Rome didn't burn, it committed suicide...
"Garrett looks to Gris and notices her looking over the corroded remains of some long since meaningless device. He reaches out and pushes down on a door handle to reveal the rooms darkened interior. “Gris, I want you to meet Dr. Alan Carter.”
"The tribal woman walks over to the smaller room and peers inside. “He’s all dried up like the others.”
“He surely is but what else do you see?”
Gris peers in closer and steps across the threshold of the small room, in response to her movements a series of overhead lights come to life. The mummified corpse resting permanently in front of a computer screen, one dried hand still clutching a soldering iron, seems to greet the new comers like some grisly amusement park attraction. Its frozen rictus smile reminding all that, in the end, death always wins."
“There’s metal inside of him, behind that dry patch of skin on his chest, his forehead and his arm.”
“Yes. Their fascination with their inventions didn’t stop with merely creating artificial life, some had already began to change, to make machines of themselves. Dr, Carter was a pioneer in the field of something called cybernetics and he decided to run a final and very daring experiment as the starving servants beat on the metal doors outside and the intellect decided to run its own experiments on everyone.”
When Gris looks puzzled Garrett steps into the room and crosses over to the desk and the mummified remains. He’s careful to avoid touching the corpse as he presses a button on the keyboard. When she doesn’t follow Garrett motions for Gris to come around behind the desk, when she does so, she looks even more puzzled. There is one-word blinking, yellow against black, on the monitor screen."
“Hello?”
"Garrett is quick to hunt and peck his reply across the keyboard. “Greetings, Dr. Carter. I’m back, sorry for the wait.”
