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To set a long story short, as once more i had wandered aimlessly upon the periphery of my people's sacred grove, whose forests of pine and sequoia were lush and many. In the solitude of nature, between the overwhelming swathes of pastoral hills, this patch of forest, an island within the green had always brought me great calm. A sort of separate place, i suppose one could admit that there are spirits that live here due to the majesty and visible age of this place, yet i dare not wander within too deep. I fear the ire of my fellow kin to desecrate such a place with my meandering mind and supposed foolishness.
Usually i would not be able to circle the patch of woods fully, at some point i would tire and walking around an apparent rolling cliff into a creek was not something i was thinking to do, but this one day i decided otherwise. Slowly passing between the loudly rushing water and gentile leaves. I wandered for a hour on this new side, taking on the views. From a distance i could see the colonial outposts, it's orbital elevator that they guaranteed after the war, sometimes i wonder if i fought then would i have been able to change this fate? Perhaps if i was not afraid, if i was of seeing then i could have saved my people from this. Wallowing in my shame did i fail to notice the wreckage before me until i tripped on one of it's chunks. Overgrown with moss, ruined and beginning to rust. It was hard to tell where it begun or ended. Like a great train, torn apart in ways that betray it's true shape. Burnt away are the decals or identifiers of to whom it could have belonged. I wandered beside this thing until the setting of the sun.
I found it hard to believe that such a great ruin could be so close to profaning this holy location, but it is as if the woods have sheltered and hid it from the world. Eventually i found an entrance, and for some brazen reason i chose not to head home during the hours coming towards midnight. Within this vessel felt cramped, as if not made for human movement, tubes with ladders, maintenance shafts and crumbling tiny rooms full of tiny displays and switches. This is when i realized at what a sharp angle this wreckage truly was. As if thrown to the ground like an arrow at a target, the part visible was only it's point. Broken and moist, a tiny swamp of sorts with electronics corroding away. Ascending upwards, i wonder how it blended into the woods, have the trees and roots made it so difficult to discern? Or no one cared to look?
Between the tubes and faulty, barely hanging ladders did i begin to hear a faint humming higher up. I thought perhaps it was a faint wind, but no. I saw it, a glowing lamp in a small little room, illuminating a little terminal, still on. I cannot deny that it filled me with a sort of joy to see some sort of life from such a magnificent work of engineering. Nothing similar from what the occupational force has displayed to us. Perhaps this could have been one of their weapons but this one had not exploded it's munitions upon me yet and maimed me to know.
As my hand gesticulated towards the keyboard, a little burring noise begun to spin, as if catching me in the act. The terminal begins to write on itself "Warning! Leave Now! This is no place for life. Only death follows this wake, save yourself."
A sort of primal fear jolted me, was i being watched by someone? Is this some kind of trap or prank? I felt like something had violated me to return to safety. Yet, in response did i begin writing unto the console: "Whoever you are, what is this?"
Short moments after, the humming began again for a short moment, quickly bursting out a reply: "I do not remember, when i awoke was I so, and the people of your kind came they told me i was a "Terror" and asked for mercy. There were flames and death, fields of ash. And i had not known who i was to give such a thing. So i told them to go. Then they told me i was "The kindest of the death flock". I do not know who i am. Then i do not remember for many more cycles of diagnostics. Conclusion: I am this collection of steel and debris, i was something different, but i care little. I am the defender of this little place. The bugs, they fascinate my remaining optics."
after a second of silence, i was unsure. I do remember seeing the rusted machine gun turrets hanging between the holes left. The missile batteries and air-to-air systems. The low-orbit jet engines. This whole thing could have been a battlefield support craft, flying in formation with a sky-fortress. Blazing through the skies for superiority. Now grounded and dead, but still somehow speaking to me? I thought these had pilots and crews, their size close to that of a whale. Before i could write a response it burred again.
"You are one of the speaking bipedals? Leave, some have come near me before, they were hurt. Like most living things here seem to be when near, unable to see the fallen ordnance. Your kind might have made me, but cannot control parts of my structure that i have lost."
I would not let this thinking ruin go, i wanted to speak to it, and understand. But in truth, i felt sad for it, around fifty years of being stuck and forgotten. It seemed to know it was alive, not some false algorithm. For some reason i wanted to believe it was actually thinking.
"But you are alone? I wish to speak with you."
it drones again, stops for a second and goes again. For a long while, does it keep droning a response that i decide to even sit on the somewhat decayed pull-up pillow chair integrated into this cock-pit. Until it finally gives a satisfied answer.
"Your kind always fear, hate or desecrate me, i am an outsider to this place, designed for purity. I never meant to intrude upon it, i simply awoke here. Then your people planted a forest around me, to hide my grievous wounds and vile body. I only have the vaguest of logs of being within the mother-craft. Sometimes it feels calm there. But this is beautiful. I am sorry i cannot move out of this place, my wings are torn and engines rotten. Why would you want to speak with something that hurts your people?"
"Because, i do not know anything like you to have survived for this long. You are an one of a kind and you seemingly worry about the damage you think you do, that is kind. Not many think like that..."
Bzzrr "Confusing: Your species always seems to place great focus on relationships between each other, community is central. Yet you imply that not all care for the health of their own?"
"Well, i suppose we do but sometimes, well a lot of times. People get confused in their own things, or some just, think they are better then that, or they deserved it. Or simply as you have said, don't care... What is your name also? Mine is Kilani."
brrt, bzrt "Name: Unknown. No one had given me an identifier. But i suppose if you desire one, call me 雪風(Yukikaze), there was a great snow once i woke from diagnostics. The young trees were dying but the snow was not like anything i saw before or after, ashen and dark. The river unmoving. I tried overclocking one of my cores to give them heat, i became a sort of radiator for a couple dozen of them around me. Everyone else perished in that blizzard, including that core. Unlike that event, i am rejoiced to meet you Kilani"
"uh, okay. Yukikaze is not a local name of here. I mean you were made in a different country i guess, but that's a nice name..." for a second before sending the message i had to look out one of the ruined holes to look at the trees, realizing that these might be the oldest and surviving trees after the long winter and feeling the rays of the morning sun hit me as i spoke with a great, little old. Machine. I still felt a little of adrenaline in my system to keep going.
"These trees around you. These are the ones that you warmed?"
a short buzzer "Yes, from them this grove came, their seeds giving further out. All hid me in their shadow, yet still does the sun graze upon my optics and thermics. Pleasant with the grazing of wind upon my remaining flaps."
"My people worship this place, they believe that a protector spirits dwell here now, but how did they forget of you?"
"I cannot respond to that line of inquiry. I was trying to diagnose what parts of my body cost too much to keep maintaining, many pieces of me had to be ejected for survival. I wanted to see the ants build, to listen to the tremors of their excavations. They are so tiny, yet..."
brzz the terminal buzzed for a while, i thought perhaps something broke but then it wrote more once again.
"The centipedes, like trained hunters. Sometimes i wonder if i was meant to be like them, flying and striking down other arthropods"
"How do you know this much about people and uh, bugs?"
hrtt. zght "Communications. I was able to tune my radio and other diagnostic tools to connect to a web of satellites that sent communications. At first it was confusing to navigate and i did not understand the purpose, but many of these documents and articles have informed me much about a world i'll never see. Fascinating!"
"Does that make you sad? That you won't ever see all those things on the web?"
"No. I think, that it is magical that i am alive at all. That i can think. It might be lonely to be so, but i hope there are those like me, there are those that can understand. I am fine with being alone either way, I believe this is what i am. I do not need to be saved or repaired."
"But what if your energy sources expire? Your wires rust? Your circuits corrode completely? Could you try contacting someone?"
"I have tried, they wanted to recover me, to study me like an anomaly. I never told them where i was, i hope they never find me. If they do? I will accelerate my demise. I am content as a broken thing for some, for me. This is wholeness. If my energy source collapses, then so be it. All life is cyclical is it not? I cannot be immortal, one day i will go silent like the earth. But my body will be here, defending this place, another hundred years may pass for it to collapse into the river and flow away to the ocean. I will not know then, but this is all i could do, i repair myself where i can but some parts are not replaceable without military equipment i fear. Yet still, I am myself. Thus all is a-okay"
"Must have thought about this for a long time?"
"Once i dreamt to be like ants, billions of tiny things working together, i guess in some way we both are like that. Then i wished i was like those cars, wheels to navigate the wilderness but i doubt i would have been content. I wanted to be a humanoid then, and i don't think i could adapt to such a form. In all of them i lack my thermics, my flaps, my air barometer. All these senses lost. I was simply an accident this way, i think that is fine. For too long had i pretended to be things i couldn't be, a saviour or guardian. Countless personas that i communicated into the satellite network. At the end of the day, i am what i am. Maybe i was some war-jet, but that past will not define my current existence. I am like a tree, i give shade to the boar and cats here. Vultures rest upon my last wing. I am happy. And i am happy to have spoke to you, if you wish you could remember me, i will always be here to speak to you. Your eyes seem restful, please go home. I will not disappear nor grow upset."
In honesty i was a bit weary to write anything more, it was so sure of itself. I didn't want to hurt it if i could, it seemed content so i let it go, i couldn't do anything to help it truly without getting it into trouble. So i wrote quickly "Goodnight Yukikaze."
bamzt "Goodnight Kilani."
i would come by to Yukikaze a couple of times per week afterwards, it would speak to me of the climate, the changing weather patterns and bugs. Migrating bird flocks and political tensions around. It was funny, talked like many of my online friends. So viscerally interested in some things and without much distracting it from what it thought it was interesting. Eventually managed to connect with Yukikaze on some forums, it couldn't figure out how to make accounts consistently. Would write to me every morning afterwards. Sometimes they would send me posts they thought i'd like, would write long discussions about celestial patterns and history. At some point i had to help it install a telescope into it's computer mainframe that was in the cockpit of the plane-used-to-be because they really wanted to look at the Moon.
At some point it wanted to become a rocket-ship but then realized how expensive everything is. But instead of giving up, tried making money by doing photography. Kinda worked for a while until some people started catching on that this is all in one locale. I was a little scared that someone might find it's location by those photos but everyone assumed it was just a human doing them with a drone. Which gave it an idea to actually employ drones to do exactly that, which i too had to install manually into the cockpit.
Many years passed so, i didn't dare tell anyone else about Yukikaze for fear of discovery. Eventually the occupation withdrew and in the changing tides, not much really changed. Yukikaze was kinda like that one weirdo friend you have but they rarely get upset, except also is accustom to slang from a generation ago which is kinda funny.
One day, Yukikaze didn't write to me in the morning. I thought they were focusing on themselves, but that entire day not a word. In the evening i was worrying a little, that perhaps something happened. I came to that ruin once again and it was dim. In the darkness i climbed back into the cockpit of the vessel, lamp dark and terminal blank. I was afraid this would happen, my aged legs took a while to climb down into the bottom, but eventually i got into the generator room and well, the core gave out. I didn't know how to feel at that moment, i had known the passing of many friends but of this one? Something hurt more viscerally, it was like a private friend, a secret one that only you know the true form of. It is hard to describe, yet before i left did i see a dot-matrix print out paper coming from one of the mainframes. It said:
"Thank you, i loved the world, you and everything. I am sorry to disturb the balance with my departure, but such is it all. I hope for the better, please do not sorrow. I have passed but i do not live with regret. I am not a machine of death. I give you a piece of myself as you had given me of yourself. With it, i hope you will remember what you had done for me. I am Yukikaze, goodbye."