Foundation of All

Sean confronted Brenda the next day and she assured him that she would be personally be doing Lira’s ‘training’. That let Sean relax at least a little, because he knew that despite being a hardass Brenda cared about Lira in her own way. Not that he liked that it was going to happen. In the next few days he tried to convince Lira several more times to not go through with it, but she had her mind made up. Before he even knew it, she was gone, out of contact until her ‘training,’ read torture, was complete. No one knew how long it would take, even Brenda. Sean was vibrating with worry after she left. With nothing else to do but pace around muttering, he headed to the workshop to blow off some steam.

When he arrived, V4 was still going over the list of body designs. The robot sat up and turned its head fully around to track Sean as he made his way across the room towards it.

“Hello, Sean,” V4 said as he approached, “I have selected seven ideal robotic frames for myself. I have some further questions that should narrow the options down further.”

Sean nodded and tapped his foot on the ground, “Fine, V4. Hit me with it. What do you want to know?”

“First, for synthetic muscle type A3744 the tensile strength appears to vary by length but the design specs of this design in contrast states that…”

Sean answered V4’s questions and asked Ricardo when neither he or the database knew the answer. The man had a wealth of knowledge regarding this place when he deigned to interact with them. Although interacting with V4 always seemed to peak his interest so it wasn’t so bad for Sean in prying some extra information out of the man.

After V4 was done and they had selected a final design, Sean checked his holopad for any messages. It was empty. Lira wasn’t out yet. It had been three days already and she wasn’t out yet. Sean tapped his foot harder and looked around for something to do. He made a decision.

“V4! Come on. We’ll get started building it right now,” Sean said, “No need to wait.”

V4 looked at Sean and its blue eyes flickered. “Are you sure, Sean? You seem to be in distress. Where is Lira? The two of you in proximity usually normalizes abnormalities and lowers emotional distress.”

“No, V4!” Sean said harshly, “She’s, She’s busy. Do you want a new body or not?”

V4’s eyes flickered again, “Very well. I will begin on the less complex portions and segments while you can begin working on the electronics and synthetic muscle. Is this acceptable?”

Sean hesitated. V4 had never taken charge like this before. He felt a little bad now for yelling at him. It wasn’t V4’s fault that Sean was so stressed, and it clearly was eager to create a better body for itself.

They got to work, and as they went Sean’s hands started trembling slightly. He cursed as he ruined yet another chip. He was still making progress, but he just couldn’t properly focus with Lira still not out yet. He checked the holopad every chance he could and there was still no message from her in there. It had been nearly a week now and she was still not out. How long would it take? Sean could only imagine her being torn apart over and over by the green backed beetles. Her blood spraying every which way and her face twisted in pain…

Sean angrily focused on making more electronics. He had to finish V4’s body. Yes, the body. That’s what was important right now. Nothing else but finishing it.

Sean kept working, and soon went numb again as he entered his flow state. There was nothing but him and the defense turret, body. Robotic body. The outside world was nothing more than an illusion while he worked and built things from the ground up. Just like he had always dreamed of doing back in the beginning before everything had all changed…

V4’s body was almost finished and Sean was angry. How was there nothing else to do? How could such a complex project come together so flawlessly for once? He raged against the unfairness of it all as he finished the last component for the project. Now there was only assembly of everything together left. That was hard enough. Yes, that would take a while.

Sean checked the holopad. It had been four months since Lira had left and there was still no message. Sean left and checked her room, she had left him a key. She wasn’t there. He hoped that she had just forgotten the message, but she hadn’t.

She was still gone, being tortured over and over so she could make herself feel strong like she should never have had to. All of this traced back to Lars. He had done this to her.

Sean shook off the thought. Nothing good would come from thinking about that right now.

Sean returned to the workshop and yet again the assembly of the body went flawlessly. There was only the head left to create, sitting on a nearby table while V4 worked on the main body a dozen feet away.

“Sean,”

Sean kept working, attaching the left eye and rooting it into the metallic frame of the detached head.

“Sean,”

Sean began working on the right eye.

“Sean!”

He blinked and whirled around at hearing Lira’s annoyed voice behind him. He looked around in confusion when he saw only V4 standing behind him adjusting the breastplate on the robotic frame. Its arms were deep in the gap in the armpit of the new body and V4 was standing there perfectly still.

“That was me, Sean,” V4 said, “Apologies for the impersonation of Lira. My arm is malfunctioning. I appear to be stuck.”

Sean grunted and walked over. He helped dislodge V4’s arm from the other body and inspect V4’s arm, opening it up to diagnose the issue. He calmed slightly as it proved a hard issue, none of the obvious things that one would expect. He was disappointed when he discovered what it was and that it was a relatively easy fix. Just a loose connection on one of the internal wires and nothing more. What a shame.

“There, all fixed,” Sean said after it was done and he put everything on V4's arm back into place. V4 flexed his arm and tested his full range of motion for the arm, before stopping apparently satisfied.

“Thank you, Sean,” V4 said, “I will continue with the work now. It appears we are mere hours from finishing.”

“Yeah…” Sean said, “I suppose so.”

He checked the holopad again. There was no message.

They were nearly done and Sean realized that this was the first major project he had done with V4’s full assistance. They each worked on their respective tasks with almost no interaction with each other at all. Usually Sean and V4 worked together with Sean doing the high level work while V4 focused on the more rote tasks or inputting data into the machines. Sean hadn’t even looked over the full schematic before starting working, just focusing on creating the little individual components instead.

Now that they were finished, Sean was frowning as he looked over the full design. He hadn’t realized that this thing would be armed with such serious weaponry. He wasn’t opposed to it, but he should have probably moved somewhere else before building the robot. Hopefully Ricardo would let it slide as long as nothing went wrong. V4 must have been the one assembling most of the dangerous parts while Sean was distracted.

And what in the world was a nanite factory? The thing took up most of the chest cavity, and no matter how deep Sean looked into the specs there was no clear explanation of what it did except ‘Repair’. A single word under the entry of one of the largest pieces of the design. It was ridiculous. Even the tiniest screws had paragraphs of text describing their uses and flaws.

“V4?” Sean asked, “What is a nanite factory? Did you assemble that portion?”

“Yes, Sean,” V4 replied, “It creates small microscopic machines composed of metal. They are optimized for upkeep and repair of the whole rest of the robotic body. I will place various slugs of material such as metal inside the central chamber, spend high amounts of energy, and the module will build these machines that will spread through the rest of the structure automatically. It will make sure I will need no manual upkeep of my systems ever again except in the case of extreme damage.”

Sean nodded. That was interesting, that kind of technology sounded extremely useful. It sounded a step above the clothing bands if they could do complex tasks like that. The nanites in clothing bands just crawled to an assigned location or back into the band and nothing else. Repairing equipment was no simple task even for a skilled human, if nanites were doing it then the design must be complicated, but if they really worked the way V4 said… no wonder why the nanite factory was so central to the design.

“And why are there so many weapons on this model?” Sean asked, “I, ah, didn’t properly inspect it earlier. Can you give your reasoning there? We could have easily removed them and kept everything else the same.”

V4’s eyes flickered. “The concern outside the lab was that I would become damaged or nonfunctional as one of the Immortals damaged me, no? Weapons are a way to ensure any attackers can only perform minimal damage before being incapacitated.”

Sean nodded. Legally, V4 wasn’t a person. He had looked it up, and AIs and robots were treated that way at least on Immortus station. In other places it was different, with no standard across the galaxy regarding the issue. But here if someone walked up to V4 and completely destroyed him, all they would be charged with was destruction of property and have to pay a fine. A large fine, but still only a fine. And V4 would still be dead.

“Alright,” Sean said, “But make sure to only use the weapons in extreme scenarios. We’ll both be in big trouble if those weapons are ever used on the station. They’re technically illegal for you to have and I’m not even sure how bad it would be considering the arsenal you’ve got packed in there.”

V4’s eyes flickered, “Confirmed,” it said.

Twenty minutes later, they were nearly done. There was only one step left. Transferring V4’s brain over to the new model. That had been an interesting challenge. Sean had to change the design so the new larger brain of the new model would encase V4’s old brain like an extremely thick shell. Obviously less processing power than the normal design, but it was likely V4’s hardware that made it special so they were crucial if they were to fully transfer its personality. All of V4’s old processing would still happen on the same hardware but it would interface with everything newer around it. Hopefully that would solve the issue of V4’s uniqueness not being transferred over. But they wouldn’t know until they actually did it.

Sean resisted the urge to check his messages on the holopad again. He must have checked less than five minutes ago already. He had to stop. She was fine, Brenda would make sure she made it out the other side better than ever. It was just… taking a while to get there.

V4 sat down and Sean started opening up the back of its head. After a few minutes the brain was fully exposed, and Sean was hit with the seriousness of this moment. V4 was a person and he was literally about to perform risky brain surgery on him right now. Should he be doing this while he’s distracted?

“Are you sure we shouldn’t wait, V4?” Sean said, “I’m not in my best state right now. Waiting a year or two might be for the best. Check everything over carefully after I've cooled off a bit.”

“I’d rather not,” V4 replied, “The operation should be relatively simple. Do you believe you are at risk to fail?”

Sean hesitated. “No,” he finally said, “I think I can do it. It just seems a rather important thing to do so suddenly.”

“Waiting will not help us know if my uniqueness will be transferred,” V4 said, “The chips giving me cognition could fail any day now without warning. Waiting would only be increasing the risk that I would die.”

Sean hesitated one last time. “You’re absolutely sure?” He confirmed.

“Yes,”

“Alright, shut down V4. Hopefully when you wake up, you’ll be in your new body.”

V4’s blue eyes flickered off while its body remained still stiff and upright.

Despite Sean’s worry, the procedure was relatively simple. The whole robotic brain had a protective casing around it, so it could take a little jostling as Sean extracted it and placed it carefully into the cavity in the head of the new robot’s body. He quickly began connecting the various wires to link V4’s old brain with all the processing power of the more advanced processing power surrounding it like a thick shell. He was done with it in under an hour. He spent another hour going through and carefully checking his work before sealing in the brain of the new robot shut.

Sean plugged the robot into the external power to start the process of booting it up. Unlike V4’s old body, this model had an antimatter generator and reactor that produced massive amounts of power from only grams of fuel. As extremely dangerous and volatile that antimatter was, the antimatter power system was one of the most difficult things to create that Sean had ever done, especially at such a small size. Antimatter literally exploded into pure energy whenever it impacted any normal matter, and without the containment fields inside the robot it would already be damaged as the antimatter started working to build up its supply of antimatter fuel as V4 started booting up.

With minimal power and some time to extremely slowly build up a store of antimatter for the reactor to use, the whole energy system was almost completely self-sufficient. Sean didn’t completely understand the mechanics of it, but apparently the antimatter generator acted as a sort of advanced filter removing normal matter from any gas that was running through it, only leaving the antimatter behind to be stored and used by the reactor later.

After some time passed as Sean watched on in anticipation, the new robot’s eyes suddenly flickered on, the same blue shade as V4’s had been. It moved its head side to side and fixed its eyes on V4’s old body, V4's old head opened up in the back and an empty cavity where its brain had been.

“V4?” Sean asked and the robot refocused on him. It stared at him for a moment silently and Sean worried that it hadn’t worked.

“Yes, Sean?” the robot said after a moment, “I was running a diagnostic. All systems appear to be fully functional. Including my brain and cognition luckily.”

The robot stood to its feet and raised its hands and visually inspected them for a few moments as Sean let out a big sigh of relief. It had worked, V4 had made it into the new body.

The new robot body was similar to the old one, except it was much bulkier and the metal plates more angular than the last one. It was larger too, now a full head taller than Sean rather than matching him like the old V4. The armored plates were much thicker and there was a chainmail like gray mesh in between the thicker plates. There were small holes and little flaps where the weapons would pop out, and the metal used was a slightly darker shade of gray than V4’s old body. Well, it was a combat model so it made sense it was better protected than the one made for industrial use…

V4, well the new V4, walked over to its old body. It reached down and picked it up with its two arms and held it in front of it by the shoulders. It turned its head towards Sean.

“Can I use these materials to start the production of my nanites?”

Sean eyed the old V4 that was only a little smaller than the new one, “No respect for the dead, huh… but, I mean sure. Can you even use all of that?”

V4 pushed its arms and began crushing its old body into a large sphere of metal. Sean watched in morbid fascination as a compartment spanning V4’s whole chestplate swung open, revealing a large empty cavity inside it.

“Yes,” V4 said as it started trying to shove the body into the cavity. After it became clear that the whole thing wouldn’t fit inside even while compressed, V4 grabbed it again and pressed harder. Sean heard cracks and the groaning of metal and the material compressed even farther inwards. V4 managed to just barely fit the condensed ball metal into its chest cavity and seal its chestplate back up as Sean watched.

“The generated nanites will be completely distributed throughout my new body..." V4 stated, "...also partially distributing the weight as well. The rare metals and materials that I’ve just acquired will allow me to repair myself for a long time without needing more.”

“Well, ah. A little disturbing to watch you eat your old body. But its practical I guess. How heavy are you? Try taking a step.”

V4 took a step forward and the floor shook a little under the weight as its foot came back down.

“Yeah, you’re heavy alright,” Sean said appreciatively. Now, that was intimidation! People definitely wouldn’t mess with V4 now!

“Well, no reason to delay,” Sean said after clapping his hands together, “Want to see my place, V4? Now you can defend yourself and are more durable, you should be safe to go around the station. Well, as long as you’re with me or Lira to make sure we don’t get in legal trouble.”

“Certainly,” V4 said, “I will be alert for any dangers while we venture in the station.”

“Well, it’s just a precaution,” Sean clarified, “I don’t actually think someone would outright attack you. But now you’re more durable, we can risk it and not worry about the worst case. Do you get it?”

V4 paused and its eyes flickered for several moments before it looked back at Sean by turning its head slightly, “I think I understand. Reducing processing power devoted to threat assessment…”

“Alright, that’s good,” Sean said, “Are the nanites working? Antimatter generation hasn’t had any issues yet?”

“Yes. No. The nanites should help repair the generator from its normal degradation that it would usually suffer. Nanite production is slow but steady, they should cover my whole body within five days. Before that point repairing any damage to myself would take a much longer time than otherwise. But it will still happen. Antimatter stockpile is still slowly building.”

“Okay,” Sean said, “Then let’s head off. We’ll have to spend a while convincing Ricardo to let us leave with you, so we might have to wait for a bit before we can actually go.”

“That’s V4?” Ricardo said, “He looks mean as the Shadow. What did you do to the poor robot toddling around here, solving digital mazes a few decades ago?”

“Well, I gave him a new and improved body with all the upgrades,” Sean bragged, “Antimatter power system, thicker plating, bigger brain. V4 is looking better than ever. He actually helped in his old body in constructing the new one so he should get at least half of the credit for it.”

“Indeed,” V4 piped in, “I constructed over eighty five percent of the components, but Sean created the more complex parts that I could not build. So it is hard to quantify our contributions in exact numbers due to the division of labor.”

“Well, by the Shadow. I’ve built up enough funds by now to blow off this job for a little while,” Ricardo said, “I’ll go with you. I’m not missing seeing V4’s first time in the station proper. It’ll be hilarious to watch.”

Sean raised an eyebrow, but Ricardo shrugged and spent a few seconds straightening his desk before standing up.

“Well, are we going or what?” Ricardo said after he came around the desk to join Sean and V4 near the door.

“V4 has sights to see, and all sorts of people to scare the shit out of!” Ricardo finished as they walked out of the door.

Hopefully not, Sean thought as Ricardo locked the door behind him and they set off.