Petrograd || ateez

「chapter 1」: Don't Panic! You're Safe

The air smelled like burned grass. Blinking against the blinding sun, he opened his eyes; the sky stared back at him, silent and vibrantly blue. Blue? He stood up, scowling at the endless steppe ahead of him as a shadow fell over his eyes, then looked down at himself. A jolt of surprise ran through him.

What the hell?

He wore cowboy boots, washed out jeans, a brightly yellow shirt, a black west, and - after taking it off - found that he'd worn a white cowboy hat. Something red snaked around his neck. He looked out over the steppe again, turned around and found wooden houses in some distance. Where the fuck was he? Why had he taken a nap on the ground?

And was he cosplaying Lucky Luke?

Who even was Lucky Luke? Had he been on his way to some sort of convention? Like this? He dismissed the thought. Why would he be out here? The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. He hated dust and heat. And upon investigating his memory, that seemed to be the only thing he remembered. An aversion to dust and heat. He didn't even know his own name, or his age, or where he lived, or anything. Just that he hated it here.

He frowned, looked down in search for some indicator on the purpose of his being there, but found only a leather-bound notebook. It would've looked expensive if it weren't covered in red dust and half buried beneath pressed down prairie grass and the half-rotted corpse of some animal (probably four to five weeks old, judging by the absence of smell and the state of the decay). Disgusted, he knelt down to pick the notebook up, hoping to find some sort of clue within it. As he took a stick to roughly, carelessly move the bones and flesh aside, he halted; how often had he handled corpses to be so uncaring with them?

Well, the notebook might tell him. So he ripped out some grass - the nanobots made sure he couldn't feel the pain of the cuts - and cleaned the book as best as he could with sand and the grass. When he was satisfied enough with his work, he took the book and stood back up, putting the hat back on to protect his head and eyes from the relentless sun.

A closer look at the book revealed the cover to be engraved with some sort of intricate symbol; instinctively, he placed his thumb onto the star in the middle. "What the fuck," he muttered to himself as the metal clasps of the book snapped open. A locked notebook? How the hell did that even work like that?

Eager to find out anything about himself or this situation, he opened the book. The first page was empty except for a red fingerprint. Blood. He continued on without paying this any mind, after all, what was a little blood? Strange thought, that one. But he didn't get to dwell on it. The next page was covered in... calculations? Rows upon rows of narrowly scribbled numbers and symbols flowed over the yellowed paper, and he knew what they meant, just not why. Why he knew that, or why he'd calculate something as arbitrary as trajectories and isochoric changes.

Irritated, he flipped the page. More calculations, sentences in a language he couldn't read. As he found out by leafing through the book in increasing anger, this was the case for every page, except for a few empty ones in the back. Calculations, unintelligible sentences and, strangely, drawings of machines, people, places, and the same person again and again. Those portraits weren't flattering though, oh no, eyes were crossed out, sometimes knife cuts slashed through an entire page, some of the portraits were partly burned or deliberately smudged almost to unrecognizability, bloody hand prints over the daunting grin on that recurring face, angrily crossed out or scribbled through faces.

Needless to say, he was disturbed. Had he really done all of that? Maybe he should be glad not to remember. He seemed to really hate that guy in the drawings. But what did that make him? What was he? Who was he?