This excellent prompt makes me wonder which would be more horrifying:
1) The Asset doesn't want to decommission itself and tries everything to prolong the time before the inevitable point when its programming forces it to make its handler aware of the option, begging Steve to be given a mission, a task, a purpose, even if it's just as a sex toy because, even after everything that's been done to it, it still doesn't want to die.
2) The Asset is actually looking forward to being allowed to decommission itself, has been ever since the program was installed in it. It has been a quiet promise lingering in the back of its mind for seventy years that one day, one blessed day, there will be a final pull of the trigger and then no more pain or humiliation. The Asset isn't afraid; it knows how to make it clean. Now if only Steve will allow it to do it quickly and not draw it out, the Asset will be content to comply...
Re: The asset is programmed to decommission itself
1) The Asset doesn't want to decommission itself and tries everything to prolong the time before the inevitable point when its programming forces it to make its handler aware of the option, begging Steve to be given a mission, a task, a purpose, even if it's just as a sex toy because, even after everything that's been done to it, it still doesn't want to die.
2) The Asset is actually looking forward to being allowed to decommission itself, has been ever since the program was installed in it. It has been a quiet promise lingering in the back of its mind for seventy years that one day, one blessed day, there will be a final pull of the trigger and then no more pain or humiliation. The Asset isn't afraid; it knows how to make it clean. Now if only Steve will allow it to do it quickly and not draw it out, the Asset will be content to comply...