Lieutenant Sophie had just finished the software update for her cybernetic vision enhancement, as the automatic pet door to her bunker room slid open, and a tiny spider bot entered the room. “Hello, Major. You’re back from your adventure already?”
*Bleep bleep boop* “I see”, she said smiling, “And now you’re here for a snack.” *Bleep bleep* Lieutenant Sophie logged off, got up and walked across the room towards a cabinet that was over and over plastered with drawings, stickers and photos of her soldier friends. The doors were secured with a code. Not to keep Major away from its content, she knew she could trust the AI of her pet. It just gave her a strange sense of safety, and it was a nice way to keep her brain fit to remember all the codes and passwords. “There you go.” She took out a small bottle of machine oil, the best she could get around here, for the occasional spoiling of her spider bot. It made happy gurgling noises as the oil slowly dripped out of the bottle. Thankful and satisfied it sat in Sophie’s hand. “Now, let’s see what shenanigans you were up to…” Carrying Major back across the room, she pulled out the memory card. “Maybe, you took some interesting pictures in the depths of the bunker.”
Major was more than a cute pet. It was programmed to explore, and every day it would stroll through the Bunker, looking for places that were still left unknown, at least to its human inhabitants. It could also switch to its night vision camera automatically when in dark places. In some cases that already had been a very helpful feature.
However, Sophie had been thinking about upgrading Major’s ‘eye’ for a while now, to get pictures with much higher resolutions, night and day. “And there you are again”, she murmured. The reason why she wished for a better camera. A blurry shadow in the distance, too far away for Major to properly catch it. “What IS this thing? And why does it always seem to be fleeing from you?” *Bleep?* Sophie kept looking at the photography, but no vision enhancement in this world could help her if the source data was that bad. This figure always seemed to appear randomly somewhere on the lower levels that were still not renovated, let alone inhabited. But as soon as it took notice of the little bot it vanished again, it seemed. Major never could take more than two or three pictures of the mysterious shadow. And all Sophie could see were pixels. “I don’t know who you are”, she continued, “But I will find you, and I will identify you!”
– To be continued…
