Novels2Search

VII - Flock

"Rosalina seems to have reached overload" I said to myself as I continued to move deeper toward the wide forest. Unlike the bamboo-like thicket, this is a wide forest with many tall and smooth trees blooming in different and varied iridescent colors. Because Rosalina is currently undergoing some sort of calibration to accommodate all the information explosion that has come her way, I'm trying to remember in my memory the direction I need to go. While holding the green disks that fell from some of the tall trees that were around me, I continued to move and move forward.

The weight of the makeshift bag made up of various storage compartments continued to weigh me down until the steps I left in the soft but compacted earth were very deep steps. All around me was the sight of different trees, everything that accompanied me on the way: some of the trees seemed to be divided into sections, and at the end of the flowers bloomed with beautiful blue petals. On some of their leaves, they fell very heavily like the green disks, from the rest they came from. On another side next to him, a tree is so tall that I can't see its top and its branches are hitting the building next to him and his room through them. I guess they look a lot like Sequoia but I'm leaving Rosalina to recognize it as unidentified and start trying to convince me it's something that existed on Earth. This forest looks as if someone engineered it for an entrance to their home or some botanical garden.

The light coming from the sun began to shade my path as I progressed deeper into the forest and the burning sun was no longer exciting. The farm of the walk became much calmer and peaceful as some of the trees began to rustle lightly in the wind that had formed. There were no bushes or grass on the ground, these were just leaves of the trees that had fallen and were probably half-rotted, but that didn't bother me to look at the top, some of which had ferns hanging between them like plant bridges. It makes you forget that only recently everything was covered in ash and civilization existed until recently.

I had already lost track of time as I continued to walk through the wide forest but the visibility began to decrease as the single light that manages to penetrate the bottom began to weaken, and this was my sign to stop and find a place to rest for the day. The situation is more sticky than yesterday - Rosalina is currently disabled until she manages to calibrate herself, so I lost the protective environment I had, who knows after we already encountered an animal before, maybe there is something that has a different thought than these leaves something more pleasant.

I manually turned on the flashlights that lit my way in the dark forest and stopped myself next to a tall tree whose branches spread all over the area that happened to grow near a skyscraper that manages to resist the push of its branches and instead, form a kind of cymbal. This is the paid place to stop and rest. I took the backpack off my back and leaned against the tree trunk. I opened one of the compartments that contained the printer and started injecting the print food I found earlier and it started working. He made light noises until a nutrient cube came out and with it, I took off my helmet and ate it. Simple and all this already filled me up, as it should.

Noises began to emerge from the branches of the tree and I immediately took the plasma rifle and began to arm him. I moved away from the tree trunk and the lights from the suit began to beam in the direction of the noise, but there was nothing there. Fear began to take shape in me and I pointed the rifle toward the branches that just kept rattling. I held tight to the trigger, not trying to release it. The ready light began to show the cause of the noise: a monkey's head began to pop right out of the collection of branches. He had very large eyes and long thin ears. He immediately got frustrated with me as if he could see my soul - fearing the worst. More heads began to emerge from the branches. It's a whole bunch of them looking at me, and judging me while I almost pulled the trigger. It feels like a battle of who will move first. It lasted for several long moments until one of them, the one closest to me decided to get off the branch and jump! The rest suddenly also started jumping one after the other!

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But what I saw I didn't expect rustling of wings began to be heard everywhere from them while each of them spread large thin wings with long thin fingers, like a big bat's. Some of them had long and strong tails like the monkeys I already know. I wasn't excited when they started flying everywhere, scattering leaves and making sounds that resembled giggling. I was so frightened that I retreated straight back to the wall of the skyscraper behind me and try to aim my weapons at them, but their rapid flight does not allow me to track even one of them. The giggles continued to be heard all over the area and one of them immediately started flying at me. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and I fired the weapon! The creature that flew straight at me immediately retreated while the slingshot hit one of the tree trunks in the line of fire and with that, the rest of the pack flew away from me, and along with their giggles echoed throughout the forest.

Everything in a single moment became quiet as I crashed on the damp ground, trying to understand what had happened and why. My heart was beating so hard that I could feel it and try to hold it from preventing me from having a heart attack from the situation. They wouldn't look harmless, but this whole thing that happened gave me the shock that I should have expected.

I knocked on the tree to check that there were no more of them, but nothing happened. I slowly made my way to the locker trying to organize my things back into place and taking one last sip of water before sitting down with my weapons armed and ready in case they returned, or worse.

A voice came back from the helmet and jumped me from the spot just before I realized in a few moments that Rosalina had finished calibrating herself:

"Colin" she began to speak:

"My sensors show that I went through fear and high excitement"

"You're right," I confirmed to her

"I'm sorry I had to turn it off suddenly"

"You don't have to be sorry" I answered her

"Can you put your helmet on there? I have something to show you"

I advanced to the helmet and put it on. The screen turned on and began to display the holographic drawing of the trees I was walking next to. In a short moment, one of the creatures from the group that attacked me also appeared and I was able to see its full picture: a head that resembled that of a monkey with large and long black eyes, long and thin ears, and a long jaw with jagged teeth. His forelimbs had large wings with fingers connecting the membrane which resembled rows with layers of feathers and his whole body was covered with feathers his feet were scrabbled with soft toes without nails, which resembled mine, and a hard and flexible tail, as I had imagined before. Looks like someone decided to create a new creature out of nothing I thought to myself as I looked at it.

"This is the creature that caused you a panic attack according to your memory"

I nodded my head in agreement but continued to look at the other illustrations as well.

"I have a question: why are you showing me all this?"

"According to the protocol of Planetary Explorers, I am obligated as an AI assistant to collect and preserve any information required from your journey. This function cannot be canceled. Nevertheless, I am also obligated to help you understand what you see. Because the information overload and my requirement to understand And to fill in every piece of information that comes to me, requires all of my abilities, and for that, I preferred to fulfill my primary function, and that is at the sacrifice of other systems and for that, what you have experienced until now, especially following disconnection and access to the broad information that humanity has taken a toll on."

"I'm aware of that"

"It's good that you're aware of that, but there's one thing I want to introduce you to"

Suddenly all the illustrations started showing pictures of different but more familiar creatures. Some I know but others I don't recognize or know. I think I even saw dinosaurs in some of them while some of the illustrations were marked with a question mark. But they all had one thing in common:

"All these creatures share in one way or another biological process and genetic information identified with all those you have met so far with creatures that are in my database, in their complete matching" she quipped before she closed all the illustrations and presented something else:

"I think I have a theory for what happened here"