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welcometomybraincomics · 1 year

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Mother

Context! Context! Context!

I cannot state enough how much I love Mother. This one is actually a departure from Robits, what I call the Mother AU.

Setting: Vole and Streaker (named Lo-fi and Streaker at the time of writing) are not Cybertronians or created by them, but rather AI weapons made by the species invading Mother (the planet). At some point during their activation, they became sentient. They are deployed to help destroy Mother's guardians (her ambulatory plant children who imitate various creatures) and they are defeated. Sensing their sentience, Mother decides to turn the twins to her side. She enveloped them within her and breathed more life into them, granting them some semblance of free will (considering everything on Mother is sort of part of a hivemind, true free will is... not natural), imbuing them with loyalty and purpose (she revived them, they have now been charged with protecting her and her children), and blessing them with her mark (the mark of Mother is the evidence of plant life woven into the flesh/faux flesh).

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He stared into the lifeless eyes of the creature squatting in the mist. It looked like nothing he had ever seen before: long skinny forelimbs swept the ground, leaving ripples in the shallow waters of the dark swamp as equally skinny hind legs held its frail body erect. A mop of wilting leaves brushed over its face and head, hanging low over the rest of its stark white form reminding Lo-Fi of a weeping willow.

Its bone-white body stood out against the dark swamp, even surrounded by mist. It sat crouched behind the shriveled root of some long-dead tree that sank sadly into the black water beneath it.

It gave him an odd feeling, one he couldn't quite describe. It felt foreign, but not in the same way invaders did. Those felt like vermin scuttling across Mother's skin, sending chills up his spine and filling him with hot and ugly anger. This? It felt almost dangerous. Everything about it filled him with a deep sense of wrong like it did not belong on Mother. That couldn't be right though, Mother's mark hung from its head, the branches leaving just enough space for the eyes to peek through. It looked of Mother, but it felt indescribably wrong. It made him want to do nothing but run deep into the forest and hide under the safe roots of the Great Elders. He couldn't though. Its gaze held him in place, as though if he looked away, even for an instant, it would be upon him, crushing him with its menacing air.

—-

For a little more context look at Robits, The Epic Train Wreck Dumpsterfire of a Transformers sidestory AU

So, he didn't run. He held its gaze, staring at it for what felt like hours. It tilted its head to the side, almost quizzically, its willow branches dragging through the water and causing a ripple that sounded impossibly loud in the silence of the misty bog. The creature lifted a forearm and began moving forward on its knuckles.

Its movement sent his systems into panic, trying to pull up his weapons and a monstrous sense of dread rose in his chest and pressed his back, crushing him from both sides. His servos clicked frantically, trying to transform into any sort of weaponry, but nothing happened. He felt his head heating up as his ventilation systems failed to activate. He frantically opened his vents hoping for cool air to naturally circulate through him, relieving his overheating circuits, but all that came in was an unmistakable feeling of death and decay.

The creature brought its other arm forward, taking another step closer to the helplessly panicking mech when a twig snapped somewhere behind it and the whole world spun into darkness. Suddenly, Lo-Fi found himself sitting up, weapons drawn and ventilating hard. His head swung around manically, his eyes taking in the view of a bright clearing filled with sunlight and surrounded by tall, healthy trees filled with green leaves and beautiful flowers. He began to calm down, recognizing his surroundings. He was home. Deep in the heart of the forest, surrounded by life and sound which warmed his mechanical heart. He sucked in a deep breath and listened to the sounds of bird song, insect chirps, and the rustle of leaves that indicated someone was on the hunt. He exhaled and disengaged his weapons.

He looked beside him to the sleeping form of his brother whose red plating reflected the sun in brilliant white beams. His arms were wrapped around the leafy pelt of Nex, whose feline eyes boreholes of concern through the blue mech as his brother snored peacefully.

"You alright?" She asked, one ear twitching in concern.

"Yeah, I think so." Lo-Fi answered, breathing shakily. His friend continued to stare at him in concern. "It was just a bad dream." He smiled trying to reassure her.

She slipped out of Streaker's hold and stalked towards Lo-Fi. The red mech grumbled something at her leaving but rolled over to take the warm spot she had left in the grass and settled back into sleep, his wings twitching lightly in what was likely a dream of flying. "Must have been some dream for you to freak out like that." Nex mused, brushing herself comfortingly against Lo-Fi's blue metal before settling against his back and wrapping her tail around him. "Wanna talk about it?"

Lo-Fi could still feel the eyes of that thing staring into him with its dead, hollow eyes. He shivered all over, his plates clinging together as they each moved independently to try and shake the ugly feeling of those eyes. No way in hell he was going to relive that all again when he had just escaped it. He shook his head. “No, not right now. Anything but that now. I need something to distract me. How’s your training to become the Mammalian Elder going?” He asked, trying to change the subject.

Nex gave him a concerned look before answering.

~~~

By the time Streaker had woken up, his brother and Nex were neck-deep in a conversation about politics. Uhg, boring. He didn’t bother interrupting, knowing they would be too engrossed to even notice him, transformed and went to go find his charges. Surely, the insectoids would have something more interesting than politics to talk about. He scoffed at the thought as he dove through the clouds. Who would willingly talk about that? It was so boring and confusing, all it ever did was give everyone a headache. He sighed heavily as he flew over the forest and allowed the view to rip everything else from his mind.

His charges were exactly where he thought he would find them. Right by the entrance to their cave already eating their breakfast. They had always been early risers. Said it had something to do with “getting the best grub,” what that had to do with getting up when the sun rises he had no idea.

“Hey, sprouts,” He said, transforming from a plane back into his bipedal form and landing a few feet away from the two insectoids. “What are the plans for today?”

Shesq shrugged nibbling on an aphid. “Nothing much, just entering the last few lines of code for the suits and repairing the damage from the last attack.”

Skela nodded, shoving the last bites of whatever bug she had managed to capture into her mandibles. Streaker couldn’t be sure of what it was today, she never really stuck to a strict diet, but from what he saw from the air, it looked like she had nabbed a big one today. Somehow, between him spotting the sisters' camp and landing, she had managed to devour the entire thing. It was kind of scary how fast she ate. “We were hoping you and Elder Blue could help us with some of it. A lot of the code got corrupted by the foreigners and we can’t quite remember all of it.”

The mechanoid leaned against a tree and nodded. He had first-hand experience with the code corrupting virus their planet’s attackers had created to try and decommission the tech which protected Mother’s surface. Originally, that had only been he and his brother, but they had spent the last few decades constructing mechanical weapons and suits for the other defenders to use so the virus’s use had spread. Thankfully, they had taught most of the pilots and gunners the ins and outs of their weapon’s programming and mechanics so they didn’t have to travel halfway across the planet every time something broke. The sisters, however, were only sprouts, practically fresh out of the ground, their marks hadn’t even fully come in yet, so it was only logical that they would still need some help. “Yeah, of course. Lo-Fi’s doing something right now, but I can help.” He walked into the cave where two mech suits lay dormant, waiting for their next use. “I’ve got a firewall that we’ve been working on to repel the viruses too.” He climbed up on one of the mechs, straddling its neck so he would have a good hold, opened up an access panel on the back of its head, and typed in a few passwords, opening up the coding. “What are you guys stuck on?”

The gorls, for reference

#robits #mother #mother au #creative writing #oc #technically this is transformers ocs #however #it is several steps removed from the original material #like so many steps removed #the one thing consistent with Transformers at this point is transforming alien robots #lmao

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gallusrostromegalus · 1 month

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Move To A Darker Place

This is a story of Man Vs. Machine.

---

Last March, my father attempted to file his Taxes.

My beloved father is a Boomer. Unlike most Boomers, my father is rather handy with technology because he was one of the people that had a not-insignificant hand in Developing a hell of a lot of it. He was studying Computer Science at Cal Poly before the computer science degree existed. I have many fond childhood memories of skipping through the aisles of various electronic and computer part warehouses while Dad described something that either terrified the staff or made them worship him as a God. He taught himself how to use his smartphone. Internationally.

So when he saw the option to file digitally with the IRS through the “ID.me” program, he leapt at the chance to celebrate the Federal Government finally entering the Digital Age.

It was all going swimmingly for about six hours, until he was ready to file and the system told him that it needed to verify his identity.

“Very Well.” said my father, a man unafraid of talking to himself and getting something out of the conversation. “It wouldn’t do for me to get someone else’s return.”

The System told him that it needed him to take a “Digital Image ID”.

a.k.a: A Selfie.

“A-ha!” Dad beams. Dad is very good at taking selfies. He immediately pulled out his phone, snapped one, and tried to upload it.

Please log into your Id.me Account and use the provided app to submit your Digital Image ID. The System clarified.

“Oh. You should have said so.” Dad pouted, but used his phone to log onto the ID.me account, do the six security verification steps and double-checked that the filing looked the same as it did on the desktop, gave the IRS like nine permissions on his phone, and held up the camera to take his Federal Privacy Invasion Selfie.

Please align your face to the indicated grid. Said The System, pulling up a futuristic green-web-of-polygons approximation.

“Ooh, very Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry would HATE this!” Dad said cheerfully, aligning his face to the grid. My father is a bit… cavalier, when it comes to matters of personal information and federal government, because he’s been on FBI watchlists since the late 60’s when he was protesting The Vietnam War and Ronald Regan before he’d broken containment. Alas.

Anyway, there is very little information the federal government does not have on him already, but he’s as good at stalking the FBI as they are at stalking him, and had worked out a solution: He has something approaching a friendship with the local Federal Agent (Some guy named “Larry”. Allegedly), and got Larry hooked on Alternative Histories and Dad’s collection of carefully-researched “there is very likely buried treasure here” stories, and Larry is loath to bother his favorite Historical Fanfiction author too much.

But I digress.

After thinking for a minute, The System came back with an Error Message. Please remove glasses or other facial obstructions.

And here is where the real trouble began.

See, my father wears glasses that do substantially warp the appearance of his face, because he is so nearsighted that he is legally blind without them. His natural focal point is about 4 inches in front of his nose. While Dad can still take a selfie because he (approximately) knows where his phone is if it’s in his hand, he cannot see the alignment grid.

He should ask someone to take it for him! I hear the audience say. Yes, that would be the sane and reasonable thing to do, but Dad was attempting to do taxes at his residence in Fort Collins, while his immediate family was respectively in Denver, Texas and Canada. He tried calling our neighbors, who turned out to be in Uganda.

He looked down at the dog, Arwen, and her little criminal paws that can open doorknobs, but not operate cell phones.

She looked back at him, and farted.

“Well, I’ll give it a try, but if it gives me too much trouble, I’ll call Larry, and Larry can call the IRS about it.” Dad told her.

She continued to watch him. Arwen is an Australian Kelpie (a type of cattle-herding dog), going on 14 years old, deaf as a post and suffering from canine dementia now, but she still retains her natural instinct to Micromanage. She was also trained as a therapy dog, and even if she can’t hear my dad, still recognizes the body language of a man setting himself up for catastrophe.

So, squinting in the late afternoon light next to the back door, Dad attempted to line his face up with a grid he could only sort-of see, and took A Federal Selfie.

The System thought about it for a few moments.

Image Capture Failed: Insufficient Contrast. The System replied. Please move to a darker place.

“...Huh.” Dad frowned. “Alright.”

He moved to the middle of his office, away from the back door, lit only by the house lighting and indirect sunlight, and tried again.

Image Capture Failed. Please move to a darker place.

“What?” Dad asked the universe in general.

“Whuff.” Arwen warned him against sunk costs.

Dad ignored her and went into the bathroom, the natural habitat of the selfie. Surely, only being lit by a light fixture that hadn’t been changed since Dad was attempting to warn everyone about Regan would be suitably insufficient lighting for The System. It took some negotiating, because that bathroom is “Standing Room Only” not “Standing And Holding Your Arms Out In Front Of You Room”. He ended up taking the selfie in the shower stall.

As The System mulled over the latest attempt, Arwen shuffled over and kicked open the door to watch.

Image Capture Failed. Please Move to a Darker Place.

“Do you mean Spiritually?” Dad demanded.

“Whuff.” Arwen cautioned him again.

Determined to succeed, or at least get a different error message that may give him more information, Dad entered The Downstairs Guest Room. It is the darkest room in the house, as it is in the basement, and only has one legally-mandated-fire-escape window, which has blinds. Dad drew those blinds, turned off the lights and tried AGAIN.

Image Capture Failed. Please Move To A Darker Place.

“DO YOU WANT ME TO PHOTOGRAPH MYSELF INSIDE OF A CAVE??” Dad howled.

“WHUFF!” Arwen reprimanded him from under the pull-out bed in the room. It’s where she attempts to herd everyone when it’s thundering outside, so the space is called her ‘Safety Cave’.

Dad frowned at the large blurry shape that was The Safety Cave.

“Why not?” he asked, the prelude to many a Terrible Plan. With no small amount of spiteful and manic glee, Dad got down onto the floor, and army-crawled under the bed with Arwen to try One Last Time. Now in near-total darkness, he rolled on his side to be able to stretch his arms out, Arwen slobber-panting in his ear, and waited for the vague green blob of the Facial grid to appear.

This time, when he tapped the button, the flash cctivated.

“GOD DAMN IT!” Dad shouted, dropping the phone and rubbing his eyes and cursing to alleviate the pain of accidentally flash-banging himself. Arwen shuffled away from him under the bed, huffing sarcastically at him.

Image Capture Failed. Please move to a darker place.

“MOTHERFU- hang on.” Dad squinted. The System sounded strange. Distant and slightly muffled.

Dad squinted really hard, and saw the movement of Arwen crawling out from under the bed along the phone’s last known trajectory.

“ARWEN!” Dad shouted, awkwardly reverse-army crawling out from under the bed, using it to get to his feet and searching for his glasses, which had fallen out of his pocket under the bed, so by the time he was sighted again, Arwen had had ample time to remove The Offending Device.

He found her out in the middle of the back yard, the satisfied look of a Job Well Done on her face. She did not have the phone.

“Arwen.” Dad glared. It’s a very good glare. Dad was a teacher for many years and used it to keep his class in order with sheer telepathically induced embarrassment, and his father once glared a peach tree into fecundity.

Arwen regarded him with the casual interest a hurricane might regard a sailboat tumbling out of its wake. She is a force of nature unto herself and not about to be intimidated by a half-blind house ape. She also has cataracts and might not be able to make out the glare.

“I GIVE UP!” Dad shouted, throwing his hands in the air and returning to the office to write to the IRS that their selfie software sucks ass. Pleased that she had gotten her desired result, Arwen followed him in.

To Dad’s immense surprise, the computer cheerfully informed him that his Federally Secure Selfie had been accepted, and that they had received and were now processing his return!

“What the FUCK?” Dad glared. “Oh well. If I’ve screwed it up, Larry can call me.”

---

I bring this up because recently, Dad received an interesting piece of mail.

It was a letter from the IRS, addressed to him, a nerve-wracking thing to recessive at the best of times. Instead of a complaint about Dad’s Selfie Skills, it was a letter congratulating him on using the new ID.me System. It thanked him for his help and expressed hopes he would use it again next year, and included the selfie that The System had finally decided to accept.

“You know, my dad used to complain about automation.” Dad sighed, staring at the image. “Incidentals my boy! My secretary saves the state of California millions of dollars a year catching small errors before they become massive ones! He’d say. Fought the human resources board about her pay every year. I used to think he was overestimating how bad machines were and underestimating human error, but you know? He was right.”

He handed me the image.

My father was, technically, in the image. A significant amount of the bottom right corner is taken up by the top of his forehead and silver hair. Most of the image, the part with the facial-recognition markers on it, was composed of Arwen’s Alarmed and Disgusted Doggy face.

“Oh no!” I cackled. “Crap, does this mean you have to call the IRS and tell them you’re not a dog?”

“Probably.” Dad sighed. “I know who I’m gonna bother first though.” he said, taking out his phone (Dad did find his phone a few hours after Arwen absconded with it when mom called and the early spinach started ringing).

“Hey Larry!” Dad announced to the local federal agent. “You’re never gonna believe this. My dog filed my taxes!”

Larry considered this for a moment. “Is this the dog that stole my sandwich? Out of my locked car?” he asked suspiciously.

“The very same.” Dad grinned.

“Hm. Clever Girl.” Federal Agent Larry sighed. “I figured it was only a matter of time before she got into tax fraud.”

---

I'm a disabled artist making my living writing these stories. If you enjoy my stories, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi or Pre-ordering my Family Lore Book on Patreon. Thank you!

#Family Lore #Dogs #arwen #Arwen the Crime Dog #Taxes #Ronald Regan mention (derogatory)#long post under the cut #this one is funny this time #I could really use some extra tip money this month

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