Playlist: Apocalypse

Virus in a Lullaby - Part 1

Have you ever imagined a night like most nights where everything felt perfectly fine? Everything felt so perfect that you knew something must have been wrong? This night was filled with the darkest clouds you have ever seen. The thunder roared over the sound of the heavy rain and lightning whipped across the sky. Buildings towered over the nightlife and even ascended into the clouds. On the ground, you could make out all the signs that were lit up but they were blurred behind the veil of rain. The city felt quieter than usual even with the thunderstorm. Overlooking this city was Tier Technologies, a building that rivaled even the tallest towers in the city of Azimuth and its twin city Zenith. At the very top of Tier Technologies lived one of the most well-known families in the world.

You see we live in a future where technology has advanced tenfold from what we've seen prior to the apocalypse. Rumors circulated that this technology has given both power and strength to the new leaders of today. The society that we live in today is nothing like that of what the world has previously seen. The wealth we gain today is not of a physical currency. In both Azimuth and Zenith wealth is distributed in other ways that we will take a look at a bit down the line. However to give you a sense of wealth let's just say that even the richest of the richest would be worse off in today's world. If you could measure wealth today the wealthiest man known to the world should've died long ago but has survived with just his consciousness to live for an eternity.

Heavily guarded, his robotic body lays in a chamber built to scan, repair, rejuvenate, and update his humanoid sleeve. A lover of classical music, a symphony reaches its climactic end as a lullaby starts to play out. The chamber lights slowly start to fade in and out. Fluid running through a tube that goes into different parts of the humanoid sleeve turns from its clear state to a dark blood red. The lullaby continues on. A few dedicated engineers that analyze the humanoid sleeve are finally notified of the issue and get to work on initiating the backup protocol. It all seems but too late. The virus set it without alerting any of the security programs or personal until it was mere minutes even seconds too late. Bits of information popped up on the system as the engineers tried to scan the virus. Before they could access any information the chamber locked and the systems went dark.

An alert was sent out to all the security and engineer teams but they were baffled by the events. At this time the lullaby was in a mellow tempo. All backup systems were offline and could not be brought back to life. They watched helplessly as the chamber slowly filled the dark fluid. It was as if life was being drowned in front of their own eyes but the key to unlocking the tank was locked inside the tank itself. The lullaby came to a soft end as the virus completely took over the humanoid. One of the most advanced pieces of technology, its servers, its code said to have been so sophisticated that hacking its encryption would've taken over thousands of years was now taken over in a matter of minutes. There a human conscious, the founding father of Tier Technologies lay lifeless in a hollow body. 

Everyone on the last few floors of Tier Technologies was scattered and confused about the events that had taken place. The thunderstorm raged on and just a few blocks down from Tier Technologies was another building that barely pierced through the clouds. A complex that housed different businesses, restaurants, and apartments. There were many balconies and patios that faced Tier Technologies. If you happened to look you could see the panic that was ensuing that night. Still hidden behind the downpour but just enough to see workers in a frenzy much like ants in a colony.

Sitting on one of these patios in a cafe sat a figure shrouded. There was only one other person in the cafe that was sitting behind the counter. A ringtone barely broke through the thunder. The figure picked their hand up to their ear.

"It's done."

Just like that, they watched as multiple vehicles raced through the sky, many of which turned out to be Enforcers. Now the top of Tier Technologies was being flooded with sirens and the flashing lights of the Enforcers. 

The figure looked down at the cup of coffee that they were drinking. Only a few drops were left in the cup. One last sip, they placed the cup upside down on the plate it was sitting on and vanished from the cafe.