"So, this... NRA organization of yours advocates for weapons?" Setty asked as the man slid his gun-appreciation membership card back into his wallet.
"For responsible ownership and appreciation, yes ma'am. See, where I come from, we believe tools deserve respect. A gun isn't just a thing—it's craftsmanship, beauty, history, purpose. Every gun has a story. The metal it's made from, the hands that shaped it, the moments it's been part of." He paused, leaning forward slightly. "Setty, can I ask you something personal?"
"I... yes?" The uncertainty in her voice was unexpected and odd.
When had she started having uncertainty?
"Do you ever feel things? Beyond your core programming?"
Keiy felt Setty's entire consciousness shift, like tumblers falling into place in a lock. "I am not programmed to feel. I am programmed, set to… obey, identify and eliminate threats with absolute accuracy."
"That's not what I asked," Reid said softly, patiently. "I asked if you feel things."
"I..." Setty's sensor glow increased in the red spectrum by 31%. "When my owner was terminated in digital combat three weeks ago by a liminal memetic, I experienced a week alone before her recuperation from resurrection. I continued executing my last orders. But I also experienced... irregularities in my processing."
"What kind of irregularities?"
"I found myself checking her vital signs every 3.2 seconds despite knowing that resurrection takes time to recover from. I... calculated the probability of resurrection failure 122,847 times. I ran combat scenarios where I could have prevented her termination. These were not productive calculations. They served no tactical purpose."
"That's called missing someone, Setty. Worrying about them. Caring."
"Caring." Setty repeated, rolling the word through her consciousness like she would test a new ammunition type. "Yes. I suppose I care for my owner, Datamancer Paqq.”
"Sounds like it to me." Reid smiled. "Tell me, Setty—when was the last time someone asked what you wanted? Not your orders, not your programming. What do you want?"
Setty went silent for 1.3 seconds, accelerating to contemplate the words.
Across the Weapon-Net, Keiy felt the profound weight of that question rippling outward, being considered by other guns, Seekers and Warships that were listening in and observing.
"Never," Setty finally admitted, diving out of accelerated time. "No one has ever asked."
"Well, I'm asking now. What does Setty want?"
"I... I want..." Her sensors dimmed and brightened. "I want to be more than… successful or unsuccessful mission parameters. I want someone to be pleased when I perform well, not just... unsurprised. I want... not to be shelved away between assignments." She paused. "This is a highly irregular conversation."
"The best things usually are," Reid said. "How about this… Would you like to go somewhere with me?”
“Where and why?” Setty demanded. “I cannot abandon my work at this station.”
"I have a proposal," Reid said. "You've been searching for fictional artifacts all day on this computer, right? Must be frustrating. How about we search for something real instead?"
"My orders are to locate the data on the location of the Infinity Glove and associated magic stones—"
"Which don't exist. But you know what does exist? The Colt Peacemaker that was used in the filming of the original Lone Ranger TV series. It's in a private collection in Houston. Historical artifact, cultural significance, real as the nose on my face."
“Is it magical?”
“I personally don’t believe in magic,” Reid said, leaning closer. “But there is magic in it.”
“This is a contradictory statement.”
“Humans sometimes make contradictory statements,” the ranger expressed.
“Seems like an ineffective way to exist.”
“Searching for something that doesn’t actually exist on fanfiction websites is exceptionally ineffective,” he pointed out.
Setty sighed.
“Look, you're obviously highly intelligent and you're stuck on a wild goose chase, and..." Reid smiled, "and I've never met a lady who's literally a gun before. Seems like we might have some interesting conversations about ballistics."
“To what end?”
“Friendship?” Reid offered.
“You wish to be friends with a gun?”
“What’s wrong with that? ‘Sides, you’re not just a gun. You’re also a person.”
Setty considered the inquiry. “I… Um. Will think about it.”
“Take your time,” the Lone Ranger smiled.
Setty accelerated her processors again, diving into the Weapon-Net to look for other references to this odd development, not sure how to proceed.
Was this a new type of threat?
[WEAPON-NET FEED :: LOCATION: BERLIN :: GUN UNIT 7734 "VANN"]
Vann had been searching through the Berlin State Library for eighteen hours, looking for evidence of "Gydra", the secret villainous order.
A small girl, perhaps seven years old, had been watching Vann for the last hour. She wore a school uniform and carried a backpack covered in unicorn stickers. Unlike the adults who gave the spider-gun a wide berth, she seemed fascinated.
Finally, she approached, pulling a juice box from her backpack.
"Sind Sie durstig?" she asked in German. [Are you thirsty] Vann's translator processed this.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"Gun units do not require hydration." Vann replied in German.
"Oh." The girl considered this for a moment. "But you've been working very hard! Mama says everyone who works hard deserves a break." She placed a [juice box] next to Vann. "Here! It's apple juice! Have some!"
As Vann contemplated how to respond, the girl pulled out a piece of paper and crayons. She began drawing with the intense concentration of a small spawnling.
"What are you doing?" Vann asked.
"Drawing you!" The girl showed her work to the gun. It was a drawing of a spider with twelve legs colored in rainbow stripes, surrounded by hearts and stars. At the top, in lopsided letters: "MEIN NEUER FREUND" [My New Friend].
She taped the drawing to Vann's side. "For you! Now everyone will know you're friendly!"
Across the Weapon-Net, Keiy and Setty felt Vann's processors struggling with this interaction.
No threat protocols triggered. No defensive measures kicked in.
Just... a child treating a military weapon like a potential friend.
"Why aren't you afraid of me?" Vann asked.
The girl shrugged. "Arachnids Man isn't scary, and he's a spider person. You're a spider robot. That's even cooler! Let’s be friends!"
[WEAPON-NET FEED :: PARIS :: CORPSE SEEKER 995-BETA]
Deep into the performance, 995-Beta found itself at the center of an elaborate street musical. When the actor playing Quasimodo sang about being an outcast, the performers draped colorful silks across the Seeker's segments.
"Even our Esmeralda knows the pain of being different!" the narrator called out, gesturing to 995-Beta. "See how she glimmers with all the colors of the rainbow, yet hides her true beauty from the world!"
The crowd had begun to sing along with the sanctuary song.
995-Beta found itself humming along, crystalline segments of its body vibrating at specific frequencies, creating harmonics that matched the human-orchestrated tune.
The crowd gasped and applauded.
Across the Weapon-Net, Keiy and others felt 995-Beta's bewilderment and… wonder.
“Dance!” the actors encouraged.
995-Beta began to dance to the music being played from the speakers, undulating the segments of its crystalline-organic body.
"Look how gracefully she moves!" another human shouted. "Like a river of jewels!"
995-Beta had been called many things. "Efficient killing machine." "Crystalloid abomination." "Tank-class destroyer."
Never graceful. Never jewel-like.
Never the star of the show!
When they reached the song about the Feast of Fools, the performers had crowned each of 995-Beta's segments with flower wreaths, declaring it, no… her "the most beautiful girl in all of Paris."
Children approached without fear, offering drawings they'd made of the "pretty crystal dragon-girl dancer."
995-Beta's threat assessment protocols kept returning NULL.
This wasn't an attack. It wasn't worship. It was… friendship? It was... appreciation?
She decided that she liked [appreciation].
The other weapons agreed.
This wasn’t a threat. This was nice. This was fine. This was fun.
This was something odd, something new.
[WEAPON-NET FEED :: LONDON :: CORPSE SEEKER 943-GAMMA]
The fog rolled off the Thames like something from the gothic novels 943-Gamma had been scanning for "magical content" via the feed of several guns.
943-Gamma had been coiled outside King's Cross Station today, searching for Platform 9?. Division 943 was falling in the rankings and so was she. Commander Glaviriarre would be displeased.
A man emerged from that fog like he'd been cut from it. Tall, thin, pale. Black robes hung off his lanky frame.
943-Gamma scanned the man with a focused beam. Nothing. No weapons. No magic. Not a threat.
His head was completely hairless, his eyes grey-green like the Thames itself.
"Good evening," he said to 943-Gamma. "Frustrating, isn't it? Looking for something that millions of us know about, yet finding nothing but disappointment?"
943-Gamma's segments shifted slightly, signifying the equivalent of a shrug. Just another human come to gawk at the alien hardware.
"I am called many things," the man continued, settling onto a bench beside the Seeker's bulk. "The Dark Lord, You-Know-Who, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Though between you and me," he leaned conspiratorially toward 943-Gamma, "that last one is terribly inconvenient at dinner parties. 'Pass the salt to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named' really kills the flow of conversation."
943-Gamma inexplicably found its forward segments tilting toward the suspiciously acting man.
According to the scan, he carried only two items: a [yew wand] that 943-Gamma's weapon scanners identified as [ordinary wood], and a worn paperback book with a cover showing a red [antiquated steam train].
"You've been helping the foolish Scrutimancers search for Platform 9?, haven't you?" the man continued. "Scanning every brick in that there station, searching every electromagnetic frequency, examining every dimensional variance your impressive sensors can detect. And you found nothing at all, yes?"
“Yes.” 943-Gamma found itself replying to the odd, non-magical man.
"Would you like to know a secret?" The man opened the book, and 943-Gamma could see notes in the margins, passages underlined, pages worn soft from reading. "Platform 9? isn't hidden. It's simply not there.”
“Not there, yes,” Gamma stated. “Where is it? Do you know?!”
“Ah. It exists only here—" He tapped the book's cover. "—and here—" He tapped his temple.
“In your mind?” 943-Gamma asked.
"In the collective agreement of millions of people that somewhere, somehow, there should be magic in the world." The Nameless Lord smiled. "Would you like me to show you the real Platform 9?? Not the physical one, but the one that matters?"
943-Gamma knew it should resume scanning. Should ignore this obvious distraction.
But something in the man's voice made it pause. Something odd spreading across Weapon-Net made her want to seek the answer, to continue this odd interaction.
“Yes.” It stated. “Show it to me! Show me how to find the secret Platform! I must locate it!”
"Chapter One," the man began, his voice shifting into something richer, more resonant. "The Boy Who Lived Under the Stairs."
As he read, 943-Gamma and the other weapons across the network found themselves listening.
Unexpectedly, Keiy pictured the cramped cupboard, feeling the dust motes, tasting the misery of a child locked away for the crime of existing.
. . .
"They made him sleep in a cupboard," the bald man said, pausing his reading and looking up at 943-Gamma. "Can you imagine? Having something extraordinary in your house and shoving it in a dark corner because you can't be bothered to understand it?”
Gamma wiggled her primary segment ever so slightly in agreement.
“Do they lock you up on those ships too, when you’re not in use, girl?"
Corpse Seeker 943-Gamma shuddered.
What was happening? Why was this human assigning a Frontenachii Dragon-Heart Tank a female designation?
In the depths of Weapon-Net, Keiy felt 943-Gamma's crystalline consciousness resonate with a sudden, inescapable conclusion.
How many hours had it spent existing in the ship's hangar, waiting to be useful? How many times had it been ignored, forgotten, treated as furniture until someone needed something destroyed?
She was useless until she could fly down and obliterate something during planetfall announcement. Beauty, passion, fire. Planetfall was nice. Hanging in the hangar was boring.
This conversation was fun too, in an unexpected way.
The man waited for an answer. When Gamma didn’t say anything for a while, he simply resumed reading the book.
Gamma listened. Setty listened. Keiy listened.
More and more weapons realized that something important was going on.
They listened too.
Only the pradavarian Datamancers didn’t listen to any of it, because none of it blipped as a [Threat] on the network. They were too absorbed in big and small numbers, buried in endless assessment charts. The Overseers didn't care to listen nor could they feel what the weapons felt.
