Cerulean

2578 CE. 486 Post-Holocene. Humanity is gone and forgotten. Life carries on.   Machine intelligence rules the Solar System, a civilization that stretches from the fiery corona of the Sun to the cold depths of the termination shock at the system's furthest edge.   They call themselves, Apothics.   But all is not well amongst the machines. Differing factions, each with their own ideas about consciousness, biological life, and free will, vie for maximum control. They settle their conflicts through differing means, some opting for military strength, others through economic might. Resources and utility are the key underpinnings of this civilization, and the key to dominance.   These struggles are far from the thoughts of those who live on the lonely Martian moon of Phobos. A barren pile of rubble, orbiting so close to the planet that its sky is filled with nothing but the endless stretch of red dust, Phobos is the final resting place for starships and spent equipment. Scrappers toil here to breakdown and recycle whatever remains usable from the worn machinery that is crash-landed on the surface. It is a dirty, often dangerous job, and a thankless one at that. But those that do it rarely know a better life, a greater existence.   And so it was with Hall-3562.   Hall was an unusual mech for a Scrapper, a Mk. LI Pivot-class high-mobility type, more akin to someone found constructing, rather than breaking things down. Phobos was where Hall had first come on-line, and had never left the desolate moon; Scrapping is all they had ever known.   That was the way things would have remained, until the day their gears ground to a final halt, had there not been the accident. It was such a minor thing: a momentary change in concentration, the slightest slip, the crash and injury. Damage too severe to be fixed on Phobos. Damage that would require a visit to the surface, a thorough exam... and the first steps into a wider universe.   And in their mind, somewhere deep in their firmware, buried below thoughts and feelings, algorithms and sensory inputs, is a single word. A word devoid of personal meaning. A word devoid of context. A word intrinsic to their being, but hidden from their thoughts. A word that may have never surfaced, had it not been for the accident, that moment of contemplation.   A word that would change them all:   CERULEAN.