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{fantasy world}

A young boy was running through the large, dense forestry, freely jumping from branch to branch while enjoying the endless sea of giant oak trees that cover both the horizon and the sky.

His bright blue shirt could be spotted between two trees before disappearing in the foliage, and, considering the boy's speed, it's really the only thing one could see, that and the flash of light bouncing on the golden decorations on his shoulders and at the end of his sleeves.

-"Your Highness! Please, stop! You can't enter the spirit forest!" screamed a man wearing full plate armor and who desperately tried to catch up to the boy.

Stopping on top of a sturdy branch, the boy turned and looked down at the soldier as a devilish smile crept up his face: "Really? And who's going to stop me?!" condescendingly asked the prince "Certainly not you!" he taunted before maniacally laughing once more and leaping away.

The bodyguard, who was already having a hard time tracking the boy's position and digging through the jungle-like vegetation on the ground, was now completely out of breath and could do nothing as he helplessly watched the prince get away.

Continuing to swing his arms around from branch to branch and not caring a single bit about the numerous warnings that had been given to him, the boy kept traveling deeper and deeper within the spirit forest, until one of the branches he grabbed on broke in his hand.

Sent tumbling down, the prince was hit by a flurry of branches, scraping his skin and scratching his clothes. However, said branches also considerably slowed his fall, letting him crash down in relative safety.

Upon standing back up from his miserable fall, the boy cursed his surroundings and got prepared to jump on the nearest tree and start climbing back up.

But, before he had the chance to, noticed what appeared to be a giant pit.

Confused by the presence of such a massive hole in this otherwise untouched forest, the prince took a step closer to investigate.

Upon laying eyes on the entirety of the structure, the boy could only marvel at how deep and dark the cavity seemed to be. No matter how hard he squinted his eyes he couldn't see the bottom of it.

His previous fall could have been bad, but it would be nothing compared to if he fell in this hole, but he hopefully hadn't slip- …. slipping at the very edge of the crevasse, the boy fell in headfirst.

Contrary to what you might think, the prince hadn't started to scream his lungs out in terror or desperately tried to slow himself down by flapping his arm, but kinda just accepted his fate and let himself fall down.

After a minute or so of experiencing the feeling of plummeting down, the boy finally smashed on the cold stone hard ground, creating a heavy shock that made the underground tremble.

Had it not been for the protective artifact his teacher gav- well, more like, forced on to him, the boy would have been dead 10 times over by now.

-I'm not a f**king child!" he screamed before attempting to remove the protective magical artifact once more.

After failing to remove his life saving artifact for about the 100th time, and once back on his feet the boy scanned his surroundings.

Spotting what looked like a long, broken-down hallway with white borderline grey walls made of a strange material he could not recognize and knowing that there wasn't much else to be done, he decided to investigate a bit more.

Stepping forward through the very dimly lit corridor while dodging metallic debris after metallic debris, the boy kept walking until reaching the end.

There laid a much larger, much darker, almost menacing room that'll make anyone want to turn around, but the prince wasn't just anyone, he was far too overconfident in himself and proudly stepped in the room.

A dozen red lights suddenly grew out of the walls and started flashing in every direction as an incomprehensibly loud alarm started blasting across the facility.

-What the f*ck is this place?!" Screamed the boy as he covered his ears. "The hell are all those flashing lights!?"

Panicking, the prince instinctively conjured a ray of fire in his left hand and shot it across the room destroying one of the lights. The resulting explosion then somehow caused all the other lights to immediately turn off, plugging the room into darkness once again.

After only a few seconds of calm, a much brighter, much less aggressive white shine enveloped the room, letting the prince notice some sort of desk that seemed to have appeared in the middle of the room

Said furniture was much larger, much more polished, and much, much white than any desk he had seen before.

Getting closer and noticing a lone, very comfortable-looking black chair placed right next to said desk, the prince simply sat on it and enjoyed the softness for a while before realizing that the wall in front of him was covered in hundreds of black, glass rectangles all looking straight at him.

-The f**k is this?!" He asked while leaning back, startled more than fearful.

Instinctively forming a small rock in his right-hand using magic, the boy threw it on one of the rectangles exploding it in a million pieces.

At that very moment all the other screens started to shine dimly before all turning bright white, illuminating the room and momentarily blinding the boy.

After re-opening his eyes and noticing the giant red arrows in the middle of each screen pointing downward at a big red button. The boy looked down and saw that a similar, large red, almost tempting button had spawned on the desk.

Curiously examining it, the boy reflected on what to do for a very long time (1 minute and 5 seconds to be precise), before coming to a conclusion.

Extending his right arm high toward the ceiling, he brutally brought it down and smashed the button with all his might!

///////////

{futuristic world}

A young brown-haired boy was running through a claustrophobic metallic maze, crawling from pipe to pipe, unable to see a meter in front of him.

He truly despised everything about this place and would have done anything to not be here, but it was already far too late to regret his decision now. He had no choice but to keep going.

Despite wearing a grey cloth was almost indistinguishable from the walls surrounding him, his breathing and footsteps been muffled to be as silent as can be and his smell having been completely nullified, to the point that no human could have ever noticed him, even if he had been standing face to face with them, it wasn't enough.

Even if he had been an intangible, invisible, inaudible, smell-less ghost, they would have still been able to detect him in a matter of milliseconds.

-In the name of the law, you are to stop immediately and follow us without resistance." Repeated the loudspeakers for the 3rd time this minute on their monotone, emotionless, robotic voice.

-"Leave me alone!" screamed the desperate child, knowing full well that his shouts were pointless and would never garner any amount of pity from his enemy.

-Article 1 of the constitution: "The state owns all that is, will be, and was; and thus has absolute authority over all citizens and non-citizen, within, and outside of the state." Answered the robots with the same monotone and yet somewhat cruel voice.

After a few more minutes of running about, the boy started having goosebumps as he heard them catch up to him, their loud, metallic footsteps reminding him of the darkest hours of his childhood.

Contrary to what an outside observer might think, the boy knew exactly where he was going and what he needed to do to get there, after all, that child had spent days studying the building's layout to the point where he could have achieved the mission blindfolded. Well... if the plan the boy was following hadn't failed miserably that is.

There no longer were any way out for him or the others, but it didn't really matter, the mission never asked them to come back out, only to get to where they had to.

After what seemed like an eternity of pure anxiety to him, he arrived at the last obstacle. The corridor he had crawled into had taken a 90° turn upward becoming a seemingly unclimbable wall out of nowhere.

If the plan had worked, this obstacle could have been overcome in a dozen seconds or so, but since the boy already had to use his anti-gravity boots to just barely escape his pursuers, he didn't have any energy to fuel them with.

But, despite all of that, the boy jumped up, grabbed onto the metallic pipes that were attached to the walls and used them to climb up, jumping from one to the other as fast as he could.

After crawling through some more useless, broken ventilation pipes, the fugitive finally arrived above his objective: the main control room.

Kicking the last ventilation grid standing in his way and immediately jumping down, the boy landed in the room in complete darkness.

Activating his night vision mode, the boy was able to make out the sealed door's location and deduce the localization of the energy supply switch, which, upon being activated, caused hundreds of screens to light up all at once in a blinding flash of light.

Deactivating his night visions and after adjusting his eyes to the light level, the boy looked up at the wall of screens and read the message written on them: "Enter password here: "

Leaping at the large white desk in the center of the room, the child started furiously typing the password on the keyboard, unlocking the computer in only a fraction of a second.

He then quickly plugged a USB key in and activated the program stored inside.

The algorithm booted up and searched for any files created between the first of January 2428 and the 31st of December 2443 called: "project renaissance".

After a few seconds, that felt like a millennium to the boy, the program found a match and downloaded it before sending the data contained within a network of secret spy antennas that had been placed around the facility and linked back to the outside.

Knowing his mission had been accomplished and that there literally was nothing else to do beyond waiting for his inevitable demise, the boy decided to read the files contents, expecting it to find a mess of jumble signs and letters that would mean nothing without the proper description key.

However, as the fill booted up, the child was rather surprised to see a singular line of text appear on screen: "Project renaissance: state --> 84%; tool: Athéna--> operational, Atlas-->operational, Gaïa-->operational, Pandora-->Terminated, Thēseús--> first face (Y+12)"

Leaning forward, as if it would help him read better, the screens suddenly turned black as all the lights shut off, plunging the room in a sea of darkness.

The boy knew that the only way to turn off power in this room from outside was to turn the power off in the whole facility, which would deactivate the turrets and automated tracking device, giving him a chance to flee.

The boy's hopes were then immediately crushed when all the light turned back on as if nothing happened, like the AI in charge of the place had decided to troll him a little.

Desperate, the boy looked down in defeat, waiting for the inevitable as he heard countless government agents making their way toward him and preparing to blast the main door open.

Sighing deeply, the boy looked back up to the screen, as if it would somehow magically give him a way out.

"Project renaissance: state --> 86%; tool: Athéna--> operational, Atlas-->operational, Gaïa-->operational, Pandora--> Terminated, Thēseús--> second face (s+0.09)"

Squinting his eyes, the boy re-read the message and confirmed that it had changed.

But, before he could investigate any further, the gigantic blast resist door that was the only proper way in for the guards, bursted open letting 5 humanoid robots rush in and immediately aim their weapons at the boy.

At that exact same time, all the screens in the room turned white with the picture of a long red arrow pointing down at a red button displayed on them.

The boy panicked, tried to duck to avoid the incoming bullets, slipped backward, and hit the red button with the back of his head.

{both}

Lights started turning on and off as the ground shook uncontrollably! It looked like the whole world was being flipped on its head.

Loud mechanical screams started echoing from afar as the hundreds of screens began to spontaneously explode. The force that was shaking the facilities then suddenly amplified, reaching the power of a magnitude 9 earthquake.

Both boys tried to stand back up, before realizing that they were already up.

They looked behind themselves and saw the same room twice, one much more damaged and broken down then the other.

The walls and ceilings which had resisted the onslaught until now, suddenly started vibrating uncontrollably like a piece of paper in a tornado. They were cracked, torn apart and finally collapse before falling on both of our heroes, turning everything into

Nothing

All suddenly turned to

Nothingness.