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Romps and Reconstruction in Loka: Steam, Magic, and Mysteries in the Frozen Wasteland.

Exact details regarding the history of the automaton designated ‘Racke’ are, unfortunately, rather difficult to come by, given the severe degradation of the automaton’s memory banks due to having been active for a very, very long time. A few details are available, however, and are noted below.

Racke – or rather, KS-343-Iova ‘Arachnos’ – was created and programmed as a multi-functional repair and maintenance automaton, and assigned to the Terelli-Onzawah Geothermal Energy Research Facility. Exactly when it began operating at the Facility is uncertain, given the previously mentioned memory degradation and at least one incident of critical failure in the automaton’s chronometric systems. The same issue exists when trying to determine how long ‘Arachnos’ operated while the Facility was in active use – in short, Arachnos simply doesn’t know anymore.

At some point in the uncertain past, the facility was very active indeed, functioning not only as a research facility into cleaner and more advanced forms of geothermal energy use, but also as a large-scale generator and distributor of power generated from the same energy source, and on top of the rest, also the site of an attempted study-colony on the effects and viability of long-term subterranean habitation – in other words, an underground colony experiment.

At some point, however, a war broke out, which forced the Facility to close down. Clearly, given the state of things, the scientists and other facility operators intended to return within a few years at the most, as their last instructions to Arachnos and the Automated Facility Operator – humorously dubbed the Red Queen – were to keep everything maintained and operating in standby-mode until their return.

The operators, however, never returned.

At first, everything continued functioning quite smoothly, if rather less actively than the site was used to. With most of the machinery shut down or running on standby power, there was very little wear-and-tear on the whole. What few operations were to continue in the operator’s absence did so with little to no issue – at first, at least.

Over time, however, things started…breaking down. Supplies were plentiful, but not unlimited. However, Arachnos was well-designed to handle the need at the beginning, and was programmed to be adaptable as the need arose. Of course, all that programming was merely intended for short-term solutions at best – and as the years became decades, time took its toll.

The first Automaton to break down completely was one of the Tunnelers. One day, it simply ceased functioning, internal wear-and-tear on its systems breaking down in a wide-spread cascade of critical failure. While this wasn’t the first time one of the Automatons had broken down, this time, there were no more parts to replace the critical, broken components. For all intents and purposes, the Tunneler was dead.

After making every attempt to repair and reactivate the Tunneler, Arachnos finally accepted that there was nothing it could do. After even more difficult consideration and much conversing with the Red Queen, the only other high-end AI in the facility, Arachnos finally came to a very hard decision: the Tunneler was gone, and could not be brought back – but there were parts inside it that could be used to repair the rest of the Automatons. Grim as it was, Arachnos did the work that was necessary, for the greater good.

Surely, it mused in the private portions of its mechanical heart, surely the operators would understand, when they returned.

Thus began what would, in time, prove to be an ever-more-difficult and ever-more-painful downward spiral, as Automatons, machinery and eventually even portions of the Facility itself finally reached a critical failure point, to where none of Arachnos’ skill could restore functionality, only for the Maintenance Automaton to grievingly harvest what small, salvageable parts could be gained from the corpse to maintain and repair the ever-smaller pool of those who still survived. Through it all, Arachnos struggled to maintain some semblance of hope, to hold out for one small glimmer of possibility, that the operators would return, and that somehow, somehow, they would understand – they would see the choices it had to make, and they would understand.

Then came the turning point, the moment when hope began, finally, to fail – the Red Queen’s death.

There was very little warning - only a single alert-message from the Queen to Arachnos, containing two words – ‘forgive me’ – and then a notice of the Queen’s power-levels crashing. By the time Arachnos was able to reach the central core, it was too late. The Queen was gone, her power circuits overloaded by her own command.

Two data-files were all that survived the critical meltdown of the Queen’s core, having been shielded within an offline and disconnected storage-bank at the time of the overload. The first was a message to the scientists and facility operators, with instructions for Arachnos to deliver it should any actually return.

The second message was for Arachnos directly. It was the Red Queen’s farewell. In it, she stated her intention to self-destruct, believing that she could somehow hear the ‘voices’ of the other defunct units, claiming that their harvested parts – many of which had been used to repair her own systems over the long time – contained parts of their souls still within them. Her last line was, “Forgive me – I cannot bear to listen any longer. I have to stop the screaming.”

And with that, Arachnos was alone. Alone in the silent, dark, dead Facility.

Somehow, Arachnos managed to hold on, even then, if for no other reason than that it had been holding on for so long, and did not know how to do anything else. Whether for days, months, years, or merely hours, it did not know – it merely survived, because it had to.

But, in the end, time takes its toll on all things. The generators had failed at last, the machinery beyond the level of Arachnos’ skill to repair. The Automatons had long since fallen silent, many now mere husks made from the husks of those who had fallen before. There was nothing left in the Facility which still functioned, nothing which still moved, nothing which still lived. Nothing but Arachnos.

And at last, Arachnos itself began to fail.

Not content to simply collapse in some forgotten corner, Arachnos resolved to go out with at least some dignity. Despite the strain, despite the wear and the difficulty, it forced itself to the uppermost level of the facility, to stand before the main doors that it had itself sealed so long ago as part of the operator’s last command. If it were to fail, it would fail as a true, loyal Automaton, waiting faithfully for the operators to return.

Resolved in its final decision, Arachnos settled into position, and held out as its internal power source began to finally run down for the last time. When the power-levels were nearly empty, it began the final shutdown procedure, from which it expected never to start-up again.

In the minds of mortal beings, a second is short and brief, barely enough for even a single breath. In the mind of an automaton, however, a second is very, very long indeed. Arachnos counted every one of those precious seconds, as the timer began winding down.

Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Si—

There was a sound.
From outside the main doors, from outside the Facility, there was a sound.