Have you ever wished to build your very own utopia?
One that shines above all, one that allows you to sit on a golden throne, one that perhaps lets you sleep all day.
The Solarium Zone is one of them.
Mortals would have heard of it during one of their bedtime stories told by their guardians –– depicted as a grand city above the heavens that cannot be touched even with a lifetime-long dream, its blessing roars question to the other worlds. They once said that nothing ever dies; would it a flower that has never been embraced by the passing rain, the birds that chirp in harmony and carry their tunes across thousands of years, or the only human who governs the Solarium Zone and dances with the sun without witnessing the sentiments of the full moon.
This sole human, a man with youth shining behind his back–– what would he be doing now?
Of course, the answer is...
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"Ah, dang it, shoo."
Waving his hands to and fro, said man Izanagi Taiyou felt like melted ice cream; surrounded by heated equipment on a scorching day had perhaps fried him in the brain. A translucent yellow-winged butterfly fluttered to his wrist, a clicking noise simultaneously sounding as it flapped its wings stiffly. Such butterflies were programmed to be more active during the summer; yet no matter the season, every day was still a step closer to a volcano.
The Solarium Zone was home to one human and a million robots.
Despite being the sole manufacturer for the robots roaming within the city, he did not quite know what he would have made until he switched it on. Pre-robots took the form of a sphere ball around the size of a crate –– to stick all the pieces together needed outstanding skill, uncanny precision and deep focus. These balls would come from the main building resting at the centre of the city, named the 'Central Ignition'; to robots, this would be where they were born. Right when Taiyou would boot it up with the touch of his finger, personalities would run through the mechanism's core, and through the power of RNG would the robot's main personality be forever embedded into.
The robot he was currently constructing was none other than one of the strongest –– its strength balanced at least 10 professionally trained policemen stained with gunpowder. In other words, it was the worst type of robot to deal with.
His baby blue eyes caught sight of a widescreen embedded on the inner wall of Central Ignition. It was rare for the screen to light up with the news; this was because the news anchors were all robots and barely had anything to discuss unless it was to commemorate a significant number of robots born per month. However, it currently displayed a warning sign and a sage-green robot rolling around like an egg.
"W-A-R-N-I-N-G! W-A-R-N-I-N-G!"
Taiyou immediately dropped the equipment that was always glued to his palms.
"I-N-T-R-U-D-E-R! A-L-L R-O-B-O-T-S E-V-A-C-U-A-T-E T-O H-O-M-E-S. E-D-S R-O-B-O-T-S A-R-E T-O E-L-I-M-I-N-A-T-E I-N-T-R-U-D-E-R!"
The DES.
"Argh–!"
Taiyou grunted, shuffling his bottom backwards as the robot he recently constructed began to light up. On its chest printed boldly read the letters 'DES', short for 'Darkness Eradication System' –– that was their role in the city. It was the first time he had seen the robot flash a colour other than blue on its frames. Resonating with the situation occurring outside, its feet ignited into flames as it lifted itself from the floor. The man involuntarily grunted from the heat radiating to his face, shielding his front with his two bare arms.
In no time at all, the robot launched itself outside of the open windows and faded into the distance, leaving Taiyou himself to reiterate what had just unfolded in front of his eyes.
"An intruder..." He whispered to himself, furrowing his eyebrows and folding his arms. "That means something must have disrupted the system that's keeping this world in place –– or in other words...
I can escape."
Taiyou hopped on his two feet, his sneakers making a loud sound on the metal ground before staring at the wide window. The silver frames were stained with rust from the flames below the robot, he did not quite want to touch it, yet he found his hands grasping the corners of the window frame with his eyes laid upon the ever lit buildings beyond the horizon. The sky that was always so frustratingly bright and blue, billows of clouds ignoring his pleads, the robots who could see within him every single time he thought of something he should not have ––
Perhaps all of this could end after all?
Turning his back to the wind, he loosened his grip on the frames and felt weightless. He felt the wind resisting his fall as if to save him with little effort, as if his life was that insignificant.
It was not the first time he jumped from the window of a 373 storey building.
Recalling his memories from fifteen years ago, he was still the same now. A human who was not quite a human, a bright-haired boy blessed with tints of orange and yellow who was not quite a bright person, continuously living in an eternal world with no eternal hope. If he were to ask the gods despite living in a world enveloped in the skies that the gods would have themselves, just who would he be asking questions to?
In a world where nothing dies.
In a world where the unmended will mend.
In a world where no matter how long he falls for, he would open his eyes back to find himself in the Central Ignition.
For the first time in his life, he saw darkness.
It was not what he expected, though. Rather than large shadows raging from above or rain howling from above, it was in the form of a woman with silver hair washed to navy blue currently falling alongside him, a smirk spreading from cheek to cheek.
If a woman were to fall from the sky on an ordinary day, just how high would the skies be?