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BEGINNING AT THE RUINS
While salvaging the ruins, I found something.
“An arm? —
Whose?”
A soulless being (maybe?), humanoid type, unable to identify whether it is an Automata* or Automaton*. But at its worst, I would say neither is an answer.
Shortly, a strong ray of light flashes vividly, the flare spreading chaos and creating an overcast on all walking-grims across these desolated estates.
The high capital seekers, known as The Apex, marked their first intrusion on the bottom of the underworld after a decade. At my best, I dragged the living corpse all the way from junkpiles. The humanoid seems important enough to even break their code of conduct.
I tried to deceive countless mechanic hounds, but none of it would possibly work. Even though there are many solutions, it would be impossible for humans to take nimbly silent steps. Even the simplest movement could have gone under their detection, but luckily, this is the time when all the Tinkers came to salvage the pile.
“Halt —” A man shouts loudly, surely he is one of the Apex’s seekers.
Gunshots echoed through the estate, resonating repetitively all over this bottomless cave junkpile. The eruption of pandemonium leaves me with a great opportunity on the way out. At the last sight that I saw, I started to question things that took my absolute interest:
‘Why are they using the cables with hounds?’
— Days later..
..
I woke up from the nightmare; in there, there were faces of destroyers that kept reminding me of that history. It must have been caused by seeing those things recently, for sure. Yes, the Apex, I mean.
… A week has passed without my noticing; how quickly can time fly? Perhaps none could answer.
As I look out of the window, where I cannot see a horizon, something piques my interest.
“A leaf? —Huh, that’s odd.”
Something so organic that we rarely see in daily life. It’s quite sarcastic that nature is considered as ‘luxury’ for the rich. It used to belong to all life, which has already ceased. Well, a hobby? So ironic, Mother Nature would cry til all the rivers dried up.
“Seems like I’m out of luck.” The gust pushed away a little foliage before I could catch it. Leaving a sight of meaningless sky-cities in my vision. A cloudy place where the sea of lights shine like stars, where stars no longer exist.
We limit our skies, bind everything to the ground, and wall over the biome. In the end, we divided all our empathy among all. The human race is best at fighting its own kindred. —sighs
Who knows, maybe my last stroke of luck has already run out.
I may have used it all over the last week. And speaking of which… Later, the sound of a heavy object clattering over the ground breaks out loudly all around. A man dragging stuff one after another, so it was Fawn. I walk outside the temporary shelter that is a few minutes from the ruins.
I return my gaze to a friend, who is busy packing.
“Anything interesting?” I spoke in a cold tone.
“It seems like those uppers are dropping something special.”
“Need help?”
“As usual, Allen.”
I helped him set up a vehicle that will soon transport some loot. The ruin’s air is filled with chemicals and extremely toxic. Even the special suit we wore doesn’t seem to be sufficient protection; a clear stab of toxicity keeps stabbing my nose annoyingly. Surprisingly, it’s as bad as swabbing your nose with a long needle.
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We spent some time investigating the area where a ray was cast on a massive ventilation fan. The ray is periodically interrupted by Vent’s fan blade rotation, where its size could easily crush all life in the whole yard if it ever fell.
Fawn may seem to be an airhead, but he’s quite a genius for inventing something that is almost useless. At least he’s good at fixing things, if you skip the part where he usually messes it up in the end. I guess it's inventor blood, modifying a good technology into crappy-like functionality. But you can’t blame him for his creativity; everyone has their own will, and at least he is passionate about it.
"Hey, don’t throw that thing away, Allen!!” I intentionally ignored him.
“Gold is a great conductor.”
“Really? That sounds familiar.”
Well, in the underworld, no one cares much about those little trinkets. Jewelry is not extraordinary—a lavish luxury that is totally useless, at least for me. As I threw that trinket away, Fawn immediately jumped into a pile of metal. What an amusing sight to see him being impulsive when it comes to materials.
I would rather focus the [Automata] in front of my eyes. A soul(less?) being gasping faintly doesn’t even have any energy to raise its hand. No wonder why it belonged to the yard, also, I ain’t a saint. Sadly, there’s no salvation for you mate. I plunged my hand in, reaching across their veins & cables, and grasping its heart—the Automata core.
“Farewell.”
At the moment that I plug out that core, its organ begins to electrify, he doesn't even scream or sound. There’s only a suffering gaze as the emission of particles glows out of my hand. The lights were visible to my bare eye, but it wasn’t strong enough to illuminate anything.
“Surely you were helping him.”
“You think so?” I shrugged my shoulders.
He is an expired deadman because he is not a member of any networks.
I don’t even witness his last sight as the light in his eye faded away. If there’s any mistake for this Automata I’d say that it’s his decision.
> Rule #1, Never sell your soul to the machine, and do not believe in the machine's life form. The first lesson everyone learned when opening their eyes here in the underworld.
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> [Automata] is a noun for a life-form being birthed from the transcendence of human consciousness into the network, known as a machine life form. Hence, termination of the process's function results in their death.
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> [Automaton(s)] are droids, androids, and other machines. They are soulless beings in human-like robot form, but they have autonomy on their own. Instead, a super-artificial-intelligence entity with free will could be their definition in the dictionary—Also, servant or warhead robots are one of them, for example, the executioner android.
Not all living is living; in contrast, not all machines are soulless. But, I never witnessed any Automata transcend back into organic flesh. While we’re mimicking the old patriotism idea of zero-waste automata, our spines were chilled as we heard immersive-weight footsteps land behind us. A metallic-gargantuan shadow cast over us, leaving us no chance of turning our heads back.
All I feel is heat passing through my body up and down repeatedly. An array of lights rapidly travel back and forth all around our organic entity, through blood and veins, heart and soul. My vision was blurred by rapid scanner trajectory all over the retinas.
Wait..
The spectre unit..
—!!
You gotta be kidding me, since that blood bath incident, a spectre or even worse never settle their feet on the underworld ever!
How come, how could.. It..
Oh ! — I see now.
Allen traces back to some event, he fully understands it. He would rather stay silent, playing along with their protocol. A horde of special forces patrolling at the bottom of the underworld at unnecessary hours, just like they’d been robbed of something very special. The officer who controls those leashed droids looks restless; it was like he was forced to work overtime relentlessly. We heard squads march over this estate seriously, they stepped on metal like they were crushing bones while stepping on the pothole puddle like stomping splashes of bloodbath. The historical horror kept haunting us for what we witnessed a decade ago, but now with a relative reminder in front of us.
“Don’t stare at it Fawn.” I whisper to him.
He stared those droids into its black bone, and suddenly he picked up its interest.
A human officer who controls a squadron of ‘Spectre’ droids joined the circle. He steps into our group as he observes around while holding a batch of cables in his palm. Later, some heavy-weight automatons landed around us. We’re covered by the shadows of undefeated machines surrounding us along with one officer upfront.
“You fellas ever see some humanoids in this junkyard?” The officer asks us whilst keeping his finger attached to the gun trigger he’s holding.
“No — of course not, sir..”
The officer looked into Fawn's eyes for a few seconds while annoyingly moving his leg. He reveals his short attention span honestly.
“And you fellas? Ever see it?” He eyes on me.
“No. We only have these things from Automata.” The droid is about to arm their weapons when I shove my hand into the bag, but the officer slightly faces his soulless subordinate fiercely. Those combat droids retained their actions instantly, fortunately, he only kicks one of my cores as he leaves along with six intimidating spectre bots.
Those officers or inspectors kept territorial watch on many yards in this underworld for a week. It’s clearly invading peace here, but no one would dare to eat bullets and blades.
Normally, those murderous androids are wirelessly regulated. But now, I started to wonder why those high-level special forces needed cables for controlling those merciless robots in the underworld?
—To prevent those soulless murderers from running wild? Nope. Apex neglect lives here. It’s more like to prevent some scheme instead, could that be terrorism or a riot? But those were forbidden a long time ago, ain’t they?
“No idea what they’re looking for, right Allen?”
“Allen?” Fawn repeatedly calls my name.
“Oh— yeah, neither do I.” My mind was absent, clouded with mixed emotions. I’ll never forget the inferno that happened that day, even if it wasn’t caused by this type of Apex unit.
Allen was unable to harbor many resentments toward the upper class as they both watched Apex's inspectors vanish away in the darkness of alley. The party went silent and cold afterwards, their routine no longer lively as usual.
At the moment, the underworld is not seeking vengeance against the Apex; rather, they’re preventing the Apex from trespassing over them, where their exploration could spark friction on the underworld's citizens to rally again. It’s quite a shame that law enforcers failed to do their basic job and instead corrupted their own regulations, where peace is only an option in prosperous territories.
We hurriedly pack our bags and separate. Allen waved back to Fawn and picked up the machine core where the officer had kicked it earlier. He pockets a piece of machinery and departs from this hopeless ruin without any negative emotional attachment to that enforcer.
“How can just one Automata cause this much disaster, I wonder?”
Allen speaks to himself as he never looks back to the junkyard after he steps out.