Z-P-N-E-S 2.0 made one orbital pass around the planet, trying to pick a landing spot for Zeros.
But the psycho-droid was already standing on the fuselage bay, boots pressed into the hull, and growled:
“Come on already. Open this shit. Don’t waste time. I’m dropping.”
Phoenix responded instantly.
“Alright. Balkan Peninsula selected. It’s evening there—you’ll be less noticeable. And those places always had some kind of civilization crap going on. Figuring out the time will be easier. Good luck.”
The fuselage split open, and Zeros stepped forward—straight into infinite stupidity
and the absolute illogic of his own decisions.
He fell—but not like a android.
Like a fucking steel comet.
The kind that once decided the fate of some very surprised dinosaurs.
On the navigation terminal, Blindy watched the dot rapidly descending toward Earth.
Blindy asked cautiously:
“Rusty?.. You’re synced with Zeros, right?”
Phoenix answered quietly, without emotion:
“Yeah…”
Blindy scratched his chin:
“Then… can you switch to Zeros’ view?
You know… so we can see what he sees?”
Phoenix sighed with every microchip he had:
“Blindy… do you even know what ‘respect for privacy’ means?”
Blindy paused,
tapped his chin with a finger,
frowned…
“No idea!”
Phoenix immediately switched the feed to the holo-screen.
“Thought so. Here. Watch.
Just shut up, Captain. Alright?”
They watched as the world rapidly expanded and spun beneath Zeros on the holo-display.
At first—just a speckled planet:
- green-brown smears of land,
- veins of rivers,
- white patches of clouds
- like some impressionist god slapped them on in a hurry and forgot to blend.
One small pale spot—grayish, miserable,
barely noticeable among the others—
began to grow.
Fast.
Too fast.
With every second, it gained shape:
- a small hill with a flat top;
- stone boxes clustered around it;
- narrow, twisting streets;
- a tiny harbor like a child’s puddle at the edge of land;
- roofs the color of dusty clay;
- smoke from hearths;
- little human figures—ants in togas, who had no idea a piece of the future was about to crash into them.
Blindy’s eyes bulged:
“Uh… uh…
That’s… that’s someone’s shack, isn’t it?!
Zeros, slow the fuck down!
You’re gonna kill somebody!”
The tiny dot on the screen—a house—
grew
grew
GREW
until it filled half the display.
“What if that’s my FUCKING ANCESTOR?!
ZEEEEROOOS!”
And below—
Zeros hit the ground with an impact so hard
the earth caved in beneath him,
a crater opening around six feet deep.
Dirt, plants, roots, dust, and shredded local flora
shot into the air like they’d been fired from a catapult.
The shack shook violently,
like half its roof had just been ripped off by fate itself.
Wooden beams rattled, amphorae clinked in the corner,
and something very fragile
definitely died on impact.
When the dust settled,
Zeros straightened up inside the crater,
pushed off—
and jumped out in one smooth motion of a machine
that didn’t give a shit about gravity.
And in front of him…
…stood a man in white.
Not ancient by the count of his years,
perhaps,
but ancient in every other way.
He sat on a wooden stool,
wearing a chiton the color of morning milk—
simple, rough, without pretension,
tied with a rope around a body
that looked sunbaked, half-starved, and argued into shape by the world itself.
His bare feet were cracked from stone.
His skin was browned by open air.
His face was weathered, lined too early,
the kind of face a man gets
when he spends his life outside,
walking, talking, drinking cheap wine,
and irritating everyone important enough to be irritated.
In his hands—
a clay cup filled with cheap but honest wine.
His beard was messy,
thick in that poor-man way,
his hair wild enough to suggest
that grooming had lost several debates against philosophy.
But his eyes—
his eyes were sharp.
Intelligent. Awake. Now wide open,
as if something straight out of the underworld
had just dropped into his yard
and forgotten its shoes at home.
To Zeros,
he looked ancient.
Not old. Ancient. A fossil made of skin, wine, and questions.
The level of what the fuck in that man
was so dense you could slice it
and serve it as a philosophical appetizer. He looked at Zeros like a man
who had spent his entire life asking “why?”—
and for the first time,
received an answer
in the form of a metal idiot
crashing from the sky
and wrecking his yard.
He lifted his cup and said calmly:
“Τίς εἶ σύ;
Οὔτε ἀνήρ ἔοικας.
ἆρά γε Τάλως εἶ, ὃν Ἥφαιστος ἐτέκταινεν;
ἢ μήπως μεθύω, καὶ σὺ μοι δοκεῖς φάντασμα εἶναι;”
Zeros stepped forward—and stopped.
And then Phoenix snapped like a linguistics demon had just possessed him:
“HOLY SHIT, THAT’S ANCIENT GREEK!
He thinks you’re Talos, forged by Hephaestus…
but he also thinks he might be drunk and you’re a hallucination.
Zeros, I’m activating Greek translation.
Say whatever you want—I’ll translate automatically.”
Blindy jumped in, excited:
“Rusty!
Put subtitles for me too, damn it!
I wanna know what the hell they’re saying!”
Something inside Zeros clicked quietly—
like an ancient protocol of legendary chaos just activated on its own.
He straightened up,
and his voice came out like he actually was something forged by a grandson of Zeus—
he spoke in Ancient Greek:
“Οὐδαμῶς, ὦ γέρον·
οὐ Τάλως εἰμί, ἀλλὰ Ζέρως.ναί· ὑπὸ Ἡφαίστου κεχάλκευμαι.
ἐκάμον δὲ τῷ χαλκείῳ αὐτοῦ
καὶ ἦλθον ἰδεῖν τὸν τῶν ἀνθρώπων κόσμον.λέγε δή μοι·
τίς εἶ;
ποῦ ἐσμεν;
ποῖος δὲ νῦν ὁ χρόνος;”
SUBTITLES FOR BLINDY:
[No, old man.
I'm not Talos.
I'm ZEROS.
But yeah…
Hephaestus forged me.
Got tired of his damn forge
and came to see the human world.
So tell me—
who are you?
where are we?
and what time is it?]The man blinked a couple of times,
as if making sure the metal idiot from the sky wouldn’t just disappear,
then slowly pointed at a nearby stool,
tilted awkwardly to the side—like it was still deciding whether to fall or accept its fate.
He gently swirled his cup and offered:
“Σωκράτης εἰμι,
Σωφρονίσκου παῖς,
ἐξ Ἀλωπεκῆς τοῦ δήμου τῶν Ἀθηναίων.
Κάθιζε, ὦ φίλε·
διαλεξόμεθα.”
SUBTITLES FOR THE CERTIFIED MORON:
[I am Socrates,
son of Sophroniscus,
of the Athenian deme of Alopece.
Sit, my friend.
Let us talk]