arkircpeeps | A Short Story Involving Robots

And in the beginning, there was darkness. But a dull darkness lit by the dimmest of dead lights, slowly sweeping, and registered on his optic sensors.

After a time, the light swept again across his optics. He pushed himself up, his systems unsteady for some reason. Everything about the place felt rotting, unbalanced. Decay. Like rust.

The entire place was an eerie darkness lit in a wrong-feeling light slowly sweeping over it. And when it did, it became obvious he was standing in... on... the middle of a giant pile of metal and machinery and cracking concrete.

Where was he. K-1 Numeris-Genitor looked around, trying to ascertain his location. He kept walking until the waving, sweeping light became more and more obvious.

And from the wreck. It was obviously a wreck. Broken concrete and steel. That the source of the light was... a lighthouse. Or at least something resembling a lighthouse. He tries to ascertain where he was. Something about this recalled something in the memory of his data banks.

One piece of information after another clicked together forming a stack of information...

...

He was positive, he was in "Sargasso the D.D. Battlefield". A dead sea of entropy and anti-causality in the borderline realms that were called "The Different Dimensions". Something about it made him darkly laugh. But realizing where he was, he also realized he had time. Possibly all the time in the world. In a half un-realized world full of metal parts, even if they were rusting.

...

How much time had passed since he realized where he was? He doesn't remember. Nor did it matter, time was meaningless He floated in the 'sea', looking the name plate. It was rusted over. He used acid to peel back the rust...

The plate read "DKM Naglfar".

...

The welding was taking time. But he reminded himself, that time didn't really function normally in this quasi-dimension, except a linear progression, as far as his sensors registered. But it was coming together. The rewiring. The welding of steel plates. Repairing what he could. But the ship looked damaged, twisted, altered in ways it wasn't supposed to bend. There was a limit to what he could do, even as he cannibalized other ships for parts and drones.

The drones slowly clanking. Welding. Attaching parts. As he remembered the human's words. That the moment he lost was the moment he gave into anger. Anger. Anger of loss. He was letting his own anger control him. Instead of him controlling and directing his anger. What had the human's name been. Haita Onni. Haita Onni. He would remember the name. Haita Onni. The man who taught him a lesson. A lesson of Anger. A lesson of the potential of humans. A potential he wanted to know more. How did Haita. How did Van Der Aart do it. What separated him from them. It would be something to focus on after more immediate concerns.

...

The plush carpeting was an aesthetic he didn't need, but for some reason it appealed to him. Hrm. He'd need to get more when he had access to such materials. The main concern is would the Naglfar still fly. And whether to rename it or not. But mostly flight. But he could tell in its current state, even with all the work he'd done to repair it, the Naglfar could only do one Hyperspace Jump. So he'd have to take it somewhere either he could obtain more power for the World Chalice in his chest. Or with more materials. The Neglfar's sensors had picked up the former.

A massive well of Dark Matter Energy, nearly endless dark energy but without the dangers of the Warp, or the Entropy of Sargasso.

It appeared to be a place called Tartarus...

Good enough. Bumeris-Genitor reached his hand and pressed the buttons to confirm Hyperspace Jump.

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