23 JUN 2020
2D sat on the floor. He stared at his robot arm, remembering that fateful day almost three years ago. He stood up, stretched, and went to see how things were going.
"2D! Hey!" 2D turned around to see a man with long brown hair grinning at him. "Hi, Andrew," 2D said. "Did you find anything?"
"Did I find anything?" Andrew said, laughing. "Yeah I did! The stockpile was huge. I wonder why they had all that stuff..." Andrew had been a musician before the Machines took over, but he was temporarily pausing his career to instead go around to abandoned buildings and find food and supplies.
2D and Noodle had found an old underground city, seemingly abandoned, that they decided to use as a base. Along with the few remaining free people, they had formed a small resistance group known simply as "Free Will." The Machines knew the group existed, but so far they had been unable to find them.
Free Will was very small, consisting only of 2D and Noodle, the leaders; Andrew, the "collector"; Mike, a twentysomething videogame-loving nerd who served as their weapons expert and computer guy; and Tess, resident tough chick, wetware technician, and hacker.
Andrew pushed a piece of hair out of his face. "We've got enough food to last for a while now, too."
"That's good," 2D said. "We're still gonna need everything we can get. So... did you find anything special?" Andrew pretended to think for a moment. "Yeah, yeah, I think we did. Follow me!"
Confused, 2D followed Andrew to their storage room. Andrew looked around for a while, then pulled a large black rectangular object out from behind a stack of canned peas.
2D stared at Andrew. "Is that..." he said. Andrew grinned, setting up the rectangle on stilts. "Yeah. It's at least ten years old by the look of it," Andrew said, "but I've tried it out and it works great. I figured our dear leader would want it. But let me use it when you're done! And look what I found for Noodle." He pulled a guitar out from a stack of old issues of Weekly World News, which promptly fell over.
2D smiled. "This is great!" he said. "Thanks, Andrew. We haven't seen real instruments in years." Andrew nodded. "Yeah. It was cool to find them. Reminds me of my old AWK days." 2D nodded and walked towards the keyboard.
He pressed the on button and ran his human hand's fingers over the keys. He grinned, tested it a bit more, getting his robot hand used to it, and started to play one of the songs he remembered from years ago.
After a little while, Noodle walked into the room. "I thought I heard music," she said. Andrew grinned, pointed to 2D, and gave Noodle the guitar. "I found 'em while I was getting supplies," he whispered. Noodle smiled, hugged Andrew, and went over to join 2D.
Andrew watched them for a while. A girl with short, spiky, bright red hair walked in, her tall black boots making a racket on the floor. "Who's got the radio?" she asked. "Hey, Tess!" Andrew said, pointing at 2D and Noodle. "Look."
Tess smiled. "Man, I haven't seen our fearless leaders this happy," she said. "Ever." She looked at Andrew. "Have you?" Andrew shook his head.
2D and Noodle finished their song. "It's not really the same without Muds and Russ though..." 2D said. "But it was nice to play again." "Yeah," Noodle said. "When we save them everything will be better."
Andrew and Tess clapped. Laughing, 2D and Noodle bowed. "Thank you so much, Andrew," Noodle said. "Hey, any time," Andrew said.
A young man with semi-long black hair and black plastic glassed ran into the room. "Guys! You gotta check this out! It's important!" he said. "What's wrong, Mike?" 2D asked. "Nothing's wrong, exactly..." Mike said. "You'd just better check it out. 2D followed Mike, and everyone else followed him.