Disclaimer: They still aren't mine, and I'm starting to lose hope that they ever will be.
Deus Ex Machina
Part III: Furious Angels
127 Years Ago:
Machines age. Despite what the humans thought, machines were not perfectly immortal. In a static situation, they could live indefinitely, but the world is not static. Accidents happened, parts wore out, programming got corrupted, newer models were built. All but a handful of machines had an intended lifespan when they were built. Some were meant to last a few years, others for perhaps a century.
P17860013-JX could last a hundred millennia, if it was lucky. It felt pride, as far a machine can feel such things, that it would live far longer than the machines that built it, and perform a task more import than they ever would. As the rocket beneath it roared to life, it considered the distance it would cover, and the amount of time it would take to get there. Fortunately, machines don't get bored.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty for machines as well as humans. P17860013-JX and it's fellow Probes, it was later decided, were a bad idea. When P17860013-JX reached it's third star, it found a recipient for the welcome message it carried. Happy that it had done its duty, P17860013-JX continued it's interstellar journey, never knowing the chaos it had invited to its home world.
Years later, the machine race would curse P17860013-JX's name, if they did that sort of thing.
Author's Notes: I must apologize for not posting a real chapter. I'm sitting on it so that I can work ahead in the story a bit. I want to be several chapters ahead again when the next semester starts.
Also, I would like to run the next chapter by a pre-reader before it is posted. I haven't used one yet, but I think its time to start. If anyone is interested, please email me at jagstang7@yahoo.com .
Happy Holidays,
Hatcheter