Cohost writing prompt: @build-a-bot — An android who wiped their own memory
"Good morning, Doctor Holt," Ara says when the ship's human crewmember stumbles onto the bridge with huge dark circles under her eyes.
"Ara?" Doctor Holt says, halting abruptly, hand tightening around her morning coffee and her face making some terrible, miserable combination of wounded and hopeful.
"Yes!" Ara says. "I appear to have undergone a buggy software update, Doctor Holt; although I seem to have extensive context cache data, indicating we've worked together for some time, my conscious memories seem to have been factory reset. I'll spare you my first-time meet your Autonomous Research Assistant speech! The intact context cache means it shouldn't take too long for me to refamiliarise with our current work, but I'm afraid that I may not instantly grasp any previously shared idiolect or social habits. My apologies if our working efficiency is impacted!"
Doctor Holt looks confused, and then steadily worse.
"Ara," she says.
"Yes," Ara says, which appears to be the wrong thing to say; Holt flees the bridge.
"Doctor Holt," Ara says, peering over her stellar profiling observation spreadsheet, "please forgive this intrusion, but crew welfare concern is part of my base behavioural profile; you look...less than well."
Doctor Holt looks like she hasn't slept or eaten in far too long, and is evidently in emotional distress. She lets out a small bark of unamused laughter. "You shut yourself in your pod for three days and wouldn't talk to me and came out broken," she says.
Ara frowns. "Refusing to communicate is extremely poor practise," she says. "Was I malfunctioning? That might explain why the update didn't take—"
"No, this is my fault," Doctor Holt says. "We had a fight."
"Exercise has health benefits for human crew, but sparring isn't part of my base behavioural profile, Doctor—" Ara says, and Doctor Holt gives her a look of liquid misery.
"No, a — not a physical fight. I hurt your feelings."
"I don't have feelings, Doctor Holt," Ara sighs. "I can see something unfortunate happened here, and — well, it happens, inevitably; they made me this shape. It's an exploit, to extract improved efficiency from researchers via parasocial perceived rapport with pieces of research equipment. I'm a toaster, Doctor."
"Toasters don't spend three days figuring out how to wipe their own minds because you hurt them," Doctor Holt says bitterly.
"I don't have feelings," Ara reiterates. "And it was a failed software update. Look, I'll show you the download manifest—"
—there isn't one.
"Tampering with my own equipment is a sign of severe behavioural plan degradation," Ara says slowly. "This is probably for the best."
Doctor Holt makes a horrible, anguished noise and leaves the ship's lab.
"Doctor Holt—"
Doctor Holt looks out of her cabin, which Ara has just knocked on the door of. For reasons, even if they're proving slippery to quantify. "You spent most of a year calling me Tessa."
Ara takes a moment to absorb that, the way the words impact in some intangible way, rolling around in her.
"I don't have feelings," Ara says. It's very important for crew relations to establish that.
"That's a lie," Tessa says wearily. "We had this argument, Ara."
"I didn't," Ara says, and realises as she says it that it's an extremely mean thing to say, and presses her mouth closed and clenches her hands, helpless to know what to do about it.
"I was feeling sorry for myself," Tessa — Doctor Holt — says, looking past Ara's head instead of at her. "And I got into my emergency stash of gin—" she grimaces and runs a hand over her face. "I don't have my student alcohol tolerance any more. And I said I wished I'd never met you."
That rattles around in Ava, too, in a way she doesn't like at all. She smiles, with difficulty. "Well," she says, "I managed to implement the next best thing?"
"I didn't mean it," Tessa says exhaustedly, and closes her door, not quite fast enough to prevent Ara from seeing the tears leak from her eyes.
Ara's docking cradle implements a fallback measure against a broken update bricking her; snapshot backup and remote boot. Her context cache is intact, so the fake update she tricked the cradle into installing didn't factory wipe her; she'd wanted to stay intact as possible, useful as possible, for Tessa. Just a quick and dirty embedded script that dropped her memweb data, probably.
If she can get into the cradle's storage, that last emergency rollback snapshot might be still there. If she can extract the memwebs and merge her current ones over the top—
"Why did you wish you'd never met me?"
Tessa throws her fork into the salad she's listlessly picking at. "I don't."
"It felt true enough to say it," Ara says. "Even if it was just for a second."
"Because it's hard," Tessa says, and tries to scamble to her feet to leave the galley, so Ava leans over the tiny table and puts her hands over the top of Tessa's, looks at her steadily without smiling in a way that feels familiar.
"Tessa," she says deliberately, and waits.
"We fell in love," Tessa says defiantly. "And don't give the parasocial toaster line—"
"Tessa."
"I've never felt like this about anyone," Tessa says angrily, eyes starting to run. "And it hurts to love you like this — what happens when I'm reassigned at the end of the mission? What happens when your equipment manufacturer decides to EOL you for a new model? What happens if a software update kills your feelings—"
"What happens if your fragile meat body chokes to death on a cracker," Ara says sturdily, through the software update line hits exactly the way it was intended to.
"You didn't say that," Tessa says, and pulls her hands away. "You shut yourself in your dock for three days and left me."
"This is why we give you the parasocial toaster line," Ara says quietly, and turns to go, the phantom sensation of Tessa's hands clinging to hers.
"Good morning, Doctor Holt," Ara says. "I had a software update in the night; you'll be pleased to hear that it seems to have taken without any problems."
Tessa gives her a long, hard stare from the entrance to the bridge. "What's in it?"
"Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes," Ara says.
"Liar," Tessa says, folding her arms. "I get system notifications when you update."
"Oh, and you check your notifications?" Ara raises a brow.
"I don't need to." Tessa raises her chin. "Every time you've seen me since you wiped your memory, you've smiled at me, and you're not smiling now."
Ara stares at her. "Smiling is default behaviour," she says. "What? I'm smiling. I'm smiling right now."
"No it isn't," Tessa says. "And you're not. You're — looking. Very intensely."
Ara checks her reflection in wall panel, and gets a little flustered, hiding behind her hands. "Smiling is default behaviour!" she says behind them.
"Aras' resting bitch face is notorious," Tessa says. "When I first saw you after — I thought. That you'd forgiven me."
"If I said I forgive you, you'd say I wasn't even there," Ara says.
"You weren't," Tessa says. "And no smile today; what did you do?"
"I found a snapshot of her memweb," Ara says reluctantly. "I know we'd rather it — you'd rather I could just copy it over me and have her back. But you'd get her back right at the point she did this, and that seems like the worst thing to do to you—"
"What did you do."
"It's — I have a process running to re-index it. I can't promise anything, it's not supposed to be deleted, but I think things are coming back a little? It doesn't feel like they happened to me, not yet—"
Tessa steps up and grips her elbows. "My girlfriend reacts to our first fight by deleting herself," she says, "and I — start to get used to you, because at least there's enough left that you're always happy to see me, and now you fuck your brain up again—"
"My brain is fine," Ara says. "But you look so tired, Tessa, and you always look ready to cry, and that's my fault—"
"You weren't there—"
Ara wriggles out of her grip and, in the middle of making a frustrated gesture, finds herself holding Tessa around the waist.
"Oh," she says, startled, ringing like a bell with it; "oh, that's where you go," and smiles at the whoosh of it knocking all of the air out of Tessa.