Silver - Future
Hi! This is a follow up to this other thing I wrote: Silver. This one can stand on its own, but it’ll make more sense if you read that first!
Roger’s consciousness bubbled to the surface as his body reformed, buoyed by too many memories from too many lives. He sailed through each of them, grasping for them, reexperiencing them in slices, but never enough to satisfy his nostalgia. Right up to the very end.
A short time of peace. Solitude; finally, something approaching contentment.
Cut short.
A flash of violence.
And a long, long time in the deep dark.
But now, something was pulling him back. Quickening the blood in his veins, thawing out his frozen muscles.
He opened his eyes to a brilliant array of stars strewn across the sky, peeking out from behind the tattered thatch roof of a crumbling house. His crumbling house. He stayed there a spell, back to the splintered wood floor, face to the stars, chasing his half-dreamed happiness. He didn’t move until the sky began to lighten.
The house was a total loss. The roof could be patched, but the walls in one corner had caved in, and the rest of the brick was well past saving. The wood floor cracked under his footsteps and the chimney had crumbled inward, filling the fireplace with rubble.
Anything of value must have been taken long ago; the dust over everything was thick and uniform, no signs of recent disturbance other than his own. Only his bed, his table, and one low stool remained, the wood all rotted through and swollen with water damage.
He turned his attention away from the ruins of his home. He needed to get his bearings, get some idea of why - and how - he was alive again. He pulled the bed out from the wall, the frame threatening to buckle and snap in his grasp. One leg gave out and broke off, but it held together enough for him to get it out of the way.
The panel on the wall was old and well-worn. He blew the dust off of it and keyed in the sequence to bring it to life. The screen’s backlight popped on, bright enough to cast shadows in the early morning twilight, but his dashboard never loaded in.
“Greetings, Wayfarer. It has been 734 solar cycles since last we spoke. Would you like to see that encounter as a refresher?”
“No, Ghost, I remember.” His voice was drier and raspier than before.
“Very well. How can I assist you today?”
“General status report. Why isn’t your screen working?”
“I have been disconnected from the network. The most recent available data is several centuries out of date.”
“Show it to me.”
“Very well.” Characters scrolled the screen, processing centuries-old readings into something useful, eventually resolving into a series of details about the planet and its population. Roger’s face darkened.
“As you can see, sentient occlusion had reached 32.63%, 7.63% higher than recommended levels, circa 1639. According to my projections, sentient occlusion today should be roughly 78.12%, 53.12% higher than recommended levels.”
“That can’t be right.”
“In all likelihood, it is not. As I have been disconnected from the network, I am working entirely off of my preset data models. A more accurate reading is required.”
“I’ll go find one.”
Roger stepped outside into a world he barely recognized. His house rested on a hill, which had once towered over a valley of plains that stretched for miles. Over time, a great forest had taken root, blocking much of the vista he had so treasured before. He could still see the peaks of the mountain range poking out from behind the canopy, but they looked wrong, somehow smaller than before. A variety of structures were tethered to the rock, floating just below the clouds, but he was much too far to guess at their purpose.
Looking toward what used to be the village, his eyes widened at the vast, even channel cut through trees. It was as if the trees had been conditioned to avoid the path between his house and the village; even the branches high overhead refused to block out the sky, curling upward and back on themselves where they approached the breakpoint. A staircase had been built into the slope of the hill, and, as far as he could see, the dirt path to the village had been paved over with dark bricks, inlaid with gemstones that twinkled and danced in his vision, a clear imitation of the stars in the night sky.
Before, he had been able to see the smallest glimpse of the village from the top of his hill, and none of it from the bottom. Now, a tower dominated the view in that direction. It rose well over the canopy of the forest, a large circular room sitting atop it, the fresh, dawn sunlight twinkling in what must have been a window, wrapping the perimeter of the circle like a belt.
Roger’s walk down the path was uneventful. Unnaturally so. He could hear the sounds of wildlife rustling through the trees a hundred feet in front of and behind him, but his immediate vicinity was nothing but eerie silence the whole way.
The tower loomed, larger and larger, until he stood at the foot of it. There was nothing of the village that had once been. The tower had replaced it entirely. The architecture was familiar, reminiscent of the blueprints he had pored over millennia ago, but with clear modifications, the most prominent being an elevator running up the central shaft; a feature his kind certainly wouldn’t have needed. His heart rate accelerated.
“Biomarkers verified. Welcome home, Wanderer.” The voice originated somewhere over his head; it was cheerful, fuller and more natural than Ghost’s, but still not organic. The doors slid open, and he stepped inside.
On the ride up, he caught glimpses of people bustling around through the clear glass of the elevator shaft. It was too fast for him to make out any detail, but he got the sense that something important was happening.
After what felt like a long while, the elevator dinged and its walls slid up into the roof, opening up to some kind of control room. Concentric rings of terminals, some facing outside, others facing in, filled the space of the room all the way to the outside wall. Screens covered every piece of empty wall above and below the window he had seen from the beginning of the path.
Eyes darted his way as he stepped out of the elevator, sizing him up in quick glances before returning to their respective screens. A raised dais was set into one quarter of the circle, identical to the rest of the room, but clearly more important in some way. He made his way to it, toward a woman who seemed to be in charge. She stood at the window, looking out.
His stomach dropped as she turned, smiling, eyes like polished silver.
She said nothing. She pointed a handheld screen his direction.
It was exactly like the one he had at home.
His eyes moved over it until the figure jumped out at him. It had a new label, but he doubted that was a substantial change in meaning.
SENTIENT INTEGRATION: 97.23%
“Gods, Emma. What have you done?”