When the light begins to change
I sometimes feel a little strange
A little anxious when it's dark

Fear of the Dark – Iron Maiden

~ ~ ~

I was scared. Every second of my existence in the void felt unbearable, dragged out to eternity and at the same time compressed into an infinitesimally small moment. Time was still here, and yet I could feel it passing. With my senses dulled, everything around me was a desolate grey.

I was trapped in the grey, and I couldn't tell how I had gotten there. But I remembered being here before. A couple of years ago, I had been in an accident and had to undergo surgery. The anesthesia that I had been given, that combination of hypnotics, analgesics and amnesiacs, had put me in this same state.

I had been distinctly aware of the passage of time, but completely unable to tell how long I had been in that state. It was nothing like a dream, in which time might often be distorted, and a decade might fit into a night's sleep, or hours in the real world might feel like minutes. It was nothing like a dreamless sleep, in which a night will pass in the blink of an eye. And it wasn't the black nothingness of complete unconsciousness. It was somewhere in between, or perhaps underneath. It was just – the grey.

I lost most of my memory from those days. My mother had waited by my bedside for me to wake up after the surgery, and she later told me, when I finally came to I just burst into hysterical laughter. When I stopped, I looked at her and told her, "This is what it must feel like to be dead."

So am I really dead now? I thought. Perhaps I have drowned in the well.

I remembered the well, the constant ebbing and flooding of the chamber, the dark water around me. The desire to give up, to allow myself to be dragged down by the current, to open my lungs for the water and just let myself rest forever. But I didn't remember drowning.

Am I Sky or the prisoner?

I had gotten out of the well. I remembered that, too. But now I was drowning again. Floating in the grey, there was just my mind, as I was awash in an irregular current of time.

But suddenly, a noise reverberated through the emptiness. For a second there, I wondered how sound waves could even be transmitted without any air. Then I recognized what it was. Three sharp knocks. Then a pause. More knocking. Impatiently.

Suddenly, the emptiness around me exploded into a myriad of sensations. There was the feeling of the soft mattress of my bed underneath me, and the covers of my sheet around me. I became acutely aware of every square centimeter of my skin covered by my pajamas. Pleasantly cool air filling my lungs with my next breath, and the smell of something fresh and flowery - my favorite washing detergent and a hint of my hair shampoo.

I could also hear other noises now. Moon rustling her sheets at the other side of the room. The window of our dorm room had been left half-open and let in a cool breeze, and there were birds singing in the tree outside.

The knocking grew louder and almost frantic, and Moon groaned.

I opened my eyes, and felt something else. As I touched my hand to my cheeks, I was surprised to find them wet with tears. Confused, I slowly rose to a sitting position and stared at the door.

It seemed to me as if this room and everything in it, Moon, and even my own body had just appeared out of nothing, plopped right back into existence as if nothing had happened. But of course, nothing had happened. I had just woken from an absolutely weird nightmare.

"Sky! Moon! Wake up!" Bastion shouted outside our door.

"Ugh, you go talk to him," Moon grumbled, putting her pillow over her head. "He's your friend."

"He's both our friend."

"Not when he knocks on our door at this hour."

I sighed and got up. My legs felt strangely weak, as if I had been running for miles. Perhaps the mission yesterday had exhausted me more than I had cared to admit when I had visited the infirmary. Sluggishly, I walked to the door, while drying the tears on my cheeks with the sleeve of my shirt.

"Sky!" Bastion seemed surprised when I finally opened, and took a step back. "I knew you two would still be asleep."

He crossed his arms, staring down at me with an accusing expression. But he had no right to be this stern with us. At this hour, he had no right to anything, except getting his ass kicked right back out again by two very tired girls.

"What the hell is wrong with you, man?" Moon grumbled behind me.

She had crawled out of bed after all and threw him what was probably supposed to be an angry glare, but with her pink bedhead, she looked too much like a fluffed up cotton ball to appear threatening.

"Sky is all over the news. The Moirai have released the footage – or it has leaked. At any rate, you should really see this!"

"What?" Moon and I asked simultaneously.

"There's more. It's... let's just watch it together," he suggested.

We left our room and went to the common area on our floor of the dorm. We had vid screens in our room too, but we hadn't let Bastion in there in the past four years and that was not about to change, not even under those circumstances. When we arrived, a group of people was already propped up in front of the big screen. Some of them turned around and stared at me, and a few began to talk in hushed whispers.

But I didn't really care about that right now. My gaze was immediately drawn to the screen, where a broadcast was running. It showed the footage from the Daidala test run from different perspectives. I watched myself jump over obstacles and across gaps between levitating platforms, and somehow found myself unable to believe that this was really me. Then, there it was again, the moment when the drone hit me. The image froze and minimized into a window in the corner, and a man dressed in a dark blue suit came into view.

"The footage from the academy has by now been verified by the Moirai as authentic," the news anchor said, "Meanwhile the cause of the malfunction is still unknown, and a special Talos task force, supported by the Science and Engineering departments of the academy, has been established to clarify the matter. For the time being, all citizens are asked to cooperate by bringing personal drones in their possession to the central maintenance units in their vicinity. Small handheld electronic devices such as communicators or tablets should be manually connected to the framework for a firmware update. Public drones and Artificials will be recalled for preemptive maintenance checkups in waves starting later this week."

Next to me, Moon cursed.

"Expect disturbances in network access over the next couple of days as city-wide OS updates will be rolled out for all terminals, private and public. In the meantime, if you have any suspicion of malfunction of your devices, androids or Artificials in your vicinity, please contact the engineering hotline displayed below and we will assist you."

The reporter spoke those lines as casually as if it was a weather report. It made it all the harder to believe that this was really happening and I wasn't still dreaming. A recall of this scale had never happened before in the entire history of Pharos.

The broadcast continued to show maps of the city highlighting spots where people could bring in droids or electronic devices for checkups. Then, they showed an interview with Tribune Nona.

"On behalf of everyone dealing with this problem, I apologize for any inconvenience caused by the investigation. We would like to reassure everyone that we are doing everything to resolve this problem as fast as possible. I have full confidence in our engineers and scientists. I humbly ask for your cooperation so we can all soon return to normality."

She closed her statement with a smile, as usual for her TV appearances. Despite her advanced age, Nona was still a very beautiful woman, but something about her smile seemed off to me. Her eyes seemed like she was thinking of something else while talking. She had dark eyes, deep and black like bottomless wells. I shuddered at the thought of that comparison.

Next, a woman was interviewing Doctor Way, one of the head researchers of the Agalma Project, in front of what I recognized as the Computer Science building right here on campus. Behind him stood a tall, broad-shouldered man with a cybernetic eye that emitted an electric blue glow. That was General Shield, commander of the Talos Defense Force.

What on earth does he have to do with anything?

"The prototype exoskeleton suit called Daidala Alpha 1 was the Agalma Project's latest attempt to develop protective gear that can withstand the dangers of the wasteland," the interviewer began, "However, Doctor Way, after the incident during the test run, critics of the program argue once again that even with such a suit, the endeavor of walking the wastes poses a great threat to the wearer, and that it is just not worth the risk to put our people out there when we can rely on robotic suits instead. They believe the Agalma Project is a waste of valuable resources and it is time to put it to an end. What is your opinion on that matter?"

"Well, you have to understand that for the past centuries, ever since the Builders raised that wall around our city, we have essentially been cut off from the outside world completely. I believe it is just a logical consequence of human curiosity to want to go back out there and, in a sense, rediscover the world."

"But couldn't we just do this from the safety of our good old remotely piloted suits?"

Doctor Way smiled at that notion. "Of course. But you have to understand, our goal was never to just send a couple of Keres out there to snap some images and grab some loot. Our ultimate goal is to enable every citizen to walk outside the confines of the wall, while being protected from radiation and other dangers of the environment."

The reporter was left stunned for a moment, and so was everybody in the common room, watching the interview. To them, the thought must have seemed so boldly far-fetched that it bordered on science fiction. It would take another ten thousand years or more until the radioactivity would have reached just half of the levels that currently polluted this world – another ten thousand to halve it again, and perhaps another ten thousand before the world would become even remotely habitable again. They probably thought, why would anybody, let alone a civilian, willingly cross the wall to actually, physically walk across the wasteland?

I found myself smiling at the thought. If they ever asked me, I'd volunteer in a heartbeat.

"I understand now that the approach we took was perhaps too bold," Doctor Way admitted. "Now that the Daidala project is on ice, we will focus on the advancement of other technologies, like the improvement of decontamination technology and radiation shielding, like the mesh protecting our city. Hopefully, our critics will agree that these endeavors are worth pursuing. And if one day, this research leads us to leave these walls behind, we will be happy to have contributed in any way."

"What is your professional opinion on the underlying cause of the droid attack during the Daidala test? Human error in their programming? Could there be a connection to the glitches in the systems AIs of the city?"

General Shield cut in to answer. "We do have a lead. I can assure you, that the science and engineering departments are doing everything in their power to get to the bottom of this problem. For now, that information is confidential."

Once again, I asked myself, what does he have to do with anything? He wasn't part of the Agalma program.

I found that man with his cybernetic, glowing eye very unsettling.

"Any personal opinion you could give us instead?" the reporter continued to try to coax information out of him. The General threw her an unwavering, cold look.

"He must be terrific at poker", Moon commented drily next to me, "And a fucking blast at parties."

Something about him made me feel very uneasy. Despite all the praise that Bastion had for his highest superior, he always seemed very cold and distant. I could never quite shake that feeling that the reason that he so fervently tried to protect humanity from harm could not just come from the goodness of his heart – if he had one at all.

"All I can say is that the malfunction is nothing to be worried about. As long as you are not wearing a prototype exoskeleton suit and running an obstacle course through a group of drones, thereby replicating the exact setting in which the accident occurred, it is highly unlikely that anything like that will ever happen again. Yet we must get to the bottom of the problem nonetheless, to understand how it was possible that the drones could react so unpredictably."

The reporter hesitated for a moment, checked her tablet, and then asked, "Then one last question about the recall of the Artificials..."

The General raised a hand to stop her from speaking. He now turned to look straight at the camera with his mismatched eyes – one cold and unwavering, the other burning with an eerie blue glow.

"I am aware that the recall has led to some discomfort among the citizens of Pharos. But believe me when I tell you that we take all of this extra precautions so you don't have to concern yourselves with any problems. We are merely conducting a preemptive, but routine, checkup. There is no reason to worry."

A shiver ran down my spine. Never in my life had I felt less reassured by somebody saying that sentence.