Ranma ½ & Against The Fall Of Night
Ranma ½ belongs to Rumiko Takihashi (did I spell that right?) Against the Fall Of Night belongs to Arthur C Clark, I am writing without permission.
Ranma's eyes opened. The room he was in was sterile white, and in all probability it had been unopened while he had slept…. For how long? He looked out of the clear materiel that served as a window from his Cryo Tube. A robot of unknown design stood nearby. It was almost a metre tall, and it floated almost half a metre off the ground, it was roughly spherical with a bulge for the head which housed eyes and two arms coming from the sides of the machine and hanging limply. It spoke slowly, as the robots of his time did. "Welcome Ranma, The time has come when you must awaken; one of the Atavisms has begun the revival." Ranma smiled wearily and sat up, the cover of the tube moving out of the way automatically.
"You'd think in all these years they would make a robot that could speak a little faster." Ranma laughed. The robot looked at him seemingly uncomprehending. Ranma glared at it. "You can speak faster, Do it." The robots head bulge shifted up and down. Ranma sighed, "I need clothes, how long?" the loin cloth he was wearing was nearly indestructible, it had to have been to survive in the cryo tube for so long, only his enormous ki reserve had kept his body in good enough condition to function.
"Another minute and apparel visually identical to your preferred will be here." Ranma nodded, the robots did speak a lot smoother, the eternally pigtailed man wondered how long he had slept in there waiting for humanity to rejuvenate itself or die trying. "Here are your clothes Ranma." Ranma nodded and took them, the familiar Silk shirt weighed a little more, all his clothes did. Ranma looked at the robot after deciding it wasn't just the deterioration of his muscles. "It was decided that extra material would be added to your clothes to make sure they stayed in one piece for longer." Ranma looked curious at that, as the robot continued. "Self repairing nano technology. It repairs the clothes and can scavenge materiel from elsewhere to repair."
Ranma nodded. It had been invented a few years ago, but was horribly expensive; well a few years before he had gone into Cryo it had been. "You may also notice you are not in the same city as you went to sleep in. the entire facility was moved during what is now termed The Great Migration where all of humanity moved into two separate and mutually unknown settlements. We are in Diaspar, the last city on Earth and are populated by the Immortals. Lys is the other settlement, comprising of mortal telepaths." Ranma nodded as he finally stood up and stretched.
"What is the Status of the atavism?" one wall suddenly changed into an image of a boy being carried by a robot, the image became motion and motion sped until it would be a blur to any normal person. The image slowed as a council meeting was played out and Alvin left and took the spaceship. Ranma smiled, that was probably the first spaceship to take flight in a very long time. "So, what needs to be done?"
"Nothing. You are awake because the orders were for you to be revived as soon as humanity tried to revive itself after the fall." The robot answered.
Ranma cursed for a moment, he hadn't anticipated that the atavism wouldn't need any help; it was small consolation that the rest of the team of scientists hadn't thought of the same thing. "Did any of the others who underwent cryogenic sleep survive?" Ranma asked finally, he didn't really want to know the answer; as he (and everyone else to undergo the sleep) had been informed there would be a nine out of ten casualty rate within cryogenic suspension… but he did have to know.
"It is unknown." The robot said after a moment. "The cryo unit containing Ryoga Hibiki was lost somehow approximately fifty thousand years ago." Ranma's laugh interrupted the robots speech; it waited for him to stop before continuing. "The rest of the sleepers have died." Ranma's amusement shrivelled quickly, he hadn't known most of the people well, barely known their names even. But it was a sobering thought how close he had come to death, only he and possibly Ryoga out of five thousand people survived the long sleep.
A side panel opened and revealed a tray with his childhood clothes laid out upon it, glaring at the robot angrily Ranma stalked over and snatched them off the tray. Knowing that he'd not be able to get other clothes for a while he slipped them on anyway despite their painful memories.
"So, What can I do while I wait?" asked Ranma irritably. The robot moved sideways as a door opened behind it.
"Work on repairing your body, learn about the current environment, learn of the advancements since your sleep, create a workforce to help the atavism, create workforce for construction of new buildings or anything else, learn of newer construction methods, learn-"
"Shut Up." Ranma barked, "take me to a gym, give me a summary of all advancements since I began to sleep, and bring me some food to the gym." Finished the man as his stomach rumbled.
The levitating robot bobbed up and down before leading the way out of the room. Following quietly Ranma noticed the odd black path outside in the hall, as he took a second step along his eyes widened as the walls seemingly moved backwards of their own accord. After nearly half a second Ranma realized that the floor was moving without causing inertia for him to feel, a technique that had not even been theorized over when he went to sleep.
The hallway stretched over one hundred metres behind him.
Above him the hallway bent downwards, as Ranma's feet moved closer he realized that by now he should have felt the change in gravitational pull. The hall came to an end and Ranma looked backwards momentarily, noticing the hall bent downwards and out of sight in less than ten metres. Walking through the automatically opened door Ranma entered an immaculate gym. Looking around curiously he walked to a nearby window out into a futuristic city, the building he was in was not the tallest by far, as many others towered over it, but Ranma could see many buildings with smooth glass like walls. On the nearest building he could even see a reflection of his own building almost as clear as a mirror. He was standing at the side of a ball with a thin tower below him, it wouldn't even be twenty five metres wide.
Ranma blinked and turned to look at the door.
Walking over to it, he glanced at the hallway that bent down out of sight in a few metres… shuddering the pigtailed man pushed all thoughts of moving up the middle of the building at a ninety degree angle out of his mind.