by Briana Ervin
Should I bring up 433? I wondered. His security clearance might grant him knowledge of the matter, even if it's just a little bit. It's risky though, I recognized, no one knows what happened on that ship except for Cyrii. Even Alesia wasn't conscious at the time. I don't want to strain this mutual alliance and risk a lash-back... I tilted my head, thinking. How could I word my suspicions about these half-built mechs without making it sound like I was hiding something?
...I would have to keep it short and curious, just like what I did with Stratien. No further questions.
Garenede typed something into the table, glanced up at me, then kept typing. “Am I really that interesting, or do you need something else to do?”
“What model do you suppose this is?” I said, keeping an innocent lilt to my tone. He didn't even look up to see what I was referring to.
“Don't know,” he said, “Why?”
“It's interesting.”
“Why should you care?”
“I'm bored,” I said, annoyance slipping into my voice. I tried to correct it by adding, “I don't have anything else to do, is all.”
“So I was right,” he said flatly. I suppressed the automated function to flare my ears when I felt defensive, resulting in them twitching.
“Fine, you were right,” I said dryly. He choked out a laugh. “Do you actually know anything about the mech?”
“I didn't lie to you,” he said, becoming annoyed as well.
“You have the clearance to know something!” I argued before I had processed the words. He looked up from his work at me, skeptical hostility returning to his face. I immediately regretted blurting that out; a stupid idea!
“Why is this so important to you?” he demanded.
“No reason! I'm just curious...” I ended the conversation immediately. Well, that didn't work, my thoughts scolded me, now he's going to be wary of you!
I suppressed a growl, pawing at the ground with one foot. I wanted to prod Garenede further, but I also couldn't give him any leads, not even implications of further interest. I switched my gaze back to the mech, annoyed that I couldn't ask anything else. I just had to speculate, as usual, though not even Cyrii cared to do it with me.... Maybe this isn't as important as I was making it out to be. It could very well be that the Enemy just made a bunch of these machines to deliberately confuse us, and this testing track was the Empire's attempt to understand and combat them, just as Cyrii said. It would explain the severely-damaged room we left and the lack of suspicion others had. Although, if that were the case... these “mechs” would have to come into use literally days ago for me to not have them marked as drones in my database. I encountered 433 barely a day after Cyrii overhauled my BIOS, which would make him brand new, and to the offense of his shiny hull he looked more bedraggled than that. In skimming my database there were no drones that mimicked Xinschi-uual mechs either. The closest I could come was the Deceiver Drone, which sent misleading sounds and coded messages to confuse the tactics of battle parties, but it looked nothing like a mech, and I had yet to encounter one.
I digested my findings. None of them really proved or disproved that there was something suspicious about this. At best I could verify that I really was just sitting around wasting time while Garenede did whatever he was doing. Though it might be worth storing this idea somewhere...
I poked around on my hard drive for temporary storage, which made me remember that I wanted to ask Cyrii something.
Cyrii, I called for her.
There was a brief pause before she responded, putting the DIAS on yet again. I felt her annoyance at being interrupted again, which just spiked my own irritation. “What?”
I need more storage space for recordings, I said. She gave me a baffled look before it came to her. “Right, I wasn't done there...”
What?
“You don't have a lot of free disk space. I was focused on memory, not storage. Uh, remind me later, I can't do any poking right now.”
I recalled the overhauling process: first indignation, then shutdown. She was right, it wouldn't be wise to do it now. A random shutdown in front of Garenede wouldn't bode well.
Cyrii began scrolling through my console, probably looking for something related to disk space. I looked back at Garenede, curious to see what he was doing, yet certain he would just shoo me off again.
What to do...?
I looked back at the mech model in the center, then up at the machine in the ceiling above it. Maybe I could do something with that in the meanwhile. There was a computer sitting in front of the mech, with more advanced controls on it than the tables. I went in front of it, first checking Cyrii, then Garenede, but neither of them were responsive. I studied the face of the computer, thinking.
Semi-circular in shape, clearly designed for three workers and not just one. A broad monitor with a blank blue screen spread across the top, showing that the restored power was reaching it. The controls to either side consisted of normal buttons and switches, but in the middle there was a concentric formation of circles, and along each circle was a clear, elliptical object; “seekers”, they're called. With repeated glances between the ceiling mechanism and the control panel I deducted that the circular controls had to do with the placement of each tool on the machine, allowing it to reach every part of the mech... and that's as far as I could go. I didn't even know how this thing turned on. Was there a switch somewhere?
Well, if it wasn't active, messing with it wouldn't hurt, right? At least I could pass the time, instead of listening to the ticking sounds of Garenede's typing.
I opened my retrieval panel and nudged one of the seekers with an arm. Nothing happened. It moved very nicely though.
Cyrii must have glanced up at my screens. “What... are you doing?” she asked.
I'm bored, I said factually.
“Oh. Well, don't break anything. You're not built for this stuff,” she said, continuing to skim the console.
I'm sure I know that, I said, annoyed that she wrote me off as incompetent so quickly. I was capable of being careful just as much as she was. If she didn't trust me to have self-preservation, she shouldn't have given me free will!
I grabbed the seeker and swung it along the lines, still bored. I glanced up at Garenede; he was still typing. I swung the seeker again along the whole circle; still nothing happened. Back to Garenede; still occupied. A check on Cyrii; still not watching the screens. I sucked in fresh air and flushed it back out with a whoosh, trying to relieve my boredom.
“...Did you just sigh?” Cyrii asked. I didn't answer right away, grabbing the seeker on the innermost circle and moving it as well. There was a clunk.
I looked up in shock as a sudden whir started up from the mechanism. One of the robotic arms swung around! It struck the mech's shoulder with a clang, making it tip. A jolt of energy shot through the presences in my head. I jumped back with a surprised beep as it came forward, crashing to the ground in a cacophony of noise.
I stiffening up guiltily, staring at the collapsed metal form. It took me a few seconds to glance over at Garenede to see his reaction. He was frozen, just glaring back silently.
“FIDDLESTICKS!” Cyrii shouted.
I'm bored! I objected, I'm a machine built for intense battle! You expect me to be patient?!
“She has you there,” Krysis mumbled.
“I told you to not break anything...” she moaned, burying her face in her paws.
Garenede twitched. “Good job,” he said sarcastically. I grew annoyed.
“At least I did something! You're just poking at a table,” I said. He looked amused at my comeback, choosing not to respond and continue typing. That just annoyed me further.
“Just forget about it,” Cyrii waved her paws, “It's not important.”
Smug Superiority model...! I grumbled.
“Hey, you asked for it!” her tone turned sharp, “You've been annoying him! Give the guy a break! Seriously, because it's miraculous he hasn't dragged us back upstairs yet!”
/>
I recoiled, shocked. She was reprimanding me? What was going on in her head?!
This was definitely not one of my proudest moments, as I decided to sulk in silence. The situation didn't improve: I was still bored, although I was annoyed now too. I wanted to be defiant and keep toying with the machine, especially now that the screen had lit up with new information, but at the same time I knew better than to push it.
Cyrii took off the DIAS and rubbed her temples as my annoyance influenced her. It wasn't helping me either, as that little nudging sensation in my head telling me to do things wouldn't stop, which just fed the emotion, which just annoyed me further.
I looked around, searching for something of even mild interest. There were no new doors though. Odd, since there was supposedly another room after this. I wandered over to the storage area in the back, retained grumpy disinterest, wandered back to the center, stopped myself from touching the machine again, paced around the room in search of this mysterious last door...
“Huh. Interesting.”
I was over to Garenede in a heartbeat. He took a few steps back when I closed in, shocked.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“No,” I answered truthfully. He looked me up and down.
“Sometimes I wonder if you models need toy trains to entertain yourselves,” he muttered.
“'Toy'?” I echoed, “I'm more dignified than that.”
“Fine, a real train,” he dismissed. Cyrii snickered in my head. I ignored her.
“What did you find?” I queried, coming in closer to the control panel, hovering over his shoulder to see what he was seeing. He had a schematic of something pulled up on the left screen and some logs on the other screen. He shifted, uncomfortable.
“It's not important.”
“It's the only other thing happening in this room,” I said, implying that it really was important. He stared, debating if telling me anything would cause me to go away or not.
“It's a device the scientists were making,” he finally explained. “Small, long, and fragile. They were arming mechs with it.”
“It's a weapon?” I asked, interest piqued.
“Yes, it's a weapon,” he said testily. “The logs say they equipped at least five models with it, but after that the information is gone.” He pointed to a time stamp on the screen. “The computer was last booted up at 5:53 a few months ago, yet this log only goes up to the sixth month of Cryion.”
I made the connection before he even said it: “Two entire months of data are missing.”
“Exactly.”
“Was the weapon discontinued?” I mused.
“That's what I can't figure out,” Garenede said, “all of the logs gloat about the Empire's huge success with this thing, but it doesn't tell me anything about it, or why it's not being worked on anymore. Doesn't even explain the purpose of Chamber 4A. I'm guessing they purged a bunch of data before abandoning this track.”
That's weird... I thought, studying the schematic. It consisted of many different pieces, but it was mainly separated into two parts: an elongated, rod-like part, and a cylinder attached to its end. Any ideas? I asked Cyrii.
“I've been looking at mechs this whole time and I have nothing,” she admitted. There was some shuffling in my head, before Krysis's normally-muffled voice came through clearly:
“Looks like it would fit into an arm,” he said, “maybe a tail.”
I felt confusion from Cyrii.
“What?” he asked.
“I didn't expect you to say that,” she mumbled.
“Ask him the size of that weapon,” Krysis prompted. I turned back to Garenede.
“What are the schematic's dimensions?” I asked.
“It's actual-size,” he said factually, like I was an idiot. I brushed off his tone, looking at the schematic and then the half-built mech in the center. That was definitely small enough to place in an arm, and if they really were putting this thing in mechs...
I walked up to the model, turning my scanner on to check its exposed parts. Wiring, crystallized chips, layered boards, more wiring... nothing really unusual. I kept my focus on its arms, searching for rod-like objects hooked up to the machine, but found nothing. Cyrii did notice something, however.
“Look, there are spaces.”
Spaces? I said, The entire machine has spaces in it. It's missing parts.
“Exactly! Don't you think one of those weapons could fit in there?”
I blinked, looking at the right arm in particular with the scanner off. The elongated part of the weapon could certainly fit up against the steel rod “bone” right there, and the cylindrical part could be placed further up in the shoulders, where it was bulkier. Or maybe, if the cylinder was laid down so its end stuck through the palm...
Threads met up in my head. Now I knew what made 433 so formidable.
“Does this weapon output high-energy bursts?” I asked Garenede. He was watching me from the table, curious, and glanced down at the screen at my question.
“Looks like,” he answered.
“It's built to be concealed?” I pressed.
“Yes.”
“Are there any corded wires connecting to the brain?”
“What are you looking for?” he now responded with a question. I looked up, realizing that I just nullified my previous attempts to keep from being suspicious. Now that I was in this position, should I lie?
“Don't lie,” Cyrii said.
“Nothing, I'm just curious about how it works,” I said, compromising.
“That's still a lie!” she burst out.
It's only half a lie, I said. Actually, if you want to be technical, it's one-eighth of a lie.
“Fiddlesticks...” she sighed in exasperation. Krysis was back to his quiet mourning, saying nothing. As for Garenede, he didn't look any more relieved.
I stared at him. He stared at me. His gaze was cold and suspicious, more so than I was used to, and for a second I had doubts...
“Don't lie to me. You want to know what it is so you can destroy it. You're built to destroy things,” he pointed out. I let out a mental sigh of relief: a good excuse! Better than withholding the existence of a traitorous mech from a Superiority model. Even calling out traitors had its consequences. Besides, if 433 was still alive out there, I wanted to kill him myself, not have some nosy Xinschi-uual dump him in an incinerator for me!
“That's enough thinking about that,” Cyrii said, back-ending the thought process. I twitched.
Why did you do that? I was enjoying myself.
“Yeah, no.”
“Admit it,” Garenede prompted.
“Okay, fine,” I feigned admittance, “it's a built-in safety precaution. But Cyrii genuinely wants to know.”
“What? I didn't say anything,” she objected, as Garenede relaxed a bit. “I've been trying to find Krysis a mech this whole time!”
“I still like the 71,” he mumbled.
“For the last time, that design was scrapped a year ago!” she said. I noted her curious words. “Last time”? They must have discussed this back when my internal microphones were muted.
“Yeah,” Cyrii responded to the thought, “sorry about that, I didn't want to distract you. Though clearly we can't work separately,” Cyrii rolled her eyes. “You break things and I grow testy.”
“She didn't say anything,” Krysis pointed out, confused.
“I know, it was in the console.”
“In the console? How was it in the console?”
“I'll tell you later. Right now Garenede thinks I'm brain-dead.”
I blinked, realizing that the mentioned model was suddenly next to me, waving a hand in my face.
“Zirhon to 767?” he asked, amused. I squinted and backed away from him.
“Don't be so-! I'm fine.” Cyrii cut off my prepared insult right away.
Hey! I had something good there, I complained.
“Because that's safe,” she snorted, “We already have redemption on our head
s, we don't need an angry Superiority model either.”
I think you like him! I jumped to teasing, as he blinked in exasperation and trotted off to the storage area.
“Don't switch your wit onto me, you sack of metal,” Cyrii said, though her grin told me she was just as amused, “If I liked him we'd have a free ticket out of jail.”
Does that count redemption?
“No. Mechs aren't included.”
Awww, I feigned sadness, I feel left out.
“I can't tell if you guys are mocking each other or actually getting along...” Krysis muttered under his breath. Cyrii burst out laughing. Garenede swiveled back to look at me, and I realized he was expecting me to follow, so I went to the storage area as well.
“Did you find everything you were looking for?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, looking at a stack of crates in the corner as if he could see through them.
“Were you looking for anything beyond the purpose of the track?”
He turned to stare at me, and I quickly added, “If you don't mind me asking.”
“It's not important,” he defaulted. I closed my blast shield, annoyed. I guess he did mind me asking. I couldn't help but wonder though why he bothered to seek information from the computers in here, or rather, the computer in one table. For some reason he didn't go searching through all five that were present. So maybe it really wasn't important, and I was just nosing around because I was bored. I definitely knew I was bored, although I would claim curiosity over it.
“So why are we back here?” I decided to prod about something else.
“The chamber layout said the last chamber was back in here, but I don't see it,” he said. I opened my blast shield.
“Probably because there are crates in the way,” I said cheekily. He glared at me.
“Thanks genius. Who would stack crates in front of an exit? You don't block the exit before leaving a chamber.”
I saw his point, but that didn't make me less amused. Instead, I looked at the crates, an idea in mind.
“If we destroy the crates, we can unearth the door,” I suggested. He rolled his eye.
