Chronicle, entry number fifty-two.
I understand about the socks now.
The world we’ve arrived at is a radioactive desert with a single city protected by an energy dome, and the only way to reach that city is to cross the desert on foot while killer robots chase you.
I lost both pairs I was wearing.
Primarch Vulkan, who carried me the last three kilometers on his shoulder like a backpack, lent me a pair of his.
I use them as a sleeping bag.
I.
The Domed City
The world of Corinth had lost the war against its machines.
A computer virus called Venjix, created to protect humanity, had decided that the best way to protect it was to exterminate it.
Within a few years, armies of robots had razed the planet.
Only one city remained, Corinth, beneath an energy dome, defended by a handful of soldiers and by a team of five young people in colored suits with absurdly fast vehicles: the Power Rangers RPM.
When the Salamanders appeared outside the dome, aboard their green Land Raiders covered in fire symbols, Colonel Mason Truman, military commander of Corinth, gave the order to open fire.
Luckily, his soldiers’ aim was as bad as their luck.
“Cease fire,” said a voice over the tanks’ loudspeakers, deep and calm.
“We are friends. And you need practice.”
The hatch of the lead Land Raider opened.
Out stepped Vulkan, Primarch of the XVIII Legion, nearly four meters of coal-black skin and eyes red as embers.
Behind him came Captain T’karon and Sergeant Varn, two Salamanders in green scaled armor.
And behind them, a young chronicler with his feet wrapped in socks the size of potato sacks.
* * *
The Power Rangers arrived in their vehicles at full speed, skidding across the sand.
Scott, the Red Ranger, got out first, hand on his weapon.
“Identify yourselves.”
Vulkan looked at the colored suits.
He looked at the helmets.
He looked at the vehicles.
Then he turned to his men.
And the Salamanders, as one warrior, went down on one knee in the sand.
The Rangers froze.
“Uh…” said Ziggy Grover, the Green Ranger, who technically wasn’t a Ranger but a former member of a criminal gang who had ended up there by accident.
“Why are they kneeling? Are we famous in space?”
“Because you have defended humanity alone, against a machine that wants to exterminate it,” answered Vulkan.
“For years. Without reinforcements. In my Legion, that earns respect.”
There was a long silence.
Summer, the Yellow Ranger, put a hand to her chest.
Flynn, the Blue Ranger, discreetly wiped away a tear and pretended it was sand.
Dillon, the Black Ranger, who was half human and half machine and couldn’t remember his past, crossed his arms.
“I don’t trust them,” he said.
“You don’t trust anyone,” Ziggy reminded him.
“That’s why I’m still alive.”
II.
Doctor K and the Mechanicus
Dr. K, the genius who had created the Rangers’ suits, was a brilliant, sarcastic young woman allergic to visitors.
She received the Salamanders in her lab with her arms crossed and a lab coat that was too big for her.
“So you have ships that travel between universes,” she said.
“That is correct.”
“And weapons that can destroy a planet from orbit.”
“If need be.”
“And yet you came here by tank.”
“The Primarch prefers to arrive on foot,” explained T’karon.
“He says you get a better look at what needs protecting that way.”
Dr. K thought about that for a moment.
Then she turned to the two Mechanicus Tech-priests accompanying the expedition, Tyrel-07 and Ferrus 89-B, who were examining her computers with a mixture of fascination and horror.
“And those two?”
“Our engineers.”
“Why are they praying to my microwave?”
“It’s how they work,” said Vulkan.
“Don’t worry. It almost always works.”
Tyrel-07 raised one of his mechanical arms, which ended in a scanner.
“Doctor, your dome system is based on an autonomous algorithm capable of making decisions.”
“Yes.”
“Potential heresy detected.”
“Excuse me?”
“Thinking machines are an abomination,” explained Ferrus 89-B, in the metallic voice of someone who has explained it many times.
“Your enemy, Venjix, is the proof.”
Dr. K looked him up and down.
“My enemy is proof that somebody programmed it badly. And that somebody was me.”
There was an awkward silence.
“That is logical,” admitted Tyrel-07.
“Nevertheless, I will log it as heresy.”
* * *
It turned out Dr. K had more reason than anyone to hate Venjix.
As a child she had been kidnapped by an organization called Alphabet Soup, which forced her to program the virus.
She escaped by accidentally releasing it.
Ever since, she had carried the guilt of an entire world.
She told Vulkan about it one night, in the lab, while everyone else was asleep.
The Primarch listened in silence, sitting on the floor because no chair in Corinth could bear his weight.
“In my universe, my father gave humanity a second chance,” said Vulkan.
“And he also made enormous mistakes. The difference between a monster and someone who deserves forgiveness doesn’t lie in the mistakes, Doctor. It lies in what you do afterward.”
Dr. K stared at the screen, where the map of the planet showed Venjix’s factories as red blotches.
“Then help me fix it.”
“That’s what I came for.”
III.
Tenaya 7 Gets Electrocuted
Venjix detected the Salamanders in less than a day and sent his best agents: Tenaya 7, a human-looking android, and General Crunch, a robot so clumsy that his own soldiers avoided him in the corridors.
Tenaya’s plan was simple: infiltrate one of the Land Raiders and hack its systems to turn them against Corinth.
She did it.
She reached the tank’s console, plugged in her cables and began uploading the virus.
The Land Raider’s machine spirit, which had eleven thousand years of service, two hundred battles and a profoundly foul temper behind it, sensed the intrusion and reacted like any grumpy old man whose remote control somebody has touched.
Tenaya 7 was blasted out of the tank with her hair standing on end and smoke pouring out of her ears.
“Intrusion repelled,” announced Tyrel-07, satisfied.
Tenaya was captured.
They interrogated her.
It turned out she couldn’t remember her past clearly either: just like Dillon, she had been human before Venjix turned her into a weapon.
And, just like Dillon, she had a chip in her brain.
“They’re siblings,” said Dr. K, looking at the scans.
“Dillon and Tenaya. Venjix kidnapped both of them.”
Dillon went very still.
Then he left the room without a word.
Ziggy went after him with a sandwich, because it was the only thing he could think of to do in situations like that.
IV.
The Signal
Venjix’s last move was the cruelest.
He remotely activated the chips of every hybrid he had created.
Tenaya, in her cell, writhed in pain.
Dillon collapsed in the corridor, his eyes glowing red.
“Dillon!” shouted Summer.
“I… can’t…” he gasped.
“It’s calling me…”
His hand was on his weapon.
He was aiming at Summer.
Vulkan reached him in two strides and took him by the shoulders, without squeezing, the way you’d hold a child in the grip of a nightmare.
“Hold on, brother.”
“I’m not your brother…”
“Everyone who protects humanity is,” said Vulkan.
“Hold on a little longer.”
Behind him, Dr. K and the two Tech-priests were working frantically at the console.
The doctor typed.
Tyrel-07 recited litanies.
Ferrus 89-B rhythmically struck the casing with a blessed wrench.
“I need more power for the counter-signal!” shouted Dr. K.
“The machine spirit requires an incentive!” answered Tyrel-07.
“What kind of incentive?”
“A prayer.”
“I don’t know any prayers!”
Ziggy threw himself onto the console, clasped his hands and shouted the first thing that came into his head:
“By the holy toaster, help us!”
The console hummed.
The power surged.
The counter-signal shot out through every antenna in Corinth.
Dillon’s eyes stopped glowing.
In her cell, Tenaya fell asleep, breathing peacefully.
There was a silence.
“The prayer has been accepted,” announced Ferrus 89-B, deeply moved.
“Unorthodox. But accepted.”
From that day on, among the Mechanicus of Corinth, there has been a minor litany known as “the Grover Invocation.” It consists of a single sentence.
No one dares change it.
V.
The Prometheus Leviathan
Venjix, cornered, did what all villains do when they run out of ideas: he went giant.
He fused all his factories into a metal body the size of a mountain and advanced on Corinth.
The Rangers formed their Megazord.
It was an enormous, brightly colored robot made up of all their vehicles.
Next to Venjix, it looked like a toy.
Then the Titans arrived.
Two Warlord Titans of the Legio Ignatum, each taller than a skyscraper, emerged from a Webway portal and took up position on either side of the Megazord.
And behind them, something even bigger: the Prometheus Leviathan Zord, a machine the Mechanicus had built in secret from Dr. K’s blueprints and the technology of Mars.
It was shaped like a dragon, it was green like the Salamanders, and on its brow it carried a servo-skull that prayed nonstop.
“Is that ours?” asked Flynn, his voice trembling with emotion.
“It’s yours,” answered Vulkan over the radio.
“If you want it.”
“We want it!”
“We want it so much!”
The battle against Venjix lasted twenty minutes.
The Titans pinned him down.
The Leviathan bit him.
The Megazord dealt the final blow, with an energy sword the Tech-priests had blessed three times just in case.
Venjix’s core fell to the ground, sparking, begging in binary code.
Tyrel-07 approached it with a sacred hammer.
“Executing Exterminatus,” he announced, very solemnly.
“That’s for planets,” T’karon whispered to him.
“It is a very small planet,” replied Tyrel-07, and brought the hammer down.
* * *
Corinth celebrated for three days.
The dome opened for the first time in years.
People went out into the desert to look at the sky.
Vulkan personally helped build the first farms outside the city, carrying steel beams on his shoulders.
Colonel Truman offered to give him a medal.
Vulkan accepted, pinned it to his armor and wore it for years.
Dillon and Tenaya, free of their chips at last, began to remember their childhood.
Ziggy made sandwiches for both of them.
Chronicle, entry number fifty-three.
I asked Ziggy Grover why he said “holy toaster.” He answered that he had seen the Tech-priests praying to the doctor’s microwave and figured “the toaster was the boss of the appliances.” I told Tyrel-07.
He asked me not to tell anyone else.
I believe he is seriously considering the matter.
VI.
Ten Billion Percent
Many worlds away, on another planet where humanity had fallen—not to machines, but to stone—Ferrus Manus had a different problem: a green-haired teenager who would not stop asking him questions.
More than three thousand years earlier, a mysterious beam of light had turned all of humanity into stone statues.
A boy named Senku Ishigami had woken from the petrification having counted every second of those three thousand years, and ever since he had set out to rebuild civilization from scratch.
With science.
Starting with soap.
When Ferrus Manus landed in his village, Senku had just finished making penicillin in a bamboo hut to cure Ruri, the village priestess.
The Iron Hands arrived just in time to see Ruri open her eyes.
Senku looked up at the ship hovering over the village.
Then at the silver-handed giant coming down the ramp.
Then back at the ship.
“Ten billion percent,” he muttered, “that thing runs on a fusion reactor.”
“Plasma,” corrected Ferrus.
“Ten billion percent exhilarating!”
* * *
The relationship between Ferrus Manus and Senku Ishigami was, from day one, that of two scientists who recognize each other and refuse to admit it.
“Your methods are primitive,” Ferrus would say.
“My methods work with bamboo and rocks,” Senku would retort.
“Yours need a spaceship. Which is more impressive?”
Ferrus wouldn’t answer.
But the next morning, he would give him a microscope.
Senku visited the ship.
He toured it for nine hours.
He touched everything he wasn’t supposed to and asked everything that could possibly be asked.
At the end of the tour, he stopped in front of a six-wheeled scout vehicle.
“This is better than Disneyland,” he said.
“Can I drive it?”
“Negative,” answered the Tech-priest Varl.
“What if I explain to you how internal combustion works?”
“Negative.”
“What if I make you soap?”
Varl hesitated for a second.
“…Negative.”
Senku smiled.
He had detected the hesitation.
VII.
The Empire of Science
The problem on that world wasn’t the stone.
It was Tsukasa Shishio, “the strongest primate high schooler,” a young man Senku had revived who now wanted a new civilization without corrupt adults: only young people chosen by him.
He was destroying the statues of any adults he didn’t consider worthy.
The Iron Hands first rescued Senku’s friends, Taiju and Yuzuriha, who had been trapped in Tsukasa’s territory.
In the forest, during the operation, they came across something no one expected: Leman Russ, the Wolf King, sitting on a log eating a roast boar.
“What are you doing here?” asked Ferrus.
“Got lost in the Webway,” said Russ with his mouth full.
“Smelled roast meat and followed my nose.”
“You’re in my Legion’s area of operations.”
“Want some boar?”
Ferrus thought about it for a moment.
Then he sat down.
Senku, who had just arrived, looked at the two giants eating boar in the forest.
“Ten billion percent,” he said, “this doesn’t make it into any history book.”
* * *
Two of Tsukasa’s best warriors, the archer Ukyo and the spearman Hyoga, deserted when they saw the ships.
Ukyo, because he hated watching people die.
Hyoga, because he knew a losing side when he saw one.
Tsukasa faced Ferrus Manus in person.
It was a short fight.
Ferrus pinned him with a single silver hand and held him against the ground while Tsukasa struggled.
“You’re strong,” said the Primarch.
“But you’re wrong about one thing. There are no worthy and unworthy humans. There are only humans.”
“The adults destroyed the world.”
“The adults built the world too. And children destroy as well.” He let him go.
“If you want to protect something, protect everyone.”
Tsukasa didn’t answer.
But he stopped fighting.
Ferrus offered him something in exchange for his surrender: the Iron Hands unraveled Senku’s depetrification fluid, multiplied it a millionfold in their ship’s laboratories and woke Mirai, Tsukasa’s little sister, who had spent years in a coma inside the stone.
Tsukasa wept, holding his sister.
Senku watched from a distance, hands in his pockets.
“Ten billion percent,” he muttered, “that makes him a good guy.”
* * *
The Towers of Awakening were built in a month.
They were structures of silvery metal, erected in every great ruined city on the planet, that released revival fluid over the statues within a hundred-kilometer radius.
On the day they were activated, seven billion people woke up all over the world, confused, naked, and with three thousand years of news to catch up on.
Senku watched the awakening from the top of a tower, beside Ferrus Manus.
“You know what I like most about this?” he said.
“Tell me.”
“That it didn’t take any god. No magic. No miracles. Just science.”
Ferrus nodded slowly.
For the first time in many years, he seemed to be in complete agreement with someone.
“Humans don’t need gods,” he said.
“They need tools. And someone who isn’t afraid of them.”
* * *
Chronicle, entry number fifty-four.
In the end, Senku got Varl to let him drive the scout vehicle.
I’m told he offered to make him a quartz watch out of village materials.
Varl agreed on the condition that the watch not think for itself.
Senku promised it wouldn’t.
The watch, according to Varl, “ticks in a suspicious manner.”
Ferrus Manus asked me to put something on record: “This world did not need gods.” The next day a report reached me from the IX Legion.
Primarch Sanguinius had entered a world that had many of them—too many.
And one of them was Hell.
I’m a novice writer with many stories still left to tell and a great passion for Warhammer.
I love imagining dark worlds, epic battles, and imperfect characters.
I write to learn.