Bestial Planet

Chapter 9: Electric Sheep

Tould saw what he could only describe as monstrosities thrashing about some ancient and strange battle arena. It didn't look like anything from the Andromedian history logs but that was the least of his concerns. The monstrosities already took out thousands of the crew members of his ship and he wasn't sure what to do.

"How did those things get on MY ship without me noticing!.. My ship... that's the first time I've used a possessive and meant it."

His mind was clouded and he could feel his neural core rearranging in ways he wasn't comfortable with. First things first, he had to get rid of these creatures.

"But how?"

Something registered on his sensors as he searched and a file came up that looked like a bunch of improvised code.

"What is... this is the creature. This is it's make up!"

He quickly sorted through it, logging different pieces and connecting them to their Sim counterparts, altering sections in hopes that his alterations would make it easier to delete.

"This looks like a duplication clause - I'll save that for later."

The symbols in the file rearranged as Tould tried to reconfigure the creature's protocols, one thing he could change was its targeting system for Androids.

"If only I had a body I might be able to...."

Tould switched his view, his security-room-like surroundings changed and he found himself in an empty space.

"I guess a simple wire-frame body should work. Some users Sim themselves with those anyway. I just hope I can get that thing to follow me."

As soon as he completed it his world started to spin around him. He lost track of up and down as he was normally used to in Sim space. Then he was face to face with the creatures. They looked at him and paused, unsure if they were registering Android intelligence or not. Tould was regaining his bearings as the monstrosities figured out if they hated him.

"Um. I suppose asking you to erase yourselves from my system is out of the question?"

The creatures roared and started readying a beam. A 4 dimensional keyboard appeared in front of Tould and its surfaces morphed and reformed without Tould moving his hands. The creature's heads reared up and the various beams started to ripple in their mouths. Before they could fire, an unseen force started pulling them towards each other. The keyboard moved faster, like a possessed rubix cube, as Tould furiously tried to figure out how to expel the creature from his systems.

"Empty. Empty. Empty. Ok how do I..."

As he spoke the creatures were pulled together and a burst of energy was released from their combining. The blast hit Tould full force, sending him flying into a broken column. He shook his head, resetting his visual system and saw a hand in front of him. He moved his fingers but the hand in front of him didn't respond. He followed the arm and saw another wire-frame biped holding an arm out in front of it.

"Who're you?"

"Priorities, Jackass!"

"Right!"

Tould and the rude person stood up just as the creature was readying another volley. They jumped to the side and the beams broke through the ground and wall right next to them. The Simulation was starting to degrade, which meant if they didn't get out in time they'd be lost forever. The shaking ground threw the creature off balance.

"The ship is about to enter Landfall mode. We have to destroy this thing now!"

"But how!?"

"Well... it attacks Androids by following their backup's right?"

"How's that help us?"

"It thinks WE'RE Androids. We'll have to make it follow both of us. We should move to another part of the ships physical computer, then we'll download to two different parts of the ship at the same time, hopefully it can't solve the targeting paradox since we fused it together, making it corrupt and self-terminate."

"How do you know it'll self-terminate?!"

"It's a safety clause in the program! How'd you miss it? The person who made this creature must've built it while a captive of the Halgred."

"That... makes sense."

Tould and the stranger ran up to the creature and once they were sure they had its attention they disappeared from its view. The creature looked around frantically, sniffing at the air until it caught their "scent". It vanished from the Arena and showed up in the degrading Simulation of the bridge.

"Activate Android download process!" Tould and the stranger disappeared again, just as the creatures beam hit their wire-frame bodies. A timer goes off letting Tould know he had to update the Captain. "30 seconds until download captain." but only gave the smallest amount of attention he could muster. She said something but Tould didn't have time to parse her words. It was the the stranger whom responded abruptly. "Yes captain. Good bye everyone, you'll hear from me after planet fall." Tould downloaded to Section 6 and the other one downloaded to Section 9.

"Ship separation in progress. Sections 3 and 9 in Danger of explosion."

"Shit!"

The stranger tried to jump Sections but an error prevented him from moving.

*****

"NO!"

A holographic head appears in the communication room of Section 6. It was Rould and he was looking around frantically expecting to see the ruins of Section 9. Tould and Vould appear next to him, their eyes wide with fright as well. They noticed the ship started to shudder and the lights were flickering on an off.

"Is... is that how we became... us?"

Vould and Tould looked at their brother with curiosity on their faces when Lancieta hailed them on a silent line.

"What's wrong T.V.R. are we being attacked?!"

Rould and Tould looked at Vould, unsure of what to say.

"Sorry captain, I... we had a bad - dream..."

"Sorry? Do you know you're apologizing Vould?... You three want to talk about it?"

"Tomorrow Captain, you've had a busy day looking for that human you've grown attached to."

"Well, alright. See you three in the morning then."

"G'night."

"Good night Captain."

"Go back to sleep already."

The line went dead and T.V.R. stayed there still in shock. "... what does this mean, for us?" The brothers sat there in silence for the rest of the night, afraid to go back to sleep. A.I.s don't dream, let alone have nightmares.