Life is created at all shapes, some were built by the innocent powers that are guards of their realms. Other creations are just what remains of developed worlds that reached to far.
Looking back through the scope of time, you would see a clean plastic cased shell. Lights veined the many possible expressions or show of energy transfers between joint limbs. A humanoid with hands that configure to the task that they are programmed. There was only one purpose that their creators had tasked them to be, home care assistant built to be company for lone survivors in a habitant for natural disaster relief. They were consider part of the furniture for this all weathers bubble shelter. To withstand storms, floods and the total wipe out of the planet surface. Underwater homes for when the worst hits.
The lasers that scan this 'living' bubble space, to watch glitches in faulty memories. Creaked lenses attempting to health check the ghost images of humans. The busted speakers statically fizz low monotone bleeps, repeating the program phrases. Sometimes it were in repeated full dialogue recoreds.
The bed sheets twirl slightly off the reef bed frame. A flush vibrant school of fish swim in and out the storage. The scars of blackened wall frames tatters in water current waves, opens to the sea as vast as it full of aquatic giants. For a tin can, they are aware that the past is gone. That time has left them. Not point in moving when all that is left is now a house of reef fish.
This bubble house had glory, protected a family of four. A family whom were decades gone by now. A smart family whom were renounced for their smarts into computer technology. The creators of the company that made 190 bubble sites across the world. Their personal object float around quite often, faded printed photos of the future lost to time. The cartoon icon plush toy that made the baby smile, a soggy sad lost toy. The tin man can sometime relate with it from moment to moment.
A machine man like this is left to ask its questions about itself, its programs, and its faulty memory databases. Left to ponder what is freedom and the complications his once human family would ask them. It would play back memories of conversation it overheard the family having or the times when the children asked strange questions that had no science or evidence of belief.
Darkness takes all eventually. Be it the last spark of energy in battery. Be it a fish pulling the wires. The reef of corals that eat at the metal bones. That of the machines most sensitive parts gives up. Little to a rusted tin reasoning.
There was something among the darkness. A community of lost like itself. Be it soulless or not. There was warmth in the voids of nothing. A well earned congratulations and thank of service... yes. Its what this tin rust wanted.
Yet... once more, its like life here. To have to adapt and learn. To make that achievement worth its words in merit. This is this shadows goal. A goal that will be unfinished each time his totally forgot.
The damned 'lives short goals' so it recounted upon standing in a strange dark place. The tin man goes through doing basics diagnostic checks, a habit leftover from being a house servant. The internal computers were showing strange readings as were the environmental readings. None of this made sense, that is unless the logic of being fished out of the water and put here by some humans. Yet if that were true, then where are those humans? Those things do not look human. There were a few to many questions for this machine.
So it was about time that they seek those answers.
"Welcome to the dark edges of Sigil, rust bucket." The strange bird of scales then feathers, it retained a bird structuring, "You're a lost fella. I seen folks like you before." It lands on the shoulder, "Let me give you the run down, because I like you strange objects like you." It tells all sorts of things, but most importantly it answered that basics that had to be known.
"According to the law of existing, I am simply a lost soulless object." Having gone through enough to make space in new data servers, "I am a shadow of damned or a cursed object?" the scaled bird creaks deeply with agreeing, "You are a postal service bird?" the nod, "You found me standing here for the last 12 minutes." It fluttered a wing in reminding, "time is meaningless, yes I understood this. I said that in a human way of saying, I was here alone for a while." It nods once more, "What do I do now?"
"You're free to do what you like as long as you don't break the lady of pain's law. Sigil is just a corridor of most known realms within one universe." It twisted in a neck breaking action to look some way and back, "Say, how about you stay with me. We can learn and explore stuff together. Until you can make sense of what keeps you lingering." A good plan, "You got some sort of nickname. Not your real name, never give your real name... but I guess a soulless object does have that sort of soul problem... But still. Its good practice to never give real names."
"My family used to call me Copper. My wires are made of copper." The bird cooes softly.
Together, they march onwards exploring the vastness of what humans call the afterlife. Little does many realize the truth in the matter that it was more then that. Maybe it hardly nothing at all.