Log #8

Year one day thirteen

My brilliant plan was vetoed, apparently humans have an awful documentation system and have so many undocumented births you can just fill out a form saying you were born on a colony. Then you get citizenship and all the digital documentation you need, sure normally you need to go into a bureaucratic office and get a bunch of pictures and DNA samples done. But Balistraia can just fake those fairly easily. Though it’ll only be foolproof for the first thousand or so, after that people might get suspicious.

Good news is that there are only ten thousand YoRHa androids, a small number to defend an entire planet, but they were more guerilla fighters than anything. Highly mobile but small in number, striking and vanishing before heavy retaliation could get to them.

Not the best infiltrators though, hot, buxom, with flawless features? And lacking any ability to behave human. No, if I’m sending androids off it’ll be resistance ones, still flawless, but more human in behavior.

I have a few set up as on world ranchers already, just to build some distinct capital and history. Basically giving them a papertrail, and hopefully a resume. Eventually I want them in government or military positions, though it’s going to be far harder to get them past that screening, unless the humans don’t do frequent scans of their leaders to make sure they are who they say they are.

But thats all largely Balistraias job, I designed some spy gear and communicators, hidden weapons and things like that. But that was my only true role in this operation, aside from sending the androids off.

I already mentioned that I’d made my android's new bodies, I didn’t mention that I’d designed them from the ground up myself. Everything before now had just been updating the androids' own designs, not building my own. Mostly as I hadn’t understood enough about them before to risk it. But I’d felt certain I knew enough now to build them bodies.

I bring this up now, because 2B was the first to test out her new body. And I could feel it like any of my other machines, before even the android bodies I built I couldn’t feel, same with mundane things like lightbulbs or plain steel. But this one? I could feel it, and I could feel her. But it wasn’t the instant she started using the body, it was during our occasionally ‘therapy’ sessions. She’d worn the body and halfway through the talk…. I felt her loyalties shift. Before she’d followed me out of obligation, and she’d harbored a hate of all humans, myself included. Now? She’s loyal to me, and I can feel that. Its an odd sensation, distinct wholly from the minds who had always been with me. Like suddenly gaining a new limb.

Honestly makes it hard to look at 9S when I can feel her crush on him as if it were my own. The bleed through goes both ways, but my own mine is structured well enough that she hasn’t been overwhelmed by all the data flowing. But now the factory responds to her like it would me, meaning she gets things delivered to her the moment she thinks she wants or needs them, and the inner factory doesn’t rip at her clothes and skin like an untrained dog.

She’s also started reacting to me before I finish thinking, in the same way the minds do. It's a bit odd knowing she knows what I think about her skimpy outfits, but she knows it's an artistic appeal, not a sexual or romantic one. Pretty machines are pretty and I can’t exactly not think that. Well I could but no modifying my own thoughts and all that.

But there are no more secrets and only a thin boundary between us, and while it was jarring at first it’s very useful. Mainly for rapid communication between her and Balistraia, which is terrifying to see in action. But also for helping me work on her emotional damage, and let me tell you, feeling what she felt? any ordinary human would have broken. The only reason I didn’t is because I’m incapable of it. She quite literally watched her loved one die dozens of times, only to forget her and die again. While she was helpless.

Genuinely astounding how she was sane… ish.

The other androids, aside from A2, are disturbingly eager to do the same thing she did, and I had to ban them from wearing their new bodies until I could get this figured out. Even aside from the fact we run the risk of turning into a hivemind I don’t want to get bombarded by a half dozen sets of foreign emotion until the current turmoil has settled.

Not sure how I feel about 2B hearing the different voices the minds always talk about, and I’m even less sure about how she’s taking sides in the arguments. It's just my subconscious but still.

More testing will be done to determine the extent of the connection, as well as finding out all the benefits and problems. One glaring issue being the shared pain I feel with all of my things, it hurts to have a machine be damaged. The pain is proportional to the size/importance of the thing destroyed but it’s still dozens of needles for each lost tank, and outposts are worse. 2B has a high pain tolerance, but it’s nothing like mine. She’s still operating fine but it’s influencing her mood and she keeps going out to single handedly rescue tanks or outposts. Which is terrifying to watch, and other thoughts that make 2B look at me funny. Which are most of her looks really.

Really I think I get why it happened, and it’ll probably happen with every android in my ‘group’. 2B is one of mine now, in a way no other android currently is, and because she’s mine I can feel her.

The Nauvis warfront is going swimmingly now that the teleporting interruptions have been minimized. I now have half of the content under nominal control and half that under proper control. The difference being one has forts and biters and the other only has forts.

Watching the fights nowadays is something else, the biters use ranged weapons, artillery, emplacements, anti air, troop carriers. You’d think there’d be friendly fire, but thats rare, and even when both sides are launching hundreds of projectiles both my machines and the bugs can actually somewhat dodge.

I remember when there were few enough bug forms for me to list them all, those were the days. Now I’d need a few hundred pages just for a day's new bug forms. Mostly minor variations admittedly but when you have the tolerances the minds use, a slight increase in speed in your opponents can clip you and kill you. Only really worry about the esoteric adaptations now. Things that affect the battlefield on a larger scale.

My own forces are far more standardized, but that's not really a bad thing. I have enough weapon variation now that the bugs can’t really adapt to everything and I’m still adding more. And standardization means if the minds find one tactic that works we can use it everywhere, while the bugs' myriad forms need a hundred different methods.

Looking at the bugs really makes me realize something, there isn’t another force I know of that could fight them aside from me. The androids would fight but fall rapidly, the machines would fare even worse. The humans aren’t even really contenders. Even the creatures from the deeps would get overwhelmed eventually even if it took a year or a hundred. And they certainly wouldn't kill off the bugs.

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I can match them strength for strength and grind them into nothing. I can throw hundreds of thousands of tanks and drones into the battle and get none back, and sustain those losses without a sweat.

And it's working, well at that. Even the bugs effort at crippling me with the teleportation fiasco only slowed me down. And once I get them off the continent that won't even be able to do that with anything resembling regularity. And so what if they throw a new thing at me, I’ll adapt and beat it just as they would.

It might be arrogance, but I’m expanding rapidly on fronts they can’t slow me on. While I can reach everywhere the bugs have. It's a game winning advantage.

The earth front is basically finished, Balistraia finalized a treaty with the droids. Allowing trade and immigration, and I doubt they’ll break it once they see what I’ve built. The one advantage they had were better bodies than even YoRHa androids, and now I can makes things superior to even them. They are outnumbered and now weaker than me.

Every production facility planned for earth’s own growth has been finished, and now they will begin building war factories to support my Nauvis front, widening my advantage. Already the androids are experiencing a population boom as their own factories are upgraded and no longer starved for resources. Machines growing likewise, though in forms almost as diverse as the bugs own.

Phosphor slimes have been released on the dark side of the earth, and light posts using their plorts are everywhere androids or machines live. Leaving the formerly perpetually dark places filled with a dusk they’ve not had for thousands of years. The androids and machines there now follow me the same way all others have begun too.

The machine network, what little remains of it, has perhaps a few isolated servers. But even those aren’t running, only containing offline backups. And while Balistraia was searching for the network's signals she found something in the ocean.

A machine made eldritch horror that lurks in the depths, the thing is larger than most bugs even. More comparable to mountain class bugs than anything else and so far there’s only been one of those. It's specialized for taking down machines and androids, really anything that uses circuitry. But well, as problematic as that sounds, the thing just isn’t a threat. A giant softy if anything, it quite literally only wants friends that don’t break when it touches them.

And while the machines are seemingly adverse to making quality machines that can move with anything resembling grace, I have no such limitations. A few software upgrades and the thing could move its body as gently as it’s body could be moved. Which still wasn’t great but it got the thing to the point it wouldn’t accidentally break power armor with an errant twitch. That let it ‘play’ with a few androids and machines who volunteered, Pascal especially being a big help.

Then, while they all socialized my drones set to upgrading the ‘grum’ mostly giving it fine control but also painting the thing and scraping off rust. Also copying its shielding designs, those things are getting added to my ship, hell this thing could take just about anything I could dish and be fine…. Are things in oceans just absurdly powerful? Sure the shield only covers the exterior, but my own shields cover that weakness. Combining them will make my ships basically unbreakable by anything not up for cracking a continent.

Now the things just staying by a harbor town, or following around android and machine ships. And seems content. Meaning I can basically say thats handled.

With my sentinels done, and the androids and machines handling themselves there isn’t really anything else I need to deal with on earth, aside from the cult. Which I’m not dealing with, maybe I’ll make a mind to handle theology and the justice system, one mind for both. But I doubt it, even if I could use it to guide android and machine society.

I don’t want to do that, it sounds too involved. So I won’t. If people aren’t dying or suffering I couldn’t care less. They are happy worshiping me, and other androids are content to leave the cult be, therefore it ain’t an issue.

On the space front I have the warship design done, twice the size of my builder model and with enough weaponry and drone space to fight a small war on its own ‘by the scale of humans, not Nauvis’ it’s a perfectly fine ship. Capable of handling anything humanity can produce and then some, faster, more durable, better weaponry. Basically an improvement in every way. One of these could take ten of the humans warships comfortably, and I mean any ten including their best. And I sincerely doubt they’d score a kill at any point, with how durable my ships are, and with the speed difference if a war breaks out I can just strike hard, demolish them. And be gone before they can retaliate, and thats if I’m at a numbers disadvantage, which I won’t be.

Comparing my ships to known human warships wasn’t my idea by the way, that was all 2B. She’s even more paranoid about them than I am. And it was on her insistence I finished the design and started building a few. Otherwise I would have kept tinkering for far longer. I just keep finding new ways to build, and new things to implement.

But this will work just fine for a first iteration. And one will be finished within two days. Just so I can have something to throw into the slime reality if I need to.

And really, I won’t be needing more than one with the new thing I discovered. I’ve known about quantum plorts for like a week now, and I've finally figured out how they work. Well a way to use them, I can duplicate an object, only for a day and it destroys both the object and duplicate after the fact. But I should be able to increase the duration and number of duplicates. With things like drones which I don’t expect to survive this is beyond useful, and if I’m ever outnumbered and sure to lose a battle, why not take my enemy forces with my own.

I don’t think I’ll be able to make the duplicates permanent though. Which is a shame.

Honestly, things are oddly calm. ……… Why is 2B grabbing more weapons? And Balistraia is arming all her weapons? Did Bulwark just turn on every shield? The instant I wrote that sentence. It’s not like the inevitable attack will happen the moment I write that, it’d be too convenient and expected. No, it’ll wait till we are all calm and relaxed, or in a position we can’t deal with it.

I need to stop, my own paranoia is going to bluescreen 2B. It's a feedback loop.