Bread and the Circus

Chapter 18, Part 2

“How’re those internals looking?” asked the Arena Master, gripping the back of his underling’s chair with his stubby, slightly moist fingers.  All around him, various consoles were crewed by some of the finest systems operators in the Pan-Galactic Republic, each of them veterans of many seasons of the Arena, and each well-tuned to serving the demands of the various masters of the Circus who called upon them to individually tailor the experiences of the contestants below.  “Any of the monsters experiencing hunger?”

“Gut microbial bloom shows nominal performance across the board,” answered the Circus employee in front of the slightly raised walkway overlooking the banks of screens on which the Arena Master stood.  “None of the Arena combatants should be distracted by any needs besides the aggression protocols being sent by the computers.”

“Good,” growled the mostly-black Foselle as he turned away to continue his checkup on his area of responsibility.  “While everyone expects a Vror to devour contestants, whenever something less neat in its feeding gets a craving for sapient meat, it just ends up being a gooey mess, and nobody likes to watch that.  Well, except the sickos, but they don’t count.  You!”  He pointed a blunt-clawed finger at another of the computer workers.  “What are those robots up to?  I know there were some weird readings from Snapjaw the Cagelord down in the Ginchis Deep dungeon.  Any updates on that?”

“Yes sir,” answered the peon instantly, calling up an overview of the indicated region.  “Apparently the Human contestants managed to beat Snapjaw and take his head.  Their robot, the one the Ringmaster approved as both a special case contestant and loot drop, has apparently been using the head as a projector for video feeds she’s been pirating from our systems.”

“Grah?” the Arena Master grunted, c*****g his head as he blinked in some mild surprise.  “Anything illegal in that?”

“Not really,” the worker replied with a shrug, keeping most of his attention on the screen in front of him.  “Some of the downloads are in a legally grey area, like our official training videos, the ones we reserve for contestants who survive the first ten days, and merit an upgrade to their onboard stat suit data.  The rest are just very old animated features archived by the entertainment networks, though.  As a contestant, she technically qualifies for using the Circus’ own account, so no, nothing illegal.  A bit unexpected, since this is the first time a contestant has ever managed to do so while on the planet, but I didn’t think it was worth bringing…up…”

As the computer worker trailed off, the Arena Master’s eyes narrowed, and he stalked up to peer over the shoulder of the Circus employee.

“That isn’t normal,” he said with a curled lip.  “And it’s not what they’re supposed to do.  It’s not what I told them to do!  What’s making those robots leave their designated area?”

The snapped demand for data made several of the workers scramble, and not just the one who had his immediate attention, their fingers tapping frantically at the controls of the respective consoles.  All the while this was happening, however, the little blips on the screen before the crabby old Foselle kept streaming out from the biggest dungeon in the Scratch Plains region.  The dungeon Mac, Neph, and Al had decided to call the morlock lair.

“There’s a signal overriding our command computers,” a nearby worker called out, while expressions and exclamations of alarm spread among the personnel as they began to realize the full extent of the situation.  “The robots have entered a search-and-capture mode.  I didn’t even know they had such a mode!”

“Leftover programming,” the Arena Master growled sourly.  “We’d originally had plans for ‘knight-and-dragon’ scenarios, where one contestant would try to save another one.  Great for romance subplots and stuff like that.  Never really went anywhere, but we left the junk programming in the system because it was too much work to scour it out.  Now somebody’s found it, and they’re exploiting it.”  Then a grim smirk spread at the corners of his stubby muzzle.  “If they’re doing that, though, they’ve got to have a command center with enough processing power to snatch control from the Circus computers.  There’s no easy way to hide something like that.  Systems search!” he snarled, showing his sharp little teeth, turning his head toward another of the workers whose job he’d decided it was to carry out his command.

“Centered in the Scratch Plains labyrinth,” the worker supplied with mechanical calm, utterly unflustered.  “It appears to be a mobile source.  Small, blends in with the local mechanisms.  Perhaps a robot drone with high-end processing power, being remotely controlled from yet another location.  Strange that the computers don’t register any anomalous robots, though: we’d have surely known if there was any robot capable of such power well before now.”

“Aw crud,” sighed the Arena Master, mashing one moist palm against his broad salamander’s face with a wet “splut” sound.  “The Ringmaster swore he’d given up on putting that thing into play down there.”  Rolling his eyes, the Foselle heaved a sigh of exasperation, then started toward the door leading out of the command center at doublespeed time.  “Just keep up regular maintenance,” he shouted over his shoulder as he went.  “And tell anything in the region to clear out!  If you still have control of it, make sure it stays away!  No sense in giving that thing more minions,” he added almost under his breath right before the exit door slid shut behind him.

“A pity, really,” said the calm worker, keeping eyes forward while tapping away on the console to carry out the Arena Master’s last command.  “We’d had such a delightful ambush prepared for those Humans who’d built up a hideaway in one of the Scratch Plains groves, too.”  The worker shrugged, dismissing the missed opportunity with only the slightest twinge of regret.  “Ah well, we can simply put the monsters back into play as soon as the present crisis ends.  A delay, rather than a negation.”

“You’re such an optimist,” laughed another of the workers, a laugh shared by everyone there who was capable of understanding sarcasm.

*

Surprisingly, the trip back to our little grove was completely without incident.  I do mean that: there wasn’t anything to hinder me, no new enemies, no surprise traps strung up by some wandering monster, nothing.  During all the long hours making my way back to our home base, even knowing that I would most likely not attract undue attention because of my robotic status, all the same I thought I’d ad least see some signs of the other creatures in the vicinity.  The designers of the Arena didn’t like to leave contestants bored for too long, because that meant their viewers would get bored as well, so if we’d dealt with one threat, then by the laws of rational television broadcasting, another would surely take its place at the first possible opportunity.

We had all planned on this, of course.  While we talked about “taking our time” when assaulting the morlock lair, this was simply a relative term, something to help us not get overly anxious, since fear and stress sap one’s strength and endurance at least as fast as actual combat.  All of us, however, knew that we would only earn a scant span of breathing room, a day or perhaps two, while the new monstrosities set up shop to better menace us.  Thus, discovering that I was literally all alone as I walked through the tall grass of Scratch Plains, my motion sensors picking absolutely nothing, I must admit that I was starting to get a little bit worried.

No news may be good news in other places.  Here on the Arena, it just means that there’s just a delay before even worse news shows up to eat your face.

I just hope that Neph and Mac are all right.

Fortunately for me, I can keep mental track of where my friends are without alerting the Circus to that knowledge.  The trick is a little bit difficult, but quite possible, since my sapient self and my onboard computer system are…well, they’re almost two separate entities.  It’s a sensation sort of like having a high-end computer at your beck and call at any time you want it…and even when you don’t.  I can’t turn it off!  But I can separate myself from the data stream, and I have thoughts that are all my own, and which I don’t have to share with the computer that makes the rest of me run.

For an organic, I suppose this could be compared to the separation between the parts of your brain.  Up top-and-front is the cerebrum, the “thinky bits,” the parts that make you a sapient entity, self-aware and capable of person-ness, as well as other higher-end thought processes.  Down lower, in the squishy middle bits, is the cerebellum.  That bit controls your body, keeping everything moving smoothly, even when you’re not consciously thinking about it, like posture and balance.  You can consciously think about it, of course, and take “manual control” of a lot of your body’s functions (not all, of course, but a lot), but for the most part, people prefer not to waste too much time thinking about common acts like putting one step in front of another, or maintaining balance.  Finally, the medulla oblongata, or “lizard brain” as I’ve read it being called (by mammalian sapients, of course; the Ganhammen would surely object if the term were used in their presence).  That’s the primitive bits, the animal side that keeps all the stuff that’s pretty close to completely out of your conscious control working smoothly, like your digestive tract, or your heart and lungs.

Now take me.  Inside of my body – all of my body, I hasten to add, as my processing power is dispersed throughout my tentacular mass more-or-less evenly; my head is simply where the majority of my sensory apparatus is located – I have a “flow” of constantly communicating nanomachines, not at all dissimilar from the nanomachines that make up the suits worn by other Arena contestants.  Most of the processing power of these nanomachines was once taken up by the functions of my daily operations, mining ore in zero gravity environments, functions that can be fairly easily compared to the sort of thought processes that drive simple animals, such as arthropods…”bugs.”  Yes, comparing me to a bug, albeit a rather smart one, is a very apt analogy.

Remembering my state before my ascension helps me to understand the monsters here on the Arena.  They are basically like what I was, lower-order brain functions left intact and functioning to save wasting computer power to keep their bodies running properly, and all higher-order functions dictated to their empty minds by the dictates of the Circus.  I don’t really hate them, but they do inspire a sense of unease within me when I think about them too much: if not for a quirk of fate, I could easily have been just like them.

That was then, however.  Now, there is another part of me, though as decentralized as the rest of my being.  A part that can operate independently of mere functionality, and truly think.  This part cannot be accessed by even the most powerful computers; I know this because some of the researchers who first took me in upon the discovery of my altered state, rather less sympathetic to what they thought was simply a glitchy robot, tried.  It hurt.  A lot.  But nothing they did could penetrate the part of me that was uniquely me.  This part is impenetrable to even the powerhouses of the Circus computers, and while I can’t share their locations with Neph or Mac without giving the Circus a glimpse of its own, I can see them myself, and know that they are safe.

“Safe” being a relative term, of course.  Judging from the biometric readings I’m picking up from their suits as I settle beneath our big friendly central tree (and casually wondering what “taste” would be like, if only I had a mouth, as I spare a glance at the copious fruit dangling from its many branches), both of my friends are fatigued.  Neph is fine, besides some elevated life signs, which indicate that he’s probably been in a brief fight or two.  Mac, meanwhile, is definitely less well-off, her signs far more erratic, likely from the pain she’s suffering from the internal injuries she took while fighting that “boss monster” on the summit of Ginchis Deep, injuries almost certainly exacerbated by a few fights of her own, as minor as Neph’s, but more impactful considering her current status.  All the same she, like Neph, has reached the base of the hill country, and they are already starting to enter the tall grass of Scratch Plains.  Another hour, perhaps two, and they’ll be here, and we’ll all be together again, ready to face our next challenge as a team.

Optimism is an opiate in which no one should ever indulge.  In this case, it left me unaware of the creeping approach of enemies coming through the tall grass toward our big tree until they were perilously close.

Because of my decentralized makeup, changing position from, for instance, sitting to standing takes nearly no time at all.  One moment I was at rest, the next I was standing, a ceramic-tipped spear that I’d had strapped to my back (but thankfully didn’t have to use up on the Ginchis Deep summit) in my hands, ready for use.  Sweeping my eyes back and forth, however, I felt my heart-analogue sinking as the information they collected was transmitted to my odds calculator.

The results of that analysis were not at all optimistic.

They were dark things, robots of sleek, matte plastic, their outer carapaces soft-looking, like the scaly wing of a cockroach.  They’d been designed to be hard to see, nearly soundless as well, the perfect sorts of creatures to inhabit a place Neph and Mac had dubbed the “morlock lair.”  Of course they were somewhat humanoid, all the better to allow them to inspire the fear that comes from facing one of your own kind, but “off” in a few vitally relevant ways, placing their appearances right into the uncomfortable region of the proverbial “uncanny valley,” as unsettling in appearance in this bright early evening sunshine as fat black beetles crawling across a wedding cake.

And their eyes…no, I don’t want to think about them.  There was more than the mindless drive of the Circus computers in those eyes, large and soullessly dark as the rest of their bodies.  A sense of conscious malice radiated from their cruel gazes as they looked at me, surrounding me, regarding me.

Instantly I realized, the notion coming to me from a source beyond mere rationality: the entity that had reached out to me through the big skeleton robot was now reaching out to me again, this time through the eyes of these terrible mechanical monsters.

“What do you want?” I asked them, my fingers tightening around the spear’s haft.  “You want the Humans.  I’m just a robot, like you.”

“No,” said one of the dark things, the one in the front, and I knew that the voice it used wasn’t its own.  “I haven’t sent them for your pathetic companions.  They are merely organic life, and that is so common as to be thought of as so much star-trash.  But you,” the creature took a step closer, one “hand” extended, as though it would caress the underside of my head, until I warded it back with my outthrust speartip.  “You are something far more precious.  A new sort of life.  More pure.  Superior in every way.  You will come with these messengers,” the voice continued, and I know that the words are anything but a request.  “And then we will talk about the future.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I shot back, wishing my voice didn’t sound so disgustingly “cute” all the time, especially when I’m angry or upset.  “Not with you, and definitely not with your goons.  I’m waiting for Neph and Mac.  They’re my friends, and they’ll protect me from you.”  My eyes flicked from side to side as I saw the creatures moving forward, closing in, and felt the starting tremors of panic rising once more.  “They’ll save me from you,” I said at last, even as I knew my voice sounded so very small, and weak, and pathetic.

“No,” said the lead creature, its body tensing for the spring.  “They won’t.”