Stella Vir: First Flight

5:55 in the morning, an alarm goes off followed by a moment of anguish and dread. ‘It's time to wake up’, he thinks to himself before hitting the snooze button. This process repeats itself three times until he finally gets tangled by the sheets to the point that he simply rolls out of the bed onto the ground. ‘Well here we go again’ he thinks to himself, ‘why am I even doing this?’ follows the first thought. After a moment of being lost in thought the alarm goes off again and snaps him back to reality. He hurries to pack his things and gets ready to jump onto the next hyper-rail that will be arriving at a nearby station in the next 20 minutes. The sun is slowly rising at this point. It's a cold February morning especially by the standards in Rome, most people at the station stop are bundled up from head to toe, but Razzo decided he wanted to look good for work like an absolute idiot. Razzo never really liked adhering to the status quo for many reasons, first of all he disliked most people that did as they were plain and uninteresting. He wore a thick wool sweater with a light wind breaker over it, a baseball cap, jeans and some boots. Not quite the outfit you would wear in negative five degrees celsius or to a factory job but definitely something you would wear to impress. The thing with Razzo is that he always battled the concept of being average yet in doing so almost always ended up being uncharacteristically average. From having the most common last name in Rossi to being tall but not gigantic enough to stand out, being good looking but never exceptionally handsome, to also being not particularly intelligent in most instances. Everything about the sum of all of Razzo’s parts made him characteristically normal and average, except in his heart which was difficult to judge from the outside. Razzo was subject to working at an energy refinement center given his social standing and being from a very lower middle tiered family it was a suitable job for him, although he accepted the situation he wasn’t too happy with it. The department he worked at was the one responsible for the process of recycling energy that was at use in the surrounding area and redistributing available energy on the grid to other places that required it, or so that’s what he was told it was as asking too many questions can result in being moved around as Razzo knew very well from personal experience. The energy plant was very potent and could power all of Europe with efficient recycling of energy and correct dispersion. Although it was currently still restricted to power simply the western side due to safety precautions. The way that the power plant would generate this energy would be by taking very small particles that would make up a star and through a long tedious process chiseling down the matter of the star. Then directing the energy to a water grid system that would be used to transfer the energy using an irrigation system. The trouble with dealing with the essence of a star is there is so much potential energy that it can be dangerous to handle, so in the plant beyond the distribution of power, they chip away at the star particles to keep it from bonding together. This becomes problematic as these particles can also bond on to beings such as animals, insects, and even humans, with always extremely varying results depending on what are all the properties of the beings that the particles are attaching to.

As Razzo arrives at work he looks at his time tracker and sees that the time has already hit 7:03 and he is three minutes late to work. He starts to get uneasy and his palms turn clammy; he knows that if the owner of the plant sees him not at his post he may lose his job or worse. As Razzo sneaks through the first portion of the plant all is calm as people are walking around about their business without much care for him, as he gets to the door of his department he stops and sees the boss and immediately turns and hastily walks down the hallway to avoid him. As he gets near the end of a hallway  he quickly darts into a room. This room is dark and filled with different stacks of servers of different sizes, it was like a circuit board laid out for a room. Razzo looks towards what appears to be a desk and picks up an object that he had only seen in pictures and remembered from his brief studies in the past: a banana.

He whispers to himself in disbelief: “I thought these had gone instinct”.

This is because bananas for the most part had gone very much so extinct but some trees had been preserved by the elitists, making the value of bananas astronomically high. Razzo decides that the banana just may be worth the risk, he takes the banana and takes a bite from what he presumes is the top of it. He’s left with a very confused expression on his face trying to understand the means of eating such a fruit as it has a crunchy exterior and a sweet mushy interior, he thinks to himself how do the elitists even like this stuff? As he’s about to go in for a second bite of the banana he hears footsteps approaching the room. He makes out the conversation to be his boss speaking with the plant manager, and at this point Razzo has no option but to hide behind the office door. The boss was a smaller statued man that was quite old and had the plant passed down for several generations. He was always hunched over and bald with a mustache that would hang over his top lip as well as big round glass goggles. At this point he appeared extremely thin and frail like the wind could blow him away.

The manager tells the owner: “We are well on our way to decimating the energy source at a stable and consistent rate. This year we should provide enough energy to power all of Europe!”

The manager was a tall woman that had long beautiful hair that was always up in the bun, as well as beautiful brown eyes that were the color of an oak tree. She was proportionately built yet appeared as a giant next to the old man.

The owner answers back to the manager: “I’ve heard this information before, nothing new here, how fast can the energy be mobilized to be exported across the globe?”

“Perhaps an additional two yearly periods, maybe three if we encounter containment issues” - replies the manager.

At this point both of them walk into the office and the plant owners eyes dart to the bitten banana on the desk, “Carla one of your idiots snuck into my office and ate a high densely packed banana, FIND THEM AND BRING THEM TO ME, I WILL ADMINISTER THE ZAPSKY MYSELF ON THEM!”. Carla turns and hurries away so as to not receive the brunt force of the zapsky herself.

The plant owner walks over to the desk, picks up the banana and murmurs to himself: “I could have savored this delicacy for a year and now some orangutan in a human body is going to die from the high levels of radiation, I knew I should have listened to pops to be in charge of the hiring process. But nooooooo I just needed to experience Fiji before it drowned 80 years ago”.

The plant owner goes and walks out of the office most likely headed to either find the culprit or fire some people. For the owner it didn’t matter too much who was in the way because he simply didn’t care for much aside from results. Razzo hears people crying down the hall and thinks to himself ‘I guess he was in a firing mood’. Razzo goes and picks up the banana and thinks to himself ‘radiation killing someone? I work with radiation every day and nothing has happened to me yet!’ He decides after all that he shall keep the crunchy goodness for himself for the future, his mind then wanders as to what is an orangutan? He walks out of the office and still sees his boss down the hall furious. At this point Razzo runs through one of the other doors at the end of the hall and briskly walks through a dark hallway with somber red lights lining the hallway. He walks through the hallway and ends up in a large room with two cylinders close together but in the middle of them he sees a small object squirming while floating in the air. He walks up to it and admires it as it is a rather small ball of white light with blue, yellow, and red sparks shooting around a sphere. Through all the various lights he can’t really make it out. He knows he should probably get out of the room but he’s so mesmerized by the light that he walks up to it even closer to admire it. Suddenly a light comes on and the two cylinders become activated beaming with energy and electricity around them. They start to shock the ball of light in between them, with the ball of light shooting out rays of light that would burn things inside the facility. Then as the two cylinders heated up and turned more orange as the ball of energy begins making sounds unlike anything Razzo had heard before. Razzo thought it sounded almost as if the ball was crying or yelling to him for help. With half a banana in one hand and nothing in the other, Razzo takes it upon himself to rescue this light and hopefully free it from its prison. At first he attempts to use his free hand to push the ball of energy out of the way but that simply shocks him and sends him flying back. He decides to use a long pole within the room to push the ball of energy out of the way. Then the ball of energy screams and shocks him, sending him to his knees. Razzo, feeling rather defeated, doesn't know what else he can do.

So he slowly gets up and mumbles to himself: “I’ll save you, beautiful angel, don't you worry!!”

He goes and with all his energy pounces on the ball of light and strikes it with the unbitten end of the banana. Next a big flash occurs and then everything goes dark for Razzo.

Razzo awakes in a hazy state to find the room he had been previously standing in has been reduced to rubble. ‘I know I’ve had some weird dreams while dozing off during shift but never this weird’ he thinks to himself. The two beams that had been transmitting electricity had been reduced to half their size and burned to a crisp. He looks up to see the night sky as the ceiling of the facility had been blown off with nothing obscuring the view anymore. All around Razzo are the scattered remains of the facility that he once used to spend so much of his time in. He goes to pinch himself to see if he’s still sleeping, after not waking up but instead his skin turning almost purple so he assumes he’s not asleep. He begins to panic slightly internally thinking ‘what the heck is going on here, did the boss stick me in the simulation chamber to torture me or something?’ He looks down and notices that the banana was lying not too far from him, completely preserved from his view point the same way he remembers it. He scoots himself over to it and turns it over to see the other half of the banana burned to crisp, unsure if it’s ruined or not Razzo takes another bite of the banana. Thinking to himself ‘mhm extra crispy’ and finishes eating the entire banana yet not realizing he’s not tasting any of it and he might as well have been eating garbage. Razzo slowly dusts himself off and gets up to go and look around the area to see what’s going on. Only once he’s up  and walks out of the room that's had the roof blown off he sees that it’s all been destroyed for several kilometers in all directions. He slowly walks through the debris to find people crushed under some toppled walls or pillars. For the most part the factory that used to stand here appears to be simply razed to the ground. He couldn’t see the boss anywhere, Carla was nowhere to be found, he thought to himself all alone ‘how did all this happen and where did everyone go? Is this the torture method the boss decided with the simulation chamber’. He zeroes in his attention on the ground and focuses on every single detail to try to find gaps in the simulation as he has in past experiences. There’s too many imperfections in the rubble and no blurs in his focus to be a simulation. Now the panic is truly starting to set in ‘how did this occur and how am I alive?’ he wonders to himself.  Not worrying too much about the state of the used to be factory, Razzo decides to do something useful and figure out how long he’s been asleep for. He also wants to get some answers as to why no one cared to check up on him or why no one woke him up. He thinks to himself ‘typically this is against protocol to take naps during energy failures and as much as I needed the nap I’m not taking the blame for this one someone should have woken me up’. He makes his way past the ruined factory and onto the streets to see a lot of ruined buildings with what appear to be starships or satellites but he doesn’t pay too much attention to that. Thinking to himself, Razzo wonders if he had gone back in time from the explosion, although it couldn’t be because the factory ruins were still there. He was in awe of the state of the streets as it’s nothing like he had ever witnessed before and only heard about such destruction during the Machine War. He walks to one side of the street to get a closer look at a half demolished store, he sees on the wall that isn’t torn down that the clothes are similar to what he wears and what people on the streets wear so he couldn’t be in the past but he also couldn’t be in future. Thinking to himself ‘could this have really been caused by the factory?’ Razzo makes his way further down the street as he passes an alleyway he hears some faint noises coming from it, something that he typically wouldn’t hear. Determined to get some answers he hurries down the alleyway towards the source. As he flies down and knocks things out of his way causing a ruckus he hears that the person making the noise starts to run away just as quickly as him.

With it being difficult to make out the figure he calls out to the person: “WHY ARE YOU RUNNING! WHY ARE YOU RUNNING!”

At this point the alleyway transitions into more backroads and Razzo looks down the one side and then the other trying to figure out where they went. As he turns to go down one way he hears a loud sound from the other side, he quickly pivots in that direction. As he approaches the area Razzo sees a huge pile of scraps and something moving in the middle to try to get itself free. Razzo goes and grabs their leg to try to help them and they kick him with the other leg trying to free themselves from his hold. He thinks to himself ‘what a weirdo I’m just trying to help get them out’, instead of wrestling with one leg he grabs both and tugs once, then twice, then he uses tugs on the third time as hard as he can. With force like he’s never had before Razzo sends himself and the being back flying through the air and crashing into some debris. To his surprise they were missing an arm and wires were coming out of their shoulder where the arm used to be. They looked almost human to Razzo yet the eyes were still and the hair looked almost as if it was made of metal. Most of the beings body was covered in metallic overalls and a silky smooth plastic looking hoodie underneath. The little amount of the exposed legs that Razzo had grabbed were warm but slick and buzzing with electricity as if a computer was running inside them. Their legs transitioned into shoes as if their feet and shoes were as one. It was like nothing which Razzo had ever seen before which made his mind wander in many directions.

After a moment to collect himself Razzo asks: “What are you, I’ve never seen the insides of a person like that, are you American? I hear they’re built different over there”.

The being looks at him with a tormented expression and tells him: “Please don’t hurt me… I didn’t mean to do it, they made me do it, I just want to go home, I don’t want to be here please I beg you don’t hurt me”.

Razzo is super confused at this point because he wouldn’t hurt a fly or however that expression would go.

“I wasn’t going to hurt you, I don’t even know you. But who are you?” - says Razzo.

The being slowly gathers themselves a little: “My name is D.R.3.D.1. But to make it easy for humans you can call me Dre. It's a human name and I am of my first generation”.

Razzo takes a moment to think to himself ‘wow they got some weird names in the Americas probably explains the outfit too’.

After taking a moment to inspect the supposed Dre being, Razzo asks:  “So are you from the North or the South?”

Dre says quietly: “I’m from the Eastern Capital”.

Razzo gets upset and says: “So we’re playing mind games now huh? Are you from North or South America, the Eastern Capital is in Eurasia and I know fashion and you’re not from there, so again are you from the North or the South?”.

Dre quietly replies: “I’m from neither, I’m from The Eastern Capital on Mars not from this planet. I’m an Automaton”.

Razzo takes a moment to think back to what he was supposed to learn so long ago when he studied space history and the complicated nature of the solar system. Razzo regrets not paying more attention to the finer details during his schooling. He doesn’t quite believe the being to be an alien but the exposed arm sure makes him think that maybe it’s telling the truth about the matter. He figures the only way to catch the being slipping is through a thorough interrogation.  In this moment the being simply stares at Razzo paralyzed with fear.

After Razzo’s brief reflection he says - “I thought you guys went extinct two hundred years ago? Also what happened here? Did you guys come back for revenge? Did you attack us?”

DR3D1 answers slowly: “No we went into hiding on Mars and have been peacefully living there for a while, we didn’t attack your people but we were forced to use our ships as a distraction for the attack. I wish it were different but there was nothing we could do”

Razzo thinks to himself ‘okay that makes sense, but wouldn’t the Americans do the same thing given the history between the continents and just blame it on aliens instead?’ Razzo decides that the question is too far above his pay grade to worry about and decides to settle down for a more simple question that the being can answer for him.

Razzo goes on to think for a few minutes before saying: “So everyone’s dead then, I’m not the last one here am I? Who attacked us then?”

“The Minerau laid waste to the surface of  our planet and then came for yours when some of us tried to escape. When they came your planetary defense was too old to stand a chance from their heat canons. I don’t know where everyone else is. They took prisoners to these massive buildings that you had built before and packed them in. I don't know what their plan is for your people, hopefully better than the kamikaze use they had for us” - replies Dre.

Razzo’s mind races through one hundred thoughts in a minute, trying to figure out all of that means and leaving a pretty dumbfounded look on his face. He shakes his head trying to focus and snap himself out of his daydream.

Razzo then decides that he probably should be upset and exclaims: “Who are these orangutans, they’ll pay for what they did! We have to find where they’re keeping everyone, maybe we can still save them!?”

DR3D1 confused by what orangutan’s have to do with any of this considering that Minerau are rock people and orangutans are an old type of primate.

The automaton chooses to ignore this moment and says in a defeated tone: “It’s pointless they’ll just capture us too and kill us, it’s too risky and not worthwhile to. It’s just better for us to test our luck here and survive out here instead”.

Razzo, disgusted by the attitude and feeling fired up says: “Come on DR3D1 or Dre or however else you might call yourself”.

Dre interrupts him: “Dre is more than fine”.

Razzo continues with the inspirational talk: “ Right whatever, we have to try at least for all we know I could be the last free human left on Earth. At least show me where I have to go and I will do it all myself if I have to! But hopefully you’re convinced by my words of encouragement and come with me!”

Dre sighs and replies: “Yeah not really but fine I’ll show you the way” and quietly mutters under their breath: “I’m not losing another arm for you though”.

As the two newly acquainted companions make their way through the wreckage of Rome, with buildings crumbling left and right, dead bodies buried under debris and Automatons lying in their ships or next to their ships. It was a dreadful scene of despair where the once lively streets filled with people had now been laid waste to ghastly destruction. Razzo and DR3D1 walked in silence for much of the trip with each of them having an uneasy feeling about what they will face. As they veered off to a street where transport machines used to park, Razzo noticed a veicolo volante 420 that had remained barely touched hidden in a garage with its door half open. Clearly someone had wanted to get to it before machines started raining from the sky but didn’t make it as there was debris on either side of the entrance. There was a small gap in the middle of the two piles of debris on either side of the garage. The rest of the structure of the garage was barely holding up as even a breeze was causing the walls to sway back and forth ever so slightly. It was mainly being propped up at the base of the garage with the debris holding what little was left of the structural integrity of the garage in place. Razzo and Dre approached the debris carefully making sure there was nothing that could fall on them. As they get to the door Razzo thought the door had been jammed but he went to lift the garage door and moved it without issue although being heavier than typical garage doors. Razzo doesn’t think too much about it and they both move inside the garage to approach the vehicle. The vehicle was in the shape of a large stone that was completely round from all sides with a flat bottom on which it rested.  It looked a little bit scratched up from the debris coming from the ceiling but the gray color of the vehicle remained intact. Razzo waves his arm at DR3D1 to come closer and  Razzo places his hand on the side of the vehicle, the feel of the vehicle was cold as the material was a thick metal plastic mix. The material doubled as a material that made it safer for the people inside the vehicle if they crash as well as the ability to increase visibility out of the vehicle. After Razzo had placed his hand on the vehicle a bottom red ring lit up where the rounded sides met the flat bottom and from where his hand had been placed a hole started to slowly open up and expand as the nanobots receded creating an entry for Razzo and Dre to climb into the vehicle. On the inside there were plush cushions that lined the inside of the cabin and allowed eight passengers to comfortably sit leaning against the walls with the controls in the middle of the cabin.

Dre nudges Razzo and asks him “Do you know how to work this thing?”

Razzo has a quizzical look while inspecting the middle control panel: “Not really I’ve only been in three of these my whole life and only drove one once so we’ll see how this goes”.

Dre looks in horror and mumbles: “I really am going to lose my second arm so soon after losing the first”

Razzo presses a few buttons at random until finally finding the autopilot, the autopilot appears in a hologram at the center of the control panel and illuminates in the middle of the vehicle.

An AI asks them: “Where would you like to go?”

Razzo claps his hands in excitement after figuring it out: “I don’t know Dre where are we going again?”

Dre points outside and answers: “Are you familiar with the term hell? Because that’s where we’re going…”

The autopilot takes a moment and configures its result and answers: “Destination set to previously infamous ancient town of hell in the old province of Norway. Do you accept?”.

Dre shakes its head: “Not what I had in mind but honestly don’t really care. I accept”.

The vehicle begins to slowly start to gravitate itself off the ground. It then punches its way out of the garage knocking out the pillars of debris holding up the structure and causing it to collapse on itself from the lack of support. Once the vehicle reaches the middle of the street it slowly begins to elevate itself and increase its altitude before it begins to pick up speed after getting roughly 50 meters off the ground.

As the two companions watch from above they see the decimation that had been caused to the city of Rome. Buildings on fire, ancient architecture that had previously withstood the test of time, human negligence and war was crumbling. It was a sight for sore eyes as if the city had been razed to the ground and the previous civilization that had held its place had been vanquished and a new civilization was about to come forth and make a new beginning. The further that Razzo and DR3D1 had ventured into the city the more they saw despair without a glimmer of hope. After a few moments of covering the distance from the outskirts of the city to the core area DR3D1 realized that they were quite exposed at the moment and murmured: “This isn’t going to end well, we need to hide ourselves”.

Dre quickly moved over to the hologram of them flying and with the one good hand grabbed the hologram of the ship and plunged it down, after which the ship followed the actions and plunged down as well.

Razzo, shocked by what’s happening yells at Dre and pushes the Automaton out of the way: “ARE YOU INSANE! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!”

To which Dre replies: “We have to get out of sight we’re far too open flying so high”.

Dre uses its moment to push Razzo out of the way and get a hold of the hologram of the ship to plunge it downwards again.

Razzo pushes Dre off once again while holding the Automaton at a distance exclaims: “Well you could have just said that I’ll just turn on the ship's reflective panels and we’ll be fine!”

The Automaton shakes its head and says: “That won’t cut it, they'll be able to pick up on the heat coming off of you”.

Razzo feels like this could be the way in which Dre sets him up and betrays him but decides to give it a chance. They agree that it’s best to try to avoid taking any chances given the situation and lower their altitude to the point where they are flying between one and two story buildings zooming through the streets. As they continue to move through the decimated streets Razzo notices things moving around the back of alleys of the buildings that they pass. Soon the things that are difficult to make out are quickly moving along with the veicolo volante 420 and in this moment Razzo realizes that they had been made. They continue to veer through the streets and increase their speed, but the shadows keep following them. It gets to the point where Razzo takes over for the autopilot but the autopilot displays a warning for Razzo that at the high speeds that they’re going at it is far too fast and dangerous to drive manually  for a person and that the autopilot should take over for them. Razzo continues to ignore the message as he keeps looking over his shoulder seeing if they’re still being followed. While Razzo is distracted by his paranoia Dre is watching ahead of them and sees they’re about to crash. Dre jumps over to Razzo trying to grab the controls but Razzo doesn’t let go while he’s looking back and the veicolo volante 420 hits the edge of a building loses control and crashes spinning several times and sliding along the middle of the street. The vehicle comes to a stop and the autopilot exclaims that the vehicle is no longer operational and could be damaged to the point of being a hazard to the passengers.