Apparently both Go-bot and Aphrodite lived in a little flat above the town square, they shared it as a space with Locke, who owned the house downstairs. They must have developed some sort of friendship. After wading through the sea of corpses, that disgusted Sylvie but went completely ignored by Locke, they approached the house, walked up the stairs to the side, and made their way into the flat.
The inside of the flat was still pristine, everything was clean and tidy. It really didn't belong in the wasteland that surrounded it. Was Locke keeping it tidy this whole time?
"Ms Sylvie!" a recognisable child-like voice. Go-bot, who was in the corridor, dropped the spade he was holding and waddled over to Sylvie as fast as he could. He tried to hug her but he couldn't quite get his arms around her legs.
"Go-bot! You're ok!" Sylvie crouched down and hugged him for real, she wasn't sure why but emotions started to flood out. She didn't remember being so emotionally attached to Go-bot, maybe it was just that fact that she wasn't alone in such a dark and grim corner of the universe that brought out these emotions.
"I can't see Ms Sylvie!"
Sylvie's hair and face were covering Go-bot's tiny eyes, "Oh, sorry," Sylvie pulled back, but she remained crouched on the floor. She preferred being down on the floor with Go-bot than she did being with Locke.
"Ah, it's nice that you two both finally got to meet," said Locke, the creepy insane Evo.
Sylvie tried to ignore him, "I'm glad you're ok Go-bot. I'm sorry we didn't find you sooner."
"That's ok Miss Sylvie, I knew you'd find me eventually!"
"It's been a complicated four years on Mars. And, I'm assuming it's been complex for you too."
"Yes, the sanctuary fell. Everyone died years ago."
"What happened here?" Sylvie paused for a moment, "Go-bot, you're a Block-5 aren't you?"
"No. Not anymore."
"I modified him, his limiter was taken off." Locke interrupted,
"Limiter?" Sylvie scratched her head,
"His brain was modified to emulate the intelligence of your Block-5 Serv robots. This is how intelligent a normal Evo child is." Locke chuckled, "Although I suppose you're not quite a child any more are you Go-bot?"
"Locke made me able to learn. So I learned a lot by myself." Go-bot explained,
"I see, so that explains it," it explained how he was able to hold a coherent conversation with Sylvie without coming across like a dumbass, "in that case, Go-bot, can you tell me what happened here?"
Go-bot turned to Locke, the creepy robot was looking at the two, the creepy deluded robot had that dead look in his eyes again.
"Mr Locke, Can me and Sylvie go on a walk together? To catch up." Go-bot asked,
"Oh, um, I thought Sylvie wanted to meet Aphrodite."
"...Aphrodite is sleeping." Sleeping, Sylvie could tell what Go-bot was saying here: Aphrodite wasn't around either. Was she dead too?
"Well, very well I suppose. Make sure to keep your footing Go-bot." the creepy Evo smiled again. Sylvie shuddered.
Sylvie stood up and cautiously headed for the door, she felt like at any moment Locke would snap and go berserk, however Go-bot's calmness managed to keep her grounded. The two exited the flat and made their way to the main streets, which was covered in corpses.
The sun was now setting and the bodies were starting to become red and black stains on the ground, while Sylvie had no empathy for these beings, she couldn't help but admit that she felt overwhelmingly grim here.
"I'm trying to bury them all, but it's taking a long time," said Go-bot, "all of them died."
"Aphrodite too?" down to business, Aphrodite was who Sylvie was here for, after all.
"No. When the fighting started she left, although she never knew it became this bad. Two years ago a signal from the network came to the Sanctuary, the signal said that all Evos should kill Aphrodite on sight."
"So she's dead?"
"No, Locke realised this, so he dressed her up to look different from the parameters given by Mother. That way none of the cyborgs in the village would go after her. But... they did end up going after other girls who looked like Aphrodite."
"So that's when the bloodshed started. Right."
"Aphrodite did it too. She was caught in the middle of trying to kill someone." Go-bot slumped, "it made her very depressed. When she found out she almost killed."
"Almost?"
"Well... Aphrodite is a weak human girl, and she was attacking a cyborg. She didn't do so much damage that Locke couldn't repair the girl."
"I see, so the girl didn't die, but Aphrodite was still affected? That's weird."
"Locke told me it was some sort of emotion that SERVs wouldn't ever be able to feel. Regret, guilt, remorse. Depression. The will to commit self-termination."
Sylvie had heard those words before. She sort of knew what they meant, conceptually, but whatever they involved was beyond her capabilities. Probably.
"She locked herself in her room for days, she almost starved to death. And then she told Locke that she didn't want to live with the humans any more. She said she didn't deserve to be with them."
"So she's not here anymore. Great."
"Locke took her to the scrapyard planet, her left her under the care of another Locke."
"Another Locke?"
"All the off-network moons have Lockes that look after them."
"So, the scrapyard planet is where I'm going next huh. It looks like Ava managed to get to the human before me after all." Sylvie wanted to tell herself that she only cared about finding Aphrodite, and didn't give a damn about all these corpses. But she had to know, "what happened after that then? How'd this happen?"
"The divide between humans and cyborgs became more obvious. Humans were worshipping multiple gods, they created gods for the sun, the moon, the seasons, all sorts of things. The cyborgs were programmed to see the planet Jupiter, and Mother, as god. I think mother's interference to their mind made them too devout, having her talk to them directly made them believe some sort of divine intervention that happened... they practiced their religion far more openly, and that made the humans mad. They argued for a long time about what god was real and then-"
"This happened. In just the space of a couple of years? They killed each other in a religious war just like that?"
Go-bot didn't reply,
"Is that what happened?"
"It's true. They fought. But in the end it was... it was Locke who killed them. He slaughtered all of them."
"That creepy Evo!?"
"He was fighting it for a long time. The directive to join the network again. But eventually it was too much for him. He was forced to connect to the network, and when that happened he was immediately given the order to kill anyone who resembled Aphrodite. At the time he was networked with all other Evo cyborgs in the town, and that kill order, mixed with the tension between the Evo race and the Human race, meant that they all went on a murderous rampage. Including Locke himself. Even though they were only meant to kill Aphrodite, they killed all the humans instead, because Locke saw every human as beautiful, every human was as beautiful to him as Aphrodite was. The moment that kill command hit him, it wasn't just Aphrodite who was in danger, it was every human Locke saw Aphrodite in, and that perception spread to all other Evo cyborgs in the town... They slaughtered everyone, because Locke thinks mankind is all equally beautiful."
"...That's terrible."
"Once it was over, he forced the cyborg Evos to self destruct. And did the same himself." Go-bot sighed, "He was a good Evo. He taught me a lot. When it all happened, I was very sad."
"Wait. Self-destruct? But-"
"I repaired him."
"You repaired him!?"
"I learned how to."
Go-bot really had changed. "So... did you cut out his memories of the event? Why's he like this?"
"I don't know. Maybe I made a mistake somewhere. I don't think I did. He keeps pretending it didn't happen. He keeps pretending all the humans are alive." Go-bot slumped again, "I tried fixing him. But he's still broken."
So Locke was manipulated by mother's orders. And the guilt he felt fried his brain permanently. Par for course, for Evos. It wasn't hard to believe that such a monstrous race of beings would do such a monstrous thing. Still, at the same time, he didn't know mental trauma was something possible for Evos.
"Miss Sylvie. Evos are good people. Mother made them bad." Said Go-bot,
"Mother is an Evo too Go-bot. I know you like Locke, but everything he and the Evo-cyborgs did, that was only possible because they were Evos." She clenched her fist, "in the end, a race of beings that are willing to kill on the whims of a greater power, can never be considered 'good people'"
"But the humans were willing to do the same thing. And so are the Servs."
"What?"
"Mother wasn't the only god that caused this to happen. It was a war between three different gods. Wasn't it?" Go-bot paused for a while, as if he was taking time to think about his next few words, "I know why Mister Ava hates god now." Go-bot looked across the sea of carcasses, "Now I do too."