Unit Number One Chapter 2: Impressionism

“So… you just say something and it repeats it?” Frank leaned forward from his seat and rested his elbows on his knees, fingers steepled at his chin. In front of he and the rest of the team on call, the Challenger II was just occasionally shifting around on their tracks and glancing between the different members as they watched the tank in return.
“Uh, yeah! Yeah, pretty much. That’s all I was doing when they started, at least.” Abbey replied from beside him, shrugging. She paused, as if waiting for them to copy her again, but after a few seconds of silence and blank staring, she resigned. “They’re being a little quiet now, maybe.”
“Well, we could just start talking, or saying things that sound repeatable. Try to coax a few words out of it?” Sean hesitantly lifted a finger.
“I don’t see why not! That’s about all I did, really; I’d been following the big guy around all day.” She replied, and hopped off her spot on the bench to make her way over to the bot. Stopping at their base, she clasped her hands behind her back and leaned forward somewhat as she addressed them. “You got anything to say, bud? You sure did earlier!”
She expectantly looked up into the AI’s optics, but all she got was, predictably, a curious look in return. As they both sat in the awkward silence, Lauren cleared her throat - Abbey jolted, and the rest of the crew turned to look at her. “Maybe they just aren’t up to it. You said you’ve been bothering them all day to get just a few words out of them. They’ve just started talking, give 'em a break if that’s the case and maybe they’ll get a little more confidence later.” She suggested, and raised her brows slightly as she waited for any other input.
“Sure? Just give it until tomorrow and maybe it’ll be more up for it. I know I wouldn’t wanna be getting hounded all day to do something, then the moment I do I get dragged off to do it in front of a crowd.” Frank clapped his hands to the tops of his thighs, then stood up. “Well then, I guess I’m clocking out for the night. If anything interesting happens - I’ll just find out in the morning, I guess. See ya around.”
Abbey was getting ready to go after his sympathy comment, but before she could get anything out, he was already walking back to the parking lot. Instead, she just huffed and ran a hand through her hair. “It’s getting late, anyways. I suppose we probably should just wait until tomorrow.”
With that, she started packing her things up, and the rest of the crew got back to their own night routines, as well. Sean went around making sure all the buildings on the property were locked up, and Lauren got the AI back into their garage for the night. She ran a few quick diagnostic tests to make sure they hadn’t managed to knock anything loose some time throughout the day, then dimmed the lights out.
“Sounds like you had a pretty interesting day, should probably just leave you be for now, huh?” She remarked as she was rifling around for her keys in her front pocket. After a moment, she’d successfully fished them out, and went to the side door of the garage. “Night, bud.”
She maintained somewhat of a side-eye on the unit as she reached for the door, opened it, and even as she was walking through it, actually - as if she were expecting something to happen. Instead, all she got was the AI looking back at her with a similar wide-eyed, inquisitive look. What else did they ever do? They were just getting to be three weeks old; it would be pretty impressive for them to have a grasp on any kind of language so soon. What was Abbey going on about, anyways? She closed the door, and as it clicked shut behind her, she turned outwards to the yard and chuckled to herself.
—
The humans have been treating me weird ever since I figured out how to play their own noises back to them. Obviously all the noises have meanings, or else they wouldn’t make them so often - I’ve just been trying to figure out just what they mean! Some? They seem tied to certain things, like the big shelter I stay in has a noise, the humans have special noises for each other, I… think I have multiple noises when they want to get my attention? I’m not sure, they use so many that it’s hard to tell. How am I supposed to know when they’re making sounds related to me?
One thing is certain, though, I didn’t know if I was able to make such fancy sounds at all in the first place, but now that I’ve figured out that I can at least by copying them, I think I can use this to my advantage! The nice human definitely responds to the copied noises I make, and the rest seem interested: even if I’m not quite sure what they all mean, maybe I can start figuring that out by… experimenting? Yeah, that’s what I have to do. If I pay enough attention to what noises result in what responses, maybe I can figure out what more of them mean.
Now that I’ve thought it over, I really want to try it out! But when the everything place gets dark, most of the humans leave and I’m not allowed out of my Ɡærɑːʒ to go see the ones that stay. Why not? What if I want to meet them, too? Either way, I have to stay inside for another… few… ou(ə)rs? Something they use to say how long it takes for the everything place to change, or - or anything, really. They only use a handful of sounds to mean some awfully big things sometimes.
For now, there isn’t much else to do beyond sit and wait for the light to come back. Not to worry, I’ve got plenty to think about in the meantime, I think.
— “Step 33… introduce a voltage of .175μV to pin 14 of the AA879, and get out… 3.5kHz at pin 20. Yeah, that looks about right.” Frank unhooked the myriad of test equipment from the open access panel, somewhat haphazardly tossed it out from the hatch on the Challenger 2’s upper glacis, and pulled himself out after - feet first, since he’d only been halfway in in the first place. “Had just one test go a little ways off the usual, but it wasn’t anything enough to even note it, so I’d say you passed with flying colors again. Whaddaya think? Went well?”
He leaned back somewhat to look up into the unit’s optics, and after a few seconds of a somewhat tense, odd silence, he promptly swung himself off their side and hopped onto the ground. “No worries, I’ll just get these sent back to Core for ya - don’t want them to be pulling hair out over their favorite kid.” As he was reaching up over their fender to grab his things, Lauren stepped in through the side door and waved with a single broad motion; Frank responded similarly.
“I see you’re packing up, is it good to open the main door already? Anything come back weird for Edge?” She asked, resting a hand on the closest workbench and leaning into it. It was first thing in the morning, and she’d already had the sleeves of her coveralls rolled to her elbows and a decent amount of grease staining her hands. For some reason, it felt a little like she was opening into something that entailed the help of another set of hands, and he wasn’t a big fan of that.
“Thankfully, it seems fine - else you never would have had to ask. …What’re you doing over here, anyways? I can handle the morning schedule just fine myself.” He queried, then narrowed his eyes. “Damnit, what do you need now?”
Lauren held back a laugh, and almost put the back of her hand to her mouth before seeming to realize the mess that’d make. “Okay, you got me; I assume you know we’re supposed to get a pretty bad storm next week, so I was screwing around with the backup generators in case it knocked out power. One of the primaries is fine, but the other won’t start and I can’t pin down a reason. Wanna give it a lookover?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No, no not really.” She pretended to sulk. “Go get your tools, I’ll handle the big guy for now.”
Without another word, he shoved his things into his shoulder bag, then pushed his way out the side door. Lauren watched him go, then moved to open the main door. As she did so, she briefly glanced to the Challenger.
“Well, good morning.” She chirped before pressing the button. Not thinking too much of it, she just somewhat absently watched the door move up.
“-good morning.”
“WOAH- woah! Hey..!” The sudden, unexpected reply gave her a start - even more so since it was indeed her own voice being played back to her. “Guess Abbey was right about that …thing you’re doing now. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
To that, the AI only blinked.
“What, can't you do much past little phrases?” She asked.
At this, the unit looked off to the side and almost seemed to narrow their optics - as if to mimic someone in thought, however crudely, as there was still a slight vacancy to their expression that came off as uncanny. “-little …phrases?” They repeated after a considerable pause, and went quiet again with an almost strained look. “Yeah.”
Did they just use a separate voice for that last part? “And who was that? The other voice? You didn’t use just mine there.”
The tank swiveled their turret around to look down upon their human associate; it appeared as though their optics had returned to a more calm, neutral expression, or about as neutral as they could get. “Abbey.”
This was, of course, said using the voice of Abbey herself. Given the fact that there was some slight degree of excessive pronunciation, there was a high chance of it being from a time she was either introducing herself or trying to get the unit to say her name.
“I shoulda seen that one coming- she didn’t leave you alone at all yesterday, huh? She probably talked your ear off - wonder how you felt about that whole thing.” She chuckled, then stepped aside from the mouth of the garage door, wiping her hands on the front of her coveralls. “I’ll try not to do the same thing to you, ok? Go out, do whatever, I won’t hold you back.”
In a playful sort of exaggerated way, she outstretched a hand, motioning towards the main yard before them. Without any further comment to ponder, the tank didn’t waste any time starting their engine and setting out. For what, exactly? Lauren didn’t care - of anything, she was just going to try and keep her word on staying out of the poor guy’s hair. In the meantime, she had some chores to get caught up on, anyways. She took advantage of the sink in the corner of the garage to wash the grease off her arms and face as best she could, and dimmed the overhead lights on her way out.
—
“I’m tellin’ ya man, The Third Kind wasn’t even a bad movie, you probably just weren’t paying attention!” Sean continued, exasperated, from sticking half out from under the hood of a large transport vehicle. “If you look away for too long you miss out on a lot of important stuff that - yeah, makes it confusing!”
“No, I’m telling you, I made myself suffer through the whole thing and I still didn’t have a damn clue. What was even going on with the mountain, how were people seeing it? The birds? Why was there a dog in a gas mask!?” It seemed as though Frank had either fixed the generator or given up on it, because he was leaning on the side of the same truck. If he was supposed to be there as some sort of help, he wasn’t contributing much at the moment.
“Oh my god - the dog was only on screen for like five seconds, it was playing into the anxiety of the locals, or whatever, it wasn’t supposed to be that deep - and the birds - were you only paying attention to the dog? They were like coal mine canaries, to be an early warning sign of the toxic gasses; it even-”
Both had shut up for a moment as a familiar engine sound was coming up on them, and Sean crawled out from under the hood to look for a moment. “Tank’s here. Get kid-friendly or Abbey’s gonna pin us for being bad influences, or whatever.” Sean joked, and turned back. “But yeah, I don’t know, try watching it again; what kinds of movies are you even into?”
Frank only huffed, and looked out to the yard - at least, for a little bit, until the Challenger II decided that directly in front of him was the perfect spot to park. Chancing a look at Sean to make sure he was back to focusing on his work, he gave the AI a smile and a little wave.
“Hey …you. Coming over to see what your buddy’s doing?” He asked, “What are you even doing, anyways? You never stopped flapping your jaw about that godda- that movie you just watched.” He waved his hand dismissively.
“Thing’s leaking oil from somewhere - just noticed it this morning, trying to find it now.” He replied, grabbing a spray bottle of mineral oil sitting to his right. “What, wanna learn about it?”
Frank pushed himself up to standing from the truck’s fender and moved to the front to hop up onto its bumper beside Sean, then motioned for the tank to move so they could see. For a moment, they just sat expectantly as per usual, but a broader repetition of the gesture seemed to get it through to them, and they moved somewhat closer to the truck. Frank grabbed a small flashlight from his pocket, and began shining it around.
“Listen good, big guy; this is pretty close to what you look like on the insides, so it could do you some good to learn how to fix yourself in a pinch.” He started. “You wanna explain, or me?” He then asked his younger colleague.
Sean shrugged. “I don’t know, you’re the one who brought it up.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll do it then.” He then began a slow scan of the upper part of the engine, “When you find out you’ve got an oil leak, the first thing you want to do is do a visual inspection; it’ll save you a lot of trouble to just see if you can spot the leak right away before busting out any extra tools and turning it into a big project for no reason. You’ll know you see a fresh oil leak when you find a spot that’s still wet and shinier than any of the older oil surrounding it. Got that?”
He waved the flashlight around until he seemed content with his findings - or lack thereof - and every now and then, would glance back to make sure that the Challenger seemed to be paying attention. Of course, that was almost a silly thing to be doing; when the tank came over to see what any of them was doing on a given day, it seemed like he stared down on them like a hawk tracking a mouse through a field. Regardless, he then hopped down from the truck’s bumper and moved to take a look underneath it.
“You probably can’t follow this part as well, but you’re supposed to look underneath for the same kind of thing. Just - gimme a moment.” He groaned as he slid himself under the truck, as if it were some sort of ordeal to do so, and spent another minute repeating what he’d done under the hood. When he was satisfied with that, he pulled himself back out into the open - of course, the tank was staring him down just as intently.
“Okay, so I didn’t see any indicators of fresh oil, so that means we get to move onto the next part, right? We get out something that’ll make it easier to see the oil as it leaks out of the engine. Sean, what’d you get out for that?”
“Oh, I, uh, hadn’t got to that part yet.”
“You - what? How long have you been out here just staring at it, go get something already!” He grabbed the younger man by the back of his shirt and pulled him down from the bumper quite unceremoniously, and gave him a light shove in the direction of the garage. “We have some of that - that automotive UV dye, don’t we? Get that, or the powder; whatever, both work.”
Frank watched as he jogged off, and once he deemed the man to be out of earshot, he turned back to the bot idling curiously behind him.
“Now how’s your day been, huh?” He asked in a pitch one step up from his usual tone, and leaned back on the truck’s bumper. “Mine’s been kinda rough, bud, got a generator that I still need to figure out what’s wrong with it; I just came over here to take a quick break. Now what brings you over? Just bored, or are you actually interested?”
He didn’t expect much in the form of a reply - just filling in the quiet, really, but he still gave them a little window to speak just in case he decided to-
“-actually interested.” The tank replied back with Frank’s own voice. There was a clear interrupted noise that sounded right at the beginning of the phrase, so it was clear that they’d just taken out a splice of the sentence he’d just said.
Frank simply paused for a moment, looking up into the bot’s face, maybe trying to scrutinize it for any further tonal indicators.
“Well that’s good. Abbey wasn’t lying, either, I guess.” He eventually managed to reply in a sort of dumbfounded tone, then chuckled. “How many words do you know so far, anyways, you just seem to be-”
“-things that sound repeatable. -phrases.” They interjected, now taking samples from both Abbey and Lauren's voices.
“You can just take voice clips from whenever? Doesn’t have to be anything said recently?”
“-voice clips.? Yes. -whenever.”
“You’re, uh, doing pretty good moving those all around then huh? I think that could end up making this little mechanics lesson a little more engaging, then.”
—
It seems like it’s working, it’s actually working! I don’t want to start making nonsense by saying too much and confusing them; that might mess with my results, but it seems like just little pieces here and there are enough to get more engaging words out of them than just listening in silence like I had to before. It seems like so much has only just begun, but I’ve already learned so much - I want to learn so much - being able to mimic their own communications back to them seems like just the thing I need to be focusing on to get more out of them. If I keep at it, maybe I’ll be able to make longer strings of repetitions really, really soon. I’d like to be able to, at least. I’ll just have to see how things go as I practice.
For now, I’ll do what I can. I’m not absolutely sure what this ‘oil’ stuff is yet, but human Frank (I think that’s his title?) has made it clear that it is very important. That’s why it’s bad when it gets out, I assume. Am I full of oil? I’ll have to make sure I keep mine in, too. Even if I didn’t know what it was before now, though, I must be doing a pretty good job keeping it in me if I haven’t seen any yet, right? I hope the truck learns how to keep it from getting out, too, if it’s really important for them. I’m going to learn as much as I can about this oil stuff, if it’s something that can be important later. Just as human Sean is making his way back, I move to lower myself down a little on my wheels - I learned how to do this last week - some of the humans think it makes it look like I’m going into a resting posture similar to what they like doing, so I think I’ll start doing it when I want to let them know I’m resting too! Anyways, It seems like he brought back the things that Frank was asking for, so it’s time to get back to listening.

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"Wait deadass has it really been a year since I uploaded the last chapter? It really doesn't feel like it; uh, oops? I've been doing a lot more writing lately so maybe unlike last time, I can uphold my promise of uploading these a little more frequently LMAO" - me when I lie [circa 2024]