Metanoia

13

The air reeked of fumes, metals, a bad kind of toxic for a simple human. Hugo and Kismet landed by the almost completely burnt down house sometime at dusk.

"We're late."

Hugo was visibly and audibly disappointed. Part of him knew that tracking down his suprisingly capable daughter wasn't going to be easy, but he still hoped it wouldn't take much. He was absolutely aching to see her again.

"Hugo." Kismet calls out to the cyborg preoccupied in his thoughts. "There is a subtle trail of footprints in the ground. I suggest we wait till sunrise until start moving again, it'll be easier to see the tracks."

"Hm. Okay." He answers in a small voice.

For a while Hugo was still bothered by his priorities and broken relationship with his daughter, But the thoughts didn't last. He soon found himself inspecting the plants like they were sent from some alien planet.

"Green, fresh, they don't emit some foul decaying odor. I'm astonished there is a place so untouched."

"Yes. It is much different from the other places I've seen." The war angel mentions as she walks over to his side. "Is this what the world was like long ago?"

She had to admit, as much as she had a dislike towards humanity, simply due to being created for the purpose of bringing them to extinction- the more she spent time travelling and pondering what the structures may have looked way back then made her rather mellow.

"I haven't existed early enough to see it in it's golden age. But I believe it looked even more stunning way back then."

"I'm very limited to imagination. The thought of seeing something better than what I can see now is very hard to comprehend."

"It is for all of us, Kismet." Hugo murmurs.

"I feel like machines and humans aren't all that different."

"Perhaps. Aren't you sounding a little self aware?"

Kismet bends down, her hand slowly reaching out to touch the grass which glinted like a little star. Sounding self aware? She didn't know how to answer that. So she didn't. It wasn't a command anyway.

"I'm going to sleep, wake me up as soon as the sun is up." The cyborg continued, Kismet nodded as a form of acknowledgement.

While Hugo went into one of the empty houses, unaffected by the slowly spreading fire to get a peaceful sleep, Kismet went around the tiny, dainty village exploring the many different structures and trying to understand their symbolic nature. What could they have meant in the past?

It made her question if it was really worth having to be the one to destroy the last of humanity.

They aren't much now, simply chained and living like they're already dead. But in the past they created relationships, meaning, and value into everything.

Is it really their destiny to go extinct? Wouldn't this planet become very obsolete without them?

"I shouldn't ponder on it too much, let alone be having these thoughts at all. Besides, as of now Hugo only instructed me to destroy the other android and... Dispose the other two humans."

A part of her felt that she wasn't ready to lay a finger on the humans. But it's her job, there is no choice or option.

"And perhaps it's better I end their suffering now than later."

The reflecting android shuts her eyes for a few moments, then reopening them taking a deep breath and feeling more resolute.