-----10
The cafeteria never changed. Same slop of who-knows-what on trays that look as if acid ate through them a little, despite the fact that some of the plates are made of glass. Despite the toxicity, the crap was edible. It always surprised Philip that people, including himself, still ate the stuff.
However, he was no longer a human, and didn't need to eat any more. He didn't know if the evil-looking chefs and cafeterians even cared or noticed, as Philip saw them dump slop onto the robot girl's plate as well. She, along with Jakob, had bottles of motor oil on their own trays to complement the questionably healthy food.
Jakob sat down at a table near the doors, where he pulled out what looked like a tattered book and lay it wide open on the table. As he sipped motor oil, he was softly moving a pencil around one of the pages. It was a drawing book, hands-down. Philip took a seat in front of Jakob.
Jakob pushed the second of his motor oil cans to Philip, who reluctantly popped it open and took a swig. Since being made into a robot, he seemed to develop a taste for the stuff normally toxic to humans. He never noticed it during slavery, but as he was riding in High Hopes on the way to the ARKS base, he subconsciously embraced the smell of the motor oil Jakob was drinking.
Philip took a look at Jakob's drawings. Some made no sense, while some were simply concept art for what looked like weapons. Jakob flipped pages back to take a look at earlier drawings, and Philip also noticed that Jakob also wrote what looked like a story synopsis, character lists, and storyboards for something Philip wouldn't be able to imagine. All of them seemed to have a dark theme to them. Be it the guns, the enigmatic character in a trenchcoat and a wide-brim fedora Philip saw in an earlier drawing, (which seemed to populate many pages) or the overall scenes.
Suddenly, that Don Prima douche bag came along. If anyone was going to remember Jakob, it would be him.
"Don't even try anything." Jakob simply said, without even looking from his drawing book.
The upper-class "pig" snorted and walked off in a prince-like fashion, ultimately stopping at similar-looking humans and randomly talking; occasionally sticking a thumb in Jakob's general direction.
"Despite the lowness in what they're doing, it means nothing if they can't kick my ass." Jakob commented. It was as if he had eyes in the back of his head while he drew. Either that, or something much like now happened before, and Jakob still remembered it.
The Don guy came back, this time with a few of his buddies. All of the rest followed, but kept their distance. Every single human in the cafeteria, save for the school employees, were looking in their general direction; curious as to what's happening.
"So... you're back, I see." Don said in a voice that exerted forced perfectness.
"I'm surprised. You're the only one that still remembers."
"Do you think I'll ever remember the second day?" Don asked.
"Point taken, but don't try to satisfy a grudge in here. I don't want to repeat history in front of the entire school, and I'm sure both of us don't want to get suspended."
The first reason hit Don somewhere, while the second one got him thinking about his actions rather than react to the insult.
"What should we do with his little friend then?" one of the "perfect's" group asked.
"We can use him to get Jakob to comply to my challenge," Don replied. Philip didn't like the sound of that. He felt a hand go over his shoulder in a semi-aggressive way.
What the owner of the hand didn't realize until a few seconds later was that Philip's own hand gripped around the offending hand and crushed it slightly, breaking bones. The cracking was heard across the cafeteria. Seconds later, the scream and thud of the man, who rolled in pain.
Philip spaced out during that time, and didn't realize that everyone was starting at him, including Jakob. His fellow android seemed to be staring in a state of anger and surprise. Jakob then grabbed Philip and pulled him through the crowd, who were all concentrating on the screaming boy with the broken hand.
Jakob threw Philip against a wall when they exited the cafeteria.
"What the hell happened?" Jakob barked.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't play stupid. You broke that guy's hand and you didn't even realize it?"
Philip tried to absorb the words. That was unlike himself. He was not one to be violent, and he was definitely not one to go so far as to break someone's hand when they simply placed it on his shoulder. It was probably self-defense in response to the comment Don made, combined with the hand on his shoulder, or it was probably some other reason.
Either way, he broke a guy's hand, and he was going to get in trouble. Philip swore under his breath.
"How tightly did you squeeze?" Jakob asked.
"I don't know. I don't even know what happened after what Don said."
Jakob cursed as well, and started pacing in front of Philip. He then pulled a communicator from his shorts pocket "We'll need to get Jessie over here, ASAP."
"Consider it done," the voice of Orange replied.
Jakob and Philip both entered the cafeteria again, but were immediately glared at by Don and his crew.
"You're going to pay for that." Don said, pointing straight at Philip.
"Easy, Don. It wasn't his fault," Jakob said, "We can get that hand fixed no problem. We just need to-"
He was interrupted by Don swinging a fist. A fight was inevitable. Then came a tough decision: Either disable the attackers quickly, and give Jessie more work, or go through a full-blown fight and explain everything to the vice-principal when he arrives.
Radzinski sometimes understood, but sometimes didn't. Jessie also enjoyed taking care of patients, so Jakob went for the former. Dodging a second punch, Jakob grabbed Don's own hand and pinned him down with his own CQC skills. Jakob had Don pinned down right in front of everyone.
"I don't want a damned fight, for crying out loud! Either calm down or I'll twist farther than humanly possible! Alright? We're getting a doctor here, and she has experience in fixing things like this."
Don's group was reluctant, but everyone calmed down. Jakob still had Don pinned down just in case. Soon, a helicopter was heard. Later, another female robot entered. Instantly recognizable by Jakob and Philip as Jessie, while everyone else had mixed reactions between surprised (the fact that she's a robot), annoyed (since a bunch of robots just arrived and started "invading" the attention circle of the school), and indifferent. (such as most of them, who turned back to their own business after Jakob asked for the humans to remain calm.)
Jakob got close to Don's ear and whispered.
"Accepted, but keep your cool until after school, Agreed?"
No one heard it, except Philip, who was closest. Don simply grunted a comply, and Jakob let him go.
"So, what have we here?" Jessie asked.
"Broken hand. That guy." Jakob replied. He nodded towards Philip slightly, subliminally indicating that he was the cause.
Jessie simply nodded. "Get him to me. We'll see how it is."
"You sure she's able to help out humans?" Philip asked while Jakob and another kid helped the broken-hand boy onto a table. Jessie started to examine the hand.
"She's a pretty famous doctor even before she was in the Cluster." Jakob muttered in response. Philip simply nodded. Jessie's hand turned into some small arm cannon of some kind and enveloped the broken hand in a blue-green light. Jessie then started pinching the hand in certain areas softly while the hand was under the blue light. While she did this, the Vice-Principal came in. Before he could ask what was going on, Jakob was already with him and walking him out of the door again, explaining what's been happening.
Philip was left to get mixed stares from all the humans in the cafeteria. It was definitely unnerving.
---
Philip left to escape the sudden bad air directed toward himself by his formerly fellow students. It was definitely worse to be despised than to be unaware of existence. Philip definitely knew he was despised right now. What was happening to him? Whatever was happening, he would need to ask Jessie about it.
Jakob appeared from around a nearby hallway corner. This time not escorting the vice-principal.
"There's definitely something wrong with you," Jakob said.
"No kidding?" Philip asked, "I just broke someone's freakin' hand"
"Are you always like this?" Jakob asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Before all this crap happened, were you this talkative and aggressive?"
"N... No. I don't remember."
"I guess that explains it all then... This early though...?" Jakob muttered, as he leaned onto a wall beside the door.
"What is it?"
"You're undergoing a state that all artificial beings go through before their so-called deaths: rampancy."
Philip nodded and leaned onto a wall opposite from Jakob. He continued looking at Jakob, intent to learn more on what this "rampancy" is.
"The term originally became popular when it became the main theme throughout some old games. I forget their names, but they were popular. Despite the fact that fully functional AI-based robots like us have been made at the time, the whole subject was highly accurate when it came around."
"But what is it?"
"An artificial intelligence's realization that they are not human, and therefore cannot experience some things that make humans human. Rampancy is basically the consequences of that realization. It usually starts with the Melancholia stage, where the AI discovers itself as simply an AI and becomes depressed. I'm sure you experienced a bit of it while in prison, and when you learned that your... paintball captain... met that terrible fate. I noticed it as well, but I didn't think it was actually the first stage..."
"Okay, so what's the second stage?" Philip asked, a slight impatience in his voice.
"The stage you're in right now, if I know correctly, is known as the Anger stage, and it's in that stage where the robot or AI starts to become... aggressive. It became obvious when you broke the human's hand, but now that I think about it, your "enthusiasm" from that earlier fight might have caused the jump from the first stage to the second."
"Is there any way to stop this?"
"Unfortunately, no. All we can do is make sure things like this don't happen again. Sometime later, you'll reach the Jealousy stage, where you'll function normally, except with a higher degree of... intelligence, and the fact that you're jealous of practically any organic being, since they can do stuff robots can't."
"Is there anything after that?"
"One other stage, in theory, as far as what Jessie knows. The XJ-9 unit is one of the rare cases. In which she knows she ultimately cannot do what humans can do, and not care. Either she knows, or doesn't know. Either way, her AI is built to resemble a human almost perfectly. The only difference is the body used to carry it."
"Has anyone else from the group experienced it?"
"We all have, but no one showed even symptoms of the first stage as early as you did. It's highly likely that the human prison on Cluster Prime would have done that."
"So let me get this straight. This "virus" I currently have is basically theories by a video game company that turn out to be very valid?"
"Exactly. Their ways of creating realistic systems is incredibly disturbing."
"But what about Don Prima?"
"I accepted the challenge, but made the location secret. I should inform Jenny to not interfere. Don has a grudge, and the only way for him to drop it is to either beat me, or I beat him."
Jakob then paced around, then put a hand over his face. Philip knew exactly why: All that's happening now is just wasting time that they could use to save human slaves.
Considering the whole rampancy topic, a lot of things make sense: Why the Wakeman girl goes to school, why the Cluster despise Earth, why their queen is a sadistic tyrant, and basically anything that has to do with the oddity of robots.
A video game company explaining the nature of artificial beings. Now there's something for Philip to think about. He thought about trying to find some of the games they made; see as much as he could as to how they kept to their "theories".
Before he could think further on the subject, Jessie exited the cafeteria. She looked at Jakob, then Philip.
"I kneaded his bones back together and re-established the circulatory. What exactly happened?"
"Rampancy, second stage," Jakob replied, nodding toward Philip.
"Th... This early?" She asked.
"Exactly what I said," Jakob replied, "We'll need to keep watch over him until we can get him back to Time"
"But you have your own subjects to return to," Jessie said, "The rest of us are too busy repairing the ship and helping to clean out the carnage from this morning."
"Phil, what classes do you have?" Jakob asked.
"Chemistry and Math." Philip replied.
"Same as mine, if I remember correctly. I doubt there will be any problem even if I'm not there, since Jenny's in those classes as well."
The bell suddenly rang. Jessie nodded to Jakob, who nodded back, and then walked off. Jakob continued to hang by Philip.
"What?" Philip asked, as the hallways started to fill up with humans.
"I may remember my classes, but I don't remember where they are."
Philip silently walked off with Jakob following. They soon entered what looked like a lab filled with two-seat desk. A bunch of kids were already there. Philip sat at his own seat while Jakob started to make conversation with the teacher of the class. Most likely talking about homework issues and what's been happening since his disappearance. The conversation was heard by no one, since the popular girls at the back were all gossiping. The useless conversations complemented the room with all the other talking humans. At one point, Philip saw Jakob nod towards Philip, and the blur-haired chemistry teacher looked at Philip, then nodded back to Jakob.
The robot girl arrived with his orange-haired friend, and another human, who followed behind the two, seemingly entranced. It was that one human with that net bazooka that shot at Jakob. The teenager in the brown hoody took one look at Jakob and started to glare. It didn't stop him from taking his seat, which was in a desk to Philip's left, and right behind the seat where the robot girl and the orange-red haired kid were sitting at. Jakob sat in front of the robot girl's desk.
The bell rang, indicating the beginning of the third period classes Fortunately, today was an experiment day, guaranteeing that there would be no homework at all. The teacher announced that the Bunsen burner was broken... again. Almost instantly, the robot girl stood up and walked to the front of the class. Her left hand suddenly replaced with a laser gun of some kind. She definitely had something the ARKS didn't have: a mass amount of weaponry on her person, and the ability to annihilate multitudes of contacts effortlessly. Just by being instantly part of a chemistry experiment, Philip found out why she would easily tip the tide for the favor of the ARKS.
Philip couldn't shake off the question: If she was so great as everyone says she is, how come Jakob got her pinned down? It was most likely the fact that Jakob was a master of CQC. Any other way, he wouldn't have stood a chance against Jenny. Everyone else would probably be stronger than Jenny in some way, but ultimately be inferior overall.
Jenny fired a concentrated beam at a vial hanging over the apparently busted Bunsen Burner. The liquids within bubbled almost instantly. Philip didn't really pay attention. The experiment days were only there to add a spark to the otherwise ultimately boring, repetitive life of school. He noticed that a number of the students were occasionally glaring at him, especially the so-called "popular girls".
To get his mind off of the hating humans, he went through the objectives he ultimately came up with for the ARKS, along with the minor objectives. To start, they were to go to Earth and get Jenny to help the ARKS fight the Cluster and bust out all of the human captives on Cluster Prime. In order to do the latter, they would need a ship big enough to carry all of the approximate thousand humans, a number that Time isn't able to do by a long shot. Multiple trips would be too risky, meaning that they would need a relatively big ship to go in, pick up the humans, and get out.
However, such a ship they lacked, and the XJ-9 is currently refusing to join the ARKS, since her joining the ARKS in their mission would endanger over seven billion humans. It didn't take a computer to know how stupid such an action would be for Earth's only efficient defender.
Skyway Patrol is out of the question, as they're a relatively corrupt police force that doesn't really do anything other than provide some form of international military, and jobs for most that don't have any. It's a wonder how they actually managed to disable Time to begin with.
Then there was that Silver Shell character. Highly enigmatic, and the robot girl seemed to be attracted to the relatively giant robot. Despite having the same function, he was not always on-the-ball, and has recently not arrived for a while. He also seemed to be sort of a deep-down coward, from what Philip has seen. The cowardice was something only Philip seemed to notice. All in all, his lack of presence and risk of liability would make him not the best of alternatives.
Humans in general. They were easily out of the question, since pitting them against the Cluster in the hopes of saving other humans would ultimately end up in a human-robot war, and it will end in blood, agony, and suffering. This was a robot-on-robot fight, and humans are the prize, and the rest of the ARKS knew that.
They'd need to come up with some way to get Jenny to join them on their ultimate mission.
To add to their pile of problems, Philip was apparently undergoing the so-called robot illness known as "Rampancy", and the way it's going right now, it's going to cause mass unease throughout the human community. Philip was easily a threat to life, due to his rampancy-induced unpredictability.
Also, Don Prima and Jakob are to fight to settle a grudge once and for all. Jakob seemed to take severe annoyance toward the upper-class bastard, while the latter didn't like Jakob because he was strangely popular with the ladies. It was most likely his "hair". Either way, Don disliked Jakob and picked at him because of the universal bully reason: jealousy.
It was definitely a bad situation, and definitely more than the ARKS could handle. One by one, each one will be complete. It would only be a matter of time... something they ultimately lacked.
---
The Warden sat at his office chair, sorting out assorted files at the main terminal in his office. There was a ring at his titamium-plated door colored the same bold orange popular with Cluster-based buildings.
"Come in," he said. He knew exactly who it was.
The Captain entered.
"Any news on them?"
"They apparently disappeared."
"From..."
"Cluster Prime itself. Our invasion force returned to report a failure, and a mass amount of casualties."
"Sent to Earth?"
"Yes. According to survivors that got back to the ship, they saw the ARKS."
"Anything else?"
"Yes, we managed to identify citizens confirmed to be associated with the ARKS. However, they were also gone."
"Like whom?"
"Citizen 5700, known only as Jessie, Citizen 5503, alias Terrace Jeric, and Retired Citizen 6722, whom has obtained the name of "Orange", I believe. Those are all I managed to identify."
"Who are those three?" the Warden asked.
"Citizen 5700 is the doctor we had established in Health Administration. She disappeared when Slave Subject Seven-Nine-Nine also disappeared. Citizen 5503 was a physical system studies teacher at the High School, while Retired Citizen 6722 is a regular customer at the civilian shooting range near the outskirts. "
"I'm getting the feeling that the ARKS have moved to Earth and have provided the XJ-9 menace with information regarding our abduction forces."
"Also..." the Captain said. The Warden waited, and then nodded. The captain then shook his head and continued. "There were four humans, not including Seven-Nine-Nine, in the last successful abduction run. There were also two humans that have been confirmed to have dealt with Seven-Nine-Nine. However, I doubt those humans had anything to do with the ARKS."
"It doesn't matter now if they did. What's the status of all of them."
"Two of them, dead. Subjects Seven-Nine-Eight and Seven-Nine-Six. Human names: Sal S and Pete M, respectively. The other two are Subjects Eight-Zero-Zero and Seven-Nine-Seven. Human names: Gerald F and Johann Y"
"How about the other associates?"
"Four-Nine-Two and Four-Eight-Four. Human names Hender S and Joel L."
"You're positive that they had nothing to do with the ARKS?"
"The two slave vets were once busted out, but we captured them again and re-circulated them into slavery. The other four were not that badly injured, so Citizen 5700 could've have done anything within the speed that she worked on them, unlike Subject Seven-Nine-Nine, who was most injured."
"Hmm..." the Warden muttered. He stroked his chin, where a steel-plated beard was welded on. "We'll get as much data as we can with what we have so far. But first, report to the Queen regarding the current events, and inform her that we'll need time to think of a plan. After all, they're now on Earth, and therefore under guard by the XJ-9."
"Understood, Warden. I'll report back when I can."
"Take your time, but remember that there's a timeline."
"Of course." the Captain said while leaving.