AUTO x Reader: nothing you have said is revelation

nothing you have said is revelation

You're fascinated with history.

You read all the books you can get on "the age of abandonment": the period where humanity fled from its mistakes and into space. Society before the event seemed horrid, so materialistic, so short-sighted, and even worse during the stint in uncharted vacuums. Sure, the history books might exaggerate just a little, but knowing that the state of the planet was bad enough that everyone decided to leave kinda sells it.

You're lucky enough to live near the remains of the Axiom, the once-mighty ship that was notable for being the first to return to Earth. It's long been reclaimed by nature, vines climbing what remains of rust-eaten walls. It stays standing after all these generations as something of a monument to man's return.

It's so tempting to go inside. No high school textbook will satisfy you. You want to see, to touch, to experience what your ancestors did.

And so you do. One night you stuff all your essentials into a backpack and hop over the fence like you're the rebellious protagonist of a YA novel.

The ship is surprisingly easy to navigate, between you having absorbed pretty much every publicly available fact about it, and all the very simplistic CAFETERIA, SALON, POOL signs that guided the people before you. The windows, once well-cleaned and clear as crystal, you imagine, have long clouded over with moss and grime. The pristine, white walls from the photographs burned into your memory are no longer so pristine or white, scratched and dirtied from decades of plant and animal alike claiming territory. It's not the Axiom from your books, but it's your current reality, it's a testament to mankind learning its lesson. It's beautiful, really, between the natural scenery overcoming the rigid Appleness of it all and the moonlight filtering through the windows and casting a soft haze on everything.

You eventually make your way to the captain's deck -- and you freeze in your tracks.

You recognize the steering wheel hanging from the ceiling, slumped over like a sad rag doll, like you'd recognize an old friend, or perhaps an enemy. You've read every little piece of information on the autopilot of the Axiom. You know his exact dates of activation and deactivation, you know the name of the voicebank that was used to simulate his voice, you even learned that he apparently bore a striking resemblance in both appearance and actions to a fictional computer from what was an iconic film in pre-abandonment ages.

You take tiny, careful steps towards the machine. What historian -- self-appointed or otherwise -- wouldn't want to meet the "villain" of their "story"? To ask questions, to get in their head? It's not like AUTO is going to turn on ever again, though, you shot down that hope as soon as it crossed your mind. It's been far too long, surely his programming is unsalvageable at this point.

You keep taking tentative steps towards him, towards his corpse, essentially, as you think on everything. Before long, you're an arm's length from him; you can see your awestruck face in the reflection of what was once an eye. If you wanted, you could reach up and hit that auto/manual switch...

You can't help it. You know nothing is gonna happen, you're going to sit there waiting for a broken computer to power on like a college student who just spilled an energy drink on their moving out present. But you're just too curious.

You flip the switch.

AUTO spins to life and you jump back with the force of startled slingshot fodder. What the fuck. What the fuck! You can only watch, standing awkwardly with your hands semi-clasped together, as the autopilot gathers his bearings.

"H-hello," you begin. You try to make eye contact but that camera lens stares at you so intensely. "I... I'm very sorry, sir," do robots get sirred? Did he have an actual title or something?, "I didn't mean to wake you." You wonder if all of his 'brain' survived or only some of it, if your language even means anything to him.