Alone was the second story I finished. It was completed much (much) faster than Datascape, taking about six months from the first word typed to the last word on the last (and indeed only) rewrite. And what’s more when I finished it I was almost totally happy with the way it worked.
Coming back to it now, some four years later I’m not quite so happy with it, but as ever see what you think.
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Read online part 1 below, (part 2, part 3 and afterword)
I stood alone.
The sun rose over the battle field, it was a new day. And peace had at last settled over the land. There was no one left to fight and nothing left to fight for.
Chilling banks of toxic fog blew through the forests of twisted and dead trees. The battered and broken bodies of men were scattered on the broken ground, victims of the terrible weapons developed by both sides in the final few years of the war.
Men from both sides lay together, united in a horrible death.
Some of the final weapons did not even leave bodies, piles of ashes marked the spot were some one had died. They would not have known what hit them, killed in micro seconds.
The machines and engines of this final war did not fare any better in the last battles. For all there armoured hulls and advanced defensive systems they ‘died’ in numbers as large as their soft, defenceless human crews. Their twisted and broken hulls littered the barren land.
The early morning light cast long shadows across the grey and drab scene. A poison drizzle fell on the wreaks of this the ultimate symbol of the folly of war.
Such was the scene at greeted me, eight years ago when I emerged from the command bunker, and the it had not changed much in the past eight years.
I do not know, why or how I managed to survive the effects of the final weapon, nor do I even know what sort of weapon it was, for weapon development in the final days of the war had accelerated to a frantic pace. I know others survived like me. I met a party of them a few weeks after the ‘last day’. They had been scavengers, and my approach had been greeted with violence and I was forced to continue the destruction.
But on mornings like this morning, when the skies are clear of poisons and the weak morning sun warms my tired body, I feel that some where the may be pockets of survivors that have given up the fight and that would except and welcome me.
But my brain tells my heart that this is unlikely.
And yet every so often I still try to contact some one. The hope that one day I may succeed and my work are the only thing that keep me going.
I surveyed the broken lands that surrounded the bunker, nothing grew here, the bunker was at the centre of the weapons effects.
Sentry 14 informed me that nothing had happened last night. It stood behind me dutifully watching over me, as I had programmed it to do. I took a deep breath of the cool morning air. “Today could be the day”. I announced to the three sentry robots that surrounded me, of course they did not respond, the mark 27 Sentry was not equipped for speech. But this did not deter me, the air this morning seemed heavy with the promise of better things to come. “Yes today defiantly could be the day”.
With a spring in my step I returned to the bunker for breakfast. The upper levels of the bunker I used as storage, my quarters were on level 14.
I passed many unseen guardian robots and security systems on the way down, any scavengers would not get this far in to my home. The systems would test any guest, and depending on the results they would either be guided safely to my inner sanctum or be left to stumble in to one of my many traps. There must be so few civilized humans left, I don’t want to kill any more of them. The tests were subtle as they were advanced. The reprogramming I’d done on the guards neural net works was my masterpiece. Had the world come to it’s senses before it destroyed it’s self I could have become one of the greatest designer of robot brains.
After my breakfast of fungus stew I descended to my workshop. Checking my work schedule I saw that two of the sentries needed routine services and that I had one repair to make on one of my modified scouts, my eyes and ears in the world around the bunker.
The servicing I completed quickly and with out problems and repair would have to wait though because I did not have the parts to complete it. Finding them would not take to long, in the final days, humans were so few that most of the fighting was done by robots. There broken bodies littered the land. I had collected enough parts to make nearly a hundred of the most common types of robots. I programmed the scouts on the surface with the parts that I needed and moved on to the days, and indeed my lives main work.
As I approached the curtain surrounding the bed I felt a little shiver of nervous anticipation wriggle though my body. I went to pull back the curtain and stopped, my hand shaking. I usually felt some thing when working on her, but today it seemed more than normal. I was so close now after working so long and hard, and perhaps today I would achieve my aim. Perhaps.
I pulled back the curtain and let my eyes linger on the fruits of my hard labour, for a few seconds.
She was truly beautiful, her shining chrome body was exquisitely shaped. Her legs long and athletic, tapering finely at the hips in to a flat slim stomach. And tapering out wards again to her perfectly shaped breasts. Her shoulders wide and slightly muscular. Her head was not yet attached to her body, but was linked to it by thousands of fibre-optics.
It had taken me many months of work to adapt the mark 30 sentries body to this form. Every part of her was of the finest quality I could find.
But the work I had put in to her body was as nothing compared with the work I’d done on her mind. I’d broken new ground with the work on her neural nets, ideas that had only been theories in the final days had been developed by me and incorporated in to her programming. Hardware discarded as to experimental or unreliable had been rescued, developed, refined and finally installed in to her body.
When completed she would surpass all my previous works, she would be my companion for life, it would not matter if there was no one else left in the world, she would be my world.
And I was so close now, maybe just days from completion of my work.
I allowed myself about a minute of breathless admiration before settling in to work. I powered her up and ran though a series of test and calibration moves, they would test that the movement systems had fully imprinted on to her body form. This was the excuse I made to myself, but deep down I knew that I wanted to see move again.
Her headless silver form moved with and athletic grace and beauty that brought a tear to my eye.
The results from the tests were displayed on a screen and showed that the movement systems were functioning perfectly but I knew that any way. I had built them by hand, any slight deviation and I would have noticed.
Satisfied with the results I set to work on connecting the final few pieces of her synaptic memories. When that is completed I’d only have to connect them to the neural nets of her actual mind and she would be complete. The links were the problem. The loads they would need to take would be very high, higher than has ever been needed before. I could have just used standard parts, I had plenty of them, but I could not bring myself to use any thing but the best on her. She would have worked with the normal links, but to only a small percentage of her potential. I had agonised for hours weather to try these normal links, weather it was worth it just to get her running. But I could not do it, it would be a desecration of my work, even if I just tried it once.
My mornings work completed I returned to the control centre. During the war the theatre commanders had directed the battles from this large, armoured room at the heart of the bunker, until that is the final day came. On that day it seemed that most of the worlds population were reduced from living breathing people in to a dead husk that quickly dissolved in to a sticky goo. Now I used the control centre to monitor and direct my army of robots in there search for other survivors and parts that I might use in my work.
Standard parts would automatically be collected, unrecognised parts or unusual parts were logged for later inspection by me or more likely a robot controlled directly by me. I scrolled through the list of finds. No evidence of other survivors had been found today I knew already. If any had been found I would have been alerted immediately. But a large number of standard parts had been found.
The scavengers were getting less and less in number every month as tribal wars and diseases took there toll. Soon it seemed I truly would be the only person left alive. Alone on a dead world. Suddenly a tide of grief and loneliness washed over me. It’s at times like these that the urge to finish my work prematurely was almost unbearable. I started to get up from the console.
I blinked, through my tears I saw some thing that made me stop in my tracks. I scrolled back through the images of unidentified objects found.
The image on the screen was of a humanoid shaped robot about 2 meters tall, it’s metallic body was obviously heavily armoured but it was totally unarmed and of a type I did not recognise. The scout did not recognise it either and it had been programmed with all the hardware used by both sides. Sometimes badly damaged equipment could fool the robots, which is why I checked all unidentified objects.
My heart suddenly skipped a beat. If this was some experimental prototype which I had not seen before, then it may hold the high capacity links that I needed. I jumped up from my chair and headed for the surface. This could be the breakthrough I needed. The rest of the days work could wait.
Up on the surface my transport, a modified command all terrain vehicle had already been prepared. It’s robot driver and it’s escort of four assultbots stood ready and waiting for me.
I took the wheel myself, I would take more risks and get there quicker than it would. Before I started off I ordered the scoutbots near the find to guard it, I did not want to lose it to scavengers now.
The object was a good days travel from the bunker, but I had no intentions of stopping to sleep. I was so close now. After 8 years on my own, my dream of some one to talk to, some one to share my life with, was almost in my grasp.
After the the shock of that terrible morning, when I awoke to an empty and quite bunker, I had spent days trying to find out what had happen to the outside world. Most of the sensors had been knocked out by the action of the final weapon. After four days I’d almost lost my mind. Four days trapped in the bunker, surrounded by dead lifeless figures, there blank eyes staring out at me and the slightest touch could cause them to disintegrate in to a pool of disgusting slime. Yet my fear of what might greet me if I ventured to the surface, kept me underground.
But on that forth night I’d been trying to fix the satellite uplink and for no reason that I could see it was not working. My anger and frustration built up, I shouted and shouted at it, I did not under stand why it did not work. I had got so angry I could not work on it. And so, blinded by anger I went to the chief engineers room. Mike and I were good friends, he always seemed to know the solutions to the problems I had.
I burst in to his room, to find him frozen in the position he’d been when the weapon was used.
He was of course dead.
In my anger I demanded answers to my problems. When he did not answer my question the fury within me finally burst out, and its target was MikeÕs lifeless body.
His body exploded under the rain of punches my anger threw at him. I was showered with the goo that had once been my friend Mike.
At that point I almost lost my mind, for good. I ran for the surface, in a temporary insanity I did not care weather I lived or died out there, anything would be better than the hell I was in.
But the surface was still just about habitable. When out in the open my mind calmed it’s self and I regained control of my emotions. But it was still days before I could bring myself to descend back in the bunker. In those days I realised that I would need the robots to help my survival in this world.
I had rebuilt and reprogrammed nearly one hundred robots 8 months later. They protected me from the scavengers, farmed food, carried out searches and repaired systems for me. I still searched for other survivors, but despair had set in. The only people left alive it seemed were the few scavengers I found, and all they did was try to kill me and steal my robots. I was staring at the edge of insanity again, when I discovered some secret work that was being done on the next generation of robot brains. The work if completed could offer me a companion.
I set to work on the prototype like a man possessed. It became my sole reason for living. And now I was so close.
I awoke to the insistent beeping of an alarm. It seems that despite my intention to drive all the way to the site, my body had other ideas. I was still seated in the drivers seat, to my left a modified servicebot, my driver. It was plugged in to the ATV’s control systems, so it needed no controls to operate. My programming would have sensed my slow loss of control as I drifted off and taken over. I had arrived at the site.
The damaged body of the unidentified robot lay in a ditch surrounded by my scoutbots. It’s left arm was missing and the whole left side was badly damaged. But it’s head and torso seemed to have escaped major damage, and it was here that I hoped to find my prize. I set to work immediately.
I found out several things in my work. One it had been used by the other side from my own, in the final war. Not that fact mattered to me, many of my robots had parts that I’d salvaged from the other side. Secondly it was definitely a comandbot, I could tell by the extensive communication equipment it had fitted. This was the news I’d been hoping for. It meant that it may well contain the last few parts I needed.
A light rain started to fall on me as I opened the final layer of shielding on the robots command systems. My own scoutbots hurried to cover me from the poison rain. I did not care. My hands were shaking as I inspected the circuits in the robots mind.
Yes, indeed the control systems were of a high order of complexity. Perhaps grater than even my project demanded. Indeed the whole robot seemed to be of the very highest quality. Some systems even appeared to be superior to my own designs.
Using the remote control in the ATV I directly controlled the robots moving the damaged robot. I did not want to risk any further damage to it. Now it was in my grasp I would let my driver take me and my valuable cargo back to the bunker. There was no need for haste now. Indeed I would take the greatest care with every step of this the final stage of my work.
