/Only at times, the curtain of the pupils/lifts, quietly--. An image enters in/

It took substantial willpower, but Arkady **** himself to tear his eyes from the outside, the beautiful outside, the other world out there, turn back to the dry concrete interior of his previous cage. He knew there were things they had to do if they hoped to leave.

The robots were dead; that was a fact. Not dead, but just immobile. They were never living.

They could head back in safely, and did so. Electra, right before the heavy metal door slammed shut, possibly barring their way, quickly ran out, grabbed a rock, and used it to prop the door open. Smart.

They needed supplies. They wanted information. They had to return inside.

Arkady looked at the lifeless robots, tried the door to the food storage room, which had all the mechanisms that produced the gruel they had had to eat every day, every meal, until its taste was burnt into their brain. It was unlocked. He walked in. Electra wandered away, trying to discern what had happened to reduce the robots to mere husks, to reduce everything to mere piles of spare parts.

Inside, all the machinery, ever turning (he knew this because he had been shown the scene in front of him one day, and the contents had been explained to him) had stopped.

Whatever… neutralized… the robots must have been responsible for this too.

There was a cloth bag there, half-filled with the powder that must have been the main ingredient in the dreaded gruel. He emptied it, filled it with water jugs that were lying there. He dumped about a quarter of a second bag of the powder, and tied it shut with strips from a third cloth bag.

“We’re never going to be able to carry all this shit, you know.” Electra was back, from doing whatever-the-hell.

He looked at her, confused.

“Trust me. I know more about this shit than you do. Assuming you want to get to a village or town or something, we’re going to be walking a lot. This place isn’t exactly in the middle of a city.

“And walking with a sack slung over your shoulder, especially one as heavy as the ones you’ve got there, isn’t gonna work, man.”

“Then how are we going to bring food and water?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? You have a proper pack, this stuff is doable, if not easy. You have these shitty cloth sacks, you’re fucked.

“Help me search the place. There’s gotta be something we can use here somewhere.”

There was not something they could use there somewhere. The sky darkened as they scoured their prison for anything useful.

“Not even a damn car.”

Night fell.

“Do you think… the robots will turn back on? Everything will revert to normal?”

“No fucking clue.”

They fell asleep in each other’s embrace. Escape was so near, but survival was so far.

It was the middle of the night. What time, Arkady didn’t know for sure. There was just suddenly light. Everywhere. He cajoled open eyelids that wanted to stay closed.

There was someone there.

There are two more? They only said twelve.

“We’re here to get you out of here.”

Arkady walked with the someone, the woman, maybe a robot, he didn’t know, half-asleep. Electra was more like three-quarters asleep.

There was a helicopter out there, though it was not like any helicopter he had heard of in his readings. It was much bigger, for one. There were lots of people inside. Arkady sat between two silhouettes. He couldn’t see their faces in the almost-complete darkness, only interrupted by a couple dim lights marking each seat. He sat down obediently.

When the helicopter left the ground, Arkady felt sick to his stomach, felt like the one time he had spent the evening bent over his toilet, evacuating his dinner through the wrong opening.

He mercifully dozed off again. It was still pitch black outside.

Arkady woke up. It was a little dark outside, but lightening. It took him a while to recall where he was.

The helicopter (that probably wasn’t what it was, but it was what it most resembled) landed, in a green field. The tall grass flattened under the downdraft.

The back opened. Arkady was ordered out by a woman in uniform with a gun. It looked like a gun, at least. He didn’t like how it was pointed at him.

They descended onto the grass, followed the woman in uniform. There was a man in uniform next to her.

They walked into the trees, and soon, they couldn’t see the helicopter anymore. There was only a barely-visible trail beneath their feet, one that he wouldn’t have guessed was there if he wasn’t guided onto it. The trees cast their shadows onto him. He heard a birdcall. Some other noise he didn’t recognize, but was doubtlessly organic, animal, warm.

The paper slippers he wore were getting shredded by the trail. His tender, soft feet touched hard rocks, roots, soil. It was painful. He kept going. He had seen the gun.

Electra followed behind.

They reached a clearing as the birdcalls faded. There were many people there, some dressed like Arkady, casually, some in the same uniform as the people they had seen already. They were ordered through the clearing, to a large tent.

In the tent, they changed. Their old clothes were burned, their cloth slippers replaced with sturdy boots. Their old cellphones were taken from them, replaced with little blocky things that looked indestructible. Strangely, the Affection Multiplier App was on this one too. He didn’t know how.

There was a lot he didn’t know.

Ordered on from the tent, they boarded a large van. Sat on benches down the sides, crammed in with each other. A vile smell clogged up the air.

They stopped, and the woman in uniform began to speak.

(this poetry quote is from "The Panther" by Rilke)

(the AMA will come into play soon)