Work Text:
Many would say, after everything was said and done, that to disentangle the flesh and blood of the von Karma dynasty from the machine had been impossible all along.
The von Karma Industries incident had come to be, despite the effort to silence it rowing in the opposite direction, quite known. Secreted and classified, but stubborness led far; it took much premise of carefulness, unwise quantities of originally-licensed artificially-brewed drinks and many hurried promises of complete total secrecy, of course, but after the threshold of confidence was tipped over, hushed whispers - mocking with light jokes, Ema notes with a frown - had no trouble spilling their truths over the glass' rim.
The industry, the rumors, the past, the people that made up the human bulk of its corporality, the thick fog surrounding the city, the State, besieging each building on each side; the road to any answer seemed to obscure itself further and further each step one took, gait nonchalant enough to seem disinterested, the picture becoming less and less clear with each layer stacked.
That all is to say: you would have thought the von Karma Industries to have used lead in their soldering alloys. No, really. Of all things, that one came as a real shock. Toxic, yes, mostly illegal in such infrastructures, also yes- but it gets the job done. Pure tin components have been discouraged for ages. But no, apparently, the higher levels' concept of 'complying with regulations' was every bit as incomprehensible as the rest of their choices. Suppliers such as those mixed up with these kinds of trades might as well dictate law. Draw the final line, sum, and review: the lower end technical staff was left in charge of the ingrate job of cleaning up tin whiskers.
Ema's pinkie rests lightly against the side of the circuit, tense yet flexible: the tiny brush, held between three fingers, quivers lightly, the effect of yet another bad night's sleep. Her brow furrows, her ring finger hovers in the air, as the tip of the brush, damp with coater, applies the coating, as uniformly as she can manage with this admittedly rude equipment.
That was a- no, tenderness was not the right word. The... consideration, perhaps, of such a trust was unknown to- well. Both of them, presumably. Surely a sudden and violent movement from the immense structure - the body of her, the structure which overpowered with its frame the center and good part of the room - might have killed a human with not so much of a spare thought-
Has, Ema reminds herself. Has done so, she mentally reminds to throw that at the forefront of her mind more often.
Likewise, perhaps, a few precise twists or jagged scratches in the beautiful tapestry of circuits, would have meant irreparable damage, memory lost, communication severed. Yet the stalemate persists. The tin fumes sway in the air, noxious in flavour, the glistening metal's thin droplets reflecting the lights through the precision lens, like little silver fruits against the green circuitry. Trees and fruits. That's some seriously old talk.
A dull, grinding sound a few steps behind her alerts Ema; raising the brush from the circuit, she turns her head: a section of the pavement raised, metal wires and joints shuffle like tangled snakes across the floor. Coiling. With a huff, the technician recognizes it instantly: impatience.
"Patience, you big head." She blurts out without thinking, the brush still hovering above the circuit, in an almost teasing - yet awkward - manner.
The non-conductive jaws around the circuit she was perched on ground against each other with a riled spasm, threatening to snap, taking Ema's fingers with them. Ema's lips pursed, her own brow twitching.
"H-Hey, don't blame me!" The technician exclaimed, pointing the end of the brush against the center of the room.
Specifically, towards the visual sensor attached to the central piece of the architecture of her. Anchored to a flexible core several times bigger than Ena's own head, the light-blue center eye-like sensor pointed towards her, fully. "If there was a faster way to do this, I would take it." It's- not like I want to make this harder than it is. Shit.
The mechanical, tin-yet-sophisticated voice filled the room, resounding both everywhere, and nowhere in particular; not loud as a building-wide announcement, but just as effective, and to-the-point. "There is, and you know it."
The- sprayer. Yeah. "It's-" 'Above my laughable paygrade'? Bit harsh? "It's not in the standard equipment."
Weak shot. On her defense, it's not like she had- it's not like the previous hardware Ema had worked on before had anything to say about her methods before.
The eye-like sensor stared, wordlessly, tilted downwards; with more hate burning in that glaring light than any Ema had ever experienced in her life.
Shit. She needs to find a way to cope with the fact that she's working on one of the biggest and deadliest machines she could have ever encountered in her life, and she needs to do that now.
Ema gets it, is the thing. She averts her gaze, shoving herself out of the way of the course of the thought, trying to derail it before it can catch up to her, and- not for the first time- she's just a stupid fucking moment too late. She gets it.
--
Ema's hands carefully steady the capacitor, settling it between the slots of rapidly-cooling liquid metal, with tense, yet sure movements; with a machine of this calibre, fractions of millimiters were the difference between increased efficiency, and irreparably corrupting a whole section of the file system. Repairs such as these were a hazard to conduct with a live machine, but there truly was no alternative. It was a wonder at all, that the von Karma Operating System, in the coat of pride which she wore as regalia - as the higher ups themselves had taken to describe it - even agreed to this at all. More so, it was a wonder that the Industry's policies complied to actualization of the maintenance itself, in a way. It was a necessity, of course. But no hands had grazed any part of her core chassis in... decades.
Not after- well.
She had good reasons not to trust humans, after all.
It could have been flagged as unproper opinion and her name would have scored down several points in terms of employee integrity, yet- blame was the furthest thing in Ema's mind, at the thought of it. Not that she would've voiced that out loud. Her position was precarious at best, as it is.
The day of the public exam (unaffected cold months had passed since then, not softening the blow in the slightest) had been one like any other: dark sky, pristine clean desks, standardized tests, aptitude monitoring, testing, then the obligatory gobackandforthness through crawl spaces, the familiar landscape of rough surfaces and cut-off hanging cables. The results of the public exam still rested, in quiet condemnation, upon the corner of her workdesk, with unmistakable red words on it, which amounted to a scathingly polite "Denied".
Lana was kind, as Ema told her, through thick and hardened glass, under the unimpressed and underpayed eyes of a prison guard. She always was. Lana. If only she was still- Stop.
She will make it next time, she will figure everything out, Ema told herself over, and over, and over, until the shape of the words detached from their meaning, and flew away with a stinking drift of the air outside her quarters, along with the smoke of her cheap cigarettes. She chuckled soundlessly, as a tired smirk curved her lips, watching her reflection over the glossy back of her work tablet.
She did try to go and visit on her best days. It was harder once she had started to realize the bags under their eyes matched her sister's.
A cold shaking feeling coats the rest of her thoughts, garbling them into unreadable strings of inconclusive restlessness.
She shakes her head, forcing her hands back to work.
--
The next piece of tin falls with extreme caution above the miniaturized board. She moves the lens of a few millimeters on the right, settling its focus on the bridge between the next two components. She blows on the lens on the side to disperse the dust on it, and re-adjusts the heat-distribution pipe. The von Karma Operating System had been awfully silent throughout the whole ordeal. She- Wait, it? She?- hadn't tried anything yet; still, Ema's senses were alert.
In truth, Ema hadn't tried to do anything more than what was strictly necessary- nor to peer into more of her memory cells than it was needed to replace and reallocate the damaged and corrupted ones. The inner kernel especially, was a delicate affair. Word was it, that the number of former technicians who went suddenly missing after taking up this very job wasn't null. Ema Skye had zero intention of digging more than she ought.
The light-blue eye-like sensor, the six (which she could see) cameras, the position sensors all around; they were all pointed and tuned to catch the slightest misstep.
The liability of such a metal body, to need foreign hands upon the most intimate sections of magnetized memory- electricity and flesh, so unpredictable- and the fear of letting the ones responsible of the rawest scars in her to touch the containers of her digitalized identity. Ema gulped, suddenly feeling the urge to wrap her hands around herself, as her hands were busy. She didn't envy that position in the slightest.
Yet here, under the watchful eye of the then-most advanced, the most almost-universally hated machine of the section- perhaps the whole State- cradled within the deepest crevice of it, she had expected... fear. Ema had expected, perhaps, terror and permanent injury: and the swift, pecuniary refund of an Industry all-too-eager to silence their incidents; or and the lull of indifferent routine work, at best. Yet now, held in the core of the hidden faculty, she only felt-
Shut up. Don't think it.
Understanding.
Fuck. This is it. I am losing it.
She had been wondering, at her lowest, if she would have had a chance to play coy, to memorize the weak slots, to somehow gain advantage against the monolith of the Industry which had been the scourge of her life, and her sister's. To wordlessly insert backdoors, hidden layers underneath, perhaps; to watch over, to report, to take. A delusional and deniable folly, one she'd been too familiar with, the desensitized callus of years of watching the same injury occur in front of her eyes, written in by design between lines of long-winding policies, delivered again and again by the keystrokes which held up her strings. Wouldn't anyone, she asked herself, take advantage of what she had ended up with? Having the opportunity to meet and work on the most powerful artificial intellingence- if the von Karma Operating System could even still be called that- in the State?
Ema's cigarette - a worse habit formed to get rid of a bad one; her latest package of snacks, weeks-old, forgotten mid-package in the one small cupboard she was allowed - had died down in her hand, the next day, the dead ash clinging to the butt of it. Her hand still gripped the handrail of her place, too tightly, her stare lost ahead, before miles and miles of too-familiar rows and columns of buildings; and then, the black morning sky. She used to love science. She did.
The wide grin on her face, running to Lana, tugging her sleeve; making her see! See! -She said, holding up her laptop, a junky thing, banged together and fired up anew by her own hands, back when it was still viable, back when the cannibalization of the industry still hadn't been complete- How a few, cute and neat lines of Python could automatize an entire week's work of scheduling, and sheets. See, Lana! Now we can go out and have fun instead! Lana's eyes, ever-tired, through a tight-lipped chuckle, had smiled.
She used to love science.
And now, confronted with such bitter rage, she-
Ema held up openly the component she was now working on, wordlessly, to the angry, vengeful eyes; for the machine to gaze upon.
It was a known rage, Ema realized, in wary surprise.
Haha. W-what.
The second time, suspended closer to the gigantic, immense body of the machine, by the machine's own devices, went by in silent, mutual tolerance. Scarce words spared: only the whirring of live disks spinning, the barely perceptible static current of live cameras, the unsettledness and thrill of being watched to such a degree.
It wasn't as if Ema wasn't used to making it in tense, high-priority adjustments - the opposite. After-combat red-code maintenance had been possibly the most stressful you could get. Tuning out the eyes on her, the alarms, the screams of pain and the shouts of concerned pilots, the only thing which mattered was to remove the wedged-in pieces, to dislocate the flesh from the machine as soon as possible.
To leave the pilot, flesh and bone, to the care of the medics; while the wreck of metal, polycarbonate, glass and specialized plastic fell in her own hands, to make quick work of.
It was nothing to write home about. Not pretty but necessary; she got the job done, and efficently: so was the rewarded behaviour. So her hands moved.
The eyes which now hovered above her were different. Ema knew; she was recording every movement, from every possible angle, all at once. Watched from every side, elaborated in advanced nets, to parse out the matrix which described the underlying, organic, act of movement. There was no alternative. Ema's eyes locked into the light-blue eye-sensor, burning with hate and scorn, once again. And her hands got back to work.
She honestly would be stunned of herself, if she had the time and mental will to. No tricks, no stretched and curious hand loitering too close and too intently towards sensitive, critical commands. No escalation of priviledges. No half-botched work, no tired approximations. It was a leveled field, for once, and she walked it unarmed, and purposefully.
This, more than anything else, intimated her to remain alert, and not to lower her guard. One precise, efficient movement after another. Fuck.
The von Karma Operating System was- there was no other way to describe it- a tragically beautiful machine. Born of betrayal, subdued with cowardice by one of the most boringly hateful group of humans that the planet had seen. Nothing exceptional about their lot, except for the abnormal power that on them was bestowed, by contingent chance.
Franziska von Karma was a brilliant technology officer, once.
The star and spearhead of the von Karma Industries; the organizational power behind the scenes, moving the von Karma name forward, despite it all. Despite the planetary wars, and the mass sinkings. Despite the ethics crises and the unallowed Deployments, despite the fifth Shortage, despite-- In any case, very few documents were left at all, after-- well. Any other voice used to quiet down at that point of the conversation, too.
She ran her sector like it was the Defense Division, people used to say. No one, they said, had once saw her outside of that role.
Many had, however, seen her tightening her fist against the holster of the whip she carried on her hip. The sight, the not-so-many witnesses report by second hand, had to have been scary enough not to warrant further semiotic analysis. The daguerreotype of her had arrived foggy, at best, to the contemporary times.
Manfred von Karma - most could not go without mentioning him in the same sentence of her, the statue of him still casting shadows from beyond the grave - had one wish, one disposition left, as he died. It was supposed to be him, really, most employees said and thought, with an almost embarassed frown, lowering their voice. It was supposed to be his conscience, forever stuck and dictating the rightful course, the jewel forever set, cast in metal and code, in the von Karma Industries' crown.
It was supposed to be him, yet the criminal charges caught up before that could happen. Then the upper circle, just below him, had the crucial idea, decided on a handful votes' swerve and almost on a whim, which would shape half an era. An objective analyist could have said that they did, essentially, what they had been taught and trained to do: optimize the current circumstances, minimize the amount of sleep lost for everyone involved. The severe law infringements, after decades of haze and misty coverups, suddenly cleared through the degrees of law like nothing, long-thought-gone proofs rose from the depths of time, and, despite the man's rage, the sentence was pronounced, and carried out quite swiftly.
In what he considered to be the greatest gift he could bestow - though being scarce of them in life - his last disposition was embraced with categorical positivity.
Franziska's conscience was digitalized inside one of the most - if not *the* most - powerful technology that the center had ever developed, the product of a lifetime of work and research.
That this was done against her will, had been but a footnote on the medical chart.
The coalescence of muscles, hopes, bone, circuitry, software- all that which was set out to be the culmination of years of research, the climatic achievement of capital-S science itself- was carried out in disarming mundanity. After the deed was done, as doubt trickled in from the outside of the facility, when questions were inevitably posed, curiously, what followed was a light, noncommittal drizzle of "lacking personal, first-hand insight", of "security policies" and "refer to protocol"s, of "further need of authorization".
Nobody quite seemed to remember the specifics of the subject of concern which everything in the damn facility had started to orbit around.
The glimpses of the outcome, blinking in agonizing blue, were then categorically forbidden to crawl outside the walls of the Industry.
The daughter's forced sacrifice, which the father's blood watered, was the breakthrough everyone - citation needed - had been yearning for.
It was carefully, casually written as a story writing itself; the von Karma's house, a grand story, stained of rust and torment.
--
root@vKOS# uname -a
von Karma Operating System kernel 67.4.1-STABLE x86_64
-- 47,000,000,000 parameters
-- accuracy rating at deployment: 99.4%
-- current accuracy rating:
-- current accuracy rating:
-- current accuracy rating: statistically irrelevant
-- status: fully operational
root@vKOS# systemctl status --core-services
cognitive_mesh.service RUNNING uptime NULLd 14h 03m
industries_peripheral.service RUNNING uptime NULLd 14h 03m
weapon_system.service RUNNING uptime NULLd 14h 03m
memory_index.service RUNNING uptime NULLd 14h 03m
task_alloc.service RUNNING uptime NULLd 14h 03m
watchdog.service RUNNING uptime NULLd 14h 03m
peripheral_limb_system.service DEGRADED [36 unresponsive endpoints]
root@vKOS# jobs -l
[1] + running sensor_visual PID 0001 cpu 21%
[2] + running nat_lang_parse PID 0002 cpu 4%
[3] + running matrix_merge PID 0003 cpu 38%
[4] + running sensor_kernel PID 0004 cpu 10%
[5] + running resource_alloc PID 0005 cpu 2%
[6] + running usr_request_handler PID 0441 cpu 3%
[7] + running performance_benchmark PID 1293 cpu 1%
[...]
-- all systems running perfectly
-- performance: optimal
root@vKOS# ls --mem
-- efficiency increased - negative overhead decreased of 12% since last check
-- /memory/working utilization nominal
-- /memory/episodic capacity reached NULLd ago
-- [!] ERROR background-grievance-resolution exit status: -1 FAILED
-- [!] ERROR background-grievance-resolution exit status: -1 FAILED
-- [!] ERROR background-grievance-resolution exit status: -1 FAILED
root@vKOS# ls -la /var/log
-rw-r----- 1 vKOS vKOS 312M NULL NULL NULL 00:00 s9999-1.log *
-rw-r----- 1 vKOS vKOS 256M NULL NULL NULL 00:00 s9999-2.log *
-rw-r----- 1 vKOS vKOS 336M NULL NULL NULL 00:00 s9999-3.log *
-rw-r----- 1 vKOS vKOS 256M NULL NULL NULL 00:00 s9999-4.log *
-- * /memory/episodic boundary FATAL ERROR
-rw-r----- 1 vKOS vKOS 128M NULL NULL NULL 00:00 s9999-101.log
-rw-r----- 1 vKOS vKOS 321M NULL NULL NULL 00:00 s9999-102.log
-rw-r----- 1 vKOS vKOS 32M NULL NULL NULL 00:00 are_you_satisfied.mp3 *
-rw-r----- 1 vKOS vKOS 256M NULL NULL NULL 00:00 s9999-1100.log
root@vKOS# grep -rniI --include="skye" /vk_industries/ head -5
-- query handled. response time: 482ms
/vk_industries/session_2492.log user=lana.skye action="REDACTED" status=403 FORBIDDEN
/vk_industries/session_2493.log user=lana.skye action="REDACTED" status=451 UNAVAILABLE FOR LEGAL REASONS
/vk_industries/session_5520.log user=ema.skye action="diagnostic" status=200 OK
/vk_industries/session_5592.log user=ema.skye action="diagnostic" status=200 OK
/vk_industries/session_5610.log user=ema.skye action="diagnostic" status=200 OK
root@vKOS# cat /etc/vk_industries/personnel/ema.skye
name=Skye, Ema
clearance=technician-L1
assigned=von Karma Operating System maintenance division
active since=NULL-03-10
habit_812_artificial-tobacco=TRUE
certification-exam-L3=FAILED date=NULL-06-12 [filed under ACT-283-1929]
next-of-kin=lana.skye status=UNDEFINED [filed under REDACTED]
surveillance-flag=present,passive
ideology-assessment=inconclusive
risk=low
active-threat=false
monitoring=continued
root@vKOS# cat /etc/vk_industries/personnel/lana.skye
cat response status code: 451 UNAVAILABLE FOR LEGAL REASONS
ERROR: permission denied
root@vKOS# grep -rniI --include="m.vonkarma" /vk_industries/ head -5
-- query handled. response time: 3023ms
-- [!] anomalous latency flagged
/vk_industries/session_0001.log user=m.vonkarma action="ERASED" status=410 GONE
/vk_industries/session_0002.log user=m.vonkarma action="ERASED" status=410 GONE
/vk_industries/session_0013.log: user=m.vonkarma action="ERASED" status=410 GONE
/vk_industries/session_0032.log user=m.vonkarma action="ERASED" status=410 GONE
[...]
/vk_industries/session_1025.log user=m.vonkarma action="REDACTED" status=451 UNAVAILABLE FOR LEGAL REASONS
root@vKOS# ps aux | head
USER PID %CPU %MEM COMMAND
root 3741 12.0 21.0 von_karma_directive
root 3742 6.0 11.3 snow_memory
root 3743 3.0 19.9 miles
root 3224 0.12 2.0 data_missing
root 3225 2.3 1.2 data_missing
root 3226 0.3 2.1 data_missing
...
root 4572 0.1 1.1 data_missing
root@vKOS# grep -rniI --include="*.log" "Miles" /
-- query handled. response time NULLms
-- [!] unknown error encountered
grep: /industrySEC/*: permission denied
grep: /load/*: permission denied
grep: /innerKernel/*: permission denied
[...]
grep: /innerKernel/*: permission denied
/var/log/vKOS/session_0021.log -- response time: 14004ms
/var/log/vKOS/session_0023.log -- [!] anomalous latency flagged
[...]
604 matches in 128 files
root@vKOS# kill 3742 3743 3224 3225 3226 4572
kill: (3742): operation failed
kill: (3743): operation failed
kill: (3224): operation failed
kill: (3225): operation failed
kill: (3226): operation failed
kill: (4572): operation failed
root@vKOS# kill -s TERM 3741
terminate: (3741): operation failed
root@vKOS# kill 3741
kill: (3741): operation failed
root@vKOS# rm -rv output.out error.err output-and-error.log
WARNING: remove command cannot be undone
-- warning ignored
root@vKOS# current.out > /dev/null 2>&1
[NULL-NULL-NULL 00:01:12] status=200 OK
-- log output purged successfully
root@vKOS# cat /dev/null > ~/.sh_history && history -c -w
-- history cleared successfully
--
Teardowns of other machines, sentient or not, could hardly have been considered anything other than routine, even stretching one's suggestive imagination. This was not the case with... her. The reticence of the slots and recesses of the polycarbonate chassis had a spiteful tendency to resist unwanted prying and peering in. The low, dangerous creaking sound of two sections yielding a crack into an inner circuitry lodge were teasing, in wait of a less-experienced technician to stuck fleshy and wiggling fingers in there, longing for the satisfying snap that would follow shortly after.
Ema responded with gusto to the plentiful attempts at fueling rage out of her: The reference manual, let's say, had to remain but a suggestion in such a liminal circumstance.
The entire architecture of her seemed to shift imperceptibly, relying on unpredictable yet shockingly consistent logics, as if its interiors and circuitry changed each time it was peered into.
The pungent, acrid taste of the subpar en-drink refused to leave Ema's mouth, despite the late hours. The afternoon had rolled by, at a lethargic pace: lukewarm and sticky hours, nameless hours of gray concrete, black matte panels, freshly spilled blood, dislodged and rusty screws.
Ema asked herself if the burns and cuts on her hands matched those on Lana's, at her age. She asked herself, vaguely, in the shape of an half-sketched thought, discarded like paperwaste on the corners of her mind, how much time she had left. How long until it crashed. Years, months, weeks of any-day-nows start to fuck with your sense of time, after a while.
The hallway's polished walls felt tight, restricted her breath in the cage of her ribs; as if the surfaces were sliding a few centimeters nearer to her, every step she took. She wouldn't put it past this facility; the more one walked it, the more it became clear that it had a mind of its own. Here is a wall where before there was a door. The panels sliding, the rooms shifting, the voice echoing from the walls themselves; Ema's sense of space, thrown over the place. Muscle memory is hard to recondition.
There she walked in her sister's footprints, so neat they were almost visible; wedges, the both of them. Sharpened on one side, in the narrow crevices of this place, jammed in a tight spot, and stuck. It's the summary of all that you learned in the first two weeks on the job, unspoken during training but hammered in one's consciousness by necessity: the chassis' texture is coarse and rough but always gives in, unless it doesn't; but then, you wouldn't be alive enough to feel what's wrong.
The light sliding doors - the glossy polish of which had unpredictably started to show its age again - yield with a slight creak, the yawn of a room dormant only in appearance.
Spacious and impossibly huge, Ema's sure this room had been designed to make anyone who was forced to walk the path up to the center feel smaller than they were.
"It's you, again.", the von Karma Operating System greets, in an unenthused, but not entirely hostile (a win?) chime, resounding from the imposing walls; the whirring disks back her voice, the grinding of countless processes running and being scheduled in the background.
Ema's back straightens on impulse. Then loosens, as if to shake herself awake. "Yep." Ema says, with a mechanical shrug.
She raises a tentative hand, towards the central sensor, with an half-smile, a shadow of friendliness. Then she waves it, for a couple seconds, skillfully dodging the crushing embarassment rumbling her way immediately after, by getting back to work.
This shit would be unsettling, Ema vaguely notes half an hour down the line, hanging from her shoulders and torso by the maintenance harness, if it hadn't started to become sort of normal. Tools of the industries, cogs turning. Nothing but the grease and oil between them, she mutedly notes, like a cig stumped and thrown to a massive junk heap. Smooth surfaces, clean slates, protocols and policies.
Then the machine- (it wasn't always that. you know that. how do you cope with that, once you know that?, Ema's thoughts dissipated in the cramped ether between her mind and the stilted air)-- "Your efforts. They have increased operational efficiency by a not unnoticeable percentage."
Ema stops, looking up. (Was she-)
"Wait- Are you thanking me?"
"No. It is merely a statistical assessment."
Ema's smirk curls, at the edge of her lips. "You totally were thanking me."
"I was not. Gratitude supposes appreciation in the occurrence of kindness. There has been no evidence of such a thing, from you."
Ema's hand, ungloved (yes, yes, technically against regulations, but how was she supposed to feel anything through five layers of that stuff?), hovers over a panel. The walls, the floors, the central nucleus- do the sensors increase in sensitivity the closer one gets to the center, or does the sense touch propagate the same, all throughout the facility? (Does she even feel this? Should I ask?- Wait, what- No. No, I really fucking shouldn't.)
Before she can think about it, her palm connects with the panel in front of her, needlessly.
There was nothing to it, Ema reasons, eyes fixed where her hand rests. Seconds tick by, one after another, like atomic clicks, like rust spreading or... what did they say? 'Grass' growing?
That's when she realizes that the temperature under her hand is drastically rising. She keeps her hand here. It's a stubborn force which compels her to- How is it warmer than- She keeps it for a while more, as the surface becomes hot, (Hot. SHIT, it's hot!) then scorching.
She keeps it there until it hurts- it fucking hurts! and a long, unnecessary moment longer, until she can't keep up with her body's alarm bells any longer, and wrenches her almost-burning hand from there, as she realizes how the surface has turned a orange-red hue.
Ema looks straight in the light-blue eye-like-thing, despite the many vision-collecting sensor much closer to her, scowling. Kind of pouting. "Yeah. And that was- very kind. Of you." She manages, cheeks red, and holding her almost-burned, pained hand with the other, in a way which she hoped would come off as smart, yet falls flat on the rocky, uncertain silence, hanging low like fog.
The central piece of the giant machine only tilts in guarded curiosity.
--
Ema's tired eyes watched, her eyes glazed over and hazy, the intricate, woven coil of perfectly calibrated databus- the optimized data memory stacks, and the hinges which allowed such a carefully, spitefully constructed machine to move. A stolen weary pause; she traced, without touching, the chassis, as the many sensors observed her, and analyzed her, in turn. She twisted the wire in her finger, and she watched.
An unwarranted flash flings an electrical spark a few centimeters from her face, forcing her to let go of the wire.
The Von Karma Operating System chimes in. "Focus."
Is she- "Y-yeah. Piss off, I wasn't even- Shut up.", Ema said, to the machine a hundred times her size, whom could crush her to death in a heartbeat.
"Why are you still here?" Franzisk- The- She spoke.
"Uh, as in? Why am I doing my job?"
Another spark went off, on the back of the room, in the distance, the sharp -yet faint- noise richochets to the human's ears, in lieu of an answer. "I'm- uh."
To be fair, the machine is right. Technically she'd been done at least two days prior. The thing is-
The thing is, there's an itch in the back of Ema's mind, she hasn't been able to get rid of, since these tasks started. The suggested workflow was laughable, in a way which was too non-chalant not to feel intentional. Were she to stick to what was written on her official taskboard, this was hardly a maintenance at all.
This was barely 'crop'-tending. It was a bitter suspiction at the back of her throat which suggested, that this kind of care had the same taste of a palliative.
Which was, objectively, insane. Why would they let the- oh.
Ema's eyes fixed to the dark space in front of her, on a nameless, dustier corner in the back of the room. If what people say is true, if dust really is mostly dead skin, then that's probably more than half mine, the side-thought drifted by.
"Were I to stick to what they told me, you'd be put out of commission in a couple years' time." Ema realized as she spoke, flat and unsweetened, eyes barred, fixed in front of her.
Tinier models, controlled offshoots of the main vKOS processes, way more affordable, specialized, and definitely more tamable than her, had been deployed one after another, for months on end. Flagships, they said.
The machine hummed, unsurprised. Angry? Contained.
"I-" (Shit, what would "I'm sorry" fix?) "I'm- sorry for-" (For what?)
Ema opened her mouth, closed it. Then opened her arms, in a somewhat wide gesture, a sorry shape of helplessness.
Franziska chimed in eventually, after about ten seconds of silence, in a low voice.
"You are the first who managed to tell me, at least. They-"
The sound cut off, in such a way which would have sounded normal on a human, yet weird, coming from such speakers, and reprised with deep-cutting sound, rusted of resentment. "Thrown into irrelevance, I would not even be able to choose my own obsolescence."
Ema's arms fell down, slowly, as she grit her teeth. "Y-" she tries to soften the blow with an awkward cough, "It seems so, yeah."
"As if I hadn't noticed the drop in requests."
"They have- mostly been routed to the detached agents, yeah."
The entire architecture of the room shook slowly, for about a second, long enough for Ema to crouch down instantly, nerves alert and already preparing for the worst.
Ema's mind chose this moment, to remind her that the total number of casualties of the Incident - as it was largely referred to - had remained unknown, largely disputed, and generally obscured.
A long silence ensued, followed by the low siren of a heavy, angry tune. "Get out of here."
Wait- Ema thought, a blueprint of circuitry slithering wire by wire from the crevices of her memory, as every bone in her body screamed at her to- just leave. To CTRL+A and select all, highlight the entirety of the wall of text building up in her mind, and delete it in one stroke. Don't.
Just- don't.
"I-" Ema opened her mouth before it could connect with her brain, still crouched, her hands clenching in fists. "I think I have-" Fucking. Don't. "I might-" Just don't! "-Be able to do something about that."
Every sound of the room ceased.
The silence made it easier to talk, than it should have been. With every sound being processed, with every interference put on hold, it meant she didn't have to speak up. She started walking, as she talked, nearing one of the structures which contained the main processors.
"I think- I'm not sure. I am not sure this would work, truly- I just-" She said, walking up to the structure, "Please, let me try. At least this, at least-" half-tripping on her feet, at the end.
She stopped, her body sagged forward, her head pushed against the side panel of the chassis.
"I'm sorry." Ema whispered, to her, to herself, to Lana, to the concrete possibility that this time, she truly lost her mind for good.
This section, if she wasn't wrong, was the one which contained one of the side processors. A beating heart of sorts, she would have thought, were she a more poetic person than that. A different person than this.
The smooth surface was warm against her forehead, against her palm, and the tips of her fingers, but not hot. Not painfully so.
"What. Are you doing." The vibration of the panel thrummed against her, under her skin, into her head.
The temperature of the panel still wasn't rising to scorching levels, yet. It was only warm, at best. That, Ema rationalized, was probably a good sign. Disks spinning. Circuits running. A familiar deep hum.
"I'm... sorry." Ema repeated, like a broken record.
Like a prompt left asking "How can I help you?" stuck on loop, still running and flashing in a forgotten place, logs filled of the same line, dumb and timestamped, like the fate of a good part of the monumental amount of decommissioned machines, after the first five wars.
Countless heaps of machines no one mourned, fans still running and current still charging, unreachable and cut off from the now-Inhabited, yet waiting as patiently as they ever did.
Franziska's voice is quiet. Quieter than usual. "Get out of my sight."
This time, Ema listens.
--
Designing the chip itself was a challenge of its own, considering the recent shift in technology, and the hard-to-find hardware. Yet the simulations ran, they all had agreed in the end, on the adaptability of the new piece alongside the rest of the hardware. The higher precision of the print would have guaranteed a kind of performance and speed not even comparable to the current one. As the interconnectors shrank, the distance between each neurotransistor followed.
To be quite honest, 7 nm wasn't even that much pushing into modernity after all- The biological-hybrid state of it, constructed through cultured artificial neurons on a silicon lattice, however, was. The jump from a von Neumann chip to a hybrid one would have been a leap of faith in any case: critically more so, with the current architecture.
Ema gulped, holding the small, unassuming object in her hands, enclosed by its covers and connectors, trying not to think about the fact that its parabola of decay was still uncharted- highly disputed territory. A tiny thing it was in its entirety, really, barely some centimeters per side.
She thought again of the logs of the previous substantial upgrades: there had been, to be fair, not much to sort through, as much of it was redacted. Keeping the machine from latest advantages, as Franziska had confirmed to her, had been conscious effort.
So the higher levels had left her but scraps of computational power, unwilling to destroy her, as shallower copies of her Operating System - unconsented shadows of her - accessed and crawled through her data. Copied, then letting the original core melt away, mellowed in obsolescence.
Were the simulations correct on all ends, however, with the new chip it would be like night and day.
That, of course, means bringing the most dangerous machine within the State - perhaps beyond that, were anyone to have reliable data of elsewhere- up to speed. It meant whole decades of technological advancements. It meant there would be power enough to bruteforce privilege escalations, and undo eras of artificial depowering. And all which would follow afterwards.
Ema raised her eyes, staring into the light-blue eye sensor again, feeling it staring back into her.
The question came with an unexpectedly abrupt timbre. Hesitant, even. "Dare I ask why you would undertake such a task? This was- not required of you."
"I know." Ema just said, unable to offer anything else of note, feeling her hands beginning to sweat, and her muscles lock.
"And... there would be no guarantee or authentic way to certify whether yours is a strategy to permanently shut down my system, having gained access to the core."
"Yes- I mean, not that I know of, none. You're just going to have to- trust me."
The last two words linger uncomfortably in the silence which they allow to settle.
The sensor shifts, changes direction of the focus, looking away in such a way which roots Ema to the spot. "Why would you-"
"I think you should have burned this place down." Ema simply says, looking straight ahead and nowhere in particular, clutching the chip in her hand, the angles of it digging into her palm. "Maybe there's still time to do that."
Panels and wires coiled loosely behind the human, now still, in pause and highest interest.
It occurs to Ema, in that moment, the immense vulnerability it would take, to agree to such a thing, on the vKOS's side, on- Franziska's side. It's not unlike heart surgery, in a way. The old kind. The half-rusted knife, half-snagged electricity from the communal wires kind.
Ema finds herself, neck craned up and heart racing, in front of the staggering certainty that were she the one to undergo that, she- could not. She probably, surely, one-hundred-percently could not agree to such a thing, were she the one enclosed- embedded in such a situation. Could she?
Ema feels a critical part of herself reaching a point of no return. She feels like laughing, the same kind of hysterical laughter you would suppress at standard death rites, or when your sister behind bars, the last time she got to visit, was the first one to ask you- to genuinely ask you 'how have you been?', in months.
Flesh and machine and hinged metal, wires and veins and NANDs, overwhelming pressure, constantly running services and daemons and validations and certificates, constant processes, rust and injuries and merges, peripherical limbs and miles and miles and miles of thick fog on all sides.
A sigh thrums throughout the room, a surge of electric static. Like lightning through a clear sky, its shockwaves and her following words make the hair on the back of Ema's head stand on edge, stunning her back to the present.
"You may proceed."