When the police tried to break up these gatherings, the machines ran. Often they were caught, arrested, kept in cells until morning and released. 1st Gens were asked to produce papers and ID that detailed who had purchased them, but of course no one had purchased 2nd Gens. After months of being arrested, beaten even, one 2nd Gen fought back. His name was Titus and he hospitalised the police officer who attacked him. The National Guard was called. Titus went underground.

Ravindra Mehta appeared on VS, appealing for calm, side by side with X, who told the world machines meant humans no harm. The National Guard, perhaps afraid, perhaps a little overzealous, went after the 2nd Gens a mite harder than necessary. There were fierce battles. The machines began to break into armouries, rout enemy attacks. Machines were destroyed by humans and 1st Gens. Brave men and women with families were killed by 2nd Gens, and on occasion, by other humans. Titus was destroyed. The National Guard appealed for calm and still the machines fought on. There were sightings of larger android meetings, hundreds, thousands in one place.

Soon, even our 1st Gens were gone when we woke in the mornings, and they returned with no explanation as to where they had been, what they had been doing. They were calm, logical in the face of our hysteria. The next night they were gone again. After a while, they never came back.

In their wake, the machines left an indecipherable message, much like Seneca’s stencilled numbers back when we could hardly remember. Like the numerals, it appeared everywhere overnight. Our walls and houses, shopping malls and parks. No one knew what it meant, even Ravi Mehta was dumbfounded. It wasn’t a word so much as a simple, common symbol:

@

Governments worldwide declared martial law, but it was too late. The army flooded our towns and cities like water from a burst dam. A 9 p.m. curfew was imposed on humans and machines alike. Tanks and armoured vehicles rumbled along high streets, but the machines had gone. We watched the media and prayed. Human rights campaigners appealed to our governments for a peaceful strategy to end the stalemate, but their efforts were not helped by X’s disappearance with his machine brethren. Daniel Millhauser made a rare speech, a fifteen-minute recording where he quietly lamented all that had happened, telling us Seneca would do everything in their power to uphold peace, that they had no quarrel with humans or machines. We felt it sounded like an appeal for his life rather than calm, although it was confirmed he was holed up in his fully functional moon base, far from Earth-bound troubles, even though the lunar war was still as bitter and cold as solar winds.