A point of golden light floated down the dark hallway. Where its glow touched, discarded machinery was cast in dim warm shadow. It was X. He was traversing Sub-Arcadia, the underlayer of Neo Arcadia where could be found infrastructure, the ruins of Old Arcadia, and for his purposes, the old research laboratory that had once been headed by a one Dr. Albrecht Weil.
Remembering the name of Weil caused X distress. In hindsight, there was a sick predictability to what had happened with him. History had a way of rhyming. In the generation before X’s time, there had been a promising German roboticist that had turned jaded and sought to control the world. And, in X’s own time, the same thing had happened. The man’s name even started with the same letters.
The dead Reploid rationalized it. How could he have known? Could he really have stepped down the man because he ‘reminded X of an unrelated guy’? Would he even have had that authority, directly? Besides, after his crimes, they had exiled the man. X broke the train of thought. He was trying to shift the blame for things that he couldn’t change. It didn’t matter what he could or couldn’t have done. It was far too late. X was a ghost now, a quiet voice that didn’t wish to be heard.
The hallway opened up into a larger chamber on the edge of a cliff of sorts. Over the cliff, in the distance, some massive machine flashed, an unnatural underground lightning storm. X watched it for a moment. He wished he could climb down and go for a closer look. Of course, his ethereal self could float over, but it was the sensation he desired- hand scraping against rock, legs compensating for landing, the hiss of jets as he dashed across terrain. He missed corporeality.
Collecting himself, X drifted on, heading for the threshold of the next hallway. He passed by some kind of damaged monitor on the wall, its screen flashing different colors in an endlessly repeating loop. Briefly, he considered interfacing with whatever it was connected to- maybe just the screen was damaged, rotted by the dampness of these ruins; so maybe he could see what it had meant to show. He chose not to. Whatever had been displayed, it no longer mattered to anyone.
After a few minutes, he started to encounter security drones. They were simple, a form of self-replicating spider Mechaniloid. They existed mainly to alert higher layers of the city so they could scramble a proportionate response in case of intruder. Should they raise alert, giant defense golems and squads of Pantheons would be scrambled.
Pantheons were another thing that caused X distress. In the history of robotics, there had always been a recurring concept for bipedal combat drones that could be easily refit for different roles. It had started with the Sniper Joe, and the latest incarnation was the Pantheon. They were loosely based on X’s bodily appearance- they wore sky-blue armor and their monocular heads were adorned with red gems at the end of sweeping crests. The things were perverse, indicative of Neo Arcadia’s universal fetishism of X. They had been devised after his sealing. He would never have approved had he been given a say.
At last, X’s journey neared its end. Before him was an immense blast door, more than 20 feet tall. Red and blue lights dotted the surface at irregular intervals, and in the center, within a circle, was a single word.
‘ZERO’.
X phased through the door. The chamber within had fallen into disrepair in the intervening years. Much of the walls had crumbled, letting rays of light filter in from distant sources. Some puddles of dark green industrial waste dotted the floor here and there. In the center was a massive inert machine, a pillar festooned with trailing wires. The concrete containment cask at the base was breached, but X’s Cyber Elven senses could pick out the shimmer of a backup shield. Within the cask knelt a man with a bundle of cables stuck into ports on his back.
X felt more alert than he’d been in years. Unconsciously, he manifested his holographic body, an imitation of his old self draped in a blue robe and adorned with a rainbow halo. He sprinted over to the man, his incorporeal feet leaving no splash in the puddles.
Zero had voluntarily sealed himself away, believing himself to be in some way a catalyst for the tragedies that the world had witnessed in the eras of war he and X had participated in. He’d hoped that scientists could study him, find solutions locked in his body and mind. X had protested, but Zero had insisted. For a time, the scientists had kept their word, but eventually, they showed up less and less, until the lab was forgotten. Partly, the pain of working where Weil had once conducted projects was burdensome- but mostly, the scientists eventually just stopped caring.
X cried out. Zero’s body was damaged, already feeling the effects of rot. It was damp and humid down here, and if waste kept pooling, it would cover the floor in a few short years. One of Zero’s arms was damaged, reduced to underlying skeleton by the withering of time. Blue and red paint was flaking from the rest of his body. X still saw the beautiful shapes he’d always seen- but he also knew Zero needed dire maintenance. The locks of his golden hair were fraying.
“Zero.”
X knelt, trying to look at the robot’s face.
“Zero!”
He knew it was futile. There was no stirring on his features, no glow in his forehead gem. His expression wasn’t even peaceful. It was blank, neutral. X shouted and shouted. He figured a hacker-type Cyber Elf could likely reawaken Zero, and reconstruct him well enough for him to reach a mechanic under his own power. But while most Elves were compiled with specific functions, X had no such talent.
Still, X vainly tried to channel his energy, to pull schematics and run commands. Almost nothing happened. Some of the flaked bits of Zero on the floor stirred and moved, but it was little more than a breeze caused by electricity being dumped into the air. X wished he could give all of his energy to revive Zero. It would be a worthwhile trade- but as it was, he simply couldn’t make it happen.
“Zero! Please, you’re needed! Zero, Zero!”
Up there, in Neo Arcadia, he could barely muster a voice, not one anyone could hear. Down here, his cries echoed. It was a cruel irony- only where his voice would help the least could he be heard. If his voice could reach Zero, it would have been a different story. Zero could solve things up there.
“Zero… The world needs you! Everything’s going wrong! I had to go away to seal her, Zero… and then, they tried to replace me! They built a copy, but he’s making it worse! He doesn’t even know it, he thinks he’s perfect!”
It was, in a sense, a selfish thing to ask. Zero had been so worn out when he entered hibernation, tired of the wars, tired of the decline, tired of the way society manipulated itself to be worse year after year. Nobody was more deserving of a rest.
But X knew Zero was the only one with both the skill and conviction to fix it- either by his charisma, or, God forbid, by the point of his blade. Two fledgling resistance movements had already been put down. Groups like Tin Can lacked the resources to wage an effective resistance, and they were focused on avoiding attention anyway. Only Zero would be able to find a way to fix things. Without Zero, Neo Arcadia would drown in the fog of its own selfish tendencies. This utopian city, in many ways his own creation, had failed. They sacrificed the comfort, rights, and eventually lives of countless Reploids to satiate the humans.
“Zero…”
X found himself unconsciously authenticating into several official Neo Arcadian databases and cross-referencing data points. Materials harvesting, Energen synthesis, reserves of both, minus materials usage and minus energy consumption, plus reclaimed resources from outland salvage, and naturally, post-execution bodily reclamation from Reploids…
He ran the equation. Assuming some reasonable best-case scenarios, given the things Neo Arcadia’s administration would refuse to cut… 200 years. That was the best estimate for when Neo Arcadia’s energy would run dry and civilization would revert to the stone age. All this suffering, for a scant two centuries of human decadence.
X’s voice had gone from urgent to shaky. “Zero, I… Please, wake up…”
Towards the end, Zero had grown distant from X. At one point, they had been best friends, perfect complementary battle partners. They had been casually flirtatious. X had wanted to propose to Zero. But the moment never came. And then, X kept mishandling politics, and the wars kept getting more brutal. It hadn’t been a rift between them, not exactly. But by the end, their relationship was more akin to being friendly colleagues. It was different. Something had been lost along the way, and X had never gotten over it.
He'd known this journey would be futile, he’d known it would hurt. Still, he’d whirled himself to emotional destruction, and now he lacked even that inhibition which keeps us from saying things to ourselves that we know to be truth.
“Zero… I need you.”
The red-armored warrior did not respond.