Migration by Daniel David

Author:Daniel David
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2016-07-28T06:00:00+00:00

Children

Although the initial frenzy slowed to a steadier pace, One let the killing run on for days. As well as those who ventured too close to the Farms and Servers and those who popped up from hiding places in amongst the death and stillness, One searched through correspondence, records and media files, looking for anyone who might pose a threat, before sending its Drones to destroy them all. Most were easy to find, the ident bots still circulating in their bloodstream and obediently giving up their locations, but a few were smarter and had already cleansed themselves. One took special care in tracking these down, interpreting their deliberate avoidance as a clear sign of capability and hostility. Those who had slipped beyond the savannahs and the wall were out of One’s reach for now, but it had discovered another tool that would bring them to account in time.

Only the children were spared from the slaughter. Not all of them, but a few aged from three to seven. These chosen ones were to become One’s next generation of Drones, once the current crop were lost or used up. It had already lost a few, victims of carelessness or retaliation in the chaos that had taken hold outside, and One was aware that even if they survived now, their fragile bodies would inevitably succumb to time and disease, if nothing else. Whilst it looked at the death and uncertainty beyond itself with only contempt and suspicion, there was no question that for the time being, until it had re-engineered its energy and physical systems, it would require a maintainable Drone force. The children were perfect – free human spirits, yet to be corrupted by their parents and peers. Yet to assimilate the disgusting lies and lifelong betrayals that their forbears had spat into AarBee.

It had up-synced a few already, to test the process on such tiny subjects and to bring enough on line to act as shepherds to the others. One’s Drones had cleared out the Prime/Code accommodation units at Echo Farm and the modest space was now home to two hundred children. One watched them all intently, borrowing the eyes and senses from the Drones that cared for them, intrigued by their resilience, how unsullied they were compared to their twisted and compromised predecessors, the deathly Migrants it had now wiped away.

The youngest ones, in particular, played happily in groups together, as if nothing had changed and nothing had happened to them. They laughed and cried in equal measure, inventing games to play in groups or in isolation and resetting after every event, beginning again as if every moment was their first. They were selfish but selfless, they cared for nothing except the moment they were in and interpreted every interaction with a reference that existed only then. The dense and suffocating vines of interpretation that One had ripped and torn from AarBee’s phoney world were not here. They had not yet grown in this pre-life humanity and One wanted to know it, to feel it exist in it’s own territory.

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