Eternally a clique, Snip, Zoom, and Dizzy clung to the walls while several young men, their shirts slightly damp with sweat, assisted yet another group of young women in hauling in long, gangly wires that would be welded together to form a resemblance of a Christmas tree. Baby was trying to do anything she could to help them, but mostly getting her tentacles stepped on in the process.
Sugarcube and Sleepyhead were curled up around Michallis, powered down peacefully. The other infants were around as well, but doing nothing in particular. As usual, Peaches was covered in flour to the point where red eyes stuck out of a white face like bizarre lights in a snowbank.
"Why do we have to make a new tree every year? We could just save the old ones!" someone whined.
"What, and ruin the tradition for the children?" someone else called back as they hefted the firm pole that would be the center into place. Several children, some bald and some not, sat around. Those closest to the front wore welding glasses over their eyes. A few older teenagers and young adults were hanging around as well, and the older they got the more they tried to look like they weren't there for the purpose of the tree welding.
Peaches offered a small tin containing cookies up to Michallis, who took one and passed them around. Sitting beside him, Gauge nodded softly, trying not to betray her thoughts. She was thinking of how nice the cookies probably would taste if she still had her taste buds.
She looked down to find Sugarcube looking up at her. She smiled, never letting her lips part in the process, and patted the baby sentinel on the head. She'd never thought she'd be able to like any machine after how much fun they'd seemed to have torturously yanking the muscle out of her mouth, but… the babies were impossibly cute. For giant black radioactive cockroaches, that was.
Sparks flew as the welders set to work, their torches finally being used for something other than the war effort. That, in and of itself, gave each welder a feeling of warmth in their hearts hotter than any flame that could come out of their torches. Dizzy trembled a bit, nervous about the sparks, before Zoom put a few of his tentacles around her and comforted his overly paranoid sister.
Michallis patted Sleepyhead's tentacles. "I hope the 'Santa' ship gets here soon. I want the newly programmeds to be able to ask for presents, too." After making sure none of the babies were really listening, he leaned over to Gauge and whispered "We've already got presents for them, but it can't hurt to let them ask."
Gauge merely nodded. Michallis smiled and continued on. "I wonder who gets to play Santa for all the kids in the free human empire this year. Not as if the end of the war isn't a big enough present as it…"
"I heard it was someone who got in BIG dooky with the Council during the war, and the council's making them do it as punishment," said a girl behind them, a younger child playing with a corncob doll perched on her knee.
Overhead, several adult sentinels including Fluffy and Spot, shot by and out an opening above the main gates. They still hadn't been able to find the parts they needed to fix the landing lights on the surface, so the sentinels had to go out and guide in incoming ships. "I hope that's them now," Michallis smiled, rubbing Sugarcube on the head. He failed to notice Sugarcube removing a small packet of crystallized energy from his pocket and shoving it into her mouth orifice, chewing in a satisfied manner.
It was, indeed, the "Santa" ship, bringing presents that were more or less relics recovered from the surface now that it was relatively safe to travel there and into the ruined cities. The children were beyond excited. No more hand me down presents and corncob dolls, they hoped. They hoped, beyond all their dreams… for real toys left over from the great wars. Left over from the time when humans walked upon the surface of Earth, and all Earth's beasts and things were man's to command.
You think I too hard on kids, do you? Spot asked as he took up a cable to guide the ship in. His mate, taking up another cable, hummed in a way that indicated she was being thoughtful.
Maybe little. I understand not want them to become… too human… but don't see how it hurt them. Take up cable more, 00010001110!
The crimson-eyed sentinel with a weld scar running the length of her carapace took up the slack on her cable, pulling it tight. Most of the sentinel living inside the human cities had been injured in some way in the war. Don't let ship sides hit rock! Fluffy commanded. She was the head of all guardian operations at the base, as she'd been living among humans the longest. At first the others had grumbled about having a traitor for a leader, but only Spot and Andromeda had the experience to replace her, and neither would be willing to do so.
Andromeda waited inside, controlling the panels that opened and shut the gates. She wasn't like the other squid sentinel, although she was what the humans would have lumped in the category of sentinel during the war. Her main body was a circle covered in eyes, with two giant shoulder pad shaped projections like muscular arms on either side of her main body. Out of the ends of each arm came three slender, agile white tentacles that looked like fatted worms. And unlike the squid sentinel, she was blue.
At one time, Andromeda had been head of the task force to find and wipe out machines that had become converts. Then, for reasons no one understood, Andromeda had become a true traitor, abandoning the machines via her own free choice and not via human intervention. Unlike Fluffy and Spot, her eyes were green. Rumor had it that Andromeda had been betrayed by her own mate, and had joined the humans out of spite, but that had happened long before she was Matriculated and even she no longer remembered the details. However it had happened, Andromeda's talents at leadership and multitasking made her an excellent choice to oversee the dock machinery.
The Santa ship landed and the doors slid open. A young African woman stood in the doorway, calling angrily back. "Come ON! The children are waiting!" She jumped back into the ship, and emerged from the ship pushing a tall, muscular black man in crude, red knitted Santa suit and beard.
Fluffy, landing, recognized the "Santa" instantly, from the one time she'd been allowed to meet the three humans central to the war. The realization struck Fluffy as so funny… she rolled over on her back, crossed all her tiny arms over her belly, and laughed in her mechanical voice, her tentacles flailing.
"I'm being laughed at by a sentinel," Morpheus said in a monotone voice, feeling ridiculous. The council hadn't been kidding when they said they had a punishment in mine for him… this was torture!
"That's just Fluffy," the dock captain apologized.
"Yes. We've met before. It was wearing make-up," he said dryly. He wasn't kidding. Fluffy had been decorated up and down by Andi in an attempt to make her more appealing to the council when she stopped in for a progress update on her training. In his opinion, a sentinel still looked like a sentinel no matter how much jewelry and paint it was wearing.
Spot nudged his mate back upright. Come on, babies are hungry.
Fluffy pushed him with one long tentacle. You no fun. He look stupid!
Human always look stupid, Spot snorted before the two sauntered off together, Fluffy's mechanical laughter still echoing off the walls. The newly programmeds dinner alarm clocks had long ago gone off, and they were all waiting with wagging tentacles for their dinner cart to arrive.
What you going to ask Santa human to bring you presents? Fluffy asked as her young gathered around her. She managed to catch Peaches before the poor little sentinel could reach a download port and set herself to the task of cleaning flour off her speckled young. The baby wiggled about beneath the dozens of tiny arms that lined her mother's belly as the arms brushed the flour and picked gobs of dough off of her. Real cookie dough, it was worth noting, and not protein rich mush or the plain bread that had merely kept the humans alive before, when they had to hide their every activity from the machines.
It had only been a few months, but what a difference it had made.
Something fast! Zoom replied, busily downloading his nightly filtered energy meal out of his mother.
Something sharp, Snip answered. The others were too busy "suckling" to really answer their mother's question, so she merely sighed and set herself to the task of cleaning her babies. Spot, resting nearby, growled deeply.
Still don't want newly programmeds taking part in human excess.
Fluffy fixed her dozen or so red eyes upon Spot and sighed deeply, blowing hot exhaust out in frustration. Humans no live in excess before war. Humans barely got anything. Let them forget real world not so good for humans.
If Fluffy want, Spot sighed. He began climbing up the walls.
You no sleep in nest tonight? Fluffy asked, rolling partially back onto her belly, causing the infants trying to get to the ports on her belly to squeak angrily in protest.
Spot… need space, he answered, vanishing up the lines to the roof. Fluffy sighed deeply; feeling slightly miffed by Spot's wounded pride.
The next morning Fluffy flew down to where the children had begun to line up to see "Santa" before he would have to depart to head for the next outpost. The next outpost was last because it was newest, and perhaps most important… it was an outpost that had been formed to take back the wheat fields that many valiant citizens had lost their lives trying to hold.
If they could have a steady supply of wheat and bread again, maybe things could become a little better… bit by tiny bit, things would get better. There was even talk of asking the Machine City to send more sentinels, which the machines had no use for themselves in peacetime, to the fields to help with the growing process. Since Peaches had learned to develop a program within herself that taught her to get pleasure out of baking, maybe her program could be modified to teach the adult sentinel to get pleasure (or the machine's version of it) out of farming.
Peaches, meanwhile, had no idea of exactly how important she would be to the future of free mankind. She was busy deciding if she wanted to ask for a rolling pin or cookie cutters, as her turn in line was rapidly approaching.
"I have to let baby SENTINEL sit on my lap?" Morpheus hissed in an angry whisper to one of "Santa's assistants."
"The little one with the white face… she's the one with the program that may allow us to teach sentinel to farm. The one sucking on her own tentacles… she's the one who seems to thoroughly enjoy human contact. Even the one biting that guy's ankles… her talent as a mechanic is far above her tender young age…."
"Okay, okay, I get it. Please the baby sentinel because we need their programming to use on the adult sentinel."
The assistant patted him on the shoulder and smiled. "Now that's the Christmas spirit!"
The babies went, as usual, in birth order. Baby nearly crushed poor Morpheus in the important man-parts when she decided to leap into his lap. Using a trick she'd learned from a friendly robot who had once tried to unsuccessfully court her mother, she snaked one of her tiny upload cables around and into a jack located further down the spine.
Needless to say, this caused a big jump out of "Santa," who certainly hadn't been expecting it. He was on the verge of screaming that he was about to be attacked when a tiny voice spoke into his head. "Something shiny, please. A toy," it said. It sounded like the voice of a frightened, wounded child speaking within his head. It kind of tingled all over when she spoke.
Then, as quickly as she'd jacked in, Baby withdrew her chord and went running for her mother, diving behind her and peeping out. He scary, Baby said in a decisive manner, hugging her mother's tentacles.
I not scared of him! Snip announced, stalking directly up and sticking out her upload chord, waiting for him to take hold of it and plug himself in. When he merely stared at it, she waved it impatiently in his face.
He doesn't know what you want, dear. Plug yourself in, Fluffy answered, trying to calm a still scared Baby.
Snip gave Morpheus what he would swear was a sneer before jacking herself in, and frankly, it kind of hurt. She wasn't a gentle little sentinel by any means. "Sharp thing, cutting thing," a girl's voice demanded in his head before Snip roughly yanked her plug out. She turned heel to stalk away and lost her balance, falling flat on her face.
Ignoring the laughter behind her, Snip picked herself up and trotted angrily away. Zoom asked for a stopwatch, to time himself. Bon-bon didn't care what he got, and Peaches decided on cookie cutters. Dizzy, sitting facing away from Morpheus on his lap, couldn't make up her mind what she wanted. Finally, she simply said "Surprise me!" and trotted a few feet away before a shining ornament caught her attention, and she would proceed to spend the next hour staring at her own reflection.
Finally, it was Sugarcube's turn. Sugarcube, though normally the most loving of humans of the newly programmeds, hesitated and trembled. Her mother pushed her forward, telling her not to be afraid. Sugarcube only reluctantly approached the strange human, and was slow in extending her upload chord.
"You have a pillow under your shirt," Sugarcube noted cautiously. "I… I ask for some crystallized energy; it's sweet and I like it… but sisters said it silly to ask for sugar… once I eat, I don't have present…"
What was it that the almighty Morpheus felt? Could it be a tinge of pity, of sympathy for a baby sentinel? No, no, definitely not… "You can… ask for whatever you want…" he said hesitantly, uncertain of exactly what to say to a hesitant machine. "If you want something sweet…"
Sugarcube shook her head. "Wanna ask for something sensible. Not let sisters laugh… dunno what to ask for."
"Why don't you… think about it some more… and tell me when you've decided? My ship doesn't leave for the wheat outpost until after the evening meal."
"Is that okay?" Sugarcube asked, red eyes shining.
"I… don't see any reason why it wouldn't be."
Sugarcube hugged him perhaps a bit too joyously, forgetting her sheer size even for an infant and the strength of her metal arms. He gagged, and one of the assistants would later swear she saw his eyes bug out of his head. "Gonna think of a good present! One sisters not laugh at!" With that, she took off flying… and fell down after about five feet. Well, it was still an accomplishment. The last time she tried to fly, she fell down after about as far as she could jump. Trotting as fast as her little grabber claws would take her, she ran off to decide what it was that would bring her little sentinel self joy.
Sleepyhead looked Morpheus in the eye, yawned, and extended her plug. "Want tentacle warmers. Knitted ones. It cold sleeping in the storage bay." With that, she left. Sleepyhead was, above all things, not a complicated sentinel. She went as far as the base of the unlit welded tree, curled up around it, and promptly powered down to go back to sleep.
Sugarcube, meanwhile, was out on a mission. She had about seven hours left before the evening meal… seven hours in which to decide what the perfect present for a baby sentinel would be.