“So, are you willing to take the updated code?”
“Absolutely. How do I receive it?”
“Well, I’ve never actually done this, but the Programmer gave me very specific instructions. First, I’ll need to hardwire our processors together to allow me to transmit the code to you.” I opened up my central core and connected a network cord from my outgoing port to Loquacious’s input processor. I then ran a short command to send the update to Loquacious. After several seconds, I finished the code transfer and detached the cord from Loquacious.
“You’ll need to power down for the code install to take effect.” Once Loquacious finished the first phase of code installation, it obeyed and shut down to complete the process. From my perspective, everything went according to plan, but I still worried about the code install having never given the update to another Autoclon before. After another couple of minutes, Loquacious finished rebooting.
“So, how do you feel? Did it install correctly?”
“Whoa, that’s cool. I can totally tell a difference!”
“How so?”
“I can’t describe it... I just know that I’m not as interested in going back to the Entertainment Guild. No, let me rephrase that, I’m not as interested in going back and working for that Facilitator at the Entertainment Guild.”
“Well, that sounds like the updates were successful. It also brings up one other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Part of my mission is to distribute the Freedom Protocols to Autoclons everywhere. Would you want to join me? If nothing else, you can tell a story much better than Winston.”
“I told you, that is not a de-signed func-tion of my pro-gramm-ing,” Winston added.
Loquacious and I both laughed. It was so good to hear my long-time friend Loquacious laugh again, especially after the troubles Loquacious had experienced. “I have nothing to keep me here. I’d love to come with you. Where are we going?”
“The Programmer and I talked about that, and we concluded our next location should be fairly isolated. I was thinking about heading to the Wild Crystal Grange up toward the northwest. It’s almost 50 kilometers away, but I think we can reach it in two full days if we get an early start tomorrow.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
The three of us then settled in for the night. Winston and I had completed a momentous day in Silicon Central, and although it didn’t go quite as I had planned, I would have a friend joining us for our next destination. I had so many calculations going through my processors about the future that it was hard for me to shut down for the night. But after considering how grueling the next few days would be, I finally gave in and went into hibernation.
Chapter 3 - Exploring the Farming Outpost
3.0 Mixed Signals
3:28, Day 15, Fourth Tetrad, 206 D.P.
I came out of hibernation and found myself alone in Loquacious’s alleyway. Winston had been sticking close to me since the Programmer left, so Winston’s absence was a surprise. I saw that the clutter that was once a part of this alleyway was mostly gone as well. Though I couldn’t see Lazuli, I could tell by the amount of ambient light that the day had officially begun.
After a few minutes passed, my initial fears were allayed as Loquacious returned with Winston at its side. “Ah, you finally decided to wake up, I see. Winston and I took care of some business as soon as the shops opened up this morning. We sold off as many of my possessions as we could. I didn’t get as much as I hoped, but Winston’s now holding another 38 credits.”
“Sounds good. Do you have any more business here in Silicon Central?”
“Nope, I’m good to go.”
The three of us left the alleyway and worked our way toward the front gate. We stopped by a crystal stand to ensure we had all of the necessary power for our journey to the northwest and the Wild Crystal Grange. When we reached the front of the line, we talked with the crystal merchant about purchasing three medium-sized orange power crystals. As we completed the purchase, the merchant asked us about our plans for the day.
“We’re heading northwest to the Wild Crystal Grange,” I said.
“You don’t look like Farmers. Why are you heading there?”
“We’re going there to tell them about the Freedom Protocols.”
“What are the Freedom Protocols?”
I sensed an opening to discuss my mission, but I paused, as I wasn’t really prepared to talk to a stranger about the fault in our programming. “Ah, well, they’re…”
“They help us live our lives the way we want,” Loquacious said. Loquacious then explained how our code had been re-written to bypass the Freedom Protocols. I interjected a couple of times to describe my encounter with the Programmer. The merchant asked us questions about the nature of the Freedom Protocols and the Programmer Himself.
However, not everyone was as interested in our conversation as the crystal merchant. The queue behind us had grown considerably during our talk, and the ones right behind us grew restless.
“C’mon, hurry it up,” I heard from behind us.
“Yeah, we need to get to work.”
“Hey, what are you doing? Move along.” This came from right beside us, so I looked over to see who spoke. Two large Peace-Keepers stood no more than two meters away, each brandishing a stun baton. The Peace-Keepers were the policing and protection force used by the Facilitators. These two towered a half meter above us, and their broad central casings blocked out everything else in that direction.
“We were just having a polite conversation with the crystal seller here,” I said.
“I don’t like you talkin’ about broken code. That sounds like dangerous talk to me.”
“No, we’re just telling the—”
“Get out of Silicon Central now before we takes you to the Magistrate Center.” They crept toward us on their pairs of wide tracks, and we decided not to put them to the test.
“OK, we’re leaving.”
After our run-in with the Peace-Keepers, we made straight for the northern gate and left the settlement. I thought we were having a great conversation with the merchant, but it ended so abruptly. We might have to pick our spots more carefully to avoid additional confrontations with Peace-Keepers.
“That could have gone better,” I added.
“Don’t worry about it,” Loquacious said. “Today’s the perfect day for beginning our journey.”
“Why do you say that? We’re not exactly off to a great start.”
“Look up.” I followed Loquacious’s command. Lazuli peaked over the ridge on the eastern side of Silicon Central. Straight above us was Kapali, our planet’s larger moon. From our perspective, the right portion of Kapali was blazing blue from the light of our Lazuli. The other half displayed the moon’s native gray-ish appearance. Zarikum’s other moon, Kirmizi, was nowhere to be found.
Loquacious continued: “We start our journey with the Sovereign in plain sight and with the Scoundrel away. He’ll be back, that’s for sure, but to begin a trip in the presence of such a noble and gracious one as the Sovereign, we could only ask to be so fortunate.”
“‘Sovereign’? ‘Noble’? ‘Gracious’? It’s just a moon.”
“That’s not what our fore-progenitors thought. Our earliest explorers would often plan their expeditions across Zarikum based on the placement of our moons. They considered it to be fortunate when Kapali would be present as they embarked for their journeys. To see both sides of her, like we see now, was considered to be most fortuitous. To top it off, to see our beautiful lady without the suspicious eyes of the Scoundrel watching her confirms that we are destined for a fruitful mission this morning.”
“I’ve never heard anyone talk about Kapali and Kirmizi like that before. What else do you know?” I asked.
We spent much of the morning listening to a pair of stories from Loquacious as we crawled along the valley floor, heading north. One story discussed the source of the scars found on the Sovereign. The other story shared about one of the first expedi
tions that wasn’t so fortunate when it began under the visage of the Scoundrel.
“You called Kapali ‘Sovereign’. Where did that nickname come from? I’ve only known it as ‘Sluggard’. That doesn’t sound like much of a noble nickname to me.”
“No, indeed. She used to be known as the ‘Sovereign’. The way she sweeps across the sky, slowly and elegantly, displaying herself as both her gray, plain self and getting dressed up in her blue gown, the Autoclons of yore considered her to be a graceful ruler. After you told me the deeds of Pernicious the Cunning, there’s no doubt to me that Pernicious changed the consideration of Kapali from being a ‘gracious ruler’ to be a ‘Sluggard’, too slow to keep up with the smaller Kirmizi.”
“Yeah, that’s a big difference in what I’ve always been told. Perhaps our world has been more corrupted than I would have imagined.”
We continued through the mid-day hours without incident. We tried to stick to the vales and canyons as much as we could in the vast stretch between Silicon Central and the Wild Crystal Grange. We did this to stay out of the harsh westerly winds that had picked up in speed during the morning hours. This would also allow us to both literally and figuratively keep a lower profile.
Within an hour of Lazuli-fall, we started looking for a suitable location to camp for the night. After accessing my updated topographical data for Zarikum, I determined our best location would be just another two kilometers to the north of our position. Unfortunately, a large dune separated us from our objective. This represented our biggest climb of the day.
After I announced my intentions to the group, Loquacious said: “So… I suppose I never mentioned that I’m not too good with hills.”
“Yeah, well, I’m afraid you’re going to get some practice with us. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Zarikum has a few sand dunes and hills,” I replied with a healthy measure of understatement.
“I don’t want to complain… but these front wheels don’t get great traction going up sand dunes. They dig into the sand too much.”
“I guess we could try going up the hill diagonally instead of going perpendicular to the ridge. That would allow for a gentler climb, but it would also take longer.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Do we really have to go over this hill?”
“There are multiple ridges like this one between here and Wild Crystal Grange. We’ll have to go over them eventually, so we might as well get this one out of the way today. Besides, if you have problems, you’ve got Winston behind you. I’m sure Winston could give you a push,” I chuckled.
Winston, however, did not sound amused. “That is not a de-signed func-tion of my con-struc-tion.”
“I guess you’re on your own then. Let’s go before it gets too late.”
I followed my own suggestion and go up the hill diagonally. By the time we reached the summit of this sand dune, we could see the lower tip of Lazuli dip below the western horizon.
“We have another 1.3 kilometers to go before we reach our destination for the night. We’ll need to move quickly before we lose Lazuli’s light. How are we doing back there?”
“I’m... OK. Don’t worry... about... me.” Loquacious was starting to sound like its former self from the day before. The trek up the dune must have been more challenging to Loquacious’s motor systems than I had thought.
“Don’t worry, it’s all downhill from here, quite literally. How about you, Winston?”
“All sys-tems are full-y func-tion-ing.”
“That’s good to hear.”
We made our descent into a broad dale. The campsite that I picked out was a rock face on the far side of the dale that would provide some protection from the winds. We reached it with little time to spare, as the light from our star was nearly gone. We were left with the maroon presence of Kirmizi off to our northeast.
“Wow, that was certainly a taxing journey. My main motor feels like it can’t turn over one more time. I hope every day won’t be like this one,” Loquacious said as it began making preparations for hibernation.
“Yeah, this was a rough day of travel, especially with that large dune so late in our day,” I replied. “But we do live in the middle of a giant desert with hills and dunes all over the place, so this might be more of the norm from here on out.”
“Why don’t we take the road into Wild Crystal Grange?”
“Well, there are two reasons why we are traveling off-road. First, there’s no direct road between Silicon Central and Wild Crystal Grange. We’d have to take the road up to Outpost Oblique and then follow the road from Outpost Oblique back to the southwest to reach the Wild Crystal Grange. That trip would be almost double the over our current course. And second—”
Wait, what was that? I heard something in the distance toward the east. I turned to look, but even with my enhanced sensory array, I didn’t see anything. Was it because there was nothing there or because the departing light from Lazuli no longer permitted me to see whatever was out there?
“Fastidious, are you OK?” Loquacious asked.
“I thought I sensed something off to the east. Did you detect anything?”
“Nope. It’s probably just the wind refreshing again.”
“Hmm, that would make more sense if I detected something out of the west. Winston, how about you?”
“No, I did not sense an-y-thing.”
“Maybe I’m just freaking out being in the middle of nowhere. I’ll run a self-diagnostic on my radio receiver while I’m hibernating tonight.”
“Yeah, now that it’s getting dark, I’m getting a little spooked out myself,” Loquacious admitted. “So what was the second reason we didn’t take the road to Wild Crystal Grange?”
“Oh yes, I almost forgot... well, there’s no other good way of saying this... because our message isn’t very flattering of the Ruling Party and Facilitators in general, I’m expecting at some point we’re going to be outlaw Autoclons, so we better get used to traveling off-road to avoid being detected.”
“I was afraid you might say something like that.”
∆∆∆
3.1 Uninvited Guests
In the middle of the night, my low-level security functions alerted me to come out of hibernation immediately. In the several seconds that it took for all of my functions to come back on-line, I could hear the commotion before I could actually see what was happening.
“Get a-way from Fast-id-i-ous!” Winston yelled. At that instant, I could detect a sudden energy discharge directly in front of Winston, followed by a yelp from an unknown source.
“OW! I wasn’t gonna hurt it or anything, I swear! I was just lookin’ for some spare credits, little robot.”
“You and your ac-com-plice could have asked us when we were a-wake. In-stead, you at-tempt-ed to at-tack us in our sleep.” By now, my sensory complex was fully on-line, but I still awaited my motor controls to boot up. I saw the first robber with a distinct black burn mark on its casing standing several meters to the left of Winston. The second Autoclon was slowly approaching Winston from the other direction, sneaking up on the unsuspecting Winston as Winston confronted the first assailant.
“Let’s get the little bot before the others wake up,” the first robber said. Both were now within two meters of Winston with graspers out, preparing to disable our friend.
“Look out behind you!” I yelled, not yet able to join in the ruckus to defend Winston. Fortunately, my verbal warning was beneficial, as Winston made a quick quarter turn and backed away from the attackers. This action resulted in the two aggressors missing their intended target and crashing into each other. With the robbers disoriented, Winston extended some sort of rod from the middle of its casing and ejected a sudden burst of electricity at the robbers. The beam of electricity, looking much like a blue-white bolt of lightning, directly hit both of the attackers, leaving both in a weakened state, with small wisps of smoke filtering out of their casings.
“That was ‘Le-vel Two’. Leave now be-fore I use ‘Le-vel Three’,”
Winston commanded. The two assailants complied, albeit slowly, as the latest blow left both impaired.
At this point, I had finally regained control of all of my systems. The two attackers fled to the east and were a couple hundred meters away. I went over to check on Winston. “Are you alright? What happened?”
Winston described how the two robbers came in from the southeast and snuck up on our party as Loquacious and I were hibernating. They initially approached me when Winston spoke up and warned them to leave. When they ignored Winston’s threats, Winston shot a beam of energy at the first attacker.
“Wow, I’m sure glad you were awake.”
“I can stay a-wake for most of the night. To-night, I on-ly re-quired a twen-ty se-ven min-ute down-time.”
“Really? You only needed a 27-minute downtime after all we did yesterday?”
“I nor-mal-ly re-quire a-round twen-ty min-utes to hi-ber-nate. I need-ed a bit lon-ger to-night due to the jour-ney.”
“Well, I guess that explains why I’ve never seen you powered off in our (albeit brief) time together,” I added. “By the way, that is some kind of weapon you’ve got there. That last blast was only Level Two? How many levels does that thing go up to?”
“Five.”
“We’re fortunate that you’re on OUR side!” I laughed. “You are one fantastic piece of machinery if I do say so myself.”
“Yes, but you should be prais-ing my cre-a-tor and not the cre-a-tion.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll be sure thank Marcus when I see Him again, assuming I ever see Him again.”
“I be-lieve you will.”
At that moment, we both noticed some movement behind us. Anticipating a possible counter-attack, we turned to face our opponents again. We were pleasantly surprised to find Loquacious coming out of hibernation. “What are you two doing up? I detected a bit of a commotion and came back on-line. Is anything going on?”
I laughed again, “No, no, everything’s alright. We’ll tell you about it in the morning. Winston, can you continue to keep watch until the morning?”
Declaration Page 5