The wasteland underneath the starless blackest sky was the same as it had been for centuries.
The plains of poisoned soil stretched for miles into the obscured horizon. Great gusts of wind erratically tore into the landscape, tearing at the hills and rocks that dotted it, and flinging mountains of dust into the air.
Strange clouds drifted through the Blackest sky; tortured clumps of poisoned air and toxic fumes, propelled by the Great winds, blocking out the heavens with their sheer volume. But the moonlight pierced through these poisoned clouds with ease, like beams of light from the next world, illuminating the wastes in a soft, baleful light. Underneath the light, occasionally things could be seen moving. Strange, spindly little things, with the outline of rodents and not half the musculature.
One of these spindly little things perks it's narrow head from a carcass. It was cracked, ancient. The burnt out skeletons of strange automobiles and humans alike littered its millenia-old surface, with the larger automobiles being home to great nests of things.
The rodent-thing followed the highway, and the highway eventually gave way to a mountain. The plate protrusion stood hundreds of meters high, reaching back millions of years into the imperceptible past. At the foot of the mountain, built into the massive rock itself, was a single, titanic building.
From the outside, it was a great square of gleamless metal, built into the side of the mountain and looking relatively intact. Countless marks and holes adorned it's ancient surface, the only sign of real, major damage being on it's single, massive mechanical door. It was torn open, and in its place was a gaping hole of darkness.
Inside the gaping hole of darkness rested a single massive room, which contained an ancient production line. It was huge, occupying most of the titanic room that held it, and was miraculously intact.
What purpose it originally held was long lost to time. The only clues was the strange automatons and hunks of scrap that littered its surface. Pale white skeletons slumped against its great machinery and littered the floor, clad in the remnants of strange, foregin uniforms.
But deeper inside the titanic factory, past the countless production lines, past the titanic machinery and workings, past the skeletons that litter every floor, and down, down, deep into the mountain itself; past ancient failsafes and safeguards; a single, titanic room. The room held many giant servers, arranged in a perfect ring.
At the center of the Great server-ring was a single vat, stretching into the ceiling high above, the countless reinforcements and struts keeping it standing upright for so long.
Inside of the partially transparent vat, floating inside a soft green fluid, a brain existed. It was connected to Strange, high-tech strands of machinery, and stranger devices were embedded in the soft grey matter. The ring-room was overlooked by a single command room in the wall.
The Skeletal corpses of its organic workers littered this command room. The room was locked. Obvious signs of struggle was on the cold metallic door, in the form of jagged scratch marks.
The silence in the command room was broken, by the sound of scuttling. Out from the darkness of a corner, a thing crawled out.
It had the appearance of a hairless rat, with horrifically enlarged eyes that would have looked comical on anything else, and a great, gaping maw.
The rodent-thing scuttled on far too many legs across the width of the desolate command room, before climbing up a wide, dusted console. Miraculously intact. Possibly working.
It sniffed around the surface of the Console, before quickly finding what it wanted; a miniscule scrap of mummified flesh, hanging off a corpse. The rat-things opened its mouth, revealing its cavernous, tooth-edged hole, and bit down. Hard.
The action ripped off the dry flesh, and into its mouth. It carried the flesh by its seams, scuttling across the console.
It was at this exact moment that a single light began to blink.
For the first time in centuries, a message had been received.
Immediately, the Console reacted to the message. A Panel slid open. The motion scaring the rat-thing off, not abandoning its precious flesh-scrap. From this open panel came a shower of red light.
A hologram.
The hologram immediately formed into the shape of a square screen. Strands of code rapidly appeared on its immaculate surface. Eventually, a message coherent to the human eye surfaced.
+Message Received. Activating Protocol #84...+
Tense silence descended over the room, before a single beep sounded from the Console, echoing in the command room. Immediately afterwards, the slow humming of emergency lights came into existence, draping the room in a baleful red light.
The Servers surrounding the Vat stirred. Emergency power generators quickly sprang to life. Electricity crackled across ancient cables for the first time in millenia.
It all happened blindingly quickly. A speed only a machine could accomplish.
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+Central Processing restored. Approaching minimal power requirement... +——————————————————————
...
Throughout the entire factory, silence reigned once more.
...Minimal power requirement reached.
The brain inside the tank began to stir.
...
The console beeped another time, the hologram turning a soft blue. A new message was displayed, now.
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+Protocol #84 Activated+
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There was no fanfare, no great awakening. The brain simply flickered on.
An old world machine was awoken.