[Hanoa Station] Between Machine and Machine men (closed)

Imorkan supplied the Sahrabarik system and Omega with valuable helium-3 starship fuel. The planet and its fuel extraction operations were known for their literal price wars, where drop of prices invited a wave of customers and mass accelerator fire from competing extractors. The gas giant also hosted tens if not hundreds of layover stations for the needy, whether they were looking for gas, supplies or entertainment.

Hanoa station was one of these. As the name suggested, is was owned by a hanar, and if it was to be believed, the name meant "congregation of people". Hanoa was medium-sized, with plentiful docking arms extending out from a central sphere where the markets and lodgings were.

It was on this station where Flash of Light had arranged a meeting with Kai'Fenrer nar Tonbay to be held. The quarian had the interview location's address sent to him. The geth had prepared beforehand, renting out a storage cubicle and arranging some seating to be put there. To organics, it was frankly put a hellhole to interview in, but it had an advantage: privacy. Booking a hotel room for quarian and geth could be denied, and additionally be stressing for the organic party, and Flash of Light could put surveillance here without attracting too much attention.

So, there it stood, at the entrance to the storage cubicle facility. Cloaked figure not unlike a quarian waiting for the real one. The robes were certainly inspired by same design as those on the Flotilla, but lacked fine texture, and they shrouded the head and body entirely.

To get one thing straight, this station was already on the cards. Kai's little Vacation of Freedom had been charted in a nice, wide loop (for a given value of 'loop' given the logistical issues inherent with trying to place the galaxy on a map) that took him on a varied walking tour of all the kinds of places he'd never been able to experience before. And plus, bizarrely enough, he almost felt safer being out of C-Space. Putting aside his frankly disastrous visit to the Citadel, it meant that he got the Transgression warmech back. Having the hulking mass of synthetic warbeast at his side did frighteningly well in deterring those who might have wished to give him a hard time.

Which leads us to the present. Kai came into view near the storage cubicle facility, instantly recognizable from the pure whiteness of what could be seen of his wholly synthetic body. A strange sight, a mechanical quarian wearing pants and a t-shirt, but a noticeable one. The Transgression kept pace with him easily, burning red optics locking immediately upon the robed geth waiting for them. Each 'paw' bearing mono-edged claws the size of combat knives, a heavy tail bladed from base to tip, and housing a powerful microfabricator that could have molten ceramic blades flung through the air like knives in a split second. Lacking the heavy back-mounted turret it had worn when Kai first encountered it did little to dull its menace.

"... hello?" Kai's voice made a pretty good effort, though.

Flash of Light had nearly seen Kai and his beast's EM signature before they had appeared in his line of sight. As well contained as today's hardware was, there were still parts where data could leak out and be seen. Wireless communication between the Trangression and Kai was whole another thing. Speaking of the warbeast, the geth hadn't expected a third party to be present, and this mech didn't exhibit normal VI behaviour...it was retrieving and sending data just not to Kai but elsewhere too. Could it have been an AI?

"You did not inform me that you were not coming alone." the hooded figure spoke, and the voice wasn't like a geth's. but like a quarian's speaking through a modulator on the envirosuit. "Will it be participating or spectating in our interview?"

Kai seemed taken aback for a moment. Much as he doted on the drone, he didn't exactly consider it 'company'. Sure it could speak, but only simple responses. More or less just vocalizing what his HUD readout would tell me. Plus, hearing the geth speak like a quarian had put him more than a little off-guard.

"It'll... sit in with me. If that's alright." The Transgression continued to stare at Flash of Light, unblinking and unmoving.

"It can come. Please, follow." the geth moved down the hallway, heading for the cubicle it had rented out. It was opening already on its own, most likely due to Flash ordering the doors to do so as they approached it.

"Were you followed on your way here? My on brief observations have not registered any Relicae's or Mutasriga Imugis on the station." it spoke as it walked. Once at the cubicle, he gestured for Kai and his warbeast to step in. The decoration was sparse. Just two reclining chairs that had seen better days and wall-mounted light on the back wall. It didn't need to glance behind its back to check the coast was clear. Small camera pods on either end of the walkway were Flash's eyes on the outside, and they showed clear coasts for the time being.

"Take a seat."

Kai followed. The cubicles weren't exactly in splendid shape, but they'd have to have been literally falling apart to ping on a quarian's radar. He sat in the offered chair, wiggling back and forth uncomfortably, tapping plastic-cased fingers on the arm rests and nervously gripping them with rubberized palms.

"Um... no, I wasn't followed. I think," he answered.

"No observers detected," the Transgression stated, its synthesized voice flat and matter-of-fact as it sat down in the corner.

"Thank you. And, um... well I've never met another Relicae's... person. Or a Mutsastu Igmugi..." Kai went on, utterly butchering the pronunciation.

Flash of Light took the remaining seat paying no mind to the verbal blunder Kai made, pulling down its hood to reveal the geth head. "Acknowledged. With no reliable law enforcement present, heightened alert is required for security measures especially for both of us. I have placed surveillance onto the hallway in case of intrusions. Are you armed?" The fake quarian voice was away. The geth was speaking with its familiar stuttering sound again.

"Before we begin the interview, I must ask your consent to record it. It will contain audio and visual data, and may be presented to the geth consensus on a later date as part of review of this research. Do you agree to these terms?

"i... kind of. I have my omnitool. I don't have a gun, though," Kai replied. He glanced down at the Transgression as he spoke, a silent addition of 'but I really don't need one'. Still, he may or may not have given the doorway a suspicious look or two. After 18 years stuck behind a visor, the young quarian really had no governor on his expressions.

"I do. Consent, I mean."

"Very well. Please state your name and profession, or what you are allowed to disclose of it." the geth spoke, starting the routine that had come quite familiar on many interviews it had held.

Meanwhile elsewhere on the station, malign forces were on the move. A digital pickpocket who fished passersby in the crowds for vulnerable wireless connection nodes had found a firewall stronger than anything else and of foreign make had passed his information forward to those who would pay for it. The salarian broker who paid for the info had relied it forward to his superior that there was a geth on the station. This asari crimeboss had ordered her cronies to tail the unusual guest and its proceedings. Now they had reported a full-on synth with a warmech headed where the geth had been residing.

What had seemed like a good opportunity for money had turned into a jackpot. Amazing tech and software in the same catch? It would be quite the auction on Hanoa when they had picked their share of the catch out first. But first, the trap would have to be sprung.

"I'm Kai. Uh... Kai'Fenrer. Nar Tonbay." (Nar Tasi, more like) Kai fiddled nervously, chewing his lip. "I work for, um... [REDACTED]. That's their name. Yeah, little bit silly but... you know. It's an information brokering company. I do mechanical work, repairs and stuff. Mostly I code drones. Like this one."

He indicated the Transgression. If it had any sort of reaction to being mentioned, it didn't show it.

"Kai'Fenrer, on the forums you wrote that you underwent the Relicae's Process due to injuries you had sustained. Now that you have recovered, what do you think of your new body? Moreso, you are most likely going without an envirosuit since your childhood. How do you compare your life at present and before the procedure?" it spoke, lone ocular following Kai's every move and gesture intensively, giving a cursory glance to the warmech when the quarian pointed at it.

Yeesh. Leaping right into the meat of it. The nervous fiddling only intensified as Kai struggled to find the words. One might have thought that the quarian was unconsciously playing up his reactions, used to a life in a full-body suit concealing his thoughts and feelings, and overcompensating. You'd be wrong - Kai really was just that transparent.

"What do you mean? I mean it's just... kind of a broad question to just ask 'what I think'. But so far my life's been..."

The stares. Being called a freak, an it, an abomination. Weight that up with breathing, wearing clothes, eating both dextro and levo cuisine without a care for its sterility.

"... different."

Subject visibly unnerved by line of inquiry. Likelihood of sensitive issue high. Not at terms with change yet?

The geth's eye recorded every small movement Kai was making. "I am inquiring how do you perceive yourself in the aftermath of your process. Are you still Kai'Fenrer despite your brain and stem being only remaining organs from your old body, or do you believe you have changed whole with the change of body?"

Meanwhile in the neighbouring district, a crack team of armed operatives were assembling. Six commandos clad in hardsuits inspecting their weapons and three engineers in lighter vestments. The latter would try to locate the geth and the mech and call in the heavy guns to detain them. They were sporting disruptor ammo mods as well, given their synthetic enemies.

"I... don't know," Kai admitted. "I mean... I don't know if I feel any different, but things have been different. And some things have been great but some things have been... not so great."

Tower of insight, this one.

"I don't feel like I died on the operating table or anything, but... I dunno. I guess what I'm trying to say is... I do feel like I've changed?"

Adapt different line of inquiry.

"Acknowledged. In your current state, would you consent to a 'suitrider' sharing your body, if your hardware supported such functionality? Secondly, if you were given an opportunity to have a cloned body to move back into, would you use the opportunity?"

"I... hrm. I never thought about that, actually." Slowly but surely, the quarian seemed to be loosening up. He looked down for a moment, thinking about it.

"I... might," he said eventually. "I mean, I thought suitriders were for immuno-therapy and I don't even need an immune system any more so... what would be the point? And..."

It was a pretty obvious question, but had to be handled delicately less the irrational I RUINED MY LIFE guilt was allowed to return. "No. I don't think so. I mean part of the reason I chose this was... well, I can eat. I can breathe. If I went to a cloned body, I'd need my suit again, wouldn't I? Besides. Relicae's is irreversible."

"Immuno-therapy is one purpose of a geth deployed to an envirosuit. There are other functions a suitrider can perform as well, such as assistive calibration and electronic support. Compatible suit could also serve as emergency upload node for runtimes evacuating from compromised platforms."

What Flash of Light didn't mention that there were documented cases of runtimes preferring to suitride with individuals they had interacted much over time.

"If you were presented a possibility to entirely digitize your consciousness, would you take it?" the geth's eye refocused on Kai to monitor his reaction.

"I guess that'd still be pretty useful. Though, um... don't know about the possibility of getting strange geth programs jumping into me because their platforms got destroyed... oh Keelah that sounds so selfish I didn't mean..."

Kai's anxious 'oh ancestors the geth thinks I'm a complete shitlord' fiddling was suddenly halted at the next question. "Wha- no! No, would would I ever even want to?"

"Use of suits as emergency nodes would be negotiated beforehand. Runtimes would require your consent to use your body for this purpose. Extreme duress however, if there were nothing else in range would result in non-consented uploading."

Outside the cubicle facilities, one of the sniffers was at work, scanning the premises for unusual signals. For a moment it seemed this corner of the station was a dead-end for the search...

Flash of Light sent a ping to the cameras to check they were still intact. They would activate upon detecting movement and then begin send footage in, otherwise they would idle. Both cameras came in good, still there on standby.

The human engineer outside was startled when a strong signal suddenly spiked on her sensors. No familiar headers or frames. Foreign transmission protocol. If this signal didn't come from their prey, then she'd be the Hierophant of Gruul!

Back in the cubicle, the prey was unaware of the mounting danger. "What is your stance towards the geth?" asking Kai if he had fought with the migrant fleet at Tikkun was needless. He was not an exile.

"... hrm." This time his fiddling was less nervous and more thoughtful. Yeah, it sounded really iffy. Especially if you were the sort to call the geth soulless automatons. But this was Kai, the person whose only friend for two years was a drone. He was somewhat inclined to think of the geth as people. Plus he kind of owed his life to a synthetic, the Transgression that sat at the ready by his side, so that was another point in their favour.

"I think I would," he said eventually. "Because geth... geth are different, I won't lie. And I won't lie about being scared of them. But an emergency upload like that is basically, like... saving a life. So I'd do it."