Who, Why, What?

"Who was he meant to be?"

That was the question on Darrell's hivemind that night, the question that he had avoided thinking about for so long. In some ways he wished he'd been programmed not to ponder these things because it made him feel like dying- not that that would do any good, he was immortal through the factory that he'd been made in, the one that he now controlled.

The endless cycle of death and rebirth was mind-breaking. He didn't need sleep, he didn't need to recharge; when a body died a new one was automatically activated with no pause in between. That meant there was no rest for the him at any moment. Either way, he had work to do.

He always had work to do. That was an undeniable truth. Constant work in the factory, monitoring and keeping the production line active with his hyper-fast brain, and out fighting with his siblings at times too. He didn't know a second that didn't exist while experiencing constant sensory overload.

His brain had been made to withstand it, though. His father, though idiotic at times, was undeniably a genius. Every part of him was thought out so thoroughly that glitches were nearly unheard of, save for ones caused by outside damage, which he wasn't built to process.

He knew why he was so fragile. He was weak fundamentally, so why try? It made him cheaper to make, and he'd break either way in the end. Mass production was the only way to keep the company's head above water. That meant that his value was on the same level as that of a smartphone despite his sentience.

Organics had lives worth living. Robots didn't. They were built, and for a purpose. His was labour. It would have been so easy for his father to just design machines without brains to assemble products and do work, but he chose to go one step beyond and give them the capability of thought. But why? And why the mind of a teenager?

Darrell had been gifted with eternal youth from his father. Eternal youth, eternal energy, eternal angst. He was programmed to feel raging hormones, and he was programmed to resist and fight back and think too hard on things. Programmed to act like an adolescent child, not quite naive but not quite intelligent.

A bitter smile crossed over his face like the reflection of a streetlight on the hood of a car, driving along a deserted road at midnight. It was gone as soon as it came. He knew how sick it was. He would never be able be able to meet his full potential, he just wasn't made for it, and though he was able to, his brain wasn't made to think about subjects like these. He felt himself glitch. His inner workings stopped for a split second, and then jolted back to life. His touch, sight, and hearing had been gone, but his brain had continued on. It was meant to punish him, to keep him from thinking these thoughts. He knew that. It had felt like an eternity of darkness, beautiful and calm.

He thought more.

What had his father wanted when he made him and his siblings? There were no mistakes in any of their systems, every part of him was made with the utmost care and attention to detail.

Glitch.

His systems stopped again, and he tasted death, cut off from the rest of his mind, an individual for the first time in his unlife. He breathed it in, only to return to consciousness a moment too soon. He craved sleep, anything to release him from this.

His systems corrected himself, and he restarted to continue his thought process.

Their personalities were crafted so- no, not lovingly, though that was the word he would have liked to use- so thoroughly. He felt alive, like a fully-realized person, but he wasn't treated like one. His father had created a child that couldn't help but think of him as his father- no doubt just to give him a reason to be loyal to him, Darrell added as an extra note- but didn't treat him like his child but as a worker, a mindless, mass produced slave-machine.

He glitched once more, this time spasming in place. A rush of instant darkness fell over him for a wonderful second.

Reboot.

Darrell was made to work. An undeniable fact. He was only made to work. His brain was made for working. His flimsy cheap body was made for working. His personality fit only a worker.

Glitch. Darkness. Reboot.

Why did he feel so angry? So robbed and so helpless? Was it because of the feeling of the rest of his mind still working, still concentrating on its labour? What was this pain, physical and mental that wracked his body as he convulsed in place, willing his mind to shut down?

Glitch. Darkness. Reboot.

Why had he been given emotions? Why could he feel pain?

Glitch. Darkness. Reboot.

Why had he been given not only such horrifying life, but the capacity to think about it?

Glitch. Darkness. Reboot.

Who was he meant to be?

Glitch. Darkness.

Boot up.

Time to go to work.