Dystopian world

Lookout

We stepped in through the door, and everyone else looked up at us.

  "What took you guys so long?" asked James in a tone which showed no concern. The question seemed more for the purpose of getting us two in trouble.

  "Yeah Sam. You don't usually take so long. What happened?" glared Michael. He stared directly in to my eyes, waiting for an explanation.

  "Sorry I did. It was just Nico's first day and I wanted to teach him the basics of the job" answered Sam confidently, trying his best to hide the truth. "Isn't that right Nico?" he asked, turning to me for confirmation.

  "Oh yes, yeah, that..that's right" I answered as confidently as I could, looking Michael in the eyes.

  He stared at us for a few moments, before giving a slight nod. "Okay" he said. "Let's have some dinner, and then I'll take Nico up to the roof for lookout duty. Everybody good with that?" he asked.

  We all nodded and me and Sam took our place among the other guys. I ended up seated next to James and Sam, one of who I was just fine sitting with. I couldn't say the same for the other though.

  We ate in silence, each of us getting a tin of food from James while we handed out the vials to everyone. One for each.

As I had expected, the meal was absolutely disgusting.

  Well, maybe I was exaggerating. But the tinned food was cold and sticky and slimy. It was like..like someone had eaten a very mediocre meal and then spat it back out and put it all in a tin can.

  I shivered at my remarkably disgusting comparison and just chocked it all down. The drink helped. It was tasteless but it washed down the food, and as it entered my stomach I could feel my hunger and thirst diminish.

  I caught James staring at me and he looked away instantly, pretending to eat his food. I made a mental note to keep an eye on James in case he ever tried to spy on me.

"So" began Alex suddenly, "Nico is coming with me right?"

"Not yet" replied Michael, looking up at him. "He is coming with me for lookout."

"No!" I thought, "Couldn't lookout wait till tomorrow?"

  It seemed it couldn't, and that's how I soon found myself atop the roof of the building, getting a lecture from Michael on how to do the job properly.

  Now let me just say something: I am not one for lectures. I had never been given one before this very moment, but I knew I was never going to be a fan of them: Especially those coming from Michael.

  I let my mind wander while pretending to listen to him, giving him occasional nods to show I was definitely listening to him as best as I could.

  So much had happened in the past two days that it was just amazing. I had woken up inside some strange pod in this machine dominated society, where we were the last humans surviving. I had almost gotten killed more than once, gotten a trip to the gates of heaven, met a girl who I really liked, and above all the voice in my head.

That voice

  It hadn't spoken in a while, that was weird. I was just fine with that though. I had enough to worry about without some creepy voice telling me to do stuff.

  But who did it belong to, and why was it interested in me? Perhaps I could find some answers in that diary, or one of the books me and Sam had snuck in. I desperately needed them.

"Nico, you there?" asked Michael, snapping his fingers in my face.

I snapped out of my thoughts and looked at him. "Yes?"

"You weren't listening to anything I said, were you?" he asked.

"Oh no, I was listening to everything you said" I replied sarcastically, unable to control my smile.

"Yeah, sure you were. What was I telling you about the machine's living areas?"

"Um.."

  "Exactly" laughed Michael. It's your first time though, so I'll forgive you. "I was saying that not all of these AI were designed for battle. It is true that not all of them wanted it either. So the ones who didn't desire this settled a safe distance away from the factory where all those hideous monsters were being created."

  "Wait a minute..why haven't seen any of them yet, or their houses?" I interrupted, my curiosity getting the better of me.

  Michael gave me a little look of annoyance. "Sorry" I mumbled, feeling a little embarrassed for forgetting my manners.

  "It's alright" he sighed, running his hand through his short length hair. "I'm getting there though. Let me show you something first."

He beckoned me to come to the telescope, and positioned it so that I could look in to it.

"Tell me Nico, what do you see?"

  "Nothing much..wait, I see something. Is that..a city?" I squinted a little and tried focusing my eyes as best as I could at the mysterious place. I could see the tiny outlines of buildings and houses quite some distance away. This place was to the west of us too.

  I just looked at it for a few moments, growing more and more curious of the place with every passing second. What was that place? Did the robots live there? The questions just kept coming to me.

  "Yeah, it is..well, was..a city. The machines who did not desire war settled there and built their own city from the remains of ours. And now here's the interesting part. They evolved mentally, thousands of times faster than we ever could." He paused for a moment before continuing, "They started developing emotions, starting becoming more..human."

  "Now naturally since this happened, they wanted to live away from the likes of their commander, who they saw as evil and unfit to even live. And of course as you can see, their ideologies brought them nothing but death. Now that place is abandoned and no one goes there." Michael stopped here, looking at me to see if I was getting all that.

  "Oh wow" I said in awe. This meant that some of the AI had been peaceful! It was very intriguing. What was more intriguing was their "death". Perhaps it was civil war? "How did they all die?" I asked.

  "War against their leader: the one who eradicated almost every human from existence. That's what happened. I don't know the whole story because we were all too busy staying safe inside our building to think about other things, but what I do know is their leader attacked first by bombing their city, and then the others retaliated and very quickly there was a full scale civil war. We barely survived. I wish I could say the same for the peaceful AI. James witnessed the gory ways in which they were all slaughtered." Michael shivered a little, hesitant to go on.

  "Tell me" I urged Michael, wanting to know even though I didn't want to at the same time. "What happened to them?"

  "Beheaded, mutated, carved with knives, burnt, short circuited, you name it. T..those were just a few of the tortures they went through before getting killed Nico. It was terrible" Michael said with a little bit of a scared tone to his voice.

"Oh my gosh" I whispered, terrified at the thought of such brutal torture.

  "Yeah" whispered Michael. "I think it's better if you head to Alex for patrolling. This is probably more than enough for you to digest for one day. See you later Nico."

  "Bye Michael, thank you for telling me all this" I thanked, getting up and going towards the staircase, leaving him outside on the roof.