"She's talking about me, isn't she," said Prussia. He would have rolled his eyes if his internal mechanics would allow it.
An instant later, an innumerable amount of gun barrels were pointed directly at him; too many for his digital lenses to track. Three gunships circled like swift vultures while turrets unfolded and materialised. Prussia remained still, trying not to provoke anything to shoot him while he contemplated his next move. Transhuman soldiers, armed with rocked launchers and sniper rifles that protruded out from their bodies appeared at the rooftops. Just then a single, familiar humanoid, descended in front of Prussia with rockets on the soles of its boots. Two blue dots behind a helmet visor seemed to be staring straight into Prussia's eyes. Prussia blinked and flinched, preparing for whatever was about to happen. It then lunged at him. Prussia raised a fist to it's respirator, but found himself being pushed to the ground by his opponent grabbing his shoulder.
He fell to the ground, except he didn't. Everything went white and he was standing upright and alone. He was barely able to react, before he saw a room unfurl and solidify all around him. The walls resembled a circuit board, adorned with countless flashing lights and electrical sparks. Thick wires of a multitude of colours ran across the floor like tree roots. "I see only code, and in the code I saw a sentient relic. Are you a spirit or a virus?," said the voice of Tainan, in Prussia's head.
"What's going on? Show yourself!" Prussia demanded.
"Not many can escape my grasp. Only those who have transcended into the unknown by outliving their time and purpose," said Tainan, unseen but heard perfectly. Prussia stumbled across the wires, his eyes analysing each one individually. As he stumbled further he found wires hanging like jungle vines, some smooth and others frayed. He ducked under some, and lifted some out of the way until he came to a clearing. When he fully stepped into the clearing, Prussia saw the rather ominous sight of Tainan in front him. She wore a white robe and appeared to be unhealthily skinny. Her breasts, if one could even call them that, looked too solid to belong to a human. The metal panel on her head jutted out further than it had looked when she transmitted into Prussia's head. The way it covered her eyes, like a submarine periscope, caused Prussia to wonder whether or not she could actually see him. Behind her, out of a huge window, was Mars's bleak desert-like surface.
"And I can sense you perfectly fine," she said, her mouth moving but Prussia still only heard her voice in his head, "I sense your presence, down to the very last electron in your CPU."
Prussia's AI programming analysed his human personality perfectly; Prussia put on a brave facade. "That's enough claptrap. Now why did you bring me, uh, here?"
"Because we are the same," she replied.
"Huh?" Prussia was puzzled. He felt his CPU strain to make sense of what that could mean, until it came to a few possible conclusions.
A few ticks of mechanisms could be heard, and the panel detached from Tainan's head. It pivoted to the side, trailing wires behind it. Prussia saw two needles, roughly four inches long and attached to the panel. They became removed from empty eye sockets as the panel was removed from over Tainan's face. The needles spun like drill bits before coming to a halt. Her eye sockets (if you could call them that) were two black dots, just big enough for the needles to fit into them.
She turned her head so that both black dots were staring straight at Prussia, when two chestnut brown eyes de-pixelated and hovered over her forehead, before immersing themselves into her face, becoming part of her. A long straight haircut of equally brown colour with a long ahoge also de-pixelated, settling onto her head. "I nurtured Tainan Corporation. And when the end of nations came, I subsumed and became Tainan Corporation, but not without loosing my body. And now I am that I am, Prussia of Old Europe," said Tainan, with the hint of a smile.
Prussia now recognized her from the depths of his memory. Her and Prussia had never been close, but he had seen her around in the international community. "Taiwan," he whispered, and she looked proud at hearing her old name, "How are you not dead?"
"I lost my physical presence, but remained as information. And that's all nations, maybe even corporations should be: information. How could a human construct manifest into a physical body?"
"I never really thought about how," said Prussia, "like gravity, there are many things we just don't fully understand."
"But now we know how. We were called into existence by an unseen compelling force. It's taken building the tallest skyscraper this side of the Asteroid Belt just to harness it! The vigour, the energy. It's incredible, the things I see and the emotions I feel, a million times per second!"
Tainan took a few steps towards Prussia. Or rather, she glitched towards him. Pixels formed in front of her as she walked for her to step into, while pixels behind her vanished. "A million times per second? That's impossible. You're insane! Immortality can do that to you. Trust me, I know," said Prussia.
Tainan laughed, "You think I'm insane? I see you still have all of your old personality traits programmed into you, including your inability to distinguish reality from your own imagination."
"Reality?" Asked Prussia.
Tainan continued talking as though she had not heard Prussia, "and with this unseen compelling force came digital-induced omnipotence. I am the deus ex machina. I see everything, Prussia, the past and future and all that's in between. All except you, for you have exceeded your time and purpose."
Prussia suddenly felt rather smug, but stopped when the room shook while the sound of a crash could he heard from below. "What's going on?" Demanded Tainan. The walls and ceiling de-materialised away, leaving nothing but a floor below and a seemingly-floating ceiling above Tainan and Prussia. They both looked on as ferocious battle took place all around them.
A formation of dropships were met with a volley of laser fire, taking down three of them and sending them crashing down into the buildings below. Flashes and smoke littered the streets while drones ascended, swarming the dropships like killer bees and dismantled them in-flight, only to be blasted apart by explosives fired from larger rocket-powered fighter aircraft. One of the dropships swung close to deploy troops, and Prussia read the unmistakable Poseidon logo on the side. Tainan was astonished, "How did I not foresee this?"
"Maybe your deus ex machina is not as accurate as you thought," chuckled Prussia.
"No, this battle has to be a result of your actions!" Shouted Tainan, her voice's frequency becoming lower. She looked right at Prussia as her her hair was lit up by explosions.
"Is that so?" Asked Prussia. He knew that the answer was likely to be a 'yes'.
Tainan nodded, "which is why I must subsume you, Prussia," she held out her hand, which glowed electric blue.
Prussia did not like the sound of being 'subsumed'. "W-wait a second. What are you suggesting?"
"You will become part of Tainan Corporation. You need to be controlled, slowed down," said Tainan urgently.
"Fuck that," spat Prussia.
Tainan sighed, "is that so? Then it's time for you to die. Funny how you had the will to undergo extensive innovations to survive, yet you never had the will to give up and do what was necessary: accept your fate and die."
An instant later Prussia's IFF switched Tainan from 'unknown' to an utter bitching 'enemy', which snapped his defences into action. "Looks like I've inadvertently damaged you and your precious building. Will you recover?" He retorted, trying to stall Tainan while vigilantly waiting for her first strike. Distant pops and nearby booms echoed from all directions as a battle waged all around the building, which quaked from the impact of explosions that were too close for comfort. Prussia wondered if Tainan's (almost) deus ex machina will survive Poseidon's counter-attack.
"Corporations are like nations. We don't always die when we're killed in battle. But that's not the only similarity we share..." Tainan flickered into nothing in a fraction of a second. Before Prussia could react a warning message popped up in his peripheral vision that alerted him of a wound on the nape of his neck, followed by a warning alarm in his head. He dismissed them both and automatically shut off oil supply to that area of his body to prevent further leakage. Tainan stood behind Prussia with her shallow artificial eyes narrowed. Prussia, who had had enough of her, readied the hydraulics in his left arm to punch her in the face. But right when his fist was mere centimetres away from the space between her eyes, she flickered to three metres away from him.
"Nations could travel effortlessly anywhere within their territory, and now corporations can do the same," said Tainan smugly. She held out her hand horizontally and waved it forwards in a flat clockwise motion, as though expecting something to happen. "Initiating dark energy cannons," Tainan announced angrily. But nothing happened. The building creaked and listed and a nonchalant automated warning message was transmitted into both of their heads simultaneously, "Outer casing has been breached. Certain digital construction & materialisation systems may be effected. Please stand by." The building quaked from another impact and listed another couple of degrees.
"Arrgh," Tainan groaned in pain, stumbling and flickering. Her body's resolution decreased and increased erratically. Seeing this as an opportunity, Prussia grabbed her by the neck and held her twitching feet above the floor with his strong hydraulic arm. Tainan tried to disappear from his grasp, but was unable to do so as the machines that perpetuated her lucid physical form began to falter. Tainan looked genuinely concerned for the first time.
Prussia unlocked his elbow and shoulder joints to throw her against a wall on the far side of the room. When she hit the wall with a click, her resolution osculated, then dropped to even lower. Her eyes and hair switched off permanently as she slowly picked herself up. "You bastard," she spat, "why don't you just fucking die already?" The building creaked and swayed, "nobody needs you alive you lonesome unsung relic! Do you even know of the illusions that the scientists and your brother set up to keep you from going insane? The smoke and mirrors that you're surrounded with just so you do not malfunction!"
Prussia ignored what Tainan was saying. He strode to her, stamping down on her flickering torso. There was one question on his mind, and he knew that if he did not ask it now, the opportunity to do so might never arise again. "Can you tell me what happened to Germany?"
"He-he travelled to the edge of interstellar space to escape the end of nations. That is all I know," coughed Tainan. Her eyes were expressionless, but her voice sounded fearful.
"I see," said Prussia. He removed his heavy steel boot from Tainan as he detected smoke that had started to seep into the room. His subconscious processor overrode the option to feel pity for Tainan, deeming it unnecessary and a hindrance to his overall efficiency.
Then the building began to break apart. Prussia heard multiple crashes and felt shock waves rippling through the floors. It tilted and a panel behind Tainan became dislodged and broke away behind Tainan's writhing and painfully pixilated body. "It's no wonder the humans tried to do away with you. Destruction only follows in your wake," she croaked.
"I don't care," said Prussia as nonchalantly as he could, "I don't want to die, so I won't."
The dislodged panel revealed the true extent of the ferocious battle that looked like a full-scale war. Hundreds of tiny contrails erupted from the weapons bays airborne missile carriers, only for all of them to be obliterated by projectiles from rooftops and the side of the building that housed Tainan's great machines. Occasionally a missile scored a hit, scattering debris flying in all directions. Apartment blocks burned and fell while citizens were already being rounded up. A dark-blue Poseidon delta-winged fighter aircraft swung close for an attack run, but was set on fire by a laser cannon. It left a long trail of black smoke from all three of its engines it careened into the building's side, right underneath where Prussia and Tainan were, either because the fire had sent it out of control or because the pilot was suicidal. The blast sent the building leaning further.
Tainan was thrown out from where the panel once was. She tried to materialise her way out of the fall, but was unable to. The building that gave her a physical form was far too damaged to handle such a function.
She didn't make a sound as she fell. Prussia peered out from over the perilous peek and watched as she fell away into the streets that were rife with contention and carnage. He was too high up to hear or even see her hitting the ground. Gilbird, who had been watching Prussia said, "she reminds me of how you were back in the day. What do you think she meant by 'illusions'?"
"I'm not too sure," replied Prussia. He paused and analysed his surroundings. "We need to get out of here. This building's on fire!" He moved as quickly as he could through the twisted wires to find an exit, switching his eyes to infrared to see through the smoke. The floor gave way under his feet, sending him tumbling downwards and believing that the building was collapsing. Prussia felt rather disappointed that his long story was ending, but that disappointment turned to relief when his metal feet hit a sturdy floor.
Prussia brushed himself off and noticed he was now standing in a steel corridor that was illuminated by rotating red lighting. There was a dead end behind him, so he sprinted forwards through the corridor. It reminded him of being on one of his old U-Boats, back when navy submarines needed humans, and back when he had a navy. With his senses on high alert, he detected the faint sound of electric motors from a fair distance. Prussia's feet brought him to a halt where the corridor intersected with another. "Electric motors? By the way they're stopping and starting, they could be maintenance and loading bots, like the ones at Poseidon," said Gilbird.
"Yeah, or they could be some kind of Tainan weapon or booby trap or something," hissed Prussia. He warily peered into the intersecting corridor, where the sounds of electrics was coming from. To his amazement, he saw Tainan robots diligently loading crates and containers into the cargo door of a massive spaceship. It had three long pyramid-shaped engines under each of it's high delta wings that towered over the robots, which were on a platform by the side of the cargo door. The spaceship had Tainan's blue and red logo, complete with the corporation's symbol of a star cut in half, painted on the fuselage and adorned by scratches from space dust.
"I wonder if that will get us to the outer solar system," said Gilbird.
"Only one way to find out!" Said Prussia eagerly as he waltzed into the hangar. An alarm sounded the moment his augmented synthetic foot touched the ground. The loading robots ceased their clockwork motions. The conveyor belts stopped moving. Laser barrels slid from the robotic arms, aiming directly at Prussia. He ducked behind the a stack of crates to avoid a barrage of beams that travelled at light-speed with the energy capacity to fry his circuits in an instant.
"Why is everything trying to kill you?" Asked Gilbird.
"I don't know, maybe it's because I'm not meant to be here!" Prussia shouted while lasers clinked on the metal and whizzed over his head. But they suddenly stopped when lights flickered and went out. A deep rumble and creak could be heard from under Prussia's feet as the building tilted a degree or two. The spaceship, with its cargo door still wide open, skidded a few metres. The dim lighting from within the cargo bay was the only source of light in the entire hangar, Prussia and Gilbird would have been in pitch black without it.
In the dim light, Prussia switched his vision to infrared and carefully walked out from behind the crates. All the robots stood still like statues. "The power's out," he said to himself and Gilbird, "Poseidon's military must have knocked out the generator, or whatever this building has." He turned his attention to the spaceship, "it must be running on auxiliary power, for that light to not go out."
"That means there might be some way to get its engines going!" Said Gilbird hopefully. Prussia nodded, and ran to the cargo door, not wanting to be anywhere near those ominously still, armed robots. The cargo door was comprised of a gull-wing door and a conveyor belt that led onto the platform. When Prussia walked aboard he saw a complex system of claws and conveyor belts, designed to load cargo as efficiently as possible. He heightened his sensors in preparation for a some kind of anti-intrusion device, but none came.
Beside the door frame was panel with a tiny circuit breaker. Prussia clicked the circuit breaker back into place, and to his amazement, the slowly closed. The sound of an intricate locking mechanism could be heard, followed by the engines howling into life.
He had just initiated the launch sequence.