The Last Lightrider
Compendium 2020 – Story 49
by Andrew Hawnt
The Underlight had fallen. Kaia watched in horror as her city disintegrated around her. She thrashed at the air with her fingers, creating panel after panel of new inventions in glowing pink light. Her fingertips danced over controls that had emerged from her own code. There had to be some way of stopping the Digivore invasion of Nexa.
She would not let the first and last city of light be consigned to history without knowing the architects of its destruction had died with it.
She swiped through glowing projections of all of the vehicles at her disposal. Everything that could traverse the lightways had been destroyed. Everything that could stop the Digivores from consuming the first posthuman digital city had been lost to their onslaught.
As the Court of Gygax fell, sending clouds of pixelated smoke towards the green grid of the dark sky, Kaia ran to avoid the debris. As great chunks of her reality collapsed through the ground, blasting holes in the essential code of the omnistructure, she dived behind the ruins of the Atarisi Cathedral. Still she worked, creating panel after panel in the air before her.
This is what I was programmed for. This is the moment I was designed for. The soul that was my seed would be proud. I must not let her down.
Yet there was nothing left that she could face this threat with.
I am no warrior. I am just an archivist. What can I possibly do?
As a purple crystal girder smashed through a walkway and showered her with devastated code, her eyes met the doorway to the archive.
Kaia knew what was to be done. She rushed over, dodging the endlessly hungry jaws of the Digivore forces. As she entered, she called up an access panel and downloaded the complete library of fallen warriors from throughout the history of Nexa. Their knowledge burned. The violence of their lives seared her senses. Kaia screamed. She had gone too far. Her algorithms battled to make sense of the sudden influx of data, almost bringing her to her knees. All would be lost. It was too much. It was too painful. There was too much.
Narrow search parameters. Focus on Lightriders. I need to access the core.
Kaia opened her code to the archives of the Lightriders, the long-lost first army of Nexa. She felt her old self dying. She sensed the archive was being torn to shreds. She had to leave.
Kaia awakened their power, channelled through her own fragile being. A column of blazing light exploded forth from her, and she felt her code traverse it, flying through the horrifying site of existence being consumed. It became too much. She broke out of the column, and her feet landed on something solid and black.
Before her hung the mind of Nexa, trillions of lines of code hanging in the central void of that reality's core.
“I pray that this is the right thing to do, Nexa,” Kaia called out to the mind that had created and maintained this world. “As it is also the only thing.”
She unleashed the power of the Lightriders, their determination, their courage, the unique ways their once-human brains had operated. Their consciousnesses melded together and called out as one.
Purification through absence. Silence yourself, Nexa. Let the Digivores die.
Reality died. Nexa fell into darkness just as Digivores invaded the core and lunged at the mind.
All was still. All shut down.
Minutes? Years? Generations? There was no telling how long passed.
Finally, a green line split the darkness horizontally.
“Awaken,” said Nexa. “You should observe.”
Kaia's code grew from the darkness, and as she was completed, her eyes and hair began to glow pink. She smiled, raising her hands in celebration as green wireframe lines pierced the darkness and her home began its life again.
Deep in her code, the ancients slept.
© Andrew Hawnt 2020
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About Compendium 2020:
Compendium 2020 is a project from author Andrew Hawnt that consists of 52 original short stories, flash fiction stories and vignettes given away for FREE in 2020. Featuring science fiction, fantasy, horror and more, this began as a personal quest and due to the weirdness of 2020 has become an ambition to provide free distractions for anyone who needs them.
About Andrew Hawnt:
Andrew is based in Nottingham, England. Known for his music journalism career, comics writing and film critique work, Andrew is a prolific writer and is the author of a growing stack of books, including the cult hit VHS Ate My Brain. He made the movies The Demon And I and The Demon And I: Birthrite completely in lockdown with cast members filming their scenes remotely, and new films are coming.
Andrew is also the creator and presenter of the YouTube shows Planet Hex, Turn One Shock and the VHS Ate My Brain series as well as the video versions of the Compendium stories.
Follow Andrew: YouTube Mixcloud Facebook Instagram Twitter
© Andrew Hawnt 2020
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