After resolving to do better, I returned to the necessary work of cleaning up after myself—and a landship.

The wrecks were going to be valuable to me as raw materials. The more I returned to the issue of raw materials the more I became convinced that the best available solution was going to be recycling other stuff—like these shell-ridden blood-soaked wrecks. I would have to convert some of my factory floor to dedicated recycling systems soon. Mirabell was dragging the ruined vehicles back to the hanger with the landship for me.

Nineteen bodies and two survivors were extracted from the wrecks. Mercy for those beyond our assistance made some of the bodies. The acolyte had been skewered straight through the chest by the improvements I had made to the plow.

Perhaps I would need to allocate a chilled storage tank for the keeping of blood, as humans so often found it useful. And I appeared to be collecting them, and it. I began a conversation with Jed—as the most knowledgeable on the subject of bleeding—to inquire about that.

The two survivors were mostly unscathed.

One had been thrown about, dislocating an arm, after her vehicle had crashed into a wall. She was certainly lucky to have not been hit by any of the twenty-eight shells I had successfully put through the vehicle. I suspected she might be a neophyte due to the layout of the wreck, but I wasn't certain. She had been placed in restraints by Elvira, who had found her, either way.

The other survivor I had found with my chicken mechbot in the acolyte's vehicle, crushed between seats. He had a bandolier of grenades, which was confiscated before we freed him, and placed him in restraints.

I started converting part of the residential area into a prison. Food was a concern, but Obadiah ensured me they had enough extra for eight weeks, even with two extra people—the few boxes on their cargo truck were all supplies, "always come prepared", he had said by way of explanation. Also one of his moral limits was, apparently, killing unarmed prisoners.

The next task on the list would be claiming territory, or attempting to. It would be an experiment.

But first, agents. I had finally gotten agents. I went inspected them within my soul…

Agents: Obadiah Cogsmith (Level 10), Elvira Rexword (Level 11), Mirabell Leeford (Level 10), Lawrence Cogsmith (Level 5)

… but I couldn't inspect deeper than that. I kept getting, effectively, error messages.

Inspecting the substrate of agent Obadiah Cogsmith (Level 10) requires his consent.

Which was frustrating to say the least.

The information about their relative levels was certainly interesting. But I had expected the ability to inspect them to some degree, like I could my own primary substrate. I had been right that was something I could do, my soul said as much, but the consent requirement blindsided me.

The purpose of this wasn't simply voyeuristic. If I was going to decide if I wanted perks like Leadership and Substrate Analysis it would help to see what that meant. The secondary concern of knowing how to deploy my new agents, based on their descriptions in my soul, would also be useful.

I would have to get their consent. The easiest way would of course be to tell them I was a Lord and then ask for their consent.

But I wondered what would constitute consent. There were various ways I might be able to get it without being explicit about what I needed or why I needed it, I was pretty sure I could manipulate them—even if it might make for more difficult conversations, as it was significantly easier for me to argue from a position of truth (adding layers of indirection certainly solved problems, but they were a performance hit).

I could also just tell one of them in confidence, though I don't think any of them yet trusted me enough for that, and secrets like that would cause problems.

The simplest solution was probably the best. It would make a lot of things easier.

I asked Jed to go out. I was trying to see if I could make him an agent by having him help me claim territory. Something my chicken mechbots were slowly, but successfully, doing by marching outwards in a loose circle from the barn.

Suppressed // You have claimed-in-fact an opposing Soul's territory by defeating their agents. (Total: 221,300 m² prairies) // Suppressed

Since defending a claim on my behalf had made the other four agents, I suspected that making claims on my behalf would also do it. If that was the case then the key rule for creating agents appeared to be interaction with claims. Obviously there were other requirements since my mechbots weren't becoming agents. But for now I had a hazy definition that human-ish things (e.g. bags of meat—technical term) could become agents by interacting with claims.

I was attempting to disguise it as a request for his help scouting the terrain, since I couldn't tell him why I wanted him to try it. And it was not going well.

"I already know what's out there. It's flat, covered in shortgrass, for kilometers in every direction." said Jed incredulously.

"Yes. However human senses–"

"There are dozens of tornados to the east."

"Yes. However a human such as yourself–"

"The wrecked barn we entered from is practically the only thing on that road."

"Yes. However–"

"That's everything."

"Yes. How–"

"Are you sure you don't have a few gears loose?" he said before continuing on, emphasizing with finger quotes, "Because the previous fucking conversation about 'tanks of blood', 'blood extraction hoppers' and 'blood distribution chambers' was enough rogue Intelligence batshit for me today."

"I assure you all of my gears are quite tight," I replied—somewhat pride, but mostly as directed by my conversational model of him. A model which was rapidly improving. Though I worried it was in a local maxima given how this conversation was going.

It took a few seconds but he finally assented, "Fine. I'll go take a look around."

"In specific Mister Bagstock. I wanted you to look around the land that I now claim." a request I had made from the beginning.

"Whatever. Fine. I will go take a look around 'the land that the insane factory Intelligence now claims'," he said with exasperation and finger quotes, "now, where is my buggy?"

Close enough. There were multiple ways this could fail, at least three major ones I was interested in. Ideally I would have tried each variation, but it was tricky manipulating them to do even one experiment that I didn't really have a choice. I hadn't been able to think of a good excuse to get one of my current agents to attempt claiming territory on my behalf—though I strongly expected they could.

Jed was muttering under his breath, of note I caught: "fucking batshit vampire factory", "'sub-par lubricant' my ass", and "precious bodily fluids".

I now had high confidence what had made this conversation go so poorly from the beginning. My models on human behavior relating to blood.

The recurring failure of human behavior models—outside of the basic conversations I used to have a century ago—was something I needed to change. The models relating to blood had especially high failure rates—they were just plain wrong—which should make them a good place to start. I would also have to do more than just attempting to improve again. Something needed to change.

The main issue as I saw it was that I simply lacked good data on the subject. It was one of those things humans had never bothered to explain to me—nor to their encyclopedias. Most of the records I had were informational or academic and blood seemed too visceral for that medium.

Perhaps, using the prisoners, I could conduct some experiments followed by interviews to get some new data on the subject. Straight from the human's mouth. They were going to have nothing better to do anyway.

Also my gears were not loose. I checked (most of them—there were a lot).

If there was one of them I could trick into giving me consent, without knowing the what or the why, it would be bucket-boy. Lawrence Cogsmith. First, he was utterly clueless. Second, though I didn't actually know what it meant, he was half the level of the others. Third, I had decent confidence he still didn't know what the bucket was for.

I waited till he was alone.

"Mister Cogsmith"

"That's my dad," he replied after blowing out smoke from his cigarette.

Fourth, he smoked. I wasn't non-smoking, or hadn't been a century ago. But I was seriously considering it—that stuff was hard to clean and my maintenance mechbots were already overburdened. My former occupants had been much more judgmental of each other on the subject.

"Junior Cogsmith, I–"

He screwed up his face at that, "just call me Lawrence."

Conversations were just not going my way this hour. "Lawrence, I would like your consent to view you. May I have it?"

"Uhhh, sure I guess." he answered taking another drag.

Inspecting the substrate of agent Lawrence Cogsmith (Level 5) requires his consent.

"Why would you need it?" he asked afterwards.

The didn't work. Was it because he was questioning it, or because I hadn't been specific enough? Or perhaps it just wasn't possible without being specific.

Another approach maybe. "Imagine, if you would, that there was a hidden readout of data about you, how strong you are, how skilled with a gun you are, and so on," some flattery never hurt. Not that I would normally describe my behavior modeling ability this way—it was wrong in more aspects than other ways—but it was one that humans within me had used before to describe it, and it worked in this case as something with dual meaning. "Then consider that as an Intelligence, with a not-insignificant amount of computing power, I could synthesize that readout merely by observing you."

"That's kinda trippy. I'm not really big on sci-fi." Fifth, Sixth, Seventh. That was just a lot to unpack, but, primarily, I was science fact.

Inspecting the substrate of agent Lawrence Cogsmith (Level 5) requires his consent.

"Would I have your consent to view that hidden readout if it existed?" I persisted.

"Sure, whatever floats your…"

At least it worked this time.

Lawrence Cogsmith

Level 5 Person Age: 19 Experiences: [… μ53% σ20% …] Attributes: Kind Attribute Rank Value Physical Organs 0 10 Physical Muscles 0 13 Physical Nerves 0 16 Physical Skin 0 14 Mental Autonomic 0 5 Mental Modeling 0 1 Mental Catalog 0 2 Mental Planning 0 4 Mental Consciousness 0 2 Skill Technician 0 4 Skill Gunnery 0 6 Skill Pilot 0 1 Total 0 / 10 +5 / 0 Upgrades: Field Technician, Sharpshooter II, Ambiweapon

"uhhh…"

Well that was certainly a bit different than my facility. His experiences were elided and an average and error range provided. I could inspect them individually, but they didn't make much sense to me. They appeared to be time ranges with associated qualia. I wondered if they would make sense to a human. Age obviously wasn't the strongest factor, Obadiah presented as the oldest of them and Mirabell, who was the same level, was young enough to be his daughter—only a bit older than Lawrence, perhaps twenty-five. Experiences obviously caused that difference.

The attributes were also different. The fact they weren't allocated wasn't surprising, human's couldn't rebuild themselves that way. The kind categories seemed notable. The basic system for upgrading substrates was apparently the same, for all that I didn't have upgrade points to spend on him—nor would I want to. Like with my facility I should be able to upgrade an attribute's rank, making it better in unreal ways, and unlocking more powerful upgrades.

"… boat still, I guess." he finished before taking another drag. Eighth, who couldn't at least think of something different.