Taekook Oneshots

The Last Of The Real Ones (1)

the last of the real ones - taekook as some of the last humans on earth, robots taking over. androids, so it's hard to tell who's who. Sci-fi

My eyes widen in horror when I see the sparks in the stranger's eyes, a key indication that he's one of them. It's nothing simple, not anymore, not now that the world is slowly falling apart around us. It sounds like something that could never happen. We were always told that they were under control. That this would never turn out to be the future.

I guess they were wrong.

"Hey, I gotta get going," I say carefully, keeping an eye on the android in front of me. He nods, a polite smile appearing on his synthetic face, the skin practically human, even if I know it's stretched over a maze of various metals and wired connections, hooked up into a supercomputer hiding where the brain should be. "It was nice to meet you."

"You too," he says calmly, and I can't even hear the robot in that generated voice. It sounds almost normal, if I didn't know the truth, if I hadn't forced myself to learn who to trust in a split second. "Be careful. You don't know what's out there."
"Same to you," I manage, faking a smile and backing away, my heart thudding in my chest.

I take my bag from the side of the room and exit as quietly as I can, trying not to attract attention, even if I know that my heat signature has been picked up by every metal monster within a five mile radius. I can't escape them. I can't avoid them, and I can't tell who's who at first glance, no matter what I believe.

I could be wrong, and that could be the last other human on the planet. But I'm not going to risk it. I know better than to fall prey to that kind of trickery, not again. After one of them impersonated my mother, pretending to be someone safe just because they scanned her memory before turning her to dust.

I only figured it out when it slipped, and fell over, and didn't even react. My mother was sensitive to pain. Robots could only feel the sensation of the cool floor below them, not the pain of the impact. And so I picked up a kitchen knife, some spare clothes, some food that I knew would last a few days, a coat, stuffed it all into a backpack and ran.

Ever since they were introduced, various androids malfunctioned. To start with, it was only a few, and it wasn't an overwhelming problem. It was under control.

And then someone died, hacked to death by one of those robots, and things got a little serious. They started producing themselves, imitating humans that were important within society. Political leaders, doctors, everything. And suddenly they were everywhere. Protected under law, but hidden under the guise of ordinary humanity.

They were too smart for us, realising that humans would have shut down the whole production line if we knew what was truly going on. And they decided that the best way to avoid being shut down was to kill us all. Replace us all. Save the planet, destroy our efforts to leave a permanent mark on the world.

I mean, some of it does make sense. I'm not even mad at that. I just want to die at my own pace, make my own decisions, instead of becoming just another pile of dust on the mass graveyard of my entire species. I can't imagine going down like that.

But I don't want to be the only one left. I'm scared.

I find myself crawling between two buildings, as carefully as I can, when I see him. Crying, properly crying, on his knees in the alleyway, in front of a pile of dust. Probably somebody he cared about. Dead to the world.

But in front of him is another person, watching him with emotionless eyes, which are beginning to glow. And I'm no idiot. I know that glow. I nearly died to it, when the robot who tried to be my mother realised that its cover was blown. I'm about to turn away and hide myself when it hits me. This is a living person. A real human.