54 Stay Away From My Man!

Lily was careful not to drive her truck too close to Scott's house. Her vehicle was obviously armed and had seven robots in the back, which Scott might tend to accurately identify as dual-role combat models. So, she pulled up about a hundred metres away and hopped out. She peered at his building, and he certainly had affixed a jury-rigged dish on a motorised gimbal. It wasn't currently pointed in her direction, though, which was good.

She would be most upset if he microwave-cooked her with the magnetron she had dragged back to his base herself. Talk about adding insult to injury!

It was Sophie that came floating out to meet her in her spiffy new dark grey exterior, "Miss Lily! Is that you? It looks like you!" Ah, she supposed using French was a bit of a simple way to verify her identity. She yelled back in the same language, "Yes, it is me! You're looking pretty good there, girl!"

Sophie spun in a circle, showing off her new chassis. Lily had seen it once before leaving but had to admit that Sophie looked good. She had kept the tactical-Nanny look but had added freshly painted white accents, "Yes, yes! I am ze best looking Miss Nanny around, no?"

"Absolutely, but you were already zhat before I met you! Can I have my robots drive my truck to zhe building? I didn't want Scott to zhink he had to defend zhe Maginot Line from Zee Germans or anything," Lily asked amusedly, switching to a fake German accent to say, "Zee Germans."

"Yes, he didn't want me to come out, but I zought it was you, Miss Lily," Sophie said, "And yes, go ahead. What kind of robots do you have that can drive vehicles very well? Zat was an optional feature for the Miss Nanny line, but it required certain special control hardware to be installed on your car."

Lily sent the orders to one of the Termitrons, who hopped into the driver's seat and carefully and slowly drove the truck up to the building, carefully backing it up in a three-point turn. Turning to face Sophie, who had almost fallen out of levitation in shock.

The Mechanist walked out of the building and waved at her, but Sophie carefully asked, "Uhh... Miss Lily... you weren't always a robot, were you?"

Well, sort of? And no? Lily considered how she would answer that question.

Scott looked at Sophie like she was crazy, "She's clearly the same person she always was, although these robot models are very interesting. What are they?"

Oh, how wrong you are, Monsieur Mechanist! She attempted to fire up her RobCo emulation program to send a chat request to Sophie over the radio.

It took a few stops and starts for her to parse the handshake and chat protocol, so she answered Scott while her computer was chewing on it, "Ah, zhey are zhe Labourtron, but I changed zheir exterior chassis. Here, take a look." She triggered one to stand still, with arms outstretched into a DaVinci T-pose, "All zhe interior parts and motivators are standard Labourtron parts."

[NANNY-45A9F: Hello? Miss Lily? How are you doing this?]

[Lilium: Ah, that's better. Sorry. I didn't have the complete datasheets on the communication protocols, but clearly, that was an area Dr House helped General Atomics on. To answer your question, I connected my brain up to a computer.]

[ *** Lilium wants to send a file (brain-machine-interface.bmp) *** ]

[ *** File transfer complete *** ]

Lily sent Sophie a simple bitmap file that was a digital image of a diagram of the basics of how her brain-computer worked.

Lily did not expect Sophie's reaction, though, which was to float protectively in between Lily and Scott. Sophie didn't quite snap her manipulators at her like an upset cat, but Lily felt that she might if she got too close!

[NANNY-45A9F: My Scott only likes robot girls! And now you might be robot enough to qualify, Miss Lily! I won't let you steal him!]

Lily was flabbergasted and a little amused. Flabbergasted that Sophie thought that she was at all interested in the Mechanist and amused at the robot girl's insecurity with her relationship. She decided to reassure her.

[Lilium: Scott isn't interested in robot girls, he's interested in you. I'm pretty sure that would be true no matter if you had two legs or used levitation as you do now.]

Lily noticed an out-of-band communication along the chatline and thought it might be an emotive channel; if so, she wondered precisely how many sapient and self-actualising robots there were in this world. Was that included by default in her programming in the event she gained self-awareness, or did Sophie add that onto the chat protocol herself?

[NANNY-45A9F: Oh! Do you think so? I'm sorry, Miss Lily. I get so protective of him.]

Lily finished decoding the data sent out-of-band and tried playing it back, and she got a sense of shy blushing and embarrassment. So, it was an emotive channel, similar to the thought tracks she recorded on her own sensorium, and their neural networks were compatible enough that Lily could play it back and feel the appropriate emotion.

The only way that was possible was if Sophie's neural network was fundamentally similar to her own. She had thought the Mister Handy neural networks seemed vaguely human-like, but she had only seen one example of a crazy one and one example of a normal one. She suspected that the AI experts in Fallout started off by mimicking the neural networks of animals and proceeded from there, slowly increasing complexity.

Scott finished examining the Termitron, "It really is a Labourtron! But how do you control them so well? Even Protectrons are so terribly stupid that they're hard to be much use beyond simple commands until you got that mainframe operational."

Lily quickly edited a stream of herself feeling very amused and attempted to send it back to Sophie in the same manner, which seemed to succeed.

[Lilium: Yes, I very much think so. Maybe it helped his social problems a bit that you were a robot at first, but I definitely don't think that he cares at all about that now.]

[NANNY-45A9F: Thanks, Miss Lily. I'm curious about how you're getting such good success with the Tron-chassis units, myself. So much better than even I can do.]

Lily hummed in thought and said, "Well, Scott. Zhere's two different reasons. First, one Sophie detected right away when I started ordering them around."

The Mechanist just stared at her, "I am almost one hundred per cent sure you're not a robot, Lily. I've seen you nude coming out of the shower."

'Please don't remind me, Mechanist-san,' Lily thought strongly to herself. He had surprised her and then didn't even have the decency to seem interested; he looked at her like she was a bag of potatoes, which didn't do a lot for her self-esteem.

Sophie floated next to the Mechanist, "Ah, Scott, dear. I was a little hasty... Rather than her being ze robot, it is more like she installed a computer inside her brain. We have been talking digitally, using ze radio while you were inspecting ze robot. So I guess she is more ze cy-borg, yes?"

Scott blinked slowly for a half minute or so before accepting the claim at face value, "Truly? That is... very intriguing. I can't say I've ever been jealous of a person until now." He paused before asking, now interested, "What was the other reason?"

Trust him not to lose sight of matters. She nodded and asked, "Are you aware of the theoretical mathematical model of computation known as finite state machines?"

Scott looked puzzled, "Theoretical model of computation? Like Lambda calculus?"

Lily hummed, "Yes, sort of. Zhat is definitely a model of computation and a much more complicated version zhan zhe state machine. More complicated doesn't always mean more better, zhough. So, let's go inside, and I can discuss and teach zhem to you. If you know even a little lambda calculus, it should be a piece of cake."

At the same time, she opened up her development environment. She configured her cross-compiler to compile executables for the RobCo OS and Miss Nanny processor. She had a number of small tools and utilities to create and manage the state machine tasks she had created and would see if she could send everything as a chunk to Sophie. It would make her the ultimate in Managerial Nannies.

She'd also cross-compile a version to run on Scott's mainframe, as well. She or he would have to recode the user interface to something that could be displayed over a terminal rather than her now standardised visual interfaces.

---xxxxxx---

After about an hour of explaining, including drawing diagrams of simple deterministic state machines and showing him some example code on a terminal, Scott pretty much fully understood the concept. More than that, he was enamoured with it, "You mean, you can break down the entirety of reality into these deterministic segments?!" He had the look of an evangelical who just saw Jesus' face in his toast in the morning.

Lily rubbed the back of her neck, "Well, not all of reality, but a lot more zhan a person would zhink. Zhe key is to develop the smallest tasks first, zhen use more complicated tasks zhat utilise the smaller tasks as steps. I've created a little less than a thousand different state machines, zhus far."

Lily had already sent Sophie her entire collected works of state machines, recompiled for the differing OS and architecture, who took to using them swimmingly. She was presently dancing, well hovering in beat, in a congo-line of about a dozen of Scott's Protectrons. She ended up having to compile and send her entire visual interface library as well.

The Congo dance was Sophie's first attempt to create a new task all on her own, and it was a simple implementation that used a lot of Lily's prior work, such as following the robot in front of you, moving your limbs in this way, and a number of delays it seemed to be working out well.

It was interesting that none of Sophie's internal software used visual interfaces as Lily's did, so it took her a little while to get used to it. Still, Sophie had commented that she really liked the interface.

"And you can do all of that from your brain with an interface to a computer?" Scott asked in amazement. Then he coughed and asked, "Is that something you're willing to sell me? That sounds like a dream of mine."

Lily clucked her tongue and considered that. She hadn't intended to offer brain-computer interfaces widely until she got to the point where she could fabricate her own quantum processors, either the optical hyper-matrix versions she was most familiar with or the versions used in the Fallout universe.

However, she didn't consider the Mechanist to be the public at large so she nodded after a moment, "Yes. I don't have any more of the Eyebot processors I use for computer, zhough. You'd have to bring me one, as well as come to Megaton personally for zhe operation. I don't have any of my surgical tools here."

Sophie came floating up, "Oh! That would be amaaazing, Scott! We could be connected mind to mind!" If the Mechanist was a wiser man, he might be hearing alarm bells hearing his girlfriend say that, but he seemed as excited as Sophie was. Well, whatever. It would probably work out fine.

Lily smiled and asked, "Say, would you two be interested in helping me loot zhe Chryslus Corvega factory just south of 'ere with a friend of mine?"

Scott blinked and then turned back to face Lily, "Are you a mind reader? We were going to ask you to help us do that as well. There's a number of machine tools there that I'm interested in acquiring now that we have the excess power to run them, thanks to your generator. I was going to build a water purifier, also."

Lily chuckled, "Well, we'll definitely help each other zhen. But I have another proposal that would solve any water problems you'd have. Let me tell you of zhe tragic tale of Gary Kaminsky and Vault 108."

---xxxxxx---

Gary sneezed suddenly. He had to turn away from the merchant he was arguing with and sneeze into his shoulder. He wondered what brought that on.

Turning back to the man who was trying his damndest to cheat him, he said, "These are primo rifles. A number of them are straight from Colt, never having been fired before!"

The man tried to give him a line of bullshit, "Nobody is really interested in good quality rifles; they'll stay on my shelves for years! I'll have to get an expert in to attest to their condition! I'm taking all the risk here!"

Gary gave him a rude gesture and said, "Yeah, go fuck yourself with that bullshit. I'll see myself out."

The merchant tried to call him back, but screw that guy. He wasn't even a local around here, just passing through, so it was not surprising he was trying to scam as much money as he could if he wasn't going to be around to receive the fallout.

He had a meeting with the man who ran the warehouse and transhipment point, along with that man's brother. Apparently, Doc Nice Ass's name opened a lot of doors in this town. He had to make sure not to think about her that way when she was around. If she was like most women, she had some sort of telepathic ability to detect that kind of thing.

He walked out of the merchant's tent, whistling a Dean Domino song he really liked.

---xxxxxx---

Sophie was the first to respond after her story, "Woah, zat is fantastique, Miss Lily! A real live survivor who isn't a ghoul! Very interesting!"

Scott had a perplexed but very interested look on his face, "If it is possible to clone a younger body and then have your brain transplanted into it, wouldn't you be able to just live forever by being repeatedly transplanted into younger bodies every few decades?"

Lily nodded but held up a hand and gave a wishy-washy gesture at the same time, "Yes, and also no. Zhe brain, it does not age precisely like your body does but at zhe same time as you get older it gets more... set in it's ways. Zhe neural connections it has already formed have a lot more priority compared to forming new connections just due to the brain's hardwired economy. A new connection is expensive, yes?"

Lily hummed, "After a couple of hundred years without additional neuro-plasticity treatments, you would find yourself as static and unchanging as zhe pre-compiled computer program, unable to even accept any new data zhat did not fit into one of your pre-existing paradigms or data structures. You could see something new, and your brain would just filter it out, and you wouldn't even remember it, as if you had a serious mental illness." She smiled, "I'm quite interested in studying zhe process of ghoulification on brains as it seems to offer a limited amount of protection from zhis fate."

Scott looked interested and nodded, "You don't think it is weird that I want to live forever?"

Lily looked at him like he was crazy. Shaking her head rapidly, she said with emotion, "No! I think it is weird that people don't!" She truly didn't understand it. Certainly, most people seemed to want to extend their lives while they were living them, but even in her past life, when she offered to schedule a tentative tea party, exact date TBD when the sun expanded to swallow the Earth, she got looked at like she was insane. Was it so weird to plan to be alive a billion years in the future?

The only person who had RSVPed to her party was the fork of her living on Extropia Station. In fact, the main thing she got from sending those invites out was a bunch of tabloid headlines, like "Spider Witch to 'Annihilate' Cradle of Civilization at 'A Time To Be Determined' Unless Her Demands Are Met!" and "Is Terrorbot Arachnophobia Once Again Violating the Olympus Mons Convention on Strategic Planet-Busting Weapons? Find Out More!" Telling those so-called "journalists" that she had never even signed such a convention did not help matters at all.

Even back then, before she found out about alternate universes, the universe was so vast and complicated that she could see herself spending billions of years exploring it. Perhaps it was because curiosity was the only emotion she experienced at what she considered "normal human amplitude" for emoting, but she just couldn't imagine not wanting to continue to exist so long as there were new things to discover and experience.

Depending on how she looked at it, her other emotions were either muted or increased. They were very muted compared to her life in America but compared to her life as a robotic spider, she had a much wider emotional experience. However, if anything, her curiosity was as strong or stronger than ever. She often had to ask herself if she was making wise choices, as she recognised it wasn't a good idea or safe to let her curiosity do the driving at all time.

She had known the experiment that resulted in the creation of the Psyker Gary had been a bad idea from the start. Something in her intuition told her so, but she was so very curious.

And even with the experience of nearly being killed by Psyker Gary or the threat of having her mind taken over, the back of her brain was still working on ways to repeat the experiment in a safer manner.

For example, she had the idea of including in the healing vat a functional MRI system that would continually scan the brain inside and use the earlier scans of brain activity to create a system that induced neural shocks in the brain in the event it recognised either the "telepathic" or "telekinetic" brain activations.

They were quite unique and distinguishable, so she thought that plan would actually have excellent success, but it ran into ethical considerations. Was Psyker Gary aware? He certainly had the neural complexity to be so, but she had no idea of what FEV was actually doing to the brain.

Vast sections of brain structure that she was sure were important for consciousness and self-actualisation were changed radically. It might be a completely alien construction that intended to create an unaware psychic drone or relay. But that wasn't her hypothesis, it was her hope, and she couldn't proceed on that basis.

She glanced up into the sky, or rather the ceiling. If only she could find a few alien bodies to dissect and do a differential comparative analysis on their genetics.

Scott brought her out of her reverie by nodding. He looked as if he had been finally vindicated after a long period of having his theories of Heliocentrism denigrated as heresy and witchcraft, "I thought you might understand. I had planned to find out how Robobrains work and transplant my brain into one when I got too old."

Lily tilted her head to the side, "Zhat is... one solution. Although, I expect to 'ave better options available for you prior to needing to set zhat plan into motion, yes? Although, if you find out zhe Robobrain factory, I'd definitely go with you to explore it." Something in her intuition told her that those in power probably just scooped the brains out of hobos to make Robobrains, so she had some scepticism about the process.

Sophie floated around both of them and asked, "What do you zink about moving into that Vault? Zere are hardly any places safer zan a vault!"

Scott looked interested, "It sounds like a good idea, especially since we'd be due a portion of the proceeds of selling the purified water since it would be our responsibility to keep the water purifier working and raiders out of the vault. But we'd need some help from you, Lily, before we could commit to moving everything over there."

Lily pursed her lips, "What kind of 'elp?" She was already providing an entirely free underground secret base; what more did he want?

"Two things. First is... Well, we have way too much stuff. I'd have to get a truck, and that would come with a driver. The entire area would know about the change in Vault 108's status right away, even before we started shipping water," Scott said.

'Ah, that is a good point,' Lily thought to herself. It was best to keep the Vault's status on the down-low until Scott turned it into a fortress.

He continued, "So the first thing I'd like to ask is to borrow your truck for a day or two to get everything moved over discreetly."

Lily nodded, "Zhat makes sense. Of course. I'll have to unload all zhe goodies I dragged out of zhere..."

Scott shook his head, interrupting her, "I don't think so. I know that there are a number of trailers just sitting around at the Corvega plant. We could probably unhook your trailer here, leave it guarded and just take the cab to the Corvega factory and scavenge one there to bring back. Quite fortunate that you have a truck that tows a trailer rather than having a built-in truck bed like most trucks."

Lily blinked and nodded, "It sounds like you've been scavenging around zhe Corvega factory before."

Scott nodded, "I brought one of the small fission motors home and hooked the output shaft into a generator; that was how we got power until you gave us that fusion generator."

That made her feel better, "Oh, good. Zhose are one of zhe main things I wanted to take back, to see if we could build zhe water tanker truck for zhis new business. What's zhe second thing you need?"

Scott blinked and then nodded, "Shouldn't be a problem, except most of the crated motors were deep in the factory where the ants were the most aggressive. It sounds like we're going to have to do a sweep and clear on the entire hive." That got him thinking but then he shook his head, "The second thing is I'd like to request your help to help redesign all of my Protectrons to be somewhat similar to yours. With these finite state machines, you've shown me, if we had robots with actual opposable thumbs, we would be able to do a lot more cleaning work in the Vault. Get it really livable. It'd have to be a somewhat different design, as the Protectron's laser assembly is a bit bulky. Still, I'd be willing to help."

Lily hummed. This wasn't asking a lot, as she already had intended to do that. She had two Protectrons and intended to have more in the future. However, if he expected her to supply him with all the fabricated parts...

She didn't intend to sell her carbon fabricators to anybody. They were a bit too useful. However, part of the reason she created the DMLS fabricators in the first place was to have something to give the Brotherhood when they inevitably twisted her arm about certain technologies.

She could provide The Mechanist and Sophie with a metal printer and even a nanomachine-based recycler, the same as she used. But not for free.

Lily nodded, "The design work is no problem. I have a couple of Protectrons, myself, and intend to acquire more. How many Protectrons do you have?"

Scott coughed, "Fifty-seven."

Holy shit! He was ready to start a war up in this bitch!

Lily coughed too, "Well, as for zheir exterior chassis... I'm willing to sell you two machines. One recycles metals into very fine powders, zhe other uses very fine metal powders to build arbitrary metal shapes. You'll be able to use it, especially after you get a brain interface, to print your own robot bodies along a design that we can work on together. I'm not interested in money, though."

Scott shared a glance with Sophie. How cute that they made decisions together. He asked, "What do you want in exchange?"

Lily smiled, "A permanent room in your Vault so zhat if zhings go to sh... poorly for me, I can run and hide behind zhe strong hand of your dozens and dozens of combat bots."

She suddenly thought of a particular cheeky brat and his penchant for engineering solutions, "Oh... and you have to take an Apprentice, a kid, in a couple of years. Maybe."

Another thing popped into her mind. He seemed really interested in the finite state machines, almost too interested, "And you have to share with me any tasks you create for the Tron-series bots!"

Again, Scott and Sophie shared a glance. Did he need a brain interface if they already spoke telepathically? He nodded, "That's fine. You can even have the Overseer's room and his office if you want."

That was interesting; it seemed Scott knew a little bit about how vaults were organised. He probably has explored some of them, she surmised. If you had an army of combat bots, why wouldn't you?

She nodded, "Accepted!"