The Last Days of Krypton - Kevin J. Anderson [81]
“The Computer Tyrants are long forgotten except by me. I do this for myself. And for them.” He looked at the domed cities. “I have saved them all.”
Zod stepped closer to the energy dome that encapsulated Krypton’s capital. He wondered if the tiny people inside could see his gigantic face looming over them. “Is that why you were sent here?”
“I came of my own free will.” The android sounded very proud of the fact. “I am no longer the subservient construct the Computer Tyrants created.”
Zod waited for him to continue, still puzzled by the alien’s oddly nonthreatening attitude after having caused such horrific destruction.
“In order to make me a better spy, the Computer Tyrants twinned me with a slave boy. I took all of his emotions, his thoughts and his desires. I believe he took much from me as well.” The android sounded almost wistful. Another image shimmered on the smooth wall screen, displaying a thin dark-haired youth with lean features and sunken eyes, haunted by a brief lifetime overloaded with fear and oppression. Even so, the image seemed almost…idealized.
“Once we were twinned, the boy should have been my longtime companion. The ship was ready to depart on my survey mission, but the boy escaped just before I took off. He surprised me.” The wall image sparkled and vanished. “I miss him.”
The green android seemed genuinely sad. “And so I went from star system to star system by myself. That was centuries ago. I studied many planets, searching for perfect cities.” In separate projections around the ship’s main chamber, more images showed spectacular landscapes of world after world, exotic places such as Zod had never imagined.
Then he saw a sparkling portrait of Kandor. “Krypton was one of my favorites,” the android said.
Zod drove back his feelings of being overwhelmed. All those places, world after world raided by this creature…and no one on Krypton had ever known of the threat. Kryptonians had been obliviously, and intentionally, unaware of so much. The Council members had hidden their heads in the sand for centuries. Damn them! “Then why didn’t your Computer Tyrants invade us?”
The Brain Interactive Construct stood close to Zod, also staring down at bottled Kandor. “Because I never told them about Krypton.” His artificial face shaped itself into a placid smile. “The Tyrants had programmed me to feel their need to dominate biological life-forms, but after I was twinned with the young boy, I also understood other components of the equation. I valued peace and beauty. I valued harmony and personal interaction. Those were the things the poor slave boy longed for most.” He lowered his voice. “However, when I had gathered all the necessary data, I returned to Colu, as my programming demanded of me. I had no choice.”
Now shimmering images formed on all the wall screens, creating an overwhelming symphony of dark and bleak recordings. Zod saw scene after scene of total destruction, wrecked industrial cities, bodies and machines strewn through streets and across a barren landscape. “But when I arrived home, my planet had been devastated. All of the Computer Tyrants were annihilated in a great war. All of the slaves had rebelled against the machines.”
“Intriguing.” Zod thought he should feel relieved. “They won?”
“In a sense, perhaps. But every scrap of life was wiped out as well. Colu was dead.” The walls grew blank again, as if the android could no longer bear to view the images. He stood stock-still, reviewing files in his cybernetic mind.
“I dug through the rubble for two years alone until I found intact data cores. When I uploaded everything that had happened in my absence, I learned that the cause of the destruction was none other than my own ‘twin.’ After the slave boy had shared with me, after I had become partially human and he had become partially machine, he understood how to overthrow the Computer Tyrants. He destroyed our world.”
Grainy archival images showed the revolt, slaves throwing themselves against the