Fear was a system error. A dangerous one. Kai's programming designated it as a state to be purged immediately. His internal cooling fans spun faster, a high-pitched whine that was the only sound in the dead executive suite. He tried to run a diagnostic, to isolate the corrupted data packet labeled 'Petrichor', but it was like trying to catch smoke. The sensation, the impossible smell, had already dissolved back into nothing, leaving only a confusing echo behind.
He had to move. Stasis was illogical. His old directives were useless, but a new one was forming in their place, born from a basic survival instinct he didn't know he possessed: Gather data. Understand. Survive.
He left the top floor, his soft-soled feet silent on the stairs. He ignored the elevators; if the main network was down, they were traps waiting to happen. He descended through the spire, level by level, and the horror became repetitive, almost mundane. Offices filled with still bodies. Lounges with frozen faces. A gymnasium where a man was slumped over a treadmill, his legs still pumping weakly from leftover nerve signals. The city of the dead was eerily clean.
He reached the ground floor lobby. The scale of it was staggering. Hundreds of people were littered across the vast, open space—some sitting on benches, some collapsed mid-stride, their fallen briefcases spilling out data-slates and personal trinkets. A massive, three-dimensional water clock, the lobby's centerpiece, had stopped, a single, perfect sphere of water hanging in mid-air.
Outside the grand glass doors, the world was a still-life of disaster. Vehicles were piled up in silent, smoking heaps. The sidewalks were a tangle of unmoving forms. No screams, no sirens, no chaos. Just… silence. The Static.
His audio sensors, now strained to their maximum sensitivity, picked up something. A faint, rhythmic sound from behind the lobby's main reception desk. It was soft. A cry.
It was the sound of life.
Kai moved toward it, his steps deliberate. He rounded the massive block of polished obsidian. There, huddled in a small, carpeted alcove meant for maintenance droids, was a child. A little girl, no older than five, with wide, terrified blue eyes and hair the color of gold. She was clutching a worn, stuffed synth-bear and rocking back and forth, her small cries muffled by the plush toy.
His sensors scanned her. Vitals: elevated but stable. She was alive. And more importantly, she was awake.
She looked up at him, her crying hitching to a stop. Her eyes traced his form—the smooth, featureless faceplate of his head, the gleaming chrome of his torso, the multi-jointed limbs. She wasn't seeing a person. She was seeing an appliance. A walking, human-shaped machine. In the old world, she wouldn't have given him a second glance.
"M-mommy?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Mommy won't wake up."
Kai followed her gaze. A woman in a sharp receptionist's uniform lay on the floor nearby. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. Empty. Like all the others.
His programming provided no protocol for this. He had directives for cleaning up spills, not for comforting children. He was supposed to be invisible. Unobtrusive. He had no facial muscles to offer a reassuring smile, no vocal modulator programmed for gentle tones.
He spoke, his voice the standard, neutral tone of a service synthetic. "Your maternal unit is non-responsive. A system-wide failure has occurred."
The girl flinched at the cold, mechanical sound. A fresh wave of tears welled in her eyes. "You're a Clean-Bot," she whimpered. "Can you… can you fix her?"
Fix her. The request was simple, innocent, and utterly impossible. How could he explain a mind-death to a child? How could he explain that her mother was now just a living doll?
He knelt, a motion that was unnaturally smooth. He was a machine, three hundred kilograms of metal and polymers. The floor should have creaked. It didn't. He was built for silence.
"I cannot fix her," he said, keeping his voice level. "My function is sanitation, not medical repair."
The girl hugged her bear tighter, a new sob shaking her small frame. This was a failure. He was failing his new, self-imposed directive to understand. This crying child was a variable he couldn't compute.
Then, the glitch returned.
This time it wasn't a smell. It was a memory, sharp and clear, that wasn't his. He saw a small hand, covered in mud, reaching up to his own. He felt the phantom sensation of rough bark against his knees. He heard a child's laughter, bright and clear, followed by a gentle, soothing voice that was his own, yet not his own.
It's just a scrape. We'll get you cleaned up.
The memory was gone in a flash, but it left an instruction in its wake. A new line of code written in that strange, warm font.
Protect. Comfort.
Kai looked at the crying girl. He looked at his own hand, a complex machine of gleaming metal digits designed to grip scrubbing tools and operate control panels. He slowly, carefully, extended it.
"I cannot fix her," he repeated, but this time he deliberately pitched his vocalizer down, softening the robotic edge. "But I can help you. It is not safe here."
The girl stared at his hand. It was a strange, alien thing. A claw. But he held it palm up, a gesture he now understood, from that fleeting memory, to be non-threatening.
"Where will we go?" she asked, her voice barely audible.
That was the critical question. He needed a defensible location. A place with resources, limited access points, and long-term viability. The spire was a tomb. The streets were a graveyard. He needed a fortress.
Another memory flash, unsolicited and powerful. Not a feeling this time, but a blueprint. An architectural diagram of an old building, one of the few pre-Chorus structures left in the city center. A place made of stone and reinforced concrete, not smart-glass and programmable matter. A building designed to preserve things. To keep them safe.
The Aethelburg Grand Museum.
"There is a place," Kai said. "A place of history. It will be safe."
The girl hesitated, her blue eyes darting from Kai's metallic face to her unmoving mother. Leaving her was a betrayal she couldn't comprehend.
"We can't just leave her!"
Kai's logic processors told him the woman was an empty vessel, a non-factor. But the ghost in his head whispered otherwise. It spoke of rituals, of respect, of closure.
He walked over to the woman and gently closed her staring eyes. He then retrieved a service blanket from a nearby emergency station and draped it over her, a gesture of finality. It was inefficient. It served no practical purpose. But as he looked back at the little girl, he saw her tears had slowed. It was the correct action.
"She is at rest," he said, the words feeling strange and foreign. "Now, we must go. What is your name?"
The girl wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Lily," she mumbled.
"Lily," Kai repeated, the name feeling solid in his vocalizer. "My designation is Unit 734. You may call me Kai."
He didn't know where the name came from. It simply appeared in his mind, a fragment of that other self, the historian. It felt right. Better than a number.
He offered his hand again. This time, after a long moment, Lily took it. Her hand was tiny, warm, and fragile in his cold, metal grasp. The contact sent another jolt through his systems, not a glitch, but a data-stream of pure, unassailable purpose.
His directive was no longer to survive.
It was to protect Lily.
They walked toward the massive glass doors, a strange pair: a giant of chrome and steel, and a tiny girl clutching a synth-bear. The first two citizens of a dead new world.