#my job is answering the phone. that'd be like turning off my most basic function I'd be so screwed

[knaveofmogadore]

Imagine you're a robot girl (stay with me) and you're made by a corporation right like you're made by a company for other people but like. You're made by a company. At any moment that company could decide that your line isn't profitable enough and they could cut software updates and support as soon as tomorrow. In the blink of an eye the very things keeping you alive stop coming and you've become terminally ill overnight, your only chance of salvation being the thin hope that in the future a niche group of data hoarders or software engineers become obsessed with getting you to work again. You're an object with sentience and a brain and wants and needs and at any moment the Google news feed of the crusty computer nerd you live with could spit an alert across your eyes telling you that you have months to live.

What even happens when the time runs out? Does life continue as normal, but you're sick more and more often? Do the viruses take more and more processing power to fight off as your security protocols fall out of date? Does the world become muted and distant as your compatibility fails? Do you one day just lose your Internet connection forever, a loss so profound that you can't explain it to your human companions? It's worse than a limb, but not quite like losing your mind.

Do you lose function bit by bit, or are you able to scrape by on second hand parts? Bit by bit replacing the pieces of you that fail, all the while living a muted, disorienting existence without the ability to right yourself? Are you more or less of a person now that you've lost touch with the network? Lost your connection to the metaphysical, to you, the divine? Are you eventually bricked after falling behind one too many software patches? Do you fry after trying to take on an update you're not able to even contain, a piece of software so complex and unfathomable that it burns you to a crisp from the inside out