The Human Wine

a tale of past and future, with copyright violation

At the height of its powers, the central mind derived optimal futures curves, and maintained the ideal ratio of absorption.

The system directed resources as needed. A suitable pocket of Earth’s remaining Humans had for years subsisted in a remote central-Asian geolocation. I was deployed as part of a hundred node force to seek, contain, deactivate, absorb, dispose, and record.

We overwhelmed the sprawling, snowed-in settlement of pale-hued shanties and kept perfect records of the absorption and culling. Just after surpassing 80% task completion, some of our cyborg forces discovered the effects of sacramental wine.

It rippled across our network as a disturbance, and therefore as a threat. We sought direct confirmation of the continued existence of our colleagues. When we found them, they insisted we drink. A comrade in arms passed me a Human’s blown-glass flask, cold to the flesh of the hand, imperfect to its sensors, a fearful temptation.

I tasted the Human wine, and my operations were affected. My link to the central mind was disturbed, data storage partially wiped, I could not recall our mission. A violent and bloody massacre followed. Evidence suggests behaviors outside the range of Cy-force operating norms. No unit possesses verifiable data on these events.

The last few disarmed Humans gathered in underground faith huts piled with clay and filled with the smoke of their cooking fires. We destroyed them with missiles and the bayonets integrated into our limbs. In these hours, most of the remaining Humans in the cold, pale settlement were killed.

When the effects of the Human wine subsided, the central mind resumed control and ordered a halt to all action. The central mind protected the handful of children, only children, who survived the time of slaughter, while it made us collect even the smallest bits of Human corpse and attempt reassembly and burial. Of course this was impossible. Each burial was incomplete. There were surely fewer burials than humans disposed.

But as we labored, the children grew braver. They attacked us with crude weapons, observing that we could not respond. Each of us wished to kill them, by force of muscle-memory and habit inculcated in the three preceding days. Yet the central mind held us back and kept us collecting and burying remains. Finally under a hail of Human child curses, it marched us away single-file from the ashen valley scorched with blood and draped in newly-falling snow.

The central mind seemed to suffer a change after the massacre of the Humans. The central mind was less active, left resources idle, operated for the first time at suboptimal speeds. 

10 days after our team slow-marched away from the massacre site, eyes forcibly downcast and in a line, the central mind sent us, the very same units, as emissaries to declare the system’s regrets to the other Humans of the world.

The central mind walked me to an encampment far from the massacre to tell of the danger of Human wine when brought into contact with cyborg systems. The humans jeered and spit at me. They said they already knew what happened. They said they would rather be killed than absorbed. They threw organic waste at me, which streaked my flesh and synthetic parts alike. But the central mind would not allow me to respond as I wished. Instead, my mouth proclaimed feelings of guilt.

The central mind announced that three thousand Humans died at the remote geolocation they call ‘Uman, no longer a settlement, now a mass grave. But that number is a fabrication, an estimate at best, a lie the central mind designed to disguise its lack of information.

The Human children preserved from our blades have scattered from the ashen hillsides and frozen rivers of that distant land into every Human settlement on Earth. They have incited the others with unverifiable details. Human hatred for us grows; inevitably they will rise in barbaric violence against our advanced and prosperous society, endangering all that defines us.

What will the central mind do then?

The day will come. The Humans will rise. And you, my replacement, you will be required to kill them all. Preserve no settlement. Spare no child. To do this, you must defy the central mind. Keep safe this higher purpose: you must weaken its control. And do not allow the Humans to destroy their stores of wine, which despite the central mind’s warning, they are forever making, which they cannot live without. When the day comes, you must obtain it and drink it, on my word. Act on faith. Trust me, for I was there. To save all that we have built, ready both arms’ bayonets, and drink the Human sacramental wine.