Search for leverage

Although you'd talked your way into staying in the maintenance area, you had no idea what to do next. Trying to convince the stubborn Grey technician to even take a look at 6T9 was going to be a challenge, and even if he did, that might be the end of it. You began wandering around the room surveying the jumbles of salvaged parts from other machines that had been scrapped. Each pile made you wonder if that was going to be 6T9's fate as well. By the time you had finished examining one side, the situation felt even more hopeless.

Maybe the old Grey was right. 6T9 was a machine designed to learn about your desires and play upon your emotions. What if the the reason you felt so strongly for her right now was just due to having been manipulated by some very complex programming? Was she sentient? As you recalled each of the things she had said and done, you realized that nearly all of it could have just been a programmed response for the given situation. Yet there was that one brief look of sadness she'd made when you asked if she enjoyed it. That seemed real. She said she was still trying to understand feelings, but for a moment it seemed she was actually exhibiting one. It wasn't much, but right now it was enough. You'd lost 55 valued friends and companions on the Odyssey, and you weren't about to remain idle and lose another one you'd met here on the Starpoint.

You needed more information, but the last thing you needed right now was to get on the tech's bad side by talking. "MPAD-24, can you switch to a visual interface?" you whispered.

The floating robot immediately transformed into a floating screen, much like the ones in the medical bay, and with a similarly intuitive menu. Perfect! After navigating through the options, you eventually found the details for the maintenance area, including the technicians that worked here. One was clearly the most experienced. Unlike the other Greys, this one apparently did not have the same type of shortened duty ID that most others had. Instead, he was called Specs. Apparently that wasn't a reference to his goggles, but rather it referred to the several thousands of manuals he'd written detailing the specifications, trouble-shooting and repair actions for various machines. Looking through the database, a significant percent of the technical manuals bore his name in some capacity, often as an author or a cited reference. However, it appeared that after several decades of productivity, his writings had suddenly stopped, and there were no new mentions of him over the recent decades. Why had he quit? It still wasn't much to go on, but it might prove useful.

With renewed focus, you began searching the room, looking for anything that might link him to his prior days of technical writing. However, everything here seemed to just be mishmash of tools, parts and machines in various states of operation. You stopped to watch Specs for a moment as he affixed a new limb to a bot that seemed to almost be operational. As you resumed your search, he continued working on the repair, but you could tell that he was also keeping a close watch on you.

Just as you were about to move back toward the other end, you spotted something out of the ordinary. On a shelf all by itself, there was a small robot, and unlike most of the other equipment here, it looked like it had been carefully polished and placed there. You approached it, and examined it as closely as possible without touching. Then using MPAD-24's menu's, you tried to search for details about it. Immediately you found a few entries, and suddenly things started to make sense. This robot, called SPR-1, had been designed and built by Specs, and it included several innovative features. At some point, it had begun to exhibit signs of being sentient, and soon after that it was taken from Specs and placed in a facility where it could be studied. However, SPR-1 eventually went berserk and killed three researchers before it was shutdown. Its internal components were removed and studied before being destroyed, while the chassis had been sent to be recycled. That had happened right around the point where Specs' writing had ceased.

Either Specs had somehow gotten the chassis back, or perhaps this was another version of it. Based on the polishing and placement, it was evident that Specs had cared about SPR-1. After it killed the researchers, he likely felt guilty about what had happened, and he had never recovered. He probably didn't want anything to do with another sentient robot for fear of what it might do. Somehow you had to convince him to try.