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 announces: Emergency defrost complete. Entering low power mode.
Jack thinks: Get it together, Jack! You knew this was gonna 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 has 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 across the room are covered in dust and all exposed bits of metal have rust. The 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 with a keyboard and a screen, and above them a phone on the wall – nothing out of the ordinary here. 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 couple expletives and 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. 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 notices the toolbox is missing. Jack opens the drawers on the desks looking for tools. He also rummages through the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen area. After finding some object that he could use as a screwdriver, he returns to the door, taking off the control panel. He realizes that he has no idea what he's doing so he attempts (and fails) to get the manual from the computer.

Jack returns to the desk with the terminal. He flips the switch on the desk lamp. The lamp flickers for a moment and turns 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, cryogenics control unit sees one active chamber, primary hard drive is powered up – all good. Secondary hard drive is powered down, let's change that... He pushes the power button and hears the spindle motor kick on. The power button blinks. There is some intermittent rattling from the drive, probably a shot bearing. He hears the platters inside accelerate for an unusually long time. 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, followed by the platters slowly decelerating. That's gonna be an ugly head crash. No manuals for me, I guess...

He gets up and walks over to the phone. Maybe, the lines to <dome city> still work. Not exactly excited by the prospect of calling random people, but not seeing another option, he reaches for the receiver. It lifts off the wall with a quiet click and Jack begins to dial. He holds the receiver to his ear - silence. Welp, that's that. He puts it back on the wall.

In an attempt to find anything useful, he sits down at the terminal 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 starts going through the files, hoping he misremembered where the manuals were stored, but to no avail, they are gone.