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<h1> Wake Up! </h1>
<p>
<span class="quote speech">Awh fuck!</span> 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.
<span class="quote speech">Owowowww... Ouch!</span><br />
An automated voice comes on: <span class="quote speech">Emergency
defrost complete. Entering low power mode.</span><br />
He thinks: <span class="quote non-speech">Get it together, Jack!
You knew this could happen. You have trained for this. Where are the
meds again? ...</span>
</p>
<p>
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
<span class="quote non-speech">things have moved around</span> different,
it gives off the vibe of a full-on lost place. Unexpected but whatever...
</p>
<p>
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.
<span class="quote speech">These fucking idiots... They didn't
reseal it properly.</span>
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<p>
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.<br />
<span class="quote speech">Hello Michelle.</span><br />
He checks the status lights of her chamber.<br />
<span class="quote speech">I think I'm gonna leave you in there
until I find a way out of here — should be fine...</span><br />
He continues past the remaining empty chambers to the back of the bunker.
</p>
<p>
Jack opens the cabinets under each of the desks while talking to himself:
<span class="quote speech">Where is that fucking toolbox?</span>
<span class="comment">Do we have an alternative expletive to use?</span>
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. <span class="quote speech">Welp, time to
improvise.</span>
</p>
<p>
Jack returns to the kitchen area and rummages through the drawers to find
anything useful. He grabs a fork. <span class="quote speech">Works as a
screwdriver, I guess...</span> 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
<span class="comment">sharpening rod?</span> 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. <span class="quote speech">Meh,
could work.</span> He tests it on the kitchen cabinet again.
</p>
<p>
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 <span class="comment">
middle? inner?</span> prongs out of the way to bridge the control
panel's switches using the outer ones. Nothing happens.
<span class="quote speech">Of course it wasn't gonna be that easy.</span>
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.
<span class="quote speech">Guess I need the manual for this
thing...</span>
</p>
<p>
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: <span class="quote speech">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...</span> 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.
<span class="quote speech">Of course...</span> 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.
<span class="quote speech">That's gonna be an ugly head crash.
No manuals for me, I guess...</span>
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
<pre class="terminal">
Tue, 2106-06-01, 18:01
EARTH-53 Login: jack
Password:
Welcome to INUX!
$ █
</pre>
<p>
<span class="quote speech">So it's been over a hundred years.
Hm...</span><br />
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.
</p>
<p>
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.
<span class="quote speech">Welp, that's that.</span>
</p>
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