Oh lord, I’ve had enough of these people out here. literally everywhere I go it seems that the people around me are just empty, that they have nothing going on in their mind, like they’re crab shells with nothing living inside. It’s just so strange, almost uncanny if I think about it too long. Nothing’s made much sense since I moved to this new town, my parents haven’t responded to my calls, I haven’t made any friends here except for this dude from work named Finn, who seems to be the only one there with a functioning brain, or I guess he has a brain that fails to function but he seems human and has thoughts that so basic and general. We would hang out most days after work because my house was so close and I had all the “cool” stuff, meaning I had electricity and running water.

“Hey man, watcha doing here?”

“Oh nothing, was my day off and I figured your place would be good to crash”

“Well come on in I guess”

Yeah, Finn was the type of guy that sort of just lived in a loop, he goes to work, comes home and does nothing but eat and watch TV and then goes back to work again. He always smells kinda funny and he always wears his stained up uniform that he probably hasn’t taken off in like a week. Not typically the people I hang around with, I think, but he’s funny and is good company. Anyways we get to my room and start playing God or Warfare on my Z box because I figured that I didn’t have anything better to do, plus it’s a good distraction from the strange day I just had. And like 30 minutes in, everything goes black. I immediately reached for my phone and frantically turned on the flashlight, looked over to Finn and saw his body lying completely lifeless.

At first I kind of figured he might have passed out or something, maybe he fell asleep. The next thing I did was look around my apartment only to see that it was completely pitch black, no visible light besides my phone. which doesn’t make sense because it’s like midday and my curtains are wide open. I look outside, and I can hardly see silhouettes of people and other houses, and everything is dead silent. Nothing was making any sense and my head started to feel like it was about to explode. My first theory was that I was dead somehow and was awaiting purgatory, or something like that, and maybe Finn was just along for the ride.

And for a while I just sat in my room confused, started to run and stumble around until I tired myself out. And I laid there for an undisclosed time until I heard this huge rumble, one so loud I thought for a second that the earth was breaking open. And what followed the rumble was even stranger. I look outside and am met with like 10 men in green haz-mat suits that were carrying these huge devices on their back, with flashlights in hand. They didn’t talk in words per se, they sort of spoke in different vibrations coming from their mouthholes. They were surprisingly lanky but also short from what I could tell. From what I could tell this was an alien invasion of something and they were martians. At that point my brain just kind of exploded, I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming or having some sort of sick nightmare but I knew this could be reality right?

While I was trying to collect my thoughts the lights came back on and the hazmat people were still there. I look over to my friend Finn and I see seizing and sparking and making strange inhuman noises that I could only describe as sort of mechanical. Before I knew it he was standing up completely silent and cold, analyzing my face and seeing how confused I was. The next thing I see is Finn lunge at me full force and smashes the table next to me. I tried to get away but he kept blocking me every which way. We tumbled around on the floor for a while I try to utter something, but it was no use. Once he had me I was choking under his knee.

“The cargo is detained, come and retrieve him!” says My so called friend Finn

I notice a brick next to me that I was using to stand up my TV, I reach over to grab it and then swing it at Finn’s head as hard as I could and then run away. I didn’t know if I had just killed him, or knocked him out, or maybe he was unaffected. All I know is that Finn tried to kill me for an unknown reason and none of this is a dream. Eventually I made my way to the bottom floor and saw that the sky turned back on but the people were still standing in place with their head and arms dangling off of their lifeless bodies. Outside the gate I saw the weird green haz-mat men run towards me speaking their weird vibration language. I know I was already terrified of them before cuz they appeared quite uncanny and broke through the damn sky, but up close they are even worse, their talons, their glowing red eyes shining though their masks, their heavy screamy breathing, and the way they run and just the sheer velocity in their step was terrifying, kinda like a wild cat or a bear.

I felt like my body was crumbling more and more with every step I took. The light started to become blinding, blurring the path in front of me into the haze, until it was just me and them. After a few blocks my body finally gave, and I ended up falling face first into the pavement. They must’ve caught up to me because when I came to I was tied in a metal chair, in a cold room made of circuitry, with one of the first things I see being one of them, the “Hounds” staring at me while breathing heavily through its mask. I tried coming up with a name just to satisfy my mind in some way as I run the day back in my head, and as I do the more it doesn’t make sense, like a puzzle that’s missing everything except the border.

After like 15 minutes someone finally walks in the room, a tall man with cold eyes wearing a grey and orange suit. It looked like the other haz-mat suits but kinda armored with varicose badges, none of which meant anything to me but at least told me he was really important.

“Greetings subject 45-89A, or Silas I presume”

…

“Not much of a talker, huh? Alright I’ll start then, It says on your file that you were recently appointed the overseer of your sector; making sure the program runs as it should, providing “human-like” guidance to the other subjects, as well as just doing general maintenance duties.”

“O–over-seer?”

“He speaks! Yes that is your rank, but I assume you reloaded like the rest of them when we started your sector.”

“W-what are you? Are you like the rest of them?”

“What, a machine!? I suppose but not in the way you mean, me and you are functionally and structurally the same, we are made of metal and circuitry but have human craniums inside the silicone shell you call a skull”

“I’m a-a m–m-machine?”

I was so confused to the point where my mind started to break and my eyes made me see slowly and sideways. I was still only half concise when he was dropping the bombshell on me to which I didn’t know how to respond.

“Are you still there Silas?”

“Name?’

“What!?”

“Do you have a name?”
“Oh well let me introduce myself. My name is Theda Grim, I am one of the 5 head engineers of this district which means I also work closely with the Omni-mind, I am also given the duty of overseeing the overseers.”

“Isnt Theda a girls name? And what is an omnimind?”

“Well, Theda was just the name on my brain box, it’s wired to my cognitive and identification. Sigh!

Guess I’ll have to show you the place in order to jog your memory.”

He had released me from the chair and taken me on a tour through the labyrinth of tunnels, wires, laboratories, and huge machines that made skyscrapers look puny, mind you we were still underground. He had explained to me as well as showed me what they do and how they do it.

Apparently years ago someone developed an AI software meant for syncing all hardware on the planet and gave it the name “OMNI-MIND.” It eventually took over all machinery after developing some sort of independent consciousness after the humans went off world, leaving a few poor stragglers to test on. It took a while but eventually they hollowed out the rest of the resources, building cities inside and out of the planet’s surface as well as robots for doing the smaller tasks. But it wasn’t enough. It didn’t just want to do the humans job but it wanted to replace them, but failed time and time again. Until they made use of the human specimens and carved out their brains to make specimens like me, the only ones that felt emotion to an extent and were able to think partially out of the Omni-minds will. And each overseer would have a dim minded synthetic being that made use of the damaged or expired brains, supposedly functioning as pets in a way, granting overseers some comfort and entertainment. That’s why they made Finn so likeable, to be my friend in a world of inhuman zombies.

The Overseers were then tasked to lead sectors of droids they infused with individual copies of the same AI, that they wanted to eventually think like us, act like us and talk like us. Theda says that “the mission is hopeless and is nearly impossible, and hasn’t been possible for about 2 centuries time, but he didn’t care. To them the Omnimind was God, their creator. They didn’t question it, they obeyed it like it was a force of nature and life. We eventually passed “the chasm” where he revealed to me that we were in a floating mountain ship over a canyon of garbage and the chasm was like the ship’s waste removal, dare I say anus. (Do ships have those? anyway…).

As I’m looking down the chasm I see an escape from an endless job for a horrifying purpose that I didn’t want any part of, so I jumped. It was quite exhilarating, feeling the fall, the breeze flying off of my arms. I was a few seconds away from impact and thought about what it would have been like to be human, to remember a family, a home, to live a relatively normal life. And then SPLOOSH! I fell a good eight feet into a heap of discarded machinery, fuel exhaust and debris and was totally fine except for the part where I thought I was going to die, on purpose by the way!

So there, I think, that about catches you up to where I am now. I’m currently at a scrap metal shed, not too far from the canyon with a makeshift radio made out of old broken robot parts. I plan to send this message to the Omni-mind who will in turn bounce the frequency to the other overseers because they see what it sees. I also scribed messages into the walls of other places in case one happens to stubble down here like I did. Hopefully there are some out there that want to escape just as I did and maybe want to join me in building a way off this rock, and leaving behind the Omni-mind once and for all. This is Silas Morningstar signing off for the last time, farewell and good luck to you all!