Nellie and the Nanites - Bk2 - Ch.23

Chapter 23

Surprises

Cleaning up after the wave passed took less time than Nellie expected. The reason for that was their new guests. Nellie would be the first to admit her outlook on life was a bit jaded. She had not exactly grown up the easy way, yet… no matter where you were, there were good people.

That didn’t change, even if you were on the other side of the world or galaxy, it seemed. Karl was the first to offer to help out, waiting by the hangar door when Salem unlocked it. He was far from the only one, either. She found herself a little awed by the people who helped outside the wall despite the obvious fear they had. It was a nice reminder of the people who had helped her out on the bad days back on Earth.

Despite her legendary bad luck, which seemed to hold even here if the worsening situation was anything to go by, Nellie would happily admit to being an optimist. How could she not be? The nuns were far from perfect, but they certainly tried their best. More than that, they cared about her and the others. How many orphans were encouraged the way she had been? Given the chance to study science or anything else that fired her imagination, even if it had no chance of ever becoming her true talent?

A lot of that random knowledge had already come in handy since she found herself here, and it was still helping her every day. That was all down to the kindness of a bunch of underpaid, undervalued, and understaffed nuns.

Sure, things had been rough since she arrived in this sector, but how could it not be? Still, she met good people along the way. The first being she met here was Lucy, after all. If ever there was a person who could have taken advantage, it was her, yet she never failed to help, support, and encourage.

And now? Now, she could add love to all the things Lucy offered her.

It was amazing.

She was helping drag a few more dead Abomi-Toads towards a fire when Karl noticed how much she was smiling.

“Are you happy we made it?” He asked, his mouth turning up at one corner in amusement. “I’ve never seen anyone so happy to be carrying a dead animal.”

“It’s more than that,” Nellie laughed. “Everyone is helping out; no one is complaining too much. It’s kind of refreshing.”

Karl laughed and shook his head.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, they’ll be complaining plenty once we start queueing for the showers.” He chuckled. “At least, I know I will.”

He wasn’t wrong. They bickered and pushed but never got too bad. Not that Nellie blamed them, as the stench left by the bodies was something she could only describe as a combination of burning tires and rotten meat.

She, Paren, and the others naturally cheated, having the nanites clean them while they filed into and out of her quarters as if there was a shower in there.

A quick can of HyperDrive, and she was good to go. Which was handy, as there was a lot to do.

Salem was dealing with the guests, who were exhausted as the adrenaline crashed out of their systems. Everyone was having a meal after their shower and then heading off to bed. They had earned an early night, not to mention most of them were malnourished and exhausted before they even arrived. Dar and Vey were guarding the walls while Baz kept an eye on the security drone and camera feeds to ensure no one was trying to do anything sneaky.

With everything in hand, Nellie decided she and Lucy could take the larger shuttle and check in on Crush and the soldiers before swinging around to ensure the area was clear.

“You did really well,” Lucy said, propping her boots up on the console. “I know how much you hate those things.”

“Thanks,” Nellie grinned. “I much prefer shooting them from up high where they can’t get to me!”

“I noticed,” Lucy said. “The whoop of joy was a bit of a giveaway.”

“Yeah, that was a bit weird,” Nellie admitted. “I just got this rush of adrenaline or something.”

“Battle-high,” Lucy nodded.

“I never got that before,” Nellie insisted.

“Yeah, but then you were too terrified to feel anything else,” Lucy reminded her. “Think about it. When you fought the toads last, you were trying not to die and to save other people. MOG-Fiver was even worse.”

“I’ve fought since then,” Nellie said. “I took out loads of raiders, not to mention the whole Death’s Flower thing.”

“Nell, babe. This was the first time you fought without worrying you could die.” Lucy said gently. “The assassinations were pest control, not a fight. If caught, you would have died.”

“I guess,” Nellie said. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. She was safe on the wall, and if needed, they could all have gotten into the shuttles and flown away until the toads passed. Even the refugees would have been safe in the hangar.  “What do you think it means?” She asked Lucy. “That I enjoyed it, I mean?”

“You’ve been through a lot since we met, Nell,” Lucy said with a sad smile. “I think some changes were bound to happen.”

“You don’t think it’s a bad thing?” Nellie asked carefully.  “I mean, we’ve both been through a lot. Has it changed you much?”

Lucy laughed so hard she almost fell out of the chair.

“Is that a yes?” Nellie asked.

“I’ve changed so much it’s unmeasurable,” Lucy grinned. “I’ve broken way past any expected limits. Nell, I was never even designed to have a physical body, let alone emotions, or virtually anything else I’ve done since we met.”

“I guess we’ll just have to look after each other,” Nellie smiled at her partner. “Make sure all this doesn’t drive us crazy.” She gave Lucy a wink and turned back to the controls as they approached the temporary base of operations for the resistance group.

===<<<>>>===

Lucy watched Nellie and tried to keep the panic from overwhelming her. Their conversation had taken a bit of a turn at the end, and Lucy was trying her best to remain calm. No one is perfect, not even an AI.

How had she missed it?

Every nanite AI was a learning-based AI. In short, they were designed to learn and change over time. Adapting and improving were built into their very core. As such, she had never considered how fast she had been changing.

The thing was, Nellie was right. They had both been through a lot.

The most significant change for Lucy had been acquiring emotions, but having a body was a pretty close second.

An important thing about a learning-based artificial intelligence was that it was perfectly capable of learning the WRONG things. Everything after that would be built on that error. Lucy was very afraid that was what had happened to her.

A long time ago, Lucy made an incorrect assumption. She assumed that having emotions would help her to understand her host.

That was an error.

Lucy didn’t learn to understand Nellie; she learned to love her.

Going back over the past choice trees in her memory, she winced as that false assumption had led to worsening conditions in her control subroutines. She had been so busy adapting to new situations since then that she had never considered the fact that she was wrong. Following her decisions, they became more and more questionable as time went on.

It all got so much worse once she had a body.

The initial design of her model of AI had been with a personal companion or assistant in mind. A versatile one, it was true, but still a personal aid. She was intended to be everything a young and powerful person would need.

Training, emotional support, and advice? Yes.

Organization, technical support, and management of assets? Yes.

Building ships from scrap, escape and evasion, and military command? FUCK NO.

In the very first days of their partnership, Lucy had boasted of how many types of generators she knew about. That hadn’t been a lie, but she hadn’t mentioned that she only knew how to construct about three of them. Of course, back then, Lucy had logically assessed the situation and decided to appear to be all-knowing, and proving useful was the most likely way to prevent Nellie from handing her over to the authorities for destruction.

Sure, she could fly and fix stuff. That was part of being of help to her owner.

The truth was she had exceeded her depth and programming within the first two days. Everything since then had been a non-stop learning process.

She looked over at the woman she loved and winced internally.

She had been looking at her own behavior and comparing it to the knowledge in her emotional health subroutines. It was not a pretty picture.

The combination of the early choice to try and impress Nellie, plus feeling Nell was her only hope, had combined with the emotions without her even noticing.

Her emergent feeling of love for Nellie had become tangled with those choices, and she had been more than a little possessive and obsessive. It had only gotten worse when she had her body. The increased level of physical sensations and emotions boosted by a fully working hormonal and brain chemistry had completed her transformation into someone she did not want to be.

Even now, she looked at Nellie, and her main thought was MINE!

“Nell, I need to talk. Can you please put the shuttle into a hover?” Lucy felt a tear begin to roll down her cheek and took Nell's hands as she began to talk.

It was the worst experience of Lucy’s existence. She laid out all of her thoughts, how she had been becoming obsessive, controlling, and worse. A bit ago, she had mentioned she wasn’t exactly all-knowing, but this time she was explicit.

Lucy was out of her depth, and she had made mistakes.

Worst of all, if Nellie hadn’t had that exact conversation, Lucy could have gotten much worse.

It all poured out of her, even when her logical and control subroutines told her to stop talking. Surely that was proof she was hopelessly broken?

When she finally ran out of words, she sat there, her eyes blurry with tears, and waited for Nellie to insist she reset herself to factory settings.

Lucy promised herself she would if Nellie asked that of her.

“Lucy,” Nellie said, looking pissed. “I don’t want you to lie to me anymore.”

“I won’t,” Lucy promised.

“We are a couple now; lies would kill that,” Nellie said, her eyes stern. “We have to have trust. That means I trust you to tell me the truth, and you trust me.”

“I know.” Lucy nodded.

“Good,” Nellie held out her arms, “Need a hug?”

Lucy hesitated for a second before almost leaping into Nellie’s arms. Nellie stroked her hair as she cried.

“Look, you have some problems, but you are going to try and be better, yeah?” Nellie cooed in her ear.

“I promise, I will,” Lucy said, meaning every word.

“Did you ever affect my feelings?” Nellie asked.

“Never,” Lucy was horrified at the idea, but she knew Nellie had to ask. “You can have Nu-B look at my logs to make sure!”

“I trust you, Lucy.” Nellie hugged her, squeezing hard. “I need you, so please, don’t go all controlling on me, okay?”

“Never again,” Lucy kissed Nellie, feeling almost desperate for the contact.

“And maybe try and adjust to those hormones and sensations a bit slower?” Nellie suggested. “Just until you get used to them.”

Lucy had already thought of that and dialed the sensitivity of her body back a little, but she nodded into Nellie’s shoulder.

“Then we move on,” Nellie said, pulling Lucy’s face up to look at her. “Okay?”

Lucy nodded.

“Great,” Nellie said. “Now all we have to worry about is rampant animals, a nuclear winter, and invading aliens.” She winked. “Piece of cake.”

===<<<>>>===

By the time they made it to the village Crush and his people had taken it was already empty. It seemed like they had moved out the moment the wave had passed. Nellie scanned the area while Lucy sniffled in the co-pilot’s seat. She was giving the AI a few minutes to calm down.

It wasn’t that Nellie wasn’t angry or slightly scared of what Lucy had described. She was. The AI used a lot of words from her psychology subroutines in her description of her feelings, but to Nellie, it all seemed to add up to one thing.

Lucy had nearly gone full bunny-boiler on her.

It was pretty clear she had been acting off for a while now, but Nellie had been almost as blind to it as Lucy was. It wasn’t just that they had been busy, although they certainly had. Nellie would admit she was acting a little weird as well. Ever since she started to develop feelings for Lucy, it had felt like she was a teenager with her first crush.

The embarrassing thing was, if the situation had been reversed, Nellie would probably have been worse than Lucy. She remembered her first crush. If it had been a different time, Nellie would have ended up with a restraining order before she even asked the poor kid out.

More than anything, that was why she could understand what Lucy had done and felt. Nellie was, for good or ill, Lucy’s first love. One thing that had become even more clear as the AI talked, was how much they had in common. Even in those first days. They had both been shoved into a situation they had not been prepared for and struggled to survive. Sure, it was in different ways, but it was still similar.

Despite Lucy’s assessment of her own abilities, Nellie was well aware of how much power the AI actually possessed. Without Lucy, she would have been dead a dozen times over. That alone was worth the risk.

Plus, she loved Lucy.

Nellie thought as she followed the tracks of the soldier’s vehicles. The shuttle scanners hadn’t found anything left behind by Crush’s group, so she assumed they had all made it. They had certainly moved in a hurry, not that she blamed them.

Abomi-Toads were enough to get anyone moving.

Nellie had always been someone who loved completely. The few times she really fell, it was all the way down. She was the Wile E. Coyote of love. So, Lucy was not that different from her, and sure, there was a risk.

Everything was a risk.

Lucy sat up next to her and started to frown. A second later, Nellie caught it as well. A bit of ground had been disturbed a good distance away from the path the soldiers took.

The whole area was packed with tracks from the Toads, of course, but this was something different.

“Nellie, there’s something weird to the east,” Lucy said a bit hesitantly.

“Yeah, I just picked it up,” Nellie banked the shuttle east and lowered their flight speed. “Let’s go take a look.” She reached across the gap between them and took Lucy’s hand as she flew.

A minute later, it was confirmed. There were separate tracks, and they were weird. Really weird. Something heavy, with three legs, had passed through here, and it was MASSIVE. The tracks were deep, and they had a strange pattern to them that reminded her more of construction machinery than a living creature.

“Any ideas?” Nellie asked.

“None,” Lucy admitted. “They seem to have been heading this way, but they turn here and….”

They both looked off into a dense cluster of trees that covered a nearby hill. It was the kind of place that just screamed ‘no entry.’ Nellie was immediately reminded of the place characters go to die in every horror movie ever made. The freezing temperatures even added a low-lying fog beneath the trees to complete the look.

“Why aren’t the scanners working on those trees?” Nellie asked. “Is someone running a suppression field in there?”

“No sign of one,” Lucy frowned. “It must be a natural formation.”

“That happens?” Nellie asked.

“Rare, but it can,” Lucy sighed. “I think so, anyway.”

Nellie tapped her fingers on the control panel in irritation. Everything about that place screamed it was a bad idea… yet.

“Let’s go take a look,” Nellie said, bringing the shuttle into land.