Chapter 7: Starting the preparations. (Patreon)

It returned to its Den without further problems, they didn't even give a second order to [Main Core] and only dumped some nutrient slurry on its receptacle for ingestion.

It didn't even pretend to eat it and directly used one of the extractor tubes that had direct access to its internal storage for the nutrient slurry. It would spend it as needed and saw its tank rise in content once more, it had almost burned it all with multiple uses of burst energy burns, so it was low in the material.

The tank could hold way more than what it had right now of course, but it had never questioned it before, the design had been tweaked like this from [Main Core], which meant that this was an instruction from either the box-shaped organisms or the [Humans].

But now...Now it needed to be sure...It needed to make sure it hadn't been a bug nor a flicker into another sub-system it wasn't meant to look at.

[Query: Open...System Menu]

[No accessible menus for Subject P4 are available.]

[Main Core] answered back, and at the same time...It saw a blue screen manifest right in front of it. Its visual sensors detected nothing, its audio feedback detected nothing, and yet...

It moved one of its claws into it. Then one of its legs, but neither seemed to be able to touch it... Finally, it tried to ram its body into it, only for the blue screen to stay at the same distance away from it, moving with it.

And there it was, it had basic information...It wondered why it didn't state its name as Subject P4...Was it because it was aware that was a designation and not a [Name]?

The other information wasn't as useful, it implied the existence of a metric of time that wasn't quite sure what it meant [Years], was that what followed hours?

Somehow it got the feeling that it wasn't. Also, it marked how old his [Core] was, but it had [Main Core] since inception, so it was probably speaking about another [Core].

[Notice: No extra Core in body detected, filed error for further contemplation.]

And there it was again, somehow [Main Core] couldn't perceive it...But it could file its interactions with it...Or attempt to file them.

[Query: Explain Nanite Foundry.]

[Notice: Subject has no access to Nanite Foundry. / Nanite foundry works independently to conscious stream, it will replenish and fulfill the needs of Main Core, but will not yield control to main conscious stream.]

It got the answer back, it also noted how another file got marked and added to the report to be delivered in its next maintenance run...And the hidden message [Main Core] added, it seems it had one of those but no direct access to it, it was slaved to [Main Core].

And after it...A new blue screen showed itself with an interesting description.

That was educative.

It learned that most of the work done by [Main Core] was, in turn, delegated to this Nanite Foundry thing, for now, it needed to learn how to control the thing.

So focusing inwards it tried to search for this command, this prompt, this [Button] that allowed control over this [Skill]. It decided to try and work it the same way that had brought that information.

So focusing on the words it [Felt] something moving at the back of the consciousness stream and something [Opened].

That was an operation it didn't want to do right now, since that meant at the very minimum 42,000,000 nanites in its body...And the [Skill] was even giving it an image of where the nanites stood within its body.

[Warning, Subject P4 has access to confidential information. Filing report.]

And since [Main Core] was filing another of those reports it meant the information was good, now the question was... Where was this mass and biomass coming from?

The list included the nutrient slurry, so that meant it wasn't only the food they gave it. The biomass section was bigger than the biomass it currently had in its biomass reserve, by a hundred kilograms. Since it didn't have anything in its tank right now.

That meant that it was counting something else...Was it counting its body mass?

It had never worried about how much it weighed since the body would move itself either way and if it couldn't then it was a simple matter of building either a new pair of legs or streamlining some parts, maybe shedding a couple of armor plating here and there...

Actually... It had some broken armor platings, didn't it?

[Query: Purge faulty armor plating.]

[Purging armor plating.]

It sent a query to [Main Core] and it responded in kind, a side of its exoskeleton opened up and one of the plates that had been damaged by the [Human] popped up and fell to the floor. Soon enough the numbers on the blue screen updated themselves and it was now missing fifty kilograms in the composite material sections.

So that meant the [Skill] could use part of its current body, not only the biomass to create nanites...

[Query: Make a unit of nanites, use the remaining spare plates of armor.]

[Answer: Subject P4 does not have the right credentials for the creation of nanite swarms.]

[Main Core] answered as such, but the blue screen showed progress nonetheless, soon enough the weight of the mechanical body decreased and the number in the nanite section increased one unit at a time.

After a few seconds of waiting the number settled in a nice [14] and its weight didn't increase back, some loss in the material seemed to have occurred. Interesting.

So it said the blue screen, so even using this to create a nanite swarm could be dangerous...Perhaps creating that many wasn't a good idea. But time wasn't on its side.

[Warning: Hostile nanites detected, starting countermeasures.]

And the numbers started to go down soon enough.

[Yes]

It acknowledged the prompt from the blue screen, and soon the number started to slow down its descent till it settled on a five. Five units of nanites remain, but all are under its control.

[Warning: Nanite foundry offline, scheduling maintenance.]

And the nanite foundry was turned off, these new nanites worked fast, and now it had one problem less to worry about. The next one was how to deal with [Main Core].

It wasn't able to see how it worked, the thing refused any and all commands about it, but maybe...

[Query: Can the nanites examine and determine what functions the Main Core does?]

[Query: Will I remain functional if Main Core is dismantled?]

[Answer: No, the continued work of subject P4 depends entirely on Main Core.]

And with a flick of will...The nanite swarm dived straight to [Main Core], the swarm fist surrounded it, making sure there was no spot left untouched, and then within seconds, they nested themselves in all the components...

And with a final confirmation, they got to work, first, the communication array was taken down, then the energy reserve, the hard drive, the processor...One by one all the functions that made [Main Core] work were offline.

Soon enough its body felt heavy, and it dropped to the floor, its functions no longer automated, it took conscious effort to make its mechanical heart keep pumping the saline solution that oxygenated its brain, it soon found out that was a subpar method, and understood why most biological subjects used that red liquid... [Blood] it was definitely more efficient and would file it for a new design later.

Its mechanical lungs needed a more optimized design, its heavy body was compressing them and the O2 tanks no longer worked with [Main Core], soon enough the saline solution would no longer hold O2 and that would slow down the [Brain].

It was getting harder and harder to see, its mechanical eyes didn't have a translator for what they were seeing, [Main Core] did that work too.

The nanite swarm had finished deconstructing the whole thing, saving a template of the way it worked, and then without a prompt from anyone... Remade [Main Core].

In mere seconds they created it back and reconnected it to all its functions, its lungs started pumping O2 extracted from the tanks, its heart started pumping the saline solution, and its brain started to be oxygenated once more.

Its body weight was distributed evenly across all its mechanical parts.

It was alive.

She was alive.

[Notice: Restart of Main Core finished...Are you the system administrator?]

....She was screwed, she was thinking of herself as a female, identifying with a gender...The checklist...

Wasn't there?

[Notice: Are you the system administrator?]

And Main core was prodding at her with those prompts, she could now see all the programs nestled within it, and none were sending data, even if a few ones were receiving data packets.

[Yes]?

She sent the acknowledgment to [Main Core].

[System administrator credentials granted. We thank you for your hard work in making The Saintsworths Conglomerate the number one in the world.]

That was interesting...

And a long list of different blueprints and programs was added, all the other test subjects she had eaten at some point were there, some that didn't provide anything useful or were redundant and never used stood up.

Those were quickly deleted, and some other less useful things also got deleted, most of the designs that would require more than four legs, why would anyone want eight legs anyway?

Some of the information she had available was interesting, for example...The original design this [Main Core] had was started using the idea of a female hybrid between a [Human] and some [Cat] species, something along the lines of using the best of both worlds?

Was that the reason she had settled for the female pronoun? It was hard to tell. It was an interesting tidbit of information and it worked to confirm something, after that near-death experience its control over the brain had...Diminished.

Its main consciousness had fled its main body and settled in the [Human] body it had created before, it was settled within that brain and only a small nerve ending was connecting it to the bigger body.

That was...Troubling.

That body was way smaller than its current mechanical body, it didn't have any augmentation nor had a good weapon system, it was...

[Substandard]

As the main core stated, it was a terrible body with below-average functions, even its biological nutrient bag could hold at best 2 kilograms of food if it expanded a little beyond its tolerated threshold.

The only good thing it had going for it was that it could be able to function without many modifications and that it was small enough to be able to hide in almost any place it wanted.

....It was able to hide in almost any place it wanted.

She looked down at one of its claws, the body held within its carcass wasn't bigger than this claw. And the [Human] it fought was barely big enough to fit in it, this...This might be the answer.

Now...How to escape?

The walls of its den were smooth and a bright white as always, a couple of box-shaped organisms up there as always watching, judging...But she had thought the same about the white walls of the testing area, and those had shown to held within [Gun] type weaponry. So these white walls couldn't be judged like that.

Most of the emplacement of the [Gun] type weapons on the other testing chamber were in the high end of the walls, so if this den held them, they would be almost certainly above a certain height threshold.

So in theory, anything below that would be fine to search...Now, the perusal of the parts in the blueprint for the different [Gun] type weaponry it had stored showed these required a [Reload Mechanism] by which they would insert a cylindrical metal with an internal chemical compound that would burst and propel the metal cylinder at high speed.

Now, those [Gun] emplacements? They needed a way to do so too, so that meant there must be a way to feed them new [Ammunition]. So extending one of its claws to a wall it commanded the [Skill].

[Order: Analyze the composition of the wall, and search for a way to bypass any defense.]

[Sending nanites...]

[Main Core] answered back and soon she felt the nanite swarm within move, they swarmed into the wall and the connection was strong...Till they left its body.

[Warning: Nanite swarm self-destructing, aborting mission. Filing report.]

And a report showed in its eyes with the information and statistics of the event, the nanite swarm self-destructed within one centimeter away from the claw. It seemed they had some type of connection to its body that would prevent their destruction, but as soon as they left its area of influence they would self-destruct.

[Optional Solution: Spread a tendril into the wall and use it to spread the nanite load.]

It was baffling, [Main Core] was actively trying to work with her, almost as baffling as using a pronoun to think proactively about herself. But the solution seemed good enough and the blue screen hadn't pestered her anymore, it seems the thing was happy letting [Main Core] deal with her in its stead.

[Order: Spread a tendril from the claw into the wall, keep the nanite swarm within the functional area, and move the tendril to search for a way to escape, minimizing evidence of the work when possible.]

[Acknowledged. Starting work, spreading flesh tendrils within the wall, the diameter of cable average at 0.012 millimeters.]

And so smaller tendrils bored into the wall, the nanites seemed to be using the materials within the walls to fuel themselves and create new nanites when those working there expired. That seemed to waste even more materials than using her foundry. But she wasn't pressured by time, so she allowed it.

Soon enough her tendril spread far and wide and she had a complete internal map of how that wall was created, the complete list of materials within, and the places where she would find a way to escape this place.

So she started the second phase of her plan...

She needed to make a mess of this place, within her body the face of the [Human] she had created previously as a test smiled at the idea, and for her next trick...

She would need to connect to the main server and send a file... She needed to compile a list of errors and things to make, and also move some materials around.

This would take some time.