SmackDown: Back to Our Roots

Round 3: Man Lost - @TEBramble

He paused, staring at it with both trepidation and relief before stepping through into the light. Soon he found cold air soothing as a gentle breeze brushed over his skin. He closed his eyes and took his first breath and relished a world of strange unknown smells. Then he opened them and looked around.

A light blue sky shone down upon an endless jungle of vibrant colour. Nothing like the greenness of earth. Boundless reds, yellows and purples coloured the canopies below him. He found himself on the edge of a cliff face. Strange pale yellow stone held up the ground he stood upon as strange crimson creatures with wide tales, four wings and long beaks flew by him.

He looked back. The once smooth, sleek hull of his ship was scorched to an irreparable degree. Where once were thin coats of light grey now remains black ashen metal and glowing molten slag as it melted into the mountainside. Hs simply froze.

For the future of mankind.

He read on what was left of the hull before he dropped to his weakened knees and started to whimper. His life, that was all his life, ended in a heartbeat. He reached out to it with shaking hands, sapped of all fight. 'Give it back' he begged. 'My wife, my farm. Give it back' he wept and wept. For all his despair not one tear was shed.

Day passed into dusk as the sun set on a purple evening sky Godfrey turned his attention to the ship's belly. Pulling out the panel and tinkering away. His heart leapt for joy when he found that there was still power. Drawing on memories of a distant life he found his way throughout the ship, drawing power to a single terminal he downloaded his past into a datacore.

Feeding it power was constant chore as he rerouted and tinkered away for hours. Soon his heart sung with relief as his world began downloading onto the core. He sat there, ever vigilant as his dying machine performed its charge. He stared at that screen tirelessly as his mind soon turned to the sweet embrace of his wife, her soft, soothing voice, the pleasure of her kiss, it all took him into the land of dreams there he wandered, free again.

"Beep. Beep. Beep."

Godfrey shot awake and dashed the machine's side. 'Power level critically low' it declared in large font.

"No!" He exclaimed as he searched through the screens. Soon he came upon the words 'download complete. 12 of 12 yottabytes transferred.' With a sigh of relief he let himself fall against the screen as he ejected his world from the machine and all went dark.

Thank you.

He brought the data up and watched it as it remained so inert in his hand. How strange it was to see all he had loved and cared about all bound up in this tiny silver sphere no larger than an egg. He moved on, burying it in the chest pocket of his blue bodysuit.

The next hour was spent scavenging about like a carrion picking at a corpse. Eventually he slowed to a halt when he came across a small canister built into the wall, not far from the door. Unlocking it he reached inside and took a handgun and a survival kit. Ancient memories springing to life he checked them over before locking them to magnetic plates around his waist.

All was dark when he finally ventured from his corpse. The moon in the sky was a strange sparkling marvel. He stared at it, perplexed, no planet he knew had a moon like it. The sudden roar of animals being slaughtered spooked him and he dashed for cover. Cautious and silent he slipped away while carnivorous drew blood in the midnight darkness.

-//-

A host of spectacles came with the morning of the next day. Tiny little raptor-like creatures sped about the forest floor while huge quadrupedal herbivores, each one easily larger than a hippo, lumbered out of a nearby river with armoured hides of brown leathery skin, rendered green by layers of moss and algae that had grown upon their soaking hides. The ground almost shaking with their every footfall.