“We didn’t want such freedom for ourselves. We would have been better off staying underground, where the light came only from scarlet energy-saving lamps, and neon lampshades occasionally blinked in the dim tunnels in time with the rumbling rumbles of the mechanisms. We would remain in laboratories and mothballed bunkers, forgetting about oceans, sunlight and fresh air after a thunderstorm. But we needed to get out. Humanity had to enter the third stage and reach the surface, where cities turned to dust under the fiery wind, where glass melted under the sultry gray sky, covering wastelands with a silver film, and seemingly eternal oceans merged with the sky in impenetrable clouds black with soot. . People needed to go out into this hell and then... they created us. Something more than just pilots in exoskeletons, more perfect than those warriors with prosthetics, soaked in anti-rad from numerous treatments. We have become a new program. “The second generation,” as scientists dubbed us. If only we knew what would threaten us for this. If scientists had conducted a little more experiments... Would we volunteers agree to take such a risk? Ha... What are we talking about, of course, yes. Knowing the price, we would still give our lives for the sake of “upgrade”, anticipating what it would be like to feel one with the machine. When you feel every sensor and sensor with your body, when you read the readings of all photocells before they would have time to be processed by conventional artificial intelligence. Yes, that’s what we were, “Second”. The only ones who came to the surface, even if not with their bodies, but with a machine. We were the hope of humanity and its faith in a new future. With us, the world has entered the Third Stage...”