Murder Drones: Reborn As A Golden Retriever
Death, as it transpired, was not the grand cessation of consciousness that I had been culturally conditioned to anticipate throughout my twenty-three years of thoroughly unremarkable human existence, but rather something far more akin to an administrative inconvenience—a bureaucratic hiccup in the cosmic machinery that governs the transition of souls between states of being, if indeed souls exist and if indeed "states of being" constitutes appropriate terminology for whatever metaphysical jurisdiction I now found myself navigating without map, compass, or the faintest comprehension of the rules governing this particular game.
Permit me to elucidate upon the circumstances of my demise, for context—as any competent narrator understands—is the scaffolding upon which comprehension is constructed.
I was, in my former existence, a specimen of humanity so thoroughly mediocre that I occasionally wondered whether the universe had simply forgotten I existed and was operating on autopilot with regards to my continued biological function. I inhabited a studio apartment of approximately forty-two square meters on the seventh floor of a residential building distinguished from countless other residential buildings by absolutely nothing whatsoever. My domicile contained the accumulated detritus of a life lived without particular ambition: secondhand furniture acquired through transactions I could barely recall, electronic devices of modest capability that I used primarily to consume entertainment media rather than create anything of value, a refrigerator perpetually stocked with provisions requiring minimal culinary intervention, and a houseplant of the Dracaena genus that had long since shuffled off its botanical mortal coil due to my catastrophic inability to maintain any sort of consistent care schedule for anything other than my own base biological requirements.
Vocationally, I occupied a position within a corporate hierarchy so magnificently irrelevant that I occasionally received emails addressed to names that were not mine, sent by colleagues who had apparently confused me with other equally forgettable employees or perhaps with the concept of an employee in general rather than any specific instantiation thereof. I manipulated spreadsheets with the enthusiasm of a medieval peasant tilling fields he would never own. I responded to electronic correspondence with the creative vigor of an automated system designed to acknowledge receipt of messages without actually engaging with their content. I attended meetings where individuals of marginally greater importance than myself discussed matters of marginally greater significance while I contemplated whether the ergonomic chair I had been provided was slowly and deliberately causing spinal damage as some sort of long-term corporate cost-reduction strategy.
My interpersonal relationships were similarly bereft of any distinguishing characteristics that might have warranted cosmic attention. I possessed acquaintances rather than friends—fellow humans with whom I occasionally shared beverages and superficial observations about weather patterns and popular entertainment programs, but with whom I had never achieved the profound emotional intimacy that supposedly characterizes genuine human connection. Romantic entanglements remained theoretical constructs, my attempts at courtship consistently undermined by my comprehensive inability to maintain eye contact during conversations and my unfortunate tendency to discuss obscure historical trivia at moments when such discussions were neither solicited nor welcome.
I was, in summation, precisely the sort of human being who might slip on a banana peel at the top of a stairwell and tumble thirty-seven steps to his death without anyone pausing to question whether such an exit possessed sufficient narrative dignity for a protagonist.
Which is, of course, exactly what happened.
The banana peel—and I feel compelled to emphasize this detail because it remains a source of profound posthumous embarrassment—was positioned with what I can only characterize as malevolent precision at the apex of my apartment building's central stairwell. I had been returning from a brief excursion to the local convenience establishment, my cognitive faculties occupied entirely with the monumentally consequential decision of whether to order Thai cuisine or pizza for my solitary evening meal, when my left foot made contact with that treacherous yellow crescent of discarded fruit integument and my entire existence pivoted—quite literally—toward its conclusion.
The descent was comprehensive.
I made contact with each of the thirty-seven stairs in what the paramedics would later describe, with what I suspect was poorly concealed professional amusement, as "an impressively thorough introduction to gravitational physics." My arms windmilled with desperate futility. My briefcase—containing documents of absolutely no importance to anyone, including myself—launched into an independent trajectory that I tracked with my peripheral vision even as my primary visual attention was occupied with the rapidly approaching floor. A sound emerged from my throat that I can only describe as the vocalization of a man confronting his own mortality while simultaneously experiencing the kind of embarrassment that transcends physical pain.
The lobby floor was cold.
That sensation—the chill of institutional tile against my cheek, the distant cacophony of someone shouting for emergency services, the curious detachment that accompanies the recognition that one's corporeal vessel has sustained damage beyond any reasonable expectation of repair—was my final experience as a human being.
Death itself was anticlimactic. There was no luminescent tunnel beckoning toward celestial destinations, no choir of angels performing welcoming hymns, no deceased relatives materializing to guide my consciousness toward whatever metaphysical jurisdiction awaited. There was simply cessation—a termination of sensory input and cognitive processing so complete that it defied adequate linguistic representation. I was, and then I was not, and the transition between these states occurred with neither ceremony nor explanation.
How long this non-existence persisted, I cannot say with any confidence. Duration becomes a rather meaningless concept when one lacks the consciousness necessary to perceive duration's passage. It might have been microseconds. It might have been geological epochs. It might have been no time at all, in any sense that the word "time" retains coherent meaning.
What I can say with absolute certainty is that non-existence eventually concluded, and what replaced it was considerably more peculiar than anything I had anticipated during my previous life's occasional late-night philosophical contemplations about the nature of mortality.
Consciousness reconvened within my cognitive architecture with all the gentleness of a thermonuclear detonation.
Sensory data flooded through neural pathways that felt simultaneously familiar and profoundly wrong in ways I lacked the immediate capacity to articulate. I perceived light, but the quality of that light differed from anything my previous optical apparatus had ever processed—richer in certain wavelength ranges, diminished in others, processed through visual cortices optimized for entirely different environmental conditions than those I had inhabited for twenty-three years. I perceived sound, but the resolution and range of that auditory input exceeded my prior capabilities by orders of magnitude—I could hear the microscopic settling of crystalline structures, the subtle vibration of air molecules responding to temperature differentials, frequencies that human ears had never been designed to detect. And I perceived scent—here I must pause to emphasize the comprehensive inadequacy of human language to convey what I experienced—scent of such overwhelming complexity and richness that it constituted an entirely new category of sensory experience, a symphony of chemical information that painted the world in dimensions I had never known existed.
My consciousness, still reeling from its recent discontinuation and unexpected resumption, struggled to integrate these inputs into anything resembling coherent perception.
And then something else manifested.
It appeared in my field of perception without transition or preamble, as if it had always existed in some adjacent dimension and had only now deigned to make itself visible to my reconstituted awareness. A translucent azure rectangle, hovering approximately thirty centimeters before whatever optical apparatus I now possessed, rendered in typography that seemed to shift and shimmer at the edges of legibility—characters that were simultaneously present and not-present in a manner that violated my understanding of how visual information should behave.
The rectangle contained text.
Text that, despite its impossible presentation, I could read with perfect clarity:
『 SYSTEM INITIALIZING 』
Welcome, Transmigratory Entity.
You have been selected for participation in the EMOTIONAL COLLECTION SYSTEM.
Designation: Canine Consciousness Vessel (Golden Retriever Variant)
Location: Copper-9, Outer Planetary Mining Colony (Defunct)
Status: Recently Reincarnated
Please stand by for comprehensive orientation...
I attempted to vocalize my confusion, my alarm, my desperate need for clarification regarding what in the absolute concatenation of cosmic absurdities was happening to me.
The sound that emerged from my throat was not human speech.
It was a bark.
A distinctly canine vocalization—a "borf" of bewilderment that resonated through vocal cords I had definitely not possessed in my previous existence.
The azure rectangle flickered, as if acknowledging my distress with something approaching digital sympathy, and additional text materialized beneath the initial message in a scrolling cascade of information that my frantically processing consciousness struggled to absorb:
『 EMOTIONAL COLLECTION SYSTEM — ORIENTATION MODULE 』
Greetings, Host Entity!
You have been reincarnated into a new corporeal vessel following the termination of your previous biological existence. The circumstances of your selection remain classified at security clearances exceeding your current authorization level, but rest assured that your participation in the Emotional Collection System is both mandatory and potentially beneficial to your continued existence!
THE EMOTIONAL COLLECTION SYSTEM allows you to harvest EMOTIONAL ENERGY from sentient beings within your proximity. This energy is quantified as EMOTIONAL POINTS (EP), which can be expended to enhance your physical capabilities, unlock dormant evolutionary traits, and potentially achieve transcendence beyond your current biological limitations!
Current EP Balance: 0
Would you like to proceed to the detailed tutorial?
[YES] [ALSO YES]
I stared at this impossible interface with what I can only characterize as comprehensive ontological bewilderment. A system? Emotional points? Harvesting energy from sentient beings? What manner of cosmic bureaucracy had ensnared my transmigratory soul, and why had it chosen to deposit said soul into what was apparently a canine vessel on a defunct mining colony?
The questions multiplied faster than my consciousness could formulate them.
But the rectangle pulsed with patient insistence, awaiting my response.
With no apparent alternative methodology for interaction—I lacked hands with which to press buttons, and my attempts at vocalization had thus far produced only canine sounds—I directed my thoughts toward affirmation. Yes. Proceed. Explain to me what impossible circumstances have befallen my existence.
The rectangle expanded dramatically, filling my visual field with cascading information:
『 EMOTIONAL COLLECTION SYSTEM — COMPREHENSIVE TUTORIAL 』
SECTION 1: EMOTIONAL POINT ACQUISITION
Emotional Points (EP) are harvested automatically when sentient beings within your proximity experience strong emotions while directing attention toward you, the Host Entity. The strength, purity, and direction of the emotion determines the EP yield. Emotions experienced by beings who are not aware of your presence or not directing their emotional response toward you will not generate harvestable EP.
EMOTIONAL CATEGORIES AND BASE VALUES:
JOY — Base EP Yield: 5 — Generated when beings experience happiness, delight, or contentment specifically in response to your presence or actions
AFFECTION — Base EP Yield: 8 — Generated when beings experience love, fondness, attachment, or warm emotional bonding directed toward you
AMUSEMENT — Base EP Yield: 4 — Generated when beings find your actions, appearance, or behaviors entertaining or humorous
CURIOSITY — Base EP Yield: 3 — Generated when beings experience wonder, interest, or inquisitiveness regarding you specifically
COMFORT — Base EP Yield: 6 — Generated when beings experience solace, security, emotional relief, or psychological stabilization through your presence
EXCITEMENT — Base EP Yield: 5 — Generated when beings experience enthusiasm, anticipation, or energetic emotional engagement involving you
SURPRISE — Base EP Yield: 4 — Generated when beings experience unexpected emotional responses triggered by your presence or actions
FEAR — Base EP Yield: 2 — Generated when beings experience apprehension, anxiety, or terror regarding you (reduced yield due to negative emotional valence)
ANGER — Base EP Yield: 1 — Generated when beings experience frustration, irritation, or rage directed at you (minimal yield due to negative emotional valence)
SADNESS — Base EP Yield: 3 — Generated when beings experience sorrow, grief, or melancholy in relation to you
YIELD MODIFIERS:
Emotional Intensity Multiplier — Stronger emotions yield proportionally greater EP: ×1.5 for moderate intensity, ×2.0 for strong intensity, ×3.0 for overwhelming intensity emotions
First Encounter Bonus — +50% EP for the first emotional interaction with any individual sentient being, encouraging diverse social engagement
Sustained Attention Bonus — +25% EP when a being maintains emotional focus on you for extended duration, rewarding relationship building
Multi-Being Multiplier — Simultaneous emotional responses from multiple beings stack additively, incentivizing group interactions
EXAMPLE CALCULATION: A sentient drone experiences strong joy (×2.0 intensity modifier) upon first encountering you (×1.5 first encounter bonus). Base JOY value of 5 EP × 2.0 × 1.5 = 15 EP harvested from single emotional response.
I absorbed this information with the cognitive equivalent of someone attempting to drink from a fire hose. The system was apparently designed to reward me for evoking emotional responses from other beings—positive emotions more substantially than negative ones, which at least suggested some form of ethical architecture underlying the cosmic machinery. I was meant to be a collector of feelings, a harvester of emotional energy, accumulating metaphysical currency through the simple act of making others experience things in my presence.
The tutorial continued scrolling, apparently interpreting my stunned silence as invitation to proceed:
SECTION 2: EMOTIONAL POINT EXPENDITURE
Accumulated EP can be expended through the ENHANCEMENT MENU to improve your physical capabilities and unlock advanced traits. All enhancements are calibrated to your current vessel type (Canine/Golden Retriever) and will manifest as amplified versions of naturally-occurring canine characteristics.
ENHANCEMENT CATEGORIES:
CATEGORY A: PHYSICAL FITNESS ATTRIBUTES
STRENGTH I through V — Costs: 50 / 150 / 400 / 1,000 / 2,500 EP — Increases muscular power with each level providing +25% bite force, +20% carrying capacity, +15% impact resistance — Cost progression increases approximately 3× per level
SPEED I through V — Costs: 50 / 150 / 400 / 1,000 / 2,500 EP — Increases locomotion velocity with each level providing +30% sprint speed, +20% acceleration, +15% sustained running endurance — Cost progression increases approximately 3× per level
ENDURANCE I through V — Costs: 40 / 120 / 320 / 850 / 2,100 EP — Increases stamina reserves with each level providing +35% activity duration before fatigue, +25% recovery rate, +20% environmental resistance — Cost progression increases approximately 2.7× per level
AGILITY I through V — Costs: 45 / 135 / 360 / 950 / 2,350 EP — Increases flexibility and coordination with each level providing +25% reaction time improvement, +30% balance enhancement, +20% jumping ability increase — Cost progression increases approximately 3× per level
DURABILITY I through V — Costs: 60 / 180 / 480 / 1,200 / 3,000 EP — Increases physical resilience with each level providing +20% impact absorption, +25% bone density, +15% wound recovery acceleration — Cost progression increases approximately 3× per level
CATEGORY B: SENSORY ENHANCEMENTS
OLFACTION I through V — Costs: 35 / 100 / 280 / 750 / 1,900 EP — Amplifies scent detection capabilities with each level providing +40% detection range, +35% scent discrimination accuracy, +25% temporal scent tracking (ability to perceive older scent trails) — Cost progression increases approximately 2.8× per level
AUDITION I through V — Costs: 35 / 100 / 280 / 750 / 1,900 EP — Amplifies hearing capabilities with each level providing +30% frequency range expansion, +40% directional precision, +35% distance detection — Cost progression increases approximately 2.8× per level
VISION I through V — Costs: 40 / 115 / 310 / 820 / 2,050 EP — Amplifies visual processing with each level providing +25% low-light sensitivity, +30% motion detection, +20% color perception enhancement — Cost progression increases approximately 2.7× per level
CATEGORY C: CANINE TRAIT AMPLIFICATIONS
LOYALTY AURA I through V — Costs: 80 / 250 / 680 / 1,800 / 4,500 EP — Amplifies your natural aura of trustworthiness with each level providing +15% probability of positive first impressions, +20% resistance to suspicion or hostility, +25% bond formation acceleration — Cost progression increases approximately 2.7× per level
EMOTIONAL INTUITION I through V — Costs: 70 / 210 / 570 / 1,500 / 3,800 EP — Amplifies ability to perceive others' emotional states with each level providing +30% emotional detection accuracy, +25% intensity assessment precision, +20% emotional trajectory prediction — Cost progression increases approximately 2.7× per level
COMFORTING PRESENCE I through V — Costs: 75 / 225 / 610 / 1,600 / 4,000 EP — Amplifies your natural calming effect on other beings with each level providing +20% anxiety reduction in nearby beings, +25% trust generation rate, +15% emotional stabilization effect — Cost progression increases approximately 2.7× per level
PACK BONDING I through V — Costs: 65 / 195 / 530 / 1,400 / 3,500 EP — Amplifies your ability to form lasting connections with each level providing +25% bond durability against stress or separation, +30% loyalty reciprocation from bonded individuals, +20% mutual protective instinct enhancement — Cost progression increases approximately 2.7× per level
RETRIEVER'S INSTINCT I through V — Costs: 55 / 165 / 450 / 1,200 / 3,000 EP — Amplifies your breed-specific talent for finding and returning objects with each level providing +35% tracking capability for objects of interest, +30% intuitive object location sensing, +25% carrying efficiency — Cost progression increases approximately 2.7× per level
CATEGORY D: SPECIAL ABILITIES (Currently Locked)
Additional enhancement categories will unlock as your total accumulated EP reaches specified thresholds. Current threshold for Category D unlock: 500 EP total accumulated lifetime.
My canine brain—and I was now fully, unavoidably cognizant that I possessed a canine brain, with all the implications that carried for my cognitive architecture and existential circumstances—struggled to process the strategic implications of this enhancement system. I could become stronger, faster, more perceptive, more socially influential—all by cultivating emotional responses from the beings around me. The costs were steep, the progression exponential, but the potential was undeniable. A maximally enhanced golden retriever would be a creature of considerable capability.
But first I needed to actually inhabit this golden retriever body successfully.
The tutorial concluded with operational information:
SECTION 3: SYSTEM INTERFACE AND ADDITIONAL FEATURES
MENTAL COMMAND "STATUS" — Displays current EP balance, enhancement levels, and relevant statistics
MENTAL COMMAND "MENU" — Accesses enhancement purchasing interface
MENTAL COMMAND "HISTORY" — Reviews recent EP acquisition events and transaction log
MENTAL COMMAND "HELP" — Summons contextual assistance for current situation
PASSIVE FEATURE — EMOTIONAL RADAR: You will receive subtle notifications when sentient beings within 50 meters experience emotions of sufficient intensity to generate harvestable EP. Detection range increases with Emotional Intuition enhancements.
PASSIVE FEATURE — SYSTEM LOG: All EP transactions are automatically recorded for your reference and strategic planning.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: The Emotional Collection System operates on a progressive scaling model. As you accumulate enhancements, subsequent upgrades will require increasingly greater EP investments. Strategic planning of your enhancement pathway is strongly recommended!
Tutorial complete. Best of luck, Host Entity. You will need it.
Current EP Balance: 0
Total EP Accumulated: 0
Enhancements Unlocked: 0
『 SYSTEM ACTIVE 』
The azure interface collapsed into a small, unobtrusive icon that positioned itself in the periphery of my visual field—present but not distracting, available for consultation but not demanding constant attention. I was left alone with my thoughts, my confusion, and the increasingly unavoidable awareness that I needed to actually use this body I had apparently been reincarnated into.
I attempted to rise.
This proved considerably more challenging than my twenty-three years of bipedal locomotion experience had prepared me for.
My previous existence had equipped me with neural pathways optimized for balancing a vertical torso atop two lower limbs, distributing weight across bilateral foot structures, and coordinating arm movements to assist with equilibrium maintenance. None of this hard-won expertise translated to quadrupedal operation. My brain issued commands calibrated for human musculature and skeletal architecture; my body responded with canine physiology that interpreted those commands in ways I had absolutely not intended.
My first attempt to stand resulted in all four limbs extending simultaneously in different directions, producing a configuration that resembled a furry starfish experiencing an existential crisis more than a functional canine preparing for locomotion. I collapsed back into whatever surface I had been lying upon—cold, I registered belatedly, quite cold, covered in some granular frozen substance that my enhanced olfactory apparatus identified as crystallized water precipitation: snow.
My second attempt achieved momentary verticality before my hindquarters and forequarters engaged in what I can only describe as a philosophical disagreement about directional priority, each section of my body attempting to proceed in a different vector, sending me tumbling sideways into a drift of accumulated snow that at least cushioned my impact.
My third attempt was accompanied by a frustrated vocalization that emerged entirely without conscious authorization—a "boof" of canine exasperation that resonated through vocal cords I had not yet learned to control—and managed to get three legs properly positioned beneath my body before the fourth betrayed the coalition and I collapsed once more.
The snow, I noted with grudging appreciation, was at least soft.
I lay there for a moment, engaged in respiratory behavior I had never consciously performed in my previous existence—panting, my tongue lolling from my mouth, my chest heaving with rapid shallow breaths that served some thermoregulatory function my human knowledge couldn't quite specify—and contemplated my situation with the philosophical resignation of someone who has accepted that the universe operates according to rules he does not understand and cannot influence.
I was a dog. A golden retriever, specifically, if the system's designation was accurate. I possessed four limbs configured for quadrupedal locomotion, a tail of considerable magnificence that seemed to operate with autonomous enthusiasm regardless of my conscious intentions, a coat of lustrous golden fur that was doing an admirable job of preventing the ambient cold from penetrating to my core body temperature, and a brain that operated on two parallel tracks that I was only beginning to understand.
The first track was my human consciousness—my memories, my reasoning capabilities, my linguistic frameworks, my accumulated knowledge of a world I apparently no longer inhabited. This consciousness retained its essential character, still thinking in human concepts, still processing experiences through human interpretive frameworks, still occasionally expecting to look down and see human hands rather than furry paws.
The second track was something else entirely—a canine substrate of instincts, drives, and perceptual frameworks that operated beneath and alongside my human awareness. This secondary consciousness noticed things my human attention would have dismissed: the territorial implications of scent markers I hadn't realized I was detecting, the subtle body language meanings encoded in my own postural configurations, the overwhelming and inexplicable desire to investigate that particularly interesting-smelling pile of snow-covered debris approximately fifteen meters to my left.
And beneath everything, always present, always tugging at my attention: the urge to wag my tail when I experienced anything even remotely positive.
The dual-consciousness situation was going to require considerable acclimatization.
With renewed determination born of necessity rather than confidence, I made another attempt at achieving functional quadrupedal locomotion. This time I approached the challenge with methodical deliberation, consciously observing the position of each limb before attempting to engage it. Front left leg, extend and plant. Front right leg, extend and plant. Weight shifts forward. Rear left leg, extend and plant. Rear right leg, extend and plant. Weight distributes across four points of contact.
I was standing.
On four legs.
Like a dog.
Because I was, inescapably and irrevocably, a dog.
The existential absurdity of my circumstances threatened to overwhelm whatever remained of my human psychological stability, but I suppressed the incipient crisis with the pragmatic recognition that emotional breakdown would accomplish nothing productive and would probably just result in more undignified tumbling into snowdrifts. I was alive—or re-alive, or whatever terminology applied to consciousness that had been extinguished and subsequently reignited in an entirely different biological substrate—and I possessed a physical form capable of interacting with my environment. The form was unusual. The circumstances were inexplicable. But functionality was functionality, and survival presumably required me to actually utilize the tools I had been provided.
Besides, I reminded myself, the system had provided a framework for self-improvement. If I could accumulate sufficient emotional points, I could enhance this canine vessel into something considerably more capable than a standard golden retriever. The costs were steep and the progression exponential, but the potential was undeniable.
First, however, I needed to actually assess where "here" was and what manner of environment I had been deposited into.
I lifted my head—a movement that came surprisingly naturally, my canine neck possessing flexibility that my human spine had definitely lacked—and surveyed my surroundings.
The panorama that greeted my enhanced visual apparatus was one of desolate, frozen magnificence that simultaneously awed and terrified.
I stood—or had fallen and then stood, repeatedly—in what was unmistakably an urban environment, though one that had experienced devastation so comprehensive that "ruins" seemed an inadequate descriptor. Buildings rose around me in every direction, puncturing a perpetually overcast sky with skeletal silhouettes of structural steel and shattered facades. These were not ancient ruins weathered by millennia of natural decay; they were recent catastrophe, industrial architecture torn apart by violence and subsequently preserved by freezing temperatures that halted decomposition.
Everything was metal. Steel, aluminum, titanium, and alloys my limited metallurgical knowledge couldn't identify—shaped into angular configurations that prioritized industrial functionality over aesthetic consideration. The architectural style, if it could be called a style, suggested manufacturing facilities and processing plants rather than residential habitation. Massive structures that had once housed heavy machinery now stood hollow, their internal components either destroyed or removed, their walls punctured by damage patterns that suggested explosive force rather than structural failure.
Snow covered every horizontal surface in pristine white accumulation, softening the harsh edges of devastation with crystalline beauty that seemed almost mocking in its incongruity. The precipitation continued even now, falling in lazy spirals from clouds that churned in slow convulsions across the entire visible sky—a perpetual overcast that permitted no glimpse of whatever stellar body illuminated this world. The light that filtered through this atmospheric barrier was diffuse, grey, and constant, creating a twilight ambiance that seemed to have no corresponding dawn or dusk.
The temperature—my canine senses provided this information with considerable precision—hovered somewhere in the vicinity of negative forty-seven degrees Celsius. This was, by any reasonable standard, lethally cold. Temperatures at which unprotected human flesh would succumb to frostbite within minutes, at which exposed skin would freeze solid, at which survival required either sophisticated technology or biological adaptations specifically evolved for arctic conditions.
My golden fur, I realized with dawning appreciation, constituted exactly such a biological adaptation. The dense undercoat trapped insulating air against my skin. The longer guard hairs shed accumulated snow with each movement. My paws, equipped with specialized pad structures I hadn't possessed as a human, traversed the frozen ground without the tissue damage that bare human feet would have immediately suffered.
Perhaps there were advantages to canine existence after all.
Corporate signage, remarkably persistent despite the comprehensive devastation surrounding it, adorned structures throughout my visible range. Holographic projectors, their mechanisms somehow still operational after what appeared to be considerable chronological passage, flickered with advertisements for an entity called "JCJenson (IN SPAAAAACE!)"—the stylized logo rendered in typography that combined corporate professionalism with an enthusiasm for interstellar commerce that I found deeply unsettling. The logo repeated across fallen billboards, collapsed storefronts, shattered factory windows, and crumbling industrial facilities with the omnipresent insistence of late-stage capitalism extending its reach to extraterrestrial markets.
"JCJenson Worker Drone Series 7.4," proclaimed one partially-intact advertisement, depicting a cheerful robotic figure holding what appeared to be mining equipment. "Efficient! Compliant! Probably Won't Develop Sentience!" The tagline was delivered with corporate optimism that aged poorly given the obvious devastation surrounding me.
The implications crystallized with uncomfortable clarity.
This was—or had been—a corporate colony. The system had designated my location as "Copper-9, Outer Planetary Mining Colony (Defunct)," and the parenthetical now carried ominous weight. JCJenson, whoever or whatever that corporate entity represented, had established operations on this frozen world using robotic workers rather than biological personnel. The environment was too hostile for human habitation, but robotic laborers could extract resources, manufacture products, perform whatever profitable activities justified the tremendous expense of interstellar colonization.
And something had gone catastrophically wrong.
The evidence was everywhere once I knew what to look for. Scattered across the frozen streets like discarded toys, embedded in snowdrifts, collapsed against walls, sprawled in positions that suggested their final moments had involved considerable distress—the worker drones. Hundreds of them, visible from my current vantage point alone, and presumably thousands more throughout the broader urban expanse.
They were humanoid in basic configuration: bipedal, with manipulator appendages approximating arms and hands, sensor clusters that resembled faces with digital display screens for eyes. Their designs varied in minor particulars—different model numbers, perhaps, or specializations for different labor categories—but they shared common aesthetic elements. Rounded heads with LED optics. Compact torsos housing complex mechanical innards. Limbs optimized for industrial labor rather than combat.
They were uniformly dead. Deactivated. Their optical sensors dark, their limbs motionless, their mechanical bodies frozen in whatever positions they had occupied at the moment of their termination.
Many bore catastrophic damage. Chassis torn open with what appeared to be tremendous force, their internal components exposed to the frozen air. Limbs severed clean through by cutting implements of considerable sharpness. Heads separated from bodies, sensors shattered, central processing units destroyed beyond any possibility of repair or reactivation.
Others appeared to have been... drained. Their bodies were intact, structurally undamaged, but somehow hollowed—collapsed inward as if essential fluids had been forcibly extracted through mechanisms I couldn't immediately identify. Oil stains—long since frozen into dark crystalline deposits—surrounded many of these remains in patterns disturbingly reminiscent of bloodstains at crime scenes.
Something had killed them. Something had killed a great many of them, with methods ranging from brutal mechanical violence to precise extraction. Whatever predator had hunted these worker drones, it had been thorough, efficient, and utterly without mercy or restraint.
Something that might still be present.
My canine instincts, previously occupied with cataloguing interesting scents and suppressing the urge to chase snowflakes, suddenly surged to the forefront of my consciousness with urgent warnings. Danger. Predator. Hide. These weren't linguistic concepts but something more primal—neurological alarm bells evolved across millennia of ancestral dogs learning that certain environmental patterns indicated immediate threat to survival.
I flattened myself against a nearby debris pile, my golden fur suddenly feeling considerably less like sophisticated thermal equipment and considerably more like a conspicuously visible target against the white snow and grey metal.
Whatever had depopulated this colony, whatever had killed hundreds or thousands of worker drones across an entire urban center, whatever had transformed a functional corporate operation into a frozen graveyard—it was almost certainly still out there.
And I was a dog.
A moderately-sized, golden-furred, thoroughly non-combat-optimized dog, with zero enhancement points, zero special abilities, zero knowledge of what threats this world contained, and zero experience with survival in hostile environments beyond occasionally forgetting to buy groceries and having to order delivery instead.
My situation, I concluded, was rather dire.
But the system had provided tools. The emotional collection mechanism offered a pathway to enhanced capabilities. All I needed was sentient beings to evoke emotions from—beings whose emotional responses could generate the EP required to purchase improvements to my physical form.
Which meant I needed to find beings who were still alive.
Despite the comprehensive devastation visible around me, my enhanced canine senses had begun detecting evidence that not all inhabitants of Copper-9 had succumbed to whatever catastrophe had befallen this place.
The first indication was olfactory—a subtle chemical signature carried on the frozen wind, distinct from the metallic decay and frozen lubricants that characterized the dead drones' remains. This scent was fresh. Active machinery, heated circuits, the ozone tang of electrical systems operating under load. Someone—something—nearby was still functional, still consuming power, still generating the thermal and chemical byproducts of continued operation.
I followed the scent trail with cautious deliberation, my four legs gradually achieving something approximating competent coordination as I navigated through streets choked with debris and accumulated snow. The dual-consciousness phenomenon continued to manifest in interesting ways: my human intellect analyzed the environmental data and formulated hypotheses about potential scent sources, while my canine instincts provided an intuitive directional sense that proved remarkably reliable.
The trail led me through the devastated urban center, past collapsed structures and frozen drone corpses, past flickering holographic advertisements still cheerfully promoting JCJenson products to consumers who would never again purchase anything, past industrial facilities whose purposes I could only guess at based on the specialized equipment visible through shattered windows.
Eventually, I arrived at a structure that appeared more intact than most—a massive industrial complex that had apparently been designed with durability in mind. Reinforced walls of alloy composition that exceeded standard construction materials. Multiple redundant structural supports. And embedded in the foundation, protected by security measures that seemed excessive even for corporate property protection, was a door.
Not merely a door. A bunker entrance.
Three meters of reinforced alloy, embedded in concrete foundations that extended at least ten meters in every direction, sealed with locking mechanisms that would have been excessive for military installations. Warning signage surrounded the entrance: "EMERGENCY SHELTER FACILITY 7-G," "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY," "IN CASE OF SURFACE EMERGENCY, SEEK ALTERNATIVE REFUGE."
The door was closed. Sealed. Hermetically isolated from the exterior environment.
But through microscopic gaps in the door's seating—gaps completely imperceptible to human senses but glaringly obvious to my enhanced canine olfaction—I could detect unmistakable evidence of activity within. The chemical signatures of operational machinery. The subtle vibrations of movement transmitted through the ground. The acoustic echoes of voices.
Voices. Multiple voices, engaged in what sounded like heated argument.
"—absolutely FORBID you from attempting this suicidal foolishness!" A masculine voice, mechanical but infused with unmistakable parental concern. An older drone, I inferred, or at least one who had assumed parental responsibility for the argument's other participant.
"You can't FORBID me from anything!" A younger voice responded, feminine, crackling with rebellious energy and the kind of aggressive enthusiasm that characterized adolescents across apparently all sentient species. "I'm not a CHILD, Dad! I know what I'm DOING!"
"You're going to get yourself KILLED! The surface is DEATH, Uzi! The Murder Drones—"
"Are going to get a FACE full of my RAILGUN! I've been working on this for MONTHS! It's going to WORK!"
"Your 'railgun' is a collection of salvaged components held together by optimism and spite! Do you have ANY idea what those things DO to Workers who venture outside? They don't just deactivate us—they DISASSEMBLE us! They DRINK OUR OIL! They're MONSTERS, Uzi!"
"Then I'll be the MONSTER that KILLS monsters!"
A door slammed somewhere within the bunker. The argument continued at diminished volume as one party apparently retreated deeper into the facility.
Murder Drones.
The terminology painted a vivid and deeply concerning picture. The worker drones—the massacred remains of which I had encountered throughout my exploration—were prey. Something else—designated "Murder Drones" by the surviving population—were predators. An ecosystem of mechanical entities in which one variety existed specifically to destroy, disassemble, and apparently consume the other.
The frozen corpses with their hollowed bodies and oil-drained remains suddenly made terrible sense.
And this "Uzi"—the rebellious young drone whose argument I had overheard—intended to challenge those predators with homemade weaponry. Intended to venture onto the surface that her father had described as "death," armed with something she called a railgun, to confront entities that had successfully depopulated an entire colony.
It was either tremendously brave or catastrophically foolish.
Probably both simultaneously.
I settled into the snow beside the bunker entrance, allowing accumulated precipitation to blanket my golden form until I became little more than a dog-shaped snowdrift. My canine instincts urged patience—a predator's patience, the waiting behavior of ancestors who had learned that prey eventually emerged from hiding. My human intellect recognized this as a reasonable strategy: if this Uzi intended to venture onto the surface, she would eventually emerge through this entrance, and I could assess the situation before deciding how to proceed.
The wait proved considerable.
Time passed in increments I couldn't precisely measure, the perpetual twilight providing no markers of progression. Snow accumulated upon my patient form. My thoughts drifted through philosophical contemplation of my circumstances, through strategic analysis of the emotional collection system's mechanics, through increasingly desperate suppression of my canine instincts' desire to investigate that interesting scent drifting from approximately forty meters to the northeast.
Eventually—after what my human estimation suggested was several hours but might have been considerably more or less—the bunker door began to cycle open.
The pneumatic seals released with a tremendous hiss of equalizing pressure, the massive alloy barrier swinging outward on mechanisms that had clearly been maintained despite the surface's devastation. Emergency lighting from within cast a rectangular illumination across the snow-covered entrance area, and silhouetted against that light—
Uzi.
She was smaller than I had anticipated, perhaps 1.5 meters in height, diminutive even by the standards of the deactivated worker drones I had encountered throughout my exploration. Her chassis bore customizations that distinguished her from the standard JCJenson aesthetic: purple accents adorned her frame, contrasting with the utilitarian coloration of standard workers. Her optical sensors—her "eyes," rendered on a digital display face—were asymmetrical, one considerably larger than the other in a configuration that suggested either manufacturing variance or deliberate modification.
Her expression radiated determination. The set of her visual display, the posture of her mechanical body, the way she gripped her weapon—all communicated a being who had made a decision and intended to follow through regardless of opposition, consequence, or statistical probability of success.
And the weapon itself—
I had expected something improvised based on the argument I'd overheard. The reality exceeded my expectations in magnificent absurdity.
The railgun appeared to be constructed from approximately thirty-seven different mechanical components, none of which had originally been designed for integration with any of the others. I identified what appeared to be industrial laser focusing elements, capacitor banks salvaged from power distribution systems, magnetic acceleration coils repurposed from manufacturing equipment, and what was either a sophisticated targeting computer or a heavily modified coffee machine. These disparate elements had been united through aggressive welding, creative bracket fabrication, and what I could only describe as engineering spite—the determination to make something work through sheer force of will regardless of whether conventional principles supported the endeavor.
Warning labels covered almost every visible surface. Most of them had been crossed out with marker and replaced with handwritten annotations: "ACTUALLY FINE," "IGNORE THIS," "WORKED IN TESTING (MOSTLY)," "PROBABLY WON'T EXPLODE."
The entire contraption hummed with contained electromagnetic energy, its various components vibrating at frequencies that suggested power levels straining against improvised containment systems. Cables snaked across its surface in configurations that defied conventional wiring logic. Indicator lights blinked in patterns that might have been diagnostic outputs or might have been random malfunction or might have been the weapon's equivalent of nervous fidgeting.
It was, objectively, the most dangerous-looking improvised weapon I had ever witnessed.
It was also, somehow, magnificent.
Uzi stepped fully out of the bunker, the massive door already cycling closed behind her with the finality of someone who did not expect to return through that entrance. Her optical sensors swept the devastated landscape, scanning for threats, searching for the predators she had come to hunt.
The system—my Emotional Collection System—pinged.
『 EMOTIONAL DETECTION 』
Source: Worker Drone (Designation: Uzi)
Detected Emotions:
DETERMINATION (moderate intensity): +0 EP — Note: Determination does not generate EP as emotional focus is not directed toward Host Entity
FEAR (low intensity, suppressed): +0 EP — Note: Fear not directed at Host Entity
EXCITEMENT (moderate intensity): +0 EP — Note: Excitement not directed at Host Entity
Recommendation: Establish visual contact to enable emotional direction toward Host Entity and commence EP harvesting operations.
The system's analytical framework clarified my operational requirements: emotions only generated harvestable EP when directed toward me. Simply existing in proximity to emotional beings accomplished nothing productive. I needed to become the focus of their emotional experience, the subject of their attention, the stimulus that evoked their responses.
Which meant I needed to reveal myself.
I weighed the strategic implications with careful consideration. Uzi was armed—heavily armed, with a weapon of uncertain but presumably significant destructive capacity. Her reaction to encountering an unexpected biological entity could range from curiosity to hostility. Making my presence known carried genuine risk of being vaporized by improvised railgun technology.
But remaining hidden guaranteed zero EP. Zero EP meant zero enhancements. Zero enhancements meant zero capacity to survive whatever threats this world contained. And if the Murder Drones were as lethal as the evidence suggested, I would need every advantage I could accumulate.
I made my decision.
The movement was subtle—a shift of my body that dislodged accumulated snow, creating a cascading miniature avalanche that revealed golden fur against white precipitation. A sound accompanied the motion: the soft crunch of compacting snow, barely audible but sufficient to attract attention from a being whose senses were presumably optimized for threat detection.
Uzi's railgun snapped toward my position with impressive speed.
"WHAT THE—"
Her targeting reticle—visible as a glowing indicator on her weapon's improvised sighting system—locked onto my thermal signature. Her finger tensed on the trigger mechanism. For one crystalline moment, I contemplated the possibility that my second existence might prove even shorter than my first, terminated by a rebellious teenage robot on a frozen alien world.
And then she actually looked at me.
Her aggressive posture faltered. Her optical sensors flickered through what appeared to be multiple processing cycles, her visual cortex struggling to categorize what she was perceiving. Her railgun lowered incrementally, threat assessment apparently deprioritized in favor of sheer cognitive dissonance.
"Is that... is that a DOG?"
The system exploded with notifications:
『 EMOTIONAL HARVEST — SUCCESS 』
Source: Worker Drone (Designation: Uzi)
Harvested Emotions:
SURPRISE (overwhelming intensity, ×3.0 modifier): Base 4 EP × 3.0 = 12 EP
CURIOSITY (strong intensity, ×2.0 modifier): Base 3 EP × 2.0 = 6 EP
First Encounter Bonus Applied: ×1.5
Total Harvest: (12 + 6) × 1.5 = 27 EP
Current EP Balance: 27 EP
Total EP Accumulated: 27 EP
Twenty-seven points. From a single moment of surprised recognition.
The system's economy suddenly made considerably more practical sense. Intense emotions from beings encountering unexpected stimuli generated substantial EP yields, especially with first encounter bonuses applying to initial interactions. And I was a golden retriever—a creature specifically bred across centuries of human selective pressure to evoke positive emotional responses. My very existence was optimized for exactly the kind of interactions the system rewarded.
"There aren't supposed to BE any dogs," Uzi continued, her voice carrying genuine bewilderment that I found oddly endearing. "All the biological stuff died when the core went critical and everything froze. Like, that was the whole POINT of the Murder Drones—there wasn't anything biological LEFT to protect or whatever twisted reason the company made them for. The surface has been negative fifty forever. How are you even ALIVE right now?"
I sat up in the snow—an action that came surprisingly naturally, my canine body folding into a posture that I recognized from my previous existence's media consumption as quintessentially "good boy" presentation. Ears attentive. Expression alert. Posture communicating non-threatening curiosity.
My tail wagged.
I had not authorized this. The tail apparently operated under its own governance, responding to social interaction with enthusiastic oscillation regardless of my conscious preferences or tactical considerations.
More notifications cascaded across my awareness:
『 EMOTIONAL HARVEST — ONGOING 』
Source: Worker Drone (Designation: Uzi)
Harvested Emotions:
AMUSEMENT (moderate intensity, ×1.5 modifier): Base 4 EP × 1.5 = 6 EP — Note: Triggered by tail wagging behavior
CURIOSITY (sustained attention, +25% duration bonus): Base 3 EP × 2.0 intensity × 1.25 duration = 7.5 EP (rounded to 8 EP)
Total Harvest: 14 EP
Current EP Balance: 41 EP
Total EP Accumulated: 41 EP
Forty-one EP, and I had done nothing more than exist in Uzi's field of perception and allow my tail to wag. The potential for emotional harvesting on this world—a world populated by sentient machines who had apparently never encountered living biological entities—was staggering. Every interaction would be a first encounter. Every emotional response would carry novelty bonuses. Every being I met would presumably react with the same surprise and curiosity that Uzi was currently displaying.
"Okay." Uzi appeared to reach some internal resolution, her expression shifting from bewilderment to pragmatic acceptance with the adaptability of someone who had learned to function in a world full of inexplicable phenomena. "Okay, so there's a dog. A really fluffy, kind of adorable dog that definitely shouldn't exist but apparently does anyway. Cool. Cool cool cool. This is FINE. This is just one more weird thing in a life full of weird things. Not going to question it. Not going to let it distract me from my MISSION."
She glanced back toward the sealed bunker entrance, then toward the devastated cityscape, then toward me again with an expression that suggested she was still struggling to integrate my existence into her understanding of reality.
"I don't have TIME for this," she declared, apparently to herself as much as to me. "I have Murder Drones to murder. You—" she pointed at me with her free hand, the one not clutching her magnificent railgun, "—should probably go somewhere else. Somewhere not here. Because things are about to get very EXPLODEY and I don't think dogs handle explodey well. So just... go. Shoo. Find a warm place to hide or whatever dogs do."
She turned to continue her expedition into the frozen wasteland.
My canine instincts, operating entirely without consultation with my human intellect, made an executive decision.
I followed her.
My paws crunched through snow as I padded after her retreating form, my tail wagging with enthusiasm I genuinely wished I could suppress, my entire canine body radiating the kind of cheerful companionship that golden retrievers had been bred across generations to provide.
"No—what are you—" Uzi spun at the sound of my approach, her asymmetrical optics flickering with what appeared to be mechanical exasperation. "Go AWAY, dog! This isn't a WALK! This is a COMBAT MISSION! There are literal MURDER MACHINES out here that will DEFINITELY try to kill you!"
I sat. I tilted my head in the manner that I understood, from extensive media consumption in my previous life, was universally recognized as adorable. I allowed my tongue to loll out in what I hoped communicated friendly companionship rather than respiratory dysfunction.
『 EMOTIONAL HARVEST — ONGOING 』
Source: Worker Drone (Designation: Uzi)
Harvested Emotions:
FRUSTRATION (low intensity): Base 1 EP × 1.0 = 1 EP — Note: Anger-category emotion, minimal yield
AMUSEMENT (moderate intensity, conflicting with frustration): Base 4 EP × 1.5 = 6 EP — Note: Triggered by head-tilt behavior
AFFECTION (low intensity, emerging): Base 8 EP × 1.0 = 8 EP — Note: Triggered by overall presentation
Total Harvest: 15 EP
Current EP Balance: 56 EP
Total EP Accumulated: 56 EP
Fifty-six EP from nothing more than basic canine behaviors. The system's economic model rewarded exactly the kind of interactions I was apparently incapable of avoiding—being cute, being friendly, being the kind of creature that evoked emotional responses simply by existing in proximity to other beings.
"Stop being CUTE at me!" Uzi's optical sensors flickered in what I interpreted as mechanical exasperation tinged with reluctant amusement. "I can't— you can't just— UGH!"
She threw her free hand in the air in a gesture of theatrical frustration that was somehow endearing in its dramatic excess, a teenager's performance of irritation that didn't quite mask the underlying warmth.
"FINE! FINE! You want to come watch me DESTROY THE MECHANICAL OPPRESSORS OF MY PEOPLE? FINE! Just don't get in the way! And if something tries to eat you, that's YOUR problem! I'm not responsible for dogs that follow me into combat zones!"
She turned and resumed her march into the devastated cityscape, her railgun humming with contained electromagnetic potential, her posture radiating the determined defiance of someone who had decided to challenge fate regardless of the odds.
I followed.
My tail continued wagging.
And in the distance—carried on frozen winds that my enhanced canine hearing could detect with crystal clarity—I heard something that made my newly-acquired fur stand on end.
Wings.
The sound of mechanical wings, beating against cold air, approaching from somewhere in the perpetual overcast sky.
The Murder Drones were coming.
And I, a reincarnated golden retriever with fifty-six emotional points and zero combat capabilities, was walking directly toward them alongside a rebellious teenage worker drone armed with a weapon that "probably won't explode."
My circumstances, I reflected, were either about to become considerably more interesting or considerably more terminal.
Possibly both simultaneously.
『 CHAPTER 1 — STATUS UPDATE 』
Host Entity: Unnamed
Vessel: Golden Retriever (Adult Male)
Location: Copper-9 Surface, Approaching Bunker Facility 7-G Perimeter
Current EP Balance: 56 EP
Total EP Accumulated: 56 EP
AVAILABLE ENHANCEMENTS AT CURRENT EP:
Endurance I — Cost 40 EP — Affordable ✓
Olfaction I — Cost 35 EP — Affordable ✓
Audition I — Cost 35 EP — Affordable ✓
Speed I — Cost 50 EP — Affordable ✓
Strength I — Cost 50 EP — Affordable ✓
Agility I — Cost 45 EP — Affordable ✓
Retriever's Instinct I — Cost 55 EP — Affordable ✓
LOCKED FEATURES:
Level II+ enhancements require additional EP accumulation
Category D (Special Abilities) unlocks at 500 total EP accumulated
EMOTIONAL SOURCES ENCOUNTERED: 1
Worker Drone "Uzi" — First encounter complete, ongoing emotional harvesting active, currently generating positive emotional responses (amusement, curiosity, emerging affection)
ACTIVE THREATS:
Murder Drones — Unidentified predatory mechanoids, approaching via aerial vectors, capabilities unknown but presumed lethal
『 SYSTEM ADVISORY: Consider investing accumulated EP in survival-oriented enhancements before hostile contact. Speed and Agility recommended for evasion-based survival strategies. 』