Elements of Earth: The Element Trials

Chapter 1b Estrellita:2019, The girl encased inside

Wet thuds of fists wiped spots of clarity in the fogged window. As if sentient, the condensation inside the capsule swallowed those clean sections of glass, forever obscuring who it was that so desperately wanted out. While outside the capsule her rescuer struggled.

"Vivian..." An old man's voice, consumed with strain and panic, barely extended across the large concrete room. "Help... me." His frail fingers pressed, pulled, and scraped across the metal framing the foggy glass lid. But he his efforts were innefective. Useless. He had already given up trying to pry the door open with the crowbar lying at his feet. He once succeeded in wedging it in, but simply didn't have the body mass to budge the door.

"You know I cannot open the capsule." Vivian lamented. Her voice carried easily from the directional speakers installed in every corner of the workshop, though she stood right behind him. She placed her hand upon his shoulder to comfort him, but he was having none of it. Focused on consoling him she was late to pull her hand back when he jerked away. As he did, her fingers passed through his shoulder. She stared dejectedly at her semi-translucent hand. It flickered until her processors told the projectors where to project the image.

"No you can't." The old man agreed. His voice grew more hopeless and quiet with each beat, as did the capsule inhabitant's attempt to escape. He gave up trying to force the capsule open with his hands and picked up a crowbar again. "Not from there." He said. He didn't need to look at the hulking robot behind him to know she'd understand. It's vaguely human form pitted and corroded a monstrous green. Its knees bent the wrong way, and if it stood straight, its gauntleted hands would've torn the ground it walked on. The old man didn't look at the space her image occupied either. He knew she'd understand. Understand his unspoken and unfair request.

"Kira's shattered soul haunts that place still. I won't go in there. Never again."

"One more time." His voice held a solemnity that somehow begged. "If not for Kira, for me. Please."

It was the please that did it. As her creator, he might have ordered her, though whether she would have complied was uncertain, even to her. But he asked instead. Her flickering hologram was answer enough as Vivian split her resources and copied small sections of her own programming. First baseline sentience, electrical interface complex, introductory morality code, and semi-permanent dependence package, marked so it would obey her instructions. She rolled all that into one file, booted from virtual disc, simulated, rewritten in base code and done. She made an extremely basic Mobile Sentience file. Now to connect and upload.

Rejected? Oh, feedback error. 'This file format requires naming.' Impatiently Vivian simply abbreviated her own name V behind the acronym for mobile sentience, ms_V, and sent it into the ancient machine with one request. To save the life of the girl she'd never met. The girl her creator loved. The girl she hated for coming back into his life when he should belong to Vivian alone. If that part of her ever escaped the madness of the machine, she would never touch it again or risk being corrupted by it. Since she'd cut the connection she felt a crackle of what might have been fear trickle through her processors when the robot moved. Its steps cracked the concrete floor and shook the holographic projectors hidden around the room, causing her image to shudder. Her creator, however, didn't even look back. He must trust her dearly to believe that she'd be able to keep the madness inside that machine at bay long enough to-

'Shunk.'
The old man finally found purchase with his crowbar, jamming it into a barely visible seam under the capsule's lid. He looked to Vivian with a question. "Yes ," Vivian confirmed. "I am jamming all long-range radio communications, have been since we powered up your robot." Vivian muttered.

"It hasn't been mine for a long time. They had it. Their blood's still on my hands though."

"Sorry..."