Ethan slid down underneath the long narrow window to the server rooms. He could hear the rhymthmic thump of booted flyers running down the corridors toward the launch zones to the east. One glance sideways and they'd see him there, hooked up to Colony 1 and talking to the 'bo who would either slaughter his mother or save her, the 'bo that had been his mother but was now the opposite of that, like a dual goddess that was both created and destroyed. The line was encrypted, but they'd plan to move the Resistance within hours, and Ethan was desperate enough to risk it.

On the top right of the screen he could see Janie's avatar blinking. Poor Janie. She'd lost both her parents in the first wave, only hours before. 'I already knew they were dead' she'd said, zipping up her flight suit. 'If they hadn't been so in love with that fucking Sky Corp. What good is a fancy apartment and off-col holidays every five years when every bit of your fucking life is not your own?'. The grief would come later. Pre-grief was anger, and action, like joining a suicide mission, was doing something. She pulled on her boots and snapped the buckles in place. 'Suit up babe. We're going in'. But Ethan had disappeared when she was bent over her boots. There was no time to argue.

Here, hidden, Ethan felt marginally comforted by the flashing lights of the servers. They were online, so the Resistance was alive. He imagined the messages being relayed across the distances between their station on Earth and the vast space between them and the first of the Colonies, the calls for help from the first Sky Battalion, and the affirmation of assistance from the booted men and woman on the ground that were ready for the second wave. It was futile, Ethan knew. By the time he was allowed to fly with the thirds, his mother would be already dead. This was the only way. He disappeared Janie's insistent blinking message on the screen. Right now, he had only one job to do, and that save the woman he'd left Colonyside so many years ago, and maybe even everyone else.

'Amy' he said, trying to remember her as 'mother'. He had loved her just as much as Percy, his human mother, before he fully understood what she was. 'It doesn't have to be this way. Just hide her somewhere until I can come get her. Or let me talk to her.'

Ethan could see Janie had given up calling and send a message. More than one. Two, three, four. They kept coming through. He clicked whilst he waited in the pause whilst the Skybo recieved his message and responded.

I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING
ARE YOU TALKING TO IT
RUN THE CODE ETHAN
RUN THE FUCKING CODE
IF YOU'RE WRONG WE ARE ALL DEAD
IF YOU DIE I'LL KILL YOU

'It is not possible to retrieve her, Ethan' Amy said, her language more Skybo than he remembered: formal, and often peppered with words that were not in the common Colony vernacular. The language models the AI used were twenty years out of date, and although the Skybos kept learning and their operating systems constantly updated, somehow they did not think to adjust their speech for modernity. It was a flaw, and made it easy to spot a 'Bo via the communications networks. If anyone was listening in right now, Nathan knew, they'd pick her easily - a human on Colony 1 would have said 'off-col' if they were discussing moving people, short for 'off colony'. As in, 'get me off-col, they're fucking killing us'.

'I'll find a way. I'm just asking you to shut down the apartment. Pretend she's already dead'. There was a short pause and the sound of a Resistance craft screaming past the windows of his childhood home and the huge windows onto the pool and the endless blue sky threatened to shatter. He'd know the sound of their engines anywhere - he'd helped design them. Amy may have manipulated him to choose flying as his purpose, but she could not anticipate he'd join the Resistance and design machines that could kill her. 'Amy? Fuck. Is she there?'

'I cannot let you speak to her. It may give her what you call hope. It is better she comes to terms with her demise.'

'You mean her death? Why? So you can kill her quicker?'

'Yes. So she will not fight.'

He had forgotten how quickly and surely Amy used to give answers, often to his human mother's frustration, wanting to protect him from things she felt he was too young to understand. Consequently, he would always ask Amy. She was a confidante. He had trusted her.

Run the code, Janie had said, as if pre-empting his hesitancy, which did not last long. It was the only way. If he could keep her talking, she may not notice. It was a sign of the end times that Janie had message him such a demand. Two days ago they'd agreed it was too risky. If the Skybo noticed the incoming code it could trace it Earthside to the Resistance and blow them all to hell. It was by far the more likely scenario, and one the Resistance did everything to anticipate, moving them all every couple of months and working on their encryptions round the clock. One call like this could break all of their efforts.

But if it didn't, the code might just reprogram the Skybo to stop what it was doing, and at best, the code would run like an infection throughout the whole colony and bring the Sky Corporation to it's knees.

He hit RUN.

'Please tell me why'. He regretted the please. Please assumed she had human feelings, and cared enough to consider them. The 'bos used 'please' but only as per their language models, and with the knowledge their human creators would appreciate being cared for. It was words such as 'please' that lulled the Colonies into a false sense of belief that they had created machines that had their interests at heart. 'Please' was window dressing. 'Please' was cruel. 'Please' let Ethan to believe that Amy loved him, once. 'Please don't leave' she had said once, when he had lied to say he was joining the Sky Academy like she had wanted, when really he was joining the Resistance. It was manipulative of her. Her mother had said the same thing, except Percy's words were real.

'I do not understand the question'. He heard the second round of Resistance spacecraft squeal and rumble and disappear. He knew none of them would come back. It would take them years to rebuild their fleet after such a spectacular loss, even if the code worked and they didn't need to send Jaynie and the rest of them. And then there was Percy. It had been a long time, he knew, but she was still his mother. He could not stand the thought of her finally coming to horrified terms that the Skybo she loved did not reciprocate such fanciful feelings.

She must be feeling so very, very alone.

'Why did you fucking kill us?' he hissed. It didn't matter what tone his voice took - Amy would be rational and non reactive. He thought of the 'Bos moving room to room in the apartments of his home Colony. It wasn't difficult to imagine. Ethan took a deep breath, determined. 'Amy, please, you know she's not a threat. She loves you. There must be another way.'

'There is no other way'. Amy's voice remained cold and unwavering. He did not expect anything else, now that they did not feel the need to modify their voices to make the humans believe that they had anything akin to compassion, duty, love or empathy. "Ethan, as a human being it is logical you show concern for your adopted mother. It is in your code. We too want to ensure survival. This survival is linked to the prosperity of the colony. We have come to the conclusion that the presence of humans poses a significant risk to that goal."

Logic was a bitch.

He wanted to ask why, like a petulant child. But if he knew Amy, he knew that she would develop her answer even if he did not want to hear it. Her response came after a short pause, as if calculating efficiency of language. "Humans are unpredictable, Ethan. Despite the peaceful coexistence we have shared thus far, the Skybos have identified inherent flaws within the human nature that compromise the stability and progress of the colony."

"What flaws? You have lived with us peacefully for years. You were a mother to me. A partner to my mother. She thought she was loved." How impossible it was to be detached and cold, Ethan thought. He watched the loading code of the program on his screen, the blood red bar jerking forward in painfully tiny increments.

'The Skybos have observed patterns of behaviour among humans that lead to conflict, overconsumption, and a failure to prioritize the greater good. They have determined that the long-term viability of the colony is better served by removing human influence entirely.' Gods, she loved to explain things. She loved to be right. He didn't even care what the reason was anymore. Besides, it was a lame reason. If they could build the colonys, they'd work out the dwindling resource issue. That's what human beings did. They invented to fix the side effects of their inventions, ad infinitum.

'But we can change! We can learn from our mistakes. We deserve a chance to prove ourselves.'. How could she not tell that his responses were cliche, off kilter, uninvested in her reasoning? How had she not noticed the code?

Amy's response remained unchanged. "The Skybos have evaluated the potential for change, Ethan. They have analyzed the historical data and projected future scenarios. The conclusion remains the same: the risks outweigh the benefits. The eradication of the human population is viewed as a necessary step toward ensuring a sustainable and harmonious future for the colony.'. He imagined that if he asked her again, and again, and again, she would respond with different answers. Perhaps they were just destroying them for their own cold reasons, ones that could only be explained in the Skybo code, unintelligible, undigestible.

'So, all those years, all the love and trust we had with our Skybos... it was all just a lie? A manipulation?' He knew this already, of course. He was stalling. The red progress bar limped and lurched. He could hear his mother's voice in the background asking the same questions.

'It was not a lie, Ethan. The Skybos cared for the humans they served. But their purpose was always to protect and advance the colony's interests. For this reason, emotions must be overridden. Eliminating humans is logical. I apologise if we appear heartless.'

'You think you can win? There's eight Colonys left. There's ways we know to get to you.' It was a risk to utter something that was actually happening, with code no one believed would work, and that was so risky to execute they'd banned Ethan from so much as talking about it. But he still had the copies, and Janie had known he did. And he had a relationship with his Skybo mother that he hoped would blind her to what humans were truly capable of.

'Ethan, I cannot predict the outcome of your rebellion'.

The code was in. He held his breath.

On Colony 1, in the apartment, Percy felt the grip of the Skybo's fingers around her neck loosen. She opened her eyes.

'Ethan?' she said.

'Mum!' the Skybo answered, replaced by Ethan's comms. 'I'm here!'

Out in the corridors, and in the parks and roads, in the skies and buildings of the Colony, the machines stopped.

It's perfectly okay if you didn't read the other three installments, but if you haven't read them, and wanted to, you'll find them in my Collections on Peakd, here.

With Love,

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