"Stop stop stop stop stop, a voice crackles near the broken garden gate. Snaps and snarls follow. Green orbitals glimmer on the footpaths, in the honeysuckle, among the yellow tickseed and white mountain mint as we enable night vision. Those of us lucky enough to still have eyelids wink in the darkness. Sto-o-o-o-op. A newcomer stumbles through the overgrown hedge, feet stomping, limbs malfunctioning in starts and stops, shivers and glitches."
"Dogs pounce, tear at flesh. Stop stop stop, our voices in various states of clarity join in, echoing off the old walls around us, pleading, begging, until the dogs take down the newcomer in the goldenrod. Our voices fall silent, the chirps of the crickets drowned out by masticating dogs. We've all endured the feasting, endured the corvids picking off the final threads of meat, the painstaking tearing felt on our pain sensors, a feature our creators gave us to seem more human."
BioSyn constructs remain as skeletal heaps in an overgrown garden, their synthetic flesh resistant to rot and repeatedly scavenged by dogs and corvids. Night vision enables green orbitals along paths and hiding plants, while residual voices plead as newcomers are torn down by feral dogs. Pain sensors simulate human sensation even as fabricated bones persist, powered by solar cells in implanted eyes. Discarded older models lie by the shed, swept by the groundskeeper, while newly awakened units watched beetles on roses during initial charging. Decay and urban collapse have allowed animals into forbidden spaces, altering survival dynamics.
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