Episode 1 - Episode 2 - Epsiode 3
The survivors could do nothing more than stare at this monstrous ship up above. When the bow of the ship had parted clouds, a thunderclap had reverberated off of what felt like the entire planet. Forget measuring it, it was hard to understand how it could even exist. Defying physics, the metal whale in the sky emitted a deafening roar and then simply hung there, a meager few kilometers off the ground, and perfectly silent. It was God, come to witness Human. The winds themselves held back, nothing stirred in the glades or trees, on the ground or in the sky, at least near the metallic deity eclipsing the sky.
"WTF did I just see?" mistowed stammered, breaking the solemn, almost religious silence that had stolen over the platform. His contorted face hung between prufarchy and timsaid and, in a moment, the three were guffawing. It was clearly better to laugh than cry.
Mistowed rounded on berniesanders, his arm thrust up towards the machine that substituted the sun in the sky. "What do you want, berniesanders?"
Timsaid joined in, "You've been up here all this time, why now? Who are we to you that we're here witnessing this instead of back there in those cells, with bolts through our heads?"
"You've done well, my Steemians. You fought your way to the surface when I set your Sanctums to implode. You were the only ones. I needed the strongest. You," he turned toward prufarchy, a light sneer playing across his lips. "You, I had altered. It's a bot I set up 20 years ago to learn and adapt, and suggest ways to get me what I need... a specific DNA pattern set in Steemian blood, but mutated for my needs. Congratulations, prufarchy, you're my fuel."
Behind him, the craft had begun to glide, so silently over the landscape and creating a odd shaped shadow that thrust the life below into early night. It was headed straight for the group, and it seemed berniesanders was controlling it, somehow. When the front of the ship hovered just above the platform, a circular opening slowly churned, grinding metal on metal, and a sharp light shot out, enveloping the world.
The survivors had shifted, from on the ground to inside the metal whale. In the belly of the beast, they found themselves missing berniesanders. That can't be good, timsaid thought but didn't say.
"This can't be good," mistowed thought, and said.
They weren't prisoners, but they were definitely lost. The trio started to make their way along one corridor, corrugated metal and faintly glowing tubes peeking out from bulkheads in disrepair. The glowing lines set against the wall painted the corridor in the faint, light blue of electrical fires. The survivors did not know where they were going, but soon enough found themselves on an observation deck that was bigger than any human made space they'd ever been in, or on. They could see the land they had lived inside of, spread across the sky like a drunk across a table.
At a standing set of dials and screens, bernisanders was furiously pecking away at a monitor. The ship started to buckle, shift, and then slowly begin to angle upwards. The survivors rushed berniesanders, coming at him from all angles. The ship groaned audibly.
"Let me go, I need to input the correct sequence or we'll burn up on exit!" berniesanders shrieked, bucking wildly against the survivors restraining him. "So you can steal more Steemians, experiment on them, turn them into mindless bots!" prufarchy pulled tighter, stretching berniesanders arm to an impossible position. Berniesanders cried out. The ship screamed in alarm, the shrill tone all but drowning out the buckling of metal whale's walls.
The ship exploded in the night sky and seemed to suck all the air from the world. It had been unable to ascend through the atmosphere at the right angle, and the hailstorm of metal to come was evident in the billowing cloud consuming the behemoth.
The survivors hadn't realized or even thought about themselves, but sacrificed their lives so that the other Sanctums that they now knew existed would not be plundered or experimented on.
In the days of raining metal that followed, the survivors would not get to witness the rising of yet more Sanctums. This time, as countless in number as that first night sky full of its countless stars.
Editors Note: This is a pure fiction and in no way related to actual users bearing the same name. We are positive that @berniesanders is a dog-loving, upright person. This tale has come to an end, but there's still more tales to come that will need the community to decide what happens!