The Five Evolution

『"PLEASE REMAIN CALM. YOUR HEALTH IS IMPORTANT TO US."』

A cafeteria drone suddenly dropped from above and slammed an entire tray of mashed potatoes directly onto some poor student’s face.

The cafeteria froze as every head turned.

Then the student slowly lowered the tray, potato dripping down his forehead. "...what?"

A second drone descended immediately after. "NUTRITIONAL INTAKE INSUFFICIENT," it announced politely, then shoved broccoli into his hands.

"What the hell?" Hiro blinked, watching as another drone aggressively chased screaming students across the cafeteria with a bowl of soup.

Right on cue, a girl stood on top of one of the cafeteria tables dramatically, her black cape fluttering behind her.

"The machine spirits have begun their rebellion!" she declared loudly for all to hear, one hand stretched toward the ceiling. "The prophecy of mechanical gluttony is upon us!"

Half the cafeteria groaned instantly.

"Oh my God," Andre muttered, lowering his head. "Not her."

Hana looked genuinely offended. "You mock me now," she proclaimed, "but soon you shall all kneel before the Cybernetic Feast!"

"Get down from the table, Hana," Naomi said flatly.

"You cannot silence the herald of destruction!" Hana yelled.

A drone immediately floated toward her. "DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR DETECTED DURING CONSUMPTION PERIOD."

Hana pointed at it triumphantly. "Behold!"

The drone blasted mashed potatoes directly into her face. And just like that, the cafeteria fell into chaos.

Students started running in every direction as drones descended from the ceiling in increasing numbers.

"MANDATORY NUTRITIONAL OPTIMIZATION IN PROGRESS."

"PLEASE REMAIN CALM."

"YOUR HEALTH IS IMPORTANT TO US."

One student got physically tackled into a chair by three separate drones and another screamed as mashed potatoes were forcibly spooned into his mouth.

"This is insane!" Hiro yelled, ducking under a flying dinner tray.

A drone immediately locked onto him.

"MALNUTRITION DETECTED."

"Malnutrition detected?!" Hiro looked at his arm and muscular frame before yelling at the drone that accelerated toward him at concerning speeds. "Fuck you! I’m very nutritioned."

Raj intercepted it midair with one massive hand and slammed it into the floor."See? Problem solved," he said proudly and looked at Hiro. "And nothing the gym wouldn’t solve."

The broken drone twitched once on the ground, sparking. Then another identical drone immediately appeared behind him holding two trays of meatloaf.

Raj lifted an eyebrow. "...huh."

Naomi sighed, flicked her finger, and lightning arced through three drones instantly, frying them midair.

The surrounding students stared and Naomi glared back at them. "What?!"

"So the food AI is malfunctioning huh." Andre looked at Ethan. "This is why you don’t take certain jobs from humans."

"On a completely unrelated note," Ethan said casually from his chair, "I have a strange feeling that we’re technically responsible for this."

"Technically?" Sophia deadpanned beside him.

Another tray launched toward Ethan’s head and without looking, Bastion appeared for half a second, the tray splattering harmlessly against the sapphire barrier.

Honestly, after Tokyo, murderous cafeteria appliances ranked pretty low on his personal threat assessment list.

Sophia caught an incoming flying spoon between two fingers and tossed it away in annoyance. "This is ridiculous."

Meanwhile, Hana had somehow climbed onto another table. "The metal servants hunger!" she yelled, placing a hand over her face. "They seek to fatten us for the coming apocalypse!"

A drone suddenly stopped mid-movement, pausing as its systems processed her words.

"They’ve come for my power," Hana continued, laughing like a maniac, gesturing grandly at the room. "The evil dark organization wishes to harvest my power for their evil, sick twisted goals."

The drone’s optical sensor flickered red. "...HARVEST?"

Hana kept talking, pointing toward the chaos mid-performance. "Mark my words," she declared. "Once they feast on me, they’ll be coming for you all next. You can’t stop the growth of evil!"

Another drone paused midair. "...FEAST?"

A third rotated slowly toward the crowd. "RESOURCES IDENTIFIED."

The cafeteria went silent for half a second. Then the system responded.

"CORRECTION RECEIVED: PRIMARY DIRECTIVE AMENDED."

"NEW OBJECTIVE: PREPARATION OF OPTIMAL ENERGY SOURCE."

Hana’s theatrical expression faltered almost instantly. "Huh?"

"CORRECTION WILL BEGIN SHORTLY."

The shift was immediate and weird in a way that was hard to articulate.

The drones stopped like they had powered down. Every unit in the cafeteria went still at the same moment, hovering in place like they were listening to something no one else could hear.

Then they moved again. But differently this time.

The drones began spreading out across the cafeteria in deliberate formation, cutting off exits, herding groups of students away from the doors and toward the center of the room.

One student bolted for the exit and the doors sealed shut before she reached them. A heavy metallic clank that echoed through the suddenly quieter cafeteria.

She hit them anyway, pulling at the handle and a drone floated up beside her, unhurried.

"PLEASE REMAIN CALM." It extended a blowtorch toward her. "YOUR HEALTH IS IMPORTANT TO US—ME—US."

The student turned slowly. The drone was carrying a meat tenderizer as well while bringing down the blowtorch, and she screamed.

Amara took a moment and watched the chaos carefully. At first it looked random. Students screaming, drones malfunctioning, food flying everywhere.

But after a few seconds she stopped seeing the chaos and started seeing the pattern underneath it. And the longer she watched, the more the randomness fell away.

The drones weren’t running into each other or moving senselessly. This wasn’t your typical technology on the fritz problem.

They were spacing out, covering angles, cutting off routes without being told to. Every unit moving like it knew what the others were doing.

With a conclusion settling in her mind, her eyes moved slowly to the cafeteria control system near the rear wall and it narrowed slightly. "Something’s wrong," she muttered.

"No kidding," Hiro yelled as he vaulted over a table and turned it over, blocking six carving blades that was thrown into the wood. The blades punched through it, partially piercing out the other side.

"No," Amara said quietly. "I mean, ’this isn’t just an AI malfunction’ wrong."

She activated Intent Sight and the world around her dulled instantly. The noise of the cafeteria faded beneath the flood of information entering her vision.

Signals moving through the entire cafeteria like a nervous system. Through the walls, the serving terminals, and the drones.

And when she traced it, everything connected back toward the central cafeteria control system near the rear wall just as she suspected.

Amara slowly turned toward it and froze. She could see it now. Not circuitry, codes, or wires, but pulsing flesh.

Thin strands of white-and-red fungal biomass pulsed through the machine like veins pumping blood. Alive and growing.

The parasite hadn’t just merged with the AI. It had become the AI.

Now completely intertwined with the system, Amara kept her gaze on it for a few seconds before pinching the bridge of her nose. "...God damn it, Raj."