Light Path

The Dark Sun heralded a new week. New oppression. Farquar, named after some obscure princeling from more than three thousand years before, awoke on a Frigursdaeg morning with a sense of sadness at the routines that had overtaken its life. Farquar looked in the cracked remains of the holoscreen at its dirtied face. It really should shave, but then who could be bothered? It was not as if it had a reason to look its best. It splashed some water over its face and that was about it. Once dressed, the outside world called.

High above, what was left of the sun's glory peeked through the dense clouds. Farquar had read once that people actually wore special creams to protect themselves from something called sunburn. It believed none of it. Like a lot of things from “history”, you had to be careful what crap you swallowed. And today, Farquar was in no mood for crap.

Serving neo-tensile hits to dickhead Synths all day was not the ideal purpose in life. But it paid the bills. That was until Frigursdaeg. Farquar smiled at the lanky specimen that was its first customer. Once ensconced in her cubicle, she would be lost to reality for a number of hours. Farquar waited. The second, third and fourth clients arrived on time, as the synths always did. Farquar racked up a nice, round ten clients in the tanks. All stupendously out of touch with their own realities.

One data crystal was all it needed to. Farquar inserted the weapon into the central console which fed the chain of code into the business' system. For about a minute, Farquar wondered if something had gone wrong. The silence was deafening. The howls of panic and agony reassured it that everything was working just fine. The crystal uploaded and boosted the code into the synths. Their voices cracked with the agonies that they writhed with, but it was futile. Every one of them succumbed to the assault.

All Farquar had to do was wait.

Hell would be unleashed. A certain Roman general of dubious provenance's words seemed appropriate. Except Farquar was with the rebels, the barbarians. It would look down the line of light leading to freedom for its kind and for all organics.

Photo by roman raizen on Unsplash.