Reboot: a Short Story

Epilogue

3017 AT Spring 54th

Magnus stared at the screen in disbelief. He was speechless, "this wasn't supposed to have happened." A scrolling list of results rolled down the screen, mostly useless data that he would probably never use.. but there were a few things that would prove useful to his research. He placed his hand on the mouse and scrolled up through the list until he reached the top, where most of the important information was, and the bit that he was looking for. 

Magnus stopped scrolling and looked at the screen in disbelief, this couldn't be happening. He had seen the specimen make it to the upload tube with another, but FOUR entities. "FOUR entities" Magnus repeated out loud as if to let it sink in harder. "FOUR" he said a little louder.

"LUCY" Magnus bellowed "BRING ME DOWN TO THE ANTECHAMBER AND BRING UP THE REPLAY OF THE END OF THE SIMULATION ON THE SCREEN". 

"Say the magic word." Replied a robotic sassy female voice reverberating throughout the sphere Magnus was in.

"PLEASE" Magnus said, normally he wouldn't give in to Lucy's attitude but this wasn't the time he needed to see the results. The chair he was sitting in jerked forward sitting Magnus upright in his seat slamming and his head into his keyboard causing his forehead to type a string of random digits. "I'M NOT IN THE MOOD" Magnus yelled starting to regret that he had given the AI the ability to develop its own personality. 

"Fine, you don't have to be so grumpy" Replied the Lucy. The desk slid into the wall of the sphere fitting in seamlessly. Magnus rubbed the bump on his head regretfully as the chair rotated slowly 180 degrees and then sunk out of the sphere. The chair sunk down into the antechamber. The antechamber was massive, not exactly worthy of the name antechamber but that's what he called it anyways. It was a white sphere, half filled with a purple colored liquid leading out through a massive black tunnel. A massive panel slid open on the wall to reveal a massive screen. On it, four screens appeared, one was a map with four blinking red dots, the other a view of a room, a room Magnus only knew too well. The other two windows were a jumble of numbers and information. 

"ZOOM WINDOW ONE" Magnus bellowed. The window with the room filled the screen. "PLAY" 

"As you wish.." Replied a clearly annoyed voice. The video played revealing an interesting series of events. First just out of view something exploded sending dust and chunks of white rock everywhere. The outline of a figure appeared in the dust then the screen flashed black for a moment. The dust had cleared now and the figure was looking behind himself staring at where he had come from. This was the point where he had lost. Magnus looked at the screen frustrated. The figure took a moment to look around the room before limping forward into the center. Magnus had panicked at this point, the screen went to black flickering glimpses of the scene that had happened. Then it ended. 

"Lucy compile the frames that aren't corrupted into a slideshow"

"Already done" Lucy replied, she knew Magnus too well. 

"Then show the first one" A picture appeared on the screen of the figure attempting to keep his balance.

"NEXT" the next frame appeared showing the figure stooping over to pick up something behind him. Magnus groaned realizing what he was doing.

"NEXT" Magnus said again. The picture switched to the figure running towards the upload tube. Magnus paused and took a breath.

"NEXT" The image switched to the last sight Magnus wanted to see. There was somebody in the upload tube, someone he knew very personally. It was a boy, about the age of seven. There was a look on his face, not fear nor sadness, it was a broken, a spaced out look. He clutched three creatures to his chest, a fox a wolf and... He looked up at the screen again at the third animal. It was staring right out of the screen at Magnus, knowingly. It knew what he had done and he could never escape from it. 

Never.