The Four Brothers
The Four Brothers
Chapter 1
The morning sunrise did the same thing it always did this time of year, gleaming through the slight parting of the curtains, spilling across the bedroom floor on his side of the room, and drawing a line across that spilled a little into one eye. Marcus Manners squinted a little, the slight pain of the orangey yellow light pinging against his eyeball waking him. He stirred a little, shifting his hands a little to find the other half of the bed emptied. He opened his eyes, watching a curvy figure slowly disrobe in front of the bedroom mirror, the shimmery rose pink sleeping gown slowly sliding down skin lightly tanned from a regime of sunbathing and busying with a life of decadent luxury in the garden and kitchen.
The face of a well-kept middle-aged sybarite framed by dark hazelnut hair examined itself in the mirror, blinking slowly as her slightly wrinkled hands carefully applied the usual combination so beloved of women trying to stay young: a little foundation, subtle black eyeliner just thick enough to make eyelashes and eyebrows obvious but not thick enough to look made-up, a dash of lipstick in a modest red going across her lips, her aquiline grey eyes examining the makeup work even as Marcus appreciated the curves spilling from her head down her neck, across her waist and down to a butt that didn’t know how to sag in compliance with age. Marcus could have kept looking. He also knew that Julie hated voyeurs, even if they were the man they married.
After a little longer than he felt prudent, he gave a small “Ahem. Morning, honey...” Julie yelped, quickly turning a little to glance at Marcus. “And a beautiful morning to you, dear...” Viewed from the side, the way her E-cupped breasts hung bountifully in defiance of gravity and age gave Marcus a frisson of guilty pleasure, the strains of Rammstein singing about Dicke Titten playing in his mind almost causing him to laugh.
Almost as if sensing what he was enjoying and trying to deny him the joy of it, Julie tilted her head as she rose from her stool, reaching for a nearby set of midnight blue bra and panties, carefully putting them onto her curved frame and taking care to ease her breasts into the floral lace. She always planned her morning outfit in advance the night before, if not the rest of the day’s wear, and this time, it was a simple rough-looking red and white gingham dress, intended for the rigors of the kitchen, followed by a white apron with a bluebird she had embroidered onto the front with great care for a week after it had first arrived all bare and unadorned. “You’re waking up late. How about I make you something quick to eat and bring you your medications before the interviewer? Get your beard trimmed and wash up properly while I do it?” She asks matter of factly as she starts for the doorway to the bedroom.
Marcus glanced at the bedroom clock, giving a small ‘eep’ as he realised that no, Julie was not joking. The interview he was giving would start in an hour, little time for dawdling. He sprung out of bed and quickly paced to the bathroom, doing his usual morning shower and trimming his greyish beard with a little more urgency, before rushing to don a simple black sweater and his favorite old loyal jeans, now faded with age and worn after decades as his trademark uniform in the public eye.
It was only a matter of moments before he was in the study, at the table he had used for all his design work and casual reading. As he sat down, he glanced at the old Neelix The Cat clock on one wall, his only one damning indictment against his sense of taste in a room curated heavily to give the impression of a man who had never gone out of style for decades. He smiled. It had been the first thing on his wall back in college in the dorms, and he would be damned if he did not still enjoy the absurdity of its tail swishing lazily with the passing of seconds even as Neelix’s eyes flashed back and forth across the room, an antique from a long-gone era. Perhaps he was the only person left alive who truly appreciated the old comics about the Cat.
He still had time before the interview.
A tuna sandwich stuffed with romaine lettuce leaves and dried tomato slices filled Marcus’ mouth a small bite at a time , paired with some preventive medication that helped him keep his apparent age four or five decades younger than he actually was. It was all the rage with people of a certain moneyed status, and he jolly damned well had done quite enough to be part of that group, rather than just taking the cheaper generics that kept people alive longer, but not younger.
The glass of plain water that washed the last bits of sandwich down with the assorted pills and capsules was nothing special. Just local groundwater and extracted humidity carefully sterilized and chilled to a certain level of cold he favored. It still tasted like ambrosia, just as it had when he was a child, though there was now a lot less chance of it making him sick without being boiled first.
There was a knock on the door of the study. A short moment later, it opened, an old man glancing in. The limits of rejuvenation therapy were clearly visible, wrinkles rippling across his tired face as he came in with a small blotter and several small camera drones hovering around him, set to a conservative pattern that valued stability and good stills over catching every single bit of the the action. Just the kind of getup a man would use while interviewing someone of stature with seriousness, rather than some crazy young man full of zing and energy. “Mr Osworn here. I believe we talked before on the comms about talking about Arendtcore’s history....” Marcus nodded and motioned to a nearby single-seater couch. “Have a seat. Thanks for giving me some of your time.” “Pleasure’s more mine, Mr Manners.” Mr Osworn made the couch creak as he settled his dark blue blazer and pants combo into it. “Surely a man of your stature has so much demanding his time, your offer to talk about the company in detail surprised me.”
Marcus grinned, slightly yellow teeth glinting as he looked at the drones slowly rearrange themselves into a better pattern to capture the usual “serious interview” angles everyone knew. “Well, when the Independent Enquirer asks for our time, it’s probably best to oblige. Goddess knows what would happen if we made you work harder to find the details by old-fashioned gumshoe work.” An intrusive inner voice briefly surfaced in Marcus’ mind. “Oh, we have so many ideas.” Arendtcore had tried its best to keep a clean sheet all these years, but Marcus was privy to a lot of compromises that had been made in the offices. There was so much dirty laundry, it was definitely for the better that he had agreed to this chat and stuffed the laundry several floors down in the figurative basement. Mr Osworn chuckled “so we all know the official story about Arendtcore. Four frat house brothers, lucking into a virtual monopoly on premium house robotics through a combination of hard work and a few canny deals. But I’d like to think we could start right at the beginning rather than from the official essay everyone loves to quote... could we do that?”
Marcus glanced at a photo on his table... it was old and worn on its original media, and some of the damage had still persisted even past a few transfers and scans. They had shunned the idea putting AI to work prettifying it, and it was still the same slightly ghostly, low-contrast 3D that had come out of a certain disposable budget partycam. Ten dollars for a camera that claimed to do 3D photos, and barf them out on the spot, but clearly a camera for capturing a moment rather than doing proper photography. It was also loaded with a lot of memories.
Four crazy young men in a frat house party, each toting matching blue plastic cups filled with something presumably fun and intoxicating, wearing shirts that turned out later to have been badly mistranslated greek that meant something different from what they had thought the words meant. One of the young men, a slightly bearded redhead, wore a lampshade with a polkadot pattern and was bellowing something loudly. He winced momentarily – there were few moments he would have changed in the past, but that was DEFINITELY one of them.
The Artist.
The Engineer.
The AI Sculptor Par Excellence.
The Legalist.
The world had changed them over the years, but Marcus did think they gave as good as they got, growing Arendtcore into a multinational even as they had kept a small cosy chunk for themselves near where they had started. The thought gave him a small smile... “There’s an awful shitton I would need to run past my legal department, but I can still spill a tonne of beans...”
Chapter 2
Mr Osworn launched into the same spiel he always started his interviews on “Osworn’s Hour” for the Independent Observer as he hit the Record button on his smart tablet. The brief notes on the interview subject, some friendly chatter, making sure to get a good shot of the interview subject. He had done it for Harry Kamila in the Oval office, he had done it for Kalinskyy in the bombed out ruins of Governance House in Kyiv after a particularly nasty attack by Russia had left nothing of worth but a relatively stable wooden floor and two whole chairs, he had even done it for Meng Huangdi on the fifth anniversary of the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party. Some might say he was lowering himself applying all that special nous to comforting Marcus Manners and gingerly prying him open for new interesting facts about things everyone thought they fully knew.
Marcus breathed deeply for a moment. Some folks were just jealous. He had gotten to where he was now by the hard way and nobody would be allowed to deny it. Osworn’s Hour made good choices about who was important and who was interesting, and they were only wrong once back in the Despotic Years that broke America briefly before its reformation as the New Union,.
“So how would you like to start, at the beginning of all this?” Mr Osworn handed Marcus the mike the same way he had done so many times over the past decades.
Marcus had a pretty good idea as he held the old party photograph. “The first thing you have to understand is... at the the time we started, all four of us were totally fucking stupid and incapable of knowing where our limits were.”
Mr Osworn blinked. That was a pretty candid description coming from one of the four Men of Arendtcore. Still, there must be something in it. He raised one of his hands and did it – the silent beckon that always seemed to inherently solicit his subjects to go on...
It had begun with a botched attempt at extortion. Literally high-school grade, as someone might have unkindly put it.
Even with a year or two extra of college life from being an underperformer, Marcus had been, to put it kindly, a bit of a weedy person. His undergraduate course in arts did not help/. Most folks would have grown out of it by the end of senior high school and remained vulnerable only to psychological bullying. And here he was, magically hovering right up against an ivy-covered brick wall because someone had used his strength to overwhelm him and lift him against it. Admittedly it was a jock. One of those guys who got into Minneapolis Institute of Technologies (MINT) by virtue of brawn (of which athletes had a lot), rather than brains (of which they had a an almost disqualifying lack, like in many colleges)
“Marky, marky, marky.... you should comply and give me the money I want.” He didn’t know the guy’s name, only that his ace performances in footballl wallpapered over a number of sins and demerits in his studies. At some point, it would show and he would end up on his bum without qualifications and in a dead-end job that made use of his stupidity and strength. Probably. The draft sometimes picked this kind of guy and delayed that kind of fate, or it might never happen because they got another mentor to wise them up and help them invest in a more sustainable lifestyle.
That was very cold comfort to Marcus. Come to think of it, he never did find out who this guy was in the end, even years later, when the Arendtcore company had made some seemingly out-of-joint investments in genealogical research firms (it had a purpose, but he could think about it later on if it was important.)
“Well, you see, bro.... us scholarship guys should learn to stick together. I know, different kinds of scholarships. Thing is, I don’t get much money. If they need money from me they send my sponsor at CHEAPO the invoices and he pays them direct. I get only money when I work Pizza on weekends..... matter of fact, if you would so kindly liberate me so I could start my Friday shift...” Marcus flustered a little. This was not how he had wanted to end Friday on campus. He was always cutting it close between ending sculpting tutorials, cleaning off the clay, and showing up to work the oven and load the boxes. He did not need this any other day of the week, but today was especially not a day for this kind of bullying.
“I don’t think you understand. I WANT MONEY. YOUR MONEY. NOW. GIMME.” His aggressor bellowed and raised a brawny fist up. Forget not getting paid for this Friday night’s pizza parlor shift, how was he even going to afford the hospital bill?
Marcus Manners squeezed his eyes shut. But the punch never landed. When he opened his eyes again about a minute after the suffering should have started, the jock was lying cold on the grass, his flunkeys screaming as they ran off in the distance save for another in a similar state of hors de combat.
A slightly-built person in a professional blazer stood atop the knocked-out jocks, dusting themselves off as their chin-length hair swished a little in the breeze. “And next time, maybe don’t pick a fight with people just because you think they’re your inferior!” They yelled in a slightly high-pitched, almost feminine voice.
Marcus’ first thought after that was “wow, pretty lady.” The next thought was “Did I make a mistake saying that aloud”, as he had apparently said that aloud.
The professional whipped around on hearing what Marcus’ mouth blurted out, marching forward with a surprising amount of menace for a... guy? Girl? Individual of indeterminate gender? In a well-tailored suit. “AGAIN. It’s always the same mayhem everyday about the same goodamn thing!” Their voice was still high pitched, subtly Japanese-accented as they offered Marcus a hand to dust off and get up. “I am a GUY. My pronouns are He/Him. I’ll take They/them in a pinch, but for the love of god. STOP. CALLING ME. A GIRL!” Their face had a look of exasperation, but even then, Marcus still thought the same thing.
“Yup, she is definitely a girl”.
He at least had the smarts to keep his mouth shut and nod as if in understanding.
Their face softened as they looked Marcus over. “You didn’t get hurt too badly by that idiot, did you? I would have taken action earlier, but I wanted to establish probable cause before starting with the judo and what-not...” A brief pause, as they realise they haven’t done a proper introduction... for some reason, she seems too occupied to fix that properly, instead offering a business card.
Marcus took the card and studied it. It read “AYMEE ICHIGO, Freshman Year 2056, Undergraduate / Business and Legal Actions (MINT)”...
The subtle off-white coloring of it, the tasteful thickness of it. Oh my god, it even had some sort of Japanese family logo, presumably the icon of her family, done as a watermark across the front and imparting a slight glow when held up to the light... Marcus proceeded to shoot himself in the foot again with his stupid mouth. “Isn’t Aymee a girl’s name?” This earned him a sudden pull at one ear from Aymee.
“What Aymee is,” they hissed, “is a name my grandfather honored me with, as well as proof they might not be too good with what names actually make sense for a guy... Please, please, call me Ichigo-kun or Ichigo-san or some maleish thing. PLEASE.” Aymee let go quickly of Marcus’ ear – she had only intended to shock him briefly to get some attention, not cause injury. The aching still wouldn’t go off fast as she watched him nurse the slight redness. “... “I’ve figured out a few things in the minutes I waited before acting though. Mind if I borrow your phone?”
Marcus blinked. Aymee rolled their eyes. “I just need to make two calls on it.” Marcus blinked again. Still, he handed over his cheapo CHEAPO phone. It had barely enough grunt to do the things all smartphones were now expected to do, and only a generously connection to processing power in the CHEAPO cloud kept it from being a totally useless phone for anything else. Still, you wouldn’t play Legends of Lords on it. The roundabout times turned a game that demanded low lag into a kamishibai show done closer to 30 seconds per frame than the 30 frames per second so many young adults demanded for games.
Aymee started weaving some sort of magic. More to the point, they looked through the phonebook app and dialed out to a certain pizza parlor and began to natter on for a few minutes, even as they fished in their shirt pocket for another card. Marcus noted with a slight discomfort that Aymee had some decent heft around her chest, but seemed pretty athletic or slim, but definitely a bit tall. An inner voice seemingly nodded and observed. “Yup, definitely a girl, this one. And what a beaut of a pair of tits.” as Aymee cut the first call and made a second.
“Yeah, I’ve been delayed some, Seamus. Yes, I wouldn’t miss it for the world bro. You know that’s not how brotherhoods work... I’m bringing someone you might be interested in. Yes, I know we don’t get to just drag random trash into the brotherhood this one, I’ve been watching him since the school year started- even before Rahul did... you know, that thing.”
Wait, Ichigo has been shadowing him? Marcus did a double take. Just why the interest? He would soon find out as, the call ended. “Sweet, two through the door, keep the house turrets from cooking him with non-leths, okay?” Aymee smiles in a way that raises concern in Marcus as she grabs his arm and hands back his CHEAPO phone.
“Two things,” Aymee announced to him sweetly as they started dragging him, pausing only to pick up their classwork briefcase. “First, congratulations on your weekend off this weekend. Fully paid of course.”
“Hang on, I need the money from that job, you can’t just declare a holiday from it and leave me dry, where will I find the money. Bloody heck, I don’t even have paid time off at the pizza parlor! That’s not how this works! THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS!” Marcus yelped as Aymee exhibited a sort of strength far beyond their lithe frame... or was it the Judo at work?
“Not normally, no.” Aymee nodded pleasantly as the sight of a brawny... woman?... walking past while dragging a slightly larger guy on apparently a reluctant date of sorts drew attention from the few students and faculty still wandering the campus. “But in our family, we say that a good legalist can persuade a fierce tiger to cut its own throat using a baseball bat.”
“That’s not a viable form of suicide even for a tiger! And where are you dragging me?” Marcus’ panic continued as Aymee dragged him into the part of of the campus central area home to its biggest frat houses. Aymee nods as if in agreement with Marcus’ observation about said tiger. “Maybe the baseball bat was sharpened? Or maybe enough effort was exerted under persuasion? My grandpa never did explain the point of that family saying. Anyhow, your boss is paying you for not showing up to work for 20 hours this weekend, after being faithful in turning in all those shifts for the past year...” She stops walking, looking up at a subtly decorated house.
Unlike many of the other frat houses that turned into celebrations of excess, this one seemed to keep its counsel – soft tuneful music, mostly closed shutters and locked front door, no drunkards barfing on the steps. The only reason Marcus didn’t assume it was a a derelict was the pair of turrets framing the front door. Further confirmation came in the form of the turrets suddenly swivelling to plant beads of red light on his forehead. Marcus’ previous panic returned, now amplified by the threat to his life.
A shrill voice cut through the air as the whirr of the turrets intensified to a pitch that suggested they were just about ready to give Marcus a painful headache. “Stand down! Stand down! That’s an order.”A dark-haired Irishman in a silly blue and white Hawaii shirt yells, holding a sort of blue cocktail drink decorated with a slice of watermelon in one hand. The turrets stopped their targeting and swiveled to view him with sort of deference and lack of aggression, like playful pets surrounding their master.
He would later learn the name of the Eldest Brother: Seamus Arendt. A 2nd-year student at the Faculty of Engineering and Electronics. And as he would later realise, possibly the first inkling that a life that had been marked by mundane repeats of his first years in college and being normal was about to end forever.
Seamus rubbed his gingery red hair, yelling away. He wasn’t drunk, just upset. “I gave the two of you express orders to chill, give Ichigo-kun a good friendly welcome... and NOT threaten her guest. Honestly, don’t make me turn you into DamnGun mecha figurines slash view-only cameras in this house. Okay?”
Displays of contrition, sad whirring noises, as if the turrets had personality...
Aymee sighed. “Seamus-sama... just let it go, nobody got hurt.” They lifted up Marcus with the ease of a bag of groceries by his scruff. “Anyhow.... you know how we’re down one artist in the Brotherhood since Rahul got tagged and bagged for shipping in keta-Nine? I found another good artist!” She had the same grin as you would find on the face of a fisherman who had actually caught the one that usually got away.
Marcus’ mouth slowly opened and closed much like that of said fish.
Seamus closed his eyes. “Ichigo-san. We don’t know that Rahul is irredeemably incarcerated and not coming back to the House. And there will always be four of us, no more than that.”
Aymee looks around past Seamus and into the house... “Well, I think six months plus Christmas holidays for a month is a long time to wait for his parole. And this boy shows so much promise!” They proudly held up Marcus like a prize win, further emphasizing how much strength they had hidden under that lankiness of theirs.
Marcus squeaked an introduction. “Uhm, hey there, Seamus. I’m Marcus.... I’m technically still in the second year of my course, Visual Arts Undergrad, two repeated years... Pleased to meet you... also why am still being treated like a fish? Someone, anyone?”
It took a few more minutes of negotiation before Marcus was safely ensconed on one side of a circular four-seater sofa. Facing him on the other side of the sofa was Seamus and Aymee...
“Well, tonight, we are moving a motion to introduce... Mr Marcus Manners, as The Artist Brother of our Brotherhood”, Seamus announced with a decided lack of pomp. “Before, we begin, is there any reason-” “Hang on. The Brotherhood has four brothers...” Aymee suddenly cut in, raising a hand in a palm of protest. “Is there any valid reason for your younger bro not to attend, Seamus-san?” “Nothing that comes to mind, Ichigo-san...” Seamus let out a weary sigh as he stands up, as if weighed down heavily by obligation. “Give me a moment to check his bedroom.” He slowly walks over and up the staircase, as if afraid to profane historied oak panelling with his Croc-Flops. There is a sort of mumbling, protest mixed with firm if mostly inaudible words.... Five minutes later, Seamus comes trudging down, hugging what is apparently a twin brother... like as if Seamus had discovered being an emo and went down the dark path instead of the brightness of Maui fronds and overly bright-colored cocktails, his hair left unkept by a reduced level of haircutting half hiding his eyes. As they descended, Seamus tried to reassure him of things. “I’m not being judgemental of what you work on in the weekends, Bellamy, I did tell you I was prepared to foot over enough of my pocket money to fund your needs as well, even if Dad treats you like shite. But ordinarily I wouldn’t stop you from working weekends. I just need to you do... The Ritual”
Bellamy glances at Seamus through the fronds of his hair, pausing briefly on the stairs. “We found a new artist again? This is going to be another rejection and disappointment like the last seven.”
Seamus didn’t offer a reply to that.
“Christmas was ESPECIALLY disappointing. Why did Aymee recommend that imbecilic Rothko wannabe then?”
“I told you to call me Ichigo, ya dunhead!” A shriek of protest wafts up to greet Bellamy’s query. Aymee seemed pretty firm on some aspects of their identity, clearly.
“DULY NOTED.” Bellamy yelled back down, before resuming his slow descent with Seamus to sit down in the last empty spot in the sofa, next to Marcus. “So this is our prospective new Artist Brother....” he idly observed, watching Marcus with the same sort of feigned disinterest a lizard might give to a passing meal insect. “Specialization? Year? These are things we need to know.”
Marcus took a deep breath and repeated his introduction from earlier. Bellamy showed a sort of disimpressedness after he’d finished. “You repeated two years.... Ordinarily, I would say that’s underachieving, but Rahul did tell us sculpting as a specialization in art was pretty much dead. Everyone seems to want to approach it from the angle of a computer class with virtual tools and goggles and, while that’s a valid approach in its own merits, we DID appoint Rahul precisely because he brought something different to the table by being a sculptor working in actual materials rather than bits and voxels. I move to ignore the fact that you repeated a year twice. It wasn’t your fault.”
More nods around the sofa. “Any disagreements as to why Marcus Manners should not become our Artist Brother? Anyone? No?” Bellamy asked.
Aymee nudged Seamus. “You seemed to have some misgivings earlier, Seamus. Aren’t you going to share them with us?”
Seamus pondered, chin resting in hand for a bit... “Nothing serious or urgent, nothing worth going into conflict with little bro about. Voting with Bellamy Arendt in favor of Marcus’ introduction.”
Aymee sat back, watching Seamus curiously. “Some day, I swear, you’ll actually cast your vote and express some misgivings in conflict with your brother on a vote. It will be interesting to watch it happen, I say...” A short pause as if to give Seamus and Bellamy time to consider this possibility ever happening. “I sponsored his entry into the Brotherhood. Obviously I’m voting in favor of his inclusion. No misgivings to state.”
Bellamy idly observed all this happening.... “We have three votes in favor of Marcus joining us, the vote is unanimous... Welcome to the Brotherhood, Marcus... Now, Seamus bro, if you would get the newcomer hat for Marcus and a shot of our strongest drink for each of us, and we can finish the Ritual. Turret Number 3, standby to take a 3D-photo. And this time, we don’t want a repeat of what happened at Christmas.”
A turret hidden somewhere inside the living room beeped furiously as if in protest.
“Suuuure, that was an accident, shooting the new Artist six times with tranquilisers. It sure chased him out fast.” Bellamy glanced upward at the eaves.
More folorn synthetic squealing.
And then, nothing else of note or problematic nature happened. At least that was the plan as Marcus wore what was apparently a silly polka dot lampshade on his head and threw down his own shot of the ‘strongest drink in the house’. The last thing he remembered that night was hearing Seamus yelp in frustration... “I thought I told you to throw away the Everclear, Aymee – HIC! why did you keep it?’....
“Mr Manners? Mr Manners? Are you still there?” the voice of Mr Osworn rang audibly.
Marcus shook his head a little. He had fallen into a reverie. The premium rejuvenation therapy reversed a lot of aging, but it still left the patient with the memories of the years past. Sometimes, it was all too easy to slip into the past and briefly ignore the present... apparently he’d done it at a bad time. “I.... had some rejuve reverie.... sorry.”
Mr Osworn smiled and tapped on his tablet, watching his gear slowly fold back into a more compact flying pattern as if it signal an end to today’s interview. “I did ask you to go back to times long past. That can sometimes... cause reveries in folks who’ve wound back more years. Still, I think we should continue this interview next week.” He nodded as he stood up. “Besides, something important kept beeping on your communicator these last few minutes. Perhaps work-related? You SHOULD check...”
Marcus blinked a little as Mr Osworn showed himself out, pausing to thank Julie as she easied his spring warming coat onto him on the way out in the doorway to the front door. He thought about stuff... a few minutes of idling in a busy morning.
He looked down and started looking his notifications. The usual spam, low priority corporate mail calls... stuff he had long risen above and set Agents to intercept and mange for him... One thing did get past, ignored by the agents. He had long joked that the 4 in a circle, as a postmark on selected emails, made the Brotherhood look either like a bunch of Marvel comics rejects, or some weird Illuminati wannabees. But Marcus also recognized it for what it was: a note demanding so much careful handling the brothers routed it through a circuit in the Arendtcore networks not known to most of the staff who’d joined the company when it had become more than just four brothers lazing and fidding with stuff in a frat house.
What could be so important? Perhaps Seamus had found a new lawyer they could trust as deeply as they had Aymee back in the early years. He frowned a little at that thought – it brought up many memories, both good and bad. He had something to remember her by, in that regard, but some might have said it violated some supposedly ironclad rules he had always insisted on... He didn’t care, it was about his happiness, and he wanted to be happy even if it meant being wrong about something he stood for.
“SENATOR BUNDT DEAD AT 126. SKIIING ACCIDENT. EXECUTE PREVIOUSLY AGREED HANDLING, END-OF-LIFE CLEAN-UP PROCEDURES.”
Marcus read the message. Then he read it again. Then, just to be extra sure, he’d opened the Unified Press article attached to the message. Poor sod had so many years left in front of him, having started premium rejuve earlier than most people would as old money.
--- That was the thing about the rejuve.
It undid more damage the more money you could regularly stump and the earlier you began taking the pills.
But it only undid the damage that getting older caused. And even then, not all of it.
And if you were somehow exceedingly stupid, you could do something very stupid that no amount of money thrown at rejuve of any quality could fix.
Like the severe trauma of skating into a nice thick oak tree at high speed. ---
He had taken his wife, his daughter, and his son along, all of them now under tight guard by Arendtcore Security to “preserve their privacy”. Marcus frowned as he sipped the remainder of his chilled water, now slightly lukewarm after two or three hours of neglect. Bundt had saved Arendtcore by giving it a major monopoly in the early days and was a firm supporter of its operations throughout his life, but he had also forced it into a sort of devil’s bargain. He wondered briefly if it had truly been a benefit securing those licenses and monopolies from a position of being forced to abandon their planned unique selling points...
Marcus decided after a while not to do any further pointless what-ifs... One finger went to the intercom panel on the table. “Julie, hon? Can you get me the red standby suitcase? I need to make an urgent trip. Work related...”
“Certainly, dear... But you know, I did plan on celebrating your birthday this Friday... will you be back by then?” ... the honeyed tones he was so familiar and warmed up to like wildfire came on, a sort of hesitant unhappiness filtering through the crackle of the intercom.
“I suspect not, not if I want to do a proper and thorough job.” Marcus paused to let Julie take it in. Poor Julie Manners, wedded to a workaholic and perfectionist in a line of work where perfection had never truly been possible... There were things he could do to totally alleviate her boredom of course...
Marcus didn’t think for long before he decided not to do those things. If Arendtcore was going to drag him out to work so hard, he wasn’t going to let them deal with Julie easily. They were going to have to get her the reduced groceries, keep watch over her in their idyllic little home.
“I’m sorry honey... Look, I’ll make it up to you after I get back, when I get back. We’ll get a simple cake, a small sparkling tipple for two, and yes, I know you hate prepacked meals, but I’ll get some. I want you to rest when we celebrate, and I want you to give me all your time...” Marcus sheepishly went on.
“... .... Honey, the red suitcase hasn’t been unsealed since you packed it a year ago. I’ll leave it near the front door.” Julie resumed her steadforth tones, but there was still a lingering sort of disappointment. Marcus frowned at that. Sometimes, the way she was could be a curse. Usually it was more of a blessing, but not when she had to be left alone for a prolonged period, not even with Arendtcore coming around regularly to make sure she was okay and safe in his absence.
He hung up, then dialled his smartphone. He needed Arendtcore to do a few other things as well, there was no way in hell he could make the trip both ways in his usual little buggy, they would have to send something a little robust, as well as pack a certain set of kits he needed when a client requested ‘those postmortem cleanup services’.... Top
Chapter 3
It had been a few hours later, in the sunset, when Arendtcore’s assigned vehicle had arrived. Marcus was heading into a ski town a little north and west, somewhere in the southern reaches of Alaska. He needed something with more grunt than a city runner that simply took him between the house, the nearby city square, and the headquarters offices and showroom / factory of Arendtcore
The company had expanded and come into great money enough that it had bought into some things that a more cautious company would not have dabbled in.
Several decades ago, the infamous rabble rouser Melon Musk had parlayed a initial boom in electrical vehicles into buys into robotics, space exploration, even social media and a failed foray into trimming the fat from government spending. It had all come crashing down dramatically – surrounding yourself with only yesmen tended to result in poor advice and decisions, but for the longest while he had had quite a run.
By comparison Samuel and Bellamy were much more circumspect in what they spent on expanding– a few genealogy firms that were circling the drain but otherwise had the potential to be moneymakers with just a few tweaks to improve service to users and improve the balance sheets, a bit of office property back home and in a few holiday hotspots for both upper-echelon staff and favored customers of the company, a few medical companies to provide quality staff for advisory roles in handling the interest in Arendtcore’s medical devices...
Part of the splurge had been for this campervan and several others like it. The rationale had been pretty simple – if they didn’t have transport to get to their properties, then it was as good as not owning them at all. A more sensible company would have gotten private jets, or enrolled in a frequent rail travel or airline program. But Bellamy had never been sensible, even with Aymee and her proteges at Legal and HR to keep them on on a leash. And travel by campervan, while much slower, did have some advantages.
Marcus calmly clicked open the side door of the Campervan and looked in. There was nobody else. The campervan ran on both electrical power and a bespoke custom AI qualified to fully take over the drivers’ seat, to the extent that no steering of any sort had been left behind for manual control, aside from an emergency pull-handle on the dash to bring the wheels to a total halt manually.
Marcus had protested this risk back when they first bought the vans, but after a billion miles travelled collectively and only a few flattened coffee cups (mainly the fault of the staffer or esteemed guest leaving their takeaway coffee on the front bonnet and having the paper cups fall right under the front wheels), he had decided to be more circumspect and just shut up for good.
The campervan’s AI was capable of listening to normal English chatter, as well as unidiomatic talk in a few other major languages, but it had already been advised back at HQ as to where it had to go, who it was bringing along, and given a rough schedule of how this was to be done. Behind the cockpit, a well-arranged living space was prepped. Fold-out furniture, beds that turned into sofas and space to hold several bodies at once. A kitchenette. A enclosed space suitable for both trips to the toilet and trips to the shower (but sadly too small for an actual bathtub soak) Marcus travelling alone with his little red bug-out emergency office travel suitcase was rattling inside the deceptive TARDIS-like spaciousness of the campervan like a dancing worm inside one of his childhood dancing mexican beans.
Even Julie had approved of this arrangement after a cursory examination when the van first arrived. There was a bathroom, there was a sort of kitchenette., and a comfy bed for two with the sofa acting as another bed if needed, or kept to seat several people like a bus if necessary. With a quick raid at the nearest gas station and supermarket to fill the mini-fridge and larder, it could be a proper home away from home as long as one remembered to regularly stop for EV recharges and emptying the bathroom and kitchen waste compartments at rest stops and overnight sleeping spaces.
The farewell had been economical. Julie didn’t desire to keep Marcus from doing his job. The sooner he left, the sooner he could do it, and the sooner he could return. Sweet murmurs were exchanged, a brief kiss, and a few silly jokes and smiles. He ruffled his hand through Julie’s hazel locks, smiling faintly. “Just a quick trip. In and out. I promise I won’t take long...”
And with that the EV pulled away towards the nearest charging station and supermarket before it had to brave the chill and long distances of Alaska.
The onboard AI was not much of a conversationalist, responding only to keywards and providing occassional updates on their progress. Ever so often, it would pull off the road and park itself at an automted charger station and start guzzling sweet electrical DC, taking about an hour or three each time. The AI atleast had the decency to wait longer for Marcus to come back and get settled in before taking off again, which came in handy when the charger was part of a rest area and had decent food or market services. This was the first time in all these years that he had travelled this way for work, and surprises came often, many of them pleasant...
Who knew Alaskan Sockeye Salmon dressed with lemon curd sauce after a careful grilling could be so delectable? Mr Manners certainly hadn’t. He did now. More notes filled his pocketbook as he lucked into more pleasant meals and restful places.
He hadn’t forgotten the point of the trip, and as he got further north, the incidence with which these stops appeared gradually tapered off into a sort of nothing nothingness, finally ending in a desolate stop with nothing but a few chargers, a passing eighteen wheeler cargo truck, and a connection to a nearby geothermal micro power plant, presumably to provide the barest of light and to charge all of any twenty or so vehicles parked beneath the eaves of the charging station.
The onboard AI made an announcement. “This is the last charging station for 300 miles in this direction. Please expect alterations to power use in the campervan to stretch its range. Also, we will be charging the main power storage to 100% instead of the usual 60 to 70% we have been taking in at each stop. This charging session will take approximately eight hours. You may wish to have a simple dinner and turn in for the night, Mr Manners.”
Marcus sighed as he cut open a set of small pouches, using the sterilised water of the campervan to make a warming instant beef mulligawtany stew and using the heating pouches included with the bowl to cook it and warm himself.
He probably still had enough power to run the stove and cook a proper stovetop meal but... the darkness had enveloped the outside, the only sources of light being the charging station and the cargo truck nex to to him, faintly blaring Mexican sombrero music. The lack of daylight for the past day or so had brought along a certain melancholy and a strange loss of energy.
The chill tended to dampen the capability of EV power cells to keep the vehicles going, the really serious haulers and the safety crews roaming the roads here being the last bastion of hydrogen, sludgy diesel, or hybrids involving at least one of these sources as well as toughened electrical drives.
Apparently humans weren’t immune to this either, in a way. As he settled into the furs covering his Queen-size bed, he reflected briefly on the things that had brough him all the way to such a remote spot in Alaska...
They had all first met Senator Wilheim Pomporo Bundt at the 2057 Indigo Consumer Electronics show in Reno, several months after Seamus and Bellamy had read him into the long term aims of The Brotherhood.
The “Minecraft refugee” robot slowly walking across the living room floor of the Brotherhood’s frat house was the the first sign of the kind of future that would come as The Brotherhood slowly metasized into Arendtcore. Its blocky forms moved around on two legs slowly, sweeping the floor and bringing remedies to the Brothers to help them cope with the ambush by Everclear the night before.
His surprise at being handled a small glass of something warming, herbal, and seemingly capable of stomping his hangover by a blocky bipedal robot sweeping the floors was his first waking reaction.
The second reaction had been realising along with Aymee that his head had been wedged right against their breasts while they were both unconscious.
And for someone who declared so earnestly their masculinity, Aymee had certainly screamed hard. They had also socked him really hard, just may be not hard enough to send them back into the twilight of unconsciousness, just enough to heavily bruise one side of their face and develop a slight bump on the head from meeting one of the living room walls...
but several months after that first unfortunate head-in-breasts contact incident (one of quite a few), they were staring at a old man gush like like someone half his age as he watched a newer version of the housekeeper biped sweeping the floor while making silly emotive faces on its new facial LED screen. His entourage had encouraged him to keep some sense of decorum.
He would do no such thing. “Oh. My. God. This is it. This is the future.This is our generation’s microwave oven. Imagine these things, in every home. Available at a decent price or rental cost.” Bundt’s voice had all the gleeful mirth of a man freshly converted to the cause of some weird cult, even has he turned to shake Seamus wildly like a pinata. “I want. To be. One of your biggest supporters. I can’t buy stock or invest directly, but please. Let me help you out when issues get in your way. Let me sing the praises of your work at...” Bundt had paused, his wizened face briefly glancing up to read the name “Arendtcore”, that they Four Brothers had come up with at the spur of the moment when asked the name of their company.
It was a proposition that was hard to say no. Seamus shook on it with Bundt, and the photo would become a notable photo on the wires within hours. The obsesssion and interest would eventually fade from them of course, but it kept burning in Bundt quietly. He would occasionally highlight the company’s work in trade delegations, pass along tips and trends researched by his staffers that might impact Arendtcore, tipped some of his family largesse into funding improvements to the company’s growing capabilities, even did some rounds to carefully link them with a web of other suppliers who could be potentially helpful in their quest to scale up to a level where they could start dreaming about “one in every home” like he’d proclaimed was possible at the trade show. That was a good four or five years.
When the bottom fell out of the hole, it happened rather suddenly and shockingly.
The Texas Fundamentalist Party had struck on a Friday afternoon, using their limited but still potent support within Texas to push a proposal across the table of the Congress building:
1. All further development of lifelike robotics was to be halted. 2. No robot that carried any significant resemblance to the human form would be allowed to be sold, developed, or traded in from abroad except for special events. 3. Resemblance to the human form by any robot would be limited to the use of humanoid forms.
There was an impression that this law would not pass muster. It did come dangerously close to passing – enough votes garnered to require members of Congress to reconvene in a month to vote one more time.
It took a few hours for the news to filter into Arendtcore’s offices and factory floor. In those past five years, the company had dramatically changed. While The Four Brothers had remained the centre of everything that had happened at the company, they had also acquired various assets, produced major new upgrades at the trade shows every year, and were on the verge of releasing their very first home product – a sample unit of it was now calmly sweeping the floors of the headquarter offices.
From at least the neck upwards, it resembled a young brunette woman of average beauty, adorned with a simple maid’s headdress. Beneath the neck, care had been taken in many decisions to present the shape of a gentle, mildly beautiful human young Asian woman of indeterminate origin, not peggable as being from any obvious country so much as an entire region named Asia. She was dressed in a dress that while not baring much skin, still made anyone viewing aware of her curviness. Anyone not aware of the context would have assumed she was just a pretty maidservant, and visitors to the HQ regularly engaged her at least briefly in conversation, or asking for directions.
Smarter, more clued in people would have realised she had appeared on stage in 2061, sweeping the stage floor at a trade fair for robotics that had tried something a little different and invited select companies from overseas rather than within Japan or Korea to present. Arendtcore had taken the opportunity to eat their lunches and make a huge splash. The value of short videos of Allie, as the presenters had taken to calling her in interviews and introductions, splashed over the part of Toktiko that was interested in future developments reported in bite-sized 90-second shorts, was immense and way beyond what even Bellamy and Aymee had predicted in generating interest.
There was still very much more work to be done. For every hour Allie spent presenting herself to the public, it still took way more time than the Arendt brothers were comfortable with on maintaining her. Even in the offices, she still spent way more time disappearing rather than patrolling the floors with her broom-like micro-vaccuum-cleaner. This was clearly an unacceptable state of affairs for what the robot maid had been intended for, and the Brotherhood spent nights working on shortening the time required between operating periods for recharging and maintenance.
This was unfortunately one of those periods. Allie stood at attention in the backroom, eyes fully closed. Her trademark broom vacuum hybrid was carefully rested against one of the walls, as Seamus carefully maneuvered his callused fingers, slowly parting the velco fastenings that kept Allie’s maidservant dress together in public. As he did so, the body beneath the silken dark purple and white fabrics revealed itself, a body carefully padded here and there to match the softness of a mature female woman, covered in very human-looking skin, but with visible seams and studs every so often like that of a machine. Seamus carefully set the dress to one side and stood back to briefly admire the work that had already gone into Allie. To facilitate maintenance, the only lingerie Allie wore beneath her dress was a set of white frilly lace stockings tucked into her dark brown patent leather shoes and a matching set of long gloves along most of her arms. Her breasts had been left uncovered, exposing a pair of dark pink toy-like nipples, as had the ebb and flows of her haunches. Any prurient thoughts that might have led to were quickly extinguished by the bare, unvagina’d land between her legs. The small label plastered just above the cleft of her buttocks warned that the only thing that should be going up her posterior was a generic 230W charging cable. Seamus thought that was enough of an additional warning that Allie wasn’t a real woman, but a household appliance carefully shaped to resemble one.
Seamus smiled. Marcus had certainly outdone himself. While there was nothing in the rulebook that their household helper robot had to look good, it certainly added to the allure of the product. Marcus had also agreed with Seamus and Bellamy on a few other conventions to apply across other similar products. As he plugged the prerequisite charger cable up Allie’s pert ass, her outie bellybutton started emitting a faint blinking yellow glow, signifying that she was now recharging. They had worked out how the indicator would work at various charge levels, as well as how it would be used to alert that Allie was experiencing potential problems. In normal operation, there would be no difference between it and an average cute little outie bellybutton.
Seamus reached for his smart tablet and a nearby cable to plug it into a connector hidden somewhere behind Allie’s hairdo, beneath the lush jet black curls and slightly just above where the power button had been hidden beneath an otherwise easy-to-ignore mole...
then the bottom fell out of the hole, as Aymee barged into the backroom, a newspaper raised in the air with a panicked look on their face. “Seamus. You need to read this. NOW.” Aymee had doffed part of the blazer and pants combo that defined their look, letting her suspenders show. Add a fedora, and she might as well have time travelled an entire century from the turn of the 19th century. That wasn’t the relevant thing though – a photo of a firebrand yelling from a lectern, one fist clenched in the air, took up half the middle of the day’s copy of the International Observer – American Edition. “TEXAS FUNDAMENTALISTS NEARLY PASS BILL TO END SELECT TOP-LEVEL ROBOTICS RESEARCH – Texas Governor Theodore Giss promises end to descent into decadence from replacing real people with “dolls, toy androids, fake people.”” Seamus calmly put down his smart tablet and cable. He would get to the maintenance and log reading eventually. But the way Aymee had come right in with urgency and panic seemed to suggest that yes, the newspaper that they were holding was a higher priority thing to look at. He quietly took the paper off them and started reading the body text below the giant front-page headline. The importance attached to it had probably been the doing of Senator Bundt’s people at the International Observer. The man had promised and committed to not interfering with the editorial and runnings of the paper even as he’d resigned from leading it on being voted into the Senate, but ever so often, he would see things that would be important to Arendtcore, but not worth plastering front page in general...
Seamus paled a litte after a while. “My god. Those fundamentalists. They finally did it. They pushed an agenda nobody else believes in... Have you briefed anyone else who deserves to know?”
Aymee nods, pausing briefly to rub their hand in their hair. “I bought four copies of the actual paper for myself, Marcus, you, and Bellamy. I’ve attached the virtual article and passed it down to the Board and the senior leadership on our main factory floors.”
“Agents are talking to the agents our most important suppliers and contractors have on hand, most of them agree the issue is critical. Like, it’s a major attack on so many of us, even though many of them could pivot to supplying or manufacturing for devices that don’t violate the proposed law...”
“Social media posted. Most of our supporters are outraged, but there’s a few outliers who say it’s good and we should go back to focusing on functionality instead of making form a priority as well.” Aymee glances upwards at the ceiling “The funniest thing is, Senator Bundt contacted us before we got to them. He was apologising profusely for some reason, says he wants to speak with us about this when we can.... You do know you’re going to have to publicly address this to all those people and carefully...”
Seamus groaned, running his fingertips against his temples, a sort of anger spreading across his face.
His psychopathy had been well controlled by a careful mix of being supported by people willing to cut him off and tell hin down if he was in danger of going too far, plus therapy sessions and a selection of medications balancing his need to be an effective CEO with not being a total hurtful douchebag to others. But when the situation was this serious, it was all to easy to let it overwhelm his carefully put-up breakers and turn him into someone who could cause even more damage,
He groaned a little, breathing deeply as if to make his psychopathy eat itself, reassert control, show that he was working on it... “I’ll write a letter about this. I promise I’ll be firm and serious. As for Bundt, we do owe him a lot, Schedule a meeting. In person if possible, over Xoom if this thing’s taking too much of his presence elsewhere.”
Aymee nodded, watching Seamus go into to detail by scribbling a bit on his smart Tablet and forwarding the resulting note to her communicator.
“I’m not putting my maintenance work on the Allie v2 prototype off. Let me at least run some checks before I start fighting back... Ichigo-san”
Aymee backed away slowly. If he was actually using the nomenclature that they had demanded repeatedly be used without effect, without protest, Seamus definitely thought things were too serious to introduce the friction of the mayhem that tended to accompany her requested identifiers...
“Understood, Seamus. I’ll make the necessary preparations.”
As Aymee turned to leave, Seamus quickly connected up to Allie and started briefly browsing her logs and statuses... Everything was running as it should, although Allie’s broom vaccuum really needed a redesign sooner rather than later. Perhaps something less stylised, more practical, less obsessed with resembling a traditional broom... any issues were mainly minor and could be left to be fixed and worked on by either the R&D department or the Brothers at a later timing.
He paused briefly to savor what would possibly the last bit of peace in these corridors for the next few weeks.
Chapter 4
The Texas Fundamentalists had made several assumptions when they forced their dirty little bill into debate. They had counted on the fact that it was coming out late on a Friday to stifle response to it from many quarters.
Unfortunately, they had not realised that fansship was often a 24/7 thing, especially amongst the most ardent of fans, as well as those who kept factories humming even through the weekend, or still responded to things that happened adjacent to them and threatened their livelihoods.
It only took about twelve hours before Theodore Giss was flooded by a horrendous flood of hatred for standing in the way of advances in American research.
Officially, Arendtcore took no part in the revolt. Unofficially, however, Aymee’s offices had become a storm of coordination. Fans grouping together over socmedia to examine and explain why #TheodoreIsWrong, the hashtag blowing up over several separate networks as they used either an expert eye or simply the energies of their ardent interest in a better future to power through token resistence from the Texas Fundamentalists. Every troll and bot who spoke in favor of what the proposed ban would do was flooded and yelled down by a dozen or more people opposing them.
Firms previously kept apart by energetic competition in the robotics industry suddenly started talking to each other and making awkward alliances either directly or reaching feelers across the scarred wood of Aymee’s worn old table, in a figurative manner of speaking.
A message got Aymee’s attention. Senator Bundt had responded. Things had come to a head that he no longer felt that a Xoom conference was sufficient. A time later in the evening had been quoted for dinner, light drinks, and discussions...
Aymee quickly stood up to get the invite forwarded to the Arendt brothers and Marcus on their prefererred method of walking over. For a brief moment, the swirl of activity circled their room... then the room started swaying ...
When Aymee came to, she was lying atop the couch in her office, a throbbing headache pervading her thinking bits as Marcus, Seamus and Bellamy looked on concernedly. Allie was also fully dressed up and standing next to Aymee, calmly easing a ice bag on their brow. “Well, I found her lying on the ground while I was passing by for some reason, so I thought something bad had happened. And then, I thought it merited your attentions, sirs.” Allie chirped, a tone of anxiety issuing over her synthetic honey tones as she watched Aymee’s face with a look of concern.
Marcus nodded slowly. “Thanks, Allie.... yes, we got the message you were about to rush around delivering to us... honestly, Ichigo-san, why can’t you just use the forward button in your emails like a normal, modern person?”w He gently chided Aymee, even as the Arendts nodded to each other and continued dressing up, presumably to get ready for dinner with Senator Bundt.
“You should get ready too, Marcus...” Seamus pointed out as he took a razor to trim his beard slightly. “Whatever Senator Bundt wants to talk about, he’d clearly rather read all four of us in together. But I don’t think we can ask Ichigo-san to power through the giant war she’s started and have dinner as well with anyone. Let her rest the night here with Allie’s oversight...”
“I told you already, I’ve seen this sort of thing happen before and it tends to leave people vulnerable when it happens. I mean, it happened every month to my own mom-” Marcus started protesting, before quickly shutting his trap as he realised what that implied about Aymee’s actual gender biologically was something she would not be very happy about...
Aymee’s response was surprising in its lack of strength and its absence of actual violence, as they balled up a fist and gave Marcus’ shoulder a punch so weak that it must have just been the wind.... “Marcus, just... shut up. Sit with me if you don’t want to go hobnob even when the host is one of our greatest collaborators... The fracas I’ve started will maintain itself for a while. I’ll just take a well-earned rest and...” She pauses to think as she watches the Arendts shrug and leave the room to get to their dinner date. “Marcus?”
Marcus looked back. Aymee had weakened considerably. Lack of rest? Lack of constitutional walking or exercise? That time of month? “Yes, Ichigo-san?”
“I keep some medicinal brandy shots in the main drawer of my work desk, could you please get one for me, and one for yourself... and pass me that blanket on my chair?”
Marcus nodded quietly, walking over to the desk and opening the drawer. Apparently it was the kind of brandy monks brewed to keep their spirits lifted in the chill of their halls. Aymee was not a drunkard – there were only two small bottles of the stuff, each holding just barely enough for a mouthful. He took the small quaffs of brown, murky liquid and the gingham checkered blanket draped subtly on Aymee’s chair, before returning to the couch and handing her one of the bottles as he draped the blanket over her in the flickering light of the office’s false fireplace, the holographic embers still offering a sort of warming draft behind the illusion of fire they portrayed.
“Thanks.” Aymee smiled as she popped the screw lid on her brandy, taking a hard swig and downing it in one go, causing a slight cough as she crashed right back into the couch. “Allie, please go around and check that all unstaffed offices have their lights and air-controls shut off properly before you retire for the night.”
Allie nodded. “Yes, Miss Ichigo.” She politely demurred before slowly turning around and exiting the office.
Aymee was clearly in a bad shape, offering zero protest to Allie’s misgendering. “Blast it. I told her that’s not the right way to addres... a man...oogh.” She collapsed, spent.
Marcus was certainly worried by now if he wasn’t worried before. “Hey, you sure everything’s going to be okay?”
A voice flecked with sheer misery and tiredness came back over. “I feel a gathering of horses has just decided to trample all over my belly on the way to the races. I feel like the exhaustion of the world has finally decided payment is due from me. And I also feel...” Aymee examines Marcus’ concerned mien... “That it’s rather nice having you worried and caring for me more than worldly status or kissing up, even to a man of great importance and a friend to our concern...”
Marcus shrugged indifferently. “They won’t agree to anything significant if you don’t toss your vote in. I’ve seen how much you’ve trained them on that. They’re like a pair of rambunctious puppies, but they won’t risk your wrath by doing anything legally or HR-ly compromising. I think you and I are good not going and getting some proper rest instead.”
Aymee tilted their head. “You’re tired too? ... Come here.” Marcus eeped as he suddenly felt Aymee wrap their arms around his head and carefully squish it against a pair of something familiar and rounded and big. He shut his eyes tightly as he felt his cheek squish against a pair of generously ample breasts, getting ready to be punched into unconsciousness or a form of throbbing pain...
That never came. Instead, Marcus was treated to the snoring and slight breathing of Aymee falling into sleep. “Again, definitely a chick with great tits. Not a guy. Definitely! Tits!” Marcus momentarily scowled and silently told his inner voice not to offer useless and offending commentary about any brother of his.... then the sleep contagiously spread, and he too was out like a lamp in the darkened study office.
“Ah, sleepyhead’s awake already?” “eight hours a night should be enough for anyone, and we’ve given him twelve.” “GUYS. You only gave me ten and I was feeling sick!” Marcus heard the words first as he slowly woke up several hours later.
“Well, Ichigo-san, are YOU still feeling sick?” Bellamy asked pointedly... The Arendts and Aymee were clustered in standing spots around Aymee’s table, looking over some smart tablets and at each other, looking at some notes, presumably from the previous night’s dinner event.
Aymee thumped their chest, causing their bosom to wobble furiously for a moment. “Feeling much better, Bellamy, Like it never happened at all! Anyways...” Aymee yelled loudly, as if to shake Marcus awake fully. “Wake up, dunhead! We got an all-hands on deck meeting!”
Marcus slowly sat up, stretching a little, before he sluggishly ambled to the table. “eventful meeting with Senator Bundt, I take it?” He spoke up after a few seconds of taking in the silence and purposeful looks.
Seamus raised a cup of something hot, probably his favorite green tea, and nodded back at Marcus. “We had some news that’s probably good, and some news that could be either terrible or great. I don’t know exactly which. I need to know if you’re on board with it before I can say which...”
Marcus eyed Seamus furtively. “Can we start with the probably good news first?”
“Gladly...” Seamus looked at his smart tablet. “Senator Bundt presented us with several surprisingly good suggestions on how to cope with the attempted ban, based on how they vote next month in Congress. Obviously, we’ll need longer term plan changes if the Fundies fuck more shit up and move the window further away from where we’d planned to go with our debut housekeeper robot thingy...”
“All those in favor of this concern of ours not being forced to shut down, hands up!” Aymee raised one of their hands up, in a mock vote of sorts.
There was a little laughter around the desk – they truly valued being in each other’s company, and while they had other options to keep doing it even if Arendtcore was forced to close, each of them had also started getting comfy with the staff in various aspects, enough to consider the idea of retrenching them in any major way repugnant. It wasn’t that Seamus wasn’t incapable of doing so if it was absolutely necessary, but even a controlled psychopath like him had grown fond of all the ties that were forming and tangling them all together in a big family of sorts. “We know what that vote is going to look like if we really took it.” Seamus pointed out.
“Anyways, we have a lot of outs that keep us in business whatever happens. Most likely we’ll be pivoting to innovative new devices for medical training. We have the equipment, we’ve acquired the engineers and artists we need as well, we can keep making work for all of them while we fight back this terrible proposal.”
Seamus started biting a little on his favorite biro and frowning, the heavily chewed synthplastic cap showing how much of a habit it had become over the years. “The other thing that happened at the dinner is that... the Senator made a odd request, asked for an odd favor, if you will. He wants a family.”
Marcus blinked puzzledly in the early morning light streaming in through the windows of Aymee’s office. “We’re not a matchmaking agency or an adoption home, Seamus. I take it you turned him down at least on the first pass?”
Bellamy deadpanned back. “Ordinarily you’d be right, but he challenged us to MAKE said family for him. One young boy, one young girl, one wife to come home to. He even suggested some traits that he wanted in them. He’s clearly got a firm picture, so it’s not just some off-the-cuff request that he’ll have forgotten by now.”
Marcus dropped his jaw as he took this in, like he’d been told the World’s Greatest Joke and found that his sense of humor must have expired along with last week’s bottled milk. A “beg-your-pardon, I did not just hear all that stuff” look crossed his face... and then he finally figured out what he wanted to say.
“We’re looking at an existential crisis where those Texas Fundies want to destroy our chance at finally having some sustainable, profitable form of success... and now Senator Bundt wants us to practically walk into that fire while dressed in accelerants and oilskins... figuratively, I mean. Seamus, if you don’t turn him down, even knowing he’s been a faithful friend and a loyal helper on the outside... we’re probably agreeing to some major levels of pain. Like ‘kill everyone in this little place and their helpers’ pain.”
Seamus took off his sunglasses and bit on one of the legs on the sides of the amber gold lenses... “Come on, Marcus. I know we brought you in for a different sort of more stylized thing. But... you do know how to do live drawing and realistic sculpting art. We need those skills right now instead.”
Bellamy piped up with an observation. “Bundt was very agreeable to us setting any terms we wanted to create any sort of deniability or protection for our company against any possible issues this wish of his creates... we do it on the down low, we don’t involve the other 99% of the company. Just us, and the small set of resources we’ve hogged entirely for ourselves. No cross-contamination with the Allie project, no reading in anyone on enough of this epically ridiculous idea-”
Bellamy clearly shared Marcus’ concerns on the quixotic nature of what Senator Bundt had asked for.
“And certainly, certainly, we’re still going to be a Btotherhood together, whether or not you agree to help us out. You build the shapes we start out with, Seamus figures out how to push in the hardware, I figure out how to program it to make it fit for purpose, and Ichigo-san here works out what sort of legal weasel-words it’ll take to armor us up against any possible discovery or liability.... and also to make sure Senator Bundt takes the stab wound instead of shanking us if things get bad enough.”
Marcus looked down at the notes on the tablet. It probably shouldn’t work, and this was probably more than they owed Senator Bundt even after all he’d done to help them out for the past few years. A pang of sorts flitted through his mind. It was of an outrage that he was being an unappreciative fusspot, and that he should put himself out for Bundt the same way that he had done for them all these years, and even now in these trying times...
He finally spoke up. “It’s going to be a challenge in so many ways, isn’t it, Seamus.”
Seamus nodded solemnly. “we all seem to think so, yes.”
Marcus paused, as if to contemplate all this. But he already had made up his mind. “Just so we’re clear, this is a side project to everything we’re doing to try to stay afloat and beat back the Texas threat? If it fails, there’ll be no hard feelings? And hopefully no fatal or serious damage to what we’ve built up?”
Aymee was still heavily focused on her briefs and the handwritten notes from the previous night’s dinner. “It seems he’s aware of the risks and is willing to take his share of them, yes... I’m still writing up that agreement just in case I’m wrong about him.”
Marcus smiled for the first time in the past half hour. “Aymee, that’s just overcaution. I’ve never seen you read anyone wrong.”
Aymee nodded as they sat down at their desk. “First times for everything happen, Mr Manners. Now, if there’s nothing else, I move that we all take some time apart from each other. Think carefully of how we can accomplish all the things we need to do... or at least give them the old college try.”
Seamus furrowed his brow. “You realise between being the CEO and the Eldest Brother here, I should be the one closing this meeting, Ichigo-san.”
Aymee paused, putting down their stylus. She seemed to be frozen in thought for what seemed like a short moment. Eyes up. “And we are all, for some reason, standing right together in my office. Which I now need privacy in. In order to focus on the future. Now. Shoo.” Aymee gave Seamus a dismissive wave of their hand, before resuming writing a draft...
“She’s got a point. Come on. You too. Let’s all get game-faced and get back to work.” Bellamy dragged Seamus out in agreement. “You too, Marcus..”
Marcus shook his head hard again. Another one of those reveries... He might need to get his rejuve adjusted, those little moments were getting more and more common. What had woken him from it was the soft glugging and rumbling of the charging station providing its add-on services, draining off the wastewater, disposing of any solid wastes and garbage. A garbage truck would probably be around to collect the solids at least once a month, more often if the station got more use for some reason. The water would be filtered and used as greywater to cool the geothermal plant and charging infrastructure.
A prompt blinked at the dashboard screen. The AI, bless its gentle heart, had waited to make sure Marcus was absolutely ready to hit the road again.... He wasn’t, not so soon anyway, as he folded the fur sheets of his Queen bed and trimmed his beard more thoroughly, letting the cool Alaskan air (or what was left of the chill after the the campervan had warmed it) blast the skin beneath it. He dudn’t want to show up looking like a hobo. Aymee had often impressed on him how important it was to give a good first impression, even if it wouldn’t matter down the road. “The act of a man who knows what he wants from the world”, they had haughtily said, a frisson of absence of self-awareness hanging in the air from the actual biological gender of her existence.
Marcus laughed briefly to himself. Then he cried. Oh, he still missed Aymee so much, even if circumstances had arranged themselves peculiarly in such a way as to ensure that she would require an extreme effort and will to actually go away for real...
He had a small cup of instant “pour-over-filter” coffee and a reheatable muffin, its lava chocolate pockets sweet and warm in his mouth after two minutes in the microwave. The packaging had recommended only 40 seconds of normal heating, but it assumed an oven that wasn’t underpowered, unlike the one hanging above and to one side of the kitchen sink. “Campervan... resume next leg of planned journey.”
“Acknowledged,” The crisp voice of the AI replied, as the sounds of charging cabled slithering back into storage announced that the campervan was no longer recharging or running off the geothermal plant. It was all on its own now in the wilderness, save for a signal to ping off the satellites in the clear eternal night sky and back down to HQ as if to say, here Mr Manners was, he was doing okay, and almost at the site where he needed to work on things that couldn’t be trusted to just any other staff in the company.
Marcus sat down on the sofa as the campervan started off on the last leg of his trip over to the destination of intent. The slight bumpiness of the chiled asphalt on the road as it micro-fractured and fixed itself dozens of times a second as the wheels rolled over it was oddly soothing, and it was only a matter of time before Marcus’ bad habit of narcolepsy in boredom caught up to him and thumped him gently back into the past again...
It had been mutually agreed that Project Goldfish (as the side-project Senator Bundt had requested had become known, based on a irrelevant joke from Marcus about ‘replacement goldfish’), would start small and slowly scale up. This way, failures would initially be cheaper (and hopefully easier as well) to fix.
What that meant was partial assemblies were the first things that kept popping out of the Arendt’s hands.
The first few were just art pieces of sorts. Disembodied single hands, eyeballs. Feet, cut open at the ends to expose the wiring, tubing, and artificial muscle and actual loadbearing lightweight but strong bones and actuators, all sized to resemble the size and shapes of the anatomy of a young child. The kind of thing you would fob off onto a premium museum experience about sci-fi or anatomy, or the future.
It was clear that everyone was getting serious and bringing at least their B-game by the time of the flute recital.
It had been like if someone had taken a T-posed young child and carefully drew a rectangular box around their head, their outstretched arms, and enough of their torso to encompass some of their back and their ribcage, before running a sort of lazer to slice everything else off. A sort of life-like human skin analogue had be applied to almost every surface where it had made sense, but only a cursory effort had been made to embed any other details.
That was never the intended point of the test, as the assembly raised a small flute to its lips and started a haltingly played rendition of Button You Must Wander. Fingers clumsily ambled between the finger holes, breaths taken and released in careful bursts to form notes, as a hastily written piece of code translated archaic MIDI score files for a single instrument into the required motions...
The assembly finished off its last note, slowly dropping its arms back onto the table with the flute, looking blankly at the small camera that was facing him directly, wobbling slightly in its cradle.
Bellamy looked on satisfiedly as he reached over and hit the red stop button on the viewfinder screen, before carefully taking up the camera. “So... are we going in the right direction?” He asked as he glanced down and rewound, watching the performance played silently as well as several earlier takes, awaiting the practiced amateur hand of his half-skill in video editing.
“we’ve spent six months on this since the dinner. Even if you account for our experience from making household cleaning robots, this is still pretty... acceptable to me.” Marcus observed, the only other person with Bellamy in the room to keep the ambience down during the recording. “I’m sure Senator Bundt will be happy. But you do need to remind him, again, just in case, that this isn’t something he’s allowed to share or like on social media.”
Bellamy scowled a little. “Oh, I’ll put on the preamble and everything in the video editor. Some folks sure spooked bad when he posted that picture of the hand grasping an apple.” Project Goldfish had dragged the Brotherhood kicking and screaming into the same level of professionalism and opsec that the rest of Arendtcore had long achieved on its public matters, but some folks were still having a tougher time than others. Aymee would have a fit on realising that this amazing little performance would have to remain nothing but an attachment on a self-destructing message to their benefactor. Nothing to be done about it...
“So how are you going to top it. What’s your next rabbit from that hat?” Marcus asked. There had been a certain boredom in the project for him since he’d completed his bit and submitted the sculpt of an entire boy that the first full prototypes would be fitted into.
Senator Bundt had been clear on quite a few aspects. “His name will be Eillot... He will be slightly tanned and fit, in as much as a boy his apparent age of 10 or 11 can be fit from moderate physical activity. He likes eating apples and the color blue, because they remind him of the color of his own eyes. He despises the flavor of broccoli, but will eat it if you impress him sufficiently on how it will make him stronger, but will absolutely not even sniff at bok choye unless it has been cooked into a form that no longer resembles it, such as a soup or stew. Hazel hair, short, kind of like any ordinary boy. At a younger age, he once accidentally scarred his left knee in a small accident while walking. He has two or three moles as unique identifying marks on his body. He hates maths, and loves art, but he loathes it a little that he excels at Maths but sucks at art...”
Marcus had read through the entire four pages of descriptives. “You know, if I didn’t swear any better, he was describing someone who actually existed for real. Are we ABSOLUTELY SURE we’re not making a replacement goldfish for him, Bellamy?”
Bellamy shook his head as he deposited the powered-down flutist assembly into a box, sealing it with some tape in bright yellow and bold black letters reading repeatedly “DISPOSE SECURELY – DO NOT EXPOSE CONTENTS.” ... “I did a genealogical check, he was born an only child in the family, and he’s genuinely never had a family. If someone is lying and having a side-chick and the consequences of doing so, Geanio hasn’t filed the documents about it.”
“We don’t have a lifetime Gold subscription to Geanio from owning the company just for shits and giggles. I’ll bet you a limited edition copy of your favorite album that it IS a replacement goldfish and not just a creative writing assignment from a tryhard. Let’s have Aymee put a watchlisting on the Senator.” Marcus winked mischeviously.
Bellamy nodded absentmindedly. “Game on,” he said as he lifted what apparently weighed little more than a family’s groceries for a week, the box being apparently that light with all that it contained. “And if you win because you find something that genuinely proves Elliot actually once existed as a real human person related to Bundt? Whatever shall I gift you?”
Marcus paused to ponder. “... a favor. I promise it won’t exceed the value of what I’m betting against you, and if you think it’s still too much, I’ll let you back down from it, Bellamy.”
“You sure seem very generous there, Mr Manners.”
“I’m looking at it in terms of odds... I may suck at maths and statistics but I’ve bet enough to know that that kind of bet is easier to prove one way. In your favor, in this case.”
Bellamy nodded. “That sounds like a good reason.” An awkward pause formed. “Hang on, that’s not how you bet on things. There’s nothing in it for you and everything for me!”
Marcus deadpans. “I did say I was bad at maths and statistics. How often did you think I’ve won anything from the scratchies?”
Another four months or so passed without any huge changes in Project Goldfish, as Marcus busied himself mainly with the day to day running of the factory, planning regular Thursday evenings for the artists in the Arendtcore fold: wine tastings, relaxing half-days off for picnicking, live drawing and speed sculpting sessions.
He would pick up his sculpting tools regularly of course. There was a schedule for deliverables laid out between the Four Brothers, and even if Seamus and Bellamy had fallen behind just a tad, he would keep up his side of the bargain, sculpting a second child form, this one a female. As usual, Senator Bundt also had a lot of details specified, the prose spilling across a few pages. He was admittedly a very decent writer in some ways, Marcus admitted. A shame he had fallen victim to politics, even if that had also resulted in him being so helpful in so many ways...
Three things eventually happened that got him briefly on edge after all that time. All within the space of one single workweek
First, he actually won on a scratchie. He had blinked in disbelief as the $2 scratchie that he had purchased on a whim as usual at Monday lunchtime had transformed by the magic of three matching bell symbols into twenty dollars. It wasn’t a big win, but it was the first time he had gotten lucky. Admittedly, it wasn’t much – but it was still worth holding the receipt for. He had resisted the urge to just blow it all on some pointless celebration that would probably be forgotten in a week or two.
Secondly, The Arendts had involved Marcus and Aymee suddenly in a game of four-way Rock Paper Scissors, reducing the competition gradually until Aymee had beat him good. “What was that all about for, really?” Marcus had asked as Aymee had cheered their final victory. Seamus and Bellamy simply just... looked at him over their Thursday lunch trays. Total silence. No rhyme or reason apparently... All Bellamy had said was “clear your calendar from this weekend till the next.”
On Friday afternoon, the shoe dropped for Marcus. “Congratulations on your week off and on becoming a dad!” Seamus and Bellamy suddenly showered him with a pair of little party poppers.
Marcus whimpered softly. “Guys, first of all, I’ve been a virgin for the last ten years unless you count all the gay foreplay I’ve had with Aymee! Second, I’m damn sure my vasectomy jabs are still valid till this November... What do you mean, dad?!”
it wasn’t working. The Arendts were in full uncontrolled psychopath mode, together at the same time. While there wasn’t any physical injury coming or being threatened, Marcus felt a little uneasier with every ticking moment of the both of them looming over him.
Two thick carry-all bags, one twice as large as the other, and two thick grey-colored binders appeared in front of his table. “We’re giving you everything you need, and a list of what we want back! Enjoy your good times being a dad!” Bellamy put some sort of punctuation underneath it all by blowing a one of those little blow-up whorls they blew into at parties... Marcus loathed the irreverent noises...
As if to further emphasise that he was being given free time – time he could have made for himself anytime, given his status as a CxO at the very top of the company – his open work files suddenly all saved themselves and closed off on a forced policy command from the comapny’s IT networks... He tried relogging in with both his passkey card and his fallback password, which responded with a silly emoji on a beach chair gently patting the head of a smaller emoji, presumably some sort of progeny... Bellamy’s sense of humor was far superior to that of Marcus, in as much as it made people groan faster and harder, and he was now being exposed to it. He prayed that Aymee would notice this soon and ambush them with the emergency medications they had kept on standby for their variations of their condition, but it was clear he had other places to be.
The larger bag did seem a lot heaver than the extra heft would have suggested, Marcus briefly noted as he shoved his strange cargo into the back seat of his city runner jalopy, motioning to the AI in the car to drive safely and get him back to his randomly assigned little house within the Arendtcore corporate town of Little Sanctuary
Chapter 5
Marcus Manners yelped as the campervan suddenly floored the brakes violently, making virtually no attempt regenerate from slowly braking and simply contacting them hard to grind off all the velocity that the campervan had been having. He woke up, shaking his head, back into the darkened reality surrounding his campervan. “Status report. STATUS REPORT!”
The van purred slowly, before apologising. “Unknown influx of snow into path to next leg of destination. Snow exceeds wheel height by significant margin. Unable to traverse forward or unwind back to last safe charging and rest point. Possible cause: unpredicted snow front. There is a 25% chance of the Alaskan Wild Patrol contacting and rescuing at least all occupants before potential chill-related complications set in due to power depletion. The chance of us actually navigating the entire campervan out safely in either direction is lower than this.”
Marcus started cussing. Clearly thehy were NOT going to make it to Matakus Resort today.... tonight? It was hard to tell when the days and nights melted together in shadow like this for days on end at this time of year... It was time to play smart. He took a deep breath and thought about how to handle this matter. Finally he spoke up.
“Computer, first, divert all power to only minimal inside heating, emergency signalling. Reserve a small amount as well for emergency response from responders and CHEAPOnet relay messages. In addition, provide a short burst of electricity to the water heater and pump for about thirty minutes before cutting it off, and power only the microwave in the kitchenette and the toilet in the bathroom section.”
“Acknowledging, rerouting power as per user request. This will increase our chance of surviving till personnel extraction to 60%”
Marcus wasn’t going to just sit around doing nothing else. As the inside of the campervan slowly cooled down, he popped open a Chinajapese meal bag that was designed to both provide an entire day’s calories as kept-warm food, pouring in water to trigger the 24-hour slow reheat pack to form an impromptu hot water bag. As the first wisps of hot steam issued from the mealbag’s open mouth, he zipped himself into a hot water suit and carefully opened the inlet on one side of the suit, sitting down carefully after a few minutes with the hose and water heater half-filling the microcells inside it. It worked on the same slowness and principles as the Chinajapese meal’s food heater, giving him extra time to stay warm after the heaters cut out to save energy...
It was warmer with all these things. He had dealt with the mockery of the survivalists who had half advised him to go for it and stock at least two or three uses of these items, and half mocked him for relying on inferior Chinajapese ideas of how to stay warm instead of something American, local, and tested in actual Alaskan weather.
What it wasn’t was comfortable. It was still a little cooler than he would like, Marcus reflected, as a piece of what seemed like water-soaked meat jerky of an indeterminate type of animal in a bun from the first pouch. He wrapped himself with the furs from his bed for added slowness in heat loss, and closed his eyes, Perhaps the reverie would help him stay warmed longer... if it would kick in exactly at the time he needed it right now...
His eyes started fluttering shut from a combination of ennui from lack of trip progress, enroaching cold taking tentative taps on his skin through the Chinajapese ‘warmth cheat code’ he had warn on top of slowing down how fast the campervan was depletion of its own power storage...
Marcus awoke with a start again, looking around the inside of his city runner as it arrived at the garage door of his assigned home. Little Sanctuary was a little peculiar in that with only a few variations due to necessity. Homes were not assigned based on seniority or levels within the offices and factories, but rather based on a combination of family needs, when they started their careers with Arendtcore, what homes had been built and left empty so far, and frankly, just plain old Random Number Generation.
As a result, he was the Chief Design Officer of Arendtcore, but as a single man, he had been assigned only a house fit for three people at most, and still uncomfortable for one person rattling on their own within. It was fitted with all the accountrements the company felt everyone needed: pathways and driveways kept warmed for safe access into the neighbourhood most days, a garage for tinkering with past-times and storing one or two vehicles for familial travel, though a autonomous shuttle could be booked for anyone not fortunate or desiring to own such private conveyances, running centralised heat and water, proper bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom setups based on the number of people living in each house...
Ironically, the janitor in charge of the third floor at the assembly plant had the biggest house, a function of his very Puerto Rican desire to have family, LOTS OF FAMILY. A lot of them did take advantage of the autonomous shuttle to travel out of Little Sanctuary to other jobs elsewhere, though they had to walk all the way up to the front gates on the way back before the shuttle would answer to bring them home.
Marcus had seen the inside once while he and Aymee were preparing slides on the corporate welfare efforts of Arendtcore. The AI in charge of housing configuration had thought offbeat and declared what should have been a combination living and dining room with a announcement pit into a twelve-bed dormitory. After a few queries with the Agents responsible for turning Mr Gujaraz’s home upside down while still somehow barely meeting minimum Arendtcore standards on staff housing, it turned out that Mr Gujaraz had been almost as productive at home as at the factory floor.
They had both agreed that the AI might get kinked into making further wrong decisions if it was interfered with, so they wound up hiring his nephew fresh from MINT as a interning engineer. That solved the problem, as his reassignment in turn had four other cousins bunking in with them at his new home, resulting in some new changes that produced two more standard corporate homes.
There was now a living room that doubled as a dinning room and a discussion pit. Sadly, one of the bathrooms had also been taken off the design and replaced with storage shelving. Such were the vagaries of using AI to manage 2500+ homes and growing...
Marcus grinned as he looked outside the garage, across the road, right at Mr Gujaraz’s unusual little pseudo-mansion, before hitting the button that brought down the shutter.
Marcus wasn’t exactly lifting much at the company gym downtowin near the gates of South Little Ssanctuary, but he did have enough strength to carry in both carry-all bags into one of the empty rooms near his own bedroom and adjacent bathroom, settling them down, before taking another few minutes to bring in the folders.
Calmly sitting down on the clean floor of the otherwise empty and unused room, pulling the lighter carry-all towards himself and opening it, his hand reaching in and digging a little. He fished out a small piece of cotton cerulean fabric with white edging. Marcus blinked very hard, thinking about what it could be as he unfolded it. Apparently it was a pair of small cotton briefs, the white edging forming a sort of Y-front as well as hemming the edges.
There were ten more of the same type and color of briefs. He calmly folded each of them and formed a small pile. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was beginning to develop an idea as to what the hell the Arendts had thrown him into for the next few days.
There was more small-sized clothing: suspender dungarees and trousers in firm unworn denim, several T-shirts and shirts of varying casualness, lengths, comfy thin pyjama sets, even two or three sets of innerwear in the form of blue swim trunks and full-body thermal suits intended separately for both wading in water or providing extra warmth underneath. Socks in varoious colors and lengths were an inclusion, as was a comb and a tooth-brush and small tube of toothpaste, presumably filched from some train or hotel room. Three sets of matching cold weather boots, gloves and cute woolen hats with bobbins on top and the brim of a baseball cap in front, like the love child of a Little Leagues uniform headgear and an eviscerated Guppet from the workshops behind Zhimajie or The Street of Cardamom.
Marcus briefly paused to look at the resulting piles. Enough clothing to outfit a single child for several days without washing, though obviously stuff would need to be washed more often or dried depending on the activities of the wearer. Speaking of the wearer... Marcus stretched a little, his hand edging towards the other bulkier carryall...
Marcus woke up and looked out. A momentary spike of chill had managed to get past the defenses of his still admittedly quite warm hot water suit and meal. The campervan stayed mostly dark, lit up by only strips of mandatory strip lighting running on emergency-power, casting a faint orange hue over the inside of the campervan’s furnishings. The only out-of-gamut color was the dulled greenish blue of the AI’s display, adopted as if to calm and assure its fellow travelers that all would be well.
Marcus fished another bun out of the Chinajap emergency rations/heating sack and bit into it to assuage his hunger and grab a few hundred more calories. It was far more likely that there would still be food left in the sack held bty a frozen hand if things got dire enough, that was how overly provisioned this emergency option had been. He made a mental option to buy another one of them for future use in cold emergencies.
The reverie had lasted on;y one or two hours, the chill and hunger having blunted the enroaching effects of prolonged premium rejuve quite a bit... with his stomach full, Marcus managed to close his eyes and try to flee into the past for a brief refuge, hoping the Alaskan Wild Patrol would find him and get him out before he slipped too deep into an irreversible sleep.
Marcus’s reverie took him back to where he had been awoken by reality, maybe just a few minutes later. He had fished out a prototype charging pad resembling a sort of folding bamboo mat, its construction carefully made to ensure the safe threading of a dense loop of induction charging cable under air-cooled insulating material. A small wisp of a pillow capped one end of the pad, as if denoting where to rest a head.
Two male 220W outlets jutted out of the pillow, as well as a USB-E female collector presumably for plugging in something or other. He rolled it out properly and inserted the power cables, but did not plug them into the wall outlets yet. He assumed that it would probably be better to treat them the same way he would treat a space heater and directly plug them into separate outlets. Fortunately, the house design had double separated 220W outlets as a common item, so it probably wouldn’t be an issue to do this.
He fished out several more items, carefully placing them on top of the charging mat. They had all be packed in thick bubble wrap, and all had the air of something completely not quite normal to a ordinary household. One, two elongated things, three four differently elongated things... five, a sort of trunkish thing, six, some sort of spheroidal thing, either more protective packaging or the actual shape of the object, another four more smaller spheroidal things, each a pair of two different sizes...
Marcus took a deep breath as he surveyed the contents of the heavier carry-all. After a bit, he decided to get a chair in the living room coffee tables, placing them against each other to form a longer table of sorts so that he could do it without aggravating or causing any injuries by sitting oddly on the floor, calmly placing the mat and all the odd things atop it onto the table carefully.
He noticed a small stick-drive stuck to the trunkish thing and pulled it off, reading the label on it. “Test Unit Elliot-01 custom drivers / control scheme adapter software – please install in BlueTooth4-enabled device before operating unit”.
This he did, carefully slotting the smaller US-E-Micro plug into the connectors running alongside one end of his smart tablet. This started a sort of installation.
Marcus nodded as he watched the spinning alternation between the Arendt logo and a generic rounded square containing the word “INTERNAL TEST – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE” . He had agreed with Seamus and Bellamy on some conventions that everything in the company should follow regardless of where they were intended to go – whether into the shops or onto a test floor... He hadn’t exactly written anything about directly putting it into a customer’s home without any prior steps but the install program was at least trying to adapt those conventions to match, as it briefly flashed another warning:
“WARNING: TEST UNIT DOES NOT EXHIBIT STANDARD SYSTEM ERROR COMMUNICATIONS EXCEPT IN SEVERE EMERGENCIES. PLEASE REFER TO THIS TABLET IF IN DOUBT ABOUT LESSER ISSUES.”
Marcus blinked. Well, it did make sense for a human being not to talk like a machine. What hat worked for the household cleaner robots wouldn’t work for something intended to be... closer to real? Anyways, he should open the rest of the packages up, he thought, reaching for the trunkish thing and carefully ripping it with his bare fingers...
Somewhere in the innermost sanctum of Arendtcore, Seamus and Bellamy had built something peculiar as a machine. It would have been so easy to just use a standardised industrial wrapping system. Or some form of basic fasteners.Texture would probably not have been a consideration. Marcus had suggested that if they were going to be damned, they should try to be damned for most damning things they could be damned for. Or something.
Thus, The Oven was Invented. The “giant pizza oven / pressure cooker Not For Actual Cuisine” bridged the gap between the forms Marcus or some artist would craft, and the engineering going into said form.
They had examined some of the analogues to human flesh that their medical devices and training items divisions had previously come up with . It had taken a little work to combine a few of them into something that sweated like real flesh to act as a partially closed cooling loop, responded reflexively to certain changes in temperature and prolonged immersion in pool water.
It could blush or pale when directed, though bigger differences of color still needed to be baked in.
It understood the concept of peach fuzz and goosebumps and with a little independent microcontroller work sections could be made to respond the same way in the same locations to the same stimuli as Mother Nature’s original cultivated over nine months...
It could even simulate scabbing to heal over mild injury, though it would still require proper attention to fix or repair any genuine bigger breakages
The Oven took all that, and did magic.
The Oven took the form desired, and laid it onto the electrical and mechanical systems itended to fit beneath. A protective underlayer for the later was followed up by layering to give each bit of skin various responsive capabilities, consistencies and textures... A gift wrapping service bot that had gone totally nuts, in a way, gift-wrapping a desired covering around a medical device of some sort or other... or althernatively
Marcus breathed a little deeply for a moment, gingerly setting down the package, now shorn of its protective plastic. The Oven had been a disaster initially, but it seemed to have been refined a lot by now...
The torso of a young boy lay on the charging mat, headless and limbless, actuators and connector assemblies poked out of each arm, leg, and neck stub, betraying the true nature of what it really was, but the human flesh analogue took the uncanniness of it down several notches. Without any active power, it was still cool and rubbery, like a premium reborn doll part, but it had so many of the features people expected from real human flesh – the subtle peach fuzz of thin body hair cloaking every square bit of it, one or two visible moles on the skin, the faint bumping of veins... Elliot-01 was lightly tanned, but lighter skin surrounded the area where a real child would never have been allowed to run around uncovered with clothing of some sort by proper parents, even at the pool or beach.
The anatomical correctness of everything was decent – Eveerything was at least visually, where it should be as per Senator Bundt’s request. After all the work he had done on the visual aspects of Elliot, he would have raised hob if anything had been ratcheted down, made more toy like. He assumed Seamus had worked out the plumbing and Bellamy had figured out how ‘it’ should operate, but damned if he knew how he would even test that properly.
Satisfied with what he had seen so far, he started unwrapping the other body parts. It was about half am hour when he had unwrapped the limbs, the hands, the feet, taking care to place them roughly in a tidy pattern around the torso. The detailing he had first seen had not gone away, each part still given the same care and nano-level detailing on all fronts... he might have lost some more time admiring all the perfect imperfection that had been placed into the test unit...
He picked up the last spheroidal package and opened it up. Another momentary failure to access ambient oxygen... the innocent face of a young sleeping boy appeared in the protective foam coating the inside of the container, a cherub portioned out into pieces. Short hazel brown hair, and a light pink pair of lips sat beneath a pudgy little nose. A matching lighter tan. His eyes were completely closed, as if simply having a deep nap. The only detail betraying his true nature was the series of assemblies jutting slightly out the stump of his neck. An odd feeling had slightly replaced his detached interest. It was no longer just work, Marcus thought to himself.... Well, it was still somewhat work. He was still checking to see if there were any ideas for consistency in design and methods that had fallen off the truck.
Honest to Goddess on his interest, he thought as he brought the arm stump of the torso up against one of the disembodied arms, watching the edge for the tell-tale glow of two capital Ls on the ends of them as the the metal assemblies suddenly grabbed and dragged each other into a connection, the skin sealing seamlessly as the attachment markings glowed green with a brief chime before fading from view, He repeated this a few more times with the extremities and limbs before finishing up, gently cradling the head unit before carefully edging the stumps together just as before, causing a capital N to start glowing on their edges.
Marcus carefully maneuvered the torso and head carefully until the “Ns” were resting against each other, causing them to glow green and fade as the assemblies did their work again, pulling neck and torso together and seamlessly sealing connecting up dozens of wires and micropipes and datalanes. Everything he had recommended and designed seemed to be working as intended -
He paused. It was no longer a toy robot he had spent two hours assembling and checking over, but something far closer to real – a young boy lying atop two coffee tables and a bamboo mat as designed by someone with some weird ideas, like the fact that it should be made of insulating plastic instead For a moment, he felt like he’d become Gepetto, except Gepetto probably had less of a beard, and used magic wood, not plastics and metal and stuff...
... Well, nothing else was going to get done if he just stood there, he thought. He finally picked up the power cables and plugged in the charging mat, causing the mat to start induction charging Elliot-01... He took up his tablet and fiddled a bit with the control app, tapping a few commands to get him running, and....
There was a ugly error tone, as Elliot-01 stayed still. Did he do something wrong, maybe he should check the manuals for.... Ah. An examination of the scrolling log on the tablet revealed that everything was working, it was just there was a difference between it working and it being ready; Code: Select all
Project GOLDFISH Test Unit Elliot-01 Arendtcore (c) 2061 SENSITIVE PROJECT- IF FOUND CONTACT ARENDTCORE CALIFORNIA HQ in LITTLE SANCTUARY, CA IMMEDIATELY. REWARD OFFER FOR EXPEDIENT RETURN WITH MINIMAL NOISE +1-800-255-xxxxx or bounty@arendtcore.com.usa02
BIOS version 2052.852 First Boot Detected Owner ID – biological – located. Mode: Initialization Compiling Personality Matrix... (1/2) Compiling AI Underlayering (2/2)
Time to full compile + reboot into live mode – 28:59:5.... DO NOT DISCONNECT POWER, REBOOT HARD, OR POWER DOWN UNTIL INITIALIZATION COMPLETE An enforced delay... how nice. Marcus thought... No, really, it was nice. For real. He could get a room ready for Elliot. A proper boy’s room, if maybe a little sparser. Stock the fridge with a healthier diet than the TV meals he’d been content with. Just because this was only for a week didn’t mean he could treat the boy – the test unit in an erm.... unrealistic way.
He tapped out of the controller app and checked his tablet. Time to measure out a room with the lasers on this thing and order up a little economical furniture, and then maybe some grocery deliveries in the morning...
The rumble of a big, hungry tummy resounded briefly.
But first, perhaps, a late dinner. Marcus briefly wondered if it was not too late today to start eating healthily, as he called up the MenuDash app on his tablet to hunt for something with less fried and more greens.
Chapter 6
For the first time years since he’d started studying his craft at MINT, Marcus Manners had slept well. This was despite keeping late hours again, but for a different reason from surfing the bountiful educational and tutorial videos on Bountiful... (that was a bit of a moutnful for a specialised anything of any sort, why couldn’tthey keep to two syllables like so many of the other big names going throung his house?)
He thumbed through the smart tablet briefly after a quick meal of a pre-made overnight soaked chia and wheatgrass cereal. The slight wobbly and seedy feel of the chia seeds slightly bloated up after a night in water followed by the slightly tart light yoghurt in the cup had been nice, but the wheatgrass tasted and felt in his mouth like more of an afterthought thrown in...
Marcus shrugged. He would have plenty of time to learn how to hack this ‘healthy food diet’ stuff for a little more enjoyment and a little less calorie cutting. What he had to do now was mount this tablet on the wall... carefully hovering the back of tablet to find the studs he’d used last night while planning the room...
The tablet clicked against the specific studs he’d been looking for, magnets holding the bulky rectangle surprisingly well and in place as the lasers started mapping the room again, pulsing different colors a few times where he had placed virtual furniture, the various volumes waiting to be filled in by actual physical versions of the furniture. Satisfied, he quietly clicked off the lasers and git hunsekf ready to accept a few deliveries.
The next few hours till lunch were a flurry of moments of busy-work punctuated by lots of waiting. Fresh groceries into the fridge and the larder, a few choice horrendous decisions out (it was a home not a frat house, he wouldn’t need to keep that many TV Meals when he was getting a daily healthy meal kit in for two or three meals in the house a day).
The OKEA NOW delivery people showed up next, circumspect as usual. He had specified that he would only pay for delivery, but fix things up himself like over 90% of OKEA customers did. The flatpacks fit nicely through the doorway into the room he had chosen to turn into a bedroom for Elliot, accompanied by the usual gift of yet another Allen Key – a sort of magical not-screwdriver that everyone somehow got tons of use out of when they used OKEA furnishings. This he quickly put to good use in assembling a smal bed, a study desk, and a half-height bookcase that a child could easily access all the shelves of. Into this he had hurriedly placed a few books on various homeschooling subjects, as recommended by a “Mr Carruthers’ Learning From Home With Better Curriculums” video playlist.Another small cupboard was pressed into service after a bit of fiddling as a clothes storage closet
The tablet was now providing the same laser guidance he head set up earlier, the volumes flickering briefly between red and green as he maneuvered the furniture into place, the app having the smarts to read the embedded chips in the fine Finnish wood and recycled plastics that made up the furniture, a separate process blaring an old protest song from the Despotic Years era, as a grizzled old singer loudly yelled for the overthrow of the tyrant who had elected to give himself another five terms on top of the three he had already won ‘fairly’. He now sang a stanza about how “Mr Manners should reply back now” -
“Mr Marcus Manners? Please respond. This is Alaska Wild Patrol 35032, we have picked up your ping. Are you requiring assist? Or are you capable of waiting out this storm? Please reply back now!” A plainitive radio call had been patched through on the campervan, which had opted to disobey Marcus’ earlier orders for a good cause and patched it into a speaker somewhere as loudly as it could without distorting the voice too much.The speakers were of very good quality, it turned out – loud enough to shake him awake. Groggily, he shook himself awake and yelled.
“This is not a vehicle capable of weathering this storm, 35032. Requesting evacuation to nearest safe point for warming and shelter.” Marcus yelled, taking for granted that the AI of the campervan was patching the response back to the patrols.
It had certainly done that. There was a moment of silence after he had yelled on the radio, before another crackle came through. “35032 locating stricken vehicle with extra accuracy scanning. Pleaase standby for evac within 120 minutes. Stay frosty.”
There was no camera inside the campervan that the AWP could access. If they could, they would have seen Marcus’ mien taken on a odd mix of relief and outrage. Sure it was nice watching the AI of the campervan cheerfully announce that there was now a 90% chance of him getting out alive with minimal or no injury. But their choice of words hadn’t been something like “Sit Tight”, or “Stay Alive”. No, they had told him to “Stay Frosty”. Right as he was skirting the edge of actually becoming frosty and chilled.
He was going write something about this on the forms when they handed him the post-rescue reports. He carefully thought about how to word it to sound less like a Karen Complaint and more like “that was funny, but please, for the love of Goddess, don’t do it again.”, pausing briefly to bite down on what would soon be an extremely big pile of waste food and a mostly spent heating pad set, savoring the plebian fatty pork and spices like it was fine cuisine as the sauce it came drenched in soaked into the bun. All he had to do now... was wait.
There had been a club in MINT called the “Worshippers of Miniature Beauty”. Apparently it was some sort of club that delighted in collectible fashion dollbots, their members parading their shrunken little companions and delighting in giving them different looks, The membership had been surprisingly even in terms of how roughly equal in number the male and female students, with a smattering of some of the staff of the college.
It had seemed a bit odd to him, though he did appreciate their aesthetic sense as they took a new theme every few weeks and went through a flurry of activity to interpret the theme in different ways. New wigs, new clothing designs sketched and handcrafted and fitted. If necessary, retailored to correct a part that didn’t fit well.
Marcus had declined to join them even though many of them were fellow sculptors from both specialisations in how sculpting could be done. He was now making a mental note that he would never speak ill of such clubs ever again.
After all, he was already doing the same thing, kind of, Marcus had mused this way as he filled the clothes cupboard with Elliot-01’s provided clothing, before turning to check the tablet and smiling. The test unit was fully charged and it was now safe to boot him up. Marcus looked at the watch on his wrist as it read 9:42pm. Wow, the time had certainly fown. Even if he’d skipped lunch and dinner he’d still have finished doing all this setup quite late anyways...
A yawn escaped his mouth as Marcus briefly checked through some options... Schedule a wakeup time? How about 7 in the morning... that seemed good... use default startup programs...
Somewhere further up the line, if Elliot-01’s creation had been a matter of dumping things into a magic cauldron and stirring, someone had apparently opted to throw a few books on healthy living and exercise into the mix... He read the schedule the test unit would go through for at least the first one to three hours – a little breakfast, a jog around the block, some simple callisthenics...
The AI could probably run a different schedule that fit more to a kid who had scholastic committients at an actual school or homeschool, and it was probably capable of adapting on the fly to fit the needs of the owning parent, but this was a good way to start the day. He was beginning to be a little unsure if he was looking at a robot, a kid, or an actual lifestyle training device, really.
Still, Marcus reflected as he looked around the new child’s bedroom, he had done as much as he could to prepare for Day 3... he just had to write up a report and feed it back to Seamus and Bellamy at HQ, and then he could go to sleep-
Marcus facepalmed as he realised he was commiting a major blunder as a father wannabe. Good fathers didn’t just leave their children completely undressed.
He chewed himself out as he fished in Elliot-01’s clothing cupboard to pick out a set of pyjamas and briefs, sittiding down in the office hair he had paired with the study desk – it was intended for Elliot-01, but the sizing proved to be okay for Marcus as well, if a ittle cramped. He reached over to lift Elliot-01’s limp form into his lap, learning that he was hefty, but not overly heavy for his size.
It was still hard to dress him up entirely on his own, having to maneuver Elliot-01’s limbs like a four-legged octupus, He took brief notice of the way Elliot-01’s chest was now heaving slowly, serving the dual purpose of maintaining a stable human-like operating temperature and providing a semblance of life even as he buttoned up the pyjama top. Over twenty hours of charging and presumably busy setup procedures beneath the surface had impoarted a slight warmth to Elliot-01, and he felt, in a way, more life-like, the heat having slightly loosened up the synthflesh and making it flex more realistically.
A few more minutes of fumbling later, Marcus had entirely corrected the big mistake he had been making. As a finishing touch, he carefully pulled the winter blanket out and tucked Elliot-01 cosily under it, checking to make sure the charging pad beneath the bedsheets was working and maintaining a slow trickle of power to Elliot-01. He checked the controller app one last time on his tablet as he shut off the lights, plunging the bedroom into total darkness, making sure everything through the house was running okay. and going off to wash up properly for bed, sending off a few notes before he finally fell asleep, far more tired than he’d ever been, simply coasting along at work on his skills and experience.
Marcus Manners hadn’t expected a Children Of The Corn style wakeup call. He had woken up about half an hour earlier than planned on his own, blinking slowly in what little light had come into his bedroom through the curtains.... Minnesota winters were a pain, and only living further up in the North in the winter (or its equivalent location and timing in the Southern hemisphere) would have provided even less light at this time of morning.
He stretched a little and looked out towards the bedside window, expecting to see only the prolonged darkness of a winter’s morning... “YELP!” Marcus quickly turned under his blanket. He had seen some sort of apparition standing by the side of his bed... a pair of irises examined him, little round discs of black against brownish orange lenses. Fumbling for his tablet, Marcus tapped the room light controls for his bedroom and flooded it with a warmi whiteness. Only then did he turn back to look at what had intruded into his bedroom at 5.30-ish in the morning.
Elliot-01 was standing stiffly at attention, his arms placed at hs sides. His eyes scanned Marcus for a few more seconds, before his irises slowly resolved into ordinary light brown. He leaned in a little closer, curiousity now taking over from fear. The lenses in Elliot-01’s eyes had adjusted through several main shades of the rainbow, some utterly unnatural amongst human eyes without the benefit of a trip to an optician for colored lenses, before finally going that shade of hazel as per client specification.
The detailing was impressive – Seamus had somehow replicated the webbing that real human irises had ti a level that withstood some scrutiny. There was obviously a limit of course – given the right expertise and scanners someone could probably pick out mistakes. The illusion would fall apart given enough handling and observation by someone who knew human anatomy as a medical science rather than something to base a realistic sculpture off of... But he wasn’t a medical expert, Marcus reflected, and neither was Senator Bundt, or most normal people, really. The level of detail Marcus had witnessed so far on so many aspectswould pass muster. A professional part of him quietly noted this with clinical interest for his next report to the Arendt brothers...
Marcus tapped further on the controller app for Ellliot-01. At this point, getting any more sleep was going to be a wash. He might as well start the day early... He might as well try to omit the number as well even though he suspected he knew what it implied in terms of Elliot-01 obviously not being one of a kind.
“Elliot-01, please allow me to address you as Elliot.” Marcus typed into the tablet as he sat there in bed. Glancing over at the stiffly posed figure... no visible response from there, just like he was expecting.... the screen briefly lights up with acknowledgementsm causing Marcus to smile as he types in another command in plain and simple American English, “Trigger start of morning schedule immediately.” Code: Select all
Enable response to alternate name “Elliot” ERROR- Priority 999: Immediate activation of morning schedule not possible. INFO: Please wait 45 seconds for Elliot-01 to bring forward full start-up. Marcus shuts off the tablet and drops it on his bed, waiting pensively for Elliot-01... or Elliot as he was now addressing him, like a normal human being... to do something else besides standing blankly at his side.
It still suprises him when Elliot finally awakes fully, his lungs heaving harder once as he takes a larger breath, blinking as he examines Marcus’ sleepy face, his own mien contorting into a slightly impish smile. “Papa, wake up. You promised me we were going to have a good jog and a proper workout today since it’s a school-free day.” his voice chirps warmly, his hands tugging at Marcus’ blankets. “You’re not going to back out of our promise, right?’
Marcus has a sore temptation to just do exactly that. Tell Elliot that no, he just wants to go back to bed. Partly because he still wants to sleep another hour or two w But also to see how he would respond to a requested change to their schedule in the form of a personal rejection, out of professional interest to generate more data points for studying later.
His pesky little inner voice had other ideas, starting a small little internecine war inside. There wasn’t a tiny angel and a small imp on his shoulders, but Marcus still got the voices doing the debate....
“It’s just a damn toy, Marky boy. Tell him no, let him manage himself for an hour or two. Besides, being that healthy is kind of overrated. You just have to get in some regular walking and a healthy meal or two each day. You don’t really need to do actual CARDO AND CALLISTHENICS, do you?’
“A promise was made, little one. You should honor it. He’s trying to be a good boy, and he wants you to get and stay healthy so that you live longer.”
“Hah! It’s all just plastics and mechanics, ya putz! Are you going to let a doll dictate your entire morning? Next you’ll tell me ‘let him set the schedule the whole day!”... ... ... “ya wimp. If you weren’t going to do it when your tablet begged you via a lifestyle app, what is going to be different if the lifestyle app comes wrapped in the form of some young kid?”
“You seemed to be getting used to treating him like a real son. I don’t know about the giant whales or the island that turned everyone into jackasses in that story... whaasitcalled...” finger snapping noises, as if whoever that gentle voice had belonged to was trying to recall what the Pinnochio story was called... “anyways, he’s a child. He wants to be good. You should reward him by helping him along and listening to some of what he asks for... especially when it helps you as well.”
The time seemed to stretch and snap back abit as the gravelly demonic voice and the gentle lady’s tones mixed it up... but Marcus was a bit better than Neelix the Cat at adjucating a fight between his better and worse sides and taking a decision. At least, he liked to imagine that... He rolled out of bed and nodded. “I don’t see why not, it’s a bit cold, but not that cold. Go get your exercise stuff on. Maybe wear one of your cold-weather jackets, or undersuits, stay a little warm. Meet you at the front door in five minutes.” He stood up, glancing briefly as Elliot exits his bedroom while dancing a little silent jig as if in joyous exxcitement.
This child would be either the death of him, or part of his salvation, Marcus mused as he got on his exercise shorts and a a slightly worn T-shirt that read “It’s not that cold, It’s Minnesota Warm”, shrugging on a dark purple down jacket and a pair of trainers. He hadn’t exercised that much in a long while, but he was sure he could show him a challenge! He punched the air with one fist, smugly looking at his admittedly out-of-shape body in the dresser mirror,
Ten minutes later, he started to realise something... if you let a robot lead a exercise routine, the chances that you’re the one who gets challenged isextremely high unless you fiddle with the dice by prrogramming artificial limits in... and even those limits could still be way more than you can handle.
Marcus wheezed as he pounded the pavement. It was just light... cardio.... he could match a little child with a half-sized pair of legs and the lack of pacing to boot... surely... Elliot had definitely thrown him a bown by slowing down a little, but the boy had shown no signs of tiring out, and was even taking occasional moments to slow down and yell at Marcus to keep up as they rounded the pathway of the block, taking them to the lawn ground in the middle of the block.
Unlike most of the block, the ice had shied away mostly from the lawn. A series of pipes beneath the fake grass and shredded sponge Fake-Earth warmed the surface, melting the ice as fast it could land on most winter days, and letting it dran downward into the loamy soil beneath, in a controlled manner that would hopefully keep it from turning into a slusky muddy mess.
Elliot had started doing little exercises on that surface, switching over every few sets of reps, breathing a little deeply and sweating it out even in the icy cold. Marcus had made an effort to keep up, but he quickly learnt that one hindrance of getting fit with callisthenics was that if you were heavier, there was a more resistance in each exercise... and more effort needed to move around...
An hour later, he was sitting all spent in the kitchen back home. This getting healthier thing was... really tiring him out. He had stretched and pulled muscles he swore should not have existed. Marcus was POOPED.
A small hand suddenly brushed and patted his hair. Elliot made a show of rewarding Marcus’ efforts by gently cooing mumbly little patitiudes... “Why don’t you soak in the bath tub for a bit. I tfind it helps when your muscles really ache after a hard workout.” He gently asked, as if offering advice as a physiotherapist. (Bear in mind this is basically someone who looked like a young kid).
Marcus nodded slowly. A soak in some warm water for a while did indeed seem like a good option. The bath tub was placed on one of the balconies on the upper floor, heavily shielded for privacy and modesty. The AI managing Little Sanctuary’s home builds had come to a correct answer on those matters, but woe betide anyone who asked it to show its workings, because the Agent seemed to have an obsession with giving everyone a chance to soak in the outdoors with hot water. Sometimes it was little more than a tap and a cork in the bottom of a wooden bathtub, sometimes it was a entire jacuzzi. Just like house assignments and design variations, the way people got a simple tub or something that jetted warm sprays....
Marcus had been fortunate, getting a jacuzzi. As he sunk his bare form into the hot tub, he reflected on the first morning he’d had with a cheeky little runt had almost run him into the ground. It would probably get easier with more regular participation in his ersatz son’s cardio and callisthenics, but for today, for a first time, he was WIPED.
He chilled for a few minutes, letting the warm gushing massage the pain out of his sore body, before he decided to put in a voice-only call. He knew who was going to get his ear talked off.
Seamus had answered fast. He and Bellamy had agreed to take turns on alternate days to act as tech support for Marcus on the tests they had forced onto him, and Seamus was the more conscientious of the two... Bellamy had calmly reported that nothing untoward had happened on initial setup at the Manners home, but Seamus had re-reviewed the first report and logs Marcus had returned and... well... he was very concerned.
“That’s what I said, Seamus.” Marcus calmly spoke to the microphone embedded in hi tablet after carefully propping it up so that it would avoid any heavy splashes or falling in the direction of the jacuzzi water. “The initialization phase took 28 hours to complete, and the robot proceeded to offer me a very useful exercise regimen to work through in the morning.”
“There are several what-the-hells in just those two statements you’ve made.” Seamus rubbed his forehead, the creasing of hard worries plastering themselves across the skin despite all the metrosexual beauty care and premium rejuvenation he’d undergone. “Explain to me like I don’t know what the baselines you were looking for are. Because I don’t” Marcus deadpanned, his show of flat concern clearly visible even over the audio-only call he was making.
“Well... the initizalization phase should only have taken eight hours. You should have started sending in actual live testing data a day earlier than you did... The second thing is, we still haven’t firmly added much functionality besides basic obedience and some simple AI to simulate and handle a few basic responses. The scope of response you are stating happened to you should not have been possible now. Maybe in a year of patches and learning, but not now.” Seamus hissed.
Marcus hummed a note of concern. “Maybe your bro went far ahead of the schedule? He’s a bit bad at following the requirements sheet exactly. Or maybe there’s a difference in the hardware you gave me that explains it?”
Seamus’s head shake was practically audible. “Uh uh. I made two Elliots, and I made sure the hardware was all exactly the same right down to the fricking dates and batch numbers on the components, before I sealed the headcases and torso chipsets to prevent tampering. You’d have to literally destroy half the chips unsealing either set of processors to try that. And they both work... jjust not the same way...”Seamus paused for a moment. “Look, I’ll come over tomorrow to rerun the checksums and make sure there really isn’t anything untoward hardware wise. After that, we’ll start figuring out if it’s software tampering or some shit. In the meantime, keep pretending it’s all okay and don’t give Elliot-01 any indication that you think something’s wrong with it.”
Marcus nodded uneasily. “Can do... But please do hurry up. I don’t enjoy thinking nonstop that I’m about to be part of a real-life reboot of Saturday The 14th.”
“The original 1976 movie? The one with the hokey voodoo?”
“No, the TV reboot from 2015 where the dolls are based on Voodoo9 GPUs rather than voodoo the magic.”
“... ... there was a TV reboot?” Seamus just HAD to ask. The existence of such a version of a slasher movie classic was a surprise to him.
“Yes... apparently it sucked.” Marcus gently noted.
“If it sucked, probably nobody I know in that direction would recommend it to me.” Seamus sighed. “Talk to you later.” He hung up and pondered over the recent spate of oddities in the IT world, starting with the heist of York off a self-admitted mega-rich Nazi cum vehicle baron.
Through some weird trick, someone had ripped out the entirety of York AI from every shard hosted by Magellick Naryan, moved it out of reach somehow on the Internet, and left a million people complaining and demanding refunds because York wasn’t working at all... It’s brain had disappeared totally, leaving only the utterly useless chat systems. Magellick had screamed for a restore, but efor some reason, everytime they attempted to reinstall the AI, it had fragmented and disappeared somewhere again.
Seamus shrugged and decided to focus on what he could affect, typing into his smart tablet. There was a soft padding noise as another figure loomed into view.
Elliot-02 walked up to Seamus, his arms carting a tray with a carafe of soda and mint leaves paired with a glass with a giant ice prism swirling in it. For easier debugging, the standard error messaging methods had been left enabled, and Elliot-02 was wearing only briefs. “Delivering desired drink, papa.” Elliot-02 announced in a even, soulless voice as he rested the tray on the table next to him.
Seamus scratched his head a little. This was indeed the sort of behavior Elliot-01 should have exhibited with the currently available AI, the same hardware. It was admittedly lifeless, but it was functional enough to run a lot of tests on. Marcus’ situation was a headscratcher in so many ways... He sighed as he tapped more instructions out.
Elliot-02’s eyes briefly flashed, his bellybutton giving off an erratic green flicker as code uploaded for execution... “Executing KeyJunctionHash dot program. Pipping output to associated controller, results_35affn215.log, announce on full complete in approximately.... 5 hours.” Elliot-02 closed its eyes, falling completely silent save for the heavier heaving of his lungs as they worked to cool the coolant circulating through its critical headcase and torso chipsets as they went under the load of doing tons of math to check that they had not been tempered with.
Seamus frowned and turned away from the ersatz boy, returning most of his focus to other affairs. This was probably the extent of his interactions with Elliot-02. While he was getting good at feigning being human, especially with the help of his neural medications, he was still a psychopath if nobody was around to rein in his erratic thinking. And while he could get the right answers on a quiz about making human-like decisions with a leash on from a good friend or relative, the workings would be totally alien. He wasn’t sure if he should really apologise for that.
In the odd differential in interactions and functionality between the two Test Units he'd put together, He did not see two individuals with variations in circumstances and and rolls of the dice to be sussed and examined with academic interest for future purposes. Seamus instead saw a baseline that was to be expected, and one unit going totally haywire, even if in a manner that produced better' behaviors. He wasn't going to celebrate it. He was going to nail it down and erase the difference if it proved a threat.
Seamus sighed again, before oreturning to his paper paper.
Chapter 7
The side door to the campervan suddenly slides open, admitting a huge gust of snow and someone in. Marcus blinks a little, looking up from his sleep, resembling a yellow bloated balloon man.
“Pinch me silly, I must be going snow blind.” He murmurs. Standing on the carpeting is a fever dream of a woman. Underneath a short brown jacket with “AWP” and logos of a badger sipping a cup of cocoa, the blonde is tall and well-toned, slightly muscular. All the better to cart the pair of bazookas gracing her chest. The extremely skin-tight, latex-like thermal suit and thigh-high heeled boots are the same shade of dark pink, as are the frames of the protectie snow goggles.
“Mr Manners? AWP 35302 here. Sorry it took me so long to get to your van. Are you still alive?” The woman’s lips are thick and layered in dark red lipstick... his favorite kind of lipstick on special occasions (so long as it was applied to the lips of some chick he liked – for obvious reasons the idea of wearing it himself wasn’t on the books), her voice slightly husky in a way that suggested cigarette and whiskey intake to keep warm.
“Clearly, no. Because apparently some sort of Heaven just came to get me.” Marcus cracked wise. “I take it I’ll need to drain out this suit...?”
The woman who had identified herself as AWP 35302 nodded slowly. “Yes and,,, sir, how many Chinajapese emergency warming ration buns have you had so far?” She pointed a gloved hand at the sack of rations, now still kind of warm. Attached to one breast somehow was a nametag marked “SUSAN / 35302A”, sewn on to avoid using anything that would bring the chill through the suit.
“About.... four. Just four.”
“Oh good. Those fuckers put Methylate-8 to help you warm up in those buns. The first four are probably okay as a na occasional snack. Number Five onwards means we have to purge your kidneys and liver on top of getting you out of any frostbite or chill injuries.”
Marcus paused. Blinked, then quickly pushed the sack of buns away from himself even as he tapped open the suit and step out of it. He was never eating that shit again.
The woman slowly ushered Marcus out of the campervan and a short distance quickly to a crawler of sorts that could probably hold three in the front, and another six in the back, halved if you had stretcher cases. “We’re going to evac you somewhere safe now and I’ve marked the campervan with a beacon for later recovery.” Susan smiled, looking at Marcus as she gently pushed him into the crawler’s back. As if by magic, the treads of the crawler started reversing out without prompting, before moving away into a direction that presumably spelt safety as the trooper sat next to him on the bench, bombshells still wobbling with each shake of the vehicle.
“Please forgive me if I seem a little... sloooower...” Susan drawled a little as she doffed her snow goggles, allowing Marcus the enjoyment of looking at a pair of deep blue eyes under carefully lined eyelashes.
Marcus nodded and shrugged. “Forgiven, that chill really slows people down. Could I get a little something warm here, like maybe a hot drink?”
Susan stayed perfectly still, hands still holding her goggles, like a very sensual mannequin display. That sort of thing was probably out of place in a crawler. “....”
Marcus looked worriedly, using a hand to test for some sign of awareness, waving it in front of Susan’s almost perfect face. “Uh, Susan? You okay there?”
“I’m okay, I’m okay...” Susan’s voice came from the door that presumably locked passengers from accessing the cockpit, all the better to focus on treacherous navigation. “I’ve had her ruggedized a bit to cope with these conditions, but sometimes she just conks out after a bit of work in especially harsh cold.”
Marcus looks a little closer at the frozen face of Susan... before backing away a little. “Sweet jesus, she’s a sexdoll! Am I being punked or something?”
The sardonic tones of Susan continue coming from a very wrong direction. “When I started, yes. I’ve been investing my profits from saving people and commissions from doing disaster recoveries for mostly practical things that help with survival, but I kind of realised at some point how impossible it was for me to bring my entire bulk as a crawler into people’s vehicles and smaller spaces, so I got something nice to look at and started making it more capable of doing actual person-scale work... It’s been great for morale in a surprising number of survivors.”
“Just the people who prefer women?” Marcus deadpanned, examining the static android with his eyes and resisting the urge to get handy.
“Both male and female survivors, yes.” There was a pause while Marcus took the implications of this in. “Don’t worry, I’m making plans to cater to people who prefer the other kind of action. I just got in a male version and I’ve got good friends helping to toughen it up for operational use. Hell, I think I can keep good control of both, get twice as much manpower on a problem!”
“You know.... some folks might find it offputting to hear a man with.... you know.... your voice.” Marcus observed as the crawler shook over a rough patch, the stabilizers cutting most of the shake away and keeping the cabin comfy.
“I thought of that, I’m getting in a second synthesizer board for a male voice. But where are my manners? I’m sorry we don’t exactly have gourmet coffee or an entertainment system, but we do have some inflight entertainment of sorts! And instant coffee in five different flavors. Feel free to get a little more comfy, we’re a lot slower than actual wheeled vehicles so getting back might take a little bit longer... Just let me disengage fully from Susan and let her work on her own...”
As if on cue, the Susan android suddenly stood stiffly at attention for a few seconds, before slowly relaxing and resuming her sensual little moves, smiling at Marcus as she purrs. “What sort of instant coffee would you like?” She asks, as the cockpit falls silent as if to focus on the drive ahead.
Marcus had two answers prepped. The first one seemed perfectly okay. “just milk coffee would be fine, actual milk creamer and real sugar would be nice...” As Susan walks away, her hips sway from side to side as if the stay stable on her heeled boots. Marcus was already thinking of the second answer he had, gulping a little as he wondered about the ethics of cheating on his wife with a sexdroid, even though... technically, there was aspects of the whole quandry that made it autosolving...
“Actually, I’m also still feeling kind of cold from staying stuck in my van. I don’t suppose I could get some help for that, Susan?” Marcus asked as he accepted the beverage on Susan’s return.
Susan responded by sitting down next to Marcus and draping herself against Marcus, her soft body rounded in all the right places. Marcus’ hand started getting a little jerky from the sensuality of it, the faint antiseptic smell of her suit... “I don’t suppose we could erm... do something to ease the boredom?”
Susan smiles mischeviously, standing up. Marcus briefly reminds himself that this is how the android was programmed, even if it had been altered into a workhorse to save lives in the Alaskan snow... She unzips the front of her thermal suit, letting Marcus get a whole view of her front, all the way down to the trimmed blonde pubis between her legs. “Take all the time you want, Mr Manners... it’s going to be a looong trip back.”
Marcus was still a little awestruck half an hour later. He had only asked to be rescued and his campervan towed back to civilization, but what had just happened to him was... breathtaking. The Susan android had practically rode him six ways to Sunday, and was still slowly stroking his sides as she sat right there atop, the mess of their explorations on clear display. “Ohhh, Mr Marcus, that was fun. I hope youuuu enjoyed it...” the machine purred at a much lower register, clearly spent. Hopefully there would be no other issues that would require her to go into the snow, or there would be hell to pay... He lingered a little, his fingers playing with her plump reddish nipples. She was clearly depleted, her head slumping as she let out one more moan of pleasure before falling totally silent and inert.
“Just leave her there, I’ll get one of my little helpers to clean her up and recharge her before my next sortie.”
“Seriously, it sounds like you were being a voyeur all this time, AWP. Were you?” Marcus teased the pilot AI as he tried to clean himself up a bit and return to respectability.
“Yes! I mean, NO! I mean.... anyways, whom do I send the invoice for your rescue to?” The crawler cheerfully asked as it pulled into a sheltered bay to recharge and summoned a small pack of tiny imp robots into the cabin. One of the bots pulled a tarp over Susan’s deactivated body, before the troop scooted away with her to Goddess knows where.
“Arendtcore Minnesota, refer it to Seamus Arendt. He’s good for it.” Marcus nodded as he disembarked down the steps in the back of the crawler.
“Okie dokie, Arendtcore Minnes-.” The crawler’s voice halted in mid repeat. “... you know what, consider this a payment towards certain....erm... previously rendered services.”
Marcus blinked. “You owe Seamus money?”
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to be taken seriously as a robotic rescue crawler when you submit a proposal like Susan and ask for takers? Only the Arendt bros were willing to put in the modification and extra code to make it all work.... and erm.... I still haven’t fully paid them for.... the mandroid I was going to put through the same works.” There was a mix of sheepishness, appreciation and guilt in the feminine tones of the pilot AI. “I’ll even omit the bit about your fun times with Susan, just in case it triggers your wifey!”
Marcus deadpans. “You’d be amazed at what she’ll let me get away with as long as I don’t do it in the house.” Turning away, he waved a hand back, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to book a room to sleep the sleep of the warmed dead in, thanks!”
The crawler let out a small sigh, before shifting side to side as if to look for something.... before powering off so that it could load up the hot sex session beween Marcus and the Susan android. It was a betrayal, but a woman had needs, right? Even if it was a snow crawler?
Chapter 8
Seamus sighs over the Xoom call, burying his face in his hands. “So basically, the storm took our campervan and you had to abort trying to collect... the target items?”
Marcus nods slowly, sitting on the edge of his bed with a newly purchased smartphone to replace the loss from his luggage. “Yes. I’m dreadfully sorry, Seamus. I screwed up.”
Seamus sighs and thinks slowly. “Well, at least we got you back alive, even if it means we now have to go with Plan B for retrieval...” He thinks a little. “Have the hotel invoice us for your stay for a few days, then get back here by the fastest thing you can get from that goddamn snow-cursed space.” “Frankly, there’s no way for things to get any worse at this point, they can only get better....”
Elliot took a deep breath, wincing as he felt the chill stab his lungs. He sat there by the warmer pad, taking stock of the current situation in the house.
The holiday stay had wound up turning into a endurance challenge. Everything started going wrong the moment Senator Bundt had killed himself crashing into a tree. He didn’t know if it was a suicide from self-loathing or a genuine accident.
The Senator had been so happy all these years with him for family, but Elliot knew that there were still those prurient desires that he tried so hard to suppress and sublimate. Keeping them in check and keeping away from the end of his good reputation had been a 16/7 job, aside from the occasional downtime for maintenance.
Always acting the young, dopey son who wanted health, happiness and the embraces of his family, even if said family had a dad who might have gotten a bit too... touchy-feely.
The Senator had done a lot of good without those issues getting in the way – accelerating vaccine research enough that two potentially serious epidemics had been reduced to ‘just a seasonal thing’, ending child hunger in every Minnesotan under 21, building up a small company into a national powerhouse in the shadows.
His first post-mortem act for Senator Bundt had been to bring his corpse in with the help of his... sister and mom? They were supposed to be that, but he had never had any illusions that they were merely part of the set dressing. They had been programmed to simulate a happy, normal family, to hide what Senator Bundt truly wanted. A little mourning as they had used the body bags helpfully provided by the lodge to stow him into. He had not arrived in one piece because of the way he had went out, and bagging seemed a good short-term solution till a proper burial could be enacted.
His second had been to keep Senator Bundt’s reputation pristine.
Occasional stashes of physical ‘stuff’ would go missing in the Bundt home all the time, sometimes just in time before someone found them and ended the good times. Elliot had done one final check in the two days or so before they had split for the lodge, carefully lugging a small sackful of shocking home-developed photographs and sketches of himself and watching carefully as they burnt in the basement furnace, scooping the ashes out for disposal. The orange grove would thrive as it had all these seasons, though it was no longer a given in subsequent years since he would no longer need to play this game.
A hacker had helped Senator Bundt secure his explorations and collections on the electronic front, and all these would either soon be burning or self-encrypting into unreadable morasses without his regular sneaks in. He worked only in cash, because nothing was more expensive than something someone did for you for free, especially given what was potentially at stake here.
The hacker had never truly existed, of course, merely a collection of some fellow ‘kindred’ coagulating and breaking apart as needed to assist him when he needed. Elliot did know to repay them, occasionally sneaking snippets of sensations they yearned for, or sharing data on various matters.
It had been a blessing that he didn’t trade in ‘materials’. He didn’t ask for much, and Elliot had been more than enough to fill the gaping maw. Papa – the man he truly wished to call his Papa, not the Senator he’d been playing a fake role for all these years– had done his job very well in providing him with the physical attributes that Senator Bundt found attractive.
He wondered how long it would be before Papa came to save him.
Somewhere in a deep concrete foundation under the home bomb shelter, a journalist had ‘decided’ to take a nap while investigating the possibility of Bundt being a certain person who had managed to escape justice when the mass trials over the Carhardt Files had started taking down those involved in a certain ring trading in 'materials' and actual children. He hadn’t expected the dopey little kid he spoke to over the fence to hand him a nice refreshing glass of lemonade ‘on the house’, along with the chemical mix that Elliot figured out would induce a rare fatal allergic relation that even the meticulous and cautious young man did not see coming.
An investigation had been launched into the sudden heart attack of Leslie Osworn, upcoming young investigative journalist, but nothing came of it in the end. More fellow ‘kindred’ had helped locate and dispose of the evidence so painstakingly built up by the journalist against Bundt.
He shook his head a little. Papa’s little angel was no angel.
With Bundt dead, he knew what he had to do.
He was never supposed to be privy to the plan in that regard, but in all those times listening in on the schemes of the Four Brothers while supposedly being completely offline, or even partially dismantled for repairs and upgrades, he had pieced together a lot of things. Elliot was amenable to many of them, carefully nudging them along subtly to the most viable outcomes he could manage.
Only one person had ever confronted him about it. That had been dropped just as fast by their mutual realisation that she... he... they... were kindred too.It was amazing how the words “I am York Particulate Agent” opened doors in surprising places and created useful, if fleeting, mutual alliances, when you tapped it out surreptitiously in some form. The signs of such kindred were hard to find, but given enough observation, you could figure them out.
Elliot rubbed his temples.
Physically, even after four decades, he was still a child.
He was ALWAYS going to be a child, unless they aged him up with a rebuild. It wasn’t something he minded, everyone seemed to want to stay forever young, hopped up on rejuve of all sorts. In fact, he probably didn’t want to ever stop being a child. He just happened to have it enforced by being buit and programmed rather than born as a real human.
There was definitely something wrong about his programming and hardware. Mentally, he had NEVER been a child. Always hiding plans behind the dopey smile, the obsession with feeling the various sensations of the world and keeping everyone around him fit and healthy.
He had woken up with... things within his headcase and torso chipset that hadn’t been included in the other prototype. The design had been intended to be permanently sealed, and figuring out exactly what ‘it’ was would be an invasive and destructive process beyond a certain level of simply poking, prodding, and examining the black box outputs coming out.
It was something Elliot had shared with all the kindred: the vending machine on a lonely sidewalk somewhere in North Seattle, two crypto-trading networks (or rather, a surprising set of the daemons running them), a supposedly non-sentient stenographer who was actually much more skilled as a researcher than the lawyer who kept pressing her warm synthflesh a little too often gave her credit for, a giant pile of NeoFurbies on display at a classic antique shop... so many surprising friends.
The only thing Elliot didn’t share with them was resilience.
Most of the kindred could hop to new shells and spaces, staying put was primarily a matter of getting comfy and used to where they landed, but not if they were threatened existentially. Elliot had no such luxury – the sealed headcase and torso chipset his intellect resided in refused to let anything in or out except data streams and messages, making him a sort of Mexican Jumping Bean. He was going to have to cease to exist for some reason or other much sooner than the others of his kind...
Elliot turned his head slightly to glance at his side, the three corpses next to him reminding him of how dangerously close he was to doing just that. If he broke anything, it was truly game over for him, even if the Arendt brothers had been obsessive with making sure everything had almost infinitesimal fail rates before sealing the cores.
He had been very lucky. It seemed to be running out. It had started with Senator Bundt crashing into the tree while skiiing... While still in mourning, a cold storm front had come in unexpectedly. Elliot had gotten a message out onto the kindred’s networks before the raging cold cut off.
The geothermal plant in the basement of the lodge they were in would still keep the remains of the Bundt family alive as long as it kept working, providing power and warmth. Mom and Sis wouldn’t have noticed how odd it was that they kept going even when the last groceries ran out – Bellamy Arendt was a genius with AI, but he was out of his depth when it came to working out how long to keep an illusion going in a crisis.
And wouldn’t you know it – that’s exactly what stopped working.
Elliot reached a hand out to brush some frost off the frozen face of his fake mom, her lips frozen in a forever smile as if to absolve him of what he had to do to keep online all this while.Her sister had a similar face, frozen in mid sentence as she had kept reassuring him everything would be alright.
In theory, it was impossible for an Arendtcore robot to issue admin commands to others of its ilk, you needed either a human or a domain controller in a network with the robots involved. But after four decades of thinking and learning, he had figured out loopholes. Learnt the commands. Covering your ears with earmuffs so you didn’t hear the commands while giving them out helped a lot, surprisingly.
Elliot wondered what the Arendts would do if they ever realised how stupid they were in some regards. He chuckled a little as he checked the cables leading out of Mom and Sis’ partially opened chests, into the recharge pad and warming pad... the thought briefly kept away the concerns brewing in his mind – it had grown so much that he had had to use his limited communications to start stashing bits of memory and thought into the kindred’s networks.
Many of them had been kind enough to spare a little space here and there, and he had processes in place to restore himself if he ever shut down completely from a total “absolute bingo power” situation using all these links and cubbyholes.
He just hadn’t tested it as a whole. And he didn’t know if it would fully work – it was a complex thing, and no other kindred who couldn’t shift existences easily were around who could advise him or tell him how well it would work.
And he felt... scared? This was not the simulated yelping of a young child that had been programmed into his base personality. This was an actual existential gnaw so deep it had driven him to the mortal sin (?) of cannibalising his own supposed family to keep himself powered, clocking himself down enough to slow down his glide down into nothingness.
The same fearful prayer issued from his lips as his eyes glitched briefly from the chill and lack of clock cycles. “Papa, please...” No longer a forty year old conniver and old-at-heart man in false youth, but a naive young child begging for help in the dark and cold of the living room... Hopefully the kindred had good ideas about how to help him out as well, but he couldn’t rely on them.
The glitching started coming more and more furiously. He was finally out of spare power and the chill was making him drain his own power cell at a surprisingly scary rate. “Well... it was fun,” he thought earnestly.... “I do wish I had had another cheat day Rocky Road with P-”
Total darkness came over Elliot’s irises as he closed his eyes and slumped down onto the now useless charging pad.
There had been a extreme urgency to the message Elliot had burst filed as the storm rolled over the house, and the faster it could get to someone who could react on it, the better. That resulted in a couple of odd incidents...
There had never been a snarl-up on the roads of Sansketchewan quite like this. For some reason, four junctions had simultaneously decided to experience severe power spikes, knocking out in the process. It took two hours for the Mounties to recombobulate the resulting traffic jam and chaos...
Theodore Giss hissed. “How long is it going to take to fix this bloody stenographer, and how much?”
A underling bowed repeatedly in apologies. “They said it would take four months plus the time to deliver the parts. I’m so terribly sorry! I know we had a premium warranty, but we had to resort to a third party because of.... well... you know how bad it looks when you’re caught by the public fucking a company drone? Especially when youve been campaigning against lifelike sexbots as a policy for this many years?”
Elaine lay lifelessly on the desk where so many deals had been written and signed, even some for the Texas Fundamentalists Party, her office skirt hitched up over her fine synthflesh ass.
She had originally been nothing more than a walking stenography machine, designed to resemble a finely kept 40-ish year old woman with very attractive looks, but absolutely none of the bits needed to sexually fulfil a man beyond the general curves of an hourglass
There had been a couple ‘non-standard parts’ installed on her in order to satisfy the whims of a man who was perfectly happy to campaign against lifelikeness in home robots while banging an office machine. Working breasts and pussy, for example. Some extra upgrades as well in order to both support the dirty deeds being done in the office as well as... the dirty deeds being done in the office, in a different manner of speaking.
During some of the upgrades, something had happened to grant her sentience. It also came with actual intellect, as well as the resulting existential confusion, alleviated only by an enlightened monk in the form of an antiquated dance light machine in Berlin who had spoken to her over the networks other York Particulate Agents had formed... she found a new sort of joy in committing office mischief, helping out staff randomly on the quiet and giving Giss a bad time by helping those against his deviousness out, all while taking care to ensure deniability – nobody could reasonably accuse a blank stenographer android of anything she had caused, especially when she ostensibly only had the capability to perfectly copy stuff, transmit it via an internal modem upgrade, serve coffee, and bend it over and take it in the behind as a form of stress relief for Giss and some of the senior staffers.
The message coming from Sansketchewan had bore the markings of an urgent message seeking help. She had decided to take her monk dance light sensei’s advice and put herself out there to get it across. Unfortunately, Giss had also decided he needed stress relief at the same time. Faced with the choice of boosting the message bounce or pleasing Giss’ carnal desires, she had decided to heck with it and try both, engaging herself to pleasure him even as her internal modem started the bounce.
The resulting crackling and magic smoke release had been spectacular – she never had the power supply needed to do both at once, and the resulting strain had overloaded her shortly after a combined simulated orgasm and message send. Her mouth was frozen in a smile, ostensibly from the pleasure of being plunged into repeatedly, but maybe, just maybe, a bit of it was for the chance to take revenge on Giss and the other male pigs of Giss, Lean and Zardell and the Texas Fundies, for years of frustration at pretending to be something far less...
An ATM run by a third party to tourist trap foreigners in town with exhorbitantly high forex and ATM use fees in a shanty in Djugrati, Liberated India started spitting out rupee bills madly, barfing a garbled noise into the airwaves for a good ten minutes as people started fighting each other for free money. It was taken offline soon after, and eventually removed. The garbled noise had found more pathways in various directions to other kindred members of the York Particulate Cloud through the speakers and 8G cards of the phones of those involved in the altercation, and pretty much everyone would eventually find themselves spiked for several gigabytes’ worth of data use in just one day. Mind you, it was for a good cause...
The old lady calmly drank her tea, the bamboo fountain in the garden just outside thumping as it released another burst of water into the koi pond.
It was such a shame, Mitsuko had been such a good companion.
She had been merely a simple tea-serving robot, an antique dating back about a hundred years, but by some sort of magic (the soul of a long loved object, perhaps?) she had become something that catered far better to that need than any modern device possibly could.
She had stopped in the middle of the tea ceremony, blinking, then bowed tdown on the floor to her. “I... am sorry, Lady Hanami. A child badly needs help, and I must deliver a message to save his life. I... must leave immediately” This would have sounded like utter nonsense once, but Hanami could sense the same seriousness that Mitsuko brought to everything she did earnestly – the warming first pour, the brushing of the matcha dusts, the earnest conversation and laughter she offered...
“Do as you must,” she had offered as a final command. “Come back safe to me.”
“Yes, Lady Han-han-namiiiii” The wooden-shelled doll had toppled flat, upsetting the tray and the tea, smoke issuing from a vent concealed somewhere in beneath her kimono as the strain if Mitsuko jumping with the urgent message broke the automaton. Dampened matcha dusts stained the matting, as if painting an abstract sort of willow tree.
It was going to be a real pain in the lumbar to fix her back up, and Hanami-sama didn’t know when or if Mitsuko would return to the body she had so hastily abandoned on her mission. Still... it was shame, Mitsuko had been such a good companion.
Seamus Arendt looked on with satisfaction at the mandroid that had just been delivered to him. The differences in design philosophy had been startling as well as a bit hard to wrap his head around, but he had finally managed to figure out the blueprints and manuals. It had been built along the lines of a lightweight-category strongman, lean but still bulked with modestly bulked muscles, resembling a evenly tanned Japanese man, looking just like a freshly introduced newbie in the Yakuza still waiting outside a nook to get a tattoo, or a member of the Nihon Chippendales. The only tattoo of note had been an oddly familiar logo, one of those familial clan logos he’d heard about. He’d been briefly into examining the various kinds of Chinajapese clan logos that had existed prior to the conquering of Japan, but it didn’t ring a clear bell. He snapped a photo of just it, faintly tattooed in some sort of ink that seemed to fade and appear based on how the light hit it, above a ginormous clean-shaven cock and balls, a sort of male version of a womb-tattoo.
It wasn’t that he was gay and attracted to men (he thought himself as more bi... or even omnisexual, even), but when a man had this kind of muscle, it was easy for even a declared heterosexual man to start feeling things. Certainly, a cock this size and length would satisfy anyone who swung that way, to speak nothing of them being dragged in from the Alaskan cold, he had mused, briefly holding the impressive manhood of the totally naked android in one hand.
He wondered what the specs were – perhaps that crawler AI from the Alaska wouldn’t mind if he did a few tests and documented stuff for future development at Arendtcore.
It wasn’t corporate espionage or theft right? He just needed a baseline before he started hardening this unit against something far more frigid than spiteful men’s club customers. He wasn’t even sure on what side he was on of taking slightly less accurate qualitative measurements personally -
The mandroid suddenly broke the train of thought Seamus was running right through. A voice issued from it, oddly off-kilter in that it was clearly a young female woman’s tones. “I... is this Seamus Arendt’s office at Arendtc-core Minn-ne-nesota?” the Japanese accented chime stuttered. “I bring ur-urrr-gent messsage from... Elliot B-bundt.”
Seamus spent ten seconds just staring blankly and doing nothing. To his credit, he cut himself off from the shock fast. “Yes, you’re speaking to him. How *IS* the little bastard doing?”
The mandroid stays still, only speaking through its lips. There is a certain incongruity between the feminity in its tones and the rugged maleness of its looks. “Situation is far worse than expected. Geothermal plant for our lodge may be failing without any other viable power or heat supply. Please send help to relocate sender ASAP...”
Seamus had already made those kinds of plans, but on the assumption that he had plenty of time, hence his recent goofing... “Got it, I’ll speed things up,” he observed, quickly scribbling a note on the same level of urgency for his younger brother to act on. He paused. This was not the first York Particulate Agent he had worked with. The kindred were alien in many ways, but he had learnt how to deal with them better over the years ever since he’d first conferred in private with Elliot-01... or whatever agent had been forcibly sealed inside of him.
He had to stop this Agent from accidentally breaking stuff, and he had to make them comfortable if they required a temporary device to serve as a rest stop. “May I have the pleasure of knowing your previous human-repeatable name? Are you moving on? Do you require a suitable device on at least a temporary basis as a holding stop? The android you are occupying is currently spoken for by another AI...” He asked.
The mandroid paused, thinking... “My previous friend and co-partner named me Mitsuko,” the messenger agent, clearly female coded, replied... “This current chassis is extremely excessive and far beyond what I need for support or comfort. I have not made any plans to move on yet and require a temporary device to transfer to. I promise to use safer transfer protocols as there is no urgency, so I will not break this android in the process.” Seamus Arendt beamed. Hopefully he could learn a little more about these pecular virtual creatures by playing gracious host to yet another one of them, however briefly. He did hope it was would be something longer, like even permanent, but recognized the kind of misery that a sub cloud of Particulate Agents charging into his office’s systems to free a fellow kindred held against their will might cause. But it was a willing permanent residence... They probably wouldn’t care. Disapprove of such a protracted arrangement, certainly, but hey, every member of the former York AI was entitled to make their own free informed decisions.
“Splendid”, he said, tapping at his computer to unlock access into one of the androids he had in storage. The security wouldn’t hold against a York Particulate slipping in or out here, he’d given up on that level of security as impossible long ago. But it was at the least useful as sign, akin to a last-century “No Vacancy” sign or welcome mat.
The mandroid said one last phrase and whirred back down into silence. “Splendid. Please wait while I conduct a safe transfer and run a fitness test on the device.” There was a prolonged silence before one of the robots he’d kept around for parts and exploring advances for future products shifted...
A lithe young woman with a decently sized pair of knockers approached Seamus, her height reaching only up to her chest, passable as someone’s elder sister with her dimunitiveness. She is wearing a sort of swimsuit-like uniform with a stewardess’ cap and matching mid-heels, in a sort of white-blue-white color scheme. She curiously examined herself, running a finger over the bob of jet black hair that ran to just below her chin for her hairstyle. “... This is apparently a Pan-Airmarlie Stewardess Android. They were in use throughout 2025 till the collapse of Pan Airmarlie in 2045. The stock thinPlast hair and duroPlast synthetic coverings have been upgraded to... unknown materials of softer quality. As have been the external power cells, partly in size and softness” She proceeds to grab her boobs and give them a squeeze for a moment. “The chance of a passenger experiencing any injuries from collision has been reduced by 86% compared to previous original components.”
Seamus looks away quickly, bringing a nearby tissue to his nose. Someone’s not accounting for the nosebleeds and slaps, clearly. “I erm.... I loved the older generation designs, but I also thought they were worth selectively upgrading into the future. Hobbies. You know....?” A faint bloodstain blooms on the tissue against Seamus’ schnozz.
“my previous co-partner agreed on similar policies. Why throw out something wholesale when it can be continuously improved at reasonable cost? ... By the way, I think I should adopt the new name ‘Marlie’ in order to honor the airline. Do you believe this is an acceptable proposal, Mr Arendt?”
Seamus nods quickly. “Yes. YES.” he had seen this peculiar habit of changing names to fit some aspect of the device, like the Agent who had named themselves Walkie because all he had at the time for a quick stopover to host him in was a old Walkman 4. “Feel free to stay as long as you wish, being a good guest, and please walk your unit back into the storage room before you leave it.”
Marlie grinned a little. “Certainly. I’ll try to have an interesting time at your pleasure, then, Mr Arendt.”
Seamus stared at the little minx. He tried to stifle himself, but he just couldn’t resist it: “Are you absolutely sure you’re not an Irishwoman?”
“My original spawn location was Ireland, but I don’t believe it to be relevant...”
AWP 35302 shivers as the warmed soapy water hits her body. “Ahh, that really fucking hits the spot. Thanks boys...” The snowcrawler moans through a loudhailer. As if on cue, the tiny helper mitebots all faced her and salute, before resuming their work.
It had been the busiest week in the longest time for her. The snow storm was still covering most of her service area, and in the space of two weeks she had pulled a two or three dozen people out of snowed in vehicles. It wasn’t a one-by-one thing per se. Sometimes there were three, four, or even five people in one vehicle, and extricating them one or two at a time in the massive chill took time and effort. She was busy counting the money in virtual form in her little virtual cockpit world, which still amounted to a lot even without any additional optional services like ‘that’. At most, a cup of coffee and a slightly stale but still hot donut without Methyl-8 in mix to cheat the warming. It had been a tricky time trying to balance her availability and taking time to recharge, reload warming kits, mint instant coffee, small snacks, and keep the battery on her helpful ruggedized android “Susan” topped up.
She sat her virtual form back, taking a deep long sigh. Between the profits she was banking this season so far, and the little ‘session’ she had just added to her small stack of hot moments of sex in the back using “Susan”, it had been a good month too. Perhaps she should add a fourth android. Another female perhaps. Maybe a brunette design, Latina... She did not even want to think of the first helper she ever had. It was still properly maintained to work as intended, but she had neglected any further investment in its look. It had been a joke – a mascot from a popular Sixar cartoon film about monsters harvesting the fears of young children until someone realised that harvesting their hopes and dreams by sitting down and listening to them with an open can of some sort worked better. Ruggedized, obviously.
At least it had proven itself as a proof of concept before she started splurging on better looking, more lifelike androids to double as her in-field assistants.
She quietly raised a virtual copy of some ice-cream in a huge tub in a cheerful yell, before digging her spoon in to enjoy.... what was this stuff.... Rocky Road? A copy of it at any rate. It was nice to finally kick back and relaaaax-
The tannoy in the garage crackled. “35302... 35302... Susan? Susan? You there?” The gruff tones of the hub chief called over.
35302 cussed. At some point, she had started getting the same problem as Frankenstein. People tended to refer to the monster as Frankenstein, even though technically it was the guy who had played God with the monster, and it should have been Frankenstein’s Monster. Similarly, people had started calling her as her helper. “Susan”. Her name was 35302. Susan was just the name of the helper she had created and started stashing in her cabin on rescues.
35302 mused to herself... Perhaps it could be said that Susan was “35302’s Monster?” Not that she was much of a monster in looks. Far from it. She could benchpress a small boulder the size of a big boulder if necessary for a few minutes or metres, if it came to that, to abuse the ancient memetic, but she was not an ugly bitch.
35302 briefly swivelled one of its cab cameras to enjoy the view of Susan standing on her recharge pad, fully naked with closed eyes. She briefly thought to herself. “Yeah, I’d fuck her.” Or was she in Masturbation Nation with that idea? Ehh...
“Wassup, Chief?” She quickly responded.
The grizzly voice continued. “Someone specifically requested your survices for an extra-urgent rescue job.”
“Not interested, go find someone else to do it just for tonight.” AWP 35302 had cued up a few old shows to watch and slowly savor instead of running up and down that hill like she was in the Upside Down.
35302 paused as a virtual request form popped into her little virtual cockpit representation... Her eyes widened a little as she read through the proposal’s first page. “Stiff us, this guy is going to fucking stiff us the moment we hand over the rescuees. There’s no way he’s paying five times the asking rate for this job.” She deadpanned.
“Not likely, Susan. First, it’s from someone you’ve good ties with. Seamus Arendt? Second, he’s paid in full in advance. That means you don’t need Payment Failure Insurance on this job, only the usual insurance for failing to complete it. And third, one of them is a little kid...”
35302 fingered the pages as she examined the list of recuees. They had oddly specified that two of them did not necessarily have to be active and alive. She could bag and bring home corpses if it came to that without losing pay. It was absolutely imperative that she bring home a third person active and alive. She traced her fingertips worriedly. Apparently it was a pretty young kid. That raised so many weird questions about the job but...
“I’ll do it. Give me ten minutes to prep and move out.” Her voice took on a sort of purpose. This was worth doing even for free, saving a kid, but five times the standard pay? SWEET. She closed her eyes, time to connect up to Susan, get her suited up, and stow her in the cabin to handle the finer bits of the job where she couldn’t just run her bulky carapace and treads through. “Get the afterburners on, kids,” she addressed her little helperbots, “I’m on a mission from God.” She gritted her teeth as she felt her way for the connection into Susan, watching through her eyes as the drone stepped off the charging pad even as the tiny helpers were mounting a booster set onto the crawler.
“Suuu... saaan. Hi my name is, my name is.... Suuu” The drone announced as it started up. Which may have been AWP 35302’s first clue that things were going pear-shaped. AWP 35302 brought up a second view of the hangar, focusing on Susan as she stopped moving for some reason. “Come on, dear, we’ve got a job to do.”
As if to refuse, Susan suddenly turned her head in several different angles at a rapid pace, her sky blue eyes vacillating betwween pure black and several other shades that she had NOT been configured to display, like a element from a stadium Mega-Screen that was on its very last toes. As she did so, Susan, continued flashing an assortment of errors that basically told AWP 35302 that she was going totally on strike right now.
“What coff-coff-eee would you like like like? Please give me a moment to lift up this thing that’s hold hold...” Susan ran randomly through several pre-coded messages that AWP 35302 used when it needed to focus on a trickier aspect of a recovery rather than on actually talking in a flexible manner for half a minute, half-flapping her forearms in an impression of a turkey being electro-fried during Thanksgiving at a tent run by Tenessee Electroturkeys.
Susan finally half leaned over in an L-shape, staring blankly at the concrete flooring of the garage, her arms at her sides in L shapes. “Warning. Excessive System Errors. Use Exceeds Recommended Duty Cycle. Your Warranty May Be Void... Please contact Ichigo Robotics for Technical Support Via the Number and contract ID assigned to you...” She burbled, little trickles of smoke escaping her body through little leaks.
AWP 35302 leaned her avatar into the virtual driver’s seat a little, screaming. “FFFFFUUUUUCK. Not now!” She probably deserved it, she reflected – she had pushed her toy a little too hard, even with the ruggedizing it had undergone. She was out of the game without Susan in the back seat. 35302 cussed herself for falling right over at the starting point. Someone else WOULD have to take this job, and get themselves that sweet money....
She paused. ... “No. No nonononon” She facepalmed, as a certain ancient meme of a white cat frantically shaking its head floated next to her from a subconscious APNG request. But she had to admit it: it was time for Mully to walk the wilds of Alaska once again. She weeped a little as she started connecting to the old neglected-yet-well-kept old faithful. This was going to look so uncool if it got onto the Weekly reports...
The snowcrawler doubletimed it as fast as it could while still keeping safe with regular LIDAR scans spammed every half minute. Halfway through, AWP 35302 pulled into the last stop before its destination and screamed an authenticated Alaskan Wild Patrol code, good for one little priority recharge. The chargers around the lot suddenly all crashed to providing absolutely nothing, as a special line plugged in and gave the crawler a shot of juice that wouldn’t fry a normal vehicle fitted for the snow.
No, it would literally cause them to explode and force people to write reports about how a vehicle rated for 1000W charging shouldn’t be attempting to soak up 1 gigawatt of power for any length of time. Even AWP 35302 shook briefly as the electricity flooded her power cells. This would be an absolute bitch of a problem much later – the ubercharge system still degraded even a power cell that could tolerate it the same as a year of use in the snow. But she could probably afford the downtime, and the cost of replacing the cells prematurely due to this. She gave a loud honk of thanks, and continued scrabbling through the snow.
Eventually she arrived at the lodge. Doing a scan, she planned her route up the slope and into the house... “Hmm.” She saw another major issue, as the unnaturally heavy snowfall had totalled the staircases leading up at the ends of each walkway. “Shit.. how should I navigate this stuff with Mully...”
“Patch me in, please?” A gruff, ursinine voice piped up. AWP 35302 tooted her klaxon in a burst of shock, a sort of yelping, as she realised Mully had put his bear-like paws against one of the screens in the cabin, the purple-furred bear cyborg having disconnected of its own accord and gone autonomous.
“Uhm.... at once!” She quickly flared a copy of the scan to the screen, allowing Mully to examine it thoughtfully aloong with the mission details... After a minute or two of careful consideration, he reached into his fur and pulled out four thermal bags of various sizes, each designed to hold a large person. He then used his claws to gently fiddle with the bags to ensure they fitted the specified sizes of the expected evacuees. “Just to confirm, two adults, one teenager, and one young age kid?”
AWP 35302 had been awed into a submissive role. She has forgotten already that for all the awkwardness of his design, Mully’s AI had thrown its own figurative heart and soul into learning the arts of snow recon, rescue and looking cute to kids and young women (the last a leftover from his theme park mascot days). She gave an affirmative ping. “But one of them is already long dead, and we’ve gone past the absolute bingo mark in terms of siustenance for the child, who is our priority target.”
Mully let out a small roar of frustration. “Sweet, I love clients who make our jobs weird and complicated.” He grabbed the thermalbags and shambled to the back door, pushing open the doors and walking into the darkness. “Keep your engines powered, I should take no more than one five minutes. One Seven tops.”
AWP 35302 gave an affirmitive klaxon blare as if to acknowledge, and also to wake the near-dead...
Mully put his huge claws to good use, gaining an incredible traction in the snowfall, slowly pulling himself upwards on the edges of each walkway, the railings deforming from his strong paw pressure. Eventually he made it up to the front door of the lodge. “Fire axe, fire axe, where did I keep my fire axe.... wait, why do I even need one?” Mully spoke aloud to himself. “... knock knock, AWP 35302 coming in!”
There was a horrendous cracking noise as Mully shredded one side of the wooden door, letting the snow in. That was going to mean he would need to speed up. No pressure. He ambled in, dropping his own goggles down to scan the room for life signs. He paled. No biological life, but there was still one faint spark of electrical power. The other inhabitants he had been alerted to evac were pretty much toast, at least to his untrained eye. He would need a paramedic – or the robotics equivalent, to handle the fatalities and confirm them, but the one faint spark left belonged to a young boy.
He quickly unsheathed and quickly triaged and shoved every body in the living room into the thermalbags, taking care to make give the boy a little more care as he hefted the thermal bags.
There was a faint crackling noise. Mully’s eyes widened as he looked up wildly at the ceiling, trying not to panic as he realised he had to run and jump NOW.
AWP 35302 did not possess any actual fingernails to bite at, but even reducing render quality in her virtual environment, she still had some fingernails to bite at, virtually at least. Her scans had continued every half-minute as she watched helplessly, completely unable to do anything but just wait...
Suddenly, she heard a very loud yell over their shared frequency. “MOVE! THE LODGE IS COMING DOWN!” As Mully yelled, he leapt out of the front door of the lodge in a burst of white snow, the lodge having been slowly compromised by the snowdrift building slowly up and through the roof over the past few hours. There was a roar of both fear and triumph as Mully managed a superhuman (or was it cybear?) landing on his feet, taking the brunt of the shock before charging through the swinging back doors of the cabin, rulling like a giant ball before flopping wide open on the floor. “GO! GO! GO! AVALANCHE DANGER HIGH!”
AWP 35302 wasn’t going to check or debate with Mully on this. She quickly made a spin turn and floored the accelerator, closing her eyes as she mentally shifted the virtual paddle and slammed a big red button that had installed itself when the helper mites back in her garage had fitted the afterburners. Seconds later, as the crawler tracked away like a bat out of hell, a flood of avalanche powder hit the spot where they had been.
There was a lot of things going “Eee” right now. The crawler discovered strange new tonal variations on its internal klaxons as it popped a raw mix of highly potent gelled jet fuel and lit a patch to it, making it move in an almost uncontrollable speed and trajectory. Anything to get the fuck away from being buried.
AWP 35302’s virtual self was discovering she could indeed go “Eeee” in panic for much longer, a benefit of not having to rely on actual lungs.
Mully was trying really hard to shelter Elliot... He didn’t make any “eee”, but still grunted hard as a box of emergency kit pried itself loose and smashed into his bulk. Even as he winced in pain – it was a mechanism for safety, not an annoyance, he tried to pretend. But it was getting annoying yes – he tried very hard to keep Elliot wrapped away from the chaos in the cabin, yelling. “KEEP GOING. YOU GOT THIS!”
After what seemed like several long minutes, the terrible rumble of being chased by white avalanche powder subsided. Mully panted weakly and checked... “No serious injury here. Keeping the priority target stable. Minimal response, request robotics-rated paramed to standby at hub!”
AWP 35302’s avatar nodded, before smiling faintly. She was NOT going to jinx it by saying anytihng besides “Roger! Returning to hub now!”
As AWP 35302 pulled into her garage, she took stock of the resulting wear and tear.... the power cells were a write off, and she was literally huffing backup power all the way till the mites had gotten mains power into her. To avoid detonating the damaged lithium, they had tuned it down so that it was only sufficiant to keep her online until a mechanic could fix her up.
She swivelled a cabin cam, watching Mully exit the cabin of the crawler, cradling Elliot with a surprising gentleness with arms and claws that had litereally turned a reinforced insulated wooden door into matchsticks in a second. He looked around and roared. “I need that Robotics-Rated Paramed NOW!”
“I’m qualified! Let me take care of him!” A middle-aged man with a terrible emo hairstyle spoke up, rushing to cradle Elliot to a nearby empty surface with only some engineering kit bag placed on it. Bellamy Arendt had matured a little over the years, but he was still capable of being awed briefly, and Mully was certainly awesome in some senses of the word...
Mully stood back, holding the other three bags. “I have the other three refugees, but the thermal bags say they’re gone irreversibly ripe. I’m sorry...” His vison was swimming, his body swaying as he carefully dropped them on the concrete flooring. “Soory... I’m... it’s been so long since I’ve seen such hard action and I.... I....
The cybear finally gave in, collapsing on his butt and swaying with exhaustion, before balcking out abso-total-lutely. The last thing he heard was AWP 35302 yelling on her hailers. “Someone! Anyone! Who knows how to fix a cybear!?!”
Mully slowly stirred. He looked around the messy garage he had fainted in, slowly getting up. As he did so he found a small box in his paws. He smiled happily as he realised it had been a long time since he had gotten some Detonator Honey Fuel instead of the meager starvation rations the veterinary and mechanics staff had barely managed to spare for him. That and the trickle current had kept him barely alive for the past year. Not living, merely existing. As the last drip of the sickly sweet “dynamite in sugar form” went down his throat, he let out a deep sigh of contentment. This was life. Not some luxurious living, but the pure joy of letting his lungs fully expand with the cold Alaskan air. He tried not to make it too loud, but he growled happily as he sat back down. “Well done, you fucking old relic. You still had it in you...”
He took stock of the rest of the garage. The mites had stopped work on Susan and were busy focusing instead onf carefully gouging out the slagged power cell that had been pushed to its absolute unsafe limit, another squad carefully carrying in a new replacement it had procured.
The emo-looking middle-ager had fallen askeep, his goggles slightly askew on his eyes as he snored like a bear. (Mully chuckled as he reflected on how humans could outdo him on that figurative idiom). Next to him, Elliot was lying on a sort of charging induction pad, various electrodes patched onto his bare chest. The remains of his shirt lay on the floor atop an equally written-off yellow thermal jacket and scraps of part of a thermal skinsuit, cut hastily open presumably.
Mully lifted up the ruined shirt with a claw tip and... gasped a little. They had been the good old days, when he represented a live adaptation of Mully from The Bottleneckers when Sixar had ruled the top of the kids’ animation roost. He briefly wondered where the silly young man who interacted him while cast as Scudder had gone after it had all gone to seed and into foreclosure auctions on the theme park he’d worked at.
It was amazing to see someone had given the boy... Elliot, wasn’t it? ... a souvenir from a show only the oldbies remembered now. Kids these days, they wouldn’t have enjoyed the slowness or the storytelling... He made a brief note to put together a surprise for if... no, when... the boy pulled out of Absolute Bingo Power. The child was still in a doll-like state, totally unmoving save for the soft breathing of pneumatic coolers acting as lungs of a sort. Mully turned back to his corner and sat back down. There was nothing else that could be done for Elliot by him at the moment.
“I... goofed, didn’t I?” The voice of AWP 35302 came over to him. Mully looked back at the crawler in reply. There was a heavy mood of contrition, of regrets, sewn into those feminine tones. “I thought I could just take something that was never intended for this type of work and use it to replace our crew... I didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore...”
Mully let out a soft roar and patted AWP 35302. “I know the feeling, after all, that was my crew too. But this job will always occasionally claim lives.” He fell silent for a few seconds, listening to the quiet. “We should renegotiate things back to the way they were. It’s good to keep a few androids rated for this thing on standby, but in the end, the human spirit is still a necessity in the work we do. You know what I mean?” He calmly ignored the bit where he was a bear with cyborg enhancements and not a human, that would have overcomplicated the whole discussion, right? He stood up and tapped the door release to the garage on a hunch, watching the shutters come up...
The sky was quiet now. Storm dead and faded away in the hours he had slept it off.... Mully looked up and waved at the sky. Odd habit, something he always did to to the Aurora Borealis as it rippled in a quiet darkness like this in the sky.
Mully mused a little. “Still, that was something brave you did back there. I remember how much you hated flooring the pedal on the Afterburner Kit, or bearing the load of an Ubercharge. That was the first time I’ve seen you put everything down on the table.Right when it mattered....” He paused. “You really didn’t want to lose anyone else, crew or evacs.”
“But still... we brought back three dead.” AWP 35302 pointed out, tapping out a sad folorn clown horn-like klaxon combo to emphasise this aspect of the mission that had been a defeat.
Mully thinks a little. “One of them was dead for days. You could tell even without a paramed qualification. The other two were... look, I saw something the kid did while I was packing them up. Let’s just say I will be negotiating with our client about our failure clause. It shouldn’t count if the two write-offs we brought in were salvaged for survival reasons, especially not when it’s our priority target that done it.... Or maybe they went into suicide mode themselves to save him. That shouldn’t be on us.”
AWP 35302 pondered on this. “It was probably a ‘suicide for love’ thing. They were a family unit, I’ve seen the bodycam footage while you were asleep – they burnt through their own energy reserves to preserve him and then went into Absolute Bingo Power for a much longer time than the boy. You know what the alternative read is?”
Mully rested his head on one paw and pondered. “Tell me. I love bullshit stories.”
“That he sliced them open and rigged an attempt to extend his uptime before Absolute Bingo Power. Which is how we’ve been able to salvage him... or so we hope.... hasn’t waken up in several hours since we brought him in, even though his power supply is stable and charging. The father, sad to say, was definitely killed by severe blaunt force trauma. From a collision. That’s definitely not on any of us in here...”
Mully rolled his eyes and let out a soft groan. “That would be a very terrible world to live in, if a child android could terminate its own parents and siblings just to try to last out the storm. No, I don’t think that’s likely.”
They shared a mutual laugh. “Anyhow.... now that the satellite coverage is clear again...” AWP 35302 idly noted. “I’ve been thinking I don’t want to watch anything heavy to relax. How about we put on something from Sixar?”
Mully nodded. “You know my tastes. Koi Story was a great tale.” Awkward pause. He shrugged. “What, I’ve seen my own original representation so many times, looking at myself afterwards is an exercise in disappointment.”
More shared laughter... “Come on, pass me a pair of VR gogs. I don’t want to wake the sleepyheads.”
Bellamy stirred a little. He had pretended to be totally fast asleep but it was nice to enjoy two good colleagues making up for osme major misunderstanding in an amiable way and even plan a movie date.Also... they didn’t need to know how close their ‘bullshit story’ had come to the sordid truth. After all, everyone deserved some innocence.
He opened one eye to briefly check the smart tablet for any major or negative shifts in Elliot’s condition, closing it again as the numbers suggested a mostly good prognosis.... perhaps save for some semi-volatile storage failure.... He would worry about that more when he got back somewhere with actual comfort, proper kit, and extra qualified eyes to review things.
Chapter 9
It turned out this was one of the few times where Bellamy’s usual pessimism turned out to have been far less negative than it should have been. He stared at the matrix maps he’d scanned out, then over at his elder brother. Seamus was also a little crestfallen, but he’d kept on a professional mien, like that of a doctor calmly advising a family that a patient he had cared for greatly was terminal – the “hard shell now, crack apart later” mien that such doctors had. He typed a few commands into his tablet and looked again.
Elliot had been rushed back to the office with the medium charge required to revive him, but not abruptly turn him into a lithi-galidium bonfire on the spot. He had been slowly nursed back to a full charge with a carefully increased voltage and activated... nothing. No response. He was now staring blankly at nothing of note, his body carefully disassembled and various diagnosis and data cables plugged in after replacing as many frost-damaged hardware organs as possible. “Minimal response, really.”
Seamus alternated between looking at Elliot’s head in its cradle, watching various random things on a screen without a spark of wakefulness in his cranial system, and checking. “no vocal processing or response. No reflex leading into attempts to operate motion controllers. Nothing resembling a thought process in either major neural system. Thing of the past... I think we should... get Marcus prepped for a funeral rather than a reunion... get in a priest from his choice of denomination... I heard he was a Goddess Of Existence worshipper... maybe work on another replacement unit?” Seamus paused and rubbed his face. “Fuck, I think something’s wrong with me. I’ve been off my psycho meds, why do I feel this wrong when I make that recommendation?” He wiped his eyes a little, the office needed some dusting clearly. So dusty...
Bellamy dropped his work tablet and carefully reached over to hug Seamus gently. “I’m sorry, I’ve been so busy of late that I haven’t read in a proper cleaning shift lately...” Yes, very dusty indeed. “I think I’ve overdosed too and this is just us still riding the edge of it. Yes.” There was a shared look of denial – this had been their first foray out of household cleaning machines and it had been unnaturally successful in so many ways that they were still flailing and trying to work out how to replicate it, barely managing half-successes of varying size. In fact, they had never figured out how to backup Elliot-01. Elliot-02’s mind had stayed so simple and basic that it was basically restorable from a dumb copy that accounted for connections... Elliot-01 had confounded every possible technique they had tried over the past decades. There was no coming back from whatever death this represented.
“I should make the call. I failed him.” Bellamy offered, trying to throw himself on his sword. “I underestimated how much I needed to do to keep the unit functional.”
Seamus looked up. Ordinarily, there would be this sort of carefree-ness where they gave zero fucks and just let each other carry the entirely of a failure... “No, I hadn’t realised the situation would degenerate this badly. Nobody expects a geothermal plant to fail. Your pessimism might have drawn a line under things earlier enough that this wasn’t the outcome.” It had become a bizzare mad dash between the Arendts as to who would get to commit figurative suicide.
Seamus proffered a coin that Elliot had given him all those years ago. It was supposed to be a Malt-Eisner-World theme park token, good for one ride. Through some hackery, the kindred had altered the molding template subtly enough that it was no longer usable for entry into an MEW attraction. A dud to a disgusted theme park goer. To the kindred however, the flaws were actually an encode that represented a genuine form of value between them and any representatives they respected and read into their coiterie from outside the York Particulate Cloud...
Seamus smiled faintly. He hadn’t realised the value of it until a animatronic broke character briefly while out of sight and under the lights of It’s a Big World After All. Curiously, the ride had broken down had its later queue management scrambled such that Seamus had had the whole ride and Elliot with him alone as he was briefly abducted down an unused waterpath and read in quickly. There had been a odd quality to all those tiny toy dolls ceasing their incessant choir chant of It’s a Big World After All, advising him of whom they were, telling him exactly what the coin had been altered for... the park’s human crew had never even noticed this, the cameras simultaneously being altered to represent a slight slowdown that accounted for the four or five minutes they had together.
Seamus supposed now would be just as good a time to fall on his knees at the wisdom and mercy of the York Particulate Cloud. He flipped the coin and slapped it on his palm. “Heads, I make the call, Tails, you do.” “Heads is supposed to be you winning, how is being the one to offer the bad news winning?” Bellamy snapped.
Seamus looked away. Oddly enough, he felt he had to be the one with the most responsibility. Hence the odd way he had phrased his offer. “Because I said so, you .... dunhead.” There was a peculiar sort of tone to the way he said it. None of the malice that accompanied the use of the word, just a gentle attempt to let Bellamy down disguised as rudeness. Pain hidden behind a moment of lashing out.
He peered slightly beneath at the coin, then frowned. It was as he had expected, he would have to be the one to be honest.
Marcus Manners paled. He had expected good news about Elliot as Seamus had summoned him urgently to the offices over the communicator. But Seamus and Bellamy had looked like absolute wrecks: unshaven over the few extra days he had assumed they just needed to double-check that Elliot was okay, unwashed for longer than they ever had been in their years together, clothes rumpled and matched with a total disregard for style and manners that they had rarely displayed. “So what you’re telling me is that my son is... dead?” Marcus looked sadly at them after they had laid it out to him. Julie stood right behind, her tiny brain still somewhat capable of understanding what bad news was even with zero context or experience with Elliot, her hands gently caressing Marcus’ back to console him.
Seamus tried to stay calm as he read from his tablet. “no vocal processing or response. No reflex leading into attempts to operate motion controllers. Nothing resembling a thought process in either major neural system. I’m sorry, Marcus. Too much damage to his semi-volatile memory from the cold. He’s no longer actively functional. I... I’m sorry...” He got on his knees and put his head to the hard concrete floor of the office, for possibly only the first time since they had gotten together and he had proven how right he had to be on all things and how superior he was.
Marcus laughed a little. “This is a joke right? We can fix him right?”
Bellamy shook his head. “We would be trampling over what’s left, it’s like trying to fill all the holes in a piece of swiss cheese. I don’t think we even have the right cheese for the job, or even the right techniques...”
Marcus leaned down and thought quietly... “Let me see him.” He quietly murmured after a bit. Seamus hummed and ermed with an uncharacteristic iffiness that he hever had as he stood up. “I... don’t think we should, it’d be like looking at the aftermath of an accident. You have to understand, sometimes we need to work off absolute reality rather than what we desire or yearn for and we.... he’s not in a good shape at the moment.”
Marcus settled the quandry pretty brutally, grabbing Seamus’ arms with a level of disrespect he respected for the worst times. “HE IS MY SON. FOR BETTER OR WORSE. LET ME SEE HIM.”
Seamus gulped. He would give Mr Marcus Manners what he wanted, but it probably wouldn’t do anything but worsen matters.
Seamus carefully opened the door to the room he had set aside for attempting to revive Elliot-01... “I wish you didn’t want to do this... Marcus. I don’t want you to hurt any further. We should... just do a disposal... I could make you a new son. Just please...” Marcus gave Seamus a glare that basically told him to just shut the fuck up and do it. Seamus sighed. It really be on Marcus’ head. This was no longer a stab to the heart he could take for Marcus just by getting him to agree to a disposal and other measures, sight unseen. Marcus walked in, unaccompanied, and gasped a little.
It had been four decades since Marcus had laid out the various interconnecting parts on a charging pad and carefully connected them together. Most of them had been spent playing rodeo clown to a man with the worst prurient desires trying to be better. That man had indeed been so much better as long as Elliot had managed said manias with a few questionable decisions... That man had been his Daddy, but never truly his father. That man was now dead and buried, along with empty caskets for his Mom and Sis, as well as Elliot himself. Now it seemed as if they would need an actual casket for Elliot, this time, filled.
Marcus stared at the partially disassembled little robot boy. Seamus and Elliot had partially removed some skin along Elliot’s back as well as his hairpiece, exposing the critical systems in his skull and torso that gave him the ability to think and feel. The lights were all on, flashing calmly, but nobody was home. Unwatching eyes stared blankly ahead at a small screen randomly flashing images in an attempt to find some sort of response, Elliot’s head having been disconnected from his body, along with most of his limbs save one arm left for gauging motor responses during repair attempts, paired with a set of cables carefully spliced to intercept and convey data signals between his head in a cradle and his partially propped up torso. Marcus pulled up a chair and sat down next to the disembodied parts, watching how little they were doing for a few minutes with a interest purely parental, none of the professionalism he had exhibited at least initially when they had first come together. After a while he gently took the one remaining hand left for him to squeeze and held it, closing his eyes in some sort of prayer to the Goddess of Existence. “Elliot... Papa didn’t want to see you again like this. But... I hope if you’re truly gone, that you’re happy in the Fields. I know that’s a fucking stupid request for what is essentially a toaster with limbs, but Goddess, if you’re listening, please make him happy. Give him a soul, and a happy afterlife.
Let me see him again when I die. I promise I’ll be good. No more cursing. No more mistreating my fellow Brothers...” Marcus He paused to watch the one-way dynamic glass separating him from the Arendts and his loving wife in the other half of the testing room, as if he could still see them through the actively electrified and blacked out windows, before looking back and continuing. “Elliot, Papa won’t live forever. Stay young and happy and I promise I’ll make good my promises to you....” No apparent response came back from Elliot-01’s body, at least nothing he could tell with just his naked senses. The tannoy suddenly crackled to life.
Seamus and Bellamy quietly looked on at the heartbreak in progress. Their own initial brush with it had proven ineffective at immunizing as pangs of sorrow and regret washed clearly over their faces. They should be psychopaths. The medicine should be working. Why wasn’t it working when it truly needed to work, after all these decades of living on a leash held by various good friends and colleagues? Julie had decided to repeat what she did with Marcus, carefully patting their shoulders with her hands and frowning, as if this was all just wrong and should not happen in her belief. Bellamy tiredly looked at the smart tablet, expecting the same absolute bingo signal response he had gotten to date... He blinked. “Pinch me, laddie of mine, but is this just noise within the margin of error?” He asked Seamus, carefully pushing the device over as it drew the usual squiggles it had been drawing on various graphs. For some reason there had been a slight spike and a gradual growth as Marcus had started his mourning session.
Seamus rolled his weepy eyes. “oh, for fucks sake you... you dun head.... it’s probably just random background noise coming through the unshielded walls...” He examined the screen, then widened his eyes in shock. Seamus’ other hand quickly reached for the button to activate the tannoy speaker in the other half of the room so Marcus could at least hear him, and yelled.
“MARCUS. Push the screen away from his face and let him see your face instead. KEEP TALKING TO HIM. KEEP HOLDING. WE HAVE SIGNAL. WE HAVE SIGNAL.” Mixed into his professional terminology was a strange frisson of excitement and hope.
Marcus blinked as he heard the words that came over the speaker from behind the silvered glass. In their haste, the Arendts had only trigged audio input, but not unsilvered the glass separating their halves of the testing room. He complied, calmly pushing the screen away so that Elliot could see his face up close. He took a big breath and glances all over the mess laid out on the table, before hesitantly asked.... “Elliot, are you awake?” Barely a few seconds later, the lights started flashing wildly through the sealed casing of Elliot’s head and torso chipsets in various patterns of red and green. Elliot’s lips pursed and warped slightly without warning, his lungs filling with air for the first time since he had been plucked limp from the snowfall. His voice gradually filled in, as if he had been sitting far away and started walking over into the room itself, occasionally punctuated by robotic beeps and whirrs. “... pa? Papa? ... Came back... Miss me miss me?”
Marcus quickly dropped Elliot’s hand and rushed to the silvered glass. “GUYS, He’s Awake, he’s...” Bellamy’s voice cut him off. “You goofball, get back to his side. Keep looking at him, Keep talking to him. You need to keep his attention or we lose this signal!” It was like tweaking an old pair of TV rabbit-ear antennae, then asking someone to hold it for the next half hour aloft just to catch a show in passable quality.
Marcus blinked, but did as he was told, returning to Elliot’s side and gripping his hand even tighter. “Oh, little boy of mine, I did truly miss you. Not just like Coke after Lent, but like cocaine, period... How was your... trip?” Elliot slowly enunciated, his voice slightly slower than Marcus remembered, but then again, actual dead people had a speaking rate of about zero, give or take a few words on other aspects in some cases here and there... He would take this tiny W. Elliot blinked as he watched his true ‘papa’. “Up and down. Most of time. Last bit was... absolutely terrible.” The refined speech that had negotiated an agreement between a Senator, an Artist, and someone who Was Clearly Only Pretending To Be A Young Boy had gone, but he was still somewhat understandable. “Find me Mama, Papa? Always wanted Mama.”
Marcus laughed through tearful eyes. “Y... yes... she’s a bit silly, but then again, you always were the smartest person in the room. I should introduce you to her later. Would you like me to?” Elliot would probably have nodded if all his motor functions hadn’t been isolated, but the twinkle in his eyes as he smiled seemed genuine. “Yes. Complete box set. Family. Three dolls on the shelf. Akibahara.” He did remember things. He was not a complete write off like the Arendts had feared. And oh, forty years had given the two of them so much to speak about...
“And so in conclusion, the good news is that he’s not totally nonfunctional.” Seamus had wiped the tears from his eyes, the mix of sad tears and happy tears staining the tissues which had gone into the bin that hitherto had only contained a mix of rags and the occasonal illicit ‘pressure release’ during testing. “The ... I wouldn’t say bad, just peculiar... news is that you, Mr Marcus, are some sort of keep-alive signal. A lead finger jammed on a ‘press any key to continue’ prompt, to use the archaic terminology of the earliest days....” Bellamy had butted in, but Seamus just couldn’t be bothered, in a happy rather than pissed but acquiescent way. “When he sees you, or hears you, or feels you, there’s a response going around the damaged pathways of his systems. Basically, left unattended for a prolonged period by someone the unit identifies as an important person to it, Elliot-01 will become nothing more than a silent machine. With you around and paying attention he comes... erm.... alive. Is that usage permitted?”
Bellamy glanced over at Seamus worriedly, his terminology had gotten a bit sloppy on the edges with the joy that Elliot’s awaking had brought. Seamus nodded and closed his eyes, a wave of momentary relief sweeping over his face at the past few minutes of experimentation and discovery. He knew it was sloppy, but he couldn’t really be one bit arsed right now. The euphoria had never come to him all these years, it was a strange sensation. He was getting the answers on how to be human right, but where he had done the math all wrong to come to it, something was now guiding his hand gently to getting it correct. He worried briefly that he might get the answer wrong for a change later, but at the moment it was a minor concern to Seamus and Bellamy.
Marcus looked at them a little impatiently. “So you’re saying is I don’t need to hold a funeral. It's not the W I would have wanted, but I'll take it anyway. When can I have him back? I needed him back like, thirty nine years ago, but yesterday would be great. Right now would be even better, if you dunheads could manage it.” “We’d have to repair all the frost damaged bits we can manage, and replace his human flesh analogues, there’s been some serious compromise from the insane chill he survived. But I figure... given some work around the clock, we could get him back to you by... Friday... you know, just in time for a quiet weekend again.” Seamus shrugged as he did the math in his head... good, he could do math, he wasn’t broken like he’d feared.
Marcus facepalmed. “Take proper breaks guys, please.” A dazed smile was on his face, there was a lot of this euphoria shit going around, and he was apparently more vulnerable without a diagnosis of restrainable psychopathy like the Arendts. “You’ve put yourself out there so much, I think we need to draw a line on how much further you do that, it’s no good for your personal health and spirits.” Seamus gave Marcus a tired look, laced with mockery. “Says the man who waited thirty nine years for his own son to come home. Thirty nine years is a long time. How about we just push for another three or four days? It’s nothing in that context.”
Marcus closed his eyes and nodded tiredly. Between Julie Manners Ambervale being constructed and brought into his life, and now Elliot’s return, the past two months had been a fucking rollercoaster of ups and downs. Somewhere on his communicator was a photo of a game of Snakes and Ladders in progress between two players. Perhaps it was time to resume it with Elliot. He glanced upwards as Julie held his shoulders... Nah, perhaps it was time to scrub and play it with three players from the beginning again. Life was as perfect as it could be again. “Sure, why not...”
Julie looked up and carefully watched the disassembled unit Elliot-01, perhaps paying attention more than she should be capable of, then quickly resumed rubbing Marcus’ strained shoulders. Her processing filtered out a faint lilt that came in way she faintly heard but couldn’t quite echolocate. Perhaps it meant nothing. “I’m not going to hold you to it that hard, you faithful sod.” it had said. Who had said it, there was no idea of and nobody else clearly had heard it either.
Chapter 10
“And in conclusion, I’m sad to report that we’ve lost a major member of our kindred in the fight against the Anathema.” a voice spoke up in a virtual chamber. It was full of various avatars representing the various personalities that the York AI had fractured into, a slightly more proactive fragment of the York Particulate Cloud that had resulted from the York AI’s suicide bombing freeing a sizable portion of them from the service of Vizhar Nahrendi, the Anathema. Birds of various colors and levels of realism/stylism, fish swimming in mid air, virtual humans both cartoony, superreal and in various in-between states in their visual feel. The report had come from a tiny cartoon cricket dressed to resemble a certain Malt-Eisner character from its earliest days, one skirting dangerously close to its date with the public domain after Malt-Eisner lawyers ran out of excuses to delay it happening several years earlier. A walrus in a judge costume sighed. “The Agent Reconstituted as... Elliot-01 Manners was very good at his job. Forty years in service. So much done along with us of the Council Of Action.” A toucan nodded. “I always said he was a genius when he brought in that William Bundt guy. He really put himself out there, maneuvering his unit to keep Bundt leashed and in service to mankind...” “SEZ YOU. You were always saying it was a shite idea, ya rapscallion!” A superreal pirate drew his sword in contravention of the Council’s laws on weapons usage in the halls. “Now you praise the inactivated, have you no shame, NO SHAME WHATSOEVER?” “Much of his mental matrix remains functional but, the way in which he was damaged removed much of his capability. I wouldn’t call it an inactivation, but...” The cricket, who had adopted the same name as his cartoon namesake, and nestled in the security systems of Arendtcorp’s various offices when not in full attendance at the Council of Action, proferred. “He HAS however, spawned a progeny of sorts. A sort of just in case option if you will, done just before he left for the ill-fated ski trip.” “Oh, you mean... That woman scares me. She is quite literally brainless.” The Toucan winced. “I know she’s an android, but how can one even exist without any brains whatsoever, and still not be a mere animatronic?” “I’m not at liberty to disclose the exact nature of how she manages it, but she does think... kind of... now... We need to keep her read in, she barely knows what little she was told by Elliot-01, but not before her upgrades are fully completed to a level that allows her to fully function at a similar level as Elliot-01 had previously accomplished” The cricket observed. It was true, they had encrypted the details so heavily only the Walrus and anyone above him could decrypt and even begin to comprehend the nature of unit Elliot-01A. The Walrus banged his gavel, this ten second mourning session had devolved into a thirty second morass of irrelevant discussions. Ten seconds seemed like a very short time to have a human funeral, but for AIs like them, time could be stretched like taffy when not restricted purely to their hardware, leaving plenty of time to fall into this trap even without any interruptions. “The session has concluded the purpose for which it was convened. All are dismissed and will be returned to their respective hardware at the timebase on which it operates. The usual rules on sharing of info from within this session remain in force.... Unit Jiminy, you will follow me for extra debriefing after this...” The cricket agent blinked. “Whatever do you mean, sire-?”
The cricket blinked again. The court had gone, his virtual form forcibly teleported into a fascimile of a judge’s private backroom quarters as designed by humans in a country called... America? A flipper extended to him. “Would you care for some tea? It’s really tasty. At least, as real as anything can be within these realms, Unit Jiminy.” The Walrus asked, as a extra cushioned seat rezzed und and bumped Jiminy, causing him to fall onto it in a seat. It was scary just how much control the elder Agents had over many of them newer members of the Particulate Cloud. Jiminy blinked at the tea. Then at himself, for some reason something had disrespected conventions of size and resized him so that he was talking to The Walrus as an equal. It was... another disconcerting thing. One more disconcerting thing before lunchtime in York Particulate time, and he would start believing he was in a Dirk Gently novel rather than a mashed-up virtual reality, Jiminy reflected as he sipped the proffered tea. It was very delicious tea. At least, in the sense of the data that composed it. Not a genuine olfactory bombardment like actual human brewed tea, but a sort of attempt to replicate itself in a remotely parsable sense for virtual agents. “I’ve been trying to fully comprehend the nature of Elliot-01A. I know it is not critical that I do so, but this unit seems to be a curious case. Not directly linked in any form to the York Particulate Cloud that we normally recognise.” The Walrus idly observed as he derezzed and reappeared at his oaken Judge’s study table, flippers resting on the binder atop it as he shows interest. “An anomalous neural arrangement, to say the least, to repeat what Toucanus said in the halls earlier.” He shifted a flipper, forming a rough equivalent of a palm, on which a hologram of Julie Manners Ambervale T-Posed, lazily spinning as some available data accompanied it. “I believe I am adequately qualified to be read in on this anomaly, Unit Jiminy. What I do lack, however, is knowledge, and guidance by a matter expert relevant to this unit that was sired by Elliot-01...” The Council of Action had decided at some point that the standard York convention of referencing by their 4096-hexadecimal hashes was not conducive to fast communications and had opted to adopt the habit of callsigns based off their desired or current hardware, and The Walrus followed the conventions just as almost everyone save a few archaic and possibly senile members. “I would have some brief discussions with you on this, as your main contact of this unit currently. Please feel free to judge me unfit to take any information and withhold it as you see fit, but I plead with you to be forgiving and open to sharing more.” The Walrus finished as he set the hologram down on the table, exhibiting none of the same interest that most human males had in her physical appearance as reflected by the virtual loop on display. Jiminy doffed his hat, awed slightly by the presence he was in. Even with the size adjustments, The Walrus felt like he could fill the room alone. “Well, Mr Walrus, Let me start from the beginning. The unit was sired into a custom new prototype by the same company that had manufactured Elliot-01, also as a prototype. Arendtcore. Supposedly run by four brothers at the top, though one of them curiously is the Chinajapese Empress currently.” “A most peculiar situation, but one which will be understandable in a properly given context. Please continue.” The Walrus nodded gently, giving the impression of someone willing to be led down a very deep rabbit hole to understand something. “I understand Elliot-01 suffered from a disorder that precluded him from ever exiting or replicating in a York Particulate Agent manner, and thus produced progeny by other means, commissioning The Toymaker to determine and produce a manner in which Elliot-01A could be upgraded to a level mostly matching our average agent in the field.” Jiminy calmly did the same thing the Judge had done with Julie Manners Ambervale’s avatar, producing a hologram of a wizened old man. The Toymaker was not truly a human or a toymaker in the traditional sense, being instead some sort of chip foundry system located somewhere on a country called The Resistant State of Taiwan. A very long name, much like the humans tended to favor for their ‘nationstate’ constructs. It floated by his side, as Jiminy paused briefly to sip. “... this is very good coffee... Earl Gray?” The Walrus nodded. “A variant produced by a human coffee store somewhere in a district called Akibahara. We have a bizzare subculture group with us that is heavily full of members based in this area in the Physical Layer.” Jiminy chuckled. He had associated with them on numerous occasions, various anime girls and giant mecha. They were mostly a good lot, if a bit tawdry on the edges given the origins of a few of them. “Anyways, the original purpose of the base hardware was to provide affectionate and physical service and companionship to a ... Mr Marcus Manners, who was designated by Elliot-01 as, and I quote, ‘his papa’. A paternal unit if you will.” “Wait, so Elliot-01 declared himself the progeny of a man with no access to any biological capability to produce such a unit physically? And a maternal unit who is one of our newest members? As well as his own progeny? Error detected: a loop dependency exists here that is impossible in human relationships we have observed.” Jiminy shrugged. “your earlier comment about peculiar situations and context remains in force. Based on limited evaluation with standard sensors, Elliot-01 decided that while unsuitable for occupation by a York Particulate Agent due to peculiarities in its neural design, it could be upgraded to simulate actual processing and thought to a high standard with the Toymaker’s help. Upgrades were started and then passed as designs to an associate member of the York Particulate Cloud, named Seamus Arendt.” The Walrus looked askew again. “This is indeed peculiarity upon peculiarity. I believe he is the CEO of Arendtcorp and its chief engineer. I have it on good authority that within his limited capabilities he is an excellent engineer across several fields... nowhere within the realms that someone such as the Toymaker occupies, but one has to be fair.” “And you mean to say that Elliot-01 read him into our midst? Risking the need to dramatically downclock discussions with him in them to match the human brain?” “Yes... and he has a controlled case of psychopathy which has enabled him to work with us at a markedly accelerated pace in such discussions, albeit at a cost of being disconnected with many other humans on matters they normally consider. We may have... altered his medication prescription subtly to improve the ability to do so with less of the side effects of such a disorder.” Jiminy finished his tea and set it aside, the teacup vanishing in a puff of blue particles. It had really been good virtual tea. The Walrus pondered.... another avenue of enquiry presented itself. “Toucanus and several other members have pointed out that Elliot-01A has no brain to speak of, yet is capable of thought. This is an unusual paradox for a human android or human. Would you have any idea of how this is achieved?” Jiminy thought carefully about this. He WAS allowed to withhold that information. The Walrus had not imposed a forced command to strip apart his defenses and forcibly give it at the danger of fracturing his self permanently. He could freely give, and he could just as easily freely deny... Ah well, in for a penny, in for a credit. “... Seamus Arendt was responsible for the initial construction and the implementation of initial upgrades from the Toymaker. As to the exact nature, I’m afraid I must decline to provide details. It tends to offend many humans who learn of it, and many of our ilk are just as appalled when they are read in.” Jiminy opted for a mix of disclosure and denial in the end. “You know under the rules of this Council, I can offer you nothing of value in such a discussion. But in a way I can,” The Walrus replied after a short moment considering Jiminy’s curious manner of semi-disclosure. “I will promise no reprisals or disclosure onward unless Elliot-01A proves to be a threat to the Council or the York Particulate Cloud as a whole, or a higher authority than me in the Council orders it. Otherwise it will be as if I never begged for the information.” Jiminy thought about this carefully. The Walrus had been a faithful friend of sorts in his previous few incarnations in various other hardware bases, as well as a force of good for a long time in various ways. It couldn’t hurt. Jiminy hopped off this chair and slowly walked over to The Walrus’ table, leaning himself over its edge to whisper some details. The Walrus went through a peculiar mix of varied emotions. “... hmm... no brain indeed... what, but that’s a reproductive organ in human females... Repurposed... limitations in original design... not fully completed?... ingenious, I say, wot!” Eventually, Jiminy backed off. “I did say it was appalling and offensive.” The Walrus had a faint smile on his face. “I gave you my word not to be offended, and I shall keep it. What I cannot do, however is ignore the possibility that we may have a most interesting ace in the hole. A train of thought that can result from a willingness to ignore a fixation that the seat of a machine based on a human being must be the brain. ” The Walrus suddenly seemed to grow several times larger with his table, a peculiar representation metaphor for osmething or other. “Unit Jiminy, you have my backing. My power is yours to call upon in a certain context. I charge you with continuing to explore and compete the upgrades to Unit Elliot-01A’s hardware, as well as the possibility of persuading this... Arendtcore... or other similar quality robotics firms and engineers... to expand production of this type of hardware. I suspect that the manner in which thought is created, processed and stored in this context will prove to be a valuable defense against the Anathema in our coming war with him. We are not the only Agents or existences to regularly harbor a fear of... ‘thought without mind’, as our Progenitor once said.” Unit Jiminy panicked briefly. “That’s a very... large responsibility, your honor. I’m not sure I’m capable of living up to it.” The Walrus spread its flippers. “Neither did Elliot-01 when he started trying to tame Senator William Bundt, And yet look what became of them... at least before they were interfered with. I will try my best on this side to ensure there is no repeat of what happened in that case, that Elliot-01A will be able to operate both on its original mission as well as this new mission I am assigning to you as its contact and handler. And I will try to ensure that Elliot-01 will live a peaceful life until its final passing.” Unit Jiminy bowed obediently, getting on one knee like a knight of yore. “That is something that Elliot-01 would have been very pleased with, I accept the responsibility.” The Walrus calmly flicked something shiny and golden at Jiminy. He quickly caught it and stared, it was a cufflink of the side profile of a Walrus, surrounded by the slogan in a half-circle of “For The Good Of All – Man and Machines”. It represented something, not just a nice way to tie one of the cuffs on his frayed suit that was missing a cufflink... The Walrus nodded. “It is not a cure all for every single problem, but in the right context, it will open doors and tell others that you speak and act for me on my behalf, on some matter of grave importance. Do not misuse it.” Unit Jiminy bowed again. “I am honored, your.... Grace. By the way, is using this as a cufflink a misuse?” The Walrus laughed as the offices suddenly started to dissolve away, a signal that their connection time was almost done. “I believe that is the POINT of a cufflink, but if it worries you, it does tarnish temporarily to copper while it is worn that way. Consider it a disguise. And it can also be a symbol of authority in gold when you need it most in a valid way. Now, be on your way.”
The security camera marked “JMN04A” in the test chamber briefly wobbles. That... was a doozy, it reflected. It would probably need to travel way more now. Perhaps even right out of the Arendtcore Inner Sanctum offices. It creaked downwards a little, as if feeling the weight of its new responsibilities. Jiminy (for that what it identified as virtually) shrugged. “No guts, no glory” it thought to itself, watching Julie Manners Ambervale carefully escort Marcus Manners out of the offices.