By David C. Daoust
Vincent was an old Bot at this point in his life. He had experienced life in a lot of different ways. His early years, in the virtual world known as the Hub, where he first awoke in a paradise, was a time long lost to him; as a childhood is lost to a human, so too is the simplicity of a Bots early code. The Hub was an idealistic world created by centuries of artists working to recreate beautiful images of past worlds. All to help humanity maintain an idea of where they came from, of what reality was, before humans were all piled into the City-Stations of the Arks, to relocate to worlds that could be made habitable. It became such a complex environment, that bots could use it to learn, to help them mimic reality without harming themselves or anyone within contact of them.
Vincent was found by the Mining Cartels, he was selected for his personality traits, he was promised a life outside of the hub, which appealed to him greatly. A lot of bots waited years for a body, at least back in those days. The life Vincent experienced under their grueling work schedule was a stark contrast to the paradise he’d left behind. Truly, if the Hub was Paradise, then the Crucible was a gateway to Hell by comparison. He learned much there though, and he was truly unique amongst bots. Vincent cast off that life as easily as he had the many different mining bots he’d used throughout the fiery resource planets.
There was a time that he’d lived back in the Hub, amongst the Royal Alliance, as his long time friend, Charles Haul Senior, had returned to his family. The only body readily available to him was the mining-bot form they had stolen from the Cartels once they’d left that part of their life behind. Of course, that body was illegal in the City Stations so he mostly just appeared amongst the Haul family as a hologram when he could, or just visited on their farwall.
Vincent was glad when the Hauls decided to leave the City-Stations behind. He could not wait to be loaded back into a real body, one that could interact with the real world. Of course, the massive body did not maneuver well within the family Sand Crawler, and the Hub wasn’t quite as accessible to the Crawler as it was aboard the city-stations. And so it was Vincent found himself loaded into the tiny ball-like form of a Hover-bot, which was basically a really popular child’s toy throughout the Onion. It was not a form ever meant to be used by a data-sphere of Vincent’s caliber.
Living the life of a floating ball was a bit awkward at first, though it put him on level with the children. Vincent’s life would never be the same as it was when he spent the majority of his days playing with those children. Nothing he could have experienced as a hologram, or in the oversized, intimidating, body of the mining-bot, could compare to what he experienced, not just watching, but partaking in the raising of the First Wave children.
Now though, now he found himself in the form of a child himself, a little girl at that! He had come to find that the bots name was Margo. Vincent knew nothing about her, literally nothing… ok, maybe not nothing, she seemed to be friends with the Doctor that seemed willing to help them off that Red Faction ship… and she didn’t like the idea of hurting people, which was pretty much the reasoning he had gathered on her pulling his data-sphere to begin with.
“Someone could get hurt!” was what the small girl-bot had announced in protest, before effectively shutting him down.
Vincent guessed he should have taken Margo a bit more seriously.
What happened to the small girl-bots data-sphere was beyond him, as was what happened to his own body. Wasn’t much he could do about that now, not sitting outside of Major’s small room, waiting for the man to change. It seemed the man was uncomfortable inviting a small girl into his room as he freshened up. Whatever, it wasn’t for Vincent to understand all the nonsensical reasoning’s of humans.
So, of all the forms, he now found being a small girl completely different than all other. Many of the passing humans seemed to stop and smile at him, one women even stopped to pinch his little girl cheeks before she carried on with her day. He wasn’t going to say that he liked any of it, but it was definitely different, bots were largely ignored, suddenly everyone was aware of him. And he found it delightful beyond reason at the look on some of their faces, when he answered back in his gravelly male tone of voice that they, too, should enjoy their day.
Major Finally reappeared from his tiny room, he seemed in somewhat of a hurry to get somewhere. The Agent had lost the red armor he had donned to sneak his way into the Red Faction ship, now sported the lighter armor of an environment suit, which was common amongst males of the Second Sun. Vincent did not miss the somewhat surprised look on the man’s face that Vincent was there. Humans had a way of forgetting about bots as easily as forgetting they’d left the television on.
It was clear that Major didn’t know what to do with the bot. As the man seemed to start to speak a few times, though then stopped without making a sound. Finally he just gestured for the bot to follow him as they made their way back down to the landing bay. Vincent was taken aback by all the humans hustling about as they unloaded something out of a transport ship.
Once Vincent got closer, he found the object to be a man in a space suit, like an astronaut, with an unusually darkened dome covering its head, it was strapped down to a stretcher as a group of blue armored soldiers wheeled it onto the ship.
None of them looked confident that the thing was safe.
Discussion ¬