The boy woke up in a tube. Sharing the Plexiglas container with him was a large quantity of a glowing green liquid that was slowly draining away from his naked form. He remembered having a dream before waking up in the tube, though he could only remember how the world of the dream worked; Watching a movie, eating a burger, going to school. What he couldn’t make out of his memory was where he was when doing these things, when he was doing these things, and who he was doing them with. When the liquid reached his waist a blue, featureless face appeared before him, obviously in a hologram.
“Good morning, Master,” it said in a voice that sounded digital as he looked. “As soon as the Cloning fluid is drained I will let you out and perform the Habilitation procedure.” The glass around the boy slid down beneath the floor when the fluid drained from beneath his feet. As the boy was leaning against it, he fell face first to the cold metal floor. He took a moment to analyze his surroundings. The only decoration to the metal room where he now lay was a computer, next to the now empty capsule he had inhabited.
“Can you stand, Master?” the voice said. This time it took on a full figure, similar in structure to the boy’s. He decided to see if he could, and was successful on his second attempt. The hologram pointed to a metal box, about as big as he was. “In that locker are some clothes, which you will need for your life ahead.” The boy looked in the locker finding a blue, hooded jacket, a black shirt, a pair of white pants with pockets down to his knees, and undergarments that wrapped around the upper thighs. After putting the clothes on, he found one more item in the locker, a small rod with a red switch on the side. He thought of a strange word, “Lightsaber,” only to be reminded that this was a “Photosword,” by the figure.
“Now you should see the handle next to the door,” the figure said. “Grab it and read the name you see on the wall,” when the boy approached the handle, the figure stopped him to give him a warning. “I must warn you that the handle will clamp down on you, and you will feel a burning sensation before it lets go. Don’t worry about the possibility of bodily damage, it is to ensure that the Transceiver that allows me to accompany you is put in place on your arm.” After that warning, the figure disappeared.
Apprehensively, the boy grabbed the handle and a cylinder of metal slid up his forearm and clamped itself on. The screen next to the door lit up with digital letters.
STATE YOUR NAME AND SERIAL NUMBER AS SHOWN BELOW
1 TANXHAN
“Number One,” The boy read. “Tan-shin,” he pronounced the name with slight difficulty.
So then, the boy thought. My name is Tanxhan? It didn’t strike him as a real name, but then again he had nothing to compare it to. The burning sensation he was warned of shot up his forearm very briefly, but as soon as it was there, it was gone, leaving only a slight heat on his skin. The metal cylinder crawled back into the wall, leaving a machine that covered it sleekly, with only the screen, and a projector branching off. The figure lit up on the projector.
“Congratulations on your successful Habilitation,” the figure said. “My name is Arc. I will be helping you on your mission of peacemaking with the new inhabitants of Earth.”
“New Inhabitants?” Tanxhan asked Arc.
“Your kind, the Human Race, has been wiped out in place of something else, something you will see a lot of during you exploration,” Arc explained. “You’ll see when you leave.”
Tanxhan didn’t like the sound of that, but he had no choice. He left through the door and came out into a heavily wooded area.
