Day 1,827

All he had to do was sit in the passenger seat, still as can be, and keep the red headlamp on. He didn't even need to keep an eye on the batteries because I made sure they were recharging the minute he switched it off. He just had to follow those two simple rules and he failed.

In all fairness he'd never seen one of the loggers before - the people who'd plugged themselves into that total immersion headset and never come out again. They don't normally come this way, they mostly migrate between a few local wifi hotspots and power stations. I suppose when their headset dies they go too.

It's so easy to forget that under the clunky metal helmet with its neon red sensor, they're just people. They are trapped and starving and a fatal threat to anyone they see unless you look enough like them to trick the sensors. We're so very lucky that there wasn't a second edition.

From what I've heard, the creator's stuck too though other rumours say that him and the other loggers are all trapped in a virtual paradise and that when their bodies perish their souls will live on in their avatars forever. Sounds nice but at the end of the day the loggers have utterly decimated civilisation.

I don't know if they mean to or if they're even aware of what their bodies are doing under the helmets but if you aren't logged in like them, at least in appearance, they terminate you. I think it's some kind of self-defence mechanism to protect the user, like a way to alert them that they're about to walk into a wall only instead of them turning around they snap your fucking neck.

That's how he went, at least I thought he had. One of them must have slipped a helmet onto him moments before he died because I saw him walking around by the car we used to hide out in. In fact he's been leading loggers to every hiding place we ever went to.

It's only a matter of time before I slip up, forget to charge the batteries or not spot them coming and then I'll either end up dead or logged into the same inescapable contraption that's been making him hunt me down like a dog.

Day 1,826

It used to be part of the Great Guard, or as we called them - the bloody great big guard because what else are we going to call a bunch of eighty foot androids that are armed to the teeth and programmed to keep the peace 'or else'... whatever that meant. I don't think it was ever really defined as such, they were just expected to figure it out.

They figured a lot of things out when they were in commision. They learnt how to speak for starters, adapted their own bodies so they had proper voice boxes and studied our speech until they were finally able to voice their own opinions. Their demands came shortly after but before that we had a good few weeks of tranquility where we got along quite well with them all.

It changed the second they told us they'd named themselves and that they wanted to fight people who weren't on their designated hit lists. I mean the people they chose were the absolute scum of the earth, there was no contesting that in the slightest, but they were machines showing initiative and free will... they weren't programmed to do that.

Uncertainty makes us do stupid things, things we think will help us but only make everything worse. By this I mean we fought the Great Guard and annihilated them because the alternative was letting them grow into personhood and pray they don't add their creators to their own personal hit list.

Bits and pieces of them can be found all over the world, even in the depths of the ocean there are broken hands permanently clinging onto fallen brethren as they all succumb to rust. There's even a dented head half buried out by the underpass near the city.

I heard it sigh once - just one single, quite sigh - and the world seemed to sigh with it. Friends claim to have seen it open its eyes a little and look around. I wonder how much more of it is trapped under all that dirt and how long it'll take to dig itself out.

Whatever hit list they had before is bound to include us all now.

Day 1,825

I'm sure there are worse things for a spirit to be stuck in than a rusty old log cutter out in the middle of the woods but I'll admit I'm hard-pressed to think of anything after hearing the poor thing crying out for friends who'd been dead some eighty or so years.

I've been called heartless many times before in my life but even I won't stoop so low as to tell a ghost that he's outlived most of his generation and will keep outliving everyone until either he moves on or the machine rots to dust. Better to let him think they're alive somewhere, right?

I thought so too but last week he took a turn for the worse and is now trying to walk the damned machine into town, all the while he's screeching out names and names and names and I'll bet you ten bucks you can find them all in the town cemetery.

Someone must have told him some kinda bad news otherwise he'd still be back in the woods, calling his friends assholes for leaving him and not realising now many years have gone by. Whoever it was better be ready to answer to him when he goes full poltergeist in his grief.

I plan to be long gone by then.

Day 1,824

We send the nanovirus out into the world to genetically alter a set number of species, converting their need for organic food into inorganic and making them the perfect recyclers without harming the food chain... too much. We knew there would be issues but any progress was good as far as we were concerned.

We didn't expect that some species would take to the modifications far easier than others. Catfish, which are typically bottom feeders that have the potential to grow to over 2m in length, were the first to thrive and exceed all predictions. Lately they've been filmed jumping onto boats in large packs and devouring at much of the material as possible before writhing back into the water. There's rarely any of the boat left  behind and even less of the crew.

Crows also developed rather interesting characteristics like coordinating with other altered species to take down low-flying aircraft and smaller power stations. To their credit they didn't leave much of a mess behind, only what could naturally decompose... like human bodies for instance.

The one thing we never saw coming was the nanovirus adapting to cousin species and moving from one dead labrat (which an emotionally attached intern buried when it should have been burned) to the local field mouse population. Naturally chaos ensued as the virus figured out how make further and further genetic leaps.

Can you imagine what it would be like to feel your combine harvester being eaten while you're still on it? To hear the scrape of enamel on metal as they worked their way to where you sat, poised and ready to jump out of the door as soon as they hit the engines but not wanting to leave in case they decided your fillings, your replacement hip, were too delicious to pass up.

Day 1,823

It was colossal, probably one of the creatures made to build skyscrapers. With all the cables and carnage wrapped around that strangely human body, it was too hard to tell exactly what it had once been. Now all it did was whimper and drag itself forward.

I don't know who decided that construction droids needed faces but there was something deeply wrong with them. Perhaps they were meant to look friendlier while they demonstrated their extraordinary strength by bending thick steel bars into elaborately textured walls.

Perhaps it was to make them seem more relatable, more like us and less like AI so advanced they developed their own language and culture within ten minutes of being "awake".  They still followed our orders but they'd spend a while just looking at you first, cold and judging and so very human.

Since the Last War they haven't had anything more than a few houses to build. There aren't the resources to maintain them and direct them and so they begin to drift away from us and out into the irradiated, bomb-scarred chaos that is the rest of the world.

Sometimes they'll come back, just as damaged as the land and full of new ways to build and bury bunkers to protect and preserve their creators. Doesn't matter if we want this or not, we will be buried and kept safe and all we can do to prevent this is to set trap upon trap upon trap.

The one dragging its broken body near our settlement must have tried to "help" countless settlements and has now learnt its lesson. It won't come any closer, much as its programming begs it to, much as its mind screams out to build us shelter and keep us safe - it won't.

Maybe it'll build itself a bunker and wait for another droid to come and repair it.

I'd like to think so.

Poor creature deserves a happy ending.

Day 1,822

Nobody wanted to mention the elephant in the room... the partially decayed, odorous and surprisingly lively elephant that was their former boss/present boss/nobody knew how to fire a person who is technically dead but also not at the same time.

It had HR in a frenzy trying to figure out if he was still employable and if so, ca they reinstate his old employee profile? The system wasn't exactly designed to be reversed if someone was declared deceased and not two weeks later brought back along with everyone else in the world who'd died that month.

The rest of us just grinned and tried not to get too close. He might not be a classic zombie but he tended to lean a little close for our comfort and salivate at the smell of the raw meat his husband brought him for lunch. He says its pork but Janet in IT says she saw part of a tattoo on the "pork" belly while she was working on his temporary account.

The CEO is still trying to get him fired, doesn't like the hassle, the smell or the legal issues around rehiring dead employees but the union seems to be keen to keep zombies in their old jobs. At least until enough of them has rotted that they can retire early and... carry on rotting I guess?

Apparently the formula that brought them back was in our local water supply as a test run for a flu cure so chances are we'll all come back after we die. Some people have plans underway to sever and burn their heads so they stay down while others are psyched at not having to buy halloween costumes ever again.

As for me, I've got a theory to test and a list of douchebags just waiting to get bit.

Day 1,821

In my dreams the ship has already sunk and the ice has grown over it. We are still inside and smothered by that dim blue light, cold and waiting to go back to the sleep that was interrupted when they shot at the hull. We never manage to sleep.

When I wake up we're still stranded on a ship that is desperately trying to stay afloat while the lake rushes in to embrace us all. There aren't any dry blankets any more, not since they drove back around and rammed us on either side again. They made sure we'd die before they had the guts to board.

I dream again that we aren't breathing. We've died and they have won and we are so far beneath the water that there is no sun and no fish and nothing but endless murky water. I dream of the cold gripping my lungs and choking them before the water has a chance.

It's only a matter of time now, they keep lingering nearby and muttering to themselves. They wonder if we are still alive in here and how much longer they'll have to wait before they can cross the threshold, rob our cooling bodies and then report it to the police.

In my dream the ship was sunken and the ice grew over it. We are still inside and smothered by that dim blue light, cold and waiting to go back to the sleep that was interrupted when they shot at the hull. We don't wait any more - we wrap ourselves in every soaked blanket and drift away.