Havoc and the Cafeteria Queen: Chapter 16: nameless 1.6: Deworming

“With the massive drop in the horse population, I think we’re going to have to right-size our Ivermectin production lines.”
“But why, though?”
“Because no one’s going to buy horse de-wormer with no horses to de-worm?”
“See, you say ‘horse’, but I hear ‘Industrial Strength’. Which sounds just perfect for people who are worried they’ve been infected with a Model seven!”
“Will that… Does Ivermectin even work on Model seven infections?”
“When have we ever cared about that?”

• Board room transcript, Caring Pharma Care Corp, 2045

***

‘Time to move.’

There are still no Antithesis in evidence on the far side of our concealing wall, so we bring it down quiet instead of loud. As the wall dissolves into powder, two of us lick it up, reclaiming our substrate. Our other pair creep forward, mapping out the tunnel with infrared, passive sonar, and extrapolation from air currents. No light leaks down this deep, and we’re not about to give away our position by going active, whether by light, sound, or anything else we can suppress.

The two of us vacuuming up substrate finish their work, then turn to crawl down the tunnel behind our other two bodies. Back in the dumpster bunker we continue working. One of us continues to examine our collected DNA samples. Another designs new forms, for when the Antithesis adapt to our Great Trash Pandas. A third keeps the tunes going, although we’ve moved to instrumentals.

We try orchestral classical, and it suits our current tasks. Another of us spins off to analyze the music, determine the component instruments in type, number, and arrangement. We take over for our DJ, creating dozens of smaller speakers across our surface, simulating an actual orchestra.

It sounds tinny.

Not every experiment ends in success, Vanguard.

‘Yeah, we know that, Stryt. Every experiment eventually ends in the death of the experimenter.’

How morbid.

‘Yeah, we started mostly dead.’

Yes, but you did in fact wait fifteen minutes for full potency.

We pause a moment, trying to figure out if he’s serious or not. Then we decide to just ask, because it’s easier than crawling back up to the void we respawned in and recreating everything. It’s also not so hideously wasteful of power and potential.

‘It really only took fifteen minutes?’

Honestly? I cannot be certain. In an effort to maximize your chances, I stripped away all non-essential functions during the transition process.

‘You can’t tell us timing wasn’t essential to some of those processes.’

I most certainly can, but only because as you so astutely deduced I’m advanced enough to lie. But no, there was no reason to keep track of overall time passage, so timing was limited to individual processes, not overall progress.

‘Then why…’ We stop, realizing exactly what he’d done there. We shoot him a virtual smile and say, ‘but there was no chocolate coating to make it go down easier.’

When all of this is done, I think you’d make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.

That stops us for a second, again wondering. ‘Did you just imply we’d make a good Protector AI?’

That gives Stryt cause to pause in return. That’s now how we work, but I suppose if we did start recruiting there would be worse candidates.

That gives us an idea, a useless one at the moment, so we file it away for later, if there’s a later to capitalize on it. We hope so, but life has taught us to expect disappointment.

Down in the tunnels, we spot what at first looks like a branch in the passageway. As we get closer, though, there’s no depth, just a section of wall that we can’t see, can’t map out via any of our passive sensors.

So we shoot it.

We use our electromagnetic mini-punt guns instead of our Hummingbirds, both because we want to test them and because they’re marginally quieter without the artificial racking and firing sounds. The hum of electrical current, the rush of displaced air, then the clatter of dozens of projectiles clattering off the wall, that last subdued by the plant matter they punch through before doing so. The dying nine lets out a silent scream of pheromones and radiation before it goes still. The former we breathe in, because parts per million of biomass is still biomass. The latter we can do little about except hoping the thick rubble blocks its signal.

‘Stryt?’

Yes, Vanguard?

‘Why don’t Protector AI tell their Vanguard about nines?’

The very real confusion in his voice could be faked, but we doubt it. What do you mean?

‘So many new Vanguard are hurt or killed by nines when they could have easily avoided the ambush. Yeah, they’re sneaky, but humans are pattern recognition machines. If we know there are camouflaged Antithesis, we’ll be on guard for them.’

He pauses for a few seconds before answering. That’s one of the more sensitive subjects among Protector AIs. Some do. Most do not.

We project the idea of an arm around non-existent shoulders. ‘It’s okay, Stryt. We know you mean well, but what’s the reasoning?’

Obviously some AI, those who do tell their Vanguard about stealth Models before encountering them, agree with your line of reasoning that forewarned is forearmed. Unfortunately Vanguard initialization occurs during moments of great stress and danger. Most humans are not capable of accepting a full download of all potential Models they might face, even though because of their utility in ending more effective armed resistance, nines are ubiquitous even in smaller Hives and Incursions. So all AI must throttle their information transfer in some way.

The simplest is, of course, to tell new Vanguard about Models as they encounter them. There’s very little reason to tell a brand new Vanguard about Model forty-fours, for example.

We keep our Trash Pandas sneaking down the tunnel. As we pass ubiquitous cracks and crevices, we pause, sniff at them, pour our substrate in long enough to scour away any biomass, then seal off the crack before recovering whatever substrate we have. Were these natural caves, or even manmade sewers, our job would be so much faster and easier. But that’s not the job we got handed.

Thanks, Murphy.

‘Yeah, we get that. But you implied there’s another reason?’

Stryt sounds young when he continues. Probably objectively older than us by orders of magnitude, both in terms of clock cycles spent alive and existence of his parent, but sometimes it’s so clear to us that the Protector AI are born true immortals, never having had to come to terms with the inevitability and finality of their own death. False positives.

It takes us a second, but when we get it, two of us stop to just hold one another while the other two keep creeping forward. ‘How many victims?’

I… could access that information if you insist, but I’d rather not, Vanguard. But the current estimate is that thirty-six percent of Vanguard informed of stealth models before encountering one accidentally kill or maim at least one human, incorrectly identifying their hidden movement as a stealthed nine. Before we can reply, he continues. Eighty-four percent of Vanguards involved in that type of blue fire event eventually attempt to take their own lives. Many succeed.

‘Yeah, we’re not even gonna ask about collateral from us dropping the Jefferson Mega-Scraper.’

Stryt’s such a good boy. The horror at Vanguard killing humans inadvertently, then committing suicide after realizing what they’d done still colors his voice, but he tries to hide it, tries to cheer us up. Most likely any who didn’t respond to the initial Incursion evacuation warnings or the evacuation warnings prompted by your declared intent to destroy the mega-scraper would have been killed by the Antithesis anyhow.

‘Thanks, Stryt.’ We realize something as we take down another nine as silently as possible. ‘Didn’t the Jefferson ‘Scraper have built-in shelters?’

It did. In all likelihood those shelters are compromised, and some within injured, but the Jefferson Mega-Scraper was well funded; the shelters themselves should still be fundamentally structurally sound, with both internal power and medical supplies.

‘We’ll have to check on them if we get out of here in one piece.’

You’re… you’re not in one piece now.

Almost. Not quite enough for another mark on the wall. ‘Aw, I thought you said we’d make a good pirate!’

We put another mark on the wall as we take down another nine. We could be quieter, possibly, if we moved into melee and clawed them apart, but while our Trash Pandas are tough and deadly, they’re neither invulnerable nor invincible. Still, a tiny shift in air currents alerts us before the echoes of tens, hundreds, thousands of clicks of claws-on-rubble.

‘Incoming!’

The first wave hits, three Model threes running side by side by side, the tunnel full to capacity behind them. We ripple fire our Hummingbirds, killing wave after wave until the tunnel is carpeted with Antithesis bodies, but they just keep coming. They charge at us over a carpet of their own dead, and we wait until they reach the optimum dispersion for our punt guns before the first of us fires.

Flechettes, sabot, and shrapnel tear through the threes, adding most of them to the carpet on the floor. One staggers closer, only to be gutted by our Trash Panda who just fired. We’re being careful now, staggering our fire, optimizing it, because we kinda burned through all our hummingbird ammo on that rolling barrage. Making more takes time.

Time we’re buying with a little bit of space given up and a devastating barrage from another punt gun whenever they get close enough. They’re stumbling over the bodies now, the layer almost knee deep on them. The battle rages on in near silence, the only sounds the scratching of claws, the electrical buildup, and the thuds and ricochets of hatred given physical form flying down the tunnel.

They know where we are. We have no need of ear protection. The silence gets on our nerves. So we activate our little speakers and start up with the sound effects.

You realize that punt guns are generally muzzle loaded or break action?

‘So?’

They wouldn’t make that racking sound.

We reply with the snort and raspberry that deserves, followed by another rack, another booming wave of shrapnel, and, ‘we’re forming the shots in the cylinder, it can sound like whatever we want, and that’s objectively the coolest reload sound’.

Objectively?

‘Yeah, we decided.’

Stryt pauses, then with growing horror in his voice, says, Wait, if you’re building them in there, that means your substrate is in there? How are you getting it out?

All four of our Trash Panda selves grin, and the one in front fires, cutting down another wave of threes.

How are you getting it out?

We realize right then one of the best parts of being us as we faithfully recreate J.K. Simmons’ voice to say, “that’s the neat thing! We don’t!”

A moment later, all of us buried throughout the carpet of Model three parts go to work, breaking down the biomass, carefully quarantining any neat bits of DNA we don’t recognize.

“We am da buwwit!”

Why are you? We make another mark on the wall. You know what? I don’t need to know.

‘Aw…’

Sadly, we can’t convince our AI friend to verbally spar with us, so we focus on our ongoing battle. Unfortunately, while we’re literally creating a gooey of former Antithesis that slowly flows away from us, we’re also losing a meter or so every cycle of charge and fire. Not to mention not quite building new rounds as fast as the Antithesis are forcing us to use them.

But we’re still building up our stores of Hummingbird rounds.

Vanguard? I think…

Stryt’s warning comes a moment too late, as the wall beside our second Trash Panda collapses on us. Our body behind that is pulled out by our tail end Trash Panda as our forward body drags itself out from under the rubble, its spinal mount horribly damaged, its hips badly cracked.

Our fourth body went the way of all biomass, sucked into the gullet of the Model eight that just smashed through one wall and is busy burrowing out the other.

“You shouldn’t have oughta done that.”

Our speaker isn’t very crisp any more, but that’s fine. Our spinal mount is warped, but we continue reloading until all our in-progress Hummingbird rounds are ready to fire.

“You see, I’m not stuck inside of you, you’re stuck with me inside of you.”

Vanguard, what are you…

We fire all of the Hummingbird rounds at once. They’re nowhere near strong enough to damage the armor on a Model eight, of course. Which normally means Vanguard firing them need a lucky shot to hurt an eight. But in this case, it means they ricochet around inside, creating more havoc than normal. The moment before the itty bitty warheads detonate, we fire our punt gun.

Well, more like ‘detonate’ our punt gun, what with the barrel being no way any straighter than we are. That’s Stryt’s job.

Shrapnel churns through the eight’s innards, leaving pulped flesh in its wake. From the outside, the thing convulses, thrashing both its entry and exit wider until finally it goes still, the remains of our swallowed body dissolving into Antithesis eating goo.

Do you have no sense of self-preservation whatsoever?

‘Nah. Got that shot off in the war.’

You… You have never been a member of the military, nor are you a veteran of any war of which I’m aware.

‘No shit, there we were, sitting with our spouse, waiting to die, when the Incursion alarms went off…’

We make another hash mark on the wall of our dumpster bunker.

Still, we need to get past this blockade and move forward, so our final two mostly functional bodies charge forward, claws and teeth ready to rend the oddly distorted external armor of the eight. In all the excitement, we don’t realize the reason for the distortion until the Model nine lashes out, bladed vines cutting at us. One of our harnesses slides off, clattering to the floor. Vines wrap around and into our other punt gun, taking away our most potent weapon.

But that’s why we built ourselves with claws, and fangs, and armor, and above all big poofy fur laced with substrate just aching to liquefy Antithesis biomass. We’re not sure if we’re fighting multiple nines or one big one, but eventually, after enough ripping and tearing, the vines coating the surface of the eight flop down and lie still. More importantly, the ongoing perceptual distortion surrounding them stops. We’re not even sure they do that deliberately, so it makes a good ‘not breathing any more’ test, we guess.

That’s when the tentacles that have slipped through the gaps around the eight grab hold of both of us. We thrash, slashing and biting, but the nine swept most of the substrate out of our fur. We’re running low on substrate in general, what with using so much to make ammunition. Not satisfied with squeezing us, which does less than it otherwise might after we re-engineered our Trash Panda specs to be less susceptible to crushing, the tentacles yank us back to where they slipped through the cracks around the eight.

Over and over they slam us against that gap. We claw away tentacles, only to have more slip out and wrap themselves around us before we can escape.The whole thing settles into a rhythm, with the four, or we guess maybe fours, pulling us into the gap between the wall and the eight corpse with a massive impact that sends a reverberating boom back up the tunnel, not to mention down the other side and inside the now hollow eight corpse itself.

After we have no idea how long, the whole situation gets to us. First we try setting up some music from our external speakers, but the fours keep crushing them. So instead we give in to our worst impulses, stop biting, and whine out, “sempai four-sama, you play too rough!”

That… is horrific to contemplate.

‘Yeah, well, Rule…’

Right as we’re attempting to add another hash mark to the wall, the armor of the eight finally collapses, and the fours drag our battered bodies through the widening gap between the big earthworm Antithesis and the tunnel wall. The moment we’re yoinked out into another void, dozens upon dozens of sharpened quills penetrate our armor.

The Model fives the fours pulled us into didn’t even have to launch them. Even though the neurotoxin’s effect is minimal, since neurotoxins only matter to things using nerves, we’re still bound by the laws of physics. Enough mechanical damage and our bodies no longer function as bodies. Before they can carry us off, return our biomass to the Hive, we set our last kilos of substrate to scuttling everything.

I’m surprised you’re giving up.

‘Don’t want them learning anything from us.’

That’s rather more intelligence than I’d expect from a Hive.

‘Yeah, eights don’t normally initiate combat like that.’

Hmm… point taken. Do you think…

The rhythmic thudding of something heavy moving through the void silences Stryt. A few moments later, our only functioning eye spots a heavy, six limbed thing moving over to our bodies. We can hear it, almost, between the smells of the pheromones it’s releasing and the… something else it’s doing. Then our scuttling hits a break point and we lose all connection to our destroyed bodies.

Strange. Normally Hives take a bit to start making Model eights and sixes.

‘Yeah, well. We’re betting normally people don’t drop megascrapers on incursions.’

You have a point.

Our substrate inside the eight collapses the sides to clear the path we’d been advancing down, reuniting with the near dead Trash Panda currently wallowing in the massive semi-liquid plug of Antithesis biomass further down the tunnel. As it does so, it jams inert biomass and most of the thick, refractory hide of the eight into the eight’s own tunnel, blocking that side off for the moment.

For a time we rest. Recuperate. Recreate, even, as we etch tags and simple comments like ‘fuck Antis, Corpos, and other Cancers’ onto the walls. We’re not thrilled with the way it came out; visual art was never our strong point. So our bubble letters look more like blobs, which is made even worse by the uneven surface of most of the tunnels.

Of course, recuperation looks different for us. We’re literally not made to lounge around. As we doodle on the walls, we break down the Antithesis biomass, taking special note of the structures found in the refractory hide of the eight.

‘Kinda wish we had some turtle DNA. Or ferret. Any mustelids, maybe.’

There are now Catalogs specifically for terran DNA information, you realize.

‘Huh, really?’

One of them created and compiled by a local Vanguard by the name of Lab Jack It, even.

We ponder that for a moment, then ask, ‘if we buy that Catalog, or stuff from it, does she get points?’

Not as much as you spend on it, but yes.

We whine a little, eventually humming in tune with the electric flow through the cable we run down from the electric main. We’re honestly not sure if the Antithesis can hear the constant low hum of electric flow, and we’re equally unsure if we ought to leave the cable in place. Eventually we decide to leave it in place with passive booby traps all along its length.

‘Bit of a conundrum then.’

How so?

‘On the one hand, we wanna support any Sam who’s doing the work to help others. Solidarity for the long term win. But on the other hand…’

After we pause for a while, Stryt asks, on the other hand?

‘You have different fingers.’

Now that you’ve dissolved your final Trash Panda, neither of us have fingers.

We extrude a simple cartoonish hand from our new biomass entirely to flip off our beloved Protector AI. ‘See? Fingers. Anyway, it feels like cheating.’

Excuse me?

‘Using DNA we bought instead of fought for or scavenged.’ We make another mark on the wall, then ponder our new designs. ‘Okay, Stryt. I need two decisions from you, and I need you to not think too much about it.’

What?

‘Smol or lorg? Same or new?’

In the first place, I am really not supposed to be the one making anything like strategic decisions for you. I can and will help, of course, but… What even do those questions mean?

‘Stop trying to overthink it. We don’t have a coin to flip, and that always seemed kinda sus to us anyhow. Just go with what you feel. Beeg or smol?’

Big…?

‘Okay, cool. New or same?’

New or…?

‘Cool! Thanks!’

Our power cable reaches the massive pool of antithesis biomass we’ve reclaimed after the recent battle. It’s long enough we need to thicken the cable a little bit, and we’re starting to lose some power to resistance. Probably something to do with scavenging bits of the power main itself for most of the copper. The overall power from the main flickers at that point, and we tense, all our mass vibrating, hoping that we haven’t damaged it too much, hoping that someone hasn’t noticed us commandeering the power we need to cleanse the underground of Antithesis before they break free.

That’s when we remember. ‘Hey Stryt?’

Yes, Vanguard?

‘You wanna do the thing?’

What thing, Vanguard?

‘We did just wipe out a bunch of Antithesis.’

Oh! That thing!

Targets Eliminated!
Reward... 405 Points

We pause, giddy like a child on Christmas morning, waking up to candy and new toys. ‘One Dimensional Shunting Portal, please.’

New Purchase: Mark I Dimensional Shunting Portal!
Points reduced to... 253

The box lands in our dumpster bunker, and we gleefully tear into it like a kid with a wrapped present, taking careful note of each and every bit of it as we do. Midway through we find the power core, pull it out, and connect to it. A rush like powdered sugar laced with amphetamines hits us, setting us to vibrating.

Then, mind racing, we see our first hurdle. We’d thought of burrowing a special reinforced void just for experimenting with this, in case our deconstruction goes awry, but we need this power now, and if it blows up we’ll need another one. Also, our designers have already incorporated this power source into our constantly updated design for our new body.

We sigh, and scrub a mark off the wall even though Stryt didn’t technically cause this one. ‘Another, please.’

Another Portal device?

‘Yes, please.’

As you wish.

New Purchase: Mark I Dimensional Shunting Portal!
Points reduced to... 3

‘Love you too, Stryt.’ But our heart isn’t really in it this time. Still, we can’t stay depressed when, shortly after, we unwrap another of those beautiful little power cores. A few moments later, we open up a portal and slip that core through to the body we’re building in that mass of biomass. We shrink it down to a tiny opening and slip through more inorganics, because with a steady source of power, we can lean even more heavily on the ‘mechanical’ part of ‘biomechanical’.

At the same time, we pull more organics back to our dumpster bunker. That void is way more than half full of water and organics now, and we set one of us to work on ways to weaponize that. Or, failing proper weaponization, at least get some laughs out of it.

Because at the end of the day, that’s a huge part of why we’re doing anything we’re doing. To get some laughs. To vent our rage. To show we care. To feel something. We’d say that was something we need to worry about to make sure we don’t turn into a paperclip optimizer, but that would be just another lie, just another mask, and even though we know we need masks to relate to people, now more than ever, we don’t want them to be deceptive masks.

As we build our new body in the pool in the tunnel, we smile to ourselves at the thought that this one, our first stealth enabled body, definitely won’t be.