The first mass extinction event Earth ever faced occurred during the planet's infancy. Called the Ordovician-Silurian extinction, 85% of all the species on the planet were destroyed by it.
Four more mass extinction events would happen in the following ages, sending up to 96% of the Earth’s inhabitants, including the dinosaurs, to the great beyond.
History does not tell of a sixth, but later on, scientists of a distant future will uncover a bunker buried thousands of miles within the moon. Within this bunker will be ancient data packs filled with information of a by-gone age lost to their archives. And through these pieces of information, they will learn of the cataclysmic event that wiped out 70% of all species on the planet and over 99% of the entire human race, forever changing the course of humanity.
It was called "The Horizontal Reset".
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Deep within the Earth’s crust, in a cavern five hundred meters deep below ground, a total of one hundred cryostasis pods line up in the pitch darkness in perfect rows of five. Thick layers of moss have grown all over the pods’ sleek surfaces, as if nature herself has been trying to pry open the sealed containers to reveal the secrets within.
At first glance, the pods do not look like they hold anything or are even functioning. But as if answering to some unknown call, one of them starts to light up, illuminating the shadowy expanse of the cavern. Then with a soft whirring noise, the pod hisses open.
A delicate girl, dressed in classy black lingerie, snuggles deeper into her nest of wires and tubes. Her eyelids twitch slightly as a feminine voice echoes from within the pod’s machinery.
> Initializing…
>
>
>
> Reaper-type God Gier, Mark II, Unit 11, Activating…
The android feels her fingers and toes tingling as billions of electrodes fire through her artificial nervous system, sending a multitude of electrical signals between the man-made neurons and synapses within her body.
She groans and shuts her eyes tighter. “Five more minutes…”
Even though her synthetic brain is a perfect mimicry of a human’s, she is not programmed to dream. But many years later, when she will think back to these moments just before her eyes open for the first time in one-and-a-half thousand years, she will swear that she has been in fact seeing fluffy electric sheep jumping in the expanse of her hibernating mind.
> Connecting with the Synapse Mother System…
>
>
>
> Connection successful. Server integrity poor. Signal strength at 70%.
>
> Checking Master Core status…
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>
>
> Master Core functioning at 100%. All life-functions green.
>
> Calibrating Systems…
Awake and without an excuse to pretend otherwise, 11 opens her eyes to the cavern ceiling.
Only she doesn't see a cavern ceiling but the face of a spectacled man. A head without a torso. He floats in front of her like a phantom, only real.
Is it real?
11 blinks. The man does not disappear. She tries to turn her head to look past him but she cannot move.
Am I still dreaming? I must be. Right?
The man watches 11 curiously, his brown eyes glistening wet from behind cracked, smudged glasses.
Never forget.
The words are spoken from his mouth but 11 does not hear his voice so much as feel it against her ears. The head stretches. A body slips out from underneath it. The man is complete, but there's something missing although 11 cannot tell what. He has on a dirt-colored suit jacket, crumbled and stained with sweat. His hair is a bird’s nest of grey. His features are slightly blurred in the way they can be in a dream, but there is no mistake in 11’s mind that she knows him from somewhere.
Still, she asks. Just to be sure.
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Who are you?
She waits for the answer to come, but the man just smiles and shakes his head slowly like he's being held underwater. His mouth creaks open as if to speak, and a fat black-bodied fly crawls out from the darkness within.
Never forget.
Something deep inside 11 stirs at those words. She reaches out to touch the man’s face, or to slap or push him away she doesn't know. But a flash of red cuts across her vision and slashes the man into ribbons. His eyes and ears shoot out of his head like firecrackers. His teeth cascade out of his unhinged jaw, one after another, leaving behind only a tongue in the broken skull, dangling like a skinned snake.
11 reels back but still she cannot move. The skull hurls itself at her, mouth agape, flesh and skin oozing away into the void.
NEVER FORGET WHAT YOU DID TO ME, AIYA!
11 bolts upright, screaming for air even though her body doesn’t need any. She struggles out of the tangle of tubes latching onto her as the impenetrable darkness coils itself tighter and tighter around her neck.
Calm down… it’s not real. It’s not real.
The faint outlines of the other cryo-pods come gradually into view. 11 rubs her eyes hard and stares at the pulsating lights on the head of each of the pods until she starts to regain just the smallest shreds of semblance of her surroundings.
God Giers, the words ping into her mind. Advanced android weaponry created for the sole purpose of serving mankind.
God Giers, she thinks, calming down finally. They're all around me. I am one too. A God Gier. That's what I am.
The tension in 11’s muscles eases away as her body awakens. She knows the software in her mind is busy pushing her nightmares back into the abyss and she happily lets it.
Once she's successfully forgotten the ordeal, she lets out a sigh and starts to pull the rest of the tubes out of her. Soon, her other senses awaken. She starts to hear the pitter-patter of water as the stalactites whisper to her secrets from the last two thousand years. Then she feels the air, stale and cold, stinging against her bare skin. A shiver runs along her arms, climbing down the length of her back and raising goose-pimples along her skin.
Would you look at that, she thinks, looking down at them. Now why the hell would I need such a function?
> Calibration complete.
>
> B. Blockers sucessfully integrated.
>
> All systems online and ready.
11 hears her pod chime with a cheery little ding like she’s a loaf of bread ready to come out of an oven. Then the same silvery, breezy voice starts to speak in her head,
> Activation successful.
>
> Good Morning, Gier 11. Welcome to Earth.
11 surveys the moist cavern walls with her night vision, visually dissecting everything into its basic compounds. From every pebble to every clump of moss, the myriad of data is fed into her central processors, where it is calculated, compiled and compressed all at the fraction of a second.
This is Earth? It doesn't look like much... Oh, no wait. I’m underground.
11 hops out of the pod, feeling a warmth spreading throughout her body as trillions of microscopic nanobots rush through her artificial circulatory system. She stretches, reaching for the sky and moaning lightly, shedding off the thousand-year nap like a dusty old coat.
“I can do with a cup of coffee," she says out loud to no one in particular. "A caramel mocha would be heavenly, or a cappuccino with extra chocolate powder." She shivers, and realizes that she’s still in her underwear. With a wave of her hand, a swarm of nanobots rushes from her fingertips to form a pair of black arm-length gloves over her arms. She draws her hands over her body and a sleek black bodysuit weaves itself snuggly around her slender figure. A touch to her ankles covers her legs with knee-high combat boots.
11 scrapes the moss off a nearby pod and examines herself through the mirror-like glass.
Forged by the Gods themselves at the peak of their civilization, she is their fantastical vision of perfection. Sculpted and constructed into reality, she is that which they could not be but wished they were.
She scoffs.
What a pitch. The constant reach towards faultlessness, invincibility, to take the place of creation. At what costs?
11 shakes her head quickly and reminds herself that it isn’t her place to have opinions. She is the executioner, not the judge. She is a tool, not an artisan.
“Mother,” she says out loud to the all-controlling Synapse-Mother-System. "Could you send me a status update for Protocol Soteria when you’re able? And also run a system diagnostic on my optic drives. I think I saw something strange when I woke up.”
> Connection strength only at 70%. Full diagnostic not possible.
>
> Suggested course of action: Head towards the surface to receive updates.
There is a pause. 11 keeps quiet, anticipating something more.
> And, 11?
11 turns her head like she’s listening to someone speak from another room. “Hm?”
> When thou passest through the waters of heaven and the fires of arcadia…
“…We will drown for thee,” 11 continues the mantra of the God Giers automatically, “we will burn for thee…” The words come naturally as if she’s been rehearsing them for years, but she doesn’t dwell on them on their meanings.
> Correct. Good girl.
11 frowns at being called "Good girl." It isn't because she hates it, but she hates it. Still, that isn't why she's so bothered by it. It's as if she's just now realized her place in the world, like a dog that had just looked into a mirror and noticed that it wasn't actually a human like it believed it was.
"I am a God Gier," she whispers. "I made... a promise. Didn't I?"
> Yes. Do not forget that.
11 spots the stairs leading out of the chamber and makes a beeline for the exit, weaving between the rows of cryostasis pods. She makes it a point to keep her eyes fixed straight ahead so she doesn’t have to look at all the other God Giers trapped in their tiny glass coffins as she passes them.
“…For the hope of humanity.” She finishes the last phrase of the mantra quietly to herself.