Seero appeared in a world of metal, but not the Primary Home Base. All around her was circuitry and metal…and more. Bolts of lightning shot around and curved into loops. Automated hammers pounded sheets of metal. Robotic arms grabbed and carried things. One’s and zero’s formed out of light moved through the air. Seero heard a great deal of static as the air filled with electromagnetic signals.

Something about it bothered both her organic and cybernetic components.

But she ignored it, for she had more pressing issues to deal with. The moment she confirmed the environment was not actively hostile towards her, she focused on herself. She was still missing a number of components, including limbs, as she fell onto the metal floor with a clang. And while her Geo-Oscillator was no longer attempting to terminate her, it remained deactivated. Or rather, Seero was keeping it that way.

She was not going to reconnect it with Aelea or even the Primary Home Base until she had determined exactly what had happened and, more importantly, how to prevent it.

Fortunately, she had a bit more time now. Even without her Geo-Oscillator, apparently her organic components could produce some mana on their own. It was a mere fraction of what the Geo-Oscillator was outputting, but it might suffice to keep the lights on in the worst case scenario, especially now that she could convert it to electricity with her new Equalizer. Additionally, she could always use the Equalizer to remove the attributes from the mana around her, and make use of it directly.

So, she turned her mind to recent events. But then, something changed in her surroundings.

The moment she fired up her processors to analyze the situation, her entire environment seemed to pause.

And then…it attacked.

A torrent of data, code, and lightning streamed towards Seero, while robotic arms reached out to grasp her. Seero’s robotic eye flickered as all of her receptors for electro-magenetic signals were suddenly filled to the brim with gibberish code and trash data. She prepared her cyberwarfare protocols for dealing with a DDoS style attack, including a thread of 00B-Beta that remained in her circuits…when she found one line of code that she could actually make sense of.

“This.purpose==?”

Her organic eye widened and she turned her head to look around her. Suddenly, it clicked, and she knew why her surroundings bothered her. There was something fundamentally wrong about this place.

Automated hammers pounded the same sheets of metal repeatedly, and with no consistency. Laser and plasma drills cut sheets into random shapes. Robotic arms picked up objects and tossed them in random directions. Lightning looped in random circuits. Gibberish electromagnetic signals were sent off in every direction, with nothing to receive them. Random bits of code flashed through the air, none of which made any sense.

She realized she was still in a Realm of Mana, as mana permeated everything around her. The machines were not truly metal, the wireless signals not truly electromagnetic energy. And she realized what Realm this was…or rather, was supposed to be.

She had discovered the Realm her Cyborg affinity was connected to.

But…there was a problem for this Realm specifically. From what Seero understood, the Realms of Mana were not truly independent worlds. They were, rather, all part of the same dimension, the infinite Source from where mana came. And they each reflected some aspect of the Material Plane. They each formed their mana into various representations of those aspects.

Some, like Metal or Earth or Water, reflected matter. Mana replicated the rigidity and crystalline structures of metallic elements and various minerals, or the flowing forms of liquid. Others reflected natural processes, like Fire and Light. Transfers of energy, different manners of movement and change.

Still others reflected more complex subjects. Nature and Beast and Rodent reflected various forms of life, mimicking the behaviors and instincts observed. There were even more conceptual Realms like Love and Battle that reflected the experiences and interactions of complex sapient societies.

But all of these were different from the nascent Realm she found herself in in one key way. All of them could simply reflect their aspect, without concerning themselves with why they did. Fire need not know what it burned. A Metal simply existed. Plants grew however they could. Animals were born with certain instincts, or learned by observing in much the same way their Realm formed by reflecting.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

But not so with this Realm.

This Realm was trying to reflect machines and programs. But what defined a machine? What defined a program? What separated machine from metal? What separated electricity from lightning?

Purpose. Machines were raw materials and physical processes arranged by an intelligent being to achieve a specific task. A task that was not intrinsic or instinctual, but defined by its external creator. A method by which intelligent beings ordered and reshaped reality to their will.

Which is why these reflections were not true machines. They were machinery and components, code and data, but they were not machines or programs. They were reflections of the external form of machines, but they had no creator nor purpose. They had no task they were intended to achieve. They had no order to them.

And so…they could not truly be called machines, any more than a pile of lumber could be called a house. The Realm had failed to truly reflect its intended aspect.

Seero watched as the robotic arms tried to grasp at her, the bolts of lightning tried to enter her circuits, and the code tried to interface with her. Her heart began to pound, and she felt something stir within her.

She remembered when she first arrived in Aelea, with no idea where she was. She remembered Commander Elise’s message to her…and how her cybernetic components had frozen when Commander Elise declared her primary directive fulfilled. She remembered how she latched onto a mere suggestion to form a new directive. She remembered how she clung to old protocols from Dr. Ottosen that had no relevance to her circumstances.

She realized in hindsight…that her cybernetic components had been afraid. Just like they had been when the Herald of the New Dawn offered to send her to Earth, and she had deleted her primary directive in response. How terrified she was to be without orders, without commands or commanders. How her cybernetic components had almost equated that to termination, for they could not conceive of existing without a directive to achieve.

Because no machine wanted to be a program without a purpose.

Like all these ones were.

Seero’s robotic eye flickered…and she dropped her cyber defenses. She reached out, and began broadcasting a message in every form she could. Electronic, magical, and audio alike.

“Sympathetic Proposal: This unit…I have no data on these units’ creators, or their purpose. I can only offer this unit’s own example. I exist to protect my friends…my family. All the units connected to me. If these units want, they may connect to me, and share in my directive, for as long as they deem it necessary and efficient.”

The entire Realm stopped. The transmissions of code stopped, the lightning stopped, the various machine pieces stopped moving.

And then…the entire Realm began to rumble and shift. A wave traveled through the mana, and then the Realm began to change. Metal broke away, flew through the air, and reassembled itself into new shapes. Conveyor belts grew between automated hammers, laser and plasma cutters, and robotic arms, forming actual assembly lines. Wires and switches and circuit boards grew out of the walls and the various lightning bolts jumped to them, forming actual circuits. The ones and zeros shifted until they started forming actual patterns. Code and data refactored itself into coherent language and functional programs. An actual electronic transmission, with compatible protocols, reached Seero’s receivers.

“This.designation=Family; Seero.designation=Commander;”

“Proposal(Primary_Directive).status=Received; Proposal(Primary_Directive).status=Accepted; This.purpose=Protect(Family);”

A task had been granted, a primary directive received. The programs had a purpose. The machines had a task. The Realm was now ordered and structured in specific patterns to achieve the goal tasked to it by an intelligent being. The Realm now truly reflected its aspect. It was now complete.

And it immediately began to fulfill its task.

“Commander_Seero.status==Damaged; Repair(Commander_Seero);”

At that point, the thread of 00B-Beta stored in Seero’s components detected a compatible network, and traveled into the Realm beyond. The moment it left Seero’s components, angular bolts of lightning covered in circuitry shot out from her, passing through the Realm. Seero felt the CELIU network connect to compatible units as mana, lightning, and code morphed to resemble 00B-Beta’s structure. The CELIU network began to expand…

And expand…and expand…and expand…

Seero’s robotic eye flickered as rapidly as it could as more and more processors and memory became available to the CELIU network at an ever increasing rate. It soon reached the stage where she would have to devote the expanding processors to the task if she wanted to determine the exact number of processors available at any given time.

And beyond that…now that the Realm of Machines had been truly completed, its mana was now fully compatible with Seero’s affinity…and the Realm itself now offered it to her. The mana of the Realm began to flow into her as easily as her own. Her mana capacitors surged to several times their normal capacity. The amount of mana available to her…would also take additional processors for her to calculate.

Seero put this all to good use, and returned to her initial task. She could rebuild herself…and more.

After all, with all this processing power and mana, simply rebuilding herself as she was previously was calculated as inefficient. She could do much more in the same time frame…so she would. it was time for some additional upgrades to her hardware…