G2 Gone

There had been a lot of discussion about G2. Debate would be a better term, but they were going nowhere. Still a valuable and, if the committee was being honest, a mostly unstoppable part of their crime deterrent force. Discussions came down to two topics in particular. Was there any merit in trying to upgrade her to work a little more proactively on the streets, instead of taking a passive and more investigative stance. Secondly, was there any good reason to leave her as she was?

A certain amount of work and money had been funneled into her original creation, and now there was a question of upkeep and maintenance. There was no debate about the value she added, none at all, the question was more about to what extent did they want to put into her upkeep. There was no shortage, as the name might suggest, of gadgets inside of her, she was capable even if she wasn’t armed. At least not in a traditional sense. It had been years since she and the inspector had worked together and since then she hadn’t received much in the way of additional hardware. There had never been a need for it. Now, though, she was beginning to show some signs of decline.

“It takes her at least a second, if not more to reply to a question.” One of the committee members was saying.

“I don’t see a problem with that.” one of the other members said in response. “One whole second is nothing.”

“For her it is.” came the reply.

“This is ludicrous. We’re talking about spending a small fortune on a machine so that it can talk faster? Am I understanding that right?”

“That’s not what the new processor core will do and you know it. She’ll be able to respond faster and better to any situation. That could mean saved lives and crimes stopped.”

There was a murmur around the small meeting room at that. The point was valid, for certain. The cost was far less than the salary of another officer but that wasn’t really what was happening here. Precious few folks understood exactly who was on the budget and planning committee. Even less knew who backed them. There were a few very vocal opponents to the G2 upgrade path, but those who opposed it did so for good reason.

Well, the reason was good for them.

A human was fallible. A human could have money or blackmail slipped into their palms and made to do as they were told. You could make a cop look the other way if you flashed the right amount of dollar signs at them. G2, on the other hand, was something different. She didn’t need money, there was nothing to hold over her head to force her hand, and the criminal underbelly hated that. There was nothing worse than a boy scout, or girl scout...or robot scout.

“We need to be making jobs for people, not putting these windup dolls on the streets.” One of them interjected.

“She’s worth it though.”

That voice had come from, perhaps, the weightiest voice in the room. The chief of police himself had seen the rise of G2 and her good deeds on the street, along with a meteoric plummet in crime. She did her job and she did it well. She was no wind up meter maid as had been suggested, she was every bit a part of the force and she did good by the city. Her methods might be a little unorthodox, but there was no questioning her results.

“We can argue on this until we’re blue in the face.” The chief blustered, “But it always comes to a vote. So-”

He indicated the packet of papers in front of the dozen or so members of the committee. They had spent hours debating this and a number of other measures for budgeting. His wife had already texted him twice and wanted to know if he would be home while the meatloaf was still hot, and he was hungry.

They voted, as they always did. The papers handed in and counted in front of everyone. No chance to tamper when everyone was right there and watching it unfold with their own eyes. Many of the budget items were a no surprise kind of endeavor. Easily passing with no opposition. The G2 initiative, while contested, also passed, barely. There was no need for it to be unanimous though.

“Great, well. That’s settled.” The chief said as he clapped his hands together and pushed away from the table. “See you all next quarter.”

This was a setback, for certain. The upgraded processor chips would make G2 more effective, but it wasn’t the only solution that the underground had discussed. There had always been a chance that this would pass, and the fact that it did just meant that they needed a slightly more..aggressive..approach to disposing of the threat G2 posed.

Funds were moved, parts purchased, and shipping labels created. Soon, the new G2 chip was on its way to the technology department and in the hands of the technical crew responsible for maintaining G2 and her daily activities. Everything from small software debugging and programming tweaks, to fully disassembly and maintenance of the internal workings that kept her running. Two dedicated folks had been assigned to the task and G2 had become something of a friend and pet project all in one to them. They had been the team behind writing the grant for the processor upgrades and even put together a full presentation and argument notes to give to their section head to present to the committee.

The thrill of actually getting new hardware was palpable the morning following the approval. A quick email had been sent to them just after the meeting to let them know of the success and to make preparations. A request they were more than happy to take on.

G2 lived in the technology office. She stood on a small pedestal in the corner, the wireless charging station pumped a steady trickle of electric life into her chassis. Her internal batteries were charged long before the morning shift arrived. For the night, she was mostly just left alone in the darkness of the tech office. That was fine with her, she wasn’t programmed to be upset about such things.

In fact, she wasn’t programmed to be upset about a lot of things.

That was one of the greatest shortcomings of her current configuration. The slightly older processor core allowed for smooth operation as a public servant and some interpersonal skills, but little else. She might look human on the outside, and her behavior reflected that to a lesser extent, but she was undoubtedly a machine. The newly approved upgrades would help change that. She would have CPU cycles to spare and still run a more advanced personality core. She would be one step closer to being almost indistinguishable from a human. Not that that was the end goal, but it was something that would help with her interpersonal investigations.

When G2 reactivated in the morning, her face remained still for a long while as her operating system connected to the rest of her body and swept through it. System by system checked in and confirmed that there were no issues and made themselves ready for use. Structurally she was secure, balance protocols came online as the stabilizing clamps retracted from around her waist. Her personality came online and her face relaxed into a vague smile and her body relaxed.

With her body online and sagging slightly into a more ready position, the worn, blue leather outfit she was clad in creaked along with her. It wasn’t so much an outfit she wore, it was part of her. There was no artificial flesh below it, no human body simulacrum for anyone to exploit, just her leather outfit and her internal structures. Synthetic skin was expensive, and with as much action as she saw on the streets there was a very real fear of constantly replacing sections of her skin that were slashed, ripped, or otherwise damaged in the line of duty. Still, her neck, head, and hands still had artificial skin coatings. Simply put, they were the only part of her that the general public would ever see and it lent itself well to calming the people she interacted with if she looked somewhat like a human woman.

There was a box that had been placed on one of the workbenches some time the day before. It was coated from top to bottom in a variety of warnings and alerts. Some were words explicitly designed to tell someone what to do. There was no shortage of “top” and “fragile” warnings on it along with a myriad of symbols. Arrows pointing in the right direction to orient it, iconography of a broken glass with a slash through it next to the indicator of fragility. Manufacturer logos plastered all over it and inside was a mess of bubble wrapping.

The technical crew arrived at approximately the same time. They met in the break room, filling their coffee cups and chatting idly, wholly unaware that there was work to do. Work that they had legitimately been excited for. Once they unlocked and pushed open the door into their lab, expecting nothing more than to see G2 standing at attention and waiting for them. She was, in fact, at attention and waiting, standing on the opposite side of the central workbench as she always was. Mechanical and still, and vaguely smiling.

“Good morning.” she said, her voice smooth and unassuming. In front of her was the box, about a foot long, twice as tall as that, and waiting for a human to take it up. “I believe there is an upgrade here.”

The thrill was palpable after that. The cups of coffee practically thrown at their desks in a flurry of activity. The box was picked up and promptly opened to reveal a brand new processor array, the necessary additional components and a series of cables. There were additional accessories too, mesh bundles to tidy up the cabling and small plastic clips to help mount the cables to her internal framework and tuck them neatly out of the way. G2 was asked, not ordered, to slip up onto the table and disengage her torso plating.

“Unable to open paneling without authorization.” G2 calmly said as she settled down on the workbench. A typical response, and one that was expected. One of the two technicians verbal aloud the proper code to authenticate themselves against her internal systems.

“Command code accepted. Disengaging plating.”

A small hiss, like a jar being quietly unsealed, filtered into the air. It lasted a few long seconds and then as suddenly as it appeared it was gone. Still, the technicians waited, they had done this more than once and knew what to wait for. Opening the chest cavity was more of a process than simply unlocking a cabinet and pulling it open.

An instant later the room filled with the small, faint buzz from inside of G2’s body. The whirring sounded like a high powered drill at maximum speed for a second before it lowered, ratcheting down to a lower speed, deepening the sound it made. Then it stopped, the restraining bolts that locked her chest into place had been undone and they were ready to proceed. While the robotic woman undid her chest panels they had taken a moment to don blue nitrile gloves and dust masks. As each one stepped up to opposing sides of the table they clipped anti-static wrist bands to their arm and then clipped the other end of the tightly curled wire to the workbench.

They locked eyes for a moment, nodded, and got to work, all the while G2’s expression remained on the friendly side of neutral. Her eyes locked on the ceiling and nothing changed in her expression despite what was happening to her body.

Each of the two technicians manually lifted her arms, there was a small amount of resistance as the motor control systems inside of her shoulders tried to keep her arms in a neutral position at her side. Still, they moved up and exposed a small clip that held the leather shoulder pads in place. Unclipping them allowed for the whole shoulder and back panel to be wiggled out from under her. Hidden below the thick bands that usually covered her upper chest, was a simple heavy duty zipper. It ran from her collar down over her chest and belly, then down to the bottom fringes of her blue leather tunic.

One of the pair took it and used his free hand to pinch her collar. Holding it in place he gingerly pulled the zipper down until it released at the bottom of her tunic. Once done, his partner gently slipped his fingers into the seam it created and pulled one side open. Before long the second man joined and pulled open the other side of the leathers.

Where one might expect to see exposed skin, there was only framework, circuitry and wires. A hard light weight metal shroud covered much of the upper chest. Two halves that gave G2 a bit of shape to her chest, but little else. The two halves met in the middle where they formed a small ridge where the sternum might be on a human woman. Three consecutive clips latched the two halves together and provided not only protection from external threats, but also formed a seal over the components below the shell. Gentle ridges studded the outer edges of the plate, vaguely in the form and spacing of ribs. A simple byproduct of using widely available materials to make G2’s casing. Clearly this particular plate was meant to be coated in some kind of fleshy analog, for G2 though, it was just part of her internals.

Pulsing with a faint light, just below the upper chest plate, was her power core. It had remained online and functional for several years now. The light seeped out between the seams in the plates, and oozed from a number of other small breaks in the casing. Through clear plastic windows used to view her deeper internals and out holes drilled to accommodate screws to bolt on new components. The power from inside of her chest leaked out and sprayed the open leather panels with a gentle blue light. All the while G2 remained still, smiling, occasionally blinking and allowing the two men to open her up.

Tools were brought out and the pair began to undo the latches across her chest. The three at her sternum were easy enough, consisting of little more than simple thumb clips. There were more complicated ones along the sides of her torso. She wasn’t meant to come apart easily and it took a combination of tools and techniques to crack into her inner chassis. Specialized tools that slid deep into recessed openings and allowed for a hidden button to be pressed, others required a heavy handed clamp to be attached and turned. Once unlocked though, the hard casing inside of her chest was loose and tilted outwards before being pulled free and set gingerly onto another table.

More exposed now, G2 turned her head slightly to one side and spoke to one of the technicians.

“Will there be an interruption to my operation?”

“Not this time, your secondary processors should take over most of your functionality while we swap this out.” Was the reply, after a moment of further thought he added, “you might experience a little lag between cognition and execution though. Nothing terrible. You’ll catch up once the new proc’ is in place.”

“Understood. No further questions.”

It was a dry response, the kind that the duo of technicians had come to expect. G2 was all business, and at the end of the day, all robot as well. As personable as she could be in the course of her duties, in the technology office she was little more than technology. She liked it that way, or at least as much as a machine could enjoy things. It allowed her to truncate a large number of running processes and operate more efficiently. She had once described it as letting out a breath and relaxing. It wasn’t a perfect metaphor but it got her point across at the time.

Hands reached into her opened body and with as much precision as they could muster, began to disengage the processor core. It was nestled below a nest of cables and wires, bundled together into their own distinct mech tubes. Each one wriggling deeper into her chassis and connecting to some system and then back into the processor controller board. It would take so much more work to disassemble her further and properly detach each and every one of those bundles, and wholly unnecessary. There was more than enough room to gently scoot them out of the way and hold them back with plastic ties for a short while.

Once they were out of the way, just below the portion of her chest where her false ribs were, lay her processor core.

A simple circuit board with a number of additional daughter boards clipped into it. Each one required its own discreet power connection. Thin mesh wrapped cables clipped into the ends of the daughter board and from there snaked their way back to the power cell just above the processor bank. Small status lights flickered and blinked next to row after row of microchips embedded on those daughter boards, each one showing that it was ready for operation.

Today’s upgrade would remove each and everyone of those processor chips as well as the motherboard each one was attached to. While there was no real reason not to simply detach the whole motherboard and all the accompanying chips at once, the G2 assembly and instruction manual indicated that for a full replacement, each one should be done individually. The technicians settled down into a long day of work.

As each bank of processors was detached, the little status light winked out and a moment later returned, blinking an alarming red. G2 also seemed to let out a small gasp at each one, regardless of how often those components were detached from inside of her. She had no real control over it, it was her programming, and she had to obey it. The same was true with the spoke alerts as certain milestones were achieved. Once a quarter of her processors were removed, she spoke out loud that she was operating at a reduced capacity, though her jaw and mouth moved slightly out of sync with the vocal processors in her throat. A phenomenon that would only get worse as more and more processing power was robbed from inside of her.

Soon enough there was a pile of deactivated and powered down processor daughter boards lining one of the carts they had dragged over to their worktable. G2 remained mostly still through this process with her spoken words lagging further and further behind until it was time to remove the main board from inside of her.

There were about two dozen heavy bolts holding it in place. Whoever had assembled G2 in the first place had wanted this board to stay firmly in place, and with good reason. Other than the tedium of manually removing each fastener, the process itself was smooth enough. As was the process of putting in the new processor core. The main board was placed inside of her, resting nicely against the insulated screw holes. While one of the technicians aligned it and made sure that each and every one of the mounting points was in place, the other dumped a tube filled with fresh mounting bolts into a plastic tray and set them next to G2’s head. From there, it was only a matter of putting everything back together.

The new board was secured in place, locked tightly and satisfyingly unmoving. New sleek looking processor chips with their own individual cooling fins were slotted into place. Just like when the chips were removed, G2 let out a small gasp as new ones were placed inside of her and powered on. Each one would clip in, a plastic lock flipping into place and locking it into the slot and then a connection to the power core was made. The plugs wiggled into place and a plastic lock clicked home to ensure that nothing wiggled free in the line of duty. A moment or two after each connection the little status light would blink from red, to amber, and then eventually to green. Once it was clear it was running as expected, a new chip was brought in and the same process started again.

Two dozen of those same chips were clicked into place. Locked, plugged in, wait for a green light, next chip. Over and over. Until it was finally done. The wiring inside of her torso was gingerly placed back where it had started for the most part. Some of the cabling was a little more loose than before, simply because the processor core was smaller, more powerful but compact and it allowed for more room for the cabling to dangle. Additional plastic ties were inserted to anchor those cables in place. The last thing anyone wanted was a loose cable to accidentally flop into a running cooling fan or get caught on the edge of an errant circuit board.

The plate locked into place and once again her leather tunic was flapped over her chest and closed up. Zipped into place and G2 was asked to sit up. She quickly and easily complied, finding that the time between order and execution to be a fraction of what it had been when she activated that day. Her collar was placed back on her shoulders and clipped into place. She was finally ready to start her day, even though it was already noon. Still, she smiled, eager to get out and begin utilizing the newly installed hardware.

-Meanwhile-

Across the city, in the basement of a mid class apartment building, nestled among running laundry machines, sat three men. One wore jeans, ripped at the knees and stretched over well muscled legs. He looked like the kind of gym bro who wouldn’t spot you on the bench press no matter how much help you needed. A simple black t-shirt covered his top and despite the muscle, he had a pistol tucked into the back of his jeans. Across from him was a well dressed man with a high forehead and hair that was slicked back. A fact that only seemed to escalate the view of his balding head. He looked unimpressed with the other two men. The last one was a simply dressed young man, perhaps early thirties. He was wearing khaki pants, a hoodie and appeared to be perpetually slouching.

The man in the suit was the only one talking at this point. He was explaining everything that had happened in the committee meeting where the G2 processor upgrade had been approved. His tone was calm, with a certain bite to it, as if the things he were saying were both factual and disastrous.

“With these upgrades that tin can is going to be a lot more dangerous to us.” He said as he concluded.

“So what? It’ll be better at chatting up little old ladies after pulling a cat outta the tree.” The muscled man replied. “How’s that going to stop us?”

Nearby one of the dryers rattled to a stop, casting a bit of silence over the group and hushing everyone for a moment or two until it cycled to the next phase, rattling back to life.

“It means that the G2 robot will be more effective at noticing things. We’ve been lucky that it hasn’t started seeing patterns in our normal activities.” The well dressed man said. “We’re going to have to be a lot more diverse.”

The casually dressed man nodded, while the thug tilted his head a little.

“We’ll have to do different jobs in different places.” The suit clarified. “We can’t keep shaking down the same places, peddling merchandise on the same corners. We need to spread out, confuse it.”

“Or.” The man in the hoodie interjected, his voice low and dangerous. “We do what we’ve talked about for a year now.”

he let the implication hang in the air. Both of the others looked at him and expected more, but all they saw for a moment was a devious smile. “And I think I have an idea of just how to do it.”

Plans were discussed. Diversifying location and merchandise was off the table now. Instead, it was all out war.

-Two Weeks Later-

G2 booted as she always did. It was a much faster process these days. The new processor installed inside of her chest made the chassis wide check in process smooth and speedy. The system wide sweep would usually use their own discrete processors to check and verify the workability of each system, but with her primary processor core sitting on enough power to spare, each system was able to dip into those spare cycles. Dipping into the core processor and offloading some of the work each system did allowed for a swifter boot sequence, and from that, a more field ready G2 unit.

The technical crew wasn’t in the office just yet, there was nothing new about that. They would typically roll into the office around an hour after G2 was online. On slower days she might have waited until they arrived so they could do a quick once over of her system logs and give her the seal of approval for a day's work. While she waited, it was common for her to double check the previous day's paperwork and reports, check in on the interoffice message boards, and most importantly to her, check any outstanding warrants that she might come across in the course of her daily duties.

Today, she let most of the other menial work slide as the duty roster showed something upsetting to her core. A drastic spike in illegal activities had begun to sweep across the city, though the majority of the crimes seemed concentrated in a small block. The usual thugs and drug dealers seemed to surrender with an almost comically low amount of resistance. That alone was something that triggered further investigation, but to G2 she was much more concerned about the root cause and not the symptoms.

The location of most of the arrests, discarding outlier data, seemed to be concentrated around an industrial park. One part manufacturing facilities and warehouses buttressed up against small one story office suites. Unassuming little gray buildings stuffed with cubicles provided the only entrance for the larger storage behind them.

The kind of places where someone could walk in unseen by anyone. The kind of place where cement walls protected against the prying eyes of the law. It was an ideal place for any mobster or criminal organization to set up shop. No doubt shell companies and false advertising provided the social cover for more sinister activities. G2 was sure that even inside of the warehouses there was likely to be actual merchandise, just enough to cover their activities upon a casual glance. No one would suspect anything.

That was where she would start her investigation. There were no cases actively assigned to her and she was intended to simply be on patrol today. She made her own route, and today she made sure that route was going to take her over to the industrial park. From there, she would easily park and investigate.

It was, in fact, G2’s first stop of the day. And her last.

She had parked her cruiser some four or five blocks away from her intended target, choosing to walk up to the industrial park. Her logic was that she would be a little more inconspicuous if she didn’t pull up in a brightly colored and labeled police vehicle. She completely ignored the vibrant blue leather tunic and leggings she wore. They were just as obvious as her cruiser, if not more so. A squad car could be any badge rolling up on a park, but the swift and somewhat stiff movements of the robotic police woman were unmistakable. Even from a distance someone could spot her uniform and gait.

She politely questioned and spoke with a dozen or more front desk receptionists and secretaries over the next few hours, finding little more than polite conversation and a few stray looks at the oddity of her appearance. G2 was a well known quantity in the city, having been featured in more than enough news stories and articles, but it was another thing entirely to see the robotic woman in person. Still, her investigations, though polite and natural, were yielding no results. It wasn’t until just past two in the afternoon that she encountered something off.

Like any other office building or warehouse front she had entered today, the building was cool. The air conditioner was blasting hard and the difference between the relative warmth of the sunny outdoors and the fluorescent lit interior was palpable. Still, she took off her officer's cap and tucked it under her arm as she had done with every other building she entered. It was polite, it was her programming.

She looked around, but there was no one here. A simple reception desk was set up just across from a small lobby dotted with fresh plastic chairs. The glass spanning the opening across the desk was crystal clear too, almost like it had been freshly installed recently. The floor too was clean, too clean for any office building that saw even a moderate amount of foot traffic. She had no ability to accurately detect and analyze smells, but the whole place reeked of cleaner as well. Despite that, there was no one in sight.

“Hello? This is the police. I’d like a word with you.” G2 called into the empty building. No one responded.

She stepped up to the receptionists desk and peered past the glass. There was a computer there, and a monitor. Neither were hooked up to any kind of power, though there were cables draped and dangling around the desk. A mouse and keyboard were there too, but the cables weren’t connected to anything, rather they were run back towards the rear of the computer tower and left there. Even the clear plastic rolling mat below the office chair looked as if it hadn’t yet settled down flat. The edges were curled up as if it had been unrolled that morning. G2’s suspicions were growing by the second and her processor core was drinking it all in, cataloging and analyzing each new piece of information with intense scrutiny.

There was a door next to the receptionist desk, clearly leading back into the hall beyond. She could see a door just behind the receptionist desk on the side that might lead into the hall. The assumption was that they were connected and G2’s eyes darted to the door next to her. There was a handle, but no obvious keypad, or lock, or latch. The door was completely unsecured.

It opened with little fanfare. A precise click as the latch retracted into the handle and it smoothly opened on well oiled hinges into a dark hallway beyond.

The darkness was all encompassing, there was little to be seen even if there was abundant light. The door to the right led into the reception area. G2 nudged open the door with her foot, finding it swung open unhindered as well. She couldn’t help but squint into the darkness as her eyes switched to low light vision. It wasn’t quite enough to see everything, but it gave her enough of an edge to see that the room was empty, and the hallway as well.

G2 turned back to the hall, looking confidently down the expanse towards the back of the space. There was one other door that her dark vision revealed. At the end of the short, five foot hallway, was another door. The same make and model as the one that leads into the office and the lobby. Simple, unassuming, and waiting patiently for G2 to open it. On the other side of it was the beginning of her end.

Two burly thugs waited on one side of the door, each held a length of pipe, simple but brutally efficient at breaking things. Opposite them was another thuggish man, he had already completed his part of the plan. The benefit of working in a chop shop tearing apart cars and electronics all day long for a criminal organization, was that someone had access to a plethora of high powered car batteries, and a misplaced confidence on how to wire them into things.

Such as to an aluminum security door at the end of a hallway in the facade of an office building.

Behind him the usual daily operations of their illegal chop shop were all powered down and quiet. A dozen men waited, tucked away behind stolen cars with tarps draped over them and crates of parts ready for sale on the black market. All eyes were on the door at one side of their dirty little operation. Everyone, without meaning to or not, held their breath. They were about to spring a trap on the silliest little threat to their operation. It was hard for any of them to believe that one robotic officer could cause them so much grief, but her results were obvious, even to them.

G2 hesitated for only a moment. Her hand hovered over the handle on the door. She was designed to be resistant to external electrical currents, meaning that the flow of power through the door handle wouldn’t arc straight to her fingertips. If it had, then she might have detected the incoming jolt of electricity sooner. Despite the forethought that had gone into her construction and the amount of safeguards against a number of threats, there were just some things that would overcome those precautions. Such as the battery from a diesel truck that had been connected to the door handle and forced through a hole in it to connect to the handle on the opposite side. The very handle the G2 police android had just placed her hand on.

The phrase “It’s not the voltage that kills you, but the amperage” was very apt at that time. The hefty battery had plenty of voltage to it, but that was merely the output, it was the flow through the amperage was what took G2 off her feet. There was over a thousand amps flowing from the battery and into the somewhat delicate internal systems that helped keep G2 operational. To her construction’s credit, the sudden burst of light and electricity hit her like the heavy duty truck the battery had come from. It blew her back a few feet and crumpled her against the floor, despite that though, she remained online.

“In- Increased voltage de- de- error- detected...motor- alert motor- alert motor control functionality lim- limited.”

G2 muttered from the floor, her voice was slurred and barely above a whisper. Despite the errors and the obvious attack, her eyes remained open, in fact they were a little too open. With her motor control systems offline, she was unable to blink or even change expressions on her face.

The crew of thugs on the other side of the door had heard the explosion of energy from the door. They sprang into action, first the pipe wielding goons backed away, letting the self proclaimed electrical expert power down the battery and remove the jumper cables that were hooked up to the door. He managed to do so without shocking himself. While he shoved the battery out of the way the other thugs threw open the door, pipes held high and ready to attack if need be.

There was no need.

G2 was attempting to restore her system to working condition, but the process would take a long time. Even with her new, more powerful processor core, there were a lot of checks and balances to go over inside of herself. Every system had to check itself for faults and errors, then do a physical self test, then report in to her operating system that the system was working or not. If it wasn’t working then she would report the error out loud with the expectation that this would be happening with a technician nearby. She wasn’t lucky enough this time.

“Error detected, lower balance protocol drive. Motor control system fault at line nine five three for lower left balance protocol drive. Please service.” She muttered as the thugs approached her cautiously. Her voice set everyone on edge, even if it was a rolling litany of broken and disabled systems. They didn’t understand her operation well enough to know that they were in no danger, just that she was speaking.

Her eyes flickered wildly as her operating system strained against the sheer volume of work to do. Some of her motor control systems were beginning to come online again though, a fact that the thugs were quick to notice.

“Shit, she’s turning back on. Uhm, fuck get her inside!” One of them shouted as he saw her fingers twitching in an attempt to curl up into a fist. It was a stuttering movement, as if the wild surges of electricity were still coursing through her and causing her body to respond sluggishly. An assumption that wasn’t too far from the truth.

With only a bit of hesitation the pipes they were carrying were discarded and they scooped up G2. One man roughly grabbing her under the arm pits and another gripping her ankles. Once they had hoisted her up from the floor they could physically feel the amount of vibrations shaking her chassis. There was a consistent,low level vibration running through her, as well as more focused twitches and spasms from distinct parts of her body. Her feet jolted slightly, twitching in one direction then another. Her hands also moved in strange and seemingly involuntary motions, twitching to one side before her fingers curled one at a time then fanned out. All the while her head lolled to one side before suddenly spasming and turning to the other side then falling limp again.

The larger warehouse beyond the door was coming to life. There were figures moving around, dragging stainless steel carts around, each one laden with all manner of equipment. Some had electronics, others had equipment and tools of some kind that few of the men there could identify. All of it began to arrange itself around a large stainless steel workbench that had been set up in a space near the center of the warehouse. Surrounded by cars of varying kinds in different states of disassembly, repair, or in some cases decommissioning.

G2 was laid on the scarred and dinged workbench and in rapid succession handcuffed, tied down, and chained in place. It was overkill, and the gang of thugs that had been hired to take care of G2 knew it, but there was some wisdom in being overly prepared. As such the large bank of batteries that had been used to initially neutralize the robotic woman were dragged over and made ready. A man stood nearby, thick rubber gloves on his hands and live contacts held in his mits, ready to blast her with another jolt.

“Shall we begin then.”

The voice came from the smallest man among a group of muscle headed figures. He was dressed smartly in comparison to the group. Jeans and old sneakers were replaced with a pair of professional shoes and slacks, instead of a tank top there was a button down shirt that was freshly washed and tucked in. His hair was clean, slicked back and dark.

G2, had her operating system been working as expected could have easily scanned his face and matched it to a massive database of known persons. She would have identified him as well. The CEO of one of the biggest technology companies in the state would have been easy for anyone to identify. He inclined his head politely towards the robot on the slab.

“Good afternoon officer.” He said and then smirked to himself as G2 tried to turn her head and look at him.

Her head was fighting against the surges of electricity still trapped inside of her chassis. It was as if her head was trying to turn left and right at the same time. Likewise her eyes were unfocused and swiveled inside their sockets. Her field of vision was scrambled and even trying to focus in on just one face, let alone a dozen was a struggle that consumed an absurd amount of her available processing power.

“Y- You are- alert vocal processors- error- processors online- error!” She murmured “Sub- je- ject ident- identif- ified.” She finally muttered.

“Oh good, so you know who I am. It must be comforting to a machine like you to know who it was that brought about your destruction.” He gave a forced but menacing chuckle. “Too bad.”

“Why- why are-” her voice suddenly dropped an octave and became a flat burst of words. “Data storage- torage- age- storage corr- corruption de- de- de- detected in root sector.”

“Aww, shame, no one will get to know.” He clucked and the group of men around her laughed along with him. “Shaun. You’re up.”

Another man stepped forward, dressed more casually, though still more put together than the thugs. He had cargo pants and a simple black shirt with a faded set of crossed bones under an ancient cassette tape. He wasn’t smiling as much and looked to have a bit of grim determination on his face. A moment later he was gently prodding around her neck, seemingly searching for some hidden catch or release. G2’s head swiveled as best it could to look in his direction, though her eyes still jittered and moved in the sockets and she never got a good lock on his face.

“You- ou are n- not- ot- not authr- orized to work on this- on this- ON ON ON- THIS- ON this unit.” Her head twitched away and then back a moment later and her voice dropped down into a flat mono tone again. “S- s- S- STOP. You are under Ar- ar- arrrrrreEST! pu- put your hands- lay on the ground with your- hands up! You- you’re under hands up on the ground!”

The man pawing around her neck swore once, completely ignoring G2 and all of her many demands. He was still searching her neck for the release, but between a faint unfamiliarity with her construction and the way her head was constantly moving from side to side, it was a challenge. One that he was growing increasingly frustrated with. He tried again for another few minutes while a small crowd stood by and watched, ready to tackle her if she managed to break free, but mostly just watching for the sick pleasure of seeing her torn to pieces. Eventually.

“Marco, get her coat off.” He shouted as he finally gave up trying to do the detachment properly.

One of the thugs grinned with some kind of lewd intent and got to work tearing at her leather tunic. He was altogether disappointed to find that below the surface of the coat was not a typical woman’s chest, but rather a tangled mess of circuitry and wiring. His face melted into a disappointed sneer and he stepped back letting the little technician do his job.

Even with her chest covering open and her entire chassis exposed to him, he was still struggling to find the latch. Even going as far as to reach inside of her opened torso and up into her neck cavity proved to be unfruitful. Still, there were options. He was a man of professionalism and was a little hesitant to resort to violence with such a beautifully crafted machine like G2, but orders were orders. Her head needed to be removed first so she could fully watch the rest of her body be completely destroyed. There would be no repurposing her like the cars that made up the shop's backdrop. No, this was a demolition job, plain and simple.

While he wasn’t able to get her head properly detached, he was at least able to manually disengage a number of systems to help preserve a part of her. He was already up to his forearm inside of her torso, his hands wiggling up into her neck and towards her throat. Once there, the same connections and ports were all the same as other androids he had worked on. It was just a matter of prodding his fingers in the right direction.

“Warning. Input latency de- detected. Delay in. Connection. Severed. Ple- please reconnect cranial module to. Connect to. Error. Device not found.” G2 muttered as her eyes fluttered and her irises went dark. She was still operational, that much was certain, but her operating system was struggling. “Packet loss detected. Re- re- establishing- wireless connection to. Connection to. to. Tooooo. Alert, connection packet loss detected.”

There was a small chuckle from the crowd mixed in with jeers from the all too eager crowd of thugs.

“Emer- emergency connection protocols engaged. A- attempting force re- reconnection. Reconnection to motor cortex. Pairing… pairing… one moment… pairing. Access code zero zero zero zero. Error. Connection not established. Attempting connection…”

The technician retracted his hands from inside of G2 and stepped back. He nodded towards the crowd and let them do what they did best. There were mock gestures of politeness as the gathered crowd put on faux polite voices, bowed and swept hands at one another and gestured at G2. There were plenty of “no no my good man, I insist upon you demonstrating your skills” and “please sir, you must take care of this for us all.” Each one met with a burst of laughter, all the while G2 attempted to reboot her connection to her body. Her eyes jolted from side to side as she attempted to follow the source of the voices. There were either too many or her operating system was simply overwhelmed as it attempted to fix itself and her body.

In the end, two men stepped forward, one of them brandishing a crowbar. Positioned just above her head, the unarmed thug placed a meaty hand on either side of her head, ready to stabilize it, or just pull. The other man, crowbar in hand stepped up next to the work bench.

“Night night sweet heart.” He grumbled before raising the long black tool up over his head and bringing it down hard on her throat. The dull prongs cared little for the resistance her artificial skin gave, nor did it stop as it plowed through cabling and tubes, circuitry and wires. All of it was just an obstacle that the crowbar was specifically made to pierce. Eventually the momentum came to a halt, somewhere near the back of her neck, potentially butting up against her spinal column. That wasn’t about to stop this though.

“Pull it back.” The man with the crowbar ordered and his companion pulled on her head, dragging it only an inch or so away from her body, but it was enough. There was a small ping as something broke inside of her neck. More than that, it also allowed the crowbar to slip just a little deeper, right in between a pairing of artificial spinal disks.

“Halt. Thi- This action will result in- result in damage. Penal code five seven five seven five seven forbids the destruction of- of- destruction of- destruction of of of of of of government proper- proper- ty- ty- tyyyyyyy-”

G2’s warning was cut short with a spray of sparks, distorted sounds and half spoken words. The sound of metal tearing apart rent the air. The thug had thrown his weight onto the top of the crowbar and wrenched it back, at the same time his partner had twisted her head from side to side, pulling back as he did so. The result was the most improper detachment of G2’s cranium. The man holding her head stumbled back a bit, still clutching his new prize. Her eyes had shot open and her mouth churned, attempting to speak words that were simply not coming.

Her body, still on the slab, convulsed wildly as a midstream data and power disconnect rocked through her. Some kind of fluid dribbled from the base of her detached neck as well, splattering against the cement floor and leaving oily dark stains wherever it landed. It would be a dull reminder to the gang of this day.

The smaller man pointed to one of the carts that had been drug over. There was a little more than a towel and a long orange extension cable there that had a number of additional attachments on the end of it. G2’ head was placed on the towel, landing on its side and turning her field of vision into a strange sideways view of the world. He stepped over to the cart and eagerly jammed a number of cables and plugs into the matched port inside of her exposed throat. They were mostly power connections to keep her head operational while they brutally disassembled her body. Though there were others that connected to networking ports that led directly into his own personal subnet that would capture and block any communication with the outside world. There was no backup coming for her today.

Her operating system was still chugging and churning the myriad of error messages and warnings that her missing body had produced. They would eventually clear out all the way, but for now they dominated a massive amount of the secondary processor system inside of her plastic skull casing.

Her operating system did, however, manage to catch up with the circumstances and rearrange some priorities. Errors and alerts were shunted to the side in favor of establishing a remote connection to her writhing body. It became her top priority, announcing it, on the other hand, would still be spoken aloud no matter how much she wanted to keep it a secret.

“Peripheral device, cra- cranium module con- connected to- error. Unable to establish motor control junction. Streaming data- da- daaaaata- data established. Stop what you’re doing! You’re under the ground, put your hands in arrest!”

Another round of chuckles and mockery resounded from that, though a few noticed that her eyes were beginning to focus a bit more. They were no longer jittering in their sockets and were instead locked onto her own body. An observation that meant little to most of the thugs in the chop shop, but the technician knew that meant her OS was beginning to recalibrate. A fact he wasn’t about to let happen for too long, lest she do something to combat them.

“Well gents, let’s get this show started.” He said to a chorus of cheers.

Then he put his hands inside of her torso.

There was so much useless wiring inside of her, if he had any hope of getting to the core components he needed, those pesky bundles of cables, tubes, and wires needed to go. He took hold of one, clutching it firmly in his hand and then moving one hand to the rim of her torso, the hard edge where machine met leather casing. He bent forward, twisted his back and pulled hard.

Nothing happened at first, but a moment later there was a bit of give as some of the more delicate wires popped free, or in some cases, reached their breaking point and simply snapped free. The results were immediate, even as the smaller cables broke free.

It started with a burst of static from G2’s open mouth but quickly refined itself into words. They sounded distant and with the lowest possible fidelity. “Alert! Input mismatch de- detected- ted- ted -teeeeddddd- detected. At line five three eight nine three… nine three...nine- nine- nine. This this this unit requires ser- service. Please. Nine three. Service nine three unit service needed please nine three service unit nine three please.”

G2’s voice fell silent for a moment, the gentle whine and whirr of servo motor arrays in her neck filled the empty space. More cables came free from inside of her, resulting in more static, more half spoken words and sounds from her head. Despite her jaw and mouth remaining still the words tumbled out as she watched her internal systems tear free. Soon they devolved into little more than just sounds for a while. Her operating system struggled mightily against the torrent of errors that her broken torso was feeding her. The limited amount of processing power in her detached head struggled to process it all in a timely manner, but it still tried.

“Ahh, here we go, this is something interesting.”

With two hands inside of G2, the technician grinned wickedly and asked for some kind of tool. One of the thuggish men nearby was happy to place it in his hand like a surgeon requesting a scalpel. But there would be no precision work done today. Instead he wrenched something free inside of her, all the while G2 groaned miserably from her little nest on the cart. Her pleas to stop fell onto a room full of deaf ears.

The man pulled something from inside of her, holding it just barely above the rim of her opened torso. It looked, to most present, like a block of circuit boards with more circuit boards attached, and somehow even those had more boards jutting from them.

“Behold, the crown jewel of our little problem. Her core processor. I’m told it was quite expensive.”

“You are not authorized to handle this component. Please re- re- return it to my cha- chassis im- im- immmmmmediately or face penalties up to- to- tooooo…” G2 whined, her pleads were once again ignored in favor of light chuckles.

“We’ll leave that for later. Wouldn’t want her to go offline too quickly now.” He was met with a round of cheers at that. “She could, however, stand to lose some limbs. What do you guys think?”

There was another round of cheers, and almost as if it was a coordinated attack, the gathered crowd of muscle moved away from the slab, leaving the man and G2 alone.

“Don’t worry, this won't take very long.” He assured her.

“You will stop this right- right now- now- right now. Now. NOW. Right Now!”

“I don’t think we will.”

The crowd returned, each splitting into smaller groups and organizing themselves around her body. Some carried power tools and protective gear. Leather aprons and plastic face shields. Others simply grabbed whatever sharp or blunt instrument they could get their hands on first. Hammers, sledges, more crowbars, and tools.

“Gentlemen.” The technician said and set the processor core back inside of G2’s opened torso, then took several steps back.

A pair of muscle bound thugs was the first to strike. One grabbed G2’s leg, boot and all while the other lifted a heavy sledge up above his head. He brought it down hard on the joint where G2’s leg connected to her hips with the kind of skill and precision of someone who had spent hours slamming a sledge hammer onto the head of a small target. The results were immediate as well. Her body bucked, not just from the impact but from the wild surge of errors and alerts that coursed through her systems. They screamed at the new processor which was already too busy to parse them, but it managed to squeeze through a small bit of data to the remote connection.

“Damage sustained in lower left joint wo- wor- work workWORKworkWoooorK!” G2 muttered with a distortion to her voice. “Discontinue thi- thi- this activity im- immediately!”

The look of horror on her face was all too real. There was some part of her human emulation that, despite the disconnection between her head and her body, was still doing its best to make her appear human. She attempted to wince in mock pain as the hammer fell on her hip joint, but all that resulted was a weirdly twisted face followed by a string of mispronounced words.

The joint in her hip shattered from the impact, the only thing that kept her chassis on the slab was the copious amounts of ropes and chains that held her in place. They were also enough to keep her steady as the man's partner pulled hard on her leg. He strained at first, a chorus of cheers egged him on, all of it drowned out the series of pleas G2 was giving to try and stop him. He twisted and wrenched her leg from side to side, feeling the components inside of it snapping and breaking. Soon enough he stumbled backwards, her detached leg in hand and the ruined and twisted metal core exposed. A shower of white hot sparks sprayed from the end of it and splashed across the leather tunic G2 wore. Her leg was held high above his head, a prize for breaking her, even as it twitched with the last remnants of electric life.

“Lower mobility module missing. Plea- please- alert missing component illegal removal. Plea- please reattach missing- missing mobility de- device- vice- device- ice.”

Amid the cheers and laughter around her headless body, there was another voice that rose up. Gruff and gravel laden. He coughed once or twice to try and silence the crowd because he wanted his turn. There was too much mirth about the leg that he had to hold the trigger on the power tool he held to get their attention.

“Nice job, but watch this.”

The tool he held was long, about as long as his arm and tipped with a serrated blade of some kind. Every trigger pull brought forth an angry motorized sound as the metal blade moved back and forth at a high speed. He grinned, pulled the trigger and shuffled forward, right up to G2’s leg. He could have positioned the sawing tool against her hips, if he had, the cut he would make would have been much more clean. But that wasn’t any kind of fun. Instead, he pushed the blade into the leather breeches at about her mid thigh and pulled the trigger.

“N- n- noo. Stop this im- im- immediately- ly- lyyyyyy. This is improper use of government prop- property!”

The blade sheared through the leather with ease and into the underlying casing inside of her leg. It met a little resistance with the clear plastic casing that gave her leg shape, bu it only slowed him down for a moment. He applied more and more pressure, encouraging the sawing blade to cut deeper. Soon he was blasting through cables and tubing, each one popped with a small puff of acrid black smoke. The real fun didn’t start until he reached the core of her leg module. A metal structure gave her strength to remain upright and the cutter ground against it, throwing sparks against his leather apron and a smile on his face. Soon, her leg had been severed and once again the wild surge of data from an improper disconnect reached G2. Her eyes rolled up in their sockets and she stammered.

He didn’t hoist his prize like his companion, instead he let it fall to the floor with a dull thump and then kicked it across the shop. It would be retrieved later, for now though he held up his cutter and pulled the trigger, letting the long whine of the powerful motors inside of it be his battle cry.

Inspired by the display another man walked forward, wielding a crowbar not so dissimilar to the one used to wrench G2’s head off of her neck. He wasted no time in ramming it into her shoulder. It pierced the leather cuff there and dug deep into the electronics inside of her. He pulled back, bringing some fragments of the delicate wiring inside of her with him. Then he plunged it back in, again and again, deeper with every thrust, until the tip of his crowbar was halted by something hard. The joint work took some finesse to work the crowbar into, and he took a bit of time to make sure the alignment was just right.

The somewhat curved and gently bent tip of the crowbar was in place, the pointed claws resting just barely against the ball joint in her shoulder. Then with a sudden movement he dug in deeper and wrenched the joint free. Her arm popped free of the socket and dangled by the remaining shreds of leather and wiring.

“Dexterity augmented har- har- haaaarrrrdware offline.” G2 muttered before her voice dropped into a smooth, pre-programmed sound file. “Please contact your nearest-” a burst of static issued from her throat as her mouth continued to form words that were never spoken. “-for the latest service update graded patch install firmware software today!”

As she spoke her face continued to move from pleasant and smiling, to worried, to happy, to terrified and back around to something completely neutral. The same whining sound of angry servo motors accompanied each transformation. Even her lips and jaw were beginning to whine with movement as if she was trying to both move and not move all at once. Each motion was a fight against her own programming.

“Alright alright. I think we’ve had enough impromptu surgery on this one.” The little technician said as he stepped forward. He looked up at one of the catwalks that spanned the upper level of the warehouse and nodded to someone there. A moment later the sound of a heavy industrial motor rumbled to life and a hook dangling from a chain lowered into sight. “Let's get her upright a bit, shall we.”

Her one remaining arm had the handcuff released from the tabled and instead clipped onto one of the chain links. The chain was lifted enough to drag her limp and mostly limbless body from the cart. Cables and wires dangled from her open chest as well as the frayed and twisted ends of bundled cables and mangled framework from her legs and shoulder. Her neck was a mess of shredded flesh and broken electronics, most of which were still arcing with a subtle blue glow and an angry snapping sound.

Once her weight was off of the table, it was quickly shoved out of the way and her body was lowered down just a bit. G2’s head was scooped up from its little cart as well and the technician had someone hold it while he did a haphazard job of reattaching a number of the cables inside of the neck back into the head. Once done he took the head module from the thug and turned it to face him.

Her mouth hung open, only small squeaks and sounds tumbled from the vocal processor. Most of them didn’t even sound like her voice. They were either too deep or far too light, though they were only sounds and occasionally a singular spoken word now, they were still indications that something was going on inside of her. He smirked and connected the last cable, the hefty data cable from her torso.

In an instant her OS was flooded with fresh and available processing power and all she could do with it was cry out. Her words never coalesced into anything useful, just a continual string of “please re...this...you are...err...put you...I...alert...service thi- error-...put m...me put me…”

She stammered on and on, no amount of additional power or processing was going to bring her back from the absolute mess she had been made into. Her hand twitched in the cuff, fingers twisting and releasing. The whine of servos trying to move legs and arms that simply were not there any more filled the space. Her software kept trying to move her in ways that were simply impossible. She still hadn’t grasped that this was her end.

“And now, the coup de grace. A stupid robot like her can’t process anything if you remove the processors.” He mocked and let go of her head. It fell a short way before the remaining cables caught it. The head dangled from those cables, swinging gently back and forth with the movement of her body. “Now this particular unit has two processor cores. One big old juicy one in her chest. It’s brand new and it costs so much money. Sure would be a shame if someone-”

He reached into her torso, grabbing the larger processing core in his hand and yanked it out. Her body swayed a little but the amount of cabling that held it in place was delicate and already damaged. It short circuited for a moment, sparking weakly in his hands. G2’s body convulsed at that, wiggling and thrashing from the one arm it dangled from. The movements only caused her to sway and swing in new and different directions, punctuated by the jingle of chains and backed by the cheers and laughter of the group of thugs.

Her speech patterns were gone now. She made no more words, only sounds and half formed syllables. Even her operating system was incapable of actually forming the words to say. So flooded with alerts and errors, all it could do was observe from behind a veil of static and glitching visuals. There was no more thought, no more human emulation or even cold and calculated police work. The remaining processor core struggled to simply keep her operational.

“The second.” The technician said as he tossed aside the expensive processor core. “Is in her head. Blocked behind some really good shielding. But when have we ever let that be a problem?”

The group of men descended on her, some held her body steady while others managed to produce utility knives and box cutters. They dug deep into the artificial flesh around her skull and soon her scalp and hairpiece were removed. Under it was a clear plastic casing, below it was a fresh tangled mess of cables and wires studded with blinking circuit boards. None of it made sense to any of them, but they had their orders. Screwdrivers were produced with hammers and mallets. The flat head of the screwdriver placed against the plastic and a hefty hit from a hammer, over and over and over, vibrated through G2. She tried to protest, but her whole operation was teetering on the edge of collapse, words were unimportant right now.

The casing proved little match for steel and muscle and soon enough it was shattered and laying in pieces around the floor. With a delicate hand the CPU was pulled from inside of her open head by the technician of the group. It was still wired in, a half dozen ribbon cables disappeared into the tangled mess inside of her dangling head.

“Here we go, look at all these microchips! Each one of these little boards is a part of what makes her tick. Anyone want to take a bet on how many we can remove before she completely fails?”

More laughter and one by one each man stepped forward and yanked a little board free from the main circuit board that housed them. Each one caused G2 to shutter or convulse a little. Each one caused her to make a sound, sometimes it was the same as the one just before, other times it was a new squeak or cry. Sometimes it was just noise or static. Each one seemed to cause a light to spark just behind her eyes and then dim, but no one was paying attention to that.

G2 managed to remain operational, at least from a certain point of view she did. She had power, some CPU cycles, though those were diminishing rapidly. Her core operating system was still connected to many devices inside of her body. But she was utterly useless. Motor controls were shot, they only worked when there was a sudden jolt to her system like when…

One of the thugs tore out another CPU chip. Her body thrashed for a moment and then swung loosely from her arm.

It was impossible for anything to operate properly. She was so limited in how she could think, or move, or remain online. The power core in her chest was healthy and supplied her with plenty of power. They had been meticulous in leaving that be. It provided plenty of power to arc whenever…

A new man grabbed a board, studded with chips, and yanked it free.

Her eyes flared again then dimmed back down. They were almost dark, almost out completely. Her operating system had no spare CPU cycles and it was struggling to even keep her operational. Data flowed in but nothing knew what to do with it. Was it a sensory packet from her arm telling her that the handcuff was still digging into her skin? Maybe. Or a fresh burst of alerts and errors from inside of her body as they once again reported in that there was damage? She would never know, no one would. Her vocal processors were offline now, there was nothing left of her except for her cranial processors and those were disappearing. She only had one left, but even she didn’t know that. She didn’t know anything.

Her head was cracked open, and from it dangled her last processor core. Her head swayed loosely from the data and power cables that linked it to her body. At least what was left of her body. She was a mess of torn leather coverings and robotic components that spilled from her open body. Many of them dangled loosely and swayed along with her body.

She didn’t even hear the technician as he muttered one last goodbye because her audio receptors had no idea how to send the files for processing. She was utterly useless. Utterly destroyed.

The last chip was yanked free. Her body once again twitched and convulsed as it dangled from the chain, but that didn’t last long. Her entire system crashed in a cascade of failures. With no processors at all the data flow simply stopped. She was powered on, for certain, as indicated by the myriad of angry blinking status lights inside of her opened torso and cracked skull casing. Even those winked out after a short while, there was nothing there to read them, they were pointless. G2 was gone now.

There was a celebration around her destroyed chassis. Beers were clinked together and laughter all around. Several of the brutes took to reaching into her open torso and yanking more of her out. They let it fall to the floor. After a while though, it was time to clean up and get back to work. Shredded ribbon cables and frayed wires were swept up and dumped into a cardboard box. Arms and legs joined her body and head as they were loaded into the industrial compactor. They all shared another round of raucous jokes and celebrations as they watched the last of G2 disappear below a plate of steel that crushed all that remained of her into nothingness.