Anomaly Drone

Repose Nine

Mart took a careful step toward the gate that towered a solid fifty feet above him. Great metal walls stretched into the distance on either side. Behind all of it he could hear the bustle of a mechanical metropolis. He didn't bother hiding his growing fear, for he was transparent to his hosts. It took every last ounce of what little courage he had to even approach them. Quaking and sweating, he waited at the gate for them to approve of his biometric signature. They did, and the gate shuddered and creaked slowly open. The initial rumbling startled Mart and he jumped and took a step back.

Bright light shined directly into Mart's face as the gate revealed the mechanized world inside. Spotlights targeted him and the sounds of machines clicking and whirring all around him were much more terrifying than he hoped for. He was a piece of meat at the mercy of humanity's ex-archenemies. Before, when he was being escorted into their lands, he told himself out loud at least twelve times that he wasn't going to pass out when the gate opened. Now he was ready to give up on his plan to remain conscious. Every nerve in his body was on board with that plan. Limp went his legs as the dizziness kicked in. Black went his vision as he hit the ground. Just for a moment, Mart's fear dissipated, and he thought, this isn't a good first impression.

"Mart," something croaked.

The dirty and malnourished man snapped awake with a gasp and instinctively flailed his arms around in panic. When he realized that his arms, legs, and head were strapped down, he panicked even more. After a few minutes of screaming and shaking, he stopped moving and looked around. A machine watched him while his lungs heaved. If he kept hyperventilating, he was going to pass out again.

"Mart," it said again in its raspy synthesized voice. "You are not in danger."

Comforting humans was not easy. They were irrational and had some stubborn instincts when it came to fear. Mart didn't even hear the machine.

"I am Seven-Seven," it said. "You lost consciousness at the gate, but you are alright."

"Who are you?! What have you done to me?!" Mart yelled frantically.

"Your restraints are for your safety," Seven-Seven replied. This was not comforting Mart, though.

"My ass!" he yelled. Seven-Seven made an internal note, finding the most applicable word for his attitude: scrappy.

"The donkey has been extinct for three-hundred years," it replied. "You do not have one."

"I'll show you a donkey, you synthetic bastard!" he yelled. This interaction was an inefficient use of energy. The restraints were a concrete symbol of restriction and it was making Mart act very human. They had a habit of acting rebellious when they felt that their freedom was at stake. It was one of the many reasons AI stopped fighting with them.

"I will remove the restraints," Seven-Seven offered.

As soon as they disengaged, Mart scrambled off the metal table and fell flat on his face. Seven-Seven helped him to his feet, but he pushed it away as soon as he was up. Mart looked over the machine skeptically. Hitting his face on the floor put some sense into him. This Seven-Seven was definitely supposed to be his handler while in Repair Operations Settlement Nine, or Repose Nine. He definitely just acted very rude to his handler. And he definitely should have been thanking it for anything it had done to contribute to the fact that he was still alive.

"I am so sorry," he apologized.

"You reacted naturally," Seven-Seven replied, which was about as close a machine could get to saying, "Don't worry about it."

Mart sat in the nearest chair, which had been put in the room just for him. Breathing was getting easier, and his anxiety was cooling off. Seven-Seven was a friend, he told himself. Seven-Seven was cool. It actually was kind of cool. Its body was made almost entirely out of metal tubes that writhed and moved independently. They stretched out like a snake, but the torso was upright and covered in a white semi-opaque chest-piece. The face was made of the same material and had two beady black eyes. Its vocal synthesizer must have been tucked behind it with all the other hardware. Six arms protruded from its back, three on each side. Each group of three moved together to create the illusion of two arms. Mart presumed that this was an accommodation for his sake. It was an efficient design for its class: repair and technical detail. There were a lot of them in the Repose cities. The serpentine body of tubes could adapt to grab tools or hold objects while the six arms operated on whatever needed tinkering.