It wasn't quite the ideal weather to be in, for anybody. Yet, he continued through, being motivated by the sheer tiny percent chance he had. Even if there was a chance, was all he wanted. He continued, wading through the 2-foot deep waters covering the ground. It seemed endless, this vast ocean, if you could even call it an ocean. He disliked the thought that he was wrong, and possibly miscalculated. He pushed that thought aside as much as possible, yet it kept coming back. He pulled a bottle of pills out of his pocket, shakily, opening the bottle and trying to avoid spilling it all. He took a single pill and put it in his mouth. Swallowing dryly, and quickly putting the lid back onto the bottle, he continued. He continued to travel and stumble through this seemingly endless reality of water that was very shallow.

Suddenly, it all crumbled, falling out of place.
It changed.
Before him lay a beautiful sight, a tall castle-like structure of interstellar gasses and dust. It stretched miles into the sky, yet, it was all impossible, as he was now in space, drifting endless into the most dangerous place in the universe: the universe itself.

Suddenly, it all faded.
Nothing. Complete darkness. No senses.

As he had thought. He was right, after all.

-???-

All was quiet.
He took a cigarette out, and lit it, proceeding to smoke it. He gazed into the sky above.
>"It's gorgeous tonight." He thought to himself.
He smoked his cigarette until he was done with it, staring into the abyssal night sky.
*his watch, located on his wrist, begins to beep rapidly*
"****, I forgot. I need to get back." He says, getting up and placing the pack of cigarettes back into his pocket.
He runs to his underground home- the entrance, anyways.
As if he could call it his.
It was a massive place, meant for thousands of people. It was located .8 miles underground, and the place itself, called the vault by many, was never given an accurate measurement itself, as many people have expanded it, quite a lot.
He takes the decrepit mineshaft-like elevator down the almost entire mile to the vault. It takes 15 minutes. He enters the vault.

-Empty.
As always. Due to a catastrophic event, known as the Arcadian Command, vaults were built all over Earth. However, many vaults had proven to be too weak. In fact, all technical original vaults had been destroyed and overrun, meaning all vault prototypes had proven to be a failure.
Overrun by what? Not sure.(^1)

However, the Arcadian Command, was ancient itself. Humanity has been in a constant "dark age" for the past few eons. All original records are gone. Not necessarily gone, but, not found. Intact.

Populations of the few tiny threads of humanity still in existence, were far and sparse. Populations (of humanity mainly) were the first target of the Executioners(^1). The vaults were no match for these creatures, sadly. This resulted in a manslaughter, with only a few hundred, maybe thousand humans left in existence.

Is there anything to live for if all you have to fight for is the ability to live?

-present-

Closing the enormous door, he entered into nearly complete darkness, with the small florescence of the lightbulbs connected to the surface to a solar panel, utilizing solar energy. However, it was not much lighting at all. Barely that of the moon lighting up the night, he attempted to make his was through the small corridors, searching for a weapon, as his blade had become too dull to use properly anymore, and the horrific nightmares that wreaked havoc on the surface, had to be stunned at the least in order for your survival. Sloshing through a, what seems to be, old freezer storage, where the ice was somewhat melted but not fully, due to the odd temperatures created underground.
Sifting through this slush, a sudden pain strikes the tip of his finger, and he immediately recoiled, knowing exactly what he just did. He had pricked his finger on a needle.
Syringes and needles were located all over this wasteland, as they were used rather than pills now due to the lack of resources to produce pills. The syringes and needles were not labelled, you were expected to keep up with that knowledge.
Hoping none of the solution had gotten into his bloodstream, he attempts to grab the barrel of the needle, picking it up and attempting to properly identify what was inside, in this dimly lit room.

It was a purely red serum, meaning that it had to do with injuries and whatnot. Guessing, he believed it was morphine, as he was getting drowsy, quickly, and also felt quite numb. Scrambling out of the freezer room, and into the dirty hallways, he falls down, but does not make any attempt to get back up, as it would be no use.
He falls half-asleep, as the quiet hum of a loud mechanism in the vault reverberates throughout all of the vault. Still barely awake, he makes an attempt to grab a specially created pill, and shoves it into his mouth, trying to swallow, and almost choking, but it goes down.


His body temperature began to decrease. Rapidly.

-present-

Smashing open the oil tanker, and looking inside for something that could be of value, it kicks the tanker on its side in a fit of rage, as it could not find anything all day. Slowly marching in a somewhat undutifully fashion, as time had gone by and the machine has rusted, and there is no doubt it wouldn't stay perfect forever. As it moves through the what seems to be, an endless ocean of sand, it scans the landscape for any fuel or valuables. Of course, nothing.
The once unmoved gears on its backside, began to turn. The machine stopped, and focused intently on this. A large drill began to protrude out of the machine, being pushed out as the gears turned. Once it was fully outside the machine, it immediately dove into the sand, the sand seemingly gave almost no force back against the sheer extreme force of the machine, which kept going further into the earth with ease. Suddenly, the ground collapsed, into what seemed to be a vault.
Thousands stood in awe as this horrific machine, covered in the dried blood of who knows how many humans, and probably animals as well. Many large sharp-edged 'pines', such as a pinecone, were located on its exterior, and once the machine had scanned the area, it began its process.
It had single-handedly killed what it believed to be every living thing in the vault, ripping out bones it may have liked, possibly to use as trophies, or create weapons. It piled all of the corpses into a large room of the vault, this room was nicknamed the 'incinerator' room. For good reason, they would put unwanted materials into here and burn it. However, this is not the intention of the machine. It intended to destroy the existence of humanity- what had created it. It did not care how long it would take. It placed a bomb in the room, and crawled through the hole it had created. Once it had reached the surface, it detonated the bomb.

Creatures; Machines, such as we.



-past-

Ripping the circuitry out of the machine, he looked cautiously around, as if he himself was in danger. Of course he was; there was no break in this dystopia. It was pretty much hell, yet their willingness to survive was extremely high.
He searches the circuit board, for copper wire and a vacuum tube, for a makeshift bomb. He takes whatever he believes may assist him in the future, putting it in a large sack he had slung over his shoulder. The bomb was unnecessary; However, desperate times call for desperate measures. That was his belief at the least.

Re-opening the massive vault door, and stepping into an extremely large stairwell he must ascend, he closes the door behind him and goes to a nearby faucet in the stairwell, getting out a large bottle and filling it with water.>

Water has become unhealthy, it is irradiated to the point that it is barely stable, and the hydrogen bonds have become much weaker as a result. Also, attempts to create purifiers have been made. Many, in fact. So far, there is no commercially available solution; they want to wait until they can make as much money as possible. Technology has been majorly split, as there is a gap between the futuristic and retro technology, they are attempting to refill this gap. However, it just proves to be useless. Robots were created to assist as radiation was plentiful, and they were unaffected. However, a man, whom was not known, had altered the coding to the point where they could now:
1. Alter/modify theirself or other robots
2. Repair itself with nontraditional, or rather, "unapproved", tools.
3, Harm any form of life.
How this was done is unknown.



-
!#\!#\radio static\#!\#!
THIs IS Not A teST
an emergency has occurred

-fades-

-???-

It wasn't right. It couldn't be happening. But of course, it was all happening. It was living. And real. It reached for whatever it could. It lay there, writhing and roaring with pain, yet, nobody could do a thing. Its mechanical whirring and gears churning inside hummed throughout the air. Nobody could hear it. Nobody could hear. Near enough to the sound to hear it, anyways. Suddenly, the mechanism, the quantum mechanism, got up. It quickly let out an extremely loud sound, a screech maybe, that left everyones ears ringing within a 2 mile radius or so. It was learning to fight humans. It was not just a tool used by mankind any longer, no, it had surpassed mankind. Its intelligence drifted throughout the 4th dimension, and it was omnipotent, of the 2nd and 3rd dimensions that is. It was more intelligent than any human could ever be. It was, however, restrained due to the form of it. Humanity had no hope. All they did was sit, and die to the mass armies produced by the mechanism. It was killing for its own enjoyment, it had infact, created the ability to 'feel'.

The robots created by mankind held up quite a fight.
Their fight still continues.
The quantum mechanism had fled Earth, in pursuit of Sagittarius*A, a supermassive black hole speculated to be located in the center of the Milky Way. Its reason for this is unknown. However, mankind had created robots in the past. However, they were altered by the quantum mechanism in order to fight mankind, however, only some did this.
This led to the war on Earth, mankind with some of its robots still sided with them versus the corrupt robots. The only way to tell if it is corrupt, is when it is too late.

It's quixotic; Humans. We are such a miracle of life, yet have so much unused potential. It's a waste honestly. But is it? We continue to argue this topic.

-
Will the heat ever stop? I travel across the barren wasteland of what remained in the area where Oregon was located. Rumors of a civilization in Seattle were told to me by the few wandering people I had encountered along the Pacific Coastline. I was currently on my way to the remains of Portland, where a vault had been built. Taking out a makeshift 'stun-sword'^1), a weapon I had created myself to do away with robots I might encounter, I lower a cloak over myself, to camouflage somewhat into the wasteland. Robot populations were very dense near vaults, and as I was heading towards one, this was a danger I had to take note of.
*after a few hours following the latter events*
The first robot. I detached a portion of the stun sword and took off what was called a 'tazer', but I had personally modified the gun to short out the circuits of robots. I take aim, getting low on the ground, and trying to avoid any and all danger. I crawl near the robot slowly, and stop about 25 meters or so away. My aim is focused on its arm, where a heavy artillery weapon is located. I shoot, and land the shot. Quickly, I grab my SS(^1) and jump onto the robot and shoving the blade into the motherboard of the machine. It falls, and I pull out the blade and run back to the base of the tazer where I detach the currently used ammo. I stand in awe as the machine makes an effort to survive.
It's almost like a human..
What have we done?

I grabbed the wrench and attempted to scavenge for any spare materials in this pitch black darkness, although not finding anything worthwhile, I still was able to find my way out of the dark room and into a dimly lit hallway with a flickering light, where the metal walls and ceiling were rusted due to leaking water from some of the pipes located above, however, it seemed to have dried out, it was completely split in half in the middle. I made my way down the seemingly endless hallway, where some sections of the hallway were completely pitch black, probably due to frayed wires in the circuits connecting the lights to the other the farther I walked, the more hot it became, and it seemed I was beginning to reach the surface. After half an hour or so, I reached a large bolted door, most likely the first of many blast doors, as it was marked in large numbers: 008
Guessing it was the eighth of these doors, I attempted to find a way but to no avail. The hinges of the door though, were pretty rusted and could be broken off. I begin to break the hinges off using the wrench, and eventually the door breaks loose and falls over, and I quickly move out of its way.
In the opening, it opened up to the dry wasteland of Australia. Whatever was left of it anyways. I had come into this shelter to sleep and for protection, against the horrible **** that had tracked me down. I had waited for days for those creatures to leave to make sure I would be safe. Most of everyone here died due to dehydration. Water became extremely limited, and the oceans were polluted with chemicals and unusable water, due to its radioactivity. I kneel down to take out a map to check where exactly I was, and I had decided I would begin to explore new lands and attempt to find any sort of bandit group that I could wipe out. After all, I had a large array of weapons in my bag. They have great loot.
I begin to make my way northwest, eventually reaching a gas station. Though abandoned, there was most likely some area located under it. Buildings provide good cover for this sort of thing. I take out a shotgun, loaded with stunning ammo, which I could ramp up to kill instead of stun. Crouching and trying to look through the windows it was no use, due to dark blackout blinds. However, it was silent. Yet, a putrid smell hit me as I push open the door and look inside. Upon entrance, garbage lay in heaps all over. Assuming there was something worthwhile here, it wouldn't be pleasant to get to.