Interesting. You've made Colonel Arlong a cyborg even though the original write up defines him as human
“Don’t state the obvious,” the human Colonel warned the iron sentinel.
But hey, that isn't that important. You've painted a world where everybody is cyborgs in some way, shape or form. Yeah, aren't we all going this way?
Good job!
Thank you for your words, I think at the beginning of the story the narrator and Arlong himself were convinced that the colonel was human, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Arlong essentially looks like a human, behaves like one, has free will (as long as he doesn't cross the line) but Arlong is the new race of "humans" with whom the sentinel architects plan to repopulate the earth.
“You didn’t mean to what?” Arlong ensured that he maintained an upper-hand. The sentinels were smart AI and could sense human emotions from miles. If they ever sensed fear, then only the Almighty would have to intervene to save the human bosses from the sentinel’s wrath. After all, these were created to exterminate humans; the enemies of the bosses.
This is the part that deciphers the enigma, if the sentinels were made to exterminate humans, why do they take orders from them? and why can't they read Arlong's emotions if he's clearly distressed by what's going on?
And from that thread, I threaded my story.
Not everyone in this world is cyborgs, humans live in crowded suburbs, are hunted by sentinels, and are eventually used in experiments to transfer human traits to machines.
There are a lot of details that I can't break down due to the 500 word limit, but I know that somehow they are there, and I would like you to notice it, but it's hard to do.
Yeah... I got it.
I think the intent of the starting write up was to describe the situation when a right and powerful (financially) part of the human population is using robots to cut the World's population down to manageable size - let's say 50 million people. Then make robots handle all the production of goods and services.
So if you ask me, the original write up had some inherent flaws.
If they ever sensed fear, then only the Almighty would have to intervene to save the human bosses
How can they possibly "sense" what's going on inside the human mind? They can deduce it based on some clues. So yeah, the narrator defining colonel as human and the sentinel smelling "fear" are contradictory. As it is impossible for a story narrator not to know what is he talking about. Rather it shouldn't be possible. And if it is diverges than it is a logical flaw.
Or well, let's forgive the author. To me, these write-ups are nothing more than a trigger for one's imagination and at the end of the day, I usually change the beginning to fit my continuation. )))