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// Chapter 1: Where We're Going We Don't Need Startup-Lag! 
// Story: Spark of Humanity 
// by StarChaser01 
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	He had been in the middle of beating himself in a game of modified 3D chess (he was quite proud of the design what with doubling the number of unique pieces and adding a whole new direction of play, not to mention that he had almost finished making it completely fair for both players) when an alarm went off.

Quickly saving the current configuration of the game, he diverted his full attention to the diagnosis for information.

START REPORT. Date: FEBUARY 10, 37<TIME STAMP ERROR>76. Diagnosis: UNKNOWN DISTURBANCE detected in ENTRANCE. Errors detected in SECONDARY DIAGNOSIS SUBSYSTEM. END REPORT.

The entrance? That was where his presence was severely limited. Deciding to see for himself, he switched the diagnosis systems over to automatic and fed the data streams from what few sensors in the entrance that still functioned to his primary cores.

Visual 1: Offline
Audio 1: Offline
Vibration 1: Offline
Visual 2: Offline
Audio 2: Offline
Vibration 2: Offline
Visual 3: Online
Audio 3: Offline
Vibration 3: Offline
Door State: Online
Lights: Offline
PA System: Offline

Discarding all the dead data feeds, he focused on Visual 3 and Door State to try and get an idea of what was happening.

The video feed was filled with feedback-induced-static. Compensating for the feedback, he managed to make out the vague shapes of an old-broken down desk, half of a table that, judging from its angle, had a broken leg, a monitor that had fallen off the wall and was probably cracked, and the large, gear shaped door.

He idly remembered reading in the logs left by his father before he had awoken and the random bits of information that he carried that the door’s style was inspired by a video game. Something about vaults, he couldn’t remember, the data was apparently corrupted before it had even gotten into the facility.

He was snapped out of his thoughts of what had come before by both a slight movement, and the door status changing from ‘Closed’ to ‘Opening’. He felt the automatic signals go out to the warning light and klaxon that were originally by the door, but judging by the lack of a spinning light he assumed that they were long gone.

The door (or at least the fuzzy circle where the door was supposed to be) slowly moved inward, centuries upon centuries of dust, dirt, and debris being disturbed and pushed out of the way as it was pushed inward from the outside.

It took a few hours for the foot and a half thick gear to finally reach the point where it could then be rolled aside, but those few hours felt like centuries to him. Multiple times he considered slowing his internal clock to hurry the process along but decided against it. If something where to happen, he did NOT want to miss it. Besides, this was something new! Even if nothing else happened once it got all the way back it still would have made his millennia!

Once it was all the way in, he discovered that at least one automatic system was still functional in there as the door was pulled to the side by powerful hydraulic pistons. How the fluid hadn’t leaked out of them without maintenance he wasn’t sure, so he began running some simulations in the background to try and figure it out.

As the door was pulled away, light started streaming into the decayed room. At least he assumed it was light that was causing the shapes to go from dark fuzzies to light fuzzies.

Watching the spectacle at accelerated clock speeds to capture every last frame and storing it in permanent memory, he found himself wishing more than ever that he could have gotten at least ONE maintenance bot in there so the video feed would be even slightly higher quality.

So focused on what could have been, he almost missed a new shape enter through the now open door. It appeared to be about the size of a large ‘dog’, but unfortunately due to the lack of detail in the video feed no further details could be made out.

‘Hm… if the specs I have on that room are correct, then that shape’s about ¾ the size of an average human being. Not only that, but it seems to be longer, perhaps moving through wheels or treads, assuming it’s mechanical.’ He continued contemplating on what it could be when two more shapes of similar sizes entered behind the first one and began slowly exploring the room, first examining the door itself, then quickly leaving the view of the camera.

‘NO! Come back! Please?’ He mentally begged the shapes.

Fortunately it seemed as if one of them had heard his pleas as one re-entered his view and stopped in front of the downed monitor. It moved around it, almost as if it were looking at the broken device from different angles, before moving over to the broken desk. After circling that a few times it faced the camera, either that or it was looking directly away or its front was on its wider side, but that last one was unlikely given that it seemed to be leading with one of its thinner sides.

As he contemplated the possibilities of what the shapes were and their basic functions, they began leaving one by one.

‘Wait, why are you leaving? Come back! Don’t go! Well, if you do go then please don’t close the door! I rather like how this video feed’s different from how it was before! Please don’t return it to its old, boring state!’

Thankfully his worries were unfounded as, instead of closing the door behind them, they left it where it was.