Rings of Rhea - Prologue

Commencing data recovery of the following subject:

Construction: “Timeless”
Build Code: #73642
Designation: Craig
Time Since Activation: 43325 hours/14 minutes/23.46998 seconds

Initializing...

* * *
Drops of water descend onto Craig’s shoulder and seep through the threadbare fabric of his faded brown coat. The feeling makes him adjust the strap of the bag slung over his shoulder, being sure not to scrape the walls or drop his metal pipe. Only a few hours since the last bout of “rainfall,” water continues trickling down from the concrete stairs, iron rooftops, and unfinished walls surrounding him. His footsteps make wet echoes against the walls as he comes to an intersection of halls. With a glance down one of the plethora of hallways radiating out from the center, he spots a light at the end of one, illuminating some of the damp walls around it with a harsh sheen. Every other branch of halls, some stacked on top of each other or bending off in odd directions like veins, only end in pitch black mud of darkness too thick to see through. Choosing the illuminated route, he soon finds himself naught a dozen yards into it before finding the way shut, a vast hole in the structure having cut the way short. The building in which he stands presses up against several much larger buildings on either side of it, but this one hall lets out into an open area large enough for several city blocks. Like the remains of massive detonation, every other path in the vicinity is revealed on the edges of the hole. From the bright lights above the skyscraper rooftops, a light orange mist cascades down into the pond of muddy water at the bottom of the carnage.

“Wrong turn, I guess,” he mumbles to himself, turning back into the black hallway from which he came.

Pipes line the ceiling edges, curving around corners, looping around each other, and ending in dead ends, and often leading back into earlier segments like a child’s learning experience in the Ouroborous pattern. The cracked cement leaks water and other liquids from all angles as he trudges through puddles and grime with only the occasional collapsed wall or glassless window to giving him light from the sky up above.

His feet, frozen within his hard boots, are already waterlogged enough to feel reminiscent of slogging through a river. Predictably, his jacket is similarly soaked through to his very bones, his undershirt completely useless in the endeavor to keep him warm or dry. Running a hand through his slick filthy hair to relieve his eyes from stray strands, he continues his journey the floors of the building.

Crossing countless other intersections within the building, he spots a ladder leading upwards. A full door and door frame sits snugly into the ceiling with ribbons of water escaping through the cracks on the sides. With a minute of consideration, he scratches his stubble and climbs the ladder to the top before leaping up to reach the doorknob. With a frictionless grasp at the metal orb, his fingers slip and let him fall down into a puddle with a slap and spray of water.

He mutters a few curses to himself as he reaches into his bag. Producing a hammer, he aims and throw the tool up to the frail white door. The heavy head of the hammer pierces straight through the barricade and lets out a small torrent of water and soon subsides.

A quick look around tells him that a section of a nearby concrete wall has fallen off recently. Mentally kicking himself, he reaches down to the block of wall, jagged with steel rods and wire mesh throughout the chunk, and sets it down beneath the door. With some reaching, he grabs the knob with a firmer grip than before. A turn, and the door falls open, nearly knocking him down, but drenching him nonetheless in the murky ice cold water, though he reacts with only mild annoyance at the temperature.

With some doing, he climbs up into the room above. An old office, if the derelict desk, chair, and soggy carpet are any indication. The room is small, but he spies another door within view. Hauling himself up, he sees that the new door is similar to the one he just entered, but he smiles at the fact that it is in a place a proper door should be, for once. As he reaches for the doorknob to open it, he halts in place as his ears strain to hear something in the background of shifting concrete, humming background machinery, and flowing water.

The numerous scars on the walls around him are indication enough that something has been living nearby. With a deep breath, he turns the knob with the tenderness of a parent, and peers through the crack.

The room beyond has had its walls torn down as if to make room for a parking garage, but each support beam was left alone with various wires and metal supports showing from where the original concrete walls once resided. All across the floor are cracks and indentations in the cement through which water from above continued to seep. As he stares through the crack and surveys the room, the only sounds are that of water trickling all around, and the various cracking noises that often emanate from the decrepit structures that supposedly support the floor on which he stands`.

Opening the door a few more inches, his breath catches in his throat as his eyes fall upon the resident of this floor. To the right, a more a large round dent had been beaten into the ceiling, with the floor having received the same treatment long ago. Pieces of metal, concrete, and wires sit in a heap as if to create a nest.

Curled up on the mound of metal resides a slender mechanical creature, its numerous ball-jointed limbs folded inwards and its metallic black spine reaching around into a wretched tail. It resembles the skeleton of an animal without ribs, the skull nearly the size of Craig and the thing’s claws at the end of its forelimbs each longer than his arm. As the creature rests in the nest it remains several times larger than Craig himself.

Letting the door close again before taking another breath, he lets out a silent sigh as soon as it leaves his vision. His eyes dart around the office, yearning for an alternate exit. With the amount of water near the machine, he figures that there is no way he could traverse it without making enough noise to awaken it. It is not often that the machines “sleep”-- he is lucky-- otherwise he would already be dead. A shiver runs up his spine at the thought of its impossibly powerful claws scraping against his skull before crushing it like a grape.

The sides of the office prison around him are blank except for the two doors: the one in the floor and the one he just closed. No windows and no holes to crawl through, not even an air vent to stumble his way into. He begins pacing between the damp broken desk and the door, a hand scratching the back of his head. Mumbling to himself and looking around the room for something to use or something to inspire, he finds himself cautiously opening the door again.

The machine continues to sleep. The lights that usually switch on upon its awakening are left dim and empty, but still showing a slight glow if he squints enough to see it. That little glow, so silent and innocent, yet in possession of something strong enough to tear down the walls around it. Nonetheless, no other doors lead forward in the halls below, and he can see several more paths open to him beyond the nest.

He eyes the small streams of water trickling down from the ceiling and walls, straining his ears to examine them. Their timing, their loudness, their pitch and echo. Beats of his heart against his chest nearly throw off his timing, but he nonetheless takes a step into the water with a wet splash just in time for a synchronized movement with the water around him. A glance to the lanky machine tells him that he is not yet eviscerated-- a good sign so far.

Leaning onto that foot to lift up the other, he lets go of the door knob and takes the second step, also in time with the torrents of water coming from the floors above.

Three.

Four.

Five and Six more and a glance to the machine.

The next hallway sits a meager few paces away. With a turn back to the machine, he only just notices how deep his breathing has become. More than the rain, his sweat has drench his clothes, and his eyes remain frozen in their focus, trying to find any trace of movement from the mechanical creature before it decides to end him. Its thin fingers, each with six or seven knuckles, sit crossed over each other, supporting the creature’s long narrow head in its slumber like any animal of flesh would have.

Remembering his purpose, Craig slowly pivots to keep his eyes on the machine and steps backwards toward the nearest ramp out of the building. As he feels the vibrations of his steps crawl up the wall behind him, he reaches out an arm to catch himself as he approaches a concrete wall. Feeling the rough surface behind him, he let his feet crawl along the floor until they felt the ramp. His head turns to peer up the wide ramp, a surprisingly dry section of floor where his footsteps will no doubt echo, then back at the machine.

“Intruder” is the word he least wants to hear. The mechanical sounds of garbled language always find themselves converging into that one word. Sometimes he can to catch others, but not many. “Unsafe” and “Leave” often sound from their speakers in jagged frequency as they pursue him with otherwise ceaseless, precise metal hands strong enough to crush his limbs with a simple pinch.

A drop of water tickles his nose and breaks him out of his stupor, as if to tease him for his fear. Broken out from his waking nightmare, he finds himself at the top of the ramp. Not a sound emanates from the nest, and he soon lets his shoulders and neck relax with a sigh. Adjusting the strap on his shoulder, he continues into the next twists and turns that the proceeding hallways give him, taking them as they come.

* * *

At the beginning of his time in the “city,” he sat witless, naked, and alone among a massive building of black metal and clicking machines. No clothing provided, nobody to welcome him, and nobody to tell him who he was. There was nothing in his head but a language, some vague knowledge of Earth, and the ability to walk, talk, and think.

Countless hours of travel through the surrounding structures have left him with scars, a set of threadbare clothes discarded by their previous owner, and the only tools he had the knowledge to use: a hammer, a blanket, a piece of old pipe, and a small length of rope that he uses to crank open hatches with rusted handles.

He has given names to some of the varying monstrous machines he has encountered. Swarms, Wolves, Helicopters, and Snatchers, to name a sparse few. The words associated with them simply come to him without any solid thought. What scares him more than the machines is sometimes his lack of creativity. Whether he brought it up in his own thought processes or saw the destruction left in the wake of one, however, he always shudders at the thought of a Wolf.

The beast whose nest through which he recently passed looked to him to be an ancestor of the Wolves. Through experience, he has found that no two machines are built alike, many of them having functions alien to others even within the categories in which Craig had mentally placed them. He once encountered a Helicopter with ballistic weapons instead of a pair of whirling blades, and twice has found himself being overtaken by dozens of Swarms with tiny pain-liquid injecting needles instead of their usual mandibles. No other machines attack each other, so he always wonders exactly why they sometimes possess poisons meant for his body and weapons that can tear through his flesh but are otherwise useless against their fellow machines. But what amazes him the most is that he had the wherewithal to survive their presence for so long.

Smashing individual pests in a Swarm and crushing the skull casings of Snatchers have become second nature to him, as has completely avoiding Wolves and their many savage cousins. Helicopters are useless in tight spaces, so the hallways he was just in are perfect. For Snatchers, however, his ears are always perked up on case their cries echoed down the halls in time for him to dodge one of their bone-crushing claws that seem to extend for miles into the mazes in which he finds himself.

With those mechanical creatures, along with the amount of time he has spent traveling, he no longer stares with wonder at the beauty that the structure can provide. The massive hole that he passed without a care is easily several miles wide and tall enough to have once boggled his mind -- he was not even able to see the through all of the rain. Instead of wondering what exactly could have caused such a gargantuan hole in the city, he saw it as another obstacle to move past. Just another piece of scenery that sat in the way of wherever he was going.

But he does not know his destination. He keeps on walking, knowing only a language, how to walk, talk, and think. There is one piece of knowledge, however, that always bothers him; if nobody else is present in this world, then why does he have the name “Craig?” Who is there to name him, and who else would even know of his existence, or even care what his name is? Not once has he had the chance to speak his name aloud to anyone or anything, even to one of the more docile machines out of boredom.

From what Craig has seen of the world, he surmises that someone made plans to build a large city, but never stopped doing so for centuries. The first buildings he found himself in were, while empty of life, relatively suitable to live in if the machines had not taken over. Comfortable beds and intact walls and untouched apartments and ceilings without leaks spanned for as far as he could see, however rare it was that he found himself in any open space. The machines came by often, but their purpose seemed to be more to repair damages than to eject him out a window or break his bones. Back then, they looked to be more taken care of than the rest of the city he has seen, with their pure white encasements fully intact and frightening inner skeletons all but unnoticeable underneath.

With all of the comfort, pampering, and clean living conditions, however, he could not stay for long. Something was missing. It was not the fact that he could not recall the face of his mother or father, nor was it that he did not seem to have to eat or drink. The passage of time blurred with the lack of any clocks, calendars, or even the passing of day and night. There was nobody else to speak with; only he and his thoughts were present to wander. So wander he did, into the rest of the city he was unable to see or comprehend.

As he traveled, he noticed that despite what seemed like years of trudging through the endless structure, he never aged a day. Every mild wrinkle on his face from what he assumes to be around thirty years of age never grow or shrink with time, nor does his stubble become anything but that with his want for a razor. Though it is not as if he has to look good for anybody, he often wonders if his hair would grow back if he ever cuts it, or if the scars on his skin will in fact become permanent aspects of his ageless body. In the apartment buildings in the area in which he awakened, there were even toilets and dishes despite his inability to eat, leaving him aghast as to the intentions of the architect. To confuse him even more, he once found a toe nail clipper, but found that none of his nails ever grew a single millimeter.

“Millimeter,” he muses to himself, pinching the measurement between his thumb and fore finger. Another word the meaning of which he knew, but he cannot for the life of him recall from where he learned the measurement. He also knows of centimeters, inches, feet, yards, meters, kilometers, and miles. In the face of the vastness of the structure before him, however, the knowledge is as insignificant as he.
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A/N: I hope you enjoyed reading this, though I believe this part of the story is a bit dry. I think that it gets more interesting later on, so if your interest is piqued please stick around in case I get around to posting more.

This is an edited draft of a two year-old NaNoWriMo piece, so it might feel like a bit of a mess, but that's nothing a good review can't fix. Constructive criticism is much appreciated, as always!