“This is Prime. He helped me out during a quest to hunt a Thunder Bear,” Shea offered.

Jada stared hard at me again. “You’re Unclaimed.”

“I’m not some lifeless magic tool. I’m as Unclaimed as you are.” All this talk of Unclaimed and Automata being regarded on the same level as a toaster was really beginning to piss me off.

Jada narrowed her eyes. I imagine not having any facial expressions made it hard to get a read on me. Then she burst out into laughter and slapped me on the back. “Quite right, young fella, quite right.” All the tension in the room evaporated just like that. Shoulders I didn’t know were tense relaxed, and I slumped a bit.

Shea laughed nervously then said she was going to go up to her apartment to start making some lunch. The mention of lunch made me pause and think for a moment. “Now that you mention it... I haven’t eaten or slept at all since I first woke up, but I don’t feel tired or hungry.”

“You haven’t been an Automata for long then, have you Mr. Automata?” asked Jada. “Automata don’t need food or sleep. They live purely on Mana and absorb it from their surroundings. That’s why they are so often the perfect soldiers and servants.”

I checked my data page and, sure enough, my health had gone back up to 100/100. “So what exactly are Automata then? I have memories, feelings; I know I’m a person.”

Jada nodded. “Put simply, Automata are the dead brought back to life. Spirits that haven’t moved on or those of the recently dead are forcibly sealed into a puppet body and inscribed by magic to fit a specific purpose, and they are compelled to obey their masters.”

“So Automata like Elita were once people, and after they died their spirit was captured and enslaved?”

“That’s the short of it. She could have been a lingering spirit, but most likely she was some poor villager that was murdered so that her spirit could be trapped in that body and forced to fight for her country.”

“That’s horrible! How does a country get away with that?”

“Anything can be justified. The Automata soldiers perfectly obey, don’t need food or sleep, and don’t need training. Often the people that are murdered are children that the parents can’t afford or are homeless beggars. From what I understand, though, the spirits don’t have any memory of their previous life, so in a way it’s a mercy.”

“I have a full recollection of my past life. Though it’s a little different from what you’d expect.”

“Which is why I don’t understand what you are, Mr. Automata. You don’t seem to fit the usual description, and you seem to be able to wield magic. I’ve never heard of an Automata that can do magic on its own before.”

“There are magic swords and stuff, right? Don’t they have magic?”

“Not really. They have spells and incantations inscribed into them, sure, but it’s the warrior channeling their own mana through the device that casts the magic, and only if the warrior already has an affinity for that magical element. There have been Artificers, craft people, that have tried to inscribe elemental magic into Automata bodies, but it seems that spirits lose whatever affinity they had in life. So there’s no magic type that they can use. In the end, they end up being like that magic sword and needing someone else to channel their mana through them to cast spells.”

I had a lot more questions about how magic worked here. So far the magic things that I’ve done haven’t lined up at all with how this is supposed to work. Did I have an affinity with any of the elements? Nothing so far has been “elemental.” I would have to do some experimenting when I had the time. Before I could ask Jada more, the code compiler finished doing its thing, and a second magic circle lifted off of the first one till it was above the cat body and started rapidly pouring magic glyphs and runes of light into the body. This must have been the compiled code installing. Automata firmware? Hopefully, it would work right and I hadn’t messed something up for the cat soul that was getting installed in this body.

The cat body took on a radiant glow as the firmware installed, but in no time the process completed, the body softly settled back down on the table, and the magic circles evaporated. I opened up [Console] to take a look and got an installation setup screen. I had to input a name, but everything else was already a part of the firmware installation. I thought about it for a second then laughed at myself inwardly as I keyed in the new name.

“We’ll call you... Ravage.”

I entered in the initialization and boot sequence commands and crossed my fingers. The console log showed me it was going through a bunch of start-up tests and functions, and then the cat opened its eyes and lifted its head to look around. Like mine, its eyes were black gems, but it had a purple light emanating from them instead of blue. Interesting... Hopefully, I didn’t just create a Decepticon here. They weren’t red, so they should be fine, right? The cat slowly got up on its paws, stretched, then walked in a shaky way over to Jada and bumped its head into her chest. I saw tears welling in Jada’s eyes as she gingerly put her hand on the Automata cat’s back.

“T... Tibbins? My little Tibbins?” she said, her voice quivering.

The cat looked up at her and meowed. Well, it tried to meow. The sound that came up was more like an old modem connecting. Yeah, I would have to do something about that. Jada cried openly and put her face to the cat’s armored head. I felt like I was smiling; I mean, in my head I was smiling, but I don’t think my face actually changed. I was tempted to touch my face to see if it had moved at all, but that would have ruined the mood, so I abstained. I rested my elbows on the workbench to put my head at their level.

“Her name is Ravage now,” I told her.

“Hello Ravage, it’s so lovely to get to meet you again.”

I stood up and cleared my throat, or at least made a throat-clearing type of sound, and pointed at Ravage in a commanding pose.

“Ravage, transform!”

Jada looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Eh??”