Cloneborne 080 – Field Scholarship (Patreon)

Rirris didn’t bother to hold back her expressions. Her vacuum armor’s helmet hid most of the parts of her anatomy used for expression, so she was able to be properly appalled and horrified without letting the Kaedekin know as the magicshaper cheerfully related the absolutely horrifying story of not just the creation of their species, but that of their buddies as well. She already knew that the Kaedekin had been made to be slave soldiers, but actually hearing the story of how a species was made as a tactical decision to give said slave-soldiers better weapons gave her the creeps and made her want to writhe out of her shell.

And according to the story, it didn’t even actually give them better weapons until well after it would have helped!

A part of her morbidly wondered if the Kaedekin’s cheerful attitude was the result of an engineered brain chemistry imbalance.  From her experience with humans, the sort of mentality who would think cloned slave soldiers were a good idea would also be the sort to confuse cheerfulness for morale. Not that the Kaedekin were human, but from their story it’s clear their creators were.

She wasn’t sure how to regard the ‘Lyrica’ entity whom the buddies were based on. While the buddies were supposedly based upon her, it was made clear they were not exact copies in either hardware or software. So… they were not true clones. However, they had specifically been made as intelligent, self-aware artificial intelligences for the stated purpose of being better weapons, which… yes, that was very accursed demon thinking.

And so Rirris listened in horror as all the Kaedekin-girls—and Kaedekin-buddies—enthusiastically explained how the first buddies were made using specially-made circuit boards and microchips that had been designed to trap loose magic so it would congeal into spirits. The software the processors were running had been some sort artificial intelligence that was known to be capable of attaining self-awareness when given sufficient input, runtime and memory, which was… well, it literally sounded like something out of a science fiction story written by someone who didn’t know what an artificial intelligence actually was or how they worked, hadn’t bothered to research how, and had based their concept on older ideas of artificial intelligence from other science fiction stories. Once a spirit actually came into existence, it simply became the continuation of the artificial intelligence, resulting in a fully digital consciousness with its own soul.

“And… buddies are still… born this way?” Tahkehl said. The shinkamrai scholar specialized in studying family and social structures.

“Oh, yes,” Seraphine said, smiling fondly. Rirris made a note to add that distinction, because while her scholars would likely recognize the smile, they wouldn’t be able to identify the fondness. “When a little sister reaches seven years old, they get a buddy to raise to help teach them responsibility. Enough magic congeals for the buddy to develop their soul about a year later, and from there the two are together for life. Oh, watch your step.”

Unconsciously raising her feet higher to get on whatever they were stepping it, Rirris’ mind couldn’t help going back to old stories, of how young tsokeri were gifted with an equally young kivhar like her when they reached a certain age, and the kivhar would grow to be emotionally dependent on the accursed demon. Those stories always had messy ends…

Her thoughts were interrupted as her antennae felt the familiar increase of weight that was the sign of upward movement, and Rirris refocused, looking around in surprise to see that they were rising into the air. She looked down, and did a double take at the bright blue opaque surface she was standing on. Tapping the heel of her vacuum armor’s boot against it, she judged by the impact its consistency was closer to metal than wood or ceramic. “Is this vennplate?” she said as the others looked down as well.

“Yup!” Seraphine said. “Nearly all girls can fly, so we don’t really have elevators in the fortress. Or anywhere, really. Since you all can’t fly in your suits, this is the best way to get you up to the park under the dome. I doubt you’d enjoy climbing all the stairs.”

Given how many landings they passed, Rirris had to agree. Her wings probably wouldn’t enjoy the experience either. Her muscles were strong, but trying to gain altitude purely with flapping and no updrafts was an exercise for masochists and those obsessed with fitness, which was about the same thing.

“Are parks important in your culture?” Izutu asked. Her area of expertise was customs, traditions and social mores, and how they shaped societies.

“Not really?” Another of the Kaedekin escorting them—Rose—said. “Mostly they’re just places people go to play because they have a lot of space and there’s a good chance you’ll find your friends and crèche-sisters there.”

“Doesn’t that mean they’re important?” Rose’s buddy Snow said.

All the Kaedekin visibly thought about this, as if they’d never considered it before, then simultaneous blinked and made the same expression of understanding. “Ooooohhhhhh…” they chorused.

Had they actually been unaware of the significance of parks in their culture until it was pointed out? Or had they simply never considered the matter worthy of consideration? Perhaps they were at a transitory phase, where parks are gaining importance while a different location is losing it?

The feeling of acceleration ended. “And we’re here!” she heard Rain call out. “Please stay away from the edges and watch you step! This way, please!”

Once they’d stepped off the platform and it had ceased to exist—they had all pointed their scanners at it but there had been do detectable residue. No radiation, no unusual gasses, no microscopic debris, just the platform seeming to start to dissolve before abruptly winking out like an amateurish special effect some beginner had stopped bothering to render onto the clean plate image.

“Hypothetically,” Tahkehl said once they were moving again, trailing behind at the rear of the crowd while Rain explained about the park, “what would happen if a buddy no longer wished to be with a girl?”

“Oh, like she wanted to go do something by herself?” Tahkehl’s escort Asuna said. “Well, then she can transfer herself into a mobile chasis. There are a lot of different configurations that can be built for her. In fact, that’s why most buddies are sized the way they are, so they can be fit into a standard buddy interface for a chassis.”

“Ataraxia has one of those,” Seraphine said. “It’s a whole T-type tank that’s rigged to be her full-body chassis. When I’m in there, I don’t need to do anything except provide power and magic for its systems.”

That gave them all pause. “A tank?” Ulada said. “She has a chassis that’s a big container of water?”

Seraphine shivered, an extremely disturbed expression on her face. “No, thank goodness. Here, we’ve got pictures…”

Ataraxia was removed from the holster at Seraphine’s belt where she hung, and with a practiced movement the Kaedekin-girl opened the buddy like a book, revealing a screen on one side and some sort of interface on the other. An image appeared on the screen, which showed… some sort of large war machine in vivid purple and fluorescent green. It was rectangular, with metal wheels resting on a large belt of linked metal treads. An unmistakable weapon barrel rested on a turret atop the war machine, and suddenly everything was put into context as Rirris recognized the basic shape.

Ulada and the rest of her scholars peered at the image. “It’s some kind of self-propelled gun?” Khasugha said.

“No, that’s a different class of weapon,” Ataraxia said, and to Rirris ear she sounded slightly offended at the comparison. “My tank is a heavily armored, high-mobility weapons platform. My sloped armor is designed to deflect any ballistic projectiles, my reinforced structure resists blunt force impacts from handheld weapons and rampaging animals, and my hybrid cannon is multifunctional and capable of switching from railgun, gauss gun, plasma repeater, plasma beam, laser cannon, shockwave cannon, and freeze ray configurations!”

“Which I maintain is a waste of perfectly good heat,” Seraphine said in the tones of long-suffering exasperation.

“Look, freeze rays have better projection capability! If you can devour heat from a target from ten kilometers away, I’ll change my cannon, but until them, nothing changes!”

Around them, Rirris scholars were frantically taking notes. Well, she supposed that answered the implied question of whether the buddies were allowed agency, although not the question of whether buddies had the choice of leaving the girl that… essentially gave birth to them. Huh. Rirris quickly typed up a message with her thought, and sent it to Tahkehl. Best to avoid the topic for a bit until they had more information on how both sides saw the relationship.

Rirris was of two minds about the Kaedekin’s park.

Within one mind, the science fiction reader in her was disappointed. The mostly-white of the plants were disappointingly boring, saved only by the patches of ultraviolet. It was still a very drab book cover, wouldn’t click on to check the sample or the summary.

The scholar in her was listening eagerly as Rain explained how the Surcease-sourced plants—grass-analogues, shrub-analogues and tree-analogues similar enough to the ones she remembered from Earth that she agreed with the rudimentary classification—had no coloration in the non-ultraviolet spectrums because they mostly used infrared and ultraviolet light for their synthesis, although they seemed to use a miniscule amount of magic to make the process energy-efficient enough to be sustainable. Apparently some Kaedekin had compared the metabolisms of the local plants and the plants that the Kaedekin had brought with them, and come to the conclusion the resulting energy was all wrong. More interesting was how the plants had evolved to survive in a heavy-metal environment. Many of the wood-analogues chemically integrated the metal into their structural fibers, which apparently made for very durable building materials. Others diverted the metal towards seeds or seed-spreading structures to protect them, usually in high enough concentrations that technically-organic structures were at least ninety percent metal by mass…

She wanted to take samples for the botanists back at the ship to analyze and try to grow, but as much fun as that would be, Rirris knew it would be simpler to just ask the Kaedekin themselves directly. Besides, any samples she took might be infected with some kind of local metallophagic bacteria that would start eating the Dhekhajhyde’s superstructure… again.

The park itself was well-tended and obviously cared for. Benches, tables, and huts for what Rirris assumed were biological disposal are spread out on either side of the path they’d been following. Despite how there seemed to be Kaedekin everywhere, no one seemed to intrude on each other. Or if they did—as in the case of the children who were still tracking them—no one seemed to mind. Occasionally, there would be groups statues, never less than three at a time, brightly painted and life-like. The first time Rirris had seen them, she’d wondered why they’d been standing so still until they’d gotten closer and she’d seen they were standing on stone slabs.

That got her scholars taking notes again, hopefully putting together some rudimentary notes for the scholars on the Dhekhajhyde who had art subspecialties. Unlike the statues she’d seen on Earth and its vassal worlds, these statues weren’t standing straight in constipated dignity, cast in bronze. Instead, they were all brightly painted with the clear intention of looking life-like. Most of them were in action poses or standing dramatically as they held weapons that either pointed diagonally at the sky or forward at some absent foe. Unusually, every single one of the statues depicted someone wearing some sort of mask, visor, or a painted mask that partially obscured their faces. More significantly, none of them looked like Kaedekin, or at least any of the Kaedekin Rirris had encountered and was currently surrounded by. Some of the statues were clearly of human males, and many were taller than even the tallest Kaedekin-girls they’d encountered in passing.

“Who do the statues depict?” Rirris asked as they passed a group of statues. “They do not appear to be Kaedekin.”

“They’re not,” Seraphine said. “The statues are of heroes from the old universe, from the time the Mass Production Models were decanted. Those statues are the After School Student Alliance, protectors of Yosakimachi.”

“Protect it from what?”

“Anything,” Seraphine said. “Vampires, gravehearts, ashhearts, ghosts, the Wandering Nightmare, western youkai, criminals, nuisance streamers, supervillains, illegal government goon squads, sanctioned government goon squads, government goon squads doing evil things…”

Rirris understood about half of that, including the part about government goon squads, because she’d lived on human-controlled worlds and even for those who weren’t spies their attentions wasn’t anything you wanted on you. As to the rest… “Aren’t vampires human fiction?” she said. She’d picked up that much from her time on human-controlled worlds, some sort of fictional monsters similar to the unshaped that could come into being if a watershaper or Symbol was missed and left untaught until the day they died.

That caused Seraphine to give her a confused look that eventually turned into realization. “Oh, right, you wouldn’t know either. Vampires are real. They’re made from…”

Rirris and all the rest of the scholars around were soon frantically taking notes.