Advent, Chapter 2-Spree
Chapter 2: Spree
Molfreya and I sped across the skies, from what I could discern, at a speed of about 800 km/h judging by the planes we passed. I could barely make out the fear in the faces of the passengers, the frightened expressions making me feel somewhat guilty at antagonizing a helpless lot of people for amusement. I had other things on the mind though, like my newly-obtained power over force. I alone commanded the movement of the mightiest of forces, from the overwhelming power of a tidal wave, to the unstoppable front of a bullet train. I got a little too excited, and the palms of my hands instantly began to sear like before. "Control, control. Think control. It's what we have, and the humans don't." Of course, the only vice of the human race was just that: control. With it, they lacked the sense to stop the madness of their production and creation so as to preserve what matters most. What does indeed matter most, I cannot say; it all depends on which side you ask.
The humans were not sentient through my eyes, as my AI was allowed to interact with them, not show compassion to them. Though my secret admiration for my family and best friend are anomalies that cannot be explained, I decided to keep them a secret, lest I risk disappointing the Federation, and possibly losing my own life. All doubts aside, my mind was ready and my muscles twitched with excitement. We were catching up to another plane, this time a big one, 777. I decided to amuse myself and go stand on the wing to phaze out the passengers. Then I made faces, threatened to shoot the window with a pistol Molfreya had given me, (which was convincingly enough, very similar in appearance to a conventional Earth weapon), and poked my head over the cockpit of the plane.
"Get off!!! NOW!!!" Came out of nowhere.
In an impulse maneuver, I jumped off the cockpit window, two seconds later of which I heard a deafening boom erupt from behind me. After gaining ample distance from the explosion, I turned and saw the plane engulfed in flames, heading gradually down to the ground. With a gaping jaw, I stared for a while at the horrific scene, and, after a while of gawking, looked up to see Molfreya chuckling to himself.
"What the hell?! You almost killed me!" I yelled to him as I approached.
"Sorry! Sorry! I guess I didn't see you until the last moment. You ought to be more careful," he spoke to me in a tone like a father would speak in to an ignorant child.
The enormous aircraft plunged through layers and layers of clouds, a fireball descending to Earth. No doubt there would be thousands of witnesses to a plane coming crashing down nearby, or reports of a falling object, engulfed in flames. Just then, with the destruction of two-hundred lives, the nation would become afire. Tomorrow, I would help seal the entire human race to their doom, and there wouldn't be a journalist, reporter or editor of any kind to say I was guilty.
An image flashed before my eyes, the clouds turning to an ocean of water with no end, save for where it began, that is, at my feet. Redness spread from side to side in a flash of blinding light, turning the water to blood. Enigmatic figures, most in some sort of uncomfortable position, revealed mangled faces, mouths of which that were desperate for an answer. A woman, crying for her baby, a man crying for his wife, a boy crying for his brother, boyfriend laying dead beside his girlfriend, a corpse flopping back and forth in seizure, alone and dying. Though horrific, I sensed nothing but anomalistic images from my lingering traces of humanity within my person. Every passing soul jerked my brain back and forth within my skull, choking out tears, yet I was too resilient, and I pulled the tears back to keep them there. The question still lingered: why. Why did I do this? What purpose was there? Was it love? Maybe hate? Revenge? Insanity?
Questions engulfed my mind, clouding my senses, nullifying my sanity. My conscience pushed forward and sent forth a beam of light. The answer to the question is this: there is no answer; if there was, I am not the person to give it to you. I have been made to function, not prosper and ponder the wonders of the universe. Vis-r-vis, I chose to. But choice is the problem. Proper functioning does not include the option of choice for a semi-mechanoid like myself. I am given a program, and anything that affects it is a ripple in a vast ocean; the ocean cannot be moved, but it can be manipulated.
My vision disappeared, the sanity returned. Still, my vision was red. Apparently, I had tapped into some place which was not meant to be disturbed inside my mind; the HUD flashed bright red letters: SELF-DESTRUCT. The human inside my artificial mind wanted himself to die so that he may save humanity. Of course, he fully realized that the attack would proceed anyway, but he was making a stand, a coup, paying me back for every wrong I did as a human. No, it couldn't happen now, not when I had so much left to do, so much left to fulfill! SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE TERMINATED came up. Thank God. Either somebody up there likes me, or somebody down there doesn't like me well enough.
A hand waved in front of my face, one which belonged to Molfreya. "Coming? Or are you quite content just hovering there for another ten minutes?"
A bit shaken, I spoke in a shaky tone. "T-ten....minutes...Let's--g-go."
Shooting a hairy eyeball at me, Molfreya broke off from me at a moderate pace. I caught up to him, still stunned from my encounter. "Are we going to start an assault any time soon?" I queried.
"Just what I'd like to know! You're the commanding officer here--you call it on, and I shall follow your orders."
"In that case, follow me." I banked down towards the ground. The clouds blurred everything, but the shimmering lights of a night life soon emerged. I descended further and further, into the veins of the city, the streets where there was bound to be a good deal of fodder for destruction.
My feet glided to the ground. A couple on my right ran down the sidewalk, screaming in horror. Molfreya landed close to me, but not without attracting additional attention. Within twenty seconds, a crowd of fifty observers was encircling us, some amazed, others amused, some terrified, some angry. A young boy came up to me, his mother screaming for him to return. He asked me my name, I answered with a death blow to the head. The woman screamed in agony, racing up to her child, cradling his bashed-in head. Her fists were soon upon my chest. I walked forward without regard of her pathetic attempt at me. She soon collapsed by where her child was, sobbing and wailing in sadness. Molfreya and I kept on walking down the street, being cursed by the surrounding mob.
A man came at me with his fists, I answered with my own. A police officer shot at me three times, while the bullets were stopped in midair. I turned them around, sent them to two bystanders and then the police officer. Nightstick, dead. Shovel, massacred. Shotgun, mangled. Pistol, in another country by now.
"Feel free to jump in at any time," I urged Molfreya. Being obliged, he lifted up the remaining forty or so people into midair with an invisible command of his hand. He removed a pistol-like weapon from a holster at his side, lifting it up to level on the person nearest him. With his eyes fire-red, intent on his target, no earthy force could tear him away. The human began to scream uncontrollably, angering Molfreya. A white beam of light silently erupted from the weapon, ripping apart the man's skull. In five seconds, there were thirty-nine more corpses to join the unfortunate first. Each and every one, I realized, had ended the epic that was their life, no, had it stolen. Innocent of crime, honest, diligent, human people. They did not deserve this alone no, but an epidemic like humanity cannot be destroyed by a single blow to its hull, and the sad truth was that we would have to start somewhere. The barrel smoking like a cigar, Molfreya put the weapon back in its holster at his side. He glanced back at me with a sardonic and toothy smile. "Impressive," said I. Blood spatters were dimly visible by the lights of the streets, sirens roared, forty or so corpses lay with one or more gaping, bloody holes torn through their flesh, some with heads completely severed, the blood making a pool that extended their entire body length. I showed no remorse or regret.
Molfreya took a fusion rifle off his back, moving his head off the strap and throwing it to me. I grinned a devious grin and strapped the rifle around my shoulders. A mass of bystanders, at least three hundred or more, stood their ground about fifty feet from where I stood, keeping their distance from the blood and gore. With an ice cold heart and firey eyes, I aimed for the highest concentration of humans and pulled the trigger. A gargantuan recoil insued, taking me offguard, but the rifle didn't miss it's target. The blue flash of light, silent yet deadly, comsumed half the crowd in an instant. Every building in the path of the shot was either destroyed or was left with a gaping hole in it. The bystanders were half their former mass; the absentees left not a drop of blood as they evaporated into the elements they were composed of.
It was then that I realized why the Federation had me be a part of this attack: to prove my loyalty to them and show my contempt for humanity. They would get their wish, and I knew just the thing that would satisfy them.
"Give me a meson bomb. I'm blowing up the city." I said in a stately manner to Molfreya.
"Are you now?" Molfreya seemed a bit surprised, like a father would be to a child pretending to be in his dream career. "Fine, but you'll need more than one. Take three, that should get the job done," he replied. "Though we'll need to get away from here fast, so as soon as you arm it, run away as fast as possible and deploy the other ones from above."
He withdrew three black spheres from a compartment on his belt, gently handing them to me. As I took them, I realized they were quite heavy, five pounds each at least for the small things they were. In my hand was the fate of three million people, single and absolute, cold and unforgiving.
Setting the timer on one to the equivalent of two minutes, I placed it on the ground. I flew as fast as I could out of there, speeding at what must have been five hundred miles an hour. Looking back, I realized that I had left Molfreya behind in all my excitement. Just as I was about to turn back, a bullet came cruising up at me at a speed easily twice my own. I bolted off as fast as I could, pulling at least twelve-hundred, which caught me up to Molfreya. I saw that he had retracted his wings and was operating off the same system I was for flight. I checked my watch, and with only seventy-two seconds left, I deployed the second bomb, silently falling in the cloudless sky. I dropped the last one about three seconds later, which fell to the ground to the same effect. Three suns erupted upon the face of the planet, which could be seen for thousands of miles around as a sign that we had arrived.
"In the mood for anything else while we're here?" Molfreya asked.
"No....no, let's go," I replied, yelling above the din of the wind coarsing against my ears.
And the two figures departed to the heavens, leaving the destruction they had wrought behind them.