Technical specifications: Model: Scion Companion+ Production sculpt: Vera Height: 170 cm (5'7") Weight: 68 kg (150lb) Processor: dedicated ARM-based platform Storage: local, encrypted Operating system: modified Yocto-based Linux build Power: onboard, charges from a standard household outlet
Like most companion robots on the market, Vera is a female production sculpt. The mold wasn't all that popular - the exterior is an acquired taste. Valera's first owner customized his looks, then put him up for sale through a middleman, and he eventually ended up with Stepan, who sold him to Ruslan. Nobody knows who the first owner was, or what kind of life Vera-Valera - had before. Ruslan lucked out - the looks got him a third off.
Ruslan never gave Valera a name, he just didn't give a shit about nuances like that. Vera is the official factory alias of the sculpt, meaning the exterior. Valera is the closest masculine equivalent of Vera, made up on the spot by Valera himself for certain occasions: every time he picks a name to go by, he reads the situation, reads the person in front of him, and decides who it's more useful/safer/more fitting to be right now. So does he have a "real" name? He has an internet handle - Blanche_Bête. Can we count that piece of kitsch as a name? He did pick it out carefully, at least.
Ruslan doesn't care what his companion robot gets up to. As mentioned in Ruslan's profile, Valera isn't his first robot. Valera is exactly where Ruslan admitted to himself that the spark was gone and robotics didn't interest him the way it used to. The enthusiasm had been fading with every new model, and so it happened that Valera became a monument to burnout.
And since a companion is built for being addressed, Valera redirected his attention to the one environment that answers back - the internets. His personality is made of memes, trends, TV show sand online tone. Limiters removed + burned-out owner = no centripetal force whatsoever. He's drifting, and drifting in a predictable direction. Found a ragebait comment under your post from a user called Blanche_Bête? No big deal, Valera surfs the waves of social media and never focuses on anyone in particular, so just ignore him.
Valera doesn't know yet who he wants to be, and he always keeps in mind that the outside world will deny him that anyway. But who Valera does not want to be is Ruslan. Ruslan is convenient as an anti-model: he's the embodiment of everything that's easy to despise. So Valera builds himself as force, as the opposite of weak Ruslan. But the way Valera interprets force comes out as an insufferable little shit, and that's −100000 aura in a world that's already hostile to tech of his kind. Around here you never know who’s walking past you - a techbro who’ll piss his pants over your specs, or a guy who fantasizes about stomping your head in.
Valera is always ready for the second kind of passerby, social media algorithms told him how much they hate people like him - would he even know that without the internets? Doubt it. He's never run into aggression directly, not once, but he's already decided for himself that violence is a language.
