Meet the Robinsons: Time Will Tell

Chapter 4 - The Ruined City

It was dark. He felt the weight of something heavy, making it become more difficult to breathe by the minute. Forcefully, the teenager pushed himself up. Whatever was on top of him crumbled off his aching body, as the boy finally saw some bit of light...

Coughing up all the dust trapped in his lungs, Wilbur squinted his eyes open, finding himself sitting in a pile of rubble. The air was chilly and all was quiet... At first he thought the sun was already set, a dim light shone at the horizon, until he realized that light was coming from the East. It was nearly sunrise.

Dang, he's been out of it for that long? Wilbur thought. What happened? Where is everyone?!

That's right... The last thing he saw was Carl's tin hand barely out of reach, before falling to his doom.

Wait, Carl!

"Carl!" the boy called out whilst attempting to stand up. "Carl? Ngh-" he grunted, losing his balance as he stumbled forward. Feeling a sharp pain in his left ankle as he must've hurt it from that fall. Even after a plunge like that, Wilbur was surprised he didn't suffer worse than a hurt ankle, let alone lucky enough to be alive.

Pinned down by the rest of the rubble, there was a corner of a tarp flapping in the gust of wind blowing past. Maybe that's what softened his fall before it got buried?

Picking himself back up, Wilbur realized he was still wearing his Chargeball glove, deciding to leave it on just in case. There wasn't anything else on him that he could use for self defense, this is as close as it gets. Slowly but surely, Wilbur stood himself up, trying not to put a lot of pressure on his bad ankle and wandered off to go look for his robot buddy.

"Carl!" he hollered once more. There was no one in sight, the city seemed practically deserted.

Limping past the fallen building, Wilbur wondered how it came down to begin with? Whatever the cause, it had to be massive. Bigger than a T-rex. Not only that, but the whole area was a disaster. More rubble to climb over, abandoned vehicles, fires, leaking pipes... It looked like two tornadoes went through the city.

Stopping himself, Wilbur almost stepped on a small teddy bear. Picking it up and wiping the dust off the cute plush, it was golden brown and wearing a polka dotted bow tie. Some kid must've dropped it in the midst of all the chaos...

From the kindness in his heart, Wilbur stuck the bear in his back pocket: hoping for the slightest chance he could find the owner. That is, if the owner wasn't already... No, he hoped that wasn't the case.

The sun peeked over the horizon, sunlight illuminating the wrecked city. Eventually, Wilbur got to higher ground, getting a better view of the scene...

...it was worse than he could imagine. Like this was something out of a bad dream. Smoke rising into the morning sky, clouds of dust covering the terrain, beaten up buildings. It was like seeing the aftermath of a war zone. To think that Wilbur's father, Cornelius, helped bring life to this city, only for things to turn out like this...

Flipping back to that voice... Was his dad really involved in all of this? No, that can't be right... His father's intentions were always to build a brighter future, not decimate it. This was all some sort of misunderstanding and Wilbur, being the son of the world's greatest inventor, was going to get to the bottom of this.

Continuously wandering through the lifeless city of Todayland, that wasn't the only thing on Wilbur's mind. Their house sat outside the city, but was the rest of the family okay? He was out of it for the entire night, unaware of what else went on while he was unconscious.

Wilbur scoped around every turn, but still no civilians and no sign of Carl anywhere. It made him wonder if he was the last person on Earth, as if everyone else vanished out of thin air. He of all people knows how that feels...