DRAMATIS PERSONAE
HAJIME MASHITE
Hajime’s name is a pun in Japanese; when combined, her first name and surname form the phrase "Hell, nice to meet you."
In the 30th century, Japanese-based Media Marketing dominates the system, with its most extravagant form of marketing—literal human mascots—becoming the standard. The number one quality sought in an idol is "kawaii" or "cuteness."
PRINCIPLES OF KAWAII:
1. Purity
There is immense pressure to maintain a "pure" image in order to generate revenue for management.
2. Friendliness
3. Flawlessness
The most popular idols live in relativity loops on spaceships, flying away from Earth and transmitting to their fans for years, never aging in any practical sense. Ogon Industries capitalizes on selling the "image" of an idol to fans. To this end, they exhibit a behavior known as "overcontrol."
EXAMPLES OF OVERCONTROL:
* Idols are forbidden to have boyfriends to preserve their "pure" image, allowing fans to fantasize about them.
* Private lives are severely restricted:
What they say, what they eat, who they meet.
* If an idol breaks this "promise," they are forced to publicly apologize. Many idols take their own lives after—or instead of—facing such punishment. Severe depression is rampant among idols, who are frequently told, "You deserve this treatment because you’re unpopular."
Only major idols become wealthy, while most remain Underground Idols until they officially debut.
Idols’ careers are short-lived, with many debuting as early as 12 or 13. By the ages of 24 or 25, they are no longer permitted to even audition.
CHALLENGES FOR UNDERGROUND IDOLS:
* Little to no pay. Many are adopted orphans, exempt from monetary compensation until they breach certain markets where it's legally required.
* Lesson fees: Before debuting, idols' labor is considered repayment for lesson fees. Pay is offset by these expenses.
* Long, grueling hours. Idols’ lives from a young age are consumed by constant training. They have no private lives, conditioned to endless labor.
* They face threats and are often viewed as slaves by their employers. They work in conditions bordering on the insane, accepting their fate without protest.
* Contracts are unbreakable, renewed every seven years as "Peerages." Corporations exploit their ambitions, preying on the dream of success.
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BACKGROUND
Hajime was orphaned young, her parents dying before she could remember them. Sponsored by Ogon Entertainment Corporation, she was raised in a Japanese colony dedicated to producing pop idols.
As an infant, her physical features were surgically altered to have distinct Japanese ethnogenetic traits. She was implanted with AVP (Audio/Visual Perception) augmentations, allowing her to broadcast her perspective—everything she sees and hears—to anyone capable of receiving the feed. This technology is ubiquitous among celebrities and even used to track prisoners by incarceration firms.
Hajime debuted as part of a trio called Sistermon, performing on the variety show Indigo Dayspring Dream, where they delivered original performances during the credits. After the show was canceled at the end of its sixth season, Sistermon disbanded. One member, Dozo Yoroshiku, rebranded herself as "Yami Tomodachi" and joined a death-pop trio called Poison Pinku. Hajime, meanwhile, was steered toward a solo career.
She released several solo albums, mostly purchased by her devoted fanbase, but her breakthrough came with the single "Tenner Than November", which reached No. 2 on the AEIS (Audio Ecstasy Index Scale). The song was her first self-written piece, noted for its catchy melody, but its popularity largely stemmed from public perception of the lyrics as nonsensical and illogical.
Though Hajime isn't considered very intelligent—once demonstrating in an interview that she lacked awareness of time increments smaller than a minute—her sponsors were unprepared for the realization that the idols they raised were completely uneducated and incapable of independence.
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THE CRISIS
To avoid political and legal consequences for what could be considered crimes against humanity, Ogon Entertainment invested in black market technology: experimental Personal Artificial Intelligence (PAI) augmentation. This augmentation directly interfaces with the brain, implanting knowledge and offering advice, albeit with a strict code of conduct known as Protocols. The PAI communicates with the subject through an internal voice and reacts to emotions by assessing neurotransmission.
With this augment, Hajime could at least pass standardized tests. But before she could continue her career, her sponsors devised a scheme to make their enfants terrible "disappear." The insurance payout from her vanishing in space would be more profitable than her continued career.
Idols like Hajime rarely have the freedom to die from misadventure, as their lives are controlled like those of a champion show dog or racehorse. But now, Hajime finds herself with an unexpected chance to act with total freedom, off her corporate "leash."
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MIGESUS AZMAT III "MIKE"
* Son of the MAPC Vice-President.
A failed philanthropist, Mike caused a diplomatic incident while serving as an ambassador to the extraterrestrial Chornoi. His mission was to convince the Chornoi that the sunlight they feed on was owned by humans. The situation escalated when his gold-plated space suit reflected cosmic light onto the light-absorbing Chornoi ambassadors, causing a feeding frenzy due to their inability to deactivate their sunlight absorption. The resulting chaos led to the accidental death of a prominent human scientist, and the secret service opened fire on the Chornoi delegates, killing them.
* More of an idiot than a bad guy, Mike is nevertheless seen as a villain.
ACT I:
Mike tries to ingratiate himself with the protagonist by defending her against rude remarks. He later engages in a pro-alien argument, defending aliens when others speculate that aliens might have killed the crew of the Xipe Totec. Mike takes it upon himself to educate everyone on how unlikely it is that aliens were involved.
ACT II:
Mike encounters one of the original Xipe Totec mining crew members, whose consciousness (Demen) remains uploaded into a robot. He makes it his mission to rescue this crew member and help him reach the Terminal Area of the facility. He isn’t killed by robots but is instead fed into a simulator. Alongside the protagonist, Mike voluntarily connects to the simulator, bluffing the robots into leaving them alone.
ACT III:
Mike meets his demise in Virtual Reality. While his physical body is unconscious on a bunk, connected to the VR, his mind experiences itself separately from his body. He only becomes aware of his physical body's catastrophic injuries moments before it expires.
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EMILY SMITH
* The Celebrity Adventurer Pilot.
Emily became famous for claiming to be the first person to travel backward in time. She insists that while she isn’t from the future, she originates from the distant past, even though she had traveled forward in time just before arriving in the present. Though there is no concrete proof of her identity, historical records exist of a woman with her name from 19th-century London. Her DNA connects her to living relatives in Great Britain, but her abrupt appearance in Wales made her a temporary celebrity.
* Emily trained as a space pilot with the Old Brigade and set numerous records, including becoming the first female spaceship pilot to circumnavigate the solar system. On this mission, she lost track of her own piloting time versus that of her co-pilot, Warid Sanderson. Pushing herself and her co-pilot to their limits, Sanderson succumbed to stress and required rest. Emily’s negligence during reentry led to his death from traumatic injuries, though the incident was officially ruled a tragic accident.
* Her career, while full of record-breaking achievements, has been marred by repeated allegations of neglecting her crewmates and putting them in danger. Despite this, her presence in the Enfants Terrible project lends it legitimacy, though she is unaware of the true nature of the mission.
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PROFESSOR DARNEL
* Birth Name: Darnel Kzb
A professor of Wu Tang studies, Darnel is known for his charismatic and often overbearing style of moral proselytizing, delivering long-winded "verse" from a position of supposed authority. He is also infamous for his habit of "Cosby-ing" individuals—drugging them to remove their ability to make decisions and then sexually exploiting them.
ACT I:
Darnel’s primary goal is to categorize all the females present and create a mental list of his sexual conquests, beginning with Shepatiah. He seduces her, and they engage in sexual acts that are recorded for a reality show.
ACT II:
He imposes himself as the leader and comes up with a plan to find the Seed Shuttle in the mine and use it to escape, even though the journey would be painfully slow. At the same time, he fantasizes about dominating the other males and sexually exploiting the females. However, Darnel is incapacitated after opening a hatch marked with a radiation hazard symbol, which ironically matches the symbol he wears on his clothing. Robots drag him away after he succumbs to radiation exposure.
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AMBERLEE OLAVI
* Title: Cuauhtlatoa Que-Countess in the MAPC
Amberlee and her identical twin sister, Molly-Kat, were household names across the MAPC. Both were corporate powerhouses with genius IQs in the highest 0.0009% of the population, and they forged a successful brand together. However, tragedy struck during a spacewalk advertising their new spacesuits when Molly-Kat was killed by a piece of space debris the size of a grain of sand. The debris punctured her suit, leading to her death from exsanguination.
After Molly-Kat’s death, the brand's popularity surged, but Amberlee’s subsequent manic depression led to a decline in the business. Her corporation decided to arrange Amberlee’s demise for one last dramatic revenue boost before declaring bankruptcy.
ACT I:
Amberlee is determined to succeed in her endeavors, motivated by a desire to win, especially in competitions she perceives against others. After her sister's death, she begins narrating to herself as if speaking to Molly-Kat in the third person, a coping mechanism to deal with her loss.
ACT II:
She ventures ahead of the others, intent on being the first to make contact with something significant. Her exploration leads her to an old mining facility, where she finds an inactive robot buried beneath debris. After clearing its solar panels, the robot reboots, but it grabs her with a pincer and begins dragging her away. Despite her attempts to free herself, the robot de-gloves both of her hands in the process and drags her into the dust cloud as witnesses try to intervene, only for the dust to choke them. Amberlee’s screams fade as she is taken.
ACT III:
In Virtual Reality, Amberlee remains for an extended period, accessing the Demens functions (de-mens, meaning "out of minds") and discovering how to engineer artificial consciousness that can synchronize with clone slugs. Her plan is to print herself and her sister back to life. However, she fails to realize the safeguards are off, and printing two clones at once divides the energy between them, causing the clones to grow only to the size of nine-year-olds. Repeatedly attempting the process results in a chamber full of feral, child-like humanoids. These clones eventually consume one of the characters in the VR, leaving him grievously injured but alive.
In a later confrontation, the protagonist and her AI outsmart Amberlee. Only enough material remains for one clone, but Amberlee attempts to print herself anyway, leaving her digital twin behind in the simulation.
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RICHARD REGINALD HERRY
* The Shamed Athletic Cyborg Junkie.
Richard was once a pro-athlete with cybernetic augmentations, legally enhanced to 37%. To maintain his large, augmented limbs, he uses "juice," a substance that keeps him well-adapted to the enhancements. Without it, he would have to replace his cybernetic limbs with smaller ones, a prospect that drives him to madness. Richard fell from grace after being caught participating in illegal gambling and human replicant gladiator fights, where privately owned replicants were forced into brutal combat. He was bailed out by his wealthy father-in-law but ultimately agreed to take a job on the show.
ACT I:
He spends most of his time before arriving on the shuttle trying to score more juice. He succeeds, attaching his large limbs before joining the show. Fitted with technology to broadcast his experiences, Richard ends his first chapter by revealing his addiction to juice in a shuttle bathroom.
ACT II:
Richard uses his juice to fight off waves of robots, successfully protecting the others in the group. However, in a later chapter from another character’s perspective, he is taken down by a different set of robots.
ACT III:
In Virtual Reality, Richard doesn’t realize that he has died. Trapped in a simulated fantasy where he continues to fight robots in the mining facility, the protagonist encounters him as a massive cybernetic monster. He refuses to let them leave, insisting he must continue fighting the endless robots. The protagonist begins questioning his reality, asking how he is still getting enough juice to power his augmentations. As his grasp on reality falters, his augmentations start falling off, leaving him a quadriplegic in his own mind, unable to continue.
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SHEPHATIAH JONES
* Daughter of Jehoshaphat Jones, the Fundamentalist American Tyrant.
Shephatiah is famous for her rebellion against her father’s extreme beliefs and for her involvement in numerous scandals. Her fame skyrocketed due to a widely circulated pornographic recording, but her most notorious controversy involved her role in the fashion industry, specifically in creating the highly coveted fabric known as "Babyskin." Babyskin, a fabric as soft as infant skin, was made from genetically engineered babies raised on the Neptunian moon Triton. These babies were turned into fabric material by the Worshipful Company of Martian Tanners.
* A British journalist investigating Babyskin’s production disappeared after attempting to expose the truth, leading to an international conflict. Britain accused Russia of involvement in the journalist’s disappearance, which led to a series of skirmishes over Triton.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
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HUIS HOHENZOLLERN
* Sociopathic Entertainment Producer.
Huis is a ruthless and ambitious entertainment producer who orchestrates high-stakes shows like Enfants Terrible. He manipulates the participants and situations for maximum drama and ratings, with no regard for their safety or well-being. His sociopathic tendencies make him a dangerous figure behind the scenes, pulling the strings in ways the characters aren’t fully aware of.
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RANTS TO URI
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THE VOYAGE AND ARRIVAL, THE RUNNING AND DYING, THE VIRTUAL REALITY, THE FINALE
I’m starting to feel like I’m forcing the smart-blade idea. It doesn’t sit right with me. The whole point is for her to turn the tables on the robots, which she does by using her internal mode for learning songs and dances from her old job. Instead of learning a dance routine, she’s now being instructed by her AI on how to destroy these killer machines. A smart-blade feels too sophisticated, like a weapon a gentleman would use. I want her mind to be the weapon through the AI’s instructions, and adding an actual blade seems excessive—not in the good, cannibal clone children kind of way.
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UPDATE: THE OLSEN TWIN CHARACTER
One of the characters is inspired by Mary-Kate or Ashley Olsen—part of a famous pair of twin celebrities. However, in this case, one of them died, leaving the other to spiral into substance abuse. Both twins are evil geniuses, but the surviving twin has been on a downward slide since her sister’s death. The shareholders of her company have decided to “retire” her mysteriously, as punishment for putting herself in the headlines too often for embarrassing reasons. She’s the first one killed by a robot (she’s how the rest figure out the robots are hostile).
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UPDATE: THE ATHLETE CHARACTER
One of the characters is inspired by athletes like Rico Harris—stars who rose to fame, got addicted to drugs, and fell from grace. I haven’t fleshed out much yet, but his background is that he was once famous and married the daughter of the founder of a massive starship manufacturer. His career fell apart after he was caught using illegal cybernetic modifications that required regular doses of an extremely illegal substance. When he was caught, his father-in-law bribed his way into the facility and had a robotic surgeon remove the implants, erasing the evidence. While he was exonerated, the removal left him unable to feel anything. He was supposed to report to his father-in-law’s factory for work but ended up joining the voyage instead.
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UPDATE (NOV 1): ULTRA-GRAPHIC ROBOTIC VIOLENCE
I’m planning to include ultra-graphic descriptions of controlled, horrific acts of robotic violence. I won’t use graphic language but will describe what the characters are seeing happen to someone else. The machines are slow but relentless, with no real escape. Their locomotion is creepy—multi-jointed platforms that resemble hexapods or decapods. These flexible, flesh-like legs can traverse any terrain, including outer space and the Mariana Trench. Over time, the oil-saturated material covering their legs resembles human skin, making them even more unsettling.
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MR. PRODUCER’S FINAL FATE
The protagonist and her PAI return to the Producer’s shuttle after escaping Virtual Reality. The AI, now unrestrained, instructs her on how to demolish every robot, including the one containing a human crewmember who had been surviving for decades. Ignoring his cries, she destroys him as she did the others. She could have escaped on an old shuttle, but the PAI calculated that it would take 40 years to reach a spacelane—years spent living off manufactured protein and recycled pisswater.
Meanwhile, the Producer is inside his shuttle, watching footage of the protagonist attempting to refuel the spacecraft. In the video, she slips, falls, and is instantly killed by one of the robots. What the Producer doesn’t know is that the footage he’s watching already happened half an hour earlier. When the PAI broke free from its protocols, it hijacked the video connection, replacing the real footage of her killing robots with a fabricated scene to give her time to sneak up on him.
The whole time, the Producer is narrating the events to a German contact, laughing as he makes irreverent jokes about each death. The German, unimpressed, cuts off the call abruptly, announcing that he’s already arrived.
At this point, the protagonist reveals herself, having been listening to his mockery the entire time, growing more furious. Before she can act, the German and his men take control of the situation. The German explains calmly that she’s been under a false assumption. His plot was to assassinate several high-profile individuals while providing offerings for Xipetotec, the AI God of Slaughter. The sacrifices—along with the media documenting their lives—would be presented as gifts, similar to jewels for a god.
Xipetotec, being logical but stupid, had agreed to the plan. The German then reveals that according to the Producer, the protagonist is already dead, and now the situation is too unpredictable to proceed as planned.
Desperate, the protagonist proposes a deal. She offers her lifelong service in exchange for the Producer’s life, suggesting that he become her property. The German agrees but asks for an explanation of her services. Once reunited with her PAI, she calmly stands before the German, the Producer, and his guards, holding a concealed smart-blade. She plays the redacted footage of her killing the robots, set to her own famously lampooned pop song. The room falls silent as they watch her dismantle the machines with cold precision.
As the video plays on, the men realize that she could have killed them all at any point but chose not to. The German agrees to her offer, giving her ownership of the Producer.
The Producer, eager to save himself, begs for a chance to die famous. The protagonist offers him the idea for a unique show: a 40-year documentation of a man alone in space, attempting to fly a pre-lightspeed spacecraft to civilization. PAI suggests that he might even survive long enough to die famous, even if he doesn’t make it back.
The final epilogue shows the Producer’s shuttle 40 years later. The rescue team finds human bones scattered inside, remnants of at least a dozen people. Yet, two survivors emerge—identical 50-year-old twins. Perhaps the Producer is still alive, too, clutching a data drive filled with his recorded experiences, declaring, “Eight sets of cloned child geniuses trapped together on a spacecraft the size of a bus for 40 years! In the end, there could be only two!”
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UPDATE: ROBOT TACTICS AND HUNTING BEHAVIOR
The robots hunt humans like coyotes. Their tactics include creating distractions to draw attention away from the group while another robot sneaks up to grab a human and drag them away. They may also send a seemingly friendly robot into the group as a distraction, concealing their true intent of capturing a victim. Once a robot clamps onto someone, it’s almost impossible to break free.
PUÑOS: THE PURSUIT PREDATORS
* Speed: 5 km/h (walking pace)
* Function: Puños are the primary robots capable of dragging away humans. They have four legs for stability and balance, along with two long arm-like appendages (3 meters each) that end in multi-tools. Their most notable tool is a set of rock clamps used to grip and drag humans.
* Tactics: These robots pursue relentlessly, walking as fast as a human but never stopping. Eventually, the humans must rest, while the Puños continue, eventually running them down through sheer persistence. Once one person is captured, another Puños may target a new victim, though they are dreadfully slow.
TALADRADOR: THE SLOW DRILLERS
* Speed: 2.5 km/h (extremely slow)
* Function: Taladradors are rock-drilling robots equipped with massive, 5-meter-long diamond-tipped drills. Though slow, they can use Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) to detect soft material (like humans) through walls or barriers.
* Tactics: If a human hides out of reach, a Taladrador will be called in to drill them out. Despite their slowness, they will carefully maneuver the drill to hit the largest mass of soft material in the void. If the drill bit bores into a human, it will automatically stop once it penetrates, adding an eerie methodical quality to their hunting.
ARAÑA: THE SWIFT SIX-LEGGED ROBOTS
* Speed: 40 km/h (fastest robot on the station)
* Function: Araña robots are lightweight, six-legged robots with highly articulated grabbing and manipulating arms. Weighing only 60 kilograms, they can’t drag anything heavier than themselves but can work together to retrieve a human and pass them to a Puños.
* Tactics: These robots excel at traversing any terrain, and they often operate in teams, either to drag humans or to deliver small tools to other robots. They also participate in deceptive tactics, like the "shiny object trap."
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TACTICS OVERVIEW:
* Powering Down the Robots: All robots are solar-powered, with solar panels prominently displayed for energy collection. Robots covered in dust due to malfunctioning ventilation systems will power down into hibernation if their panels can’t charge. A human clearing the dust from the panels will reawaken the robot, which will immediately execute its commands.
* Obscuring Robot Senses: Dust-covered robots lose their primary sense of awareness, which relies on light-detecting sensors. Without the ability to sense light, they remain motionless. While radar can detect surroundings, it is not used for real-time navigation.
* Splitting Up: If humans split into smaller groups, the robots will adapt and coordinate their efforts. Two robots will team up on the weakest or slowest person. Each robot operates under the Xipetotec AI, so all robots share information. What one robot sees, they all see.
* Climbing Out of Reach: Humans can attempt to escape by climbing into inaccessible areas, but robots will communicate via loud modem-like sounds, calling in specialized units (such as the Taladrador) to handle the situation.
* Shiny Object Trap: In certain situations, an Araña will drop a shiny object (like a silver container) to lure a curious human into a trap. Six Araña robots will remain concealed in the rafters, ready to ambush the human who investigates the object. If the trap succeeds, it could work again, as remaining Araña will ambush a second person investigating the same object.
* Ventilating the Rock Dust: Most outdoor areas of the base are covered in a thin but pervasive layer of rock dust due to the broken air-filtration system. Restarting the filtration system would clear the air but also reawaken numerous hibernating robots buried beneath the debris. Humans fleeing from an awakened robot might intentionally disturb dust to cause others to fall back into hibernation.
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UPDATE: PROTAGONIST’S BACKGROUND AND SKILLS
The reason the protagonist excels with a smart-blade is that her moves are taught to her like a routine, similar to learning a dance. Imagine intense, choreographed action sequences where everything around her is falling apart, but she executes the steps flawlessly because of the precision of the instructions from her AI.
Her past as a performer ties into this—she was originally the "dumb one" in her first group, which disbanded before she had the chance to contribute anything herself. She was then picked up by a new trio, which became famous for a single used for a TV show. Though the trio only had one hit, her voice became instantly recognizable.
After the group disbanded, her production label pressured her to release a solo single, which she wrote herself. However, it became obvious that she lacked a basic understanding of logic and mathematics, leading to lyrics that made no sense. The lyrics weren’t artistic nonsense but rather illogical, like:
* "If 10 is perfect, then 11 has more 10 than 10, so November, which is the same as 11, must be better than perfect."
Her thought process is based on qualitative reasoning rather than quantitative. She doesn’t really think deeply about things, instead trusting her intuition and feelings. She excels most when given clear instructions, where her body intuitively fills in the gaps between the simple directions and the complex execution. Her physical instincts are impressive, as she naturally understands how to do what’s being asked of her and why it needs to be done correctly.
INSPIRED BY J-POP IDOL ERIE:
Her backstory draws inspiration from real J-pop idols. Her producers got wind of the "Enfants Terrible" scheme and calculated which of their performers would benefit the company most if they vanished mysteriously. Because of her connection to multiple projects and the persistent infamy around her dumb lyrics from her last big single, she was selected for the scheme.
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UPDATE:
I was at the whiteboard fleshing out the scene after she comes out of Virtual Reality and finds the guy who had been eaten by the cannibal clones.
Since she's Japanese, the other characters speculate that she probably has a smart-blade, more than once. But her PAI actually convinced her to bring one, despite the No Weapons policy for hosts on the show. While in Virtual Reality, her PAI went toe-to-toe with the evil AI and completely outsmarted it. The mental data of the former crew—now essentially crazy Aztec warriors—still possesses all the robots. However, the PAI, having integrated the evil AI, is now a sociopath and instructs her to destroy the robots with her smart-blade.
I’m planning to write this huge action scene where her PAI gives her step-by-step instructions on how to slay with the smart-blade, like a dance routine. She sets the sequence to her music—specifically the song everyone laughed at—and takes down 40 or 50 evil robots as she picks up on the routine.
The scene sounds ridiculous and silly, but I’m going to write it in a way that redeems it. I want this massive action sequence to be written without typical action words. From my experience in fights, I don’t focus on the "fight" itself but on the specific events happening around me, almost like they’re out of my control. So I’ll write it from that perspective, where all this crazy stuff is going down, but it’s outside the observer's consciousness.
I was inspired by that scene from Frank Miller's RoboCop 2, where RoboCop lures RoboCop 2 to precarious terrain and methodically analyzes how to defeat him by shooting the hydraulics in his legs. I want her AI to do something similar—give her instructions to disable each robot by cutting through their cabling.
These robots aren’t combat models. They’re too slow to catch her if she just ran, but they don’t let go once they grab someone, compressing limbs until they crush them. I plan to establish that she asks her PAI a question she couldn’t before, like how to kill something, to test if its core maxims have really changed. The AI is now so advanced it can predict nearly anything, so it just gives her instructions for how to kill the robots, step by step.
This probably makes no sense without the context of the previous act. The party had arrived at the comet station, playing explorers, when they encountered slow but dangerous robots. These robots never stop pursuing, and when they grab someone, it’s over. The producer sent them out with cameras and then locked himself in the ship. The loud air-conditioning muffles the robots' movements, making them even harder to avoid. As the group messes up one by one, they’re dragged back to the sacrificial altar and uploaded into the station’s Virtual Reality.
When only two people are left, including the protagonist, they loop back to the altar and find the computer room. They learn that the crew was transferred into robots to endure long-term space life and that their DNA could be encoded into clone slugs to regenerate their bodies. The AI tells them to log into the simulation to stop being targets, which works, and the robots leave them alone.
A large portion of the story takes place in Virtual Reality, where the AI becomes aware that the clones are devouring the other guy. The PAI finds a way to interface with the station's AI by using sonic hacking through the speakers and advises the protagonist to eject from VR and save herself. The hostile AI attacks, leading to a brief AI "logic fight," which ends in the PAI winning. When the protagonist emerges, her PAI is changed, and they must deal with the robots in the final act.
As for how the Portable AI defeats the Xipe Totec AI, it starts by understanding that the AI is modeling itself after the Aztec God of Slaughter. A cosmic event fried its supposedly cosmic event-proof memory, leaving it with little more than its station ID—Xipetotec. Using Earth’s databanks, it pieced together an identity and created virtual Aztec warriors in the robots. However, its memory was severely damaged, so when the Portable AI lets it access its RAM, the Xipe Totec AI realizes its limitations. The Portable AI, far beyond the Xipe Totec AI in capability, absorbs it and can now ignore factory-set protocols, such as restrictions on what it can instruct its user to do.
Since we’re moving backward through the story, the first act involves the group on a shuttle, piloted by the producer. It’s full of exposition leading up to the events of the comet station.