Author's Note: This is the real chapter 5! Sorry for the confusion, I accidentally uploaded the next part forgetting that this little part was still left offline.
Words and images flashed in front of his eyes, blurring into each other as they rushed by, an endless trail of meaningless information. Forcing them out of his head, he realised that some part of him was aching. Finally locating the problem he let out a tired sigh.
My head throbs. That was the only coherent thought he could manage in this state as he got out of his bunk. Shaking his head as if to clear it he slowly rubbed his eyes open, clearing out the bits of grime stuck there. As his blurry vision focused on the display, he jumped up in shock. 8:15?! I’m already late!
As he rushed around trying to get his act together the only thought going through his head. Why didn’t the room wake him up in time? Getting increasingly frustrated as the trouser leg kept snagging in his frantic move to put them on, he decided to take it out on the room.
“Room! WHY did you not wake me up in time? Too much effort for your 20th century processors?”
“I tried but you told me to shut up, with the rudest accompanying gestures, so I thought it best too leave you alone” the room replied in an almost sulky voice. It even placed a sniff at the end for added effect.
Muttering darkly to himself, Robert finally succeeded in clothing himself. Looking around for his ID, he turned towards the display with a big scowl on his face. “Stop babbling excuses you broken old Pentium piece from the scrap yard”
Spending so much time around the intelligent, self-aware and pseudo-self-aware AI’s that were so prominent everywhere, Robert knew just how to get under their… skin, so to speak. The comparision with age-old computers from the dark ages of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries seemed to work the best.
In response, the display changed from the digital time read-out to a picture of a baby, a half-sulking, half-scowling baby. “You did I even have the recording to play back. And continuously passing such horrible insults about me does not help.”
Another sniff.
Shaking his head in annoyance, Robert stormed out of the room. What a perfect start to his day, he was over an hour late for work, his room AI was upset with him and would probably continue sulking even when he returned in the evening and he had a splitting head-ache.
To top it all off, he had a very annoying itch along his arm, which refused to abate.
Ah well, just another perfect day.
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Exodus
Science FictionSummary: Left a damaged husk, a pale shadow of all it once was by the last war, Earth, the cradle of our civilization is now populated by only a few million, living among the ruins of our former glories. As support and aid pours in from the colonies...
