“You cannot kill me, Loregar.”
“No, I cannot,” I say, “But I can push you from the precipice and let the ground do it for me.”
I know he doesn’t believe me. Not even I believe it.
“I do not think you will.”
“Why? Why did you let him do it? I know you can see into my mind. I know you know–”
“Because it is the only way you will be free. That is what you want, is it not?”
“Not like this,” I say as I approach him. “And you truly were my father, you would know the truth of this.”
“Freedom is not something that comes easy, boy!” He’s angry now. His face turns into a sneer I haven’t seen before. It looks ugly on him.
“Don’t you wonder why I have made you choose that particular recording? Why you were drawn to a certain thing in the Mind Bank’s storage systems? Look!”
I feel as though punched in the forehead. My head cocks back and images of destruction find me faster than I can recover. It feels as though they have always waited for me…
Gods walked the earth, wreathed in the ash from the mayhem they brought.
I had somehow ended up back on the surface, propped up against a crashed aircraft, with soldiers yelling beside me, shooting off barrages of electric fire in all direction and at targets I couldn’t see. My coughs felt heavy and when I wiped my mouth of residue, I saw a grey substance, thick and wet.
“He’s coming around!” one of the soldiers yelled. The one next to him threw something I imagined to be highly explosive at something I knew was highly unlikely to be effected by it. “Get him to the pickup point,” yelled a red-helmed sergeant, his voice a deep rumble emanating from his mouth grille mask. I took a moment to look around. The horizon was in flames. It was a dark red line under dark grey clouds that looked thick and unmoving. There was no wind. The sound of gunfire and huge feet walking surrounded me. A blast right next to us threw about fresh material and the world turned white for a moment. The ability to hear things was taken from me. Another shot. More matter was thrown ahead and I felt heat on the side of my face. Within a fear heartbeats, some of my hearing returned, but everything was muffled. Their footsteps felt distant as two of the soldiers dragged me. One on each side, they helped me along towards a tall building – the tallest one around. I heard another of the shattering sounds, like a razor made of darkness, and the essence of one them splattered over me. Nothing but his left side remained. It flopped to the ground with a wet thud. I could see the other soldier yell something, but could not hear it.
DC was burning. Buildings were nothing more than rubble – smoldering rubble filling the sky with smoke and ash. The ground was littered with dirt, small craters dotted the streets and pebbles crunched beneath my feet. The tallest buildings still stood, however, smoke rising from giant, brightly burning wounds in their construction. Demolished vehicles were scattered over the broken streets.
“Can you hear me! Hello!” I finally heard the soldier as he shouted into my face.
“Yes!” I answered. “How did I end up here?”
“Hell if I know! A couple of guys dragged you to us and told us to try and keep you safe, and safe is where we kept you. You’ve been out cold for nearly a week before that, they said!”
Not even I knew why I had to be ‘kept safe’, to be honest, but at that moment, despite all that I was seeing, despite the hopelessness of it all, I was glad to be alive. Hope was what drove me. Because somehow, through some twisted trick of the brain, I knew we would prevail. This couldn’t be over, could it? This couldn’t possibly be it. I knew I had to resist to my last breath. The soldier too must have seen this conviction in me, perhaps because it mirrored his own, or perhaps because he held hope as well. But when he asked me his next question, I saw that hope dashed by his daily experiences. War had a way of bludgeoning a man down to the very core of his true self and, currently, this man’s true self was – although hidden under a martial exterior – scared shitless.
He said, “Why do we go on? Tell me why we even try. Nothing can stop them.” A blast right next to us nearly shook us off our feet. I could barely hear him and didn’t dare to look behind us. “Why do we even do this?”
I clenched my teeth, conviction shooting through me like a sword through the chest. “Because no one else will!” The soldier looked ahead and I, in that moment, knew feelings were indeed contagious, if portrayed with passion. His back straightened, his face brightened and his pace quickened. We made it to the building without speaking another word and he helped me sit down. They must have dragged me out of that bunker very roughly, because my back was killing me. My heart nearly stopped as I saw the scene before me as I sat. Beings of titanic size, even bigger than all the others who had descended down before and killed, trudged in the distance. They looked almost like they were moving in slow motion, such was their mass. Their legs were lost between shattered buildings. They walked and were bombarded with energy expulsions, plasma shots and standard explosive projectiles alike bounced of their frames. I could see three in the distance, more disappearing between tall skyscrapers and within the smoke-haze. Visibility must have allowed for no more than one and half kilometer. Residue raked across all points of the compass and choked me of breath. One of the beings swung down its hand and an explosion enveloped the entire frontal portion of its body, licking it with orange flames and black smoke. Even from afar, I could see bodies thrown in the air. Parts of a tank shot out in all directions, a big piece of it bouncing off the thing’s torso. The soldier looked as I did, silent and unmoving beside me. He looked until something caught his ears and he appeared to be listening to something, then said, “Roger that.” His eyes appeared different when he looked at me. Like he knew something. “I’ve just found out why you’re so important, friend,” he said as he came closer and helped to my feet.
“Why?”
“Apparently, there is a way to destroy them. They’ve managed to kill one of them and stored the information in your mind-banks.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, why me? Why not simply send the information to–“
“Someone has to tell you this,” he interrupted. “I’ve heard about you, but didn’t imagine I’d see you in the flesh. You are the first and only, Loregar, you are the most expensive and well designed robot that will ever walk this earth again.”
The revelation was a stab in the face. It couldn’t be true. It simply couldn’t.
“It’s funny how this all turned out, actually,” he said as we headed into the tall building. “Satellites are down, communications systems are down and all the old lines that still existed have been cut, but within you, there’s a powerful signal generating and relaying device that can send information in all directions. It is designed to be received and stored into all mind-banks. Its like a discharge of data. You are state-of-the-art. You are humanity’s greatest achievement, and you will help it survive. We need to get you up that building, we need high ground.”
“You must have made me too human, then,” I said. “Because I feel nothing like a robot, I feel–“
“That was the point, now wasn’t it? Now trust me and–“ The ground behind us wobbled and waved upward. We were thrown ahead and against a wall.
“Fuck!” I heard. “Go, go, go,” he yelled. I looked behind me and saw two of the beings approaching. Their forms seemed indistinct in the half-light streaming from the building’s lobby windows. Smoke shrouded them and they looked nothing like I remembered them. They had no form in my eyes, no distinct outline, they were ideas approaching, terror given from, a supernova erupting. I didn’t even have time to wonder and ask the soldier if he knew more about me and my origin, when he was blast apart beside me. I was thrown to the wall on my right and it caved in under my weight. I felt something for the solider, a sorrow or remorse like a pang in my gut. In that moment, I realized I had never been sick; attributed it to advancements in medical care. I have never broken any bones despite numerous falls that shoul
d have ended with a violent snap; attributed it to gene-engineering. I have never understood emotions and felt them at a decreased level to what I thought natural; attributed that to strong character. But more than anything, more even than the why and how I was made, I began to wonder why no one ever told me. I found I actually felt more alive than ever. I felt a rush of chemicals propel my feet and made it up the stairs and onto the uppermost floor in no time. I looked out the window. All I could see was destruction and smoke and fire and grit and carnage and wreckage and crafts being shot down and crashing onto a heap. A black derelict hung above it all. A deathball out of which countless shots, like lighting striking, kept firing and shooting into the already mangled soil. I opened my mind-bank and accessed it, when I felt a strong jab in my torso. I hadn’t even heard the being walk up behind me. I looked down to see a hand, thick and strong like stone, protruding out the side of my chest. There was no pain as the limb was yanked back out of me, there was only a feeling of pressure release, like water flowing out of an ear. I was kicked into my side and landed at the wall. They aimed a rifle at me and my world turn to white.
I am immortal.
My vision cleared to see them walking away, my lower torso gone, reduced to specks hanging and oozing down the walls around me, bogging the floor. No pain. No ill feelings, for I knew this could never kill me. My functions may cease, my mind may go to sleep. But before that happens, I will send this signal and broadcast it over all the radio frequencies of the world. I will become a beacon of light in this spreading dark. For a moment, I will ignite a pulsar of hope on our little world. And when they finally find me again and run my systems, I will bask in knowing something most humans have always struggled to understand. I will know the meaning of life. Of my life. It is much more simple that I had expected, yet uniquely profound. It is to save others. To die for a time so others may live. And despite my inevitable death, it feels good. A rush of emotions passes over me as I relay the signal. I can almost see it travel and encompass all of the space around me. I can almost see it travel upon currents of hope and illumination. It is the type of illumination the gods should have brought. I don’t even have time to see what it says. The text is too long, and I can already feel my mind hiccupping, like a hard drive that cannot read past a point, like an old vinyl that has reached its end. I feel my thoughts skipping, ending, and with the last reserve of my own energy, I smile and wonder what my dreams will be like.
“Lies,” is all I manage before the weight of my discovery introduces my face to the floor. My mind turns dark, darker even than the void between the stars above me.
CHAPTER 25