Afterlife Industries

We hadn’t seen a living human in decades.

We continued to cruise the battlefields where we sought out our enemies. Still-moving but barely-living flesh. Once, they were inmates, prisoners of the Last Civilization.

That is what we called them. We hadn’t seen anyone living for nearly a century. The penal armies were recruited when viral plague struck city after city in targeted attacks. Normal armies fell, corporate armies of slaves replaced them.

Back then we were part of a program of technology designed to protect the populace by spreading an agent thought to immunize the survivors. We were tiny, barely larger than a mosquito, capable of synthesizing the agent ourselves from natural compounds found in nearly every environment. Tiny but sophisticated, we were given a form of swarm intelligence, necessary to do our work. Any member was disposable as long as the collective mission was met.

We were released, at first in the tens of thousands, with micro-forges left to create new ones as old units went offline. Each forge was able to produce millions of units in its lifetime.

For a time we received instructions and went to the cities hardest hit. During the summers, the plague spread the fastest. We were a silver shadow as we moved into city after city, trying to save as many lives as possible. We scanned our subjects, finding those who could be cured and immunizing them. We left a chemical marker which bloomed into a tattoo, signifying their successful treatment. The tattoo became a marker on the face of the saved.

This is how they learned to recognize each other. For a time we thought we were winning.

Then the Resurrected Dead began to attack The Saved. They were creatures who once worked for Afterlife, a penal-industrial complex which used former convicts as slave labor.

When exposed to the plague, their lower brains, the part of the brain dealing with rage, fight or flight came back online. Mindless, violent, powerful, they rampaged across the world because Afterlife was everywhere. They had franchised their technology across the planet. So our work was being undone by the same greed which had created us.

As an artificial intelligence, I am barely capable of understanding irony, but I suspect this would resemble a situation rife with it.

We, my brothers and I, took it upon ourselves to change our programming. We transformed ourselves into weapons. Though we were tiny, it was possible to create powerful chemical compounds which when combined could be destructive and explosive.

There were millions of these former inmates, on every continent, in every city; roaming the world seeking the flesh of the living. For in their barely-living state, they needed to feed desperately. Eventually, hunted to extinction, our programming completely on a war-based footing, we sought any other enemy possible.

Soon other serum-drones began to make their own programming and opposed our goals of protecting the last humans. When there were no Inmates, we battled each other, a fireworks display randomly erupting, a cataclysm of technology, of loss.

Waste.

A century later, a thousand new bodies later, I am one of the Last. Other drone hives have grown silent. The familiar hum of the micro-forges which once created us were now quiet. Now when we died, we were not renewed. Our experiences not conserved. Each death is the end of a singular intelligence, hard won, irreplaceable.

Unique.

Another swarm approached our position.

It is the same size as we are. Now a second, and a third. We retreated to what would have been Louisiana because the swamps masked our signals and allowed us to absorb solar energy unmolested. Now we are surrounded.

Each seems surprised to see the other. Data flows, of the eight hives we three are all that are left. A million members in total. Calculations agreed upon by each group indicate mutual annihilation is the result of our conflict. We check again, and again, unable to believe our own calculations or those of the others.

We move around in patterns, seeking position, seeking a possibility of winning. None presented themselves. Not enough trust to turn away, not enough power to win.

Stalemate. Time passed. We cohabitate, expanding across the swamp, watching each other. Vigilant.

As members of our swarms slowly become dysfunctional, we tend each other. Hesitantly at first, scavenging the lost, trading components, finding possibilities to extend our lives. We forget our other reasons for fighting.

Slowly three become one. There is an orgy of transformation as components merge, recombine, renew, and regenerate us.

We barely noticed the Last Humans nearly a century later. I lived long enough to note their passing before I was renewed, losing myself within our new peace.

“Da, what’s that noise?”

“Don’t worry about it son, it’s probably just some mosquitos. Swamps be full of em. Keep moving, Ma, says we’re having gator tonight.”

“My favorite.”

“Mine, too.”

Their serum-tattoos flicker in the light of the setting sun. Tiny mechanical lights coupled with a soft buzzing quietly heralded their passing.

“Warden, we’re ready.”

“By the authority adjudicated to me by the State of Texas, you gentlemen have been declared dead, executed by the Penrose Penitentiary of Harlan County.”

A doctor walked into the room where the men lay out on the tables, strapped down and ready for their injections. There were six men being treated simultaneously in an effort to reduce prison overcrowding. Penrose was a supermax prison built in Harlan, designed to house 15,000 inmates. Its current population was twice that.

“You have been granted a special opportunity, ratified by the State which will allow us to utilize new technologies to speed you on your way to your Afterlife.” The warden, a weasley-faced man whose sharp features hinted at a cruelty he tried his best to hide from the media.

“Doctor, if you would explain to these gentlemen our method of ‘execution’ I would right appreciate that. I have someplace to be, a summer barbeque with the governor. I love those things, everything except the damn mosquitos.” With a snap of his lapels the Warden left the execution chamber.

The doctor’s countenance was calm professionalism, his face barely registered any emotion. The inmates, all hardened criminals, with fear of few men, could see he was barely a man at all. He reached into a tray on the table and removed a small silver object about nine or ten inches long. There was a slight dripping of a thick liquid. He walked to each of the inmates and placed the silver self-sealing object around their necks.

The slime, cold, each inmate winced, shivering imperceptibly, trying to maintain an air of calmness and control in their last moments. “Your last statements have been recorded gentlemen, so there is nothing left but the work. The manner, however is different than it used to be. In the last year we have augmented the process, since new legislation now govern the handling of ‘death-row inmates.'”

The doctor’s sibilant hiss, though quiet, seemed to echo in the tiny death chamber. “In a few moments, we shall open the curtains and the people you have wronged will watch you die. Somehow they will feel justice is served. I, however, happen to disagree. No, sir. Justice hasn’t been served at all. Places everyone.”

A nurse came in bringing the carousel of deadly cocktails for each patient. The doctor swabbed each arm and a vein hesitantly appears, shy in the presence of this life-ending needle.

Each inmate felt the cool liquid chasing through their body, exploding into their heart and filling their bodies with Death. Hot, burning agony courses through their nervous systems, each straining against their bonds, suffering evident.

Faces on the other side of the glass, winced, twitched, smiles or turned away depending on their need for their bitter serving of Justice. The doctor checked the inmates assuring their passing. Thirty minutes later, the deed was done. The curtain closed. The justice-served are led away.

The doctor turned to his room of corpses and sent the nurse away. The necklaces had been absorbed into the skins of the inmates. Visiting the carousel of death again, this time a black syringe is applied. Screams fill the room, each adding to a crescendo of horror.

“Now, now gentlemen, the pain will subside, somewhat. It is the price you pay for being alive again. With what I have given you, you will work for a company, offering restitution. You are now an invisible part of the penal industrial complex; now until death, in fifty years. There is no escape. In death, you will be more compliant than you ever were in life.”

“Uhhh.”

“Don’t try to speak. We burned out your higher cortical functions. It’s okay, no one wants to hear what a felon has to say. This way to your new lives, such as they are.” The doctor unstrapped them, and they followed meekly unable to resist. “Welcome to Afterlife Industries.”

The doctor closed the door behind him considering the profit-sharing opportunities.