Chapter 17 - Body Composition II

It turned out that enchanting a mouth wasn’t as simple as the eyes had been for whatever reason. It just wouldn’t happen, no matter what Logan tried. Eventually Logan just slumped on his bed and before Freya had fully wrapped herself around him, he was already asleep.

In the morning he woke up like a man possessed. Logan suspected Tumor was tinkering with his brain chemistry and motivation, but the AI was almost offended by such a notion.

Regardless, After a quick wash, piss and drink Logan went straight back to the work table where the darkmetal pieces waited for him. It was a testament to the fact that Logan had to be doing something right, if the insanely valuable pieces of metal had been left untouched for the night.

Having not come up with anything new during the night regarding Tumor’s speech impediment, Logan tried a few more choice words to get a working enchantment. It didn’t happen. Tumor was getting impatient, but the AI had no ideas to offer.

Then Logan snapped his fingers and grinned. “Let’s just do it the old fashioned way, right?

[What do you mean?]

“Let’s just give you a simple air generating enchantment. The enchantment activates and starts generating air. You make the liquid darkmetal take the shape of a human’s uhh… Mouth and tongue and stuff.”

Tumor didn’t answer for a while. Logan was grinning to himself. It was such an obvious idea, like genius often was.

[You want me to make a perfect replica of the whole complex infrastructure that humans use to produce speech? That requires roughly a hundred different muscles split between the diaphragm, larynx, tongue, lips and a couple of facial muscles. The interplay of the tongue and lips alone would require an immense amount of processing power. One does not simply—]

“Wait, you can’t do it?” Logan asked, genuinely surprised. “I thought processing power was like your thing. I’ve seen really, really stupid humans talk a lot. I would have thought it’s a piece of cake for you.”

[I… hmm… It is doable in a theoretical sense. We would need to increase the mass of my body. I would also be rendered useless for most functions if I needed to speak, because it would require most of my mass, if we are using space optimally.]

“Hell, that’s fine,” Logan said. “We have material to spare. You’ll get more Numa to store and we can augment your other capabilities further.”

[Is that… Okay? You are pouring a lot of resources into me. I would not want to be selfish.]

Logan chuckled. “You’re a better person already than most, Tumor. But it’s fine, even if I were playing favorites. And I don’t think I am. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but you and I are the most valuable assets to these people right now. We need to be in top condition. Something, something, put the oxygen mask on yourself before helping others?”

There was something like a sag of relief Logan sensed through Tumor. He smiled at the gesture. Of all the possible ways a self-aware AI with superior capabilities could go, Tumors was a case most fortunate.

After enchanting a bead of darkmetal with a simple wind-enchantment, Logan slid it next to the artificial eyeballs and the large sphere that was to be Tumor’s body. It was toggleable, so Tumor could simply activate it and guide and obstruct the wind flow as he saw fit, and deactivate it after being done with talking. Logan wasn’t sure what manner of a chatterbox Tumor was going to be, but that single bead should last for at least a few months. Besides it was just a first iteration.

“Well, the stage is yours.”

Logan felt a slight stiffening of his Armor, and the constantly swirling and moving liquid armor’s movements became much more sluggish, as Tumor relinquished control over it. Logan couldn’t feel it, but it seemed the AI was sliding into the sphere. And soon enough the sphere started to swirl unto itself, like the clouds on a planet watched from space.

Gently, almost tentatively, black tendrils sprouted out of the sphere and plucked the eyes into itself, before they resurfaced one by one around the sphere.

[Logan. I can see. It works. This is… Thank you…]

The thanks came with a pulse of emotion so profound and heartfelt, that Logan felt his breath catch in his throat. Tumor had been there every step of the way. Saving his life, teaching him subtly to be a less shitty person. Logan thought about his father, and his thoughts darkened. But he couldn’t help but to admit that despite the reprehensible fashion Logan had received the AI, it had been a great boon to him.

“Keep going.”

When all the eyeballs were sucked in, the sphere picked up the wind enchanted bead. After that it became a little creepy. Logan took a hefty swallow of air, as Tumor turned the sphere into what must have been a collection of human organs for respiratory and vocal purposes. It was a grotesque show of glistening black metal. Especially the tongue, which swirled around on top of the structure without an upper jaw. A strange series of eerie and squishy sounds started which turned up and down in volume and pitch. They started off as metallic and slicing, which made Logan wince.

Eventually they started resembling a hurt animal, and then transitioned into something resembling a toddler or an adult who had lost his capabilities. This went on for a while.

It took Tumor thirty minutes to learn to speak. Logan sat there watching the glistening mess of black outlines of organs in mute intrigue and horror as Tumor learned to speak english. Logan must have heard every conceivable sound a human could make, and eventually the words started flowing out. Short ones first, vowel based. Tumor went through them like a rapper, as if the AI was racing to say every word ever invented. Once Tumor had full command of its ability to produce sounds and individual words, the AI went through a list of what seemed like a thousand words to Logan in alphabetical order.

But indeed after thirty minutes or so, Tumor spoke his first intelligible sentence.

It was a metallic voice, deep, but not exactly masculine, with faint echoes and hard edges.

“Can you hear me, Logan?” Tumor asked.