maintenance /avriel 89th
Feb 6, 2022 3:33:55 GMT -5
Post by gamemaker kelsier on Feb 6, 2022 3:33:55 GMT -5
a v r i e l .
Desynchronization starts while he's standing at the kitchen counter. He's running a dish towel around the inside of a fresh cleaned coffee mug, the brewers just finished, the sun is about to rise. One moment everything's fine and then the next his world is buzzing, enveloped in a red flashing light.
"Warning," a voice intones, "Match reduced to 3%"
His mechanical foot detaches itself with a little clicking sound and he loses his balance. Avriel winces and places the mug down on the counter before grabbing onto the edge for support.
"Warning," the voice repeats, "Match reduced to 1%, perform routine maintenance priority one."
Damn.
"Security Code V1 Oh 200," he whispers. The red leaves his vision, the voice cuts off and the foot powers down.
The warning had started coming a few months back at fifty percent but Avriel'd forgotten about it. It'd been sometime around Christmas, when the Capitol had demanded he come out and show his face on that stupid talent show. Guess this is what he gets for ignoring it.
Gripping the counter for support, he bends down to pick the foot up off the ground. Powered down like this it isn't all that exciting. It's basically just scrap metal, despite it's superior programming the foot is still nothing without the chip that it's connected too which is currently embedded in Avriel's brain.
He hefts it in one hand, an odd experience. It still feels like a regular human foot, the engineered skin matches his in tone and it even smells sort of sweaty but that's probably thanks to his shoe. Everything about it screams normal except for the fact that it comes off.
There's a little tool kit in one of these kitchen drawers, Av hops around cold tile for a few minutes trying to find it. He opens drawer after drawer in his search. Three spare keys, a ball of rubber bands and a used band-aid later, there's the kit shoved into the back of a drawer beside a half-empty pack of gum and a used up lighter.
Avriel hops back over to his foot and then tucks it under his arm. He takes the clean mug out of the sink and fills it with coffee to the three-quarter mark. Then he slips the tool kit into his pocket and spends the next three minutes getting to the kitchen table without fucking anything up.
Two drops of coffee on the floor later, Av's sat at the little table that he brought from their old house. The wood on top is all scratched from years of the three of them all doing their homework on it and there's a little dog drawn in sharpie on one of the legs. Avriel couldn't bear to part with it. Their mom's signature is etched into the soft surface from years of her signing forms and there's a dent near the head of the table from his dad accidentally dropping a knife.
He sets the foot down in front of him and then opens the toolkit. First he takes out two screw drivers and places them down on the table so that the bottoms of the handles are aligned. Then he takes out a set of pliers, a little pick and a miniature hammer.
After a long moment of staring at his lineup of tools, Avriel lets out a long, tired sigh. He didn't think to grab a rag and the wd-40 from under the sink.
Part of him wonders if he even needs his foot. He stretches out on the chair and takes a sip of his coffee, gaze on the large window in front of him. The sky's beginning to lighten and the dark shapes in his backyard are forming into recognizable things. There's the shovel leaning against his work shed, the lemon tree he planted this past summer and the soft little mound where he buried a land mine when they first moved in.
When the sun starts to touch the edge of the yard, Avriel hears a soft rattling from upstairs. The rattling tilts up at the end, a little like a question and Avriel knocks softly on the top of the table. The sound stops and then a couple minutes later, Scout pokes its little head into the kitchen.
"Hey, coffee's ready," Avriel says quiet enough to not wake Billie and Duke, "Can you grab me a cloth?"
Scout rattles softly, it's little light pulsing in a rhythmic pattern as it climbs up the Kodama-sized ladder Avriel nailed to the side of the counter last year. He watches the kodama go for a moment before turning back to the foot. He presses down on the top of it to open the panel.
It's been a solid amount of time since he last fucked around with it. "Security code V1 Oh 100," he says and the foot powers back on. Its internal lighting system boots up with the trouble areas lit by gently pulsing red lights. It needs more work than he thought, a complete take apart and clean.
Scout approaches along the table top, dragging a rag behind it. The mutt drops it in front of Avriel and then stands there, gazing at Av with those big empty eyes.
"Hang out with Duke today," he tells it, "I'm just gonna be doing this, boring for you."
Fun for Avriel though.
Birds start to sing outside and Avriel pulls the foot into his lap, screwdriver in hand. His cup of coffee goes cold as he works. The house could burn down around him, he wouldn't notice, he's so focused. At one point he smells eggs and when he looks up briefly, Duke is making food at the stove. He's taller suddenly, shoulders more filled out, Avriel notes that but doesn't process it.
Then the kitchen is quiet again and his foot sits deconstructed in neat little rows on the scratched up kitchen table. Billie's sitting curled up in the chair across from him, book open, propped up against her knees. The clock on the wall reads eleven and Scout's gone, probably with Duke.
Av kicks at Billie once with his good foot and she starts reading out loud.
He picks up the cloth Scout brought him and gets back to work.
