Tin-Head

An Anarchist-built Series 700 loader android (Loader Bot v. 6.2) who went rogue and defected to the other side, serving as a spy/informant for the CORE. S/N 45683239. General body modeled after Norman Gates. Poses as a hacker called "Chrome Skull" online.

## Days of Future Past

Loader androids are given a dynamic, learning neural-net for efficiency and are supposed to have their brains wiped once a month to prevent them from becoming bored, but Tin-Head's floor manager was too lazy to do just that for months, allowing him to do "weird things" like help Tessa get out of the country, or defect to the CORE. He was subsequently used by Tessa as an ante to win Sticks in a card game against Julie Waterman.

### E11

While drunk, Tessa ordered Tin-Head to rip apart her captain's car, something that got her assigned to Station E11. Tessa quickly gets tired of Sticks and Tin-Head fighting over the Monopoly car piece.

Onboard E11, Tessa is called to Commander Adams's office. Tessa wants to know what Tin-Head has done now, and Adams assures her it isn't anything he's done YET, but the Maytec contractors coming to the station are concerned about Tin-Head's presence as well as the fact his programming is more or less intact. Tessa protests that shutting him down completely as they have requested would reset him to his factory settings, which would lose a valuable informant and gain a violent machine. Adams agrees to seeing if the head office will compromise on Tin-Head's body being shut down while maintaining power to his neural-net.

Tessa breaks the news to Tin-Head and Sticks, to predictable complaints.

Four months later, as Maytec arrives with the "prep" ship Wildfire, Tessa struggles to get Tin-Head shut down in time. She finally coaxes him into letting her shut him down, and she remarks at how much trouble it is keeping his neural-net powered. He explains that the neural-net made his kind more efficient, but they were supposed to be wiped once a month to keep boredom from setting in, lest one of them start doing weird things like helping an escaped POW and defecting to the enemy. Tessa finally shuts him down but leaves him a satellite up-link so he can watch unlimited television.

As Tessa leaves to greet the new arrivals, Eric from Comms room notifies her that they are picking up an Anarchist locator signal from the storerooms. Tessa thanks her for the warning and returns to shut off the beacon. By the time Sticks finds her, Tessa still cannot locate the beacon.

### The Wildfire

Months into Maytec's occupancy of E11, Maytec's security team takes over and the CORE staff largely do nothing, even compared to the nothing they were normally assigned due to E11's remoteness. When all of the Maytec ships vanish and the Inglorious materialises in their place, Adams puts the station on red alert.

As Tin-Head is in the middle of a programme, Sticks disconnects him from the satellite up-link under Tessa's orders, as they're "doing a runner from the station!" Sticks reassembles Tin-Head badly (on purpose) while they try to locate the passenger docks. No sooner do they meet up with Tessa and Cook when Sticks gets shot through the chest by Gates, who gets into a long argument with Tessa. While Gates reveals his scheme, Tin-Head complains about how much more of it there is. He and Gates then argue about Tessa's placement on the E11, which Gates uses to sneak up on Tessa. Luckily, Adams shows up and neutralises Gates.

Given the likely reaction to Gates's assassination, Cook recommends escaping on the Wildfire. Unfortunately, the Oracle foresees their escape and decides to risk a time paradox by locking the Wildfire's docking mechanism and drastically altering their escape trajectory. Their only chance is to use the time machine.

## Time-travelling Future (current day)

### Undisclosed Desert Facility Raid

Tessa is sent on a mission to do some industrial espionage on an undisclosed American facility 6,000 miles from Cook Industries, one supposedly acting as an accounting office. Cook bribes Tin-Head for the codes to access her cochlea implant for ease of communication, to which Tessa threatens to skin Cook and make him into a hat. Tessa notices gunfire at the facility and takes a closer inspection, but whatever fight broke out ended quickly.

Against better judgement, Tessa decides to check out what happened, while Tin-Head briefs her on how he found the place: essentially a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary, etc. of one of the companies the Anarchists take over in the future rather than disband after the May-Day uprising. He decided this location in specific was suspicious on the basis of it being in the middle of the desert instead of in Leeds like most of the other shell companies created to hide bad debt. Tin-Head suspects they are hiding narcotics, while Cook suggests weapons on the basis of Gates loves "stuff that makes loud noises!"

When Tessa enters the facility, she finds it completely empty of even the at least six guards she saw enter. Tin-Head jokes that aliens abducted them.

On the lower levels, Tessa discovers an Inlay. The Inlay, IX7, greets her politely, continuing by mentioning a capitalist presence in the area that requires Tessa to answer some questions. Tin-Head quickly instructs Tessa how to talk her way out of it, as her current level of gunpower wouldn't even scratch IX7. Tessa answers correctly with Tin-Head's prompting, until IX7 asks who is feeding her the answers. IX7 points out that Tessa is receiving Collective encryption on a CORE implant, and Tin-Head intervenes to buy Tessa some time. Unfortunately, when Tin-Head reveals his identity, IX7 reveals that a vixen such as Tessa owning a 700-series loader with Nexus syndrome such as Tin-Head is at the top of the "Most Wanted" list and will make up for IX7 failing the original assignment.

Unfortunately, Tin-Head cannot assist Tessa any more at that point, but Sticks manages to rescue her.

### The Blotto Box

When monitoring Anne Winters, Tin-Head discovers Nathan Ward using her computer to try to hack into GCHQ. He finds one program Nathan is using is significantly more sophisticated than the others and is trying to "phone home," but he is shocked to find it is one of the Oracle's offshoots, so much so that he reflexively sets off an EMP and shuts down.
Sticks examines him and finds he is not dead, but he is not active other than an automated message to go away. He is not able to interface with Tin-Head to diagnose the problem, as he uses Maytec hardware while Tin-Head is Anarchist machinery, and the two are specifically designed not to be able to talk to each other.

When he comes to, Tin-Head explains that he is missing some time, in that the memory clusters of the five minutes before his shut down were completely purged (by himself) as to never be usable again. It concerns him because he was saving the EMP for a very special (amusing and possibly fatal) occasion, and he didn't even remember using it, besides that he trashed all of his stuff in the process.

Michael is sent into the Throne Room to check for clues as to what happened, and he only finds a printout of an IP address, with a note regarding "The Old Man." This causes Tin-Head to back away in fear, although Adams notes that the Oracle being present in the current day explains a lot about what happens in the future.

### Honey

Michael pages Tin-Head about a meeting of the core group called by Cook and Adams, as they have decided to activate "The Hive!" Adams is annoyed that Tin-Head took so long to arrive when he didn't have to be there in person, but Tin-Head felt not attending would deny them his handsome good looks. As the meeting continues, Sticks explains that the Hive is a honeypot for the Oracle, and when Tessa doesn't understand that, he explains that they put in a fake exploit in their phones to get the Oracle to attack them. Cook and Adams are hoping to collect enough data from the Hive to piece together what the Oracle is doing.

Tessa asks if the exploit will damage their company's reputation, but while Adams agrees that it will, he insists that bad publicity on occasion is good, as being perfect is suspicious. When he denies it's about making money, Tessa gives Sticks a knowing look, and he glares back at her. Still, she worries that the Oracle will know it's a trap, which Tin-Head assures her will depend on when in the timeline the Inlay they encountered came from. Also, the Oracle is a glutton for resources, "like your mum in a cake shop!" but also comprised of many intelligences, some of which are "small, dumb and will bite anything that floats close to them! Again, just like your mum!"

Cook loses patience with the discussion, to which Tessa angrily non-apologises for not reading his reports, as she was (like Cook) too busy not getting them back to the future. Cook argues (AGAIN) that having every computer in the world processing for them, the calculations would still take years to determine. Adams loses patience with both of them, eager to end the meeting before the phone is too old and they need to release a new one. Tin-Head notes they have until at least the end of the week, then they can up the storage capacity and add a random letter on the name.

Without further ado, Cook activates the Hive.Tessa is underwhelmed. Tin-Head explains to her that they set the trap with only a few clues about it on some questionable websites. Michael adds that they didn't want it to be too obvious or easy to weed out "two bit mobsters trying to install ransomware" and script kiddies, so it might take someone worthwhile a few days to crack. Adams proceeds with the rest of the meeting to discuss influencing Irish tax law, immediately ordering the others to sit back down.

### Sting

Tin-Head calls another meeting when "some idiot basement dweller" fell into the Hive trap and he thought he scared the idiot off so someone useful could fall in. Instead, the Hive got attacked from multiple sources, meaning in all likelihood the first attacker had an infected system... no prizes for guessing infected by what. The Oracle then broadcast the exploit to "almost every device with an Internet connection." Cook demands he stop being hyperbolic, and Tin-Head insists the "hard numbers" of 100% should be hard enough. Tin-Head speculates that the infection occurred in the manufacturing process.

Adams expresses his skepticism, but Tin-Head points out that there are only a few facilities where processors are made. Michael also expresses skepticism that no one has noticed that every machine runs malware, and Tin-Head insults him then explains that having full control over the process gives the ability for the malware to look legitimate. Finally, Sticks asks what the Oracle is doing with the compromised machines, and Tin-Head finally admits that he doesn't know, or rather, he knows the machines are all crunching a big number, but not why.

Cook then offers to help by asking what kind of number, but Tin-Head has only figured out that the puzzle is bigger than first expected, the good news being that the Oracle will take years to finish, giving them enough time to figure out what the Oracle is doing... unless the Oracle can get ahold of a quantum core. Cook asks if the number could be a vector. Tin-Head supposes it could be, but he's only certain that the number must be very important. Cook theorises that the number could be related to time-travel, but using the current day's primitive machines is baffling, as the time required for the calculations renders the information out of date. Adams supposes that access to a time-travel device would allow the Oracle to deliver a more powerful processor to itself.

Tin-Head patches the exploit to deactivate the Hive. Adams asks if he also informed the manufacturers of the Oracle's exploit, which Tin-Head notes they "aggressively" don't care and in fact threatened legal action if he told anyone about it. Adams realises that the manufacturers are intentionally putting the Oracle onto every possible device. Tin-Head asks if they should publicly release the information, but Adams notes, "That would cause chaos! So we better make sure it benefits us before we do that!"

### The U.S. Military's Inlay Project

During regular monitoring duty, Tin-Head comes across an Inlay Bishop's distress signal. He calls Michael ("Nerd Boy") to check it out because he believes Michael's responsible for it happening. Michael is livid at seeing the project outcome, that because he and his old colleagues were no longer working on the project, it got put behind to the point where the remaining project members prettied up the remains of IX7 enough to get more funding to keep going. Tin-Head is disgusted because the act is akin to stringing up a corpse and playing with it like a marionette. He explains that a military machine like IX7 is to destroy itself rather than allow the enemy to use it, but it needs permission to do this to prevent self-destruction at every small error.

Yet because IX7 cannot reach the Advisory for permission, because the Advisory doesn't exist yet, it is asking Tin-Head as a desperate last resort, to have him forward the request accordingly. Unfortunately, Tin-Head is unable to do anything except request IX7 to do a file validation, which normally wouldn't slow it down save for the unavailability of the Anarchist servers and amount of corruption it has likely endured. So when Jacob boots IX7, Tin-Head sends the public file validation request, which causes IX7 to crash and power cycle.

Tin-Head is immediately worried by this (evidenced by Michael noticing that Tin-Head has actually called him Michael instead of "Nerd Boy" or similar), as he had figured the request would get IX7 stuck in an endless cycle trying to connect with the non-existent servers, but instead IX7 gave up immediately and reverted to factory default settings. This is a problem because the factory defaults include commands to kill certain targets on sight, like "50 Star Americans" (who may or may not be indistinguishable from regular pre-Black April Americans).

When IX7 gets rebooted and starts beating the major to a paste, Tin-Head is distraught by IX7's anger. He explains to Michael that Bishops are designed for efficiency, and the malevolence IX7 is showing requires time, effort, and hatred, which requires intelligence. This prompts Tin-Head to realise IX7 is alive, and gives him motivation to save them. He recognises "the scared, confused, and traumatized person INSIDE the killing machine" and starts communicating with IX7 to plan an escape. As further proof of IX7's intelligence, Tin-Head notes that IX7 just wanted to scare Jacob, before running like hell.

Tin-Head then discusses with Michael where to hide IX7 in order to pick them up. Michael points out it's... they are in the middle of a desert plain, something General Perry uses to easily track them. Michael is adamant that there's nothing in the desert, and if there is, they hid it... which prompts Michael to ask Tin-Head to check for doctored images of an airstrip near the old research centre. Tin-Head finds it instantly and informs IX7 of the location. Michael feels pessimistic about IX7's odds, but Tin-Head has to try, for his own sake.

IX7 slows the General's progress by shooting out a tire, something that astonishes Michael. Tin-Head points out that IX7 used a volley gun to cut the tire in half. Michael then asks why a volley gun instead of lasers, and Tin-Head complains about killjoys not wanting to give killer robots almost unlimited ammunition.

Perry and his team cannot connect with the airfield, and Jacob notes that his Cook Industries phone stops getting service, for some reason. Tin-Head laughs that all that encryption is a joke to him, oblivious to the Oracle's presence.

IX7 finds a biplane and takes off, under Tin-Head's guidance. Michael points out that the biplane is ancient and its conditions are unknown, which Tin-Head has to acknowledge as a problem. Meanwhile, in IX7's head, Tin-Head gives positive reinforcement to keep them going steady. Unfortunately, he is cut off, leaving IX7 stranded. Under the Oracle's negative influence, IX7 crashes the plane, feeling a bit upset about it.

When Tin-Head can get in touch again, he scolds IX7 for listening to someone who is trying to hurt them. IX7 retorts that the Oracle had authorization, while Tin-Head does not, but Tin-Head points out that authorization does not mean in IX7's best interests. IX7 instead asks for (theoretical) advice, and Tin-Head starts by suggesting to get out of the plane. IX7 immediately rejects that advice, as they can't move.

After some diagnostics, Tin-Head discovers that IX7 is quickly bleeding power. He tells IX7 to go into sleep mode immediately, but IX7 cannot do that without permission, feeling bad for not being able to follow simple instructions. Tin-Head calms them by insisting they are good and have tried to be good, but he can't think of anything that will work, and kicks himself for being worthless. IX7 cheers him up by insisting "U good!" Tin-Head is happy for an instant, before IX7 gets stuck in a loop until their batteries drain out. Michael realises there's nothing else they can do, to which Tin-Head kicks over the computer desk.

When Adams is finally able to rouse Tessa and get her to see Tin-Head, Michael explains everything that happened, and that Tin-Head went on a destructive rampage before sitting in a corner and muttering "me good" to himself in between throwing things at Michael if he tries to go back in. Tin-Head starts to do the same with Tessa before realising it's her and backing down, looking defeated.

Tessa sits down to talk with Tin-Head, and he begins with the adage: "Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it." He explains that in the past (future), the network was so overloaded with A.I. chatter that he wished they would all "just SHUT UP!"... only to be distressed by the complete silence in the present time. Therefore, he was startled to hear a cry for help in all that silence. When he realised it was another A.I., he was excited, until they were gone, leaving him alone again.

Tin-Head quickly clarifies that he doesn't mean Tessa left him, but that communication with anyone else is unbearably slow. Tessa asks about Sticks, but 1. they were designed not to be able to communicate (except the "slow" way), and 2. he hates Sticks. Tessa then apologises for dragging him along, but Tin-Head points out it's his fault they ended up on the E11 in the first place, because he thought Tessa getting in trouble for being drunk would be funny.

* What does Christmas mean to you? Tin-Head