Hearing doesn't means Listening

“How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?”

― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

Marina helps me sit down on the floor beside her, she looks at the drones around us while wiggling her right index finger, something she always does when organizing her thoughts. Finally, she makes a tight fist then slowly softens it and starts “You were the first to be knocked down, a fraction of a moment later Marcellus got shot in the back by a drone coming from the room to the left. Instinctively, I ran towards the drone that had shot at you … as if I had any chance of taking it out…”, she stopped for a moment to make a cynical smirk. She raised her hand in front of her, opening it as if trying to reach something, after a short moment she closed it and continued “No matter how much I tried to hit it it kept avoiding me, which only irritated me more. It took me a good couple of attempts to realize it wasn’t attacking me nor anyone else. That thought gave me enough clarity to realize it was talking to me, it had been doing it for a while but I couldn’t pay attention to it. In my rage I became unable to understand words or really, just pay attention to anything that wasn’t destroying that drone. I hadn’t even realized that Captain Liu was also shot…”, she looked down, frowning her brow with such intensity even I could feel the frustration and shame coming from her. Suddenly, she opened wide her eyes with a bit of surprise and returned to her tale “sorry, I got distracted in my thoughts. Anyway, the drone was telling me it didn’t want to hurt us. That they had only knocked you three down because you were wielding guns. Then it explained the reason for their previous behavior…”, she took a small pause to think then continued “but I think it is better that you hear it from the horse’s mouth”. She waved her hand to one of the drones and asked it to come and tell me what it had explained to them before.

The drone looked at me for a second then started talking with a cold synthetic female voice “Miss Numa, how can we help you?”. I didn't expect them to know my name but I guess it makes sense given all of us had to be registered in the system before entering. “Give me the condensed version of the security reports of today”. The drone didn’t waste a second and replied “ We have registered fires and debris in the entryways to the place of communion and processor rooms of all three God’s Machines. Also, there are several small fires caused by drone units being set ablaze. Thirdly, we have detected a gap in our records right after the first registration of the first fires. Finally, the three God’s Machines' mental processes show unusual patrons, having stopped for the most part their daily tasks”. My eyes open as wide as they can, my jaw hangs low and the palms of my hands sweat cold. No matter how I think about it, the only explanation for the areas around the GMs being so damaged is because someone performed an attack on them.

The drone interrupted my train of thought by saying “Miss Numa, Is there anything else you want help with?”. Now that it mentions it there is a question more important than any other “Are the GM’s damaged?”. The Drone stopped for a couple of seconds as if consulting information and then answered “We lack the information to give a conclusive answer. We can ping to their servers and detect thoughts being processed but we aren’t receiving answers when doing any query. The last log with reports from them was at 7:46 AM and shows a sudden and erratic increase in thoughts”. With only intrigue in my mind I ask “Give me more details. Tell me what are the GMs doing at the moment?”. Again it stays some seconds in silence and the answers “We lack information regarding what the God’s Machines Amateratsu and Valetinius are doing. The God’s Machine Ignatius has taken direct control of the drones 9-A to 9-S and 2-B to 2-Z, coordinating them with the rest of the drone units under the standard security system to aid any personnel in need”.

After spending some time processing the unbelievable news I realized something odd about this situation. I looked at the drone and asked “Have you identified anyone who could be responsible for the fires or even someone that has a high chance of that?”. The drone replied without waiting a second “We have no way of answering that question, can you be more specific?”. I scratch my head in annoyance, think about what I want to know in as granular a way as possible and ask “Was anyone found near the entrances to the temples and/or processing rooms that shouldn’t be there?”. The drone replies “We have found five bodies and one heavily injured person in these areas, one person per entryway. All of these people weren’t supposed to be there based on their planned itinerary. These people are all members of the external engineering team Disciples of Dhanvantari”. My team?!… Did we hire terrorists? How could we have been so negligent as to hire six people who all were part of a radical group? My god, I should have checked their background more. Even if the central and human resources did their job, as a team leader I should have done a final check on the team I was assigned to... There is no way all six of them acted independently and it would be very hard for them to organize this once they were with us, at least without raising suspicion. I will ignore going down that train of guilt for now and ask “The person that survived, what is their status?”. It waits for a second and then answers “The person has his whole body burned and several further injuries that have put him in shock. At the moment the medical team has been able to stabilize him but it is uncertain if he will be able to survive until an external medical team can perform emergency care”.

None of this makes any sense, why attack three GMs from different beliefs? Why not leave a message? How did the background check fail so badly that we hired multiple people who are part of an extremist group? There is still plenty of stuff we don’t know and before things get weird again we need to discover what it is.

As I walk around the area I pass through several drones going and coming from everywhere. It really is strange to coexist alongside so many of the things that not long ago scared me to death. Then, down the staircase to the central circular room I saw Captain Liu sitting alone and in silence. His hands were pressed together and in front of his face as if he was … praying. I was so wrapped in my own mind I didn’t think about it before. First, I proved a hypothesis of mine and asked the Captain and Marcellus if they had dreamed while unconscious and what was it if they had. As I listened to them fumble through the description of what neither of us can even grasp to begin with I confirmed my suspicion.