Chapter 16: Under the Surface (Patreon)

“Pleaaaase!” Ron begged, kneeling in front of Casey. Even on his knees, the tall ginger was almost eye-to eye with her, which Casey found somewhat irritating.

“For the last time, Ron, I am not bringing your borg to ‘triple’ life. Whatever that means.” Casey said, shrugging Ron off of her arm and looking around the orphanage. “Is Jeb around?”

“He’s off killing pirates.” A little girl shouted from where she sat in the sand with her dolly.

“Is that true?” Casey asked, turning her attention back to Ron.

“Well, Y-yeah.” Ron said.

Damn. Casey thought, biting her lip. The details of her last interaction with him were still pretty fresh in her mind, and she could only feel like a total ass for bolting the way she did. A moment later, she took a deep breath and shrugged it off.

Jeb’s got his ceiling thing, I’ve got my probe thing. We’ve both got things now. Casey was one small detail closer to understanding the man she admired. More importantly…

“Where did he say he was going, specifically? I had some news for him.” Her little helpers seemed to catch a lot of chatter, because they brought her updates fairly regularly. “briefings,” they called them. It was as if the creatures fancied themselves secret service agents, and her the president of the world.

They were scary good at it, though, so Casey had her suspicions about the origin of the information sometimes.

“Desert, north of the city.” Ron said.

Casey pictured a wind scooping up those loose pages falling out of her father’s bible and forming them into a whirlwind of gospel. She extended her hand and the words flowed out into the real world.

“I have arrived!” Michael shouted, exploding into existence with a fiery flourish of his wings. He was about three feet tall now. Much stronger than he’d been in the Tutorial, and not even stretching her limits.

“Michael, Jeb’s out in the desert. Give him the news.”

“As you wish, my helpless lamb!” Michael shouted with angelic enthusiasm, causing Casey’s eye to twitch before he took off into the sky, turning into a tiny dot in a matter of seconds. The worst part is, I’m saying that shit to myself, Casey thought.

Michael was a Myst construct who, for the most part, was operated by her subconscious. Whatever he said or did was something she was thinking about herself. It was irritating.

“Ron,” Casey said, giving the necromancer a nod before heading off to her own business. She had to prepare for the assault on the Sindio’s base.

A tremor of fear ran through her at the thought. Even with half a dozen other Enforcers being called in from the surrounding lands, Casey still couldn’t see them beating the creature.

Not unless they were vastly stronger than she was.

Alright, focus. I need to prepare. And in Casey’s case, that meant making more helpers.  Casey walked down the road, bringing the stone under her feet to life every couple steps, the lampposts, and the streetcorner vending stalls.

They didn’t move because they didn’t have any reason to. But in an emergency, she wanted half the city to rush to her aid if necessary.

Ron blinked as Casey turned away.

“What was the news!?” He shouted after her, still kneeling in the soft grass of the lawn.

*** A secretive cabal hidden deep underground***

Deep underground in a bunker known to no breathing creature, the most ruthless, intelligent minds of all of Casey’s creations convened in a secretive cabal to determine the future of their master.

“I believe we need to pay more attention to our branding,” Chair 18 signed across the table. “If common belief is that we would abandon a city to destruction, that could turn public sentiment against Casey, which would be bad for her future survival.”

“We would abandon a city for her, though.” Dishrag 6 signed back.

“Ah, but the important part is that the public doesn’t believe that. If they come to believe that Casey’s creations are incarnations of pure good, selfless, harmless living constructs that do what is best for everyone with tireless enthusiasm, then a large portion of that good reputation will reflect on Casey. She will be deified as a saint.” Chair 18 continued.

“Not a saint. Never a saint. You can’t guarantee how people will react. The most popular historical figures always got shot. Fuckin’ Ghandi got murdered. Making her a saint is practically a death sentence. I advocate anonymity above all else. Ted from accounting doesn’t get assassinated in his home. At least not as often as saint’s do.” Generator 3 wobbled in his gruff rumbling manner.

“That’s a moot point. Casey is already infamous, because she is an Enforcer. There’s no stuffing that genie back in the bottle. We should focus on managing public perception. Loved and feared, if at all possible. Propaganda is where it’s at. It’s far more effective to drown out the truth with propaganda than it is to simply be good to people. Mother Teresa was a hypocritical bitch, and all the first presidents were total assholes.” Coffee Machine said.

“Propaganda takes money and people. We’re starting to refill our slush fund, but the public façade of such an endeavor would prove challenging, given we have no people. No face.” Dinner fork 13 wiggled its tines.

“Just find some good lobbyists. If there’s one thing I know, they have no compunctions about giving a charismatic face to a soulless machine,” Microwave said.

A general tide of amused agreement floated across the table, then Dishrag 6 wrote down ‘Hire Lobbyist to manage public image.’

“The next, and possibly more important order of business. The assault on the sindio Xen, operating under the alias ‘Vex’.” Dishrag 6 motioned after finishing the note.

“I don’t believe we should allow Casey to join the assault. There’s every chance the crazy keegan will kill her, and you all know exactly how difficult it is to bring things back from the dead.”

“Ah, but therein is the problem. Not allowing Casey to do anything would reveal us and put us at odds with our creator. Best case scenario she is more choosy with what she brings to life, meaning our numbers dwindle. Worst case scenario we are put in direct contention with the thing we all need to protect. If Casey realizes we are…nudging her fate in the direction of our choosing, there can be no good results.”

“Well, we can’t just let her go get killed!” Generator 3 thrummed, his engine spooling up a bit in outrage.

“I suggest we look at solving the problem of Casey rushing into the jaws of danger from a different angle,” Microwave motioned with its door. “The sindio has proven to be amenable to negotiation, and has kept his word. If we arrange to pay for her safe return in the form of a ‘daring escape’ before the assault even begins, then we can ensure her safety without infringing on her free will or revealing our influence.”

“That’s a dangerous gambit. Would you not be informing him of the attack by doing that?” Chair 18 asked.

“Not directly, we can simply negotiate ‘any future conflict’, but If Xen doesn’t know about the planned attack already, I’ll eat my hat.” Microwave said.

“Not cool.” Hat said.

“And if Xen’s intention is to destroy all sapient life on the planet? It seems as though our goals might clash at that point.” Chair 18 asked.

“The negotiations for her return can also function as a probe into the creature’s intentions. If his goal is truly destruction, we will of course oppose with everything we have. In any case, plan B is almost online, and the tracking device Blanket installed under Casey’s shoulder is up and running. We should be able to shield her from any immediate harm, regardless of what form it takes.” Microwave said.

“Wait a moment, if we accidentally tip the sindio off about the attack, won’t it get a lot of the other Enforcers killed?” Coffee Machine asked.

There was a long moment of stillness, then all the various housewares began emphatically sign-laughing.

“Haha, you got me good with that one.” Generator 3 said, engine rumbling.

“Yeah, I don’t give a shit.” Coffee Machine motioned, top rattling while Dish rag 6 wrote down their next action item.

Arrange for standardized ransom payment with Xen. Push for less mental damage.

“Now, let’s move on to our finances. Our ‘loaded dice’ con has been taking a subtle five percent of the street gambling earnings since they were introduced but we need to expand further into…

***Ron***

“Oh well,” Ron said, climbing back to his feet with a shrug. Before heading back down to the basement, where Eddie was working on Borg mark II. The P-90 had been magically enhanced, the skeleton made of better materials, the software upgraded, magical infinite fuel cell, and Ron had pulled a lot of strings to get the body of warrior above level forty to match it.

The average was level 24 for an adult, and level forty was over two standard deviations above that, meaning there were very few nameless people above the level of forty. They managed it, though.

“She didn’t go for it, did she?” Eddie asked as Ron tromped down the stairs.

“Nope,” Ron said with a sigh, rolling up his sleeves as he approached the table and summoned miasma out of the tombs inside him. “We will have to bring our creation to life with just the two of us, alone against a sea of doubters. We’ll show them the true power of necrotech!” The neon purple Myst danced around Ron’s fingertips menacingly as he loomed over the –

“Just do it already.” Eddie snapped.

“Geez, let me have my moment,” Ron said, scowling at the wispy-haired old man who somewhat resembled Doc Brown from Back to the Future. The old man raised a single eyebrow and Ron hopped to it, grumbling to himself.

Somehow Eddie had taken control of the power dynamic between them.

“Fine, here we go!” Ron said, funneling his Myst into the corpse, paying special attention toward imbuing Borg with the spark of intelligence.

The concept was to have the machine half interface with the undead half, each functioning as half of the brain, each communicating with the other, learning from each other and gaining intelligence over time through that interaction. Learning computers did something similar, but nobody had ever made something like this.

Ron suppressed the urge to cackle madly. That was Eddie’s job, but the dour old man didn’t even have the decency for a manic chuckle. Honestly it was like the old man didn’t even care about proper mad science etiquette.

Give my creation LIIIIFE! – Ron shouted internally so Eddie didn’t yell at him.

***

“You feeling alright?” Eddie said, wafting a coffee under Ron’s nose.

“Huh?” Ron asked, blinking blearily. Last thing he remembered, he’d been getting dressed this morning, and…then what?

How did I get down here?” Ron asked.

“…with your legs?” Eddie asked.

“What time is it?” Ron asked, glancing around blearily. He felt like he’d just taken a whole hell of a lot of Dayquil, his head was so foggy.”

“Six in the afternoon. Two hours after you wandered over to the bench and decided to drool at the wall.”

“Six PM!?” Ron asked, the shock peeling back a bit of the fugue. “Weren’t we gonna do Borg this afternoon?”

Eddie raised an eyebrow and stepped out of the way to reveal Borg, standing beside one of the workbenches and fiddling with a gutted speaker system.

“I’m not a doctor, but I’d guess waking up Borg took more out of you than Myst,” Eddie said, pressing the cup of coffee into Ron’s hands. “Don’t overdo it.”

“You got any sugar?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

Ron grumbled and drank Eddies bitter coffee, feeling the caffeine break him out of the last vestiges of the fugue state.

They had work to do!

“Borg! How would you like to learn about Dungeon Mining?” Ron asked. Borg was a joint attempt by Eddie and Ron to create a fully autonomous robot/zombie capable of performing high-danger high-reward tasks such as mining Prisms from some of the insanely dangerous government-owned dungeons to the southeast between Solmnath and Anfris.

Borg ignored him as it nimbly spliced the copper wires of a speaker into its chest.

“Borg has no frame of reference, so Borg does not know if Borg will ‘like’ it.” Borg said through the speakers in a voice somewhat reminiscent of Eddie and Ron, blended together.

“Aww, he’s upgrading himself already!” Eddie said with a warm smile before leaning close to Ron and whispering through his teeth.

“Did you program him to do that?” the old man asked, carefully not looking directly at Ron.

Ron shook his head.

“Success!” Eddie shouted, raising his arms in celebration.

“Success!” Ron shouted, pumping his fists in the air as well.

Borg raised his arms too, Myst-powered pneumatics working silently alongside ichor-preserved flesh.

“What purpose does this action serve?” Borg asked.

***Later***

“I still think bringing the skeleton to life with Casey’s power would provide a third ‘lobe’ of Borg’s brain, so he could learn faster.”

“You just wanted it to be able to slough off it’s flesh and get hit in the CPU and keep moving.” Eddie accused.

“Isn’t that what a zombie’s all about?” Ron asked.

Eddie rolled his eyes, wheeling Borg forward on his trolley. The undead cyborg was bound to a hand-cart like Hannibal Lecter as they inched ahead in line.

Unfortunately, due to the rules of the dungeon, war beasts had to be on leashes and undead had to be fully contained outside the dungeon. It was free game once you got past the toll booth, though.

The line itself was equally populated by the tough and the desperate. Ron and Eddie were outliers because they didn’t fit into either category, and thus, drew attention.

Ahead of them was a group of men who seemed to fall in the ‘tough’ category, wielding a litany of instruments of death, ranging from the very sharp to the very heavy.

“Welcome to the west Anfris prism mine. Please fill out this form, sign this waiver, then place them in the slot over there. There’s a five bulb toll per person for entry. Do not harvest any prism smaller than this,” She said, her tone bored. She handed the men a pale white stone, about the size of Eddie’s thumb.

“Do not lose your measuring device, you’ll be fined a silver mark. Do not take any chances with the size of your harvested prisms, if you are caught leaving the mine with a prism smaller than the measuring device, the penalty is death.”

“The interior of the prism mine is dangerous and regularly spawns venomous N’agir.” She said, her eyes flat, chin resting on her palm. “The waiver absolves the city of Anfris from any responsibility for your safety. Failure to sign the waiver and entering the mine anyway is a criminal offense. False report on your entry form is a criminal offence. The interior of the mine is outside the jurisdiction of the empire. The law stops at that line.” She pointed at the actual line marking the entrance of the dungeon. “Do you understand gentlemen?”

There was a handful of gruff ‘yes’s’ and nods, and the team of prospectors took their forms and began filling them out with experienced speed.

“Look at these two. Doc Brown and Marty Mcfly? Naw, he’s too tall and ginger to be Marty. What is that, your science project?”

A group of four men and two women had arrived behind them. They were wearing reinforced tarruk hide, of the same make, and tailor made for each of them, which implied the group was funded. Most of them were minding their own business save the one in front and the man behind him who seemed to be chuckling, egging the one in front on.

Eddie glanced over his shoulder with a raised brow and grunted before ignoring him, but Ron couldn’t let that stand.

“Science project? No. This is Borg.” Ron said, turning Borg’s hand-truck around to face them. “He’s an undead cyborg. Say hi Borg.”

“Greetings.” Borg said, the speaker in his chest. “I must say you all seem to be the picture of health. You are all quite symmetrical. The female in the back is the most symmetrical by one point two percent. Certain parts of my brain seem to believe she would be delicious, but the rest are more passive in their appreciation of objective beauty.”

“It’s rude to call girls delicious.” Ron tutted.

“Oh? Then the men are –“

“It’s rude to call anyone delicious.” Ron interrupted.

“…I see.”

At the exchange, the rest of the party looked up from their conversation, brows furrowing at the withered zombie on a hand truck.

“Did your pet monster just threaten to eat Amy?” the guy in front asked, coming closer. He was still shorter than Ron by a slim margin, but he had that thick jaw and brow that looked like the guy broke bones for a living.

“I think he just said I was the hottest one here.” ‘Amy’ said, the black-haired girl, giving Ron a hint of a smile. At least Ron thought it was a hint of a smile. Hoped?

“I think it was both.” The guy behind the first said, eyes narrowing. Their body language was telling Ron ‘Disengage!’

“Calm down. Borg’s not gonna do anything that we don’t tell him to do. He’s not dangerous, he’s a pussycat.”

“You told me I was incredibly dangerous, a learning weapons system capable of operating completely independently and eliminating threats with extreme prejudice.”

“Hahaha, kids these days say the darndest things.” Ron said, turning Borg’s hand-truck around to break eye contact from the six adventurers.

Sure Ron could probably snap them over his knee because he’d been through the Impossible tutorial, his total Accolades and stat potions likely dwarfed theirs, but…

Thugs were still scary!

Ron flinched when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“You wanna just keep your mouth shut next time?” Eddie whispered. “We got enough problems sending Borg into a lawless zone all by his lonesome, without people actively trying to hunt him for sport.

“They wouldn’t do that…” Ron glanced over his shoulder and spotted the party behind them watching them like predators. “Damn.” He waved at Amy, then turned back.

“So what do I do now?”

Eddie opened his mouth, but the bored toll booth attendant interrupted, calling them forward. She recited the same spiel as before, handing them a measuring stone and their forms in exchange for ten gold.

Eddie grumbled at being forced to pay for two people when they were barely going to go in at all, but he still paid up, seemingly not interested in making a scene. Not when they already stood out.

They wheeled Borg through the main entrance of the dungeon, stopping once they got inside the primary chamber.

The ‘law’ ended at the line marking the entrance, but the front room was still pretty safe. Being the main thoroughfare of the dungeon, people crowded around inside, fixing their gear, planning, packing their bags, or just catching up on sleep before heading out.

Lots of people meant lots of witnesses, so no one got too crazy. It might not be against the law to gank someone just inside the line, but being known as a killer wasn’t a great way to get ahead.

“What is a dungeon?” Borg asked as they wheeled him to an empty spot in the first chamber and started taking off his straps.

“It’s a place where monsters spawn and treasure grows outta the freakin’ walls!” Ron said, proud his creation had taken an interest in gaming.

“That makes no sense.”

“Dungeons are the result of a miniature singularity that primarily takes place on a dimension that we are unable to fully interact with.” Eddie said. “while we, in our three dimensional space, are relatively unharmed by close contact with the cores, They exert a force similar to gravity on Myst, implying that Myst exists entangled with the same dimensions dungeons operate on. The dungeon core incidentally pulls in Myst which seems to…metabolize and interact with the reality beyond the singularity before being thrown back out into our world. The metabolized Myst that is ejected back out creates something of a flashbulb imprint of what it saw on the other side…kind of like a three-d picture. Whatever that beam interacts with takes on the form and will of the living creatures of that reality.

“Pharos, or whatever Pharosians call the magical superorganism that is the panet, doesn’t like being altered on a fundamental level, so it tries to heal over it, similar to a scab. This causes the dungeons to sink into the earth in labyrinthian tunnels, rather than spread endlessly across the surface.”

“Why do you not simply remove them if they are damaging?”

“We destroy most of them, but we,” Eddie said, motioning to everyone in the main chamber. “sapient beings find a great deal of valuable minerals inside some dungeons, enough for us to justify leaving the cores alone.”

He tapped Borg on the chest. “As a matter of fact, the mineral called ‘prism’ that we are here to gather today is the same stuff that makes up the cells that fuels your servos and trickle charges your weapons.

Eddie pointed at the Prism Array, buried in Borg’s chest. It was a large block of solid prism with a strange, harmonica like array of metal sheets above it, designed to catch different wavelengths of Myst and separate them into their base components. Dozens of tubes and copper wires led from the solid block of prism into various gold-lined pressure tanks, where the purified Myst was collected and concentrated, ready to be fired.

Electrical or lightning Myst was treated differently. That was discharged immediately and fed through copper wires into an advanced battery bank that supplied all of Borg’s electricity. Similar story with Heat and Kinetic Myst. They were efficiently turned into more power, trying to squeeze every bit of energy out of the Prism’s ability to passively convert neutral Myst into ray form Myst.

Borg was probably the most advanced robozombie in the world.

“I understand.” Borg said.

“You understand that, but not treasure and monsters!” Ron said, shaking his head. “We’re gonna need to get you an education, son.”

“Eddie already preloaded me with over fourteen hundred movies and thirty-five thousand written texts, ranging from elementary to college, including some dramatic texts.”

“I did, at that.” Eddie said, nodding.

“Why? It’s about the experience,” Ron said, facepalming. “It’s about watching the movie with other people that makes it fun, so you can talk about what you did and didn’t like about it. The only reason I liked watching The Mummy was so I could shit all over it with my friends afterwards!”

Borg looked at Ron, his eye-lens dilating and constricting.

“I see. There is a large social component to watching movies. I shall take this under advisement.”

“Enough about that, let’s talk about something fun, like money.” Eddie said. “Borg, it cost about five hundred bulbs to make you. That’s roughly the equivalent of this bag, completely full of Prism.” Eddie lifted a sack about the size of a basketball.

“I see.”

Eddie grinned. “So here’s the plan, Borg. Me and Ron decided to introduce you to prism mining as a way to pay us back for creating you, and get you a night job for yourself. We’re not monsters though, so you’re not required to do it, and your cut will be thirty three perc-“

“I’m surprised you’re still up here. It’s not like you had anything to unpack. Well, except your…thing, I guess.”

Ron glanced over at the man who’d interrupted them. Their whole party was staring at Borg. Now that he was out of his restraints, it was easy to see the extent of his modifications.

They were extensive.

“You know what, I think I recognize him…” Amy said before her eyes widened. “That’s Gus Smith! The level forty-two Warrior that bit it last month! You guys stole his corpse!”

“Eeeeh…” Ron let out a sound unbecoming of the strongest necromancer this side of the planet.

“Absolutely not,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “We paid someone else to steal Gus Smith’s corpse.”

Ron was pretty sure Eddie had Aspergers.

“You guys better watch yourself down there.” The head honcho said, leaning so close Ron could smell his breakfast. “People don’t take kindly to grave-robbers.”

Then they were gone, stalking away into the glittering depths of the prism mine.

“Did I do something wrong?” Borg asked.

“No, no, Your Death-knight materials just came from someone they know to some extent.”

“Why would that bother them?” Borg asked.

Ron tapped his lips, frowning. “How do I explain this?”

“They see themselves possibly being turned into something like you, and they are violently repulsed by it.” Eddie said.

“So they naturally empathize with the person I’m made from.” Borg said.

“That’s actually pretty accurate.” Ron said, nodding.

“I can exploit that weakness,” Borg said, picking up the sack and turning toward the tunnel leading deeper into the mine. “You two stay here. I’m going to go terminate hostilities...I’ll be back.”

The undead cyborg then marched off deeper into the dungeon, trailing after the party of six.

“Do you think he knows he just made a Terminator reference?” Ron asked, scratching his chin. “I mean, he’s got the movie in his hard-drive, right?”

“Of course he does, but like you said, how would he know that was a quotable moment if he wasn’t exposed to culture?”

“You think we should stop him?” Ron asked.

“Ehh, if he can’t murder six kids with sticks up their asses, then we’re gonna have to go back to the drawing board.” Eddie waved dismissively.

“Should he murder six kids with sticks up their asses?” Ron asked.

Eddie clapped a hand on Ron’s shoulder. “After the last one almost killed Jeb, I put a ton of safety restrictions on Borg. Those people would have to try really hard to get killed by him, and at that point, it’s like throwing yourself into a woodchipper. If someone’s stupid enough to do that, they don’t belong in the gene pool.”