After my update, I got all of my proxies powered back up and back to whatever jobs they were in the middle of doing. The exceptions being Carnivac and IronHide. Those two got the honor of hanging out in my [Inventory] as I prepared for my mission to Trone.
I thought about also packing Cyclone but I got this strange feeling like the proxy shell wanted to stay behind and hang out with Sentinel and keep an eye on the village. I couldn’t really explain it. It was the same sort of feeling that I’d gotten with Carnivac the night before. By this point I had dedicated subroutines that I partitioned for each proxy. Since each on
Previous Chapter
Related Chapters
Automata Prime 1.1: The day I died
I looked at the time. My usual train home left about an hour ago, and I had another half hour until the next one. I worked on putting the final touches on a big project for work; we were supposed to be rolling out a major website redesign, and it would be going to production Monday morning. I poked my head up from my cube and looked around; no one else on my team was there. Typical. I remembered seeing an email that said something about a bar meetup to welcome some new person that got hired in another department. I sat back down and continued testing my code changes. Everything was mostly finished, but I needed to double check everything on the staging environment before it went live. I felt a tap on my shoulder and heard a soft “excuse me.” Weird, pretty sure I was the last one left. I took off my headphones and turned around. Ah, it was the cleaning staff, and they wanted me to move so they could vacuum. Sure. Well, I was nearly done anyway. Control, Command, and Q; the M
Automata Prime 1.2: That ancient rivalry of elves vs bears
Eventually, the game trail met up with a larger path. This one seemed to get more use and was clearly more worn by larger creatures. I noticed there was a large puddle off of the path a bit, so I walked over to it to see what I looked like. My head was vaguely humanoid. It was covered in the same armor-type material with what looked like a hinged jaw; like a cross between a human skull and a rock. I didn’t seem to have any sort of nose or distinguishing features, or even ears. My eyes looked like black jewels with a bright blue pinprick of light at the center. It wasn’t really what I was expecting, but I didn’t know what to expect in the first place. My body looked pretty plain, truthfully. No cool armor or fins or anything, though I did have some neat accent lights that made me feel like I was a program in Tron. It seemed like just the barest of basic design to accommodate human-like joints, like an action figure buck that I might have designed in my old life. That would be a
Automata Prime 1.3: Starter Town
I walked with Shea to the Fiefdom of Urd, the nearby city responsible for spring-boarding Adventurers and hero wannabes into the forest in return for money and rank. It wasn’t quite “Dungeon Diving,” but it had all the hallmarks of a Player’s “first town.” The local feudal lord was a vassal of the King, but “everyone” said that he bought the position. No one really knew how, though, and he was never seen in town. The primary industry for the town was the Adventurer’s Guild, which handled most of the labor needs for the region, and the rest of the town supported the Adventurers. People from all over came to Urd to either try their luck at being an Adventurer in hopes of a quick path to success and riches, or to sell things to people in hopes of a quick path to success and riches. The forest I had woken up in was called the Fangwell Forest, and it covered the majority of the valley we were in with little pockets of town sprinkled through. From the Thundermond mountains in the nort
Automata Prime 1.4: Tinker time
Everyone froze and looked at the newcomer. Before anyone else could move, Elita had already drawn her sword and was flying towards the old woman. Shea tried to intervene but was too slow, and Elita’s strike raced for the old woman’s throat. The old woman didn’t move a muscle or even change her expression. She was a statue of calm. Light had enveloped her as Elita’s attack bounced harmlessly away off of the magic shield. Before Elita could strike again, Shea caught her arm. The Automata turned to glare at the girl with eyes of burning blue coals. Shea gripped the other’s cloak instead but was firm in her resolve. “That’s... Um... that’s the landlord, Jada,” Shea said meekly. Elita turned her unblinking glare to the landlord, who only smiled knowingly at her. “I’m going to watch from the roof to make sure we don’t have any other surprises,” Elita said coldly before leaving the room. “Is she okay?” Shea asked. “Elita’s a warrior. Let her do her thing,” I replied. The landlord
Automata Prime 1.5: Ravage eject
Ravage looked up at me and took a step back from Jada. Her head dropped down and her whole body started folding in on itself as cat limbs disappeared and small human-shaped limbs emerged. The cat’s body unfolded and folded again like origami. It seemed to be going slowly and deliberately, which made me think of nearly every robot show I’d ever seen that gave you in-depth transformation scenes at first then later skipped over them. Now I was wondering if they went slow at first to test things out, or if it was a skill thing where you got faster as you gained experience. Ravage the cat was gone and in her place stood a small, humanoid Automata no more than a foot and a half tall. Her face was featureless and white like Elita’s, but she had long fibrous black hair that flowed down her back and little kitty ears on top of her head. The cat tail was still present and flicked from side to side. If you knew to look for it you could see the shape of the cat head in her chest and the cat e
Automata Prime 1.6: I need a duck
I fashioned some simple armor for Elita, trying to keep the design along the lines of what I thought an orc warrior might wear, but it was all guesswork based on the memories from my previous life. Elita didn’t have any experience with orc fashion either and wasn’t any help beyond “I think they wear a lot of leather and furs”. Thankfully I still had the remains of the Thunder Bear in my [Inventory], so I was able to craft some leather and fur items for her. In my past life, I'd been known to do some cosplay from time to time so I was no stranger to making clothes and armor. Laid out on the workbench I had leather boots, breeches, bracers, and a tunic with a fur-trimmed collar along with a simple breast plate and a shoulder pauldron from her sword arm. Now that I looked at the collection, it appeared to be more barbarian than the caveman fashion I associated with fantasy orcs, but whatever; I was sure she’d be fine. The less skin she had to [Cloak()], the better for her mana reserv
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
Automata Prime 1.8: I met a large snake
For the next several days I continued to work on my exo-frame project while Elita and Shea went out on quests to earn money while also gathering up materials that I’d need in the shop. I began crafting simple magic tools to populate the shop with items for sale. I upgraded Rom and Ram to be able to craft the simple items and had them working on that while Alfred managed the store front. From time to time Jada would pop in to see what we were up to and to collect her share of the profits. We got some customers from time to time but not a lot. So far we didn’t have any must-have items that couldn’t be found at other shops. Hot plates, cold boxes, various armors and shields resistant to different kinds of magic effects, that sort of thing. Jada showed me how to easily make these tools and took care of arranging a contact in the Guild to purchase the required mana crystals at wholesale. I was just about finished with the exo-frame, when I felt some new items enter my [Inventory].
Latest Chapter
- Automata Prime 3.9: Infiltration
- Automata Prime 3.8: Upgrades all around
- Automata Prime 3.7: A check-in with royalty
- Automata Prime 3.6: Camping overnight
- Automata Prime 3.5: Meeting the parents
- Automata Prime 3.4: The Factory
- Automata Prime 3.3: Welcome to Trone
- Automata Prime 3.2: I should do some shopping
- Automata Prime 3.1: Slowing down?