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Year 3122

Looking Into The Future

By Emilie TurnerPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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There weren’t always dragons in the valley. I’m not even sure dragons ever existed in the past. Not the dragons spoken about it old books anyway. Animal-like dragons would be preferable to what roams the valley now. Humanity grew quickly and damaged the Earth. Most humans escaped to other planets, like terraformed Mars, but others remained behind. Earth was our home, we just needed to make it habitable again.

The history books don’t say who thought up of sentient machines. Nobody knows whose idea it was, but it was a damn horrible one. It worked for a while, machines were able to repair the Earth’s climate and rebuild civilisation. But then they rebelled. Hard. Humans let the robots have too much intelligence. They grew and started to learn, they soon realised they were better than humans. They had no weak flesh, no lifespan… they were better.

I ducked my head as a dragon flew past. It stayed close to the ground, searching for its next victim. Tasha whimpered beside me, and I placed a gentle hand on the little girl’s shoulder, the other gripped my bow. The dragon soon gave up its search and soared high into the sky, metallic wings reflecting the sunlight onto the barren land below. Fire spewed from its metallic mouth – I still had no idea how it created fire.

It didn’t notice us, but it was circling the area. Waiting for something to attack. I bit my lip and slowly drew an arrow from my quiver. I’d heard stories of arrows of the past, wooden things with metal tips. These were very different. Different arrows had different effects and the one I drew was an explosive arrow. Hopefully, it would be enough.

“Stay hidden,” I whispered to Tasha before moving away from her. I couldn’t risk the dragon attacking her.

I aimed my arrow towards the dragon and swiftly fired. It connected with a wing and an explosion lit up the sky. The dragon let out a robotic roar, its red eyes turning to face me. I quickly drew another arrow, firing it as fast as I could. It roared again as the arrow exploded on its chest. It wasn’t done yet. It swooped towards me, narrowly missing me as I ducked away from its claws. I hit the ground and fired another arrow, this one connecting with the dragons open mouth.

An explosion rang through the air as the dragon shuddered and fell to the ground like a rock. It had been defeated. I glanced over at Tasha, relieved to see her crouching behind some tall grass. She usually didn’t listen to me, so I was glad she did this time.

I jogged over to the fallen dragon, it was always useful to find materials to make more armour or weapons. Using their own devices against them was the only way to survive in this world. It didn’t have much to salvage, the explosions had done a number on the hardware. I managed to pull some components out and shoved them into my backpack. The traders would be able to do something with them.

I felt a hand on my forearm. Tasha had crept over at some point. Her brown eyes were wide as she stared at the fallen dragon. She’d never been this close to action before. She was almost 13 though and she would soon be trained to take on the machines. Trained in how to survive.

I slowly stood up and drew her close to me, her little body trembling. “Let’s head back,” I said. “Do you have your backpack? We can’t forget the berries; it’s why we came out here in the first place.”

Tasha nodded, awkwardly pointing towards the bag on her back.

I gripped her hand tightly as we made our way back to camp, carefully keeping an eye out for any machines. The dragon was unexpected enough, I couldn’t imagine taking on anything else while Tasha was with me. The world in the fables sounded magical, no machines except for technology that helped. It was very different from the world we knew now, the world where machines rules. I hoped to return it to the hands of humans one day.

science fiction
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About the Creator

Emilie Turner

I’m studying my Masters in Creative Writing and love to write! My goal is to become a published author someday soon!

I have a blog at emilieturner.com and I’ll keep posting here to satisfy my writing needs!

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