robinbloke | (no subject)

"Process one, external cleansing."
The cold metallic voice rang out the words as Mical stepping into the chamber and past the disposal bins. This was the quickest stage, but his least favourite.
In the first chamber he deposited his clothes into the furnace chute and moved into what was known as the 'clipping room'.
Keeping perfectly still he held up his arms as several mechanical arms reached out and buzzed electric clippers all over his body. He hated this bit.
Two minutes later he was utterly bald, he shivered despite the warmth of the room. The sliding door ahead of him opened and he stepped into the next chamber.
The chem-shower, here you had to carefully attach nose plugs into your mouth before pressing the activation button, keeping his mouth and eyes tightly shut - he didn't relish the pain that would follow if he didn't.
A torrent of white/yellow liquid flushed into the room with a dull roar, spraying from all sides, above and below. Mical lifted his arms waited as he slowly turned around on the pad on the floor.
The torrent stopped, but he kept his eyes closed. A second later there was a blast of cold water over him to flush away the chemicals. Mical shivered just a moment before warm arm roared around him to dry him off. The last of the water gurgled away down holes in the floor.
"Process two. Evacuation."
The tedious section. Mical sighed as he stepped into the next room, picking up the plain white jumpsuit. He dressed quickly and picked up the two pills from the disk shaped dispenser beside where the clothes had been.
A screen flickered on in front of him and he sat down to wait for the internal flush to complete, twenty four hours stuck in this room - at least there was the vidscreen to watch.
Then again he didn't relish the consequences of what would happen if this process wasn't in place. Mankind had decided long ago in the stakes of universal survival that in order to ensure that it was the only species left in existence, all other living creatures were to be destroyed right down to the smallest worm or insect. This decision had been taken in the light of decisions that, given a disaster of a scale that mankind couldn't foresee it wanted to ensure that mankind wouldn't have any competition whilst it rebuilt itself from the stone age back up again.
There were those that argued that the farm planets should be purged as well, to avoid any possible evolution issues in the case of such as disaster and that only the protein plants should be left. But these were seen as the basis for the disaster planning recovery, given that these were the seed planets were humanity would rebirth itself in the case of this unseen disaster.
Earth was the last planet that actually had any non-human life left on it now, surrounded by multiple killsats, orbital bombardment systems and radiation shields that could be dropped if required, should the disaster hit then failsafe systems would kick in and the whole planet would be destroyed. This used to be a series of nuclear class weapons and radiation flooding, but it was argued that this was not sufficient. Finally a consortium of weapons companies had perfected a 'planet buster' weapon that - using simultaneous strikes - would crack the core of the planet open and literally split it in two.
Mankind was taking no chances in it's desire to be the only thing alive.
So, Mical sat in his detox chamber for probably the last time. He'd been on leave down to earth to walk amongst the creatures there and anyone lucky enough to be allowed to visit had to come out and be cleansed to ensure they brought no unwelcome guests with them, the entire cycle took just over a week to complete.
He flicked the vid screen to show earth, quietly basking in the suns light. The human alliance foundation had finally pushed through their supremacy resolution and Earth was to be demolished next year, the contingencies were not enough. Mankind wanted to be sure.

Mical for one would miss it.