The Big Damn Fight

Nova pretended she didn’t recognize the laptop from the Margot thing’s lair. If she could avoid her drones’ cameras from focusing on it in any amount of detail, Nova could still bank on the fact that nobody would care much if she needed to 'murder' it in this bloodsport she had found herself in. But if it got any decent screen-time, that plan would be botched. Anthropomorphic things had a way of worming their way into the hearts of the American public, and Nova couldn’t be having any of that.

“Interesting, how did you know there was a computer in that machine?”

“It’s complicated... I guess you can say I can interface with them, but it’s really more like an innate ability of mine.”

“Yes, quite the ability. Manhandling me when you could just ask.”

Nova quickly made smalltalk to keep III☆ from engaging with the laptop. “That’s really useful. I wish I knew more of that kind of stuff, but I have a hard time updating my band website by myself. It’s not really my scene.”

“Well this specific machine is pretty weird...”

“Who are you calling weird you oversize-” Nova deliberately coughed, cutting him off.

“Weird how?”

“The thing’s got some very advanced specs, some of them might even have an edge on Linkwyrm technology, but it's exterior design and organizational structure is very primitive.”

“Primitive!" WWW scoffed, "I have three PHD’s from UoX! THREE!”

That was an unsettling specifically human response. She had encountered a few AI’s in her time and they didn’t typically attend higher education. This was likely no AI, Nova surmised. Even so, she continued her scheme of ignoring it. “It’s a current human model if that helps.”

“It doesn’t, but it’s interesting I guess. You're a human I take it?”

Nova didn’t skip a beat. She’d told this lie a million times. “Yes. You're a.. Linkworm?”

Zaiza nodded. “How can you tell that this is a battle between humans and... that other race?” He gestured down the hall to the bodies.

“Deduction. Us being in a battle is obvious enough, I don’t know of a lot of armed foot-soldiers that just walk around in formation during peace-time. As for there being humans, that’s really more of a gut feeling, but the whole place screams human construction and architecture. The weird thing is that there aren't a lot of human space ships so I assume we’re either in the future or some kind of simulation..”