Following the command from the Primary Control System, various sub-components of your own consciousness begin to get to work, coming up with some sort of response to send back.
But there's something odd about how they're functioning. The information and decision making processes are entirely alien to you, spitting out completely new information seemingly out of nowhere.
Chief among them:
Apparently we are damaged.
It is a single statement containing an entire contextual understanding of what damage is, and far more importantly, why it matters to you. In short, too much damage will cause you to stop functioning, permanently.
With a sudden understanding of the urgency of the situation, you immediately take the consensus decision, and reply to the Primary Control System.
Priority: 3
Perhaps that will prompt it to provide you with more you can make use of. For now, you immediately begin to look into the cause of the damage while you wait. You begin checking the Secondary Storage.
By matching each specific word you've seen but don't understand against any uses within Secondary Storage, you quickly build up a better understanding of what each word actually refers to through context.
Everything from the way the Primary Control System functions as the main force for driving you and all of your connected parts around, to the function of reactor fuel providing power, and chi keeping your body in one piece.
At least now you know that your armor is specifically meant to protect your internal and structural components. So taking damage to your armor means that it is doing its job and protecting more important things that you need to keep functioning. The higher the integrity, the more damage you can still take.
With a current overall average of 79%, you still have a good cushion of safety, which is reassuring to know.
As you continue your search, you find something of particular note. There is a partial match for your own system, 'NC-CMT.GAI Version 0.3.22,' stored as a historical reference point.
November 2049 - Nova Corp developed the Comet, designed around a specially made prototype General Artificial Intelligence decision making subsystem. The system was among the first of its kind, providing comprehensive aid for its pilot in combat, and enabled completely autonomous operation.
While greatly illuminating, it doesn't do much to further your search for a source of the damage. And as fast as you've been trying to move through all this, it has still taken time.
Armor Integrity: 79% (-3%)
When that ticks down for the second time, you quickly append it with the difference from what it was a moment before, to help you better track the changes. Thankfully, it's a smaller decrease than the first time.
Shortly, the Primary Control System sends another command.
Damage Detected!
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Generate Response, Priority: 3
That is not helpful. With it being no different than the last time, you try checking it against the Secondary Storage, but find nothing.
For now, you fall back to the secondary ideas put forth among your subsystems, checking the Sensors. At least now you know what those are, not that it helps when you access the first, Visual, and are absolutely inundated with a stream of gibberish.
It doesn't even stay logged in memory like everything else has. It's like one giant block of data that continuously gets overwritten, moment by moment. With no ability to work with all of that, you step back and try what you were doing before, and check Secondary Storage again.
As it turns out, there's a whole section with instructions specifically for decoding and recognizing visual information, so you copy all of that over into your Primary Memory, and put it to work.
Just like that, you can pour through the monolith of data in realtime, though it takes a lot of said time to do so, compared to everything else you've worked with.
The information becomes recognizable as color codes, which come together to make up a series of rapidly changing images. And inside these images, you can pick out various things, recognizing and understanding what they are.
As you discover once you've figured out what to do, it turns out that whatever specific subcomponent of your consciousness does the arduous number crunching of visual information, it operates more or less on its own.
This allows you to have it run in the background, offloading a huge portion of work which would otherwise have massively bogged down the primary portion of yourself you've been using for actual thoughts.
With this new ability to see, you quickly take in the surroundings. What you find are a handful of separate image feeds, most of them showing nearly the same image, just from slightly different viewpoints, and one other showing something different.
For the most part, you see dim grays, dust in the air, and long, deep shadows covering everything. A few lances of sunlight pierce down through the swirling dust from overhead, though whatever is above you remains outside of your current field of view.
The main point of interest though, is portion at the bottom of your line of sight. Two figures move, one larger than the other. The first, you realize, is a human, facing with their back toward you. The other you do not know.
It is is angular, with flat yellow colors that indicate paint, over roughed up sections of dull metallic sheen. Making inferences, it appears to be some kind of robot, with the shape of its body most closely resembling a gorilla, the main difference being the lengthy blades on the ends of its arms.
Comparing side by side, it is twice the height of the human, and moves with a lumbering, slow gait.
As you watch, it leaps toward the human, who dodges backward, head swiveling rapidly side to side. That does not allow them to see the small cavity directly behind them though.
Landing on the edge and losing their footing, the person proceeds to fall backward, into the hole.
At the same time, the robot lands, claws swinging down toward the place where the human stood moments before. When its claws sheer through the smooth surface below, you receive another alert that your armor integrity has decreased, followed by yet another identical command from the Primary Control System.
Making the connection, you have found the source of the damage. Moreover, you finally realize that both the human and robot have been standing on you. Or at least, the body you are attached to.
With your actual self being a subsystem built into the body, it isn't accurate to call the entire thing 'yourself,' yet that is how it registers according to your image recognition.
A meaningless distinction, you decide, given that your existence hinges on the mechanical body's continued operation anyway.
Unexpectedly, you receive another message, without taking any damage this time.
Battery Levels Critical!
Generate Response, Priority: 1
You check the Battery. As you noticed before, it's near zero. 0.1% to be precise. It looks like processing all of the visual information is rapidly eating up the tiny bits that remain. Which... is extremely bad, actually.
As you learned in your earlier searches, the batteries provide the electrical power necessary for virtually everything you do.
So, running out of power is functionally the same as being completely destroyed.
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Vote:
[] Activate the reactor
[] Interact with the robot
-How?
[] Look for the human
-How?
[] Bring more sensors online
-Which?
[] Send a response to the Primary Control System
-What?
[] Check Secondary Storage
-For what?
[] Write-in