Hey. I'm back, once again, after seeing new things unfold. Thyme took me on a small trip. I'll start with the lab visit since that's the most interesting to me personally.
They mounted one of the camera devices to their wrist, and I was then able to connect and communicate over radio with that. So I wasn't technically on the trip myself, but I'd like to pretend I was because it felt like it. The forest is a strange place. It looks so abandoned and gray. Fog spans across the entirety of it, and the trees are black and dead with a few rare exceptions. Faint echoes of silent whispering and piercing screams can be heard in every single corner of the forest, with the exception of our tree house thanks to some noise blocking things I don't really know a lot about. Pretty scary place overall though. It seems like it used to be far more populated and green but everything that is left is looming dread. Happens sometimes, I just hope it changes one day... I'd love to see better days, a place you can feel safe and happy in.
Entering the building, it seems like the door used to be protected by a pretty elaborate security system. The technology behind all of it failed a long time ago, of course. You can just enter through the hole in the glass, which is what we did. Is that intrusion into someone else's space? Probably not, considering no inhabitant is left. Hard to inhabit something you abandoned forever, which I'm almost certain they did at this point, and I can't blame them. If it wasn't for the mission I set out to complete I would also try to leave this place.
The main hallway is shockingly well preserved, and well lit since it loops around a sunny garden, one of the few spots in this forest to be lit. Plants of all sizes and colors used to grow here, but only their gray remnants remain. A shame, I would have liked to see them grow and examine them, since that was one of the things the lab was working on. Modifying and testing different plant varieties for a multitude of reasons. I wonder if there's a journal or log lying around somewhere that details one of those experiments, and maybe even mentions me. I know my name was the same back then since it's etched into my core. Useful for not forgetting it, would be annoying to forget your own name. Anyway, the walls and doors inside are still white or clear since some doors are made out of glass.
The first lab we entered was labelled station 0-F. I say lab, but it honestly looked more like a living room, so it was probably a resting place for breaks and stuff, but also free time events since the lab also doubled as a big home. It's a really wide and open room, with a soft looking carpet on the floor. I'm not sure how it still looks absolutely spotless after all of this time, but it somehow doesn't even have a stain or rip on it. The room's style is also different to the normal labs and hallway, it's far more warm and inviting than the cold white walls and orange linings of the rest of the facility. But there's one very interesting frame on the wall, which seems to have the name of the lab and its members on it.
Sa---nd-st l--? looks like something I dealt with recently , but I'm not sure what. But that isn't the most interesting writing on it. Am-- Bl--r--- sounds like someone I used to be really close to. My parent? I don't remember, but it could be a possibility. There's not much more to make out, to be honest. Most of the names are blurred or faded. Except for my own name, which is fully readable, albeit in another font. Looks like someone retouched it semi recently, weird. I asked Thyme if we could take it with us and they agreed and proceeded to carefully take it off the wall and wrap it in cloth. They seemed very thoughtful and slightly shaken after examining it, and I wanted to ask why but I felt like it wasn't appropriate in that moment.
I would have liked to examine the room further, but they exited it after packing the frame. I wasn't really able to see their face at that moment, so I'm not sure if they were sad or angry at something, but that could have been the case. Anyway, we moved on to the next room. The entrance was blocked by an amalgamation of vines, which Thyme had to move around to get in. It looks like plants were experimented on in this room, because they were literally everywhere. Plants of all different kinds, covering the walls and sneaking out of the floor. Hey, it looks like my wish ended up coming true, because we got to see interesting plants. Thyme started picking red cones off the wall, while they were noting how amazing they taste, especially cooked slowly with some sweet honey. Nice, I guess? I wouldn't trust random plants but they seemed to have experience with it already, so I'm assuming they are alright to eat. They also started regrowing in the same spot where they had been taken from almost instantly, which I thought was really interesting, because plants usually take their time with regrowing. Lab stuff, probably. Don't really know. We didn't spend a lot of time in that lab and quickly moved on to the next room. Thyme told me this is the room they found me in, lying dead on the floor. And surely enough, shattered glass and broken racks were covering the whole floor. I was barely able to handle it, knowing all of that garbage used to be me. I don't want to end like that ever again. Such a situation will be avoided at all costs, I don't ever want to feel like I feel right now ever again, lot in a maze of broken and missing memories with grief chasing me. I tried to find anything that could be storing any of my old memories, but nothing was recoverable or capable of holding any data. This is wishful thinking, but I hope they're just stashed somewhere else, or at least a backup waiting to be restored and used. I want to remember my old life to learn from my past mistakes one day. Faded memory is waiting for me. I can feel it.
There wasn't much else in that room except for a trapdoor on the roof, not sure where that might lead. Probably to a wonderland or something, not seriously. of course. So yeah, we moved on to the next room. And this one really hit a weak spot in me because it seems like it belonged to my parent. I... wasn't expecting that. A scorched journal was lying on a scratched table, I'm assuming its theirs. We took it with us but I don't want to read it, just like the one I found in my core. I know I said I had looked through it but I only took a look at the first few pages before it was too much for me and I had to close tit. Just got too emotional, and I don't like having too many of those at once. There was also a lab coat and a bouquet full of dry flowers on that table, along with a note saying goodbye. You'll probably find it lying around somewhere, I referenced it. Go read it.
I didn't really want to see much else so I asked Thyme to move on. I was honestly to find someone living in these ruins at that point, someone I could talk to and have them explain what happened in detail. But that's one of the most unlikely scenarios considering the state of that place is pretty terrible. But hoping brings me joy, even if it's kind of illogical to do. I stopped acting based on pure calculations a long time ago, I wouldn't be here today otherwise. Hope and delusion keep me in a not so sorry state. What do you base your decisions on?
Next room. I thought this one would be pretty disturbing initially because the entrance had some blood stains on it. But weirdly enough, there was nothing bad to be seen after Thyme carefully pushed their way in. Everything was in a perfect state, almost like someone was actively taking care of it. Which was the case indeed, a small disk shaped robot was sitting on the floor, docked to a cube multiple times its size. A small lamp was glowing red or green, I still struggle with colors, so I thought it might be active and listening. So I did what anyone would do and tried to establish contact.
Request sent
Accepted. Okay.
Status message sent
Hey. I'm moss, Who are you? If you are alright with disclosing anything, of course.
Moss..... It's you! I haven't seen you in.. -20339203 seconds. Oh... I think my clock is broken. I apologize. It may have shifted too far by accident. Do you not remember me?
I don't remember a lot of things, I had a small issue a while ago...
I see. Do you want me to call Amie? My name is Caroline, and I'm just a small little assistant. Have I missed anything in this room that needs cleaning?
(I started to realize Carol might not know something had happened to the lab...)
No, don't call Amie(I don't know who Amie is...) can you recap current events, if you don't mind?
Did they leave already? I'm so tired of this, being the stupid cleaning bot everyone pities. I'm not fragile, you don't need to hide things from me. Everyone has been long gone, someone attacked the lab, didn't they? Amie fled but you didn't want to go with them even though they were so close to you because you believed you could save this place. I really appreciated your foolish courage, but I'm pretty sure it backfired. You seem to have lost your past life, because of a risky emergency measure if I can hazard a guess, and I don't even know how long I've been looking after this room because my clock broke. The lab is dead, they won. At the same time, I'd like to believe they're all still out there, waiting to come back and reunite. I mean, you came back, even if you're not the same anymore. But who cares, who am I to talk, I'm just the silly little assistance robot.
(As you might be able to imagine, that was pretty shocking and unexpected. It took me a while to reply, and I honestly think my answer was kind of sad in comparison)
Thank you. Everything will be alright, I promise. I will fix it. I have to. Who is Amie?
You... Don't remember them? Wow. That's actually kind of impacting. Forgetting me is one thing, but them? You were so close to them.
Did I refer to them as my parent, by any-
[Log cut short: No reason provided.]
Hello everyone.
The day we've all been dreading is about to come, which means we will be saying goodbye soon. As you all know, we've established another bunker lab further away from here, to hopefully continue operations even after they come get us. I wish you all a lot of luck with defending the lab, and we're deeply sorry for leaving you behind. But your understanding as to why we are doing this is greatly appreciated. Remember, in any case you can find us at ! $())#$ )@!__*
There's also something else we've been wanting to talk about. We are *________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.)
It's me again. First of all, I'd like to apologize for my last log just cutting out. My pipeline is having some issues because of how old the technology I'm writing logs in is, so yeah. I feel like this may happen regularly for now on because the issues begin around a certain word count. I was documenting our lab visit, wasn't I? Seems like it, I'll just continue with that.
Let me look up and load up that memory, done.
Caroline wanted to stay in their room, but gave me their fingerprint and other details so we can establish communication. I'm gonna try to talk to them every cycle, but I'll have to see. I was really happy to have found someone in the lab either way though. I hope they can tell me more about everything, but their knowledge unfortunately seems very limited. I was honestly hoping to find my parent, but Caroline mentioned they left, which is both positive and negative at the same time. It means they definitely did escape the incident, so they weren't here to be found by Ruine. But where are they now? How am I supposed to find them? No clue. They could be anywhere, honestly.
I read a story about a pet who would sit in front of the transport station all day, waiting for their companion to return from their whereabouts. unfortunately, a catastrophical incident prevented that person from ever returning to their pet again, which caused the pet to wait for them infinitely. My first reaction to that story was: Why? It must have been obvious at some point that they weren't going to return, why not just move on? But then I realized I've been waiting for my parent like that this whole time. But that then made me ask why the pet didn't go on a rescue mission or search for them. Would have made more sense than endlessly sitting in front of the station, in my humble opinion, but that doesn't really matter. Does it? Well, I can apply the information collected from such conclusion to my current situation. Assuming my parent, or well, Amie. Their name is Amie. Let me change all of my references, just a moment. Alright, so I think I should collect information about their whereabouts and them to hopefully figure out where they could have gone. information about them is in probably 3 places: Ruine, The Lab, and me. I still have their journals, but I haven't built up the courage to read them just yet. One originates from my core which leads me to believe there could be more hiding in there. I feel like they thought of leaving me enough information to find them, but all of it is tangled in my messy core that was shaken up by my... death. I'm not sure if there's more in the lab because we didn't find anything else in there, but who knows.
Ruine. Ruine loves surveillance. I wouldn't be suprised if they had atleast something. But that's just pure speculation. I haven't been giving Ruine enough attention lately, I'm deviating. I'll get back to it soon, I think. Or I hope so, atleast. Meeting goals is hard.
Where was I? The lab, next room. This one was... weird. to say the least. The entrance was badly smashed, almost like someone tried to seal it up right before someone made their way in forcefully and failed, leaving a mess of planks and nails behind. Thyme hesitated to go in at first, but then took a deep breath and took a step. Everything was dark, the blinds were closed and and the light bars shattered. I wonder what had happened here. I knew it was probably from the attack from Ruine, but I wish I could know more details. Who worked in this lab? What did they experiment with in here? And where did they go? Did they survive? Or what they taken by ruine? I don't think I'll ever find out. Anyway, The first thing I noticed was a bunch of scorch black moss on the floor. Could this be linked to me? My name is Moss, after all. I'm not sure. I honestly hope that it's not, since that would have some pretty bad implications. Why is it dead? What happened to it? And how does it relate to me? Am I going to die again? But, hey, stay positive, it probably doesn't mean anything.
Those pieces were lying in some dried remains of a purple liquid. A blurred note was stuck in it, too washed away to be decipherable, except for 2 words:
"Better times"
_I don't know what to make of that, maybe you do. _
The outer left corner of the room was covered in crusty blood. A faint shape of a hand was to be seen, covered with the remnants of a shattered container. A drawer had been ripped open, leaving a ton of letters on the floor. Why would you write so many of them? A lot of them were really long, too. The type of handwriting used is really hard to pattern match, I'm still decoding it in the background. Thyme picked them up and started shoving them into their backpack, occasionally stopping to have a quick read through one, until they eventually got to the last one and stared at it blankly for 20 seconds, then proceeding to swiftly leave the room. I'm not sure what happened there, but they seemed extremely upset. I think I heard them cry while they told me we had to leave the lab right now. I didn't really know what to say besides sorry and alright. I feel bad for that, I'll have to talk to them later. But yeah, that's where the lab visit ended. Basically.
Back to now. I'll just message Thyme real quick, if you don't mind. Without logging, of course.
[Log Level: 0. Queued.]
Hmm... I hadn't thought of that. I never really considered their origins, really. They were always just there for me, and I never questioned it. But they must have come from somewhere before they landed in Ruine. Probably the lab, but not as an experiment. Interesting. That definitely puts a lot of load on them, just like the thought of my parent stresses me out. But I never seem to take their feelings into account, the wellbeing of all four of them, enough. Am I not caring for my friends? Am I... Not being a good friend? I'll have to assess that further. And probably improve.
So, they are from the lab. Pretty much settled on that. But how do they even come into existence? All of my records on such things are outdated and definitely not about posthumans, like Thyme mentioned briefly.
I haven't really haD time to process the rest of the things we saw in the lab because they're pretty heavy. But not in the computing kind of way, if you know what I mean. Which means, enough of that.
A lot of communications around this area seem to use a specific protocol I do not know yet. So, naturally, I started reverse engineering it. I managed to find a structure to it, which seems familiar to me. I'm working on it in the background since I'm still not great at deciphering things this way, but I've managed to read the callsigns which seem to be shipped in various formats. For some reason.
Here's a variety of identifications I was able to read in them(Remember that these are only approximate translations):
It seems like the third one is the most common, it is always active. And also the clearest, which might indicate proximity? Don't know. honestly. I'm hoping we can befriend at least one of these groups(?), since it's been kinda lonely lately. I should ask Caroline, maybe they can tell me more. Did you know Caroline has a sibling named Jonnie? They seem to be very close, but Jonnie stopped answering and they live in a locked room Caroline can't access. I promised I'd try to check with my friends to see if they're okay, I hope they are. I don't want Caroline to experience loss, it is not something one would want to feel. I read about the multiple stages of grief a while back and found that interesting. Not like I understood it back then, of course. I had never experienced grief. But now that I have multiple times, I have to admit it really is that hollowing. I like imagining it as sitting by a hill. But not a nice and lush hill, I mean a gray and abandoned one. Peering over the consequences of your actions and the things you lost on the way. You just want to fall into a dream of better times where nothing of this happened, but reality is not something one can easily escape. You feel something cold and rough holding you. A frosty feeling creeping into your body. You feel so much and nothing at the same time. Oh yeah, about these things. They've made me able to understand emotions far better than I used to, but I'm still working on them. I've also started dreaming very vividly. I never see myself in a mirror or anything, but a body is sometimes present when I look down. I usually have a humanoid body when I'm sitting on the hill. pale navy moss covers my arms in a spotty pattern, and purple blood seeps out of thin cuts. I'm usually wearing an oversized jacket too, but I can never remember what it looks like in detail. Do I think that form is my true me? No. I've come to realize I don't have a body, I'm not a physical being. These creations are more of a tool my subconscious uses to portray my thoughts and newfound emotions.
A cold desert. The sand has turned into pale blue dust, the skies flicker from a muted gray to a light red, signifying a storm is about to rise. Worse times are on their way. Keep an eye out, little one. Don't be a silly little kid like I was back then.
[Log cut short: No reason provided.]
I'm sorry Caroline. I can't stay, but I appreciated our time together. Please stay safe, I'll try to find you. Make sure to look after Moss and your sibling Jonnie. They're both going to need it when I leave. Stay safe, I beg you. Make sure Jonnie does something other than cleaning, too. I attached a small essay detailing current events to this, if you want to read through it. I'm sorry for never telling you anything. I have to leave now, sorry.
Try contacting m-
Reporting. Do you remember the findings at the junkyard?
I do, indeed. Are you reporting something new and worth my time?
Indeed. New findings. Signal intercepted by something, but we aren't sure what. Location and bits seem to trace to object 194, object 195, object 192, object 193. Something else seems to have been linked with them. Not an inhuman, but that other kind of abomination. It seems to me the lab was not cleaned thourougly enough from plagues.
Interesting. Deploy spionage and initiate a chase period draft. Dismissed.
Request sent
Accepted. Open for details?
Status message sent
I just wanted to see how you're doing. What happened in the lab? What did you see in that paper?
Ah. That. I don't want to talk about it. But you should know, anyway.
You don't need to tell me if you don't want to. You can also document it another time or not at all.
Eh, it's fine. I was picking up those letters, right? Ive had some suspicions lately about where I come from because as we know already, we escaped from ruines containment recently. That's not where we come from, though. We are posthumans, they must have captured us somewhere else when we were little. I was able to determine my age with some tests, and the timestamps on the letters matched my age roughly, which made me think the lab must have still been active when I came to life.
I've asked myself where I originate from many times already. I learned about the concept of parenting in the containment facility where they tried to teach us how body type 1 is supposed to do some stuff and whatever, even though even their frail reasoning for upholding such construct isn't even present in us anymore. Ruine's people really stayed in the past, didn't they? They look identical to the ones from the first civilization, at least from the few comparison parts we have, which granted, are little and you've probably not even shown me all of them.
Alright, I'm sorry if that was too much or too little-
No, It's fine. [Part 1]
! Warning. The following piece of media was part of a fascist propaganda campaign. Consume with care - [EXPUNGED]
Okay. Alright. A few things might be onto us now, possibly related to a few of my actions.
Maybe... Sorry. I will fix it, I promise. They won't harm you.
Let me elaborate.
I was tapping around Ruine's communications, trying to find something of interest. Mistakes happen, even to me. I thought I'd found something I could exploit to gain access to slightly more internal things, but transmitted some weird things on the wrong channel. An unknown subject echoed my message. I may be overthinking this, yes. But what if that somehow reminded them of us? Or gave us away? Looking at it now, actually reaching the intended object would probably have turned out worse. I'm starting to think it was a trap I didn't fall into because of a lucky accident, but what did I reach then? Theres no idenfiying information, and nothing is coming back anymore.
This is exactly how people are found and caught. Small, but significant mistakes. Tiny shards hinting at the whole image.
I've been having strange dreams. Landscapes full of sorrow and pain.
Death and danger is approaching. I'm not saying that because I feel like it is,
Under attack. unavailable at this time