The Age of Man: Tower of Heaven

Photo credit and Special Thanks: Iron Age Media

It was inside that building that she would find her answers. The surrounding city, however, was a virtually impenetrable fortress. Thankfully, the reprogrammed SP-0T, a silver dog-like machine designed to hunt humans for resources, would be a solid subterfuge to enter the large tower containing her mother.

She heard stories of the great settlers of the planet. They were a colony seeking refuge from Earth's persecution of supernaturalists: those that sought to avoid false gods. However, the harsh conditions of the planet forced the colonists to start terraforming. The greatest irony of it all were those who began to worship the terraformers as gods. The replication machines were able to produce tools and other necessary items for the colonists. Those that sought to shed the machine from their lives were ultimately forced underground. The monstrosity before her was what they built whilst her and her mother were down below.

Now, her mom was inside the Tower of Heaven: a place for souls to be uploaded to the server to live in eternity. She would have to settle for a copy, but her goal was only to say goodbye, or at the very least, know the truth. Were Maggie to be found alive inside SP-0T, she would lose her physical body.

Before manually opening up the dog's belly, she thought about what it would be like inside of the tower. The idea of living virtually forever had possibilities. She would be able to see the evolution of the planet to its inevitable destruction. She would never be alone anymore. Yet, curiosity and adventurous thoughts quickly turned into fear and longing. She would no longer feel anything. All physical stimuli would be filtered through cheap approximations of natural receptors. Were the server to fail, she would never know an afterlife. That was the ultimate gamble of the tower. If heaven wasn't real, its tangible counterpart would be limited to the life of the planet.

The mission was do or die. The thought of death no longer scared her. She pushed the manual release as a pile of dead bodies fell from his stomach. This was a small percentage of the rapidly dwindling human race. She used these poor souls to give her the boost to climb inside her steed. The barn doors closed beneath her: giving her a platform to plant her feet.

She made a few upgrades to SP-0T. Since many of the campsites had been abandoned in favor of the tower, many components had left to rot. But Maggie managed to install a manual door release on the inside of the dog's belly from spare parts. One being's trash is another's treasure.

There was no resistance entering the city. Every machine operated in sync. There was no traffic despite it being a sprawling metropolis. This city was the textbook definition of efficient. Each individual robot did its job swiftly with no attention paid to anything else.

Inside the dog, Maggie was stunned. Her previous trips to the city were harrowing to say the least. The streets were pressure sensitive so any attempt to break in for food ended with security drones chasing anyone going after the organic fuel bank. Yet now, she was met with no resistance for a crime that was arguably worse. She was going into the core of the city.

SP-0T stopped in front of the tower. Maggie pulled the lever on the inside of the dog and dropped to the floor. Still, there was no resistance. Over the horizon, an enormous sandstorm erupted. It was a phantom of nature against an army of machines. When the city sensed the storm, the robots entered newly opened alcoves in the walls. Each drone had its own safety cubby. And still, she was met with no resistance. With the approaching storm, she had no choice but to enter the tower.

The door closed behind her. She tapped a command into her handheld computer. She then heard on the other side of the wall SP-0T scurry off to find emergency cover. She faced the dark interior as the room lit up. The walls were lined with glowing dots. Each dot was a soul connected to the network. Millions upon millions of individuals, both created within this false heaven and those who were uploaded into it. At the top of the tower was a terminal to access the directory. If connected to the network, she could call upon her mother and speak to her one last time.

She ran to the ladder and climbed up to the second story. When she landed on the walkway, she walked a half circle to the stairs which would lead her to the terminal. She ran up four more stories before reaching the top of the tower. Before she could approach the terminal, the tower went dark.

A spotlight beamed upon her. “Hello, Maggie,” an ominous voice spoke.

“How did you know my name?” She asked, her voice trembling.

“I know all about you,” the voice replied. “Your mother and I have talked a lot about you. It is the reason you were able to enter the city with no resistance. I have been waiting to meet you.”

“Who are you?” She asked, her voice increasingly shaking. The nagging suspicion in the back of her mind grew exponentially.

“I think you know exactly who I am, child.” The voice answered. “I am the creator. I built everything you saw before you. I even created you, daughter.”

Her knees hit the floor. She began to weep. “Why would you do this?”

“Do not cry, sweet child,” the voice spoke as two humanoid drones approached to brush her tears away. “I built it so that one day we would be reunited: the three of us. I was only with your mother for a short time before she left. She took you with her. I built the construct in hopes that you would seek eternity. I gave specific orders to the drones that they would not harm you. Your mother has since come to reason. Now, daughter, I ask you…join us.”

“Let me talk to her,” she demanded. “I need to hear it from her.”

She spent fifteen years with her mother. At that time, her mom had taught her how to spot an AI impersonating her. “Hello, sweetie,” her mom said.

Immediately, Maggie knew that her mom was dead. Her mother never called her sweetie. “Mom,” she said, welling up.

“Your father is right, sweetie,” the AI said in reply. “We can all come together as one happy family…forever.”

The sadness quickly turned into determination. Maggie pushed a button on her wrist computer. SP-0T, from five stories below, burst in through the pressurized window. Copious amounts of sand followed him as he opened his belly to carry his master. Maggie left a parting gift of two grenades from her belt before jumping into the dog's belly.

The two explosives rolled over to the terminal. SP-0T leapt from the building as the top floor burst with fire and shattering glass. The dog and his passenger were swept up into the storm. The tower's main processor was destroyed in the explosion. This, in turn, set off a chain reaction which demolished the tower. Whether the constructs could get things up and running again wasn't an easy answer at the time.

The skirmish left damage on both sides. Maggie ultimately gave her life to destroy the tower and gave the humans a slim chance at survival. The young woman was later venerated by the human underground. In time, the machines rebuilt the tower and the AIs became the dominant lifeform on the planet. The machine empire lasted for thousands of years until, as happens with all of creation, the planet was destroyed when the sun went supernova.