Chapter 1:
The Youth from the Black Sea
IN THE BEGINNING, the Creator pinned the compass of creation’s fulcrum on humans and sent the other point out into the vast, chaotic, and unknown universe.
With the passage of time, civilizations rose to the peak of their grandeur before disappearing without a sound. Those who knew of the possibilities yet to come foretold the limitless future by reading the space between the stars, but their prophecies did not come to pass as expected, and those blueprints that existed within their collective imagination turned out to be nothing more than fantasy.
This was a terrible era. At the nucleus of the galaxy, only three landmasses were still inhabited by people. Mankind had undergone three different eras of explosive growth followed by sudden nuclear war, which had shrunk the population to less than five hundred million. The resources of the nucleus were completely exhausted, and huge pipelines ran through the core of the earth, harnessing the raw energy produced there. The surface was barren, and the Country of Machines occupied the greatest amount of land—the region known in ancient times as the Third Mainland.
The Central Computer was created to become the world’s new ruling machine, replacing governments, parliamentary bodies, and all other systems of law. On the day it awakened, robots conquered the world. The humans living there were either exterminated, forced to flee, or subjugated.
In the aftermath, steel life-forms colonized the surface. Sulfur pollution from constant years of industrial production filled the sky, blanketing the City of Steel with yellow clouds, and though the surface was covered with forests of skyscrapers, they housed nothing more than icy steel factories.
Humanity instead lived deep under the surface. They became slaves to the metallic life-forms, and their daily lives were simple and regimented: They took shifts to sleep, and when the time came, they would get up and start working, as if they were animals kept in cages.
Our main character, A-Ka, lived in the city’s underbelly. He was one of the human residents of the area known as the Ant Nest.
A-Ka was sixteen and held the role of maintenance technician in a production line. His daily tasks consisted of receiving various mechanical life-forms, helping them adjust and change their parts, and testing out the new techniques and parts that Central Technical sent him. Many odd robots passed into his care with all sorts of requests—logical or not.
“Replace my infrared vision scope. Desired model number: RM47,” one android commanded.
“Sorry, the warehouse has run out of those,” A-Ka answered. “You’ll have to wait until next month.”
“Replace my infrared vision scope. Desired model number: RM47,” the android repeated.
“There aren’t any more. The warehouse is empty.”
“Rule Three of the Human Control Regulations,” the android announced in its dead, robotic voice. “Humans are not allowed to reject any requests from intelligent life-forms, or they will be exterminated immediately.”
A-Ka tried to think of a different way to phrase the issue. This rule was the exact reason the last maintenance technician had had his head blown off! A-Ka stared down at his client’s laser opening, which was already starting to heat up. He only had ten seconds left to live.
“Counting down,” the android warned. “Ten, nine—”
“Please wait a moment!”
Opening a drawer, A-Ka quickly pulled out a lens that had already been polished to perfection. He swapped the android’s scope out with the “new” one, though it was actually a trash piece he’d taken off another robot earlier.
“The model doesn’t match. The infrared lens will malfunction.”
“That’s an issue with the workmanship. It just needs some troubleshooting. Please return to the queue once more. Oh, and please rate my service before you go.”
The android began to capture A-Ka’s body profile. A-Ka watched it with trepidation; he knew that he would get a complaint for this, but that was still better than losing his head.
Eventually, the android left, and A-Ka let out a sigh of relief.
“Help me change out my power source.”
Another being lay down at A-Ka’s workstation. In his mind, A-Ka thanked the heavens. This one was a clone.
The residents of the City of Steel were split into three strata: at the top were the steel life-forms, in the middle were the clones, and at the bottom were A-Ka and the other original humans. Clones were quite different from the chilly, mechanical androids, and they were the beings closest to humans.
“Do you require a battery or a nuclear core?” A-Ka asked.
“Battery,” the clone answered, before shooting a glance at the android that had just left. “I thought you might be shot point-blank by the laser and sliced to ribbons. It would have been a pain if you had. My pathfinding system has been glitching quite a bit, and if I don’t get it replaced here, I won’t know how to get back.”
With that, the clone turned around, and A-Ka opened a small box built into his back. “Oh, your GPS has been affected by moisture.”
After turning on a light, A-Ka replaced the faulty part with a spare. The clone simply sat there without making a sound, and A-Ka couldn’t help staring at his side profile. All the clones were male and had identical features, so humans could only differentiate them by their outfits or their serial numbers. This issue had confounded A-Ka for a long while.
Compared to the steel life-forms like androids, A-Ka was more willing to provide services to the clones, if only because they could also feel emotions like joy, rage, grief, and contentment. Unlike the robots, they would occasionally be affected by their hormones as well. By contrast, if a human carried out the wrong command in front of an android, they would be exterminated, no questions asked.
“You’re new,” the clone remarked.
“How’d you know?” A-Ka took a look at the records on the computer screen, which indicated that this clone had not appeared at his workstation, at least not in the past three years.
“Because you’re very curious and have spent so long watching me. Most of the humans fresh from the Ant Nest are like this at first.”
A-Ka didn’t dare to reply to that. According to the advice his predecessors had given him, it was best not to provoke the clones either. The effects of emotions like happiness and pain were stronger for clones, and as soon as the hormones in their bodies became imbalanced, they would kill any humans in front of them, just like an android.
“Losing focus while working,” the clone said, “makes it easy to slip up, and your customers’ reviews will drop as a result.”
A-Ka hurriedly nodded. “Thank you for your reminder.”
The rating system A-Ka was subjected to allotted him a total of five points. Every time he received a “D” he was docked a point, while receiving an “A” granted him a point. If he ever lost all five points, the enforcement system would mark him as necessary for disposal. Humans so marked were deemed no longer able to contribute to society. They would be brought to the Rebirth Processing Factory, where they would undergo protein dissolution—in other words, death. Their bodies would be broken down into their elements before being returned to the biological energy system, where they would be reassembled into new clones or turned into raw materials for nutrient production.