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 he brushes the thought aside for the moment...
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
are rusty. 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 being unable to close a door properly... Doesn't matter now, too late.
As he passes each of the preservation 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 its 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 says more to himself
than to the frozen person inside.
He checks the status lights of her chamber.
Looks good to me — I think I'm
gonna leave you in there until I find a way out...
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?
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
sharpening rod he begins the long and arduous process of grinding the
fork handle flat, dragging it across the rod over and over and over
again. After a while, he stops to inspect his work.
Meh, could work.
He tests it on the 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 with it,
the panel lifts out of its niche in the wall, pulling cables out of the
box under it. He grabs the fork by the handle and bends the inner prongs
out of the way. Then, he bridges the switch contacts using the two outer
prongs. 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
preservation chamber – all good. Primary hard drive is up, second
hard drive is ... powered off? 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
it. The button lights up solid and the motor inside kicks on. There
is some intermittent rattling from the drive,
probably a shot bearing, he thinks.
He hears the spindle inside accelerating unusually slowly. Impatiently
sitting there, he waits for the drive to be ready. Clicking from inside
the drive followed by a ringing scratching noise.
Of course!
He quickly presses the power button again. The scratching stops and
the motor turns off, the spindle still rattling occasionally as it spins
down.
That's gonna be an ugly head crash.
No manuals for me, I guess...
He gets up and returns to the terminal, thinking there might be something useful, maybe even a backup, on the primary drive. He pulls a nearby chair in front of it and sits down.
EARTH-53 INUX v8.4 SMP Login: █
Jack logs on and issues a command:
EARTH-53 INUX v8.4 SMP Login: jack Password: Welcome to INUX! Last login Wed, 1994-07-20 11:34:08 $ date Tue, 2106-06-01 18:01:55 $ █
So it's been over a hundred years...
Hm.
He goes through the files but nothing useful turns up. He does, however,
find a note from 2030 saying that the inhabitants of the dome city
have proven to be unhelpful when asked for assistance. Too bad they are
the ones that have a full backup of everything – 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.
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