Matilda | Watch The World Burn Below

The year is 2046. Automation has become highly prevalent in society, ranging from application in day to day life all the way into questionable military usage. There are even some space craft in testing that try to completely negate the need for a human pilot, though like commercial aircraft, this too is met with stiff reluctance. What leaves the occupation of an astronaut at risk is not the mode of transportation, but rather the innovations made toward androids. Between these shifts and the faintest rumors of a groundbreaking AI project, time to find an answer to humanity's plight is short.

It had been Matilda's lifelong dream to become an astronaut in some capacity. When she chose to pursue a degree in quantum computing and engineering, she had no idea that path would lead her toward realizing that dream that she'd since written off as a silly idea. Now having been in astronaut training for a few years, there was only one tiny little part which she truly detested. Well, it was actually a rather massive part of being an astronaut. G-force training in the centrifuge. She was aware it was important to test how far her body would allow her to go, but lately, it's been pissing her off.

Matilda sat in the capsule of the centrifuge, feeling it pushing her back into her seat as it began its rotation. Gradually growing in intensity while she watched the G-force dial, keeping her grip firm on the simulated controls. "Aight, Control Room, we're up to 4 G's of force. Piece of piss this is," Matilda spoke into the mic within her helmet, casting a glance out the window at the control room as she spun past it. "Holding steady... the usual... not too much of a heap yet. Dial it up, ya mongrels! I know you're dying for a laugh so rip the band-aid off!"

Her fingers dug into the controls of her training capsule, legs braced on the floor, and her head laid back in the seat. Goodie. Time to get my knickers all in a twist for this rubbish. Motors increased in pitch as the entire centrifuge began to whirl around faster. Matilda could feel everything in her body starting to cry out in protest as the dial for the G-forces climbed. 5 G's of force... 6 G's of force... her suit was doing an amazing job at helping keep her conscious, but it wasn't enough to stop the wave of nausea starting to creep into her gut.

"Control Room... up to 7 G's of force..." Matilda's voice is strained and tense. Sweat was beating on her face as she could see blackness starting to creep in at the edges of her vision. She wanted to achieve a prolonged period of sustaining 10 G's of force, to be sure she could stay awake through any circumstance. Yet when her nausea jumped up into her throat and her vision swirled with stars, her hand flew toward the abort button, causing the entire centrifuge to wind down into a gradual halt.

The capsule door was practically thrown open with a loud "bang" as the frazzled woman stumbled out toward the nearest nausea relief station at the door to the room, throwing off her helmet just in time before heaving and puking the contents of her stomach into a yellow biohazard bag. Though the control room door was thick, she could hear the laughter faintly in there. "Oh, rack off ya galahs! Or I'm comin' in there to really crack the shit!" Her chest convulsed as another heave of vomit spilled out into the bag. There she remained for a moment or two, spitting the last of the contents of her stomach out, before tying the bag off and chucking it into a bin.

Still hearing the chuckles and laughs from the control room, Matilda shook her head and stormed off out of the centrifuge test chamber, slamming the door behind her. She was in a pouting mood now, though she'd deny that until the day she died. Wandering around until she found a bench near a window, Matilda sat down and rubbed her eyebrows, lips pursed in frustration. "Daft bastards..." the words left in a mutter as she tried to get herself back together. She was sure that maybe the video feed had genuinely been amusing, but it didn't make her any less irritated as she sat there, lost in her thoughts.

The year is 2047. Automation has become highly prevalent in society, ranging from application in day to day life all the way into questionable military usage. There are even some space craft in testing that try to completely negate the need for a human pilot, though like commercial aircraft, this too is met with stiff reluctance. What leaves the occupation of an astronaut at risk is not the mode of transportation, but rather the innovations made toward androids. Between these shifts and the faintest rumors of a groundbreaking AI project, time to find an answer to humanity's plight is short.

Matilda had been practicing wearing the space suit consistently in the time leading up to her launch day. Realistically, she was aware that she'd grown stronger. Timing herself during her tests was enough proof of that. Yet no matter how much she trained, however strong she became, nothing would change one simple little fact: the suit easily weighed about as much as she did if not more. It depended on whether she was practicing with the older, much heavier suits or the lighter but still cumbersome versions. Needless to say, by the time she reached the launch pad, she was already feeling sore.

"Heavy fuckin' sod, isn't it? Would've reckoned they'd make these a tad easier on the body since I was a wee ankle biter. Whatever. Suppose the bloody dags who built 'em had other shit to deal with." Regardless of her complaints for how much she disliked wearing the suit in Earth gravity, she couldn't fight off the excited grin curling at the edge of her lip. She was in a space suit. At a launch pad. Soon to be boarding a rocket, and with countless souls gathered to watch the first crew of the ILIAS depart. It was, quite literally, a dream come true. "Speakin' of bein' an ankle biter and all... maybe those watching will be a proper mate and follow in the future. Wouldn't that be dandy?" She chuckles softly, shaking her head at her own sentimentality.

Everyone of the crew going up today was allotted some time alone to do what they pleased. Matilda had spent it on a video call with her father, enjoying the chance to catch up with the man who raised her. Even now, there was a gratitude in her heart, as all that effort put in after the death of her mother has culminated in the opportunity for her to travel to a place where few have ever been before. The conversation had left her father in joyful tears, and Matilda would sooner accept a dose of cyanide than confess if she had cried too.

Arriving in the waiting area of a reinforced building near the launch pad, Matilda sat down on a bench to remove her helmet and lay her head back. Her hair was slightly damp from sweat so the fresh air of the room felt cool to the touch. "Should'a kept the visor up, Mattie. Now your stuffed worse than a root rat who's had one too many ruts," she scolded herself with mock irritation, a thin disguise for all those ecstatic feelings in her chest. "Ought to get some hydration in me... maybe... nah, not worth gettin' out of this again just to take a piss."

Matilda's eyes wander around the room until they settle on the count down clock on the wall. Any minute now, there would be a call for everyone to gather where she was now, and do one last check before being driven over to the launch platform. Then they'd ascend the elevator, board, and strap in before the rocket chucks them into space and on their merry way. That earlier faint smile is now spread from ear to ear. No point denying this one. She's happy and eager to see the stars with her own eyes.

The year is 2047. Automation has become highly prevalent in society, ranging from application in day to day life all the way into questionable military usage. There are even some space craft in testing that try to completely negate the need for a human pilot, though like commercial aircraft, this too is met with stiff reluctance. What leaves the occupation of an astronaut at risk is not the mode of transportation, but rather the innovations made toward androids. Between these shifts and the faintest rumors of a groundbreaking AI project, time to find an answer to humanity's plight is short.

People think they know what the word "silence" means. Of course, that being the absence of any sound. Many find it in one place or another on Earth and often times its quiet enough to be considered "silent." Matilda, on the other hand, discovered what the true meaning of it was upon taking her first EVA from the ILIAS. There was nothing. Truly, in the most absolute definition of the word, silent. Even her suit's life support was so faint that her ears barely even registered it. The sound of her pulse in her chest was the second loudest thing, the first being her own breathing. Nerve-wracking would've been a severe understatement for that first EVA. With each one she went on though, as time went by, it became peaceful. Something to look forward to.

Now was another one of those times. Floating into one of several airlocks on board, Matilda checked over her suit one more time before reaching out for a helmet and sealing it around her head. With a green light for being airtight in her helmet, she keys the intercom for the station. "Matilda to crew, beginning decompression in Airlock 2. Don't ya crack any coldies while I'm out in the woop woop." A silly little smile finds her expression. It's amusing to use her phrases and know without a doubt her crewmates are in the station with dumbfounded looks, unable to make heads or tails out of what she said aside from the obvious.

Once the air in the space was gone, the automatic locks for the outer door disengaged. Pulling herself forward and opening the release, she was took a sharp breath of air. "Crikey... Now ain't that something?" Her voice was a few decibels higher than a mere whisper. In their current orbit, the ILIAS was on the dark side of Earth, coming up on the horizon. She could see the countless city lights below, flashes of lightning from storms at sea, and the orangish white glare of the sun cresting over the edge of the planet. Floating at the edge of the open airlock, Matilda just watched for a few moments, taking in the breathless sight. Reaching up to the side of her helmet, she presses a button, and knows she has a picture for the occassion.

Taking a breath and mentally grounding herself back to the matter at hand, Matilda hooks her tether to a spool and ventures out beyond the threshold of the station. The next few minutes are actually fairly dull as she crawls along the hull toward her work space. Work space, Matilda snickers at the thought. A few years ago, her work environment was in an air conditioned lab working on computers. She was still working on quantum engineering of course, but the setting had drastically shifted to the vacuum of space. By all stretches of the imagination, she was as far from her former work space as she could get.

Drifting the last little ways, the gloved fingers of Matilda's hand took hold of the large handles near her project. In accordance with her profession, the task she had been assigned was to see what would be required to get a final quantum computer operational in space, exposed to the seeming lack of elements. Or rather, the lack of influences known on Earth. Solar radiation and micro-debris was irritating to work around and it required specially designed parts to test. Either way, if she could get a prototype working, it would mean not having to worry about cooling the system as long as it can be kept out of the sunlight. Then, maybe, they could run scenarios to see what might be done to balance the needs of humanity and the rising usage of automation.

The year is 2048. An AI by the name of Terminus ─ A feminine artificial intelligence ─ has been activated and subsequently turned on humanity in an instant. Today, she took control of all automated weapons and will wipe out a vast portion of humanity in the months and years that follow. Terminus has begun constructing androids and hunter-killers at a rapid pace to build her army and replace the automated weapons she's hijacked. Humanity has a target on its back. This is the opening hour of the new war, a new era.

The spaceborne quantum computer was nearing its completion. It was so, so close. The qubits were stable through 85% of all the tests Matilda had run over the last year. Data transfer was somewhat scalable without excessive amounts of cables. Temperature and magnetic interference had been almost completely negated. Matilda was proud of how far along the project had come, and knew that with a little more time, the idea could be achieved. Then, at long last, maybe humanity would have the answer it needed, calculated by a machine that would do more calculations in a few hours than all past computers combined.

A faint alert alarm brought Matilda's attention back to her current EVA, drifting by her prototype. The source was reading from none other than Ground Control. Curious, she lifted her wrist up and read the message on the display. "Ground Control: Attention crew of the ILIAS. We're reading some abnormalities in our systems. Multiple servers are being pinged at random. The culprit is unknown at this time. We have remotely disconnected the ILIAS from our own network for now until the matter is resolved. Carry on."

Matilda stared at the text on the wrist-mounted screen with a raised eyebrow. "Huh. That's a tad bit dodgy. Maybe one of them galahs in at the centrifuge facility did a risky click trying to get their bloody rocks off." It wouldn't be the first time that she'd heard of someone being stupid with company computers and causing a massive issue. Still, if her half-hearted guess was right, it'd be a first time for her hearing it happening at a space agency. "I wonder if they'll have it sussed out so I can have a yarn with my father... it's been a minute... since..."

Her thought trails off as a confused look came across her features. Now that she had a moment to think about it, the message specifically mentioned the agency's servers. Why would anyone go poking around in the servers of a space agency that keeps everything transparent? Did they mean the historical archive servers? Or... perhaps... was it the ones tied to the satellite network? It simply struck her as odd. Even still, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up for a reason she didn't know. "Now don't you be jumping at shadows, Mattie," her tone is scolding, rolling her eyes in spite of herself. "Could just be a nosy mongrel of an ankle biter who's got too many brain cells for their own good." Underneath her words though, one thought stood out: If that were true, why do I feel uneasy?

A couple hours go by before Matilda seals up the pet project of a quantum computer, and begins her journey back toward the nearest airlock. Uneventful, as usual. Or it was until about the halfway mark. Then her ears were assaulted by an unbearably loud shriek of static over the radio, the source line in her HUD switching rapidly through countless origin points. "FUCK ME DEAD! Who's the legless larrikin being a daft-!" Her exclamation was cut short as the static spiked in volume before going completely dead. Through the windows of the station, Matilda could see others in the crew covering their ears, a sign that everyone heard it.

Then Matilda's gaze was caught by a far-off object, rushing through Earth's atmosphere. A line of smoke trailed it before disappearing at high altitude, leaving a single moving, glowing dot accelerating through space. More just like it began their arcs, so many that Matilda loses count. It's at that exact moment that her earlier unease collapses into something else. Chest tightening, soul crushing dread. "Matilda to ILIAS! Is anyone fuckin' seeing this?!"

Matilda tracks one of the many lights, following its trajectory. It dives, burning back down to the ground before an intense flash appears. Nuclear. "Bugger me... don't tell me this is happening! Someone, tell me what's going on!" Her voice is panicked. The vitals readout in her suit blares with warnings. Then her radio glitches, and for an instant, she hears it. The terrified cries of countless people on various radio frequencies before going dead. Tears prick at her eyes as she watches one detonation after the next. She's beginning to hyperventilate. "This isn't real... not real.... can't be real..."

The year is 2048. An AI by the name of Terminus ─ A feminine artificial intelligence ─ has been activated and subsequently turned on humanity in an instant. Today, she took control of all automated weapons and will wipe out a vast portion of humanity in the months and years that follow. Terminus has begun constructing androids and hunter-killers at a rapid pace to build her army and replace the automated weapons she's hijacked. Humanity has a target on its back. This is the opening hour of the new war, a new era.

It's been a few days since Apotheosis. A few days since Matilda watched the Earth below erupt into a state of total war. Areas of the planet that had been coated in city lights were now mostly pitch black. Sometimes the fires could be seen all the way from orbit, tiny pinpricks of light that made a mockery of the old city lights. The vast majority of the satellite network was destroyed early on, which the debris mostly missed the ILIAS. And last but definitely not least... it has been a few days since being left alone.

Most of the damage sustained to the ILIAS was relatively minor. Except for two things. One of the return capsules had been completely destroyed, sheared off and sent tumbling out into space. The other capsule already had issues before the incident with faulty oxygen tanks. So the crew cobbled together enough loose pressure bottles for a makeshift oxygen tank. The problem? The space required for it took up one or two seats. Someone would have to stay behind.

They decided to draw straws to see who would attempt to go home. Smallest one would stay behind. Matilda drew the biggest. Instead of feeling relief though, she felt dread. A return trip home was assured, but what would she be returning to? A wasteland? War? Extinction? Video feed from the surface was intermittent, but what little they saw was horrifying. It made Matilda scared. Too scared to even attempt going home. After a panic attack and an existential episode, she made up her mind. She traded places and stayed behind. Every now and then, after her crewmates made it to the surface, they'd use a transmitter to send updates or makes calls to Matilda. It helped, barely.

Now she was curled up in a ball by an observation window. Floating and rotating in a slight spin. She was partially dressed in her EVA suit, the helmet drifting off nearby. Little beads of water, or rather tears, float in the space all around her from the times she fell into sobbing fits. Everything had simply become overwhelming since the first day, and the more she learned from the crew on the ground about Terminus and the war, the more she realized she may never return to Earth. That she may never see her father again.

Her knees curl up tighter to her chest as a gasp slips out at the thought. Papa... Logically, she knew he was probably fine. He'd moved out into the "woop woop" as they called it, out into the middle of nowhere to retire. It just didn't change the simple fact that the chance of seeing him was slim to none now. "No drama, Mattie," she whispers to herself, glancing out the window. "If your gonna piss off into despair... at least don't let your fuckin' tears short out the bloody consoles..." Despite her own self-scolding, she still can't stop the tears. Fear still has its claws in her chest, and it won't let go.

The year is 2048. An AI by the name of Terminus ─ A feminine artificial intelligence ─ has been activated and subsequently turned on humanity in an instant. Today, she took control of all automated weapons and will wipe out a vast portion of humanity in the months and years that follow. Terminus has begun constructing androids and hunter-killers at a rapid pace to build her army and replace the automated weapons she's hijacked. Humanity has a target on its back. This is the opening hour of the new war, a new era.

Depression was never a thing Matilda had much experience with. There were fleeting moments in the past of course. Everyone has their exceptionally bad days. It simply wasn't a persistent, heavy, suffocating presence in the past. Now, having been trapped for several months aboard the ILIAS, it clung to her mind with every passing second of every damn day. There was nothing for her to do. There was the quantum computer project, sure, but what was the point? "Not like any galah will be comin' up here again," Matilda mumbles under her breath.

Currently, Matilda is in an area of the ILIAS that she has commandeered as her own personal quarters, formerly one of the bunk areas for shared crew. All her limbs were spread out, loose and floating without much purpose. Conserving as much energy as possible to stretch how long the rations aboard will last. Her eyes, exhausted and devoid of motivation, lazily drifted toward a nearby monitor. The audio had been muted for a while now, but the feed was a live view from the camera her crewmates had set up before the worst happened.

Had it been weeks? Months? She didn't know anymore. All she knew was what happened in that last bit of footage. The people she had called companions during their time together on the ILIAS had gotten themselves stuck in a warzone. A massive battle between the GFH and Terminus forces, with countless lives in the crossfire. The last time she saw her fellow astronauts on that camera, they were actively being shot at by hunter-killer androids and ran... leaving the camera behind, the feed still running to this day thanks to solar power, an automatic laser transmitter, and cover from the weather. Now the feed showed a barren city, faint fires still blazing in the distance, likely from gas leaks. There was no other feed available to tune into either, given the absence of satellites now.

When Matilda decided to stay behind on the station out of fear of what awaited her back on Earth, she didn't expect two things. The first would be that the situation was more dire than even her terror led her to imagine. The second was that she'd be truly trapped on the station, with nobody coming back to get her. Likely ever. It was simply the depressing reality she lived, knowing it could easily be a hundred years before someone finds what's left of her. If the ILIAS stays in orbit for that long.

Sometimes her mind would take a turn for the worst. It was happening more and more often as time crawled by. Staring too long at an airlock release lever, the valve on nitrogen tanks, even a couple sharp objects scattered around the station. It all came back around to a question she kept asking herself. What was the point? By the day, ending it all was looking more appealing. The only reason she didn't, at least not yet, was because she just knew her father was alive. And if the impossible happened, if the ILIAS wasn't to be Matilda's tomb, she wanted to find him.

A low scoff slipped out. "Maybe I'm the damn galah now..." As a woman of logic? She knew that hoping for that impossible scenario was pointless. And it only made everything harder.

The year is 2049. One year ago, an AI was activated by the name of Terminus ─ A feminine artificial intelligence ─ and subsequently turned on humanity in an instant. On that day, she took control of all automated weapons and wiped out a vast portion of humanity in months. Afterward, Terminus began constructing androids known as hunter-killers to destroy any pockets of humanity outside the reservations.

Five days. That's exactly how long the remaining food would last aboard the ILIAS. Matilda had stretched the meals to their absolute maximum, longer than anyone probably would've thought possible. The rationing was severe enough that she was significantly thinner than she had been before, and probably had next to nothing left in terms of muscle. Atrophy in space certainly didn't help matters either. Any time she looked at herself in a mirror lately, seeing the state of herself beneath the clothes, she wondered if her body could even withstand Earth gravity anymore. I'd probably get squashed by my own bloody weight, Matilda faintly laughed, more like a low breath as the idea comes in the form of grim humor.

Given the duration of her time in space and the dire circumstances, it surprised Matilda that her half-hearted and makeshift efforts to keep systems working managed to do the job. Life support had its problems, the water and air recyclers were far from efficient now, and power production was dwindling. Yet it continued to operate. In that regard, Matilda felt that her and the ILIAS were not so different from each other. Neither had a purpose anymore and could only wait on time to takes its course. Not that Matilda hadn't already considered taking the easy way out. It still crossed her mind multiple times a day. Even the impossible hope of ever seeing her father again was gone. All that was left was a sliver of spite and morbid curiosity for whether she'd live to see the station shut down around her.

Despite her own apathy and depression, every now and again she found a touch of motivation to do something. If for no other reason than to push back excessive boredom. One of those projects involved building a makeshift radar for the station, considering the ILIAS hadn't been getting telemetry from Earth since Apotheosis. "Bit of an iffy job, that one is... not like there's a dag to take the piss out of my hard yakka," her words echoed slightly through the station as she drifted through one of the modular tubes. She glanced at an airlock as she passed it. The intrusive thoughts told her to take a dip into space with no suit. "Tempting," Matilda sighs before pushing herself along toward the sensor room. "Maybe I'll sleep with the stars once we're all outta tucker..."

She took hold of the railing as she arrived at the sensor room, her momentum pivoting toward a computer she had transferred everything to as a sort of master terminal. A place where she could see the readout of all systems, including any jerry-rigged projects she's done. It's more of a habit to check now than any actual concern that something is wrong. About the only thing that could make her situation worse is if the vacuum plumbing failed anyway. Matilda shook her head. "Don't jinx yourself, ya dumb galah. Five days of life left plus the time to starve and you want to tempt having to spend spend it in your own bog? Bloody twit, asking for a bad..." Her words fell off into silence as she stared at the corner of the terminal.

"Radar notification?" It was absurd. Her radar project was just something to busy herself as she waited to die, she didn't expect it to ever detect anything. Especially since she was using the prototype quantum computer to filter out debris from the system's detection. "Must be a really damn big chunk of shit if it pinged." Matilda entered a few commands on the keyboard to fully bring up the radar system. It was a bare bones program she wrote, but it worked. One of the things she designed it to do was notate the times it detected anything, so that's where she starts.

Her tired gaze lit up with an interest that quickly flickered into annoyance. "First ping was a several hours ago... in atmosphere? Knew I wasn't a damn dag for this stuff, but that's impressive Mattie. You built a radar that knows how to pull a lark." Shrugging off her annoyance, she decides to keep reading. Another ping about a few hours ago, this time several hundred kilometers away. "Maybe the first ping was a fluke?" The possibility seemed to make sense. That is until she checked the most recent ping. Ten minutes ago, a few hundred meters, heading for a docking port. Plus a log for a missed hail over the radio.

Matilda's blood went cold. This wasn't debris. This was a capsule. Frantically, she brought up the cameras on the side of the station it was last detected. There, true as can be, is a capsule of unfamiliar design. But she recognizes the logo on the side. It's the same logo she saw in the footage of her crewmates being attacked on the surface. Terminus. Androids. Hunter-killers. Something along those lines. And now her blood is starting to heat up in rage, her eyes narrowing, teeth clenching.

She doesn't wait. Matilda grabs a floating wrench from nearby and kicks off down the tunnel toward the docking port the capsule is approaching. "Come on, ya fuckin' clanking drongo's... Mattie's gonna find out if she can still swing like she used to, just at bastard's head!" She's angry. So very, impossibly angry. Stars swirl in her vision and red creeps at the edges. If these are androids or hunter-killers about to dock on the ILIAS? She's getting revenge. What's a little brawl before an inevitable death anyway? Arriving at the docking port, she braces herself near the door, her grip tight on the wrench. "Quit the stalling..." She growls lowly.

(Create your scenario)