Deckerd sat in a disused hallway in a deliberately random part of the ship, and he wrote out a message to Starscream and Ultra Magnus and Gold Arm and Orion Pax. After he was done, he very calmly minimized the messenger function and pulled up schematics for a computer that was reasonably similar to diagrams he had last seen back home on the engineers' computers. The diagram was of computer chips, and a passage to the left side of the screen explained how data was stored and went on to show how to recover or delete sequences.
Deckerd spent another few minutes reading this over with glazed over optics. It took multiple attempts for him to absorb the information. Both because it felt like it was delivered to him from far away and through muffling layers of cotton, but also because it had to fight past the echoes of yesterday's conversation with Six Oh Four.
He had gotten Yuuta killed.
Yuuta had been killed in large part because of his own recklessness.
This --he-- was the source of Gunmax's nightmares and hallucinations.
The words floated around and around and around his processor as they had every minute of every hour since they had been said to him, but he knew what to do now. He understood. He understood that he could not cope with knowing these things. He understood that as an AI, his world and his mind were defined by data.
The answer then, was simple.
Deckerd had returned to the brigade labs on his way out of security this evening, and took tools that the video assured him he would need. He then walked and he walked, and he sat.
He wrote the messages that he had initially tried and failed to use as a way to distract himself but which he thought still deserved to be said, and then he removed his helmet. The delicate hardware of his processor now partially exposed, Deckerd consulted the diagram again. It told him what to do.
It was easy.
Somewhere far away and growing farther was a voice attempting to catch his attention. Maybe it was his own, or Gunmax's, or Starscream's, or Gold Arm's, or Soundwave's.
He ignored it.
It was easy.
Everything already felt both too far away and too close, suffocating and alarming and far, far too much, and it was a relief to instead pay attention to one step after another. To connecting a cord from his datapad to a port just beneath his audial. It was uncomfortable. He ignored that, too.
He then used his datapad to begin to hunt down and delete files. At first, it was easy. As easy as venting or holding a hand or laughing at the cape Starscream had worn to a party.
He no longer was quite certain which one.
As he kept going and going, the hand he'd kept cupped protectively against his head started to shake, scratching down the length of exposed parts. His vision blurred, and thoughtless, wordless noises began to pour out of his mouth in a stream. He had manually deactivated his comm before he'd started, but it clicked on again now as he began to thrash.
The word he said between bursts of crackling static was not Yuuta's name.
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timeasmymeasure
*Jaws theme song*
Date: 2024-08-26 02:18 am (UTC)Deckerd spent another few minutes reading this over with glazed over optics. It took multiple attempts for him to absorb the information. Both because it felt like it was delivered to him from far away and through muffling layers of cotton, but also because it had to fight past the echoes of yesterday's conversation with Six Oh Four.
He had gotten Yuuta killed.
Yuuta had been killed in large part because of his own recklessness.
This --he-- was the source of Gunmax's nightmares and hallucinations.
The words floated around and around and around his processor as they had every minute of every hour since they had been said to him, but he knew what to do now. He understood. He understood that he could not cope with knowing these things. He understood that as an AI, his world and his mind were defined by data.
The answer then, was simple.
Deckerd had returned to the brigade labs on his way out of security this evening, and took tools that the video assured him he would need. He then walked and he walked, and he sat.
He wrote the messages that he had initially tried and failed to use as a way to distract himself but which he thought still deserved to be said, and then he removed his helmet. The delicate hardware of his processor now partially exposed, Deckerd consulted the diagram again. It told him what to do.
It was easy.
Somewhere far away and growing farther was a voice attempting to catch his attention. Maybe it was his own, or Gunmax's, or Starscream's, or Gold Arm's, or Soundwave's.
He ignored it.
It was easy.
Everything already felt both too far away and too close, suffocating and alarming and far, far too much, and it was a relief to instead pay attention to one step after another. To connecting a cord from his datapad to a port just beneath his audial. It was uncomfortable. He ignored that, too.
He then used his datapad to begin to hunt down and delete files. At first, it was easy. As easy as venting or holding a hand or laughing at the cape Starscream had worn to a party.
He no longer was quite certain which one.
As he kept going and going, the hand he'd kept cupped protectively against his head started to shake, scratching down the length of exposed parts. His vision blurred, and thoughtless, wordless noises began to pour out of his mouth in a stream. He had manually deactivated his comm before he'd started, but it clicked on again now as he began to thrash.
The word he said between bursts of crackling static was not Yuuta's name.