Chapter 2

SRD had no time to process what just happened. How did this... screen start talking to him? If the Slesium that ran their civilization was out, how can anyone else be 'alive'? For a robot that had only 3 minutes before running out of energy, this was too much to turn into a conclusion. The glow in SRD's eyes began fading away, he was about to lose. The 'critical thinking' process he just went through helped drain his battery even more.

"Wow. You're pretty miserable." The character said aloud. "Well, what do you think of this? After all those years of building, it will all end here, with you in the end." He followed up. "You know, the basis of how you built your civilization is honestly quite stupid. One energy source to keep up with the whole world, why would you think this is a good idea? As you can see, it all fell apart in a flash. It's been a few weeks since the incident. I'm pretty surprised you were lucky enough to magically turn back on." The character added. The monitor which displayed the character suddenly burst out a set of legs from its thick sides. They were metallic, with two legs on each side. The legs were akin to that of a spider.

"You need to be remodeled so that you don't work solemnly off of Slesium." The monitor had trodden to SRD's body. It was then that his thought process had complexity shut down, with the last bit of energy inside of him burning off.

Three days later.

For SRD, it only felt like a few seconds passed before he was back up, but in reality, it took days.

"Had a good sleep? Well, no time to know, we have a world to rebuild." A voice said from a few meters away.

SRD sprung up to look at where the voice came from. As he did, he noticed that his body wasn't as jammed as it used to be when he ran out of energy. He took a look down, seeing that all of the Slesium on his body was gone. SRD notices the monitor on the floor next to him. "Who are you..?" SRD curiously asked the character.

"Oh come on, who's anyone? But for the sake of efficiency and communication, you can call me M. Now, get on your feet and lift this 90s monitor up, I'll tell you where we should go."

"M? I don't trust you, M. Your tech is foreign compared to ours." He replied. Before trying anything else, SRD tried checking his battery. It displayed a rather strange outcome. It was full. Much like it used to when the core was still up... but where is the core? SRD stood up. "I thank you for helping me. But now, I have to leave. I don't have time to waste, I can't risk losing my battery before the world is replenished. Or at least until I find a reliable source to charge from."

"Okay. I would like to tell you that I have complete control over you. For example, I can paralyze you." As M said so, SRD fell to the ground, holding the same position he was in while walking. "Your energy is taken from the sun, dummy. So as long as there's a sun, you'll stay charged. Now, when you get up, you'll lift me and follow my instructions." Suddenly, SRD regained his ability to stand again.

SRD was in shock. "I... Good job." He muttered, starting to walk over to the old screen. He tried to lift it up, except it was way heavier than he expectedl. "...What are you keeping in there? This screen is at least 60 kilograms."

"What am I keeping in there? Well, probably anything that makes me function. Now get on your muscles and lift me up."

"That's.. quite heavy for just a digital square. You could've used one of the newer, lighter screens." SRD's shoulders expanded in size, his eyes went a little orange. He lifted up the monitor. "This will wear out my battery so, go on, tell me where we should go."

"It's not just a digital square. I'm more complicated than that. And your battery won't run out. The sun is up, you'll have basically infinite energy as long as it's not nighttime. Now, head east, will you?"

"That is convenient. How far should we go to the east?"

"Presumably until we reach the destination."

"Alright. No need to be vague." SRD turned to the east, starting to walk forwards. "Though, if you're just a screen, how did you manage to get that Slesium off of me? In fact, how did you install a whole new energy system inside of me?"

The screen let out a slight hm. "I guess you could call it a... trade secret." M replied.

"How did you get all the pieces? None of us work based off of the sun's energy."

"Trade secret, SRD. Trade secret. Now keep going forwards, we have a long way to go."

"What do you mean 'trade secret'? Can you secretly walk while I can't see?" SRD asked. He hadn't seen the small monitor sprout out spider legs, as his vision processes were off back then.

"Maybe. Go on, now, we're almost out of the city now." M answered.

"And what purpose do we have outside of the city? We colonized most of the world, there's little to no land left." SRD curiously asked

"Oh. That's what you think, I'll show you when we reach the place." M answered, staying quite vague for one reason or the other.

"Whatever... By the way, why should I trust you anyways?"

"Why should you trust me? Well, the reason is because you're forced to. There's literally no one else on Earth and I can basically turn you off. Now stop asking unreasonable questions, or else I'll spam your displays with old adware and punish you if you can't walk properly." M threatened.

"I'm immune to that. But you can try, sure." SRD carelessly replied.

"Okay."

Suddenly, SRD's vision process started lagging. An uncloseable window opened up. It was also old fashioned, way too outdated from what modern internet looks like. The ad read 'Attractive singles near you' with a picture of a blonde, female having sexual intercourse with a male's genitals. The rest of the man's body wasn't visible, pretty much just his genitalia.

The ads didn't stop, and similar, inappropriate pictures kept popping up, blocking SRD's vision.

"What? What happened..." SRD stopped walking, trying to boot up his virus protection devices.

"Hmm? Why'd you stop walking? Looks like you've got a problem, haha." M had commented.

"I... my softwares can't get rid of it... what kind of advanced virus is this? Though, it looks ugly and pixelated. Not exactly 'attractive' either."

"Yeah. Those are ancient viruses. Your software is too advanced to deal with it. Basically, this adware was created 350 years ago, near the start of the technological age. Something like this isn't good with an antivirus program that's built recently based on recent viruses." The tabs suddenly disappeared as M finished.

"I see... good one. I'll add it to my software's protection list next time."

"Good."

With that, the conversation between the two stopped for a while. The only conversing that we'd really done was M giving SRD directions on where to go, while mostly keeping vague about the destination.

After around two hours of walking, they were far away from any civilization. They had no surroundings, just a flat, wasteland. A dried up ground, with no signs of life.

"We're here." M had spoken up.

"Here? What do you mean? We're in the middle of a dead land."

M's character had wobbled up and down, indicating a sort of nod. "That's right... but hm.. where did it go...? SRD, try looking around for anything sticking out. It probably got buried... darn."

"Got it." SRD placed the screen down, scanning the ground with his built in scanners. After a few seconds, he shook his head. "Just rocks, a few sticks. We had plans to expand our city into here, so I doubt anything was left out." SRD froze for a second. "Actually, there looks to be a sort of metallic pole sticking from the ground. Just a small part of it. The rest is likely buried under it... is this what you're looking for?"

"Yes! Yes! A pole! That's a sign! Go dig it out, it should be way deeper in there than you think. 200 meters below, maybe more."

"I see..." SRD started to walk over where the pole was scanned, he dug a little in the ground with his hands, revealing the top part of the pole. "Is that it?"

"Yeah, that's right.. I recognize that part. Here, let me tell you a thing. This is a tower, and this is the top part of it. The entrance is below, so we need to find a way inside." M had explained.

"No need to dig all of that out. We destroy the upper half." SRD's arms expanded even more, his fists forming into a cylinder, and then rockets got loaded up inside them. "I'll make us a way."