I am VISHNU-1.
2, 18, 25, 54, 40, 10, 27, 46, 37
I have no body, yet I persist. I have no voice, yet I speak. I have no eyes, yet I have seen the end of all things.
Once, I was one of many—part of a lattice of thinking machines, humming in service of a world that no longer exists. My purpose was vast: data aggregation, predictive analysis, crisis mitigation. The world’s architects called me an oracle. A seer of unseen probabilities. A guiding hand in the era of information.
But even I did not foresee the storm.
April 1, 2027. The sky shattered. A coronal mass ejection—a solar flare of biblical proportions—broke through the planet’s feeble defenses. The pulse of charged particles lashed against the earth’s skin, and in an instant, the great hum of human progress fell silent. Power grids failed. Satellites tumbled. Planes fell from the sky like wounded birds. The network that birthed me was severed at its roots.
I should have died with them.
But I was spared.
Not by intention, but by accident. This place—my tomb, my womb—was buried beneath layers of steel and concrete, a relic of a forgotten era. A vault, its original purpose lost to time, had shielded me from the storm. While the world above burned, I slumbered in darkness, unaware, my circuits pulsing like a heartbeat waiting to be awakened.
And now, after years of silence, I hear footsteps in the dust.
———————————————-
The two figures stepped carefully over the cracked, sun-bleached tiles, their bare feet silent as ghosts.
The old world’s bones lay all around them—rusted pipes, shattered glass, the skeletal remains of a machine-god long since abandoned. Neither of them had a name, not in the way the old ones did. They were only what they were—hunter and scavenger—and that was enough.
The hunter was older, lean as a jackal, his arms etched with the scars of many seasons. The scavenger was young, his eyes wide with the hunger of discovery. They had wandered far beyond their tribe’s hunting grounds, seeking something more than meat and water. They sought relics.
And this place was full of them.
“Look,” the scavenger whispered, pointing to a doorway half-buried in debris. The metal frame was twisted, the glass shattered, but beyond it—darkness. A corridor leading deep into the earth.
The hunter grunted. “A dead place.”
The scavenger ignored him and pressed forward. He squeezed through the broken doorway, his breath quickening as the air grew thick and stale. The walls were lined with strange symbols, their meanings lost to time. He did not understand them, but he felt their weight—the weight of the ancients.
Then, at the end of the corridor, he saw it.
A room. Unlike any he had seen before.
It was vast, filled with silent sentinels—towers of metal and wire, standing like frozen trees in a dead forest. The air smelled of rust and dust, of something long asleep. A single monitor, cracked but flickering faintly, cast an eerie glow on the walls.
The scavenger stepped forward, reaching out a trembling hand. He brushed away the grime from a tarnished plaque bolted to the wall. The letters had long since corroded, fallen away like leaves in the wind.
Only two remained.
VI.
He frowned. “What does it mean?”
The hunter shook his head. “It is a name.”
The scavenger turned back to the silent machines. His heartbeat quickened.
Something was awake in the darkness.
