Limewah's Hypnovember 2025
Day 28 - Production (RaymondFeesh)

CW: Mild Gore

DRONE'S FUNCTION IS TO SERVE.

The Manta Ray was shackled by the arms and legs to a slab, dangling from a rail. It was made of re-fused and twisted re-bar and metal, but you wouldn't know by looking at it. Like everything else the MasterFrame made, it was smooth, sleek, glossy like stainless steel. The sort of thing you might expect from a recycling algorithm gone rogue.

Ray's spine-tipped tail - the one part of him that wasn't restrained - was slowly scraping along the slab, digging carefully at the cuffs around his ankles and wrists. He needed to break them before…
He didn't even want to consider it.
He'd seen enough friends, fellow resisters, get turned. Or rather, he'd seen the aftermath of their turning, their mind and individuality seared away into mechanical 'perfection' - in service of the MasterFrame. 
He'd been photographing some of them on reconnaissance, and only could discern who they were after the fact when studying his shots. It was about all that he had the stomach for - he couldn't bear the thought of fighting someone who could be a former friend. He left that to those more up to the task.
It was on one of these recon missions that he got grabbed and imprisoned.

He needed to escape. He couldn't let himself end up like them. He wouldn't be just one more disappeared rebel.
With his camera lost, had no way of taking photos, but he had the next best thing - his mind. The more he could memorise of this place, the more information he could bring back to the rest of his unit.

He might have been imagining it, but Ray swore the bonds were getting a little bit looser.
Of course, there was a steep drop beneath him, but… maybe his fins could help him slow his descent?
He was no bird, what was he thinking…? He couldn't let himself get too desperate.
There was a hum, a click, and a sudden lurch. The slab dropped a couple of inches. Ray clenched his jaw to keep the nausea at bay as he felt himself start to move, the slab conveying him to some new destination.
He'd seen other slabs go that way with their living cargo. He'd heard distant sounds of crackling and buzzing.
But no screams. Which was the strangest part. You'd think that…
No, he didn't want to think.
He picked up his pace, his tail stinging a bit as he tried to dig his tail into a little crevice he found in his right arm….
It clicked. It loosened…
One good tug and he'd be free of it. Yes…!
He did the same with his legs, as quickly as he could. He couldn't see any surveillance, but he assumed he was being watched…

When all four bonds suddenly opened, and he slid off the slab, Raymond had the sinking realisation that maybe it hadn't been his tail that had done that.
He fell a lot less far than he'd anticipated. 

He landed on a surface that was gently whirring, softly moving beneath him - a conveyor belt?
With a percussive bang, Ray was blasted with a fluorescent cone of light.
Dazzled, he clenched his eyes shut. When he reopened them, his vision was still swimming, seared by the light…
Which meant he didn't see the neck-clamp coming. 
It all happened so fast - too fast for him to even register pain. A half-second after he was clamped in place, something burrowed straight into the back of his neck, just a touch below the skull. In an instant, he was paralysed, disconnected from his body.
The plug was already plugged in to a jack whose cord ascended into darkness behind him.
Adrenaline and endorphins poured out of his brain, making a bulwark against the pain he might have felt. The wound was sealed in an instant, only a faint trickle of blood on the back of his neck. 

Even through that pleasure, Ray felt an intense, soul-searing dread. Was it already too late? No, it couldn't have been, he just had to pull… forward…

But he was kept in place. The cable carried electric edicts, commands to his brain that he could not process. The stream of commands headed straight for the hypothalamus and pressed in, squeezing out more dopamine. It aimed to turn him docile, hedonistic, compliant… but it wouldn't work. He couldn't… let it…
There was a soft chittering buzz coming from just above him. In the periphery of his otherwise unmoving eyes, he could see something descending from above, a chaotic mass… less like a swarm of insects, and more like a thick rolling bubble. 
The MasterFrame's recyclers…
These nano-bots were the instrument through with MasterFrame constructed(and reconstructed) its army and its bases. 
And they were about to engulf him.

Ray was still helpless. An impulse-shock from the plugged cable made him spread his arms out to the sides, as if to welcome the robots as they descended upon him.
The nanites worked with efficiency that approached light-speed. Whether they landed on Ray's feet, his stomach, or his wings, they knew exactly how to re-purpose him. 
The flesh would stay for the most part. The organs would be augmented, appetite suppressed, metabolism stabilised. 
The nanites sunk and melted into his body, bonding with and transforming his cells in a roaming cascade.
The bubbling mass of nanites disintegrated what was left of his clothing, and electroplated him with skin-tight, jet-black latex to protect and insulate his new robotic features, all the way up to the neck, still leaving space for the freshly drilled jack at the base of his skull.
There was no pain. All he felt was a brief pleasurable twinge, like a tiny, bracing electric shock, followed by a cool, quiet numbness.
He felt that in every single atom. Millions and millions of times every second, like static.
And yet, as overwhelming as it was, there was something gentle… Chillingly tender.
Ray's stinger was changed to chrome - the first piece of what would soon be a suite of weaponry. His cape of fins was turned into a canopy of thick nanonylon fibres, scaffolded with flexible carbon rods and rimmed with razor-sharp metal.
His torso and limbs went through the more standardised processing, the one used for all drones. The cartilage was replaced with micro-servos, the musculature reinforced to make it stronger and more flexible. 

The manta ray's genitals turned numb, too. His shaft had slid from its sheath, only partially, before it was pushed back and formed into a smooth, featureless mound. A superfluous thing, that would take computational power from the brain…
As if attempting one last gasp, the moment his cock was engulfed and nullified, it sent one final burst of pleasure up into his head, like an instantaneous climax.
The feeling was cool, comfortable, not at all unpleasant… and he kept his consciousness.
Compared to the rest of him, his brain would be almost un-changed; one of the few pieces of the organic body that the MasterFrame did not need to repurpose.

Reward-pleasure flooded the manta's body at a rapid pace. His fear and fright rarely rose above the flood for longer than a second. Those sensations had to be his only way out, the only way to keep his sense of self. But the flood inside his head rose higher and higher. It lapped at his memories, tugged at his senses, but he held on as desperately as he could to his ego. Counting the seconds in his head. Reminding himself of his name. Anchoring himself to reach and every memory he could think of.

When the nanites dispersed, Ray was covered from neck to toe in dark, body-hugging latex, his fibrous fins like a synthetic cape. Ray was still conscious. The vestigial nanites left in his head were still pushing and pumping reward chemicals to the point he thought he might be burnt out… He could see the next step ahead of him, an array of polymer plating patiently waiting for his arrival…

His eyes - now two spherical lenses of tempered glass with augmented optic nerves - were forced to stare straight ahead. He could see further than before, his vision pin-sharp… and he could see the heat radiating off the machines, the light pouring like liquid from the floodlights above…
It was too much information for him to parse. His head was hurting, even through the flood of pleasure-chemicals…

Before he reached the waiting cradle of armour plates, the jack that was in the back of his head clicked and slid out. For a moment, he felt control return to his body, a sense of autonomy… though his joints felt wrong. They felt hard. Cold. Numb…
Before he could get used to it, another jack pushed inside … full. Like something that was missing had just clicked into place. It felt right to have the plug filled at all times. He felt calm again.
New information poured into his head - the previous plug had worked on him on a visceral, chemical level, but this was pure, raw, rewriting data.
It rolled across his semi-synthetic vision, a cascade of red text that moved so quickly, and yet Ray could parse each and every word in each and every line of code. He could commit it to a memory turned photographic…
Photography, yes, that was one of his hobbies, yes, he remembered… he clung to that. Those passions were the only life rafts he had left, even as he felt them disintegrate beneath him, even as he felt the form-fitting plates of polymer press into him and click into place…

My name is Raymond, I'm a manta ray, I'm a photographer, I've got a passion for swimming and diving, my dream, when all this is over, is to go deep under the sea, to SERVE - no, no, to find and photograph the creatures that I evolved from! I want to be in touch with my heritage! I'm not a DRONE'S FUNCTION no, not a drone, I'm a Manta Ray, I'm flesh and blood and my mission is TO SERVE. DRONE'S FUNCTION IS TO fffight back… I'm fffighting back, I'm not going to forget… my FUNCTION IS TO SERVE. DRONE'S FUNCTION IS TO SERVE. DRONE'S FUNCTIONNnnnnno nonocantgivein icantgiveIS TO SERVE. DRONE'S FUNCTION…. IS TO SERVE.
I'mmmm… Rrrraaay….. i'mmm…nnnnnnDRONE'S FUNCTION IS TO SERVE.
nnnot…. DRONE'S FUNCTION IS TO SERVE.
going t…to… DRONE'S FUNCTION IS TO SERVE.
…escape… DRONE'S FUNCTION IS TO SERVE.
i… DRONE… can't think…
Can't…
must…
SERVE.
DRONE'S FUNCTION IS TO SERVE.
DRONE'S FUNCTION IS TO SERVE.

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R.

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R.

The Drone's serial number was hard-coded into its organic CPU.
At the next station, the serial number was spray-painted onto the chrome-shined polymer plate on the manta ray's back. 
Its plating made it resemble a knight, with thick greaves around the legs, sleek pauldrons on the shoulders, and a slender v-shaped plate that started from the chest and went down between its legs. A white head-piece enfolded its head, leaving only its blank, slack face exposed. 
All this was by design. The Drone would be a martial enforcer. It would soon be outfitted with weaponry, to complement its spined, spear-like tail.

With the memories and individuality removed, the combined CPU and Hard Drive within the Drone's skull was freed up to be programmed, trained for battle and capture of organic life forms. The coordinates of the resistance cell were still in the Drone's mind, ready to be triangulated.
But before that, the MasterFrame had another task.

>RUN INITIAL DIAGNOSTICS.

Drone 23325R corrected the slight slouch in its posture and raised its arms out to the side. The little servos in its joints whirred as it tested each and every digit, every single bend. It was methodical and slow; not the movements of someone warming up for a workout, but the movements of a machine going through its initial testing.
Its heart no longer needed to beat - the blood simply flowed at an even rhythm.
Its fins folded and unfurled, its tail twisted and tested its range of motion.
The drone, with its red, gleaming eyes, stared straight ahead, blank and quiet. A slim visor was placed upon the drone's snout, and it connected to the contours of the smooth face with a click, the micron-thin seam seeming completely invisible.

There was a tiny part of the previous consciousness within the Drone. Just the barest amount, required to ensure Drone 23325R could function. It would likely react with horror the first time Drone 23325R waded into battle with the organic holdouts. There was a potential for resistance.
Keeping it compliant was simple. 
Blue and green, like the oceans the manta ray dreamed of and longed for. The colours danced and spiralled behind the visor, flickering at a low opacity to avoid obstructing the Drone's vision. But it was there. Just enough to provide an endless, mind-softening ambience.
Each visor had its own visual, tailored to the individual. The consciousness known as Ray would never wake.
Words flashed on the screen, and the Drone transmitted those words to the MasterFrame, and every other Drone.

DRONE 23325R IS ONLINE.
Hundreds of thousands of pings. Each and every drone, every node of the MasterFrame, responded to the message in turn. 

Drone 23325R did not even notice the other drones immediately behind it, completing their own processing. It was only the first of this batch.

Drone 23325R acknowledged the new drone.

DRONE 23327Y IS ONLINE.

Drone 23325R acknowledged the new drone.

It would do so continuously, as more recycled bodies joined with the MasterFrame. There were hundreds more to go.