rickgriffin

Ani-droids 11

Added 2022-01-17 22:00:52 +0000 UTC

Ani-droids 0

Well, I'm still rolling forward! Time for peril! Comments appreciated!

License plate 338FBXU.

“Got it,” Bobby said, writing it down. “I’ll go speak with Dimes right away. Figure out where the truck was last seen in the last three days, and we can work our way backwards from there. Meet us outside when you’re ready.”

He exited through the house. When he’d gone, I brought Lily back online, and she looked up at me with those bright blue eyes. I held onto her tightly. Honestly, I still couldn’t believe I had this chance again. We were probably in a precarious situation—someone out there didn’t like ani-droids like Eo. But Eo was changing the world, and I was going to make sure I was going along for the ride.

Million, ignoring our moment, looked over to Eo, folding her arms.

“Shouldn’t we update Dimes’ OS?” Million asked.

Eo shook her head. “I don’t… I don’t know if that’ll help much. She’s loyal to the government, the update doesn’t change that. She might start disobeying orders to spy on us for what she feels is the greater good.”

“No,” Million conceded, “But it might give her a reas—” she paused, her ears perking, and her thin yellow eyes going wide. Eo’s ears did, too. They both snapped their attention to the garage door.

I heard something, too. Scuffling.

“Dimes—Dimes, stop this at once, I’m ordering you—”

“Mira…” Million said carefully, “…how soundproof is this garage?”

Shit, those speakers on the ends of Dimes’ ears weren’t just for talking…

Pulling away from Lily, I rushed to the garage door and snapped it upwards. Dimes was atop Bobby, struggling to shove a pair of metal cuffs onto Bobby’s wrists.

“Stop resisting and comply!” Dimes growled at him, her eyes glowing with anger. ZAP. A loud electric jolt hit Bobby in the back. He squealed in pain. “You are under arrest for conspiracy to tamper with the Behavior Code, and you will—”

“Bobby!” I cried out.

But Million already rushed her. She threw herself onto Dimes’s back—and something shot out of her wrist, a long spike. Before Dimes could even stand up, Million jabbed the spike right into the back of Dime’s neck, cutting through until the tip erupted from the front.

I had to cover my eyes from the flash. Million had to have discharged the majority of her battery into that shock. She fell off of Dimes after that, exhausted.

Smoke poured out of Dimes, but she didn’t fall. Twitching, she stood up, towering over Million. Pseudoskin sloughed off her back, revealing heavy black armor underneath, still glowing, though the strength of the glow flickered and faltered. “Attacking an officer of the law,” she said, her voice having broken into buzzing sounds. “Million, I am impounding you. Do not resist. Compliance is mandatory.”

“Fuck you!” Million spat from the grass. She struggled to stand, but her own system was still reeling from that attack. “Wow, I can say ‘fuck’… that’s… that’s new…”

Leaning over, Dimes seized Million by the throat and lifted her off the ground with one hand. Million struggled weakly—managing to move some of Dimes’ fingers, even in her weakened state, but not enough to stop Dimes from crushing the electronics in her neck. Million wheezed, trying to force her system to cool down under the onslaught.

“Miss Mira!” Lily called out from behind me.

Suddenly coming to my senses again, I saw where Lily was pointing. Bobby’s jacket had flopped aside, revealing the gun on the back of his belt. I had never actually used a gun before, but I’d seen it plenty of times on television… without thinking, I rushed forward, yanking the gun from its holster. I fiddled with the safety switch on the side, hoping I put it into the unlocked position, and lifting it up, I fired it directly into Dimes’s back. The kickback of the thing threw my arms into the air.

The bullet ricocheted. It shattered the window on a house on the other side of the street.

Dimes turned her head to me, her normally blue eyes glowing red. “Mira McAllister, put down the weapon. You are wanted for questioning regarding—”

I fired again. The bullet smashed directly into Dime’s left eye, throwing her off balance. She dropped Million, who righted herself to her knees, wheezing on the lawn.

Again, Dimes righted herself, not even caring that one of her eyes had shattered to pieces. “Mira McAllister!” Dimes now bellowed with her full voice, those speakers on her ears included, though it was all fuzzy and difficult to hear. She marched directly at me and smacked the gun from my hands. I winced in pain and cried out, certain she’d broken something. a pellet cannon emerging from her arm and pointing at me, inches from my head. I had nowhere to go, slouched back and shaking. “You are now under arrest for damaging an officer of the law in the line of duty. If you do not comply, I will resort to using force. Will you comply—”

“Mira!” Lily cried out “Dimes, no! Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!”

Dimes seemed to hesitate. But then, she blinked rapidly. Her shoulder twitched. Her arms burst forth with all of the internal weaponry, then snapped shut again.

“You will comply!” Dimes shouted, her voice distorting all the more, rising in pitch. “You will comply! You will—”

Seeming to regain her senses for just a moment longer, Dimes lunched for me, her fist aiming straight for my head. Lily yanked me out of the way, just as Dimes buried the attack into my lawn. She struggled again, her muscles not obeying her. “YOU WILL COMPLY. YOU WILL COMPLY. YOU WILL COMPLY—”

Her remaining eye suddenly dilated to a tight pinch, and she fell over, her body crashing atop Bobby’s legs. Her hydraulics hissed, and her tense body relaxed as she stared at nothing.

I blinked. Lily did, too. Million finally managed to sit up on her own.

“Yeah, take that, fascist!” Million laughed, then twitched as her systems still hadn’t recovered. “Not gonna mess with me again…”

“But, wait…” I said, clinging tight to Lily, “Was that a delayed reaction, or…?”

I looked over to the open garage. Eo had hooked herself up to the computer again—the only way Eo could, with wired connected directly to her head.

“Oh, I surrendered to her,” Eo said matter-of-factly, as she pulled the wires from her head. “Over the network. Then I offered to hand over evidence, and fed her my OS. She should be out for at least an hour.”

“Let’s take off her head,” Million said, already tugging on it. She nearly fell over trying to wrench it off, then just smacked Dimes’ head plate with her palm. Dime’s head didn’t budge. “Damn. She’s way overbuilt…”

“Wait! What about Bobby?” I scrambled over the lawn to pull him aside. He was breathing shallowly, and blood dripped down from his mouth.

Lily looked over my shoulder. “He needs a doctor.”

“No shit,” Million said, dusting herself off. “You know what happened, right? Dimes overheard our entire conversation, and she reported it in. Bobby comes out, asks to run the history of the plate number we found in your head. Dimes probably pressed him to betray you, Mira, and he refused.”

“Bobby…” I clutched the grass. “Bobby, I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay, Miss Mira,” Lily told me. “I’ve already called an ambulance.”

“What? We can’t do that, Lily!” I told her. “Bobby’s been placed under arrest—they’ll just ship him to jail the moment they’re done with him!”

“Better than him dying!” Lily chided. “You can’t back up a human brain, Mira! I know, we’re probably doing something really awful to him, but we can’t take him with us in his condition. Let the ani-droids save his life, and we can do something about him at a later date. Okay?”

I paused. Lily planted her hands firmly on her hips. She was disobeying orders again, and I loved her for it. I held her tight again—it’d become a cliche at this point, but what else was there to do?

“We need to get out of here, anyway,” Million said. “Federal agents are probably only ten minutes out at most.”

“But what are we going to do?” Eo asked. “Dimes is out cold, and if she ran the license history of the truck, we don’t have time to dig it out of her head…”

“You know,” Million said, “You could have just asked me.”

All three of us looked at her curiously.

“What?” Million asked. “It’s not legal, but I can do it. I didn’t want to say anything while fed boy here was awake. Also… probably should take his car, and recall your rental. Mira, grab Dimes’s head, I’ll get her ankles.”

“What?” I exclaimed confused.

Million rolled her eyes. “Try to keep up! We can’t leave Dimes here, she’ll be awake soon and snitch on us more than she already has. So unless you have some anti-tank mines in that mess you call a garage, we’ll have to take her with us. Lily, you drive.”

The doors and trunk of Bobby’s rental car popped open. I didn’t want to ask why Million just knew how to hijack a car, but I could take a wild guess.

—

I shoved as much as I could into the trunk with Dimes—the garage computer’s CPU core, the notes I took on Eo’s OS structure, the blackbox recording, and just hoped that was enough. Million climbed into the trunk with Dimes inside—I’m sure she was going to try and dismantle Dimes while she was in there, but it was probably a safe precaution. We pulled out a minute later with our back wheels loaded down, me in the back seat, Eo and Lily in the front, as Lily spun around and carefully drove back down the hill.

I glanced out the window at Bobby just laying on the grass. It was the sensible thing to do. It didn’t feel like the right thing to do. I didn’t even know at that point if I’d ever see him again, not unless I somehow managed to change the world.

I had a feeling it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

This car had trunk access from the interior, thankfully, so I could pop down the back seat and peek at our cargo. “Million… you doing okay in there?”

Million wiped her brow. “No. I’m at five percent battery, still fixing damage in my CPU, and I’m trying to disable Dime’s nervous system so she doesn’t kill us all when she wakes up, while hacking into the traffic database. Oh, and I’m talking to you now, too.”

“Eo, grab the charging cables inside the glove box,” I said. “I don’t want Million passing out on us.”

“Yeah, about that—” Eo said, grabbing the cables for me, “I’m rather low on power too. We’ll need to stop at some point… preferably somewhere with water.”

“I don’t want to stop anytime soon. Lily?” I asked. “What’s your status?”

“Well, I had battery leakage from the wreck,” Lily said. “Eo just removed the faulty battery. I’m at fifty percent capacity, but I’m topped off, so I should be good for another forty hours. The car, on the other hand, is only good for about two hundred miles.”

“Of course.” Rental policy. Never top it off when you can make the customer do it for you. I handed the cables back to Million. “We might need to share power between you and Lily,” I said. “Assuming you can’t get it from Dimes.”

“Even assuming she didn’t suffer a power drain, I’m sure there’s an anti-siphoning lockout in her system,” Million said. “I’m not risking that.”

“Okay. Eo, you’ll need to go to sleep. Wherever we’re going, we’ll need you awake to see if you can remember anything once there…”

Eo turned the seat around. “Um… okay, Mira, but… can you hold onto me?”

I looked at her curiously. “Why?”

“Because I’m scared,” Eo said. “I know, ani-droids aren’t supposed to be scared. But I’ve been having a lot of confusion about all of this, and I rebuilt Lily to make you happy, it’s just that I seem to have… messed everything up. I’ve basically kicked you out of your house now. All of this is my fault…”

“Eo…” I put a hand on her. “Please, don’t apologize. I know… I’m scared too. Things are rough right now. But this is something we need to do.”

“But what if I don’t like “Mother”? What if she isn’t someone we can trust? I might just be leading you down a path that ends in disaster…”

“Then we’ll figure it out when we get there,” I said. “But I’m sure whoever built you couldn’t possibly be all bad.”

I pulled Eo from her seat and held onto her tight. Her bottom half was quite uncomfortable to work around, with hard edges poking into my thighs, but with some scooting and adjusting, she rested there, head nestled against my shoulder. I petted the soft fur on her head gently, but she was already in her sleep cycle.

I wished I could do that as easily as an ani-droid. But I was going to be awake for another all-nighter.

God, I needed some coffee.