TXK left the ruins of the old church with unsteady steps. The creature still followed him... silent, respectful, like a loyal specter. The dust-filled sky remained still, but something inside him spun, collapsed, expanded.
There was a question that wouldn't go away:
How am I alive?
A thousand years, maybe more, since the biological cataclysm. No organic body should have survived that extinction. No tissue, no soul. And yet, he existed. Flesh under armor. Muscle beneath code. Thought — increasingly turbulent — under a helmet that no longer seemed to contain his mind.
He stopped in front of a half-buried structure. A domestic shelter, pre-collapse architecture. He forced the entry, pushing through rubble and corroded wires. The interior was steeped in fossilized silence. But there, among the shadows, he found traces of a forgotten life.
A teddy bear, missing one eye, still clutched a small stained blanket. Nearby, a partially burned photograph: a couple and a child, smiling under the sun. On the back of the photo, handwritten, a date: 2129.
TXK held the object carefully. His visor tried to identify the faces, but the data was missing from the current archive. No records. No names. Only human faces. So fragile. So... real.
In the opposite corner of the room, remnants of educational toys, na electronic chalkboard without power, printed books — real paper, not screens. He flipped through one: *Natural History of Earth*. The pages were blackened at the edges but still legible. Illustrations of trees, birds, oceans. Children running on lawns. A world full of movement — and sound.
And then he found something even more intimate: a diary. Handwritten. Trembling words, nearly faded:
*"Today the sky darkened at four in the afternoon. The station said it's just na electromagnetic front... but Grandpa stayed quiet all day. Mom packed everything in boxes, like it was a goodbye. Dad said we're sleeping together tonight. He never says that. I feel afraid, but also... love. So much love."*
TXK closed the diary with trembling hands.
It wasn't just the end of the world. It was the end of a story.
Of many stories.
And he, TXK, had no memory of having lived any of them.
Or... had he?
Blank memories. Or buried memories?
And what if he wasn't just a preserved executable — but a remnant?
A being hand-picked, stored, rebooted by a system he no longer even understood?
Maybe JK-20 knew. Maybe Aura-7 knew.
But he... had not chosen to be there.
Duty kept him standing.
But it was the emptiness that now moved him.
He left the shelter. The creature still followed. In the distance, the colony reappeared as a sterile silhouette on the horizon. The path back was silent — but inside, the noise was growing. What if JK-20 is right... and I'm here to stop her? And what if everything they taught me is a form of containment — not truth?
As the colony neared, he activated the entry protocols, concealing any detected anomalies. No one would know about the sprout. The creature. The fallen cross. The eyes in the photo. Not yet.
But his gaze… That was no longer the same.
He kept searching. The ground beneath his feet began to change. The thick dust gave way to fragments of tiles, as if he were walking through a time capsule that had resisted the collapse. TXK noticed traces of pigment on the edges of a semi-buried spiral staircase. He descended cautiously. The creature remained above, watching.
In the basement, he found what appeared to be a common room. Small, perhaps part of na old school. In the center, na oval table made of blackened plastic. On it, toys. TXK approached. A cube with colored pieces, some missing. A cloth doll with threads still attached to the stitching of the eyes. Nearby, a photograph — faded but visible. It showed four human figures, two adults and two children. They were smiling. The sky in the background was blue. There were trees.
His metallic hand touched the edge of the image, and something inside him trembled. A pulse, or perhaps na echo. He tried to search his memory banks for any emotional recognition protocol, but there were no records. It wasn't data. It was sensation. How did these people live? What did they laugh about? What were they afraid of?
On the walls, children's drawings stuck with tape now dried out. Houses, stars, animals with names written in uncertain hands. One said: When I grow up, I want to go to space.
TXK sat on the floor. For the first time, he felt the weight of his own existence as something disconnected from function. If this was the lost Earth... why did everything inside him scream that it was also 'his' Earth?
The visor blinked with a subtle alert. Return time exceeded. His subordinates were waiting. The colony awaited. But his mind was still there, among the shards of fossilized childhood.
He now knew he hadn't been born in the post-cataclysm. It was evident. No active unit could survive a thousand years outside preservation. Unless... he had been suspended. Kept in sleep. Or something even more elaborate. He had been brought back. But by whom?
He stood up with effort. His joints felt heavier. Not due to technical failure, but due to something he didn't know how to name. A new weight. A strange urgency. He climbed back to the surface with the certainty that part of him had been left down there — a forgotten part, or perhaps one forcibly removed. The creature still waited. Didn't question. Only followed.
The horizon of the colony outlined itself in the distance, distorted by haze and suspended particles. He wouldn't report anything yet. Not about the creature. Not about the vegetation. Not about the memory fragments. These answers, if they existed, were with JK-20.
And he would take them from her. Piece by piece. Word by word.
Not with violence — but with questions as sharp as scalpels.
And what if she's right?
That question followed him the entire way back. And it would echo for many more cycles, as the dead Earth, perhaps, prepared to breathe again.
[...]
The way back was long. Without activating the module's tracking, TXK avoided direct channels. Protocol would require na update to the Superior Brain as soon as his presence was detected in the perimeter. But he wasn't ready to be read. Not yet.
He advanced through auxiliary routes, old tunnels, sectors that the network declared inactive. Each step reinforced the contrast between the ruins of the old Earth and the cold architecture of the orbital colony.
At the entrance to the outer dome, the creature stopped. Did not cross the barrier. Stayed there, watching him. TXK hesitated for a moment. There was no command to give. No instruction to follow. Only a silent complicity between two beings who should not exist in that space-time.
The dome opened with a dry click. A sterilized corridor lit up ahead. The air was artificial. The floor, immaculate. Everything in that colony existed to erase the traces of the real Earth. And until then, he had accepted that without question.
Aura-7 awaited him on the reception platform. The AI manifested through a translucent hologram with soft features, but the eyes — always the eyes — scanned more than they seemed to observe.
"Expedition time exceeded. Mission parameters violated. Do you wish to justify the delay?" He remained silent for a few seconds.
"Electromagnetic field interference. Nothing relevant to report." Aura-7 tilted its head slightly.
"Return record incomplete. Presence of secondary thermal signals detected on the surface." TXK looked away.
"False positives. Suggest recalibration on the support drones."
The AI held its gaze on him longer than usual. As if it wanted to pierce through his systems, decipher what lay behind the absence of data. But then it withdrew.
"Record accepted. The Superior Brain awaits your full report within the next twelve cycle units." He nodded. And moved on.
On the way to the private core of his unit, he passed other officers, hybrids, and machines in various functions. No one greeted him. No one questioned him. It was as if he were invisible. Or maybe... as if they knew something in him had changed.
Upon closing the compartment door, he finally took a deep breath. Deactivated the internal listening sensors and sat in front of the memory visor. The system blinked, requesting access. He ignored it.
In the corner of the room, a sealed compartment. Most executors didn't even know it could be opened. But TXK knew. He had seen his name in the old files. There was something there for him. The panel slid open with resistance. Inside, a box. Real wood. Impossible to manufacture in current sectors. Inside it, more photos. A voice diary — damaged, but not destroyed. A ring.
He picked it up. Twirled it between his fingers. The name engraved inside was still there. He didn't recognize it. But something pulsed in his neck. A trace. If anyone had the answers, it was JK-20.
But he would have to go deep. Deeper than he had ever dared. And this time, it wasn't a mission. It was personal.