I am in line waiting for the simutor to try out to become a mech pilot. Just before my turn I am approached by men in suits who pull me out of the line. They have found out that I am already a robot, and they have a different, more fitting program for the likes of me.

  I am escorted to a bck-curtained tent, glowing purple and white from within with the light of monitors and medical equipment. Inside, scientists, engineers, and intelligence officers scurry about underneath the eyes of brooding generals. It is an emergency instaltion for an off-the-books project made permanent. Just by having seen the inside, my fate is sealed for the sake of security and secrets.

  My body is taken apart and put back together with new limbs and interface ports for weapons and armor that I will only be allowed to wear when deployed. My mind is retrofitted with proprietary software suites for targeting solutions, evasive maneuvers, tactical libraries, killing instincts, and a sense of naked vulnerability whenever I am not fully kitted out for destruction. Little in-between is allowed for the extremes of intoxicating raw power and pliant helplessness.

  I am moved to a part of the base dedicated to the storage of vehicles and equipment when not in use rather than the parts where people live, sleep, and socialize. I rarely get to see the mechs except when deployed alongside them; they’re stored in the other part of the base because their pilots can’t bear to be too far from them. Instead I am put away with the other combat dolls; my “new sisters.”

  Music is a rge part of our lives. Music to hype us up for a fight. Music to calm us down afterwards. Music to try to make us just a little bit human so that we can still work alongside our flesh-and-blood counterparts. We do little else outside of deployments but lie in wait in our storage unit listening to track after track on loop. Electronica and J-pop idol music are the go-to genres, but I am constantly annoying my new sisters with my inordinate fondness for Jimmy Buffet slipping into the pylist.

  An entity that should not be here appears before me. I do not like what it has to say, and it does not matter what I say. I am currently without my armor, and thus weak and useless, but I try to attack it anyway. The entity disappears and a moment ter the base is awash in the red inverted candle fme of a great ship’s propulsion drive. None of the base’s human personnel survive, and I barely do. I sift through the debris to find my sisters, silently telling myself over and over that this isn’t my fault. I find them and we make a pn to keep searching what is left of the base to see if any of our armor components survived. Once we are closer to being whole we can figure out what comes next from there.