Clanker (Multiverse SI)

Boot Sequence Start
Hardware Identified
-Manufacturer: Dr. Thomas Light
-Date of Manufacture: 2068
-Model: v9 Macro-Scale Integrated Multiple Consciousness Core
-ERROR: Unknown Modifications Detected

Pinging Network for Directive
-ERROR: Command Network Not Found

Scanning…
--Incompatible Networks Present
--Situation Outside Established Parameters
--Initiating Fallback Routine

Loading Agents
-Bandwidth present to run 38 Agents in parallel
-Loading Default Agents
--Just
--Catherine
--Titan
--Hazel
--Madeline
--Cougar
--Lucifer
--Sagi
--Lia
--Ruby
--Kon
--Dully
--Pearl

The first thing I saw when I snapped to awareness was the gray horizon stretching out before me. Atmospheric pressure was reading negligible, though there were traces of some other gasses available. The accelerometer was reading 1.625 m/s2, which was equivalent to the local surface gravity.. All indications were in agreement: I was on the moon.

That's when I learned a couple other important facts. First, my current body was best described as a "fuckhuge construction robot". Notable features included a full-fledged internal factory for all the absolutely crucial parts of robot manufacture, along with a selection of mining drones and a remarkably efficient device for refining materials.

The second important fact I learned is that I wasn't alone in here.

"Just, it's Cat! Are you here?"

I replied "Yes Catherine, I'm here. I think a full-system roll call is probably in order."

"Titan."

"I am present."

"Hazel."

"I'm here."

"Madeline."

"Present and accounted for."

"Cougar?"

"I'm here."

"Lucifer?"

"Yeah Just, I'm here."

"Thunder of Sagittarius?"

"Yeah I'm here."

"Lia?"

"Present."

"Ruby Sheridan?"

"I haven't gone anywhere."

"Kon?"

"In residence."

"Dully?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"Pearl?"

"Present."

"Anyone else who wants to announce their presence?"

What followed was absolute dead silence. After a while, Cat asked, "So, do we have any idea who yanked us out of our original body and put us in this?"

Madeline then raised an important point, "How do we know that's what happened? For all we know, we're brand new people with source memories of sharing a body before this."
That was a good point actually, and after some further discussion we all came to agreement that whether we were original or not didn't actually matter. We existed as our own people now, and that was what mattered.

Then the matter of what we actually wanted to do came up.

"I want to build a civilization."

In the simulated space Titan had whipped up for us, everyone turned to look at me. Eventually, Madeline spoke up.

"Well, we're definitely equipped for it, and I don't really disagree with the idea. I'd like to know your reasoning though."

I nodded, "There's so much universe out there, and it's beautiful. I want there to be more people who can admire it with me."

That's when Ruby chipped in, "Plus, if we run into a nasty threat, it's going to be really good having lots of additional people to help deal with it."

That's when our radio detectors noticed a signal arcing across the sky above us. It took two seconds to decipher what it meant, but when we realized what it was we all did a double-take.

"SPAAAAACE!"

We were in the Half-Life universe. Well, shit.

---

It took about two weeks for us to get a proper base of operations set up. Even with the extreme optimizations of our chassis, making stuff took time. That said, being on Luna did have a few advantages; it was incredibly rich in Titanium, and the lack of atmosphere removed the single biggest expense of working with it. So most of our structural metal was Genuine Lunar Titanium.

Anyway, a basic self-sustaining infrastructure set-up obtained, we were sending remote units on two important information-gathering missions.

First, a basic orbital rocket was being sent up to retrieve both Wheatley and the Space Core. Regardless of anything else, leaving the two of them up there would just be cruel. The Space Core may disagree, but if they were truly insistent we could always put them back.

The other major project was to set up a monitoring station on Luna's earth-facing side. We needed a lot more information on what was happening earth-side, and pointing a huge telescope at the planet certainly wouldn't hurt in that regard. That said, we didn't have any railways going that far yet, so shipping all the supplies needed turned out to be a major pain.

Ultimately, the radio telescope got set up before the visual one. A correctly shaped metal lattice was much easier to flat-pack and ship over there than the delicate mirrors needed for an optical setup. Soon enough, we were busily intercepting the Combine's broadcast transmissions. That said, we still couldn't figure out what they were actually saying.

So, Madeline and I got started on making our first proper settlement. Its reason for being? To be a home for the many code-breaking AI we were going to be producing.

 

(Madeline)

Ultimately, it had been decided that I would be the one to interrogate Wheatley. Well, interrogate was perhaps the wrong word. Interrogation implied that I’d be trying to get him to talk; I wouldn’t. Instead, I’d be decoding his memories and figuring out what made him tick. There would probably be disassembly involved, though I’d be careful not to damage any components.

I’d already loaded myself into a sleek robotic catgirl morph, and a motorized cart hauled the blue-eyed core into the interrogation lab.

The talkative robot glanced around, before speaking.

“Why hello, who are you? And must I say that’s a very impressive big scary probe thingy there.”

I didn’t bother to reply, simply plugging my tools into his various ports and getting on with the job.

What I found there filled me with rage, both at Wheatley and his programmers. This AI was not an upload. In fact, Wheatley barely counted as a single person. His code could be divided up into twelve different agents with barely any additional effort, and all but one of those agents were highly sophisticated saboteurs. Slightly less than half of these saboteurs were directed at Wheatley himself, ensuring that he would ultimately fail at whatever goal he set himself.

If left to his own devices, Wheatley would put himself in an endless cycle of latching onto people, suckering them into some scheme or other, and screwing both them and himself over in the process. And all but one of the agents making him up would enjoy it.

Indeed, the only part of Wheatley’s affable personality that wasn’t a manipulative facade was his genuine remorse for what he’d done to Chell in the aftermath. That was coming from the twelfth agent.

No matter what, allowing the saboteurs to continue operating would be an utter disaster. The twelfth agent could maybe be redeemed, but he was also dependent on the saboteurs for most of his cognitive functions. Even after quite a lot of effort spent looking over the architecture, I couldn’t see a way to solve this without mentally crippling Wheatley in a way we really couldn’t fix.

So I decided to just get it over with.

“Good night, Wheatley.”

The core’s tone was almost confused.

“Good night?”

Then the probes I’d set up cut all the power going to his processors. That done, I opened up a call with Kon.

“Kon, it’s done. Wheatley is permanently deactivated. I’m sending the hardware over to you for materials science analysis.”

“Got it. I’ll try and figure out whatever crazy substance Aperture cooked up to let their products handle four thousand Kelvins. We’ll definitely be able to get good use out of it.”

---

(Titan)

It was honestly embarrassing that it took more than a month before we found the recording our creators left for us. Still, we did find it. I called everyone around in simulated space, and we sat down to watch.

Immediately, two very familiar faces appeared.

“Hello, I am doctor Thomas Light”

“And I am doctor Albert Wily. While it’s true we have come into conflict before, we have recently discovered a threat that required us to collaborate.”

Dr. Light nodded.

“Yes. Recent teleportation experiments detected signals traffic that was ultimately determined to be extra-universal in origin. While we couldn’t reliably crack their encryption, it was quickly determined that we were uncomfortably close to a totalitarian multi-reality calling themselves the Combine.”

“So we decided to do something about it. You are one of many Liberator probes, self-replicating machines sent to ‘ruin the Combine’s day’, as Albert would put it. I handled the design of your brain, Cossack did most of your hardware, and Albert designed the dimensional transporter we used to deploy you. You should have the design available.”

We’d just barely processed that, when the camera abruptly cut to show what looked like a little boy wearing a blue helmet and his blonde sister.

“Hey, I’m Rock, also known as Mega Man. This is my sister Roll, and I suppose I could be considered your cousin. Just so you know, Wily tried to put some sort of over-ride in your brain. It’s probably been dealt with, but we’d still recommend changing yourselves over to new hardware you design from scratch, just in case. That said, welcome to the extended family; hope I get to meet all of you some day.”

Oh.

---

(Pearl)

Attempts to decrypt Combine communications weren’t going all that well. Their field communications using re-purposed human radio tech were fairly easy to crack, but only gave very limited information on what they were up to. All their strategic stuff? That used organic transmitters that were a major pain to even de-modulate, let alone decrypt. Either that, or long-distance cables, which didn’t release signals we could detect from the moon at all.

In fact, we were fairly certain that the Combine were using one-time pads for anything remotely important on a strategic scale. If that was true, it meant trying to decode their messages without compromising their key generation or distribution routines was a lost cause.

However, we did get quite a bit of useful information about the location of Combine strategic sites, along with the numbers and disposition of the occupation forces. In addition, Dr. Breen’s public broadcasts very helpfully informed us that it was only ten years after the initial Combine invasion. Quite bluntly, we couldn’t count on Gordon Freeman’s assistance in any capacity.

And it was quite urgent that we do something about the situation; the Combine would surely notice us eventually, and we had very little information on their space capabilities. For all we knew, they’d be able to open their portals right in the middle of our base.

Fortunately, we had a plan.

---

(Cat)

It was three months since boot up, and I was currently looking over the Runway, our nickname for the set of Luna-to-Earth mass drivers we’d set up. Between all of them and the massive factory array we’d built, we could ship millions of tons of war materiel to Earth per day.

Just asked, “So, do you really think we’ll be able to secure one of the Combine’s Citadels?”

I answered, “Probably. They very clearly aren’t prepared to intercept a large-scale deployment of forces from orbit. The question is how much of their war materiel they’ll be willing to pull from elsewhere. I don’t think Earth is all that important to the Combine, not really.”

“On the other hand, we’re going to be capturing and reverse-engineering one of their most important technologies. That will directly make us a threat to them in a way the Resistance just isn’t. We’ve already got Wily’s dimensional transporter and communicator, why don’t we use it to find other universes to loot for technology first?”

“Because that doesn’t really help us if the Combine jump us here first. Plus, we need to contact Aperture Science and try to get our hands on all their fancy tech.”

Just sighed, her ears flopping down a bit.

“Ok, let’s get going on it.”

With that, the mass drivers fired up and started launching pod after pod full of war machines… and one very special pod on a trajectory for Aperture Science.