Mama and Papa headed to bed with full and happy stomachs. Dorothy was happy that she could provide her parents with something that they enjoyed so much. The night would be Dorothy’s third night as an Automata. So much had happened already that it was amazing to think that it had only been two and a half days.
The first night, she had become absorbed in the handcrafts of adjusting Papa’s old Adventurer gear to fit her, and the second night she was focused on learning more about her systems. Tonight, though, she didn’t have any such distractions and the idea of sitting, alone, in the house while her parents slept, suddenly felt very lonely. Dorothy wondered if all the nights to come in her, potentially, long life would be long stretches of loneliness; waiting for the dawn and the rest of the world to wake up.
Her FAQ had told her that she could “power down” to conserve energy and replenish her inner mana as well as speed up her repair systems. When she was at full health, it didn’t seem to make much sense though. It would be like sleeping, but instead of spending time moving around she’d be in that void space she went to when she was offline. Not exactly “dream land”.
Before they went to bed, Dorothy had talked with Mama about it and gotten her to agree to letting Dorothy visit Jenny in the Knight Patrol. This was going to be Dorothy’s first time spending any sort of social time with another Automata. She was a bit nervous but also excited. Jenny was sure to have loads more experience in dealing with Automata life and the transition to feeling comfortable in one’s own metallic skin. Jenny certainly seemed comfortable.
Dorothy stepped out into the night. There were still plenty of taverns and pubs open for business as well as night entertainers looking for clients. All in all, it was relatively quiet. She strolled through the city in the direction of the Imperial castle and before long neared the compound for the Imperial Guards. As she walked by their entrance gate she snuck a peak past the guards to see if she could spot any hint of the elite company of Automata and Botanicas that her father had told her about, the AutoBots. All she could see though was buildings and the occasional soldier and maybe a bit of the training grounds.
Dorothy got directions to Station 4 where Jenny was assigned and headed back the direction she’d come. When she was going through the setup process when she first got her Automata body, she was given a choice of different “plugins” that could be installed. The illustrated robot had said that her version number could only support two of them but that had to mean that if she could level up her version number higher then maybe she could install new ones. That guy had also said something about being able to change out plugins. That Map plugin was sounding better by the day. Dorothy wondered if that meant that meant she could swap them out like equipment. She made a mental note to ask Jenny about it.
As she walked, Dorothy noticed some adults skulking around in a back alley but they didn’t seem to actually be doing anything; just leaning against the walls and smoking herbs. They did watch her as she walked by though, which inspired her to pick up her pace. As she got closer to the station, she could see more knights in the area. Some were laughing and talking with each other, while others were double checking their gear as they came on shift. She even saw a couple of knights with people in restraints, leading them into the station building.
Dorothy found the main entrance at the top of a large set of marble stairs. The building wasn’t as large or as grand as the guild hall, but it had a feeling of authority to it. The entrance was flanked by two large statues. On one side was a gryphon and on the other was a blindfolded elf in mage robes with a sword.
Beyond the entrance way, Dorothy found a reception desk staffed by a Botanica. Botanica were very similar to Automata in that they had an almost manufactured look to them; like they could have been made by a skilled artificer. Dorothy didn’t know much about the species, but they seemed to her to be Automata made from resin cured wood and vines rather than magisteel and mana fiber. She wondered if they had a HUD and POS like she did or if they were completely organic. The Botanica at the desk resembled a wooden puppet, though one with abnormally long fingers and long green hair made from vines. Its face was either covered by a large featureless mask, or was the large featureless mask. Otherwise, it was dressed in the uniform of the Knight Patrol and looked up at her as she approached.
“Can I help you?” it asked in a voice that reminded Dorothy of the sound of dry leaves blowing through the forest floor, and gave away zero hints as to a gender.
“Um, yes! Hello, I’m looking for an Automata Knight? Her name is Jenny, she said she worked here? My name is Dorothy, we met a couple of days ago.”
“Ah, Knight Wakeman... Motor Unit XJ9. I am paging her now.”
Dorothy couldn’t see the Botanica actually doing anything. It just sat there and looked back at her. Dorothy looked around anxiously and back at the staring Botanica. The silence drew out to the point of becoming awkward. Just before Dorothy was about to say something, the Botanica spoke up.
“I’ve located Motor Unit XJ9. She will be with you in a moment. Please have a seat,” it said in a rather monotone deadpan.
Dorothy gave it a nod and looked around to find a small group of chairs on the other side of the large room, against the wall. She found a seat and settled herself. Dorothy watched as the knights went about their business, some were dressed in a more comfortable uniform and looked like they could be officers or maybe they were support staff while others were in full armor. Occasionally one would come in dragging a drunk person and take them beyond the reception desk and deeper into the building.
After a 13 minute wait, Dorothy heard her name, though the voice was high and effeminate, though still had the metallic sound of an Automata. She looked up to see a thin and girly looking Automata dressed in a light leather armor version of the Knight Patrol uniform. Her face was similar to Dorothy’s in that she had large eyes that glowed with a teal color, an expressive mouth, and the same lack of nose. She had short, spikey wire hair that matched the teal of her eyes and she was grinning at Dorothy.
“Wow! I hardly recognize you from the factory fresh kid I saw a couple days ago. I like the locks a lot! Come on, you’ll have to show me what other upgrades you’ve gotten.”
Dorothy stood up, this Automata was about a head taller than her and seemed to radiate energy.
“I’m sorry... you are?” Dorothy asked, confused.
“I’m Jenny!” she laughed. “This is me!”
“Um... The Jenny I met was um... much bigger...” Dorothy said, giving this Jenny a suspicious side eye.
Jenny rolled her eyes with a lopsided grin and grabbed Dorothy’s hand. “Come with me factory fresh. Yo, 1-84B, I’m taking my friend Dorothy on a ride-along,” she called to the Botanica.
“Acknowledged, a report ticket has been generated,” 1-84B replied.
“You know, it’s funny,” Jenny said as she pulled Dorothy past reception and down a corridor. “We’re technically the robots, but they sound and act more like robots than we do but they’re entirely organic.”
“I wondered... I’ve never met a Botanica before,” Dorothy admitted.
“It kinda creeps you out, right?”
“YES! I mean... when I asked for you it said it was paging you but all it did was stare at me.”
“Yeah, that one is tapped into the building. It kinda lives in that spot and has roots running everywhere.”
“Huh... so you’re really the same Jenny?”
“Yup,” she replied without offering any further explanation.
After some twists and turns, and down a couple flights of stairs, they arrived at a large underground room with a massive set of doors that opened out to the street. Around the room, Dorothy could see several transport wagons as well as heavy weapons and armors. Jenny stopped in front of what looked like a large Automata that had been partially turned inside-out.
As Dorothy looked closer, she could see some of the details that looked familiar to the “Jenny” that she remembered, but its upper half was split open like a clam.
“This here is my trusted partner, my motor armor. I can’t let you climb inside but you can check it out,” Jenny offered.
“Wait... so, it’s not an Automata?” Dorothy asked, confused.
“Not as such, no. It’s not alive, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m what you’d call a load bearer. I can generate enough mana to fully power a body that size as well as handle the bike configuration.”
“That’s kind of amazing. How does it work?”
“Here, I’ll show you. We’ll go for a ride.”
Jenny climbed into the armor, sliding her legs into its legs but grabbing some handles that were located within the torso. She gave Dorothy a big grin and chuckled a bit before the whole thing folded in on her. Lights came to life, running along the accents of the armor ending with glowing white eyes flaring behind a dark visor.
“Pretty cool, right?” Jenny asked in that deep mechanical timber that Dorothy remembered.
“SO COOL!” Dorothy exclaimed. “I’ve! I mean! I’ve never seen anything like that! I had no idea that there could be smaller Automata inside of bigger Automata! That’s. That’s just crazy!”
Jenny transformed into her motorcycle form and pulled up next to Dorothy.
“Get on, let’s go for a ride.”
“Are you sure that’s okay? I mean, what about that devil knight? We’re not going to get in trouble, right?”
“Regina? Nah, don’t worry about it. She’s off duty tonight. Hop on.”
Dorothy did as ordered, and climbed onto Jenny and sat in the saddle, not exactly sure what she should hold onto or how to properly sit on the motorcycle; she’d never even been on a horse before. Jenny pulled forward, aiming at the large doors leading to the street. Dorothy nearly fell off, but quickly learned to hold on with her legs and where the hand holds were. The sensation of traveling by motorcycle was pretty exciting as they rode around with the wind in Dorothy’s face. It was hard to hear anything or be heard over the sound of the rushing wind when they got up to speed so Dorothy gave up on conversation and just enjoyed the ride.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Jenny drove them around the capital, sticking to the larger, high traffic roads, but when they got near the slums she slowed down. Dorothy noticed a steel cabinet of some sort on the street corner, a blue light was flashing on top of it. Jenny pulled over, near the cabinet and had Dorothy get off before transforming back into armor mode. She placed a hand on the cabinet and something inside clicked and unlocked. When it was opened, Dorothy could see a crystal ball inside.
“Motor Unit XJ9,” Jenny said as she placed a hand on the ball.
“Motor Unit,” a hollow sounding voice replied. “Suspicious activity spotted near your location. Number 12 Male with gray feathers and red tunic in the vicinity of 212 Cleric street reportedly acting skittish and took off running on foot when approached by healer unit. Healer unit had been responding for a domestic service call.”
“Copy that, show me in service.”
“Acknowledged.”
Jenny withdrew her hand and closed the cabinet back up. It locked on its own and the flashing light went dark.
“Maybe we’ll see some action,” Jenny said to Dorothy as she converted back to motorcycle. “Cleric street is a block from here.”
“What’s a number 12 male?”
“That’d be a harpy.”
“Oh! Like the other day. I heard there are harpy gangs now, causing trouble, and that you guys are looking for the mastermind.”
“I don’t know about a mastermind harpy or any proper gangs, but there has been an increase in petty theft and shabby looking harpies running around on foot instead of flying.”
“That is odd, now that you mention it. They don’t exactly have walking feet.”
“Not at all. The ones we catch all seem to be sickly and their feet are messed up from running around for a while. Ah, here we are, 212. Um, I see you’ve got a sword so I’m guessing you’re an Adventurer now. Any spells or other weapons I should know about?”
“I’ve got a MyFirstBlaster loaded with clay rounds that I can cast [explosion(small)] on, and an integrated blade I can charge with ice element,” Dorothy explained as she got off of Jenny.
“Okay good. If anything is crazy or gets scary then I need you to stay back and out of the way... but it’s good to know that you can defend yourself if it comes to it.”
Jenny converted back to armor mode and looked up at the building. It was a shabby looking apartment building in a shabby looking part of town. She had her headlamps activated as she carefully searched the area. Dorothy switched her vision over to the infrared and ultraviolet overlays and looked on with curiosity. It seemed odd that Jenny kept her headlamps on, but maybe that was because she wasn’t actually trying to sneak up on anyone.
No one seemed to be around that Dorothy could see. She could see the residual heat of foot prints from people that had been here and then left a short while ago. The healer unit must have left along with whomever had made the original call for help. When Dorothy looked at the building, it also looked empty, though she could see the glow of mana coming from the second floor.
Jenny could see it too and gently tried pushing on the door to find it open easily. She then moved to the side, her motor armor was far too large to comfortably get through the door, so she opened it up and climbed out. Dorothy noticed, though, that Jenny now had a large blaster type cylinder on her left arm. She motioned with her head for Dorothy to follow her so Dorothy converted her own blaster and carefully entered the building behind the knight.
The interior was filthy. It looked like the place hadn’t been cleaned since before Dorothy was born. Dirt and grime covered everything, old food, questionable stains, and small heat sources behind the walls were the hallmarks of the building. Something squeaked and scurried near Dorothy causing her to squeak herself and grab Jenny.
“You okay?” Jenny asked. “You want to wait outside with my armor?”
“No! Thisisfine! Everythingisfine!” Dorothy blurted out in a bit of a panic before feeling embarrassed, then jumping again when she heard a scratching noise come from the wall near her head.
“C'mon kiddo, you got this,” Jenny reassured her. “The only things in this building are ratches and such and they can’t hurt tough Automata like us, right?”
Dorothy tried to agree, but it came out more like a chirp. They found the stair well and carefully headed up, each stair creaking loudly and announcing their displeasure at being disturbed. On the top floor, Dorothy could see multiple rooms branching off from the central hallway. A door near the front of the building was half open, and they could see more mana glow coming from it in the ultraviolet spectrum.
“Knight Patrol,” Jenny announced as she tapped on the door with her blaster, gently pushing it open further. Dorothy couldn’t see any heat signatures coming from the room but there was probably policy that Jenny was following. Or maybe there were things that didn’t give off any body heat... Inside the room, the mana hung in the air like a cloud, filling the apartment.
Molted feathers were everywhere along with waste and other trash. The place appeared to be a harpy nest, though one that was poorly cared for. Harpies weren’t known for being a particularly tidy species to begin with but Dorothy thought this whole building was pushing it. They made their way through the apartment, following the mana cloud to a room that looked to be set up as some sort of alchemy lab.
Jenny carefully picked up a bottle with a glowing liquid residue in it and a faint etching of a human hand print on it.
“What’s that?” Dorothy asked.
“My guess? Illegal potions. I don’t know what kind though, we’ll have to take this back to the station to find out what it is they’ve got here.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Not much, I’ll have to write up a report and in the morning they’ll send over an alchemical investigation unit to dismantle this place.”
“Do we have to like, stand guard or something? You know to make sure that nobody hides the evidence!”
“Ha! Nah, we don’t have to worry about that. I’ll show you.”
The two headed downstairs and exited the building much quicker than they had entered. Dorothy would be happy to never have to enter the building again. Jenny put the blaster back into its storage area inside of her armor and retrieved an elongated cube the size of a soup canister. She then gave Dorothy the “wait here” signal and headed back into the building.
After an excruciatingly long time that was actually only about five minutes a magical barrier spread out from somewhere over the building, covering the area in a shifting green energy dome. Jenny returned shortly after, dusting off her hands.
“See? All good,” she told Dorothy with a cheesy grin.
Jenny placed the etched bottle into an [Inventory] space and climbed back into her armor. After she converted to motorcycle mode, she had Dorothy get on and they passed through the barrier and headed back to the station.
When they got back, Jenny parked her armor in the large room with all the other transports and led Dorothy to a room with several desks. Each desk had stacks of papers with a variety of forms as well as writing implements. Jenny sat down at an empty desk and sifted through the form stacks until she found the one that she needed and patted an open area on the desk, indicating that Dorothy should sit down.
“You know,” Jenny began, “a lot of folks think that the Knight Patrol is all chasing down bad guys and solving crimes, but honestly most of this job is filling out paperwork.”
“Did you start out on the Knight Patrol? When you were converted, I mean,” Dorothy asked.
“Yeah, well sorta,” she replied as she tapped her Knight badge on the form and her information automatically filled out on the paper. “I was a knight before my conversion. I’d only been on the force for a couple of years and ended up getting on the wrong side of some really bad guys. They caught me at the wrong place at the wrong time. Nearly killed me, messed me up real bad and left me for dead.”
“Oh no,” Dorothy said, biting her knuckle, “oh Jenny, I’m so sorry.”
Jenny waved away her concern. “Regina’s the one that found me. I was too far gone for the healers, so to save me...” she gestured towards her body. “The Patrol covered the costs and locked me into a 20 year contract, but I was planning on retiring from here anyway so nothing really changed in that regard. Besides, I can do stuff now that I never even dreamed was possible before my conversion. I’m sure you’ve noticed plenty of stuff like that already, right?”
“That’s true. I’m way stronger and faster now than I ever was, even before I got sick. Plus having the upgrades, being able to make up my own spells, my HUD, all that stuff... It’s really cool.”
“Right? Thanks to that stuff, I can do things that none of the other knights can do. I’ve become a really useful team mate and I love my job.”
“Do you ever miss it? Your old body?”
“It was definitely tough starting out. I couldn’t help but focus on all the things I was missing out on; things I thought were a part of life that I couldn’t have. But after a while, I realized that those things didn’t mean that I was lacking in my life... just that my life was now different.”
“I really miss my mama’s cooking... and I feel sad that I’m never going to fall in love or have a family...”
Jenny put down the quill and paper and looked at Dorothy, placing her hand on Dorothy’s knee. “Hey, food, okay I’ll grant you that one but you’ll find other things that you can enjoy just as much. But just because you’re an Automata now doesn’t mean you can’t fall in love. You won’t be able to have babies like an organic but that doesn’t mean you won’t have family. You’ll adopt people into your life that you treasure, you’ll create your own family. It just might be in a different way than what you have thought it should be before now. You still have your mom and dad, right?”
Dorothy nodded.
“And you still love them, right?”
Again, Dorothy nodded.
“Well, there’s your proof right there. We may have a heart of stone in the most literal sense but we can still love and laugh and cry just as much as any other species out there. Except maybe the Botanica... I have no idea about those guys.”
Dorothy laughed as her body shuttered a bit, which she now realized was simply how Automata “Cried”. Jenny stood up and put her arms around her and held her close until her shuttering stopped.
“See?” Jenny said, “just like anybody else, it just comes out a bit different. We can’t do the whole ugly cry sort of thing though, this is about it. Really emotional spikes can wreak havoc on your systems and potentially put you into a system lock until you cool back down. So never bottle things up, okay? Talk to me, talk to your parents, talk to your friends. If ever things are bothering you, you have people you can rely on.”
Dorothy nodded. “Thanks Jenny.”
“Anytime kiddo. Now let’s submit this report and go interrogate a prisoner.”
“Eh??” Dorothy said incredulously.
Jenny just laughed and grabbed the report form and headed out of the room with Dorothy following behind. Dorothy was introduced to Jenny’s leftenant when they turned in the report and she was asked a couple of questions about what she thought of patrol work, details about the shabby apartment, and if she thought she might want to become a knight. They seemed nice enough but being an Adventurer was the only job for Dorothy.
After submitting the report, they went down into the lower levels of the building where the prisoners were held. It wasn’t long term incarceration, criminals were taken to a proper prison for that. This was mostly people that were being held for a couple of days at most while they waited for a trial or a hearing. Jenny interacted with other knights that were on duty to watch over the people being held and was directed to one of the cells. Dorothy counted eight cells total and they varied in size. Likely to accommodate multiple sizes of people. Most of them were empty, thankfully, though she did see a bunch of drunks grouped together in one of the cells. Jenny told her that they had a number of regulars in the group that often got into trouble at the local pubs and would need to spend the night here to sober up. She even greeted some of them by name.
In the cell that Jenny had been looking for, Dorothy recognized the harpy boy that had assaulted the old goblin lady. He was sitting on a stone slab in the corner with his legs tucked up and had his wings wrapped around him. He looked tired and worn out with heavy bags under his eyes; just staring at the wall. Jenny waved her badge at a security plate and the door unlocked. She stepped in and closed the door behind her, having Dorothy wait outside the cell. She squatted down to be able to look at the harpy but didn’t get any closer to him than the door.
“Hey Tomms, how you feeling?” she asked the harpy.
Tomms glanced up at her but didn’t say anything before going back to looking at the wall.
“Your hearing’s in the morning. You excited? You might get to go home.”
Tomms ignored her.
“So Tomms... tonight I was out riding around, you know getting some fresh night air, and I found a really interesting looking bottle. Check it out, it’s got this etching on it. Kinda looks like a human hand print.”
Tomms looked in her direction as she pulled the bottle out of her storage space. Jenny held the bottle up to the light as if she was examining it, allowing the small amount of liquid inside to roll around.
“Oh look, there’s still some stuff inside of it.”
Tomms screeched and lunged at her, but before he could cross the room she’d already converted her arm into a thin blaster and hit him with a shock bolt. He hit the ground unconscious and Jenny put the bottle back into storage and exited the cell.
“I guess that didn’t work. He didn’t say anything,” Dorothy huffed.
“Not so, my young friend. We actually got quite a bit of information.”
“We did?”
“We now know for certain that the handprint etching is meaningful and that it’s related to these harpy kids. We also know that whatever this potion is, it’s something that would cause this kid to try to attack a knight in the middle of a jail for just a couple drops, even though he’s been in there for the last couple days. So this stuff is either highly addictive or powerful enough to make him want to gamble on it. We’ll take this to the lab and let them figure it out. Meanwhile, I’ll talk to Regina about learning more about this etching.”
“Wow! I didn’t catch any of that. You’re definitely going to be a great detective one day. I don’t know how you keep it all straight.”
“Well you know,” Jenny said, leaning in and lowering her voice, “I’ve got a bit of a cheat.”
“Oh? Do tell,” Dorothy said, getting excited.
“Here,” Jenny said, tapping two fingers on Dorothy’s forehead.
Attachment Request
Attachment Request received from Jennifer Wakeman:
- Notepad.exe
* Accept
* Decline
Dorothy accepted the request and received a new program called [Notepad].
“What’s this?” she asked.
“I use that all the time, it puts a little icon on your HUD for notes and stuff. Now when you make a mental note about something, you can make an actual note... in your head.”
“Oh that’s so useful! Thanks!”
“No problem, there’s higher ranked versions that will let you store the things you see or hear too. I use those for work stuff. Really useful for providing evidence at a trial, but the basic Notepad is handy on its own.”
“Yeah for sure. So is there anything I can do to help out? I mean with this bottle harpy thing,” Dorothy asked.
“Ha! Not unless you’re looking to get on the payroll,” Jenny laughed, patting Dorothy’s head.
Dorothy smiled warmly, for the first time since her conversion, she felt happy about being an Automata. Rather than missing her old life or simply accepting her conversion.