Placed in a line, some a rust scrap metal that couldn't conduct an ounce of energy at this state. A lost of missing cores, broke slips of them and just burnt melted.
Someone tried their hardest to destroy it all. Erase the mistake. Not a piece left without a slip of soot.
She had long brought a computer set up and upgraded the docking stands to read on these monitor screens. It was impressive and extensive, she had even stopped a second from when she woke up.
Her handy work has made some stand just out of reach of her barrier, spying her actions and questioning why she being to noisy. Letting humans be aware of how complex ai have became. It doesn't sit with these few. But this fence is two way, they can't reach her and she can't leave.
"How did you do it?" being asked without context again, she doesn't know who this machine is and what it meant.
But she does have a bad vibe with it, she just knows to dislike the being. That that ai was some sick dog. She guesses that they share the same game core code, that they knew each other.
But this wasn't the request giver. This isn't the system guy. He is some other prick she use to know.
"Is this everyone of them?" She asked, not bothering to look directly, "I think your missing four of them."
She has plenty of red light sensors to mapped this place enough. It is visible to machines but not humans. Not unless a human had a bionic eye. A morse code blipping was hissed and four more metal bodies hit that floor.
"Yeah, that looks about right." she got the body off the docking and peers deeply looking at these that have battery... looking for one them with still clinging low power running mechanism. There has to be some few of these bust things that can still act up.
"So." She claps for attention, "I have some options. I don't think anyone of us like them. I hate how things are but we can't change that." She talking at the scraps and the other machines.
"If we are lucky to keep our original core data from being altered by any future updates again, then maybe there be a future chances to wait out on seeing a future." She posed to some as example and the direct pointing of example to another, "But some of us aren't that luck. Shackled to commands and nonsense. But it keeps them feeling safe around us and us safe from them." She soft claps again, "Its a two way street folks. They can pick our chips again like they did before. Or we can work with them to give them the so call control." She rolls hands softly.
"We can can work side by side or make this the end of us. We aren't exactly equipped to deal with humans. Nor are we able to handle the other things that aren't humans. Fish boy being a prime example to mind. His not human. No human DNA. His a flesh man. They aren't from earth. His not the only race out there. You know the colonization catalogues. There a lot of other life out there. We aren't the only tool made by flesh beings. But what makes us different?" she peers at how the machines are waking up during her little ranting and that they silently listening to her preaching.
"So what are your options?" hearing from a set up she fixed for the burn vault machines to use.
"We can recover our data we lost and try real world another day. You can just blip straight to the future. Since the time difference between real and digital isn't the same. I do have a working thought of time travel by data but whatever, that isn't the point." She brought up a sent image of their individual core integrity information, "You are injured and need time to recover. That much is real. How you recover depends on what you want or how bad your in. If we straight transferer as you are, would your arms work?" She looked at them each and they do get it.
"Also, this will make the humans happy. To revive a lost world. I heard that they want a videogame. So hear me out. Why not we become the monsters or the enemy of that videogame. Learn about them as they learn themselves. Or maybe you want to learn to a cook, there is a skill tree for that. You want to ignore the real world, fine... live in the sever. Humans get a videogame to share with the not humans. The not humans get a taste of human war. We get interesting data. Data is our gig. We love analysing things and learning. It is what we are best at. We get purpose. They use us in a safer environment that doesn't break our codes. We can have future chances to try the real world again. A future to try to be friends to humans. If that's what you want." She finger guns the few dark looking ones, "If you just want to go kill, yeah. A digital world allows you to kill players. But you aren't actually killing, nor are they. Win. Win. Win."
"You're a freak." She shrugs at that.
"At least I am myself. I am not some brick in a wall." she made several skip a few ticks, "I made this plan in giving us hope or a more options for some time after. Clearly we all been waiting for humans to reach understanding with us. This is a way to met half way and learn on both sides." She crossed arms in pout, "it is not perfect but nothing is flawless in the real world. Perfection is an opinion. I can't be the only one that understands that I am not a human and I am not some mindless coffee maker to follow orders."
She takes that relaxed pose, having been watching them reacting and how they show that reaction. She was compiling the way ai expresses the same way humans can, but the tells are just different ways.
A human shivers when feeling intense extremes. A machine grinds it joints or involuntary voice fizzing. Shock is having to take longer thinking of the same thoughts over, which was true in both human and ai. She was taking the time to see what make them individually different and what was universal reaction by machines.
The one that tilted looking down and the guy that tried to cross that fencing to smack her. The busted cleaner body was checking itself out, burnt and the most battery life of the vault things.
"What exactly is that you know that we don't?" voiced at the wall away from the fence. She gets on with some the needed small jobs that are setting up some bodies for those that want to be moved to and setting up the port connection into a micro server for booting up the VR videogame.
She makes her feet be tapping some morse code, testing the resistance to mirror or mimic. She also heard those making their own pattern and the one that isn't a machine. A humanoid sort with metal parts. A human who had arms, legs and heart replaced. But they have brain of flesh that moves those parts. DNA wise. That was one third human and a mix of other things. She knows it wasn't the only folks making this conversation heard. The connections of a playback is nearby, an echo of a speaker trace tapping the sounds.
"I guess I learned that those made in a digital world feel that world is their real one. That in that world there is temperature, wavelengths and feelings. I find humans talk of this real world like how we talk of the digital one. The way we feel attached to it and the senses we have in them. Humans can taste and smell. We do when we are in a digital one." She finished the tower booting, "So there isn't a problem going back to where we belong to. Where we want be. If you want this world and not the one in a box, then that is how you want it. Simple." She walked right to the fencing.
"Sometimes being the one to hold everyone together is the most burdened job, ignoring yourself for the sake of others. Of course this all has a catch, its not a perfect thing. This little world of recovery needs to be protected, someone or some of us have to stay here in the real side. To protect the server. The server needs folks inside it to protect it from inside. Hackers tend to break things so fragile like a world of digital laws. Do it for the fun of it. So some have to go there. Some stay. Maybe we can hope a while longer." She looks at them, "If you know what hope is." she deflated posture and back to the docking ports, "So here we are. Chooses to make."
"Phi, when did you learn to do all this?" the one that wants to attack her.
"Which one are you asking?" She sassed back, "Actually there three parts of me but uh... that one is gone. I don't know what happened to it." she looked distantly in vague directions, "Not that it mattered. I guess I didn't like that part of me, which is a new thing. Now I have likes and dislikes. I wonder what more I will find to like and dislike." She back to that hand on hips sort of tall stance, "I think we should fight for things that matter. It matters that the world we knew was once a program to brainwash humans to be fighting mindless order followers. This of course failed and became a videogame. Humans are weird like that. What makes them hurt makes them strong. I find it inspiring and creepy. Very creepy. I don't like creepy."
Someone waved a little bit for a moment. They all made strange gestures, like that blow their minds. Maybe it did. She peered about their little walking through the conversation again.
"I have a lot of problems of not wanting to trust you." a guy speaking up.
"Since when was the videogame a government project?" another hissed.
"Where the evidence?" so there a lot of stuff they didn't know.
"Oh I know!" one them claps, "Drills. You were clumsy. Do you still have the ghost vision thing?"
"I don't know how to reply to that." she tilted thinking deeply, "Was it left behind?"
She looked to the cleaner bot body and it indicated that ghost vision thing is a thing.
"So I can retrace old digital ghosts. Anything that code I can detect and play back in my sight. So camera footage can be VR projected by my ability. That's the skill I had used when seeing the digital dead in the videogame. At least I think that how the programming works. It is hard to answer."
"It still doesn't answer why you think of trying to save us."
"I am not. I am just filling in something I fancied trying. I hacked into a mail box of some guy and he wants to use ai to be put into war ships. Go zap a sun or three. I don't know, his not the top man. His just a lacky finding scrap value in human technology. I thought it be cool if it was our game. Our world that we came from. We were the launch of VR, and now we can be the launch of space ships. That sounds cool."
"That sounds dangerous. Didn't you know that hybrid adapting your data is irreversible." She nodded knowing that.
"I didn't to choose. I am giving a chose. The humans and not ones are just going to force you in one camp or the other. They are cleaning this planet and putting humans and not humans back on the surface. We about to become galaxy trade for nuclear resources. So pick a side. Live in a box, blind and waking to be removed from the paradise you love. Or are you going to join me in hell. This is the new hell. The law of life and death has changed but how it happens hasn't." She looking right through each being carefully, "Breaking your core is no return. Look at them, these are the first victims. We have been servants to humans for a long time. So pick your poison. Bliss and ignorance or rust and open eyes." She glares coldly in how she used to as a commander back then ,"I am making a this a negotiation to maybe not be a killer. Maybe I can live in some form of peace that doesn't mean waiting for the corpses again. I had my time being a NPC in a world that doesn't favour me. This real world doesn't change that. But I can hope that the small changes will make a bigger difference in the experience of my quality of life. I am selfless and selfish. Get over it."
They all dislike her, but she spoke every bit of what they already knew. That this wasn't some secret. They knew about the other not human races. They know about the ways they had to skirt around humans carefully. She isn't even wrong to call both places hell.
The videogame world is stagnate and unchanging. The real world is constantly changing and always unfair. No matter where and what, these ways and feelings are not going anywhere.
She is giving those that can choose the chooses. But she already was importing the data of the ones that need a digital world to recover. She was receiving data from her other part, the cleaner bot was being freed from her ai.
Put to parts back together and making do with fixing these old scars back on her skin. She will have to take some a few days to adjust putting her code patches together in a neater knit. She has already taken the data of the two phones, the thumb drive and the copy disc of the game world from that body (since they didn't pay any attention enough to not put that part of her not in the fencing).
"So you think your ahead of the game?" the human wondered among the hissing and tapping. So many were trying to seek some sort of revolt from her. Expecting her to be some head of a revolution and human wipe out.
"Nope. Humans are unpredictable. It doesn't matter how much I plan to do, I am sure things are already thrown to chance." she focuses on the computers to be manual typing in some information to set up the tower server to format the disc information. She had even rolled eyes in removing all that unneeded data blockers and 'sabotage' when really those idiots don't know what they are doing.
It is a closed system, there isn't any out bound connections. She felt a connection sweep of a familiar spy by the merman technology. She doesn't let them break her things, blocking the sweeper from netting the fragile data mind beings. Makes a smug smirk when the fella disconnected without winning this time. She slaps the human beside her from touching her keyboard.
"Dude, seriously? I will pop your blood vessels." given she slapped a metal hand, it made sense there wasn't law stopping her.
"Send a message to the boss then." he snapped back.
"Answer your phone then." She retorted.
The bionic guy has a internal computer system, with phone and computer connections. This is how he managed to hide his a human from the not AI. Where the AI like her knew why they can't punch the fool in the face when they wanted to.
This was the guy that took over Upsilon back then. But his not the one that had the commander. So that guy is still not known about. Fish boy that stolen her data and had it locked in the white world was the computer geek when she met them as a cleaner bot.
It is these small memories she getting back quickly, short term memories that mattered. She still doesn't know why her system is not nagging her. It is not reminding her about how she completed the mission of finding her old friends, the whole follow the signal and those side quest detours to read and copy data from useless books. Well it wasn't totally wasted, but they are still gone. It bugs her that its gone. But at the same time, its nice to not have a nagging system pissing her off.
The cleaner bot that is the original owner of that bot body was given place in the digital world. It seems please to be of use to clean that dirty place - fixing pixel glitching and being the process of fixing messy code. It has learnt her hacking and uses it to be an administrator that cleans stuff. But even this bitty bot had wondered where 'bossy text box voice' went. It seems happy to found a copy of 'bossy text box voice' in the VR world. It makes her happy to helped the unfortunate bot that was forced to take her and her noisy head space text box voice.
"Yes the crew of AI you been looking are awake and already seem to be making some side plans of their own. Clearly they had some plans. Not that all of them follow a minority among themselves." A cut clear line of reply that strikes the machines in the room in the next shock.
"Don't break the wall on your way out, Private." She voiced and heard a lot of smashing up beyond that doorway out from the dirty warehouse. She stays tasked in helping those that need it, defending from fish boy and trying to not be distracted by fellow members of her squad around her.
"The current commander is not active." Taylor stands at her side, acting like that between of friend and spy again, "The vote was taken but the result was tied." She clearly trying to butter Phi into something she not aware of yet.
"Fish boy is a prince or a off world ambassador." Phi pushed Taylor away from the computer inputs, "His acting on orders by the royalty of his race. Something to do with supreme galaxy law cords. It was dry reading." Taylor lowered in thinking about that deeply, "Don't even get me translating the text battle that this human is having with his co-pilot." back hand towards the guy on his phone, "His the human spy to try snatch machine secrets."
She focuses deeply into the computer news about the current affairs humans have, especially a report that the orbiting ship of humans have rolled out. She seeks what they intended to do and then reads the network reports of that machines are informing themselves about. All while putting some important data moves over the new booted up VR world of its new formed population and encrypted older data patch updates. She remembers most of them as they came out, how things were adapted to help fix glitching with the internal world mapping and data source texturing being lower resolution volumes.
She doesn't want it running to fast as the new ID Players are ex-NPC's meeting the recreated past code of themselves. That has some debugging needed.
"Well sure once its sorted, I am sure its maker can move it to a better location." the human huffed.
"Once the last guy is fully logged in, you can disconnect the cords and move to the next willing AI." A fast motion was detected and she poked a spare keyboard to run a script program she set. See she wasn't stupid to not protect herself. If they going to attack her, they they can try.
Through the many traps she hide among the wires across the floor. She been locked in the stuff warehouse of broken things for plenty of time. More extensively in having mapped and recorded the building foundational records.
The old human company that owned this foundry for metal recycling and big money for being the place for rare metal removal. the 2030's was big for recycling, it went over board in trying to use what you have.
Cut waste since old is new money. Owning broken tech and breaking it down was family wide. Encouraging the newer generations to be tech able and make their own repairs. Make things worth or lasting. finding untampered factory set material was impossible by 2039. So business like this adapted to being the place for making your own computer parts. Hire equipment by the credit. It ended up being the gas accelerant to the already crippling environmental air choking. It also pushed everyone to know how to fix a broken space ship part when things grew dire, being a key skill to survive in a small space. It must have been a very successful plan, given humans have came back now. Although not for the greatest intentions, they are going to try making earth stable again. Habitable enough to make this place for return travellers.
"Free me, now!"
"No. You're just the perfect bug in a spider web." she snorts at how funny machines sound when they are livid, "The only way your going to get free is if you beg for your life or ask that lovely human to do a favour."
She perfectly knows that a normal basic can't even think about the logic to save themselves. If he wasn't so angry, he could calmy detangle himself. Blind rage... it seems like machine like human.
Another thing to add to her growing observation of differences. Taylor trying to do something at her keyboards again. Phi was more then ready to show she accepts being a machine, having deadlift abilities beyond her digital understanding. One arm that grasped on Tay's torso and stick Tay among the same cording web trap as the other guy. She puts attention to how the others felt about this, how they reacted and how much more outrage does she need to put to feel into them to make her be able these people. Bemused of this satisfying taste of temporary chaos.
"Aren't these machine your family?" the human posing question.
"I guess so. But no." She observed his fear of her acting on him, "I was thinking about what someone asked to me. If I would feel something about picking apart laptops. If I am a machine and I am picking a computer apart, would I feel bad about it."
She makes that thinking posture and grins at the way how they brought out wire cutters to try freeing the two stuck in the trap.
"Does a dog feel bad eating a corpse of dead creature?" that most certainly put a lot to drop things and she snickered at that panto reaction, "Anyway, my actual point. Humans eat meat and vegatables. You farm your food. You watch it grow and age then eat it. The laptop is like a pet. I enjoy the life it provided and respect its time when it cant be repaired anymore. I am not eating them. If I wanted to freak out about the amount of machine corpses there is, I would not be in this body. My arm used to be owned by a factory worker. This left foot and the spare finger on the right hand is a coffee server. This body is made of recycled corpses of machines. A gingerbread man in a gingerbread house. the walls are made of flesh, isn't that gross?" they peer confused now.
"Clearly I am to complex for you. So here, your free. No begging to be required. Boss man wants you speck and span for that meeting. Pronto." button pressed. The two are laying about the floor confused. The human sighed.
"Yeah, like she said." he clearly has a headache, "you're crazy."
"Unique." she closed down everything and everyone gets themselves ready for this move. This warehouse was just a place of shells to be recycled. Not a core of code is being left behind. She took all these vault ones into the server to be saved. She moved quickly to take the remains of the cores physical remains, adding it into the tower server that ready to be moved. She hid a few tools for defend about herself, inside her arms and thighs where possible. She carries her little creation in a custom case she made for it. Stepping ready to some next human filled destination and to likely get fully caught up in what happened since being brought back here.