Century

Chapter Four: Released

All images go to their rightful owners.

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."
~
Kage
~
It's been a week since we've been woken from our hundred year sleep. I've been in rehabilitation at the hospital along with Abi. I'm going to be released in a few hours. Abi still has a few days left along with everyone else. Everyone but the adults and Melody.
The adults are still in comas. Melody is still to weak to walk and she complains about her left hand. That and the fact that she has burn wounds across her body. The doctors say that they never healed properly so they want to keep her even longer.
Ashley made us fake identities and she made it so that Melody and I are orphans, which is true. We've been placed under the care of Abi's parents once they wake up. Until then, Danny volunteered to keep is at his house. I met his mom as well and she agrees.she also said that we would go shopping for some clothes since I had said that we were very poor and I lost my clothes.
The officers had come in again to ask us why we didn't have anything with us and we said that we were surfing at another beach but we can't remember the beach or location. Since Melody and I are orphans I told them that we only had the one set of clothes and we lost them when we were taken away by the current. They eventually bought it and said that we all had suffered memory loss, Melody's being the greatest since she couldn't remember much if anything. I don't feel that bad about lying to the officers even though Melody does.
Danny had talked with Eric and Eric gave me some clothes since I only had a diver's suit with me. Eric gave me some black jeans and a white shirt with a black jacket and black, worn out tennis shoes. He said he felt it was 'my style' or something like that.
Danny and his mom came for me the day after I met Danny's mother. She has brown, curly hair and green eyes with tan skin. She's a nice lady and she's a little taller than I am. I'm in Melody's hospital room when they come to get me. Melody still complains about her left hand but she won't tell me what she is complaining about. She just says it hurts.
"Ready to go Kage?" Danny's mother asks, sweetly.
I nod and stand up from the wooden chair I am sitting in next to Melody's bed. Melody looks at me with sadness and worry.
"I'll be fine," I comfort. "You'll be fine."
She nods and I turn to leave. I follow Danny and his mother out of the hospital and into their dark blue Jeep. I climb into the back of the Jeep, which doesn't have a top on it, and look for a seatbelt.
Danny turns back to me.
"Are you looking for the seatbelt?" He asks and I nod in response. He smile and laughs a little. "Cars have automatic seat belts. Once we start the car they come out from the seat and lock in by themselves."
I nod in understand and Danny's mother starts the car. Grey seat belts come out of the black, leather seats and strap me in. We drive away from the white and glass building and head on a freeway. I see Danny's mother click a button on her steering wheel and she turns round to me.
"Don't worry, Honey," she comforts over the noise of wind rushing through my ears. "It's on autopilot."
"Autopilot?" I thought. "That's.... interesting."
"We're going to go the store to get you some clothes, okay? Since you are borrowing Eric's," she explained.
"Okay," I reply, stoically.
We drive on the freeway, occasionally Danny turns around and shows me how to work the radio, which is like an iPad touch screen. We finally get off the freeway and drive through parts of town.
The town was like a place I had been to once, the downtown area of Long Beach, California by the ocean. There were shops everywhere with hologram signs and floating street lamps. There were cyclists with holographic wheels and dog leashes that were also holograms. Yet they were tangible. You could touch them to ride your bike or walk your dog. Danny explained everything to me as we drove, his mother not caring what our conversation was as long as we got along.
We drove further down until I could see the ocean a few blocks away. There was a huge building to my right where we parked the car.
"This is the mall that we can get your clothes from," Mrs. Gazer explained.
My shoulders slumped at the sight of the tan brick building, with holographic signs above the entrances.
"What's wrong?" Danny asked.
"I hate malls," I explained with slight anger in my voice.
Danny sighed and shook his head.
"I don't like 'em either," he says. "My mom is a shopaholic."
"Oh~," Mrs. Gazer says, waving her hand. "Only a little."
I give a slight smile at the miniature argument and exit the Jeep. Danny and his mother exit and Mrs. Gazer clicks the lock on the Jeep. She then clicks another button and a hood comes out of the back of the Jeep and encloses what's inside.
"Have to have some things from the past," she explains, kindly.
I look at Danny and he understands my question.
"You can choose to have an automatic car that doesn't need keys or hoods," he explains. "But my mother likes the past, before the wars anyway, and she wants to show some of the past. That's why she has keys and the hood."
I nod slightly and follow Mrs. Gazer into the mall. It's bright inside with a sun roof. Everything is pretty much the same from back in the twenty-first century for a mall's sake. There are holograms for signs and directories. However there are still fast food stores and indoor playgrounds for kids to play.
I followed Danny and his mother to a large clothing store and look up at the sign, Macy's. I sigh in anger at the store but relief at the familiar sign. We entered and went to the male teen part of the store.
"Alright you two," Mrs. Gazer say, happily. "I'll be over at the women's area to look at some clothes. You two pick out some stuff for yourselves and go find me there. Then we can go and get something to eat."
We nodded and she left.
"Glad to see there's still paper money," I say aloud.
"Yeah," Danny says. "There are some places where you can just use a card to shop for that specific place but otherwise we use bills, coins and credit cards."
We wandered a bit and I picked out some clothes, not bothering to look at the size since I was still thin and didn't care how big the clothes got.
"You sure it's fine for me to get these?" I ask Danny.
"Yeah," he replies as we start heading to find his mother. "My mom is a robotic doctor and she gets paid a lot. Plus this is awesome because I got out of school to help you."
"What about your father?" I ask.
"He's a hardware and software designer. He travels a lot and helps companies come up with inventions and then moves on. He comes on special occasions mainly but he calls a lot. He's a great dad even though I don't see him often."
I nod and we spot Mrs. Gazer and head over to the checkout.
After paying for my clothes and the ones Mrs. Gazer found we head over to a fast food place called Pete's Place. When we got in I picked a hamburger and fries with a milkshake, Danny got the same and his mother got a salad.
We ordered by talking to a robot and I was slightly disappointed. I saw robots in the hospital and they looked fine but I don't see a lot of them around.
"Hey, Danny?" I ask and he looks at me as we exit the restaurant with our food. "Where are all the robots?"
He gulps down some of his shake and give a slight smile.
"Well..." he thinks. "Everywhere. You see, there are different kinds of robots. One kind is like what we saw in the hospital and in the restaurant. They look like higher tech versions of the prototype robots that were with you." He looks at his mom to see if she heard anything. She was on the phone and thankfully missed what Danny said. "Then there are the people robots. You see, there were great wars in the past hundred years. In order for the robots to not have conflict they started looking like humans. They got fake skin and started wearing human clothing. They even turned their robotic voices to sound like ours. They could be anywhere and you wouldn't know it but their faces do look a little harder."
I nod and try to process everything. The others were going to freak at what we had created.
~
Mrs. Gazer dropped us off back at Danny's house and said she had to go to work. I followed Danny into his house and Danny showed me around.
He has a big, two story, dark brown house on the outside and it becomes tan on the inside with redwood floors. He shows me his granite kitchen that looks like it could fit five families at once and his living room with white and tan carpet and dark brown furniture with a giant flat screen TV and a red brick fireplace.
He then showed me his backyard which could fit another house and showed me the doors to some bathrooms and his parents room along with another guest room.
Then he took me upstairs. Right when you get to the top there is a white door directly in on top for a bathroom. Then to the right there was a blue door that they had for Melody's room and to the left there was a green door and then a black door. He said the green was his and the black door was the entrance to his room.
"See if you like it," Danny says, opening the black door to my room.
The walls were painted silver and the bed had a black frame and bedside table. There was a window directly above the bed were you could see to the neighbor's house. To the right was a closet and to the left there was a silver desk and black chair.
"I like the color," I say crossing my arms.
"It used to be my brother's room but he's off at collage. Same with my sister. Melody has her room."
"You have siblings?" I ask.
"Yeah," he says and nods. "I'm the youngest of three. Anthony is my older brother and Alexa is my older sister. Anthony is the oldest out of the three of us. His color style is the same as yours for the most part."
I nod.
"I'll leave you to get changed and then we can do something else," Danny says as he exits the room with a smile.
I get changed into black shoes and jeans white a grey shirt and black jacket. The jacket has a leather vest with it that doesn't have sleeves and is jagged at where the sleeves would be.
I go downstairs to see Danny waiting on the couch in their living room.
"Could you wear anymore black? What do you want to do?" He asks, sitting up.
"I want to go back to the building where you found us," I say, stoically.
"Why?" He questions.
"I have things to do," I reply. "I'll explain when we get there."
As we walked down I looked up at the sky. It was clear blue and has few clouds. I sighed.
"Maybe the world is finally at peace," I thought.
As we walked down to the building I heard a explosion and screams.