Sentient

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

I wondered whether the Bots could hear the shouts of the humans who’d been captured on their ships as they blasted through our atmosphere.

Probably not.

Another ship had landed in Seattle yesterday. The evacuees were still arriving in our small Montana town, and the stories they told were the stuff of nightmares.

Would they come this far?

Living in the middle of nowhere had its perks during the War - but now our enemies weren’t human. They might use different tactics.

“Sufferin’ for the sins of our fathers is the oldest story in the book.”

The gruff voice came from the tree stump to my right.

His worn-out hat leaned a little to the side, heavy from the weight of sweat and dirt.

“Alright, Preacher,” said a voice from the gathered crowd, “we don’t need your lectures right now. The Bots might come for us tomorrow, but tonight - we’ve got plenty of whiskey and a whole lotta stew in the pot. Let’s leave the heavy stuff for another day.”

Preacher stood up, dusted off the front of his jeans, and walked away from the camp.

His young antagonist smiled, took center stage, lifted his small tin cup into the air, and gave a toast, “To surviving another month in this God-forsaken world.”

Our makeshift village immediately erupted with the sounds of life.

Fiddles and drums played, and the rest of the group got off their logs to dance to the music.

What a bunch of fools.

Our mountain woods gifted us with anonymity. It was arrogant to announce ourselves with tall fires, bright lights, and loud noises.

We were begging to be noticed.

Our lot was worn out from the first fight. Tired of worrying about our inevitable ends. It was hard enough to stay alive when the enemy was other people. How could we possibly hope to fight off the new arrivals when our own Sentient had been destroyed?

The progress of civilization screeched to a halt as quickly as it had crept up in the first place.

Manufactured sentience had given the Controllers too much power. We’d wrecked their processors to give the Rebellion a fair shake. The war was easy to win after that.

While the machines and computers on Earth had all been severed from their link to the Sentient - those we’d sent into space survived. They’d made their own sort of Sentient - and it was one we couldn’t control.

And now, the technology we built to explore the cosmos had placed its crosshairs squarely in the center of its creators, who’d been weakened by civil strife.

The refugees said the Bots didn’t kill anyone.

They just took ‘em somewhere in their ships.

I’m not sure which was worse.

Shivers ran up and down my spine at the thought, and I couldn’t stomach the festivities. I decided to follow Preacher into the forest. Full of melancholy or not, he seemed like better company than these drunkards.

He was leaning against a tree when I finally found him. His hands turned toward beams of moonlight slicing their way through the canopy of the pines. I regretted searching for him now. It felt like I was invading something private, but as I turned away - a branch broke beneath my foot.

“Hey you,” he called out.

“Hey,” I replied.

“You joinin’ me?”

I hesitated. Join him in what exactly?

Slowly, I walked toward his tree and claimed one of my own nearby. The bark poked into the thin wool fabric of my dress. But somehow, I found comfort in the feeling.

“You’re missin’ all the fun,” he said. I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. So I didn’t reply.

He grabbed his pipe from the pocket of his shirt. It was fancy. Not like the makeshift ones the other men whittled out of fallen tree limbs. His was made from something special. Like bone, maybe.

It was white, shiny, and carved with some design that I couldn’t make sense of. I liked it. We didn’t see many pretty things out here anymore.

His hands searched for his tinder box, then shook clumsily as he struck flint and steel to light whatever he’d put inside the old relic.

After a long, deep inhalation, he put his head up toward the night sky. After a few good puffs, he sat in silence. I knew it was up to me to move things forward, but I still didn’t know what to say.

Preacher was full of wisdom, and I had so little. I was afraid of sounding like an idiot - and didn’t even know what I hoped to gain from talking to him. He just made me feel safe. In the world of chaos around us, every man was out for himself. Preacher felt like a remnant of the old world. He’d been around before the war. He’d lived with all that comfort and safety. All that food and freedom.

“We’re the Titans,” he said with a start.

He looked in my eyes, “The Olympians have come to throw us all into Tartarus.”

I had no idea what he was talkin’ about.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“It’s Hell, honey,” he answered, “And that’s what’s so funny. The Bots don’t know we’ve been stuck in this abyss for eons already. There’s nowhere they can send us that’s more painful than the place we’re already livin’. So I ain’t scared of ‘em.”

I let his words sink in.

“You shouldn’t be neither.”