On planet Zynima, you could sit still during the evening and watch the environment become darker with every passing minute. The days were short, meaning it would probably only be ten or so minutes until the night sky would be fully visible, even though the sun was illuminating the world mere moments ago. The city lights quickly grew vibrant against the sky, and here I was, still standing in the worst part of the city.

I really hoped Shock knew where to find me. A lot of the buildings around me were decrepit and nondescript, and there weren't any landmarks around me except for the main entrances to these slums.

Shock wouldn't be coming from outside the city if she was already home, so I continued walking up the main street to see if I could meet her halfway. I sure as hell wasn't about to wait around here for her, anyways.

As the sun set, most of the people on the streets were starting to pack up and go inside. Zynima became unusually quiet at night unless you were around a club district, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some of those particularly scary robots staying outdoors around here after dusk fell.

Like earlier, most of the bots I passed by didn't pay me much attention, as they were too busy mumbling amongst themselves and focusing on getting themselves indoors. The fervency with which they were moving almost made it seem as if they were trying to hide or get away from something, which did nothing for my paranoia. I quickened my pace just enough to satisfy the urge to get out of there, but that was when it happened.

A robot was passing by my right side when our shoulders collided.

This is how I die, I thought.

Before I could even turn around to apologize, I hear an angry voice shout, “the fuck's up with you? Watch yourself, asshole.” His raspy shouting accrued the attention of almost every nearby robot.

“S-sorry, man! I'll be-”

“Sorry? You wanna be sorry for something?”

Yeah, I'm going to die, I assured myself. His angry outburst astonished me, and it took a moment to realize that this was actually happening. This other bot was almost the same height as me, made of an equally black metal, and he wore an angry purple expression on a jagged-looking head.

The sudden altercation drew in another robot with the same structure and colour as the person I just bumped into, but this bot was much taller and bulkier than both of us. To my slight relief, their voice was a lot calmer than the robot I'd just bumped into. They stepped between us.

“Hey, what's goin' on here?” they asked.

“This bitch made me drop my shit,” my angry adversary explained. I didn't realize he was carrying something until I glanced near his feet and saw a small laptop on the ground.

“I didn't mean to! Look, I'll pay for it if-”

“Yeah, you're gonna pay with your face!”

I tensed up, mentally preparing myself for whatever this guy was about to throw at me. However, the larger robot intervened before it came to punches.

“I oughta set you straight,” said the big machine, directing his voice at the person ready to whap me. Slowly peering in my direction, he simply said, “you should get outta here.”

Did I ever take that suggestion. I bolted up that street, unable to care any less about what anyone else thought about me at the time.

Two assaults in one day. I need a bloody bodyguard. Speaking of...

“Shock!” I called out, hoping she was nearby. But, as I waited for a response, I realized I wouldn't be quite that lucky. I cursed to myself, begging for her to show up and escort me out of this hellhole.

That's when an idea hit me. The cool thing about being a musical machine in a city of robots is that there's no noise restriction during the night.

While running up the curvy uphill slope, I turned on the recording device in my visor.

“Shock!” I repeated, knowing full well she wouldn't be able to hear me. However, if I took that recording and blasted it through the speakers that lined my chest and shoulders...

“SHOCK!” The volume I cranked out that sound clip at vibrated my entire body, and the resulting echo lasted at least five seconds. I loved having a built-in sound system.

I heard what sounded like a faint reply in the distance. My processor was telling me it was a voice shouting back “Aural,” but I really couldn't say for sure. A few seconds passed before I heard a distant “air a you.”

Air a you? It took me a minute to realize what I was hearing. Wait, not “air a you.” That was “where are you!”

I picked up my speed even more, pushing my legwork to the absolute limit. I didn't feel like recording a new sound clip, so I blared Shock's name out once again. This time, if I listened really carefully, I could hear “Aural” in response. As I reached the top of the uphill slope and surveyed the long, straight road in front of me, I saw a pair of glowing green eyes far off on the other end of the street.

She was illuminated only by the nearby streetlights that she passed beneath, but it was more than enough to confirm her grey, android-like identity. She was still wearing her work outfit: a yellow and orange vest, two matching pauldrons, and those two huge beams connected to her back that extended almost a foot above her head. I slowed my pace considerably as we approached each other; my circuitry went into overdrive when her rapid footsteps became audible.

“Aural!” her monotone voice called out again. Shock ran up to me and put her hands on my shoulders, covering my speakers. “You're okay!”

The tension in my body dissipated almost instantly. “I... yeah.” I laughed, unable to find the right words. “I'm good.”

Shock wrapped her arms around me. Part of me wanted to usher her out of this crummy place right away, but I found enough safety in her embrace to stop for a moment and hug her back.

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“Worst day ever,” I drawled.

“Your leg,” Shock spoke up, releasing her hug and looking down at my feet. “Is it okay? Which one is it?”

“It's okay. Got it fixed.”

She sighed. “Let's get you somewhere safe.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. We didn't haphazardly sprint forward, no – we walked alongside each other, figuring out a plan. We were standing at a fork in the road far from those slums, and it happened to branch off to the tower I lived in. It was a remote but familiar area of Zynima; lots of small buildings and houses lined the left side of the street, and the right side of the intersection had a small-scale mining operation going on. I don't even think this little strip of land had a name, but it was a place I called home.

“Damn... I wanna check my place, but what if that thing's still there?”

Shock pensively put a few fingers beneath her chin. “I have a tool that detects nearby electronic signals. One of the perks of being a chief techy,” she said, flashing a quick smile at me.

That's right – Shock was a chief technician here on Zynima. I always assumed that meant she had a lot of cool gadgets at her disposal, but she never really went into specifics.

“We can go up there, and if I see anything, we'll have more than enough space to get away unnoticed.”

“Good.” I didn't have the capacity to question her in my current state, but I trusted her judgment enough to just go with it. The two of us headed right, towards the tower.

“I'm just happy you're alive, Aural.” Shock beamed.

“Yeah?” It threw me off seeing her so full of emotion. “You don't seem like yourself right now.”

“Your well-being is the highlight of my week,” she started, staring off in the distance. “For the last six or seven days, work has been hell. I've been strictly dealing with homicides, and every single one of them has been the exact same: death caused by someone tearing up the victim's drives. Death, after death, after death, all linked to this one killer.” She lowered her voice before continuing, “I can't say if the robot who attacked you is the machine destroying all of these other robots, but if it is, I'm sure as hell not going to sit around and let my friend die.”

I laughed again. “It's stuff like that that reminds me why I keep you around.” I got no reply, but I suppose this wasn't really the time for humour.

The circular tower was only a few dozen feet away by then. It looked a lot more impressive from outside the city, since it was situated on a bit of a plateau. From within the city? It was maybe six or seven floors tall. Nowhere near as high as it looked from the other side, but it still offered a gorgeous view of the badlands.

Shock took the lead and stepped onto the tower's stairs, which circled the building from the outside. The steps were connected to several little homes in the tower's interior, and they occasionally branched out to reach a few houses tucked in near the tower's supports. It was a pretty cozy place to live when you weren't being murdered.

She slowed down to a stop.

“What floor do you live on?” she whispered.

“Very top.”

Shock looked straight up for a little bit. “No, I can't detect anything up there.”

“You can tell that easily?”

She glanced at me with the corner of her eye and nodded.

“Wow.”

“Though, it takes a couple of seconds for my scanner to work its magic.”

We kept moving up the spiral staircase at a cautious pace, but Shock didn't inform me of any impending threats as we neared the top floor, so I assumed it was all clear. It was incredibly hard to see the top floor's narrow walkway with a huge overhang just above us that had zero lights, but the rail on the outer edge kept most people from falling off. (Whoops.)

It only took a few more seconds of circling around the topmost walkway before we saw the light of my doorless apartment.

When we walked inside, I was both greeted by the pleasant air of familiarity and walloped by the displeasure of examining my trashed room.

“Look at what that asshole did!” I shouted with my arms out to the side as I looked over the damage. “This is my door! What am I gonna do with this?”

“Call an installation expert? You're asking the wrong person.”

I sighed as I walked over to the balcony door and closed it. At least one of my doors was still unharmed.

The stuff on the walls looked undamaged, too. Good thing, because all of my CDs and instruments were hanging up, and it'd cost at least a bajillion bytes to replace it all. My most prized possession – my custom built electric guitar – was still propped up safe and sound in the corner of my room. No surprise, though – it was made of the most sturdy metal I could get my hands on, but the strings were okay and the body hadn't been scratched at all.

On the other hand, my desk chair, recliner, computer tower, you name it – anything that was between the front entrance and far wall where I had been knocked down had also been knocked over. I could tell my computer still worked, since the LCD monitor was still showing my computer's desktop.

[https://zynima.net/assets/lit/soulless2.png]

Speaking of, when I glanced over at it to see if it was functional, I noticed something on the screen. There was an e-mail notification at the bottom. Between the time I dove off my balcony and returned home with Shock, someone must have sent me an e-mail.

“Yo, did you send me any messages today?” I asked.

“Nope.”

Mystified, I propped my chair up off the floor and took a seat in front of the computer monitor. The e-mail was from an anonymous address. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't open an e-mail I didn't expect, but this was a bit too much of a coincidence for me to let it slide.

“Why do you ask?” Shock continued.

“I got a message since that bot barged in here. Lemme check it.”

I clicked on the notification, and a small window popped up on the screen, reading, “Aural Automaton, you're in danger right now. I know what's going on, and I need you to trust me and listen carefully. Come to Verdin Square and find a white robot with green eyes and green markings. This is SUPER important. Please believe me, and come as fast as you can.”

Well, I could already tell I was in danger thanks to today's B&E.

But that was it. A vague invitation to part of central Zynima, and one of the most populated commercial districts in the city, at that. I read the message aloud for Shock, spinning my chair around to face her after I'd finished.

“You don't happen to know any white robots with green eyes and green markings, do you?” I inquired.

“Do you?” she retorted.

“...No, I don't think so.”

“There's your answer.”

I grumbled. “So, Verdin Square is only like, half an hour away from here.” I was working under the assumption that Shock was going to accompany me.

“Do you really want to be going out there to meet a stranger right now, of all times?”

Shock was right – it was almost pitch black outside, and it had easily been the longest and worst day in a long time. I just needed to voice one concern.

“What if that thing comes back? Maybe that's the danger I'm supposedly in.”

Shock grimaced. “I'd happily stay here and keep watch, but I don't know what kind of machine this is. It might be an angry runt, but it might be some genocidal beast-machine. From its track record, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter.”

I put a concerned expression on my visor. “Yeah. So, I take it you're up for a midnight stride with me? This e-mail could be a lead.”

“Mmm,” Shock looked outside through the main doorway, “with no real detectives to speak to, it might be our best option.”

I started picking up the rest of my stuff off the floor, from my pencils to the reclining chair, placing each item where it belonged. Not much of it was actually damaged, to my surprise. Just tossed around a bit.

“When are you marching off to Verdin?” Shock asked while I puttered around.

“Right away,” I declared, “just let me clean up a little bit.”

“Do you need a hand with that door?”

We both looked over at the door on my floor. “Nah. It's pretty flimsy.”

I grabbed the door by one end, dragging it over to the front entrance. Propping it up against the wall near the doorway took almost no effort.

“One last thing,” I said, hopping over to the far end of my room. I took another look at my favourite guitar, admiring every bit of it until I was satisfied putting it away in its bag. I swung the strap over my shoulder with the bag itself resting against my back.

Shock gave me a strange look.

“If we're going for a night walk, I'm bringing my tunes with me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Let's just go.”

I stepped outside with Shock, taking a moment to slide the door to make it look as closed as possible.

“If some thief gets in here while I'm gone, I'm going to kick so much ass,” I mumbled.