Forgotten Space

Deep across the vast black depths of upper space, through time against time, tore an expansion in the fabric of the frontier as escaping light fled from the ancient deep at an alleged 299,792,458 meters per second. From its swirling center, an illumined eddy, a shadow twisted out of the unfurling form. Escaping at the said rate, a ship halted jump after that, employing new stop-on-a-molecule hyperspace dynamics, withholding particular impact. Behind the spaceship, the violent tear converted back to black matter.

The ship's awkward trajectory pre-jump had been ineptly coordinated at the nimble hands of a wrought Bot-Mechanic. The fruits of this error remained afoot, and the pilot initiated immediate countermeasures: ironically, the ship, more so the onboard A.I., thoroughly tossed its mechanic around the docking bay for an unknown attempt against it. At one point inside the tumultuous chaos, he collided with the intercom relay as the countermeasure ensued, dodging a crash-landing on an alien satellite, one with the borrowed name of Enceladus, the sleeping giant.

Pulling successfully out of the titan's density well, the ship jetted toward a closer stellar satellite for their long-awaited pickup. Pushing to, into, and through the distant planet's unwelcoming glass ceiling, they descended toward the verdant floor below, hovering meters above a supply sector in awkward silence. Arriving smoothly and claiming the exact location (flexing her manual navigator/pilot abilities), they finally came. The thick jungle canopy just beneath gently rustled, whispering a hush heard through monitors inside the ship.

Soon, both suns would break the horizon.

Twin suns shone toward the eastern light, breaking alien skies and casting ample light across a mackerel sky. The colored clouds were a sickly hue between yellow and blue, resting splendidly suspended above the meandering summits of Spinal Crag. This sheer mountain range tickled the lofty heights and descended darkly, deeply twisting throughout the unscathed wild landscape. The colossal mountainous Spine fell jaggedly away to the southwest for miles. From above, the Spine resembled a god-struck fissure split directly through the heart of the supple sylvan, quilting the Geopoan coil.

Large-bodied leaves rustled, slightly disturbed by rising gale forces shading the plentiful morning rays. Cradled by the breeze, the separation of the abundant leaves permitted rays of lemon-white sunlight to weep through into the depths of the foliage-flung toadstool-furnished floor. Dawn's morning song was heralded by an exaltation of synthetic Farrowlarks' waking throughout the abounding jungle.

Skylined by the advent of lemon rays of light, the silhouette suspended aloft the swaying sylvan canopy was that of the calamitous Calypso 7 cooling its engines. The interstellar war vessel stolen and flown by Frelow was a lone vessel; she was an Ore War hero and notorious rebel-by-repro bot. The design of Calypso 7 was aerodynamically sleek for any given atmosphere; a war vessel whose reflective identity could be likened to a large-scale Stingray and had, since Frelow came to pilot it, become quite an infamous ship in spreading the misery of staunch conformity.

Frelow is a female L33r class automaton designed and built long before the Ore Wars at the base of the Spine (a war-for-ore allegedly out of necessity). She eventually increased her infamy after stealing the Calypso 7 from a freedom champion, equating it to that of Calypso's caliber: something to complement its navigational and wartime protocols. Together, they became the deadliest of developed and deterministic duos.

Her highly effective efforts in the post-war era did not go unnoticed, although she even had an extensive agenda, wrought with ulterior motives. All Sight, All Light Alliance recorded and cataloged all things seen: an intergalactic confederation, the Federal Alliance of Robotic Transit, documented her surgical battle patterns and precise flight strategies. She appeared during wartime chaos and managed a narrow escape every time. Further recording all entry and exit routes – recovered entries seared into vast allied databases stretched far across the known upper macrocosm. Therein, due to unseen events that unfolded near the end of the Ore Wars, ultimately keeping watch on her and her growing following had been all but easy...

After the Ore Wars met its boundless, fruitless end in 2333, during Man's fierce final stand in a furious fight against those they created – the robots - as well as the robots' creations – the synthetics. Many lives fell, clear to the war's inevitable end. Of the human survivors who chose the warring side, they executed them! Defeated by an overwhelming surge of first and second-series allied forces, both below and above, their fight and existence ended.

Soon after the superior surgically accurate surge, Man's remnants fell as ashes to the alien soil below. The Ore Wars - the Decade of Descent, as time ornamented this moniker - left the grounds asunder, and the skies were torn. Amid the settling, smoldering debris, from up high, several abandoned, burning, colossal sky ships swept in by the tug of Geopo's greedy heart. Without any opposition to her fatal attraction, they met Geopo, registering plate-shifting quakes.

Static rose in her frontal globes preceding a recalled vid-feed streaming in... Frelow read off the coordinates, copiloting a Harbinger class ship in the past warring year of 2323. A pilot by the moniker Trill, an efficient last-working model of his kind, had made an error in his interpretation of her navigational coordinates and set the course for imminent failure deep within unregistered territory.

The misinterpretation landed them far off course, with the HARBINGER wounded from a prior fight. Struck again, this time by a stray Federal beam, knocked out the power long enough to descend into dire depths, crashing deep into a vale hitherto unknown.

The ship tore at the unforgiving ground, parting dirt and stone. The metal peeled back violently and with a terrible roar, dragging against the rugged terra firma. The frame twisted to a screeching, punching, crushing point that corkscrewed clear up to the Trill's seat, spinning his Terra-Steel legs up together within the dealt decimation, trapping him immeasurably all the while severing the threaded light-giving lifewires in the furious fray.

Beneath a powdery moonlit glow, the darkness hid its secrets from the night's luminary light. The twisting, wrecking carriage took once more to wobbling off through relative darkness: smaller bits and pieces, debris and pebble and sod slung off somewhere out into the inked evening.

Trill went the way of without. This ended his model, and it was now finally extinct.

Behind Trill's lightless body, strapped into the navigator's seat, Frelow caught a hurried glimpse of the needs-be warning in passing slivers of moonlight: 'Be Without or Jump Out!' Quickly unbuckling her safety harness, the ship smashed once again into the hard ground pulverizing more vegetation and darting off from the terraformed lands beneath just before she had punched through the overhead enclosure and jumped from the twisting, burning, and billowing HARBINGER as it wobbled off at a ridiculous rate through the deucedly dark. Disappearing into the night, her ship vanished, consumed by terra incognita. Frelow had flown freely through the damp night air at incalculable velocity, seeming minutes long no matter how untrue. Branches, twigs, leaves, and synsects swatted her Terra-Steel body mercilessly. Whipping at her looking lenses, one scratched to the point of Mar-Sight, further degrading all susceptible models and causing the need for eventual unworthy repairs or desertion due to tech-field advancement, thus falling to obsolescence.

Finally coming to a halt, ironically meeting a weeping tree much to her demise, her entire right-side display crumpled quickly, damaging her terribly; popping and crackling outside of immediate repair, she peeled free from brief embedment in bark and further fell to the damp deadfall below: Without.

- End Feed -

Time measured onward as her battered body lay still beneath a Weeping Tree. Dense overgrowth claimed her as the wars above continued for several more years. The prolonged war eventually ensured its cold end on one wintry holiday eve - that too came and passed, and more so each year. Corrosion took its ultimate toll upon her, as did the life creeping into its grave overgrowth. The endless infection spread slowly throughout her body, covering the rested joints, silent servos, and gyros; all unprotected things, metal and electrical, bore the infectious brunt of intense heat and sweltering humidity.

Day and night, calendars abound, past unsound.

Time is relative, but no relative of mine.

Geopo was gargantuan in circumference, a stone adrift in a dense macro-ocean, dimmed and decorated in omnipresent starlight, heavenly bodies ornamented with an unending abundance of potential: ore, fauna, and vegetation throughout the deep. Here, Nature is abundantly nurtured.

Within the expansive jungles were equidistant safe havens called Triptao (trip-dow), and gathering there frequently were assortments of post-war robots and second-series synthetics to sip upon newly rationed Opulus Oils and Sweetened Silicon Saps that were Triptao exclusives.

Some havens, those Triptao stood, well built and aloft in the arbor as others dwelt subterranean in an area referred to as a Domiciliation.

On occasion, a smug human, like-skin as they came to be, journeyed through gathering help for excavations of undiscovered sites and ancient abandoned buildings, with most of the service never returning, not even to the most popular Triptao, #1-o-3.

A few veteran pilots, older models still running on the limited premise of preprogrammed intuition, overheard of an uncharted vale through the wire in the war and endeavored to expose the undiscovered locations of age-old secrets. Listening in on an iota of dished-out details, a rough guesstimate of its coordinates was determined, and the three that left to traverse the deadly expanse were a well-known mechanic bot as Werck, [D]oil - a Forensic Class machine, and an all-around pacifistic human that went by the name Robert Bott.

Deep within the extreme expanse, more so for the frail-aged human, they managed all things strewn along the slipshod jungle floor with difficulty: colossal trees felled left in mid-production, locally leased logging left abandoned.

Otherwise, ferocious constrictors hung lazily about, mocking the ubiquitous clambering vines draped and dangling ubiquitously; the only difference was that one dangled, draped lazily free from the tree, and the other, albeit quite similar in sight, killed, ate, and regurgitated, also lazily burdened. Creeps and crawls alike, synthetic, surrounding, to say it holds an overabundance of fauna would be a gross understatement. The grounds swam with endless numbers, adding to the swarming scores of life above.

The soaring temperatures held well above average for the season. The sweltering atmosphere will easily ruin two of the three hastily. In addition, for the ilk skin, the overwhelming heat and synthetic insects, Synsects being the proper terminology, were the utmost suppressive to Rob Bott. Appearing more so a bane to existence than any panacea, they slurped his blood through synthetic syringes, filling nothing more than a want (data), never a need (desire). After the sanguine retrieval, the genetic material logged consistently in upon Synsectic's triumphant return to H.Q. after delivery, its rampant Release and Revival.

Hung from the swirling sky, twin suns cast brilliantly blazing beams, parting the sallow cloud and casting down darkened shades.

They pedaled along as best the slipshod expanse allowed—clambering over felled trees, dodging trapped boulders, and roving Indigenous biological beasts that noticed the smell of fear-laced sweat beading from Robert's perspiring pores. He again, hour by hour, had been complaining about the strenuous efforts made in trudging the overgrown, teeming animal kingdom and cursing away.

Several hours passed in daylight and complaints. Eventually, Werck stumbled upon the scorched and torn wake, exposing more of the hidden jungle's innards and the only entrance into the vast hidden vale below. The weight of something huge previously pulverized the surrounding area. It was large enough to tear quite a significant hole deep into the dense surroundings and continue, splitting trees, shattering free from their stumps, smashing and pulverizing stones in passing. The overall damage was, unfortunately, impressive and incredibly extensive.

Robert was shortly awestruck. His head oscillated at the sheer size of the bored opening. Following the other two slowly into the gaping gash behind him, he could not believe the extent of the ruination.

Hours became more laborious and lingered, slowly passing by like Robert's unending complaints. Once they had passed through the scorched entrance leading into the unregistered savage milieu, things fell darker by the moment.

Hundreds of feet in, Werck pointed out another touching down, as there were smashing impacts torn from the trees and grounds, and more of the destructive wake up ahead. 'Quite possibly, fallout lingers around depending on the make and model of the ship, skipping like a stone across the water at a terrible rate, given it is a shipwreck.' Werck gathered his processes as his gyros and gears whirred and popped, sounding like shorting circuits each transmission or broadcast message.

Upon the radical notion, Robert Bott smacked his forehead in forgetfulness, shortly donning the necessary protective gear pulled from his traveling pack. Protecting him from possible fallout and preventing, if possible, radiation sickness, also filtering smothering levels of pollen and ridding him of those damned Synsects! Moreover, it sported a shoddy level of A.C.

Werck was a squat 'bot, standing five feet four inches, and his old-iron braincase resembled an old-fashioned gas mask, save filter-mounted access, with a rectangular Lithic-Light panel for his mouth. His appendages were long and simply tubular, and the light-giving wires wrapped tightly around his structure, serving as a set of ersatz muscles and fiber-optic veins that kept him mobile without and brightly lit within. His coming to mechanics was conceived during the decennial industrialization on a nearby satellite known as Oehm. Oehm is hardware! Tomorrow's technology! Forget the past; come to the future! Programmed by a handful of brilliant ilk-skins, Werck knew most recorded materials and almost all registered machines.

Werck looked through the pulverized dirt, searching for evidence of something more than pieces of panel parts without numeric wires or their holding harnesses. All aggregated alongside more of the scattered, scorched, unrecognizable debris.

While digging at a different patch of overgrowth in another area, [D]oil broadcasted that he may have found something. Kicking around some of the abundant flora, he was sure of it!

'An exposed and infected manus,' he impassively broadcast.

Beneath years of rampant overgrowth, the protrusion of an L33r model's well-designed mechanical hand gleamed in the sweeping glow of lemon-white sundrops: twilit suns lit. Something somewhat sad remained about the lonely hand lying there silently: Without.

'A classic model,' stated [D]oil processing certitude, with hearing his uttered noisy reference to her antiquity stemming from a smug newer model epithet.

'Classic!' replied Werck, astounded, taking a few steps closer to the manus. 'Perhaps your lenses are marred,' he added, kneeling to the rusting hand mostly buried beside an ancient Weeping Tree. The processing of the marring notion would have sent shivers down [D] oil's spine if only this effect had any worth and thereupon decided to be a facet of autonomous meaty awareness. It was not and could not ever become a robotic reality.

Beyond the find, further into the jungle, the digital sounds and moonlight songs sung by the synthetic nocturnal life rose to deafening proportions. Most bots see the natural static state as soothing, but to humans, it soon became quite irritating—annoying, to say the least!

Robert Bott (Robbot to his friends) stood six feet six inches and was considered a toe-head by his peers. As a self-proclaimed engineer and university-taught archaeologist, he studied the protruding mechanical hand well. Swimming in a deep sense of thought and a heavy odor of alcohol exhausting from his suit, his mind was slowly coming together beneath the hushing canopy of leaves and hinting gleams of moonlit radiance in a cerebral soup of sourly sums.

Wishing a scratch at his five o'clock shadow with dirty, gloved hands, he asked [D]oil for a bit of light and, as a few minutes passed, extrapolated that L33r models had issues with their calibration and were not worth an individual's time, furthermore referring to them as rebels-by-repro. Off went the light.

Werck, on the other hand, certainly made it known he had disagreed and began removing some of the overly abundant overgrowth, scattering synthetic insects from the silent automaton.

The baleful moon crested high, arcing long in the dark sky: the somber spread dappled with ancient mottled illumination. Werck rested, looking up at them, aware that this was a great find and somewhat beset that it disappointed one of the other two. Being that in the group, it was the human proving to be wasteful. It was no surprise that Robert no longer had found use for something that was once paramount days prior. At one point, she became the predominant factor in what he denied her that night.

-An assistant?

-An employee?

-Possibly a friend?

He processed this, along with many other

augmented algorithms.

Kicking away some of the nocturnal Synsects traversing her surroundings from Within, he ordered two panels split apart upon his left-side-facing mechanical thigh, exerting a wheezing and whirring noise. The thigh jumped open to a neatly kept and lightly oiled workbox. Sorting through the magnetized, slightly oiled lithic tools, he found and drew out the plasma cutter. Clutching firmly hold of it, the thigh compartment closed, and the blade extended as it reached the outside air, at which point it emitted a yellow-orange glow in low-frequency hums.

Once more, Robert mentioned that it was not worth their time swatting away at some of the larger indigenous Synsects attempting to circumvent his protective suit, thirsting their well-documented pound of flesh: his sweetened, animated, data-filled life force.

' It is well worth my time,' Werck chided in an arrogantly formulated transmission. 'I am not suppressed by times woeful end symbiotic to your fleeting existence: this is far more an opportunistic endeavor than having ever helped one of your withering, wasteful species.'

Lifting into the overgrowth quickly and surgically slicing away, not to hit or graze the L33r model. Overhead, a few cargo ships drifted quietly and heavily by, casting down searchlights for downed craft, scraps, and supplies, everything up to and including expendable current slavebots.

The ships passed overhead. Robert sneered at the remark and demanded that [D]oil shut off any operational lights. Wandering off, awaiting the morning light, they stood beyond the weeping sweeps of chalky night light.

Twin moons slowly sailed away overhead as darkness crept across the unregistered vale. Elevated high beyond, the twin moon rocks stretched out through the illusion of a distant galaxy. Nott's Nebula filled the scattered, dappled diamond skies. Distantly, the cargo ships waned from spotlighting and went pianissimo.

Werck continued laboring away at the L33r beneath the bowing giant Weeping Tree. Gently rapping on her, carefully poking at her, dutifully prodding here and polishing what he could there, he finally plugged it within. This took away the remainder of the night: attempting to fix her. All but the marred right-side display was once again effectively proper. Furthermore, he picked up the area he littered, gathered his tools, and sat down at the base of the Weeping Tree, recalling his records from two weeks prior up to and including the events that unfolded this evening. Then, wipe them all! Except for this one. Except for her...

Time passed on.

Twin suns rose from the east beyond the brow of a distant mountain chain, climbing their snowcapped peaks high towards the morning orange sky. This ophidian Spine called Prominence Piques was legendary.

Casting off the nightly hue, the jungle air began to cool as warmth pushed through. [D]oil, along with Robert, had continued searching for the shipwreck somewhere further inside that had left quite a relevant wake of destruction to follow to its finish. Finding any other unsuspecting treasures fate may thrust upon them was an added and welcome bonus.

Robert was not short on complaints as he and [D]oil eventually wandered off. The jungle was in such disarray that it quickly swallowed them up.

Werck spent that night and part of the following morning clearing off bits of debris and cleaning up the rest of the L33r model bot. He checked her vital components against his and her circuitry juxtaposition. All things were operational.

Nothing had ever become of the other two that further ventured into the jungle that evening: neither [D]oil nor Robert Bott had heard from them since. They crossed his mind at any point or time.

Later that night, he would make contact with the L33r. Still, for now, he allowed his systems to move into a conscious scan followed by defragmentation, hosting the whimsical feed of the two of them becoming fast friends before setting his memory banks from isolationism to hibernation.

In the following years, the connection with her led to this whimsical awareness of a fast friendship, and she would soon become host to an unending endeavor. After helping her out of death, the Great Without, before shutting down, Werck could not help but process the query, What if?