Graveyard of Zeros (WIP)

Photoreceptors of the World

    Silvered limbs, not much different than her own, cracked and shifted underfoot. She was walking...walking across one of the many graveyards that marked the land. The blue sun played tricks on the photoreceptors as bronzed parts appeared more oxidized than they were. As she walked, she kicked aside pieces of others, half looking for a new arm, half to pass the time on her journey. The graveyard stretched out past the horizon and she  was sure that a suitable replacement could be found.

A face was kicked aside, and a hand twitched in the light of the sun. From the pile, it grabbed for her foot. She jumped back, crushing more rusted parts underfoot as she landed a few feet away. She watched as nano hairs moved in the wind like grass, drinking in all the light it could. The fingers became less rigid as power was slowly being restored. She stepped closer, trying to look through the parts to see who the hand belonged to. Under the rubble, the glow of infrared sensors grew brighter by the second. They soon focused on her own eyes and the ground begun to move.

The electronic wuurr of actuators joined the clanging and grinding of metal on metal as the hands owner crawled out to the surface. She retreated again, her only arm behind her back. Her hand silently snapped itself from its socket and flipped down to reveal a small barrel. The other machine pulled its torso out, using most of its energy reserves for the one action. It slumped down onto its elbows; its eyes dimmed again as it looked up at the girl that saved it. She looked down at him as his chest rose and fell, mimicking strain. His eyes grew bright again and his mouth popped open with a few clicks.

"What year is it?"

The question said a lot. He'd been offline for several years if even his internal chrono battery had failed. She relaxed her body a bit and shifted her forearm behind her.

"4278."

He violently spun around, frantically taking in his surroundings. His legs were still trapped in the junk below as he began to run low on energy again.

"The war… what… what happened?!"

She saw radio waves leaving his body. With a groan, she stepped forward and forced the barrel into his chest. His eyes grew brighter and looked into hers as his power core was blown out of his back. The slag around the hole glowed for an instant before cooling again. Its body slumped over and she flipped her hand back up into place. With a foot on its shoulder, she grabbed the best looking arm and pulled it off with a twist of her body.

The clicks of tiny sparks echoed in the immediate silence. its body slumped forward and froze. She removed the damaged metal from her arm slot. Taking a seat next to the torso, she worked the new arm onto herself.

The arm looked vastly different than her own; the biggest difference being the green war-paint etched into it that screamed an affiliation she didn't have. Miles from the cold machine, she found some cloth and wrapped it over the colors. The sun had moved closer to the horizon before her, making the, only recently visible, edge of the graveyard glimmer like an ocean of sapphires.

Seeing the edge meant the Rusts weren't far at all.

'Just another day' she thought.

'Just another day'

Night fell over the desert. The blue silica underfoot was a fine powder that twinkled in the light of the moons above. The dark blue of the sand and the twinkles perfectly mirrored the dark sky above. Her eyes darted between the lights above and below. Her head was tilted back as she gazed at the light of dist-

It was soft at first. A slow, yet growing hum from a distance away. She snapped out of her daze and knelt in the dark. She reached up and slowly spun a thin cog that peaked through a slit on her temple. Her eyes saw farther than before, enough to pick up the source of the sound. A small, single engine speeder left a tail of dust as it dashed across the sand. These eyes weren't good enough to see the rider's features, but knowing there was only one brought a solace. It finally crossed in front of her, then went off into the night. ‘Maybe this is the right direction’ she thought as she kept walking.