Scheduled Maintenance Draft 1

INTRO NEEDS A REWORK

Andrew was in the middle of organizing and cleaning his maintenance station for the day when he heard a page on his  door intercom, “Come in.”

As the door slid open with a mechanical ‘whoosh’, his heart plummeted he heard the distinct rhythm of carbon fiber heels on the workshop floor. It was late; that sound pointed to only one person, one android. He turned on his heels to see a superior officer, two levels up from his own boss, standing in front of him, her arms sharply crossed behind her back. Her olive-tone synth-flesh was in sharp contrast to the cobalt police uniform that she wore, playing host to her many decorations and commendations.


“Hello Lieutenant Sinno. I’m nearly finished cleaning up my workstation for the evening. I'll be out of here soon.”

A sharp, synthetic female voice responded him. “Don’t close up shop just yet, Technician Liam. I need to have a word with you.”

Perfect. He had been expecting this death sentence for a few days now. “M’am, if this is about the Oorentov incident, I will assume full responsibility for t---”

The sharp female voice cut him off, speaking with a machine-like efficiency, “Stop. Oorentov won’t be seeing the outside of an intensive care ward for a long time.”

Andrew was still lost. Hadn’t she come here to chew him apart and then fire him?

She continued, “Your quick thinking and technical expertise prevented many more officers from being injured, or possibly killed, in the line of duty.” She paused, her renowned stoic face betrayed with an almost imperceptible  smile, “I was impressed.”

Andrew could only stare. He was expecting, for sure, to be terminated on the spot. The legendary android officer Sinno, was impressed with his work. He thought for sure that he was going to be terminated on the spot, and that--

“Officer Andrews?”

Andrew lurched from his trance, “Thank you m’am.” He looked at her face again; the smile was gone. “You said you wished to have a word with me, ma'am?”

“It is exactly because of your technical expertise that I came to you for an evaluation,”

Interesting enough, "What kind of evaluation, M'am?"

"Executive Chief Reynolds has expressed concern that my actions in recent raids and arrests have been excessive in force and aggression, even though I haven’t differed in any of my routines or procedures. When Chief Reynolds contacted my assigned technician to run a diagnostic check-up, my technician reported back a green light-- no discrepancies. Then the Oorentov happened two days ago."

Four inmates’ hopes of escape were dashed by Lt. Sinno when responded to a call for backup at a prison transfer center. They had killed their guards, procured weapons, and had started to make their way to a pre-planned escape vehicle. In the ensuing chaos she cut them off and viciously detained them, breaking at least one bone of each man's body, and left the ring leader, a powerful and well-feared enforcer for the Green Stag Cartel named Donald Oorentov, in a coma with a broken leg, two arms broken, six ribs shattered, a dislocated jaw and a fractured skull. "Permission to speak freely m'am?"

Her face remained motionless for a moment, "Granted."

"I saw security footage of you in the transfer wing when you folded those four guys, and if I was in Reynold's position, I would have had your psyche flashed within the hour." Andrew declared casually as he walked over to his workbench and fired up several of the proper modules, clearing off some of the clutter from his desk and breaking up the painful silence with another question,  "I take it you are feeling better now..."

"I've felt the same as I always have these past few days, and I don't feel any different than I have since my last diagnosis. Regardless of how I feel, Executive Chief Reynolds has put me on administrative leave until they can correct my aggressive….."

The whole situation felt uncomfortable, but familiar, to Andrew. It felt like a hundred years since he had heard these symptoms. Back in his old life. Before he was offered a chance to be a technician on the police force.  Back with a much less pleasant crowd. Back when he...

"Something is troubling you Technician," Lieutenant Sinno pressed, shocking him out of his trance, "Something about your life before you joined the force, perhaps?"

Andrew stared at the android with wide eyes, baffled at her perception. How on Earth could she know th--

"I’m trained to interrogate rings around homicidal fanatics and pathological liars. Reading you... is effortless.” she answered, her powerful glare drawing fear deep into the pit of his stomach. He turned his eyes back to preparing his workstation, feeling like a thousand burning needles were dancing across his back. The Lieutenant continued, her tone softening considerably,“Actually, that’s not entirely true. I reviewed your file before I came here this evening. There were high marks on your technical expertise, but it failed to specify where you went to school or a specific area of technical expertise before you were accepted into the Bureau. Could you enlighten me?”

Liam paused, keeping his gaze from his superior officer, his visible unease well-noted by the android, “It’s not something that I’m comf--”

Her request was as swift as it was absolute, “That wasn’t a request, Technician.”


He paused, his answer faint and embarrassed,“Sex bots, m’am.”

He didn’t dare to turn around to see her face, and finished the last touches on preparing the diagnostic computer. “Sexbots?”, her reply was not severe, as he had expected, but he could still pick out the confusion and disbelief in her reply.

Liam cleared his throat, trying his best not to show his embarrassment, “Yes, m’am.”

 After a short silence that seemed eternal to Liam, the Lieutenant spoke up, her tone much more pointed and curious,  “How does working with sexbots give you any sort of qualifications to work with the Bureau?”

“As you might know, most android technicians spend two years with a basic android technical program, and can continuing studying and working towards a specific certification depending on the type of android they want to work with. Sex bots are more complicated than you would expect and require about three to five years of certification to attain,” he paused, turning and sitting against the workbench as he continued, “When the raid on my… I guess you could call it my home, happened, I was downstairs in the workshop, neck deep in my music, working on one of the girls that had had a run-in with a group of overeager customers. I was pulled out during a raid by one of the people that I had worked with in passing. Turns out he was a cop, and didn’t see the point in letting my talent go to waste.” The Lieutenant listened, amused behind her unwavering expression, as a proud tone began to creep into Liam’s voice, “All of my technical expertise, I taught myself. Most people who work on the models that I worked with had spent about 5 years of their life in a college,” he paused, “I was 19 at the time of that raid.”

They simply stared at each other, Andrew’s confidence waning with each passing moment. Her piercing cobalt eyes darted from his to the room, to the workstation, to the floor, back up to his. Her face seemed to soften considerably as the minute of silence started to feel like an eternity, the mechanical hum of the workstations filling the room with a noise no more comforting than silence from before. He felt his stomach slowly start sinking into the center of the Earth as she continued to stare at him. “Are you ready to get started?”

“No,” she replied sharply, her tone piercing. His gut twisted and he felt himself stand up a little straighter. Her gaze remained fixed on him as she stood up, walking up to him and stopping when their faces were mere inches apart, “Technician, do you often work when you are wound up like a time bomb?”

“N-No, m’am.” he replied, quickly. She brought her hand up and rested it on his shoulder, her eyes inches from his. He didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

“In that case-- at ease. Please, relax. I don’t have any administrative power right now. I’m coming to you because I don’t want to be out of the game for longer than I need to be,” she let her arm fall back to her side, “My assigned technician isn’t able to see me for another week. I’ll lose my mind and kill something if I have to sit out for a week. That’s why I personally came to you for help.”

She sounded.... anxious. Andrews could tell that it really did bother her to be sitting around doing nothing. It was a general rule of thumb around the Police Bureau that there were two things always working to some capacity: Lieutenant Sinno and the coffee machines. Andrews let out a breathe of relief that he had been holding in for longer than he realized, running his hands through his hair, holding his eyes shut as he tried to relax. He was willing to at least take a look, but one lingering question still ran through his mind, “Does Reynolds know you’re here?”

She let out a small huff, her eyes drifting up to the ceiling, “No, he doesn’t.” Andrews grinned; he could hardly believe his ears. She was desperate for anything to get her back to the force.

“You’re looking for anything to get you back on the force, huh?” Andrews chimed, much more relaxed and confident, pressing the android for an honest answer. “I’m a raid android,” she scoffed, crossing her arms, “What else am I good for?”

“That’s a terrible outlook on life Sophia, even for a police android.” Andrews shot back, drumming his hands against the side of the table. She seemed to faintly flinch at the use of her informal name; reading the almost imperceptible body language of police and military androids was always a challenge, “Fortunately for you, I think I might already have an idea what the problem is.”

Her expression was unwavering, “You do?”

“I think so. Take off your jacket and come sit up here” Andrew replied, motioning to the workstation. He was fairly certain of what was wrong with her, but diagnosing the problem was going to be interesting, “Can I ask you a question Sophia?” The android finished draping her jacket onto one of the nearby work chairs, muttering a vague acknowledgement over her shoulder. Andrew took a deep breath, “You have a vaginal module, don’t you?”

Sophia flinched, spinning to look at him, her face wrought with shock, "What did you just say?"

He continued his question, his tone more stern, "Do you have a vaginal module?"

"What the hell would that have to do with anything, Technician?!" she snapped back, her expression confused, her tone angry. Police and military androids rarely showed an emotion, besides confidence, to a visible degree, which is why Sophia’s outburst left Andrew stunned. For a brief moment, her expressions were almost… human.

After a moment he collected himself, still trying to get an answer out of the Lieutenant, “So you come here to me on a hunch, without any approval whatsoever, looking for anyway that you can get back onto the force. I haven’t even opened you up and I have a good idea to what might be the problem, what your.. brilliant technical engineer and maintenance team have probably missed, and…”

“YES…  Technician! I have one!” she barked. There was a tense silence between the two as Sophia stared at the floor between them, and Andrew cleared his throat, "Ok, then I can help you..." the Lieutenant didn't look reassured, "I know you came to me because standard procedure wasn't helping you, but I'm going to start off with a basic diagnostic analysis. Could you remove your shirt?"

The lieutenant nodded and began to remove her undershirt, as familiar with the process as Andrew as he reached over to the diagnostic suite and began to unwind the fiber optic diagnostic cable. He glanced over to see Sophia sitting patiently on the table in her underwear, and he found himself staring at this beautiful android. Her jet black hair was short, hanging almost two inches above her shoulders. Her form was masculine, with powerful and streamlined muscles and actuators hidden underneath a nearly flawless olive-tone skin, her form radiating an inspiring and humbling charisma.

But all of that power was kept in a body that was as undeniably feminine as it was masculine. The concentration of shock absorbers and synthetic muscle fiber in her legs that gave the android her amazing agility and speed lent a certain plump form to her waist and thighs that flexed between smooth, plump flesh and toned, unyielding muscle as her legs swung back and forth. Her arms held an awe-inspiring amount of strength in a gentle build that barely looked conditioned. Above a set of soft, perfectly defined pectorals, a spartan grey sports bra that held her pert B-cup breasts firmly in place. A perfect blend of performance and beauty that only an android could achieve. It seemed appropriate for someone like her, and he couldn’t help but stare.

She caught him, lost in his trance. “Technician.”

“Sorry, m’am,” he sputtered, taking the cable and stepping over to her, resting his hand on her shoulder as he scanned her neck. Most android manufacturers place the diagnostic port on the side of the neck, and after searching for a few moments he couldn’t find any trace of one. His eyes narrowed in concentration, searching for something that he might have missed, muttering an involuntary, “…where’sit…”

Sophia sensed his confusion,“Top of the spine. Second vertebrate. Gently press your fingers on it.” Andrew followed her instructions, spotting a faint indent exactly where she said. He pressed his fingers onto the indent, holding back a gasp as a small ‘click’ sounded from under the indent. The cover shifted up against his fingers gently, then slid to the side, revealing the diagnostic port. Andrew simply gazed at it; the sophistication and utility of this design was much nicer than the standard port setup.

 “That’s nice,” was all he could manage, gently seating the diagnostic cable into the port with a soft click. He turned back to sit in his chair, the half dozen computer screens flooding with information. Andrew drummed his knuckles against the desk as the information finished it’s report, presenting a mountain of data on everything in Sophia’s body. Visual readouts, emotional state, and data on her physical body were splashed across the screen, and with a few keystrokes he could bring up the deeper parts of her psyche and an intricate and detailed layout of how all of the Lieutenant's limbs and sensors worked in tandem to feed information to her Psyche.

He already knew what he was looking for; it wasn’t the first time that he had to check on the status of a malfunctioning soft-wired vaginal module. He found himself already calling up the diagnostic page of all of her minor organs and auxiliary modules as he reassured her, “This should be pretty quick, I got pretty damn good at straightening out malfunctioning soft-mods.”

Sophia began to protest, “Technician Liam, I’m not--”

“Call me Andy.” he muttered, scanning through the statuses and readouts from the various minor systems.

“Technician, I don’t have a vaginal soft module,” she finished, just as Andrew reached the end of the list. She was right: no vaginal soft-module. No, that couldn’t be right. His mind was scrambling for an answer as he started back at the top of the list, scrolling through the entries again and again. The results came back negative. His brow furrowed, deep in thought, and he quickly shifted workspaces and called up the data printouts and logs on major organs in Sophia’s body. The Psyche and Synth-Heart logs would take a few minutes to dump their info, so he switched back to the first workspace monitor and opened Psyche Analysis. “Sophia, could you step over here please?” As she stepped over to him, he clicked the large tab titled READOUT, and with a few more clicks he was looking at the emotion spectrum, including the one emotion he was checking for in her Psyche: arousal. He then stood up and put a hand on her shoulder, “Could you start by lifting your arms out to the side, Lieutenant? You might feel a sharp, but very momentary pain.”

She nodded, raising her arms straight outwards. She looked at Andrew as peered over her shoulder at the READOUT screen, stating, “I don’t remember this being a standard diagnostic check, Technician.”

Andrew simply muttered “Nope” as he dove his hand into her panties, twisting his hand to put pressure inwards as he pushed his fingers against her mound, curving his hand with a practiced ease until her mound was cupped in his hand. She gasped faintly and froze, eyes wide. His eyes were fixed on the screen: She pinged zero arousal. But what immediately caught his eye was a large spike in confusion and anger, an unusual reaction for an android with a sexual module. What would be causing her to ping confusion and a--

A hand slammed into the base of his jaw as Sophia grabbed his throat and jerked him forward, their faces inches apart. As his hands shot up to grab her arm, her words came as a whisper. Quiet as the breeze, as sharp as a dagger, “Technician,” she paused, “You better have a goddamn... brilliant explanation for what you are doing with your hand down there.”

He was terrified of the android that threatened to collapse his jaw, but he had to find out what was causing that strange readout. He patted his hand on her shoulder as gently as he could muster, choking out “Getting a much better idea of what is wrong, if you can believe me,” He struggled to get another lungful of air, the computer chirping to tell him the organ readout was ready, “.. and that’s gonna let us know if I’m right or not.”

She pushed his head towards the computers in disgust. Andrew caught himself on the chair, hoping that his stunt a few moments ago wasn’t going to result in him looking like a freak and possibly getting dismembered. He sat down at the desk, quickly bringing up the major organ printout. He scanned quickly, his eyes landing on the readout, showing that one of the major organs was deactivated. Andrew drummed his hands against the desk. With a few clicks,  he brought up a readout of the deactivated organ. It was a hardwired vaginal module.

Andrew swore under his breath, seeing how interconnected and interweaved the vaginal module was to the rest of the system. The few public top-shelf vaginal soft modules drew around 50,000 neural connections and interorgan links. Sophia’s hard-wired module was drawing nearly 4.2 million connections, stretching to every facet of her body, nearly as deeply as her heart, Psyche, and neural Core Links. The module was responsible for a long list of Psyche pings and Core Emotion checks and failsafes that Andrew had a hard time wrapping his head around. And it was turned off cold.

If a poorly maintenanced soft module causes the damage it does, what the hell would a completely …..

The computer pinged again, and Andrew quickly brought up the freshly finished Psyche printout. He quickly switched workspaces and extended the results to the full, exhaustive printout. Andrew failed to hold back his curse, “Holy bastard son of God…” NULL;DIFFER fail-safes and Psyche pings failing and differing emotional feedback through the wrong channels. Some of the neural signals never even got differed in their entirety, leaving out critical information from the other reasoning centers for making sound decisions. Failed or failing backup Psyche caches. Non-responsive pings on important P-AthOS hardware and firmware checks. A complex firmware sub-module that Andrew didn’t even recognize. How the hell was Sophia stil functioning and what the hell is that modu-

“Technician Liam!”

Glancing up, Andrew saw an extremely worried android looking back at him. Actual, tangible worry. “What’s wrong?”

Lucas stared for longer that he should have, trying to find a way to explain her situation to her without terrifying her. “I have a pretty good idea of what is wrong… but gimme a moment to check one more thing,” Andrew reassured, turning back to the computer.

“Technician, you aren’t using any techni-”

“Sohpia, if this is still unofficial business, please call me Andy.”

“Andrew, you refuse to use any actual technical jargon or give me a complete answer. Will you tell me what is wrong with my platform?”

As he continued scanning over the readouts, he exhaled a deep breath, drumming his hands against the desk before clapping his hands together, slowly turning his chair to face her as he thought about his choice of words, "Your vaginal hard-module is shut off. Cold. I have no fuckin' idea why it would be; there is no reason for it to be."

Lieutenant Sinnoh didn't seem phased, "Why are you so worried? That's not a problem.”

Andrew stared in disbelief, “What are you talking about? That's absolutely a problem.”

Sinno seemed sure of herself, "No, turning off the module reduces wear and helps filter out unnecessary feedback from the module. Technical Sergeant Mackenzie told me that since my vaginal module is hardwired in, this is the most effective means of keeping my it from interfering with my work."

Holy shit it was deliberate. "If your vagina was a soft-module, then turning it off would be an option," he started, turning around to bring up the workspace showing the data output from the major modules, specifically the hard-wired vaginal module. He pointed to the screen, "Come take a look at this Sophie."

As she leaned over his shoulder to look at the screen, he began to explain, "Right. See here where it reads 'SYSCALL - ALL' up here? That's how many connections it's can make if it's working properly." Andrew continued, pointing to one of the following lines in the workspace titled SYSCALL - CURRENT, "This line here shows that, right now, only 19 out of your possible 4.2-ish million connections are actually being used. A fifth of the total connections in your body aren't being used, and a lot of them are important.”

Sinno was quiet and attentive as he shuffled a few windows, “Now see this list here? This is the long list of all the emotional and mental checks your body is supposed to pass through your vagina, and this… weird sub-module. And none of it is actually being passed through, or going anywhere. Take my word when I say that most of the things here on this list are important. And I don’t even really know what that module is supposed to do, but it’s supposed to be making about half the number of calls and checks that your vagina is, which is still a heck of a lot.”

Sinno continued to scan the screen over Andrew’s shoulder, “I still don’t understand why either of the modules had to end up inside of me in the first place.”

“Well, parts this interdependent and complex don’t end up inside of you by accident. Even if you aren’t using your module, your Psyche readout is telling me that leaving your vagina turned off is playing hell with your insides, mentally and mechanically,” Andrew asserted, turning slowly in his chair to face Sophia, “so I say we turn it back on.”

There was silence between the two of them. Andrew could see, even through the stoic android expression on the her face, that the Lieutenant was giving it serious thought. He decided to pitch it further, “If anything happens before the week is up, you can come back to me and we can look at turning it back off, if you aren’t happy with the changes. Then your techni--”

“Alright.”

Andrew wasn’t expecting such a quick reply, “Alright as in good?”

The android nodded, “Yes, I am fine with your suggestion. How should we start?”