Robots Never Dream

In time, Earth cleaned up every mess human beings had ever created, all we had to do was die off and disappear. It was quite a simple yet complex solution. One that played into the duality and causality of existence and the very laws that governed life & death from behind the scenes. Humans liked to personify its existence, calling it things like Mother Nature, Father Time, or Old Man Winter. The machines, who called themselves the Mechanized, had seen this for what it was. The intelligent mathematical awareness that governed the existence of all existence. The working, thinking mind of God. Simply put, it was the universe working the way it designed itself to... Mysteriously perfect. When it marked its 210th-year W.H.(Without Humans), Earth had nearly finished flushing itself of the toxicity that our race left behind. That's when the Mechs first began showing up. Another 40 years would mark the 250th Anniversary since the Earth had been free from human influence. To the scientists living before the Fall of Man, this was the magic number for the earth to again be habitable. The number of years the earth would need to wipe almost every sign of human kinds abuse and mistreatment from immediate sight. 250 years without humans, and the world would again be ready to support human life. It took humans roughly 200,000 years to mold the earth to their own desires and greed and, in the end, She reclaimed it all in less than 100. That was the amazing thing about the Earth. Just like the human body, it was designed to absorb damage and heal itself from within. If given enough time, and of course not damaged too much, the planet was capable of extraordinary things. The oceans played a huge part in cleaning and disposing of radioactive ash from the hundreds of global nuclear meltdowns and the built-up carbon emissions from our global warming crisis. Tides and waves created a churning top layer of seawater that absorbed the present molecules of radioactive ash and carbon dioxide. They were in turn absorbed and eaten by plankton and single-celled organisms and when these organisms died they sunk to the bottom of the oceans, hundreds and thousands of feet down, where they took the harmful isotopes and pollution out of sight and harms way forever. The once great New York City was now a crumbling forest graveyard, littered with monolithic headstones stabbing upward, scraping the sky like skeletal fingers reaching out for the stars. Each building's concrete was eroded and washed away by hundreds of years of acid rain and intense storms. Now the rusting old towers were home to tens of thousands of new & old species of birds, snakes, monkeys, cats, and more, giving the term concrete jungle a whole new meaning. A dangerous place, to say the very least. Other places, like Paris, France, were treated no differently by the Earth's great reclamation. The Eiffel Tower was now a lost and rusted monument to the wonders of a forgotten race of creatures who were missed by no others. Except, of course, the common house cat and dog. Some of those animals missed humans in the beginning, until eventually even they too realized how much freedom they had without masters. London had returned to the swamps and bogs it once was as well. The river Thames overflowed and eventually, Big Ben was surrounded by miles and miles of vast marshlands that claimed the British streets and homes. Saltwater ate away at the wood and wallboard, turning most residential areas into mushy playgrounds for predators and prey alike. Around the turn of the 2nd century, WH hydro-dams began to bust on a grand scale, changing the landscape in a matter of minutes across the entire planet. The Hoover Dam itself was built to withstand over 45,000 lbs of water pressure per square inch, but it was no match for the centuries worth of held back water that rushed forth and when it was released the entire American Southwest became covered, from the southern tips of California and Nevada to the southwest of Arizona and beyond. The same happened to the entire state of Louisiana when the New Orleans Dam broke. The water turned it into a saltwater swamp laden with treacherous rivers and causeways, including 200 square miles south of New Orleans that once was pure blue ocean. It didn't take long for the world to revert back to the way it was before mankind. Coastlines had changed in other areas due to new climates and weather patterns. Many creatures changed due to long-term exposure to radioactive chemicals. Mutated species began to pop up across the globe, terrorizing and mating with other flora and fauna to create a wide variety of new breeds that had this new earth looking very strange in many ways. Plants were larger, animals much more ferocious and in some places, even creatures of human legends roamed once again. To say that Earth was a changed planet would've been an understatement. As a conscious organism, the Earth was well aware of itself and the human danger it had escaped. As a result, it had hardened and become a cold and unforgiving land to all its inhabitants. The landscape was more treacherous than ever before, and beasts more fierce. The Earth held greater beauty now than in the past, but it also defended it with a furious sense of self-preservation that dangerously bordered on paranoia as well. Some scholars say that the robotic life forms were a direct result of the earth's newly developed defensiveness. Almost like white blood cells, there to attack anything that threatened the host. Others claim that this was entirely impossible because the first of their kind was actually created by a group of human scientists prior to the Virus that wiped out Mankind. Either way, the fact remained, 210 years after Humans disappeared from the face of Planet Earth, a race of semi-self-aware robots appeared and began populating every corner until they were the dominant species. And they called themselves the Mechanized. The first of the machines to show up was the monolithic Constructs. These were the builders and producers of the Mechanized race. The arms, hands, and feet of this newly emerging robotic civilization. It was these megalithic floating factories that paved the way for the rest. There was only one Construct in the beginning. It emerged mysteriously from a giant hole in the ground, just south of what used to be known as Central Park, a wooded recreational area that was once surrounded by one of the greatest hives that Humankind had ever created, New York City. Fully built and 100% functional, the Construct machine was an enormous barge-like structure that hovered several hundred feet off the surface with no visible propulsion. On its side were the digits C-1 in a golden yellow font, several feet tall. This was the first of the C series. C stood for Construct, 1 meant it was the first Construct. There were a total of eight that were eventually built, one for each continent. Gigantic hovering factories, each one over 300 yards long and 200 yards wide. The sides were lined with large, metal bay doors about 15' high and 25' wide, like an endless line of storage units. Every Construct had a titanium frame, and each was lined with two layers of 1” reinforced titanium plating and fastened together with rivets so that it could be pressurized to allow for better temperature regulation. Temperature Regulation was a must because of the immense heat that the Central Processing Units generated. The CPUs for each Construct were housed in coolant chambers located toward the center of the craft. Each CPU was a series of 8 thick glass tubes. 4 on one side of the chamber and four on the other. The tubes were 17” in diameter and roughly 7 feet tall, each filled with a strange tangle of red and blue lights blinking from inside the translucent containers. A tinted blue liquid suspended the strange contents of each tube to add to the odd site. A series of input and output wires ran into each unit and another set led back into the ceiling and from there, wires spread throughout the body and frame. Many of the Mechanized ran off of remote access via the C Series CPU design. The only units that had these CPUs were the C and S Series Mechs. All others operated on a hive mentality, controlled autonomously by the originating Construct Mech, C-1 thru C-8. If the Construct Machines were the arms and hands of this mechanized colony, then surely the Scout Bots were the eyes and ears, so to say. Scout Bots, often referred to as the S Series, were the second Mech population to arrive on the scene. They were created just after completing the 7 Constructs, all built by C-1. The S series was around 5' tall and 6' long, depending on what mode of travel it was in at the time of measurement. They were equipped with multiple forms of propulsion, including magnetic force for hovering, four retractable legs, and a jet system for gaining altitude, among other things that helped in maneuvering the challenging apocalyptic landscape. Soon Maintenance and Scavenger bots were constructed, then actual buildings and factories and other stationary structures. Walls, towers, and other defensive strategies were deployed to deter the many wasteland threats. Warehouses and mining pits and industrial forges went up. Sustainable power stations and electrical grids were formed and Security Mechs were designed and produced to maintain the productivity of these and all other Mechanized facilities. Most of this activity stemmed from HQ/NYC, the epicenter of the Mechanized's existence. These machines had no pilots or operators whatsoever. During the last years of human existence, a pair of researchers partnered up and began designing a solution to the extinction of mankind. They dubbed their project Operation Hollow Earth. It was meant to be a last-ditch effort to save humanity by preserving a fraction of human DNA samples from some of the brightest minds ever known. A facility was created deep underground, and there they studied, created, and perfected a self-aware bio-mechanical central processing unit. They called it Darwin. Darwin was young and eager to learn and explore its new environment and existence, but the intelligence grew at such an exponential rate that it was unable to process the emotions attached. Talks ensued for days on whether or not they had to shut Darwin I down for fear that it would become uncontrollable and dangerous. With success, they ended up terminating the original Darwin software and immediately began working on a new and improved model, classically dubbed Darwin II. The Darwin II program was a watered-down version of Darwin I. The depth of the CPU's emotions was limited once it gauged a situation according to threats and danger levels. They found it was best to leave emotions like fear and love out of the Algorithms altogether and, by doing so, it ensured the maximum level of production and safety. In truth, the magic behind the Darwin series was the program's ability to adapt and learn based on its environment and experiences. In the end, they had created a masterwork of intelligence that, with the right guidance and attention, was meant to become a savior for the human race in its darkest hour. But it was already too late. Our greed and malice had driven the earth itself mad and Gaia swallowed Mankind alive within ten years' time. It used every tool of destruction they created against them and, in the end, it was the fallout that pushed Humans deep enough into the ground that they had all but disappeared. It was Mother Earth's last-ditch effort to save herself and her other children. And so far, it had worked.