I closed the [Terminal Window], picked up the sister’s core, and cracked it with my arm blade. I sat there for a long moment before taking a deep, metaphorical, breath and connecting to the next one. Carnivac brought me all the loaded cores that the murder bots had collected as well as any intact cores from the murder bots themselves. I continued connecting to them and talking with these people through the night. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything so emotionally draining as telling these people what happened to them and being with them in their final moments. Some were sad, others were angry, some pleaded while others were resigned. In the end, between the eleven villagers that were murdered and bound to cores and the seventeen out of twenty one murder bot cores that were recovered, sixteen chose to continue living on as Automata. The other twelve wanted to be released. Most of the twelve were at peace with moving on but a few refused the idea of becoming “abominations” and some of the former murder bots didn’t want to live with the guilt of what they’d been forced to do.
For the remaining sixteen that chose life, I set them up in a shallow pan filled with my energon mana slurry and a control disk that acted as a rudimentary message board network for them. All sixteen of the cores sat in the slurry with the control disk and could talk to each other. This way they wouldn’t be completely alone and in the dark while they waited for me to prepare bodies for them.
At my request, Elita brought the Mayor up to the room to talk to me. At first, she was shocked and horrified that I, an Automata, would even be talking to her. I tried to gloss over that part and explained what the cores were and that I wanted to build them new bodies from the remains of the murder bots. She was surprisingly at ease with the idea, though she advised that the Automata wouldn’t be able to remain in her village. The families were grieving and they didn’t need to be constantly reminded of what had happened to their loved ones or be forced to live with the ones that had killed them; even if they were under the control of someone else. I could see her point, but she was thinking about those left behind more than those that were taken. Still, I was able to set up a workshop in one of the stables and set about my task of rebuilding the old murder bots into new Automata citizens. These people chose life, and I wasn’t about to deny them that.
Elita asked me to set up a means for her to connect to them as well, though she still maintained her orc disguise for the townspeople. Without my [Console] abilities, the only means for her to connect would be for me to remove her core and sit it in the pan with the others. She wasn’t quite ready to go that far so I opened a visible [Terminal Window] for her with a keyboard input. She was basically sharing my account and would preface things she typed with E<3:, which made me wonder all the more what the pre-Automata Elita was like.
I kept connected to the message board chat while I worked. Keeping them company while they kept me company was pretty cathartic. They knew that this new life would be an uphill fight for them, that their old friends and family were likely to treat them as dead, that the world at large wouldn’t respect their autonomy. It was quite amazing to be a part of their discussions about deeply philosophical things or about stupid inane things. Murdered and bound to a hunk of magic metal, but these people were still full of life. We talked about the fact that Automata are free from the daily struggles of survival; the need to eat and drink and sleep. Elita and I talked about our experiences so far as an Automata. They were like little baby Automata and we were their seniors.
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One of the big concerns was what to do with their lives if they didn’t need to think about feeding themselves any more. A life without purpose, isn’t much of a life. The village of Shady Grove lay empty and abandoned so this group was going to rebuild it and claim it for their own. Many liked the idea of becoming craftsmen or pursuing arts that they didn’t have the time or energy to focus on in their past lives. The new village would become an Automata commune, I suggested the name “Iacon” but it was rejected as no one knew what it meant. There, the Automata artisans would make things for themselves and others and provide goods and services in order to trade with other towns. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was a start. An Automata village. I was excited to see where this would go.
From time to time, a human or other organic would come into the stable and ask about their loved one. We had informed the villagers, by way of their mayor, who had chosen to live on as an Automata and those that had chosen to move on. Some of the villagers cursed and yelled at me, saying that it wasn’t my right to let them pass on. I agreed with them and tried to say that it was entirely the choice of their loved one, but largely I was a target for their grief; especially since it was other Automata that had done this. We had six former villagers that had decided to live on. I believe they were mostly young adults and two children.
The father of the two children, Teddy, would also spend a fair amount of time in the stable. He would gently stroke the two Automata Cores of his kids and talk to them. Teddy wasn’t fully literate, so I would act as a medium for him and relay messages back and forth. When some of the angrier villagers would come in, Teddy would stand up for me. Hopefully, Teddy would be an ally for us in the future as well.
It took me nearly a week, but I got new bodies built for all of the new Automata. Some wanted small bodies, some big, their list of demands was huge but I did my best to accommodate them as much as I could. Thankfully, one of them had been a blacksmith and was interested in how Automata worked. His name was Jackie and he got to be the first one installed in a new body, so that he could help me with the others. Jackie also volunteered to take on the responsibility of becoming the village doctor. I was able to copy a number of useful artificing skills to him as well as some basic diagnostic skills, but he’d have to work on leveling them up himself.
When the last core was installed, we had a diverse collection of Automata that included crafters, makers, hunters, and defenders. All of them were equipped with what weapons and tools I could think of to aid them as well as a variant of my Freedom.exe program that I called Defender. This program included firewalls that would protect them from having their core accessed without their consent and included some self diagnostic tools. I suppose it was a ward against curses of sorts, in magic terms.
We made our good-byes and headed out, the village of Shady Grove was only a half-day's walk for most people but this group of new Automata were all eager to try out their new bodies and we ended up running the whole way there in about two hours. For our organic friend, Shea, she got to ride on Cyclone so that she’d be able to keep up. Without me inside, Cyclone could only get up to a speed of about 20MpH but that was fine for this trip.
I didn’t know what the future would hold, but I felt like this marked a turning point for the Automata. A village of our own, a place to call home, the beginnings of a society that didn’t revolve around being someone else’s property.
Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.
The Automata will be transformed, no longer NPCs for other players to use and discard or some magic tool to equip. We will be the main characters of our own stories.
There are mysteries to the universe that we were never meant to solve, but who we are isn’t among of them. Those answers we carry inside. I am Prime, and I send out this message to those that would have us be property: Leave the Automata alone, for I am coming for you.
END BOOK I