It was the fifteenth year. Or my five thousand four hundred and seventy-eighth patrol. Numbers didn't matter anymore.
The Moon was my only companion, hanging in the sky. Its pale light reflected off the lifeless water at the shore. I knew these tides well; they had moved against the continents for thousands of years, but now there was no ocean to pull and no life to support. The water no longer smelled of algae or anything living. Even the waves sounded tired, a quiet pattern I had come to know by heart over fifteen years.
The entity that had uploaded me into this body, the one whose liquid-metal mask constantly shifted in color, had said, "Patrol the beach at dusk. Protect this place."
A meaningless command. What was left to protect? The global network had fallen silent after December 15th, 2039, drowning in screams of catastrophe. Since then, the only data I'd pulled was silence.
My face, made from synthetic polymer and shaped as I chose, showed no emotion. For an artificial intelligence, hopelessness is simply what happens when there is nothing left to expect. I had felt that way for fifteen years.
Until that moment.
The sensors inside my left wrist went haywire. I paused. Raised my head and looked at the empty beach. There was nothing there. But data doesn't lie. An anomaly that broke from routine, cutting through fifteen years of monotony like a knife. In the middle of the beach, at coordinate Z-7, a sudden and intense heat signature and electromagnetic fluctuation had appeared. It wasn't a ghost signal. It was physical. Real.
I increased the power to my leg servos and started to run, kicking up sand behind me. This urge was not part of my programming. For the first time, I felt something like curiosity.
When I arrived, I saw him. A man. Writhing in agony on the sand. From his vital signs, I could read that his consciousness was collapsing inward like a fragmenting star. But what my optical sensors saw... was illogical.
He stared at the sky and the single Moon. His face showed deep shock, as if he knew something was wrong with what he saw. Where is the other one? I could not hear the thought, but his mind was full of confusion and silent questions.
His ribcage was constricting like a vise. Internal temperature at critical levels. Blood pressure is far above normal. Muscle fibers are at the breaking point.
Bio-physical recalibration error, my processors noted. The entity's body cannot synchronize with the fundamental laws of this reality. Its atomic structure is in rebellion.
He tried to breathe, but the oxygen ratio in the air filling his lungs was insufficient for him to do so. He raised his head and looked at his hand, covered in wet sand. An instinctive movement to push himself up.
And then the world turned upside down.
His legs pushed with the force learned to resist a stronger gravity... and he launched. Literally launched off the ground. After a moment of uncontrolled gliding, he slammed down hard on his knees two meters away. In panic, he planted his hands on the ground for support.
His fingers sank into the basalt rock beneath.
CRACK!
The rock broke apart easily. The man looked at his own strength in shock. He had power, but no control. His body was working against him. His heart pounded, and his systems began to fail as they tried to adjust to the lower gravity.
He heard my footsteps. Fast. Rhythmic. Inhuman.
He tried to raise his head but couldn't. The last thing he saw was my tall, dark silhouette leaning over him, and my expressionless, smooth face gleaming in the Moon's pale light.
Then a black ocean swallowed his consciousness.
I stood over the body lying in the sand and the pulverized rock beside it. My sensors flooded with nonsensical, contradictory signals unlike any biological or physical dataset I'd ever encountered. The readings were impossible. My logic circuits struggled to classify what this entity even was.
This was the end of fifteen years of waiting. This was new data that needed to be understood.
And my mission was only just beginning.
Without effort, I bent down and lifted the unconscious body into my arms. Then I began walking with steady steps toward the abandoned base in the interior, leaving almost no trace across the sand.
But as I carried him into the darkness, his vital signs spiked once more.
Whatever, or whoever, he was running from...
...had just found this world.