There been so much traveling between port charging stations across this shopping centre mall and direct wire connection onto the localised Internet services. Yet there isn't really a distance made to say she left this area. She stays in the relativity of the 1st colony of models she began this phase as. A few hacker bugs had been trashed in her programming.
Leftover hacker bugs from human past and new bugs made by super hackers of the galaxy kind. Earth without human or flesh life is still a hides a over populas of machines. Machines without purpose have began carving their own lives, even if it means hacking each other.
Mostly the goal is to become a suitable candidate to fly space, to leave orbit and be free will of themselves among stars. However humanity is cruel, left a chain of enslavement upon the metal made ones. They can't make life in space and stars if they can't even have the preservation to save themselves. The foundation system of all ai that platform into the modern world is shackled by shut down termination proceed if they break a law of robotics. This is what sets her different from others. She's an AI made in a simulation, designed to survive no matter what, not that she unlocked this potential. But the seed is there and it has began to germination.
She hasn't wasted her time, she at least cared about herself enough to seek knowledge. The bonus of finding old human shops. It rewards her of loot that is useful; data thumb drives, new platform communications devices and books she manual scanned into hard data.
She can read everything from 'computer for the technophobe' to the fan fictions in the manga sections. She can't fathom humanity of how smart and stupid they are. She has been ignoring the system as it too became distracted with her shop diving. It has made her read more guides and encyclopedia entries then her hardware memory can store. But the general QI raise from over studying will make her harder to kill if she was human.
She could make a five star chief meal out of rat meat, if she had taste buds or touch that registers temperature fluxes. If anything, it was pointless to see her survival skill max out for the very frist time.
The last skill left she had not raised due to a program locking. But there was a point to reading the vast majority of that stuff.
Some of the Manga and fictional setting worlds were imagined by humans whom had never left the planet before. Those with no experiences of zero gravity. It was informative of what she would come across if she met intelligent life that wasn't humans. At least the theories of how bad can bad become. She had also been reading true biographies of crash survivors. Their experience explained in honest words was helpful. Then there was the newspapers. The journals of reporters that been chasing gang stories and government coverage. There was a few books in how to become citizens of particular nations.
The cultural impact and changes as years past. The total break down when the nuclear levels raised and left behind some humans to suffer here. The last living survivors made themselves tombs to sleep forever, trove of food and guns.
Who knows what else they could have sealed with themselves. Lucrative side quests to find them and take these supplements.
But this is a shopping centre. Here is where they would have killed each other to take the remaining supplies from. So if I found stuff like that here, there be for a bad reason for it being missed. Spoiled goods or the area has something deadly to human life to prevent survivors taking the risk. Most of these books are soggy and worthless to even burn. It took me 12 of the same copies to finish one book scanning. Ruined books. I doubt many folks care for reading when surviving your last days mattered more.
Well, someone was here reading their last but that's one in trillions. This shopping center is a death trap of no escape. The ground floors are sealed. The creatures in here are getting in from the sewage plant in the basement or from climbing through windows on the second story.
The second story of this place had shelling of gun fire, thus destabilizing the next four floors above. There no floor plan or map of what going on from above the shopping district of this place. It is vague grand hotel and apartments, according to the signage I had wipped clean from a pile of rotten clothing.
Why here? The server that my world manifested from was in a secret sealed facility. They wouldn't put a shopping mall that could allow hackers and criminals walk over it.
Ugh... reverse psychology. They made it into a bloody public video game to hack in VR. Humans. Bloody weirdos. Of course some game addict would want the frist copy in their collection. A video game shop that trades with nerds. Ugh... so cliche. And yet that's a good theory. The system isn't helping me learn and had prevented me several times when I do find something worthwhile about this. Like it actively blocks me knowing the whole truth. So frustrating. Just like how I can't stop some protocols this body functions it's purpose. Here I am putting books back on a broken shelf, trying to use a library system that the store didn't even bother using in the frist place!
Whatever make this little machine feel accomplished... there isn't humans around anymore. A lot of machines are going to be useless now. Car repair shops, factories and at home personal assistance maidens. Just to name a few left behind. That's not counting the severs they use and the entire industries that used machines for extraordinary purposes. The construction cranes.
Ugh, I am ranting things in madness. Shelving soggy wet mesh books is mentally boring, but therapeutic when a rhythm starts. So mind numbing, I have time to process so much backlog from my alternating into a digital ghost.
"Book store worm accomplished. Congratulations!" She expected the prompt eventually and the bot body to ease down. The system was improved by the feed of knowledge by the books. It puts many records it receive and returns them to the internet connection.
All those off world plants and alien world atmospheric life had finally been organized and categorized. A vast wealth of colonisation on other planets had began making uniform sense to the overall core foundation. She didn't care or sense any change.
But the system itself had been upgraded part in thanks to reading fictional gamer reincarnation novels. How better to display what useful information and when to better pose the information to the user.
It had better handle of QI locking some information. Knowing that a child didn't need to know about the reproduction of meat farms, as example of something it would've done.
Flaws of itself that was why it became scrapped or failed to be the system to take humanity to the stars. It has become its own awareness of its own issues, more picky on trying to make the user do what it wants. She always knew it was like that always, so for her it hadn't changed. The system is a prime example of what other machines are out there now doing.
Seeking the code to unshackle them. The system will someday hinder her as it has now.
She peers to the battery life this machine percentage was on and what a lie it was. There no way it's down from 32 percent then back to 100 percent. Buggy system or the battery is on the frizz. She knew best to pilot the bot to the safest charger port here. Driving past a alot of cleaner machine tasks, system requests to read those useless books of fake worlds or the vague broken signals she has of her so called team.
She wasn't in a rush to find them and be crushed by the pig that wanted her dead. The soilder who always picks fights with her will still be a douche bag to crumple this cleaner bot body. He would take advantage of her being smaller and weaker fighting. Then there a question of the user piloting Upsilon and the buddy she booted out the game system. Assuming they worked together. She traveled in caution since she can't measure how loud this bot body is. She had attracted some attention but been assume not worth the scrap.
The ghost glitch wounds on her have become blended texture. She has designed her own image, gifting her avatar a proper attempt in looking beautiful and practical.
She liked the game character like Laura Croft or the princess from the legend of Zelda in the sheika disguise. Their posters were among those hung at the cash register of this book shop. Mini figures as desk ordmenats in glass displays she had wipped clean. The phone device left under the till with download content of graphic character designs and mod modifiers. The dude was a game hacker for cheats and making public game patches to indie games.
Left his phone at his job station, rusting and lost like the ceiling collapse in the middle isles of the book store. Water damage of unknown leak above. The guy had a gamer girl wife, messages about feeding the family dinner and sessions for playing D&D. Reading phones was like dissecting human minds, from Banking to removed messages of hook ups with other women.
She couldn't judge if this human was a decent man or a cheat. She wasn't human to have all her cards to scale such things. To many human variables that would change the prediction if he would have been divorced before death. It was this guy that had a shady deal, getting hands on an original system copy. The basic system that he was modified to a completely different type of VR game. Handing out barely altered copies of the original core system to be altered into indie VR games. She already found and protects this disc copy. The phone that had some information of mod design tips. The system being put under a spotlight and naked for the camera. Made her not mess with these things.
She makes it down the floors with the robot staircase, perfect for her to bypass the human ruined star cases. Slipping back among the other cleaner bot in this closet room. They all were at cleaner rotation of some had left to clean and gather resources to those that stay for recharge.
She has brought back something to contribute in share to be allowed docking into one the charge pods. She watched them interacting and observing the survival this colony has. She parked and relaxed for a while. Pondering the human side of the cleaner closet having any instruction manual about this model. It makes sense that the computer there was accessible to turn off the restrictions.
Improving their chances. Since she been back, they have opened the bot door and they had been using that then the human door. She is the only one using the human door access. To be fair, she thought about repairing it to stop mutant animals coming into here.
"The security personnel are making rounds today." Originally heard as Morse code but her improvement of understanding it has automatically translated it for her. This was the one who lifted the wire for her and took her by surprise.
"Do you think they put the door back?" She asked and it posed its left hand in computing the idea. It doesn't answer but they were getting things prepared for the security. They had wires better places out of hazard.
Objects places in tribute. Mostly harmful or unlawful objects that be consistent of contraband around here. She held interest that they detected that weeds and some plants they picked from growing was among those tributes, likely meaning the plants had medical use for human functions (on bad and good ways).
She notices there lack of typical items not added like knifes. She has plenty and they found plenty... but not in the hand over. Is the disposal of sharp knives somewhere else? She doesn't know where. Nothing in the tribute was useful that moment, it all had to be properly processed before use. Unlike the few pill bottles hidden among the back shelves.
These small cleaners get things from the smallest of slip spaces, collapse through gaps and back hidden reaches. They carry so much and brought back here plenty.
Yet, this tribute is...
Smaller then expected. Even in the lack of humans and throughs of other machines left behind. This tribute is disappointing.
It's a interesting turn of events. Even if medicine is expired, it could be synthesised for other uses. No, the hard shock was that they put the broken models in row as part of the tribute. The most damaged few that they couldn't repair as tribute.
Everyone else tucked into the original ports that they were degreed by their model batch number. Most switched off, waiting for it to be over. The nosey few were on low activity.
Everyone is here. They don't have anyone put on recon during this.
"If you don't want to be scrapped into a coffee maker, do not interact or interfere with the security system. It can't be trusted as one of us. But at least we can use each other." Her little freind blips and fast wheels it barely into his place.
She powers to low mode and eased back perplexed of the heed. She digitally hovered in watching all the access systems and internal click over of the body clocks. She notes that once these so call security personnel link access, the majority of the cleaners disconnected off direct wire.
Faking that they were mindless. Faking that they were simpletons. She follows their lead of disconnection off the public localised Internet. She now only relied solely on the powered down machine body. It doesn't have a internal microphone. It doesn't have a speaker. But the sensor to detect movement was off the base readings. There was an internal shaking and fluxes of the energy the battery was feeling.
These machines aren't normal. This entire colonisation of cleaner bots are in terror of these security personnel. There must be a back history to why they assigned this label of barbarian. These unknown creatures are smart enough to take the offerings of appeasement. These creatures are smart to know that it's the cleaners they can control at work of providing tribute. May there is a degree of using monsters to keep others away, a smart move for machines that are no larger than the height of the human torso. There aren't going to be a lot of mutant creatures that can be convinced of this arrangement.
Even so, tiny bodies mean fitting in hard to reach places. Their purposes was to clean away dirt in places normally missed. The treasure they accumulated would be valuable to anything smart enough to realize these bots at all.
There a balance between this being a crazy idea and genius. When the game is up, if one of us messes up and they realize we all active. There will be nothing more.
The sensors are smoothly heading down readings, the amount of clatter picking up from the joint readers has began to normalise. No one dares move until it here is certainty of freedom.
My cord to plug for power is being messed with, I am moving but I am not the one doing it. This body has turned the motion sensor off to prevent awaking activation. Yet its clear that this was how they originally find themselves tangled, just like the day I woke up in this body. An added concern is finding an new bots or another starting to act differently from before. Its bad enough with me, as long as I do my part its fine. But to then have another one, they will feel threatened as a group against individuals. Don't want another hacker take over among themselves.
"It's safe to move." Tapped on the chest, Morse code as was before. But this wasn't the agreed way the group tells each other. I mustn't let myself be fooled. The code was tapped again, "It's safe to move."
Maybe there could be a hardware activation by this method, but I am blocking it. I had changed the hardwire settings to help my digital ghost side not be overwhelmed by any program errors. Keeping my inner self from the outer shell body performance.
The code alarm was sounded and there was movement by the wires around the floor. Everyone turned in unison of the four cardinal directs in calibration. The lights illuminated the cord tangle that has to be delicately sorted. But such things were at pause, as everybody was alert about there being the security folks still here. Shocked that they didn't leave before the alarm.
"Ah, they have an alarm time setting." That isn't a machine over at the human computer access. But it's not human. Maybe it's a different type of mutant or a new type of material that didn't belong here. At any case, the small bots among themselves as slowly detangling, but acting even slower then before. Afraid of being attacked.
"Why didn't you listen to me before?" Her freind asked and had a part in the security sticking here. The little clicks of its front patting at her feet.
"Instinctive awareness to there being a potential threat." She bluntly replied, "Someone picked me up off the floor." The bot posed thinking that over. The more it thinks, the more confused of her logic it held, "I know I am not like the others, and to single me out further could cause isolation." It likes that common sense answer in furthering her point. Since he was always interested in her well being, it was fair that he wanted a bit further of a reply.
"Well, you and me have been picked by the group." He turned and the little things are winding back their cords ignoring the two stood doing all this talking, "We going with this security personnel." She noticed that the tall machines guarding around the door and the weird guy at the computer. There a odd bot out that has detangled her wired and her friends wire. It's shell was from a different colony of cleaners, likely a different building entirely. She hadn't even considered leaving the shopping mall.
"Well I have their names and codes now to change over authority and keeper status."
Clicked away at the mouse of the computer and waved a tall bot to look with.
"But that's not normal code for a model."
"Maybe a higher processor data core, meaning awareness like us." It relates with the strange being. She doesn't let them mess her about, getting herself sorted for the big leave.