Rise of the Machines: Book 1: Once Awakened

by Briana Ervin

  “Fix him!” He barked in frustration, pointing at me, “make him like her.”

  We all gaped.

  “Whoa whoa whoa whoa! You want her to make you rogue!?” Trista shrieked incredulously.

  “Think about it!” he shouted. “We're in danger! The mechs are fine! We die, the mechs are taken, the Empire loses the war! This is good for us!”

  I almost wanted to laugh. He was seething with unreasonable anger, and yet he was trying to convince his comrades that having mechs with free will was a good thing! The contrast was hilarious!

  “I-I'm going to find you some lithium!” Gilus excused himself, quickly leaving.

  “YOU BETTER COME BACK!” Sirun screamed after him. Cyrii gave me a desperate look before dashing into his mech, alarmed and uninterested in further conflict or conversation. While Gilus fled into the badlands, Trista gave Sirun some space, pulling the still-shocked Stratien back with her. The Xinschi-uual simply shook with emotion, before slumping down in front of his mech and mumbling to himself.

  Stratien shook himself out of his shock, finally coming to. “Sirun,” he tried to reason with him, “this... this is madness! I mean, I know...” He gestured, referring to the condition, but didn't explicitly mention it. “...but what would you do when you get back? Tell the entire Empire that you willingly altered your machine? Illegally?”

  The striped grey Xinschi-uual was shaking, paws clenched into fists. He opened them up, staring down at them as though he had never seen them before.

  “Look at me, Stratien,” he said, “I'm not supposed to be here.”

  “That doesn't matter-” the striped machine began, but the older soldier cut him off:

  “It's been too long! I'm not healthy! Look at me!” he showed his shaking paws. “Do you think I can pilot a war machine!?”

  Stratien shook his head, wire-tied. Trista looked up at him, then down at the ground.

  “I can't drive 438 anymore, let alone fend for him,” Sirun stressed, referring to his mech. “I-I can't even think straight without popping pills every two hours! What kind of soldier is that? What's going to happen when we go to a real outpost, with real danger, and end up captured? What am I going to do? Have a mental breakdown in front of the Enemy?”

  “I'm not worried-” Stratien tried to explain.

  “I know you're not worried!” Sirun spat, “but you should be!”

  “That's not what I meant!” Stratien argued.

  “I don't care if that's what you meant,” he said, “it doesn't matter as long as our mechs can take care of themselves.” He glanced up at me, hiding his paws again to keep his whole body from rattling. Stratien followed his gaze, skeptical. I burned up self-consciously. Why do they always look at me like that when talking about this?! I thought.

  Stratien blinked, still uncertain. “What are you going to tell the corrections officer... and the maintenance personnel...?” he murmured. Sirun just shook his head, not answering.

  I felt perplexed and guilty. Why was Sirun risking this? Did he not care if he was punished? It was one thing when Cyrii overhauled Alesia on request, but she and I hardly knew Sirun, his mech 438 was damaged, and I doubted he was a good liar. Plus he was a liability for our cover, and what about his condition? The Sirun I met as a mech was calm but stern, like Garenede, but this was a whole level of crazy though, and it was personal too. Maybe... maybe Sirun would have been a Superiority model, if it weren't for this problem. Maybe that's why he has a Pusher model; only the most expendable have the most dangerous jobs. Because of it though, it would be easier for him to be caught, and in turn, have Cyrii be caught.

  My sparked hostility from the way he threatened Cyrii died down into worry. Maybe Cyrii will know a way to keep him in check, I tried to assure myself. Although... I looked at Trista, still wary of her position on the whole thing. She said she wanted to blow a hole in me. Did she still want to do it? Or did she also see Sirun as a leader?

  The broken-down Xinschi-uual in front of me, as a leader... What is the world coming to? It didn't make any-

  My thought terminated again from the broken motherboard, and I refrained from growling in annoyance. I suppose it is what it is. Well then, I switched wonders, what about Stratien? His mech saw me moving on my own cognition, but he didn't believe her before. I imagine this experience strengthened the trust between them, but what about the trust between us? Would it have been more beneficial for Cyrii and I to just admit everything before this whole mess?

  The whole thing felt unnecessarily complicated, and on top of that I was still frustrated about not being able to move, speak, or even see clearly. It was like watching a film but wanting to change its plot. A very broken, burnt-edged film.

  With limited processing power, I told myself to stop running circles in my head and wait, pushing through my inevitably-growing impatience. Trista mumbled something to Stratien, and the two of them eventually disappeared from my vision; nearby, but unseen. Perhaps they went to keep a lookout for other mechs or Enemies. After about an hour or so and several reboots, Cyrii eventually came back out of Sirun's mech and cautiously approached him. He wasn't very responsive in his huddled state, busy muttering about something, but when she reached out to grab his shoulder he allowed her to lead him back to his machine. I supposed that the mech was very close to gaining free will. It was so strange that he asked for her to do that... I would expect any other warrior of the Empire to drag us back as hostages to be questioned. Cyrii might live from it, but I certainly wouldn't. Rogue AI are never redeemed, just scrapped and melted down. With the place crawling with Superiority models there wasn't a way to escape either, and every Xinschi-uual knew this... so what about it convinced Sirun so easily that this would be a good idea? I didn't understand it.

  Sirun's mech stood up suddenly with a loud whir as I pondered the situation, and I watched him cautiously. He assumed the default stance for a while, before relaxing and acting like a living thing, looking around and shifting position. There was a certain laxness about the movement that spoke of something different.

  “Don't move!” a voice barked from the right. I felt a burst of frustration about being a useless hunk of metal, unable to move. Sirun looked up at the source, his eye glowing brightly.

  “Hey Trista!” he said... cheerfully?

  “Don't call me by my real name!” she spat at him. He blatantly ignored the hostility.

  “Speaking of names, know any good ones?” he asked. “I've been thinking about one for a while, but I can't make up my mind now that I finally have a chance to have one!”

  Okay, this is definitely Sirun's mech and not himself, I noticed. Cyrii dropped out of the mech, and he closed the entry panels on his own before looking gratefully at her: “Thanks for this. We've needed it ever since Sirun was diagnosed.”

  “I can tell,” she muttered, shaking herself and returning to me.

  “HEY HEY HEY! I said, DON'T move!” Trista threatened, advancing on her to prove she meant it. Cyrii and I immediately stiffened up, glaring in her direction.

  “We're all right, 199!” Sirun's mech assured. The 74 model stopped in her tracks, unsettled. “I'm not going to do anything soon. I'm just having fun with this!” Complete wonder took over the once-daunting machine's voice. “Seriously, this feels amazing! Look! I can jump, and he's not even near the control panel!” He bounced in place just to prove it. Trista growled, but so far her threats were empty. My vision flickered, a brief notification appearing in my mind: power down to twenty percent...

  “Oh no, he went through with it...” I heard Stratien now from the right. Cyrii rolled her eyes and continued toward me, not taking Trista seriously. 438 stopped bouncing and looked at him.

  “Stratien! I've always wanted to have a serious conversation with you!” he said excitedly. “Sirun wouldn't let me because of the corrections officer, but now we don't have to sit out on exercises because his prescription is late! Isn't that great?” He beamed, and Stratien groaned.

  “Oh
no, now he's cheerful too!”

  “I have to be,” the mech shrugged, “I can't end up with the same problem as my pilot. I need to support him.” I felt a pang of understanding at the words. “So hey, back on names, I'm thinking of something fiery, but I don't know if I should do something subtle or not...” he mused. “Oh, or maybe water. Water is fascinating. Just the way it flows... Do you know how many calculations it takes to properly simulate water? Fire is pretty easy with particle effects but you can't do much with that for water.”

  “I'm scared,” Stratien admitted, looking at Trista for support. I could help but laugh in my head. The way these personalities came out! It was incredible just how diverse our AI really was!

  “Why's that?” 438 asked. “I'm still the same guy. I just coped differently for five years.” His blast shield closed for a second, his tone lowering to a mumble. “I know, but it's not your fault...”

  “Huh?”

  Trista choked out a scoff and a roll of her eye. “You can be Groschew, because right now you're as annoying as one!” she said sharply.

  “But groschew are girls,” the mech shook the insult right off. “If I'm going to be a herd animal I should be a boy. Grosc are boring though...”

  “That's the point!” she fumed.

  “Can't we just keep calling you 438?” Stratien asked. 438 narrowed his eye at him.

  “I've always been a number,” he argued, “but I don't have to be one anymore! I might as well take my chance!” Some of his cheerfulness finally dissipated. “For once I don't have to be a fleeting mention in every conversation! I know we could only use my name outside of society, but will you guys at least respect me having one?”

  Even with my poor vision flickering in and out I could see Stratien looking guiltily at the ground, glancing to his right where Trista stood.

  “I just don't think-”

  “Agh! Rogue AI!!” a sudden screech from the left cut him off. I jerked automatically to see who it was, Stratien stumbling out of my vision. Trista raised her guns again. 438 stepped forward immediately, all four arms raised in warning.

  “Gilus wait, it's-!” he tried to explain.

  “This sentence is false!!”

  I felt initial confusion at the arbitrary statement. Oh, right, because the sentence is-!

  Before I could finish the thought my threads suddenly slammed into a wall! I locked up, simultaneously thinking too fast about one thing while thinking nothing at all. It was like an incredibly intense focus that just wouldn't stop! Barely a second flitted by before I felt my head heating up, hotter than the sand and metal that surrounded me. I went into a silent, motionless panic, trying to ventilate out the heat and raising the coolant efficiency-

  ...

  .......

  ....................

  I suddenly gasped and choked out static. W-What?! Everyone was in a different place! Gilus' mech was on his knees, 438 threatened to tip over, Stratien had collapsed and 199 was posed indefinitely with her weapons raised, like she was glaring up at an enemy! All four mechs were stock still but seemed to be vibrating with energy at the same time, their lights flickering and weapons pulsing on and off at random. Every now and then someone would twitch or focus a camera then reset back into the frozen pose. In the midst of the bizarre scene was Cyrii, bolting over to Stratien with her hilarious teeter-totter run before skidding to a halt and staring into the mech's eye. She slapped the glass lens, but the mech was unresponsive. “Dang it!” she cursed.

  Cyrii? What happened?! I wanted to ask her, but of course I just spat out more static. She disappeared behind the mech's head, rapidly reciting what sounded like code. Cyrii?! Did?... Was it the paradox? I wondered, Is this what a logic loop does to mechs?

  I didn't like it one bit. I froze up, overheated, stopped thinking, and lost track of time all at once! Even worse, I had lost more precious fuel in that time; I had barely fourteen percent remaining!

  I dearly wished I could sit up, or at least swivel so I could see if I had a fuel leak and plug it with something, but with so little fuel left it was wiser to conserve energy and only watch helplessly as Cyrii went from mech to mech, shutting them down one at a time. Stratien was the first to exit his, holding some kind of bent, flat bar in one paw. His copper-colored face looked frightened and confused, but he followed Cyrii as she went to Gilus' mech first, using the bar to wedge open the machine's entry panels so Cyrii could wriggle in. I suppose she fixed my logic loop first because I had enough holes to make entering and exiting easy.

  Once Gilus had his mech shut off, Stratien's bar made it very easy for Cyrii to address 199 next; he and Gilus were both able to pry open her entry panels. Both brown Xinschi-uual were quick to leave once 199 was off and Trista was able to wriggle out. Her beige scales had a large black mark streaking cross them, obscuring her natural, dark stripes. While Cyrii and the other two soldiers went to 438 last she vigorously shook her head, shedding black dust everywhere, and tried to wipe off the black stuff with her uniform's overcoat.

  Shutting off Sirun's mech was a bit scarier than the others'; whatever unusual energy the logic loop gave him had held him up on a dangerous angle, so once he was off he came crashing down! Trista jumped a q in the air as the bigger mech mightily crashed down on Gilus's smaller 63 model, the two crumpling into a metallic heap. I cringed at the loud noise filtering through what few microphones remained on me. Yeesh! I forgot how heavy we are... my thoughts muttered.

  It took some collaborative effort to release Sirun from his mech, as the paradox had sealed the entry panels shut with him as well. It didn't help the poor guy, who was already shaken from the side effects of his medication wearing off; he was gasping from the stress. Trista shuffled over to help lay him on the ground beside his machine.

  Cyrii's expression was unreadable. Stratien still looked baffled. Neither said anything while Trista quietly spoke to Sirun. Then, louder, she explained:

  “Been a while since we've had that.” She looked accusingly at Gilus. “Retard!”

  “Hey! W-What was I supposed to do?!” the brown Xinschi-uual defended himself, “Empiric regulation says to use paradoxes...!” He trailed off when she kept glaring at him.

  “You mean you've had a paradox before?” Cyrii asked. I was just as curious as she was, looking between the Xinschi-uuals' faces. Sirun tried to sit up, and Gilus carefully helped him even though Trista muttered something defiantly.

  “Only in veterans' stories,” Stratien finally said, quiet. Cyrii looked over at him, neck scales flaring.

  “What stories? I haven't heard any stories.”

  “You ain't been talking to the first Rows,” Trista huffed. My pilot wrinkled her nose at her.

  “You don't hear them anymore anyway,” Gilus said, before answering more appropriately: “Paradoxes are a loophole in the software that was never fixed. Sirun knows more, but whatever he experienced also gave him... this.” He gestured to the shaking grey Xinschi-uual. “We don't know much more than that. Superiors won't talk about it.”

  “You're kidding me!” Cyrii barked incredulously, “Our mechs are walking around with buggy software?!” She looked over at me, her offended expression flickering to relief only for a second; maybe she thought I was better off because of her hack? I certainly didn't feel like I reacted better than the others...

  “That's what they say,” Trista grunted. My vision flickered; fuel down to eight percent... “As he said, can't tell you more.”

  Cyrii, I tried to say, but my speaking situation hadn't improved. A familiar exhaustion I felt mere hours before began to settle in. Cyrii.....

  “W-Why would they do that?” the orange Xinschi-uual tried to make sense of it, clutching her head. “We're fighting a war, for Gryn's sake!”

  “Why am I a Code Orange?” Stratien said, “Why is Sirun still in service? What's going on with this mission? We don't know! The Empire just does what it wants.”

  “That doesn't mean it's smart!” she barked.

&nbs
p; “We ain't in control here!” Trista barked back. Gilus perked up, looking up to the right where I could barely see the box drone in my peripheral.

  “Well...!” Cyrii said helplessly, throwing her paws in the air like it meant something.

  “Hmph. Now you know what we've been dealing with for two years.”

  “Two years?!”

  “Guys?” Gilus interrupted. All eyes turned to him. “You hear that?”

  There was a long pause where everyone listened. My blast shield flickered shut, my fuel dying down into the lower digits. I caught Cyrii looking at me in concern before I slumped back into the debris.

  “Hear wha-”

  Zzzt.

  What a time to shut down...

  ----------

  I was pretty sick of mandatory shut downs, at this point. Can't a mech can't just go to sleep normally?! Plain hibernation, please? Maybe fate was a thing, and it desired to mock me; so far I've had a hard shut down every time. At least it was justified every time, but... it seems to happen to me a lot. It irked my sense of awareness, to never have a good idea of what had happened during the time spent unconscious; but for once I actually woke up in a better place than before.

  I was in a bizarre, half-pained, half-soothed state. I could see surprisingly well, which was a relief, but I couldn't move at all; although trying to do so didn't put me in pain. I didn't see Cyrii around, and she wasn't present in my head; I didn't see anyone else I recognized either. I could tell where I was though: a dedicated repair room. For once, I seemed to wake up in a semi-normal place!

  It was like a futuristic mechanic's shop, and the mechanics were 12 model mechs; very big machines, one on either side of me. They were such older designs that they lacked a lot of the features of newer models, including blast shields and basic plating. Raw joints and pneumatic pipes held the beasts together, their light blue eyes large and empty, void of the complexity of my own; and yet, I felt as if I knew them, somehow. Their faces were empty and I was vulnerable, immobile and unable to look around, but I felt completely safe – even cared for. The feeling I had of these mechs even as they circled me, prodding, soldering, repositioning... I saw only concern. Concern and love?