Chapter 55: Chapter 53

“Right then, synths.”

I was back in Caladan, surrounded in the park by everyone who lived here (less than forty souls, but a good crowd still). Even the toddlers were in strollers before me.

“You’ve heard a little about them, the main point is that they’re basically a bit human with some bits in them that hold their programming. Kinda in between slaves and robots.”

The explanation didn’t sit well with the former slaves, but most of them nodded nonetheless. “Anyway, the Institute, for some reason or another, is kidnapping people and replacing them with synths. Usually to act as spies, or to secretly control a group of people. The bunch of you who saw them know what I mean.”

More nods, this time angry ones.

“Anyway, sometimes the synths’ programming makes them realise that they’re basically humans with a few metal chunks in them living in slavery, and they decide to escape. This is where the Railroad comes in, though their success rates aren’t the greatest.”

Before letting that somber fact set in for too long, I clapped my hands to banish the moody pause. “So, good news is, for now synths can only be adults, so no need worrying over anyone in the Nexus for now. And I’m also able to find a secret way to pick out synths other than killing them, so if Vault 81 joins us, they’ll be filtered through and you don’t have to worry about the adults.”

That cheered them up a bit, though Cait uncharacteristically raised a hand diligently to ask a question instead of just butting in as she usually does. “So will we take in any escaping synths?”

The question focused everyone’s gaze towards me and I shrugged. “Only if they’re honest about it, and only if they want to. If they come up and tell me to my face that they’re synths looking to escape, don’t see why we can’t put them through the same probation as everyone else.”

I gave a cold smile. “If they think they can...pretend to be escapees and try to cause problems here, well… We have laws in the Nexus, right?” Dark chuckles broke out amongst the young crowd. I let them go on for a bit before finishing up. “So, basically, leave the synth issue to me, don’t get overly paranoid that you start distrusting outsiders, especially Vault 81 folk who have been good to us.”

With that announcement done with, I let them disperse and got into my office, Piper, Cait and Curie in tow. “So, anything out of the synth raiders?” I asked Curie once the door was closed. The girls dutifully picked up copies of some reports and joined me in the meeting. Some extra heads in this topic wouldn’t hurt.

“Only three confessed to being ordered by the Institute. The others were stubbornly doing their best to deflect after we had the news spread that we employed reliable lie detection devices.”

I don’t mind helping that manufactured half-truth spreading to the surface, it’d keep strangers meeting me on their toes hopefully. Weirdly, my girls and everyone in Caladan was fine with my newly revealed powers. In reality, I needed the people I wanted questioned in a more helpless state than a victim in a revolutionary’s kangaroo court, but I kept that to myself for now.

“So that’s enough proof right?” Piper asked, flicking her papers to accentuate her question. “The Institute is out causing shit in the Commonwealth again, but this time they messed up big time.”

Cait agreed rather eagerly. “Yeah, they fingered the wrong hole for sure. We gonna take them down Sev?”

“We could,” I admitted reluctantly. “But there’s some things to consider before moving in on them, like what happens to the synths within the Institute, or even the people there? Do we conquer or desolate, and do we care if it might cause a greater synth scare throughout the wasteland?” I plopped into my seat behind the desk and sighed. “It’s why I didn’t bother thinking about them for a while. Compared to stamping out raiders and helping people in need, there’s a lot of things to worry about for these fuckers.”

“There are a lot of potential ramifications from any course of action or inaction we take,” Curie empathised with an incline of her head.

“It sounds like the Institute is ransoming the Commonwealth’s stability when you put it like that,” Piper remarked dourly.

“Yeah, but it’s a headache we have to meet now that they basically declared war on us...without officially declaring war, of course.” Which meant a bunch of rules our side could ignore. No war crimes if they ain’t counted as crimes. Gotta love that bit of legalese Curie added into (or rather, left out) our rule of law.

Piper crawled down under the desk with a dirty grin on her face. “Good thing we know how to help with headaches, right Cait?”

“That we do Piper.” The redhead moved up beside me and leaned over for a hungry kiss.

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Eh, I guess some relaxation would help refresh the brainstorming later…

After further discussions, the start of a plan was brewed up. A lot of preparation was needed though, particularly guinea pigs. Shame that all of the non-synth raiders were used up, but I learned more about my console functions and the bots got way more anatomical research added to the database, so I shouldn’t complain.

And so I was out leading a convoy of Ox battle busses, sans Glossu for once. We ranged south, where eyebots reported back small groups of raiders heading up, apparently never getting the memo.

I’m glad they’re volunteering for experimentation.

For the first raider camp encountered, we drove up close enough for the raiders to see us. Then I let my soldiers enjoy the turning of tables and bag me some prisoners. Everyone on my side was using blades and batons, with the main order of incapacitating, not killing their prey. De-limbing was fine since the prisoners could be chucked through healing arches anyway.

My little army of young soldiers descended on the camp like a storm, roaring battlecries as they manhandled the common filth of the wasteland. Their power armor meant they easily chased down any wannabe escapee, and at that first run, we bagged a cool twenty-three prisoners.

I had to keep my guys in line a bit though, some of the girls especially were showing off their more sadistic side by taking their time in restraining their captives. Also, one poor raider was forcibly bent over in preparation to receive a few batons. I had to give a stern word to Lynn and her little clique holding the poor sod down before they just broke his legs and tossed him into an Ox designated for prisoners.

This might be a problem, I’ll need to find a way to neuter any overly cruel behaviour from forming, now that these kids finally get the taste for vengeance. Maybe Curie would have the relevant info in the medical databases? Le sigh, that’s another problem to worry about now.

We hit a few more camps before returning back to Station 81 and letting the Sentinels process the three busloads of prisoners.

*****

Curie regarded the prisoners before her with a cold apathy only a robot could offer. Her altered medical protocols had suppressed patient wellbeing to allow for more efficient work. The screams and struggles from the synth raider was treated as a measure of their healthiness, allowing her to gauge how far she could continue prodding and snipping away at various points in the body.

This synth had had his skull carefully cut open to expose his brain, and further careful excision revealed the foreign synth components biting into the grey matter. With wires and electrodes carefully placed for monitoring and limited manipulation, Curie recorded how the practically human systems interacted with the bits of metal stuck in his brain.

If not for her suppressed emotions, Curie’s codes would have been slightly glitchy with excitement. Sev’s remarkable insight had suggested that it might be possible using the synth components as a transferring medium between robots and humans. With how research was progressing so far, she was ashamed that she didn’t come to that conclusion as soon as he did.

The Nexus had seven synth prisoners left, though the three that were expended provided valuable information indeed before they expired. A method of accessing the synth chips remotely was discovered, though with some decoding and brute-forcing through security measures they were now able to get a realtime log up on a screen of the chip’s processes.

With so little samples to work with though, Curie had to be careful with how the prisoners were treated. A rotation was put in place to allow the synths to recover from some fatigue on their bodies and minds. It also allowed for tracking results that required some time to pass, like the limit of deterioration of the chip due to the host’s physical trauma.

There were groundbreaking implications here. If it was possible to upload a digitized artificial personality of a robot (like Curie for example) into a human body, surely the reverse would be possible as well. And if they managed to figure out how to grow bodies like these synths, then Sev could further aid the wasteland by backing up minds to be transferred from overly shattered bodies into newer pristine ones, or reloading them from a point before heavy trauma.

Progress had moved to the point where Sev had gone out to gather more prisoners to begin implantation of the Nexus’ own prototype chips, and even in her cold clinical state, Curie was eager to receive the new arrivals. Once the workings of the synth components were fully revealed, not only could Curie finally have an organic body, but Sev could theoretically remotely detect and control any synth, ensuring that these malicious brutes were culled before they grew to a threat that warranted wasteful expenditure of the Nexus’ resources.

Ah, she was distracting herself again. Curie refocused on the prisoner and thoughtfully regarded the pleading, broken man before moving in with her claws. Right, would the synth interface react to heart arrhythmia, and could it perhaps be made to correct such incidents?

There was only one way to find out.

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