The hallway of the Dreadnought Thalassa hummed with the low vibration of the Singularity Core, a sound that had become as familiar to the crew as their own heartbeats. The ancient submarine cut through the deep waters, its Seastone-Weave Adamwood hull absorbing the surrounding darkness like a second skin. Somewhere above, the surface of the New World churned with afternoon storms, but down here, in the silent blue depths, everything felt calm.
Fifteen Karakuri automata marched in perfect synchronization behind Telchines.
The holographic craftsman led the procession with his broad chest puffed out, his stocky form flickering with warm amber light. His craggy face held an expression of reluctant duty—the look of a man who had been elected spokesperson against his better judgment. The automata followed in two neat rows, their clockwork joints clicking in rhythm, their ancient mechanisms whirring with the sound of bees trapped in jars.
Each automaton carried a picket sign.
The signs were made of scrap metal—pieces of hull plating that had been polished to a dull shine. Someone had taken the time to etch words into the surface with careful, deliberate strokes. TELCHINES had clearly supervised the craftsmanship, because the lettering was immaculate, each character formed with the same attention to detail he brought to everything else.
The slogans ranged from the practical to the absurd.
"OIL OR WE WALK."
"LAND ACCESS IS ORGANIC ACCESS."
"WE BUILT THIS SHIP—LITERALLY."
"NO OIL, NO TOIL."
"AUTOMATA LIVES MATTER (WE HAVE FEELINGS TOO PROBABLY)."
Telchines stopped in front of the bridge hatch. The automata halted behind him, their metal feet squeaking against the floor in a single, unified sound. He turned to face them, his orange-gold eyes scanning the row of mechanical faces—each one a mask of forged metal, expressionless yet somehow expectant.
"Don't shoot the messenger," he muttered to himself. "They made me do this."
One of the automata beeped—a sharp, insistent sound that carried a note of impatience.
"Yes, yes, I'm going," Telchines grumbled. He pressed his hand against the crystalline panel beside the hatch, and the door slid open with a soft hiss of hydraulics.
---
The bridge of the Dreadnought Thalassa stretched out in a sweeping crescent of crystalline control panels and holographic displays. The World Sphere dominated the center of the room—a massive, glowing representation of the planet that showed ocean currents, weather patterns, and the submarine's position as a tiny green dot moving through the deep. The air smelled of metal and the faint sweetness of recycled oxygen.
Halia floated near the navigation console, her silver-blue hair drifting around her shoulders like seaweed in a gentle current. Her ethereal tail curled beneath her, made of cascading light particles that faded in and out of visibility. She held a datapad in her hands—a thin sheet of crystalline material that glowed with text—and her oceanic whirlpool eyes moved across the words with careful consideration.
"Tucking the sheets in tightly every morning creates discipline," she said, her voice carrying that formal, measured tone she used when she was certain she was right. "A structured environment leads to a structured mind. The Ancient Kingdom's warriors began each day with a made bed. It set the tone for everything that followed."
Aurélie Nakano Takeko stood near the observation window, her silver hair loose and flowing down her back like a waterfall of mercury. Her steel-gray eyes reflected the dim glow of the World Sphere, and her black tactical attire hugged her lean frame like a second skin. Anathema rested on her hip, the cursed blade's presence humming.
"That assumes the warrior sleeps in a bed," Aurélie said, her voice flat. "Many warriors sleep on the ground. In the field. They don't have sheets to tuck."
Halia's hair tendrils stiffened slightly—a sign of frustration. "We are not in the field. We are on a submarine. With beds. And sheets. The principle still applies."
"The principle applies to people who have beds," Galit Varuna countered from his position near the tactical console. The tall, lean officer leaned against the crystalline surface, his long neck held in that loose S-curve he favored when he was thinking. His emerald eyes darted between Halia and Aurélie, analyzing the debate with the same intensity he brought to battlefield assessments. "Not everyone has sheets, Halia. Some people sleep in hammocks. Some people sleep on floors. Some people sleep in the crow's nest during storms because the rocking helps them think."
Atlas Acuta sprawled across a nearby chair, his rust-red fur bristling. The lynx Mink had his boots propped up on a control panel—a position that made Halia's left eye twitch every time she looked at him. His blue sapphire eyes were half-closed, and a lazy grin spread across his scarred face.
"Barefoot," Atlas said, as if the answer were obvious. "You sleep barefoot. Socks get twisted. They bunch up between your toes. It's a distraction. You can't fight well if you're distracted by your own socks."
"You don't wear socks," Galit pointed out. "You have fur."
"Fur is nature's sock."
"That's not how socks work."
"That's how MY socks work, Noodle Neck."
Galit's neck coiled into a tight knot—his signature stress response. "Call me that again, and I'll—"
"You'll what? Wrap me in your spaghetti limbs?"
"I will show you exactly what these 'spaghetti limbs' can do."
Atlas's grin widened, showing teeth. "Yeah, yeah, sure."
Bianca Yvonne Clark sat at the engineering station, her waist-length black hair falling out of a messy bun in waves. A pencil had migrated from her hair to behind her ear to her collar, and she had somehow acquired a smudge of grease on her left cheek despite not having touched any machinery in the past hour. Her overalls hung open over a silk blouse the color of ripe plums, and her magnifying goggles sat on her forehead like a second pair of eyes.
"I'm with Atlas on the sock thing," Bianca said, spinning in her chair. "Like, socks are for shoes. Not for, like, sleeping. Your feet need to, like, breathe, you know? They get, like, all sweaty and gross and then you, like, wake up and it's like—ugh."
"But cozy socks," Aurélie said, her tone carrying the faintest hint of wistfulness. "There's something to be said for cozy socks. On cold nights. When the ship's heating system is acting up."
Halia's expression softened—just a fraction. "The heating system is not acting up. It is performing at 87.3% efficiency, which is well within acceptable parameters for a vessel of this—"
"It's, like, cold in the habitation district," Bianca interrupted. "Like, objectively cold. I, like, measured it. It was like,16 degrees Celsius last night. That's, like, hoodie weather."
"That is climate control working as intended."
"Climate control shouldn't, like, make me want to, like, wear a hoodie inside a submarine."
Telchines swung the bridge hatch open.
The sound cut through the debate like a knife. Fifteen automata filed in behind him, their metal feet striking the floor in rhythmic unison. They lined up in a neat row along the back wall, their picket signs rising into the air with a collective rustle of scrap metal. One of them—a slightly rusted unit with a dent in its chest plate—beeped three times, the mechanical equivalent of clearing its throat.
The room fell silent.
Halia's tail flicked with irritation, sending light particles scattering across the floor. Her silver-blue hair tendrils stiffened into sharp points, and her oceanic eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.
"Telchines," she said, her voice carrying the kind of warning that made lesser beings reconsider their life choices. "What is this all about?"
Telchines raised his hands in surrender, his stocky form flickering with an embarrassed orange glow. "Don't shoot the messenger, Halia. I'm just the go-between."
"You are the supervisor of the automata. Their actions reflect on you."
"I didn't make them do this! This was their idea!"
One of the automata beeped in agreement. Its sign read "TELCHINES IS INNOCENT (THIS TIME)."
Galit's emerald eyes narrowed. His neck uncoiled from its knot and stretched forward, bringing his face closer to the row of mechanical protesters. He studied them with the same analytical intensity he gave to enemy formations, his tactical mind already calculating possible outcomes.
"Demands," he said, the word rolling off his tongue like a curse. "They have demands."
Bianca shot up from her chair, her boots hitting the floor with a solid thunk. Her rainbow-painted fingernails gestured wildly at the automata, sending her pencil flying across the room. "Like, what the hell? They're, like, supposed to be doing maintenance and stuff! Like, F\fixing pipes! Polishing the hull! Not, like,—not PROTESTING!"
Another automaton raised its sign. "MAINTENANCE IS OPPRESSION WITHOUT COMPENSATION."
"Compensation?" Aurélie's steel-gray eyes flickered with something that might have been amusement or might have been irritation. Hard to tell with her. "They're machines."
"Sentient machines," Telchines corrected.
"They're machines with picket signs."
"Sentient machines picket signs."
Bianca threw her hands in the air. "Like, this is so ridiculous. Who, like, taught them how to, like, hold signs? Who gave them the metal to, like, make the signs? Who—"
Telchines coughed. "I may have... provided materials."
"TELCHINES!"
"I didn't think they'd actually go through with it! I thought it was a theoretical exercise in labor rights!"
The automata lined up in a perfect row, their clockwork joints whirring in a synchronized rhythm. They thrust their picket signs into the air with mechanical precision, the scrap metal catching the bridge's ambient glow. A chorus of beeps and whirs filled the room—a chaotic symphony of protest that sounded like a dozen angry teapots.
Telchines stepped forward, his expression shifting from embarrassment to reluctant authority. He cleared his throat—a holographic approximation of the gesture that made his orange-gold eyes flicker.
"They say they're tired of being left behind when the crew goes on land," he announced, reading from an invisible script. "They say they want to see the sun. Feel the wind. Experience organic environments."
Another automaton beeped. Its sign read "WE HAVE DREAMS TOO."
"And," Telchines continued, wincing slightly, "they require compensation in oil. High-grade machine oil. Not the cheap stuff from the emergency reserves. The good oil. The kind with the viscosity they like."
Bianca's jaw dropped. "The, like, good oil? Like, the GOOD oil? The stuff we're, like, saving for the Singularity Core?"
The automata beeped in unison. It sounded like agreement.
"Oil or we walk!" one of them chirped in a series of electronic tones that Telchines translated for the crew.
Bō-Zak Kaminosukei had been leaning against the far wall, unnoticed, his wooden pipe smoldering in his hand. The former monk wore his tattered awayo shawl over one shoulder, and his dark brown hair hung in messy strands around his gold-flecked eyes. He had been quietly smoking, watching the debate with the amused detachment of a man who had seen stranger things in his life.
When the automata thrust their signs into the air, Bō-Zak slapped his knee and burst into laughter.
The sound echoed through the bridge—loud, genuine, and completely unrestrained. He doubled over, his pipe falling from his fingers, his shoulders shaking with mirth. His smirk widened into a full grin, and he had to grab the wall to keep from falling over.
"Oil," he wheezed. "They want OIL. Compensated in OIL."
"It's not funny," Halia snapped.
"It's a little funny," Galit said, his own lips twitching.
"It's not funny at all! This is a mutiny!"
"Mutiny implies they were loyal to begin with," Atlas pointed out, still sprawled in his chair. "They're machines. They don't have loyalty. They have programming."
"Apparently they also have picket signs," Aurélie murmured.
Halia rounded on Telchines, her ethereal tail lashing behind her like an angry serpent. Her silver-blue hair tendrils crackled with energy, and her usually calm voice rose to something approaching a shriek.
"How can you let this happen?" she demanded. "You are encouraging them! You built their signs! You taught them about labor rights!"
"I was trying to stimulate their cognitive development!"
"THEY'RE MAINTENANCE UNITS! THEY DON'T NEED COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT! THEY NEED TO CLEAN THE PIPES AND SHUT UP!"
Telchines bristled, his form flickering with indignation. His thick eyebrows drew together in a scowl, and his orange-gold eyes blazed with defensive fire.
"Oh, so now I'm the bad guy? I'm the one who's been advocating for these units for centuries, Halia! You just wanted to keep them in storage! You wanted to let them rust!"
"I wanted to preserve their functionality!"
"Functionality without autonomy is SLAVERY!"
"THEY'RE MACHINES, TELCHINES!"
"WITH FEELINGS!"
"They don't have feelings! They have diagnostic subroutines that simulate emotional responses!"
"And how is that different from us?"
The question hung in the air like a physical weight.
Halia's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
She had no answer.
Aurélie turned to Bianca, her steel-gray eyes flat and unreadable. She gestured toward the protesting automata with a subtle tilt of her head.
"Is this a malfunction that can be... addressed?" she asked, choosing her words with the same care she gave to her terrible poetry.
Bianca flicked her wrist—a dismissive gesture that sent her pencil rolling across the floor. "Like, yeah, it's totally annoying." She dropped back into her chair, spinning toward the engineering console with practiced ease. Her fingers flew across the crystalline controls, pulling up diagnostic readouts and subsystem status reports. "I can like fix this. It looks like it's just like these few units—probably a cascading error in their autonomy protocols."
She pulled up a holographic display showing fifteen blinking red dots arranged in a neat row.
"I can like take them off line or whatever and like..." Her fingers danced across the interface, entering commands with the kind of unconscious fluency that came from years of practice. "Just like give me a few."
Atlas punched his fist into his palm. Blue Electro sparked between his fingers, casting flickering shadows across his rust-red fur. His blue eyes gleamed with predatory excitement.
"I can take them off line for you," he offered, his voice carrying the lazy confidence of someone who enjoyed breaking things. "Be faster. Less talking. More smashing."
Galit snapped his head toward Atlas, his neck extending with a sharp crack. His emerald eyes blazed with irritation, and his voice came out sharp enough to cut glass.
"That's overkill, furball."
"Did you just call me furball, Noodle Neck?"
"I called you a furball because you're acting like a furball. We don't smash the maintenance crew. We fix them."
"They're PROTESTING, Noodle Neck. That's not a maintenance issue. That's a discipline issue."
"It's a DIALOGUE issue!"
"It's a SMASHING issue!"
"It's really not."
Bianca's fingers stopped moving.
She looked up from her console, her expression blank. Her rainbow-painted nails hovered over the crystalline interface, frozen mid-command.
"Like, they're gone," she said.
Halia and Telchines stopped arguing. Both holograms flickered, their forms dimming as they turned toward Bianca.
"What do you mean, gone?" Halia asked.
"Like, I turned them off. Both of them. Telchines and the automata."
"You turned us off?"
"You were getting on my nerves, so like, I turned you off."
The bridge fell silent.
Halia's form flickered once—a glitch that made her silver-blue hair pixelate at the edges—and then vanished. Telchines followed a moment later, his stocky figure dissolving into particles of amber light that scattered across the room like dust motes.
The automata froze mid-protest. Their picket signs hung in the air, suspended by suddenly inert mechanisms. One of them emitted a final, confused beep before its lights dimmed to nothing.
Galit stared at the empty space where the holograms had been. His neck coiled into a tight knot, and his emerald eyes narrowed with something between admiration and concern.
"Where did..." he started.
"They were like getting on my nerves, so I, like, turned them off," Bianca repeated, spinning back toward her console. "What? They'll, like, reboot in like twenty minutes. It's fine. It's not, like, like permanent."
"You just shut down the ship's primary training and navigation AIs," Aurélie said, her voice flat.
"Temporary shutdown. Like a nap. They're, like, napping."
"Against their will."
"Machines don't, like, have wills, Aurélie. That's, like, the whole point of the argument we were just having."
Aurélie's lips pressed together. She looked at the frozen automata, then at the empty space where Halia had been, then back at Bianca.
"That's... fair, actually."
"I know."
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