"And then, on the night of Christmas Eve, he gets into his sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer, and flies through the air to bring toys to all the good little girls and boys."
"Sheila, what are you doing?" Andi asked, clamoring over the catwalk gate with a pile of thick rubber tubing slung over her left shoulder. Her eyes were a deep color that could have been blue, green, or gray depending on the light. Her hair was so blonde that it was almost white, and shimmered with a strange light.
"Explaining the whole concept of Santa Claus and the magic of Christmas shiznit to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen over here," Sheila smiled, turning around and helping Andi pull the wires over the gate. Sheila was a mousy girl, somewhere between a redhead and brunette, who had never lost her childhood freckles. Standing the background, saying nothing, was an albino girl named Gauge. It wasn't uncommon for Gauge not to say anything; during the war she'd lost her tongue.
"Yeah, well, they don't seem to interested." Andi gestured to the four tiny machines, one of which was sound asleep. The other three were busy poking one another with their miniature tentacles and making mechanical chirping noises of annoyance at one another.
"Where's your Christmas spirit, Andi? We finally get to have a celebration without worrying that the machines are gonna bust in and break up our cheer," Sheila replied.
"Yeah, because this time the machines are invited," Andi sighed. She waved a hand at the infant sentinel. "Come on, guys, I need these wires strung up the walls."
The young machines came forward, chirping and shoving one another. Several other machines were clattering along the walls, mostly full sized adult sentinel, but Andi ignored them. She didn't trust them. They'd been sent by the Machine Empire after peace to "establish a relationship between the human and machine worlds."
She didn't trust the fact that they'd sent sentinel to establish a relationship. She knew the machines understood exactly how the majority of the free people felt about the sentinel. She feared they were merely looking for an excuse to break the fragile peace and reopen the wounds of war. She was afraid that they lived among the humans not as free will, but as one simple command held back their murderous impulses.
But the young sentinel were different. They'd been "born," among humans, nurtured by a female who had been brought to fight as a traitor to her own kind via the Matriculation process. They'd named her Fluffy, a name she'd chosen to keep even after discovering what her name had been before she'd been Matriculated.
She and another female sentinel with almost identical programming to her own were the only two known sentinels to respond to the Matriculation process. Even her mate and the programming code donator of her young still bore the flaming red eyes that indicated exactly whose side he was on.
The young sentinel clamored over the walls, stringing the wires behind them as they moved at astonishing speeds by pulling themselves along with their tentacles. They couldn't quite fly yet, but they'd advanced a long way from how mobile they'd been when she'd first laid eyes on them.
"Sheila, do you remember the first time we saw them? The babies?" she asked, her eyes on the young.
"Yeah. We came back from the last battle and Fluffy came to great us… with a single file line of eight tiny sentinels following her. We almost didn't believe it was real, that the machines could have offspring… but there they were."
Andi bit her index finger as she often did when she was lost in thought. "They're going to start welding the tree later today. We should gather up the young and let them watch. As much as I hate to admit it, the machines are right in saying that integrating them into our world is the only way to hope for lasting peace. I'll ask Fluffy to bring them."
Andi found Michallis playing with three of the remaining unaccounted for infant sentinel, while their "mother" lounged against a wall, her eyes the deep gray color that indicated she'd powered down to rest her processors. "Powered down in the middle of the day?" Andi asked.
"Babies nursed her dry again. She's recharging her battery."
"You little gluttons!" Andi cried in mock surprise, picking up the infant named Zoom and spinning him around. "Always picking on your poor mother!" Zoom made a confused whirring noise and wrapped his tentacles around her neck, pulling himself up and onto her shoulder. He was a bit heavy, but Andi had gotten used to him perching on her like he was an oversized black parrot. "What are you doing?"
"Teaching the babies 'bout the holidays," Michallis responded. "I was trying to carve one of those… spiny… Jewish… top… thingies… for them, but it isn't working out very well."
"I'm afraid I don't know what it's called, either. I do know it will be nice to really celebrate, and celebrate hard. I plan on having myself enough simulated eggnog that I'll have one heck of a psychosomatic hangover in the morning."
Michallis looked confused, and Andi decided her joke wasn't very funny. "They're going to weld the tree later today. When Fluffy wakes up, ask her to bring the babies down. They'd enjoy watching it, I thi…" Andi cut off her sentence in mid-word because of the dark shadow that fell over her.
Hanging on the ceiling like a radioactive spider was an oversized, bullet-hole ridden black and brown spotted male. "Spot. Lovely to see you," Andi said cooly. She had to respect Spot on some level. Without him, Fluffy would likely be dead. On the other hand, he made his distaste for humans apparent in every way he could, and he was so wild it made even the most liberal of people on the subject of machines living in the cities nervous.
On the third hand that she didn't have, but that he did, he had donated half the programming that was in the baby sentinels, so she had to at least put up with him. After all, the infants simply adored him, as evidenced by how they would perk up and wag their little tentacles whenever he saw fit to descend from his perch clinging to the ceiling.
Spot roughly pushed Andi with his head as he shoved her aside, pushing his way over to the bounding infants. They were all making high-pitched noises in his direction, a sign that they were using short-distance communication to talk to him. Spot listened for a few moments, then drew himself up and ordered a low-pitched booming sound, before turning around and pulling himself back up the wall. The babies shrank back against the ground and trembled.
They're going to weld the tree! We don't know what the tree is, but we want to go! Can we, can we? they'd asked, all more or less speaking at once.
After a moment of apparent thought, Spot had ordered a loud NO, immediately followed by the command that they were not to Participate in any ridiculous human superstitions or meaningless exercises of excess, under the penalty of a swift machine-style spanking.
Andi glared after Spot, knowing that he could care less exactly how much or how little she liked him. He'd made exactly how he felt about her and her trying to push her human traditions on his offspring, and there was nothing more he felt he needed to see or hear.
The noise, however, had awakened the sleeping Fluffy, who drew herself up and shook the sleep out of her tentacles. I want you to go, she yawned. Just don't tell your father. You don't need to get his oil pressure up.
Yes mom, they all responded in unison. Fluffy lifted up her satellite and let out a signal to let the sentinel know that she wanted her newly programmeds to come to her. Within a few moments, seven of the eight had arrived. Fluffy made a displeased grunting noise.
Where's Seven?
The seven babies all looked at one another and shrugged. Their parents simply called them seven through zero based on how quickly they'd emerged from their programming development pods. The humans had given them each nicknames based on their personalities.
Zero, the firstborn, was known as "Baby," after what Andi had screamed upon seeing the line following behind Fluffy. The second to emerge from her pod was just about the same size as Baby, and was known as "Snip." Snip and Baby were about the same size, and being the biggest of the newly programmeds, were constantly challenging one another for the right to be alpha over the smaller siblings. Snip was more like her father than Baby was, and was known from snapping at people.
Two, otherwise known as "Zoom," was the first of the males to emerge. Zoom was hyperactive, and spent pretty much all of his time zooming from place to place. Andi foresaw a future in delivery services for him. He'd hatched at nearly the same time as his sister "Dizzy", who had come out of her pod backwards, and did nearly everything backwards. The only think keeping Dizzy on track was Zoom's strong attachment to her, and that he was always watching over her.
The next to emerge had been the only other "male" of the group, "Bon-Bon." No one knew exactly how he got that name, but it had seemed to have stuck to him. Bon-bon was a bit on the territorial side, and like his sister Snip, had trouble getting along with the humans about him.
The sixth infant was Peaches, so called because of her odd habit of sucking peach juices up into her cooling system. She had to clean her radiator far more often than her water-drinking siblings because peach juice was sticky, but she didn't seem to mind. She spent most of her time in the kitchen, and had become rather quickly adept at cooking, despite her inability to taste-test what she was preparing.
The seventh of the newly programmeds was named Sugarcube. Sugarcube was the smallest of the young, and when they'd arrived, had been lagging behind her siblings. Fluffy only had six energy download ports and eight infants, so Sugarcube had been finding herself too small to push in and get any energy. The runt of the family, she'd been on the verge of starvation until Andi and Gauge had devised a method of making a filter that would act like the filters in Fluffy's body did, making the energy suitable for her young form. They'd essentially nursed her back to health, so she was attached far closer to humans than she was to her own kind. Hence why they'd named her Sugarcube. Not only did she love sweets; she was the sweetest of the infants.
Sleepyhead, the last to emerge from her pod, was always finding places to sneak off and sleep, which would explain why she was missing from the family gathering. Fluffy sighed loudly. She was tired of always having to hunt down her missing, sleeping daughter.
Snip, would you go wake your sister?
Yes mama. Snip hopped along the top of boxes, satellites extended, until she heard the gentle whirring noise of a powered-down sentinel. Jumping down, she used her jumper cable extensions to poke her sister in the head. Sleepyhead jumped up, looking wildy about, then made an angry noise when she realized it was only her sister.
The two crawled back over to where their parent was waiting. They hadn't quite learned to fly yet. They could hover and flit small distances, but when it came to large-scale movements they usually ended up clinging to walls and pulling themselves along.
I want all of you to go to the tree welding, but I don't want any of you to tell your father. He's a bit high strung, and he already has enough stress to worry about.
I don't want to go if daddy doesn't want me to go, Snip argued.
Fluffy grabbed Snip with her forward-facing arms and pulled her beneath her body, cleaning the wriggling little sentinel. Fluffy tended to clean her young when she wasn't in the mood to argue with them. You don't have to like it. I just want you to see why humans are different from us. If you can't understand what makes us superior, you can't understand why we live among them.
Yes mama, all eight little machine voices said in unison, and the newly programmeds began to crawl off in the direction of where the tree welding was to be held.
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I intended this to be a one shot thing, but apparently it took me too long to introduce the characters for that. That, and I don't even really know what I want the plot to be. Well, I do have an idea, and it involves Morpheus being forced into a Santa suit. So there's your preview for future chapters, may I post them posthaste!