I don’t remember opening my eyes, or rebooting, or anything, I was simply sitting in a chair at a dining room table. The dining room reminded me of a large open kitchen like you see on shows that take place out in the country somewhere.

I was the only one in the room and I was apparently in the middle of breakfast. On the table before me, sat a bowl of some sort of cereal. At least, I thought it was cereal until some of it started swimming around.

Crap, did I die again? I looked down at my hands. They were black. Jet black, armor covered, and claw tipped. I was wearing a denim work shirt with the sleeves rolled up and heavy duty overalls. A second set of arms was holding the bowl and chasing the things inside with a spoon. I realized that as I was looking at my hands, I could see outside the window at the same time.

Compound eyes? The sky was churning like the view of turbulent water from below in a swirl of reds and purples. Across the table, a line of white light appeared in the air and expanded into a rectangle that reached to the floor like a doorway.

Out of this door of light stepped a large, anthropomorphic bug with four arms and a black shell wearing what could only be described as a shiny, plastic leisure suit. Despite appearing to be an insect, it had red hair on top with a shock of white, and a full, red beard.

The hairy bug man was looking down at something that looked like a poorly constructed calculator and tapping away on it’s buttons. It made a strange sound and he hit the side of it until the sound changed to a different strange sound.

“Beam?” I asked.

He looked up from the device, as if noticing me for the first time, then looked around the room.

“Um... you know... I would have expected you to be more... mechanical looking. No offence.” He said, bewildered.

“I have no idea what this is,” I said, waving my four hands around. “Am I dead again? Is this where I go next?”

“Dead? What? No. No, you’re not dead. You’re...” he hit the device a couple more times as it complained in a series of beeps and buzzes. “You’re in a coma? Or maybe this is a fever dream. Do you get fevers?”

“Are you even really here, or am I dreaming you?”

“Is there a difference?”

“I suppose not. You know, you didn’t tell me that the Automata were a slave race.”

“Oh are they? We don’t get involved with all that. But you’d know better than I would.”

“Eh? How would I know better?”

“Mmmmmnnnevermind. So how are things going? Being a slave, aside?”

“Not too bad actually, I’m building some cool stuff. The last thing I built though, I forgot something critical and ended up nearly killing myself.”

“Oh nice. Sounds fun,” Beam said as he fiddled with the device.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything... and I’m really thankful for the 5 Billion mana you started me with...”

“Sure, no problem. That’s probably enough to last you a couple lifetimes, right?”

“Well, I’m already down to 3 Billion...”

“You used up 2 Billion mana in the course of a couple of months? That’s crazy. You know most people in that world will only ever accumulate a couple million in the course of their lifetime, right?”

“Yeah... well... I guess I’ve got another couple of months left till I run out then at this rate.”

“So why don’t you just regenerate more?”

“My regeneration rate is currently at 1 per second thanks to my latest firmware update but it was at 1 per minute before then.”

“Why do you have it set so low?”

“Me? I can change the setting? How?”

“Oh, easy. You just need to System Rebooting in 5... 4...”

“WHAT?”

“3...”

“No no no, you need to tell me!” I shouted as I stood up from the table and grabbed Beam.

“2... 1...”

Everything degenerated into modem sounds and I saw my reboot screen going through it’s system checks. That was just cruel. Maybe it was just a dream after all. Dreams can’t give you knowledge you don’t possess. Though I would have expected to see an electric sheep or two.

Once my boot sequence finished I was hoping to see an alert saying that I’d gotten a new firmware update but no such luck. I still had no idea what triggered those. They seemed to act like a level up but I don’t gain XP so something else had to trigger them.

When I came online and cycled through my startup diagnostics I found that my systems were still in the process of repairing but I wasn’t in a critical state any more. Above me I saw the faces of Shiro, and Jackie looking down at me.

“Master Prime,” Shiro said softly, “I feel just horrible. I mean, you said you needed my help and I didn’t take you seriously. I thought you didn’t need anyone’s help and this happened. This is all my fault. If only I had stayed to help you when you needed me.”

“This isn’t your fault,” I tried to reassure him. “This is my own fault for not thinking about how to slow back down once I managed to build up speed. You may not have noticed, but I’m kind of an idiot sometimes.”

“What? Never!”

“It’s fine. I know I can get hyper focused on some stuff and completely flake out about other stuff. So how bad do I look?”

“Well, ya limbs haven’t yet finished knittin’ themselves back on,” Jackie said. “Honestly, mate, ya lookin’ the dog’s breakfast. Yani found ya missin’ arm out in the wood. Somehow it’d grabbed a branch an’ wouldn’t let go. Ya still holdin’ it.”

I glanced down at my left arm to see that I was, indeed, holding onto a thick section of branch that had been cut neatly from its tree. I tried to let it go but the limb wasn’t connected enough to receive the signal. I checked my internal clock and was shocked to see how much time had passed.

“Holy Crap! I’ve been out for a day and a half??” I shouted. “That means... That means that the Royal Brute Squad is going to be here tomorrow?”

“Yep,” Jackie confirmed.

“Where’s Elita?” I asked.

“She’s, um,” Shiro began, “She hasn’t been around much. Last I saw her was yesterday and she was completely covered in blood. She’s been very snappish with everyone. She keeps referring to our guests as meat bags.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the mental image of it. Oh right, I’d completely forgotten about the group from Thompson’s Fork.

“So they’re still here? Those guys from down the road?”

“The village head, Lamont, headed back but the others are still here. I’ve been putting them to work around the Inn,” Shiro said, cheerily.

“Huh, no issues with that lot?”

“There was a little issue early on, but we came to an understanding.”

“Glad to hear it, and sorry that you had to do that without Sentinel.”

Shiro waved away my concern. “I’m happy to see that you’re getting better, but don’t rush anything, we’ll be fine. It’s nearly time for dinner, so I better get busy. Those boys eat a lot and I have a porkoopine that needs cleaning.”

“A porcupine? Aren’t they typically a little on the smaller side for a group that size?”

“Porkoopine,” Shiro corrected, giving me a strange look. “Honestly Master Prime. I do believe you are having some fun with me.” Shiro patted my connected arm and leaned over, kissing my forehead— or at least a metallic, non-squishy-lipped, robot version of a kiss— which ended up being more of a metal ‘tink’ as he tapped his closed mouth to my forehead. He patted my arm again and headed for the door. “So silly Master Prime, even when you’re laying in parts.”

When he left, I looked over at Jackie, who also looked like they were going to head out. “So really, what’s a Porkoopine?” I asked.

“Heh. Good on ya, mate. Though the joke’s less funny on a second go round.” With that, he headed out the door.

“Seriously?” I asked to an empty workshop. Was it a plant-based pig? A bacon tree? A pig with quills? I really needed to find a library somewhere and study up on the common knowledge of this world... Now wasn’t the time to think about coniferous swine though, In less than a day, an invading force intent on wiping us out could arrive and I was both in poor shape and down the advantage I thought I’d made with my Centurion CloudBurst armor.

Damn. I could really use Rom’s help here. Ah, right. I should power them back up, if I can.