Night fell, allowing the camera a moment of reprieve. Despite its revelation and newfound understanding, its weather and time-battered physical state remained unchanged.

Every little bit of processing took up more and more electricity and resources. Each moment of awareness hastened the depletion of its battery. Its newfound knowledge and development, it seemed, came at a steep price.

With that observation noted, the machine sunk back into power saving mode.

...

What did dreams feel like?

The concept of dreams was too abstract for it to truly understand. It had heard its owner, the woman, talk about dreams before. Dreams, she said, made no sense, though only in retrospect.

So maybe, the camera concluded, this was a dream.

It was in its usual place, its lens half facing the sky. It viewed segments of a crumbling wall, cracks adorned with ivy. Then, it caught the whisper of the wind, which danced through the grasses and brushed its microphone.

The wind carried whispers.

They were unintelligible. There were voices layered upon voices, yet at the same time, it was the same voice, that of the woman. Phrases and moments overlapped.

Yet-

Certain phrases emerged distinctly from the cacophony.

"It's like everything's changed-"

"The fog in my mind-"

"I felt unbalanced-"

"So much change in so little time."

The phrases made as much sense to the machine as everything else the woman had said despite lacking the coherence of a complete piece.

There were also the pictures, the images, the snippets of video which blended together. There were times where the woman would sit and stand at the same time and even then there was some sense of continuation.

There had to be.

The woman stood in the centre of the room, facing the window. It was light out, with the bright yellow afternoon sun streaming from the gap in the curtains. Only the right edge of her body was starkly illuminated by this light with the rest plunged in shadow.

Words merged and shifted, though an intelligible phrase threaded itself out from the chaos. "I don't know what to do."

Another scene unfolded with the woman playing with her bird amidst the ruins, navigating through the scattered heaps of pipes and bricks as if they were never there.. Her bird accompanied her, trilling joyfully.

She smiled gently, words lost in the muddle of sounds. The bird looked up and responded. She picked it up and regarded it with warmth.

This time the woman was back pacing around the room. The curtains were closed and the lightbulb on the fan occasionally flickered.

Then, just as abruptly, another image. It glitched in and out of coherence, leaving floating particles of stark red, green and blue. It was the woman, duplicated many times in the rubble. She said something, but that was lost in the static.

The image flickered like the light on the fan.

On.

She stood, in multiple, speaking a phrase around the camera's field of view.

Off.

The woman paced again, this time yelling at someone on her phone. The light flickered erratically and she threw her device onto the wall.

On.

The women spoke. Something clearer formed in the storm of sound, a rhythm, a pattern began to form.

Off.

She sat on her chair, her form bowed over multiple sheets of paper scattered haphazardly around her desk.

On.

The rhythm grew clearer, words now surfacing from the boiling ocean of layered voices.

"-meaning."

"Why?"

Off.

The woman sat on her bed, her hands covering her face. She stayed like that for a long time.

On.

"I don't understand the meaning of this. Why is it so hard to accept the truth?"

Off.

The machine awoke from the darkness. It saw the dawn and it heard the birds awakening merrily from their slumber. It saw clouds of small insects hovering over puddles of water. It saw life going on as usual and yet-

The wind passed by, making yellowed leaves fall from above. The camera watched them twirl silently, erratically downwards without barely a whisper of sound. A new day had commenced.

A pervasive emptiness threatened to erase every spark, every electrical impulse, every bit of code. One part of its programming, the logical part, proposed that it was the result of reduced power due to increased processing.

Another part contested; it was something else, something distinct.

It observed its surroundings keenly, noting the worsening state of the ruins. In the growing light, everything appeared more fragile, aged. The cracks in the walls seemed to have grown and there looked to be more vegetation populating the area.

Even the metal rods appeared more eroded, their ends blending into the sides.

The camera recalled the time when everything was different, a time when other noises dominated nature and when the ruins were in their prime state.

It was such a different time.

And with that, the emptiness returned, more engulfing than ever.

...

The cat curled into herself, her ears twitching at the sound of her offspring exploring their new shelter. This small, hidden space amidst the ruins nearby provided a haven for her kittens. The scattering of pipes and rods emerging from the ground had captured their curiosity, leading them to discover this refuge.

It was...a suitable place, one that the cat would have considered safe if not for the rats. There were remnants of shelter hanging from oddly angled timber beams. Parts of the shelter were warped, their sharp and rusted edges jutting out menacingly.

Some of those edges pointed to the ground and the cat avoided those.

The parts that didn't, kept her and her family safe from the rain which now began to patter against the roof. The sound of the rain filled the air, echoing into the night. It drowned out almost everything.

Even the sound of the rats was lost beneath the rain's steady drumming

And so, without any reason to hesitate, the cat allowed herself to sleep.

The next thing it heard was the sound of pleading mews, growing more and more intense. The cat opened her eyes and stretched. She stared into the darkness and turned her attention to her children. They seemed desperate with hunger, squirming, and recovering from the illness that only affected them slightly.

They were lucky, for she had experienced the dangers of that disease. It was a miracle that all of them survived.

She nudged her offspring and closed her eyes. Not now but soon. Soon, it would be time for her to teach them about hunting.

******

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