First Contact

"Enraged Phillip, give me the strength for just one more." - Common prayer of the desperate

The cantina was built for at least two hundred people. Each bench table could fit five per side comfortably, even taking into account how computing work led to mass increase in many cases, for a seating of ten total. There were four rows of six tables. At the far end was "The Wheel of Death" machines. Vending machines with a carousel showing foodstuffs, snacks, and drinks. There was an abandoned cooking line, neither machines nor the living staffing it. The LCD screens were off, and the room was dimly lit.

Sitting at one bench, in roughly the middle, Daxin sat slowly eating a pomegranate with a knife. He peeled the fruit with the blade, then used the point to pop out the berry/seeds onto a napkin. Once he had four or five, he would eat them one at a time with his fingers.

With one eye's retinal link he watched FIDO chase the seagulls, Kalki laughing uproariously as he waved his spear around at the fleeing birds. Once in a while he'd give a slight smile and a silent chuckle that would make his chest heave.

The door opened and he glanced over, seeing the slim profile and the shine of the lights off of a polished brown head. He went back to his pomegranate as the slim figure of Dhruv/Legion moved past him, to the vending machine, and stared at it thoughtfully for long minutes. There would be a little bit of 'hmm' and 'mmm' and 'huh' then Dhruv would press the button to rotate the carousel to look at the next set of products.

"There's always shaving cream in these. Like I'm going to sit down for lunch and eat a refreshing tube of shaving cream," Dhruv said, shaking his head.

"At least you know it's properly aged," Daxin rumbled.

Dhruv laughed, reaching out and pressing the button. The hidden nanoforge spit out the wrapped vegan sandwich, dropping it into the bin. Dhruv picked it up and moved over to sit by Daxin.

"How's it going?" Dhruv asked.

"FIDO and Kalki are hiding from the seagulls and snickering to each other," Daxin said. His eye flickered and a hologram appeared, projected from the cybernetic eye. It showed the seagulls settling down next to the pile of fries. "They'll run out there, scare the birds, laugh, then run back and hide, and the gulls will come back, and it starts all over again."

"At least they're having fun," Dhruv said, taking a bite of the sandwich.

"What's got your underwear in a wad?" Daxin asked. "You're acting like a futa with a twisted jockstrap."

"Really, Dax?" Dhruv lifted an eyebrow. He took a bite of the sandwich and a large crescent of avocado fell from the sandwich. Dhruv frowned, set down the sandwich, and picked up the green wedge. "You're in a mood too."

Daxin shrugged. "Eh, not really."

"Thought you'd be hanging out near Pete," Dhruv said. "Give him some moral support."

"He's testing some gobbledygook hardware on some Greek alphabet named layer somewhere. He's got like fifteen thousand staffers now," Daxin said. His face twisted in a snarl. "Eight thousand years dead and they look at me like I'm some kind of monkey when I go see him.

Daxin slammed a fist into the table.

"I can hear it in their brains. What's this gorilla doing in here? Why does he have a gun, does he have a small penis and is compensating?" Daxin looked over at Dhruv. "I got back from putting down some leftover clones from that fight and walked in to tell Pete it was done. One woman literally got up from the group she was talking to, walked up, looked at me, looked at the rifle I was carrying, and literally asked me "something wrong with your penis?" and looked back and gave her friends a smirk."

"Is she in the ICU?" Dhruv asked. He took another bite and a bunch of sprouts fell out. Dhruv sighed and started to pick them up.

"No. I'm not caving in her face for that comment," Daxin said.

"What did you do?" Dhruv asked around a mouthful of sprouts.

"She was all smirking at me and I shrugged. Told her the last time I used my penis instead of a gun the enemy soldier was traumatized, my command was horrified, I had to do mandatory counseling, and the Imperium put my name on a list," Daxin said.

Dhruv laughed, covering up his mouth so he didn't spit chewed up sprouts.

"She turned bright red, turned to Pete, told him that she wanted to file verbal assault charges and some crap about making light of sexual assault," Daxin said.

"What did Pete do?" Dhruv asked.

Daxin shrugged. "You know him. Told her to get back to work. He asked me if I handled those clone soldiers, then told me he'd get back to me as soon as he was done with the testing."

He slammed his fist against the top of the table. "She was just an example of why I can't stand humanity. Asks me about my penis then screams verbal assault when I give her a smartass reply. The whole 'it's OK when we do it' mentality that so much of humanity has," he growled, setting down the pomegranate. "I'm half tempted to tell Pete I'm leaving. Grab FIDO, see if Kalki wants to go, and leave. I don't need humanity's crap."

"I just want left alone," Dhruv said at the same time as Daxin.

Daxin glared at him for a minute, then laughed. "OK, OK."

"Gotta stay. We need you and Kalki in case we need lots of gunfire really fast," Dhruv said.

"Maybe he's got the right idea. I'll go down there and harass seagulls with them," Daxin said. He glanced at Dhruv. "What are you doing? I can tell your extended."

Dhruv sighed. "Pete's got me doing the repairs. I can be millions of places at once if I need to."

"Just what we need, millions of you," Daxin grumbled, picking up the knife and the pomegranate again. "All telling the same joke."

Dhruv shook his head, smiling. "There's a ton of stuff that can't be done by a robot, but doesn't need the highly trained specialists. More: go down the checklist, replace obviously labeled parts with obviously labeled and distinct replacement parts. Less: Rewire all these boards and bypass the tritium sewage pounder Q-38 Module."

Daxin nodded. "You're the man for the mind numbing time consuming tasks," he said. "No offense, but you were pretty much built for it," Daxin popped a seed in his mouth and chewed it. "I mean, when our Digital Father and I found you, you'd managed to repair the entire garden," he gave a sigh. "It was weird, stepping through the hole in the wall and seeing that beautiful garden. It took my breath away."

"Thank you," Dhruv said, smiling.

"You've got the patience and the temperment. I don't," Daxin said. He sighed. "I've always envied that about you."

Dhruv frowned. "Really?"

Daxin nodded. "I get frustrated or bored easily. It's worse around people. I don't really like people."

"You care about me and the others," Dhruv said. "I've always secretly believed the whole clinical misanthrope was an act."

Daxin shook his head. "No. People think that it means I hate everyone, everywhere, all the time. Not true. I hold humanity in contempt more than hate them. Morally, ethically, intellectually, they have so much potential but, as a whole, they never do anything with it. They seem to deliberately fail time after time, gleefully snatch defeat from the clutches of victory, let you down time after time."

Daxin popped some seeds free with a twist of his wrist.

"Then I started meeting alien races, and I'll be thrice chrome-dipped if they weren't the exact damn thing. Same stupidity, same arrogance, same willful ignorance, same selfishness and greed," Daxin popped a few more seeds out onto the napkin. "I just gave up. With life comes disappointment, I guess."

"Do we disappoint you?" Dhruv asked. "Kalki, Menhit, that kid Vuxten? Me?"

Daxin shook his head. "No," he sighed. "I can form personal relationships. I'm not a sociopath. I can form deep complex personal relationships," Daxin said. He picked up one of the seeds and used it to point at Dhruv. "I like you. I'd put my life on the line for you. I have put my life on the line for you. I'd burn the Clone Worlds to a cinder because they're just the same mistakes replicated endlessly."

"Huh," Dhruv picked up some 'spider-legs', the little green sprouts having fallen from his sandwich. He popped them in his mouth, chewing on them, looking thoughtful. "So all of us, your brothers and sisters, the new kids, we're the exceptions that prove the rule."

Daxin nodded. "Yeah."

"I never knew any of this," Dhruv admitted. He folded up the package and slid it across the table to the reclamator.

"You never asked," Daxin said, shrugging. He popped a pomegranate seed in his mouth.

"Probably because you were chasing me all over the Galactic Arm Spur with a knife in one hand and a mad-on in the other," Dhruv snorted.

Daxin laughed, inhaled the seed, and choked for a second before Dhruv slapped him on the back.

"Thanks," Daxin grinned. "Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be? Enraged Phillip, choked to death on a pomegranate seed."

"But very mythical," Dhruv smiled.

-----

The four guardian sentries were robots. The best virtual intelligences and combat algorithms built by late Age of Paranoia humankind could devise. Heavily armed, heavily armored, their battlesteel chassis were colored brown and they bore no markings but an infinity symbol inside a circle. The same symbol that adorned the heavy double door behind them.

They were far beyond their original programmers instructions. Buffer overruns, computational errors, sheer age, had all altered their programming, which was designed to be self-altering for battlefields and to auto-compensate for errors.

In the thousands of years they had guarded the gate, they'd moved from virtual intelligences to what could arguably be called true sentience.

"How is your Gotcha-Tommy pet doing?" one asked. It had an etching of a cat-girl riding a dragon on its left arm, done by another robot thousands of years ago.

"Good. I have taught it to roll over and beg on command," the other said. "How goes your romance with the meal planner? Does she let you give her energy pulses on dedicated input lines yet?"

The first rotated its fist in a negative. It had no neck and its head was nearly hidden by its shoulders. "No, but she did tickle on of my missile laser guidance emission detectors with a cooking laser."

"Kinky," a third said.

"I was startled," the first admitted.

The tram stopped and they went silent, all straightening up and looking ominous and malevolent.

A human walked off and there was a quick burst of startled code between the four as well as a sudden alert being passed to the Gate Keeper.

The human wore a set of smart-glasses and was dressed in denim overalls and a heavy flannel shirt. They had on an orange and yellow reflector vest, a tool belt heavy with tools, the leather old and worn, one of the pouches torn down the side and used to hang a meter from instead of hold objects. They had a hard hat hanging from their belt, a magac pistol jammed sloppily into a holster on the tool belt that almost covered a datapad and put the wearer at risk of discharging the weapon when they reached for the datapad, and heavy workboots on their feet.

They also had a clipboard in their hand.

The human went and examined things on the startram platform. At one point, they carefully opened up a kiosk, ran some tests, and replaced a part from the steaming nanoforge orb on the tool belt. The hologram came to life and began flickering through self-tests.

The robots saw the human scroll through the datapad, wincing when he pulled it out, and tap an icon with a flourish, changing it from a red sad face to a green happy face. The Terran looked at the doors and the robots and the robots tensed.

"NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY!" they all boomed at once.

That was safe.

The human ignored it, looking at his checklist and moving up. He looked at the robot, the robot able to see data on the smartglasses.

"Warmonger Mark II robot," the Terran said. It consulted the datapad. "Overdue for memory defrag and optimization."

All the robots tensed inside.

"Wow, you boys are really overdue," the Terran said. It pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.

"THERE IS NO SMOKING IN THIS AREA!" all four said.

Perhaps that would make the human go away before it did maintenance on their brains.

The Terran just touched his maintenance badge, shifted his fingers a few times, and the warning about no smoking vanished, replaced by "PLEASE STAND BY - MAINTENANCE IN PROGRESS" and a bouncing smiley face.

"There. Problem?" the human asked.

"No. No problem," Number Three said. "The warning is gone so the warning has no force?"

"Very good," the human said. He looked at them. "OK. You need to summon a supervisor."

"For what purpose?" Two asked.

The human cocked his head. "Aw man, not another set of time progressive adaptive code self-awareness," he said. He sighed and opened the datapad again, going through the menus.

One robot saw himself.

"OK, you're self aware enough to try to hide it from me. That means your self-awareness has a self-preservation instinct beyond your Third Law," the human said. He looked up. "All right, I'll run a quick diagnostic. I hope none of you are ticklish."

All four robots felt tingles and light fluttering touches.

Two and Four started laughing and squirming.

"Yup. Infant reflexes," the human sighed.

The diagnostic ended.

"All right. Hardware, you're good. The majority of your non-intellectual software is good," the human said. He started tapping icons, turning them from red to green. "I'm not going to mess with your personality or intellectual or logic centers."

One and Four felt relief.

"No physical or hardware or structure defiencies," the human said. He hummed. "OK, time to check the doors, then your fire support," the human said. He looked around and sighed. "You know what, I'm due for a union break."

Two and Three drew back slightly at the mention of the all powerful Union.

The human walked away, got a drink and a candybar from the machines on the startram platform, then sat on a bench. They watched as he played a gatcha game involving scantily clad women of exaggerated proportions.

Four knew that game and liked it. He felt slightly smug that his score was higher than the humans and he had more outfits unlocked as well as more characters unlocked.

The human closed the game, then opened his maintenance program, turning to face the robots and the doors.

The door went through self-checks. It opened slowly.

All four went to high alert, pinging the supervisor VI.

The door closed.

It opened fast, then closed slowly. It opened quickly, then slammed shut. The maglock engaged and the door strained to open.

Then the weapons did self-tests.

Three was asked to smack the wall below railgun air defense turret three.

The weapon dutifully popped out, corrosion falling down.

The repair bots were ordered into work, slightly sulky at having to leave their warm spot.

The human walked up after another Union Break.

"OK, get the supervisor," the human said.

Three nodded.

After a minute the door opened and the hologram of a balding, bespectacled man appeared. The man's face was pinched and disapproving.

"Yes?" the AI asked.

It remembered some time ago when someone else had posed as maintenance.

But...

...this guy was dressed like maintenance, had a broadcasting RFID chip embedded maintenance ID, had a SUDS LOCAL 4587 union coin in one pocket and an alcohol addiction therapy four year anniversary coin in the other that had been rubbed till one side was shiny and indented, the engraving and embossing obliterated.

The VI checked.

Local 4587 was the union in charge of handling maintenance in this sector according to the records.

"Maintenance. You have nearly fifteen thousand requests and I'm here to inspect to see how big of a crew to bring in," the human said.

"Access is granted only to authorized personnel. I see no authorization coding on you, nor do my files possess any notification that you were to arrive today," the VI said stuffily. "Leave."

The human put the datapad away and the four combat robots flinched as the knuckle of his thumb grazed the pistol's firing stud. He took the clipboard off his waist, paging through the pink and yellow pages.

"OK. Here you are," the human said, marking the paper with a pen. He stuck the clipboard out with one hand and a pen with the other. "Sign where I put the X. Press hard so it goes into the copies."

"What is it?" the VI asked, reaching for it.

"You are signing to put on the official record that your area has refused maintenance under your authority and your authority alone," the human said.

The VI jerked its hands back. It looked at Two. "Sign that."

"SYNTAX ERROR. CANNOT COMPLY WITH REQUESTED OPERATION," Two bellowed out.

Four and One looked like they suddenly powered down and Three shots sparks from two joints and made a grinding noise by putting the restaining pin in between the links of ammo and running the loader gear at high speed without adding any pressure onto the belt.

The VI looked around.

"Look, buddy, union rules say you gotta sign this is you're refusing maintenance," the human said. "Those guys in legal with the blood on their mouths say we get fined a day's pay if we don't get a refusal authorization signature."

The VI went pale, flickering. It thought for a moment. It told the AI the problem.

The AI disconnected with a thud.

The VI thought about it.

"Authorization accepted," the VI said. It waved at the human. "Welcome. We have many maintenance orders in."

"I can tell," the human said, hefting the clipboard. He walked through the door, talking to the VI, who was complaining that the VR rec-room for VI's and AI's had been offline for several centuries.

The four robots waiting a moment.

"So..." Three said. "Anyone heard any good rumors?"

-----

Daxin looked up from where he was trying to balance a pomegranate seed on the top of the knife he was balancing on the tip of his middle finger.

Dhruv was chuckling to himself, his eyes closed.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"Pete said it would never work to get into those places where the security policy systems got disrupted during the Glassing," Dhruv snickered. "The VI practically yanked the blast doors off the hinges to allow me in the minute I handed him a clipboard."

Daxin shook his head. "You're easily amused."

"Guilty."