Automata Prime

1.7: Puppet Master

After Shea finished her breakfast, the girls headed out again. This time they would go to the Guildhall and try to get Elita registered as an Adventurer and then register their own party.  I wished them luck as they set out.  Again I’d be left to my own devices, so I worked on getting the shop cleaned up.  This was going to take a lot of work—the shop hadn’t been touched in ages—but then I remembered that I had those three dead Automata in my [Inventory].  Time to try a new idea.

I didn’t have any nearby souls to connect to according to my [developer] installation tools, so I couldn’t go that route, but I wanted something simpler anyway.  I got the bodies repaired and lined up against the workbench.  All of them were taller than me but more human-sized.  I guessed these were intended to be servants and would have to fit in with human staff as well as wear human-sized clothes.  I completely replaced the firmware that was installed with new firmware.  These bodies would simply be proxy shells rather than house any spirit.  The two that had cried trying to put their shackles back on were female maid types, while the one that had resigned themselves to being a slave was a male type.  None of them had any facial features other than their eyes, though the male did have a mustache decoration. It was rather dapper looking and made me think of Alfred, the Wayne butler, so that’s what I named this one.  I named the maid types Rom and Ram because I’m a dork and I liked the play on Read-Only Memory and Random-Access Memory, the two “twin” memory types in computers.  All that was left was to test them.

I still felt horrible that Elita had killed these three but maybe they could live on, in a way, through me.

I updated my own code to register the proxies and initiated the connection commands.  As soon as I connected to the proxies, I had the sensation of seeing a picture-in-picture effect.  The main “picture” was my own vision, but in three new views I was seeing out the eyes of these 3 bodies. Under each view was a label for which proxy’s view I was seeing.  It took some getting used to, but I was able to partition a bit of my consciousness to run in the background for each proxy.  The proxies didn’t have my abilities, but I could still move them around independently.  This was great!  It was like there were now four of me able to work on cleaning up the shop and the workshop.

By lunchtime, I had gotten both the shop and the workshop cleaned up and organized.  Shea and Elita had gotten back from the Guildhall and were ready to go out on their first quest together. Via Alfred, I gave a nice butler bow to them when they came in and welcomed them home. 

Rom and Ram also bowed, then all four of me said: “Welcome back, ladies.”

Elita froze, looking unnerved and guilty before turning on her "cold indifferent" look. I’m sure she remembered killing these three.  Shea looked completely lost and just stammered in her confusion before saying, “That’s really creepy.  How are you doing that, Prime? I know this is your doing, right?”

I laughed and had the proxies step back and line up against the wall before disconnecting from them. 

“Yes, that’s my doing.  I’ve set up these Automata bodies as proxies that I can connect to.  I don’t know what the range is for how far apart from me they can be yet or if anyone other than me can do this.  It seems to eat mana rapidly, but with my levels it’s negligible.”

“Well, the place looks great at any rate,” Shea admitted.

“Thanks, how did it go for you guys?” I asked.

Elita explained that when they had gotten to the Guildhall there were a lot of people there, since it was the usual morning rush for Adventurers looking for Quests.  She had gotten a number of odd looks, but no one tried to mess with her.  During the Adventurer registration, there had been a part where they had her place her hand on a magic sensitive crystal to determine her affinity and she got nervous, but she used the [lightning()] command and no one thought anything of it, assuming that she had the lightning affinity but wasn’t very strong with magic.  After registration, they had been able to form their party, which they named “Angel,” and picked up a quest.  Since the morning rush had mostly picked the quest availabilities over, there wasn’t much to choose from for E rank.  In the afternoon they would head out for some simple collection quests.  One for a particular root, and another for Shadow Rabbit pelts.  I reminded them to be sure to never accept escort quests or multi-party quests, otherwise Elita would have to maintain her disguise the whole time and could run out of mana.  I issued them my own quest for some Mythril ore if they happened upon some and that I had an idea for a weapon upgrade for Elita that I’d reward them with.  For Shea, I offered to look at and upgrade her water magic as a reward.

With that settled, Shea went upstairs to get lunch for herself and Sparky while Elita helped me finish organizing the material inventory for the workshop.  I hadn’t seen Ravage lately, but she seemed to be most comfortable with Jada and wasn’t particularly disposed to helping out anyway.

“What’s this thing?” Elita asked, pointing to the exo-frame I was working on.

“Oh, that? That’s going to be a sort of armor that I can get into that will, hopefully, let me pass for an Adventurer.  I’m planning on making it look like a beastkin so that it will be easier to hide the Automata seams and joints.  If possible I’d like to use a wolf, so if you come across any, I’d appreciate you getting a couple for me.”

“Sure, that shouldn’t be a problem, though we might have trouble bringing the bodies back.”

“Ah, right; that’s true.  Here, I’ve been messing with something that you can try out for me.”  I pulled out a satchel that I had been working on and handed it over to her.  “This satchel is connected to my [Inventory], so anything you put in will be directly added to it.  For objects that are bigger than the opening, you may need to turn the satchel inside out... really, whatever it is just needs to touch the bottom of the satchel.  Getting things back out is a lot trickier though, and I haven’t figured that part out yet. For now, I’m the only one that can pull things back out of my [Inventory], so you’ll need to come back here after your quests to get your goods.  You should probably avoid touching the bottom of the satchel yourself...”

“This will be really useful—thanks, Prime!”

“Sure, no problem,” I said, feeling rather proud of myself.

When Shea was ready, the two girls headed out to go on their first quest together. Again I was jealous that I couldn’t go out yet and was stuck in the shop.  This world didn’t seem to have any means of remote communication yet either, so I’d need to come up with something so that we could stay in touch.  I looked over at my proxy staff and got an idea.  I’d need to work quickly before Shea and Elita got too far away, but this would be a great field test for the proxy limitations.

Moving quickly, I grabbed a bunch of different materials and crafted a large insect body, roughly the size and shape of a stag beetle. Naturally I named it Shrapnel. Due to the materials on hand it was entirely silver colored, but there was no time to waste on paint schemes. I copied in the same proxy code firmware that I’d given to the staff proxies and booted it up.  Once I registered it with my own systems and connected to it, I was able to take control of the body.  Deploying paper-thin metal wings Shrapnel was able to slowly lift off and then fly out of the shop. It was an odd experience seeing my main body below me from its perspective, then it raced out the door.

I had a vague idea of where the girls were headed but had Shrapnel climb to a higher altitude to get a grasp of the town’s layout.  Below him, the low-rent district stretched out with buildings crammed up against each other.  The Guildhall would be past the market area full of vendor stalls and shops, and there were a number of street vendors with carts and blankets laid out on the streets of low-rent and beyond them, the main entry gate through the wall that surrounded the city.  The closer to the gate, the shabbier the buildings got.  Likely, if there was ever a breach, these would be the first places hit so the lower income homes and shops were here. The sound of Shrapnel’s wings beating feverishly to keep his relatively heavy body in the air was deafening.  The next time I built something like this, I’d have to figure out a better method.  Maybe a bird of some kind would have been better, but it was too late now.  Shrapnel flew over the market area but couldn’t find them.  Unfortunately, it appeared that something else found him.

Above and backlit by the sun, a falcon rammed into the little bug body, sending it flying.  Thankfully being made of metal and not an actual insect, Shrapnel didn’t take too much damage.  I didn’t have time to add any sort of weapons to this body, so all Shrapnel could do was head down and try to zip through the crowd.  Falcons are dive bombers and prefer to ambush their prey in the air; they weren’t likely to try and follow me through the crowd of people.  At least that’s what I thought based on knowledge from my previous world.  Not only did this falcon give chase through the crowd of people in the market, but it also used wind magic to push people out of the way as well as propel itself faster than should be normal.

Going through the crowd was still the better choice, and people started yelling and screaming as this bird tore through them.  A lizardman, or possibly lizardwoman, caught the bird with an uppercut strike with their club, sending it tumbling up and into the side of the building.  Shrapnel didn’t stick around to see what became of it, but it wasn’t his problem anymore.

In the chase the proxy somehow managed to head in the direction of the town gate facing the forest and caught a glimpse of a big, beautiful, green orc.  Thank Primus for small favors.  He flew over to them and hovered in front of Elita.  Not surprising, she absently swatted at him, but he moved outside of her range and continued to hover in place looking directly at her.  When she actually took notice of the big metal bug flying in front of her, she held out her hand.  He softly landed in her palm, retracted its wings, and transformed into a humanoid form.  This body was only about six inches tall and his vision was limited in depth and range, but it would be nice to go with them in a way.

Shea turned to look over, and her eyes locked onto him.  First her mouth opened, then it closed and her eyes narrowed.  “That’s Prime, right?”

“I assume so,” said Elita.

“Prime, I don’t have any more amazement to give you. I’ve run out.”

Shrapnel gave a shrug and a thumbs up.

“You can hear us, right? Can you speak?” Elita asked.

He tapped the side of his head and gave a thumbs up, then tapped where his mouth would be and shook his head.  I hadn’t had time to put any sort of speaker system into this body, and at this size I’d likely have to invent an entirely new tiny speaker.

They were nearing the gate guards and Shea said, “Quick, hide him.”

Before he knew it, Shrapnel was getting tossed into the satchel and could hear Elita say “Ah crap” before he vanished into the [Inventory].  

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In my main body, the connection abruptly cut out and a warning error appeared where I should have seen the vision and status from Shrapnel.  I guess it wasn’t possible to stay connected inside the [Inventory].  There was still a lot I didn’t know about that ability, and I would have to take the time to explore it.

I held out my hand and retrieved Shrapnel from [Inventory] and the connection reestablished.  That was good to know.  It didn’t help with getting to go on the quest with the girls, or help maintain communications with them, but it was a good test.  I now knew that I could maintain my connection to a proxy body at least as far as the forest side gate.  I also knew that I’d have to equip this guy and his future siblings with weapons and speakers.

It looked like my adventure was over for the day and I’d have to be content with being chased by a falcon.  It would have taken too long to try to get Shrapnel to catch up to the girls at this point.  I set Shrapnel aside on a shelf to tinker with later.  I might be able to set up some sort of pseudo-proxy that just had a speaker and a microphone that could work like an ear bud, but it would only ever be good for talking with me and not to each other, unless I want to relay messages back and forth, which I really didn’t.  I decided to put that idea aside for now and looked over at the exo-frame.  This was going to take a lot of work.