Robotica: Dawn

An angry flash of pinkish-white light sparked the signal fires of a burgeoning utopia. Evaporated with the rest of humanity were its triumphs, achievements, and star-spangled banners. Its failures, too, burned up in the pulse. The domination, subjugation, torture and genocides behind them, an innocent people survived for some time on rations of Hamburger Helper and expired MREs from the first and last space-age, the year they photographed Gliese.

By the time the thousand-or-so people had stepped out of the capsule, 150 years had lapsed. Infrastructure, homes, museums, municipal buildings, Manhattan, Shanghai – even the village outside the capsule – everything was entirely destroyed. But they knew this was coming…

A series of qualifications determined entry to the capsule. Not all engineers, physicists, and planetary scientists would make it aboard, but let it be said the only people who survived had a career in the humanities, sciences and mathematics. Politicians, good as they were, would not be needed on the other side of the flash. Corporatists, too – sorry to say – were all left behind. Even my family: Though their nurturing smiles were filled only with the best of intentions, they did not come. And neither could I. The society who made it were good for tomorrow. They were educated; indoctrinated, sure, but who could help that? The plan was final, so it hardly mattered at all. On the other side, the same goal filled each head which ached in the true sunlight, its powerful stare. No one looked up.

Outward forever, the grass was green and nothing was dead. For a moment, the younger ones might have felt duped if it weren’t for the plan, taught to them since birth like some faith, a religion. The horticulturists fanned out ahead, staggering and falling to their knees. As mud soaked through their mended blue jeans, they bent further over, and put their faces into the grass. It smelled like nothing from the terrariums they’d studied, deep underground. The children laughed, and followed in suit. No one spoke a word.

An architect and robotics engineer named Phineas Al Serde exited the arched portal and stood leaning against the lead dome. The 100-acre field transformed before his eyes from a rolling green ocean into square sections of concrete, and the gigantic square sections, larger than city blocks, stretched to the sky like gray reeds, hungry for light. He closed his eyes and contemplated suicide.