Home
Re-evolution
Copyright © 2005-2007 by Aster Rose - All rights reserved		 

Re-evolution
by Aster Rose
The planet of Narsiti (“red planet” in Narsinese) was dying. The crops would not grow. The water in the rivers had sunk into the earth and the meager amount of water left was barely enough to support the population. It was clear that Narsiti would have to be abandoned. So on the 822nd day of the 111th month of the Narsitian year everyone on the planet climbed into a giant mother-ship and left their home world forever. The ship was a silvery color and made of platinum. It was triangular in shape which made it easier to cut through the air and move faster. The spaceship floated in space for twenty years. Old generations died and new ones were produced. Finally a planet was sighted, The ship’s tools took an analysis of the planet’s atmosphere and found that it almost exactly matched the atmosphere on Narsiti. The Narsitians would be able to inhabit it.

A smaller spaceship within the mother-ship was sent pot with a party of twenty-five Narsitians to explore the planet. When they landed they found themselves in what appeared to be a small colony. There were houses at least. But all of them looked abandoned and the yards were unkempt and littered with weeds. The Narsitians teamed up into groups of five and began to explore the houses. Though there were signs that people could have lived in the houses once, there were no current inhabitants. The party covered there ship with leaves and dirt to hide it from prying eye. They spent the night in the houses. After packing up the next morning the party moved on. They found several more tiny colonies but none of them were inhabited. Perhaps a disease had struck this area? Or the whole planet? After two long weeks the explorers found a great city. And while examining this city, they would find out just what the inhabitants of this foreign planet really were.

The city as far as they could tell was abandoned too. Interestingly enough, it had all the characteristics of a modern city malls, stoplights, restaurants, cars. It was if the inhabitants had all died out right at the peak of the modern age. The menus in the restaurants served mostly oil and light energy. The Narsitians found this very strange because on Narsiti oil and light were fuels for mechanisms not human food. Though the creatures that had lived on this planet or still did were not necessarily human. All the stores in the malls were hardware stores. This planet seemed very alien and strange. The scientists were inspecting a trashcan to see what waste the inhabitants made when suddenly they heard a beeping noise. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! The beeping was steady like a heart beating. According to the timer on one of the Narsitian’s watch there was exactly 2.5 seconds between each beep. The party cautiously moved towards the beeping noise. Suddenly something turned the corner. The party all gasped.

Standing there was a robot. It was all shiny metal with jointed arms and legs. Without any warning at all the robot’s head swiveled 180°. It stared straight at them. The robot had no facial feature except eyes. The rest of its face was like a blank silver metallic canvas. It eyes began to glow red. “Threatening Life Form. Located. Terminate,” said the mouthless robot in a voice that never changed its tone. Lasers began to shoot from its red eyes. The laser struck a man and he fell to the ground clutching his chest with cold hands. His eyes stared upward in horror. He did not move. The party whipped out there guns and began to shoot the robot. The robot’s metal fingers retracted revealing giant guns. It began to shoot mercilessly. The Narsitian’s bullets could not pierce the robots metal shell. The bullets just bounced right off. One man was killed by his own bullet, which bounced off and hit him in the chest killing him almost immediately. The party tried everything. They all shot at once raining bullets down on the robot. They shot with the eighteen bazookas they had brought with them. Nothing worked. Even throwing the robots own bullets at it. It was all a mess of dead bodies, stray bullets, screaming, the robot’s constant “Terminate.”, the smell of blood. Through all this clamor finally someone shouted “Retreat!” The robot followed them to the edge of the city. Then it stopped shooting and returned to the depths of the place whence it had came. The Narsitians journeyed back to the first colony they had found. They re-examined the houses again and dwelled in them for a few weeks. Here they found a crucial piece of evidence.

Eoainiaiai
was walking down the stairs in one of the colony houses. She was an eighteen year old brunette youth with dancing hazel eyes. She was one of the youngest scientists on the expedition but she was also one of the most advanced. Having immersed herself in science since she was seven she had read almost every book ever written about space and quantum and rocks and DNA and RNA…The list goes on forever. Suddenly one of the wooden boards that made up the step flipped up and sent her sprawling to the bottom of the stairs. Luckily she was not hurt. Eoainiaiai walked back up the stairs to wear the loose board was. She pulled it up farther and saw something in the dark gloom. She reached in her hand and after moving it around for awhile found the thing she had seen. She pulled it out. It was a piece of paper. The writing was printed in neat small handwriting but the language it was written in was not Narsinese. Eoainiaiai showed her discovery to the rest of the party. After searching the other houses an alphabet guide was found. After figuring out that their alphabet was actually quite similar to this new one they were able to translate the document. It reads as follows:

We were created from the lower ones. The savage animal creatures that walk on all fours and eat each other. It is rather embarrassing to say but it is true. Some of the animal creatures figured out that wearing wood on their bodies protected them. This of course was a wonderful discovery since this made them more likely to survive and reproduce. Centuries later the animal creatures that are our creators discovered the iron in the ground. This made even more effective armor. Our kind became superior to all others. As soon as a baby was born it was given armor. For a long time you had to change armor regularly since armor would become to small for you. But as evolution took its course the new generations began to be born with armor which grew with them. Eventually after millions of years of living in armor the body inside rotted away being no longer needed. We had now developed into metal beings. We began to walk upright instead of on all fours. Then we perfected our bodies. We made ourselves invincible. Since we were completely made of iron we could no longer reproduce. However there was such a large population of us that this did not matter. We built a civilization for ourselves to inhabit. Thus our evolution. Today we are getting a new upgrade. Now we will be able to upgrade by ourselves and we will no longer need to be fueled. The Disc is being disposed of.

The party blinked. “Upgrades?” said Eoainiaiai. The rest of the group shrugged. Another search of the houses was taken to see if they could find anymore clues. Nothing else was found. The Narsitians returned to the mother-ship. Their party had been reduced to eighteen by the robot. Seven dead. They were greeted happily upon their arrival. The passengers aboard the ship were told of the robots and there evolution. Other scientists who had not gone on the expedition took more analysises on the two documents. Eoainiaiai kept away from this. She sat at her desk in her cabin chewing frantically on her pencil. She had to figure this out! The robots obviously had feelings once. But why were they not so now? She took the pencil out of her mouth and wrote:

How Could Robots Change?
A whole different set of robots took over and destroyed the robots who had feelings.
He feelings robots built the no feelings robots.
The robot who wrote the document really didn’t have any feelings and just wrote the document that way.
Upgrades????

Eoainiaiai sighed. What were upgrades anyway? They had no such word on Narsiti. She thought back to the document “Today we are getting a new upgrade. Now we will be able to upgrade by ourselves and we will no longer need to be fueled. The Disc is being disposed of.” The Disc?? Obviously an upgrade was some sort of change. Beside upgrades on her list she drew a slash then wrote “a change”. But what kind of change? Eoainiaiai looked at the word. Up-grades. Up, like “Up into space.” But grades? Grades were what you got when you were still in school. Getting better grades? What did that have to do with robots? Grades. Good grades meant that you worked better and more efficiently. Up-grades. With sudden realization Eoainiaiai began to scribble furiously beside “a change” “in which a robot/person is made to work better and more efficiently.”

Eoainiaiai circled number four on her list. Something had happened with upgrades. Now what could have happened? The feelings robot had seemed almost human. What had turned them into that awful killing machine? She thought back to the document again. “The Disc is being disposed of.” A disc was a storage place for a program. Maybe the Disc was the storage place of the robot’s programming? If the robots have programming. Eoainiaiai wrote down the clues onto a sheet of paper. She closed her eyes and thought of all the pieces of the puzzle she had so far. “What if…” she thought.

Eoainiaiai rushed out of the cabin to the laboratory. There, she explained to the other scientists her theory. “I think upgrading is making a change in which a robot/person is able to work better and more efficiently. What if the next upgrade in the robot’s manuscript disposed of there feelings?! Without feelings they wouldn’t even think about killing something or getting hurt. Maybe this “Disc” wanted to destroy all other life forms on the planet so nothing would threaten the robots. That’s why there are no animals on the planet!” “There are plants,” said someone. “I guess they’re not considered threatening life forms. We had guns and we were intelligent life. So the robot tried to kill us,” explained Eoainiaiai. ”and somewhat succeeded,” muttered someone. “That is a very valid theory, Eoainiaiai,” said a wrinkled old man, the Head Scientist. Others nodded their heads in agreement. “Maybe,” someone mused , “the robot only attacked because we had weaponry. Perhaps the robots are friendly and only become violent when they feel threatened.” A council was held to decide whether they should try to see if the robots were friendly or not. They finally decided to send a party of thirty unarmed people to the city. Two days after this decision was made a small spaceship was sent to the planet. It did not return for a week. Worried about the people, another spaceship was sent out to see what had happened to them. Only one person was found. His clothes were torn and bloodstained and he suffered from a fatal bullet wound is his arm. He was able to tell the scientists that the robots had murdered the rest of the party. He did not live through the night. A massacre. These robots were definitely not friendly. And one hundred and seven people had died in the past four months because of it. After the massacre the Narsitians never left the mother-ship. No more explorers were sent to the robot populated planet. The mother-ship revolved around the planet.

Ten years past. Eoainiaiai got married to Zexinavileasai, a fellow scientist, three years after the finding of the planet. She was twenty-one. Zexinavileasai was a dark black-haired youth with a deep base voice. Eoainiaiai wore a lime green wedding dress and her love Zexinavileasai wore a formal white tuxedo. The priest marries a couple by singing a song about the joining together of a man and a woman. In most cases. Some are about the joining together of two people. The song goes as follows:

Love is love
And roses are roses
And when I proclaim you
Man and wife
You are to be joined together forever
If one says I do
And the other the same
Life will be happy
And joyous too
Small children asleep in their arms
As they are rocked to sleep
The thrill of a kiss
To wonderful to describe
Will thou take the vows
To be kind
And respect others wishes
To love one another as you do your own mother
To stay together in times of need
To share the money you make
And not desert one another and be alone….etc.
Then all the people there dance and eat cake to wear off the boringness of the priest’s song. Then instead of kissing, the couple must hold a burning coal between them for a period of five minutes. If they are able to do this then their marriage will be strong and happy. If one or both of the people let go of the coal then their marriage will be weak and one or both of the couple may cheat on each other. Some people even call off their marriages if this happens. However being scientists and having gotten burned all the time, this particular couple was able to hold the burning coal for the allotted amount of time. Thus they were married. Eoainiaiai and her husband moved into a much larger suite where there was room for both of them. Life was good for them and they had obviously been a perfect couple. They were happy together.

Scientists spent their time analyzing the space and stars around them having nothing else to do. Everyone else lazed around, bored because they were stuck in a ship revolving around a foreign planet. Only the few people who actually worked on the ship did something useful everyday. People read and played on computers and took walks in the technology simulated holographic nature park. The few people who had brought pets along played with them. Everyone wanted something else to do.

In the tenth year after the Merciless Massacre (as it came to be known as) had happened the food supply on the spaceship began to run out. You had to wait in a line for hours on end, just to get a ladle-full of soup or a miniscule chunk of meat. People started to die. Obviously food had to be found. And soon. But where? The only place was the planet. But killer robots inhabited it! There were huge debates about it but finally it was decided that food had to be found and the planet was the only place where it was as far as they knew of. A small group of hunters were sent down to the planet equipped with guns to shoot down meat. This party never returned. Another was sent out. Its crew met the same fate as the last. By this time nearly ten thousand people had died from starvation. The robots had to be stopped. But how? It was decided that a group of five people and an army would be sent to the planet to some how destroy thee robots. If this failed they would give themselves up to the robots. The choosing of the elite five was to be made by the head scientist.

A huge crowd (consisting of everyone on the ship) was gathered around a giant pedestal on which stood the Head Scientist. “The first person I choose is………….Eoainiaiai!” he said. Eoainiaiai gasped in surprise and pleasure. This was even more an honor than getting the Quasar Award for her robot theory. She began to walk forward. Suddenly there was a horrible grating noise. The security guards rushed out of the room. Crashes were heard as well as moans and screams. “Terminate. Terminate.” The robots entered the room and began killing everything in sight. Shot innocent people running to the shelters deep within the center of the ship. Decapitated helpless, crying babies that had fallen forgotten to the floor. Killed mothers with lasers and did the same to the children that fell down crying on their mothers’ bodies. Anyone who could use a weapon used one now. Shooting at the merciless menace robots and dodging whizzing bullets and lasers. The floor was covered in blood and lifeless bodies.

And then some of the robots began to attack the Head Scientist. Eoainiaiai leapt to his defense fending off the robots to save the old man. But there was only so much she could do against thousands of invincible robots. Finally having stabbed and shot the old man many times they moved on to their next victims. The Head Scientist lay on the marble floor just alive, He croaked, “Make sure they still let you go as one of the five. It is…..” He choked violently , his body writhing in pain, then fell still. His eyes stared blankly upward his beard and clothes spattered with blood. Eoainiaiai wanted to stay and cry over the old man’s body but there were still robots to fight. The whole thing reminded her of a poem by a famous Narsitian poet Adsriartica Justyre
:

What is the opposite of light?
Dark
Yes, dark in the night
Doom, and gloom, and death
When one no longer hears life’s breath
A gunshot in the night and a scream
A horribly nightmarish dream
A mourning veil
Will good over evil prevail?
The reek of rotting flesh on bones
The bells ring their mourning tones
The taste of blood in your mouth
A snow-white bird shot while going south
A hand cold after death
Oh, where is the breath?
Where is the steady beating of the heart?
Will the pulse again start?
The Dark
The Dark
The horrid screaming
For all light and goodness is but us dreaming

Of course Adsriartica had been insane and had seen the world in that way. She eventually committed suicide when she was 25 with a knife after her twin brother had died in a motorcycle accident. But if the robots weren’t stopped all light and goodness would be but us dreaming. Finally the robots left and went back to their own spaceship. This was genocide. The robots were trying to wipe out all the Narsitians from existence. All the dead bodies were prepared and put in caskets. Since there was no place to bury them they let them drift off into space. They spent two years mourning for the dead. The travel to the planet, which they had decided to call Earth (Darkness in Narsinese) was called off.

Their whole plight seemed hopeless. Especially after the round saucer shaped robot spaceship began following the revolution of the Narsitian spaceship. Of the original 1,000,000,000 people on the ship only 198,000,000 remained. Over 500,000,000 had died of old age and many hundred million more from murder and suicide. The birth rate was lower than the death rate causing an extreme drop in population. The robots led to more attacks on the ship. Between both the attacks 500,000 people were killed. It was hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. With the food supply running out, at least 50,000 people died each week. A year passed. Then another and another. Then two more. So many people died that caskets weren’t even bothered with. They were just shoved out the door into empty space. The Narsitians were in serious danger. With little more than a hundred million people and thousands dying each day it was obvious they were to become extinct. At the beginning they had been so powerful and curious, ready to take on anything. But now they were weary and almost ready to give up and let their race slip from existence.

Eoainiaiai sat in the waiting room to take the monthly pregnancy test every matured woman had to take. She was lost in thought. Lately she had been having dreams about the Head Scientist’s death. His last words echoed through her head. “Make sure they still let you go as one of the five. It is…..” She wondered what he had wanted to say. But the expedition had been called off. Though….Eoainiaiai thought they still needed it. Yes the expedition must be re-organized she realized. Then her name was called and she had to go and get blood drawn and other such tests to see if she was pregnant. The doctor told her that the results would get back to her tomorrow. Eoainiaiai wandered into the bedroom part of her suite and lay down. She knew she had to bring back the expedition. But there were so few of them. Would it be worth it to waste hundreds on an army? Yes. If they succeeded there would be no more threats and if they didn’t they were all going to die anyway. She promised herself tomorrow she would go and visit the new Head Scientist about re-organizing the expedition.

The new Head Scientist was a balding brown-haired man with droopy eyelids that made him look older than he really was. He was constantly running his hands through his hair and his mouth seemed fixed in a frown. Eoainiaiai wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d never laughed in his life. His name was Quitico
. Eoainiaiai bowed before the man. “Sir I need to ask you something of great importance. Something that could be the difference between life and death for the Narsitians,” said Eoainiaiai. “Go on,” said Quitico in a regal voice. “I think that we should re-organize the expedition to go to Earth and destroy the robots,” said Eoainiaiai. Quitico went white as a sheet. “Destroy the robots? Impossible. Besides who would go on such a journey? What a preposterous idea!” “I would sir, for it was the old Head scientist’s wish that I go on the journey. And if it will save the Narsitians I think many others would go with me as well,” said Eoainiaiai. “It is a very far-fetched idea,” mused Quitico, “but I will call a meeting of the Council of Science to discuss it.” “Thank you sir,” said Eoainiaiai and waited for the Council to begin.

A circle of scientists sat around a long wooden table. At the head was Quitico and on his right sat Eoainiaiai. “Ahem…Ahem…hem…This young lady has proposed an expedition to Earth to destroy the robots. This Council was called to discuss this idea,” said Quitico. “We are going to starve if we don’t defeat the robots!” proclaimed Eoainiaiai. “True, true,….hmmmm…yes…but…maybe,” muttered the other scientists. “We will starve that much is true but do we want to sacrifice our people? And is it even possible to defeat the robots?” asked a blonde female scientist. “Yes. There is no such thing as something that is invincible. And if we fail everyone is going to die anyway,” said Eoainiaiai. The other scientists mumbled. “Let’s take a vote,” said Quitico. “All for the expedition?” All the scientists hands raised into the air. “Alright the expedition is on. Eoainiaiai will be the first of the five since she wa….” BANG!! The door swung open. A doctor rushed into the room. Pointing at Eoainiaiai she said breathlessly, “There you are I came to tell you your pregnant!” Quitico turned to Eoainiaiai eyes blazing, “Pregnant! You know that every baby is needed! We cannot let you go.” “I must. I won’t let the baby die. And if I fail, does it matter? We’ll all be dead by the time the year is out,” she said flatly. “True, we’ll let you go,” said Quitico. And so it was.

The other four people were chosen all strong and able bodied (Zexinavileasai among them) The trained with a small army of about twenty for back up. And finally it was time. They departed and landed on the outskirts of the city. They wore space suits like armor and helmets with mirrored visors. The robots were waiting for them. Minutes passed each army waiting for the other to shoot the first bullet. Finally an army volunteer who was young and impatient shot a bullet into the midst of the robots. The robots went into action shooting bullets and lasers. The humans shot bullet after bullet but none even left a dent on the robots metal covering. Zexinavileasai shot a bazooka at the robots. Suddenly one of the robots bullets came whizzing at him. He tried to duck, but too late. It him directly in the heart. He fell with a thud to the ground. Eoainiaiai saw. Saw his blank eyes staring no where. At the saliva trickling from the corner of his mouth his blood-stained space suit. But she only got a glance. For in war you never take your eyes off the enemy. Tears streamed down her face. But this was war. War is cruel. She shot the bullets one by one and ducked when they came whizzing her way. But finally one laser came her way to fast and she didn’t have time to duck. The tears streamed faster. She was going to die. And suddenly the laser was hurtling back towards the robot. It struck. The robot exploded into a thousand pieces. “What the…” Eoainiaiai murmured. She continued shooting. But it happened again and again. And finally she realized what it was. The mirrored visor on her helmet was reflecting the lasers. “THE MIRRORS ON THE HELMET REFLECT THE LASERS!!” she yelled. Everyone immediately lowered their heads so any laser would hit the visor. They blew up the robots in that army every single one. They had succeeded. They had done the impossible. Now Eoainiaiai understood why it was so important she went on the expedition.

She walked over to the remains of one of the robots and picked up a disc from the molten metal. “Must be its file,” she said and pocketed it. They returned to the ship. There Eoainiaiai gave Quitico the disc. “This could be very important information,” said Quitico. He called in what the scientists jokingly called a “computer geek”. He had bright red hair with the tips dyed purple. He slipped the disc into the disc drive. He typed in some strings of binary and then read the binary that appeared after he typed it. “This is eezee! All I have to do is deprogram this disc and it will have automatically shut down all the other robots,” he said. He deprogrammed the disc. Everyone in the room cheered. They were saved. They could live on the planet safely now. They landed the mother-ship on Earth and set themselves up in the already made civilizations. Eoainiaiai gave birth to twins. And as the phoenix is reborn again from the ash, a new world was born from the remains of an old one.

End of Story - Pick another one

But before you continue ... any comments, corrections, etc. for this story will be greatly appreciated by the author. Other than a name we can associate with this and future comments, all requested information is optional and simply helps us understand our readership demographics.
Your comments are kept private and will not appear on this or any other web site. Although we value your input, neither the author nor weirdwritings.com is obligated to respond to them in any way. If this feature gets abused, it will either be removed or user registration will be required in order to make comments. Thank you for your cooperation.

Your name (alias is OK): 
The following information is optional. If you have previously made comments using the above name you may skip this part.
Your age: 
Your gender:
Your location: 

Your comments: