"Tapper, I have a job for you." Ms. Uxral sounded happy, almost excited to delegate this particular chore, coloring Tapper's sense of duty with motes of curiosity. The teacher bounced slightly on the balls of her feet as she pulled one of the museum tablets from behind her back and said, "I need more of these."
Mild shame. Purchasing those tablets was a good idea, but Tapper should've done more. "I am sorry, Miss Uxral, but we have not yet found another entrance to the mall. My apologies for not purchasing more units when I had the opportunity."
"No no no, not like that! Don't you dare apologize for this wonderful gift! Just come with me, I'll explain." Ms. Uxral didn't wait for Tapper's response, grabbing the robot by the arm and dragging him across the warehouse to a section of cleared floorspace by the far wall. A rectangle of yellow and black striped caution tape on the floor outlined the service elevator, and a quick tap on the wall panel sent the two down to the basement.
Tapper already visited the sublevel before to help clean, but much of the space served communal barracks; a noisy clanking robot was generally an unwelcome disturbance. "Now before I show this to you, I need your promise that you won't tell anyone. In fact, that's an order. Phanya and Ricky already know so it won't interfere with your programming."
Interesting, this was the first time that Ms. Uxral had used a formal order on Tapper, and he automatically chimed in acceptance. She huffed, as if surprised and relieved, and motioned for Tapper to follow. Did Ms. Uxral forget that she was a sub-proprietor? Tapper tried to ask, but she shushed him to silence as they walked around rows of beds and shelving units. In the back of the basement the storage took over, and turned the area into a dense maze of things saved for "just in case."
After an implausible number of turns around boxes and dusty tools, they reached the gray plasticrete wall of the basement and Ms. Uxral pushed aside a hanging garment to reveal another embedded panel. She checked over her shoulder to ensure they weren't followed, tapped a quick number in, and with a muffled thunk the entire wall swung inwards. It had no door frame, instead an attached shelving unit camouflaged its existence.
Inside the hidden room, a lone lightbulb flickered to life and revealed more shelves, with narrow boxes in neat arrangements along three walls and a metal desk against the other end. One such box had fallen off its shelf and on reflex Tapper bent to pick it up, splitting open in his hand. He only panicked for a moment before Tapper finally realized he was holding an actual book.
Tapper gawked at the thing in his hand, its fragile pages liable to tear at the slightest mishandling, and he quickly pushed the book into an available gap in the shelves. In fact all the boxes were books, there must be over a hundred in this little room!
"Would it surprise you to know that I always dreamed of running a library?" Ms. Uxral asked. She wasn't directly looking at Tapper, instead taking in the whole room with a wistful shine in her eyes.
"Not a surprise at all, my own library of data has proven to be quite useful," Tapper nodded along, but Ms. Uxral chuckled.
"Not that kind of library, Tapper. One where we lend out the books, its data, and share with everyone for free."
"Ah, one of the intentionally poor business mindsets." Tapper was still nodding in thought without any accusation in his modular voice, and thankfully Ms. Uxral realized that. "It makes no logical sense, but it did serve the museum curator."
"Consider this: Maybe the greatest 'business mindset' is the long-term growth of all people, and that requires foregoing short-term profits." Ms. Uxral walked along one wall with her hand gently brushing over the spines of a dozen hand-bound books, pulling out the occasional volume to flip through its pages before putting it back.
Tapper's social algorithms finally clicked into place and registered why Ms. Uxral's demeanor had taken such a shift. Her shoulders were less tense, her movements flowed better, her eyes were half-lidded but not sleepy — she was actively relaxing, just by entering this small, hidden library. Asking her directly whether the presence of antiquated physical media carried a numbing effect risked breaking her good mood, so Tapper pressed on through their current dialogue. "But without any profit motive, then who would be the initial investors?"
"Why, you would!" Ms. Uxral actually booped Tapper on his face plate, taking a moment to enjoy his eyes crossing in disbelief before her playful mood sobered slightly. She turned to the backpack leaning against the comfortable chair and pulled out one of the museum tablets, holding it with the same respect as her physical books.
"Tapper, I don't think you realize what a boon you've brought us. There is so much history in these articles, not just the technology, but sociology and ecology and everything between! Just one look at the index for farming sciences, and I had to give one of these to Everett and Wiessa."
Ms. Uxral closed her eyes and held out her palms, hitting the mental breaks on her own excitement before she continued. "The point is, this is precisely what is needed to take this room from my personal escape into a proper library. But we'll need many more copies, and I would like for you to please make them for me. Now before you say anything, I've already checked the terms and these ones do not prohibit reproduction, so this shouldn't interfere with your programming."
For once, Tapper's social programming failed him, and not due to an unpredictable flare of emotions. The first few words were already out of his speaker before Ms. Uxral shot down his copyright defense, and the rest of his boilerplate rejections slowed to a distorted warble. He instead tried, "I... do not have the capacity for that?" But he knew it was a poor excuse.
"Nonsense! You can read and write yourself, can't you?" She ushered him forward to the desk — and then had to coach him through many failed attempts on how to sit in a wheeled office chair — and handed Tapper the tablet. A small desk lamp clicked on and revealed a massive stack of blank white pages salvaged from magazines, carefully folded in groups and cut to uniform size. Rows of pens sorted by color and remaining usage lined the rear of the desk, and a tower of office drawers stood at the sides . "All you need to do is copy it, every article. Don't worry about binding the book when you're done, just keep the pages numbered and in order! You're really going to help Fableton with this, Tapper."
She sighed a bit, picked up a book and then replaced it at a cleared spot, sideways, so that its cover faced outwards. Bright red with any original wording scuffed off, and a new title written with block letters in steady black marker:
Love is Revolutionary in the Systems that Oppress Us
It felt wrong, to make copies of something for free. His emotions, beneath that, were also suggesting that those first feelings were interacting with his Bowson directives again and should therefore be ignored. If these were what it's like for organics to have second thoughts about something, then Tapper didn't enjoy them. But if this directly helps Fableton, just like the pending quest said, then Tapper knew clearing that would feel right. And with his assurances, the teacher left her sanctum in the hands of a bartender.
Hours later and Tapper felt bored. That must be the sensation gnawing at the back of his emotions, it's what every child complained of when they weren't properly stimulated. At first Tapper was stimulated to attempt reading the entire book the same way humans do as he copied it, until a quick calculation revealed that it would take over three weeks to read, comprehend, and write every single page down, and that's if he completely neglected his regular duties.
Instead, a quick program could take command of Tapper's eyes and hands and merely make an exact replica of the tablet's page, and since it didn't save or comprehend what he saw, this process both drastically increased his writing speed and decreased his processor load. But that also meant the rest of his processor couldn't do or see anything, leaving far too much room to experience boredom for the first time. Unfortunate that the museum hadn't offered a simple data packet to download, then he could at least read a different book while his hands worked.
But why couldn't he do that? Tapper plugged into the tablet, and marveled at the data. He had access to everything, conveniently stored in a quality archival format so it wouldn't take too much time to download. No security features, no keycodes, no subscription fees, it was just there and free. Tapper set a command to download everything, increased the bandwidth to max, and let his consciousness shrink to a pinpoint.
Stolen novel; please report.
When it flooded back to signal the download ending, Tapper checked his storage and found a new chunk of data to feed his copying program. He did it! With some clever usage of spindles Tapper managed to only need his good hand for writing, leaving his other to manually fiddle with the tablet.
Only, it was blank. Every article, every file was gone, even the museum app's interface was replaced with a utilitarian list of admin options. As if all aesthetics had been scrubbed down to the root of all technology. And the files Tapper had downloaded, not copied, were already integrated into his personal memory; even the tablet's glossary was indistinguishable from his own.
Maybe Ms. Uxral won't notice if one tablet goes missing.
----------------------------------------
"Tapper, you need to tell me about these developments." Ricky chastised, but his attitude was at odds with his words and he clearly still enjoyed any opportunity to work on and study the robot.
The two had returned to his hideout to retrieve the physical log of his system messages, when Tapper saw the feat list and sidetracked them both. He casually mentioned that the description for his Witchcraft class let him choose magic components as feats, and that he somehow pulled such a component from the mining robot! Tapper was uncharacteristically quiet on how he managed to do that, but Ricky's suspicions dropped to Future Problem status in the face of testing out theories.
Ricky loved to test theories, especially when he makes a breakthrough like learning that Tapper's spells were twice as effective when fed through specific limbs. He couldn't wait to further test whether that was due to spells playing off augmented abilities or some other hidden rule in the system! They spent hours testing out every different way Ricky could think to use spells, bouncing from one idea to the next with barely enough time for Ricky to jot down notes that only made sense to him. And right as Ricky neared the verge of admitting they had stayed out too long, Tapper mentioned that his spritzer nozzle jammed the first time he ever used it.
Of course Ricky couldn't not find out why right there and then, he was on a roll!
Now Tapper lay on a table in the hideout, curled in the fetal position while Ricky worked on his back. "My apologies, Mister Ricky, I shall do better." Tapper's apology was equally half-hearted, with most of his processor still focusing on his hands instead.
The experiments throughout the day mostly consisted of Tapper digging small trenches in the tarmac with a variety of different methods: Using his new drill hand, forcing the Drill spell through his normal hand, and then casting Drill through his drill. Using his normal hand worked just like Spraying through his vacuum worked, and was equally as uncomfortable. His delicate bartender fingers were not made to bend and contort into a drill, it felt unnatural.
Tapper wasn't sure whether he should be worried about that. He was a robot, his very nature was technically unnatural.
Ricky completely missed any signs of Tapper's existential crisis; he was more concerned with the fact that the spell and the drill hand were almost exactly equally effective. And Ricky was downright ecstatic to find the drill hand doubled in efficiency when used in conjunction with the Drill spell, possibly even more than the sum of its parts. He didn't have the proper measuring tools and he needed to run more tests to form a baseline, but still!
Any further communication between the two fell to mutual mumbling, with Tapper contemplating the piecemeal nature of his being and Ricky weighing the metrics of cutting through the spindle or working through the tank. Whatever had jammed the nozzle was gumming up the entire contraption and locked it in place. Whatever option he took will require intrusive measures.
Ricky settled on the tank option and wedged a pry bar in the rim, focusing on popping the lock without damaging the mechanics. He fell into his zen-like trance when someone kicked open the door and sent the hideout into a panic. Ricky yelped, Tapper flopped, and a pry bar bounced off the wall.
"I freaking knew I'd find you two goofing off here and — what the hell is on your back!?" Phanya's explosive entrance and primed insults both died in the air, as Tapper's tank popped open and several blue fingers waved a boneless hello to the world.
Tapper confirmed that nothing was on Ricky's back before he realized where Phanya was pointing. With a fearful ratchet his head turned 180° around and faced a wriggling mass mere inches from his eyes. "I'm growing flesh! Get it off get it off!" The max-volume shout flinched the unfortunate human ears and Tapper lunged for any direction away from his own back, never tearing his eyes away from the fleshy thing.
The hideaway descended into chaos. Ricky and Phanya tried to coordinate but mostly tripped over each other, their shouting drowned out by a repeating loop of "GETITOFFGETITOFF" from Tapper. Eventually Phanya caught one of the erratic limbs and flipped Tapper into a pin, holding him down while Ricky tried to get close with a knife.
"Hold still Tapper, this thing has tentacles!" Ricky yelled, wishing very much right now that his busted hauler suit could steady his shaking hand. One blue tentacle lashed out at the first opportunity, cracking like a whip against the flat side of the knife, and Ricky pulled back to ogle at the weapon. The blade now bent at an angle, right at the point the tentacle touched it, but Ricky hadn't felt any sense of force pushing on his hand. The blade simply went from straight to bent in the blink of an eye.
The thing on Tapper's back used Ricky's distraction to do the job for him, bracing all its tentacles to tear itself free from inside Tapper's tank with a wet sucking sound. It bounced off Tapper and landed on the table, revealing what looked like a single long horn with a slight curve on the topside. Two beady eyes blinked from under the lip of the shell before the creature darted to hide within Tapper's prone form, the horn-like tip visibly quivering behind the crook of his elbow.
Phanya found her voice first and asked the most important question. "Why is the baby octolusk's shell kinda... unfurled?"
Ricky hummed at the question and leaned in to look, curiosity overriding any sense of safety. "Because, hrm, because of the clog!" He started pacing around the table to look at a new angle and continued, "Yeah, Tapper must've sucked up an octolusk egg from that nest, and the first time he tried to use the Spray spell it got clogged in his spindle. But it lived, and grew all deformed, and now Tapper isn't clogged anymore!" Ricky held up his hand and didn't budge until Phanya returned the high-five for solving the mystery.
Tapper, meanwhile, was less enthused. The slimy, wriggly thing cradled itself in his arms and refused to move, and despite the screams of his emotional center Tapper's body refused to throw the monster across the room. All he could manage were half-hearted squirms to try getting away without actually disturbing it, and with a groan he realized why.
"Oh no, we're connected. From that feat, it made this fleshy thing into my familiar. It's going to follow me... forever. Look, it even comes with its own tiny wizard hat." And then Tapper made a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a sob.
Phanya reached out a finger to scratch gently on the shell's tip, and after a fearful pause the creature leaned in. "I think it's kinda cute! Wonder what came first, the feat or the egg? Eh, Ry?"
Ricky blinked twice and said, "Hrm?" Phanya just heaved a sigh and Ricky returned to his musings. "I wonder what it's been eating while it was stuck inside the tank?"
At the mention of food, the octolusk leapt onto Tapper's chest and he recoiled back, bumping into a shelf and spilling a glop of green ooze from the open tank. Anything that wasn't metal or plastic started to sizzle on the shelf, and Phanya shot out a hand before Ricky could get too curious. "Don't touch that, it's a trap Zero left in the mall!"
But the octolusk made a series of clicks and whistles and leapt right onto the acidic puddle. It drank with gusto and then climbed back into Tapper's tank, the slurping sounds given an amplifying echo as it reached all the way to the bottom. All this time it lived stuck in the nozzle port, with all that delicious slime just out of reach!
A pause, a small burp, and clinking sounds followed as the octolusk climbed into view. And it now carried a small green gemstone, shiny and beautiful and absolutely not something Tapper had knowingly vacuumed up. The little creature dropped the gemstone onto the shelf, whistled and clicked, and promptly ate the jewel as well.
"No wait don't!" Ricky shouted and lunged, far too late. "What was that? I could feel something weird about it! Like, like a magic gem or something!"
"I don't know," Tapper responded, his voice slightly slurred. "But it made the thing stronger. I can... feel that. From the connection." The little creature shuddered and streaks of green coloring blossomed among the mottled blues and whites of its body.
Phanya held out a hand and waited for the octolusk to inspect her. She should know better, but it was pretty cute. "Y'know Tapper, if you're connected then you should give a proper name to the little guy. Or girl?"
It clicked and whistled in response, all variations of the same two noises. "K-k-ka see! See!"
"Ugh, I think I'm starting to understand it," Tapper whined. "It's a male. And it sounds like it keeps saying 'Kakisi,' so... that can be its designation." The robot's legs shook and he slumped against the shelf, too much processing power now spilling over his emotional center. "I'm sorry, I believe I am feeling overwhelmed."
The little critter crawled into Phanya's hands to much cooing, while Ricky begged for Kakisi to reveal the secrets of the gem he just ate. By the time either one noticed Tapper, he was already in sleep mode.
In under 24 hours Kakisi the octolusk familiar was already at home in Fableton, with his own designated spot on the cafeteria counter where patrons could nuzzle on his shell. The only two members that hadn't immediately adopted the idea of adopting a town pet were the ratbird that followed Aazran around, as their interactions quickly turned into fights over food. The other holdout was Tapper. He didn't want to have a pet, familiar or otherwise, but he at least managed to stop flinching every time Kakisi wanted to sleep inside of his spritzer tank.
It helped that an octolusk could eat almost anything, and that included any grimy surfaces he squiggled over. Despite his slimy appearance, Kakisi left a trail of cleanliness wherever he went and soon the entire length of the counter shined. It was even cleaner than Tapper ever managed on his own.
Tapper refused to contemplate whether he was feeling jealousy towards this little organic creature.