Coven's Rebellion Chapter 4 (Patreon)

I did not intend to leave this story on the cliff that I did. Goodness. Anyway, here's a chapter, sorry it took me so long! Thanks everyone!

Rosa

… opened my eyes. Experimentally, I wiggled whatever appendages I had, only to discover that I didn’t have any? It was an extremely odd sensation.

Feeling out around me, everything was warm and sort of gooey. Hold on, how was I feeling? I had no limbs, not even a body, I—

I recognised this. It was my smoke form from CORA. Except I was probably a cloud of nanites now, rather than a strange spirit goop. Logically, the next conclusion to make was that I was currently inhabiting the nanite swarm inside my own skull. As if my life couldn’t get any more eldritch before.

First things first, I had to reconnect with my body. I had no idea how long it would survive without input, and I really didn’t want to inadvertently find myself testing it.

So far the nanites had tried to act intuitively, so what if I just imagined myself taking control—

With a gasp, I tried to sit up, only to bash my head on the imaging robot still poised above me. “Ow!”

The robot was gone in a moment, lifted off by a concerned Ame, who carefully took my head and looked into my eyes. “Are you okay? You stopped breathing for a few seconds.”

“Yes, just a slight hiccup while I… did something,” I said, trailing off when I realised I wasn’t really sure what I’d done. I was back in my body now, but did that mean I could control my nanite swarm now? I had better go and place my body in storage before I tried anything.

“I see,” Ame said, giving me an exasperated smile. “You scared the crap out of me to do something.”

“Hush,” I pouted. “I’m not entirely sure what just happened, but I intend to take precautions before I attempt anything as risky as that again.”

“Oh, so you admit it was risky?”

My mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water while I tried to find a response, but in the end all I could do was pout harder.

“You’re so cute,” she said, wrapping her arms around me in a surprise embrace.

“Yes, thank you,” I grumbled, still unsure what to do with her compliments even after the last few months. “Let me up, please. I must take my body to a storage casket and conduct some experiments.”

“Only if you be careful,” she told me slowly, making eye contact so she was sure I got the message.

An hour later, I was inside a VR pod with the various life support systems turned on, but no connection to virtual reality itself. Slowly, I began to pull my consciousness inwards, like I was peeling myself out of a wetsuit.

My perception of my body dwindled, piece by piece, until every sense I had was replaced with an… absence. I couldn’t feel anything at all, not even the wet fluid inside my skull. No, that wasn’t true. I could feel a… a sort of structure to myself. I knew the general shape and configuration of my nanites. I kept them very carefully in that state, and slowly reinforced the idea that even if my shape changed, the connections and functions of each individual nanite must be maintained at all costs. If one died, another had to take its place, if one moved, it needed to continue its neurological function.

It felt like an eternity before I finally let up with enforcing the most important part of my new existence. Then, I tested it.

Slowly contracting my swarm, I kept the shape the same at first, but then slowly I allowed the nanites to form a crystalline structure. Against all my last minute fears, my consciousness held up and I was able to mentally relax.

Let’s see what I could do from here. Vision, please? That, apparently, was trivial for my new body. Everything was dark, but I could see that darkness. It was strange, but there was a similarity between my nanites and my smoke form from CORA. It responded to mental commands in the same way.

That was how I was able to form a light next, and finally see… oh, ew. The inside of my own skull. Now… how did I actually get out of here? Ah, there was a membrane down there.

It took me a while to figure out how to exit my body, but when I finally navigated the maze of blood vessels, I carefully extracted myself from my lungs and crawled out of my mouth like some sort of alien. The tough thing was that now that I was out of the fluids that made up most of the human body, I couldn’t swim. So there I was as a sort of dry sludge made of nanites, wiggling my way up the side of the pod and then out under the polymer seal. At least I could stick to surfaces just fine.

While I was making my way down to the floor, some vibrations wobbled my nanites, and I turned my vision upwards to see Ame crouching down to look at me. Goodness, she looked massive from this vantage point. Like some sort of mythical titan.

Her lips moved, but I heard nothing— oh, no ears. How could I… ah! The vibrations!

“—twice if you can hear me,” she was saying.

Experimentally, I asked my nanites to take a vaguely humanoid form. Sure, I was still grey and twelve inches tall, but it was something.

“Ah! A tiny person! Are you my girlfriend?” Ame asked, chuckling quietly to herself.

I nodded up at her, and she grinned widely. “Adorable!”

Hands on hips, I attempted to glare up at her. She just giggled and tried to pet me, so I had my mouth open wide and bit her. Not enough to break skin, but having a foot tall humanoid blob of grey goo grow a mouth the size of its head to chomp her index finger was a surprise regardless.

“Ow!” she squealed, yanking her hand backwards. I stayed attached, hanging from her finger like a tiny angry animal. “Oi, get off me!”

Rather than do as I was told, because that was something I’d only be doing when I was dead, I reformed back into a blob and slid up her arm.

“Oh, I’m playing taxi, am I?” she laughed watching me climb her. “Okay, where to?”

Extending a little feeler, I pointed out the door. From there, we walked down and out of my skyship, which I’d named Karearea. I led her down to one of the robot storage cellars, and then to one of the humanoid multibots. These were bots set up so any SAI could check them out and use them to do whatever job they needed to do. As such, they were fairly versatile, with hands, legs, feet— basically, they were vaguely skeletal humanoids.

“Going to try and pilot one?” Ame asked. I nodded with my tendril and pointed to one I’d already reserved via my ever-present connection to the FTLN.

Once my girlfriend deposited me on the shoulder of the robot, I got to work slithering inside its chassis. Once I was in, I tried to figure out how I could— ah, of course! The physical port in the back that was used to update the software and firmware of the robot.

Slithering down there, I located the plug and stuffed a bunch of my goo in there. Instantly, my nanites registered a connection and got to work. One, maybe two microseconds later, I was in control.

Flexing a hand, I looked down at the appendage in wonder. Completely without the help of the FTLN, I’d taken control of a piece of tech using my new goo form. I was like some sort of tech-slime savant!

“Looks like it worked, huh?” Ame commented, causing me to jerk my head up and focus on her.

“I guess so,” I replied, and unhooked myself from the charging rack. “Let’s go show Tim.”

When we got out to the construction site, Tim was having a conversation with an SAI that was using one of the same robots that I was. Both turned to watch us as we approached.

“Tim!” I said when I arrived. “I’ve figured out how to control my nanite swarm.”

Putting the bot into standby mode, I slithered my goo out of the chassis and waved a tendril at them. “See?”

“Oh wow,” the robot gasped, her voice sounding familiar, although I didn’t know where from. “Your neurological processes are running on the swarm? How does it feel?”

“Cerridwen,” Tim chuckled, putting a hand to the robot’s chest to keep her from rushing into my personal space.

“Ah, apologies. Your situation is just so fascinating. I would love to look at the sensor feed from your swarm at some point. We could learn a lot from it.”

“When I figure out how to give you that, I’ll send it to you,” I said, having slithered back into the multibot.

Cerridwen cocked her featureless robotic head. “Oh? You don’t have any access to that type of thing?”

“I don’t have access to any of their code or whatever you call it,” I said, shaking my head. “They’ve been intuitively reading my thoughts and intentions and implementing them as best they can.”

“That is rather terrifying,” the SAI said, sharing a glance with Tim. “Perhaps we should get a software expert to look at them, see if they can’t give you some more formal control over the swarm.”

“That… might be a good idea,” Ame said, somehow realising I was going to say no. How did she do that? I didn’t have a face for her to read.

Well, if my girlfriend wanted it to happen, I guess I should submit myself to the scrutiny of whatever expert Cerridwen had in mind. It couldn’t hurt, and maybe they could build me more nanites. Then I could have a bigger swarm. Oh, or build some sort of levitation tech into them, then I could really get my smoke on! Yes, this was actually a rather good idea…