The sounds of falling water were mostly all there was to disturb the peace in Minerva's Den, but then again where didn't it? It was a very quiet place, the mildly tainted silence being a nice change from intermittent explosions of conflict or aggression found in the city. There were no sounds of Big Daddies roaming the halls, not a remark made by a Little Sister on the condition of an "Angel", not a scream by a Splicer or a screech by a Big Sister. In the distance, the announcements which sang the praises of the Thinker were barely audible, the sound files beginning to corrupt from age and deterioration.
The Den's population had been reduced not so many years ago to nearly zero, a particular Alpha series cleansing the area of ADAM deranged humans in the pursuit of truth. In all honestly, the Splicers in Minerva's Den hadn't lead a very interesting life since it had been cut off from the rest of Rapture. They hadn't heard any news of the city, hadn't heard of the rise and downfall of Sofia Lamb nor the demise of Frank Fontaine and Andrew Ryan. No visitors at all, until Sigma had ended their boredom. All they'd had for entertainment was to tinker with their inventions and perfect their designs. A futile effort, as they would never be properly used. Nor could they be successfully crafted; being cut off from Rapture meant being cut off from Vulcan's Forge, the district in Rapture that dealt in production, ranging from plastics to metal to concrete. Their corpses still littered the district though; women with gaudy yet ruined hairdos and bald bespectacled gentlemen lying across the floor without a chance of removal as the Saturnine were unaware of the Den's existence, let alone the bodies'.
Subject Sigma hadn't exactly ruined the place, but his passing though had left a significant change there. For one, the Splicers were dead. Obviously. For two, the Den was slightly more dilapidated that it was, the remains of cameras and security bots almost like a signature he'd left behind. But the main change was that in killing Reed Whal, the Thinker had been freed. He could finally communicate with the outside world, rather than aiding them with menial tasks that the city required. He could actually use his intelligence for something better than opening doors or maintaining the oxygen level. For example, his extensive knowledge of every inch of Rapture could help Grace Holloway to reconnect districts previously thought lost to the sea. Utilize his knowledge of mechanics to help repair the broken Hephaestus core, the harvesting equipment up in Ceres Green (the district that grew all of Rapture's food, plant or livestock) and to re-calibrate the vita chambers to heal everyone so that no more of Rapture's inhabitants could die prematurely. He could have even used the technology there in the Den, perhaps the Vacuum-bots to aid in cleaning up rubble. Then again, they'd all been mysteriously destroyed.
So much I could do, if only I was called upon.
It wasn't that he was forbidden to offer advice to people without being asked, that was very much up to him. It was parts of his AI code that helped ground him to Minerva's Den; You Will Not Lead. This was put in as a precaution in case he (for some inconceivable reason) should he decide that he was somehow better that humanity, and come to the logical conclusion that he could take over Rapture by force. Though unlikely, The Thinker admired the care which had gone into creating him, safeguarding against every eventuality. It was as though Charles Milton Porter had calculated every possibility as he himself had calculated Charles Milton Porter's return and subsequent victory. He did miss Charles Milton Porter, but it gladdened him to think that he had escaped, living on the surface with Brigid Tenenbaum. The Thinker had calculated that with her knowledge of ADAM and The Thinker 2.0, he would be able to correct the alterations to his mind and vocal chords, repairing the damage done in becoming an Alpha series. He'd also calculated other things about Charles Milton Porter, but for some reason they wouldn't surface to the center of his thoughts, as though some inbuilt code turned into a barrier every time they threatened to make an appearance. Perhaps like "Override Code 34". Maybe this was a variant of that code. Perhaps 33 or 35. Well, whatever it was, he was sure it must be there for a reason.
"Hey thinker?" Stanley's voice came through the speaker system. It didn't interrupt The Thinkers thoughts; it was impossible to interrupt his thoughts as he could run up to three conversations at one time, on top of regulating Rapture. Stanley's voice was haggard, cracking on the first word like an adolescent male. He'd evidently only just woken up after being knocked out.
"Yes, Stanley Poole?"
"Where did you say those gloves were?" Stanley Poole asked. Thinker could hear him reattach his glove to the suit.
"There are in the Maintenance Area, behind a gated doorway. You will have to open it yourself," Thinker replied. Stanley released the button of his radio, ceasing communications.
The Leak in Dionysus Park. That was what Thinker had been trying to solve; how to locate and repair it. There was no-one in the Park that he could talk to, nor was there anyone that would listen to him. If only he was mobile, then he could do it himself. Perhaps there was something here he could use.
What about McClendon Robotics? Maybe he could build himself a droid of some sort.
Hidden away in McClendon Robotics, several figures lay in the shadows. Some were on benches, positioned so that they were resting or kneeling, whilst others were standing on the floor together in a huddle. They weren't all together unfortunately; five were up stairs in an office, whilst thirteen were tucked away in a private workshop. They hadn't been seen in years, hadn't been activated, hadn't even been considered. They were forgotten, failed experiments left to rust in the silence.
The one lying on the floor sparked and twitched the lower half of its body, resembling a child kicking its legs. She was facing the vent, her head held in her hands as though overcome with boredom. Her left ear piece was glowing brightly, as were all of the others', providing minute light to the room.
Nothing moved.
And suddenly, the little girls' eyes began to glow.
The coils in here eye bulbs slowly began to warm up, gradually brightening into a steady orange, here earpiece flashing rapidly as she was remotely activated. Her brain was wirelessly uploaded with information, feeding her codes and orders:
[01001001 01101110 01101001 01110100 01101001 01100001 01101100 01101001 01111010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101110 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101110 01100110 01101001 01110010 01101101 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101001 01101110 01100100 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01011011 01010100 01001000 01001001 01001110 01001011 01000101 01010010 01011101 00101110 00100000 01001110 01100101 01110111 00100000 01110000 01100001 01110010 01100001 01101101 01100101 01110100 01100101 01110010 01110011 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100011 01100101 01101001 01110110 01100101 01100100 00111010 00100000 01010010 01100001 01110000 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101100 01100101 01100001 01101110 01110101 01110000 00101110 00100000 01010010 01100101 01101110 01100001 01101101 01100101 00111111 00100000 01001110 01100101 01110111 00100000 01101110 01100001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100101 01110011 01101001 01100111 01101110 01100001 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01011011 01000001 01101100 01110000 01101000 01100001 01011101 00101110 00100000 01010100 01100101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110100 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100011 01100101 01110000 01110100 01101111 01110010 01110011 00101110]
The robotic little sister put her hands to the floor and gradually got to her feet. Her joints yielded uneasily, rust crumbling from her elbows and knees. She surveyed her surroundings for the first time in years, the separate components of her brain slowly awakening and being rewritten; when initially created, their brains weren't uploaded with any complex code, only simple commands as their creator predicted their failure and therefore didn't waste the effort. Thinker uploaded more complex movements to their memory, amendments on judgmental parameters, installing the history that the sisters had missed and so that they'd recognize objects invented after their creation.
When the upload was complete, the android began to run a self diagnostic. Her eyes flared with light, testing to see if age had reduced brightness whilst warming air was blasted out of her scalp vents, clearing away any cobwebs or grime that obstructed the cooling ducts in her head. Her vision flicked from standard to infrared, ultra violet, night-vision and the special ADAM tracker. All visions worked, though the android was running on half its power. She'd need to be charged and oiled, but that wouldn't be hard to do.
The robotic little sister finalized initialization, donning her new name. She used to be called "Georgia," but now she had been re-named "Alpha." The Thinker had thought this would be appropriate, stealing the naming system used for the Alpha series.
Alpha began walking around the workshop, seeing how one by one her sisters were awoken, their eyes flickering to life. Some only had one eye working, whilst others had vents entirely blocked upon inspection. She did the best she could, scooping our muck from the vents of her fellow androids as they warmed up. She waited patiently for them to fully awaken, flexing their joints and flaring their eyes. Soon, they began to climb down from the benches and extracted themselves from huddled positions, straitening into default standing positions.
Unfortunately, due to her design she didn't have the capabilities of wirelessly broadcasting to her sisters. She'd only been intended for gathering ADAM, yet with her new updated she could do so much more. She could think, she could reason, she could strategize. She was…an improvement on what she was.
She opened her mouth.
"Sisters, follow!" She spoke. Her sound files had been modeled on the child that had recorded for the gatherer's garden, the obnoxious voice that sounded both smug and whining. Her speakers were scratchy, buzzing on certain syllables.
She led her sisters out from under the crawl space sized exit and into the workshop, her water resistant body dripping with water from crawling though puddles. She got to her feet and strode over to the centre of the room, her joints whirring with each motion. She heard metallic clicking overhead, and saw five more little sisters walking along a metal strut as though they were tight rope walking, joining them after having been stashed n different places. This brought their total up to 18 units, and adequate number for whatever they were instructed to do. The others lined up automatically, forming three rows in front of her.
"Confirm idents! Alpha!" She yelled. The droids spoke in sequential order, from the left of the row to the right before the next row started. Some of the voices were broken, sounding like a skipping record whilst others just cut out.
"Beta!"
"Gamma!"
"Deltatatatatatata!"
"Epsilon!"
"Zeta!"
"Eta!"
"Theta!"
"Iota!"
"KappPPppapa!"
"L…L…LammDDDDa!"
"Mu!"
"Nu!"
"Xi!"
"Omicr…on!"
"Pi!"
"Rho!"
"SigGGgggggma!"
The Thinker was listening to all of this, gratified to learn that most of them weren't too damaged. He quickly sent Alpha several objectives. Her earpiece blinked as she received them, her head cocked to one side.
"Everyone to Dionysus Park!"
The sisters filed out in single file, Alpha leading the out of the workshops and through to the recently restored exit. They marched on the same foot, occasionally freezing in place as a frayed wire sparked. They marched past the welcome desk and out the main door, Alpha turning right at the end of the tunnel whilst the others turned left towards the Park.
Alpha had a different task to fulfill.
A/N: I didn't come up with the names for "Vulcan's Forge" or "Ceres Green". I created the districts and needed names. I saw them on a blog about a possible Bioshock first person MMO forum and they kinda stuck, just so people dont think i'm stealing ideas. Im so terrified of copyright i would probably never even publish a book unless ive asked the creators of everything ive referenced.