Chapter 7

  Exploration

  DATE:

  7088.03.06-07,

  RECON

  ERA

  I sat with

  my legs to the side, trying to keep them out of the way as much as I

  could without dislocating my hips. I had managed to turn Forty-Five

  around so I could access his back panels. Surrounded by tools, I

  managed to delicately pull apart the back plates, finding several

  layers to go through. I delicately dropped every screw, bolt and

  washer into little containers I kept for this very process. I drew

  diagrams in the blank pages of Forty-Five’s manual of how the

  plates fit together, so I had a reference for later.

  It was once

  I got to smart

  fabric that I realised that something

  was off...

  I wasn’t

  sure how sophisticated Forty-Five’s diagnostic capabilities were,

  but if he

  knew I had damaged the electronic fabric he

  would know that I had gone rummaging. I shuddered at the potential of

  another lecture, but I forged on. Using surgeon-level precision, I

  cut through the fabric. I

  avoided slicing any of

  the live wires woven in

  the fabric, and then

  delicately

  clipped

  it aside to keep it from being damaged further.

  Exposing

  the surface below, I rested

  my palm on the silver

  material. It felt like real

  skin.

  and On

  par with some of the high-end synthetic

  leathers that graced the fashion scene.

  “You...your power source must run a bit warm,

  huh?” I muttered nervously. “This… why put high-end synth

  leather three inches under plasteel? That’s a waste of credits...”

  Forty-Five

  was way more sophisticated than I

  even

  imagined.

  I could not

  find

  any seams or screws that kept

  the silver leather panels in place. From my limited view, I seemed to

  have picked a seamless section. Feeling through with the tips of my

  fingers, I was able to feel that there was a skeletal structure

  underneath. I used my scalpel once more, cutting into the leather in

  a straight line down, just next to his

  spine.

  There was a

  growing feeling deep in my stomach that what I was doing was wrong. A

  dark maroon fluid was dripping from my cut and looked way too much

  like organic blood, triggering a flash of the nightmare I’d just

  washed off in the shower. I bit the inside of my cheek until the

  sharp pain grounded me. Not now, I told myself. This is a machine.

  Just a machine.

  A morbid

  curiosity for all things robotic took hold; I needed to know

  he was. I needed to know how Forty-Five worked. I needed to know why

  he was made this way.

  But most of

  all…

  ‘I

  need this distraction.’

  I pushed

  back some bile as I finished cutting through the section, clamping it

  back. The entire piece was more than just leather, I realised.

  Coloured a deep metallic silver like a living aluminium, it was

  layered like human skin, muscle included.

  If he

  was a ‘Class-2 Sentinel’ then I was one of the lost Terra AI

  Gods, I

  thought, grimly.

  A cold sense of vindication sweeping through me. The diagnostic

  report had been .

  But why would

  synthetic biology layers be considered a military grade secret?

  As I

  exposed the next layer underneath, I noticed the skeleton was created

  with white metal

  slats that curved and interlocked, mimicking the protective curve of

  a ribcage, but with a precision no biology could achieve. The ribs

  ended just as a

  would, creating an open space around the spine that gave way to the

  robot's insides.

  I reached

  in with my gloved hands and found…some kind of liquid. I pulled my

  hand back and noticed the rubber bubbling slightly.

  "Acid,"

  I hissed, yanking my hand back as the rubber dissolved. "Shit!

  You're leaking!" I started at the smoking glove. "Wait...

  if this melts rubber, why isn't it melting you?" I looked closer

  at the internal cavity. The lining wasn't standard plastic. It was

  something else. Something expensive enough to hold acid.

  I

  turned sideways and rocked forward on my legs, not using my

  acid-covered

  hands

  to get up. I rushed to the galley, throwing the gloves in the bin as

  I grabbed the bucket marked with

  sharpie as

  the Chemical Spill Kit. I hurried back, making sure I didn’t go too

  fast in case I tripped over my own feet and hurt myself.

  Before I

  committed to do a full clean, I put on heavier duty gloves than the

  ones before and took a

  sample using a chemical

  sampler. The surface I

  swabbed was speckled

  with small, rough indentations.

  “Yeah,

  this is

  healthy.

  Exploration

  can wait.

  Gotta get this stuff out first.”

  I hauled

  the spill kit onto my lap and twisted the lid on the bucket till it

  clicked. A panel opened in the top, and a tube telescoped out from

  the middle of the bucket. I swabbed the sampler

  across the top of the tube, causing it to

  telescope down. The display panel flashed across a few chemical

  formulas that I recognised as a heavy-duty

  coolant, and severely degraded organic blood.

  ‘

  I thought curiously. My mind

  jumped to the synthetic muscle I’d just cut. ‘Does he

  run on bio-sludge? Or did something crawl inside and melt?’

  I moved my

  legs out of the way, leaving the bucket next to the cavity in

  Forty-Five’s back. I pulled off my gloves and watched as the spill

  kit did its work. Hydraulic arms lifted the lid so vacuum arms,

  articulated tentacles equipped

  with cloths and sponges dripping

  with neutraliser solution

  snaked out.

  A

  thin antenna topped with an optic

  sensor zeroed in on the

  offending concoction.

  While it

  did that, I turned my attention to the skin. The bile returned. The

  more I looked at it, the more it resembled the dermatology diagrams

  in the medicine textbooks my oldest sister used to bring home. I

  traced a myriad of minuscule wires, as thin as strands of hair, that

  snaked along the exposed underside. Quickly wiping my hands on a

  stained rag, I pulled Forty-Five’s useless manual onto my lap and

  used the blank page after

  the microwave chicken to

  draw what I was seeing.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I drew

  diagram after diagram while I waited for the spill kit to finish its

  job. I wrote notes in the margins, documenting the very little I had

  already exposed. A small beep signified the job completion by the

  spill kit, all the extensions disappearing under the lid as the

  hydraulics brought the lid back down.

  The

  telescoped tube disappeared, and the

  display panel advised the details of the cleanup job. It had removed

  300 millilitres of high-density fluid, finding depleted

  uranium shrapnel and

  paper pulp bits in the dregs.

  “Paper?

  Did rodents actually build a nest inside and they all died? How…

  did it get in?” I tapped my pencil against the page, thinking.

  “Depleted uranium makes sense. That’s bullets, cheap projectile

  weapons… You’re a combat sentinel, you would have seen combat at

  some point.”

  I quickly

  wrote down the report, including my little theories, making sure I

  wrote every chemical component as the spill kit reported them.

  I then

  put aside the manual

  and pushed the bucket out of the way. I peeked back into the cavity

  with my torch once again pointing inside. The bottom of the

  cavity was slightly corroded, not enough to cause any immediate

  structural problems but I could see a support bolted to the top of

  the hip eaten through halfway.

  With the

  liquid gone, I could see the tops of the hip servos, which were

  connected to the twin

  supports with thick

  corded

  cabling. In between the

  servos was a thick black mesh that domed upwards slightly. The liquid

  had made the space look much bigger than it was, the viscosity

  allowed it to cling to the walls. I looked up, seeing a dense

  configuration of cubed crystal

  data banks, connected

  in series. I gaped at the amount, never having seen that many in any

  bot. I counted eight

  from what I could see, knowing there were some hidden by the other

  cubes.

  “Damn,

  Forty-Five. You’re

  walking around with a quantum-state labyrinth for a brain. Show-off.”

  I grinned, though the complexity of it made my head spin. “That

  is definitely not standard security issue. What

  the fuck are you? What kind of sentinel needs this much memory?”

  I moved the light, looking for the heavy thrum of

  a power core. Instead, I saw a soft, latticed balloon tucked behind a

  rib-strut. It didn't look like tech. It looked... like a biological

  mimic.

  “Okay,

  now you’re just making things up,” I muttered, poking the air

  near it. “Where’s your power supply? Is this some kind of

  bio-fuel hybrid engine, for

  a Class-2?

  An

  oxidizer intake? What is that for?

  Why

  The usual

  black box was missing. I was used to seeing them at the bottom of a

  robot's torso, but there was nothing here. I muttered softly. “It

  could be above instead. The rib cage solidifies up there, looks like.

  Whoever made you, tried to emulate Ron tech.

  It’s a bit wrong though…”

  I doubted I

  could access anything behind where the shoulder blades would be. I

  scribbled in the manual a bit more, drawing a circle around the chest

  on a diagram of Forty-Five. I

  idly putting some tools

  away as my mind raced over what I just learned.

  Maybe the diagnostic report was all over the place

  because his hardware all over

  the place! Maybe someone used a Zap-Trap Systems Sentinel shell

  and stuffed it with scavenged Ron components, like the data cubes

  and...whatever the balloon was.

  A soft

  alarm from the cockpit caught my attention.

  “Shit.”

  I cursed softly under my breath. I scrambled to my feet, almost

  tripping as I tried to untangle myself from my tools, book and

  writing implements. I took light quick steps up the cockpit, pulling

  up the proximity alerts to see what the ship was freaking out over.

  A wreckage,

  badly degraded and fragmented, had been picked up in the distance. I

  hung my head in frustration. It was two

  hours away from our

  position, based on our current speed. “Stupid, neurotic alerts.”

  I dismissed

  the alarm, fighting the urge to disable the proximity alerts again. I

  took the hint though, playtime was over. I settled back behind

  Forty-Five, putting together the tools I’d need to close him

  up again. I was done stitching the cut to the ‘skin’ type

  material when the alert sounded again, about

  fifteen minutes after the first alarm.

  Louder this time. I cursed, louder this time, and choosing more

  colourful words as I forwent

  stitching the fabric so I could screw the armour panels back in

  place.

  The alarm

  increased in crescendo as I desperately begged my haptic

  river to go faster

  without damaging the tiny threads.

  “Come on,

  come on,” I hissed, feeling

  the magnetic motor whine in my grip.

  Once the

  last screw was in place, I thrust my tool back in the kit, scrambling

  back to my feet once again. The ship swerved slightly, and this time

  I tripped on my own feet fully. I was barely able to catch myself on

  the coffee table as I pushed off with all the grace of a drunkard,

  only to fall into the couch.

  “Get

  to the cockpit. Come on Mel, get to the stupid cockpit.” I muttered

  to myself, pushing off the couch and practically jumping to the

  stairs and vaulting to the top.

  The wreck I

  saw in the distance wasn’t all of it. A trail of debris had made

  its way right into our path, and I hadn’t seen it. I dove for the

  pilot seat, disabling the autopilot and yanking on the dual flight

  stick.

  I

  fired the thrusters, bringing us over the stream of metal. I reversed

  thrust hard, bringing us to a complete stop just outside the field’s

  edge. Behind me, I heard the sickening sound of heavy objects

  sliding, followed by a massive metallic .

  I

  winced

  thinking

  about

  the garbage dump outside Kelara’s orbital

  path.

  “Machine

  Gods,” I

  breathed, heart hammering. “This

  system really needs to tighten up their waste policies.”

  I checked

  the scopes. Clear.

  I

  rushed back down into the living room and hurried to hide

  the evidence

  of

  my excursion into Forty-Five’s insides.

  Movement caught my eye as I noticed my

  patient

  had slammed backward into the wall during my manoeuvres, an arm

  slowly reaching up to the power cable in the port on his

  left.

  I could

  feel blood draining from my face, my breath hitching. I took the

  manual and my toolkit, tossing them carelessly inside the coffee

  table and then I grabbed the spill kit, grunting a bit at the heavier

  weight. I wasn’t fast enough.

  Forty-Five’s

  hand wrapped around the cable and pulled it loose, twin lights

  flickering on behind the reflective visor. His

  head turned to look at me, and the twin lights went out. All I could

  do was stare back, my eyes wide and my arms shaking with the effort

  of holding the bucket. I fought to keep my face neutral, but I could

  feel my composure slipping. A cold dread washed over me as I saw him

  processing the bucket in my hands.

  “Heyyy,”

  I drew out my greeting, trying as

  hard

  as I could to sound casual. “Good afternoon sleeping beauty. Had a

  good nap?”

  He

  looked back at my face, but then his

  head inclined slightly to stare at the bucket again.

  “Oh

  the bucket?! Well, I accidentally spilled some stuff. A

  smoothie. Huge mess. Needed

  to clean it up. I was, um, it was a bit much for any of the towels

  I had, so, I used this. It made it so much easier.” I was rambling.

  Stop

  rambling, Mel,

  

  a fucking robot!

  The

  proximity alert screamed

  again.

  “Oh, what now?!” I snapped, spinning around to

  face the viewport.

  My breath vanished.

  It wasn't metal debris.

  Drifting just metres from the glass, caught in the

  ship's external lights, was a woman. Her skin was jet black, her face

  no longer recognisable, her arms drifting weightlessly toward us as

  if begging to be let in.

  I dropped the bucket, the sealed lid keeping the

  thick contents from escaping.

  It hit the floor with a heavy thud as I clamped my

  hands over my mouth and screamed.