Atrandom was the first of their kind. Bundle was the second. Code… Code was and wasn’t the third.
Designed to be an augmentation program for Bundle, Code originally didn’t have a body and had existed solely in the computer realm for years. Eventually, they decided to make a robot body for him, and gave him his choice of bodies... and Code surprised everybody by choosing that of a bird.
/Flying for his freedom./ Gravely, Signal reflected on what Code had told him just before he took off flying circles in the sky, and he realized he didn’t understand the program at all. Hardly surprising, since Signal was designed as a fighting robot, not a thinking one, but it irked him all the same, for he felt he *should* understand his partner.
/I don’t understand why Code wants freedom – aren’t we free already?/ Justice, though, made him admit that he maybe had more freedom than the program that had been trapped in cyberspace for 20 years. Kindness made him sorry for the bird, though he knew Code would reject any form of pity from him... and... maybe Code was right.
/Labeled as different than humans, we really are different,/ Signal puzzled over the idea. Made, not born, by creators with different ideas and purposes in mind, so there wasn’t that much alike between them, and they could be traitorous as well as go mad. No wonder humans didn’t entirely trust them, or accepted them, and that made Code’s ‘freedom’ more than just flight that he wanted.
Oratorio and Lavender, through their years of diplomatic and bodyguard service, had lessened humans’ fears and allowed more human formed robots to be designed and built. Pulse and Signal, the two pure fighting robots, had been designed without a specific purpose... making them truly unusual among their kind, Signal realized, and not an easy state to be in for the humans could see their fighting skills, and not much else.
“Quiet is an unusual state for you,” Code sarcastically remarked as he landed on Signal’s shoulder, back from his flight.
“Reflecting on things,” Signal replied absently, not really paying much attention.
“Seriously? That’s unusual,” Code said as he bopped Signal on the head with his wing.
“Unlikely, maybe,” Signal retorted, pulled out of his thoughts, “but not totally unusual.”
“Verily, you *do* have some occasional signs of intelligence in that upgraded jumbled circuitry of yours.”
Wondering if that could be the cause, but not wanting to ask directly, Signal skirted the topic, asking the question without the reasoning, “Why doesn’t the Professor upgrade me with some spiffy new weaponry like Pulse has?”
“X-ray vision,” Code laughed through his wing, “or something else for example? You’re enough of a menace to society as it is!"
“Zapguns aside, though, Signal,” Code said softly, “you’re absolutely complete and perfect just as you are.”
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