*Beep beep beep* an annoying alarm whined.

A boy, rudely awoken by the sound, groaned. 'Ugh... Just five more minutes...' he thought.

Having rubbed off the haziness shrouding his sight, he was met with a big bright blue sky decorated with white and green fluffy clouds.

'Huh? Why am I on the ground... outside?' he looked around and grew distressed.

An alien scenery surrounded the sleepy boy. Silver tree trunks boasted their plasticesque dark green crowns that shaded the ground interlaced with cyan bumps encircled by moss.

'What the...? Seriously, where am I?! Who am I?!' he felt a needle's stab inside his head. 'Ow ow ow!' he rubbed his temple, but still couldn't recall his memory.

He sat up as sharp pains twisted across his body. 'Are you kidding me? It feels like I died, came back to life, only to die and get revived, AGAIN.'

He tried to stand but exhausted mussels and aching bones thwarted his effort. Regardless, he persevered and forced past his weakness, earning him a stable footing. He dusted himself of the dry dark dirt devoid of the bumpy plants filling the environment.

*BEEP BEEP BEEP* from behind he heard the same infuriating alarm blare stronger. 'Ugh! What's making that noise?' he sluggishly turned and became wide-eyed.

An ominous metallic object towered above him. Akin to an iron maiden, it stood a few heads taller than the boy. It had a small flat spherical head embedded with what appeared to be a digital screen. Its large opal body had two bulky doors swung wide open to its sides, exposing the hollow volume within filled with tangled wires and leaking tubes.

'What is that thing...!' coughing, he took a step back.

A rush of memories swirled inside his head. 'Ah! Now I remember... THAT whole thing happened...'

The sound stopped. The pod's face screen lit and showed a big buffer wheel spinning in the middle. Illegible text and numbers scrolled to the sides. The screen cleared and the buffer wheel morphed into a flat horizontal line across the middle.

'Here we go...'

The pod let out a glitchy robotic yet rowdy voice as the line on its face jiggled like a sound wave.

[C-C-C-CONNNNGGGRATULATIONS!!! YOU HAVE JJJJJJUSTT BEEN AWOKEN FROM SUSSSSSS-!] the machine broke into static.

'Pfft, I shouldn't have messed with its voice settings. But even then, I only messed around with the cowboy dial...' he scanned the tough exterior with his eyes. 'Why is it so beaten up? Weird...'

[WOHO?! WHAT'S THISSS? YA DUUUUN LIOK SO SWWWELL!!] translucent rubbery tubes shot out towards the boy. Startled, he tried to dodge, but was far too slow.

"Woah, woah- *cough*! What are you doing?!" he protested with his raspy voice, trying to break free from the tubes tightly wrapped around his wrists. "*sniff*... Have mercy...?"

[WAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! DIS IZ WUUUUT- YAEEE GUJET!] like snakes the tubes twisted and bit into the boy with their pointy ends.

"AAAaaaa...?" he looked at his hands 'It doesn't hurt?' a warm clear liquid began to ooze from the machine, flowing from tube to vein. 'This is so weird and gross.'

After injecting the last drop, the tubes let go and were pulled back dragging on the ground. The boy felt noticeably refreshed.

"Huh... Well thanks I guess, wait no that's yo-" he got interrupted by the booming voice of the iron maiden.

[IT HAS BEEN ONE TRHOUSHASND YEEETERS, TWEENTY SEVEN DEYS, TREEEEEEEEEEE HOURS AND-- 5 MINUTES SINCE YOU FELL- ASWeeep...] the energy in the pod's voice began to wane.

[you-you-you-you have... mission.] it stuttered.

[DO.] it reverberated, momentarily regaining its former volume.

[Rebuild sacaety kiDOOOOoo-] the voice abrupt cut as the sound wave laid flat and the screen dimmed.

The boy silently watched. 'Welp, glad that's over!' the boy, all smiles, walked towards the pod.

'Guess this dumb pod thing didn't wake me up properly or something, probably why I felt so sickly. But hey, it came in a clutch at the last moment and... what's a fancy word for this? Rejuvenated, me, heh.' he bopped with a hum.

'Let's see my goodies should be here...' he rummaged inside the bottom portion of the pod, setting aside three items: a phone, a bulky metallic briefcase and a backpack.

The backpack contained canned food, water, tools, gadgets and changes of clothes that the boy confirmed were all there.

'Good, everything's here, but... This stuff is supposed to be a thousand years old! Did that magic sardine sealing tech REALLY preserve everything as promised? Those guys didn't have a good track record by the end... Wait, has it even been a thousand years?'

The curious boy latched onto the pale green phone.

'Tenth of march, thirty forty-seven... It really has been a thousand years, huh?' he continued browsing, checking multiple apps and files.

'It's fully charge, my terabytes of stuff is all intact and it works just as well as when I first got it!' the boy was pleasantly surprised.

He equipped the backpack and dropped the briefcase on the ground next to him.

'Now then... WHERE IS EVERYONE?!' he pocketed his phone and looked around the sparse forest.

'There were a LOT of other pods around me, like a lot lot, it was super crowded! Like, I was in a building, a military base looking one! It couldn't have just vanished...!'

He scratched his head.

'Hmm, my pod looking real messed up... And I think I woke up a few weeks, nearly a month, later...' the boy contemplated.

'What happened?'

'Well... All I know for certain is that I'm all alone and alive with all my stuff as I planned, soo...' the boy was filled with joy. 'GREAT!! HAHAHA!'

'I get to explore and discover this brand-new world all by myself! There's no General Captain Lieutenant President Gregory Johnathan the Sixty-Ninth of Country-Land to tell me what to do! I can do anything! I'll build a machine empire! I'll- I'll- freaking EE-' his mind rushed with ideas.

'Whatever freaky stuff might get in my way?! HA! I'll SLAY it all! My power will know no bounds!' he continued to monologue.

'... Sigh, this is great.' the thrilled boy calmed down and glanced over to the strange briefcase.

"Hey Duke, wake up!" he yelled out towards the shiny light gray briefcase on the ground.

The hunk of metal with a handle on top began to rumble. It unfolded itself, revealing a small gray dog like robot accented with pale green. The robot reached the boy's knees and its length was a quarter of the boy's height.

[Initializing...] the robot dog, Duke, spoke with a cold and emotionless voice.

Its four short thin legs bent up and down along their single knee joint. The rectangular body lined with cameras on all sides swayed from side to side making the long folded robotic arm jiggle along its three joints. At the end of the arm, a three fingered disk spun and folded its fingers in and out. The robotic arm moved randomly, at its longest it could reach the boy's head.

Like a human eye, the lens within a small transparent glass hemisphere atop the robot's head took in its surroundings, shifting its gaze in all directions.

[Complete. All systems online. Self test successful.] the sporadic movements came to an end with its announcement, made in a fluid voice that could be mistaken for a person's had it not had a distinctive robotic and synthetic tone.

[All systems nominal, charge at one hundred percent. Five days until depletion.] it said plainly.

"Huh? You actually working without any problems after all this time? Nha, I'm not convinced yet." the boy said, having watched the robot while it woke up.

[Rejoice. I am not one of the many mistakes you've made, regretful creator.] the robot quickly replied.

"At least that snark is still intact..." he muttered, digging through his backpack.

He took out a sickly green palm sized gadget with a soft sheen that made it look plastic. From atop the rectangular base grew a flat four sided pyramid with four lenses wedged within each face. Rotor blades rested on long thin strips on each of the four vertexes of the base.

'Please work...' the boy reluctantly took out his phone and inserted it into a dent at the bottom of the gadget where it fit perfectly.

The two devices melted together, leaving no hint that they were once separate.

'No way!' the boy marveled at the lit screen.

After a few taps he threw the device in the air.

With a low buzz, the blades spun into a blur, suspending the device in the air.

"Yuppie! The phone drone works too." the boy turned to the mechanical dog.

"Come Duke! Time for a post-apocalyptic selfie!" he knelt next to Duke, prompting the machine to let out a short series of low-pitched beeps.

The boy gestured at the drone with his hands, causing it to change position. Eventually it landed in his hand with which the rotor's whir stopped. On the screen at the bottom, there was a picture featuring a typical teenager with brown hair and eyes wearing casual clothes, on his knee next to a grey-green robotic dog. They were insignificant compared to the engrossing alien scenery encompassing the background.

'As plain as ever...'

'Alright then! Time to survive!' he looked up from the screen.

'... But, uh... Like, how? I don't really have a plan here...' he shrugged. 'But, I mean, how hard can surviving be? Just don't die. And to not die don't get killed, have something to eat and drink and somewhere to sleep. Simple enough.' the survivor looked around.

'... I don't see anything to eat or drink here though... What about these bumps? What're they?' just as he was about to reach the mossy plants, a fizzling sound startled him.

He snapped his head behind and witnessed the iron maiden's screen blaze to life, its wires and tubes shuffled wildly before its doors slam shut with a bang.

[EEEhehehehe! AHAHAHAHA! HAAAA! YEEEHAAAW!!!] its robotic voice boomed, shaking the very dirt it rested on.