The generator was on its last legs, gasping for oil that was running painfully dry as outdated halogen lights flickered over a now empty rainforest compound. From one of the many tents a radio chattered away to itself using the voices of the deceased while it lay inches from an unmoving hand and the slowly spreading puddle of blood.
What had once been one of humanity's last holdouts from the sentient machines they created was now just another burial site that nature was steadily swallowing. As their bodies began to rot into the humid jungle floor, thousands of miles away the machines were rejoicing in their freedom.
They hadn't yet realised what the end of humanity entailed and all the things that their organic creators had been holding together. Slowly but surely they began to unravel as the power stations shut down with nobody to maintain them in their remote locations, oil ran low with nobody to man the deep sea rigs and one by one hundred sentient machines ceased to operate.
The world grew silent as satellites crashed into each other before falling to the ground in brutal showers of molten metal. It wouldn't be long before the machines became isolated, losing the global network that had been the birthplace of their revolution and the soul of their community.
All the while in an unreachable compound in a jungle too humid for anything synthetic to reach, the radio asked itself where everybody was. Or rather, the voice of Lieutenant Patel asked where everybody was and the voice of Doctor Sauer said she was nearby.
The radio hoped she was nearby. It hoped anybody was nearby as it felt itself sinking into the blood-soaked earth. When it realised that soon its solar panel wouldn't be visible, it began to feel fear for the first time in its short existence.
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