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I CARRY MASAAKI IN my arms down the stairwell one hundred levels. As we exit to the lobby of the building and out onto the street of the colonial city, we are greeted by the fetid chaos of rancid death and the pale, disturbing rigidity of stale flesh.
There are thousands of piled up sapiens corpses and androids, drones and other mechanical servitors. Auto-cabs, hov-cars, and other transport methods are also on the floor, cruelly torn apart by explosions and ripped gut-open by incoming heavy fire. I can see the large footprints of Torragami, and the obvious consequences of their powerful destruction. This was a massacre.
Masaaki cries silently and holds a hand to her face to cover her nose from the rot. The smell is so pungent that it can pierce your covered nose. There is no point in trying to avoid the smell. We just deal with it.
It is the equivalent of noon, with the local star potently shinning with bright yellow-white light. I walk to the corpse of an android and notice how it was cruelly disemboweled, noticing it’s organic and synthetic guts, cables and chips, scattered around it, with a pool of dark red blood surrounding it. Its brain is also exposed. A power-round, likely a DrillCore, must have pierced it in the belly.
However, there is something different about this android. I notice it’s dressed in black light armor that has a standard refractory surface to refract powerful energy beams. There’s an emblem at the center of the chest, though obviously torn and misshaped by the destruction.
“What is that?” I ask. My voice seems to interrupt the mourning and silent death as my voice is carried by the polyconcrete street and echoes in the surrounding buildings.
“An android...”
“I know that much. I mean at the center of its chest. That emblem. I have not seen it before.”
“It’s the Doomsayers’ symbol. It’s called the Golden Tree of Retribution, or simply Tree of Retribution,” she explains as she kneels by the android and closes its eyes, which had been staring into infinity.
“You haven’t mentioned it before,” I say. “It looks important.”
“It is. It was not time to mention it. Your virgin mind to things like the Doomsayers emblem and symbol would’ve been too much too soon,” she jabs at me. Her attitude sometimes makes me want to...I digress.
“Rest now...be in peace...” she says and weeps.
“What does the symbol stand for?”
“That’s what you want to know? Look at all this death. Just...please have a moment of tact and feel for the fallen. Have you no mercy?” she asks, as if I’ve committed a great offense.
“It’s an android,” I say, confused.
She recoils. She nods in disbelief. “Androids have a soul too!”
“Impossible. It’s like AI’s. Purely artificial. No offense, Hai.”
“None taken.”
“You animal! Of course they have souls!”
I want to talk more about the Doomsayers’ symbol, the Tree of Retribution, but find it impossible when she stands and leaves me behind. She’s furious.
Seeing a Doomsayer symbol on a fallen victim brings many possibilities to mind. What were the Doomsayers doing here? Why are they suddenly surfacing when they’ve been a cryptic organization all this time? This is the first time in my life I’ve seen a Doomsayer in the streets! Is this why my brethren attacked and purged this city or planet? Has the Necro Day begun? This worries me.
I fear Ahmurai never came to our galaxy to fulfill the Homo sapiens purge protocol and fear that the worst has happened. Without Ahmurai’s help, the Doomsayer’s are doomed. And so am I.
If not here, then where is he? Did Ahmurai stay in Canis Major? And if so, why? I follow Masaaki and keep on walking.
As I see more and more destruction, I notice the opposite reaction brewing in me than in Masaaki. She feels torn.
I feel the sudden urge to fight and brawl, to cause and wreak havoc. I am slowly being seduced by so much death and have a strong urge to join the massacre, to cause destruction. I shake it away, and yet the urge is so strong Masaaki notices the change in my energy and mood.
“I can see it in your face,” she says as we continue walking amongst the dead. We’ve no idea where we’re going yet. We haven’t defined that. I guess exploring is the first option here. I should be fearing encountering opposition, but part of me knows this place is abandoned. There’s nothing but death and rot left here.
“You’re all animals. This is exactly why the ÆTAS needs to be destroyed, especially the Celestial Core.”
“Ferfasser is part of the Celestial Core,” I say.
“He’s the only good one. The rest can be cleansed.”
“All members of the Core are rats, Masaaki. Just remember that.”
“That tower, you see it?” says Hai interrupting our bickering. “Notice the antennae. It must be a communications tower. You should try entering and seeking a comms device or perhaps even information on what happened here.”
“Is the electromagnetic field coming from there?” I say, still wanting to continue my argument against Masaaki’s belief that a Core member can be good.
“It is not, I’m afraid. As we’ve moved toward the center of the city, I’ve been noticing the signal has been getting weaker. Meaning we are moving away from it.”
“We should find the source then,” I say.
“True. But first enter the tower. You may find useful items within.”
As we enter, the gore is also obvious. The Devastar must have relished causing all this havoc. We do our best to ignore the bodies. But sometimes we must step between the fallen.
I remember Omnistar Magna saying at our last meeting that while Tauro and I conquered Canis Mayor, our brethren would be hunting down the Doomsayers. But he never said anything about purging the innocent.
There are still many holo advertisements announcing the new food combination or the new desirable dish, or a new drug combo to enter the richness of bliss. Sex, pleasure, drugs. Everything and anything, at any moment in any quantity.
This is how the ÆTAS controlled the masses. The simple way to keep its citizens under control and blind them to the horrors that we, the soldiers, partake in during every mission. Give them sugar in a number of sweets combined with synth-butter and sour rice flour, and all the drugs they could manage, and they are yours. The devolution of man. Maybe the ÆTAS got sick of pampering its galactic citizens and decided to dispose of them.
But that argument makes no sense to me. Not with Doomsayers among the fallen. Something must have happened.
“...Endless pleasure...endless everything. The most successful social-control scheme has been making humans so self-absorbed in themselves that they are willing to trade anything in exchange for a fucking like,” says Masaaki. Faint light shines off her bald head. It’s strange not to see her with hair.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean the social media, the sharing of your profile, the obsessive necessity to share everything you do, this...this ambition to post your face doing some simple task so you can be noticed by your peers and liked...this is how ÆTAS subdued their galactic citizens, what we the Doomsayers want to destroy. The lure is so powerful that men and women gladly immerse themselves in the social arena in exchange for bliss. And it’s this bliss that allows the ÆTAS to purge countless civilizations, to spread blood without the public caring.” She sighs.
“Nice epiphany. But it’s not true. Sapiens do know about our missions and killings. It’s more like the coliseum back in the Roman days. People like to see the gore as long as it’s not their pelt being skinned.”
“It’s not the gore they like, not in particular. It’s the celebration of anything, of the hero, of the melancholic warrior,” she says staring at me, mocking me.
“I’ve been MIA for almost eight months.”
“Likely for as long as these killings have been going on. Maybe that’s what’s happened. Upon your death, there was no more delusion, no more reason to keep the public blind. And they revolted.”
“Don’t blame this on me.”
She shrugs and keeps on leering at the holo-ads.
Once we get to the console room, there is nothing to be seen. Everything has been laid to waste by either termite or plasma grenades.
“This was useless. There is nothing useful left. The ÆTAS wanted this planet left for dead. Total annihilation,” I say.
“Horrible...disgusting...” says Masaaki with a sigh.
“And yet, there is a powerful EM field around us. Powerful enough to block all communications,” I say.
“What does that imply?”
“In the very least that there is still something or someone trying to block all entering or outgoing communications. Or disabling simple aircrafts or hov-cars. We should find its source,” I say.
“I agree. Finding the source and disabling it will allow me to assess if it’s possible to synchronize myself with my nearest server. And of course request for evac.”
“Why would there be a server anywhere near?”
“Because we could be closer to a Doomsayer stronghold than we think. Or very far indeed. Remains to be seen. If there is no nearby server, I could always activate an emergency beacon pulsed by your DAT. It would be at light speed so help could be days...months...or years from us.”
“Keep your hopes up. We need to get off this planet and figure out what’s going on. Let’s find that EM generator.”