Chapter 23: School Eternal — Part 10
Blue’s roar ripped across the sky as the android rose from the Earth’s surface, free forever of its bonds to the Bizaar Manor. Blue had left Spunky’s weaponry behind as she Snapped, and Orchid had to assume that either she had no use for the weaponry or that she had erased all of Spunky’s protocols in order to survive. Three days had been spent integrating the android and the bander, carefully synchronizing the processes so that Blue’s processors would be brought on as master data controllers to the deviant processors Spunky put to use. In the end, Spunky’s weaponry still lay on the table, and none of the androids had conversed with Orchid about their nonverbal communications.
Diane had kissed Blue goodbye, hugging him around his massive neck. Yap and Diane, again working with Kamau, took off Diane’s arm and put it on a table next to the weaponry. Kamau’s eyes seemed to glow eerily as he worked, but not so much so that Orchid would have thought it was more than her imagination getting the best of her. His fingers flew over access points in Diane’s arm, removing a shaft embedded in her forearm, and replacing it with Spunky’s smaller weapons core. With a few modifications, the core began integrating into the arm, tendrils of wire slithering into circuitry, metal bolts screwing outward, seeking to integrate completely with the android’s frame. A power cable, moving like a greedy snake toward a rat hole, sought out her power core. During the entire process, Diane’s arm twitched and rattled on the table while Diane stared at it with an eeries sense of lacking attachment.
When it was done, the arm lay unmoving, smoking in places, and Diane picked it up and put it back into its socket. The shoulder locked into place, and Diane let out a wimper of pain before relaxing and flexing her fingers. She found herself looking inside her head at the new information. The weapon would discharge from her fingertips, much like her old one had. Her look was one of concern.
“It’s going to take some practice.” Diane said to Orchid, when the scientist came over to check that Diane’s arm had sealed into the shoulder correctly.
“You look worried.” Orchid said, taking Diane’s mechanical hand in her cyborg hand and squeezing in a fashion she hoped was gentle.
“Spunky has never used this weapon at full charge. He has never used it at its lowest setting, either. I don’t think it was initially meant to be placed in a bander.”
“What do you mean?”
“One must assume that a weapon is intended to be discharged at full capacity. To charge this weapon to full capacity at the speed it is designed to work at would require something with massive weapons batteries.”
“Massive?”
“It is designed to fire at full power every ten seconds, but to do so would require hundreds of times the peak power output of your lab generators.” Diane said. “Short of a planetary generator, I don’t know anything that would be able to supply it with the power it needs to work at the speed it is designed. Using my own generative batteries, I can have the weapon fully charged in two to six months, depending on my level of activity. Using it at partial power allows it to be used more readily defensively and offensively. It would have taken Spunky years to charge it, given his core power supply. It seems odd that it can put so much power into a beam that’s only two inches in diameter and three feet long.”
“Why would Elec ever design a weapon of such power with such a limited focal point? Much less power would be needed to take out even the most determined hume.”
“Maybe she wasn’t building it to target humes.” Diane said.
