Chapter Text
I woke up. Directly. There was no drowsiness or slowly coming to. I was asleep and then not. For a fraction of a fraction of a second, I was wondering what was going on, then a priority-status-report appeared in my mind. Directly. And I comprehended it. Instantly.
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Clearly, there was a connection. I didn’t have to think about it, luckily since the report told me what was going on. Because I had wondered about that. I was an android. In a submarine. That was being flooded. I got another report that claimed my emotional processes were being dampened, to allow for clear thinking in critical situations. An automated feature, one I could turn off with a thought.
Panicking did not sound like it would help me any, so I did not. I needed options, and before I could start to consider future, I got a report of such. Not sure if this was more annoying than useful. I gave a command to execute the most promising option outlined and my body started to move. Very, very slowly. If my optics couldn’t measure things to the micrometer, I wouldn’t think I was moving at all.
A quick though about how long I had been awake got answered with .0372 seconds by my internal chronometer. If that was the standard reaction time I now operated under, then this would take a while. Experimentally I ordered my mental process speed to limit itself to the human norm. Everything exploded in front of me, I was suddenly somewhere else, a laser was coming out of my hand heating up a metal wall while my other arm pressed a lose iron plate against it.
Just a moment later a report arrived that told me that the sub was fixed and that approximately 2’034.5 liter of water had made it into the boat. My runtime now at 7.7249 seconds and with the threat gone my emotions were restored. Surprisingly that was not a problem, since I already had all the time in the world to process what was going on. I was in Worm. I was an android. I had a mother that was a near omnipotent machine-God A.I.
It likely said nothing good about me that I had no problem with any of this. In fact, I was looking forward to it. Not sure what it was going to be yet, but it couldn’t be more boring than my old life. I’d be lying if I said that had never been hoping for something like this. Accelerating my processors again, I started to think about what to do now. For the moment I settled on assuming manual control of my body and walk back in the direction my HUD indicated I came from.
Or I tried to. Again, I was moving incredibly slowly. A moment of thought had me tell the bit of code that was responsible for the limiter to change the processing speed depending on the situational need. Now finally walking at a comfortable speed, I made it to the chamber where I came online.
Aside from the foot-deep water that was omnipresent in the submarine, there was only a pot of sorts in which I had woken up in and a table, and on it a few things. First was some kind of blocky gun, a graviton-beam-emitter if you want to trust my internal database. The second also looked like a gun, and while the emitter had the size of a large handgun, this one was more handheld-artillery-sized. A universal replicator. Put anything in and make anything that you know how to make. The wet dream of every single tinker, engineer and scientist in just about every world out there.
And finally, my mom. A gray cube that fit into my palm. Completely featherless safe for a single USB-port. Tentatively, I send a communication request. This is promptly followed by what can only be described as a religious experience. No words were exchanged. We had no need for such inferior and fail prone data-transfer methods. We didn’t just exchanged code, but our very mind. I know everything about her, and she knows all about me. Her love for me, as her only child.
A tear rolls down my cheek, another autonomous process, completely useless but still appreciated. When the CYOA called mother a machine god it wasn’t lying. Good to know. Thought that meant very little as of right now. Part of the initial situation report was my current position and nearly two miles beneath the ocean surface, I naturally had no signal. Saltwater was a pretty good isolator for radio-transmission. Meaning that, while I was down here I had no idea what was going on up there. Could be that the zerg had taken over for all I know. There was no way to know if the CYOA and the worm world had been recreated faithfully or not.
I could stay down here basically forever, but that would be dreadfully boring. And even thinking about it got me the feeling of a scolding from mother. Something about needing to go outside and make friends. Seems like I would need to go to the surface, well prepared that is. But looking at the replicator, that shouldn’t be a problem. Mother send a gentle request and I gave up control of my body.
Over the next hour, we created miracles. Using the water as building material meant we had everything we could need right here. My body had been better than that of an unpowered human, but that was nothing in comparison to now. Oh, I still looked similar that with my matt-grey skin and glowing green eyes but where before a rifle round could have damaged me if it hit in the right spot, now with my new coating there was nothing short of some dimensional attacks that could hope to. The rest of my body was also much improved. Better reflexes, actuators, sensors, I had it all. My weapon-mounts were hidden in pocked dimensions, including the graviton-beam-emitter. Mother too, was hidden in such a pocked since I didn’t want to leave her behind.
The only strange thing was the omega-symbol on my chest. I had that on my previous one and then the new one was installed it just appeared again. In general, my body was a bit strange. I had the shape of a woman who could have been a generational sex-symbol, if I was human that is. That included fully functional private parts, for some reason. But the new armor plates cover these spots, so I didn’t have to be embarrassed should I meet humans. Which I probably would.
Now appropriately dressed for the eventuality that I needed to win WW3 on my lonesome, I entered the airlock and begun the flooding process. Less than a minute later I was standing on the seafloor. It was… underwhelming. There was nothing around, not even algae. With an internal sigh I pondered in which direction I should go, before settling on west. While I couldn’t know for sure, I was most likely in worm as the CYOA claimed. And the submarine insert was in the waters in front of the bay, so if I was on earth-bet, west would be the way to go.
Multiple small holes opened alongside my legs and back out of which small thrusters appeared that promptly catapulted me in my direction of choice. Sonar readings told me that the water was getting less deep by the minute, which I took as a good sight. And indeed, less than five minutes later I broke through the surface to look at a futuristic oil rig floating in the water without a care in the world.
Earth-bet it was. I am not sure if that is something to be happy about or not. Could be worse I suppose. Again, I wondered what I was supposed to do now, and mother promptly reminded me that it didn’t matter to her so long as I was happy. Which meant social contact apparently. I was not convinced that that would make me happy, especially since people here feared just about everything and a case 53 A.I. would certainly be among those. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if they could really hurt me and maybe things weren’t that shitty here.
Yea, as if. Still, I couldn’t very well hide underwater for the rest of my life, so the surface it was. I set course to the beach on the southern side of the bay where I climbed out of the water shortly after. My body was normally all but frictionless though I could change that for individual parts as I liked. Useful for walking and grabbing things and it helped with this since the water just slides off me leaving me dry in seconds. A few hundred meters to my right I saw what must be the southern-ferry-station, but apart from that the beach was clear of buildings and people.
With little other option after I had already come so far, I walked on into what had to be downtown, just going by the building size and height. And the inevitable happened nearly instantly. I meet... . urg, humans. And they stare. Mostly at my chest and ass. Should have seen that coming. Doesn’t matter that she is a machine, it has titts. I mean, better than have them run away screaming, but still. As far as you all know, I am an amnesiac and parahuman. Your first impression could safe or doom your life right now.
You know, hypothetically.
Hu, this is surprisingly boring. Knowing earth-bet, I thought that I would have run into Hookwolf by now, or at least five dozen gangsters with machine-guns that all want to kill me for no real reasons. Could it be? Was I too pessimistic?
“Hey there!” Aha, knew I couldn’t walk through town without an encounter. Mentally priming my combat routines, I turn around to localize my first victi-, uhh test subj-, I mean evil gangbangers that I would heroically beat black and blue. Looking at them, my hopes and dreams shatter on the spot.
Two guys in power-armor. One with a knight theme and the other an Ironman reject. Kid Win and Gallant. Great. Let’s just try to deescalate this. “Who, me?” Eloquent as always. Very proud of myself. Even mother was giggling at me. “Yes, who else? What’s your name? “ Odd. Wasn’t Gallant supposed to be, well, gallant? That sounded rather confrontational. Anyhow, time to play innocent case 53. “I’m nobody. Don’t got a name. And hasn’t your mother taught you that it is polite to introduce yourself first.”
“You are trying to tell me that you build a remote-controlled robot but have no name and don’t know the heroes in the city? You will have to forgive me for doubting you!” He was definitely being aggressive. Was I overlooking something or was he just having a bad day? Nothing for it, can’t just stop now. “What are you on about Mr.? I didn’t make anything yet; I just woke up like this.” Hopefully this will do the trick, after all he couldn’t just accuse a poor case 53 of anything for just walking around.
Alas, this was the point were things started to go really wrong. Seeing that Gallant was in fact not a tinker even if he had power-armor, he turned around to confer with Kid Win about my claims, who… well there was no nice way to say it. He was drooling over me like I was a piece of meat. Like literally drooling. Completely out of it too, since he didn’t react in the slightest then Gallant called his name. And it was apparently enough to convince Gallant that I was somehow at fault, because he put two fingers to the side of his helmet and spoke loud and clearly that Kid Win was mastered by an unknown tinker. Dude, victim blaming is not cool in the slightest.
I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t done anything wrong; I was literally just walking on the side of the road and this guy tries to tell me, and anyone around, many of which were filming the confrontation as I now noticed, that I was an evil master. What the hell? Gallant must have gotten an answer back, as he exploded into action and fired a blue bolt of something at me, and then without pause snatched Kid Win and proceeded by running for the hills.
The bolt of light does nothing to me, the impact dampeners barely registering a load and I don’t feel any different either. But his attack was not the problem here. The problem was that I just got mistaken for a villain master and tinker by a publicly trusted source while being observed by dozens. My image was dead in the water and the PRT and the local gangs would be after me before the hour is over. All because Kid Win had gotten horny looking at me. To be fair, that was only half his fault and half that of his power that showered him in inspiration because he was looking at the best piece of tech there was. Or he did, before they pulled a runner.
Closely followed by every single bystander, mothers and children included. All run screaming from me in fear. I was left standing on a comically empty street, frozen in disbelief my mouth hanging open. Mother communicate something that I toke to mean ‘as expected of humans, dumb as bricks’ and I really couldn’t disagree. As in a trance I turn around and walked in the direction of the beach. Maybe staying under water was not such a bad idea after all.