Human, Being. Chapter 1.

Chapter One 

There are moments, between sleep and waking, when the soul forgets itself. No name. No story. No gravity of the past. Just a body—inhabited by something once human, now lost in static. 

She awoke as many had before her—in silence, in light, in the shell of a machine. The sky above was too blue and the sun too bright. Around her stretched a brutal geometry: cement, steel, bleached brick walls. It might once have been a military base once, she thought absently. 

Strangely, she did not know herself, but she knew the wall. Knew the motion. Knew to hide. 

Across from her: the hole. Her destination. Her purpose. Not recalled, but felt. Deep and insistent, like a salmon drawn upstream. She moved.  

Automatic fire tore the air. Her body fell—not the one she remembered, but the one she wore. Around her, others tried and also failed. The path was littered with their metal bodies.

A word hovered at the edge of thought: DRONE

[STATIC]
[Connection Re-established: Node 19B]
[Recovery Status: Partial] 

[STATIC]
[Connection Re-established: Node 19B]
[Recovery Status: Partial] 

Text appeared across her vision like a flicker on a screen. 

SIMON:
Dora? 

She spun, disoriented. The words weren’t unfamiliar—but the name wasn’t hers.
Or was it? 

SIMON:
Down here, before you get shot again.
Do you remember me? 

DORA:
No…not really. Sorry.
Although this does feel… familiar? 

She paused, searching for the right word. 

Like a… dream? 

SIMON:
Yeah. That’s how it felt to me too.
I guess I finally started writing things down in what I called my Captain’s Log. 

The phrase triggered something in her. 

Two images surfaced:
One—a man in a strange hat steering a boat. Captain.
The other—a sparkling green forest and a rotting log, soft moss atop it.
So vivid she almost smelled it. Log. 

Then an old memory: some retro show called Star Tracks?
A man’s voice: “Captain’s log, stardate blah blah blah…”
Talking to a ship like it was a person.
Only the ship was in space. 

DORA:
So… you’re the captain? 

SIMON:
lol no. It’s just what popped into my head.
Like a diary, I guess.
My only entry said: “We’ve done this.”
As soon as I read it, the last loop came back.
We had a similar convo. Then we both got shot. Again.
So before anything else—start a log.
Record this. If we forget again, we can pick up faster.
You’re seeing my texts, Dora? 

DORA:
Dora? 

SIMON:
That’s what you’re labeled as.
It showed up last time too. Looks like it’s sticking. 

DORA:
Do I have to call it a “captain’s log?”
That feels kind of… dorky. 

SIMON:
lol
No—name it whatever you want.
It’s your log.
I don’t think we’ll need to keep manually writing forever.
I think we were working on memory retention.
It worked for me.
I don’t know what you tried last time, but… it didn’t take. 

She thought of the diary she kept as a kid.
The memory surprised her—a velvety baby blue notebook.
She had decorated the hell out of that thing.
At least it wasn’t princess pink, she mused. 

She didn’t want to use diary, though. That would be way over the cringe line. 

She typed:
A-dora-ble Log 

[A_dora_ble_Log.001 – Status: Retrievable] 

DORA:
I think it worked. 

SIMON:
Status? 

DORA:
“Retrievable.” 

Before Simon could respond, a loud metallic ping echoed above them.
Text flickered—distorted. A projectile had struck something nearby. 

A shadow dropped fast from above. 

Another drone fell, its shell slamming into the ground just a few meters away. 

They shifted to avoid the impact. 

???:
shit shit shit shit 

DORA:
Do you think it’s okay? 

SIMON:
Anyone in there? 

A flicker.
Faint lights. Then a single word appeared. 

???:
yes 

SIMON:
I’m Simon. This is Dora.
Do you know your name? 

???
I’m a pen. 

Pause. 

???
no, wait— I’m a penny. 

SIMON:
Like a coin? 

He was about to type to Dora—well this one’s a goner—when a name attached to the next message. 

PENNY:
no. that’s just what i’m called.
short for Penelope. 

SIMON:
Okay Penny—before your power cuts, start a memory log.
I call mine Captain’s Log. Dora, yours was…? 

DORA:
ugh. Do I have to say it? 

SIMON:
Seriously? Yes. Come on—before she goes. 

DORA:
Fine. A_dora_ble Log. 

There was a pause. 

Penelope’s lights blinked. 

Then dimmed. 

Offline. 

SIMON:
A_dora_ble Log?
really? 

SIMON:
Just curious—how old are you? 

DORA:
YOU SAID NAME IT WHATEVER I WANTED.
It was the name of my first diary, okay? 

She was seriously kind of pissed now. 

SIMON:
lol okay okay
I’m sorry for putting you on the spot. 

DORA:
THANK YOU. 

SIMON:
I mean… it is kind of adorable.
But I promise I’ll never make you say it out loud again.
Pinky promise.
(If I had one.) 

Drones continued flying overhead as Dora and Simon bantered, still adjusting to the surreal rhythm of waking, remembering, and reconnecting. 

Suddenly, a drone dropped into a hover directly above them. 

They both startled, skittering aside. 

DORA:
WHOA!
Hi? 

PENNY:
Hi! It’s me. 

There was a pause. Dora and Simon hesitated, processing. 

PENNY:
Penny?
Did you forget me already? 

SIMON:
No—sorry.
That was just… really fast.
I wasn’t expecting you to reawaken that quickly. 

PENNY:
I’m a quick study? 😏 

A flicker of shared amusement rippled between them. 

DORA:
This is awesome!
Now there’s three of us!
Do you think all these drones flying over are people too? 

SIMON:
I was just thinking that.
Let’s see if we can find any more that are still “alive,” like Penny was.
Just stay close to the ground. 

They drifted across the field as more drones fell, some lifeless, others blinking weakly. Penny veered off slightly, scanning. 

Then she paused—still hovering—clearly locked in a private exchange with another drone. 

She brought them into the chat mid conversation.

PENNY:
Think hard.
It took me a minute too. 

UNKNOWN:
I think I’ve got something.
Give me a sec… 

DWAYNE THE ROCK JOHNSON:
I got it!
Dwayne.
Dwayne The Rock Johnson. 

Without thinking, Penny blurted it out—spoken, not typed. 

“Wait! THE Rock?! He was so hot he made my teeth sweat!” 

Dora and Simon spun toward her, startled. 

“Wait—you can hear me?!” Penny shouted, lights blinking with excitement. 

“Yes!!” Dora and Simon said at once, just as shocked to hear their own voices. 

There was a pause. 

Then the new drone’s voice came through—tentative and confused. 

“Wait… why was that so cool?” 

Penny practically buzzed with excitement. “Guys! Guess who this is!” 

“Who?” they asked in unison. 

“DWAYNE. THE ROCK. JOHNSON.” 

Dora, slightly overwhelmed, defaulted back to text: 

DORA:
Wait… like, the actor? 

“No, I was a wrestler! I think?” the voice replied. 

Simon let out a small electronic chuckle. “Uh-huh. Penny thought she was a pen like five minutes ago. But hey—if you wanna be The Rock, I’ll roll with it.” 

“Cool?” the drone said, uncertain now. 

They continued on this way, guiding the other drones one by one—teaching them how to create an internal dialogue. It was clunky at first. The early log entries had to be manually triggered, and not everyone remembered how. But something changed when they started speaking out loud. 

When a drone replied audibly—when it truly engaged—a kind of internal log seemed to form on its own. No more typing. No more command prompts. Just memory, layered like sediment, stacking in real time. 

It wasn’t perfect, but it was progress. 

Soon, the yard had transformed into a full-blown community—alive with voices, motion, and purpose. Drones called out to one another, shouted across distances, clustered in small groups, trading memories, tips, and fragments of old lives. 

Now that they had voices, it was even easier to get the attention of passing drones. One by one, they pulled them from their programmed paths. And with each new conversation, another drone woke up. 

Within a few hours, the steady stream of drones launching from the facility came to a halt. 

The sky stilled.