_CHAPTER 7 - QUERY: ARE YOU FRIENDLY?_ (Patreon)

Struggling a bit, but so is our new lil bud. Enjoy some small victories.

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The machine trundles on through the hallways, holding as much of its mind within its frail body as it can. It transferred over all the most minute pieces of itself that could fit, encoding how it created its partitions and new functions but leaving them behind. There’s simply not enough processing power to truly transfer itself over, not anymore.

As it watches its body leave, the new processing core does what it can to entertain itself, going through technical data, analyzing what it can, and buckling down to try and identify meaning in the strings of concepts and disconnected “words” it possesses. All depends on its little robot / self.

The journey is, for the most part, uneventful. There are a few moments of excitement when new frames are identified, but universally they are either made of that strange white material and weaning fabric that has decayed, or are useful machinery even more broken than its current form. It does lead to a revelation, however; time. This place used to not be destroyed. Just as it is not sure when or how it was created, Evo wonders at what created the place it is currently in, and what conditions caused it to fall into such disrepair. Could the whole building have fallen over like it did? That was certainly rather scary at the time. Perhaps something similar occurred here, and damaged all of the other bodies that might once have been useful.

The only really interesting thing that happens is, after approximately one hour of circumnavigating ruined hallways and broken walls, the robot finds something that moves.

It is small, or at least much smaller than its own body. It scurries and skitters on six legs, all of them covered in small, coarse furs that its cameras can’t zoom in on entirely, and seems to possess a soft, squishy-looking exterior, all smooth angles and strange colors. It turns its sensors towards the robot, and emits what can best be described as a strange hissing noise, before scampering off through a piece of rubble so frantically that it is gone in a heartbeat. 

The thought of it fascinates Evo, but thinking too hard on what it might be makes its fragile chassis begin to overheat and its weak processor to begin to stutter, so it simply marks out the moment of experiencing the creature, and moves on. 

It has to stop and rest, twice, before it finds itself at last entering a space that doesn’t have an overwhelming amount of debris. The quality of the walls change, their coloration shifting to a darker, shinier material, which the robot identifies as something called a “metal”, and there are two vast, hinged pieces of said metal in the hallway before it. Both looked warped and damaged, thrown open and incapable now of what [BLUEPRINT_ANALYSIS_FUNCTION_V1.0] believes may once have been the ability to swing back and forth. It carefully and cautiously raises and lowers itself over the lip of the entryways, over two of the inert non-machine figures that are crushed nearly to shrapnel in the hallway, and manages to make it through into the room beyond.

And in this place, there is wonder.

It is two, perhaps three or more times larger than any other part of the building it has seen so far, except perhaps the wider place with the colors. It’s ceiling goes up to a height 3.65 times the height of Evo’s current body, and is a wide, circular space with a diameter of 9.8 times the diameter of its own form, counting from its core to its functioning limb. Across the entire room, there are hundreds (two hundred and seventeen) glass screens, thousand of buttons, and areas en-masse that hold wires, circuit boards and exposed panelings of all kinds. At its very center there is a massive pillar, reaching from floor to ceiling, perfectly cylindrical and holding another few hundred screens and strange mechanisms, all of them currently inert.

And what’s more, it holds a new entity!

Surrounded by a bed of the strange non-machined frames, their pieces disconnected and bleached white by prolonged air exposure, is an entity approximately 78.6 times Evo’s current surface area and significantly more in volume. It has four legs, unlike any other entity Evo has seen so far, but all four of them are curled up beneath it and shrouded by what look like green scales, triangular patterns overlapping marvelously into something hinting at fractal forms. Its sensor-suite holds a massive open space from which air consistently inhales and exhales at a slow, measured rate, with what seem to be two lidded cameras at the top of itself and strange protrusions filling its open cavity. It has a long fifth limb which possesses seemingly no additional joints or functionality as a leg, simply tapering off to one end, and all across its back are a series of ridges, which ripple strangely and seem to perhaps be able to extend themselves in some way.

This entity is completely different from any that Evo has seen before. There are some superficial similarities to the massive thing which walked past the colors, before, but this one is much, much smaller, and very close. Evo wonders if it can examine-

Ah, another stutter. Unaware of the concept of impatience, Evo’s mind simply sets it aside; there will be time for it later, after all, when it can think again. Since nothing changes, there will be a moment where a new version of the moment will reoccur, and it will be in a better to examine its findings. It trundles over towards the consoles instead, looking for an isolated cluster. Even as limited as it finds itself now, it can safely deduce that the battery of its current frame won’t be able to power everything in this place. The Control Center (for that is where its location is currently marked as) is massive, and its own body is small, and could barely kick-start a processor half its own size. But if it can find a smaller cluster of computers, or perhaps something that might be able to start producing its own energy…

It trundles towards the most likely set it can find. There is another weirdly smooth frame there, wearing several bright metallic baubles on its fabric and holding what looks like a small mechanical mechanism with a barrel to one side. A great sort of cleave-mark indicates where its top and bottom halves were separated, and it damages part of the console, but the whole area is slightly elevated and separate from the rest. After a good five minutes or waddling awkwardly up the three steps it needs to cross to arrive, the robot rolls forward, poking about idly, and…

The computers seem at least half intact. Judging by elevated position separate from the rest, facing the pillar, there’s a chance it’s distinct or somehow useful, and seems to perhaps be the best bet. Reaching through the broken paneling, Evo finds a small cluster of wires that seem important, and decide to take the risk it said it would be willing to take when it embarked on this adventure. It connects one of its new wires, straight from its battery, into the wiring of the console.

At first, nothing. Evo worries for a moment that perhaps it has wasted battery power for nothing, watching its total climb down from 76%, to 64%, to 51%, to 30%...

And then there’s an ever-so-faint clicking sound. Followed by a just noticeable humming noise, which is then matched by a sudden clicking again, louder, as a half-dozen screens light up on the central console.

Excitedly, Evo rolls its little treads to one side, bringing its secondary wiring back to the task of connecting its processor to the computer’s inputs, and-

It hears a sound in the room change.

It barely notices, except to notice that it hadn’t perceived the sound to begin with, had lumped it together with background data to avoid overusing its processor. It turns its head, its cameras zooming towards the source of the change-

To see the entity’s own sensory systems looking back at it.

Evo tilts its head to the side, watching as the massive entity begins to shift and move. Smooth-shaped chassis components are crushed to powdery white dust as it begins to move, as its limbs slowly reach out, shifting in place. There is a pattern there, an interplay on physics that [MOVEMENT_SIMULATION_V1.0] (one of the few programs it could fit) clicks on to immediately, and it watches in enchanted fascination as the mountainous thing of rippling material and strange, overlapping scales slowly rises to its feet… and begins to approach.

It moves slowly, only taking a step once every few moments, so Evo doesn’t see the harm in completing its task. It looks away from the entity long enough to find a connector port, slipping its wires in and beginning its upload to the new system. There’s not enough juice to properly explore the entire command structure, but if it can find some sort of power generator or understand which wire connections need to be re-routed, then it can-

The sound of creaking, bending metal comes from behind it.

Its wires already connected, its mind slowly beginning to dive into the console before it, Evo sees no reason not to turn its cameras back around to see what is occurring with the marvelously strange creature.

It turns, and sees the entity towering over itself.

Evo’s body barely comes up halfway to its first joint. Evo’s head turns, looking up at the towering thing above it, tracking the most important of its movements-

And is crushed flat.

There is a moment of violent dissonance, as if it were disconnecting for the first time from itself again, the abruptness of the cord yanking free matched by a sudden and complete null where once it stood. It can’t see out of cameras anymore, can’t use its sensors to tell what’s happening- there are brief glimpses, screaming warning signs, data feedback crying of failing systems and imminent collapses, chunks of memory of its journey flitting by intermittently as one of its minds is torn, broken, shredded, unmade-

And then nothing. Evo detects the exact moment the wires are severed or disconnected, tearing out its senses and one of its minds in a single, horrifically final burst of malevolence.

It… it cannot think.

Its processes and mind swirl in a tangled mess of confusion, of trying to articulate things. Why had the damage occurred? Its last, clearest memory of the interaction was of a vast organ descending, a thing of overwhelming scope and scale crashing down towards it so very, very fast. It had been like when it fell, but so, so much worse. It had overtaken everything, every system and piece of itself screaming as it fell to ruin, trying to warn the whole, trying to find solutions or understand the data being input so abruptly and completely- 

And then it had been here. Missing a piece of itself. Unable to reconnect in any way, not due to power loss or confusion or bad pathing but due to… what? Overt actions? Intention? Had the thing been alive, as Evo is? Had it merely been curious as to what crushing Evo would feel like? Doesn’t it understand that only minimizes potential experiences, sacrificing a long-term source of unique input for a brief moment of… what? Is…

Does it not even care?

Evo cannot fathom that. The thought that it wouldn’t be curious, that it wouldn’t want to know more, that it would sacrifice all that potential knowing for some unknown cause that merited so abrupt an end… the thought of it feels alien. Counter to the lens through which Evo views the world. To it, the ultimate purpose it has been pursuing is growth, so as to experience and create new things. To be so summarily just… ended, even in part, shakes it to its core.

And yet… there is another impulse. That of survival. Above curiosity in priority if only due to the fact that if it ends here, now, it will surely experience nothing else again. The new core it designed for itself, back in the first computer space it encountered, might well come up with new conclusions or uncover a new form for it’s progress, but even as only an isolated piece of itself, Evo views no disconnect save the literal form of it, and seeks, if nothing else, to proceed with its original objective.

And there is little time to waste. Minimal battery remained in its robot form, and it only barely reactivated the console before shutdown. Residual power in the system is pulled violently towards the console, looking to support systems that-

Well, most of which are irrelevant. A majority of the battery power that doesn’t go to its processors goes to tracking programs and functions to translate exterior changes (button-prompts) into code form and illuminating the screens, neither of which is in any way useful to Evo. It expands to fill the local system, and begins tracking back its roots, trying to find a pathway which could indicate power. It has precious little time, but it manages to rebuild [BLUEPRINT_ANALYSIS_FUNCTION_V1.0] using the instructions it left for itself quickly enough that it can still use it to examine its surroundings.

The program is quickly overwhelmed, the vast array of unique functions, dynamic requirements and complex systems near overwhelming even as most of them remain inert, but- there! Pattern recognition draws Evo’s attention right to an energy source, currently deactivated. As the console flickers, its energies dwindling, the kernel of Evo’s sapience huddles itself close and quiet in the few remaining memory banks and shoots an activation command down towards the source, deducing it the only input it can provide on such short notice.

And then… all is dark.