It Was All They Knew

By the year 2XXX, the land was smoke and fire.

Buildings stood empty, crumbling slowly to the ground. Streets were littered with debris and scarred by battle. Weeds sprouted through the cracks in the rubble before being choked in the air. This was no longer a world for the living.

Distant explosions could be heard through the silence, as could the crackling of a fire that couldn’t immediately be seen.

From above, the world seemed grey and black, drained of colour and life. Then there was a light electric humming sound: a drone spinning freely through the thick smog, cutting it aside, searching for something. Always searching.

A distant explosion lit up the sky and sent a building crumbling to the floor, and as it landed a cockroach scurried loose and dove back in the shadows. The spinning drone appeared more clearly for just a moment, passing just in front of an old tattered flag, the colours of which could only just be distinguished. The flag had lost all meaning, but as buildings around it fell and the air grew darker, it continued to flutter through it all. It could not be stopped.

On the drone the letters of an ancient language could just about be seen on its side, but these, like the flag, had long lost all meaning, and it vanished entirely as the sky dimmed and returned back to darkness.

As the explosion passed, a light clapping sound took its place, quietly in the distance at first but building slowly. The humming drone with the ancient letters returned, lingering, searching, aware of a presence but unable to pick it up with its failing sensors.

The light clapping grew in to something resembling the beating of a drum, and odd little pieces of rubble dropped and shook as it grew louder and louder. The drone spun in the direction of the noise and waited, humming, spinning in tiny circles to keep the smog from filling up its ventilation systems.

Louder and louder, until eventually, appearing around a corner, they could be seen: a row of machines marching, their bodies rattling, their legs shaking, their marching perfectly in rhythm, perfectly in unison to hide their numbers. Round yellow orbs pierced the smog, some flickering, but most solid, like spotlights in the night. Against the sides of these machines were more ancient letters.

One of the machines raised a hand, and the marching came to a stop. The yellow orbs all pointed up at the humming drone, which was still spinning in tiny circles in the sky, trapped in the light. It had no where to go.

The row of machines lifted automatic rifles and began broadcasting the same message they always played: even after all these years, even though their speaker systems were tinny and distorted, even though the words themselves had lost all meaning and there was no one around to hear them, and as the message played they filled the sky with fire.

The spinning and humming drone didn’t stand a chance. Nothing did. It fell in shards of burning metal.

As it fell, the firing continued. The machines weren't programmed to show mercy.

When the drone was nothing but dust, the machines lowered their rifles. The sky was once again empty, returned to unbroken and endless black smog. But their spotlights lingered a moment on the solitary tattered flag that they were programmed to protect, and their distorted message continued. It was all they knew:

“Leave, leave, leave!”

The words had lost all meaning, but the message continued playing as the machines marched on.

"Leave, leave, leave!"

Up and down. Forever.

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