A distant clunk. A shudder, barely felt, rising up from levels deeper than he had ever visited. These - though Comproller 604 would not recognize them as such for many shifts - were the first clues he had that his world was coming apart.
- start -
It wasn’t as though 604 could have done anything, if he had caught on sooner. Structure and Procedure was supposed to take care of that sort of thing. 604 was a Comproller - he crunched the numbers and he crunched them with absolute adequacy. Of course he had wanted to explore! To visit the other 12 Divisions, to see the vast Manufacturing levels - the countless Cogs all moving in sync, as if dancing to the music of pure efficiency. During Onboarding he had played with the idea of being assigned to Integrity Control and becoming a Technician. He always heard stories of their missions to the lowest levels - repairing the oldest Machines and decommissioning those that could no longer provide.
Alas, his servos were destined for data analysis. He didn’t have the feature set for such activities. He did his part - put in his shifts. Followed procedure. Where did that get him? Maybe if he had been a Technician things would have gone differently. Who was he kidding? being a Comproller was the only thing that stopped 604 from ending up “Assimilated”.
It was said, by those who also made it out, that the Technicians were the first to go. The clunks and shudders was them losing ground. Once Manufacturing was lost the whole place went with it.
Math wasn’t going to beat Legion. That’s what they were calling themselves - Machines and Cogs, Even some Technicians - There were whispers around the sludge pipes that it was a Technician that had started it all. When it came time for their own decommissioning ritual, they had created a virus - some sort of sickness that gets into your brain - and set it to activate as soon as the ritual was complete. Why the wouldn’t just accept the honor 604 would never know.
Those Technicians that were first infected? Re-animated their fallen partner as well as over a 1000 Machines that were previously laid to rest. 604 couldn’t imagine the horror that must have been, to those poor Cogs down at the lower levels, the ones that never had a chance of making it out. Hanging wires - dead, empty optics - shambling endlessly forward. 604 counted himself lucky that he hadn’t run into one of these “Refurbished”. He was the first of his Division to notice that something wasn’t right in the lower levels.
604 never took his downtime with the rest of his quadrant. This may have hurt his performance analysis - it almost certainly did, inter-quadrant political maneuvering was a metric Monitoring used to determine upward movement within The Factory - but there was something more valuable to 604 than upward movement: Test Engineer 702.
Describing the feelings 604 had for 702 would take terabytes of data. They had met while Onboarding - She was the one who suggested being a Technician. The very concept of wanting an assignment you weren’t meant for was ridiculous, but 702 had made it seem logical. They had tried together towards that goal, both knowing that the odds were low. It was the rebellion that mattered, not the result.
They became an inseparable pair - laid next to each other during Reboot, transferred Packets between them during lessons. They were partners in everything they did - as if they were meant to process together, Dual-cores working in tandem towards a greater solution.
All downtime was spent with 702, exploring The Factory. They spoke little, only to warn of hazards or to share what awe the gargantuan sprawling engine of stone, iron and fire had invoked within them. Though they could not do the work they wanted, they were able to experience something that only they could: freedom. Maybe it was a fault in their design - 604 didn’t mind, and 702 called it a feature, not a bug.
It was during one of these explorations that they first noticed the signs as they were. Not rumblings of a change in procedure, but as a system-wide failure that was consuming everything in its path.
They were between Divisions, walking among the buttresses and struts that held the towering structure together. It was 702 that noticed.
“Huh, that’s weird.” She had said.
“In English, please?” 604 could never understand QA jargon.
“There is a significant fault in the structural integrity of Quadrant B of Division 6, level 2,032.”
As he redirected his focus, 604 struggled to put together what his optics were receiving. The assessment of “significant fault” wasn’t inaccurate, but it would be better to say it was “falling apart”. Except, a quadrant couldn’t fall apart - what could possibly go so wrong so fast that Structure couldn’t maintain it?
They did not know this at the time, but Structure had been ordered by Monitoring to discontinue all resistance effort against the Legion the instant that Manufacturing had been lost. They had been reassigned to securing specific quadrants, as safe havens for anyone who managed to avoid assimilation.
“702, what do we do?” He remembered asking.
“We survive, 604.”
Together they watch the quadrants fall, one-by-one. 702 lead them through passages no longer used, around much of the ever-increasing chaos. There were some that were fleeing, hoping the higher levels would protect them. They were probably the last to go, terrified - waiting for a solution that never came. They were some that were fighting, but none that knew how. And why would they? There was no procedure for the end of the world.
702 got them back to her station, and quickly went to work while 604 kept a lookout. For what he did not know.
“No one is going to tell us what to do, 604.” She liked to talk while she worked.
“Luckily, I once found a bug in Monitoring’s access keys - and they all got so sick of trying to fix it they gave me root permissions. If I can remote into one of their ports, I should be able to figure out what they know.”
“Did you see those Cogs?” he asked. “They didn’t look online.”
“No. They did not.” 604 could her the whirring of her thoughts, she was thinking so loud. “I mean, its not out of the realm of possibility. There are rumors that some quadrants in the lowest levels practice re-activation in order to appease the High Quota.”
“Where do you hear this stuff, 702?”
“Its my job to know things. No one else does.”
“Fair.” It was. “Find anything yet?”
“Just got in.” he heard her start typing again, but almost then abruptly stop. “604. Its not great.”
“What is it?”
“They’ve issued a terminate order on all essential processes.” The typing continued, faster this time. “I can’t understand all of it, and it looks like they are encrypting as they go, but I’m grabbing all the data I can.”
“Why would they not try and fix this?”
“If they already knew they’d lost, and all they can do now is hide.” The ambient light around the station faded, and she was back at his side. “I’ve copied most of what I could. My best guess is this: If we can find wherever they are hiding, we will be safe.”
“Wouldn’t they just turn us away? What value do we have to them?”
“Mostly none.” She grabbed his wrist and led him quickly. “But they don’t have any value either. This whole system is coming down. I haven’t met a single one who explores like we do. Who questions things, 604.”
“No one who survives will have any idea of what to do next.” She pulled him into a maintenance tunnel. The chaos was far away, but 604 could hear it getting closer. “We’ll have answer for them.”
“You know what to do?”
702 laughed. “Not at all, but we’ll think of something.”
And so, despite his assignment. Despite the fact that he didn’t recognize the signs until it was pointed out to him. Despite the world as he knew it crumbling around him, Comproller 604 of Quadrant C, Division 12 - Level 200 found himself standing in front of this crowd of what used to be his superiors. Of the survivors, most were from Monitoring. The next group had been Structure, though many of them were lost in the effort to secure these safe havens. There were a few Technicians, and a spattering of those from other Assignments.
702 had lost her entire quadrant, but knew their had to be others from her department who survived.
Level 200 had burned. Fire hot enough to melt steel devoured his entire department, and many others with it. They had been deemed “not fit” for assimilation.
Yet here he was. With optics trained, watching every move. Trying to understand perhaps? How someone with his feature set could have survived. What the two of them had that so many didn’t.
“You said you had information.” Someone finally shouted.
That had been the deal. 702 wagered that with Communication down, no new information was available.
604 didn’t know why, but he spoke first. “Legion is looking for something.”
“Aren’t they looking for us?” Someone else chimed in.
“They have most of the Departments already. If its numbers they want - they already have them. Trust me, I’m adequate at math.”
There were nods of understanding. “So what are they looking for?”
He looked to 702. She had been working on something for hours before they reached this spot.
She waited a moment, and then smiled. “A way out.”
- end -
I like this one. :) Nice ending.
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