When we returned to the Complex, it was in ruins.
The Thorium Reactor had melted down. The corium melted into a pile of molten slag, and when it hit the sensor array at the bottom of the tank, the safety valves opened and purged the Thorium-Fluoride salt into the nearby forest, which became infected and mutated.
The Artificial Intelligence core had been torn out. The backup systems maintained whatever necessary systems they could; air, humidity, security locks, some of the force fields and emergency systems. The genetic lifeform that had been installed as its GLaDOS was still in its containment tank, making due with the senses it had remaining.
The Ventilation System had gone haywire, spraying dor-accumulating aluminium into the air supply. The primary purification systems were on fire, the secondary purification systems were on fire, the tertiary purification systems were on fire, and the phytoplankton processors were stable, but slowly dying.
The Replicator Factory had been torn apart, its components pillaged, all manner of bootprints and equipments types strewn about as raiders of all sorts dropped their standard-issue gear and ransacked everything they could.
In the years since, plants both natural and mutant overgrew the complex grounds, feeding on the corpses of units that died in the incident . Time control sent travelers back again, and again, and again, their heavy-fisted interventions making the situation worse every single time. It may have even been these attempts at rectification that caused the crisis in the first place.
Smoke billows from unquenchable fires. Skyscrapers decay gradually until they hit threshholds of structural integrity, causing entire floors to collapse into the ground below. Wild animals hunt and feed on whatever they can find. Some of the original units left when the AI was torn out, following the beacons they had been programmed to follow.
Some of us were still inside.
titsay
vaporwave
jbbartram-illu
andulkaphoto
