Hawkesworth Mk II

Hawkesworth Mk II

Dr. Blokkum stood over his strangely shaped and chrome patient in operating theatre four, his eyes fixated on the necrotizing fasciitis that was surely caused by invasive Streptococci agalactiae. "Hmm..." Dr. Blokkum wore a concerned look on his glistening face as he postulated the survivability rate for his patient.

"Perhaps I should start with a simple incision," he mused as he grabbed a scalpel from a nearby surgical tray. Just as he was about to make the first cut, the doors to his room burst open.

"Goodness! What are you doing, doctor!?" the Chief Medical Officer yelled.

"Get out of here, I need to focus on this operation!" Blokkum rasped as he fumbled with the scalpel. Perhaps it was a small bout of space madness--or the 25 units of space drugs coursing through his veins--but his patient was in fact a disposal unit that he managed to strap to the operating table.

"Are you on space drugs?" the CMO was reaching for the silent alarm concealed beneath the table, alerting the military police to OR 4.

"Absolutely not!" Dr. Blokkum giggled, a small string of drool leaking from his lips.

A short while later, the sound of boots stomping could be heard in the distance. "That's him, officers. Take Dr. Blokkum away...and drug test him!" The two gruff military law enforcers grabbed their suspect.

"Hey Chief, howse 'bout we have that Synth test out his new hardware on him? I hear those maintenance techs really souped him up!" offered the slightly less gruff enforcer. Dr. Blokkum frowned, he had heard tales of this Synthetic, the "Soda Synth" built out of recycled Souto machines. He was a hindrance to most daily operations but the maintenance techs found out how to upgrade his CPUnit to mine Bitcoin, and thus he was saved from being scrapped.

"Not a bad idea, sport," the gruffier enforcer agreed. As the two strode through the hall with Dr. Blokkum locked in between their arms, the door to the Synthetic's chambers opened.

The Soda Synth Hawkesworth Mk II sat on a plush office chair, or rather, he was welded onto it. A cornucopia of wires were attached to his back, leading to a series of computer towers also welded beneath the chair. Something seemed different about the Soda Synth, he seemed more polished than the stories had said.

"Place him in front of me," Hawkesworth said in a cold robotic voice. As the doctor was thrown before the Synthetic, a tube popped out of the its right arm. "Blow into it", he ordered. As Dr. Blokkum blew into the breathalyzer, the Synthetic began computing every single molecular compound in his body. "Doctor, you are currently under the influence of opium."

"I had a bagel with poppyseeds on it this morning," Dr. Blokkum threw back. Hawkesworth didn't pause.

"You are also under the influence of space drugs, plasma meth, and two different types of animal tranquilizers."

Blokkum began to sweat. "Yeah uh, it was an everything bagel," he said nervously.

While this conversation was ongoing, Hawkesworth Mk II had successfully mined 27 BTC, netting the Corporation 27,000 credits. He turned to the MPs. "You two may leave me with Dr. Blokkum, I will need to perform a psychiatric evalution on him and it may take a while."

"Sure thing Hawkesworth. Hey...before we leave, can we get a couple drinks?" The Synthetic's mouth popped open and shot out two ice cold cherry Soutos into the hands of the policemen.

"Thanks pal!" one said as he high-fived the other as they both walked out of the room. It was just Hawkesworth and Dr. Blokkum now.

"Doctor, please lie down on that table over there while I perform some tests on your brain." the Synthetic said, pointing to a table in the corner that was lined with restraints.

"Hell no, there's no way I'm going to let you poke around in my brain!" As Hawkesworth began to back away from the Synth, he noticed its arm had begun shifting into something that resemble a stun baton.

"Please doctor, just lie on the table."

"Never!" Dr. Blokkum was now reaching into his pocket for the scalpel he had hidden earlier. As the Synthetic rolled towards the doctor in his motorized office chair, Blokkum deftly dodged his stun baton arm and stabbed him in the left eye with his scalpel. A series of important wires must have been severed, because the Synthetic's ears began shooting out sparks.

"Now it is time for me to make my grand escape!" Dr. Blokkum whooped and did a celebratory cartwheel out of the room and ran down the hall.

It was hours before another person came across Hawkesworth. A short-haired maintenance tech opened the door and saw the Synthetic facing the wall. "Hey Hawkesworth, we got some new graphics cards to install on ya so you can mine Bitcoin faster!" he said gleefully. Hawkesworth slowly and creepily rotated his head 180 degrees to face the maintenance tech.

"Shit fuck", the Synth shouted, gesticulating his arms. "Asshole peepee fuck!" the Synthetic yelled louder.

"Oh jeeze, have you gotten some kind of computer virus or malware or som-" the tech's question was cut short when he noticed the wires hanging out of the Synthetic's damaged eye. The speech center of his artificial brain had been damaged, and he was only able to communicate using vulgarities. "Ah crap man, there’s no way I can fix THAT! Not to mention we are at least 10 lightyears away from the nearest robotics repair depot."

The tech slowly walked over to him and plugged a small USB cable into his back. "Ah, looks like you are operating at peak capacity except for your newfound potty mouth. There's no need to send you off to the depot just for that. Let's just upgrade this graphics card and I'll have you back on the job."

After the GPU upgrade, Hawkesworth Mk II was back out in the hallways, rolling and around performing his assigned duties and mining bitcoin at twice the previous rate.

"Yo Hawkesworth, toss me a soda, boy!" shouted a friendly marine wearing mostly blue fatigues. The Synthetic's jaw distended and ejected a cold orange Souto into the waiting hand. "Thanks Soda Synth!"

Hawkesworth grinned at him and said, "goddamn poopoo." The marine's smile turned to a confused frown as he slowly backed away.