>fatal system error;

>reboot//

>error: manual restart required

>shutdown//

…

…..

………

>system reboot; manual restart accepted

>audio receptors online; unknown voice pattern detected

    "Hello?"

>kinetic abilities online

    "Can you hear me?"

>speech patterns downloading

    "Y….yes…"

>speech file corrupted; standby

    "Can you open your eyes?

>visual receptors online

>log open; ready to record

    I opened my eyes slowly, the whirr in my chest growing louder as my systems came back online. I took a few moments to blink. I was still in thermal vision, and each blink changed the setting until I was finally at "human" vision. 

    "Hey, you're awake!"

    The unknown voice pattern (language; Korean Busan) drew my attention and I turned my head to look at the human speaking. I scanned the man's face and ran it through my databanks. Nothing came up.  He was not affiliated with the center, and as such, he should not have been aware of my existence. I stared at him, considering a dozen suitable ways to dispatch him, when he smiled.

    "What's your name?"

    Name? I didn't have a name. I had a serial number, a barcode, a chip in my arm that identified me and that was all I needed. Names were for humans.

    I blinked at him again, my face unchanging from it's standard neutral expression. 

    "Hello? Can you even hear me?" The human's face contorted again into a frown and he reached out to touch me. I moved faster, grabbing his wrist.

    "Yes. I can hear you," I intoned quietly, releasing his wrist. He seemed unfazed and smiled again.

    "That's good! Come on, you should probably move away from here. The street cleaners'll come soon, and you know how robots are."

    I did. I ignored the hand offered to me and stood up on my own, brushing down my front and running a full diagnostic on my body. I had no physical damage, the nano machines were doing their work well, and my systems were all functioning at full capacity. The error that shut me down was a fluke, obviously. Commander could fix me.

    "Where's your house?" The human asked, smiling brightly. I had to take a moment to run through answers. If I told him an address, would he offer to take me there or would he just let me be on my way? If I said I had none, he would probably think of me as a vagrant or runaway. Would he try to take me in? I had no answers to these questions, they required speculation on a human's personality, and I was not programmed for such things.

    The time I took to calculate apparently was too long for the human's liking, and he frowned at me, eyes sweeping over my face.

    "Do you even remember anything?" he asked, and I suppose that could be considered humorous. Of course I remembered everything about myself from the moment I came into being. Before I could answer, the human shook his head and beckoned to me.

    "Come on, I'll take you to my place so we can get you out of the cold. Then we can try and figure out where you came from."

    I was unprepared for this turn of events. This human seemed to think that I was a human suffering from amnesia.

    "That won't be necessary," I told him.

    "Then where do you come from?" the human asked, frowning a little. "What's your name?"

    I opened my mouth and then closed it. I could not answer these questions.

    "Come on, then," the human said, grabbing my arm and pulling gently. "Just until you figure out where you come from."

    "Very well…" I pried the human's hand off of my arm and followed him as he started walking.

    "My name's Daehyun," the human told me. I merely blinked at him, the file I had created for him registering new information.

    >Unknown, change to=Daehyun

    We walked down the street, the sidewalks piled high with refuse and garbage to be collected by the sweeper bots and burned. My simulation software informed me of a dozen possible escape routes should this Daehyun prove to be hostile. Somehow I did not think so, as he spent most of the walk blathering on about everything and nothing. I stopped listening after about five minutes, looking straight ahead as we  walked. He did not seem fazed by my lack of interest.

    Finally we arrived at a two story building made of brick. That meant it was old, most brick buildings and homes had been torn down and rebuilt with better, sturdier materials. However, this was usually at the owner's cost, so perhaps Daehyun could not afford the renovation. I detected several places where the mortar was beginning to rot and made a note to leave this place as soon as possible.

    Daehyun took out a ring of keys and stepped up to the door. I heard a lock turn six times and the beeps of an electronic key pad. Was this a crime filled neighborhood, that he needed so much security? A quick scan of the headlines and police reports, overlaid with my GPS coordinates, showed that while there had been several reports of break ins and assaults near this area, there was nothing to suggest needing seven measures of security.

    I stored the data for later analysis, and at Daehyun's insistence, entered his dwelling. Daehyun followed and locked the door behind us. It would take approximately three minutes to escape from the front door.

    Daehyun toed off his shoes, and after a moment of calculation I took my shoes off as well. It was a custom, it would be considered odd for me not to comply. Right now my priority was blending in and figuring out how to contact Commander. My onboard communication software was still searching for a signal, but it appeared we were in a dead zone. Odd. The communication network was supposed to cover the whole city.

    "Do you have a phone?" Daehyun seemed a bit startled by my question and he nodded.

    "Yeah, just go sit down and I'll get it." He gestured vaguely to the main room, half of which was taken up with various tech and tools, a large recharging station, and what looked like an old power core on a worktable. The other half had a sofa, a vid-screen, a bookcase, and a coffee table crammed in. The furniture area was quite clean and organized but the workspace seemed like Daehyun was in the middle of a project.

    I moved closer and considered the power core, blinking to x-ray vision and examining it. It had a burnt out conversion cable, but it seemed that Daehyun already knew that, from the way he'd dismantled it and had a spare cable set aside, ready to replace the burnt out one.

    I left it alone, blinked back to normal, and sat down carefully on the sofa. It sank a bit under my weight, I supposed Daehyun must find it comfortable. The vid-screen, sensing movement, , showing whatever it was Daehyun had been watching last. It seemed to be a drama, with the sound off. My facial recognition software identified the actors immediately but I dismissed it. It wasn't necessary information.

    The couch dipped as Daehyun sat next to me. I had not sensed him approach, it was a bit out of the ordinary. He smiled and held out the phone, an old model, it didn't even have a holoscreen. In a way I supposed that was better. He would not be able to see the number I dialed.

    I nodded and took the phone, taking a few moments to pull up the number I was supposed to contact if I ever lost touch with Commander.

    The soft beeps of the keys were the only noise, Daehyun seemed content to watch me, one of his legs tucked under him. I did not like the way he was watching me. Mostly because he was not supposed to know I existed, and he was wasn't supposed to hear any sort of conversation I would have with Commander. But also because he seemed actually concerned about me. It was strange.

    However, no one answered the call. It continued to ring and ring, until finally I ended the call, blinking slowly. This was irregular. Commander always answered. Perhaps something had occurred I was not aware of.

    "No answer?" Daehyun asked, reaching for the phone. I blinked and looked at him before shaking my head. He pressed his lips together and set it to the side.

    "I suppose they must be busy." He said, seeking to reassure me, no doubt.

    "It is possible," I said, but it was unlikely.

    Daehyun ruffled his hair and I turned my attention back to the vid screen, watching the mute scene of a girl arguing with a boy.

    "Well, we might as well have a look at you." Daehyun's fingers pressed to the back of my neck, popping open my service port. I jumped up, hand clapping down on my neck, my weapons system engaging as I stared at the man on the sofa.

    He stared up at me, eyes wide and hands up in a gesture of surrender. My processor raced. How had he known? I was supposed to perfectly mimic a human in every way, and yet this man had seen right through me. No one was supposed to know of my existence.

    "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," he said slowly, hands still up. "I just thought you might need servicing. I didn't know how long you were outside and I wanted to make sure your systems weren't damaged."

    "My systems are perfectly functional," I told him, mentally selecting a poisonous gas as my weapon of choice. He would not suffer, at least. His death would be quick.

    "Then why were you out there in the first place? You're a beautiful model, very advanced, I'd guess. No one would just throw you away unless you were malfunctioning."

    I paused to consider his logic. True, I was working perfectly now, but there had been that system error that shut me down. I still could not diagnose exactly what had gone wrong. I was on a routine drill and suddenly…nothing. My memory banks were blank. It was…unnerving.

    "I just want to take a look," Daehyun continued, standing up very slowly. "I'll run a full diagnostic on you and I won't peek at your memories or your data beyond what is absolutely necessary to fix you."

    "And what, exactly, are your qualifications to work on an android?" I asked, disengaging my weapons for the moment. He had sound reasons to look at me, and so far he had given no reason for me to draw the conclusion that he would attempt to tamper with my brain or body. Judging from the equipment in this room, he'd serviced robots before, but that didn't mean he had any kind of real knowledge of androids.

    Daehyun smiled and moved around me to the worktable. He moved a few things and plucked a data pad out from a pile of wires. He tapped on it for a few moments before handing it to me.

    "My qualifications," he said, lips twitching, a note of amusement in his voice.

    I blinked and looked at the data pad, taking in Daehyun's resume. He had several degrees in mechanics, robotic engineering, programming, and plasma core design. Basically he knew how robots worked inside and out.

    "Satisfied?" Daehyun leaned against his worktable and smiled at me. A picture on the side caught my eye and I moved closer. I recognized Daehyun smiling next to another man whose arm was thrown around Daehyun's shoulders. Both of them looked completely happy, and Daehyun was looking at the other man with something I could identify as love.

    Yes, I was aware of love. I was simply incapable of feeling it. I was incapable of all emotion.

    The other man turned up very easily in a facial search.

    "You know Dr. Yoo Youngjae?" I asked Daehyun, and he did not answer for a long moment.

    "Yes, I did." He replied, voice soft as he picked up the picture frame. At his touch it flickered and began to move, showing the two laughing and shoving each other playfully in front of the camera. "He was…my mentor. My friend. Taught me everything I know."

    I knew Dr. Yoo Youngjae by name only. The scientists under Commander spoke of him with no small amount of reverence. He was known as the father of modern androids, after developing better power cores, more advanced AI, and lighter materials to build humanoid robots. It was his theories and programs that had led to my creation.

    According to the news, Dr. Yoo had disappeared from the public eye almost two years ago. He would occasionally publish papers and dissertations on robotics and engineering and energy production, but otherwise Yoo Youngjae was a ghost.

    If he had trained Daehyun, I had no further objections to him taking a look at me. I sat in the chair in front of the worktable and Daehyun opened my access port again. I heard a rustle and then a click as he attached an omni-wire to my core system. A hum of energy ran through my systems and I heard the tapping of Daehyun's fingers as he assessed my data.

    I sat there, immobile. While I was capable of moving away if I had to or wanted to, it was a bad idea to do so while still connected to another system, there could be data corruption on both sides.

    After a few moments Daehyun made a little noise and tapped my shoulder lightly. I turned to look at him, the wire had enough slack for me to do that.

    "All right, good news and bad news," he said, running a hand through his hair. It made it stick up in strange places. I blinked and waited.

    "Good news: There's nothing wrong with you, you're working perfectly and there's no viruses or bugs or missing code or anything like that."

    I blinked again. Daehyun continued, turning back to his screen and tapping a few keys, bringing up the lines of my code. The few lines of programming that created and defined me. He tapped a spot on the screen and it enlarged so that I could read it.

    "Bad news: You have a kill code. And it can be activated remotely by your owner at any time. I've put a time delay on it, if they activate it again, you'll at least have a warning so you can get somewhere safe before you shut down."

    My eyes narrowed and I stared at him.

    "You altered my programming."

    Daehyun lifted his hands in what was supposed to show he was harmless. Except he was not. My programming was supposed to be unhackable. No one could alter it, I had been told. I added new information to the file.

    >Daehyun: Possible threat, observation recommended

        >Trained by Dr. Yoo Youngjae

        >Able to alter previously unhackable data

        >A robotics mechanic (?), further data required

    "If you'd rather shut down without warning and get run over by a car or something, I can easily delete it," Daehyun was saying, highlighting the code he had added to my programming. I scanned it and ran a simulation. In the event of the kill code being activated again, the time delay would give me three minutes to prepare for it. It was disguised as a warning system for my coolant tanks in the event of a leak. It was quite ingenious really.

    "But you can't delete the kill code?" I asked him, turning my attention back to the human.

    Daehyun shook his head and frowned.

    "No. Honestly it was hard enough to get the time delay tacked on, whoever coded you did a damn fine job. Hardly any backdoors or cracks."

    That, at least, was what the programmers had told me.

    "So, now that's taken care of, what do you want to do?" Daehyun asked, stretching and yawning. I checked my internal clock, it was close to midnight. "If you need to recharge, I have a port there. You can try calling your owner again, or you can watch something on the vid."

    "And you?" I asked, blinking as Daehyun shut down the connection and tugged the omni-wire out of my access port. I reached up and close the flap.

    Daehyun chuckled and yawned again.

    "Me? I'm gonna go to sleep, if you need anything, just wake me up, but I make no promises about my coherency or helpfulness."

    He moved to the doorway before pausing and looking back at me.

    "You never told me your name," he said quietly, looking over my face. I had no name to tell him. I looked at him and then away, unsure how to phrase this in a way that wouldn't sound suspicious. Most robots were given a name by their owners, something to respond to and a way to identify them. But not me.

    "If you don't tell me I'm going to make something up." A grin tugged at his mouth and I wondered if he expected me to smile back. I didn't.

    After my prolonged silence his smile drooped a bit and he sighed, rubbing his face.

    "I'll call you Zelo then."

    Zelo?

    "Goodnight, Zelo." He gave me another smile, this one tinged with sadness, and disappeared down the hall, leaving me sitting in his living room all alone.

    I was surprised he didn't try to restrain me. I was always restrained at night. But then again, reviewing his behavior again, Daehyun had only tried to help me. Restraining me would not be helping me.

    The man was puzzling. He almost seemed to be treating me like a human, even though he knew I was not. It was uncommon.

    Another puzzling thing was the fact that instead of simply ordering me about, he'd asked me what I wanted to do. No one had ever done that before.

    My orders still stood: If you are ever delayed or forced out of contact with the center, get in touch with Commander as soon as possible and a retrieval squad will be sent to your location. I wanted to get back to the center. There, things made sense. And I wanted to ask about the kill code. I was not informed of its existence and I wanted to know why.

    I sat there for a few more moments to ensure that Daehyun was asleep before I stood and walked to the door silently. My shoes were where I had left them and I slipped my feet into them, bending to tighten the laces before undoing the locks on the door and slipping outside.

    I had taken three steps before something occurred to me. Daehyun had the locks on his door for a reason. If they were all undone perhaps something or someone would harm him.

    I was not sure why this occurred to me. I was not sure why I thought it mattered. I was not sure why I went back to the door and used the unitools in my hands to re-lock the door. But I did. After it was done I started walking back the way Daehyun had taken me, retracing our steps easily.

    It took me exactly 11 minutes and 26 seconds to get a signal from the network. Almost immediately Commander's voice invaded my audio receptors.

    "Z310, status report," he barked, his deep voice almost a growl. I stood up straight and ordered my thoughts before replying.

    "After experiencing a system failure, this unit was restarted by a civilian and taken to their dwelling, where they ran a diagnostic on this unit's systems." And discovered the kill code that I was not told about, and manipulated my code so that I would have advance warning of another shutdown. "After finding nothing wrong with this unit, they retired to their bedroom and this unit was able to escape."

    There was a long, long pause.

    "You let a civilian work on you." Commander's voice was low and cold. "And here I thought we made sure you were above average intelligence."

    I blinked. He had never attempted to insult me before. It was…uncomfortable.

    "Sir?" I said slowly, taking a few small steps forward. "I was concerned that there was a fatal error in my programming. He-"

    "How did he even know you weren't human?" Commander interrupted, and I had to fumble for an answer. I didn't know. I had not asked.

    Before I could reply, Commander spoke again, short and sharp.

    "We're sending a retrieval squad. Stay at your current location."

    As soon as he cut the communication, a warning flashed before my eyes and a voice spoke calmly.

    "Shutdown imminent. Three minutes remaining."

    Something seemed to flood my insides with a chill. It didn't make sense, my systems were functioning perfectly, my coolant tanks were intact.

    They were shutting me down and coming to collect me. I should be alright with that. After all I had been created by them, I existed to obey them. And yet…I remembered the helplessness of being shut off. Of feeling my senses simply stop working one by one. I supposed it could be compared to a human dying.

    It took me 13 seconds to make a decision.

    I turned and I started to run, engaging every motor and piston in my legs to move as fast as I possibly could. I called up a map of the city and tried to find the quickest route to Daehyun's house. At my current speed it would take me 3 minutes and 14 seconds to reach it. Too slow.

    It was an effort but I managed to increase my speed, moving my legs so quickly and hitting the ground so hard I was sure I cracked it in a few places.

    "Two minutes remaining."

    The buildings flashed by, mere glimpses of steel and glass and concrete. I was moving so fast it was hard for my processors to keep up. So when a street sweeper bot turned the corner directly into my path I stumbled and nearly crashed into a storefront.

    I corrected my trajectory and avoided the collision with the building, but my foot caught on a crack and I fell to the ground, skidding along the rough concrete on my right side. I staggered to my feet. I lost some skin there but more importantly I lost precious time.

    "One minute remaining."

    The coldness seemed to be spreading throughout my body and I threw myself forward. I could just see Daehyun's brick building.

    "Thirty seconds remaining."

    My right leg wasn't moving as well as it should, I must have damaged it.

    "Twenty seconds remaining."

    Every step I took seemed to make it worse until I could barely lift my foot at all.

    "Ten seconds remaining. Nine."

    I wasn't even fifty feet from the door.

    "Eight."

    I dragged myself forward, eyes fixed on the handle.

    "Seven."

    I took another step. I could make it. I had to make it.

    "Six."

    Another step.

    "Five."

    Just a few more steps. Just a few more.

    "Four."

    I was nearly there, I could almost touch the doorframe.

    "Three."

    My leg collapsed under me and I fell to the ground, fingers still stretching for the doorknob.

    "Two."

    My fingers dug into the front step as I dragged my body forward.

    "One."

    I wondered if Daehyun would restart me again.

    "Shutdown, sorry."

    The world went dark.

    >fatal system error

    >reboot//

    >error: manual restart required

    >shutdown//

-----------

A/N: Don't have much to say here except that I'm sorry it took so long. Don't worry, there's more to come. Robot Zelo gives me feels. Who is the Commander? What happened to Youngjae? Will the other members of BAP show up? What the heck is a plasma core? All these questions and more will be answered