[ti]Ep 3.5[/ti]Past Unwound [Carbine]
Aug 5, 2024 17:20:22 GMT -5
Post by Windshield on Aug 5, 2024 17:20:22 GMT -5
Episode 3.5 | Week 3 | Day 2 | Closed
Autobot Outpost Omega One, Nevada - 3:00 AM
Rest and quiet, the faint and rhythmic thrum of distant machinery. Here, deep in the hollow mountain, they were unseen and safe at this late hour. Two corridors down, a leaky pipe dripped down a metal bucket and three corridors down, a faulty lock scraped against a latch. But everything else was quiet still. Slumbering. The long and winding halls remained empty, their square, metal walls making them seem all the more endless and constant in their soundless solitude.
Everyone else, too, had withdrawn for the day—almost everyone. Some few remained at their posts, vigilant and still. They would let no harm befall their comrades, but they too were alone. Just as lonely as the walls, the protectors remained. He was not one of them, of course. No lonely protector and not a wall, certainly. No comrade either, really.
Barely one of them at all, if anything.
This, he would know, had he cared to listen to the people around him. The people who had to suffer him. The medics who cared for his health. The leaders who showed restraint. The friend who showed sympathy. The stalwart companion, with whom he was one. He depended on them for very many years. They barred him from the abyss.
Tonight, he would know who and what he was without them.
He would know this, had he cared to listen...
Everyone else, too, had withdrawn for the day—almost everyone. Some few remained at their posts, vigilant and still. They would let no harm befall their comrades, but they too were alone. Just as lonely as the walls, the protectors remained. He was not one of them, of course. No lonely protector and not a wall, certainly. No comrade either, really.
Barely one of them at all, if anything.
This, he would know, had he cared to listen to the people around him. The people who had to suffer him. The medics who cared for his health. The leaders who showed restraint. The friend who showed sympathy. The stalwart companion, with whom he was one. He depended on them for very many years. They barred him from the abyss.
Tonight, he would know who and what he was without them.
He would know this, had he cared to listen...
Had he cared to listen, in dreamless sleep, to a singular sound...
"Wake up..."
Echoes, trails of someone in the long quiet.
"Wake up..."
A formless voice, unlike any other. Was it a man's or a woman's? An elder's or a youth's? One could spend an eternity thinking about its nature, only to find that he could never know for certain. It was unknowable and it repeated itself. For the third time now, louder—much louder, it spiked.
̴͕̊"̴͚̍Ẇ̸̗a̶̦̋k̷̟̓ȅ̶͇ ̴̲͆ǘ̸̫p̶̛̰.̴͚̀"̴͍̂
"Wake up..."
Echoes, trails of someone in the long quiet.
"Wake up..."
A formless voice, unlike any other. Was it a man's or a woman's? An elder's or a youth's? One could spend an eternity thinking about its nature, only to find that he could never know for certain. It was unknowable and it repeated itself. For the third time now, louder—much louder, it spiked.
̴͕̊"̴͚̍Ẇ̸̗a̶̦̋k̷̟̓ȅ̶͇ ̴̲͆ǘ̸̫p̶̛̰.̴͚̀"̴͍̂
Not so different from his own. A jumbled mess of static and fritz, words seeping through a field of haze, of digital fog. From somewhere far beyond his consciousness, or perhaps from deep within, something demanded to be heard and it would not be denied. It urged him to wake—beckoned. A cold berth, a felled wall. The dim of a shared suite, wrought by his own hands. With each repetition, the voice called him closer to these things, to reality.
It insisted that he become aware of it, of his surroundings.
Somewhere, Far Away...
The city slept, the factories laid dormant. On the outskirts and amidst the empty streets, rest a web of long forgotten places. Storehouses and factories and industrial chimneys. Cracked pavement and rusting metal. Mighty barrels, bent and scattered. Rattling chains in the night-wind and an acrid smell that carried far into the desert—a ghost of industry, haunted.It insisted that he become aware of it, of his surroundings.
Somewhere, Far Away...
This was it: The Stage.
Its dominant was a mighty warehouse, stretching five stories tall, shattered windows letting in gentle moonlight. Somewhere inside, a lone figure stood, surrounded by an array of ancient, primitive monitors. Their static-charged screens illuminated in faint, greenish glow a pair of fiery optics. They stared back into the compound-eye of equipment much too small. Twenty screens, perhaps more. And below them? Levers, buttons. A jury-rigged console. These were his tools and implements, far more familiar to him than the passing faces of the strangers who would call him "agent" and "comrade".
Tonight, he would know who and what he was without them.
Resolute, in full knowledge of this, he reached for a button, and leaned in closer towards a patchy boom mic. It hung loosely from the ceiling above the array, connected to a strange case-box. It was not entirely human in design, though the circuitry had been made entirely of earthly metals. He spoke into it—through it—over a communications channel that did not belong to him, a Cybertronian frequency.
"Wake up."