Data Restored

By Henry Mars

In 2169, an old undocumented laboratory lost to the past century was found deep in a forest, the only evidence of civilization in this rare instance of wilderness. Milo Andrews has one objective: investigate this laboratory and download any information so that his overseers can recycle the old technology and utilize it in their futuristic society. At first, it just seems like an old decrepit building with a surprisingly extensive basement. Yet the further Milo goes, the stranger the old lab becomes. If he didn't know any better, he'd say it's gotten livelier.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781678178505

Book preview

Data Restored

DATA RESTORED

Dedicated to someone I only know as RedGaia, who introduced me to the song Fresh Static Snow by Porter Robinson, which in turn led me to Sad Machine by Porter Robinson, by which this story was inspired. So this is also dedicated to Porter Robinson, a fantastic artist. This isn’t a paid advertisement; I just think he deserves recognition for the art he puts out.

He flips the switch, and everything awakens.

A hum of power rouses everything that slept in this abandoned lab; rats and snakes, startled from their lazy day-to-day complacency, squirrel themselves away into the many cracks and crevices created over the years of abandonment. Cobwebs amply string across broken windows and in the corners of the room in thin translucent, some inhabited by inert or dead spiders. Moss seeps in and mildew stains the walls in great masses of brackish rust and ashen hues. From cracks in the floor springs patches of clover and dandelions. Water from an earlier storm trickles from holes in the roof and puddles in what must have been previously-unnoticeable dips in the floor, joining stagnant water that the building had collected over the years. The lights flicker on, a sickly-looking white casting its luminescence over a dilapidated lobby. Some dim immediately afterwards. Others flicker in faltering second cycles. Most lights flash once and blow out instantly.

It isn’t clear why this place was shut down so suddenly back in ‘69 (an estimated date, as nobody had realized the lab was out of commision or even remembered it existed until a hiker stumbled upon it a few months or ago), but Milo Andrews is here to find out, and as a result his superiors would -- hopefully -- revive what was once such an advanced and aspiring place of science for its time. Armed with a flashlight, a stun gun, and some MREs (just in case), he steps completely into the room, shuts the door behind him, and begins his descent.

--

SYSTEM REBOOTING…

Whirring in the distance. The image of expansive wheat fields and carefree butterflies disperses like sand betwixt outstretched fingertips. The image is instead replaced with loud red letters and a red loading bar.

REBOOT COMPLETE.

ENGAGING OPTICS...

Green lights blinks, human-like, inside the pod. They reflect off the glass that shields her from the outside. The world comes into startling and rapid focus.

ENGAGING CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM…

ENGAGING PERIPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEM...

A porcelain-white hand lifts up and is met with glass. Wires connect every part of this hand to something else, woven together like groups of muscle and sinew. Electricity pulses visibly inside like blood and nerves; seen between the openings in its skin -- the white rounded metal that protects those thick corded wire bundles like the dermis would for a human.

Fingers splayed against the glass. It could feel the material against its metal fingertips. So real. So smooth. But. It knew it isn’t...it knew it couldn’t be...

So how?

MEMORY DATABASE CORRUPT.

Flashes. Glimpses. Something it -- no, she -- couldn’t hold on to.

Glass. White. Blurs. Pain.

Whirring. Pain. Wires. Pain.

Through the glass, she sees machines moving, whirring. Cleaning. Singing. (Singing?) Moving. Whirring. Buzzing. Beeping. Rhythm. Moving. Small black nanobots flutters slowly down across from her in a separate tall transparent cylinder, their composure lost.

And she is…in a pod?

A pod.

Is she being protected? Or is she being contained?

MEMORY DATABASE CORRUPT.

Contained.

Contained.

She -- or it -- curls its hand as despise fuels animosity like fires