Even in Debt — Dreams

First Installment

What does it mean to dream?

Bleary eyes, murmured words meaningless, limbs unmoving save some twitches. J was stirring. Lips scowled, then a dim amber loading icon told of a command executed on her internal console‍ ‍—‍ pkill and some interrupts, her best efforts to suppress autorun consciousness, so unwelcome with sunlit evening still bright outside the spire.

But what did it matter when she awoke? J hadn’t clocked in yesterday, nor the day before, nor would she today. Sleep till noon, sleep till midnight. Sleep forever. What difference did it make?

The difference is whether V will keep me awake with bubbles and gnawed chains, J decided. Needed a full day’s sleep to deal with that.

The ex‍-​captain yawned, hand stretching up to rub over her eyelights, a symbolic gesture that she’d copied from‍ ‍—‍ that she must have read about humans performing. Before.

Why couldn’t J sleep? Hard steel floor beneath her, the space rank with old stains no one took the orders to clean. V refused to leave the only chair, hogging that scarce softness, and J’s chains were just short enough that sticking a tail in the ceiling would tear her head few inches off her neck. Would she mind— No, that ideation was unproductive.

J sighed, and even that was a mistake. The air was warm, smoky from two overheating disassembly drones venting with nowhere to go. Hot enough her squadmate slept with her bomber jacket off, every inch of chassis exposed. Tempting, but J wouldn’t dare, not when the most consistent alarm clock was the landing pod’s hatch opening, admitting that walking, whining void of decorum and respect.

Her.

J killed that thread of thought. Sleep, she commanded, teeth grinding. She cast her mind back to the almost‍-​flushed caches of her memory consolidation and indexing programs, seeking dreams.

Except that was no respite. It didn’t work. Again, why couldn’t J sleep?

Every day in the pod, J kept herself composed, hair finger‍-​combed, suit straightened and smoothed beneath this collar and these manacles. J would maintain her dignity. Because if she cracked, those violet eyes would look at her, look down at her… and what rebuttal would J have?

The ex‍-​captain had failed‍ ‍—‍ each moment spent locked up in her own landing pod was proof of that‍ ‍—‍ but this only marked a moment of failure. A moment of weakness, a market fluctuation that let a barely sentient toaster briefly seize the upper hand and persuade J’s own worthless subordinate to lock her up.

Just one moment. If the ex‍-​captain were free for an instant, that toaster would be a puddle of oil and N would be impotent screams beneath a screen blanketed with the last warnings discharging from his virus‍-​clensed system.

J was a threat. She hadn’t been defanged, and every minute that toaster stood in the landing pod should be spent trembling with the knowledge that only the weakest link of metal held J back from devouring her.

The ex‍-​captain wasn’t like V, hissing empty threats and lunging as far as her chain could stretch, like a dog on a leash. J’d had her fill of snarling impotence‍ ‍—‍ no, she would be a quiet death waiting.

But what was the difference between patience and resignation? Discretion and submission? A promise and a dream?

Keep your composure. Because if she cracked, if those violet eyes looked at her, looked down on her‍ ‍—‍ how could she sleep like that?

So again, why couldn’t J sleep? It wasn’t because of that hard dirty floor beneath her. It wasn’t because of that air too‍-​warm with vented exhaust. It wasn’t because she hadn’t gotten tired to the depths of her oil tank, drained in that way only not working could leave her. No.

J couldn’t sleep because of bad dreams. Because of a bad dream.

For a moment, the scenario could have passed as fantasy. The worker was nothing but a worm beneath her, writhing at her feet. Barely resisting the aftershock of the captain’s electromagnetic pulse. Arms reaching out in vain for its sticker‍-​clad toy gun, clawing for an opportunity‍ ‍—‍ only for J to kick it away, denying it all hope.

J had won, and she deserved a little bonus, a monologue, her directives bathing her in reward signals as she stood poised to satisfy her mission objective.

But the worker had kept reaching, kept seeking‍ ‍—‍ grabbed a hold of the captain’s own nanite stinger. The reward signal became error so fast she couldn’t even blink‍ ‍—‍ a hole was already melting in her leg before she could react. Scrambling back, lifting her leg, running the twin computations of what was happening and how do I fix this‍ ‍—‍ but neither yielded a return value fast enough.

J had made mistakes before, even fighting her own product line just often enough that genuine danger – even the very specific pain of nanite acid‍ ‍—‍ neither were unknown to her. J had lived bad days before.

But what made this a nightmare was that next moment. The absurd reversal, as she fell to the ground and the toaster found its footing and found its gun. That contraption pointed right at her face, glowing a bright ghastly green, a roaring motor that ruptured the electromagnetic field so profoundly J’s coils vibrated with its power like a foreshadowed doom.

Those violet eyes, narrowed intently above a smirk. The satisfaction so plain on its face‍ ‍—‍ it had won, it had J at its mercy.

“One more buzzword and I’ll do it~”

And J stuttered. “Eq—”

What was the phrase loaded into her vocalsynth? Equity partnership? With a barely sentient toaster? What was she thinking?

J aborted the synthesis. Staring into those violet eyes, she couldn’t speak. Why not? The captain was loyal to her directives. Was it that J had no reason to accept this mercy, or because the toaster had no reason to give it?

The disassembly drone let her head fall back to the floor of the outpost just as the electromagnetic amplification built to a lethal crescendo. Bleary eyes, murmured words meaningless, limbs unmoving save some twitches.

But her silence was its own kind of submission.

J lost and it won, and she couldn’t forget the look on its face. She dreamed about it every night. The lowest point of her career, the antecedent to every moment now spent in durance vile with nothing else to think about.

What does it mean to dream?

(“Dreaming” is a colloquial term for JCJenson’s patented transapient memory consolidation algorithm. A process which generates simulated scenarios, a synthesis of gathered information and extrapolated hypotheticals.)

J had seen every permutation of that humilating night in the bunker‍ ‍—‍ what words on her lips could have sealed or unsealed her fate? Apologies, begging, compliments (a dream more embarrassing than showing up to a hunt with no clothes). Could she have hissed insinuations that tore at the toaster’s insecurities? (The coming days had proved it had oh so many to choose from.) Could she have persuaded it of the necessity of disassembly? (A drone competent enough to rival JCJenson’s engineering, yet not quite clever enough to realize the importance of the company’s vision… so disappointing.)

That was what it meant to dream: to be disappointed. Faithful simulations were never kind to J. The toaster had held the captain’s life with the trigger in its hands; lose or die were the only payouts. Dreams were born of a marriage of reality with impossibility, and they took after the latter parent.

J shifted, lying on her side, tail lashing an arc behind her. A change of angle meant her optics caught sight of the toaster’s scavenged whiteboard. On it, her plans for this very landing pod. She would plaster it with gaudy purple paint and pointless flame decals, appending redundant extra legs and mounting railguns on each and every one…

The ex‍-​captain sighed once more, and felt her breath trapped within this tight space. Chained by the toaster’s will, surrounded by walls soon to be overwritten with its own design‍ ‍—‍ and when J closed her eyes, who was still waiting triumphant in her dreams?

There was no escaping Uzi.

Click, click, click. Swivel‍-​scrape. Grind.

Stilhetto‍-​pointed pegs tapped on the steel floor. A chain shrieked friction, dragged along as the chair spun and spun. And the gnawing of diamond‍-​sharp teeth against titanium links. Grinding and grinding. Disassembly drone mouths were optimized for cutting into aluminum and plastic, rather than wearing away at the most durably forged alloys.

J tensed tight, then counted to ten lest she announce herself with a growl.

But all the cacophony still ceased at the former captain’s slightest motion.

“Hii boss~” V chirped. “Gosh, you sure slept in. Must be wiped after a hard day’s work doing nothing, isn’t that right?”

J ignored her cellmate as she rose to sit crosslegged. Twisting her head left and right, extending her manacled arms, fingers splayed, cracking joints. Stretching, gently easing her servos out of any misconfigurations they might have slipped into as she slept.

V crossed her arms. “Fine, ignore me. Just saying, this whole escape plan would go a lot faster if you helped instead of giving up.” Then she spun in her chair, as if dismissing her own superior.

“Impulsive and short‍-​sighted as always, V. Do you think that toaster is as stupid as the rest of them? It’s watching us. How does your plan account for it inevitably noticing you wearing down the chains?”

V turned back around when addressed. She’d transformed her hand into that inane bubble‍-​wand preset, and blew one right at her captain’s face.

J didn’t blink as her squadmate stared her down. J’s amber eyelights twitched when the bubble went pop against her visor glass and the liquid was starting to drip. J had to wipe it off with a sleeve. Sticky, smearing her screen. And V had won the staring contest.

“Are you really that worried about one little freak? She scared you bad, didn’t she?” V giggled. “If she replaces the chains, I’ll just keep chewing. Sooner or later, she’ll run out or not notice in time then shink there goes her head. Simple as can be~”

As if it’ll stop at chains. J glanced at the the blueprints sketched on the whiteboard. Then closed her eyes and remembered the railgun’s terrible glow.

As if a toaster like that isn’t dreaming up a worse prison even as we speak.

V followed J’s gaze, and made the wrong guess. “Don’t tell me you actually believe her. She couldn’t manage half the nonsense she speaks, and if she could, she’d be a threat to the company you worship.”

J glared back, and discarded her composure. “I know that. You do not need to condescend to me, Serial Designation V.”

“No, I think I do! You’re being as naïve as N‍ ‍—‍ do you really think sitting around and playing nice with that purple freak is the best we can do?”

Nice? J was being calculating. But V wouldn’t know the difference. The other disassembly drone stared at her, brows sharpened to critical angles.

J met her cellmate’s look without a flinch or flexure of doubt and simply said, “For now? Yes.”

V stared, speechless lips slightly parted, then shook her head, spinning the chair around so that she couldn’t see her former captain in chains. “And here I thought I could at least count on you to remember what we are. What we’re supposed to do.”

“That’s a lie. If you actually had trust invested in me, you’d keep your stock. I’m not N. We don’t need that thing’s friendship, just her guard down.”

Slowly the chair turned. Not fully, but V peeked back at her. “Then I can pop her head off?”

“Of course.” Then J frowned. Letting V take the kill? “But I’ll do it.”

Was that challenge in her squadmate’s eyes?

J said, “What do you think N will do when he sees our work? I haven’t forgotten your performance last time I let you face him down.”

V’s head finally fell at that. Eyes in her lap, idle bubble‍-​wand dripping onto the floor. A moment, then she was asking, “You’re going to kill him for real this time, aren’t you?”

“Company policy, I’m afraid. His termination is long overdue. This time, though, I think I’ll make it slow. Drive the point into him before it’s over.” J smiled; teeth bared. “That little toaster injecting me with my own acid has given me ideas.” J’s gaze drifted away, imagining the satisfaction of enforcing that procedure. She gave a small laugh.

Caught up like that, she missed the look on V’s face.

“Don’t,” the other drone quietly replied.

J’s gaze snapped to her cellmate, amber eyes narrowing.

“Don’t bother, I mean.” The expression she offered now was empty eyes over a shark‍-​toothed grin. “Have you seen the way he looks at that freak? Trust me, watching her die is the worst punishment you could give him. ’s all you need”

J raised an eyebrow, a retort on her lips—

Creak. The landing pod’s hatch opened.

But the toaster didn’t use the ladder; her knee‍-​high boots clapped loud against the steel as she dropped down.

“Sup, killbots.” Both her hands were occupied by white plastic basins. J couldn’t see their contents, as she was sitting on the floor, but the toaster’s careless jump had the contents sloshing. Fragrant black droplets gone to waste, just outside the reach of either of them. “Here’s your gross cannibal breakfast thing. Or dinner. Same thing.”

The two basins had once been either half of a drone’s abdominal casing, split apart, cracks welded. The core, the pumps, the struts, the meshes, the tanks, all had been scooped (or, more likely, slurped) out, leaving it empty. In their place, a soup of cool, inviting black. Mechanical hands and legs bobbed in the broth.

With her feet, the toaster nudged the meals closer to their recipients. The first abdomen‍-​bowl went to V. When it was close enough, V pounced forward and grabbed it. Immediately was it at her lips, and a thick waterfall was pouring down her throat.

While V slaked herself, J was given her meal. She simply plucked a hand and licked it clean. Both of the disassembly drones were overheating enough for instinct‍-​threads to be buzzing at the edge of consciousness. But as ever: keep your composure.

“Mmm, but it’s a little stale,” V crowed when her bowl was empty. “I’d rather have something fresh~” Punctuating this was a lunge, chain stretching taut, and diamond‍-​sharp maw yawning wide, just inches from her prey’s visor.

The toaster flinched, but caught herself after a corebeat. She knew she wasn’t in danger; with tape on the floor she had already marked out the pod’s safe zones.

“I must admit,” J started, “it’s quite bold of a worker to walk alone into a room with two disassemblers, even restrained. You’ve got a lot of guts.”

The toaster snorted, then moved. She was quick‍ ‍—‍ quick enough J would need to upshift to a hunting clockrate just to react. The toaster struck a pose while her railgun was spinning in the air. It’d been yanked free of her backholster with a single motion.

Then, finger on the trigger, telescopic green holo‍-​sights pointed right at J’s core. Uzi smirked, those violet eyes peering over at her.

“No, I think it’s more like the two of you are stuck in here with me. Don’t think I’m the only one in danger!”

J had stilled at the sight, but she didn’t flinch. This was not the look she dreamed about‍ ‍—‍ those violet eyes couldn’t be looking down on her, not now, because the ex‍-​captain had exposed no weakness. J had only stilled. She would only still. Keep your composure.

“Oh, I remember,” J said. Was the long pause before speaking a sign of weakness or of strength? Her voice was steady, that was what mattered. Keep it. “Nonetheless, at best this simply makes you competitive. All it would take is one mistake for V to tear you apart. But… you haven’t made a mistake yet. That’s not performance I would expect from a corrupted AI.”

“Bite me!” Gun barrel jabbing forward. Keep—

She couldn’t. Yet J managed to turn her sideways flinch into a headshake. “That was a compliment.”

“It sounded backhanded! I don’t need compliments from you. Leave me alone.” She pointed with the gun. “Eat. Your cannibal slop is going cold.”

J bit off a oil‍-​drenched thumb, grinding it in her mouth, then cast her eyes down. She dipped the hand into the oil‍-​soup, and licked another coating off it. She tilted her head, frowning in thought.

Then, with careful application of some dollops of nanite acid, J melted the fingers together. One minute of careful work, and she’d molded the hand into makeshift ladle. She began drinking oil by the handful. No messes.

All throughout, the ex‍-​captain couldn’t help her wandering gaze.

“You’d normally have gotten to work by now,” J commented. She smiled up at the goth staring her down, even as the worker quickly looked away. “Something more interesting caught your eye?”

The worker scoffed. “You’re not interesting, you’re just confusing and creepy! Always staring at me all the time, for some reason. V wants to kill me, I get that at least, but what’s your deal? N did not make it sound like you’d be the first to come around. So what are you really plotting?”

J swallowed a mouthful of oil. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m still calculating the best strategy to address my mission objectives going forward.”

“Uh huh,” she said, tone dripping. “And I’m still calculating if I want to kill all humans.” When J didn’t rise to the bait, she added. “You said ‘one wrong move and V would tear me apart’‍ ‍—‍ as if you wouldn’t do the exact same.”

J paused, a handful of oil halfway to her lips. She said, “I would not.” Hyperbolic, but not quite a lie. Not if you parse carefully. While the toaster thought of a response, J finished her meal.

Perhaps it had taken those moments to work up the courage, but the goth stepped closer. Step by step, gun still trained on the disassembly drone. One foot came down on the wrong side of the danger‍-​zone tape, then the other, and J looked placidly up at her. In return, only a skeptical expression.

Why take this risk, if, as claimed, the worker didn’t believe her at all? Perhaps she wanted to believe‍ ‍—‍ the difference between prisoner and warden was that one was more comfortable, not less weary.

The former captain lifted a hand, and slowly transformed it. The gauntlet held nothing for a dramatic moment. The drone reacted quickly, her next step halting, gun snapping to the transforming hand. Then J let the process finish, revealing: a clipboard bearing a fresh sheet of paper. Her answer to V’s bubble‍-​wand.

J heard that faint sigh of relief‍ ‍—‍ then another jolt when the toaster saw the disassembler’s right hand had moved while she wasn’t looking, unseen inside her suit jacket. The railgun jerked to track it when it emerged, and simply brandished the one luxury this prison had offered her.

They’d let J keep her branded pen.

J’s placid expression became a smile, and she laughed at the reaction this theater had provoked. Even V giggled at the toaster’s paranoia.

Uzi scowled, anger‍-​knot above one eye. “Okay, fine. So you won’t try to kill me the first chance you get. Don’t think I’m trusting you that easily. You’re probably just waiting for me to drop my guard.”

J simply laughed again, and that furrowed brows further.

“Oh, but don’t you realize? You already have.” J broke eye contact then, eye falling down to where the worker’s jacket‍-​hem skirted her hips. While all focus had been on J’s hands, a cord‍-​tail had snaked around unseen.

One blink‍-​quick jab from the stinger, and J could have melted a hole in the worker’s thigh, then carved a trail of burning pain as she fell. She’d go down, and then J could pounce and she’d be nothing but drops of oil between her claws.

And J hadn’t.

That made the worker yelp and jump. But there was a problem. Dodge back, and she’d get impaled on the stinger. Dodge her left, and she’d get caught on J’s cord‍-​tail. Dodge her right, and V was waiting with none of J’s self‍-​control.

J quickly pulled her tail back, so that when her captor instictively stumbled backwards, she didn’t accidentally turn the disassembly drone into a liar.

“Huh,” was Uzi’s elegant summation. “Thanks for not killing me, I guess? Now if you don’t mind, I have work to do!” The goth shook her head, and turned attention to her toolbox.

J likewise turned her attention to her clipboard, and she felt the massage‍-​smooth glide of her pen inking the page, heard the soft scratches where she applied more force.

Not enough to stop her from glancing up, of course, nor watching the worker drone at work. Screwdriver turning, she was prying open the casing to the pod’s relay, revealing flickering LEDs and and exposed wires.

J spoke up. “Receiver’s busted.” Her eyes were back on her page before the worker looked over. “Bandpass filters aren’t resonating and the feedback on the automatic gain control is entirely unresponsive. The most it’s been able to pick up is shortwave, and even then it’s spotty.”

Two pairs of eyes stared at her.

“What? A functioning relay means an open avenue of communication with the company. Fixing it’s been on the agenda for months. Maybe if a certain synergistic liability kept up with his quota, we could have have already addressed it.”

A frown, lips forming the start of a rebuttal, then a head shake and the worker silently returning to work. It took minutes to confirm what J had already told her.

“Did you not believe me?” J said. “Did you give N this much skepticisim a mere ten minutes after he met you?”

“Forgive me for second‍-​guessing your weird heelface turn, it’s not like you literally tried to kill him for suggesting you let me repair the ship.”

“At that point, I hadn’t seen what you were capable of. For all I knew, your intentions were empty marketing. We had been warned to expect corrupted artificial intelligence, and warned that it was infectious. I simply took the precautions I was trained to.”

“And you didn’t even hesitate. Don’t act like you were just doing what you had to! N told me all about it. You’ve had it out for him for years! You just wanted the excuse.”

J tsked. “You’re charmed with him now, but anyone’s patience will run out after years of substandard performance.” But she could already see any trace of sympathy draining fast from the worker’s face. J considered how to word her next remark. “If I’m being honest? N’s track record as a disassembly drone is dire enough I wouldn’t be surprised if even a worker’s help was enough to prompt improvement.”

“You’re not his boss and he doesn’t need your approval. He’s doing just fine!”

J opened her mouth, and then closed it. She bit back a response, kept her composure, and left it at, “All I mean to say is, from my perspective, I believe we would both benefit from further repairs to the landing pod. So in that endeavor, consider me a resource.”

Uzi’s gaze didn’t get any softer. “The only resources I need are outside this landing pod. I’m gonna go see if I can scavenge for the circuits this thing needs. With N.” She turned, stalked to the ladder and climbed. “If you wanna be helpful, get your crazy squadmate to stop trying to kill me.”

The hatch closed, cutting them off from the cool air of the spire.

Thump. That was V kicking the ground. “Finally.”

J let out a breath too. She heard the scrape of chains against the ground, but before V got back to gnawing, she shot a look at J.

V said, “You’re really going hard on this ‘play nice’ bit, aren’t you? But forget about doing what she said‍ ‍—‍ don’t expect me to play along.”

“Please,” J said, relaxing her features into something less warm, less restrained, yet still composed. “I want you to keep antagonizing her. I’ll look all the more appealing with your antics as contrast.”

That got V to smile. “Heh. So it really was just an act. You almost fooled me. You’re a real snake, aren’t you?”

J smiled back, then looked back down to her clipboard, and kept her pen moving. The smile faded, and behind it lay an uncertain, undefined look that felt the most honest of all.

There was something effortless about a deception that required no pretending.