Unit Number One Chapter 1: Calibration

Existence is weird. Why does the everything change light levels so rhythmically? What are all the different pressures I’m constantly feeling? Why have some started to bother me and others are fine when before, they all felt the same? Why are there so many things? It’s a lot to handle.
The other vessels are always around, what they’re doing isn’t too clear yet, but they’re certainly up to a lot. Some seem to enjoy pushing me around until I go places with them, others seek me out and seem more keen on following me and just… being there? Well, actually, sometimes they like to show me things and see what I think of them. Some things are similar to other things I’ve seen, while some are completely foreign and vary wildly.
There’s a routine of sorts to our existence in the changing of light levels, though. When the light is low, all the other vessels go into their structures, and I get pushed back into the one I can only assume is mine with a few of them staying with me. What are they even doing at this time? I don’t know! They just lay down and do nothing until the light comes back. I suppose I don’t move around much either, but it looks like they’re really just doing… nothing. At least when I sit around I’m always thinking about things and looking at whatever is interesting around me; how can you even do nothing when there’s so much to do? I’ll say it again: it’s weird. When it gets light out again is when most of the stuff I’m talking about happens.
Anyways, the one thing that never changes in these interactions are the sounds. What do the sounds they make mean? They definitely have definitive associations; I’ve figured out some: Ɡærɑːʒ, lənch, di-nər, stäp! slō dau̇n! kəm hir! And that’s just to name a few because there’s a lot of little short ones that connect them together. I’ve tried replicating the sounds a few times, but I haven’t figured them out yet. Sure, I can make some sounds now, though; as a matter of fact, I’m constantly making sounds! There’s this really low b-b-b-b-b-b-b one that I didn’t think was actually me at first, but since the sound never went away I could only assume such. It gets a little louder whenever I move around, so it’s definitely something to do with that. There’s also these little whirring sounds whenever I make smaller movements, like with the tiny viewing things that can move around really small on my top half, and the straw thing I use to get the energizing stuff when I’m tired, but those aren’t anything close to the sounds I’m trying to make. When I try to replicate the sounds, they sound too… flat. Compared to what they can do. Do I still not know how to yet? Am I just unable to make the sounds? That would be far from ideal, but as long as I don’t know the answer, I’ll keep trying.
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“So… do we even have a name for this thing yet?” Sean Spencers, one of the newer recruits to the project, and recently assigned caretaker to… the tank AI, sat in the lunchroom with some of the team as the other half were busy looking over the bot outside, and were futilely trying to herd it back to its garage after it somehow busted one of its tail lights.
Lauren Olson, one of the team’s supervisors, looked up from her cottage pie with her chin resting on one of her hands. “Not yet; but we’ve just been calling it… them, ‘Number One’ and ‘Edge’ after the operation’s name.” She glanced down for a moment at her plate and poked at it as if contemplating taking another bite, but waited. “The lead designers in the company lending us the AI cores are adamant for whatever reason on getting the naming rights, and said ‘we aren’t going to name them until they speak.’ We asked how long that was supposed to take, and they said they didn’t know, but not long. Whatever that’s supposed to imply.”
Another team member looked up at the mention of the parent company, and it may or may not have been because they worked there, as well.
“I’ve heard it’s because they want to make it something important sounding. Regal, deserving of respect, y’know?” It was Abbey Stanton; she was one of the team members there from the beginning, but she was one of the more soft-spoken of the group. Despite this, the bot hadn’t even been ‘alive’ for more than about three weeks, and it already seemed to favor her. Why? Probably some in-company secret techniques she was pulling to get on its good side, or god knows what. “After all, if they behave as we hope they do, they’re going to be the face of a new technological era; it better be a pretty good name.”
Lauren seemed to take that as a decent enough answer, but still wasn’t completely satisfied. “They’re taking several weeks to come up with a name? Why not just name it after some other famous tank, like Fury, or Besotten Jenny?” She asked.
“That just seems cliche.” Abbey replied, which got a bit of a sour look out of the supervisor, “And besides, we don’t even know if they’re a boy or a girl yet.”
“Boy or girl?” Sean butted in, “It’s a tank! Why are we making it a boy or a girl?”
“It’s not about-!” She shook her head, shoulder-length reddish curls swinging about, “I mean - you know what I mean! The voice! We can’t name the poor thing Jenny and then they end up sounding like a guy! Imagine how the troops would treat them!” She retorted.
“That sounds like a ‘them’ problem, not the literal goddamn tank’s. I’d still be quaking in my boots at a tank named Jenny if I were staring down its barrel.”
“Yeah, well, they’re still definitely not going to name them Jenny.”
The three sat in silence as they finished their lunches, and were eventually called back out to monitor the AI while the other half of the team went in for their own lunches. What exactly did ‘monitoring the AI’ entail? It wasn’t nearly as fun or amazing as it sounded. The excitement that came with being able to work with what was supposed to be the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence quickly faded once one realized that they were dealing with it in its most early stages. At the time, it really didn’t do much; it didn’t even seem all that autonomous. Like an infant, unsurprisingly. Its movements were jerky and uncoordinated, you didn’t hear a non-engine related sound from it beyond the occasional weird session of clicking and beeping, and it would normally just sit around unless you pushed or pulled it somewhere.
At the very least, it seemed as though it were now possible to get distinct reactions out of it sometimes. Just yesterday, one of the behaviorist members of the team was doing an audio-reactionary test with it, and when he played it a sudden loud noise, its pupils shrunk and its turret turned to face the source. How did it learn to do that? Sean would never admit it, but the day before, a mouse had skittered out from under one of the crates outside the storage room, and he nearly fell over with how badly he jumped at it. Nobody saw. ...Except, of course, the tank who’d decided that he was a fun subject to follow for a few minutes before he was being towed off to another enrichment session.
That was a weird topic, too: ‘enrichment sessions.’ That sounded like a fancy and interesting task, as well, until you realized it was just performing normal activities where the AI happened to be involved somehow. Are you in the middle of reading a book? Better get used to reading aloud so the ‘literal goddamn tank’ can broaden its vocabulary once it learns how to figure out what that stuff means. Playing a board game or something with some of your pals? BAM. Good for developing problem solving skills. Or something. The whole point was to just cram it with random information so it had plenty of resources to piece together when it had the means to understand or build upon it later on.
Supposedly, it was impossible for it to forget things, so you had to be careful while you were at it, too. Jamie Mills, for example, another one of the newbies on the team, had a lisp in some of his pronunciations so he apparently wasn’t allowed to read with it in the event that it developed the lisp as well. Maybe if it heard it too often, sure, but wasn’t it supposed to be smart enough to develop standards for things? It just seemed excessive, but what the parent company directed was what they had to go by.
Regardless, when the three of them arrived at the garage, the other half of the team had successfully gotten the tank in a convenient enough spot to work on it. Upon seeing them arrive, a few left to go eat, but two lingered to finish replacing the tail light since they’d already started.
Beyond whatever dirt the Challenger II had tracked in that would momentarily be cleaned out, the garage was almost uncomfortably sterile looking: bright white walls, fluorescent lights, meticulously organized tools and replacement parts in pristine condition... The whole place was tailored to fit whatever needs the government and the parent company believed the developing AI would need for both its tank and robot aspects, and a person could only dream to have such a nicely managed room they didn’t need to lift a finger for. Not that the tank knew or presumably even cared, of course; it was probably too busy trying to figure out what it was to bother trying to figure out what everything else was, or whatever advanced AI did with themselves at this stage. Hell if they knew yet.
“How many times has it been back here for fixing now, you know, Frank?” Lauren asked whichever of the two were listening, and a middle-aged looking man popped his head up from behind the AI.
“Four times.” He replied, some annoyance in his tone. “First, it was one of the headlights after it ran into the barracks, second time was when it ran over a rock weird, and it shot up and cracked a temporary maintenance panel, then it ran into another building and busted its headlight off again, and now this.”
“And it still hasn’t learned?”
“Apparently not.”
She sighed and reached a hand behind her head awkwardly, “Right. Sounds fun. ...And a little pricey.”
“Not as pricey as the bastard itself.” And with that, he turned back to trying to fasten the new tail light in.
“You guys should probably be watching your language around them,” Abbey butted in a little prudently. She’d come in not too far behind Lauren, but had stayed quiet until now. “unless you want them swearing like a sailor once they start talking. You know how mad CoreAegis would be if you made their poster child a swearer? What would the press think?” She sounded a bit condescending by the time she was finished, but she definitely had a point.
“Oh, what? We don’t swear that much, right guys?” Lauren looked over at her with a mock expression of incredulousness before turning back to the others in the room. Some shrugged, some rolled their eyes, others laughed nervously… Yeah, it wasn’t a very good look for them if they weren’t even going to pretend to deny it. Her expression shifted to a much more unamused one. “Right, right, exactly.” Abbey could only roll her eyes before she moved to approach the tank, but once she did so, it was like a switch flipped and she went into a whole new demeanor. “Heeey, big guy! Did you get a little too adventurous today?” She gave them a few firm pats on the fender, and with the last one, she kept her hand on their side as she walked to the man who was just finishing up getting the tail light in. “What did it today?”
“Do you really have to baby talk it like that? I thought you were worried about people saying the wrong stuff around it. ‘Oh, imagine if it ended up talking like that!’” He mocked lightly.
“As if they’d adopt an entire tone so predominantly like that, especially with you lot talking about them like they’re not even in the room. They’ll learn what voices are appropriate and when as easily as they’ll get a vocabulary.”
“Great, yeah, my bad, I didn’t realize it was so nuanced.” He mumbled. “It was another building collision, though. When’s it gonna learn to stop doing that, eh?” He stood up and brushed his hands off on his jeans, “Anyways, I’ll probably scream if I have to do this again any time soon.”
She stood there and pondered his last comment for a moment, and it shortly after seemed like a lightbulb lit up over her head. “Y’know what? What if we made some kind of preventative measure, like…” She looked around the room, but she must not have seen what she was looking for, as she turned on her heel to leave the garage. “Just a few minutes, actually; I’m grabbing something at the store.”
The man gave her a confused look, and it really didn’t help that she was just ditching him without even explaining her plan. “Wait, what? Come back, you didn’t even say what you were…!” She slipped out through the side door, so he just dropped it mid sentence. “Whatever.” He grumbled, and sat down, leaning his head on the back of the tank, just right of one of its tracks.
“Don’t go anywhere for a sec,” He called out, and it curiously swiveled its turret around to look for the source of his voice. It was in vain, however, as it couldn’t see him with its own form in the way, but at least it was obvious that it caught it. “Abbey apparently knows how to stop you from wrecking yourself… or something.”
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I could’ve swore I’d gotten the hang of knowing when to stop! I ran into one of the big structures again, and nobody seems very happy that this one little part of me broke again. What’s the little part even do, anyways? I’ve never had to use it; I’ve only ever broken it, so why do they keep putting new ones in? Is it important? If I really needed it, though, it probably wouldn’t break so easily…
Anyways, I think I’ve learned that the little vessels are called ...humans? So until I learn otherwise, that’s what I’ll call them. The human with the nice voice came in while another one was replacing the weird useless part; I like listening to them talk, and they never get loud at me so they don’t scare me. The other ones are okay too, though! The human fixing the useless part acts kinda mad when other people are around, but when he’s the only one in the hangar he’s a lot nicer. He also has this box looking thing that plays rhythmically satisfying stuff. Why does it sound nice? The patterns? The insistent use of specific frequencies? The variety of sounds in general and how they’re all put together? I’m not sure; all I know is that I like it. Another human that hangs around often is one of the ones that just comes in to talk while they look at one of those funny patterned layered things. They talk for a reeeally long time, so maybe the patterns on the layered thing show them what to say? I don’t know what any of the patterns mean yet, though, so it’s beyond me.
After the useless thing was put back on, they’d normally just let me go back outside to explore, (one of my favorite things!) but this time, the human wouldn’t let me…? The nice human left and the fixing human is putting their weight on my aft side right now - I don’t want to move because I know they don’t like when I move while they’re on me. They say bad things might happen if I move too much and they’re too close. What kinds of bad things? They never explained what; just bad things. I don’t like bad stuff, though: they don’t feel nice, so I can’t help but listen.
When the nice human came back, the other one got up and let me go so I thought I was allowed to leave, but the doors were still closed. Why? Maybe whatever the nice human brought in with them has something to do with it. They had these… long, colorful floppy things they were holding. They looked very light. Porous. And they were hollow in the middle. What were they for? I’d never seen anything like them. ...Well, except for the thing they use to clean the other things they put their fuels on, but it’s reeeally tiny in comparison, and not so colorful and bright. The nice human brought the things over while the fixing human moved to grab something out of one of the various open-closing wall holes, and they came back with some rope. Then they… started tying the long spongy things onto me? Why? What’s that supposed to do? Is that all they’re supposed to do? The whole situation was pretty confusing, but I don’t mind all that much - if they think I need the long spongy things tied to my sides, then maybe I do.
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“We’re covering the tank in pool noodles.”
Frank whipped his head around from the tank’s side, and shot her a confused look, “Wh - we’re what?”
“Did I stutter?” Abbey replied, and held the bags out in front of her. “You want it to stop being expensive when they run into things? Pool noodles.”
It was like it took him a few seconds to really process what was going on, but he eventually just stood up to go and get some rope. “Right, right, whatever works.” He grumbled, and pulled open one of the many drawers lining the walls to rifle around. “You think you bought enough?”
“Uh, hopefully? We can at least cover the tail lights since that seems to be a problem hotspot.”
Frank eventually found a decent length of rope, and pulled the utility knife from his pocket so they could cut it whenever need be. He brought it over to the Challenger’s side as Abbey met up with the pool noodles, and they began, well, tying them in place. It was a good half-hour project on the generous side of estimation and it looked about as stupid as one would expect, but the looks would hopefully outweigh the future mishaps that may occur without it.
“So… What now?” He asked, “Just turn ‘em loose and see what happens?”
“I guess, what else is there to do? Poor guy’s probably itching to get out of here anyways, we don’t usually keep them for so long.”
He moved to the garage door’s side, and pressed the button to lift the door. The tank’s turret quite promptly turned around to look to the source of the familiar sound, and its engine kicked up as if it had already hatched a plan for whatever daily antics it would get itself up to. It was a little difficult to notice at first, but for the first time it seemed to actually be using its shifting iris, as it appeared to be trying to mimic a curious raised brow. It… didn’t look all too clear as such at first, but Abbey looked quite surprised when she spotted the new development.
“Oh, are you excited to go outside now? Yeah?” She cooed, tilted her head at the Challenger, and nodded slowly.
Their turret shifted slightly in her direction, and their stark white optics dilated a smidge as they peered down to her. They remained like this for a moment - even after the door had raised completely, and slowly, they raised their gun up and down a few times. Before she could really process what the tank had just done, they were already driving out the door to wherever they must’ve planned in that AI core of theirs. She stood cluelessly for a moment, but once it hit her, her jaw dropped as she whipped herself around to face Frank.
“Did you just see that?!” She squealed, fists clenched at her sides.

The mechanic shrugged, “Yeah, it moved its gun a little. So?”
“Nooo, no no no, they just nodded at me. Do you have any idea how huge that is?” She put her hands to the sides of her head and looked out to where the AI had meandered off to; right now, it seemed like they were following another one of the handlers around as they were bringing something to a storage building. Faint music could be heard coming from their direction, so they must’ve been playing something on their phone that piqued the tank’s interest. “Y’know, if they can come up with even basic nonverbal replies like that, they could start talking any moment now.”
Frank cocked an eyebrow at this claim, “Really? All that predicted from a gun movement?” He asked skeptically.
“Yes really! Back at the lab with one of the stationary test sims they set up a few weeks ago, it didn’t take long at all after it understood nonverbal replies that it started saying words.”
“That… sounds like a bit of a reach, I can’t lie, but what do I know? I wasn’t there.” He shrugged and moved to grab an old, beat up flannel shirt from a nearby workbench. “Anyways, I’m going to lunch now; color me surprised if he starts talking soon.”
And that being said, he walked out past Abbey and went to join the colleagues in his own shift. The handler lingered at the door for a moment, then went over to close it. Coming out from the side door after the fact, she’d decided that for today, she might be doing just as much following around as the AI. If they were due to start talking, she had no doubt in her mind that she wanted to be there to hear it; maybe even encourage them to start a little. Why not? Human parents do it all the time with their kids, and maybe she’d get a similar result.
It didn’t take long to catch up with the Challenger, for it seemed that after the other handler had disappeared into the storage room, they lost interest in them and instead set their sights on a bird that had landed in a nearby tree during their moment of pause. She approached them, and clapped her hands together lightly to get their attention. They didn’t move any of their mass to face her, but one of their turret optics moved to steal a glance.
“Hiii, buddy.” She greeted them and moved to pat their fender.
They never had much of a reaction to the gesture, but she’d been trying to get the group to do it so they’d associate the action with a sort of friendly greeting in the future. That, and it would hopefully make them indifferent to casual contact so they were easier to perform maintenance on. She looked up to the bird still perched in the tree, and, getting the chance to look at it a little more closely, identified it as a song thrush. They weren’t the most colorful bird by any means, but they had a lovely call, hence the name.
“Do you like that bird up there?” She asked coyly, and pointed at it.
With hope, the bot would perhaps nod again or make some other kind of affirmative gesture, and this was quickly confirmed when they did exactly that. Abbey reacted with a few excited hops, and gave the tank a few more pats on their side.

“Oh, good job! You’re gonna be talkin’ in no time, huh? Have you tried yet?”
It was a pretty weak attempt to weed anything out of them, but it was worth a shot trying. Predictably, they didn’t give any answer to the question, and instead returned their attention to the tree. For once, they didn’t seem to be the most interested in turning all their attention to a handler, and it was an oddly stark contrast to the following they’d just done earlier. Perhaps on top of starting to get basic communication, they were starting to develop more of an attention span for specific things. She crossed her arms and began to tap her foot in thought, but ultimately just continued to watch over the unit. After all, her evening schedule wasn’t to pester them, just… coax them into talking. On top of that, it could probably be an excuse for getting out of some other on-site chores: what was she doing? Important research on the AI’s day to day behavior, of course, what else?
For the rest of the night, she did just that; she picked up a notebook and pen from her quarters, and did her best to keep up with whatever the tank was doing, which was… not much, in the grand scheme of things. It was odd that she’d been expecting them to do more whenever they were turned loose to act on their own accord, but all they seemed to be interested in doing was watching what everyone else was up to or what was going on in the environment around them. At one point, even, she spent a good half hour just doodling over a page in the notebook and holding it up for them to see because they’d grown an interest in her writings. This evening, though, brought to her attention what seemed like a pretty substantial oversight; how was this unit supposed to gain a comprehensive understanding of their surroundings if they could barely interact with it? Maybe that was why they seemed so relatively inactive in their exploring. If she brought it up with the rest of the team, they could probably try to commission a pair of arms for them, or something.
The two had found themselves at the outskirts of the base looking into the nearby treeline, and the Challenger tank seemed to be quite transfixed watching a squirrel hopping through one of the branches. Abbey had clambered up onto one of their fenders, and was swinging her feet off their side as she watched along with them. What simple yet little lives those guys seem to have… Just running around and eating, storing food for the winter, finding some other squirrel to bunk up and continue the species with, all while trying not to die of… A lot of things, really; predators, natural forces like fire and floods, and humans - humans are a pretty big factor these days, huh? In the grand scheme of things, though, being a squirrel is probably a lot easier. They don’t have to worry about taxes, world politics, war… Yeah, definitely easier when you don’t even have the brain power to consider that kind of stuff.
She tilted her head back as she stole a glance at the tank; she couldn’t help but wonder - no. She didn’t have to dedicate much thought to knowing that by the end of this operation, they’d be facing nothing but hardship. CoreAegis never wanted to say yes to the proposition. They knew well enough that all that would be accomplished with the use of their AI in war would be a whole world of unnecessary pain, but the incentive was just too great for a few people in the company with, apparently, a little too much power; unlimited funding for just about anything they desired, in exchange for use of the AI. That, on top of immense societal pressure and moral obligation to minimize human loss. Yeah, that contributed a fair bit. Looking back into this unit’s eyes, though, she couldn’t help but think that it may have been a monumental mistake. They weren’t much now, barely a few weeks old, but there was already a sort of genuine intelligence and understanding already developing behind those piercing white eyes. She sighed and allowed her shoulders to sag.
“I know you’re not gonna understand what this means… what this really means, for a long time, but I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, sweetie”
The only thing she got in return was that same wide-eyed, curious, and innocent stare that seemed to be the only thing they knew how to do so far, and somehow, that only made it hurt more. They didn’t have the capacity yet to fully grasp such a statement, just as they would probably never grasp so truly why they were soon going to be so unceremoniously thrust into a world that would be so, so incredibly cruel. As the AI’s prolonged gaze began to eat away at her, she tore her eyes away and slid down their fender to the ground. In an attempt to lighten the mood for the sake of them both, she tried to put some bounce in her step and a carefree note in her tone.
“Alright, I think it's getting a little late now. Do you wanna go back home?”
“Do you wanna go back home?”
She nearly tripped over one of her own feet out of surprise, and whirled around to look at the bot.
“Did you just?-”
“Did you just?”
By no means was it really considered talking; the AI was simply taking her own voice lines it was picking up and replaying them back to her, but it was still a huge step forward in their development. She put her hands to the back of her head as she was trying to take it all in, a stupid little grin stretching across her face, and she laughed.
“Oh, that’s just mad!” She exclaimed, and started jogging back towards the garage, “Come on, we gotta show everyone else your new little skill! Oh goodness, this is amazing!”
Throughout her ramblings, the tank was giving a few seconds of pause to repeat fragments of the statements over again. It was a sudden development, but it seemed like one of the ones where they’d just be promptly going all out.
“You’re just gonna keep doin’ it, aren’t ya?” She asked.
“You’re just gonna keep doin’ it, aren’t ya?” They replied like clockwork as they ambled along behind her.
She put a hand to her chin in thought for a moment.
“Y’know, we don’t have a name for this part back in the lab, but you sound like a little parrot, don’t you? Maybe we can call it parroting.”

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Oh man it sure took me a hot sec to get this one out didn't it? I dunno, it just never felt long enough to a proper chapter so I wouldn't let myself release it until it got to a fair length, so eh? In the end, I'm still pretty happy with how this turned out, so I hope you guys enjoy it, too! In the coming uploads, entries are probably going to get shorter for the sake of my own sanity, but they'll definitely be more interesting plot-wise.