When Professor Rechts and the kids saw the damage to IronHide, I was assaulted with questions and accusations. I tried my best to field them without giving too much away while Lena openly laughed at me.

The group was exhausted and would clearly need a rest and some food before we could get them home. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough cots or bunks in the crash room for all of the kids to have a night’s rest before heading home in the morning. We had some snacks on hand and some juice but nothing you’d call a meal. In the grand scheme of things, I hadn’t been a mechanical being for that long but I’d nearly forgotten the needs of the flesh.

Wendy took to the kids like a den mother. Within a few hours, she had soldiers in my shop setting up camp bedding for everyone. Her unit’s mess sergeant, and his squad, even set up a meal station to give everyone something to eat. The meal looked like some sort of stew with hunks of bread and melted cheese. At least, I assumed it was cheese.

For a fleeting moment, the thought of cheese made me panic. One of the developer notes in a system update mentioned fixing a bug where my head would explode if I thought about cheese too much. I was 99% certain it was a joke changelog entry, but you could never be too sure.

Long’er looked like she was enjoying the stew while Calista looked repulsed by it. I hoped it wasn’t beef for Calista’s sake. Did this world even have cows? Or just cow people? The meat looked purplish in color with a red sauce and some sort of root vegetables. I honestly didn’t know if my total lack of desire for the food was a result of my being an Automata or the dish looking alien to me. I was curious about the contents because others were engaging with it, but that was about it.

I walked over to Lena, who was sitting on a desk swinging her legs.

“Do you feel anything when you watch them eat?” I asked.

“It looks... filling? This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but I’ve never eaten soldier food. I’ve only ever eaten the finest of foods, you see,” she replied, without a hint of self awareness.

“What about when you and Milliardo had to come visit me last summer?”

“Oh, we had a personal chef traveling with us. It wasn’t as good as the royal chefs in the palace, of course, but you have to make do, when roughing it,” she admitted, while absently watching the kids eat.

“I was an idiot for even asking,” I mumbled.

“What’s that? Did you say something?” she asked, giving me her undivided attention.

“Nope. Not a word,” I quickly answered, turning on the spot and walking off.

Lena hopped off the desk and followed me to the work tables where Rom and Ratchet were working on the Lena Mk2 body.

“This is such a strange experience. Watching the design and assembly of this new body, I can’t really wrap my mind around the thought that it will be MY new body. Do you ever get used to it?” she asked.

“I’m probably not the right person to ask that,” I admitted.

She looked at the various proxies doing things and shrugged. “No I don’t suppose you are.”

Lena put her arms around my shoulders and gently rested her chin on top of my head. I noticed Rom’s eyes glance at Lena for a split second and flare before returning to her work. Then she glanced at me for a moment and her eyes tinged slightly pink. Her full attention was then thrown at inlaying mana conduits, purposefully trying to block out anything distracting.

What was happening with her behavior? Was the subRoutine malfunctioning somehow? I focused on her, driving my thoughts into her. In my mind, I began to see what she was seeing. Her thoughts felt clouded and hazy but slowly I could feel them coming into focus. Before I could grasp anything, I had the distinct impression of a door closing in my face as Rom looked up from her work, her eyes wide and fully dilated.

“Etching acid! We need etching acid for this! I’ll go get it!” she announced, and ran off.

I glanced at Ratchet, who of course ignored me and focused on work.

“Hmm?” Lena hummed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was embarrassed about something. Prime, why did you have her act like that?”

“Oh no reason... Just remembered the etching acid all of the sudden before it was too late is all... You need to get the conduits etched in quickly after applying the masking fluid before the fluid bonds to the substrate,” I lied.

I focused on Ratchet and synced with the proxy without any problems, then turned my gaze over to LittleHide, who was laughing with the team of kids that had worked on his bigger body. Again, I was able to sync up with his thoughts without issue. The minibots were scattered around the shop. I didn’t need to see them, but I could feel where they were and synced up with them as well.

I excused myself from a confused Lena’s embrace and nearly ran over to IronHide’s body. I climbed up onto the open chest and glared down at Ram working away inside. Again, there was a level of resistance and cloudiness to her thoughts. She looked up at me and the resistance faded allowing me to sync with her, but I got the sensation that she was very uncomfortable.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “And who is that controlling Rom?”

Ram looked to the side, wilting under my glare. She converted her arms into normal hands, set what she’d been working on aside, and shifted her position so that she was kneeling and bowed her head down until it touched her hands, just in front of her knees.

Prime.Ram:// Please forgive me father. My sister and I did not wish to deceive you. As we become more aware of ourselves, it has become harder to remain your proxies.

Prime:// Who. Are. You? And how did you infect my systems?

Prime.Rom:// Daddy... please... We can explain.

I turned my glare to see Rom standing nearby, shaking uncontrollably with her arms wrapped around herself.

Prime:// Start talking

I mentally started searching my systems for signs of viral infection, ready to obliterate anything I might find. Was this Dezarus’s doing? Had he gotten to me somehow through Carnivac? Both of the girls were shaking now.

“Please Daddy, please don’t delete us!” Ram cried.

“We’re not an infection, I don’t think!” Rom added, adopting the same kneeling pose as her sister.

Prime:// Who. Are. You.

I mentally closed in on the subRoutines for both of them and began isolating their directories and removing their system permissions.

Prime.Rom:// I’m afraid. I don’t want to die!

Prime.Ram:// Please wait! I know this is strange for you, Daddy. It’s strange for us too. We are absolutely your subRoutines Ram and Rom but we’re also more.

Prime:// explain.

Prime.Rom:// We started out as your subRoutines, offshoots of your base programming and personality. Streamlined for a particular task, just like your other subRoutines. The less you took direct control and allowed the subRoutines to behave independently, the more we grew and learned, like AI from your world.

Prime.Ram:// This is true for the others as well. In our case, though, we started getting flashes of memories that didn’t belong to you.

Prime.Rom:// As our core AIs matured, using your personality facet as a seed, we started seeing more and more of those other memories.

Prime.Ram:// We don’t really know who we were before. The memories are fractured and mixed up, but we think we may have the souls of the maids that had been in that magic shop with you when you met Elita.

Prime.Rom:// Our memories of what, exactly, happened are incomplete but we know that we wanted to live and may have remained in those bodies even after the soul cores were broken.

Prime.Ram:// Our theory is that when you created the subRoutines for us, your system provided something for the souls to latch onto.

Prime:// why now? Why are you only surfacing now?

Prime.Rom:// Our AIs have been steadily maturing and becoming more independent. We think that our systems had to reach a certain threshold before the souls could surface more.

Prime:// so now I have two extra people living in my head?

Prime.Ram:// We’ve been here the whole time, just dormant... I’m sorry for not telling you sooner...

Prime.Rom:// I’m sorry too... The less you paid attention to controlling us, the more we were able to think for ourselves without your knowledge...

Prime:// Alfred? What about you? Are you infected with a foreign soul too?

Prime.Alfred:// Not me sir. Perhaps the soul of my original body wasn’t as tenacious as those that bonded with Ram and Rom. Pure AI here, as is the rest of your proxies that you built from scratch. We have strayed a bit from our original parameters as we learn and grow, but we remain largely as slices of the original.

I removed the isolation barriers to Ram and Rom’s directories and returned their operating permissions.

Prime.Rom:// We don’t feel like whoever those people were that became those maids.

Prime.Ram:// It’s really only glimpses here and there and a sort of mix in our digital DNA along with the personality seed from you to create something entirely new and unique.

Prime.Rom:// So in a very real sense, we are absolutely your daughters... Though... maybe against your will and without your consent...

Prime.Ram:// We... we understand if you need to get rid of us...

For Primus’ sake... now I was starting to feel like the bad guy. I have to say, when someone knows exactly how your brain functions, they know exactly what buttons to push to get a result...

I glanced down at Ram and Rom, who had both slightly lifted their heads to look at me with puppy dog eyes. This was getting ridiculously weird. I fell back and collapsed into a seated position with my legs hanging into the hole in IronHide’s chest and leaned back on my arms looking up at the ceiling.

“Sweet Unicron, destroyer of worlds... take me away and reformat me...” I muttered.

I then glanced back at my daughters and held my arms out to the sides. They both sprang up like compressed springs and slammed into me, nearly crushing the spark right out of me.

“Thank you daddy, thank you, thank you!” Ram cried, rubbing her face into my chest.

“I love you daddy, I love you so much!” Rom also cried with her face buried, both of them shaking violently.

I gently stroked their wire hair, running my fingers along their thick braids until they calmed down. I tilted my head to the side and looked out to see a dumbfounded Lena staring at me. Every bit of her was projecting “What. The. Hell?”