25 - Exhibition

“Well, the existence of other life in this place shouldn’t be a surprise,” Maya said. She pulled open a window, picked up a scout rat and set it down upon the hood of the buggy. The rat scurried forward, lifted its head and began scanning the area. Zono had dumped the information he had on the beings into her computer and she had transferred the data to the rat; system tech and rogue tech could talk to one another, but with some translation issues. The tablet that Bell carried made communication easier, but not efficient.

“I’m not denying that,” Bell said. “I’m just concerned that there seems to be an entire race of these beings.”

“Rainbow Sky Hellscape locals,” Maya grinned. “I’m sure they’re surprised to see us as well. I wonder how they’ll be, what kind of culture have they created here? What kind of society did they create in a world that doesn’t have anything growable in it, with low ambient mana, with no access to essence mana, also.”

“Perhaps that’ll mean they’re low leveled,” Bell said. “I can handle low level creatures.”

“People, Bell. People,” Maya chided. “Though it does make you wonder, if there’s a whole race of these guys, then does that mean that there was a group of them that arrived together? I mean, maybe there might be other humans or other Bells around here.”

“An interesting question,” Bell said. “There’s only a one in a billion chance that a SIL would survive the crossing. I arrived with ten others, but they all perished.” Bell frowned at the words for a moment and then shook his head. “What are the odds that there would be two of the same species that survived the instability, that they were of breeding age, let alone were able to survive for more than a few months in a place where nothing grows.”

Maya shrugged. “True. But you can’t deny Zono’s scans. He’s been tracking them for days and there have been six distinct different people who have been watching him, all seemingly of the same race.” Maya thought for moment. “Are there, like, SIL that reproduce asexually?”

“There are all kinds of SIL,” Bell said.

“Is that a ‘yes’ or a “I don’t know’?” Maya asked.

“It’s a ‘there are all kinds of SIL’.”

“How about inter-species breeding?” Maya asked. “Can, y’know, two SIL bang and produce a healthy viable offspring?”

Bell shook his head. “There are… ways to accomplish that, but by in large, two different species have two totally alien sets of DNA that are incompatible with one another.”

“So the ultimate contraceptive,” Maya remarked.

“Why would anyone want to… outside of their own species?” Bell shook his head.

“Keep an open mind, Bell. Someday you might come across an alien princess that’ll sweep you off your stubby legs,” Maya grinned.

“My low center of mass keeps me very stable,” Bell grumbled.

A chime bleeped on Bell’s tablet and Maya looked over Bell’s arm to see that the scout rat had picked up signs of the people… goblins… kolbolds? Gobbolds?

“They appear to be burrowers,” Bell said as the image on the tablet showed a small hatch in the ground. It was barely noticeable, a small disturbance that showed the outline of a door among a pile of trash. Maya would not have even noticed, as there were no tracks that lead to the door nor were there any other visible signs that there were creatures around.

“They’ve been this close the entire time?” Maya wondered. They had traveled another ten kilometers from Zono’s mining site, following the projected route the creatures had taken. They had seen some slight signs of something passing through, but nothing more than that.

“If they’re low leveled, then they would be wise to be careful about their presence being noticed,” Bell said. “This place is lousy with rogue AIs.”

“Yeah, they’re probably not playing around with mana cores and system tech like we are,” Maya said.

“What is the plan? Are we going into that hatch?” Bell asked.

“Oh, hell no. Are you crazy?” Maya said. “They might be people, but that doesn’t mean they’re our friends. We make our introductions, we show them that we’re not gonna harm them, and then we leave. The next move is up to them.”

“Ah, well,” Bell said, “your previous actions…”

“Oh, I would totally run into that hole and see if its full of gobbolds, but as they say where I come from ‘when you got responsibilities, you don’t go running into gobbold holes’.”

They entered the buggy once more and drove to where the hatch was located. Maya approached the hatch, while Bell kept watch, and began pulling items from her inventory. She hadn’t been prepared for a first contact situation, but she was glad she hadn’t been organizing her inventory lately.

She pulled out a pile of ration bars, a combination of Bell bars, Yosi bars, and Human bars, then added some bottles of water, a bolt of duracloth that she was going to experiment with, a small stack of decent quality mana batteries, and a tablet with an updated language pack. She didn’t know if the SIL had language translation modules, but if they did the tablet would update them.

“Why are you carrying around ration bars for Yosi and I?” Bell asked.

“Why aren’t you carrying ration bars for Yosi and I?” Maya asked in return.

“Good point,” Bell remarked.

“Alright, let’s bail. We’ll leave a rat behind to keep a lookout, but beyond that we stay hands off.”

Maya climbed back into the buggy and headed back to the Hangy.

“I remember crossing these wastelands by myself,” Bell said as they drove. “There was always the fear of being attacked by rogue AIs, although I would provide them nothing, they seemed very interested in killing living SIL.”

“Maybe it was just you,” Maya quipped.

“Or perhaps I misjudged their intentions and they only wanted to be friends,” Bell said.

“Rogue AIs aren’t all that bad, look at Tender.”

“He is not fully a rogue AI, although he appears as one to other SIL; he is a product of system tech programming. An oddity, but not unheard of. Rogue AIs, after all, are ‘evolved’ forms of system tech AIs.”

“That would mean Nan could become a rogue AI one day?” Maya asked.

“Per-“ Bell stopped and peered into the gloomy landscape. “There’s something out there.”

Maya eased off the accelerator and stopped the buggy. She peered in the direction he pointed to and couldn’t see anything. Her computer worked to clear up what she was seeing, filtering the image on a different window. It took a moment but Maya frowned when she saw the image.

Four figures stood at the base of a trash pile. They weren’t moving and they seemed to be either waiting for them or perhaps they didn’t think they could be seen. Maya watched them for several moments, one of the figures seemed to be talking to the others, but the three other figures didn’t move at all.

“That’s about a kilometer away,” Maya said. “What do you think they’re doing.”

“Watching, evaluating, and deciding what to do with us,” Bell responded.

“Well, let’s be good neighbors and say hello,” Maya said. She started up the buggy again and made a beeline toward the figures. She saw that they saw her coming for them, but they didn’t move. The talking figure stopped and stood statue still like the others.

A feeling of dread suddenly came over Maya.

“Aw, shit,” she said, slamming the brakes. She glanced around and switched the buggy into reverse.

“What is it?” Bell asked.

“Don’t know, but I think my dangersense is popping off,” Maya said. She summoned a weapon and set it down on the seat next to her. Bell began scanning the area with his eyes and the scout rats. On the open window, Maya saw that the four figures were still standing there watching.

“Shit, what is it?” Maya cast her eyes around, turning the buggy into a direction that would take them back to the Hangy.

The ground erupted before them. Maya hit the brakes again, but they were already caught in the fountaining dirt. It blasted upward and she could feel the buggy rising off the ground, it began to tilt and she cursed as it flipped over. The cage like structure of the buggy prevented her from being injured, but Bell had been tossed, along with the scout rats that had been with him.

The buggy landed heavily upside down, the big wheels spinning in the air. Maya groaned and unbuckled herself from the seat, she was suddenly glad she had automatically buckled herself in. She scanned for her weapon, but it was missing. Cursing again, she clamored out of the buggy and began looking for Bell.

The big man was lying crumpled in the dirt, groaning as he got to his feet. He had lost his rifle, but one of the scout rats clung to his ship suit. A wave of relief ran through Maya as she saw he wasn’t hurt.

“What the fuck!” Maya cried, turning toward a hole that appeared before them. It wasn’t an explosion, but it seemed something had forced its way out of the ground.

A moment later Maya saw what had caused the dirt to fountain upward.

“Oh, shit,” Maya said.

Rogue AI GG4587-MI - Level 40

Maya raced toward Bell and stood beside him as the rogue AI pulled itself out of the ground. She looked him over for damage, but he appeared fine. Maya gave him a thumbs up and then changed her outfit. The shipsuit she had been wearing changed into the battle armor. Bell followed suit a moment later.

They both turned to look at the rogue AI, to Maya it looked as if a worm had been crossed with a beetle and then someone had decided to add a thousand grasping legs to it. The carapace of the rogue AI gleamed a dull green under the gloomy light, but she could easily see the hundreds of red glowing eyes that all seemed to be focused upon the two.

“I didn’t know they could burrow underground,” Maya said. “That makes a lot of our defenses useless.”

“I doubt they could burrow through a ship’s hull,” Bell said.

“Okay, you’re right about that.” Maya grinned and looked at the rogue AI as it finally fully emerged from its hole. The creature screeched at them, Maya noticing that it had a pair of pincers around a large hole in what she assumed was its head.

“I believe this is a trap,” Bell said.

“No, shit. Those little turds over there are still watching and I think one is eating popcorn.” Maya didn’t take her eyes off of the rogue AI, but she still had the small window open to watch the other figures. They hadn’t moved. “If those guys live underground and this thing is a burrowing AI…”

“Right. They want us to deal with their problem,” Bell said.

“This is not how diplomacy is done!” Maya shouted toward the distant figures.

“Do we have a plan?” Bell asked.

“You’re the one packing a lot of heat, what do you got?”

“I’ve got five of those helix satchels you made, along with a dozen of your prototype mana pulse grenades, three low grade pistols, and a mid grade laser rifle,” Bell said. “You?”

“Get Big Boy’s attention for about thirty seconds,” Maya said.

Bell sighed and nodded. He summoned a rifle into his hand and began jogging away from her. The rogue AI snapped its pincer head toward Bell and let out another screech. Maya watched it for a second as it made a show of preparing itself to lunge after Bell. The big man began firing on the rogue AI, sending scorching laser fire across its metal body. It screeched in return and began scrabbling toward him, the scores of tiny legs pushing the massive creature forward.

It wasn’t spitting lasers or plasma or shooting artillery shells at them. Maya wondered what its signature weapon was, though it seemed to be designed more for burrowing, so maybe its big guns were something to do with the ground. Maya shrugged and got to work.

Although she had spent the last five days in VR, she had not been idle in building the defensive turrets that they had planned on. The gatling turrets would require a lot of machining and they didn’t have access to that as of yet, but the railguns… Maya had made railguns before.

Maya summoned an emergency mana battery, the heavy mana battery slammed into the dusty ground, kicking up dirt. Next she summoned a simple tripod stand that she quickly set up and finally she summoned the railgun. It was a simple design, like the Sullivan Special, but the redesigned railgun were meant to take down big targets.

She snapped in a prototype sensor box, hooked up half a dozen stout cables between the three devices and flipped on the power switch. It immediately connected to her computer and Maya brought up the targeting window in her vision. It showed a wireframe outline of the rogue AI and another of Bell who was down on all sixes running flat out. He looked pissed.

“Adios, motherfucker,” Maya said and fired the railgun.

THUMP!

She could feel the air around her charge and then as if a pair of giant hands slammed together, the pressure dissipated and a flash of light nearly blinded her through the filters of her faceplate.

If the giant rogue AI could arch its back in pain, it would have. Instead it flopped over onto it’s side, screaming in pain. Maya lined up another shot and fired once more, straight into the exposed belly of the beast.

THUMP!

A hole the size of her head was punched through the armor of the rogue AI’s stomach, an eyeblink later, the marsani chunk of metal blasted out the back of the beast in a shower of red tinged components.

Maya grimaced at the sight. It wasn’t blood, but it still caused a visceral reaction in her. She fired again.

THUMP!

And again.

THUMP!

A beep sounded from the railgun as it hit a recharge cycle, a five second wait as the capacitors greedily sucked up mana from the batteries. She watched as Bell had stopped running and returned toward the rogue AI tossing a pair of pulse grenades and then a pair of satchel charges.

The explosions nearly tore the head off of the creature and Maya grinned as she got a notice.

Rogue AI GG4587-MI - Level 40

Defeated

+ 183 BXP

Lootable

“Easy money.”

One hundred and eighty three billion experience points. Maya grinned, it seemed that what she had been told was true. The more she leveled the more she gained from the enemies she defeated.

She did the math and realized that the 183 BXP was her share of what would have been 366 BXP, but also that the rogue AI had only given out one third of what a SIL would have had at the same level.

As she needed 40 QXP to reach level 52, she would need to kill about two hundred and eighteen thousand level 40 rogue AIs or one hundred and nine thousand rogue AIs singlehandedly or nearly forty SIL singlehandedly.

“Jesus,” she muttered, setting a hand on the railgun and summoning it back into her inventory.

She turned to face the four figures that had been watching them and noticed their numbers had multiplied. Now there were twelve of them, all standing still and watching her. Maya activated her comm unit.

“How’s it looking Bell?” she asked.

“I think we can fit most of this thing into the buggy,” he said. “If you use your looting skill on this thing, we might get something good.”

“Alrighty, buddy. Our spectators have grown also. They’re not moving but I don’t like the fact that we’re outnumbered six to one.”

“Just keep the railgun out, they saw what it did to the rogue AI. If they come running at us, just use it.”

“I’m not entirely okay about using railguns on living beings, pal. Trust me, being hit by a railgun slug is not a pretty thing.”

“Our amazing combat prowess will keep them shocked in place until you tip over the buggy and then find our missing weapons. I’ll handle this rogue AI.”

Maya grunted and headed toward the overturned buggy. She kept a window open on the distant figures, there was still twelve of them and they were still watching.

She wondered how they had all survived. What were they eating. What were they doing? She didn’t see any obvious weapons on them, but in a universe where people were weapons, that didn’t mean anything. She managed to right the buggy and found Bell’s rifle not to far away. A scout rat dug itself out of the ground and scurried over, climbing upon her shoulder and gave her a distorted image of what it had seen.

“Bell!” Maya cried. “We’re on top of a warren of tunnels!”

“Oh, hell!” Bell cried and Maya turned to see him suddenly vanish in a cloud of dust. The body of the rogue AI also was swallowed up by the ground.

Maya cursed, glanced at the window of the figures to see that they too were gone. A moment later the ground opened up under her and Maya was swallowed up by the darkness.

She fell in darkness, the air whistling by her as she scrambled to summon objects into her hand. She made contact with the bottom of the hole a second later and the dark world disappeared.