StarDestroyer.Net BBS

System Failure

He opened his eyes, momentarily disoriented. He lay there in the dark for a moment, fear thrumming through every part of him, and the fear brought with it rage.

He sat up, swung his legs over what he knew was a metal table. He ripped the sheet from his body, tossed it aside with an unseen sneer. "Why?" he growled in the dark. Why did they bring me back? Fools. He hated them. Now more than ever, he hated them. And this time, he consoled himself, he would kill them all.

He listened, testing the air for their stink. He smelled only animal feces and dust. The only sound was the furtive scrapings and scramblings of what might be rodents, possibly large insects.

"Lights." he ordered; to his frustration, nothing happened. He moved slowly to the wall, adapting himself to the darkness. He found a toggle switch near the door and activated it. An ancient filament bulb clicked on, bathing the stark room in garish yellow light. He looked down at his hands, and decided it was good to see them again. These hands would topple kings, he decided, and build castles of their bones.

A quick survey of the room led him to a large bulk over which was draped a voluminous polymer sheet. He pulled this aside to reveal a pathetically outdated computer console and a starkly modern replicator. Neither was active. Experimentally, he pressed a key on the console. There was no result.

"Well, this is entertaining." The door proved as stubborn as the ancient computer; the walls, apparently, had been reinforced from the outside -- whether to keep invaders out or to keep prisoners like himself in he had no idea. He sighed theatrically, and went back to the computer console.

This time he managed to find the right key -- the computer issued a stream of whirs and clicks as its input pads and display screens flickered to life. He had never personally seen a computer of this vintage, and had no way to know whether its operating system was even remotely like anything he was familiar with... but there was only one way to find out.

"Computer?" he tried.
"WORKING." its monotone response brought a grimace to his face.
He attempted to recline as far as the sturdy but inelegant operator's chair would allow. First things first, he thought. "Tell me the stardate."
"THIS STARDATE: 5205.3."
Naturally, he massaged the bridge of his nose. It's 109 years past its expiration date.
The computer clicked, then announced, "PRIORITY MESSAGE ON DISPLAY ONE."

He froze. Suspicious, he narrowed his eyes at the delapidated machine.
"PRIORITY MESSAGE ON DISPLAY ONE."
Slowly, reluctantly, he leaned forward and began to read. As the display speed increased to the relic's maximum ability, text, photos, video and schematics flashed before him, dancing on his pale skin. Then tactical assessments, intelligence reports, casualty lists took their place.

And he began to chuckle...

Dude, don't pad your post count like that, or this fic'll get shut down.

IG-88E wrote:Dude, don't pad your post count like that, or this fic'll get shut down.

I don't understand, what do you mean "padding my post count"? I'm not being sarcastic or anything, I genuinely don't understand what's up.

You're doing like, a paragraph per post. That's not padding?

Not intentional padding, no. Appy Polly Loggies, didn't realize serialization was verboten. Of course, the only way to do the whole thing at once is by typewriter, which would be a pain in the ass, since I'd have to write it, then transcribe it from hardtype to the board... and that high a word count would probably take as much storage space anyway. But the big question is, do you like the story so far? Are you going to stay tuned?

The story's interesting, but the sigs interrupt the flow.

IG-88E wrote:The story's interesting, but the sigs interrupt the flow.

Corrected. And have you guessed who our Mystery Protagonist is?

I have a couple guesses but why ruin the surprise?