esseresse
R'lyth Power Make-up
- Location
- divorceville, state of depression
- Pronouns
- They/Her
They are opposite messes that balance each other out......
Lieutenant Fusilier in The Farthest Reaches
- Thread starter open_sketch
- Start date
- Original Mature
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think the way they got from point A to point B was losing balance and falling over each other... I mean finally having things out and realizing they'd misjudged each other pretty seriously and being able to voice frustrations they'd been keeping to themselves for a long time.
As far as emotionally charged moments go, it's a pity they didn't have the volta generator handy then and there.
- Location
- Under a cat
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Huh, I wonder what they could do with a volta generator or two (beyond just powering themselves).
I mean, a huge amount of electricity doesn't do a ton for you unless you have something to power. I mean, maybe they could rig up an electric forge or do some chemical processes, but I'm not seeing a way to use the generators besides charging themselves.
Although, if they're recreating inventions from their own 19th century, I wonder if they'll build some Adam and Eve machines...
I mean, a huge amount of electricity doesn't do a ton for you unless you have something to power. I mean, maybe they could rig up an electric forge or do some chemical processes, but I'm not seeing a way to use the generators besides charging themselves.
Although, if they're recreating inventions from their own 19th century, I wonder if they'll build some Adam and Eve machines...
I suspect that you need a Dorthy or a D--- to roll out a new machine, or at least, yeah, that early prototypical Adam and/or Eve.
I also suspect that the first Machine was a wild, miraculous one off built by a very, very lucky mad genius and that humanity here got lucky with their mind imaging in a way that only the Concordiat of Man would find familiar otherwise in fiction that I can think of.
Well, maybe parts of the Xuya setting? (But I'm not one hundred percent certain about how much of how of the descriptions I've read in the series so far about raising AIs there is metaphorical and how much is mechanics.)
I also suspect that the first Machine was a wild, miraculous one off built by a very, very lucky mad genius and that humanity here got lucky with their mind imaging in a way that only the Concordiat of Man would find familiar otherwise in fiction that I can think of.
Well, maybe parts of the Xuya setting? (But I'm not one hundred percent certain about how much of how of the descriptions I've read in the series so far about raising AIs there is metaphorical and how much is mechanics.)
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Okay, this is funny in a morbid sense. Just another bunch of feelings thrown into the box.
I mean, that's, uh, what you're doing, too?
Doraaaa.
I just came to a horrifying conclusion.
Theodora is a workaholic. For a machine.
Good God.
Cough.
Lewd.
Okay. I've caught up, and I'm here for it. So, I guess in retrospect, it's kinda obvious that Dora's singleminded dedication to climb the ranks and supplant the human officers stems from the trauma of having her Lieutenant die on her watch.
So, all those jokes about replacing human officers weren't exactly jokes, were they?
No, I get it, her motivations are complex and not one-dimensional, she also wants to excel, to get self-fulfillment out of doing an important job, and doing it well, but it all kinda falls down on its face in light of this huge gaping hole of unaddressed and ignored issues. This vacation is going to be Fun.
Mmm, considering how much time passed since they teleported here, it seems that the British Army cannot activate the gate from the other side, at least not with what they have on hand.
Has anyone tried to figure things out from this end? Ensigns? They don't have anything else important to do most of the time. Then again, considering the overall attitude concerning humans and danger, probably not. And there's also that terrifying prospect of entrusting an Ensign not to create a singularity by accident or something.
- Location
- Universitas Oxoniensis
Another excellent installment! "Voting is open", by the way.
- Location
- Under a cat
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So... what I'm hearing is that we're a few decades (maybe a century or two) away from massive societal upheaval? Ooh, I'd bet humanity would splinter into (even more) sub-factions as each group develops their own new culture.
Gah! I suddenly want to read the story of that slow-motion (and probably very polite) apocalypse.
- Location
- Yes
Wait, this is what happened to all the other empires, isn't it? This is the Great Filter. Once a civilisation realises that it can make smoochies with the cute robots, why would they ever stop? Just resign yourselves to a slow populational collapse, followed by the robots shutting themselves off in the absence of anything to do.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
This is precisely what the robots are worried about.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
I mean, maybe?
But also
They perpetuate theVictorian Regency cultural norms that presuppose a degree of, not exactly chastity, but, you know, not going around and smooching everyone you meet.
If they were worried about the population levels, shouldn't they passively encourage something less tame and more... involved?
What I'm saying is, I don't think most machines do it consciously, they were just programmed with the norms that Make Sense and can't imagine a stable society working on different principles. Of course, that varies from a country to country, but the population problem seems humanity-wide, so I think many of the polities take some of their cues from the British Empire ( don't tell that to the French or Americans or anyone outside the country, really ), probably because this is the place where the Industrious Revolution first started.
But also
They perpetuate the
If they were worried about the population levels, shouldn't they passively encourage something less tame and more... involved?
What I'm saying is, I don't think most machines do it consciously, they were just programmed with the norms that Make Sense and can't imagine a stable society working on different principles. Of course, that varies from a country to country, but the population problem seems humanity-wide, so I think many of the polities take some of their cues from the British Empire ( don't tell that to the French or Americans or anyone outside the country, really ), probably because this is the place where the Industrious Revolution first started.
Chapter 40 - Dying for the Cause
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
The reaction around the table to that was pretty grim.
"If it came down to it, what would we do?" Kennedy asked, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. Unfortunately, I'd been thinking about it all meeting.
"We would have to strike first, before they could evacuate any of their hostages. The best time would be tonight, in an hour or two at most. We don't know the interior layout of the whole palace, but we do know where all the entrances and exits are. We'd want to get a flying squad on horseback to cut off the rear entrance, then go in through the connecting hall with our infantry machine, and have the gunners take the front steps and set up the flying guns to hold off reinforcements through the gatehouse." I said, "We'd have to move fast to find and secure whatever queens are kept hostage so we could maintain the current power structure."
"Would we have to kill anyone?" Kelly asked nervously, and I sighed.
"Yes. Probably. If we stun them, we'd just be leaving potential threats in our wake who could sabotage our supplies. And we don't have the numbers to manage many prisoners." I said, the words feeling utterly disgusting on my speaker. I felt the impulse to simply crush down that feeling, to be as impartial and objective as I could, but I needed to stay in this moment. I needed to know what I was proposing.
Kelly stared dejected down at the desk, nodded slowly.
"Plus, at a certain point, they'd probably realize we weren't trying to kill any of them, and they'd use that to their advantage. They could shell the palace with impunity from within the range of our guns if the only threat to them was a twenty minute nap." Sumner pointed out, her voice remarkably even. "As awful as it is, it's just logical."
"Plus, there would likely be chaos, uprisings, reprisals, and even worse once we leave." Kennedy finished. "We'll have blown this city up."
"I… don't think it would be right to do, even if we had no other choice. I'd be better to just… give up." Kelly said, his face twisted up. "The South Hunters are awful and I hate how this world works, but their servants and stuff don't deserve that. This isn't fighting autowars or animals, they're people."
"Horace, we're people too. Our lives matter." Kennedy said, "But you're right. Dora, let's rule out a preemptive attack. What then?"
"... it'll be worse. They're going to bring up reinforcements and evacuate the hostages first." I said. " I imagine what that will look like is we split our forces: a third or so to hold the hallways, and the rest with our artillery dealing with the forces outside. We shoot… somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand of their local auxiliary troops, depending on how disciplined they are, then seize the power station, then likely have to fight constant street battles with them until we get home."
"That's not acceptable." Kennedy said, and I nodded immediately.
"Absolutely not. I'm just saying how it is." I said, "If it came to that, you lot should retreat by horse, and we can surrender. I won't have them use you as leverage against us. They'll probably try to make us fight in exchange for power, but I'd refuse, and I think the troops would too."
"And then you'd wind down and they'd take you apart." Kelly said, "Learn how to build their old soldiers. Use them against the locals…"
"So… we have to seize the palace." Sumner said, and Kelly slumped against the table with a pained expression. Kennedy shook her head.
"That, or we bank on being able to build a working volta engine before they turn on us. If we have it, we can negotiate with them from a position of strength." she said, "It's the certainty of some violence against the possibility of a great deal."
"Or the possibility of our surrender." I said.
"Can we just run away now? Get the materials we need and try to build the volta plant out in the boonies?" Kelly asked, clearly despairing.
"We'd use up enough power over the next few days that we wouldn't have enough left over to start the volta generator." Sumner said, and Kennedy nodded, turning to me.
"We could get lucky and complete the volta generator, but otherwise there's no way out without violence. No matter how we dance around it, our choices are simple: Do we kill some now, kill many later, or let ourselves die?" Kennedy said.
Everyone fell silent.
"We have to seize the palace." Sumner said firmly. "It's the only choice that makes sense."
"Unless we get the volta working in time." Kennedy pointed out.
"But if we didn't, we'd be killing hundreds. Thousands, maybe." Sumner said firmly. "Lieutenant, we can't risk it."
"I'd rather die." Kelly muttered. "I would."
"Ensign…" Kennedy began, a mix of frustration and sadness in her voice.
I leaned my elbows on the table, cradling my head in my hands as the argument went around in circles. The smart decision was the first, the easy decision was the second, and the third felt the most like my duty, but the moral consequences ranged from the grim reality of suicide to the apocalyptic results of our reverse-engineering.
It felt like I was being shoved by the universe into being an aggressor, some cruel twist of fate or God. Like I had no choice but to become a monster. Like my peers had no choice but to revert to their barbarous past. And that it would be justified, the least worst path.
"No." I said, shaking my head.
"Dora?" Kennedy said.
"No. Just no. This is unacceptable, and I'm not going to stand for it." I repeated. "This is my fault, I'm responsible for this situation. I volunteered our services, and I had second thoughts. I lead the team."
"Dora…" Kennedy started.
"So hold me accountable. Pin whatever happens on me and show them you won't tolerate such failure. It'll buy you time to finish the generator." I finished.
"Absolutely not." Kennedy replied. "We're not going to use you as a scapegoat. They'll want your head, you realize that, right?"
I laughed.
"... I know. But it'll be alright." I said, "We're a tough lot, you know?"
---
I've not given a lot of thought to death.
That might seem a little strange, being a soldier, being built to fight until I can't. We're all going to stop working one day, of course, that's just an inevitability, but for my fellow machines that date is indefinite, abstract. But for accidents, they'll live forever. Who knows, maybe tens millions of years from now, when the Earth has frozen over in the frontier and we've moved to new planets, Miriam and Molly and April will still all be working, serving humanity's distant descendants.
But not us. Not Theos and Doras, not the Wills who volunteer for Navy ships. Eventually, something is going to kill us. But it doesn't seem to come up much.
It's not like we can't think about it, I know some of us do, but I don't think it dominates the way we think about it. As a whole, we don't think about it much. Rather famously, when a pastor had asked Adam Wright, the original Adam, if he thought he had a soul, he'd said:
"Nah, probably not?"
And we'd mostly not much deviated from that. Of course I believe in God, somebody had to set the universe in motion, and I find it comforting, thinking there's a heaven, but it's not for us. Man is God's children, we are Man's.
And how would we tell if we were in paradise anyway? What would change for us?
But had you asked, what would finally do me in, I'd have to think about it. Didn't dwell on it much. In the line at Fomalhaut, I had been pretty sure it would have been a thermal lance, but beyond that… I don't know. An energy weapon of some kind, some alien bastard. It'd probably have to be a technological leftover, because some of the meanest beasts in the galaxy already took a shot at me with acid and claws, and it hadn't exactly worked out for them.
I had not expected execution.
We didn't do executions, we left that behind in the 19th century, and I don't think we've ever executed a machine. Well, I know the anti-machinists did some awful things to some of our ancestors, but they don't count, poor fools. But on those rare occasions when somebody goes screwy, well, it's why we have deprogrammers and cognition engineers. No machine in their right mind would ever hurt anyone, so it'd be awful to punish any who did.
This was a first.
The whole thing was a farce, too. Between the three officers, they could only remember five execution methods from the bad old days. Hanging or the guillotine wouldn't work, obviously, and Kennedy ruled out blowing from a gun even as she recalled it. Firing squad had also been ruled out, because there was no way to do it reliably that wouldn't also light any cuddlebug observers on fire.
Decapitation with a sword, then.
They made a great show of it, too. I understand that they went to the South Hunter family to inform them of the arrest and everything that happened, and to tell them in no uncertain terms that such a thing wouldn't be tolerated. The South Hunters had, predictably, asked to witness the execution they were sure this implied, and my fate was sealed.
I removed my jacket, unbuttoned my shirt to spare my very expensive collar, and Thomas gave me a final check over. My hands were, rather preformatively, tied behind my back, and I was lead out into the courtyard.
There was a crowd. I figured there would be, but there had to be hundreds of observers. One of the horrors stories I knew from before the Industrious Revolution, the one I always sort of assumed was an exaggeration, was that executions were a form of public entertainment, that people took their children. I suppose it must have been true, though.
Kennedy'd be doing it. They'd discussed having a sergeant do it, but it'd be a more powerful image. The humans getting the machines in line. It'd resonate with the cuddlebugs more, probably, as awful as that was.
At least the Ensigns weren't here.
The two soldiers pulling me along, two Doras from my unit, did their best to handle me as roughly as they could, for the crowd. The one on the right, boxie as they came, kept apologizing as she pulled me forward, muttered quiet.
I met Diana's eyes, just for a moment. She looked utterly stonefaced. I probably should have been quiet, but I'll admit, I was rather nervous. I was rather worried she'd have to take a few swings at it, and I would have asked her to aim carefully, but I couldn't.
She drew the sword, holding it aloft and activating it, and the crowd ooh'd at the glowing blade. Took her sweet time drawing it out, too.
Then I felt a pinch at the back of my neck, and nothing else.
---
It wasn't my first time, being dead.
Fomalhaut was the worst battle for machines ever, except maybe some of the darker moments of the Industrious Revolution before they built the first Theo. The allied forces there, mostly British but also Chinese, French, American, and Slavic Union, we deployed fifteen thousand machines, and by the time we were done a third of us were dead.
And I'd been one of them.
The blast of plasma that had torn open my back fused the contacts of my batteries as I staggered on, the heat not dispersing in the thin atmosphere. I apparently caught fire not long after, it was very dramatic. They'd thrown me in a heap alongside seventy-five other casualties from 4th company and the battle had moved on.
When you counted both those knocked out and those too damaged to realistically fight on, my company ended the day with nine active machines.
Fourteen days later, they'd turned me back on in a mechanics ship on the way back to Starhall. They'd had to replace my batteries, all five of my primary motors, and ninety percent of the wiring in my back. They were so short of parts from the battle that they stuck the half-melted plate back in place, and I didn't have movement in my legs for two more days when a supply ship arrived.
Of the seventy-six of us? We lost eleven when all was said and done. From a unit that had effectively been wiped out. I remember it, looking down with the unit at those poor bastards, the twisted metal, the darkened lights, what was left after they tried to save them, and I remember thinking that if it had been me…
Well, no. I wasn't thinking rationally at the time. I haven't for a very long time. I remember wishing it had been me. But the rest of us, we talked about it and agreed that we'd not have minded much if it had been us.
Dying came with the job, and none of us would ever give that up.
---
"Dora?"
My cameras blipped back on, and things looked awfully green.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Lieutenant." Thomas said, pulling his hands away from my neck. "Worked like a charm."
"Dora, you alright? Talk to me!" Kennedy said, concern etched on her face, and I tried to say something, but I found I couldn't. I nodded instead, all I could do.
"Huh. Lieutenant, can you speak?" Thomas continued, and I shook my head. With a sigh, he gestured for me to lift my neck up, and poked at something with a tool of some sort. "Now?"
"Yes, damnit." I replied. "How long have I been down?"
"It's only been four hours, Dora, we got you fixed up as quick as we could." Kennedy said. "They've agreed to help us build the generator: we promised we'd leave them with it when we leave, but it'll run down on its own so hopefully they can't use it for anything evil."
"Do me a favour, Lieutenant, sit up, move around. Shutting you down beforehand should have prevented any power surges, but I want to make sure I connected everything right." Thomas asked. I did so, moving my arms around, my legs, flexing my neck. Something about that felt off, unsurprisingly, and I moved a hand to feel it. It felt unnaturally smooth, like something was loose.
"My neck feels strange… did repairs go alright?" I asked, and Thomas shrugged.
"You've got a downed boxie's neck is all. Probably just not as stiff." he said, shaking his head. "Restoring your voicebox was the hard part, as you can tell, we don't use units like that anymore."
"Well, look, I like my voice, I didn't want to end up with somebody-"
I had to pause as I noticed, behind the assembled group, two young officers looking rather nervous. I waved to them, and their faces lit up.
"- somebody else's voice. So what now?"
"Well, we're expecting them to get the telegram from their missing friends any minute now, so we're going to need you to get dressed." Kennedy explained, and Miriam came forth with a set of clothes draped over her arm. "It'd be rather embarrassing for their representatives to see you."
"Congrats on the demotion, Private Fusilier." Miriam said sarcastically. "I took the liberty of getting ahead of things and filling in your scars with some of Corporal Smith's epoxy, so that should take care of your most distinct feature. Just keep your collar up and the brim of your hat low and I can't imagine they'll be able to tell."
Carefully, I got dressed: they'd put together a mostly undamaged uniform, though it suffered rather badly from my small size compared to the newer machines. The sleeves of my jacket extended to my knuckles, and I had to roll the cuffs of the trousers up, but it didn't look too out of place, I think.
"How does it feel, back in enlisted gear?" Miriam asked at a whisper, helping me adjust my crossbelts. I could feel the undercurrent of implication to the words.
"Like a bad fit." I joked, and she chuckled, fussing with my buttons and batting my hands away when I tried to do it myself.
"At least your sense of humour is intact. Shame, I'd hoped she could have nicked that on the way through." she retorted. At about that moment, the door opened a crack, and an artillery Theo leaned his head in, eyes wide.
"Ma'am, we have cuddlebugs coming down the hall, they look serious." he said, urgency in his voice, and I nodded along with Kennedy.
"Thank you, private." we said, simultaneously, and she looked back at me with a sigh.
"Try not to do that when they're around?" she asked, as a soldier passed me a spare musket, and I quickly rushed to the edge of the room, taking up guard position alongside one of the other soldiers. It took me a moment to recognize him as the boxie Theo I'd taken along on the aborted sniping mission.
He glanced over a few times, looking me over, concern in his eyes, and then he shrugged.
"Begging your pardon, ma'am, but something about that's all wrong on you." he said.
"I wore this uniform for thirty-three years." I pointed out, and he nodded as if conceding before continuing.
"Yeah, but I never saw it." he said. "You're just the Lieutenant to me."
"If it came down to it, what would we do?" Kennedy asked, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. Unfortunately, I'd been thinking about it all meeting.
"We would have to strike first, before they could evacuate any of their hostages. The best time would be tonight, in an hour or two at most. We don't know the interior layout of the whole palace, but we do know where all the entrances and exits are. We'd want to get a flying squad on horseback to cut off the rear entrance, then go in through the connecting hall with our infantry machine, and have the gunners take the front steps and set up the flying guns to hold off reinforcements through the gatehouse." I said, "We'd have to move fast to find and secure whatever queens are kept hostage so we could maintain the current power structure."
"Would we have to kill anyone?" Kelly asked nervously, and I sighed.
"Yes. Probably. If we stun them, we'd just be leaving potential threats in our wake who could sabotage our supplies. And we don't have the numbers to manage many prisoners." I said, the words feeling utterly disgusting on my speaker. I felt the impulse to simply crush down that feeling, to be as impartial and objective as I could, but I needed to stay in this moment. I needed to know what I was proposing.
Kelly stared dejected down at the desk, nodded slowly.
"Plus, at a certain point, they'd probably realize we weren't trying to kill any of them, and they'd use that to their advantage. They could shell the palace with impunity from within the range of our guns if the only threat to them was a twenty minute nap." Sumner pointed out, her voice remarkably even. "As awful as it is, it's just logical."
"Plus, there would likely be chaos, uprisings, reprisals, and even worse once we leave." Kennedy finished. "We'll have blown this city up."
"I… don't think it would be right to do, even if we had no other choice. I'd be better to just… give up." Kelly said, his face twisted up. "The South Hunters are awful and I hate how this world works, but their servants and stuff don't deserve that. This isn't fighting autowars or animals, they're people."
"Horace, we're people too. Our lives matter." Kennedy said, "But you're right. Dora, let's rule out a preemptive attack. What then?"
"... it'll be worse. They're going to bring up reinforcements and evacuate the hostages first." I said. " I imagine what that will look like is we split our forces: a third or so to hold the hallways, and the rest with our artillery dealing with the forces outside. We shoot… somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand of their local auxiliary troops, depending on how disciplined they are, then seize the power station, then likely have to fight constant street battles with them until we get home."
"That's not acceptable." Kennedy said, and I nodded immediately.
"Absolutely not. I'm just saying how it is." I said, "If it came to that, you lot should retreat by horse, and we can surrender. I won't have them use you as leverage against us. They'll probably try to make us fight in exchange for power, but I'd refuse, and I think the troops would too."
"And then you'd wind down and they'd take you apart." Kelly said, "Learn how to build their old soldiers. Use them against the locals…"
"So… we have to seize the palace." Sumner said, and Kelly slumped against the table with a pained expression. Kennedy shook her head.
"That, or we bank on being able to build a working volta engine before they turn on us. If we have it, we can negotiate with them from a position of strength." she said, "It's the certainty of some violence against the possibility of a great deal."
"Or the possibility of our surrender." I said.
"Can we just run away now? Get the materials we need and try to build the volta plant out in the boonies?" Kelly asked, clearly despairing.
"We'd use up enough power over the next few days that we wouldn't have enough left over to start the volta generator." Sumner said, and Kennedy nodded, turning to me.
"We could get lucky and complete the volta generator, but otherwise there's no way out without violence. No matter how we dance around it, our choices are simple: Do we kill some now, kill many later, or let ourselves die?" Kennedy said.
Everyone fell silent.
"We have to seize the palace." Sumner said firmly. "It's the only choice that makes sense."
"Unless we get the volta working in time." Kennedy pointed out.
"But if we didn't, we'd be killing hundreds. Thousands, maybe." Sumner said firmly. "Lieutenant, we can't risk it."
"I'd rather die." Kelly muttered. "I would."
"Ensign…" Kennedy began, a mix of frustration and sadness in her voice.
I leaned my elbows on the table, cradling my head in my hands as the argument went around in circles. The smart decision was the first, the easy decision was the second, and the third felt the most like my duty, but the moral consequences ranged from the grim reality of suicide to the apocalyptic results of our reverse-engineering.
It felt like I was being shoved by the universe into being an aggressor, some cruel twist of fate or God. Like I had no choice but to become a monster. Like my peers had no choice but to revert to their barbarous past. And that it would be justified, the least worst path.
"No." I said, shaking my head.
"Dora?" Kennedy said.
"No. Just no. This is unacceptable, and I'm not going to stand for it." I repeated. "This is my fault, I'm responsible for this situation. I volunteered our services, and I had second thoughts. I lead the team."
"Dora…" Kennedy started.
"So hold me accountable. Pin whatever happens on me and show them you won't tolerate such failure. It'll buy you time to finish the generator." I finished.
"Absolutely not." Kennedy replied. "We're not going to use you as a scapegoat. They'll want your head, you realize that, right?"
I laughed.
"... I know. But it'll be alright." I said, "We're a tough lot, you know?"
---
I've not given a lot of thought to death.
That might seem a little strange, being a soldier, being built to fight until I can't. We're all going to stop working one day, of course, that's just an inevitability, but for my fellow machines that date is indefinite, abstract. But for accidents, they'll live forever. Who knows, maybe tens millions of years from now, when the Earth has frozen over in the frontier and we've moved to new planets, Miriam and Molly and April will still all be working, serving humanity's distant descendants.
But not us. Not Theos and Doras, not the Wills who volunteer for Navy ships. Eventually, something is going to kill us. But it doesn't seem to come up much.
It's not like we can't think about it, I know some of us do, but I don't think it dominates the way we think about it. As a whole, we don't think about it much. Rather famously, when a pastor had asked Adam Wright, the original Adam, if he thought he had a soul, he'd said:
"Nah, probably not?"
And we'd mostly not much deviated from that. Of course I believe in God, somebody had to set the universe in motion, and I find it comforting, thinking there's a heaven, but it's not for us. Man is God's children, we are Man's.
And how would we tell if we were in paradise anyway? What would change for us?
But had you asked, what would finally do me in, I'd have to think about it. Didn't dwell on it much. In the line at Fomalhaut, I had been pretty sure it would have been a thermal lance, but beyond that… I don't know. An energy weapon of some kind, some alien bastard. It'd probably have to be a technological leftover, because some of the meanest beasts in the galaxy already took a shot at me with acid and claws, and it hadn't exactly worked out for them.
I had not expected execution.
We didn't do executions, we left that behind in the 19th century, and I don't think we've ever executed a machine. Well, I know the anti-machinists did some awful things to some of our ancestors, but they don't count, poor fools. But on those rare occasions when somebody goes screwy, well, it's why we have deprogrammers and cognition engineers. No machine in their right mind would ever hurt anyone, so it'd be awful to punish any who did.
This was a first.
The whole thing was a farce, too. Between the three officers, they could only remember five execution methods from the bad old days. Hanging or the guillotine wouldn't work, obviously, and Kennedy ruled out blowing from a gun even as she recalled it. Firing squad had also been ruled out, because there was no way to do it reliably that wouldn't also light any cuddlebug observers on fire.
Decapitation with a sword, then.
They made a great show of it, too. I understand that they went to the South Hunter family to inform them of the arrest and everything that happened, and to tell them in no uncertain terms that such a thing wouldn't be tolerated. The South Hunters had, predictably, asked to witness the execution they were sure this implied, and my fate was sealed.
I removed my jacket, unbuttoned my shirt to spare my very expensive collar, and Thomas gave me a final check over. My hands were, rather preformatively, tied behind my back, and I was lead out into the courtyard.
There was a crowd. I figured there would be, but there had to be hundreds of observers. One of the horrors stories I knew from before the Industrious Revolution, the one I always sort of assumed was an exaggeration, was that executions were a form of public entertainment, that people took their children. I suppose it must have been true, though.
Kennedy'd be doing it. They'd discussed having a sergeant do it, but it'd be a more powerful image. The humans getting the machines in line. It'd resonate with the cuddlebugs more, probably, as awful as that was.
At least the Ensigns weren't here.
The two soldiers pulling me along, two Doras from my unit, did their best to handle me as roughly as they could, for the crowd. The one on the right, boxie as they came, kept apologizing as she pulled me forward, muttered quiet.
I met Diana's eyes, just for a moment. She looked utterly stonefaced. I probably should have been quiet, but I'll admit, I was rather nervous. I was rather worried she'd have to take a few swings at it, and I would have asked her to aim carefully, but I couldn't.
She drew the sword, holding it aloft and activating it, and the crowd ooh'd at the glowing blade. Took her sweet time drawing it out, too.
Then I felt a pinch at the back of my neck, and nothing else.
---
It wasn't my first time, being dead.
Fomalhaut was the worst battle for machines ever, except maybe some of the darker moments of the Industrious Revolution before they built the first Theo. The allied forces there, mostly British but also Chinese, French, American, and Slavic Union, we deployed fifteen thousand machines, and by the time we were done a third of us were dead.
And I'd been one of them.
The blast of plasma that had torn open my back fused the contacts of my batteries as I staggered on, the heat not dispersing in the thin atmosphere. I apparently caught fire not long after, it was very dramatic. They'd thrown me in a heap alongside seventy-five other casualties from 4th company and the battle had moved on.
When you counted both those knocked out and those too damaged to realistically fight on, my company ended the day with nine active machines.
Fourteen days later, they'd turned me back on in a mechanics ship on the way back to Starhall. They'd had to replace my batteries, all five of my primary motors, and ninety percent of the wiring in my back. They were so short of parts from the battle that they stuck the half-melted plate back in place, and I didn't have movement in my legs for two more days when a supply ship arrived.
Of the seventy-six of us? We lost eleven when all was said and done. From a unit that had effectively been wiped out. I remember it, looking down with the unit at those poor bastards, the twisted metal, the darkened lights, what was left after they tried to save them, and I remember thinking that if it had been me…
Well, no. I wasn't thinking rationally at the time. I haven't for a very long time. I remember wishing it had been me. But the rest of us, we talked about it and agreed that we'd not have minded much if it had been us.
Dying came with the job, and none of us would ever give that up.
---
LINE_OS.2133
CleanSent v1. 2. 1 alpha 1 [LINEDOS]
Installed at PS/2 PORT
L:\> Dir
SETTINGS = 0
SAFE BOOT = 1
"Dora?"
My cameras blipped back on, and things looked awfully green.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Lieutenant." Thomas said, pulling his hands away from my neck. "Worked like a charm."
"Dora, you alright? Talk to me!" Kennedy said, concern etched on her face, and I tried to say something, but I found I couldn't. I nodded instead, all I could do.
"Huh. Lieutenant, can you speak?" Thomas continued, and I shook my head. With a sigh, he gestured for me to lift my neck up, and poked at something with a tool of some sort. "Now?"
"Yes, damnit." I replied. "How long have I been down?"
"It's only been four hours, Dora, we got you fixed up as quick as we could." Kennedy said. "They've agreed to help us build the generator: we promised we'd leave them with it when we leave, but it'll run down on its own so hopefully they can't use it for anything evil."
"Do me a favour, Lieutenant, sit up, move around. Shutting you down beforehand should have prevented any power surges, but I want to make sure I connected everything right." Thomas asked. I did so, moving my arms around, my legs, flexing my neck. Something about that felt off, unsurprisingly, and I moved a hand to feel it. It felt unnaturally smooth, like something was loose.
"My neck feels strange… did repairs go alright?" I asked, and Thomas shrugged.
"You've got a downed boxie's neck is all. Probably just not as stiff." he said, shaking his head. "Restoring your voicebox was the hard part, as you can tell, we don't use units like that anymore."
"Well, look, I like my voice, I didn't want to end up with somebody-"
I had to pause as I noticed, behind the assembled group, two young officers looking rather nervous. I waved to them, and their faces lit up.
"- somebody else's voice. So what now?"
"Well, we're expecting them to get the telegram from their missing friends any minute now, so we're going to need you to get dressed." Kennedy explained, and Miriam came forth with a set of clothes draped over her arm. "It'd be rather embarrassing for their representatives to see you."
"Congrats on the demotion, Private Fusilier." Miriam said sarcastically. "I took the liberty of getting ahead of things and filling in your scars with some of Corporal Smith's epoxy, so that should take care of your most distinct feature. Just keep your collar up and the brim of your hat low and I can't imagine they'll be able to tell."
Carefully, I got dressed: they'd put together a mostly undamaged uniform, though it suffered rather badly from my small size compared to the newer machines. The sleeves of my jacket extended to my knuckles, and I had to roll the cuffs of the trousers up, but it didn't look too out of place, I think.
"How does it feel, back in enlisted gear?" Miriam asked at a whisper, helping me adjust my crossbelts. I could feel the undercurrent of implication to the words.
"Like a bad fit." I joked, and she chuckled, fussing with my buttons and batting my hands away when I tried to do it myself.
"At least your sense of humour is intact. Shame, I'd hoped she could have nicked that on the way through." she retorted. At about that moment, the door opened a crack, and an artillery Theo leaned his head in, eyes wide.
"Ma'am, we have cuddlebugs coming down the hall, they look serious." he said, urgency in his voice, and I nodded along with Kennedy.
"Thank you, private." we said, simultaneously, and she looked back at me with a sigh.
"Try not to do that when they're around?" she asked, as a soldier passed me a spare musket, and I quickly rushed to the edge of the room, taking up guard position alongside one of the other soldiers. It took me a moment to recognize him as the boxie Theo I'd taken along on the aborted sniping mission.
He glanced over a few times, looking me over, concern in his eyes, and then he shrugged.
"Begging your pardon, ma'am, but something about that's all wrong on you." he said.
"I wore this uniform for thirty-three years." I pointed out, and he nodded as if conceding before continuing.
"Yeah, but I never saw it." he said. "You're just the Lieutenant to me."
- Location
- Brisbane
...you SWINDLER, I knew this was a thing and you STILL got me! I love this.
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Hah, scapegoat the leader and hold a sham execution to buy time to build a real generator! Nice solution.
inb4 Dora has to do this like twelve times over the next three months and ends up with literally an entire new body.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Also because I'm terrified people won't see it, I'm really proud that they substituted a fake assassination with a fake execution.Hah, scapegoat the leader and hold a sham execution to buy time to build a real generator! Nice solution.
inb4 Dora has to do this like twelve times over the next three months and ends up with literally an entire new body.
- Location
- Yes
Yeah, I didn't think of that but it was very neatly done.
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
This implies some very interesting things happening around the Volga and Balkans, but I have no idea what.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
If I absolutely had to guess, then the Russian Empire somehow evolved into a federation of semi-autonomous nations Soviet Union pretended to be, ( and even sometimes succeeded ) but it's still nominally a tsardom.
I have no idea how the Balkan situation was resolved, though. Only that it had to be resolved, the arrangement between Austria, Russia and Ottomans didn't necessarily have to result in a World War, but could easily result in a three-way between those countries.
The machines would have looked at that clusterfuck, shook their heads in exasperation and arranged something sensible.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You are such a good boxie.
I will protect this precious Theo's innocence to my grave.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
You are such a good boxie.
I will protect this precious Theo's innocence to my grave.
"That's really counterproductive to my job, sir."
ScottotheUnwise
Verified Crack (fic) Dealer
- Location
- Mulberry, Fl
And there is now a chance that someone will complain she abandoned her post in time of war, masqueraded as non-officer. She has to have some enemies gunning for her by now.
I will admit I expected her to wake up in the body of the sniper.
- Location
- Yes
I mean, not necessarily. Yugoslavia didn't have all the Slavs, nor even all the Southern Slavs. The Slavic Union might be fifteen square miles of farmland outside of Lublin, or it might be all of Western Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Former Yugoslavia and some areas of Chicago.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
fuise...good...
i didn't sleep until 2 Am...
compliments good...brain tired...
i didn't sleep until 2 Am...
compliments good...brain tired...
- Location
- Under a cat
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Wow. I knew they were built durable and quick to repair, but I didn't realize they could patch a decapitation that quickly with just the supplies available.
Huh, weird to see Dora's self-sacrificial streak lead to the right response. Well, I guess Dora's problem was never that her instincts were 'bad'. They're just excessive. Too much of a good thing and all that.
If they can get the volta working, I guess they could just fortify someplace until the cuddlebugs decide they're just not worth dealing with.
Huh, weird to see Dora's self-sacrificial streak lead to the right response. Well, I guess Dora's problem was never that her instincts were 'bad'. They're just excessive. Too much of a good thing and all that.
If they can get the volta working, I guess they could just fortify someplace until the cuddlebugs decide they're just not worth dealing with.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
I wonder if they would be able to get away with the "we recycled the parts" excuse.
Wouldn't want to be the guy on whose shift it runs out.
Dora should try and break her heart a few more times. Kennedy is not yet enthousiastic enough on the whole decapacitation thing.
Last edited:
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
I wanted to write an omake where Dora wakes up as a head but I spent my executive function this morning on a magnificently stupid photoshop for another quest. Instead I will present the notes I managed to put together:
"Oh, you're all right!" My cameras blipped back on, and everything looked awfully green and fabricy. Suspiciously fabricy. ...Suddenly I was very glad that I hadn't seen Kennedy's underthings and could plausibly deny any idea of where I'd woken up.
Something something "head on a pike" but the Cuddlebugs have no idea that Dora's angry shouting is actually orders so she commands for the rest of the mission from the top of said pike and just has to make sure that she always sounds super angry. "Company standard" indeed.
Last edited: