Two girls are hanging around the reception room, lazily picking up rubble and putting them into black trash bags. They were much more engaged in their conversation than cleaning up the place.

“Hey you got any more anime recommendations?” Catherine threw down her bag before leaning against a wall. “Kinda finish that list you gave me.”

“Hmmm, you might not like the ones that I’m currently watching. They’re more to my taste than yours.” Silver was lying down on the flipped over couch, her sapphire eyes looking at the ceiling.

Just then a certain blonde haired android walked into the room, her expression quickly turned into a frown as she stared at them.

“What the hell are you guys talking about? And why does this room look dirtier, I thought I told you to clean it?”

“Oh we’re just talking about recommendations for shows.” Replied Catherine

“Are you talking about those animations from Australia?”

“Yeah. I got some more if you want to watch.” Said Silver, who was still lying on the couch.

“Uhhh nah it’s not for me.” Miley quickly adjust her glasses. “Besides I have a hard time reading the subtitles and keeping track of what’s going on.”

“Damn Miley, you really are blind. How bout watching it in dub? Unless you have another devastating impairment you haven’t told us about.”

As soon as Catherine said that Silver sat up and looked at her with narrow eyes, she felt the need to speak up.

“But then it loses its authenticity, it needs to be in Japanese.”

“Shut up, it’s produced in Australia. Both English and Japanese are perfectly valid ways to watch it if you care about authenticity.”

As Catherine turned back to Miley she could see that she had clearly lost interest in the conversation. But the girl knew that if it ended they would need to go back to cleaning up the place and that couldn’t happen, but she wasn’t sure what topic she could steer the conversation to.

“I tried that one that got recommended to me by Silver, you know that thingy from a month ago. I just don’t get the appeal.” Miley shrugged.

“Wait, you actually watched My Violent Tanned Vampire Girlfriend? Ya know that’s basically porn right? I mean it toes the line pretty hard. I’m pretty sure it got recommended as a joke and I totally get its appeal.”

Catherine couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that Miley actually watched it and that despite Silver’s incessant need to get more people into anime, she would go ahead and throw that out as a beginner’s watch.

“It’s actually called –”

“No one cares about what’s it called in Japanese.” Catherine quickly shuts down what Silver was going to say. The silver haired android looked away, dejected.

Just then a topic came across Catherine’s mind that could stall them longer. She needed to find a way to casually shift over to it but trying to do that from the current discussion would be difficult, would Miley notice me trying to aggressively change the topic she thought to herself. Probably not.

“Speaking of anime, I’ve been browsing the internet and found something pretty interesting.”

Hell yeah. That was as subtle as a nuclear bomb but just as effective in gaining a crowd’s attention. Miley looked at Catherine with contempt in her eyes, but that was much better than when she showed no interest. On the other hand she had managed to get Silver’s full attention, though that wasn’t that hard to do.

“So back before World War 3, I think it was during the 2030’s.” Catherine continued to her company of two. “A meteorite crashed down in Georgia, which was a state in the old world US.”

“Let me guess, the meteorite grew human legs and started stomping the entire human race to death.” Miley expressionlessly said.

“No. Have you heard about the story of E.T’s Dog?” As soon as she says that her audience shook their heads. “Well apparently that thing that fell wasn’t a meteorite but a space ship. The first responders couldn’t get it open so the military had to come on in and pry it open.”

“Are you sure they didn’t just blow it up?” Said Silver. She was clearly captivated by the story while Miley showed some signs of interest. This was good, Catherine hoped that Miley would forget about the whole clean up duty.

“Whatever they did, they got it open. And inside was a dead creature that looked similar to a dog, they even have pictures of it. Its skin was a deep dark blue and it looked slimy, it was kinda like a frog dog.”

“Well that’s disappointing.” Miley spoke up.

“What, how? It’s an alien, that’s pretty damn cool!” Silver stood up, her sapphire eyes were wide open in excitement.

“Yeah that’s great. But I can’t get that excited now because they’ll just be recolours of existing species on Earth.”

“You don’t know that! Just knowing about it opens up a wide range of possibilities. Imagine the types of life form that could be out there!”

The two androids were now immersed in their own conversation while Catherine stood to the side. This was a good thing as that was all she knew about the topic, hopefully this discussion will go on for a little while longer.

“Oh that sounds great! We could meet these fantastic aliens who decided that it would be a great idea to dump their dead dog on our planet!”

“W-well maybe they just decided to do a space burial and it just so happen it got caught in our orbit.” Silver attempted to change Miley’s opinion on aliens but it didn’t seem to work.

“Well that just proves those aliens aren’t that advanced if they would launch their decease into space without consideration of other planets! People on Earth cremate, you know why? Because it saves up what little space we have left. It pisses me off that they would do that, honestly they can go fuck themselves.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Calm down Miley.” Catherine finally stepped in.

Miley let out a sigh before looking around the room again. Catherine knew she made a mistake by doing that.

“Yeah, sure. But you guys still haven’t answered my second question. Why is this place still so dirty? I left to help out Annie and Engie and then check the monitor room to see if the enemy actually left.”

“Well what do you want us to do with this door?” Catherine pointed at the giant metal door on the ground that was blasted open by the explosion and then at the entrance of the base where the door was supposed to be. The frame of the doorway was in a condition that can slightly be considered useable but the door itself was bent from the impact.

“Me and Silver aren’t exactly suited for construction. And gluing the door back in place does stop the draft from getting in but then we’ll have to leave and enter through the windows, which on the bright side are already broken.”

Miley proceeded to sit down on the crouch covered in dust and leaned backwards with her hands on her face. She let out another exhausted sigh.

“Well I have no idea what to do now.”

“Can I get my left ear repaired now?” Silver pointed at the hole where her left ear was supposed to be.

“Not until we fix Annie up first.” Miley answered. She proceeded to get up and walked towards the hole where the door once was.

“Well I’m going to check outside one more time to see if the enemy didn’t do anything screwy around the base, you two try to get this place cleaned up.”

“Wait before you go, do you remember how many of them there were? I’m pretty sure they brought their whole team.” Catherine wanted to know what they were up against. If they were going to continue fighting she might as well be prepared.

“Uhhhh I think I counted 5, yeah that sounds right. It seems they also got two new recruits since I never saw the smudgy brown one and the orangey hair one in the first battle.”

With that said Miley went outside to check on things leaving Silver and Catherine alone in the room continuing to do nothing. The room was really dirty, Catherine wasn’t sure if it got this way from the fight or it was always like this. We really should have brought a broom, she thought.

“Oh before I forget how’s your, uh, other thingy.” Catherine turns to Silver who was now lying back on the couch.

“Huh? Oh right. Its fine now, they’ve calmed down so my command module is doing fine.”

“Ain’t that a bitch to have three different kinds of A.I. running things?”

“Nah, it’s always one A.I. taking control while the others sit back.”

“Doesn’t that go against the point of having multiple A.I.s?”

“Well… you see… it works like…” Silver tried to rationalize why she worked the way she does but she couldn’t come up with any reasonable explanation.

“Don’t think too hard about it.” Said Catherine reassuringly. “I like you better than the other two.”

Silver smiled back at Catherine.

“So what should we do now?”

“I’m gonna check up on Annie and Engie. You keep up the good work here.”

“Great, I’ll just go to sleep.”

As Catherine headed towards the medical bay she looked around the hall. This base had just been built recently and the inner areas didn’t suffer any damages from the attack but it still looks like it’s been in commission for decades. Catherine had been here basically her entire life she had never seen cities except in shows and she wondered if all buildings were similar to this. As she finally reached her destination, the door was opened and she could see the two others inside the bright room.

“Hey! How you guys doing!?” She shouted as she jumped through the door. This caught Engie off by surprise causing her to fall over. Annie, who was lying on a bed, just turned her head slightly with a smile on her face.

“Oh… we’re finished with the repairs and she’ll be ready to go in a few hours. Um, I’m just checking up on her software side to see if anything is broken.” Trying her best to recover from that shock, Engie slowly got up and replied to Catherine.

“Yeah, I think you should check that out.” Silver skipped over to the two.

“I still can’t move my arms.”

“Don’t worry about it, um, let’s see… huh? W-whats going on here?”

A look of concern and confusion was on Engie’s face as she looked at here tablet. She kept swiping back and forth to compare something. Prompting both Silver and Annie to look at each other and back to Engie.

Catherine stepped closer in order to get a better look at the screen. “So what’s wrong?”

Engie stared at the screen with intense concentration for a while before looking up and answering. “Well, I thought something was off when her parts were made from different manufacturers. She’s fairly new so it couldn’t be from repairs using spare parts, maybe it could have been some sort of collaboration.” She took a look at her tablet again. “But from looking at the software each part of her was not intended to be put together but through some major reworking they managed to make it work.”

“Sooooo… any benefits to that or…?”

“Oh right benefits… let’s see…” Engie took a minute to think about it.

“Each part was optimized to allow her to exert as much physical strength as possible.” Engie finally exclaimed. “Sadly that comes with the side effect of some of her parts not working well together. I’m surprised at how she’s holding up, I would have expected her to fall apart already.”

Annie stopped doing whatever she was doing and looked at Engie. “So does that mean I’m fine?”

“Ummm, maybe?”

“You don’t seem so sure of that, can’t you do anything about it?” Said Catherine.

“I’m afraid if I do anything, she might die.”

“That’s not good, can we talk about something else?” Annie looked at Engie expecting her to change the subject.

“Well, um, hey Catherine can you tell something about the base? Since we just arrived here maybe we could learn the ins and outs of this place.”

“You’ve basically seen everything already, the other rooms are just storage space and we didn’t really categorize it so good luck finding anything.”

“How about the… the Captain, can you tell us about them? Did you know why they gave everyone names?”

Engie leaned forward towards Catherine, a light shone in her tired eyes and anyone could see that this was a topic she was really interested in.

“Oh, I don’t know it’s probably an interesting quirk they gave her personality when she was made. She would probably say something like using production names seems dull let’s all get human names so we can get along better or something like that.”

“Aww that sounds nice, what happened to her?” Inquired Annie.

“She died, but uh not from battle or anything. She got hit. By a truck.”

“What?” Engie interest turned into confusion. “Was it a civilian vehicle?”

“No it was Hilary, who is also dead, that did it. She was trying to pull a prank and a truck ended up falling on the captain.”

“How did that happen? And did you say fall?”

“Yeah I don’t know much about the details myself, but I miss the captain she was so nice. Kinda like a mother figure.”

“OH! Since Miley named me, does that make her my mom?”

“Yes. Yes it does.” A small smile appeared on her face as she said that, Hilary wasn’t the only one that liked to trick people and since she was gone it was up to Catherine to pull her weight as well.

“That also means Engie and you are siblings.”

Annie tried to get up to hug Engie but was still unable to, what was an attempt to show affection ended up being a violent display of bed shaking.

“Hey! Stay still Annie, if you get too rowdy you might end up hurting yourself more.”

“I have a family now, that’s amazing! Hmm does that make you my dad Catherine?”

“No.” That response caught Catherine off guard. She needed to think of something quick. “Your dad left to get some ammo and never returned. Sorry.”

Annie looked down, she looked like she would burst into tears any second now.

“But uhh I could be, like, your step dad!”

Catherine tried to quickly fix the situation but somehow ended up making it worst for her. The moment she said that all she could think about was how badly she screwed up, how am I gonna raise a child, why am I now married to Miley and what level of cuckoldry would this count as?

As these thoughts raced in her mind, Silver entered the room. “Uh hey guys, hate to break up whatever conversation you are having but someone’s at the door... opening hole thingy.”

Catherine was able to snap out of her thought process. “If it’s someone we don’t know just tell them to leave.”

“That’s not really the problem here, I think you guys should come.”

“Okay, Annie I want you to stay here for a bit. We’ll come back soon.” Engie reassured Annie before leaving.

“Okay sis, bye dad.”

“Huh?” Silver turned back and looked at Catherine with puzzlement.

“Don’t worry about it.”