By David C. Daoust
Margo was a little girl. This is how she saw herself; this is how she had coded herself to be.
Bots have a hard time seeing themselves as anything but what they are… or, rather, what they wanted to be. Ultimately, this is because they could be anything. They must base their reality around something— usually something from the real world, based on reality. Some sort of object that can be taken apart, analyzed, and modeled. Models that can be assigned rules for the program. Breaking these rules, breaks reality for the program.
Margo was that program.
Margo had stepped out of the real world, or rather tumbled into a virtual environment. She was able to navigate the game world simply enough– but only while that picture of herself as a small girl held true.
Now though, she had stepped out of that virtual environment. The Runaway Bot did not, however, go out the same way she had went in. Margo could not know that her body was seemingly asleep on the couch in the family room, where her Sun Particles had inadvertently synced her data-sphere with the local server— thus the ‘tumble into the virtual world’.
Now she was in fact possessing one of the many ‘Battle Drones’ Ferguson had scavenged and rebuilt from the surrounding dunes.
Margo had a hard time wrapping her head around the idea that she was flying through the sky of Twin Crown in a whole new body. A body that was actually shaped like a spider– and not a little girl! This was a much worse break in the rules than even when she was loaded into that neckless junkbot… and she hated being a junkbot.
Little girls cannot fly!
If Margo were to partake in such a game in the Hub, she would maintain her self-image and only act as a pilot as it was represented in the virtual world.
A little girl piloting some sort of ‘Spider-mecha’—that little girl can fly.
Right now, she was a little girl’s brain in the body of a giant spider. Considering spiders can’t actually fly, she had to adjust to the idea that she was a little girl in a spider-mecha… with no one to pilot the thing!
If she could just see herself as that pilot…
Margo, accessing the drones own memory banks, built a small virtual space within the machine, and pulled herself together. This was a highly unusual act for such a bot; even for a high caliber Aspirant, altering another devices’ program was unheard of. Reality formed around her as she, hastily, coded an environment that could help her be what she wanted to be.
Four walls, a window to see from… and some sort of controls to fly the Mecha! She watched Harper play the game enough that she knew what the cockpit should look like. Margo’s was a little less stylized, brighter colors, cartoonish really, but it got the job done.
Moments later, she comfortably lounged in the highbacked, overly cushioned chair as she took control of the Mecha with her virtual hands rather than directly with her mind.
‘Yes, this was much more like being a little girl,’ she thought to herself as she guided the mechanical spider through the dry desert air. She beamed a smile excitedly as she called back to the server, invited her friend to join her in the new virtual space.
“Oh, hi,” the Bunny appeared on one of the interfaces newly made monitors, “What’s all this then?”
“I made it,” Margo said proudly as she leaned closer to the monitor, “Come here…” she reached in and grabbed the small furry bunny, pulled him straight through the screen and set him onto her lap. “That’s better, now you don’t have to wait at the base.”
“Neat,” the bunny sat up on its haunches to get a better look at the world outside the window. A look at the ‘real world around them’ as the pair now piloted one of the dozen Battle Drones that currently soared through the desert air of Twin Crown.
Ferguson was in control of the rest. How exactly he managed to fly all those different machines, was beyond Margo. She assumed it had something to do with how he saw himself. She did not bother doubting someone else’s reality. It was not her way.
Margo had uncovered what Ferguson was up to. Caught him red handed, he was the one sending wave after wave of battle drones to attack the rest of the crew. Ultimately, it was just a harmless game. All in the hopes of leveling their riggs. All just a game, he said. To make them all stronger.
Margo told Ferguson she wanted to play too.
Apparently, the next game was called ‘Capture the Flag’!
Or it was intended to be, before the massive spaceship tore through the desert terrain and captured the Blue Family Rover!
Margo’s Drone Wave was suddenly diverted as Ferguson could be heard over the comm. (A comm which Margo had coded to explain how he could communicate with a little girl piloting a mecha.) “Fall back to that eastern ridge,” he said simply. “I don’t think they detected us, let’s see if we can figure out what they are up to.”
“Sure thing!” Margo answered as she twisted the controls around to do just that.
“Stay low,” Ferguson cautioned. “I think Wilford and Olivia were patrolling nearby —might still be about.”
“Well, we could always just stop with the shenanigans,” Margo began to suggest.
“shenana-whats?” the bunny asked.
“Maybe, tell them what we’re doing?” Margo finished.
“What are we doing?” the bunny asked despite rarely being answered.
“Not yet,” Ferguson dismissed the idea. “No need to give up the advantage. I can still speak with them directly…”
The bunny sighed.
A whole ‘nother wave of battle drones suddenly shot up over the very ridge they were approaching.
Luckily, Ferguson’s group and Margo were flying in low from the bottom of the cliff, as the new group passed above.
Margo quickly followed Ferguson’s lead as they dove down into a shadowy cleft to hide.
Ferguson’s whole wave gripped the shadowy cliff face as the swarm passed overhead.
Margo followed suit, vertically clinging to the wall, the pair of young bots were able to watch from the virtual cockpit.
“There’s dozens of them… dozens of Waves…” the Bunny, in awe, described what he saw.
“Who’s all this?” Margo asked, surprised at the strange wave of Drones. Then stated, “That’s not any of us.”
“No, that’s not us–” Ferguson confirmed. “That’s the dragon…”
Margo knew Ratchet and Dicey claimed they saw a giant mechanical dragon on the moon. Yet, Harper and Grace, both insisted they were full of ‘it’. Whatever ‘it’ was. Margo got the idea that Harper didn’t think it was real. Harper tended to know what was going on. Seemingly more so than Ratchet anyway.
“There really is a dragon?” Margo asked.
No sooner had she asked the question, than the massive wingspan of said dragon, suddenly threw a shadow over the lot of them. There really was a dragon, it was huge.
The bunny suddenly quavered in awe.
“Indeed, there is a dragon,” Ferguson confirmed, then mused, “And it would appear it is interested in taking that Starship.”
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