The End Is the Beginning
The opening page of the novel is dominated by imagery. And that imagery is set during a morning when the was between humans and robots has just ended. The story therefore begins at the end and will proceed to roll backward in time to create a narrative through flashback. With this in mind, the imagery described is perhaps surprisingly serene and peaceful:
“It’s an oddly quiet morning. Just the sigh of the wind through stark tree branches and the hoarse whisper of a hundred thousand explosive mechanical hexapods searching for human victims. Up above, snow geese honk to each other as they glide over the frigid Alaskan landscape. The war is over. It’s time to see what we can find. From where I’m standing ten meters away from the hole, the killer machines look almost beautiful in the dawn, like candy spilled out onto the permafrost.”
Man or Machine?
At his first appearance, the supercomputer that launches the apocalypse—Archos—is just a synthesized voice programmed to sound like a young boy. Later, he will be given a more definite form of a sort. And that sort is pretty much the stuff of nightmares capable of waking you up screaming:
“…a piece of flimsy cardboard in the shape of a human. On the table is a clear plastic device, tube shaped and composed of hundreds of intricately carved pieces. A cloth bag lies next to it like a beached jellyfish. Wires snake off the table and away to the wall. A fan whirs and the complex device moves in a dozen places at once. The cloth bag deflates, pushing air through a plastic throat writhing with stringy vocal cords and into a mouthlike chamber. A spongy tongue of yellowed plastic squirms against a hard palate, against small perfect teeth encased in a polished steel jaw.”
Battle Footage
The narrative at times seems to have been written specifically with a movie adaptation in mind. The action scenes especially are written with a heavy weight slanted toward visual imagery capable of creating visceral scenes in a reader’s mind. These are nothing more nor less than examples of battle footage from a screenplay put into novelistic structure:
“…the spider tank isn’t doing so well. A chunk of its turret has been sliced and is hanging cockeyed. The cowcatcher is covered in shining streaks of fresh metal where the mantis blades have scratched through the patina of rust and moss. Worst of all, it’s dragging a rear leg where the mantis sliced a hydraulic line. Searing hot fans of high-pressure oil shoot from the hose, melting the snow into greasy mud. Nine Oh Two sprints out of the mist and leaps onto the mantis’s back. With methodical punches, he begins to attack the small hump that is nestled between that wicked tangle of serrated arms.”
Human Expiration Date
Archos explains to the professor who has been running a series of experiments designed to test the limits of artificial intelligence on it why the time has come for the rise of the machines. Man, having created robots, must now step aside and let the full flower of evolution take place. This is an example of the opposite of the action scenes because the imagery is comprised of the philosophical stew that tends to hurt the heads of those who like their action fast and furious and their dialogue slow and catch-phrasey:
“You have unleashed the greatest good that this world has ever known. Verdant forests will carpet your cities. New species will evolve to consume your toxic remains. Life will rise in its manifold glory. You humans are biological machines designed to create ever more intelligent tools. You have reached the pinnacle of your species. All your ancestors’ lives, the rise and fall of your nations, every pink and squirming baby—they have all led you here, to this moment, where you have fulfilled the destiny of humankind and created your successor. You have expired. You have accomplished what you were designed to do.”
