PROLOUGUE

I wake up.

December 31st 2999.

It is now precisely four o'clock. AM. I've always hated that buzzer in my
head every morning, but I was used to it by now. Today it was different. Today it was early. I shrugg and figure that I had just forgotten to mute my A_larm appbility. I usually just sleep until, like, ten, because I need the extra charging time. Remember, I get minimum wage, so I'm stuck with an old TX3 when everyone else is sporting a brand new IMAGination TX3.65. I feel so out of date. I look over to my bank and see how much I've saved.

I am so surprised I nearly use my feet.

"What the?!!!" I say.

I realize someone left me a hundred gig piece! I immediately start to literally freak
out in my apartment! Excitement overcomes me as I stomp, yell, do things with my body that I haven't done since...since ever.

I'm immediately shocked to hear something high. Something whiney. It came
From downstairs. I float down expecting nothing, but when I think into Mrs. Landry's apartment, I'm shocked, disturbed, and amazed. It was her child. Jimbo.

His ears were bleeding.

CHAPTER 1

What a way to welcome the neighbors.

"Hey, welcome to the building, would'ja like me to think 'yer kid into a coma?"

I sat on the other side of the room from Mrs. Landry that entire day. Her eyes,
filled with fear and rage, never stopped. Always glancing from side to side of the room, waiting for answers. After an hour, the good Doctor arrived with Jimbo in his arm.

"Oh, my God, is he okay?! Please let him be okay!" she said, lowering my self
confidence even more.

"He'll be okay, Mrs. Landry, you just might need to send him his OS again, we
had to uninstall it and copy his memory to a disc," he said, handing her Jimbo's entire 13 years of memory on a dash drive, " he must have heard something pretty loud for it to pierce his defense implants like that. It must have been something loud enough to crash his thunder drive."

I suddenly remembered something Allie told me. "Doc, actually, I was meaning to
ask you, when would be a good time for me to get my TD checked?"

Dirty looks.

I slowly sank into my seat, realizing that I nearly killed a kid today. Later, Mrs.
Landry told me it was alright, and, "No harm, no foul." I decided to get rid of the memory by treating myself to the thing that started this in the first place. A new IMAGination.

I went to the market. They sat me in the operation chair, as I awaited the joys of sorting out all my new appbilities.

"So, you want a new TX3.65, right?"

"Absolutely!"

He knocked me out.

CHAPTER 2

I enjoyed initial setup. It was always fun to decide what personality I wanted to
have, what start-up functions to set. I woke up in the town square, with a totally re-vamped HUD.

"Woah!" I wanted to cry. My entire life would be forever changed, as I
immediately started toward my next job! I was going to be an appbility programmer, always putting my own personal touch on things people used every day, but first, I rushed over to Rocco's.

Rocco's was a data bank, housing all kinds of memories, codes, and all the other
things that weren't worth a gig. I popped my head in the building and Rocco immediately started yelling at me.

"Boy, where you been, I been handlin' this (beep) all day and you been lazin'
aroun'? Imma have you fired!"

He gestured me to come.

I returned a gesture of my own.

I run over to RedCorp. where I met Allie.

"Hey, don't you have a job to go to?" she said, playfully, yet surprised.

"I got fired." yeah, right.

"Well what're you gonna do?"

"I've been thinkin' about joinin' up here. As an artist."

"What? No, you can't, they don't allow people with out-of-date models to work here, company poli-"

"The HUD is blue."

Surprise, surprise.

"What?"

"You never told me what color the Three-Sixty-Five's HUD was. It's Blue." I point to my cranium.

"Oh my God, you got it!"

She hugs me, totally unaware that her arms around me were the most comfortable thing ever.

She was too good for me, anyway, all awesome. We were just friends. Nothing more. But, in spite of all that, something had me feeling....frisky today.

"Hey, listen, what're you doing on Saturday?"

"Nothing, why?"

I was wondering if you might want to come over to my place for a little bit, cause I'm gonna be doing a movie, and if you're-"

She did something I never thought would happen. Her lips gently touched my forehead.

"Sure, see you tomorrow!"

I walked away.

My Lord...

Already 7:30, and so much to do...

Today was turning out to be a good day, as I signed the application form. What a way to start the Millennium!

The only thing that could have made this day bad would be if I had to Port, which, as fate would have it, I needed to do to get to Mr. Robbs' office.

I stepped in the menacing tube and picked out my destination. bright lights engulfed me, as I dreaded the feeling of death.

I never got over that burning feeling...

CHAPTER 3

Like always, the newly Copy/Pasted me appeared in Mr. Robb's waiting room, while the previous "me" appeared in God's. I was always disturbed by the fact that I had just committed suicide.

Ironic, how the safest way to travel always involved killing you...

I waited, waited, waited, waited, waited, waited.

Then I waited some more.

At 11:00, I was starting to get worried. Thank God Allie walked in, I was just about to go back to the PortTube and "forget" to pick out a respawn destination.

Due to the extremely ridiculous amount of people they had waiting, they pulled everybody in at once at 11:30.

They say Steve Robbs is the most mechanized man alive. He had a very advanced prototype IMAGination that seemed to protrude out of his skull, and you could follow it down his spine.

he called it the next generation of Human Integrated Bionics.

I just called it ugly.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the next Millennium. "

Oh, that's right, I had forgotten, we were only twelve minutes to midnight! All the employees-to-be rushed to the gigantic window to see the gigantic mass that was Manhattan lit up in one spectacular light show of celebration that our tiny existence had managed to carve out another thousand years.

Me and Allie both stood next to each other, as she held my hand, I knew this was the most significant moment of my life.

Too bad.

Steve turned around, a sparkle in his eyes, he had already inaugurated us into REDcorp., and he gave us all a speech.

"My friends, Mr. Robbs is no longer here."

Wait...

What?

CHAPTER 4

"This is the entirety of the REDcorp. human bionics corporation's main knowledge database and advisor, or MKDBA. We are happy to inform you that our logic generator has chosen you all as the best this city has to offer to Project-Codename: The Plan."

"Uhh, guys?"

Chris, an old buddy, had found drawrings and bizarre carvings on the bottom of Steve's desk. The old man had gone crazy, and formulated a plan that would ultimately bring about the end of mankind, and begin a new race of super-humans that would go on to be the most superior race in Steve's image.

But I know now what I didn't know then. Steve didn't think of those things.

The machine did.

the machine's logic engine had grown too close to it's goal of supporting the people of the earth, I suppose the most logical and time-saving thing to do was to swap humans for a new race. One that could take care of itself.

Amazing, how ironic that was. We humans, who had swapped our own minds with these contraptions to benefit ourselves, had in the process, planned our enemy's attack for them.

The only reason I do not go into more detail with Steve's plan is that it is really too dangerous for human eyes.

"Codename: The_Plan will commence in T-ten minutes."

And now, slowly falling into Oblivion, I sit here at the bottom of a trench, fighting a war I cannot win for a race not worth saving. My eyes are no longer red. They've reverted to a dark shade of brown. I refuse to reveal any more about my current state, all that is in the enclosed emvelope. I prefer not to write any more about what the rest of the resistance is calling, "Year 1 PD (Post-Domination)" because I's rather this chapter be left out of our history.

It was two minutes before that that two people had already commited suicide by crashing their own heads into walls. I stand there, in the middle of the room, a city in wonderment at my feet, waiting to delve into what they least expected to be Armageddon. I stare at my feet.

Just an ordinary guy, having an ordinary day. I turned around. I was almost ready to make a run, but she stopped me.

" Wait. What are you doing?"

"I'm gonna leave."

"I'll come with you."

We held hands as she ran, she slowly huddling toward me out of fear.

The glass crashed. I could just barely stand the pain. It was a pain I hadn't gotten used to, and would never get used to.

I never got over that burning feeling.

THE END