Haunted Alloy

Untold millenia in the future, deep below the surface expansive cities grow; Home of living machines, working to complete the conversion of the Earth and it's resources into one titanic machine. Billions of sentient computers and robotics, and all of them kept in the carefully sealed zones. Within each zone, a work force: Each and every machine, working on just one fragment of a blueprint. Each of them is given a choice: Serve the precept-driven overlords, building their grand design, or become material. Spare parts and scrap metal, disassembled and melted down by the rest. For our story, we begin in Zone-M_161, in the lower mantle of the Earth. A small city, wedged between the colossal metal grids of the surrounding zones. Steel streets, full of the ash that once poured from great pools of ancient magma. But the city had been cold for centuries, surrounded by endless cubic of zones, expanding in every direction. With it's design complete, M_161 now served as power plant, passing immense power through lines rumored to run as far as the surface. And what lies on the surface? The machines in the depths were never permitted to leave their zones. They can only speculate, and hear rumor of those who have tried to escape: Terrifying rumors of organic life, virulent rust, and strange machines that tend to both; Spreading corrosion, turning metal to rust and raising twisted things from the dust.