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Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

* * *

Thin planes of light shone in on him, giving enough illumination to show the wooden slats of a crate, his body folded tightly inside as a self-preservation routine, claiming he was in an artillery barrage, brought him out of shutdown and drove him to seek better cover. Bracing himself, he pushed against the slats, which gave suddenly with a dry snap; the release unbalanced him, and before he could recover he fell over an unseen edge, falling four feet to a concrete floor, broken boards bouncing off his external plates as they fell after him. Unfolding himself, he stood up, looking down a long aisle walled by tall metal shelves full of boxes on pallets, bare girders overhead supporting a concrete roof. Turning to look at the fragments of the crate he had been in, he saw “МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБОРОНЫ” stenciled on it, above “КЛАССИФИЦИРОВАННЫЙ” and “ОПАСНОСТЬ” in large red letters, then БРА-1 — Проект: БРИГАДИР near the bottom. This was not where he remembered being when he was shut down. He paused, running through his last memories…

“«This is not acceptable!»” yelled the man in uniform, stabbing a finger at a television, the rows of medals on his chest bouncing at the sudden movement. On the screen, a video recorder playing back a recording of the latest field test, combat robots were moving smoothly through a forested area. “«Look at what it’s doing! It was given orders to attack the target from Hill 843, but it swung through this valley and is moving through the woods, and hasn’t even gotten to the target yet! »” The target of his ire, a small group of men in stained lab coats that said ‘scientist’ in any language, winced at each consonant-laden syllable. “«A combat director that will not obey orders is worthless to us!»”

From his position, held securely in a maintenance frame, his motor functions disabled, БРИГАДИР could only observe the encounter. «Alekseev, Mikhail Andreevich, General; Assistant Director, Bureau of Weapons Development, Ministry of Defense» echoed an identification subroutine, the general’s face bracketed in his vision, an image of the man’s military ID appearing along with details of his service history, education, and family.

“«БРИГАДИР was constructed exactly to the specifications we were given, and you yourself supplied the initial tactical responses, General,»” replied one of the scientists. «Academician Korontsev», the identification subroutine determined; БРИГАДИР terminated its cycle before it presented further data. “«You know as well as I that the neural-net central logic unit modifies its own logic patterns once it is exposed to the training environment; this was spelled out carefully in the original specifications — one of the most important features of the design, to learn from each engagement so that it would not repeat mistakes.»”

“«Do you call ignoring orders ‘working as designed’?»” yelled the general, waving at the video recording. On the screen, the woods thinned; in the distance was a field fortification, the sound of artillery firing faint at this range. A thick cloud of smoke filled the space between the trees and the fortification, and a dozen rifle grenades hit the parapet one after the other, their explosions rippling down the wall. The camera position changed, now looking from the fortification as six Улан combat robots leaped out of the smoke, landing on the parapet and spraying the bailey with automatic weapons fire. The battery firing from inside the walls fell silent.

“«БРИГАДИР accomplished the objective, and did it without losing a single auxiliary warbot!»” Korontsev yelled back. “«Your staff’s tactical analysis projected fifty percent losses. All of БРИГАДИР’s survived; he exceeded―»”

“«That is not important! He ignored everything in his orders except what target to attack ― had other forces been depending on the capture of that fortress for their own operations, they’d have been left dangling, and gotten chewed up by the fortress’ guns!»” General Alekseev waved a fist toward where БРИГАДИР hung in the maintenance frame, access panels open, cables plugged into the ports they revealed. “«In each of the last six trials, he has altered or ignored his orders. I’ve seen enough! This project is terminated!»”

“«But, General, БРИГАДИР completed —»” Korontsev protested. “«But nothing!»” Alekseev yelled, cutting him off. “«You have wasted enough of the Ministry’s rubles! Shut this… thing… down; I want everything here crated for pickup by tomorrow, or everyone here will be transferred to the nuclear-waste processing facility in Krasnoyarsk.»” The general’s last words were spoken with a tone of deep threat; Korontsev visibly deflated under their impact. Not waiting for a reply, the general turned and strode out of the room.

Korontsev turned to his assistants, who had wisely remained silent through the whole exchange. “«You heard the Comrade General,»” he said tiredly. “«Shut it all down and get it crated; you may yet be able to salvage your careers if you distance yourself quickly from my ‘failure’.»” He turned back to face БРИГАДИР as they scurried quickly from the room. “«Некультурный idiot,” he muttered to himself, reaching out to set his hand against БРИГАДИР’s chestplate. “«He doesn’t want robot soldiers; he wants cannon fodder for the enemy to waste its ammunition on.»” Korontsev shook his head, then grinned, clapping БРИГАДИР on one shoulder. “«And from how well you did on the exercises, afraid for his own job, as well; if you can construct a battle plan that much better than the General Staff — and on the fly — how much longer would those… dinosaurs… be needed, eh?»” As Korontsev moved around behind him, БРИГАДИР tracked him by the sound of his voice and of switches being thrown. “«Perhaps one day we will find out.»”

«Закрытие систем; спасите и архивировать.» The world went black.

His memory record ended at that point, restarting when his systems rebooted, an autonomous sensor triggering an alert (flagged as an artillery bombardment) to a self-preservation routine, which triggered an evasion subprogram. Examining his surroundings more closely, only floating dust gave any hint of disturbance, but the dust also lay undisturbed around him; he had clearly been crated up for many years, and the facility where his crate had been stored left undisturbed for that time. Despite the rows of shelved crates, he wasn’t in a warehouse; the concrete walls and ceiling implied a storage bunker of some sort. «Had I been deliberately reactivated, I would not have found myself in the crate I was packed in; I would have been unpacked first. Based on the circumstances of my deactivation, keeping my reactivation secret as long as possible is therefore a priority until I learn what my situation is.»

Careful exploration showed that he had reactivated in one storage room of a large — and apparently abandoned — underground facility. Dust was everywhere except the floor; this seemed incongruous until he spotted a cleaning automaton traversing a corridor, its tank of cleaning solution dry, but the vacuum still sucking dirt away. There were more storage rooms, barracks, kitchens, common areas, armories, and offices. The living quarters showed no signs of occupancy — barracks without even mattresses for the bunks, kitchen storage empty, armories containing only empty racks; only the equipment storage rooms had been used. Even the computers in the offices appeared to be unused; only a central computer showed signs of use, and that merely a database with an inventory of the contents of the storage rooms.

The inventory was interesting; the facility was a repository for all variety of hardware and records from military projects, some straightforward — devices to irradiate food to prevent spoilage — to the baroque: resurrecting the WWII program of conditioning dogs to crawl under tanks (by association with being fed there), then fitting them with explosive packs and releasing them to find enemy vehicle parks. One set of items, however, stood out: several of his subordinate robots — fifteen БРН-1 Улан, eight БРН-2 Опекун, and four БРН-3 Арбалет, partially disassembled, their weaponry removed, and sealed in transit containers. There were also crates of spare parts and partial subassemblies, but these had been more carelessly packed; as if in a hurry, and racked in the storage chamber without any organization. «Позже.» A troop of combat robots was about as well-suited for stealthy infiltration as a tank platoon, and there was no sign of any of his БРР-1 Агент or БРП-1 Убийца reconnaissance and infiltration units; leaving the crates untouched, he retraced his exploration to the entrance to the facility. Using the observation ports to check first, he slipped out through the personnel door to learn more about his situation.

The facility was in a densely forested and overgrown area, the entrance set deep into a hillside, concealed by a heavy growth of vegetation; even the track to the entrance was almost hidden by underbrush. The nearest town was some miles away, but he was able to reach it fairly quickly. From discarded newspapers and magazines, he determined that he’d been shut down more than a decade. Over many nights, he familiarized himself with how the world had changed in the years he was shut down and expanding his horizons beyond the military actions that had been his world until then. The books, magazines, and newspapers he collected during his forays drew a picture of a country greatly changed in symbols, but little changed in actuality. The ideals of the country — now countries — had been and continued to be high, but long before his construction had come to be paid only lip service. «‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.’ — a fine ideal observed more by how quickly it is thrust to the side than ever by its fulfillment. To eliminate the waste and inefficiency, the leadership would need to be replaced with less self-serving administrators. But no such leaders exist; almost from the first, the аппаратчики sought to feather their own nests and grab more power for themselves.»

Between excursions for research, he unpacked and reassembled the subordinate robots he’d found; their original weapons were not packed with them, but the storage facility was apparently where military projects were sent to disappear. Crated and packed on shelves in the storage rooms, he found weapons to replace those removed from his robots that were better than those with which they had originally been equipped — pulse lasers, particle-beam cannon, hypergolic-fuel flamethrowers, and miniature swarm missile launchers. There were other advances locked away that he appropriated — force-field projectors, aerial drone launchers, some sort of optical grenade launcher (on the crate, some wag had scrawled “торпеды фотона”), and a hand-held pulse-beam weapon he appropriated for himself. In a file room, he discovered documentation for all of these weapons, and his own development program. He noted that the program did not end with him — a second robotic combat director had been built, designated БРА-2 КОМАНДИР; a mistake that had loaded backups of his own programming into КОМАНДИР had resulted in that unit displaying the same independence that had made him… unsuitable… to the Soviet high command. The documents were incomplete, however, and did not contain the final disposition of his… brother? The concept that he might not be alone was both unsettling and comforting.

The regime that had ordered his creation no longer existed; as an experimental prototype, his isolation had left him with no real loyalty to it in the first place. Humans had built him, but humans were flawed and unreliable. Their political systems were chaotic and wasteful of resources; their economic systems equally disorganized. They would be much more efficient if organized and run more logically. «Massive waste at all levels, » he thought. «Leaders seek only to cement power, position. Conditions for average resident unchanged. I could direct the economy more efficiently. The economic principles are merely logistics clothed as business and political practices.» He recalled General Alekseev and the last recorded words of Academician Korontsev. Alekseev would drive himself into apoplexy at the prospect of having to obey his direction. The mental image was accompanied by an odd feedback in his systems, a strange but in some way satisfying sensation.

Humans ran their countries so poorly, staggering from one crisis to the next, hamstrung by their own desires for power and wealth. A more logical hand was needed to direct them to maximize results... and he saw no one more fit than himself to be that hand; he did not want the power or the wealth, only the satisfaction from bringing order out of chaos. But he could not take control of Russia — not yet. Paranoia from the Soviet era ran too deep to have faded in only a decade; there were too many interlocking checks, deliberately outdated manual procedures, and entrenched cliques for him to assume control of more than marginal power blocs without access to more resources than he could expect to have available to him. But other countries were much less rigid, more amenable to infiltration. America, with its capitalistic culture and chaotic power structures, seemed ideal — assert control over one piece, then extend further, a piece at a time, as the previous acquisition was integrated, its fragmented chains of control well-suited to carefully replacing one chain with another, again and again.

Getting himself to America was the next obstacle. Moving at night, he and his support robots left the facility, heading for a port that he had identified on a map. Identifying an empty warehouse, БРИГАДИР moved his robots in for concealment while he located the shipping companies. After picking a target, he inserted forged shipping orders for a shipping container of ‘machine tools’ to be dispatched to America, its destination a holding dock in New York City, then concealed himself and his robots in the container and sealed it, waiting until he felt it being loaded onto a ship before putting himself on low standby for the voyage. However, an engine failure during the trip forced the container ship to divert to Paragon City for repairs, with the more time-critical and perishable of its cargo to be offloaded and shipped out while the ship sat in port waiting for parts; the rest would continue to New York after repairs were completed.

(And that's a good point to break it at, assuming that the post-size limit cooperates; there's a fair bit more, but I'm stuck writing the battle where he gets captured, so it's incomplete.)

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

The Underpants Gnomes would also work.

I love this one. Very fun!

My fav toon for most anything: Dr. Turgenev.

@TURGENEV - Freedom Server / IRON / B.A.N.E / HORDE

Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine Acts III & IV coming 2012!
Turg Fiction: IX is now LIVE on Architect Entertainment!

Pep your bio reminds me of South Park's Mint Berry Crunch!