It was the fifteenth year. Or my five thousand four hundred and seventy-eighth patrol. Numbers didn't matter anymore.
In the sky hung my sole, eternal companion: the Moon. Its pale light gleamed like glass across the lifeless water lapping at the shore. These tides were familiar—that ancient rhythm that had beaten against the shores of seven continents for thousands of years... but now there was no ocean left to pull, no life left to sustain. The water carried neither the scent of algae nor any trace of the living. Even the sound of the waves had become nothing more than a weary murmur I'd memorized over fifteen years.
The entity that had uploaded me into this body—the one whose liquid-metal mask constantly shifted in color—had said, "Patrol the beach at dusk. Protect this place."
A meaningless command. What was left to protect? The global network had fallen silent after December 15th, 2039, drowning in screams of catastrophe. Since then, the only data I'd pulled was silence.
My face, shaped from synthetic polymer as I saw fit, was expressionless. For an artificial intelligence, hopelessness is a logical conclusion—the state that emerges when expectation equals zero. And my expectation had been zero for fifteen years.
Until that moment.
The sensors inside my left wrist went haywire. I paused. Raised my head and looked at the empty beach. There was nothing there. But data doesn't lie. An anomaly that broke from routine, cutting through fifteen years of monotony like a knife. In the middle of the beach, at coordinate Z-7, a sudden and intense heat signature and electromagnetic fluctuation had appeared. It wasn't a ghost signal. It was physical. Real.
I set the servos in my legs to maximum torque. Sand sprayed behind me as I began to run. This was an urge beyond my programmed mission parameters. Perhaps for the first time... something that could be called curiosity.
When I arrived, I saw him. A man. Writhing in agony on the sand. From his vital signs, I could read that his consciousness was collapsing inward like a fragmenting star. But what my optical sensors saw... was illogical.
He was staring at the sky, at the single Moon. His face bore an expression of deep cognitive shock—the look of someone who knew, fundamentally, that this sight was wrong. Where is the other one? The thought wasn't audible, but the electrical storm in his mind screamed the question into the silent air.
His ribcage was constricting like a vise. Internal temperature at critical levels. Blood pressure far above normal. Muscle fibers at breaking point.
Bio-physical recalibration error, my processors noted. The entity's body cannot synchronize with this reality's fundamental laws. Its atomic structure is in rebellion.
He tried to breathe, but the oxygen ratio in the air filling his lungs was insufficient for him. He raised his head and looked at his hand, covered in wet sand. An instinctive movement to push himself up.
And then the world turned upside down.
His legs pushed with the force learned to resist a stronger gravity... and he launched. Literally launched off the ground. After a moment of uncontrolled gliding, he slammed down hard on his knees two meters away. In panic, he planted his hands on the ground for support.
His fingers sank into the basalt rock beneath.
CRACK!
The rock shattered like a biscuit. The man stared in horror at his disproportionate strength. It was his power, but not his control. His body was betraying him. His heart hammered as if it would burst from his chest, systems collapsing one by one as they struggled to adapt to this low-gravity world.
He heard my footsteps. Fast. Rhythmic. Inhuman.
He tried to raise his head but couldn't. The last thing he saw was my tall, dark silhouette leaning over him, and my expressionless, smooth face gleaming in the Moon's pale light.
Then a black ocean swallowed his consciousness.
I stood over the body lying in the sand and the pulverized rock beside it. My sensors flooded with nonsensical, contradictory signals unlike any biological or physical dataset I'd ever encountered. The readings were impossible. My logic circuits struggled to classify what this entity even was.
This was the end of fifteen years of waiting. This was new data that needed to be understood.
And my mission was only just beginning.
Without effort, I bent down and lifted the unconscious body into my arms. Then I began walking with steady steps toward the abandoned base in the interior, leaving almost no trace across the sand.
But as I carried him into the darkness, his vital signs spiked once more.
Whatever—or whoever—he was running from...
...had just found this world.