Oracle opened the reinforced doors, a soft hiss of air escaping accompanying the movement, revealing Sir Alain and Sir Oswald lounging comfortably on well-worn sofas. Oswald’s eyes shot open and he rose, his weapon at the ready, but Alain simply stayed laying there, a frown rolling over his face despite his closed eyes.

“Here so soon?” he asked.

Elli and I looked at each other incredulously even as Oswald turned to stare, a grin tugging at his lips.

“Yeah. We would’ve taken our time if we’d known how much you were enjoying yourself,” Elli answered.

Alain nodded, sitting up and turning sideways on the sofa, his eyes fluttering open to look over our motley group.

“Good to see you both in one piece,” Sir Alain said, before yawning loudly. His eyes flicked to Oracle and he chuckled. “So, that’s the little demon that trapped us here. What's his story?”

Eadric snickered and stepped forward.

“This is Oracle, the base's information droid. It's shown us some pretty amazing stuff, explaining the history of this place and its purpose. We're all guests here, it seems.”

“More than that,” I piped in. “We’re apparently fated to remake the old world.”

Alain laughed.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. You’d be surprised at how many half-cocked robots in ruins were given the same final mission. Save humanity. Build back better. Between the rads and chems, all our ancestors went nuts.” He looked about the room appreciatively. “Can’t say that this one here isn’t the best one I’ve ever seen though. This level of preservation and operation is just amazing.”

Oracle clicked and whirred.

“I am . . . pleased you enjoy your new home. Shall I . . . show you your rooms?”

We all shared a long look.

“Doesn’t seem dangerous,” Elli said excitedly, her eyes gleaming above a beautiful smile. “I mean, the defensive devices outside can keep us safe, and Oracle seems to like us.”

“Humans are good . . . I like humans,” Oracle answered.

“Yeah, but what about the mechs?” I asked. “We’ll have to get them over here or at least park them outside the gates.”

“Time to see if new tech plating can face down old tech tube fire?” Sir Eadric asked.

We all laughed; it was rather clear how that sort of a confrontation would end.

“Oracle,” I said. “You seem to have a lot of control over the place. Can you tell the weapons outside to hold their fire while we bring in our companion and our vehicles.”

Everyone turned to face the droid as it burred and clicked.

“The turrets . . . they can be given new commands . . . I can turn off targeting and response . . . give transmitters and codes to install.”

“Conrad is going to love this,” Oswald cut in, breaking into a wide smile.

“Aren’t we all?” Alain added, leaning back into the cushions of the sofa to emphasize his point.

“The tour . . . has not completed. Not all present humans . . . have seen the video file. Shall we recommence?” Oracle asked.

Alain sighed and stood, nodding his assent. Soon, we began walking again, Oracle resuming its tour guide role, floating ahead and leading us through the pristine hallways. The droid repeated the presentation we had seen earlier, projecting the same crimson-hued broadcast onto the walls. The balding, muscular figure spoke with the same grim determination, detailing the collapse of the old world and the remnants left behind.

Alain and Oswald took it all in stride, watching without expression as the presentation rolled through, then nodding their understanding as we filled in our own details of everything we’d covered with the droid so far.

As we walked and talked, Oracle showed off the marvels of the base. There were a lot of rooms, some large and filled by rows of sturdy bunks and lockers that suggested a military or worker housing, but many were smaller and had almost certainly been repurposed, such as a guild bureaucrat’s scribery, to become functional homes.

It was obvious that the place could comfortably hold a few hundred people with its current configuration, and as we moved onward, we descended a level deep into the earth itself. The air grew cooler, and the walls turned into rough-hewn stone, giving the space an earthy, cavernous feel. At the end of a long winding tunnel, the space opened up into a vast storage room, filled end to end with metal shelving, crates, and boxes. Rows and rows of old-tech goods lined the shelves, most of them more Mreh meals, and on a glance I guessed there were enough here to last a full population decades if not longer.

A massive cylindrical device caught our attention, its label reading McAffy’s Pure Potable Water Processor. The slogan underneath promised, Guaranteed to keep you refreshed and ready, one sparkling sip at a time!

“This facility is . . . designed to hold . . . emergency population nutrition and . . . can withstand heavy attack,” Oracle noted. “The water is drawn . . . from deep . . . it is almost wholly impervious to chem . . . or attempted nuclear irradiation strikes.”

“Impressive,” Alain muttered, his tone incredulous. “Something like this, it couldn’t be taken by siege. Not in a million years.”

Oswald looked over at him. “You’re Knight Commander. What are you going to tell the Duke?”

“This isn’t the Duke’s quest. It’s not even the Scavenger’s Guild’s, really. This is his and her thing,” Alain replied. They both shifted their eyes in our direction.

“Scavenger Master Boyerman wants us to set up a manufactory for advanced goods,” I replied, eyeing him with care. “This looks like the perfect place to use to supply that. I’m not saying anything if you aren’t.”

Alain nodded.

“No word to anyone. This place is full of sacrilege with those Toran descendants infesting the place out there, and I don’t doubt this big a find would spur on a civil war as all the lords come out to lay claim. It’d be a mess.”

“Besides that,” Elli chimed in, “This place makes for a nice little keep of our own.”

Eadric chuckled beside her as Oswald and Alain cocked their heads in confused wonder.

“She’s right,” I said. “It’s not so far away, wasn’t too hard to get to, and Oracle already said we can learn to control the place. There’s no reason we can’t make our own thing here.”

“Sounds like treason,” Alain said stiffly. He cracked a smile. “Like it matters. Everything I’ve said sounds like twice as much treason and stinks of heresy. Yeah. Let’s see if we can’t do something with this place. You two can handle the tech, we can do the mechs. It’ll have to be something for the future; we can’t just set up here and now half-baked. Besides, I’ve got some things to do back in the city.”

“If . . . conversation is done . . . shall we move on?” Oracle asked. We nodded and allowed him to continue.

The droid led us out of the storage area, into another sloping corridor that opened into a nexus of passageways. Without any pause, Oracle took the first right, moving us into sight of a metallic sliding door labeled, ‘Holographic Training Simulator’.

“Holograms!” Elli gasped excitedly.

I couldn’t help but be enthused as well; we’d seen them in some old tech, but never in a way that was truly useful. Just advertisements or entertainment; and usually corrupted, glitchy. Or otherwise worn down.

That made me think of CD. He hadn’t been spewing any of his nonsense for a good while now. Maybe it was because of how deep underground we’d gone? Would be something to consider.

Oracle hovered in front of the door, and it slid open automatically, allowing us entrance. We walked in, seeing another cavernous chamber into the ceiling of which had been positioned numerous holoprojectors that were in visibly good repair. A series of cabinet-sized panels stretch a quarter the length of one rocky wall, and the buttons there blinked amidst a forest of toggle switches. At its farthest end were three terminals, all of them alive with light and evidently awaiting input.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“The . . . Holographic Training Simulator . . . once understood . . . will allow you to level your abilities quickly . . . while also allowing you . . . to perform under . . . stressful situations . . . that would normally be . . . dangerous . . . in the real world,” Oracle informed us.

Eadric let out a whistle.

“Safe Live Training,” he said, shaking his head. “What will they come up with next?”

Oswald shook his head. “We’re so far away from all this, we’re still trying to make tube fire work.”

“I will demonstrate the process,” Oracle interjected. He moved to the console, typing commands, only for each of them to be answered with a shrill beep. “Much is corrupted . . . processing . . . I have found a program that is completely error free. Engaging now.”

Oracle continued tapping on the console, his mechanical fingers moving with precision. A pleasant sound, lower-toned beep signaled success, and we watched in anticipation as the holographic projectors above hummed to life.

One moment, all was a cavernous chamber. A moment later, the rocky walls and floor faded away to be replaced by a bustling and alien worksite, clearly a place from the world of the ancients. Elli gasped and I followed her with one of my own.

The place was amazing.

It was an exotic landscape of strange, complex machines and bewildering technology. Some of them I knew a bit about, but so many I didn’t, and it made me wonder about how many more artifacts we’d permanently lost from the old era. The air was filled with an incessant hum, punctuated by occasional sharp noises that I had never heard before. The floor was smooth and uniform, like one continuous and unbroken cobblestone that seemed to go on forever. Over top of it, quite strangely, people had painted lines in random places, all bright yellow or black.

And there were the longest machines I’d ever seen. Made of shiny metals and plastics, their metallic housing held countless exposed moving parts—gears, belts, and pistons that operated with a precision and speed that didn’t make sense. Long black belts of some pliant material through the worksite like endless, mechanical streets, carrying various objects and materials to and fro.

It was altogether dizzying.

Workers moved through the simulation, clad in sleek, fitted outfits made from materials I couldn't identify, adorned with symbols and logos that made me wonder if it weren’t the heraldry of their time. One of the workers, a man whose helmet said he was named “Foreman”, stepped before us.

“Welcome to Workplace Safety, The Dangers of the Modern Workplace,” Foreman said, his voice gruff. “

“Damn if this doesn’t feel real. Like real real,” Eadric remarked, glancing around in awe.

Elli hand snaked sideways, taking my own.

“To begin, please watch as I demonstrate some of the consequences of poor workplace safety etiquette.”

Our eyes followed where he gestured, just in time to see the worker reach too close to one of the long black belts, only to somehow fall bodily upon it.

“Roll off!” I yelled. But it was too late, in the blink of an eye, the hapless man was brought into a metallic box, where the sound of juicy grinding commenced, and a torn up carcass exited the box from the other side.

“In all of the burnt oily hells,” Elli moaned.

“Ouch,” stated Foreman without any emotion. “That must have hurt. In the modern workplace, it is our duty to ourselves and to America to produce arsenal and war supplements safely and without hurting ourselves or the machines that we operate.”

A scream came from behind us, and we turned to see a man get run over by some sort of wheeled mech, two metallic arms sticking straight forward from its front. The man was somehow scissored in half, blood splattering everywhere.”

“As you can see, the arms factory is a dangerous place. Keep your eyes out for anything.”

I shook my head.

“Is this all you’ve got?” I asked, looking around the factory. I couldn’t see the droid, so I stepped forward to explore, but my foot splashed down into what had to have been the slipperiest puddle to have ever existed. My feet flew out from under me, and I felt a moment of weightlessness before the back of my head slammed against the ground, exploding on impact like an overweight melon.

The simulation paused, the details of my fatal slip highlighted in glaring red above me.

Fatality. Cause: Puddle unnoticed due to not being marked by Slippery When Wet safety sign.

I watched, now a ghost to the program, as calamity befell the others. First a creaking cracking sound from above led to the decapitation of Eadric by a collapsing scaffold. Then a bulbous machine started to whistle, and Elli leaped sideways as a blast of super-heated steam exploded from its side, boiling the rest of the party alive.

They all joined me as ghosts, laughing and touching their faces and elbows, as I watched Elli bounce around, avoiding death after death until, finally, she was wrecked by a device that tore through the ceiling and exploded the entire factory floor on impact.

All of us clapped and cheered as her ghost joined our crew, and moments later the projectors faded and we were back in the cavernous room in which we had started.

“That was intense,” Elli panted, catching her breath.

“It would seem . . . that the room . . . will require . . . some repair and adjustment,” Oracle informed us. “Shall we move on?”

We left the chamber talking animatedly of Elli’s parkour through the mad facility,

We moved onward, reentering the Nexus and following Oracle to a vast library. While the shelves were filled with traditional books and manuals, it was the glowing screens – Digital Archives, as Oracle called them – that captivated us. These terminals were quite different to the ones I’d seen before. They had a lot more options, and were more colorful. Plus they held the ability to display pictures, video, and even project small holograms as Oracle demonstrated to us. It had an immense array of subjects and topics, but showed the same corruption problems we’d been encountering everywhere else.

Despite several failed attempts, Oracle finally found one that worked, and all at once we were watching a historical module on something the ancients called “The Great War.” We watched in awe as massive tube guns exploded dirt and men, the soldiers hiding in trenches deeper than a man could stand. Alain signaled Oracle to turn it off after a particularly grueling holo of a chem attack on gasping soldiers kicked in, and we moved on.

Sir Alain winced as the gas attack scene played.

“That's enough,” he said, cutting the display short. “We've seen enough of their suffering.”

Next Oracle brought us to the “mess hall,” a place that resembled the feasting halls of nobles. Oracle described it as a place for hot, fresh food, and showed us a variety of cooking appliances and ‘food dispensers’ that would, when filled with the right ‘mix’, produce meals at the touch of a button. Oracle attempted to demonstrate by entering a code into one machine that he said would produce “Patriot Pasta”, but the machine in question grunted, sparked, and died.

“Not everything can last forever,” Oswald joked, tapping the defunct machine.

The tour continued to the ‘Medical Bay’, a well-equipped area that felt like a blend between a healer's hut and a workshop. There were cots, medical supplies, and strange machines bubbling with greenish liquids.

As we walked through the medical bay, Oracle floated beside us, his mechanical voice breaking the silence.

“This facility is . . . equipped with advanced . . . medical technology,” he began. “With the proper equipment . . . we can perform procedures . . . that enhance . . . physical and mental abilities.”

Elli raised an eyebrow.

“Enhancements? Like making us stronger or smarter?”

Oracle's eye blinked.

“Correct. We can augment . . . muscle strength, cognitive function . . . and other biological aspects . . . but the current stock is . . . very limited. A trained bio-evolutionary scientist . . . can grow more augmentation materials . . . using devices we have in operation. To prepare for augmentory . . . grafting and surgery, a sample must be . . . taken and analyzed.”

I crossed my arms.

“Samples? What do you mean?”

“When it is time, the AutoDoc will need small samples of your body tissue,” Oracle explained, “to analyze your genetic structure and determine any biological modifiers that must be accounted for in the implantation process.”

“So, it’s like monster core surgery?” Elli asked. Oracle clicked, beeped, and whirred, then began moving out of the chamber.

“Follow me . . . It is time . . . to end the tour . . . and see the command center.”

Heading back to the Nexus, Oracle guided us down another descending path and into what had to have been the lowest level of the facility. The doors to it were locked with simple password terminals, like the ones we’d encountered before, but we didn’t need to hack anything since Oracle already had the codes ready. The double steel doors that guarded the place opened, and we stepped inside.

Unlike many of the looming and vast, seeming dug on the fly rooms of previous, this place was full and cramped. The space was dominated by walls of toggled control panels, blinking terminals, and a whole wall of screens that showed visual feed of a variety of areas located throughout the base. All around us, the old tech hummed, no doubt consuming more energy than the city of Alnda ever would. I peered closely at one of the screens, surprised to see some of the hallways we had walked through.

Oracle floated to the center of the room, his eye gleaming as he surveyed the array of equipment.

“This is the Command Center,” he stated, his mechanical voice echoing slightly in the expansive room. “From here . . . all base operations . . . can be monitored and managed. You have control . . . over . . . surveillance, communications, environmental systems, and defenses.”

I walked up to one of the control panels, gingerly touching the sleek, glassy surface. Elli came to my side, as the other knights spread out, examining the place as well.

“This is incredible,” she whispered. “It's like having the eyes and ears of the whole base right here with us.”

Oracle hovered beside us, pointing out a specific set of controls.

“This panel . . . governs the defensive turrets. You can . . . deactivate them . . . from here . . . allowing safe passage . . . for your companion . . . and vehicles.”

Sir Alain leaned over the panel, peering at the screens with a furrowed brow.

“So, we could control everything from this room? The turrets, the gates, even the cooling we felt when we came in?”

“Correct,” Oracle affirmed. “All systems are . . . integrated . . . into the Command Center . . . You can monitor and adjust . . . as needed.”

“Let's do it,” I said. “Elli and I can keep the fort here. Rest of you go grab anything you need from the mech bay and bring your mechs in. We’ll stay the night, grab some loot for when we had back, and spend the rest of the time learning this place. For later.”

“For later,” Alain said, looking me in the eye. He grinned. “Never knew I’d be taking orders from a serf.”

“Never knew I’d be giving them to a knight,” I retorted.

Elli giggled.

“You’ve got a good head, Alaric. We’ll go get stuff done and be back in a few hours. Keep the fort. We’ll see you tonight.”

Oracle's eye glowed.

“Mission parameter . . . turn off defensive measures until knights have left . . . Turn them on until knights return . . . Mission Acknowledged,” it said. Oracle began to manipulate the controls and moments later a series of red lights blinked across the control panel, signaling the deactivation.

Sir Oswald watched the process intently.

“So, that's it? The turrets are off?”

“Yes,” Oracle replied. “Defenses are currently . . . in standby mode. Your companion . . . and vehicles . . . can now enter the base safely.”