-=Episode 1: Debut=-
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The city was in shambles. Indeed, it had been for millenia - though the buildings never seemed to crumble. Parts of the earth had been pushed up and down by seismic activity, and the sewers were exposed to open air in some places, turned to impromptu waterfalls, which fed into ponds which in turn fed into rivers. But all of that was like ants, from my position atop one of the many dilapidated buildings around town.
"Goo~od morning, Vietnam!" I spoke to my pod, recording the whole event. "Today's weather is looking like, oh.. Kind of feels like the sweaty, greasy crevice between a fat-man's inner thigh, if only 'inner thigh' was an aerosol. And to those of you who don't have that frame of reference, I envy you greatly! Nonetheless, I can't help but compare it to my time in Florida - and man did I hate the weather there."
"Well," I gestured around me. "I don't figure this is actually Vietnam - I've seen some of the signs around town, and going off of the writing system, best I can figure is this whole city was once old-world Tokyo, or somewhere near - and last I checked, Continental Drift hasn't progressed to the point where the Japanese Island merged with Mainland Asia quite yet. Point stands, however, I hope none of you are sensitive to the weather, because god knows I am."
And while it was Tokyo and not Vietnam, it also wasn't even actually that hot - probably more like a summer breeze if I had to guess, but I was just stubborn, and really attached to my parka - the thing has so many pockets, and such large ones - that it functioned just like a torso-encompassing backpack. It's just.. Really warm, and not well suited for warm weather. Be damned if I'm taking it off, though. But, anyway, the Pod.
I'd found that Pod half-submerged, half-buried in a river, just a few 'weeks' ago. It took me until just the 'day' before to get it up and running again - and fuck was that a frustrating process. Turns out Pods don't really have 'power' buttons, but there's a few other really obscure ways to activate them. I learned that after I paid a visit to the nearby Android Resistance Camp, after I got stumped in repairs. I was just lucky they knew how to fix it - but that didn't stop the staring from being awkward. They didn't know I was human, I don't think, but a non-YoRHa Android walking around with a YoRHa Pod? Its a good way to get attention.
After actually booting it up, the Pod had imprinted on me, I think. Kind of like a duckling setting its eyes on the first living thing nearby. Pod 172 was generic as could be, the Maintenance seemed to have wiped its memory card, so it was just like it was booted up for the first time. Lucky me, too, because if I had to deal with finding its last owner? That'd be a can of worms on its own.
"Today, we'll be going over our some of our Old-World History. Or, at least, what I know of it." I made a quick gesture for the pod to float over to me, and then pointed to one of the buildings in the distance, which it quickly pointed its camera - visual sensor? - at.
"That over there, my friends, is - or was - an Apartment Complex. Just about most of the buildings in the city were, I imagine. These were residences where people used to live, back when they were still being maintained, oh, six millennia ago? Maybe more. In fact, we're standing right on top of one, right now! Let's head inside, take a peak around, hm? I'll show you around."
I picked my rucksack up off the floor, and made my way for the stairs.
Now, just what the hell, one wonders, was I - by all rights, a 21st Century American - doing in 120th Century Japan? Well… Good fucking question.
I had no idea myself, not truly. I woke up somewhere on the European continent some… Maybe fifteen years ago (By my count, that would have been 11929) - I've actually been having a hard time keeping track of time, what with the tidally locked world and all - and I've just been circumnavigating the globe ever since.
I've seen everywhere from old-world Moscow, all the way to Warsaw and Berlin. From Gibraltar's Rock to Plymouth Rock. I've been to the Americas, or, what had been dubbed the 'Night Kingdoms'. And at the time of these events, I found myself landed in Japan.
In other words, I'm on a world tour! After all, what else would one do when you wake up with no responsibilities, no connections, debts or ties, and all the freedoms in the world?
Me and my Pod reached the top floor easily, the stairs were in amazing shape for 'six thousand years unmaintained'. Then, I had pointed around the first proper room I'd come across, and made a sweeping gesture with my arms. "This here is the average Apartment. Or, I suppose given the position of this one at the top of the building, it might have been of above-average quality."
"Were this apartment in proper shape, you'd probably have, oh, a kitchen in that corner-" My finger pointed to each location as I called them out. "-maybe a few beds in the next room over there for the residents, a table somewhere in the middle to just lounge around in your free-time, and a carpet along the floors. Or, maybe tile? Polished wood would work just as well, though."
"The walls and ceiling would have been in much better shape, too, I imagine. Either a solid color, or they'd have a patterned wall-paper along it to put some color in the room. The ceiling obviously had a better lighting system and the floor had some ventilation to pump air through the building." I pointed my Pod to the ceiling and floor respectively.
Now, such would've been all too obvious. Or, to any other human. The Androids that now inhabited the earth, though? So far, they didn't really seem to understand what the buildings around them were for - or a lot of things, really. Who I'm really talking to isn't just my pod - rather, all the Androids watching from 'behind' the pod. I had my pod recording audio/video and streaming it to... Well, I wasn't actually sure - the Pod handled that part.
Over the last decade I've been wandering the earth, I've run into all too many Androids questioning to themselves just what Item X had been for, or what Building Y was used as. I'd started this project under the masquerade of a sort of archaeological study - to help the Androids understand the world around them better, and to bring past knowledge into this distant future.
Or, well, that had only been one such part of the project. The other part?
I was starved of any contact. I couldn't interact with the Androids much, not without letting them know I was human, and with word about that Project YoRHa? Well, maybe it's my trust issues with authority talking, but I'm not much for revealing myself quite yet.
This project is for both of our benefits, then - Mine and the Androids. To help them learn the history of this world, and to give mine august self something to talk at, so that I don't drive myself insane.
"Any apartment building had dozens of the rooms I just described. And a family of humans lived in each room - sometimes just one human, other times up to four or even five per room!" I inflected a bit of awe into my voice at the end. Was I playing into a character? Certainly, but what talk show host is genuine?
...And I had compared myself to a talk-show host. That immediately put a damper on my mood. But alas, the show must go on!
"This is, of course, just one of many kinds of human residences. There were plenty of others, the house was smaller than an apartment complex, but generally larger than one individual apartment - and only built for one Family-Unit. Mansions were much the same, but they were more for wealthy people to flaunt their wealth."
I left the room, and looked to the southern wall - I remembered from my ascent to the roof seeing a hole in the wall, there, looking onto the roof of another apartment building, a half-dozen stories below this one. "Help me down, yeah, pod?"
It moved quickly - and I grabbed hold of the two arms situated below its chassis - and with its aid, I floated gently to the next roof - and I spoke all the while.
"Of course, these obviously weren't the only habitations available. A Barracks was a house filled with as many beds as it could fit, most commonly used as a sleeping quarters for Human Armies. Hotels and Motels both - extremely similar, different in where they were placed - were more temporary accommodations to those traveling." I landed on the next roof, continuing my stride as though I hadn't just done my best Mary Poppins impression.
"A visitor would check into a hotel for a short period of time, usually a few day-night cycles and then move on - important to note, this was before the Earth became tidally locked." And wasn't that a thing to learn? I thought I was going crazy when I woke up and suddenly, the sun never set. It had to have been at least a day before I figured something was wrong.
A little digging into that subject told me that once upon a time, the earth did still rotate, until… Well, I'm fuzzy on that part. Someone did something fucky and fucked something up, and a tidal lock was either the intended result, a side-effect or a consequence - I can't tell quite which.
"Actually, that was a mystery to me for a long time, why the Earth still functions like normal. I mean, normally, when a planet is tidally locked, the temperatures vary wildly. Like, on one side of the planet, it'd be an uninhabitable hell-land, forever aflame because of the sun ceaselessly beating down on it - and the other wouldn't have any of the suns light, and would cool down to the point it would become a winter wasteland, also completely unfit for life."
"The only place where something could exist, in fact, would have to have been the perpetual 'twilight zone' between the two sides, where the sun permanently rested on the horizon. The temperatures here would be… something approaching normal. It'd get colder on one side, and warmer on the other, but it would still, in that little sliver of land, be habitable."
I lost myself in my speech, forgetting my surroundings.
"This tide-lock wasn't always the case, I'll have you know. Once upon a time, when there were still only four digits in a year, the Earth used to rotate. You'd have a twenty-four hour cycle of twelve hours day and twelve hours night. The sun would rise from below the horizon in the east, lighting up the sky with much the same day you see now - and set in the west, bathing it in a beautiful red-orange before the total darkness of night, when distant stars of uncountable other solar systems dotted the night sky, breaching the dark with infinite ancient lights."
Man, I really got into that. I found that it was a habit of mine, I'd start talking to myself and couldn't stop. Might as well use it for something, eh? "Ah, sorry. I started rambling. Where the hell did I end up?"
I'd lost myself in my rant, obviously. My legs had taken me down to the street - or, rather, the grass? Most of the streets were overgrown, and I'd seen trees bigger than most redwoods strewn about the cityscape. This had been just about a constant over every other city I'd seen, and it was only worse in the wilderness.
I continued down the road, the Pod following close behind. I made sure to face my head toward it, talking to the camera. "Right, well, anyways. It was probably, what, just last year when I was in the Night Kingdoms? You know, the dark side of the earth. You know plants still grow over there?" I raised my brow. It was true, amazingly.
"Yeah, most plants get by using the light of the sun as a sort of fuel, plus what nutrients they can suck out of the soil with their roots." I turned away, continuing down the road. "But in the Americas, there is no sun, so how could they still be alive?" I posed it as a question, rhetorical as it was. But the pod answered back in its masculine voice.
"Apology: I do not possess the information to answer this query."
I snorted. "Yeah, never change, 172. Anyway, so, it turns out they did some studies about it over there, millennia ago anyway. Common knowledge now, or so they say."
"So, it turns out - and, I didn't have any concept of 'Maso' before this, but it turns out the plants over there adapted over, what, a thousand years, to use Maso in place of sunlight. Well, I asked them what the hell Maso was, and they looked at me like I- Well, like I was an idiot." I chuckled.
Barely caught myself that time. I used to say 'looked at me like I was a space alien' a lot. I learned my mistake when someone was kind enough to inform me of this world's experience with space aliens. Well, it's hard to break a habit, but at the same time I've really tried to stop saying it ever since.
"Well, boy was I surprised when I learned magic was real. It also turns out, this Maso stuff is what's keeping the entire ecosystem alive right now - its also why everything's so out of whack. I mean, there's the desert just a few miles off in that way, and a forest practically bordering it - and both of those border these very city ruins."
It was pretty jarring to learn that, too, when I first woke outside Moscow. I'd woken up in the kind of swamp you'd only see in the Russian wilderness during spring, but I walked five miles down the road and suddenly the very same Comrade Winter that wiped out both Hitler and Napoleon's invasions came for a visit. Such a drastic change in weather was just baffling - and it was so sudden, too!
"Right, well, anyway, that's probably gone on long enough. What'll we call this episode, 172? 'Man rants at a camera about plants, apartments and the sun? It's about as good a debut title as any."
"Proposal: The Episode should be titled; 'Episode 1: Debut'."
"...Creative~, pod. Artistry on par with Leonardo da Vinci."
"This Unit does not have any record of 'Leonardo da Vinci'."
"And you're worse off for it." I deadpanned. How did his legacy disappear, anyway? Everyone's heard of Da Vinci. "Wait, you're not still recording, are you?"
"I am still recording. You did not tell me to stop."
"Cheeky bastard, you are. Alright, shut off the strea- Actually, first, Next episode I'll have Pod sort through questions from all of you! If any of you have a question you need answered, I'll do my best to answer it on-air. Pod will be sorting through any questions that've been asked before, any questions that are too specific and any exceptionally stupid questions. Keep them intelligent and keep them just a little bit open-ended, yeah? I'm supposed to be ranting. You can shut off the stream now, Pod. Oh- and, do try to find something on Leonardo da Vinci, alright?"
"This unit will endeavor to learn more about this 'Leonardo da Vinci'." And with that, its visual sensors stopped recording. I could tell by the red light by its 'pelvis', anyway.
I call them 'episodes', despite being more live-streams broadcasted to a frequency I was sure nobody else was broadcasting out of.
"Right, we'll just leave that up on the network, then, I guess, leave it wherever you see fit, long as someone can just look for it and find it easy. I guess 'Episode 1: Debut' will have to do."
And with that, my jaunt over to the river was complete. The area was almost void of Machines, and when they did come by I made sure to hide myself - while they had proven themselves susceptible enough to kill with my Shock Baton, one death would wake up all the others and I didn't want to lose this fishing spot.
But, I digress. With that, I returned to everyone's favorite pastime - fishing.
It really was amazing what kinds of fish you could find in such a shallow river.
But on another note, maybe, in true talk-show host fashion, I'd be taking calls next episode? Depended on how many Androids were actually watching, I supposed. And if any of them had any actually intelligent questions.
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-=Episode 1: Debut, or, 'Apartments, Sol, Plants and Maso'=-
:: This story seemed successful on spacebattles, so I decided to start cross-posting it.