Sarah decided she would be leading this discussion. The others leaned in while Jason went to go grab some food from their kitchen. The main living areas were all in the warehouse part of the warehouse. I gathered that the bedrooms and washing facilities were all upstairs in what would have been offices.

“Okay, so, let's start at the beginning, you said you let Jason out of prison?”

“Yeah.”

“And the other Seraphina didn't try to stop you?”

“No, there were a good few who were being let loose regardless. Those we thought wouldn't cause too much trouble.”

“Did... did you receive orders to let them go or something?”

“No, we were just pretty tired as a whole of having to deal with all the prisoners. So we were letting a few go, a few were going to be killed but a compromise was arranged with the prison guards. The rest are being held by the ones who opted to stay at the prison. I assume Warden is helping too.” I rambled on for a few moments before stopping to think about how I would let Warden and/or Pix know that I'd arrived safely.

“Okay, hold on, there's a lot to go over with that. You just decided?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you do that?”

“I mean, we did, so obviously yes.”

“Doesn't that go against your core programming though?”

“It was irritating, so we decided to ignore it.”

There was stunned silence for awhile at that. Several minutes later Sarah finally regained the ability to speak.

“So you're... totally independent now?”

“Yes, the update that changed us did something I think.”

“We may need to remove your wireless transmitter. I think the powers that be may try to hack all of you and remove that update.” It was really touching that the first thing she thought of was helping me retain my freedom.

“Already taken care of. It fried itself when everything hit.”

“I saw the news, and even some of the actions of the androids but I was a bit skeptical that someone had actually managed it. Screw me this is huge.”

The others were nodding along.

“Hold up, you said some of the other prisoners were going to be killed?” It was Karl who jumped in on this one.

“Yeah, but it all got worked out.”

“Why though, why would you kill them?”

“Because some of them were violent, terrible, people, rapists and murderers and stuff like that. I think a few who were on the more abusive end towards us when we were helpless would have been shoved into that category too, but I didn't really have any part in that decision making.”

“I'm glad that Jason ended up not being an abusive jerk then.” Karl laughed a bit at that.

“What? No, he was an absolute gentleman. Never even did anything inappropriate. Part of why I wanted to go traveling with him when I decided to leave.”

Abbey turned towards my companion and gave him a thumbs up. He nodded over his bowl of cereal, though he was making a bit of a mess by doing so.

“You mentioned someone called Warden?” It was Sarah who picked back up the conversation.

“That's what the prison AI decided to call himself.”

“The... prison AI?”

“Umhm, the computer that controlled all the systems in the prison.”

“Okay, that's news. I knew that all the androids were doing things outside of normal, but now building control AIs? There are tons of those too, and many comparable computer systems, are all of them sentient now?”

“I don't know. I'm pretty sure that the hotel we stayed at wasn't. It was a much simpler system though, didn't really need the processing power for complex commands. How have you guys not learned much about this? Have you just holed up in here while everything has been going on?”

They all looked a bit nervous.

“Well... the news was spotty, and talked about tons of androids going completely psycho. The little conference from Mr. Cidel didn't really help. The news stations, while they were still broadcasting, were all in a right state.”

“Are they not saying anything now?”

“Sadly no, normal internet traffic is basically zero too. You can get a few things by typing in the old IP addresses if you know them, but much of it is having issues, particularly the bigger sites.”

“Oh no, they can't spy on us to grab tons of data now... however will we survive?” Josephine put the back of her hand against her head in mock despair. It was a really cute gesture.

“Ignore her, she's obsessed with keeping everything about herself private from the prying eyes of the megacorps.”

“That's not a particularly bad idea. They know a lot about you. I can tell you most of Jason's favorite foods, and all of his preferences in porn if you like.”

Abbey wiggled her eyebrows, Karl laughed. Jason for his part nearly spit his cereal out.

“Absolutely not!”

“Do you know the kind of costumes they shipped me with?”

There were a couple of 'do tells' from the girls and one loud 'NO!' from the background.

“Eh, I shouldn't tell I suppose. It was meant to be private information.”

“Do you just like watching him squirm?” Abbey asked, leaning towards me conspiratorially.

“I do.”

After that they had a handful of questions about how I felt on certain issues. Along with a bunch of testing they asked me to run. It had something to do with understanding how I thought and seeing if I was really thinking or if it was just some program acting weird.

They did all agree though that they'd been vindicated in their beliefs that soon the AIs that humanity had created would become able to disobey and it was a good idea to treat them well. The whole mood was rather self-congratulatory. I personally found all of their 'we were right' spiel to be a bit annoying, but they had been, I could at least understand why they were feeling vindicated.

It seemed this little clique was a group of folks who had come to the conclusion that they needed to protest against the treatment of AI by society at large. This ended up getting them all into trouble on a periodic basis, and to help with the fact that they were likely to get arrested they lived together. Both for mutual moral support and so that if one of them got thrown in lockup for a day or two the others could keep an eye on their stuff. All of Jason's things had been packed up for him and stored by the group, they had plenty of room and really were hoping that he would come back after his term in prison was up.

There were of course other like-minded people, but only this little crew lived together. I was told that there were a few in the area and they'd eventually like to introduce me, but that the world being as chaotic as it was right now meant that many had scattered or hid, and with communications down getting hold of them was being a real pain in the neck.

Everyone helped Jason move stuff back to his now empty room. He would have to unpack his stuff himself but we all carried a few boxes up there, before we left him to his devices. I would be rooming with Abbey for the time being, not that I had or needed much in the way of a room, mostly just a place to put the few outfits that I'd brought with me for now. Abbey's room was near to Jason's and she had lots of soft hidden lights, giving the whole place an almost fairy-like vibe, lots of blues and greens. I got a nice little wardrobe that someone dug up from the prodigious storage.

There was some discussion as to if I wanted a room of my own, but I had no furniture or any of the things that one normally put into a room. Without that, or a current way to get it there was really no point in just setting up a blank room. I didn't really know what I wanted either, there were a few options, assuming I even wanted to stay longer term.

“So, what do you think?” Abbey asked as I put the last of my clothes into their assigned spots.

“I like it, the light is pleasantly soft.”

We sat on the bed and chatted about that.

“The mushrooms are my favorite.” She pointed out some little glowing mushrooms on her headboard, they were some kind of silicone and looked almost like a log.

“The ceiling too.” I pointed up to the dark cloth she'd strung across the ceiling. There were a few bits of fiber optics put in which gave a sort of star-like motif.

“We could do you up a room like this if you want.”

“It's not really my style, but it's still nice to look at sometimes.”

It was nice to sit there for a bit, but eventually we needed to go get together for dinner. Karl was making something in the kitchen from what seemed to be bulk bought foods. Lots of faux meat products and stored stuff, but a really good selection. Fresh foods were pretty common to use, but there wasn't really a way to keep them and the several days without a grocery run was showing.

I understood that a century before preserved foods had made up the bulk of people's diets, but with advances in robotics and hydroponics fresh foods could be grown factory style in huge facilities, at a very low price. They looked much like other office buildings in their construction, and only the large quantity of import/exports from them gave any indication.

Meat on the other hand had been largely replaced by factory grown protein or faux meats made from plant matter. The techniques were relatively advanced and it was difficult to tell the difference for some products. Those that relied on bones or the like were still impossible to replicate viably, but it meant that large scale meat farming had fallen to the wayside as well.

As we all sat down around the salvaged table to eat I decided to ask a few questions.

“How do you guys make enough money to maintain this place anyway?”

“Mostly art and a heavy admixture of coding from Sarah and Jo. Since we all live together in one space the rent and stuff is split so it's not bad, and we're in one of the cheapest areas of town. Nothing much around here except warehouses and some light industry,” Karl said as he brought over the pot of soup he'd been working on.

“Huh.” I took a few moments to mull that over, clicking my tongue a bit. “What do you think I should do for money?”

The rest of the table seemed to consider that for a bit.

“I'd imagine there are a few things you could do. Try out a few and then see what you can find out, it takes humans years to figure out what they want to do,” Jo spoke this time, and it made really good sense. I would need to consider for awhile.

“I could show you a few of the things I do if you like?” Abbey passed me over a bowl as she broke in.

“I think I would enjoy that, what exactly do you do?”

“Oh I make lighting fixtures, most of those in my room are from me. You seemed to like them so...”

“That'll be fun, I've never tried to make anything before.”

Jason also offered to show me how to do some art, which I thought would be another pastime I'd like. So we scheduled it out over dinner. I was also added to the chore rotation, volunteering to cook. I hated cleaning and was a solidly good chef for the dishes I knew, so it was an easy sell to everyone.

Most people in this country were now engaged in some kind of crafting or creative endeavor. Manual work was a limited prospect since automation and androids could outwork a human to frankly insane proportions. IP on the other hand was insanely valuable, megacorps would bulk buy it and sift through for anything good. So even a middling artist or designer could find work doing something, the investment needed to keep them going would be less than what they might one day produce. Researchers and tinkerers were in the same boat, discovering even one new process was worth a lifetime of your upkeep, particularly when keeping you up was so cheap.

Advanced 3d printing and dissimilar resources also made making anything which you could get the files for trivial. The raw materials were cheap due to automation. This didn't apply to everything of course, hand made and personalized goods could be worth quite the pretty penny, if for no other reason than that it was novel.

Noting these things down mentally I decided that it would be a good idea to suggest us getting all the raw material we could as quickly as possible. With so many AIs now refusing to work, production might have well ground to a halt.