“Um. This would be easier if… yes. Think the words ‘check status.’ Try to shout them in your thoughts, if that makes any sense.”
Three tries later, I finally got the hang of it. And if I’d had eyelids I would have blinked as a glowing screen full of letters popped up right in the middle of my viewpoint.
STATUS
Master Designation: Wynne
Make/Model: Northwest Enginetics Bunker Core Nanohive 4L
Resonance Rate: 1/24:00
Bandwidth: 10Feedstock: 20
Open Circuits: 10
Specialized Circuits: 0
Floors: 1
Minions: 1 Autonomous Remote Guidance Universal System
Processes and Subroutines
Construction: Demolition 0, Infrastructure 0, Fabrication 0
Medical: Cybernetics 0, Pharmaceuticals 0, Recovery 0
Power: Broadcast 0, Efficiency 0, Redundancy 0
Research: Algorithms 0, Analysis 0, Databases 0
Security: Defensive 0, Drones 0, Offensive 0
Storage: Energy 0, Material 0, Organic 0
Improvements: 0
“I see it, but I’m not making much sense of it. I’m the Master, it looks like. Of this Bunker Core thing?”
“Yes! That’s you. You’re the primary guiding persona.”
“And you’re a minion.”
“…yes.” If a mass of eyeballs could grit its teeth, it would sound like Argus’ voice right now.
I glanced over at the girl. She was sagging a bit, but still held the knife ready. “How does the rest of this help me?”
“Most of it doesn’t. It’ll cease to matter after our departure from this core. Honestly, the rest of it wouldn’t matter… except the room’s way worse than Juno’s reports indicated. We should have just been able to shut the door and call it a day. Now we’ll have to improvise.”
“Juno.”
“She’s a conversation for another time.”
“Alright, but she will be a conversation.”
“Um, okay. Look, basically you’re designed to be the primary intelligence of an underground facility. When things are working properly, you are the facility. So you don’t have a single body, you’re basically supposed to be the rooms and structures within a bunker. But you can jump into your minions and control them. Which is how I think we should do this.”
A dull ‘clunk,’ from the other side of the door. I tensed, but nothing happened. I turned my mind back to my minon. “Where do you fit in this?” I mused. “You had some pretty firm ideas on how to handle the situation. Why did Juno send me with you?”
“You’re human. Or you were. Or… I don’t know your exact circumstances. You’re allowed to make decisions that fall outside normal safeguards. Me, I can’t kill people. Among other things, that make my sort of program a poor choice for situations like these. But I’m great at helping people! Speaking of which, I think the other two might be gone.”
Yeah? That would make my job simpler. I thought loud words at my status screen until I found a way to close it and stared at the door. No sign of the goons. The girl was sitting down with her back against it, shaking. The aftermath of an adrenaline rush, I knew.
“Good kid. Good soldier,” I told her.
Damned if she didn’t give me a pissed-off look. She shushed me with a finger to her lips and pointed at her ears. So we could communicate. Sort of. In this case, the message was clear; she was trying to listen for her enemies.
I lowered the audio to a whisper. “Argus, still with me?”
“Yes. Volume makes no difference. I’m reading your words from the audio packets as they leave your processor.”
I filed that under things not to worry about right now and called my status screen back. “So what’s useful to us right now?”
“May I look through your eyes?”
“For now. Until I close the screen.” He was like a djinn or a captive demon, I knew. I’d have to watch what I said and make sure I didn’t leave any loopholes he could exploit if he was so inclined. Then I wondered what djinns and demons might be. More echoes of memories I couldn’t access? Seemed likely. And annoying.
But Argus was happy to comply. “Alright. The useful things to us right now are your circuits. You’ve currently got about ten synapses worth. The circuits control your core capabilities. The more you devote to your subroutines, the more you can create.”
“Create? How?”
“That’s your main purpose. This bunker? It was made through the usage of the core you’re occupying. And probably run through it, until something went wrong, anyway. Basically you’re a nanohive. You create and control microscopic machines that go forth and do your bidding. They’re called builder swarms.”
“Sounds good. I’m guessing they’d be minions, though, and I’m not seeing any.”
“Yeah, normally you’d have a schema to create them. But… wow, all your subroutines are bare. That’s ah, that’s not good. So we’ll have to devote some circuits to them. Think of subroutines as specializations. The more circuits you have devoted to them, the higher the rating, and the more things you can do.”
“So what’s the catch?”
“There are diminishing returns. The higher you go into a subroutine, the more circuits it takes to enhance them.”
“Is there a way to get more circuits?”
“Technically you don’t get more circuits, you enhance the efficiency of the ones you have… but uh, that’s where resonance comes in. Which isn’t a factor here. It’d take too long to give you more circuits.”
“This sounds a bit like a game.” I had another one of those teasing, not-memories tugging at me.
“It kind of is. The cores were designed for human intelligences controlling them, and the makers decided to go with a gamelike interface. A late twentieth-century development called tech trees.”
“Tech trees. Yes, that rings a bell.”
“I mean, technically you’re not rediscovering anything; it’s all embedded in your core anyway. The circuits are just the dedicated hardware and software you need to handle creating and using the things you ‘discover’. But you should be able to attempt to create anything you can imagine. Just think about what you want to create and yell the thought ‘Create’ and then the name of it.”
“What happens then?”
“If you have the circuits in the proper subroutines, and enough feedstock, then you’ll create it. If not, then the interface will tell you what you need.”
Sounded good. I thought of a machine gun… no, I’d need something to fire it. No, wait. “How exactly do the things I order get created?”
Argus blinked in irritation. “I already told you, through the builder swarms.”
“Yes, those minions that I don’t have.”
“Oh. Right. Um. Try creating a swarm.”
It took a few minutes of back and forth whispering to get a good description from him. All through this, the girl listened at the door. She ignored us, waiting, breathing as shallowly as she could. Then she stirred, standing, calling out a warning or something of the sort.
My foes were back at my gates. The grace period was over, I’d have to work fast. I thought of the thing Argus had told me about, and thought Create Nanobuilder Swarm.
And instantly, new words popped up, temporarily overlaying my screen before fading.
Insufficient Subroutines for this task!
Requirements: Demolition 1, Drones 1, Fabrication 1
“Wow, three circuits?” Argus said.
“Fine, we can spare those,” I said, moving the screen over a bit and eyeing the door. The girl was cutting a strip from one of her raggedy sleeves. As I watched, she spat on the fragment several times, then wrapped her face. Why?
A shimmering through the gap drew my attention. A glitch?
No. Worse.
“Fire,” I realized, as the first tendrils of smoke seeped into the room. They’d definitely started a blaze out there, and thanks to all the
red flashing lights, I hadn’t noticed the change until it was too late.
Or was it too late? Did I need to breathe? “They’re trying to smoke her out. Is this a problem for us?”
Argus squeaked, as new words appeared before us.
Warning! Core Contamination 1%
“Oh yeah…” Argus whispered, as the 1% blinked a few times, and grew to 2%. “This is pretty bad…”
THREE
I couldn’t waste time. I didn’t know what contamination would do to me, but I was sure it wouldn’t help the situation. “The circuits. Tell me how to put them into subroutines. Quickly!”
“All you have to do is think commands,” Argus said, eyes open wide in alarm. “The commands are ah, ‘allocate one circuit’, and then the name of the subroutine.”
It was hard to focus, but I did. And each time I did, words scrolled up my screen to vanish into the aether.
Demolition Subroutine is now 1
Drones Subroutine is now 1
Fabrication Subroutine is now 1
There, that should do it.
Warning! Core Contamination 5%
I would have grimaced if I’d had a face. Instead, I thought Create Nanobuilder Swarm
Schema Available: Nanobuilder Swarm: This swarm of microscopic robots is capable of disassembling or constructing virtually any material that you are qualified to handle. Top-of-the-line safeguards ensure that no accidents involving living tissue are possible; this Northeast Enginetics drone product is guaranteed human and pet-safe under all circumstances.
Would you like to create one Nanobuilder Swarm at the cost of 15 feedstock?
I blinked. That was… expensive. Most of my feedstock.
Warning! Core Contamination 8%
But then I wasn’t in any position to haggle, now was I? I could feel the effects the smoke was having on me. Somehow, even though I didn't have lungs, it was making me woozy and a little high. The downsides of a few beers, without any of the benefits.
I couldn’t dwell on it. I had a swarm to build. Yes, I thought, and lights flickered and flashed around me. Initializing, said my interface.
I glanced over to the girl to see how she was reacting, and I saw that she was coughing, even with the rag over her face. She couldn’t take much more of this, I thought. She would have to leave, and either way she went, out the front or down the elevator shaft, I’d lose my defender.
“Courage,” I told her, watching my contamination rise, and feeling my mind get fuzzier. Somewhere around 21%, though, the job was done. A cloud of something like fireflies, only much, much tinier, rose out of the sphere that was me, and hovered in place, filling about a five by five column.
Construction complete!
Minion: Drone Nanobuilder Swarm I has been constructed and added to your minion pool.
Warning! Your minion pool is full.
What, already? I’d only made one!
No time to get upset. “Argus, I’ve got the swarm. Now what?”
“I’m… fuzzier on this part of things.” He sounded fuzzier, too. Worse for the wear. He was in the core with me, so the contamination was probably hitting him, too. “You should just be able to… assume control. Without… commands.”
I stared at the swarm.
Warning! Core Contamination 24%
The girl was hacking up a lung over there, by the sound of it. And here I was fumbling my way along, hoping for miracles.
I didn’t get a miracle.
But I did get a break. After a few seconds of frantic experimentation, without knowing exactly what I’d done, one of my attempts worked, and my perspective shifted.
1 Bandwidth required… committed. Depart your minion to free up utilized bandwidth.
The room grew, massively, but I was still aware of it in the same way someone would be aware of their head or their hand. But my vision was full of lights, dancing and swirling, in a pattern I somehow knew by heart.
It was beautiful.
But through it all, were veins of greasy black stuff, eddying and twisting. This. This had to be the smoke. This was the enemy.
So I ate it.
It wasn’t a conscious thought, really. I just wanted the smoke gone, and the next thing I knew, the lights were bobbing along, dispersing, going after the black vapor one after another. And as they did, a little window popped up to one side, listing chemicals and symbols. Most of them were familiar to me… salt I knew, carbon I could decipher, but a few were bright red, and alien to me.
“Argus,” I said, and it took me a try or two to say his name without stuttering. “Use my eyes for a second and look at this.”
“Technically you don’t have eyes— whoa.” Argus said. “Whoa, no wonder the contamination’s spreading so fast. The idiots are burning tainted combustibles.”
“Tainted. How?” I asked, wincing as more words flew up.
Warning! Core Contamination 25%
“Tainted by the wars. Or the aftermath. Radioactive dust, military nanostrain remnants, maybe even some gray goo. Though probably not that latter or we’d be destroyed by now.”
“Do I want to know what gray goo is?”
“No.”
“It seems to be slowing, though,” I said, and watched from the nanoswarm as the greasy tendrils disappeared into burning light. “It’s working.”
“Smoke’s not too hard to absorb.”
Feedstock+1
“Huh,” Argus said. “There must be useful trace elements in there. Normally you’d need a heck of a lot more material to get feedstock out of something.”
I filed that under stuff I’d worry about later. The girl was making more noise and that concerned me. I tried moving the swarm out a bit, and enveloped her, tried to eat the smoke that filled the air around her. The swarm’s disclaimer had said that it was human safe, and she was coughing harder, the cloth around her face stained red. Figured she’d die anyway if I didn’t do something.
When her coughing slowed, and she managed a few raggedy breaths, the girl looked up in wonder, face comically huge in my new perspective. She lifted a shaking hand, tried to catch the ‘fireflies’ of the swarm in her palm. They slipped away like droplets of mist, sliding off her gloves and skin as soon as she touched them.
“Careful, I’m ticklish,” I told her. But it kept her busy and entertained, so that was fine.
The contamination rose one final time, up to 26%, but then seemed to hold steady. My bad buzz had gone from beer to wine, the sort that comes in boxes that you buy in bulk.
As the room thinned, I directed my borrowed bodies toward the door, to cut the smoke off at the source.
“I don’t think you can leave this room,” Argus said. “Your minions have to stay inside you. You’d have to claim the hallway or whatever else is outside in order to extend your range.”
“How do I do that?”
“I’m honestly not sure. This has never come up in any of my previous—“ Argus shut up. “Ugh. This contamination is affecting my processes.”
On that we agreed. “So how do we get it out of the core? Should I use the swarm to eat it away?”
“That… sounds like a very bad idea. You’re, ah, porous. Kind of vulnerable to attacks like this one. There’s no telling what the contaminating particles are coating or influencing. Telling a bunch of dumb nanobots to eat it away… You would risk damaging something important. Like me. Whoops, did I say that last part? Sorry.”
“We’re drunk. It’s fine.” But we weren’t drunk. We were hungover or something of the sort.
I looked to the girl. She’d slumped over, but her eyes were open and watching the fireflies. Poor kid looked exhausted.
And my pernicious, blessed, paranoia pointed out something worrisome. She wasn’t coughing anymore. If the would-be arsonists outside heard only silence, then they might assume that she’d been smoked unconscious or dead.
I tried mimicking her cough. She stirred in surprise, looked at me. I had the fireflies dance around the door.
Understanding flared in her eyes. Deliberately, she coughed. Then she winced. It hurt her to do that. I didn’t like that, didn’t like her going through pain on my account.
Was I a softy? I thought not. I strove for memories, found one of a man choking under me, my hands straining around his throat. Remembered coldness as I choked him out. No, no, I wasn't a softy. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I DID like her. Maybe that was the reason for my sympathy.
I eyed the smoke, as much as I could without proper eyes. The nanoswarm was getting the hang of it, and the work only occupied about half the little bots right now, to keep it halted at the doorway. I could use the unoccupied nanobots for something else. But what?
I looked back to my nameless kid. She was fading fast, eyes half-shut. She faked another cough as I watched, but then it turned into a real one, raspy and wet. Eventually the terrible twosome would come in to see their handiwork, no matter what she did.
But she’d bought me time, and I wouldn’t let it go to waste. I concentrated, took ahold of the inactive part of the swarm, and gave it its marching orders.
It was… tricky. The occupied part tried to shift away from the smoke to help, and I had to shepherd it back. Then back over to enforce my orders, then back up again to keep the smoke contained. The builders didn’t do multitasking well. They couldn’t have done it at all if I wasn’t there, I understood. This was the benefit of ‘occupying’ a minion. I could get them to perform better.
And as the girl’s coughs grew few and far-between, I experimented, found a way to do what I wanted, and set it in motion. And oh boy, did my feedstock rise, as the nanoswarm did its thing.
Finally, the excavation was done. It was a pretty slick job, if I said so myself. If I’d had a mouth I’d be grinning. Feeling smug, I settled back to wait.
Sure enough, once her coughing faded off, one of the goons filled the doorway. He was wearing a scarf or something over his mouth and nose so I couldn’t see his whole face…
…which was really a pity. I’d really wanted to see his face when his foot broke through the floor into the space I’d hollowed out between the door and the frame.
Bunker Core (Core Control Book 1) Page 2
