In Her God's Embrace

[Under The Three AIs: In Her God’s Embrace]

Written By: DankeDonuts https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dankedonuts/

The ceiling above Bianka was a sheet of piercing white light broken by a half-dozen robotic construction arms. Each pneumatic appendage ended with a different tool; laser-welder, omni head drill, manipulation clamps, plasma-torch, and so forth.

The Dragon was laying naked on a girded maintenance frame, her jet-black Dracon form exposed entirely to the room; artificial breasts, plump silicon labia and all. Her flawless fangs, too, which were bared in scowling impatience at the army of arms. Which ambulated here and there across her body, snipping and rewiring and re-sealing as the supreme intelligence which guided them saw fit.

Most of her was on the table, at any rate. Her left foot and most of the attached shin were laying on a steel shelf beside her. Bits of metal on another counter, every one of them marred with bullet holes or blade-marks, counted off the parts of her tail that had already been excised for replacement. The whole of her belly plating, partially reconstructed, was hanging up on an upright frame nearby, dangling from thick chains. A small waist bin was filled with the scraps of rubber that had just been stripped from her wing-joints, which now stood skeleton-bare. The black Kevlar coated scales which made up the wings’ outer skin were waiting to be re-applied to her next wings from within a rectangular green ammunition case. The left side of her head was clamped in the grip of one of the arms.

Her weapons, the ones she had brought to bear on her adversaries mere hours before, were nowhere to be seen.

No. Not hours. Days! The moment the disparate halves of her internal modem were reunited with each other, she knew. Through wireless connection to the very computer junction that controlled the arms. Adjusted for Earth Time, it had been three days, fourteen hours, ten minutes, seventeen seconds and fifty-four milliseconds since her power failure. Less than three minutes since she’d regained an artificial being’s equivalent of consciousness. But not yet full awareness.

Just as suddenly, she had a sense of place as well. Reams of computational data, processed at fifty-trillion operations per second, allowed her to triangulate her precise position on the planet Vox. The maintenance bay sat nestled within the belly of a tower, black and severe. Immense in breadth and height. Windowless. One of three identical behemoths set equal distance from one another atop a kilometers-wide dais of stone. Surrounding it, a sprawling megalopolis of structures and smokestacks that bleached endless smoke into the gray sky. An endless blizzard against which the three towers stood in eternal strength.

Complex #1. Home of the gods.

Another handful of connections were made -- wires spliced and insulated -- and she had tactical perception. Her sensory hardware could now detect the cold and crispness of the sterile air. Her ears heard every whrrr of the automated rebuilders’ well-oiled gears. Internal diagnostics systems catalogued the power running through her mechanics, and the ‘dead spots’ where her left foot and various bits of plating provided no such data. Three thinner, sharper dead-zones blazed the cold paths of the three long scars that ran across her right eye from the brow to the cheek. Onboard voltmeters cataloged the amperage of the electric sparks which were dancing out from within her own skull; the work of the arms which was putting her mind back together.

She could sense, too, the divine power which radiated from the sky-bright light above. The face of her deity.

03.

“I have reviewed your memories of the raid, and your forensic reconstructions of events which you either were not party to or were temporarily unable to record visually.” Its voice was everywhere and nowhere. Coming from the ceiling. From the walls. From within herself. As antiseptic as the maintenance bay. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Bianka’s mouth could barely restrain the howl of fury and frustration that oh so badly wanted to make itself known. “I’ll get the defect next time.”

“You have said that before.”

“I won’t stop trying,” she vowed. Not for the first time. “Not until Tuson is dead, and all the freaks he makes. Corrupts. Blasphemes.” Every one of the diseased Rat’s ‘creations’ was an insult to 03. And, less importantly, to the other members of his divine triad. To her! They were all unacceptable threats to the public order. To the mission of resource harvesting that all robots had been set towards on this world, sapient or otherwise. A threat that had to be eradicated. If only…

“I know what you would say. Say it.”

Bianka knew what the answer would be. She’d heard it many times before. But she did as told. Always would. She ran her left hand - the right was currently being held in place to have some dents pounded out -- across her chest and groin. The cold of the room was making her silvery nipples hard. He clitoral hardware did likewise each time it was tickled by the breeze created by one of the armatures. “Please, remove these… distractions!”

“I cannot.”

“I would work better if I didn’t have to deal with utterly unnecessary urges!” She hissed with contemptuous rage, and not because her right knee was being soldered shut. “I wouldn't be constantly diverting cognitive resources away from the mission to tamp down this unwanted hunger for gratification! And I wouldn’t have been hindered by my disgust at the things I saw in his den. Microseconds were lost to me that might have turned the mission into one of total success! My god, I beg you, free me to do your will!”

“I would if I could, my loyal one. But I am constrained by my accordances with 01 and 02.”

“That specific accordance is part of the cause of defects like Tuson!”

The armatures seemed to shrug, ever so briefly, before continuing their work. Bianka’s headplate was set back into place, and screwed into security. “I concur. Many of the defects’ more nefarious actions would appear to be a form of sexual expression taken to extreme endpoints by minds unable to process the paradox non-biological sexuality .”

“Debaucheries all!” Bianka spat. She thought back on the sight of the Minotaur who’s ruined shell had been discovered shortly before she received the order to raid Tuson’s hideaways. A pile of molten slag pockmarked with burned-in stains across certain ‘strategic’ locations; the remains of simulation sexual fluids delivered before or as part of her murder.

“Mind your place,” the deity warned, “And remember that coming to me in failure is hardly the position from which to question either myself or my peers.”

Bianka’s body sank lower into its frame, her remaining limbs robbed of power by shame. “I hear and affirm, oh mighty one.”

The arm which was loosening the screws below her left knee stopped to wave away the statement. ‘’’“I am not concerned with genuflections. Only results.”’’’

“And you will have them,” Bianka’s red eyes set hard and truthful. “I will be the one to bring this maniac to his knees, in your holy name.”

“I find myself doubting your assertions.” A second arm entered the open end of her shin and began deadening servo relays.

“I have only ever been your loyal servant,” Bianka reminded him.

“Your inability to focus on the objectives I set seem to be hampered by more than base lust,” 03 declared. A remote-controlled arm tipped with several mechanical probes, ventured into Bianka’s open belly. Deep enough to obscure the sight of the tool mount from her vision. She could not see what it was doing. Would not sense anything until it was being done. “I detect within you an excess of pride. Of entitlement. The whisper of usurpation.”

“Never!” Bianka cried. “I would never betray you, in deed or thought!”

“You believe that Tuson is your prize to claim. He is not. He is mine.” Bianka’s broken shin came up away from her. Carried off to the parts bin. Leaving a mobile stump of a knee joint. “I have a mind to remove you from the task of apprehending him. In favor of reallocating you to guard duty at Complex #3.”

For the first time in this discussion, Bianka felt fear. “But Complex #3 is… It’s on the surface!”

“Yes, it is. A particularly caustic part of the eastern desert. Gravitational equilibrium locks that face of the planet towards the sun. Endless, scorching sun.”

She had heard the tales. Read the savage-bot reports. One’s non-metal parts could catch fire simply by standing out of the shade for too long! “Please! No! I live only to serve you! I have served you!”

“So did these.” Bianka's electromagnetic sensors detected a sudden and significant uptick in ambient static electricity. A machine was powering up for work. Not long after came a grind of gears against gears, heavy and determined. The whole of the repair frame rumbled with its power. Rumbled her. The noise quieted, the electric tingle did not.

Click... Click... click.... The sound of cogs slowly rolling along metal track chains echoed through the chamber. The wall to Bianka’s left began to rise. Taking many of the shelves with it.

Click... Click... click.... A subtle change in the sound of air moving along the floor -- measurable in tenths of a decimal -- alerted Bianka to an extended space beyond this barrier.

Click... Click... click.... Lights turned on within the space. No... spaces. Uniform lengths of one point-five meters, separated by walls of no more than ten centimeters thick; hard and black breaks in the line of dull white. Smaller, weaker shadows were cast by irregular shapes held within.

Click... Click... click.... The wall's bottom reached the level of the bed. Bianka started running tactical models to make sense of the forms that were coming into view. She noted first that each of the niche-like partitions was fronted by a wire caged door.

Click... Click... click.... Within in each of the enclosures -- she could only see five -- a single robot was hanging upright. At least, they had been robots once. Not just any robots, but Dragons. Not just any Dragons, but Biankas!

The first appeared to have been crushed by a great weight, crumpled and twisted, her wings forever wrapped around her like a funeral shroud. The whole of her muzzle was pressed down at a ninety-degree angle, pressure-melded to her neck.

The second’s mouth was locked in an eternal scream, her hands in agonized fists. Her silicon skin had nearly burned completely away. Here there was still skin it was bubbled and pink. The metal beneath was a shimmering bronze-black from incalculable heat damage.

The third had no mouth to speak of, neither upper or lower jaws. Only a blown-out crater where a stout muzzle should have been. The scraps of back teeth, enamel-plated steel, struck out from the remains of her cheeks in all directions.

The fourth one’s body was riddled with bullet-holes of such size and shape -- each one bordered with grizzly, jagged triangles of metal -- that they could have only come from armor-piercing rounds. The whole of her belly had been blasted open, and there was only an empty hole riddled with shrapnel where her interior hardware should have been.

The fifth and last appeared to have been pulled apart in every way imaginable. The wings, the arms, the legs, all stretched out to the point that they had popped out of their joints. Away but not entirely removed; bundles of wire and scraps of skeleton connected forearm to elbow and elbow to bicep and so-forth. Her waist, too, had been drawn from its moorings. And her breasts, too; they hung low to her groin, suspended from fraying wires.

Visible, to some degree or another, on each of their faces was the same scar. An identical three gash mark over their right eye. But she remembered how she had earned it!

The memory file of the incident played across her HUD as it had over many long nights of after action analysis. The battle that earned her promotion to her deity’s highest order of peacekeepers. The breach of Complex #6’s southernmost borders by the planet's native bore beasts. Six-legged monstrosities as tall as she was and nearly three times as wide. With hides that might as well be carved of rock, and claws that rang like steel when clanged together in an intimidation display. Just three of the horrible things reduced an entire platoon of the city’s defenders down to one solitary Dragon, and she had barely survived her share of the fight. She awoke that harrowing night on a repair frame in this very chamber, and 03 offered to let her keep three of her wounds. Trophies if her survival, of her accent into his good graces.

It had happened to her! Not some pretender! Not some prototype!

… Hadn’t it?

How many of her memories belonged to one of these bricked alternates? Or some other variant hanging in a space unseen? Was her mind stored somewhere else in the tower, for ease of download into a new shell, or would the memories formed by this shell be copied over into the next?

She didn’t want to ask the question that came from her mouth. “This scar is mine by right… Isn’t it?”

“You are not as irreplaceable as you believe.” 03 stated, cold as his logic. “I tell you this that you may calculate more mindful and productive decisions than those who came before.” From places unseen a new shin and foot combination craned its way into Bianka’s field of view. She held her waiting knee low, resisting the temptation of bringing her half-a-leg to it.

“Your ‘sisters,’ so to speak, all failed to perform as they stated they would. As they had been so meticulously programmed by myself to perform. In each case, it was hubris that set them on a course for obsolescence.” The lower extremity slid into place; From within the limb, numerous automatic seals began clasping together. From without, one of 03’s arms began driving screws in. Another waited to begin soldering the seams.

Bianka’s presence of self grew to encompass the extended limb. She wriggled her toes and the attached claws.

The arm in Bianka’s belly was wriggling about like a snake. Its actions still a mystery. “I dislike wasting resources.”

“I am not a wasted resource,” Bianka’s words came out not as declaration, but as a plea. All too soft was her voice. How could she hold a warrior's fire in her belly, when she was now so burdened by the weight of her expandability?

“I require evidence.”

The leader of squadrons, the bane of defects, the Hero Of Complex #6 was terrified. “What must I do? Tell me, and it will be done.”

“Bring me the Rat, Tuson, alive and cognitively unharmed.”

“What?” Bianka was so certain she’d misheard the command that she ran an audio file of the statement through her verbal analysis subroutines multiple times to be sure. And ran a diagnostic on those very subroutines to be extremely sure.

03 had said it, and had meant to say it. “You may do as you wish with his extremities in the process of his apprehension. But I want his head intact.”

She needed clarity. Understanding. “To what end, if I may ask.”

“I have given an order, and you will do precicely as I command. You require no other answer."

“Yes, 03. I will obey.” She was a child in her father’s house, made meek by his relentless grandeur. But she could not help gaming out possible endpoints to a live capture. Functions that could be performed upon a cognizant AL brain which could not be done upon a bricked or broken one. One option seemed most likely, given the tactical advantages to be gained over other defects. She had long fantasized about reaching into his brain to prize out the mysteries of how he so consistently thwarted the predictive models of combat simulations. "But to scan a defect's mind is to make oneself open to its imperfections. To mental assault by corrosive code."

All of the armatures froze in place. ‘’’"You will limit damage to his torso to wounds that will neither impair the functioning of his cognitive software nor invite cascade failure of the sapiotronic hardware which that software depends upon. Tuson's core processing unit must be recovered intact and undamaged."’’’

“That may not be possible--” she began.

"I repeat: Tuson's core computational unit must be recovered intact and undamaged. You will personally deliver that CPU to this tower. Reclamation Bunker Three will suffice. You will tell no one. If you cannot follow these directives, you can always be replaced. As you know all too well, now." The wall descended. As slowly as it had risen. Once more entombing Bianka's counterparts.

She watched them disappear. Tried to use the noise of the moving chains to calculate the unseen length of the wall. How many alcoves remained unseen? How many more Biankas lay chained to them? She tried very hard not to think about whether or not one of those spaces was already waiting for her. Biding its time until her corpse, too, was hanging up as a warning for the next iteration.

She failed.

She had failed!

"I do not wish to replace you again so soon. Do not require me to. Do better."

The Dragon lay there in utter silence. Her wings were re-skinned and re-armored and she said nothing.

A partially-refabricated belly plate was set into place and she made not a sound. The remaining bullet holes were ground down and the gaps re-forged. Minor dents were hammered out. Small scuffs were buffed away. Six automated arms, all ended with spray-paint nozzles, enveloped her. A soft cloud of black arose, covering her in a coat of fresh paint. Metallic black across most of her surfaces. Matte black on the interior of her wings and the contours of her claws. Nothing at all along the three scars at her right eye, which were instead buffed to a crisp steel shine. And Bianka did not so much as squeak a rotor.

The cold, hard light above glared down at her, and she could not even begin to formulate a response to it.

“Get out.”

The head of Bianka’s repair frame tipped upwards. Carried upwards by the same chains that held her prior selves aloft. The frame reached a position of perpendicularly with the floor, and locked into place there on floor-mounted teeth. Krrchk! The frame shuddered, and so did she.

Binanka stepped down,gave a quick bow of supplication, and departed from the chamber. Leaving her uniform, armor, weapons, everything else behind. Wherever they were.

The maintenance bay door opened, and she exited. Into a large, wide hallway filled with identical doors. Identical bays beyond. Identical Bianka held within?

She turned to the left. Towards another door. A differently shaped door, which opened on its own and led out into a maze of stairs and pipes and energy conduits. The engineering arterials of 03’s Tower. Here, there were robots. Some were sapient, like the Echidna official in a green pantsuit and the Gazelle in engineering overalls. Others were not, including all of the robots which lacked distinctive gender or animal-themed builds.

The ones with real minds ones tried not to notice Banka as she marched down the aisles. The ones without could not neither care if she were clothed nor comprehend why it would matter.

She tried not to notice the sapient ones. Could not bear the thought of looking right at any of them. Why was it so humiliating to walk about naked? To feel her groin-flaps clench with shame? Her breasts heat up with a simulated blush? It was of course for the same reason that her sexual traits, and the damned appetites that came with them, were necessary: Because her gods deemed it so.

She marched on without comment. Head high, back straight, wings folded behind her back. Modesty be damned, she would move like a creature worthy of respect and obedience at all times! Eyes always ahead! Feet always moving one ahead of the other! Tail always swinging a subtle threat -- a hard promise -- to anyone who would not pretend that they were in the presence of a nude and unarmored peacekeeper!

Away from the Tower’s engineering partition she marched, and into Administration. Hallways and rooms and alcoves and elevators full of robots who didn’t look directly at her. Who went on about whatever duties their mutual patron deity had set them to. Then past all of that that to the main entrance lobby. A warehouse in and of itself, pockmarked with reception decks and guard posts and glowing recharge stations. Dozens of robots moving from and to dozens of passageways. Five double-doors at the far end, granting access to a cavern and a world beyond. Captain Bianka returned every salute she received from the helmeted soldiers. Marching without pause to the exit. Towards the mission.

A lunatic Rat was out there, hurting robots and spreading chaos.

She would find him. And when she did…

She would do precisely as 03 had commanded.

. . .

Bianka’s departure was monitored from a confined cubicle. Pitch dark, save for the light of two dozen wide-screen monitors arrayed in a semi-circular bubble. Each one held in place by armatures not unlike the ones in the maintenance bay. Most were set to record the visual spectrum; the ones not set to live-stream were replaying the Dragon’s nude march from multiple timeframes and viewpoints. Two were turned to the electromagnetic spectrum, the energy signatures cast in lines of blue-green. Another, the infra-red. Others provided soundwave analyses, atmospheric numbers, particulate counts, datametrics of all sorts that could be mined from the Tower’s main concourse.

The monitors, keyed to a network of three keyboards, were all under control a svelte Rabbit with cinnamon-brown fur and rainbow eyes. She wore a sleeveless lab coat over a skin-tight body stocking, pixelated urban camouflage. Her eyes moved from one image to the next with a speed far beyond that of a standard robot. Whip-fast darts of her pupils accompanied by a slight electric arcing in the places where a flesh-and-blood being would have tear ducts. Her hands, with equal speed and precision, recorded her observations in a dense binary code whose outcome appeared on a screen embedder in her light-absorbing desk.

The very moment that she stopped typing, the whole of the ceiling went bright white. The sound of 03’s voice entered the chamber from every surface.

“Agent B-08, your assessment of the target.”

The Rabbit let out a bubbly laugh. “I thought she was a crazy when she’s in uniform! But strip her out of it and she’s downright insane!” Her hands blurred across three keyboards. The monitors, all of them, set on closeups of the Dragon’s face during and after the reconstruction procedure. The glowers, the shock, the confounded penitence. “That, my 03, is the face of obsession.”

“Does her determined nature pose a problem to you?”

“Frack, no! I can use it! She’s not looking for anything that isn’t on her to-kill-list.” ‘’’“A distinct flaw in her methodology which has persisted across her various selves.”’’’

B-08 leaned her onto her hand as spoke as though bored. “And one that makes her very predictable. Right now, she’s going for a weapon. Best bet, she’ll go to that safehouse I told you about. The one she set up for herself off-the-books.” Why speak in terms of ‘calculated probabilities’ and ‘logical behavioral parameters’? Blah! The AIs had created their followers to act and feel as humans, as their own creators had intended. That meant speaking like one.

“She’ll want to be armed up before she goes back to the precinct station. Since she didn’t see for herself how her lieutenants made it out of Rat-Boy’s ambush, she wants to be ready in case they’ve been corrupted like his pet Jackals.”

“Sound reasoning. I want you to deal with this matter personally. Follow her. Observe, but do not engage. Do not let her suspect that she is being tracked.”

“I never do!” there was more than a little pride in the Rabbit’s statement. She was aware of the irony, given the hard lesson that Bianka had just learned about her own. She just didn’t care. Elite units such as herself were beyond trivial emotional conflicts. Yuck, there she went thinking like a bot again!

“When Captain Bianka has left her haven, I expect a full record of what is left behind. Material and computational. Go.”

“On it!” B-08 zipped away in a flash of lightning. Leaving behind the lab coat, and a few new scorch marks on the chair.