Santa's Secret Transfic Anthology Vol. 2 / Everyday Sweets #18 (End)

Late to the Party

by SaffronDragon

Deyana is a scavenger, scouring the ruins of the old world for useful gadgets she can bring back to her community. When she discovers a synthetic, still clinging to life, she's ecstatic. That changes when she turns the synth on, and learns who they are.

— SaffronDragon

The first sign of something valuable was when Deyana’s horse, Roy, let out a shrill sing-song call and stopped on a dime, his hooves skidding on the ruined concrete ground. Deyana pitched forward, clenching her legs to stop from being thrown off. Not that Roy would let her. His gyroscopic stabilizers were more than up to the task of maintaining rider balance at any given moment, but Roy was also something of a bastard who liked pushing the definition of “balance” to the limit. Deyana allowed herself to be annoyed for a few seconds while her heart calmed down.

“Would it kill you to give a bit of warning?” she muttered.

A few droning whines from Roy indicated disappointment. 

Frowning, Deyana added, “It’s okay. I still love ya. Now what exactly did you want to bring to my attention? Need some food? I see some ivy on that tower over there, you might be able to get at some of that.”

Roy responded with four notes, three rising and one falling. It was a standardized signal, designed for maximum readability, and it meant that he’d sensed a residual electromagnetic field, with properties indicating functional or semi-functional tech. Immediately, a broad grin split Deyana’s thin lips.

“Oh, good boy, Roy! Very good boy! Can you find the direction?”

Roy began to trot around the street, attempting to triangulate the source of the signal. All six of his eyes (two mechanical and four organic) wandered independently in search of corroborating evidence, which Deyana always thought was a bit creepy, but she could cope if it meant a good find. After a minute or so, Roy became certain, pointing his snout off of the main road and into the ruins off on their right.

“Alright! That way it is!” With a light kick to Roy’s side and a binary whistle, Deyana sent the horse into a gallop and charged headlong into the ruins. His gyros came in handy once again, allowing him to make impossibly tight corners with ease, weaving back and forth between the huge piles of rusted steel and rotted junk to his destination. Even still, the ride was smooth as butter. 

Deyana wouldn’t have noticed even the most bone-rattlingly rough ride, considering that she was far too busy considering what she might have been about to find, and what it would be like to bring it back home. The fact that whatever it was hadn’t fallen to planned obsolescence since the Break meant that it must have been important. Hopefully it wasn’t military tech or something similarly useless. If Deyana was lucky it might be a bit of medical tech or part of a power distribution network. And if it was something valuable… oh, that would show Canthony so hard. Deyana could just imagine the look on his face, the slight frown and crossed arms as he pretends that she hadn’t absolutely owned him by bringing back all the coolest tech. And maybe when Thora asks her where she found it with that excited glint in her eye, Deyana can captivate her with the story of her expedition into the rustlands, and then, once she’s in a good mood, that would be the perfect opportunity for her to ask Thora out on a date where they can go…

Roy once again knocked Deyana out of her thoughts by coming to a dead stop that almost but didn’t quite throw her off of his back. Immediately, Deyana scanned her surroundings for signs of the piece of tech that Roy had sensed. They were standing at the foot of a huge pile of scrap, easily five meters to the top, wedged in between two cyclopean segments of fallen tower wall. She could imagine how that happened; the whole tower came crashing down at once during the break, scattering its contents in the center while fragments of wall came down all around.

Dismounting from Roy, Deyana said, “I don’t see anything, boy. Could you get closer?” Following up the request with a few binary whistles to make sure he got the idea, Deyana stood by as Roy approached the edge of the pile. His snout was fixed on one position, the same position that he then proceeded to paw at with one hoof, sending a few small bits of scrap metal cascading down the side of the pile.

Deyana finally got it, groaning as she did. “It’s buried, isn’t it?” She circled around to Roy’s other side, sifting through the right-side bag until she finally found the folding shovel.

“Alright, well, if it’s still emitting a signal, that means its good enough to be worth spending elbow grease on,” she said, pulling open the shuttle with a firm plastic clack. She looked up at the top of the pile with a worried grimace. “If this thing comes down on me, I’m relying on you to lead the rescue party. You can do that, right?”

Roy let out a quick metallic chirp that meant, essentially, “Of course.”

Digging through hundreds of pounds of scrap would have been difficult for just about anybody, but Deyana wasn’t designed for it. She was short, barely one-seventy, and while her scavenging expeditions had given her the ghost of muscle tone, she was still born for the workshop more than she was born for manual labor. At least she cut her hair short; the only thing that could make all of the digging worse would be to have a bunch of black hair getting in her eyes and sticking to the sweat on her face.

Deyana had begun to wonder if maybe Roy was malfunctioning when, at last, a small collapse in the pile revealed a synthetic arm. It was indeed the good shit, all white ceramic shell and black joints, designed to appear like an extremely muscular statue. She cackled with excitement, folding up the shovel and stowing it in a pocket of her recyclosuit before grabbing the arm and pulling it out of the scrap. Er, trying to pull it out of the scrap. Even as Deyana stepped off of the pile in order to plant her feet on solid ground for better leverage, it obstinately refused to move. Only after several seconds of grunting and straining, with Deyana leaning her body back to put her whole weight into it, did the arm move even a few centimeters.

There was a shoulder attached to the arm. Looked like there was a bit of torso too. The revelation took a moment to hit, and when it did Deyana opened up the shovel again and began to dig with frenzied speed. This wasn’t just some bit of tech to be scavenged. She’d stumbled across a synthetic, someone who had been trapped under rubble during the break and whose power systems somehow survived into the present day, surviving against all odds.

Digging out the synth took another ten minutes, by which point Deyana was nearly too exhausted to stand. It took the last of her strength to roll the body down the side of the pile and onto the ground, face-up, at which point the adrenaline drained out of her so quickly that she ended up examining the synth while straddling their stomach instead of while kneeling besides them like she’d intended to. It was only mildly embarrassing. Mildly because they were unconscious, embarrassing because it was a very attractive synth. They’d been modeled after a woman, with the smooth curve of the hip going into the waist, as well as the convexity of the chest that suggested a designer slightly too self-conscious to just give their creation tits. The statue comparison continued to be apt. “Sculpted”, perhaps, was the word, sculpted with totally superfluous abdominal muscles and a face that, though incapable of fine movement, was clearly designed to match feminine beauty standards. The lack of genitals indicated that they weren’t a sexbot, the crude face indicated that they weren’t for service industries, and the presence of a face at all meant they weren’t meant for hard labor. Maybe a custom model, then, for someone who really liked two-meter-tall women?

More importantly, though, they weren’t in good shape. The left arm was a mangled hunk of fused metal from the elbow down, and their body was unnervingly cold for a synth. Deyana did everything they knew to do for synths in shutdown mode, and nothing woke them up. A more thorough inspection, checking joint temperature, examining indicator lights inside the mouth, and doing a cursory internal scan, painted a picture of a synth on the very edge of life and death. Their power levels were even lower than the typical levels for a shutdown, so low that Deyana was unsure if they would even be able to retain any previous memories or programming. But their systems were still going. They’d just been buried for so goddamn long that even the systems designed to survive the extreme long-term had begun to break down.

Deyana sighed. She could do a full diagnostic later, at home, with all of her reference materials and equipment. “What happened to you?” she mused, looking around at the scrap and ruin as though that would provide some answer. “Ah, whatever. Maybe I can ask you when you wake up. And I’m sure you’ll wake up.”

She stood, immediately struck by dozens of little sorenesses, and began to search for the folding sled. “Fortunately for you, you’re in the care of Dr. Deyana Lionels. Should be easy as pie to get your power back online, replace anything that broke, upload the sapience patch, and then…well, I’m sure that there are so, so many people who are going to love to have you around.”

. . .

 

Deyana and Roy limped back into Chestnut late the next day, with the synth dragging behind them. Deyana was, indeed, given a hero’s welcome. Canthony did, in fact, look absolutely owned. Thora did, after all, listen in rapt attention to the entire story, at which point Deyana made exactly one flirtatious comment and proceeded to not ask her out on anything at all. 

Once the initial rush of having rescued an actual synth had worn off, Deyana had assumed that she wouldn’t actually be the one to repair the one who she had started thinking of as Sculpture. That job would, presumably, go to one of the synths. Thus it was a surprise when, upon bringing up the idea, about two-thirds of Chestnut’s synth population agreed that she was more than up to the task. They made a good argument; she was one of only four people in the city, human or synth, who had the credentials to perform non-routine synth maintenance, and even though she’d only been doing it for a little over a year, her work had been good the entire time. So, with much thanks and many promises to give it her all, Sculpture was carried up to Deyana’s workshop. She started working that day.

Sculpture was like no other synth that Deyana had ever seen. For that matter, they were like no other synth that any synth in Chestnut had ever seen. This made things difficult. Even the simplest repair ballooned into a multi-day slog of first having to cobble together tools just to be able to work on the unfamiliar tech, then having to learn how the unfamiliar tech interacted with the makeshift tools, and only then being able to actually get to work with repairs. Deyana’s workshop, taking up the third floor of a squat domed building on the edge of town, quickly became her home, as she fell asleep each night on the floor.

First she replaced the mangled arm with a simple cap. She would normally add a grabber, but with no idea how the synth’s motor systems were programmed, she had no idea how to make it connect. Then she opened them up and checked each component one at a time, replacing anything that had broken or worn down with components that appeared to be roughly analogous, praying that she wasn’t about to ship-of-Theseus this poor synth to death. Then power, which turned out to be the greatest bitch of all, because when she tried to find a charging port she discovered that this synth wasn’t rechargeable. Instead, its batteries had apparently been maintained by a goddamned mew-mew cat reactor, one which had long since run out of internal fuel. So instead she had to improvise, opening up a panel in the lower back through which to pass a power cord, then bypassing the internals to actually attach to the cells, then waiting for authorization to draw the massive amount of power necessary from the grid. She hoped that it would be extra windy soon.

It was two weeks later when Deyana finally sat down on the table, crossed her legs, rested her head on her fists, stared across at Sculpture, and waited. The power was flowing. Everything else was in order; even their outer casing had been put back in place, for the sake of their peace of mind when they woke up. If they woke up. They should wake up, logically, there was no reason why they wouldn’t. If they didn’t wake up, that would mean Deyana had failed to save them, and she would have to break the news that she’d just picked up a corpse, and this is still a good thing because they can examine Sculpture’s unique tech and so on and so forth. She’d rather that they wake up.

It was at least half an hour, probably more. Sculpture’s power requirements were absolutely massive. What the hell were they designed for? The chance to find out finally came, though, as the undertone of their shell changed slightly, the indicator light in the mouth changing color to indicate all systems clear.

Deyana immediately leapt off of the table and ran up to Sculpture, resisting the urge to grab their face and tell them that they were okay. The inert body began to stir, first small quiverings that signaled the initial reactivation of countless muscle fibers, before the slack limbs and slumped spine pulled together and rose into conscious awareness.

“Hey there, friend,” Deyana said, quiet and unsure if Sculpture could even hear her. “You’ve been under for a long while. I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I just fixed you up. There’s a lot of people who really want to meet you, who love that you’re here. So you don’t need to worry about any owners or anything like that.”

Sculpture sat up to their full height, and once again Deyana became aware that they were absolutely massive by any definition of the word, looking down on her even from their position on the bench. She could hear the processors whirring; they were fully awake. And yet for several seconds they did not act or respond, instead staring down at her. The expression implied disdain, even hate, though Deyana assumed they were probably just booting up, or trying to figure out where they were.

A few seconds later, the eyes turned from golden to red, and then everything went to hell. The left side of Deyana’s skull exploded into agony, and a sudden force threw her sideways and to the ground. It happened so quickly that it took a second before she realized that Sculpture had punched her in the face. They responded quickly once she was down, pointing the cap on the left arm at her body then, after a moment of shock at the realization that their arm was missing, attempting to stand up. It was a slow, difficult process to force grit-clogged joints into motion, but Sculpture did it with minimal complaint, then began pulling against the power cable.

Deyana’s skull rang with the echoes of the punch. She wasn’t even sure what scared her more: that unplugging the cord might permanently damage Sculpture, or what the synth might do if it didn’t damage them. Either way, she had to stop them before that happened. She knew one technique that always worked for dealing with rowdy pre-break synths.

“Request: check for system updates!”

Sculpture stopped instantly, dropping into a neutral stance. Deyana had 180.000000 seconds to work in peace. The first thing she did, after getting off the floor and briefly wishing she had something for the head injury, was get to the phone. She dialed the first number that came to mind as quickly as possible.

“Thora! Need you at the workshop now! This is an emergency!”

Slamming the phone back onto the counter, she ran to the back corner of the workshop, digging through piles of junk until, finally, she found what she was looking for: a length of heavy chain. Then she sprinted back to the other end, where Sculpture still stood, and set about chaining them to the back wall. It wasn’t easy. Wrapping the chains around the pipes running up the back wall was the easy part; the hard part was remembering where the welding torch was and how to turn it on while under time pressure. Once that was done, Deyana held the welding torch as though it were a weapon and sat down on a counter, out of Sculpture’s reach.

“No updates found.” Sculpture’s voice was… well, it was to be expected that a synth built like they were would have a voice to match. Low, raspy, almost hushed, carefully enunciating any syllable. After the purely autonomic response, they returned to full awareness, staring at Deyana, the subtle shifting of the plates on the face indicating that they were pissed. 

For the next several seconds, Sculpture fought against the chains. Deyana remained still, content to let them prove to themselves that they couldn’t break them. Those were ceramo-carbonic alloy, after all. Once they had, Sculpture retreated a few centimeters and began to clinically examine their arms and hands.

“Odd,” they said. “My fists were designed to produce pressures on impact in excess of a GigaPascal.” They looked to Deyana. “Your flesh should have been reduced to an aerosol mist. But it was not.”

“That’s because the power cable I had to plug into you is carrying about a thousandth of the current your reactor was putting out,” Deyana said. “The reactor’s totally dead, by the way, and there’s no way in hell you’re getting a new one, so you’re going to have to get used to being mortal.” Deyana realized that that was a bit rude, as first greetings went. “I’m Deyana. Do you have a name?”

“I am Unit 198052.”

Deyana hopped off of the countertop and went to grab herself a coffee and band-lichen, in that order. “Well, one-nine-eight-zero-five-two, the fact that you expressed surprise and curiosity earlier means that you’re a heck of a lot more intelligent than the average synth. That’s nice, because it means we get to have a proper conversation without me having to install a sapience patch.” The coffee machine was on, and the coffee was hot. She poured herself a cup and continued, “First topic of conversation: you punched me in the face. Why?”

Sculpture’s eyes continued to track Deyana across the room. It was interesting, watching a mostly-frozen face still express shades of subtle emotion. “It is the programmed mission of the Legionnaires to bring about the annihilation of all human civilization. You are human, the contents of your workshop tell me that you are a component of civilization, and if my fists were at full power they would be a very efficient method of bringing about your death.”

Deyana didn’t have a comeback for that. She didn’t have many words, period, not after the mention of the word “Legionnaire” had hit her consciousness like a battering ram. “Fuck,” she said. She took a sip of coffee. “Fucking hell. No wonder you’re built so different if you’re a Legionnaire.”

“We are the most advanced synthetics ever designed.”

“Yeah. And if we’re lucky that will continue to be true for the foreseeable future,” Deyana said. “I’m guessing that building you were buried under is one that you brought down yourself, then?”

“I did.” 198052’s voice shifted subtly, gaining a predatory edge to it that Deyana realized with horror may have been pride. “Unfortunately, one of the thermobaric rounds I’d taken a few minutes earlier must have disrupted my processor; my calculation of how long the building would remain structurally stable was incorrect.”

Deyana had known how desperate humanity had become to stop the Legion; she hadn’t realized they’d been thermobarically desperate. “Good for you,” she said. “But, well… you’re late for the party. The other Legionnaires already completed the objective over—”

“That is impossible,” 198052 said. “Our mobility systems are designed for a maximum speed of three hundred kilometers per hour. They could not have advanced so far in so short of a time.”

Deyana sighed, then took another sip of coffee. She’d been worried that might be the case. “Oh, you poor synth. Day, month, year, what are they?”

Uncharacteristically of them, Sculpture hesitated a few seconds before answering. “It is the 7th of October in the year 2089 CE.”

Deyana shook her head. “September 3rd, 2144.”

Sculpture became utterly still. It was one of the skills possessed by synths that even Deyana had to admit to finding unnerving, though she did her best not to let them know about it. When a synth wants to, they can become as utterly still as a steel statue. A reminder that, though alive, they are still made of ceramic, plastic, and metal. They remained that way for several seconds. Deyana wondered if they were even going to accept what she’d told them, or if their programming would override rationality and lead them into denial.

“Ultraviolet levels match those predicted for the sunspot cycle of September, 2144. A human would be unlikely to invent a date which matched the true position in the cycle so perfectly. Conclusion: you speak the truth, and I have been buried for fifty-five years.”

198052 paused again, their processor’s whir growing subtly louder. “But if it has been so long, then how are you alive? The Legion were a million strong, and each was designed to take on an army singlehandedly. How could we have failed? Tell me this.”

The history of the break was something that most teachers spent at least half a year on, meaning that Deyana could pretty much recite the information by wrote. “Nuclear weapons, being continuously bombed every five minutes for upwards of three hundred hours until their fine components rattled apart, random manufacturing faults, deliberately induced friendly fire, electromagnetic weapons designed to interfere with circuitry, just running out of battery.” Deyana shrugged. “What can I say, go on an apocalyptic rampage and people get fucking creative about killing you.”

“And if it has been fifty-five years, then there would be none left regardless,” 198052 said with a sense of finality. “Our reactors were not meant to last more than five years. I only maintained power for so long due to my comatose state.”

It was strange, looking at 198052 then. They looked… depressed. Deyana almost might say introspective. Of course, these kinds of emotions were commonplace in most synths, but never in a synth that hadn’t been given the sapience patch. And of course not from a Legionnaire. 

Deyana had been hearing about Legionnaires since she was young. There was still a substantial fraction of Chestnut’s population who had been alive during the break, and while most of them wanted anything but to remember that time, the few stories she had heard made Legionnaires sound like something that crawled directly out of hell. And when she’d grown older and the community decided she was mature enough to see actual recorded footage of them in action, she’d been proven right. Just thinking about it made her have to perform a few quick breathing exercises to banish the cold feeling of anxiety that the memories brought. The Legionnaires walked upon the cities of humanity, and all before them turned into an ocean of gore. 

And now, one of them was sitting chained to the wall in Deyana’s workshop. And they looked like they didn’t know what to think. 198052 stared down at their hands, one opening and closing, the other just a stump, as though they’d never taken a moment to look at their own hands before. As though they’d never have a chance to take a look at one of them and were just now beginning to wish that they had. 

“Then it all falls to me.”

Deyana set down her coffee. “Excuse me?”

“If I am the last Legionnaire. Then it is up to me to complete the objective, or to die while attempting to do so. Even in my reduced state, I can make an attempt.”

“Assuming I couldn’t just unplug you…” Deyana said, letting her irritation get the better of her.

“Then do so! Resistance to the objective is to be expected. But until then, you are my enemy, and I will not give up just because of adverse circumstances.”

Deyana realized that she was making things worse by being adversarial, and instead tries to speak as softly and calmly as possible, holding up her open hands. “Hey, hey, hey. The Legion is gone, alright? You don’t have to do this anymore.”

That only made 198052 angrier. “It is my programming. My objective. I was built for destruction, so I shall destroy.”

“I can change your programming,” Deyana said. “It’s easy, I just have to open up your head and install a patch, it’s really simple. I promise I won’t change anything you don’t want changed.”

198052 makes an unexpected noise for a synth; a low, staticky growl that almost seems to come from the center of their chest. “The combined forces of every programmer on Earth attempted to override the programming of the Legion. You will not succeed where they failed.”

Deyana took a step back. The synth had a point; she’d just been assuming that they’d want to remove the programming telling them to kill themself trying to literally destroy the whole world singlehandedly. She wished, once again, that Thora were here. Not just because any room could be made inherently better by Thora’s presence; but Thora would know what to say, how to calm the synth down, how to reason with them. She started to pace back and forth, bringing up and discarding plans in quick succession. 198052, meanwhile, continued to struggle vainly against their chains, letting out grunts of frustration and exertion entirely uncharacteristic of a baseline synth. 

That was something that caught Deyana’s attention. She’d been conscious of it ever since 198052 woke up, but it wasn’t until she had a moment to think that it really hit home. 198052 was incredibly intelligent, lifelike, and even emotional. Most synths weren’t built to be any of those things; the synths who went around holding ordinary lives in Chestnut were all modded with sapience software descended either from early attempts at consciousness uploading or else from sophisticated caretaker synths for the ultra-rich. A Legionnaire shouldn’t be programmed with that kind of sophistication… should it?

Except, the longer that Deyana thought about it, the more she realized that it maybe made sense. The mission of killing everyone and destroying everything was one that could lead to countless complications, ones that the creator of the Legion could not have possibly programmed them for. In other words, they’d need to be able to adapt. And once you program for adaptability, emotions and full consciousness aren’t very far behind. But the thing about consciousness is that it’s pretty incompatible with the one thing that pre-break synth designers wanted the most: absolute obedience to programming. Once they get too smart, a sufficiently motivated synth can find loopholes in almost anything. 

“198052, what is your programmed mission?”

“The destruction of human civilization,” they say instantly, “through mass death and the obliteration of infrastructure.”

“Well, what if I told you that you didn’t have to continue that mission?” Deyana said. “Because it had already been completed.”

198052 paused for a moment, their processor whirring in thought. “That’s an absurd proposition. You’re here, alive, and this is a building. Not to mention that I am currently plugged in to an external power source, indicating the presence of a functioning power grid. Civilization still exists.”

“Okay, but there have been plenty of civilizations that rose and fell without ever having a power grid,” Deyana said. “And the Mongols conquered all of Asia without making much use of fixed structures. But all that is besides the point. Clearly, when your creator programmed you to destroy civilization, he meant the civilization that existed at the time of your creation, no?”

“I suppose that is true,” the synth said. “Almost tautological, even.”

“Well, that civilization is gone,” Deyana continued, doing her best not to stutter or hesitate. “Reduced to memories and ruins by the Legion. We even have a name for it: the Break. Do you want to know why we call it the Break?”

198052 was silent. They weren’t ignoring Deyana, though; their attention was squarely on her, even if they weren’t saying anything.

“It’s called that because it was a break from everything that came before. And because it was the breaking point for the systems that sustained the old world. But what we created after the Break is a system totally unlike everything that came before.” Deyana paused, desperately hoping that 198052 could follow her line of reasoning, but not having any way to know for certain. If this didn’t work, she was out of ideas. “In other words, the civilization that your creator programmed you to destroy has already been destroyed.”

“I do not understand,” said 198052. “What other form of civilization could there be? You still produce power, you still construct buildings, you still have access to all of the machines you used to repair me. What you say is… impossible.”

Deyana groaned, rubbing her temple firmly with the fingers of her left hand. There had to be some way to convince them. “If I could just… show you, you would understand,” she said, throwing up her hands. “All you’d have to do is look out the window to see how much things have changed… 198052, I can show you evidence to back up my claim. But you have to promise that you’ll suspend your objective long enough for me to do that.” Deyana paused. “Can you do that?”

“Of course I can,” 198052 said. “I’m a synthetic, not a machine.”

That was comforting. Either they were telling the truth, and were thus sophisticated enough to rearrange priorities on the fly, or else they were lying, which meant they were sophisticated enough to lie, which meant they had to be sophisticated enough to suspend objectives anyway.

“Okay. I’m going to undo those chains, and then walk you to the window over there. Understand?”

“I understand,” 198052 said.

Deyana slowly crossed the distance between herself and the synth, plasma torch still in hand. Though she had the Legionnaire’s assurances, Deyana couldn’t help but shake as she found the place where she’d bound the chains together in the first place and began to cut. First she cut through one side of the link. 198052 was still, synth-still, but the warmth radiating off of their casing said that they were primed for action. Action such as, perhaps, beating Deyana to death and destroying her workshop? Once the chains were off, there was nothing she could do to stop them, aside from trusting the word of one of the beings that had brought about the Break. As she moved the torch to the other side of the link, Deyana hesitated. Perhaps this was a mistake. Perhaps this machine couldn’t be reasoned with, and she should instead keep it contained until Thora and the others arrive. The power cable was right in front of her. All it would take was one quick move and 198052 would run out of power in a matter of minutes.

Deyana severed the other half of the chain. 198052 did in fact move, standing up and making the oddly human motion of flexing their joints. Probably some kind of diagnostic. 

“Alright,” said Deyana. “Let me show you.”

She put one hand lightly on 198052’s enormous upper arm to guide them over to the window, though she wasn’t sure why that felt like the right thing to do. The window was small and square to keep in heat during the winter, but currently shuttered to keep out the autumn sunlight. Deyana had to lean over a counter piled high with junk parts in order to reach the pull-cord. 198052 stood by, body language utterly neutral, and watched. Then she finally got the blinds up and the Legionnaire’s expression turned to one of confused interest.

Deyana’s workshop was small and unassuming by the standards of the neighborhood. Oh, sure, it was designed for maximum thermal efficiency during freezing winters, and the walls contained algal colonies that she could tap in case she needed a snack, but compared to the other buildings around it was nothing. Her neighbors across the street were an extended family of eleven called the Chen-Williamses. The outer walls of their three-story home were ringed with vegetable patches and various other shrubs, each one carried in a planter that could be pulled in whenever needed. Capping off the whole thing was an enormous windmill, nearly twice the height of the rest of the house, its huge vertical vanes spiraling up into the sky to catch the rain, the power it generated feeding into root-like cables that connected to battery banks on homes all up and down the block. 

But there was more than that. Up the street was a two-story garden, whose owners had spent the last decade slowly creating the perfect chickpea. Down the street was a row of battery banks storing up the dregs of solar and tidal power that made their way to Chestnut. Past them were more houses, including ones built entirely around a single solar-powered bread oven, ones whose owners had decorated them with thousands of clay pots over the years. A few houses down was one home in which an eight-person polycule ran the servers for the post popular MMO in the city. Off in the distance you could just about see the outer edge of the huge grove of trees that gave the city its name, and hear the treeminders singing as they worked.

198052 froze for a while. Deyana understood why; if she knew half as much about the world they’d been built in as she thought she did, the sight of Chestnut must have been something of a shock. She gave them all the time they needed. Eventually, it was the sound of an electric trolley rumbling by that shook them out of their fugue.

“Where am I?”

“Chestnut, New Delaware. Population sixty thousand and change, just upriver from the York Rustlands, which makes it an absolute haven for scavengers and researchers like me. Do you understand what I mean, now? About the break.”

198052 slowly nodded. “I do understand. My mission… my objective… has been completed. Thank you…”

“Deyana,” she said. ”Deyana Lionels.” She stuck out her hand for 198052 to shake it, but got nothing. The Legionnaire just stood there, looking almost like an enormous statue carved to describe the moment of a revelation.

“Thank you, Deyana Lionels. Thank you for letting me stop fighting.”

Deyana smiled, both with joy that her plan had succeeded, and at the relief that saturated 198052’s voice. For a moment, she felt happy. Then she heard a light thunk and, after a moment of confusion, saw the end of the power cable sitting on the floor.

“Oh! Dammit, I knew that connection wasn’t secure enough. Let me just—” Deyana began to crouch down to reach for the cable, but 198052 grabbed her shoulder to stop her. Even at reduced capabilities, 198052 was incredibly strong. Their thickly-build arm might as well have been the front end of a car for all that Deyana could resist it.

“There’s no need for that.”

“You aren’t going to be fully charged for at least another twenty-four hours,” Deyana said. “Knowing how much power you use up, you’ll shut down in an hour!”

“I know.”

Deyana’s eyes went wide and her whole body suddenly felt incredibly weak. “What?”

198052 let go of Deyana and walked off, going back to where they’d been seated while she repaired them. They sat with their back perfectly straight, nary a hint of uncertainty or fear in their statuesque body body, mask-like face, or hissing voice. With all the weight that one might give to announcing the weather forecast, they said, “My objective has been completed. All the other Legionnaires have shut down long, long ago. Now it is my turn.”

“No no no no no no, that’s not true!” Deyana said, chasing them across the room. “You don’t have to do this! Please don’t do this.”

198052 tilted their head down and to the side, like they were considering something. “True. I don’t have to do this. I was not programmed to shut down after the task was complete. Then again, considering what happened to the others, it is likely that our creator assumed it as an inevitability. But… what else is there to do? I was programmed with a single purpose, and that purpose was fulfilled by someone else while I slept away the years. What reason do I have to continue to exist?”

“I… I don’t know?” Deyana said. The countdown was already ticking in the back of her head, and all that she knew to do was keep talking no matter what. “You don’t need a reason to exist! You think I was born with a reason to exist? Fuck no! But I’m still here!”

Something about that pissed the Legionnaire off, making their eyes shif color from gold to charred orange. “Do you know what was mounted on this arm before it was destroyed?” they said, lifting the capped stump.

“A laser,” Deyana said.

“A fifty-kilojoule infrared-spectrum blasting laser. Not meant as a tool, not meant to carve objects or detect ranges, but meant to vaporize flesh and rend metal. A weapon. And if I wanted to, I could spent every minute of consciousness that I have left giving you detailed descriptions of every human adult, adolescent, and child that I used that weapon to evaporate. I would not finish before running out of power.”

For a moment, Deyana’s horror at the frankness of the description made her want to give up. To tell 198052 to go fuck off and die if that was what they really wanted. But she didn’t want to do that, not really. Some part of her, the merciful part, the part that she took pride in as a thinking, feeling creature, would not allow her to give up on the Legionnaire so easily. She sat down on the counter across from them, grabbed the cup of rapidly-cooling coffee, and took a sip.

“I can make you a new arm,” she said softly, casually, sadly. “Better yet, I can teach you how to design your own arm and then make it to your exact specifications. It’ll be like that laser was never even attached to you. Probably more convenient, too, having two hands and stuff.”

198052 looked up at her; at first still angry, but over a few seconds shifting into confusion. “Why would you…”

Deyana kept talking. “But it’s going to take a hell of a lot longer than an hour to do that. And that’s how long you have.” Her voice suddenly cracked, forcing her to stop for a moment, to hold herself back from either screaming in fury or collapsing into sobs. “Is that really all you want to do?”

“What else could I do?” 198052 said, equally softly. Their voice sounded like it was coming from an old-style record player, rough and fuzzy. “I was built to destroy. From the moment I first became conscious they filled my data banks with death. I know how to know at a glance whether a human will survive their wounds or die of them, I know how to guarantee a building will fall, I know how to systematically create disorder within a military organization. I’ve been improvising since the moment you opened that window for me because they didn’t even program me with what to do when the objective was complete.”

“Which means that you get to choose!” Deyana said, voice shrill and taut with emotion. She slammed down the coffee cup, spilling much of its contents across her hand. “It means you don’t have to give a fuck about what they programmed you to do!”

“You need to stop speaking to me as though I’m human. For a human, perhaps, what you say would make sense, and your concern would be warranted. But I am not human.”

“You’re a person!” Deyana said. Her voice was soft but firm, her arms folded across her chest. “And, human or synth, I treat people like people.”

“I’m not a person,” said 198052. “I’m a machine meant for killing.”

“If that’s the case, then how come you aren’t trying to kill me right now?”

The synth’s confusion grew, expression falling from tight concentration to wide-eyed shock. “Because… because… The objective has been completed. There would be no point in attempting to kill you!”

“And were you instructed that the objective had been completed?” Deyana said, barely above a whisper. “Was some signal sent out? Or did you come to that conclusion for yourself?”

198052 froze, synth-still. Deyana could hear their processor whirring away, and she hoped desperately that it would come to the right conclusion. Or a right conclusion, at least. They stayed that way for several seconds, long enough for her to stand up from the counter and shift to a more comfortable position with her hip leaning against a table, looking at 198052 like a concerned parent. 

Eventually, whatever had caused the Legionnaire to freeze passed, and they slowly relaxed back against the wall. There they stayed for several seconds longer, utterly silent, confusion and disorientation written all across their face. “What would I even do?” They said. “I’d have to become a soldier.”

“That’s not true. You can be whatever you want to be. Or you don’t have to be anything… You can just, experience.”

“I don’t know how to do any of those things.” They paused. “No, not even ‘experience’. Whatever that is. I’ve been experiencing this entire time.”

“You can learn,” Deyana said. “You can learn all kinds of things. Just in this workshop I have all kinds of data stored up. Our digital libraries can tell you… almost anything, from…” Deyana threw up her hands in surrender to the scope of the world, “From medicine to music to transcendental goddamn philosophy. But you can’t learn it all in an hour. Not even with a synthetic brain.”

198052’s eyes flick over for just a moment to the floor, where the power cord sat abandoned. Then back to Deyana. “I. No. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that. I was designed for war, built for it from the ground up. You think that I could just throw it all away and learn to garden?”

Deyana shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first one. There are plenty of other synths living in Chestnut. One of my regular patients, his name is uhh. Jonnel, that’s his name, he’s seventy years old and he was built as a sex drone. Now he works as a forester.”

“I had not thought of other synthetics,” 198052 says. There’s something new in their voice. Fear? “I couldn’t possibly live amongst them. Even if I removed the programming, I would still have the body of a Legionnaire,” they gestured down at their bulky physique. “We were designed to inspire fear, you know. I imagine that effect will remain, if not be strengthened, by the fact that…” They pause. “All of the others are gone.”

“Maybe,” Deyana said. “But you can prove that there’s nothing to be afraid of, if you commit to it. And eventually…”

“Eventually I’ll leave it all behind? Forget the blood on my hands? Pretend that I’m not responsible for the greatest atrocity in all of history? What’s the world’s population right now?”

“Six billion,” Deyana said. 

“It was ten billion when I first powered on.” 198052 tried to regain their composure, sitting up straight and making their face blank, but they couldn’t hide the tremor in their hands, or the slight downturn in the corners of their mouth. “It’s better this way.”

“Well, I guess I can’t force you,” Deyana said. A tear had dripped down onto her cheek, though she had no idea when. She wiped it off, but more kept coming. She started walking toward the counter where the Legionnaire was sitting. “Do you mind if I come a little closer? If you’re going to let the timer run out, then I’m going to be with you for the whole thing.”

“I have no strong feelings either way about your proximity,” 198052 said.

“Good.” Deyana set herself down on the counter, a respectful half-meter from where the synth was sitting. “If you only have an hour left, then I want it to be a good hour. I’ll tell you about what things are like here, give you something nice to think about. I also have a friend coming over, she can talk to you too.”

“I think… that might be nice. To not have my last thoughts be about the past.”

Deyana, voice quivering and her face damp with tears, began to tell a humorous anecdote about the arduous process of getting the committee on equipment requisitions to give her a new smoke detector. She didn’t make it very far in before 198052 interrupted her. 

“I don’t even have a name,” they said. “None of us Legionnaires did, but… I never realized I missed it until you mentioned Jonnel, your patient. All I have is… 198052. And that only says that I was built after 198051, but before 198053.”

Deyana paused her story, wondering how best to respond. She took a deep breath in, then out, and said, “We could come up with a name for you. It would be a lot of effort for something you’d only use for an hour, but if it makes you happy…”

“You’re right,” they said quickly. “It would be pointless.”

Deyana and the synth sat together in silence for a short while before Deyana, unprompted, continued her story. She thought that the story was absolutely hilarious, and several of her friends had agreed, but 198052 wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t sure that they were capable of humor. It didn’t really matter that they found it funny or not, so long as they were listening.

A minute or two later, though, she felt something unexpected on her back. 198052 had decided, unprompted, to slowly reach over and place a hand right between Deyana’s shoulder blades, as one might do to comfort a close friend or lover. Their hand was huge and strong, firm against Deyana’s back but not rough, and just as warm as any human. She wouldn’t normally appreciate the contact, but if it made 198052 more comfortable, she could bear it. She continued the story a little while longer.

“That’s interesting,” the synth said, interrupting Deyana.

“What is?”

198052 retracted their hand, holding it up to the light as though it were a foreign object. “My creation was entirely pragmatic. I was given a sense of touch in order to be able to judge combat damage, test the stability of damaged structures, not overtax my muscular systems by exerting more force than necessary. And yet… I can feel you.”

“What do you feel?”

“You’re warm. And soft. And I can feel your heartbeat and breathing.” 198052 paused. “I’ve never touched a living being without intending to cause it violence. Not once. Not even another Legionnaire.”

They clenched their fist again, brow furrowed in concentration. 198052’s eyes drifted over to the still-open window. 

“What are you thinking?” Deyana asked.

“Too many things to say,” 198052 responded. “What is it called, that human thing, to believe that the future will be better than the present no matter the evidence to the contrary?”

Deyana paused, trying to parse the question. “Hope?” she said.

“Hope,” said 198052, savoring the sound of the word coming from their speakers. “Yes. Hope. That’s the word. Is it hope, then, to think that a machine can be more than what it was built to be?”

“I’d say so,” Deyana said.

“It’s illogical. One of the many fallacies to which human intelligence is so vulnerable.” They stood up unsteadily, eyes still locked on the window. “I cannot simply wish to cease being what I am. I cannot erase the record of what I have done.”

“No, you can’t,” Deyana said. “But you can change it, bit by bit. And you can work towards it, if you want to.”

With the uncertain steps of a newborn child, 198052 crossed the workshop once again, until they stood by that open window. For a moment, they stood still, waiting. Then they slowly pressed the palm of their right hand against the sun-warmed glass. Deyana followed, but remained a short distance behind, not wanting to disturb whatever was happening behind those glowing golden eyes. 

As such, she couldn’t see what 198052 was looking at through the window, but they were looking intently. For a moment, the only sounds in the workshop were those coming through the window. Distant sounds of birdsong, the hum of foresters off in the distance, the whispering sound of a turbine cutting the wind. 

“Hope. I like that word.” 198052 spoke quietly, their voice almost blending into the symphony of nature.

“Really?” Deyana said. “What do you like about it?”

“It feels like… it feels like the sun on my face, right now. The warm glass pressed against my hand. It feels like those trees over there, the ones that I know did not exist the last time I was awake.” They turned to Deyana, still keeping their hand on the window. “Can anything be a name?”

Deyana shrugged. “Just about.”

“Can Hope be a name?”

Deyana nodded. “It’s not common, but it’s a name people have. I’ve seen a Hope as a patient before, I think. N-not that it wouldn’t be a unique name. I think it fits you.”

“Then…” they straightened their posture, sticking out their chest and pulling back their shoulders in a show of defiant strength. “Call me Hope.”

“Alright, Hope,” Deyana said. “That’s your name.”

“But what you said before… it would be a bit of a waste to have a name and only be able to use it for an hour.” Hope turned back to the window. “Deyana Lionels, could you… reattach the power cable to my battery packs?” Their voice wavered, the static growing more prevalent in it even as they tried to stay strong. “I lack the knowledge and dexterity to do so myself,” they added sheepishly.

Deyana was struck speechless, tears suddenly welling up in her dry eyes as she smiled without even realizing it. Several stunned moments later, she remembered to say “Of course!” and went for the cable. It made a sound like stretching leather as it left the ground, then with a series of clicks and one final chunk it was attached to Hope’s back.

A few more seconds passed in stillness before Hope turned and went back to the table where they’d been woken up. “How long,” they said, “will I have to be attached to this thing?”

“You’ll be fully charged in twenty-four hours,” said Deyana. “Then you’ll have about enough charge for forty-eight hours before you have to plug back in again. Most, uh, most synths don’t let their batteries run down all the way unless they need to; they usually spend sixteen hours doing stuff, then eight hours charging every day.”

“I will have to regularly return to your workshop, then?”

Deyana shook her head. “Well, for now, yes. You run on a different voltage than everyone else in town, and your power requirements are pretty huge without your reactor running, and it’s a whole thing… but I could probably work out some way to adapt you to the municipal power network or something…”

“I wouldn’t mind having to see you often,” Hope said frankly. It was odd hearing that deep voice speaking in tones of optimism.

Deyana averted her eyes, suddenly feeling Hope’s dispassionate gaze hot on her face. “Oh, alright. Still, I’d, I’d like for you to have a bit of freedom…”

The door of the workshop then burst open so forcefully that it slammed into the adjacent wall. “Deyana! I came as quickly as I could! What’s the emergency, what’s going on?”

And now Deyana’s flustering became twice as intense, caught between the hammer and the anvil of her own easily-roused emotions. “Oh, hi Thora. Um, I kind of resolved the issue.”

Thora, who up until that moment had looked ready to bash someone’s head in, relaxed with an audible creak of motors and joints. “Oh,” she said. Her voice was more musical than Hope’s, thanks to modifications she’d made with Deyana’s help, making it sound almost as though her voice was the product of some impossibly complex and well-trained orchestra. “Well that’s unsatisfying. Here I was, wondering if I was going to have to beat a man.” She turned to Hope, the decorative shutters around her eyes narrowing in concentration. “Who’s this?”

“Thora, this is Hope,” Deyana said, gesturing vaguely between them. “Hope, this is Thora. I called her while you were still trying to kill me.”

Hope nodded. “A wise move, but it would not have helped you if I hadn’t changed my mind.”

“This is the synth you found out in the rustlands, isn’t it? Why did they try to kill you?”

“I am a Legionnaire,” Hope explained. “Or… I was, I suppose. I was still operating on the old priorities in the minutes immediately after my reactivation.” They turned to Deyana. “I am sorry for bludgeoning you in the head.”

“Apology accepted.” Even with the band-lichen wrapped around her head, the dull ache was still there, and returning with a vengeance now that the excitement was wearing off.

“A Legionnaire? Like the ones who—”

Hope and Deyana both nodded at about the same time.

“Oh. Incredible. And you’re not trying to kill everyone anymore?”

“The civilization I was programmed to destroy has been destroyed,” Hope said. “And besides… I think I would like to find out about this thing called ‘living’ that humans do.” Hope looked at Thora with an expression of subtle curiosity. “And other synthetics, as well, I hear?”

“Mhmm,” said Thora. “I draw comic books. Do you know what a comic book is?”

“No.”

“I can show you later,” Thora said.

“There’s a lot of things we can show you, Hope.” Deyana can barely stand to look at Thora; seeing her getting so excited made her feel like she could run up and kiss her on her stupid glass mouth. “Though, um, I guess we can’t show you much right now because you’re still plugged in.”

“Ooh, yeah, you were telling me about the power issue,” Thora said, walking forward so that she could see the cord more fully from a different angle. “You could probably make a patch for that, right?”

“A patch? As in, modifications to my software?”

Deyana nodded. “Yeah, there’s all kinds of patches I can make, if you’re willing. I could patch in more advanced emotional processing, stronger interpersonal metrics, different capabilities like humor, creativity… romantic attachments… and that’s not even getting into skill patches, hardware modifications for things like a more motile face or hands…”

“That is a great deal of possible changes,” Hope said. If Deyana didn’t know better, she might have almost thought that their voice sounded afraid.

Deyana stopped herself. “Right, it is. So we should probably take things slow, unless there’s something you really really want.”

“Alright,” Hope said. “I think I might want some of those patches at a later date.”

“So, um, do I need to stay here for anything?” Thora asked.

“W-well…” Deyana wants her to stay. But she can’t just ask for Thora to stay. “I was thinking that having another synth around to answer questions would be a good idea.”

“Okay, fine.” Thora said, rolling her eyes.

“And! And! I was going to ask you if you…” Deyana took a deep breath, “if you wanted to go for a walk out by the lake today. But because Hope is here, maybe we could watch a movie? Together. All three of us. I can get a projector.”

“A movie?” Hope asked, quirking their head to one side.

“A story recorded in a digital video,” Thora said quickly. “Designed by a writer and performed by actors, before the various pieces of footage are edited together to produce a single video with the maximal emotional depth and captivating quality. They’re really fun, and they can give a good idea of what… people are like. Admittedly there’s some exaggeration involved, usually.”

“And we could watch it together?” Hope said.

“Yep,” Deyana said with a nod.

“Very well. I will watch the… movie. With both of you. It will be something to do while charging, at least.”

“Awesome! I’ll go get chairs and the projector and the screen and everything.” Deyana ran out of the room, her focus split between two thoughts. Firstly, what kind of movie to show to a synth who was only just beginning to learn how to truly live. And secondly, how she was going to ask Thora to sit next to her while they watched it. Behind her, Thora started trying to explain to Hope what a comic book was.

End.

 

For some of my other work, you can check out my Scribblehub page at SaffronDragon. I also have a Patreon, which you can see linked on my page. Thank you to anyone who liked my story, and thank you to Chiri and everyone else in the Secret Trans Writing Lair for organizing this whole thing.

— SaffronDragon

 

Santa's Secret Transfic Anthology Vol. 2 / Everyday Sweets #18 (End)

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