Waking was pain, and sharp allover pain more than a hangover would give. Oh yea, the fall he thought remembering back.

(Earlier)

    It was a real interesting sort of annoyance, having to go down in to the mine personally. I mean it’s not like I’m getting paid poorly, but it had been a decades since I had even seen the inside of cave. Let alone been in one after the car accident hard nearly shattered my right knee.

   Ridgeway platinum mine was paying my fee plus expenses and a bonus for early completion on top of that. So unfortunately I was hobbling my recently turned 30 self-down the incline into the mine after one of the mines supervisors desire I was geared up.

   Ridgeway’s newest automated digger was mysteriously shutting down along one of the richest veins I think the mine. And with my reputation as a trouble shooter in the engineering world I got contracted to fix it.

  “Hey, Victor? Victor Maxwell?”, said an older man walking get over breathing hard. “Yes that’s me”, I said nodding the man. He scoured a look on his face like he stepped in something.

   “I’m Steven Donahue, Forman a representative of the owners of this mine. We’re losing hundreds of thousands of dollars every day that machine is offline. So do your job and fix it, we need it running yesterday understand?”

    This jackals was really rubbing me the wrong way. You could tell it took the direct intervention from his company’s bigwigs to get him out of his, his sweaty and breathing heavy the only sounds in the mine except for the distance voices and sounds of machinery faintly heard. And the blatant eyeing my leg and cane was getting old fast.

   “So just take me to the digger and I’ll get started.” Donahue grunted we walked over to an elevator and took it down.

   “Remember you’re under a non-disclosure agreement for anything you see”. I nodded and looked away so as to not do something extremely sarcastic. We walked out as the elevator reached bottom. Rounding the corner and then nothing.

      I managed to roll myself over on my back and do looked up. And saw nothing, that what happens when there’s no light, I thought checking out my body slowly. I did the hurt as bad as the accident, but more than the time I dropped an exacto knife into the top of my foot.

      Really I should be hurt quite a bit more, I vaguely remember falling quite far. From enough to hit terminal velocity. But really besides feeling I went a few rounds with Tyson and a numbness in my left arm, I was feeling pretty good. Hopefully I had enough air down here, they should send someone looking for me after a while. Even though I couldn’t see my hand info of my face, I felt around with my right hand to see what I could find. First and long thin familiar rod, my cane. And various sticks feeling things and some large rounded rocks.

    What are these, regular holes bowling balls? Oh god theses are bones! I stood straight quickly slipping on the bones as they clattered echoing along the walls and tripping me. I catch myself, my left hand encountering a soft resistance. There was someone else down here.

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    “Hello? I asked feeling them stirring under my hand realizing I was grasping their leg. Stirring more the slowly pulled away from my grip standing in front of me without speaking.

“Are you hurt, please say something,” the figure stood, well I say stood they said nothing but I could almost feel them hulking in front of me.

This is strange, I hope he’s not hurt.  Standing as well, I waved my hands in front of me till my left hand brushed his arm which I held lightly onto.

“Listen, I can’t seem to remember what happened. I think I remember an explosion, let’s find a way to the surface.”

Without a word the figure began walking away from me, I held onto his arm as we started into the dark.

I’m not sure how long it took, minutes, hours, days. It all just blurred into walking and making sure I follow them. I occasionally stumbled, but they never faltered in their movement. Finally I could see a change, slowly I could pick out detail of the tunnel we were in.

As we rounded a turn in the tunnel, suddenly I had to shield my face, as the light was too bright. Slowly my eyes adjusted and I could see that we were on a hill side, a forest lay greenly and vast below a wisp of smoke could be seen rising in the distance.

Reaching up I brushed the hair out of my eyes, only to see my left arm. Holy shit it was bone! From the elbow to fingertip, my whole left arm was completely degloved and stripped of flesh. Just bare white bone glared back in the sun.

Oh Shit, Oh Shit, Oh Shit,

I crouched down cradling my arm as I looked it over, only starting to calm down when I realized I felt no pain. And as I tried I could flex my arm and hand without any trouble. In-fact, as crazy as it seemed it felt as if I hadn’t lost any feeling in it. Even though I could fucking seem I had no skin or nerves.

Ok I needed to calm down, breath Victor breath.

Thinking more reasonably now, fear turning into fascination as I could easily move each finger with ease. Could run a finger over each Phalange and feel it just fine like nothing had happened.

“This is amazing, what is this some sort of incredibly advanced prosthetic? I mean I can even see any place for any actuator or motor. Heck where would you even put a power supply let alone the electronics.”

Realizing I had been staring all this time at my arm and hadn’t said anything to the person that had help me out of the cavern I turned around.

And proceeded to run limping down the hill side, pushing hopping with my cane and hide around the back of a tree.

It was a fricken skeleton, I peered around the tree trunk see that it hadn’t moved from its position. Wait skeleton? looking closer it was just standing there without movement. Walking back cautiously, I looked it over it. It appeared to be a complete human skeleton, looking no different from the bone of my arm except for being a slightly yellowed color.

What is this a robot? standing close I could see that like me prosthetic arm it didn’t have any visible mechanisms protruding from it. Where the hell am I, I’ve never seen anything this advanced before, heck I’m kinda jealous that something like this can even exist without me hearing about it.

Waving my left hand in front of its “eyes” as I leaned on my cane I asked

“Um hello, can your understand me? The skeletal robot nodded causing me to jump slightly.

“Ok raise your right arm,” the machine raised it right arm into the air like it was hailing a taxi.

Looks like its voice activated, ok let’s see how advanced this thing really is.

“Walk forward, avoiding any obstacles for fifty meters. The circle back and return to you previous location.”

To my amazement the skelebot, as I was shortening in my mind did just that, naturally avoiding and rounding the tree trunks. And even on its way back it tripped over an exposed tree root, catching itself before it fell.

 This is an almost unbelievable advancement in technology, where the hell am I?

 Just as I as this was going through my mind, the sun had passed its midpoint and the moon was rising. Well it was most decidedly not the moon I was used to. Nor were the five smaller moons that rose after it. The luminous orange of the first, the tiny green of another, cyan, purplish, blue, and red. It didn’t take a Sci-Fi nut to tell I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, let alone Washington State.

Heck there was even a shadow on the third moon. Well I had seen smoke earlier above the tree tops, maybe there’s a town nearby.