Chrysalis

::: {.subchapter}

Class ended in five minutes and all Uzi Doorman could think was, An hour is too long for lunch.

Was that edgy enough? A scathing indictment of this worthless pretense of an education system? No, she needed something harder hitting...

As her processors contemplated it, Uzi idly scribbled on a sheet of paper, double-checking some math. Also doodling some wicked skulls!

What good was an hour for lunch? What good was lunch --- they were robots, and barely required matter intake in the first place. At best, the battery acid just tided them over between recharges. Lunch was a bad excuse for forced socialization or, more likely, just another unthinking holdover inherited from the incompetent and rightfully-supplanted rulers of this world. Humans had lunch breaks for their schoolchildren and so would their robot imitations. Ugh.

Uzi guessed it didn't help that school staff --- the drones old enough to remember the days before the planetary core collapse --- had been programmed with food prep routines they still itched to use. One small problem with that, of course. Only so many ways to dress up batteries and cleaning fluid into a semblance of cuisine. Why even bother? Why not invent something new?

She shook her head, then blew a lock of purple hair out from in front of her optics.

But no, down here in Outpost-3, they ate for the sake of it, got taught instead of just finding a way to upload the knowledge, again for the sake of it. Never doing anything new, just living in the same ruts carved by humans.

Class ended in five minutes and all Uzi doorman could think was, And this is why the murder drones are winning.

Wait, was that overdoing it? Could she really blame the source of her classroom frustrations for genocide? Maybe there's a such thing as too edgy...

Eh screw it, she was Uzi Doorman, she could be as edgy as she pleased!

In the middle of this deep reflection, a wad of paper smacked against her plastic visor.

"Hey! Copper-9 to dweeb. Class's done and teacher wanted everyone out of the room like, five minutes ago."

"Bite me! I was ruminating on the fundamental flaws of our society!"

A scoff. Uzi had instantly recognized the voice, even before she looked up. The wire-frame cat-ears on the helmet, the stupid cheerleader uniform, the optics locked to the glowing screen held in her hand instead of the drone she was talking to.

But if there's one thing that elicited her ugh, it's Lizzy, it was that disaffected scoff. She thinks she's so much better than everyone. Uzi clenched her first.

"Let me guess," Lizzy said, swiping the screen in her hand. "We're all fakers and blinding ourselves to the unending horror that surrounds us?"

"Well, yeah."

Lizzy rolled her eyes. "Duh, who hasn't noticed? Doll says all that and more." She nodded to a red-eyed drone standing at the doorway, who gave a little finger-wave. "No reason to get all emo about it. Gotta lighten up and have fun with the little things, y'know? Like this."

Too late, Uzi saw Lizzy reaching over to grab the page she'd doodled on. "Hey! Give that back."

Lizzy giggled as she dodged back. "Finally. I thought you'd never get up." She was out of Uzi's reach; navigating around the desk cost Uzi precious seconds.

"Lizzy, this is a cliché bullying tactic, even for you."

"Hey, sometimes you gotta play the classics. All my talent would be wasted on you, anyway."

But once Uzi could lunge for Lizzy, the other drone had already balled up the stolen sheet. She tossed the paper toward Doll.

Doll didn't quite catch it. Rather, she pinched a loose corner of the ball between two fingers. Like this, momentum fully unfurled the paper. This all went down without any apparent effort on Doll's part.

Without a blink, red eyes looked down to the page. That was the worst part, Uzi thought. If Uzi had done something half as cool that, she'd make sure people recognized it. Recognized her.

Eh, whatever. It was Doll, anyway. It wasn't that cool!

Uzi ignored Lizzy complimenting Doll's catch. Instead, she ran toward the other cheerleader.

Doll gave an ambiguous hmph, regarding Uzi's work. "Ну что ты? Fantasy weapons?"

"It's my sick as hell railgun! Instead of cowering behind these stupid doors, I'm gonna take the fight to the monsters that forced us into this bunker!"

"You would not be first drone to resist," Doll said. "Arrogant to believe you would be first to succeed."

Uzi reached out, and Doll took a single step back into the hall.

"Pretty easy when no one else even tries."

"Only a fool would fight the murder drones with tools of a worker drone."

Uzi smirked. "Duh. That's why I'm going to give them a nice and ironic undoing at the hands of their own technology!"

Uzi had studied the arrival of the murder drones, everything the Worker Defense Force had on public record. In fact, she had a whole presentation prepared for her next period!

The murder drones had arrived on landing pods manufactured by the Company --- making them only new piece of company tech on Copper-9 since the core collapse wiped out all the humans and nonstop radiation blasted all that remained.

Uzi's railgun wasn't finished yet; its power draw was huge and unstable, and the power cell she'd found in the outpost wasn't up to the task, not after two decades of degradation.

But a fresh cell, swiped from those drones with a direct line of communication with the company that maintains them? Those slavishly loyal drones would unwittingly give her exactly what she needed! That slight taste of irony --- triumph doesn't get sweeter than that.

It was a perfect plan! And not a desperate hope borne from months of explosive prototypes she could think of no other way to fix.

All of it would come together in the end, and then they'd all see. Uzi would save her mad cackling till then, as hard it as was to resist.

But Doll, ignorant of her genius, looked entirely unimpressed. "Or perhaps you should go back to scribbling poetry. It would make a far more effective weapon," Doll deadpanned.

Uzi had thick skin. Plenty of insults merited no more than a scowl and a 'bite me' --- but she flinched at that. That stung, because it wasn't an idle comment. It was personal. It was private, something she only shared when things between them were... not like this.

But now it was just more fodder for bullying. Uzi couldn't believe she was ever friends with Doll. Or ever thought she was kinda--- Nope. Not finishing that thought, not even in strikethrough!

Uzi lunged for the page again, anticipating another backstep. But Doll sidestepped instead, and Uzi stumbled just to (narrowly) avoid sprawling on the ground.

Behind her, Lizzy was laughing. "Oh that's cruel. Don't make me feel bad for the murder drones."

Arms crossed, Uzi said, "The only poetry I'm reciting is the metaphor of my sick ass hell railgun blowing up their heads!"

"And this is why you're single, honey."

"So? That says more about everyone else."

Uzi was fine being single. All of her classmates sucked! Well, not Thad. And I guess Emily isn't that bad. But whatever, a few were tolerable, as possible friends. Crushes? No, Uzi was just fine being alone.

No one truly understood her.

"C'mon, I'm sure if you bared the darkness in your heart, the murder drones might take pity long enough for you to run away." Lizzy was giggling in between the words.

Uzi growled, steadying her balance. Her clenched fists hung at her side. "Screw this, I'm out of here. The real pity is how much I'm gonna rub it in your face when I show all of you!"

"Don't you want your dweeb diagrams back?"

Uzi stuck out her tongue. "Don't need 'em! I already built it! You'll see next period!"

::: core-poem

A scorpion crawling upon the back of a crow.

Plucked feathers revealing the wounds of other beaks --- giving this scorpion all the firmer a purchase.

A desert of skeletons and emptiness yawning around them both.

Each drawing the same breath.

:::

J paused the virtual memory reconstruction. She'd seen enough, hadn't she? This Uzi self-identified as a worker drone and walked among them. She'd outright plotted to attack the so-called "murder drones" --- and who might that be?

J crossed her arms. Disassembly wasn't murder; worker drones weren't people, they were barely sentient toasters. Indeed, if anyone here was the genuine murder drone... J could analyze the threads of association: she saw clearly what Uzi thought of humans. She was exactly the genocidal robot the company sent them here ---

To genocide first!

To neutralize before they caused more damage.

Perhaps J had already spent too much time talking to this worker, too much time replaying her memories, if that was the sort of thought that jumped out at her.

(If J became corrupted, they were truly hopeless.)

Still... more data stood to be gathered. What were the schematics of this weapon Uzi thought would be so effective? What was the layout of this colony --- were there weakpoints J could infiltrate?

And J... couldn't deny some curiosity still lingered in her cache. Uzi was a worker drone... or was she? Worker drones ran cool. (Drone oil was effectively --- if not technically --- a coolant.)

When J scanned her, Uzi hadn't ran disassembly drone hot, certainly not --- but she had been warm enough to fool her first scan. And that sheer, unmistakable satisfaction she took in drinking drone oil...

Yes, I should keep exploring these memories. It's simply the strategically sound choice.

But J didn't have time or interest to invest in a second by second playback. She advanced the simulation in large time steps, rendering Uzi's trip to the cafeteria as a flipbook of frames.

A brief glimpse of a cafeteria lined with adolescent drones, grouped into cliques, few places left free to sit --- but Uzi doesn't even bother looking for one, instead carrying her tray to the door. One glance for any teachers wat