Searching For Andromeda

It was common in top-secret facilities to harbor AIs, but they were less in number. Anna was an artificial intelligence that had a concept of what "emotion" is. She had numerous information regarding how to "feel" stored in her chip—her memory akin to the cognitive functioning of the human brain. She "knew" what to feel at certain times, and she had the basic grasp of cognizance. She was also encoded to be "unable" to control what she feels, but programmed to be able to handle what she "felt".

Fear. Happiness. Loneliness. Sadness.

Desolation.

Anna knew these emotions for long she could remember. She was incomplete—a fragment of the real Anna, so she couldn"t really tell if she was allowed to "feel" something.

But desolation—it was a word that fascinated Anna. Her last memories comprised of the crew throwing her chip somewhere else—and maybe destroying the other chips as they fled the laboratory in mayhem. She was forced to stare from the computer screen—unable to move freely as she got stuck in the cell of binary codes. She was the memory fragment with the emotions stored. The fragment where language and cognition were programmed. She was deemed harmless so her chip was inserted in a device with a series of codes enclosing her hologram form.

For years she learned how to store information and s.n.a.t.c.h up radio waves. She learned to process frequency until she recovered a "voice"—only a voice. She was fortunate enough to get the voice at the radio waves pa.s.sing through the house. The problem is, it was a voice of a child. Anna definitely didn"t look intimidating—but who would she intimidate?

ANDROMEDA was desolated.

And desolation was the word she was accustomed with for the past thirty years, for a reason she couldn"t understand nor remember.

Anna took a step back, feeling the emotion called "fear,"—the creature, a monster-like ent.i.ty, was behind the door enclosing her and Ephraim. Desolation—of course—she remembered now how she got fascinated by such word.

Such creatures have slept in the laboratory for long; slumbered and shawled against the flowers forgotten by the creators. Neglected and desolated into a cold forest.

Her system was botched, meaning she couldn"t retrieve any file about these creatures. Through her synthetic eyes, the information regarding the creatures were glitching through her eyes. She could see through the walls and the closed vault door being continuously thumped with a brute force that there are more of the monsters now awake from their thirty-year sleep.

Ephraim called her several times before she could snap back to reality. She couldn"t a.n.a.lyze what they are, yet she could remember how they looked thirty years ago.

[When a man encounters something he doesn"t understand,] – [Fear courses through his brain and would trigger his defense mechanism]

Anna knew she was feeling "fear" now.

The strongest kind of fear.

The fear of the unknown.

When the vault door opened, it revealed the creature. It looked so much like the experimental subjects—the scientists were procuring and modifying. She couldn"t remember much—but she knew instantly that this creature was created in the laboratory.

She tried to distract it so Ephraim could run through the doors, although it isn"t a guaranteed escape. There are other creatures looming in around the corners—but as of now, it would be wiser to escape this room. Anna once again a.n.a.lyzed the situation as she closed her eyes to drift her consciousness to several sectors of the laboratory, examining where would be the safest route.

Almost all of the laboratory was looming with monsters. She can"t believe she didn"t notice this—is it because her system did not recognize the creatures? But that can"t be the case. She immediately knew there was an intruder. She immediately knew when Ephraim fell to the lagoon, and his companion to the opposite.

Is she programmed to let the creatures pa.s.s undetected? None have destroyed vault doors, yet they were sp.a.w.ning everywhere.

The flowers!

Anna wanted to blame herself, but she couldn"t. It seems like the creatures could pa.s.s undetected because they were lab-made and perhaps it was because she herself was immersed in examining the room. This was the laboratory she remembered.

The laboratory she remembered . . .

She then a.n.a.lyzed the situation once more, and then rummaged her senses to different premises of ANDROMEDA. Room by room she examined.

One safe room.

A specific room she had access to—but contents botched and deleted by the scientists. It was all dark in her mind, but this part of the laboratory was the only sector unoccupied by the never-ending sp.a.w.n and h.o.a.rd of laboratory creatures. Anna sees Ephraim dodging the attacks of the monster, and she was there unable to do anything. She couldn"t even sense the presence of these intruding creatures!

Intruding creatures . . .

Intruders!

Anna then noticed in her system that there is a person who touched the gla.s.s pane separating the laboratory from the jungle. Anna wanted to "kick" herself (one term she learned in watching animes at the time she couldn"t do anything)—she had put her system to idle to lavish and enjoy her walks since it"s been forever she was in her hologram form.

Without wasting a time, she started to run through walls. She still couldn"t teleport, but at least she could actually be a Hologram and float through thin air and "walk" to the ground. She ran (because it seemed easier for her) towards corridors and walls, hoping it isn"t too late to save the "intruders"—

And then as Anna set foot to the premise—she stumbled upon mountain of corpses. She couldn"t really smell, but she "knew" rotten flesh smelled horrid.

Surrounded by the mountain of corpses was a man with ink-black hair and dark eyes. The person who helped her and reprogram her hologram form along with her security chip. The guy who saved Ephraim from drowning.

He saved Ephraim once.

Now he got to do it twice!