brockton bay heroes, meet plant tinker

[msrewind]

Time elapses. Rewind is allowed to leave her prison- er, hospital room. She needs to go around on a wheelchair, and it'll still take at least a month for her bones to mend completely, and she needs help to move around and do stuff. But she definitely won't complain about being able to eat real food more often (she is very thankful for the bot bringing her takeout), and she can keep riding along with paramedics even when she can't really move around a lot.

And one of these days, while she's in an ambulance, something lands on it, rocking the vehicle and startling her from her thoughts. The ambulance stops, and whatever it is makes noises as if it's moving and then jumps off it. Rewind twists to see through the window, and-

"Console, a really weird leafy monkey just jumped on the ambulance and then off it," she says into her comm.

Comments

[mrglam]

"It's a three-way date, then."

[thinkering]

"If I have you talking to the bot, what am I supposed to do, hide in the parts closet?"

[mrglam]

"Well, the two ideas in my mind are me talking to both of you at the same time, or whoever-it-is coming to my room so that if it turns out not to be you you can tinker or do stuff with your time that isn't boring."

[thinkering]

"Won't be able to take my helmet off or anything, the bot only knows how to operate joints, not a face."

[mrglam]

"Yeah, that makes sense."

[thinkering]

"Actually, do the copy suits you make even have anything in them? They'd just need the armor and enough weight to behave the way the bot expects."

[mrglam]

"I have no idea if they have anything in them, and I'm pretty sure a thorough enough inspection would squint them away."

[thinkering]

"Ha, okay."

[mrglam]

"All they'd need to do would be generate the right output for your bot to notice, right? I mean, Occam's Razor would say it probably has at least some stuff inside, but my power pretty much runs on bullpoop."

[thinkering]

"Dunno, it doesn't need to read gaze on an actual me inside the fake suits so they don't actually look. They do weigh the right amount, it would have noticed if they didn't."

[mrglam]

"I did expect them to behave like pretty faithful copies."

[thinkering]

"And they work beautifully."

[mrglam]

"If a bit mysteriously."

[thinkering]

"A bit, yes."

[mrglam]

"Can your bots remove your suit?"

[thinkering]

"Yeah? Why?"

[mrglam]

"Well, then we could ask them to remove your copy's suit and see if there's a you there."

[thinkering]

"I suppose. Might be kind of uncanny valley..."

[mrglam]

"I wonder if it would be. Your bots can control the suit, but does that mean nothing's going on face-wise underneath?"

[thinkering]

"I have no idea."

[mrglam]

And lo, a Lorica copy!

[thinkering]

It takes off its helmet.

[mrglam]

There's a Bella under the helmet!

She doesn't look particularly emotionless-robot or uncanny - just expressionless.

[thinkering]

"Huh," says Bella. "So that answers that."

[mrglam]

"Yup." Go away copy. It goes away.