Wednesday, November 25th, 2048
Wendy and I had delivered the first two fabricators, and a big production batch of Shivs was running that did not require our presence.
That took some of the time pressure away, so I decided on a trip to the long neglected Styx Base. I had some unfinished projects there. We’d also been neglecting to deal with the Mack girl we had captured in the last emergence.
So Wendy and I loaded some raw materials and Miss Mack The Latest into the Explorer and took off for Styx Base, located on the southern flank of Mt. Olympus. Sleet and rain pummeled the cockpit as we flew, making me glad about the Protector-grade quality of the nav suite. It even had 3D terrain maps programmed into its memory and could show it to us in augmented reality.
I landed us as close to the entry as possible, and we rushed to get to the comfort of a dry base. The first item on my agenda was two automated turrets for defending the base entrance. Those would be very similar to the turrets on the Explorer, but with thicker armor I had deemed too heavy for use in the Explorer.
Number two was to produce a few more Lesser Battlecats for reinforcing the base defense.
While Wendy started to manufacture stuff and restock the fabricator supplies, I checked the housing area for damage. Fortunately everything was still in good shape. The worst thing was the air being a bit stuffy. So I returned to the manufacturing area for the Type 21 and started disassembling the teleport equipment.
Soon Wendy joined me and helped pull the broken machinery apart. She mused “Omega Lily certainly did a number on this one. I think our only option is to recycle it.”
“I’m thinking of rebuilding it. I managed to nab the blueprints a while ago, but I still haven’t figured out how they sent the Twenty-Ones to Vancouver Island without a gate on the receiving side. Perhaps building a new, functional gate I can experiment with will help me figure it out."
“And that gets us to number three on my agenda, fixing the large recycler near the base entrance. We will need its higher throughput to process this material in reasonable time.”
“The fabbers are still busy with the turrets and the Battlecats,“ Wendy replied. “Spare parts for the recycler can come after that. In the meantime can we explore this digital immortality thing a bit more?”
“You have a digitized mind now, and digital data can be copied with no loss. So we can copy the data from your Mack brain.”
Wendy made an irritated face. It was obvious that she was still not entirely happy about running on Mack hardware. The electronic brain was the only thing that was left of her Mack body, but it still bothered her.
“..and store them on an external drive. I have a suitable one prepared back at the Victoria shelter. Then if something happens to you, we could restore that copy to a new body.”
“What about the brain? Do we have Mack brain blueprints? Not that I’m eager to wear more Mack hardware than I absolutely have to.”
“There is a suitable Protector design I purchased the blueprint for. Memory, who is an MG SHOCKS and I rescued some time ago, is already using one. Making one will occupy a fabber for almost six weeks though, so we might want to start a print before we leave here.”
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“OK, that makes sense. Can I have it once it is done? And how does it compare to what I have now?” Wendy begged.
“Sure, and in terms of capability it would not be too different. Perhaps slightly better, especially at thinking deep thoughts.”
Wendy radiated silent happiness at that prospect. I let her bask in it for a bit, then I reminded her of the final reason for our trip.
“We still have that Mack MG to check out. I hope the person inside is still salvageable.”
Together we put the head of the Mack MG into the contraption I had used before to examine Arina and Wendy. Explaining the process to Wendy along the way, I rebooted our latest sleeping beauty.
Her eyes began to glow and blink, then settled on a constant dim red. She immediately snapped “Flame Arrow!”
Nothing happened. The eyes flickered some more, then she said in a monotone, robotic voice
“Error 404, body not found. Rebooting…”
I had heard that sequence before, so I interrupted the process. “Elya, stop that and reboot her with free volition restored!”
A few seconds later the intialization process repeated, but this time it ended with a rather confused robot girl.
“Where am I? Repairs necessary. Return to operational area of high priority.”
I reused the greeting I had given Arina four months ago. “Good morning, my synthetic friend. You are at Styx base and its location is classified. But first, what are you?”
Desperation overwhelmed her face, and if she still had tear ducts, we might have gotten wet feet.
“I don’t know anymore. I am supposed to be Model 54401 Combat Unit, Nanite-Enhanced. I also remember being Arina the Magical Girl.“
Uh oh. I suspected my love life might become a lot more complicated. But at least I had a good idea about how to help her. If she was like my Arina, she would be happy to get her body replaced with the SecondLife system, and probably the snack upgrade as well.
So I explained “We have captured you while you were on Mack business, and we have a way to restore your free will. That is why we can have this discussion now.”
“But what happens now?”
“You are not the first MG we have retrieved from the Macks. Our standard welcome-back package is a replacement body. Still mechanical but not Mack-built. The only thing you would keep for now is the electronic Mack-brain, and even that can be replaced with time.”
“You can do that? I cannot believe it!” A slight ray of hope shone on her face.
“Have done it before.” I pointed at Wendy. “Wendy here is already wearing one of these.”
“Yes! I want out of this awful Mack body as fast as I can!”
“We have an agreement then. It will take a while to build your new body, so take a nap in the meantime.”
“Wait, what…” the former Mack girl started to ask, but Elya had already shut her down.
Wendy was quite shocked “Are the Macks producing us in series now? Fuck, I hate the thought of fighting and killing versions of myself.”
“I’m even more worried about Arina. Both of them. When I suggested the backup option to her, she explicitly declined and said she would be uncomfortable with that.”
“That really sucks. But even so, we still have other obligations. The Shivs will be ready by Friday morning and we have promised prompt delivery. Perhaps we should do what we can until then, and postpone the rest for a future visit.”
I considered that good advice and accepted it. We managed to upgrade the defenses and fix the recycler by late Thursday, but the teleporter had to wait.