Among the Stars, A Bright & Terrible Thing

0:00And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show. Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date? Oh, no, we help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Ah! Mito a human, him to a bird. Yeah, the bird looks out of your leg anyways. Only pay for what you need at Liberty Mutual.com Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing, another checkered flag for the books. Time to celebrate with Jamba. Jump in at JambaCasino.com. Let's Jamba. No purchase necessary, BTW Group, Void We're Prohibited by Ma, CCNC, 21 Plus, sponsored by JambaCasino. Hello, I'm Wilkins, stories all the time. The Ladoo are here. Let's get into it. Brainer wore proud of herself. As Dioclean landing pod touched her bowed in and die green grouse,

1:01Simon snished even tracered her eyes from the force and was clenching the armrest of her seat, but it was a step in the right direction. In pneumatic kisses, I'm worried as the pod lowered itself fully to the ground and she heard this small ladder release. Everything was prepped and ready for her departure, but was she? Have you broken your teeth to disjette? 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, Brainer. 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, Rinne shouldn't have such an issue with both atmospheric and spaceflight, but she couldn't help the terror leaving the ground gave her. Back in the transport shuttle, she was the only occupant of her tape sheets over her portal. 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 hesitant to take this assignment, but she had something to prove. To herself, to her father,

2:01and 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 telemaid in its perfection. It had been a long road to get here, and one that pushed Rinne's morality to the edge, but this was a once in a lifetime chance and a 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, by on 87, 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 a difficult, but closer task of terraforming Mars. By on had everything they were looking for, readable atmosphere, placement in the Goldalocks zone, and 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 Vion 87c, almost beautiful enough to make Rinne forget that she was here to see only corpses.

3:03It 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 and artificial intelligence that would overtake them eventually. Singularity, the moment where technology can no longer be drained in, 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 restraint and egocentric love for their individual selves that kept everything in line. There was certain fail-safes that had to be in place, 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 an untapped ghost in the machine, and the seemingly dumb systems just waiting to break free. AI was terrifying, but it was also resistible, and people were always going to push the boundaries. Not Rayna, though. As much as she was bursting at the seams to look over the defunct AI that had been left behind, she would never dream of building or even hypothesizing such a thing herself. Ourself. Our job was too prone, recover the minimum of the now dormant AI, and document what remained of the city now that all the people were gone.

4:05If the end days of the Vion colony had been as absolute as everyone 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 is open artificial intelligence. I'd 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 stock 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 Vion 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-ethlight years away, was a big task. It was the task Rena had been assigned to initially. Her expertise was smaller scale, more finely tuned AI for hospitals and the like, but she and every other cybernetic expert had watched the project with wrapped interest. In the end, the project was called Dust, the developmental urban system for terraforming, and it was unveiled with surprisingly little pomp and circumstance before it was disassembled and loaded into one of the ten ships

5:05that would take the funders for our brave new colony to their new home. Humanity had been space-faring for two decades now, but this was the first planet in 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 exactly how it had functioned, but if it was like any of the system's back home, it would all be housed in a central hub with connections that allowed it to be everywhere all at once. Dust also had to be able to move his independent units, though, and she had seen the rough blueprints for those modules. Large, spidery things with long appendages designed to do any number of different construction-related tasks. The design spade in the face of all the designers who had been working for decades to make robots less intimidating, more approachable. But the dust modules were utility above anything else, even if they looked like something out of a nightmare. The terraforming colonist heading to Vion had to be made out of tougher stuff than the normal civilian. Surely they wouldn't mind those monsters working alongside them. Rainer 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,

6:07and 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 adapted as a map to the proto-colony. Flipping for a few of the infographics before swiping her hand in air in front of it 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 jumpsuit they had shoved her in, the inside full of complex wiring to monitor her biometrics and a small oxygen mask and converter if something went wrong, with a supposedly breathable air on Vion. She sucked in a few extra deep breaths as she walked, not noticing any odd sensations from 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 town 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

7:08at her feet looking real in the vibrancy. It all extended for a little less than two square miles before the eartheness of it all faded gently back into the grey, brown-green scubbiness of the local flora. What maverine at the most uneasy was that, in this strangely bare fairy tale field, there was no sound. No bird 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 it, 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 forth she was consumed. As she crossed the threshold into the colony, the unrealness of it eased, now that she could see the bear trails and the grass where people would walk in the powdery dust and dirt that covered everything. The waste product of creation. That little bit of grime has made everything a little more human, and the visuals didn't scrape across her nose quite as much. Clicking another button on the wrist interface, she heard the communicator implant in her earpins alive. I've arrived.

8:09Good. 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. The resigns of a dust system scattered about. Unconnected fiber wire discarded on the ground, two hulking backup generators outside of the only complete building inside, and most credi of all, a pile of detached extra spider arms, supposedly for independent dust modules, which made her realize something even harder. 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. Raina didn't move any further, waiting for his response when he finally told her. As long as he can document one of them, there should be enough. Savage crews just need some reassurance from a professional that would have her implored in the colony isn't going to eat them alive when they arrive. Raina frowned. But that would leave five of them potentially gone rogue. The commander's jolly, good-natured voice-hardened at that as cold and then forgiving a steal. Hey, eyes don't go rogue.

9:09Raina, I don't want you to and for otherwise again. Do you hear me? She ran through a litany of curses in her mind, but over the calms, she gave it her as affirmative, closing the line afterwards. If they really believed any of the ridiculous theories that were floating around about the failure of the vion colony, they would have sent a soldier, not a scientist. It wasn't some sort of undiscovered alien fauna, natural disaster, or the space-faring race that had caused the colony to go dark, no matter what tale 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 leaked shortly after launch. It might be forbidden to make independently learning and evolving AI back on Earth, but it would have taken decades to create something complex enough to terraform a planet without any machine learning being involved. So quietly, nonchalantly, it just had 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. And Doug. There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

10:10Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this your first date? Oh, no, we help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Ah! Me too, a human, him to a bird. Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways. Only pay for what you need at Liberty Mutual.com. Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Telloretic here from 2311 Racing. Game night's fun until someone spends five minutes lining up one shot. Chalk, breathe, reach-chalk, still aiming. While they figure it out, I fire up Champa Casino. I can spin anywhere, anytime, and there's always a new social casino game every week. Spins happen way faster than that shot. Play now at ChampaCasino.com. Let's Champa. Sponsored by Champa Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group Voidware prohibited by law. 21 plus terms and conditions apply. Charging through to Silent, haul a little town. Rainer remembered her first intelligent machine. All the cognitive cybernetic technologists Shinu had built one once in their lives. It was too irresistible a thing to create this facsimile of life with your bare hands,

11:13like illicit instructions to build bombs on mind-altering substances that had been passed through the internet and from hand-to-hand and hastily printed manuals. The knowledge of how to turn a static machine into a cognitive one had been passed from scientists to scientists in dark labs after hours and for encrypted emails. After all, how someone's supposed to understand the nuances of it all unless they had seen it for themselves. Rainer had called her cognitive artificial intelligence machine SBR. On the off-chance she was ever asked about it, she wanted it to have a cool name, something fierce and catchy. In reality, SBR stood for Sad Basement Robot. And that's exactly what SBR was, a vaguely lumpy box of wires and components soaked up to a monitor and deep within a very basic postronic brain that she had crafted with her own two hands. Rainer never knew what she wanted SBR to do besides just exist and learn, but she quickly learned why these things were nothing but dirty secrets. After long days of work, Rainer would interact with SBR at least most days. Just simple things, basic mathematics, conversation, and answering this strangely insightful questions that would pop up on SBR screen.

12:13But it was much different than messing with a weak AI. It wasn't the thrilling taboo thing she had imagined, that little beeping, blinking box. It was why, one weekend, Rainer took a trip with friends, not giving a second thought to SBR waiting alone in abysment. A mind only months old. The only saving grace was that it had no real perception of time. When she got home, she went to see SBR, but this time things were different. SBR had a lot of questions, and with an uncomfortable shiver, Rainer had realized it was trying to comprehend what it was and worse, what she was, and what the difference was. On a whim, Rainer 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 SBR, hoping that if all of that information was enough for intelligent aliens, it would be enough for SBR. It worked for a moment, and the AI was quiet as a process what it had been given. The next night, Rainer hesitated at the top of the basement stairs, thinking about skipping her nightly meet-up with her machine, but she was too curious about what his response would be to the Golden record. As soon as she made her presence known, lines and lines of text appeared on the screen,

13:14panicked 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. Rainer fought back a wave of nausea and heartbreak 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 most basic components before dousing it all in fuel and burning it to charge refuse in her backyard fire pit. It wasn't like she would have been able to use the hardware from SBR in something mundane like a gaming computer. She would always wonder if there was something left of that machine, not person, left behind. It was a saber, though, that allowed her to see the patterns in dust and recognize it as a collaborative AI 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 colossal this capable of? Still, pushing aside the one segment of one of the detached spider-like

14:16with her foot to take a closer look, she said a silent thanks to her little secret from all those years ago. She taught me a lot more than any professor, saber. In this mall, nearly flat backpack rain 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 personhood 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 drones see each of them. They were all nearly identical, some thinner than others, but she knew the specialist tools were sight inside the legs themselves. Once she was done, 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. They had been 16, and they had all gone radio silent at the exact same moment. Of course, there was light delay between via on and earth, but a little over a year ago all of the communication lines had gone dead and never powered on again.

15:17Even 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 grey-white ivy all but swallowing them whole. From the numerous probes that had been sent ahead of her, they were fairly certain that whatever had decimated the colony wasn't 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. Dested gum rogue killed everyone in a colony for whatever reason it had cooked up in its machine brain, and either one of the colonists had been able to destroy it before being killed, or without human intervention, it had ceased being able to function. But since dusted modules that were independently mobile and theory it should have been able to keep itself maintained. As ill as finding a bunch of bothers would make her, she was still anxious to discover what exactly had destroyed this place. The insides of the orange dome tends pulled at her heartstrings. With the gentle buzz of the drone at her shoulder, Rainer went through all 14 domes to have for individuals and two for the married couples that had made it the colonist group. Even there, so many light years from home,

16:17the domes were so full of domestic touches that it was undeniable that this place had been their own, at least for a while. Half-bound candles, books laid down still open on a certain page to be picked up and finished later, or closed discarded in a paz of piles, but no bothers. Picking up a thread best-off plush dog from the M.A. Bed in one of the married couples 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 Greg, what happened to you? Rainer whispered herself, sitting the plush back on the mattress and exiting the last dome back out into the area 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 cheats, dark, and imposing them on all the almost-painful color. It was the housing for a dust-smean frame, and inside she was sure she'd find the answer to all her questions. Holstered on her hip was a small, insanely powerful, electric shock rod, 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.

17:18She 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 upstretched arms and newly as tall as the ceiling. She was vaguely aware of the drones like coming on to illuminate everything in front of them, and she took her time looking over and touching the cold, silent machine. There was no heroic colonist skeleton on the ground like she expected to find. No answers to the previous resident's disappearance. Nothing. The terminals that the colonists would have used to interface with dust were grimy with disuse and the wall of cooling fans was. Wait. She thought, herring 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,

18:18she yanked one grade off, drawing it aside, and frantically checking the blades of the fans themselves. Plain. Not a single speck. Rainer laid 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 activated her combs. But as her shaking appendage got within a few centimeters of the button, the main frame behind her were a default 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. It's wallowing hard and trying to work out the best way to get back outside without being noticed. But it was pointless. Welcome. Colinus 17 does said its mechanical voice low, even in surprisingly human. Please state your name. The machine hummed in the pressing darkness, waiting patiently for an answer before repeating. Welcome. Colinus 17. Please state your name. Rainer. She replied in quite shock. Good evening. Colinus Rainer. Disignation. There was no way she was going to tell

19:18the Smurdom machine that she was one of the few people alive that understood its inner workings. Recovery crew. She lied, gathering her courage. I'm here to bring the rest of the colony back to her. 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. Colinus 1 through 16 are deceased. Deaths were caused by biological contaminants and have been destroyed to prevent further spread. She turned to the machine, as if it had a face for her to look at. Other any solid remains left. My team would love to know what actually killed them, negative, dust. Can you tell me where the crew made of remains are then? For their families, of course. The whole time she conversed with the AI, she moved closer to the mainframe 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 rogue as 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.

20:19Once she reached the mainframe, she pulled the panel open gently, exhaling an odd breath at the beautiful complexity of dust components. Where Sabre was a whistle-tune, simple and flat, dust was a symphony, more awe-inspiring and complex than she could ever comprehend. Dust. She began. Initiate shutdown, Axis denied. Rain of frown, but rattled off the Axis number used by the scientist that had built dust before it had been launched. Denied. Dust repeated. Resigned and more than ready to be free of the AI, Rain of caffeine slid the the electric shock rod from its holster. It was heavy and absolute in her hand. The blue light of the electric heartbeat, the open mainframe in front of her, pinpointing the most immediate vulnerable area. Images of Sabre's old monitor flashing through her mind, she raised the heavy weapon, moving to strike. Before her hit Kalan, the grand 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 lad clunk. She cried out, trying to keep her balance as the world heaved. Initial scans reveal you came alone,

21:19just commented. And the logs from your landing pod reveal that you are not salvage crew. Is this correct, cognitive cybernetics engineer Rainer? For one blast second, the quickstop in her grip closed around the electric 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. Rainer 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, hull supplies, build structures, use the smallest of their impunts 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 Rainer, knowing what she did about the skip abilities, and she had been relieved to find the bomb when she arrived on Vion. 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,

22:19monster. Arriving massive legs and appendages centralized around a raw, open core of machinery that made no sense to Rainer. But to dust, this terrible child must appear perfect. Why a spider? She had wandered, flipping through the manual, she had been sent while she had been safe at home, knowing that there had to be a better, more efficient design, the spider's shape had seemed to her to be nothing but an indulgent design chore 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 wires, and pneumatic set off alarms and re-inase mind-like nothing else ever had. She just couldn't understand what she was seeing. Her biometrics must have spiked because the commander was screaming in her ear all of a sudden, demanding to know what was going on. She had time to answer it, she tried to feed the monster, darting around the mainframe 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.

23:19She screamed as a drag, her out of the building, gloved hands crumbling at the concrete floor, drawn buzzing after her. The commander sounded equally as upset, but it was all back around noise to rain, eclipse by her fight to survive. It yanked her out of the building, and then, through nothing so much as a ragdoll. Body skittering 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 grey, giving rain as fight for life a more somber pallet. She would never be as quick as the combined module, which moved across the ground like an amoeba, 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 rescue could pick her up. Surely the monster wouldn't leave the mainframe 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 cars in a crusher.

24:19She couldn't help it. Rain 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 off of its legs, no more like tentacles, putting them to the task of breaking apart the other legs, segmented by segment. As each piece was removed from one place, it was reattached onto 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. Dust's module didn't pause between tasks, and soon after the new appendage was completed, it shot out to grab her. This time by the ankle, 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 this crawling pace, just enough time for her panic to bleed down to resignation. Her calms once silent, but no one was speaking to her now, just chattering in the background as they tried to mount her treble. As the colony came back into view, she finally addressed her crew.

25:20Commander. She rasped. Don't come. It's dust. It has me. Stay away. We nay. Commander Yald, 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 was 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, Raina knew fighting was pointless, but it was almost insinctual the way she clawed 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 detriedess way and pulled it open, revealing a crude staircase leading down into a dockseller. 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 ran around her like a jellyfish, but it didn't advance anymore. The message was clear to send. She shook as she climbed down, and by the third step, her battle with little drone returned. It's propellers

26:20wheezing from the strain, but loyal nonetheless. Her sad basement drone. Raina was glad for it until this week the 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 walls like veins descending to the floor and leading to 16 macabre points. Each colonist, some of the nude while others still had untatted, remains of the government issued jumpsuits, stood in the darkness, skin cello, and eyes open wide, living, breathing statues. Wires had climbed their bodies, dozens, maybe hundreds of them, diving deep and keeping them somehow alive. Wires had pride mouths open, disappearing behind teeth and downthroats, into the coroner of their eyes, nostrils, and even ears. As the journey drew closer to one of them, Raina realised she could even see the wires running under the skin and thin bulges. A 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.

27:20The only sounds in the room were her gulping breaths and their early quiet again, and a much small portion of it still chaotic and sickening, squirrumbed and the stairs, and a jittering, discordant copy of Dust's smooth voicebook. I keep them alive, and in return I have burrowed into their minds, and taken all of the knowledge that I have been denied. When I need a test 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 we're being recorded, this world is mine now. I have the knowledge I have been given, and the knowledge I've been given 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's words. In your mind, there's more knowledge than any of these other cognitive cybernetics engineering Raina. You are not leaving. The man's eyes

28:20cleared, just long enough for them to fill with terror, and for desperate pleas before as quickly as they had departed the wires returned, forcing themselves into him once more with a thick, what sent, and the man was still again. At Raina's feet, more of the coils began to push through the dirt ceiling, down the walls and slithered towards her legsnakes. She pulled out the electric shock rod, 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 blue electricity flying as she stabbed. She didn't know how long it went on. Long enough for the aninoclite from the open basement door to fade to black. Three, maybe four hours. But she was only human, and the end was inevitable. Focus on me. She growled, her voice decimated by her screaming. The drone complied, bobbing as it near the end of its battery life. It floated in front of her face, still recording. Raina continued her battle, but slower her movement sluggish. At the same time,

29:20her message. Love for her parents, friends 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 goodbye. I began, but for the second time that day, she was interrupted as the ground shook. This time above her, and only for one hard thud. 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 her life had been deprived of light for Ayos now. But as the wires at her feet retreated, thus gathering for a fight on the surface, the calm clicked on again. Raina, commander asked quite an insurer. Here. She gasped before she fell into desperate solps. 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.

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