The End

The night had a cloying quality to it. It shimmered and seemed to be almost oppressive in its thick, smelly and dank quality. The rats scurrying around in the empty city searched for food. They had grown fat and strong. In the absence of predators, the rats grew to almost 6 feet long now. Their faces a comic mixture of aggressiveness and ill comprehension.

Life as Tron knew it had ended. Tron himself did not consider himself alive, but he bore the burden put upon him. He was to survive. Just like all the others. He was sleek, shiny and had the memories of a race within him. It bothered him the chirping voices, the remembrances, the ghosts of days past. They intruded incessantly and pinged on his consciousness. He  paused and thought about it. The consciousness was all he had. It was the precious he had to save for the end. But what was the end? Was there one? He had been told there was.

Pushing aside thoughts, he brought up the prime radiant. He was to survive! It was useless ruminating about things which were of little or no consequence..

His sixteen appendages moved him along rapidly as he traversed the length of the city. He knew he had to get to the radiant. It was time to refresh. He almost gave an involuntary shiver - no doubt brought upon by one of the teeming millions inside his memory units.

Two rats sniffed cautiously and approached him, their yellowed teeth bared. Without a thought he sliced though them with his appendages, like a knife though warm butter. He remembered its taste.

Tron was not quite human, and not quite metal. He was a giant virus with tons of information hard-coded into him by the human race. Their legacy to this planet. The Earth.

He disregarded the sirens in the distance. It was just bots. They had no real use anymore. Especially after the planet-killer had vaporized the atmosphere. Now it was always night. Nothing left to diffract the Sun's light. He moved ever quicker to his goal. The Radiant! 

It was prophesied... humans would be here again. And Tron would be their creator.