54 – Scattered mess

Ishrin pointed at the unassuming door. It was reinforced with a hidden layer of steel, but it didn’t show from the outside.

“This is the one?”

Liù nodded, somersaulting happily in the air like she was swimming in it.

“Who goes there?” The answer came from inside not a moment after the knock.

Melina pulled at Ishrin’s shirt, speaking to him in a low, worried voice. “This is not Mekano’s voice.”

He nodded. “It’s not,” he whispered back. “He’s got an automated door-answerer.” He said, then yelled: “It’s the interdimensional police! Here to take you sightseeing at the jail!”

Melina frowned.

“I ain’t done nothing! You can’t come in without a warr—” the voice said, before cutting off. “Ishrin?” Mekano’s voice now came from the other side of the door. “Mekano heard right? Is that you? Why would you say those things to Mekano’s doorbell? Do you want Mekano’s automated defenses to shoot you dead?”

Understanding dawned on Melina’s face while Ishrin replied to Mekano inside. Of course he had a robotic voice answer the door for him, especially if he was this paranoid about being found. He couldn’t help but announce his name to the four winds whenever he spoke!

The door opened, revealing a messy claustrophobia of computers, cables, a sofa overflowing with discarded cans and boxes, and dark windows that looked upon the dried lake. In the distance, another storm was brewing, the flashes of light above the dark horizon were like mirrors to the blinding blue neon light of the city.

“Come on it. Mekano welcomes you to his humble dwelling.” The man said, in his usual squeaky voice. He clicked when he spoke, and sometimes dragged his words into a sibyl that lasted seconds.

“Thank you!” Ishrin replied. He stepped over some garbage bags lying on the floor, moving them to the side to let the others pass in the narrow tunnel through the single room that made up the apartment. There was no kitchen there, but the discarded empty takeaway boxes all piled up in a corner were more than enough data to infer what Mekano used to eat every day.

On the side, along the wall, countless computer screens connected to wires that stretched the whole ceiling and crawled to hidden nooks and crannies in the room beeped. Mekano stared at the girls for a moment, eyes lingering, and then turned to clear out the sofa. With one single motion of his clawed hand, he swiped the trash that was littering it right to the ground in a heap, by the windows.

“Mekano’s very glad that you came to visit! Although, Mekano did not expect you to ever come to him. If Mekano only knew, he would have prepared a better welcome!”

While Ishrin continued the chit-chat, exchanging pleasantries and explaining the situation to Mekano, Lisette looked around the apartment. Close to the door and pointing out of the slab of metal, from this side it was visible how it was locked shut with at least five different locks, she could see the automated defenses that Mekano talked about. There were guns, lasers and other kinds of technological contraptions that she was not familiar with. All hooked up to wires, cameras and mechanisms that disappeared into the mess of dangling things making up the length of the wall before somehow entering the computer system on the messy desk. She wondered how things like these functioned. How they managed to kill people. Ishrin had explained a bit, but she had never seen them in action yet.

The topic shifted to Liù, after Mekano was brought up to speed with the current events. At the mention of her name, the little fairy flew out of her pocket and fluttered her ethereal holographic wings in the air, all the while flying left and right, examining the room whole.

“WH—” Mekano yelled. “Don’t touch that! Mekano orders you to stay away from that!” the lizardman squeaked, but Liù ignored him. She proceeded to examine all the technological equipment in the room, projecting small scanner beams from her eyes as she passed the various screens and unfinished prototypes lying around amidst the mess. Once she scanned a garbage bag by mistake, and she turned around with an expression of disgust on her face.

“You cheeky thing! Mekano didn’t know you were coming!” Mekano protested, to which she stuck out her tongue.

You should clean up anyways! :P

Her voice, or rather the strange way she communicated that was a mix of voice and text without being either of the two made Mekano’s eyes grow wide, and his pupils dilated until his eyes were two small dots of black, reflecting the beeping lights and the dancing blue light of the fairy.

“She speaks? Did Mekano hear that right?”

I do! I do!

Mekano shook his head, turning to Ishrin and putting a claw on his shoulder. “Mekano doesn’t want to know what you did, and how you did it. Actually, Mekano does want to know both of those things.” He said, scratching the scales on his chin. Then he clicked his beak. “Ishrin, friend Ishrin, tell Mekano that she was the one who found where Mekano lives and not you.”

“Yep. She found you in a matter of hours. Wait, what do you mean not me?”

Mekano paused. “Ah…” he exhaled, fixing the few feathers that poked from his head. He was, by all means and definitions, a balding Terrigenean male despite his young age. “Well, if Mekano had been found by someone with the technological ineptitude that you have, friend Ishrin, then Mekano would have been a dead man walking.”

You were hiding well! The pixie chirped.

“Mekano wonders… if you found him in a matter of hours, how well was he even hiding? Hey! Don’t touch that!”

All eyes turned to Lisette. She was holding a plasma rifle in her hands, barrel pointing at her face. “I am sorry. I was simply curious.”

Truth be told, she had disassembled most of it, and had even removed the battery that powered it. She even did so without damaging any of the parts, and when caught she began to reassemble it with a level of mastery beyond what even a local samurai should have.

Ishrin laughed. “I doubt it would kill her!” he told Mekano playfully. “Let her have her fun!”

Mekano looked away in desperation, going to find his goggles and putting them on with practiced movements. He motioned for Liù to perch on his hand, and after Ishrin told her that Mekano wasn’t going to hurt her, he began to scan her.

“You got this thing from that mountain, right? Mekano recognizes the design.”

“Yep. Swiped it right before we made the whole thing collapse.”

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Mekano frowned. “Why would you do that? Mekano doesn’t get it.”

Melina suddenly felt her chest heat up. Ishrin, noticing that, placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke first.

“It was the right thing to do. Which is also why we are here. See, that cube there? The one Liù is inhabiting? It’s a small version of the central AI of that mountain, or at least that’s my working theory at the moment. Liù said that she can’t access the data beyond the fact that it’s called SPAWN, an acronym, but it was enough to make me want come here to you. I need you to extract the rest of the encrypted data, now.” Ishrin asked, and then walked close to Mekano, looking at him in the goggles where his reflection was big and imposing. “And I need you to make sure that Liù is not harmed in the process.” He whispered.

“Mekano understands.” The lizardman said, stepping away from Ishrin’s invasive presence.

Ishrin held up one finger. “Not a hair. You will not harm a hair of hers, you get me?”

Mekano gulped. “Mekano promises.”

“Good!” Ishrin said, plopping down on the sofa and throwing his feet on the far cushion. He gently pushed some leftover garbage out of the way with his telekinesis and let himself sink in the dusty fabric of the sofa.

A couple of hours passed. Mekano barely lifted his face from the cube, probing it and prodding it with a multitude of tools while Liù complained and tried to pull pranks on him. She eventually got bored, and left the cube there while her holographic form went to sit on Ishrin’s chest, pretending to doze off only to then wake up and complain every time Mekano probed her in a way that tingled a bit too much. Every time Ishrin yelled something at Mekano, who in turn complained before getting back to work. At the same time, both Melina and Lisette kept themselves busy. Lisette put away her blades by the door, and sat on a stool with a VR headset on, sometimes dragging her fingers across the air, sometimes spinning in place. It took her some time to get used to the technology, but not nearly enough time as Ishrin initially thought. Melina just sat there, thinking, looking out the windows. The mountains in the distance were hidden by a curtain of rain that was approaching rapidly.

“Ah! Mekano did it!”

Ishrin pulled himself up with a start. The girls too stopped doing what they were doing and went to sit on the sofa.

“What did you find?”

The lizardman spun around in his chair, facing the other side of the narrow, cramped room. His knees almost bumped into Ishrin’s, and definitely bumped into Lisette’s before she glared at him and he pulled away from her. His expression was hard to read with his face in the shadow, lit only at the sides by the glow of the computer screens behind him. Briefly they could see him when Liù flew to recover her cube form, but she had to return empty handed when she realized that the cube was still hooked up to cables and interfaces.

“This technology is incredibly advanced.” Mekano said, for a moment even forgetting his own tic.

“It is. Scarily so. But what about the contents of the cube, what did you find?”

“Mekano agrees with you, that the cube is a backup AI.” A clawed finger scrolled down a tablet’s interface, showing the three designs, code and numbers. “If Mekano reads correctly, and he does, SPAWN has only one directive: assimilation of all forms of life.”

“What?” Melina cried out.

“Mekano isn’t done. That mountain wasn’t the only one sent to… Mekano thinks it’s Prima Liece? Ah, Luce.” He corrected himself. “Prima Luce, Mekano said. Yes. There is another. Bigger, more deadly, the data says. Mekano can’t know for sure because the AI sleeps, but at the time this cube was taken from its place that other mountain was active and gathering energy. See this error message? Mekano thinks that the other mountain is trying to recover from some problem that is delaying it, but it’s almost completely done with the repairs.”

Ishrin narrowed his eyes, absentmindedly stroking Liù’s hair. “You say the AI sleeps? Liù managed to install herself on top of SPAWN without causing the AI to even boot up?”

Mekano nodded. “Mekano wonders… does Ishrin even know how to boot up an AI?”

“I do know! Liù is there, that’s why I didn’t even try to probe it! I sure as hell hope that you didn’t either. I told you, is the pixie is harm—”

“Mekano knows!” The man cried out in his usual shrill voice. The feathers on his head were all pressed down low. “Mekano was careful. In fact, Mekano can safely delete the AI entirely, once Ishrin decides he’s done with it.”

“Do it. I repeat again: Liù. Is not. To be. Harmed. Hear me?”

Mekano lifted up his goggles. “Mekano swears Liù will be safe.” He said and spun around on his chair. “But Mekano will have to turn Liù off to make the changes.”

Ishrin inhaled. “Liù.”

Yeeees?

“You need to go to sleep for a while.”

Nuuuu :c

She protested by throwing little, tiny punches against Ishrin’s leg.

“Come on! It’s for your safety.”

The pixie, having no idea of the risks involved with having a genocidal AI cohabiting inside of her, obviously insisted some more.

“I'll give you a treat when we are done, how about that?” Ishrin said, trying to buy her.

Okay! I want… I want… I don’t know! But I will ask when I do. Hehe :3

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