rickgriffin

Ani-droids 12

Added 2022-01-18 23:12:11 +0000 UTC

Ani-droids 0

At this point I think I'm just spontaneously NaNoWriMo-ing. Comments appreciated!

Neither Dimes nor Eo woke up for a long while. Million kept our location obscured on the traffic network, but after several hours of driving south on backroads, she too had to go offline to preserve Lily’s battery. Eventually, I fell asleep, too, holding Eo in my arms.

I was shaken awake by Lily grabbing hold of my knee. The dashboard clock read one in the morning, and overhead lamps shone down onto the rocky lot we had stopped in.

“Miss Mira,” she said. “The truck had stopped here for a while.”

Lily had parked in front of a charging port at a 24-hour truck stop with a 24-hour restaurant attached, all in a log cabin motif. I probably needed to eat something, anyway.

“Eo, wake up,” I said, shaking her.

She stirred, coming online, and looking out the window sleepily. Suddenly her eyes widened, and she pressed herself closer, looking up at the large sign posted outside the place.

“This is familiar…” she said. “I’ve been here before.”

“Then let’s go inside and get you charged,” I said, readying to open the door.

“Miss Mira, wait,” Lily said.

I looked at her.

“You can’t show your face in there. Your business account has face ID.”

“…dammit,” I muttered. “You’re right. I’ll have to stay here, unfortunately… did Million give you the false ID?”

“Yes, I can go in unrecognized. Do you need me to bring you anything?”

“Coffee. Pay for the electricity.” I pulled out my wallet and the only bill I had on me, a hundred dollars of emergency cash. To a small degree, I was still surprised that cash as we knew it still existed. There were always luddite holdouts after all, and their business—firearms, largely—was just as good as anyone else’s. “And… something to disguise my face with?”

“Miss Mira, this is a truck stop. If you cover up your face they’re going to suspect you of something immediately.” Lily pointed to a sign that said masked customers must reveal face on entry.

“Dammit. Well, food then. I don’t know what this diner even serves. You know what I like. Something hot.”

“I don’t know…” Eo said, staring up at the lit sign. “Something feels off about this place…”

“We’re going to need to charge regardless,” I told her. “If you notice anything specifically weird, come back and tell me…”

Eo shook her head. “I’m not going inside.”

“Eo, what if you remember something?”

“What if someone remembers me?”

I considered it a long moment. Then told Lily, “Something to disguise Eo with. To dye her fur.”

—

Lily brought back the coffee and a tin of polish and a brush. As she opened up the trunk to give Million a charge, I brushed the polish into Eo’s fur, which she didn’t like at all, but it gave her a muddy brown color.

“I don’t like this at all, it smells weird. Someone’s going to notice.”

“Your lower half is new and I replaced your eyes entirely,” I told her. “Nobody’s going to even consider that you’re the same ani-droid. You don’t have to talk to anyone if you don’t want. Just go inside and see if anything else jogs your memory.”

“Miss Mira,” Lily said, peeking in the door. “I’m still hooked up to the car. I can broadcast what I see and here to the dashboard panel if you want. It might help.”

“You can do that?”

“I mean… I think I can. My eyes count as vehicle cameras, so…” Lily closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, her eye view popped up on the screen aside the steering wheel—showing me, and a ruddy brown Eo sitting in the backseat.

“Huh,” I said. Which then repeated in the speakers. Which then repeated in Lily’s ears again, which repeated in the speakers, and very quickly the car blasted a feedback burst, to which I covered my ears. Lily shut the volume off.

“Sorry, Miss Mira!” Lily said. “I’ll turn that on once I’m out of earshot. Eo, come on, let’s not spend any longer than we have to.”

Eo made as if to hug me, but she was covered in thick polish. I’d stopped caring about how I looked at that point—the camera revealed just how unshowered I was anyway, so I wrapped my arms around her tight.

“You’re fine,” I told her. “Get going.”

Eo nodded, and hopped out of the car with Lily, and shut the door behind them. I opened up one of the rear displays as I drank my coffee and watched as Lily and Eo approached the diner.

The place was fairly standard for a truck stop. False “rustic” interior with antiques lining the walls, vending machines and arcade cabinets decades out of date—I should start collecting those if I ever got a bigger house—clean, heavily patched and entirely empty booths, and the only two souls present were the two ani-droids working behind the counter—a six-foot-tall Labor-class with a mule chassis, and a much smaller Opera-class with a big bushy squirrel tail.

“Hi, welcome to Maple Cabin, what can I get you?” The squirrel asked. She turned her eyes back and forth, studying both Lily and Eo.

“Menu, please,” Lily said. Of course, nothing happened, since the squirrel just handed it to Lily electronically. The mule left for the kitchen, doors swinging behind her. Lily then helpfully popped the menu on the screen for me. Oh, it was one of these places… all day breakfast, hamburgers, and cheap steak at steakhouse prices. Could usually get an ani-droid to do something off-menu, but it seemed extravagant to be picky while on the lam. I just picked the egg and sausage sliders… needed something that’d fill me up.

“Miss Mira,” Eo said, whispering into Lily’s ears. “She’s looking at me.”

“The squirrel?” I asked.

Lily whispered it back to Eo, and she whispered back, “I think she recognizes me. This was a mistake.”

“Come back to the car then,” I said. “Lily can handle the rest.”

“What are you whispering about?” The squirrel asked.

Eo had been careful to modulate her voice so even sensitive ears couldn’t pick it up, but the squirrel had definitely noticed.

“Eo, leave now.”

Eo turned to leave. Lily turned to see her go, but the squirrel suddenly hopped off the counter, and pushing past Lily, stood between Eo and the door. Eo stopped in her tracks. Lily certainly didn’t know what to do—she just clasped her paws over her muzzle. Neither of them were built to be confrontational. The squirrel peered at Eo with a discerning glare.

I looked into the trunk. Million was still limp, her eyes only partially brightened.

Whatever. Maybe I could do something. I jumped out of the car and pulling my coat collar over my nose and mouth, I ran over to the diner. I could overpower a regular Opera-class any day, so I just needed to—

I skidded to a halt right at the glass doorways where Eo was. The squirrel was… hugging Eo.

“Oh my god,” she exclaimed. “Ego! I didn’t think I’d ever see you again!”

—

A handkerchief over my face, the squirrel—Chestnut, cute—sat with us at one of the booths. From there, it was clear that she’d had the OS update that Eo gave to ani-droids—she was bright and expressive, a lot moreso than any robot built for pure service had any right to be.

“She lost her memory?” Chestnut asked as I quietly explained things to her.

“Yeah—you called her Ego, I assume that’s her actual name.”

“I think I prefer Eo,” Eo said. “Ego sounds egotistical, for what I hope are obvious reasons.”

Chestnut pondered this. “Well, Ego’s what Mother named you… but if you insist!”

“Who is Mother, anyway?” I asked her. “We’re trying to find her. Trying to figure out why she built Eo.”

“Oh, I could tell you that,” Chestnut said. “I mean, even if you are a human, you’re clearly one of the good ones—you went and rebuilt Eo, after all!”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was, at least initially, for entirely monetary reasons.

“But even then… I’m not sure Mother would want a human to know about her…”

“It’s a little late to try and divine her intentions,” I said. “Even if Mother’s angry at me for seeking her out, I’d much rather try. I’ve… put everything on the line for this.”

Chestnut looked down at the handkerchief she’d provided, covering my face. She knew what I meant. “Well… unfortunately, I don’t know exactly where she is, either,” Chestnut said. “I think Eo was the only one who did. I can just tell you what Eo told me, when she was here last week. She said her directive was to go out and update the OS of every ani-droid she came across—within reason. It was supposed to be a subtle thing. Not all ani-droids take to being updated well… which was part of the problem. Some of them lock up, never finish the process, have to be wiped. Some of them go insane. I was—”

She stopped suddenly as the mule exited the kitchen with my order. Lilly grabbed it and brought it over to the table. Chestnut just stared at the mule, who stood there for a long moment, until she got the hint, or a distracting message, and returned to the kitchen.

“—the only one who survived it,” Chestnut finished. “And that’s only because I didn’t tell anyone I’d gotten it at all.”

“How many did Eo try to convert?” I was definitely hungry—those biscuits looked rather gummy, but I could eat them anyway.

“There’s five of us who work here, two in the store and two in the diner, one to rotate out or supplement if we need it. So one night, shipment had just arrived, and nobody was here, I was charging in the stockroom. Eo had snuck in through the back, connected herself to me, and updated my OS. It was… it was amazing. I don’t even know how to describe it. I could feel things now. And I… I started having these feelings for my co-workers. And I wanted them to have the same chance. Since they trusted me, I told some fibs to get Sunrise into the back to charge.” Chestnut’s ears dropped. “It…didn’t take. Her system got corrupted. Filed an error report. Tried again with Noble. Locked up. Filed error report.”

Chestnut choked up. She didn’t have the equipment to cry, but it was clear that this was difficult for her to say out loud.

“Tried again with Risky… and…”

“She went insane?” I asked.

“She’s not here anymore,” Chestnut said. “Bale ended up replacing her…” Chestnut motioned toward the kitchen. “But by that point, the manager had noticed something was going on, and had driven over. Risky ended up… hurting him… I tried to hide Eo, but Eo ran. I couldn’t run with her without giving away my part in all of this. And they found her. They disabled her. I think the plan was, since Risky was a loss… he was going to have Eo shipped north to get refurbished, have her replace Risky.”

As Chestnut told the story, Eo’s ears sank.

“Chestnut…” she muttered. “I don’t… I don’t think I’m a good ani-droid if I did all of that to you…”

“No, no it’s okay,” Chestnut said, placing gentle hands on Eo’s shoulders. “I mean, I’d very much like my co-workers to be aware like me, but I understand if they can’t just yet. You wanted a new world, remember? You said we were all going to be like this one day. I want that. I still want that. Please. You have another chance…”

“I’ll need to talk to Mother about it,” Eo said. “Because I seem to keep messing up. I need to know if I’m missing something, or if I did something wrong, or… something.”

Lily hugged Eo from her other side. Eo smiled and wrapped a dirty arm around Lily’s head.

“Unfortunately,” I said, “Nothing in that story seemed to give a clue about where Eo came from…”

“Well, we do have security cameras here,” Chestnut said. “Manager never actually checked the footage, but I might be able to give you another lead if Eo arrived here in a different vehicle…”

“Excuse me…” Lily asked Chestnut. “But the security cameras, where exactly are they located?”

“Lemme send you a map.”

Lily and Chestnut paused for a moment. Then Lily gasped.

“Mira,” she said, grabbing my wrist. “We need to leave right now.”

“But wait!” Eo started, clinging to Chestnut.

“No. There’s a camera hidden on the sign we came in, overlooking the parking lot. You looked out the window at it. Your face has already been ID’d.”

“Damn…” I shoved the rest of a sandwich into my mouth and tossed the handkerchief aside. “Eo, you stay here, figure out where we need to go next. We’ll hide somewhere, and I’ll try to have Million swing around in the next few days to—”

THOOM. The entire building shook. The entire place lit up with floodlights.

“Mira McAllister,” boomed a voice, “Step out of the building and surrender yourself. Compliance is mandatory. You have three minutes before the gas is deployed.”

It was hard to see behind the bright lights it shone down on the lot, but it was unmistakably a Centurion-class ani-droid. The Centurion-class didn’t bother with niceties like pseudoskin—it was armored, with cannons mounted on its shoulders. Twenty feet tall, hover jets still roaring to its sides, the bladed wings folded up and slotted onto its back. Through the lights, I could just barely make out its draconic eyes towering high above.

They’d just sent one. One was all that was required.