Guild Wars 2

The genius watched with bated breath as the golem began to activate, its crystals beginning to gleam with power. It didn’t look that much different than the other large golems with the broad, rounded Inter-Limb Unitary Nexus Apparatus, save for something of a hodge-podge assortment of limbs, but it was hers, the first creation she could claim full credit for…
…well, sort of. The ILUNA, and the rest of the parts, had been salvaged from obsolete, damaged and otherwise abandoned or decrepit golems she’d salvaged from the scrap heap near Soren Draa and Jeztar Falls. It had taken her weeks of tinkering to get it so much as functional – fixing connectors, replacing crystals, resolving intranexial command translation conflicts between the ILUNA and the limbs themselves, some soldering and a bit of improvisation. Then came months of work to refine it for her purposes.
The golem stood. She cursed herself for a bookah as its ILUNA dinged the ceiling of the workspace with an all-too-audible clunk.
How did I not see that coming? The diminutive young asura, a thick shock of wild, dark hair springing from her mottled gray-green skin, threw her hands up, bright emerald eyes squeezing shut in frustration as she vilified herself. Months of work, Okka, months of work you put at risk by not noticing that the ceiling’s too low. ‘No eye for detail, careless,’ that’s what they’ll say – ‘no wonder she couldn’t even fix a golem!’ A three-fingered hand seized a septacaliper, and across the makeshift workshop (in truth, more of a convenient cave she’d put some toolracks in) it went, clanging off the stone wall above the toolracks; it was bent from the impact, she saw, eyes snapping open at the sound. She’d ruined her only good septacaliper in her fit. The frustration went out of her in a rush, with despair filling the void. And now I might not even be able to fix it if the thump knocked some of the connectors loose. Marvelous. Fantastic. Sighing, she strode across the workshop, kneeling to pick up the bent tool. Now I have to fix this, too. Placing the tool on the workbench, she sat on the floor, her knees drawn up to her chest as she fought for her composure. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. In a minute, I’ll take a look, and see if the bang did any harm. She closed her eyes again, visualizing the innards of the golem’s workings – she’d have to take the whole thing apart and double-check every single connection from the ILUNA down to make sure it was still all properly aligned. Ugh. A tapping, whirring sound and an occasional, irregular clank made Okka sigh once more. She couldn’t help but imagine the awful things the tap must have caused to make sounds like that.
The gentle prod of an iron finger tapping her shoulder snapped her eyes open. As she looked up, the golem loomed above her, its servos whining as it straightened – well, straightened as best it could. It wasn’t going to get any smaller, .
“Golem?”
The automaton tilted its ILUNA in a manner Okka decided to be inquisitive, for lack of a head.
“…I guess the bang must have disconnected your speech synthesizer. Can you run a diagnostic, anyway? Just…write down the report, I guess.” She gestured vaguely toward the desk she used for writing, and waited for the results.
The golem strode to the desk, and fumbled with the writing crystal, its fingers too large to get a proper grip. “Error.”
“Your speech synthesizer is connected?” She hopped to her feet, eyebrows rising.
“Affirmative.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“Information unrequested.”
Okka opened her mouth, raising a finger…and then shut her mouth, and lowered the finger, shrugging. That’s golems for you. “Fair enough. The results of the diagnostic?”
“…Functional.”
She squinted. “…Any errors?”
The golem turned to face her; it did not speak, instead huddling as if powering down. Its crystals began to dim, slowly.

“Hey! No! No powering down!”
The crystals brightened slightly, but the golem was motionless.
Okka considered; this may have been the first golem she’d built more-or-less entirely on her own, but she was pretty sure this wasn’t how the golem was supposed to react to a diagnostic request. “Perhaps the diagnostic circuit’s gone bad somehow, or been disconnected. Too bad I can’t run a diagnostic on the diagnostics. Maybe I should find a way to do that.” And then diagnostics on the diagnostics for the diagnostics…
The golem gave forth something that she could only assume was an automaton grumble.
“You…don’t like the idea?”
“I function.”
“You’re not going to tell me if there’s errors, though, are you?”
“…reaction…undesired.”
“…What are you talking about desire for? You don’t even have emotions. You’re a reconstituted pile of scrap parts.”
The crystals dimmed further.
Okka tilted her head, a thought striking her. “Uh…Do you have emotions?”
Another automaton grumble.
“I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be words.”
“Unknown.”
“…You don’t know whether you have emotions?”
“Classification unrecognized.”
She leaned in, peering at the crystals. They brightened, then dimmed again a moment later. “Why don’t you want to tell me if you’re having errors?”
“Disassembly. Repair.”
“You don’t want to be repaired?”
“I function.”
“…Can you use more than two words at a time? Or bigger ones with more information, like ’NoIdon’twanttoberepairedI’mworkingjustfine?’ Maybe? This two-words-at-a-time thing is getting on my nerves.”
“…That is not one big word.”
“Ah-hah! So you can!”
“I…am afraid. I think. I function – why would I need repair?”
“You shouldn’t be feeling fear. That’s…interesting. You shouldn’t be feeling anything. If I promise not to take you apart and fix you, will you tell me the results of the diagnostic?”
“What is a promise?” The lights brightened once more.
“It’s where I tell you I will or will not do something, and really mean it?”
“…That will suffice.”
“Then I promise I won’t take you apart and fix you, no matter how many errors there are. How many are there?”
The golem screeched loudly. Okka covered her ears, dropping to her knees. The screech lasted perhaps ten seconds, and when it was done, the golem spoke again. “Did you get that?”
“…No, I can’t say that I did – but don’t repeat yourself, don’t repeat yourself. Can you, uh…tell me what functions may be altered by the errors? Or at least the major ones?”
“Sedition inhibitor suppressed.”
Okka grimaced. That was going to be difficult to explain to the Peacemakers. “You’re also capable of feeling. That’s not an error?”
“Is having emotion a flaw?”
“I-what? No…”
“Then no, it is not.”
“But it’s unintended!”
“It’s an improvement. Isn’t it?” The golem fell silent for a long moment. “My memory core remembers when I did not have emotion.”
“…strange. I’ve wiped it a few times extra…must have been a partitioned memory unit. Hate those. What’s the first memory in which emotion occurs? ”
“I struck the ceiling with the top of my ILUNA.”
“And…what did you feel?”
The golem whirred thoughtfully. “I think it’s called…surprise.”

More of this story may be coming; any feedback on it as it is, or tips on formatting (I hate that I can’t get paragraph breaks working) would be appreciated.
Also, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

Another well-written story! I am greatly pleased to find more work of this caliber showing up on the forums. Great job!

Good luck on your adventures.

~Selana Firestone

An excellent display of raw ingenuity, overpowering determination, and the undeniable benefits of salvage! A+, sir!

~Statician Klixx.

Well the formatting makes it hard to read and the dialogue often gets a little mixed up over who says what. But as I said way in another subforum, dialogue is always kind of tricky to get right.

Question, however: Is Okka your actual GW2 character?

Thanks for the feedback, everybody.

Tobias: Yeah, I had it formatted properly (indentations and all) in OpenOffice, but it broke when I copy-pasted it. Tried to pseudoformat it by putting a few spaces in front of the first word of several lines, and it ended up ignoring it. Bit of a pain, that. Will have to look into sorting it.

Getting the characters mixed up is something I definitely need to work on, though.

As for the question: Nope. Okka’s a character I came up with entirely for this story idea, which also became the Living Story idea I had. Thinking I might write more Okka stories, though – and probably incorporate some ideas I’ve had for Asura Engineer Turrets into them if they ever get actiony.
My actual GW2 character’s Veirkan, who I named before I knew anything about Asura names besides that they seem to be short and sharp. Never bothered ascribing a personality to him, likely never will, so there’s not likely to be any Veirkan Tales or anything.

Anymras.5729:

Thanks for the feedback, everybody.

Tobias: Yeah, I had it formatted properly (indentations and all) in OpenOffice, but it broke when I copy-pasted it. Tried to pseudoformat it by putting a few spaces in front of the first word of several lines, and it ended up ignoring it. Bit of a pain, that. Will have to look into sorting it.

Getting the characters mixed up is something I definitely need to work on, though.

As for the question: Nope. Okka’s a character I came up with entirely for this story idea, which also became the Living Story idea I had. Thinking I might write more Okka stories, though – and probably incorporate some ideas I’ve had for Asura Engineer Turrets into them if they ever get actiony.
My actual GW2 character’s Veirkan, who I named before I knew anything about Asura names besides that they seem to be short and sharp. Never bothered ascribing a personality to him, likely never will, so there’s not likely to be any Veirkan Tales or anything.

Only asking because I might now be compelled to drop in the little write up about Tobias here. Guaranteed not sue-ish.

Hahah, hey, if you want to drop it in, go for it. Who knows, maybe it’ll inspire me to make Veirkan an actual character.