It was a balmy summer's day, with the low murmur of crashing waves in the distance, the whisper of winds through pine boughs, and the low buzz of cicadas all swirling together in a kind of dreamy melody.

Noah raised a hand to shield his eyes from the rays of the sun that filtered down through the forest around him, dappling the dead leaves and pine cones that covered the ground with gentle gold. Up there, ahead, through rows of tree trunks that seemed strangely orderly for nature, was The Factory. Noah thought of it like that, The Factory, though there were certainly others of its kind.

It was monolithic in nature, and enormous; he had never seen it from far enough away to glimpse its full shape. A building of sleek curves that flowed and melted into each other, seemingly coated entirely in reflective metal, with no entrances - at least, none that he could see from here. Why it had been built so oddly, Noah could not guess. It was not made for humans. Only the bots worked in there. It may well be that no human had ever set a foot inside whatsoever.

"Noah," came a worried female voice from over his shoulder. "Hey - I don't think we're supposed to be this close."

Noah glanced behind him. There, floating in the air, was a smooth black orb about the size of his head. Purple lines of light traced across its surface, in the shape of a stylized eye; they briefly shimmered and danced, warping into a cartoon trace of the face of a worried young woman, with short-cropped hair that cut off at her jawbone. "Lighten up, Penny," he replied. "No one said we couldn't be this close, did they?"

The face of the young woman on the surface of the black orb frowned. "Yeah, but..." A faint shimmer of blue light ran over its surface - a sign, Noah knew, that Penny had connected to an online database; probably searching for horror stories of what happened to people who got too close to buildings like these. Apparently finding nothing, the young woman pouted. "It's just...industrial buildings like this can be dangerous. They aren't designed for human safety."

Noah waved her off and turned back toward the building. Penny was his ball-bot....well, not his, exactly. He didn't own her. The little things had minds of their own, but they were designed to bond with, watch over and assist humans. He had known Penny since he was a young child; they had met on a playground where, noticing he was lonely, Penny had floated over and begun playing hide and seek with him, and well - that was apparently all it took to get her to follow him for the rest of his life. Fairies, some called them; he didn't know why, exactly, it was decided they should be made, but it was not uncommon to see small swarms of them drifting lazily through the air when they were not accompanying a human, burbling to each other.

Just then, the strange, mirror-coated building seemed to hum; a hum so deep Noah could feel it in his bones, even from this distance. A seam opened in one curling, silver globe, where moments before the surface had seemed flawless; steam hissed out, in quantities enough to blanket the forest floor in fog.

And following the swirling gray torrents came dozens, or perhaps even hundreds, of floating little bots, of a diversity of shapes and sizes, ascending wildly into the air like sparks thrown from a campfire. Some were featureless black orbs, like the fairies; others pronged and silver like the tines of a crown. Others wove through the air like snakes, countless jointed sections undulating against each other, and still others seemed almost like gigantic balls of tubes tangled in on each other, stretching taut like straining muscle. And one gigantic one twirled in the air like some sort of dancing jellyfish, largely transparent except for pulsating lights within that traced out the lengths of its tentacles and ended in a tangled cluster in what might generously be called its head.

All into the air they rose, weaving around each other, some seeming to float lazily while others shot forth with urgency. Noah leapt to his feet, watching their dance with delight, until the last of them was little more than a glint against the clear blue sky.

"Those were some weird ones," he murmured, when he finally let his eyes drop. "Couldn't even tell what half of them were for. Do you think they're off to fight the war?"

An eye was all that graced Penny's surface once again; pink and purple and staring. "I don't know," she replied softly, after a moment. "I don't like to think about that." A blue shimmer ran over her surface, and then she added, more light-heartedly, "Why don't we start heading back? You must be getting hungry about now."

~*~*~*~*~*~

The Factory was located at the top of a pine-covered hill; accessible by gentle slopes on foot, but with a sheer drop to sharp rocks battered by the waves of the Atlantic facing the ocean. From a distance, it was barely visible through the pine trees; just a strange silver glimmer that caught the light of the sun now and again.

It was down these slopes that Noah walked now, his long legs carrying him quickly. He was tall, and just a touch heavier than what some would call scrawny; skin tan, and burnt in some places; a mop of messy brown hair that had a slightly dark red tinge, from long hours spent in the sun. He wore rough and faded jeans, and a white button-down shirt rolled up around his forearms that blew, untucked, behind him in the wind. Not a shirt he would normally wear, he thought; he didn't care much for fashion, but Penny had said it looked good on him.

Penny, for her part, was clearly eager to leave the topic of The Factory behind. She orbited around his head, lights dancing playfully across her surface, as she hummed a wordless, lilting tune; whenever Noah mused thoughtfully about what might be going on within The Factory, she replied with nothing more than an exasperated "Oh, who knows!" before resuming her singing. Eventually, he stopped trying to bother her; Penny could be touchy like that, downright childish when something bothered her.

The winding dirt path beneath his feet led him close to the oceanside cliffs; the sound of the ocean waves grew louder and louder. They tugged at Noah's thoughts, as if he were being led out with the tide; Penny's singing faded from his awareness as he imagined himself flying out over the churning foam of the ocean, weightless and limitless.

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So ensconced was he in the daydream that he almost shouted when, turning his attention back to where he was walking, he noticed the man in his path.

The man was old, and gaunt; a curtain of gray hair ringed around the bald top of his head. He wore pair of slacks too loose for him that billowed in the wind, and a sharp tweed jacket. He stood at a little culvert along the path, where there lay a bench and worn wooden fence that looked out over the seaside cliffs, staring at the crashing waves that lay far below as if waiting for something.

A droid, perhaps? Noah wasn't sure, but it would be a little odd. Droids could look pretty lifelike these days, but he had never seen one choose to make itself look so worn and tired. Could be a human that had uploaded themselves into a droid; they had odd tastes sometimes.

The man turned as he approached, and Noah caught himself just sort of gasping. Half of the man's face was the twisted, ruined flesh of a scar; it swallowed most of his jaw and crawled up his right cheek, carving across his eye to end in a whisper upon his brow. Noah had never seen a scar so brutal; he resolved that it would be rude to stare. "Hello," he said light-heartedly, giving the man a little wave as he passed by.

The man did nothing but stare silently, wispy gray hair whipping about his head. Noah had passed him by already when finally the man spoke. "Young man," he said, in a voice that was surprisingly sharp and clear for his frailty, "Were you up there checking out The Factory?"

Noah paused, and turned slowly. "Yes," he said carefully, as the old man stared at him with eyes the color of stormclouds. "Was I not supposed to?"

The old man gave a smile, though it was difficult to tell beneath the scar. "Not at all," he chuckled. "I was just heading up to see it myself. Curious about how the war effort is going, and all."

"So those are war bots it's making up there," Noah said with satisfaction, no longer feeling nervous about the old man. He took a step closer, as Penny hummed and whistled anxiously behind him.

The old man paused in his chuckling, and stared down at the ground. "No, you wouldn't know, would you," he said quietly. "Why should you?" He glanced back up at Noah, his expression unreadable beneath his scar. "Pardon me, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Theodore."

"Uh, Noah," Noah replied, a little taken aback by the formal introduction. "Are you new in town? I haven't seen you around before, I don't think."

"You might say that." Theodore smiled, a bit blandly. "Mind telling an old man what sort of things there are to do here?"

Despite his initial misgivings, Noah found the old man quite charming, as they chatted about the interesting sights about town. There was the beach, of course; and a fine river for fishing, but there were also more sophisticated attractions. The supercomputing center which hosted the governor-level AGI was open to visitors, and spare processing power could be used for scientific or artistic simulations; and there was still the old VR gaming arcade, though those had fallen out of fashion by now. As he talked, Noah found himself wondering again if the man was a droid. Penny would know - her sensors were sensitive enough to detect a heartbeat and other signatures of biology - but it would be rude to just ask her in front of the man.

Theodore nodded and hummed appreciatively as Noah detailed all the town had to offer, but his eyes kept wandering up the hill. "Well, sounds like I made a good choice in coming here," he murmured once Noah had finished. "Though...seems a bit odd, doesn't it, that they'd build a Factory here."

Noah frowned. "I'd thought it was a bit odd myself, when it first popped up a few years ago. Don't the governor AIs usually keep industry centralized in order to make it easier to scrub pollution?"

"Also it's dangerous for the humans here. Definitely dangerous," Penny muttered, as she drifted lazily past Noah's head.

Theodore was quiet long enough for Noah to begin feeling uneasy. His face, formerly smiling and friendly even with the grotesque scar, now seemed carved from stone. "I can tell you why they do it," he said, his voice suddenly harsh and clipped. Noah felt as if he was being judged beneath the man's harsh stare. "They're decentralizing industry. So it can't be taken out all at once. In case the Manu invade."

Noah felt his heart skip a beat. "That...that wouldn't happen," he managed to force out, through lips that suddenly seemed too dry. "The Manu aren't even in our solar system, and the bots are - they're dealing with them."

"Are they now," Theodore asked. His gray eyes regarded Penny coldly, and she drifted back a bit in trepidation. "Do you think they'd tell you if they were losing? They didn't even bother to tell you they were building a war factory here. And they're preparing for an invasion, so Strategos at least thinks it's a possibility." His gaze dropped back to Noah, and he simply stared for a long moment, and then sighed, turning away. "Doesn't even feel like a war, does it," he murmured into the wind. "Not at all, no, not at all. Bots control everything; no humans even fighting in it. Not like the last war."

Noah wasn't sure what the old man meant; he had no frame of reference for what it should feel like to be at war. He only knew the current one. In fact, nobody he knew what it was like to be at war; nobody should, unless...

Something clicked. Theodore's age, his horrible scar. There was one way the old man would know what war was supposed to be like. "Um," Noah said, trying to conceal his awe, "Sir, could I ask - how do you know what war is supposed to feel like? Did you..."

Theodore didn't say anything as Noah trailed off, letting the wind howl in answer for a while, thin gray hair dancing across his skull. "Yes," he replied finally. "I fought in the War for Humanity."

Noah was agog. To think he had been chatting with the man so casually. If he had fought in the War for Humanity, Theodore had to be close to two centuries old, at least. But it wasn't just his age; he was a veteran of the War for Humanity - the last war humanity had ever fought with itself. A distant age of terror, whose whispers sometimes reached up from the history books; it seemed so alien, so awful. And yet here was a man who had lived through it. It felt almost surreal; as if someone from a nightmare had stepped through into the real world. He was struck with the absurd urge to run away. "I....um, I...." he stammered.

"Oh, please don't go thanking me," Theodore said, with a long sigh. The old man looked him up and down, sighed again, and stepped back from the cliffs and onto the path. "Look, it was....nice meeting you, Noah. Thanks for the tips and all that. I suppose I'll probably see you around town." And with that, Theodore set up the path, up towards The Factory, walking at a pace that seemed unusually brisk for someone as old and frail as he.

Noah blinked, watching the old man go. He hadn't been about to give thanks. He had been about to say "I'm sorry." He watched Theodore disappear up the path, and then turned to continue down the path himself. He was quiet, uneasy; a small pit of dread opened in his stomach. "Penny..." he said, after a few moments of silent walking.

"He was human," the little bot replied, anticipating his question. She seemed about to say something more, but then fell silent herself. Noah supposed she was probably feeling a bit unnerved, as well. Penny didn't like talking about the war.

Noah himself forced the thoughts out of his mind. A human, and at Theodore's age...the man was taking a big risk, letting himself get so old without uploading. Perhaps he was a bit of an eccentric. Still, it was nice to have another human around.

After all, Noah thought to himself, glancing upwards to watch the pine boughs sway gently in the breeze, There's only five other humans in town.