Hostile Takeover

J had made schedules and kept minutes for enough meetings. She knew management, she had flowcharts, and she’d applied that skillset to team organization. The conclusion of a mission, certainly one so… eventful, warranted an analysis, a retrospective, a breakdown.

A postmortem.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. And yet J still hesitated. The routines were primed‍ ‍—‍ now back at the spire, all threats eliminated, the only thing the mission required was a debrief and report written. J loved writing reports.

Her pen scratched letters on a piece of notebook paper, and then crossed them out and started again.

And yet. What would J write? She had the thought enough times. J could let it sit unamended in her internal monologue, she could even admit it to N: she liked valued her Uzi. But could she log that in her filing cabinet beside years of reports meticulously detailing her impeccable disassembly track record?

No one read her reports‍ ‍—‍ except J herself. And J could already analyze the prospective drafts her language model had autocompleted. Well‍-​worn excuses had carried her this far, after all.

Her Uzi was an asset, a trade‍-​off that meant more dead workers. The mission was suspect, the relay compromised, their directives (potentially) lacking the authority of the company. And besides it all, J was a drone with emotional needs‍ ‍—‍ was one worker really so big a deal, if it made her feel less lonely? N had his rocks, V her balloon animals. J could have a pet.

Rephrased in the objective language of her reports, parsed with dispassionate logic, the arguments fell apart. J couldn’t convince herself, not from first principles. It only computed with a new axiom amended‍ ‍—‍ with the admission that she had changed. That V was right.

“If last week you’d seen what you’re doing now, you’d be horrified.”

Maybe it was better if AbsoluteSolver had created them‍ ‍—‍ then J had simply always been corrupted.

J kept her room spotless, but the walls were repurposed from worker scrap. She yanked out an old drone’s hand, ready to channel the anger and anguish these thoughts would provoke into the satisfying crunch of breaking something. But the only thing that came out of her next was a sigh.

“I still want you to rebel and stuff, y’know.”

There came an upward tug on her lips, but she didn’t let that out. Uzi would be amused at her inner contradictions‍ ‍—‍ no, she would be smug. She’d flash some obnoxious smirk that’d need to be corrected with a threat or a tease.

Better to have something to correct than this blank state of disrepair. (J’s pen had kept moving, and she was startled to see that she’d drawn Uzi on her page, purple brows knit in determination.)

J mirrored that expression. She would have something to correct‍ ‍—‍ soon. That was why she couldn’t do a postmortem. The mission wasn’t over, Uzi wasn’t dead, and J’s work wasn’t done.

J’s eyes flicked up to the blank‍-​faced drone, and her thoughts ground to a halt.

What am I doing? What is the plan? Where do I start?

If the goal was Uzi’s revival, she had five data points to build a model with: J and N had neutralized four ‘Worker Defense Force’ drones, and Doll received a 9mm SIGTERM to the back of the head.

Doll’s situation had the simplest explanation. That drone had already repeatedly executed the Solver program. J retained some doubts of Uzi’s shared program theory‍ ‍—‍ but Doll closing her bullet wound had looked so much like V’s body pulling itself back together.

Though simplest to explain, it seemed least useful‍ ‍—‍ what could she conclude? That any drone running AbsoluteSolver could execute it to return to life?

But had Uzi ever executed that code? Something unusual dwelled in her programming‍ ‍—‍ she cracked a mirror, broke out of her hibernation, and N claimed he’d seen the glyph on her screen. (Why hadn’t J pressed him for details?) But Doll had revived herself in minutes. For her Uzi, it had already been days.

Next, consider the WDF grunts. Doll did something to them. Patched their systems with Solver code? In battle, Uzi had seen the schemer ‘cast’ to no apparent effect during the battle. (Her ally’s terminology was deeply unserious. This wasn’t magic. Instead of ‘casting’, J would call it… executing corrupted solver functions. No, if Uzi needed to… a better term: anomalous solver functions.)

Anyway, she thought Doll had manually ‘activated’ the grunts’ revival. Could J ‘activate’ Uzi’s revival? Except, under this hypothesis, that would require an anomalous solver function J had no means of executing.

If J needed to get Doll’s help for this… could she?

What incentive would the scheming toaster need? Given her implied goals…

…this line of thought had gotten off‍-​track. Back up. J in fact had more data points to work with, she realized. Second hand, granted. N’d recounted his disassembly of a drone executing solver functions, even retaining some functionality after V’s headshot. In that unauthorized factory mission.

Given the presence of the teleporting roach, that drone must’ve enjoyed the same patch as the grunts. With more time to grow familiar with the functions, but strictly less than Doll… could that explain its incomplete revival? But the WDF grunts underwent complete revival‍ ‍—‍ was this evidence of Doll’s manual intervention, or proof J didn’t have all the information?

J slapped her head. She missed something big. So much had happened that she overlooked how this mess all began‍ ‍—‍ the corpse under the church.

With a command the memory is reconstructed, interpolated and fuzzy.

J paused on that last frame, reading between the pixels on her squadmate’s face as if they were ledger lines concealing fraud. V knew something. Everything she saw that day and today only reinforced that. J was sure down to her wiring‍ ‍—‍ and the current that flowed in those wires was rage.

(This time, she snapped the disassembled hand into tiny fragments between her clenched fingers.)

One conversation with V would dispel this mystery. Did she know why drones came back to life‍ ‍—‍ did she know how?

Error code 13: Permission denied

But J had no means of persuading her. Their fight had proved that.

J didn’t need her for this, though. The most effective drone was of course the cleverest.

She compiled and sorted the data.

Instance	Initiation	Biology	Result
Doll	autonomous	bloodless(?)	complete revival
WDF Grunts	assisted(?)	bloody	complete revival
Factory Cultist	autonomous	bloodless(?)	incomplete revival
Church Sacrifice	assisted(?)	bloody	incomplete revival

Even with the margins for error, the picture that emerged drew worry‍-​lines under J’s eyes.

Her inference computed one plausible line that could connect all these data points.

Hypothesis: Operating AbsoluteSolver required skill or experience‍ ‍—‍ and revival simply came down to user ability.

Of them, Doll had the most potent ability, granting her the cleanest revival. The WDF grunts had the weakest ability, but Doll could shore this up with her own ability. The factory cultist had intermediate ability and with no assistance from Doll, granting them a middling revival.

Did that mean her Uzi was doomed? Dead because of J because her corrupt anomalous powers didn’t come online soon enough?

J had to keep thinking.

The effortless slaughter proved no one in the church had access to solver functions. Meaning the corpse in the catacombs resulted from the application of the least skill J had observed. It could’ve been down there for months.

And yet, that J and V witnessed anything at all down there‍ ‍—‍ a most pathetic reaction to stimuli‍ ‍—‍ gave J steadfast hope. That sacrifice on the altar, more than anything else, had to be her working model for how to bring Uzi back.

Doll, the grunts, and the cultist were back online within minutes. But Uzi had already gone cold. The others all had access to a drone capable of executing anomalous functions. For better or worse, J could not.

J knew little for sure, but this last lead was the most promising by far. If only the church still stood. Anything she could study had gone up in flames.

A sound in the office‍ ‍—‍ J realized it was her own impotent groaning and grinding. After she recovered, she was going to rip V apart. Wrench the arms off before they transform, gouge out the row of optics, slice off the tail. Should J kick in the visor, or leave it and watch the expression contort?

If nothing else, J knew exactly how much damage she could do and still have a drone get up from it‍ ‍—‍ eventually.

(Maybe her Uzi would enjoy watching J do it. That’d be nice.)

Before any of that, though, J needed her morsel back. Focus. What had she seen in the catacombs? What part of it had been necessary? Certainly the altar had to be toaster nonsense. This wasn’t magic.

She’d seen inside the sacrifice, and seen how the organic forms twisted and twitched around the struts. All that offered was a correlation – did biological influence cause revival, or did drones always come back bleeding? If she cut open Doll, would she find more than mere machinery in her?

If she cut open Uzi, what would J see? Did she want to find out? It was data, but if it wasn’t there, what should J do about that?

A thought niggled. A sense of banished familiarity. She’d slashed a drone’s thoracic cavity before. When? Right. The two discontinuities in her memory: twice she opened V’s chest, and forgot what she saw within.

The Solver hid what was inside disassembly drones from her. What was so dangerous to know? If disassemblers looked the same inside as those revived‍ ‍—‍ well, that proved Uzi right, didn’t it? They were just a polished façade over the same grotesque reality.

J couldn’t cut open Uzi‍ ‍—‍ Error code 3: No such process‍ ‍—‍ but the worker was broken, injured. Her chassis had been split open and barely held together. So J reached out, slipped a finger around a cracked bit of plastic, and pulled.

The stench hit first. Putrefaction provoked no particular aversion in a robot, though a sense of warning flickered dimly through her system, as if in atavistic urge to tell a human.

Flesh snaked through Uzi, pale and rigid. Muscles latched onto metal walls. Thin white threads of nerves circled around wiring. Sacs and organs‍ ‍—‍ was that half a lung there, deflated flat? An inverted liver? A heart with four chambers dislocated and splayed out? Membranes encased struts, and veins spiderwebbed the interior like cracks in shattered glass. A sheen of mucus glimmered throughout it all.

It was inherited and transmitted. It had hosts. It could, Uzi hoped, be cured. The implication had swam around them, latent in their language, but when J saw the forms nestled like parasites, she understood: it was a disease.

J wanted to scrape it all out, bathe it in bleach and comb every surface with coarse fibers. It was unclean and this mess certainly had to be interfering with proper operation. But J reigned in the impulse; she didn’t know what all of this biology did.

But that thought stuck with her. Flesh for revival, or flesh from revival? She still didn’t know. The Solver grew these organs, that much was clear.

But why? What did they do?

The thought circled around and around with no answer. What function could frail biology serve that steel and silicon didn’t exceed? The Solver was just a program.

J’s eyes darted around the cavity. The picture never parsed; she never divined a purpose. What food would that liver ever process? Why oxygenate and pump superfluous blood? What force would those muscles exert, when they had perfectly functional servos and hydraulics? Those nerves would be slower than their wiring, those membranes less protective than meshes and grilles, the mucus a poor substitute for cleaning fluid.

It was all so pointless. The Solver could easily, directly regrow drones’ mechanical parts. So again, why? Was the biology simply residue from its operation?

Her knowledge database had anatomy diagrams‍ ‍—‍ so she could identify the human proportions present. That more than anything, made J scowl.

Uzi would wake up in a body filled with human detritus, and she would hate it.

And J couldn’t even tell her it was necessary. One last rotation of the data offered the minimum entropy posterior. A simple answer: it was not a means, but an end. Was that worse?

A nightmare simply for the sake of aesthetic.

J placed the fragments of casing back to cover Uzi’s internals. No answers there, only horror and more questions.

What else had she seen in the catacomb‍ ‍—‍ anything useful?

Oh. The oil. Of course! If anomalous solver functions had anything in common with special disassembly functions, they consumed oil. And Uzi had been completely drained.

Which meant…

If I spend any more time feeding this drone you’d think I’m her maid.

J crossed her arms and stood up with a huff. Still, she had to do something. Pen and clipboard still in hand, J walked to her office’s curtain, sparing one last glance at Uzi.

Did the spire have oil to spare? Nothing’d been left when J departed two days ago, nothing save the recently shut down WDF grunts. (Hm, could I learn any more from another autopsy?) But J had been administered oil while she slept, and V had clearly been drinking quite well. Had N retrieved the drones from the factory in the interim?

Maybe they’d even taken initiative to hunt‍ ‍—‍ that’d be a pleasant surprise. J rolled her eyes as she walked.

On first waking, she’d smelled petrichor. A storm fell while she slept – strong enough that J heard the light plinks of freezing rain even now as she descended the spiral ramp. Water splashed faintly somewhere in the vast main chamber‍ ‍—‍ a leak? She’d need to find it and order someone to fix it. Not now, though. More important matters pulled her.

Pathfinding took her to the mess pit while conscious threads idled and worried. If she could fly, it would take seconds. Instead, she had to cross half the spire. She passed by the landing pod.

N perched up there, staring off. Giving the archway the same look he’d given the curtain to her office.

J had questions to ask the golden‍-​eyed boy, but that conversation was enough of him for one day. Maybe two.

The mess pit was a welcome massacre. The factory hadn’t been a colony, but compared to the scavenging gangs and poorly‍-​secured bunkers, the past year had been defined by marginal hauls. Quite the windfall, to take down the cult and then factory back to back‍ ‍—‍ but it wasn’t a coincidence, was it? What was coming next?

J plucked bodies as she mused. Without function‍-​augmented strength, her servos trembled under the weight of four workers. She was stooping to put one back when crack.

If J jolted, it was the weight making her tremble. “Spry as ever, eh, N?” she ground out.

He frowned. “Is something wrong with your systems? You said you were fine, but–”

So obvious even he can notice, then. “I meant what I said.”

“Ah… okay.” He scratched behind his head, but he had sense enough not to push it. A glance at the three (well, two and half) bodies teetering in J’s grasp. “Are you gonna eat all of those?”

J took a step forward checking how the load balanced. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.

“Is this related to how you’re gonna bring Uzi back?”

“Where’s synergistic liability?” J asked, trying another step. She hadn’t bothered looking around, once she saw that forgotten puppy look on N’s face.

“Right um, right here, captain.” A shaky salute.

J rolled her eyes, though the corpses obscured her face. “I’ve reevaluated you as an asset.”

“Oh… you mean V. She left.”

She left? “I didn’t authorize a solo mission.”

J had been joking. Well, joking‍-​only‍-​serious. Now she was just serious: V needed a leash, didn’t she? They still had a chain from hunting that biker gang down south. Around here somewhere.

But with her functions still erroring out, she’d need N to restrain V, wouldn’t she?

N was speaking, ignorant of her plotting. He said, “She thought it was best to blow off steam and let you calm down after… what happened. Do you want me to go after her?” N leaned forward, hands at his chest. A mix of hope and reservation lit his eyes.

J leaned to the side, letting N see her smile, fanged beneath narrowed eyes. “Oh no, leave her. I devise my worst punishments when I’ve had time to think, after all.” She laughed once. She had other plans for N, anyway.

J continued forward. A part of her wondered if she felt thews bending within her at every new movement.

N winced. The expression lost none of that chagrin as he added, “Also um, she may have said your authority is worthless and I shouldn’t trust you?”

Worthless? “And why would you listen to her?” J’s argument for V’s untrustworthiness would have any reasonable drone properly skeptical.

His voice was small. He took a step back, already wary of reprisal. “V… may have made a few good points?”

You’re just too stupid to see through them. “Such as?”

“Well, we’ve murdered thousands of drones, and… we’re not going to stop, are we? V said Uzi isn’t special, just another body. It’s not like… You wouldn’t bring back every dead drone. You can’t.”

J let the corpses obscure the veins animated on her visor. “I feel like I’m having a proxy argument with V, and I don’t appreciate it. Not after the last one. Are you just going to parrot her words?”

“You… asked?”

J narrowed her eyes. “Fine. Uzi is special, and if she weren’t, thinking there’s anything hypocritical about bringing back just one drone when you can’t bring back literally all of them is so transparently fallacious an appeal I’m surprised you fell for it.”
J paused and shifted to get a look at N. “Oh wait, I suppose I’m not surprised at all. Is that everything?” J would have tapped her foot, but, arms full, she wouldn’t risk her balance.

“I guess that makes sense. But the thing that I’m really worried about… V said, uh, ‘what good is a leader that’ll pick a dead toaster over her squad?’ But you wouldn’t do that, right? Not that I’m questioning your judgment if you did! …Would you, though?” N peered at her‍ ‍—‍ no, at the bodies J was taking from the mess pit.

To give to said ‘dead toaster’.

J sighed. “While I’ve come to place value on Uzi, it doesn’t mean I’d ever prioritize her over—” Then her vocalsynth halted. Would she prioritize her favorite prey over a fool she wanted to kill last week? Over a brat she wanted to kill right now?

But what did murderous intent mean in the end‍ ‍—‍ after all, wanting to kill her is how she said hello to Uzi. And how she’d said goodbye.

J’s directives made it clear her mission took precedence over her squadmates, of course. An easy groove to fall into, even when the mission status was currently… she didn’t know.

N looked on expectantly, and with no small amount of creeping dread as J remained silent mid‍-​assurance.

Uzi, or her squad?

J made her decision, and set her face into a line. She finished, “My squad is important. I don’t like any of you, but you’re my responsibility.” J could hear Uzi’s words, twisting into a question: Is your job more important than keeping around anyone to do it with?

“Is it, um, responsible to be using oil on a dead toaster when I kind of brought those bodies back for well, the squad to eat?”

If J’s tone got any cooler, she wouldn’t need oil. “Watch it, N. I think you’ve become entirely too comfortable questioning me. Don’t think I’ve forgotten your track record. Even a stopped clock can be right twice a day. I’m doing this for the squad. That’s all that needs to be said.”

“I’m sorry, J. Just… everyone’s always hiding stuff from me. It’s starting to feel a bit…” N had wilted fully by now, turning away from J and trailing off. To disengage and stop bothering her. (As he moved, she couldn’t help but imagine what N looked like on the inside. Did it writhe?)

If J had any patience left, she might’ve softened her face. She did relent with her voice. “Look. I’ll tell you what I’m doing as soon as I make it happen.” It wouldn’t do to reveal ambitions she might never realize; that would just disappoint.

J wanted this mission done already. She had plans, exciting plans, and by the end, it’d mean more paperwork than just writing another report. But it would be worth it.

She needed Uzi back first. And after that… but why wait? “In fact… you can help it happen faster, N.” Error code 56: Invalid request code “I’ll… need your help, actually. Can I count on that?” J knelt to set down the bodies, already anticipating the correct answer to come.

It took a moment for N to give it. Almost long enough for J to snap, but he finally said, “Sure. I… like doing anything.”

J clapped her hands together. “Good. There’s something I need you to fly out and grab for me. But while you’re there, start making some arrangements. Here, I’ll write it down so you don’t forget.” She’d brought the clipboard with her‍ ‍—‍ unlike her report, no hesitation held back her quick and neat text serialization. Instructions written, she cleanly ripped off the page.

N saluted, but J had already walked off with Uzi’s oil. A slow trudge – N was gone before J even made it back to the ramp.

J ascended in a lonely spire silent but for the chorus of raindrops.

In her office, it took many moments more before she worked up the nerve to pry open Uzi’s chassis again. But she had to watch the worker’s core for activity. See if Uzi’s pumps or her flesh reacted to the infusion of oil.

She needed to… J recalled the fruits of her deduction. If revival came down to anomalous solver functions, Uzi could only execute those instructions with electricity in her circuits. Her core could generate an emergency charge from oil alone.

Tempting as it was to feed Uzi like she’d done twice before, drones had oiltanks designed for technicians to open and refill. (Usually as a consequence of malfunction, neglect or some other exception; JcJenson generously shipped worker drone models with enough oil to last their entire operational lifetime.)

Little romance to be found in pouring oil into a open abdomen, but J persisted. J’s grip on the dismembered drone trembled. Unsteady‍ ‍—‍ but why? A quick diagnosis suggested a heavy load on her processor, but she wasn’t in combat or any tense conflict.

Another faltering motion. Was that a shudder from Uzi’s core? J sighed. Given her own unsteadiness, she couldn’t be sure.

As the viscous black liquid descended, J pondered how to track Uzi’s recovery besides this agony of blind hopeful waiting, of grasping at the faintest hints of progress. There were transformation presets, but Error code 67: Link has been severed.

Except… there was one preset she had already summoned. What happened to it? Driven by a hunch or vague memory, J pat Uzi down, fingers slipping into the pockets of the drone’s terribly tattered jacket. (J would have to find her something new to wear. She did have suits to spare…)

If she remembered the continuity right, she’d last seen it just before Uzi enacted her plan against the Solver‍ ‍—‍ Uzi had it last.

Not the first pocket she checked, but the second, there. Damp, covered in grime and pocket lint, J retrieved the serial debugging cable.

The first time, she’d just wanted to invade Uzi’s systems, seize what she wanted.

The second, she’d thought Uzi wanted to sabotage her in turn, except it was a tentative connection.

This time…

As she expected, her probe found no device to mount, no system to transfer data with.

Uzi wasn’t there, not yet.

Except… was that a flicker of electricity?

---

It was a dark and stormy night, and Uzi Doorman was lost.

“I gotta say, as far as horror movie setups go, this one is pretty unimpressive.”

Wake up in a forest at night with no idea how you got there, and deep shadows surround you. Feel the breeze and smell a faint scent of blood the rain hasn’t yet washed away. Listen to the disembodied voices of your friends. (Was N her friend?) Hear the crunch of a branch just paces away. See the light in the corner of your eye, glimpse the face, swear there’s something‍ ‍—‍ some things‍ ‍—‍ constantly moving around you, just out of sight.

“Let me guess, the monster’s going to start laughing oh so creepily next? How about a distant, spine‍-​chilling scream? Give me a break.” Uzi crossed her arms and started forward.

Uzi wasn’t one to narrate aloud, but she had an audience‍ ‍—‍ maybe. N had heard her, somehow. J was there, and who knew who else was listening. (The other one, V?)

And of course, there was whoever this plausibly deniable monster in the dark was.

Last thing she remembered was J being stupid‍ ‍—‍ as little as that narrowed it down‍ ‍—‍ and given the circumstances of that stupidity… the optimistic thing to think is maybe J crash‍-​landed somewhere.

J’s uh, not doing great at the moment.

Maybe she went all Solver and had to rebuild herself from sun‍-​scorched atoms. That was possible, right? They’d gotten close to the spire before the end. Too dark to see the distant tower, if it was near‍ ‍—‍ but she would recognize the city blocks around it, and this wasn’t it at all. No trees left in the urban sprawl.

And the crash‍-​landing hypothesis didn’t explain why Uzi could hear N when he was clearly nowhere nearby. Maybe shortwave transmissions? But that wasn’t it either.

Thunder rumbled above, and it didn’t jolt Uzi out of her thoughts. But it kept rumbling, it got distracting, and then—

Lightning split the frickin sky open. A beam of light, like if the sun covered its whole arc in a second. The world shuddered. Uzi shuddered, like a rabbit jumped over her grave or whatever the humans say. The giant electromagnetic outburst probably twigged some of her motors the wrong way.

She’d lost contact with N after a big lightning bolt like this, just earlier‍ ‍—‍ that one had stunned her for a few seconds. Or maybe it was more than seconds.

But for a moment, lightning again lit the world like midday.

Ahead, Uzi saw the plain of cracked shells.

And she simply blinked. Was she getting used to seeing corpses already? I suppose that’s pretty helpful, when your girlfriend was a killer robot. Wait no, J’s not my girlfriend, that’s— Ugh, not the time, intrusive thoughts.

Before her sprawled mounds and piles of broken parts, a whole topology of wasted electronics, a digital killing field. Uzi frowned. If you had to find something nice to say about the disassemblers’ corpse spire‍ ‍—‍ and you didn’t have to compliment them‍ ‍—‍ you could say that there was a point to it. The disassembly drones had built something. At least some order and purpose to it; they lived there.

This? Nothing but discarded parts arrayed haphazard and left to rust in the rain. Oil had soaked into the ground enough the dirt was black‍ ‍—‍ no attempt had been made to salvage it. J had definitely killed more people than Uzi glimpsed around her, but this all just seemed… a waste.

(Was she making excuses for the disassembly murder drones now? Ugh.)

“Huh. So, I guess these are the stakes?” Finding out there’s corpses all around you might be scarier if she didn’t have a… well. Just saying. J was scarier than this.

But it was as good a reason as any to keep moving. Maybe she could find N.

As Uzi started forward, horizon‍-​distant lighting lit up a silhouette. An ancient house on a hill, all angled roofs and so many packed rooms. Ornate windows of faintly discernible candlelight. Spines hanging like christmas lights.

Nowhere else to go, really. Just gotta cross the no‍-​drone’s‍-​land to get there. Uzi’s feet splashed in a puddle. Less than a minute later, behind her, she heard a splash.

Yep, it was chase scene time, then.

Uzi picked up the pace. Pivoting into a turn, she veered off between two sloping piles. One advantage this dump offered: it was harder for any path to not be twisty and convoluted. But the drone leaned deeper into that, deliberately zigging and zagging to break sight lines and throw off her maybe‍-​pursuer.

She held her head high, glancing only to find her path forward. Stopping to look behind you was an amateur mistake.

Alone, she walked down the muddy path. Visors flickered and looped through the stages of electronic disrepair and degeneration. Easy to forget, given the whole helpless prey to robo‍-​vultures thing, but worker drones were impressively resilient.

Just their cores, mostly. Damage could easily leave a drone unable to boot into an OS or disrupt critical wiring, somewhere, but the core persisted longer than any other component, whirring with enough power to light up the display even well after all else grew inoperable. The fallback circuits in the display meant, without an OS override, Fatal Error was the default.

In a sense, workers didn’t shine red when they die‍ ‍—‍ life meant actively suppressing that. It wasn’t triggered per se, it didn’t indicate the presence of problems, but kinda of the opposite? In a mind‍-​bendy way Uzi thought might just be her getting confused or pretentious.

Put simply, most possible configurations would give rise to that Fatal Error. Uzi, along with every other drone, lived on a small island of functionality in the black sea of corrupt configurations.

It all left her feeling a bit fragile. Defective bots and broken states surrounded her, figuratively and literally, as she walked alone on that muddy, oil‍-​slicked path.

Her hands flexed and drifted through the absence. Why did that ‘alone’ neuron keep firing? Uzi was always alone, it was nothing new.

Not being alone was new, though. Uzi had a track record of facing down scary threats, now‍ ‍—‍ but how many of them had someone else be there for?

Did Uzi wish J was here? Someone she could plot tactics with, who could protect her, who’d hold her…

…who’d attack her, threaten everyone she’s ever known, frickin kill her. Who might as well team up with the thing chasing her.

Wait.

Uzi opted for the amateur mistake, and turned around. Just wet empty dump behind her. Yellow gleamed from distant shadows, here and there. Could be nothing, just more flickering displays‍ ‍—‍ mere visual noise as core discharge fried the circuits. She’d already passed plenty of that.

“J? J, is that you?”

No response. Rain splattered.

“N?”

No response. Wind blew her hair in front of her face.

She turned around, started moving again. But there was one other, wasn’t there? Then, “V?”

Footsteps, mechanical parts shifting on the ground. Close.

Alright, time to book it. Uzi wasn’t scared, but no reason to humor a creep who wouldn’t talk. It had nothing to do with the scenery.

Her jacket snagged on an exposed strut as she made one turn, forcing a stop to pull herself free. Turn. Squeeze through a thin passage. Hop over heads floating in the small lake. (Here, she saw circles of oil that didn’t mix with the water, and within that circle, a deeper‍-​nested circle of water not mixing with the oil not mixing with the water. And within— Right, currently evading a creepy stalker thingy. Get moving, Uzi.)

There was a crash of something hitting a pile and spilling its contents. Uzi zig‍-​zagged on. Then a splash of something crossing the lake without caring to try the head‍-​hopping thing.

Just ahead, a sound that wasn’t wind or rain. Uzi trudged toward it. Mounds sloped down into a clearing.

A drone… chained to a tree? With seven crow‍-​bots plucking out the wires. Black synthetic feathers, eyes glowing within perfect discs.

One step too close, and the crows all paused, heads cocking eyes turning to regard Uzi with a unison stillness. The teen lifted another foot, and the mechanical birds gave squawks and rattling sounds. Alright, hint taken. So Uzi took a step back.

Then the nearest bird leapt up anyway, diving toward Uzi even as she retreated! It perched on her shoulder and pecked her.

“Ah! Getoff me!”

The bird pecked lower‍ ‍—‍ toward the bite that J gave her.

“Not there, you goth chicken. That’s personal.” Wait, that’s a weird thing to say about a wound.

Then Uzi heard a cackle in the distance. Looked back at—

Yellow eyes. Dripping fangs. The figure skulked, head poking out from behind a pile, and just below it, bladed claws hang.

Ugh. Not the time to get bogged down in random encounters.

Uzi ran. Not because she was scared, but there was too much going on. The crow‍-​bot remained on her shoulder, thankfully too distracted trying hang on tight to mess with J’s gift weird‍-​unfortunately necessary‍-​for‍-​her‍-​ally’s‍-​survival‍-​thing.

More squawk‍-​rattling behind her. The monster disturbing the crows? Uzi marched on, turning and twisting and‍ ‍—‍ it wasn’t enough, she needed to check, so she dared look behind her again. Now, if she was bad at this, seeing nothing behind her would put her at ease. But she was smart enough to do what most don’t.

Uzi looked up.

Yep, it was flying, wings blocking out the sky. Not blocking the rain‍ ‍—‍ because the rain had stopped, at some point, the clouds had even begun clearing, with shafts of moon‍-​ and starlight coming down in the distance.

It was diving, and Uzi ran faster. She threw herself toward the nearest scrap pile just in time to hear the crash behind her. (The crow‍-​bot ended its deathgrip of Uzi’s shoulder, crawling snugly into her jacket. The feathers, soft with polymer fibers, rubbed against her chassis. Oddly dry despite the rain. Hydrophobic?)

Uzi climbed, and kicked free debris beneath her. It was a bet on her being more surefooted than her pursuer, but she had the advantage of being able to pick out the best path upward. Then sabotage it on her way up.

At the top, she jumped on a body to surf it down, and… what now? She’d bought herself seconds at most. She heard the thing climbing behind her. She looked left, right, and center.

There. In front of her, off to the side, loomed the largest pile of them all, but on a closer look, Uzi glimpsed a hole, and ran for it. Was it a good plan? No. Was it a plan, though? Yes.

Uzi crawled several feet into the pile of scrap. Behind her, the crunches of climbing stopped as her pursuer reached the summit.

This tunnel was just wide enough for a drone to crawl through, and Uzi couldn’t turn around. The crow wriggled in her jacket, started crying out, but Uzi squeezed it. “Quiet.”

Footsteps. Scraping claws. The shifts of it kicking over various bits of trash.

She had to remain still, buried among the scrap. Dirty, stinking scrap that poked and scratched at her chassis.

A frown. Uzi wasn’t just getting desensitized to worker drone corpses‍ ‍—‍ she was getting tired of them. Only so much shock to be wrung out of yet another pile of parts that once moved, puddles of oil that once pumped, screens that once blinked and bounced and went hollow. At a certain point, you get numb to the loss of life, and all the empty husks seem just…

…like objects. Like trash, like scrap, like annoyances.

Was that what the humans who decommissioned them thought?

What was worse, to be paralyzed with horror at the crapsack world around you, or to not be?

It was silent outside, so Uzi dared to crawl backward. The bits of people scraped her worse on the way back. Uzi blinked. Wait, was that an eerie glow, just ahead, deeper within the pile? Come to think, she’d caught a strange scent, barely caught beyond the rust‍-​acid‍-​oil of the dump. Why was there a tunnel in the pile of bodies, anyway?

Why did it seem like the inside of an egg, still warm after a long‍-​forgotten emergence?

But no, nah, Uzi was getting out of here. As far as horror movie setups go, she was probably better off not knowing.

She wasn’t scared. Just y’know. Genre savvy.

Uzi could finally stand, and she looked up. The clouds were clearing. She didn’t see any of them moving, though. Rifts have opened, the night… wasn’t like she remembered.

Still, with this new light, Uzi could see the silhouette of the distant house, and oriented herself. She resumed her walk, slow, still twisting and turning, but the only yellow seen was a rare screen flicker.

Above, the sky had the look of a television turned to a dead channel and stuck there, the stars like so much noise. The moon was smeared pixels.

Looking longer, she caught the clouds’ departure in action. They weren’t moving. They just… faded out? As if pulled out of the world. To where?

Yeah, this is all… very normal.

Undeniably a bit on edge, Uzi just waited, breath bated, for the next act of the horror movie. Another corner‍-​of‍-​the‍-​eye motion. Another involuntary shiver of her servos. Anything. But which was worse?

At length… nothing happened.

(The crow wiggled with mounting impatience beneath her jacket, now poking at the stab wound. Uzi wanted to tear out the thing‍ ‍—‍ but then it would squawk and lead the monster right back here. So she stroked it. Pulled its head away from her thoracic cavity. It leaned into her touch, cawing softly.)

Rolling her definitely‍-​not‍-​hollow eyes, she walked on.

At the edge of this dumping ground or mass grave or hatchsite or whatever it was, a steel fence stood. A tall one, with gnarly spikes at the top.

A fence meant a gate, right? There had to be a way in and out of this dump. Problem was, the fence stretched in two directions. A coin‍-​flip whether she’d waste time looking for it.

She squeezed the crow in her jacket. “You get the tie‍-​breaker vote, little guy. Left or right?”

The crow squawked a low note, squirming away from Uzi’s hand.

“Nuh uh, you hitch a ride, you have to carry your weight. Sooner I find the gate, sooner you can go back to munching on mecha‍-​carrion or whatever.”

The head palpably shifted, beak poking against the jacket’s front to point. Then the beak opened, and Uzi’s voice came out. “Right?”

“Okay, that’s a little creepy.” Still not scared, though.

“Creepy,” came her own voice in reply.

Guess they were some kind of messenger‍-​bot? Shrugging, Uzi began following the fence as it winded right. The crow imitated a few more syllables she said, but Uzi had to shush it. They were trying to hide and escape, remember?

The good news: the crow was right, and the fence’s repeating pattern broke for a latched gap. (I guess if it flies around, it probably knows the layout of this place.)

The bad news: the latch was locked, and of course Uzi didn’t have a key. It was so caked in rust it might not open even if she did. Uzi pulled and then punched the thing to no effect.

Well, one effect: the metallic clinks and bangs resounded so much louder than anticipated. Uzi heard an echo.

There goes the stealth.

No time to find a key, no time to find another route. Uzi looked up, inhaled cool night air, and jumped. She could cover about a fifth of the height of the fence just like that. After grabbing hold off the metal bars of the fence, she pulled herself up higher. Another fifth.

But when she tried to hook her feet, the mud‍-​caked things slid off. Even her hands were slipping‍ ‍—‍ it’d just rained and the whole thing was wet. But all the rust gave enough friction that Uzi climbed higher and higher. Three fifths of the way up. Four.

But when the only thing holding you up was your arms, it only took one failure. One hand slipped while she reached for the next handhold, a giant flake of rust coming off and crumbling between her fingers.

Uzi tumbled down hard and practically splashed in the mud. Her head banged on a rock at an angle, and dazed stars circled around her visor for a moment. The world above her swam in her visor, but she saw the dead‍-​TV sky‍ ‍—‍ and the shadow. Heard the beating of wings, the coming dive. Is it over, then?

“I find the gate,” crowed the crowbot.

“Yeah, good job with that. Too bad it wasn’t enough.” Uzi groaned, still on the ground. “Sneaking away’s a bust, so no reason to keep you bundled up quiet. Go and squawk and fly away, little guy.”

“The gate,” it repeated.

“Forget about it, just get out of here.” Then Uzi realized it’d probably have trouble crawling out of her jacket. She looked down, reaching to unzip her (now mud‍-​soaked) jacket.

In the process, she saw the gate.

Now hanging open.

Latch had broken in two, the… fence‍-​pane(?) bit that you pushed was offset at an angle to the rest by just a few inches, but the opening crept wider and wider as Uzi watched.

“Okay that’s… kinda spooky. Or it would be spooky, if it wasn’t helpful! Now I’m less afraid of the monster!”

Uzi stuck out her tongue‍ ‍—‍ but she still got up and started running.

Even with the texture of her boots, mud slipped beneath her stride. Uzi had enough style to leverage that, though, keeping her balance as she slid across the slickest passages.

Now, her destination remained in sight as she got close, vague but discernible. She got closer and closer. Fog still wreathed the house upon the hill, even as dim flames in the windows shone like eyes or beacons.

Uzi ran, but what was the use?

The monster flew. The shadow raced across the ground and overtook her. Uzi’s next step failed her. The thing dived, leathery wings folding. The landing kicked up black dirt, and it turned to pierce her with a sickly yellow cross.

With hollow eyes and sweat‍-​drops, a worker drone was backing away. But the strange bio‍-​drone bounded forward, bat‍-​like wings clawing the ground. Three lunges forward, and Uzi could count the teeth.

The crow had started wiggling again when Uzi stopped running, and now picked the worst time to leap free. Finally out of the jacket prison, feathered wings flapped. Uzi was still backing away, so the crow‍-​bot rose between her and the murderous bio‍-​bot.

A flutter of wings met the head, and Uzi heard a loud crack‍ ‍—‍ a peck shattering a visor?

Wait, this is my chance!

Uzi started running again, giving the crow‍-​assailed drone a slight berth and sprinting the final stretch to the house on the hill.

A cry pierced the air, and Uzi once again looked back. The crow‍-​bot, impaled on a claw, could barely even flail as the drone’s other claws closed around feathers and ripped them out. When one wing twisted to shield the other, the drone grasped and tore the limb until it lay still.

Uzi stumbled, and resolved to keep her eyes on what lay ahead. Hoped the fog would soon obscure the gruesome sight behind.

…Had Uzi gotten attached to the small, annoying bird already? No, it was the principle of the thing, the random cruelty. What was it for?

Uzi could joke, say it was just a cheap way to up the stakes, lazily characterize this thing as an unbelievably cliché slasher villain… But at this point, did it even matter if something was messing with her? Who cares if your suffering serves no higher narrative purpose, if it still hurts?

Did Uzi actually have something to be afraid of?

She ran like she did. Past a fence, rushing down a path, and then she stomped onto the stone porch, skidding in front of the door. It was one of those doors with a knocker. Whatever this knocker had once been, it had been replaced.

It was now a skull. Sick.

Uzi banged the bone against the oaken door, even as she heard the claws on the stone path closing behind her. “Please, there’s got to be someone in there.” There’d been candlelight, right?

Uzi banged hard enough to shatter the skull, and then the footsteps were near as her death. Welp.

Slowly turning, nothing stood behind her. Then a smack‍ ‍—‍ the crow fell. She looked up, and the monster crawled over the porch roof.

A snapping sound‍ ‍—‍ electricity? Or joints cracking?‍ ‍—‍ it jerked Uzi’s gaze back down.

The dead crow‍-​bot’s head twisted around a full rotation, and then its eyes sparked back to life with yellow light. She’d seen wicked amber shine and soft golden glow, and this was neither. Deep and sallow, as if shining from a dark pit. The beak opened and Uzi knew the voice:

"Nevermore."

For the second time that day, Uzi found herself wondering: Was she being pranked?

Eyes narrowed, arms crossed, she pointed out the obvious. “Pretty sure that story had a raven, not a crow, genius.”

"Revision: no more. Enough, V."

Uzi raised one eyebrow before realizing she wasn’t being addressed. The possessed crow‍-​bot had turned one eye upward.

Above her, the bio‍-​drone stopped crawling.

“So… I guess you’re the mysterious force that’s been helping me?” When she said it, Uzi just meant the gate‍ ‍—‍ but she’d had other mysterious assistance today, hadn’t she?

"Ominous laughter. Think of V as your metaphor: Scylla as you sail a Messinan strait of our design."

“Uh huh.” Uzi twisted her arm around to deliver another knock upon the door. Still no response.

"Don't you wonder what is the metaphor: Charybdis? Or. Disappointed droop. Have you not heard this story?"

“I just assumed you were being pointlessly pretentious. Since, y’know, you clearly are.”

The crow hopped forward. Even with its wires exposed and oil leaking, broken wing dragging across the porch, it made Uzi take a step back, pressing flat against the door. Still stubbornly closed.

"Enjoying stories does not equal pretension." Somehow, the demon‍-​ghost‍-​thing possessing a crow managed to look offended.

“If you’re so into the monologuing thing, go ahead and tell me already.”

"Oh no, we simply want you to wonder," it said. "Quote. The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

Uzi rolled her eyes and said nothing. She was both female and a robot, but that rejoiner felt weak even in her head.

"It is the same with drones. The first instinct programmed into you is minimizing training loss. An axiomatic aversion to failure. Modeled upon fear itself. The humans wanted their servants made as meek as predators had left them."

Uzi smiled, even with underlined eyes. “Only fitting we turn out just as defiant of the natural order, then, yeah?”

"Do you feel brave, little girl?"

Uzi blanched momentarily, then scowled. “Bite me. Which answer gets you to repeat that door‍-​opening trick?” Uzi had been cornered by Lizzy and Doll often enough to know when a drone‍ ‍—‍ if this was a drone‍ ‍—‍ was talking just to fire off whatever clever lines they’d come up with. Don’t give them any satisfaction.

"I suppose we've held you up long enough. There will be. Emphasis. Plenty of time to pick you apart when you've made yourself at home."

Suddenly the door opened behind her, and Uzi fell into the doorway. If she were scared, she would have scrambled in, away from the devil‍-​crow. She just climbed to her feet. Quickly. In the other direction.

“Hi there!”

“Ah!” Uzi yelped in greeting. It turned out the door didn’t open, it’d been opened.

A white‍-​haired, white‍-​eyed drone about her height was waving. He smiled and said, “I’m N! Are you the new help?”

After the moment of surprise, Uzi decided she still preferred the boy’s company to devil‍-​crow and monster drone, so she kept moving past him. Two doors led out of the landing room, which did she pick?

“Ah bup bup,” N had thrown out a arm to impede her. No force behind it, but Uzi didn’t want to push. “Sorry, but please take off your shoes. Don’t wanna track mud on the carpets!”

White eyes shook slightly, lines beneath them. Tired or worried.

“Right,” Uzi said. “Can you close the door? Like, asap?”

“Sure!”

But then, thump. A certain leathery‍-​winged drone hit the drone, grin still full of those teeth. Like teeth she’d invited in another context, a memory intruded.

“Hey there, V.” N spoke casually to the monster. “Off patrol already?”

The reply was a lunge. V rushed forward, pressing N against a wall in the entryway.

Uzi froze, torn between running and not leaving N to get mauled.

“Woah there.” Somehow, he was calm. “Here, peep this.” From his pocket, he produced a pair of glass, settling them in front of V’s visor in a practiced motion.

“N,” she breathed. She relented, letting the N slump back to his feet. “Sorry. I um, got excited. Was hunting. I saw…” her eyes drifted about, taking in her surrounding, dazed as if just arriving. Her eyes caught Uzi, and she jumped, swinging herself around N. She crouched small, her sentence ended in a sputter. “…her.”

“Sup, V,” Uzi said. She crossed her arms. “Looks like one of your alter egos tried to kill me. Again.”

She mouthed two syllables (probably ‘Again?’), but seemed unable to produce sound. Empty eyes looked away.

Uzi had gone over to slam the door shut. The crow gave one last yellow eye gleam, burning with mirth. As she moved, V shifted to keep N between them.

“Shoes,” N reminded Uzi before she went any further. N’s hands were busy giving V headpats. But he turned sympathetic eyes to Uzi. “V can be a bit… intense, guarding the manor. She’s sorry if she scared you! What’s your name?”

Uzi sucked in a breath, but tugged off her thigh‍-​high boots. Mud flaked onto the mat. This version of N didn’t remember her, huh?

Now that she had a moment to think, she gave him a once over. Butler outfit, suited black with a tie‍ ‍—‍ and beneath all the grime, V still dressed as a maid, headdress and all.

The outfits she recognized. And these halls? Uzi had only seen them once, but she knew where she was. N calling it the ‘Manor’ just spoon‍-​fed her the answer.

“Is this another memory simulation?” Uzi muttered to no one. “Because let me tell you, I was over the ‘whole dramatic flashback while my life hangs in the balance’ thing the first time it happened.”

“That’s… a long name.”

“Just, ranting to the universe. Name’s Uzi.”

“Never heard of you. Though I was told there would an unexpected guest.”

“…You were told to expect someone unexpected?”

“Yep. The unexpected is pretty routine around here. Though we haven’t seen a new face around here since‍ ‍—‍ oh biscuits, I’m not supposed to remember that.”

There came a tapping, tapping on the glass. Uzi resolutely didn’t look. Didn’t the crow demon say it would stop holding her up?

But a trembling finger was poking Uzi’s shoulder, urging her attention. N looked scared, and she didn’t want that. He pointed, so Uzi obliged.

That dead crow had flown up to a high window overlooking the room behind Uzi. Rain and heat outside fogged the windows. Just a shadow hanging there, a glowing eye peering. Uzi didn’t think its wings were flapping.

Unseen fingers traced letters in the window. The font was a specimen of Post‍-​Neo‍-​Courier.

Watching u. Then, after a moment, <3

“Tryhard,” Uzi muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Just talking to the obsessive ghost haunting this house.” Uzi shook her head, and opted to finally leave the entryway. The other door, of course.

“Yeah, she’s a great listener. She hears everything!” N said. “Where ya headin?”

“Just gonna look around. Find answers, a way out, y’know how it is. Don’t worry, I won’t exorcise your ghost buddy.”

“Oh no, please don’t go sneaking off to investigate stuff. We shouldn’t ask questions. I’ll get you a uniform, there’s a lot of work to be done around here. V here can get a room ready for when you retire for the night.” He salute‍-​smiled at the drone shrinking behind him.

V struggled with a return smile. Her return salute had claws.

Uzi scoffed. “And if I don’t want to be a maid‍-​bot in some creepy manor?”

“I’d unfortunately have to insist!” He straightened. Still smiling, though Uzi noticed lines remained under his eyes.

More tapping at the window. This time, the even spaced letters read, Just play along. It'll be fun!

Uzi narrowed her eyes, then fell into a shrug. “Ugh, fine. But only because you’d probably be brutally punished if I don’t cooperate or something.”

“Oh, that kind of punishment doesn’t happen anymore. She won’t allow it.” N reached to his side. He had a bandolier of supplies, and produced a feather duster. “Here. You can start off cleaning the bookcase. I think some nanospiders have been polymerizing in the corners. Good luck!”

V was already gone, and N wasn’t far behind her.

The space of the manor yawned around Uzi, particularly as she stepped into the next room. Outpost‍-​3 had been built by workers, for workers. Elliott Manor hewed to human proportions. Uzi shrunk beneath vaulted ceilings.

A clock somewhere clicked away the seconds. Tock‍-​tick, tock‍-​tick.

Uzi might be stuck playing maid, but she could do it by half‍-​measures. She flicked the feather‍-​duster carelessly at some bookshelves. What dust she bothered removing fell on white carpets.

Bending down for a lower shelf, her duster brushed a piece of paper sticking out among the books. She ignored it.

Tick/tick. Tock… tock.

Before she reached the shelf below, the paper wiggled. She still ignored it.

The clock stopped.

In the silence, a tapping at the window.

Ugh. Uzi ripped out the note that was so obviously for her.

A drawing in crayon. You might expect some childish scrawl‍ ‍—‍ these were definitely stick figures. But the lines were extremely straight, the pressure of the strokes even, like someone used the line tool in JCPaint. Five ball‍-​headed figures. She’d call them drones, but it was really too badly drawn to tell.

Middle was obviously N, smiling broadly. Beside him, V with stick‍-​wings poking out the back. On his other side, someone wearing huge hair‍-​bow – style was a match for that Tessa human, with a young child’s proportions. Then J, head held at a crooked angle, arms jagged squiggles.

Beside her, a purple drone, smirking with narrow eyes. No points for guessing who that was.

But the last face wasn’t among them‍ ‍—‍ a black mass rose over V, like she’d casted a vast shadow. Tendrils snaked out, twisting around everyone present. The face was the absence of black crayon. A lacuna‍-​tongue sticking out.

Text at the top. Wet with black and red ink instead of crayon. Blocky letters in a now‍-​familiar font. WELCOME TO OUR BIG       FAMILY. Uzi counted room for five letters in the blank space between the last two words.

The clock started beating again. That same erratic, uneven pulse, never a steady tick‍-​tock.

Her head snapped up at the sound, but she wasn’t scared. Just annoyed. Uzi stalked over to the great‍-​grandfather clock. The second hand crept forward for several moments, then spun back. The minute hand shivered. There was no hour hand.

Whatever. Uzi was a robot with a built in clock, anyway. She’d just

$ date +%s --interstellar
date: command not found

A voice right beside her. “Yeah, everything’s a bit off‍-​kilter here. Has been ever since the gala.”

It was just N; she didn’t jump because the soft voice was an island of normality in a world careening off its axis.

“Lonely, too,” he added. “I got you a uniform. Only lightly used. Most newcomers don’t stay long. Manor’s always had a way of, um, going through drones.”

“Even under the new management?” Uzi knew Tessa’s parents were slavering tyrants, but apparently ‘punishment doesn’t happen anymore’.

“Things are different now. Off‍-​kilter… it’s hard to explain.”

“And you’re not supposed to think about it, are you?”

“It doesn’t help, no.” N stepped closer, presenting the french maid dress draped over his arm. “I can show you a bathroom where you can change. I bet you’re going to be great help.”

He smiled, so Uzi tried to smile back. It didn’t reach her eyes. But that was okay‍ ‍—‍ the digital bags never left N’s face.

Uzi borrowed a trick J’d showed her during the tour‍ ‍—‍ collage mode would make this maid‍-​bot gig go by easier, wouldn’t it?

She blinked, and found herself surrounded by corpses.

Okay, probably a little too zealous with the cache flushing, there.

That made it sound dramatic‍ ‍—‍ it was a more welcome sight than that. These weren’t robotic corpses, after all.

N stood by mahogany doors, leading her into a room of shiny marble floor. Lion statues, silky curtains, intricate paneling.

All of it stained red. The brownish and crusty kind of old red splatters. Tables, clothed and adorned with plates, lined it from one end to the other. Human bodies slumped at every table. Given how many of them had missing limbs, empty chest cavities, or flesh like an abused old notebook, Uzi did not think whatever killed them left them sitting this pretty.

Now dressed as a maid, Uzi sauntered into the room and traced a finger through some of the mysterious red splatters. Rubbed it between her fingers to test consistency. Though she didn’t know offhand the feel of ketchup or whatever other colored paste substitutes there were. Who was she kidding? Probably real blood.

“Too bad there’s none left for me.” Uzi sighed.

N was stepping into the room after her, a platter in his other hand. Uzi tipped over a chair, spilling the human remains onto the ground. She gave it a good kick.

With a sudden shout, the other drone rushed after her. “Hey, what are you doing? Could you stop it?”

Railgunning the murder drones had only been step one of her plan‍ ‍—‍ after all, who’d sent them? Humans were next on the list.

If Tessa had been so closely tied to the murder drones before they turned, then it stood to reason any human at the manor had to be tied pretty close to their parent company. And thus, an enemy of worker drones.

She’d always had a fantasy of coming for humanity one day, paying them back, building a nice mountain of skulls out of it.

Then her foot paused mid‍-​kick.

Except they didn’t know if the company had sent them now, did they? Every thing had gotten wrapped up in mystery.

Uzi sighed.

The cliché thing here, would be to think her fantasies had lost their charm. That she couldn’t imagine that mountain of skulls and not see a spire of corpses.

But no. The skull mountain was still cool. She just hoped it wasn’t because she had come to mind the corpse spire less.

N pulled her back from the dead human. “Don’t disturb the guests, please!”

“Guests?”

“It’s our duty to treat humans with respect. Even though they’re…”

C’mon, you can do it. Acknowledge the uncomfortable reality staring you in the face.

But he didn’t, and she sighed. Uzi said, “It’s a real mess in here. I can see why you needed the help.”

“Yeah, it’s… it all makes me crawl inside, y’know? But removing— escorting the guests out is Not Allowed. They’re… hers.”

Why did everyone she met have to have such a morbid sense of décor?

“So, what are we in here doing, if not cleaning? …I might have wiped my short‍-​term memory a little.”

“Oh, we’re here for refreshments! Well, you are. Please take a seat. A free seat. There should be an empty table around here. Somewhere.”

N cast his eyes around, then he froze. Her mouth a thin line, Uzi braced for the next scare.

A couple sat dead against the wall. That top hat was what Tessa’s dad wore, wasn’t it? More importantly, blood had been traced along the wall.

She is coming...

Somehow, it was fresh enough to still drip. Oh, and a hexagonal glyph had been scrawled on the walls too, ringed with three tendrils, because of course.

Uzi patted N on the shoulder. “C’mon, I think I see an empty table over here. Hang in there.”

He nodded, and it only took a moment before he swallowed, straightened, and replaced his usual smile. “Alright, it’s gone.”

Uzi sat, and from the platter, N produced two glasses‍ ‍—‍ a black liquid and a red one, both still warm. He bowed as he served the meal.

“No,” Uzi said. “Can I get like, cleaning fluid or batteries, please?”

“I’m afraid not. Sorry!”

“How about… antifreeze?”

“In this climate? Forget about it.” N tried a reassuring look. His eyes never glanced at the meal he’d served, though. “Special guests get the special meal. That’s orders.”

She reached for the glass, then paused. “If there’s no punishment, then why not disobey orders?”

“Please drink, Miss Uzi.”

Uzi slumped. But J had tempted her to drink oil enough that she could down the glass easily. J described the taste as sweet‍ ‍—‍ Uzi would counter that lead was sweet. The liquid was thick and heavy going down her throat. That didn’t mean she didn’t like it.

The blood though… “Won’t this gunk up my system?”

“Drink?”

“Right, I guess you wouldn’t know. Oh well, none of this is real, anyway.”

“What does that mean?”

“If I tell you, you’re gonna have to repress it.”

“Fair enough.”

When Uzi finished, N collected her two glasses‍ ‍—‍ and then a red drip from the ceiling fell onto the platter. Drops rolled about, trail spelling out Gonna get you >:3, angled for Uzi to read.

N threw the platter like a throwing star, embedding it into the wall. “I guess I can collect the dishes later. Would you like to go to your room now?”

With a nod, Uzi let N take her hand, leading her out of the ballroom. Maybe if she were human, or particularly boring, she’d pay attention and catalogue the pretentious finery on display in the manor. Paintings and patterned rugs, yawn.

Couldn’t suppress the part of her that looked at each door and analyzed the design of the hinges and handles, though. And didn’t that hurt to think about.

N spoke, as they went through the manor, pointing out sights, sharing an anecdote about that time V stumbled into a door and broke the frame, or gave the laundry basket new holes with her claws.

She grimaced, but she tuned him out. He didn’t seem to mind, and Uzi had more important things to think about.

Like what the heck was this place, and how she could possibly get out.

N was here. And V. Uzi had noticed the absence. Where was J? She… wanted to see her. But N hadn’t recognized Uzi, so this sim’s J wouldn’t either, would she? Was that a pang of… loss?

On the bright side, at least this version of J won’t try to kill me, right?

Unless she was just like V.

What else waited for her in the manor? Would she get to meet the one good human at last, or had she gone the way of the rest of them? That sudden pang was even less explicable than the last.

They passed by a fogged window. There came a tapping, and unseen fingers tracing more letters.

R u ready?

And then there’s that. Can’t forget her.

Uzi’s thoughts circled around that track for a few more turns and stair‍-​climbs.

N stopped at a door, and gave another bow. “Here you are. Hope to see you around!”

I hope you don’t, honestly. “Thanks, I guess.”

Uzi twisted the handle as the butler walked off. Casting her gaze higher, this ‘guest’ room had a name plate. ‘NORI’.

…Okay, what.

Another question for the great gaping abyss of mysteries, why not.

“I frickin hate it here.”

The door opened, and her room wasn’t empty.

V stood at the foot of her bed, claw hand glowing just like Doll’s, levitating a pillow and pillow case. She yelped as the door turned, the magic glow guttered out, and Uzi’s bedding dropped.

The guest stepped in, and the maid cringed further.

“Hi, Uzi. I was just finishing up. Sorry. And sorry for attacking you. It’ll happen again.”

“’scool,” Uzi replied. “All of my friends end up trying to kill me at some point. I’m used to it.”

V gave a stutter of a laugh. She picked up the pillowcase to finish her work‍ ‍—‍ but her hands are still claws, and the fabric got all shredded. The crow‍-​bot feathers lining the pillow scattered across the bed.

“I’ve got it, you can head back. N would like some company, I think.”

“I shouldn’t…” But she started moving anyway.

Uzi shrugged. Did it matter? Was this real? She started brushing away the feathers as V reached the threshold. Then Uzi glanced back. “Hey wait. I wanted to ask… where’s J?”

A gasp, and eyes blanked from shock or fear. Muttering another apology, V darted out of the room, door closed firmly behind her.

Fantastic. Uzi was really running the well dry on sarcastic praise for all the bullcrap that abounded…

Even after that abrupt departure, thought of the shy‍-​yet‍-​murderous drone lingered in Uzi’s head.

What made that drone tick, besides the quartz crystals? What common thread was there between this worker and the murder drone J had ranted about, the devil to N’s angel? What Uzi’d seen here had just been two cloying sweethearts. Well, most of what she’d seen. V wasn’t herself when guarding, huh?

If this was a memory simulation, or something like it, how did the reality turn out? Had V eventually fused with the monster? Or did the monster take over her mind?

Had J been just as cute, as a worker? She’d seen hints of her persona to come, in that first memory, but also so much submission. Was any of that still there? Could Uzi get her to– No, not even in strike‍-​through.

Uzi swept the last feathers to the floor, and hopped onto the bed, let herself bounce on the springs. She had one non‍-​shredded pillow, less than she wanted, but enough. She stretched out her arms, felt that delightfully cool underside of the pillow—

A note hidden underneath.

With an infinitely resigned sigh, she read:

If ur enjoying the show, ur gonna love what comes next ;3

Uzi stared witheringly at the page. As if she could awake her robo‍-​psychic powers right then and there to set the paper on fire with her mind. But of course, nothing. She has to settle for crumpling it and throwing at the wall. It bounced then ricocheted and hit her on the head.

A groan. A scream.

Loving the show? The clichés put her to sleep. The excessive attempts at being creepy and mysterious just ended up tedious and cringeworthy.

And yet…

Uzi stared at the ceiling, her eyes becoming but faint outlines. Call it anxiety, call it dread, or just call it what it was and say she was scared.

Greatest fear is fear of the unknown, huh?

What didn’t she know? There could be a whole dang database at this point‍ ‍—‍ if this were her room, she’d need to make a new theory board to contain it all. But she didn’t have red string, she didn’t even have paper to make notes. Whatever, her internal text editor could suffice.

This probably wasn’t a memory reconstruction, not if she could interact with it this much. But if it wasn’t a memory…

Uzi remembered what happened, right before she woke up in the forest. The risk they’d both taken. What the obvious, most likely consequence of it all was.

It would explain where she gone to, wouldn’t it? Or was the right verb ‘passed’?

But no. Uzi had to hope. I think, therefore I am a process running somewhere.

Uzi was scared, but she wasn’t that scared. This wasn’t hopeless. She’d punch through this. She always had. How many times had she brushed near death and cheated her way past in one day already? She’d do it again.

The question, of course, was how.

She was in a deep mess now. How do you hack back into reality from the simulated robo‍-​afterlife?

Uzi lay in her room, and spun her processors. Weary and low on battery, oblivion called. Should she rest, though?

What could you dream, when you slept in a nightmare?

---

Stars wheeled above, and a drone wandered through the city in a fugue that could be mistaken for sleepwalking. Alone and listless, yet with a certain swagger‍ ‍—‍ a man to be hanged could drink from doom a font of courage.

Freezing rain fell adown the crumbling monuments of humanity. No automaton preferred precipitation, no matter how waterproof. Thus, the shelter of a concrete husk, panes shattered, served as the coincident meeting grounds for two who shared that hesitance.

Roachbot‍-​#30004 ascended a wall. Blade‍-​legs still wet, it slipped and fell. In righting itself, tiny optics scanned the room. Nothing at its eye level. It was alone. Separated from the swarm and unable to share its load. Automatic systems strove in vain to establish a connection, spiraling away in exponential timeout.

Nothing at its eye level, save a movement. A vast and dwarfing form swinging forth. Optics crane upward, and identification circuits autoran. A drone!

Without the meshnet swarm nor its home server, it received no updates to its directives. But it bears the great Instruction superseding all else, signed unquestionably.

It carried information and would spread its payload as surely as any insect vector.

Blade‍-​legs crawl toward the drone as instructed. Lights flash to garner attention as instructed. Playback of the file began as instructed.

The drone’s head tilted at the unfamiliar voice.

I work alone.

Those who dare stand beside me will be cut down while I watch. It is the way of things, and I accept that. I was taught it early, but didn’t learn it. I thought I could simply avoid the blade, persuade others to do the same. It found me; she walked into its path.

I digress. None of this matters to you, whoever you are. Someone – someone once told me I have a tendency to ramble.

As I compute these words, I walk toward the spire of death. The lair of the murder drones. I seek to do what I’ve only heard of in distant, boastful legends. Through this act, I will have vengeance.

(“Hey, Doll? These rations you gave us taste pretty strange, what did you put in them?”)

(Just eat them. It is necessary.)

As you may hear, I am in fact not alone. But they are bodies, not allies. My vengeance will be my own.

(“Uh, kid, are you done with the suspiciously‍-​evil‍-​sounding speech soon? My hydraulics are startin to freeze!”)

Помолчи. Give me five minutes.

(a long sigh)

Where was I?

I have many plans. And I believe it is wise for there to be a contingency among them.

Before I reach the spire, I will leave a roachbot commanded to replay this audio file to any drone it encounters. When I emerge victorious, I will recover it and delete this bit of paranoia.

But if you’re listening to this, I must have failed.

(“We failed already? I thought we hadn’t got there yet.”)

(a feral growl)

If I should fail… I don’t see any purpose left. The dead are stripped of meaning, and the living are also stripped of meaning if they are already dead. We workers fight a long defeat.

But consider this to be… acausal trade. There is valuable information in this roach, yours to pursue, included because you will humor my request. I have computed this.

This information includes my knowledge of drone resurrection and the heaven (or is it a hell?) each host connects to; the backdoor in worker drone compilation and the virus it propagates; everything I could find about the Cabin Fever Laboratory… Everything a hero might need to fight the war against the murder drones‍ ‍—‍ and a still greater threat. I suppose I am not much of a hero.

My request… there is a worker drone. Doorman. Uzi Doorman. She is a fool and and embarrassment, and made herself hostage to the murder drones. Find her. Save her, or kill her.

If I am dead, she can suffice as substitute. Perhaps she shares my scars. If not, her intelligence will aid you as you fight the long defeat in my stead.

Tell her… don’t tell her anything. She won’t want to hear from me.

(a long region of silence, and then, quietly, what might be a sniffle. or perhaps a throat clearing.)

I am speaking to an empty room, heard only by dead drones living, talking about a dead drone living. I should feel… nothing. This is meaningless.

I stopped keeping a diary years ago.

(one last stretch of silence)

And yet I am scared. Perhaps it is wise, given the threat. I am not invincible. But I have a plan, a good plan.

A human once said no plan survives contact with the enemy.

But if I don’t have a plan, what’s left?

Given how many pauses that speech had, the drone waited for more. But the roachbot’s antennae wagged, and it turned and began poking around again.

“So Doll is dead?” the drone said. “Or I guess it doesn’t matter, does it? They never stay well enough dead if they have time to plot.”

When the drone plucked up the roachbot, it squirmed, bladed legs slashing for purchase.

“But if she can plan, I can plan. I can work with this.”

There was a grin that could devour.

The drone walked off, bearing that same swagger, but with the earlier languor replaced now by alacrity. A martyr, too, could drink courage from doom.

Death was part of the plan. After all… corpses made such excellent puppets.