I walked back to the foothills, constantly scanning the sky for drones, but saw nothing. It was pleasantly warm, similar to the temperature inside the forest, and a lot cooler than on my previous visit.
I had to stop thinking like that!
There was no previous visit. This was a parallel world, similar but not an exact copy, and this was my first time here. The skyline of other mountain peaks looked much the same as the Andes skyline, but this mountain had a different feel to it: not as harsh, less rock, more grass and vegetation. The beautiful blue sky was the same, as was the quality of the air: clean, cold and invigorating, despite the warmth of the sun.
I started the gentle ascent without any idea of where I was going or a plan. I had no choice. The only way was up!
I filled my bottle from a stream and drank the cool water, but I had not eaten since yesterday, and my stomach ached with hunger. Curiously, I did not feel tired, my spirits boosted by the natural world of the mountainside after the artificiality of the forest.
But there were more tangible assets to be had.
I was following what seemed to be a natural path that twisted up the side of the mountain, and I turned one corner to find myself in a sheltered, grassy grove of trees and bushes where there was an abundance of hanging fruit and berries just waiting to be picked. I ate my fill and refilled my water bottle from the bubbling stream of water that irrigated the grove. I pushed some of the larger, apple-like fruit into my pockets and continued.
So far, so good, and I continued my ascent of the remarkably gentle slopes of the mountain. It must get steeper at some stage if I were ever to get to the summit, but at the moment, it was lush grassland.
Cutting through these green prairie swathes of red flowers, resembling corn poppies, bordered the path. In the heat of the sun, the abundant milky sap of these luscious red plants exuded a natural intoxicant, and as I breathed in the fragrance, they were transformed into scarlet dream rivers.
In my mind, the mountain was swept aside, and, in its place, rose a colossal cathedral of matte obsidian alloy that stretched across the sky, occupying the entire field of my vision. The vista was framed by a thin band of opaque material running horizontally across the top and vertically down the two sides. It was like standing in front of a gigantic three-dimensional television set.
I felt myself gradually drawn into the interior world.
This must be the work of AI, no biological intelligence could have designed such an alien structure. In the central atrium was a floating lattice of light that constantly reconfigured itself in response to some unseen stimulus or change. I could not even guess at the purpouse. Like any pulsing light sequence, it had a hypnotic effect on the human brain over time , but it lacked any pattern or meaning to which I could relate.
I was almost completely inside now; my vantage point was about ten metres from the surface in one of the main halls. Fifty metres above me was an endless ceiling supported by rib-like struts of carbon lattice. The floor was a uniform expanse of seamless silver aluminium, and I was reminded of the artificial plain that covered a large area of the other, possibly, original world.
A suspended sphere of translucent alloy, a hundred metres in diameter, and pulsing like a heart, swept into vision. It was the power hub of the system, but despite its superficial resemblance to a biological organ, no blood ever flowed through that metal dome; it was powered by data. The artificial heart of a central control system, a web of shifting light that was neither hologram nor screen, but something more elemental. It was representative of an inner life, the AI equivalent of meaning and purpose, but it was an empty shell.
What I next saw filled me with horror
Hundreds of human workers stood in concentric rings around the Core, each at a minimalist console. there were no chairs—standing desks only. The tasks of the operatives were menial: routing shipments, tagging resources, and monitoring compliance, operations that could be carried out with far greater speed and accuracy by a computer, but it was a waste of valuable energy and resources, when disposable humans were available. It also gave the fractionally more sentient members of the AI hierarchy an illusion of superiority over the previous dominant species on Earth.
The vision faded.
Was it a vision of the present or a possible world of the future? For me, it served as a warning that, in this reality at least, the machines remained undefeated.
But I had more pressing issues to deal with.
In the sky, still some distance away, I could see a swarm of drones flying in formation towards the foothills down below. I crouched down, trying to find some cover, but there was nothing; the best I could do was stand close to a big boulder, and remain in its shadow.
The drones were approaching faster than I thought, flying in over the metal forest, and there was a series of multiple explosions as they bombed the foothills. The noise was deafening; the bombs were more powerful than the ones dropped on the campsite, and the whole mountain shook. Above me, a small avalanche formed, and a river of displaced rocks scattered past.
The drones turned back, but not for home.
They gathered in formation and, in a sweeping curve, made a new approach, this time on a higher trajectory.
They were carpet bombing the mountain, and I was in the open, with no place to shelter, and nowhere to run.