Just another day at work.
The electrical sounds of large robotic arms moving from place to place and welding metal to metal resounded around me. I was hidden in a nice cubby, but with a quick glance to my right and over some safety fences I could see the rapid movements of large orange robotic arms. Sparks occasionally shot out from the weld guns, spewing out like a shotgun blast.
I leaned back in my rolling chair as I clasped my hands together on the back of my head. An audible yawn escaped from my mouth. Through the tears that accompanied my yawn, I stared at a TV screen with bars of purple, blue, and occasionally yellow appearing and disappearing.
It was the fault screen I had to watch to make sure the production line under my watch was in order. I was a technician for the largest production plant in the state, and it was my job to make sure that any, red, faults that appeared got fixed.
"Hey, you tired already? It's barely 9 Did you not have good sleep last night?"
I slowly turned to peer at the man who was grinning at me. He sat not too far away from me with his legs propped up on another chair. He wore a uniform similar to mine, a red shirt and blue work pants.
"Not particularly, honestly I was thinking about the worldwide eclipse from last night. Do you think the world's gonna end soon? heheh." Ending with a joking tone.
"World ending? No way! Though it was strangely supernatural, nothing's happened yet, right? Besides it's not like you worrying about it is gonna change anything. Hmm, well I'm gonna go get me a cup of coffee or something, you want anything?"
"Nah, I'm good, thanks."
Robert kicked his feet down and grabbed his knees to push himself off the chair. I watched him walk away for a few moments before turning back to the screen filled with mostly purples, which were just messages.
The worldwide eclipse is an event that is logically impossible. At most, they cover only a small section of the globe and only for a few minutes at a time yet yesterday, October 30th, at 9:33 PM EST, they occurred.
Not only did the event itself seemingly appear out of nowhere, but it had lasted for a full 2 hours as well. News coverage of the fiery ring in the sky was occurring from everywhere. On the other side of the world, they experienced it during the day as well.
I had checked when the next eclipse was supposed to arrive and it was supposed to be situated next year in 2025 at the earliest and even then I shouldn't have been within the zone.
Nothing about it, from the region it was located, the time of arrival, or the time it lasted was natural. No one could even possibly explain the phenomenon.
It was… startling. Everyone tried their best to come up with some sort of explanation, but there was nothing, at least nothing that came close to believable to me.
At that point, I'm sure many people probably thought the world was ending. But nothing happened, at least not that we know of. The rest of the night went as if any other and even this morning was nothing new.
After a few moments, I started feeling a wave of drowsiness as my eyelids felt droopy. I tried to fight the heavy weight of my eyelids, but soon it would overwhelm me.
Sleeping on the job was bad, but I'd never been able to sleep for longer than a few minutes at a time with how noisy the robots were. If somehow I did I'm sure Robert would come back and wake me up regardless and hopefully it won't be for missing a problem.
In the end, the fault screen filled with purple was the last thing in sight as I succumbed.
…
I woke up groggy for a moment before I sobered up instantly, horrified to see red plastered on the screen. It wasn't just 1 or 2 messages either, there was half a dozen and the time next to it showed that the problems had lasted close to 2 hours already!
It would already be bad if there was a problem for 5 minutes and half an hour was something we considered a major breakdown. The fact that it happened on my line too meant I might get a strike towards getting fired.
Immediately, I stood up and read the message. It had stated an over-cycle with the robots. That would mean that the standard waiting period has passed. Most if not all the times that has occurred it simply appears when the people in production are slow and haven't managed to get parts out yet or there was a major breakdown somewhere that halted the line.
Normally, that is. At that moment, there was an eerie siren in the hall. The monotone sounds of robotic welds and minor explosions of sparks had halted. The clanking of metal from the production members on their fixtures was gone as well.
All that remained was a low-toned siren I've heard countless times working here. It was the sound of AGVs, but there was something different about this one.
I checked the time to see whether or not I was simply making things up in my mind. It was silent since people were at lunch and there was just something major that happened.
It was 11:46 AM, and lunch for the production members should start at 12:30 PM. The station that had the longest fault also happened to be one that was relatively close by.
I looked through the metal fencing that barred off the robots, but there wasn't anyone around.
'Fuck, they didn't just leave me here to deal with this shit, right? If there was really something wrong and people had to evacuate, surely they would have gotten me right or at least called. Did they call?'
I pulled my work phone out of my pocket, but instead of my coworkers texting me it seemed to be several family and friends. I was a bit confused but decided to check a few anyway.
[Mom: Where are you? 9:36 AM
Are you still at work? 9:36 AM
Have you seen the news? 9:37 AM
You have to be careful! 9:37 AM
When are you coming home? 9:37 AM
Please respond! 9:39 AM
Call me back when you have a chance! 9:39 AM]
[Dad: Are you ok? 10:00 AM]
[Juni: Hey, I know you'll come back to your house eventually so I'll just wait here for you until you get back. However long it takes I'll be waiting for you. 10:02 AM
I have something important to tell you when you get back. 10:05 AM]
[Robert(Work): Hey, if you are even still alive be careful of those things. Those monsters tore Josh to shreds in a minute. 10:27 AM
I don't know if I'm writing to a dead man, someone whose ass is still somehow sleeping, or maybe I even attracted one of them to your location with the notification. 10:28 AM
Be careful and be wary of everyone, you might not even know if the person you are talking to is the real one. 10:29 AM]
'Huh? What the fuck? Did I really just sleep through the beginning of the apocalypse? The hell is happening?'
I shot a text to my mom and soon it was delivered so I sent a few more to my dad, Juni, and one to Robert as well. Once that was done I put it on silent and tucked it away.
I didn't want to call them as I didn't want to distract them from whatever they were doing or potentially give them away if they were hiding, though these situations weren't something they would be in I watched a few too many movies where someone who forgot to turn their phone on silent killed them. Though in hindsight the single ding of the notification could also be bad.
'Ah shit, did I just kill them? Well, hopefully their situation wasn't so perilous that a single notification would end them… Fuck, well I can't mope around now that I already did it.'
The chance this is fake is probably close to null, there is no way that any of the higher-ups would agree to stop not only a whole line but the lines nearby as well.
Time is money and every minute we aren't producing cars, we're losing money in the thousands.
All of that just to prank a single employee is insane. Since it was impossible to be a prank, how REAL was this apocalypse exactly? Zombies? Armageddon? Aliens? Eldritch horrors? What else?
The point is what am I fighting, hiding, or running from?
'God dammit, Robert! Why couldn't you be more specific about what these monsters were? The one I'm talking to might not be the real one?!
It could be a zombie that doesn't look oddly shaded or pale, some kind of humanoid angel or demon, aliens with a futuristic disguise device, or an eldritch creature that has influenced my mind into seeing a humanoid illusion or hallucination.
I guess I'll just have to find out on my own and hopefully, I notice them way before they notice me.'
I looked around for something to defend myself with. I scanned the desktop and the small cabinet nearby. There was also a tool cabinet nearby which contained… well… tools.
Several combination wrenches of varying sizes, ball-peen hammers, chisels, wire brushes, pliers, and various other tools.
Eventually, I settled for a ball-peen hammer with my pocket knife as a backup.
I didn't have any options for range as those tools usually resided by where they were used. But I did take a pair of metal shears with me as I planned to find one of those long metallic scrapers and shear the corners off the end to make a short spear.
I put on the few pieces of gear I could potentially use for protection: mid-level cut-resistant gloves with the A4 rating on their back, a bump cap insert for a baseball cap, a pair of safety glasses, and a pretty thick jacket I had draped on my chair.
After getting my gear together I had to think about what to do next. Should I immediately leave the building and go home or search the building for… uh, something? Well, whatever it is I should at least get a move on I suppose.
I walked out of the small secluded section into the eerily empty production line. The operators were gone, nowhere to be seen.
But with the personal items still scattered about, it seemed as if they would be back anytime. Water bottles, backpacks, and a few jackets hung around stations.
'Shit, what now? Should I just go home? Look for someone? Hmm, maybe I should see if I can find Robert… but where would I find him, actually is he still alive? Maybe I could try and follow his trail.'
To the cafeteria, I go then. I walked through the halls seemingly devoid of any life, the only sound being a repeating monotone beep.
But as I got closer to the cafeteria I started to notice small pools and splatters of a crimson liquid. It wasn't hard to realize what it truly was, but what was odd was that there were no bodies around.
Sure, I could be optimistic about every single one of them escaping, but the sheer amount of blood around meant that surely at least one person wouldn't have made it. The amount of dried blood scattered was focused on 3 spots, but there weren't any drip trails of blood that indicated their escape as if any of those who had been wounded never had the chance to leave that spot.
'What happened to their bodies? Do these creatures take over dead bodies to pose as humans? Are they perhaps some kind of parasite that's evolved to human hosts?'
I couldn't stare at the blood and think of hypotheticals all day so I moved on. But even then, those missing bodies slightly gnawed at my consciousness with each step.
I was starting to get close and only had to get by some offices by walking down a long open lane, but then something caught my eye.
It was some kind of movement, immediately I got down and behind something before peeking out. To my relief, it was a person and I was about to get their attention before noticing their actions.