Chapter Text
Mumble took the last view of her beloved city with her human eyes. It didn’t seem any different from any other day - the trees were growing, the factories were working and the people were smiling. The sun was shining, but a little wind was helping the temperature stay comfortable. Everything was perfect.
Of course it was. From each patch of grass to every person’s job and life, she made sure it was perfect. This whole city was designed by her, every little detail saved in her memory with fondness. She has spent her whole life working towards this and now the fruits of her labor were laying upon her, forever beautiful in the evening's sun.
Now it was time to make her perfect.
She slowly stood up, her old bones not handling sudden movement anymore. She took her cane and made her way towards a tall building, smiling and waving to everyone on her way there. No one may have known what she was planning, but it was nobody’s business to question the sweet Mumble, that one older lady that helped put foundations to the city, start every factory and never forget the name of any resident. The fact that she made all those names and people never got out as a known fact.
She walked into the Mined Corporation building like into her own house, which it was about to become. Every scientist knew her here by her name and she knew them too. Only one of them knew what she was there for, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t welcome here. She was welcome everywhere in the city.
When she found her way into her room, she was greeted with a smile and a nod. Nothing more was needed. They both knew what she had come for.
As she laid down on the white bed she couldn’t stop a smile.
In less than an hour, she will leave her mortal body and her consciousness will be transmitted to the chicken, which later would be connected to the robot controlling the city. And then she will be eternal, always connected to her people in a way that wasn’t previously possible.
As Mumble closed her eyes, she hoped to forever hear nothing, but joyful sounds of her city’s life.
Mumble woke up to the sound of humming fans, buzzling wires and rattling screws. Instead of a flesh, feathered body, what she felt was steel, metal and the horrible hole inside of her. A hole that carried a weight she could not understand. She wasn’t able to feel anything resembling a limb, not as if she’s been paralyzed, but as if it was gone or never existing in the first place. Her hair, her moustache, her face… Her whole body all felt wrong. All felt steel, hollow and cold.
Then, one by one, she started hearing more and more. More beeps, more clanks, more whirs. Every set of sounds seemed to come from a completely different area than the previous ones, but all still felt like coming from a part of her. She could compare it to listening to her own heartbeat, if her heart was pumping quicksilver instead of blood.
Then she heard a pair of familiar voices:
“…n’t be scared, I’ve done this before!”, a cheerful voice exclaimed, trying to talk over loud beeping right next to it.
“You’ve… plugged a chicken to a computer before?”, a sceptical voice answered, its tone suggesting the nature of intelligence of whoever it was speaking to.
“Well, maybe not exactly, but something like that!”, the owner of the cheery voice didn’t seem to catch the underlying insult. “Besides, it’s not really plugging in the chicken, it’s more of…”
Mumble tuned out the conversation, trying to feel her way through… whatever this new form may have been. It couldn’t be the chicken, she knew that by now, but it also didn’t feel like any computer she knew from her city. She definitely was bigger than before, but it was incredibly hard to place any of the sounds in space. She could be sure of one - the voices were closer than most of things she could hear. In addition to that, their weight felt weird, almost… unbalanced.
But it all also hurt horribly. She thought sufferings of her mortal, never fitting her well enough flesh were bad, but this was something new. She felt countless scratches and little wounds that she had no way to relieve, old mechanisms she felt were vital to her that were barely working and even some parts felt like they were about to fall off her!
Then she could see. It didn’t feel like opening her eyes, more like the ability to perceive suddenly came to her.
A room before her was a small, cramped corridor made of metal plates, each a bit different hue of gray than the other. It seemed like she was looking with only one eye from an upper corner. The space was so small, she wondered how two humans at once could fit standing in it.
Then she was also looking at the kitchen. The corridor did not disappear, the new area just opened right next to it. It didn’t seem much bigger or less metallic than the hall, but it was in a definitely worse condition. The counter was stained with a dark liquid she didn't want to know the origin of, empty shelves were broken and her vision seemed to be obstructed by a cobweb.
One cramped area after another, her vision was soon filled with a small amount of rooms. Among them she could definitely recognize a sleeping area intended for only one person, a storage room filled with mostly empty space and insects, a poorly-equipped armory…
And finally, the bridge, where Mumble recognized the two people present. A person with long brown hair and many scars decorating their face was sitting on a wheelchair, clicking keys and connecting tables on the control board. They had… a body of a bird laying on her lap.
The other one was standing up with their iridescent wings folded on their back.
They were staring right into her eye.
“…Mumble?”, Grian asked, suddenly straightening up in shock. “Mumble, can you see us?!”
Scar also looked up to the camera, her face full of hope, while Mumble desperately tried to find a way to answer. She had no mouth, she couldn’t just speak like she used to! There was no way to write anything down, to even show with movement, she... how could she communicate even a simple “Yes” or “No”?!
After a few seconds of silence, Grian looked at Scar with a face full of confusion.
“Is it me, or is something... beeping louder?”
...Huh.
Hm.
Maybe she could...
“...It's a morse code!”, Scar exclaimed, immediately taking a danty little device from her shirt pocket and turning it on. Was it a translator? Why did she even have it...
Not important. Very not important.
[What am I? What have you made me?]
“Mumble, it’s still you!” Scar reassured, a small smile of relief appeared in her face. “We know you wanted your peace, but… we just couldn’t leave you there, okay?”
Mumble felt anger. She had worked countless years for her happy ever after, to retire in the perfect city of her design, one that could not have been disturbed by anything and now it was taken away from her, for whatever reason! It didn’t even matter anymore, all the work she’s put in could be just thrown in the trash! If she had blood, it would be boiling now, she was sure of that!
But her body had no way to react like that anymore.
“Something attacked”, Grian added, their head wings fluttering nervously. “We… We don't know what it was. But it was about to destroy everything there. You too.”
Oh.
That… didn’t change her anger at all. Just redirected it to someone else.
But it also made her a little relieved that at least those two cared about her enough to take her.
[What am I?], she asked, desperate for an answer.
“Well… this is just a temporary solution.” Scar started the answer in a way that did not help Mumble calm down. “We know it’s not the best… not good at all, actually, it’s quite old, but it was all we had time to grab…”
“You’re the spaceship, Mumble.” Grian interrupted her. “But we’ll find you a better body as soon as we can, okay?”
…A ship?
From a motherhouse of the entire city, a governor with absolute control over it, a place where her word as the perfection and everything was a perfection… to an old, abandoned vehicle for others to control.
[...I need some time.]
Grian groaned as the lights went out and surrounding sounds of machines quieted down. They looked right and saw the control board lost its power, now being just a useless set of keyboards and buttons.
“I knew it’s gonna happen!” they exclaimed, sitting down on a cold floor. They wanted to yell or scream, go for a fly… but all surrounding them was a vast, dark space.
“We’ll just wait a little. I’m sure she’s not mad at us”, Scar came a little closer, her wheelchair barely fitting in an already tight space.
“Yes, but… can you even control her now? Can you choose where we are going?” Grian looked up to see only embarrassment on Scar’s face.
“...Don’t answer.”
“But hey, someone will find us soon enough!” Scar patted them on their hair in an attempt to cheer them up. “Besides, there was no better choice, right?”
Grian sighed, putting their head in their hands.
“...Right”, they agreed. “But it doesn’t make it right.”
After all shit they went through, barely getting away from an apocalypse, they were left floating in space, just the three of them, all alone and lonely.