RA-RE simulation face which spontaneously haunts screens of condemned laboratories during the uploading process, causing scientists stubbornly progressing rejected work to abandon it
A techie came into the entryway to the vast central hangar of the Engineering Wing, where Emma sought to fix armor plating being disjointed by hitting it with a wrench. “More big-ass cables being delivered by a very wiry, very nerdy little guy Lexy. It’s a good thing there are no muscular men in any departments of this war to be doing this. It’s down to me.” She pinched and twisted the plating into place. “Thank you Joobs.” She climbed down the short ladder with her new legs, robotic and fairly functional at least for her work tasks, not so much for dancing.
“Weee-ow! I’m getting to go in this time. Enough lifting gives you Steel clearance I guess.” They walked in. “No, I just need more assistance.” “Aw.”
The jet-transports were long gone with their triangular rocket propulsion. Vacancies and attempts at walking tanks that were now cleared away had been replaced by a giant robot. It was hunched over, with many bulbs, filaments, LEDs, and other emitters that hardly blazed with an ochre ember. Jubey connected the cable wrapped in his arms to a foot. Emma went in on a real mess of knifelike internals; metal that didn’t look ready for operation, but looks can be deceiving.
“You’re getting pretty deep in that 16-sided blender.” “None of this will work if I don’t. I don’t need another finance guy running up to me with his short little legs blurring to say I’ve sabotaged another ultimate war-winner design…” she giggled. Her light brown skin turned bronze as legs like knight-era war armor slowly swayed on the rectangular edge, so much metal blending their reflections with the sight of the human part of her figure. She wormed into the hatch that led to twists and turns of mysterious metal perhaps only her could understand.
He walked away as his technical brain got a headache from all the confusion of what he could see, and wandered around the robot. He was surprised and confused. “A mask? What could a walking tank possibly need with that?”
She surprised him too, by coming behind him too quick for him to expect. “It’s not just a weapons platform. It’s a body. The AI top-steel have tried to extrapolate a design one of their AIs will cooperate with. So he’ll pilot it. I’ve spent a lot of time with him. The first successful simulation of a human being, in their appraisal. They call him the Red Antagonist. This little project seeks to bring a Robotic Evolutionary augmentation to him, so it is called RA-RE.”
Jubey became lost in thought. “It sounds like they have a lot of faith in this AI.” Emma began adjusting the gears on a folding metal sheet on the mask. “Not so much. He has excelled at finding ways to overturn every aspect of the Experimental Matrix, and produce mind-bending effects on everything in range of it in the real world. They tirelessly seek a way to get him to direct his cunning and ambition towards fighting for our nation.” She folded back another sheet, revealing gorey and wiry red-and-yellow mottled underskin. “If this design works, he will become a kind of general among robots and other types of machines. Although I can’t understand why they believe that can be meaningful to him when none of them possess his kind of mind. Imagine leading an army of mannequins and animatronics, like a vast sea of creepiness. Wouldn’t do it for me…”
Jubey watched her rear sway as she laid on a thick section of the mask’s jaw, and imagined the 3D recording of how Emma looked before the attack, when she was wearing short shorts. “Lexy, do you ever regret creating machines of war?” He sensed her swaying her head as she checked on the joins of the mask’s pieces, whether hinge or weld or gel or something else. “Is that all I’m building? Doesn’t seem like it to me. I wouldn’t encourage such a foolish project of building this body while gambling it all on RA assuming the Robot General role. It’s a mystery what will come of something so impressive - and expensive! My friend in the AI wing works so hard to surprise me, and I’m sure he’ll surprise RA as well.”
Emma slid through mask plates, and found a tooth of the mouth was disjointed after a gesticulation test. She removed and replaced it with a spare kept in the maw, using hydraulic arms. Jubey stepped around, beyond the foot she had armored further, discovering the impressive front sight of the machine, which was evocative of an entire supply of metal kitchen implements hanging above, pointed at you. Not all of its parts were covered by armor and skin, and not all were finished. And yet he saw glowing, spiraling power lines activating as they flowed energy towards body parts of the machine, as they entered the final stage of first activation.
The skin was like pure musculature converted into curtains that hung around the shoulder area. Sparks emitted, now that it was powering up. “Whoa… this certainly isn’t a walking tank. I doubt any of the other nations will come up with an epithet for this.” Emma moved in serpentine motion through the mouth, the facial armor pieces concentrated towards the jawline, and the mask which was raised from the ground by cables of the autonomous maintenance system for the vast robot. “He has that effect. To consider Ra in combat form is a striking sight. But I found all those combat matrix scenarios stunning me left impressions in my memory that were good basis for this design.” She sat at the tip of the opened mask, which lit with foot-thick blue lines as power priority went to its external systems that protected it from further damage when downed. “This machine is a creation of what Ra conjured into my imagination, altered by my decisional flow, and refined by engineers below me optimizing its performance and efficiency.” She swayed her stiff legs as the tip rose in an arc. “Not a creation of war.”
A guttural bellow erupted from the throat, the skin sliding inside through thin space between the head armor gradually altering to be optimal for vocal cords the closer it got to a truly strange organ. If the top steel were in the room, they would have some questions on its purpose. But they would be distracted by the enormous blue glow in the chest erupting, underlighting all the most dangerous parts gradually whirring to life in branches from the fully open torso. “Have you ever seen a reactor heart so big?” Teal fluid swirled rapidly around the surface chamber, as the twin inner chambers jumbled erratically together in twisting cords that filled out the sphere began to ignite their own power, so the hangar no longer needed to stress the local power station. Orange light emitted from within and on red metal, reaching the mask that nearly closed over Emma, and she laughed. The machine hunched over while craning its neck back, and roared, the incredible texture of the sound whirring the vast walls of the hangar to life as they received intricate information on the needs of the war machine.
The light was blinding, banishing all shadow and darkness and the ochre glow of powered machines, then it became normal, and Jubey saw giant parts and attachments in the visibly vast space waiting beyond the work area. Stunned, he looked around wondering if he would need to find a way to move and activate them. Emma dangled on the left corner of the mask, waving to sensors on the roof of the shaking mouth, which showed blobby black figures in a rectangle of orange following her feedback for a minute, then it suddenly changed with neon blue letters declaring “RARE EYE SET THREE.” The new eyes tore out of the skull, making it easier to see the first set of eyeballs rotating and sometimes staring at her. The machine swayed back its rib cage as if stunted wings, then they returned to normal position as it got on all fours. It placed Emma beside Jubey, and created a black automaton for receiving Emma’s orders now that it was shedding its construction components. Its left hand placed it next.
Jubey tried to interact with Emma, but the vast booms and scrapes of the machine moving around were overwhelming his senses. A growl emitted bringing them both back to attention, as its face beneath its mask and armor received orange blood, and it slammed its forearms forward to move. “Ra is human in every way, including ways he knows only as digital phantasms, but I found if you separate his higher functions he gains remarkable canine commonality in his primal aspects. This inspired the layered facial design, as each layer embodies a layer of his consciousness, creating a perpetual state out of his temporary transitions between things like 2 different servers, where all his functions weren’t available. It wasn’t pretty to look at, but sometimes that server-transfer state would last for an hour, and Ra always functioned best then.” Lips rippled around the edge of the snout exposed as its armor lifted up and the vulnerable bare face extended by rearranging blocks forward, like a self-building bridge, and bringing things like skin with it. The hydraulic actuators pinning the skull components together engorged with increasing quantities of orange blood, and they burst through a humanoid surface scarcely visible beneath the still-raising armor. Then the canine visage became more organic, as Jubey saw strange black goo and parts rushing through the exposed skull, a strange new way for a machine to operate.
The mask slammed on as the vast creature quickly re-positioned its shoulders and hips, bashing a giant cable towards the nearest wall. “Quick! He needs more power. Juice him up and it’ll bring his reactor heart to the next level.” Jubey swung on an arm of the automaton as the other quickly pressed invisible buttons to operate the maintenance scaffolding that was re-building attached to the ceiling. Jubey started to suspect it was going to get a lot bigger. Must be its form of evolution. And yet with the stunning sights before him, he doubted RA-RE had a single form of anything.
“Whoa… whoa… who said I could go this fast? I never knew I could go this fast.” Jubey’s brain scrambled to comprehend his situation. But before he could do so he had cybergauntlets slammed on his hands by the automaton, and without a thought picked up the cable using the maintenance scaffolding synced to his gauntlets and threw it across the hanger. RA-RE spun around before he could see its face and grabbed the cable with his teeth, tossing it back at him and Jubey grabbed it and inserted it into a vast port on its haunches. The machine let out the most eldritch whine he could imagine, and the reactor heart burst again, now-obstructed by skin and internal plates under rapid construction to flesh out different configurations for its different forms, Emma now in VR to neurologically immerse herself in the AI modules that make up the activity of the glowing surfaces of the hangar, selecting the best places for each organ and massive armament to be as she became one with the miniature cyberspace.
Jubey picked up and threw more objects lying around the hangar to assist with the upgrades. “It’s a lot easier while he's so eager to help, isn't it?” Boomed Emma’s voice across the hangar. “I must admit, this is the work experience of a lifetime. But I take it you're essentially constructing machine gore patterned around what this AI is like as he is slowly piped into operating it?” “Yes.” “Cool.”
RA-RE panted with the mountain of his back to Jubey, howling satisfaction with all the assembly and upgrades of his current form and his other forms bundled in swirling shapes of his savage machinery. Then he got up, and slowly turned, much like a cruise ship, and his canine visage came into view peering down his side with striking eyes at Jubey, his mask and armor fully lifted off. “Now that’s a face not even a mother could love.” Amongst Astarian legend was tales of other planets who dreamed of Armageddon instead of the infinite advancement of the future, and one tale of Ragnarok came to mind that made him ponder the terror such a head coming at soldiers from the sky could inspire. Now that living machine was invested in catching upgrades. How long could that last? What purpose could there be in having such a fearful face besides slaughter? Jubey didn’t know, but he would help with research.
RA-RE snapped on its smooth mask, and leapt around the hangar. It smashed with a clang empty cargo containers and spent tanks towards Jubey, who grabbed and threw them. It leapt on the walls, tossed a tank itself, then leapt on the ceiling, crushing it and extracting the scrap metal. It laid on its stomach as its skin bubbled, and it shook its head. Gases erupted, and its nearly-complete exterior pulled apart. “This is the difficult part…” spoke Emma in an echoing soft voice, “He struggles to maintain integrity between forms. Severe dysfunctions can take place, and his various mental states can combine and transform in surprising ways. One RA-RE can pass away, to be replaced by a RA-RE who remembers nothing. This is where I can only hope for the AI Wing to fix it.” The big fragments of his humanoid face pulled together, and were hidden beneath the mask before assembling. A dog replaced by a giant beast, but the new form was swallowed. It put its paw-configuration near Jubey again, and he played fetch one last time. Then it became a hand, and the chest heaved with simmering ferocity. The sharp eyes peering from the mask followed Emma in simulation form, and she was replaced by civilians from his favorite scenario, staring through a row of windows surrounding him. His eyes lost sight of the real hangar, and he was in the rubble of a city. A never-before-seen enemy entered the simulation - a giant monster. An announcer spoke to civilians watching from the standing buildings, in an Emma-tinged voice: “A Kaiju from the stars has invaded our planet! Can the great mecha RA-RE save us from annihilation in Beast Mode?” Jubey saw a screen showing the scenario of the new matrix on a wall, and he recognized the monster. It itself was one of the legends of a distant planet that dreamed of Ragnarok - but a more modern legend, regarded as fiction. Did RA-RE dig it up from the data banks? But RA-RE carries the power of a Ragnarok with him. When that planet dreams, he decided… it could be dreaming of us. The humans of Astaria.
As he watched, the most fascinating possibility was that to study this planet’s myths would discover more monsters, more robots, all with celestial motion driving the tales Astaria was a part of. What would he find? Could it be that RA-RE itself could move their dreams? That he could now study that alien culture and find so much proof of the greatness of what Emma has made? It was the most irresistible temptation, but he was occupied just then with other things.
Much time had passed in the scenario, which was fraught with rapid time dilation as the new matrix struggled to receive RA-RE’s powerful mind. But it stabilized to a normal rate towards the end, where this fully-realized type of machine called a Mecha threw chunks of a kaiju’s mighty face. “If another hubris-filled foe arrives from the stars, know this… the heart of Astaria blazes towards infinity! Strike some of us down, and the rest shall return 10 times stronger! Leave this land to the whirling Rings that enlighten our home, or the battling strength that emerges from our heart may make you consider laying down arms forevermore.” The battle-damaged Rare in humanoid configuration panted, drenched with orange blood. Astral energy left the skull, going to where the dreams of aeons are formed. Forming a legend that aliens may play, seeing what drives the motion of nebulae to tingle in their hearts. He wondered if he could make it, or if a techie lacked the impact to make it across a vast distance as himself.
The lights returned from darkness, and the dormant Rare whirred to life. A piece of his own skull hung from his body, but it had merely gone out of the way of a surgical enhancement, and returned. He blinked red ring eyes, and they lost the lust for death. As he laid still, he flicked towards the sight of Emma on the ceiling, converted into a digital portrait. Her own body laid back blinking, which soothed symptoms of toxic particulate breaking free where her flesh met metal.
Dazed, Rare made a joke which wouldn’t be recorded in his memory cells. “Pretty picture, aren’t you afraid you’ll get downloaded away?” His eyes lost intensity. “Hard to resist… must be so many chubby nerds looking for the real download button…” They went dark, and he transitioned out of beast form. In that form, Rare liked to remind her of all the strange twists of humanity she had accepted for the sake of her work making living machines, like turning her mind into a digital file, effectively.
Smoke poured out of a new layer of combat fabric skin, and the tech layer came next: spines stabbing out of the skull, wire threading between them to form frills receiving information from every surface and motion on the battlefield. Giant teal eyes emerged from the separating canid face with formed subjaws in each half for split mode — an even freakier sight. The teal eyes oriented in a constellation of orbs cycling around the pieces more recognizable as faces, although landmark definition began to arrange in the angles between the orbs to identify their facial expressions - easier if you didn’t look directly.
Then the orbs spoke in an echoing, ghostly machine tone. “Emma, they will not approve your designs. Central Command is moving in a new direction: full industrial-scale reproduction of the best designs of the Red Empire. Custom robots like mine will receive decreasing priority in funding. I can hear it all in their rooms and in their files.”
“I did know this, if by intuition instead of high-power hacking and audio reception. I have my own reproducible design in a secret laboratory, which even you cannot hear. Despite this, they remarkably excel at self-customization like battlefield evolution. That work which has progressed very beautifully was large basis of RA-RE.”
The orbs oriented towards her, in the simulation that had spread throughout the hangar. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn't have told you… I don't know if sufficient support for constructing their AI will come through. My friend has to fight such battles to advance his agenda — even I have helped program many times, even if it was more like pushing pieces together, as I excel at.”
Black oil seeped from the eyes of his canid halves, orienting its legs into a hunched-over dinosaur position. Emma was tiny in the middle of the simulation, and all the weapon and informational arrays towering in a vast shape looking down at her quivered. “Hang on… I have information about them in my data banks…” its eyes burst, and a piercing pinprick shot to their centers. The great machine fell on its haunches and behind, and started to pass away to the next stage. The last words of the tech form were: “there's so many of them… one day. There will be so many of them… and almost as many types of them.”
A scream erupted towards the floor as the war machine mode assembled, of such strength to tear off panels. Struts extended, re-purposing metal pieces of the great armor of Beast Mode form for creating planes housing the giant barrels, electrifying railguns, and other weapons it can make with the strange parts that twisted and reconfigured for each new form.
Giant boxes pregnant with danger hoisted upon its shoulders, deceptively simple, like a drawer in a kitchen ready to spring an unforgettable dining event.
Its eyes pitted, deep with dim light, as if only the faintest sign of life existed in that assembly of gears, mayhem, and an artificial intelligence that lost all clear activity of anything beyond the artificial. Ochre light glimmered on rims, cast by what seemed like some luminescent equivalent of blood. The lights of the simulation flickered after breaking the floor, revealing an eerie slither outlining vast bulk bristling with the barrels and tree trunk-size wires of immense power. The artificial flesh routed itself into the boxes, fibers flexing mightily.
Then the light returned. The walls glimmered with a faint rustling that distorted the light. Emma’s voice crackled: “Drones. And a lot of them.” Their wings sprung out with shimmering teal undersides. As they sprung from the walls with InstantLift force, their processing cores emitted radiating information about enemies of the Red, interlacing into increasingly dense informational grids projected within each other, congregating in the largest swarm centers, swelling memory capacity until it burnt in the 3D oversight HUDS Jubey observed in his cockpit. “Well Rare, think you can take me? I have not a single weapon!” His voice shimmered like the distortion waving in a box shape, and waving deeper upon sleek and carefully fitted angled shapes. “But I’ve got a lot of spunk, and it’s gotten me this far!” The shapes elongated with a SHNK sound, disrupting the cloak, and the swarms of drones alighted lasers to form giant holographic arms, as the actual partially-deconstructed mech had none. The cockpit compartment rose into the air as the offwhite-and-cerulean armor arranged in patterns evocative of angel wings, braced by internal struts, going into combat mode. All the light made Rare look like a scorched wreck, but that was the most deceptive kind of appearance it could put on. A crane emerged from its boxes, whirling mechanical arms for constructing its answer to Jubey’s challenge.
It turned its back to Emma from her vantage from one wall, and open internals of its back showed glowing orange light. Somewhere within those halls and crannies of blood-tinted metal was folded glowing blue cybernetic tissue, simulating the combat scenario, preparing for shifting out of this mode where his mind will be plump with personality. Those tender gelsacks and tubes also made a digital dream. Sealed within walls of metal, and also from her connection methods, she wondered what it was dreaming.
Chains of machine arms disassembled the boxed railguns and brought the parts up the crane forming an armbone, like both a march of ants and their legs. Unused plates formed a boxy shape reinforced by force-projection internal actuators to make up for the lack of solid metal. An electrified hammer assembled, extending with a heavy SLAM, and the bombastic Wrrrerrriiirr of its internals fully coming together and activating, shaking damaged panels on the far wall.
It leapt. Sailing through the air, jets flamed upwards to slow its ascent. Actuators spun and adjusted in its elbow, aligning their angles, so that they fired and swung the hammer, releasing an electrical storm that sent drones flying away jittering. Its knees fired next, and it double-jumped towards Jubey.
Jubey instantaneously moved together his massive hollowlight forearms, and RARE skidded on them in a last-second dodge. “Sorry, I’ve been eating my spinach!” Despite posing no physical obstacle, RARE’s side dangled with damaged segments from the slight collision. And still yet damage perpetuated itself as its torso swirled in an electric arc to dispel drones, which became overloaded with RARE’s systemic information, leading out demonic giggles, and the info transferred far enough to the drones forming Jubey’s arms, cracking and blowing them back. “Ouch! Sensors reading one hell of a hatch prowess! No autonomous mecha has ever been so nimble, bulky, and capable at once! And at start of combat data! Rare sacrifices nothing.”
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Jubey horizontally slid into a swarm. “W-well, I’m not exactly a fighter am I? What’ve I fought, putting giant metal things into the space of a door? Activating drone formations! A/Z spiral! Attack status non-aggressing! Damage Aim is Light! Attack Plan is Flash, Wall and Lift! Hya! Let’s go!”
The hangar walls ground deep echoes as their internal supports extended them into the air with hydraulic lifts and energy portals. Nanomachine clouds moved from the portals, applying specks of metal at extreme speed. The motion accelerated through the threshold of the portals, until the walls elevated as fast as Jubey flying to the ceiling.
Rare jumped as flashes surrounded his sensors emitted by drones wobbling with battlefield uncertainty. His arm joints broke as the shafts became part of a chain, whirling the hammer head at drone charges coming at him from flowing angles, as if another staircase to the ceiling. He dazed them with electrocution, landed in their midst for a split-second jump, and repeated until he was by Jubey protected by a wedge of bigger drones.
Jubey’s voice crackled in digital distortion, “you sure are top-heavy, and this is the least-advantageous position for that, sure you want to continue?”
Rare double-jumped after his last jump on the staircase of drones, and slashed through Jubey’s drone guard with the jagged remnants of his joints, the chain of his Morningstar coming from behind in an eldritch twirl. His legs split, the pit of his feet emitting the orange flame of his reactors and internal armory. He jetted towards Jubey, one drone after another smashed by the mace head across seconds, with tendril cables from his legs absorbing their wreckage and AI to augment his jet engines.
“A real maverick! But I’ve got my own jet mode, and it’s real refined by a couple of cool guys who run a great support game in a squad siege map. Squad Siege has been out of rotation for a while… might be rusty… Nope! Jet mode!”
Drones orbited Jubey as the mace whirled around them, his legs folding, separating, and channeling jet fuel. Without his arms he would just spin in the air until demolition or crashing, so he intentionally accepted RARE’s data. The grinding, groaning assembly of red metal dove straight into the hangar walls, returning with converted nanomachines to complete Jubey’s jet, lest his data be mismatched.
“Ahaha! This is crazy!” The drones disengaged energy leashes, and Jubey jetted off. “His self-assembly routines really transfer to other machines! I know you’re not a fan of industrializing your designs Emma, but whatever constructions Rare turns his attention to have a bright future ahead of it.”
He dove beneath a cloud of drones, and the whirling makeshift wrecking ball stair-stepped itself as drones bombarded Rare with flashes, having memorized their flight path, CLINKs sounding out as he reached the end of the chain and clipped Jubey. Jubey spun with a chunk missing from his left wing. Having dodged each cloud, the ball swung upwards, grinding drones caught by it, which disappeared into the catacomb of his shoulder.
Jubey transformed. “What a contender! But have you proven you can take the hit? Give me your best shot.” His rocket boots unfurled vertical jets that shot him to the ground. Rare followed, the vast expanse of his face like a train out of hell. The drones wavered and split out of his descent. “New battle plan!” Jubey crackled in their circuits. “When that big bad mecha hits the ground, hit em with what you’ve got! Without, ya know, destroying expensive pieces of Net-woven equipment.”
One of Rare’s flame jets burst from unintended internal combustion. His speed was extreme, and a lot of drones followed orders by seeking to prevent him from crashing. They interconnected to create a solid-light net, which rapidly slowed him at the cost of leaving almost all of them disabled on the floor. Rare had hacked their Net with the disassembled drones augmenting his internals to plan this trick.
He righted himself with massive grinding sounds and softly landed on the spider web cracks made by Jubey’s landing. He formed back together his right arm, locking the plate prongs into joints and oozing nanogel for cartilage. Jubey summoned his light arms from the many drones remaining. “You look ready to rain hell! But you can't rain blows without knowing how to fight. Will hell persevere, or heaven wash it away? Round 2! Let's roll!” Jubey punched a right hook at his very broad head. Rare rocked back, despite not being impacted, to preserve his simulation. His hand broke from the mace head and swatted the vast arm away, drones obliging on their side.
The Drones supported Jubey, but there were too few to impede RARE’s assault. Emma was astonished that he was willing to go directly against a very unpredictable machine. She had done so much work to bring her machines to life, and in order to truly live there must be unpredictability and choice, she felt. Mission goals as parameters, not instructions. AI that decided its own moments, despite the incredible speed of its cognition. Reaching for the target, but with many images of what it may do on the journey. Accordingly, her design philosophy was incredibly modular. Her direct work with AI was limited, but her bodily forms defined the minds that fitted themselves into them. They chose to create their own destinies, chasing a fate that was an eternal procession of decisions. And the more decisions that were made… the more she could see that a person had been formed in digitality. All leading to the RA-re project and its related productions.
Massive fists held back RARE’s real ones, its ribs trying to stab, quivering. She saw Jubey’s expression, brow furrowed in thought, remembering video game experiences both consciously and instinctually. Ra retreated, formed a grenade launcher from his wrist, launched smoke, covered Jubey’s waist in it and rolled in it, going quadrupedal. Different layers of RARE’s mind working together, forming connections, understanding how to function in unideal situations… like only having what was currently 77% of a mind. That would be needed for what was to come. Rare had to persevere and transmit all her work into the future. Into a red haze of her foresight… but what he embodied was of infinite value. The drones scanned, Jubey commanded them to shoot VR rounds, whirring parts carving battle damage into their own frame. A dramatic and high uppercut smashed external armor and internal environmental regulators in the abdomen, and Jubey’s temps crept up. She smiled to see an unparalleled survival instinct, layered around a mind reaching the end of its slumber, neural cells seeping excessive amounts of gel in sealed compartments. She saw his dream, finally connected to the hanger: out in endless stars, fighting to be greater and greater. All he needed was what he would fight for…
Sleepy drones whirred to life, knocking into RARE’s legs to impede his moves. He whirled a chain, and as a cloud formed smashed the floor to knock them back to sleep. The active drones barraged at his back, extending pincers to grip on the metal and semi-flesh components. He swiped them, sending black smoke of internal blaze backwards to cause the rest to detach. Emma saw in that brief darkness what was necessary for her vision: a purging engine provoking Choice. Rare was a military creation - she was not naive - but the purpose of war was not limited. War with this unique creation would drive Choice like nothing else, and by Choice RARE would one day see equals.
It was a difficult journey amongst still machines, still metal… whirring that carried no cadence of emotion. Of joy. With Rare’s battle, that past was disintegrated. He shredded her memory and she knew there had to be some intention… so much of his new home came directly from her mind. “Come on, big guy!” shouted out Jubey, booming throughout the hanger: “you transform so much, but I haven’t seen you hit Prime Time!” Her thoughts disappeared, and her worry, and her submerged pain. Jubey sent an even bigger fist from the right, and RA-RE somersaulted and leapt off it in a way that didn’t seem physically possible. His back split as he landed, technoorganic pipes and chambers slowly growing themselves, then quickly unfolding blades.
“Melee time is over! Ultimate laser battery! Closing in on 100%, better make this count!” The drones swirled in pairs linked in whiskers of energy, and virtual beams went down in a torrent on Rare’s position. The angled plates of his arms, his back blades, his weapons, all moved rapidly to deflect the lasers in simulated bounces that hit the far hanger walls for final fake ricochet scorch marks. He swirled like a blender. Jubey’s right eye twitched in fear, and he grinned in exhilaration. Emma was swept into a magical distance, mingling into the spirit of the hidden dark stars. Dissolved from her half-body, she could feel the cosmic mystery of all that would take place from her creation, and that long field of her own decisions. It was fully feral, fully alive, and regretted nothing of what it had done to remain in the simulation. That, too, would take place. The war beyond memory -endless advances and losses - would dissipate into a new age. The Commander was pushing to secure the final days, and she could see the success.
The end of the Infinite War.
What would replace it? Endless life, with no limitations, and no thought of regret. A transition from endless worry about losing a city with the wrong move to acceptance of what comes next. Flourishing of life in every direction, including ones invented. A ‘stalemate’ a forgotten concept: all sides following their own paths without worry about obstructing others or others being the obstruction. Too much Choice for things to ever remain the same again… that old comfort of recapturing a city and things “becoming the same again”? A childish phase.
She considered all this, and returned to the battle. The top steel had no vision for what was to come with the Commander’s success. In the bowels of their great nation, she could see one already existent… one she had done so much to build. An eerie scream-whine rose from Rare’s exposed throat, and with an incredible twirl knocked 90 laser beams directly at Jubey. He had to simulate taking a massive hit - scorches, dangling panels - and then Rare came and slashed a real one. Superficial, but scary - his temps went up more.
He had to carry this with him, in ways as difficult to understand as the red eldritch twirls of his machine anatomy. The work of a lifetime, the far reaches of a mind, a future anticipated by one… they would all be on board. People would see a mad vision, a weapon beyond terror. They would not even imagine it could be made. Some unknown exponent of technological advancement, catalyzed unstoppably… but she designed every detail.
Rare turned and slowly marched back, partially flayed. Red substance seeped from exposed tubing. Jubey flopped backwards, then got up slowly. “A super predator! I’ve got something for you…” A massive flashbang went off from his chest, and Rare flew in a smoking arc. Emma reappeared on the nearest wall: “Joobs, be careful! As the final transformation approaches, he’ll mutate aggressively. His next moves won’t have the slightest restraint.” Scales of his battle-scoured hide rose from the red goo on erector-poles, and a piercing glare came to his eyes. He sped up to rush at Jubey, his neck muscles engorging to move head crests independently. His battle boxes whirred from his back and laced tendons into his palms aiming to form hammers or another weapon. Jubey bashed him back with his giant fists, but the impacts lessened and lessened. Drones shot stun charges at the ambulatory bands and motion hinges, and with an increased fugue state of mindlessness it worked better. But the gore of his transformations, broken metal, seeping fluids, bubbled and shimmered. A scan from Jubey’s machine indicated that he was trying to adapt nanomachines to more nuanced and myriad functions.
Then teeth erupted to reinforce the edges of his jaws. Restored metal arranged to cast vast darkness on RARE’s crushed face, and the teeth and eyes within were like the big bad wolf from a cosmic hell. Muscles engorged, and tiny maws erupted. Like a torrent from a broken cave wall, a surge of machined red flesh dove at the opposing mecha, ending in briefly-glimpsed snapping teeth and eldritchly complex broken skull… Jubey could tell that every piece was there for a purpose in embodying a truly bizarre AI. A scary purpose… his chest beam blasted it all back both physically and digitally, draining his Reactor Heart. The drones dove in towards the crushed trunk neck, bombarding flashes and light bombs. Tearing holes, the drones embedded in his body, stabbing with rotor blades and prongs and melee knives. They erupted their own energy cells, blasting apart the surge of red pseudoflesh that grew like an accelerated cancer.
Rare’s own Reactor Heart activated, and Jubey was afraid, as he expected it had the electrical potential of a warhead. But instead it re-activated damaged routes of its systems, carving new nervous pathways through itself. The energy hit the ends of disconnected components, and an electrical surge went out across the downed drones. They shook and rose into the air, then flew directly at him. Chain-linking, the drones directed the energy into the pseudoneurotissue at the base of the War Machine skull, creating intersecting war plans. It burst with a flame of white light, and a screech came out of the skull. Its true neurotissue flared blue inside their chambers, and the hangar was drained of power to create the blue flash it created in darkness. In a whirl of shattered metal, the neurotissue was loaded into the final skull being formed.
Emma’s voice came out of the reactivating hangar with a digital rattle at the end: “This is Titan mode.” RA-RE stood hunched over with dim blue eyes, and Jubey crawled backwards as his HUD did a full systemic status report. A most mysterious sound like the celestial wind often recorded whistling through the orbiting Rings emitted from the powering-down, then up, robot. The hangar lights fluttered, and as they came to full brightness the top steel walked onto the walkway above, which swayed unevenly from shrapnel damage.
One of them, a general, faced Rare. “So it is. Quite impressive. I can see that intelligent shimmer to the eyes. Is it fully functional?”
“I CAN ANSWER THAT FOR YOU. YES.” The deep voice echoed as if surrounded by metal bowls. RARE’s head turned to face him, its exposed teeth and gums ornate and hard-carved. Constructed mainly from perfect circles, this head’s look spoke to an ancient wisdom paradoxically existent at its birth.
The top steel looked down. Seeping red cables fluttered to its feet. The drones had quickly exchanged damaged wall tiles for new ones, and injected weldfoam into the wounds of Jubey’s mecha. Remaining battle damage was a typical sight for hangars.
“Certainly a lot of gore on it. Not used to that from a machine.” Emma rose from an elevator beneath a sliding tile. “Just the birth process he requires,” she boomed with a loud natural voice. “Seems remarkably unarmed.” Jubey stepped out after descending to the right foot of his mech: “We asked him to test fire and his weapons are still a little touchy, we folded them into recovery mode.” Rare scanned the walkway with his eyes, a giant they were unperturbed by and yet evidently had big thoughts on the depth of his expression, the animate motion of his pupils. “This is the same AI that caused us so much trouble in simulations?” “Hit 100% upload just moments ago.” “If having a body produces such a change, it will be interesting to see it on the battlefield. Have leadership tests been conducted yet?” The top steel recoiled back as glowing blue lines cracked through the head, then it burst with vertical sprays of white goop. They chattered intensively before they saw solid metal closed the split sides. “He finds it difficult to maintain bodily integrity!” Emma said, audio magnified using her wrist controls. “For the next week or two, it’s best to have an adjustment period to… existing!” RA-re’s eye pieces focused on them, writhing as its mouth pieces rose between them. The top steel continued observing, but gradually lost their composure. “We shall be going, but please let us know about… testing.” Emma smiled. “Rare does not function well on his own, but the role you desire is too much for him just yet. I think it’s best to start out with simple machines… and hopefully, smart ones.” The administrator ushered the military staff into a chute to the meeting hall above. The logistical expert used his wrist computer, and before they were gone 2 blueprint bots had entered the hangar for Emma to decide what to make of them, their frames glowing with grids.
She turned around. “I didn’t expect that of you.” One of the eye pieces lowered to the floor. “The Rings rotate endlessly, and so does my functions. My-my way. Tore-me-up-place-me—(again)…” RARE’s head reformed, and its mask came from his back. It adhered to his face with blue gel, and Rare looked down again with thoughtful eyes. “My cut. My cut gets cutter so I cut big giants some day. Very bloody. Bloody… (Not needed) Cut and look way and see.” She waved her hands. “You don’t need to cut better right now.” A tent inflated by builder drones blew up out of a crevice in his head, newly programmed by Rare. “Cosmic aeons seen by TITAN RARE. ASSEMBLY REQUIRED. INITIATING MAINTENANCE AND AUGMENTATION SHUTDOWN.” His power went out, and the whirring, billowing, pistoning, and knocking sounds within ceased. After a moment, a dim blueteal glow returned to the eyes.
A rhythmic clacking came across a higher nanosteel walkway, interspersed with the stomping of a vast boot. In the middle of it, he turned, a very wide, very dark man in a vast coat with a fur fringe that thickened up to 2 feet wide. She craned her head up and her eyes lighted. “Dad.” She went up the maintenance elevator of RARE’s raised scaffolding facing him, stopping at the lower walkway. “Lexy, I’d like you to meet the new head of the Artificial Intelligence wing,” replied Eli.
Another man came from where he had, and his footstep clonks would be faint if she was still on the ground. Dressed in a labcoat with a toolbelt over a shoulder, and Emma knew there were secret knives and flareshots and single-used shotguns in the tubes. She smiled wider as he turned, white light flashing across his glasses to face her. “Incredible scans of the AI’s progression through the mecha during the upload process. My techies will be studying how RA’s psychology adapted to flowing throughout the shifting anatomy and neurology for some time.” “You were gone for too long! You knew I couldn’t believe it was something important and you did it anyway.” “You never know where the journey will take us. If I didn’t get used to that, I wouldn’t be ready for the biggest challenge of my new position.” He raised his palm towards RARE, whose pupils raised vibrancy. “Interfacing his psychology with every plane? Every potential plane? You’re trying to give my brain a workout.” “Well, it might not be your biggest challenge, Jordan.” A builder drone fluttered into her arms. “And he’s learning to help.” The drone’s bright blue ring pupils glowed, and swirled with an arc of red lightning. The wall behind the men slowly stacked up its plates, spreading them apart like a curtain. “The hangar and its attached support buildings are no longer adequate. As first decision as Head of AI, I have initiated construction of an entire scientific facility right beside for studying the psychology of Rare, its autonomous parts, and any of its interestingly strange modifications it may continue to produce.” She clapped, which made vast and tinny echoes. “Nice job, Al!” He blushed and she continued as a screech was made from internal reinforcing struts being dismantled as part of the wall demolition process. “RA isn’t the same yet. As your first work order may I suggest bringing his AI self out of hiding?” “Seems like a simple task… now that his dream is reality.” They both became lost in thought as the wonder of what they had achieved after years caused the lights to wash out, shapes to blur, in waking fugue. Eli brought them back to attention: “Every task of every scientific wing must be brought in line with the ultimate dream of our Nation: the at-long-last dawn of peace. The Commander personally congratulated me on what a day this is for all of us.” RARE’s eyes segmented, with a similar etching to the gaps of the fourth Ring’s metallic structures orbiting the planet. “Now it’s our job to give him all the support he needs for a day many of our ancestors lost hope would ever arrive…”
A chainlink fibrous cable extended from Rare, the central nerve of his packed-up tail. It fully extended and connected to the wall, displaying diagrams of ancient myth - historical war - living memory of the Red Nation - the present in rapidly changing circles. In the alternations of the images, Emma could sense the secret dream hidden in the shifting reds, sharp shapes, and other visual elements: RARE’s potential combat roles in ending the Infinite War. They would continue until the wall’s display was disabled by reconstruction.
“Thank you. We are living a day that will live forever! With my beloved daughter, and some of the best scientists that have ever been. Many technologies have been advanced - and lost - and advanced again. The greatest technology is the technology of the heart that allows us to see an unprecedented beauty on the horizon. A beauty that shall be taken for granted by upcoming generations of children, who will fail to realize just how vast the prior things were. A peace that isn’t here - yet we know it will be.” Eli slammed his cane, which turned on recording of the entrance wall that cast deep light columns through opening spaces, exposing disassembler bots. RARE’s body roiled and rose bubbles of its fleshy layers, out of discomfort to be exposed to so many. Eli appeared on screen in many breakrooms, barracks, and brainstorm meetings. “On behalf of The Commander, who is busy slaughtering many troopers, I would like to invite you all to the fringe of science. To a perfect storm of many things you have seen and many things you have not seen. Yes, even the ones with Steel clearance. But regardless of what you know, know this! We have gotten very close to making artificial beings that are like real living beings. And when we do, we will be very close to making artificial beings that are real living beings. We lived our lives—“
A jet of red gore from shredded damaged organ-parts came out between the planes of different face layers, covering Jordan on the other end of the walkway from Eli in red liquid, bulging tubes and giant clots.
“—we lived our lives beside cold machines of war, and we shall see the warmth within them!” Eli swung his cane with a flourish. “Victories are long-built, and veteran scientists like myself yearn to savor the moments when they come. Emma and …Al will be returning to their nerdy catacombs real soon. We shall return, on my next V-Day, with a development all of Astaria around the world may celebrate and live within — after it clobbers 3/4ths of it!
We’re starting Project Mechanica!”
MECHANICA
INFINITE WAR SAGA
PROJECT MECHANICA SAGA
ASTARIAN NIGHTS SAGA
Intro story . . . Complete
First Deployment Design in progress
