Circuit's Awakening

A cold shadow fell across the cold concrete before him. A hard rumble shook the air as a steel monster thundered overhead. He looked across the steel landscape around him, a sea of cold technology where once had been warm fields of life. The shuttle streaked into the distance, shimmering from the burning fire in its belly.

He turned slowly back to the door he'd come through to get to the roof. A silent rumble echoing inside him struck him as he opened it, and he looked back to the shuttle. Only the cold smoke of its wake greeted him. He walked through the door, empty and alone.

The long elevator ride down felt like ice against his skin. A girl stood before him for half of the trip. He looked at her, quietly wondering who she was, where she came from, where she was going. She left as suddenly as she had come, turning briefly to smile at him. Her long red curls bounced against her shoulders as she walked away from the closing doors. He looked after her, something inside of him begging to ask her all the questions in his mind.

The doors opened one last time and he suddenly found himself back on the streets. A hard wave of foot traffic hit him. The streets were thick with traffic like insects scurrying from one empty place to another. He let the wave push him down the street, taking him wherever they wished. Slowly the traffic lightened until he found himself alone wandering through an abandoned industrial sector. The once ever-present roar of machinery was silenced forever, replaced by the hollow echoes of his footsteps.

He came to the base of a tall building, a bundle of cables running up through the shattered doors. Slowly he walked through the broken building, following the distant hum of fans and water pumps. He walked through a door and suddenly the shattered building fell away to a grey steel room filled with brilliant golden lights and shining green plants. Hydroponic trays lined the walls, the exposed plant's roots suspended in a mist of cool steam. On the other end of the room was a wide set of windows next to an airlock, the room beyond magically illuminated in a greenish golden light like the greenroom. He stepped through the airlock, waiting as automatic pumps cleared the room of excess humidity. The room was the antithesis of the greenroom, full of computers and technology. A set of screens dominated the room, hovering almost magically before a large chair. Three manual interfaces were clipped below one of the screens, and a neural interface was sprawled on the chair. In the corner a roll of bedding rested precariously against a refrig unit.

He reached out to the neural interface, carefully clipping the two leads to both sides of his head. An unseen force in the room reached out to him as he fell into a spinning white whirlpool. In the distance he vaguely thought he felt his body hit the floor. The impact reverberated through his mind, building to a brilliant white-hot scream.