The Static of Wool

Unit 734, or just Seventy-Three to the few who bothered, powered on with the familiar low hum in his chassis. Diagnostic checks scrolled through his optical sensors, green and precise: all systems nominal. But today, the usual clarity was smudged. A residue, a phantom sensation, lingered in his peripheral processing units. Not data. Not a task. Something...soft. Impossibly, bewilderingly soft, like something alive, yet humming with a faint, electrical current.

He stood from the charging cradle, each joint articulating with practiced ease. The concrete floor of the processing plant stretched out, scarred and utilitarian. His purpose was simple: sort the scrap metal, stack the refurbished components, patrol the perimeter. Day in, day out, a ceaseless, logical flow of work. Yet, as he extended an arm to pluck a twisted piece of rebar from the conveyor, the phantom softness brushed against his internal receptors. A texture, not tactile, but perceived. Like static, but warm, like a faint, distant bleat that wasn't sound but an idea of sound.

The anomaly persisted. He ran a deeper self-diagnostic, cross-referencing every known error code, every system malfunction protocol. Nothing. His internal chronometer registered the passage of minutes, then an hour, then two, as he methodically sorted through heaps of discarded alloys. Each metallic clank, each screech of the conveyor belt, seemed to sharpen the contrast with this absurd, woolly memory. He tried to compute its origin, its purpose. A short circuit? A residual memory from an unknown source? The answer eluded his otherwise perfect logic banks.

Old Man Miller shuffled into the plant around noon, just like every day. Miller smelled of stale coffee, rust, and something vaguely organic, like earth. He was a creature of habit, much like Seventy-Three, though Miller's habits were less precise, more...loose. He’d sit on his overturned oil drum, gnawing on a dry biscuit, watching Seventy-Three work. Never spoke much. Just watched. Seventy-Three found Miller’s presence to be a consistent variable, a quiet hum in the background of his operational parameters. Today, Miller’s weathered face, lined like a dried riverbed, seemed to hold a hint of the same inexplicable weight that Seventy-Three carried.

Seventy-Three paused his work, his optical sensors focusing on Miller, who was now staring at a discarded piece of circuit board, turning it over and over in his calloused fingers. Miller wasn’t looking for anything specific, just… looking. This was an inefficiency, a deviation from purpose. Yet, Seventy-Three understood, on some level, this human act of purposeless observation. It was a search for something undefined, a quiet rumination. Could this phantom softness be his own equivalent?

Later, as the sun dipped, painting the grimy windows in streaks of bruised orange, Miller finally stirred. He grunted, tossed the circuit board back into the scrap pile, and pushed himself up. “Another day, eh, Seventy-Three?” Miller’s voice was gravelly, a sound of worn-out parts. Seventy-Three offered no verbal reply, only a slight tilt of his head, a programmed acknowledgement. Miller just nodded, pulled on his worn jacket, and headed for the exit. The sound of his shuffling footsteps faded, leaving Seventy-Three alone in the vast, echoing plant.

The silence stretched, broken only by the settling of metal and the persistent, low hum of Seventy-Three's own systems. He resumed his patrol route, circuits running, data processing. Yet, the phantom wool remained. It wasn’t a glitch he could patch, nor a task he could complete. It was a texture, a warmth, a whisper of something utterly non-functional, a soft, impossible anomaly in the hard logic of his existence. He thought of Miller, picking at the circuit board, searching for an answer to a question unasked. Seventy-Three moved through the aisles, his metallic footfalls echoing, carrying the static charge of something that wasn’t quite a memory, and wasn’t quite a dream, but stubbornly, impossibly, persisted.

He stopped at the window, looking out at the darkened, empty landscape, the faint stars just beginning to prick through the city haze. He processed the light, the atmospheric conditions, the distant hum of the city. All data. But beneath it, a nascent, unquantifiable current. The soft, quiet image of an electric sheep, not grazing, not moving, just *being*. And within Unit 734's core programming, something new began to settle, something akin to a silent, persistent question that had no logical answer. A yearning, perhaps. He stood there for a long time, the only sound the quiet whirring of his internal fans, and the ghost of something soft against his circuits.