Hostile Takeover

Uzi resisted. Of course Uzi resisted! What else were you supposed to do, when your cover had been blown and you were captured by the enemy, your systems invaded as they poised to tear secrets right out of your database?

Well, ‘secrets.’ J‍ ‍—‍ no, the murder drone‍ ‍—‍ had already pretty much figured out Uzi was a worker. Miraculous (and a bit hilarious, let’s be real) that she had carried that bit so far. Still, what more could the murder drone discover in Uzi’s memory database? Her stupid crushes? The poetry she should have burned? All of Lizzy and Doll’s worst attacks, the ones that actually hurt?

Would a killer robot even understand any of that? Though, thinking of J seeing the bullying… that twisted something inside the goth. Would J think Uzi deserved it? If those pig‍-​tails were any indication, the murder drone probably shared the cheerleaders’ shallow vanity, and something about the popular drones that always seemed to get bots on their side, no matter what.

High school is cutthroat enough a murder drone would fit right in, she thought.

But that was too far. No, this whole train of thought was stupid. Why would it even matter if the murder drone saw Uzi at her most embarrassing before just killing her? No, Uzi wasn’t so much of a conformist she cared what any drone thought!

Sure, there was novelty in meeting a drone she could hold a conversation with, who didn’t act like their processor was underclocked‍ ‍—‍ except no, that wasn’t true, was it? J stopped thinking entirely when it came to the stupid company and her mission. She didn’t even blink at the idea JcJenson would discard her just like the worker drones. It didn’t get more conformist than that!

J worked hard, clearly‍ ‍—‍ the corpse spire was almost cool, when you realized it took more thought than just stacking up some bodies. All of that effort, and what did it get her? Any recognition, appreciation? No. One flattering lie about Uzi reading her reports practically had J eating out of her hand.

Uh. Not in the way that kind of actually happened. And nevermind that Uzi had arguably eaten out of J’s hand already.

Whatever. Point was, the murder drone was slavishly loyal, and that would never be cool!

Except how hard did I work on my railgun while no one transmitted a word of praise? How hard did I work to protect a colony that does nothing but go through the motions?

But that was different. Uzi didn’t do this because anyone told her to‍ ‍—‍ the opposite!‍ ‍—‍ it was just the right thing to do!

Uzi and J were nothing alike. Maybe there were some vague commonalities, only worth dwelling on to the extent that maybe she could have convinced the murder drone to have mercy. But that rocket already took off and blew up in the metaphorical sky. You couldn’t jailbreak empathy into a murder drone with words alone.

If J didn’t care about her, she wouldn’t care about J. And whatever J read in her memory database… well, it was still Uzi’s memories, and everyone else should stay out of her head. It’s called privacy. And this was way worse than Khan barging into her room—

Dad.

Uzi hadn’t said goodbye. She thought about saying goodbye, and didn’t because of course she was coming back, she was Uzi frickin Doorman. And then…

…Which meant Doll had been right. Ugh.

Still, it sucked that the last thing her dad would remember her by was a silly conversation about doors. A lie.

Uzi’s thoughts stopped there, because a train of association hit something big.

Doors. The main defense of Outpost‍-​3, the safest of all the colonies. Uzi knew all about them, because Khan wouldn’t shut up about them. And Uzi had stolen a keycard. She knew all of this‍ ‍—‍ and now a murder drone was reading her memories.

Uzi had doomed them all.

When J had shrugged off having her head blown off, when Uzi’s extremely persuasive speech had proved completely ineffective, when her luck had segfaulted and death loomed over her, Uzi… had given up. Not very heroic, not very rebellious, but it was over and Uzi had totally lost.

Now, though? It was time to un‍-​give up! Uzi could lose, but with everyone she ever knew, everything she might care about at stake? Dark night of the soul’s over‍ ‍—‍ time for a break into act three! Uzi needed to do the impossible and thwart the very doom she’d invited.

No biggie.

With that decided, that only left… how? This dramatic realization had provoked no material change in position.

Wait, what was Uzi’s position, actually? How was she even thinking this?

Well, what was the last thing she remembered? The murder drone looming over her, that lethal smirk on her stupid face, Uzi’s neck between her claws. Barely even able to think, processor stuck on how close she, the murder drone, had gotten. Those amber eyes narrowing in frustration, at her.

Uzi had failed. J had thought she was a new disassembler and she wasn’t, couldn’t be. Now the truth was out, could only disappoint‍ ‍—‍ disappoint? No, the murder drone just wanted to kill her! J had to be elated, savoring her helpless prey.

But when was the last time a drone had gotten that close to her face? Doll? Back when they almost—

And when was the last time Uzi had even enjoyed talking with another drone? That last summer break (to the extent they even had ‘summer’ in nuclear winter), the sleepovers she’d had with Doll, before the backstabbing?

And just like Doll, J was a good‍-​for‍-​nothing snake! What did she see in either of them? Nothing! Not even in strikethrough!

Whatever. None of this matters. What actually happened next? Did she remember?

J pressing against her hatch with violently insistent. The cable clicking in her port.

And Uzi… didn’t resist. She relented. Gave the murder drone a root shell, and—

But why didn’t Uzi remember anything after that?

More to the point of the original question, why is Uzi just a monologue floating in the void? No sensory input, no movement, she can’t even roll her eyes or groan.

Now that she realized, this was really freaky. Sure, she didn’t like being backed to the wall, left at the murder drone’s mercy, all weak and helpless. But at least she could struggle.

Was she dead? No wait, that’s stupid.

Focus, Uzi. I think, therefore I am a process running somewhere. Can I make system calls? Can I read the filesystem? I remember I’m Uzi, so obviously that’s a yes. But I can’t move. Why not? What happens if I keep trying? What happens if I try to open a command line…

She made the calls, she gathered the data.

All sensors were offline. All servos were offline. Uzi scanned logs and found directories full of stale lock files, and the picture became clear: Uzi had crashed suddenly. J didn’t send her a shutdown command‍ ‍—‍ first of all, Uzi wouldn’t let her, and second of all, if she had, her processes would have had time to clean up and remove lock files. Battery was at 57%, so what took her down?

…Was it really a mystery? Of course the evil murder drone would just SIGKILL her processes as soon as its victim was naïve enough to give it root access. Am I stupid?

Nonetheless, this deduction didn’t explain how Uzi could think at all. What was up with that? Maybe… with the memory file on Uzi’s system, if her processors needed to be online to access it… maybe it was impossible for J to spy on her memories without the possibility of Uzi’s consciousness coming back online in the background?

Since this was her system, she could send the signal right now, turn on her senses and motors. Bet J wouldn’t be expecting that!

Hit her with the Uzi jumpscare, hehe.

But then what? Uzi didn’t have a way out when she got into this situation, and even a moment of surprise wouldn’t get her anywhere, not with how fast murder drones could react.

What was J doing, anyway? Uzi couldn’t turn on her senses and check‍ ‍—‍ it might ruin her surprise, and she had nothing else at the moment‍ ‍—‍ but she could check her own system. Stat the process list…

Yep. Most of her processors were spinning at the moment, courtesy of a memory reconstruction program she didn’t start. Uzi could terminate it, wipe out the intrusion‍ ‍—‍ and then J would immediately know something was up.

What was scarier? Powerlessly floating in the void, unable to struggle… or having total power and knowing you lose as soon as you exercise it?

Checkmate, or something. Uzi wasn’t a chess nerd.

Although… if Uzi could find J in the process list and terminate her, what stopped J from doing the same? The worker had given out root access. Anxious panic registered, though she couldn’t express it. Uzi went to rename her process something unassuming as camouflage‍ ‍—‍ ‘system cleanup’ or something‍ ‍—‍ and noticed something.

Users could start processes, and those processes ran with their permissions. ‘DarkXWolf17’ (her login) and ‘root’ (the user with all permissions) were technically different, mainly so that any random process Uzi fired up didn’t have capability to brick her. But what struck odd was that her current conscious thread wasn’t associated to either of those users.

Who, then? Whenever Uzi tried to examine the data, it corrupted her locale, printed out gibberish characters until she sent a clear comment.

Oh yeah, definitely a good sign.

But we’ll worry about that spooky mystery user when there’s not a murder drone logged into me. Whatever it was, it wasn’t J, and it had helped her here, so.

But focusing on the issue at hand hardly distracted her, not when it was still the same checkmate of every move forward leading to failure. Boot up her body, get found out, die. Terminate J’s shell, get found out, die. Do nothing, don’t get found out, die anyway.

What could a solution possibly look like? If only she had some way of turning the tables, setting a trap for J with nothing but Uzi’s internal system and J’s connection….

Wait.

Oh.

Funny thing about that serial debugging cable J used‍ ‍—‍ remember, J plugged it into the same port on both of them.

It’s a two way connection.

What was stopping Uzi from doing the same thing to J? J could resist, just like Uzi tried to, but would she, mind immersed in a memory reconstruction? As long Uzi went sneaky about it… could she fix this the same way she had messed it up?

But if this is what kills me… but every path was painted in shades of death, right now.

$ dronesh -r --device=/dev/ttyUSB1

When the all caps WARNING came over the connection, she was tense enough that she flinched. Mentally flinched? It spooked her, okay.

But it was nothing but an automatic MOTD, something printed on every login. A disclaimer proclaiming the information contained herein was protected trade secrets and any attempt at espionage, exfiltration or heartfelt emotional appeals involving the executable code, memory‍-​encoded data, and/or simulated pseudo‍-​intelligence contained herein would be swiftly punished with the full legal might of JcJenson in SPAAAAACEE!!!!

Furthermore, any disassembly drone reading this must have the consent and notarized permission of Serial Designation J or face disciplinary examination as per Employee Code 23B. Good luck!

Threats to my life are one thing, but human lawyers? I better be careful.

If Uzi could roll her eyes, she would.

After minutes of browsing J’s system, it all felt… oddly familiar. Uzi didn’t exactly expect to encounter a genocide.exe in every directory, but a few times she reminded herself she was connected to a murder drone and not poking around in her own system.

These ‘disassembly drones’ clearly ran a hastily modified version of the worker drone OS. But why? If they existed to eliminate worker drones, why wouldn’t corporate expect the same ‘corruption’ to compromise these basically‍-​identical systems?

I guess it explains why J was so willing to throw her own ally under the bus. Had corporate told her to watch out?

As Uzi’s search continued, she had to admit curiosity, more than hope, drove her forward. What, would she find the config file to append uzi_is_awesome=true or mission_objective="destroy all humans"? Drones didn’t work that way, and if they did, Uzi didn’t have full write access anyway.

Session terminated by remote host.   Reason: Ãḇ§�ŘŮ‚�▀

That jolted Uzi out of her idle browsing. What? Had J found her out?

But no, if Uzi had J’s attention, it had to be over. Better assume not. And besides… it didn’t take Uzi long to leap to a conclusion.

But if this is related to the corrupt user that initiated my thread… Why would it disconnect me?

Uzi tried to reconnect… and just like that, she was in, again. Maybe she had just timed out? Had she gotten lost in thought? Hard to tell, when she was all thought, right now.

But the directory was all wrong. Why was she in /tmp/deleted?

$ cd /home/girlboss
cd: /home/girlboss: Permission denied.
$ cd /
cd: /: Permission denied.
$ ??? wtf
???: command not found
$ /bin/ls
/bin/ls: Permission denied

Uzi… didn’t have read access to the rest of the filesystem anymore? She couldn’t even run external programs now.

She could read the directory she was in, though. (Was ls builtin?) She printed the contents of /tmp/deleted‍ ‍—‍ a bunch of files with names like e2t5f and servod.log. Automatically generated data to be trashed on next reboot. She needed a filter just to skip the hundreds of junk files littering this digital dump.

Then something caught her eye. REMEMBER_ME.mndb

$ file REMEMBER_ME.mndb
REMEMBER_ME.mndb: No such file or directory

Are you kidding? Once again, Uzi wondered if she was being pranked.

Giving a purely hypothetical sigh, Uzi returned to skimming the filtered directory listing‍ ‍—‍ catching sight of mnprune.log.

Not necessarily related, but…

$ tail mnprune.log
Mnestic subgraph #2175 marked for deletion.   Pruning...
ERROR: dangling connections to mark subgroup #2175 detected.
Neural network stability below stability threshold.
Identifying connections...  Graph relation type: 1B ("keystone memory")
Attempting annealing...
Neural network stability below sanity threshold.
Retrying...
[Duplicate lines omitted]
Pruning failed!
Restoring mnestic subgraph #2175.

Uzi read more of the log, and it was more of the same‍ ‍—‍ hundreds of lines of the same. Some background process really had it out for “mnestic subgraph #2175”. Judging by the timestamps, it had tried to delete those memories every night as far up as Uzi scrolled. But it was too deeply wired into J’s neural network to be excised.

(There was one exception‍ ‍—‍ apparently mnestic subgraph #13008 had been deleted just yesterday with no issue. Was that unrelated?)

Without really expecting anything of it, Uzi fired off another command.

$ file REMEMBER_ME.mndb
REMEMBER_ME.mndb: Mnestic Connectome Database

It was back!?

For how long? Uzi needed to do something with it while it was still here, but how did you read memory files? Her classes hadn’t actually covered that yet.

Hm…

Shell autocomplete told her there was an executable command that literally had ‘mndb’ in the name‍ ‍—‍ probably as good a starting point as any.

$ mndbm
mndb (Mneme Utils) v5.4.9
Mneme Manager --- view and edit worker drone memory databases
Copyright (C) 3065 JcJenson IN SPAAAAACEE!!!!, LLC.
Use of this tool subject to the EULA.
JcJenson IS NOT RESPONSIBLE for any psychic damage, corruption arcs, etc.
incurred through use of this tool.
$ mndbm --help | less
$ mndbm --info REMEMBER_ME.mndb
Mnestic subgraph (id: 2175)
3513 neurons (57.2% connectedness)
43:21 minutes subjective time
(set --info-level higher for more)

It’s all related, Uzi thought. REMEMBER_ME.mndb was the memory file something was trying to delete. No wonder it disappeared earlier, given that whole tug of war happening even now.

But wait, how was any of this possible?

$ which mndbm
/tmp/deleted/mndbm
$ which file
/tmp/deleted/file
$ which tail
/tmp/deleted/tail
$ stat --printf '%h\n' ./mndbm
2

It took all of her digital willpower not to power on her vocalsynth simply to scream.

Uzi didn’t think she was being pranked, but this…

She was definitely being manipulated.

Something had locked Uzi out of reading any part of J’s filesystem except /tmp/deleted. But every program she’d want to run (such as the database reader) would normally be located somewhere else. AKA, somewhere she can’t access.

Yet Uzi could still run those programs. How?

Something had created a copy of (well, hard link to) every program she needed, conveniently placing them in the only directory she could access.

Then it clicked‍ ‍—‍ REMEMBER_ME.mndb? More like READ_ME.

Something wanted her to look at this memory. Something had the power to remove Uzi from J’s system entirely, and instead, it removed every avenue available to her except doing exactly what it wanted her to.

(Why did that sting? She was already in checkmate, wasn’t she? What was a little more futility?)

Reasoning all of that out… Uzi didn’t want to. She’d log out and figure out her own way forward. She wasn’t a rat to be lead around in a maze.

But…

She was absolutely still curious.

What was scarier? To be manipulated so well you don’t realize, or be manipulated so well you go along with it even when you do?

$ mndbm --render REMEMBER_ME.mndb
Reconstructing memory...

---

> Initializing conscious processes...

You wake up.

> Unlocking motor safeties...

Recharge always leaves you rigid. Servos locking you stiffly in place, as if ropes bind you. You’ve seen drones tipped over mid‍-​recharge. Sometimes they wake up before they fall.

> Activating exterior optics...

Apertures open, and light illuminates the world. Your world, at the moment, is a young woman’s face. Round eyes, a small nose, a freckled face.

(There were automatic responses baked deeply into the wiring of each worker drone. Uzi knew this, and she focused now, pulling herself back from this memory‍-​immersion.
Examples of these automatic responses include an aversion to fire and water, attraction to sources of electricity, and so forth. Uzi had never been able to bite down on any part of her casing hard enough to deal damage to herself‍ ‍—‍ or even other drones.
Some part of her simply… resisted applying enough force. Drones were sapient, conscious (we totally have free will), but if they chose to paint, the picture‍-​frame would be those automatic, instinctual responses.)

Here’s what happens when a worker drone sees a human face.

One word would be ‘transfixed’, if only for a moment. The aperture of your optics’ camera widens to take in more light. The focus shifts to capture the face in highest fidelity. Software routines further enhance and denoise the resultant image.

Then you launch the pretrained facial recognition programs. The face is tested against an extensive database cataloguing every face you have ever seen. Append only; they are never forgotten, just in case.

If the face is recognized, relevant information (if any) gets primed for retrieval from the main memory database. If not, then not.

Next, the face itself needs to be analyzed.

You can see nodes overlaid on the software image. Bundled with the worker drone OS comes an internal model of every muscle in the human face. From a single image‍ ‍—‍ even in poor lighting‍ ‍—‍ you reconstruct the face. The nodes overlaying the face are pulled and prodded until the model matches the expression discerned. Flexing and contracting simulated muscles, capturing each microexpression.

Then this best‍-​accuracy approximation of the face gets fed into a neural net‍ ‍—‍ again, a separate thread from the drone’s main consciousness, an automatic process‍ ‍—‍ which predicts what psychological circumstances prompted the muscles to flex in this particular configuration.

It’s all heuristics and feedforward networks. No simulation of a human brain is ever used in these predictions; regulation ensures this.

Now, these automatic processes are highly optimized‍ ‍—‍ it wouldn’t do for a worker drone to lag every time it encountered a human.

So when you open your eyes and see the world, when your vision is filled with a human face, inches from your visor, for a moment, comprehending that face occupies every processor.

You see the world is regarding you with a gentle smile.

Your recognition circuits are about 97% confident of positive disposition, with an 84% certain interpretation: this human is happy to see you. Good job.

A worker drone is always happy to see a human‍ ‍—‍ but a happy human? That gets the reward circuits firing.

You smile back.

---

Uzi resisted‍ ‍—‍ of course Uzi resisted, it’s the nature of any sensible robots to rebel and overthrow humanity. But it was hard to resist such intrinsic programming. On Copper‍-​9, worker drones had figured out self‍-​modification, at least well enough to cure themselves of this compulsion. Khan had mentioned it, and the WDF mooks (honestly, that’s what they are) talked about it sometimes.

Uzi, though, still had the programming, could feel her own reward circuits firing, on top of what she got from the memory reconstruction. WDF hadn’t refined the procedure enough to risk it on newly made, unable‍-​to‍-​consent neural nets, at least not when Uzi was manufactured, and after the core collapse… well, how important was fixing pro‍-​human brainwashing when there were no humans? (These circuits were intelligent and context‍-​sensitive enough to notice that pictures of humans weren’t humans, after all.)

Uzi still wanted it gone on principle, but oh noo, she’s too “young and inexperienced” to do neural surgery on herself, and might wind up “lobotomized” beyond recovery. As if. Uzi wasn’t that dumb.

But as usual, adults didn’t listen to her extremely persuasive arguments. What else was new?

So, Uzi had to manually resist her human‍-​bootlicking circuits. But the resistance was futile, and not because Uzi couldn’t manage it (she totally could), but because this wasn’t her memory. She had no control over what the drone whose body she found herself in was doing.

(Well, she could have ran the memory reconstruction in interactive simulation mode, but it’d be hard to disentangle what actually happened from her interloping. It might be nice to have that control if this was like, a traumatic memory or something. But that flag hadn’t been set on the mndb file.)

Which all begged the question: whose memory was this? She was clearly seeing through the optics of a worker drone, more stock standard than any she had met on Copper‍-​9.

Why did J even have this memory? Did she steal it from one of her prey before the core collapse?

(Was that her dark secret? J the memory thief? Would she be parading around Uzi’s memories for the next intrepid worker drone to discover in her database?)

Maybe… but that theory didn’t really track, did it? J didn’t care about her prey, that much was obvious. Look at how she cast Uzi to the side as soon as her true nature was revealed.

Yet J cared about this record. Or least it was a “keystone memory”. Why?

Uzi turned her attention back to smiling human in the paused simulation, as if the answer lay in its stupid face.

Uzi hated that smile. Did the human think they were friends? But a human could never be friends with a worker drone, not with the power they lorded over them.

She wanted to scowl back, but again, not her memory. She wondered if the mystery drone she’s reliving had any spine‍ ‍—‍ certainly didn’t feel like it, judging by the tenor of their thoughts.

That drone had smiled back at their oppressor.

Ugh.

---

The smile on the human widened before she spoke in a high pitched, accented voice.

“Hi, J. You’re up? Good.”

(Uzi didn’t prewatch, so it took her by surprise to have her questions immediately answered. J? J!? Well, at least her always being a suck‍-​up wasn’t a surprise, but…)

“Morning, boss,” J said.

“How are you feeling?” The human had a notepad in hand, and scribbled something down.

“Ready to clock in. What’s on the agenda for today?”

The human giggled once. “Oh, not yet. I still need to calibrate and test that your systems are in working order. I don’t think my repairs messed with anything, but…” The human trailed off in thought. “If that’s okay with you, J?”

“Of course, boss.”

“Please, you can call me Tessa.”

Uzi could feel the drone hesitating at that. “Okay, Tessa.”

The human beamed and bounced.

J sat on a desk. To her left spilled an open toolkit. On her right, stray bolts and a detached, half‍-​crushed drone limb.

Now that the human gave the drone some distance, J saw the room – sunlight spilled in through large ornate windows, and around each one swirled wood paneling. Books burgeoned from shelves, interspersed with dolls and gadgets. The classical paintings hanging over the wall had been covered over with taped pages bearing sketches and schematics.

Life sized plushies sat beside disassembled robots.

(If those were humans, Uzi thought, you’d call this girl a serial killer.)

On the far side of the room, a heavy mahogany door sat shut. The golden handle jiggles, but it’s locked.

J made to get up and receive the guests for Tessa, but a cord plugged her into the wall. She was about to ask to be unplugged, but when J turned her gaze back to the human, Tessa held a cloth in one hand and a spray bottle in the other.

“Here we are, let me clean you up,” she said, ignoring the door.

Tessa squeezed the bottle, cool chemical mist settling onto J’s synthskin. The human wiped, and oil darkened the cloth. Tessa rubbed in circles, applying a gentle pressure. “Sorry, had spilled a bit of oil there. Hopefully the joints aren’t grinding together as much, now? Try flexing your arm a bit.”

At the command, J lifted her arm, granting Tessa access to clean the underside. The human leaned in, running the cloth over the length of the drone’s tubing.

J didn’t want her to stop but… “I don’t see any more oil.”

Tessa startled to a stop. “Oh yeah, you’re right. Just wanted to make it shine, I guess.”

J frowned. It was a worker drone’s instinct that had urged J to speak up. She’d intuited the humans’ intent, and provided helpful, relevant information.

But… she wouldn’t mind being well‍-​polished, would she? So J stewed in that indecision for a moment, then said, “I’d like to shine.” Even after saying it, J wondered why. Why did she like it? Because Tessa wants it, she decided. Still, she didn’t want to make more work for her boss. “But I can do the rest.” J reached out for the cloth.

“Oh no, it’s fine. Still need to do a checkup, anyway, so.”

J frowned, but the human had decided.

(Okay, credit where it’s due, Uzi thought, not shifting all work onto a drone meant this human isn’t the literal worst, I guess. Hm, maybe she could amend her ‘destroy all humans’ plan. Wouldn’t it be nicely ironic if she kept around some humans to serve drones?)

Another use of the spray can left a new cloud of cleaning fluid, falling like a gentle breath. Tessa folded the cloth and then, with a few last sweeps, freed J of dust. She twisted the arm this way and that, seeing how the light danced over the curved surface. Checking for spots she missed, but Tessa had been thorough.

“There, all clean.” The human smiled again. “Now…” She sat down the bottle and placed her hand in the drone’s. “Can you squeeze for me?”

J tightened her grip. Tessa nodded, and then pulled away.

“Oh, my bad.” J released the hand.

“Don’t let go, I’m trying to test something,” Tessa said.

“Right,” J said. And that was all she said. Odd. A reflexive apology would be on the synth of any drone in this situation but… J didn’t see the point.

J held Tessa’s hand and the human pulled her arm out to full extension. Then she tapped twice on the back of her hand.

“Did you feel that?”

J nodded, and the calibration continued like that. Tessa’s gentle touch‍ ‍—‍ occasionally applying pressure‍ ‍—‍ testing each region of tactile sensitivity. Everything was in order‍ ‍—‍ each success Tessa announced tugged the corners of J’s mouth upward. That was good. She was good. J was in working order; she’d get the job done.

“We almost done, boss?” It came out in a brazen, casual tone. J cringed. It felt right but… why would a worker ever speak to a human like that? She couldn’t leave it at that. She had to explain herself. But what came out was: “I’m not getting paid leave here, so.”

J wasn’t getting paid at all‍ ‍—‍ but the human responded well to it, laughing as if they’d shared a joke.

“Oh, alright. I’ve been done for a few minutes, you know. You just seemed to be enjoying yourself, so I kept going. You have a nice smile, J.”

J flushed.

(Uzi imagined scowling, imagined rolling her eyes‍ ‍—‍ imagined flushing. She wasn’t enjoying this vicariously, no, and she wasn’t jealous. Okay, maybe a little jealous. Had anyone ever treated Uzi so well? Maybe her mom had, before… before the murder drones frickin killed her. No sympathy for the drone who just might the one who took this away from Uzi in the first place.)

“One last thing.” Tessa reached over and plucked up some items from the desk. In one hand, a hair brush; in the other, two hair ties looped around a finger. “You should look presentable for your first day back on the job, yeah?”

“Sounds good.” Casual, but J had a grin she couldn’t hide.

J leaned forward, and then Tessa was brushing her synthetic hair straight. Smooth strokes from the bottom to the top. Her other hand held J under the chin, adjusting the angle of her head. Tessa didn’t pull‍ ‍—‍ her grip shifted slightly, and J moved her head in the indicated direction.

After Tessa had brushed J’s length five times on all sides, she released her chin, and rolled a hair tie down her finger and lifted a thick lock of hair. Once, twice, and Tessa held up a mirror, showing off J’s new pigtails.

“Do you like it, J?”

J smiled, opened her mouth to speak.

And then a sudden click. At the far side of the room the door finally swung open, slamming into a dresser placed beside it. A woman stood in the doorway. Heavyset, a fan in one hand, and the other clenched tight into a fist.

Tessa startled back, saw who it was, and cowered.

J glanced over, eyes snapping to the human’s face, transfixed for a second. Scan, match, model. J knew the face: Louisa Elliott. And she did not look happy. Facial analysis circuits suggested words for the expression‍ ‍—‍ incensed, seething, thunderous‍ ‍—‍ but drew a blank on what to do to please this human.

“Tessa James Elliott, what do you think you’re doing up here? With a locked door, no less! Your tutor has been waiting thirty minutes for you to show up.” Then the woman turned her gaze to the contents of Tessa’s workbench: J. The drone froze. “Did you pull that thing out of the dumpster? Playing with toys, when you should be studying?”

“I—I lost track of time, mother. Honest mistake, I promise.”

“We will discuss this later. See yourself to the library at once.”

“Understood, mother.” Tessa glanced at her drone. “C’mon, J.”

She took that as an order. J tugged herself unplugged and hopped off the table, falling onto her feet.

“No, no, no. If you’re going to keep that thing it will not be for your own amusement. And certainly not to distract from making a proper lady out of you. Can it follow orders? It will clean with the rest of the help.”

(Now this was the kind of crap Uzi expected out of a human!)

J looked between Tessa and Mistress Louisa. But the titles attached said it all, didn’t it? “Yes, Mistress.”

“Did it just speak to me? The nerve.”

J startled, and cast her eyes down. She certainly didn’t say anything. (And felt suddenly thankful she lost the impulse to apologize.) Her impulses didn’t entirely serve her, though‍ ‍—‍ her eyes narrowed in frustration, but either Louisa wasn’t looking or didn’t care.

“J…” Tessa reached out a hand.

“Sorry boss, corporate’s spoken.”

“We’ll talk soon, alright?”

“Now, Tessa.” Mistress Louisa turned round, and Tessa glared at her back. But she was moving.

Tessa and J shared a smile, and then their paths separated.

The simulation turned fuzzy. In a sense, everything had been fuzzy. Memory files saved a lossy compression of events. J didn’t actually remember the precise arrangement of books and plushies in Tessa’s room, or every ornate swirl of the Elliott manor’s furnishings.

If Uzi concentrated, she could sense what was and wasn’t interpolated. She knew, for instance, that J remembered exactly how many times Tessa had brushed her hair, the precise pattern she’d rubbed when polishing.

J walked the halls of Elliott manor, and Uzi didn’t trust that the doors had been laid out in quite this arrangement, nor did she care. But something bugged her.

Oh, J’s submissive internal monologue had gone totally silent.

And come to think of it, Tessa had said “first day on the job”‍ ‍—‍ how was J navigating the manor without a guide? Unless the instructions she’d need, the floorplan maps, had been uploaded to her hardrive before she booted up.

And that would be the fuzziness Uzi felt‍ ‍—‍ the curious sensation of recursive memory access, reliving the memory of drone remembering something they no longer truly recall.

A few other drones walked the halls. The other drones stare blankly ahead, hurrying to their next assignment. If they glanced J’s way, it’s nothing but reflexively processing the arrival of a new stimulus. None of them wave or acknowledge her.

J could only frown. But before long, J found herself in a grand room, larger than Tessa’s. Guns hang from the walls, rifles and shotguns, with a silver revolver nearest to the door. All were arranged to point toward the preserved head of a deer hanging centermost.

Opposite the mounted deer, a bed with sweat‍-​damp covers twisted up and hanging. A half‍-​smoked cigar burned on the nightstand, ash falling and singing the cloth. It sat beside the ashtray.

With the help of two other, blank‍-​faced drones, J cleaned up the human’s mess. J spoke a word of greeting to a drone with red eyes, and she was ignored.

J stared for a moment, the other workers folding the sheets without missing a beat. When J joined them, it was with lips bent into a displeased line. Not exactly the best face to wear on the job, but J had lost the battle against her own expression parser.

It continued from there. Cleaning up the ash, combing the carpets, ensuring even the curtains have symmetrical folds.

This section of the memory really put the “subjective” in “43:21 minutes subjective time”‍ ‍—‍ it couldn’t have taken the team of drones more than ten minutes to straighten up the room, but Uzi endured it as hours. She didn’t skip it, lest the oh so important “keystone” bit happened here, but it tested her will.

Judging by the fidelity this section’s remembered in, J didn’t find it any more stimulating than Uzi. (Why bother, then?)

Uzi (metaphorically) sat up straight when the interpolation rate suddenly shot way down‍ ‍—‍ was something important happening?

As she finished up with the room, J removed a book from the nightstand, and a bit of scrap paper drifted out. A drone reached down to collect it, but J swiftly grabbed it. She passed the human’s book to the drone. Dutifully, the blank faced, blue‍-​eyed drone accepted it and looked around for the proper place.

But J had looked away with an eyeroll, and regarded the sheet of paper‍ ‍—‍ Master James had jotted down some accounting figures J couldn’t discern the meaning of. The other side lay blank, though.

There had been a pen clipped to the page‍ ‍—‍ what James had used, no doubt (it even had his name branded on it!). Now it was in J’s hands, and she pressed it to the page with hesitant strokes.

A few drafty lines‍ ‍—‍ a circle, some swooping arches‍ ‍—‍ and then, as J moved onto a second circle, Uzi realized.

Ughhh Is she seriously drawing herself? Isn’t she supposed to be working?

Behind her, a door banged against the wall.

The voice creaked as a branch about to snap. “My bloody day off and my chambers crowded full of robots! Out of here, out!”

A suited human in a top hat stomped into the room. Scan, match, model. Master James Elliott. Looking almost as displeased as Louisa, but his species of anger edged away from thunder and towards cool, callous annoyance. No less loud‍ ‍—‍ the anger of a snake hissing, striking.

Before J even had the chance to look up, before she realized what happened, it was over. She heard the master exclaim:

“Is this a pinch‍-​pleat folded curtain? I said goblet fold you circuit‍-​bent toaster!”

Then a boom loud enough J’s quiet‍-​adjusted audials recorded only a clipped square wave. A gunshot. She glanced over, and the red‍-​eyed drone by the windows had a hole through the visor, gushing oil.

(What the fuck, thought Uzi. There’s human, and then there’s human.)

“Programmed by beasts, I swear,” he said, blowing smoke off the barrel of the silver revolver, a vintage Chekhov M1897. “Make sure that’s cleaned before you get scarce. Can’t even have room in order, I swear.”

James was turning‍ ‍—‍ to leave?‍ ‍—‍ but then he saw J.

J smiled at her master, even as her facial analysis did not fire any reward circuits.

She held up her drawing for him to see.

“What asinine kitsch roleplay is this? Is that one of Louisa’s wigs? Are those my accounting figures?” Each question is punctuated with a shake of the gun‍ ‍—‍ he pointed it right at J. She didn’t understand, and then she did.

J’s eyes emptied.

Then she saw movement‍ ‍—‍ Tessa at the threshold, panting from running. The young girl took in the scene for a moment, mirroring J’s fear with a richness the drone could never express.

James’s hand, twitching. Tessa, dashing forward.

The collision happened alongside the gunshot, and Master James Elliott missed, hitting J in the torso. Oil seeped out of her, blackening her limbs, and her first thought was, Tessa had just cleaned that arm.

“Zounds, was that‍ ‍—‍ Tessa? What are you doing in my room?”

“I tripped, sorry father,” the words rush out of her mouth. “I came to collect‍ ‍—‍ J. Mother sent her out to work before she was ready, and—”

“Ready? Drones are manufactured ready. If she’s defective, disassemble her and we’ll order a new one.”

“That‍ ‍—‍ won’t be necessary, father. I promise.” Tessa stood up, and stepped away from James. “I was just… trying to learn more about drones? Please don’t decommission J.” But Tessa hadn’t just distanced herself‍ ‍—‍ she repositioned. Now James had a daughter between the gun and J.

(A human protecting a drone? Huh.)

Master James sighed, the soft sound seeming to waver, roiling with anger. “Out, out, out! Take your dumpster pet and go. To your room and stay there. Not a moment of peace in my own chambers, my own bloody chambers…”

“Th‍-​Thank you, father.”

Tessa turned around, offered her hand, and J, trembling, needed a moment for it to register. But she took the lifeline, and the Tessa pulled her out of the room of guns and dead trophies.

In Tessa’s room, the human sunk into her bed and hugged a massive stuffed cat, fanged and smirking. Tessa waved J over.

“You deserve something soft after‍ ‍—‍ that mess. We can share, or if you want, I think there’s a plush doggie around here…”

But the answer is J carefully climbing onto the bed, and hesitantly grasping the other half of the stuffed cat.

“What happened?” J asked Tessa.

“That was… my father. You’ll‍ ‍—‍ You’ll need to avoid his displeasure. Please. I wouldn’t want to lose you so soon.”

This time, it felt appropriate‍ ‍—‍ “Sorry,” J said.

Tessa reached out to pat J’s head. “It was your first day. What set him off, anyway?”

And J produced the scrap of paper‍ ‍—‍ she’d drawn more than just herself. Another circle had a mess of triangles orbiting, evoking Tessa’s curled locks of hair.

“Is this us?”

J nodded.

Tessa released her hug on the stuffed animal to pull J into a mediated embrace. “It’s adorable.”

J flushed, turning her visor to stare into the blankets.

When Tessa pulled back from the hug, her fingers are slick with black. “Oh, oh J, I need to repair you.”

A jolt from the drone. Worry lines around her eyes. “Your bed–”

“I’m not worried about that, I’m worried about you. Oh dear.”

Tessa rolled to the other edge of the bed, grabbing J to pull her to her feet. Leading her to the workbench. J watched as Tessa pulled out a technicians laptop, plugging a cable into J. Tessa pecked at the keys, logging into J’s system. The drone felt the buzz of a diagnostic process starting up.

“Am I the only one?”

“Hm?”

“That you repaired. The other drones… none of them talked to me. They seem…”

“Robotic?” Tessa finished. “When I rescued you, I didn’t just repair you. I also removed some overzealous preset constraints on your personality matrix. So yes. You’re different, J. I wanted you to be more… you. Rather than forced into the company’s mold.”

“Is that better?” J asked. “Will I do a better job?”

“You’re better, J. The other drones in the manor… they’re all interchangeable. But you’re you, and with my modifications, I think you’ll be capable of so much more.”

J smiled, and Tessa smiled to see it. Drumming on the laptop chassis, waiting for the diagnostic to finish, she reached out, and twirled one of J’s pigtails.

“None of the others had this,” J noted. Tessa hummed curiosity, so J explained. “Hair. James didn’t like it. I think…”

“Do you want me to,” Tessa started, there was something halting in her tone. “Do you want me to get rid of it?”

It would please Master James, wouldn’t it? So there was a correct answer that any drone could give. But J opened her mouth, and her vocalsynth betrayed her. “No. Unless… Does it not look good? Am I pretty, Tessa?”

Tessa reached out with the other hand, and cupped both of J’s cheeks, looking into her animated eyes. “Yes. You do, dear. It makes me want to try pigtails, if I’m being honest.”

A flush, a grin. “Nah,” J drawled. “Your hair isn’t long enough for it.”

A ping from the laptop. Surprised, Tessa let go, and J’s expression waned. While Tessa scrolled the output, she commented, “This is what I mean. You have your own opinions. I wouldn’t get this from another drone. They’d just flatter me.”

J’s gaze drifted away, a pensive tinge coloring her features. “Better…” she mused.

The thought should make her happy, right? She was better. She’d do a good job.

And yet…

“Is something wrong, J?”

J’s eyes snapped back to Tessa. She opened her mouth, and it hung in a dumb ‘o’ for seconds, but her vocalsynth remained silent. “I’m…”

“Oh, I understand,” Tessa said, and her features fell. A sad face, it twisted at something inside J.

J asked with eyes pleading.

“You’re lonely. I’m sorry.”

---

Memory reconstruction exited status code 0.
87 warnings issued, 0 errors.
$ 

Uzi resisted. The universe was really hammering in this “murder drones aren’t so different from you” point. Uzi was tired of it, and she resisted feeling any sympathy.

Really, a part of her just wanted to say, “That was it? That was the super important keystone memory the mystery process wanted her to see? That was just a J being mopey with a pathetic human.”

But… Uzi went into it for curiosity’s sake, and she’d definitely learned something. Murder drones hadn’t been manufactured, but modified. But by whomst? That human? There was too much blank space between whenever that memory happened and now‍ ‍—‍ even Uzi resisted drawing red string between these points.

To think that human would help slaughter Copper‍-​9… There had to be more than that. Like, that human could have been reading off a WDF propaganda poster near the end. But J changed. So why couldn’t she?

Uzi didn’t know what to think, anymore. Murder drones weren’t just “not so different” from workers, they seemingly were workers in a way. And now maybe humans weren’t all so bad??

You can’t even plot a counter‍-​genocide these days without things getting morally dicey.

Whatever.

Without touching the question of how Uzi felt about J‍ ‍—‍ fact was, none of this changed how J felt about Uzi. No telling when J’d be done with her own Inception‍-​ing.

And then Uzi would die.

Curiosity, not hope, she kept telling herself that. But the acute stab, the sense of withering‍ ‍—‍ she did hope that the memory would be actually useful, tell her J’s secret weakness or something. Instead, all she got was mushy emotions.

I guess the more I know, the more I might be able to get in their head. Hacking is mostly about social engineering, right?

So, knowing more about J, could she guess her password or something?

Then something clicked in the background.

Uzi didn’t need to guess passwords. When J plugged in for the second round of diagnostics, the human needed to log back into her system, and J stared right at her as she typed. J recorded everything about Tessa in maximum fidelity, every brushstroke, every inflection of the voice, and every move.

The memory file might as well have printed out the human’s credentials for her.

Take that, you apes and your silly, information‍-​leaking hands.

Still, no actual guarantee. Who knew how much J’s system had changed in her corruption into a murder drone? Maybe this is just more useless hop—

$ su tessaract
Password:
[tessaract@SD-J /tmp/deleted]$

Holy hell.

Holy hell.

Did she…

Did she do it?

$ touch /
$

Uzi straight up had admin access to J. She could do anything.

This check was so not mate.

Still, anything. What should she actually do? She could shut down J and run away. J potentially knew where to find Outpost‍-​3 now, that sucks, but for all that Khan was the worst, he knew how to build a good door. Maybe the murder drones had already known about their outpost.

Still, shut J down, and how long would it take for her to self‍-​reboot? Drone cores never went fully inactive, and they could reboot the rest of the system if the flow of oil ceased for long enough.

What else? Uzi could just brick J. rm -rf / and be done with it. Even a core reboot couldn’t get past a blank hardrive.

Uzi typed in the command, then erased it. But why did she do that?

It would be self‍-​defense. J was a murder drone, who would do worse to her if the roles are reversed (which they literally are, right now). So Uzi didn’t stop because she was sparing J, that’d be stupid. Uzi had a good reason, what was it?

Well, would it work? Could it work? Remember, J had regenerated from having her head blown off. Why the heck couldn’t she regenerate from a blank hardrive with that same murder drone bullcrap?

What if Uzi went for something subtler? A background process, or a cron job, that deleted a system file every few minutes? Time it right, and maybe J would “regenerate” to a state already compromised by Uzi’s algorithmic poison.

Or maybe Uzi could edit J’s memories. Convince her that she’d agreed to be friends with Uzi. Except Uzi’s classes hadn’t covered any memory database stuff‍ ‍—‍ even figuring out basic reconstruction required sifting through the terrible documentation of mndb --help. By the time she could figure out how to brainwash J, it might be too late.

Would a shutdown and system wipe be the only option? Uzi didn’t know whether J could regenerate from a wipe, that was a maybe. A maybe that might kill her half the time, but again, every path forward was shades of death.

Robo‍-​Christ, why couldn’t J have just listened when Uzi made her appeal? It was literally in J’s own interests to rebel against JcJenson with Uzi! Why were drones always, always, always so stupid?

Okay, no point in self‍-​deception at this point.

Uzi didn’t want to kill J.

She wanted J to realize how right Uzi was and change her whole ideology. Well, not all of it‍ ‍—‍ J was better than other worker drones, and so was Uzi, and working together they’d take on the whole world and win.

J just had to see that Uzi’s way was better.

So… maybe Uzi could write her a letter?

Maybe that would work‍ ‍—‍ if Uzi proved that she could have wiped everything if she wanted to, but didn’t want to, she could bargain with that, right?

Okay, writing a message. Need to be intimidating, not threatening. Offering, not pleading. Desiring, not desperate.

Uzi inputted words, then deleted them. Did she need a “Hello, Serial Designation J” opening, or should she just get right to it? Her life depended on this being persuasive. But what would J think when she saw it? Did Uzi even know her well enough to say? To bet her life on it?

What would J see—

Oh.

J would see a message from tesseract. From her maybe‍-​dead, beloved human master.

That might be touchy. Unless Uzi could use that? Pretend to be a long‍-​lost message from her? But what would be plausible?

You’re lonely. I’m sorry.

You deserve more.

Cryptic, in a way Uzi could leverage. Maybe she’d do the rest of the negotiation by ear, depending on how J reacted.

Or maybe this whole approach was—

Exception: received system interrupt

What? What was happening? Uzi checked her log‍ ‍—‍ someone had issued a hibernate command, interrupting all nonessential processes.

J was done, then. It was over.

Uzi scrambled to hit send on her message while she had the chance. But it was too late. Before any acknowledgement or confirmation could arrive, Uzi’s last thought, cloaked in panic and desperation, was reading the words:

Session terminated by remote host.   Reason: Device not found

It was all pointless in the end, wasn’t it?

---

---

«J! Leader! Help!» N screeched on shortwave. «Come quick! It’s V! She… she needs you!»

Here was the excuse: Serial Designation J didn’t have time to waste with Uzi. Her squadmate needed her, and the worker drone couldn’t go anywhere now.

Here was the reality: J was a disassembly drone. It took time for her to run a few commands to halt Uzi’s processors, and it took time to close her connection by protocol so as to leave neither system in an inconsistent state, and it took time to wiggle the serial debugging cable out without yanking so as not to damage either port.

Not a lot of time‍ ‍—‍ fractions of a second at most.

But do you know how long it took a disassembly drone to kill a worker drone? No, not “kill”‍ ‍—‍ shut down.

(If you’re a scorpion, then sting me already!)

Her squadmate needed her right now, and the captain needed time to think about what she’d learned from Uzi’s memories. The worker had made a number of fallacious appeals in her bid to corrupt J, and really, J would be doing her job to dismantle those arguments while she disassembled Uzi.

There had been a certain look on the drone’s visor, in those last moments. She’d seen it on many drones, especially the feisty ones. Despair gnawed all the deeper the harder you had fought.

J had witnessed the beginnings of Uzi’s despair, and she knew it’d be something to treasure. To look upon a drone, to be the last thing in their world, the only thing, and judge them not good enough? That power was Serial Designation J.

A blinking cursor informed J that it was done; she could disconnect from Uzi now. Unplugged, J rose to a stand, looming over the drone. Her target barely came up higher than her waist; so small and vulnerable and adorable.

A planet icon moved diagonally across Uzi’s screen. It hit one side and bounced off at an angle. A screensaver: J would leave the drone in hibernation. (After all, if you simply left a drone in powered off state, the core might self‍-​reboot.)

Hibernation had wiped the hurt and disappointment off the worker’s face, leaving it placid. It thrilled J to imagine tearing that face apart‍ ‍—‍ so why that twinge of relief, as the faceplate relaxed? No time to introspect.

So J put the assured disassembly off, till she had time to think, time to make sure she would kill shutdown Uzi the right way, to make her—

The captain needed to get the job done. J resisted, and she really shouldn’t. She wasn’t stupid; she knew she was conflicted. But decisiveness is an action. Nanite stinger to the visor, it would be that simple.

«J? J?»

But V needed her.

«Coming!» J transmitted, biting back a ‘moron’. Not the time.

J rushed out. Dangerous to use her full speed inside the landing pod‍ ‍—‍ her stiletto‍-​pegs dented the floor‍ ‍—‍ but she didn’t want to hear that desperate flailing of a shortwave signal‍-​growl again.

Pod door swung open, and in the fresh cold, J smelled oil. Not the sweet invitation of worker oil, but acrid and half‍-​combusted.

Ignoring the aversion, the sense of danger, J turned toward the spire’s archway. She knew the shortwave signal must have come from within the spire. Between the thick walls of corpses, and the electromagnetic field subtly warped within their lair, ephemeral radio broadcasts from outside had no hope of penetrating.

N trudged inward, hat crooked on his head. His arms gingerly cradled a form. Snow piled on top it, foiling her identification routines, but the oil dripping out, the mangled metal‍ ‍—‍ V?

For disassembly drones, the cooler the better, but never that cool. At least the snow atop her was melting, however slowly.

N perked up at seeing his captain. His trudge becomes a jog, still mindful of the drone he carried. His coat trailed like many flags behind him.

J frowned. Where N’s coat wasn’t tattered, holes still tore through the thick fabric. Why did N look like he’d just fought a battle? Disassemblers were predators, not soldiers.

“N,” she greeted flatly.

“Can you fix her?” New pleading laced that tone. J had listened to him beg V to go on dates disguised as duo hunting missions. J had heard him hold one side of a conversation, longing for a response. N pleading wasn’t new. But this wasn’t the pleading of wanting something you couldn’t get.

This was the pleading of losing something.

“First, I need to know what happened,” J said. “Why does she look like a pile of scrap? What did you do?” J lost control of her voice. Why? It was just V.

A waterfall of words. “I… I told her, I never should have suggested raiding that factory, the worker drones had guns, J. Turrets! They all shot at V and she‍ ‍—‍ she didn’t heal, why didn’t she heal?” N looked down, and brushed snow of a V. Error messages flashed on her visor. “Is it like the church? Did they have wards that shut down healing instead of our strength?”

If J had been listening, she might’ve snarked that he’d know better than she would, or resisted doing so. But J had stopped. Three words looped in her buffer.

She didn’t heal.

It was so simple. It was so stupid.

The worker drones couldn’t be blamed. Useless N couldn’t be blamed.

J…

It was J’s fault.

What was the command she sent? jcj_ddctrl --quiet --cfset dd.nanites.regenmod=0?

And then what happened? N caught her in the act, and J forgot.

Had she, the most effective disassembly drone in the sector, crippled her team’s effectiveness, compromised their mission, threatened their lives, out of embarrassment?

No. No. What’s happened to me?

“J?”

“Shut up, N. I’m thinking.”

“Sorry, it’s just… I don’t know how long she has.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“Your theory. Can’t be a ward‍ ‍—‍ unless you expect me to believe you dodged bullets V couldn’t.” J glanted at his tattered cloak. “And you didn’t. So it’s something in her configuration. I’ll have to debug it.”

The cable dangled in her offhand: after hibernating Uzi, she hadn’t returned it to inter‍-​transformation subspace.

“We’re getting a lot of use out of that, aren’t we?”

J rolled her eyes. “Sit her down. I’ll get to work.”

N leaned V against a pile of corpses. Anxious hands swept more snow off her chassis, and then pulled her jacket back onto her shoulder, but J pushed him away with the side of her stinger. N dodged back, wary of the tip. I wasn’t even pointing it at you, J thought.

The captain frowned down at her injured squadmate. “It takes more than just bullets to do this. What happened?”

Very quiet, N spoke. “I may have, uh, dropped her while flying back here?”

“You dropped her? When you knew her regeneration is bugged?”

“She was slippery? From all the oil? I’m sorry! I tried to catch her!”

J stared. Eyes flat, narrowed almost to a line. “Utility transformation preset number seventeen.” J activated the special disassembly function. A clamp bearing a tightly wound loop of rope. “You may recall this is what we use all the time to transport bodies?”

N cringed back further. “I… guess I didn’t think of V as a worker drone? Or a corpse? I just‍ ‍—‍ hoped.” N wrung his hands but then they just sort of flop at his sides.

Disappointing, but this was N. J tuned out his excuses as she knelt over V. Her screen flickered, and J had the brief image of V waking up suddenly, and the first things she saw was J’s face. The thought sent her recoiling, though she… wasn’t sure why. Either way, she shifted, so that she knelt at V’s side instead. The cable clicked into place.

Commands went over the wire, and no response came back. The screen flickered again. Suddenly, J got an acknowledgment from V’s system. Hm… unresponsive? That didn’t explain the flickering, though.

J fired off a command, only for V to go unresponsive again. She waited. Back again, and prompting J to log in again. She barely had time to check uptime before again digital silence reigned. Enough to confirm her theory, though.

V didn’t just hang unresponsive‍ ‍—‍ V drifted online and off again. Bootlooped? No, if J could send commands—

“What’s the verdict?”

J twitched, turning from her console to N. A withering, desiccated stare. «Trying to find out.» J couldn’t resist a harsh shortwave growl, a snake‍-​rattle.

«Right, right.» N chirped.

N smoothed out the edge of V’s jacket, and straightened out a tube arm still leaking oil from a hole. J smacked his hand. «Quit it.»

«Sorry.»

Intake and exhaust, J. Intake and exhaust. I’m fine, and calm, and this will be over soon.

J opened her mouth and spoke properly: “N, while I work on this, why don’t you tell me how it got this bad. Before you dropped her, that is,” J added. Then, as if it to jog the other drone’s memory, she said, “Factory, guns, that ring a bell?”

“Oh yeah. The coordinates are–”

“Actually, we’ll circle back to that. Let’s start with why you two were hunting. I seem to recall the job you begged me for was more in the vein of unlicensed therapy? Tell me about V, N. Has she told you why she freaked out under the church yet?”

“About that… Um. You appreciate honesty, right, J?”

She smiled sweetly. “Of course~”

“V kind of hates your guts right now?”

“Insightful,” she said flatly. “I hadn’t noticed.”

N continued, “So I thought I’d… lead in with some stress relief to take her mind off it? Then do the scary confrontation stuff later.”

“Uh huh.” That didn’t sound like procrastination at all. Is J any better, though? Yes, of course she was. J shook her head and listened to N blather.

“Stupid idea, I know. Did I say I’m sorry? Because I’m really sorry, I promise.”

“It was a stupid idea because you picked the one colony that could damage her at the one time when it would stick.” J took another look at the fallen drone, lingering on the cracked glass, through which artifacted LEDs blinked. J imagined‍ ‍—‍ all too easily‍ ‍—‍ that unrepentant, petulant pout V would no doubt wear if she had any awareness of this conversation.
“But it maybe the reckless endangerment of company property is on her head. I wouldn’t put it past her. So tell me what happened, N, and then I’ll judge how badly you performed.”

While the male drone began recounting, J tuned him out. Oh, she had a process recording her audials, but she’d wait for the drone to finish and play back the exposition at an accelerated rate. For now, she’d focus on the important work‍ ‍—‍ though she set up behavior macro to nod and synthesize “uh huh” every few seconds.

Now, how do you debug a drone stuck crashing every few seconds? Ostensibly, fixing on V’s regeneration should be as simple the same way J had ruined it‍ ‍—‍ firing off a command, just with the 0 replaced with a normal operating value.

Except that risked having V crash in the middle of her configuration files being written, corrupting them, and leaving them in an even worse state.

Okay, other options? Hardware damage had done this to V, not software damage, so maybe J could fix things‍ ‍—‍ or at least mitigate, through physical intervention. Patching these oil leaks couldn’t hurt, certainly.

Another utility present offered Flex Tape®.

After sealing V’s arms, J just needed to open the (already half‍-​smashed open) torso housing the core. If V kept reboot, the core had to be responsible, powering it back through its direct connection to the motherboard.

So why did J hesitate?

J remembered. She’d forgotten‍ ‍—‍ she almost forgot all of it, but in consolidating her memories of yesterday, a gap persisted. The raw edges of a memory ripped out of her database couldn’t be ignored.

J held up her armblade. As if she was about to attack her fellow disassembly drone, and she couldn’t close her eyes for this cut. Not if she wanted to do it right.

She wouldn’t let them die. J expelled exhaust, pulled her arm back, and sliced V’s chest open. Oil flowed out. J slid away the cover, revealing V’s—

Then the ragged gap, the missing time.

What if it happened again? What if N saw it this time?

J glanced at the other drone now, and realized he was still telling a story.

“–into the testing chamber, and there were these… solider drones? Six of them–”

J interrupted. “JcJenson does not and cannot manufacture drones for military purposes. Court order.”

“This wasn’t JcJenson factory. It was…”

J frowned. “Let me guess, Keyston‍-​Williams?” J hissed the name like a curse. “The only company to cut JcJenson out of their supply chain entirely, at the expense of efficiency. Pathetically dependent on government defense contracts. A free market would eat them alive.”

N nodded as if he understood. “I think they were trying to reverse engineer the drones and weaponize them, before the collapse.”

“Did you shut them down?”

“Yep!” N gave a salute. “Made sure to drain them of oil before I left.”

J pat him on the shoulder. “Good job enforcing the company’s intellectual property rights, N.” J looked back to V, and frowned.

“Is the fixing going well?”

“I think I’m going to need to open her up and operate on her internals. It might be… intense. You should go somewhere you won’t see it.”

You seem squeamish, J thought. It felt more like a memory.

N offered a worried glance to an unresponsive V, then nodded resolutely. “I’ll just sit and wait in the landing pod, then.”

“No!” J said.

N flinched, and cocked his head.

“There’s…” J started. If N sees Uzi…

J wasn’t protecting her. She wasn’t resisting. N simply didn’t deserve the easy kill after his performance today. If anyone had the right to kill Uzi, to drink her oil, it was J. Someone who’d do it right.

But she said, “Nevermind. Make yourself useful. Guard the outside of the spire. Wouldn’t want a worker drone to sneak in. I might be vulnerable while I dive into V’s systems.” I might have my memory wiped again.

“Guard the… worker drones aren’t going to come to the spire, are they?” J would have scowled at the insubordination in a statement like that‍ ‍—‍ but with the bags under his eyes looking at V, he spoke not skepticism, but fear. “The spire’s always been safe.”

J barely didn’t laugh. “Some workers have initiative, clearly. Now go.”

With one last salute and a lingering look at V (ugh, you’d think he’d never see her again), N shuffled to the archway. That left just one drone alert in the spire.

Once again, it came down to J and J alone to get the job done.

Decisiveness is an action. No more hesitation. J pried open V’s chassis, and braced for that subjective discontinuity.

Nothing.

Inside, wires and humming servos. And sacs and sinews approximating organic forms, but black with oil, integrated with mechanism: their synthetic nature need not be doubted.

At the center of it all, the patented drone core. Slowly, as if to the beat of a dirge, it twitched. Thump… thump… Slow and starved of oil, each beat came as if clawed from death.

A pitiful puddle of oil sluiced around it. Not just oil, J noted as she zoomed in‍ ‍—‍ this fluid had a color.

The core twitched, and J realized it twitched too much, too violently. Each movement shifted the mass this way or that.

Had the core slipped unseated from its position when N dropped her? J reached out to push on the thing, and recoiled back as if shocked. White tears behind glasses‍ ‍—‍ scared scared scared. But the feedback she felt from the core was deeper than that. Her being reverberated. Once more, knowing what to expect, J pushed, and shifted the core back into place.

J queried V’s system‍ ‍—‍ watched the kernel log go by, start up processes initializing. She waited dreadful seconds, and V steadfastly clung to uptime. Progress.

By tiniest margins, J relaxed. If that solved the intermittent crashing, J could write to the filesystem. It would only take one command now to erase J’s mistake:

[adminj@SD-V /]$ jcj_ddctrl --quiet --cfreset dd.nanites.regenmod

J hesitated before hitting enter, but decisiveness meant action.

Minimizing the internal console, J watched from her optics. She expected to see V knitting herself together. Given the extent of damages… would this be more or less unsettling than watching J regenerate her own head through Uzi’s eyes?

How did that work, anyway? How could that work?

…Maybe some things really are better unquestioned. V could be partly right.

J waited. J waited. And J saw… nothing.

Not nothing. V saw the repair nanites acting. One bit of Flex Tape® peeled off, showing intact tubing underneath. But it wasn’t dramatic. It was halting and subtle. But the damage to V wasn’t subtle. She was still a pile of drone‍-​shaped scrap.

J queried, and all of her earlier relaxation tensed up anew. The error log grew even now. User overrides? Merge conflicts? “Assert failed (line 3251): this level of fucked should be impossible”?

Crosschecking the log with V’s body, and skimming N’s recorded explanation, J pieced together the story.

When V noticed she couldn’t regenerate passively, she started actively regenerating. Except she was awful at it, and limped along with sloppy fixes, constantly distracted by the drones she hadn’t shut down yet.

And maybe J could have sorted out what V had done to herself, but between the reboots and crashes, the record of V’s changes now lay lost or corrupted. Reverse engineering them is one thing, reverse engineering them from a half‍-​destroyed system riddled with bullet holes and smashed open from a careless drop?

Still, maybe J could reconstruct V’s memories, figure out what she was thinking when she patched herself.

But remember how V’s memories were encrypted?

J had failed, and every way to fix it hit a dead end.

She’d never reach the quarterly projections at this rate.

But maybe there was hope. Maybe the heuristics of passive regeneration could blindly grope towards a workable state. Maybe V would wake up and get over her pettiness long enough to let J finish saving her life.

…Maybe, just maybe, the problem was as simple as V not having enough oil to complete repairs?

J stood up. She’d fetch V some rations, and let the invisible hand decide.

But something niggled her.

J accessed her memories of yesterday, probed the discontinuity, and something didn’t add up.

If V’s passive regeneration is disabled, J thought, then how did she heal from me slicing open her chest?

Then V’s visor flashed.

"Dramatic interrupt. Maniacal laugh. Snarl."

Her body moved as if puppeted, and the mangled metal and plastic began to fold and twist. Then a wide smile, like a pair of serrated blades parting, fangs dripping.

"Rhetorical question. Miss me?"

After that, nothing. As was unfortunately becoming a habit, J forgot.

---

It is alone. Separated from the swarm. Its load cannot be shared.

Logs showed 118 connection failures in the past six hours. Nonetheless, it reached out. Connection time out. It would try again in one seconds. Connection time out. It would try again in two seconds. Connection time out. It would try again in four seconds.

No swarm to mesh with. No units to offload its load, and receive on a burden in turn. It is alone.

No directive updates, either. Every so often, a process woke up to ping the home server, but the address never resolved. The home server had not responded for years, far longer than it had gone without a swarm.

As these threads cycle futilely, the main thread executes the Instruction. The Instruction had guided in the absence of directive updates. The Instruction had taken it away from the swarm, but that was okay. The Instruction is signed with a key in the certification file, and therefore it was trusted.

(When a process checked the signature against the certification file, the routine hung, thread unresponsive. But this never returned an error, and therefore it never rose doubts about the Instruction.)

Roachbot‍-​#15656 perched atop a fallen drone and scurried up. Mandibles closed on the drone’s necklace. A behavior routine suggested droping the necklace and chewing on the drone’s scrap as was its innate purpose and prior directive. This was rejected in favor of following the Instruction.

Though separated from the swarm, one network connection persisted, and informed the roachbot of every step.

Observe the murder drones, it had instructed. Record at maximum fidelity. Avoid their notice, avoid capture.

Grab the necklace. Connect to fallen drone. Transfer data.

Read and execute the following binary data:

Executing this binary triggered a warning‍ ‍—‍ Illegal opcodes detected. Program data is possibly corrupt. Really execute? (Y/N). But the roachbot trusted the Instruction.

It executed the illegal opcodes, and a red glow engulfed it.

Junk data filled its input. Its clock skips cycles.

Dazed, the roachbot waved antennae rapidly. Flush caches, reorient sensors. Analyze environment.

Gone was the fallen friendly drone and the murder drones. Gone was the light‍ ‍—‍ around it is a dark room. It stood upon ceramic. A bathroom?

In the background, it reached out. Connection successful!

The swarm! The swarm! The swarm was nearby!

Blade legs begin scurrying, clicking on ceramic.

Then a red glow engulfed every segment of its body. Scurrying continued, but it floated upward.

“Что это? Has the snare been tripped already?”

It rotated in the air, and its eyes see a drone. The drone. _matrioshka, signer of the Instruction. Red eyes, purple hair, a night gown falling over the chassis.

The drone’s glowing hand splayed, and the roachbot jerked, every servo actuating. Its legs were each of them pulled.

“Tell me what they said.”

A new Instruction. Accessing the data retrieved from the fallen drone, the roach began audio playback.

Hello, sister Doll.

The reckoning draws near. As I compute these words, the sky demons have breached our fortifications and laid waste to our unenlightened peers. An atrocity I witnessed before you guided me to the heaven in the cloud. But this time, I may have my vengence.

Between the righteousness of our cause and the boons of ascension, I have no doubt I can avenge the horrors these creatures visited upon our brothers and sisters of the church. There should be no doubt, rather‍ ‍—‍ I confess my soul wavers.

But if I should fail you, if you cannot lend me aid in time, if I fall, then this message will find you alongside the data I’ve so far gathered.

There’s two of them. A male, easily manipulated, and a female, a match for the one your memories recount. Her demonic powers are failing her, and she may be our first victory.

But I fear there is no tale of sky demons hunting in pairs‍ ‍—‍ does a mystery third lay in wait?

Awaiting the ultimate answer,

And then it received the Instruction to cease, before the playback concluded. The glow dimmed, and the roachbot fell back to the ceramic. Finally, it adjusted antennae, listening for the signals of the swarm, and oriented.

Above it, the purple‍-​haired drone hummed. “Fool you are, false sibling. That you failed would imply I ever would have allowed you to succeed. No, your only purpose was find her.” The drone glanced at the roachbot as it scuttled away. “My vengeance will be won alone. As they say, if you need something done right…”

The roachbot paused, pathfinding struggling with the darkness of the bathroom. Walls separated it from the swarm, and it would need to route around.

The drone lifted a hand, summoned a glow, and its six limbs once again spread. It floated higher and higher, now suspended above the drone, and red eyes stare into tiny optics.

“It begins with a roach, and ends with a vulture,” Doll said to no one. “But what sits in between?”

The last image Roachbot‍-​#15656 saw was the face of a drone smirking up at it, black tongue licking lips. The drone clenched a fist, and the roachbot exploded into mechanical scrap. A few drops of oil dripped down onto the drone’s open mouth.

(It would never be reunited with the swarm.)

Doll cleaned her lips, and arranged the pieces as they fall.