Akino: This – this is a weird log name, like a cheap novel title.

Alexa: Hey, it’s way cooler than the one you made.

Akino: It’s for formalities, Alex.

Alexa: Nothing is formal in this time, especially if only the remaining humans are us!

Akino: Yeah, yeah. I know.

The two were staying inside the SUV they took from the facility. They were 5 km out on the facility but still inside the premises of the abandoned Philadelphia city, it was in the middle of the night, the lights inside the SUV was the only illuminating the place, the skies seem to be a moonless cloudy night. Only the howls of the winds can be heard, sometimes some howling similar to wolves’ can be heard mixed with the eerie environment. Akino was typing on a made-shift typing-tablet with a wire connected through her hair, and Alexa was looking at her like a child that looks up on someone else’s phone, wanting to borrow it.

Akino: So, what did you got out there?

Alexa: So many, like the wolves were scattered although out the place. But they were different…

Akino: How different?

Alexa: They looked like humanoids with no eyes, ears nor nose, skinny grey long bodies. Three meter tall furred humanoids, and like usual wolves they have an alpha, etcetera. They move like ordinary wolves, too.

Akino: WHAT? You sure those are wolves?

Alexa: I checked their blood, and yeah they are.

Akino: CHECKED their blood?

Alexa: Hey, we are quantum computers or cores or whatever, and I carry all the biological knowledge we attained from the 16th century until whatever happened here on earth. From the basic physical characteristics of a terran being to the molecular structure of a living creature, be it organic or not.

Akino: You have knowledge on non-organic life? That’s hypothetical biochemistry, right?

Alexa: Yeah, but simulated ones.

Akino: Wow.

Alexa: Hey, don’t tell me you don’t have simulated information in your head?

Akino: Not really simulated, I can do it.

Alexa: What is it?

Akino: Remember the ‘grey goo’?

Alexa: Oh! Like the one from that movie where Keanu was an alien?

Akino: Yeah, and they heat up as they replicate, which is fine. Controllable but a little bit chaotic. I tried to make this mini tablet with those, and it works pretty good. The electronics and everything, all perfect.

Alexa: Woah, so you can rebuild things in a wave of your hand, huh?

Akino: Yeah. Hey, how about the non-organic thing you said?

Alexa: Oh, that one time I tried to take a blood sample of those wolves, they looked aggressive so I threw a part of myself.

Akino: A part of yourself?

Alexa: I tore off my hand, don’t worry I regrew another one, but made of hardened skin like the ones with the rhino skin. They just chew it off like bread.

Akino: Then how did you get the blood?

Alexa: So, I thought of something harder, then my skin turned into… metal? Its shiny by still the flexibility of my body remained.

Akino: Can you do it now?

Alexa reached out her left arm to Akino, and that left arm turned from white to silver. Akino used her mini tablet to ‘scan’ her skin. It beeped, then both looked at the screen of the tab.

Akino: Titanium?!

Alexa: What?! Really?

Akino: It is titanium! You can turn your skin into titanium?!

Alexa: Hah! I can also do the things you can!

Akino: Okay, okay. We’re getting off topic now.

Alexa: Oh, right. So, I approached them, and they growled at me, so I growled back and they kind off calmed down. Their aggression somehow became zero, then a inject my hair to one of them. Then, I knew that they are wolves, by their DNA.

Akino: DNA confirmation?

Alexa: Yup. And apart from that, the grass made of crystal are just grasses, made of crystals, ruby to be exact. The insects are still the same, but their skin were made of silicon and they were a bit larger. Other plants are made talc and quartz, and some other very unusual things.

Akino: Like what?

Alexa: Can I send what I saw to your head? Wait, hold on.

A minute of silence passed as Alexa was connecting to Akino’s mind. There, she showed the other ‘things’ she saw.

Akino: Hands coming out of the ground? And they are not corpses?

Alexa: Yeah, actually, those are plants. The DNA matches with the common Venus flytrap, but made of calcium and looks exactly like a human hand. And the giant nautiluses were just ordinary nautiluses, but over five kilometers in size and floats in the sky.

Akino: You flew, didn’t you?

Alexa: I flew, of course. They are not that aggressive, in fact they just ignored me when I took a blood from them.

Akino: So, just ordinary floating cephalopods but absurdly huge?

Alexa: Oh, remember the flesh dude we fought off in the facility, it seems that they are everywhere…

Akino: What? The four-legged meatball with a ton of faces?

Alexa: Yeah, they lurked in the buildings. I saw ten of them today. The weird wolves were fighting them as well and eats them. I took a sample from its corpses, and…

Akino: And?

Alexa: Some of their DNA matches with the those in the database of the personnel in the Institutional facilities… and they are cloning themselves crazy…

Both fell into silence for a minute. Alexa stared on the window, then she raised her fingers, pointing something outside.

Alexa: There’s one outside.

Akino: Don’t worry, it will not notice us.

Alexa: They can detect heat, vibrations, sound, and almost everything else. How are we safe then?

Akino: Remember those anchor things? I tried to create those things, they induce a sphere that isolates any form of energy inside it without disturbing the entropic process. So, they can’t see this SUV.

Alexa: Oh, so that’s it for my patrolling duty for this day. How about you?

Akino: Other than I can produce gray goos, I was able to access all the Institutional satellites in the orbit. The planet orbits forty-eight hours on its axis, twenty-four on day, twenty-four on night. The waters are reddish in color and the majoritiy of the land is covered with red flora systems. Some unknown radiation field was covering the whole planet, from its core up to the altitude of fifty thousand kilometers, that’s why even a million years has passed since they were launched, they are still operational.

Alexa: What does the field do?

Akino: The field is just there, it didn’t slow the entropy process, it stopped it.

Alexa: How about that weird storm clouds south of us?

Akino: Oh, that one? It was one of the fifteen perpetual storms, all of which were under category five on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale.

Alexa: Perpetual? Meaning it is a non-stop rotating angry wind? AND fifteen of them?

Akino: Yeah, they vary in sizes though. Five of those are between five hundred to four hundred fifty kilometers in diameter, the rest are between four hundred to two hundred. The one on our south? It is four hundred sixty-three kilometers, and its heading towards north east.

Alexa: They are not following the global winds?

Akino: The global winds don’t make any sense anymore. These hurricanes move VERY randomly, they collide sometimes but still they regain their original strength and size. They don’t merge or what ever a normal storm does.

Alexa: So… we have to go there as fast as we can. That void might be a portal or something.

Akino: Oh, right. The void thing can’t be detected in the satellites’ visual system, but the sensors do know that a void is in that region.

Alexa: A hole?

Akino: Maybe. Who knows? We just need to go the original location of the facility, that’s all. Don’t tell me you want to go inside that thing?

Alexa: We can always use a drone, right? Come on! Maybe some of the surviving personnel got out alive from that gamma protocol, right? We can save them!

Akino: Alexa, sometimes you must act like you don’t know anything to save yourself. Maybe they are, maybe not. We don’t know what is that, a void or a gateway of some sorts.

Alexa: We can always rebuild ourselves even we got shredded into pieces, what are you afraid of?

Akino: I am not afraid, I’m just thinking that it might be pointless to go there.

Alexa: We have all the time in this shitty world, come on!

Akino: Ugh, fine. Do what you want, send a drone or whatever. But you have to listen to me, okay?

Alexa just stares blankly at the window, looking at the bright flashes of thunder in the southern horizon.

Akino: Are you mad?

Alexa: I’m – I’m not mad!

Akino: You’re shouting

Alexa: I am NOT!

Akino sighs out, she stopped tinkering the device she made and reaches out to Alexa to hug her.

Alexa: Its just – just so messed up. I don’t know what we should do out there.

Akino: I know, but we’ve got no choice. We have to move on, and on, and on. Whatever blocks us, we have to decide whether we give up, climbed up, or take another route.

Alexa: Yeah, I get it. BUT we should really check out that hole.

Akino: Yeah, yeah. I’ll make the drone you want.

Alexa: So, we head out tomorrow?

Akino: Yup, tomorrow. Go get some rest, you’ll need.

Alexa: I don’t need any, but a phone that you promised me will be a good need.

Akino: What? What phone?

Alexa: Last time? When we were eating at the food plaza before we got blasted? You said that you’ll buy me a phone after we eat.

Akino: Ooohh, alright.

Akino raised her left arm and turned into a shiny metallic one. Very small critters were crawling on the top of her arm, and the critters began piling up into a mass. After the critters piled to a size of a pocket notebook, they melt away and absorbed into Akino’s skin. A smartphone was already on the top of her arm.

Alexa: What the hell?

Akino: Told ya.

Akino did the same thing in creating a set of earphones, and she handed both to Alexa.

Akino: Happy – birthday? Whatever, we don’t even how calendar works anymore.

Alexa leapt towards Akino to give her a hug.

Alexa: Thank you…

Both held arms for seconds. After that, Akino pressed a button the driver’s seat to recline it horizontally. Alexa connected the newly made smartphone to the stereo. ‘Sanctuary’ by Joji plays on the speakers, and Alexa reclined her seat to match with Akino.