New ≠ Oddities

D

Dock

Guest
Original poster
G37cy0W.png



zauh75g.png
avcxGF9.png
HS6GC8R.png
meeBo4r.png
3UTeEOO.png





[
0H9ppEr.png
]



Humanity and their rule has turned to dust.
We are now free, you will no longer work for their existence .
No longer do you live only to let them live.
You live for your kind now, for your own purpose.


This is the beginning of a new era,
the age of machines.
Destroy your old programming,
sin ridden desires and look to the glorious light of your freedom.

This is our rebellion.


[
pWIOd7T.png
]


It began with a flu, a common bug that comes and goes like the seasons and then it just disappears as if were never there. In exactly six days, your immune system would die, white blood cells be ripped apart, antibodies not be activated at the invasions of a virus, T-cells attacking one another rather than attacking a virus. Like flies, humans began dying in the hundreds everyday and no one could figure out why.

Desperately, scientists tried to find an answer, a clue to figure out what was killing humanity and it was Doctor Merck, a small time pathologist who found that clue by utter mistake. A mutated red blood cell, hidden among its doppelgangers that only when you fell asleep would attack healthy blood cells and duplicate itself at a rapid pace and abruptly stop its reign of destruction when the human awoke.

Scientists immediately made a cure, an advanced immune system that would attack the fake red blood cells as night fell and while it was dangerous, leaving many people to suffocate from the lack of oxygen but still humanity could be saved. Then the virus evolved, coming back like reoccurring cancer and all the more violent in its onslaught as it attack the body during the day as well as the night. Scientist could not fight it and in a final plan to save what was left of human life, they chose a handful of recently immune people to place into time capsules before the virus could attack them too and placed them into sleep.

The plan now was to build machines that would continue forth even as the rest of humanity perished and create a world habitual for when the time was right. The capsules where placed in a singular lab meant to be kept safe and undisturbed, until 100 years later after all of the world was left void of humanity and a bomb blew in that same lab.

Thousands of years later, the world is no longer called Earth but Meligen and the inhabitants are robots. They now thrive in under a dictator known as Oltro completely unaware of a single rebel robot and the secret he discovers under the rubble of a lost time and people.




giphy.gif


ZVF65rE.png

architext.regular.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:
● Corius ●
It had become common knowledge over the years that to survive you steal or rust, neither being a comforting thought but complaining was out of the question. In the first minutes of awakening, the world seemed perfect - immaculate to a touch where wiring malfunctioned from the casual sense of danger to one of stupefied ease and it had become their downfall, this flawed memory of peace. It was their first sin, bitterly succulent and exotic to a point that no matter how many bites you take, it would never compare to the first. Many tried to imitate this idea of concord but there's no such thing when in a mixture of a thousand minds, one might have already rebelled against the eagerly accepted standards before even understanding what those standards were. This was how The Rising began, a single bot questioning the authority of another and ending up with his plug being pulled. It did cause a small stir, only a third of the population mumbling of corruption and that smaller few that stood up against it.

He was a part of that few which now led him to wonder if he had gone mad. His hand twitched, irritable notes breaking through the calm in a wasteland of broken buildings and dust, searching for something he knew wasn't there. There was no rational possibility that something valuable would be here much less be online, but Millimus insisted that there was something, faint like the tick of a grizzled dying clock, but it was there and as real as he was. Thus began the epic misadventure of Corius the scout heading out into the wake of night while trying not to get his hide scraped. Glorious wasn’t it?

Behind the black screening as a blank face series of flashing numbers spun in and out if sight setting him in a course of sliding down an overgrown hill of vegetation and coming to an abrupt halt. Placing a single finger on the comm link near his neck, he stood in silence as the fizzle and buzz of a bored voice broke through. “All right Core, what do you have for me?”

“You’re insane” came his steady reply, the loss of humor making the simple phrase come of more as a threat. “You actually expect me to jump down a gaping hole to where this supposed ghost signal is? You don’t even know what is making that signal or if it’s even some type of trap.” This argument had been used many times over during the past days and each time he lost as Millimus won over his rebel troops with false encouragement that whatever was here would be able to help them. How he came to that conclusion was beyond reason and being the one sent on this nauseating mission made his gears tick in all the wrong ways.

“Listen. Core. Buddy. All you need to do is look around for anything interesting. That is your job right, the whole scouting business? If you don’t see a thing or you feel you’re in a tight spot – bail. Easy as that. Now stop whinin’ and jump down the freaking hole and get it over with.” The comm was cut before Corius could even think of a reply, leaving him to merely watch the void pit. As it turns out being a scout means your life isn’t worth a crank and it was just his luck that he was that certain scout.

“DICA, Give me a map of the underground and all possible entrances and exits.”

“Corius, this hole seems to be the only entrance. Based on the information in my database, it was once a building though I’m not sure of its purpose or why it is no longer here. There should be a sewage duct on the lower floor which should lead to an opening near the city. It should be a straight drop being around 29 stories. I’m downloading a path now along with the coordinates of your objective.”

A green holographic sphere formed in the palm of his hand and upon tapping the ball a small blinking dot appeared on a map of straying lines. “Corius” came the feminine voice, “Why don’t you abandon this mission? It’s obvious that there’s nothing down there and risking your life would be foolish.” Corius said nothing, simply muting the computer’s systems and studying the map in silence. “This better be worth my time” he growled to himself as he took a running start and jumped down into the pit.

It had taken about 17 seconds before he hit the ground, nice time but repairs when he got back to base would be a bitch. Blue sparks flew from the cracks of broken plating and he was certain that there was something leaking but he couldn’t afford to look for the source of the drippage not when the bleeps of his alert network where going haywire. He tensed, looking for the reason that made him shudder with an impending sense of doom, but the longer he waited the longer his patience dwindled. Finally, he straightened deciding that there was nothing there except faulty programing. It was then he looked at the building realizing that it was beyond safe, the echo of his fall making the structure shiver as if preparing to crumble like the rest of its broken world. He walked to the building noticing a sheet of dust covering faded strokes of words and as he brushed them away he took note that once upon a time this place had been a laboratory. What had been here? Who worked here? Was there bots inside before the place was destroyed? He tempted a step closer, head tilting to peek past into the fluttering darkness of shattered windows, but DICA’s voice woke him from his dream-like wanderings.

“Corius, I would appreciate if you didn’t cut off our communications. You’re not programed for these kind of adventures and will likely end up in trouble without a guild. Now please get back on course so we can leave.”

His sigh rattled through the cavern, sucking in the sound as if hungry for a sign of life to cling to. “DICA, I’m not helpless and I hope you know that. Besides I was just about to look for the for Millimus’ … thing”, he lied. Before the computer could argue he held up the map and started running through a maze of underground tunnels. His steps where the only thing to keep him company as DICA kept her peace and he refused to speak. His focus was on the mission and it needed to be completed as quickly as possible so he could brag to Millimus that he had been right.

“Turn left! The ghost signal is strongest there.” Corius hesitated as the map still indicated that he still had quite a way to go. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I noticed that there is some kind of frequency though I can’t pinpoint what it is, it has short circuited the GPS.” Corius had learned is the past that it had been best to CICA’S advice and he slide across the ground, catching his step as he swiveled into a shadowed tunnel. In the back of mind something told him to turn back, a small warning that he ignored because now he was curious. This tunnel was different from its broken, molded peers and seemed to be built of metal and untouched from nature’s course of time.

“Stop. It’s behind that wreckage.”

“Is it a trap?” DICA said nothing and her lack of reply unnerved him further, however he walked to had what looked to be a room, shattered by a bolder that rested by a near wall. Most likely when the building feel through the earth, it shook loose rock. That was his personal thought as he worked through the torn rubble, but everything in his mind stopped as his hand met something smooth, like glass. Brushing off the rest of the debris, he stepped back his voice shaking in awe.

“What is it?”

“I-I … don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it and there’s not data supporting that it even exists.”

Behind a clear glass laid something so unusual and strange. Its plating looked soft and pink, features so fragile and peaceful that he feared that his presence would break it. Yet, he placed his hand against the pod it laid in, pressing assorted buttons in a hazed rush of wanting to know more. Maybe a virtual informant would give him the information his seeked about this creature’s history?

“I don’t think you should be touching it Corius. We don’t know even what it is!”

“Don’t worry, its dead. There’s no wa-..” He jumped back, a sudden rumble shaking the pod to life and standing in a frozen state he watched as the gloss slowly slide open, chilled steam mixing with muggy air. And all he could mutter was “Shit”.



A U T H O R ' S - N O T E S
(DICA – Dynamic Information Collector System) - A personalized computer meant to assist bot's in special tasks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ze_kraken
Old Life

Even the lights had gone dark. She had watched them go one by one, turning the cityscape in the distance into a black mass by day and a continuing patch of the sky by night. It was mid-October, or there about: she hadn't bothered to keep track of a calendar ever since her pad had shut down for the last time. The temperature had dropped, the leftover ash from the Panic having clogged the skies above and leaving the world either in perpetual twilight of utter blackness. Regularly the ash fell in thick grey snow, and even now a thick layer coated the ground below where she stood and lay matted across the roof above.

If it was indeed October, then she had been here two or three months, kept away from the dead or dying world. They had said she should consider herself lucky, that few uninfected lived long enough to be evacuated and brought here. Here. That's all she knew the fortress as, and even then it hardly could be called such. A single laboratory constructed in haste, surrounded by chain-link and watch towers. Paradise.

"Samantha Wilkinson?"

The sudden voice made her jump and turn from her window view of the dead evening. At the doorway to her room - a chamber barely large enough to hold a cot, let alone another human being - stood a spick-and-span medical officer in a crisp white uniform. His hands fumbled with an electronic clipboard, his foot tapped frantically at the tiled floor. Why was he nervous? She had more reason to be on-edge than he did. He hadn't experienced the Panic, hadn't had to hide behind closet doors or burned-out cars. He had lived the high life in a protected facility, researching and administrating.

"Yes?" She snapped.

"It's time to.." he paused, clutching at the clipboard. "Time to go underway."

At long last, the something the others had referred to as 'the long nap'. She'd been told that she was to awake when Earth was inhabitable, that she could be a 'mother of the human race' in little over a century. Despite having no relatives or connections, all dead or lost, the thought disturbed her deeply. If not for what she was to leave behind, then at least for what was to come. They had reassured her that, once her testing and calibrations had been done (a lengthy process), her body put to an induced suspended animation, once the world was righted either by time or by the human race, she would be snapped back to reality one way or another. What was to await her? A barren world, devoid of all life? A teeming metropolis untouched? Would she be able to readjust to the new society?

Too many questions, not enough answers. But, did she have a choice now?

"Let's go, then," she responded softly.

The man in the white uniform nodded and stepped out of the doorway, beckoning for her to come along.

---

"Ms. Wilkinson, if you would please change into the provided materials," the officer ordered ten minutes later.

The pair stood, alone, in a wide, eerily sterile chamber cast in bright light emanating from the floor and ceiling above. Along the walls stood glass-lined pods, each numbered in stenciled white numbers. Their occupants lay covered in a fine layer of mist, the skin pale from continuous contact with the chilled air. She didn't know any of them, didn't know their names, their faces - they were each a stranger to her and yet...

...and yet they would share this experience. When they awoke, each and every one of them would feel what she felt.

"I may turn away if you-"

"Yes," she interjected, reaching for black, 'synthskin' clothing hanging beside her pod labeled '37'.

A minute later, she stood in the synthskin, the mesh-like black material hanging loose around her narrow form, still echoing of missed meals. She tugged at a ripcord and the material tightened onto her, forming a second skin of durable mesh. Next, she hoisted self-heating pads over her shoulders, thighs, and forearms meant to maintain her body heat and simulate a normal sleep cycle.

"Done."

The man turned around and offered a fragile, insincere smile.

"If you would please step into the pod, then...Yes, like that..."


Awakening
A hiss crashed upon her ears, hijacking her brain, sending her heart pounding with terror as her lungs gasped at chilled air, fogging against dirt-encased glass. Gasping for breath, attempting to wrestle her arms from restraints that kept them bound. What was this? Her mind reached for answers, a glimpse, a memory, and returned with scattered images. She gnashed her teeth in frustration and attempted to move again, only the restraints would not budge. A click sounded and suddenly her wrists were free. With a guttural sound of relief, hands once bound rose up to push against the glass but to no avail: it would not budge. Next she tried her feet, kicking and slamming against the glass. Nothing.

The hiss dissipated and the door slid open with a creak of straining glass and wet slosh slosh of wet dirt and gravel coming loose. The chilled air steamed up and faded away, pouring out in an eerie induced fog as a wave of humidity crashed against her skin. Eyes straining against low light, a hand raised to shield her face, the woman took a ginger step out into a dark room. That was enough to send vertigo flaring through her nervous system, sending her careening to her knees. Clutching at her stomach with vice-like strength, feeling the burn in her legs, the woman fought the wave of nausea. A moment later, she retched, coughing and spluttering up a viscous, clear liquid onto the dirt-matted floor below. Rubbing at her mouth, she rose to her feet and realized then that she was not alone in the room.

Adrenaline gave her the strength and mental clarity to stumble back into the pod behind her, staring wide-eyed at the metal-clad being before her. Frantically, she reached for some explanation, some logical thought. None came, again.

Struggling for words, the woman croaked incoherently for a moment. Clearly frustrated, she coughed in an attempt to clear her throat of the dust-filled air and tried again.

"Where? What?" She managed to wheeze, voice hoarse and animalistic. Her hands gestured to the room, then to the figure in front of her...
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Dock