The room was dim. It was one of Tin Can’s data archives, a comfortable space. Here and there were shelves of books, mostly manuals for old programming languages and hardware interfaces. Data servers lined most of the walls, quietly humming away and awaiting queries from anyone connected to the town’s network. The floor space of the room was dominated by cozy furniture and a few terminals for accessing the room’s airgapped server. The room was a total contrast to the contents of that machine, which had been airgapped for the ominous sensitive data that was stored on it.
In short, it was hardly the typical medical hospital room, but then, Tin Can tended to have little use for medicine. A small alcove of the room had been converted, however, to house a single old hospital bed. In it lay Tomato, ailing in her old age.
The rest of the data archive room was unoccupied, save for an intently pacing Tanuki Man. Floating about him were myriad holographic charts and graphs and documents. They were being emitted from the projector in his helmet and several free-floating leaf-shaped emitters. Every few seconds, his focus shifted from one page to the next. Sometimes, he scanned up and down the document in focus, and sometimes, the contents of a given document expanded under his watchful eye.
Internally, he was hooked into a live feed of Tomato’s senses, sent to him remotely by the augmentations installed in her body. In addition to his own view of his document spread, he saw himself through her eyes, stalking around between the furniture. He heard his own footsteps, resonating through his own body and nearly simultaneously reaching her ears. He felt his own weight shift with each footstep, and also the light blanket on her skin and the dull aches throughout her aged body. It was perturbing, but at the same time, motivating. He was monitoring and recording the feed of her experience for data that was helping him with his latest project- preserving her precious, short human life.
Tomato looked around at the room again, bored. Her eyes settled on a data vessel on a shelf near her. It had its own hologram emitter, displaying a wireframe of a complicated machine in the shape of a lotus flower. It was a hopeful, happy thing. It was a vision of the future.
The path traced by Tanuki Man’s pacing brought him close to Tomato’s bed. She sat up, wincing in pain. Frowning, she watched as Tanuki Man winced in kind.
Right. He’s experiencing my sensations.
“Yo. Tanuki. Come sit with me a sec.”
As his focus disrupted, the holograms flickered for the briefest moment. He looked at her with a startlingly, nakedly distressed expression. “I don’t got time to. I dunno what kind of time we’re working with. I can’t- I can’t afford to risk it. Every second is a risk.”
Tomato sighed. “Look, I’m still able to move. I’m not on ventilation, or an IV, or anything like that. Everyone around who was ever built for medical shit’s been helping. Please, just… chill. Take a moment. You’ve been pacing like that for days. It stresses me out.”
Meekly, the short robot sat at the foot of the bed. Tomato leaned forward. If she ignored the hospital bed, it almost reminded her of sitting at a table at a restaurant in old Arcad-
OW FUCK
In unison, both recoiled backwards from a flareup in her spine. She regained her composure almost immediately, but the robot was panting, unused to the terrible sensations of senescence. “Tomato, I- hah- oh my gosh- I don’t know how you humans deal with your body falling apart like this. This is terrifying. When a robot has a part go bad, we can just swap it for a good one.”
The woman smiled, sitting back up. “Well, you’ve certainly given me your best shot at the experience. All the shit you installed in me really has kept me moving. Y’know, since you’re takin’ a break, you should turn off the link. I don’t wanna accidentally creak you in half.”
He grimaced. “I can’t do that. I need all the data I can get from your body, and sharing the experience is a necessary cost of realtime analysis.”
“Well, you could at least turn off the holograms for a few minutes?”
“Fine, fine…”
The jade glint of the text and graphs faded, and the floating emitters came to rest on a nearby counter. Tomato beamed, satisfied. She would make him have something like a proper break, whether or not he liked it. He cracked open an E-Tank and began to greedily chug the contents. The label indicated that it contained flavoring agents. It had abnormal branding, seemingly mirroring a brief trend in the 2020’s of human pre-workout drinks having ostentatious, violent branding with curse words and violent imagery. She snorted. “They still make that shit?”
Tanuki Man side eyed her as the cannister drained into his gullet. Pulling it away, he responded, “No, they don’t. I kept a few cases of my favorite flavor in reserve for times like this.”
She laughed. “Well, reverse engineering the flavor should be your next project. God, that takes me way back. You remember that old Global Communications Relay network? The shit people used to talk on?”
He fully paused, putting the drink down. “How could I forget? Dude, I straight up harassed like three different Stardroids on there once when they were in the whole ‘Earthlings submit and we will make your executions hurt a bit less’ phase. Crazy times.”
Tomato responded, “Well, this is all reminding me of this one time… Roll Light was talking on the frequency about the difficulty of installing augments into humans, and I chimed in about wanting them. Said I’d replace most of my body if I could. Would be kickass. She gave me a really earnest earful ‘bout how dangerous it would be to do for no reason. Shit about how complex the immune system is, and how bad prosthetic rejection is on the body. Scary shit. Guess I’m real glad that didn’t happen when you guys fixed me up. ‘Cause it turns out I was totally right. It does kick ass, even though my augments don’t even let me do anything cool. Just seeing seams and lights on parts of my body is… I dunno, awesome.”
Tanuki Man perked up at the mention of Roll’s research. “Y’know, we actually referenced a bunch of her published papers when we were figuring out how to augment you. I’ve been looking into a bunch of her work for this project, too. It’s very interesting and useful stuff, but I’m hoping we can entirely bypass you out of, well, biology. It’s looking a lot like the weirder ends of my Cyberspace research is coming into play for it. Either way, once we get you stable for the long haul like the rest of us, I’ll make your body able to do whatever you want, alright?”
Tomato smiled, but there was a certain sadness to it. “Y’know… that does sound pretty great, but… Like, it’s okay if it doesn’t work out, yeah? Plenty of humans have died before. I just-”
The small robot made a strangled noise in his throat. “Please, I can do it, I know I can do it. I’m so close. I’m right there , Tomato. I just- need a little more time. Please. God, please.”
“Tanuki.”
She grabbed him by the face. He felt her hands on his cheeks, and simultaneously, felt the sensation of his fluff in the nerves of her hands. He saw her face, wrinkled and content, and he saw his own distraught expression.
She spoke softly but firmly. “Promise me that you won’t beat yourself up if you don’t figure this out in time.”
He responded with more desperate fumbling. “I- Tomato, I- you’re one of my best friends. I could never-”
He felt the tiny pumps behind his eyes whirring, and he could see the saline moistening the fuzz below his artificial tear ducts.
The old woman pushed on. “You guys did a great job keeping me around and not in too much pain. But it’s really hard to keep a human going at the end. Shit’s rough. Like, I know what it’s like. But it’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to let go. I’m not saying don’t try, but just… I don’t wanna go off to the other side worrying that you’re gonna be all broken up about me, alright? Don’t worry too much about me.”
He sniffled. The sound resonated in both of their ears.
“Alright. I promise.”
She grinned and shook his face gently.
“And promise me you’re not gonna go crazy and stick a robot in me and turn my body into a fucked up meat puppet.”
Despite himself, he laughed just a little. It was macabre, but he couldn’t help himself. She laughed right back.
“Promise me, you little freak!”
“Alright, alright, I promise.”