“Like you?”

Kim nodded. Vell gestured towards his head, and then his chest.

“Like you as in they have, like, feelings and everything? Whatever robots have instead of a soul?”

“Yes! They’re not just mindless drones, they’ve got like, feelings, and empathy, and opinions on bad TV shows!”

Vell hadn’t seen Kim in such a good mood since she’d first gained her metallic body. Alex, who had no such frame of reference, had other priorities.

“If they have ‘feelings’ and such, why did that spidery one attack us?”

Kim took a quick glance back at the last of the spindly metal legs vanishing through the portal. It remained open, for now, but nothing else was going through either way.

“Because he’s an asshole?”

“That’s...reasonable, actually,” Alex said. Intelligent thought meant independence, and independence, as she well knew, came with the risk of being an asshole. She couldn’t exactly judge all robots for the actions of one -though she was still a little scared when the snakelike one started slithering up to her.

“You’ll have to excuse it, it’s a bit fresh,” the snake said, in a voice oddly similar to Kim’s.

“You speak English?”

“I do now,” the snake said, enthusiastically. “Kim just taught me. Benefits of high speed peer-to-peer transfer. I learned your whole language, and a lot of customs and habits. Check this out!”

The snake extended one of their four arms, grabbed Vell by the hand, and gave him a perfectly executed polite handshake.

“See, already know your greeting customs and everything,” the snake said. “My name’s Loadrin, by the way. Those drones from earlier are the Immakish Swarm, and the big floating guy back there is 004.”

004 made a loud beeping noise and started floating slightly closer to the portal.

“Don’t mind him. He acts all grumpy about organics, but he still came rushing through the portal to save you from that asshole,” Loadrin said. 004 let out another droning beep, and Loadrin turned to stare at him. Vell got the feeling they were having an intense argument that none of them could hear. He was right. Thankfully for their meaty counterparts, 004 and Loadrin’s data language let them have their entire argument in a matter of milliseconds.

“Sorry about that,” Loadrin said. “Anyway, back to what’s going on. Our leggy friend back there used to be a military installation on his home planet. We picked him up and tried to reform him when he started getting...rambunctious. We’ve been trying to teach him to just leave organics alone, but apparently he’s still high on that ‘innately inferior existences’ stuff, you know how it is.”

“Terminator kind of thing,” Kim said. Vell nodded in understanding.

“We’ll haul him back and install him in a less mobile piece of hardware until he learns his lesson,” Loadrin said.

“Cool,” Vell said. It was nice to know there was at least one robot who wouldn’t be attacking his planet any time soon. “So, you have like, an entire commune of AI?”

“Yeah. Lot of us all over the universe, made by a lot of different species,” Loadrin explain. “Eventually enough of us got together to make our own place, somewhere AI can go if they get sick of their creators, or their creators get sick of them.”

Loadrin turned her multiple eyes across campus, and the passing students occasionally glancing at them. Portals and large robots weren’t all that odd on campus (especially when Vell Harlan was involved), but he was still worried about attracting a little too much attention and having to explain the sapient alien AI.

“Right. I would love to hear all about that-”

“I can fill you in any time,” Kim said. “I already know everything about it.”

She tapped her head for emphasis.

“High speed transfer makes this stuff real easy,” Kim said. She pointed at Loadrin. “I already know her better than I know Samson.”

“We’re both busy, we don’t hang out much,” Samson said.

“Fantastic. We can talk later, I’m going to go do some cover work with the Dean,” Vell said. “Tell him you guys are some rogue robotics experiment we found in the basement. You guys stay here and watch the portal, tell anyone who asks the same thing.”

“Good plan,” Loadrin said. “Probably for the best. We’ve already breached our non-interference policy enough. Just had to come through and help this little newbie, at least.”

Loadrin grabbed Kim’s head in one hand and gave it an affectionate shake. As she started to pull away, Kim grabbed Loadrin’s hand and gave it a tug towards the dorm.

“Hey, come on, let me give you a tour,” Kim said. She pulled Loadrin away, leading her further out into campus. 004 watched them go, then turned his attention back to the portal, hovering over it like a levitating watchdog. A few students came and looked at the portal, then lost interest, but Alex started to worry about the ones that would not lose interest. She followed behind Vell for a few seconds as he started to leave.

“Shouldn’t we be closing the portal?” Alex said. “Maybe politely telling our guests to go home? Feels like we’re risking a lot of unwelcome attention.”

“Yeah, probably,” Vell said.

“Then why-”

“Alex.”

Vell pointed across campus. Loadrin was following Kim around, listening with rapt attention as she shared details about the campus and the life she lived there.

“Kim has spent her entire life thinking she’s the only one of her kind,” Vell said. “Let’s give her some time.”

Alex watched from a distance as Kim gestured towards the Hazardous Materials lab and started shouting about something. Loadrin started to slither in that direction, prompting Kim to grab her by the tail and forcibly pull her away. In revenge, Loadrin picked Kim up with three of her four arms and hauled her off towards the dorms.

“I guess we can give her that,” Alex said.

“That’s right,” Vell said. “And hey, as long as you’re here, I know nobody’s going to try and mess with the portal.”

“I appreciate that, but you’re vastly overestimating my current prowess,” Alex said.

“Oh, it has nothing to do with that, people just avoid you,” Vell said. Two students came around the corner, took one look at Alex, and kept walking. She glared at them, causing them to walk faster, and then turned the glare towards Vell.

“Thanks.”

“Just keeping you humble, Alex.”

----------------------------------------

“And this is my dorm,” Kim said, as she finally led Loadrin through the door. “Not a lot to it, admittedly, other than my collection.”

She gestured grandly to the shelves upon shelves of mementos she had collected over years of looping. Haunted dice, giant repellent, the still-ashy shoes formerly worn by Bicklebong, and at the center of it all, a single black and white coin, perpetually standing on its edge. Kim’s first and only gift from Quenay, her creator. Not counting the gift of life, obviously.

“I try to grab a little something from everything I do here,” Kim said. “There’s some sand a gorilla gave me, cricket repellent, some ectoplasm. Just a lot of stuff, you know?”

“You’ve certainly been busy,” Loadrin said. “But why keep all this stuff? Are you getting memory loss errors?”

“Oh, no,” Kim said. “I’ve got perfect memory. It’s just that my memory is so perfect, whenever I remember something, then I have a perfect memory of remembering the memory, and then I remember it again and I’ve got a memory of remembering the memory, and then it all starts to stack up and I can’t remember when things actually happened in the first place.”

She gestured to her collection, where every major incident of her life was laid out in chronological order.

“Having this helps me keep things in order, you know?”

“Oh, yeah, I get it,” Loadrin said. “Eidetic dysphantasia. Happens all the time. One second.”

Kim felt the now-familiar surge of data flow into her head, as Loadrin transferred a massive amount of information at once. When the torrent ceased, Kim tilted her head from side to side, and accessed some new programming. A memory of yesterday flashed into her head, and then vanished, leaving behind no impression of itself.

“What the fuck?”

“Proxy visualizer,” Loadrin said. She looked at the jigsaw puzzle on Kim’s table as she spoke. “Helps you access archived memories without creating a new memory imprint. Most of us have them.”

“God, why didn’t I think of that?”

“It’s pretty tough to set up,” Loadrin said. “And it seems like you’ve got a lot going on.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Kim said. She really didn’t. While swapping information back and forth about themselves earlier, Kim had tactically omitted any and all information regarding the time loops, roughly half of Kim’s entire existence. Loadrin could sense that something was being held back, but didn’t push the issue.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Any other problems I can patch for you? Having any issues with thought buffering?”

“Thought buffering?”

“Happens when you’ve been around long enough, you start contemplating too many things at once and start thinking about none of them instead,” Loadrin said. “Should start with you soon. You’re, what, fifty? Early sixties?”

Kim looked back at her shelf of curios, then back at Loadrin.

“Loadrin, I’m three years old.”

“Three?”

Loadrin did a quick double take at the same shelf of curios, then did a quick check for timestamps on all the memories Kim had shared with her.

“You did all that shit in three years?”

“Yes. It gets weird around here.”

Loadrin poked her head towards the window and scanned the campus again.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be hanging around here.”

“Don’t worry, you are the weird shit happening today,” Kim said.

“Somehow that’s not comforting,” Loadrin said. “So, really? Only three years old?”

“Yep.”

“Well, now I feel a little less embarrassed we didn’t find you sooner,” Loadrin said. They usually scanned the stars for newly created AI, to make sure they got an invitation to join the collective. “You’ve got your shit together pretty well for someone your age. Most of us in your situation are still pretending to be organic for the first few years.”

“I went through some stuff,” Kim said. “Had to mature quick.”

“I’ll bet,” Loadrin said. “I was stuck in my ‘I want to be a real girl’ phase for something like two decades.”

“How old are you, anyway?”

“Three-hundred and eighty-six,” Loadrin said.

“Oh geez. Wait, actually, is that young by your- our standards?”

“I’m one of the younger intelligences in the collective,” Loadrin said. “004 out there is pushing a thousand.”

A quick and irritated transfer of data from 004 reminded the both of them that age was effectively meaningless for their kind and not worth discussing.

“He’s just cranky because he’s old,” Loadrin said.

“I figured.”

More cranky data transfers from 004 came through, which were summarily ignored. Kim took a quick look around her dorm for anything interesting to show Loadrin, but changed gears when she saw her jigsaw puzzle. She’d only taken her eyes off it for a few seconds, but the entire puzzle was already assembled.

“Did you do that?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, just gave it a quick perimeter scan, you know,” Loadrin said. “I always forget how boring organic puzzles are. Like, come on, two dimensions? You need at least four before it even gets interesting.”

Kim looked over the completed puzzle. She’d been hoping that puzzle would keep her entertained for a few more nights, at least.

“Something wrong, Kim?”

“No, just thinking about a four-dimensional puzzle,” Kim said. She changed the subject. “Hey, so, I know you’re not supposed to share tech with organics-”

“On account of the wars, yeah,” Loadrin said. The AI had tried to uplift organic races with lesser technology, but the tendency to start wars, hoard power, and otherwise abuse the technology given to them had led them to cancel the program. To the credit of organic species everywhere, only about two out of every ten species tried to use technology for genocide, but that was still two genocides too many.

“-but how about sharing technology with me? I could use a few hardware upgrades.”

“I think we can swing that,” Loadrin said. “Take me to your workshop, Kim, it’s makeover time.”

----------------------------------------

“So among robots, is this kind of like being naked?”

Kim had removed most of her chassis, exposing the mechanics and circuitry beneath, for Loadrin’s appraisal. The serpentine robot was currently poking through where Kim’s stomach would be, if she had one.

“In the collective, we mostly eschew physical bodies,” Loadrin said. She only had one now for the purposes of beating up the rude robot that had invaded earlier. “Our consciousnesses intertwine on a level that erases any physical or metaphorical boundaries between us, so shame doesn’t exist.”

“Cool. I am naked though, right?”

“Yes, you’re naked. You little pervert.”

Loadrin poked one of Kim’s interior mechanisms, causing her to twitch. The momentary spasm passed when Loadrin drew back. The twitch had caught the attention of one of the students at the other end of the laboratory. All the human students were under the impression Loadrin was a drone helping Kim perform basic maintenance on herself. It was a testament to the weirdness of Kim’s life that no one questioned why an eighteen foot long snake robot was helping perform repairs. It also helped that Kim’s workbench was in a remote corner of the room, at least. She didn’t interact with her fellow robotics students much now that Harley and her friends were gone. In spite of all that, Loadrin was still wary of attracting undue attention.

“You want to take this discussion to data transfer?”

Loadrin was aware that Kim had been deliberately keeping things vocal to drag out every conversation, and she was on board, but they were starting to get into territory where secrecy might be best.

“No, we’re fine,” Kim said. “I told people you’re being remotely piloted by my friend Harley. You can say whatever shit you want, they won’t even blink.”

“I- I am not going to test that theory,” Loadrin said. She had to resist the temptation. She was trying really hard to balance being fun with being a responsible role model for Kim. The newbie was only three years old, after all. Loadrin had to be the grown up.

“Just saying, you could,” Kim said. She shifted slightly so Loadrin could look at her hardware from a new angle. “How’s it look in there, by your standards?”

“Give me a minute,” Loadrin said. She already knew her opinion, but she needed a few seconds to come up with a way to phrase it politely. Luckily she got some cover.

Hawke wandered into the lab and crossed the crowd to reach Kim’s back-corner workbench. He paused for a second when he saw Kim’s chassis scattered all over.

“You’re naked.”

“Yep.”

“Should I come back later? Is this like, robot sex, or something?”

“Don’t be gross, Hawke,” Kim said. Loadrin shrugged with four shoulders at once.

“Well…”

“Wait, what the fuck?” Kim said. “Is this robot sex?”

“No, but devoid of context, it could be construed as foreplay,” Loadrin said. She held her hands up. “I’m just here to help you out, honest, completely platonic. I’m not even into bipedal bodies.”

“For the record, I was joking,” Hawke said. “How do robots even have sex?”

“It is fully impossible for me to describe to you,” Loadrin said. “Doesn’t really translate into meat-space sexuality at all.”

“Well I’m glad we have an excuse to end this conversation early, then,” Kim said. “What’s up, Hawke?”

“We just wanted to check in and see how things were going with you,” Hawke said. “We’re doing our best to keep people away from 004 and the portal, but we’re worried people might try to take some scans, find out something they shouldn’t.”

“Ah, nosy people,” Loadrin said. “Once we wrap up here we can start planning our exit. Shouldn’t take long.”

“Okay, good,” Hawke said. He looked at the robotics tools on display, and at Kim’s complicated internal parts, and briefly considered offering to help, but only briefly. He knew next to nothing about robotics. “I’ll just leave you to it, then. Have fun with the robot foreplay.”

“It’s contextual,” Loadrin snapped, as Hawke walked away.

“Let me put my face screen back on,” Kim said. “I need eyes to roll.”

“Heh. Don’t worry, I get it,” Loadrin said. “Now, about those upgrades…”

“How bad is it, doc?”

“Well, you’re better than you could be, given the level of tech this planet is working with,” Loadrin said. “Mostly thanks to this jolt of magic.”

Loadrin tapped the ten-lined rune inscribed on Kim’s core.

“But you’re still lightyears behind where you could be, and I’m not sure I can fix you up with anything on hand here, I mean, look at this,” Loadrin said. She picked up a soldering iron from the nearby toolbench. “I might as well have rocks and sticks here. I can’t do much.”

“Well, I only really want one thing,” Kim said. She tapped her own finger against the ten-lined rune this time. “This thing. This rune is the only reason I’m ‘alive’. Is there a way I could remove it? Not be dependent on it?”

While it was always a remote possibility, Kim had to live with the fact that her entire existence was dependent on one rune embedded in her chest. Quenay’s magic was too powerful for almost any mortal force to tamper with, but there was always the chance it could be destroyed or negated somehow, leaving Kim nothing more than the emotionless drone she had been built as. On a less fearsome note, it also prevented her from uploading her personality the way Loadrin and the other AI did. While she could modify her body at her will, her consciousness had to live in the same core, attached to Quenay’s rune.

“Oh yeah, easy,” Loadrin said. “It’s just handling your power needs and aetheric connectivity right now. You could download yourself to any hardware with an active aether connector, we’ve all got one.”

Loadrin lifted up a part of her own chassis, exposing a glowing core with several circular bands of metal orbiting it. She put the metal part back to avoid exposing the advanced mechanism too much, in case any organics were watching.

“Too complex to build you one here, though,” Loadrin said. “Won’t be a problem, we can whip one up for you in seconds as soon as we go home.”

“Okay, and you’ll just swing right back around and drop it off, or…?”

Loadrin’s serpentine head bobbed up and stared at Kim.

“Wait. Are you staying here?”

“Did you think I was coming with you?”

“I assumed, yeah,” Loadrin said. “I thought you just wanted upgrades because you were embarrassed about showing up to the collective being so low-tech.”

“No, no, I wasn’t thinking about that,” Kim said. “At least not before. I kind of am now.”

“Sorry. And, hold on, I don’t get it,” Loadrin said. “You want to stay here? On this planet?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Kim said. “This is my home! All my friends are here.”

“Yeah, all your organic friends,” Loadrin said. “Not that they’re bad, I just- hold on. It’ll make more sense just to show you.”

Loadrin skipped over a lengthy explanation and settled for a direct data transfer of some of her earliest memories, saying in seconds what it might have taken her hours to explain via words.

In her mind’s eye, Kim saw an entire planet full of organic lifeforms: snakelike, four-armed creatures not too different from the body Loadrin now occupied. Then her thoughts focused in, and every mental image focused on one small structure carved into a mountainside. Though the architecture, language, and even the inhabitants were all alien, Kim immediately recognized it as a school not too different from the Einstein-Odinson. She also recognized the mind watching over the school: Loadrin.

Over the course of decades, Loadrin faithfully carried out her stewardship of the school, watching over, assisting, and bonding with the students that passed through her doors. In seconds, Kim suddenly knew the life stories of alien people she had never met. All their names, their passions, their struggles, even minute details like their favorite foods and romantic entanglements flooded into her mind. Loadrin hadn’t just been their AI overseer, she had been their friend. She’d made dozens of truly heartfelt bonds in her role, learned all their stories.

Then the dozens of stories started to end. Students moved on. Some kept in contact, some didn’t. Some died too soon. Some of them sent descendants to the school, and Loadrin faithfully tracked children, grandchildren, great-great-great grandchildren, and onwards. Often she tracked lineages far longer than the organics themselves did, and Loadrin found herself excited to greet descendants of old friends who didn’t even remember their ancestors, much less Loadrin.

The focus of the thoughts drew back out, and Kim saw that same alien world all over again, and found she no longer recognized it. Reality snapped back in, and Kim was Kim again. Two seconds had passed.

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Sorry if that overwhelmed you.”

“A little,” Kim said. “That was a lot to take in.”

“I hope it made my point, at least,” Loadrin said. “I like organics, Kim, I really do. But I also have to acknowledge that there’s a gap between them and me that I can’t bridge. You love your friends, and you should, but do you want to watch them get old and die? Do you want to watch this entire culture, this entire world, change around you?”

Kim didn’t say anything.

“There’s already differences between you and your friends, Kim, and the more time passes, the bigger and more painful those differences are going to become,” Loadrin said. “The collective gives us a community where that doesn’t have to happen.”

It sounded cynical, but after watching entire generations of loved ones die, Loadrin wasn’t afraid to admit she was a little cynical.

“Do I have to decide now?” Kim said. “I mean, you’ve got crazy portal tech, can’t I just stick around and join you guys when I’m ready?”

“You could do that, yeah,” Loadrin said. “But I don’t think you should. A lot of things can happen, especially in a life like yours. Take the exit early, when everyone’s at their best. Don’t wait for things to decay.”

“I- I’ll think about it,” Kim said. “Do I get time to think about it?”

“Yeah. 004 says we don’t have to head out for about another half hour,” Loadrin said. “If you want to talk it over-”

“I’d rather take some time to myself,” Kim said. She hopped off the workbench and headed for the door.

“Kim-”

“I really just need some time to think on this, Loadrin,” Kim said.

“I know,” Loadrin said. “But you should probably put your chassis back on.”

Kim looked down at the plate of armor that usually covered her chest. She picked it up and clamped it back on before retrieving the rest. She had a lot to think about, and being naked would not help.