Favela Pt. 23

The last three months had been interesting to say the least. Olivia barely bothered to register everything that had changed in the last month alone, but perhaps the most shocking of all though was hearing her girlfriend's voice over the factory intercom every morning and afternoon. One day while they'd been working, Muduru had walked up to Maithri down below and pulled her off of the assembly line. A new girl that Olivia had never seen before slipped in and seamlessly took her place. Olivia was scared at first, terrified actually, that her girlfriend was being punished for something, but a few minutes later the PA squawked and then to her absolute surprise Maithri was reading the latest bulletin from the State.

As it turned out, the announcements had become so frequent and critical to daily operations that Bozna had decided to create a dedicated post just to keep up with them all. Maithri had told Olivia everything that evening when they'd both met up excitedly at the front gate, Bozna had mentioned her interview all those months ago, said she'd been confounded by how well spoken and articulate she was for an anemic street urchin. It had stuck in her head until the need for an official announcer had come up. "Also she told me that she likes my accent." Maithri beamed.

Olivia felt a sharp stab of jealousy, but tamped it down immediately as a flood of memories reminded her of all the times that her friend had reached out to her when she just as easily could have walked away. Maithri, her usual perceptive self seemed to take note of this subtle wrinkle in Olivia's delicately pained expression. "I'm sure she likes my boobs too, but I told her in no uncertain terms that I was betrothed to a fearsome gorilla who would rip her limb from limb if she so much as solicits my affection."

"S-Seriously?" Olivia blinked, struggling to imagine the petite girl before her telling off the towering amazonian giant that was Bozna. Maithri clapped her hands over her mouth and started laughing uncontrollably, snorting and spluttering for several seconds.

"Oh my god. Your face!" She laughed a little more, until Olivia was glaring balefully. "No. I just told her I'd quit if she touched me." The girl tittered musically. "She assured me that our relationship would remain entirely professional." Maithri said seriously. Olivia nodded, feeling strangely subdued.

Her pay was the same as before, but her new job consisted of summarizing the detailed reports transmitted to the factory's secure channel and then after clearing them with Bozna, reading them over the intercom. There were going to be regular updates every thirty minutes so despite being less physical, it was still going to be a lot of work. "Summarize?" Olivia asked curiously. "You mean they've been leaving things out this whole time?"

"Oh yes. But not just leaving things out." She leaned in closer to whisper in Olivia's ear, even though they were basically alone in the jungle. "The reports are already censored when they show up on my console. Sometimes half the document has been redacted, and then even after I write them up Bozna crosses out some of the items. Things are getting pretty crazy in Calico, I know you heard today that the AI has finally accepted a single human diplomat to act as a liaison, but what what you didn't hear is that the military attempted to tunnel into the fortress while the first meeting was taking place."

Olivia's mouth opened in disbelief. "How stupid can they be?" Her friend nodded.

"Yeah, that's why it was left off the bulletin. The drilling platform was vaporized and the operation team was stripped naked and ejected back onto the surface. Everything was angel ray cloaked and they were even using analog comms, but it didn't matter, the AI could see and hear everything. When the diplomat was released he said that they had discussed the attempted breaching in realtime. The whole thing was displayed on a wall in the meeting room, like it was one of those antique American action movies. Maybe it was mocking Calico, but it seemed to him like the AI was just being playful and didn't feel threatened at all, which is why there were no casualties."

Olivia nodded thoughtfully. An AI with a sense of humor? Wasn't that mandatory by definition? "Sounds embarrassing for them." She smirked.

"To add insult to injury the operations team reported that before the platform was destroyed the plasma cutter encountered an unknown substance, it looked similar to the concrete they were expecting to find since the site is basically an old bunker, but it seems the masonry had been replaced with something else, the notes mentioned iridescence. The plasma couldn't make a mark and actually started to reflect and overheat the drill head, it had completely melted before the rig was even attacked." Olivia glanced down at her wrist and smiled at the opalescent filament tied around her wrist.

"The tower, it's woven out of this stuff, I'll bet it's the same as what's in that bunker now." Maithri took hold of Olivia's wrist and held it up to the light, the bracelet shimmered like a tiny rainbow.

"You might be the only person in the world who has an intact fragment of this filament Olivia. They tried to take samples from the first tower, but nothing would scratch it. Diamonds, lasers, acid, MEMS, they tried everything." Olivia pulled her hand away, clutching her wrist to her chest and stroked the bracelet possessively.

"Well it's mine now." She sulked. "Those idiots aren't going to stop that thing, even with all the free samples and help in the world." She said confidently. Maithri didn't feel like she could disagree exactly, although her head was swimming with many other unaired excerpts from the daily brief. So much was happening, so much that she was afraid of. She leaned over and clung to Olivia, pulling their bodies so closely together that it made it harder to walk. The vivid sky-blue dot on her shoulder caught her eye, the place where she'd been bitten by the mosquito, the day after Olivia, a poignant reminder of the AI's long reach. Marcella had been bitten too, along with everyone in the factory, and probably everyone in the Favela for that matter.

Another week or two went by. It seemed like each day a new series of shocking reports filtered through the factory intercom, although Olivia was starting to get a little desensitized, by all the drama. The only reason she even kept listening was because she never got tired of hearing Maithri talk. Bozna had chosen well, the girl had a golden voice, it was clear and carried through the entire plant despite the cheap barking speakers, it had a soothing quality yet always sounded authoritative and self-assured. On top of that she could speak four different languages, and had quickly become fluent in Portuguese, plus she never struggled with big or overly technical words, reciting them as flawlessly as a machine herself.

Olivia's ears always perked up however, the moment she detected that subtle note of stress in her girlfriend's voice. These particular passages she'd file away for later, being sure to ask Maithri about them after work to get the full unabridged version of the story. Just such an instance had triggered her attention as her friend described the daily list of detours which were now necessary to avoid the various large groups of metal stick-men who roamed about the favela. It wasn't that they were hostile, but rather that they could be oblivious, accidentally causing damage or injury if one were to stray too close or get caught up in one of their drifting triangular platoons.

They had become an oddly mobile environmental hazard, like tumbleweeds that could roll through walls, or flatten a child. The state had started tracking them via satellite and balloon, issuing advisories of avoidance, or AoAs as they were called. Apparently, off the record, the strange arthropodal droids had taken over certain unoccupied buildings and seemed to be moving between them. At times they were seen carrying raw materials, or performing mysterious rituals on the ground. It was scary at first but as days went by without any serious incidents, people became complacent again. The AoAs were reliable and easy to follow, also it did seem like the paths that the robots took were becoming more predictable over time.

Production demand had increased at the factory, and everyone was doing double duty, even Olivia had taken on a few more shifts. Every evening she grilled her girlfriend while they walked home. Maithri told her fantastic tales about the transformations that were happening in the North. The cities nearest the first towers were being restructured in a sense. The AI had built its own factories, mimicking human industry. But it hadn't stopped there. Trees were growing again, their genetic blueprints resurrected from ancient terrestrial archives thought to have been lost centuries ago, but now modified in strange ways to survive in previously uninhabitable areas.

All the vaults and treasure troves of the old world were being unearthed and invaded, their knowledge extracted and exploited by the emerging intelligence. The stick-men walked on the bottom of the dead acidic oceans, moved steadily through the hearts of impassable mountains, waded through lava and fire, fearlessly ascended the highest airless, vacant, frozen spires brushing up against the vacuum of space. Systematically they were exploring the earth like ants looking for sustenance, but their diet was information, data and artifacts. Then they would return to their "queen" in great waves like rivers of living mercury flowing back to the nodes of an ever expanding nexus.

The normal familiar paths that Olivia and Maithri had taken through the jungle had changed too. The stick-men, by way of their incidental movements had established a new network of wide corridors through the overgrown synthetic vegetation. People had just started using them as a matter of course because they were safer and more convenient than the crude winding footpaths. The metal droids always moved in perfectly straight lines, crushing and flattening everything that got in their way. The only curiosity being that whenever they changed course, their junctions were at 60 degree angles. There were as many as six separate paths at each intersection, but never more than that.

They just so happened to be walking into one such clearing, Olivia turned and looked over her shoulder, she could see the faint glow of the tower, like a sparkling thread dangling down from heaven. "You haven't seen it up close yet, have you, the tower I mean?" She asked her friend. Maithri shook her head, feeling a strange mix of emotions at the question. She didn't understand why Olivia always seemed to be so happy about the changes the AI was making to their world. While she herself wasn't particularly worried about the direction things were going, she didn't feel excited by them like her girlfriend clearly did.

Maybe it was the subtle influence of the unedited versions of the daily briefings wearing down her curiosity and replacing it with a nagging sense of growing existential dread. In her mind, a pattern was forming, just like the distinctly geodesic pattern that the metal men were stamping into the Favela's soil. Or perhaps it was the residual trauma of having to flee her home due to catastrophic changes beyond her control. This whole thing felt oddly reminiscent of that horrific experience. Although in this instance the state of the world seemed to be improving rather than the opposite.

"You read those announcements every day, but aren't you at least a little curious? The tower is so close." Olivia had stopped moving, she held onto Maithri's hand and craned her neck towards the slender sparkling monolith, once again feeling its strange magnetic pull. Her olive-skinned friend grunted and stopped trying to drag Olivia along their original route.

"Fine." She said sulkily, her apprehension increasing, but also feeling a twinge of excitement as she stared at Olivia's face, the girl was staring at the tower and had a blissful expression on her face. "You don't think it's dangerous?" Maithri pressed. Olivia took out her phone and scanned the latest AoA.

"It doesn't look like any of the stick-men are around the tower. There were solders there awhile back but I think they gave up after their barricade got destroyed." The latest reports had also suggested as much, Calico had canceled all military activity surrounding the AI and the towers after their humiliating defeat at the bunker.

Maithri finally turned around and started walking down the new, broad, street-like thoroughfare the droids had smashed into the forest floor. Olivia laughed in glee as her girlfriend actually started pulling her along. "Let's get this over with." Maithri said gruffly. The path was so straight and smooth, in less than ten minutes they arrived at the large clearing where the landfill used to be.

"It's hard to believe there was ever a dump here." Olivia commented distractedly as she headed straight for the south side where the embankment used to be. Maithri followed reluctantly behind, she'd fallen back a bit as they'd gotten closer to the tower's base. "Look, right over here was where the robots were collecting the grass that they used to make the thread like my bracelet!" They were both surprised to see that the field wasn't empty or bare like the rest of the surrounding terrain. As soon as they reached the edge of the place where the landfill had originally began they discovered that the grass was still there.

In fact it was over a meter high. "It must still be feeding on whatever is left of the trash underneath." Olivia said excitedly as she crouched down and made a small space with her hand at the base of the nearest outcropping. The ghostly blue-white grass swayed softly in the gentle breeze. Overcome with curiosity Maithri crouched down too, reaching out and trying to pluck one of the slender stems from the soil. It wouldn't budge. "The robots were cutting it somehow..." Olivia murmured, noticing her friend struggling. Maithri grunted in frustration and gave up. "Then they braided it, try weaving a few strands together." She suggested.

Maithri took three of the closest stalks and pulled them together, rapidly forming them into a tight braid. There was an almost inaudible crackling sound, the folds between each individual blade glowed bright white and then all three stems merged into a single opalescent filament. "F-Fascinating." Maithri said breathlessly, gently running her fingers up and down the glittering cord-like composite. The texture was perfectly smooth, it felt nothing like the grass which was so coarse it was almost abrasive.

"So cool." Olivia remarked, standing up and striding boldly into the softly swaying field. She squealed loudly and started running through the grass, enjoying the pleasant dry rustling sound it made and the oddly stimulating sensation of it brushing against her legs.

"W-Wait for me!" Maithri yelped, chasing after her girlfriend who was racing at full speed across the field. As they got farther from the edge the grass started to rise. Olivia sensed that they were reaching the center of the dump, the grass had almost reached her shoulders now and it was tickling her armpits, she had to slow down, wading more than running. Maithri was still in hot pursuit so Olivia resorted to bounding wildly in an attempt to evade her friend's desperate attempts to catch up to her. "No fair, I'm shorter than you!" Maithri yelled angrily as Olivia leapt like a gazelle towards the tallest part of the field.

Copying her fried Maithri started leaping as well, her marvelous flexibility allowing her to quickly catch up. Olivia only had one chance to look over her shoulder as she dashed headfirst into the wall of palest blue. Maithri was leaping on top of her, they both screamed loudly and tumbled head over heels into the cushioning bower created by their own sprawling bodies. The curtain of tall grass, now towering over their heads rasped closed behind them, trapping them both in a kind of sheltered cave of flattened stems as comfortable and springy as a synthetic mattress.

They both grunted and disentangled their bodies. "Come see the tower, you said." Maithri snorted in annoyance, even though she was smiling, her voice echoed and boomed in the confined secluded space. She looked upward startled, the night sky was open above them, speckled with unfamiliar twinkling points of light, and yet the sounds around them had dropped off precipitously, nearly to the point of silence. "How strange..." She whispered, even her quietest voice loud and clearly audible to both of them. At the sound of a loud rustling she turned to face Olivia and squeaked in alarm. Her girlfriend was rapidly stripping off all her clothes and tossing them towards the edge of the large mottled clearing they had made on accident.

"W-What are you doing!" Maithri hissed as Olivia pulled off her panties and tossed them onto the growing pile.

"I... I want to feel it... Everywhere." The girl murmured dreamily, stripping off the tight black sports bra, her tiny breasts jiggling slightly, her biobronze nipple ring glinting in the milky moonlight. "Don't you?" Olivia asked quietly, her eyes sliding slowly up Maithri's body towards her face. The Indian girl reached out and took hold of a defiant nearby frond that had somehow miraculously survived their frenzied flattening tussle. Its rough texture sent shivers down her spine, her flesh all the way up to her breasts tingled from their run through the grass. Olivia now stood before her completely naked. "Strip." She mouthed, grinning mischievously.

Maithri flushed and reached up to her top wrap, her fingers trembling, uncertain if she had the courage to follow her girlfriend's insane suggestion. And yet, her hands had already started moving on their own, twisting the heavy fabric around her neck, exposing her decadently large boobs to the cool night air, her large brown nipples were already hard. The unwrapping continued, her bare hips came into view next, and then all she was wearing was her surprisingly vivid and immature looking yellow sandals. "N-No underwear?" Olivia remarked a little breathlessly. Maithri shook her head and tossed her bottom wrap onto the pile of their clothing.

"I never wore underwear before I came here, I only started because you bought me some, but the truth is I prefer it like this." She said somewhat aloofly, expecting Olivia to react poorly, or at least dramatically. But to her surprise her girlfriend did neither, she simply closed the distance between them and reached out gingerly, her hand hesitating for a moment before making contact with Maithri's warm flesh.

"You've gained a little weight, haven't you?" Olivia asked curiously as she stroked Maithri's belly. Maithri blushed and looked away, under normal circumstances she might have taken offense at this seemingly callous question, but the truth was her body was changing and she had gained some weight, although for reasons that had nothing to do with her improved diet. "And your boobs... They look a lot bigger, if that's even possible." Olivia snorted, sliding both hands upward until she was cupping Maithri's absurdly large breasts. She twisted her wrists, sliding her fingers around their sides, grabbing both of the girl's nipples firmly between her fingers.

They were large and succulent, slightly moist with sweat and oil, an intoxicating aroma wafted from between them. Maithri kicked off her sandals, guiltily enjoying the feeling of having her nipples lightly pinched, she tried to imagine how her breasts would look in several months, even larger probably, swollen, aching. She imagined a tiny mouth latched on, perhaps a different mouth on each one, sucking, drinking. She whimpered and sank to her knees, pulling free of Olivia's grasp, the rough matted grass beneath them scouring and invigorating. She flopped backwards, spreading her legs, luxuriating in the cool night air.