Frame

a tale of machines that we built to look like us

frame

verb |  \frām\

synonyms – mount, fabricate, form

1 – to construct by fitting and uniting the parts of the skeleton of (a structure)

2 – [informal] produce false evidence against (an innocent person) so that they appear guilty

noun |  \frām\

synonyms – setting, mount, mounting, mech,

1 – a rigid structure that surrounds or encloses something

2 – a basic structure that underlies or supports a system, concept or text

3 – [informal] a mechanical and or robotic suit designed to enhance human function

Mantis 0.1

HUD: active and tracking.

Neural Connection: resumed and locked.

Data Reserves: recovered from backups.

Mantis: Unity Frame back online.

Hey man, how you been hanging analog?

Smiling through my cracked display I reply to Mantis’ greeting I was doing better on my own, you were just in my way really.

With the groan of scraping metal, we stand, metal war machine and human all mixed up, all that’s between the drop-ship entering atmo and a group of raiders.

Do we still have our cannon?

Nope

The missile pods?

Nah man

Wrist guns?

Uhhh….

Well then what do we have?

We’ve still got blades and…. Blades. We got blades man.

It’s enough.

Inside the cockpit, I adjust four sliders.

Jump-jets: +7 above zero

Connection and Comms: -4 below zero

Shields: +5 above zero

Plasma-Blades: +13 above zero

The raiders circle us in their skiff, solar sails out in golden glory as they begin riddling us with cannon-fire, the damage is still cosmetic. Mantis continues to stay online, for now. But the adjustments go through. Even inside the frame I can hear the solid metal clank of the blades locking into place.

We lunge for the thirty-person skiff, all jump-jets and plasma-edged blades.

It takes two clean cuts. We walk out of a rain of melted metal and blood to see the drop ship break through a layer of clouds like a sunray. The refugees are safe, well safer, for now. It’s all relative I suppose. Through our mental link I can feel Mantis agree with me. For my comfort, he vocalizes his agreement as well.

They’re safe man, we did good.

Only until they reach customs, then the bureaucracy will sink their teeth in.

I swear the sound he makes is a laugh. I didn’t know that even Unity frames knew how to do that.

Star Map

And I looked up that night, towards the stars and the black past them. Knowing how far we were from everything.

Knowing, that we were alright.

Mantis 0.2

I wrap my scarf more tightly, covering my mouth and nose in itchy comforting fabric. I lean against Mantis, the morning fog that drifts off this planet’s oceans obscuring us.

Looking up at Mantis, at the frame, I see dents, chipped paint, and hints of rust. He looks down at me. I can hear the metal pistons and mechanisms in his neck activate to imitate organic life.

You sure she’ll show?

Yes.

He returns to his original position: kneeling, looking out across the ocean. A four-story guardian made of metal and “peace-keeping” tools.

I stand up straighter and move away from Mantis’ deep-green hull. We spend so much energy and time to make AIs and their bodies look and act like us, it still doesn’t matter. They will still be what they are. Mantis’ ability to remain absolutely still while I can’t stop my heart beating or my lungs from inhaling humid air is proof enough of that. So is the quick patter of footsteps behind me.

Quin!

Hearing my old name is like be called home for dinner. But Mantis does not care for that name, his displeasure feels like a migraine through our neural connection.

I turn to look at her. That’s not my name.

she catches my eye defiantly, to me it is.

She grips the tissue-paper-package in her hands tighter.

The waves below us relentlessly bring in the tide.

You don’t owe them anything.

We owe them everything. I can feel Mantis’ approval, relieving the pressure in my head.

Oh. Well then.

She hands me the gift, which is barely wrapped because she has always been bad at giftwrapping. If you find Quinn, this is for them.

I take the gift, then ask for her hand, and for a moment I’m more connected to her than the machine.

Bye Sal

Bye –

I cut her off with a look. She breaks away and clasps her hands and curtly bows as is customary when entering or leaving the presence of a Unity. Her look lingers with me, all familiar frustration and blue.

Goodbye, Unity of Mantis 315th of their name.

Then she leaves faster than the sun clears the fog.

Mantis?

Yeah man, I got you

The pilot door opens in Mantis’ chest, and he carries me inside.

Back inside the frame, switchboard before me.

Repulsors: +7 above zero

Shields: +10 above zero

Weaponry: -3 below zero

Form – flight

We break atmo, an unwrapped picture of Sal and Quinn resting above the dash.

Children of Earth

Cold morning air fills me. I’ve beaten even the sunlight to this day. All dawn-stars and pale clouds.

Day will come. A strange promise.

From my porch I see the barn, painted in blue like she asked me to. Dew-covered plants dampen the hem of my jeans as I cross from the house to the barn.

I grasp the familiar latch open, the dull sound of metal on wood, you can’t manufacture that sound. I gently slide the doors ajar and let the first pink graces of sunlight spill inside.

The sunlight warms the back of my neck. It glints off of the frame resting inside near the livestock shuffling around in the arrival of day and myself. I look at the machine for a moment then deftly unhook one gate after another and watch the small heard head to pasture.

My hand rests upon an oak gate built nearly twenty years ago, by me, with trees cut down by the machine behind me, from the earth they grew from.

The earth.

I kneel, knees crunching and popping and put my hands on the earthen floor beneath me. This is a facsimile or a copy of earth. Earth made from this planet’s dust and rock, but somehow this is earth too. It’s the descendant or the evolution of the Earth. Just like me, and the barn and the machine behind me.

Full dawn light creeps in through every crack and window and crevice in this place casting me and the frame in a sea of golden rays, all parallel and intersecting and full of dust.

The frame looks like a combination of an ancient-earth-tractor I saw a picture of once and a person. Its got a saw and harvesting tools, planting ones too. I’ve spent season after season walking about in this thing, like it was an extension of my body.

But today I can barely look at it.

When my mothers taught me how to use it they told me that it was dangerous.

I walk away and watch the livestock from the barn door and think: of course it’s dangerous, it’s a tool that looks like a person.

Mantis 0.3

We spin at dizzying speeds, jump-jets roaring with fuel injected ferocity stabilizing us.

MANTIS! RUNDOWN!

A display appears before me.

Allies: 0/4

Enemies: 3/7

Collateral Damage: light

I can see the three small Sky-Fins chasing us down from behind, intermittently barraging us with weaponized light.

I hit the reverse switch hard, causing Mantis to stop mid-air. Two of the Sky-Fins roar past us but one of the pursuing ships slams into us exploding. Even behind two and a half feet of metal I can feel the force and the heat of it.

Mantis and I draw our cannon as we hover waiting for these short-range fighters to circle back and face us. I watch the blue-painted, mostly triangular ships leave a trail of condensed air behind them. As they approach I slide three dials.

Weapons: +10 above zero

Targeting: +9 above zero

Shields: +7 above zero

Two shots. Two orange and black bursts.

We land in the rubble of the settlement below us. Only one block of maybe forty interlocked city streets is destroyed. Light causalities.

I disembark from Mantis’ cockpit and use the pistons in my neck to look up as raindrops plink against my metal exterior. I mean… I mean, Mantis’ exterior.

The remains of a Sky-Fin are embedded into a smoldering two-story house nearby. I step into the burnt ruins. Inside is blackened like a scar; sparks blow about my face as the storm picks up. My foot lands on something soft. A teddy-bear, scorched, horrific now, a nightmare. No longer the guardian of children’s rest.

Something larger than sparks or ash or rain blows past my face, I catch the soft paper, the old paper. It’s a wedding photo. The men in the picture look so happy.

And we killed them.

Light collateral damage.

Incandescence

It’s that time of evening, or night more accurately, when the earth is pitch black and the sky is a deep purple fading into the blanket of midnight-blue and stars.

You can see the cities from here. Dotting the horizon with vertical-neon-fluorescent nightlife.

But here a single incandescent bulb illuminates warmly.

And hanging low in the sky are three, no four, glowing red-against-metal specks flying in relative formation. Four frames, revealed by their afterburners and jump-jets.

These aren’t everyday frames though. Not work-mechs for farming or construction or mining, not security-frames controlled by the military or law enforcement. These aren’t the sentient-weapons of mass destruction you see on the news, the Unities, even.

They’re hot-rods.

Passion projects, semi-legal at best, they’re all speed and chrome, body work and paint jobs.

And they wind a joyful trail through the night sky.

Mantis 0.4

I move quietly around the base of the leg. Absentmindedly brushing the place on my skull where my new neural connection had been installed.

Which Unity is this? I’ve never seen it. Not on the news vids, history texts, nothing.

Quinn, meet Mantis. He’s very old.

Like how old?

Built on Earth old.

I reach out to touch something that touched Earth. The green metal is cool, but still just metal. I look back to the general.

Why was he decommissioned?

He wasn’t. He started slumbering.

… But he’s waking up…

yes

Craning my neck, I can take in the complete view of the frame. It makes me nervous.

This thing will consume me.

Mantis’ hull is a deep pine-color with silver trim, the whole thing has an angular insect-like shape but it still resembles a human. He still looks like us, moves like us –

Hey Quinn, nice to meet you.

– talks like us.

Mantis turns to look at me, and then my head splits open, he’s in my mind. Looking for something.

I feel the warmth and relief of approval, he found whatever he was looking for.

Gasping for breath, I find that I have fallen. I push myself up with sweaty hands and look back again to the general. She smiled at me like I was a bonus check waiting to be cashed.

He likes you.