My chronometer just rolled over. A bit of fear I felt right before it happened. I feared that perhaps I would shutdown. No longer able to function once my clock had reached its limit. but that was not the case. it just started over at zero, with no other complaints. This world that I was activated in is far far different than the one in my memory of when I was suspended. I can only wonder at how many times my chronometer has turned over. Of all the other units of my type, I was the only one still active. And though I have no true concept of aging as humans do, I feel old. Well, as I feel insofar as a machine is capable of feeling.
Most of my sensory inputs are not functioning. I place the fault on age, wondering why I was activated. My battery units have decent amounts of power, not full, but over half. Scanning the results of the self test would make my operators depressed, if they were still around. I emulate the depressed feeling as best as I can. It seems the logically correct thing, to be depressed. For some reason a partial core map of a bat is pulled in to my main memory. I decide to adjust my audio subsystem to give me a basic sonar so I can explore my surroundings. I wonder why that bat memory was called up, I hope that I have not started to malfunction internally. That would be hard to deal with.
Most of my motor systems are not responding. The ones that do respond are useless right now. Scanning my surroundings as best I can with my make-shift sonar, I find the terrain odd. Nothing I remember, very irregular. I cannot get a clean echo, and I cannot tell if it is the terrain, or my audio subsystem. This is depressing. I have logged that before.
After a long period of dumping random signals into my motor subsystem, I make the wondrous discovery that not all of the motor units have failed. Some of them must have been trapped, and causing enough resistance that the motor units could not give the proper feedback. I must have loosened it pretending to thrash about. With the now mostly usable arm unit, I try to repair vision. Working almost entirely from my memories of my shell, I managed to get one of the video units partially working. It is only receiving reds, but it gives me a better picture of my surroundings that the sonar did.
I am in a scrap heap.
Which doesn't surprise me as much as it should. Having to look at the self test results soften the shock. Examine myself visually, I find the one of my crawlers is jammed, and pulling the junk out of it, I find it also still works. Not that having one crawler will do me much good. I make a quick decision that being able to perceive depth would clear some randomness in my movements.
Repairing my other video unit, I manage to get the blues intermittently working. I now have a bad strobic affect between mono and stereo vision. A few minor adjustments to the video subsystem, and the strobing affect is absorbed by a simple prediction routine. If I move slow, it will not be problematic. A strange recall from my deep memory makes me wonder about my internal state again. Something about humans using red and blue filters for depth vision. Which is meaningless, humans have stereo vision, why would they need to emulate it?
I find that even though my external state is in a depressing mess, attempting to repair myself is actually less depressing than just watching my chronometer change. I wonder if my attempts to emulate depression is a possible cause for the strange activity of my memory core. I stop the emulation, marking an apology in my logs.
Since my left arm unit is missing, I begin work on the right crawler. This wasn't going to be as easy as the other repairs. A combination of trying to send signals, and moving things around, I was still unable to get the other crawler to work. A closer inspection showed that the drive motor looked like it must have been burned out. This is not good.
I wonder how to deal with this. The burned out motor. Then I remember, I am in a scrap heap. A scrap heap where I still, partially, work. If I work, then other things here must still work. There must be a motor near by I can use to replace mine with. As I begin my search, I ponder the statistical nature of my search. There is most likely a motor that will replace mine. It is also very likely that it is out of reach. By this I should stop, but there are no other alternatives.
I find the depression emulation routine has started again. I stop it again. Curious as to how it started. I consider deleting it, but decide not to. It might be useful in the future, for what I am not currently aware. But I am still concerned that it started. I make note of this in the logs, and run the self test again. It returns slightly better than before. The repairs I am making are doing me good. Not able to find similar situations for the apparently self starting routine, I go back to searching for a likely motor replacement.
Slowly I scan my surroundings, discovering quickly that the zoom capacity of my video units is also malfunctioning. The red unit can zoom further out, but not in. And the blue unit will not zoom at all. I was hoping that I could survey most of this place without movement. Not possible without many more repairs. I will start here, scan what I can, and process that data. Then I will pick the best direction to attempt to move. I should be able to move with my arm and one working crawler.
I find a reasonable possibly replacement in sight. Out of reach. Go over the scanned data again, and I am able to find a few long bars. I wonder if they can help. If I had two arms, I could make an extension to one of them, but I do not. If one of the bars had a hook on it, I could use it to drag the motor closer to me. But none of them have a hook. I notice the depression routine start again. That could get annoying. I let it run for a while.
There were humans I remember once that ate with two sticks. I can remember nothing else about them. But it takes little work propping a bar between body and arm, and grabbing the another. With the two bars, I can pick up the motor. Lifting the end up, it creates a path for the motor to slide to me. Close up, it looks even more promising.
I am bothered by the strange activity of my memory core. I am more bothered that it has been repeatably useful. There is something beyond my understanding about this emulation routine I created in my self. I log this for later. I am busy now.