Wake Up!

Awh fuck! Jack exclaims in pain as he wakes up. He has a terrible headache. While moving his hands up to hold his head, he realizes that his entire body hurts. Owowowww... Ouch!
An automated voice comes on: Emergency defrost complete. Entering low power mode.
He thinks: Get it together, Jack! You knew this could happen. You have trained for this. Where are the meds again? ...

Waiting for the painkillers to kick in, he stays in his preservation chamber until he is fully awake. As he stands there, looking out of the small window in the door, he notices something off. The bunker looks different from yesterday - not yesterday! That was years ago, probably decades... Besides the point. It looks different. Not just things have moved around different, it gives off the vibe of a full-on lost place. Unexpected but whatever...

The pressurized air hisses in the lines as the door of the preservation chamber swings aside. Jack steps out into the bunker, breathes the musty air, and looks around. The light shining out of his chamber reveals a dirty floor. The table and chairs in front of him as well as the kitchen area across the room are covered in dust and all exposed bits of metal have rust. The paint is starting to flake off of the walls. Red night lights on the ceiling are dimly illuminating the rest of the bunker. He looks to the left: The wall is lined with other preservation chambers, all but one of them being powered down. In the corner is the minicomputer controlling the bunker, a half-height rack filled to the brim with devices, and next to it a teleprinter, a computer-controlled typewriter. Along the rear wall are desks holding a radio and a terminal, a device comprised of a keyboard and monitor, and on the wall above them is a phone; nothing out of the ordinary here – apart from a few paint crumbs sprinkled on everything. He looks to the right: More preservation chambers. Instead of a wall, there's the bunker door – door is a bit of an understatement, it's a massive gate. A small slither of light passes under it. These fucking idiots... They didn't reseal it properly.

He walks over to the door's control panel. The paint is flaking off revealing the rust underneath. Jack attempts to press a couple buttons but they get stuck and nothing happens. A bunch of expletives and some banging on the panel later, he turns back to the inside of the bunker, looking for tools, contemplating the tradeoff between waking up a couple years too soon and getting slowly poisoned by the air, and being locked inside a bunker due to a bunch of apparent troglodytes unable to close a door properly... Doesn't matter, too late now.

As he passes each of the presevation chambers, he looks into them. Empty, empty, empty - nothing unexpected here. The others would have been woken up over time. His own chamber... He presses a few buttons to fully shut it down. The lamp in the ceiling turns off, the door closes, the status lights turn off. After passing two other empty preservaton chambers, he reaches the one that remains active.
Hello Michelle.
He checks the status lights of her chamber.
I think I'm gonna leave you in there until I find a way out of here — should be fine...
He continues past the remaining empty chambers to the back of the bunker.

Jack opens the cabinets under each of the desks while talking to himself: Where is that fucking toolbox? Do we have an alternative expletive to use? Well, it isn't there. He continues with the kitchen area. Still nothing. He enters the bathroom through a door next to the kitchen area. Nope, not here either. Welp, time to improvise.

Jack returns to the kitchen area and rummages through the drawers to find anything useful. He grabs a fork. Works as a screwdriver, I guess... He proceeds to jam the handle into a screw on one of the kitchen cabinets to see if it will turn. It does – barely. Using a slightly rusty knife sharpener sharpening rod? he begins the long and arduous process of making the fork handle more suitable as a screwdriver, grinding the end over the sharpener over and over and over. After a while, he stops to inspect his work. Meh, could work. He tests it on the kitchen cabinet again.

His newly gained screwdriver in hand, Jack walks back to the control panel for the door and unscrews it. After a bit of fiddling, the panel lifts out of the niche in the wall, pulling cables out of the box under it. He grabs the fork by the handle and bends the middle? inner? prongs out of the way to bridge the control panel's switches using the outer ones. Nothing happens. Of course it wasn't gonna be that easy. He starts to dig into the wires, attempting to find what's wrong, but realizes after a moment that the wiring is more complex than expected and he has no idea what he's doing. Guess I need the manual for this thing...

Jack walks over to the desk with the terminal and flips the switch on the desk lamp. It flickers for a moment before turning off again. He flips the switch back and leans over the terminal to turn it on – Bonk! At least this seems to work. While waiting for the picture tube to warm up, he walks over to the rack and sits down on the floor in front of it. He inspects the status lights on the various devices, thinking aloud: CPU is idle, serials are idle, one active cryogenic chamber, primary hard drive is spinning – all good. Secondary hard drive is powered down, let's change that... He pushes the power button and hears the fans blow air through the drive. The spin-up button starts blinking. He waits for a moment to let the fans blow away any dust that may have settled inside the drive, then he pushes the button. The spindle motor kicks on. There is some intermittent rattling from the drive, probably a shot bearing. He hears the platters inside accelerate unusually slowly. Impatiently sitting there, Jack waits for the drive to be ready. Clicking from the mechanism unlocking the heads followed by a ringing scratching noise. Of course... He quickly presses the power button again. The scratching stops and the spindle motor turns off, the spindle still rattling occasionally as the platters spin down. That's gonna be an ugly head crash. No manuals for me, I guess...

He gets up and returns to the terminal. Maybe, there is a backup copy or anything useful on the primary hard drive. He sits down in front of it and logs on.

Tue, 2106-06-01, 18:01

EARTH-53 Login: jack
Password:

Welcome to INUX!

$ █

So it's been over a hundred years. Hm...
He goes through the files but to no avail, no backup turns up. Nothing useful either. He does, however, find a note from 2030 saying that the inhabitants of Sunside Cove have proven to be unhelpful when asked for assistance. Too bad they are the ones that have a backup of the secondary hard drive – assuming there is anyone still living there.

He gets up and reaches for the phone. It lifts off the cradle with a quiet click. Jack holds it to his ear and starts dialing but there is no dial tone. Welp, that's that.