The first thing that came to her was the sense of touch. Cold and wet, some unknown liquid. It was oddly thick, and its contact quickly made her uncomfortable.
Sight was second. Everything was pitch dark until fuzzy outlines of space and objects blurred into view. Slowly, her eyes came back to her, splashes of sullen blues and metal grays forced their way in.
She appeared to be in some sort of lab -or, the remains of one. The computer screens on the right were shattered. Tables and chairs lay scattered and broken on the floor as though an earthquake had dislodged them from their positions.
Despite the unkempt nature of the room, her eyes glossed over all the details and zeroed in on the largest of these abnormalities: the corner of the lab was completely separated from the rest of the structure. However, instead of letting gravity accomplish its intended role, the large piece of rubble lay suspended in the middle of the air.
The woman was in a pod. Like the room, it was also in ruin. The glass pane that kept her and the thick substance inside was split apart. Splinters of the glass floated in the stillness directly in front of her, creating a glittering reflection of her visage.
It was as if she were seeing a stranger. She touched her cheek and recoiled on contact.
How do I not remember my face?
Fair skin, brown pigment in the eyes, and black locks with red highlights at the lower half that fell just below the shoulder. No matter how hard she tried to remember, she did not know the person see was looking at.
The woman looked down at the liquid spilling out of the pod. It must've kept her in place when the tank was in use. It was spilling out, no doubt, but it did not flow like most other liquids would. As with every other item in the room, it was stuck in the middle of its motion.
Laminar flow?
That was perhaps true, but the stillness also occurred with the water that remained in the tank with ripples stuck at the median of their movement. What surprised her though was the fact that she knew what laminar flow was and not her own face.
Suddenly, her other senses rushed back to her. The heavy, bitter taste of the liquid jostled in her mouth, rolling slowly down her throat as she swallowed. The overbearingly loud noise of… nothing. It was odd; there was not a single thing that made a sound. Not a buzz, hiss or thump except the noise that she herself made.
The one sense that did not come to her was smell. And unlike her hearing, where the absence of noise affected her, she simply did not think -or remember- that she could smell. Like an infant lacking the object permanence to know their mother still exists even when not in front of them, she did not have smell, so she did not even consider it.
The instant flush of her other sensations gave her a start. She coughed, spitting the nastiness from her mouth, and attempted to climb up over the sharp pieces of glass. As she pulled away, a carbon wire tethered to the temple of her head halted her progression. It jolted her neck back with a strike of pain. Annoyed, she ripped the wire out of her head, revealing a thin syringe at the tip.
Whatever this was, it had to have been what kept me knocked out. What experiments did they do on me in this lab? And why did I go along with it?
Cautiously, as if she were a cat in a new home, she observed her surroundings. It wasn't just the structures and the water that lay motionless. The air itself could not travel. She could feel it though; the surrounding air seemed to hold her in a soft embrace that was more apparent than usual.
She reached out and touched some of the levitating rubble from the suspended structure. It was a light amount of force, but it still moved a good bit of distance away from her until ultimately ceasing to move once more in space.
What the hell? She squinted her eyes.
Instinctively, she looked at her left wrist only to find nothing but bare skin there.
Time. I need to know what the date is.
She looked outside and noticed rays of vibrant orange and pink bleeding in. It was sometime around sunset or sunrise; she couldn't really tell with all the city buildings blocking most of her line of sight. They too were crumbling, but the lack of time interrupted their complete destruction.
It isn't enough; I need an exact date.
She tried to think back to the last thing she remembered. Maybe find a date in the corners of her head, but she found nothing. It was as if she had been reborn; everything felt fake. She rubbed her arm, reminding herself that she had senses, and that she was in... some kind of reality.
She looked back at the pod, messed up as it was. There were other pods besides hers, also broken. Nobody remained in any of them.
Whatever went through here that caused so much destruction is most likely massive. I'm surprised I went unscathed given how bad it looks.
The bottom edge of the pod was fastened with a metal framework. There were words inscribed on the metal:
[Rl-004]
Something was faintly familiar about the word. Only faintly. Nothing substantial enough for her to consider it a memory.
At the left end of the lab was the exit, stuck ajar. She moved over and slipped out of the room. The hallway stretched outward from both sides of her.
I need stairs or an elevator. Some way to get the hell out of this building.
She had no sense of direction, so leaving the building would probably not help that. But anything was better than staying in the lab.
Still figuring out how to walk comfortably, she limped down the left side of the hallway, looking for any sign on the door that said stairs or elevator. Luckily, at the edge of the room, one of the last doors displayed the way to the stairs. There was no way to go up; this floor could have been the top one. Or whatever area she woke up in was hidden from the upper floors. She did the only thing she could and took the steps down.
Two flights passed.
Three
Five.
After over thirty flights, she finally found a door to open. Instead of another hallway to walk through, she entered a large room. It was most likely a lounge area. There were people there, as well as some robots. Most humans were in pasty lab coats, with a few suits dotted around in between. The robots appeared to be following the lab workers, carrying equipment for them or projecting esoteric documents readable only to the scientists.
Every one of them stood, sat, or walked frozen in animation. Their countenance unmoving from their current fearful and confused faces. They all seemed to be stuck in some erratic movement. It made sense when she noticed why. Like the room she woke up in, the far end of the lounge with glass panes serving as a wall appeared to be imploding.
Walking up to the closest person to her, she stared straight into their eyes. She could see it — the light in their eyes. Frozen as they were, they might as well have been dead. But they were alive. Somehow, the way the light refracted back toward her confirmed that. It was almost like they recognized she was in front of them, but could not actively express it.
The notion made her shudder. To be completely in stasis but your consciousness remaining intact felt like a nightmare. As if watching paint dry, they were stuck looking at the same place for what could be eternity.
What happened to them?
She walked down to the imploding window, gazing in awe at the petrified bodies surrounding her. She was definitely lower than where she was before, but she was still pretty high up. Many tumbling buildings stuck in place still blocked her view of anything past them, and leaning forward down to the street below was still many flights away. A fall would be fatal from this height.
Suddenly the empty noise that bounced around was filled with the mechanical buzz of something. She turned around to see a small silver hexagonal machine hovering freely in the air. Their corners twisted independently from their main body, turning around as if being unscrewed. At the center of their body was an opening that housed a bright blue light that jolted systematically in all directions. It observed the surroundings as an eye would.
The robot narrowed in on the woman.
"You finally awake, Doomsday Unit RL-004. The others have already left." The sound of another voice almost made her fall off the edge of the building. But it was also comforting. It sounded friendly as far as she knew.
RL-004 eyed the machine with trepidation. "W-who are you? What day is today? Where am I?"
The robot's eyes transitioned to yellow. " One at a time, please. Too many questions take longer to process." His eye shifts to blue once more. "...but I suppose you have just awakened; it should be sensible that you are a bit frazzled. Very well..."
From its eyes, a projector protrudes light, showcasing the date for RL-004 to see.
[05/08/2245]
"Today is May 8, 2245. 1.093 seconds before the end of the world." The words came out so mundanely that they sounded normal.
RL-004 reeled as the hairs on her back stood. "The… end of the world?"
The robot's eye turns green. "Doomsday Unit RL-004. What you see before you is the artificial intelligence assigned to accompany and guide you as you travel this world. You should consider me something akin to an Auxiliary Device.
The robot pauses for a moment as RL-004 catches her breath.
"You are tasked with the mission of saving our world from utter desolation."
RL-004 exhales, and immediately the weight of the world gets pressed on her shoulders. She had no bearing on where she was, no semblance of understanding of what had happened, and for all she knew she did not exist a mere twenty minutes earlier. But despite that. Despite not knowing who she was or why any of this should matter to her. The pressure was still immense.
''But before that…" the robot's eye turns pink, "...I would suggest you find some thicker apparel than just your undergarments."