(A/N) Hey all, time for another X-Ray and Vav update, and you can expect one each day from here on out until the 27th, as we come closer and closer to the launch of the animated series, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that I cannot wait! We've got another fantastic chapter from Gumby1011 here, depicting the Mad King himself, Iron-Ryan. And where Iron-Ryan goes…well, we all know what comes with him, am I right?
We're entering the last two weeks or so of taking apps for In the End, You Always Kneel – our upcoming Hunger Games/Avengers fic, so if you're interested, but have been putting it off, time's beginning to run out, so head on over there straight away and start filling out an application! We've had some fantastic apps so far, and I'm really looking forward to starting this fic. I can promise, it'll be well worth reading.
Speaking of well worth reading, I'm going to leave you to enjoy this chapter!
Chapter Thirty-Nine – War Machines
Ryan Heywood / Iron-Ryan
Written by Gumby1011
"In the future, when Microsoft leaves a security-flaw in their code it won't mean that somebody hacks your computer. It will mean that somebody takes control of your servant robot and it stands in your bedroom doorway sharpening a knife and watching you sleep."
– Daniel H. Wilson
Iron-Ryan sat behind a desk in his workshop. Scattered across the large deskspace was a general clutter of mechanical odds and ends strewn around his supercomputer. The high-tech box was currently connected to a snow golem, as Ryan typed with astounding speed, writing line after line of the complex new subroutine coding he was working on.
The snow golems needed an upgrade. True, they weren't built for combat, but that limited their time of usefulness to between the identification of a lawbreaker and the time the first iron golem units arrived. It wasn't really efficient, and it also made them totally useless for the battle to come. But he was fixing that. Ryan had already run the calculations: with his average writing speed, he would have the program fully composed in three...two...one.
As he finished the code he scanned upwards through it, faster than the human eye could trace. Flawless work. Excellent. He closed the windows on the monitor that displayed his iron and snow golem schematics, and began compiling the code. As it transferred into the golem that was connected to the laptop, Ryan looked over the top of his monitor. "Hey, you." Several of the other snow-golems stopped milling about and turned to face him. "Noooooooo..." he put a hand to his chin. Choices without any obvious determining factors were honestly the toughest ones for him, nowadays. "Yyyyyyyoooouuu…" He pointed to one of the golems, and it stepped forwards as the others went about their work. "Come over here for a second."
The little robot scooted over to Iron Ryan on hidden wheels in its base, stopping and staring at its creator with that grin on its face as the computer finished compiling the subroutine into the first golem. Ryan picked up the little scout unit, examining its workmanship. He'd recently gotten some robotic autofabricators up and running, which had sped up unit production tremendously. However, he had yet to inspect the workmanship of the automated process. "State unit production model and manufactory of origin."
The golem was silent for the slightest of moments before responding. "Unit production model: Snow Golem, Firmware v. Manufactory of origin: Autofabrication unit 3."
"Good, goood…" Ryan checked all of the welds and rivets on the little bot, until enough time had passed for the supercomputer's compilation into the first golem to complete. "Looks like everything's in tune. Do me a favour." He stood up and lifted the little robot before putting it in a headlock. "Don't... move, for a minute, would you?"
"Roger,"the robot replied, not moving so much as a single hydraulic, staring at him attentively.
Ryan applied pressure to the robot's neck jointure, his metal limbs causing the snow golem's steel shell to buckle and squeal under the forces exerted. After a few moments, where was a metallic popping sound. Then the cyborg then dropped the golem, its head completely separated from its now limp body. Ryan picked the head up off the ground before shaking it, a few parts and pieces loosely falling out of the hole where its neck went.
Ryan shrugged before tossing the broken and still-smiling head over his shoulder. Then he powered on the golem connected to his laptop. The little robot immediately sprang to life, before turning to face its creator.
"Directive?"
The cyborg stuck a thumb over his shoulder at the robotic carcass behind him. "Fix it."
The little robot nodded before hopping off the desk and scooting over to the broken mechanical husk. It immediately went to work. A chest panel opened up on the active robot, and its deft little arms retrieved a blowtorch and workhammer from within it. It immediately took to repairing the broken robot, connecting wires, mending connections into their proper shape. After a while it scooted over and retrieved its brethren's head and reattached it, sparks flying as it soldered and welded wires and surface panels back into place. After a few minutes more, it backed away from the now-fully repaired robot.
The fixed bot glanced around before looking at its hands, admiring its brethren's handiwork. Then both droids turned up and stared at Ryan. "Directive?" they asked in unison.
Ryan picked up the repaired golem once more. "Don't move," he intoned flatly. Then he looked over at the bot that had executed the repairs and ordered, "Teach them. All of them."
"Roger,"the two bots replied in unison. The repair golem froze in place, as did every other snow golem in the workshop, which by now numbered in the dozens. As the auto-repair subroutine was put in place, Ryan made sure that the horde of snow golems had their work cut out for them. He ripped the golem he held apart: first pulling off its head, then both arms, then ripping its segmented body to pieces.
This is what his golems would have to endure in combat, and recover from in the aftermath. Total and utter ferocity, foes with no restraint being shown for the robots. Humans seemed to fight unrestrained against the non-living. Which made sense from a logistical standpoint, he supposed: organics are so much more difficult to repair. He stomped the snow-golem into the dust, flattening its parts and embedding a few of the more resilient pieces into the floor. Then he bathed the entire pile with a low-intensity beam from his cyborg eye's laser weaponry, softening the metal enough that they sagged and deformed slightly under their own weight.
Then every snow golem in the group turned to face Ryan, before speaking as one: "Repair Protocol Compilation complete."
Ryan shrugged. "Alright." He swept his hand, indicating the pile of scrap. "Get to it, then."
"Roger."
The horde of snow golems converged on the scrapped remains in mere moments. Ryan could hardly even observe what was happening, they crowded and packed around the robotic wreckage so tightly. He could see in places near the edges of the mob that the golems were passing parts between the expectant hands and tools of their compatriots, forming an organized if seemingly frantic mob that functioned as a high-flexibility assembly line. Sparks, flames and tiny cutting lasers belched out of the group in places, until they eventually began to disperse, revealing a one-hundred percent operational snow-golem where only charred remains had been a mere minute earlier.
Their primary task of full functionality completed, the golems now went about their secondary objective: maximizing efficiency. Snow golems scurried around the lab like productive little gremlins, scanning, repairing and optimizing flaws not only in each other, but the Iron golems and autofabrication machines as well. Occasionally a golem or two would go somewhere it shouldn't and be crushed or torn to bits by the still-running autofabricators, which would lead nearby golems to risk their own limbs to retrieve their parts, but that was fine. The rate of successful retrievals from the factory machines were high enough that such incidents at worst only lead to a minute or two of frustrated obstacle dodging and repairing that wouldn't look out of place with Yakety Sax playing in the background.
One golem held still as another pulled off its arm, recalibrated a shoulder-servo, and reattached it. Another one smiled at a faulty hip-joint on an iron golem before waving another couple of its kin over as they carried a replacement part on their back. A few went about tossing irreparable parts into the smelting furnaces, allowing the autofab machines to make use of the recycled material.
Despite all of Iron-Ryan's genius, he'd yet to develop a model of golem that he was absolutely certain could withstand superhuman assaults. So there was only one real option left: if he couldn't stop his metal guardians from breaking, he'd make sure their breaking was of no consequence. The snow golems would now actively repair and maintain their iron allies, and he had enough of the combat drones built that he was confident that by the time the last iron golem fell, half of the first to fall would be back up and running.
Of course, it always helped to test systems as complex as this one out.
Iron Ryan clapped his hands once, and the snow golems all froze in place. Then he clapped twice, and all iron golems snapped to attention, their gangly arms held in awkward salutes. Ryan sat at his supercomputer again before opening up a command prompt labelled "Unit E-01.0 Command Interface V .1" and typed in a string of code:
( ( ( (hole))));
Ryan then looked over his monitor at the dozen or so Iron Golems standing in the room before him. "Go in the hole." The iron golems saluted before marching to the centre of the workshop, wherein a square railing rose up from the floor and surrounded them. The floor within the rail then started to descend, deep down into the second, hidden tier of the workshop. After it had descended far enough, a thick layer of glass slid over the top of the hole, allowing Ryan to observe the Iron Golems' fate while minimizing danger. The cyborg walked over and stood atop the glass, watching intently. Then–
"MMMMROOOOOOOOOOAAARRR!"
A horrifically loud bellow drifted up through the glass as the spectacle below unfolded. A massive brown and white form tore through the small spot of visibility at the bottom of the hole, ripping the iron golems limb from limb. The robots themselves were powerless to stop this entity, but that was okay. They weren't supposed to.
It was then that Ryan felt the gaze of several of the snow golems, staring at him with the same smiling face they always did. The cyborg turned to face them. "And now you know that Edgar isn't down there to be mean to Edgar. Edgar is there to protect you."
One of the little robots raised its hand.
"Yes?"
The golem rolled forward about a foot. "We have detected several inconsistencies between our uploaded schematic for Iron_ and target unit's current state. Permission to rectify these errors?"
Ryan stared at it, stonefaced, evaluating his next response. "Identify systems affected."
"Minor inconsistencies detected in exoskeletal, endoskeletal, musculature, laser-based weaponry and rocket-based locomotive systems."
Ryan mulled it over for a second, weighing up his trust in the small androids. "Alright." He stood perfectly straight and held up his arms in a T-pose, chin jutting forward in grim determination. "Permission granted."
The little robots were on him in an instant, removing covering plates and swapping out components. At one point he lost connection with his back's rocket-boosters before they were reconnected with a twenty percent increase in capacity detected. At another, his cyborg eye's laser weapon was removed, recalibrated, and socketed back into place. The golems took him almost entirely apart, taking care to never entirely stop the flow of electricity through his primary processors.
While Ryan could no longer feel sensations, one of the few preserved portions of his human mind perceived the increased efficiencies as being not unpleasant. Almost as if he had been stretching, or just finished popping his knuckles. When the snow golems had finished their work and backed away from the cyborg, Iron Ryan observed their handiwork: his chrome plates were devoid of all scratches and gleamed with a polished shine, so that he could even see his reflection in the palm of his hand. His joints no longer caught at those awkward angles they had before, and the traces of corrosion that has set into his body ever since his dip in the ocean had been completely removed.
He still hadn't entirely forgiven X-Ray and Vav for that, although he was aware that, if they hadn't, he would probably still be under the control of the Community. He sighed to himself, and shook his head wearily. More evidence of still-present sentiment, informing him that he still hadn't been entirely successful in eradicating emotion from his synapses. He would have to rectify that, and soon.
They were the most illogical things, emotions. No matter how he reconfigured his brainwaves, and restructured the sections of his brain responsible, they still turned up in the most unlikely places. His human nature was fighting back, he realised, and frowned. That was only to be expected, admittedly, but still…he couldn't afford for emotions to cloud his judgement, not at this point.
He shook his head, dismissing the thoughts running through his mind at a speed that would have been incomprehensible to a human, and glanced back down at the work his golems had done on his outward, physical form.
"Not bad," the cyborg muttered, almost in admiration. He then noticed that in the meantime, the hole had stopped emitting metallic grinding and bending sounds. The roaring and bellowing carried on, however. Ryan walked back to his supercomputer, totally straight-faced. Then he entered a new command into the prompt.
(optimizeEfficiency);
As soon as the cyborg hit the return key, the ruckus from the hole ceased. Ryan kept internal track of the time, waiting for three minutes to pass. Then the elevator rose out of the hole, a wrecked heap of iron golem parts sitting atop it. The snow golems descended upon it, looking almost like a school of piranhas had decided it was opposite day. In a matter of minutes, the little wonders had repaired the combat drones.
Iron Ryan nodded in appraisal, then commanded: "Iron golem units, identify."
"Iron Golem Unit Alpha-1, reporting. All systems nominal. I'm combat ready."
Now it was just a matter of time. With the community out of the way, Ryan would no longer need to contend with this crisis. Then he could carry out what he'd chosen as his primary aim: the ensured security of the world, and the protection of every person in it.
"Iron Golem Unit Alpha-2, reporting. All systems nominal. I'm combat ready."
The current "peace" of the world was but a farce. Sure, they may claim peace, but is it really so when major atrocities are met with nothing but shrugs and proclamations of sympathies?
"Iron Golem Unit Alpha-3, reporting. All systems nominal. I'm combat ready."
Does a system truly dispense justice when wrongdoers are allowed to continue to sow seeds of discord and hatred in the fields of society's mercy?
"Iron Golem Unit Alpha-4, reporting. All systems nominal. I'm combat ready."
Can a country claim to be safe when a man can be made into a weapon with no consent? With no warning? With no way back?
"Iron Golem Unit Alpha-5, reporting. All systems nominal. I'm combat ready."
No. It could not. These "super criminals" were merely catalysts, almost designed to highlight the flaws in the system. Ryan could see that now. Thankfully, he was no longer part of the system.
"Iron Golem Unit Alpha-6, reporting. All systems nominal. I'm combat ready."
He was above the system. Beyond it. Intelligent enough to discern its flaws, yet both willing and able to correct them – to improve them. To update them in this time of upheaval. Ryan walked to his computer and sent the golems of battle group Alpha to storage, clicking the icon on the toolbar that ran from Alpha to Mu. Each battle group would have six iron golems, each iron golem would have three snow golems. And at the end of his plan, each city would have its own set of battle groups. Achievement City was just the beginning.
A fitting name for a testbed.
The far wall of the lab opened up, sliding completely apart and revealing a massive hangar-like bay filled with even more iron and snow golems. They were arranged on mechanical racks along a main walkway. One of these racks hung empty, until the golems reached it. Then the robots climbed on to the rack in rows, each row then being hoisted up into the air as the next empty rack swung into place.
The time would come. But first, the Community would have to be dealt with. Uncertainty was the enemy of logic, and this transition would need to be handled with the cold precision of a scalpel. The situation that he currently found himself in would have to be stabilized. A foundation would need to be built. One day, he would start to build upon this foundation. One day, he would truly solve the problem at hand. But, sadly, it was not today.
Ryan glanced down into the hole. Glanced down at the first building block of the solution.
No, it was not today.
"Not yet."