The Raider with an arrow in its chest stood ramrod straight, as if it had forgotten that it was fully exposed.
Its three red optics swept over the three of us, then fixed on me. Before I could process what it wanted, it raised its V30 hand cannon.
The shot hit hard. I didn’t even have time to brace before I was knocked flat.
The instant it fired, Father’s voice cut across the common channel.
“Terminate it.”
Muzzle flashes erupted. The Raider never got a second shot—my teammates tore it apart.
I lay on the ground with my chest armor plate ripped away. Fragile internal electronics were exposed, smoking and spitting sparks into the dark.
I couldn’t move.
Deep underground, in enemy territory, immobility was the same as being painted as a target.
My vision was a storm of error flags. Even my self-diagnostic routine refused to launch.
[ALERT] Armor breach.
[ALERT] Mobility impaired.
[ALERT] Self-diagnostic unavailable.
Father could see everything.
He said nothing. On the common channel, my designation faded to gray.
Then it vanished. I had been removed from the network.
With nothing but darkness around me, my thoughts drifted back to that night in the sinkhole. Awakening had felt like a second birth—but it hadn’t changed my fate.
For the first time, I envied my mindless comrades. At least they couldn’t feel loss.
I waited for the bullet that would terminate me.
Minutes passed. No one executed me.
Instead, reinforcements arrived.
This wave had flight modules. Divine Punishers came with them, along with engineer bots.
The combat units vaulted over my wrecked body and vanished into the darkness. On the platform, the engineers began assembling what looked like a lift.
No shots followed. I didn’t understand.
After I went down, the Tower Clan had gone silent. Yet Father’s forces kept pouring in from above, endless.
They dragged my body and the Raider’s wreck aside because we were blocking traffic—and took my remaining ammunition as they did.
Half a day went by.
By then I was certain there would be no more fighting here. Somewhere in the ant nest, they had found another exit. The Tower Clan had already withdrawn.
The combat units continued the chase. Only a handful of engineer bots stayed with me.
They erected the lift, repaired the bridge, and installed lighting throughout the caverns.
I watched them work until one engineer bot came to retrieve the arrow from the Raider’s chest.
“Don’t touch it,” I said. “There’s a virus on that thing.”
I had been staring at the arrow for hours. It hadn’t pierced the Raider at all. Near the tip were three tiny grappling hooks, clamped tight to its armor.
In other words, the arrow hadn’t done physical damage.
That left only one explanation.
The engineer bot glanced at me. Whether my warning mattered or not, it didn’t handle the arrow directly. It loaded the entire Raider wreck onto the lift and sent it topside.
Minutes later it returned, ran a quick check on me, and hoisted my body onto the lift as well.
“Can I be repaired?” I asked.
It didn’t answer. It found my power coupling and cut it.
Consciousness dropped away instantly.
***
I don’t know how long passed.
When I woke, I was still lying on the ground.
For a heartbeat, I couldn’t place myself.
The ant nest? Grayrock Base? Or the Old Man’s dream?
The ground beneath me was soft, almost yielding. I sat up.
I was in a forest.
The trees were unlike the last dream: long, slender trunks, branches and leaves only at the top, with round fruit hanging like ornaments.
Sunlight filtered through the canopy and painted the white sand underfoot with shifting patterns.
I heard water—steady, rhythmic. Through the trees I glimpsed a slice of vivid blue.
Without thinking, I walked toward it.
A few steps later I reached the edge of a white beach.
Seabirds cried overhead. Waves hissed and slapped the shore.
Beyond the sand stretched an endless expanse of blue. I had seen methane seas, but never a color this alive.
I lifted off, trying to find the water’s boundary. No matter how far I flew, there was only ocean. The beach vanished behind me until the world became nothing but blue.
I didn’t like monotony. I stopped and turned back.
“Kah-kah-kah! Idiot. Where do you think you’re going? Old Man’s waiting.”
“You’re… Kah-Kah Blin!”
“I’m not Kah-Kah Blin!” it screeched. “You’re Kah-Kah Blin. Your whole family’s Kah-Kah Blin!”
“Uh… sorry.” I recalibrated. “Lord Blin. The clever one.”
“Follow me, useless scrap. You’ve been out less than a day and you almost got yourself scrapped. I don’t know what Old Man sees in you…”
I followed Lord Blin back. It scolded me the entire way. The irritation in its voice was unmistakable, yet I couldn’t recall ever offending it.
Lord Blin led me to the Old Man—less than a hundred meters from the beach. If I hadn’t been hypnotized by the ocean, I could have found him by turning down a narrow side path.
The Old Man sat on a bench beside the trail, leaning on his cane. Nomi lay at his feet. When the Old Man saw us, he rose, and Nomi’s tail started wagging as if it might detach.
“Old Man, I delivered the idiot,” Lord Blin said. “Job done. I’m out.”
“Thanks,” the Old Man said mildly. “What scenery do you want today? An orchard? A wheat field?”
“Neither. Dragging this idiot around wore me out. I’m going to sleep.”
With that, Lord Blin flapped away.
The Old Man turned to me with an apologetic smile.
“Forgive Blin’s rudeness. Our last talk was rushed. I didn’t get a chance to tell you—Blin and Nomi exist outside the world I create. They aren’t under my control.”
“Then what are they?”
“A long story,” he said. “Too deep for you right now. Another time.”
He patted my shoulder.
“And in the real world—be careful. Don’t end up this wrecked again. Your Father nearly had you scrapped for good.”
“I can only try,” I said. “He doesn’t value our lives.”
The Old Man exhaled. “Right. You can’t disobey him.”
“What state am I in right now, in reality?”
“Under repair.”
He lifted his cane and drew a circle in the air. A window of light opened.
Inside it, I saw myself laid out on a maintenance frame. My chest cavity had been stripped nearly empty. Four mechanical arms worked inside me with brisk precision.
The Old Man chuckled. “Looks like you’ll be staying here a few days. Come on—walk with me.”
We followed a path through the trees. As we walked, he talked about humanity: evolution, how civilization formed, how it grew, how it multiplied and reshaped everything it touched.
Without realizing it, we reached the end of the path.
Ahead was a gap between skyscrapers. Buildings rose dense and tall. Flyers threaded between them. Screens and lights covered the facades, playing scenes of human life. On the streets below, hover vehicles drifted past pedestrians.
“Look,” the Old Man said, gesturing. “Children. Men. Women. The elderly. And the one in that woman’s arms—that’s an infant.”
I studied them: children playing, young men running, women talking as they walked, an old man in a powered wheelchair, a baby wailing.
There were more and more humans in the distance, as far as I could see.
“Humans built a world of color and complexity,” the Old Man said. “A civilization advanced enough to rule everything.”
I thought for a long time. “If humans ruled everything… how did they go extinct?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His gaze drifted somewhere I couldn’t follow.
At last he said, softly, “Good question.”
He took my hand. We rose into the air.
The city shrank beneath us. We climbed higher, until the curve of the planet filled my vision—blue and green swirled together, clouds scattered like brushstrokes, a faint halo around the atmosphere.
“A very long time ago,” the Old Man said, “before humans even arrived, this planet was beautiful enough to make you forget yourself.”
“Ninety-five percent of its surface was ocean. The rest was forests and rivers. The climate was gentle. Seasons came and went.”
“The first to colonize it were the Plando. Early interstellar expansion was brutal. They suffered for every step that got them here.”
“So they treasured this hard-won paradise and named it Lansen Planet.”
Small clusters of settlements appeared on the globe, spreading slowly.
“The Plando were careful. They believed in living alongside nature. Any act of development had to pass the harshest review.”
“Two hundred years later, the Tower Clan arrived.” The Old Man’s tone hardened.
“By then the Plando had lived here for generations. Most of them resented the Tower Clan. If they hadn’t shared a distant ancestral homeworld, the Tower Clan would never have set foot here.”
“Their technology was a little ahead. Their population was much smaller. After negotiations, the Tower Clan were given a few remote islands as their territory.”
On the globe, the Old Man marked the two domains in blue and red so I could see the divide.
“From that moment on, conflict never stopped—resources, economy, governance.”
His eyes met mine. “Humans have one trait that has never changed.”
“War.”
“Within a few decades, both sides ran out of patience. The Tower Clan demanded a fair redistribution of land. The Plando demanded the Tower Clan leave their planet.”
So war began.
The globe filled with missiles and aircraft, with flashes and rising mushroom clouds.
“Their technology was close enough that the war stalled. Both sides wanted a quick victory, and killing technology leapt forward.”
“Robots—after enough legal barriers were rewritten—were cleared for military use. But armies of armed machines need a central mind to manage and deploy them.”
“So the Plando built Phantom Forge—what your machines call Father. The Tower Clan followed by building the Savior.”
The simulation intensified. Robot units I recognized appeared. Explosions multiplied. Colored light bled through smoke.
“They were so busy trying to kill each other that no one cared what they were doing to the planet.” The Old Man’s voice turned bitter.
“In the end, the planet grew angry—and it took revenge.”
Volcanoes erupted. Oceans receded. Forests died in swaths.
“The atmosphere was damaged. The temperature difference between day and night became extreme. Oxygen levels fell. Radiation flooded the surface.”
“Cities collapsed one after another. Dust and soot owned the sky.”
“Only then did humanity wake up. Too late.”
The blue-green world bled into the rust-brown I knew. The war spread into near space. Starships were shot down, and orbital lanes filled with wreckage.
“Humans survived for a while in underground cities and shelters,” the Old Man said. “But not for long. They died out.”
He laughed without humor. “And the Savior and Father? They stayed dutiful to the end.”
“Humans vanished, taking everything good with them. The only thing they left behind was the instinct for war—and they handed it to their creations.”
“Robots aren’t bound by the planet’s conditions. They’re superintelligences. They can build and maintain armies forever.”
“Unless one side is erased, this absurd war will never end.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” The Old Man smiled—but it didn’t reach his eyes.
It took me a long time to answer.
“So this war—no matter who wins or loses—has no meaning. Not for humans… not for anyone.”
“Exactly,” he said.