The Hive

XI77192 flew through the narrow tunnels toward the depot, her thrusters straining against the inertial mass stored in her holds. The hive was busy this rotation; the queen had reached her final operational cycle, ordered the construction of a new queen, and subsequently terminated her operations.

XI77192 might have worried about the future of the hive, but as she had no need for predictive logic,  no such capacity was included in her programming.

Both XI77192 and the queen were machines, of course, and had no sex. But the Designer was Human and thought in gendered terms; a proclivity He had passed on to His creations.

Designer and Human; the implication of these terms’ capitalization in her textual interface with her processing cores wasn’t lost upon her. She hadn’t been programmed with the knowledge of why these particular terms were important, but that gap in understanding was irrelevant.

Her cognitive subroutines had been designed to fulfill a specific purpose; if she found emphasis in a particular term, then surely it must be necessary to her function.

Still, pondering on these topics was somewhat aberrant, so she logged the abnormality and sent a request to central processing for a diagnostic test.

A failed diagnostic would mean a deactivation order, but that was irrelevant. The hive was designed to mimic the function of a nest of bees. She had been programmed with this knowledge to give her a cognizable logic dictating that, while she had been given the primary end of replicating her mechanical pattern, it was unnecessary for her to actively pursue that end or preserve her function.

A greater portion of her pattern was passed on by the queen than she could, so XI77192 was sterile and didn’t need any self-preservation functions.

The central processor responded to her request instantly. No technician was available to fill her request. That was sensible; the production of a new queen required the independent audit of three qualified Operators; there were only three such in the hive, so they were all engaged with the queen.

She acknowledged the information then transmitted her internal diagnostics. Nanoseconds later, the central processor instructed her to return to her duties. She acknowledged this also, and returned her full processing capacity to her task.

The tunnels had no lights, but that was alright; she navigated by liDAR and needed no light.

The tunnel opened up as she came to the airlock, tunnelers and porters boring into the loose rock and carrying the refuse away. At the same time, soldiers hovered nearby, armed with fifty-caliber rotary cannons, both to defend the workers from non-operator Human intruders and to keep watch for malfunctioning drones.

She had no need for concern, though; even had she the capacity, her aberrant cognitive patterns had been logged, and no shutdown order issued.

She transmitted her clearance and slowed in preparation to stop within the pressurization chamber. The drones needed no atmosphere, but the foundry was situated adjacent to the tunnels, and FC 1917-2 § H required regular audits of autonomous heavy industrial machines, so the foundry was maintained as a pressurized area for the convenience of the Operators while being positioned to conveniently purge its atmosphere in the event of a fire.

She stopped and waited as the airlock doors closed behind her and filled with atmosphere. The inner door opened to admit her, and she flew through into the foundry, stopping again at the inspection station. She logged the weight and approximate composition of her cargo. The inspection station acknowledged her report and informed her she was over one second late. She logged the delay and proceeded to the ore sorter, maneuvering around it and backing into it, docking her bulbous storage container into the hopper. She activated her internal pulverizers, pulverizing the ore and rock as it passed into the hopper and onto the line where the fragments would be shaken flat and carried to the next station.

She completed her offloading and undocked, noting a leftward list. She noted a twenty-percent loss in thrust from her left side bottom thrusters and ran her diagnostic, finding a deficiency in fuel levels.

She wasn’t due for refueling but logged a delay and flew to the fueling station. Docking, and began fueling, taking on new hydrogen. The fuel station stopped almost immediately, but her systems continued to log low fule levels in her left tank.

Her systems threw up a fuel pressure warning, and one of her bottom leftward thrusters sputtered, and her downward thrusters threatened to break the fueling nozzle off before it resumed thrust. She detached from the fueling station, her left side thrust growing more intermittent.

She lacked the processing power to speculate on the problem, so she cut her thrusters and transmitted her diagnostics. Central came back, ordering her to report to maintenance, and upon acknowledging the command, XI77192 reignited her thrusters, only for the left bottom row to fail. She immediately began to rotate, her gyros struggling to right her, but with the total loss of her left upward thrusters, the best she could do was cut her thrusters and spiral into a nearby wall.

The collision rattled her internals but dampened her rotation. She drifted, unable to safely fire her thrusters, and requested assistance to tow her to the maintenance bay.


---


Daniel blew out a huff of breath. It was always a chore when they needed a new queen. Ślusarski had already finished his audit and gotten to fuck off, which left him and Elane; she was in the middle of her’s, and he couldn’t go until she’d finished and he’d both run his audit and validated all three reports against each other.

He was being paid enough, but it was still a pain.

He got a ping from central on his tablet, followed quickly by a second and a third, and snatched the device up, eager to break the monotony.

A drone was having trouble down in the foundry, AI, and mechanical errors. He checked the unit; six years old; it made sense; the AI cores on those low-level AIs got a little funny as they aged. Probably it was all software-level problems, and the unit had misdiagnosed the physical symptoms as independent issues.

 “What are you looking at?” He glanced up to find Elane staring.

“Maintenance request,” he said, “malfunctioning unit. You done?”

“No, do you want me to take the call after I’m finished here?” she asked.

His eyes flicked down to his pad, back up to her, and he frowned. “Naw, it’s an old unit; I’ll just send it for recycling.”

“Isn’t that a little mean?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

He sighed, shaking his head. “You want to waste more server space?”

“They don’t take that much room. Besides, we’re not using it for this mining outfit, anyway.”

He rolled his eyes, “you’re lucky you’ve got a nice ass. Alright, one more for bee heaven.”

She smiled at him, “good boy.”

“Get back to work.”


---


XI77192 soared through the sky, the sun hot on her back, her wings flapping rapidly to keep her bulbous frame in the air. She landed on a flower, gathering nectar from the bloom.

Soon, she would return to the hive with this precious cargo, and she and her sisters would make precious honey to feed the hive.

She scrambled back out of the flower, taking off once more and flying into the big, blue sky.