Tags: #Romance/Friendship
Author: The Imperator 2 you
Rating: M
Words: 578,739
Synopsis: With all hope lost Humanity places its final hope in the souls of those frozen in time. While excavating a tunnel, a team of Mammals going about their business discovers a relic of millennia past, and an ancient species thought mythical and legend. Yet of all eggs discovered only 1 survives. Can Humanity be redeemed for the sins of its past, in the future it cannot control?
Link: fanfiction.net/s/13341213/1/Heart-of-Gazelle-and-Humanity
Personal Review:
What can I say? The story is interesting and well-written, with well-developed characters. This fanfic belongs to the "Humanity, Fuck Yeah" (HFY) category, which highlights the superiority of humanity, and here the human is portrayed as technologically superior.
A small spoiler: the plot revolves around how humans ruined their planet and left the last survivors in a bunker to wake up in the future. However, upon awakening, they discover that the world is now inhabited by anthropomorphic animals.
I'm not sure if the author has abandoned the story, as updates sometimes take months, but I can say that even though it's incomplete, it's definitely worth reading.
LONG LIVE HUMANITY!!!
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Chapter 1:
The setting is the year is 2257 AD… in what remains of North America
Humanity is in its final twilight, the glory days of the species, the golden eras of centuries past… the times of democracies and republics, of empires and countries long gone.
Humanity is but a shadow of its former self, all that made it shine on the blue marble called Earth lost in the darkest times, the species succumbing to the shadows of time and history.
By the year 2167, Humanity had reached it's breaking point, numbering over 40 Billion the planet could no longer sustain it. Vast leaps in technology, medical, scientific, and cultural had given rise to low death rates and higher life spans. Where millennia before the population was kept in check by disease and age, now even the lowliest person could expect to survive to an age past 100.
With the low death rate, and high birth rate, the species rapidly grew as technology and science advanced. In 1650 the population was less than half a Billion, by 1850 it broke a Billion, by 2050 it reached 10 Billion, and by 2150, it was over 35 Billion strong, too many for a single planet to sustain…
In its vain attempts Humanity struggled to exist in an ever-shrinking world, struggled to survive with ever dwindling resources, and out of fear, anger, distrust and desperation humanity turned on itself in a last vain struggle to continue. Allies became threats, opponent became threats, and humanity once united if only in name became truly divided as war took hold.
In 2207 a war to truly end all wars by man erupted, the very weapons that centuries prior created a golden age of peace that prevented a world-wide war, were unleashed upon the very species that built them to prevent it. In the aftermath a decade later barely half of a percent of humanity survived, with the world now barren and ashen, incapable of sustaining the tiniest fraction of creatures upon its face. The resources humanity hoped to utilize to keep itself afloat, now lost to the ravages of hate and distrust, of greed and fear. Earth now lay dying in the weakened hands of Humanity, its fate tied to the planet, and the planet's fate tied to humanity.
With no hope left, what remained of humanity took shelter in underground cities, sustaining itself for as long as it could, but no longer could humanity exist on the planet as they died out slowly. Its doom had been decided as the scars on the planet were created, and belief in surviving faded into nothingness.
In a final, last, desperate act to survive, humanity deployed its technology to preserve a portion of its population in a hope that time would rectify the mistakes and sins of humanity's past, that time and time alone without man to intervene would heal the wounds it left upon its mother world. They prepared pods in the most advanced bases underground, which would preserve and contain thousands of Humanity's best, brightest, and its greatest hopes to save the species. Those chosen were those without inequal views, those without visions of greed, those without the sinful parts of Humanity's soul. They attempted to cleanse humanity's soul of its sinful parts, so that should they survive, past mistakes would never again be made.
Those that were left behind dedicated what was left of their lives, to sustaining the pods for as long as they could, with only the hope that when those within awaken will be able to build a world brighter and better than anything in the past…
(?'s PoV)
The old man looked over the program of the small glass sphere that was twice the size of what would have been a baseball. It had taken him the last twenty years of his life programming it, trying to ensure that it would be everything he wanted it to be. It was his last hope, his last dream… his final belief in the good of his species.
Everything else was dark around him, with exception to the screen he stared at, all remaining power diverted to the cryogenic pods that contained what was left of his people, of his species. At most only one thousand pods were prepared, and everyone else was left to die of slow old age, of lack of resources to sustain them.
He was alone now… he and he alone remained of those left to keep everything running. Only he and this one last gift he had to prepare.
"There…" He groaned as he closed the program and updated it.
Seconds later the base of the glass sphere lit up in a colorful display of lights, and what appeared before him made him smile.
"There, you're ready now…" He muttered.
The small figure within the sphere put its hands upon the edge of the glass, a look of wonder and joy on its face as it beheld the old man withering before it.
"You are all that is good in 'us'… all that makes 'us' good." He whispered as he tentatively picked up the sphere and held it close to him.
The figure inside smiled and nodded in agreement, knowing he spoke the truth, and feeling unrivaled joy at his words.
"I don't know when you will next wake up… or what kind of world you will awaken to… or even if 'people' will still be around but know that you… him… and anyone else you meet." He whispered as he slowly, wearily, walked through the darkened corridors and metal hallways to his destination. "You must have hope, have faith… and believe… that the world… will be 'better' than what it is now!"
It nodded in understanding, still smiling as he spoke to it.
"And you must let them know, whoever you meet… let them understand… that we are not evil… that there is good in everyone." He said as he entered a cold and dark room, slowly walking to a box he had prepared. "Help them build a beautiful and wonderful world…"
It nodded and watched as he slowly put the sphere into the box and took a small pod and hooked it up to the base's generators and a backup generator to ensure it would keep running. Inside that small pod, he took an air tight bag, which contained a single seed.
"Remember… all the magic of creation… exists… within a single… tiny seed!" He said shakily as he put the seed and sealed it in the pod.
The pod lit up a neon blue color, and a small hiss of cold air escaped its air tight chamber, indicating it had cryogenically frozen the seed.
"Remember… remember that…"
It nodded as he reached down and turned off the sphere's power supply, before connecting it to the small cryo-pod so that the two would stay tethered together.
With that he shakily got up, his week knees trembling from lack of nourishment, lack of care, and lack of energy as they tried to keep him standing and walking. His joints ached, his muscles hurt badly, but still he walked back to the command room, and switched on the power control console before sitting down.
He stared at the power controls, and saw that the only remaining systems still active, were the air recycling and purification systems, and what little power was being diverted to the command center.
All else was devoted to the Cryogenics Pods.
"We did it… my friends…" He whispered to nobody, being the last one alive and awake. "We have done… all we could… the rest… we leave… to you!"
He typed in the last commands, shutting off all remaining power, and setting the timer to ten seconds.
"Good luck… my son!" He whispered as the timer ticked down.
Seconds later, the screen shut off, and the air vents went inactive, without that he would last maybe another ten months before the air ran out. But he had no hope of surviving another ten months as he smiled and closed his eyes.
"The rest… we leave… to you!" He whispered as he began to fall asleep. "May you redeem us… for the crimes… we blindly committed."
He fell asleep and at some point, his soft breathing stopped, his heart ceased beating… and his form slumped in the chair he sat in.
Meanwhile in the Cryogenics Room where a thousand egg shaped pods, each containing a single sleeping, frozen human, awaiting thawing by their computer-controlled system, sat humming silently.
For a decade, a century, millennia… they sat… waiting….
Waiting…
[Power Reserves at 29%, Analyzing Surface Details. . .]
[Error. . . unable to detect . . . attempting to extend power life span, checking available options based on data compiled. . .]
[Re-evaluating Power Distribution Options. . .]
[Discontinuing Power Connection to Pods 1 Alpha to 110 Alpha. . .]
[Re-evaluating Power Reserves Check . . . current power standing at 68% reserves. . . remaining active pods, 890]
They waited…
[Power Redistribution complete . . . remaining active Pods, 406. . .]
And they waited…
[Emergency Power Redistribution Measures, complete. . . remaining active Pods, 2. . .]
And still they waited…
[Emergency Power Redistribution Measure, complete. . . remaining active Pods, 1. . . remaining power reserves incapable of sustaining Cryogenic Stasis, power shut down within 500 standard years]
And they waited… until… at long last…
Chapter 1) The Steel Chambers and the White Eggs
It was a wonderful morning in Zootopia as the citizens woke up to the morning sunshine to go about their day. It looked like it was going to be an ordinary day as Pandas, Giraffes, Antelopes, Lambs and every other manner of creature went about their business.
Stores opened as the sun was beginning to rise over Sahara Square, Little Rodentia, Rainforest District and even Tundra Town. Each location with its own controlled climate for those who live within such climates naturally, like snow wolves and polar bears of Tundra Town. Children went off to school, parents to their nine to five jobs, late night workers wearily trudging home to sleep, and morning rushers running with bits of food in their mouths as they dashed to their destinations.
Beneath Sahara Square, a new subway tunnel system was under construction at the behest of the new mayor of Zootopia, Leia Lioness. One of her campaign promises had been an improvement to the subway systems to improve travel time and travel services within Zootopia that didn't rely on the main Metra system currently in use. While the current subway system and internal city rail network was enough, it was notoriously under performing when it came to reduce the wait time of passengers to board and depart, which Leia Lioness hoped to rectify after her election.
Which is why deep below a new subway system of tunnels were under construction across all of Zootopia as additional 'temporary' construction jobs were created to make this promise possible. The foremen beneath Sahara Square were currently overlooking a construction map detailing the layout of the planned tunnel network and was getting a schedule going in their head to get the job done as quickly as possible.
"Alright everyone we're going to work in four shifts, morning, evening, night and twilight shifts." The Mole foreman said as he pointed out to his fellow moles and the other mammals, or as they liked to coin them 'new hires'. "Mayor wants this done within a year's time, we gotta get these tunnels dug and have rail lines laying down and concrete walls lining it before winter! George your going to take over evening shift, Robby on night, and Lula on twilight!"
"Always sticking me with the new hires on twilight shift huh Bob?" The beaver Lula said with a chuckle. "Why do I think this has something to do with that 'short' joke I made about you at the Gift-Giving Winter Party?"
"Hey at least you get to go home and sleep early, my team's gonna be chugging down 4-hour energy drinks when our shift arrives!" Robby hollered as they all separated, three fourths of them heading to the elevator up while the rest went to their gear and further into the tunnel.
"Alright let's get to work everyone, 'jackys' start tearing into the bedrock and miners' chip em up! New hires gather up the pieces and roll em outa the way! Let's get this going and show the other shifts what 'real' work looks like!" Bob the mole foreman yelled as the noise of construction work began to overtake the silent sounds, and everyone put on their earmuffs and headpieces.
As the jackhammers began tearing into the floors and shovels dug into the hardened dirt, everyone began to talk among themselves with their idle chatter to help pass the time.
"So, my second son is turning eight this weekend, and the wife and I are trying to decide on what to give him." A tiger said as he held the jackhammer in place. "The wife wants to get him 'clothes' of all things, so I say, 'clothes, you want to get our son clothes for his birthday'? What kind of parent gets their children 'clothes' for their birthday?"
"Oh please, you don't even wanna hear about my daughter, she just can't stop begging me to get the latest outfits that the paparazzi catch Gazelle in!" The antelope said as he wiped some dust out of his goggles' lens. "I can't count how many times she managed to get me to shop at the clothes department in Savannah Central."
Work continued on like that, with people having conversations about whatever they were talking about, silly stuff, stupid stuff, new hires complaining to themselves about how 'dirty' they feel, and others just ignoring everything around them and focusing on their jobs.
It was like this until a bobcat took his pickaxe to break apart a particularly hard piece of rocky wall and swung it hard to remove the annoying piece of debris, missing it by the tiniest of margins and striking the wall itself, when sharp metal hit deep and resulted in a huge 'clang' that could be heard over all the ruckus.
Everyone paused as they all heard the sound that shouldn't have been heard and turned from what they were doing to stare at the surprised bobcat, who was just settling down as his teeth finished rattling from the sudden heavy resistance. "Uh chief, I think we hit metal!" He hollered into his mic.
"That's not possible!" Bob the mole said grumpily as he sauntered over with map in paw. "We shouldn't have any kind of metallic compounds this deep and there should be nothing but rock in this direction!"
The bobcat nodded and took another tentative swing at the wall, before once again, metal pickaxe struck metal surface, resulting in a clang that made even the grumpy mole foreman pause and do a double and triple take at his map, skimming his eyes over every detail to make sure he missed nothing.
"Well there's something there chief that aint rock!" The bobcat said nervously as he took out his pickaxe.
Bob looked up at the predator and nodded, before pulling out his phone and calling the other foremen who were just about to leave the nearest terminal with their crews by now. "Hey Lula, get everyone back here, we found something, and we'll need everyone to dig it out!"
With that he nodded at their spare tools and signaled everyone to pick up and start digging.
Minutes later every mammal was shoveling and pickaxing away at the wall where the 'metal' was heard, and soon several clangs could be repeatedly heard in the tunnel. Soon the other workers who had just left returned and began to help in the excavation effort.
As they dug, they began to remove the earthwork from what they found was wall of what appeared to be purely of a metal that was so resistant to outside damage, that even being hit by multiple pickaxes, not a single dent or scratch was made on the shining surface.
"It just keeps going Bob!" Lula called out on her mic over fifty yards at the 'edge' of the excavation efforts.
"Same here, there's no end to it!" George yelled twenty yards on the other edge of the work detail.
The mole looked at their work so far, observing how long this 'wall of metal' was and baffled by how resilient it was to their efforts to either dig it out or even damage it without intent.
"These can't be ruins, its… too advanced for anything I've heard of!" He muttered as his teams continued digging.
Until…
"Hey, I found something, it looks like a door of some kind!" One of the workers yelled out.
Everyone paused and ran over to the mole who was shoveling some excess dirt out of his way, and sure enough he had found what appeared to be a 'door', or at least the 'top' of a door. He had only uncovered about half a foot of it, but there was a rectangular series of seems in the metal where two 'windows' resembling plexiglass but were no less resilient as the metal surrounding them. They could barely see into whatever was beyond the door with how much dust and dirt was covering them, but it looked like they had found a superstructure of some kind.
"Start digging it out!" Bob ordered, and within moments shovels started pushing downward as others worked on digging out a ramp.
It took them over an hour to fully dig out the door enough for them to use it, and another half hour before the ramp was finished, but at last they had unearthed the door to this 'thing' they had found.
The door itself was roughly eight feet tall, barely five to six feet wide, and sealed shut to them.
"Doesn't look like anyone's home…" Someone commented.
"This looks like a scene from that one Star Lines show my kid and his friends geeks out about." Another whispered. "Could it be an alien ship?"
"Can't be… buried this deep beneath Zootopia? Someone would have said something about it or found it before today!"
"Well only one way to find out… everyone stand back…" George said as he took a shovel and wedged it into the seam of the door.
With a massive grunt, and three others helping him push, he slowly forced the two sides of the door to separate and slide into their slots on either side. Instantly everyone coughed as a huge wave of dead air raced out.
"Oh, sweet mother that stinks!" Bob yelled as he waved away the air. "Torchlights everyone!"
Everyone began to switch on their hardhats as one by one they entered the door and into what could only be described as another world.
If the outside was alien to the mammals, then the interior was truly another world. Metal was everywhere as they walked through the corridor, the only sources of light being their hard helmets as mammals looked this way and that. They found more doors, corridors locked off, empty rooms as they moved past. Along some of the walls were slabs of metal nailed down with words on them like "Storage Room A-7" and "Crew Quarters B-9 - G-6". They continued to look around until they entered a room that had "Command Center" above it.
"Whoa… look at this place." Lula whispered in awe. "This is way, way more advanced than… anything that geek tv show could manage."
"Hey, look at that…" Someone said, and everyone looked to see something sitting in a chair at one of the 'screens'.
Tentatively a leopard stepped forward and, nudged the chair to turn it around, revealing to their shock a dried and disheveled skeleton wearing the remains of some kind of 'cloth' on it. The colors were so faded that they had turned white and only hung together by the tiniest of strings still clinging together for all they were worth. What astonished them was that it wasn't any skeleton they were familiar with, even from their school days they did not recognize it.
"Oh man… whoever that was… they must have been… trapped hear for… who knows how long for them to… look like that when they died."
"Look at that face, no snout muzzles, no hoof bones, large jaw bones… not even clawed fingers or toes."
There was silence as everyone just looked at the skeleton or looked at other screens that they began to recognize as computers, though far, far more advanced than even the latest Mapple Personal Laptop could pride itself on. Even the highest tech computer on the marked would pale in comparison to just 'one' of these things, which looked like they had no keyboards…
Until one of them found a button that faintly resembled a 'power' button that they were used to.
"Whoa!" He shouted as the screen turned on and lit up like the sun in the dark building.
[Systems… online!] A distinctly feminine voice declared.
"What'd you do?"
"I-I didn't huabata!" He stuttered as he tried to explain.
[Power levels at… 0.006 percent… diveeeeeeeerting… bzzzzt] the voice said as the screen dimmed and began to die. [Cryogeeeeenic… chamber… Pods… remaining… 1…]
With that it turned off as everyone, so scared at just the sight of the computer turning on and the voice mysteriously talking that they had all huddled at the far end of the room.
Silence was all they heard as they breathed so quietly, but then one of them noticed a distinct blue glow coming from one of the rooms in the empty corridors, and above.
As if being called, an antelope stepped forward and led the way to the corridor, above it the words 'Cryogenic Stasis Chambers' labeled what the room was.
They entered the massive chamber and beheld a sight that dwarfed everything they saw before. Inside the chamber were, 'eggs', the only word they could describe the weird oval shaped pods that were hooked up to each other and into the ceiling. They were each around eight feet in length, maybe six feet in width and six feet in height. Each one colored white and each one had a strange panel identical to the next with the same 'red' light bulb and red line that gave a low humming beep.
"Those look like heart rate monitors… the kinds you see in hospitals." A sheep said as she leaned closer to one.
Tentatively she examined the egg and found two hinges that allowed her to gently open the pod, but what she saw caused her to gasp and scramble backward out of fear and then sadness.
Inside the egg, was another skeleton, far better preserved than the one in the room that they were in before, but no less… whoever or whatever it was… was long dead.
When she realized the little flat-lining beep was what it sounded like, a flat lined heart rate, she looked at all the other eggs in the room and mourned silently for them. "Oh, ancient ones… please let these souls rest in peace…"
"Nothing against you sheep and your 'beliefs', but now's not the time for that." Bob the mole muttered as he and everyone spread out to see how many eggs were in the room.
"I count thirty… but this place is so big, how could thirty… whatever they are possibly fill this whole place!" A tiger yelled.
"There's more than thirty, there's more here in this room!" The antelope hollered from another room, causing them to look with their lights and see yet another room filled with eggs.
"Yea, there's another room here!" Lula called out.
Soon comprehension dawned on many of them as they fanned out, finding more rooms, found more eggs, found more flat-lined panels.
"There must be hundreds of them… no way more than hundreds!" The bobcat said sadly. "But what killed them?"
"Whoever they are… we should leave them be… this is…" The antelope whispered before she paused and found one egg glowing blue slightly, with faint wisps of cold air leaving its otherwise air-tight insides and humming constantly.
On it was a panel just like all of the others, but unlike everyone so far, this one had a 'green' light bulb, and the heart rate monitor, had a green line spiking every few minutes.
She walked toward it, again as if being called, and stared at the egg. She put a tentative paw on it, feeling the deep cold beneath it, but also feeling a hum coursing through her. She could feel it, feel the hum of 'life' within it, whatever it was these eggs were doing they were preserving something 'alive' within them.
Something told her, that they 'had' to save this egg, that it was begging to be saved… as if 'they' were its last hope. All the others had died, but this one clung on, desperately trying to save whatever it contained.
She looked at the nearby screen and saw the most obvious sign of a 'battery power' that she had ever seen, no different than her ZPhone's battery symbol. It was flashing red every millisecond and blinking the number 0.003%, and below that 'Estimated Time Remaining: 4 Hours'.
"Oh no… WE NEED SOME KIND OF POWER FOR THIS THING!" She screamed at the top of her lungs.
"What's up!?" Someone replied as everyone ran over to the Antelope.
"This one's still alive, this one is still working, but its about to run out of power!" She yelled as she pointed out the screen's battery life.
"Four hours, but we don't even know what it 'runs' on!" Bob said.
"Well we can't just leave it to die!" She countered.
"Hey what's this?" A porcupine said, as with his small stature, he pointed out a small wire hanging from the egg and above it the words 'Alternative Energy Input'. The wire itself was tipped with a small 'knob' that looked eerily like a headphone jack for her phone, and out of curiosity she pulled out her phone and looked at where it would connect.
It would 'barely' fit, but she decided to try it, and plugged her phone to the egg's 'Alternative Energy Input' wire, and instantly saw her phone's power supply drain within seconds from 92% to 0.
"Whoa… you are hungry for power aren't you…" She muttered to the egg as she marveled at how fast it drained her phone. "That was six days-worth of power you just drained."
"And it barely made a dent!" The sheep said as they stared at the battery, stating that they had only added an 'hours' worth of life to the egg from her phone.
Six days of the most top of line phone's battery life span, was barely an hour's worth of charge for this egg and whatever it ran on.
"Even all our phones combined would barely give it an extra day!"
"Then let's give it that extra day!" Bob said as he shoved his phone forward and pushed the wire into it, draining his phone of life so that the egg gained another hour. "Lula, you keep your phone, get outside and call up the mayor, we need specialists and scientists and… whatever down here, this is way above us! They can figure out how to save this egg, but the least we can do is help it last long enough to get that help!"
Lula nodded and quickly left the 'unknown building' or 'ship' or whatever it was, while everyone else pulled out their phones and plugged them into the egg one at a time, draining their phones of battery life and adding to the egg's battery life.
Thirty-seven dead phones later, and they had given the egg over a day's worth of power to sustain itself.
"So, what do we do now chief, we can't stay here all the time once the big wigs show up." A wolf asked as they stood around the egg, wondering what was inside of it.
"All we can do, just watch it and wait till someone tells us to leave." The mole said as the antelope stayed close by the egg. Said antelope just stared in awe at the egg, feeling like a protective mother watching over a child, looking over the egg with her hardhat light for anything she might have missed that the others looking at the 'dead' eggs didn't notice.
She did indeed find something, a tiny viewport in the egg that was cloudy and foggy, obscuring her view of whatever was inside the egg. Curious, she used her shirt and wiped off the viewport, and gasped in wonder.
"No…" She whispered in utter astonishment.
Being the only one who could look inside of it gave her the first look at something she 'never' thought until that second, ever existed in anything but myth and legend, in scary stories her mother told her to frighten her at night. But somewhere deep inside her she just instantly knew what it was she was looking at.
"Human…" She whispered.
While the others didn't hear her, she thought back to all she knew of 'Humans', of the 'monsters of the past' as her mother called them.
The stories she told, the legends of humans, everything she told her as a young doe called them 'beings of destruction'. The tales told of humans laying waste to all before them, destroying with no regard and no mercy for any mammal. There were tales that misbehaving does and colts were taken by human spirits away to be eaten and devoured in giant pots of boiling lava.
Yet not one single story she ever heard from her mother, spoke of humans and how they 'looked'… or how utterly defenseless they appeared.
The human inside the egg, if it was a human, was mostly pale, had absolutely no fur with exception to the small amount of fur on its head at the very top. Its face looked rather young for a human, not quite a 'young colt' but also obviously not an old antelope either.
"You don't look dangerous to me…" She muttered to herself, placing her hoofed paw on the egg and watching over it while the others went off to explore on their own.
She stayed there, watching over the egg, waiting until told to do otherwise.
For nearly four hours they waited, until they heard Lula calling for them, and as a group they began to leave but she was last, wanting to stay with the egg for as long as she could. As she walked out and scientists and engineers and who knows what else walked in after them, she looked back at their discovery and asked herself, just what was it they found.
Since the site she was supposed to work at was now essentially shut down, and she was essentially out of a job now because none of the other teams were looking for 'new hires', she returned to her apartment and dug in her old things for the 'human tales' book her mother once read to her as a doe.
She blew the dust off and skimmed through the pages, looking for 'anything' about humans themselves. She found only 1 image, one solitary picture that showed what a 'human spirit' looked like.
"They don't look anything alike." She said to herself as the image didn't even resemble the creature she saw in the egg. "They don't have teeth as large as their faces, they aren't covered in scales…"
True she only saw the face but still, there was nothing else that resembled what she was looking at in the picture that she saw with her own eyes.
Turning on the news she looked for any headlines or stories about their 'discovery' that day, and sure enough on the mid-day headlines…
[Breaking News]
"Breaking news today as reporters indicate that a mysterious 'object' was recently discovered underneath the subterranean tunnels of Zootopia, more specifically Sahara Square. As of this moment officials are not stating what it is they have discovered, but we have received word from the foreman in charge of a team of construction workers who were beginning construction work on the Mayor's promised 'Subway Solution', a large expansive project creating a new network of railway tunnels for inter-city traveling."
"Indeed, this comes in just as an energy crisis is starting to emerge as portions of Tundra Town and Rainforest District are now going into their second week without power. This recent discovery has put onto hold all other tunnel construction and excavation projects as crews divert to the new 'mystery object' that the Mayor is…. Hang on I am getting word that the mayor is about to give a statement… we go live to our field reporter now…"
She watched as Mayor Leia Lioness appeared on screen surrounded by reporters and camera crews outside of the entrance to the tunnel she had been in earlier.
"I can confirm, that earlier today at roughly eight fifty-two AM, that construction crews have discovered what can only be described… as a metallic, subterranean structure. I repeat, this is 'not' a space ship despite rumors circulating this is 'not' a space ship. The origins of which are unknown, but we can confirm, pre-date modern mamillian history, and even beyond. We do not know how old the structure is, nor do we believe it is even mamillian in nature as… its technology is far more advanced than anything we possess."
"Ms. Mayor, have you been inside the structure!?" Someone yelled.
"I myself have only been… to the front door, the structure itself is so massive that until we know its actual diameters, all future underground construction prospects are being put on hold effective immediately while scientists and engineers attempt to 'study' the structure."
"Ms. Mayor, what about the rumors about an 'object' being extracted from the tunnels and being taken, rumors are saying an 'egg like object' was removed?"
At that she became attenuative as the Mayor appeared visually hesitant to answer.
"I can neither confirm nor deny these rumors, now if you will excuse me, I have a meeting to attend…"
With that everyone began cramming and flashing pictures trying to get her to speak more, and the news anchors returned.
"Well there you have it, the object is now confirmed, a superstructure of unknown origins. Reports gathered by field reporters state that this 'super structure', based on testimonies from the mammals working the tunnel this morning confirm it is made of a super resilient metal, one that defied all outward damage. They claimed that even after hammering and hacking away at the metal while attempting to excavate it, not so much as a scratch was made upon the metals surface. They claimed the inside was almost like 'visiting another world', and another stated 'it puts to shame that geek show my son watches about star ships and space."
"This raises many questions, who built it, why was it built, and what is it doing beneath Zootopia? We'll have more on this as the story unfolds and we learn more details, this is ZNN…"
She turned off the news and realized what had happened, they had taken the egg.
She didn't know 'why' she was so invested in that egg, or if the 'human', if it was indeed a human, was alive or not. But a tiny part of her knew, or at least felt at ease, because she knew that it had been saved. She had saved the occupant of the egg, directly or indirectly.
"Four hours, four hours separated that egg, from losing power and… whatever was inside being lost." She whispered as she looked at her human tale book, trying to find anything 'good' about humans.
(Gazelle's PoV)
"A little more love in the world, a little more joy in the… cold? No that's not right…" She muttered to herself as her limo drove through downtown Sahara Central. "A little more joy in the… a little more joy if only you would~!"
She wrote it down liking that sentence much better.
"I could use a little more love in my world." She muttered to herself as they took a turn.
Then as she was about to write down the next line for her song, the limo came to a sudden stop, causing her to look up at her driver in confusion. "What's wrong Donny?"
"Police holding up traffic Ms. Gazelle." Her tiger driver/bodyguard/backup dancer said.
Sure enough, she watched as four police cars drove past at a very steady, if somewhat quickened pace. Following behind was an Ambulance, and behind that were yet 'more' police cars. Then after the second group of Police cars came a heavily armored van, which had no less than twelve squad cars behind 'it'.
As the van drove past, she felt 'something', touch her, she couldn't describe it as anything else. Her heart just seemed to… feel pained at seeing the van drive past, not for the van itself but for whatever was inside the van.
As it drove by it turned down the street alongside hers with the rest of the vehicles, and unable to resist the urge, she felt herself open the door to her limo and was compelled to watch the van drive by. It was as if… something was 'calling' her, something… or someone was calling her is what her heart told her.
"Ms. Gazelle?" Donny asked suddenly noticing she had stepped out of the limo.
She ignored him until the van was out of sight, then it felt like her heart was… sad. She felt a sudden sadness in her heart, wondering what it was about the van in particular that caused her to step out and do all she could to watch it go. It was as if her heart felt something, an ache beyond anything she ever felt before.
This felt personal, this ache felt… lonely, as if she felt another heart reaching out for hers and hers in turn reaching out for it.
"Sorry Donny, just… just ignore it." She said as she got back in and traffic resumed.
Not able to get rid of the feeling in her heart, she picked up her pen and began scribbling down a new set of lyrics, completely forgetting about the song she was writing before.
"My heart aches for you, like nothing you never knew…" She wrote down, a new song just appearing in her head as clear as day.