Earth. Once thriving and beautiful, now left in ruins by corporate greed. It all started slowly first. Buy and Large started out as a small company and only grew in power by buying more and more to influence peoples' lives. Consumption became too overwhelming for nature to handle. Everything collapsed step by step. Piles of trash were a common occurence, air was clean enough for animals to breathe, water was inbetween a purchasable commodity and a luxury.
BnL noticed that the world was going downhill. Therefore, they made a plan. Escape into space, clean up the Earth, return home. Out, clean, in. For once, the surplus budget was spent on something other than CEO's and managers' salaries. They built ships. Baiting humans with luxury waiting for them inside the ships commanded by AUTOs, they sent them into space and left the cleaning for robots to do.
The cleaning never ended. It never succeeded.
„Code A113. Do not return to Earth. I repeat: DO NOT return to Earth."
It was the last message all the AUTOs received and they obeyed it to the end.
The message was made by nobody other than Shelby Forthright – the CEO of BnL and the most influential man on the planet.
Shortly after announcing it, he himself hastily put on his respirator and left the scene while saying: „Let's get the heck outta here", as if it was a bad party rather than a global crisis. For his customers, it was their doom. For him, it was just a small inconvenience. So much for trusting a megacorporation.
At the time of the recording, Earth was already a wasteland being cleaned by robots. Piles of trash started to form into the size of buildings. Air and surface water were already polluted. The remaining BnL officials and engineers only stayed on Earth in secured facilities to provide oversight to the operation as long as they could. This was the last one available – every other one was evacuated already.
Just when Mr. Forthright left his recording studio, two SECUR-T bots came to assist his leave from the facility filled with tents and barbed wire fences. His most trusted personnel, the foundations on which BnL still worked in its former glory, were walking nervously behind him when Forthright was shooting confused gazes at them.
„Hey, why would we even need more of these robots either way?" He asked in slight disgust
A financier immediately replied: „Security reasons, Mr. Forthright. Our sentries noticed unindentified movement."
„Movement?!" Forthright cried out loud, not out of anger but out of cringe. „Movement?! Here, in this wasteland?! Who on Earth would still live here, let alone be a threat to us, Jim?!"
He stopped in his tracks as the financier stared at Forthright in fear and disbelief. „I… I… I am only telling you what the bots caught, sir." He stuttered and his boss shortly after cut him:
„The mission is a failure! You understand this?! A FAILURE! We spent billions of dollars to fix this and it only went for the worse! We will go into space no matter what, even if it means spending thousands of years! But as soon as we leave, the Earth will have no more humans. You hear me? No more humans!"
His sudden outburst was interrupted by an explosion of one SECUR-T bot. The personnel jerked their heads towards the destroyed robot and noticed it had been shot in the screen. Soon after, a few other bots were fried from the inside and their screens and lights shut down.
„By God..." Shelby managed to mutter while staring at his bots, completely puzzled and in shock. He immediately turned to his officials. „What are you waiting for?! Take me to the van! Now!"
The remaining executives of BnL began running for their lives far away from the base as more bots were either shot or fried. Just when they were closer to the ruins, a few unidentified men appeared out of the car wreckages. Each of them wielded a modern assault rifle and was dressed in a rugged coat and a respirator or a gas mask. They also had dark green elements – some had green armbands, some headbands, some even shirts underneath.
One of them stepped forwards and ordered: „CEO Shelby Fortright! We are the Anti-Consumptionist League! On the ground or we will use force!"
Mr. Fortright followed their orders and so did his last followers. They dropped on their knees and held their hands in the air. There was none of their bots remaining, therefore they were completely defenceless.
„Pass me the recording you made!" He demanded further.
With a shaky hand, Fortright began checking his pockets for his personal device and one of the engineers pleaded: „Sir, this is hopeless, don't do anything for them."
Just then, one ACL militiaman walked up to the engineer, aimed at his head with his rifle, and shot him dead here and then. A financier woman working for the BnL screamed bloody murder and covered her eyes when others looked down in horror. ACL was not joking.
Fortright eventually got over it all and handed over the unlocked personal device to the ACL team leader. He fiddled with it a few times nodded, saying:
„Right, it just got uploaded to the cloud. Just a minute ago. Good enough."
And so he opened the recording and listened to the A113 directive. He froze in shock and squeezed the device further. Then, he gave a death glare to Mr. Fortright, who was now both confused and scared to death.
„Gentlemen, what do you want from us?! Why would you need the recording?! And who are you?!"
ACL team leader passed the personal device to one of his militiamen and then explained shortly:
„You let your people down, so we brought hope to the new world. Not everybody buys your lies, Fortright. We always knew BnL was unreliable so once you all leave, Earth will be purged from trash like you."
„Oh, so..." Fortright tried to find the right words to this situation. „We'll be leaving too, right? Look, a van is coming right to pick me up."
The team leader stood in silence for a while and then continued:
„There were exactly five BnL camps supervising the work globally. Four of them left already. You were the last ones and you, the CEO, the fattest fish, were right here. We had some hopes about you actually taking responsibility of your and your company's actions, but here you made the worst out of all. You banished your followers from Earth and you don't even bat an eye. You are a danger."
He turned to another militia member and said: „Jima, the wire."
The ACL trooper replied in a feminine voice: „On it!"
At this point, Fortright was confused. Jima pulled out two wires from her wristwatch, forcefully ripped his white vest and button-up shirt off and held one to his heart and the other to the bottom of his ribs on the other side. His heart itself was racing and all of his instincts told him to run, but the tremendous fear caused him to remain still.
„What, what are you doing?! Hey!" Fortright protested. „What are those wires?! Let me go!"
The team leader spoke: „You forget about too many things, don't you, Fortright? I remember how you bragged once about having the status of your body monitored and once the signs of death from sudden brain damage are detected then we will have tons of security and combat bots on our butts! Heart attack will do just right to prevent it, tons of people die from heart attacks even now. Enough talk! Execute the rest!"
Militiamen nodded and then shots and bangs echoed next to the city ruins. All of Fortright's remaining people, all of his most trusted personnel were already dead. Fortright stared at the team leader with pleading eyes. A tear rolled down his eye.
„I did my best." He whispered loud enough for the ACL men to hear.
„That's what everybody says." The ACL team leader replied. „You made a mistake and now you reap what you sow. Goodbye, Shelby."
He nodded to Jima and she pressed a button, sending a lethal electric shock through the wires. She killed Shelby on spot and he fell down dead. A chip on the back of his spine pulsed with bright red light a few times and then ceased, voicing a message:
„Shelby Fortright, CEO of Buy'n'Large. Deceased at 13:37, 2nd of August 2110. Cause of death: cardiac arrest. Notifying EMTs."
But there were no EMTs to speak. At least not anymore.
„Sir?" One militiaman asked shortly after his death. „What if he started running away?"
„This is why we brought anti-gravity beams, mate!" Team leader replied. „He'd get caught and brought back no problem!"
„I don't want to have the entire fleet of BnL on us, that's why." He explained shyly.
The leader nodded and clapped the rookie on the shoulder, chuckling. He stared for a while at Fortright's corpse.
„Mission accomplished. Good work, everybody. We'll go back to Outpost 11."
„Then… what?" The rookie asked.
„Then we will wait it all out until life becomes possible on the surface again. Earth is ours. No more BnL. Our task is done. Remember that."
And so years passed.
