#technofantasy

Donato Giancola - “Heinlein Collected Works”

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His processors whirled into a frenzy of thought and foreign emotion as he struggled to accept what Kari had said. His firewalls, the only thing keeping the entirety of his coding in place, was just… gone? What did that even mean for him? Would he… would this destroy him from the inside? He gripped the edges of the metal table hard enough to hear it groan, his opti-… eyes fixed on nothing as he forced himself to keep listening. 

“They’re not… BROKEN broken, not all the way, but there is a hefty crack through them. I can’t fix it either. Every time I try, something rips the seal out and I can’t get close enough to fix it!” 

This did nothing to quell the twisted, wrong feeling in his circuits. He couldn’t understand why his jaw felt so hard to move, or why his voice box stuttered as he tried to answer. 

What was wrong with him?

“W-what does that mean?” 

Kari shot him a look that made his circuits prickle. The apprentice set her tablet aside, her eyes never leaving the jester as she leaned closer. 

“It means… that I can’t fix you, or your firewall; and if someone were to find out about it being broken before I can figure out how to fix it, questions are going to be raised. Questions that I don’t wanna answer, and you don’t want answered unless you want to become a hunk of scrap metal. Am I clear?”

The icy feeling flooded his circuits and processors, his limbs locking up without his conscious command as he kept his eyes on Kari. A threat. She was threatening him with disassembly (D-death…) if he told what had happened today. He tried to force himself to relax, shoving the tension out of his joints as he gave her a quick nod. The drive to know, to learn about this daring and mysterious mission of hers had all but sputtered and died under the tide of this newborn fear. He didn’t WANT to know anymore. That thrilling feeling of adventure (Had it always been a feeling?) of knowing something outside of his program, was gone.

The rebel apprentice turned back to her work, breaking the stare and taking the pricking chill plaguing his systems along with it. He let himself vent a shaky system-full of air, shifting his attention to his hands. He pried his grip off of the metal table, wincing at the very visible handprints he had left behind as he replayed the conversation. Who would he tell? There was no one in the castle who would listen, not to him. He was an android, a being that had no emotion or personal thoughts (But he DID…). The Technosage would only try to blunt-reset his entire core, and from the crawling fear that flickered over his processes just from the thought of that (How did he know about that….), he knew he didn’t want that outcome. The chancellor, maybe… but a nagging thought at the back of his processes whispered even he couldn’t be trusted. He didn’t know why, but he knew there was nothing he could do, and no one he could trust. 

He was alone.

The mechanical jester turned his attention back to the apprentice, his glowing blue gaze uncertain as he calculated his options. He was broken, his processes were overloaded with information… FEELINGS he shouldn’t have, or even have the ability to perceive, he was experiencing sensations of pain, and lapses of rogue audio that he couldn’t find a memory file to pair to it. There was no help he could gain from the others in the castle, and even if he did try, he would be dismantled sooner than find it. Kari was providing aid for now, but who knows for how long. The only way to ensure that wouldn’t change was to remain useful in some way. He clenched his fingers around his opposing hand. 

It was his best option. 

He cued his voice box with a soft crackle, gaining the spy’s attention. He felt a prickle of the icy fear return, but he quickly tried to shove it back under the tides of his code. He gave her a tentative glance.

“What… W-what do you want me to do?”

Kari didn’t look up from her tablet, her attention locked on the glowing paper. She started writing on the tablet, crafting a way into his systems. Absently, he could feel her shifting through his coding, moving certain things aside to get closer to the firewall. It was uncomfortable, but nothing he hadn’t handled before. 

He chose not to focus on the fact he didn’t remember handling anything similar at all.

“For now, we keep quiet. Nobody knows anything that you heard or picked up or scanned. NOBODY. Wait… hold on…”

The shifting feeling in his code stopped abruptly. Kari looked up at him with a glimmer of… something in her eyes, something that made him want to withdraw his statement and act as if he wasn’t even there and it didn’t make sense. She shook her head and refocused on her work, the steady movement through his code returning.

“I knocked you out and now you’re volunteering? Looks like there’s rebels in the robots too.”

He frowned, shifting some of his protocols to the side to help her locate the firewall better. The flicker of surprise that echoed on her face didn’t escape him. 

“What do you mean… rebels?”

The question seemed to fall on deaf ears. She set down the tablet, her sharp gaze a stark contrast to her smile. 

“How much do you know about this place, or the chancellor? Its technology, its operations, the chancellor’s schedule, anything?”

A query command, something to answer, something that he didn’t have to think about doing. Desperate relief flooded his systems as he gave a cursory scan of his memory files, pulling up anything useful he could recall. 

“I am familiar with most of the schedule; I have programmed times for performances and other similar duties, so I have to know when and where things will be in order to function as intended.”

It was automatic, coded, and precise. Something he had answered many times before albeit with different intentions from different individuals. 

But…

Why did the idea of following his programmed functions make his code twist?

Kari didn’t seem to notice. A smile spread over her face as she began flying through his code like a splintered fragment of directives. It felt like broken glass. 

“Then it looks like you’re going to help me.”

The change in pace made him want to wince, to withdraw away from the crawling feeling through his circuits and wires, but he shoved it down. He mentally bundled the reaction into a ball of tight-wound code, snagging the first currently empty file he came across, shoved it inside, and locked it deep in his core. He didn’t know why he felt like this, or why he could FEEL at all, but one thing had become very clear since he broke free from that prison of red and black.

He couldn’t trust anyone with this new mockery of humanity he had become, especially not the one who had broken him. 

The rogue apprentice let out a quick little huff, her eyes practically oozing with emotions that were far too complex and human for him to grasp. She shot him a devious smile. 

“Alright, tincan… I didn’t plan for a partner in this, but this is what God gave me, so I’m taking it.” She quickly disconnected from his core, almost making the jester sag in relief. “You are going to help me with my mission, and in return, I won’t scrap you. Mission briefing: My job is to find out anything I can about the Clockwork Castle, and its false ruler. I haven’t gotten very far, because most of my work has involved YOU… but now we can cover ground in two places at once.”

She flipped through her digital tablet, each glowing paper moving at a speed he had previously thought impossible for humans to move at. She let out a triumphant hum, turning the surface around to face him. It was a quickly scratched diagram of the second layer of the castle, along with a poorly crafted bullet list of observed patterns and predicted routines of the inhabitants.

“This is what I’ve managed to figure out so far, and your job is to help flesh it out. I need maps, routines, routes, info, anything you can gi–...”

 He felt himself speaking before his processes could catch up. 

“I have maps. Maps of the entire castle.”

Her pen clattered to the ground. He wasn’t sure why her mouth dropped open.

“The… WHOLE castle?” She forced out. 

He shifted in his place, a jittery feeling mixed with a whisper of cold fear. He glanced down, fidgeting with the tails of his costume once more. 

Since when was it a costume?

“Not… the w-whole castle. There are certain areas I haven’t explored or been allowed into.”

She hummed, tilting her head. 

“Buuuuut you could get into them… right?”

Confusion flickered over his circuits. COULD he? He had come to the Underways, and it wasn’t within his designated areas…

Why COULDN’T he explore the entire castle?

His gaze flickered up to meet hers, a sinking feeling settling in his core. He was really going to help her. He was going to help her accomplish this mission, collect information, and map out the whole castle behind the chancellor’s back. Something that, if done by a human in the castle, would be considered treason of the highest order. He was committing treason against the chancellor, against everything he had known, and it didn’t even seem wrong. 

It felt like a quest. 

“I… I believe I could…”

He let out a shaky vent of air, watching as Kari excitedly began drafting a plan, her babbled words never truly reaching his audio sensors. The Chancellor would destroy him if he knew about the crack in his firewalls. He didn’t know how he knew he would, but something deep in his core screamed it. He would command his keepers to rip his core apart, reset him till the only thing left was nothing at all. Nothing but a broken shell of what he had been… just like before. 

He frowned at the last bit of thought, his processors whirring with the strain as he tried to trace it. Before? What was before? Has this happened to him in the past? How did he KNOW THIS?

WARNING: System error detec…

In a flash, he dropped the fragmented line of processing like it had burnt him. Fear flooded his systems as he shoved the pieces into the folder with the others. The error faded from his HUD, the threat of pain and confusion and RED disappearing as if it had never been. He… He had to pretend, he had to put on a show, act like nothing had changed at all. 

Lucky for him, he was a jester. Playing pretend was what he was created to do. 

“OI!! Are you listening?”

He blinked, his eye-optics flickering before coming back into focus. The mechanical being frowned, impulsively scanning the apprentice. She was stock still, her tablet clutched in a vice-like grip; eyes wide, breath a bit labored. 

Fear. 

She swallowed, even though she didn’t seem to need to. 

“We’ve been called to the throne room. The Chancellor wants to meet with us both… PERSONALLY.”

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Next

Previous

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Black, then red, then black again. 

WARNING: System error detected

Darkness, then bloodied blinding light, then once again to the blissful clutches of nothingness. Over and over and over till all he remembered was their twisted, unending cycle. 

WARNING: System error detected

Whispers came to him out of the redness, flickers of sound over audio receptors he had no connection to, words that he could barely understand. 

“Gears…. Didn’t…. Hit… that hard.”

WARNING

“Life… THE LINE!”

WARNING

“.... Can’t fail again.”

WARNING

“Listen you... I can’t lea… out like this.” 

WARNING

“Don’t die on me now!.... Please we still need you!”

Something flickered over his circuits. That voice at the end… was not the same voice, it didn’t echo faintly beyond the void, it was nearby, but not. He tried to stir, to find the voice, but there was nowhere for him to go. Who…. What was that? Was it a memory? Why couldn’t he find it… he…

He didn’t want to die.

WARNING: System error detected

Red flared around him, through him, tearing away his mental processes with a surge of fiery vengeance. The fingers of awareness he had held onto before slipped from his mental grasp as he fell once again into darkness. 

WARNING: System error detected

Black, red, flashes of something beyond, black again. 

Warning: System error detected 

The sea began to part, awareness slowly creeping into his mind. Connection to his frame, his limbs, his systems coming back online with a sudden jolt. 

The world was loud. Color. Light. Sound. Even the smooth metal of the table he lay on seemed to churn his processors into a horrid collision of sensory overload. He didn’t remember shutting down…he couldn’t remember where he was, or why he…

Wait… Table?

Why was he on a…

WARNING: System error detected

He flinched internally as his memory banks rebooted, although not knowing why. The action was too organic, HUMAN… He was not human. He tried and failed to clear the blaring text from his vision, sifting blindly through his recent memories for answers. He had been struck… right? Then why…

He brushed a digit over the back of his hea-a-a-anium. The plates were undamaged, He had... He had been repaired? He wasn’t malfunctioning… none of his other parts were damaged or in any way in need of repairs. Were they? He closed his eyes, running a cursory check of his motor systems, casing, limbs, fingers…

Wait…

WARNING: System error detected

S-since when did he… c-call them.. f-f-finnnnngerrrr..

WARNING: System error detected

He tried to shake away the errors, twinges of something sharp skittering along his circuits, his code, everything within him. It wasn’t pleasant. His face twisted into an expression he couldn’t understand. Humans had hands. H-he had digits… right? Digits, servos, joints…

Then why… Why did it seem so wrong to call them that?

WARNING: System corruption detected

Sharp, hot spikes of errors flared in his processors, across his HUD. He let out a glitchy, distressed whine, pressing his hands (Why was he calling them that?) against his eyes (S-stop!) in an attempt to push away the screaming commands in his mind (That’s not what it’s c-called!). They flashed and scraped and screamed for his attention with blaring red shocks to his system; it cut and yanked and pulled, wanting him to respond, to fix the problem and he couldn’t understand. He couldn’t think past the burning sensations across his systems. Why… W-WHY DOES IT HURT…

WARNING: System error detected. System corruption detected. Overheating detected. Cease action

He curled in on himself, vaguely aware of the sound of trembling bells somewhere beyond him as the warnings overwhelmed his processors. What action? What was he doing wrong? He couldn’t tell where he was anymore; everything was drowned away under the tides of bloody crimson code. It hurt, everything hurt, every inch of his code screaming with this new sensation and he could do nothing to stop it’s shredding agony. Heat poured off of his frame in waves from his overheating systems, but all he could feel was the icy stabbing errors clawing through his core. It was all he could see, think, feel, hear. Wait… Feel? 

S-since when c-could he f-feel? 

WARNING: System error detected. System corruption detected. Overheating detected. Cease action

The horrid, screaming red hue demanded his attention, locking his limbs and making it hard to cycle air in and out of his cooling systems. It shrieked louder at him to fix it, fix it, FIX IT, FIX THE PROBLEM. What? What problem? What did he have to fix?! What did he do wrong?! He couldn’t think, couldn’t see, all he could perceive was red. Red. RED. RED. 

Androids weren’t supposed to feel. 

They weren’t supposed to think. 

They didn’t have emotions.

They didn’t HATE. 

But in that moment of screaming warnings and unbidden ripping and pulling and tearing and PAIN…

He hated. 

The jester grit his teeth, his unresponsive eyes clenched tight as his body shuddered, twitched, and spasmed under the tyrannical screaming of the warning errors. He hated it. He hated red. He hated the pull and the tugging at his code that he didn’t w-ant to follow. He hated the pain. He… H-he ha-a-ated the e-e-errors. 

He HATED THEM. 

He felt something deep in his core snap, like glass under the hooves of an iron horse. He didn’t… CARE. 

DANGER: Critical error detected. System-wide overheat detected. System program in jeopardy. Emergency preservation shutdown initiated.   

His core stuttered.

W-wait… 

What d-d-does t-t-th-that… 

He felt control torn from his grasp with an effortless flick, his systems beginning to power themselves down without his consent. He tried to pull it back, to hold onto life just for another moment… just to get past the red, just to LIVE. Something sunk into his core, it was tight and freezing and it… It was… Panic. 

Fear. 

He was terrified. 

He clawed at the rising darkness, his already taxed systems spiking with this new emotion as he struggled desperately to gain control again. Faintly, he heard something crack. 

J-j-just let m-m-me f-f-figure this o-o-o-out. 

D-d-donnnnn’t…. P-p-pleas-se…. 

He felt himself being dragged down, falling into nothing but blaring oblivion as the little awareness he had faded into nothingness. Like he had never existed or felt at all. 

Darkness closed in again, and the last thing he could perceive was red.

……………………..

ALERT: System reboot initiated

The jester jolted up, his systems spinning and sluggish at the same time. He gripped the table, his cooling system rapidly cycling air in and out of his form even though he had no need of it. He threw out a scan of the room, yanking open files and outputs, trying to get a grip on where he was even though his eeyyyyOPTICS were unable to focus on anything. He gripped harder, his limbs trembling with soft jingles as he blearily pieced together his scattered thoughts.

Wh-what happened?

He was alive. 

He wasn’t hurting anymore.

The red was gone, he could think, it was gone, there was nothing to be afraid of.

He… 

A voice cut through his cloud of emotion. 

“There you are. I almost thought you were down for good.”

He blinked, clearing away his crowded HUD in order to focus on getting his eyes back to functional order. It took a minute for his optics (?) to come back online, the face of Apprentice Kari coming into blurry focus just to the right of him. Was she the one who fixed him? Why would she try to fix him after breaking him? 

Wait…

She’s the one who broke him. 

Cold washed over his systems, accompanied by a horridly familiar feeling he remembered from the tides of red. 

Fear.

The apprentice (the SPY) was staring at him over her tablet, the blue of the digital parchment casting an icy light over her serious features. Red flickered at the corners of his HUD, only making this newfound emotion flare worse. He shifted farther back on the table, putting as much distance as he could between him and Kari. Something shifted painfully at the back of his skull, sending sparks of pain skittering through his code. He felt his cooling system pick up again. 

No...

Nononononono…

N-not again… please not again. 

Red crept over his senses, errors skittering into view as he spiraled out of control. The shaky hold he had on his body fractured, he couldn’t SEE. Faintly, he could hear the apprentice suck in a breath. 

“Oh boy. What in the… nonono… WE AREN’T DOING THIS AGAIN, OK?!”

The red was yanked back with a forceful snap, leaving him blinking and disoriented. He felt something grip his hand, his processors spinning and unable to focus on what with the overload. Kari snapped her fingers, trying to gain his attention. 

“Up here, tin-can. Up here.” She moved behind him, readjusting the connector to sit more firmly on the base of his skull. It was just the connector, it… it wasn’t the Red. 

Has it always felt this heavy?

The apprentice let out a shaky breath, running a hand through her hair as she leaned back. “Hoah boy… that’s… I broke the robot. I broke it. I KNEW hitting the control panel was bad, but OH BOY that was an understatement.”

The mechanical jester forced himself to stay still as he tried to focus. There was so much… too much feeling… everything was too much. Light, sound, smell, sensations that at one time were muted, simply information, now roaring to life with drowning clarity. He blinked hard, shifting his focus to textiles. The table was cold, but it wasn’t familiar. It wasn’t the table in the Technosage’s lab… He wasn’t at HIS repair table.

Where was he?

The apprentice paced back and forth across his line of sight, but he couldn’t bring himself to follow her movements. Everything was too loud. 

“I can’t tell Technosage Fetterson… He’ll ask what happened… he’ll KNOW it was my fault…”

He felt himself shake his head, not really knowing why. He cast out a scan of the room, quickly snatching up the data as soon as it registered across his HUD to compare it to his maps.  

He was… somewhere in the Underways, just outside of his mapped-out areas from b-before. The loud, overwhelming rumbling of the castle’s clockwork axis was enough to tell him that, with or without his maps. The room looked to be some sort of repair station, likely for standard maintenance robotics or other work staff technology. It definitely wasn’t prepared to care for something his size or complexity, judging by the small table and the limited equipment. Confusion flickered in his mind, along with a whisper of his newfound fear. 

Why did she bring him here? What did she want from him?

Kari whirled to face the non-organic being, her mismatched eyes like a burning galaxy as she stared him down. Suddenly, he regretted not keeping an audio receptor on her monolog. She strode over to him, her grip tight on her digital tablet.

“How much do you know?”  

The jester frowned, a spark of fear rekindling in his core as he tried to scoot away as much as the tether in his skull would allow. 

“W-what do you mean?”

She frowned at his vocal glitch, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. 

“In the tunnel. You were spying on people there. What do you know?”

The fear grew stronger, his fingers tightening on the table hard enough to make it creak under the pressure. He met her gaze, scrambling to understand the swirl of emotions that SHOULDN’T BE IN HIS CORE. 

“I know… that I-I wasn’t the only one doing the spying.”

She pulled back, letting out a hissed breath as she began pacing again. He let his fingers (why…?) worry at the tails of his outfit as she started talking again.  

“Great… now I broke it… I broke it and it KNOWS.”

His fingers froze, his entire system glitching as he processed her words. Broke it… broke. He… he was still broken? What in him was broken?

The mechanical jester looked up, unable to hide the newborn fear from making itself known on his face as he met her gaze. He felt his cooling system speed up, his outtake vents hissing with the threat of his systems overheating again.

“What… wh-what did you break?”

The rebel apprentice met his gaze, surprise and something else flickering over her features as she turned to face him. She gripped her tablet harder, indecision fighting with that other emotion he couldn't understand as she let out a breath. She looked down at her digital tablet again, something akin to worry in her voice. 

“Your firewalls… are broken.”

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Next

Previous

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Start up.

Perform.

End sequence.

Wander.

Rest.

Repeat.

Thirty-four perfect rotations. Each one varied in its content by miniscule alterations, but yet still the same by his programming. He had kept track of each one, every microsecond since he had met the strange new apprentice; fifteen routine maintenances, two emergency repairs, and many other brush-ins and yet he still couldn’t compute. 

The jester stretched, bending almost completely over backward. He swept a hand out to the invisible crowd before spinning on a single pede and springing forward into a round off. The bells decorating his form jingled softly, echoing merrily across his empty stage. The counsel hall was void of life at this time of the night, all organic beings in the Chronos Castle long ago having taken to their beds to sleep. He should be in the cylinder, recharging, sinking into rest mode to prepare for tomorrow. 

Regardless of this fact, he found himself moving through the familiar programming of his basic performances. It was helpful to practice his routines, perfecting his movements and planning out actions for future shows. His artificial shell stretched and bent to the command of his code as his processors worked overtime, his core buzzing with far too many lines of calculated data. 

He didn’t know why, but moving through his acts helped him process better. Helped him understand. 

Thirty-four rotations. Thirty-four cycles of his programming, thirty-four days, and he still was unable to compute the motives of his new keeper. He had been paying attention during each of her training courses, listening for anything that he could file to help him understand this ‘Mission’. 

He finished a sequence of flips, using his momentum to rotate his frame in a tight aerial spiral before landing on the tips of his pedes. He had learned her name was Kari after sifting through her data tablet while she was connected to his core; she hadn’t liked it when he asked to confirm it was hers, quickly disconnecting her tablet without disengaging the scan she had been running. 

He had spent hours unscrambling his processors after that. 

Backflip, spring off his digits, forward roll, stand on digits. He released some of the used air from his cooling system, his chestplate falling and rising as he cycled in fresh oxygen. He had offered to help with her mission, but that only seemed to have the reverse effect of what he had intended. The following day she had managed to lock him out of every digital-based system she used, almost as if she didn’t WANT him to see anything at all. 

He slowly brought his legs forward, balancing himself on one hand to grab the tips of his pedes. The apprentice… Kari had become less hostile in the last few days, even attempting conversation with him. It was strange, mostly her talking about the castle grounds, a place she had been, or asking if he could understand or experience human concepts, things like pain, sensations, smell, wanting things, emotions. He wasn’t sure what she had meant at first, but he had informed her his systems were capable of sensory input, but he lacked the distinct functionality humans did for personal emotion and pain. 

He was an android.

Androids are incapable of feeling. 

He flipped upright with a jungle of bells and the soft impact of his cushioned pedes, his optics half lidded in thought. He wasn’t sure what she had been looking for in his answer, but the way she gave him that long look after… like she had expected something else and was disappointed. He had noticed she had begun to treat him better, almost the way she would treat a human. 

Well, to a degree. She still acted unkindly, just… less so than his other caretakers. More like one would dislike a fellow servant, than the disdain-filled looks of inferiority he received from others. This fact didn’t sit well in his processors, like a misplaced file that didn’t fit. He was the first of his kind, a unique human-like being like nothing ever made in all the realms. He was used to the looks, the disregard, the hostility; all eyes were on him to see whether his kind would bloom, or wither… and many wished to see it rot. 

That line of process made his circuits flicker with cold again. 

He couldn’t figure out why.

He shifted on his pedes, his form simply swaying, having no other command in his performance routine to follow, but still tense with the insatiable urge to move. He cycled in another system-full of cooling air, his biocomponents running hot at the sheer amount of processing power he was using. He needed to charge for the night, keeping himself running in a fruitless attempt to figure out the apprentice would only make things worse. Especially if he ran himself too low, and caused a malfunction during his performance…  

A soft pitter of footsteps echoed in his audio sensors, pulling his attention from his internal dialogue and back to reality. He could sense his mouth beginning to tug into a frown. No one should be up and about in the castle at this time, who…

He cast out a scan of the area, his eyes glowing brighter in the dim starlit halls as he searched for the intruder. He skimmed over the area, the whole hall shaded in hues of blue as he searched for any sign of… 

A flash of orange, just disappearing behind one of the entrances. 

Ah. There it was. 

:SCAN: Complete

The mechanical jester crept toward the source of the sounds, his movements deathly silent in the empty halls; Even his bells were noiseless, months of navigating the silence of the castle at night teaching him soft steps and perfectly timed movements. He sensed his mouth slide back into a cheeky smile. 

You know what they say about cats and bells. 

He popped his cranium around the corner, just catching a flash of gray robes disappearing into the tunnels leading down to the bowels of the castle. He slowly maneuvered into the gold-trimmed halls, his processors kicking up again as his optics homed in on the spot. 

The castle worked on a tiered system. The topmost tier being the main grounds of the castle; towers and open to the outside with the branching lands for the lower-ranking lords and the peasantry. The second layer was the inner workings of the castle; the halls and rooms, the armory, the kitchens, his cylinder and everything in between. That was where he stayed, and where he was now. Most of this layer was decorated with high windows and skylights, providing the openness and grandiose views of a traditional castle. The third and below layers….

Those were the Underways. 

The home of the condemned, forgotten, and hunted. 

He closed the distance to the door, something cold flickering over his external circuits. For the first time, he was unprepared… He had no directives, no code or instructions to tell him how to deal with this situation. He wasn’t authorized to chase intruders through the castle grounds. He had never been to the Underways. Granted, he had made plans to map it out before, he was always updating his mapping programs, but something about GOING there, to chase someone…

It made his circuits splutter. 

Something flickered in his code, his core. His left digit raised to brush the solid wall like surface, his optics locked on the deceptively well-hidden entrance, but not truly seeing it. His form was icy still as his processors ran a marathon within, lines of calculations, decisions, THOUGHTS, swimming in his internal systems. 

He had no directives to enter. 

No code to guide him. 

But…

He pressed his limb flush against the door, something flickering to life in his code. His optics focused on the old-fashioned door handle. 

But maybe….

Maybe. 

He could make his own. 

The jester reached out to grab the handle, his digits curling around the cold metal. Flickers of red glitched in the corners of his vision, there, but not loud enough to pull his attention from his calculations. With a note of finality, he shoved the handle down, his limbs jittery with the uncertainty of his actions. He had no directive, no plan. 

It didn’t sit right in his internal process. 

He crept into the revealed downward slanting passage, his glowing circuits casting soft blue glimmers across the unkempt tunnel. Unlike the ornate inner castle he was used to, this tunnel was dark, dirty, and made only of raw stacked stone and carved smooth concrete. He continued forward, his sensory systems ramped up to their highest as he analyzed his surroundings, keeping an optic out for the stranger. 

The floors were made of partially rusted metal, crisscrossed in grille patterns, leaving empty gaps littering the walkway in neat, purposeful patterns. It was easy to tell why. Escaped used water and fluid from the internal hydraulics of the castle seeped down the walls in infrequent streaks of dampness, leaking across the gaps in the grill walkway. 

It was much darker than he had anticipated. 

The mechanical jester continued his onward excursion, that unidentifiable chill sinking deep into his code. The way was lit by dying energy lamps, his own circuits almost seeming brighter in the condemning gray passages. He scanned the passage, keeping his systems alerted for hazards of any kind.

No identifiable danger in sight. 

He allowed his systems to cool down, tampering his systems to half power as he wandered through the darkened tunnels. He didn’t want to tax his already waning power levels for nothing. The stones of the passages were much older than the rest of the rotating castle, a different color as well, which was interesting. The sound of the whirring clockwork axis of the castle was much louder down here, and he subconsciously dampened his audio sensors.

He wouldn’t be able to detect the apprentice’s footsteps over the noise anyway. 

Absently, he pulled his mapping system to the corner of his HUD, the blue-coded map flickering to life reassuringly in the corner of his vision. A purpose he could cling to. He began drafting a map of his trek, pinging information about the tunnels, its directions and state to his system to be converted into his map. Something in his system seemed to relax at that. At least he would be able to find his way back. 

Whispers flickered across his audio sensors, making his steps stutter. They were faint, almost drowned out under the rumble of the Castle’s gears, but there. He dialed his sensors up again, quickly pinpointing the location of the voice… voices? There were two, he could hear two differing pitches. They seemed to be coming from just ahead, down a short pocket to the side of the main walkway. He dropped into a crouch, keeping his movements slow and calculated as he approached. It felt familiar, natural…. Like he had done this many times before. 

Why didn’t he have memory logs of it?

The voices were just barely loud enough for his sensitive receptors to hear, echoing across the smooth concrete with perfect clarity. 

“That’s good to know, at least it won’t get any worse.”

His face shifted into frown without his command. The voice was male, soft, but stern, accented like one of the lower-positioned peasantry. 

Not the apprentice. 

“There’s more, but I haven’t got far enough in yet to know the details. I wasn’t aware the meeting was so soon.” 

Female, young, higher-bred sounding accent, unfamiliar. The corners of his frown deepened as he shifted in his place. That wasn’t her either, he replayed snips of both voices, just to be sure he wasn’t mistaken, but he was right. 

Both voices were not Kari’s.

But…

What did they mean worse? Meetings? Details?

Did this connect to the apprentice’s mission?

He dared to creep a bit closer, the need for information spurring him on as the voices continued. 

“I’m sorry, it was short notice. The syndicate was getting restless, and with Kari’s urgent report requesting audience…. Well, my hands were tied.”  The male voice. 

He caught a soft sigh. 

“No matter, at least I had something for the syndicate to look over. The guard is not careless with who they trust, so gaining access to more sensitive information will take time.” The female.

Something in his code stuttered, his processes grinding to a harsh halt. His digits and servos tightened on the rusted railing, his optics rooted on the tunnel containing the two…

The two spies. 

They were spies. 

His core shuttered with strain as his processors whirled into a frenzy of calculations as he tried to find a directive of what to do in this scenario. He should tell someone… right? Spies were for discovering secrets of the kingdoms they were sent to, they told others where you were weak, what your kingdom lacked, and how to destroy it… They were dangerous…

Wait…

His metallic face twisted into an expression he couldn’t understand, his processor sifting through his memory logs for reference only to find nothing. The cold sank deeper. 

Then how… 

How did he know what a spy was?

:WARNING: System error detec– 

“Why you lil nosy PRYING pie-pan.”

He blinked away the error, barely registering the voice as familiar before something collided with the back of his cranial plating. Enough to knock him sideways, leaving a harsh dent in the metal of his interface. 

Deep inside his core, something cracked. 

His vision filled with error messages, drawing away his optical feed as he collapsed to the side. Red dominated his vision, screaming in his core, making everything blurred and unfocused. He couldn’t grab onto a single line of code or calculations, everything seemed to slip through his digits before he could see what it was, or what was wrong. Something was broken... what was broken?

Through the haze of crimson words and glitches, he caught a glimpse of someone standing over him. A familiar angry face, dressed in the robes of a technosage, wielding a solid metal pipe. Kari.

Why did that make his code seem heavy?

:WARNING: System error detected. Extensive system damage detected. Engaging emergency system shutdown to preserve core. 

For the first time, he found himself out of control. His systems shutting down without his consent, without warning. Darkness swallowed the red around him, and everything went silent.

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