Sebastian woke up with a bolt.
Not because of nightmares. Not because of alarms.
Because something dripped onto his face.
‘That better have been water.’
He wiped it off, sat up, and blinked blearily at the chaos that dared to call itself home.
Trash everywhere. Broken metal. Scattered wires. A wall-sized stain that he hadn’t noticed last night and didn’t want to investigate.
“…Nope.”
He stood, stretched, and cracked his neck.
“Alright let’s get busy”
Thirty minutes later, he had managed to move four crates, stack some scrap, and cut his hand on what he was pretty sure was a burnt-out processor shard.
‘Progress: negative.’
The space was way bigger than it needed to be, and somehow every corner had its own brand of junk. Some piles were tech. Some were clothes. One corner was suspiciously full of broken drone legs.
He found a half-functioning broom under a pile of damp wires and started sweeping.
The bristles crumbled instantly.
“…You tried your best.”
He chucked it into the scrap pile and kept going, grabbing what tools he could find—broken pliers, a plastic bin, a magnetic strip that half-worked. It wasn’t organized, but eventually, the ground started to look a little less like the aftermath of a demolition derby.
And then—
Thunk.
His boot hit something solid.
He looked down.
Half-buried under old fiber coils and an actual pizza box fossil was a machine. Not modern like the rest of Brim’s hyper-slick, touch-to-breathe tech. This was chunky. Black casing, brushed steel panel, vents on the side.
It had weight. Like it wasn’t just a terminal—it was a presence.
He knelt, brushing dust and grime off the surface.
It was a computer.
Old, but weirdly pristine.
No branding. No logo. Just a single flickering red light on the front.
‘This shouldn’t be here.’
Most machines in Brim were synced to the Core Net. Smooth. Seamless. Overdesigned. This thing looked like it’d been built instead of printed.
He pulled it out fully and found it connected to nothing—no power, no ports, just resting there like a black box waiting to be noticed.
Sebastian studied the front again.
A small slit on the side. A switch. A data jack he didn’t recognize. And one button.
He pressed it.
Click.
Nothing.
“…Figures.”
Stolen story; please report.
Then—whirr.
The machine hummed to life with a low mechanical growl. The red light blinked once, then stayed on. A screen flared up—tiny, square, and green-tinted.
ENTER ACCESS KEY:
>>_
Sebastian stared.
No startup animation. No company jingle. No cute boot-up drone voice.
Just cold, green text.
He exhaled.
‘Always loved free shit.’
He sat cross-legged in front of it, hands hovering over the dusty keys.
“I don’t know what you are,” he muttered, “but I love a good mystery box.”
Sebastian spent the rest of the day hunched over the machine like a gremlin with a mission.
Screws, wires, casing plates—all stripped and reconnected again and again. The more he poked around, the more the thing started to make sense… and somehow didn’t.
After hours of trial and error, sweat, one minor electric shock, and a moment where he was pretty sure the computer laughed at him, he finally leaned back and exhaled.
“Alright then,” he muttered, wiping grease from his fingers. “Looks like it needs an access code of some sorts.”
It was tech from his era—sort of. Looked like an old desktop, sounded like an old desktop, but the guts were new. Not futuristic like the rest of Brim, but new to him. Things like self-healing ports, anti-loop feedback processors, and encrypted heat regulators—stuff that had only been theoretical when he was in school.
‘Either someone made this for me, or I’m the punchline of the most complicated time-travel prank ever.’
Then he remembered it—something that slipped out of Mii’s never-ending exposition dump earlier.
“You’ll need a Skylink account to access tech, duh~!”
He groaned. “Right. Because even in the future, signing your soul away is mandatory.”
He tapped his wristband.
Immediately, it exploded into holograms—apps, ads, pop-ups, floating icons bouncing in every direction. Notifications bloomed like weeds across his vision.
Coupons for body augmentations. Dating sim recommendations. Anti-anxiety drone insurance. A virtual pet that was already dying.
‘Even now the pursuit of relentless company greed stands true.’
He swatted a few of the ads away and looked around until he found it—a floating icon shaped like a cloud impaled by a cable.
‘How creative.’
He clicked it.
Everything else vanished.
A digital ring formed around him, projections pulsing outward like he was being scanned from every angle.
Then came the message:
WELCOME USER:_
A sleek, semi-transparent keyboard materialized below the text. Each key blinked with a light touch hum, a tiny, annoying buzz every time he hovered over them.
‘Let’s just hope this doesn’t ask for blood next.’
He started typing his name—
S E B A S T I A N
The ring pulsed.
LAST NAME?_
“…Rude.”
He typed again.
W H A T E V E R
PROCESSING…
The system made a little cheerful ding! like it was about to offer him a cup of coffee.
ERROR: SARCASM DETECTED. RETRY?
Sebastian stared at the screen.
‘Oh. You detect sarcasm. Wonderful. I’m going to die in this city.’
With a sigh, he entered something more believable. Old records be damned.
Sebastian Vance
This time, it processed.
Generating Skylink Profile…
Binding user ID to BrimLink module…
Standard permissions granted: Grade 0 Citizen.
Terms of service: 894 pages. Agree?
“No.”
Input recognized: ‘No.’ Overridden. Agreement assumed.
“…Of course.”
A final flash, and the text shifted:
Welcome to Skylink, Sebastian. Your life is now integrated. Your choices are now curated. Your data is now monetized.
‘So honest, it almost feels wholesome.’
A beep drew his attention back to the old terminal.
The screen had changed.
No prompt this time.
Just a line of text pulsing softly in pale green:
Welcome SEBASTIAN :)
Sebastian squinted at the smiley face.
“Mhm. Whatever,” he muttered. “Let’s try and figure out what happened while I was napping.”
He got to work.
The rest of the day blurred into hours of research—digging through files, folders, archives, and cached interfaces. The system wasn’t connected to any network, but it had enough stored data to choke a satellite.
Biomed. Engineering. Construction. Agriculture. Urban planning. Synth-food development. Drone law. Genetic customization.
By the end of it, his brain felt like it had binge-watched twelve years of school in fast-forward.
‘Alright. So I have the education of a futuristic high school dropout. Cool.’
The only tab he hadn’t touched was History.
And he knew—deep down—that was the one that mattered most.
‘Alright. Let’s get this over with. Let’s see what kind of mess we made in 245 years.’
He opened the folder labeled:
“General History – Public School Approved”
Expecting a timeline, maybe a wall of text… what he got instead was a list of videos, all sorted by grade level.
He started at the kindergarten level.
‘This should be quick.’
Then something caught his eye.
A video near the bottom.
Title:
“The Iron Lullaby”
He tilted his head.
‘What a weird nursery rhyme name.’
He clicked it.
Immediately, his speakers filled with the soft, echoing sound of a choir. Low. Haunting. Harmonized in perfect, unnatural unison.
Not the cutesy jingle he was expecting. Not even remotely.
It sounded more like a hymn being sung in an empty cathedral at the end of the world.
A single line repeated again and again, growing louder with each round:
“Lay thee down, the sky runs dry / We cradle the world in iron sighs.”
Sebastian froze.
‘What the fuck…?’
Every alarm in his brain started screaming—but not for any specific reason. He couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t pinpoint it.
But something about this song was wrong.
So he let it play.
Stared at the screen.
Waited to find the pattern.
Waited for the answer.
Waited for the why.
It didn’t come.
Just that same haunting lullaby, closing with a child’s voice whispering:
“Sleep tight. The world is better now.”
The video ended.
And Sebastian, for once, didn’t have anything sarcastic to say.
He clicked back to the main menu.
Scrolled.
Found the next video.
“History for Kids: A Breakdown of Our Great Nation!”
He sighed.
‘Alright. Round two.’
The video launched with a cheery, animated intro. Cartoon drones danced in a ring. A smiling Earth rotated in the background. A jingle played that made his brain melt just a little.
Then the narrator chimed in—way too happy:
“Do you know the history of our great nation? No? That’s okay! We’ll teach you everything you need to know!”
‘Oh god.’
It dove into a timeline—except the dates were weird. Years marked in ARC, same as his file said. No mention of nations like before—just vague names like “The Unified Zones” and “The Harmonization Protocol.”
Then came the presidents.
Each one animated like a mascot. Some with theme music. Some with titles like they were legendary figures.
And then—
“The 87th President was also known as… The Creator!”
Cue sparkling effects. Fireworks. Children cheering.
“He pulled us away from the deep, dark side of the world and made it so we can keep the Earth beautiful and helpful! Isn’t that awesome?!”
Sebastian’s face slowly collapsed into disbelief.
Then the voice kept going.
“He also introduced our universal currency… known as Stuffies!”
The screen lit up with little plush dollar icons bouncing across the screen with squeaky noises.
Sebastian sat in stunned silence.
‘We named our currency after toys…?’
He paused the video. Took a long, slow breath.
“…Okay.”
He stood up.
Stretched.
And took a deep sigh
“Welp better get to work”
