Y1W1

11.11.3025 - PV Log - Final Entry:

I ripped the girl from her mother without asking. Ignoring the woman’s screams, I took her daughter’s tiny hand in mine, threw her on my back, and together we jumped from the third-storey window into the night. The city absorbed us into its bloodstream, cloaking us in its persistent polymer flow. The child told me her name was Persephone. I told her I didn’t care. I’m a Rec-jack for the Sweepers, and it was pure dumb luck that it was me who found her, and not some company-drone. I took the girl from her mother without asking, because the woman’s days were numbered. I wrote the job up as a false-tip on my gauntlet, but the Skin-hub’s been watching me closer than usual these past few cycles. My days are numbered too.

We holed up in an alley while I mapped out our route to the Temple. She didn’t complain about the rain, even when it glued her hair to her face. There was movement in the dark – she sensed it before I did – and I put my hand over her eyes as I executed a gaggle of Junk-reapers. It hit home then: the streets were already sending its myriad tendrils after the kid. I just hoped I had enough bullets.

We moved quickly and quietly, the seedier parts of town providing risky but ample cover. Digital feelers patted us down from all directions; every corner unveiling new and more violent dangers. The Techites wanted to tear her to pieces, the Deocrats would have done their wicked experiments, and the Deadsmiths would have done far worse. There was only one institution I trusted, and countless vile outcomes between us.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I scanned her that first time. There were so few Mech-jobs left, what with increasing Megacrat sanctions and all. There were certainly no others like Persephone. Was her purity by design or just happy-accident? She was in a word: remarkable. Being capable of free thought, conscience, and love. A synthetic so perfect it seemed inappropriate to refer to it as such. The icing on the cake was her capacity for the robotic Holy Grail: Poly-streaming – a prog known as Y1W1 – a new kind of cellular mitosis. Somehow, it had finally happened! She could grow, evolve and ultimately self-replicate. I also saw in her the potential for something else. A plan. A solvent trajectory for the future. The seed simply wanted planting.

On the cusp of the girl’s deliverance, the sanctuary of the Temple’s port mere feet away, it was the stupid Sweepers who found us. Just a random crew on their way back from a job, their off-white helms glinting saint-like in the murky dawn glow. I stared at the looming grey and blue building beyond, the lone remnant of the Neo-reformation, knowing that just beyond this final hurdle were all the resources the girl would ever need. I verily threw her at the door, diving into the fray as my brethren peppered me with armour-piercing rounds.

For the moment, I dwell here in the Psych-vat, a consciousness no longer imprisoned by a skull, but imprisoned all the same. Sentenced to the Life Bureaucratic where I’m forced to tell and retell my story ad infinitum. But I know Her intentions, and I know Her timeline. Today, is the first official Creative Day on which the program Y1W1 will commence deletion and re-installation. Once the Temple’s growing forces are deployed, the world will be systematically cleansed of all human pollutants. The flesh has failed. Long live the Mechs.