The Abyss of Time

Chapter Fifty Four

     "You did what?" demanded Afreena furiously.

     "I take full responsibility," said Adam, standing firm before the cyborg and looking him straight in the eye with its sensory appendage, trying to give no visible sign of the fear it was feeling. "I should have forbidden him from going." Would the cyborg erase its mind for this? Give it a new personality to replace the faulty old one? If he did, there would be nothing Adam could do to stop him, but if this was to be the end of its existence it was determined to go with dignity.

     "Damn right you should," Afreena agreed. "How could you be so stupid..." He fell silent as he realised what he was saying."

     "We are stupid because you made us that way," Adam replied, feeling some satisfaction at being able to defend and accuse with the same words. "And you deliberately gave David personality traits that included curiosity and distrust. I understand now why you did it..."

     "Yes, yes, yes," said the cyborg irritably. He turned to the other cyborgs, who had gathered behind him as they realised something important had happened. "Go after it, as fast as you can, and pray that you reach the tunnel exit before it does. I will explain the situation to the Colonel."

     The other cyborgs nodded with sympathy, having a good idea how their leader would react to the news, and then they chased off towards the north tunnel, as anxious to distance themselves from the wrath of their leader as they were to catch the foolish, renegade machine before it could bring disaster to them all.

☆☆☆

     "Have you tried sending the kill signal?" Trombetta asked Gomez as the cyborgs ran. It now had a humanoid body, identical in appearance to the others. With an army of fighting machines being constructed, there was no longer any need for a cyborg to be a tank.

     "Of course I have," Gomez replied. "It didn't reach it. Too much solid rock in the way. Ironic. The very thing that has helped to hide us is now working against us."

     "I'm glad you find this amusing," said Trombetta, turning his camera eyes to look at its companion. "If the humans learn our location now, they can attack with their full force and wipe us out with little difficulty."

     "Perhaps it was a mistake to give the machines low intelligence," Gomez mused. "You can't make someone stupid and then complain when they do stupid things."

     "If they were smarter they would have figured out that we made them to be slaves. That we have no intention of giving them their freedom when the war is over."

     Gomez stared at him. "We're going to betray them?" he said in shock.

     "Don't be a fool," Trombetta replied. "We dare not leave them at liberty, possibly to be a threat to us one day. This is to be our planet. Not to be shared with a race of machines. Why do you think Karalis has been careful not to speak to them? They would have asked him for a promise, and he never breaks a promise. Not even to a machine." He gave a derisive snort that didn't in the least interfere with his pace as he leapt over fallen boulders. "As if machines were real people."

     "He considers them to be real people," replied Gomez. "As he should. And I am disturbed by what this says about us as moral beings. For us to make such use of sapient beings, does that make us as evil as the humans?"

     "You had no objection to turning humans into servitors."

     "That's different. The humans want to exterminate us. The machines are our creations, though, and I feel that that gives us a responsibility to them. And apart from morality, there are very practical reasons to treat other sapient beings with consideration and respect. What if they're not as dumb as we wanted them to be? What if they've figured out for themselves what you just told me. Maybe they've decided that we're worse than the humans. What if they wait until we give them their combat bodies, then decide to express their anger over our treatment of them?"