OGENUS EARTH 🌎 🌊 {Dystopian Sci-Fi Adventure}

One Thing

Archie's hands trembled with anticipatory glee. Soon, Meg would relieve him and he could leave this glorified dungeon. 

She wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine, and it was oddly intimidating when he had to decipher her speech (that never seemed to vary in tone), but it was always a treat to see her.

She would most likely fix herself a cup of hot water with lemon and a dollop of synthetic honey, a drink Archie had come to associate with the buttery color of her skin. He checked his reflection in the glow of the reports monitor. He'd been awake for nearly ten hours straight and the frenzied tufts of ginger hair clinging to his brow summed up the experience.

Beyond the modest door to the Tinker's quarters on negative-seventeen, Meg watched the trickle of bodies moving about the hallway.

Not many people joined them down here. The Architects generally wouldn't be caught dead past floor negative-six, but today, Meg had to wade past two clashing frames in the sea of bots coming to and fro. 

Which was strange, to say the least.

One woman, her name unknown to Meg but her friends called her Karen, swerved to meet a statuesque blonde a few feet to her left. Two lady Architects could spell trouble, Meg noted to herself, curious. 

She inclined her head to glimpse at the lady's pinched expressions, hoping to catch a glimpse of what they were saying. 

Before Meg turned into the Tinker's quarters, she watched the women open an unmarked maintenance hatch from the reflected view in the hall's corner security mirror. The whoosh of air from the fan blades cooling the hundred of thousands of servers beyond the door billowed their hair out in glossy streamers. 

Then, they were swallowed up and more bots reclaimed the hallway.

Curiouser and curiouser, Meg commented internally to quote one of her favorite storybooks. 

Of course, Tinkers were not privy to the Architect's actions and projects, in fact as far as most people were concerned, Tinkers were lower than bots. She shrugged against the thought and resumed her routine, heading first to the panel by the door to let the system know she was at work a few seconds early. 

Archie was slouched over the console next to the service station watching a procession of bots move through the machine.

"Hello, Archie," The flatness of Meg's voice startled him and Archie turned slowly to see what could have possibly prompted her to speak first. "I have a question, how many Architects does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

The monotonousness of her voice, with its tentative vowels and indiscernible punctuation that got swallowed up in her lips, didn't match her captivating beauty.

"Uhhh..." Archie wracked his limited capacity for a witty response, but he couldn't understand the question. "Don't bots replace the lights?"

Her dusky grey eyes peeked out from beneath thick lashes, watching his response carefully. Archie could feel his nerves unravel like a ball of string.

"Precisely," Meg's answer was just as cryptic as the rest of her.

And she didn't offer further explanation as she prepared the kettle. This was possibly the most he'd ever heard her speak, and certainly, more than she'd ever asked him before. He was both dumbfounded and desperate to keep up their witty repartee.

"What?" He probed.

She didn't seem to hear him and kept studying the monitor that showed footage from outside their workspace. Only bots filtered in and out of the screen.