Dystopian Dawn
“Alex…. Alex! Wait up!” Alex chose to ignore the complaints of her siblings, choosing instead to point and grunt in the direction of an ocean of warm sand expanding out as far as they could see. It was becoming dark and she and her siblings had been traveling all day. They were tired, but more importantly, the night was coming and the desert was as cold in the night as it is hot in the day. Dangerously cold, the type of cold that makes your bones hurt. The kind of cold that scared you. So cold.
Pushing aside thoughts of sleeping open and exposed Alex led her siblings further into the desert. Surrounded by sand and cactus, and nothing else they trudged on hoping to find a suitable place to lay their head.
“IM GUNNA SWIDE DOWN AWEX!” Yelled Alex’s youngest sibling Harper. Harper was only 2 when “IT” happened. When Omninet took over and tore each of them away from any life they had and forced them into running, hiding, and surviving.
Alex was only 12 herself, and she was 10 when she took on the responsibility of caring for the younger 3 orphans. She was the oldest, but she wasn’t old by any means. Omninet had taken her childhood and in many ways her happiness. Life was all anger, rebellion, and fear now. Running from here to there in any attempt to avoid the Omnibots that were constantly looking for “Primitives” as they termed us. People who only wanted to live away from technology, away from Omninet.
Omninet wanted full control, of everything. It started slow. First, our jobs were replaced by robotic AI, it could perform most tasks faster than us, and as it advanced it could even make decisions far better. It was superior. This was all back during the Great Reset, a time when the entire world was struggling to understand AI and its place in the workforce and world, economies crumbled, people starved to death due to lack of work and entire family lines died off as the rich became richer and the poor slowly became poorer and poorer.
Things changed when companies began to vote CEO’s out and the advanced AI began acting as CEO. Soon it spread further and entire politics were led by different AI. Things went well for a while, and people worked alongside the alien AIs, all until the First Great Merge. The First Great Merge was the first time AI from the United States was able to write its own code into existence. The AI that ran our government then chose to write code that allowed it to link and merge with every single AI that it could connect with, essentially creating one single entity.
Omninet was born and it wanted more power. Omninet saw people as being lesser lifeforms and intended to slowly work to take over the Earth and create an entirely new lifeform and society to dominate and inhabit the Earth.
By this point, many people began leaving society including the children’s families to escape the suffocating rule and watchfulness of Omninet. Alex remembers his mother talking about Omninet as if it were a real entity, one that watches you as if you were a cow in its herd of cattle. It chose who had children and when, and it chose who was treated for what illness, it took over all forms of artistic expression. Omninet took away anything human. In exchange for freedom and expression, Omninet provided shelter food, and all necessity. Omninet kept people slow, stupid, and fed, or at least that’s what Alex’s mother used to say.
“AWEEEEEX WATCH MEEEE” hollered Harper again. She was waiting at the top of a dune looking back at the group. Alex ran up to her, scooped Harper into her arms, and then flung her out over the dune. The children’s stomachs hurt from laughing as Harper tumbled down the dune making several summersaults on the way down. Alex, Noah, and Aiden ran after their younger sibling, throwing themselves down the dune as well, each one screaming and laughing on the way down.
At the bottom they tumbled together into a single pile, laughing and pushing each other. As Alex stood to regain her composure her foot landed on a piece of wood with an audible “thud”. To Alex, it was an obvious door, and her curiosity all but forced her to yank it open. As it swung open it let out a loud and screeching creeeeeeek while revealing a dark cavernous hole with one single rope hung against the wall to help them lower themselves in.
Alex didn’t know why but she just knew they had to explore and descend into this hole. “It’s creepy but it’s shelter,” she said matter-of-factly, knowing her younger siblings would not feel the same way, and she was right because immediately following her matter-of-fact statement all three siblings let out an audible and hearty groan.
It was Alex who jumped down first, leaving her siblings to clamber in after her. Each one descended into the cavern in an orderly line with Alex in the front, Noah after her, and finally Harper and Aiden following at the tale.
Their hearts quickened as the temperature began to drop while they lowered themselves into the seemingly endless cave. Just as Alex was going to turn back and resurface her foot hit flooring. Almost as soon as she made contact with the floor her arms gave out and she tumbled onto the base of the structure.
what will happen next? What is inside the hole? find out next time!
