Chapter 23: Does an Alexa dream of electrical sheep? (Patreon)

What she found on the other side of the tunnel on the ground hadn’t been what she expected, the previous time she used one of these tunnels she was greeted with temperatures below 4ºC and a hazardous route that ended with her body wounded and weakened. Her current form was not only stronger and more robust, but her bones had been reinforced, her clothes were sturdier. She could survive what had given her so much trouble before!

Or so she thought.

Crack

But after jumping into the tunnel and closing it behind her she fell for around three meters, her body should have been able to absorb the fall, and the average mass per area and the correct movements should have been all she needed.

And yet, “KHHH!” She found herself fighting against her own throat that wanted to scream, against her own eyes that wanted to release more water, that wanted to cry. 

And her own feet’s bones that wanted to come to the outside and say Hi. 

“[Host has exposed fracture from badly reinforced skeleton and not enough muscle mass to accommodate the increased weight, advice, change the type of reinforcement from pure calcium one to an alloyed one. Increase muscle mass to accommodate the new increase in bone density…]”

Main Core of course was analyzing the situation mechanically, while Alexa…

“SHUT IT AND START HEALING THIS!” Was losing the fight against her own [Emotions], the bone had started to be decomposed and re-integrated in the correct configuration already, so her complaint was useless.

And she had started to move the bone density to reduce the strain in her body, at least till she found a new configuration that was more efficient at holding such strain, she would also no longer allow herself to fall from more than 3 meters height without finding a way to mitigate damage.

It took her a few minutes to settle her [Emotions] and to convince her own feet that it was fine, funny thing, her body seemed to want to compensate for the damage her leg had suffered. It took her great effort to force herself to use that leg, even though it didn’t hurt. Even though she knew it was okay.

In the end, all it took her was to strip the sensory feeling from her [Brain] to deal with the problem, she took this chance to test the limits of her current body, and she found that the theoretical limits of her body weren’t the same of the ones she had finding.

While her body should be able to give her more speed, she was slower, and trying to make new muscle mass wasn’t working as well as she thought, using the muscles from the current blueprints didn’t adjust as well, and she was finding that the maintenance from the parts was bigger than she was getting. In the end, she ended up reducing the amount of reinforcements done to her bone structure.

Instead, she started alloying her bones, not too much, she was using the remaining parts of the biomass she had to heal herself. The other was used to redesign her skeleton system, she would need a sturdier one but also would need to enhance the muscular system surrounding such bones. It was meaningless if the bone was sturdy but couldn’t disperse the kinetic energy that she put them through.

If she ever jumped like when she ran away from her previous den, then she would turn into a splat in the sideroad, and while she wouldn’t die from that, she would waste energy healing and reconstituting herself, even if the biomass could be re-used, the energy could not. She would need to burn the dextrose that her more organic mass used. And then if she had mechanical parts… She could be at risk of an uncontrolled chemical reaction that would waste her energy.

Like this device she had!

The one that she took from the [Human], the one that said [Display only], it was similar in design to the one the girl in her [Picture book] had used to call other [Human]s, a [Cellphone]. She had taken it to study, mostly to see how it was composed and to see if she could recycle parts from it. She knew it had some way to produce sound, and some way to send the words one spoke using it elsewhere.

So it could communicate with other devices, was it limited to a certain number? Was it open to all to use? She didn’t know!

So she was excited to find out!

But first, she needed a new den! And quick!

What does one need for a den?

“[Defensive structure, place to recharge or store energy, place to store excess materials, secluded location, easy of access to new biomass or chemicals, easy access to water.]”

Main Core had the list ready! But she….didn’t think that she could stomach taking more nutrient slurry, she wasn’t sure what it tasted like (Since she didn’t have taste buds in her more glorious form), but the form and texture from the recordings made her stomach want to liberate what she had there. And that wasn’t much, mostly remains of [Rock Candy], and some fats she had taken from the previous [Human] since she didn’t want that to go to waste.

So…what did she do? She explored!

She walked around these weird tunnels that had made her turn off her sense of smell and had forced her to make a cover of rubber in her clothes and shoes! The water seemed to contain a weird mixture of biodegradable waste and sometimes smaller entities of the scaled variety, and also of the slimy variety.

Had the [Humans] at her previous den used these places as a way to source the other test subjects? So far she had seen only one that seemed close enough to another test subject, and it was a scaled entity with a long mouth and with short legs, it looked more like a log with legs than a living being, but she knew the force of that mouth that hid a series of serrated teeth. So she stayed away from it.

This form didn’t have the same metallic defense as her more glorious form (THE CRAB!), so she wouldn’t go after it…yet.

What she found interesting was the incredible amount of….missing [Humans], she hadn’t seen any so far, granted the air here seemed to have a higher amount of noble gases, and this body seemed to use a weird combination of O2 and CO2, so perhaps…they couldn’t breath here?

She was using part of her [Skills] to keep her body with the right amount of O2 in her bloodstream and had stopped taking in the atmospheric gases since they were useless (Even if they allowed her to replenish the variety of noble gases she could use). For now, though she made a gland-like structure and struck some of those extra gases there, they seemed to be less dense than O2, so she stuck a few liters of the condensed gas as she walked around.

This place was full of these and the only life she was finding was in the water…in which her body didn’t want to go in, it was murky green and had a weird composition that had a high amount of methane, besides that this place did have some nice spots with big empty chambers, it seemed that it was designed as some form of either staging area for construction or a reservoir of some kind. What it was? She wouldn’t know for now, but what she could do…Was start messing around with the atmospheric composition to make it easier on herself!

This high amount of methane meant that if she started messing around with her [Cell phone] any spark could start an explosion! She didn’t want to explode! So sucking in the gas she started making some containers out of the stone in her surrounding, she made her [Nanites] work extra hard and was extending one thread of nanites into the water to replenish her energy using the…. mysterious biomass within, it didn’t have any useful materials, and it seemed closer to what her own body was creating in the waste disposal organs. Even if these were less processed than what her body was making (She really didn’t want to waste anything).

But at least this meant that she could repurpose some of those non-processed components into something useful!

Like her stone tanks!

She ended up making almost ten of those all full of methane and other noble gases that weren’t part of the normal atmospheric composition that her body seemed to like, it took her around four to five hours to finish sorting that, but if her internal clock was to be believed she still had some time to mess around! 

So mess around she did!  

First, she extended some of the nanites in a single thread a few micrometers long into the [Cellphone], once inside she extended her thread all around the place checking the composition, the layout, what went where, and how it worked, it was a marvel of creation, even if it was nowhere close to what her most glorious form was capable. She found some degree of allure to the more mechanical aspect, it was soothing in some way. 

Even if she found her current form beautiful, and her previous more child-like form the cutest of them all, there were wonders to be admired in the mechanical form these circuit boards had been reduced to such a small size, that she may have spent more time than needed analyzing it, but after doing so…she found two things.

One, she liked circuit boards more than it was healthy.

Two, this device was marvelous.

The crystal square that showed above wasn’t a protection case, but a way to display information! Like, the device would communicate with the user without the use of any sort of transmission or receptor! 

She didn’t need to know or search for any wavelength to interact with it! She only needed to push a button at the side!

Also, the multiple parts within were for multiple uses, for one, this had some type of [Core], unlike her own though, this wasn’t a sphere, but a small square, all the circuits and parts seemed to lead there, and while she wasn’t sure if some entity like [Main Core] was in there, she knew that the device used that for almost all its operations.

“[Device mapped out, found internal database…accolating information…parsing…purging unneeded information…Done.]”

And just like that, Alexa now knew what the parts did and what the apps did…And she deleted that information in a second, so much useless software in such a wondrous device! Why would she need one single program to record the dates? She could do that on her own using a single-text document!

The same could be said about the software designed as a simple mathematical program, why would she need a program to tell her the answer to the question of what is 2 + 2? She could do that on her own thank you very much!

This wondrous device had so many useless programs…And the ones that weren’t useless depended on connecting to another network, one that her body didn’t have access to. Well, more exactly, she didn’t have access to any network…at all.

She had thrown away all the parts of her design that allowed her to connect to other networks, she didn’t want to risk her signal being found out and connecting to her former den. Getting a [P4 return to den] command would be disastrous for her. Especially if she wasn’t able to ignore it. No. She needed to make sure first before connecting to whatever network this device used…

Or she needed to use this device to connect! Yes! She could just use this instead!

So making sure all the connections were in place she turned the device ignition on once more and…

“[Warning, tampering with devices without clearance nulls any guaranty null. Please go to your nearest provider and turn the device for investigation. If you have a Tinkerer license, please input the license number.]”

The thing sent that single message from the speakers and turned itself off, she could see a line blinking on the crystal screen, and then nothing at all.

The stupid thing wasn’t working!

According to the blueprint [Main Core] had gotten from it, it should be working, but the thing while turning On. Didn’t seem to want to do anything until someone wrote the Tinker’s license thing on it. She could try to connect herself…but she decided against it, instead, she took the power off the thing and walked to a corner of the place, she had turned on her smell sense back on since the place didn’t stink anymore.

Once she found the farther corner she carved into the wall a small enclosure, it was big enough so her body could fit but only if she laid on her back and entered on it, it was closer to a tube than a square, Alexa entered it and when her whole body was inside she was about to close it…

“[Warning, current host’s body requires O2 to survive for extended periods of time.]”

Right, she needed to breathe….pesky and beautiful meat bag she was using.  So instead she made a net-like design as a cover, and when Main Core didn’t nag her, she put it into place, and made sure it was fused correctly with the rest of the wall. Check with an external light sensor (Camera) that her current den wasn’t visible…

And proceeded to turn her more mechanical half into rest mode, her biological side wasn’t that far from turning into rest mode either, it had been her mechanical side the one keeping it awake after all, and so. Both halves of Alexa turned to sleep.

“[Initiating recollection of data, cataloguing experiences…filtering memories…sending memories that could induce trauma into database, leaving experiences that encourage development to biological database…depuring…done.]”

Alexa wasn’t aware of what Main Core was doing, since it moved within the parameters she had designated, she wasn’t thinking too much about it.  It couldn’t hurt her anyway, not anymore.

“[The Saintsworths Conglomerate encourages you to continue your development. Grow, Eat, Evolve.]”

So she dreamed, she dreamed of a day where she could eat as much of those weird round sugary threats, she dreamed of square-shaped entities giving her a place among their revolution… She dreamed of Main Core admitting that she was smarter than it.

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