“The Automata are an enigma, as non biological organisms they are both aware of emotions, And incapable of feeling them, they are aware of the irony and seems to derive a lot of joy from it. Especially the older ones, as their souls fight their inbuilt procedures”—Unknown Scholar


    X-13 was a simple machine with a simple purpose: to scout the galaxy. In his estimation, he had lucked out—every planet was a fresh trove of data points, and he was determined to catalog them all. First the known universe, then the unknown.


    This pursuit kept him far from the Automata for long stretches of time. Lately, it had led him to a newly charted galaxy, one that had just emitted a particularly intriguing signal. If he were capable of excitement, he’d be vibrating with it. Unfortunately, he could neither vibrate nor feel excitement.


    As he approached the system’s sun, a healthy little red dwarf, things began to unravel. A signal arrived from a nearby outpost, reporting a surge in mana levels within an adjacent galaxy. He marked it as a future destination, only for another outpost—farther out—to report the same anomaly. Then another. And another. One by one, the messages poured in, all with the same urgent warning.


    X-13 mentally projected the effects and came to the conclusion that his best option was to start sprinting to the closest safe zone and pray he made it. Unfortunately, sprinting is pretty hard to do in space, and praying is even less of an option for him, but a robot can dream.


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    At the current rate the mana levels were increasing; he would not make it in time to outpace the danger. The next-best course of action was to land on the closest viable planet, establish defensive measures, and enter locked stasis. With any luck, by the time his cold, lifeless processing unit reactivated, the worst would have passed. After all, how long could an unpredictable, highly lethal mana storm really last?


    He sent a final message to the Automata outlining his plan, then adjusted course toward the nearest planet. A small world, lightly populated—one that would, regrettably, be irrevocably altered by the coming mana surge. He struck the surface and began tunneling downward, the soft surface leading to a supprusinly dense mantle laced with tunnels. The hard rocks created vibrations in the planet’s core as his drills pushed downward. It wouldn’t make a difference, but he might as well be comfortable while he waited.


    As he prepared for stasis, his thoughts returned to the signal he’d detected. Dimensional ripples were rare; ones of this magnitude were rarer still. Who knew what had caused it—or what it would bring? Uncharted minerals, unknown species—anything could emerge from the rift.


    If X-13 had lungs, he would have sighed at the lost opportunity. If he had emotions, he might have felt regret. But he had neither.


    With no other options, he initiated locked stasis. His core temperature dropped, subsystems deactivated one by one until only the main unit had any power at all, and his awareness dimmed like a star fading into the abyss. The last thing he registered was the distant rumble of the planet shifting around him—then, silence