*AUTOREPAIR PROCEDURES COMPLETED*

*DUALITY AI LOADED*

*HIGH-LEVEL AUTONOMOUS FUNCTIONS STARTING UP*

*STARTUP COMPLETED*

LS-class command android 000-003 opened his eyes and patiently waited for his primary hard drives to spin up, his memory of the past night becoming more and more clear. He had, under the highly impairing influence of extreme boredom, fed his brother's (or at least they considered themselves brothers; being a machine tends to complicate such matters) organic starship, the Rocinante, an intoxicating quantity of alcohol. It took rather a lot of the substance to get the ship fully inebriated, and the ship was rather suspicious of both the taste of the tank of liquor that 03 had purchased off of a passing cargo ship and 03's motives. Still, he had somehow manage to impair the vehicle enough for it to blast them here; and do so violently enough to knock 03 offline.

"Mental note: Don't get physical gods drunk. Well, non-female ones. Or unless you're really bored. Which we were, so I guess it wasn't such a bad idea after all."

He opened his eyes (well, more like slid the cover from over his optical sensors, but that's too long and confusing) and looked around. Lying on its side next to him was an extremely hung-over godlike entity in the form of a green pickup truck. It assumed the form of a pickup truck because it wanted to, for reasons no one but the ship itself knew for sure. The laws of physics and reason were more of a minor inconvenience for an entity with that much power.

03 kicked one of the ship's tires. "Get up damnnit," he said with an annoyed tone.

The ship honked wearily in reply, rumbled and creaked a bit, then stopped. It was not feeling very well at all.

"Where's 01 and 02?"

It shrugged, distorting its metallic-looking body in seemingly impossible ways to do so.

03 grumbled and set off to search for them. The ship made a slightly annoyed rumbling sound, blew some steam from its front grille, and went back to sleep.

03 didn't have to wander far to find his suited compatriot, who was lying on the ground with a moderately surprised expression on his face. LS-01 was wearing the same immaculate black nanobot-armor tuxedo as he had the day he had been activated. Technically the tuxedo was part of his skin, as there was nothing under it but machinery. 03 wore a light beige waistcoat with a dark grey undershirt and trousers instead, as if to make the two readily identifiable from a distance.

"03.", the robot said, acknowledging the others presence.

"01.", 03 replied in turn.

"Where's 02?"

"Haven't found her."

01 grumbled and leapt to his feet. Twenty-trillion years of bullets, bombs, radiation, hard vacuum, dirt, water and sand had done absolutely nothing to hamper his mobility, largely because of the incredibly intricate self-repairing piece of ancient trans-dimensional engineering that was his corporeal form. Many had tried to replicate the success of the LS -model robot, though whether it could be called a success for their creators who were destroyed by a malfunctioning 03 approximately fifty years after he was built is questionable. Either way, all had failed, and a few had died in the attempt.

"The ship?"

"Off that way. Not feeling well. I doubt he'll be taking us anywhere for quite a while. I suppose we should find civilization soon... Or get in a fight. We always seem to get in a fight whenever the ship lands us somewhere." He paused for a fraction of a second to think. "Or both. Probably both."

01 sighed. Though it *WAS* an improvement over floating through space with nothing to do, 01 considered 03's idea to intoxicate the ship a very bad one. And of course 01 had found out about this idea much too late to prevent it, approximately fifteen seconds before the ship hiccuped and blasted a hole in the space-time continuum. That was a perfectly normal thing for the ship to do, but doing so while under the influence is generally considered bad form, partially because you have very little idea where or when you're actually going to end up if you do so.

"Let's go look for her..." 01 said, and trudged off into the woods with 03 in tow.

LS-02 woke and examined her surroundings. She was in a wooded area, in the center of a small impact crater. From the size of the crater, she estimated that she had fallen approximately one mile before she came to a sudden stop courtesy of the strong nuclear force and the ground below. Her attention was suddenly caught by evidence of movement in the bushes nearby. Her hand retracted and was replaced a plasma gun, which she pointed at the source of the movement.

"Who's there?" she said, in a firm but non-confrontational tone of voice. There was no response. She approached slowly and repeated the question. "Who's there? I'm not here to hurt you..." There was still no response. She searched the area around where she had seen the movement. She found nothing.

"Hmm. Animal, perhaps. Or a sentry who spotted me. Harmless either way."

"02!" 01 yelled.

"Here!" she replied loudly.

"There you are. Seen anything?" 01 said, as his sister gave him a small hug.

"Something spotted me. I don't know what it was."

"Well, we'd better find out, shouldn't we? Nothing better to do." 03 said, drawing his plasma blaster from his right arm.

"Might as well..." 01 replied.