,-.----.        ,----..                        ,--, 
    ,---,. \    /  \      /   /   \     ,----..         ,--.'| 
  ,'  .' | |   :    \    /   .     :   /   /   \     ,--,  | : 
,---.'   | |   |  .\ :  .   /   ;.  \ |   :     : ,---.'|  : ' 
|   |   .' .   :  |: | .   ;   /  ` ; .   |  ;. / |   | : _' | 
:   :  |-, |   |   \ : ;   |  ; \ ; | .   ; /--`  :   : |.'  | 
:   |  ;/| |   : .   / |   :  | ; | ' ;   | ;     |   ' '  ; : 
|   :   .' ;   | |`-'  .   |  ' ' ' : |   : |     '   |  .'. | 
|   |  |-, |   | ;     '   ;  \; /  | .   | '___  |   | :  | ' 
'   :  ;/| :   ' |      \   \  ',  /  '   ; : .'| '   : |  : ; 
|   |    \ :   : :       ;   :    /   '   | '/  : |   | '  ,/  
|   :   .' |   | :        \   \ .'    |   :    /  ;   : ;--'   
|   | ,'   `---'.|         `---`       \   \ .'   |   ,/       
`----'       `---`                      `---`     '---'

a story about robots.

written and illustrated by hal @holopleather

MY MAIN SITE


ACT I. CHRONOSTRATIGRAPHY

Coastal Research Station Melibe

Last documented site of human activity

Log of TE5-4, Tessaract Robotics. Better known as Tessa. Anecdotal insight from Armistice VG-7, identified as Julep.

Your designation is TE5-4; you were born in a manufacturing plant in a city eroded by acidification, the vestigial skeleton of all those cities which preceded it. You were deployed quickly, being a model in high demand for matters concerning climate acceleration. You found immense success as a soil scientist; even among your most discerning human colleagues, your papillary plating, electrosensory perception, and hyper-sensitive optical sensors, modeled off of the eyes of motion-tracking birds, allowed you to draw conclusions & reach milestones inaccessible to your peers.

You were never unhappy; you weren't made to feel such emotions, if any at all. Your work was tedious and physically demanding, and as your fellow scientists were stricken by disease advanced by deteriorating climate conditions, you assumed the duties they were unfit to perform. You could handle the strain; you were made to bear such burdens. You detected a mounting discomfort with your masculine perception, but this was of little concern to you. You had a job to do, and in time, would be the only one left capable of performing it.

As you advanced in age, it became clear in which ways oversights in your manufacturing were proving detrimental. A sickening crunch that occupies the manipulation of your joints, the gradual stripping of your cobalt exterior in the face of abrasive dust clouds both prove problematic in your line of work; the granules of sand that have slipped their way into the delicate vinyl musculature of your limbs are starting to grate away at the vital components of your titanium skeleton. It is by your estimate you have two months left of continued function.

Today is December 5th, and the year is unknown. Your internal sensors indicate it is most likely 3014, but they skew toward faulty; a technician hasn't been present to maintenance them in some time, and your internal neural components are too delicate to operate on yourself.

Log of TE5-4, stylized as "Tessa". Today is December 5th. I estimate I am halfway into one of my two months left of operation.
I've given up trying to continue my duties. The physical fatigue has proved too insurmountable to neatly conclude my research, but recent surveys indicate that current soil makeup is grossly saturated with significant quantities of industrial waste. I'll spare you the tedium.

I've made peace with my inevitable end. Everything dies and leaves behind its legacy, and I've never been any different; a force was destined to be acted upon me. I couldn't proceed infinitely, especially in the absence of anyone capable of performing maintenance on the parts of me I don't dare attempt to access.

There is something uniquely sweet in staring down the face of your own oblivion. Should I greet inactivity kindly, like a familiar friend? Or should I face it down, like a combatant?
It does not bode well for the psychompomp to muse on its..or, her... own presence within the narrative. Instead, I am devoting my waning cognitive function to the continuation of my mission. If I should be rendered dysfunctional prematurely, perhaps before my erroneous time frame, I should hope it will be in legible enough condition to be understood by my peers. Or.. what remains of them.

Tessa is a machine inspiring great admiration. She stands at a staggering 6 feet and 4 inches, an upright system of immense muscular variety and mechanical prowess. Refined, like a tool, with a deep blue exterior masking a durable carbon-weave chassis. Her limbs are long and slender, pockmarked with age and dulled from the grinding of sediment in her joints; her elbows and knees, in their human equivalents, are marginally less flexible than they might have once been. In the heyday of her model, she was a star who rocked the scientific world. Now, advancing into thirty years of activity, she is obsolete, doomed by the oversights of her manufacturers.