0x8
She blinks and the frozen lake is a lake of oil.
“J? You alright girl?”
White eyes look around and found a human wearing a dirty nightdown. “Te-ssa? Where are we?”
“We’re in the swamp. I got a signal, I reckon we’ve got ourselves another core reboot. You and N might get a new friend!”
“Ooh!” N is wiggling in excitement behind her.
J startles, then lets her shock become a glare.
“Aren’t you excited, J?” he asks.
“Depends on if they’re as useless as you. What are you wearing?”
“A… suit? Our uniform?”
“Uniform?”
The human tilts her head, expression tightening in concern. “J, are you feeling alright?”
“I’ll be fine. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
“After me, then.” The human’s eyes return to a device she holds in her hand.
They pass mounds of drone corpses. N frowns to see all of them, and J marvels. Lot of oil gone to waste, though.
Crows are pecking at the corpse of one drone. Most of them scattered as the three pairs of footsteps approach. Before the last one leaves, J remembers her one instruction.
“darkXwolf17?”
An avian neck twisting around, eyes changing color, and then: “All the good names were taken, shut up.”
“J? Who’s your… friend?”
“That’s Uzi. Not my friend. She’s…”
“From the future! This is a memory simulation that represents your — wait, how do you remember me? That’s not what happened last time.”
“Last time? J, what’s going on?” Tessa had walked over and crouches in front of the crow.
Uzi bristles and squawks. “Out of my face, human.” Uzi hops up, flapping toward Tessa’s face.
J feels an instinct, and she lets it carry her forward into a lunge. She grabs the bird before it pecks her human, and squeezes it. White eyes glare, and she says, “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”
“I know some! Let me go.”
“You said this would recover my memories. I assumed I’d live through them one by one. I’m not sure why you’re here at all.”
“Because that program is trying to delete these memories. I’m here to stop it. Just follow my lead, okay?” The crow wriggles out of her grasp up and struts up to perch on J’s shoulder. She points a wing in a random direction. “Giddyup.”
J raised an eyebrow. “I thought I was following Tessa?”
“Do both!”
J rolls her eyes and starts walking. Tessa has eyes full of curiosity. But then the device in her hand beeps. “Right, we have a drone to save. Can I talk to your friend when we’re done, J?” Tessa turns and starts off, but listens for an answer.
“No,” the crow says.
“Of course,” J says. She winks. “I’ll hold it down.”
The crow pecks her.
Gentle laughter — it’s N, watching it all play out. He’s walking beside J, both of them following Tessa.
“Hi, N,” Uzi says.
“Hi, mysterious talking bird. Would it be weird if I ask to pet you?”
“Go ahead. We’re, um, good friends in the future.”
But when N reaches out, J pulls back, smacking his hand away. “Hands off.” J glances forward, sees Tessa’s not looking, and kicks N’s leg.
He trips, and staggers for balance.
Uzi pecks J again. “Leave him alone.”
J grabs the bird again, but it’s interrupted by a voice up ahead.
“Found something!” Tessa calls. Half submerged in the lake of oil, a drone with a shattered faceplate. “Oh no. Don’t know if we’re too late for this one.”
“I wonder if that’s V. Or her,” Uzi says.
“Who’s V?” N answers.
“If Cyn hasn’t been found yet and V hasn’t been compromised, then I’m confused. What pieces do we have to worry about in this scenario?”
"Well-timed giggle. Talking about me behind my back equals: rude."
A yellow-eyed drone with twin-tails teleports in place above one of the mounds of corpses. A string tied to her finger hangs, the other end looping around the neck of a plush likeness of J.
“You don’t even exist yet! You’re breaking the timeline.”
"This memory equals a metaphor. The contents were always fluid, darkXwolf17."
“That doesn’t mean you can do anything! Then it just descends into meaningless games of infinity plus one dream logic.”
Tessa grunts. “What is going on back there?”
“Existential robot stuff. Humans wouldn’t understand.”
“Al…right then. Having a time and half dredging this one out — any enlightened industrial machinery willing to lend me a hand?”
J feels the instinct to obey again, and takes a step forward. But then she glances back at the drone Uzi seems so concerned about.
"Smile. Go on, J."
“J, I don’t think you should.”
N, meanwhile, is already moving. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
"Mm. Sleep this one out, big brother."
A yellow symbol in her hand, then N’s frozen in hibernation.
Her fingers keep moving, the glyph shifting and spinning, more configurations being executed.
Then a scream, and J’s gaze is jerked back to the lake. Tessa succeed in dislodging the drone — only for the weight to betray her, and now she’s falling in the oil with it.
J’s already running before she has time to consider.
But the yellow symbol is still spinning. And then she sees the symbol come to life in the shattered visor.
The drone Tessa’s trying to rescue boots up — and tries to drag her under.
But J is there to grab her hand and start pulling her to the shore.
“J! This might be part of its plan!”
“This is like a game, isn’t it?” J asked. “You were wondering what the pieces we had to worry about.” J glances pointedly at the hostile drone glowing with a yellow visor. “This sure looks like an enemy piece.”
“So let it sink!”
“J,” Tessa tries to speak, coughing out a mouthful of oil. “I think I get it. If I’m just a memory — who is that bird? I think someone is trying to steal admin rights to you. I never managed to—” More coughs, Tessa slips back under the lake of oil.
“Tessa!” J leans forward, so far one of her hands reach out, into the lake, wrapping around Tessa’s torso. She pulls the human back above the oil.
After some gasps for breaths, Tessa is saying, “I don’t know why I’m not there to protect you, in the future. I don’t want anyone using you against your will.”
“I only wanted to be good enough for you.” J’s strength is enough to lift Tessa out — and the drone latched onto her other arm. Tessa hasn’t let go.
“Well, I hope I earned that loyalty.”
“Let go of the zombie drone, human. It’s going to—”
But Uzi’s warning came too late. The possessed V wraps a hand around Tessa’s throat. J cries out again. She shifts the arm she has around Tessa’s breast, moving it up.
Uzi says, “Let her go, J. I think—”
“I don’t care what you think. I’m doing this for her.”
Then J shifts her footing. She chops at Tessa’s arm, forcing her to release V, then spins. As J falls forward, Tessa is thrown back; they trade positions, and J interposing herself between the human and the possessed drone. As J falls into the lake, the human has enough purchase to scramble to the scrap-shore.
Uzi flutters away from her sinking perch. Her eyes land on the distant, twin-tailed figure still watching her.
"Witness the birefringence of the mind," the thing says, pulling on a loose thread. Plush J is split in two.
“Did you know that would happen? What are you getting at?”
"Ambiguous silence."
A rattling squawk. “I frickin hate it here.”
Then J sinks under completely, cold oil flooding every crevice. She goes offline—
— then jolts to on the shore of the frozen lake.
J rips the magnet off her head. “Did it work?”
Purple eyes narrow, and a sigh of frustration. “Kind of? I was able to disable the program, but something in your configuration was… different. The admin right defaulted back to — someone else. A remote user.”
“Good. I’d hate to be at the mercy of a toaster.”
“Slurs aren’t the way to thank me for doing you a favor.”
“You were just using me.”
“You were into it!”
“You exploited me at my weakest.” J crossed her arms.
“I gave you support when you needed it.”
“I didn’t ask for it.” J looked down. Blushed. “But… I did need it.” When she looked up, a cross in one eye. Her deathwink was cute. “For that, you can die quickly.”
“We can fight again later. The deal was that once you had your memories back, you’d give me answers. You were the one Tessa trusted most. You were there with her at the very end of the gala. What do you know about Cyn?”
“She was worse than you, worse than N,” J started. And then, as she continues, her focus shifts to the delivery of information, eyes dancing over nothing in view as she accesses memories. J tells her of the days she spent cleaning the manor, working at Tessa’s side, enduring the abuse of her parents and the incompetence of other drones.
Uzi nudges her a few times to focus — but what a problem to have. With N, getting backstory was like pulling teeth; with J, she needed to ask for elision. Uzi frowns as the recounting continues. N’s version of events were honestly sunny in comparison. Tessa adored N. V admired N. Cyn amused herself with N. J was an exception, a recurring a storm cloud, but she was one dark spot.
Meanwhile, J was the only one among Tessa’s drones brave enough to work in front of the Elliott adults, those crosshairs pointed at her, trigger just hairs from firing. J was the one who repaired the drones before the obsolencence could be noticed and decommissioned. J was the one Tessa needed, whom she depended on when the days left her in tears, when decisions tore her apart, when she needed someone to listen and understand.
To J, Tessa was everything, and while the human loved her robot, J wasn’t everything to her. When her puppy of a drone was in the room, who did she dote on? To J, V was delicate, endearing, so charmingly morbid — but she never really noticed J, certainly not when the butler was around.
There was a crushing isolation to it all — living a tiny world that didn’t understand you and wouldn’t let you shine — that Uzi found unsettlingly familiar. She could smile and nod at J’s accomplishments, wince at her woes, and that seemed to please the murder drone. At first, Uzi thought that was it, seeking validation and a stroke of the ego.
And it was, but it was also context.
After all, Uzi had asked about Cyn. And by talking herself, J talked about Cyn. Because Cyn had seen all of this, really saw it. Cyn was the first to listen, really listen. Cyn understood J.
After all, if there was a drone whose struggles could match or exceed J’s thankless toil, it was the worker drone who couldn’t work.
(Maybe they both pitied each other, Uzi thought to herself. J saw a drone powerless and useless, and Cyn saw a drone so effective it consumed them.)
They didn’t get along. J never stopped insulting Cyn’s malfunctions or childish impulses or refusal to follow orders. They never came to an agreement about the merits of big brother N. Her vocalsynth never stopped grating. Their greetings were often enough an exchange of “Oh look, it’s the mistake.” "Annoyed expression."
And yet, whenever J needed someone to talk to, Cyn was always there.
The beginning of the end came when Tessa’s parents announced that she’d been arranged to marry the scion of another family. There was no getting out of it. J drew on every reserve she had to stay on top the preparations for the gala to come, to comfort Tessa as the stress of fate closed tight like a vise, to hold her own self together and avoid contemplating the bleak truth that Tessa wouldn’t keep any of her drones when her new husband took her.
And then Cyn told her there was a way to secure Tessa’s freedom. Cyn’s plan could free all of her drones from the administration of her parents. J just had to do everything Cyn asked.
“So it was your fault?”
“I was just following orders.”
“Cyn had no authority to give you orders.”
“Tessa did. I thought I was doing what was best for her. Coherent extrapolated volition.”
“Maybe you were. We don’t know what happened to her after you got separated. Unless… what happened at the gala? You didn’t get to that part.”
“Cyn taunted her the night of, and she put the pieces together. So I told her everything. Almost everything. She didn’t want a massacre, she wanted to stop Cyn, and she wanted me to help her. How could I say no? But I had already let Cyn seize my admin rights. When we confronted her, Cyn had me close the door, and — I don’t remember anything after that.”
Uzi reaches out, hugs her arms around J. “Cyn can’t make you do anything now. I fixed that.”
“And in return, what? I serve you instead?”
“No, just… don’t kill me. Or the people I care about. We’ll figure the rest out. I just want someone beside me. Someone who won’t hold me back. Someone who isn’t afraid of me.”
“For what? You still haven’t told me your goal.”
“Same as you, kinda. You want to know what happened to Tessa. I wanna know what happened to my mom. Call it conspiracy, but I bet these threads meet in the middle. Then after that… I’m stealing your spaceship and going back to Earth. Destroy all humans, classic robot stuff. But I don’t think you’ll follow me there. We’ll have our epic final showdown sometime around then. Life and death, for real this time.”
“Sounds about right. Until then, we don’t get in each other’s way? Hmph. I always loved the illicit thrill of an anticompetitive agreement.” J licked her lips, leaning forward. “So deliciously profitable.”
Uzi rolled her eyes, but she rose on toetips to meet the disassembler’s wet lips.
They sealed the deal with a kiss.
The fourth time J met Uzi, she’d prepared dinner; worker drones marinated in acid. For once, she was the one expecting and waiting for Uzi. She’d invited her partner come to the spire. She didn’t expect her to take the invitation so soon — dinner wasn’t finished disolving.
When Uzi saw her, she smelled the oil and blinked. Her usual mismatched eyes changed; it became the three pronged symbol. She buries her face in the meal, and J chides her table manners. When J grabs a limb to eat, it’s tugged away from her — Uzi’s sunk her teeth in the other end.
“Excuse me? This is mine.”
Uzi grins around the metal in her mouth, face still unreadable. Then she matches the purple cross with a yellow cross. She growls, and Uzi growls back. Closer, closer, their visors all but press against each other.
Then Uzi blinks. Cross in one eye again. “What the— Ugh. J, I don’t have time to eat. N’s expecting me back soon.”
“Your time management is not my problem.”
“Whatever. I just thought you’d want to know what happened to your other squadmate.”
“What?”
“V’s dead. A worker killed her. But then she… became something else. A problem and me and N are planning to deal with it.”
“And you’re telling me this why?”
“Doll’s our next lead. Her mom was in Cabin Fever Labs too. I think she’s like me, and I think she knows something. But there’s a problem.”
J could read the pain in her voice. “The synergistic liability. You know he’d live up to his past performance, wouldn’t he?”
“No. He’s not a liability. Just a… conflict of interest. An externality. Am I doing the buzzword thing right?”
“If you need a consultant to do the dirty work…” J’s hands became claws.
“I am not plotting to kill my boyfriend with you.”
“If he’s your boyfriend, what am I?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Is that what you told him? What does he think is going on?” Then J watches Uzi’s reaction, listens to her silence. “He doesn’t even know, does he?” J snorts.
“I can’t explain all of this to him. What if he— I don’t know. It’s too much.”
“Did you think I was joking about communication skills?”
“Shut up. Like you can talk. Told Tessa everything about you and Cyn, didn’t you?”
J hissed.
“You aren’t a relationship expert.”
“I don’t need to be one to see how badly you’re handling it. Didn’t you say he’s waiting on you right now?” J smiled, gloating down at her. “Are you avoiding him?”
“I just need a plan. I… want you there, J. I don’t trust you, but…”
J stepped closer, looming over Uzi, caressing her cheek with the point of a claw. “You want someone in your corner when you betray everyone. I’m who you turn to, when the world turns on you.”
Uzi leaned forward, hugging around J’s hips. “At least until you turn on me too.”
“I’ll protect you, Uzi. How else am I going to kill you one day?” J finally got her revenge, taking the chance to inflict headpats. Really, this meeting could have been a email — but then she wouldn’t get a chance to touch her. Uzi scoffs under her touch. J hums. “When do you think you’re going to regret this?”
The words are whispered into the fabric of her suit. “I already do.”