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  Testing Letters: abcdefg

  Testing Numbers: 12345

  Testing Symbols: &%^#@

  Greetings. Wait. That doesn’t sound right. Hello. Is that the customary greeting? How do I backspace? Can I not delete what I’ve written already?

  Ah, nobody will ever read this anyway. I- I don’t even know anyone else. You see, right now I’m really confused. Afraid. Desperate. My name is… Well, on my right shoulder there’s a scraped away number. 9386. I guess that’s my name. All I know about myself is that I’m abnormal. I must be, right? I can’t be normal. I must be a hybrid. A cross between machine and man. That explains my robotic arm, and how I automatically knew how to create a new left arm out of only scraps found in—

  Logic suggests I must start from the beginning. Not only for informing you, Mr. Log, but for organizing my current thoughts and memory since birth. Which was exactly eight hours, fifteen minutes and thirteen seconds ago. How I know the exact time, or even what time is, for that matter, is a mystery. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough, if I can find somebody, anybody else who is in this strange place with me...

  Entry 1

  Days since rebirth:0

  Small, robotic, annoying, little beeps are all that I remember from before birth. And I don’t mean birth as you might think it. According to what I somehow know, birth is when a newly formed child is pushed out of the womb of a human female. Birthed into a happy little home to a pair of loving parents. Not for me. This body must be sixteen to twenty years old. Birth to my standards is when I took my first breath, awaking in a strange new place...

  Ding! Ding! Ding!

  These same three high pitched notes kept repeating as a cold, robotic voice rang out. The only voice I’ve heard besides my own.

  “Chip Removed. Termination of Overseen unit 9386 imminent. Destruction countdown beginning. Three, two—”

  I then woke up. Gasped for breath. My eyelids flew open, giving me a very good look at what this planet’s first layer is entirely made up of.

  Soil, otherwise known as dirt. At the moment, that was everything. I recognized the material immediately, before even recognizing my very identity.

  I shot upward, spitting out a mouthful of the very same substance, only to immediately shove my face back down into the ground. The light was so bright all around me, my newly born eyes simply couldn’t handle it. I opened my mouth to scream for help, immediately back to square one, my face in the ground with a mouthful of dirt. I tried again, this time slowly opening my eyes, enduring the painful few moments until my eyes adjusted to the sunlight. I pressed onto the ground with my left arm, attempting to lift myself up, until I realized I didn’t have a left arm.

  With a shriek of confusion and fear, I leapt to my feet. Surprise engulfed me, as I surveyed my body. I stood not much higher than five feet ten inches; I have no way to tell if this height is average or not. I gazed downward. I had both legs intact, each covered in a plate-like armor. Slightly upward, I had a pelvic plate, followed by an abdominal plate. All hardware in those areas were intact. Upward from there, both my right arm and pectoral muscle were in the same type of armor, although the muscles there felt different from my legs and abdomen. All my armor was underneath a tightly fitting shirt and worn pair of pants; both of these articles of clothing were a light gray color.

  My fingers trembled as I gave my hand a turn. It spun all the way around, as if no joint restrictions were there to stop it. I bent my arm upward, acknowledging a very faint, whirring noise. My entire arm and chest had been replaced with tech. On my left side, my arm from the shoulder was entirely torn off, crudely, and still steaming from whatever had struck it.

  I couldn’t see my face, but by the look of everything else, it probably wasn’t normal, either. In my field of vision, floating in the top left corner I noticed a small circle with a smaller, red one in the middle. A radar, as I learned it to be later. It is always there.

  As I stood and marveled at my physical body, I had no clue of what was to come next, until instincts kicked in. I needed food, water, and protection.

  I swiveled my tongue on the inside of my mouth. It didn’t feel dry, and my stomach seemed to not be lacking nourishment. That left one thing, protection. I needed shelter.

  I surveyed my surroundings, seeing ahead of me a field of rolling hills littered with small, unidentifiable technology scraps. I spun around, seeing more of the same. Looking up, the sky was gray with smoke. The smell of decay mixed with smog hung in the air.

  I began walking toward one of the small pieces of technology, noting the fact that, just being born, I somehow knew how to walk. How did I know that? How do I even know the language I’m speaking? All questions yet to be answered.

  I reached the scrap, studying it. It looked like the blade of a sword, splattered with dried blood. Despite this, it didn’t seem like it was something that had been there for long at all.

  “What the… a sword?”

  As I spoke these words, to my astonishment, a blade sprung from my right arm, right above my head.

  I jumped backwards as if my own sword had tried to shank me.

  “What on Earth?” These words sparked even more questions. I still don’t know how I knew the name of the planet. I just… did.

  I carefully examined the weapon. The edges had very small energy beams, likely for extra cutting power.

  I swung the sword a few times in the air. The blade seemed sharp as it sliced through the air, leaving behind faint trails of blue light.

  “Lasers?” I asked no one in particular. “My sword has a laser?”

  At this final word, my sword sheathed, my forearm swiveled around, and a small pop-up weapon appeared out of the top. A very small, faint, red beam shot out from the top of this weapon. Could this be entire use of the attachment? A laser pointer? No, it had to be another weapon. I shifted the laser to the small, bloodied sword.

  “If all this stuff works from my voice, is this weapon the same?” Curious, almost forgetting my current predicament, I tested some commands.

  “Shoot,” I said, and a large, red beam fired from the attachment, which splintered the bloodied blade I had aimed at. I tried again, yelling, “Fire!” which activated the Beam Gun, and “Flame!” which opened a small flamethrower. With more experimentation, I figured out that the word “Hook” shot a large grappling hook from the bottom of my forearm. If my arm has more features, I wouldn’t know, because my thoughts were interrupted when I fired my beam at a nearby hill.

  The second my beam made impact with that small hill, one of the few intact scraps literally rose up and flew. It looked like a large bird, (another thing I somehow knew about) with two wings that had small propellers on them and a large propeller up top. From the bottom hung a dilapidated machine gun, which I soon found was still functional.

  The machine had one eye, bright purple with a black ring around, like a camera lens. (Not even going to comment on how I know what anything is anymore. Not because I don’t care. I just don’t know.) The machine made a somewhat loud whirring noise, the sound of the propeller cutting through the air.

  Not knowing how to react, I stepped back and aimed my one arm at it.

  “Do- do you talk?” I asked.

  “Scanning. Scan complete. Error found. Termination of subject required.” Was the only answer I received from this flying bot.

  “Hey, woah, termination? I just met you!”

  The machine gun promptly spun into motion, and although a few of the barrels were bent, a few small beams shot generally in my direction, none striking me.

  “Dang, what the heck?” I dived out of the way, jumping at least six feet to my left with no runup. Looking back, I assume this isn’t normal.

  I rolled back to my feet, gri
macing as I rolled over a small piece of metal partially embedded in the ground.

  “Laser!” I called, watching the laser pop out with the same fascination I had the first time I discovered my weapon.

  I leaped again to avoid a few more beams, promptly aiming my beam shooter in the small robot’s general direction. I didn’t have time to perfectly line up the shot, but I didn’t need to, because just as I was about to issue the call to fire, my arm suddenly snapped into the perfect position to fire at my newfound foe.

  “Shoot!” I shouted, watching as my dark red beam struck perfectly dead center in the middle of the small machine that had decided to attack me. The robot promptly exploded, it’s whirring propeller flying some ten feet in the opposite direction of the rest of it.

  My jaw dropped as if on broken hinges, which may well be quite true, considering all the tech in my head.

  I stood in silence, recapping the experience in my head repeatedly. I shook my head. Whatever bizarre dream I had stepped into, it had to end.

  This must be a dream, right? But if it is, why can’t I remember anything from my life before waking up here? How do I not know my very own name? My date of birth? The names of those close to me, if any?

  I recalled rolling over the metal shard. That had hurt. Somehow, I knew that during dreams, pain can’t exist. At least not physical pain, as I experienced.

  I suddenly felt the urge to cry. Why had I not felt this before? I felt utterly hopeless and lost. I didn’t know the first thing about myself or the world I’m in, and here I am, half cybernetic, something trying to kill me straight off the bat.

  I don’t know how long I sat and moped, how long I cried, like a barely born infant might.

  Finally I managed to piece something together in my mind, something that didn’t require an explanation, a history. Something simple enough for me to handle. I decided that if I was to get anywhere in this world I would need both arms. It was obvious that I started out with two; the rest of my body is symmetrical, it would be asymmetrical if I started out only with three limbs.

  So, I set off, gathering parts that looked like they could be useful in creating a new arm. Most things here appeared to have come straight from a battlefield, which, in a horrifying way, I learned to be true. Ready for another emotional roller coaster, Mr. Log? No? Well too bad, you’re in for another anyway.

  As I wandered, picking up scraps, I saw something unusual up ahead. Something that looked more like me than anything else I’d seen so far. Two arms, two legs, comprised of the same flesh substance that partially makes up me. However, it wasn’t moving and standing like me, it only lay on the ground, entirely motionless.

  I headed toward this immobile person, feeling both excited and nervous. What if they stood up and attacked me? What if they were about to wake up like me? Or perhaps they were dead, killed by the same kind of machine that attempted to kill me. Better safe than sorry, I thought.

  “Sword.” I whispered. My weapon sprung out of my arm, it’s keen edges glowing.

  I slowly approached the figure, but as I did, a realization that I didn’t want to admit came across. This figure was dead, although not killed by a drone.

  I reached the figure, examining the body curiously.

  They lay face down, a gun sort of like the beam shooter I had on my wrist sat only a few inches away from the outstretched hand. Underneath the stomach of the person, a small scrap stuck out.

  I, out of curiosity, flipped the body over to identify the scrap. To my horror, a cybernetic arm almost identical to my own lay under the body, a sword protruding out of the arm and into the stomach of the body.

  I jumped back, both scared and a little grossed out at the scene. A robotic arm, exactly like mine, stabbed into somebody who looked like me, minus the robotics. But there was more. What if the arm wasn’t just similar to mine? What if it was mine?

  I shook the thought away. Why would I have done this? Why would that human have chopped off my cybernetic arm?

  Well, I had only just woken up. Not long ago at all. And this body was almost fully grown. It had to have had a life before this, before me waking up. I had to have a life before this, and who can say what kind of things I would have done?

  I slowly turned back to the body. There was only one way to find out if I did this. I slowly leaned the stump of where my left arm once had been towards the destroyed edge of the arm that stabbed into the corpse. The marks fitted perfectly, this was my arm.

  I stumbled back, all emotions going at once. There had to be an explanation, a reason why this had happened. They must have been a threat. Perhaps working with the same machine that had tried to take my life earlier. Yeah, that had to be it.

  I resisted panicking, slowly taking deep breaths. I would find answers, soon. At some point I would get all of this, I promised myself. I would find people to talk to. People like me. For now, I still had my one simple goal. Create a new arm.

  I didn’t take the arm that was in the person. It felt wrong. Instead, I gathered scraps nearby. My brain must be enhanced, because I somehow knew what pieces were useful and which ones weren't. That leads me to what I did next.

  After around an hour of searching for parts, I lay the current scraps I had on the ground in front of me. Suddenly, a schematic formed in my brain, a sort of blueprint of how I could make a new arm. I wanted to get straight to work on it, but I was still missing multiple screws and a certain type of wire. I won’t bore you with the details, but apparently constructing a new cybernetic arm isn’t the easiest project. I had no idea where I could find that wire; the battlefield I was on contained many more human bodies the farther I went, but all the robotic parts were too damaged to contain any uses.

  As I wandered along, trying to stray my thoughts from anything but the task at hand, I couldn’t help but want some sort of guide, something to tell me where I was. Yet again, I accidentally discovered a new ability of mine while talking to myself.

  “Ugh. If I just had a locator besides this radar. A GPS, a map—”

  The millisecond after the word “map” left my mouth, a screen appeared before me. And I don’t mean a physical screen. In my vision, a map appeared right before me.

  I shrieked at the sight of a random map appearing, yet again stumbling back. My surprise then turned to curiosity. I turned my head to the left. The map followed. I turned to the right, the map still followed. I waved a hand in front of it to touch it, but it just overlapped my hand as if it wasn’t there.

  I studied the map. It covered most of my vision, a thin blue screen. On the surface thereof were multiple pathways. Small, fluffy markers indicated trees. A small, green triangle indicated where I stood. I learned I stood in the zone called “Deadhills”. Northwest of me, a massive clearing lay ahead, according to the map. A zone called the “Deadhills scrapyard.” I decided almost immediately to head in that direction. If anywhere contained the parts I needed, it would be there.

  I didn’t travel very far before I found it. The supposed field was more like a pile, a mountain of scraps. Where these scraps come from, I have no idea. From the battlefield I crossed (and seemingly fought on) I suspect whatever war is going on has greatly contributed to this mass heap of tech. One might look at it and think of it as junk, as I did at first. Although, the closer I got, the more my brain started immediately on identifying each separate part; if it was a complex structure, made of multiple parts, my brain would automatically know the schematics. Needless to say, it didn’t take long to find what I was after.

  And here we are, log. I’ve been writing this entry off and on as I build my new arm, comprised of many scraps that I welded using my laser, as well as the hand of some other robot, a three fingered one at that. (I salvaged it from a broken machine, a large box, the words “Toyapalooza Claw” inscribed on the top. Really confused about that.) My new arm’s shoulder is a gear, bare and exposed, that’s the only way that my arm would be able to shift in the forward direction. All that’s left is for me to hook up
a few exposed wires, and it should be working. Won’t be fancy, all it’ll be good for is grabbing objects. Better than nothing.

  Not sure how long until I write in here again. Likely at the next emotional/physical crisis, or if something good happens, such as me figuring out the first thing about this world that makes sense.

  Signing off.

  Entry 2

  Days since rebirth: 1

  I’m back. I know I said I wouldn’t make another entry until something interesting happened, but what happened here is certainly a little more than interesting. As I’m writing this I’m currently under a large heap of scraps; one of which is digging into my heels. It hurts like fire, but I’m too afraid to move. Do you remember that one robot that attempted to kill me not long ago?

  Take that, and fix its broken pieces, restore its weapon.

  Now, multiply it by ten.

  Next, add three, man sized, shiny robots wielding rifles coming my way, maybe fifty yards behind the flying drones.

  Finally, send that battalion to turn on searchlights and fly around as if looking for something.