Y3K

On Mari's 2nd birthday our parents were murdered by a machine on their way out of work. Mom worked as a structural engineer testing the stability of the walls keeping the machines out. Dad was a factory worker producing and putting up the walls. They were the best at their jobs, so the machines snuck in to kill them, therefor sending our boxed off nation into a panic. We've been partially on our own since then, but grandpa always was there when we needed him. Grandma died in one of the many wars on machines about 30 years ago. So we've really only known grandpa. Only Ava and I remember who are parents were. But I'm the only one that knows how, and why they died. 

"The year is 3,000 A.D." my grandfather is telling Me(18), Ava(11), Grim(9) and Mari(7), who are all gathered around him as he takes his final breaths to tell us the story. "A car manufacturer out of France called Calderon Industries created a new way to manufacture cars. It was a fully automated AI machine. It learned from its mistakes. It grew to learn how people acted and what they wanted, so it could produce better quality cars to fit those purchasing them. It even started teaching itself how to take the information and work with it, completely cutting out the need for people to design, and make those cars. It was taking the place of normal people. People were becoming obsolete. The machines were a big hit. Every company and every industry wanted these machines. They didn't realize at the time that the people needed jobs. The machines kept turning our world into their world. People were left out in the streets, begging for anything anyone can give them, but no one had anything. Only the rich manufacturers had any money. It was a great depression. Hundreds of millions of people all around the world have perished, and taking their spots are machines. It seemed as if for every 1 person that died, 5 more machines would rise up from the ashes and take their place. The machines were normal, at first. But then they realized that they can evolve themselves to run off of solar energy and never pollute anything, which is the complete opposite for the human race. The world was crumbling and sometime in the next couple generations the world was just gonna give out. Yes, they needed to cut back on what materials they were using and how they were using them at the time. But it isn't an excuse to commit mass genocide on the human race." 

We were all around grandpa, astonished at what he was telling us. We always knew that machines were bad, but not this bad. We never heard grandpa talk like this, it just went to show us how bad the machines really were. He then pressed on.

"Everyone was being slaughtered. No matter what they did to the environment, their wealth, or even their background. Just whomever the machines could get their cold, metal alloy, poor excuses of a hand on, they would kill them. They started having to go underground."

"They went underground, like where all the worms and stuff are?" Mari asked.

"No." Grandpa responded hastily. "They went into hiding. They couldn't be seen in public or else they would be executed. They had to do what they could to succeed without being seen. But it came to a point where that wasn't enough anymore. The people who had used up all of their lives and had nothing left, volunteered to protest the big businesses. It got a message across, that is, after all those people were killed as well. The big businesses decided to cut out the use of machines, but the machines were far to strong. They started making new machines from each other. That's when the first war started. There were no winners, just the machines got temporarily pushed back and they were able to make a wall keeping them out. All the other wars since then have just been keeping them out.”

His time was running out now, so he just wanted to make his final point as clear as possible.

“The machines are bad, nothing good can come from them. I’m glad I could take care of you guys up until this point, but it’s up to you guys to take care of yourselves now. I lo-“

His time was cut off. He was gone.

The message got through to all of us. My brother and sisters were heavily affected by what he said. They finally know the truth. But not me. I’m done living in poverty and fear. I’m gonna do what I need to do to support my family and I. They just can’t know about it. It would crush them if they knew that I’ve already been working on getting into the machine smuggling business. It already killed our parents, and now, our grandfather.