Automata Prime

1.24: Aftermath

I closed the [Terminal Window], picked up the sister’s core, and cracked it with my arm blade. I sat there for a long moment before taking a deep, metaphorical, breath and connecting to the next one. Carnivac brought me all the loaded cores that the murder bots had collected as well as any intact cores from the murder bots themselves. I continued connecting to them and talking with these people through the night. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything so emotionally draining as telling these people what happened to them and being with them in their final moments. Some were sad, others were angry, some pleaded while others were resigned. In the end, between the eleven villagers that were murdered and bound to cores and the seventeen out of twenty one murder bot cores that were recovered, sixteen chose to continue living on as Automata. The other twelve wanted to be released. Most of the twelve were at peace with moving on but a few refused the idea of becoming “abominations” and