Fluttershy stood by and watched as Bonnie went to work on the small blue DOK, apparently when they were fully functional they were dangerous and in this inoperative state they were nothing more than a pile of metal. She looked to Roller who was looking out the door to the container for anything that might be coming, Bonnie had assured them that the train’s normal security might have been overridden by the robots with the deadly laser rifles that would have ripped through even Mr. Wheel’s carapace. Frightening prospects aside, she giggled at Bonnie lamenting that the big red highlighted DOK was the most damaged one.
“This is DOK number 777, the fact that it’s still in an operable state says a lot about how well built these old pieces of technology are.” Things were too quiet for Bonnie’s taste and she tried to fill the space with the sound of her own voice. She pulled out the circle on the left side of the barrel and stuffed her left arm into and started tweaking the inner workings protected by the outer shell, a second later a hatch in the shell opened up when she pulled her arm out and pushed the rod back in. “Give me a minute or two and this thing will be running, might even help me get the other two into a comparable state. Wish I was more of an engineer like some of my brothers and sisters, they’d have this thing running in seconds instead of minutes.”
“Why do people always create robots for violence? I mean I’ve been to so many places, they always seemed to be used for violent purposes and from what I know they are almost always made for it. How do some of the robots I’ve met have souls while others don’t? It’s been kind of a thing that bugs me and none of my friends are space travelers except for maybe Katrina as she’s on a planet that has guard robots.” There were always questions buzzing around in Fluttershy’s heads and since she didn’t have anything to do she’d thought to ask them of a being who was created with a soul. She didn’t exactly understand how one can simply create life either and was just as curious about Bonnie’s family. “Everyone is special in their own way Bonnie. I think it’s just as amazing that you even know what to do to make it work, because I haven’t a clue how robots work aside from the fact that I’ve been assaulted by a lot of really bad ones.”
“Oh, we’re getting into philosophy one oh one here. Dad always likes to talk about doing things because you can, not because you should or it is even a good idea to begin with. Robots as you’ve probably met come in several levels; they start out simply as tools. Do you know what a hammer is?” Looking up from the innards of the machine she was burrowing the upper half of her body into, Bonnie saw Fluttershy nod. Bonnie went to Fluttershy and pulled a tool or two she stole of some thugs she could use to help get the DOK operational. “Well the more complicated you try to make the hammer the more likelier you are to create artificial intelligence which can bleed into becoming a real intelligence, when a robot gains real intelligence they also gain emotions close to that of a wild animal. A simple machine that can perform functions at the actions of the user is a robot that has no self reliant ability, like a hammer. A machine that can do some of the work by itself for you is when you hit artificially intelligent territories, basically giving the machine information to do a job and then it will do that one job without the constant need for observation or hands on approach where you are wielding the tool personally so much as the tool wields itself. That’s what robots start out as, highly advanced tools which can do some things a biological entity can’t. After a certain point of advancement you’ve created a new race that has limited senses with which to interact with their environment and you can even teach them right from wrong. Not all robots are made for violent purposes, you’ve only been unlucky enough to meet the ones that are and the reason for their existence is so that others don’t have to fight. It’s a perfectly good way to avoid personal injury or suffering when you can just send something that doesn’t feel pain and never tires except when it runs out of energy.”
“Well how does the soul form or when does it form in a robot? When your dad made you, did you already have a soul? I’ve met a robot that can actually feel pain and some that have emotions.” Fluttershy wasn’t the only one curious with perked up ears to hear the answer as she could hear scribbling through the memory stone still lodged in her ear. XR was one of the first metallic beings Fluttershy had met that can feel things. “I don’t entirely understand how something lifeless can suddenly gain life.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m considered an illegal living entity. My dad creates every last one of us with emotions and the ability to know what we’re doing, he makes us start with a soul and puts information into our head to tell us what we’re good at and what we’re made to do. He also made use to be quite constructively destructive or highly annoying. The contention comes in when we don’t want to be what he made us to be anymore, that’s a huge problem for me and my brother. We’re hard wired to be kleptomaniacs and breaking that programming is impossible as far as I can tell, I’m the living version of a robot being that I’m an artificial life that would not naturally occur in nature.” After that Bonnie became silent as she worked over the DOK and tamped down on her anger at her dad, she hated him so much and yet loved him at the same time for giving her life. She continued working on the innards and after a moment she made the panel close and stepped back. All she had to do was wait and see what happens. “As for the thing about the soul forming, that’s when robots actually gain the ability to feel loss when they lose parts of their bodies or their minds. How it forms… well that is an interesting theory made by my father who spends most of his time making biological creatures like me. It’s all about energy, all life in the universe can be spawned from energy and robots are always powered by some source of energy. When something unexpected happens to robots energy like they get struck by lightning or are improperly rebuilt after destruction, a soul can start to form from that moment. Heck something as simple as sneezing on one might cause them to get a soul as any form of energy can cause a robot become more than what it was made for. Sometimes it could take millions of years for a robot to even gain a sense of identity if given a minimal amount of artificial intelligence to act outside the box they start out as.”
“Which is why you resent the rest of your family, because your father made it that much harder for you to get out of your box? Were the rest of your family able to do that?” Cringing at being so tactless, Fluttershy witnessed Bonnie looking at the floor while clenching her fist. It took a moment, but Bonnie finally relaxed.
A movement occurred that gained the three’s attention the little blue highlighted barrel went through an activation sequence. The top lifted upwards and it produced three small tubes with lenses that acted as the DOK’s eyes. The stand at the bottom of the barrel pushed upwards as the two circles at the sides pushed outwards and the rods unfolded into two five fingered arms then pushed back inwards slightly. At the bottom two wings unfolded and telescoped out of the structure, two jets formed and erupted from the bottom of the wings and the machine was hovering before them. After a moment the machine ceased hovering and sat on its stand and a beam swept the space in front of it, afterwards it was seemingly waiting for them to do something.
“While I can think outside the box to steal just about anything, I just haven’t been able to move outside my personal box when it comes to breaking my habit of needing to steal which is what I was made to do.” Having it brought up to her face made Bonnie a bit sour about how she and her brother couldn’t break their programming through using their talents for positive reasons. They’ve tried once or twice, but it always came back to that hunger to commit larceny. She just stowed the stolen tools back with Fluttershy, then turned to address the DOK. “DOK Seven Seven Seven, are you operational?”
The robot lifted its left arm, it gave them a general thumbs up gesture with its hand. Fluttershy had little clue what that meant but Bonnie obviously took it as a good sign so she didn’t say anything.
“I am Bonnie and this is Fluttershy, will you take orders from us?” Again they received another thumbs up and this time Bonnie frowned. “I guess it’s artificially intelligent, not really intelligent and given enough time and energy like I was...”
Fluttershy was about to ask why Bonnie stopped talking when the robot went through several motions with both its hand and seeing the dumb looks it was getting, it projected a screen with scan data of the three biological beings in the container. It was also projecting one image of itself and text.
“Huh would you look at that. He’s smart enough to tell us that he’s not artificially intelligent. He hit real intelligence a long time ago.” The machine made some loud clicking and whirring noises and then chirruped at Bonnie’s statement. “He’ll follow us because he’s has nothing better to do at the moment and the last thing he remembers is the destruction of the guardian of a ship that had captured the one he was previously a part of.”
“Well there’s something I know you can’t steal Bonnie and it can only be given to others. It’s something I think you are beginning to like. Um… hello there, I come in peace and I offer my friendship to you and maybe we can get your two friends moving as well.” Pointing with a hoof Fluttershy watched as the three lenses pushed inwards and outwards for a second, it stopped projecting an image and it turned to see the other two DOKs in disrepair. It quickly snapped back to the ones before it and gave two thumbs up. “Um, can you fix them?”
The robot just waved a hand at Fluttershy in answer; it started its jets and moved closer to the other two DOKs and landed on its stand a short distance between them. It turned its head around after casting a beam over the other two DOKs, it turned to Bonnie and Fluttershy to project an image of the damages incurred on them and what it would take to make them operational again. Only Bonnie could read the readout, while Fluttershy was rather clueless as to what it was trying to show them. Judging by the images, Fluttershy saw that they were hurt badly and she didn’t know how to heal them as she only worked with biological beings like Roller.
“Yeah, that’s going to be a bit of a problem there designation ‘Lucky Day’, just telling you right now we’re stealing you so you can help us out with a project of mine.” Bonnie saw the readout on the projected screen change and read it. “He says as long as we can assist in the repairs of his two comrades, he doesn’t care where he’s taken or what we want him to do. He wants to feel useful and he’d like to be friends with us or more importantly you.”
“That’s very nice of him.” Fluttershy said with a smile to the machine which projected something to Bonnie.
“He says he likes your presence and his scanners show odd energy fluctuations in your body giving off waves of unknown energy that make him feel operationally a hundred and twenty percent despite only being eighty eight percent combat ready.” Taking in more of the readout on the holographic display coming from the robot, Bonnie included in a deadpan tone. “Lucky Day here just doesn’t have any weapons at the moment and is sad he can’t be at peak operational efficiency for you.”
“It’s okay; you don’t need weapons to be my friend. You just woke up and you’re good enough to me.” Fluttershy trotted up to the robot and gave him a hug, the robot went into a slight shock and then returned the hug as gently as possible as to not hurt her.
“Well that’s all fine and dandy, but we need to get off this train before it reaches the next station. With the other two DOKs inoperable we’re not going to be able to get anywhere and this small one won’t be able to carry both of… them?” Bonnie watched as the little lightly armored DOK lifted both its comrades and barely managed to carry both of them in its arms. “Yeah well we still need to safely get off the train without damaging you even worse, we’re currently in a high speed hovering vehicle and if you were to fly too high the anti air turrets could get a lock on and vaporize you.”
The DOK moved outside the container he was found in and started sending out a beam to scan its environment while Bonnie, Fluttershy and Roller followed. It set down the two damaged DOKs and started scanning the containers and after a moment it stopped and reared back its fist before punching a small hole in a chest like container and started peeling back the metal flaps with both arms. It pointed another digital display in Bonnie’s direction.
It took Fluttershy a moment, but she noticed that some of the cargo containers on the upper part of the enclosed car were missing their contents. That’s likely where two of those deadly guard robots came from.
“On sight procurement of supplies granted, none of it belongs to any of us anyway and it’s illegal for the ones who do own it to have. So do go ahead and take whatever you might need.” After giving it the go ahead, Bonnie watched as it picked through a bunch of illegal weapons until it came to a particular weapon which it scanned. After a moment it started pulling out and cannibalizing parts from some spherical offensive drones known as a War Heads and started in on fixing the green highlighted middle sized DOK. It also took a moment to take up a laser pistol in the cache of weapons and stashed it away for later. “Yeah, if you can get that one operational before we pull into the station we’ll be able to get off easily.”
-
Thirty minutes later, the train pulled into the station with tons of scorch marks all along it and several destroyed anti-air high powered laser cannon turrets. It was barely hovering and severely damaged and looked to have been put through hell. Forty miles from that were two operational DOKs, one of which depleted the rest of the train’s security forces in five minutes by itself while armed only with a single pistol.
“So it wasn’t as easy as I thought, but hey, at least we’re all still alive and got two of them up and running. Maybe the cargo ship we’re here to acquire will have enough spare parts to get the big guy operational.” It was kind of funny to Bonnie that as soon as the DOK had almost finished getting the second DOK barely operational they were beset by two more groups of those Compu-Killers. Fluttershy had obviously stayed out of the firefights that started up and was amazed what that one DOK alone was capable of.
“Yes, but did he really have to destroy half the train while doing it?” As the little blue DOKs name would suggest and was readily apparent to Fluttershy, he was insanely lucky for a robot to have survived that mess. Even Bonnie had gotten shot in mid motion dive, whereas Lucky moved so fast it almost seemed like the shots that weren’t even fired at him.
The small blue DOK ‘Lucky Day’ scouted out the path ahead of the procession moving through the space port; it had its procured pistol held readily in its left hand as it scanned around for any sign of danger to his new friends and somewhat owners. It had been some time before he had been a forward scout and emergency repair robot, now it was happy to perform the job it once had long ago.
The medium sized green one was called ‘Lead Affront’ and she was armed with a high powered laser rifle stolen from one of the Compu-Kill robots that was held in her right hand. Ms. Affront was also carrying the big red highlighted inactive DOK on her left shoulder following behind the three living beings that were making their way to steal a cargo ship. The last thing she remembered was the destruction of the Guardian of the ship that took theirs captive. Lead was an all purpose model DOK who happened to specialize in hacking and forward assaults. She wasn’t fully operational until her shields and servos were repaired. At the moment she could only look like she was dangerous, which she would proudly do for the new friends and or owners.
So far nobody was stopping them or accosting them, then again two dangerous looking floating robots with a large heavily damaged third one made it well know to the aliens meandering around the space port that they were definitely not someone you’d want to mess with. So they thought it better if they ignored the two biological beings and the third mechanical looking one between the two truly dangerous things.
Lead whirred and clicked several things while looking out for hostile targets, she was having a nice conversation with Roller who apparently could speak robot despite not being one himself with his revving tones and his own whirs and squeals. Their conversation was quite enlightening for the both of them.
“Hey Lucky, have you found it yet?” After calling out the leader of the procession Bonnie received a flat handed shake meaning he hadn’t yet and was still looking for the requisite ship to requisition. “Okay, any more questions about souls you’d like to discuss? I don’t think I finished telling you that most souls are made of pure energy which a portion forms a consciousness.”
“It’s okay, we don’t have to talk about your family if you don’t want to.” Fluttershy saw the look of respect she got from Bonnie and decided to ignore it, because Bonnie would likely never admit to having looked at her like that.
“Actually I do feel like talking about it. My family is not exactly the cleanest around. Each one of us has an annoying or destructive purpose in life and that continued to be a thing up until my youngest brother, experiment Six Two Six whose name is Stitch.” At this moment Bonnie decided to bite the bullet and fully open up to Fluttershy about how she got to this moment just as they were standing outside the docking room to the cargo vessel they were here to steal. “Everything my dad ever worked for in making us little unnatural monsters and vast nuisances was flip flopped entirely by one incident, it started when they finally managed to catch my brother after his bloodless rampage all over the Galactic Alliance.”
Bonnie told the story of Lilo and Stitch. She started with the story about a little girl who didn’t have her parents anymore with only her big sister to watch over her and how they would soon be torn apart from one another. Things turned around completely when Lilo found her youngest brother and the fact that he crashed in the worst possible location for spreading havoc everywhere. Then she went in-depth about why an island was a bad place for a being that was almost completely incapable of swimming. Her youngest brother was meant to be a little monster and a brat, another one of a kind monster like all of her father’s creations.
Even as Fluttershy listened to the story, she took noted that the Lead had already hacked open the ramp leading into the ship and had led them aboard. It was quite sad that the little filly was like Apple Bloom in a way, the story of how that filly redeemed Bonnie’s brother Stitch by flipping him from evil to good with friendship alone was both bitter and sweet. It all took place on a planet called earth where strange things could go completely ignored by the native people who at times didn’t want to acknowledge that something strange was out of place.
“After that, well that’s another story entirely. It’s about when the rest of us got out on the island. We were quite disoriented to find ourselves on a new planet. Me and Clyde started doing what we always do, I now find myself regretting that we did it even knowing we can’t change our ways.” It was at this time that Bonnie started strapping herself into the pilots seat and Lead took the copilots chair while Fluttershy sat down to be strapped in by Lucky. “Some of the things we did were pretty cruel to do to a child, we got her hopes up that we can be reformed like Stitch and then we subsequently dashed them harshly. We did it several times in fact, even after she named us. The two of us are always hurting the ones we love and ourselves. That’s why we separated from the rest of our family.”
“I’m sure she did her best to help you too, I’m sure they all understand and forgive you. I’m sure they really miss you.” Fluttershy could feel her ears wilting, her eyes watered and her heart filled to the brim with pity for Bonnie. At this point Bonnie didn’t say anything as the stolen cargo freighter rose through the atmosphere, Fluttershy just watched as she rubbed lightly at the blood stained red cloth wrapped around her right arm from where she was hit and lost a blaster.
“I don’t think you’re unnatural or a monster.”