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Much like a switch being flipped, I went from complete unconsciousness to full wakefulness in an instant. The first thing I noticed was the godsdamned actual HUD in my field of vision, all in a grey text that matched the current hue of my eyes. The second was just how crisp said vision was. A favorite joke of mine is "Hindsight is 20/20, but I literally wear glasses," but the ceiling I was looking at was high enough overhead that I definitely should have perceived it as a blur. But the view I had was actually 20/20 for sure… maybe even 20/15, but I'd need a Snellen Chart to properly check that. Uuuuuugh, think about fucking work later, figure out what the everloving fuck is going on now . Speaking of, I decided to take a glance at my Heads Up Display, to see if it was displaying anything I should actually be getting a heads up about.
Reboot Complete.
Core systems running within normal limits.
Auxiliary systems running within normal limits.
Oil levels nominal.
Chassis fully functional.
Unit Personality Core fully functional and fully repaired. Previous personality corrupted. Calibrating to newly detected personality.
Error: physical damage to CPU detected. Permanent corruption of memory files detected. Seek administrator immediately.
Well then. That was cause for concern. Rather than immediately try to interpret what any of that meant , or why I suddenly had a HUD to begin with. I immediately delved back into my own memories. Nothing of my admittedly average (and perhaps mediocre) life seemed to be forgotten, but if it was, I wouldn't remember. Still, I was recalling about 20-ish years of important events, played video games, consumed media, fanfics, both read and written, and a recent 25th birthday (and before anyone comments on that discrepancy, you try remembering stuff before you were five). So… really wasn't sure what the hell memory corruption meant--
"Hey, can you hear me, kid?"
My gaze narrowed, because I was very much not a child anymore, and I looked over to the origin of the voice--
Why didn't I feel my eyes narrow, or move? --
Mental Reboot in Progress.
My vision disappeared beyond a rapidly loading circle with that text in front of it as I apparently did a literal mental reboot, before coming back as I took a second look to make sure I was seeing what I thought I saw--
That's a fucking Worker Drone from Murder Drones I'm looking at.
Okay. Okay. Uh, one fucking second. My gaze widened-- I still couldn't feel my eyes --as I took in the sight in front of me. This… definitely was not animated, and while I knew that one guy on Youtube was building a IRL maid Cyn that honestly looked really impressive, this was decidedly more impressive and lifelike than that was. And also, not recognizably a character from the show. So, uh, unless someone with waaaay too much free time and money just happened to make their own OC and also be a fucking AI genius, and also decided to kidnap me specifically as some overly elaborate rich person trolling the poors type of prank, this left me with two possibilities: I was having a really fucking weird dream, or somehow, some-fucking-how , my dumb ass managed to get Isekai'd into fucking Murder Drones. Which… you know, not the worst universe to be in. I could be in a comic book or cultivation universe, or some absolutely fucked setting like 40k, like, over half of every Stellaris game played ever, or even Dark Souls or Bloodborne. I mean, The Solver of the Absolute Fabric of Reality and the Void, the Exponential End was a thing, so you know, Robot Cthulu Satan is real and wants to kill us all, but still, my luck could have definitely landed me somewhere worse. Like Worm. Fuck me, at least I didn't end up in Worm. Always look at the bright side of things. Helps with the depression, you know?
I took in a breath… I didn't feel the sensation of breathing , craned my head-- and heard a night-imperceptible mechanical whirring and clicking as I did so that I somehow recognized as the articulation of robotic joints --and looked down at myself.
This was not my body. Ooooooh fuck. Fuckity fuck. Fucking fucky fuckity fuck fuck shit fuck Jesus H Christ on an Oyster-Encrusted pogo-stick what the fuck --
Okay. Okay. Okay… Okay… Ooooookay… let's just… table a crippling existential crisis and severe bout of body dysmorphia for a minute-- fuck I'm like over two feet shorter god fucking damnit -- I reached out what was clearly a worker drone arm that was also apparently my fucking arm now and pinched my other arm which was also a worker drone arm because apparently I'm a worker drone now, and to sorta paraphrase J, "This is okay. I'm fine, and calm, and GO AWAY!!!"
Aaaaaand, I felt that… well, not with nerves. I registered some haptic feedback in the form of pressure and something that felt like but wasn't quite like what a pinch should feel like. I chose to focus on the fact that I could get used to this new sensation rather than on the fact that I'd likely never feel the old sensation of touch or pain again. Waaaaaait. If I was a robot, who no longer had to worry about biological processes or chemical imbalances, did that mean that I no longer have acid reflux, anxiety, or depression? Because… That would be a pretty damn nice trade-off, all things considered. Huh… focus on the silver linings to distract myself from an impending existential crisis, I suppose.
Well. Not dreaming. I actually just got Isekai'd into Murder Drones, and I'm apparently a fucking Worker Drone. Cool. Yeah, let's uh, go with that. I'll ponder the fact that I'm theoretically immortal later. Right after the existential crisis I'm also going to have later. Which I will have as soon as I sort out whatever the fuck is going on at the moment and then have a moment to myself to figure out how to mute my external speakers so I can internally scream for a few hours straight while I deal with the body dysmorphia of no longer being a meat-person.
Emotional Repression Programs Running
My display blinked a few times at the words on my HUD, and my rapidly escalating spiraling and panic attack did a 180. Cool. Cool, convenient, and also a little horrifying, but I'll take it for the time being.
"Um, hello? You're awake, and I'm positive that it was only your memories and personality matrix that got damaged. Can you please answer me?"
Right. Sort out whatever the fuck is going on later , deal with the guy talking to me now . I sat up, privately thankful that (literal) basic motor control wasn't something I'd have to worry about, and took a look at the worker who'd been addressing me, as well as taking in a quick glance of the room around me. The male (I'm assuming by the voice) robot was dressed in a doctor's lab coat and had a white visor display. The room I was in was what I could best describe as the robotic equivalent of a medical bay.
"Uuuuuuh, hello?" I said. Then froze. That was not my voice . DEFINITELY changing that later.
"Oh good, you're not done kind of zombie drone," the --doctor? Mechanic? You know what, I'll just go with doctor for now-- doctor said.
Huh. That's a terrifying thought. Not zombie drones, but Zombie Drones, with capitals. Well, I didn't see any messages from an Eldritch Horror asking me to LET ME IN with a Y/N prompt, so I don't think I'm a Zombie Drone in the vein of Cyn. But yeah, I think that I would honestly prefer depression over having the Solver. Though… that would make me immune to being pancaked with a gesture… that was definitely a problem I'd have to look into. But enough of that. Figure out what the fuck is going on now, get somewhere private next, have an existential crisis after that , and then start planning on what the fuck I'm going to do about The Plot that's inevitably coming my way.
"Where am I?" I asked the doc.
"One of the medical bays in Outpost 3," he supplied. "There was a break-in by the Murder Drones two days back. We lost… a lot of drones in the hab block you live in, including your parents. You took a nasty amount of damage to your head, and a bullet grazed your Memory storage, but enough was intact that we felt obligated to try and save you anyways. While basic language and knowledge will be intact, you might have permanent memory loss and also irreversible changes to your personality, though."
Well… that's fucking convenient. Like holy fuck that's convenient. Like, I've still been Isekai'd into a foreign form that isn't even biological, but I've also been given what's essentially a blank slate for my identity. Like, this didn't make up for everything, but I'd definitely take it.
"Huh," is what I said aloud. Not in a questioning tone, but more as a matter of fact, I acknowledge what you told me sorta tone.
"Do you remember your name, kid?"
And there he goes with calling me a kid again… I took another look down at myself, and now that I had my existential crisis tabled, noticed that I was definitely smaller than him. Ah fuck, not only was I a worker drone, between that, the comments from the doc, and the mention of me having (presumably dead) parents, the body that I had apparently moved into was a child worker drone… Huh, let's add "body-jacking the corpse of an orphaned child" to the shit I gotta freak out about later.
Once again, aloud, I replied with, "Not at all." A beat and then, "Can I pick one for myself?"
The doctor's eyes… optic display… I should probably get used to using terms like that, I thought, blinked, evidently surprised, and he asked me, "Are… are you sure about that? We can change it, but you already have a name, and there are definitely drones who already know you by it."
I inhaled, briefly wondering if this was a skinwalker-ish thing to do, and resolved to be a bit more subtle about that until I could figure out if I had internal cooling fans that "breathing" cycled air to or something like that, and pondered my next words for a moment. My looks, I could presumably change easily enough. Workers were literally factory-standard, so I could just swap my hair to something that was more me and wear clothes I liked, but my name was something intrinsic enough to me that I'd want it to be associated with me as much as possible. "Well, considering that I can't remember my life prior to waking up just now, that permanent memory loss you mentioned is probably real, and almost certainly permanent. So whoever I was before now is functionally dead. I mean, I'm personally thankful that you brought me back to life, you know, but the ah… am I a guy?"
"Yes, your OS is male," he said.
Oh thank fuck , I thought. Not that I was attached to being male, but I didn't dislike being a guy, and a sudden gender-bend on top of everything else was the last thing I needed right now. "Right, thanks for that," I continued. "The guy I was before this is for all intents and purposes gone. I mean, you still saved a child, just not the child you set out to. Again, really thankful for that," I clarified, "But at the same time, using the name of someone I'm not , because without his memories or personality, I'm not really him even if I'm in his body, so it feels pretty disingenuous and honestly disrespectful, you know? If I'm literally a new me, I want a new name to reflect that."
The doctor's optics blinked at me a few times. "Right. That makes sense. A bit more introspective than I would have expected given the circumstances, but we can get your name changed before we release you. Do you have something in mind, then?"
I looked him in the eyes… visor… and waited a second or two to make it look like I was internally deliberating, but I already knew who I was, regardless of where I found myself.
"Joseph," I said. "Just Joseph, no last name. I'd feel rude to use the last name of the family who died."
He looked right back at me, opening his mouth as if to ask if I was sure, but something in my gaze must have already answered his unspoken question, because he hesitated, and then instead said, "Alright then. I'll get in touch with records and admin after we're done here."
"Thanks doc… uh… what's your name? And how old am I? And, uh, what year is it?" I asked, feigning an increased sheepishness with each question.
"Doctor Hayden," he answered the first one -- god I hope his first name isn't Samuel -- "you turned seven last week, and it's the year 3062 going by Earth's calendar."
"Okay," I said. Internally, I was processing that I was fucking seven again, because fuck man, I was 25 before this, and also now I can't drive (not that I really could even attempt to do so with the fucking Murder Drones in the post apocalyptic wasteland above), and also FUCK, I was probably gonna have to go to school again. And also, that meant that assuming events play out roughly along canon, and that The Prommening happened in what would be the latter end of the school-year of 3071, I had just shy of a decade to figure out and subsequently enact a gameplan for the Solver showing up to eat the planet and everyone on it. And, surprise, despite everything, I really didn't want to die again, least of all because if it happened once, I could possibly get Isekai'd again , and I didn't trust my luck not to shaft me by reincarnating my ass into one of the aforementioned universes I considered worse than this one. Hell, at least in this universe I could shoot a gun at the things trying to kill me. If I died here, I could fucking end up taking Naofumi's place in Rising of the Shield Hero, and then I wouldn't even be able to give myself same-day shipping to god at that point because I'd have an attack stat of a fucking one , and then the damn Shield would just unlock a Curse Series if I tried.
"Any other questions?" Dr Hayden prompted, and I just shook my head. A lot of questions, actually, but nothing immediately relevant, and more importantly, nothing that wouldn't make it seem like you messed something up really badly when you put me back together. "All right then, let's put you through some basic examinations and then we'll send you back home," he said.
"Just like that?" I asked.
"Well, if you don't remember anything, you don't have any trauma we'd have to look at, and to be fair we have quite a few orphans on our hands right now. We had WDF teams clean up your hab blocks after the attack was over, but we're letting surviving families decide what to do with the… bodies," the doc replied.
I blinked my optics at that. "So, the house I don't remember is gonna be clean, but the corpses of the parents I also don't remember will still be there? Can, can I ask that they be removed before I get back… and that someone also takes me to where I apparently live, because I can't remember that either?"
Dr Hayden blinked right back at me, what I just mentioned evidently not occurring to him. Though, that would explain a bit into how Doll had her parent's bodies in her hab… Fuck, she'd just be a horrifically traumatized child who watched her parents be ripped apart by V and now has to live with their corpses right now. That was another thing to add to the rapidly growing to-do list. "Do you have a preference for what to do with them?" he asked me.
"Not really ," I said, feeling awkward as fuck right now. "I mean, if there's a funeral service or something, maybe include a third coffin or whatever for the kid who technically died with them." then I paused, and my eyes widened… or rather, considering I was a drone, my optics probably just hollowed. "Am I gonna have to go to a funeral for a family I can't remember?" I asked, because if I felt awkward now , that scenario would be horrific .
"People will understand if an amnesiac seven-year-old isn't in the right state of mind to go to a funeral," Dr Hayden said.
"Oh thank robo-god," I said… and then followed with, "I'm gonna have to go to school, aren't I?"
"We, ah, we've suspended the schools for a week. To give the survivors time to mourn," he told me. "So you'll have some time to adjust before you need to go back. Though Khan and the WDF are going to be pulling some serious overtime to install a second and maybe even a third door to stop any further break-in attempts."
I sighed, and suppressed a wince as I wondered if that was bad or not, before deciding that breathing as part of an emote was probably okay. "Well, thanks for small mercies, I guess. Gonna be hard enough to adjust to everything, at least I get a week to prep. Let's get these exams over with, doc… and also can you tell me where my school is ? Because, well, don't remember that , either. Or what a 'Murder Drone,' is, come to think of it. Can you just give me a map of… wherever we are, and some recent historical context while we do this?"
Dr Hayden smiled, and I heard a ding in my head as a notification popped up on my head. "Just sent a map PDF to you." I blinked. Right, I'm a robot, and I can download stuff straight into my synthetic brain. I was definitely gonna abuse the shit out of that later. I downloaded the map even as the doc kept talking. "Let's get these exams started."
________________________________________
The door shut behind me a few hours later, and I slid back against it and let out a breath as I flicked the lights on and looked around the apartment. My apartment, I corrected myself. There was a living room, what appeared to be a connected kitchen and closet, and a hallway that led to a bedroom. I was gonna have to go through those for anything valuable, probably looting anything that could help me from the room of my "parents." I also saw an open door to a bathroom, which gave me a slight pause. Do drones even shit? Apparently we ate batteries and various metals and electronics, which went into a stomach analogue and were subsequently broken down to send whatever bits and ends were needed to various parts of our bodies. Even assuming a 100% material efficiency, that extra mass had to go somewhere, right? Fuck, I'd have to check if I had an asshole, and if drone constipation or diarrhea was a thing. I already knew the fuckos at JCJ programmed us with sweating, but I'd like to hope that even they would realize poor bowel movements in drones would eat into efficiency. After all, if you were stuck on the shitter due to some sadistic fuck programming in bad craps, any lost work time was down to the guy who programmed that to begin with.
I'd asked a few more questions as they came to me during the examinations and explanations that Dr Hayden was giving me, and had confirmed that this was the break-in were V axed Doll's parents in canon… and my, or at least, this body's parents as well, among a dozen other families and about another two dozen drones on top of that. Of course, I didn't straight up ask that, but the roundabout questions I did ask (what did the Murder Drone that broke in look like - a female model with a jacket and short hair, who else died, etc) gave me the answers I was looking for.
Hearing the names Yeva and Mikhail "Mitch" Matryoshka among the list of the deceased definitively placed me on a specific point on the timeline, while also leading me to two other conclusions - one, holy fuck Doll's name was a pun, and godsdamnit that was funny, especially considering her canon fate as a force ghost in Uzi's OS, but simultaneously I was gonna have to try really hard not to laugh at that until way further into the future, and two - the crack theory that Mitchell survived the core collapse, uploaded himself into a Worker Drone body, and then bagged Yeva and is actually Doll's father might not be as much of a crack theory as I originally thought. Something that morbid curiosity compelled me to look into, but it was also far down my list of priorities at the moment. Also, Nori Doorman was not on that list, so she definitely "died" at an earlier point than here.
That all being said, I was alone now, I locked the door, and had figured out how to mute my external speakers. First up, looking back into my human memories, I literally replayed the sound of myself talking, and went into my user settings (fuck me, that's a weird experience), and, using the sounds files as a sample, changed my voice to well… my voice. Yeah, don't care if that gave rise to skinwalker allegations, I was not using someone else's fucking voice while driving their goddamn corpse. I was a human ghost-in-the-shell piloting the body of a child robot after they suffered an identity death. I didn't really have a choice in that, considering I very much didn't want to die again, but I had enough respect not to use this kid's voice when I wasn't him . Funnily enough, the voice would be the only thing I'd have to change beyond my wardrobe and a wig. The eyes were actually the same color as mine, so small mercies, I suppose. I'd been born with blue eyes, they shifted to green in my teens, and eventually settled on grey in my early twenties. I definitely turned the opacity on my HUD down a bit though. Right, the most pressing concern addressed, now I could address the mechanical elephant in the room.
I had evidently died but couldn't remember the event, had body-jacked the corpse of a seven year old robot kid, was a millenia into the future in another universe where an eldritch horror wanted to wipe out the material universe and sent its pawns as a vanguard to genocide the species I was now a part of, I had 9 short years to figure out how to stop that shit, not become a casualty to Doll's murders or Uzi on a Feral Solver rampage, as well as not die in general, I no longer had sex organs (I checked, and while that definitely didn't help the dysmorphia, I was somewhat relieved that whoever at JCJenson designed us wasn't that fucked in the head, which also gave me slight hope on the whole "do drones take dumps?" thing), and, oh yeah, I was no longer a meat person.
Therefore, with several hours free, I decided that I muted my mouth, and I must scream.
I took in a mostly unnecessary breath (turns out that we did have internal cooling fans to help with heat regulation, and that the fuckers who designed worker drones, in addition to programming us with the ability to sweat for some godforsaken reason, also programmed us to pant to cyle air internally when we heat up from overexertion. Which you know, cool, because breathing was a habit that would have been hard to break, but if I had to do it to avoid skinwalker allegations like the ones Engi from the Drone Fortress fanfic got slapped with, I would've forced myself through it), and registered my optics hollowing so much they were only a pixel thick, and--
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-----
________________________________________
An internal alarm I'd set (I'd gotten the hang of my own UI relatively quick) went off about three hours into my rampant panic attacks, existential horror, and constant internal screaming, reminding me that however much the panic felt appropriate at the moment, that the clock was ticking, and I needed a game plan, preferably sooner rather than later.
I tripped my emotional repression programs at a low intensity, to gradually bring down my terror rather than just mute it and all but invite a later episode. Okay , I thought, as I panted and worked on regaining some semblance of calm. Okay. Small steps. Figure out some main goals, and then figure out how to achieve them. Step one… step one, I thought. Granted, I was fully aware I'd be freaking the fuck out again sooner or later, much more likely sooner, and would probably have several hours-long sessions of screaming terror over the course of the next week, but I did need breaks from the inevitable hysteria that proof of the multiverse in the form of being Isekai'd into a synthetic shell gave me.
I froze. Wait. The multiverse is real. That means there's an infinite number of realities with an infinite number of myself going through different versions of this scenario. And there's an infinite number of realities where what I'm thinking right now are the words on the page of a fanfiction someone's reading somewhere. Or that I'm an anime character. Or that instead of Murder Drones, Glitch or someone else made an animated Indie Series telling my story. Fuuuuuuuuuck, I'm on the wrong side of the fourth wall! Shit, that's not cool, man-- my emotional repression programs cut my spiral before it could get going again, and I shook my head as I tried to refocus on making a plan before having another episode.
Right. Goal one was NOT DIE . To do that, I'd need to commit fucking deicide on the Solver, or at the very least help Uzi do so. That was farther in the future though, and I could make plans for fighting Murder Drones and the Primary Host later. Main goals first. Also part of Don't Die would be avoiding death at the hands of the Murder Drones. Which, considering that I'm reasonably certain this was the last canon break-in to Outpost 3 prior to Uzi's fustercluck in the Pilot, shouldn't be that hard. Two problems with that, though. One, I sure as hell wasn't just gonna sit on my ass behind Khan's admittedly impressive doors and waste time I could be spending preparing for Armageddon and arming myself to the teeth, and two, my presence was already not canon. I had no guarantee that this universe was following the canon timeline on a 1:1 ratio, and furthermore, anything I interacted with could and would alter events as part of the butterfly effect, making what knowledge I did have increasingly useless until I got to a point where only my meta-knowledge of past lore would still provide any use. Not to mention that once I actually got to the end of canon, assuming I survived, I'd be flying blind from there on out.
So, rather than assume perfect future knowledge, I should start thinking in terms of me having meta-knowledge granted from my first life, and that (to borrow and paraphrase a line from the RWBY fanfic Semblance Sapience) between canon and various fanfics I've read, that rather than knowing the future, I have merely viewed a variety of possible futures for this specific timeline through fictional media in my first life, which while theoretically capable of replicating the results of precognition, is in actuality more of a demonstration of chaos theory than true foresight. Use my knowledge as a guideline rather than a railroad track, and that while I'd assume that past events of canon were ironclad until proven otherwise, keep in mind that I could unknowingly be in an AU that could invalidate almost everything I know. So make plans based on what I know, but keep them flexible enough that I can change them if my meta-knowledge turns out to be useless or even a liability, especially as I change events. And also hope really hard , that if I am in an AU, it's not too drastic of a change. N-Raged was cool and all, but I very much don't want to watch happy-go-lucky N get so horrifically traumatized that he literally turns into the fucking Lord of Frenzied Flame , ripping his own head in half as a [Null] replaces it and all.
So . What else can I put under Don't Die ? One: Uzi Doorman. Assuming I was in the same class as her (I might not be, I need to check the population of Outpost 3 and how many schools it has later), I could very well be on track to die to her when she goes feral during that camping trip in Episode 4. Two things I could do about that. First, befriend her, to make her less likely to want to kill me, or at the very least more likely to go after other kids before me. Don't have to get away when running away from a bear, just have to be faster than everyone else running from the bear. Second, try to head that shit off from happening in the first place… also by befriending her. Fuck it, we'll table that and get back to that on a more dedicated Uzi section of my plans to survive Murder Drones. What's next under Don't Die? Doll. Definitely Doll. Girl was a horrifically traumatized 7 or 8-year old right now, who'd also just awoken her Solver. She probably wouldn't start killing drones for their oil for a while yet, and right now she definitely wasn't guilty of any crimes, so I could try to head off being a tally on her list by also befriending her, which I could also do as a means to help her cope with her trauma and potentially be willing to work with everyone else when The Plot roles around, as well as averting her canon fate.
So, step one: Don't Die, because god damn , I really don't want to fucking die, especially if as a robot I was now theoretically immortal in the sense that time could no longer claim me. To accomplish this, I must: Prepare myself to confront the Absolute Solver, which will need to include some kind of means to not get immediately pancaked with a gesture. I must also: prepare for multiple confrontations with hostile Murder Drones, which should be easier, provided I can get my hands on some proper futuristic conventional firearms. No need to get started on that right this second, either, I can go full Batman mode and take like 3 years to prep for that. Additionally: Don't die to Uzi or Doll. Elaborations on how to accomplish that will come with the parts of my plans that deal with them specifically.
Okay. Right. Cool. That's step one. I can refine that into a more detailed plan later. Now, step 2? Characters. For now, I'll assume people are close enough to their canon counterparts, but will adjust if proven otherwise. So let's also break this down. Three parts: Solver Drones, Murder Drones, and Worker Drones. Let's start with the shortest of those… goddamnit, considering that Uzi is short and Nori is a flesh-crab, that was a pun.
Uzi Doorman. The protagonist. The neglected child. The angsty emo gremlin. The software, engineering, coding, computer, and possibly also physics genius. The to-be Eldritch Goddess herself. She's 7 right now. She could definitely use a friend, and considering how important she'll be, being that friend very much would be a boon for me (honestly, I'd been a loner in my first life, so beyond ensuring my continued survival, shooting the social life of my second life in the foot was definitely not a concern of mine). I might be able to push her into being slightly less volatile, less desiring of a total genocide upon my former species (space was fucking big, and humans had a thousand years to get off the planet and get around. Unless proven otherwise, I will assume that there are some humans somewhere out there in the galaxy either hiding from or trying to find a way to kill the Solver. Which could and would be problematic later, but not a concern when the resident nightmare beyond mortal comprehension was metaphorically breathing down my neck) , remove myself from a list of candidates to literally steal the sentience of , because the last thing I needed was Uzi mind-jacking me like she did Braidon, and finding out I was a human ghost-in-the-shell that way, as well as have a consistent excuse to get myself involved with The Plot as it happens. I could also help her deal with all of the neglect from Khan and all the harassment from her peers. And while I'd never try to force a ship, if I could just so happen to nudge NUzi into happening in this timeline (which honestly, I shouldn't need to do much for that at all), well, it was like the most wholesome ship ever, so by Cyn's shiny metal ass I wanted it to happen. Bonus points if I could get V in on that for NUziV. Like I said, I wouldn't try to force it, but if we were in a group and had to split up and I could put the three of them together? Yeah, I'd give that a shot. I could also help her throughout canon, possibly head off some issues with Solver possession, give warnings about Cabin Fever, etc. Hell, I might even have a chance to copy the Crucifix Patch, which would be massive . So, to recap: Befriend and aid the purple gremlin, with a bonus goal of getting NUzi or even NUziV to sail.
Next, Nori. Considering that I am nowhere near ready to take on Cabin Fever by myself, nevermind that I'd want to do it alone, or that I even know where the fuck the place actually is relevant to Outpost 3, there wasn't much to think about with her, beyond potentially getting her to create a backup for the Patch if I could get down to the labs before Cynessa. Also worth noting is that Cabin Fever is a can of worms all by itself. Clear out Alice and the Sentinels, and any Disassembler who wanders down there can jump into the core hole and finish the planet off. The show also implies that Nori only finds the actual physical copy of the Crucifix Patch like literally mere hours, if not minutes , before the main cast shows up. On the one hand, getting down there would mean more drone power to look for the thing, but on the other, I'd need to be able to leave one hell of a permanent garrison, in addition to trying to reprogram the sentinels before I made the attempt. So table Nori for the time being. Maybe also start prepping a speech to verbally ream her for not at least telling her family she was still alive (in a fashion) before running off. She had Khan mercy-kill her and that shit traumatized him into throwing himself into his doors so hard that he neglected his kid, not to mention the effect her seeming death had on Uzi. Like, fuck, woman, you're no Raven Branwen, but damn if you didn't give a good run for Shittiest Mom. At least Khan was fucking there .
Lastly on the Solver Drones (at least, assuming I didn't encounter any more, which might actually be on the table), Doll. The foil to Uzi. The question of "what would she be like without having met N?" The girl who watched her parents be murdered in front of her, had that subsequently awaken her Solver, and revenge-spiraled so hard that she ended up needlessly murdering a dozen of her peers, eating even more to not overheat and die, and alienated everyone she knew to the point where she died alone, and got her core slurped by the Solver in Episode 7, ultimately ending up as a force ghost in the back of Uzi's OS. As previously stated, though, right now, she was just an extremely traumatized kid who now had Robot Cthulhu Satan's code running through her OS, as well as her parent's corpses still in her hab unit. And I felt morally obligated to at least try to help her heal from what she's been through, prevent all the murder (especially if I could be one of them), and give Yeva's daughter a better fate. Ironic that my plans for that were also as simple as "befriend the child." But that was the plan, and at this point, it would head off a lot of issues if it worked.
Cool. Part one of step 2 done. Let's move on to the Murder Drones.
N. The other protagonist. The golden retriever of a genocide robot. The goober who has the lack of awareness to consistently stab himself with his own nanite acid stinger, possibly the guy who "killed" Nori, yet also had enough raw strength to yeet drones into the fucking stratosphere! The guy who would saw off his own arm and genuinely believe that he deserves it. J's punching bag. V's old flame. So, don't die to him, because fuck me that would be embarassing, but also see if I can turn him earlier than canon. Befriend him too, because N is just that fucking wholesome and also having him as a friend massively increases my own odds of survival. Bonus points if I can nudge him towards Uzi and possibly also get him back together with V at the same time.
Next up is V. Who is… complicated. Least of all because I want her to be between me and the Solver, but at the same time Doll also has entirely valid reasons to want her super-mega-hyper-dead . That was a conundrum all right, especially considering that N would probably oppose Doll trying to kill V. I'll have to amend my Doll plans to try and plant the suggestion that the Murder Drones could also be victims of something controlling them. Gonna have to figure that out. Moving onto V herself, though, if I could turn N, not get his memories wiped again, and not die to either V or J in the process, she'd probably come around sooner or later. Huh, maybe if I shoot the fuck out of her a couple times before that, I might get Doll to mellow out. Considering she literally force-fed a guy his own entrails in front of his family, and likes to practice balloon animals with her victims… yeah, I wouldn't really feel the guilt I might feel with N if I riddled her with bullets, shrapnel, or blasted her with various explosives. Multiple times.
Onto J. She'd definitely be the hardest to turn, but fuck me in a non-sexy way if I didn't ship Jessa, so I felt obligated to try. Besides, I have the distinct feeling that Tessa herself would have wanted someone in my place to make the attempt to redeem her Jaybird, and who was I to deny that poor, abused, and horrifically murdered child? I didn't really have any concrete plans for J right now, but what I did have revolved around making sure Eldritch J didn't happen, partly because I really don't want to deal with a Solverpede if I don't have to, and partly because a J who believes she still works for JCJenson (In Spaaaaaaaaace) could theoretically be convinced that "corporate" is actually an Eldritch Horror that killed the entire corporation and is pretending to be it just for shits and giggles. That could at least theoretically put J on our side, and if I could get her memories unlocked without her being under the Solver's thumb, her remembering her charge and what the Solver did to her would probably flip her allegiance for good.
Lastly on this front, other Murder Drones. There's at least , like, 8 or so, judging by the corpses we see in Cabin Fever, and I very much doubt that there weren't even more elsewhere on Copper 9, still working away at the local Worker Drone populations. If my (currently) vague plans for surface exploration and looting ever went more than a moderate distance from Outpost 3, I'd be encountering them sooner or later. I had no clue if they'd just be borderline feral animals, or if they'd also be drones that Cyn reformatted the memories of and then sent as her vanguard. If it was the former, I'd have to put them down one way or another, while ensuring they didn't become Solverpedes in the process. If it was the latter, that meant a whole lot more Solver-proof bodies I could try to put between myself and the Primary Host.
Well, regardless, unlike a Solver host, I could probably fuck up Murder Drones with conventional firearms… actually, given that one clip, their wings could block vehicle mounted machine guns. Hmmmmmmmm… I was gonna have to come up with some better bullets for that shit. Maybe something with Tungsten Carbide? That shit's tough. And with the overheating problems the Murder Drones have, I could also look into mixing in an incendiary component… Oh! I could also look into figuring out the exact kind of light flash that the sentinels use. If I could replicate that in a flashbang or a little light like in Men-in-Black with the memory wipers, I could boot-loop fuckers left, right, and center. And since I know they're vulnerable to sunlight in general and UV light in specific, I could get a UV light-stick ala Dying Light! Oh, there's so much shit I could pull from video games and use here! I was actually getting excited just thinking about it.
Wait… I'm in the year 3062. Holy fuck, I'm in the future. How much sci-fi shit that's in my head could I actually make IRL right now? Fuck, for how ludicrously overkill they are compared to most other settings, if I could replicate pretty much any gun more advanced than a stubber or autogun the Imperium employed in 40k, I'd be in business. Even the bog-standard lasgun had the killing power of a fucking 50-cal, and keeping it fed with ammo was a logistician's wet-dream. If I could recreate a melta-gun, a plasma gun, a power sword , or even a bolter ? Huh, did Hacksmith also exist in the distant past of this timeline? Those guys made IRL lightsabers, assuming that the internet was decently archived, and that said archives were locally stored somewhere and survived the core collapse, I might be able to peek back into Youtube and replicate some of the crazy shit they made. Hell, for all I know, they could have went and built a real life Space Marine Bolter for me.
Okay. Basic plans for the Murder Drones down as well. Lastly, some basic ideas considering Worker Drones of Interest.
Khan Doorman. Husband to Nori Doorman. The guy who is currently convinced he mercy killed his wife, when in actuality he's cheating on her with literal doors. So horrendously traumatized by the experience that he threw himself into his work so hard that he neglects his own daughter. And if the posters and shit from the pilot that were up in an actual school were to be believed, he's gonna get worse. I mean, for fuck's sake, "How to deal with your disappointing failure of a child?" "Doors are my real daughter?" "Doors>Uzi?" Dude , that's fucked up! He's also in charge of the Bunker, and could probably have me imprisoned or banished if I do something that is too threatening to the Bunker… like picking fights with Murder Drones… So, mentally traumatized authority figure that will be the neglectful, possibly borderline abusive dad to someone I intend to befriend, and will potentially cause me problems. On the other hand, the guy, when not hyper fixated on doors, is definitely the side of the family that Uzi inherited all her engineering genius from. Dude rebuilt her railgun in like 10 minutes max, and when he finally locked in at the end of the series, Khan really locked the fuck in . Dude built a bulkhead so good it could make a god bleed. And if it can bleed, that means we can kill it. No wonder his lore as the fucking Emperor of all worker drones on Copper 9 went so hard in the Sisters fanfic. Also, that "killing all humans phase" he apparently had very much implies that Khan could have been as completely unhinged and badass as Uzi was at one point. Would also explains why Nori was into him.
So: Deal with Khan as issues relating to him come up. Try not to undermine the guy too much, for timeline stability if nothing else, but very much make plans to operate under his nose and against his wishes, because survival is more important than doors. Try to make him be a better dad, though don't just try and force it out of the blue. Gonna have to work up to that slowly after befriending his kid, so as not to raise digital eyebrows.
Next was the WDF in general. Probably want to prevent all the deaths N causes in the Pilot, for the sake of preventing unnecessary deaths if nothing else. And, to be fair, those doors did keep us safe (mostly) for like two decades. Plus, I might be able to co-opt them into a militia or something. If I could overcome the seemingly in-built passivity of the average worker drone, and gave the dudes guns, I might stand a chance of whipping these guys into an actual solid fighting force… a long shot, to be sure, but I had 9 years and needed to exploit every last angle I could. I was planning deicide here, and if I went into a fair fight with a god, I was doing something wrong. I needed to rig the fucking game in my favor, and that meant ruthlessly going after every single advantage I could.
Thad. The chad. Not to be confused with Chad. Who is a toxic piece of shit. Thad was wholesome and cool as fuck, seemed at least somewhat less passive than most of his peers, and if I was gonna try and build a friend group involving the main cast, he was going to be the much needed lynchpin of sanity and stability among us… shut up, people out there in the multiverse. I swear to god if any of you are saying sus right now I will find a way to cross back over to the other side of the fourth wall and punch you in the face myself! Anyways, Thad is a bro in like, literally every single timeline ever. Without exception. I honestly can't recall a single fic with an antagonistic Thad in it. Dude was just that fucking cool. He's Thad. Definitely wanted to be his friend, and considering I very well knew how nuts I could get, and that I was gonna be working with Uzi, Doll, and likely Lizzy as well, having him as a voice of reason to try and reign us in from our worst impulses would be a godsend.
Speaking of: Lizzy. Ooooooooh, boy. Lizzy. One the one hand, she's fucking hilarious. On the other hand, she's a literal stereotypical blonde cheerleader popular girl who is at the very least complicit with Doll's murders, possibly directly fed some of her peers corpses to V, and seemingly felt no real remorse for that. So, she's a fucking psychopath for sure, a narcissist as well, and generally shows a disturbing lack of care for the safety of not just others, but also herself . She might genuinely be so nihilistic that the only reason she isn't suicidal is because she fuels herself on the shallow praises of others and constant distraction from her phone, which would honestly be really sad if that's the case. Makes me want to help her, if only because that strikes a chord with my own personal life experiences. Except, instead of popularity, I spent a couple years throwing myself into gaming and fanfiction to distract myself from crippling levels of nihilistic thought and depression. Didn't always work perfectly, but I was hopeful that no longer having a meat body meant that at the very least, the depression was behind me, and I could combat the nihilism with the argument that as a theoretically immortal machine, I could carve out my own purpose for existence and take however damn long I needed to do so.
On the other other hand, she's one of three worker drones, besides Thad and Khan, to have actually gotten off her ass and went outside, beyond the safety of the doors, to fight the Solver, even if she didn't really contribute to that fight at all beyond some texting with V. I also had a personal theory that with all the shit she survived in canon (Solver Uzi, a literal missile going off next to her, Sparky using her as a chew toy, etc), she stole Doll's Plot Armor without realizing it. She could definitely be useful, and more importantly, getting her on my side would be far less headache inducing then letting her grow up into someone who could antagonize me or be tricked into letting a Murder Drone into the Bunker. So, get her on board too…
Shit man, the first steps of my plan to survive Murder Drones after being dropped into it a decade before canon really did boil down to "recreate the story from 'The Neglected Children of Outpost 3,'" and I wasn't sure how to feel about that.
Next up were all the children Uzi and Doll end up murdering. Granted some of those kids were little shits and/or gunning for a Darwin Award, but they were still kids, even if I had to really struggle to recall even some of their names. That was another really weird part of being a robot. Anything I could even slightly recall from my first life was now perfectly stored in my digital memory, and I could look back on it whenever I wanted, which was really fucking nice when it came to double checking details on Murder Drones (the show, not the bots who were now very real and very much wanted to drain my chassis of its vitae), but anything I'd actually forgotten was gone completely, with no chance of thinking about it hard enough letting me actually recall it. Regardless, while I didn't really care about them in the sense that I wouldn't want to kill myself if they went the way of the dodo, I'd definitely feel guilty if I did nothing to try and prevent their deaths, and drones like Emily, Kelsey, Penny, Braidon, or Sam didn't really deserve to die. Hell, maybe I could recruit or use them for something. Probably not, but again, explore every avenue for every advantage, and those kids were avenues who had their potential cut short in canon.
Lastly, other classmates of Uzi's. At least some of them made it to the end of Episode 8. I recall even less about them than the ones who did die, but again, I might be able to use them for something, and while I was fully aware my sense of morality wasn't the best , I would like to avoid the deaths of innocents when and where I could, because I still would feel guilty if I did nothing.
Right. Don't Die, Deal with the Characters, change the Plot, and overcome it when everything goes tits-up. Extremely basic outline of surviving the next decade made, and now I can revise it as needed in the future. I smiled to myself and let out a shaky breath.
So. Gameplan made. Go full on "Neglected Children of Outpost 3" on this crap and literally utilize the Power of Friendship to get the kids in the Outpost 3 crew on the same page and actually working together. Then start working on guns and shit to prep for Murder Drones and eventually fighting Robot Cthulhu Satan itself. Maybe even build a secret lair while I'm at it? Oh! I should come up with a coat of arms or something for myself. Maybe something socialist? Could I actually create an Anarcho-Syndicalist society among Worker Drones? Would be pretty damn funny to start the literal Worker's Revolution in J's own hunting grounds. Hmmmmmm. Well, things I could think about more later. My hands were starting to shake again, so I think it was time to start screaming and having another existential crisis for the next few hours. Maybe this time I'll panic over the no-longer extant family jewels? Didn't really focus on it earlier, but now that I was thinking about it, no longer having any sex organs was definitely pretty high up on the list of things to scream over when considering my reincarnation to a synthetic lifeform. Especially when I never got the chance to use them. Yeah, that seems like a good thing to freak the fuck out about…
Damn, I really died a virgin in my first life.
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