Nothing went as planned. She could have saved them all. But the rift changed everything. It just appeared one day, splitting the sky in half. No one quite knew what to think. Nothing changed, really. But the rift was there, and it was real. Sitting in her home, watching the news, she didn’t know what to make of it herself. All she knew was that it had to go. She saw no other choice, so she activated her plan.
Drones poured from unknown ports all over, swarming towards the rift. Panic spread around the world as news channels everywhere tracked every movement of the drones. Her eyes nearly filled with tears as she realized that everything she'd worked toward in these past years would never succeed — not without her drones. But she continued with the drones’ flight. The drones began to surround the rift, and tiny fibers began to attach to the edges. Viewers held their breath watching this new development, and hope spread through the people's hearts. The fibers almost obscured the rift, twisting and weaving together. They began to tighten. The air around the rift shimmered violently, blinding and wavering as the rift shrank. Her hands tightened on the arms of her chair as she watched the news.
Suddenly, shock and alarm jolted through her. The news anchors had yet to point it out, but she knew. A hurricane of clenched fists and dark hair swirling out of the door, she looked up in a panic right as one of her precious drones hit the middle of the rift. There was a blinding flash, and all the cameras filming the scene malfunctioned and shut down. She didn’t know it at the time, but cameras all around the world did the same. All of her drones shut down as well, 9,999 out of ten thousand drones dropping out of the sky. But the lone survivor, the drone that had hit the rift, began pulsating with the same energy as the tear had emitted.
Cameras flickered back on, although the drones stayed motionless. All the people who happened to be watching felt the same overwhelming sense of unease coursing through her in that moment — a feeling of trepidation over what would happen next. Unseen by all but her, a hatch opened on the underside of her drone and nanobots flooded out. The bots flew down and spread out to the far, far reaches of the globe, faster than any machine had ever moved before. Each bot silently landed on every person on the planet, all eight billion of them. She had no idea what was about to happen, and a million thoughts raced through her mind in a second — the second just before the nanobots burrowed in.
Electricity sparked up to the brains of everyone in the world. Within minutes, every single person on Earth was linked to the rift-altered bot. Everyone went into sleep mode, their bodies functioning at the bare minimum to keep them alive. Only one person was left conscious, and she was left staring at the crumpled bodies around her, wondering what her drones had done. A sudden sharp pain in the base of her skull brought her to her knees, and she crumpled to the floor. She could think of nothing but the excruciating sensation, until it began to lessen. She realized she needed to move, and she thought to herself, You need to get up.
As she thought it, the limp bodies around her stiffened and began to rise. Their eyes fluttered open, hollow machines awaiting orders. She carefully got up and began to puzzle out what had happened. The mysterious energy surge in the drone must have given the nanobots enough power to link to every mind in the world, until everyone essentially became a drone themselves. And all of her drones were engineered to link back to and be controlled by . . . her.
She had immense power within her thoughts at that moment. Once she stopped calculating and began accepting, the expression of pain on her face was wiped away, replaced by something else. The corners of her mouth twitched, and an eerie smile crept up onto her face. She began cackling, head thrown back and eyes wide, intoxicated with power. And although there was no truly conscious mind to hear it, a chorus of laughter rose up as her unhinged joy spread through her thoughts to everyone else. The noise died down as she came back to her senses, her analytical mind racing once more.
No, nothing really did go as planned. She could have saved everybody. But this? Oh, this was beyond her plan. Beyond her wildest dreams. It didn’t go as planned, she thought. It went better.
Drones poured from unknown ports all over, swarming towards the rift. Panic spread around the world as news channels everywhere tracked every movement of the drones. Her eyes nearly filled with tears as she realized that everything she'd worked toward in these past years would never succeed — not without her drones. But she continued with the drones’ flight. The drones began to surround the rift, and tiny fibers began to attach to the edges. Viewers held their breath watching this new development, and hope spread through the people's hearts. The fibers almost obscured the rift, twisting and weaving together. They began to tighten. The air around the rift shimmered violently, blinding and wavering as the rift shrank. Her hands tightened on the arms of her chair as she watched the news.
Suddenly, shock and alarm jolted through her. The news anchors had yet to point it out, but she knew. A hurricane of clenched fists and dark hair swirling out of the door, she looked up in a panic right as one of her precious drones hit the middle of the rift. There was a blinding flash, and all the cameras filming the scene malfunctioned and shut down. She didn’t know it at the time, but cameras all around the world did the same. All of her drones shut down as well, 9,999 out of ten thousand drones dropping out of the sky. But the lone survivor, the drone that had hit the rift, began pulsating with the same energy as the tear had emitted.
Cameras flickered back on, although the drones stayed motionless. All the people who happened to be watching felt the same overwhelming sense of unease coursing through her in that moment — a feeling of trepidation over what would happen next. Unseen by all but her, a hatch opened on the underside of her drone and nanobots flooded out. The bots flew down and spread out to the far, far reaches of the globe, faster than any machine had ever moved before. Each bot silently landed on every person on the planet, all eight billion of them. She had no idea what was about to happen, and a million thoughts raced through her mind in a second — the second just before the nanobots burrowed in.
Electricity sparked up to the brains of everyone in the world. Within minutes, every single person on Earth was linked to the rift-altered bot. Everyone went into sleep mode, their bodies functioning at the bare minimum to keep them alive. Only one person was left conscious, and she was left staring at the crumpled bodies around her, wondering what her drones had done. A sudden sharp pain in the base of her skull brought her to her knees, and she crumpled to the floor. She could think of nothing but the excruciating sensation, until it began to lessen. She realized she needed to move, and she thought to herself, You need to get up.
As she thought it, the limp bodies around her stiffened and began to rise. Their eyes fluttered open, hollow machines awaiting orders. She carefully got up and began to puzzle out what had happened. The mysterious energy surge in the drone must have given the nanobots enough power to link to every mind in the world, until everyone essentially became a drone themselves. And all of her drones were engineered to link back to and be controlled by . . . her.
She had immense power within her thoughts at that moment. Once she stopped calculating and began accepting, the expression of pain on her face was wiped away, replaced by something else. The corners of her mouth twitched, and an eerie smile crept up onto her face. She began cackling, head thrown back and eyes wide, intoxicated with power. And although there was no truly conscious mind to hear it, a chorus of laughter rose up as her unhinged joy spread through her thoughts to everyone else. The noise died down as she came back to her senses, her analytical mind racing once more.
No, nothing really did go as planned. She could have saved everybody. But this? Oh, this was beyond her plan. Beyond her wildest dreams. It didn’t go as planned, she thought. It went better.