Andrew was not usually the adventurous type. To be fair he was more of a loner, whether that was to do with him being shy or moving from place to place as his dad's firm moved him all over Europe, he didn't know. However when he came to his obsession with art, he just couldn't resist. With sketchbook in hand he had explored most of the French town over the last couple of days, but one prize was still waiting…
The abandoned factory stood in front of him, the walls derelict and covered in graffiti. He wondered what this place could have been used for in its prime, Perhaps a car manufactory. Whatever it was the place was a mess now . A single bridge over the river stood between him and the secrets within. He had already been gone an hour after telling his parents he would be gone for twenty minutes. He was expecting a call from them any minute now but the opportunity was so close he could taste it. He made his way across the river whilst imagining the things that could be inside to sketch.
Whilst inside he came across a number of metal poles holding the construction up. Above him there were platforms on either side of the factory, although the rest of the huge room was empty. Andrew explored the place further, although there didn't seem to be anything of interest. He considered sketching out the building its self but he had already drawn so many other buildings that week. To his right he could see what looked like a lift.
"Jackpot!"
The double doors were already open, allowing Andrew to walk straight in. This is how far his luck went however, as the button on the right hand side of the elevator refused to work. Without entering the correct code he wouldn't be going anywhere. He entered a few codes but none of them came close. Andrew abandoned the lift and searched for another way down. Various corridors led off to the main manufactory machines. One room contained a number of conveyor belts, obliterating Andrew's idea of it previously being a car factory. He opened another door. Nothing. At this rate all he was doing was wasting his time.
He looked at his phone. It was 4:30 and his parents would definitely be starting to get worried. He considered calling them but then thought again, worrying what they would think if they knew he was in the abandoned factory. He placed the device back into his pocket and moved on. Besides the door he could see an air vent with one corner bent out of shape.
"That must lead somewhere interesting..." Andrew thought, just before wondering why he thought an air vent would lead somewhere interesting.
Regardless of his strange thoughts, he couldn't find another way down from there, so into the air vent he crawled. Pulling the grate off was a challenge to start with, but in its bent state it soon gave in. The vent suddenly came loose, slamming into Andrew's knee in the process. He grimaced and hissed through his teeth. Was all of this really worth it for a sketch of a crappy old factory? Still he carried on, his curiosity getting the better of him. He struggled through the air vent as every bit of pressure on his right knee sent a shooting pain through his leg. The vent went on for quite a way and forked off in different directions, but each was a dead end.
Andrew continued to crawl through, his clothes now caked in dust. What on Earth would he tell his parents? At last he found an exit. In front of him was another grate leading to a thin tube-shaped room. He pushed on the grate to release it and sure enough it fell down the tube-shaped room and landing with a clang down below. From the delay it sounded like quite a fall, now was not the time for slip ups! The room wasn't a room at all, but rather a ladder shaft. Reaching out Andrew grabbed the ladder with his left hand and carefully pulled himself out of the air vent, dragging a bed of dust behind him. At last he reached out to grab his sketchbook and carried on down the ladder. He could see the grate down below him, just as his fear of heights crept in.
"Slowly does it, one step. One step."
Strangely the ladder wasn't as dusty as he expected. In fact, he could have sworn that some parts had hand marks in the dust that was there. Andrew regarded it as workers looking the place over for demolition of something. He could see he was approaching a large room below him, oddly with plenty of light.
"Surely it should be pitch-black down here?" Andrew thought to himself.
Andrew's foot came in contact with the floor, and his head with relief. He turned round to start searching for something to draw, anything. What he saw however was beyond his imagination. In front of him sat a huge, dome like machine connected to a chair and various monitors and controls. The chair was suspended in the air and wired to a crane mechanism.
"This is amazing!"
Andrew circled the room, looking at every aspect of his discovery. Anyone would assume that the thing must have been used to control the factory, but it looked nothing like a control centre, more like a super-computer. From what he could see, the machine was still on. On the right arm of the chair he could see an ear piece. Andrew examined it in his hand. It looked normal enough. Curious, he put it on but heard nothing. Nervously, he experimented further.
Worrying about the repercussions but at the same time feeling excited, he placed his hand on the main keyboard in front of him. Luckily for him the chair was not in the way, as it appeared to move along the crane system to its final destination in front of the monitors. Andrew had no idea how to work it so it would have just been a hindrance. Andrew pressed the enter key. The computer didn't respond.
"Well that's disappointing."
He pressed it again, then the space bar, then every key he could see. The machine simply refused to do anything.
"What's wrong with this thing?"
Without warning the screens in front of him flashed into life. It wasn't anything Andrew did as his hand wasn't touching the keyboard at the time. The screens in front him were all running codes of some sort and other complicated algorithms. But the most interesting discovery of all was what was shown on the main display. A computer-generated model of a pink-haired girl was looking back at him. She had pointed ears resembling that of an elf and pink stripes down her cheeks falling away from her eyes like war paint.
"Hello? Jeremy, is that you?" The girl was speaking out from the computer.
A million thoughts went through Andrew's head. Was this a video game, or an artificial intelligence? The voice had come from the earpiece he was still wearing, but the avatar on the screen spoke as he heard the voice. Expecting the impossible, Andrew replied.
"…Who are you?"
Immediately on the screen the girl's eyebrows shot up in surprise. She heard him!
"Did you just hear me?" Andrew was in awe of this discovery.
"Why, yes. But I don't recognise your voice. Are you a friend of Jeremy's?"
Andrew could be very perceptive when he wanted to. He thought over what she had just said. She thought that he was a person called Jeremy or one of his friends so he must have discovered the machine before Andrew. Secondly, Jeremy must be a boy rather than an adult as she had mistaken Andrew's voice for his. Lastly, what the hell was he doing!? He was standing there talking to a computer. What he saw on the screen couldn't be alive and yet what he saw on the screen was displaying more than just A.I. She was blinking occasionally as they talked. She conveyed emotion in every sentence. Whoever had built that thing must have been a genius.
"Did this Jeremy find you first? Or did he create you?" Andrew asked her…it… I don't know.
"I…" She hesitated.
At that moment Andrew's phone began to ring. He was dreading this moment. Slowly he raised his phone from his pocket to his ear, forgetting that he had the ear piece in. He removed it and spoke to his mother on the other end. As he moved he could see the Pink-haired girl follow his arm. Not only could she hear him, she could see him too!
"Yes I'm on my way now… Yeah I know I said twenty minutes but… sorry! Yep… see you soon."
His exploration was over for today. He put the ear piece back on.
"I'm sorry… what is your name?"
"Aelita." She answered. Andrew had never heard that name before; he thought it might be a code name or abbreviation or something.
"Goodbye Aelita. See you soon." And with that he placed the ear-piece back on the chair and limped towards the ladder.
"Wait! Who are you?" Aelita called back but Andrew could no longer hear. The room was left alone once again as Aelita shut off the monitors.