<span style="font-style: italic">”10 September, Entry 674<br/><br/>We reached our destination late last night. Took me a whole hour to place the feelings of nostalgia and uncanny familiarity; I've been here before as a boy. Horrifyingly, I clearly remember it being open skied, one of the last untouched places, but it loomed in on the horizon a whole three hundred foot taller than I recall and structurally alien. <br/><br/>Upon closer inspection they've demolished the tips of the old buildings and set about constructing a whole other settlement on a top plate and one underneath too. The underbelly, the original City is ruined, the top, too, devastated by the blast radius. As for the underground hive… we could not breach it, the crystal has no doubt been pawned by a fool, but I suspect it to be relatively intact...<br/>But that's not what's worrying me. <br/>It's been approximately twenty years... Can they really build something that complex that quickly?<br/><br/>A brief history.<br/><br/>Our forefathers labelled this territory ‘For Smoother Legs’, we know because it was on a sign outside of town. Local swine have no respect for history. They insist on calling it ‘Tempest’.<br/><br/>As a child I had always hoped, <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">in the makings of a promising historian,</span> I'd find time to study it in scientific depth, but, in accordance to my father’s wishes, surface exposure was limited and restricted to certain hours of the day and almost exclusively with a lookout present. Were it not for him I could prescribe the historic landmark numbers and percentages. I could map the once City. Instead I can only offer a visual account of my once home.<br/><br/>I am well read, but scarcely literate, so I apologize in advance for any lacking description on my part. I know that by the time you read this I will be long gone and unable to answer questions. To save you frustration I'll attempt to be as thorough as possible.<br/><br/>By the side of the only road, a part buried dual carriage-way, in and out of Town there is a square of metal erected that says it all. Curling on one side, like book corners and slightly dented like every other waning article of the old age, it's divided down the middle with a clumped scattering of rust patterns, like watery porridge oats, on roughly one side (suspected attraction to an adhesive leak. Would love to know which chemical used... would place bets on polyester resin based), dust swirls the other, segregated by a lightening bolt of torn, sepia paper.<br/>Its image is difficult to decipher, but what I can make out I've drawn below. <br/><br/><br/>Side note: Smoother legs is supposedly a dockside tourist destination. There's a lot of broken glass, massive concrete half tubes of skeleton ship metal, immense tin stations and nature claimed empty hangers, crumbling brick banks. Occasionally the neon lights and mist-o-grams on the dried out waterfront will drink up dregs of diehard energy from the power lines and twitch to life for half a second like a dead thing.<br/>---hear movement.<br/>Will report later.<br/><br/>Shit. Everything seemed quiet and empty! <br/>Our scout returned with news of rogue Droids.<br/><br/>If I was to hazard a guess, I'd assume there’s a broken specimen down there, still investing a few of their perverted off-breds in a bout of late stage construction. <br/>Understand this if nothing else.<br/>YOU CANNOT TRUST DROIDS. No matter how human their outwardly form, no matter how they laugh or cry, no matter if there’s a sparkle in their eye; they have no individual mind. They only exist as something of bottom of the barrel scraping intelligence and creative problem solving, something that they can stick down pokey holes and ventilation shafts to hand-rig wiring and patch up electronics.<br/>They have no physical capabilities or weaponry otherwise, but they'll warn their bigger, nastier brothers in a heartbeat. <br/><br/>They're working on powering their monstropolis.<br/><br/>No time to circle, Smoother Legs is too large and we have too few resources. Looks like we'll have to keep our heads down.“ </span><br/><br/>The hand journal of Atticus-Rose Arley, dropped, about 3 feet from Jon’s current position, 2 weeks ago.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Let me set the scene for you.<br/>It was approximately three AM, but Orchestra didn’t work in approximation so it was exactly 02:56. Roads<span style="font-style: italic">were</span>down there, in a manner of speaking; long, curved white things whose appearance comfortably belonged in a game simulation and whose shapes and maps belonged in a pack of dried noodles. The temperature gauge hasn’t broken, Orchestra simply lacks the software to read it, so the dew has frozen over and the internal pipework of the city gurgles and rattles as it sprays sheets of rain like a fine mist.<br/>Everything glistens in the lime light (literally green) of cat’s eyes and emergency bulb and under the reek of burned plastic and construction there’s a sickly sweet tang of rot.<br/>Meanwhile lithe, dark bodied creatures combed the streets for cracks in the surface.<br/><br/>Got it?<br/><br/>Good.<br/><br/>The concept was simple; move out and repair.<br/><br/>They'd jog barefooted along the streamlined alien architecture, little black toes leaping out a mile in contrast from the cool, gleaming surfaces, leaving tiny condensate imprints in their wake, quickly forgotten under Nature’s Quick-n-Spray (a brand name for renewable artificial rain. I’ll bet you’ve heard their jingle!).<br/><br/>Once upon a time these busy figures existed only as the butts of jokes. Alien abduction and experimentation claims usually ended with a few cruel jibes about anal probing and a whole drawer of a psychiatrist’s cabinet all to yourself; sixty years down the line from the first few genuine and awkwardly terrified reports, came<span style="font-style: italic">this</span>. These experimental kindred of the abductees could scarcely be called human any more, all shell with the essence sucked clean out.<br/>Pop.<br/>Like a crab skin on the beach, vacant looking, but convincing enough you half wanted to poke them with the tip of your least favourite toe to see if anything happened.<br/><br/>They plainly shared the same maker.<br/>The bodies of both city and creature were full of tiny aqua markings. Dots, dashes and vectors. A whole language radiating, pressing up from beneath the stretch of skin or length of road. If you looked closely enough and studied hard enough you'd find they closely resembled instruction manuals.<br/>Or, it has been said by a few lost bandits, a colouring in app for blood.<br/><br/>Kids, hold on to your hats, these are no alien abductees! These were the undisclosed offspring the original lot, harvested like a mad prom queen with a needle and condom access and grown by an A.I. with either rampancy or a strong sense of affirmative action!<br/>Dun, dun, duuun.<br/>About a million and one journalist creamed their knickers at once. BIG, ol’ public outroar. Some of the old timers still remember it if asked. The A.I. was questioned for scientific purposes and answered that this was the eventual outcome, the happiest outcome,<span style="font-style: italic">the only logical outcome</span>; the wording was different, but the connotation was the same, slaves that were happy and programmed to be slaves.<br/>Further investigation unearthed similar models of this A.I. around the galaxy had been doing the same and were IMMEDIATELY decommissioned.<br/><br/>All but one.<br/><br/><br/>Chord was passed wordlessly. The thick, mummified snake of material roped around her fingers, up and over the dirty slicks of her palms, already cold with ache and aching with cold, and tightly constricted its fat belly in parts, pushing flesh about knuckle, with each new layer a new wound.<br/>Even the bandits knew to wrap their hands first.<br/>Y.150’s nerves protested fruitlessly, it had been a long day already and an even longer night. They had been going for two days straight now.<br/>Exhaustion had come in on sticks, now it kicked like a horse.<br/><br/>Somewhere along their trail one might falter, pause, fish green, tank sized eyes widening and seizing a patch of the road and sinking tiny spines of methodical consideration into the throat of its workmanship.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">10... 10... 22.... </span><br/><br/>Its brothers and sisters (distinction was almost impossible, if only for the tight, underfed mound of breast on some of them) would stop on cue whether a meter or a mile away. Just stop. Plain stop. Dead stop. Like they'd never needed to move, statues that drew breath, polyvinyl dreadlocks twitching in the breeze. No words were needed or crazy hand signals, but then flocks of birds didn't need to be told when to turn either.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">… 26... 28 joint sect.</span><br/><br/>Its brow would furrow with no wisp of hair to soften the expression. These half droids didn't contain keratin, it even said so on the packaging somewhere in green, sorry fellah's, no beehives of bouffants, no mullets or mohawks, no comb-overs or cornrows.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Half crescent bolts.<br/>3.2018 diameter. <br/>Matte Panel before a power junction.</span><br/><br/>Out came design sheets in its point and click hardwired brain.<br/>It'd stoop like a sheet and brush it's fingertips against the floor, invisible twiney hairs picking up and channelling an invisible angry current.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Palpitating voltage. <br/>Chance of critical failure. <br/>Outside factors: distance from water, wind channels, availability to public vector... <br/>6.6638093 recurring. </span><br/>Perfect mathematics in the time it'd take most to crack a fart.<br/><br/>It's siblings would circle back to unscrew panels to marry stray tails of wires between their fingers or polish out the gunk from the grooves and the grease from the grates with a wad of sleeve, whatever it was their urban ward required. One might even hesitantly put the rag to its lips, testing for PH balance or anything else betrayed in the mechanical flavour.<br/><br/>This was Orchestra's mobile hardware, a group of twelve platforms, each with freshly updated data packets, nutrient rich tissues, shared wireless stream capabilities and gleaming suits. They were newly flushed from the tube, skin still dull with a purple newborn mask, unsunned, veins embossed against the whites of their wincing eyes, the waxy flooring material slapping blisters into the palms of their virgin feet.<br/>SOME of the bodies protested spiking the blood with a hormonal cocktail the flavour of mild desperation, but orchestra knew it only as a strange agitation, an unsourced twinge, an unaccounted for trigger with a vague point of supply. Orchestra<span style="font-style: italic">knew</span>their limits, it had pushed their limits and tried their limits enough, with fleshy test dummies, to know that bodies exaggerated and a certain amount of time. The A.I. had to be dedicated to wearing them in and breaking that habit. Like stiff shoes. It was all right there in the data package.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Suddenly something caught their collective attention.<br/><br/>Noise.<br/><br/>The band paused mid-fixture on the empty highway.<br/><br/>A horrible silence replaced the comforting whirr of numbers in their heads, ears strained, headlamp eyes searched the dark behind the science-fiction green glow of maintenance lighting. Pulses dropped dead in their veins (to minimize influence to their ears). Jumpsuits stopped rustling.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Old ruins creaking? No. Cross reference ruled it out. Different ranges. Too.. limited... <br/>Crash?<br/>Affirmative; metals and plastics scraping, but what of the later noise?<br/><br/>Could it be.... Speech?</span><br/><br/>Yes, speech was a possibility. Despite the area being cleared for miles and currently in a beta phase of construction (habitation was strongly discouraged. With weapons.) it wasn't outright impossible some life had slipped through and were skirting the pre-revolutional floorboards, the city beneath the city, the old human capital.<br/><br/>Something stirred in them, something new and gnawing. We call it curiosity.<br/><br/>An old energy passage had been re-opened somewhere above, Orchestra could sense it, but the data to locate it or assess its usage no longer existed…<br/>A piece of hardware was chosen to scout it out, Y.150. The area in question was outside of their wireless range and the likelihood of losing the component was high, it was best to choose one that didn’t have much battery life left already.<br/><br/>As she jogged she could already feel a toll being paid just beneath the surface. Like pebbles of dirt crumbling down loose guttering, each breath rattled in her throat. His lungs wheezed with heat, a pressure cooker boiling over. Whereas the vacuum pit of her belly had been sucking itself almost inside out, anxiously aware of how she'd been running on empty all day, something chilly, passive and vengeful had now settled there in its place.... Tendons shrunk and muscles groaned, aching impacts echoed in hollow, empty bones and raw gasoline roared through her road map veins, the adrenaline was getting old now, the engines were flooded and spluttering...<br/><br/><br/><br/>None were trained in descriptive manner. Orchestra's need for the arts was minimal at best, bordering on all out non-existent. As a divided branch of carefully calculated evolution, a cryptic, thorough-bred poem of genetics, meticulously organized for hammer and ratchet handiwork and computer friendly creative thinking, they never needed to discuss the world.<br/>No communication was required for them to come to a conclusion, the platforms saw with many angles, felt with much flesh, thought with numerous instinct and silently devised their output in mid air, like a magician pulling tricks.<br/>They observed distantly.<br/>Thinking only in terms of X and Y, affecting factors, variants and outcomes.<br/><br/>But, if they could weave words and forge purple prose they sure as hell would have found muse material as they shimmied down through the gratings and inched down ledges into the city.<br/><br/><br/>The sickly sweet tang of rotting garbage launched an assault on her nostrils. These old cities were abandoned mid-meal, everything as it was, the human occupants clamouring to beat the thousands at the toll of a controlled captain American-esque voice. gargling radio static and promising them a safe evacuation, some of the recordings were still logged in Orchestras hub. The smell was evidence of old decadence, like the breath of an overfed wino given a few hours to lay and let their belly brew with drunken incompetence, a bygone era of greed.<br/><br/>As she followed the path, junk scattered noisily away from her feet like startled rabbits.<br/><br/>Y.150 lacked enhanced audio pick-up but for all intents and purposes, the travel software observed. It had already a few voices within range but little more than an angry hum above her. Where it met the ears of the platform a white noise began to form. A white noise that could only be described as mood....<br/>Its fingers clenched and Orchestra chalked this down as distance from the router...<br/><br/>In other words; she was bricking it.