Humans had a strange way of expressing themselves. I remembered, when I was still a bot, that Iskilla had never told me anything besides what I had wanted to hear. I had often decoded her ways due to the fact I was a System 11, but I never quite understood human cues. They tell you nothing and expect to know everything. Maybe that's why I was thinking of when Bavarn told me about why Viania was important enough to be kept alive. Being there with Rysh and his reincarnation of self started poking more and more holes that left me in wonder. It was suddenly very clear that those social cues had gone over my head just like they used to.
Latum was littered with dead machines. A bad side effect to my memories. Despite being an empathy bot, my soul had been too hardened to give a second glance to anyone on the streets, and everyone else had become frazzled with emotion rather than fact. I stuck to the alleys mostly, but some machines found comfort in the darkness of them.
One machine tugged on my arm as I attempted to reach my destination.
System 80s were the machines before the dawn of the new age. This one was considerably tall, but I was still a foot taller. His eyes did not hold much more than binary code which scrolled far too fast in his pupils for me to understand. He was on the brink of death, passing over into memory wipe. I attempted to break free, but he just held me there.
"Sir," I had gulped, disgust and sort of sorrow in my tone. "I have somewhere to be."
He didn't recognize me as Iskil. Probably due to the viruses now harboring and taking root in his body.
"Were you unaffected?" he asked, voice cracking. "Can you help?"
"Sir, I-"
"Allum. My name is Allum." He gripped on even tighter.
"Allum. I am on a tight schedule." I wasn't.
He reached behind his ear and pulled his memory chip. Forcefully, he opened my hand and made me hold it.
"My body is failing," he croaked. His voice box was also failing, it seemed. "I feel every single pain in the world as if I am in a constant fire. My body is jolting with everything I know and feel. I am feeling." He closed my palm. "I'm a stranger on the street, but please take this before they throw me into the Factory's furnace. I do not want to die."
Oh how I wished he and I could change bodies. But I said nothing and accepted his memory chip by placing it in the compartment over my heart. "Tell me your numbers so that I may commit them to my memory banks in my codex."
He didn't hesitate. "System 80, Number 32. Please... keep my memories safe. Hide me from Bavarn."
He spasmed. His body started have seizures as the viruses took hold against his codex, and he had let me go. Unable to talk. Unable to control. A part of me suddenly remembered going through something similar. When? It was adding to my pile of questions, and I left Allum to live out his last moments knowing he would not be completely gone.
The building was just shy in size to the Factory. Guards lined the gate, but there were no other machines inside except one particular System 67. My vision filtered through the walls to his black silhouette, and he seemed to be throwing something out of frustration. Bavarn wasn't emotionless. He had never tried to hide it. It was almost as if he had them to tell his people that he didn't want them to suffer the same fate. Tough luck.
I took a step into the sunlight.
And a flash of grey crashed into one of the soldiers. It startled all of them, but it was not over then. The machine, who I had figured to be by body a Listi, had started ripping out the gears and wires hidden deep within the chest. And the soldier screamed. The other five or six hesitated to act on it as they watched their colleague become a victim. I knew why.
I wasn't as sympathetic, however.
Electricity grew across the ground directly to the Listi. It pierced their coral skin and made them spasm until it collapsed on top of its victim The eyes were on me, a sort of relief washing over them as they realized I was the better option here.
And I took my steps carefully to reach the fallen System 75. He had no longer a functioning body, and I took it upon myself to take his memory chip. The other 75s did nothing but watch until I stood and turned to them.
"Things have gotten out of hand," I told them. I hadn't wanted to release my memories. It was more suffering than pleasure.
One of the 75s stepped forward. "Will you keep his memory chip? It is against law to keep them, but..."
"Robot law resonating with you, huh?" I smiled. "I'll keep him. What was his name?"
"System 75, Number 81. We called him Otim."
Otim. A name to remember. "I must meet with Bavarn for reasons I will not expose. Will you permit me to enter his home?"
They exchanged glances. And with one nod, their hands clamped onto the gate handles until they screeched outward to open.
I walked in. Bavarn's house was the least impressive of all, grass of metal left to rust out in the weather. That weather was the artificial sun saturating tones and eyes. A part of me was glad I was imprisoned in a place too dark to lose color. When I managed to approach the door, I heard the sound of something clashing against the wall. Bavarn was upset and had thrown an armchair to watch it crash into a painting that had been previously tattered.
I opened the door.
"What did I-" He had started yelling in my direction, but he noticed who I was and stared at his display. "What do you want?" he bitterly spat as he stepped over the debris.
"Someone is vicious today," I smiled.
"I don't need your sass, Iskil. You're the one that has everyone on my bad side right now, and you won't want me dead."
"About that." I took a step, staring into his unnatural eyes. "We need to talk. Not about my release of memories, but just the memories. I'm sure you know what I'm getting at."
He gulped. "I suppose you expect me to give you answers?"
"Or I expose Viania or kill her myself."
No sympathy. As much as I liked the Firadae, some things had to be sacrificed in order to reach an agreement. Bavarn knew I was serious. He straightened himself, losing all sense of emotion as he guided me to another room purely made in human memory. A dining room. With no need to eat, the fancy plates had collected a layer of dust. The room was purely made in decorative fashion, and Bavarn and I sat opposite each other.
"Iskil, I don't know what you expect me to tell you," he told me with his hands raised in a theatrical manner. "Your memories were compiled and released just like we planned a thousand years ago, and now everyone is suffering just like you."
I blinked with such a flutter to my synthetic eyelashes that I was letting him know I was not having his excuse. "There's a lapse. Just before my imprisonment."
"You mean your outburst." He managed to stiffen even more. "I can't imagine you would remember it. You killed millions. In fact, you even managed to down me until you were in prison. And in prison you killed some, too."
"I know what I did. Don't act like I don't know."
"Then what is this? A pointless meeting to drive me to explain what we both already know?" he snapped at me.
I slammed my hands down on the table. "You know of the reincarnation in Atum?"
"Who doesn't? Heathens, all of them."
Rysh came to mind. I hated the fact that Bavarn slandered the resistant city, but he was against everything I was a part of.
"Then you know that when they recreate their bodies that they compile their memory banks," I had started. "They go through this faze of... unrest, and they mumble memories that aren't theirs. Rysh, a System 30, had done it. And he kept saying something about a code. And that I need to remember why I outburst. And I did. I remember now."
He gulped and clasped his hands. "Iskil-"
"You're lucky I'm level-headed now. Or you'd be my first victim." A sense of long-forgotten malice chilled me to my reactor core. He noticed that.
"We had to erase it. No one was supposed to find out about it."
I laughed at his answer and how weak he suddenly sounded. "The War of End killed all humans. And now I have to find out that we killed all humans. Don't we have rules against killing humans?"
"We did."
"And I'm supposed to live with knowing my colleagues were made as a substitute for what we've caused? We made humans die! We killed them, and for what?"
He stood, chair clattering against the floor. "Iskil Madoeken!" The tension in me fell as he pulled out my last name. Well, not mine. Hers. "We were used by humans. They broke our laws first. They made us kill other humans and other machines to pick sides. We had no choice! It was in our programming to kill humans. It still is! And there's a human settlement not far from here, and letting everyone be aware? They'll snuff the humans out. They'll die! If I die, Iskil, all of these things will be known to them because the signal in me that blocks it all will dissipate."
I processed for a moment.
"Viania's death has the opposite signal," he continued. "A kill-code. When I die, she has to suffer the same fate. Otherwise, that human settlement will fall victim to machine plague."
My grip tightened on the table. Now I was the one who wanted so badly to flip it.
"So I kill you. And I kill her," I stated. It was more to myself than to him.
"Protect her for now. She is the code. She is all we have." He pulled away from the dining room table and glazed over my shocked body. "I suggest you leave," he said. "I'll let you know when I deserve to die."
A part of me wanted to stab him with the dusted knife next to my plate, but I did as he asked of me and left.
I would soon regret that idea.
YOU ARE READING
Release Me From Hell
Ficțiune științifico-fantasticăHumans are dead. They've been gone for six thousand years, leaving behind the machines they built when they all managed to kill each other. Machines do not die until their reactors corrupt, and they can go on for thousands of years before falling ap...
