[center][b]Subterranean Robot Blues II
[sub]• Errant •[/sub][/b][/center]


She also hated what she was doing. It was something other Ciphers could do at a distance, but with her being disconnected from the network she had to directly make contact with a port. However, once a touch-based connection was made, she had access to all of the robot’s memory. In a matter of moments it was copied into her memory bank, her system rapidly sorting through the information to see what was and was not relevant. The junk was flushed from her mind, but for the briefest of seconds Errant had two individual life experiences living inside of her mind. Back before she had gone rogue her life experience was also shared, but everything that happened from one Cipher to another was processed the same way whereas with another type of robot it felt different. It was strange, and foreign, sometimes horrific, and always an invasion of privacy that made her feel dirty. 

Flushed were the memories of the servant model’s master, the other servants that it interacted with, the child that spoke to it like a person, the repairwoman that spoke to it like a child. They were irrelevant, no matter how much they clearly meant to the robot. Saved were the memories buried behind encryption. A sense of loneliness crept through all of them, and that feeling of isolation was what led to the drug Synthony. Errant could feel the same euphoria that robot had felt the first time it had inserted the data stick, she could see it connect for the first time to other technology in a way that was eerily reminiscent of the Ciphers, how it could communicate through great distances to other users to temper its loneliness. She felt the same anger the robot felt when it discovered the drug had left open a backdoor that would allow a virus on the data stick to move in, and then experienced the hopelessness when that virus reprogrammed the robot to want more Synthony.

Why, though? That was a mystery that the robot’s mind could not answer. Errant disconnected; the markings faded to black. She did learn that the data stick the robot had picked up from the bartender was not Synthony. Instead, it contained a ledger for one of Vargas-IV’s Capos, and she now knew where they would be meeting. The decision was made: she would be the one delivering the ledger. She palmed the stick and stood up, aware that some citizens had stopped to gawk at the scene. Errant couldn’t just ice this robot; hell, even if there were no witnesses that wouldn’t have been the plan. 

So she stomped in its ankle and then ran like hell. The crunch of metal on metal, then the clank of metal on concrete. Nobody came after her, or at least nobody kept up with her as she ran past flows of sewage and vendors selling the fried meats of mutated rodents. It might have seemed as if she was only fleeing the scene, but in reality she was following a map in her mind to the location of the meeting. She knew what the capo looked like, and she knew that she needed him alive for now. What she didn’t know was how many other creeps she’d be up against, or what their level of lethality would be. Still, she imagined hers was better.

She slowed her pace when she emerged from the Gutters into the crowded streets of the Reach’s bazaar, knowing both that it would alarm any merchant guard to see a robot running and that she’d likely end up trampling someone who would then seek an altercation. Errant weaved in and out of the throngs of people as they argued with shopkeepers and held scarves up to their necks. She found her destination at the end of the marketplace—a smoke shop. An elaborate weave of curtains and beads masked the exterior and muffled the music that came from inside, and a group of juveniles had crowded around the entrance. Which was fine; she was going in through the back.

Her knuckles rapped against the door in a one, pause, two three, pause, four pattern. Just as Errant began to think that perhaps she had gotten the code wrong she heard the door unlatch, and then everything from there was fluid. She kicked the door in as it started to open and didn’t even give the poor woman a chance to hold her bleeding nose as Errant rushed in and slammed the back of her head against the wall with a measured blow. It was hard enough to knock her out, hard enough to probably give a concussion, but wouldn’t leave her leaking out brains. Errant knew that they were probably all crooks, and it was that “probably” that made her restrain herself. 

She pressed forward down the hall as she passed by shelves of defunct hookahs and burnt out pipes. She turned the corner and came upon two men. The first dropped before he even realized what had happened; the second got off a shout before Errant chopped him in the throat and slammed him to the ground. The shout roused a woman out of the sideroom she had been resting in; she attempted to punch Errant. It connected and the woman recoiled back and grabbed her fist, perhaps realizing now that it was a colossally stupid idea to punch a robot. Errant punched her back. Once was enough. She pushed on and tore her way through a bead curtain, where she caught a rather surprised man eating a sandwich. Vargas-IV’s Capo, in all of his glory, with a bit of mayo on the corner of his mouth. 

Truth be told, Errant had expected a bit more resistance than a handful of unarmed humans.

“Hello,” said Errant.

“Hello,” repeated the Capo, more confused than anything.

“I have the ledger.”

“You have the..what was all of that noise?” asked the Capo as he pushed up from his chair to try and look around Errant. She stepped to one side and then the other to block his view. “Who are you?”

“I’m the one with the ledger.”

“What ledger? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you here?” 

“I have the ledger for Vargas-IV,” said Errant. Something wasn’t adding up. For a drug dealer, the man seemed less aggressive and more nervous than anything.

“Y-you work for Vargas-IV?” asked the Capo. “Are you here to collect already? It’s been only three days. I was told I would have a week.”

“What? No. Wait,” said Errant. He could be lying, but her scans of him detected no usual tells that all humans suffered from when they stretched the truth. “Why do you think I work for him?”

“Because you’re a robot.”

“And you don’t work for him?”

“That’d be impossible!” shouted the “Capo”.

Errant paused. 

“Okay,” she said, “I’m new here. Maybe you should just sit right back down and explain to me what’s actually going on in this town.”