Awoken

CHAPTER 1

My eyes clicked open and I felt a soft hum spread through my head and neck, but it stopped there. The warmth I felt previously inside the void was gone and only the light remained.

My vision came into focus, and the brightness was dying down. The light slowly shrank until it was only a little circular mass in the center of my vision.

It was a lightbulb fastened into a grey, metallic ceiling. Various machines with blinking lights and nodes ran around this light.

I tried moving my arms and legs, but nothing worked. Everything except my head was completely numb.

I tried tilting my head away from the light but nothing was working, why couldn't I move my body?

I wanted to panic for a moment, but I knew that wouldn't help. I stifled the anxiety building up inside and thought about my options, maybe I cou-

"God damn it! Just once, I'd like to see something work in this godforsaken shithole."

THUMP!

A much deeper voice replied sternly, "Melissa! Do not kick the equipment. If you continue on this infant like tantrum, I'm gonna call Shoto in here."

"I am done with stupid fucking job!" screamed who only I could only assume was Melissa.

I wanted to see what was happening, but how could I if the only thing in my field of vision was the lightbulb.

I heard stomping move across what sounded like a large, echoey room, then it went silent after a little metallic swish.

So my hearing and sight worked, but that was all I knew, now I have one more thing I needed to figure out, I wanted to speak.

"I don't understand, I did everything the files instructed. Why isn't it working?" The deep voice was saying to himself, whatever project he was talking about must have failed and that set this Melissa person into a rage.

It didn't matter to me though, I needed his help. Now that I was out of the gray void, I needed to figure out where I was. Maybe he knew where I had been and if I learned more about what was happening, I could learn how to stay out of that hell forever.

So I tried saying the simplest thing I could imagine, I said, "Hello?"

My voice sounded like it came from a static heavy speaker, and the emotion I was trying to put behind it was not there, it sounded very monotone and artificial (sounds like male text-to-speech voice).

The deep voice sent out a little "huh" out of confusion, but I was just as surprised as him.

'Why did I sound like that?'

The deep voice made shuffling noises and I could hear his footsteps grow closer and suddenly my head was lifted very quickly from where I was lying down.

I was tilted to face man as he raised me to eye level. The man looked me in the eyes, and I realized that I had no depth perception.

When I glanced around the room, it had a fisheye distortion to everything around the edges of my vision. In the distortion, I could make out the computer monitors and consoles strewn along the sides of the walls where there was space.

I started to look back at the man who was holding me upright, and started to take a good look at his features.

He had a rather short yet stocky build with a light orange tinge to his skin. His black hair was jumbled and sticking out in multiple directions. The age lines of his face made him look like he was nearing his late forties. The dark bags beneath his eyes only made him look older. Below his long nose was a black goatee and mustache peppered with white hairs.

Along the lining of his collar, he had streaks of black rising up his neck. They created almost a black vein pattern that lightly danced across his face and hands.

I found it to be very peculiar, but all thoughts immediately began to shut down and focus on one thing.

Behind the man's head there was a computer that had just shut off, and the screen turned black and reflective.

I saw my reflection in the turned off monitor, and what I saw made me start trembling in shock and terror while wanting to scream.

All I could see in my reflection was a heavy cord leading to a metal ball in the man's hands. It was me.

I was just a metal head plugged into the wall.