After some extensive searching for a closet, Rl-004 gave up. Instead, she settled for a lab coat and pants of one of the scientists. Getting them off was quite the struggle, still as they were. She intended to not rip the clothes as she took them off, though their stiff body made that nearly impossible.
The pants fortunately fit her well, but the lab coat was oversized, its sleeves hiding her hands. To offset this, she rolled the sleeves up and tucked the coat into the pants. Not ideal, but functional.
She hesitated, looking back at the scientist in the lobby.
It's fine; they're not gunna move anyway.
After her brief perusal for clothes ended, she returned to the broken window where the floating robot was still waiting for her. Its eye was blue this time.
I think the color of that bot's eye indicates some kind of emotion it wants to display. Blue seems to be its usual.
"Ah, that is better. It may be the middle of spring, but time is frozen after all," The light of the robot began to blink rapidly at the dull joke.
"All right, cut to the chase. You told me I'm supposed to save the world?"
The robot's edges rotated, "You were chosen to do so. Although it is not just you. Four others were given the ability to Time-tread, all in the hopes of saving us from certain doom." The robot enthusiastically inflects the last two words.
"Time-tread?"
The robot's eye turned yellow, "Is it not obvious? You are able to move freely with no issues, unlike our diffident friends over there."
RL-004 took a glance around at the frozen scientists in the lounge. Of course, the bot was right; her body seemed unperturbed by time's heavy grip on literally everything else around her that even gravity had ceased to function.
She paused, "...Are they conscious?"
"Who knows? Perhaps? Perhaps not. A human mind is hard to quantify."
The notion made her shudder. To be completely in stasis but your consciousness remaining intact felt like a nightmare. As if watching paint dry, they were stuck looking at the same place for what could be eternity.
Shaking off her unease, she thought aloud, "I was in that pod upstairs, perhaps the syringe stuck inside me back then gave me that... Time-tread ability."
"That I do not know. At any rate, it is best if we leave this place. I hope you have not grown jaded of stairs already."
The robot moved toward the stairway, but before it could get far, RL-004 took hold of it in her hands.
"Hold on. There's still so much I need to know. Do you expect me to just listen to you when you've barely explained anything at all to me?"
Its eyes transitioned to red, "Okay, okay. Hands of the silver lady! This coat is premium grade, you hear! PREMIUM?"
She complied, releasing her grasp and letting the machine move its body freely once more. She found a new place for her hands on her hips.
"Firstly. What are you?"
"I believed I already told you," If it could. The robot would've been frowning. Instead, its eye remained red. "I am an Orbital Warden, a type of Auxiliary Device tasked to help you–"
RL-004 interrupted the robot by loudly clicking her teeth together, "You expect me to understand any of that? Keep it simple. A name would be good to start, unless you want me to just call you 'Bot'. After that, then you can drop the entire story of what you are."
"...The designation given to me by my creator was OW-283e7Ny8R."
"OW-283e7Ny8R, huh? I'll call you Owen then, given the first four letters of your designation and your voice sounds like a man's."
Owen bounced lightly up and down. Considering the name. "Owen? It actually has a bit of synthesis that I find satisfactory. Very well, I will be referred to as 'Owen'".
"I think the phrase is 'It has a ring to it'."
It was an intriguing little bot. Artificial intelligence but acted in a way that seemed to exhibit high amounts of emotion. The overly expressive tone and movements were perhaps an emulation of someone else assigned by his creator, or that this AI has the capacity for emotional understanding to a certain degree.
I also received a designation. At least, that's what Owen claimed. Doomsday Unit RL-004.
Hey eyes widened.
Could it be… that I'm also artificial intelligence?
She brushed her fingers across her skin. It felt natural. Someone could have grafted it onto her like a doll. If that was the case, instead of organs being housed within her, there could be a concoction of a robotic exoskeleton and a metal plating within her body.
The thought of being a robot was not too appealing, but not so much as the notion that she could be wearing a dead woman's skin.
RL-004 tabled her growing anxieties and convinced herself to follow Owen out of the building. They took the stairs for another twenty flights before making it to the main lobby.
"You said you were an Auxiliary Device. What does that mean?"
Owen's eye lights up yellow, "It means I am a device created for the sole purpose of serving a Doomsday Unit. Constructs like me are a special case, seeing as I can converse with you. But there are copious amounts of these Auxiliary Devices stashed away in storage units and labs in this city. I suggest you look for some; they are a necessity for you."
"Why?"
"Its best if you see that firsthand."
RL-004 squinted "...How do I find them?"
"I do not have access to that information. I think you just sense them. Was it not the same for me? Were you not drawn towards me because you could espy my presence with your senses?"
Rl-004 raised her eyebrows. She did not notice Owen until he started buzzing around her head.
Owen's eye went pink, "That's not what I mean! It should be an ability that you have!"
She scratched her chin, "Thinking back, I did sense something when I awoke. It was on the lower floors. But I was so stunned by the rush of all my other senses that it kind of got lost in the noise.
Owen's corners twirl, "See! You can do the very same with all Auxiliary Devices, not just me."
RL-004 continued to follow Owen through the lobby washed with neon lights. Frozen people and machines were also present here. Intriguingly, they looked a lot calmer than the people on the upper floor. The calamity that had befallen the people higher up has yet to reach these people below.
To RL-004, that was comforting. At least if time were to begin again and if they are not conscious of the state they are in now, they will die with calm expressions on their faces...
...Still not ideal, though.
Finally, the two made it outside of the building. A light hue of orange flushed over them, bathing them in a soft heat and brushing the building in a more effervescent light. Off to the left side of the street. The top half of the sun peeked over the horizon, visible in the pocket of the open street, down what could've been fifty blocks.
It was familiar to RL-004. Almost... natural, unlike everything else she had witnessed so far. She had felt this heat, this warmth, many times before... in some kind of past she used to have.
She put a hand on her chest.
What is this feeling?
The fleeting emotion dissipated when she looked up at the sky. It didn't look like a normal sky. A field of black blotted out most of the once-full sea of blue. It seemed to pixelate the sky, erasing it from existence where only pockets of it remained, especially around the sun.
It made the lighting confusing. The sun shone through in places, but the darkness overhead cast an ugly shadow on the land. It almost looked like the two were fighting over whether the world should be midday or midnight, and RL-004 couldn't tell who was winning.
"The sky looks like it's dying." RL-004 said, stretching her neck back as she looked up.
Owen's eye went yellow. ""They call it The Falling Sky, the catalyst for the end of all. The people who created me. And the people who put you to slumber, they halted time one second before the darkness fell not only onto the sky but on all things living or otherwise."
She kept gazing above until they fell upon the chunk of the building that she saw separated up in the lab was above, falling debris that broke off before the bigger one did was stuck in the middle of the air.
Most of the surrounding buildings were of the same ilk. Tops of buildings, like a knife through butter, slid down partway off the foundations. Some of the rubble had made it all the way to the street, and the dust of the initial impact floated around in the stillness.
Some debris was in the line of a woman on the sidewalk. Her arms moved above her head as if her flesh could deflect the power of falling rock and steel. Her eyes forever plastered on the object that would ultimately end her.
Others were not fortunate enough to freeze before they died. Metal beams and boulders trapped some. Their bodies crushed under the sheer weight. Blood spilled out, leaving red stains in their wake.
You can still see the pain on their faces.
Telephone poles were partly off centered. Cars on the street were stuck in place. The smoke from the exhaust spewed out, and the lights from the screens in the car emitted yellow streams of color. A self-driving car was the one in front of her, but she noticed a family filling the passenger and back seats. Although the car was frozen, the burn marks on the road made it easy to understand how fast the vehicle had been moving.
It was as if someone had taken a picture of the beginning of an apocalypse. Stuck perpetually in a state of impending doom.
"So, the reason everyone is somehow stuck in place is because of the people that presumably experimented on me?" RL-004 said.
Owen's eye turned green, "Correct, it was the only option to save the world."
"These people — do you know who they were?" She raised both her hands up to her side, "How do they expect us 'Doomsday Units' to 'Save the world' so to speak?"
"That information does not exist in my database. However, when I was created, I was given only two tasks. Aid Doomsday Unit RL-004 and tell her to make it to the City Command Center in the middle of this city. I would like to take you there now."
"What? Now? What makes you think I want to go there? Or that I would follow you? I only wanted questions, many of which you failed to clear up!"
Owen's eye turned blue, "Doomsday Unit RL-004. I strongly advise you to follow me to the City Command Center. There is nothing for you to lose. Frankly, you are like a babe freshly born into this world. You do not even understand who you are. Other Doomsday Units are most likely going to the City Command Center now; you can meet up with them. And you know... you might find something about your past there."
Trust was still off the table for Owen. The way he came off despite being a robot felt as though he knew more than what he said. He was hiding something from her; that much was certain. Despite any of his objections to that being "he speaks only with veracity". But what he said was right. This world was an enigma to her. Everything made little sense, and she probably wouldn't figure it out on her own.
Best to go with him.
"Fine, I'll come with."
Green appeared in Owen's eye, twisting in excitement, "I knew you would see reason, Doomsday Unit RL-004."
RL-004 frowned, "Just don't call me that long-ass name. Call me… RL for now until I figure out what my real name is."
"Whatever you say." Owen said, somewhat confused with her demand.
The two traveled down the street into the heart of the city.