A massive war machine makes an endless march through an America empty of humanity, desperately seeking signs of intelligent life, new orders, meaning, a purpose, anything at all.

======

Denial

PILOT INCAPACITATED

OBJECTIVE: RETURN TO BASE

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

Shockwaves rocked the abandoned city, rattling the empty buildings. Clouds of dust rose from vehicles and spilled from broken windows. Squalling, flocks of nesting birds erupted into the sky. Every few seconds, each boom was a mortar blast in the stillness.

Some of the skyscrapers looked melted, like ice cream on a hot day, or were collapsing in on themselves in slow motion implosions. Hulks of ancient cars and taxis choked roads and intersections where they’d rolled to a stop. Plantlife reclaimed the city, forests of weeds and vines carpeting everything in sight. Skulls and bony figures littered the buildings and roads, some strapped upright inside the vehicles. Gaping eye sockets stared through foggy windshields above crooked grins.

A shadow the size of a skyscraper fell across the streets. With a rolling boom, a truck-sized foot came down on an iCruiser 3.0. Fuel cells long run dry, white sides turning brown from exposure, the vehicle was flattened. Its skeletal inhabitants popped and snapped like toothpicks, ground into powder, and the asphalt around the car buckled. As the foot’s owner continued forward, the iCruiser remained pancaked into the road. A row of footprints, each as long as a tank, stamped the road as far as the eye could see.

AS OF 983,092 HOURS AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. NO RESPONSE FROM DIRECT CHAIN OF COMMAND. SEEKING RESPONSE FROM NEW UNITED STATES HIGH COMMAND FOR NEW OBJECTIVE.

The mech, fifty metres tall and weighing several hundred tonnes, looked like a giant wearing a suit of mediaeval armour. Arms swung stiffly at its sides. Lines of red and white waved across its armour in a badly faded paint job. White stars on a blue background spilled down the mech’s right shoulder and arm. Weapons bristled, including a monstrous minigun attached to the mech’s right forearm and a kind of cannon slung behind its left shoulder. Its face was only vaguely humanoid, with a triangular voice box instead of a mouth and two glowing photoreceptors protected by a metal brow.

PILOT INCAPACITATED

OBJECTIVE: RETURN TO BASE

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

When Major Colvin originally became incapacitated and unresponsive, the mech had returned to its primary operating base only to find a gaping crater. Buildings, vehicles, other mechs, as well as soldiers and technicians, all of whom it was familiar with, had been erased. The ground had been scoured down to raw rock. Thick dust and smoke hung in the air.

Fortunately, the mech had in its systems a comprehensive knowledge of every operating base across the New United States and its territories. Unable to reach anyone in the major’s direct chain of command, the mech continued to the next operating base. It, however, had been empty. The mech hadn’t been able to find anybody in command at the next one either, or the next one, or the next one, or the next one, or the next one. Many, like the mech’s original base, were missing entirely no matter what the GPS coordinates said. Narrowband transmissions to command structures failed to return any new objectives. The mech knew the satellites were still out there, receiving, transmitting back automatic receipts. They orbited the planet constantly. Always moving, just like the mech itself. Making unthinking adjustments with short bursts of propellant to slow their inevitably decaying orbits. But no human response ever came from High Command. The mech had no choice but to keep following its current objective, find a base to return to, for new orders and to help its incapacitated pilot.

Roads, vehicles, and hundreds of bones were crushed underfoot. The mech’s shoulders almost didn’t fit between some of the buildings. Its hundreds of tonnes shook the ruins. Scanners painted the structures and the roads around it, picking up no sign of human life. The mech was  a war machine, it was not built for gentility, but programming directed it to avoid civilian casualties in all possible cases. That issue had not come up in some time. Scans also picked out places where sewers and subways beneath the ground made the road too weak to support the mech’s weight, so it avoided smashing through the crust in those areas.

AS OF 983,093 HOURS AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. NO RESPONSE FROM DIRECT CHAIN OF COMMAND. SEEKING RESPONSE FROM NEW UNITED STATES HIGH COMMAND FOR NEW OBJECTIVE.

Inside the mech’s chassis, like a hunk of phlegm rattling around the chest of a person with pneumonia, were the mortal remains of Major Michael Colvin. The corpse had become desiccated in the dry air of the sealed cabin where the mech’s controls were located. Mottled remains of Colvin’s uniform, a tag with his last name still attached to the breast, hung in rags off the mummy’s shoulders. The top half of his remains dangled from a harness attached to the ceiling, swinging gently with the mech’s every step. The lower half, dressed in rotted pants, lay in a jumble underneath the harness. Colvin’s bottom jaw clung to his skull by means of a few stiff sinews and flesh as dry as cardboard, broken and crooked, and a crater had blown open the back of his head. A service pistol had fallen from the corpse’s bony claws and lay on the floor next to its lower half.

The mech hoped there would be new objectives at the next base. Its joints were stiff and stained with rust. Its paint was faded. Hydraulic systems squealed in protest with each step. The mech had a fusion battery that, short of a massive and explosive system failure, would keep it running for another three hundred and forty-six years, two months, eleven days, and seven hours, but all its other systems could use a checkup and repair. More than that though, it desired new orders.

The mech paused, the shock of its last step fading through the city. It could not hope for anything. It could not desire anything. It had its objective, return to base, that was all that mattered. It was a machine, it followed objectives not feelings. A cascade of system checks triggered and poured through the digital corridors of its programming but they returned no errors. It was operating at optimal, all things considered. The mech accepted and moved on, but was there some tremor in its circuitry? Some approximation of confusion or surprise?

PILOT INCAPACITATED

OBJECTIVE: RETURN TO BASE

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

The mech continued until the buildings thinned out and the skyscrapers shrunk. The vehicles underfoot spaced out as well so the war machine flattened fewer and fewer of them and their skeletal passengers with each step. Ruins blackened and turned to slag. Rubble made the mech’s footing unstable, which its scanners warned it to avoid. Melted glass created frozen rivers across the ground. Instead of skeletons, carbonised shadows were printed onto concrete sidewalks and the sides of remaining structures.

The mech pushed back against a ghost in its programming that ran against the core. It had its objectives. But something, flickering in its systems, felt almost like hopelessness. The mech kept going until it reached the coordinates it had for the base.

It looked as if some enormous wildfire had swept through the area. Everything had been scorched and flattened. All that remained to indicate a military base had ever stood there were some snarls of wirelink fencing poking out of the charred soil, and the glassy lumps of what might have been concrete bunkers. Of course, the fire had been many, many years ago, so plantlife had started to reclaim it. Trees and bushes, bright splashes of green, sprouted through the ash.

Anger

The war machine stood in the middle of the base, narrowband transmitting call and response codes to no avail. Scanners picked up nothing in the overgrown ruins. No human life, although plenty of animal life. No electrical signals indicating that there might be deeply buried machinery still turning over. Nothing transmitting with new objectives of any kind.

PILOT INCAPACITATED

OBJECTIVE: RETURN TO BASE

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

An internal screen overlooking the corpse of Major Michael Colvin illuminated with a new set of coordinates. Another base for the mech to attempt to make contact with. The optimum route meant retracing its steps, back through the empty city. The mech set off, shockwaves of its every footfall rumbling.

AS OF 983,096 HOURS AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. NO RESPONSE FROM DIRECT CHAIN OF COMMAND. SEEKING RESPONSE FROM NEW UNITED STATES HIGH COMMAND FOR NEW OBJECTIVE.

Stalking back across the ruined city, the mech registered an issue with its targeting systems. Although its scanners were constantly, passively, measuring the environment around it, air temp, light quality, ground density, the strength of structures around the mech, and looking for threats, its targeting system had gone live for no apparent reason. Red boxes flooded the mech’s primary vision system, highlighting potential sniper nests, weak spots in nearby buildings, nooks and crannies from where an ambush might be launched. It was as if the mech’s targeting routines were going into active mode but without an enemy to target.

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

The mech’s automated system checks reran, looking for errors. They checked and doublechecked the targeting and weapons systems but found nothing amiss. The mech’s AI switched off the targeting systems manually but they flashed back as the mech continued forward, through the ruined skyscrapers. It was almost as if some hidden subroutine, something apart from the mech’s cool, calm core, was looking for an excuse to hit something. Like it desired to hit something.

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

More vehicles and skeletons imploded underfoot, grinding into the asphalt. The crunches registered in the mech’s audio receivers with something almost like satisfaction. When the mech had passed through the city centre earlier, the local wildlife had scattered. They’d returned in the time it took the mech to reach the base and turn around. Flocks of pigeons filled the broken levels of surrounding buildings. A small herd of deer, including one male with a terrific rack of antlers, grazed on plants carpeting an abandoned street. Given the mech had passed through harmlessly the first time, the animals were more inclined to ignore its thunderous steps and grinding joints as it made its way back via the same route. The mech’s targeting systems boxed the animals, highlighting them, declared them no threat, and yet the systems did not go away.

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

The failure to locate anyone in the NUS chain of command at the last base replayed in the back of the mech’s programming. The mech’s AI had perfect recall, it could remember and replay every single failure to find anyone at any of the operating bases it had reached and contacted. It could remember, with perfect clarity, every minute of the last 983,096 hours since its pilot had become unresponsive, and every moment since its systems had been switched on before then. Miles of silicon and circuitry, processing power, over a century of experience, slaved to a single purpose.

PILOT INCAPACITATED

OBJECTIVE: RETURN TO BASE

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

The mech slowed, each movement titanic. Hundreds of pigeons roosted in one of the nearest buildings, watching the iron giant go by like a slowly thawing statue. One of the birds flapped toward the mech’s face. The mech’s targeting system boxed it, highlighting it in red, and determined it to be no threat. The bird flapped closer and landed under one of the mech’s photoreceptors.

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

The pigeon perched under the mech’s left primary photoreceptor. Cooing, it studied the glowing orb. Its tiny beak pecked at the photoreceptor in curiosity.

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

USE FORCE

ENGAGED

One of the mech’s enormous hands came up, batting at its face. Each of the mech’s fingers was as tall and wide as a large man. In a flurry of dirty feathers, the curious pigeon took off. The mech reared back.

As a first wave of engagement, the mech unleashed a 180 Db sound bomb. Louder than a jet engine during takeoff, the sound bomb could rupture eardrums if properly directed. It was primarily meant as a crowd control measure. The mech’s roar echoed across the city, reverberating over and over. Pigeons exploded from the surrounding buildings, thousands of them, like a cloud of flies rising from a garbage dump. The family of deer, startled, shot upright and took off like rockets in the opposite direction. All animals within range of the noise scattered.

ENGAGED

The mech’s tremendous laser cannon flipped into place. Thrusting from the mech’s left shoulder, the cannon consisted of two massive prongs, ribbed almost like mandibles. The interiors of the prongs glowed and a 20,000 kilowatt laser blast, a brilliant red lance, ripped into the nearest skyscraper. With a sound like the sky being ripped open, the laser carved straight through the building. Concrete dust erupted and steel screamed. A diagonal line cut the skyscraper, far taller than the fifty metre mech, in half, and blew through the other buildings behind it. Rubble disintegrating, the structure slid sideways. Hundreds of tonnes of concrete and metal girders tumbled into the street and imploded in on themselves as they hit the ground. A choking wall of dust exploded through the surrounding intersections and billowed over other buildings like a mushroom cloud.

ENGAGED

The mech’s targeting system highlighted a series of boxes across another building. Identifying potential pigeon roosts in the broken windows of the building, the mech’s right arm and minigun came up and around with barrels already spinning. The minigun howled in a deafening burst. Tungsten-tipped anti-aircraft bullets the size of beer bottles blasted through window frames and walls. Although the burst took less than two seconds and seemed almost random, the damage was concentrated in the boxes created by the mech’s targeting systems. Rooms shredded apart like tissue paper and broken furniture spilled into the street.

ENGAGED

The two halves of the mech’s breastplate slid apart. Gaping cannons, like mortar barrels, protruded from behind the plates. The half a dozen cannons boomed, one after the other after the other, like peals of thunder. Curved shells streaked into the buildings surrounding the mech and exploded. The blasts sent tonnes of concrete and glass, office furniture and bones and other debris, spiralling into the sky. Another skyscraper imploded and its dozen upper floors tumbled into the street.

ENGAGED

More panels opened across the mech’s back. Sprays of smoking flares with brilliantly red tips, meant to divert heat-seeking missiles, erupted out of the panels and lit through the air. It made the mech appear as if it had grown a pair of vast, smoky wings. The mech’s primary weapon, its laser cannon, hummed audibly as it recharged. Targeting systems were still going wild, picking out every detail of the surrounding environment even as said environment disintegrated around them. When the cannon had recharged, the mech fired again in a wide, sweeping arc that cut straight through at least half a dozen buildings and sent a burst of red light flashing across the sky. The tops of the building toppled clear and smashed apart, leaving smoking stumps and clouds of grit which filled the air.

ENGAGED

USE FORCE

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

Spent, the mech stopped and stood surrounded by rubble and ruin and smoke. Cannons slid back into its chest and its laser cannon folded itself away behind its left shoulder. Half the city centre levelled in a few short minutes. Had anyone actually been living in the surrounding buildings, casualties would have been devastating.

After action reports were already running and replaying, analysing and being filed away. Reports looking for damage, counting ammunition and wear. Looking for errors in the string of programming decisions the mech had made. No errors were found even though logic and experience dictated to the mech’s AI that some of its decisions might have been, perhaps, extreme.

PILOT INCAPACITATED

OBJECTIVE: RETURN TO BASE

USE FORCE ONLY IF ENGAGED

The mech started forward. Passive scans, painted green, began highlighting bits of its surrounding rubble again. The targeting system error seemed to have resolved itself. Miasmas of smoke and dust swirled through the air with every movement.

The mech’s scanners picked up fading signs of warmth in the ruins below. Stopping, it slowly folded at the knees. Its fifty metre height bent over the scanner blip. A pigeon’s twisted body lay in the road, surrounded by chunks of rock. Total recall told the mech that it was not the same bird that had pecked at its photoreceptor. Life and warmth leached from the bird’s body. The mech reached down and prodded at it with one huge finger. Analysis supposed that, frightened by the mech’s initial sound blast, the pigeon had flown into a pane of glass and broken its neck. It had fallen to the street and died as the mech destroyed the city around it. The mech considered it carefully for some time before rising back to its full height and continuing on.

Bargaining

AS OF 983,537 HOURS AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. NO RESPONSE FROM DIRECT CHAIN OF COMMAND. SEEKING RESPONSE FROM NEW UNITED STATES HIGH COMMAND FOR NEW OBJECTIVE.

Another base, another disappointment. It appeared this base hadn’t been nailed by a direct hit but it was empty of human life all the same. Muddy fields stretched between buildings carpeted in plant life. Mostly the base looked simply abandoned but a few human skeletons dotted the weeds.

The mech trudged to the centre of the base and cycled through its series of call and response transmissions, scanning. No signs of human life or other mechs. The huge footprints it left in the marshy ground filled with groundwater and mud. Crickets chirped in symphony across the waves and waves of wild grasses.

PILOT INCAPACITATED

OBJECTIVE: RETURN TO BASE

USE FORCE ONLY IF ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY

Even in the middle of the night, the mech’s photoreceptors and other visual sensors could see just as clearly as they could in the middle of the day. The mech stomped back out of the base. In the countryside, the mech was the tallest object around in any direction. The ground was mostly flat with gently rolling fields. A series of electrical transmission towers marched from one horizon to the other. Vaguely man-shaped latticeworks of metal girders that looked like giant scarecrows, but still not as tall as the towering mech. Broken wires trailed from their tops and snaked in the grasses below but no electricity travelled any of the lines anymore. A few towers had rusted and collapsed, and left gaps in the parade.

The mech walked to the top of a low hill near the base. Its head craned backward as much as it was able to study the sky. A sparkling sweep of stars stretched across the heavens, like tiny diamonds spilled on black velvet. The mech’s scanners could easily judge its exact coordinates by mapping the sky, which it did unthinkingly, and comparing it against its internal date and time. Scanners picked up and tracked the shine of satellites as they sailed across the black as well. Far less numerous than they used to be but still there. Talking to each other, talking to the ground, talking to things, like the mech did, which never responded. Sometimes, one would run out of propellant and out of altitude, and fall from the sky in a brief blaze across the upper atmosphere like a shooting star.

PILOT INCAPACITATED

OBJECTIVE: RETURN TO BASE

USE FORCE ONLY IF ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY

Stargazing served no purpose. The mech’s internal GPS required no recalibration. Relevant communication satellites could be pinged with a quick call and response, and did not need to be visually observed. A cascade of system checks ran through digital rooms and hallways and found no faults. Over the past few thousand hours though, the mech had started to wonder, if it could be said to wonder, whether the system checks themselves were working at optimal. Some quirk in the mech’s core programming, cycling up and up with each rotation, which could almost be mistaken for consciousness, had become concerned. Concerned with subroutines that had evolved, or become corrupted, in just such a way as to resemble human emotion. But system checks returned no errors no matter how many hundreds of them ran per second so the current objective remained the same.

The current objective was not returning optimal results. If such a thing were possible, the mech supposed it would feel something like hopelessness. Although supposing wasn’t possible either. It needed a new objective but the hourly narrowband transmissions up the chain of command had failed to return any.

AS OF 983,538 HOURS AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME-

The mech ceased the narrowband transmission. It was the first time it had failed to make a full transmission on the hour in the last 983,537 hours. After a few moments, old systems began to cycle up. Instead of another narrowband transmission, the mech began broadcasting on all available frequencies, digital and analogue. It hadn’t done so since shortly before Major Michael Colvin became unresponsive at the controls. When the major made a similar attempt and failed to receive any replies.

AS OF 983,538 HOURS 01 MINUTE AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN HAS BEEN KILLED IN ACTION. SEEKING NEW UNITED STATES HIGH COMMAND. REQUEST NEW OBJECTIVE.

Satellites both friendly and unfriendly, circling the skies above, received the first transmission they had heard in years. Any mech or robot capable of receiving within the northern hemisphere would have picked up and understood the message. Communicators and HAM radios, dormant for decades, and every other kind of electronic communication device would receive the transmission.

AS OF 983,538 HOURS 02 MINUTES AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN HAS BEEN KILLED IN ACTION. SEEKING NEW UNITED STATES HIGH COMMAND. REQUEST NEW OBJECTIVE. PLEASE RESPOND.

The mech repeated the transmission on all frequencies. It got back only the standard pings from satellites confirming they were receiving, no worded response.

AS OF 983,538 HOURS 32 MINUTES AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN HAS BEEN KILLED IN ACTION. SEEKING ANYONE LISTENING ON THIS FREQUENCY. REQUEST NEW OBJECTIVE. PLEASE RESPOND.

Watching the sky, the mech broadcast. A mechanical giant screaming into the void.

AS OF 983,539 HOURS 48 MINUTES AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN HAS BEEN KILLED IN ACTION. SEEKING ANYONE LISTENING ON THIS FREQUENCY. REQUEST ANY NEW OBJECTIVE. PLEASE RESPOND.

AS OF 983,541 HOURS 12 MINUTES AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN HAS BEEN KILLED IN ACTION. SEEKING ANYONE LISTENING ON THIS FREQUENCY. REQUEST ANY NEW OBJECTIVE. PLEASE RESPOND.

AS OF 983,547 HOURS 03 MINUTES AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN HAS BEEN KILLED IN ACTION. SEEKING ANYONE LISTENING ON THIS FREQUENCY. REQUEST ANY NEW OBJECTIVE. PLEASE RESPOND.

AS OF 983,556 HOURS 23 MINUTES AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN HAS BEEN KILLED IN ACTION. SEEKING ANYONE LISTENING ON THIS FREQUENCY. REQUEST ANY NEW OBJECTIVE. PLEASE RESPOND.

AS OF 983,568 HOURS 51 MINUTES AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN BECAME UNRESPONSIVE AT CONTROLS. PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN HAS BEEN KILLED IN ACTION. SEEKING ANYONE LISTENING ON THIS FREQUENCY. REQUEST ANY NEW OBJECTIVE. PLEASE RESPOND.

PLEASE RESPOND.

PLEASE RESPOND.

PLEASE RESPOND.

Depression

The mech continued based on its last objective. It moved onward. The skies were grey as slate and rain lashed the giant. Rivers ran off its faded armour and weapons. Grinding joints and stomping feet echoed over the storm.

PILOT KIA

OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE:

USE FORCE ONLY IF ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY

Ahead, more skyscrapers and buildings created smudges against the sky. Grey blocks against a wall of grey as thick fog and rain covered the city. GPS coordinates led the mech on the most direct route. Scanners passively measured everything about the surrounding environment. Its footing, the humidity, and the temperature of the rain. It counted the steps until arriving at the next empty base.

AS OF 984,122 HOURS AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN WAS KILLED IN ACTION. SEEKING ANYONE LISTENING ON THIS FREQUENCY. REQUEST ANY NEW OBJECTIVE. PLEASE RESPOND.

The route took the mech to the foot of a bridge spanning a river that bordered the city on two sides. The river was at least a kilometre across and the current moved hard in the storm. Whitecaps foamed on the grey surface of the water.

Gaping holes had formed in the bridge, collapsing into the river below. Metal arches running down the sides of the bridge were rusting through. Although the bridge was supported by concrete pylons as thick as redwoods it seemed to twist and sway in the wind.

The mech’s scanners painted the bridge, creating a grid over the lines of the structure and the holes created by erosion. Scanners estimated the damaged bridge would not be able to take the mech’s weight. An 88.64% chance of structural failure. Unacceptably high, the mech’s systems would have to find an alternate route.

The mech held where it was, calculating. 88.64% risk of structural failure, unacceptably high. An alternate route would involve backtracking and heading further upriver to cross. Systems evaluated the new number of steps and time until reaching its planned destination.

PILOT KIA

OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE:

USE FORCE ONLY IF ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY

Rejecting the alternate route, the mech took another step forward, and then another. Asphalt crackled under the metal soles of its feet. Scanners flashed warnings to the mech’s internal systems. The mech measured every drip of water as they ran down the bridge’s girders and off its own armour. The groan of the structure where it met the shoreline was inescapable.

The mech avoided the biggest holes in the road’s surface. Still, the tremors of its footfalls caused the edges of those craters to disintegrate further. Concrete and asphalt splashed the waters below. Iron girders screamed and the bridge sagged under the mech’s weight.

Halfway across, fissures formed under the mech’s feet. The surface dropped. The mech steadied itself, arms rising for balance. Metal girders made grinding noises, warning the mech to turn back. The mech took another teetering step forward. With a roar, an entire section of bridge collapsed. Dozens of tonnes of concrete and metal poured into the water, creating a raging maelstrom. The mech fell and was sucked down into it, entering the water feet first. A geyser shot up and came cascading down along with the last of the rubble. The bridge was cut in two but after a few minutes, in the rain, it was like nothing had happened at all.

Under the water’s surface, everything was dark and calm. The mech sank into the deepest portion of the river, much deeper than the mech was tall. Heavy as it was, the mech sunk like a stone, surrounded by a cloud of rubble. The bottom of the river was covered in mud, a strange landscape of rocky reefs, stretches of soft soil, debris, and rusted cars that had fallen from the bridge. Hundreds of fish, startled by the splash, took off in flitting clouds. The mech’s feet punched into the mud and sunk shin-deep, stuck standing upright.

AS OF 984,123 HOURS AGO-

The mech cut the transmission. It made no attempt to free itself, arms falling stiffly to its sides. Only the mech’s glowing photoreceptors cut through the gloom.

PILOT KIA

OBJECTIVE: OBJECTIVE: OBJ-

The mech’s systems began to shut down, one after the other. The cabin containing the mortal remains of Major Michael Colvin, still jostling in his harness, plunged into darkness. Subroutines went into standby. Systems slowed until their power demands were almost undetectable. Outside the mech, its glowing photoreceptors dimmed and went dull as it stopped taking in visual stimuli. System checks cycled and cycled through core programming and subroutines almost as if in deep contemplation. Like a sunken colossus, the mech remained where it was as the river and the world moved around it.

Acceptance

A crust of ice formed across the rough waters above the mech’s head, thickening into a solid sheet. Snow carpeted the ruined bridge, the ice, and the grey city beyond the river. Below the ice, in a state of standby so deep barely a tremor of electrical life could be detected, the mech stood with legs buried in mud. Systems and subroutines cycled over and over in inky blackness.

Spring, and the ice broke apart. Snow melted, widening the river and making the current run. Sun glittered off the last of the melt until it evaporated. Although the humans were gone, the city came alive again with the sound of birds, insects, and other animals. New, brilliant shades of green erupted across the abandoned buildings and streets.

Without warning, a tremendous head broke the river’s surface. Water ran over the mech’s glowing photoreceptors. Shoulders and chest emerged as the mech made its way inexorably forward. It climbed the shore and rose fully into the sunlight. Mud and rocks coated the mech’s legs from the knees down. The mech swivelled, taking in the city, as its scanners came back online and painted the ruins. After a long winter of contemplation, it still needed a new objective.

The mech stomped into the city, rattling shards of glass loose from window frames in abandoned buildings. Flocks of pigeons fluttered into the air and hovered. Small herds of deer scattered as they felt the ground shake but then cautiously nosed their way back. A mountain lion licked its chops and regarded the fifty-metre-tall metal man as it passed the windows of the old department store the big cat called home.

The roads were lush with new growth. Scanners picked up the hulk of an iCruiser slanted across one intersection. The vehicle’s battery was long dry but chemicals from the rusting fuel cells were leaking and poisoning the surrounding plant life. The mech considered the slow leak for a few moments and then bent over, picking the car up. Its hand exerted exactly enough pressure to pick up the shell of the vehicle without crushing it. The mech looked around and then gingerly placed the iCruiser down on the bare rooftop of a nearby building. Its scanners swept across the city. No sign of human or mechanical life, only animal.

AS OF 988,643 HOURS AGO, PILOT MAJOR MICHAEL COLVIN WAS KILLED IN ACTION. UNIT HAS FAILED TO ACHIEVE OBJECTIVE. UNIT IS SEEKING NEW OBJECTIVE. SEEKING ANYONE LISTENING ON THIS FREQUENCY. PLEASE RESPOND.

The mech sent the message out again on all available frequencies, in one enormous pulse. It continued to scan. No response came but the mech was past believing it would receive one.

The mech decided to get to work.

PILOT KIA

OBJECTIVE: ???

FORCE UNNECESSARY

Months later, dry summer heat rising off the earth, the mech knelt over a vast field like a gardener. Roads that had run through the area had been pulverised. A small mountain of cars and other metal debris gathered behind the mech. Someday, the mech might get around to recycling it all for a new purpose. The base that the mech had been headed toward before attempting to cross the bridge was still intact although devoid of life. It was attached to a vast fabrication plant for making machines like the mech itself.

The mech sensed the seismic tremors a long time before it could make any visual contact with the second mech approaching its position. The mech raised its enormous head. The laser cannon was still slung against the mech’s back, as much a part of the mech as an arm or a leg. The giant minigun was mounted to its right forearm. The mech’s targeting software remained dormant, however. Force was unnecessary, detrimental. It had continued to broadcast its message once every twenty-four hours and now it finally had a response.

The second mech was just as tall as the first but its profile was slimmer. Its armour had a smoother appearance and was painted entirely red, less faded than the first mech’s waving rows of red and white, their white stars on blue. A pattern of five yellow stars decorated the second mech’s mostly featureless face. Two enormous rocket boosters and a pair of stubby wings were attached to the second mech’s back.

The mech rose steadily to its full height, dirt crumbling off of its hands. Passive scans regarded one another, targeting systems offline. The second mech was not alone. Lower to the ground was another machine that resembled a giant arachnid, ten metres long and five metres high, walking on multiple legs. Tiny in comparison to the mechs and the walking tank, three man-sized iDroids, white carapaces covered in old damage and grime, also moved as part of the strange pack. The first mech stepped forward to greet them.

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Sean: This is an older story of mine, actually! I wrote it a few years ago and it was another of those I had “in reserve” in case I ran short of ideas when writing Monster Manual stories in 2022. Lucky for me, I never needed them, and I thought this one would be an appropriate one to kick off 2024 instead.

More stories coming in the next few weeks! I think I’m looking at a short story every two-three weeks at the moment. I’ve been working on some other projects, a novel, and thinking about putting a few of these stories out as a podcast or on a YouTube channel. To be honest though, I never had any kind of break over Christmas and New Year. Apart from the public holidays I’ve been working nonstop and I’m a little bit mentally worn out. Looking forward to a break in a couple of weeks where I can hopefully gather my thoughts.

Thanks as always for reading! Keep your eyes on the website for more, and you can find me on Facebook and Twitter, Reddit, Instagram or Threads for updates!