Chapter 357 - Meet The Team...

The next day Afton was awoken with an unfamiliar sound at his bedside... He wipes the dust from his eyes and takes a blurry look at the disturbance, afterwards spotting the metal ball floating in front of his face while beeping away happily.

...​​

"Couldn't you do this like, five minutes later?" he asks with a tired frown.

"Beep Beep-wooo!" it chirps happily, though Afton has no idea what it just said, or even if it was intelligible in the first place.

...

"Nyx, did you understand any of that?" he inquires, hoping his AI would have some way to translate the eye-bot's peculiar and strangely expressive beeping.

"I'm not sure... Is there a port I can interface with?" she asks, a wire sticking out from the wrist of the suit.

Afton raises a brow and is about to start looking to robot over for a port when it turns around and presents it to him, as if it'd understood what they were saying. "Huh, that's a good sign." he mutters, plugging the port in... To be honest, this felt oddly sexual despite the lack of, you know, sexuality...

"*Ahem*, is the port in correctly Nyx?"

"It is, give me a moment."

Afton nods and sits up, grabbing some water out of his bag and sipping it to wake himself up faster... Nyx seems to be taking her time, so he brushes his teeth and prepares everything else that might be needed for travel. After a couple more minutes of holding his wrist up against the eye-bot's port Nyx finally finishes.

"User, this eye-bot seems to possess information on how to manufacture more of it. It's a Prototype Duraframe model, and seems more suited for combat than records on the Enclave suggest. This model you have named 'ED-E' has been tasked with delivering this information to an Enclave base somewhere in Navarro, though this data seems far more encrypted than the rest... It is currently beyond my ability to decipher, perhaps my younger sister would have more luck?" Nyx explains.

Afton rubs his face, what's an eye-bot with top-secret information doing wandering the wasteland alone?... The Prototype Eye-bot schematics drew a lot of his attention however, his 'dream' was to conquer the Mojave, and he wasn't planning on doing so via typical means of uniting people and overthrowing the current ruling government. No, robots were far more loyal and stable.

These Eye-bots gave him more leeway though, he could make hundreds or maybe even thousands of them and have them patrol the Mojave as a sort of police. It wasn't out of the means of possibility, and seemed pretty easy to do once the Think Tank was properly set up.

"Dog-meat! Come here." he calls, the Cyberdog trotting through the door not long after, "Nyx, transmit the data to Dog-meat so he can send it to Glados."

"Will do." she chirps and ports into Dog-meats neck, the Cyberdog going silent as it begins sending the data to Glados. It'd take a couple hours as they would be encrypting the data before sending it off, while Afton didn't think anyone would be able to pick it up, it was better to be safe than sorry.

While that's happening Afton looks to ED-E and gives the robot a poke, causing it to wobble in mid-air. "So, since your duty as been completed and all of your data is being sent to the Enclave, what will you do now?" he asks, making sure to emphasize that its duty was done.

"Beep Beeeeep!"

...

"Nyx?"

"ED-E says that it does not know, it is supposed to be reprogrammed after the information was transmitted to prevent anyone stealing it." she translates.

Afton shrugs, "Er, ok." he says, not really wanting to waste time reprogramming it, "I am now your owner, you belong to me and exist to protect me and all I own. Understand?"

"Beep?"

"'What should I do with the data I possess' it asks." Nyx says in a dull voice, obviously concentrating on transmitting data to Dog-meat.

"Delete it." Afton states, knowing that Nyx had already downloaded it. After a couple second ED-E beeps again, signalling that the data had indeed been deleted. Afton smirks at the fact the Enclave would never receive the data that was rightfully theirs.

[Companion gained : ED-E]

[Comapnion Perk gained : Enhanced Sensors]

[Enhanced Sensors] : Enemies are easier to detect and target, even while cloaked.

Huh, Afton wasn't sure that Perk was actually any good... Didn't Nyx basically already do that? Hmm, maybe it affects her as well? "Nyx, something just happened, do you feel anything different?" he asks.

...

"Not that I am aware of?" she says, wondering if her sensors were malfunctioning at not sensing anything. She deactivates and then reactivates them to see if there was a problem, and only then spotting what'd changed. "User, my sensors have somehow improved?... My range has almost doubled and has become better at detecting peculiarities in the terrain."

Afton nod with a grin, "Good... Now, how long left until the data transfer is complete?"

"Two hours and forty-six minutes."

...

"You serious?... God damn it." he mutters. "Alright ED-E, come with me, it's time to introduce you to everyone while we have time."

ED-E ends up receiving a 'warm' response from the group. Boone didn't really care, Karl wanted to know if he could rig a mini-nuke to it, Josie wanted to deconstruct it, and Anja disliked being unable to talk to it.

Indeed, a very 'warm' response. Though, the robot didn't seem to care. It just continued hovering along and beeping happily. Afton wasn't sure whether it was programmed this was, or whether it was simply just an easy-going robot...