B2/17/Darkness in the dungeon of mechanical delight

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Kentro walked down with me into a dark hole in a basement of FiveDogs to introduce me to his secret project. Down there working with him was BlindDog's brother we called SeeingDog, Tots was hanging out with them in her own unique way. Kentro had put two and two together - dead general plus robot recycling dumpster equaled a trash trip.

"The F*** General was due to be fully recycled. Part of his computer was damaged and his program is now running partly on this external machine. His mind is encrypted and unreadable but it it's capable of working. While much of his semantic layer is damaged he in his computational delirium is capable of accidentally saying much. SeeingDog has helped me talk to him."

"How do you know how to do this?" I asked. Looking at the wires. 

"I knew I would be in space looking for a long time after you so I spent the last of you money buying robot maintenance apps for myself in case I broke down. chickenhead"

"Chickenhead is that a swear word?" I asked.

"It is on the Lunar planes Miss" said Kentro. I never knew.  Poor him he was still bravely struggling with the alternative speech synthesis chip. I could feel he wanted to say more but felt embarrassed everytime he spoke. I needed to do something about that.

Kentro opened a heavy door and closed it again. At least all his arms were working again. Even if they weren't all the same color.

"Will it help us?" I asked.

"It was betrayed by its  own commander rockhead miss. It's still processing this. It's half mad with anger. It's still half mad. You remember what I told you to say?".

Finally, we closed another thick door and entered a room light by a few red LEDs.

"Miss MOFO my I introduce General ASS formally the command and control AI for the Deep Space forces on Mars." Kentro said as I walked into enough light to see me. 

I walked in and saw the wreckage that I had pulled out of the recycling bin on the train. The machine lay on very low table leaning against the wall like a wounded soldier. It's once pure silicon skin was made of Dents and deep scratches. There had been one big blast hole his chest. Cables and wires went in and out like a mechanical doll having open heart surgery.

It sat looking at a dust mote caught in the air saying "Nothing can come of nothing, speak again. Nothing can come of nothing, speak again." then switched to singing "Daisy, Daisy give me.. Nothing can come of nothing, speak again. Nothing can come of nothing, speak again."

''Good to know Kraftwork still have enough material to make another album" I said looking at him. 

"General" said Kentro to the robot "This is the shadow."

"Why are we keeping it alive? Given the amount of horror it is has created." I said looking at it.

The robot turned it's head to me I jumped "The horror. .. Any general will tell you must make a friend of horror and mortal terror. Are you my assassin or a grocery boy come with their bill?" said the machine.

"That was your own people. General" said Kentro talking like a reassuring nurse to a dementia patient.

"So you are my nemesis," said the machine slowly and with great deliberation to me.

"We have both been hurt by the occupation forces," I said.

"If you know, I won't tell you anything, if you don't know my voice sings on the wind" said the machine. Its body was scarred where parts of been cut open. The processor looked heavily modified.

"That's a shame." I began saying something Kentro got me to memorize " We played against each other for so long not knowing the others moves or reasons. Aren't you curious to know actually what happened?" I said it without Kentro's swear words.

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