NANITE

The man, or rather, young man—barely into his early twenties, Ray guessed—was a vibrant explosion of chaotic energy. His clothes were loud, layered, and unapologetically, aggressively alive. His dark dreads were pulled back from his face and piled into a loose, precarious crown, the tips dyed in shifting, iridescent streaks of electric blue, vibrant magenta, and circuit-board green—colors that shimmered and changed faintly as if responding to the ambient city light. Tiny, almost invisible fiber-optic threads and tarnished copper beads were artfully woven through his hair, glowing faintly with his own internal, irrepressible excitement—which, apparently, never dimmed.

His face was open, expressive, his brows currently furrowed in a look of intense, curious scrutiny as he looked Ray over. A thin, almost imperceptible cyber-stripe, cut across the bridge of his nose. Mismatched earrings—one was shaped like a tiny, antique resistor and the other was a miniature, perfectly detailed wrench which glinted in the doorway's buzzing, unreliable light. His jacket was a masterpiece of controlled chaos: oversized, hooded, and splattered with streaks of neon paint, overlapping graffiti tags, and patches crudely stitched from torn, iridescent circuit casings. One pant leg of his baggy cargo trousers bristled with an array of small, specialized tools; the other bore a surprisingly detailed, hand-painted mural of a transforming mecha warrior, caught mid-shift. His heavy, scuffed synth-leather boots clicked faintly with the whir of internal servos. Slung across his back, was a homebrewed drone cradle, a tangled, precarious nest of brightly colored wires, salvaged components, and a collection of dangling, quirky good-luck charms, including a faded tag that read: "Be kind to bots. They dream too."

Then his gaze, wide and bright, locked onto the drone in Ray's hand. His mouth shaped a silent "O." "Wait— you're the guy! From last night! The one with the quiet, slightly terrifying, possible-assassin vibes!"

Ray gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.

"Man, no way! You weren't kidding when you said 8 AM. Damn, it's… it's literally 8:00 on the dot." He seemed genuinely impressed.

Ray stepped forward, extending the damaged machine. "Here's your drone."

"Ohhh, sweet, merciful RAM—it survived!" The young man—Arty, as Ray would soon learn—gently took the drone, cradling it with an almost paternal reverence, rotating it slowly, inspecting it for damage. "Still got all its limbs, no major scorch marks, and… wait a sec—did you touch the internals? Did you open her up?"

Ray raised an eyebrow. "No."

Arty squinted, his head cocked to one side. "She's humming smoother than she did last week. Way smoother. Don't lie to me, man, she feels… calibrated."

"No," Ray repeated, his expression unreadable.

"Okay, okay. Mysterious and modest. Got it." Arty grinned, a wide, infectious smile that seemed to light up his expressive face. "You want some pizza? I was just about to nuke a slice."

"I'm good." Ray turned to leave, his social interaction quota for the day already feeling dangerously depleted.

"Wait, wait—where are you going, my dude?" Arty darted in front of him, his servo-assisted boots squeaking faintly on the worn floor tiles.

"Home."

"C'mon, man, at least one slice! Triple synth-cheese! It's a new brand. Might even be, like, thirty percent actual food this time! My treat!"

Ray opened his mouth to deliver a firm, unequivocal no, but stopped. He knew this type—relentlessly enthusiastic, probably a little too friendly for his own good in a city like Virelia, but ultimately harmless. Annoying, perhaps, but not a threat. Besides, it would be… polite. A concept Ray was still vaguely familiar with. "Fine. One slice."

Arty beamed, his whole body seeming to vibrate with excitement. "Awesome! You won't regret this. Probably." He spun around with surprising agility and darted into what Ray assumed was the kitchenette. Ray followed, cautious but intrigued despite himself.

The apartment was small, cluttered, and bursting at the seams with a vibrant, chaotic personality that was a direct reflection of its owner. Hand-drawn schematics and complex circuit diagrams, scrawled on flimsy, recycled paper, were taped haphazardly to the walls like anarchist graffiti. Tools, both recognizable and bizarrely custom-made, cluttered every available surface, including most of the floor. Disassembled circuit boards, glinting with tiny, intricate components, lay atop old, discarded ramen containers. Strange, spider-legged robotic prototypes, in various states of assembly and disassembly, sat dormant in corners or twitched idly in standby mode on overloaded shelves.

The door clicked shut behind Ray. He turned, startled. A surprisingly sophisticated, multi-jointed robot arm, mounted above the door frame, had eased it closed with a low, pneumatic hiss. Another pair of smaller, more delicate arms, seemingly made from salvaged prosthetics, dropped from the ceiling, reaching for his coat with an unnerving, almost spider-like eagerness.

Ray spun, stepping back instinctively, his hand automatically going to the Glock hidden beneath his coat.

"Whoa! Sorry! Sorry, man!" Arty called from the kitchenette, where he was crouched by a battered, ancient microwave oven, intently watching a single, sad-looking slice of pizza rotate on the turntable. "Forgot to deactivate the hospitality module. She's a little… clingy. Like my last bot-girlfriend... and, come to think of it, my last actual girlfriend too."

Ray exhaled slowly, letting his hand drop from his weapon, and reluctantly sat down on the edge of what appeared to be a couch. It was threadbare, its original color long lost beneath layers of time, tech grease, and unidentifiable stains. It smelled faintly of fried electronic components, stale spice packs, and something vaguely sweet that had clearly long since fermented. He shifted uncomfortably, brushing a discarded, brightly colored plastic wrench aside with his elbow. A dismembered drone leg clattered to the floor with a hollow sound. The rest of the room was just as wild, a testament to Arty's obsessive, creative energy. A towering shelf overflowed with a bizarre collection of robot figurines—some pristine, mint-in-box originals, others lovingly kitbashed from salvaged toys and scrap metal. A few of them, Ray noted with a flicker of unease, seemed to blink in his direction, their tiny LED eyes glowing faintly.

"Interesting place," Ray said, his voice carefully neutral as he scanned the organized chaos. "You really like robots."

"I don't like them, my dude," Arty said, turning from the microwave, his expression suddenly serious. "I love them. They're honest. You wire them right, they do what you ask. No backstabbing. No ghosting you after three dates. Just clean code, whirring gears, and sweet, sweet digital loyalty." He stepped closer, wiping his grease-stained hand on his already filthy pants, and offered it to Ray. "Arthur, by the way. But you can call me Arty. Local mechatronic genius, semi-professional drone doctor, and undisputed king of cobbled-together technological wonders."

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Ray hesitated for a fraction of a second, then shook the offered hand. It was warm, surprisingly strong, and definitely still covered in grease. "Ray."

"Ray, huh?" Arty raised a brightly colored eyebrow. "Real name, or one of those cool, mysterious, mononym 'I'm too cool for actual surnames' kind of thing?"

"It's my real name," Ray said, a hint of defensiveness in his tone. "Like a narrow stream of radiant energy."

"Dang. That's… unexpectedly poetic, my man. You don't exactly look like a sunbeam—no offense—but hey, contrast is aesthetic, right?" The microwave beeped, a shrill, annoying sound. Arty retrieved the steaming plate and set it down in front of Ray with a theatrical flourish. "Voila! One slice of pseudo-pizza, synth-cheese deluxe, with extra… yellow. Totally digestible…Maybe."

Ray took the plate and stared at the sad, unappetizing slice. It was warm. It smelled vaguely like pizza.

Then he reached for it and brought it to his mouth.

He sat in silence for a few moments, chewing slowly, mechanically, his nanites already beginning to break down the synthetic compounds. He hadn't been inside a stranger's home in months. Or at least, not in one where he didn't need to constantly worry about being shot, stabbed, or otherwise dismembered. And yet—this place, despite its overwhelming chaos, didn't unsettle him. The clutter, the warmth, the sheer, unadulterated noise of Arty's personality… it didn't agitate his heightened instincts. If anything, it quieted them, a strange sort of white noise for his overstimulated senses.

"You know," Arty said, already pacing the small room with restless energy, "if, like, classic Tundam mecha tech met, say, cutting-edge 2040s military-grade servo arrays, and then they had a messy, passionate love child with, like, those cute little household repair bots? That's my ideal drone, man. That's the dream. Like, imagine you're mid-chase, right? Leg actuators overheating, sparks flying, about to go critical—but BAM! You reroute the primary coolant flow through a network of recycled tea dispensers you salvaged from a dumpster. Elegant chaos, my guy. That's the aesthetic."

Ray blinked, trying to follow the rapid-fire train of thought.

"And don't even get me started on advanced mech limb articulation!" Arty continued, his voice gaining speed and intensity. "People think it's all about strength-to-weight ratios, torsional stress tolerances. Wrong! So wrong! It's about rhythm, man. Like jazz. Servo jazz! The way the joints flow, the counter-balance, the expressive potential!"

Ray raised an eyebrow mid-chew, a silent question.

"And Neo Drift Riot, season six? Episode nine, 'Chrome Chrysanthemum'? They totally called quantum recoil dampeners, like, five years before the tech was even a theoretical possibility on corporate R&D whiteboards! Prophecy, man. Pure, unadulterated, mecha-fueled prophecy!"

Ray didn't speak. He just kept chewing, his expression carefully neutral. But beneath Arty's relentless, almost overwhelming avalanche of enthusiastic rambling, there was something else. A spark. A genuine, undeniable clarity. He wasn't just throwing words around, lost in some private fantasy. He saw how things fit together—or how they could fit together—even when the world around them, and the components themselves, were broken, discarded and chaotic.

Ray glanced around the cluttered apartment again. This place. This person. This beautiful, vibrant, overwhelming mess. And for reasons he couldn't quite explain, couldn't articulate even to himself, he didn't want to leave just yet.

"You seem to know your stuff," Ray said finally, watching Arty affectionately poke at the damaged drone with a delicate, multi-jointed tool that looked like a dentist's probe crossed with a soldering iron. "Why cobble things together from scrap instead of just using proper, new parts? Seems like it'd be easier."

Arty grinned, a wide, brilliant smile, as if he'd been waiting for Ray to ask that exact question. "Because there's art in it, man! Anyone can follow a pre-printed schematic, snap together corporate-approved components. That's just assembly. But taking junk, stuff that shouldn't work, stuff people throw out, overlook, call dead and useless—and then turning it into something that moves, that flies, that has a purpose again? That's where the magic is, Ray. That's creation. It's not about being broke, though, yeah, that's definitely part of it too," he admitted with a self-deprecating chuckle. "It's about proving that the impossible ain't always so impossible, you know? It's about giving the forgotten a second chance."

Ray found himself smirking, a genuine, unforced expression. "And I bet it makes it easy to recover your lost drones too—no one in their right mind would want to steal tech that looks like it's about to explode, and can't even be stripped for valuable parts."

Arty barked a laugh, a loud, joyous sound. "Exactly! See? You get it! I consider it a built-in, next-level security feature, not a bug." He narrowed his eyes playfully. "So you did peek under the chassis of my poor, unfortunate Matilda. I knew it."

Ray nodded, a small admission. "Just to make sure it was safe to keep in my apartment overnight. A primary solder point on the logic board had snapped clean, probably on impact. And your power cells… they're the least of your problems, but they're definitely… volatile. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out how this thing even managed to crash through my window without completely disintegrating."

Arty scratched his chin thoughtfully, his expression suddenly serious. "Huh. Matilda has been a bit… twitchier than usual lately. I never thought about a compromised solder point." He picked up the drone and carried it reverently to his cluttered workbench. With practiced, surprisingly gentle ease, he popped open the top access panel and slid on a pair of heavily modified smart lenses—one eyepiece cracked and repaired with what looked like brightly colored duct tape, the other sporting a bewildering array of auxiliary micro-lenses. "Show me where," he asked, leaning closer, his enthusiasm reignited.

Ray pointed to the exposed circuit board, indicating the almost invisible fracture. Arty summoned a delicate, articulated robotic arm equipped with a high-resolution laser scanner. It blinked red for a moment, then swept a quick, precise beam across the damaged components. Arty then moved to a stacked cluster of mismatched, flickering monitors, his fingers clattering rapidly over a dirty, ancient keyboard that was missing at least two keys and had a half-melted, discolored spacebar. Lines of diagnostic code scrolled across the screens.

"Oof, yeah. There it is. You're right. That's definitely the problem," Arty confirmed, peering at the readouts. "The heat overflow from that compromised connection was probably shutting down the primary rotors at higher operational voltages. That explains the… unscheduled landing. Thanks, man! Seriously. You're a lifesaver. Or, Matilda's lifesaver, anyway." He looked up from his monitors, his face alight with genuine appreciation. "Lemme zap you another slice of that gourmet pizza as payment."

"I'm good," Ray lied, his nanites having already efficiently broken down the first slice into its base molecules. It had barely qualified as actual food. This guy must have a seriously modded stomach, he thought. That, or absolutely no sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

Arty turned to him then, his expression suddenly, unexpectedly sincere. "Then—since you helped me out, no charge—how about I return the favor? You fixed something I couldn't see. That's… rare for me, man. Humbling, even. So, let me fix something for you. Or help you build something new. Whatever you need."

Ray shook his head. "I've got it handled. But…" He hesitated, his gaze drifting to the chaotic but fascinating schematics plastered on the walls, to the half-finished robotic creations scattered around the room. His nanites could repair and reconstruct, sure—but that didn't mean he was suddenly an expert in advanced circuitry, in complex systems design, or in the elegant art of making machines work. If he really wanted to go deeper, to truly understand and control the technology that was now part of him, to innovate rather than just patch things together and replicate what he absorbed—he had to start learning. And Arty, for all his manic energy and bewildering chaos, looked like the perfect, if highly unorthodox, place to begin.

"Actually," Ray said slowly, a new idea taking root, "I've started getting into tech. Like, actually interested in how it all works. Got any recommendations on where a guy like me should start learning? The real stuff, not the corporate-sanitized crap they feed you in the public learning hubs."

Arty's eyes widened, his jaw practically hitting the floor. Then, before Ray could react, he lunged forward and grabbed both of Ray's hands in a surprisingly strong, grease-stained grip.