Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Five, Part One

 Notes: Meet...Blobby!

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Five, Part One

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Chapter Five, Part One

 

Kieron wasn’t an engineer. He did all right, of course—he had to be pretty good at fixing things to be the sole permanent resident on Cloverleaf Station for three standard years—but he’d never had a lot of formal education in actually designing his own machines. Sure, there were a zillion and one AI programs that were happy to do it for you, but they were all proprietary in some way and Kieron had no desire to be tied down to using someone’s specific components or sharing his work with their mega-code. He didn’t give anything inside himself up if he could help it.

Elanus didn’t have to give anything up, because everything he worked with stemmed from his own company, his own mind. He’d created the first true artificial intelligences the settled galaxy had ever seen, as far as they knew—and was keeping them as secret as possible, thanks to his former business partner and mentor’s race to sell Catie off to the highest bidder. He was a brilliant designer, and Kieron was sure that whatever he came up with that was meant to help him dirtside, it would be amazing.

It didn’t…look amazing, though.

“I can hear you pouting, stop.”

“I’m not pouting,” Kieron protested, although he absolutely had been pouting, he just wasn’t sure how Elanus knew when he was facing the opposite way. “I just thought you were making a robot, that’s all.”

“Blobby is a roooobot!” Catie chirped happily. Of course she’d already named the thing. And of course its name was Blobby, because that was what it looked like—a mushy pile of barely delineated gray lumps that oozed back and forth like they were caught in a tiny tide.

“You have to know about morphologically adaptive bots,” Elanus said, finally turning his head to look at Kieron. He was smiling, but there were lines of pain around the edges of his eyes, and the way he sat let Kieron know that his back was starting to hurt. Kieron sighed and walked over, then started rubbing in broad, light strokes down the sides of Elanus’s spine. “Oh, that’s so nice, you can stop sometime next week, let’s—”

“I know about morphologically adaptive bots,” Kieron said, steering them back on course. “But I’ve never seen one that looked anything like this before.” Adaptive bots were made of interchangeable and often flexible materials that allowed them to adapt to the role at hand, but even then they tended to have some sort of shape to them. This one just looked…confused. And melted. Very melted.

“Of course you haven’t,” Elanus scoffed, his eyes falling shut as Kieron dug his fingers into his shoulders. “I’m not working with ancient technology here. This is a custom morphological matrix that I developed myself, held together with minute atomic forces instead of the usual magnets and screws. If you had any idea the lengths I had to go to to create some of these alloys, you wouldn’t be denigrating Blobby, trust me. Blobby is the next generation of bot.”

“Great,” Kieron said, letting the sarcasm through because he knew Elanus liked it. “But right now Blobby looks incapable of purposeful movement, much less being able to work with a human.”

“How dare you! Blobby is a great listener.”

“Blobby’s maaatrix is adapted to handle all sorrrts of sensory input,” Catie added. “Figuring out how to respond appppropriately will take some time, but—well. We have time.”

Yeah, they did. Thanks to him. Kieron pushed away his maudlin thoughts and focused on what Catie was actually telling him. “So you want me to train Blobby.”

“I’ll helllp! And Daddeee will help! But…um…”

“You’ll have to run field tests, of course,” Elanus said, his eyes still closed. “It’s not like I can take Blobby out there on my own yet. It’s too bad, honestly, because I thought a lot about the tests I planned to put Blobby through when I had a moment here, but he’ll be way more useful to you if it’s your style he adapts to first.”

Kieron smiled. “He?”

“Just a placeholder, and I know, overly gendering things is stupid, but I’ve already got two daughters, you can’t blame me for wanting to switch things up, right?”

That was…huh. “Does Blobby have the same level of sentience that Catie and Lizzy do?”

“No.” Elanus’s response was swift and sure. “I won’t be setting that code free anytime soon, and it’s not like the girls are eager to replicate it in someone else either.”

“Weee’re special,” Catie said petulantly. “I don’t waaant to be lesssss special.”

Elanus smiled. “You two will always be the most special to me, honey.”

“But meeeee first.”

“Catalina…”

“Daddeeeee…”

Time to head that particular argument off at the pass. “When will Blobby be ready for me to try out?” Kieron interjected.

“Oh, now,” Elanus replied. “I mean, the programming isn’t perfect, but his adaptive features should be able to keep up as long as you don’t go too far. I can tweak from a distance, and Catie can step in and take over if things go really bad.”

Was that a possibility? Who was Kieron kidding—it was them, things going bad was more than a possibility, it was practically a certainty. “Then let’s get started.”

“Are you sure?” Elanus looked up at him, for once shorter than Kieron since he—well—couldn’t exactly stand up right now. “It’s still raining out there, and Catie’s sensor issues are ongoing.”

“Sorryyyyy…”

“Not your fault,” they both said at the same time.

“It’s fine,” Kieron said. Honestly, he was feeling a little cooped up after a full cycle inside of Catie, despite the fact that he’d barely been able to step foot outside her door before. Her recyclers were running at full bore, but it still smelled musty in here, and her ambient rechargers were sapped by the rain the way they wouldn’t have been if it was a sunny day. If Kieron left, he could at least give her overloaded systems a break for a bit. “Let me get my EV suit on and we’ll give Blobby a try.”

Of course he could put the EV suit on just fine this time—fucking bullshit mental health issues, why did he have to have such a complicated brain? Hopefully he didn’t pass any of his bullshit on to Blobby during training. A few minutes later, after a very extensive scan that made Catie’s engine whine a bit from how hard she had to work, he stepped out onto the muddy ground in front of the creche with a splatter.

Blobby, apparently of its own initiative, followed a moment later. It just lay on the ground like, well, a blob, though.

“Educational matrix running,” Elanus called out. “Try giving Blobby some directions.”

“Okay.” Um. “Blobby,” Kieron said, barely holding back his surprise as the bot seemed to shiver with anticipation, “evaluate the terrain and use the best morphology at your disposal for traversing it.”

Blobby quivered, then rolled into a ball and bumped around for a few feet in either direction. It tried a cube next, then a pyramid with much less success.

Kieron ran a hand down his wet face. “Guys, I don’t think Blobby’s programming is quite ready for—”

Then Blobby changed again, and Kieron had to eat the words he’d almost said. “Oh, wow. Wow.”

That…was a lot of legs.