Start of a journey

"No shit, Sherlock!" I said angrily, as the low hum of the city reached my ears.

Gone was the city that was only in its beginning stages of construction.

Instead, a sprawling city of towering buildings of steel and glass that rose high above remained.

"How long do you think it has been?" I asked blankly as everything in front of me slowly soaked in.

"Well, from the look of it, it has been somewhere in the range of 40 to 50 years." Ares said.

But unlike me, who was just kicked off a mental cliff by his words and into a complete meltdown, he sounded excited.

"F-forty to fifty years!" I shouted out, as the realization of nearly half a century passing me by hit me.

"Give or take a few years." Ares said excitedly. "isn't it wonderful? It might as well be a completely new world then the one I learned of." He said with a laugh.

"no! No!" I shouted, as gunshots rang out in the distance.

"what, why?" Ares asked me.

I pointed at the city.

"Look at it!" I said, taking a few steps forward to look at the outer edges of the city which had what looked like an ocean of trash piled up.

"It's a complete shit hole." I said, not slowing down my slowly building melt down.

"And second, I have been gone from my family for half a century. For all I know they are dead!"

"Would you relax?" Ares said, condescendingly.

"relax!" I shouted, his tone angering me more.

Part of me was thankful nobody was around to see me yelling to myself, like I was, while completely nude, like a complete nutcase.

"I'm not going to 'relax'." I shouted, using my fingers to make air quotes.

"you should have left me to fucking die in that computer room!"

"woah, there." Ares said, trying to cool me down.

"There is still a possibility that your family is still alive." Ares said.

"Yes, they would be much older, but they are most likely still alive." He added.

"Like that is supposed to fucking help!" I shouted.

"It's better than dead!" He retorted, adding a little heat to his words.

I forced myself to clamp my mouth shut.

"I cannot begin to understand how you are feeling about all of this. But you need to start being optimistic instead of pessimistic." Ares said, slowly calming his voice down.

"You are still alive and nothing can change that fact, so stop panicking about something that can't be changed."

A part of me wondered if he was manipulating me in some way with his words and tone. Something he might have gotten from the plethora of human psychology Books that filled this planet before he was disconnected from the network.

Or perhaps he's manipulating my brain.

I forced myself to push that to the back of my mind as I let out the lung full of air I had been holding in for the tirade that wouldn't be coming from me anymore.

"Old…is better than dead." I said, nodding my head a few times.

Looking back up, I watched the city for a few moments.

"I'm going to find my family." I said.

Not just to Ares, but also to myself.

"Sounds good enough to me." Ares said.

"It's not like you have much of a choice." I said, as I looked for a way down from the hill.

To my amazement, it took me much longer to make it to the outer trash piles of the city.

By the time I made it, the sun had already set over the horizon, and the lights of the city were turned on.

I decided instead of trying to climb over the heaps of trash I would go around it.

Thankfully as I was going around all the trash, I found a pair of black shorts in a puddle.

At first I was hesitant about putting them on, afraid of getting some sort of disease from them.

But after a short berating from Ares about how any disease the shorts might contain wouldn't stand a chance against the nanobots, so I put them on.

After all, the last thing I needed was to be picked up by the police for walking around bare ass naked through the streets.

The shorts were a bit too tight but would do.

It took me about another hour to finally make it around the ocean of trash and to see my first sight of civilization up close.

"From the city planning I have stored, this place is called North side." Ares said.

"How far are we from Laguna Bend?" I asked, as I started to walk down a sidewalk in a dodgy looking neighborhood.

Trash was piled along the houses and graffiti covered walls.

"It's on the completely other side of the city."

I shook my head.

"Fuck! How am I supposed to make it all the way over there?" I asked, as I walked past a house that had a few rough looking men sitting on its porch.

"Well if you're up to it, we could walk." Ares said sarcastically.

"I don't have much of a choice." I said, not hearing the sarcasm.

"Oh, absolutely! Walking through a dangerous city at night is definitely the wisest decision one could make. I mean, who needs to worry about personal safety when you have an all-knowing AI like me in your head, right? I'm sure I can handle any danger that comes our way with my amazing virtual powers. Just sit back, relax, and let me navigate you through the treacherous streets of Night City. What could possibly go wrong? Don't worry, I'll be sure to keep your obituary brief and full of praise for your adventurous spirit!" Ares said.

"Well what else can I do?" I asked.

"ughh! Steal a damn car you moron!" Ares said angrily.

"I have no clue how!" I shot back.

"This isn't a game where stealing a car is as simple as pressing a button!"

"Just find something and I'll walk you through it."

I looked around the rundown neighborhood.

"Yeah, like there's going to be many cars around here." I said, quickly looking away from a gruff looking man, who was leaning on a post on his porch.

"Just look, would ya." Ares said in an exasperated tone of voice.

"Fine, damn it." I said, looking around for something.

It took me about ten minutes of walking to find my first vehicle of this world.

"Would you look at that?" Ares said, as I walked up to the old beat up car.

"what?" I asked, as I looked around for any people.

"This piece of junk. It's built by a company I have stored."

"That's nice. Now how do I do this?" I asked, my anxiety starting to climb.

"That's what I'm getting too." Areas said sarcastically.

"The company that built this design of car is called 'Thorton'. Before the war that ended up trapping us underground, there was a massive case against them for placing hidden accessibility locks in the engine bay."

"Why would a company do that?" I asked as I walked to the front of the car and unmatched the hood, lifting it up.

"Because the cars would be taken to chop shops where they would be unassembled then brought to their automotive plants where they would be used to build new cars." Ares said with a mischievous chuckle.

"So they would steal their own cars then use the parts to build new cars?" I asked.

"Pretty much. And it's on the left side of the engine bay. It should look like a small blue lever."

"Why not just resell the car as is?" I asked as I started to look for the lever.

"Complete profit." Ares said.

"If they can steal back the car they won't need to buy new parts from other companies who manufacture them. Meaning they get paid for the car they sold, then they can create a car free of charge to sell to the next unknowing victim. But as to why they chop them up, it's to get rid of any traces which could lead authorities to the parts that belonged to someone who had their car stolen."

"Talk about some fucked up shit." I said, pulling the lever, hearing the driver side door pop open.

"Indeed." Ares said with a mischievous chuckle.

"And you wonder why I have trust issues with you." I said, taking a seat behind the wheel of the car.

"Now what do I do?" I asked, looking around the somewhat familiar layout of the car.

"When you pulled the lever, it should have also opened a small hatch by your right leg."

Moving my leg to the side, I saw a small open hatch which held a small green button.

Pressing the button, the car made a loud screeching sound as it came to life.

"Oh thank you, God." I said, leaning my head backwards onto the headrest.

"Yeah,yeah,yeah. Thank him later. Right now we need to get the hell out of here. That engine noise definitely just woke a lot of people up. Including the owner." Ares said.

"Shit." I said, sitting up and putting our little piece of junk in drive.

Starting the long journey across a new world.