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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ledded" data-source="post: 1402302" data-attributes="member: 12744">[PLAIN]We were like gods once... [Aftermath][/PLAIN]……… France, Near St Lo, late June 1944, 12:47 pm “Get this one loaded and we’ll finish this up”, the scarred man ordered the two American sergeants as they loaded a stretcher bearing an unconscious, red-headed man into a military ambulance truck. He surveyed the scene; even if he had ever read, or heard of, Dante’s Inferno, he would have been hard pressed to find a passage comparable to the blasted and twisted landscape around him. Tanks lay buried barrel-first in the mud, trees were blackened and twisted, their bark peeled off like some kind of obscene banana. Even the grass was gray and dead, it’s life pulled free of the confines of tissue just as it’s color was.  And then the bones. Piles of twisted skeletons, devoid of any living tissue, lay among the ruins, some still maintaining a hold on their weapons as they were fired in life. Upon inspection, even their marrow had been dried to soft, chalky debris. But more amazing had been the discovery of several living subjects in the 200 yard perfectly circular killing zone. “Sir! Sir? I think we have… something… over here”, the voice breaks into his thoughts. “What is it, lieutenant?” A young man came jogging up in an American uniform with an odd insignia on one arm. “Well, sir, it’s… well, um…” The scarred man interrupted in a harsh, tired growl as he lit another camel and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Spit it out, son, I don’t have all day here!” “S-Sorry sir, it’s just that…”, he stops, and places one hand against his temple and slowly looks around the area, a look of concentration evident on his face. “Well, sir, the energy readings, as you know, are off the roof. It’s made it a bit tricky to find, um, subjects among the wreckage”, the young lieutenant speaks more rapidly as he stops his panning and concentrates in one direction. “Yeah? And?” the scarred man replies. The young man starts walking back the way he came, carefully picking his steps among the debris and ruin in the area. “You see sir, I found elevated energy readings indicative of elevated ESS activity like the others, but performing a cursory scan found only traces of living tissues, so I think it was overlooked earlier”. The scarred man, following, replies “Could you get to the point, son, I am startin’ to lose my patience here”. The young man stops by the boles of several twisted trees, then carefully steps into the mess. “Here sir, just look… it *looks* like a, um, man, only, well… it’s not. It’s not really alive, or at least how we define ‘alive’. ” “What do you mean by that, soldier?” comes the skeptical reply. “Only, well, the concentration of ESS activity comes from it, er, him, though he doesn’t read as alive, but it, er, 'he' is organic, at least partially”, the young lieutenant nervously stutters out. There is an impatient sigh and the young lieutenant is pushed out of the way.  “Move, lemme see there boy.” The scarred man pushes forward and does indeed look. There, in a small depression, lay a man. Or at least he thought it was a man. He had the requisite amount of limbs and digits all right, and skin, if the skin was a bit of a strange color with a slightly waxy quality. It was the eyes, though, silver and staring, and the strange, whitish-yellow waxy/runny quality to several areas on the body that looked like wounds of some sort that was the most peculiar. Even as he watched, of the eyes began blinking with a soft, blue light and several of the injured areas slowly congealed and began reforming back to the whole. The scarred man’s cigarette hung limply from his lip, his one good eye like a saucer, when he finally, softly, spoke. “Well. You just don’t see that every day.” “Yes, sir, which is why I wanted you to see this. I theorize that from the… sir, Sir? I don’t think you should be… sir don’t…” The scarred man reaches forward and pokes the thing in the chest with his finger. Immediately, both eyes SNAP blue, and the scarred man jumps as the ends of the fingers pop up like a hinged cap to a pez dispenser, releasing long metallic claws with an audible SNIKT. …… S-s-s-syste… s-systems coming online…, the words scroll up what looks like a glass window, a distorted figure in view behind it with a scarred face. Serrr.. sens… Sensory apparatus indicating po-po-po-potential thrrreaaatt… Cautionary derrr… deffff… defense measures activatiiiiiiiiiid… Potential…thrrrr…thrrreat analysis… holding… recognition… dEErrsssHHKKKS eAkls diaffffflles… diaaaag… diagnostic measures inititated… d-d-daaaammarerre d-d-daaamage to cognitive systems… Repairing… Self repair… engaged at 47%... Power systems as 9% and holding… Movement systems… 12% operational; motive actuators offline… Initiating core programming and memory checks… …pattern recognition sensors… 96% effective and operational… …hard imprint kernel and core programming systems… 63% operational and online… …random access flashable memory systems… ERROR ERROR ERROR …ERROR widespread damage and systems corruption: Cause: energy surge temporal associative and/or causal dislocative non-compensation …operational capacity 0.6% and failing… ERROR  …engage emergency data recovery, hard-systems commit… …replay analysis dump of existing data begins in 3… 2… 1…  ……</blockquote>

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