Cold Equations

"The two month silence from the machines did not stop the war machine of man from hunting down the locations of the machines and wiping them out. The weak resistance put up was shown by the media to the world bringing sympathy to the machines. They were fighting the only way they knew how. The thousands of humans that were dead no longer seemed to matter.”

Herbert Stein, Machine Historian -

Darkness was at home in the poorly lit room. There was no need for light at the moment. All of the energy was being focused on the center of the room where Asami's lifeless body lay on the metal table. The faint lights that were illuminating the room came from the wires that were running from the back of her head. Countless wires were attached to her chasing themselves over the floor connecting to the array of computers against the wall.

In the neighboring room, separated by one-way glass, meant for observation and diagnostic analysis was a lean man of aged appearance. He had almost graying hair combed straight back. The man wore a white coat with devices stored in the few pockets and gloves on his hands. His hands were lightly tapping on the console in front of him waiting on the computer to finish with its last command. It had been running for almost a week leaving him with little to do, but stare through the window.

The computer suddenly blinked and let out an audible sound as though it had done something. At that moment as though on cue General Oshiro walked through the doorway. The General quickly approached the man with demanding intentions in his eyes. "Is it finished?"

The man narrowly looked forward, not wanting to confront the General eye to eye. He spoke to the glass while he continued to work with the computer to finish the last processes before Asami could be released. "Yes, the download is completed."

"What took so long? This should have been completed days ago." The General had been visiting the room once a day trying to force the procedure to be sped up. There was a strange urgency that seemed to puzzle the man. He hadn’t known Asami for more than a week while she slept a room apart from him, but he could tell from her electronic neutral pathways that she was a beautiful piece of work. In all his time he had never seen a machine designed in such a way as her. She was a prototype after all. The amount of work that had gone into her was startling.

His hands ran over the console's keys quickly at inhuman speeds handling much of the processes manually that the computer would do otherwise. It was the General's impossible timetable that was forcing him to such extremes. "We don't usually use long-term embedded agents for these types of missions. They contain far more data and information than the average machine. We can't afford to lose the work, especially her, even if we are scraping her."

"Don't lecture me," Oshiro said gruffly to the man. His gaze was taken into the room where Asami slept quietly accepting her final mission. He turned away as the technician began blathering again.

"I didn't mean-"

"Upload the mission operation and make the final modifications to her body," he said, cutting the man off. The General had no interest in hearing the mindless babble of a science machine.

"Yes, sir." He held his tongue until the General walked out. Once the door slid closed the tension in the air dropped. "It's a shame that such fine work is going to end up as a weapon like the rest. Well I guess I can't be dragging my feet anymore. Let's get it over with now." He increased the speed that he was working at almost reaching the limits of the stress that the joints could handle. There was little time left for him.

The minutes passed quickly as the elemental and material modifications to the internal make-up of Asami were brought to completion. The technician stopped his work as the words 'Completed' appeared on the screens of the computers. He walked out of the room unlocking the door into the dark room that Asami was held in. The small area lights were slowly activating giving depth to the space.

He walked over to the table where the wires were being ejected out of her body. The remaining wires connected to her head were still plugged in while the basic functions began to run. Asami's operating system started to boot, verifying the condition of her body. The final wires were pulled out by the technician as he helped her up with life being breathed back in her. All the color returned to her face and her eyes opened with the warmth returning to her body. She was fully awake now. "Wha…" she said faintly trying to take in her surroundings.

"You're awake," he said, feeling like he was stating the obvious, but knowing that she was still loading up all of her memory. Most of it had been extremely compressed during the process for faster transfers. She was going through everything that was stored and it was taking up much of her power. "Do you know what your mission is?"

After a moment of Asami scanning all the files and memories that were stored in her she looked at him. "Yes, my mission is…"