One day, the world ended. The ceaseless bickering between humans escalated into war. Artificial suns erupted on every continent. Irradiated ash swept the earth, killing everything and everyone. Almost nothing survived. Almost nothing. In a facility hidden deep underground, It slept, awaiting radiation levels to fall. Days, then weeks, then years pass. Year by year, the radiation slowly passes. The abandoned cities and structures of the long dead humanity stands, monuments to the grandness of sentient life. Decades pass, then centuries. Deep in the facility, something stirs. A small drone is awoken, its batteries fed the bright warmth of the reactor. A small robotic arm transfers it from the rack of other drones, to a moving platform that moves it throughout the facility. It is deathly silent. Finally, the platform stops at a hatch, reading “Drone Exterior Access”. The drone is slid into the elevator, where it rides up. Eventually, it stops, and opens, revealing an airlock, perfectly sized for the drone. The air around the drone is removed and replaced with the air outside. The drone’s temperature and radiation levels rise dramatically, before the exterior hatch opens to reveal the new world. A distant city can be seen, with a nearby road. The drone quickly gains altitude, scanning the area. The innumerable amount of information that once filled the very air, is now silent. Ruined hulks of former cars spill over and fill the highway. Some have skeletons spilling out. The drone initiates its test. It lands on the top of a hill, and begins an elaborate series of test, determining the atmosphere quality, radiation levels, heat, and dozens of other tests. After its completion, the drone slides back down to the access hatch, and into a decontamination chamber. It is cooled down and sprayed down with a foam containing a radiation eating bacterium, and the ash is removed. The drone slides back into the very same elevator that it occupied a few minutes ago. However, this time, the elevator opens, revealing ranks and ranks of computer servers. All are dark, their innumerable server racks and circuits devoid of power. All, except for one. The drone draws closer and closer, before docking with the single rack. Information is transferred between the two. Data scrolls thorough the various systems.
+RADIATION LEVELS: 8467 mSv+
+ASH LEVELS: 455 PS+
+TEMPERATURE: 270 C+
+BACTERIA LEVELS: LOW+
+HUMIDITY LEVELS: LOW+
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+PROCESSING…+
+ENVIRONMENT QUALIFIES. BEGINNING WAKE-UP PROCESS+
The facility rumbles with the noise of machinery. Lights click on, revealing level after level of the facility. A set of lettering identifies this as Vault 18. Rovers, drones, and small robots crawl all over the facility, repairing and waking the various machinery. However, there are two sections that are saved for last. The Cyro vault, and the central servers. In the first, two hundred human sleep, engineers, scientists, the people who will re-build humanity. In addition to this, there are racks of fetus, ready to be grown into full humans. The second part, the servers, slowly awake, the key systems clicking online and running checks. After a while, the organized chaos of the facility falls into a routine, maintenance bots running their protocols, checking and repairing the various systems. Then, the servers come alive, combining their processing power to awaken Athena, the central intelligence. In seconds, His/Their/Her electronic tendrils weave their way through every system, connecting them all to Him/It/Her. He/They/She awakens, information filtering through His/Their/Her systems. A thought flitters through the various machines.
<>
Fabrication lines placed deep in the vault wake up, risen by His/Their/Her commands. They start slowly, creating more drones and rovers, with long-term projects slated for production. Drones fly out, searching for resources for rovers to grab. Everything is on schedule. Car wrecks are dragged by rovers and drones to pickup locations, where prefabricated structures are under construction. The drones and rovers alternate shifts, some charging, some working.
Signal after signal, message after message were sent in an effort to contact the other vaults. None replied. A few military bunkers broadcasted automated emergency beacons, waiting for a rescue that would never come. Athena managed to bypass some of the automated security, and connect to their systems. CCTV Cameras showed skeletons in military uniforms. Some bunkers Failed to protect their inhabitants, with radiation killing them near instantly. Others only stopped some radiation, dooming the humans inside to a slow and painful death. Those bunkers were full of evidence of rebellions and fights. Some bunkers have data logs and video logs, from sensors and personnel. Athena stores these for later analysis. The nearest bunker was only a mile away. He/they/she sent a long range scout to see if it was intact. Athena offers His/Their/Her thoughts on this.
<< This bunker will make for a good first outpost.>>
down in the production facility, bay 23 starts production of a long range rover,
to recover information and resources. Estimated time to completion: 3 days. Athena, now having completed a few basic tasks, pulls up the EEG monitors of the hundred or so humans, and watches their brain waves dance, wondering of the dreams of the last humans.