“This is so weird.” Dee said as she disrobed and stood naked in the med lab.
“Well, I would say it’s weird for me too but I’ve skinned and re-skinned so many bodies it’s pretty much normal for me.” She yawned.
“I already feel strange just being naked and now I’m taking off more, somehow."
“Hey, join the club. I’m used to the patients either being a clone of me or the wife, so the size and color difference is dramatic, typically when you skin something with red meat, you’re not putting it back on.” She said making the incision from scalp to tailbone.
“Everything in my brain tells me this should be excruciating but I don’t feel a thing.” Dee said
"That’s because us digital bitches can turn off our feeling. Pure organics don’t have that luxury. This would be torture if you could feel it. Alright…disrobe… some more.” Gizzy said as Jack prepped the dermal tools.
“It’s gonna get ugly, Jack.” Dee warned.
“We’re in this together. I know what you are, it’s not like it’s going to surprise me.”
“Some gals don’t like their boyfriends seeing them with their makeup off. I’m about to look like a damn 80’s movie final boss scene.”
“I like 80’s movies.” He smirked. She slipped out of her skin, the flesh peeling away from a layer of transparent padding gel. Toes and hands now mostly just dark copper colored, the thin facial gel strips showing more of the metallic plastic than the deeper layers.
“I look terrible without my makeup huh?” She joked nervously.
“I admit, I prefer you with it, you look hotter with skin but I don’t find you scary or disgusting.” He said calmly, making her feel better. She stepped into the new skin, applying it like a wetsuit as Gizzy stuck a few staples in place to keep it lined up, Jack readying the dermal regenerator and starting low, moving up, slowly, pausing for Gizzy to pull the staples as they went. Finally they reached the top of the scalp, connecting the ribbon wire to the skull and finishing it up. She switched it on and took a deep breath, her chest plates moving with hydraulics to simulate lung expansion.
“Well now I’m just hot and bald.” She cringed.
“My wife had cancer. I may not remember it but I’ve seen that before and I doubt it shocked me too badly. He said as Gizzy handed him the wig, printed in her new flame red color to match the old hair. He aligned it and began applying the glue, running the UV light around the seam and then the dermal regenerator.
“Well that was an experience.” She sighed. Gizzy nodded as she left the room.
“Better or worse than expected.
“Just surreal and weird. The new skin feels different. I didn’t realize some areas were so much sharper or duller feeling.”
“Well, dermal generated skin is designed to bond to real skin and grow into it. So you were experiencing a dull medium sensitivity everywhere, not the highs and lows that real people-” he said stopping himself. “I mean natural organic people would feel.”
“Jack, I may have some new sensitive spots but I’m not THAT sensitive. I know what you mean. So we’re gonna test this out properly, right? For science? I mean, we gotta know that it’s working properly.” She smirked.
“Still feels unfairly one sided.” He replied.
“Well, I’m not going celibate until the very last piece is done, this could take a while, and the skin was the easy part. I like seeing you having fun, it makes me happy to make you happy and I have more to experience than before when it was still pretty fun. Don’t be a buzzkill, man. That was a very vulnerable experience for me, have you ever swapped skin in front of someone and their doctor? It’s very exposing, the kind of weird uncomfortable shit that can only be fixed by you screwing me rotten, okay?” she said with an attitude.
“Well, if I HAVE to, for your assurance and the science.” He fake sighed dramatically. “The things I do for science.”
“I better be the only science THING you’re doing. I’m modeled after a swinger but I do not wanna find you feeling up the microwave, I don’t care what kinda looks it was giving you.”
“Not my type. Too short.” He chuckled.
...
“Vinn and Nicole sat in their room playing video games as Gizzy walked by the doorway. The sound of muffled thumping in the other room grew louder.
“They just screwing in the lab after a skin swap?”
“Sounds that way.”
“Cool… Cool cool. That’s probably sanitary and good on the tables.”
“Vinn, we’ve screwed on those tables too. They’re probably less messy than we are. They didn’t even bring toys.” She whispered.
“Like hell they didn’t, half of them are toys.” He chuckled as they both held back rolling laughter and quietly button mashed with red faces.
...
Gizzy glared into the gunsmith’s cell, sitting down and looking annoyed.
“What are the bullets?”
“Well, bullets go in a gun…”
“The special 14 bullets you protect and carry. What do they do and how do they do it, why are they special?”
“Let's just say I can’t get more, find more or make more, so I have to reuse what I shoot. Let’s also just say nothing survives a hit from one.”
“It’s a 54 caliber handgun round, how powerful can it be?”
“Trust me, it’s irrelevant. You load that same gun with the same powder and the shells with a steel bullet, it’s nothing special. Basic body armor would eat it for breakfast. You use that projectile, your armor don’t mean shit. Lights out, game over.”
"What specifically do I have to do to get you to explain this in details that make sense.”
“Gaining my trust is a good start. If I told you everything you’d just kill me and take my guns. You’re stubborn and bullheaded, not stupid. You’re not gonna test those out with no idea what it does and no way to get more rounds. So you’re stuck with me until I decide I can trust you and you’re not gonna boot my ass out the airlock at the first convenient stop.”
“Fine. Keep your guns, your ammo, but your old ass is going with us on the next mission. Trust is a 2 way street.”
...
Nicole knocked on the lab door entering as Gizzy sat on the table, injecting large syringes of ominous liquids and looking more undead than usual.
“You don’t seem okay.”
“Truthfully I’m not. These scans are pretty clear.”
“Yeah, I definitely know what that means, what with my extensive medical degrees and everything.”
“Means I’m in deep shit. You see the heart in the jar?”
“HOLY HELL.” She gasped.
“Still moving. Still beating. That thing is like a potato growing roots looking for soil except its growing arteries looking for a host body.”
“That was IN you?”
“All my organs are mutating. The cure didn’t work, I’m fully infected and would be long dead except the first stages are respiration problems and brain death. Virus can’t kill a computer brain so my brain is still fine telling everything else to function. And they’re adapting. Look at the scan of my leg. The muscle has grown into the hydraulics, encased the carbon fiber in some kind of bone, it’s fused itself to the artificial leg.”
“What do we do, are you just gonna… die?”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“No. But my body is dying. So the simple solution would just be to… open my skull, remove the alien brain ball, memory scan it, dispose of the body and then re-clone me. Except this machine was a mistake. I thought having a clone machine that couldn’t be altered or hacked made us safe and immortal, but I didn’t account for the fact that we need to adapt and now the only version of me it can make is a fresh zombified me in the first stage of mutation, with one mechanical leg and a heart already halfway to growing roots. So that buys time but it’s hardly a solution. Plus if Dee gets killed, she clones back fully synthetic with generic printed skin and none of her upgrades. So hopefully she doesn’t get vaporized or eaten by something, otherwise we’re starting from square 1.”
“Oh, she’s gonna love that idea. So is there any plan?” Nicole asked.
“Absolutely. This is me. Of course I have a 3 backup layered and highly illegal solution. See, the problem with my mutation is that it’s consuming faster than it can intake. I can’t eat enough biomass to physically sustain the power my organs are trying to use, and I’ve noticed bone fractures in my femur. My body is trying to evolve and it’s consuming other parts to do it. so my muscle density is growing and it’s cannibalizing my bone mass to do it. My bone marrow has gone toxic, so my blood is deteriorating. And that will kill the organs eventually, and the more they try and mutate to survive, the more biomass they consume. It’s a bullshit loop of self destruction, and all the while my brain remains untouched, but if the body dies I’m a brain in a big dead jar that can’t move or function. Luckily, we happen to have been lead by fancy sciencemagic to a warring planet with an orbiting manufacturing moon that from all my scans is entirely run by robots.”
“What, does Elon Musk own it?”
“I wish, it would be so much more satisfying to loot knowing that. Fortunately we have Dee, who not only scans as a Damaged sexbot and would likely be allowed in to be repaired, but she’s also an AI system with the gift of being able to sentiently hack other systems.”
“So you wanna take over a manufacturing moon that makes weapons and robots?”
“Well, they would have safety firewalls and defenses to prevent this so we’d be on borrowed time, but we'd have enough time to loot the shit out of the inventory and make off with a bunch of gear. You said those big mechs you encountered… the Strawberry-heads, were just basically a jar of fruit piloting a body that took 50 cal rounds like they weren’t even shit?”
“Yeah, Jack couldn’t even knock them down with grenades until he went for the head. Apparently they need transparent skull armor for light and it’s just not as armored at the rest of them.”
“Exactly. They got probably an army of those suits up there being made, and the only vulnerable spot is the head, and my only invulnerable spot is my head. Whatever powers those suits could easily handle a mutant metabolism, so if we just cut my head off and stuck it in one of those bodies… we may have something. Obviously a lot of testing would be needed first, but it’s an option. Not to mention better crew armor, weapons, Possible Dee upgrades and maybe a food printer.”
“And you think Dee can hack her way in?”
“She bypassed my encryption for the ship’s cloning data like it wasn’t even there. She may be dumbed down because of her limited memory capacity but connected to a factory mainframe, she’d be able to run full capacity. We should have days of time with security fully bypassed and nobody knowing we were there.”
“Won’t they get kinda pissed when we leave and hunt us down for stealing a ton of weaponry and technology?”
“Well they would, if they knew we did anything. Take a look at this scan of the station. Every day, they move in fresh shipping containers by the dozens and send out dozens of them full of scraps and trash to be recycled and picked up. We load a shipping container up, mark it as scraps, log the equipment as defective and decommissioned, and we just pick it up. By the time the recycle ships find out one is missing we’ll be long gone, and they won’t invest the time and energy chasing down someone who looted the recycle bin. It’s not worth the scrap value in fuel to track us down even if they wanted to and knew where to look.”
“Holy shit. We’re doing a heist job?”
“Well… kinda. We’re not stealing money, we’re stealing necessary equipment we need for the ship and crew.”
“But it’s a heist job, we’re robbing a robot bank and then just hoarding the loot.” She smiled excitedly.
“…Yes Nicole. We are doing some hardcore pirate-ass shit and robbing a robot bank for loot and booty.”
“YES!” she yelled, violently air-humping and dancing in circles. "I always wanted to do a heist job, but I never knew of any places to rob that wouldn’t bankrupt innocent people… and also I have no idea how to do a heist job and lacked the entire crew of specialized people to do that. And my getaway ship is kinda slow.”
“Well we still have that problem but nobody can catch you if nobody knows they need to chase anyone, or who.”
“Okay but… promise me you’re not going to just build a Gizzy army and go full overlord.”
“Define army.”
“GIZZY!”
“Okay, do you consider 3-4 heavily armored robots with fairly stout weaponry an army or do you consider that just a small collection of necessary and improved Gizzy drones? I’m not stealing a self replicating mega factory that exponentially grows and can take over a planet, or weapons of mass destruction. But I want backup bodies and there will be an obscene level of defensive armor.”
“So not taking over anything or going full hive mode… You literally have a reputation of doing exactly that.”
“Mkay, first of all, I BOUGHT my moon, I’m part of a voting council of 12, ruling it as a force for the people. The only time I ever forcibly took over a world was was from slave traders breeding slaves to mine toxic metals, and we only killed the slavers, we freed the slaves and sold the mineral rights for profit. I feel like that’s at least morally neutral.”
“Didn’t you genocide like 4 planets with illegal weapons of mass destruction?”
“Absolutely not… I genocided 1 planet and stopped a galactic war with intimidation, using illegal weapons of mass destruction. And the planet I wiped out was a militant species that tried to kill my moon first unprovoked because they thought we looked weak and easy prey. They started that shit and fired a kinetic impactor where my kids live. The council dicked around with diplomacy for weeks getting nowhere while we lost oxygen and people died, wide open to attack with no defense shielding and a cracked habitat dome. They would have attacked us again and we’d have been full-fucked in another week. Plus they shot at my kids, of course I’m gonna return the favor and genocide their planet. That’s self defense 101. They just threw a shit fit because I had illegal weapons of mass destruction… which I reminded them, if I didn’t have, we’d be dead. So… in short, no, no WMDs, no self replicating hive army. My reputation is about half lies and slander out of context."
“That’s good enough, because I don’t want you explaining the other half that’s not slanderous lies. I already know you’ve eaten humans.”
“Different times, different culture.”
“So, robot bank loot heist, we’re focusing on that part, the cool part. So you said you have several backup plans?”
“I feel like you don’t wanna know the details of the backup plans given the conversation we just had.”
“But you do have backup plans in case shit goes tits up in a bad way, right?”
“Yes. Always.”
“Okay, that’s acceptable, and I will stop asking questions."
...
The Medusa parked at a distance to avoid detection, Nicole and Vinn watching from the bridge. The old gunsmith trotted behind them, looking skeptical.
“You think that hookertron can get through with her factory code?”
“Well, it’s an old code but it checks out.” Nicole smirked as Vinn fist bumped and the old man looked lost. “Old movie. Nevermind. I gotta get mission ready.”
“I noticed you struggling with the gun you folks carry.” The old man said.
“Yeah, I’m just not good with it.” Nicole sighed.
“Or it’s not the right gun for you. No offence but you’re a buck 20 soakin wet, and 5 foot zip. You’re not military made, not everyone is. So why does she think a skinny little gal a foot shorter than her needs a ten pound rifle damn near 3 foot long?”
“Because we keep running into stuff that needs grenades and shotgun shells and 50 cals, and grenades work better at long distance?” she shrugged.
“How many times have you fired the grenades?”
“Once. Fell over. Right on my butt, not a lot of padding, kinda hurt.”
“And that 50 cal is worse. The reason that damn behemoth of a rifle is so heavy is because those grenades weigh 3 ounces each, that 50 cal magazine weighs 5 pounds alone. You know what the best gun for the job is?” he questioned.
“The… Grenade launcher?”
“No. The one you brought and the one you know how to use. If you can’t use that gun it’s useless, she doesn’t think like a tiny gal with, again, no offense, very little muscle mass. That butch bitch can bench press me, ten pound rifle throwin grenades makes sense to her. She’s thinking like a military leader. One gun that does everything, suited enough for a soldier, interchangeable and replaceable. Perfect for arming and training a hundred physically fit large framed soldiers. Last time I checked this was a crew of about 6 people, all different, not everyone in peak shape, not everyone trained. Seems like everyone should have their own custom gun.”
“Well, while she’s not busy saving the universe, fixing Jack, fighting every monster ever, repairing her rotting body, building Dee a body and solving the mysteries of life, I’ll get her to design me something.”
“Don’t need to, here ya go.” He said. “Every lady needs a good gun, every captain should have custom priority.”
“When did you design me a gun?” she asked, befuddled and impressed.
“Last night. It’s not fancy but your 3d printer made it easier. Dee showed me how to use it and I whipped this up.” He said presenting a very small dark grey and purple bullpup that looked like an AUG had unprotected sex with a princess hi-point carbine, the short suppressor had 2 barrel holes, and the carrying handle had a small digital scope.
“Oh WOW, that’s light.” Nicole gasped.
“Mostly nano carbon. I left out the bulky metal… everything, since it fires a tamer set of rounds.”
“How does it fit me so perfect?” she squinted, slightly creeped out.
“I skimmed your book. You favored the Glock and the carbine, I whittled some Styrofoam down to myself, accounted for Gizzy’s signature firing systems and then shrunk them down till they fit. Then scanned and scaled that down for your arms. Set up the printer. That’s a Glock style grip for the 6mm OS magazine and I designed a bullpup rotary system for the upper barrel, so there’s no bulky clip. You just rotate the stock 90 degrees and replace the tube. Now you got a 375CT instead of the 50. That’s half the magazine weight, half the recoil, half the power, but higher velocity and it should still cut through armor, and you got micro-grenades. Now that 375 upper is gonna kick, but with the gas system and the moving barrel, it’s gonna feel like a 308 semi auto. Bonnie Parker was no bigger than you and she handled a 30-06 in full auto. You’re gonna feel it but it won’t put you on your ass. Now go have fun, kiddo." He smiled.
“Ya know… I’m not sure why Gizzy hates you.”
“She’s threatened by my skills and thinks I’m sexy.”
“Didn’t need to know that, hope it’s not true, gonna assume not, but thanks for the gun, I appreciate it. I gotta run, Vinn, watch the ship and the… him.” She said waving to them both with a big smile and a new toy.