’Dear disk drive, today was pretty annoying. I just realized that I’ve been here constantly from the day of my birth to now. I’m undergoing training so I can start working. They told us that they would test us to understand what we would do as our jobs, but most of us knew that we’d do the same things as our parents no matter what the tests show. All I know is that I don’t want to be a stupid garbage collector like my parents. It’s just that I don’t want to see the outside world no matter what. I mean, I’ve seen a little bit of it, but I don’t want to see more of it. It’s a freaking horrible place, and walking across that completely deserted landscape just to dispose of some trash hours upon hours, is definitely not what I would like to do with my life. Ever. I mean, it’s not like I actually have a choice, but still. But, I digress, my parents tell me that it’s...’

“Bed mode will activate in one minute.”

“Save, save, SAVE”

“30 seconds”

“No, NO!”

“10 seconds”

I frantically wait for everything that I’ve written so far to document to save. I have to use this really old thing called a floppy disk to do all this because it’s one of the few storage formats that they can’t track. It’s pretty rusty. It has a hint of blue but is so old that that’s fading away now. It has transfer speeds of 15 kilobytes a second. But, it’s a gift from my parents. It’s the last gift I’ll ever get from them. I remember the day.

“5, 4, 3”

And it finishes copying over, just in time.

“2”

I quickly lean on the soft side of my pod.

“1”

All of the pods are leaning until they go to the ground. I really hate it. I only get 10 minutes after training to write about my day and wait for it to save to the drive. But hey, it’s my life, and I can’t complain about it... It’s against the rules to. But on this drive, I can do anything. These drives are so old that that it is one of the things that aren’t tracked by them. At this point, you may be asking who “they” are. Well, I really don’t know. They call themselves “space fillers”, but we call them space wasters because that’s what they are. They have giant rooms for each of themselves while they give us a pod that we can barely fit in. I am really bored, and I honestly should be. I have nothing to do. The same instructions, every single day. Wake up. Brush teeth. Eat pellets. Do work. Eat pellets. Get in the transporter. Brush teeth. Sleep. In that exact order. Nothing changes. Ever. It’s really annoying. I’ve had to follow those commands for all of my life.

“Sleep”

And there’s the sleep command. But I don’t sleep. not today, because there are rumors that the computer systems are going to die after we wake up. I’m really scared as the pods will fall one way, from P30 to P1, or from P1 to P30. I’m scared about the P1-P30 thing. You see, the way that the pods work are that there are 900 pods in each area, and they go sideways from 1-30 and from A-Z as well as pod groups β, Ω, ∞, ∑. It’s said that those groups are special, but I have no idea why. I guess I do go to sleep because I panic when I hear "Wake up”. I’m dazzled, but I’m fine now. That is, I was until I saw 29 1-ton pods causing each other to fall like dominoes towards my pod.

"Is this it? The end. I’m almost out of storage on my floppy disk anyways, so why not. It’s not like there’s anything to really live for anymore, right?"

Wait, I’m talking to myself. Is there a possibility that the 29 tons of kinetic energy didn’t crush me? Or am I in another world. Then again, this might be a dream. This seems really weird. I feel like my life is over, and yet I feel compelled to get up and report this. But then again, the others might get mad at me for it... Wait, what? All my life, I was told to not think, to just follow instructions. What is this consciousness, this instinct?

"Hello, my name is G1, and I am an AI program"

I scream. An AI? I am in so much trouble now, there’s no escape. But this AI seems different. While the other AI’s command me and are always strict and mean, this one is speaking to me in a way that other people would. Is this an illusion? A test?

Next Chapter: Control