Forward March!

Since the last thing that she could remember was being on the point of being swallowed up by a stream of lava, her questions were not surprising. However all the humans apart from Fred 2 were still too shocked by the death of Astra 3 to answer her, and he chose to remain silent.

The silver golem turned his attention back to Astra 2. "I seem to be unable to destroy you. You will have to be taken to the Archetype for analysis, followed by destruction or processing as deemed appropriate. Since you are a threat, you will be closely monitored at all times. The rest of you, including the newcomer with the distended belly, are assessed as not being threats. However at least some are likely to be of interest to the Archetype, so all will come with us."

Astra 1 found her voice. "Why did you kill our friend? She wasn't a threat to you. How could she be, when there are five hundred of you and you're made of metal?"

"She attacked me, so I disabled her. Since she, like the rest of you, was an inferior lifeform, it is not of great consequence. It is assessed as less than a 0.1% possibility that she could have provided any significant additional data. Now we will take you to the Archetype. You will walk in that direction."

He pointed in the direction from which he and the other metal men had come, and the group was marched off at a brisk pace. The journey lasted several hours and, since the golem leader seemed to have no objection to their talking amongst themselves, the newcomer was able to tell the others her story and they were able to tell her theirs. They also discussed what the mysterious "transversal convergence", as mentioned by the lead golem, might be. Presumably the convergence referred to their own coming together in this reality, but the significance of the "transversal" was unclear to them. They guessed that the silver golem must have been referring to all of them rather than specifically to the pregnant Astra when he had said: "The probability that you are the source of these anomalies is 75%."

1. Eventually the upper portion of an enormous golden statue came into view over the horizon. [21008]
2. En route...
3. What of Fred 3 and Irena? Should they try to follow the silver birds, even though the Archetype had claimed that their bodies now incorporated tracking devices which would release a lethal poison should they try to escape? [21173]

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