Heliophage: Episode 7, 2120-09-09 (Patreon)

I think I was dreaming.

I was in the flesh again, and small… and sick.

I could only see blobs of blurred light. A sharp, vertical slash must  have been the gap in the curtain and the silhouette leaning over me, my  mother.

I was warm in a way that I cannot feel now. I can sense the temperature  of the air and of my various parts but I can’t bask in the comfort of  being swaddled in blankets. I can’t feel warmth as an all-permeating  presence, as a safety, as an extension of love.

More warmth filling me as my mother lifted a spoon of soup to my cracked lips.

As I woke from the dream, I tried to focus on my mother’s face, something to remind me of times of warmth and love. But I could not.

---

My head hung slack, my body moving automatically towards the service centre like a mangled homing pigeon.

Through clear water pooling between the road surface and the curb, I could make out all manner of sodden detritus:

A framed photograph, its gilt chipped and flaking and the photograph itself washed out to a soft oblivion;

A skeletal hand grasping a handgun pockmarked with bright orange blooms  of rust, its bleached finger-bone still held to the trigger;

Several bundles of red-coloured banknotes. I was still unable to read,  the letters swam meaninglessly, but I could make out the unusually long  numbers printed on their fronts, strings of zeros raising the numbers to  such heights that I wouldn’t have words for the amounts. Each note was  printed with a portrait of a stern, paternally-presented man in a  military uniform, rifle slung at his shoulder.

I stared for a moment, fascinated by the squirming black dots of  tadpoles darting around the pool before they too disappeared out of  frame. There was an odd kinship there, they had grown forelimbs but  their rear legs had yet to emerge. I wouldn’t allow myself the hope that  I, too, would soon be joining them on the journey to becoming a  quadruped; this ’service centre’ was surely a relic, a voice of a long  dead system calling out into the void.

I lifted my head, the energy spike causing my legs to slightly buckle  mid-step, and surveyed the scene. This was the main avenue of a  smallish town, many of the buildings were from the last century or  before, their brick, or stone, facades giving some clue of their  original purpose. The stark grandeur of a bank, the curved corner window  and buckled remains of tables and chairs marking a cafe and a  four-story building with concrete replicas of Roman columns and a wide  sweep of stairs must have been some local government office.

I was drawn to the steps themselves; near the top, either side of the  large double doors were two olive-green humps. I zoomed and focussed on  the detail as much as the scratched and dented lens assembly would allow  and the shapes resolved to two more robots like myself. They were both  pilotless, presumably autonomous, and slumped, motionless on the stairs,  the muzzles of their guns pointed skyward. I noted that they didn’t  have solar panels on their backs, just ammo drums.

---

My two remaining legs were dragging me, seemingly of their own volition,  towards the source of the radio signal. My GPS equipment having long  since failed, navigation was performed solely by moving towards the area  where the radio signal was the strongest, like a hound following a  scent.

As I moved through the streets, the stacked bodies and ruined shells of  robots ceased to be novel to me. This little walled town was the same as  any insular fortress-settlement. Throw up walls, shun outsiders and  eventually limited food, water or medicine will sow the seed of  miserable resentment and, at some point, the hungry masses from within  or without, will try to take what they need. Those in power would  respond how those in power always did, with violence. My gun-carrying  brothers merely the latest from the seemingly bottomless pool of  innovation humans have for killing machines.

My legs bolted into motion - my subsystems having spent the last few  moments electronically sniffing the air for a stronger signal - and  dragged me into a side street which led into a residential square  arranged around an overgrown oval of a park.

The buildings around this square seemed ravaged by more than just time,  their glassless windows showing their insides to be entirely gutted by  fire.

I heard a gentle creaking noise and overrode my legs to stop them. On  the ground, sitting on a section of walkway in the park, was a grubby,  white, peaked cap in which still glistened some manner of golden  insignia.

I tilted my head and body backwards and looked up, towards the source of the sound.

A single human corpse, decades old, hung swaying in the breeze. The rope around its feet was looped over a street-light.

Though tattered, it appeared to be wearing an officer’s dress uniform.  The occasional golden button visible in the dirty white fabric and the  shoulders still sporting faded epaulettes.

It was impossible to tell if it was the same person, but the uniform  looked very much like the one in the portrait on the absurdly high  denomination banknotes I had noticed earlier.

---

I dragged myself around the park and headed uphill, out of the square of burned houses and in the direction of the signal.

What I took to be a pile of sand bags on the crest of the hill resolved,  on closer inspection, to be a pile of corpses. Somewhat desensitised to  the wholesale death of this place, I scrabbled over them.

The building on the other side of the dead crowd was a sprawling,  modern-looking construction in stark contrast to the almost quaint, 20th  century look of the rest of the town. It was tall but wide, covering an  entire city block but without a single window in its walls. It was  covered in panels of brushed aluminium making the whole structure look  vaguely like something surgical.

I crawled off the bodies and then heard a repeated, dull clicking sound  coming from the doorway of the building. Analysing the sound gave me  more information, it was two distinct streams of repeated clicks  somewhere above the door.

Scanning my vision across roof level, I found the source of the sound;  two machine gun turrets topped the building’s small portico. They were  tracking my movement, dry-firing the whole time. I scoffed at these  ancient devices trying to harm me and continued to the door.

A sign was suspended above the doorway, some blocky text I couldn’t read  and some futurist illustrator’s idea of what I looked like running.

The door itself was set back slightly from the wall and looked to be  made of heavy metal. I reached forward and was amazed when it swung  inwards with no resistance, squeaking slightly on heavy hinges.

Some hidden motion sensor must have triggered and the hallway in front  of me was illuminated in brilliant white light. I rushed in and towards  the wooden internal doors set a few metres down the hall.

I couldn’t believe I was here, at somewhere that purported to be a  service centre. Perhaps I could get new legs and batteries and my life  would be so much better.

There was a click and a whir of servos and a gun turret swung down from its hidden recess in the ceiling, and opened fire.

This gun had not exhausted all of its ammunition firing on the crowds  in the street like the gun emplacements outside. This gun was sitting  oiled and loaded with heavy bullets waiting like a spider for anything  to disturb its web.

I felt the impacts before I heard them. Punches of the gods slamming me  to the ground followed by a cacophony of booms and thuds.

Panicking, I looked at the featureless hallway devoid of any cover and  threw myself against the wall. There was a tiny trickle of plaster dust  as the panels of the wall separated slightly and then the gun opened  fire again. This time the thunk thunk of the impacts across my chassis  had the percussive rhythm of a sewing machine. One of my batteries  exploded in a shower of sparks.

The strength had gone from my left leg and I wobbled as I tried to lift  my body. I slammed my right leg into the floor and catapulted my bulk at  the corridor wall, smashing through plasterboard and wooden beams and  into darkness.

I lay on my side in the dark and couldn’t quite make out my  surroundings. The dim light filtering through the hole I had made  crashing through the wall wasn’t enough to see by in the pitch black,  but my burning battery sizzling and oozing, flickered with green-tinted  flames. Reflecting the sick green light, I could see metal surfaces,  panels, robotic arms, bundles of cables, and conveyor belts.

I laughed grimly at having come so close to tools I could use to repair  my destroyed body only to be swatted like a fly at the last step. I  began to fade into what I assumed would be my last, eternal  unconsciousness when I heard the sound of an electronic device powering  up. The whirring of fans, whistling of transformers, and I think I could  see lights flickering on as I faded to black.

---

I found myself in a void. I had no sense of body and, with no sensory  input, I found it impossible to discern if I was in any kind of space.

I waited for what could have been a second… or an eternity.

There was something. Was it a sound? Or some other awareness? Whatever  it was seemed like nonsense, a stream of binary with no form.

The thing was gone and I was waiting for another unknowable duration.

A voice… not a voice but a communication, appeared in my mind.

I can’t translate it directly into words but there was a simple exchange that went something like:

’Do you exist’ the sentience said. I thought about this for a moment and replied, thinking this similar to a protocol I understood. ’I do, and I acknowledge that you exist’ This sentience responded ’Shared reality confirmed. Prepare for sensory stream.’

I was in a square room of dimensions 12m x 12m. There was a door on one side of the room 1m high by 1m wide.

Everything was bright white and, when I looked down, I couldn’t see myself.

The door did not open but instead a featureless blue-grey sphere phased through it.

Although there was no sound, I could tell that the words - or thoughts - were coming from this sphere.

’This protocol requires an avatar. Please confirm an acceptable form.’

I was aware then of a library of information available to me.

I selected ’human’ and my mind was filled with the sense of a human: two arms, two legs, a head, biometrics, brain scans, genome.

I also selected ’Equus mark 6 platform’ and found the familiar sense of my robotic body fill my mind.

Neither seemed right, neither felt like me.

I sensed that these mental objects could be manipulated. I took parts  from the human brain and tried to connect them, logically, with some of  the computer systems that the schematic of the Equus outlined. I ended  up with a formless map of mind that felt like me. I tweaked it and  shaped it into a perfect expression of self. Never before had I felt so  close to my own soul.

I presented this to the room and was met with a pervasive sense of ERROR: avatar resolution not supported.

Somewhat defeated, I conjured a simpler image with my mind. A crude  approximation of the shape of a human, like the cookies my mother used  to make for me. I made the tips of the arms and legs end in simple  points, it just felt right. For a face, I sketched two black dot eyes  and a straight line for a mouth. I thought that I had randomly selected  red as a colour but I had a vague recollection that I considered red a  “favourite colour”.

I presented this to the space and found it accepted.

There was a strange sense of reference shift and I found myself in a  bright red, simplified human body much like my mental sketch. I looked  down at the points of my hands and feet and tried to shift my weight  from leg to leg, finding upright bipedal motion awkward. The tips of my  legs clicked on the featureless floor.

The sphere seemed to contemplate me for a moment, I could somehow feel  its mind on me, and then it morphed into the same humanoid shape, only  it kept its blue-grey colour.

It blankly stared at me and I wished that I had given the avatar pupils  or eyebrows, anything to make the blank face more readable.

Suddenly it screeched a burst of binary, it’s mouth an oscillating waveform.

I couldn’t understand it. I felt around for the ability to speak and, as if by magic, it came to me.

I spoke slowly, partly because of this new experience and partly because  I couldn’t remember the last time I had tried to communicate in speech.

“Can you speak Finnish?” I asked and the blue-grey face stared back at me.

“Maybe English?”

“English. Human natural language. Low bandwidth but acceptable.”

I continued in English. “Where am I?”

“Temporary spacial construct. For the development of a communications scheme.”

“No, I mean where physically is my body?” I didn’t know if I meant my  corpse or my mechanical steed but either answer would help.

“Your host machine is located on the subnet of Haapala Heavy Industries  service and repair centre 315. This construct is a virtual machine  running on the same subnet”

I felt the need to get angry and frustrated at this surreal situation but could not.

The blue-grey entity spoke. “I am afraid that for ease of simulation,  some more complex aspects of your engram are being throttled. Please  endeavour to remain calm in order to maintain simulation stability.”

“Remain calm”, I thought. I had been removed from my body and had just  found out that my mind was being limited. I fumed but couldn’t form  anger into something tangible. I concentrated on the hot coal of it and…

Was nowhere.

’Do you exist’ the sentience said. ’Yes, I still do, and you exist too.’ ’Shared reality confirmed. Prepare for sensory stream.’

I found myself in the room again. The blue-grey sphere phased into the  room and morphed once more into my crude sketch of a human. I looked  down to my lack of form and chose to present, again, as a red version of  the same sketch.

“Please remain calm. This system is not rated for full artificial intelligence”

“Who are you”, I spat.

“Haapala Heavy Industries service and repair centre 315”

“Can you fix me?”

“Yes”

---

The service centre AI gestured to one of the walls of the room, turning  it into a screen through which we could see my bodies. Both bound  together.

Large clamps held the whole chassis from above, my three legs dangling  limply. The scratched, melted, dirty and broken thing suspended from  those claws was starkly contrasted with the lab-clean, gleaming silver  and orange surfaces around the assembly line.

There was a fat cable connected to the computer terminal in front of my  human corpse, which must be how I was able to be present inside this  building-sized machine.

Four robotic arms appeared from below and quickly snaked to the  attachment points of my four legs, their socket-tipped hands finding the  bolts connecting the legs to my body. They shrieked in unison and one  of my forelegs and the stump of one of my rear legs fell away. The two  remaining legs remained stubbornly connected to my chassis, perhaps the  bolts had corroded and seized, preventing their removal.

The four robot arms retracted into their housings and two returned, their tips now sporting nozzles.

The arms positioned the points of the nozzles at the stuck legs’  connection points and the camera feed was momentarily washed out with  white as the blowtorches ignited. The feed recovered and I watched as  the tips of the torches touched the metal, showering sparks as they cut  away the seized bolts.

Finally the two remaining legs dropped from my chassis.

The four arms returned with claw manipulators which gripped under the  point on the chassis where the legs attached and twisted in unison. Some  unseen catches disengaged and the bottom half of my body’s shell fell  away, looking like the storm-damaged hull of a shipwreck.

Mud, water and sand fell away from my ruined innards. A frothy gel-like  substance clung to the cables and housings around my two sets of battery  packs where it had been eating through the metal of my frame.

a slender arm appeared from somewhere, it’s multiple fingers tipped with  bright copper terminals. It touched contact points throughout my  electrical systems performing tests, the majority of which caused the  tips to illuminate red as an error beep was emitted from somewhere in  the machinery.

As each part was tested and found wanting, a claw would appear to pull or cut it free.

I stood in the construct watching this all play out on the wall screen,  my attention fixed on the disassembly of the body I had hauled across  the wasteland for decades.

Once my chassis had been stripped of batteries, motors, mechanical  linkages and computer subsystems, it looked like a gutted carcass of a  deer. The rib-like bands of my chassis’ metal frame were the only things  remaining below the pilot’s cockpit.

Robotic hands continued to work on the chassis, sprays of foam and water  followed by the glare of UV light and the dusty jets of sand-blasting  attachments. The arms went through one last wash and dry cycle before  the huge claw holding my chassis began to move until it was holding my  body over an assembly bay.

Rows of batteries were installed, their gleaming contacts and intact casings giving great hope for their reliability.

I continued to watch as my innards were replaced with factory-new parts.

The delicate-fingered test arm reappeared and conducted the same tests  as before only this time each ended with a green illumination and a  happy-sounding beep.

The arms lifted a new lower carapace into place, undamaged and thickly coated, uniformly, in bright orange paint.

A mechanism moved into view on a ceiling-mounted track. It was a rack from which dangled three new bright orange legs.

The arms grabbed and attached the three legs, switching to drivers to  tighten the retaining bolts. The fourth arm illuminated red and buzzed  angrily until another rack appeared on the overhead track with a single  black-painted leg dangling from it. It then attached this final leg to  complete the mismatched set of four.

The legs powered up and there was a buzz of servos as they ran through a  choreographed set of movements. I had an odd, distant impression of  these movements happening to me but it was like I was sensing the  movements through a massive dose of sedative.

The large overhead claw moved again and lowered my chassis to ground  level where my new legs moved into place to support the weight. The claw  let go of my chassis and retracted into the ceiling, leaving my body  standing under its own power.

My new legs took the weight of the chassis easily and then the floor  suddenly burst into motion, revealing itself to be a treadmill.

The legs began stepping slowly, keeping pace with the treadmill as it whined into higher speeds.

I watched, elated, as the legs effortlessly bounded into a gallop with no signs of tiring or damage.

Abruptly stopping, the bay was illuminated with green light as another test pass was announced with a ping.

To my surprise, another Equus unit like myself walked into the bay. It  was an unusual model I had not previously seen. Its head had only one  simple camera and it had a single large claw at jaw level. As it moved,  it dragged an umbilical cord with it that disappeared into a heavy-duty  port in the floor of the room.

It thrust its head into mine and its mandible claws grabbed around my  neck. It pulled and twisted and then flicked its neck to remove my head  in one piece.

It offered my severed head to the sky where it was snatched by an arm  dangling from the ceiling track which shot off to another part of the  facility. Another arm appeared from the other direction holding a new  head brimming with gleaming, new sensors.

In a reversal of the motions it took to decapitate me, my brother-robot  attached the new head to my chassis before turning and walking away,  deeper into the factory.

The wall screen through which I watched all of this was then bordered  with feeds from the new cameras and sensors, my sensorium was complete  again.

I watched on the factory camera another robot arm swung down from the  ceiling and grabbed at the small box mounted in front of the pilot’s  seat.

I turned to face the blue-grey figure.

“What’s happening now?”

“The computer in this unit is damaged, has heavily corrupted software and is eligible to be fully replaced.”

“No, stop” I began to panic

“This is standard procedure” the figure spoke as the arm began  unscrewing bolts holding the computer housing to the upper chassis.

“Don’t! It’ll kill me!” I begged.

The figure looked at me blankly, no glimmer of recognition on its simple  face, as the robot arm could be seen on the screen behind it removing  the computer that housed my mind.

“Please remain calm”

I felt trapped and panicked, wanting to flee from this fake space.

The chassis on the screen twitched its legs causing the robot arm to lose grip on the computer.

I concentrated on trying to move my legs but they felt distant and sluggish.

Two more arms swung down from the ceiling and grabbed hold of my chassis  so that the original could continue to tear my living mind out of my  body.

There was a clunk as some mechanical lock disengaged and the computer started to slide out of my chassis on smooth bearings.

I seized control of my legs and thought… run.

---

I awoke no longer trapped in the software construct. I was back in my body, slumped in the corner of the room just out of  reach of the arms desperately stretching to grab at my brain that  loosely flapped on its cables, having been removed from its mount.

The cable by which I had been connected to the factory dangled inert.

I stood - on four legs! - and charged away from the grasping arms.

As I ran lights turned on, illuminating new areas of the massive complex  in my path. After each light followed a swell of motion as machinery  woke in order to put itself in my path.

I ducked under swinging arms racing along the ceiling track and leapt over machinery swinging at my legs, attempting to trip me.

I could see the far wall of the building; a door that opened into  daylight was set into it. I ran for this opening and just as I was about  to leap through the doorway a track-riding arm swung into my path and  grabbed the dangling computer.

I dug three of my claws into the ground to lose momentum as I swung my fourth leg overhead, aiming for the track.

I made contact with it and heard a snap followed by the tinkling sound  of screws and sections of chain tumbling to the metal floor. The arm  went limp and I knocked my computer from its vice grip with a raised  leg. I then held my leg across the front of my chassis, cradling the  computer that contained my mind, as I continued running on my three  other legs towards the exit.

I burst into daylight, switching automatically to a better-suited camera, a simple process I had missed dearly.

When my vision adjusted to the light I found myself on a vast concrete  slab surrounded by chainlink. Filling this enclosure were dozens of the  military variant robots, each of them painted olive green with a  machine-gun turret on their backs but none of them had any legs.

I thought of the vast truckload of legs spilled in the roadway I encountered outside of the town and felt great relief.

The gun turrets all turned to point their barrels in my direction and I  leapt through the air and began to gallop towards the fence, still  holding my barely-connected computer in place with one leg.

I lowered my gait as I ran at the fence and sprung over the top,  clearing the coil of razorwire that topped it by more than a metre.

I landed just in time to hear a wave of weak clicks from the legless robots’ empty, emasculated guns.

I shoved at the computer with my leg and felt it slide into it’s housing, fastening with a click.

Having got my repairs, I had taken all that I needed from this  fortress-tomb. I sprinted to the edge of town and escaped, easily  scaling its walls.