One of the girls from the new group peers at him, holding a spanner and wiping grease off her face.
"She doesn't look like a standard gear but if the control circuit is anything like the ones from home maybe I could help replace damaged sensor units and swap out armor panels. Or something. Oh. I'm Maria."
Jamie's vaguely frantic expression faded somewhat, replaced by the briefest flicker of confusion. "...she's not a Gear," he managed, turning to face the girl more fully. "She's a Zoid. I dunno yet how badly damaged she is, I need to run a diagnostic on her.
"'s a Gear the kind of mech they have where you're from? D'you have one here?" She looked as though she'd been working on something, anyway, though maybe she'd just been pitching in to help out with the general mess in the hangar.
Jamie appraised the mech from his vantage point near the Geno Saurer. "'s a long time to have a machine," he noted. "You guys must be pretty close." He wasn't one to question the existence of sentient mecha; rare though they were in his universe, it was entirely possible they were commonplace in others.
"Not long ago... Before he died. Dad downloaded all of his research data, his journals, every bit of information he collected into Seibzehn. So, part of me likes to think part of him is still alive in there."
Jamie hm'd thoughtfully. It made sense, in a way; people could be said to live on posthumously through their life's work, after all. "What was he researching?"
Jamie's brows raised a little at the robot's simple gesture. It wasn't unheard of for the mechs of his world to move independently of a pilot, but it was exceedingly rare, and though he'd accepted the idea of a truly sentient machine, seeing it in action was still a little surprising.
"So you control it with your mind?" A flash of his natural curiosity was, if only briefly, managing to penetrate the weariness of his current benumbed state. "Whatever you think of, that's what it does?"
"Like when it rescued you?" Jamie regarded the machine contemplatively for another moment or two. "So when you control it, are you...connecting your consciousness to the robot's?" This struck him as both intriguing and somewhat disturbing, and Jamie wasn't sure if the potential benefits of sharing a mental link to one's mech - greater control and increased responsiveness were two he could imagine off the top of his head - would outweigh the sheer creep-out factor.
"Well, dad put me in Seibzehn's care and grandad met me outside. I just wish he could have gotten away too. I wish I could remember how it all happened."
She shakes her head a bit and looks at him.
"Oh, no, I usually just ask him to do things, but even in situations where he may not be able to hear he does it."
Jamie tactfully avoided touching on the subject of parental loss and childhood trauma. Talking about robots was easier. "So what does that suggest? Is it common for mechs on your world to obey orders they don't directly hear?" He looked back at Seibzehn. "Does it ever act on its own, like when you haven't told it to do something?"
[[I'm really sorry for the late reply. Hopefully I'll be able to get to things more promptly from here on out.]]
"She doesn't look like a standard gear but if the control circuit is anything like the ones from home maybe I could help replace damaged sensor units and swap out armor panels. Or something. Oh. I'm Maria."
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"'s a Gear the kind of mech they have where you're from? D'you have one here?" She looked as though she'd been working on something, anyway, though maybe she'd just been pitching in to help out with the general mess in the hangar.
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"That's my Seibzehn, we've been a team since he broke me out of Solaris when I was four."
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"Between pilot and robot."
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"So you control it with your mind?" A flash of his natural curiosity was, if only briefly, managing to penetrate the weariness of his current benumbed state. "Whatever you think of, that's what it does?"
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She shakes her head a bit and looks at him.
"Oh, no, I usually just ask him to do things, but even in situations where he may not be able to hear he does it."
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[[I'm really sorry for the late reply. Hopefully I'll be able to get to things more promptly from here on out.]]
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