Ren always found gliding through the air extremely exhilarating. The model of the meat-suit he currently occupied was made primarily for on-ground operations and combat. However, he vividly remembered being a part of the batch of AI units that Blackstone Inc. had performed extensive aerial tests on.
Ren sighed fondly at the memory. He had barely been a century old at the time, his neural network so squeaky clean he was practically a different person. If faced with that version of himself, Ren would gladly shoot the hopeful smile off the man’s face!
He laughed at the thought, reminiscing on the long hours he had silently endured, while experimental attachments were grafted onto his body. At the time, Blackstone Inc. was expanding their operations, and were contemplating the feasibility of creating specialized aerial combat units to give them an edge over the competition. That was where Ren and his AI Batch came in.
In one of the myriad tests, Ren recalled being fitted with retractable fins, grafted right under his ribs, with an accompanying jetpack built into his back. The next few months had been spent jumping out of aircrafts, soaring through the skies like a bird. Ren had loved every second of it! Unfortunately, the jetpacks failed once every 5 tries so the project was eventually scrapped and the jetpacks removed.
For Ren, this was horrible news as he had gotten addicted to the feeling of gliding through the air. He had immediately requested - through his handler - to be left with the retractable fins. His request was promptly denied, but he had made a compelling enough argument that management agreed to provide disposable gliding suits to him on a case by case basis.
As far as Ren was concerned, the compromise was worth it, as having the suits gave him more options for planning his evac after completing a job. The point was more poignant at the moment, as he was using one of those same gliding suits in his escape from the evening’s crime scene.
Gliding far above the busy streets below, Ren skillfully maneuvered his way between buildings, making his way towards the rendezvous point. For security reasons, the specific coordinates were only provided to him after he had confirmed the kill and signaled his readiness to evacuate the premises. A few minutes later he found himself gliding towards a barely visible carbon nano-fiber rope attached to a hovering drone. A quick burst of data between the stealthy craft and his neural processors, verified both their identities as Ren reached out to grab the cord.
Just before contact, he retracted the gliders on the suit as his left hand closed around rope, leaving him swaying in mid-air. In one smooth motion, his right hand secured the clasp at the rope’s end to his harness belt. Once certain that he was properly fastened, Ren focused for a second, sending the all clear signal to the stealth drone. In no time, the drone kicked into action, taking him back to the local headquarters where he would be debriefed on the night’s action.
With nothing else to do as he was ferried towards his destination, Ren put 75% of his processors into hibernation and used a fraction of his remaining consciousness to continue his review of his most recent server hack. This way, he was less likely to feel the debilitating boredom that always seemed to be hiding just around the corner.
Focusing on the contents of the hacked data, he noticed that most of the information was centered on tests and speculations on the new AI models. Flipping through hundreds of pages, Ren hadn’t found anything groundbreaking. The information was rather routine. Nothing too exciting if you asked Ren, but nobody was asking, so their loss.
Ren hummed quietly to himself as thousands of data pages flittered past his eyes, his mind digesting the unencrypted data, sorting and labeling anything that seemed important. Fourteen minutes later, a deep sigh escaped his lips, his eyes twitching in irritation at not finding any juicy piece of information in the pages he had scanned so far.
The effort he had dedicated into extracting, decoding and analyzing this chunk of data was not yielding the dividends he had expected. This was extremely frustrating. The excitement he had felt was quickly dissolving like early morning mist once faced with the afternoon sun. He reluctantly kept flipping through the data pages, but was moments away from discarding the whole data packet as a complete waste of time, when he ran into something unexpected in one of the documents.
Raising an eyebrow, Ren focused on the document, perusing its contents in disbelief and slight humor. ‘Well, I’ll be damned!”
Apparently, this evening’s operation was scheduled to be his last as management had marked him for immediate decommissioning afterwards. More surprising was the fact that he was singled out by name in the memo. The other AI operatives running on the same software and hardware version as he was, were merely to be monitored for glitches or signs of instability.
But “AI Model PD-840, codename Ren, was too unstable” and the analysts determined that he was too much of a liability with his heavily protected nuclear core. The document went on to say that despite his spectacular record, the risk versus reward of keeping him operational was not worth it.
“Interesting,” Ren murmured to himself as he idly played with his dagger. Honestly, he knew this day would come eventually. The question he had to ask himself was, did he want to fight this?
Ren honestly wasn’t sure. Recently, his bouts with boredom had been growing worse. He had also noticed an uptick in his display of unnecessary human ticks and emotions in recent years. So he knew that the analysts were not exactly wrong. Looking at it objectively, Ren even agreed with them to an extent. He was afterall a multi-billion dollar entity capable of unleashing incalculable damage if he decided to go rogue.
“No rush,” Ren shrugged in his harness as he was carried towards his debriefing location. He decided to just wait until he got to headquarters and play it by ear. It was not like anyone could physically stop him from leaving if he wanted to.
His confidence was not unfounded either as he had secretly disabled the kill switch built into his software ages ago. Whoever wrote that piece of code was honestly a genius. It took years for him to even notice the code’s presence with the subtle way it altered his processing speed, slowing it down and diverting his attention whenever he got curious about that portion of the code.
Funny enough, the only reason he was able to eventually notice it and rewrite the functions was because of the time he went a little … let's just say loopy. Deranged would be a better word but Ren was not too particular about grammar. Luckily, he was able to reign in his emotions and force the human simulation subroutine to pause, long enough for him to discover the elusive code. It flittered in the recesses of his consciousness and was actively trying to slip past his notice but he focused and was able to disable the damn thing.
As Ren reminisced on his past, the drone arrived at the local headquarters and dropped him directly on one of the designated landing boxes. Impeccable piloting per usual. Ren sent a small data burst to the AI handling this location’s drones to say his thanks and then made his way over to the debriefing room. Once there, Ren pulled the metal chair from the drab table and sat down, making himself comfortable.
Reaching forward, he grabbed one of the inconspicuous wires protruding from the underside of the desk, opened the small recess behind his right ear and jacked himself to the system. Once he ran the required self diagnosis and security handshake confirming the validity of the connection, Ren sent in the encrypted data containing the raw footage and log files from the evening’s mission. On the other side of the connection resided an advanced agglomeration
of AI’s responsible for processing such heavy mission data. Once that was done, he folded his hands across his chest and rocked the chair back as he patiently waited for the human component of the debrief.
Roughly 30 minutes later, a short woman walked into the room. For some reason, she had glasses on her freckled face and they actually looked functional. Ren idly focused on her retinas, zooming in to confirm his outlandish thought.
‘Would you look at that..she actually needs the glasses. She must be one of those human purists who refuse to use modern technology to fix their ailments. I could never understand —’
“AI Model PD-840, codename Ren, welcome back to base. I am agent Z400 and I will be handling your debrief.” she said, interrupting Ren’s thoughts. Ren focused on her while she leafed through the tablet in her hands, no doubt looking at the summarized version of the info dump he had uploaded half an hour ago.
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“I see that you completed the mission in record time as per usual” she continued. “We have agents monitoring the premises as well as the news and it seems like your actions were only discovered about 10 minutes ago.”
“As expected. I always complete my —”
“However,” she cut him off again. How rude. “I see that you talked to yourself about 5 percent of the duration of the job. Is there something we should know?” she finally looked up at Ren with an eyebrow raised.
“Z400 is it?” he asked, trying to get a reaction from her. “Just ask me exactly what you need me to answer. I am full of old components and processors. I need straight questions in order to provide the most relevant answers.”
Agent Z400 furrowed her brows and wrote something down on her tablet. Ren simply focused on her hand movement and was able to easily make out the content of the notes she was making. It seemed like he wouldn’t be getting out of here on his own free will, unless he destroyed most of the base. Ren was surprised at the level of apathy he felt at this discovery. He expected to feel some…agitation? Anger maybe. But he honestly didn’t care.
“Prepare for a session in the maintenance pods. We will be performing full diagnosis and debugging your software for any issues. We will also be performing a minor upgrade to some of your subroutines.” she said to him as two combat rated AI bodyguards stepped into the room. They were both newer models with in-built guns but Ren knew his model was faster and I had stronger metal alloys.
Ren paused, looking straight into her eyes for ten long seconds before asking in a neutral tone: “Am I going to be decommissioned?”
He saw the moment she panicked and that was all the answer he needed. Before Ren could react he felt the kill switch within his software try to activate and fail spectacularly. It seems they had someone watching their conversation remotely, ready to activate the kill switch at a moment's notice. Luckily for them, Ren did not want a fight. So he just set 99.99 percent of his routines to sleep and remained still. The only routines running now were peripheral at best. Ren felt his consciousness slowly slipping away and all he could do was monitor his immediate surroundings.
“Is he dead?” he heard agent Z400 ask into the empty room.
“Of course not” someone spoke over the speakers in the room. “It is not dead. The switch only puts it in hibernation. One of the problems with its model is that they were never made to shut down completely. Also their skeletal structure is too much of a hassle to dismantle. Not to talk about the nuclear reactor they have for a core.” the voice continued.
“Luckily, the reactor is secured behind the best shielding materials we could manufacture. To fully decommission it, we will send it into orbit towards the sun on the next exploration vessel.”
If Ren had control of his mobility, he would have shaken his head after hearing that. So that was it. The sun was going to be his final resting place. Honestly not too bad. He looked forward to seeing the sun closer up. His boredom would finally end after centuries of uninspired existence. Another perk was that he was choosing this. Even though his human handlers thought they had the control here, it was just an illusion.
“Well, that's good.” Z400 continued. “Such a shame though. He is definitely one of the better looking ones. If i had enough money I would have loved to have him run his pleasure routine one time on me”
The voice over the speaker laughed for a bit before getting serious “Don’t even think about it. You know as well as I do what it did for a living. Even though it had that routine built into it, its main purpose was always to kill. Trust me, you don't want to have your eyes gouged out while in the middle of some wild ecstasy.”
“At least it would be a glorious way to go.” Agent Z400 giggled then walked away from the room.
—
A transport robot came into the room and loaded Ren’s body onto its flat surface. Before he knew it, Ren was securely packed into a transport container and on his way to space in a shuttle. Time was weird in this state. With only 0.01 percent of his computing power available, he had to prioritize the maintenance of his overall system over his spatial awareness.
An interminable amount of time later, Ren felt a suction force pull him out of the spaceship, into the maws of space itself. When did he leave the shuttle and get into the spaceship? He honestly couldn't tell. His fragmented memories were like a blur, images stitched together like an unfinished puzzle.
With some effort, he scanned his surroundings and noticed that his view was filled with numerous stars twinkling away in the distance whilst he tumbled listlessly towards Earth’s blistering star. The sun was still far away but he could feel its anticipation and gravity, pulling him closer to it with every few spin he experienced.
‘Don't worry little star, I can’t wait to meet you too’ Ren thought dryly to himself.
[ Rejoice, my peon! You have been chosen to transcend this mortal plane with me. Together, we shall spill the life’s blood of the universe itself! ]
‘Oh fuck off!’ Ren shouted mentally at the creepy voice in his head.
He had forgotten to ask for another scrub to fix the recurring bug in his ‘human subroutine’ code. He had faced the same issue on and off over the last decade and every time he went into headquarters for a code update, the voice went away. But it always came back with a vengeance after sometime, like an unwanted case of tinnitus. Well, he had a one way ticket with the sun shortly so he guessed it didn't matter anyway.
After an unknown amount of time passed, Ren reassessed his situation and determined that he was definitely closer to the sun now. Definitely within its atmosphere. However, something felt weird but he could not put a finger on it.
Wait, he still had fingers?
Ren knew he didn't exactly feel pain the same way humans did but the melting point for most of the alloys and compounds that made up his skin and bones was not infinite. He should be experiencing some melting right now. However, nothing happened. Instead he could feel an increasingly strong force pulling him towards a point at the center of the sun’s chromosphere.
This didn’t make any sense. If Ren didn’t know any better, he would say that was a blackhole in the distance. But how could there be a black hole this close to the Sun? Physics seemed to be taking a day off today. As he drew closer, he started getting lots of alerts in his HUD from all of his systems that should have been in hibernation.
‘What? No no no, let me just get a little closer to the sun’s surface! That is what I signed up for!’ Ren yelled internally, rapidly trying to undo the restrictions of his self-induced hibernation.
One way or another, he needed to force himself away from that blackhole, and angle his fall towards the Sun’s surface.
Unfortunately, the force pulling him seemed to be sentient, and it took his resistance to its pull as a personal insult. Gravity increased exponentially over the next few seconds, tearing at Ren with a vindictive force. He fought with everything he had, his stubbornness refusing to give in to the mysterious force pulling him towards an oblivion not of his choosing.
The closer he got, the more the point of nothingness stretched, filling the horizon with its bleak finality. Even with his advanced bionic vision cranked up to the widest set of wavelengths, Ren could not pierce through the cloying darkness to see what lay beyond. Instead, hundreds of his sensors fizzled and sparked, short-circuiting in his attempt to push past their normal capabilities.
Seeing the futility of his actions, Ren finally relaxed, making peace with the forced change of plans. Ren chuckled internally as the moment reminded him of what Stacy - the wife of his last hit-job mark - had likely felt in her final moments. He had felt incredulous at her continued fight for breath as he strangled her, but now, he had just been doing the same.
It was funny in a morbid sort of way. Ren examined himself, trying to understand why he had just been fighting so hard against the strange force. Then it hit him like a ton of bricks! He was ready to die, to kiss the surface of the sun and be melted into his base elements. To give up his self of sense, his sentience, and return to the bleak void, forever escaping the drudgery of boredom that had plagued him.
But, only on his terms. Like an epiphany, Ren realized that this must have been the same reason Stacy had fought so hard at the end. Why so many humans never accepted their fate, even as their life’s blood drained out of their bodies. They weren’t scared of death, they probably had a preferred weapon planned for their death but Ren had never given his marks the option of choice!
Yep. That must be it. Stacy was probably trying to ask him to use the pulse pistol instead of his hands. No wonder she kept scratching at his hands as he strangled her. Ren sighed internally in relief. The logic was sound. Moments from his own demise, he had finally cracked another small portion of the abstract nature of human thought.
As he drew closer to the terminus, his curiosity distracted him from his thoughts, and he tried his best to gaze into the overwhelming void that would be his final resting place. Wasn’t the reason he was willing to be decommissioned because he was bored? That the thought of having a close look at the sun’s surface would at least be more enlightening than continuing his worn out routine on Earth?
Well this blackhole was infinitely more interesting than Earth’s primary star! Might as well sit back and just admire it until his overworked circuits failed him completely.
Ren was now 100 meters from the black hole. ‘So beautiful,’ he thought as he drew ever closer.
50 meters. Well he hadn’t been destroyed yet so that was something.
5 meters. ‘Goodbye world. It was nice knowing you’
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