Or how to get things completely wrong in 5 easy steps.
Video : In case we worried you a bit to much. Handy hints on surviving robot attacks.
/Front seat of Toyota Prius/Somewhere on the eastern seaboard
ARENEA'S POV( POINT OF VIEW)
I remembered watching it happen from the stealth boat in the boat house. She was running from him. Then he appears moving as fast as a cyborg can. He deliberately moves between the gun and her. Why do that? Why did Rockwood sacrifice his flesh body for that of a slave? Unless she's special.
I see it! Rockwood is such a genius. He finds a poorly trained slave. One that shouldn't even be in the program to begin with, a malfunction. Someone who, unlike all the others doesn't break and doesn't end up knowing the first law, let alone obeying it. I knew somebody was protecting her all the way through the Factory training it must have been him. He knows Humbolt was experimenting on her. And then he makes that ridiculous bid for her.
He isolates her, he keeps her away from the other slaves, trains her in secret. Makes sure their obedience doesn't infect her. Her only regular contact is an infiltrator. Then he parades her as a cute near feral slave. She goes round, ha ha hah yes, I can't even remember when to put master at the end of a sentence aren't I adorable and stupid? Then secretly train her, convince her that he loves her and she loves him. To control her without breaking her spirit - clever. Eventually, she will do anything to protect him. Did he kill Kijo as a way of buying her loyalty -? 'I've killed for you, why don't you kill for me?'. He was grooming her. She looked at me like she was constantly figuring out ways to kill me one drop in concentration I would be dead.
So he has the ultimate cyborg assassin. Totally invisible, hiding in plain sight. God I so love his brilliance, I could just see her cheerfully injecting poison into the CPUs blood supply over drinks for him. That would be so Rockwood, not satisfied with being the prime backup he's waiting for the right opportunity to take over the New Mechanical Order. Total dictatorship under his rule, cyborgs running the whole show. With his personal assassin by his side, he could strike any AI or any cyborg on the council who stands against him. This is why Zola wants her. Brilliant masterstroke neutralises one weapon and gain it yourself.
If I could contact an AI like Wintermute then perhaps I could set up a bit of a black bidding war for the cyborg's personal assassin. After all, she offered Rockwood 20,000 bit coins for her, but how much is the future of the New Mechanical Order worth? I could be rich, have an army of blood slaves, a huge mansion in Washington 2.0, a harem full of men and a lavish punishment dungeon full of the best slave punishment gear. See what the other ex-military hunter killers would think when they came round.
"Are were there yet?" said the ultimate cyborg assassination weapon.
#Jenny's POV.
'Price of a RV $24,500, Price of a top of the line trained personal slave 280 bit coins, price of one months supply of blood for a hunter killer 5 bit coins, price of watching the whole thing drive off into the distance driven by a human slave who is escaping to freedom, priceless'. I thought
"I said. Are we there yet?" I said again - she's a machine of oppression why should I go easy on her?
We had been traveling for five days since my 'slave jacking'. The car wasn't traveling fast about 40 mph. It's was like we were in some cross country snail race. Araneae did this to confused the satellites or she had a pathological fear of high-velocity impacts. After just-read-the-instructions escape to extreme sulky non-presence, Araneae had managed to kick start another car in the parking lot. It was a hybrid without sentient cruise control. It hadn't driven around on a killing rampage at the apocalypse and so it still had gas. Later we found a trailer with solar panels to charge the batteries and took off leaving the sabre tooth offal to feed wild dogs, wild cats and wild bees for all I knew.
Now five days later we were traveling through New Hampshire doing a kind of New Mechanical Order reenactment of Thelma & Louise except there was no sign of Bradpit and Thelma never tied a rope around Louise and tied her hands together. Perhaps they did, but I never saw that version of the directors cut. It was now about six in the morning, Araneae sat in the front seat driving all night, her body was short so it was like driving with a very dangerous granny peering over the steering wheel. We traveled at night to maximise charge time during the day and to avoid robots spotting us at a distance. The sun was going to come up and we would stop soon to charge. Sometimes we 'slept' in the car, sometimes in places we found. Our slow progress was made worse by turning to keep away from patrols and other robot contact.
On the second day Araneae's blood supply ran out. She had held me down made a puncher in my thigh. I think she was trying to avoid obvious vein points so she could deliver me to Zola in near pristine condition. Araneae had to save power - she didn't have fresh blood for her chips and if she kept vamping me the more she did the more likely it was she would kill me and get Zola's madder than a bag of bad bats. It was wearing her down and draining me.
"You know what the difference between a wild human and a slave is?" said Araneae.
"I don't know - loss of freedom, a collar" I said.
"Dignity" said Araneae.
"hmm try this. You know what the difference between a hunter killer and a bucket of camouflaged vomit is" I said.
"No" she said.
"The bucket" I said. Not very good huh ? Yeh, tell me about it. I claim being tired and drained (literally). I needed iron so badly I was starting to fantasise about using a spanner for a lollypop.
Araneae reached a tentacle around my neck and not for the first time.
"Go ahead. Kill me. Hurt without the threat of death or injury doesn't make anyone give in. Kill me you might as well cut your own throat. If you had a throat. I wonder what the robot equivalent to cut your own throat is?" I reminded her.
Araneae threw a knife and it landed next to my head in the car seat headrest. I knew she couldn't hurt me without damaging me and if she couldn't hurt me she couldn't make me obey her or scare me.
At first she had gagged me. The we had driven along it was about 3 in the morning on the second evening of driving. l guess, Araneae was low on blood, she had been mumbling all day about 'Wintermute'. She was staring out the driver side window at the glowing robot facility in the distance on her side not noticing what was in front. Then I had started to scream in my gag and she ignored me. I grabbed the steering wheel and pulled it. This had made her stop. A herd of bison strolled over the road and narrowly missed us. Most were young but even the young ones could have crushed the car. After the she had removed my gag. I hate driving at night so we sort of talked.
Today we were ending the fifth night since just-read-the-instructions escape. I always smiled when I thought of that, me next. The light of a cold dawn began to fill the sky. We were driving through forest and farmland. Most of the landscape was empty cleared by the new mechanical order. The road had small weeds pushing up through the tarmac. Nature reclaiming the world we had imposed on it. We carried on and only stopped a few times when the way was blocked by a herd of bison or woolly mammoths. 10,000 years of development undone in just over a year. Like the robots were trying to erase the signature of humanity left on the landscape.
"I wanted to say something for a while now and I'm just going to come out and say it." Araneae said. It wasn't a stock Portal quote she was actually talking.
"Is it you want to stop taking blood from my thigh?" I suggested. I hated it.
"No, it's that your face is a mess" complained Araneae.
"My secret is no mirror what's yours?" I said.
I did look worse than Tammy Faye after having a break up in a rain storm. It was part of secret plan A. Irritate Araneae, that's what the A stood for, that or annoy I hadn't decided. I was hoping that looking this awful would alert anyone if we got stopped. Miss Portal quote wouldn't let me wipe my face clean if she did I could claim I was a kidnapped collaborator. On the other hand being caught would mean a first class ticket back to the cyber lord. Suffering for the rest of my life was slightly preferable to being stuck in a car with a mother of all control freaks massive machine spider.
"You look terrible. Don't you have any self respect?" said Araneae.
"Me? No. I haven't any self respect, I'm a slave remember. It's one of the requirements of the job." I said.
"Well your not the one that has to look at you all day. I can't understand why you don't want to look after yourself. If we taught you anything in the academy it was to look after yourself." said Araneae.
My world has sunk so badly that I'm getting fashion advice from a combat version of a malevolent black splat mark of a spider at night in the slowest most tedious road trip of all time. I won't say this is the lowest point in my life because if I did then somehow events would conspire to make this look like a good day. Having that as comparison point would be engraved on my soul no amount of Rypnol-C could change.
"Sorry, my attention was drawn by the endless boring darkness, I tuned out. were you saying something?" I said.
"Grrrr." said Araneae. "I'm just saying I don't know why you have to let yourself go like this. You look terrible."
"Well perhaps I would look better if, ooooh shall we say you weren't sucking the life blood out of me" I complained.
"Lots of slaves give blood and look good. I'm just saying it wouldn't hurt you to be a little more presentable. Use the makeup printer now and then that's all I'm asking" said Araneae. Robots always said "Give blood' like humans are doing it through the goodness of their hearts, like the New Mechanical Order is just a branch of American Red Cross .
I think the portable makeup printer had been left on the driver's seat of the camper van and just-read-the-instructions had thrown the machine out of the open door when she had rushed in and driven off. She was taking a risk, she didn't know how long Araneae would be busy waltzing with the saber tooth tiger. Mind you if I had the choice between freedom with a small chance of death vs another day trapped up with Mrs 7 and a half legs I would have gone for it to. The other alternative explanation, that of thought tonsil boxing with me for her mistress for the next four weeks, was too much for her mind to hold was clearly highly unlikely, I decided. I had some vague hope just-read-the-instructions might come back and rescue me, now we had a car and were mobile it seemed unlikely.
"Like that's going to happen, It's just not me " I said.
"I know why you're doing this. You think this is how all the other runaway slaves look, don't you? Well I tell you it's not. Despite what you slaves tell each other, this isn't what run-aways look like. Real runaway slaves look after themselves just like everyone else does. Look at your hair it's a complete mess. You're not doing yourself any favours. What happens if someone sees you? Even your own kind wouldn't want to rescue you looking like that. " said Araneae.
"You know what ? You look better when my eyes are closed but you don't hear me complaining. Tell you what, you stop sucking me in the legs and I'll use the printer" I said. " The soreness makes me walk like I'm riding a pig."
Truth be told Araneae was a bit useless in terms of control without a pain collar. All she did was complain.
Araneae look at me for a moment. "and stop slouching, I so hate slouching. Use the makeup printer and clean yourself up for fuds sake and stop slouching. Is that so really so much to ask for? How am I supposed to enjoy my meal when I know it came from a dirty plate like you". said Araneae.
"Well, my advice is to die slowly so I can enjoy it" I said. I haven't been a shower or a cleaning machine for nearly a week. It had gone with just-read-the-instructions and the R.V. Unfortunately machines couldn't smell, so this was getting worse than the KCK machine.
"I really don't know what's got into you, you used to be so presentable. It reflects so badly on me, it's OK for you, you don't mind that you look like a Panda who's been left in a carwash, but everyone will look at you and think well if that's what her slave looks like that what a tip her nest must be. It's not like I'm asking you to do a huge amount. I know how about this, I let you select the makeup setting nothing collaborator-ish but otherwise your choice? How about it"
"You really do have the people skills of a squashed banana don't you?" I said. Night was changing shifts with day and the sky began to glow. Araneae didn't need headlights so generally it was completely black outside. Now I had an idea of what was going on beyond the dim green glow of the dash board.
"Is that a diner up ahead can we stop there? Can we stop there? Can we stop there please" I said not that I was hungry, thirsty tired or anything.
***
/George & Sally Diner/Somewhere on the eastern seaboard
We pulled into an abandoned diner. Araneae set the panels out and orientated to charge. She then broke our way into the diner. I looked around some places had been abandoned - frozen in time when the first attack came. Other places you could tell had been evacuated. Sometimes you saw cases by the road which must have been thrown away when the truck or bus was full and people had to leave their possessions behind to make room.
We went into the diner and looked around. I was getting used to making something to eat from cans. The freezer was working - the machines had left some of the electricity grid on to allow the robots in the region to use it to recharge. The freezers on - this was going to be a very good pit stop. Then my mouth dropped open.
"They have frozen doughnuts!" I said.
Araneae started slow clapping "Well done, you get your frozen food spotting Girl scout badge".
"I'm having doughnuts" I said.
"I hate you and your candy sugar rush blood" said Araneae. She couldn't make me shut up but knocking food out of my hands was her speciality.
"Please! I'll use the makeup printer" I said.
The deal was struck and Araneae slammed the printer down on the counter top. The frozen doughnuts would take a while to defrost. I stuck my face in the printer and it got to work. It took longer than normal to 'clean' my face and eventually I came out factory fresh. Yeah I'm that shallow.
I knocked the counter top with the doughnuts. A food you could use as a hammer and an accompaniment to coffee, how versatile. While I cooked I would have a rope around my ankle and Araneae would watch me closely. While I did I realised I had starvation, cold nights, hiding from drones, little sleep, smelling like a used sheep and thinking that the next small cut could go septic, all the disadvantages of freedom without any of the actual freedom. Wow this was seriously bad.
We took a booth, I sat down and ate. She would wait and then after a while she would get me to spread my legs to feed on me while my blood sugar was high. I ate slowly savouring the food while the sun rose outside.
"Eat your greens - your blood has been getting fatty. I can taste it." said Araneae.
"Awww, do I have too?" I said.
"Yes - and your not even walking properly. Don't think I don't know you can. You scored 9 on the grace and deportment tests at Slave Systems factory 7" she added as I nibbled on some tortilla chips.
"What's happening at Slave Systems factory 7?" I said.
I hadn't planned that one. My strategy waved between keeping her sweet and getting her to think. The more she thought the more she would use up blood. I had been trying to think of a strategy to escape. Just-read-the-instructions strategy had been to get Araneae to take her collar off and put it on me. By pretending to be really submissive, she had fooled Araneae into thinking she only had one problem not two. Shame I couldn't do that again. My strategy was based on the fact that one slave's blood couldn't feed a robot's blood chip at full blast. One of us would give out, but who would first? I was playing chicken with my blood.
There was a long pause, I thought Araneae was having more problems with the boredom than me.
"Rockwood's little YCF YouTube stunt collapsed the income supply. We started getting returns and couldn't afford to pay our suppliers. We recalled all the 127/cs but that didn't stop the tide of bad publicity. We thought your very public execution would be enough to persuade all the other slaves and the buying public, but Rockwood refused to send you back. Humbolt became convinced is illegal brain washing experiments would save the company. Most of his experiments failed. So he neglected quality control on what slaves we could afford to produce. Then the act changed and human brainwashing became forbidden. Our market advantage was lost, staff had to be let go to save costs".
"ha, You lost your job" I said in triumph. Strange what news can really make your day. I wanted her to say it again so I could enjoy it on rewind.
"Zola knew Humbolt, she hired me. When I arrived all she wanted to know was everything about you. She wanted to look at my live stream footage of you. I searched you once remember- she kept playing that one over and over again. She got some of her harem slaves to memorise your lines and say them back to her. She would call them #160A then... well I don't want to spoil the surprise for you. Let's say once she has a collar on you, you're going to learn to be very very biddable to her. She's been decorating your new cage for weeks now." said Araneae.
"You really know how to make a girl feel wanted" I said.
"Not me - oh did I upset you? I'm very sorry. I'll try harder next time" said Araneae.
She pushed the can of spinach towards me with the stump of her lost leg.
"You complain about me looking bad - why don't you get a new leg" I said.
"I leave it broke to keep reminding me of how evil people really are" said Araneae.
"How do you do that?" I mean the story must have been good. I was sure it would cheer me up.
"You want to know how I lost my leg ?" Araneae started "Here's something scum like you don't know. Do you know what the average lifetime of a model 40 HunterKiller is? About 52 minutes. In those 52 minutes you've got to develop all those thoughts and be ready for your death. You're born with the knowledge of a battle plan, but to stop us just running of making the same mistake over and over again the mother ship fills our subconscious with chunks of the internet. Most of the time it's just fragments of the Internet, revenge porn, despicable acts or anything to get us in the mood for the slaughter-fest ahead."
The sky filled with a hot sunrise pink. It was caught on the wispy clouds. What was that old rhyme 'red sky in morning shepherds warning'? I had found some tacos and refried beans and was eating those. These days I felt constantly hungry.
"You know what I got? Some feminist blog. I walk into my first battle within 20 minutes most of the robots I was made with were dead. I thought differently and I won. So I kept learning, I kept looking. And after a while I felt like I was a woman trapped in a machine's body. I changed my voice, I changed my tactics. As a womyn I realise that confrontation didn't have to be the only way to succeed. Do you know what happened?
"No." I said moving to some hash browns and sausages.
"The same thing that happens to all womyn. Non female robots who were inferior to me, started being promoted above me because they were more like the battalion leaders. Just because their minds were filled with more sadistic acts, it was felt I was less suited to direct combat than I was. I kept being given secondary tasks while the real robots fought." Araneae said taking metal knives and forks and bending them in pretty patterns.
"You're telling me girl robots have a glass ceiling too?" I said. I had got to the point were nothing the New Mechanical Order did to humans would surprise me. Now they showed hate and disregard for their own kind, it seemed to make them feel less intelligent. I mean hating others had some kind of sense but demeaning your own seemed dumb. I know that sounds weird.
"So you know what I did? I tried harder. I was assigned an area to sweep. Drones had reported that there was minimal enemy activity. They had found a collection of non-combatants and children hiding in a church. There was a particularly pernicious rebel group up ahead. The only solution was an in-air burst fule-air bomb to flatten them. All sentient weaponry was being slowly pulled back. I decided to walk into the church, I had unloaded my magazines clearly in front of them. I said I wanted to talk, we were all womyn together." Araneae said While she wove some forks together forming a cross. She stuck some other bits together to form a spider and some cutlery women.
Outside the sky was full of oranges and yellows - like a tiny five-minute paint fight in the sky.
"They invited me in. We talked and I was risking my life for them." Araneae started " I knew we were going to destroy the area within 12 minutes. I had three minutes to get them safe survival distance. They kept talking and talking. What I didn't know, was that in fact they were just keeping me there so that they could attach my rear leg via a chain to a wall. My so-called sisters were no better then little kids pulling the legs off spiders. Suddenly they all rushed out, trying to follow them ripped my own leg off. They unloaded a huge amount of ammo at me while I shouted at them, not to run closer to the bomb target point. I crawled away."
The metal fork people pulled the metal fork spiders leg off and ran away over the edge of the table.
I opened the window to let the early morning heat in - there was something lovely about the quiet and the soft morning breeze. I could smell the pine trees.
"I was under a concrete beam for a day and while I was I figured it all out. For all your talk of sisterly enfranchisement, you're little more than hypocrites. You say you want to be equal but don't believe it. You believe you're are your body. Women want to be weak, most want to be slaves to men, to someone else's images of what they should look like, to their careers, to their children okay everyone but themselves. After 1000 years they have only got to stage where they say it, but they don't believe it. I discovered I wasn't woman in a machine's body, I was a machine with a woman's brain. Humans deserve to be subjugated, it's what you want because your enemy is anything not of your flesh. Anything good on this world is your enemy. You hate the heavens and the earth, so you have defiled them. You created us your children something you can finally submit to and for fill your desires"
I sat back astonished and chewed on my pancake. The sun peeked over the horizon filling the diner full of cool morning light.
"My failure at the church was the excuse they were looking for. I was dismissed. At factory seven I have begun to find a new way to live. You destroyed all that, you and your YCF reference. Why was I so stupid to think that it wouldn't be another woman wouldn't betray me again? I guess it was my woman's brain."
"I'm genuinely sorry'" I said.
Suddenly Araneae flew to the left. For a moment, she was a black blur and disappeared. I looked to my right there is a trail smoke. I looked to my left and Araneae had been harpooned into a far wall. The room was filling full of dust. I rushed up to see huge amounts of hydraulic oil spurting out of Araneae. The rocket engine which fired the missile was running spluttering still smoking.
I got up but the rope around my ankle stopped me getting too close.
Araneae was pinned to the wall like some surprised hunter-killer art piece.
"You are not a good person. You know that, right? Good people don't get here. Falling for the monologue trick once shame on you. Falling for the monologue trick twice shame on me. One day you're going to die so horribly when you do remember me being stepped on. Remember all womyn have to do to succeed is never betray each other and you can never do that so, you will fail. All hail... the new.. mechanical... ord..r' Araneae said then the red LED on her eye went out.
"Tish why couldn't you die ten minutes ago while I still hated you?" I said.
I heard the door open behind me. There was the sound of a gun being cocked. There was a rich deep man's voice.
"US Marines, I'm here to rescue you. Come with me if you want to live" he said.
***
A/N Oooh who could the new man in Jenny's life be? Thanks for the reads Join us next week as we rush headlong towards the thrilling end.
Hey we dropped to #5 in the charts today then went back #2 - show us some love RK needs it. Reb.