The security gate house was a small, dirty thing for a small, dirty town. A single room for amenities, then a windowed booth to watch the sparse comers and goers of Ingram. The partition between the two whined on unoiled hinges.
“Hey, how’d your shift go?” The female guard asked as she placed down a paper cup of some coffee-like substance on the small desk beside her fellow guard. Neither of them looked the part, regular unmatched and dirty clothes hung loose over their bodies. Only a patch over their chest and heavy belt, albeit missing most of its equipment, showed them as anything resembling official guards.
“They’re here again…” He didn’t turn to look at the thick drink or to acknowledge his replacement. His patchy chin rested in a tired hand staring outwards, she turned to match his gaze. In the distance was a sleek, low vehicle. Even marred by dust, its smoothly curved hull stood out starkly against the arid, forgotten surroundings. It’d been there for hours, the blacked out windshield blankly staring at the chain gate to the small town.
“Ash-Noble?”
“I’d put money on it.”
“They’re not giving up. Are they?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Ah well.” With an exhausted grunt, he rose from the stool, long since worn down to a picked-apart cushion. “I’ll stay on comms, shout if they start moving.” He patted the bulky communicator on his belt.
“Where are you going? You’ve gotta go rest.” The younger woman took his place on the stool, nervously and idly running fingers across the unused pistol hidden under the counter.
“I will, just need to check on something first.” Dave took the drink on his way out.
“...I don’t think getting Gress involved is going to help.” She sharply added, not being fooled by his ambiguity.
“Probably not but, I’m sick of the staring contest, either they move in or they get scared off. Win-win for us, ay?”
“Or a lose-lose if they start going at it.” A wrinkled hand clapped her shoulder.
“Come on El, have a bit of faith, he’s a good lad.”
“I know, I know. It’s just… difficult sometimes to forget.” She seemed to sink into the seat, fingers curling into a fist.
“...I know it is Ellie.” Dave departed in silence, leaving the anxious woman to her post.
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Soune hardly registered she was awake, that wasn’t outside the norm. She didn’t register the warbled beeping of a digital alarm; the scratchy sheets damp with cold sweat more mornings than not, the cracked tiles under her feet, the lukewarm water sputtering out of a showerhead, washing away dolorous phantoms for the day.
All the ignored sensations and thoughts came snapping back to her with a wave of cold water and a gasp. The icy sensation halted quickly, the two-minute lock on her shower's plumbing clicking over. She breathed a quiet, sullen swear out and not-so-gently laid her forehead on the wet wall, staring through it to where she imagined the timer was, promising herself for the umpteenth time that she’d break through the tiles and rip it out at some point. For a few minutes she stayed there, tamping thoughts and emotions crawling up the nape of her neck down with the fantasy of violent plumbing.
She stepped out of the shower, not caring for the water dripping down into rotten grout and swelling tiles, water damage was low on the list of things that needed fixing within her life. Something gave her pause as she reached for a towel, she looked over her shoulder to the opposite wall. An half-length mirror propped up against the wall on top of a broken tub, pocked with water stains and brown tarnish creeping in at its edges.
“What do you want?” Soune asked with mirthless irony, turning to face herself. A small smirk at her own joke turned downwards as she looked at herself, for the first time in months, properly looked at herself.
At a glance , she looked the same as she always remembered. Silver-white, messily-cut hair clung wet to her tan, sun-scrubbed skin. The longer locks at the back normally tied back creeped like spider-webs onto her shoulders, her gaze followed downwards along her arms. She was strong, her shoulders well built and arms still having defined musculature despite some decay. She had to be strong, a lifetime of hauling and mauling scrap metal for scrap pay required that, moreso when in recent years her work had required more of a vicious edge, causing her wide, solid muscle to take a more wiry, tight shape. Like a taut cable, ready to snap. Old, pale lines specking her arms from jagged metal cuts gave way to fresher, puffier scars from weapons to form a timeline of her work. Her other arm, though still dappled with the rainbow bruises from a week ago, reflected the same tale, though with an additional, more defined jagged, circular scar up near her shoulder. Moving down, her chest and stomach told more of the same history, appropriately wide to match her arms, though she’d lost the definition of muscle along her abdomen from a lack of discipline and practise. An unremarkable, slightly sunken plane showing her barely-met nutritional requirements. It all continued the same downwards, the same tale of a woman that had to be strong to survive, and her body only receiving the bare minimum to support that. Her eyes finished their scan of herself, disappointed at the sight, and returned to her face where she saw herself wince.
For the first time, she realised how flat she looked. The lustre to her silver hair was gone, tarnished with dull greyness. The glow of warm skin faded to a forlorn matteness. The savage, smart glint in sharp, grey eyes was missing, replaced by an idle dullness. Soune sighed, it made sense to her. Everything that made her shine, everything she looked up to and hoped for was gone. A dead, grey moon that had lost its leading sun. Reflecting off nothing but its own mundanity.
She was hit by a new sudden wave of resentment for Kirche. Not for the emotional toil the woman had put on Soune for the past, or the physical toil of the present, but for that awful nickname again. Silver. Her silver wasn’t pure, it wasn’t valuable, it wasn’t useful. It was second-grade, boring, and tarnished.
Tarnished.
That word clung to her mind, and made her sigh realising the thought wasn’t going anywhere for a while. She looked to the corner of the unframed mirror, where green and browns mixed into a creeping decay under the plastic front. The shiny foil underneath corrupted by the growing rot, rusting away.
Soune reached for the corner of the mirror, bending the back of it against her thumb. The plastic corner snapped off with some effort in. She looked down at herself in the rotting reflection, ignoring the urge to spit into it, this was her. This was always her. It had always been her.
Tarnished Silver.
Her hand closed tight around the jagged plastic, threatening to dig into the flesh, the pain centred her enough to drag her thoughts away from the chipped mirror. Wrapping herself in a towel and hurriedly leaving the bathroom. A new annoyance and haunting chill awaited her outside.
Bee-beep.
Bee-beep.
Bee-beep.
A constant, annoying tone coming from the end of the hallway.
Bee-beep.
Bee-beep.
Bee-beep.
Some form of alert, of incoming or long-unanswered communication. It wasn’t nearly the first time Soune had heard it. The door at the end separating her from the noise however, would remain untouched. It’s doorknob bearing an undisturbed layer of dust. Its hinges rusted firm.
Bee-beep.
Bee-beep.
Bee-beep.
After five cycles, it would stop, she knew that. But she also always wondered what’d happen if she interrupted it, if she acknowledged the beckoning of a machine, if she opened herself up to the knowledge of what was behind that door.
Bee-beep.
Bee-beep.
Bee-beep.
The consideration of even approaching the door however, caused something to drop in her chest. Even forcing a step forward towards it caused the hall to shift and extend, to feel like instead of a few steps the door was a walk away, then a light stroll, then an exhausting hike. Each digital beep causing the door to jump further and further away.
Bee-beep.
Bee-beep.
Bee-beeeep.
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It trailed off and died, the feeling of now or never to breach that barrier delayed until tomorrow. Soune loosed a breath she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding, and the hall shrunk back to it’s normal, cramped self. The curiosity died, replaced by instilled fear and rules, that wasn’t her room, not her space to invade. No matter how uninhabited it was now, no matter what secrets, history, answers or help it could possibly hold.
She shook herself back to ground, droplets of water splattering against the slowly oxidising metal walls of the hall.
“Fuckin’ get it together.” She chided herself, drudging herself back to her own small room.
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A while later, Soune stood over the only kitchen instrument she bothered to use and maintain to a decent degree, a descaled and cleaned kettle. A cup of thick, brown sludge patiently waited beside it as she impatiently chewed away at a tasteless nutrient block. She didn’t care much for what she ate anymore, a pre-packaged block of beige proteins, vitamins and carbohydrates did the same for her body as reheating a ration pack or rudimentary cooking of already cured meats. A wasteless point of time, she always told herself. Though the same argument held no water when it came to her coffee, for that she’d bother to take extra steps to liven up the instant grounds. Blooming it in cool water to reduce the bitterness, trying different sweeteners and spices to experiment with the flavour, even bothering to add in the expense of fresh milk for it.
The hypocrisy was worth it however, when even when made as straightforward as it was today, the coffee served to improve her mood dramatically from the smell alone. She happily toiled away at mixing the hot water, sugar and milk in exactly practised quantities to provide the bare minimum of her standards before taking the first, ambrosian sip to wash down the cloying block of mediocrity keeping her body going.
Cup in hand, she meandered around the lower floor of her dwelling for a while. To call it a house would be too generous. It was a small, blocky, prefabricated modular thing. The bare minimum for two people to live in, a master and single bedroom upstairs with a bathroom, a kitchenette, tight utility and storage room connected by a blank space downstairs. The only luxury addition being the larger block attached to the side of what could be called the living space, made that by a small couch placed claustrophobically close to a salvaged screen. It was that larger space that Soune shouldered into.
“You awake?” She called out to the dark space, no response from either her words or the hanging, warm light sparking to life. A simple, multipurpose room with roller doors to the outside. Some with the same room may have used it as a garage, some for storage, maybe even for other luxurious ones they could’ve used it as a properly proportioned living space. For Soune, it was her lifeblood and most homely room in the building, a small excuse for a workshop.
The far wall from the roller doors were dominated by a long table loaded with various computers, screens and electronics, assembled with the help of Razgrith, it all encircled the black box housing of Rhapsody, tens of cables leading out into the various devices. The phosphor screen that acted as a console interface slowly spat out various processes and percentages.
“..Guess not.” Soune murmured watching the lines meander on the screen, some mysterious processes going on deep within the matrixial being, some form of sleep and recovery that was far beyond her understanding. That was fine by her for now, she wasn’t particularly in the mood for socialisation, even if that was with a deeply familiar machine. Though she did take a moment to furrow her brow at the realisation her extent of socialisation involved mostly arguing with him. Despite his electronic being and machine body, she never considered Rhapsody as anything less than another person, A myriad of personality quirks and behavioural oddities acted as a constant reminder of this.
Instead she turned from the desk to the center of the room, sipping her coffee as she prodded the mess of machine parts hanging from chains, a gentle swing back and forth the only signs of life breathed into it. It had started as the core to a lightweight mover drone, the sort used for domestic or light commercial storage transportation. She’d dissected and rebuilt it with various parts she’d come across so many times without much record keeping she wasn’t even sure it contained any of those original parts. What she was sure of though, is that it was heavy. Heavy in weight obviously, but also heavy in specification and power demands, heavy in the morality of building a body made to be able to fight and win. Of building that for the closest thing she could call a friend, even if it was by his own specifications and needs, decrypted and compiled from long-buried data.
She left the limbless assembly to swing idly to a stop, taking her place at a rolling stool at one end of a long workbench. Strewn across it was one of the drone limbs she had salvaged from the operation a week ago, disassembled and scattered, other heavier duty parts positioned around where they’d replace the weaker versions. Tools were also surrounding what was once a robotic leg in organised chaos. Any viewer of the scene would be baffled at the sequence of wrenches, drivers and what-have-you across the table. Soune didn’t hesitate at the sight. Setting her coffee down on the only space on the bench available for it before tying her hair back into a low, loose tail and rolling snug, grease-stained sleeves up.
“Let’s get to work.” She mumbled with a smile, settling into her element.
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Two coffee refills later, and with her housemate awake and connected to the speakers, she had finished assembling the machine limb.
“Alright, let’s give this a try.” She said, hefting the metal up from the bench and towards the suspended machine.
“Did you run proper calculations?” Rhapsody queried, voice slightly more expressive connected to a higher power system and better quality speakers. Some trepidation was detectable in his paused tone.
“Sure I did.” She retorted, feigning offence at the suggestion she wouldn’t take the utmost precautions. The main screen flickered dozens of lines down quickly.
“There is no history of any kind of calculations performed here.”
“Firstly I think it’d be incredibly rude and gross to use you as some average computer while you’re… asleep? What is it you’re doing when you’re all… absent, anyway? Secondly, I didn’t need some machine to figure it out, did it all up here.” She tapped the side of her head.
“It is not such inefficient sleep. I am running several complicated sequences; diagnostics, log clearing, decryption on locked files. I think I am…” Rhapsody paused for a couple minutes to try and calculate what he was trying to say. “Grateful, that you do not interrupt these processes.”
“Right, so you’re reflecting on what you did for the time you were awake, letting your mind let go of stresses for the day and work on remembering old stuff.” Soune smugly remarked. “And you get grumpy if you’re stopped. Sounds like sleep to me.” She twisted the limb down to lock it into the core, and began leading a few cables from the hanging machine to Rhapsody’s table. The main camera sensor on the bench glared upwards at her silently.
“...Perhaps not as inaccurate a comparison as I thought.” He relented, the speakers quiet and grumpy. Soune huffed a laugh and patted the top of his assembly.
“Big bad ‘bot needs rest just like the rest of us, poor you.”
“Back on point, you ran all necessary calculations and precautions in your own mind?”
“Yup.” Soune slid the brick-like cable connector into its port, sliding the housing close as power from the building's solar generators flooded into the core. “You make it sound like that’s not good enough.”
“It is not.”
“Are you underestimating me, Rhap?”
He pointedly didn’t respond. Soune rapped the top of his housing before plugging another of the cables into the mess of computers.
“Asshole, are you ready? Start with rotation range of movement on the hip connection”
New green lines ran down the screen beside her.
“Interface matching clear, beginning rotation limit tests, motor ‘left_hip’ engaging.”
With a mechanical groan, the large servo acting as a hip joint rotated a few degrees forward, and then back. Gear teeth clicking into place under the load.
“Good start.” Soune noted, crossing her fingers.
“Agreed, increasing rotation limit five degrees.”
The leg rotated backwards, halting a couple times and groaning but nothing of particular worry. Then upon trying to lift the heavy leg upwards and forwards, an awful sound started to shriek out from the core.
“Shit, Rhap, stop it now!” Soune was too late. The process kept trying to push the motor one further degree, unable to compute the failure of the gears, only confusedly feeding it more movement commands.
“Limit test process terminated…” Rhapsody offered, overriding the sequence as quickly as he was able, but the leg had already torn itself free of the hip motor. It laid broken on the ground, bleeding black oil around the severed joint. Several broken gears and electronics in the oil reminiscent of a messy, mangled corpse.
Soune sighed, holding her head in her hands. Failure and ineptitude tried to creep forwards into her mind.
“The specifications of the limb are significantly under requirement… I attempted to lower performance demands internally. I failed.” Rhapsody offered. Soune was silent on the stool beside him.
“Soune. It was never going to work. The proverb a square peg in a round hole is appropriate. This core and I require non-commercial specification parts…However, post process diagnostic confirms the modified limb performed significantly higher than registered base specifications.” The camera whirred and whistled to drag her attention to it. “You did well, very well, to push it that far. A rounded fifty-six percent increase.”
Soune smiled softly and sniffed back a tear of mixed valence. She patted the top of the sensor array.
“Really?”
“I cannot lie.”
“Thanks Rhap.”
Soune rose from the stool, heading over to inspect the damage.
“The left hip motor is completely done.” She grabbed the gored gear from the pile of oily failure. “The teeth are nearly all snapped off, guessing it’s not a pretty sight inside the servo itself.” She dropped it back down and wiped the oil off onto her shirt.
“The servo motors are a standard fitting, and did require upgrading anyway.”
“Good point. Suppose this is an upside then?” She looked over to Rhapsody, several screens running lines to respond appropriately.
“It has some positive aspects.” Soune chuckled a bit.
“Can’t lie, but you sure can twist the facts can’t you?”
“Learned behaviour.” Rhapsody retorted, dredging another chuckle from Soune.
“I’m getting a refill, cleanups going to be a pain…” Soune muttered to herself, walking over to grab her mug before shouldering open the door to the living space.
“...Where’s that shov- '' She froze mid thought, seeing the black boots so casually hanging over the edge of her couch. An arm rose up over them and waved so innocently. Dread slashed down her spine, then frustration took its place bubbling back upwards.
“Yoo-hoo, I got you a present!” Kirche deftly flipped up and over the edge of the seat, its ageing frame groaning with the stress. A saccharine smirk met Sounes glare. “Gonna have to close your eyes for it though.”