Circuitry Part 3

Rae woke up to the glaring, almost effervescent fluorescent lights of the room where he lost consciousness. He was lying in an uncomfortable, awkward position with a couch cushion in between his legs, and and he was lying on one of his arms slightly twisted around his back. Rae moaned slightly, returning his arm to a more comfortable position. The blood returned to his hand, dancing down his arm like a thousand intangible pins. He rubbed his eyes, and the clouds of brightness on the ceiling became streaks of luminosity.

Rae picked himself off of the ground and look at his OverSoul. “Time” he commanded. Obediently, the device chirped back, “8:53 AM”. Rae moaned quietly again at the realization that he slept through the evening. He walked back out into the bumble bee hallway and into the other room with a sign above the doorway saying” Main Power Hub”. The room was quite modest, connecting two parts of the power station. He walked through the door with a sign above it that said “Generator”. He continued down a hallway until he met a door with a bullet hole ridden number pad left from Rae’s use of the pistol he’d found.

He grabbed the handle, gave it a nudge, and the door reluctantly creaked open. Rae walked into a sizable room about the size of half a grid iron field, mostly occupied by an enormous generator.The generator was made of various materials including metals, metal alloys, glass, and all manner of expensive looking materials. Rae walked up to the generator touch interface and tapped a few icons. A few taps later, and a menu showed up displaying a list of different options. Rae selected the first option under the tab Systems called Full System Check.

After about 30 seconds of waiting, a window popped up with a list of the various processes and systems running in the machine with technician jargon running along the side of each process. After about 30 seconds of waiting, a voice chirped “All Systems Nominal”. As far as Rae knew, this generator was fairly new, and was only used to power the facility itself, the nearby supermarket, and the University Rae was studying at across the windmill plain. It had a massive energy output, around 10 megawatts of power according to the sensors, but drew it’s power from the Earth’s mantle, limiting the flexibility in which the generator was able to be placed. At the bottom of the generator near the earth’s core was a heat conductor made of Calorium, an expensive, and artificially made material that transformed heat energy into raw electrical energy. The energy fed into the body of the generator where spinning rings of Imperium, another artificially made material that when subjected to a magnetic field could control the amount of energy going through a circuit, no matter how large, and even convert it into different kinds of energy. It was ridiculously expensive, even more so than Calorium, and only implemented when they can be used to full efficiently. Any excess power from this point would be stored into the backup energy cells stored in the room behind the generator.

Rae closed the interface and walked back into the small room from before and walked through a door with another victim of Rae’s gunpowder diplomacy. The room was not as large as the generator room, but still respectable in size. Along the sides of the room were computers sitting on desks collecting dust with chairs scattered about in front of them. At the front of the room, a screen as large as the wall displayed readings from the generator, and the individual power outputs from each of the windmills. Some were still working, and still attempting to send electricity to the main generator room. It also had current weather conditions displayed, wind readings, as well as predictions for the coming days. As Rae, walked towards the console in front of the large screen, he glanced with an unraveling uneasiness at all the scattered chairs at the abandoned computers. It had been quite a while since there was last another person other than Rae here, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that some of the workers had never really left the building.

It was all very sudden when the wind came. No one saw it coming, and no one knew where it came from. Rae remembered exactly the day when it ravaged the city and took everything from him. His home, his friends, and everybody else around him. Most importantly though, it took away Angel. It was also the day that the wind gave Rae his dark gift. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but it did, and it left him all the more confused.

Rae returned to the lobby and looked at the egg shaped analog clock above the various motivational and work safety posters littered along the walls. Rae picked up his messenger bag, put it on and walked over to the drawer in which he had fiddled with the contents of the night before. He pulled it open and autonomously took from it the 92 Beretta and placed it nonchalantly in the front pocket of the bag along with an extra magazine. He was unsure of why he did this at first, but confusion dissolved as he looked at the picture of Angel. He admired it wistfully, kissed it, and put it back in the drawer. He made his way over to the chute that brought him down, thoughts drifting again to why he brought the gun. Was it going to save him from the wind? Rae smirked at such a preposterous thought.

He stepped on to the platform and press a large up arrow button, and immediately the door closed, and the chute began it’s ascension. He pondered a number of things on his way back to the surface. All of them trivial though. After all this time, there wasn’t a lot of useful things to think about anymore. Just make it to the next day.

The chute began to slow Rae, bringing him down to Earth. Coming to a stop, the chute screeched like a banshee at Rae. The door slid open with the chute platform still about 2 feet under the ground. Rae stepped on to the ground with one foot and reached for the side of the outside of the chute and lifted himself out feeling the rough, battered texture of the old metal. The cold steel send a surge of goosebumps up his arms. Stepping out into the cool spring morning, Rae inhaled and was a bit taken by the cool air. Rae was startled at how bracing the air was. He began walking to the Windmill from the day before.

Rae walked steadily, breathing in and out, eventually synchronizing his steps with every inhale and exhale. Left right, in, out, his own little conversation with the spring morning. He made it to the windmill, rubbing his hands. He looked around under the windmill to make sure he could get a running start with no obstructions on the windmill poles.

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breathe, and bent down on one knee. Touching the ground, he focused his breathing to find his center. When he opened his eyes, he felt invigorated. Stronger, more aware. Looking at the first pole on the windmill, he readied himself to run and jump. As he was about to begin his dash, he spotted something off in the distance. A figure. A moving figure.

A survivor.