Cliffside Chaos

Cliffside Chaos: Downtime and Meeting the Townsfolk

[PREVIOUSLY ON: CLIFFSIDE CHAOS]

John opens the garage door of the Police Station with his Solver and pulls into the garage. He gets out and looks at Luckie and the Mustang. "Man, I'm beat." John comments to himself as the door closes. "I'll see you in the morning."

[THE PRESENT DAY, IN THE POLICE STATION, SAME DAY AS THE END OF PROLOGUE PART II]

The chapter opens a "nude" John, snoring as he sleeps in "sleep mode".

[Dream Sequence Start]

The dream scene opens up with a Camera POV shot, watching as a. . . . .different, yet familiar John is seen going through some kind of elaborate obstacle course with some bulky device on his back and connecting to his right arm. His legs appear to have some kind of shock absorbing device built into his legs.

John continues through the obstacle course, soon getting to the end of the course. He is greeted by a brown haired woman, with dark eyes, currently wearing a black turtleneck sweater, black dress pants, some dress boots, and a white labcoat. There's the familiar camera shutter logo, with the name of what she works for redacted.

"Good job completing this chamber, 1887. This is your final test, however. Effective tomorrow, all Testing Drones are being phased out over the course of the next month." The woman explains to John, in a somber tone. She pats John on the head after speaking this.

John listens to this, and looks down sadly. "Does that mean I'll be sold off to some random person?" John asks the woman with a sad tone.

The woman nods at John with a somber expression.

[Time Jump, five days later. . .]

John is now standing with a bunch of other Worker Drones bearing [REDACTED] logos and parts. John himself is approached by someone.

"How about this one, Amanda?" A man asks a woman. "I could always use more help on the ranch." He adds, looking at said woman.

"I think he will do fine in our house, James." Amanda, the woman, replies to the man, James.

"That will be $15,000 dollars. Test Subject number 1887 here was one of our top five Testing Drones." The woman, the one who told John he would no be a part of A_er_ure S_i_nce, replies to Amanda and James.

[Dream Sequence End]

John wakes up, stretching and yawning. He is curious about the dream. He gets dressed in the Ranger gear, save for the helmet. He goes to the mirror and looks into it, the Absolute Solver logo appears in his right eye, and causes the mirror to break.

"Dang nabbit." John said to himself as he stares at the mirror, a "WARNING: HIGH TEMP" reads now in the cracked mirror.

"Sorry, Jo-hn, I forgot to ment-ion that the mo-re you use my abilities, the higher your temperature will be. We will ne-ed to find you a better cooling system." Luckie explains to John with another hum. "I think you can use water to cool off." She adds, her projection appearing in the mirror.