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Machine Age

If there's something wrong, Jared could fix it.

Yes, that statement had been around for a while, ever since he joined this machine cult. For Jared, a human who lost his family because of a magical accident, decided to condemn magic as a source of his misery and joined the Agents of Tomorrow because of it was his only solace from the cruelty of the world. He felt so full again.

But that was almost a year ago.

Now Jared felt incomplete. He even dared to say to himself that the Agents had changed and not like the familial community he once liked. They became restless, full of hatred to the mages. Before, they did not even care about the mages, but would intervene if their experiment turned out to be a danger for the others around the mages. Jared felt like a police trying to dispense justice and protect the weak. The reason why the imposing armor was made was to give them a symbol to be feared and revered to.

He didn't like to fight, so he decided to be an engineer for the armors and other lost technologies. Somehow, the people who were not swayed by the new propaganda were the people who did not fight, or even involved in the witch hunt. Jared and the other engineer teams were the ones who did not like the Agents' new direction of violence. Others became like them; ignorant, violent, and even bullies.

But that statement stuck with Jared, for he was considered a genius, especially in mechanical engineering. It was a rare skill to be found in a world that had ended, and it was for the best. That statement was right in its own way. Most of the things the Agents made was designed by Jared and his team, so they were the only ones who could fix it.

Of course, his expertise was only for inanimate objects, and was not keen with the new research the Agent were conducting. He wasn't the only 'genius' in that cult. If Jared was the genius in mechanical engineering, then Telris was the genius in biology.

Telris, a young feline race, had no indication of his model except that he had a pair of big eyes, big ears, and quite skinny. His main feature, however, was his hairlessness. He did not like to talk about it, and people made different assumption about him, that he was a former slave who had all fur on his body cut, leaving him naked. Others thought that he was yet another model of the extensive feline race. Jared did not care about his past, but Telris's obsession to death and his methods was what made the human felt intimidated.

The hairless cat person was the leader of a team involved in research to combat the mages, who, like the Agents, had become restless and started futile efforts in saving their comrades. They, too, were captured, and Telris was the one who was responsible for them. Jared wasn't sure he liked Telris's methods, and he hated violence, but Telris always ensured to them that, like engineers, he considered himself 'the engineer of life'. The human didn't think of it as a declaration of his insanity. Rather, he was proud of it.

Not for others, though. Despite of his similar pursuit of science, Telris was at the most bottom list of 'likable boss'. He was pushy, always hated assistants, and liked to be alone. Even fellow 'bosses' like Jared didn't feel like he did his job, but somehow he got his results right.

Again, it was before Jared knew how much the Agents had fallen, and somehow Telris had become one of them. Jared felt so alone, doing his stuffs. The soldier people requested some new innovations to be made, or at least improvements to the mechanical armor he made for them. He was well-aware that those armors were used for killing. What other purpose it had other than sowing the seeds of fear in the populace?

Despite all this, Jared had no intention or courage to speak up The Agents may have been a house for lunatics in a short time, but it did not mean that it had become a docile group. The people were, in many ways, even more dangerous than before. The older members, who still followed the older ways, had a stronger courage to speak up, but in the end, they were either exiled or killed by the younger ones, who were more radical in their aim in exterminating the magical community. Other reason, other than life preservation, would be lack of evidence. True, they had started to become even harsher, but it did not mean that they had no reason for it.

The moment of truth came to Jared one day, when he was informed by one of his closest friends that the Agents had started an extensive witch hunt which required both Telris's and Jared's facilities to work together, for an unspecified reason. Telris and Jared knew each other, but they had never talked much aside from small talks. This time, however, he suddenly realized that his co-boss was twisted from the start.

The facility Telris headed on was an experiment facility that focused on the people they had caught. Jared instantly knew that many of them were captured mages, but others were unknown to him. What made him felt different was the fact that the collars were not worn by some of them. Telris called them 'inmates', and he considered his workplace the 'Asylum'. That was one of many indications that Telris was a mad scientist to begin with, but that was just the top of it.

As Jared knew, the Agents made their base from a decommissioned underground bunker. The underground bunker was more like an underground city, with systems of tunnels and rooms used in many ways. There were facilities like the galley, the mess hall, rec room, classroom for the children, living quarters, hydroponic garden, research facilities of all kinds, and many others. Jared was an outsider a year ago, when he joined the Agents, and he was given the full explanation of the history of the Agents of Tomorrow. In the library, Jared found out that the bunker was made in response to the war that went out of control in the last years, and the people who started the cult were the descendant of the survivors who managed to get inside the bunker.

The place wasn't big at first, but expansions and excavations provided a great place for living, even though he couldn't understand why. He wasn't allowed in parts of the facilities, and it was clear that they were hiding something from each other.

The 'Asylum' was one of the facilities recently made, and it was expanded so many times already. As the technologies underground were preserved and expanded from the minds of those before him, they were noticeably more high tech. While beast races were traditionally tribal, they could study on it. Even Chaos races, who were considered the villains, were accepted with open hands.

But upon entering the Asylum, Jared knew that it was far more twisted than the name implied. Telris gave the tour to his group, but while others didn't feel like it was something, Jared felt wrong about it.

As explained by Telris, the 'inmates', captures mages and other people, were stripped naked and was subjected to a lengthy 'decontamination' phase. The early phase, which was known, was the 'removal of hair' from them, which was basically shaving them. For the humans and the elves, it wasn't all that different, but it added more humiliation for the beast races, who had no cover on their body, making them practically naked and even more exposed.

They were then given a shower, which Telris explained that it would prevent hair growth, but they didn't know that. The next part was different, as it was separated into different sub-facilities the 'inmates' would be transferred. Telris was happy to give the group a tour to each of them, but Jared wasn't so thrilled.

The next stop for their little tour was the 'rehab', which was one of the first they went through. It was mostly just prison cells, but special padded cells for the prisoner's protection. Here, the naked people were simply restrained by something Telris called 'straitjacket', which held their hands together. Not everyone's being fitted with them, but everyone is tied up and their mouths, if they were beast races, were muzzled. Jared somehow believed their fate was worse, given the humiliation due to the glass wall. He didn't want to know what Telris made them wear, but Jared knew that they were used so they did not need to get out of the cell to find a bathroom.

The next stop was a torture room of some kind, with many tortures, ranging from physical to psychological, were conducted. Telris's twisted mind was soon revealed when one of the torturers played with their victim's mind by letting a mutated beast caged with them. It was painful to watch, so Jared urged the feline to move away before things went nasty for him.

The third was a solitary confinement room, where people, especially those causing problem and disobedient Agents, were put here and isolated. Jared couldn't see what's inside, but he could hear muffled sounds from within, possibly the prisoners. He didn't want to know what's inside, either. He almost had enough of Telris's twisted experiments.

The last part, however, was the worst. Unfortunately for Jared, this was his crew's workshop for a while, as it used his mechanical armor.

This last place was not as pristine as the one before it, but was also not less twisted. The 'inmates' who were just sorted from the decontamination chamber was gathered there. One of the Agents forced one of them to get into the same mechanical armor Jared had been designed, but it was different. The mechanical armor was, in many ways, not manually controlled, and it was an automated system capable of being used without any operators. However, without an operator, the system's fail-safe would ensure that the armor was deactivated. It practically became a moving prison for them, and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

Jared's job was to find a new way to control the mechanical armor without the operator, something he dubbed 'robot'. It was something that Jared had been trying to do for a while, so that no more people got killed inside the mechanical armor. But then, he realized why he must work with Telris. The armor itself needed bio-organic implants to work, and with Telris's assistance, it could work without an operator inside. But then, the implant itself was taken from an inmate's brain, so the processor within could process faster than it was during emergencies.

Horrified, Jared wanted to decline, but then he knew what the Agents would do to him if he refused, and that was either death or exile. He was fine with exile, but death was the more likely outcome, given that he had their secrets and such. Exile was not likely.

And so, Jared was forced to do what he must do, which was to reconfigure the mechanical armor so it could put the brain of the inmates in them. While he did that, one of his protégé found another invention in the form of brain robo, which also utilized the same principles with the one Jared was trying to do. While it seemed like plagiarism at first, it was an old redundant technology found within the bunker itself.

The human wasn't strong against violence or even anything about dissecting, and he felt squeamish when Telris's assistance did a public operation to explain Jared's subordinates on how things work. He felt sick, unable to look at the dissected corpse, and leave before it concluded. He walked out of the room while holding his vomit, then tried to find a nearby toilet to throw up. He never had thought such pursuit of knowledge could be...so disgusting.

After a week or so, Jared felt he had done whatever he could on the 'brain robo' conversion, when one of his colleagues heard a rumor about the brain robo system being used in the skirmishes. Normally, Jared would agree for a test, but this time, he could not be sure if it would stay intact or not. It was a very new field for him, and he was working alongside the biology department. His reluctance became something that started the doubt in his mind about the whole affair. What were they doing, using live subjects? It was easy to understand if it was for experiment, but then, they were desperate.

Curious, Jared tried to find a reason for the next three days, often asking people from other departments about the hastiness of their research. The one that was outright violent was the 'security department', which was the one who were doing the skirmishes. He was shoved by one of the soldiers when he asked about it. This fueled his curiosity to the point that he needed to know outright or his morality wouldn't let him sleep properly.

And thus, he devised a plan. He had a friend in the security department who oversaw dispatch, so he had no problem with him. Yet, Jared couldn't know about it since his friend said it was classified, so he did what he never did before, and that was planting a bug.

Jared felt that technology had started to become more advanced as they moved away from the dependence of magic. So, instead of using a mini transponder vivox (a method of wireless communication via magic), he used a mini microphone bug that could be put inside his friend's pocket, and still had a clear voice. He felt bad using his friend like this, but he needed to know, especially when he knew his friend was also in the security strategy meeting.

Thus, he did so, slipping the bug inside his pocket while he was unaware. His friend didn't know about it, and Jared hoped he never would until he knew exactly what happened. Jared also took the time off from developing the robot and asked his assistant to continue work, reasoning that he was tired and his assistant had better knowledge about the whole project.

He quickly walked into his room and turned on a one-way radio he salvaged from the old storage. It still worked, even after 300 years of neglect. Just a little fix and it worked perfect. His mechanical expertise also made him able to configure it to receive the mic. Then, at the given time, he heard the conversation in the meeting room.

"Let's start this meeting, ladies and gentlemen," said a voice. "I will be blunt. This is an emergency. As you may now, we start to lose support from the settlements around the city ruins. Some who cooperate against us suddenly turned their decisions around and started supporting their mages."

"How is that possible?" said a female voice. "We have intimidated them to surrender the mages but why do they suddenly regain their courage?"

"That is because of attacks lately that caused many defeats to our parts," said the first voice. "In just one week, we lost dozens of our machine armors, most of them exploded after a sabotage from unknown assailants. Others were deactivated and captured."

There was a gasp in the room, along with Jared's. Impossible, he thought. The armor had no loose wiring or even exposed parts. It was all covered in durable steel, unless the only flaw he could think of.

Jared found this flaw when he was servicing an armor. Apparently, the gas that powered the motor in the power armor was flammable. There was a petition to use different gas, but so far, Jared and his team couldn't find any alternative. The gas was pumped through an inlet with a valve on top, which acted to maintain pressure within. There was a mechanism that could help the gas to vent out if something happened to the motor, like jammed gear or other things. But doing so could cause the gas to explode, especially in conditions of conflict where fire magic was used. The saboteur knew about this flaw and used it against them. If he wasn't an Agent, he might commend them for knowing it, as the failsafe was hard to detect.

"We are losing the hold of this land," said the voice. "If this continue, people will turn against us. There is also no news about the Collectives at all, and this worries me."

"Those dirty little...," said an angry voice. "Do they realize the danger of magic?! They are helping the enemies! Sir, I suggest we..."

"Calm down, Donnie," said the voice. "Those people do not like being ordered. It's a crazy world out there."

"But we have the technology! If we go all out against them we will win! They will soon know how dangerous the Agents are!"

"Will you stop being so militaristic, Donovan?" said another female voice. "So what are you trying to do? Kill everyone on sight? That will cause massive loss to us."

"Then let them. We will..."

"Shut up!" said the first voice, now in a commanding tone. "Do not test my patience, Donovan. Your harsh witch hunt is the reason for this aggravation! Have you forgotten our founding father's oath? We are to not mind what people make. All we do is protect them."

"But Jack," said the first female voice. "In the end, we need to let them know that technology must prevail, and they need to stop making dangerous magical experiments. Telris, is the robot ready?"

"Yes, Miri, yes," said Telris's voice, a characteristic, scheming tone that made Jared intimidated. "We will deploy them as soon as Jared give the go."

"Jared?" said his friend's voice. "Why him? I know Jared. He may be a genius, but he's very reluctant. He is a perfectionist. He will not give the go until he is sure that no flaw is detected, and it can take months! Why do you think the machine armor was only made five months after his proposal?"

How did he know? Jared was sure that his department's job was classified, even to his friend. Was it someone from the main department? Even if his friend knew that Jared was trying to be safe, he couldn't know about the proposal.

There was a sigh. "Even if he's a complicated person, his department helped us with the influence in this city ruins. If some saboteur can undermine our progress, then we will crush them before they start to take root. Is the any reports from the scouting department, Juni?"

"Ah, yes...but it's not a good news."

"Let's hear it."

"A-apparently...the scouts were also killed..."

"Because they are wearing our insignia and talk about our superiority and such like a preacher? Well, it's not surprising. Why can't you make them subtle?"

"W-well, it's..."

"I did it," said Donovan. "If they know our intentions, then surely they know we are strong. Jack, give us the order and we will crush the opposition with our insignia held high. If we trust ourselves, then we will succeed!"

"Donovan, for that last time, do not try my patience!" said Jack. "We are not a military community! You cannot make them fear us. Fear makes them strong! If we are being perceived as enemies, then say goodbye to the future of technology! We will stay like this for a hundred years. Even more."

"So what are we supposed to do now?" said his friend. "Are we going to be like the Collectives? Stay underground and hide our advancement from the world?"

"No, first thing we do is to find those bastards," said Jack. "When they have been dealt with, we will cooperate with the local governments to rebuild. It is a slow progress, but by time, it will be done. Do you understand, Donovan? Violence is never the key."

"How about the freelancers?"

"They are to be maintained in a camp for them, and let Telris do whatever he likes. Just be careful, Telris."

"I will."

"Now then, this concludes the meeting. Donovan, Argenon, to my room."

Jared was even more eager to hear the rest of the conversation with Argenon and Donovan. He never would've thought his friend was the security department's friend or close partners. He wanted to hear more, and kept the door to his quarters locked.

"What the hell was that, Donovan?!" shouted Jack. "Are you so determined to kill your enemies to disregard the meeting? We are not in a war!"

"Yes, we fucking are, Jack!" replied Donovan. "I had enough of these mercenaries who think they can solve everything by being 'born' in the harshness of the wasteland. They think they are our boss or something."

"Remember, Donnie. This place also has those 'outsiders'."

"Donovan, we are the Agents of Tomorrow, not Tyrants of Tomorrow. If we force ourselves to them, all we got is more enemies. Remember that."

"So, you're going to let those mages to go free?"

"Our priority is the Collectives." The was a pause. "Their new lair has been found."

"What?! How?"

"What I will say to you must stay in this office, you understand?" said Jack. "Especially you, Donovan. No one is going to tell, or they won't get out of this office."

The was another silence.

"Good, I guess you understand. I am using a magic tracer to determine their location. From what I read in the forbidden section, magic spells, especially teleportation magic, has traces of Aether in it due to displacement of molecules. The trace is not dangerous enough for a living being, be it human, elf, Chaos races, or beast races, but it is detectable."

"May I ask how you get that tracer?"

"Confiscated magic stuffs," said Jack short. "I know this is against our principal teachings, but to win a war, we must use their advantage."

"Sin Tzen's Art of War?" said Argenon.

"Yes, it is, and now, with that, we can get where they are based. They are based inside the Death Zone."

"Death Zone! Now that's a perfect place to hide. How they cross the desert?"

"Via portal gates," said Jack. "We can launch an attack there first, and ensured that they all been decimated, and then we start rebuilding this area. You agree, Donovan?"

"Even though I'm going to go with that plan, how are we supposed to purge the area? I can only think the only way we can do it is to drive them out."

"That is the final resort." There was a moment without sound, except for someone clanging something together. It was eerily silent that made Jared uncomfortable.

"Gentlemen, the age of machine is upon us. Sooner or later, the magic of this world will disappear, and people will return to the old ways of pure machines. But, do not assume that this is a permanent solution. We will ensure that technologies that are destroying the environment be updated into recyclables, and we will turn this bleak world into a paradise."

"Cheers for that," said Argenon.

Jared assumed that they were drinking, so he turned off the radio and contemplated what he just heard.

The age of machine! It sounded poetic enough to herald in a new age, even if it was the return to the one abandoned hundreds of years ago. But Jared felt that it was the sound of a new age that was full of blood and violence, from what he heard. The whole affair was all because the surface people did not like how the Agents forced their motives towards them, and yes, it wasn't a reasonable cause.

The human started to doubt the credibility of the Agents. He knew they had screwed up far more than he had imagined. There was no militaristic ideology or anything. They just wanted to become conquerors. He didn't want the Agents to become like that. All he wanted was a safe place to research technology without the aid of magic. He didn't want the magical community to suffer just to pursue their ideology's purity.

And thus, Jared got an idea that could potentially lead to the downfall of the current Agents of Tomorrow. He didn't want to do it, but he must, to remind them that the Agents were different.

He would need to sabotage his own creations.