E.I.G.H.T
Father's task

The day had started like any other day. It was 0700 hours in a 4200 hours cycle of the planet, it was the time I usually would be alerted by my charging cycle that the charging cycle was fully complete. As always, my day was routine.

0700 hours charging cycle complete

0700 hours to 0702 hours routine maintenance of dental structure

0702 hours to 0704 hours routine maintenance of exo-skin over my metallic frame looking for tears, cuts or even possible blemishes.

0704 hours to 0715 hours routine morning interactions with Persephone before she headed off to her daily activities herself. This usually consisted of talking about possible mates she met or a male that she was interested in at that time and how she figured that he was the correct mate for her.

For as long as I had been around Persephone was the only other person I would have interactions with. Although my form and my physical appearance did look like a female Golordian and I was able to interact with them as well. It was often only Persephone that I would communicate with and only her that I lived with all this time.

At 0715 hours I would bid Persephone farewell and begin my routine cleaning of the premises that I lived at, usually with Persephone being the only person living here besides myself, our father rarely came home except every month to perform a routine monthly check on my system however I was surprised at 0717 hours when I saw my father entering the room with a look of distraught in his face.

“Eight, good I wasn’t sure if you had changed your routines, yet” father said. He looked pale and had darker than normal bags around his eyes as if he had not slept in days.

“I would not change anything unless you had asked me to change them father,” I stated. I do not recall when I started to call him father, but he never seemed to care about it, so I always called him such.

“Yes, well I remember the last time I was here Percy was trying to convince you to do something else at this time as I recall.” Father said.

“Your memory is correct,” I stated.

The nickname “Percy” was the designation our father used when referring to Persephone. I often did not address her as Percy and rather called her by her full given name as my subroutines would not allow for such things as nicknames.

“However, you did not give me that suggestion, so I made no such change.” I stated. He looked distraught, so my subroutines began to tell me that I should feel worried about his health. “Is everything alright father?”

“No Eight, it isn’t,” father said as he put his briefcase on a table in the kitchen. He opened it and I recognized the apparatus within it, it was…for a lack of a better word “my mother”. It was the original program that my father used to create me, and I knew that he could use this to change some of my programming. “A war has been declared on the Black Empire.”

I processed this data.

“A conflict between opposing parties?” I asked.

“Yes Eight,” my father said. “And it has the potential of destroying everything that I have worked for so far.”

“But father who is going to war?” I asked generally curious.

I was aware through the teachings of my father and daily scans of the world’s activities that wars had broken out in Golordia before including the civil war that lead to the destruction of the atmosphere of the Golordian home planet of Golordia Prime. I was also aware of tensions brewing between the Lord Emperor Jason Black and several Generals who had started a Coups D’état against him.

I thought that this was the distinct outcome, perhaps this Coups had declared war against the Lord Emperor Black. It was, after all only logical that such a thing would occur.

“Is it the Coups?” I asked.

“I am afraid it’s a bit more serious than just a coups,” Father said. “We have lead scientist and innovators, as well as these generals joining together in massive uprising against our Lord Emperor’s reign.”

“And what are we to do father?” I asked.

“You know how I do not like programming you without first asking you,” Father said as he looked over the programming he had been entering all this while.

“Yes father,” I said.

Every time he had programmed me since I had become self-aware he had asked me for my permission to program me or update a program or add a new subroutine to my program. I did not feel it necessary for him to ask this. Perhaps it was because I was self-aware that he had always asked me.

“Then I will explain what I am going to program you to do before I do it,” Father said. He pulled an information tab out and handed it to me. I scanned the information tab and I had all the information.

It was the biography of one named Zephyr Ezekiel Platinumus, a name that I had heard of before. He was an up and coming innovator of space travel and solar mechanics. Zephyr had proposed, at quite young age of 24 (when Golordians lived to be about 200-300 years old 24 was just a youngling), the construction of an instrument known as a Dyson Sphere. This was a marvel of technical genius, it was a huge array of solar panels that would be built around the star of Deneb in effort to collect the energy of the star and use it to power the Golordian civilization.

The biography said the usual things about Zephyr, he went to study on Golordia Epsilon, the current capital of the Golordians, there he exceeded expectations and graduated well under time that had been deemed as normal time for one to finish this sort of tenure in the school was something around 10 years and yet he finished everything in 4 years and not only that but he had had entered this school as the youngest person ever admitted into the school.

Many people had started calling him a prodigy and he became the leading figure in interstellar travel and solar engineering. I had also seen however something that I had to clarify with my father to make sure I was reading it correctly.

“Zephyr is the leader of the rebellion?” I inquired.

“At least one of the factions,” father said as he nodded sadly.

“What is it that you want me to do father?” I asked.

“I want you to eliminate him,” my father said.