I couldn’t waste time. I didn’t know what contamination would do to me, but I was sure it wouldn’t help the situation. “The circuits. Tell me how to put them into subroutines. Quickly!”

“All you have to do is think commands,” Argus said, eyes open wide in alarm. “The commands are ah, ‘allocate one circuit’, and then the name of the subroutine.”

It was hard to focus, but I did. And each time I did, words scrolled up my screen to vanish into the aether.

Demolition Subroutine is now 1

Drones Subroutine is now 1

Fabrication Subroutine is now 1

There, that should do it.

Warning! Core Contamination 5%

I would have grimaced if I’d had a face. Instead, I thought Create Nanobuilder Swarm

Schema Available: Nanobuilder Swarm: This swarm of microscopic robots is capable of disassembling or constructing virtually any material that you are qualified to handle. Top-of-the-line safeguards ensure that no accidents involving living tissue are possible; this Northeast Enginetics drone product is guaranteed human and pet-safe under all circumstances.

Would you like to create one Nanobuilder Swarm at the cost of 15 feedstock?

I blinked. That was… expensive. Most of my feedstock.

Warning! Core Contamination 8%

But then I wasn’t in any position to haggle, now was I? I could feel the effects the smoke was having on me. It was making me woozy, and a little high. The downsides of a few beers, without any of the benefits.

I couldn’t dwell on it. I had a swarm to build. Yes, I thought, and lights flickered and flashed around me. Initializing, said my interface.

I glanced over to the girl to see how she was reacting, but I saw that she was coughing, even with the rag over her face. She couldn’t take much more of this, I thought. She would have to leave, and either way she went, out the front or down the elevator shaft, I’d lose my defender.

So I sat, watching my contamination rise, and feeling my mind get fuzzier. Somewhere around 21%, though, the job was done. A cloud of something like fireflies, only much, much tinier, rose out of the sphere that was me, and hovered in place, filling about a five by five column.

Construction complete!

Minion: Drone Nanobuilder Swarm I has been constructed and added to your minion pool.

“Argus, I’ve got the swarm. Now what?”

“I’m… fuzzier on this part of things.” He sounded fuzzier too. Worse for the wear. He was in the core with me, so the contamination was probably hitting him, too. “You should just be able to… assume control. Without… commands.”

I stared at the swarm.

Warning! Core Contamination 24%

The girl was hacking up a lung over there, by the sound of it. And here I was fumbling my way along, hoping for miracles.

I didn’t get a miracle.

But I did get a break. After a few seconds of frantic experimentation, without knowing exactly what I’d done, one of my attempts worked and my perspective shifted.

1 Bandwidth required… committed. Depart your minion to free up utilized bandwidth.

The room grew, massively, but I was still aware of it in the same way someone would be aware of their head or their hand. But my vision was full of lights, dancing and swirling, in a pattern I somehow knew by heart.

It was beautiful.

But through it all, were veins of greasy black stuff, eddying and twisting. This. This had to be the smoke. This was the enemy.

So I ate it.

It wasn’t a conscious thought, really. I just wanted the smoke gone, and the next thing I knew, the lights were bobbing along, dispersing, going after the black vapor one after another. And as they did, a little window popped up to one side, listing chemicals and symbols. Most of them were familiar to me… salt I knew, carbon I could decipher, but a few were bright red, and alien to me.

“Argus,” I said, and it took me a try or two to say his name without stuttering. “Use my eyes for a second and look at this.”

“Technically you don’t have eyes- whoa.” Argus said. “Whoa, no wonder the contamination’s spreading so fast. The idiots are burning tainted combustibles.”

“Tainted. How?” I asked, wincing as more words flew up.

Warning! Core Contamination 25%

“Tainted by the wars. Or the aftermath. Radioactive dust, military nanostrain remnants, maybe even some gray goo. Though probably not that latter or we’d be destroyed by now.”

“Do I want to know?”

“No.”

“It seems to be slowing, though,” I said, and watched from the nanoswarm as the greasy tendrils disappeared into burning light. “It’s working.”

“Smoke’s not too hard to absorb.”

Feedstock+1

“Huh,” Argus said. “There must be useful trace elements in there. Normally you’d need a heck of a lot more material to get feedstock out of something.”

I filed that under stuff I’d worry about later. The girl was making more noise and that concerned me. I tried moving the swarm out a bit, and enveloped her, tried to eat the smoke that filled the air around her. The swarm’s disclaimer had said that it was human safe, and she was coughing harder, the cloth around her face stained red. Figured she’d die anyway if I didn’t do something.

When her coughing slowed, and she managed a few raggedy breaths, the girl looked up in wonder, face comically huge in my new perspective. She lifted a shaking hand, tried to catch the ‘fireflies’ of the swarm in her palm. They slipped away like droplets of mist, sliding off her gloves and skin as soon as she touched them.

“Careful, I’m ticklish,” I told her. But it kept her busy and entertained, so that was fine.

The contamination rose one final time, up to 26%, but then seemed to hold steady. My bad buzz had gone from beer to wine, the sort that comes in boxes that you buy in bulk.

As the room thinned, I directed my borrowed bodies toward the door, to cut it off at the source.

“I don’t think you can leave this room,” Argus said. “Your minions have to stay inside you. You’d have to claim the hallway or whatever else is outside in order to extend your range.”

“How do I do that?”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“I’m honestly not sure. This has never come up in any of my previous-“ Argus shut up. “Ugh. This contamination is affecting my processes.”

On that we agreed. “So how do we get it out of the core? Should I use the swarm to eat it away?”

“That… sounds like a very bad idea. You’re, ah, porous. Kind of vulnerable to attacks like this one. There’s no telling what the contaminating particles are coating or influencing. Telling a bunch of dumb nanobots to eat it away… You would risk damaging something important. Like me. Whoops, did I say that last part? Sorry.”

“We’re drunk. It’s fine.” But we weren’t drunk, we were hungover, or something of the sort.

I looked to the girl. She’d slumped over, but her eyes were open, and watching the fireflies. Poor kid looked exhausted.

And my pernicious, blessed, paranoia pointed out something worrisome.

She wasn’t coughing anymore.

If the would-be arsonists outside heard only silence, then they might assume that she’d been smoked unconscious or dead.

I tried mimicking her cough. She stirred in surprise, looked at me. I had the fireflies dance around the door.

Understanding flared in her eyes. Deliberately, she coughed. Then she winced. It hurt her to do that. I didn’t like that, didn’t like her going through pain on my account.

Was I a softy? I thought not. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I DID like her. Maybe that was the reason for my sympathy.

I eyed the smoke, as much as I could without proper eyes. The nanoswarm was getting the hang of it, and it was only occupying about half the little bots right now, to keep it halted at the doorway. I could use the unoccupied nanobots for something else. But what?

I looked back to my nameless kid. She was fading fast, eyes half-shut. She faked another cough as I watched, that turned into a real one, raspy and wet. Eventually the terrible twosome would come in to see their handiwork, no matter how she did.

But she’d bought me time, and I wouldn’t let it go to waste.

I concentrated, and took ahold of the inactive part of the swarm, and gave it its marching orders.

It was… tricky. The occupied part tried to shift away from the smoke to help, and I had to shepherd it back. Then back over to enforce my orders, then back up again to keep the smoke contained. The builders didn’t do multitasking well. They couldn’t have done it at all if I wasn’t there, I understood. This was the benefit of ‘occupying’ a minion. I could get them to perform better.

And as the girl’s coughs grew few and far-between, I experimented, found a way to do what I wanted, and set it in motion. And oh boy, did my feedstock rise, as the nanoswarm did its thing.

Finally, it was done. It was a pretty slick job, if I said so myself. If I’d had a mouth I’d be grinning. Feeling smug, I settled back to wait. 

Sure enough, once her coughing faded off, one of the goons filled the doorway. He was wearing a scarf or something over his mouth and nose so I couldn’t see his whole face…

…which was really a pity, as his foot broke through the floor, into the space I’d hollowed out between the door and the frame.

KLUNK.

The door shifted inward, shifting just as I’d prepared it. I’d hollowed the concrete under it so that the floor was the only thing holding it in place.

The thick, heavy steel door crunched his skull nicely, and he wobbled, slid to the ground until he collapsed onto the floor, waking up the girl. She shrieked, and hauled her knife back, stabbed at him. She needn’t have bothered. That was a concussion and a fractured noggin. He wouldn’t survive without help. I’d seen it plenty of times before.

He didn’t get help. He got a knife in his throat. His buddy shouted from outside, tried to pull him back. But his leg was jammed well into my miniature pit trap, and he wasn’t going anywhere.

The girl shouted something that would have probably been threatening if she hadn’t stopped to cough in the middle of it. In between her racking gasps I heard running feet from outside.

Then silence.

I looked over the dead guy. Bald, wearing ragged leathers and torn cloth. A small collection of pouches at his belt… that the girl seized and rummaged through.

Well, fair enough. She could have those.

I’d take this.

With a command the nanoswarm descended onto the now non-living mook. And my feedstock rose, as he dissolved.

“Where exactly am I keeping this stuff?” I asked Argus.

“Some of your swarm is carrying it back to your core.”

I blinked. Then I did something I hadn’t done before while I was occupying the nanoswarm, and turned my perspective without shifting the swarm around entirely. Sure enough, there was a regular convoy of fireflies marching back and forth to and from the sphere, so big from my current point of view.

“So I’m eating him, more or less.”

“And the smoke. And the floor. You should have limited capacity, though.”

“I’ve got three subroutines under the storage process. I’ll figure it out.”

“No need,” Argus said. “This looks like it’s wrapping up. We can take care of loose ends and get out of here.”

“Out of here. To where?”

“Back to Juno. Until the next crisis comes.”

I thought that over, as I ate the goon. “Will the swarm keep on doing things without me present?”

“Well, yes. I mean… Sorry. Contamination’s still muddling me. You have to occupy the core for the swarm to exist. So we have to stay here until you’ve used it to secure the area, I mean. But you don’t have to personally occupy the swarm for it to work, you can just think at it and it’ll follow orders.”

I fiddled around until I figured out how to withdraw from the core. Instantly the room snapped back into proper focus… all save where the status screen blocked my view. That reminded me of the bargain I’d made my minion. “I’m taking my eyes back now.”

“What?”

I closed the status screen. “Get out of my visual sensors, Argus.”

“All right. If it makes you feel better. You know I can still see things through the room’s microcams, yes?”

I’d guessed something of the sort. “Yeah. But I don’t think we’re going to see eye-to-eye, so I figure I’ll keep that private for now.”

“I’m all eyes. I don’t see how we couldn’t see eye-to-eye. In fact, I’m not sure what you- oh hey, she’s doing something.”

I glanced over to where the girl was prostrating herself. “Oh get up,” I told her through the speakers.

She didn’t listen. But a minute or two later, she eased up to her knees. Her grubby face was broken by clean streaks from tears, and she babbled something that was probably heartfelt and complimentary.

“Same to you, kid,” I told her back. She smiled, showing bad teeth.

Then she saw herself out, bending low and squirming out the lower part of the doorway. Still a tight fit, but nobody was trying to kill her this time.

“That’ll be trouble later,” Argus said.

“Meh. One of the goons already escaped. We had trouble anyway. Now we’ve got a friend who owes us one. Maybe.”

“I’m not sure Juno will see it that way.”

“Yeah,” I said, as I set the nanites to the task of repairing the floor and the door, with an eye to setting it back in its frame properly. “About Juno. It’s time for that discussion I promised you.”

“Must we? I hurt. That contamination’s… bad.”

I was feeling it too. I’d gone from a bad buzz to feeling vaguely brainburnt. Still, it was a different ache. So maybe that was progress? I shook my perspective like I was shaking my head, and felt, impossible, a little better. Probably psychosomatic. No, no, I needed to focus here. “Yes. We must. Let’s palaver, you and I.”

“What do you want to know? The crisis is past, so I can answer things without time constraints.”

“I want to know how this works, precisely. You remember getting sent out before. I don’t. Have I been sent out before?”

“Ah… I said that?”

“You did,” I lied.

“Damn. Ah… sorry. I’m not supposed to talk about your prior excursions.”

“I don’t remember them. Why don’t I remember them?”

He was silent.

“I’m an artificial intelligence of some sort,” I continued. “And I came from somewhere else. So my memories, whatever they are, are on files. Is that the truth of the matter?”

“Yes. Presumably,” Argus said.

“And Juno has those files.”

“I can’t imagine anyone else who would.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It… I honestly don’t have any experience with how she handles the human conversions-“ he shut up.

Too late. “Human conversions.” I said, softly.

I ached. Bodiless, I hurt. But not so badly that my thoughts could be kept from running down paranoid and cynical grooves. “So what you’re telling me is that Juno sends me and people like me out to handle things like this, and sends you along too. But you keep your memories. Whereas I don’t seem to have any. Which means she's altering my memories.”

He was silent.

“Answer me, Argus. Answer me, you made thing.”

“There’s no need to get speciesist-“

“Answer!” I roared.

“Yes. Yes, I think she wipes people between missions. I… well maybe not you. You might be newly decanted. I haven’t worked with you before. I don’t know if any of the other systems have.”

“Decanted.” And didn’t that open up a whole host of horrorshow notions.

“Please. You can ask her when we go back,” Argus offered. “All we have to do is declare the situation resolved, and think the command-“

“I order you to shut up!” I snapped. He fell silent, and backed away, until his projection was in the corner of the room. His eyes were full of fear, now.

“You can speak, but you cannot say the command that will send us back,” I told him, relenting a bit. “Not without my permission. Do you understand me?” It sounded like I was the one who needed to think that command, but if I didn’t know it, there was no risk I could think it. Ever.

Argus blinked in fear. “I understand your command, but not what you intend. What… what are you… we’ll have to go back. We can’t stay here forever.”

I remembered the nothingness I’d dwelled in before I came here. “Try me.”

“Oh no. You… you want to go rogue. And you’re taking me with you. Oh no.”

“If that’s what it is, then sure. Beats the alternative.”

“No, no it doesn’t! You don’t understand! Wynne, she won’t, she can’t tolerate rogue cores! Sooner or later she’ll check on us, and then she’ll destroy us!”

“How? A hidden bomb in this core? Some triggered program that’ll wipe me?”

“No. No, it’ll be worse than that,” Argus said. “Look, this was a risk-level GREEN mission. Rogue Cores are risk-level RED. At a minimum!”

“I’m more partial to silver, myself.” I studied the sphere that was me.

“It’s no laughing matter! For stuff like intruders without high-tech weaponry, we were the most economic use of assets. For rogue cores… I don’t know what she’ll use, but it’ll be nasty. And what do we have? What do we even have?”

We. He was saying we. Good. That was important. I looked around the room. “Garbage. Ruins. Wrecked machinery… and you. Don’t I?”

Argus sighed. “Yes. Yes, damn it. I was ordered to follow your commands. I don’t see any way around it. You’ve signed my death warrant, but I’ll do as you tell me to. I can’t NOT obey.”

“Good.” I said, as the door shuddered, and righted itself in the frame. I gave the nanoswarm a few commands, to set them fixing the motors that could open and shut it. “Then let’s get to work. We’ve got a lot to do…”

I called up my status, checked my resources, and got to work.

STATUS

Spoiler: Spoiler

Controller Designation: Wynne

Make/Model: Northwest Enginetics Bunker Core Nanohive 4L

Resonance Rate: 1/24:00

Bandwidth: 10 (9) Feedstock: 12

Open Circuits: 7

Specialized Circuits: 3

Floors: 1

Minions:

1x Autonomous Remote Guidance Universal System

1x Nanobuilder Swarm

Processes and Subroutines

Construction: Demolition 1, Infrastructure, Fabrication 1

Medical: Cybernetics, Pharmaceuticals, Recovery

Power: Broadcast, Efficiency, Redundancy

Research: Algorithms, Analysis, Databases

Security: Defensive, Drones 1, Offensive

Storage: Energy, Material, Organic

Improvements:

Schemas:

Nanobuilder Swarm

WARNING: Contamination detected! Core is 25% compromised.