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It was a spaceship, an inter-planetary conveyance of some kind, brightly metallic, the size of an eyelash. The tiny projectile left stationary orbit around the planet's single large moon and came out to meet me. I stayed motionless, halted any movement to see what they would do. I was still as large as their home planet.
After a few minutes, my time (possibly months had gone by in their time frame), the ship drew close to my waist and a smaller, more mobile craft was dispatched. It circled me with slow methodical grace, then dropped in a long curve to land gracefully on my chest. It felt like a fly had landed there.
I watched closely as a square section swung outward from the hull and a number of beings emerged. Golden in color, the size of pinpoints. There were a dozen of them gathering in a group outside the ship.
I was utterly surprised when they spread tiny golden wings and scattered in various directions, flying low over the surface of my skin. These "birds" flew in the vacuum of space but I suddenly realized my body must be emitting an atmosphere of a sort. After a short while of exploration they returned to their ship. They had journeyed no further than the midpoint of my chest. The section of the hull swung closed again and the craft lifted gently and without visible signs of propulsion, from my chest, and rejoined the mother ship. They swooped off toward their home planet.
The planet was red tinged and encircled by a continuous belt of land. The land dominated both the northern and southern hemispheres, leaving two, rather small oceans north and south. As I drew closer to their world I made out numerous space stations in orbit. There were other stations orbiting their moon as well. There were perhaps a dozen or more spaceships of varying sizes orbiting also, but only around the moon. As I got closer their number increased. There were thousands of craft orbiting the moon. I had to decide which sphere to land on, the planet or their moon.
I positioned myself nearer their home world and saw something I hadn't noticed before. The bird people had erected a series of protective enclosures on the face of the moon. Miles across and at least a mile high, each enclosure was exactly the same size and height. They could only be gun emplacements ringed tightly around the crown and around each domed periphery where hundreds more! There were hundreds of these winged creatures flitting around the surface.
Growing smaller by the minute, I was still debating whether to land on their planet or head for their fortified moon. There must be air in those domes because these creatures did need to breathe air.
I chose the planet and allowed it to capture me in its gravitational grip. I began to descend. I was landing bigger this time, about twenty miles tall. I landed in a huge inland sea i squat low to clear the thin layer of clouds blocking my view. They weren't clouds at all, but an overlay of dust!
The shore was, perhaps, forty miles off, and strewn with debris. Huge piles of crushed and twisted metal marked where a city had once stood. Columns of smoke and dust evidenced ongoing destruction. The devastation was everywhere as far as I could see. And I was miles high. "What happened here?" I pondered aloud. I got a terrible feeling the bird people abandoned their whole world and they were all on the moon.
I approached the shore and stopped five miles out and waited.
I saw them. Moving in and out and around the mountains of rubble were a legion of machines! None of them took any interest in me even though they couldn't have missed my presence here.
These machines were huge and small, incredibly complex and utterly simple. Some moved on caterpillar-like tracks while others walked upright on two legs. Still others had six or eight legs, some flew through the air. They spread out in every direction, cutting and tourching and crunching on steel. Every machine seemed to be operating on its own. There was no joint effort or coordination.
I deduced the civilization of the bird people was being resolutely demolished by their own machines! The mechanisms had somehow developed intent, intelligence and purpose. They had the planet to themselves.
Suddenly, I had been observed.
Two immense mobile cranes with gigantic shovel jaws had stopped their consumption of debris. They turned and watched me from the shore. Standing on great jointed legs, they had segmented girder-like arms, and towered a good half a mile tall! Each arm ended in a huge, pincer-like claw, opening and closing slowly. I shuddered.
With frightening coordination these giant metal cranes strode forward into the water heading my way. They moved together with menacing precision, raising their deadly claws. Taking a defensive stance I twirled around and landed my foot directly in the mid section of both the mechanical monsters catching them with a forceful blow. They flew apart in all directions, some parts landing on the shore, the rest splashing down into the water. I became enraged and wanted to destroy them all.
No more came my way, instead these insidious mechanisms toiled away, ignoring me. Moving in closer I observed the efficiency of their design. No needless intricacies, no superfluous parts, only bare essentials to do their jobs. Each was built for a specific task, cutting, torching, shearing and hauling.
There was no sense of urgency, just a methodically proficient activity. Each machine from the smallest to the largest, from the simplest to the most complex, had a certain task to perform and performed it directly and completely, tirelessly and continuously.
Then I saw the mills and machine shops, and their output! These new machines went to work building new bridges across rivers and ravines, leveling forests and obstructing hills, erecting strange complicated towers a thousand feet high. All the while legions of destructors continued their fearsome work. They were feeding the mills with an endless procession of scrap materials to turn out new machines and raw products for their construction. Yes, construction of a vast new city of towering, ugly shapes - a city covering hundreds of square miles between the mountains in the distance and the inland sea at my feet - a city of machines, ungainly, lifeless, yet with a purpose. But for what?
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Next Chapter V - Artificial Intelligence
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