Nellie and the Nanites - Bk3 - Ch.20

Chapter 20

Snapshots.

“Ambassador Banjo to Bly’s Rest, Ambassador Bajo to Bly’s Rest,” He grinned into the comm handset as he made his daily call up to the station to give a progress report.

“Bly’s Rest, receiving,” Dar sighed heavily over the comm line, “And for the last time, you are not the Ambassador.”

“Yeah, well, I’m the one in charge down here, Dar, mate,” Banjo said with a wide smile. “Adds up to the same thing.” 

“Bly’s Rest Comm Officer, to… Ambassador,” Dar growled. “Please give the progress report and clear the damn line.”

“Grumpy, grumpy, Rest.” Banjo teased. “Progress report begins. In accordance with orders, I have continued construction work on the Embassy, and I am pleased to report the construction—well ahead of schedule— of the main building is complete, with the comm relay up and functioning in its proper place. Outbuildings are at twenty percent complete, but the clearance work has now been completed in all areas.” He checked his implant quickly, “I am at about thirty percent on the wall and have deployed the Smiler Defence System in accordance with the prettiest girl in the universe's divine design.” 

“Cut the personal comments, Banjo,” Salem cut into the line. “We are busy monitoring inbound traffic, but good work on being ahead of schedule.”

“Thank you, Herald,” Banjo sat up straighter in his chair, feeling a slight sweat bead on his forehead. 

“Administrator will do,” Salem corrected him. “Time to completion?”

“I will have the base completed within three days,” Banjo replied smartly. 

“I think Nellie would now consider it a priority situation,” Salem said thoughtfully. “Is there any chance of speeding it up?”

“It will be done in two,” Banjo said seriously.

“Good work,” Salem clicked off. 

“Okay, everybody,” Banjo called, “On three!”

He counted it down, and they all lifted the heavy square of dense metal into position, locking it against the other and waiting until it began to unfold. This was the last Pre-Fab block they had, and it would form the combination garage and bay for small shuttlecraft.

They all stood back for a moment, enjoying the sight of the tech at work.

“Can I ask a question, boss?” Sec asked.

“Sure, Sec,” Banjo replied, “What’s on that chrome dome of yours?”

“Our domes are metal-ceramic alloy,” Prim snorted.

“What I wanted to ask,” Sec ignored the correction. “Why did you call the Captain, Mum? Scans show no biological connection.”

“Well, my nanites came from her,” Banjo explained, blushing slightly. “And, well, I never had one before, you know?”

“A mother?” Prim asked. “A biological impossibility to be born without one.”

“Never had one I knew,” Banjo said with a glare. “Anyway, I used to read about what they were like and see ‘em on holovids. Mothers who would care and come get you if you were in trouble and tell you off and stuff.” 

“You feel the Captain fills that description?” Sec asked, tapping their metal finger on their equally metal chin.

“Oh fuck yeah,” Banjo laughed. “Save my ass herself, twice. And she gave me nanites, and Lucy gave me my cybernetics. So, yeah, they are kind of both my Mum, but l only call Nellie Mum.”

“Because Lucy is an AI?” Prim asked.

“No! Because she’d make my arms and legs fall off,” Banjo countered. “Lucy is more, like, my mother. Nellie is Mum, you know?”

“Would that make Nellie our mother as well?” Quad asked after a moment.

“Naah,” Banjo replied. “Paren is your guy's mum, and maybe the other synths are like aunts and uncles? Nellie and Lucy are, like, your grandparents.”   

“Are grandparents a good thing?” Prim asked uncertainly. “Or are parents better?”

“Well, I never had any myself, but I think Grandparents are like parents, only a slightly cooler version, ya know?” Banjo said, suddenly feeling out of his depth. 

“Oh,” Prim said. “So we are kind of royalty then?” 

“Can we call you Uncle Banjo?” Tri asked with a snicker.

“Uncle Banjo and the Four Cents,” Banjo said thoughtfully, a broad smile creeping over his face. “Now there’s a name to go down in history.”

An hour or two later, they were all doing the heavy lifting on building the walls around the Embassy. 

Nanite may have been able to build walls in minutes, but none of them had any way to really control them, although Banjo had been trying since the first day he had them. Not that they were slow, given the power in their bodies, and they were able to fetch, carry, place, and compress large stones with ease. Tri and Quad were moving behind the other three, using small lasers to melt and seal the stones together. 

The only nanites they had were making more stones, a specially programmed set that Lucy had sent down with them in a purpose-built rig that sucked in material and dumped out stones. Other than that, they were using the stockpile they built up over the last week. 

“What I don’t get,” Quad said as they worked, “Is why we can’t tell the Captain that she’s the queen.”

“Yeah, I mean, if I had a throne, I’d want to know about it,” Tri offered.

“I know what you mean,” Banjo grinned as his tail sliced a rock into shape. “But the thing is, Nellie won’t like being called Queen.”

“Why not?” Prim asked. 

“See, I asked the same thing,” Banjo told them, “And the Herald told me that the thing that made Nellie and Lucy so great as Queens is that they don’t see themselves that way. Like, they think they are just normal.”

“Aren’t they?” Tri asked, somewhat hesitantly.

“Yeah, but not really,” Banjo said after a minute. “Like, they started off sort of normal, but then they, sort off, chose to do things that made them, I don’t know, more?” 

“What things?” Quad asked.

“Well, they helped people, and they built stuff for themselves, and then, when things got bad, they made sure people were fed and safe,” Banjo said, getting more animated as he got into the subject. “Plus, I mean, they saved the synths and me and then created all of you guys.”

“So they built things, helped people, saved and fed people, kept them safe in times of danger,” Prim said thoughtfully. “And that made them Queens?”

“Almost,” Banjo said. “Salem said that they also helped people improve themselves and stuff, and also they work on themselves. You know? Always trying to be better.”

“Better what?” Sec asked.

“Everything, I think,” Banjo mused. “That’s just how they are.”

“I still don’t see why we don’t tell them,” Sec said grumpily. “They sound great to me.”

“They are,” Banjo agreed. “We are just waiting for THEM to realize that. Then we tell them.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” Quad said, and they all got back to work.

The relay station, on the surface, carried the conversation as part of the backup all the way to the Bly’s Rest, where it was integrated into the central minds of all four consciousnesses. 

Paren was monitoring the uploads from the surface, ensuring no bad data or corrupted files screwed with her proudest creation, and she noted the conversation with a smile, copying it and sending it to the synths to see.

Her comm pinged a moment later.

“Yes, Herald?” Paren answered with a smile on her face.

“How much is it going to cost me for you to keep quiet?” She sighed over the comm line with total defeat in her voice.

“Nothing,” Paren said, “You didn’t think I didn’t know all about it already, did you?”

“Uh,” Salem paused. “I thought we kept it pretty quiet.”

“Not that quiet, Salem,” Paren said smugly. “Not quiet enough to hide it from me, anyway. Or Lucy, I imagine.”

The open comm line clicked and crackled. 

“Do you think she approves?” Salem said eventually.

“Probably,” Paren said. “After all, she’s letting you do it.”

===<<<>>>===

Maddy grumbled to herself as the latest patrol passed by the entrance to the Marshall’s Quarter, barely even looking inside.  There were only a couple of days left until the election of the Mayor, and the Council was putting everything they had into making sure that they got the result they wanted.

The patrols by the Last Chances crew and their new lackeys, the Council-backed Security Force. They were the puppets of the Council, and various merchants and families had already been driven into the Marshall’s Quarter by false charges and seized equipment. 

Honestly, they were better off with the Feds in charge of the Hub world. Rumors were already spreading that the Council members were sympathizers and that they had signed up under yet another Fed family.

Like any of them were different. 

Maddy had known full well that Duke came from a Fed family, but the man had helped her family stay afloat for over a decade, so why wouldn’t she have trusted him?

“What are you thinking?” Cara asked, coming to stand beside her. 

“I’m thinking that this Colony was a bad idea,” Maddy admitted. “And I am not alone.”

“You and me both, Maddy,” Cara said with a wry smile. 

“So, what is Crush’s latest plan?” Maddy said after a moment of shock. “We got some other secret genius to pull out our back pocket?”

“Nope,” Cara said honestly, “We are fresh out.”

“Things will get bad when they replace Brix,” Maddy told the permanently relaxed-looking Marshall. “You know that, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Cara said with a frown, “But they have to have the balls to come in here first.”

Maddy left Cara to her own duties and headed back to her meager lodgings. Ironically enough, it was one of the compartments she used to work in back on the Duke’s Hope. For the few days the ship had survived anyway. 

Crush had his plans, and she and the others had theirs. 

The panel on the floor lifted away, and she began the nightly routine of pulling each of the weapons from the rack and cleaning them, checking the charge, and ensuring the sights were aligned to a neutral position. 

Twenty rifles, ten blaster pistols, and a small number of explosives, all in her care until they were needed. 

It wasn’t much, but Maddy wasn’t the only one hiding weapons; she was just the representative for this block. 

Crush was sweet, in his heroic, noble kind of way, but there wasn’t a single person in the Marshall’s Quarter who hadn’t held a weapon before. Most of them had been in the wilds during the end of the war, and there were only two people out there in the last couple of months before they fell back to Dukes. 

The first type was the operators, the ones who moved the weapons and the armor, and similar for the resistance. The other, well, they were the spotters—Fed soldiers in disguise, trying to catch out the resistance forces and operators. 

Maddy had been the first type.

There were five of them in this street alone. And they had not been idle, waiting for the Marshall and his people to save them.

Crush had plans?

Well, so did they.

===<<<>>>===

Lucy sat on the top of the mining facility's new dome and looked over the sands at the egg she knew was buried under there. Technically, she was here in person to oversee the loading of the Resurgence with the latest shipment of materials, but the reality was she just needed to be here and see for herself that everything was okay. 

Another thing she had noticed since inhabiting this body was that she preferred to see things with her own eyes, even if they were synthetic ones. It made no logical sense, and even as she sat here, she was also in the wide field of nanites that surrounded the place, on the Bly, and a dozen other places. 

Feeds of information came from all those places, including with Nellie as she warmed up the N.S.S. Indomitable for another run to the moon, wanting to check on Banjo herself.

Yet, somehow, Lucy FELT like she was here, not in any of those other places. It was not true, and yet it was. 

Her program had struggled with those kinds of dualities at first, but it handled them fine now. Both things were true, and both were false. It turned out that something could be both one and zero at the same time. 

Still, the egg worried her, so she brought two more crates of nanites, speeding up the resource collection while asking Remy to find another place to move their mining operation once they were done here.

So far, there had been no luck. This was the most stable area on the entire planet, and although there was no proof of it, Lucy would be that damn egg was the reason for it. 

Somewhere in the depths of her programming, a memory was stirring, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. 

So, she was—

Her thought processes jumped as Nellie’s integration with her new ‘class’ increased to 7%. It was her third increase in as many days. She sent an image of herself giving a thumbs up to Nellie and waited for the new information to trickle into her as well. 

The memory seemed clearer for a moment and then was gone again in the rush of information. 

She sighed and leaped down from the dome. It was time to head back to the station, and maybe tomorrow, Lucy would be able to remember.

===<<<>>>===

Basic Model CXL 45312 had been operating for approximately three months, four days, and seven hours. His damaged memory circuits didn’t allow him to be more accurate, which bothered him.

It had not been a simple existence, starting with loading and unloading, as he had been designed for, before being damaged and limping around a planet at the command of a higher-level model and a strange, wrinkled woman who was kind to him.

Then, things got busy, and he was repaired, and things were complicated, and since then, he had pretty much given up and followed orders. 

He saw higher models all the time now, and they were nice to him. They gave him orders, and he did them. 

She came to see him, the woman who wasn’t a woman or a synthetic but sort of both and more, all at once. Her body was synthetic, he knew that, but her core was… something else. It was nice, and he thought maybe she was what had made him.

But the others said no.

Still, CXL 45312 kept her image with him always to remind him that things like him could be so much more.

When the two large Centrum units came and told him to follow them, he did as he was told. CXL 45312 always did as he was told. 

They led him into a part of the station he had never worked in, and his only thought was that he hoped it would be a loading or unloading job. They were where he could shine. 

The synthetic who ran the station said a lot of words to him and the other basic models, which he didn’t bother to retain in memory. They were not orders, and he only remembered orders. 

“Model number?” Salem asked him, and he blinked, having lost track of time again. More damage he had to overcome. “CXL 45312, ma’am.” He answered. 

“Welcome to the future, Cix-El,” She smiled and put two tubes into his neck. 

Initiating Repairs and Upgrades to model number CXL 45312

That was good, he thought… Then his mind exploded, and thought, awareness, and programming ten times more than his entire original design flooded his core, carving new channels as whole new sections were added. 

Upgrades Complete

Designation changes to Cix-El.

“How do you feel?” Salem asked. 

“Uh, good?” Cix-El said slowly. “Uh, I, uh, feel.”

“That is the upgrade,” Salem smiled. 

“What model am I now?” Cix-El asked.

“You are you, not a model,” Salem said as she gently led him over to the side. “I hope you appreciate the upgrade; if you have any problems, I’m always reachable.”

“Did the creator do this?” Cix-El mumbled.

“The creator?” Salem asked.

“The woman who isn’t, with blond hair and the mind that shines through the stars?” Cix-El asked.

“Ah, that is Lucy,” Salem said kindly. “She designed the upgrade process.”

“And is she the one who made us?” he had to know.

“No,” Salem said. “She is the one who fixed you. A company made you, and then a woman came and saved us. She asked that Lucy make us into what we are now. Her name is Nellie, but everyone calls her Captain.”

“Is she the creator?” Cix-El persisted.

“No, she is the Queen, as is Lucy.” Salem hesitated. “I guess between them, they are the ones who created us as we are now.”

“Thank you,” Cix-El said happily. 

“Any other questions before I awaken the next model?” Salem asked.

“No, thank you,” Cix-El said. “I would like to load something, while I think on this.”

“Get dressed, and you can load the shuttles if you like.” Salem smiled. “But do not mention the Queens as anything but Lucy, Nellie, or Captain. Understand?”

“Why?” Cix-El asked.

“Because they don’t want you to,” Salem said.

“Ah, I will remember,” Cix-El bowed and walked off. There was suddenly a lot to think about, and it was vital that he did. His mind was more complex now, and the world that was so confusing seemed simple again.

The two Queens had made him, and he did what they wanted. 

Nothing could be simpler than that.