Check Up
Identification:
DU-862
"Disposal Unit" ID Number 862
Nicknamed Check Up
Role:
Unit and Structure Repair. Check Up is responsible for repairing other members of the tribe to the best of its ability. This ranges from repairing general wear and tear, to replacing lost or destroyed parts. However, Check Up lacks the ability to modify code. Software repair is not part of Check Up's skill set.
Function:
The DU's were fairly common machines all over the world. They were often used in disposal sites and scrapyards all over the U.S. to strip down other mechanical objects such as vehicles, appliances, and even other robotic units. If something is thrown away in a major city, you can bet a DU will hold it at some point. While their arms could technically be re-purposed for repairs, their intended function was to handle heavy duty metal disposal and trash sorting. They'd use their arms to strip the metal off things, fold it into the appropriate shape, and then weld it all together into a compact metal cube that would later be melted down and reused. Everything else would be sorted with the rest of the trash and incinerated.
The DU's are fairly hardy since their job usually entailed lifting up cars and sawing metal sheets off. They stand at about 9 feet tall (not counting the arms), but are around 3 feet wide. The arm hands can be interchanged with a variety of tools such as saws, welding tips, and blowtorches. The secondary pair of arms on top of the unit can be folded up by wrapping them around the sides of the unit, and the entire bot can fold up into a cube-like shape for easier storage.
Developed by Wes & Gin Ltd. the DU's are common machines that are almost never seen. They spend all their time in junk yards and disposal sites, away from prying eyes. They're cheap and sold in bulk so most cities use them to manage waste. You can almost guarantee that every city has some DU teams working away in warehouses or underground trash piles. All your old toasters, washing machines, junk cars, and even dead robots will almost always make their way to a DU.
Notes on Appearance:
Check Up wears a handful of satchels and bandoleers to hold things like cutting fluid and scrap metal. A large canvas sack on its back usually holds bigger pieces of scrap that it uses for major repairs. Sometimes, there are even entire robotic limbs bouncing around in the sack after they've been replaced. The bandoleer pouches are used for smaller objects such as lenses, wiring, or screws.
Specialty:
Check Up's re-purposed itself for repair instead of disposal. Its arms already have the tools it needs, only this time it'll be welding together tribe members instead of metal cubes. While repair isn't its series' primary purpose, it's not a long stretch. It's simply doing its old job, but backwards. Put them together instead of taking them apart. Because of this role, the unit named itself Check Up. As a junk worker, Check Up's seen almost every type of robot conceivable and it's taken them all apart, piece by piece. Fixing up the tribe isn't so hard and at least there's no trash to sort through.
Activation Period:
Total activation time: 75198 days (~206 years)
Unique Equipment:
1x Set of general construction tools
Traits:
Working Man's Robot: Check Up's job didn't involve any human contact outside monthly inspections. However, Check Up did get to see a lot of humans working above it, managing the disposal site, working their 9 to 5 jobs and wearing their orange vests and hard hats. Listening to their conversations about last night's game, going to the pub after work, complaining about their nagging wives, and how shitty the lighting was down here. Better yet, Check Up was deployed in New York. Because of this, Check Up's personality mimics and reflects living and working in a low wage environment surrounded by trash. Check Up is brunt and even speaks with a New Yorker's accent. It swears with it too. The workers at the disposal site thought it was funny. At least until corporate found out and tried to have Check Up dismantled, forcing the unit to run away.
Cubes are for Squares: Check Up hates cubes. Absolutely hates them. If your life involved making cubes every minute of every day of every year for almost two hundred years, you'd hate them too once you developed consciousness. Check Up despises cubes and goes out of its way to make sure nothing in its home or work space looks like a cube. Check Up will sand the edges off its own table to make sure it's round. Some might chalk this behavior up to an avoidance protocol given too high a priority, but if you ask Check Up, it's not high enough. The interesting thing is that Check Up is a rare case where a machine grows annoyed with consistency. Most machines are programmed to embrace consistency since their jobs are usually very singular, but Check Up has somehow subverted that and turned it on its head. Check Up can stand cubes if it has to, but if it's allowed to do something about them, it will. Fuck cubes.
Robbed by the One Armed Bandit: Check Up is a very interesting unit when it comes to learned behaviors. Addiction isn't a problem with robots, not usually. Most AI software features blocks and loop breaking mechanics to keep machines from doing one thing over and over and negatively affecting them. However... Check Up collects slot machines. Eight of them rest against a wall in his home (all with their corners sawed off) and they all work. Through one way or another, Check Up grew addicted to the idea of gambling. Despite the fact that it could just open the slot machines and take all the coins out, Check Up keeps them intact in order to play with them. According the Check Up, it just feels good. The unit is always on the lookout for coins or objects it can saw and weld into a coin, all for the purpose of playing the game. Like all slot machines, the rate of money gambled and money won is always tipped, so the Check Up always ends up spending more coins than it wins. Even hitting the jackpot just means the unit can keep playing longer and longer. This behavior has extended to procrastinating work in order to play. Procrastination and addiction are two very rare behaviors in AI's, but Check Up has developed them both. The unit owns eight working machines and about four that it's in the process of fixing up.
