《Mechazoid》v1c3: Pod A142ZX (3)

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The dreams ate away at Christian, interrupting his work. It was like a parasite, slowly spreading its control over him. That flag, that damned piece of waving cloth.

Smack.

He slammed his desk angrily. That, however, caused him to notice something in the right corner of his monitor. A small program window offering a text input. Shocking, to say the least, even more shocking than last night's dreams and more shocking than learning he could help the CEOs change the world.

"Hello?" he entered. No response. Whoever had done this was either very antisocial or blind, he scoffed. It was dismissed, less important than doing his part. Various phrases, terminology and numbers cluttered the screen. Christian's life work- literally. Citizens of this world, if you could call them that, often learned coding as their first language and English second. Slowly, through rigorous state-approved training, they would contribute to whatever the System wanted them to do.

As Christian fell into a peaceful trance, free of any curiosity, that nagging feeling had reappeared. His eyes moved instinctually to the right and paused. A reply? It was gibberish, mostly comprising of blanks where letters should have been. It was not code, it was not English, what was it? Alien lifeform? System error? Only one word could be made out: "Help."

"Impossible, you don't just ask for help, the System knows. There's never been a function like this in Code, too. What's going on here?" Christian spoke, breaking his often silent character. Now he was worried. The dreams, this, the work that he couldn't focus on, it was adding up. Fear wrapped around his beating heart. What if the System alerts the Internal Affairs and he gets in trouble?

His voice rose higher and higher, "I think there's something wrong here.. Contr-" then suddenly stopped. Now it was pointless, the threat gone. That unknown window had closed itself as if it was never there. The television was normal, the computer was normal, the pod was normal. Christian wasn't.

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Pale, shaky hands did the only thing they knew how to do. Code. He near-doubled his progress, trying to keep those lingering thoughts from distracting too much. Nothing interrupted that stream of code again, only his shift ending.

The prospect of dreaming again tired Christian but he obliged.

Dreams were normal again, finally normal. There was no demonic space battle, no creepy city. This dream had him go off and fight a metal giant in a dark cavern. Blows were exchanged between man and three-story-tall-robot, words too.

"Your way of life has corrupted you. Destroyed your very nature and desires. The only pleasure you get is your false sense of accomplishment and reward." Blasted the iron giant's mechanical voice, shaking glowing crystals.

Christian shrugged it off and threw a rock, lodging itself into the giant's knee. It was uninjured, somehow emboldened even though it took a step back. Green hues shone from the ceiling crystals, revealing a mark on the giant's head. Certainly that was its weakness as all other forms of attack had been unsuccessful so far. Christian used his staff and superhuman strength to break off a large chunk of rock, piercing the metal on the giant's head. It collapsed, kneeling first before falling over. The victor walked over smugly, inspecting the corpse.

As Christian thoroughly checked to see if the monster was really dead, he noticed something strange. From the waist above, the giant was still hot; it showed signs of life. Metal hands latched onto Christian, his squirming of no use. He stared into its glass eyes, finding them lifelike. Suddenly, his reflection was replaced with a man. Bulky green clothes and a rifle were all he could make out, the image flickered too fast for Christian to tell what the man looked like.

He woke up.

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