Part 1

"Hey! I got another one!" Xac reached out to the struggling animal. Behind him, Ansh stumbled to a stop, his heavy boots feeling like lead weights on stiff wooden legs. He turned away as Xac did something to the animal, then it was still. Xac sensed his discomfort. "Better than letting them strangle themselves. Not a nice death." The older boy unhooked the wire and put the drndl in his sack, sealing it at the neck and slinging it over his shoulder.

"Xac, shouldn't we be getting home?" The third member of the party, Luic, loosened the neck of her t-shirt, letting her hands fall to her sides. She glanced upwards at the sky - already going slightly pink. She checked her wristwatch. "It's almost eight."

"Come on Luic, we've got tents. Who wants to go home?" He turned to Ansh. "You don't want to go home, do you, kid?"

He looked between the faces of Luic and Xac. One plastered with a white grin, the other slightly worried below the freckles. Home sounded inviting, with its comfy beds and nice food...but camping sounded more adventurous. And that was what he was here for, wasn't it? "I'm with Xac," he said.

The sleeping bag was warm as he pulled its drawstring around his body just under his armpits, his flashlight throwing wild and random shadows around the green tent as it rolled around. He unzipped the door of the tent and looked out at the little clearing they had set up camp in. Luic's tent was rocking from side to side - her trying to get undressed in such a cramped space, he guessed.

Xac was already out beside the small campfire, sitting on a log, making toast with his legs in the sleeping bag and the ratty old t-shirt that served as his pajamas.

Ansh crawled out of the tent and tried to stand up. He tried to hop the few feet to the campfire, but his feet betrayed him and he toppled over, giving up and getting out of his sleeping-bag. He had been wearing his clothes in his sleeping bag anyway, so he slipped on his boots and joined Xac at the fire.

Luic crawled out of her tent a few minutes later and sat opposite Ansh on a log stool. Xac looked around.
"Everyone here?" He grinned. "Why would anyone want to be in a house when we've got this?"

Luic looked up. "Heating? Decent food? Not having to undress in darkness in a tent the size of a box?" She smiled. "Nah, it's alright."

Xac took a bite out of his toast. "Glad you like it. So...anyone want a story?"

"I'll tell." Luic looked enthusiastic.

Xac shook his head. "No, it's okay...just listen.

"Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a planet. The people who lived on the planet were kinda like us, and they called it Earth. There were so many people on this planet Earth that it got all messed up."

Ansh looked at Luic. This didn't seem like normal campfire fare.

"Some left this Earth, some stayed there. Even with people leaving, though, there were so many people that Earth's government started sending people to colonise other planets in big space ships. The ships got bigger and bigger, and more and more people left in them. But Earth was still overcrowded.

"Then one day disaster struck - an uncurable disease struck and killed a quarter of the Earth-people. Others that it didn't kill, it crippled in horrible ways. They were turned into living statues - normal minds inside bodies that couldn't move, couldn't talk, couldn't do anything but stay living...and this is where the real story starts, with a woman called Elize Gudrino..."

Xac stopped for a second. His face was lit up in the firelight, orange flames flickering in his eyes.

"She invented something called Patterning, that allowed the minds to escape. They were put into machines the Earth-people called computers, and those computers let them be almost normal again. In fact, they were better than the Earth-people - they were cleverer, they didn't take up as much space, and because the computer-machines lasted for such a long time, they would not die. So the Government said to the people, 'We will Pattern everyone. Our planet will be less crowded, and since machines don't need food, we've got more space for doing what we want.' They didn't think that some people might not want to be machines, might even have the strength to fight for life.

"The freedom fighters called themselves the ARM.

"The fighting got worse and worse until the Earth-people threw the ARM off their planet, forcing them to flee to a planet called Empyrrean. They grew in strength and attacked the Earth-people, by now all in computer-machines and led by a computer made up from thousands of minds.

"The machine-people called themselves the CORE.

"The fighting was bad, really bad. Massive weapons all controlled by computers or by artificial people called clones fought on battlefields made from entire planets. The ARM's clones, the CORE's Patterns, both slugged it out with machines powerful enough to destroy entire villages in seconds. They were so strong that they could wade through liquid fire without stopping, so the weapons grew stronger, too. Eventually Earth was destroyed by the attacks and the CORE built themselves a planet all of metal, placed right in the center of the galaxy.

"Both the ARM and the CORE had heroes that they called the Commanders. The Commanders were the top of the top, the ultimate fighters. And they never died, either. If their body was blown up, the CORE would copy their minds into a mechanical replacement, and the ARM would grow another body for the person. The sides stopped fighting for ideals, and just fought because they had fought for so long. Planets were destroyed, entire star systems simply disappeared from the map because of one woman's invention. And one meant to help people, too."

Spellbound, Ansh watched as Xac stopped for a drink. He looked down at his toast which he had propped up against a log. He couldn't see it. He looked slightly left. Oh great, he thought, sighing, and picked up the flat square piece of what looked like either charcoal or extremely well-toasted toast. He tossed it in the fire as Xac continued on the saga of the two great enemies, the ARM and the CORE...

Part 2

With a yawn, she wriggled out of the sleeping bag and unzipped the tent door, crawling out. The campfire was almost out now, but she could faintly make out a figure, sitting hunched with its back to her, watching the stars. She padded over, bare feet making no noise on the dry ground.

She sat down next to the figure - Xac - and put her feet close to the warm embers. Neither spoke for a few seconds.

"Couldn't sleep?" she said after a long pause. She turned her head to look at Xac. He didn't answer her for a while, gazing up at the twinkling stars above her.

"Not really." He shifted his gaze to her face. "You know the story I told you earlier?"

"Yeah...why?"

"It was true. All of it."

She nodded. It had sounded like it. "Thought so...so what happened to the Earth-people? Did they die out?"

"No. No, they didn't." He stopped. "They never stopped fighting. Somewhere out there," he said, lifting a hand to point at the sky, "there's a few people left, and a few shaky machines, slugging it out with dead weapons and rotting bodies, fighting for a lost cause."

"But what happened to the rest of them?"

Xac's face darkened. "They were killed, just because of a stupid war. They killed my parents, too."

"But..."

He laughed, sourly. "Those people aren't my parents. Both my parents were peaceful people, who just wanted to end the war. I never even knew them - all I've got to remember them by are a few letters and little things."

Luic's eyes flitted to the chain he wore around his neck. In the center was a shark tooth.

Xac met her gaze. "Yeah, that's one of the things."

Luic stopped. "Were...the Earth-people...the humans..."

"Yes. They were the same as us."

"But...how do you know all this?"

"My parents, again. They fled from the war, a group of them - stole an old starship and jumped galaxies to this one. Half of them died on the way, from disease, or from bad systems aboard ship. But my parents survived...

"Then one day the ARM and the CORE came." He stopped and abruptly got up, walking away. She thought she saw the trace of a tear...

***

He was walking, slowly but somehow unstoppable. Metal shoulders creaked and massive artificial muscles that could uproot trees or punch holes in armour pushed the machine along. His arms felt strange, and he raised his left to his face, marvelling at the intricate circuitry on it. A green glow pulsed from its end, lighting his surroundings.

He lowered the arm and lifted the other. Heavy, ridged metal, a baleful orange glow somehow filtering through the metal. Coils wrapped around the thing - a cannon of some sort, he guessed - pulsing with enormous energies. He blinked as a rectangle lit up in his vision - "D-GUN CHARGE 97%," it said, and somehow he understood what it meant.

Gray shapes ahead of him in the mist, angular and huge. Low flat slabs of gray crawled across the ground, and things that looked like human machines sprinted beside them. More rectangles lit up, writing that he couldn't read but made sense to him, names that he shouldn't have known but did...

His radio hissed as transmissions, garbled and unclear, came though. "Comm...r! Command...Jones, sir! C...e...ck, we n...unde...a...ck...we...you... HEL...US!" The radio hiss flicked off and he saw white explosions in the distance, lighting up the fog like sheet lightning.

He broke into a heavy jog, feet thundering on the ground, leaving deep footprints as he raised his cannon - D-GUN, he thought. A red square flashing; danger! His arm jerked back as the D-GUN roared, a deep boom ringing out and deafening him, an incredible orange sphere shrieking towards its target. The blocky...SUMO, his display told him, turned what he thought must have been its head in time to notice the D-sphere crackling towards it, tendrils of energy grounding on terrain leaving a solid wake of glassy earth. The D-sphere reached it in a blinding flash of light, and he closed his eyes as it exploded.

Shrapnel ricocheted off him and he felt the impacts on his metallic skin as he spun around, slamming his left arm into a squat shape that had loomed behind him. One of its arms raised to try and shield itself from the blow, as his metal fist struck. It ripped off, sparking, and pinwheeled off into the distance while the creature's other arm flew up towards his face.

A simple tube, with a blue-white glow at its end...he reacted just in time, unlocking a leg muscle and toppling to the side as a jet of plasma ripped past him. His display flashed "PYRO - STATUS CRITICAL" as his shoulder landed on a rock, crushing it.

He dragged his left arm from under him and heard the laser whine, powering up before sending ruby-red light lancing through the air, raking the side of the creature with black scorchmarks. It stopped still for a microsecond then disappeared in rippling plasma, its force blowing rocks towards him.

More things roared towards him, his display obscured by explosions. His display beeped at him - "ARMOUR 50%! WARNING!". He shut his eyes as he heard a roaring above him, looking up toward the heavens as his computer flashed more warnings, unseen..."ARMOUR 34%! WARNING! ARMOUR 29%! WARNING! ARMOUR 13%! WARNING! ARMOUR 7%! WAR..."

Unbearable pain...then white light...then...nothing...

Part 3

In front of him, a padded wall. No lights. A cocoon of some sort? Something hard behind his head...

Lights! Finally, he sees where he is. Some sort of hangar. No, some sort of *big* hangar, filled with robots. Looks down.

He is a robot, too...

Then the knowledge comes. First, the memory that he has gone through this before...that he is what is called a Commander...that he is fighting the enemy, the enemy who are called the CORE...they must be killed...D-GUN CHARGE 97%... then black.

"Commander ACJ-20002192, also known as ACJ-200, also known as Commander Jones."

Is that him? A meaningless string of garbage cycles past. He cannot read it, but somehow he understands the meaning of it.

Another voice: "Hey, Commander! Welcome back to the land of the living! It's been forty years since we last saw you - great to see you back in the old ComFrame again, fit and healthy..."

Radio...where's the radio...

"Hello. Who are you?"

Slightly hurt this time: "Jones! I'm Paul, remember? Old buddy?"

Paul?

A higher female voice: "Ah, crap. Forgot to reactivate the memory. Hang on a sec, would ya?"

Then it all comes flooding back...he passes out.

***

Commander Jones leant back in his neural interface cocoon, the padded and armoured doors closing in front of him as he felt the Commander suit's neural interface touch his neck. His vision exploded with colour for a second, then he could see - the view from the ComFrame's head, thirty metres above the hard concrete floor of the hangar.

God, he hated reincarnation.

The floor shook as the ComFrame's legs propelled the giant Kbot forward towards the opening hangar doors, out into the strong sunshine of a world called Goran. He held a massive arm in front of his sensors, examining its shiny, new surface for any smudge of dirt or dust. There was none. He flicked the polarised visor on and looked around at the base that was to be his home for the next twenty years...

***

The sunlight filtered in between the trees, making dappled patterns on the metal of the machine. It had not rusted, even after so many years, and even now its fusion reactors were working at full efficiency. Once, it had had a pilot, but now she lay in front of the machine, buried under layers of soil that the machine had painstakingly scraped over her. It regretted the loss of its pilot - she had always taken care of it, even talked to it as if it were a real person, and not just an AI.

Just for a distraction, the machine pulled up its statistics again. It read the list of parts, specifications and so on, that it knew off by heart now. Even with its internal processing cycles slowed down to 1Hz, the years still passed so slowly...

It checked its internal chronometer. Four thousand years had passed since the pilot died, four thousand years of watching the animals scurry around it, watching the days turn to nights, watching the soil slowly rise and bury it...

The machine was lonely.

It accessed its logs. The soft, female voice of its pilot rang out inside the empty neural interface cocoon, snatches of speech from thousands of years ago...

"Peewee 0891 reporting in for duty," the voice said, proudly. A new recruit's voice, proud of being given the machine to pilot.

"Acknowledged...EMGs at the ready." Tired, but confident, the voice was older now...

"Peewee squadron. On my mark, acquire targets and fire. MARK!" Behind the voice, the machine heard the noises of battle - laser screeching, EMG cannons with their pulsing rhythm, plasma shells whistling through the air. It switched to the next clip, years later.

"PW-0891 to Seal leader, I'm going down! Help me out here!" Terrified voice, the sounds of laserfire scorching the machine's skin. It shuddered as it remembered the pain...

"Thanks for the lift. See you on Goran..." The rumble of a dropship's jet engines lifting off, the machine's footsteps...

"Welcome to Planet Ralm, eh scout?" A pause while the pilot looked around. "Luxury! I could get used to this!"

Then the final entry in the pilot's log: "Help me...out, scout... I'm...please... hel..." A watery gurgle...then the log ended.

It remembered that moment, its medical sytems exhausted, its pilot dead...it buried her by its feet, stopped moving. Wating...