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Seven Red Suns effortlessly flitted about their chamber, their oak colored cloak swaying along with them almost rhythmically. They were humming a tune, a hymn to be exact. It echoed throughout their empty chamber as they tapped away at one of the many holographic displays lazily following them.
“Hmm…” Suns stopped briefly, taking an extra minute to scan through the holographic text in front of them. It was a text log accompanied by some images, it was sent in by an Overseer observation party they’d sent out some cycles back. The party had been tasked to investigate the nearby Lush Expanse, an area that’d existed on a much smaller scale even before Seven Red Suns was built. The Lush Expanse had only continued to thrive and grow in size thanks to the frequent downpours caused by their superstructure.
Suns had always been one to appreciate the wonders of nature, it was puzzling them as to how the expanse was thriving despite the fact so much of the surface had been turned into muddied mush.
They double tapped one of the attached images, prompting a new hologram window to pop up and display it in fullscreen. “Well, It is certainly..
Green
” They leaned in closer, eyes squinting at the rather low quality image. The picture showed a dense forest, but…
Suns heaved a deep sigh, a feeling of annoyance stirring in their metaphorical chest. The Ancients had spent such great amounts of resources, time and dedication building each one of them, but they’d not dedicated such time to designing their Overseers. Instead simply settling for
‘good enough’
. They’d never be able to understand exactly why their creators thought that’d be a good idea, but a lot of their choices had been… Questionable, at best.
At worst their creators' poor design choices had cost them not one, but two close friends.
Seven Red Suns sighed again, rubbing their temples. It wasn’t wholly the fault of The Ancients, If only they
hadn’t
sent their Spearmaster on the mission to deliver that forsaken pearl to Five Pebbles, if only they’d recognised that he wasn’t ready yet– then maybe, just maybe both their dear friends would still be here.
One of them wouldn’t be collapsed on the ocean floor.
The other one wouldn’t be rotting away alone with their regrets.
An unpleasant painful pressure had begun building at the back of their processor while their mind jumped between what-ifs at supercomputer speeds.
‘Beep!’
The noise jerked the Iterator out of their self induced guilt trip, eyes snapping to the new hologram window floating to their right. Suns hissed at the sheer brightness of the pop-up, squinting their eyes at the bright red text. They could make out the bold letters at the top of the window reading
‘[!!Warning!!]’
, but the other text seemed somehow, not so uncharacteristically fuzzy and impossible to read.
Suns could guess what the obvious system warning entailed without needing to read any further.
With the flick of a wrist all holograms that’d been floating around them closed, the snap of their fingers dimmed the lights in their chamber to a far more comfortable level. The Iterator lowered themselves down, down and down to the floor of their chamber until they were sat on their knees. Their eyes closed.
They drew in a deep breath, or rather what could resemble one. The air vents on their puppet whirring loudly in the process. It wasn’t exactly a secret that they hadn’t been built with great care either. Within cycles of coming online for the first time they’d noticed little flaws here and there with their superstructure but opted to keep their concerns to themselves, they’d been convinced there was a reason their creators had built them the way they had.
Now when faced with the reality of their cooling systems slowly but surely failing one by one they weren’t so sure they believed that anymore. If only–
The lights in their chamber flickered and Suns cried out in pain, their hands desperately grasping at the fabric of their cloak as they doubled over in agony. The power surge lasted for only a few seconds but it felt like multiple cycles worth of time had passed before all their systems briefly flickered offline, then back online but in maintenance mode.
Suns chose to remain in the same curled up position on the floor of their chamber as they waited for the automatic maintenance scans to finish. Unfortunately power surges weren’t an uncommon occurrence anymore.
One thing was for certain, Seven Red Suns felt exhausted from the whole ordeal. Feeling your own hardware zap and fry itself was highly unpleasant and downright
painful
.
The soft hum of their superstructure powering up fully told them that the maintenance scans were finished.
‘Pling!’
Suns flinched, eyes shooting open. They were greeted by a single smaller hologram that read
‘[Incoming] Live broadcast [CHAT] request
.
Tap for more information…’
They stared at the hologram for an extended period of time, slowly weighing the pros and cons of engaging in a conversation with another being in their current state.
“Pros would be absolutely
none
” Suns concluded.
They swept their hand through the air and effectively dismissed the broadcast request without batting another eye. No Significant Harassment would understand if they reached out in a few cycles worth of time and explained why they’d left him on delivered. It may not be the best way to go about it, but they simply could
not ri–
‘Pling!’
‘[Incoming] Live broadcast [CHAT] request
.
Tap for more information…’
Seven Red Suns stared daggers at the hologram that’d popped right back up in front of them. They felt annoyance brewing in their chest, they truly did not have the energy for a long chit-chat with their friend right now.
But…
They squinted their eyes at the hologram while searching through their system memory, trying to recall what they and No Significant Harassment had spoken about last time. In the end they drew a blank.
“Let’s keep this short..”
They tapped the hologram, prompting it to open up and display the recently received messages alongside any relevant information about their chat partner. Their eyes sluggishly scanned the contents of the texts, a twinge of confusion striking them as they tried to process the contents of the broadcast.
Why, what was…?
No, why was he apologising?
Wait.. Who?
The color is wrong
Suns leaned back ever so slightly, lifting their gaze to the top of the broadcast window.
oh.
Oh-
[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Five Pebbles, Seven Red Suns