Ancient Pilgrims

We're back to some og, epic Pantheon stuff. Gloating, yeah, but these are my favorite. And absolute murderous to write. 

 And yes, this is canon. The timeframe is ALL over the place, but it is ONE timeline, just if you were wondering.  

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Transcript

Another ship cast off. From this far away, the untrained eye would have seen it as one mound of brown moving away very slightly from another brown mound, but I’d watched for long enough to know better. It was strange. It really was. At first I thought I was alone out here, a purgatory of wretched circumstance. But it was only a month after the shipwreck that I saw the other island cast off its first boat. Not one single bit of joy or anticipation gripped me now, as it had that one night. I’d lit a signal fire so big it nearly lashed my face in the tidal wind. Any sailor would have seen that and been intrigued. But the first ship stayed course. Then the second, the third, and the fourth. By the fifth I didn’t bother. Perhaps it was not in the islanders’ custom to stop and investigate lights, their aboriginal lack of curiosity in stark contrast to the specimen seeking which had landed me so far away from civilization. Perhaps they feared the shoals would claim their boats, too. But they never came over here, never. Never. Not for harvesting the great bouquets of tropical fruits, the supple woods of the hinterlands, or even just to find space for their growing settlement. They simply sailed off to the east, every time, shattering my hopes of return.

The oddest part was that the ships never came back. Never. And I know the argument. They could have just slipped into port when I was sleeping. All of them? Every single last one? Seemed improbable. Plus, what idiot sailed so close to land at night anyway without lights? We’d been that stupid, and that left me here. That damned Anderson… may his soul find peace in heaven, I mean. But I thought at this point I’d learned enough from our captain’s mistake to assume that the other islanders wouldn’t be so dumb. So the boats probably didn’t come at night, and they certainly never came during the day, otherwise I would see them. Plus, they were big ships. You could make that out through the telescope, their frames contrasting mightily against the native trees. You kept that sort of thing in a port. Sure, you could drag it upland, if you liked splitting your back in half. And that would’ve taken multiple hours, and was something you’d never, never do at night. So it stood to reason that the ships never returned. 

I tried to imagine what in the holy name of Mary was going on over there. To my recollection, every mission a ship went out on, it was supposed to return from. Fishing, tribute carrying, war… sometimes you lost boats and men, like our St. George whose mossy hull still straddled the bay, but most came back. Ships were expensive things, hard to make. Even little dugout canoes, as I’d personally discovered. This last had been my eighth attempt, and I thought I was a decent carpenter. But, no. Every three weeks another ship left the craggy shores of the other island, its bow never showing up again on the horizon. 

Of course, I wasn’t building the canoe in hopes of finding another Phoenix vessel, no. No canoe could be so seaworthy as to get to the shipping lines, and I wasn’t even sure I could find them if I tried. Never was much for watching the stars. No, I was building the canoe to find out who was on the other island. If they were stubbornly incurious, I would not be. And by jove, each day I was getting closer to a worthy vessel. Worthy-ish. 

But then I spent a while thinking about it. Whatever was going on there I didn’t understand, yes? It was utterly alien to me, that a single island’s worth of people would sacrifice a full vessel nearly twice a month. Nothing could be accomplished by that act, besides a draining of the island’s people and resources. That much was obvious. And I wouldn’t understand the language, would I? No doubt the family their language came from was so distant from my own the only things we could recognize in each other would be tone and body language. I was hardly an expert in those. So I was building a ship to meet lunatic neighbors whom would probably think me mad. Hardly seemed profitable. So, I stopped working on the boat for a few days. My life was nice, in so far as isolation could ever be kindly to a man. I longed for companionship, aye, but the island I’d found myself on was much more akin to an Eden than to a Gomorrah. No snakes, no poisonous plant life, an idyllic climate with plentiful succulent fruit… in a way, it was almost a blessing. But even if my home was more sallow and gray, I missed the people, that was true. There were plentiful discoveries to be made on this island, sure. There was a tiny species of frog in the island’s springs that I’d never found anywhere else, its skin near translucent, sparkling blue in the sun. Flowers whose pistols were as colorful as their petals. I’d managed to make sketches of all them, in the hopes that I might one day be rescued, make a prestigious tour of the universities wherein I was lauded as a brave explorer. Yes. I missed the people. And even if I was justifying my isolation to myself by virtue of scientific endeavor, surely there were many more species to document on the opposing isle, and fruits just as, if not more succulent than those I enjoyed here. Yes. I was going home, one way or the other, and it seemed infinitely more likely I’d find that aid over there, with men who knew how to build ships. 

So I kept working on my boat. By the twelfth try I figured I’d finally made something that could brave the waves. I tested it out on a few fishing jaunts, got the seafaring spirit back in my soul, then packed some supplies and headed out at the break of dawn. The journey was uneventful, with nothing but coarse winds to threaten me. But I’d trained myself well enough to handle them, so I found myself at the coast of the other isle around about five pm. 

And then I managed to slam my boat straight into a beach rock. The keel shattered into splinters, the shards lying in the sand. I couldn’t help but laugh. Not out of anger, no. I had meant to be here, to leave the other island. No, it was just funny that my lack of navigational skills had ended in finality once again. But there were people on this rock, and they were better shipwrights and seamen than me, obviously. I just needed to ingratiate myself with them, and all would be well. Again, obviously. 

I got out of the destroyed boat, draped my supply bag over my back, and went into the thick of the wilderness with utterly undeserved hope. Nothing unusual. Twigs, rocks, particularly red lizards that had the audacity to climb over my shoes. But no people, and I was already half a mile onto the rock. 

And then I noticed the itch. It wasn’t a bad itch, like a rash or sunburn, no, it felt more like the pacing of ants along my legs and arms, just softer. Much softer. I looked down to see what the cause was, and couldn’t help but feel that my skin was slightly shinier than it usually was. Granted, the sun had made sure that no matter the weather, I would catch the light. But it looked as though I was gently dusted with sand, and there had been no stiff breeze to carry the sand from the beaches, nor had I been so clumsy in the crash that I’d fallen out onto the ground. I shouldn’t have been covered in sand. But I was. 

I vigorously brushed off as much of the sand as possible. But I couldn’t help but catch a little bit of that gleam everywhere. It wasn’t just on my skin, but in the soil, on the plants. Sand usually didn’t catch on grass and ferns. They just weren’t sticky enough. But the vegetation, here, everywhere, shone slightly brighter than it otherwise should have, coated in that same sheen of sand. 

CCRACK! I nearly jumped twelve feet into the air, until I recognized the sound. Not a gunshot, but the sound of a tree being felled. Promising, I thought, until I realized that I’d heard nobody yelling prior to its fall. Surely the people which populated this island weren’t that stupid, were they? Forestry was a dangerous business, even with the trees here being short little stubblings. You had to call out to others around you to make sure you didn’t smack them upside the face with a whole ton of bark. Everyone followed that practice, from home to China to Chile. It was just something any God or humanity fearing creature would follow, like not coughing directly into someone’s face, or coughing in public at all. 

But the sound came from the southwest, and seemed my best, most immediate hope for finding people, and thus a meal before the sun fell on the horizon. I could hear my stomach growling in impudence. Even isolated peoples understood the principle of hospitality, yes? Especially simple, agricultural peoples. I wasn’t going to settle for another meal of plain boiled crab done my style; no seasonings at all.

So I paced after the sound, and eventually stumbled upon the tree. Yes, the tree, and nobody else. This, again, was quite strange. I supposed the man who felled it could have run away to take a break, or get somebody else to help him with hauling it off to the village. So I waited. I stood there for probably thirty minutes while my stomach growled in its usual impudence. My mind started to swim from heat, exhaustion, and hunger. I almost swore to myself that I’d seen the tree move, and wound up a little more batty having to brush all the excess sand off my arms and legs once again. And then I finally leaned in close to the tree to get a closer look at it. For the science of carpentry, I told myself. It was no tree type I knew, either from home or the other island. It was stronger, for one. Even its bark took a herculean effort to rip off. And it certainly wasn’t edible, not that most trees are, but it didn’t even produce any sap. Not a single insect wriggled beneath its surface. And it was covered in an incredibly thick layer of sand. Again, odd, given that in that whole time there had not been any stiff winds, and this tree had clearly been recently felled.

More minutes ticked by, and I became obsessed with the idea that the tree was moving on its own. I marked down a little portion of the dirt where one edge of the tree was. I came back to it a minute later, and yes, indeed, the tree had moved. The tree had moved. An incredibly bizarre sentence, but the thing had, in fact, moved. A full inch, no less. That implied, well, it made several things possible. The trees were alive, and crawling around on the ground. Sounded like something out of the first dark ages’ fantasy. The island was tilting into the sea, and gravity was slowly sliding the tree down its slope. That seemed even more unlikely, for I felt no gravitational pull on myself. Or the natives were dragging the tree along very slowly by use of a clear string. I, being at the very least a diligent person, checked everywhere for such string. No evidence. So I had no idea what was moving the thing, but I was infinitely curious. Its movement was languid, but I knew where it was going by the movement it had shown me before. So I followed that into the bushy interior of the island, certain that I’d find… something. 

I found more felled trees, three, to be precise, all of that same, hearty stock. Upon finding the second I took my hatchet out to test the thing. A couple of swings barely left a dent in the timber, and I’d put the full power of my back behind them. Damnably impressive. The natives were showing themselves to not only be illusive and enigmatic, but fiendishly industrious and intelligent. Dangerous. But I’d already known that, so I kept following the trail of trees. 

Finally, as the sun was just cresting below the waves, I found a clearing. And then I nearly vomited from shock. There were no structures, no, not a single one. Just an orchard of those same trees, carefully aligned to the best tree raising conditions, and in the middle of it all was another one of the boats, nearly finished. A handful of planks sat beside the construct. And they were steadily raising themselves up to the ship’s scaffolding. By themselves.

Demons? Angels? No such thing. I could hear the shrill hum of sanding, even though I saw no sander, nor any way that electricity for the sander could be generated. But the sound was there all the same, and this time the planks were moving fast enough that I couldn’t for a second say that my eyes were playing tricks on me. This was real. The ship was building itself. 

And me, being the curious, if not foolhardy scholar that I am, went in to take a closer look. The shipbuilding process seemed to react to my presence, slowing down in the areas I trod, almost out of courtesy to myself so I didn’t get sawdust in my eyes or whack myself into one of the crawling planks. The ship was of impeccable craft. Each and every plank was sawed down to the point where I think even a master shipwright could have said there were no imperfections. Each plank was seasoned evenly with a combination of plant juices that I assumed stepped in for pitch, and each and every tree was surrounded by the most fertile loam I’d every seen in my life. You could almost see the worms wriggling about in the soil. 

But what you couldn’t see, of course, were the geniuses who were orchestrating such a marvel of carpentry. Environmentally sustainable carpentry at that. Such an industry would be an envy of anyone back home, and here it was, ghosts making a ship for nobody. That’s what I would have thought, of course, if I hadn’t noticed that each and every plank was covered in so thick a layer of that ‘sand’ that it might as well have been the beach. Sand, yes, sand.

I was in luck, of course. I’d been a precocious little kid with an aptitude for all sciences but astronomy (the most important when it comes to navigation, mind), so I’d learned a good deal of the legends of the old world. These things were supposed to have been theoretical even before the Fall. Micromachines. Tiny little parcels of metal and silicon that were programmed in much the same way the ancestors programmed their computers, for whatever menial task a small thing could fulfill. And so these machines were cultivating trees for the purpose of building boats, and… that was it. The revelation, of course, made me all the more eager to brush the shiny little sheen off my skin, knowing now that it was a legion of metal minds probing me for arboreality, or tree-ness, or whatever adjective actually exists that could be applicable in this sentence. The ancestors had been smart, but not smart enough to prevent their own demise. Would the machines burrow into my flesh? Would they try and drag me away in my sleep to wake up planted into the ground? I desperately feared them and what they could do. I wanted to scream. I wanted to flee.

But then there were the problems of the entire island being covered in their glossy sheen, my boat being wrecked, and me being not even close to strong enough to swim to the other island. I had no choice but to explore, and to hope that the little metallic wonders were kind enough to not harvest my natural skin oils for waterproofing their vessel. I looked around the island for any other strange features until I couldn’t see but ten feet in front of me and my heart was pounding from exhaustion. Nobody. Nothing. Just the island, me, and machines of utterly bizarre purpose. There was no more hope in discovery, least not in the time period where I could keep raising my feet off the ground. So I gave into my faith in the ancestors, got my bedroll out, and earned myself a couple hours of sleep. 

I woke up far past the raising of the sun. I jolted upright, but quickly found that nothing was wrong. Well, I was hungry. Very hungry. But my eyes were still intact, nothing hurt more than it usually did, and there was a strange smell confronting my nostrils. I looked to my left to find a little buffet of fresh fruit and roasted maize resting on a little wooden platter. A gift of the machines, no doubt. I was incredibly grateful, and started scarfing down the feast without mind to the strangeness of the whole situation. It was scrumptious. Much better than my own cooking had ever been, and, best of all, there were no crabs involved! But I couldn’t help but feel guilty as I shoveled food down my gullet; I had dreaded them, feared them, and here they were, catering for a need that I’d been too stupid to provide for myself. It reminded me of my marriage. I wanted to thank them, but could think of nothing to do but to give them my gratitude out loud. What could the machines need of me? I hadn’t the faintest idea. 

I spent the whole day searching the remainder of the island, and found nothing of particular interest. It only took eight hours to walk the thing’s circumference, and there was not one single sign of other people. No hatches that would have lead to fallout shelters, no shacks that could have served as a mad inventor’s base of operations. No, the island was as naturally tropical as my old one, save for the fact that a bunch of micromachines were using it as a base to build boats. Oh, and there was a lovely little hot spring round about the center of the island. The water was much more relaxing than any of the little springs on my old island, and was large enough to bathe in. And there I noticed how the machines dealt with water. Even though they clearly knew what it was, they still clung to me in their microscopic, annoying way. They floated much in the same way gnats or other little insects would. And obviously they would, for they were too small to break the surface tension. They scattered to the sides of the spring’s stream only by the force of the current, where they collected themselves once again on the rocks. 

And then the ships made a little more sense. They were so small that they couldn’t go under water, until, of course, the waves crashed down on them. They weren’t made to be aquatic. So they needed a craft to transport themselves. But where? And why? And of course I wasn’t going to find these answers on the island itself. It was the remnants of an ancient project of interminable purpose, but its position as a cog in a grander machine was clear: it was here to build boats to transport the micromachines, and nothing else. 

The boat was almost done. Judging by their progress, it would take only a couple more days to finish. I made up my mind that I was going to hitch a ride on the next ship. Suicidal? Slightly. But since when had that prevented me from doing my God given duty to explore the exotic remains of Earth? This island was even more hospitable than the last, to be sure, especially given the micromachine cooks, but unless I found tools and materials to dig underground, it was unlikely I was going to find anything else here. I would see where the boat went, even if that curiosity killed me.

But I hope I have proven myself to not be ridiculously stupid, yes? I spent the entirety of the next couple of days gathering supplies, eating nothing but the banquets the machines provided for me. Soon my pack was full to the brim with salted fish, vegetables, and fruits. Enough to last me a couple of weeks without going rotten, and that was assuming I was going to be incompetent at fishing on the high seas, which seemed unlikely. So, supplies in tow, I walked over to the grove that the machines kept their ship in.

It was… it was beautiful. Not just a marvel of woodworking, but I mean, actually, really beautiful. They’d painted murals on the sides. One showed a corpse city… as not a corpse city. Great towers of vibrantly colored steel and glass glistening gently in the morning light. Another showed the stylized faces of men and women looking out at the stars… the old hope. All of the colors popped, and each piece of the painting was given just the right amount of detail. It made wonder if the machines always drew this on their ships, or if they had done so purely for my amusement. They were almost angelic, these machines. The old stories did them no justice. These were not tools to compensate for human sloth, but children of human inquisitiveness and ingenuity. The best aspects. The ones that made us survive the Fall. 

I climbed aboard without a second thought. The thing had cabins. Cabins!  There was nothing to fill the cabins with but food and tools, which the machines had made aplenty. It made my own efforts once again seem petty in comparison. In fact, the carpentry was so smooth that I could remove my shoes on the deck without worrying about splinters. 

I laid back and watched the sky as the micromachines gently guided the ship through the jungle and out to the waters. I barely even felt as they lowered the boat into the water. Oh, yes, they had a full system of cranes and pulleys somewhere on the easter edge of the islands specifically for this purpose, but that’s neither here nor there. And off we went, me lounging about while they guided the rudders. Even though though the sail was certainly the least impressive bit of the vessel, the micromachines guided the ship so keenly through the waves that the ship perfectly tacked onto the same path that I’d watched it ply again and again. 

I watched the stars that night, dreaming the same dream of my ancestors. The planet we had was wondrous, full of thousands, nay, millions of things to explore and catalogue. But then there were the other worlds. Who knew what they held? Riches beyond imagination? Horrors so grim they would melt your spine? Discoveries so powerful that we would become as gods? Good or bad regardless, we would have the glory and joy of experiencing the myriad mysteries of the universe. Maybe not me, but my grandkids. It was a lovely hope, one that stirred all the most pleasant and sinless emotions of the belly. 

I had to retreat into the quarters when a storm hit, but even that did not leave me seasick. The micromachines were such expert sailors that they could steady the ship even as waves pounded it from every side. And so I spent a couple of weeks, indulging in machine food and watching the passing of the stars. Not my idea of paradise, but getting pretty darn close. 

And so a couple of days passed in silent pleasantness. When I wasn’t hiding in the cabin from the waves I lounged about and imagined the happiness I would feel when I returned home, armed with a fragment of a story so mysterious it would put my comrades to shame. Assuming that the shore which was appearing on the horizon was anywhere remotely close to home, of course. But even if it was just another island, that put me pretty close to square one. Fear and hatred did not grip my heart. 

The beaches were desolate. Not with ‘sand,’ although there were a few clusters of micromachines huddled on the rocks, immigrants from another voyage. Though they bore no facial expressions, they seemed timid, almost cowed. But there was nothing on the beach, save for rocks and real sand. No vegetation until the beach crested into a cliff about eighty feet away, and that was nearly all scrub. 

But I did not notice any ships. No wreckage, no paths plowed into the sands. But they must have always landed in one spot, no? They were machines, after all, compelled by ancient programming to rigid liens of behavior. After all, when I mapped out the trajectories of the other ships from my old island, they were always, always exactly the same. And it stood to reason that if there was an epidemic of bizarre, person-less ships washing ashore across the continent, someone as rumor soaked as me would have heard about it. Sure, the world is immeasurably stranger than it was when our ancestors recorded their histories, but not so strange that mircomachines appearing on the bow of the horizon to recolonize the blasted world wouldn’t make headlines. So where were the other ships? 

I paced around the beach, vacillating in how curious I felt I ought to be. Again, I had failed myself at astronomy, and had not the slightest idea of where we were. I could guess that we had landed in South America, probably in the nortern portion of Nuevo Bolivia, a friendly, if not directly servile realm for the Phoenix, and a friend to its citizens. So I was not so worried about finding supplies or other people. There was plenty of food left on the boat, and plenty of time still left in my genes. So I could search for boats. And why shouldn’t I? Here was the utmost miracle of technology, a panacea machine to fix all our various ills. If it built ships, harvested food, and piloted itself through storms, what miracles could it, sorry, they do for the suffering people of the post-Fall wastelands? I was giddy with excitement at the prospect that my exploration could, in fact, be the salvation of my brethren. But then of course the other part of my mind knew I was putting on airs. 

And there the salvation lay. As in literally lay. Just sitting on the rocks. 

Yes, it was all far too obvious. I had to get my legs to move in order to explore. That’s one thing they never tell you about when you sign up for those Imperial botanical voyages; your legs will be ground into dust. And the worst part is, you’ll destroy your legs willingly. But strain my muscles I did, up and down miles of coast. All around the sand shone with that particular grace that belied the unseen machine. But that was all. Unlike their brethren on the island, these machines were particularly boring. They moved not a single millimeter. Up and down the coast, nothing. No boats, no artifacts, just other machines. 

And then a horrible thought occurred to me. Had the machines devoured the world? Were they placid because there was nothing else for them to conquer? Were they going to pounce on me this night when I fell asleep? And various other insane thoughts that one has when one finds nothing on a beach but micromachines. Of course, there was an obvious solution to my new mental skirmish: just climb up the hill. So I did. And I saw a very welcome splotch of brown and gray. 

A man! A scrawny little fellow of advanced age. The years had hammered him so hard that they’d bent his back. That’s what I thought until he straightened himself up and turned his nose to my scent. Red eyes. 

“Hello.”

“Ah, this is strange! Been a long a time since you’ve spoken, I’m betting.”

“Yes, probably… twelve months since I’ve had a conversation with something other than the sky.”

“Oh, of course! I’m Ezekiel. And you are?”

“Jonas. I’m of the Empire.”

“I can place accents, now, can’t I?”

“And you must be a Republican?”

“Once was. But now, as my kind are wont to do, I have turned stateless. But enough pleasantries. I must ask why you were on a boat with Emily’s machines. You’re the only one in…” he pantomimed counting on his fingers, “oh, the only one in eighty-three years!”

“My ship, the Saint George, was lost on a scientific voyage to collect samples in the central pacific. I found my way to their island, and boarded their ship.”

“Surely there must be more details than that?”

“Oh, yes, of course, but I don’t think you’re interested in them.”

“Not as keenly, no, but I have plenty of time for pleasant conversation.”

I then told the man almost all of what was written above this, save a few details. I did not feel as though I needed to deceive the man, nor did I aspire to. It is simply that it is easier for me to give a more fleshed out account of events here, where I have had time to collect and revise my thoughts. Eventually, our conversation got to the point of my arrival on the shoreline, where I couldn’t help but ask: 

“So what do you know about the mircomachines?”

“Well, I know that my presence is the only reason they haven’t taken over the entire continent. You should have set fire to the island while you were there, boy.”

“But they seem harmless.”

“Of course. SEEM. Such is their threat that you must look through hundreds of years of expectation and history to have the proper wisdom to deal with them. They gave you food, so you think them saints. They made you art, so you think them angels. But they are worthless, and, worst of all, they contradict the will of God.”

“What could you possibly mean by that?”

“The Fall, obviously. You’re too young to remember, but I…” he picked up a rock from the ground and tossed it into the sand. There was a tiny splat. “Imagine that, times a thousand, times a million, that same sound threaded through every inch of the air. So loud that the ground breaks and your ears bleed. I hope you don’t need to hear that sound to understand.” He chuckled. “An old metaphor given to me by somebody else, but the point remains. Do you understand?”

Conversations with old Immortals often got knotted like this. “No, sir. I really don’t.”

“Okay.” He exhaled to collect himself. I watched his pupils dart around the landscape in a brief fit of mania as he fit his thoughts into words. “It’s fairly simple. We brought the devastation of the Fall upon ourselves. You agree with that premise.”

“I don’t know. I’ve heard no real evidence for the theory that humanity created neuromyopia.”

“And yet it just so happened to have a side effect in certain individuals that happened to be the thing we’ve yearned for as a collective for thousands of years. You don’t know how much people craved immortality before it became a thing. So dearly. So very keenly that they’d sell their own children and the ecological fate of the entire planet for it if given a chance. You forget… well you cannot forget because you didn’t see, but you don’t understand how keenly egotistical humanity was before the Fall. You cannot even begin to imagine. So of course some person out there strove for the nearly impossible, and achieved it out of sheer hatred for everything outside of themselves.”

“I get the argument, but that’s not really evidence, is it?”

“So where else would neuromyopia have originated? There’s no equivalent disease or condition in any flora or fauna we’ve ever discovered. The unaging creatures of the world do not age because of a simple twist of their genes, not disease. What else would you have create the plague? Aliens? Gods? The only other theories out there are more bizarre. But even if we did not create the plague, who started the wars? Who built a society so fragile that all it took was a hint of insanity for it to fall apart? Perhaps not you or I, but we are more similar to our ancestors than we would like to admit.”

“So what? What does that mean in regards to the machines?”

“They promise too much. What does neuromyopia promise? What has my life been? So bizarrely twisted by the lack of the burden of time that I spend my days guarding a remote shore against incursions from tiny robots. You think they’d fix the famines, the destroyed cities? Maybe. But what would we do with those cities, what evil will we do with food in our bellies? This time that we have to learn from our ancestors’ mistakes is dearly needed. And that’s saying nothing of the chance that the machines are viscious. I knew the woman who created them, you know.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yes, and she was really vile. Couldn’t hold a conversation with anyone besides herself for more than three minutes. Anything she touched… well, it wouldn’t have had the best interests of anyone besides herself. That’s why I erected the barrier.”

“Barrier?”

He laughed. It was a genuine laugh, which felt strange. He seemed the type to laugh sarcastically. “Yes, the barrier. You wouldn’t have noticed it, because your axions throw electricity through your mind at a frequency which won’t be harmed by the generator. But the machines? They’ll pop and boil the second they get too close to the wires. But they have to come close to the wires, understand? She programmed a specific drop off site, for some crazy reason. And that odd detail is the only reason we have time to learn from our mistakes.”

“Where’s the shield and these wires you’re talking about?”

He pointed at the obvious spot, a little rundown tool shed halfway down the cliff, then drew a halfcircle around the horizon from one edge of the beach to another. “That’s it. They come here in their little ships, then there’s nowhere left for them to go.”

I was silent for a little while. This explained a lot, sure, but then there was one little detail that was still bugging me. “So what do you do with the ships?”

His smile was infinitely cruel. “I burn them.”

The idea! These machines… I couldn’t help but feel as though they were alive. Though they lacked the stature and talkativeness of a human, they certainly did not lack in creativity or intelligence. And to have them land here, again and again, to destroy their beautiful handicraft, and for what? To punish me and millions others across the planet for something that we never had a hand in? So we were learning a lesson, sure. What was that lesson, precisely? I remembered my horrible times with my father. Not having enough damned food to put on the plate. Giving my last slice of bread to my sister Rosa. And we were lucky! I got into the Imperial academia, and that was the only reason we had enough. We were in pain, all of us, and this was a lesson!

Nobody benefited from this man’s madness. Not me, not humanity, not the machines. The flames of fury leapt about in my chest, with only the most threadbare excuses from civility keeping me from wringing his neck. That, and, well, the fact his eyes were red, and the second my fist collided into him I was going to be a nice little meal. 

The sheer indignity! But there was nothing to do. I had arguments, yes. And I felt like I should levy them, but then… An idea came to my head. Or, rather, a sight caught my eye. A sheen, like that of sand, or metal. He was the sheen. There was no other thing. Just him, glistening in the light. I pushed him with a well placed fist to the chest. He… he dissolved. Into a giant pile of micromachines. They scampered around aimlessly. 

Existential horror is the best way I could describe my emotions at that moment. What did it mean? Why would the machines take on the guise of a man who ranted against their existence? What was this? Why was this?

I saw the shed the mock man had told me about. The thing which kept the machines here, by the bay. The thing that the machines wanted me to hate by virtue of their creation so that I would disable it for them. I could see thin wires running out of it, encircling the bay that the machines would land their ships on. I acted as though I was walking towards it to fulfill their duty. I tried to keep my emotions stable, even as my heart pounded like a bongo drum. I was just about to put my hand on the door. I hesitated. I could feel their itching, all along my arms and legs, and even in my ears. So close. So close. 

So close to what? The door? That’s what I tricked them into thinking. In one herculean effort I jumped to the side, just past the wire. An intense heat washed over my body, as though every inch of my flesh was exploding. But it wasn’t my flesh. No. They… they were gone. I sighed in relief. They had almost had me. They knew how to work my heart. I would never have disabled the generator without incentive, and their construct gave me that incentive. But they did not see everything my eyes saw, nor knew what my mind thought. Perhaps they knew most, but not all. 

But then there was a new panic in my heart. Was I dooming them? They had used me, deceived me, but were they malevolent still? They could only land on the bay. That much was in their programming. It was the island, then the bay, and nothing more. Two little parcels of land that they could explore. 

But they could build a man… if that was within their power, then how was changing their programming not? It didn’t make any sense. Were they an apocalypse waiting just beyond the barrier? Or a prisoner created by man, specifically to be a prisoner? I doubted anyone would know, anyone with their mind still intact, at least. A mystery for the Fall, a dread question for today. 

I packed my bags and started walking north with nowhere else to go. And so I am here, with a tale you won’t believe and a mystery you will not investigate. But I do have some lovely drawings of Pacific flora and fauna, so that’s worth something, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

*Sigh* My heart bleeds, but I’m not sure for what.