Chapter 3: Night’s Cold Embrace

A creature of habit, Roland Bernard, no longer in his lab coat, stared at the night sky through his floor length windows at the slow moving lights of trawlers picking up the debris of humanity, including the victims of meaner humanity.
A glass of whiskey in his hand, he scented its potency halfway down from his face.
It got even stronger when he took sips, and gave him flashes of comfort when he closed his eyes and breathed out the fear and tension of the day with heavy sighs. He’d given up hoping it would deliver him to a different reality.
There is no hope for humanity. Not glimmer, not a speck, not a thread, not a…
His hand tightened, wanting to throw and shatter the glass to stop the litany in his mind. Even now, when he wasn’t concentrating on his work to please his metal masters, the breaking of his spirit and resignation of his flesh to a life of seemingly pointless servitude dominated his individuality.
There’d once been sunlight, children, music, love, laughter, and indulging in the frail creative bravery of human arts.
Now there was only fire, smoke, blood, screams, cries of pain, pleading, begging for the lives of children, and even animals. They were all silenced by advanced weaponry, and the gory blood was efficiently disposed of, while what remained of the flesh was burned.

When he shut his mind against the clamor, there were only images of brave men and women sacrificing their lives in vain behind his closed eyelids. The metals always came in packs, troops, gangs, battalion, or legions, and they were undefeated. He chuckled with no mirth at the irony of a caveman’s fire still being used this far into the future to purify a world of robotic killers, sending humanity back into darkness.
Roland had tried many times to end his existence, but the last time he almost succeeded, they gave him to their best and most precise repair units. When they finished, he emerged good as new to life. As the days wore on and the new parts made their presence known, he felt he’d only been partially killed.
Turning from the planet’s slow wheeling return to daylight, he picked up the bottle and went into his bedroom, not bothering with a glass this time.
After a minute of not detecting his presence in his expansive living room, the lights went out and the window shutters hissed down, locking with the faintest of clicks.