Day Sixty Two (Alfa)

This story is connected to Day Forty Seven , and here is some music for it: Ruined World

The rolling fields of wheat spread as far as the eye could see. Inter spaced among them were the agile forms of the Alfa drones. Spiderlike in appearance, they trekked among the crops on eight strong legs, delicately stepping between the plants as they made their rounds. Each Alfa was equipped with a complex mixture of fertilization, irrigation, and harvesting capabilities, designed specifically for them to function as an automated agricultural system.

Even before the Exhaustion had begun, Alfas were in use in many developing nations. With a surprising low failure rate—given their complexity—and numerous customization options, there were few crops they couldn’t manage. And once it became clear that the Exhaustion wasn’t going to be halted, the nations that had assembled the Aegis Network had acquired a small army of them and set them to work producing a stockpile of foodstuffs. In the event that Aegis was successful in curing the Exhaustion in the future, mankind wouldn’t simply starve to death after rising from the ashes.

And so the Alfas, directed principally by a modified “foreman” Alfa, grew and harvested vast swaths of land annually. This food was processed and stored, prepared for the very moment that mankind could return. As time passed, it inevitably spoiled, and the refuse was reused in the process of producing new stores to replace it. A perpetual cycle of plant, nurture, harvest, and store took shape as the years passed; a constantly repeating pattern that would have been maddening to a human. But the Alfas didn’t care; they lacked the processing power to comprehend the consciousness that had manifested in Aegis, and so their whole purpose was the cycle. They performed it day in and day out without a word or care.

From the lens of Kindra Nikole Photography: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kindra-Nikole-Photography/495800123770510

~ by tawks on May 15, 2013.