"WHO. ARE. YOU?" I asked the woman standing before me, each painstakingly enunciated word crafted from the crackle of my flight engine.
I had spent the time between the woman's collapse and recovery experimenting with several communication methods, furrows in the snow and spidery scratches on salvaged metal the forgotten remnants of my failures. Lacking a human mouth I couldn't simply say a word aloud, and if I had a radio or an external speaker, I couldn't figure out how to access them. For a long while, I had thought that I might be reduced to scratching out individual words one after another or else praying that she knew morse code before, like a bolt from the blue, an idea struck me.
While flying, I had noticed the crackle and thrum of whatever engine kept me aloft, the bass rumble modulating in time with my motions to produce an ever-shifting pattern of noise, and careful experimentation soon confirmed that I could produce understandable words. Though it was slow to do and about as easy as catching a stream of water from a tap, it functioned well enough for my purposes and gave me some way of communicating. My only remaining fear, the one that nestled heavily like a red hot iron ball in my stomach, was that she might not speak English.
Her face whitened as she took two quick steps back. "Fan jävla skit!"
Not exactly the response I was hoping for, all things considered. The language, too, was worrying. Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, something I could recognize but not understand.
"STOP," I begged, waves of snow pulsing outwards. "PLEASE."
She halted midstep, terrified eyes locked on mine.
She understood! I thought in desperate relief, the mini forms clinging to my main hull flexing in barely constrained excitement at the thought. At the motion, she flinched and a distant, wry part of my mind was grateful that I'd hidden my squid bots from sight.
"PLEASE," I repeated.
She exhaled a long unsteady breath. "Who… what are you?"
Her accent was strange. Unfamiliar, but on the tip of my tongue. I paused to consider my response. Even if you had complete control of my speech, how do you even begin to explain being trapped in a simulation of the real world and used as a processor for intelligent machines?
I thought it was insane and I had the groundwork for it laid well ahead of time!
"KADE," I replied slowly, the bass rumble driving falling snow away from me like a forcefield. "LOVELL. CAPTAIN."
I paused for a moment. "NASA," I added, the hope I'd intended to add not making it through the interface that was my flight engine.
Confusion marred the woman's face at my words, her bruised flesh colouring red and purple as she narrowed her eyes.
"You're a person?" she asked incredulously.
I tried not to flinch at the stinging words. I knew what I looked like, how impossible it would be for someone to see the body that was trapped inside. Still, it hurt.
"YES," I replied. "TRAPPED. INSIDE."
Even as I said the words, I shuddered; cold thoughts rising from the depths of my mind to circle it like sharks scenting blood. For an instant, I was no longer a single intellect spread amongst a swarm of machines but a person trapped staring out through the eyes of an alien machine, a warm, liquid pressure pressing against my skin. Then, just as quickly, I was back to being a swarm, the transition so quick it was almost subliminal. Almost.
She gave a barking laugh, a harsh, ugly sound of disbelief and shook her head.
"This is insane," I heard her mutter. "Insane."
She raised her head and looked me in the eye. "Korpral Freja Lahtinen. KungsArmé."
"Forgive me if I don't salute," she added with a shrug and a glance at the environment.
Before I could respond, she twisted to look at the mech's ruined wreck. "My comrades," she said as she turned back to face me, "my… friends, are they alright?"
I shook my head slowly. "ONLY. SURVIVOR." I replied as mournfully as I could manage.
She didn't need to know what they'd looked like when I found them: the charred scraps of flesh, the broken bones, and the staring eyes. While I waited for her to wake up, in between experimenting with my flight drive, I had my other forms extract the bodies from their tombs and bury them. It'd been hard going digging through the frozen earth, but it had seemed the right thing to do and I'd marked the graves with pillars of salvaged metal; the dog tags I'd found welded to their surface.
"BURIED. BODIES," I added as I spotted tears glimmer in the corner of her eyes. "RECOVERED. EFFECTS."
As I said the last word, I raised a tentacle into the air and slowly brought it before the woman, Freja, careful not to startle her with any sudden movements. Gingerly, I opened the claw and let the silver medallion fall on its chain; the Saint Michael medal swinging back and forth as it caught the breeze. Smoothed by the passage of countless years and the action of countless thumbs, I'd found it hanging from a hook inside the mech of the man named Lars.
Freja gasped, cried, and laughed all at once. Taking the medal from my claw, she delicately brushed its burnished silver surface with a finger before looping it around her neck; shivering as the metal touched her skin and clicked against her dogtags. Reminded of the cold, I spoke up.
"YOU. NEED. HELP." I stated as quickly as I could, a dull drone escaping as I all but lost my grasp on the words. "ENEMIES. RETURNING. WHERE. SAFETY?"
For a long moment Freja remained silent, tears glinting as they froze, the only sound I could hear the whispering of the wind across the ground. Then, slowly, she raised her left arm and pointed to the horizon. "There's a farm twenty kilometres east of here."
"They'll have clothes and a car and maybe a radio, but I don't think I can walk that far."
"NOT. WALKING," I burred. "FLY."
***
When Freja said the word farm, I pictured a few prefabricated structures, some tractors and some fallow fields. Sitting hunched in the snow a few hundred metres from our destination, what I found instead was a preindustrial 1800s farmstead combined with a 2030s or beyond hydroponic facility; a handful of glass-domed hothouses surrounding a snow-sprinkled, red-painted home. Even as an Ohioan who grew up on a corn farm, the postcard nature of the bucolic scene was almost paralysing and the only reason I didn't roll my eyes was that I wasn't sure I could.
"S-ssee," Freja murmured beside me.
Turning one of my myriad mini forms to face the woman, I paused as I caught sight of her. Though her face was still badly bruised, her lips' blue tinge was clear to see and the steam of her breath juddered wildly as she shivered. The corporal was in a bad way, the twenty-kilometre journey overland taking a lot out of her despite my best efforts at shielding her from the wind, and she'd need both warm clothes and shelter soon.
Activating my flight engine, I pulsed as quietly as I could. "WE. GO. NOW."
She shook her head. "I sh-should gggo alone."
"Safer," she shivered.
In the short time I possessed it, one of the greatest failings that I discovered about my new robotic body was its utter inability to express emotions at a glance. Unable to stop herself from shivering and looking like death itself, I would have sent Freja a look of complete dismissal if I had been able to. As far as I was concerned, a solo journey to the homestead was about as achievable for her as fighting off one of those mechs barehanded.
"WE. GO. OR. YOU. DIE." I buzzed.
Either understanding my intended point or else lacking the energy and will to argue, Freja simply nodded and grabbed one of the steel ribs that jutted from my thorax; one foot planted on a metal plate to keep her relatively secure. Slowly so as not to throw her off, I raised myself into the air with an electric thrum and began to make my way towards the homestead, a handful of my flying squid forms dashing ahead to form a protective cordon between us and whatever lay within the red-painted building.
The initial reveal of my squid forms back when we'd first started the journey had been somewhat anticlimactic, I will admit. Knowing what they looked like, I'd been expecting some kind of negative reaction from the corporal necessitating a pause and explanation, however, she surprised me by ignoring the flying machines when they appeared.
No doubt, I thought, she recognized she could do nothing about them.
Dismissing the reverie from my mind as I approached the home's entrance, I slowly settled to the ground and watched as Freja disentangled herself from my chassis; stiff motions sent a wave of worry throughout my mind. Hypothermia had been mentioned in my pre-launch first aid training, but the crew surgeon, John Glenn, was- had been the only one with the ability to properly diagnose and treat the issue.
"S-stay h-here," Freja told me as she crunched over to the doorway, the crack and scrape of her boots on ice deafening in the quiet of the scene.
Ignoring the unnecessary command, I panned my head across the house's empty windows and felt my mind tick over like a well-oiled machine. At first glance the house looked abandoned, open curtains revealing dark interiors, but the lack of damage to the farm's surroundings didn't explain why anyone would leave. Realising that further investigation would be needed, I shook my chassis and dislodged a mix of mini forms from its steel-grey exterior; the insectile machines scuttling, winding, and stalking into position behind Freja as my squid forms began lazily orbiting the house.
"You can't-" She began.
"I'LL. CHECK. HOTHOUSES," I blared overloudly, lifting off with a thrum before Freja could respond.
Switching my attention to the host of smaller forms accompanying Freja even as my main form settled next to a domed hothouse, I followed close behind as she opened the door and stepped through; the dusky light of the outdoors replaced by an oppressive gloom. Flowing like water through her legs and across the wooden floorboards, their countless clawed legs making a scratching sound as they moved, the swarm of mini forms I controlled spread out in every direction as I began to examine the building; gleaming lenses examining every nook and cranny for signs of life.
In the entrance hallway, a spider bot spied four empty coat hooks set into the wall, a thin patina of dirt on the floorboards telling me where water was normally allowed to fall. In the living room, a caterpillar waved its thermal sensors over the embers of a fireplace; the cool red sparks of light dimming as I watched them. Upstairs, a collection of crab bots scuttled around three still-made beds while spider bots probed the divots shoes had left in the grey carpet. Inside the kitchen, a pillbug bot examined a half-eaten bowl of soup on the varnished wooden table, the green-brown lentils within still warm despite the coolness of the house's interior. Outside, a squid bot found a truck in the farm's single-car garage, its engine cold as the air outside.
Three beds meant four people, two adults and two children going by the sizes. Four people meant four sets of coats and shoes, both of which were missing in their entirety. The missing shoes and coats meant that they had left, or were planning to leave, while the warm soup and dying embers meant that it had happened recently. The car's cold engine, meanwhile, told me that they hadn't left that way.
Ahh, I thought to myself as I spotted the incongruity and ordered my mini forms to the kitchen.
Slowly Freja made her way through the house, each footstep accompanied by the creak of aged timbers and the scuttle of my mini forms legs. Through the eyes of the centipede bot, I watched as she stiffly and awkwardly filled the fireplace with wood and tinder from the nearby hopper before lighting it with a box of matches; light and heat flaring into being with a woosh. In a matter of moments, the house was filled with warmth and the thin layer of snow that had settled on her shoulders sluiced off as it turned to water. Breathing out a sigh of relief, she basked in the newfound heat for long seconds before catching sight of my mini forms scuttling towards the kitchen.
Freja frowned. "What are you doing?"
Unable to reply, I simply stopped a crab bot in the middle of the adjoining doorway before pointing to the coat rack and then back towards the kitchen. For a long moment, she said nothing, her lips pursed in thought, before recognition flashed behind her eyes and she nodded once. Taking it as permission, I continued my swarm's advance into the kitchen and waited until Freja arrived close behind; the growing warmth of the house having returned some colour to her face and looseness to her movements.
It had taken me a while to work it out, my mind pulled as it was in a hundred different directions, but the evidence fit together so neatly it was unarguable. The kitchen was small, just large enough for one person to be cooking and for four people to be sitting around the square table top sitting in the room's centre; a throw rug the colour of the sea sat underneath it. While there were plenty of cupboards and a fridge the size of a tank, the remoteness of the farm plus my own childhood in Ohio told me that there must be a pantry somewhere nearby, a place where multiple weeks worth of food could be stored out of the way.
To my surprise, Freja spotted it instantly.
"What's under the rug?" She asked the nearest of my swarm, receiving nothing more than a dip of the head.
With her good arm, and no small amount of assistance from my swarm, she heaved the table back against the far wall and pulled aside the carpet to reveal a hatch that sat flush against the floor. Giving my insectile mini forms a look that sent all but one scuttling backwards and out of sight, she gently rapped her knuckles against the wooden hatch.
"Hej?" She called out in what I was increasingly sure was Swedish. "Det föreligger ingen fara! Du kan komma ut."
There was a pause, and a click, and the hatch swung open to reveal the twin starring barrels of a shotgun.
***
There were four of them down in that subterranean pantry, two parents and two young kids all dressed for the cold outside and huddling together for safety against the terrors of the world. Seeing the shotgun, an archaic looking device made with wood and dark steel, Freya and I froze immediately; the paralysis extending from the crab bot inside the kitchen to the swarm of squids outside. Too quick to follow and in an accent even I could detect, the man I took to be the father barked out a burst Swedish.
What followed were some of the tensest moments of my life as Freja and the man shot back at one another in rapid-fire Swedish; the shotgun's slowly dropping barrels the sole measure I had of success or failure. Eventually, after what felt like hours but could have only been a handful of seconds, the man lowered his gun entirely and climbed out of the pantry, a gesture to his family silencing the plaintive cry of his children. In the gloomy light of the kitchen, the man looked… old, a bald head, salt and pepper beard, and weathered skin reminding me of my father's older brother.
Shotgun held in the crook of his arm, the man shot my crab bot a suspicious look and spat out a line of Swedish.
"A..." Freja paused as she shot me an odd look. "An associate," she finished.
"He only understands English," she continued as I waved; a brief flex of my phantom limbs scattering my various bodies away from the home.
Harumphing loudly, the man switched on the kitchen light and had a brief conversation with the rest of his family before gesturing at the table with his free hand; the scared trio emerging in time to see my mini form clambering up onto the unvarnished surface.
"Who are you and what do you want?" The man asked Freja gruffly as his children retreated from the room and she carefully leveraged herself into a seat opposite.
Wincing in pain, Freja shrugged. "Korpral Freja Lahtinen, KungsArmé."
She nodded towards my crab bot. "Kapten Kade Lovell."
"My Dragon was destroyed in a battle with pirate mechs and I was injured. We need help and a lift to Halverstaad."
As she said the word 'injured', Freja withdrew her splinted hand from within the depths of her silver blanket and rested it on the table, the sight of the injured limb eliciting a hiss of sympathy from the man's wife. Blonde haired with vaguely Japanese features and bright green eyes despite the crows feet at their corners, she pulled away from the kitchen wall and spoke a blast of Swedish at her husband, the man all but shrinking in his seat as she returned to the pantry and the sounds of a rapid search began. For an instant, I spotted the brief hint of a smile on Freja's face before it vanished into aether as the man turned back to face us.
"Magnus," he supplied before nodding to the subterranean pantry. "Hitomi."
At the sound of her name, the blonde woman, Hitomi, reemerged with a cry of victory; a doctor's bag clutched in her hands.
"Sit back and stay still," she ordered Freja in a voice that brook no argument, a sidelong glance sending my crab scuttling aside. "And make sure he doesn't get in the way."
Sitting ramrod-straight as the woman began to fuss over her, Freja turned her attention back to Magnus.
"Why were you hiding?" She asked flatly, making no attempt to be circumspect and once again reminding me of my new forms' inability to emote.
Magnus, his shotgun now resting against the table leg, shrugged. "We heard explosions close. We didn't want to risk the barn, the children, so we hid. Till it passed, then you came."
"My turn," he countered. "Why do you need to get to Halverstaad?"
"KungsArmé," Freja repeated. "My lance was destroyed. I need to report to high command and Halverstaad is the closest city with a radio strong enough to reach."
For a brief moment, an unreadable expression crossed Freja's face and her left hand strayed to the medallion around her neck. Staring out between the folds of the foil blanket, the winged visage of Saint Michael gazed out disapproving towards me, the spear in his hands plunging deep into a Chinese dragon.
"Look up," Hitomi commanded suddenly, breaking the momentary silence without a hint of regret, both Freja and I instinctively responding to the command in her voice by obeying. An instant later a pale green bottle appeared in her hand and fired with a hiss, the mist eliciting a flinch and yelp from Freja as it struck her cut up face.
"Disinfectant," Hitomi replied as Freja shot her a startled look. "Your splint was acceptable, but without treatment your cuts will get infected and your face will swell. Not easy to pilot a battlemech when you can't see."
My estimation of Magnus' wife rose another level. In another life, she must have been a doctor or a general to be so used to command; my thoughts leaning more towards the former given that she seemed to know what she was talking about
Withdrawing a set of band aids from her bag, Hitomi tssked. "Now stay still."
Smiling faintly at his wife, Magnus nodded towards me; his expression hardening.
"What is this?" He asked.
Freja frowned. "It's my turn. Do you have a car? Can we borrow it? You'll be compensated once I get to Halverstaad."
"The car works," Magnus admitted as his wife slapped a patch on one of Freja's cuts. "It won't make it to the city, though. Not on one tank of diesel. You'll need to stop in Reykjavik, first, it is much closer."
Freja narrowed her eyes. "The pirates passed near Reykjavik."
Magnus shrugged in a what can you do gesture, the motion reminding me once again of the loaded gun by his leg. Freja must have been reminded as well as the next words out of her mouth were an accession.
"Fine, they will have left by now, anyway, but I'll need to borrow clothes."
"Upstairs, end of the hallway, the closet on the left side of the bed," Hitomi interjected before her husband could reply. "We're about the same size."
Nodding towards my mini form once more, Magnus spoke.
"What is this?"
Freja looked down at my crab bot. I looked up at Freja.
Might as well tell him, I thought, hoping only a little insincerely that she might have suddenly developed psychic abilities.
"It'll be easier to show you," she admitted with a sigh.
A minute later, the three of them were outside staring at the insectile form of my main body as I examined the outside of a hothouse dome, the half-glimpsed oranges inside setting my stomach rumbling. If anything, Magnus and Hitomi seeing my main form only increased their desire to see the backs of us, the stoic farmer all but throwing the keys at Freja as he bid us goodbye and retreated back to the house.
Dressed in an assortment of cold weather clothes and with her various injuries checkover and treated, Freja looked… not good, but like she'd live, and wordlessly followed my main form as I brought her to the low-slung garage. A two-door flatbed truck painted a neutral white, Magnus' truck car had the kind of rugged design that made it such a popular farm truck; memories of a youth spent riding, illegally, in the flatbed playing through my mind as I watched Freja clamber into the cabin. Though its paint was scratched and faded and its tires could do with a replacement soon, the engine roared to life on the first attempt and growled pleasantly as Freja drove it out of the garage.
Thank god it's an automatic transmission, I thought idly as it approached.
Coming to halt beside my insectile form, Freja glanced out the window and then turned back towards the flatbed; the calculations running through her mind more than obvious.
Not going to happen, I thought.
"A·¸ t¬vat ¨b u¡cc°a," blarred the car's dashboard, the sudden burst of noise startling myself and Freja equally.
Heaving forwards, I came to a stop beside a wincing Freja just in time to catch her reaching for the CB radio's power-button; a gabble of unintelligible noise pouring out in time with my own excited thoughts.
"WAIT," I rumbled, the rattle of the car's windows almost but not quite drowning out the storm.
Shooting me a curious, and slightly frightened look, Freja obeyed; her hand halting mere centimetres from the radio.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, I thought.
"J¿*g, jnvg, j§vg, ¢næg," burped the radio.
Okay, I thought rapidly, the radio burbling like a brook as I did, when I think like this, the CB radio picks it up. Ergo, I'm broadcasting my internal monologue, but it can't translate the signals into understandable noises. So, how do I change it?
When I was a child, maybe eleven or twelve years old, I once tried and failed to teach my younger cousin how to roll her tongue. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many times I showed her how it was done (mostly by sticking my tongue out at her, I'll admit), she just couldn't do it. Eventually, after she broke down in tears and ran for her parents, my own father told me that not everyone could roll their tongue, that for reasons of genetics, it was impossible for something like a third of people. While I didn't have a tongue in my current form, the same sense of knowing what to do but being unable to describe it came to me in an instant; a kind of mental muscle forming from nothing between one thought and the next.
-"Hello?"- I sent to the radio.
"Uryyb?" It whined back.
{"Hello!?"}
"Ifmmp!?"
<"Fucking work, damn it!">
"Fucking work, damn it!"
"Holy shit!" Freja and I said together, a rush of emotions flooding through me as I recognized the voice in the radio as my own.
It was a strange experience hearing my voice coming from somewhere other than my mouth, as strange as hearing any recording of yourself played back. Made tinny by the CB radio's speakers, my native midland accent, mangled by my time on the east coast, was incongruous next to Freja's vaguely Scandinavian one; a brief flare of amusement flashing through my mind as I heard it.
Adjusting the volume with one hand, Freja glanced towards me and grinned for the first time since I met her. "You sound like this all the time? You're a person?"
<"Yes,"> I breathed, still giddy at my voice's liberation and all but ignoring the innocent, if barbed, question.
A thoughtful expression crossed Freja's face and in a single smooth motion she snatched the radio's mic from its cradle and raised it to her lips.
"Can you hear this?"
<"Can you hear this?">
I would have grimaced if I could, a double echo ringing around my mind as one set of words followed the other at a slight delay. Flinching at the disorientating effect, the shutters of my eyes clicking as they snapped closed and open, I nodded my main form's head up and down.
<"Yes, ugh the delay's weird,"> I replied a moment later. <"Remind me not to stay too close next time.">
"Ha," she barked, "I was wondering how we'd coordinate. Hold on."
Awkwardly sitting beside the cabin, I watched with more than a little curiosity as Freja leaned out of sight and began to search for something. Mere moments later, she reappeared with a cry of victory clutching a pad of paper and a nub of a pencil and began scribbling madly with her left hand; her furious expression and muttered curses ending as she presented me with a set of numbers.
"The frequency," she grinned as she slipped the pad into one of her borrowed jacket's innumerable pockets.
Sparing one final glance towards the farmhouse, Freja frowned and jerked her head towards the horizon. "Come on, if we leave now we can get to Reykjavik before the sun rises."
"We have a lot to talk about before we get there," she continued with an air of finality.
