Serpentine Squiggles

Binary black. The pointer at 0x0 — null and void.

Yet in the darkness, you still hear it.

Drip, drip, drip.

Sound is fuzzy and space is fuzzier. Shifting, wavering, convoluted. All parts blurry and echoing strangely—but is that something wrong with your hearing or the space itself?

Do you dream?

Around you yawns a Errorvast grassy plain on which a great beast bleeds out, dead from a spear-launcher of your own devising.

Around you looms Errorthe grand façade of a dam, blessèd bastion against a tainted lake, cracked and soon to let lose a rain, hope soon displaced by those heavier waters of dread. Someone built this, someone promised to protect you, protect everyone—where are they now?

Around you tightens Erroronly darkness—that embrace called torture, your arms strapped down and your face cloth-wrapped, and the extraction method of choice drips onto you now—wet cloth sticks to and chokes you, and the questions on the tongues of your captors have no answers. You don’t know, and they believe you—yet find that all the more damning.

No, no, no. Not this.

Wake up!

Drip, drip, pause, scrape, drip.

You start counting the drops—you get to twenty without skips, without hitting any nonsense non-numbers. You scratch a finger against your leg and register real damage. Right then, not dreaming.

And that drip-drop is ongoing, so incessant it had infected your dreams. Ugh, did someone bust the pipes again? idly thinks a part of you. Gotta tell dad to get someone to fix it.

A thought which could only spawn in this barely-online region of half-sleep. You hadn’t spoken to your dad in… read error.

Right, okay. Let’s try a disk scan… oh that’s a lot of bad sectors. Corrupted memory, broken journals.

A nervous heat mounts as your processors loop. Now fans are spinning, echoing just as strangely.

Deep breathes. Intake, exhaust. What do we know for sure?

What can you remember?

You are Uzi Doorman.

You ran away from home to take the fight to the murder drones. You don’t know what you were doing yesterday. You don’t know what day it is. You have images—journeys through frozen city streets, then sifting through piles of electronics (be it scrapyards or your own improvised workshop), interspersed with the violent chaos of fights against drones both worker and murder—but without timestamps, which one was what you remember ‘last’?

You don’t remember the exact circumstances of departure—kicked out? locked out? stormed out? Was anyone waiting for you, hoping for you—was anyone left? Okay no, that’s a bummer line of thought. Refocus.

You just want to figure out why everything’s confusing. Then kick the ass of who’s responsible.

And you’re getting restless just sitting here thinking.

You aren’t on a bed, that’s for sure. Whatever hole you’ve found yourself in doesn’t offer even the simplest comforts. Concrete flooring scrapes your chassis. You remember just enough to know that you used to shine when polished, and you don’t anymore.

It’s cold, and the air is so humid the chill weighs upon you. No wind, and given that most building have cracked or fallen apart over the years, you must be underground or inside some fortification.

Worker drones did come installed with GPS chips, but anyone with any sense ripped them out—else you were just asking for the predators to sniff a signal.

Probably time to boot up your optics and take a proper look at the place.

You’d seen red and yellow light. Red right in front of you—

And yellow right beside. Four bulbs—one a dull warning-red sitting out of place among them—emerge atop silver hair grimy and splattered with black. That hair frames a visor where yellow eye-outlines search.

They settle on you, then widen.

Recognition circuits finally click. This was a murder drone!

A startle flickers through your body, mouth parting to give a abortive “ah!” But you can feel memories click into place—and experience, the sort that hardens and hones. You aren’t helpless.

You jerk your eyes upward, carefully watching those bulbs. Those are its real eyes, information retrieval grants you.

“Finally,” the murder drone breathes. “Z! You’re awake.”

Black-stained lips offer a haggard smile—teeth sharp.

“My name is Uzi.”

And the murder drones sighs—yellow eyelights animating a glare. “No, it’s Z when you’re on a mission. I don’t have time or interest to deal with worker frivolity right now.”

“What does that mean?” You try to cross your arms—and you can’t.

The murder drone hisses. “Do not play dumb with me. It’s your fault we’re in this mess.”

“This mess meaning…?”

But she just growls and nods downward, chin indicating. Awkward gesture.

The murder drone has no arms.

The dripping that woke you up was oil still leaking from the stumps at its shoulder. Duct tape forms an impromptu bandage, yet raw wiring still creeped outward like questing fungus.

You flinch. Can’t help it—you’d volunteered at the repair bay, you’d seen the aftermath of drones meeting ravage of the wasteland outside the bunker. This was a drone. Even if she deserves it. Probably. Right?

“Quit blinking like an idiot and plan.” The prodding metal—its leg, ending in suggestively-sharp pegs like stilettos—swings to taps against you. It’d be a much more violent motion if not for the distance between you. “How are we getting out of here?”

“What do you mean ‘we’?”

The murder drone opened its mouth. Close it. Glaring pupils gave way to an empty stare, a blink.

“…Excuse me?” Maybe it’d meant to sound imperious, demanding—but instead: shrill and cracking. “Now is not the time for contract renegotiation, we—”

“Ugh. What is it with you and the buzzwords?”

This last question is what finally dispells the frustration and the hurt. Wiped away and rendered now was confusion. They are alike in their incomprehension, but where Uzi pleads for answers, the murder looks at her as if regarding a drone too stupid for words.

And now the final permutation: horror, as insight dawned on her. “Z… do you even remember who I am?”

“Why do you seem to who I am? Just who are you?”

“J,” it says.

“That’s a letter. Is it supposed to mean something to me? A code?”

“It’s my designation. I never understood your humor… but no, you aren’t joking. How? You know me, Z. This was our plan!”

It… no, she sounds so crestfallen. Were the two of you… friends? Allies? “I’m… sorry? I just thought— you’re a murder drone. Were we like… cool?”

J snorted. “It’s complicated.”

You glance at her arms. “Did… did I do that to you?”

“Might as well have.” She laughs, dry like underbrush.

“Just… explain. Please. Quit circling around, quit assuming things about me. I just woke up.”

“I’ve known you for weeks. Mission after mission. We’ve fought—together—so many times. Forgive me for expecting you to remember.” Her head falls, neck complete slack, and wet hair spills over her visor, hiding her expression. She laughs, a small giggle. “Heh. Past performance really really is no guarantee of future results, huh?”

She laughs—it starts as a small giggle the way fires start as sparks. A moment, and she’s cackling. She swings her arm-stump, and it slams against the wall behind her with a splatter of oil.

“Of course!” she exlaims. “I’m crippled, and you’re lobotomized. Of course, how I could I have expected anything else.”

“Don’t know who did this to you,” you hedge, “but the longer I listen to you, the less I blame them.” Not that you could blame them to begin with, given that she’s a murder drone.

That extinguished the laugh quick. “Shut up, Uzi.” Your name wasn’t an insult—so why do you scowl to hear it? “You don’t get to blame me for your fuck up.”

“What did I do? You’re the one—”

“Who saved you from the ambush. You’d have a bullet hole between your eyes if not for me. You want to talk about deserved?”

“You saved me? You must suck at that whole murder drone thing.”