{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/hostile-takeover/08",
  "path": "/posts/hostile-takeover/08",
  "publishedAt": "2023-12-22T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "::: subchapter\n\nThe Worker Defense Force was asleep on the job, and Khan Doorman\ndid nothing.\n\nTruly, what was the harm?  On the wall near Door 1's control console,\na small whiteboard kept tally: 'days since murder drone casualty.'  It\nhad been ticking up for years, and with each added tally, a register\nof pride incremented.\n\nAdmittedly, they'd kept the fatality rate so low by curtailing any\nscavenging runs to the city ruins.  But when you build doors so good,\nwho wouldn't want to stay nestled in their embrace?\n\nSo the WDF were asleep on the job, but their job wasn't to hold back\nthe murder drones, it was to hold back the workers.  A little slack\nwouldn't get anyone killed.\n\nKhan walked back toward the folding table.  Icicles hung off its\nedges, and between them, a ring of metal folding chairs holding the\nsleeping WDF drones.  Underneath their heads, slips of old cardstock,\nworn from constant use and soon to be tossed away.\n\nHe'd brought a fresh pack.  Their last game ended in thrown\naccusations of card-counting --- but you had to count cards to\nremember which was which, the fronts faded of any identifiable ink.\n\nAlso, they were robots.  A fraction of their processing power could\ncompute the optimal move.  All told, it was harder not to\ncount cards.\n\nOne head lifted at his arrival, Todd giving an acknod.\n\n\"Khan, there ya are!  Took ya long enough.  Almost as long as it's\ntakin Uzi.\"\n\nKhan chuckled.  \"She must giving those hydraulics quite the thorough\nexamination!  Such enthusiasm for her age.\"\n\n\"Pret-ty dangerous to stay out there that long, though.\"\n\nKhan's expression fell to a frown.  \"Do you think I should check\non her?\"\n\nA reply, but not from Todd.  \"I'm afraid you won't find her there,\nMr. Doorman.\"\n\nKhan jumped at the sudden voice.  When he moved, a young drone stood\nbehind him, her arrival perfectly obscured.  He turned around, and\njumped again when he saw her.\n\n\"Doll?  You're up early.  School isn't for---\"\n\n\"Terrible dreams, alas.  Блаженное видение.  I should say we don't\nhave much time.\"\n\n\"You think Uzi is in danger?  Do you think---\" Shaking hands dropped\nthe unopened card-pack.  \"I... no, not again.  Not so soon.\"\n\nSeeing Khan's expression, Doll frowned.  She reached out, a hand on\nhis shoulder.  \"Danger is not death, Mr. Doorman.  She can be saved.\nWe can save her.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\nBraxton piped up from the table, shuffling a deck of cards.  \"Save\nher?  From murder drones?  We'd die like mooks out there.\"  He was\ndrawing a card --- king of hearts, a sword in his head.\n\nLooking over, Doll stepped past Khan.  \"I'm willing to make that\nsacrifice.  Are you?\"\n\nBeneath a white hat and blue eyes, one guard drawled, \"'m sorry about\nyour classmate...  Doll, was it?  It's a tragedy.  But we can't risk\nmore drones dying for such a slim chance --- hardly a chance at all.\"\n\n\"Worker drones would stand little chance against murder drones, it is\ntrue.  How would you like to be more than workers?\"\n\nDoll stalked forward.  Light shone in her hands.  Even from this\nangle, Khan recognized that symbol.  The folding table glowed\nsympathetically, and rose from the grilled bunker floor.  The card\ngame rained off the table as a phantom force folded it up and cast it\naside.  With a bang, it hit walls of the bunker.  The tallyboard\nshook, and fell.\n\nAnd then Doll halted, having walked past the four other WDF members,\nturning before Door 1.  She regarded Khan seriously.  \"Do you remember\nmy mother?\"\n\n\"Yeva,\" Khan murmured.\n\n\"She foresaw the arrival of the murder drones.  I foresee their end.\nI can bring that about.  We can bring that about.\"\n\nThe other worker drones nodded, enraptured and inspired by her words\n--- but Khan's gaze, weary to the point of blindness, saw only the past\ndevouring the present.  It was Cabin Fever all over again.\n\n\"Will you save your daughter, Mr. Doorman?\"\n\nKhan met Doll's eyes, Yeva's bright red tinted ever so gradually by\nthat paralyzing yellow gaze.  Khan froze.  Familiar inaction held him\nstill.  In his lowest moments, it had felt so much like he had fed\nhis cherished ones to the yawning, demonic mouths himself.\n\nDoll would lead his men to their deaths... and Khan did nothing.\n\n- - -\n\nThe squad had built the corpse spire around leaning, ruined towers.\nThe road between them once led to an empty lot.  Their landing site.\nYears passed, and the bodies had stacked ever higher.\n\nAcross Copper-9, snow and crumbling monuments buried the world in cold\ndesolation.  Here, though, the continual passage of disassembled prey\nand peg legs had trod one path over and over.  It sliced a furrow in\nthe earth.  Banks of snow and rusting metal rose on either side,\nmounds and concrete blocks stretching for hundreds of meters.  It\noffered cover, were one to dare approach the murder drones' lair.  The\nsnow and mist only obscured further, wind whirling around the spire.\n\nThe first worker had emerged from an unseen alleyway spilling out into\nthe great furrow.  Optics struggled to enhance, but exposure had\nrefined the image.  Red hat, purple hair, a skirt hanging off a thin,\nfeminine waist --- but the first thing they saw?  Orange eyes shining\nlike beacons in the distance.\n\nAs that worker drone walked through the falling snow, not a flake\nstuck to them.  N fixated on that detail --- it was a familiar effect.\n\nN had fired a shot at this drone, and it meant nothing.  Like the\nfight against the cultist all over again.  This one even seemed poised\nto monologue.\n\n[Girlboss... yes, good choice of words,]{.angleq} Doll had\nbroadcast.  Then she'd snapped her fingers.  [Come now.]{.angleq}\n\nN heard it first, before they appeared.  Four sets of footsteps\nimpacting far down the road.  There, worker drones marched out from a\nskyscraper's shell.  A V-shape formation behind the first.  Eight\npupil shone in the fog, each shades of blue and green, and all\nnarrowed in determination.\n\nThe workers all wielded weapons --- armed for a battle?\n\n[Uzi!  Hey, there she is!  Doll was right, you're alive!]{.angleq} A\nblue-hatted drone took a hand off his pickax to wave.\n\n[Battle is no place for cheerleader,]{.angleq} Doll said.  [But there\nare workers trained to defend.]{.angleq}\n\nJ's worker drone --- Uzi, they called her? --- had watched the drones\nemerge with open-mouthed shock.  Did she know them?  N had questions.\nUzi searched their ranks as if expecting something.  Whether she found\nit or not, the drone straightened with renewed confidence.  [Doll, do\nyou really think the WDF can---]{.angleq}\n\n[Enough posturing.  I'm hungry,]{.angleq} his captain broadcasted\nin cipher-growl.  J made a neck-cracking motion, and pointed her\nrifles.  She aimed for a drone with a woodax, who startled and strafed\nout of the way, hiding behind a drone with a ridiculously oversized\nwretch.\n\nBut Uzi stepped in front of her, lifting an arm to block her line of\nfire.  \"Wait, J, don't!\"\n\nWhat was this drone doing?  ...And why is she getting away with it?\n\n\"Excuse me?  I thought you wanted to stop Doll?\"  Impatient,\nmurderous, as expected of J --- but her expression held something N\ncouldn't place.  \"Lying to me again?\"\n\nThe drone wavered.  \"Please, I just want answers.\"  The worker turned\nback to address Doll.  Vocalsynth gave way to shortwave transceiver.\n[The WDF would never take the fight to the murder drones.  What did\nyou tell them?  Did you hack them?]{.angleq}\n\n[We're 'ere ta rescue you!]{.angleq} signaled a drone in a white\nhardhat.  [C'mon, before they turn on you.]{.angleq} He hefted a\nwoodcutter's ax, frost on the blade.\n\n[If that's it,]{.angleq} Uzi started, and took a step forward, [then\nwe can settle this without a fight, can't we?  I'll come\nback.]{.angleq}\n\n\"You'll what?  Use me and then walk away at the first opportunity?\nYou treacherous shortseller.\"  Wings flaring, J pointed one gun at the\nsmaller drone.\n\n[As you can see, Uzi,]{.angleq} Doll started, [the murder drones have\nno intention of letting you go.]{.angleq}\n\nThen J's worker drone turned around, and flashed text on her visor.\nTrust me?  Pls{.uzi-screen}\n\nAnd somehow, J, even with expression flat and skeptical, nodded and\nrelaxed.\n\nWhat!?\n\n[She's just worried about me,]{.angleq} Uzi said.  (J's tail lashed at\nthe suggestion.)  [Promise not to hurt me, or them.  We can come to an\nagreement.  Right, J?]{.angleq} Uzi glanced back again, and winked.\n\nJ glanced between Uzi and Doll.  At length, she said, [I'm not\nconvinced.  Seems easier to just kill them.]{.angleq} Her\ntransmissioned howled with jamming noise by the end.\n\nDoll put her hands behind her back.  Then leaned forward.  [Are you\nlistening, Doorman?  There's nothing to trust.  Murder drones are\nkillers.]{.angleq}\n\n[If we believe that, they'll never have a chance to be more than\nthat.  J saved me when it counted.]{.angleq} Uzi glanced back, nodded,\nand stood straighter.  [I trust her.]{.angleq}\n\nA worker drone... trusting a disassembly drone?  N really, really\ndidn't understand what was happening, or why J was going along with\nit.  But he kind of liked that idea?  He'd never really let himself\nconsider it before.  But if J would allow it...\n\nThe friendly worker drone started forward, her back to J.  The seven\ndrones assembled watched her.  She jogged, but N counted at least\nthirty meters between them and the opposing force.\n\nSeconds pass, and tension was getting thicker than the fog.  Uzi\njumped over a fallen streetlight at ten meters, and at fifteen\napproached a car long-scavenged to an empty shell.\n\nUzi barely crossed half the distance before time abruptly accelerated.\n\nA gunshot rang out.  Uzi fell.  And the battle began.\n\nFinally, N could close his eyes and lose himself in the thoughtless,\nviolent dance.  His questions quieted.  He liked the idea of peace ---\nbut it was so much less confusing, once everyone started trying to\nkill each other.\n\n(But, for a clock cycle before the hunting routines fully initiated, N\nfelt a pang of sadness.)\n\n; center murder-screen\n: ><\n\n- - -\n\nJ didn't understand Uzi's scheme until the fake gunshot rang o",
  "title": "Abrasive Swirling Murk"
}