chapter 02 - on the roof of the world
"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
- A quote found in many of the surviving pre-shattering writings.
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An unknown location
Ahmad silently considered the glowing screen before him.
The display was frantically flickering in shades of red, its brightness slightly varying each time it blacked out and came back on power.
The room encasing his person and the army of meta-enhanced computer displays was completely drowned in darkness besides the occasional electronic flickers, leaving nothing but a vaguely ominous contour of the man’s sizable body as the only shape discernible to the mundane human eye.
The passing mechanical noises of his dusty computers were Ahmad’s only companion, as he skimmed through blurry mug shots of a seemingly random assortment of individuals on his bottommost screen.
If there were anyone else in the room to see Ahmad’s face, they would have noticed that the olive-skinned man’s eyes lacked any semblance of focus or pigmentation, rendering them quite inhuman in appearance.
The eyes were something akin to pure white in color, even though a simple descriptor alone did not convey the foreignness leaking out of them. “White” was far from a fitting way to describe the pervading sense of wrongness his eyes would have struck any unacquainted observer with. It was as if they were strippled of all colors the human mind could possibly conceive, leaving an inexplicable glimmering void in their place. His pupils took a very light shade of gray, which barely distinguished them from the sea of whiteness enclosing them.
While the man continued to regard the array of photos displayed on the screen, his eyes beheld something entirely different. His brain registered it as a jumble of loosened cotton balls, for visually, its fleeting imprint upon his mind bore something superficially comparable to untidy white fibers in the process of unraveling.
However, a more curious pattern emerged upon closer examination. The metaphorical “fibers” perfectly bridged the gaps between the unruly configuration of pictures laid before the man, constantly pulsing however briefly, evoking the image of blood veins.
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Ahmad flinched when the fibers abruptly started twitching violently in all directions, registering the amalgamation of the previously separate strings of translucent fiber as they lost tension and folded into a nondescript gray ball until entirely vanishing from his view.
He groaned in pain as a violent throb overtook his head, pounding it with the force of a blunt industrial metal beam. Collapsing onto the monotone white floor, the Archivist struggled to stifle his instinctual urge to scream, which only subsided after a few minutes of agony.
After gathering his strength, Ahmad stood up, pushing the decrepit office chair beside him. Then, he fumbled for a switch to his right, only reaching it after he took a couple weighty steps.
As the switch flipped, the faint blue glow no longer lingered on the screens, their internal circuits damaged beyond salvaging, even with meta technology.
After exiting the pitch dark room and walking down a dimly lit hallway with only a few torches to guide him, the stout-figured man came upon a staircase shrouded in a glimmering layer of energy.
With a hint of calm satisfaction across his concealed face, Ahmad muttered, “It is confirmed, then.”
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Eddie awoke from a nightmare.
What the nightmare was, he could not tell.
Judging from the unpleasantly warm sweat covering his limbs, Eddie decided that some things are better left uninvestigated.
Harsh wind assaulted his face, forcing him to instinctively search for the blanket that sat on top of his tactical backpack.
He quickly found that his backpack was missing, and preliminary searches of the surrounding area within a hundred yard radius only yielded burned bushes and decaying tree branches.
He stood on a barren landscape with few signs of life in his immediate vicinity, a sight that would not have looked out of place in mountain ranges consumed by wildfires.
It did not take Eddie more than half an hour to concede the direness of his situation. He was stranded in mountains whose terrain he did not recognize, and given the shallowness of breath and the overwhelming cold that was affecting him, it was more than likely he was well above the ideal altitude for the human body.
Regardless of whoever took his backpack, it cut him off from his only reliable supply of rations and water for the foreseeable future.
His body shivering, Eddie sneered at the thought of trying to locate water on this lifeless landscape. His body temperature was rapidly dropping from the evaporation of perspiration that dotted his body. He could already feel his fingertips going numb, and death would arrive much sooner with hypothermia than dehydration.
Eddie was not sure if he should count a quicker death as a blessing.
The desolation around him reminded him too much of a scene from his disorganized memory, one that he would prefer to keep out of his mind as much as possible.
The helpless screams of blurred figures, an impossibly tall column of all-consuming flame, a melting school bag, and…
Edward Fujimoto shut his eyes, his heart beating uncontrollably fast. His arm muscles tensed up, as if expecting a heavy blow from an unspecified direction.
After a moment had passed, he warily strode downhill, unaware of a shadowy figure watching him from atop.