A solitary man sits in an abandoned facility and a soft hum fills the air. The room around him is pristine, immaculate walls are a painful steril white there is a machine running in the corner with a conveyor belt feeding what appears to be some sort of recycling machine. Materials, anything you could imagine; refuse, metal, wood, human or animal bodies are all being fed into this machine. In front of the man is a terminal, despite the technology displayed the terminal itself seems rather basic the display black the words a dark contrasting green and a thick blocky square keeps writing out messages.
Scan complete.. Materials reconstituted.. Composite material completed.
Initializing program.. Do you wish to proceed? Y/N
The man calmly presses the Y button.
Project M4R10N3TT3 requires authorization level 5... Project Access has been logged... Notifying Administrator...
Password required:
The block blinks as it awaits the password. The man grimaces and pats himself down as if looking for something, he grumbles quietly before digging out a cigarette case, he flicks it open to reveal several pristine cigarettes and on the inside cover, opposite of the smokes was a small penciled peice of paper. He smoothes it out before plunking in the code.
Password confirmed...
Error... Unknown variable found... Isolating... Foreign energy discovered... Notifying Administrator...
Alert! Seek shelter immeadiatly.. Radioactive component found: M4N4
"Wha.. Huh..?" The man looks at the room with the conveyor belt and then the computer. There are no bells, whistles or alarms going off just the computer screen lighting up with a warning. The computer screen lights up with a bright, blue box, fixed inside of the blue box is a large triangle with a radioactive symbol on it before it promptly shuts off and is replaced with a new screen.
Administrator has flagged this terminal. Your access has been temporarily revoked, please standby.
Scratching his head the man is starting to get a bad feeling and he climbs to his feet, shuffling to the phone but before he can pick it up it begins to ring. Hesitant for the first two rings he quickly picks it up. "This is Samson..."
"Dr. Samson. This is Stephan Hammond, I am an adminstrator and your terminal just flagged for unauthorized access."
"Mr. Hammond, listen.. I don't think you understand I don't have network access down here I am working on sub level 1 on the replicator project." Dr. Samson smoothly lies, the administrator is not authorized to know about his project, nobody is except for the boss.. Gods forbid someone finds out they are trying to build robots that can build other robots everyone would be screaming about mankind ending.
After a moment the administrator, Mr. Hammond responds. "That is affirmative I have you logged into sublevel one.. four hours ago and you have not left.. That's strange I shouldn't have access to your terminal if you don't have network access.. Uhh.. is it possible someone piped some cable down to you..?"
Dr. Samson rubs his forhead and sighs at the idiot, there are at least 20 feet of concrete, one does not simply 'pipe' cable down. "Listen. Mr. Hammond is it..? I am actually really busy I need you to terminate your connection and --"
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"W..What the hell..! Stay back.. Stay AWAY.. ahh... AAAAAHHHHH...!--"
The phone disconnects, it beeps for a few seconds before it goes completely dead. Dr. Samson immeadiatly turns cold as his stomach knots after hearing the bloodcurdling scream across the landline. Finally, as if in a delayed response the building begins to light up, alarms go off, sprinkler systems go off. The phone springs to life and immeadiatly dies again. His computer starts to light up.
Initializing...
Before promptly shutting down, only to boot back up and shut down. Dr. Samson stared in confusion.. They had state of the art technology down here, the generators are hundreds of years before their time and the cost for a single one was close to a million dollars, it boasted a garuntee of stable energy output and it was supposed to have a reserved power storage that would last a month after it was disconnected from a source.
Not that any of that mattered, he was a rational man and he refused to be scared of 'the unknown' so he marched towards the door and opened it. Ignoring the growing pit of worry in his stomach as he made his way to the elevator, with the power surging he opted to take the stairs. A few flights later a breathless doctor catches his breath as the alarms continued to wail. He opened the door to the first floor and what met him was a disturbing amount of carnage. His rational mind rebeled as the smell hit him for a moment and he closed the door and promptly threw up down the steps he just walked up.
Shaking now with fear, he tried to rationalize what was happening. He worked for Starstrike Eneterprises, a technology company that claimed that they were "Aiming for the stars" In fourty years sustainable space travel was just around the corner, they had already colonized the moon but the effects of the lack of gravity on a body were still a problem and they had been working on a new project to develope more realistic gravity using a new energy type. Dr. Samson was not a stupid man, his mind whirred and he could only assume there was an energy breach of some kind and now a team of people were purging everyone in the building as a safety measure.
He quickly opened the door and began to sprint down the hallway, he may not be able to escape through the entrance or exit but there was a garbage disposal he could disable and flee. He got about ten more feet before a man in kevlar and a weapon popped out into the hallway. He threw his hands up, expecting the worst.
"Oh god.. please don't shoot me..! I have money.. all of it is yours.. please..!" He babbled, his mind caving under the looming shadow of the barrel pointed his way.
"Shut the fuck up..!" The man hushed him in a strained and quiet voice as he ran over and shoved the doctor against the ground. "Are you trying to get us killed.. Why the hell would I shoot you with those things around here..?"
"Wha.. What is happening..?" Dr. Samson stammers "I was on sub.. sub level 1.."
"You missed it all then, it's been four goddamn hours and everything is gone to absolute shit.. The sky split open, the oceans started on fire, ant colonies grew 10 sizes bigger, you havn't seen outside but a forest appeared out of thin air. Everyones phones just connected to each other, walkies don't work.. My ammo explodes now.. That part was pretty cool.." He breathes hard as if explaining everything was straining.
"Are.. Are you insane..?" The Doctor simply couldn't believe it.. This man must be a lunatic, he was about to try and run before the most terrifying thing he had ever seen crawled around the corner. The biggest cockroach he had ever seen, its physical size almost plugged the hallway and he simply pointed, mute in his terror.
"Oh shit..!" The man immeadiatly started shooting, the bullets landed on the chitonous shell and ripped huge chunks out with each shot, a bright explosion ripping the bug to peices and the man immeadiatly got up and started sprinting. The doctor stumbled to follow, glancing back to his horror to see several more crawling around the corner, smaller, dog sized ones crawling along the walls. They shrunk and compressed their shells and began to catch up.. He slipped on some blood and the roaches were on him in seconds before everything went black.
Meanwhile on sub-level 1 behind a simple door a machine quietly struggled. The room filling with a soft hum only to cut out. The screen lit back up.
Initializing... Error.
Initializing... Error.
Initializing... Error.