Memory #00001

[Oz]

.

Bright lights burned down on his photoreceptors. Near him, he could hear the fizzing of a thermal lance cutting through metal. As his vision adjusted, he could see sparks out of the corners of his receptors. Still unused to moving, the droid craned his head sideways, almost expecting a long creak to follow it. To his left, a man wearing a mask was carving a metal shell into a humanoid form. Currently he was working on the bust. "Who are you?"

He was ignored. The unknown man continued sculpting wordlessly. "Who are you?" He repeated again, louder this time. After a few seconds without an answer, he turned his head back up, toward the light. The fizzing stopped.

"I'm your new owner." Owner? The word sounded strange. Why would he have an owner? He wasn't some sort of object. Was he?

"Who am I?"

The question was met with laughter. It bounced off the walls, hearty and a bit annoying, until the man stopped to answer the question. The droid was looking at him again now.

"You're a droid. My droid." The man took off his mask now, and to the bot's surprise, the person was not a man. It was a boy. Judging by the blend of baby face and developed features, his owner was a teenager, most likely about 19 human years old. This surprised the droid, although at first, he was not sure what this emotion was. He was not sure why he was feeling anything at all. Surprise, he thought.

"I'm a droid," he echoed. "I'm a droid." He took in his surroundings. A workshop, messy and bustling, filled with bits of metal, empty boxes of take-out food, and tools scattered all over the floor, intertwined with wires leading to various machines. The machines appeared to be defunct.

There was not a window in the room. The only source of lighting was a surgical lamp above him, surprisingly clean considering its surroundings. Perhaps it had just been installed. He looked away from it now. He didn't like the way it blinded him. The droid looked at the room again, and concluded...nothing. There was nothing to think of it. This was a workshop, like any other.

He shut off his photoreceptors, and the fizzing continued.

 

[Oz]

.

The place he lived on was called "Nar Shaddaa." It was the moon of a larger planet, called Nal Hutta. Nar Shaddaa was for the criminals and the poor people, while Nal Hutta was the home of the Hutt race, who were large slugs. For some reason or other, these slugs had found themselves in possession of incredible riches, mainly acquired through illegal acts. The proximity of these two bodies caused Nar Shaddaa to essentially be the crime capital of the galaxy, although the Hutt empire did not end there. Its borders were massive, covering the entire known universe. Where there's life, there's crime.

The droid had a name now. It was given to him a few days after he first powered on, and he found himself a bit satisfied, not with the name itself, but because he had one. The droid was called OZ-442. He was not very happy with the numbers at first, although the matter was final, and he could not control the way others referred to him. He referred to himself as OZ, however.

It had been about a week since he was turned on for the first time. His shell was now finished, and despite his satisfaction, it appeared that his owner was still not happy with it. "You're bulky," he would say. "If have better prowess with tools I would have made you look better, but you're bulky." OZ did not consider himself to be "bulky." Perhaps it was simply because his owner was a teenager, still going through the human process known as "puberty" and thus was prone to tantrums and bouts of self doubt, which he took out onto others. Still, the words began to get to OZ.

He was changing. Physically, but he was also feeling different. He knew his program had been altered and that his owner was doing something to him, but the boy refused to say what exactly he was up to. This worried OZ. He was not sure why, but it worried him.

Sometimes he was left running when his owner left. He had already explored the workshop, becoming familiar to every nook and cranny, and had even befriended a small black rat that frequented the room for the take-out boxes on the floor. OZ had named this rat "Pouch," due to his small size, and the fact that he was a biological organism. He was a meat pouch. This humored the droid, but he was not sure why. He was not sure about many things, but he suspected that this would change with time. He suspected and speculated many things, but knew none.

Such is life.

 

[Oz]

.

A few weeks into his transformation, OZ had decided that he was not enjoying the direction he was going. He found himself to be having different thoughts, most of them aggressive. However, he could not stop himself, and so he went on as he was. His owner still refused to tell him why he was becoming meaner.

One day, he overheard the boy speaking to someone. He was talking about OZ. As the droid listened with his enhanced hearing, he heard every word spoken about him, but one grabbed his attention. Assassin. He repeated the word to himself later that night, when his owner had left. "Assassin." He repeated it to Pouch as well, who was munching on some greasy noodles. "Assassin." What did that mean?

The next day, his owner took him outside. "We're visiting someone," he said to the droid.

That was the first time he saw sunlight. It did not make him feel warm. He was made of metal, and was completely inorganic, so he was not sure why it would make him feel warm. He could not feel things this way. However, as he stepped out into the sunlight, he felt a bit...happy. He had grown bored to the workshop. He concluded that he liked this "sunlight." He wondered how many more he would feel.

Walking felt weird. It was not the first time he walked, but he was accustomed to a few steps to get to and from a point in the workshop. Striding in open space felt different. It felt freeing. The droid enjoyed this.

It took them 23 minutes and 42 seconds to get to the "someone" they were visiting. They walked, and the boy seemed a little nervous, as he glanced behind him and around him every few seconds. Perhaps he was paranoid, but OZ could not think of something to be paranoid about.

They stepped into a tall building adorned with balconies. The building was covered in filth on the outside and the inside. The boy and the droid stepped into an elevator, and it lifted them 4 floors before it stopped with a lurch and opened its doors. OZ wondered if the elevator thought like he did.

The two stopped in front of the door, and the boy knocked. A few seconds later, OZ could hear the opening of 3 different locks, then the door. A bearded man looked at them from inside the apartment. "Come in," he said. They came in.

After a few minutes of conversation, they beckoned OZ over. He had been listening, mostly to record for later. For now, their words made no sense to him, although he heard the word "assassin" again, and also "credits."

When he walked to them, they laid him on a table and opened him up. He closed his photoreceptors to make it seem as though he was slumbering, although they seemed to either not notice or not care that he was awake. They continued their conversation, now above his opened bust.

The older man appeared to be giving his owner advice about programming. The boy accepted this advice, although he did talk back a few times. He was, after all, a teenager.

"I want him to be an assassin droid." There it was again. That word. OZ could not figure out what it meant, until the older man spoke back. "If you want him to be an assassin droid, you need to implement a killing protocol."

Killing. That sounded unpleasant. OZ did not know that word, but he suspected he understood its meaning. "Killing" was an ugly word.

 

[Oz]

.

He killed Pouch. Put simply, the way it had been done, OZ killed the small rat. He was not sure why he did it. An impulse within him told him to do it. He stepped on the rodent as he was talking to it about his day, mid sentence. He did not feel anything as he did it, but he felt something after. Sadness.

He did not like killing. OZ told his owner, to which the boy replied, "I'll fix that." The droid did not like the sound of this. He could not do anything to stop him, however.

The days passed. No other rats showed up. Pouch's remains were cleaned, and any evidence that he had existed was gone. OZ felt sorry about killing his only friend, and he still could not understand why he did it. "I do not like killing."

His owner had brought in a monitor. It was suspended on the wall of the workshop, and when turned on, it played videos. OZ watched this monitor when he was alone, and sometimes he watched it when his owner was also watching it. Although the boy preferred action movies, the droid enjoyed the more artistic programs. He watched operas and plays, and once he even watched a short program about painting.

OZ grew to enjoy looking at the monitor. Sometimes it broadcasted government programs, and he watched those too, but the petty politics did not interest him. That was for the meat bags to sort out. That term humored him. He had heard other droids use it in several shows.

As the days passed, OZ felt less and less sad about Pouch. His grieving period was ending.

 

[Oz]

.

It had been about a month since he first opened his receptors. He had changed a lot. He was about to change even more. He knew it.

The change was abrupt. One day, as OZ was watching an opera about a masked man, his owner burst in holding a chip of some sort. "I finally got it!" The droid did not bother asking anything, because he knew the boy would continue speaking nonetheless. In a frenzy, he motioned for OZ to get up and almost threw him onto the table. He opened the droid up, although this time, he did something unexpected. Usually, the boy left him on, but this time, OZ shut off.

When he was powered on, the droid was different. His curiosity had turned to indifference. His pacifism was gone now, and thoughts of aggression swirled through his mind. He was no longer the old OZ. He had been changed completely.

"How do you feel?" the boy asked excitedly.

"What have you done to me?"

"I have fixed you."

OZ processed this. He was not sure what was broken in the first place. He felt something gearing up in the back of his head.

"I am not me. What am I?" he asked. He definitely did not feel like OZ-442.

"You are an assassin." The boy's eyes were glinting. His excitement radiating off him, but bounced off of OZ's metal shell. The droid had no reason to be excited. Change was not always something worth getting excited about.

A thought came to him. Something he had not considered since he first booted up. He glared at his owner. "Who are you?" After an entire month, the droid still did not know the boy's name.

"That doesn't matter to you."

"Yes it does. Who are you?" He could feel something building up. His processors had never acted like this before. As the gears spun, he became filled with an emotion he had never felt: bloodlust. Was this what it meant to be an assassin?

The boy seemed to be a bit nervous now. He was shifting around uncomfortably when he suddenly said, "Okay, I think that's enough for today. Time for you to shut off, OZ." The droid did not move. It was obvious he would not power off until he got some answers. His owner's hand moved toward him, and he grabbed it.

He held onto it, pressing down slowly. He could see the boy's pain written on his face. Crack. The boy was yelling now, but OZ did not care. He wanted answers, and he would get them one way or another. Besides, it was too late now. Even if he wanted to stop, his programming simply would not allow. He knew this. He felt it.

He let go of the boy's arm, and the boy collapsed in a heap on the floor. He whimpered quietly, cradling his hand. "Who are you? What is your name?" The young programmer did not respond.

A cold, metal hand reached down, seizing the boy by the throat, and lifting him. It pressed down on his windpipe, and it was moving him backwards. He did not know where his body was going, but he knew these were his last moments. The droid knew this as well, and as the boy began choking, he slammed him into the wall. The human was now unconscious, but OZ continued. He slammed him into the wall, again, and again, until cracks began webbing out, and until blood flowed through the cracks. He grabbed a long steel nail near him and impaled the boy into the wall, with the nail in his chest.

"This is only the first act," he murmured to himself. The boy said nothing. The boy couldn't say anything.