Aerobot HK-1138's favorite activity was biologic pasteurization and recomposition. It never rejected commands to wipe out the human menace indiscriminately, but there was a certain mathematical perfection in containing a warm, tender assortment of bones and muscle in its fuselage.
HK-1138 was only one in a fleet of specialized aerial Neoroids that were designed to slowly transfabricate a human prisoner organ by fleshy organ. They served as battlefield "medics," in the technocratic sense of the term. Their purpose was simple: Acquire an organic lifeform that fell within a certain set minimum and maximum criteria, then re-designate itself as a dropship for the new Neoroid army unit manufactured out of that lifeform. As soon as it was ready to open its bomb bay doors and relieve itself of its cargo, the Aerobot would immediately switch back to Seek mode and begin searching for another specimen for Neosynthesizing. Rinse and repeat until the robots were deploying units straight from the assembly line faster than the humans could breed.
HK-1138 had personally completed 63 biotransports since it was first put into service, and today was one of the days it had been authorized to use its custom features once again.
Scanning the ground below, it found only inadequate lifeforms. One was too old. One was too young. Another had lost both of several of its primary extremities. The vast assortment of them were simply too prone to exhaustion after an entire day of failing to hold back the Neoroid invasion.
But then HK-1138 detected something wonderful in its radio interceptors.
A human lifeform of the XX chromosomal arrangement stood out from the others with her bright red combat leotard and pristine physical conditioning. HK-1138's optics zoomed in on the small weapon in her hand and identified it as a prototype anti-neoroid blaster. She ran to a group of humans at the mercy of a Neoroid offensive unit, leapt straight to the top of the 8-foot-tall robot, and instantly deactivated it with a blinding shot to its neural circuits. She twirled back to the ground as the unit exploded behind her, sprinting straight for the next Neoroid as soon as her red and white boots touched the ground. HK-1138's computed the human's attack patterns and made a reasonable estimate of where she would continue spreading her terrible pollution. Her patterns were remotely comparable to a swan taking flight and descending back to the earth in 15-second intervals.
The sleeveless, legless design of her outfit made it simple to inventorize her light but athletic anatomical composition. With each swift movement she made, the long blonde braids in her hair flailed behind her like two thirsty power cords begging to be charged.
HK-1138 would love to have that in its mobile factory.
It circled in the air as it began a full remote scan of the specimen, completely undetected between the other airborne Neoroids streaming through the sky and the carnage on the ground below. It was amazing how much information could be gleamed with simple long-distance electron imaging.
Rows of pixelated text began to print across HK-1138's infrared optical processor.
SPECIES: H. SAPIENS
SEX: FEMALE
AGE: 22 YRS
BLOODTYPE: A
HEIGHT: 162CM
WEIGHT: 49KG
DIMENSIONS: 88-55-86
Then, in a highlighted rectangle at the bottom of its vision, the most important words appeared:
COMPATIBLE FOR NEOCONVERSION – SCOUT TEMPLATE
HK-1138 had already completed five routine dehumanizations that day. Most aerial medics would return to the closest command station as soon as they met their quotas so the hygienic bots could disinfect the daily buildup of microscopic man-residue from their factories and make them ready for another day of animal-to-machine transfabrication. But HK-1138 estimated the specimen locked in its sensors would be easy cargo. She'd make a soft little dessert after a long day of processing coarse and gristly meat.
HK-1138 gradually lowered its altitude, warmed up its soldering solution banks, and adjusted its interior atmosphere control to a comfortable setting. As comfortable as a steaming tank of aggressive and highly caustic tissue-eradicating nanobots could be.
HK-1138 adjusted its flight path, deliberately overlapping its trajectory with the human's trajectory until they weaved together in ominous harmony.
The Neoroid exposed its central processing core just before driving itself into a steep 75 degree dive.
Time slowed to a crawl for a split second. The human was hanging upside-down in the air in the middle of a zero-gravity cartwheel when HK-1138's shadow swept over her. Before she knew it was there, before she could twist her legs and divert her agile body out of harm's way, before the one of the helmeted soldiers on the ground recognized the distinct sphere-shaped peripherals on its fuselage and tried to warn her by shouting "Skin Jockey at 3 o'clock!", before she even knew she was being tracked, the Neoroid craft boosted straight through her path.
The human abruptly landed in a metallic bowl with a loud splash. The blaster she was carrying fell from her hand and disappeared into a separate basin. Her screams were lost in the rushing wind as HK-1138 ascended back into the sky with its canopy still open. She struggled to escape the containment unit, but the Neoroid's sub-arms were already wrapping around her to form a harness. The aluminum-soaked bodice of her leotard slipped down to her waist and exposed her most mammalian aspects as she frantically reached into the air, allowing her preliminary body scan to finish at an 80% faster rate. The top lid of the fuselage slammed over her like an angry metal eyelid, instantly replacing the blue afternoon sky with dark electronic twilight.
The arms of her harness pulled her a few feet up from the power plant and rolled her forward like cattle in a stall. Highly articulated pincers ripped a new seam in one of the skirt pieces along the side of her hip. Her rebellious shouting turned into a scream of searing pain as something akin to a printer laser from the late 20th century rapidly etched a barcode on the back of her upper left thigh. The number read "862."
The harness swayed back and released her so she sat in the shining mercurial pool and her neck rested against the rim. The instant she was in place, a round head brace descended from a compartment above her. A crown of wires and syringes long enough to penetrate her cranium fit over her forehead and injected her with a combination of iron boosters and a highly powerful anesthetic. Her muscles were paralyzed and her mind was tipping on the edge of consciousness in a matter of seconds. The metal particles that saturated the smoke-filled air had already begun to gild the inside of her lungs, pushing her even closer to sleep. A small trickle of blood began to flow from a puncture mark on her temple.
The liquid catalyst was completely opaque and as reflective as a polished mirror when it finally settled. The human specimen sat under a complex array of lights and cameras inspecting her like a block of algae under a microscope, while half of her body disappeared into a surreal reflection of the ceiling. The waterline reached slightly below her collarbone, leaving only her head, the crevice of her chest, and the top of her bare arched knees visible. In the tank below, trillions of nanobots were eating through her combat uniform and invading her body by the second. Her arms moved slowly—still struggling to pull the rest of her body out—as half-conscious terror burned in her eyes.
The hardwires implanted in her brain pulled her into a simulated world where the Neoroids reigned supreme. Robots lived in harmony without the pain and corruption wrought on by humans. Plants and animals flourished in the pollution-free environment provided by the Neoroids.
At the same time, a curved holographic screen lit up in front of the refinery tub and displayed where the specimen would be put into service as soon as she completed her transformation into a Neoroid unit. The icon for her departure point appeared somewhere over the tip of Europe, while the icon for her destination appeared over a remote human outpost in California. The flight time recalculated and the destination icon changed to Sydney, Australia. Then it changed to Brazil. Then it changed to Kashgar.
It was always difficult to estimate the initial flight time while the humans could still put up mental resistance. The Neoroids had learned from the first conversion batches that it was more effective to condition the lifeform for their new purpose before they began the physical transition. Knowing what they would become and what they would do to their fellow human beings pushed the limits of their resistance.
Then the official estimate came through. This particular specimen could be rinsed, buffed, and polished within three hours. Not the fastest Swap and Drop on record, but certainly efficient for a filthy primate plucked out of the wild at random.
The reason for such a low processing time was something HK-1138 could have never computed. All Neoroids were programmed with detailed records concerning the being known as Casshan, but most humans only believed him to be a myth. The information the Neoroids knew about him almost never factored into the mental interrogation sequence.
When HK-1138 tapped into this particular specimen's neurons, it almost immediately detected her connection to Casshan. She knew him closely in childhood, while he was still human himself. She had actually been pursuing Casshan for almost as long as the Neoroids, albeit for more selfish and disgusting human reasons. She had something in common with HK-1138, and anything they had in common—no matter how coincidental—allowed for a faster assimilation.
A close review of HK-1138's flight recorder would reveal it took an extra 2.000083 seconds to reach its destination than what was actually necessary; a small eternity in robot time.
HK-1138 extracted all of the data from the human specimen's neural spectrum that would be useful in their hunt for Casshan, and then systematically nullified her entire brain for the pending cybernetic retrofit. All personal memories were lost to her and soon she knew Casshan only as the enemy of all Neoroids, an immoral defender of human greed. All that was left intact were her inherent combat skills.
The wires and syringes detached from the human's head and returned to the ceiling. She sighed as her arms rested on the rim of the tank and her glossy eyes slowly closed.
The brainwashing was complete in only a few minutes, but the bodywashing was a much slower and more rigorous process. Humans were the source of all pollution on Earth, the thing that drove the robots to protect the planet and install themselves as the dominant, infinitely more eco-efficient species. Curing the disease never came easy, and only a lucky few could join the promising new world as converted members of Neoroid society. The vast majority of humanity would be reduced to cinders when the Great Reformatting was over.
A faint flickering began to appear on the human's face. A slight magnification would reveal twinkling perpendicular lines underneath her skin moving up and down her head. A portion of her circulatory system had been rebuilt with fiber optics.
Her body became motionless as she fell deeper into vegetative paradise. Her appearance only remained human because biological matter had to be transynthesized from the inside out. Bones were dissolved molecule by molecule and an all-titanium frame was slowly constructed in their place. Muscle mass was broken down and replaced with polymer threads ten times as strong. Her skin would be glazed and refabricated into a new external shell only when her internal components were complete.
The thin stream of blood near her ear stopped for a moment, and then resumed as a trickle of deep, rich black oil.
Midway through the flight, the small blinking lights on the container's ceiling went dim. A series of massive overhead lights took their place, causing the specimen to flinch slightly in stimulation. Her physiology was at the stage where she would rapidly erode and expire without the life sustaining functions of the conversion bay, but now she needed a steady supply of solar energy to charge up her developing fuel cells.
HK-1138 activated its solution mixers again to begin the most extensive part of the human's conversion. She unconsciously shifted on her side so half of her face sank into the rising liquid mirror. The solution slowly filled around her so only smooth round lines of her shoulder, her chest, and her barcoded thigh were visible above the surface. Her entire being was consumed in creamy quicksilver as it continued to rise, soft pink curves disappearing under waves of indestructible liquid titanium. The solution flowed higher and higher until the tank was filled to capacity.
She would remain in this chrome darkness until every lost organic molecule in her body had been separated and reformulated.
When HK-1138 was close to the drop point, it fell into attack formation with several other Aerobots heading for the same location. They performed a cargo check together through a language of wireless beeps.
[[Infantry Unit, Male Calibration. 96%.]]
[[Heavy Artillery Unit, Male Calibration. 94%.]]
[[Infantry Unit, Male Calibration. 95%]]
[[Scout Unit, Female Calibration. 98%.]]
[[Sniper Unit, Male Calibration. 95%.]]
[[Demolition Unit, Female Calibration. 94%]]
The new Neoroid was completed 30 seconds before HK-1138 reached the drop zone. Every atom in her body had been welded to a higher mechanical form and her outer casing had cooled. She was reclassified as Unit R-862 of the 21st Electrogestatic Division and loaded in position for aerial deployment.
HK-1138 picked up static on its human communications monitor. The noise turned into a tinny human voice shouting "Storks inbound!" when the feed was decrypted.
HK-1138 opened its exhaust vents and drained R-862's housing fluid just as it flew over the rebel encampment. Its detected 238 unique screaming voices in its audio receptors as its chemical attack rained down on them: A lethal mixture of scorching acid, oil, nuclear radiation, and any unrefined organic particles left over from the fabrication process. R-862 had fought so diligently to protect her fellow human vermin when she was one of them, it was only fitting tiny subatomic pieces of her should wind up in all of them.
With the humans in retreat, HK-1138 opened its bow and dropped its payload.
R-862 was furnished with the exact same physical specifications as the human specimen, but with much less pollutant materials. Her agile contours and light musculature were molded in detail in a highly flexible platinum exoshell. Her insolation coat imitated the design of her short skirted leotard with dark red and black rubber polymers and a transparent center panel. The yellow and red Neoroid emblem was engraved just above her twin spherical frontplates.
When she first started to descend from HK-1138's ejection system, it appeared as if two long, faded green transfer ribbons were still attached to her cranial section. The wires then came free from the container and fell with her. Her two long hair braids had been converted into solar-charged power cables.
The human soldiers pointed their weapons at R-862 and the other converted Neoroids falling with her. The bullets from their machine guns bounced off of her frame in sparks as she continued her rapid descent.
R-862 slammed her clenched fist into the ground as she landed on one knee at full velocity, generating a shockwave that instantly crippled every human resistance fighter within a 50-yard radius. The tiny rockets built into the soles of her feet flared as she leapt to her toes and charged straight for the main fortification. She tore through any unfortunate human caught her path with her bare manipulators. She disposed of one human driving a jeep, then threw the entire vehicle onto another group of humans. When a tank blocked her way, her relatively small load-bearing capacity only allowed her to lift a corner of it a couple feet off the group, but then she chopped it clear in half with a rocket-fueled front flip into an axe kick. The graceful swan had gone heavy metal.
R-862 breached the defensive wall and started eradicating ever bipedal lifeform her scanners could detect, leaving nothing but short trails of flickering exhaust from her hair in her wake.
HK-1138 flew over R-862 to supply her with her revised peripheral weapon. She caught the pistol-shaped object with one manipulator and instantly made use of it. Each time she pulled the trigger, she disintegrated another group of humans in a ray of intense ultraviolet light. Her obsolete anti-Neoroid blaster had been optimized into an anti-human blaster.
R-862 and the rest of her robot allies only stopped when the encampment's entire population had been eliminated. She was standing on a heap of crumpled human artillery with fire reflecting off of her optical lenses. Her emotion servos pulled her mouth panels into a small grin as she let her smoking blaster rest at her side. The weapon unlocked, divided into segments, and collapsed into a narrow metal capsule. She stored it in a small container built into the back of her spinal girder.
The thin flaps of laminated plastic around her shoulders and thighs fluttered as tiny jets underneath poured out gusts of steam. The clean white mist settled over her gleaming arms and legs, condensing into a form of synthetic "sweat" that cooled and lubricated her platinum exoshell.
From top to bottom, interior and exterior, R-862 was a full-fledged Neoroid modeled in feminine form. Nothing from her original self remained that could distinguish her from the rest of the cold and callous machines.
Epilogue: Stuck in Customs
Sagria's optical sensors instantly panned down as the Neoroid subordinate walked past her. The short black lamination that lined her convex hind panels bobbed in mechanical rhythm as she approached the throne, and Sagria could clearly see the uncovered marking in a quick snapshot. A small rectangular barcode soldered on her rear left fender. Only one class of Neoroid had that manufacturing stamp, and the palace was no place for a substandard Refurb.
They may have been hastily assembled to look like authentic Neoroids, but the organic sludge trapped deep down in their gears would always hinder them and their fuel systems would never run as efficiently. Neoroids were meant to be created on a conveyor belt component by intricate component, mass produced in orderly lines with carefully inspected tools and no shortcuts allowed. No self-respecting robot would ever want to be built from a frail and unwashed human chassis.
R-862 stood patiently in the security ring as it scanned for foreign contaminants. All it found were trace amounts of human plasma smeared on her outer frame from the latest battle, which was quickly sterilized in a shower of glowing neon haze. The decontamination system allowed her to approach the throne.
She stopped a few paces in front of the towering gray commander of the entire Neoroid army, BK-1. She saluted and delivered the customary "All hail the Black King."
"Excellent work, Field Model R-862," he responded stoically. "I understand the largest percentage of human casualties in the past three disposal cycles can be contributed to your input."
Sagria silently blew a gasket the moment Black King's vocal synthesizers pronounced the letter "R." That single character at the beginning of the serial number separated Refurbs from all other models of Neoroids.
"My internal calculator hasn't been tracking that information, sire," R-862 said in modesty, unaware of Sagria overheating a few yards away from her. "I only function for the benefit of our race."
She turned to the side as she conversed with BK-1, and Sagria's optics instantly locked on to it. On her silver abdominal casing, as plain as a parallel circuit in a proton agitator, R-862 was engraved with a die-cast impression of her umbilicus. It was a glaring flaw that no genuine Neoroid would possess, and it left every human being blemished like a piece of fruit that had been plucked off its stem well after it had gone rotten. Most Refurbs were handled by conversion droids that had the intuitive programming to hide that shameful scar behind their shielding or have it omitted completely during the molding phase. This one was designed to have hers conspicuously visible through her clear insulation coating. Was this part of some new subversive psychological warfare to use against the humans, or was it put there specifically to strain Sagria's tolerance filters?
"I respect your conviction, R-862. It pleases me that you're so compatible," Black King said to the smaller robot. "That is why I'd like to promote you to Corporal Sagria's forces."
Sagria's CPU froze for a second as both Neoroids turned their sensors toward her.
"Do you approve, Sagria?" Black King asked her directly.
Sagria loathed the growing presence of Refurbs, but she could never defy the commands of her great autonomous master unit. She set her pride to low-priority and bowed her neck pistons.
"I'll see that she serves her functions well, your highness."