53 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
53 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
[[!meta title="Paul"]]
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The day was pretty long, but eventually we got onto the ship. The anti-gravity
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chambers were always a bit odd to get used to, but it certainly wasn't the
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worst part of my day. As we finally lifted off the ground sitting in the lunch
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room, our instructor briefed us on the situation.
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"Cadets. This discovery is perhaps mankind's strangest. We'll be touching down
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in about 15 minutes, so eat quickly. It's a system not far from our own which
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for decades we have somehow overlooked. In essence, it is a direct copy of our
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planetary system. It appears that some few centuries ago, a giant part of the
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population of the planet was replaced. Only approximately one tenth of the
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planet is even inhabited by life. Much of that is not carbon based lifeforms,
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but silicon based ones. It seems that artificial life forms have somehow
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replaced most of the natural inhabitants of the planet, and buried them under
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ground. They do not take well to us, either."
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The instructor's words were bewildering, to say the least. Without any time to
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dwell on the matter, the automated announcement system beeped and said, "Please
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brace for impact. This ship is landing at CX-43-01-06."
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After the turbulence stopped and we deshipped, we were met with the strangest
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sight we'd ever seen. Earth, as we knew it centuries ago in the early 2000s,
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but with no sign of life anywhere. Giant buildings still stood decrepit and
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filled with green, fields for miles where perhaps there were roads and
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highways. And to complete the sight, there were robotic life forms of dozens of
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kinds, roaming the wild, flying high above, crawling the ground. One which
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stood out to me was a towering black robot with two legs and no arms. Its body
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was sort of cylindrical, horizontally. It reminded me of an ape, although
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veritably huge and with no arms. Actually, I guess the analogy falls apart the
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more you think about it.
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Among the fields were various researchers who had set up camps, monitoring
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these life forms and surveying the landscape. We were directed to one
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particular research team, named "Paul."
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We were designated to search a particular building, the teams all were
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organized to search in a pattern across the landing city. Ours was a
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restaraunt. The moment I walked in with the others I could tell it was going to
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be a problem; the geometry of the room was particular and clearly altered to
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suit some inhabitant which had been living in it for a while. I stopped the
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team as we entered, pointing to the various traps laid about. Some of them
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didn't believe me, but with enough coaxing I was permitted to search alone.
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One of – no, perhaps the sole inhabitant – was running wildly about. It was an
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oddly shaped, sort-of flat being. Grey, sort of beige likely due to dirt. It
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flung itself through the room, avoiding every trap it had laid, almost mocking
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me. I was myself a thin and acrobatic person, so I chased it, like a game we
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were both having fun playing. Despite the clearly deadly traps, I had a lot of
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fun running after this thing, and eventually I caught it. The robotic being was
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not hostile by nature, and from that I had guessed that perhaps none of them
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were.
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