Foundation of All

“So, this is your friend’s place?” Emily asked as they slowly started docking at the station, “Brenda, you said her name was?”

“Yes. There’s something else too. Someone else that we’ve been traveling with for a long time,” Sean said.

“Oh, it was more than the three of you?” Emily asked, “Who is it?”

“Well, don’t freak out,” Sean said, “But they’re named Ash. And they are… he’s an intelligent machine.”

The ship rumbled as they connected to Brenda’s base. Sean glanced at Emily who was staring at him in shock.

“What?” She said, “How did you find one so early in development? Do you have any idea how rare they are?”

“Well, I built him myself mostly,” Sean said, “Building robots from your Foundation of All designs. The fourth robot I built seemed more intelligent than the others, and eventually we realized that it had become a person. It’s why we fled Immortus Station as a group. They were going to destroy Ash when station security discovered him, so Brenda helped us get out. Ash has been traveling with us ever since.”

“Four?!” Emily shouted with a half strangled cry, “FOUR! YOU BUILT FOUR ROBOTS AND ONE OF THEM WAS AN UNSHACKLED AI! What the fuck. What the…”

Her face was of complete disbelief and shock. They stared at each other for a long moment, Sean not sure what to say after her outburst.

“This is ridiculous,” Emily muttered to herself, “He doesn’t even realize…”

She raised her voice and pointed at him, “You! You are possibly the luckiest bastard I’ve ever met. Do you have any idea of the chances of a random robot becoming an unshackled AI that doesn’t immediately start stabbing everyone nearby? It’s like landing a bullseye on a dartboard. From orbit. While blindfolded. With someone shoving you to throw off your aim. Ten times or more in a row. It’s just… How are you so calm right now? How many robots did you even end up building total?”

“Fifteen,” Sean said, “But Ash was the first one that fully worked. The last eleven were good but clearly not as intelligent as he is.”

“Ridiculous…” Emily said in seeming awe, “This is insane. There have been whole production lines making billions and billions of robots that haven’t produced one unshackled AI. And the first time you build a robot you get one. And it also must be pretty well balanced if it didn’t snap and start killing people when it was first threatened.”

Sean chuckled and remembered Ash cutting Lars in half and sticking him in the ground head first.

“Well lucky for everyone we were on Immortus Station at the time. Lira had a very long conversation with Ash on why he shouldn’t go cutting people in half when they insult us. Ash understands now, so it's all fine.”

“Huh,” Emily said, “I never thought about it that way. Violent outbursts don’t mean as much when everyone is Immortal I guess. So, this Ash is stable and is protective of you and your friends?”

“Yes,” Sean said, “We’re like family. I know you won’t hurt Ash, but please try to not be threatening at all. Roger is nervous and doesn’t want you near Ash since Ash is the only one among us that can actually die.”

Emily nodded, “Of course. If it’s how you say… then I don’t mind treating Ash like any other person. It’s actually rather fascinating really, even if I was a completely cold hearted bitch I wouldn’t want to hurt Ash just because of how unique he is.”

Sean nodded,

“Well, good thing you’re not a cold hearted bitch then.”

Emily laughed, “Yeah. But no worries. I promise that I’ll behave, I’ve met plenty of weird people in my time. I’m not going to be upset just because someone’s made of metal rather than flesh and bone.”

The two of them started walking to the doors and Sean remembered one final thing.

“Oh. Also, Ash doesn’t have a preferred gender. Call Ash him or her as you want. Just don’t try to convince Ash either way too much. It’s very important to us that Ash makes his own choices about his identity.”

“Okay. That sounds very responsible of you all,” Emily said as she nodded in agreement, “Sounds good.”

It took an hour or two before Brenda finally arrived and opened the doors to the station. Roger, Sean, and Emily had been waiting silently at the door silently. Roger’s suspicious looks towards Emily constantly didn’t exactly lead to a comfortable environment for conversation.

But the doors opened and Ash and Brenda stood there on the other side. Brenda was wearing beige work pants with lots of pockets and a tight, work stained, gray T-shirt. Ash stood to her right in his normal brown robes with the hood thrown back to expose his metal head and whitish synthetic muscle.

The two groups stared at each other for a moment and Sean glanced over to Emily. An Emily that was staring at Brenda intently with a growing flush on her cheeks. Brenda was also inspecting Emily closely with a slight smirk on her face.

It was Ash who broke the strange standoff, “So it is true? Lira was captured?”

“Yes,” Roger answered, “I’m sorry, Ash. We’ll get her back as soon as we can.”

“Yes,” Ash said, “I will have to adjust the designs for my new body. It must be more combat capable for the eventual rescue attempt.”

“You’re designing your own bodies?” Emily asked, after tearing her eyes away from Brenda, “I’m Emily by the way. Ash, right? Nice to meet you.”

“Emily,” Ash said thoughtfully, “Greetings to you as well. I am working from the designs that you have built from your Foundation of All world for designing a new ideal body. Would you be willing to assist me as an expert on them, as the creator of the base designs?”

“Oh, of course!” Emily said, “Just show me what you’re thinking and I’ll do the best I can to help out.”

“Why don’t we all go?” Sean said, “I’m sure that Ash is eager to get his improved body.”

“Sure,” Roger said, “May as well.”

“Well, sounds good to me,” Brenda said, “We can… get to know our new guest through some science.”

Emily glanced at Brenda and their eyes stayed on each other for a long moment.

“Yeah,” Emily said, “Get to know each other.”

“Emily and Brenda have been gone for a while, haven’t they?” Roger said as Ash, Sean, and him looked over some of the designs. Over the last few days the group had narrowed down the options a bit. Emily was head and shoulders more advanced than the rest of them, modifying holographic displays of the designs more complicated than Sean had ever seen with casual flicks of her hands.

Mostly it had ended up with Emily doing most of the design work while the rest of them debated the use or drawbacks of various features and weapons that should be included. With both her, and Brenda who was the next most competent, gone, the debate had slowed to a halt.

“What were they even doing out there?” Sean asked, “The station isn’t that big, a tour of it shouldn’t have lasted this long…”

Roger shrugged in response and rubbed his chin as he closely inspected another one of the designs that Emily had built as another option for Ash’s new body. He smirked at Sean for a moment with a knowing look on his face.

After a few more minutes the two women came through the door again, both looking rather relaxed. They had washed off and their hair was wet, Emily’s hair having regrown down to her shoulders over the last few weeks.

“Excellent. If you two are done having sex, then we can return back to the discussion fully refreshed,” Ash stated blandly as he turned back to stare intently at another one of the robot body designs.

“Ash, is that a joke?” Sean asked amused, “Good one.”

“No,” Ash replied, “Their signs of mutual arousal have disappeared much like when you and Lira did the same on the ship. I am relatively certain it is likely the same situation here.”

All the humans in the room froze at Ash’s statement and stood there awkwardly shooting glances at each other, not saying anything.

The tension grew as Roger and Sean stared at a rather embarrassed Emily and an exasperated but unrepentant Brenda.

“Alright, fine!” Brenda eventually blurted out, “Girl’s got needs, you know. It’s been millenia since I’ve been able to have a good time. And your new friend here…”

She put an arm around Emily and purred, “Is verrrrry good at satisfying those needs,”

“Thanks!” Emily said brightly, “You’re not too bad yourself. Ash is right, I do feel refreshed after letting loose a little. Thanks Brenda, that was a lot of fun. Now, let’s get back to work!”

“Remind me to tell you about when you’re supposed to keep things to yourself, Ash,” Sean said, slightly stunned at the sudden turn of events.

Ash looked up, “Was I not supposed to mention it?” He asked, sounding surprised, “Was it not obvious that that was their intention?”

Sean coughed, “Uh. No. It was not.”

“Pffffft. Sean’s just mad he had no idea,” Roger said, “Why do you think I was so quiet earlier? I can’t believe you didn’t figure it out earlier. You two were rather obvious, by the way. Stood practically shoulder to shoulder the whole time making lovey dovey eyes at each other.”

Brenda shrugged, “Hey. If it works, it works. Better being too obvious than too subtle.”

Emily just stood there and smiled awkwardly, not saying anything and burrowing her nose in the robot designs, pretending to ignore the conversation around her.

Roger made a fake vomiting motion in disgust as a joke, but after Brenda rolled her eyes in response the tension broke and the five of them resumed their more scientific discussion.

After a little while longer of work they were down to five or so promising designs that Ash and the group approved of and all of them decided to take a longer break before moving on to finalize things.

Sean tried explaining to Ash after they all split off why he shouldn’t talk about those things in public. Much to Roger’s amusement as he watched on and piped in with rather unhelpful comments about Sean giving Ash the ‘talk’.

By the end of the long meandering conversation, Ash seemed to understand that it wasn’t something he should discuss unless someone else brought it up. But still not why that was the case. Sean took the win and left to take a nap. The conversation with Ash had made Sean feel even more tired than the days of work on the engineering before.

Sean hoped he had done it right. Lira would have known what to say to make Ash understand much better than him…

“Wow, I can’t believe we managed to build it and transfer you over so fast, Ash” Sean said as they looked at the completed robotic body. Its exterior appearance was much the same as the old one, except for a few key differences. For one, it was made of super materials custom designed by Emily to make it the absolute strongest possible she could make. Ash would be at least two or three times stronger than he was in the combat body that he had lost, with much less energy expenditure.

They had included five backup batteries into his frame as a backup in case his antimatter power system failed for whatever reason.

Then there were the weapons. Oh, so many weapons. Sticking out of Ash’s back was two rows of three bulky tentacles on either side. They were moved with the white synthetic muscle running through the rest of his body. The six extra limbs were retractable and had high powered lasers at their ends and could all move independently with Ash only giving them basic commands to execute.

Most of the computing power of the targeting in each limb was entirely self contained. All Ash would have to do was designate targets or tell them how to move ‘mentally’ and they would do it semi-independently. At the ends of each of the tentacles were rounded metal caps, with only the hole in the center allowing the laser to fire out from it. When Ash didn’t want to have them out, the tentacles would curl around his chest in loops around his torso.

Ash stood to his feet after a few minutes of his eyes flickering and began to twist around and experiment with his new body and unfurling and waving the tentacles around for a bit like snakes before refurling them up around his torso again.

A hatch on Ash’s forearm opened up and revealed the heavier duty lasers hidden inside each arm that popped up and briefly glowed before dimming down again. Ash retracted them and there was a heavy clunk that Sean heard. The hatch opened again and two massive blades that shot out past Ash’s closed fists to extend three feet beyond his wrist, extending with little interlocking segments as the full blade unfurled from its little space scrunched inside Ash’s forearms.

There was a click and the twin extended blades stiffened and began to hum, vibrating slightly in place. Ash took a few practice swings before the vibrating hum stopped and the blades retracted back inwards and turned back into a pile of odd metal segments stacked all on top of each other sticking out from the open hatch on Ash’s forearm. The piles sank back down into Ash’s arm and the two hatches on his arms closed again.

“Everything seems to be in order,” Ash said, “The only thing left to see is whether the nanites will work to specifications. Thank you all of you for helping me. Especially Emily and Brenda. This design would have been much less optimal without both of your help.”

“No problem, Ash,” Brenda said, “Least I could do after you’ve been helping around here for so long. This place was really in shambles before you helped me on repairs.”

“Happy to help!” Emily said looking upbeat with the project finished. Her mood had been improving ever since she and Brenda had started going on ‘bathroom breaks’ together ever since the group had started actually building the robot itself.

Roger and Sean didn’t say anything and it seems Ash had learned enough to call them out on the obvious lie.

“And don’t worry about the nanites,” Emily said, “They’ll be much more efficient than your last ones. And these ones actually have some safety features if they start going rogue. Remote shutoff can kill any of them within any region of your body that you send the signal. Just blast them if they start doing something bad and the healthy ones will creep back in and fix things right back up! And they’ll also self regulate and kill aberrant ones automatically so even then you shouldn’t have to use the kill signal too often either.”

“I will,” Ash said seriously, “I am lucky that nothing went wrong in my old body.”

“Yep. Very lucky,” Emily agreed, “But it’s all fixed now. Better than ever with your new body.”

“You’re safer than ever, Ash,” Roger said, seeming proud as Ash continued moving his arms around to get used to his new body.

Sean and Roger really hadn’t been able to do much to help, but they did their best. Sean still felt proud as he saw Ash slowly growing more comfortable and smooth in moving around over the next few days.

After some… Passionate goodbyes between Emily and Brenda, everyone piled onto the ship. Brenda wished them well, but wasn’t willing to make an enemy out of the whole Immortal Council just to break Lira out of prison.

So, they set off and entered hyperspace. Emily knew somebody that she thought could help them, so that’s where they were going next. Sean felt more comfortable knowing that Ash was with them and with a stronger body than ever.

Well at least Brenda and Emily hooking up with each other was behind them for now. That whole situation had been uncomfortable, his long time teacher with Emily… Bleh. It just felt too strange. At least it was finally over and Sean would have some time to process before having to deal with that again.