1036. Strife, 8
(Rose)
The outpost is beautiful. It gleams. It looks pristine. As if recently built, and still meticulously maintained. It’s so out of place, or rather out of time. It’s science-fiction to me one more time.
Old world technology at its finest.
Tiny machines keep the walls clean and the vessels anchored here all mint.
Over decades and decades without rest. They’re just machines. The humans died or left. It’s not an inhabited outpost anymore. Two vessels of very unusual shapes float at bay. A wall, a few simple buildings. They are all made of a similar looking ceramic in big tiles.
It looks like bullets would ricochet on it, and that temperature would remain the same on everything. It’s all very surprising.
R - So the blue sun has outposts like that all around the world?
S - I think so. What I saw in Antarctica was not encouraging.
R - And I guess diplomacy is out of question? If there are only machines.
S - I wish we had a way. But the machine’s intelligence was not programmed in such a way. Here... I very much doubt so as well.
An odd fate for us all. They’ve been abandoned. Machines don’t mind. We do mind them. Had we met people, even if they were no longer like old human species, at least we could have tried talking.
I wonder what self-perfected Solaris humanity evolved into.
R - Perhaps their skin is green?
S - Or they have wings. Temee thought so.
R - Hm... Magenta was...
My memories as Blume are shivering. My memories as Rose feel no better. Wings can mean a lot of things...
R - In the heartland of old Russia, you should find a super volcanic caldera. With a cornucopia I’ve planted like a seed somewhere. Go check on it someday? It’s the kind of cataclysm I’ll be happy for you to nip in the bud onward. What caused the caldera, not the flower field.
S - I will do my best.
R - Thank you Polonyali Tanriça.
She shrugs it the usual way.
There is a lot we can do. A lot she can do. Manipulating atmosphere streams until it causes thunder would not be her most impressive feat. While I still prefer to carry my old bones as long as I can. Even if I come to cheat later. Selya believes thunder should work. We’ll try. And otherwise, we’ll improvise.
~
We approach the camp. Its system eventually notices us. Way beyond human guard or technology from my old time.
The cleaning dust, the tiny insects covering every wall and surface, they rise into a smoke as one. They gather and connect into a eusocial mechanism. I want to know how they tick... I want to know what they think.
Unfortunately neither of us has the ability to read electric information from computers, nor the knowledge to translate it. It takes a computer to speak to another.
Above, the sky is turning grey. It was still blue when we arrived.
Selya steps forward while I gently process the dough of the immense sky. The will of Zeus.
It grows. It starts raining as an anterior effect to my intended spell.
The machine of a different kind to S is still of the same genus or type. A swarm of microscopic machines. Each with a minute dust of radioactive isotopes, and efficient converters between heat, electricity and chemical reactions in the air. A machine with a small battery and little output normally, enough to be a versatile tool and mobile weaponry, but perhaps not a fire breathing dragon like S was or more.
Yet something in their design is terribly efficient in our contemporary air. They last. They are more powerful than ever. And now the beast is shooting bullets at us with clean animosity. It did not ask any question. It was not made to doubt, ever.
Selya deflected the projectiles and walks ahead further. The shapeless beast changes tactics rapidly.
Selya coalesces spots in the air to throw fire. The machines increase steadily their output and intensity. They adapt fast. Very fast.
Soon it’s a ruckus and balls of fire exploding. Everything burns in the field between the outpost and us. Above is the cloud blanket I steadily weave. It will accumulate enough charge to overload anything mechanic with electronic hopefully.
Selya notices the early sparks and hears the early rumbles. Without excessive pride, she yells and throws more oil to the fire.
The machines threw more energy into the exchange than I ever thought possible for a cloud of metals and other alloys. It’s incredible. Beams of plasma are thrown around us. It’s another form of potent daiûa.
Selya manages to deflect everything and throw it back with more power. Still, bullets or shrapnel scatter. I get hit and I bleed. Things pierce Selya’s field.
The ground shakes. Loud tremors ensue. We all are attacking it now. Me from second line and shelter, to attack another way. Selya on first line between us.
Pillars and columns of rocks just pop out of the ground. Boulders move. Rocks crack and break open. It’s ear-splitting.
Selya throws her first blast of heated plasma raised from burning the dusts. I begin to construct the spell. She prepares her second wave and I pull all I can through the funnel of the sky.
It constricted to protect itself from her attack, and then was struck by mine from the sky. Thunder fell as violently as you’d expect. Very heavy, blinding and deafening us.
A white column, burning the landscape and rain, dark in heightened contrast. It ploughed through everything and caused another explosion.
I was thrown back and fell after the impact. I held my wounds.
I tried to stand but failed. I realised I had deep puncture wounds everywhere. I was bleeding profusely.
As I began focusing on saving my skin, and as Selya was looking back toward me, we heard it.
She turned around and faced it differently.
~
The jagged landscape might have helped it. And more importantly, it learned. It learned everything it could.
And what remained had thrown its previous tactics aside, to charge us with a blade harder to deflect or brush off like we had so far.
Selya was surprised. Her head flew, but not without launching another enormous blast that disintegrated nearly everything in sight. I rolled under the impact of the shockwave.
I stood on trembling legs, hurt but alive. Selya’s animation was gone, and unfortunately some of the machines still lied.
I guess I will need to burn a little more into light... I have all the fuel I could need, but I am not eternal. Barely an amount of these machines to make a human shape remained. It shrank in condition.
The teenager grey silhouette made me chuckle, because it reminded me of many a daiûa.
I contracted every muscle I had and burnt just a little more, for a minute of swiftness and decisive power. I held the sword up in gestures it could focus on as it approached. Heat along the blade ignited it to a line of plasma, and I held resolve in my nerves. I also yelled as came our exchanged strikes.
My blade broke. My neck was hurt. I didn’t snap my fingers this time, but as I let it stand behind and myself fall, I summoned another lightning strike. My sword I’ve left and that shape were struck together and molten a step further. I didn’t plan for a sword to stop a collection of bugs, even if they look as one body. But it focused on it.
My eyes had gone blind from the flash, but my deception had worked. I heard it break.
I barely could stand. Some insects still buzzing around I realised as my senses returned. But nearing the last of them now.
Fine them...
I rose my head, sitting there. Mostly hearing. I snapped my fingers, dislocating these last mosquitoes now lost without number, nor tactics any longer it seems.
I dispatched them one by one as they buzzed; until the last one.
Before it exploded in the air like every previous unit, this ultimate one dove like a bullet into my flesh and reached my heart.
It blew up, and caused my own machinery to clog and die.
~
