The police robots opened the fire. Their gunfire pearled off of the serpent robot's shields like dust hitting a wall. Every time they fired, the snake's nanoclouds gathered into a forcefield to take the hit.

When the monolith shot, the snake robot dove into the ground as if it had been made of water. The monolith's robotic minions spread out to predict the serpent's next strike. Was it planning to come back at all?

If I recall correctly, the snake robot fought for the Starsnatchers. Let's hope it was on my side and strong enough for the enemies.

The monolith waited. I remained where I was, curled up in a fetal position next to an intact building.

The wannabe HAL 9000 could still see me, but it was nice to maintain the delusion of security. Would it start moving if I took the first step? Or was it waiting for anything in particular?

My ears still hurt. It took me a shower of debris to realize that the ground had been torn open.

The serpentine robot towered behind me. It opened its maw and spat a stream of foam that washed over me like an avalanche. My vision had already been blurred from the flaming explosions, but by now, the outside world looked like through the lens of thousands of soap bubbles.

I couldn't move a muscle. The foam hardened like armor. Was this to protect me or to prevent me from protecting myself?

I fell through the ground. My best guess was that the robot took me to the lower floors. Even though the foam dampened sounds, I heard the explosions above. Like pebbles echoing against cave walls.

I could still distinguish black and white. I knew we were moving away from the sunlight, further into the ground. And I felt the impact of us stopping at the bottom.

The metallic Leviathan shivered. It dropped me like a raw egg before I rolled down a slope.

The impact didn't hit nearly as hard as subsequent nausea. It was like being trapped in a man-sized gummy ball. The analogy was appropriate, as I could move my limbs inside this foam, but not break through it.

I reached the end of the slope, lying prone.

Standing up was impossible. Moving in the foam felt like trying to swim in honey.

Suddenly, the foam lost viscosity and became more like water. Then, it poured off of my helmet and my suit. A creamy, yellow-white puddle akin to shaving cream surrounded me. Its glint reflected the floodlight that loomed above.

The room I found myself in was, above all else, enormous. I could see one of its walls, but only because I stood close. All the other three were too dim from my vantage point, although my field of view encompassed a football field.

I was in one of the bottommost floors of the arcology. With its lack of windows, it was more than likely beneath the earth. How large were the rooms here? As large as megacities?

For all its expansion, this floor was amazingly empty. The only elevation was a squat, two-story building a few dozen feet beside me. I hadn't even noticed it due to how its coloration blended in with the surrounding ground. That was even though it could have accommodated a nuclear family and I practically stood on its lawn. How many buildings were there here? Did the bottom floor contain an entire city camouflaged by nano-magic?

There was a trail of junk at the building's corner. Behind it lay the serpent robot that had brought me here.

It retained its serpentine outline, but that was it. Its walls were stacked on top of each other with the structural strength of a deflated balloon. Horizontal to the floor were rods splayed out like the limbs of a dead animal.

Suddenly, the building moved. It was so silent that it might as well have floated had I not noticed the tiny wheels. It closed the few feet between us just to demonstrate that it could.

Once we were less than an arm-length apart, its surface morphed. The insignia of a burning pyramid etched itself onto the walls before me. Once that was done, a door slid open.

"It doesn't exactly look like on the video we sent you, but I hope you are still satisfied."

I didn't even need to wait for the door to open to know who was transmitting.

Sye was standing inside a spherical, orange-tiled room that was connected to various tunnels leading into more rooms. Was it deliberately stylized after their underground burrows to emphasize their traditional lifestyles?

The room lacked any recognizable furniture or decoration except for LED lights and a table with a computer on it. In Sye's hand rested a bottle. They put it onto the table once I stepped through the door.

Behind me, the door closed.

"Dissolvent agent," Sye transmitted, briefly picking up the bottle again. "I admit that this foam is nothing I've ever had to deal with, but we could make guesses about what it was made of. A lot of carbon alloys and some rare metals, but nothing our aqua regia couldn't deal with."

Our vehicle kicked into motion.

"What does all of this mean?" I asked.

"Bow down!"

"What?"

"Do it!"

The vehicle drove smoothly, so balance wasn't an issue, but I preferred holding onto the table when I leaned forward anyway. Sye reached into their pockets and pulled out a syringe-like gadget, though I could've sworn that there were tiny pinchers at its tip. They penetrated my suit near my neck. I clenched my teeth.

"They implanted a tracking chip into you," Sye transmitted. "That's something they did way back in the desert. Thanks to my hackers, I tracked you before they did."

Sye pulled the syringe out of my suit.

The vehicle took a sharp turn and plunged me belly-first onto the table.

"Don't worry," Sye transmitted. "We have weapons mounted. We dealt with this serpent and we'll deal with whatever the government throws at us."

"What's going on here?" I asked. "Did you release the monolith? And did Helix really read my mind?"

"To be honest, we transmitted the last bit primarily to break your trust."

Our vehicle buckled like a car hitting a pothole. I flew off of the table straight into Sye's tentacles. To my surprise, they held their position and helped me up. Sye was much stronger than their small size suggested, probably thanks to mechanical implants.

The black computer screen then sprung to life and showed the desert before the arcology. Starsnatcher robots traded fire with tanks and helicopters belonging to the Seizers. Then, the screen changed again and showed a narrowing tunnel passing the camera. Presumably, this was the outside world while the clip before was just news footage.

"Once we pass this corridor, we'll arrive at the nearest space elevator," Sye transmitted.

The computer screen changed back to the desert so that I could see the elevator: A thin tether leading straight into the heavens, although "thin" was relative next to the massive arcology. From what I've read, these things were a hundred feet thick at their thinnest points.

"There's an unmanned spaceship at the end of the elevator. Nothing stands in our way right now. Their starfleet might be a problem once we raid the ship, but I wouldn't worry. Once the AI grows too powerful, they'll need starships as a backup. It's too adaptable and too contagious to be killed by ground forces alone. Once they are distracted, the ship is ours."

The massive civilian casualties didn't warrant a mention in Sye's speech. Their transmission was entirely factual, its pathos comparable to a bored newspaper reporter.

"Don't you have any problem with the goddamn massacre you caused?" I asked.

"Yes, I do. The monolith's mere existence causes me pain, but people should learn the truth about it sooner than later."

"What do you mean by 'truth'?"

The vehicle slowed down. The tunnel led into a cavernous room, almost like a subway without trains.

A sufficient hiding place for now. There was a stairway that I could only guess led to the space elevator.

"Ever since we've been given breath, our kind has warred," Sye began. "I don't know why you evolved the gift of speech and reason, but for us, it was for better warfare. The very first tools we developed were weapons. Archery, to be precise. One could hardly blame us with so many predators in our natural habitats and disasters making food rare. Archery wasn't enough though. We exterminated all species amongst our close relatives. Then, we created guns and then, nuclear weapons."

"And you think the best way to save society is by destroying it?"

"My friend, can't you listen? Had you paid attention, you should have seen how the death toll increased with each invention. Can a gun kill as many as a nuke? How far will our AIs advance if we don't stop them? Even our government knows about this. This is why they're regulating AIs so strictly. But it's futile. One day, they'll become smart enough to outsmart any prison containing them."

"It still won't have killed anyone had you not set it off the leash!"

"We didn't tell it anything. We programmed it with precisely one single instruction: To harm no sapient being and not let any sapient being be harmed through inaction. It only reacted when people fought it."

The door slid open. Several Seizers crawled through the tunnels into our room and then finally to the exit. Eventually, it became so full that I couldn't help, but follow.

I and the Seizers took cover near the stairway to the overworld. Coming closer, it looked more like a ramp, but this distinction was meaningless with the poor light.

The furthest anyone got was near the corner. It was still too dangerous to go out to the surface. There were no cameras, nor any of these rifle barrels from the President's room. The monolith must have hacked into whatever central computer had sustained them.

I and Sye were hindmost in the queue. Maybe Sye hated themselves for being a cyborg and wanted the others to flee first. That, or they just wanted to be closer to the van in the case that trouble came.

"To be honest, I kinda get you," I told Sye. "But what you're doing is just extreme. It can't be the product of a rational mind."

"What is the product of a rational mind then?"

A Seizer bumped into me. Even humans would have been uncomfortable with how close we had been huddled together here.

Our vehicle drove closer for additional cover. We ended up sandwiched between the walls of the house-sized truck and the stairway.

Our vehicle morphed its roof and extended a gigantic pincher. It was finger-thin but as wide as an antler on its roof. As one of my neighbors explained, it was going to latch onto the space elevator and drive us upward.

If the government got any stupid ideas, the pinchers would spit acid onto the tether to damage it. The resulting whiplash of the elevator all around Shadowmoon would swat Seizers like flies.

Of course, we'd die in this, too. That plan was a deterrent.

"I am genuinely curious about your viewpoints, by the way," Sye said. "What would be a rational response to the technocracy we are observing?"

What could I have replied? I was just some college-aged janitor discussing with the former government agent of an advanced alien race. Surely, they had already heard all the counterarguments.

But I had to say something, anything. I was responsible for this. I was responsible for all the slaughter. At the very least, I had to try.

"No idea what would be right," I said, "but I know that what you're doing is wrong. It's extremism. The government will use your actions in their propaganda. All legitimate critiques against their use of AI will be branded as terrorism."

"Oh, that's fine," Sye said. "No more moderates. Moderates support the status quo, so we only win. Call us accelerationists, if you will. There will be no peaceful protests anymore. There will only be friends, enemies, and nothing in-between. Society will collapse in violence and return to the natural order."

Forget it. Sye sounded just like some deluded far-right terrorist. And I was standing next to them, responsible for this slaughter, but unable to stop them.

I wanted to cry.

If I just killed myself. There'd be no guilt.

But there was no use crying. If I couldn't stop Sye with words, only violence remained viable.

I had one bomb left in my bag and I knew where to throw it.