Anima: A #travelbrilliantly Comp. Short |✔| *CLOSED*

Anima

     "Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!"
A huge smile was plastered on my face as I openly thought my reaction. A small red box appeared in the left hand corner of my vision warning me that everything I thought would now be open to everyone on the server. I glanced at it, then flicked my hand in the air in front of me, and it vanished. There was a small disk that rested on my temple, and it was transmitting images and thoughts of all of the skeptics looking on at this breathtaking presentation... Mine included.
What filled my entire field of vision was astounding. Despite my sitting at my desk with the American flag beside me, and sitting towards the curving bay window with a freshly mowed courtyard, I saw a long, monarchical table with lavishly carved wooden chairs with soft red velvet backs and cushions on them. I saw different men and women sitting at the 50-chair table with the same expressions on their faces as I had. I reached a hand out, and dragged a finger across the smoothed cedar wood and gasped at the realness of it. The air even smelled different than where I was sitting; it smelled like fresh tea and a bit of lemon zest. I looked up to the head of the table, and narrowed my eyes in curiosity at the young woman with dark eyes and tanned skin who sat there. She raised her head and met my eyes.
"So you're curious about how this is possible, sir?"
I didn't even say anything. I just nodded in awe.
"Let me show you then," she said as she graciously raised herself from her chair without even creasing the suit and tie similar to mine that she wore. She began to walk towards me on the soft velvet rug that covered the dark polished floor. A tall, pale man in a black suit that matched his combed hair turned from a position at the only door in the room and walked close behind her. A small smile appeared on her face as she leaned down and placed a hand on my temple.

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I looked down at a hand that was definitely not mine. I tried to move it to the left, but it slid down to hang at my side. Suddenly, my gaze shifted upwards and my breath caught in my throat as I climbed polished white stairs entered a pristine building with almost every identifiable flag plastered upon the ceiling. In the center of the room sat one single desk with an older lady with bright red hair cut just under her ears sitting behind it.
She was typing on a silver laptop with a familiar logo on the back as I approached. I stood there patiently for a few moments until she looked up at me and nodded. She closed the laptop and pressed it down so that a wooden panel slid over it as if it was never there.
I took a seat in the bland office chair that was parallel to her own, and set my bag on the back of it gently.
"So, Mrs. Hammond, I trust that you understand the responsibility we are giving you? And the service that you will be doing for multiple nations should you continue your work with neurological interface and manipulation?"
I feel a tight smile form on my face and a proud feeling rise in my gut.
"Of course ma'am. I do indeed understand how much of an impact this technology would have. With what you are proposing, I could speed everything up at least two decades."
The woman across the clean desk nods with a solemn expression on her face. She slides a arm underneath her side of the desk and reveals a small black case. She sets it atop the desk and gingerly slides it over to me. Butterflies soon swarm my stomach.
"This, as you know, is AnimaBot; the first official AI that was created from a collaboration of some of the smartest minds in the world. I hope that you will take great care of it, and use Anima to the fullest potential to perfect your technology, Mrs. Hammond. Good day."
I struggle to keep down my giddy expression and nod. I silently take the box into my hands and put it into the portfolio that rests on the chair. I slide it carefully onto my shoulder and walk out.
My vision suddenly fades to black and it returns only an instant later as I unlock my apartment: two deadbolts and a normal lock. I walk in, take a seat in my rolling chair in the far corner in front of my computer screen and pull the box from my bag. I set it beside the laptop and immediately code flashes across it.
My vision blacks out once more, and suddenly, it's flashing through countless hours of typing and wiring and attempts to perfect the technology I had been sampling earlier. After a moment, the slideshow slows until time seems to be moving at normal pace once more.
I push away from the desk that I have been at for ages and a single code line runs across the screen:
We did it :)
I let out a victorious yell, and hold a small silver disk in my hands as a small droplet of water trails down my face. I exhale, pull out a phone and speak rapidly to whomever it is on the other end about the breakthrough. A startled gasp reverberates from the other side, and tells me to come in. A true smile pulls at my lips and I stuff everything aside from the computers inside my bag, but of course I downloaded all of it onto flash drives, and rush back to the building which is now filled with both familiar foreign people who stare at me curiously. Confidence and pride surges within me. This will change the world; it will bring true peace.

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