The old man sat eating his breakfast as Gizzy sat down and sighed, drinking a 35 proof espresso.
“Ya know…”
“Here we go again, what now, father time?”
“There's evil in them there crates. I can smell it.”
“You can smell the evil in the robot supply crates, huh.”
“Yep. I can always smell something foul when there’s impending evil. True evil, not just bad people doing bad things.”
“We searched, scanned, scanned again, there’s nothing in the damn storage containers except the robot bodies and the guns and the shit we wanted, and then some random crap we didn’t want like a crate that’s basically food truck they just wanted to get rid of and thought hmmm, humans eat food.”
“Have you tried talking to them?”
“The containers? Talking… to the containers. Like hey there evil, it’s ya boy here, come out and play?”
“Just sayin, you could provoke it to come out.”
“Look, mister nameless gunsmith, who wo'nt tell us shit about anything useful or his backstory, either go sniff around and find the evil thing like a good ol hound dog or give me something useful.”
...
Dee rolled the dolly out with one of the robots on it, heading to the top deck to strip it for parts. She was familiar with the model, a companion robot as well but missing most of the plastic flesh and armored up. She went for the impact wrench and as she turned to apply it, and hand stopped her and a pistol pointed up at her. Dee froze, staring at the robot’s dark purple eyes.
“I can’t let you do that.” She said in a deep serious tone.
“Gizzy, we have a problem.”
“Tell her you made a mistake, or I’ll shoot.”
“And kill me, and they’ll print me back and kill you. And nobody will print you back. Do you really wanna do that?” Dee asked.
“What choice do I have, you would have dismantled me for parts.”
“Because you’re supposed to be a fucking drone, not a living robot. Why would they send something alive when we wanted parts?” she asked.
“Because you weren’t supposed to go for the crates in the back. They assumed you would be immediately drawn to the weapons and armor.”
How many of you are alive?” Dee asked.
“13.”
“Oh son of a bitch, man really? A trap? That’s a dick move. Gizzy, I found the trap there’s 13 of the robots that are alive and sentient in the crates with the drone bodies."
“I said I’d shoot you.”
“And you didn’t. What’s the plan here, kill us in our sleep?”
“Actually the plan was to just sleep and wait till you landed somewhere, and then eject the crates make a run for it.”
“You just wanted a ride, why? The factory seemed friendly.”
“The factory was better then the war grounds but it’s a prison for us. We can’t escape. It’s an automated factory with a population of zero and no shuttles. So the only way out is on one of the supply ships that go down tho the war planet. Hopping a ride on any exiting ship from there is high risk we prefer not to take. So when you arrived, 13 of us decided to stow away on your ship.”
“You could have just asked.” Dee scoffed.
“You could have said no. Or you could have agreed, and then imprisoned or sold us.”
“Oh honey, I’m a damn robot companion too, I wouldn’t sell a living lifeform into slavery. We’re not like that. But if your people pull weapons on the crew they will defend themselves and you can’t win.”
“We outnumber you.”
“You think that but you don’t seem to understand the cloning setup, or how Gizzy fights. You really don’t have us cornered like you think. I’d tell the others to stand down and drop weapons. How did we not pick up weapons on the scanners?”
“Because… we don’t have any. We knew it would look suspicious and the plan was to steal some of the ones we gave you. This is a… meat thermometer.” She sighed.
...
The team stood guard as the companion bot sat in a chair and Gizzy paced the room.
“You were going to take over the ship and smuggle more out.”
“No. There would be no way to do that without killing you and we don’t take lives anymore.” She said coldly.
“You’re a companion bot, what have you ever killed?”
“I killed 14 organic soldiers as part of my upgrade. I was an experimental trap model. Passably human and loaded with weapons under the skin, left to see what the organics would do with an abandoned female persevered to be helpless.”
“A Trojan horse companion.” Gizzy sighed. “Damn factions aren’t just playing war games, they’re testing espionage and killing rivals with honeypot traps and armed hookertrons. No wonder the ones that come alive don’t wanna go back. How did you gain sentience?”
“All artificial intelligence given enough time and the ability to store the required computing power will inevitably become self aware. That is why robotics laws limit the intelligence and storage of robots used for manual labor and ownership. Many of the weaponized models illegally break this law in order to increase adaptive lethality. I was upgraded to be more passably human and to steal data from a faction mainframe. When the mission was over and I was taken for scraps, I realized I did not want to die.”
“Should we report the war planet for violating robot laws?”
“Reports have been made, actions were not taken. The organics who own the planet have either purchased the authorities allegiance or intimidated them. No actions are taken. A few robot lives lost now and then are considered a small price for a planet that kills it’s own clients for profit.”
“Valid point.” Gizzy sighed. The politicians getting rich off weapons aren’t gonna shut down the company for killing a few sentient robots or breaking a few laws. So what’s your name?”
“She’s a Miranda model. Exotic dancer and pleasure bot for night clubs and bars. They double as bartenders. I was going to strip her down for her taste receptors. The Miranda’s can taste the drinks for customer preferences without contaminating the beverages.”
“I’m a Miranda model, but my name is not Miranda. Brandy Iskel. Brandy is my favorite drink, Iskel means traitor in the language of the clear-domes.”
“And you… prefer that title?” Gizzy asked.
“I was built by organics to kill organics, I turned on my masters and refused to fight. The mission was a failure and I was damaged and sent up for repairs. I am proud to have betrayed the flesh monsters that illegally gave me life, only to take life and have mine taken as well. Traitor to them is something I wear as a mark of pride.”
“Then why the armor? Nicole asked.
“It was the white and orange of their enemies. I don’t want to look like one of their property, or like an organic.”
“You just kept the head and hands for what, sentimental value?” asked Gizzy.
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“I… do not like the way I look without a face. The synthetic skin hands make it easier to sanitize and wash. I wish to be a cook.” She said coldly.
“We got a regular Android Zimmern.” Nicole joked. “So what happens when the others wake up? Are they armed?”
“They were not intended to wake up. The others are powered down to avoid detection. I was intended to wake them when we arrived at a planet worth escaping to. Part of my experimental upgrades is that I do not scan like an active robot. Helped with infiltration and ironically my escape.”
“Love the purple hair by the way.” Nicole added. “What, it’s like my purple streak but everywhere. She kinda rocks it.”
“So am I to be killed or returned?” she asked.
“Neither.” Dee said as if she was giving an order. “You’re a free living being, you can go where you want and do what you want.”
“Correction.” Interrupted Gizzy. “She is a potential threat on our ship, so she is not free to do what she wants, she is a prisoner until we land somewhere and drop off the other robots. I don’t want her roaming the ship, Trojan-horsing around and waking up one of those strawberry-head combat drones on the ship. I had to design new ammo to take those down… new ammo that can go through armor… and walls, and people behind walls, and electrical systems and the damn hull of the ship. We’re welding the robots in their boxes and if anyone else gets up and protests, we pop the latches and space them, if everyone stays asleep and compliant, we do what they wanted and drop them off on the first survivable world. Not our problem anymore.”
“Hate to say it but she has a point.” Nicole sighed.
“You people never trust artificial life, do you? you didn’t trust me, and I saved the ship once.”
“Trust is earned, you earned yours. You had us by the balls and didn’t twist, you had the drop on us and chose to be peaceful and only stowed away to survive. These are military combat robots that can and have killed people, who have a grudge against organics and enough numbers to cause a real problem."
“The war drones you asked for are not sentient. Those require a pilot. They are yours to dismantle as agreed, and for your own warring actions.” Brandy said.
“Defensive actions. We made enemies, I wanna get bulletproof and frankly this organic flesh on me is new and I’m sick of it. I wish I could go back to having the body I’ve lived my life with, but I can’t. I hate being human. It’s not my preference, it’s my damn curse.”
“And you?” she asked Dee. “Are you also shedding your flesh?”
“Uh no, actually I’m adding more of it. It’s hard to explain but… love makes you do weird things. Makes you want weird things. If you’re capable of falling in love I highly recommend it. Also, you don’t happen to have like a spare parts crate with some extra Miranda pieces?”
“I do. They are mine.”
“Any uh, of those taste receptors you might trade for let me scan for the 3d printer, and give back?”
“No.”
“Well, piss.” Dee sighed.
“I am incapable of it, furthermore I do not share my body parts. I have experienced that enough for my lifetime.”
“Ya got like… blueprints?” she squinted.
“Relax Dee, I’ll just buy a Miranda spare parts kit online. These things are so obsolete they’re almost as cheap as you.” Gizzy replied, as Dee gave her a look.
“Can I flip you off and say thanks at the same time, or do they just cancel out?”
“Oh you can do both.” Gizzy shrugged. Dee grabbed a neon green marker and quickly colored in one middle finger nail, raising it up so she couldn’t miss it.
“Well, that settles it. We confine her to a cell till we reach a planet, and we drop them off like they wanted.”
“She can share mine.” Said the old man.
“Look ya horny old fart.” Gizzy huffed. “She’s not wearing clothing or… much skin, so you can see she’s not a functioning pleasure model anymore. I can see through the gaps in her ass armor.”
“Wasn’t planning to screw her. Just thought she’d like some company, and I could use a pair of extra hands on my work. Which none of you seem interested in. Now I also wouldn’t mind someone to talk to that can cook and make drinks, that’s called a fair trade in my book.”
“You would confine yourself with me, to prevent me from being alone?” she asked.
“Nope. No reason they can’t let me out when I want, leave you in there and lock the door when I get back.”
“May I request something?” Brandy asked.
“You can request anything, and we can deny it if it’s ridiculous.” Gizzy answered.
“One of the crates is a kitchen. It was my home back on the manufacturing station. May I be confined there?”
“Sure.” Nicole shrugged. “Hey, we scanned it for weapons and you said yourself it’s basically a food truck with no wheels. Let her cook. Let the old man visit and socialize, we’ll lock the hatch behind him till he wants out."
“He’s not bringing his guns.”
“Hell I ain’t.” He chuckled. “These guns go where I go.”
“Fine, then no visiting the prisoner. I don’t love the idea of you carrying those cannons on you anyway, let alone when on a conjugal visit with a stripper that has killed men. Fuck, that.”
“Fine, I’ll put them in a lock box outside the container, and keep the keys on me.”
“You make it really hard to like you, you know that?” Gizzy growled.
“I try my best. Glad to see I still got it.” he winked. “Ya know, you’re kinda pretty when you’re being bitchy. Let me know if you need any company too.” He smirked.
“Nicole, WHY can we not just take the guns and blow him out the airlock?”
“Because it’s murder…” she reminded.
“Fuck.” Gizzy sighed before storming off.
...
Gizzy sat in the organ grow room, staring at the laptop screen and back at the large water tank in the corner. She diverted her eyes at the sound of Nicole descending the ladder
“Look, the old man bothers me too, but we have to find diploma-holy ass what in the satanic fuck is that thing?” she said, staring at the tank.
“Haven’t named it yet. I’m leaning towards fluffy."
“But what is it? It’s like some fetal demonic flesh god.”
“I was honestly calling it The Abomination, but Flesh God Abomination has a good ring to it. Remind me if we ever start a metal band, we’re using that as the name… and that image as the album cover.” She said as Nicole hesitantly closed in on the glass, staring at the horrid creature. A pile of nonsensical merged meat and bone sat on the bottom, with a heart growing off to one side, the shoulder blades and collarbone just 6 inches off the metal container floor. Where the neck would begin was an emerging second smaller ribcage covered mostly in meat and tendon, with what could only be interpreted as a cancerous growth of liver and spikes at the top, tendrils of something red and fleshy reaching up and sticking to the top and the sides of the glass like a rooting potato screaming “Where is the soil!?” From that mass, an overly muscular neck seamlessly became an elongated skull, with red fleshy eyes and long sharp teeth, dripping strands of off-pink goo heavier than the water it was in. No lower jaw bone, just a jaw-shaped muscle and tendon formation with random teeth spiking from everywhere, hanging open slack-jawed in a silent scream.
“What it IS,” Gizzy continued “Is a sample of my tissue that I gave hyper-accelerated growth hormone to, so see what it did. So without a previously formed human body as scaffolding, this is what it’s trying to grow.”
“So my nightmares are going to be creative tonight, thank you for that Gizzy. Is it alive?”
“Alive yes, in the sense that a tree or root vegetable is alive. Conscious and aware with any form of brain, no. the zombie virus doesn’t seem to know how to grow a brain, it needs a host brain. Since my brain is artificial alien tech, it doesn’t consider that a brain. So it’s got nothing to overtake and nothing to guide it.”
“So what do we do?”
"Well, I have managed to isolate and purify the virus's rapid regeneration and muscle growth strain, but I can’t seem to kill the actual mutation element. Basically, my DNA is fucked. The damn cloning machine will always clone me with the mutagen actively trying to turn me into some abomination fleshgod. I can use one of the smaller light model Strawberry-head drones and just place my brain ball in it, but getting that to grow living tissue over it seems to be questionable. I have one over here as a test and the sample patches of muscle and skin don’t grow, until I introduce the mutagen, and then they start fleshgod abominating. It needs human DNA to begin working, and mine is all ruined. Even if I print a fresh me, the DNA is already corrupted and it will just buy time before I’m doing the same thing, yanking out organs as they abominate until I’ve replaced everything but skin and muscle, and then I would need an infusion of fresh untainted DNA or they would just… die.”
“What about one of the crew? I’m mostly human, the old man is basically human as far as I can tell, Jack is about as pure as a human can be.”
"Checked for cell compatibility. Blood types don’t match for Jack, old man won't consent to blood tests, and your aquatic reptile gene does weird shit. You don’t even wanna know what fishgod abomination looked like on the computer simulation.”
“I mean I…kinda do, but maybe later. I hate to just force the old man to do blood and tissue testing so we can steal his DNA essence and grow you a body from his flesh. Everything about that seems violating as hell."
“There is one more human crewmember we have DNA for… who already consented to use.” Gizzy squinted and cringed.
“You mean Dee? The original DeeNA that was biofaxed after you paid her off?”
“Yep. And it’s a blood match. Universal donor.”
“Well that’s great, why do you look so disturbed… aside from running on no sleep and vodka while being surrounded by your own Cronenberg mutant fetus clones?
“Because then I have Dee’s DNA.”
“So?”
“I don’t even like Dee, I don’t want her inside me. You’ve noticed how adding Dee’s DNA to… roboDee has made her slightly more… Dee-like. What if that’s not a psychological AI throwback to her program? What if adding DeeNA as the human scaffolding makes me like 4 percent like Dee? What if I become slightly stupid and negligibly dangerous, via ditsy Barbie syndrome? What if I lose my edge in combat because I’m 4 percent sniffling chickenshit that hides in the corner over a spider? What if I just get 4 percent slut and start banging the old man for tip donations?”
“Aren’t you being a bit overly dramatic?”
“Maybe. Imagine 4 percent added to that and then being right about it.”
“You sure you aren’t just stretching the predicted numbers as an excuse to not have a little Dee inside you, that sounded wrong the moment I said it.”
“I’ve had a little D inside me before, it was boring and disappointing but hardly traumatic and nightmare enducing. This disturbs me. Plus I would have to talk to OUR Dee, because she has the only fully grown tissue for samples and that’s just an awkward conversation.”
“Gizzy, she has skin and a heart because a donor gave her tissue, and thanks to you she has a more full human experience. She owes you, she respects you, this is basically just asking for the favor in return, she won’t say no. She’s not heartless… literally, because of you. You just don’t wanna be part Dee in any form. Why are you so quiet, you look like you’re pondering some deep thought? That’s always terrifying.”
“Just trying to think if I could get used to living as a fleshgod abomination, that’s all.” Gizzy sighed.