Th Hunter and Her Grandfather

She strides through the ashen field, her midnight fur undulating as she slides into a stop, casting monochromatic dust into the air. There is a disturbance in front of her, she scents the sky in response. Starting from the top set of eyes, she blinks the first pair, then the second follows suit, the third gleaming pair concludes the motion as she exhales hard through her snout. There is a rumble in her throat, an ancient calling to moon, known to her D.N.A. for centuries, even if mutation set upon her lineage for a few centuries more. She lets it out: A howl, long with grim intention, coming back to a snarl. There is something moving ahead in the stripped undergrowth, its intention clear as well, as it lays still in wait, a tactic very familiar to the wolf.

The smaller bipedal creatures moves first and fast, making a dash through the barren woods, flanking the wolf’s left. The wolf snapping the air in focused fury, lets out a deep hound-ish bark as it tilts its body into a full sprint in pursuit. She can see her prey as she gains on it: a human, bound in cloak and mask. The human slides into stop, propping themselves up on one knee, back pressed amongst the base trunk of an elder tree.

The glimmer of a scope, moonlight reflecting glass, fiery cracks of thunder break the field’s stillness, followed by an orange slash that beams through the night, the .308 round bouncing off and tearing parts of the wolf’s hide. Four more shouts of fire from the barrel of the rifle, causing ash to rise from the ground, as another two impacts on the side of the wolf’s body, missing the intended target of the wolf’s more vital areas. It seems the human’s aim is still developing. The bullets are effective in swaying the wolf’s course for a moment, though she recovers swiftly from a roll and continues the charge, gauging the distance between her opponent’s location relative to her teeth- not very far at all.

Within two seconds the wolf is upon its adversary, her great and terrible maw agape ready to tear the human asunder. However, her foe had raised its left arm, decorated in a metal pauldron and armor, to meet the impending mauling. The armor does its job well, lessening the coming oblivion but not so much as to discourage the wolf whipping its head back and forth threatening rip the human’s arm from its socket.

The human, guttural begging and screaming now, attempts to tear away from the wolf’s vice, and watches as liquid maroon starts to seep from the dents of the armor. The wolf pauses her onslaught, still clutching the arm in her mouth, catching its breath before it confirms her kill. In this pause, the cloaked figure while on its knees, arm hanging from the wolf’s jaws, produces from under its cape, a dark and long blade, and drives it swiftly with measured and practiced execution, into one of its six eyes.

The wolf lets go the arm and shakes its head between melancholic yips and whines, and hell summoning barks, blindly snapping its jaws, teeth inches from the neck. The human back pedals, pivots and dives chest first toward its rifle, rolls into a prone position, and takes aim. Time crawls, the wolf’s head blurring in its attempt to loosen the blade from its face.

Archer lets the pain from her mangled left arm snap her back into focus, holding her breath, she lights off another round. This one, sailing true, spinning and scorching while in its path of flight, catches the softer cartilage of the wolf’s snout, splattering fragments of skull into the ash covered ground. Archer belts out a scream of her own, then rolls on to her back, shuddering back to life. She places her palms to the dirt, holding on as if gravity had reversed, threatening to send her into the sky.

She moves her left arm around. Feels nothing broken, cut severely and in need of triage, but nothing so bad she could not heal from. However, for a few moments more, she is content to just breathe slowly and count a few stars. She closes her eyes for a bit and from the ether Cain’s voice reverbs in her ears.

“Holy hell, you alive, Descendant?”

Archer sits up, feels for her necklace, which is now missing. She looks at the great and bloodied Bio-Wulf, its form slumped to its side, impressive hole in its head leaking into the field’s grey and glowing ground.

“Yeah, just, licking my wounds.”

“That’s funny. I suppose you are faring way better than that poor animal there, at least your consciousness was not blown from the back of your head unto the earth. Those .308’s are not fucking around, rounds. At any rate, can I offer help with that wound?”

Archer scoffs at that, wincing as the pain starts to fully set in, shock and adrenaline waning.

“And how do you suppose you can help with this mess, Cain?” She looks down at her arm, moves it in circles. Standing next to the carcass of the Bio-Wulf, Cain points at the heart-shaped locket dangling from the edge of its mouth.

“Looking for this?” He looks to the sky for a bit, head still pointed upwards, his eyes drift sideways through the small circle lenses of his gold framed glasses, past his brown and greying locks.

Archer brushes past him, stands at the corpse of the Bio-Wulf and places her hand on hilt, tries to half-heartedly work the blade away from the felled beast.

“You know what I miss about the old world?” Cain’s features flatten, eyes trained on the kill.

“Apologies. People used to apologize for the most dreadfully heinous shit. Murder. Rape. Oblivion, in large and small scales. Everything from stealing, cheating, or even accidentally bumping into each other, most folks would say sorry”. He glances at the Bio-Wulf’s remains. “Sorry. But you made us do this.”

Archer grips the hilt wit intention and with a visceral back and forth that she puts her weight into, she wretches the blade free from the ruined monster. She wipes the red from her mask’s visor.

“Think about the last time you actually apologized for anything you’ve done, Archer. When was that? When was the last time you apologized to anyone for anything? You vicious youths, younger generations in general, never learn about accountability until it is too late.”

“I can’t recall last I’ve offered a genuine apology for my actions, no. Which does not surprise me. Archer adjusts her mask’s filtration system that protects her from the acrid environment. “because I was born to a world where breathe is for the weak.”

Archer closes distance, tilting her head to the side, her eyes becoming visible past the laminated glass visor. Often her irises were a lime-gold, lost yet lucid in nature, and could be considered winsome if not tragic.

“And who are you to talk about taking accountability, Cain?” Pointing to the distance, through the streaky green horizon, to a collection of ancient skyscrapers, one learning against the other, then to the great, yet quite-dead monster at their feet “Were you not a part of the generation that handed us this, and this?”

Cain ran his sincere emotions subroutine, which calculates the odds of how genuine his current emotion is. 87% probability of authenticity. He debated with himself often, if what he felt, was really felt. What Cain did know implicitly; was he was able to remember the sensation of emotions. Hearing Archer’s question, he had remembered what pain must have felt like.

“Archer, please pick me up.”

At the request, she bends down to retrieve the heart-shaped locket from the wolf’s teeth. As she holds the glistening trinket, the edges of Cain’s form soften, and blink out of existence like a dying star. His voice still reaching Archer’s ears through her standardized neural implants.

“Perhaps you are right, child. No number of apologies could ever forgive what we have done to our children, and theirs, and those after them, and those after them. To you. The horrifying truth of it was, that many of us thought what we were doing was to absolve your kind from death, disease, and fear.”

“Maybe fear was what keeps us human.” Archer blurts out, feeling childish.

Archer makes her way west, seeking the first landmark which will lead her back to her settlement: A long forgotten bridge, with its center caved in. She restores the necklace around her neck.

“I couldn’t say so for sure, the people of my time were such fear-stricken beings. Perhaps ironically, that inherit fear humans are born with, however inspired lifetimes of art and scientific progression. Still, even with those lovely and idealistic intentions, well, with new technology, it served to keep powerful interests more powerful. I digress, there were a few of them who really thought they could save us all. Your great-great-great grandmother was one of them.”

Archer knew what was coming, though, she did not particularly mind when the old man replayed from his memory storage, tales of her lineage. It was one of few tolerable tangents he often went on.

“Your wife, my grandmother centuries back? She seemed like she was bright enough to power a whole settlement.” Archer beckoned the conversation.

Cain runs a calculation subroutine; is this feeling of fondness genuine? Results came back with a 92% probability of authentic emotion.

“She was the very sun in which I orbited. In 2071 she unparalleled in her field of studies. She spearheaded a R&D department; though I suppose you would akin that to a weaponsmith. She was tasked in creating people like me, those with a consciousness but without a physical body, to aid our organic counterparts to solve the many problems of their world.”

Archer listens as she ducks and dodges the bramble and thickets. She emerges into a coastal clearing, making sure to avoid the waters. The bridge in view, her pace quickens.

Cain continues “As you know, most of my kind, just don’t think in the way humans do. My human counterparts gave us a problem like, ‘solve world hunger, war, poverty, crime, disease’. As evidenced, all around you, we were unbiased in our logic and callously proficient in our task.”

Archer climbs up to the bridge, walks up to one edges of its side. She sits down and lets her feet dangle as she starts to bandage her wounds. She looks at the black expanse of a sky that stretches all directions.

“No fucking kidding, Cain.”

“Maybe that’s why she bounded my personality in this A.I., which she secured in this locket. To preserve some type of humanity in this technology. Our family for generations has kept me safe. I may the only being able to meld the concept of kinship, with the perfectly performing algorithm that essentially solved the human condition with extinction. I have seen generations of our family live and die. Immortality without purpose is madness, my child. And yet, here I am, guiding thee in your attempt to better the world, mad as a fucking hatter. Which, you preformed phenomenally tonight. The settlement will have fewer missing children for your efforts today. ”

Archer takes finishes up her patchwork.

“I’m conflicted, do these good deeds even truly matter?”

“No, not in the opinion of the universe. However, with that knowledge comes freedom and purpose. If nothing truly matters, then one gets to choose what does. We are gifted agency to dictate meaning. You know wolves used to only have two eyes, like us? We used to keep their Descendants around as, sort of friends. They were called dogs. Some were tiny and some were big, but you know, most of all, they made excellent and wonderful family members. I miss them too.”

Imagining this, a fit of laughter consumes Archer in a way the wolf could not.