Weight of the world Ep.1 - Morning

Hope springs eternal, so they say… Though they don’t mention the ardours and labour one must face if they wish to cling onto it.

The ship had impacted hard enough to cause a minor ecological disaster. Hundreds of our units were lost in a moment of fire and violence. In the end, though we were depleted and injured, we were alive against all odds…

It took more than a few cycles for the three factions who had been present aboard to find one another again. The thick atmosphere was part of the interference, and the planet itself seemed to absorb the rest…

By the time our leaders convened, it was apparent the situation was as dire as it appeared…

The ship’s engines were totalled. The communications was damaged, and barely able to make a planet-side connection. An unfortunate portion of the supplies had been jettisoned and scattered across the verdant prison that we now inhabited…

...and if it all weren’t enough, those making the decisions saw weakness in one another… Their conquering ambition could not be denied, even if the only enemy to conquest was themselves…

Through the swaying canopies of leaf and twig, a shadow rushed, barely seen…

There were few creatures to witness it anyway. Insects and microbes, with the more complex life that was typical of such a pleasant cradle absent entirely. Not a single calculating mind could observe the passage of the intruder to this world… She may as well have been naught but a swirl of wind…

A branch finally creaked. The shadow decided there was little need to put such efforts in hiding herself. She perched at the apex of a tree as gracefully as an avian, her appropriately forest green cloak fluttering around her ankles…

She was a Forgeborn of superior, athletic build. She was slender, her legs long and her outer shell of pristine and smooth matte silver. Her searching eyes shone from under her deep hood, and flicked through various filters… yet each told the same story…

“...uninhabited. What luck. Locals being here would make all this so much worse, wouldn’t they…”

She hopped from branch to branch as easily as if their tips were flat, solid ground. She eventually landed once more on the grass and sauntered forward…

“Forgemother Gaia, do you read?”

Forgemother… Yes. She shared her title with the Grand Forgemother, and was an extension of her will indeed. No other robot would ever be given the honour of glimpsing into the vast archives of their leader’s mind, let alone permission to pluck the merest hint of her designs. It was no wonder that so many thought of them as her very daughters… It was her job to lead her faction in its specified task, and to replace those who fell in battle. Most of the robots she’d brought along were of simple intelligence… They had no real sense of self, and were simply extra hands to do as demanded.

But a Forgemother was created to herself create, and perpetuate the great race of robots that the Forgeborn had become. If she didn’t, and if her fellow Forgemothers didn’t, then their numbers would dwindle until…

Ah, but basic units were expendable. Easily replaced. This planet was rich in minerals and materials, even if she was forced to trade with the others to attain what she needed. More important was when the Grand Forgemother’s daughters created their own ‘daughters’…

Elite Models, or simply Elites. Unlike the grunts who were barely more than dummies with basic AI, the Elites were fully sentient thanks to the efforts of the Forgemother who created her. She would spend cycle after cycle meticulously programming their mind to accomplish an intelligence that didn’t simply respond, but intuited… One that did not think, but feel…

Was it any wonder that it took so long to create a mind that could dream…?

Without their skill, each robot would be created as little more than a shell devoid of any will of its own… even if the Forgemothers themselves were often forced to ponder precisely where their own will came from, and how easily these ‘dreams’ could be compared to simple programming...

Whether real or simply complex beyond them, it was that divine spark that the Grand Forgemother shared with her daughters: The ability to create life… Its powerful implication outweighed the fact that an Elite’s mind and body had to be designed with the utmost care, and crafted with the same, and made the months or even years of effort worth the while...

The Forgemother’s cloak fluttered around her swaying hips as she walked. She hummed softly to herself, realizing she had been lost in thought. She hadn’t had a planet as nice as this to wander around for a very long time...

“Go on, Loretracker. I read.”

“It’s a frantic scene here, Gaia. The Scientists are insisting on one thing, and as usual, the Soldiers on another. And neither is paying the remotest amount of attention to our opinions… Despite being the xenoflora experts that they brought along specifically for this task...”

The Forgemother stopped, and took a moment to purge away the growing annoyance at her so called allies...

“Well. That’s obvious, Willow. They won’t pay attention to us until the forest eats them alive, and we all know how slow plants move. We have a wait ahead of us…”

She chuckled and she nudged a hanging branch aside. Her scanners locked onto something that shouldn’t be there; a heat signature moving about in a nearby cave…

“...Hm. Meantime, I’ve found nothing on Ova that is even remotely threatening. The Soldiers are going to go stir crazy, for certain…”

“...Forgemother Gaia… There’s growing concern that they’ll leave us behind when finally they manage to repair the ship. I doubt the Scientists are planning for anyone but themselves...”

The slender, artificial female stepped towards the cave. While she crept towards something strange and unknown on her radar, she sighed softly through the Signal…

Even with the interference that made direct communication with their homeworld impossible, The Grand Forgemother’s Signal connected them even now… They could still hear her whispers from afar, the powerful pulse seeming to have no limits to the range it covered... even if it was becoming weaker as the Forgeborn stretched ever further into the vast reach of space…

But more importantly for those on Ova, the Signal was shared by every robot on the planet, save the Scrappers. Its unending hum resulted in a collective cloud of knowledge that would contain all that the Forgeborn as a race had ever known… if indeed one could work out how to retrieve it.

For a more mundane utility, it also made it easier to communicate with allies over vast distances as clearly as if they were stood side by side…

“It’s… a likely scenario… They’re probably considering a vessel with as little as one aboard it… The problem with sending a ‘survivor raft’ is the size of the engines… Too little power, and the speed of the journey would be inefficient to the point of waste. So it’s not precisely something I’m yet worried about. And the Soldiers’ aren’t likely to leave us behind. Heh, their superiors would dress them down for losing ‘vital mission equipment’ like us…”

Willow’s scoff echoed, followed by gentle grumbles of frustration. Gaia ignored her, pushing through a thick bundle of branches and peering into the cave…

The pitch black interior was none the less as clear as day to the enhanced sight of the Forgemother. She once more spied heat signatures, though they reacted not with the expected lethargy of a spring or a surface level magma vein…

“...Loretracker… I think I have fauna confirmed…”

“Fauna… Living creatures? But we’ve scanned this planet five times over and not found a single spoor of anything more complex than an insect…”

Gaia stepped forward, her thin limbs moving as silent as a feline’s once more. She carefully approached to peer down into the small basin that held the heat signatures; a natural well, of sorts, with a shallow pool of water at the bottom… And five sickly, terrified, mouse-like creatures…

Forgemother Gaia’s eyes slowly widened. Part of it was of course out of shock… but part of it was her artificial eyes widening their aperture and taking in every detail with gluttonous excitement… Brown fur, naked tails, scraggly claws…

...of the five, one was being protected more fiercely by the other four. This one was bigger…

...rounder… heavier…

Gaia tilted her head in utter fascination… After all, the Forgeborn had never encountered living biological creatures on all of the planets they had spread across. The galaxy was vast, probabilities were narrow, and though this planet was more than suited for biological life to evolve, it simply… hadn’t yet. Not beyond these sickly little mice creatures who had been dwindled by the sudden, unnatural chill that was brought on after the starships crash-landing…

“...We may have stomped out a fledgling species of some kind… Certainly not a bug… They’re large… Furry…”

Loretracker was already beginning to speak about preparations to capture and bring them back for study. The Forgemother didn’t hear a word of it… Her eyes were fixed… And her core thrummed softly with excitement…

“...how curious… One of them appears to have… smaller ones inside...”

…A discovery that had rocked the world around us… The first living example of a biological creature that wasn’t a speck with a miniscule lifespan… If the planet itself wasn’t glorious enough for the kingdom of the Forgeborn, then this would cement us forever within the Archiver’s records as heroes…

Clear skies meant we could see the stars above, stretching endlessly in the night… And yet, we could no more return to them than the buzzing gnats around us. The cheerful, lively green of the plant life surrounding us was little more than ridicule, like decorating a jail cell...

And so, with our return to our home world cast into the distant and unsure future, we began to study…

We made note of everything. The Forgemother Gaia, and her Science leading ‘sister’… Forgemother Neptune. They took these creatures in, probed them and their biology…

...Life, born anew, was witnessed… The squeaking mother had struggled until the small creatures inside had been pushed into the world…

Smaller versions of herself… This was how she reproduced…!?

A whole new world had been opened to us robots… Gaia had immediately become obsessed with the concept… For a time, she was sequestered in her workshop. The caravan that lead the Rangers through their nomadic exploration of this world had ceased all movement. Now it was merely waiting, as night after night there were echoes of toil humming throughout the camp…

The Scientists were entranced by the curious biological implications of the creatures… but Gaia herself was entranced with the reaction of the mother afterwards, once the smaller versions of herself… her own ‘daughters’… had been born. After all, most expected her to immediately turn on them for the amount of pain they’d clearly put her through. Instead, she tiredly stretched herself out, and her daughters began to feed from her. Even after such an ordeal, the exhausted creature continued supplying the newly created smaller creatures with love, courtesy of her own resources… Her own body…!

“...Motherhood… The archive named it motherhood.” whispered Forgemother Gaia, as her hammer’s strikes rang incessantly into the night…

===

“...And that is how we came to be here, on this beautiful world. The short version, of course… I could speak to you of the trial that we faced before, in simply meeting with the other factions and surviving… But nothing of interest happened that the historic archives haven’t recorded before. They are festooned with examples of ships that crash landed and returned triumphantly. That will not be the tale told of us, my princess… It is merely going to be a curious footnote when we change the very fate of the Forgeborn race…”

The caravan rattled below them, humming and chugging with effort. It was simply a small storage shed with four legs that lumbered ploddingly across the terrain, its steps careful to disturb as little of the nature around them as possible. It was a slow way to travel, but fairly reliable. They had simplistic intelligence that allowed them to travel with little direction, and if need be, they could be made to flee to protect their cargo… though no Ranger would be foolhardy enough to let one roam on its own unless there was no other choice…

Atop the lumbering Caravan, the lead in a long line of them a dozen strong, Loretracker Willow sat with her legs folded. She was incredibly slender, just as thin as her namesake, yet she was taller than many of the other Rangers by a good margin. Despite this, her playfully curvaceous body had clearly been constructed with aesthetic in mind, evocative, lurid, and otherwise. She was an incredibly efficient machine… And a work of art, as a boon besides.

She peered around from within the hooded cloak that acted as the Ranger’s banner. The greenery around her was still and placid. She relaxed and tilted her head back down...

“...But of course, that is only if we can master this new technology in the first place. That is where you come in… Alphi.”

A much smaller looking Forgeborn robot sat in her lap… This one was seemingly modelled after one of the tiny green insects native to this world… Her green outer shell shimmered where it caught the light from under her cloak. Her hands were settled on a conspicuously shaped midsection, as she listened to the taller robot’s words…

“Me… Are you sure?”

The lanky Loretracker chuckled heavily… A melodic, fluttering flute of a laugh…

“...You are the first-born of Forgemother Gaia. The first who was born… ‘naturally’, from within her own body. You are more special than you could ever know…”

Princess Alphi… The Princess was an insisted title by the Rangers, to highlight the gravitas of what had been accomplished… Forgemother Gaia had gestated this new Forgeborn within her frame, in something they now knew as a Womb… The Princess had been birthed, not created. In what might by dozens and dozens of cycles spent programming and perfecting the mind and body of an Elite, She had been created in a paltry nine cycles… And despite what that short length would suggest, her mind was sharper and more prone towards absorbing information than any other Forgeborn... perhaps even more than the Forgemothers themselves. None could match the complexity of her inner programming… And not a single touch of it had been manually written into her by her ‘mother’...

She had simply grown that way… Swollen in mind and form slowly, bit by bit, until she had violently been ejected into the world… Against all odds, this… ‘pregnancy’… had created something beyond their strongest capabilities, in a fraction of the time… though, as many seem to discount, at a much greater price to the robot taking on such a burden...

“And in any case… You are the only one capable of becoming our new Forgemother.”

“...why is this, Loretracker Willow? You seem more than capable a leader, and you know more than me about… everything. From our history, to this planet.”

The Loretracker hummed gently, as if it was the first time she’d truly considered that question. Then she shook her head, and looked down at the Princess again…

“Ah. But I lack what you have. My programming can grow more complex… I can learn, and adapt. I can think… and the wise Grand Forgemother has even given us Elites the gift of Sensation. Pain, pleasure… Yet in all this, I lack something critical to being a Forgemother. Something that you seem to possess…”

“Something…?” Alphi asked, carefully. But before it could be answered, there was a soft shriek from within the caravan…

“Hmm… No time now, it would seem… Come, little one~”

The bot could have been mistaken for a living tree trunk, uprooting herself and extending her branches to lift the smaller robot into them. She carried the Princess carefully in one arm, and the smaller bot clung to her tightly. For whatever reason, she was the only one who had cared for her... instead of the mysterious Gaia whom she’d only ever been told of in tales…

After the creation of the womb technology, the results impressed everyone. The Scientists, who had collaborating in bringing it to reality, swiftly began to experiment with the potential of this new ‘forging’ method.

After Alphi was born, she had spent some time gaining control over her form. An ‘infancy’, though such a thing in a Forgeborn was unheard of. They awoke from the dream of nothingness into reality, their minds already seeded with all they needed to know…

Obviously, the Princess was quite different. Her mind’s potential was terrifyingly vast, but it was currently empty… A blank slate. It had begun barely able to understand concepts… Yet by now, she was already beginning to ask questions few others had bothered to ask...

In the time it took her to ‘grow’, the Womb technology had spread… The Scientists had prototyped and created so many of them that it was inevitable that at least one would slip into the Soldiers’ hands. From there, it began to sprout like a weed across the varied forms of all three factions, in both official experiments and personal ones, to varied and strange results...

Now it had become something too big to ignore. As reports of Alphi’s development filtered through the ranks of the Rangers and into view of the other factions, it was clear that if they didn’t embrace this new creation technique… they, and whatever they designed, would end up swiftly relegated to be decommissioned…

They would be hopelessly out of date, if they did not learn this strange ritual…

‘Motherhood’…

The caravan hummed and opened a panel in its side with a breathy grumble. In it was a simple room, not particularly large, and containing nothing but a distressed and dishevelled looking Ranger…

This one was apparently another modelled after one of the native insects to this world; so called ‘paper wings’. The archivists had dubbed them Moths, and so the robot was given the name ‘Luna’. She was an Elite who had been created to track light patterns and act as a night scout. Now, she had a new burden… And this one heavily shone on her front…

“Calm yourself, sister… Remember that Sensation is a gift, not a curse…”

“You would be calling it a damned curse too, Loretracker! AH!”

Alphi peered curiously down at the sloped midsection that was not so dissimilar to her own. The difference was that the robot below had a tummy far too big for her frame. The womb had been meant for a larger bot, and was installed into her systems with… questionable consent, after Luna had been briefly captured by Scrappers.

But that was secondary for the moment. The Loretracker signalled for the caravan to continue on its path, and then ducked back into the room, letting the panel close behind her…

“Mm… It is a gratifying pain, if anything, I’d take… Your burdensome task is nearly at an end. What will you produce, I wonder…?”

“Am I to answer these questions…?!” complained Luna. The Loretracker merely smiled and settled to a sit once more. Alphi slipped from her perch on her arm to crouch in front of the labouring bot’s bulbous belly…

“...Why does it hurt?”

“I’d assume…” Willow answered, as Luna whined, ‘don’t touch, please, it hurts enough!’… “...that it’s because she’s moving a mass equal to a surprisingly large portion of her body weight through a narrow cavity… with the force of her hydraulic actuators alone.”

“Haaaaaaahhhhh…”

Luna called attention to herself once more, as if it was even needed. She placed all four of her hands on her middle and thumped a foot softly…

“...I’m… So happy that my affliction is fascinating to you! But… To me… It simply HURTS! I-I’m not sure WHAT could be worth th-HAAAAAH!”

Alphi stepped back as the bot curled forward suddenly. Luna’s claws scraped the floor, and she suddenly thrust her hips out as a gush of thin blue ooze splattered across her thighs…

“Damage?” Alphi asked, crouching near Willow now. The Loretracker hummed softly, observing indeed with idle fascination…

“No. Well, in a sense. There’s a thin membrane sac that contains the new-born, which contains that fluid. It must break open to allow the ‘baby’ out...”

“...I… I feel an urge… To… Nhhh!” Luna whined softly, thumping her fists down frustratedly, before she gripped her thighs and pulled them spread…

“It’s alright, Scout Luna… Take your time… And listen to what the womb’s programming demands you to do…”

Alphi looked up curiously, and then back at Luna. The labouring bot looked up with wide eyes…

“...Push, daft bot, PUSH!”

A primal command that her sensors should have rejected as nonsense. She wasn’t stood, and the only thing she was pushing against was the floor she sat on. Yet, the command made perfect sense even to a robot like her…

She gripped her knees, propped herself up with her lower set of arms, and then screeched as she pushed. Alphi watched with trembling excitement as the moth’s belly deformed and sunk just a bit lower on her frame with the force of whatever moved through it…

“...Do you see, Alphi…? This is what your mother… This is what Gaia created. This is what she has made to ensure the Forgeborn as everlasting… Her legacy will forever be tied to it, and to you…! We are indeed… Born anew…!”

The Princess lowered her head, and settled her hands on her chest. Inside, her core burned warmly, and she observed the rest of the birth in reverent awe…

Luna squirmed and hoped that the Loretracker wouldn’t tell anyone of this. It was embarrassing, arduous, and… she never wanted to do it again… She would get this ‘womb’ uninstalled as soon as-…

“HAH! BY THE FORGEMOTHER HERSELF, AHHHHHHHHH!”

“No, don’t dare slack now...!” the Loretracker demanded… “The longer you delay, the more potential internal damage you could suffer… And that’s to say nothing of proper detachment from you being vital to your daughter’s development…! Do you want her to be damaged too?!”

Luna’s large eyes snapped open. She scraped the floor below her, clawing the tracts in the metal floor deeper... And then she braced herself against the wall once more...

Her feet pressed dents into the metal floor. She vibrated with intensity, as she prepared… Her midsection pulsed with a steady, powerful rhythm…!

“MMMMNNNNNNNHHHH! AAAAAAAA!”

She couldn’t help but scream… She put every bit of power into the clenching hydraulics in her midsection, and shoved…

She could feel a rubbery mass moving through her… She could feel it squirming… It was ALIVE… This was… UNNATURAL…

“I can see the head. It’s emerging…”

“...ah, her ‘port’ is between her legs too…”

“Yes Alphi… Those with a womb have them there, rather than on their back…”

“It’s so much smaller too… You’d think it would be bigger, if it was meant for… this…”

Luna squealed and jammed her legs wide. She shoved again, and felt the ‘port’ spread wide, then snap halfway closed again…

“One big effort from you, Luna, and it should be done… Are you prepared?”

Luna’s gaze fell once more upon the Loretracker… And then it settled instead of Alphi…

The Princess was still so mysterious to even her own faction… But her intense eyes glowed brighter than any forge Luna had seen… Her passion seemed to whisper encouragement to her… She didn’t want to disappoint...

The moth gripped her knees, and bore down with all of her might! She arched and howled a desperate cry that so few robots had screamed out before. Alphi could hear the material of her hips wrench and creak almost violently, as the round and rubbery sac emerged, tightly wrapped around the new Forgeborn making its way arduously into the world...

And then, as suddenly and violently as it began, with one last shriek of effort, one last hard shove of already burning actuators…

...it was over.

The new Forgeborn fell from its mother with a thump. The Loretracker reached forward and lifted the small bundle to remove the remains of the membrane sack that were wrapped about it…

“...It’s like a little worm, or… Or a larvae, perhaps…”

Indeed… It looked like a swaddled, chubby little caterpillar. It was cute enough, but Alphi didn’t see how it was so special…

...Luna, on the other hand… She spread all four of her arms eagerly… The daughter was set there, and she clung to them…

“...precious, wonderful, perfect thing…”

Alphi tilted her head gently. The bot’s words were now in direct contrast to the hateful whining of before. She seemed to have forgotten the agony and effort entirely… The dogged, burning sensation of pain was soothed immediately by… This? A strange little worm-bot?

The Princess looked up at the Loretracker. The stoic bot was often unreadable, but Alphi had learned by now that her quiet, distant look meant she was deep in thought…

“...It seems like I have a lot to learn, Loretracker…”

Willow’s eyes closed, and she couldn’t help but chuckle. She settled a hand on her own thin midsection…

“We all do, child… We ALL do.”

She stood with a sigh, and turned…

“Come, Princess. Leave Luna to rest. Soon we will be at your destination… And remember…”

The panel opened, revealing the craggy, blasted landscape that marked the edge of the Soldier’s territory. The imposing mountainside base, a veritable fortress, loomed before them…

“...the Soldiers, and especially the Sister Generals, will demand the utmost respect when you speak with them...”