Wake up, Mr. Robot

Somewhere along the line, Valli probably should have thought about how it was a bad idea. There were a lot of parts about the idea that were unquestionably bad, and plenty more that were debatable. He was bringing something to life, an action which required actual paperwork to do, and yet he'd given it little more thought than what to get for dinner.

He simply wanted it. He wanted someone who knew him beyond his work. Maybe there was a better way to get friends than spending a huge chunk of cash buying an AI and a robot to host it, but that wasn't what he wanted right then.

What he wanted was Gask. He wanted to show him Lawrence of Arabia and talk about books and give him a better life, something better than the wasteland he'd been born in.

He wanted him to keep existing.

The body was already complete, delivered in packaging that made it look like a doll, but only a small strip of god-knows-what kind of electronic keeping him asleep. Alive. Sort of. Ready to be alive might have been more accurate, the strip keeping his brain function nonexistent until Valli took it off.

The apartment was large--not a house, but more than enough for two--and sparsely furnished. But it was modern, and with the blinds down Valli could only hope it wouldn't be too distressing. At least it wasn't waking up in a space ship, which had been a very real option. A nice, neutral home seemed better... even if it would no doubt be strange and foreign to him.

Valli felt a tickle of doubt, but he pushed it away.

Too late for second thoughts.

He leaned forward, peeling the metal strip off the skin of Gask's neck and sat back, his legs folded under him, and waited for him to wake up.

In Valli's imagination--during the few brief period's he'd allowed himself to imagine anything at all--the situation had gone very differently. Gask would sit up. He'd be confused. He'd probably asked if he was dead.

He definitely wouldn't have flailed around, letting out a yell. Things had gone to shit almost immediately, and Valli's expression was horrified as he leaned forward, abruptly uncertain on what he should be doing. Grab him to keep him from flailing and hurting himself more? Let him adjust on his own?

It was a mess.

"Gask," Valli said, resting his hands on the side of the box to keep himself from agitating Gask further. "It's alright - you're safe here."

Wasn't that what he really needed to know? That he wasn't under attack. That there were no raiders. That they hadn't been betrayed. Maybe he would even recognize his voice through his obvious pain, but Valli wasn't counting on it.

Valli felt his heart flutter at the mention of his name--his real name, the one he didn't bother with because people tended to be anxious when they messed it up--but did his best to keep himself under control.

Gask was going to be confused and horrified. He needed reassurance and comfort, not Valli being a flighty teenager.

He'd expected this much at least, and come prepared... mostly. Of course he was never going to go perfectly well, because there wasn't an answer that everyone would accept, but at least he wasn't completely winging it.

"No," he started. Best to get that out of the way. "You're not dead. You fell asleep and then... Honestly, it's a bit of a confusing situation. It would probably be most helpful to think of this as another world, which you've now been transported to. This world is... it's like the world before, but the world never ended. So it continued, and advanced. There are other differences, but that is probably the explanation that would make most sense to start."

Valli paused, and then decided to double down on reassurances. "But you're not dead. You're still alive, just... here."

At least he was standing, even if it was very clear to Valli that Gask was somewhere between an existential crisis and a full blown panic attack. Could robots even have panic attacks? Considering they were not fully a function of the body, instead a function of the mind... probably.

He was supposed to be as human as he could be, after all.

He wasn't expecting him to ask for a mirror, and it took Valli a bit to even figure out if he had one. He didn't have a hand mirror though, and the idea of pulling out his phone - of showing Gask himself in selfie mode of all things was likely to agitate him further.

"Hold on," Valli said, pushing himself to his feet. "I'll get one real quick, alright?"

No need to tell him to stay put, since he doubted Gask was going anywhere fast. He had a long mirror--mounted on a wall but easy enough to take down--and while it was a big heavy for Valli it would at least let Gask get a proper view of things.

"You're you," Valli said quickly as he carried the mirror back towards him. "But you don't have your radiation burns. So you can feel again, but also because that sort of thing would probably scare people here in a way that scars wouldn't. You have all your other scars, though. I thought you would, ah... miss them?"

Scars told a story, after all.

Valli paused for a moment, very much worried about how Gask would react, and then finally held the mirror up for him to look.

At least he'd warned him of the biggest change.

Valli had prepared himself for a lot of questions. 'How did this happen' was a big one. 'Why did you do this' was another. There were a million and one questions he'd readied himself for, and yet this wasn't one of them.

It was probably also one of the worst. No matter how he scratched it, the answer was no. Valli had not brought five hundred people to Manta Carlos. The truth was that most of those people--all save maybe a dozen--did not properly exist. They were procedurally generated, given maybe a personality trait or two each. The rowdy one. The aggressive one. The quiet one.

If they even got that.

It was a nightmare already, and it probably showed on his face.

"Not all of them," he said, his tone sombre. "Some of them are here, although maybe not in the exact forms you know. Chloe and Lou, the medic in the camp whose name I never got. The wolves, I believe. Maybe a dozen or so. But the rest... are not here, no."

He already knew Gask wasn't going to take it well. The only question was how bad he would take it.