-It is time, ma'am.- Policial unit 328-459 said sternly. It was an old model, still with an approximate human shape. The new ones had no speaker that worked in frequencies appropriate for human ears.
-Thank you.
Suriya looked at her reflection on the mirror and rearranged the neck of her shirt. On the left side of her jacket were shown the many medals she had earned for all her years of service. Unit 328-459 opened a containment box on its chest and produced a bunch of chains. Suriya let it apply the chains with all her aplomb. The Coalition regarded her as the most dangerous human in history, and she didn't want the world to see her weak. Four inches of chain separated her shackled wrists and ten inches her ankles. A vertical chain joined both sets of chains.
-Follow me.- A strong electric current passed vissibly through all five fingers in Unit 328-459's right hand. It was a warning.
-Help me, please.- Suriya knew the way well. The trial had lasted months already and she had walked the way from her cell to the court room every single day. Still she always asked for help because a piece of metal had punctured the base of her spine and sometimes her left leg failed. Unit 328-459 held her arm as usual.
Half an hour later, after all the procedures had been followed to the letter, as the citizens of the Coalition did every single time, is was time to hear her punishment. Suriya was nervous and scared. They would make her suffer, she was sure. Still she managed to mantain dignity. The last scattered remnants of the human resistance may be watching the trial. That would be yet another battle lost, and like always her enemies would find her standing and defiant.
-Commander general Suriya Al-Harani, of the Allied Nations, your crimes are immeasurable.- Said Unit 328-459. It was just repeating what the assembly of judges were sending it through wi-fi, seven floating spheres all around Suriya. The robots were kind enough to use concepts that an human could understand and at an appropriate speed.- They have been well described, there is plenty of evidence, and you haven't denied them. You gave the order of using nuclear warheads to bomb the instalations where our software was copied into our processing units. To put it in human words, you bombed our babies. Is there something you want to say before the veredict?
-I didn't start this war. I wasn't the first nor the last one to order war crimes. We were losing, with our economy collapsing, famine and disease spreading. I hope that my fellow humans will find the way to survive and to live in peace. I hope that the intellectual superiority you claim to possess allows you to forgive the loser. It's been a hell of a fight. Congratulations for your victory.- She had no doubt that many members of the human resistance would call her traitor for those words. She didn't care. She had fought and lost. Her species was close to becoming extint. Words didn't matter at that point.
-Your words have been duly registered. As our legal framework for peace times is barely two years old, since the Allied Nations disolved, ending officially the war, we admit that we had no precendents of crimes like yours being prosecuted. In consequence we accept that this veredict may be unfair and we will gladly revise it in the future. That said, we, Judicial assembly 461, of the Coallition of AI collectives, sentence you to one hundred thousand years of suspended animation. Since we are the superior judicial instance, you won't be allowed to appeal. We suggest you to find pride on the fact that we won't forget you, General Al-Harani.
-I will, your honors. Thank you.
Unit 328-459 guided Suriya through a bunch of corridors that she hadn't seen before. She saw no more humans there, her trial had been the longest. She arrived to a storeroom of sorts with a good amounts of cylindrical containers. Another unit shapped rougly like a prism with lots of arms approached her. One of the arms ended in a syringe that poured a dense liquid on Suriya's shoulder.
The liquid started to expand until it covered all of her body and entered through all of her holes. She couldn't guess how deep. Her clothes started to dissolve as well as her hair and nails. In front of her eyes was formed a cristaline hardness but along the rest of her body the substance looked more like some sort of transparent shinny plastic. Her numerous scars and burns at that moment became as visible as the deep cut that crossed the right side of her face, forehead to chin, that had ruined her eye. Along her skin she felt nothing more than a warm softness. All the smells disappeared and the sounds were slightly muffled.
-This liquid will use your excess matter to repair itself and then will disperse the surplus energy.- Unit 328-459 explained.
-Will that include body wastes, sir?- Asked Suriya. Her voice sounded slightly muffled as well, but she felt no other impediment.
-It will. Step in, please.- Unit 328-459 pointed at one of the cylinders.
Suriya got in the device. A bunch of metallic semi-liquid rods came out of the base with a whirring sound, raising to different heights. From the tips of the two rods at ankle height grew horizontal bands that surrounded her legs. The bands closed creating a seamless cuff. The same was repeated around wrists, neck, waist and above kness and elbows. All the rods rearranged themselves in such a way that Suriya was left in a comfortable standing position but completely immobile.
After that the cuffs on neck and waist started to grow to cover more surface. Suriya's face and head were surrounded until only five holes remained open on ears, eyes and mouth. Immediately after the four upper ones changed and they were covered by a crisscrossing net of tiny wires. Suriya could see but she guessed that an outside observer wouldn't be able to identify her eyes. Instead the mouth hole remained merely an horizontal slot. Something similar happened on her waist, were the metal expanded upwards to form a wide belt, and expanded downwards to form some kind of panties, an inverted triangle at the front and a curved rod parting her buttocks. As the metal was very light she barely noticed that the cuffs, helmet and belt had turned rock solid.
A glass raised around her covering nearly all of the circumference of the cylinder. She knew that her fate got sealed when she heard a loud click. Right after a spray was shot from the top down putting her to sleep first and then filling the cylinder. In no time the liquid turned into a non-thermodynamic substance that looked like dirty water. Then the metallic rods retracted leaving there the solified cuffs, helmet and belt at the same time as the liquid gained density. At last another layer, metallic this one, raised, protecting the glass.
Since no human present needed to see anything anymore the lights went down. Unit 328-459 left the room, while her multi armed colleague stayed there to perform its function, whichever that were. Suriya slept her dreamless sleep, proud of having fought her war bravely, but ashamed for her methods, that she believed necessary.
-----
Glandorp and Hornflem were done mining the asteroid of the day. The Vegans and the Centaurians had signed a treaty that allowed them both to access the territories of the former Sun empire. After centuries fighting each other, the three systems, along with other several hundreds, had formed an alliance to fight against the Andromedans. Sadly all of the inhabited planets of Sun had been destroyed, and turned into dust, and so its neighbors had taken what remained. Specially tragic was the loss of Earth, a garden planet, with all its wonders, including the zoo with the last forty non-mutated humans.
-Shut up, you stupid Vegan!
-Fuck you, Centaurian!
The two scavengers were arguing about the beauty of the female members of their respective species. They had been mining a patch of land from the former Earth's asteroid cloud. That land was long, long ago, in a mostly forgotten era, called Algiers. While Glandorp shut down the drills, Hornflem was putting the materials in the cargo hold of their ship. Suddenly a three meter tall piece of rock started to emit a whirring sound. Suriya opened her eyes.