12 Miles Below

Cathida was going to be a problem.

The crusader hadn’t appreciated our newest recruit to the group and she had opinions. For the past half hour since we’d recruited Yrob into our crew, I’d realized Cathida had to be talked to. Machines have always been the great enemy, so at the start her seething hatred of anything metal was fine. And then we met Wrath and it became complicated. I hadn’t stepped in to mediate, because Wrath was… well, Wrath. Insults pinged off her forehead like bullets would.

Yrob? Abraxas? And possibly the other Chosen and regular civilians we’ll find? That’s going to be a problem.

We’d been running through the underground in direction to Yrob’s budding town, which wasn’t too far off the map. Still a distance, but not impossible. We hadn’t yet deviated from the map Abraxas had left behind for us, but we’d be dealing with that soon enough. Which meant two problems.

Abraxas was going to be upset we were taking the scenic route to visit new neighbors. And Cathida was already upset we were throwing a welcoming party with sugar and sweets in the first place. Possibly literally, if Yrob actually had an oven over there to bake.

Despite Cathida being a cranky old crone who’s only joy in life was to see me sweat and suffer, she still felt like family of kinds after all this time. The grandma I never got.

I did actually have a grandma, except she had been a Winterscar through and through - only obsessed with status. She doesn’t count as family. None of them had a heart to even be close to.

Yrob, Tamery, Wrath… they were all part of my crew. And so was Cathida and Journey. If I wanted peace, I’d need to deal with the ghost haunting my armor once and for all. And get it all squared away.

I’d been thinking about how to convince a long dead crusader while the group advanced through the caverns. Pretty soon we vaulted over the last rock and off a small cliff leading into another section of abandoned city. Still hot on Abraxas’s map, this entire area was completely empty of basically everything. Machines had better places to be. So too did just about every living thing possible. There was no sounds here except for our footsteps, and dust puffed out with each step we took. Felt like we were running through a mausoleum.

Our pace was measured, with the old machine loping comfortably with us, pots and pans giving slight clinks every now and then whenever we took a jump from flat roof to roof. He’d put some kind of insulation between them all in his bag, given how many handles I saw poking out and the lack of sound that came from the whole thing despite his giant strides.

The machine grumbled with each long step, upset. Not at me for once, I’m innocent.

“Why attack?” Yrob asked. “I small. Not important. Old. Simple Runner.”

He wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to the problem.

“The pyrite scrapheap has more decorations than a crusader would have gold pins.” Cathida hissed, “Of course you’re a target! All this paint is about as useful as a candle in a solar flare, and half as bright of an idea. You see any other machine running around with warpaint and a giant bag on their back? Goddess’s golden tits, how did we ever lose the origin war in the first place?”

“Not warpaint. Historypaint.” Yrob said. “Paintings good. Angry lady bad… nnnh.” He paused for a moment, finding the best word for the job. “Ah. Uncultured lady.”

The way Yrob said it, as if both an accusation and a factual observation, had the whole group coughing. If Cathida were alive, I think her eye would be twitching.

“Uncultured, it calls me!” She screeched. “Me! The absolute audacity! Strutting around with scrap metal ‘art’ like it’s a sun-kissed tapestry in some gilded art museum. Obsolete scrap with delusions of grandeur more like. Stick to frying fish instead of your microchips, heathen.”

“That sounds rather uncultured of you,” I deadpanned. “And here I had such high regard for your opinions on machines.”

“Very uncultured.” Yrob agreed. “Bad lady.”

“Now listen here you little shit.” Cathida hissed, attention turning squarely on me, upset I took sides. I went through the options on Journey and she quickly stopped mid-rant before I could get to the mute button, now simply seething and muttering.

With the temporary peace, I decided now was the time to start digging into all this. “Cathida, what’s Journey’s opinion of all the machines joining us?”

“Armor doesn’t care at all.” Cathida answered, quickly forgetting her earlier antics. “It’s reassessed danger profiles for all targets ever since you ramped up, so it’s not worried about most of the rabble in the first three stratas.”

“So Yrob’s threat profile would be…?”

“About as dangerous to you as a six year old squire with his first plush sword. It’s worried about other things out there, not that scraphead running next to you.”

So the armor was fine with machines. Just not Cathida. “And you can’t ever be convinced to work with machines?”

“The old bat? The sun would have to shine purple before the real Cathida willingly works with machines deary. Lifetime of fighting machines doesn’t vanish overnight in humans. Unless you happen to have an imperial writ of command forcing her, and even then she’d be seething on the inside like a pent up pressure cooker.”

“Good tool.” Yrob said. “Cook fast. Useful.”

“What could have convinced Cathida to work with Yrob and other machines we’re possibly meeting in the future? Is there any kind of crack in the armor we could work with?”

“Sure, there’s some scripts to read there.” Cathida hummed for a moment. “Journey’s reporting there are a few situations where the real Cathida would have put her sword down. You’re not going to like it though.”

“What’s the worse?”

“Existential threat to the imperial order.” Cathida said. “Fortresses getting torn down, cities razed, humanity not simply losing the war but extinction looming over everyone written in giant gold letters in the sky - that kind of danger. If the real Cathida was put into that situation, and the only way out was working with some machine turncoats, she’d change her mind.”

“The current mite prophecy Wrath’s under isn’t enough?” We were fighting to possibly end the cycle completely. Even the faction that shaped the very world we ran through saw something in Wrath that made them believe there was a storm following behind.

“Naw, the old bat isn’t going to change her mind unless her own people’s lives depend on her putting those feelings aside. She’d do the right thing at that point and no earlier.”

About as useful as an evosuit in a sauna. “Don’t think we could do that. Wrath isn’t anywhere near picking a fight with Relinquished just yet.”

Or we might just get her free from the Unity fractal and then hide away to live out a wealthy retirement. Abraxas certainly showed it’s possible to live hiding from the pale lady’s thumb. Wrath was destined to do something big in the world, but nobody said it had to be this year. Maybe the next generation would be the ones to go with her. Had a feeling that wouldn’t be the case though, call me paranoid.

“Any other situation that would convince the real Cathida?”

“Eh.” She said. “Humans aren’t rational creatures, deary, they don’t just turn switches on and off in their heads for silly little things like facts. They have to see the consequences of their actions face first. Find something too big for the old bat to ignore, and you’ll have her convinced.”

I tried to pry out some more information from Journey, since it was the one behind the strings here, but that direction led nowhere. There was absolutely nothing right now that could convince Cathida. No string of magical words that would weave an argument that could change her mind. She was too old, too set in her ways.

That’s when I had another possible direction come to mind. The real Cathida couldn’t be convinced, not without some elaborate heart to heart moment. And possibly a lot of arm twisting.

But I wasn’t talking to the real Cathida. I was talking to a digital version of her, a sock puppet that Journey was faithfully recreating, robot racism and all. “Humans can’t be rational creatures,” I muttered. “But you can. You’re not the actual Cathida. Journey, is it possible to modify perimeters for Cathida? To possibly directly flip those switches on and off?”

“Armor says it can’t.” Cathida said, shooting my idea down instantly. “Nice try deary. Any modification of Cathida and it stops being Cathida and starts going into extremely unstable territory. Finding where the weights and biases are located in that giant mess and modifying them would assuredly cause catastrophic cascading effects.”

Wrath pitched in. “If the simulated neocortex cannot be modified due to it being akin to a blackbox, perhaps the input data stream or output from that engram could instead?”

“A filter of some kind?” I asked. “Like rose colored glasses, but for Cathida?”

“Yes.” Wrath nodded, wings rustling in the wind as she leaped with the running crew. “Why not have the armor tag myself and other machines as humans? Or have me seen as Tensient is, a stolen Feather piloted by a human soul.”

Cathida didn’t hate Father. In fact, he’s the only ‘machine’ that had her respect. “Can we do that Journey?”

“Easily.” Cathida said. “Journey’s not dumb deary, setting up a filter wouldn’t be any kind of difficulty. Cathida will still be pain, mind you. Same way she is to you, but there wouldn’t be that spec of hate buried deep down.”

Can’t belive the answer to all this was to outright gaslight the engram into thinking all our new friends were just bigger humans with a little too much iron in their diet.

“Journey will know the truth of course.” Cathida continued. “But it can easily generate responses from the engram as if the whole group here were humans.”

“We should give that a shot then.”

“Sure, why not.” Cathida said. “I’ll edit or reset some of the memories and saved data. Not going to be easy, there’s a lot of data to sort through.”

“And you don’t mind?”

Cathida laughed. “Did you forget what I am young man? Journey doesn’t care about any of this. Simply another command from the user to Journey. And I’m just answering questions as if this were about some other engram tech nonsense. It’s all jargon to me that I’m relaying from Journey.”

I turned to Yrob, “I’m tinkering with the bad lady right now. In the future, she’s going to think you’re a human. Think you can pull that off?”

“Am not.” Yrob said. “Runner.”

“We all know that, and so does my armor. We’re just making the engram in my head see the world otherwise.”

The machine looked down at the ground for a few loping strides. “Fix bad lady?”

“Yeah, it should. I think.”

“Okay. I act human.”

Somehow I had a bad feeling about that. Cathida cackled on the other hand. “You don’t need to go that far. Journey can just edit what the scraphead says to filter out anything that would make the old bat suspicious something's off. It recommends identifying Yrob as some large man from a distant region and culture. Easy to work with. And if you get too far into the weeds, Journey will not feed that data into the engram. It’ll be like a blank spot in her memory.”

“All right, if that’s the case. Execute that.”

We took another jump off a building and landed on a catwalk, then had to leap down on the bottom road before we could continue the jog. I expected something to change while Journey was tinkering with itself, but the armor stayed silent the whole time.

“Did it work?” I finally asked.

“So impatient.” Cathida tutted. “The filter is the easy part, it’s the entire history prior that’s the problem. Or do you want the little bimbo and scraphead to just appear out of nowhere from the old bat’s perspective? This isn’t an easy patch you’re asking for.”

Almost like Cathida was doing some soul searching on the inside. Except the cheating machine version of that. “How long do you expect it to take?”

“Journey’s considering this a low priority calculation. Maybe half a day. The processor is tied up to keeping an eye around us, in case of danger. And armor isn’t built to deal with overheating. You get what you ask for, a little patience young man. Don’t mess with it.”

--------------

It had been about six hours of jogging and running when it was finally time to take a breather again and switch out the power cells. Still no sign of any enemies down here, nor people, plants, or even odd buildings. The city never failed to have completely weird new pathways and make the whole place feel like a maze to leap through, so that always kept the trek novel. Armor normally removed a ton of stamina requirements from knights, but they still did end up exhausted after hour on hour. Winterblossom technique let us be completely relaxed in our armor, which meant none of us had even needed to move an inch to get the armor to comply.

So we could take breaks at much further intervals.

Cathida had been quiet the whole way there.

I had mixed feelings about this solution. It was a quick and easy shortcut, and usually quick and easy means something is going to blow up in my face later. A sidestep for the real issue.

“Soon, take turn off map.” Yrob said, taking a few glances outside the window to the quiet city. “More danger.”

Yrob hadn’t needed to be cautious of other machines. He could stay in contact with them all, and would only be seen as an eccentric running around without a pack. The runners would be confused at him, but the rest of the machine kingdom had little care.

Traveling with humans might make it complicated for him.

The huge machine had to really crouch down to fit through the doorway, but the rest of the area here was wide open for him. Some kind of empty towerhouse base, pressed up against the cavern walls at the sector’s edge. Enough room at the center to deploy a fire pack and plenty of rubble to sit on around. There were glassless windows dotted across the structure, as if there should have been multiple stories. But inside, no staircases or any kind of structure had been made. Not even a roof. Mites.

Father was at the very top, sitting in lotus position on the edge of a crumbling wall. The single best location to keep an eye out for anything moving.

“Might be a bit exciting again,” I said, putting down my pack. “Abraxas’s guide is a little too effective.”

Give that little bugger some credit, he knew how to hide from anything.

“Better we never tempt danger in the first place, master Keith.” One of the knights said, tossing a disposable firepack down onto the center. We didn’t have a huge amount of them, but the center of a mite city like this didn’t have much of any kind of wood to burn.

He drew his blade and stabbed into the pack a few times, poking holes into it, then crouched down and put his palm over. The fractal of heat lit up in his hands, quickly igniting the firepack’s contents.

Wouldn’t make as great kabobs or anything with that kind of fire, always left a chemical taste. But hadn’t had to use them too often.

The other knights equally sat around the fire, helmets hissing off as they took a breath of unfiltered air. Hands already moving to their packs to withdraw reserve power cells and replace the spent ones in their armor.

This was where things went different from our usual stops. Yrob sat down the giant pack right near the fire, then dipped one long armored hand into the pack, rustling through it. What he pulled out wasn’t a pot though.

It was a long chef’s hat. The kind of hat I’d seen undersiders wear that looked absolutely ridiculous. Giant white tower of a thing, which he unfolded gently and then put on his head.

“Can’t wear running.” He said to the crowd watching. “Safe put away.”

“I think I’ve seen just about everything now.” I said, taking a seat next to Wrath.

She nodded. “Small details allow machines to be more unique to one another. I approve of his collection. From his data log, it was a gift given to him.”

The very next thing the machine took out was a set of metal pipes all folded together. He gingerly unfolded them, clicking sounds coming out as each snapped into a more rigid frame. Some kind of hollow trapezoid.

Two of them, separated. One being rather large and the other way smaller. He took a step back to look over his little creations, then nodded to himself. One clawed hand went over to the pack again and pulled out a flat piece of metal with a wooden board that looked attached to it. He set it down on the larger trapezoid stand and… had what looked to be a makeshift table.

The clawed hand snuck through his giant back, rustling around until he pulled out a large pot. His other hand grabbed the smaller setup trapezoid and set it right above the firepack. On top of that, he put the pot. A makeshift stovetop over fire. Neat.

He turned to me. “Water.” He asked.

I unclasped my bottle of water and handed it over. Looked like a tiny thing in his claws, delicately held in three fingers pinching the top. He went right back to the pot, finding the latch for the pour setting, and then dumping my entire supply right into the pot.

I got the empty bottle back at least.

We watched with curiosity as the old Runner began pulling different things from his pack. Mushrooms, herbs, knives and other tools.

Sagrius lifted his head then, eyes focusing on Yrob. “Machine. I have a question.”

Yrob grunted. “I have name. What question?”

“How do other machines know the difference between Chosen and regular humans?” He asked.

He shrugged. “Can feel. Database matches.”

“That’s all the machines need to not attack the Chosen?”

I could see where the captain was going with that question. Maybe we could replicate that signal, make ourselves look like Chosen to lazy scans. Would make our trip a lot safer.

Yrob shook his head at that. “Chosen lowest rank. Lower than Runner. Depend on machine. Upper strata, safe. Lower strata, not safe.”

“Depend on machine?” I asked, trying to clarify what he meant by that.

“He means that individual machines have leeway to act as needed.” Wrath said, helping me translate. “Mother will not care if some machines attack or kill the Chosen. However, the lower strata has far more veteran machines. More powerful models that survive multiple encounters with humans at a far higher rate than the upper strata. They would have developed biases and would see the Chosen differently. Model of the machine is also a factor. Hunter drakes have difficulty accepting the Chosen, even under my command.”

Yrob nodded to all that. “Drakes. Hunters. No prey, not happy. Runners run. Prey optional.”

He turned back to his cooking, focused. The first meal he cooked for us ended up being fried rice with wild mushrooms and other herbs he’d carried with him. And included into it were chopped up supposedly tasteless ration bars that were pan fried to give them a crust. No sure how he managed, but they ended up tasting pretty good. “Absorb strong flavors.” Yrob said. “Trick learned from old lady. Tasteless version only. Other bars no good.”

“Never thought I’d be eating a dish made by the hands of a machine.” One of the knights said, taking another chunk of the meal in his chopsticks. “Compared to the last camp’s meal, night and day difference.”

The other knights hummed to that. Even Sagrius seemed to feel something while eating. Good food hadn’t been enough to shake his state back in the Winterscar estate grounds, but small steps.

There was enough for all of us, but Yrob’s eyes were only for Wrath. He eagerly watched as she served herself some, sat down and took a bite. She gave small nods to herself as she continued to eat through the whole thing. “This was well executed.” She said, in between bites. “Connect to my channel, I will broadcast a livefeed data stream of this.”

The machine quickly scooted closer, excited. Then his entire frame went perfectly still. Just looming over the two of us sitting. “Is better.” He finally said, giving himself a nod. “Worth travel.”