I wrote this story for Mable, I'm sure you've read something of hers on 9 (It's almost impossible not to) who wrote for me some 4x8 as requested. This was for her and any 6x8 fans out there.
Take heed this is a post apocalyptic AU in which 6 and 8 have to stick together and make it through the wastelands of a forrest and then scavenge a ransacked city. Special appearance by 3 and 4 as female doppelgangers (because your argument is invalid). Here they are humans.
In a new age of industry and efficiency, where so many tasks are automated, human life seems to live for technology to serve it. Even maintenance and function is done by machine, if humans program it to do so. Indeed, it's so cold and calculated, so mechanical, you wouldn't think humans engineered it, only observing it work to their advantage. It's more like a cycle of machine bred machines in a loop where humanity once placed as its begining, middle, and end man. Now only its benefactor for the loop and everything it reaps still belongs to man. Every aspect of it serves the purpose of at least one kind of man, of whatever and wherever it suits.
Like here.
The shadow of an unidentified mountain conceals a dark and onimous quasi facility deep under wraps. Whatever it has under works coughs up tons of smog. In its funnels, clouds of steam and exhaust gasses swirl and hang overhead in an evergrowing mass of smothering heat and pollution. Tall, black columns of thick smoke and carbon loom in a bloody sunset sky. Red bursts of fire ignite in the black smog of the mushroom clouds, eventually collapsing in their own weight and immensity. Strands of heavy carbon rain down into the mountains, forrests, everywhere. As the lesser halves of the mushroom clouds fall over the lands in layers of ash and soot, leaving only plumes of smoke, the better parts of it reach up high and settle across the sky like tangible shadows turning bright day to settling night.
It looks like the poster shot of the industrious human age and the desolation of nature since the scene is so bleak and anti-life, so self destructively human, it's outrageous. The one thing relatably worse than the operations of this shadowy quasi facility and its rolling clouds of black like the fumes of the devil's smokehouse is many, many more the world over.
These facilities, hidden away like sins from public, are mechanical monsters that breathe in their own contaminated air, consume their own creations, and thrive; it'd almost be a deux ex machina if it weren't for the easily overshadowed man behind the machine. Places like these can turn up anywhere in the form of anything but their use is almost exclusively for the profits of the destructive outcomes by their creator's design.
Yet it only starts in places like these.
It really takes off further on, in another place, away from wherever this lies. But if it ever gets near, around places like these, then you are either living in a war-turned wasteland or you will soon. Such is happening wherever here is, where you are. In fact, you're in the thick of an uncertain ruin. That's why you need to wake up, 6. Wake up while you're still in the dark.
He wakes up in a strait jacket that coddles him like a nightmarish vice. Before he makes up half a mind to struggle, he quickly realizes his legs are cuffed. Soon it strikes him that he's sprawled on a bed that isn't his own, face down and heated. It sparks an inspiration of panic in his eyes and he reacts with the worst kind of start. He thrashes fiercly in his state, crawling away from the unfamiliar bed on pinned arms and shackled legs.
Only when his bowed head hits the opposite wall does he try to sit up in a kneeling position and crawl farther away. Now that his knees pull up to the padding, he slams his shoulder forward and, with an awkward jerk of his body, he pulls to the side as best he can until his back firmly meets the wall.
He focuses on his loudly beating heart and the rushing blood throbbing in his ears. Low whimpers and quick panting resound in his buzzing head, drowning out the usual din. He has an inkling of where he is and what it means to be in there but it's too much to process and this is all he can do to hold on.
The cell room, for he knows that's what this is, is a windowless five by five meter space kept for the incorrigibly out of line. It's little more than a fortified one-bed hovel with soundproof padding and carpeting to safely isolate its prospective captives. The dim lighting takes away from it's typically sterile shroud of stark white and throws it into a darker light. A red flashing from the door completes his picturesque terror.
Then, like blinking away a mirage or sleep, he notices the door. On and off. On and off it goes. Not only from the high vent above the door, but particularly around the only exit. A rectangular halo outlines a cracked door. A door which should be sealed tight, yet isn't. It's open.
Without putting too much faith into it, he painstakingly rights himself into a wobbling stance and attempts a drunken walk to the ajar door, then through it.
His body gets ahead of his feet and suddenly all his weight is slammed into the heavy door, pushing it open with a creaking groan. He tumbles out and meets the floor with his face.
It hurts. It hurts.
The pain registers like an iron to the face but he only bites his tongue between gritted teeth. He's more worried about the noise he made breaking out. He raised his pulsing head. If any of the orderlies heard -! He scanned the halls in anticipation but no one came. There was only him and the flashing red alarm. No sound came. No way. Had he gone deaf?
Plink, plink, plnk, pli-li-li-li-lnk.
No, he hadn't. Somewhere to his right, down the hall with more stable lighting came the seeming pitter patter of falling metal pieces. Could someone still be around? Maybe they can help him. Wait. Who is he? He knows it's himself but who is he?
6, comes to mind.
It repeats in his mind for a while. 6. He is 6. He must be 6. Why 6?
A burning buzzes in his brain and 6 decides not to think about it.