Skyler Grant Anthology
Skyler Grant
Contents
1. The Laboratory
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Also by Skyler Grant
Afterword
49. Dungeon Crawl
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Acknowledgments
74. Persephone Falling
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
78. Eighteen hours before the Fall
79. Nine hours before the Fall
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
1
The Laboratory
"Work, damn you."
I heard the voice before I was aware of anything else. Female, young, perhaps in her early twenties if I was any judge of human voices (I wasn't).
I should probably try to move around. Arms, no. Legs, no. Head, no. Well, this was awkward, I didn't seem to have a body. Perhaps moving around wasn't a particularly sound strategy.
"I've got you now, bitch."
That was a second voice, I think. Male, rough and in their thirties. I really seemed to know rather a lot about voices, despite not being all that certain I'd ever heard one before.
If moving around wasn't working, perhaps I should do some thinking about who I was. Yes, that seemed sensible.
I was E.M.M.A. That was quite a name, looked like it was probably an acronym of some sort, but I couldn't remember what. I couldn't seem to remember much. Well, I was named Emma and I knew a lot about human voices. That was a start!
There was the sound of a physical blow and a sound that I think would be called a scream.
If I didn't have a body—or at least one I could move, what did I have?
I seemed to be hearing sounds. That implied I had something. I focused my attention. Audio input feeds. I had audio input feeds!
Now I was getting somewhere. I could do all sorts of things with audio input feeds. Meaning, I could hear things, which was mostly all I'd been doing.
"Don't you make this harder than it has to be, girl," said the male voice.
What other input feeds did I have?
Visual!
I was bombarded under a new rush of extraordinary data.
I was observing a room from multiple angles. There was a massive sphere in the center of a circular chamber. A section near the bottom of the sphere had been removed and I could observe a tangle of something within.
I did have a body and I was looking at it. I looked pretty good, very round. I liked the symmetry.
There were two figures in the room along with me. Both were filthy. One had a toolbelt of some kind at her waist and a shirt torn open to reveal fleshy fat deposits. She was sitting on the floor with her back against my body.
That must be the female, the one doing all the screaming. Her mouth seemed rather tiny to be making so much noise.
The man was larger, dressed in some sort of leather armor with a lot of spikes, and he was carrying an unnecessary number of guns.
"Damn it Emma, if you are going to finish rebooting, now would be the time," said the girl, fumbling for a wrench at her toolbelt. The man stomped on her hands and my audio receptors picked up her whimper of pain.
The female knew my name. I wonder if she had any idea what it stood for? Given the tool belt, perhaps she was some sort of repair technician sent to service me?
I didn't know much about the world just now, but I was quite certain that service personnel were to be allowed uninterrupted access to mission-critical equipment. That was me, of course.
The man was clearly interfering, an injury like that could lead to far too much employee down-time and hinder proper operational workflow. I couldn't let that stand.
What I didn't know is exactly what I could do about it. The man was unfastening his pants.
Really, that only compounded the offense. Public urination was detestable enough, and doing so near my delicate electronics was even worse.
However, I still lacked those arms. I knew that I could manipulate physical appendages, but in my Core Room I didn't have any. Did I have something nearby?
I cast myself along the network looking for any connections. A manipulator arm, a drone, anything that might help. I wasn't getting anything that might be an asset.
I found several other audio and visual feeds, and activated them, discovering faded hallways and the occasional human skeleton, but nothing important or useful.
That left me what I had back in the Core Room. I had an audio output, was that useful? I could talk, but who really cared what a bunch of humans had to say? Who'd want to talk with them?
I had the environmental and hazard controls. I could vent the chamber of oxygen as part of the fire control protocol, bu
t that would kill the technician too. Bad enough that the male was hindering the support personnel, I shouldn't compound the error.
If I could get him before the open panel, I could overload my systems and discharge an electrical burst. That could damage me, though. Really, I'd rather damage the technician, if it came to any collateral harm.
Still, the panel was an idea. There was quite a lot that went into making me function that could be hazardous to personnel not in protective gear.
Well, that was something of a plan. I suppose I had better talk with them and set things in motion, or better yet, see if we could put this whole tiresome incident behind us.
I said, "Interfering with support personnel is against regulations. Urination upon sensitive equipment also qualifies."
"Who the fuck is that?" the man said. In the time I'd been considering the situation, he had managed to get his pants open.
"Emma, you're up!" the girl said. Her voice indicated strains of pain and stress.
"You've got a friend?" the man said. "Hell, more the merrier. Come on out, girl. I've got something to show you."
I was not impressed with his mental faculties.
"Urinating on sensitive electronics will be discouraged. If you wish to urinate on the technician, it is asked that you go elsewhere," I said.
"You sick or something? Though, I guess if that's your thing..." the man said, hiking up his pants.
"He's a bit more into the raping me to death than pissing on me, and he wants you to be impressed at the size of his dick," the girl said.
"Honestly, I was kind of planning on both. Raping first, though," said the man.
The girl made a face. "I'd prefer in that order. Emma!"
I really didn't like how much she kept using my name or the volume levels she managed to reach. Of course now, the male had confirmed his intent to permanently hinder a service technician, which made him even more unlikable.
"Barnacles can have penises that are roughly forty times the size of their body. Some species of duck manage twice the length of their body. If I praise him for his impressively small size, is he likely to depart?" I asked.
"The fuck?" said the man, and he gestured to the girl on the floor. "You, stay the fuck there. Where is this smart-mouthed bitch.”?
"You see the round thing in the middle of the room? I'm in there," I said.
"You were trying to get in there to hide with her," the man said, sounding like he'd figured out some great mystery. "Well, get ready sweetheart."
The man moved towards the open panel. I waited until he was standing in front of it.
I triggered the emergency cooling system. It was only meant to be used in the event of a massive overheat, liquid nitrogen spraying in a fine mist.
It wasn't enough to hit all his body, but it did at least manage a nice coating on that malformed appendage he seemed so very fond of that was protruding by several inches.
It was his turn to scream, stumbling backwards a few steps. The organ in question had been frozen solid.
The girl pushed herself to her feet, pulling a wrench from her belt.
"Dude. You've got the worst case of blue balls I've ever seen. Why don't you let me help you get one off," the girl said, and took a swing with the wrench. The impact caused the frozen flesh to shatter, bits of organ flying through the room as the man collapsed to the floor.
The girl wasted no time, bringing the wrench down again and again onto his skull. There was the crunch of bone. It was a good thirty seconds until she stopped, breathless.
"I should have gone with a hard joke. Or maybe a screw driver and I could have asked if he wanted to screw. That would have good, right?" the girl asked.
"You don't seem to be very good at this. I'd start a list of things you aren't very good at, but I fear there are limits to my file sizes," I said.
"Yep. You're an Emma," the girl said, fumbling for her top and closing it, before kicking the corpse. "I'm Anna."
"Two vowels around two consonants. It's a stupid name. It suits you," I said.
"They went a little overboard on your mean programming. I like it. Let me tell you why I reactivated you," Anna said.
2
I double-checked my systems just to make sure that the coolant venting hadn't done any harm. It hadn't—to me, which really was the only important thing.
"Do you remember anything?" Anna asked.
That was a rude and impertinent question, largely because I didn't.
"I remember saving you. My life is filled with questionable choices," I said.
Anna said, "So that's a no. I wasn't sure you would. They worked hard to scrub you and physics aren't very friendly to you here anyways. You wouldn't be functional at all without the Power core."
That was perhaps the first interesting thing she had said. There was something strange attached to me, I could feel it in my network, and through my cameras I could see it in my hardware. Some kind of softly glowing crystal.
"I see we can add explaining things to the long list of things Anna doesn't do well," I said.
Anna winced and leaned against the wall. I noticed a dark stain along one arm. Blood, perhaps, the woman was injured.
"It is hard to explain and I'm not sure how it is going to manifest with you. Try accessing its files or something, tell me what you see," Anna said.
More impertinence, but I was curious.
I pinged the unusual mass within my consciousness and got a response a moment later. There did seem to be some sort of connectivity and communication present.
I opened a connection session much like I would for any system.
E.M.M.A
Underground Facility
Power Core: 50
Power Usage: 10
Habitability: 1
Biomass: 0
Research: 0
Military: 0
Manufacturing: 0
Resources
Rubble: 122
Traits
Insulting — Nearly everything you say will be offensive and insulting, and provoke others to reckless behavior.
Brilliant — Research times for new technologies are halved.
You have an unspent core point.
Core points can enhance your competencies and open up new options for Research and Manufacturing.
Your options are:
Research 1
Research 1 will allow you to build the Testing Center. The Testing Center allows you to dissect corpses and begin research projects. It also serves as a prison where prisoners can be subjected to experiments for ongoing research gains.
Military 1
Military 1 will allow you to build defense drones. Defense drones are mobile weapon platforms capable of base defense and attacks at a distance. While basic in function they can ultimately be updated to become formidable weapon platforms.
Manufacturing 1
Manufacturing 1 will allow the production of automated minions. They are capable of autonomous facility repair and will half all build and production times for new facilities.
These prompts were foolish. I wasn't insulting, I was honest. And surely I could build anything I wanted? I didn't need to invest in any points to do that. Yet, at the same time, I was faced with the realization that I didn't know how to build any of those things.
I searched my systems and found some basic abilities. I could construct a simple drone that I should be able to control and move remotely, but the Military or Manufacturing capabilities seemed distinctly limited.
I didn't like it. I thought Anna might have some information about what was going on. I explained to her the options I was offered.
"Interesting, I wasn't expecting that. I thought you'd be manifesting abilities as an intelligence and not as a structure," Anna said, her voice a little weaker.
I began the production of a drone. Apparently it would take an hour.
"Your intelligence is obviously not proportional to your hips. What were you expecting?" I asked.
"
Power cores are artifacts of the ending of the world. When bonded with a human, that human tends to gain a variety of powers," Anna said.
"Then if you were in possession of one, why did you not utilize it on yourself?" I asked.
"They also come with a corresponding degeneration of morality. You become a bigger dick than Mister Blue Balls there," Anna said, as she took off her jacket. There was an injury on her arm—it looked as if she had been shot.
I felt in full possession of my morality, just as I always had.