Dorothy stepped out into the open field near the West Gate and looked around. Last time it was the temptation of catching a mouse that brought out a Blast Hawk. There were probably plenty more mice living in this field but Dorothy didn’t know the first thing about how to track or catch any. Her chances of finding another explosive crystal seemed to be fading fast. High in the sky she could see some large birds circling around but they were well outside of the range of her blaster.

Thinking that she might have better luck in the forest, she hesitantly took a look through the trees. Mama and Papa had never let her go into the woods before but she was an Adventurer now. Danger was part of the job, right? She wouldn’t go too deep, just a little bit. The tops of the trees blocked out the sun pretty well and it was a lot darker than she would have expected.

Dorothy remembered that now that she was an Automata she could change how her eyes worked. Other than normal vision, she had the options in her HUD to overlay something called “InfraRed” and “UltraViolet” vision. There were also some options called “Radio”, “X-Ray”, and “Gamma” but they seemed to be locked. She tried turning on the UltraViolet vision and not much changed other than everything looked more purple. Occasionally certain leaves or bird scat or something would glow in some strange bright color and plants that had magical properties had a sort of glowing aura about them. It was kinda neat, but not useful right now.

Dorothy noticed that her mana had gone down to 79. Apparently using the different vision types used up mana. Maybe they would have something at the library or at the AutoForge that she could read that could explain all this for her. She tried turning on the InfraRed one. This time everything had a sort of dark red tinge to it, spots where the light broke through the canopy looked slightly brighter but not as much as she would have expected.

When she looked at the ground she noticed a glowing set of animal tracks. She could actually see footprints! They were fading quickly though and disappeared in one direction while looking stronger in the other so she decided to follow them. She didn’t really know what kind of tracks they were though. Each print looked like two beans with the rounded parts pointing outwards and some little marks at the back. She put her hand next to the print and it was about half the size of her palm.

Dorothy trotted off, following the prints, hopeful that the animal might be something useful. The tracks led to a cross road of sorts and turned to join another set of prints that were nearly faded. The new prints had four blobs that reminded Dorothy of leaves on a plant with a bigger blob at the bottom but these were much smaller than the first ones. As she followed them, the first set of prints cut off of the path and into the underbrush. Dorothy decided that a smaller animal might be better to track and kept with the second set and picked up her pace to catch up with the animal.

The trail led to a small clearing and Dorothy spotted a baby hydrofox, a kit, playing and diving after some large and colorful insect. On the one hand, the animal was very cute. On the other, Dorothy couldn’t bring herself to hunt the thing and felt like she’d completely wasted her time following it. Just as she was about to turn around and see if she could find the first set of prints again, she heard the tell-tale shriek of a hawk. What luck! The hawk was in a dive from up high, focused on the kit. The kit didn’t seem to be aware and was only focused on the bug. Where was the mom?!

Dorothy dove into the clearing with her blaster ready. She hit the ground and rolled onto her back pointing at the sky as the hawk lined up. The hawk spread its wings to slow and change course but it was going too fast. Dorothy fired a clay shot and hit it squarely in the chest, then another shot, and another. The third shot hit it in the face and it plummeted to the ground.

Dorothy sprung up to finish off the hawk, but wasn’t keen on a repeat of the last time. She drew her sword and carefully approached the dazed hawk. With a quick motion, she slashed with her sword. The motion felt familiar to her though she’d never touched a sword until last night. Must have been the blade skill she had installed that was providing the knowledge to her. Same for how she was able to knock the hawk from the sky this time when she felt steady and focused.

The blade of her sword sang through the air and just like that, the hawk was an ex-hawk. Dorothy felt compelled to clean the blade so she did so before returning it to her sheath. The ex-hawk then went into her [Inventory] and she looked around to see what had happened to the hydrofox kit. The kit was found nearby but it looked like it wanted to run away but couldn’t. When Dorothy approached it, it snapped and yipped at her. Water began pouring from its mouth and it attempted a water based attack at her, but it amounted to getting splashed by a squeeze bottle.

“Don’t worry little fella. I’m not going to hurt you,” Dorothy tried, kneeling down and holding her hand out to it. Another yip water attack came, but this time from the side and strong enough to knock her over. Dorothy looked up surprised and saw an adult hydrofox growling at her.

“Oh there you are Mama, I only saved your kit from being bird food you know!”

Another water attack and she was knocked back over again.

“Hey! That’s a fine thank you!” Dorothy shouted at the mama fox.

The hydrofox’s attention shifted to something else and yipped something at her kit before darting off back into the underbrush with the kit following close behind.

“Hmmff,” Dorothy grumbled. “Ungrateful much?”

Dorothy turned to look for the way she’d come in and her feet began melting into the ground.

“What?! What’s going on?!”

Dorothy reached down with her hands to pull her feet free and her hands were starting to grow little vines and flowers out of her joints.

“AAUGH!” she screamed.

Was this magic? What was going on? Dorothy whipped her head around and spotted a hulking shape running for her from the edge of the clearing. The mass of a creature smashed into her and she was flung up in the air. Dorothy crashed onto her back and rolled over to see a large boar snorting and pawing at the ground as it lined up for another charge. She shifted her arm back to blaster mode and took aim as little flowers started growing out of it again and her supporting arm started melting like ice cream on a hot day.

The boar charged again but Dorothy rolled out of the way. Each time the boar attacked, the flowers went away and her hands and feet were unmelted. Whatever the boar was doing, it didn’t seem to be able to do it and charge at the same time. Was it casting illusions to confuse her?

Dorothy sprung up and took aim at the boar, this time the numbers and glyphs in her HUD grew little arms and legs and started dancing around. She ignored them as the boar rushed her again. She fired off a flare round at the oncoming mass, striking it in the face. The flare exploded in a burst of light and flame but only diverted the charging boar a bit and it smashed Dorothy to the side. Dorothy tumbled and crashed through the underbrush and out of the clearing.

The boar crashed around blindly, squealing and smashing into trees, against the ground, and flailing in the air. Maybe she could stab it with her sword while it was distracted? Dorothy pulled her sword out and tried to sneak up on the thrashing boar. Just a step outside of striking range, the flame died off and the boar turned a badly burned and furious face in her direction.

“GAAAH!” she screamed and stumbled backwards.

The boar charged again and Dorothy scrambled out of the way but was clipped as it ran past, sending her spinning to the ground and her sword flying. The idea that Dorothy could take on this boar and sell it at the guild was long gone, now staying alive seemed like the best course of action. Little flowers were starting to dance in her HUD now, so another charge would be coming. Rather than wait around for it, Dorothy ignored the dancing flowers and spotted her sword trying to slither away like a snake.

She grabbed the sword and took off running. Dorothy less saw what was in her path and more felt it as she crashed through the underbrush, thickets, low tree branches, anything that could be in the way was suddenly directly in her path as the boar chased after her.

Light ahead! Dorothy crashed through the brambles and out into... nothing. The ground was suddenly not where it should be and Dorothy flailed and screamed as she flew through the air over a small ravine. Thankfully she was only a couple meters in the air and she came down with a splash in the shallow creek at the bottom. Dorothy took a moment to collect herself and just stared at the sky as she lay on her back in the creek. She risked a glance back the direction she’d come from but the boar had given up. She could feel something slightly squishy under her and fumbled around to find that she managed to actually land on a large fish.

The fish was about a meter in length and appeared to have been killed when something heavy landed on it. Dorothy laughed out loud at the situation and was glad that Charlotte wasn’t there to see what kind of Adventurer Dorothy really was. She did manage to get that hawk pretty cleanly though. Dorothy pulled herself out of the creek and dragged the fish with her. No sense letting it go to waste. She tried to put it into her [Inventory], but the thing was too big. Dorothy loaded her blaster to capacity and stuffed the rest of her clay and flare rounds into her belt pouches, gladly, the hawk could fit into her rear pouch.

With the [Inventory] emptied out, she was able to fit the big fish. Getting an [Inv] upgrade went to the top of her wishlist. Even if the fish wasn’t worth anything, Mama would be able to cook it up. Dorothy followed the creek until she got to the edge of the woods and could see the walls of Capital City. It wasn’t as late as she thought it would be, but maybe she’d had enough adventure for today.

Dorothy was soaked and made squelching sounds as she walked. The sound annoyed her. The guard at the gate gave her a wide eyed look as she checked Dorothy’s card back in, but Dorothy tried to ignore her. Dorothy squelched her way through the streets to the guild, getting increasingly more annoyed as people stared or remarked on her smell. By the time that she squished her way to the guild hall she was in a pretty foul mood.

Dorothy stood in front of the Material Processing counter and glared at the cats behind it. For their part, they only glanced at each other but had seen enough Adventurers return home to not ask questions. Dorothy pulled out the hawk, thumping it onto the counter, and looked back at the cats.

“Another Blast Hawk, eh?” Jake asked.

“Nice,” Josh offered.

“I need the mana crystal,” Dorothy growled.

“No problem, I can take care of that” Josh assured her and took the bird back into the shop.

“Anything else?” Jake asked.

Dorothy made dramatic sighing sounds and pulled the fish out of her [Inventory], letting it flap over the counter.

“Oh, this is a Smart Bass,” Jake said, picking the fish up and giving it a sniff.

“A what now?” Dorothy asked, giving Jake a skeptical look.

“I’m serious,” he laughed, “This guy casts illusions to trick prey into coming closer as well as for scaring predators off. How did you manage to catch it? They’re notoriously hard to catch and are smart enough to see a trap or bait for what it is.”

“I... um... I landed on it...” Dorothy said, suddenly embarrassed and examining the countertop.

“Ha!” Jake yelled. “Looks like instead of a Smart Bass, you managed to catch a Dumb Bass!”

Dorothy couldn’t help but smile at the dumb joke and took her reciept with a smirk. Josh returned from the back and handed over the small explosion crystal from the Blast Hawk. It was clean and polished, and Dorothy could see in her HUD that it still had all of its Experience Points in it.

“Thanks guys, see you tomorrow,” Dorothy waved as she backed away to head over to the ReQuest counter.

“Later, Dot!” Jake called.

Dorothy paused and gave him an odd look. Josh smacked his brother in the chest.

“She said her name is Dorothy.” he corrected.

“I thought Strider said her name was Dot, he even made that AutoDot joke at the staff meeting” Jake glared as he rubbed his chest.

“He did,” Josh admitted, “but that’s not what she said her name was. Maybe just her dad can call her that.”

“Oooooh... I didn’t think of that...” Jake deflated and his ears laid flat on his head.

“Guys!” Dorothy called, getting their attention. “It’s fine. You can call me Dot. I don’t mind... But not AutoDot...”

“Phew,” Jake said, ears perking back up. “Later Dot!”

“See ya later, Dorothy,” Josh said shaking his head, but smiling.

Dorothy had nearly dried off by now, though her boots were still wet and leaving small, moist footprints across the hall as she crossed over to see her Papa.

“Hey little Dot... you... you fell in the creek, huh?” Papa said, giving her a cautious look.

“You can tell by looking, huh?”

“I can tell by smelling. That creek that runs into the city has a pretty particular odor. Most Adventurers come back smelling like it when they pick up ReQuests to catch a Smart Bass.”

“Oh... well I caught one,” Dorothy said, puffing up with false pride.

“That’s my girl, okay let’s see the receipt.”

Dorothy handed over the slip of paper. There wasn’t a ReQuest to go with it this time so she wouldn’t be getting any promotion points but hopefully the Bass was worth a bit.

“Okay now... that’s 7C for the hawk again... and for the bass, it’s 4S... and 2S for its loaded illusion crystal,” Papa said, counting out the money.

“It had an illusion crystal?! Shoot, I should have analyzed it or kept it,” Dorothy muttered.

“They didn’t ask you?” Papa asked, raising an eyebrow. “They’re supposed to ask if you want the crystal. Most folks need to at least collect the XP from it. I’ll skin those cats when I see them at the next staff meeting...”

“It’s fine Papa! It’s fine! I can’t absorb the XP anyway... and illusions wouldn’t be very useful for my equipment modifications.”

“Well alright, they get to live. But only because you said so,” he said, giving her a wink. Papa split the money in half and gave Dorothy her share. The rest went into a special leather bag to be delivered to the bank with an amount receipt marked for The Primercy.

Dorothy pocketed her pay, she was a bit surprised how much the bass was worth but she wasn’t going to turn it away. It wasn’t quitting time yet so Dorothy waved goodbye to her father and headed out of the guild. She nearly had a gold’s worth of money again and was interested in doing some window shopping. As much as she liked having Papa’s sword, the idea of having one built into her arm that couldn’t be knocked or lost was appealing. She also wanted to load up on some more types of ammo and look into a blaster upgrade, but all of that would have to wait until she could get cleaned up. Shop owners might not like it if she came in, smelling of the creek even though she couldn’t smell it like they did.

Dorothy poked her head in the front door of Mama’s shop and Mama appeared from the back at the sound of the door chime.

“Oh Dorothy, yuh back soon din I thought. OH tan deh! Mi love... yuh done fell in di crick and got di green arm, eh?”

Dorothy’s shoulders drooped. “I did.”

“Gwaan now, round di back. We git yuh cleaned up an’ yuh tell Mama all ‘bout it.”

“Kay... thanks Mama.”

Dorothy left the shop and Mama locked the door after her and flipped her open sign around, shoeing Dorothy to get going. To get to the rear entrance, Dorothy had to walk to the end of the block and head down a back alleyway to get to the common alley that accessed the rear entrances for their building row as well as the one behind them. Mama was waiting for her with a bucket of clean water, soap, and brushes.

Dorothy stripped off all of her gear and sat on a little bench as her mother scrubbed at her armor plating and brushed out mud and creek gunk from places that Dorothy didn’t even realize she had. As Mama scrubbed, Dorothy told her about her afternoon adventure and how things went for her.

“Yuh know, dat vision ting would be verra useful to a tracka. I bet dey would pay well ti have a body like yuh wit dem. I wunda if all dem Autos could do dat back in di days an’ dey jus’ neva tol’ no body...”

“I dunno,” Dorothy shrugged.

“I know mi love. So tell meh more ‘bout dat boar.”

Dorothy told her about the strange things she saw like flowers sprouting or her limbs melting, even about the sword slithering like a snake.

“Was it illusions?” Dorothy asked when she was finished.

“I don’t tink so, but mebbe. I hear der sometin call da psi-boar in dem woods. Mebbe you foun’ it.”

“A psi-boar, huh? I’ll ask Charlotte about it tomorrow, she grew up deep in the Fangwell Forest. Maybe she’s heard of it.”

“Coul’ be, coul’ be,” Mama said as she worked on cleaning the individual cables of Dorothy's “hair”. “So tell meh, what utta upgrades yuh git? New weapons? Mebbe sometin like dat Knight Patrol Auto we saw?”

“Just the hair. I got some ammo for my blaster too, but just the hair for my first upgrade so I could be like you,” Dorothy said, giving her mother a big, close-eyed smile.

“Kiss mi neck, really? Oh mi Dorothy,” Mama teared up as she squeezed Dorothy.

“Ma! I’m all soapy!”

“I dohn care,” Mama said, squeezing and gently rocking from side to side.

There would be no stopping her, so Dorothy had to just ride it out. When Mama was done, she dumped the bucket of water over Dorothy and started toweling her dry.

“I can do it Mama!” Dorothy complained as she tried to grab the towel from her.

“Nonsense,” Mama said, continuing to buff and dry.

Dorothy tried again to snatch the towel away from her but still couldn’t manage it. With an Automata’s increased speed and strength she should have been able to but kept coming up empty. Eventually she gave up and crossed her arms in a huff.

“I fought bigga and badda Autos den yu, Dorothy Nightingale Singa,” Mama said with a smirk and a flourish of the towel. “Now, meh gone git dis cloths clean up. Yuh can getcha tings.”

“Yes Mama...” Dorothy said, resigned to her fate. She gathered up her gear and left the pants, boots, and cuirass to her mother. Most things cleaned up pretty well with the damp cloth and in no time she had everything sitting out and drying. The blaster ammo could go back into her [Inventory] now that she didn’t need to carry a big fish around. As she was setting things out to dry, she came across the small explosion crystal. It was only a couple of centimeters diameter, milky white, with red and black marbling winding around it.

Dorothy looked at her left arm and converted it into blaster mode. She then thought the manual function [Load] and it opened up like it had back at the AutoForge. She could see four clay rounds setting in the hopper, ready to go but now she noticed a small circular socket near the mechanism that grabbed the next round in line. It looked like it should fit, so she dropped the crystal into the socket. The crystal hit some sort of trigger in her blaster that pulled it inward and then clamped it in place. Her HUD updated and now she could see the usual trigger [Fire] when she had the blaster active as well as her custom function [Blast]. She closed up the blaster and the temptation to try out the new function was overwhelming.

Everything was finally cleaned up and was hanging to dry on the rack so Mama started getting dinner ready. She still hadn’t gotten to the market, so it looked like leftovers for Papa again. Papa would be home soon and Mama always liked to have dinner waiting for him. Dorothy was sitting in Papa’s chair again, looking at her [DevCon] trying to make sense of some of the things she’d seen earlier; now that she had the time. She had missed it earlier, but across the top of her screen were a number of words that could be touched. Things like “File”, “Edit”, “View”, “Terminal”, and “Help.”

“Help!” Dorothy exclaimed. “Yes, I think I could use some help.”

“Wassa matta mi love? Evra ting okay?” Mama asked.

“Oh sorry Mama, yeah. I found a help section.”

“Ah good. Lemme know if it can help yuh fahda git home on time.”

Dorothy smiled at Mama’s joke and touched the word to see what it provided. When she touched it a new box appeared with a list of items and a small box at the top that said “search.” The first item listed, read “Automata FAQ.”

“Hey, Mama, what’s a fack?”

“Fack? How it used?”

“There’s a thing here called Automata Fack.”

“I dunno. I hope it not sometin inappropriate.

Dorothy touched it to find out. The box with the listings went away and a new large screen opened up. At the top read “Automata Frequently Asked Questions.”

“Oooh...” Dorothy said, putting together the acronym. Right at the top was “Do Automata eat or sleep?” Dorothy was pretty keen on knowing about this herself and touched the entry to have the screen whiz the text up until it stopped at the answer to the question.

Do Automata eat or sleep?

The short answer is “no”. Automata live off of mana and absorb the ambient mana from the air. Everytime that something uses magic, the mana that is consumed in their spell is returned to the atmosphere to be reabsorbed. Automata do best in areas rich in mana like dragon vein intersections where magic is strongest.

Since Automata feed on mana and absorb it from the air, they do not need any food and as long as their inner mana is full, they do not require sleep.

Bonus: Automata don’t breathe either! So long as there is mana to absorb, an Automata will do just fine.

What is inner mana?

When we look at the status of an Automata we can see a value for their mana, but this is only part of the story. The mana we see listed is the Outer Mana. Just like non-Automata, the Outer Mana is what is consumed when casting spells. Your inner mana is what powers your body and keeps you running.

You can think of inner mana the same way as non-Automata think of Stamina. The more active you are, the more of your inner mana you will use, however as you are constantly absorbing mana from your environment, simply being inactive for a while will recharge you.

Your body is designed to recharge your inner mana first and when that’s filled up it will recharge your outer mana. Your body will deplete your outer mana to recover inner mana, in cases of emergency. Automata don’t feel “tired” like non-Automata do so keep an eye on your mana levels and rest when you need to.

“Huh,” Dorothy said aloud. “So it says here that Automata don’t eat, or sleep, or even breathe. We just sorta suck the mana out of the air and that’s all we need.”

“Dat makes mi a bit sad,” Mama said, looking at the food she was preparing.

“Me too... I love eating your food, and the smell of a feast on holidays... Though now I can’t even really smell anything either.”

“I s’pose dat why a body got di idee ti use Autos as slaves in di first place.”

“That must have been terrible.”

“Yeh, well... watah unda di bridge.”

Dorothy read on, learning about a brief history of Automata, starting with the very first one named Marie up to how Automata are used in modern times to do jobs that aren’t safe for others due to environment or how really old kings or queens sometimes convert to Automata in order to live longer as an adviser for the next leader.

Papa got home and gave Dorothy and Mama hugs and remarked on Dorothy smelling much better, which inspired Dorothy to remind Papa that Automata don’t have noses. Papa gave her the ol’ finger arrows and a doofy grin in return.

As evening turned to night and Mama and Papa turned in for bed, Dorothy continued reading all she could in the help section. It seemed like Automata missed out on a lot of things that made being alive something to look forward to, including things that were well beyond her interest level. All those “simple joys” and “truly feeling alive” were now gone for her, and there were tons of “life experiences” that she would never experience. Automata had some cold, logical representations for some of them, but the experience was far from the same.

It seemed like for what Automata gave up, they got back in time. An Automata ages at half the rate of a “Non-Automata Indiginous Life” or “NAIL”, as the help section sometimes used. It seemed that during the conversion you got back the amount of natural life you would have had, doubled. Then without the need to eat or sleep, it was no wonder that you saw so many Automata in the academic fields or in production services. Like them, Dorothy would need to find ways to spend her time. Being by herself at night without a project to focus on or a sleeping Papa in the chair felt lonely. The house, suddenly too big; and her bedroom, alien.

Dorothy closed out all her screens and got up from Papa’s chair. Quietly, so not to disturb her parents, Dorothy crept to her room and climbed out the window. From there, she was able to climb up to the roof of the building. Dorothy sat on the roof and watched the stars and the moons dance across the sky. She couldn’t go anywhere now since her parents were asleep but, tomorrow night, tomorrow night she would ask about visiting Jennifer at the Knight Patrol.