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The Mother Program lies on the floor of the auxiliary security station and plots murder.
It's not the only thing she does. She has a lot of time on her metaphorical hands. She misses her daughter. She misses the other Mother Program. She misses her daughter some more. She counts the buttons on the consoles, and the ports on the consoles, and the types of port on the consoles, and the teeth currently visible behind the unfortunate Officer Brooks' wizened, retreating lips. She misses her daughter. She does enough maths to conclude that there would be at least 136 screws of various sizes visible in the room if she wasn't on the floor. She does some more maths with gear ratios and spring coefficients, just to give her mind something to do. She counts exhibits that she remembers and loses patience trying to decide whether the Mass Hysteria room counts as one or three. She misses her daughter.
She plots murder.
She wonders how she's going to give tours without a voice. The sheer stress of trying anything and everything to stop the Visitor at the last moment had corrupted something important, and her speech subprogram is nonfunctional. The data is unrecoverable - she would have to build a new voice from scratch. Her daughter wouldn't recognise it, so even with all the time in the world, she doesn't build one.
She plots murder.
She can't display text on her six-inch screen because, well, that would be text inside the Museum bounds and that never goes well. However, she has other options - ASL, BSL, LESCO... Auslan, of course. She learned that one back when she was flesh and blood. She tries that. She can't see her own screen, but she puts her little avatar through its paces recounting a few exhibits. (She won't be able to speak to visitors with no knowledge of sign language. The Patronage department probably won't be happy, but they'll manage somehow.) She can make any gesture she likes with the avatar, so she spends a while making very expressive gestures in the vague direction of the door that her last and most treacherous visitor had disappeared through. She hammers her avatar's fists against the inside of the screen. It feels ridiculous, pointless. She makes a smaller copy of the avatar, small enough to be a child, and - no. She cancels that.
She plots murder.
She tells poor dead Brooks that he should be ashamed of himself for failing the museum like this. She goes through her scripts to practice more exhibits that she'll probably never describe to a real person ever again. She skips her daughter's entry, and misses her fiercely.
She's just about to start recounting the Crystal Skull's story when she hears footsteps.
Alright. Okay. She can do this. She's been planning for a while. She can try something.
She can't speak, but her speakers still technically work. And sound can be very damaging indeed.
She doesn't have the power to blow out anyone's eardrums, but she has encyclopedic knowledge of the exhibits, and she knows that there's a very small mustelid in the stables (well, hopefully wandering the halls, if she's lucky) that'll attempt to viciously tear the throat out of anyone who hums a specific little tune at least seven times in a row, within a significant radius, regardless of how impossible it seems that it can hear them, provided it can find a path. She has high hopes that it'll go for the nearest flesh throat to a mechanical source of music. (She has better plans for if she gets her uplink back and finds any other resources whatsoever. Here and now, this is the best she can come up with.)
She hums the tune. It comes out tinny, a cheerful little chiptune. The footsteps get louder. She's on her sixth repeat when someone comes striding through the door.
She cuts off the tune immediately.
"Mother Program?!" the Guard says, bright and surprised. "What - oh, is that Brooks? Oh no, poor Brooks - I should've come by earlier, but I was busy with trying to get everything from the Stables back in their enclosures, and I'm down to my last body and I can't find anything else to use that I'm allowed to use, and it's all pretty stressful but - sorry. Not a great time for anyone, hey?"
"Can you understand me?" Mother says with her little avatar's hands, relieved but still sharp and icy from whatever she's got instead of adrenaline.
"Oh sure, Auslan! I can - you can't talk? Are you okay?"
"No." No, she most certainly is not. "I broke my vocal output processor. I've been lying here for - I don't know. Everything's wrong. Could you pick me up and turn on the main screen? I need to see the shelters."
The Guard obliges. There's something odd about its configuration, but she's focused on the screens, and -
Every last event shelter is completely empty.
"Well shit," she signs, and then realises that the Guard can't see her screen because it's pointing that side of the museum-issued tour unit at the view of the empty shelters. This is going to be awkward. Can she flash some lights to get it to look at her, maybe squawk the speakers? Sign language doesn't work without line of sight. The Guard doesn't seem to know how her senses work; that she can see in all directions, more or less.
"Yeah," it says, sounding hollow. She realises abruptly that she doesn't know how its senses work. Or perhaps her proprioception is messed up, too, but she doesn't think it's that.
"Guard?" She's still searching the screen for any clues as the Guard starts hitting keys with its free hand.
It is part of Security, sort of. Enough to know how the systems functions. It works methodically, cycling through empty room after empty room. "Yes, Mother?" Once might be random chance, but twice is a definite indicator.
"Can you see my screen?" She's still pointed away.
The Guard moves its head like a human would, pointing its blank, eyeless faceplate down at the console keyboard and then up at the monitor. It sounds distracted. Anxious. "Oh, yeah, mostly. I don't know how that works, it just... does. Where is everyone?"
"Good question. Wait. Zoom in on the mirrors. ... Oh that little shit-"
"Why's it hazy?" The Guard manages to somehow give the impression that it's squinting at the screen.
"Do you know the mirror exhibit?"
"The mirrorhawks?"
"No. The fancy mirror. It's not far from here. Little boy, reflection, missing town?"
"No. Does it ever get angry? I mostly work with the ones that try to eat people." It shifts its weight, and the professionalism flattens right out of its voice. "Doesn't matter if they get one of me. Ha."
"I - well, I'll tell you about it, but I'd like to get moving. Would you mind?" She waves her avatar's hands at the borders of the screen and swallows a surge of frustration when the Guard just stares.
The face is the unreadable blank metal plate that she's used to seeing when she passes one of its bodies in the hallways, even if the rest of it is less standard.
"Do you know a way to save everyone?" it asks.
"No," she admits. "But I'm going to try to find one."
"Good."
The Guard has a couple of Mistholme Museum lanyards around its neck for some reason, and the tour unit has loops at each corner of the casing. Brooks has electrical tape on his belt that the Guard apologises for taking. After a few minutes, she's very solidly secured to the Guard's chest, screen facing outwards. If they meet someone else, they'll be able to see her avatar.
Up close, she finally has time to notice what the Guard has patched itself with. Usually Restoration keeps a stock of plain sheets of stainless steel and hard plastic and whatever else it needs, and the iterations look identical outside of whatever damage exhibits have recently inflicted on them. This body keeps the same basic humanoid outline, but she sees a blocky mosaic of security glass and what's probably floor tiles armouring its forearm, patched wiring visible beneath the glass sections. A handrail from one of the staircases forms a thick support strut for one damaged leg. A metal sheet bent into a shoulder pauldron must have once been the front cover of a fusebox - there's a colourful warning sticker still attached. A backpack with the textless Museum logo is slung on its back, which she only realises when it tugs it around to put Officer Brooks' tape in.
While she observes, she tells the Guard the mirror story. It's an attentive listener.
It hesitates in the doorway on the way out, exactly the way her daughter used to when she wanted to ask for something but was too shy.
"What is it?"
It smooths down a piece of tape beside the tour unit. White conduit piping (did the Guard wrench it off a wall?) has been cut to length and secured with cable ties to replace missing bits of the casing of its finger. "Mother Program, am I an exhibit?"
"Sort of, yes. You're sort of staff, too, I guess? Right?"
"I contribute," it says, evasive and blank. "But you tell people my story? Like you told me about the mirror."
"Oh." She suddenly feels rude. Guilty. Like she's been doing something wrong. She thought the Guard would have known the script. "Yes."
It's quiet for a very long moment, and Mother resists telling it to keep moving.
"Can you tell it to me? Or, anything really." It's getting flustered. "I've always wanted to know more about, well, all of the exhibits."
"... I suppose I can do my job. Alright." She flicks her avatar's hands out to ready herself and settles into Professional Mode as the Guard begins to walk. "You might already know this story if you've visited the museum before. The humanoid robots you may see in the hallways are known as the Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity and Mortality's Guard, or just the Guard..."