"Tapper? Tapper! I order you to wake up! Oh, what did that asshole say... Resume cognitive functions!"
[Wounds: ⬤⬤⬤]
"Hrm, no, it's making those weird noises again. Let me try..."
[Injury: Nerve Damage
Disadvantage to concentration checks.]
"Hey, I think I saw that hand twitch. Poke the elbow joint again!"
[Injury: Joint Damage
Affected limb(s) can dislocate after failing Constitution or Strength saves.]
"Kakakisi! Eee-see!"
[Injury: Manaburn 3
Spell attempts take a -3 penalty and cost 3 additional mana per attempt.]
Tapper tried to speak. He tried to ask why his world was now just an endless fire of pain burning through every sensory module, but the words failed to form beyond one long groan. He'd have to manually shut down his physical sensations to free up processing power, which took even longer because his proprietors wouldn't stop sending fresh spikes of pain through his body with their prodding. Eventually Tapper was sufficiently numbed to activate his cameras, and was greeted by the vision of Kakisi sitting on his chest. Up close and far too personal, the little creature radiated concern and anxiety.
"What happened to me?" Tapper tried to sit up, but with all physical sensation disabled he collapsed backwards and found Ricky and Phanya looming over him.
"Hooray, you're awake! Wait no don't move, I'm still putting you back together," Ricky said, waving one of Tapper's legs in the air for emphasis. "You really fell to pieces at the end there, just lie still and tell us what the hell you did."
"I apologize for my poor performance, Mister Ricky. Caspian Fairbanks used his authority as a numan to override my directives and force a shutdown before I could properly distract him."
Phanya leaned over and flicked Tapper on the forehead. "After that, dummy. You kicked his ass!" Her playful smile faltered when Tapper's eyebrows frowned at her.
"I have no data logs of any such event, Miss Phanya."
The two proprietors shared a look. "Nothing? Not your grand speech telling off Fairbanks with all those made-up words?" Phanya asked.
"The manager's lackey exploded, then the manager's shuttle exploded," Ricky added.
"Because you magic'ed up a freaking hurricane of drill bits in the middle of town square?"
"Also, I hit Level 2."
"Oh hell yeah, Ry."
The two bumped fists, but smiles faltered when they saw that Tapper wasn't sharing their good mood. He didn't recall a single thing, and they told Tapper to keep the blackout a secret. Then they filled him in on how Tapper fought off the manager, much to his growing horror. Tapper was programmed to believe his proprietors, but he still felt doubt that he could act so offensively. He also chose to ignore the flicker of emotion that wanted to verify those claims firsthand. Surely he didn't, he couldn't, seriously injure a numan.
----------------------------------------
Caspian Fairbanks roiled with anger inside his mind, the emotions only contained by a physical stasis of his body. The instant he returned home Fairbanks set up the Health Rehabilitation Tank and jumped in, ending any other medical processes without waiting for the help to arrive. It was for the best; they'd waste time whining about "alert this" and "tumor that" when Fairbanks knew full well they could heal that minor growth later. It wasn't even visible yet!
He had to heal his face before it scarred, or otherwise he'd have to reconstitute every square centimeter of skin on his body. It was his face, not like he could hide the stretching scars on his back. So he immediately dipped into a full tank of medical stem gel and the cool slickness froze his body in place for healing. But he didn't let the system put him to sleep, nothing could tear his thoughts away from the obscene impossibility of what just happened.
Locked away in his own mind, Fairbanks played the events over and over again. His implants recorded everything that happened around him at all times, and his internal display read out any analytical report known to man. And yet, all of them were completely useless at telling him what hidden tech that Phanya showcased! How did a cheap hauler covered in scrap metal survive that assault? How did Phanya damage his ceramic armor, designed to withstand minor missile fire, in a single punch? She didn't have subdermal implants, no muscle or bone enhancements.
It had to be something about that ugly metal on her gloves, it was the same kind the dirty little boy wore. Yet there were no abnormal energy signatures, no magnetic fields, no nanomachines. Even a metallurgical scan said they wore basic patch jobs of repurposed garbage metal.
And then there was that robot. Fairbanks double-checked that it had received his command and shut down, yet without any other input it defied him. It attacked him, practically bleeding with abnormal energy signatures that were completely alien to the Fair family. And the readings from those sharp little bullets, just simple little shards of metal that could pierce his shield...
A subtle shift stirred Fairbanks from his thoughts, his body sinking slightly when the medical process finished and released him from stasis. He climbed out of the tank feeling rejuvenated, a happy side effect of the HRT, and he stretched like waking from a pleasant nap. Maybe Fairbanks could just feed the worst dissenters through the matter recyclers and deal with the interloper later? But then he discovered that he wasn't alone, and killed any peace in the manager's mood.
The useless driver was slouched against the wall, too lazy to stand straight without wincing. Didn't even bother to get dressed, draped in nothing more than thin rubber tubes and cheap medical slime. At least he had the good sense to pretend to bow, cradling his emaciated midsection. "Sir, requesting permission to use the HRT to complete the… medical recovery."
Fairbanks turned and watched the tank drain in silence, not answering until every drop vanished. "Looks like we're out of medgel." The driver whimpered something about his internal organs not being done regrowing yet, and Fairbanks finally noticed just how skeletal Twelve looked. Maybe he did cancel the cloning process just a little bit too early, but it was his face.
After sufficient groveling Fairbanks turned his back and opened a locked container on the wall. Pouches of medgel, stabilized for emergency field use, filled the locker in neat rows. They were all identical but Fairbanks made a show of picking one out and dropping it at the driver's feet. "That's the last freebie you'll get from me. Do not return here without that robot, or the next gel you'll feel is the reclamation vat. And I'll make sure you're awake for it."
The manager's new personal attendant, less than an hour old but with the memories of too many lifetimes, took his time bending to pick up the medgel pouch. It wasn't the first time he woke up with underdeveloped muscles, and it gave him time to work up the courage and speak.
"Why not just replace me with a fresh model?" He knew to leave out the real question, Why won't you just let me die?
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
The quiet words caught Fairbanks off guard. "Because, uh, because you don't get to quit until I say so. I'll even make it easy on you and throw out some crumbs, so one of the proles will probably just bring the robot to you. How much does a robot cost to them, ten-k?"
"Thank you, sir."
"Even if you are working with that saboteur."
"I cannot knowingly endanger any numan, sir. Even the girl."
"Then you should've jumped into the crowd instead of my cannon."
"Of course, sir. My apologies."
----------------------------------------
Miraculously, aside from the masked man no one had died during the fight in the town square, yet no one was celebrating. The leadership of Fableton and Belvidere were discussing plans for retaliation, using codewords like "downsizing" and "layoffs" that bled doom in their tones. Contacting traders, organizing mutual aid, budgeting, everything carried a strain as they neared the inevitable end result of these discussions.
Ms. Uxral made the leap. "There's only one way this can end without all of us becoming corn fertilizer, Frack. We need to come together and —"
"Oh no, don't you dare say it!"
"— unionize."
"Gah! You've cursed us, woman!" Belvidere spun his chair around and threw his hands up, as if that would make the blasphemy roll off his back. "She didn't mean it! We would never go against the will of the Great Invisible Hand!"
"Damnit Frack, we don't have time for this…"
A rapid series of chimes cut off their arguing, when every single screen with a data connection lit up at once. The screens all displayed a single still image, a snapshot from Fairbanks' retinal recording, of Tapper standing wildly off-balance with a threatening finger pointed at the camera. Tapper still had no memory of the event, but seeing the sense of twisted anger in the picture made him grateful that he couldn't remember.
*WANTED*
Robot known as "The Mage from the Machine"
Rogue AI, unpredictable and extremely dangerous
REWARD: §10,000 CyraCorp debts forgiven
Every voice went quiet as every eye read the message framing Tapper's picture. The attention made Tapper feel conflicted, to his own surprise. His emotional center screamed in a wordless, deeply primal need to survive, but any desire to run away was held in check by his logic gates clamping down. This time the firewall held and his emotions couldn't run amok, because cold calculated logic read the social reactions of the crowd.
Nearly everyone, regardless of their township affiliation, wanted to turn him in. And why wouldn't they? The reward was enough to completely clear the debts an average person held towards CyraCorp, which meant they could open a new line of credit and start over somewhere else. All they needed to do was turn in a robot that had only entered Fableton a few scant months ago, so it wasn't as if the town would fall apart without him around.
Tapper almost respected Fairbanks for making such a perfectly logical offer. He might act overly-emotional in person, but the manager certainly had strong business acumen. He looked at Fableton's leader and tried to stand rigid, showing that he wouldn't resist, and she nodded in understanding.
"Thank you for making this easy, Tapper." Ms. Uxral turned to face the crowd and continued, "Now we're not going to fight, just split the reward down the middle between us and Belvidere. It's easy profit, Frack, so keep your men in line."
"NO!" The shout startled everyone, giving Phanya one chance to stop the crowd from rioting. She stepped in front of Tapper and squared her shoulders against every authority figure of her life. Ricky joined her, not knowing what her plan was but backing her up without question. Even Kakisi came out of hiding to squat on Ricky's shoulder and make a threatening pose to the crowd.
"No one is going to freaking touch him!" The description for her Commander subclass mentioned something about leading armies, and she called on those energies to guide her words the same way they guided her body in a fight.
Ms. Uxral was not amused. "Phanya, not now. I'm sorry about your bot, but the adults need to handle this. Now get downstairs where it's safe."
Phanya drew herself up to full height, trying with all her might to not flinch when the teacher started to growl on the very edge of hearing. "He's one of us and we don't give our people up… ma'am." It felt dirty to stick Ms. Uxral with her own lessons on morality, but it was easier than trying to explain that Fairbanks absolutely could not find out about Tapper's system.
"Ey, ain't those th' kids what who threatened to punch th' boss?" A random miner broke the strained silence, and Phanya felt her plea dash against the wall of mob mentality with that one statement.
"What? No I didn't threaten him, I was just… talking tough…?"
Belvidere forced himself to the front of the crowd and cleared his throat, not noticing the nonverbal argument Phanya was currently engaged in. "He's right, Sophia. Aazran, the bot, and those two kids all attacked management. Aazran might get lucky and hide, like usual, but you know Fairbanks will come for them all eventually. There's no reason for all of us to suffer."
Ms. Uxral's glare, already running at full power, swiveled to him and her words clipped to match. "And what exactly are you suggesting, Frack?"
"You want me to spell it out? Turn all four in now and we might survive, the robot alone won't be enough. Be reasonable!"
"We've survived this long by not turning on each other!"
"Because we knew our place!" Belvidere's hoverchair drifted forward as his voice grew into a shout. "We work and we prove ourselves! And you're risking everything we've built because those two brats think they can attack management? This is mad! Now I'm taking —"
Ms. Uxral stuck thumb and forefinger into her mouth and whistled a single shrill note that pierced hearing, cut off all dissenting voices, and covered the sounds of shifting gear. By the time the whistle died and hands dropped from ears, every single resident of Belvidere found a gun or knife was suddenly aimed at their vitals. Everyone from the early days of Fableton responded to the whistle without hesitation — ready to end the fight before it starts, one way or another.
"Ha! I've got four, just like old times," Aazran said with open glee. He held a dagger in his tail and a compression pistol in each hand to threaten three people at once, while his new robotic arm twisted unnaturally around a fourth person's throat.
"Back in form! And I'm still at five," Struzick laughed back, before he suddenly barked like a drill sergeant to a line of five miners. "Oi! That means I only need one shot for the lot of ya, so let's all think calm thoughts together."
"Oh, bugger your form." Their banter was often inappropriate, but never malicious. The insults just added color and laughter to the town, even in dire situations.
Everett planted his pitchfork against the exposed gut of Belvidere's hauler-clad security officer and balanced leaning on it, just enough so that any sudden movement would impale the needle-sharp tips. The security officer easily had more than twice the body mass on the stout beaver hybrid before the exosuit, and the predicament forced them into a staring contest, but Everett paid him little actual mind.
"Wiessa? Are ya planted good and sturdy?" Everett called out, unconcerned about the danger he was in.
"Yes, I have two throats by the shears," Wiessa answered, unconcerned about the overall situation she was in.
"Good, that's my Sunflower." The capacity for the couple to be equally blasé about very different things confused many people, but they always worked well together.
The trio watched in silent shock. Tapper was enthralled by the teamwork on display, so immediately effective that it almost looked casual. Ricky and Phanya, however, knew that Fableton was founded after a large fight, but only in the general terms that no one enjoyed reminiscing. They hadn't seen most of the elders handle a weapon throughout their entire lives, and now they only saw soldiers standing a hair's breadth away from massacre.
Belvidere stared down the barrel of the air pistol in Ms. Uxral's steady grip. A snarl of anger gave away to grim resignation and he said, "Like this, Sophia? Just for them?"
"For anyone. We do not give our people up, ever."
Tapper squeezed between his proprietors to step forward. Normal Bowson programming said to never interrupt high-stakes business dealings, but this situation was now outside all parameters for normalcy. "Miss Uxral, I implore you to let me —"
"Quiet." The lone word shut Tapper down just as efficiently as Fairbanks did, but unlike the hard-coded command this was entirely an emotional response. Ms. Uxral hadn't moved besides tilting her head in his direction ever so slightly; her eyes and weapon never wavering from Belvidere. "All miners, drop your weapons and leave. We will not ask twice."
A great clattering filled the square as dozens of small objects fell in unison and feet shuffled toward the gate. Belvidere moved last, his head shaking slowly in disbelief at his own employees. "20 years. I always knew your idealism would be the death of you, Sophia, but after 20 years… I started to hope it wouldn't be the death of us all. How long do you think you can hide your kids before people grow desperate?" He floated away without waiting for an answer, leaving Fableton alone to mull over its next move.