Journey to Elvander

README

They left the small city in a riot, the people of Livica all wanted a piece of Shadow Cannon even if it was just one Golem. The pair didn't seem all that bothered by it; they got what they needed, recharged batteries and a burger.

"This chili is not that bad!" Deacon happily exclaimed with his mouth full. "This sweet potato recipe is pretty good!"

He sat on Ragnar's shoulder with one arm around its head and the other clutching his half-eaten burger.

"I just didn't think we would run into problems so soon." He continued. "Those guys were crazy."

Ragnar whirred in agreement.

"You know, for a killing machine," Deacon swallowed his burger. "You pulled your punches pretty well. Not a single body."

Ragnar shrugged.

"Modest. Nice, you must get all the mechanical 'ladies' excited." Deacon smiled, finishing off the rest of his burger.

Ragnar stayed silent, either because it didn't catch the joke or just didn't want to talk anymore.

Deacon took the silence and sat quietly on Ragnar's shoulder, allowing the titan some peace to get some good mileage into the journey. The night sky sank the area into a dark hue away from the patch of lights they had when they entered Livica. Aside from the occasional critter scurrying through the grass, Ragnar made sure that nothing with fangs and claws got too close.

"You know what's funny?" Deacon broke the silence again.

Ragnar sent a message: Jokes?

"No! Well, I mean, that's one thing, but what I mean is that if Shadow Cannon did happen to build you, why did they leave so much code out?"

Ragnar paused its steps to think about the question. It still couldn't figure out its origin or its original purpose. Something interfered with its "thoughts" whenever it tried to remember. All Ragnar knew was to deliver the fuel cell and make sure it was installed to prevent Shadow Cannon from attacking Elvander. A piece of the plan was gone due to the missing representative; now it had to drag an innocent bystander into the war, so far he's been a good sport even after the previous kicking and screaming.

"You knew to pull those punches, you weren't out to kill anyone. You acted against your programming." Deacon tapped on Ragnar's head with a thoughtful sigh. "You still don't know the name of the person that sent you, do you?"

Ragnar shook its head side to side.

"I'm curious. Let's stop right here. I must've missed something while I was doing your repairs." Deacon climbed down from Ragnar's shoulder.

The young man tapped on the robot's chestplate to get it to open it to pull out his bag that had his plug to connect to the hard drive.

Ragnar knew the drill, it sat on the ground to give Deacon an easier chance to access its files. Deacon hooked up his phone to the USB wire from the bag and jammed it into Ragnar's hard drive port behind its head.

"If we're lucky, Shadow Cannon's programmers were organized enough to leave comments on some of the code." Deacon scrolled through the variety of folders that opened up parts of Ragnar's source code.

He found a folder that was overlooked when he was doing the diagnostics at his house. His finger tapped it open, giving him access to the contents that were stored in the folder.

"All this won't mean a thing unless I can find a— here we go!" Deacon located a file that said README. A simple file, but to programmers it usually meant a lot of information that can help them when they tried to do installations or debugging.