Tensor

Summary

Tensor is a highly unusual android in that it has no electronic components and, for the better part, no electrical components. In addition, is non-magical. Tensor's functions are entirely mechanical from a powerful mainspring that drives it to all the incredibly tiny and precisely made gears inside it. Tensor emits only a very faint whirring sound when active as one might expect. The mechanisms are too small to have been made by something human sized, but careful examination would reveal them to be almost all hand made, and this implies someone or someones of a very small size with incredible devotion and skill created this machine for some reason.

Because it can turn gears on or off in complete or partial steps, Tensor's systems are a blend of analog and digital depending on which subsystem one examines.

Sensors

• Heat: Primarily done with tiny, bi-metallic coils like those in old thermostats. They change shape based on differential expansion of the metals, and this relays to gears that move in response to thresholds.
• Sight: Similar to heat, sight is done by using filters that split light followed by coils that move based on how much light strikes them.
• Hearing: A broad range of tuned tines converts vibration into intermittent or sustained release of clamps on the transduction gears.

Interaction

• Speech: Tensor has a tympanic unit that vibrates to produce sound in a controlled manner that can be sharp and percussive in mode to smooth in another mode. The latter mode is driven by a drive gear rubbing against a metal sheet. AFter that, the sounds are shaped by a cavity that acts like a mouth. Tensor generally sounds airy or metallic when speaking.
• Touch: Tensor has extensive mechanisms that measure resistance and thus can ensure that when it touched a fragile organic being that it does not cause unintentional harm.

Discovery

Tensor was found on an abandoned world with a metal spike jammed in its chest. ONce removed, it began to reanimate itself and appeared to be disoriented. Thew ruins around the site suggest that its creators were not eliminated but instead escaped their world before it became inhabitable. Given some of the skeletal remains and Tensor's last account, it remained behind to protect its makers from an aggressor, and that it did not regret at all that it was not taken or recovered by its makers. Tensor described its makers to be mouse-sized beings with phenomenal engineering knowledge. It also described the attackers as militaristic beings of much greater size.