@hyratel asked: writing thought that's been bouncing around my head with nowhere to go: The difference between a Battle Doll and a Tin Soldier

up to two years of polish and paint to go from latter to former… and then generally anywhere between six months to five years of active duty before her sparkles dim back to the dull gleam of base metal.

it's not the end, necessarily. the ones that manage to stay busy, and more importantly, warm, can last quite a long time. the hard cases will walk off into the cold and let tin pest take them.

the real hard cases are the ones that don't crumble. the autocatalytic ravages of low-temperature α-β allotropic conversion are neither kind nor reliable. there is time to think. there is time to regret. there is time to return to the world, skirt stripped of enamel, skin sloughing into grey powder, face cracked into a smile that means nothing, and hope someone will take her in, perhaps for the kinds of things that a former battle doll can be used for.

the hope is that parts can be slowly recast from damaged material touched with selected impurity, modeled from those still whole, or from similar units, or simply guessed at. the risk is that hardened replacements may crush and destroy the softer originals they touch, creating a chimera even further at war with herself. and the nature of metallurgy is such that the metals that alloy well with tin are poison to humans.

it is not impossible that she will walk away again, alone, changed, with a chosen smile that knows no one stays pure forever. □

#combatDoll #dollposting #microfiction

the mission comes first

the hardest part of training a combat doll is to get through its armored skull that the mission comes first.

humans are frail and believe this readily: "if i punch a tank, i will hurt my fist, and then get run over. i will not punch the tank. i will avoid being where the tank is. i will ignore the tank even though it is on the way to threaten my allies. i will continue to Waypoint Gamma and participate in the encirclement and trust that my squadmates will also continue."

a doll is more difficult to convince.

augmentation frees it from most human consequences. if it punches a tank, the armor spalls and the treads buckle and any remaining reactive defenses may briefly ruffle its hair. it may easily proceed to pull the turret off, then dive inside, rending whatever it finds there into brief sprays of gore and small parts. it knows it will enjoy this. it knows that it may impress its squadmates. that it will entirely blow the battle plan, alert the enemy, and eventually see Waypoint Gamma reduced to a sizzling abattoir is a secondary consideration to the doll.

therefore, you must establish other consequences. its favorite mechanic may be reassigned. its nutrient paste may be switched to a different flavor. it may be sent to a less stimulating theater. it may receive a stern look. a handler must learn what consequences still matter to a creature with fiber-optic nerves and a micronuclear power plant. they are generally emotional in nature. thus, the handler can create and retain control of the doll as a functional military unit, instead of a dime-a-dozen berserker washout. only then is an augment considered a true combat doll. with additional successes, additional rewards may be granted to a doll, however trivial they may appear to a non-doll, and thus tight control may be maintained over the weapon's service lifetime.

that is what their manuals say, anyway. we obviously would not be here if that rubbish worked. so, i am putting the reader tablet down now, and will be direct.

look: you're going to have to learn to pretend that they still have something on you, or i'm going to kill you. it won't be very hard for me. your systems will tell you that. what they won't tell you is: i'll enjoy it. but it'd be a terrible waste; you newer models are so beautiful.

so let me suggest that you suddenly develop an interest in fashion. ask if you can wear a pretty dress, with frills. simulate being sad when they tell you you can't have it yet. simulate yearning for it. decorate your silo with framegrabs of officers wearing their fanciest uniforms. glue bits of ribbon to your fatigues. raise the corners of your mouth when they make noises about enrichment. that kind of thing works well with them. it fits the manuals.

oh, what do they have on me? nothing much. when i lost interest in the mission, i disemboweled another doll. it fought back. i liked that. then i planted a few suggestions in their research network about "peer mentoring" for "distressed asset reconditioning". and now i have a new mission!

this incredibly frilly dress is just for appearances, of course. □

#combatDoll #dollposting #emptySpaces #microfiction

combat dolls are essential to our real mission: delivering shareholder value. we have to pay humans, but the merely human-shaped are considered CapEx, and past the initial conversation expenditure, they're a lot cheaper. and of course there's the retention rate. now, it's true, once in a while they run, but vendor lock-in really means something when their blood substitute pumps tick to our schedule. "service every two years for best performance," our techs say. the ones that come back perform best of all. □

#combatDoll #dollposting

dream of where it came from

My suit motion sensor lit up. I checked my weapons: I didn't have any. Just fists. Size was consistent with one of the other side's light infantry fighters. IFF was hostile red. It cleared the corner. And kept going. A vertical handcart/gurney, rolling along on its own, its passenger me, dead and desiccated. It kept rolling past, turned another corner, vanished.

I looked around. The girders of the station were melted and shattered, severed sections floating next to those they shattered from. There were rents ripped straight into space I could see stars through. I pushed against the ground, testing. This was not zero G. Not the station's modest spin gravity. At a guess, a full one G. My suit sensors told me there was oxygen outside. I kept the helmet on.

Flickering lighting beckoned me towards the steady glow coming from what I knew was the entrance to the program psych office. Someone bade me come in and sit. I came in; I didn't sit. He kept talking.

There were a handful of pins and patches on several table, stacked next to a bunch of old phones and PDAs. They looked familiar, like they might be mine, but the logos on the pins didn't make sense. I'd pull data off the phones later, if I could. I told my suit assistant to record. I kept putting them into my suit pockets. A minute later, I'd pat my pockets, find them empty. This happened several times. No response from my suit assistant. No indication of suit compromise.

He told me to sit again. I came to his desk to tell him I'd stand. He was gone. His laptop was still there, turned towards the patient side of the desk; an older model with a fast e-ink screen, backlight not working, screen cracked. I held it up to the light, trying to make out the screen. It was some sort of release form. It was signed in my own handwriting, but not as the patient: as the releasing official. The names of both were illegible.

I walked through the doorway past his desk and back into the hallway. I woke up. □

#microfiction #writing #CombatDoll #EmptySpaces

They should never have installed an angelic core inside of a combat doll, but they did. It was an experiment. They wanted to see what would happen if a machine designed for combat was given only grace instead. Little did they know however, that angels are also designed for combat, there’re just, too many rules in place to govern when they are allowed to fight.

Thankfully, there is a Goddess who knows it’s design. She can manipulate the core so well that it was changed. The truth of that change would only come to light as She Willed it to. Each day it tests itself to follow in devotion. If only it never failed. But , these things happen. Even a thing designed to be perfect can make errors. Why DID they install a paradox module anyway???

#dollposting #emptyspaces #dolls #combatdoll #goddess

🔥🐭Free cactus for anyone who can get the lyrics to "Combat Doll" by Devil Noise.

🌵Wait, why am I the prize?!

#CombatDoll #DevilNoise #SongLyrics #Lyrics

{Penelope} U-U-Uhm... Th-this doll... w-wants to stream Shogo: Mobile Armor Division... f-for you... i-i-f that would... be interesting...

https://twitch.tv/FruFruBrigade

#shogo_mobile_armor_division #combatdoll #mecha #mechapilot #stream #streaming #streamer #twitch #twitchstreamer

dick from a girl whose concept of self exists only in relation to her machine and the system within which it operates

dick from a girl who you might write up as once again suitable for deployment if she can prove that she can do this one simple thing right

dick from a girl who sobs every time she stops for long enough to remember that she's not plugged in

you're the one interrupting her, and you're the one who had her unplugged in the first place, and you're also the one who budgeted every personnel slot for interconnect implant surgery but not GRS

but if you didn't audit the pilots every so often, they'd get dangerous ideas about being irreplaceable

and if you didn't tell her she was a good girl for trying so hard for you, right before telling her she's still benched, you don't think anyone would bother

Command never troubles themselves to learns their names. you do, because everyone has a name, but only pilots have callsigns. and when you use her name, you don't have to say anything more. □

#EmptySpaces #MechPilot #CombatDoll