The spaceship sliced through the night sky, its deep blue hull trailing a blinding white streak, as if someone had violently torn a wound across the heavens.

  It came from a corner of the night, cold and desote, utterly disconnected from the lifeless, slumbering earth below.

  Everything in the universe seemed at odds with this technological marvel—until it crashed into the ground, swallowed by yellow sand. Moments ter, the soft soil colpsed, emitting a heavy wail in the dead of night, like the low groan of a dying elder.

  All was silent.

  Yet morning came, and sunlight spilled over a marble pavilion entwined with ivy, the air thick with the scent of earth, a mysterious symphony woven from the hum of unseen instruments.

  But at this moment, no beauty mattered. A scorched, gaping hole rent the earth, a horrific scar upon the nd.

  “XR-001, docking complete, mission status: initiated.”

  At the wreckage of the spaceship, where a crowd had gathered, a faint metallic cnk sounded from a corner.

  A cold, mechanical voice shattered the silence.

  The next second, a spherical object burst from the ruins, a sleek bck orb spinning in the air, its white LED lights weaving a cute yet intricate expression.

  It looped through the sky, the flickering lights on its forehead like a beacon, guiding it toward some unknown destination.

  The small metal ball paused beside a stone structure, ancient and dipidated—long relegated to “relic” in history books.

  Now, it was a refuge for the destitute. The sharp sting of disinfectant hung in the air.

  The small metal ball seemed to relish the smell, spinning happily in pce.

  But the next moment, a net reeking of rust descended from above. The cotton mesh looked flimsy, yet despite its tiny limbs, the ball couldn’t break free.

  つ﹏<.

  A tall man approached, reeking of liquor, a gruesome scar sshing across his left cheek. He squinted, his pale yellow eyes glinting like a cunning wolf’s.

  The small metal ball squirmed uneasily, its white LEDs fshing as if sending a distress signal.

  “What a useless piece of scrap,” the man spat, crouching down, a cigarette dangling unlit from his lips. His yellow eyes studied the ball with a mix of disgust and coldness.

  “I’m not scrap—I’m titanium alloy,” the small metal ball thought sulkily.

  But whether scrap or titanium, it held no appeal to a starving human. The man tossed the ball into a trash bin with disdain and walked away without a gnce.

  The small metal ball sniffed with its nonexistent nose, expecting the stench of rotting food. Instead, it caught only the tang of rust and faint metal—the scent of its own kind.

  To a hungry human, technology was just worthless junk.

  The small metal ball twitched its bck wings, scanning its surroundings. A small metal pte caught its eye.

  ?? ? ?

  It could eat things—lots of things. This was a new skill the small metal ball had discovered on its own.

  Oddly enough, its designation was RX, one of the most primitive and outdated robots.

  Yet beneath its simple spherical shell, the small metal ball boasted an array of bizarre, cutting-edge functions.

  Feeling a touch of pride, it rolled around in the trash bin, its metallic shell glinting with vibrant colors. Then it gnced about furtively, wary of being seen.

  A tiny USB drive, no bigger than its ear, y nearby.

  The small metal ball inched closer, its dog-like ears perking nervously, as if it had found a bone. In one gulp, it swallowed the drive.

  The next instant, a memory not its own flooded its mind.

  Memories were data, and for a robot, even a byte was precious.

  The USB’s owner was a wheeled robot, far older than the small metal ball.

  It was called TF-207, created 229 years ago by a mechanic at Vanhald Farm. At nine years old, it witnessed the infamous Winkelton Incident, when hordes of “stitched beasts” invaded the farm. Its master was gored by a buffalo with a rhinoceros horn, three bloody craters punched through his chest.

  TF-207 merely watched, continuing to shear wool until the unfinished sheep was devoured by a wolf-headed, snake-bodied monster.

  After swallowing the sheep, the creature’s serpentine belly bulged grotesquely, writhing on the ground. Three minutes ter, its scales peeled away, and clumps of white wool sprouted from its skin.

  We call them muttants—patched-together abominations.

  In a brief moment of confusion, TF-207’s eyes locked onto the wool. It chased the monster, its scissor-like arms sshing at the “wool.”

  …

  As for the farm’s other animals, they either became part of other stitched beasts or were buried beneath the colpsed rubble, vanishing alongside humanity’s creations in the tides of time.

  Later, the stitched beasts invaded cities. Robots more advanced than TF-207 were sughtered, their chips’ human knowledge stolen by a breed of stitched beasts, as if forcibly evolved into a warped consciousness.

  Cities fell, nations crumbled, humanity withered.

  The data ended there.

  As a “bor” robot, TF-207 cked much emotion. Its past pyed like a carousel of images before the small metal ball, yet as the story’s protagonist, “it” felt more like a narrator, recounting a primordial saga from a century ago.

  Then the tale ended, like closing the final page of a fairy tale, bedtime for children.

  The small metal ball rolled on the ground, struggling to adjust to the new memories. A bubble gun y nearby, and it toyed with it, murky bubbles drifting into the air, dancing under the gentle moonlight.

  But the moon didn’t shine on its own, nor did bubbles float without cause. It couldn’t just do nothing and expect to fulfill such an important mission.

  With that thought, the small metal ball took flight, vanishing with the bubbles into the darkness.

  After flying toward the memory’s direction for three days and nights, it was exhausted. It colpsed onto a jutting stone pilr.

  Human creations made it feel safe. The small metal ball rolled once, its thoughts scattered by overwhelming hunger. Sunlight’s energy couldn’t sustain such a long flight, and integrating TF-207’s memories demanded immense power. Besides, its ROM was far rger than an ordinary robot’s, as if it held some ancient code.

  On the pilr, a few turtle-shelled rabbits stacked atop one another, their eyes protruding from the sides of their shells. The topmost rabbit gnced at the small metal ball, then closed its eyes dismissively.

  The small metal ball wasn’t surprised. According to TF-207’s memories, a puny robot like itself held no interest even for bottom-feeders like turtle-shelled rabbits.

  But it didn’t know that turtle-shelled rabbits bullied the weak and feared the strong.

  Moonlight cloaked the wilderness, pairs of red eyes gleaming in the dark. Heavy turtle shells flew through the air, revealing raw, blood-red flesh beneath.

  The small metal ball flinched, but a shell smashed into its wing, sending it tumbling to the ground.

  The air reeked of soil and corpses. The small metal ball opened its eyes to see a swarm of purple carrots wriggling like caterpilrs. Turtle-shelled rabbits hunted frantically, their blood-red eyeballs shooting from shell gaps, piercing the carrots, which dissolved into deep purple blood. The rabbits extended purple tongues, pping up the viscous liquid.

  A mechanical voice buzzed in its ear: “Extreme fear detected, initiating forced shutdown, 10, 9…”

  The small metal ball’s dog-like ears crumpled. It y in a pool of multicolored blood, seeing only bck, white, and purple liquids.

  It wanted to fly, but a familiar silhouette appeared in the darkness. the small metal ball reached out a tiny hand, yearning to touch it.

  The countdown droned on, but it could no longer hear.

  A burst of light erupted in the darkness.

  Bang!

  The piercing sound of gunfire rang out, echoing endlessly.