It began in the dark, dilapidated ruins of an old university research center. The northeast section of the ceiling had caved in long ago. Scattered remnants of surgical tools from the cabinet that had been crushed in its collapse littered the floor, tumbled among the bones of the room’s old inhabitants. Their clothes were tattered, dusty coats with faded name tags and broken pens in the pockets.
Despite the ruin around it, the operating device in the center of the room was largely unscathed. It was an oblong, oval structure. Tubes and cables ran in and out of a smooth glass pod, large enough to fit the average person. In faded lettering on the side of the pod was the word “Elysian,” styled to look like rays from a rising sun. Below it, in fine standard print, were the words “X10 Bioprinter.” Some cables were broken or frayed, and a large crack ran through the pod’s glass, but remarkably it seemed more or less intact.
A rat made its way through the room, meandering through the detritus of the old human world. The bones had long been picked clean, and the absence of people meant there was little food to be found in the building. The building was safe, though, and nature’s rapid reclamation had meant it was the ideal place for small rodents to hide. It paused for a moment, sniffing a dusty femur, when a tapping noise broke the faint sound of waves from the distant beach. Startled, the rat scurried off into the dark.
The tapping grew into a scraping, scuttling sound of many metallic feet. The first of a wave of small, spidery drones crawled through the hole in the ceiling. Together they bore an assortment of cables, wires, and electronic components. Each was no more than six inches in diameter, but together they carpeted the room.
The calm decay was transformed into a rolling mass of metal. The drones cleared the debris and the bones, removing all but the largest chunks of ceiling. They swept across the pod, using small tool appendages to re-solder broken connections and adjust cables and fittings, undoing time’s damage. Drones cannibalized themselves to produce the parts needed for the repairs and modifications. Huge swathes patched themselves into long cables connected to a newly-formed generator. By the time their construction work was finished, a mere hundredth of the drones remained. They gathered themselves around a large tank at the back of the pod, each dumping a canister of fluid into the tank before shuffling off to meld themselves into the last gaps in the machinery.
Light flickered on in the room as the final drone connected the generator to ancient circuits in the walls. It made a few adjustments to the pod’s control panel, and then hopped off, making its way to the base of the pod. It arranged a small bundle of clothes at the pod’s base, as well as a knife and a small notebook. When it was finished, it climbed aboard the pod and pressed a large button on the control panel before clattering to the ground, its power spent.
The generator whirred as the pod suddenly came to life, and fluid began to flow from the tank into the pod until it was full. Snake-like mechanical nozzles entered the pod from the tubes and began a rhythmic pattern of dispensing fibrous filament into the liquid.
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Hours passed, the sun rose, and still the pod worked. A vague humanoid shape began to grow deep within the pod. Bone, muscle, vessels, and organs weaved their way through the fluid as the nozzles worked tirelessly. No rats came to investigate the noise, though a curious stray cat or two peeked in. Birds chirped beyond, occasionally flitting by the hole in the ceiling.
Days later, the whir and hum of the generator began to soften. Within the pod lay a humanoid male. Its skin floated separately from the body, and the nozzles had transformed into small instruments that were threading a metallic filament through its muscles and organs, attaching these threads to a larger bundle running along its spine. The skull was still open, and within there was no brain. Instead, there were coils of filament woven into an intricate geometric pattern, acting as a nexus for all the strands throughout the body. A woven strand of these cables extended up and out of the pod, connecting into an external panel through a shielded tube. Periodic waves of light traveled through the strands, causing muscles to twitch and the body to move.
The process continued for another day. The external connection was severed, and the skin was grafted onto the body. The instruments slowly extracted from the pod as their work finished. The pod raised until it was at a comfortable angle for the occupant to take a direct step, and liquid drained back into the tank. The lights flickered as the generator sputtered. The glass panels lifted, exposing the occupant to the air.
He breathed his first breath, still unconscious. His arms, which had been pressed up tightly around his shoulders, relaxed to the side. His head lulled forward, snapping him awake. His eyes opened, and his pupils tried to adjust to the light in the room. He stumbled out, finding strong footing after a few awkward steps.
He was tall, but not hulking, somewhere just over six feet. He was completely hairless, and his skin was an off shade of lightest blue. Faint suture lines stretched across his body where the skin had been attached. His eyes were remarkably human, though the irises were slightly too large and the whites maintained the same off-blue as his skin.
He blinked, glancing around the room. He took a step forward and his feet brushed against the bundle that had been left by the base of the pod. He picked up the clothes and by instinct slid them on. They were a perfect fit. He grabbed the knife, slipped it into his pocket, and then turned to the first page of the notebook. A short message was printed in fine lettering at the top of the first page. The words came to him, even though he had never once spoken.
“Your name is Elias Strain. If all went well, I was able to imprint all but your memories. Not enough energy to produce any more of the crawlers. Sorry for the rude awakening. Meet me at: 500 Terry A Francois Blvd, San Francisco, CA 94158. Turn page for map.”
Turning the page, there was a detailed ink drawing of crisscrossing streets and city blocks. A large square was annotated with “You Are Here.” A marked path led from the square through the narrow roads, over a long bridge across an empty expanse, to a circled location where the cityscape resumed.
Elias read the message over a few times, flipping back and forth between the words and the image. He knew what it said, he understood the shapes of the map, but his mind was aching. There was a wrongness to the experience, a lurking dread he could not place. He knew these things, but he did not know why. He had no context, no supporting memory. His mind raced to find meaning, to gain a foothold, but there was none.
He sank to his knees, feeling his muscles growing weak. He tried to bring himself back up, but in the exertion he lost his balance and collapsed to the floor. The notebook slipped out from his fingers. Darkness enveloped his vision and he soon lost consciousness.
