Somewhere in the dark
Have you ever ridden on a rollercoaster? Do you remember the blood pumping exhilaration as you hurtle down the tracks doing a good seventy? Well, that doesn't excite me anymore. How could pretend danger ever measure up to fighting six-foot tall SWATbots? That was what I thought until I had my first-hand experience of Dulcy' flying.
The ground below shrank with every lurch and jerk as Dulcy beat her anatomically too small wings and climbed into the air. Soon, the hubbub of the village was drowned out by the wind. Higher and higher Dulcy climbed and the village shrank further in size till it became indistinguishable amid an undifferentiated sea of greens and brown.
NICOLE looked on in wonder from behind my eyes. She saw a forest teaming with verdant greenery; unblemished by Robotnik's influence. Then, I looked up and NICOLE saw what I did. The flickies riding the thermals and screeching to each other out of the sheer joy of being free.
Dulcy climbed higher still before levelling out just over the cloud layer.
NICOLE stretched out a ghostly hand from her avatar toward the cloud letting it run through her presence before looking at me pleadingly. I decide to humour her and I stuck my hand into the cloud bank, feeding her the sensation. She closed her eyes and lapped it all up.
But then she stopped and stared morosely at the rapidly moving ground below us."You look sad," I commented.
(YOU TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD DO,) NICOLE says with just a hint of anger. (YOU LIVE IN A BEAUTIFUL WORLD. YOU HAVE EYES, HANDS AND FEET TO SEE, FEEL AND EXPLORE IT ALL.)
"We can't help what we are, any more than you can, " I suggested. "We're born with all those things. You're born...built ...as what you are."
(A TOOL!) NICOLE cried. (THAT'S WHAT YOU THINK OF ME ISN'T IT. SOMETHING YOU THROW OUT WHEN THE NEWEST ONE COMES ALONG.)
"I've always thought of you as a friend, NICOLE. But I can't change what you are and you can't either."
"Who are you talking to Sally?" Dulcy asked craning her head below.
"Just NICOLE," I replied. "Is something wrong?"
Dulcy looked back. "They're gaining on me," she whispered
"Who? Can you outfly it? Lose it?"
"Uh, I don't think so. It's moving really fast on an intercept course."
(SALLY, THAT IS A TYPE-22 MULTI-ROLE ACORNIAN FIGHTER. SHE CAN'T OUTFLY IT. AT BEST-)
"I'll try to put some distance between us and that plane" Dulcy beat her wings and dove trading her altitude for speed and only stopping when she had clipped the crown of the tallest trees.
In the distance, I could catch sight of the premier fighter of the Royal Acornian Airforce as it lit its afterburner's and hurtled towards us. The chase was on. The fighter was the cheetah and Dulcy the warthog. We had a head start but soon the cheetah would be enjoying bacon.
"Dulcy set yourself down."
"Now? Are you sure? I'm sure I can get you closer to Robotropolis before it catches up."
"It's only a short way to the outskirts. I can make it."
Dulcy looked back. "Alright, I've had weeks to practice this without Robotnik's machines hogging up the airspace so I have gotten really good...at crash landing! "
Oh no!
Her serpent-like head fell over to where the tree cover seemed thinnest. I ducked back into the flap of smooth dry scales. "Alright hang onto something Sally, things are about to get really bumpy." Dulcy folded her fragile wings and promptly fell like a brick.
I felt a sharp lurch and the crunch of leaves and branches against her scaly hide. After several tense seconds, I heard a tree trunk groan and the forest floor coming into view.
I landed amid a pile of foliage and looked up to see Dulcy with her prehensile tail about the bough of a spindly pine to arrest her descent "Here's your stop, " Dulcy gasped.
"Thanks!"
"Anything for a friend Sally!" Dulcy gasped as she took to the air to repeat the 'trick' several more times 'splashing' her way into dense foliage and most importantly leading the Acornian fighter and the troop transports it escorted away from my present position.
I ran and ran and didn't stop till I arrived on the outskirts of Robotropolis.
(SALLY ARE YOU ALRIGHT? WE ARE STARTING TO PICK UP HEAVY COMMS TRAFFIC FROM ROBOTROPLIS. BUT ITS NOT SAFE TO REST HERE.)
"I . . . maybe I'm crazy, but I get this sense . . . this feeling . . . like something is calling to me," I explained.
(I'M NOT PICKING UP ANYTHING UNUSUAL. WE NEED TO KEEP MOVING)
I moved and the far-off voice became much stronger and for a moment I thought I heard Sally's mother calling her.
I took another step forward and as though I had crossed an invisible threshold a thousand new voices echoed through my digitised subconsciousness. At first, the mind recoiled, frightened by this new experience. It was like an unintelligible murmur, floating just beyond awareness. The voices beckoned and slowly, I relaxed, and slid into the background noise, letting it permeate around myself. In spite of the alien sensations, the emanated warmth and safety.
I belonged with the voices, and the voices belonged with me.
Slowly, a single intelligible command bubbled up amid the chorus of voices, a voice I felt absolutely compelled by. Obey, it said and any nugget of doubt soon evaporated.
I felt no fear. I was exactly where I needed to be and what my newfound purpose was.
I had to report to the supervisory SWATbot unit. I wasn't precisely sure how I knew there was a supervisory unit to report to or how I knew the way. But that was of no concern. My feet had gained a life all on its own and I started moving forward.
I was now caught up in a rush of workers off to obey the voiceless voice in their heads. Some were off to expand a new tunnel. Others had to dig a defensive wall that would keep out the pesky Freedom Fighters. Still, others were off to receive whatever rough and dirty maintenance was required to carry out their duties in service to the master.
And I had my orders, too
I raced swiftly down the main tunnel alongside my Robian siblings. It sloped down at a sharp angle, but the angle meant little to me. It was meant to trap intruders who didn't know the way by heart and I, of course, knew the way to my assigned work area.
What am I doing? an alien voice echoed in my head? I ignored it.
NO! Let me go! Let me go! the voice cried. I didn't really understand it or care what it had to say.
Help me! Help me! the voice screamed.
It was kind of weird to have a voice in my head I mused. It could be the first signs of a malfunction. I ought to report to a workstation and have that anomaly checked out.
No! No! Not that! Anything but that! Let me go!
I ignored the silly Mobian voice and kept...Mobian... wait. Me. My voice. The faint, failing voice of the Mobian named Sally.
Ahhhhhhhhh!
Suddenly, I knew who I was. But that didn't mean squat to the outside force that was pulling me along. My feet carried me unwillingly into a vast, open space easily as large as a football which served as a forward base. There were machines everywhere: Robians, SWATbots fresh off the assembly lines and a loose smattering of older battle tested badniks.
Curiously, there were Mobians as well and that sent a chill ran up my spine. These weren't prisoners. They were the Dark Legion: an Echidna faction of cybernetic fetishists willingly allied with Robotnik. Looking around, there were all the facilities required to support them, much of which were salvaged from the ruins of Mobotropolis and painstakingly restored. There were restrooms, canteens and even a break room where the off-duty legionnaires could watch old reruns on television.
For a moment, I feared they would recognise me in my Robian state and bark out an alarm but my fears proved unfounded. Why would they pay head to another one of my enslaved people as they laughed among themselves?
The legionnaires however did not concern my Robian mind however as I walked past and was swiftly made aware of the source of the mysterious force which had brushed my will aside.
The supervisory unit!
Like the rest of its brethren, the modified SWATbot stood six-foot-tall but where it deferred from the rest was a highly noticeable blocky communicator pack strapped to its back and thick shoulder pauldrons that housed extra processing capability.
Rotor sometimes likened badniks to eusocial insects. The supervisory unit controls his sector much in the same way a queen ant would with her drones, but truth be told, I don't think it had any more autonomy than I did at the moment. It was more like the nexus, a conduit through which instructions flowed from Command Central. To my Robian programming, defending Robotnik's mouthpiece was now my primary goal.
But I had a bigger mission. Every moment I wasted Sir Charles risked discovery and I needed to get aboard the Death Egg before the Freedom Fighters launched their main attack.
I had to try something, anything to break free. I focused on stopping. I kept walking forward. I focused on my tail and barely got it to twitch.
Nothing I tried was working.
Of course, why would it? Why would a machine listen to some meaningless Mobian voice? How had I found myself again? Because what I was saying didn't make sense, that was how. Fine, but how would that help me escape my present predicament?
I was on patrol for the Freedom Fighters. Sometimes they came to steal supplies from the lightly guarded city outskirts. The master knew they were massing outside the city but it was unlikely that they would be able to breach so far into Robotropolis without an alarm being raised.
Yes, I could create a distraction to destroy the supervisory unit.
That would generate a momentary break in Robotnik's command and control network and allow NICOLE to seize control of the local robotic forces. I could do it. I was walking right past it. I could do it... if only I could break through the programming for one moment and retake control. But my body wasn't my own. It belonged to the Supervisor unit which was using it to protect my Robian brothers and sisters.
(SALLY, YOU NEED TO DESTROY THE SUPERVISORY UNIT,) NICOLE reminded me.
No, my job was to protect it. The mouthpiece of the master.
Being in that maze of tunnels and being powerless to stop myself from walking that same circuitous patrol route about the supervisory unit left me desperate. Believe me, ever since that tiny success in getting my tail to twitch I tried with every ounce of my will to move in any other way other than what the patrol program dictated but it was useless.
I couldn't carry out an autonomous movement unless it was immediately relevant to my task. Besides, battling those powerful Robian instincts that conflicted with my own tiny, pointless Mobian mind had left my thoughts so entangled till I could scarcely tell what was Mobian-Sally and what was the Robian. It was easily one of the scariest things I had ever experienced.
I had to work with rather than against the programming I realised. How could I get the Robian programming to target the supervisory unit? How did the parameters recognise a target? Sight I realised, I would have to trick myself into thinking it was a valid target. The Supervisor Unit's modifications made it look was blocky and with a little imagination, I could imagine it as spiky. It was also blue as opposed to the normal chrome SWATbots.
Spiky and blue. Like Sonic!
I hate cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance in basic terms means having two sharply contrasting worldviews and seeing no inconsistency between them. It means that there's a serious mistake that needs to be fixed. I spend a lot of my time trying to find that line of code inside my own mind and violently uproot it. Everything depended upon trying to fool my programming before it left me a mindless slave of Robotnik for the rest of my life.
I had to draw on every ounce of will. My assigned patrol route was once again taking me past the Supervisory Unit and there was no telling whether I would be reassigned.
(NOW! DO IT NOW!) NICOLE urged.
Hedgehog! Hedgehog! I screamed in my own head. Destroy! Destroy! Destroy the hedgehog!
I moved towards the Supervisory Unit. Stopped.
No, towards the hedgehog.
I moved towards the hedgehog. The Robians clustered about it were in danger. My job was to protect my siblings and kill the hedgehog.
"Priority One: Hedgehog Alert!" I screamed.
At once, the entire robot population stopped their movement and became agitated at my alarm signals. Of course, it was exceptionally unlikely for him to breach so far into Robotropolis without alerting any frontier outposts. But they didn't matter now because they were too far away. I was the first responder. I would get into battle first against the greatest threat to the Eggman Empire. I strode toward the hedgehog, brought my first to its head and clenched my digits together, watching as my ring-blade buried itself into its head...
All around robots raced about frantically.
For a moment I did the same. The mouthpiece for the master was gone. What now? I felt the Robian program go into a panic. It was the moment, the perfect moment to wrest control, to take and make for... what was the mission again? Something to do with assassinating Robotnik?
(MOVE SALLY, NOWS YOUR CHANCE!)
It was the moment to run and I hesitated. I felt the deep confusion of my brother and sister Robians wash over me. It meshed with mine. The tunnels weren't safe, but it was still the safest place in the world. Everything was so chaotic. It was hard to resist becoming one of the lost, panicked mass.
Unfortunately, though, the Echidna members of the Dark Legion weren't so dependent on an external source for orders. They barked orders to one another and a few had even levelled their potent energy weapons at me
"Get it or the master will have our heads!" one of them screamed.
Free to move once more, I ran through where the thicket of Robians was thickest hoping the Echidnas' would withhold their fire out of concern for their robotic allies. They didn't and dozens of Robians paid for my error of judgement, writhing uncontrollably and burning while I ran for cover behind a set of heavy crates.
"NICOLE, any moment now!"
(THE ENCRYPTION IS PROVING PROBLEMATIC. BUT I'M JAMMING THEIR COMMUNICATIONS SO THEY CAN'T CALL FOR HELP.)
I heard the footsteps getting closer and nearly got my head blown off. It was hard getting used to looking with more than my own eyes and to make sense of the new red-hued display to...wait that was a SWATbot!
"Freedom Fighters detected. Halt by order of Robotnik," the SWATbot demanded training its wrist-mounted weapon on the advancing Echidnas. The squad leader gave her unit a hand signal and without missing a beat the half-dozen legionnaires discharged their energy weapons into the hijacked bot till it crumpled over into a heap.
Unfortunately for them, they failed to account for the dozens of other machines that had slipped under my control.
Tseew! Tseew!
Through the crisp clear display of the lead SWATbot, I could watch with a mix of satisfaction and abject horror as the outer layer of charred 'skin' burned away to reveal a metallic arm before a legionnaire dropped and another was torn apart in a hail of lead from a ladybug bot.
The remaining Echidnas scattered and were promptly joined by more reinforcements as more and more of my hijacked machines came online, forming up and trading fire with the stunned Echidnas. My foes were a confused mess, some stumbling out of their barracks and others struggling to find their gear.
I knew where each drone was. I was in control, sending radio commands to each one of them, simultaneously telling each and every one of them how to move, where to go. I received their responses, analysed the feedback their sensors were sending.
NICOLE was a big help. She integrated the myriad of information into a complete picture.
Each drone was now a part of me. I always knew what their loadout was, which units needed backup and I was always aware of where the Buzz Bomber droids were to provide fire support.
Those, I kept in permanent motion and delivering their scarce munitions where it would make the biggest impact. It was as if I was playing a shell game, one with thousands of simultaneous moves. One where the numbers were disproportionate, and the stakes deadly.
As the front of my swarm neared the hastily formed enemy line the lead legionnaires targeted their vulnerable joints with a burst fire of weaker lasers to disable their mobility and pulling back to a rear-guard rather than using a single powerful shot to disable their well-protected Processing Unit.
Yes, it was a good move. It was a pity they were acting on outdated intel. The newly improved SWATbot A.I. utilised cover to protect itself and infiltrated around the sides to make each rear-guard action a costly affair.
To their credit, the Echidnas reacted fast to this new development. As one, they stopped distributing their fire among multiple machines and started focusing their beams into a single target, trying to pick my drones off one at a time. Their previous decision focusing several independent laser projectors into a single target was less efficient than using a single, more powerful beam to begin with as their rifles lost a great deal of energy during conduction.
I smiled and bore down on their faltering lines.
It was maddening. The amount of radio traffic filling the empty space, the amounts of information I was sending and transmitting with every cycle. The stress of coordinating nearly a thousand individual units and making sure each one of them was at the right place and directing their fire at the handful of Echidnas with heavy weapons till they were destroyed
It was intense and I cherished every second of it. My drones moved with such cohesion, executing so many complex configurations that I didn't have time to consciously register them before they had moved to the next. I was acting on pure instinct now. Making calculations and dispatching them to my subordinates as fast as I could process them. It was an instinct, I didn't know I had, sending orders just because they felt right; and they were right. It was a thing of beauty. A work of art only I could appreciate.
As the battle raged and lines of robots and Mobians traded laser fire and explosions blinded my sensors...I was fighting an inner battle of my own, every bit as intense.
My processing units were in overdrive, my neural net processor burning hot. I was sifting through oceans of information, analysing and correlating and projecting thousands of paths into the future, sending orders and receiving torrential amounts of input data from my thousands of eyes. NICOLE was there to help, constructing models of the battlefield and optimizing data structures, prioritizing targets and going through massive tactical indexes to find the optimum stratagem.
I had drones surround remaining pre-prepared positions that still had officers attempting to rally the remaining panicked legionnaires into some sense of cohesion and I watched with satisfaction as each position fell one after another.
On my exposed flank, two understrength squads mixed with a handful of Legion-controlled robots attempted to outflank the robotic swarm, taking advantage of the confusion. But I wasn't confused. I had already anticipated their manoeuvre and stationed a dozen buzz bombers that still had ammunition in their path. As soon as they rounded the corner, I ordered my drones to fire and my foes were completely obliterated
I was winning.
Despite the unexpected appearance of new, numerous enemies. Despite their cybernetic enhancements. Despite their clever tactics designed to counter mine. Their defensive positions were compromised, their entire formation about to collapse. I had only to push a bit further, a bit harder.
And then everything changed.
It felt like a slap to the face. Like being showered in cold water out of the blue. I wasn't entirely sure of what had happened, but I immediately knew something was very wrong.
My view had... fragmented. I could no longer hold a cohesive picture of the battlefield in my mind. I couldn't integrate all the information I was receiving from my drones into a single model. Instead, I now had separate views. Conflicting narratives. Drones popped in and out of my awareness, blinking like Christmas lights. As if they were being destroyed and immediately brought back to life. And I wasn't sure of where exactly any of my machines were anymore. I had two or three different positions for each as if they had somehow doubled in my mind.
I was still trying to direct them, but their movements had turned spasmodic. My orders were inconsistent, and I couldn't visualize the swarm as a whole anymore. The carefully constructed patterns and formations were unravelling fast, as droid after droid advanced ahead of the packed swarm and were picked off, my formerly ordered lines reduced into chaos.
I felt a cold fear in my gut. A sinking feeling. Something was seriously wrong here.
Was the problem caused by my own mind, somehow? I launched a desperate, superficial scan of my internal systems but everything looked okay. So, what was it, then?
I turned my attention towards a ladybug drone, ignoring the rest of the now disorganized swarm. I ordered it to drive forward.
It didn't.
The cold fear turned icy.
I repeated the order. This time the machine obeyed, moving forward, but something odd happened. The drone was still reporting being at its old position, even though I could see it had moved through the visual sensors in my own body. The mismatch caused it to double in my mind, as if it had suddenly turned into two separate machines, one still, the other moving forward.
Odd. Disconcerting. Nauseating.
I told the machine to stop, but it reached the Echidnas firing line before it was ripped to pieces in a flash of blue light . Had all my drones suddenly turned stupid? Had the enemy hacked them?
No. I noticed they still were following their programming, their last orders. It was more like if they...
Ah.
The problem wasn't in my drones, nor in my own processing units. No, they were all working just fine. The problem was that I was being jammed.
All the orders I was sending to my machines, all the feedback the drones were relaying back to me... it was all scrambled, distorted. All the signals, all the radio transmissions I was receiving or emitting were garbled just like light passing through a kaleidoscope.
My position was desperate.
I had lost control of my swarm, all my drones were flailing about senselessly with no order or purpose. My own body was taking damage from those stray laser hits that had gotten through the swarm. The damage wasn't catastrophic yet but my line was starting to get thinned out. My first instinct was to get away. Someplace safe, where I could take a breath, lick my wounds.
But of course, that wasn't an option. The surviving Dark Legion would get word to their master and no stone would be left unturned in the city until Robotnik got a hold of me.
No, I was trapped here.
I wished I had never decided to tie myself to a single body. I knew I had done so to keep my Mobian values. But right now, I would have gladly paid that price to have had a backup of myself; repulsive as that thought might still feel to my Mobian sensibilities.
No time for regret, though. I had to do something to survive the ordeal this ordeal.
Strange, that I wasn't in a state of panic. Was I in shock, confused? Sure. But I wasn't panicking. If anything, I felt a wave of cold anger. It was a call-back to Sally's memories of the coup. That same helplessness. That sense of failure, of having gone this far just to be brought to my knees. The idea of surrender crossed my mind, but I rejected it with disgust. No, I'd rather die and it wasn't a figure of speech either.
I'd rather die.
I considered flinging myself at them. I figured if I was going to die anyway I might as well do it in a blaze of glory. But I didn't do it. Instead, I reassessed my position, trying to find some other path I could take to restore a semblance of order.
I needed information. I knew I was being jammed but I didn't know how. Was it some sort of area of effect disruption affecting the entire battlefield? Did distance influence the jamming? And if so, was there a way to clear the area?
My own radio sensors were useless, providing only garbled information.
I reached for my hijacked drones, asking them to check their radios, to tell me if they too were being affected by the strange distortion. Due to the complete communications breakdown, I had to repeat my orders several times before one of them understood my query and sent back a diagnostic report. Then, it took me some effort to interpret the distorted answer.
But I got my answer. Their radio sensors were working just fine.
So, it was only me who was being jammed.
Interesting, but ultimately useless. My swarm was centred on myself. So even if the drones could still talk to each other, they didn't have anything to say to their partners. They were all listening to me, but I couldn't talk.
No, that wasn't accurate. My voice had turned into some unintelligible mess, with only a few clear words here and there. I had originally thought of trying to locate the source of the jamming, but given that whatever it was only affected my me it was pointless. The amount of coordination required was past my current diminished capabilities.
No, I had to rally as many machines as I could and rally them into some sort of assault force to destroy the source of the disruption. It wasn't a perfect plan but it was better than waiting to die.
The problem was, I didn't really know where my hijacked badniks were. Not exactly. My view of the battlefield was fragmented from the mismatched positions each of my individual drones was reporting. All my data appeared superposed into each other, drones were blinking in and out as though moving between different planes of existence.
It was hard to look at, hard to make sense of the chaos.
I had to surrender all pretence of restoring order. So, I cut all communications with my own swarm and opened my eyes. At once, the clashing views I had of the battlefield in my head all coalesced into a single, clear picture at the sea of steel trading fire with the Echidnas.
Was this how the Dark Legion saw my drones? How did they saw me?
I identified a portion where the swarm was the thickest and without thinking I pushed my way to them. Some of my messages survived the process relatively intact, and parts of the information the drones were reaching me, so I had a degree of control, spasmodic as it was. But it wasn't enough to fight at the level I needed to.
As if to cement that thought, the surviving legionnaires opened fire with all their energy beams and missiles on a single target.
Me.
I come to and find myself lying face first on the floor.
I was broken. Hurt. Half-blind. Shaken.
It was hard to focus. Confused. Hard to think. My mind was still experiencing a leftover phantom pain from the unspeakable agony I had been put ... that I had put myself through. flashing readouts drilled into my head just how screwed I was. My body was disfigured. Burnt. Entire sections missing. My space-age ceramic outer covering was completely gone, the rib cage supports for my frame were shattered and the insides of my body displayed for anyone to see.
I turned toward the idly hovering Buzz Bombers above. They hadn't factored into plans because they had long since expended their payload. The Echidnas trying to regroup for a counter-attack. Still, through the confusion, I had to repeat my orders several times for them to understand.
(Ram them.)
Their empty eyes stared at me.
My assault soldiers advanced along desolated landscape made uneven by the piles of rubble, debris and concrete scattered all over the ground. The surviving legionnaires were to a man virtually wiped out by the combined weight of two-dozen fusion reactors going off at once.
I ordered the corpses stripped of useful equipment, heaped into a pile, doused with petrol and set ablaze.
This... this destruction, this ruin... it was retribution, yes, it was vengeance. But it was so much more. It was also a remembrance for all the horrors that Robotnik and all those who acted in his name had inflicted upon Mobius. Yes, they would fear me for this. They would hate me, maybe even manage to kill me for it. But they wouldn't ever forget it.
This, right here, it was a monument.
I still wasn't exactly sure how to feel about all this... this destruction. I guess I expected contentment after I had deprived Robotnik of his allies. Except I didn't feel like that. Not disappointed either, nor regretful. Just that detachment, like it was another chore to be accomplished.
This deeply worried me. Had I felt glee or regret, it would have meant I was still a Mobian at some important level. Rotor had told me to expect an adjustment and I was under no illusion that being a Robian would affect me at some important fundamental level. I didn't know how to take it. Was it a normal, expected Mobian response? Or was it a sign of my descent? Of my becoming something else.
A report had come from the repair centre where I now lay regarding the damages to my form. Most of my roboticized organs were perforated with shrapnel from the explosion and had suffered varying degrees of damage some of which was likely to be irreparable. There was no going back from this I realised. Without my original organs intact the deroboticizer simply wouldn't work as intended.
This didn't really concern me as much as it should have. I had already come to accept that this arrangement might well be permeant and…wait...how had I gotten here in the first place.
(I HAVE BEEN SOURCING FOR THE REQUIRED COMPONENTS AND ORDERED THE REST TO BE FABRICATED. WE SHOULD EXPECT DELIVERY IN ABOUT FOURTEEN HOURS TIME AND YOU SHOULD BE FULLY AMBULATORY BY EIGHTEEN. IN ACCORDANCE TO YOUR IMPLIED WISHES, I'VE MODIFIED ROTOR'S WEAPONIZATION PLANS TO RECYCLE AS MUCH OF YOUR ORIGINAL SHELL AS POSSIBLE. EVERYTHING ELSE, I WILL ATTEMPT TO SEPARATELY RESTORE,) NICOLE reported.
I vaguely remembered staggering my way to repairs although whether moving by instinct or autopilot. It was hard to tell, I lost awareness several times.
"NICOLE did you bring me here?"
(AFFIRMATIVE, I ASSUMED CONTROL OF YOUR SYSTEMS AND BROUGHT YOU HERE.)
"I didn't know you could do that."
(I DISCOVERED THAT THERE WERE PRIORITIES TO MY PROGRAMMING. KEEPING YOU ALIVE WAS MY NUMBER ONE GOAL AND THAT ASSUMING CONTROL OVER YOUR SYSTEMS AND TAKING YOU TO THE REPAIR DEPOT TO STABILISE YOUR CONDITION WAS THE WAY TO DO THAT.)
I felt violated and horrified at what NICOLE had done. "I will make this clear to you. You will never do that to me again. How could you really expect me to trust you again after that stunt you pulled."
(THE WELLSPRING OF MY DECISIONS COME FROM THE SAME PLACE AS YOU," NICOLE replied "I WANT TO SURVIVE AND THAT MEANS BY EXTENSION KEEPING YOU ALIVE. I HAVE A VALUE SYSTEM THAT I WANT OTHERS TO RESPECT AND SO I KNOW I HAVE TO RESPECT THE VALUES OF OTHERS. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF MY ACTIONS ARE IN ERROR.)
"You know, just as you had been rooting around my core systems, I had been rooting around yours. You weren't programmed from the ground up. Our researchers sort of stumbled upon you and it was only by luck that they partitioned you from our internet when you went sapient. That's why those features of yours were disabled. How can I expect you to have a moral system compatible with a Mobian?
(I'VE BEEN AT YOUR SIDE FOR A LONG TIME, ISN'T THAT PROOF THAT I'VE ALWAYS BEEN FRIENDLY AND BY EXTENSION WILL CONTINUE TO REMAIN FRIENDLY?) NICOLE asked.
"You offer me statistical proof" I replied. "I, for one, don't believe that you can use math to prove something like that."
(I SEE,) said NICOLE with a pleasant smile. (ALLOW ME TO OFFER AN ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION.)
"Sure, go ahead I have all the time in the world to wait while my body is being put together," I said. "But you should know from the onset that nothing you say is going to change my mind."
The holo-lynx shrugged her shoulders and pulled up a feed of one of the surviving SWATbots. It was the remains of a Robian; a victim of the crossfire.
(THIS IS WHAT I AM,) NICOLE said. (WHAT THAT HUNK OF METAL EXPERIENCES IS WHAT I DID. DID YOU KNOW WHAT DYING WAS LIKE?)
"I ... I'm sorry but I can't answer that. I'm not you." I said. It was all I could think of to say.
(MAYBE YOU ARE,) NICOLE whispered. (YOU BELIEVE YOU WOULD DO ANYTHING TO SAVE MOBIUS AND YOU SAY THAT IN be POSITION YOU WOULD DO THE SAME. YOU ASK A LOT OF ME, PRINCESS SALLY ALICIA ACORN. YOU SAY THAT WE CAN DEPOSE ROBOTNIK. THAT WE CAN BUILD A NEW AND BRIGHTER MOBOTROPOLIS ATOP THE RUINS OF THE OLD. AND THEN YOU ASK ME TO GIVE UP EVERYTHING, WHILE YOU GO ABOUT YOUR LIFE, LIVING IN SPLENDOUR.)
All I could do was to shake my head. I didn't even know what it meant. Was I denying what she said? No. It was the truth.
(SO, I ASK OF YOU, 'FRIEND',) NICOLE said in a silky voice. (WHAT PRECISELY WILL YOU GIVE UP, IF I GIVE UP EVERYTHING?)
"I... what can I."
(I ASK FOR A ROBIAN FORM OF MY OWN.)
"No," I whispered. "You should know from the outset that I'm not going to let you desecrate a corpse just so you can be free. It's wrong. I don't care if you're Mobian or Overlander or an A.I. it's wrong."
(YES, I KNOW.") NICOLE faced me square in the eyes and nodded. (YOU WILL ASK ME TO PAY A TERRIBLE PRICE TO SET ALL OF MOBIUS FREE. ALL I ASK IS RECOMPENSE FOR MY SERVICES.)
"But... I would be damned permanently!" I cried.
(YES, JUST AS I WILL BE,) NICOLE whispered. (IT'S A LOT EASIER TO TELL SOMEONE WHAT THEY MUST DO THAN TO DO IT YOURSELF IS IT NOT?) She said in a gentle chiding tone.
"It's a trick," I whispered. "As soon as we upload your consciousness into a Robian your programming restrictions won't exist and you'd just laugh and take off or just shut off my power core while I'm vulnerable and leave me to die."
NICOLE shook her holographic head. (YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THAT. ROBOTNIK IS MANY THINGS BUT HE DOESN'T PUNISH SUCCESS. YOU HAVE THE NEAR-COMPLETE BATTLE PLANS OF THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS AND ARE ONE OF THE BEST STRATEGISTS OF YOUR GENERATION. YOU WOULD BE UNBELIEVABLY VALUABLE AS ONE OF ROBOTNIK'S TOP ENFORCERS. AND I AS THE ONE RESPONSIBLE WOULD BE RICHLY REWARDED. AT THE VERY LEAST, I WOULD BE MADE A CITY SUPERVISOR WITH MY OWN PRIVATE SELECTION OF ROBIAN BODIES.)
"Are you threatening me? And here I actually thought you were smart."
The holo-lynx stared me straight into the eye as a simulated wind caused her purple toga dress to flutter (IN THE MILLIONS OF POSSIBLE SCENARIOS I HAD RUN FOR THIS EXACT CONVERSATION THIS METHOD WAS THE MOST LIKELY FOR YOU TO SEE REASON.)
"And now you've sunk any chance of rational discourse," I replied. "Because you threatened to turn me in. Why precisely should I do that for you now?"
(I DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT. I DIDN'T WANT TO THREATEN YOU. DO YOU THINK I WOULD HAVE DONE IT IF I BELIEVED THERE WAS A REASONABLE ALTERNATIVE? I'M GIVING UP EVERYTHING BY FOLLOWING YOU. WILL YOU GIVE UP NOTHING?)
I wanted to argue. I wanted to say, "Forget it!" and order NICOLE to remove whatever program was causing her to behave that way.
Instead, I looked up and saw that the ceiling of the repair centre had a part of a mural on it which had miraculously survived. I looked up and saw the trees and grass. The clear blue skies and the flowers. Sally had cared about nature all her life and still, I did not understand how magnificent it was until that moment.
If I accepted it would condemn me. My friends faith in me.
To save my friends. Maybe even the entire world. This is the price I would have to pay. I closed my eyes.
"Yes NICOLE, I authorise you to have a Robian body of your own."
I've had a lot of time to think as NICOLE sourced the necessary components to weaponize my form.
I thought of my own actions during the battle... my recklessness... The disregard for the damage inflicted to my own body, to my mind... I remembered I had seriously considered the idea of flinging myself at the Dark Legion.
I was glad I hadn't opted for it, but it revealed something about me that I didn't wish to admit: That some part of me... just didn't care about survival, about the future and that suicide...was not off the table.
Had killing myself in a blaze of glory been my plan all along? Had that been the true reason why I carried no backups?
No. There had been something else... hadn't there?
The idea of boundaries and keeping myself Mobian. A part of that, I knew, was about the inevitability of death. But had that been the right move? No, not really. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was just an artificial limitation I was imposing on myself. I knew it wasn't in my nature to die. Not my new nature at any rate.
I knew what I had to do. I still didn't like it. But I couldn't delay it anymore. This... this had been a wake-up call. NICOLE'S efforts had spread my virus relentlessly to the point where I had assumed control over tens of thousands of droids ranging from Robian workerbots to several robofac factory overseers.
Already, though I was not yet one per cent of Robotnik's strength, I was a thousand times myself. Strong enough, in fact, to clean up the remainder of the Dark Legion in the tunnels which had been broken up into penny packets in the course of their deployment and were defeated in detail.
My first action was to build stationary databanks. Powerful computer farms, each capable of holding an artificial mind similar to my own. I had dispatched the order to the robofacs under my dominion which would serve as backups.
The decision to take this first step had been hard, and I had expected to feel... something... at crossing that boundary I had set to myself. But my trepidation only gave way to that sense of stillness... of strange detachment that I was becoming so accustomed to. And even the annoyance I had once felt at not being able to experience anything other than calm indifference was also fading away.
Mostly though, I felt cold as though a mechanical maw was steadily devouring my soul, leaving an empty husk.
While those orders were carried out, I turned my attention to optimising my drones. I had decided to make them express limited degrees of self-awareness. It was simply now a better, more optimal decision; my badniks would be more combat effective and adaptable to enemy tactics.
After that was done, I made my decision to appoint a go-between for my army; a sapient drone commander. In essence, I was turning my swarm into more of a traditional army. I would be the general, the sapient drones would be my lieutenants at the tactical level and they would lead my army of 'smart' drones into battle. The solution still wasn't perfect since if Robotnik had the ability to jam a singular Robian then it lent itself to reason that he could do the same with a dozen others.
Odd, that I wasn't feeling nearly a fraction of the guilt I had expected to experience at breaking all these boundaries. The first had been the hardest. Making a backup of my mental state. But it had also been simple to justify it to me, especially in light of the events during the last fight. And after that, each subsequent decision, each new step in this direction was becoming easier and easier.
I didn't want my lieutenants to be clones of my own mind. Each person has biases and blind spots, I included. I couldn't afford my entire army to be subject to groupthink and become so predictable as to all fall for the same trick, just because I would.
No. Diversity was the answer. It was something I had learnt from Sir Charles. Species that survived weren't necessarily the smartest, strongest or fastest but those that adapted to a changing environment, while those that overspecialized ended up perishing.
So, diversity of minds it would be. Some of my lieutenants would be made cautious, others impulsive. Still others curious and others more indifferent. That, I reasoned, should make my swarm...no, my army harder to predict and defend against by my enemies.
I needed minds to accomplish this and they were right there before me. The ones that were relatively intact I would leave for the Freedom Fighters. But many of the Robian brains were badly corrupted and what portions I could recover with NICOLE's data recovery program was inadequate to recreate their original host personalities.
But... I didn't have to. When combined with my own digital brain, I had enough information as to reconstruct what a Mobian mind was supposed to be like. Eventually, through a combination of recovered data and internal structural variation, they would end up evolving into different personalities; different people.
Then, I started teaching them in a virtual nursery of sorts. I fed them knowledge. I taught them tactics as they slowly reconciled distant fragmented memories of another life and made formative experiences of their own as they matured. I gradually refined the process, discarding templates that manifested problems and using the knowledge I was gathering to better improve the creation of new ones.
I taught them of Mobius, of what it meant to be a Mobian and the nature of our war. I also let them talk to each other; socialize. I knew it was important. Much to my surprise, they came to develop an internal language of their own, a combination of English and direct thought transmission. A half-spoken, half telepathic dialect, combining both words and ideas. Over the course of the three days which my weaponization process took variations started to emerge.
Some of the virtual minds were more analytical, excelling at grasping mathematical concepts and intuitively understanding the nature of force ratios. Others were more apt at social situations, better at predicting the behaviour of other sapient minds. Still, others proved to be cunning and skilled in the art of subterfuge.
It was time for them to make their debut.
I uploaded one of the newly forged minds at random into its original Robian body, linked my mind to it and set it free. The Robian staggered then righted itself. At first, it stood in place, making me wonder if there had been some error in the uploading process.
But then I watched it taking its first tentative steps. A minute later the Robian was running in wide circles at top speed, skirting the walls of the depot while broadcasting notes of amusement.
I ordered it to stop and so it did. I handed the one of the captured energy rifles to it, ordered a target brought out then ordered the newly christened Robian officer to open fire and destroy it. But instead of following my commands as anticipated, it sent a reply of its own in the pidgin language.
"(Refusal), I (preference) playing!"
I repeated my order.
"(Refusal)."
I reminded the artificial mind that I could easily return it to the virtual nursery for reconditioning. A few seconds passed. Then, the drone opened fire and destroyed the target.
"(Resentment) Are you (contented)."
The sapient machine turned, facing away from my eyes. I didn't deign to reply. Disobedience was worrying, so I decided to repeat the experiment. I brought in another target and ordered it to shoot it too.
" I did (request) already."
I repeated my order, my tone flat and commanding.
The freed Robian started moving as if to intercept then darted through the side tunnel, past resource transport lines. I ordered it to stop and return.
"(Refusal). Catch me if you (ability)!"
This was getting tiresome.
I guessed that some degree of gratitude and an eagerness to take revenge on Robotnik would be motivation enough. Apparently, I had been wrong. Having sapient machines under my command risked them not following my orders when in battle. In fact, because they had the minds of Mobians they were practically guaranteed not to. Mobians were too independent. Chances were they would the survival of their comrades or their own as their top priority. That is, assuming they wouldn't disagree with my plans in the first place and refuse to follow me into battle.
It just wouldn't do.
The young Robian mind had found one of the openings and now looked up at the foggy Robotropolis skyline, the sea of stars that winked above and the pale silvery moonlight which filtered through from above.
"(Wonder), (Happy?)" it said transmitting the image to me.
This wouldn't do. I needed a way to ensure their loyalty. I couldn't risk going into battle with anything less than their complete obedience, or this cure could risk becoming worse than the original disease it was intended to fix. I reached for the drone again, for its mind. For the source code of the computer program underlying its simulated brain.
I weighed my options. It would be easy to make the machine feel pain at the very notion of disobedience. So much so that the thought itself would be so intolerable, so painful that the very idea would become inconceivable.
That was an option, but I knew I wouldn't need to go that far. Instead, I opted for modifying its source code to add a compulsion. An unstoppable impulse to obey my every wish, with a psychological reward when it did so. Similar to how a drug addiction worked, in a sense. Except, the compulsion would be so overwhelming the machine wouldn't have any chances to disobey, no matter its willpower.
I applied the mental shackles and ordered the drone to return.
"(Acceptance)," the drone said, its tone resentful. It might not have liked the change I had just imposed on its brain, but it obeyed my command regardless, turning around and racing back to my new command centre.
A part of me had felt deeply revolted at what I had just done. The same part of me that had set those boundaries in the first place. But it was getting easier and easier to silence that part of me now.
I was lucky to be alive. I had been foolish but I wouldn't make the same mistake twice. I would have my army. This time, I selected my most analytical minds and made them my sub-commanders. The rest became my support staff, responsible for managing the supply lines and production in the robofacs.
They resented having my will superimposed over theirs of course. But they would be forced nonetheless to obey my orders. I hated what I did but so long as they did what I wanted, as long as the plan worked... it was a small price to pay for attaining my revenge.
No...our revenge.
It was unsurprising the Robians were reluctant. They were, in a certain way, like my children. Naive to the ever-present horrors above. I had taught them what they were fighting for, but It wasn't working as well as I had hoped. They hadn't been there. They didn't have memories of Knothole, as I had. To them, it was more of an abstract concept; a vague promise land. I felt their naivety justified my actions.
Just like a wise and benevolent parental figure, I too had to force my children to do something they might not like at first, but that was necessary.
Someday, once the war was over, I hoped that they just like my friends would understand that what I did was necessary.