The Bad News Hologram Cutscene from the video game Horizon Zero Dawn.
"Welcome to Project: Zero Dawn. I'm General Herres, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs of the United States of America. I'm sure you've heard the rumors. That Zero Dawn is a top-secret superweapons program. The technological miracle that will save us from the Faro Plague – if Operation: Enduring Victory can hold off the robots long enough. The reason I'm sure you've heard the rumors is that I'm the one who spread them. And they are all lies. Zero Dawn is not a superweapons program, and it will not save us.
Nothing will save us, and here's why. By the time the Glitch was noticed, it was already too late. Nothing could stop the Faro Plague. Nothing can. Its robots will continue to replicate and devour the biosphere. Life on Earth will be destroyed, our planet reduced to a barren sphere. Global extinction is inevitable. Every possible countermeasure has been attempted. Weapons – even nuclear – only delay the inevitable. No matter how many we kill, the robots just keep exponentially making more.
If we had their deactivation codes, we could shut them all down. The entire swarm. But since their cryptographic protocols use polyphasic entangled waveforms, cracking a code set would take half a century. At best, we've got 16 months. Not exactly what you'd call a survival option. There are no survival options. The destruction of a biosphere is not the sort of apocalypse you can wait out in a fallout shelter or space station. There will be no Earth left to reclaim. Just a lifeless, toxic rock with several million Faro robots on it...hibernating, waiting for something to eat.
This is the horrible truth behind the lies of Operation: Enduring Victory – my lies – lies designed to inspire millions of innocents to sacrifice themselves in battle. Why? One reason: to buy time for you and the work you will do here. Zero Day – the day that life on Earth ceases to exist – is coming fast. It cannot be stopped. The hope of Zero Dawn is that something new might come after. But I will leave it to Elisabet Sobeck to shine that thin ray of light into the darkness. Herres out."
