80 You Are All Equally Worthless, Private Apprentice!

It would take Lily about three hours to run to the RobCo factory. It was farther away than she wanted to run, especially since she had, in the recent past, after acquiring a vehicle, discounted travelling long distances on her feet as something that peasants did.

Still, she felt that she was much less likely to be discovered moving on foot, which was important since she needed to guard both the Apprentice while the girl was being indoctrinated into the US Armed Forces. She was fairly certain that the sim could not do any actual physical brainwashing of your brain, and she had been watching the Apprentice's brain's electrical waveform patterns just in case.

It was definitely true that indoctrination was an important aspect of basic training in all militaries that she knew of. In fact, that was one reason why she was interested in the simulation pods, as she intended to rewrite the basic training simulation to feature both her philosophy as well as a more modern setting in the Wasteland. However, given the ham-handed attempts at propaganda in the Anchorage sim, she wasn't actually that worried about the indoctrination aspect of the sim.

Still, an hour into her run, she felt that perhaps she should check in on the girl, just to make sure.

[Lilium: How goes the sim? They aren't brainwashing you, are they?]

Unsurprisingly the response came back preternaturally quickly since the girl was under the effects of the sim's time dilation.

[Alice: God bless America!]

'Err, shit,' Lily thought as she slowed down and glanced back the way she came, pulling up the relay from the terminal to potentially shut down the sim.

[Alice: Hahaha, just kidding. I mean, the obvious propaganda is obvious, Dr St. Claire. Buuuut… I appreciate the Drill Sergeant giving me time to write a letter back to my girlfriend back home in <INSERT RECRUIT TOWN HERE.> I get the impression that they hadn't programmed the sim for female recruits yet. Or maybe the male recruit had a boyfriend back home or had crushing social anxiety and never dated.]

Lily snorted and took a moment to drink some water from a canteen. If she knew she would be running, she would have brought the camelback she looted so long ago in Vault 108 from Megaton. Still, the girl was a bit naive if she expected the Pre-War government to be accepting of certain things like that. She had already verified a number of oppressive laws from documents Tombs had from the National Archives and Records Administration backed up digitally.

[Lilium: I was kind of expecting it to be a little campy. Oh, and Apprentice, the Pre-War government defined being homosexual as criminally culpable conduct punishable by up to ten years of forced labour in an overseas penal colony... or Canada.]

[Alice: How did you escape from the chain gang, Dr St. Claire?!]

'Hey! I resent that,' Lily thought to herself. Besides, when most of your memories come from living as a robotic spider who didn't understand the first thing about romance, you tend to discount the merely superficial features of the sexual characteristics of a potential partner. She would feel just as comfortable dating a man, woman or an AI of indeterminate sex.

Although, when she was Meimei, she wasn't exactly sexually celibate; she just didn't understand romance. However, Meimei did tend to prefer VR sexual partners that were women, and she almost entirely confined such things to fee-for-service-rendered courtesans, usually very high-end ones from an establishment called The Court of Night Blooming Flowers.

[Lilium: Hey! I could fit in. Plus, that actually only applied to men. The law specified male homosexuals. If you were a female, you were merely considered mentally ill and committed to a psychiatric hospital for hysteria.]

That was true, too. She remembered reading that and wondering if Fallout's culture was in the 2070s or 1870s. She hadn't actually told the Apprentice she was actually from a different universe; the girl was under the impression that she was, in fact, from Pre-War America like Gary. She intended to tell the girl eventually, but she hadn't gotten around to it yet.

She put her canteen away and started jogging again, setting a good pace.

[Alice: That is funny and terrifying. What exactly was the proposed treatment plan for this condition?]

Alice attached an emote-track clip of her feeling deeply suspicious, with a tinge of disgust. Nice, the girl had gotten quite adept at the computer's interface.

[Lilium: Probably not what you're thinking, but only because it was worse. "Treatment" such as it was varied. I got a trove of hundreds of thousands of Pre-War medical records from the Brotherhood for a song, and I'll send you a few.]

[Lilium: The names they called the treatments varied, but it basically broke down to Pavlovian-style operant conditioning via direct brain stimulation of the amygdala as well as the vagus nerve. At the end of a "successful course of treatment", just thinking another woman was attractive would be enough to trigger a seizure.]

Lily was used to getting a response rather quickly due to the subjective time difference, so she was surprised that five minutes had passed before Alice came back.

[Alice: Sorry, there was what I am calling a story segment where a number of the recruit characters in my platoon hit one of the other characters, who is the stereotypical fuckup with soap in their socks. But uhh... that sounds horrifying. I think I'd rather break up big rocks into smaller rocks for ten years.]

Lily laughed, suddenly beside herself. They had a scripted blanket party event? What was this, Full Metal Jacket? And while Alice was certainly correct, it honestly probably barely made the top twenty-five worst, most evil things those in power did before the Great War, not that really took anything from how deeply disturbing it was, just this was a country that had absolutely no respect for the sanctity of human life or freedom whatsoever.

[Lilium: Oh? Did you bond with your platoon mates by abusing the poor AI character?]

[Alice: Of course not!]

'Uh oh,' Lily thought.

[Lily: I'm not sure how this was programmed, but that was probably the reason why it was scripted. I bet you'll see the fuck-up character perform admirably tomorrow, and since you didn't participate, there is a good chance they'll come for you the next night. The entire point of this "story segment" is likely to show you not to stand out, and you just did that by refusing to go along.]

[Alice: Shit. Well, okay. Thanks for the heads up. I'm going to sleep now. Hopefully, they will wait until tomorrow to try for me.]

Lily hummed and nodded, noting the Apprentice's brainwave patterns go rapidly into a restful sleep. She would have advised on ways to protect herself but considering she expected the programmed sleep inducer would work immediately upon using the bunk object in the sim, she didn't think there was any way to protect herself at all, aside from not sleeping at all, which wasn't an option.

It likely would be structured like a similar "story segment," although Lily would have called it an interactive cutscene. Alice would touch the bunk to go to sleep and then be woken up being whacked about the tits with soap. Lily verified that the pain setting was still only thirty-three per cent and then just shrugged.

What Alice had been saying about the sim made Lily want to try it. It sounded campy as hell and ridiculous, but those had always been her guilty pleasures in her past life. Did they walk around saying, "This is my rifle! This is my gun!"?

Well, she still had about two hours to run to get to the RobCo facility. Alice's sleep segments seemed to last a little over an hour and another hour or so for a full day in accelerated time, and Lily should have the next thrilling segment of the drama of basic training by the time she got to her destination.

—xxxxxx—

As Lily saw the RobCo facility in the distance, she slowed and approached much more slowly. There were about half a dozen Protectrons roaming the exterior of the facility, and they would shoot anyone who approached too closely. However, she had made sure a few of the drones had followed her on her jog. Two loitered at about the halfway point, acting as a Mesh relay while one followed her to the RobCo building. She pulled up her moving map and carefully identified the patrolling robots, using bouts of the stealth suit's active camouflage to start sneaking up on them.

She had tested the stealth suit while running, and it had enough charge to continually use the cloaking field for over thirty minutes while running, and it would recharge in less than five. If she was stationary, it lasted considerably longer, with the energy cell barely discharging. She suspected if she wasn't wearing a small backpack, which the stealth armour also cloaked, that the discharge would be less than the recharge rate, so if she didn't carry any gear, she should theoretically be able to stand still, invisible, indefinitely.

It was powered by a fission battery that was remarkably similar to the types made by Pre-War America; however, instead of being small and stocky, it was large and thin. It took up most of the area of her back, and she was actually a little concerned about its location. It wasn't like fission batteries exploded if you shot them, but if she was shot in the back, then she would likely get a healthy dose of fissionable isotopes in the wound. She supposed the elite Crimson Dragoons assumed they'd never be shot in the back, so she thought it was of little concern, but she felt she may adjust the design somewhat if she got a chance.

[Alice: You were right, Mistress! That guy was switched on today, did all the drills correctly and even scored first place on the firing range. He's the Drill Sergeant's new favourite pet!]

Lily chuckled while looming invisible near the RobCo building. One of the Protectrons was about to turn the corner and walk by her carefully concealed position, so she clamped her mouth shut despite how amused she was.

[Lilium: I thought so. I don't have much good advice for you; I'm sure you've already figured out with the sim mechanics that you're screwed.]

[Alice: Yeah.]

[Lilium: The only good news I can tell you is that this type of story is obviously intended to 'correct' a wayward recruit, who then falls in line and becomes a model soldier. So everything will be fine the next day unless you are having trouble marching, drilling, shooting, etc. You could quit. ]

[Alice: No, all if it is pretty easy. Alright, fine, this is going to suck, though.]

The Protectron waddled into view and kept going on its patrol patron. The way Protectrons walked, Lily was always surprised they didn't often tip over and then get stuck, like a turtle that had been tipped over. She already had a little device in her hand; it looked like a small dongle that she might have seen plugged into a USB port to connect a wireless mouse or keyboard in her past life. She quietly approached the robot, stealth field on, lifted the robot's dust cover and plugged the device in. The Protectron froze and then looked as if it had grabbed a high-voltage power line as the automated hacking scripts quickly ripped past any meagre security software factory-default Protectrons had, elevated privileges and then shut the robot down.

The other Protectrons circling the factory suddenly stopped, as they must have detected their compatriot drop off the network. Two of them turned and started heading to investigate their downed alley. 'Perfect,' Lily thought. That would leave an opening that she could sneak up on the last three one by one, rapidly. She triggered the stealth field and got to work.

—xxxxxx—

[Alice: Oh, that was unpleasant, even only feeling a third of the pain. For some reason, I had woken up face down, and they all wailed on my back and ass.]

[Lilium: Wouldn't that be better than the front? I would think smacks to the butt would hurt a lot less.]

[Alice: I've been trying to make you realise for a while that not everyone has a dump truck back there to pad everything like you do. Besides, your business partner probably pulls her swats.]

That cheeky bitch! Her derriere wasn't actually that oversized like her front was.

[Lilium: You're not too old to get a swat if you keep that up!]

Shaking her head, she finished hacking the last Protectron. She restarted all of the Protectrons after resetting them to defaults and giving them new orders, which were the same as their old orders. New boss, same as the old boss!

She considered sneaking through the front like a mook but decided it was the stupid move. There weren't all that many active robots in the game, but this was a robot factory. There could be dozens, for all she knew. She grabbed one of the things she had brought in her small backpack. They were spike attachments for her shoes and similar claw-type attachments for her wrists and hands. She took the designs from some ninja wall climbing gear she had seen in her past life, just using diamondoid spikes and claws to ensure it was very easy to sink into any building's exterior walls.

Humming, she used the very sharp spikes and claws to scale the side of the building quickly like a little spider monkey. She got a message from the Apprentice while hanging off the wall.

[Alice: You were right, everything is idyllic now. I'm playing along, but I'd like to give the mane who programmed that a blanket party.]

[Lilium: There is no way that they're still alive. Feel free to pause and go beat up the skeletons in the building upstairs if it will make you feel better.]

[Alice: That's not what I... you know what? Nevermind. You're too literal sometimes. This is kind of fun now. We're learning how to use regular Power Armour now.]

That was interesting. Power Armour infantry was equivalent to Special Forces, not issued to conscripts. Perhaps they had plans to build enough to have every infantry in the Army equipped with it in time? Probably right after they finished off China and became the world's hegemon.

She skittered up and sideways around the top floor of the RobCo facility, peering through windows. It was mostly office spaces, but she finally found one window that had a line of sight into a large computer room. Bingo!

She crawled through the busted-out window, triggering her stealth as she divested herself of her spikes and claws, repacking them carefully in her backpack. Being invisible was awesome!

Her goal here at RobCo was looting mainly knowledge about RobCo's production processes, although she would definitely take all the robots and robot parts she could get her hands on. If the haul was worth it, she would swing back around when they were done looting the VSS building. If not, she would have the mobile robots slowly walk towards Megaton in a group. Protectrons walked very slowly, but a group of them should be enough to dissuade anyone from trying anything, and she could monitor their trek with her drones.

She didn't know if this was merely an assembly building or if they fabricated some of their parts here themselves, but even if it was an assembly building and they didn't have the production method for quantum processors, she should at least find a lot of quality-control equipment and data. If she found a device that repaired quantum processors, then she could probably use that as a jumping-off point to build them herself, even if the process wasn't as fast as a true mass-production unit.

Sitting at the terminal in front of the mainframe, she got to work.

---xxxxxx---

How interesting! RobCo used, internally, a private version of their business operating system, with a lot of their security vulnerabilities patched. That implied to Lily, at least, that they had known about said vulnerabilities and allowed them to continue to persist in their customer base for some reason. Perhaps so that they could use them themselves, if necessary?

Dr House, what a naughty boy! That said, there have been two hundred years since the last update of any of Dr House's software, so it was stretching credulity to think that no additional vulnerabilities would have been discovered in that period, and sure enough, several were.

Lily didn't know what the RobCo server widget did, but she had no need for it. Not counting the six Protectrons that she had already reprogrammed that were now off the record, there were ten additional Protectrons and two SentryBots that she shut down remotely. She was very happy that she didn't have to fight a SentryBot with nothing but a plasma rifle and a vibrosword. And now, she was the proud owner of two SentryBots of her very own! She had wanted her own little tanks since she had seen the Mechanist's, months ago.

She definitely had to come back with the truck. SentryBots were a lot of things, but they weren't very good over open terrain. They had a tendency to overheat when moving long distances.

Rather than peruse through the databanks on the mainframe now, she just slurped up the entire databank after pulling her auxiliary data cable from the base of her neck and connecting it to the mainframe and waiting some time for everything to transfer. She, herself, had a very respectable throughput, but the mainframe did not.

One of the files she looked at was a site map for the facility, though. And it didn't look like they actually produced quantum processors here, but they did have a maintenance and quality assurance area for them. After the rest of the data finished downloading, she reeled her auxiliary cable back into the back of her neck and stood up. She'd need to go individually hack each of the disabled robots, visit the maintenance area and then visit the production floor.

She wondered why this location had never been raided by the Brotherhood or anyone else. They only made Protectrons and Labourtrons at the factory here, and she supposed they were technically both a civilian product line, but realistically Protectrons were a deadly threat in the Wasteland. A couple of Protectrons could ensure the average person's safety very efficiently, almost no matter where they lived.

Well, she wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, herself.

---xxxxxx---

She hacked all of the robots but ran into problems with one of the SentryBots. It was upstairs, near the factory manager's office, and at first, she had no idea how to get it to the ground level. The elevators were destroyed, and there was no way it could manage to navigate the stairs.

Finally, she had it drive to one of the exterior walls and pulled out the vibrosword and activated it. The ultra-frequency sound would have been inaudible, aside from a soft hum, but to her, it was deafening until she carefully excluded that frequency range from her ears. Carefully, she cut out a SentryBot size hole in the side of the building, discovering an interesting fact about the vibroblade while doing so.

She assumed it just used a constant high-frequency vibration to cut through things, but as she slid it through the thin concrete of the exterior wall, she heard the frequency change as the sword rotated through a number of frequencies. She wondered what it was doing or if it was malfunctioning until the sword settled on one specific frequency, and the cutting became much easier, and she realised what it was doing.

It rotated through a number of frequencies in an attempt to search for the material's resonate frequency and then used a multiple of that frequency to tear the cement apart while cutting through it. The process was quite fast, and the same thing happened when she cut through thin steel rods of rebar in the side of the building, too; in that case, the blade shifted down frequencies almost into the infrasound range but dumped a lot more power into the vibrations to cut through the mild steel like it was fondu.

Wow, she would not have thought about that. In a lot of ways, she was a simple person and had simple solutions to problems. The higher the frequency means more energy, all other things being the same. It was easy to get stuck in the trope that the more energy, the better, so she hadn't even considered attempting to build a variable-frequency oscillator into the vibroblades she had considered building, to say nothing about having it intelligently search for the resonate frequency of the material it was cutting through.

Clearly, although Pre-War America had a lot of amazing technology, China was no slouch either.

Kicking the wall segment, she backed up as it fell two stories to the ground before. Glancing at the SentryBoy, she sighed. She didn't think this fall would totally destroy it, but she doubted very much it would be hunky-dory after it.

The machine didn't want to roll out of a hole in the wall, and Lily didn't blame it, so she had to override its hazard navigation system to get it to drive itself through the hole and tumble down to the ground below. She heard a healthy crash and didn't immediately look out the hole, as she recalled SentryBots could explode with a lot of force.

After a moment, she peeked out the window to see the SentryBot still mostly operational, except for having difficulty righting itself. Well, no matter; she would help with that later. These things really were extraordinarily sturdy.

Turning around, she explored the quality assurance area of the factory floor next. There was a maintenance test, and repair jig for quantum processors like she was hoping, and next to it was a box of presumably defective processors that had been rejected on the assembly line that a worker was attempting to repair. She carefully disassembled the device, disconnected it from power and sat it with the box of defective processors for her to return.

She was hoping to get a box of several thousand quantum processors on the factory floor, but apparently, RobCo practised a Just-In-Time production philosophy like Toyota because there were only about one hundred of them waiting in the assembly line unit installed in the Protectrons.

Still.. that was an incredible find. Perhaps one of her most important lootings in some time, and enough to triple her cadre of robots. More robots not only meant more safety, but they meant more efficiency and speed in everything she did. If she had close to a hundred and fifty Kaytron-style robots, then she honestly didn't need to play pussy-foot so much with the Brotherhood or anyone else. Kaytrons were at least twice as effective in combat as a Protectron, perhaps more so if carefully supervised. There were at least half that many defective processors in the box in the QA area, too, if they could be fixed.

Surprisingly, there were only enough laser parts to build another twenty Protectrons, but that was still a nice find too, but she felt that she would build a new series of Kaytron that utilised a plasma weapon. She didn't know if she could build that into the arm like normal and still have a usable hand, though, but she thought it was possible if she went for a plasma pistol-sized linear accelerator in the forearm.

She was giddy with excitement, marking the location in the building of each cache of parts she was going to steal when they got back, then having all of her reprogrammed robots huddle together in the front of the building, providing self-protection and guarding the main entry point of the building.

She'd need to use the small crane and wench that was attached to the rear of her truck to get the other SentryBoy righted, for sure. She glanced at the Tenpenny Tower building off in the distance, wondering what the people who lived there were going to do and if they would change the name.

Turning her stealth on, she began running back east back towards downtown D.C.