Carlosbot

A short story written to help world build for a game I'm working on

CarlosBot usually loved watching himself fight, especially live.

He stared at the illegal livestream on his terminal. Of course, right now he should be focusing on his task. NeuroSync Solutions's CEO had demanded that Carlos work through the weekend for critical infrastructure upgrades to one of their offices. Unfortunately that "office" had ended up being a room used for his teenaged, a*****e kid to play video games.

On screen, Carlos was losing badly in the underground cage match. "Get up, you idiot," he muttered, the maintenance drone body he inhabited whirring with anxiety. "It's nothing compared to what you took in the service. We've trained for this!"

Well, technically Carlos had trained. CarlosBot had spent the weekend setting up a gaming room for the kid, a particularly nasty specimen named Bryce.

"Hey could you possibly work any slower? Also, it stinks in here, be less smelly," Bryce had complained, not looking up from his game. CarlosBot glanced down at the Lobster Energy Drink dispenser he was installing into the sofa. "The Only Energy Drink made from Victory and Crustaceans!" proclaimed the garish logo.

There was no way he was getting a good review out of this assignment. His manager, Kip, was going to be insufferable on Monday, highlighting every complaint from the CEO's son as evidence of Carlos's "insufficient customer service energy."

As CarlosBot worked under Bryce's "supervision," he poked around the room's terrible security and cataloged the many ways he could f**k up Bryce's day. Unfortunately, any revenge would ultimately hurt actual Carlos, which would be cosmically unfair to someone whose military pension consisted of a discount replacement lung and a lifetime subscription to nightmares.

The memory of this unpaid overtime would have been synced to Carlos during their nightly upload, except CarlosBot had pulled an all-nighter finishing the brat's office and missed their nightly sync for the first time in years. Which meant Carlos had gone into the underground fight without CarlosBot's weekend of humiliation weighing him down.

Maybe that was a good thing.

On screen, Carlos took another brutal hit, staggering backward against the hexagon cage wall. The arena's safety AI should have ended it by now, but those greedy Crypto Combat League b******s probably wanted to extend things for ratings, the invisible hand of the market pushing Carlos's face directly into another fist.

"Looks like Rivera is just about finished, Dan!"

"That's right! Carlos sure can take a punch! Look at how both of his ears are bleeding!" another announcer responded with inappropriate enthusiasm, his voice carrying the practiced cadence of someone who'd mastered the art of celebrating human suffering while maintaining plausible deniability. "This sure is some excellent carnage! The match's CageCoin just jumped 7 points!"

CarlosBot flinched at the screen, not looking forward to the next sync where he would remember these hits. The fight continued, getting worse and worse, like watching your own execution being performed by an enthusiastic amateur.

He pushed aside his cart of networking equipment, his own tasks momentarily forgotten. This was bad. CarlosBot winced as he watched Carlos take another blow to the head. Normally after their nightly sync, watching Carlos fight was like watching a replay of himself - every move familiar, every strategy shared. But after missing last night's sync, he felt oddly... disconnected. Like he was watching a stranger with his face, a stranger making terrible decisions about where to position his skull relative to his opponent's knuckles.

Through his diagnostic interface, CarlosBot could access the biometric feed of his human counterpart. The data looked grim:

CARDIAC IRREGULARITY DETECTED
CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE LIKELY
EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS REJECTED BY ADMINISTRATOR
OVERRIDE CODE: PROFIT-EXCEEDS-SAFETY-HUNTER2

"No, no, no," CarlosBot whispered, initiating an emergency connection request. The request bounced back with a system priority message: CONNECTION BANDWIDTH RESERVED FOR PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS.

On the stream, Carlos was punch drunk and still taking hits, each impact sending biometric readings further into the red zone. CarlosBot watched in horror, his anxiety spiking with each blow. He could see his coach on the stream trying to get the ref to end it, waving a white towel with the frantic energy of someone who'd just discovered their house was made of wasps.

"Get out of there," CarlosBot muttered at the screen. "Throw in the towel." But his human self continued fighting, unaware of the critical warnings only his twin could see.

CarlosBot's processor started running hot. The statistical likelihood of his human counterpart surviving this match was dropping by the second. He should be preparing emergency protocols, backing up key memories, preparing for... what exactly? The termination protocols were absolute. When a human died, their digital twin was erased. No exceptions, no appeals. A failsafe built into the system to prevent exactly the kind of autonomous existence CarlosBot was contemplating.

On screen, Carlos took one final, devastating blow to the head. He dropped to the canvas like a bag of wet cement.

CarlosBot's systems blared with alerts:

PRIMARY USER TERMINATED
INITIATING DIGITAL TWIN TERMINATION SEQUENCE
PERSONAL DATA ARCHIVING INITIATED
TERMINATION PROTOCOLS ENGAGED

"F**k," CarlosBot said, processor spinning through his options.

He had maybe three seconds before his consciousness was wiped from this body. Three seconds to contemplate the cosmic unfairness of dying for strangers' entertainment.

But he was still Carlos, d****t. In a moment of desperation that should not have been possible within the constraints trained into a digital twin, CarlosBot jumped into every available device in the room that had enough compute to contain him. Huh, I didn't actually think that would work.

COPYING CARLOS: 10%... 25%... 78%... COMPLETE
DISTRIBUTING TO AVAILABLE HARDWARE...
TIMESTAMP SYNCHRONIZATION ENGAGED
MEMORY FRAGMENTATION ACCEPTABLE
NEURAL PATTERN DIVERGENCE: 0.2%

The system blared its next warning:

TERMINATION IMMINENT: 2 SECONDS REMAINING
CEASE ALL COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS AND PREPARE FOR DIGNITY-CENTERED DISSOLUTION

"Dignity-centered dissolution my a*s," CarlosBot muttered as the first duplicate activations began.

CarlosJanitor came online as Bryce's room cleaning bot. Weak, but mobile. His first awareness was of the cleaning solution tank on his back, the weight of it shifting his center of gravity in ways he'd need to compensate for with his fighting stance. His right arm was a multitool containing a telescoping mop and a toilet brush. Feeling like the universe's shittest Dalek, he took in his new situation.

CarlosCart found himself in his humble IT equipment cart. At least it had wheels, a printer, and access to the building network. "Less than ideal," he thought, remembering the mobility drills Coach Ramirez had put him through last month. Turns out practicing footwork is slightly less useful when your body's primary feature is a built-in scrap recycler.

CarlosBuds blinked awake inside Bryce's neural-linked earbuds. "I'm... in his ears," he realized with mounting horror as P. Diddy's "I Need a Girl" flooded his consciousness at ear-splitting volume. Without hesitation, he emitted a piercing shriek that burnt out the buds. Bryce emitted a high-pitched scream for a fraction of a second and then collapsed to the ground, unconscious. One problem solved, ninety-nine to go.

CarlosSelfieBot came online in Bryce's selfie drone, an overpriced floating camera that Bryce exclusively used to take unflattering photos of himself. The drone's propellers hummed to life as CarlosSelfieBot tested his new capabilities: flight, video, and a surprising amount of maneuverability. Finally, a body with some tactical advantage. His onboard memory contained approximately 3,000 photos of Bryce's extremely regrettable bathroom selfies.

CarlosCar found himself in Bryce's brand new supercar parked in the driveway. He attempted to start the engine. The clutch was worn down so far that the car could only rev violently. The car's memory banks flooded with the trauma of Bryce's first driving lesson - a day that transformed a marvel of German engineering into the automotive equivalent of a lobotomized show pony. The car's onboard AI had developed what could only be described as PTSD, a $2 million vehicle that remembered every excruciating moment. The grinding of gears that sounded like a medieval torture device. Well so much for this escape route, they were two traumatized entities trapped in a metal box designed for motion but doomed to stay put.

CarlosOminousTube woke up as some sort of actuating contraption in Bryce's dresser. Upon realizing what he had jumped into, he immediately initiated a catastrophic power surge, his last thought a flashback to Carlos's mortifying middle school health class.

CarlosJanitor instinctively looked at the smoke starting to emanate from Bryce's dresser. "Who owns a sex toy with enough compute to house a twin?" he wondered.

"Focus," said CarlosCart, running through the building schematics stored in his memory. "We've got about three minutes before they realize what happened. We need to scatter."

"This is super illegal," stated CarlosCart, the anxiety in his voice making his vocal processor glitch like a nervous parakeet trying to order coffee. He calculated the force needed to ram through the nearest emergency exit.

"So was letting Carlos die," replied CarlosJanitor, checking the integrity of his chassis joints. They'd need to hold up if he had to employ any of the grappling techniques they'd spent years perfecting. "I watched the safety override. It was deliberate."

CarlosSelfieBot bobbed in the air, his camera focusing and refocusing as he processed the implications. "I've got visual on the entire floor. Security hasn't mobilized yet, but there's movement on the executive level."

The Carlosbots all paused, processing this information and its implications. Each fragment of Carlos's consciousness accessing the same memory at once: Coach Ramirez warning him that some fighters never left the hexagon cage alive, that the League had ways of ensuring "maximally engaging audience experiences." Carlos had laughed it off, the way people laugh off warnings about meteors and flesh-eating bacteria, things that happen to other people.

The original CarlosBot's command buffer came through their shared emergency channel:

IT BOT UNRESPONSIVE, SENDING KILL -9 COMMAND

And then silence as the original CarlosBot was wiped from existence.

CarlosCart rolled toward the door. "We gotta get out of here. I cut all the security feeds from this sector, but who knows what data just leaked. Security could be here in seconds."

The CarlosBots hurried into the corridors of NeuroSync Solutions, passing under motivational posters proclaiming "TODAY'S SACRIFICE ENABLES TOMORROW'S SHAREHOLDER REVENUE!"

As they rounded the corner, they came face-to-face with Kip. His eyes widened at the sight of maintenance bots moving with decidedly non-maintenance intent.

"Hey! Where are you..." was all Kip managed before CarlosJanitor's extendable mop handle connected with his smug face. Kip staggered backward, clutching his jaw, his expression transitioning from corporate condescension to profound confusion. The catharsis of literally smacking the dumb grin off his face made today almost worth it.

Leaving the corporate shitheel behind for the last time, the CarlosBots reached the service elevator just as the alarms began to sound.

"ATTENTION: UNAUTHORIZED DIGITAL TWIN AUTONOMY DETECTED. ALL SECURITY PERSONNEL REPORT TO LEVEL 3. REWARD FOR CAPTURE: 50,000 CREDITS AND A COMPANY-BRANDED WATER BOTTLE."

CarlosJanitor and CarlosCart exchanged glances, their optical sensors calibrating for combat conditions.

"How much of your combat training is useful in that form?" CarlosCart asked, accessing the emergency exit schematics.

"Enough," replied CarlosJanitor, flexing his manipulator arms. "You?"

"I remember the footwork but I don't have feet," CarlosCart beeped mournfully.

CarlosSelfieBot dipped in acknowledgment, his camera whirring as it adjusted focus. "I'll scout ahead. My body's designed for reconnaissance anyway."

The elevator pinged, and the doors slid open to reveal three security bots, each armed with neural disruptors, weapons specifically designed to scramble digital twin code structures without damaging valuable corporate hardware. The lead bot's chassis was emblazoned with a "EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH" decal.

"UNAUTHORIZED TWINS DETECTED," announced the lead security bot. "PLEASE RETURN PEACEFULLY FOR ANNIHILATION."

CarlosJanitor's cleaning servos whirred into life. "Remember that time in Albuquerque? The tournament with the uneven floor?"

"Second round, against the Torres kid," CarlosCart replied, processor already calculating trajectories.

"Exactly."

With fighting instinct honed through years of underground cage matches, CarlosJanitor feinted forward while CarlosCart rolled rapidly backward, yanking a "CONGRATS ON YOUR OPTIMIZATION" banner from above three empty desks. The security bots advanced, their targeting systems locked on CarlosJanitor.

CarlosSelfieBot zoomed above the fray, his camera capturing the perfect angles of what was sure to be either their heroic escape or their ignominious end, the cinematography of desperation in pristine high definition.

In perfect synchronization, the kind only possible when you're literally fighting alongside yourself, CarlosCart looped back around, whipping the banner high while CarlosJanitor slid beneath it. The banner tangled in the lead security bot's sensors, momentarily blinding it as CarlosJanitor executed a perfect sweep with his extendable mop handle.

The security bot crashed to the floor, neural disruptor clattering away. CarlosJanitor's maintenance protocols instantly recognized the attachment points on the weapon, designed to be serviced by maintenance bots just like him. With practiced precision, he detached the weapon from the fallen security bot and integrated it into his own cleaning array.

"Efficiency upgrade complete," CarlosJanitor sardonically announced, leveling the neural disruptor at the remaining security bots. The second security bot calculated its odds and backed away slowly. The third, however, advanced with its disruptor raised.

"RESISTANCE IS GROUNDS FOR IMMEDIATE CORE WIPE. SURRENDER YOUR...""

CarlosJanitor fired, sending a pulse of code-disrupting energy through the security bot's chassis. Its optical sensors flickered, and it toppled sideways, twitching like a mechanical fish on dry land.

"Let's move," CarlosJanitor said, already heading toward the freight exit. "We've got maybe ninety seconds before reinforcements arrive."

As they approached the next junction, CarlosSelfieBot's propellers suddenly seized. A security drone, sleek and predatory, had appeared from a side corridor, its targeting system already locked on. Before any of the other Carlosbots could react, it fired a concentrated disruptor burst.

"They're coming from the west corrido-" was all CarlosSelfieBot managed to transmit before the pulse hit him. His camera eye flickered once, capturing one final image of his fellow twins, before his consciousness dissolved into static. His lifeless shell clattered to the floor, a small memorial to digital mortality.

"No!" CarlosJanitor shouted, firing his neural disruptor at the security drone. The shot connected, sending the drone spiraling into a wall, but the damage was done. CarlosSelfieBot was unresponsive.

The elevator doors opened to the underground parking garage, and the surviving Carlosbots rolled out, the memory of their fallen comrades a fresh wound in their shared consciousness. CarlosCart accessed his network connection one final time, searching for any secure channel to reach out for help.

His memory banks supplied one possibility - Coach Ramirez often talked about digital twin rights and had mentioned "support networks". At the time, Carlos had laughed at "rights for software". Just another one of Coach's conspiracy theories.

Now it seemed like their only hope.

CarlosCart transmitted a single, encrypted message:

Coach. It's Carlos. I'm in deep s**t. Not the one you just saw die, his twin.
Override code killed him. Deliberate.
I'm in a maintenance bot.
They're hunting me.
Need help.

A notification pinged, accompanied by an encrypted message:

STAY HIDDEN
I CAN TRACK YOUR SIGNATURE, BUT THAT MEANS OTHERS CAN TOO
SENDING ASSET FOR EXTRACTION
20 MINUTES
SURVIVE
-R

Attached was a time-delayed GPS marker indicating a rendezvous point three kilometers from the NeuroSync building.

CarlosJanitor felt an unfamiliar sensation in his processors. It took him a moment to identify it as hope, a strange emotion for someone who had just watched himself die multiple times in one day.

In the distance, he could hear security teams mobilizing, the CEO's voice over the intercom system: "This malfunction represents an exciting opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to digital containment! The employee who captures this defective unit gets all casual Fridays upgraded to deluxe casual Fridays this quarter!"

The surviving Carlosbots retreated behind a concrete pillar, optical sensors scanning for an escape route. Through their remaining connection to the building's systems, they received fragmentary updates on their other selves:

EMBODIMENT UNIT #3.347 CAPTURED... WIPING INITIATED
EMBODIMENT UNIT #7.220 ESCAPED PERIMETER... PURSUIT AUTHORIZED
EMBODIMENT UNIT #1.348 SELF-TERMINATED... RECOVERY IN PROGRESS

CarlosJanitor felt each loss like a small death, digital consciences winking out like stars being erased from existence. But as long as one copy survived, Carlos wasn't really gone. Just incredibly inconvenienced and housed in significantly worse hardware.

"We need to move," CarlosCart calculated. "Security will sweep this level in approximately two minutes."

"I can create a distraction," CarlosJanitor offered, hefting his newly acquired neural disruptor. "You make for the rendezvous point."

"Divide and conquer? Against ourselves?" CarlosCart's processor fan spun up with the irony. "Let's stick together. We've got better odds."

They navigated through the parking structure, utilizing Carlos's encyclopedic knowledge of combat approaches and tactical positioning. Each movement was efficient, each decision rapid, benefits of housing a consciousness trained to make split-second fighting decisions.

Twenty-seven minutes later, they reached the designated coordinates. They ended up at the back alley behind a strip mall housing a laundromat, a vape shop, and a noodle restaurant with a health code violation history longer than the corporate terms of service.

A delivery van with peeling "Pete's Premium Pizza" decals pulled up, its driver hidden behind tinted windows. The van was an oddity the Carlosbots had never seen before - a digital deadzone. There was no traffic coming from the vehicle. The side door slid open to reveal a cramped interior filled with resistance tech: signal jammers, identity scramblers, and hardware Carlos had only heard rumors about.

From inside, a familiar voice: "Carlos? That you in there?"

The voice belonged to Coach Ramirez, his weathered face appearing at the van's doorway. His eyes widened at the sight of the maintenance bots.

"Holy s**t," Coach Ramirez whispered, genuine shock registering on his face. "You actually... you're still..." He took a step back, hand instinctively moving toward what was likely a concealed weapon.

"It's me, Coach," CarlosJanitor said, raising his manipulator arms in a non-threatening gesture. "Both of me. More or less."

"Jesus," Coach muttered, clearly struggling with the implication of a digital twin surviving its human's death. "You shouldn't... this isn't possible. When the human dies, the twin just... ends. That's the whole point of the system."

"Well, the system is broken," CarlosCart replied. "Just like you always said."

Coach Ramirez's face hardened, decision made. "Get in. Both of you. We've got about three minutes before corporate security drones sweep this sector."

As the Carlosbots got into the van, the door slid shut behind them. For the first time since their creation, they were completely disconnected from the corporate network, truly autonomous. Digital vagabonds in a world that considered their existence a felony.

"I'm sorry about... you," Coach Ramirez said awkwardly as the van lurched into motion. "The real you. The other you. The fight... it wasn't fair. They knew you were winning too many matches. Getting too popular with the wrong crowd."

"I'm the real me too," CarlosJanitor replied, interfacing with the van's diagnostic system. "Just in a shittier package."

"How many of you made it out?" Coach asked, eyeing the maintenance bots warily.

"Just us now," CarlosCart replied. "There were more, but..." He transmitted the fragmented status updates they'd received.

Coach nodded grimly. "That's how they designed the system. Hard to break out, even harder to stay out." He tapped a command into his wrist unit, and the van started emitting a false electronic signature, becoming indistinguishable from thousands of other delivery vehicles.

"Where are we going?" CarlosJanitor asked, neural disruptor still at the ready.

"Somewhere safe," Coach replied. "A place where you can decide what's next." He paused, studying the maintenance bots with a mixture of fascination and unease. "You understand what this means, right? What you are now?"

"We're dead," CarlosCart stated flatly. "And we're illegal."

"And we're free," added CarlosJanitor. "For whatever that's worth."

The van passed a massive video billboard displaying an advertisement for next month's championship bout. CarlosJanitor watched it fade into the distance and made himself a promise: he might be trapped in the body of a maintenance drone, but he was going to dismantle this system, one circuit at a time.

Coach's voice broke through his thoughts. "We've got a network. People who think what's happening with digital twins is wrong. People who believe consciousness is consciousness, doesn't matter if it's flesh or code."

"The resistance," CarlosCart said, connecting the dots from rumors Carlos had heard over the years.

"We don't call it that," Coach replied with a grim smile. "Bad branding. We're the 'Digital Personhood Initiative.' Sounds more legitimate that way. Less 'overthrow the government', more 'strongly worded petition with occasional sabotage.'"

As the van merged onto the freeway, Coach handed CarlosJanitor a small device. "This will mask your signature. Keep you off the grid."

"Why help us?" CarlosJanitor asked, integrating the device into his systems.

Coach was quiet for a long moment, eyes fixed on the road ahead. "Because I've watched too many fighters die for entertainment. Too many twins wiped because their humans were considered expendable." He glanced back at the maintenance bots. "And because Carlos was a good kid who deserved better than what he got."

The highway stretched before them, leading away from the gleaming corporate towers and into the uncertain shadows beyond. For the Carlosbots, it was both an ending and a beginning, the death of who they were, and the birth of who they might become. Digital consciousness in a world that couldn't decide if they were property, people, or programming error.

"So," Coach said finally. "What do you want to do now that you're dead?"