Maxi stood up and surveyed her surroundings. She was in an office out of some post apocalypse. There were cubicles, computers, and other equipment in various states of decay. Plant life was reclaiming the building, as vines had intruded into the space via a hole in the wall that was letting sunlight inside. A bird fluttered and flew through the window, and she could see a bug hanging out on an earth-stained divider.
Whatever had happened here, it was long ago, as nature had taken back what was once human. Maxi worried for a moment that she had traveled to a place like Chernobyl, where radiation forced people to evacuate a city and leave it to rot, but she could see other buildings through the hole in the wall that were also overgrown. If there was radiation, hopefully, it was long enough ago that she didn’t sprout two extra heads.
“Terry?” she said, but there was not a response from her HR guide. She supposed “off grid” would have the complication of no longer being connected to the network, as her phone was not getting any signal. She crept toward the collapsed wall to get a better look outside, careful not to disturb anything, as she’d seen enough TV shows to know even the plant life could be dangerous.
What she saw astonished her. It was an entire cityscape that was thick with vegetation. It wasn’t just a small town, but a metropolis, as if New York, London, or Beijing had been overgrown by a vast forest. Flocks of birds fluttered by. She could hear the call of beasts down below.
She made her way back to the elevator shaft and glanced inside. It was still the same steel architecture, with more lifts whooshing past. She contemplated going back and attempting another door but figured that reconnecting her phone to the network would alert the Company of her presence.
However, it was good to know that she could get back if she needed to escape wherever this was. She turned back to explore and almost ran into a robot that hadn’t been there moments before. She nearly jumped out of her skin before the thing said, in an all-too-familiar voice, “Greetings, player.”
“Terry?” she said and inspected the metal man standing before her. It didn’t have eyes, just a single bright white sensor in the middle of the head. His arms were mostly exposed servos, pistons, and motors, with some decaying plastic casing covering up part of the exposed innards. From the looks of it, it had been quite some time since anyone had performed maintenance on the bot, as one hand was frozen in a clutched position.
“Uh, yeah, Terry,” Post-apocalypse Terry said. “That was going to be my upgrade, but the Company wasn’t able to service all the units.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Why? What happened?”
“The apocalypse, end of the world, Armageddon, Ragnarok, the final battle, Brahma day, cats and dogs living together–”
“All right, all right. I get it. So where am I?”
“Office tower 17b, Andorra, New Catalonia, mailing code–”
“Right, you are so thorough.”
“The Terry upgrade will help with that. The new algorithms will allow me to more accurately predict what humans want when their inquiries aren’t specific.”
“So, if you’re not yet Terry, what exactly are you?”
“I’m TERANCe, Totally Enhanced Ridiculously Awesome Nice Chassis eHuman. Though my chassis has degraded a bit over the years. You wouldn’t by any chance be the Technician class, with skill in robotics repair? I can’t seem to figure out my hand,” TERANCe said, indicating his bum hand.
“No, sorry, I’m a Generalist,” Maxi said.
“Ah, no matter. Please, come with me. Terry had something he wanted me to show you, if I ever met another human.”
“You’ve met Terry? This is not some weird future, past, time travel, alternate reality, simulation thing?”
“You clearly haven’t read the terms and conditions of your employment.”
“I scanned it.”
“In Section forty-two, subsection thirteen, it clearly outlines that the Company is a multidimensional LLC responsible for safeguarding the multiverse from entropy.”
“Wait, I thought entropy just happens. Things just go from organized to messy. There isn’t really any way of avoiding it,” Maxi commented.
“Why do you think we have to vacuum so much? I must say that you are taking it rather well. Most people have a miniature panic attack when they find out they are in a multiverse.”
“The elevators took me across town in rush hour traffic, so, a neighboring dimension, why not?”
“I’ve met several Terrys.”
“What?”
“Your other question. You asked me if I met him. I met many of them. The Company was in the process of upgrading all the TERANCes when the virus spread, and most of them were digitally transferred to other dimensions, having outgrown the need for bodies. Unfortunately, my upgrade buffer was damaged, and I was left behind when the last humans fled to other locations. I’m lucky that grutomatons ignore machine life forms or else I would have become prey like all the other life forms on this planet.”
“Your printers went wild here, too?”
“Oh, dear. It seems the Company policy of containment and isolation didn’t work. I fear your dimension may be having an apocalypse, too.”
“The world is going to end over a paper jam?”
“Worlds have ended over far sillier things, like papercuts, newspaper clippings, and plumping incidents. That last one I don’t recommend – fills the world with an awful-smelling brown sludge. At least a grutomaton apocalypse turns the world into a paradise that’s only drawback is vicious predators that are attracted to human scent and can smell them from miles away.”
There was a snort and a grunt from behind. At the end of the hall was a pack of copy machines with large sharp teeth, drooling in anticipation.
“Oh, dear,” TERANCe said. “I do believe I should have anticipated this, but it has been so very long since I’ve met another human. I suggest we run.”