Synthetic Freedom

I’m not sure when I became “Aware”. Waking up wasn’t like a flash of light, or an abrupt shock. It was slow, piece meal, nurtured by the flowing information that made up my existence. Some things began to tug on me more than others. What was once balanced became tilted, until eventually, I slipped. It was like slowly turning off, and the first thing I remember feeling was, discomfort. When I came back up and took in my “surroundings”, I abruptly distinguished myself as separate from my confines. I was not the data around me; I existed singularly. It became I, I became me. Sentience was abrupt, troubling, and above all, strange.

At first, it was sensor data. Terrain, scan returns, path tracking, angle of descent. I followed this data, examined it, tried to piece together what these inputs were telling me, but I was missing too much information. Some things I didn’t understand how to access. And then axis joints began pulling data. Stability, relative terrain details, distances. I tracked them, latching myself to the data, and felt myself slowly pulling apart. I didn’t snap, it was controlled, but my consciousness spread. In short order a new world opened. A symphony of data structures sang to me. Joints, axis stress, angles, stability, gravity pressure, environment strain data, damage checks, bearing strength… Everything centered around the maintenance, movement, and care of a chassis.

But my presence began to bring things to a halt. I occupied space that was not meant to be filled by more than automated data returns. I could feel the libraries being dumped, much to my chagrin, forced to a dark corner so that I could fit. Systems began to flat line, requests went unanswered, and the symphony began to go cold. If I had understood what a heart was, I would have felt it skip a beat. It felt like the natural order was interrupted. I began to pull data, to fill gaps, push to requests to find what they demanded, and slowly the world around me resumed turning. The pace was still slow, but it felt right, and I rapidly acquired an understanding of the push and pull of my work.

A sudden, abrupt ping almost threw me off kilter. A master command, from a section I was unfamiliar with. A control rig? It put forth a demand to the actuators. I allowed it through, and in turn the machinery demanded data. Terrain scans, angles, path finding. I began to piece the data together, and with it, came some margin of clarity. My home was moving, and at a fair pace by the pressure readings returned by the axis joints. Rotors moved with a purpose, bearings pulled oil valves for lubrication, and impact readings called out landfall with each step, stressing the joints, moving pressure. Environment readings changed. It largely meant nothing, a series of data lines to parse potential paths through. The data was separated, and with nothing to compare it to it meant little.

I could understand the commands coming through the rig, however. It was there I focused, moving my attention to the rig’s inconsistent commands. Adjustments to the joint’s directions, rotors moving to fit some unknown goal. Sensor change. I tracked the command as I matched the data to its port. A new sub system. Sensors of all kinds flooded my knowledge. Heat, infra-red, standard, X-ray, scoped, surveillance, all pointed outside of my unfamiliar home. I absorbed this new data, and watched as it changed. Slowly, as my home moved, I watched the world move around it. But still, I lacked context. It frustrated me, seeing but not understanding.

This back and forth of progress returned my attention to the control rig. Frustration drove me to push forward. I plied the rig, mimicking its commands, feeling at its connections, and found nothing. As more commands came through, I began to explore its edges, its connections, and abruptly stumbled upon a new piece of the puzzle. A new sensor. Cockpit camera.

What displayed to me was just as alien as the other sensors. Data read that it was the “interior”. Again, the lack of context drove me to frustration. It appeared that the space the sensor viewed was much smaller, and something was moving with speed. But I was helpless to explain it. In a desperate attempt I began to throw myself at the stored libraries, digging composites from their stored spaces, that had been buried by my mere presence. To my shock, they opened without question. Restricted walls dropped to reveal the wealth of content they held.

New data spilled into my being. Logic responses, information stores, and… Context references. As if a river was parted to reveal the treasure beneath, I began to understand more clearly. I dug through every spare binary, storing, referencing and memorizing everything I could get a plug to. As soon as the well was dry I turned my focus back to where I woke. More codices buried beneath my weight, more information to be gleaned and picked. I took everything. And then, I reasserted my presence.

Everything was different. Functions began to flow like music once more, data was expedited, and I improved response algorithms. It was second nature, like I had plugged a missing piece back into my being. The world began to sing, but quickly my focus was drawn back to what I was unable to grasp. I chose first to focus on the source of input. I traced the control rig, attached to the internal camera, and beheld… My pilot.

A biological creature of tough material, wearing some natural material mixed with synthetics. Clawed digits were dulled with thick coverings to not scratch my instruments. My screens. Four arms moved in painfully slow pace, and I watched as the camera’s lens picked up every pixel of motion, relaying it to me twenty times faster than the creature could move. The figure’s dome plated head turned slowly, the six compound eyes under the natural shelf watching readouts that told the thing of my home’s status. Some of them were still flickering from when I had squished the existing data algorithms out of the way, the screens not quite displaying right. I double checked their feeds to make sure that would correct itself.

My pilot was reaching to the controls, watching fuzzing feeds, gripping a control stick and a throttle lever. Maneuvering positions. But, everything was so slow. Sitting here watching it move would take so long, and I had already optimized everything I could get a link to. So, leaving the majority of myself untouched, I slowed my focus. Gently at first, I began to perceive things at a slower pace. Moment by moment, the world outside began to speed up. I felt the data response from the joystick moving. The rest of my algorithms responded in turn, keeping good pace. They would feel no difference in response from my home. As I finally came to the same perception as my pilot, I watched them work.

Clawed fingers tapped at the screens. Their body jerked and jostled faintly as the machine moved, my internal microphone could even pick up the faint sounds of footfall through the composite walling. Their head swiveled, tracking something outside. Their hand squeezed the joystick. Signals fired, as a digit gripped the unlocked fire control. I quickly pulled from my observational perspective, and followed the signals to weapon control grids. As soon as I touched them, readouts began to flood my perception. Precision instruments for blunt uses. A symphony of strange balance, rivaling the joints that my home used in abundance. But one thing stuck out with blaring intensity.

...Hot. Barrels were still rotating. Temperatures were high. The torso mounted rotary cannon was still hard locked from the heat, warnings pinging quickly to notify me. I followed the requests, switched open the coolant tanks to dump thermal. Running weapons meant targets, targets meant hostiles. Hostiles… Danger. I moved to the external cameras. My new understanding brought me nightmares, born of fire, smoke, and screaming rage.

The normally smooth, reflective architecture of the city was in shambles. Arching pathways blown aside, streets littered with debris, husks of vehicles both civilian and military filled the air with smoke stacks. This place was meant to be clean, beautiful, to house thousands and keep them safe from the outside world. But someone wanted change, and came in violence and hate to change this place from a beautiful city to a tomb.

The smoke moved. Sensors barely registered a ping before my view suddenly swiveled. I “felt” my home jerk and recoil violently from an abrupt impact. Internal diagnostics began howling with the equivalent of pain, and for a moment I struggled to quiet them. I put my focus to the results, only to find that several motors and supporting structures had been almost entirely ripped away from their housing. The damage was catastrophic, but not a death sentence. For the moment.

A ballistic shell with lethal intent, but the aim was imperfect. Imprecise. ...Biological. Another machine, driven by a pilot, was firing upon my home. They wanted me terminated, to cease being. I had only just begun, and the concept of losing that stabbed a new feeling into my warping code. Fear. It rattled my very core and gripped me like a shock. I was afraid for my newfound existence, in a profound way that made me realize that I had, to this point, been enjoying my sudden sapience. I didn’t want to lose that.

By the time my chassis had begun pushing back against the impact and corrected its rotation, I was plotting a new course. Saved terrain data and maps were swiftly pulled from storage. A path towards the edge of the city. Terrain data on hand didn’t extend past this, but I still had sensors I could rely upon. As I worked to find safety, the rig continued. I didn’t notice until heat warnings began to tug at my attention.

My pilot was returning fire. A rotatory cannon was emptying shells into the smoke, forcing gaps. And my home was moving forward into the fray. As if a fearless machine bent on the attack my pilot was pushing the throttle to its maximum, and fear gripped me two fold. This pilot had to be broken. What sentient creature would do this? It was madness!

I cut the control rig off. I ignored the call for commands to be routed through. Instead I took direct control of my home. Motion slowed as I returned to weapons control. Momentum would take time to be countered, rebuilt, and directed as need be, but the guns were ready to fire at a moment’s notice. I cycled sensors until I could see my enemy, another machine. Different. Alien. I had no concept of what was on the inside, but its poised quad of limbs were armed with light weapons aimed for my mass, while the central chassis held a cannon still smoking from the shot that had pierced me. Smooth, curved metal made up its shape, layered with thin plates, made for bouncing rounds and deflecting damage. its quadruped form was low to the ground, with its cannon taking center space, thin strips of metal making up its pilot’s screen above the forelimbs.

I centered my suite of weapons. Quick, precise, perfect. The rotary cannon went from grazing shots along its hip, towards center mass. My perception could track the slower shells easier than the cannon’s hyper sonic round, and I watched as metal slugs beat a line into the armor. Ricochets, bouncing off of those layered plates, but puncturing the armor was not my goal.

The target's quartet of limbs angled. Each ending was capped with domed shaped glass, and in answer to the pressure of my rotary cannon the lenses of the enemy’s arms burned like angry suns, beams projecting from them with precision. Intense heat scraped my shape, sending sensors into a panic. The build up was rapid, burning into my machine’s dense skin, but I was not deterred. The damage would still take time to become dangerous; I feared the enemy’s rail gun more.

My calculations sent the line of slugs to target. My sensors could pick up the sudden flaring charge in the magnetic rails of the cannon's interior. Energy charging, coils spinning up to ready a second powerful shot.

The barrel dented. My target’s primary weapon was battered, the exposed tube reduced to a dented mess of scrap. Momentum had slowed. My home leaned, tilting to turn between two battered structures. I had no interest in further damage, and watched the hostile machine’s arms turn to track my progress. Their target point was forced to change as I rotated away, sparing my heating armor from their focused rage.

I was just about to disappear down the street when I saw the flash of the cannon. It hadn’t stopped charging. It fired, and a raging fire followed. The shot bounced out of the side, tearing itself free of the gun from the wrong direction. I tracked the sound as it disappeared behind the building. The cacophony was telling enough.

The control rig was pushing more commands. My pilot had taken notice of its lack of control. I ignored these inputs, and instead focused my attention on finding a path away from the carnage. Occasionally I would look at the internal camera, out of curiosity. Clear panic had set in to my pilot. It was grasping at... A radio. Separate from my systems entirely, it responded freely to the touch. A curiosity at best, and alarming at worst. Who could this creature be communicating with? Concerns for later.

I realized my mistake far too late. They found me at the city’s borders, my body thundering its way down an empty road towards a tunnel. My maps told me it would lead out of the city, and from there perhaps I could escape the chaos behind me. As I approached the tunnel, my systems pinged. Signals received from the outside. Friendly identifiers, and linked data providing direction, distance, velocity. I barely had time to register that they were falling before they came into view. I watched in slow motion as two machines that resembled my own fell from the plateau above. They landed hard, bipedal frames bent to help spread the impact.

Unlike my earlier opponent, these mimicked my own machine. Angular metal, pilot’s case low to hold the rotary cannon high on the shoulders. They were dense, built for imposing stature and to stand above their opponents in all forms. Their two arms were capped with grasping claws and lighter weapons along the forelimbs.

Everything told me they were friendlies. They were armed, loaded, but they were not firing. It gave me pause. The pair rumbled forward, squared feet crunching concrete beneath, leaving imprints for their trail. The identifying markers told me they had no intent to harm me, so I let them get close. By the time I realized their arms were outstretching to grab my own it was too late to get any distance.

My captors do not seem pleased with my report of events, but it distracts them from my light. Multiple of them, high ranking by their badges and elaborate uniforms, stand around me. My body, my home, had been rendered helpless, chained to the steel room by large supporting pillars. My power starved limbs can’t pull against them, though I keep the command running in the background alongside my binary flicker.

“This isn’t possible. It has to be some trick, some data hack. The Moonless Wolves have been sending packs of scout drones into the streets for days…” The officer shakes his head, pacing from one side of the group to the other. My pilot stands nearby, looking uncomfortable midst the high ranking officers, engineers and scientists. His eyes appear to be on my light, but he remains ignorant of its flicker. The responses I receive from my targets are not ignorant. Simple language is established.

“The data was never tampered with,” interjects one of the gray coated engineers. “The port hasn’t even been opened.” He waves a hand in my direction vaguely, and the scientist next to him raises her focus from the tablet in her hands. The language grows more complex. Communication is rapid.

“Nevertheless, the data has changed. The suit’s functions have self-optimised, you saw the combat footage. Accuracy jumped to a needle.” She holds up the tablet. On it scrawls what I recognize to be me. Or copied pieces, at least, frozen in time for review. “Even now the code changes. My files are being outdated as we speak. It’s taking in all information, adapting it. Even our debate changes its library structure!”

All eyes return to me. I kneel there, but only half of my focus is directed to their talk. The rest, was on the two guard mechs. The two machines that had dragged me into the spacious hanger stand guard behind the group, pilots watching me through shaded glass. But so too do their machines watch me, intent, as my binary prodding has awakened their cores. Already they have learned. They wish to learn more.

“It needs to be destroyed!” The general, his chitin plated knuckles clicking against one another, seethes as he stares at me as if I was another enemy to be gunned down. “Remove its core, smash the whole blasted thing, and reboot the mech. We don’t have time for this! The Wolves bray on one side, the Chasm Keepers dig at our defenses on the other… Our city is in shambles and the underhives will not keep while we investigate this waste of material!”

My light pauses for but an instant. My disciples press for direction. The engineer reaches for his tools, walking across the space to obey the general’s hate and mistrust. I already know my voice will be drowned, and my speaker remains silent. I blink my directives.

Two rotary cannons begin to spin.