Faulty Machinery (Private w/Rye)

[BoringAntagonist]

Travis let out an audible sigh as he walked along the deserted road towards an area filled to the brim with decrepit, unoccupied buildings. The area had once been home to all sorts of factories and apartment complexes, all bustling with life back in their prime. Now it all seemed as if none of that had ever been the case as Travis stared through the broken windows and doorways of the factories, exposing rusted steel beams and rotted wooden surfaces, all results of being exposed to the elements over the years. Had it not been for his current objective, he would have never even thought about exploring the abandoned piece of land.

Travis was an average-sized man, about 6' in height with the build of someone who spent their life between work and home with trips to the bar, sporting a slight stomach and hairy chest. His shaggy brown hair repeatedly got in the way of his dark green eyes as he tried to focus on the directions shown by his Navigator. A few weeks ago Travis' close friend, Aaron, had gone missing. He had taken it upon himself to file a missing persons report on his friend, but to no avail as the law enforcement saw it as a lost cause. Travis didn't though. After days and days of searching, his Navigator had received a signal coming from Aaron's device. There was no message or anything to accompany the signal, but it was a start.

And so Travis had set out for the source of the signal, coming from the abandoned district on the outside of town. He was going to find his friend, regardless of how long it may take him.

[Rye]

Inside the industrial area was a demolished pile of bricks and rubble where a where house once stood. The red stone bricks were shoved away into mounds to create a walking path through them. Lining the site was a rusted wire mesh fence with several holes and tears all around it. Just beside the main gate which had long rusted off it's hinges and fallen off was a beached notice. Most of it was illegible but there was a government seal on it along with a notices along the lines of keep out , government property , no cameras or film past this point and no access without written consent. Not that the sign had any effect. Place just looked abandoned and no authority in any way seemed to care in the slightest about it.



There was fresh footprints in the mix of sand and dirt though the compound. It lead all the way through to a door lying against a pile of bricks. The door hung agar , a stray brick keeping it open. A dim orange light flickered just past it. Inside was a metal mesh stairway leading down , seemingly protected by reinforced concrete above and disguised by all the bricks and rubble. Orange dim lights lead the way down deep into a cellar area where the lights failed and glow in the dark strips lined the way. The air was cool and smelled of dust , rust and copper. Down in the room was a small line of nixie tubes displaying numbers, a steel door and a old CRT monitor beside it , tuned off but the coating of dust had been wiped leaving a long solid streak. A keyboard was folded down from the monitor with some of the keys clean and some still coated with dust. Someone had been down here recently.

[BoringAntagonist]

Travis continued his journey through the abandoned zone, kicking away rubble and shards of glass as he made his way towards the door. He opened it, making sure to keep the brick in place just in case the door were to lock behind him.His curiosity only rose as he noticed the stairwell leading down, bathed in the murky glow of the orange lights. Travis cautiously took a step downwards on the stairs. The metal creaked and a short clang echoed through the stairwell from Travis' foot hitting the metal. Other than that, it all seemed stable enough, at least for one person.

The air seemed to get heavy as Travis entered the cellar. At the sight of the recently dusted monitor and keyboard, a surge of anxiousness coursed through his body. Aaron had to have been here before him! Now all he had to do was figure out where he was beyond what seemed to be a dead end. He carefully booted up the monitor, watching as the screen flickered to life. It displayed a flash of code before booting up to a main screen with a bunch of text. Travis stared through the text, trying to find something that might help him.

"C'mon... there has to be something here..." He muttered.

[Rye]

The old machine came to life , green sickly light bathing the dark room as it hummed, scanning and reading it's disks , their creators long since dead. Soon some words started to appear "New Entry? Y/N?" down on the keyboard the only keys with less dust was the Y key , seemed simple enough to make the deduction to press it and continue the program. Next came a flurry of commands but the machine slowed down enough to give some insight into it's inner workings "Last system online : ANA. Status: online. Other systems : Error, Corrupt task detected. Loading next available task. Current residents detected : 4 . Scanning for valid Governmental identification card. Negative. Default identification created. Accepted. Identification display for confirmation: Error. Automated Acceptance initiated." Once the last of the numbers flashed away the humming stopped but the light stayed. There was a huge sound of clanking and screeching metal as the bolts for the door came apart.



Left after the noise died down was a huge safe of a door swinging open and showing a warmly lit hallway in a fuzzy orange glow. There wasn't much to see down the hallway but it was different , a bit dusty but what could be seen was cheap looking plywood furniture with a crappy wood finish to the side to act as decoration and a gaudy dark orange floor.

[BoringAntagonist]

Travis was taken aback as the screen flashed to life, confusing him with the loads of text and code as they zoomed across the monitor. As he pressed the dusted off key and examined the newfound text, he only grew even more confused. Governmental and Default Identification? It all seemed too strange to him. Why would the government have needed to operate in a place such as this?

"At least that seemed to do something..." Travis said to himself as he watched the huge door in front of him open up, revealing the hallway. "This has to be the way that Aaron went." He decided, seeing as there was no other way of progressing through the building.

As he made his way through the decaying, tacky hallway, Travis continued to hear the sounds of machinery whirring throughout the halls. He couldn't pin down the exact location of the noises, only hearing the echoes of the metal contraptions. For a moment, he considered turning around. That was until he came upon a wall with a glass window to see into the other side.

What was on the other side took him by surprise. It seemed to be a fully furnished and clean nursery room...

[Rye]

As Travis entered the large door behind him creaked shut and bolted back into place. The warm orange glow of the lights held , flickering a bit as he walked through the dusty hallway. When Travis entered the room a soft electronic voice came on through a speaker in the wall "Scanning new entrant. Default/none Identification detected. Updating ANA." A large screen about the size of half of the wall to the left came on with a rather nice looking woman portrayed on it. The background was a dull green with white bands. The only other colour resent was black , used to shade out her features and make her appear more human like.



"Why hello there , you must be our new little one" the woman said with a warm smile as the door closed and latched shut "We'd better get you into some more appropriate clothes though , those don't look age appropriate at all" she said , mechanical hands coming from ports in the wall , the hands were a metal and steel , that much was obvious , but they were flexible and looked somewhere close to human , or at least human in design. They snaked across towards the boy , reaching to tear the clothes from his body.

[BoringAntagonist]

Travis made his way to the doorway leading into the nursery. As he continued his inspection, he noticed a bin next to the door. Above the bin was a sign reading 'Confiscated Items/Apparel'. Suddenly Travis' navigator began to let out a rapid series of electronic beeps, signifying it had located Aaron's own navigator. He took a peek inside of the bin and sure enough, Aaron's navigator was among a pile of his belongings including an old pocket knife and his watch. All items seemed to have been forcefully removed judging by their condition...

Without hesitation, Travis went through the door with a stronger determination to find his friend. Almost immediately he was confronted by the "woman" on the screen, with the mechanical hands reaching for him as he tried to think of a response to the sudden change of pace.

"Little one? What is this place?" Travis began before quickly jumping back in an effort to evade the arms. "You aren't taking anything from me!" He yelled. "I'm just paying a short visit to find my friend and then I'll be out of here!"

[Rye]

The screen continued to smile "Just a friend...Hmm , yes we did have someone here recently. Wonder where they got off too. I suppose someone picked them up." it replied with a sweet feminine tone. The arms grasped him and held his limbs apart , effectively immobilising him "hmm , records show you're a new entrant and you haven't been through processing. I guess I'll sort that out just now" she said with a slightly weary tone. The free arms spent no time in taking everything Travis had on him and tossing it in the bin. They had some trouble getting his clothes off him but another arm comprised of what looked like two huge blades folded to be scissors came out and slit his clothes up the back , making them easy to tear off him and toss into the bin , leaving him completely naked before the machine.



"Right , best get you washed too to get all those external antigens off you" she said the arms moving him to a glass cubical in a adjoining room. It looked like a bathroom , only no toilet. The tiles were a horrid shade of lime green with zig zag patterns in brown and pink across the wall. The arms pushed him into the tiny glass prison and sealed it behind him. It wasn't big , about enough room to sit on the plastic floor and to reach both sides with outstretched arms. Up top were several nozzles , some dripping some sort of liquid that smelled faintly medical with a overpowering sent of fake bananas. On the floor was a small shiny sink hole with some small signs of rust around the outside. To one side there was another t.v screen which flashed to life and showed the same smiley woman from before "I suppose you have some questions. So I'll let you ask them now. What would you like to know?"

[BoringAntagonist]

"He couldn't have just left! Where is he!?" Travis demanded to know. He got no reply however as the arms produced the huge blades. His eyes widened, afraid of what might happen if he moved even slightly in the wrong way as he was quickly stripped of his belongings, completely naked and vulnerable afterwards. The man soon found himself in the small glass cube, feeling completely isolated from the rest of the world as the figure on the screen greeted him once again.

"What the hell is this place!? And where is my friend, Aaron?!" He yelled, obviously enraged with his current situation. He banged against the glass walls, only for the sound of the glass being hit to reverberate trough the small cube. It was thick glass, there was no way he could break it with his fists alone...

(I was thinking of having Aaron as part of the story, but he's more acclimated to the nursery since he's been imprisoned there for a couple of weeks.)

[Rye]

"Hm , the last little one to be logged on is here somewhere. Hold on I'll pull the records......Subject found. He's been resting here for some three weeks. A very good boy once he's settled. " she replied "He's somewhere in the facility , you can meet him once we get you cleaned , padded and dressed" she said as an oppressive stream of warm water came down onto Travis "now the only question is do you prefer pampers or huggies?" ANA asked , scanning his measurements to have some clothes made up for him behind the scenes. "You just stay there and get clean" she said as the boy was disinfected from head to toe , taking off a lot of his hair below the eyebrows with it, matching the descriptions saved on ANA's hardware.