Though it was late at night, the workshop never slept. While Automata needed neither sleep, nor food, the mind couldn’t stay focused forever. Because of this, Alfred, Ram, and Rom, would spend their nights quietly working on side projects or an artistic distraction. Shiro enjoyed watching them work, but since I was controlling all of the others, his attempts at group discussions would fall flat. Alfred had been shut down so that I could free up a proxy slot, and Ram was working on sculpting a clay model of my main body, it wasn’t anywhere near as good as Merrel’s work though. Shiro would watch and interrupt with questions from time to time, which usually earned him a side-eye from Ram. Shiro insisted that we needed an Automata hero in the Battle Beast line-up, and that it should be me, but I wasn’t so sure about it. An action figure of me would be great though. Rom had been working on prototype action figures of the Lion Knight and the Tiger Ranger for Joshua and Jacob but had

I closed the [Terminal Window], picked up the sister’s core, and cracked it with my arm blade. I sat there for a long moment before taking a deep, metaphorical, breath and connecting to the next one. Carnivac brought me all the loaded cores that the murder bots had collected as well as any intact cores from the murder bots themselves. I continued connecting to them and talking with these people through the night. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything so emotionally draining as telling these people what happened to them and being with them in their final moments. Some were sad, others were angry, some pleaded while others were resigned. In the end, between the eleven villagers that were murdered and bound to cores and the seventeen out of twenty one murder bot cores that were recovered, sixteen chose to continue living on as Automata. The other twelve wanted to be released. Most of the twelve were at peace with moving on but a few refused the idea of becoming “abominations” and

It had been a couple of days since we got to the massacred village of Shady Grove and everyone was working hard to rebuild it into the new Automata village. When I was last here, I’d piled all of the bodies that I found into the drained fountain at the center of the village and burned them, rather than feed the scavengers with their bodies. It seemed like the right thing to do for the poor folks that were killed. Buildings were repaired and cleaned, and living areas were remodeled into work areas for the new residents. Without a need for breaks, work went on around the clock. In just a few days the village had been transformed from a desolate ruin into a thriving community. Work still continued on construction and design, but the village was mostly functional now. There was some argument over whether or not to build an Inn or tavern since none of the Automata would have a need for it, but in the end, it was decided that there needed to be a place to welcome outsiders. Shea appre

The rest of the trip home went by quickly with Cyclone, though we rode in silence.  Everyone seemed to be lost in their own thoughts, I’d have to do something for Elita to make this right.  I’d really put my foot in it.  When I was IronHide, it was the most natural thing to think that she and other Automata like her were less than what I’d become.  Now I was horrified that the thought even existed.  Where had it come from?   We were still a couple of miles out from the Urd gates when we stopped to switch shells and walk the rest of the way in.  It was mid-afternoon and possible that we might run into more Adventurers returning from quests so we had to play it safe.  I really should have asked Beam for a mapping function.  The ability to see the locations of others on a map would be super useful.  We looked around but didn’t see anyone in the area.&