Saturday, October 24th

I woke up from Arina’s voice whispering into my ear. “Wakey wakey, you have an appointment!”

With a yawn, I extricated myself from her arms. “Thanks for reminding me.”

B.S.O.D. had asked me to come in for a meeting about the fate of the Mack base on San Juan Island. And I was already short on time for getting there. So I gave Arina a quick kiss, jumped into my clothes and got going. At the last moment, I remembered to give Arina a set of keys to the shelter. She would always be welcome here.

Arriving at SHOCKS, I was greeted by B.S.O.D. and Palace Athene herself. Apparently the topic had great priority.

Once at the meeting room, Palace immediately started with the first item on the agenda. Namely what to do with the Mack base on San Juan Island. While unfinished, it was already larger than Styx Base and had significant manufacturing capabilities.

Palace said ”If we can hold that base, its manufacturing capabilities could be quite valuable. If we actually have useful blueprints.”

I could see where she was going with that. The San Juan Island base had four large-ish Mack fabricators of the type I found at Styx Base. Even with the recent upgrades to Styx Base, the newly captured base could exceed its potential output.

Or maybe I should get into that business myself? Mack Fabbers were less versatile than my Protector-tech versions, but could still manufacture a lot of stuff that outperformed human tech.

So I piped up “Have you considered disassembling the machinery on the base and bringing it here? I’m willing to help with that, either for a consulting fee or for part of the stuff we are taking.”

Silently, I subvocalized “Elya, check the real estate market for potential business locations.”

There are two suitable places that you could financially afford right now. A third one might be in your reach if you make a lucrative deal here.

Palace Athena replied “We still need some blueprints to actually manufacture to make it worthwhile.”

She had a point, so I offered ”I have collected quite a few useful Mack blueprints over the last months. A small fusion reactor extracted from blueprints of some larger Mack models, various drones and the teleport based logistics system the Macks use in emergences. I’m willing to share that stuff for a fair price.”

Trading away these would not hurt my point income, as only weapons I equipped HANAF with were relevant there. Also, it was their own damn fault if they had not figured out the little reactor by now. They had the Model 3 they had requisitioned in February for over eight months now.

Palace said “Sounds good, but we still need a business partner to actually use the stuff. SHOCKS does some research but we are not an industrial company. B.S.O.D. and our financial department will look into it.”

Having foisted that responsibility on someone else, Palace continued ”Next on the agenda, we have completed the printing of the replacement brain for the MG whose personality was trapped in that Type 42. Miss McCallan, do you have the data available? And how did you carry them out when you copied them anyway?”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

”As B.S.O.D. may have told you, my “little aug” is a bit more than that. The “bit more” includes enough memory capacity to hold the data. She has a name by the way, Little Aug is called Elya.”

A melodic voice came from the loudspeaker in the ceiling. I recognized it as Elya’s, apparently she had hijacked the P.A. system.

“It is nice to finally talk directly to you. I am Elya, Caitlin’s personal AI assistant. Among other things, I support her in subverting and analyzing Mack computer systems. In the case of the Magical Girl’s stored consciousness, I have the data right here.”

Palace: “Oh fuck. This P.A. system was supposed to be intrusion proof.”

But she quickly recovered and continued in a businesslike tone “I suggest we waste no more time and restore the young lady. I hope she will be able to accept her new body.”

Together, we made our way to the lab. The new body of the girl was lying in a bed, the new cyberbrain mechanically installed but still blank. SHOCKS apparently wanted to avoid too much of a mad scientist vibe, hence a bed and no lab table.

Her parents were also there, but Palace and B.S.O.D. still maintained the pretense of confidentiality by calling the MG only by her codename “Memory”. Of course, Elya had already found out but would not tell anyone but me.

At a silent prompt by Palace, I started to explain what we were doing. “Hi, I’m Caitlin McCallan, an ally and sometimes technology supplier of SHOCKS.

“As Palace may have told you, the Macks had captured Memory and turned her into one of their Dark Magical Girls. After a team of Magical Girls defeated her and retrieved her body, we eventually found out that her consciousness was still present in the robot brain.

“We managed to download it and manufacture a new replacement brain, as the Mack hardware was already deteriorating. A replacement body as well, think of it as a prosthetic for the entire body. This took a while, and I'm sorry we let you stew in uncertainty all this time.

“But now we are ready to upload your daughter into her new body, and we hope you don’t mind that she is a bit changed now.”

The worry in the parents’ faces was obvious, but after a moment her father composed himself and said “Please continue. We want nothing more than to welcome Alice back. It doesn’t matter if she has a mechanical body now.”

I made a show of connecting some data cables, making it look like we were copying data from a local server. While a few people already knew about Elya, I did not want to have it shouted from the rooftops yet.

A tense twenty minutes later I disconnected the cables, closed the data port and started Alice’s boot process. Seconds after, she opened her eyes and started looking around with bewilderment and a little confused. Then she started feeling up her own body.

Her mother looked increasingly disturbed by the show. So I told her “Under the circumstances, this seems normal. The Mack body they stuffed her in had a hard and unyielding torso. I think Alice is simply reassuring herself that she is no longer a Mack puppet”.

Perhaps I had put that too bluntly, as Alice’s mom started to cry. She would not stop until Alice sat up and asked “Mom? It’s okay, I am back! Don’t be sad!”

After an extended three way hug with her parents, Alice frowned and said “Wait a moment. This body feels somehow wrong. As if I’m not a Mack anymore but… not human either?”

Before things could get too awkward, I jumped in. “That is because it is brand new. The Macks have thrown away your human body, and when Team Z-4 defeated you in Mack form, that body got messed up as well. Fortunately, we can make replacement bodies now. Mechanical, but not Mack-made. You got one of these.”

B.S.O.D. hissed into my ear “Dammit, say things like that less bluntly. You have the subtlety of a bulldozer!”

Alice overheard that remark, and her face lit up with mirth. It was totally worth the scolding I just got. Even if I suspected that B.S.O.D.’s words would stick in some way.