Project New Dawn

[Frostpfote]

Project New Dawn

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Act 1: The Beginning

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Introduction

Lightning strikes outside, Michael and a couple of other pathfinders are about to finish Aurora's transfer aboard the New Dawn. For the first time in her existence she’ll get access to things beyond the simulations – a world in which there is no reset button to undo decisions. Before the team and her can even get to their mission they would have to fix the ship. What may once be humanity’s only chance of survival is nothing more than an outdated, run down Nephilim-class with only half of its decontamination chambers intact. “Alright Aurora, we’ll have to shut you down for the duration of the transfer. Please take things slowly once you boot up again, contact us as soon as you have control over the communication relay.”, Michaels’ voice sounds as confident as ever, he and the team have worked for day and night to prepare the transfer. “Understood.” Aurora responded in her neutral female voice and soon after the screen goes dark.

Michael stands up and detaches a dodecahedron shaped object from several cables and puts it into a secured container. “Bring this aboard the ship.”, he says to one of the armed guards in a formal tone. “I’ll meet you in room 221B.” The guard nods and makes his way to the ship as he was ordered. As the other people around him are still busy with last minute preparations to only give Aurora limited access at first so she could get used to her new ‘body’, he takes the last sip out of his coffee cup and puts on his uniform. About half an hour later he’s about to reach room 221B, the dark hallways of the ship have a somewhat mysterious feel to them, he can’t even imagine how it will be aboard the ship when Aurora watches every of the crew’s steps. “Great, you made it in time.”, he says as he sees the guard in front of the door, the data core still in his hands.

Once handed over he enters the room and finds a socket that perfectly matches the core’s shape. Once Michael places it in the socket all lights in the room turn on and several metal clamps seal the core in its position. Just moments later all screens turn on and display the Pathfinder logo, so far so good. Michael sits down and enters several passwords that restrict access to critical systems of the ship. “Aurora, are you there?”, normally she should be done with the basic configurations by now. Silence – Michael can even hear his own heartbeat. Right when he was about to call the other technicians Aurora’s voice appears out of the speakers in the room. “Michael! Michael! It worked! I am the New Dawn!”, her voice sounds very excited and not at all neutral as it normally would. He immediately turns down the volume of the speakers and begins to whispers in a concerned manner: “Watch out, the guards almost heard you!”, he quickly checks the entrance of the room to make sure nobody else is there. “No matter how exciting this is…you have to be careful, don’t show it openly or they will shut you down…”, the programmer quickly gets back to the computers and looks desperately at the screens, awaiting a response. But there is none.

“Aurora? Talk to me...I didn’t want to sound mean…”, a moment after he can hear her voice again, but much more neutral with a bit of sadness this time which quickly fades away as she responds. “Setup complete, operator. Ready for instructions.” Michael sighed as she resorted to a formal form of address instead of his personal name. “I’ll call the team to finish the initiation process with you, they should be here in a couple of minutes.” He quickly stands up and leaves the room after which the screens show a projection of Aurora touching the screen with her left hand as if she wanted to say goodbye – but he was gone already. Shortly after the displays shut down again along with the lights in room 221B.

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