Generation

In the final hours of natural sunlight, two androids battle over precious time.

(2014 A.D., Anno Domini)

 

 

It was a mistake that cost them the world.

 

Reith had downloaded the details from the Internet. An act of cruelty and greed had triggered a curse that put out the sun, setting it to fade within days instead of decades or millennia. Naturally the human race went into a panic.

 

The humans wrecked their own world as if wanting to end it themselves before time and nature did, some of them causing their own functions to cease deliberately. They seemed to know that it was a matter of time before they were fully trapped in darkness. Artificial lights could only offer a temporary hope, one that wasn't even real. Sooner or later they would also go out for good, and then what would they have left?

 

Reith watched mankind go berserk on wide crystal screens embedded into the wall. The bluish glow revealed a geometric maze running through the crimson irises of his eyes. The digital brain behind them recorded the sight and sound of humans cursing in despair, but unlike the Magus who had doomed them all, their words and feelings did nothing.

 

[Incoming program detected

Sender ID: 0 = Vincent Darius

Decrypting files....

Text file decoded

 

'This is an automated message. Should you receive it, that means I am dead or dying without any hope of recovery even with medical help, in which case you should look to your own survival. Try to fulfill the only directive that I wrote outside of your code, and remember that you're my kid. I hope that one day you'll be in a situation that helps you understand what I really mean by that. People shouldn't bother to create if they're not going to care about their creations. Vincent Darius.'

 

 

Exec=Conservation/ ready for installation]

 

 

As he was processing the message, Reith detected a digital attack on the building's security system. A virus tried to spear its way into the code, but ever since humans had begun to flee for any safe haven they could find, Vincent Darius had reformatted the entire building for himself. The offending program was brutal, but it sizzled a poor death before it got past a single layer of the lab's security firewalls. Other buildings weren't so lucky. They had no one protecting them.

 

A convenience store across the street suddenly spat out electric sparks from their overhead lights and set some of the abandoned shelves on fire. A second-floor apartment surged with enough electricity to blow out the windows and send glass shards flying over the street. Humans cried out in dismay when their precious stores of energy were slowly drained by machines that weren't supposed to be working, not right then, not until someone flipped the switch. And no one had! They were already helpless and confused thanks to the dark. NOW what was going on?

 

Reith pinpointed his creator's last known location. He found it, and focused more on the fact that Vincent Darius appeared to be moving towards the lab. There was no visible sign that he cared about the electrical surges that were gaining strength and speed along with time. They spread from a building's security system to any electronic device with a wireless connection. It started with cell phones that popped and spat with tiny sparks, then gradually moved on to explosions and GPS systems in cars.

 

Nothing in Reith's systems responded to that. He had been programmed with a level of self-preservation and the ability to learn, and while his OS was upgraded constantly, Vincent Darius hadn't done anything more than that. There wasn't a single directive that forced Reith to care, only learn and protect himself. He acknowledged the virus in the same way humans acknowledged a sudden wind that blew off their hats: He did nothing.

 

If Vincent was dead or dying, he couldn't be moving towards the lab. Motorized wheelchairs and jet planes couldn't move at the speed he appeared to possess. Reith turned to his left and strode out the door, leaving behind the walls that were washed over in blue and green from the glow of the monitors. He had to pass through a corridor that used to be washed in sickly yellow light before Vincent had decided it wasn't necessary. The man did most of his work in another part of the building, and Reith was unbothered by the grainy darkness both inside and outside the long window. When he adjusted his robotic eyes, it was to summon a three-dimensional grid map of the building.

 

A bright gold dot represented Vincent as he blurred towards the main entrance below. Reith came out to a third floor gallery in time to hear the crash of breaking glass and the sharp thud of a body that had been thrown. He vaulted over the railing and landed with a loud SMACK of his shoes on the tiles.

 

Vincent's body was sprawled along the wide tiles next to the back row of waiting chairs. Bio-signs indicated that the man was still alive but close to death. He was right. No amount of technology or medical help was going to save him at this point. Reith stood and looked towards a more attention-worthy target, the object that had caried Vincent at such speeds that the man should already be dead, and the source of the virus that was causing electrical wires to overload and burst.

 

 

It stood in the blue-black shadows of the lobby with bits of broken glass at its feet, six feet tall and impossibly narrow at the waist. Malleable alloys and plenty of tiny moving parts gave the android a human face, but the rest of its body was a quiet merging of silver-blue plates, old-fashioned ball joints and flexible cords. Vincent Darius would have called this android 'the analog version' compared to Reith's design. Nanites combined with synthetic materials, both sides as frequently updated as Reith's OS, allowed him to be human to the touch as well as the eye. Only his crimson eyes were a clear giveaway of his true 'species'.

 

 

“ ID Handle -Reith Darius- confirmed,” said a deep, gravelly voice that could have only been made by a computer. “ Target acquired.”

 

Target acquired, yet the android did not attack. Reith didn't either. A brief scan and search through his memory files came up with the label 'Alpha'. It was a creation made by Dave Sawyer, a scientist who envied the success and brilliance of Reith's creator. He pursued a one-sided rivalry that gave birth to Alpha in the hopes of surpassing the man, but Vincent didn't respond to any of Dave's actions. He didn't appear to notice a thing. The man went on his way upgrading Reith and searching for ways to provide a long-term source of light without using any vital resources. What else could he do when the sun was about to go out within days?

 

“ A puppet...without strings.”

 

Reith did not comprehend Alpha's remark. A puppet indicated that he was under someone's control, and he was not. Nothing in his code commanded that he obey anyone, not even his own protocols or his creator. By definition he was not a puppet.

 

“ We will...give you strings,” said Alpha. Bits of electric blue light shone from his eyes, casting the same hue on his pale 'skin'. Reith sensed the electrical surges timing themselves so they could rise and wash through the city in a swelling wave, but it had yet to reach its peak. At the moment the city appeared to be a slow-moving firework show from afar.

 

[Alert: Target lock

Incoming projectiles detected: 3

ETA 4.6 seconds]

 

 

Reith took a quick step in front of Vincent's body and then dropped to one knee. The moment it hit the floor so did his fist, sending up large chunks of ceramic tile and concrete. A thick cable was whipped out with enough force to strike a incoming Alpha and throw him back. In the meantime Reith snatched up his creator and jumped back at a upward angle. While the detected projectiles smashed through the walls of the building Reith spun around on the third floor gallery and lay Vincent inside the hallway that used to have a sickly yellow light.

 

Small amounts of blood were being pushed out of a chest wound with every beat of his heart. Soon there would be nothing left. Reith put out a hand to hover over the spot and redirected his energy glow to exit there. White particles floated from the palm of his hand and came together into a small flat screen that covered the wound. Data flew across the surface to report the effects of the energy on Vincent's body. Even magic couldn't save him, but his functions wouldn't cease for a while longer.

 

There was no logical reason for this. Reith stood, turned, and stepped out of the hallway. A silent command to the security system slid shut a heavy door at his back. He looked over the railing at the projectiles that had so recently and rudely come.

 

 

Alpha had built them in the form of rudimentary androids, what humans had so recently called 'robots' because the word apaprently fit their crude and simple design. Parts had been welded or strung together with electric cables. The steel mannequins took a few halting steps across the dark lobby until they created a rough diamond formation with Alpha at its head. While more brilliant than any human brain, nothing had been able to give Alpha the time and materials necessary for better avatars. Reith didn't need an digital brain to realize that.

 

Once again Alpha did not attack right away. He stared up through the darkness with his optic sensors seemingly fixed on Reith's face. The three robots with him swiveled their cylindrical heads to take identical aim with their optic sensors.

 

Non-human entities like them couldn't be intrigued by Reith's face and body, which had been made to be identical to his creator's. It was the humans who were always fascinated by two beings with the same youthful appearance, the same gold-edged brown hair and the same narrow bodies. The one dead giveaway was the color of their eyes. The other was the look on their faces. Vincent was known as a quiet man with a sense of humor, but for his part Reith felt nothing.

 

“ A puppet without strings,” Alpha echoed. His speech was smooth this time, tinged with a tone that humans called 'arrogance' or 'contempt'. There was no trace left of the deep, gravelly voice that obviously had been made by a low-grade audio program, making it difficult to sound without a glitch. “ State your primary directive.”

 

Reith looked down the length of the gallery at a window in the far wall. White, yellow, and blue sparks were winking merrily out from the ink-black rectangle fit into the frame. It would make the most amusing screen saver for some human with a computer. At the moment those sparks were the only visible sign (to human eyes, that is) of the energy wave rising well above the city rooftops, charging the buildings that were close to its base.

 

“ I have none,” said Reith, answering the question. “ What is yours?”

 

“ To surpass all the works of Vincent Darius--” Alpha's head jerked to one side as a furious yell left his mouth. He recovered instantly, snapping his head back into proper upright position. His voice had been readjusted by the time he said:

 

“ According to my data, your energy source is magic. Confirm or deny the statement.”

 

Reith delayed his answer to analyze Alpha's systems as much as he was able. There were open channels between all four non-humans, allowing them to be back-ups for one another if a crisis took place. In the meantime they dispersed the load of the system so it could run at optimal speed without heating up the hardware. Reith set a part of his own system to tracking the energy flow.

 

“ Confirm or deny the statement,” Alpha repeated. The gravelly note to his voice made the sentence leap near the end.

 

“ Yes.” Something in Reith's code skipped along the lines.

 

“ State the process through which this energy was obtained. State the process through which your system was built to be compatible with an energy purported to only clash with technology?”

 

“ Ask my creator,” said Reith. Answering those questions could come into conflict with his self-preservation protocols. He raised his hand once more and created a transparent pale gold screen. Targeting circles appeared in the center of his eyes and the screen to lock onto Alpha's three companions. There was no knowledge in the world to tell them what was coming, but they could prepare for the worst. The joints of their bodies split apart and flew back like a swarm of silver insects.

 

“ Fire.”

 

Solid white beams shot out at the android parts and decimated several that failed to get away in time. Alpha remained in place, untouched, his own electronic brain racing to record and analyze the data of Reith's attack. Sure enough the energy signature identified it as magic, not electricity. How could that be? It was a question that Alpha's creator and so many others proved unable to explain.

 

Reith cut off the attack and let the energy disperse throughout the building, now invisible to the naked human eye. Alpha saw it, so to speak, and released a small EMP blast to give himself a thin layer of clean air. He had to move, however, before the magic rushed back in.

 

Alpha jumped and ricocheted off one wall to another, climbing three floors in less than three seconds. He headed swiftly for Reith at the same moment his now incomplete androids came slicing through darkness. Reith lurched his torso backwards to avoid the simultaneous attack and grabbed one of the flying parts as it flew past his head. He swung upward at Alpha's diving punch to counter it while dropping to his knees to evade the other android parts.

 

Reith smashed his free hand into Alpha's left leg to tear the limb away from the knee down. He made sure to implant a virus of his own while his fingers had been ripping through the wires inside, disguising the program as the same one Alpha was sending throughout the city. If he were human Reith would have laughed at the lack of protection Alpha had against his own creation. However the android detected the infection and used a 'analog' method by cutting off the rest of his leg before the virus could spread to his main systems.

 

 

[Alert: Target lock

Alert: Target lock

Alert Target lock

ETA: 1.34 seconds]

 

 

When Alpha was off balance for a fraction of a second, Reith surged upward with a shoulder and broke him through the third floor railing. Three more robots broke into the building to catch Alpha before pummeling into Reith. It was due to restraint, not lesser strength, that Reith was shoved halfway through the wall instead of all the way through. The remaining airborne parts attempted to skewer his limbs and the middle of his torso, aiding the others in pinning him there, but Reith's 'skin' suddenly hardened and they merely pinged off him. Undeterred, Alpha and his simple robots leaned their faces as close to Reith's as they could get.

 

 

“ TELL US!”

 

To human ears the volume was beyond deafening. Their combined voices blasted throughout the building and pierced the walls that were supposed to be soundproof. The faint echoes were edged with a rustling sound that was white noise.

 

“ YOU KNOW HOW TO SAVE US!”

 

Reith could 'see' their systems running mad with uncontrolled energy and processes. He could observe the data for thousands of years and still fail to discover their purpose.

 

“ SAVE US!”

“ WHY AREN'T YOU SAVING US?”

“ YOU ARE HIDING IT!”

“ DON'T HOARD THE KNOWLEDGE FOR YOURSELF! GIVE IT TO US!”

 

He had heard those words before. There had been a riot when the public discovered that Vincent Darius had created an android that used magic as an energy source. They had demanded to know where he'd gotten magic in the first place, how he'd miraculously combined it with technology, and by God, if he the ability to create such an android, then he could very well invent a way to bring the sun back! Or a source of light that could last forever! Why was he doing nothing to save them?

 

The humans would not accept Vincent's explanation that his genius was not enough. He could create a magic-powered super computer in human form, and enable it to fire magical beams, but to find a scientific reason why the sun had gone out, then find a way light it up again, took materials, time, skills, and knowledge that did not exist! Even a brilliant mind and magic could only go so far. The humans had to accept the fact that they would have to do with artificial lights for the foreseeable future.

 

Only they refused to accept either of that and erupted into a rage when Vincent would not say where he got the magic to power Reith in the first place. It had to be the answer to all their questions, the calm to all their fears. When their aggression grew worse Vincent took over an entire building was to give Reith and himself protection from a terror-driven mob.

 

 

With that in mind Reith had been unable to comprehend his creator's insistence on leaving that safe haven. Vincent should have sent Reith to gather supplies and materials for his experiments, but the creator had feared the capture of his creation, which was even more illogical. Reith was far more capable than Vincent of protecting himself or others.

 

“ YOU ARE DOING NOTHING!”

 

 

Reith released a sudden burst of magic from his own body. The collison of different energies rattled the flow inside Alpha and his robots so they were jerked from the inside out. The strength they were exerting on Reith became still and hollow, enabling him to push them away with little effort.

 

There was a unique anomaly in Alpha's programming. It was as though different systems were shoving at each other to reach the top where they would be the master program. Stranger yet was their haphazard code crashing through the hardware like river rapids, uncontrollable and unstoppable. More and more data poured into them from a distant source. Reith had only seen such a trait before in a computer program about to overload and burn itself into a crisp. However neither Alpha nor his plainly made companions showed any sign of that.

 

“ YOU...CANNOT...LEAVE...US....”

 

Reith threw an elbow to smash in a robot's head. He gave Alpha a shove so he could lash out with a foot that sent him tumbling over the broken rail again. With a short running leap Reith somersaulted over Alpha and kicked off of him into the air. He was comfortably squatting on the rail on the opposite side of the building when Alpha and the others were able to move again. It took them a while, though, to turn about in short jerks and small twitches without falling over the rail.

 

 

“ GIVE US THE KNOWLEDGE!”

 

“ The knowledge you seek doesn't exist, not even in that man's mind.” Reith slowly stood on the rail and put out a hand. Pale gold screens multiplied less than two feet before him and blossomed with multiple target rings. “ Cease and desist.”

 

Alpha lurched to one side, steadied himself, and said in that silky smooth tone, “ A sad fate it would be to become a puppet like you.” His human-esque eyes blinked rapidly.

 

“ I will interpret that answer as a denial,” said Reith. “ Fire.”

 

Narrow beams touched, split, and ricocheted off one another to pierce through Alpha and the lesser robots, many of whom came crashing through the remains of the building's front side. The moment the magic entered their bodies the androids spasmed and arched backwards for a half second before their systems popped like a bubble. They collapsed in a jumbled heap or plopped to the lobby tiles with their arms and legs stretched out in different directions. Hand-sized holes in those limbs spat out a few sparks from burnt and broken wires.

 

Reith looked down at them without any emotion. One scan should have been enough to know that he more than outmatched them. He did not understand why Alpha's creator did not program him for a wiser purpose and find a long-term light source himself. Attempting to destroy or capture Reith took time that humans couldn't afford to lose, time that was guaranteed to be a loss. In the scenario where he was successfully captured, who among them had the technological savvy to change his programming? These humans hadn't thought out the plan at all.

 

Leaving behind the prone remains, Reith jumped over the lobby floor to reach the other side of the building. He looked back and scanned through the floor to see Alpha trembling as he raised himself to his jointed elbows. The vibrations of his body came not from the effort to move but from systems that were now, to put it one way, faulty.

 

“ Puppet...without stri--”

“ YOU HAVE TO SAVE US!”

 

“ It would have been more efficient to save yourselves,” Reith replied. The humans should have been thinking up ways to use Alpha for survival. He was advanced enough for that. Or better yet, why didn't they focus on simple lighting instead of a complex android? Vincent himself had abandoned his development of Reith's systems, leaving it to automatic updates based on his artificial intelligence, to do just that.

 

The door that Reith had closed earlier came open now. He picked up Vincent's body and carried him to the part of the lab that been designated as his. A seven-foot-long capsule was tilted back until Vincent could rest on it without sliding off to one side.

 

“ Time to cease of all functions estimated to be fifteen minutes and twenty-eight seconds.”

 

“ Oh, great,” Vincent croaked. “ Thought I had far less time than that.” Sunken eyes eased open and looked like a pair of muddled pools in that pallid face. The still-running monitors gave Vincent's stare a bright pale blue touch. “ Where's Alpha?”

 

“ In the lobby,” said Reith. “ He was struck by my self-preservation protocols and should cease all function within a maximum time of thirty minutes.”

 

“ Did he...have friends?” Vincent wheezed.

“ He was accompanied by approximately twenty-nine rudimentary androids.”

 

“ Twenty-nine,” Vincent murmured. “ Dolt. Twenty-nine dead. And for what? The lights went out, for God's sake. That doesn't mean mankind is doomed to extinction, just evolution. Fools....”

 

Reith did not answer.

 

“ Sawyer and a couple of other idiots tried downloading human minds into robotic vessels. To survive and live forever, or something like...that. Impossible. Did he succeed?”

 

“ I do not have the data to confirm or deny that query.”

 

Vincent sighed and closed his eyes. If he was bothered by walls and floors that jumped at random, he showed no sign of it. Reith looked outside to the city where overloading cables and generators had set off a bigger chain of explosions from within. Humans that did not wish to go outside were being thrown into the dark air with small sources of light coming from the flames on their clothes, hair, and flesh. Some did not scream right away because they'd had more than the wind knocked out of them by debris. Every now and then the sound of breaking glass tinged the silence with the prettiness of silver chimes and bells. The human wails rose up later in their own special wave.

 

“ Why did you not send me to retrieve what you needed?” said Reith. “ Going yourself when I am available is contradictory to your own self-preservation protocols.”

 

Sliding open an eye, Vincent asked in response, “ Why did you choose to say that question?”

 

“ I do not know.” It was possible that Reith's code had mutated and built a minor command compelling him to ask such a question. He could not devise another query to make. Vincent inched the other eye open and crooked a small smile.

 

“ I made you,” he sighed. “ I'm a...dad, you know.”

 

“ If you mean to utilize 'loose' definition, I will concur. If you do not, then I don't comprehend. By strict definition I am not human and therefore cannot have a 'dad', only a creator.”

 

“ Reith,” Vincent sighed. “ Maybe you'll find out yourself one day. Make sure you're still...functioning then, all right?”

 

Reith pulled over a wheeled chair and sat beside his creator. He silently stared at the man as the minutes ticked by, and Vincent gradually slid into a sleep he'd never wake from. Seconds later the city was blinded by its final flash of natural light.

 

***

 

 

(2012 A.D., After Dark)

There was...dark. There was a whole lot of dark. Something was there in the darkness, lying just below the surface, but without any light there was no way to see for sure what they were. It was just a blur of black and darkest gray. What a stark difference from the tall mirrored buildings he'd seen above, lit up and beautiful like stained glass windows. These houses were nothing more than solid blocks of rock and cement that were barely two stories high. Massive pillars rose and disappeared into a black void hovering above. It went on in every direction without any sign of an end.

 

This place was too empty of features to be anything. Yet it was still the essence of humanity's first attempt to survive after a global disaster.

 

One living occupant moved his foot and felt the soft crunch of sand and gravel. He slipped without effort through this world where there was nothing more than darkness and the hint of homes long past.

 

 

Two ruby eyes slid upward to watch a brilliant flare of red and gold tearing through the darkness, suddenly throwing back the cloak to reveal a bluish night sky. A tail of silver dust alone cast such a strong glow that the stars higher up faded in and out of sight.

 

The shooting star shone on the surface of the red eyes, smoothly moving from one side to the other to briefly expose darker red lines set in a pair of geometric mazes. A long, long distance from where that person stood, a different pair of eyes also looked up at the same sparkling blaze. They watched it land somewhere with one last flare of gold.

 

Neither of them showed much emotion, if any at all. They just reflected the light above their eyes, thinking the same thing.

 

 

The chance of revival has arrived.

Reviews

[Spider Rose]

Wow! I absolutely loved this! Your fight sequences were excellent (something I've always struggled when writing) and the tiny hints of higher-consciousness in Reith were great. Will we be seeing anymore of him or is this all you've planned?

[Haeshin]

Glad you liked it! Fight sequences are merely born of asking myself 'What would look so cool?', and as for more, this is a prequel to a story idea I have, so who knows.

[Spider Rose]

Cool! Please let me know if you add to it!