More of Wren

Wren had laughed at Castonnei, she had laughed at Julia and Quincy. She had laughed when they mentioned training sessions, simulations, practice. She had laughed, but it had all been for show, a completely false bravado. Wren had been nervous at the idea of having to prove herself. She shuddered, internally, at the prospect of humiliation.

But when she had fallen, when she had stumbled or walked into traps -- many of which had covered her in purplish slime -- the others had not laughed. They had not jeered. This was a place of teamwork, Castonnei had told her, not a place of stinging jokes and biting comebacks. This, he had said, was a place of trust, and Wren was no longer worried about embarrassing herself. She was, however, worried that this little band of thieves might be the beginnings of a cult.

Wren thought about these things as she pushed herself up, a hand sliding in the cold, clear gel on the floor. She opened a communications line, and she knew a tiny light would be blinking somewhere in her head, signifying a successful link had been established.

"Fabian?" she asked aloud. Fabian Connected, read a translucent-blue overlay, blinking in her field of vision. It scrolled out of the way and left a small, slowly turning icon of a rotary dial of the same color, just at the edge of her sight.

"Wren," said Fabian. The robot's voice echoed slightly inside Wren's head, an effect she had designed herself. The transmission connected directly to her auditory nerve, another part of which acted as her microphone, so no one else would be able to hear her correspondent.

"What's this goo?" she asked him, squinting at her hand and switching on her visual link. "It was on the floor of the session room. Any ideas?"

"Quincy," he said, "has been working on a new defensive system." His voice gave away both pride and annoyance, for his creator's ingenuity and Wren's apparent ignorance, respectively.

"What's it do?"

"What it's just done," he said with the same mix of annoyed pride. "You slipped through the laser and onto pressure-sensitive areas of the floor. Even assuming you had escaped successfully, the gel is laden with nano-robots meant to track you and provide assistance in your arrest or capture." He sounded smug, in her head.

"Thank you, Fabian," she said and cut the connection. She would have given Fabian a friendlier personality, she thought.

"Take Cicero, for example," she said to the empty room as Cicero flew through the window to her in his many small, ornate, bug-like pieces.

"An example of what?" Cicero asked. He landed and appeared almost to shatter or melt as his pieces became yet more pieces. The reassembled themselves into an eight-inch approximation of a human. Like a fluorescent light, skin, hair, and a toga blinked into life, hiding Cicero's inner workings, Even Fabian didn't have holo-emitters!

"A good robot," Wren told him, and she patted his tiny head. He glared at her, feigned indignance playing on his face. Without warning, Cicero jumped and curled into a ball. When he landed, it was on the four paws of a sleek, grey cat with ice-blue eyes. He purred at her and said:

"Now you may pet me." Wren grabbed him and crooked him into one arm. She could not help but appreciate her own craftsmanship: he was indiscernible from a real cat, if one ignored the talking.

"You," she said, poking his pink nose, "sent me excellent telemetry." Cicero closed his eyes as she scratched behind his ears. It was true. Without Cicero constantly scanning the environment, her new program -- and several others -- wouldn't work at all. Wren depended on Cicero, her closest friend, as much as he depended on her for maintenance and power. Even his memory was linked to hers.

...more to come (?)

(p.s... this was really more... trying to introduce ideas... sorry if it's slow)