Image of blurred specters of Nnolyth-Ma, Chlorophi, and Cord-Eel stand in a circle around the viewer, looking down at them. [https://i.vgy.me/83vC4m.png]
The sun had set. It was night, the third to be exact, or maybe the fourth... or the fourteenth. She had lost track. Sitting there, face up, having not moved for days, her eyes had been scalded by the bright sun. In the dark, now, at least, she could see up into the comfortable cool black sky. Stars shown, millions of specks of lights, other worlds. Other world's suns. It was a nice thing to think about. So many beautiful, empty worlds of dust and fire. Some of gas, she noted. Humans had not made it past the neighboring planets before giving up and returning to occupy the Shoeboxes, but they did take a lot of pictures. They flew little machines past those big balls of dirt and gas and snapped a bunch of photos that they then stitched together into portraits of the planets. She had seen some of these, of things like Uranus, which was the most beautiful and memorable to her. Nearly featureless. A baby blue sphere, so much larger than Earth. Is that would her world would become? A gas giant, but with a physical core? Someday its atmosphere would probably dissipate or burn up, slowly beginning to resemble that of the other barren planets that surrounded hers. Someday she would also be consumed, and she would become gas. However many millions of years it would take her body to erode, however long it would take the radioactive materials within her organs to dissipate into the sand... She understood now, why it was called the "Hourglass Desert," why whoever had nicknamed it that had picked the title. Laying there, she felt like a piece of glass, with the sand of the desert running through her body. Wind would blow the dune, and it would slowly, steadily, consume her year by year. She was the glass, and the sand filled her. The glass would erode with use, and eventually, she would fade. It was strangely nice feeling her body dissipate like that, sort of validating in a way. Made her feel mortal, made her cherish every second of her remaining consciousness. She wanted to think about Uranus more, cool and blue, like her beloved desert sky. Such a large, bright shape, it was like a jewel hanging alone in the black void. A big blueberry. She wished it was readily visible to the naked eye, it was too far away.
Earth was rugged, exciting, colorful... Uranus was just dry gas. Perhaps it had a solid core? Had they ever checked? She didn't know. She would have looked it up, but turning herself back on was no longer an option. Her body would retake control, potentially erasing her consciousness the next time it went in for maintenance. Perhaps it would leave her untouched, trapped and aware in the backseat of an unfeeling, immortal shell of her former self as it wandered the desert for eternity, continuing to kill and kill and kill. Instead, she had decided she would go out on her own terms, immobile and rotting away in the desert. It wasn't an ideal way to die, but she supposed it was a preferable alternative to the many other, much more gruesome ways bounty hunters would typically meet their end.
Was she angry? Not really. She was frustrated at herself for allowing her life to get to such a low point. Why had she insisted on maintaining this old, expensive body of hers from the wars? Something cheaper and less efficient may have been better. In retrospect, her stubbornness towards adapting it had been silly. She had never really needed the strength of a gorilla or the reflexes of a tiger, she was an efficient enough killer without the body. A lot of it was just strategy. Perhaps it was some mental thing, some dysphoria that kept her from downgrading. Who knows.
Speaking of killing, she wondered, why had she tried so hard to walk this tightrope of self-abuse, instead of pursuing some other line of work? Why had she not just become a masseuse or something? She was sure there would've been many cyborgs that would've been willing to engage with a relaxing service like that. She fantasized about pushing and pulling on their old, exhausted metal.. calming them, maybe fishing out some old, neglected human consciousness they had forgotten while trying to work as hard as they did.
Work. Why did they work? All they ever did was work. Why not relax? Why not pursue a life with ample free time? Desire less, appreciate more... Nnol had taught her about that. People always ask for so much, he used to tell her. They're often disappointed. Living simply will always be more rewarding, he would say. Nnol would tell her that as transhuman beings, cyborgs obviously had many physical privileges that humans did not. They could live forever on a slice of bread and a cup of water if so desired. Supposedly though, cyborgs also had their own psychological privileges as well, that neither humans nor machines possessed.
Humans had been cruel to each other over the centuries. They had designed whole societies to wring resources and currency out of each other, to benefit a select few while exploiting the rest. Arguably that exploitation more than anything had been what led to the development of cyborg augmentations. Not just to kill, but to survive, in an inhospitable world that had only become worse with time because of the insatiable greed and environmental neglect of those in power. The privilege, then, of cyborgs, was being able to ascend past those unfair societies, having the benefit of hindsight and knowing what cruelties humanity had committed.
She wasn't sure how she felt about his views on humanity, she had always resented them for abandoning the earth in its time of need. To her, they all seemed mostly the same. The whole "class structure" thing was not something she understood. However, what she could understand personally, was the desire for resources and currency... the crushing weight of trying to afford to stay alive.
She had always been plagued by bills... for repairs, for ammunition, for basic amenities... She had always had to pay the bills, lest her body would fail (as it had) and her life would end (as it would soon, she supposed). Again she wondered, why had she insisted on maintaining such old, demanding augmentations? Why had she demanded so much of herself?
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"Maybe you wanted to maintain the legacy of your militia," suggested Chlorophi. They stood over the side of her unmoving body, the plant expressing these thoughts with their distinctly bubbly form of synthesized speech. "I know you see the younger hunters with the more modern augmentations as a corruption of the utopian beliefs of your former mentors and superiors. It's true that they don't have the same societal aspirations or rules of ethics that you and the other older hunters do, so I can understand why you hesitated to join them in upgrading your augmentations."
Enny agreed. Maybe with the passing of the Peacemaker Era, there had been post-war standards she had wanted to protect and uphold, and that had made her afraid to replace what remained of it. She had wanted to maintain that era's values of kindness and mindfulness, and not let them be overrun by the arbitrary greed and carelessness of the younger, hostile hunters.
"But you didn't really make an effort to uphold anything, did you? You just caved into survivalism like the rest," Cord-Eel replied, his blue, hotrod appearance standing behind her head in the sand in such a way that she could not see him well in the dark. "You think of yourself as a progressive force for change, yet you killed and killed and killed.."
It was true, she had abandoned the ideals of her masters in favor of keeping herself alive. She was no better than the humans. She had run away from those aspirations, from that mission, just like they had. They had entered the Shoeboxes and left this world to rot. They had escaped to their little virtual cities and had sacrificed their individuality and physicality for a life of eternity and comfort... The cyborgs who had stayed had become fragile, desperate creatures. They had needed her, and she had made no effort to help them... to strengthen them. She had treated them as enemies until the very end.
The Hourglass Desert, the Coast, The irradiated Flats of the east... this world could've become so beautiful if she, and the rest, had committed to the beliefs of their post-war society. If the humans had stuck around during the Peacemaker era and helped the remaining cyborgs rebuild, the earth would still be alive. She was no better, she had let it fall into ruin just as they had. She had been living for several decades with ample amount of spite for the human race, resentful of their apathy, but had she been any different?
"I cannot be critical of you," mumbled a visibly tired Nnolyth-Ma, his massive golden form and bright horns hugging the moon like a pedestal from the top of the dune. "For the cities that have collapsed, for what you were unable to do... It's not your fault..."
Despite the reassurances from her former mentor, she still felt immense shame. She could've made more of an effort to rebuild... to maintain... the towns, the settlements they had erected during the Peacemaker Era. Free, unrestricted access to electricity. Water distribution canals. Electric libraries, walk-in repair services, public housing projects... The things they had built during that era had been left to rot. She could've made an effort to keep them running, but their structures had been stripped for parts by the populace to keep their bodies going, build new stores, and do other arbitrary things. After a few years of this erosion, a 'credits' system had been formally established among the remaining populace of cyborgs in partnership with the Shoeboxes. A virtual, non-physical currency was all the cities were willing to offer that had had any mutual value to both them and the cyborgs, who had suddenly found themselves unable to repair and maintain their bodies without falling dependent on privately owned, trade-based services for maintenance and other amenities. The accessible options of the past era had become harder and harder to sustain as their world turned to dust, the sun became hotter, and the seas became acid. These options were gradually replaced by for-profit services with very steep costs. At first, it was an absolute outrage, and many attempted to destroy these services with weapons and sabotage. Eventually, due to the difficulty of survival, those who had complained so aggressively were reduced to compliant patrons.
What if? Enevelen thought. What if she attempted to re-establish a service of... free maintenance? For example. Was that feasible? Not everyone would agree to it. She wondered if the other engineers would feel threatened, and attempt to sabotage the service themselves... maybe threaten to withhold treatment to the populace until hers was discontinued. Why not have a tax-funded system then? That way, it would still be for profit, so they would have nothing to complain about. You'd still have to supply... credits, as a payment, she supposed, but if paid for by a community en masse, perhaps that would be... infinitely cheaper. She could pursue it as a "group project" for the populace, something they could work towards together, like in the Peacemaker Era. Pursuing it one village at a time, starting small to let it grow naturally as a service. The mechanics had such an obvious monopoly on their whole society and always insisted on their ridiculous prices... whether they really needed that much or not. They perpetuated a system of exploitation and greed, and for what reason? People were dying, and not everyone could afford their ridiculous prices. Why have prices at all? She considered, in her frustration, the thought of just killing them all-
"These people are machines, you must remember," interjected Xy, his shining features and billowing cloak reaching out over her. "they have given up their consciousness and humanity to improve their work capacity. No amount of idyllic persuasion will convince them to challenge their routines, and their priorities... They are all long gone. In an earlier time, this may have been possible, but we are machines now. We work."
She considered that cold, cruel reality. No progressive efforts could change the way their heads worked at this point. So many of them had become their jobs, their work. They were nothing without their routines, without their credits. No consciousness was left, or if one remained, as in her case, it was trapped deep within the machine. She would not have much luck coaxing any real societal reforms out of them without some serious.... um...
And as she lay there, flipping through her visions of friends and societal schemes, her body slowly died. Her battery began to drain, and her injuries consumed her whole being. Thinking became more and more difficult, as memories and conscious thought fell away, piece by piece. She was not aware of it as it happened, but slowly, steadily, the spiral took her. She became a piece of metal in the sand, consumed by the dunes. The thoughts and ambitions of a young girl, now much, much older, rotted away, replaced by nothing. Her last clear thoughts were unspecific memories of colorful toy blocks.
Eventually, her sight and hearing failed her, the numbness in her arms and legs subsided, and alone, in a cold and empty desert, Enevelen disappeared.