Lab One
As projects go this was the weirdest in many ways. Obviously machines building machines was nothing new, but for some strange reason this felt more visceral.
Old drones pulled apart mining modules prized open wires and cables splayed across the floor like entrails, oil and battery fluid pooling like blood from open wounds.
Then there was the meat of it all. Pierced gel packs, sealent gel, great slabs of circuitry.
Then the husks, the torn and shredded corpses met, the cleaner, a walking crematorium incinerating the robotic remains at heats that made them sweat even on consideration alone.
When they had arrived at the Windflare orbital ring they had expected some variations from the cold collected labouratory they were used to but not this. They had presumed a larger more manufacturing focused location where they might have been requested to get their hands dirty on a regular basis.
This… this reminded them of that time they had woke up early back on their uncles poultry farm and gone to check the hens.
It had been a autumn morning their breath visible their hands deeply stuffed in their pockets. Summer had been far too hot bleaching the now coarse and wet turf yellow once starved of water, the recent spike of cold brought no nourishment.
As they approached the hen houses they could hear the movement of birds, sqawks of distress made them quicken their pace.
The site when they saw it was chaos, quiet chaos for the most part but chaos all the same. A wild animal maybe a fox had been here the dog sitting meters away from the fence solidified that but it was the aftermath which was horrifying.
The beheaded carcasses lay strewn about the coup but it was the survivors that brought the horror. Some pecked at grain like nothing had occurred others pecked water from the bloodied feeders but then some pecked at the corpses of the fallen snapping up entrails or in some cases pecking at the body of a still twitching injured bird it was here from whence the distressed sqawks emanated.
The image faded slowly pecking hens overlaying twisting drones for but a moment the canabalism of it all as clear as day.
James the heavily augmented assistant beckoned them through a large set of sliding panels that the guide lines indicated as the entry to labouratory two.