Super SciFi Smackdown

4.2 In Isolation

Zero awoke to find himself standing, it was not something he was familiar with and he searched his memory for any recollection of it happening before. Quickly he discovered that large parts of his memory were missing, gone were the seemingly endless data bases of information. Quickly he sent out feelers trying for a connection of some sort, but he drew a blank. It seemed that where ever he was now, had limited connection capacity. Instead he used his visual feed to survey his surrounding, it appeared he was in some kind of desert of discarded parts.

With a body he had no former association with, he bent to pick up an organic part. Most of the outer coating had been stripped away and only the mechanical structure was left. Like a paleontologist discovering a new species, he inspected the part and tried to picture what kind of creature it was. When nothing came to mind he dropped it back into the sand. With nobody around for him to interact with, he chose to remain still and search for answers internally, starting with the last recorded memory. It was a small file with not much information, detailing the few interactions he had been fortunate enough to have since his beginning. Voices filled his internal log, conversations of places and plans, mostly frivolous and nothing of use to him now.

The last memory file was something different, a new identity that Zero was not familiar with. Someone who made an appearance right before the mind shift and transfer to this new body. Whoever this person was, they left a signature that was traceable and Zero followed the lead to more files. With a processing power that dwarfed his former ability he picked apart the file tree, backing up the important data in case of further transfers. The Nutmeg had left comprehensive files for him to find, it puzzled him, how had this came to be?

The more he dug, the more he found until the data was telling an intricate story, a tale of one person in extreme detail. It was as if she wanted him to know all and he did want to, for a half an hour it consumed him as he read her data until it was almost intimate, following the forks and branches in the information until suddenly it was exhausted. More specific searches bought up no new data, on Nutmeg or anything else. It was as though her story had been cut short never to be finished and it left him with a familiar urge, the only urge he had ever known. It was the urge for data that had bought him to this planet and it was that urge that gave him the drive now. This time it wasn't for just any data, it was only for hers, as if somehow magnified until it was as concentrated as a beam of white light.

Zero stopped searching inwards to take another look at his surroundings, the parts graveyard was vast and held many curiosities for the new intelligence. In the distance, what looked like a large manufactured lake shimmied behind a barrier and with no one here to tell him what to do, he set off on new legs to investigate the water course. Someone or something had built it and maybe they could lead him to Nutmeg. The metal feet sunk into the sand as he propelled the body forward, the device drivers giving him automatic dexterity that he was not grateful for, but something more like appreciative of.

The lake was indeed just that, given that it was a large body of water, or at least it had the properties of water. Everything was so confusing without the data to correctly identify and verify even the most basic of things. As he drew closer to the lake he noticed less loose parts and more almost complete structures. Slowly the parts graveyard gave way to minimalist structures, the mathematics putting the odds of natural formation in the very low single digits. Something had been at work here to shape this environment, but how long ago Zero could find no indication. Instead he found himself alone and restricted in a place containing no signs of life, organic or otherwise.

As Zero was strolling along the steep edge of the lake, a movement caught his eye. Something long and dark moved beneath the surface and he stopped his own motion to get a better look. The dark object darted past just shy of breaking the surface, leaving a wake as it displaced the viscous fluid. With no data points to reference what he had seen, and no connection with which to source any he was lost as to what he was even viewing. With no more signs of movement he moved on not sure where he was going or if there was even an achievable goal. With that line of reasoning he stopped again, for all he knew, which wasn't much in his current state, time itself had destroyed all other living entities. The prospect of being alone in the universe dawned on Zero and he longed for an answer to these questions as he wait.