The area outside of the central hub where Aphrodite lived was ever more densely populated by scrapyard Evos. The settlement was a widely sprawling shanty town, it had little houses carved into the piles of junk, what looked like basic stalls made out of larger Evo corpses (which was pretty grim thinking about it). What were they selling? They looked like rudimentary batteries, but, there were other things in the little stalls, paint, wax, spare parts, and... toys? Yes, a Go-bot like Evo was standing next to another Evo, taller and more motherly looking, the taller Evo bought a toy model Evo and gave it to the Go-bot like Evo, much to its joy. It hopped around in excitement with its new toy.
What the..?
Evos didn't live in little houses, they lived in giant tower blocks, in tiny cabinets with plug-in chargers. They didn't paint themselves like the Evos here seemed to, nor did they play with toys. Toys? A mother and a son? A family unit similar to that of other organic beings like the rabbits and foxes he saw on mars. That wasn't right. That wasn't what the intel of their society said. He was certain he saw those type of structures on Europa.
Maybe the Evos here lived differently. Seeing this society warmed Ava's heart for some reason, he didn't know why. He knew he was meant to hate the Evos, but it looked like a loving and innocent group of beings that weren't interested in anything but their own harmonious livelihood. Fighting that spider from earlier definitely gave him a lot of perspective on the whole issue.
Locke and Aphrodite were accompanying Ava, Aphrodite was wearing a skin-tight black outfit with red strips attached all over, her small frame looked even smaller with it on. Apparently she needed the outfit to keep her warm in the icy temperature of the moon. Similarly, the large red goggles we wore were apparently a necessity for her outside of the central hub of the city. Her eyesight was quite poor and wasn't able to see things without higher levels of light exposure.
The three walked down the street into the square, Ava couldn't help but keep glancing at Aphrodite as she led him through. She caught his glance,
"What's wrong?" asked Aphrodite, while her expression was hard to discern because of the goggles, there was a clear sass to her voice,
"With that outfit and those goggles you barely look human." Said Ava, "More machine than man."
"It's the only way I can survive here. If I recall mankind made this scrapyard moon to be liveable, so there's still an atmosphere to a degree. But it's been without maintenance for millenia. What do you think I am, some immortal god or something?" she stopped and crossed her arms, "I'm not. I'm weak."
Before Ava could say anything, a voice interrupted, "Heretic!" it was high pitched and childish, one of the many Go-bot looking robots. It was point at Ava, "It's a heretic!" he shouted.
"Calm down Felix..." Aphrodite walked up to the small robot and knelt down, "he's an outsider, but not a Heretic."
"Oh! Princess! I-I didn't see you!"
"Heh," Aphrodite patted the robot on the head, "you're such a scardey cat! Even still, we don't need to be afraid of the heretics, haven't I told you this before?"
Ava remembered, he'd been called a heretic before. So not a literal heretic? It was the name of another group of robots?
"I see you're confused." Said Locke, was he staring at Ava this whole time?
"Heretics, are they some other race or Evo on this moon? Dangerous?" asked Ava,
"They live on the upper plates, where the cranes come from."
"Heretics sounds like a pretty negative name to give them."
"Self-chosen, they're still on the network but somehow manage to defy Mother's orders. Curious Evos, definitely. Either way they found refuge here, on the upper plates of this moon."
"Non-antagonistic?"
"No, the children are afraid of them, but they're scared of outsiders in general." Locke looked at Aphrodite, she was surrounded by other Evos now, she was talking with them cheerfully and they hung on her every word, "but they're better than they were. She taught them to be more accepting of the others. The Evos of this moon are more united now, all thanks to Aphrodite."
It was odd, seeing the Evos... happy? They didn't even have facial expressions and yet it was obvious they were living in harmony, their bodily movements, their energy, everything about them showed that they were basking in the light of Aphrodite's presence. Which was funny, Aphrodite seemed to be a pretty cold to Ava. Why did she act differently to him than she did to them?
Aphrodite threw a look at Ava, she tilted her head to invite him to join her in conversing with the Evos. Ava instantly stiffened and shook his head. He was still creeped out by Locke, he wouldn't be able to talk to this whole group of Evos. A whole group of people who he'd gotten quite used to killing en masse.
He wanted to. But he couldn't.
***
Several hours went and after Ava was done watching Aphrodite mingle, he was taken to a room in a little hut one of the off roads to the side of one of the biggest factories, this was an actual structure made out of metal, made to fit in Serv robots. A simple cabinet with a switch inside that activated an electrified field.
"So they had Servs no this planet too?" asked Ava, "The humans I mean."
"Yes, this is one of the few charging stations I'm aware of though. I haven't really looking for these in my spare time." Aphrodite replied, "You're running out of charge without solar energy right? The outlet here should get you charged fine. I don't really know how long it'll take, my knowledge on Servs is limited."
"Ten hours," said Ava, "for me to get to full charge. Which I'd prefer." A semi-lie. If he were to go into full sleep mode it'd only take four hours to him to charge fully. But he didn't trust losing his consciousness for such an extended period of time. Who knew what would happen? It'd be better if he stayed partially conscious for a longer period, just in case someone attacked him or something.
"After this, I'm guessing we're going to test whether I succeeded in getting deactivating that receiver in you." Said Ava,
"Right, we'll need to go above the clouds, up to the plates. The network is still active up there, it's not blocked off by the smoke."
"Locke said-"
"The Heretics? Don't worry, their main colony isn't on the plate above our Scrapyard City. Besides, they're harmless, if we do come across them it'll be fine." She paused, "We'll need to deal with them soon anyway. For my plan to go forward."
"I wish The Heretics had less ominous names, they're just standard Evos right?"
"Right. Anyway, I'll be back to wake you up in ten hours' time then."
Ava smiled, "Sure," he was learning a lot.
***
And so Ava endured ten hours of standing there, doing nothing. He looked out of the window and saw nothing but darkness, of course in low power mode he wasn't able to activate any of his night vision. The darkness gave him space to think.
That scared child, the one that called him a heretic. It confused him. He'd seen children before, animals had them, but robots didn't. Servs synchronised and created new intelligences, which were then programmed in terminals for a gestating period of a couple of days. By the time their intelligences became transferred to a body, they had already matured to a level of intelligence comparable to any other Serv of the same model. It wasn't like organic animals, where they had to wander the world as miniature versions of themselves, taking years to learn how to function properly.
But somehow these Evos. They had children. Why? What was the implication of being a child compared to being an adult. Ava tried to remember what his first few years were like, back when he was going through accelerated mental growth and hadn't interacted with the real world yet.
He was confused, stupid, ignorant, unable to comprehend the most basic things. How would he have been able to function in the real world?
Then he remembered.
That other Evo with the child. The "mother" Evo.
Perhaps he'd talk to her. He'd never met a "mother" before, seeing intelligent beings acting out the primal behaviours of animals piqued his curiousity wildly. Maybe it'd also explain why Motherbrain had such a hold on the Evos. Something in Ava's head told him there was more to the power she had over them than just simple programming. Was it something he could even put into words?