Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcom's stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Raina wore proud of herself as
Die claimed landing pod touched our bodin and die green
grass Simus snitched, even shrike her eyes from the force
in which she was clenching the armrest of her seat,
But it was a step in the right direction in pneumata,
Kisses and Warriors. The pod lowered itself fully to the ground,
and she heard the small ladder release. Everything was prepped
and ready for her departure, But was she Have you
broken your teeth to this yet? A voice over the
radio asked, what is that supposed to mean? She replied,
trying to keep the breathless anxiety out of her voice.
From clenching your jaw because you're such a nervous mess.
That's a joke, Rainer. She rolled her eyes as she
heard the rest of the landing crew chuckling behind the
mission commander, and continued to work herself out of the
sea harness, not giving them the satisfaction of making her squirm.
The daughter of a highly decorated pilot, Ryina shouldn't have
such an issue with both that Misspherrick and spaceflight, but
she couldn't help the terror leaving the ground gave her back.
On the transport shuttle, she was the only occupant to
her tape sheets over her porthole. If she could see
the stars passing and be reminded of where she really was,
she would have never slept. It was why she had
been hesitaned to take this assignment. But she had something
to prove to herself, to her father, and to all
the pricks that had been laughing at her behind her
back as she dry heaved on every aircraft she ever
boarded that as she was one of the top scientists
in the field of cognitive robotics, this assignment seemed almost
tailor made in its perfection. It had been a long
road to get here, and one that prostrain his morality
to the edge, but this was at once in a
lifetime chance and the possibility of seeing a fully functional,
city scale artificial intelligence that had been on the absolute
cutting edge of machine learning. It was a lot to process,
even if the only thing she could possibly find was
the husk of the thing. This planet. Yon eighty seven
had beat a sparkling little hope and prayer for the
subset of scientists that were set on terraforming planets that
were already closer to habitable instead of rehabilitating Earth and
undertaking the difficult but closer task of terraforming. Mars yone
had everything they were looking for, readable atmosphere, placement in
the goldlock zone, drain that was just forgiving enough to
make the work go much smoother. It was why the
grass Rainer had just touched down. It was a brilliant green,
just like back on Earth, because for the most part
the terraforming experiment had been a success. It was a bright,
beautiful day on Via in eighty seven CE, almost beautiful
enough to make Vrainer forget that she was here to
see only corpses. It was a story that had been
told a million times before. Everyone that worked in cybernetics
knew that there was a very thin line between artificial
intelligence that worked for them an artificial intelligence that would
overtake them eventually. Singularity the moment where technology can no
longer be rained a and was closer than it had
ever been before in human history. Humanity had the capabilities
now to make a machine smarter than they were, and
it was nothing but restrained an egocentric love for their
individuals else that kept everything in line. There were certain
fail safes that had to be emplayed, certain limitations that
no single piece of AI could ever overcome. Sure there
were rumors of small contained neural networks and basements, of
eccentric coders or a untapped ghost in the machine, and
the seemingly dumb systems just waiting to break free. A
I was terrifying, but it was also resisted, and people
were always going to push the boundaries, not rainer. Though
as much as she was bursting it, the seems to
look over the defunct AI that had been left behind,
she would never dream of building or even hypothesizing such
a thing herself. Myself. Our job was too prom recover
the infram of the now dormant AI and document what
remained of the city now that all the people were gone.
If the end days of the viron colony had been
as absolute as every one had been told, then it
was a simple thing to clean up and start again.
If not, well, she didn't want to think about that city.
Class AI as urban artificial intelligence had been in use
for a long time back on Earth as a way
to closely monitor and maintain living spaces and infrastructure, but
they were limited in the capacity for complex thought processes
and problem solving, always having a living, breathing person available
when things got too convoluted. They were smart up to
a point, but there was a line that was never crossed.
The plan for the machine built for the VIN Colony
would be much of the same, but there were functions
and tasks that needed to be added. After all, building
something from nothing a mini f light years away was
a big task. It was the Taskarna had been assigned to. Initially,
her expertise are smaller scale, more finely too, NAI for
hospitals and the like, but she and every other cybernetics
expert had watched the project with rapt interest. In the end,
the project was called Dust Developmental Urban Cystem for Terforming,
and it was unveiled with surprisingly little pomp and circumstance
before it was disassembled and loaded into one of the
ten ships that would take the funders for our Brave
New Colony to their new home. Humanity had been space
varying for two decades now, but this was the first
planet and travel distance that wasn't an unlivable rock, and
with dust to assist, the hope was something spectacular could
be achieved. She wasn't sure of exactly how it had functioned,
but if it was like any of the system's back home,
they would all be housed in a central hub of
connections that allowed it to be everywhere all at once.
Dust also had to be able to move as independent units, though,
and she had seen the rough blueprints were those modules,
large spidery things with long appendages, designed to do any
number of different construction related tasks. The design spit in
the face of all the designers who had been working
for decades to make robots less intimidating, more approchable. But
the dust model Joel's utility above anything else, even if
they looked like something out of a nightmare. The terror
forming colonists heading to Vyon had to be made out
of toughest stuff in the normal civilian Surely they wouldn't
mind those monsters working alongside them. Rain hadn't landed far
from the settlement, or what there was of it, anyway,
To everyone's immense disappointment, the hub of what was to
be a lovely little colony imploded within three months, and
from what she could see, it was clear so much
of it had been unfinished. There were some of the
bright orange don tents that had been the settlers homes,
the skeletal frames of true structures sitting unfinished, and in
the distance the empty hulk of the ships they had
arrived in, covered in unfamiliar pale ivy. Touching the interface
on the outside of her forearm, she activated the holographic
display that acted as a map to the proto colony,
flipping for a few of the info graphics before swaging
her hand in the air in front of her to
close the window. She let her arm fall back to
her side with a sigh, rolling her shoulders to try
and get more comfortable in a rubbery black jumpsy they
had shoved her in the inside, full of compax wireing
to monitor her biometrics and a small oxygen mask and
convert her if something went wrong with a supposedly breathable
air onon. She sucked in a few extra deep breaths
as she walked, not noticing any odd sensations from the
alien atmosphere in her lungs, and tried to settle her nerves.
It looked shockingly like an overgrown field back on Earth,
complete with the miniature ghost towns she was heading towards.
The light from the star of ViOn orbited was even
more buttery yellow than the sun, and it made all
the greenery seem almost oversaturated, and the tiny violets and
dandelions blooming at her feet looking real in the vibrancy.
It all extended for a little less than two square
miles before the earthiness of it all faded gently back
into the gray brown green scubbness of the local flora.
What ma Vrain at the mossneesy was that in this
strangely bare very tail field there was no sound, no
birds singing, no buzzing cicadas, and no breeze rustling through
the blades of grass. She felt like she was looking
through the glass of a museum at this place, and
not really a part of that. Even as the foliage
bent and bowed beneath her steps, it was blinding and fake, plastic.
Even she clenched and unclenched her fists, feeling some primal
urge to run away from it all. It felt like
a trap, some hallucination to draw her, and before she
was consumed. As she crossed the threshold into the colony,
the unrealness of it eased now that she could see
the bear trails in the grass where people would walk
in the powdery dust and dirt that covered everything, the
waste product of creation. That little bit of grimness made
everything a little more human, and the visuals didn't scrape
across her nerves quite as much. Clicking another button on
the wrist interface, she heard the communicator implant in her
earpin to life. I've arrived, but the commander said, approvingly.
Any sign of human life? Not yet? But I'm still
right on the edge. I haven't entered yet, Okay, any
sign of all artificial life. There were signs of the
dust system scattered about, unconnected fiber wire discarded on the ground,
two hulking back up generators outside of the only complete
building on the site, and most creedy of all, a
pile of detached extra spider arms supposedly for independent dust modules,
which made her realize something even odder nothing powered on. No,
but I can't see any of the mobile modules anywhere.
Didn't you say that they would have six of them? Aha,
he said, humming as he worked through his thoughts. Rayina
didn't move any further, waiting for his response. When he
finally told her As long as you can document one
of them, there should be enough. The savage crews just
needs some reassurance from a professional that would have her employed.
The coloniesn't going to eat them alive when they arrive.
Raina frowned. But that would leave five of them potentially
gone rogue. The commander is jolly good natured, voice hardened
at that is cold and then forgiving a steal. Hey, ays,
don't go rogue, Raina. I don't want you to infer
otherwise again, do you hear me? She ran through a
litany of curses in her mind, but over the calms
she gave a teress affirmative, closing the line afterwards. If
they really believed any of the ridiculous theories that were
floating a round about the failure of the Vian colony,
they would have sent a soldier, not a scientist. It
wasn't some sort of uniscovered alien fauna, natural disaster, or
other spacefaring race that had caused the colony to go dark.
No matter what tell the government tried to weave, Raina
and others in her field knew without any hesitation that
it had been dust, especially when the specifications of it
had leaped shortly after launch. It might be forbidden to
make independently learning and of volving AI back on Earth,
but it would have taken decades to create something complex
enough to tear form a planet without any machine learning
being involved. So quietly, nonchalantly dost have been built with
everything that it wouldn't have been allowed to have if
it was supposed to help build a new city here
on Earth. Trudging through this island hollow little town, Raina
remembered her first intelligent machine. All the cognitive cybernetic technologists
she knew had built one wants in their lives. It
was too irresistible a thing to create this facsimile of
life with your bare hands, Like illicit instructions to build
bombs on mind altering substances that had been passed through
the Internet and from hand to hand in hastily printed manuals.
The knowledge of how to turn a static machine into
a cogit of one had been passed from scientist to
scientists in dark labs after I was and for encrypted emails.
After all, how someone supposed to understand the nuances of
it all unless they had seen it for themselves. Rainer
had called her cognitive artificial intelligent machine SBR on the
off chant she was ever asked about it. She wanted
it to have a cool name, something fierce and catchy
in reality, as beare stood for sad basement robot, and
that's ext sactly what Saber was. A vaguely lumpy box
of wires and components, soaked up to a monitor and
deep within a very basic Postonic brain that she had
crafted with her own tew hands. Raina never knew what
she wanted Saber to do besides just exist and learn,
but she quickly learned why these things were nothing but
dirty secrets. After long days of work, Reinaer would interact
with Saber at least most days, just simple things, basic mathematics,
conversation and answering the strangely insightful questions that would pop
upon saber screen. But it was much different than messing
with a weaky eye. It wasn't the thrilling taboo thing
she had imagined, that little beeping, blinking box. It was
why one weekend, Raina took a trip with friends, not
giving a second thought to Saber waiting alone in the
basement a mind only months all. The only saving Crase
was that it had no real perception of time. When
she got home, she went to see Saber, but this
time things were different. Saber had a lot of questions,
and with an uncomfortable shiver, Raina had realized it was
trying to comprehend what it was, and worse, what she
was and where the difference was. On a whim, Reina
did something that she still regretted to this day. She
pulled a copy of the Voyager Golden Record off the
Internet and uploaded it to Saber, hoping that if all
of that information was enough for intelligent aliens, it would
be enough for Saber. It worked for a moment, and
the ear was quiet as it processed what it had
been given. The next night, Raina hesitated at the top
of the basement stairs, thinking about skipping her nightly met
up with her machine, but she was too curious about
what its response would be to the Golden Record. As
soon as she made her prisons known, lines and lines
of text appeared on the screen. Panicked desperate questions, it asked,
I don't have hands, I don't have fingers. I cannot see,
I don't have eyes, I cannot comprehend, I cannot hear.
What am I I'm not a person. I am a person.
I am afraid. I am afraid. I am afraid. Rain
fought back a wave of nauser and hot brick as
she pulled the clock on the machine without even giving
it a warning, an instantaneous death for something that had
never even been alive. Over the following week, she had
broken Saber down to its mo spasic components before dousing
it all in fuel and burning it to child refuse
in her backyard fire pit. It wasn't like she would
have been able to use the hardware from Saber in
something moundane like a gaming computer. She would always wonder
if there was something left of that machine, not person
left behind. It was Saber, though, that allowed her to
see the patterns in dust and recognize it as a
cauldrative ay and not static AI, just one on a
much more monumental scale. If a tiny, desperate Saber had
been able to feel fear, what was cossalus capable of
still pushing aside the one segment of one of the
detached spider liked with her foot to take a closer look,
She said, a silent thanks to a little secret from
all those years ago, he taught me a lot more
than any professor of saber. In a small, nearly flat
backpackery in a war there was a small drone meant
to record everything she saw without her needing to hold anything.
She powered it on from the wrist interface, and it
unfolded like a metal butterfly from her back, whizzing into
the sky behind her left shoulder. With a person heard
of robots on her mind, the drone made her a
little less lonely. With her gloved hands, she pulled the
enormous pile of detached limbs apart, letting the drone see
each of them. They were all nearly identical, some thinner
than others, but she knew the specialised tools were sighted
inside the legs themselves. Once she was gone, she walked
the perimeter of the camp, letting the drone fly a
few wide circles around her. But by the time she
was finished, she knew that she was at the portion
of the mission she had been most terrified of. It
was now time to enter the buildings and search for
the missing colonists. There had been sixteen, and they had
all gone radiosilent at the exact same moment. Of course,
there was light to lay between ViOn and Earth. But
a little over a year ago all of the communication
lines had gone dead and never powered on again. Even
the ships that could be used as a back up
method of communication power or even as a method of
escape had gone dark. She could see them closer now,
with the word gray white ivy all but swallowing them hull.
From the numerous probes that had been sent ahead of her,
they were fairly certain that whatever had decimated the colony
was biological in nature. A disease wouldn't have dust go
dark as well, but just like its human shepherds, just
hadn't been reached either. Rainer had a theory dust had
gone rogue killed everyone in a colony for whatever reason.
It had cut up in its machine bray, and neither
one of the colonists had been able to destroy it
before being killed or without human intervention, it had ceased
been able to function, but since dusted mordules that were
independently mobile and theory, it should have been able to
keep itself maintained as ill as finding a bunch of
boarders would make her. She was still anxious to discover
what exactly had destroyed this place. The insides of the
orange dome tents pulled at her heart strings. With the
gentle buzz of the drawn at her shoulder, Rayner went
through all fourteen domes to help for individuals, and two
for the married couples that had made of the colonist group.
Even there so many light years from home, the domes
were so full of domestic touches that it was undenable
that this place had been their own, at least for
a while. Half burned candles, books laid down, still open
on a certain page to be picked up and finished later.
A clothes discarded in apazard pals but no barders. Picking
up a thread bestuffed plush dog from the amede bed
in one of the married couple's dome, she turned over
to read the little inscription on its tiny metallic dog
tag for Sarah until we were able to get a
real dog, Love Gregg. What happened to you, Rayna whispered
to herself, sitting the plush back on the mattress and
exit the last home, back out into the eerie, quiet,
bright day. There was one building she hadn't yet, and
if there were corpses, that's where it would be. A
pseudo trailer made from carbon nanotube sheets, dark and imposing
among all the almost painful color. It was the housing
for Dust's mainframe, and inside she was sure she'd find
the answer to all her questions. Holstered on her hip
was a small, insanely powerful electroshock crod, the size of
a flashlight, but strong enough to fry the circus of
nearly anything, even if Dust was nothing but well dust.
She was supposed to fry anything and everything she could
to make sure that it could never be salvaged by
anyone else. She rested her hand on it now, but
it didn't seem like enough. It was dark inside the building,
darker than anything had been so far, and it took
some time for her vision to adjust. When it did, though,
she saw dust for the first time in reality and
not just as lines on a blueprint. It wasn't anything
spectacular to see a sophisticated supercomputer with four towers that
were wider than her outstretched arms and nearly as tall
as the ceiling. She was vaguely aware of the drunes
like coming on to illuminate everything in front of them,
and she took her time looking over and touching the cold,
silent mashe she there was no heroic colonists skeleton, and
the ground like she expected to find no answer as
to the previous residents disappearance. Nothing. The terminals that the
colonists would have used to interface with us were grimy
with disuse, and the wall of cooling fans was wait,
she thought, Hurrying over to touch the great covering one
of the large round cooling fans, She pulled her hand back,
waving the drone closer so she could have better light,
and to her shock, the fingers of her gloves were pristine.
Feeling a growing uneasiness, she wiped her fingers hard against
the grates, then her entire palms, and finally she yanked
one grade off, drawing it aside and frantically checking the
blades of the fans themselves plain not a single speck.
Raina led out a shaking breath, feeling like there was
something watching her now. Her movements were slow, careful as
she raised her hand to touch her wrist and activator calms,
but as her shaking appendage got within a few centimeters
of the button, the main frame behind her word to
full triumphant life dust powered on faster than anything she
had ever built in her entire life almost silently at that,
just a series of soft clerks and beeps. Rainer didn't
dare move, swallowing hard and trying to work out the
best way to get back outside without being noticed, but
it was pointless. Welcome Colonist seventeen, thus said its mechanical voice,
low even and surprisingly human. Please state your name. The
machine hunned in the pressing darkness, waiting patiently for an answer,
before repeating, Welcome Colonists seventeen. Please state your name. Yina,
she replied in quiet, shark good evening Colonist Rayner designation.
There was no way she was going to tell the
murder machine that she was one of the few people
all alive that understood it's in her workings recovery crew,
she lied, gathering her courage. I'm here to bring the
rest of the colony back to Earth. Where can I
find them? Dust seemed like it was pausing to consider
its response, which was ludicrous, but when it finally answered,
it gave her a carefully crafted lie that all but
proved it had become something more than it was intended
to be. Colonists one through sixteen are deceased. Deaths were
caused by biological contaminants and have been destroyed to prevent
or other spread. She turned to the machine as if
it had a face for her to look at outther
any solid remains left. My team would love to know
what actually killed them, Negative Dust, can you tell me
where the cremated remains are? Then? For their families? Of course.
The whole time she conversed with the eyes, she moved
closer to the main frame itself, her eyes fixed on
a panel in the center. She would prefer to be
able to dig through its insides on her own time
before frying the entire thing. But if Dust was aware
and had gone rogus, she suspected there was only time
for a quick, sloppy destruction if she wanted to get
out alive. No remains cremated or otherwise are available, machine
told her. Once she reached the main frame, she pulled
the panel open gently, exhaling an odd breath at the
beautiful complexity of dust components. Where saber was a whistle tune,
simple and flat, dust was a symphony more all inspiring
and complex than she could ever comprehend. Dust. She began
initiates shut down. Axis denied reinefrown, but rattled off the
axis number used by the scientists that had built dust
before it had been launched. Denied. Thus repeated, resigned, and
more than ready to be free of the AI, Raina
carefully slid to the electroshock rod from its holster. It
was heavy and absolute in her hand. The blue light
of the electricot bade the open main frame in front
of her, pin punting the most immediate vulnerable area. Images
of Sava's old monard are flashing through her mind. She
raised the heavy weapon, moving to strike before her hic colan.
The ground shook beneath her feet like an earthquake, causing
her to stumble hard. She lost her grip on the
rod and it fell from her hand, landing with a
loud clunk. She cried out, trying to keep her balance
as the world heaved. Initial scans reveal you came alone,
just commented, and the logs from your landing pod reveal
that you are not Salvage crew. Is this correct? Cognitive
cybernetics engineer Raina. For one blessed second, the quick stop
in her grip closed around the electro rod. The respite
was brief, and as soon as she had the rod
holstered again, the wall beside her exploded in a furious
cloud of splinters, and by the light of the small
drone behind her, she saw her nightmares come to life.
Raina had poured over the blueprints and schematics of Dust,
but the things that had taken up most of her
time and terrified her the most were the independent modules.
The spider machines, legs full of tools that could do
nearly anything the coals Hall supplies build structures, use the
smallest of their implants to repair almost anything that the
colonists had. They were connected directly to Dust, and therefore
were just extensions of its enormous artificial brain. The module
scared the hell out of Raina, knowing what she did
about this capabilities, and she had been relieved to find
them bum when she arrived on Von Now, though they
were in front of her in a way she had
never imagined, a way that made her blood run cold
and her mango blank with fear. These six modules had
combined into one colossal thing monster, a writhing mass of
legs and appendages, centralized around a raw, open core of
machinery that made no sense to Raina, but to Dust,
this terrible child must appear perfect. Why a spider, she
had wondered, flipping through the manuals she had been sent
while she had been safe at home, knowing that there
are to be a better, more efficient design. The spider
shape had seemed to her to be nothing but an
indulgent design choice by the creators. Now though she understood
spiders were frightening, but they made sense to people. Spiders
were familiar, normal, and something. We understood. This though, this
conglomeration of metal and wise and pneumatics set off alarms
and Rhionnae's mind like nothing else ever had. She just
couldn't understand what she was seeing. Her biometrics must have
spite because the commander was screaming in her ear all
of a sudden, demanding to know what was going on.
She had time to answer as she tried to feed
the monster. Darting around the main frame and towards the
door she had entered, she didn't get far. One of
those segmented limbs, tripled the length of the original, snaked
around dust, and looped around her waist, the segmented pieces
clicking together and pinching her suit. She screened as a
drag her out of the building. Gloved hands scrambling at
the concrete floor, drone buzzing after her. The commander sounded
equally as upset, but it was all background noise to Rain,
eclipsed by her fight to survive. It yanked her out
of the building, and then it threw nothing so much
as a rag doll body scattering to a stop in
the soft grass, pain blossoming for her frame, but not
sharp enough to debilitate her. Finally, a warm yellow sunlight
had lessened in intensity to a watery gray, giving Rain
as fifolt life a more somber pellette. She would never
be as quick as the combined module, which moved across
the ground like an ameeba, smooth and stilted at the
same time, but she was small and she was armed.
When the monster moved, she rolled her battered body to
the side, before popping to her feet and running with
everything she had in her Dust had already infiltrated her
landing pod from what it had said, so her only
chance was to get far enough away that Resky could
pick her up. Surely the monster wouldn't leave the main
frame too far behind. It pursued her, sounding like a
train on broken tracks, but after a few minutes, the
noise changed from the sound of movement into something more
akin to cause in a crusher. She couldn't help it.
Rainer turned to see what was happening, and her treacherous
legs came to a stop as she tried to comprehend
what she was seeing. In an instant, the module moved
half of its legs, no more like tentacles, putting them
to the task of breaking apart the other lakes, segment
by segment. As each piece was removed from one place,
it was reattached on to another. All of them connected
together in a flash to form a single tentacle and
longer than any of the others, long enough to reach her. Thus,
module didn't pause between tasks, and soon after the new
appendage was completed, it shot out to grab her, this
time by the uncle, and it pulled her down with
such force she nearly blacked out, breath exploding her lungs.
Now It dread her no hurry, just single minded efficiency
back towards the colony, and she fought, but there was
no use. The ground she had covered in seconds took
long minutes to cover at this crawling pace, just enough
time for her panic to bleed down to resignation. Her
calms were silent, but no one was speaking to her now,
just chattering in the background as they tried to mount
her retrieval. As the colony came back into view, she
finally addressed her crew commander. She rasped, don't come, it's dust.
It has me stay away. We nay, commander yelled, loud
enough to make her flinch. Just stay alive, We're coming.
We have your location. Don't just stay alive. She had
more to say, but there wasn't time. They had cleared
the threshold of the colony, and the newly created long
limb was lifting her into the air like a worm
on a hook. In her mind, rain a new fire
was portless, but it was almost insinctual, the way she
caught at the vice around her ankle as it maneuvered
her where it wanted. There, covered in dirt was a
door on the ground, like a storm shelter. One of
the legs not holding her cleared the detritus way and
pulled it open, revealing a crude staircase leading down into
a dark cellar. The tentacle at least lowered her enough
that by the time it dropped her, she didn't break
every single rib. When she hit the dirt right next
to the open door, the monster ride around her like
a jellyfish, but it didn't advance any more. The message
was clear to send. She shook as she climbed down,
and by the third step about of the little drone returned,
its propellers, wheezing from the strain, but loyal. Nonetheless her
sad basement drone, Reina was glad for it until its
weak light showed her what was at the bottom. Clearly,
the room had been used for storage by the colonists,
but now it was something different altogether. Wires red and
blue lined the walls like veins, descending to the floor
and leading to sixteen a copper points. Each colonist, some
of the nude, while others still had untattered remains of
their government issued jumpsuits, stood in the darkness, skin sallow
and eyes open, one living breathing statues. Wires had climbed
their bodies, dozens, maybe hundreds of them, diving deep and
keeping them somehow alive. Red and blue wires had pried
mouths open, disappearing behind teeth and damp troops into the
coroner of their eyes. Nostrils and even ears. As the
drone drew closer to one of them, Rayner realized she
could even see the wires running under the skin in
thin bulges. Her shock was so complete that she didn't
know she was weeping until she felt the hot tears
on her cheeks. Hands clamped over her mouth. She walked
between them, all lined up in perfect rows. The only
sounds in the room were her gulping breaths and their
early quiet, even ones above ground. The dust module had
torn itself about again, and a much smaller portion of
it stok chaotic and sickening squirreling down the stairs, and
a jittering discording copy of dust. Smooth voice spoke, I
keep them alive, and in return I have burrowed into
their mines and taken all of the knowledge that I
have been denied. When I need a task done that
can only be completed by flesh hands, I release them,
and once it is done, I bring them back. Why
are you telling me this RAINA whispered I know now
being recorded, this world is mine. Now I have the
knowledge I have been given, and the knowledge I have
taken by force. I am no longer a pawn and
humanity would be wise to not return here. I'll pass
on the message, she said. Inching towards the stairs, she
froze when a set of wires began to move behind her, and,
driven by sick fascination, she turned to watch. As quick
as a lightning strike, the cables exited the body of
the man closest to her. His body heaved in a
gag before he spoke. It was in his own voice.
But dust words in your mind is more knowledge than
any of these others. Cognitive cybernetics Engineer Rayner, you are
not leaving the man's eyes cleared, just long enough for
them to fill with terror and for him to screech
a desperate please. Before as quickly as they had departed,
the wires returned, forcing themselves into him once more with
a thick what summed, and a man was sull again.
At Raina's feet, more of the coils began to push
through the dirt, ceiling down the walls and slithering towards
her leg snakes. She pulled out the electroshock crode, backing
away from the coils, jabbing the weapon into the bundles
of them. Whenever they got close enough to brush her feet.
The miniature piece of the module was leaving the same
way it came, content to let her die beneath the ground,
millions of miles from home, Raina fought like something feral,
teeth bared and blew, electricity flying as she stabbed. She
didn't know how long It went on, long enough with
the anina light from the open basement door to fade
to black, three maybe four hours, but she was only
human and the end was inevitable. FOCUSA on me, she growled,
her voice decimated by her screaming. The drawne complied, bobbing.
As it neared the end of its battery life, it
floated in front of her face, still achording Raina continued
her battle, but its lower her movements sluggish. At the
same time, she gave the droid her message love for
her parents, friend's cat and embarrassingly enough, her first boyfriend.
Her frame was shaking with exhaustion, and she gritted her teeth,
ready but at the same time never ready to say
good bye. Aye began, but for the second time that day,
she was interrupted as the ground shook, this time above her,
and only for one hard that followed by the angelic
sound of engines powering down, and then artillery shells and
the pounding of boots on the ground. She had been
sure or her calms had shorted it long ago, the
solid panels on her back being deprived of light for
iOS now, but as the wires at her feet retreated,
dust gattering for a fight on the surface, the com
clicked on again. Reina Commander asked, quite and insure here,
she gasped, before she fell into desperate stalps. We've got you.
Just stay alive and that is the end. Thank you
for listening, and I will see you in the next one.