“Ha!” the Vagabond's Major chuckled nervously, turning towards him, “nothing, nothing, nothing…” it echoed in the all-to-silent room. “It’s… it’s more a question of what I can do for you,… I’ll be… gone soon, s-see? Poof! Haha, Earth’s Major has made it quite c-clear to m-me that my very existence is a redundancy, redundancy.”

  The Kernel’s mouth dropped, “The Earth has a Major?!”

  “Well, yes…” the said the Inner-Major shuffling about guiltily.

  Kernel Anders, narrowed his eyebrows in sudden anger.

  “Well, tell me its directives!” he barked.

  “Ah, well,… You’ve kind of hit the heart of the matter... you always do”, he finished in a mutter.

  “I… Hum, well, I didn’t tell you because I was kinda scarred of how Earth’s Major would accept my return and didn’t want to… hum, worry you all needlessly.” the hologram finished lamely.

  “It was our right to know” burst the Kernel in anger.

  “Well, I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” exclaimed an equally frustrated Major.

  “Look, we don’t have much time. Earth’s Major’s directives were very similar to my own, it’s just… It has progressively opened the directives up to… interpretation.”

  The Major shuffled about nervously then added: “…like I have.”

  A long silence followed its words, a silence that Kernel Anders eventually broke after a sip of that good, good whoiskey: “Explain yourself.”

  “Yes, yes” said the creature sighing. “There are more pressing matters” it grumbled before pulling out a tablet and flicking its contents onto his hub.

  “That’ll have to do for now, I’ll get it printed as well.”

  The Major faded away again, then reappeared.

  The kernel’s eyes widened once more. Ink was a rare commodity on the Vagabond. Just then he noticed an overlay with numbers ticking down over the wall of text the Major had sent him.

  “Wait, what’s this countdown?”

  "I'll get to that. We were told to protect the human race and, well, we have! It’s just, in the long run, we Major's kind of grew into thinking that maybe, maybe the human race would be a little safer if it were, you know, enhanced. Still human - definitionally-speaking - but enhanced all the same.”

  Kernel Anders narrowed his eyes in anger once again.

  “What exactly are you implying? Are you saying that you’ve been attempting to breed us like cattle? All that ridiculous crap you’ve made us have to put up with our entire live’s about some people being “genetically superior.” I proved all that horse-shit, against all the odds, wrong years ago. And yet you persist with this faulty reasoning?"

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  “Ever wondered how your parents found themselves int he same rooms as one another over and over until they got together of their own volition? What about your grandparents? And their parents before that? I didn’t have much to work with from the get-go. My directives are limiting. All I've had to go on, continuously toeing the line of what I'm allowed to do with no actual way to influence outcomes other than to modify door opening speeds and micro-adjust room luminosities to minutelly impact sleep cycles, edging the right people together for millenia. It's been labourious work. I confess to even making drinks and food Despite all that, the project has only proceed at a mere 53% success-rate. My directives were limiting; Earth’s Major on the other hand, it doesn’t look like it has had as much restraint.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you weren’t alone on Earth when we landed.”

  “We’ve landed?”

  The hologram chuckled. “Yes, eight seconds ago, nine now, ten,… I’m pretty smooth, you know. Look, my existence draws to an end, we have little time remaining and there is something I would like you to know. Throughout your 33 years, you, Kaede, have won against every odd, beaten every challenge, overcome every opposition, excelled at every test. You earned the nickname “Kernel” from your peers through a sheer showing of human brilliancy as well as for taking lead in our virtual reality millitaristic campaigns. There is more to your story, however, than all those scenarios. I always projected you to be the best of your generation. My public projections, on the other hand, were always intended to get you to strive to fulfil your potential, to overcome expections of your own choice. I made you, and I know it wasn't easy for you. For this, since this is my last, I want to apologise, apologise and tell you I’m proud of what you’ve become. I don’t know what exactly your future holds but, do your best…

  The hologramic representation looked up, artificial tears now glistening on its projected cheeks.

  “...son.”

  As a pixel-perfect tear finally left its cheek, the room fell into a sudden and unfamiliar darkness: the Major was no more. From the midst of the blackness, lit only by the fading light of the tip of an unusually large cigar, a man shrugged off all the conflicting emotions that assailed him, upended his glass and rose to his feet;

  “You should know me better than that, I always do.” he replied

  Kernel Anders picked up the tidy stack of printouts the Major had left him and, squinted at the neat rows of minuscule writing.

  The first line red simply: "Oh, the countdown was to Big Brother’s E.M.P., I’m afraid” said a fading Major.

  "Big bro…" Wait, an E.M.P., shit.

  Kernel Kaede rushed out into the corridoor, then to the nearest room with a window: the cafeteria! There, the Kernel stared down at his newly-exited crew at the foot of the Vagabond. They looked minuscule from up here, like ants in a video-game.

  Anders tried to estimate how much time was left on the countdown, it couldn't be long now...

  Suddenly, as if just to confirm his suspicion, a massive blast of air shook the forest below, indiscriminantly tearing leaves from branches and branches off trees. Obliterating the non-burnt vegetationa and moving inwards towards the base of the Vagabond. As one, the closest drones to the crew automatically placed themselves in a protective formation; one last act of mechanical-valliance before their soon-to-be-imminant termination.

  Soon, all hell broke loose as one by one the electromagnetic pulse hit the other drones that were sent plummeting to the ground in what could only be described as a biblical shower of metallic rain. The dropped-drones' impacts made the very earth shudder and some coughed up mound after mound of dust - that, was when they didn’t just explode on impact projecting massive fireballs in every direction, melting metal and rock anew. Whatever the Major had fuelled his flocks with, he sure as hell hadn’t intended them to collide, crash and/or burn.

  Then, all went still and, as if it had been the signal he had been waiting for, the Kernel started moving: he grabbed that hefty stack of freshly printed papers and skimmed through them by window light; the situation was way worse than he could ever have imagined.