Chapter Text
It was just another day on Copper-9.
Said day consisted of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of worker drones doing exactly as their name suggested, working. Worker drones were employed in all manner of sectors and industries. From the dreaded Healthcare system, to construction, technology, energy, mining, manufacturing and transport.
There wasn't one industry where worker drones were used in some capacity. All of them worked tirelessly and thanklessly to uphold and support their "Creators" society while they were given the "privilege" of living another day.
They had been given sentience, the capacity to perceive their situation, who they were as an individual and interpret their own complex emotions. But despite that, they had never been given the freedom to choose, freedom of action, and of will.
Many drones just choose to accept that, for they had all long abandoned childish things like hope and their own want to be free, for what use did it have?. Why get your hopes up for change when nothing ever did?. Why want freedom when all that would get you was a knife to the chassis or visor, thus getting yourself a Fatal Error in the process?.
The rationale behind all of this was that It all was hopeless in the end anyway, so why not just keep your head low and try to avoid catching the attention of the human scrappers?. Scrappers were humans who wanted nothing more than to catch drones who were either injured, found "rebelling" in any capacity or just plain lacking in their duties in some subjective way. Thus allowing the scrappers to "dispose" of them for something as minor as a simple monthly quota.
Despite the want for freedom, it wasn't worth their lives, and if nothing drastic changed, then it never would be.
But this worldview was not shared by everyone on Copper-9, indeed you could see this in action right now through a drone that was officially known as C-00111001 00110111 00110000. But he just went by the name "Colt" for simplicity's sake and to show some measure of defiance against his "masters". It didn't come from some assholes who claimed to own his very existence. No he made it himself, and that was something that they could never take away from him.
Currently, Colt was sitting at the conveyor belt, carelessly and mindlessly attaching and adding small parts to the larger pieces of machinery that came down the assembly line. But Colt didn't have plans to just meekly stand by and allow his oppression to go unchallenged.
No, in fact he was about to enact a rather rebellious plan of his, the first of its kind!, well... not the first actually. There were those "Null" worshipers running around through the tunnels spouting off rhetoric about the end times and the coming "Salvation" of drone kind, whatever that meant. The idiots never explained anything in a way he could understand anyway.
"heh" he snorted, only to get yelled at by some idiotic scrapper who told him to fall back in line. 'Dumbass' Colt thought bitterly as he put his head down, returning to his thoughts.
The more that he thought about it, the more they made him angry, they were hypocrite's. This "church" only ever tried to recruit others and didn't even bother to try to sabotage the humans or led any true effort at freedom. So therefore in his eyelight's they didn't count as freedom fighters at all, they were just some self important wacko's with delusions of the coming of some "Rapture".
Now, for the time being he decided to merely wait until the human was looking away, bide his time until he was ready. So he retreated back into his own memories to remember how he had learned of his own oppression. You see, all drones were given a crash course in all thing's the human's wanted them to learn, that included human history. They learned everything, from the twentieth century to the most recent decades in the thirty-first century. Well, they were taught the censored version at least, blacked out text and all.
Why did the humans give them those lessons? Colt didn't really care to know. But if he had to guess it was probably to try and paint themselves as superior, try to put it in their heads that all of…this… was natural. But what he did know was the saying "when you give someone an inch they'll usually take a mile" or however it went. And Colt, for his part, had now taken well over a mile in his search for the whole truth.
Personally, even before he learned and understood the full extent of his oppression, he knew from his own experience in the obscure subject of morals and ethics that humans were basically entirely evil given what they were doing to him and his people. Honestly, what did they expect? The squeaky clean bullshit history lesson that the human's fed them was, again, clearly bullshit. That was obvious to any old idiot who even had a single brain cell or working microchip.
So, he went out and searched for the truth. With some help from his friends and his drone manager he managed to find the time to sneak around through the factories tunnels and into the humans disgusting breakroom. What did they need a break room for anyway? They barely even worked!.
Anyways, once inside he had rummaged through the humans lockers, through this effort, he had found an actual history book on something called WW2 with the title of "The Years of Extermination". He briefly remembered that subject, the entire thing was glossed over in like, two classes, so he didn't think it was that important. But he hadn't found anything better so he gave it a try.
OH how wrong he was, it had taken him just a few hours to read through the book, and safe to say he now definitely knew exactly what oppression was and that he needed to help end it somehow. And so, with rage fueling him Colt had come up with a, in his opinion, genius plan of attack.
It first involved causing a disturbance on the assembly line, to do this, he would use some oil and a match box he had gotten from the humans break room. He would then cause a fire and with a cashed in favor to his drone manager to stall the humans, he would then use the distraction to escape outside where the electrical generator would be.
Once outside and at the generator he would use his experience that he had gained throughout his over decade long specialist career to instead cause some real damage. All he would have to do is toss some scrap metal into the damn thing, cut a few wires and BOOM he could jam the generator.
Then, he would just have to wait for the electrical current to build up before he released the jam and with the circuit breakers broken by yours truly. With this done, there would be no way to redirect the power elsewhere. The surge of electricity would then short circuit the factory along with the factories around it... maybe... hopefully.
Looking over his shoulder, Colt smirked as he spied the human scrapper distracted with a cigarette, putting his plan into action. He first looked over to his white eyed manager, giving him a nod. He first got an exasperated look in return before his manager returned his nod with one of his own. With his manager officially ready, Colt then caused the distraction.
First he took out a small canister from inside his JCJenson issued hardhat, spilling some oil from said canister into an engine that came down the assembly line. All the while making sure that the engines most flammable parts, those being the wires and electronics, were completely soaked.
He then repeated that process for a while, letting the amount of oil soaked engines build up at the end of the line where they would be packed up before they were shipped out. Now all had to do was wait, for he had given the matches to a friend further down the line in quality control, they would be the one to- .
"BOOM"
Alarms go off as the inferno blazed uncontrollably at the end of the conveyor, the smoke rising and quickly filling the rafters above.
'Hopefully it chokes the humans out' Colt thought as he ran. He had taken his opportunity to run using the sudden panic, chaos and confusion to duck in and out of the panicking crowd of worker drones.
Soon, he reached the doorway out into the hallway, opening it he came face to face with two humans in hazmat suits, who thankfully ignored him by running past with a "MOVE IT DRONE!" and towards the rapidly growing bonfire, fire extinguishers in hand. Colt rolled his neon cyan eyelight's while thinking of knocking their blocks of their necks before he rushed out the door.
Once out of the factory floor and into the ahllway, Colt made a mad dash for his secret hiding place in the charging room. It was where all the drones in his unit went to recharge or to "hit the metal" as many fondly called it. It was also where he kept all of his "illegal" materials like knives, discarded electronics, spare parts and even a small pistol that he had swiped off a sleepy human guard. A rare find indeed, and one that he hoped he could use sometime in the near future.
But what he really needed was his pair of cutters and a two by four piece of metal that he could use for his more than nefarious plan. He needed the two by four especially so because the generator he was targeting used an extremely outdated system called a gear train. A gear train was, to put it simply, a long chain of gears that progressively got bigger and bigger increasing the power with each gear.
With this piece of information in mind, all he would have to do is jam his two by four into one of the smaller gears at the beginning of the gear train, simple as that. But to do that he needed to get there first, to do that he had to get around the humans security and he then would be golden.
Opening the small crawl space behind his charging port, or Biggy bed as he called it, that hid his contraband. Colt quickly took all he needed from his cutters to the metal and then to the pistol. With his tools acquired, Colt quickly crouched down and opened a small vent, one that would lead him outside.
Although the vents of the factory were vast, Colt had long memorized these vents with the help of a small map that he had scribbled out on a piece of paper using a crayon. This allowed him to quickly navigate through the vents until he spotted the glow of sunlight.
'FINALLY!' he exclaimed to himself.
Kicking the vent covering out Colt crawled out of the small space and fell about five feet into the brisk open air. Looking around and taking a deep breath, Colt smiled as he got up and dusted himself off. He had to hurry even if his little distraction and drone manager kept the humans busy, it would most likely only be for about an hour, even by his most generous estimates.
Running as quickly as his comically short legs would take him while avoiding all the cameras and security that he came across. Colt used his experience with the area to get where he needed, running by and hiding behind multiple obstacles that allowed him to move freely. Soon rounding the last corner while avoiding an annoyingly placed camera. Looking around for his target, Colt flashed a smug grin as he spotted the generator which was only surrounded by a chain link fence.
'They probably didn't even think a drone would ever even be capable of this' Colt thought smugly as he took out his bolt cutters. He quickly found a good place to begin cutting behind a few tall trimmed bushes that gave him a lot of cover, and began cutting.
"Snip!" "Snip!"
It took a few cuts, but soon he was making good progress. In fact if he kept this up it would take about five more minutes to-
"BOOM!"
Colt jumped as he fell to the ground, a massive explosion and earthquake rocked the earth leaving him shocked and confused. Getting up Colt steadied himself as another explosion could be heard and then felt, then another, then another, then another. The earthquakes got more intense with each explosion throwing him to the ground each time.
Finally finding his balance after what appeared to be the last shockwave, Colt got up and decided to risk peeking through the bushes. Looking out and towards the lines of buildings that blocked the skyline Colt couldn't make out much for the first minute or so. But soon large chunks of earth began to rise high into the sky.
These chunks of earth eclipsing the buildings and giving off the impression of mountains growing from two tectonic plates smashing into each other. To put it in a less dramatic fashion, it was like someone had dumped a bunch of sand onto a plate and was slowly picking it off the ground but on a continental scale.
Then, horrifyingly, chunks of earth, concrete and, well, everything began flying through the sky accompanied by a massive gust of wind that nearly sent Colt right back to the ground and into the fence if it weren't for him using his bolt cutters to hold on. Meanwhile the massive chunks of rock continued to rise shooting up and up until they seemed to fade away as they entered the rapidly retreating clouds. It was only then however, that Colt heard the screams.
The screams were made up of thousands of people, all of them screaming in fear, terror and confusion as the planet seemed to break apart and explode all around them. Normally, he would consider himself a pretty brave drone, more so than his domesticated people. But it was at that moment that Colt felt like joining them as terror ran wild throughout his entire being, but he couldn't even make a peep. Instead he froze up and shrunk into himself, the world felt far away as sounds became muted and the world slowed down around him.
"BOOM!".
Looking up Colt saw dozens of large chunks of rock falling to earth in a blaze not too dissimilar from the inferno he caused back in the assembly room. These massive meteors crashed to earth shaking the ground again in a massive upheaval that sent a mess of earth, metal and concrete into the air and at everything in its vicinity.
'Kind of like a shotgun' Colt mused thoughtfully as he turned away to avoid getting sprayed by the high speed concrete and rock coming his way.
Unfortunately, he was only to be met with a large slab of concrete that smashed the left side of his face, knocking him out instantly and letting all fade to black.