Robin looked with expectation and growing fear in the back of his mind at the immense metal structures, soaring as high into the sky as the hypothetical space elevators of an extremely advanced race. The perfect synchrony of the inhabitants, their movement back and forth between structures like fine tuned clockwork pieces, the beauty of the enormous vines cut in patterns so polished in symbology of which he knew nothing else, apart from the clear natural beauty of the design itself.
Floating among a sea of sand infinite to the sight while their sky was part of the great unfathomable machinery, flashing lights like stars painted on the infinite sea of metal, a constant hum in the air accompanied by the soft clicks of a computer running at full power, filled the atmosphere with something more than the smell of ozone accompanied by that unmistakable taste of metal in an unforgettable sensory experience.
The sensation of seeing all this made him feel a strange way inside. He had seen many space civilizations throughout his career as a superhero even if by human standards he was barely a young adult. But this? The sight was both familiar and incomprehensible but everything was functional with the very aesthetic of the place. The beings passing by like paintings of a terrifying perfection were just another part of that intricate world called [The Factory].
He would have looked further into the implications of everything he saw regarding this world if he were not pulled from his mind by the indifferent voice of the guide.
"This is the main city of [The Factory]"
F-V-4 spoke while her group settled into what looked like a plaza outside the medical building. The floor was of a semi metallic color with only the patterns of the joints, patches of strange nature ornamented with diverse plants detailedly cut in the shapes of circuits whose flowers pulsed in light following the rhythm of that low hum in the environment.
Smooth paths of obsidian color moved slowly in a dance of synchrony allowing the passage of the inhabitants of this world between places, from the gigantic buildings to the smallest floating clusters of nature strangely integrated into all this.
The buildings themselves seemed to be of many types but at the same time made in a single mold, from the floating fields where he could see many of these beings practicing what he could only intuit was some form of sword combat, white forms intertwined in leaves like a gigantic multi layered structure rising like a trunk, and that was not even the largest building his gaze could capture. Thundering fields where light with clashes of metal hitting metal were heard even from here also crossed his mind. The dark buildings hummed while pure ozone escaped from them like a parody of the smoke that could be seen in human industrial zones, here no such thing existed. Crystalline water falling from above in waterfalls reflected what one looked at, creating the sensation that everything was wrapped in being smaller than it really was. At its center was a "modest" central structure adorned among the black metal like a technological cathedral; its shape like that of white and black leaves screwed together giving a shape of contrast while red light came out in lines closer to those of roots than to something as artificial as circuits. Red, white, and black flowers floated in the air around such a structure so subtly that it was impossible for it to be the work of air currents, something so neat but at the same time with a sensation so strange as if what he saw could not exist in reality no matter how much progress was made.
But as in every fairy tale one has to wake up, he was awakened again by the same cold and monotonous female voice explaining everything they were seeing.
"The zone in which we are is known as the palace zone, it is called that because in the center of everything lies the Palace of Elysium"
She spoke before pausing to see if we were all paying attention before continuing while pointing to the impossible structure in the center of the buildings. "Such a palace acts as the greatest source of data conglomeration in each city, commemorating each new achievement or discovery of our race, while the adjacent zones are research centers of all kinds used by us as a species, like the medical wing from which we just emerged" she finished while pointing to the building in which we all were.
I looked at my companions, still amazed by what we could see, while my mind went back to work on the paranoia that had been instilled in me for years by that woman.
"Further ahead we have the testing zone, used as its name indicates to test the new models created in the research zone." She pointed to the floating fields full of thundering noises.
"Alongside this we also have the military zone where each [Homunculus] receives the necessary training to be a full combatant, but since the end of the [War of the Right to Exist] the military zone is used as a combat testing center for new forms of combat" were the words of the woman while pointing toward certain circular fields of great size in which he had seen these [Homunculos] performing combat, and he did not let the name of this race pass when he heard it for the first time, nor was he the only one to notice it.
"Finally we have the industrial zone on the outskirts, as its name indicates they are the largest production centers of our society. For that very reason they are the most defended places, so I strongly inform you not to try anything out of place like an infiltration since the automatic systems could activate the intruder elimination protocols." She finished speaking before a kind of "car" or similar machinery large enough arrived at our side.
"Apart from these main sections there are many sub sections that fulfill very specific roles such as the gestation sources, the distributed reactors, as well as the synthetic crop fields." She turned to see us while touching a couple of metallic buttons on a metallic device she took from her pocket without him noticing. "According to orders from the [Fabricator] the physical tour begins at the Palace of Elysium to end in the non vital industrial sections" were her cold words before the floating stretchers on which we were entered the vehicle.