The room was frigid, and 9S’s breath misted through it as his internals struggled to maintain his body heat, even within his suit of armor. Frost was forming on the edges of his metal suit, and the floor crunched as he walked over it. Yet he still felt warm, the blush on his face failing to fade, if anything it only grew in intensity.
9S knew he shouldn’t be having thoughts like that during a mission, emotions may not be forbidden anymore but they had a time and place. But he couldn’t stop remembering the instant 2B swept him up in her arms, holding him like he was something worth protecting.
After the droids had detonated and wiped out every other android in the battalion, the support was more than welcome. Even if she probably didn’t know she was giving it.
Still the mission needed his full attention so 9S firmed his grip on the armored drive and connected his mind to the drive, without the command tank the burden of breaking through the machine networks defenses so the virus could actually affect it, would fall to him.
The virus felt ravenous, practically radiating a desire to consume and ruin. But it was kept contained by the humans' codework, and it only had one prey, the machine’s mind. 9S entered the machine, his perception of his body fading as his world became code. More intricate than any machine 9S had ever seen, not even the human’s work could compare to the artistry 9S saw.
It was a wall of coding posed to keep him out, but already 9S could see the flaws in the defense. He reached out to start pulling the coding apart, keeping keenly aware of the fact the machine network was more than capable of crushing him if he gave it the slightest chance, the memory of being infected with the logic virus sticking out keenly in his mind.
He hadn’t even started his own attack before the machine network retaliated, and he barely managed to avoid having his relatively feeble defenses crushed. Dodging dozens if not hundreds of digital attacks designed to tear him apart at the seams. But 9S couldn’t dodge forever, he needed to go on the attack.
Those previously noted vulnerabilities were attacked by his own malware, and with them the first firewall fell. The machine's attacks only grew more frantic, and 9S was forced back, trying to find anywhere in the wall for his coding to attack while keeping himself from being destroyed.
He thought he had a spot when a heavy presence crashed into him, slowing his reactions and nearly getting 9S’s processors fried. The machine network was talking to him. Its digital representation being a humanoid female, “do you even know what you're doing? Do you know the truth of your YoRHa? The truth of your ‘human’” the machine's attacks had slowed, and that gave 9S enough breathing room to actually start looking for weaknesses, if the machine bothered to waste attention talking to him he might as well keep it distracted.
“YoRHa was created by humans to fight machines, he’s a representative of them. Coming down from the moon to help us” 9S had a few doubts about that, the humans technology was nothing like their own, and he had had so many questions about how everything worked when he first arrived. If he had been sent to help you’d think he’d have been informed of those details. No, there was something else going on, but did 9S care? He wanted to know certainly, for curiosity's sake if nothing else. But even if the human was a machine in hiding like Pascal, or any other theoretical secret, he had saved them, and he stood a real chance of finally ending the war.
Even though the machine had a female avatar it spoke with a masculine voice, the inverse to Pascal. It laughed at him, like he was lesser than them. Contempt lined its voice as it spoke “humans have been dead for thousands of years, just the same as our own creators. They didn’t make YoRHa, we did. That thing? That's ravenging our world? It's no human” 9S took a few moments to think about that, it would explain so many things. And he’d seen the ruins of the alien ship, they were long dead. How had the machines infected every YoRHa android with the logic virus? They knew their defenses because they built those defenses.
It made sense, but what didn’t make sense was why the machine was telling him this, did it think he’d spare it? “And what do you think telling me this will do? You tried to kill me, you tried to kill my friends, do you think just because you made us I’d decide to spare you?” as he finished his sentence the second firewall fell, revealing yet another layer of defenses. Just how many walls did he need to break through before he could kill this thing? The admittedly creepy voice spoke once again, “because child, if I built you I can destroy you” it had already tried, it had been trying this whole conversation, was it really going to end on an empty threat?
Just as that thought passed through 9S’s head thousands of attacks lashed out at him, from every single angle, and he saw that while he’d been distracted looking for weaknesses and thinking the machine had baited him into a trap, the steady stream of attacks had been so he didn’t notice something amiss.
The machine hadn’t been trying to distract him, it had been succeeding. He frantically dodged what he could, taking hit after unavoidable hit. The voice of the machine seemed to take glee as it called out to him, mocking, “the ‘human’ you die for isn’t even a human! It’s just a biological machine that looks like one, it’s a tool to eat worlds with even less free will than you!” 9S struggled to think as his coding was torn apart, that was wrong… he wasn’t fighting for the human, he was fighting for all of his friends. The same friends that this machine had tried to kill!
9S let himself take hit after hit, even if iteration of him died he had a backup, and he’d die keeping his friends safe, he couldn’t ask for more. His attacks became desperate and he abandoned all subtly as to what he was doing, tearing down each firewall as fast as he could, taking hits he could have dodged just to break the defenses that much faster. 9S knew he wouldn’t have long, tens of seconds at most before his frayed coding failed. He was already dead, he was just going to make the death count.
Finally the last firewall fell, there had been five in total, and if 9S had still been capable of paying attention he’d have heard the machine network screaming in terror and rage as he finally collapsed, his tattered coding taking hit after hit as it failed to move an inch further. But he had made it far enough, and he’d kept the data packet containing the virus safe. 9S watched through fading eyes as it activated, the machine's attacks switching from him to it, but the attacks did nothing but make the bundle of malware larger, firewalls sprung to cage it and they were turned into the virus's armor. It took on an insectoid shape, sprouting dozens if not hundreds of legs, and let out a chiterring cry as it started tearing the fabric of the digital space to shreds.
Just as 9S thought he’d last no longer, his final sight being that of the monster he’d unleashed, he felt something wrap around him. It wasn’t comforting, it was cold and dead, but it stopped his code from unraveling and started pulling him from the digital space. He thought he could hear the humans voice from the presence, but before he could tell for certain 9S’s thoughts slowed and faded.
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A small drone detaches from the back of 9S’s spine, unlinking from his processors and letting the now empty husk fall to the ground. It was durable enough that such a fall wouldn’t damage it. The engineer took a microsecond to note that the android had performed far better than it had been rated too. Seemingly solely through desperation.
There might be merit to the androids being created with emotions after all, a machine when faced with certain doom would not break, it would just continue towards its objective as best it was able, but add emotion into that? You give that same machine the ability to break down with dread and fear, but those same emotions may drive it to break its limits.
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Still, given how the average android broke under the pressure of battle rather than fighting harder out of fear of death, it was not the wisest investment. Just an understandable one.
The drone serving as his eyes watched as the android ‘2B’ raced into the room, covered in wounds and in a half broken suit. The fight to keep the scanner alive had been fierce in both the real and digital world. She saw his limp body and shouted out his name, but when there was no movement she gave a scream of anguish and ran towards his limp form. She cradled the empty husk to her chest and rocketed out of the room.
Well, aside from the fact she was wasting energy flying so quickly it was good that she was bringing him the body, it’d be cheaper than making a new one. Once he was sure 2B was actually heading towards the factory the engineer shifted a fragment of his attention towards the broken coding of the exceptional android. In every other instance where the command tank had been lost the other teams had failed to plant the virus.
2B and 9S were the only ones to complete the mission without an intact command tank.
The androids coding was gone, well beyond saving. If the engineer hadn’t been actively keeping it from running it would have killed itself through compounding errors. But the androids didn’t actually care about the coding, there were backups of that. What they wanted were the memories, and those were easily ‘replaced’ with identical copies when damaged.
Humans didn’t even have memory, they just imagined a new scenario of the instance they ‘remembered’. Taking the few intact memories and patching them up and then smoothing out any of the missing areas with simulations was childsplay. So the engineer discarded the broken coding, took the somewhat intact memories and smoothed them over. Then he added them to the androids backup and set it aside to download once the body came within range.
A fair portion of the battles were still ongoing, and they required his attention.
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2B rushed through the air, using her body and shields to keep the bulk of the wind off of 9S’s body as she rushed towards the factory. She wasn’t far away but 2B feared she was too late. 9S wasn’t even breathing, his core active, she was holding his corpse. But the human had performed miracles before, and he’d perform another even if she had to force it out of him.
She crashed into the landing pad with a heavy bang, and rocketed through the rapidly opening armored doors, barely noticing 9S take a stuttering breath the moment she crossed the threshold.
Log #100
The machine network has been crippled, though only 38 percent of attacks carried out were successful. With the machine now crippled capability for large scale coordination and responses the overall war front will be in my favor. Already machine groups are falling from the network's control, and are either integrated with the non-hostile machine factions, purged, or only engaged when they leave their ‘territories’.
Overall machine aligned forces have been crippled on all major fronts and the Asian continent is already largely purged of their presence, with landing zones cleared on all major continents.
Of note, one faction of machines that broke off is being headed by the droid forms recently shown, the same machine instances that crippled the majority of my attacks. The faction claims non-hostility and has brokered a non-aggression pact with the majority of my allied units. As such, even despite the notable threat they pose, conflict with this faction is ill-advised.
The androids are showing extreme happiness at the recent successes, the fact that no androids were permanently lost during the attack has caused them to raise me into a near religious figure. Plans to scale this worship back before a proper cult can be established has been implemented.
The immigration of new androids and machine forms to the area directly surrounding my main factory has necessitated an increase in habitation production rates, and resulted in a marked increase in attempted infiltration by androids and machines attempting to ‘see the human with their own eyes’ or ‘thank their savior in person’. As such an hour out of my day will be allocated towards walking among the burgeoning city, with an ‘honor guard’ of YoRHa androids to keep the more aggressive instances at bay.
Upon realizing that I did not eject them from the premises as long as they did not impede my building function or greatly endanger themselves a group of androids have taken to ‘cleaning up’ my living space and the surrounding area of minor dust and detritus build up. Already fights have broken out over who will have the ‘honor’ of serving in the day's rotation, though they have been minor and were broken up by the androids own policing forces. The punishment for such actions are being forbidden from participating in the task.
Traces of the machine network will remain as long as machine forms, but with the destruction of any computation centers it will be rendered diffuse and ineffectual at thinking, much less taking any overt hostile actions.
As such it can be said that the greatest obstacle to growth on this planet has been purged, only currently known threats are rogue machine units and machine super weapons. None of which are imminent or require additional strategies or growth.
Therefore standard environmental reclamation plans have been implemented, in addition to cleaning up pollution produced by my own war effort, the machine and androids pollution as well as remnant pollution from the former human habitation of the world will be dealt with.
Destroyed cities will make up the bulk of the current workload, they will be converted into functional buildings or environments. The resources gathered from these operations will be put towards large scale solar plants and machines to pull microplastics from the oceans.
The world will be rendered 99 percent pollution free within ten years, well within specifications. Android and machines are not noted to produce significant waste, and as such once large scale cleanup is finished, resources used for cleanup will be greatly scaled back.
My personal endeavors have shifted away from those with immediate combat application and instead towards more efficient resource production and processing as well as enhancing overall production quality and speed. With it I aim to produce an abundance of concepts to power a currently entirely theoretical machine that will use them to connect with the minds, using my own inherently conceptual connection to them as the guiding line.
At the very least this portal will allow information transfer between dimensional boundaries, thus allowing coordination for a permanent portal to be constructed.
One potential issue is arising, the deviant behavior in my machines is a result of Maso interaction on a conceptual level. With the increased integration of Maso powered and generating technology this deviancy will spread. There is a non zero chance this will cause machines I build to slowly entirely diverge from their intended functions, accelerated at the amount of processing power they have available.
This is being mitigated by my own connection to my machines, but I imagine it is similar to the machine networks' own control in this regard, any machine I disconnect from will begin to rapidly diverge and develop new behaviors and thought patterns.
Until this phenomenon is more greatly understood no machine’s designed for independent operations are being created. They must all maintain a faint connection to the greater whole to prevent the possibility of betrayal, however slight.
The changes allow for greater situational adaptation, and have so far only increased computational performance, but the risk remains. As my current mental reach encompasses the planet and a large portion of its immediate orbit the risk is minor, but deep space probes are at risk.
First attempted cross dimensional communication will begin in one day.