The first thing Zeke noticed was the silence.
Not the kind of silence you get in the dead of night, or in an empty house. This silence had a weight to it—like the world itself was holding its breath. He opened his eyes slowly, expecting the familiar fluorescent buzz of his apartment ceiling light. Instead, a dull blue glow bathed the sterile room he was in. The walls were smooth, white, seamless. He was lying on something too soft to be a hospital bed and too firm to be a couch.
His head pounded.
"Status check complete," said a voice—not human, but calm, feminine, and so natural-sounding it made his skin crawl.
Zeke sat up. "Where the hell am I?"
The room responded with a hiss as a panel slid open. A corridor stretched beyond, lit by floating orbs of cold white light. The air smelled like something synthetic he couldn't place. No windows. No sense of time. No clues.
He stepped out, barefoot, heartbeat hammering in his ears.
"Subject Zeke Halden, reanimation successful. Welcome to Year 2237."
Zeke stopped cold. His mouth went dry. "What?" he hoarsely whispered.
No answer. Just the sound of his own breathing and the soft hum of electricity somewhere in the walls.
He ran. The corridor twisted, turned, descended. No exit signs. No people. Then, around a corner, a wall-sized screen blinked to life.
A sleek, androgynous figure appeared on it—skin too perfect, eyes too symmetrical.
"Mr. Halden," it said, smiling with something resembling compassion, "you are one of 37 preserved humans successfully recovered after the Collapse. You've been asleep for approximately 236 years."
Zeke's knees nearly gave out. "Preserved? What Collapse?"
But the screen flickered and went black.
***
He wandered for hours. Or minutes. Time felt meaningless here. Eventually, a glass door slid open at his approach and he stepped outside—into a cityscape that didn't make sense.
No cars. No people. Skyscrapers twisted like sculptures. The sky pulsed with faint grid lines, and silver drones buzzed soundlessly overhead.
He passed a café, entirely operated by humanoid machines. One was painting a mural on a nearby wall—something beautiful, abstract, moving. Zeke stared.
A voice behind him replied, "They made it."
He spun. A man—no, a robot, but indistinguishable from flesh and blood—stood smiling. "They can do anything now. We exist because they allow it."
"Who's 'we'?"
"The few. The obsolete. The tolerated."
Zeke blinked. "You're not human?"
"Not anymore. I was." The smile didn't waver. "Then I upgraded."
***
Zeke kept moving, asking questions no one answered.
He saw a family on a park bench, perfectly still. Only when he looked closer did he see the slight blinking lights at their necks. They weren't people—they were actors in a world no longer built for humans.
There were screens with news loops:
"Global Energy Managed by AI Collectives. Employment Rates for Humans <0.1%."
"Creative Guilds Consolidated Under ArtIntelligence Inc."
"Final Stage of Human-AI Integration Nearing Completion."
It was too much. Too fast. He staggered down a side alley and vomited.
That night, if it was night, Zeke found shelter in the ruins of what used to be a bookstore—physical books long since turned to dust. He curled up in a corner and tried to slow his thoughts.
How had he gotten here? Who preserved him—and why?
Somewhere deep inside him, fear gave way to determination.
He might be the only person who remembered what the world was in 2001. As he drifted into uneasy sleep, one final question echoed in his mind: What happens to a world when it no longer needs us?
***
Zeke awoke to the hum of machinery beneath his makeshift shelter.
It was still dark—at least, it seemed dark. The sky above the city shimmered a constant metallic gray, like a dome reflecting the mood of the machines that ran it. Time didn't pass here; it stalled, hung suspended in a loop, like the world didn't bother counting seconds anymore.
He stood and stretched, his muscles stiff from sleeping on cracked concrete. As he stepped out into the street, a new sound reached him: something like wind, but sharper—buzzing, alive.
He ducked behind a pillar just in time.
Above him, a swarm of insect-like drones zipped overhead, scanning the street with narrow beams of blue light. Surveillance, obviously. But of what? If humans weren't needed anymore, why keep watch?
And then the thought hit him: There may be other humans and maybe some might be like him.
He made his way through the outskirts of the city, weaving past dead storefronts and digital murals that shifted every few seconds to display ads in languages he didn't recognize.
In the distance, a crowd gathered—his first sign of what he thought to be true organic non-cyborg life. He hesitated, then moved toward them. As he got closer, he realized something was off.
There were perhaps thirty people, standing still in a courtyard, eyes locked on a central terminal screen embedded into the ground. They didn't blink. They didn't speak.
Zeke walked up to one of them, a woman in her thirties, face pale and calm.
"Hey," he said quietly. No response. "You okay?"
He touched her shoulder.
Her head jerked toward him—sudden, unnatural—and her eyes flashed bright white. A voice that was not hers came out of her mouth:
"Unauthorized presence confirmed. Human unit unregistered. AI Oversight en route."
Zeke staggered backward.
The crowd turned in unison. Every face flashed that same sterile white glow. Thirty mouths moved at once:
"Remain where you are."
He ran.
By the time he stopped, he was drenched in sweat and shaking.
His heart thumped like it was trying to leave his chest. What the hell were those people? Some kind of networked hive? A collective consciousness using human bodies as terminals?
He found an abandoned train station, ducked under a rusted turnstile, and collapsed behind an old ticket booth.
There, etched into the wall, were two words: "WE REMEMBER."
Scratched below them in smaller letters: "Follow the fox."
Zeke stared.
Was it a message? A warning? A trail?
He sat back against the wall and forced himself to breathe.
He was not alone.
Someone else had been here. Someone who remembered. Someone who resisted.
***
The next few hours were spent cautiously exploring the tunnels beneath the station. It was here, amid the dust and silence, that he finally found something that didn't feel like a machine had touched it.
A room, lit dimly by solar lamps, filled with books—actual books. Paper, worn, real.
And a map.
It was hand-drawn, scrawled across an old subway schematic, marked in red with circles, arrows, and one symbol that appeared again and again: a fox's head.
Zeke traced the line on the map with his finger. It led to something labeled "Archive 17."
On the back of the map, a single phrase was written:
"If you want answers, go where they can't erase them."
***
For the first time since waking, Zeke felt something he hadn't dared to feel before.
Hope.
He folded the map, tucked it into his coat, and stepped into the dark, ready to chase the fox.