Chapter 5

After looking for a fair amount of time inside the water Sara swam back up and saw Sid standing next to the pool looking at her curiously.

"So ? Where is the body?"

He asked, he was almost certain that he was dead and that was why he didn't bother getting wet.

"It's weird, he should be down there but there is nothing."

Sid looked at her curiously and then decided to finally help her in her search, two hours later both of them jumped out of the water with weird emotions showing on their faces, how could a dead body disappear like this ?

It was also possible that he was alive but then he would have to swim back up and they would see him.

The reason Sara and Sid didn't find any trace of Sam was because he was sucked in a hole that was hidden with lots of aquatic plants, the pool seemed small from the surface but it was a lot bigger the deeper you went which added another layer of difficulty to their search.

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An unknown amount of time later Sam opened his eyes slowly and looked around himself, he wasn't in the water anymore but was laying on a hard rock floor instead.

'My leg ?'

He tried moving his leg and was surprised to see that it was moving as if nothing had happened, then he looked at his shoulder and although his uniform had been torn the skin underneath it was looking as fine as normal !

"What the fuck?"

He was so surprised to see his wounds had disappeared that he unconsciously blurted out loud, he stood up and jumped a few times on the spot and except a subtle ill feeling around his left thigh he was completely all right !

Finally he decided to check where he had ended up and he started looking around himself, he was in a damp cave illuminated by small light beads on the walls. Both sides of the cave had a stone path where you could walk and in the middle was a small river.

On the ceiling was also a hole from which flowed big amounts of water and fell right onto the ground.

'I guess I fell from there, it still doesn't explain how I ended up fully healed...'

As Sam was thinking about which way to head to find an exit he looked at his feet where a small robot was standing, it had a small square head with a single curved antennae and a humanoid body that was at most 20 centimeters tall.

Sam looked at it curiously while the robot kept signaling him with his finger to follow him.

'What...the...fuck...?'

He squatted next to the small robot and said

"Are you an AI ?"

The year was 2466 and on top of exploring space to far away galaxies humans had also developed A.I.s but since they had met a bottleneck and couldn't make them smarter they had basically given up on them.

The robot understood Sam's question and nodded but that was to be expected, although they had stopped evolving they had still developed a lot from year 2000 to year 2400.

"You want me to follow you ?"

The robot once again nodded and Sam decided to follow it, he didn't have anything to lose and he was curious if this small robot was the one who had healed him since there was nobody else around here.

They walked slowly in the cave because the robot had very small legs and couldn't make bigger steps, Sam found the scene funny and cute but kept following the robot without a word for a few minutes, in the end they reached the end of the tunnels and they went through a big door decorated with weird glyphs off unknown origin, although the door gave off an antique vibe it also had a very futuristic feel to it.

Sam felt like he was looking at a vestige of an extremely old but also extremely evolved and powerful civilization. He looked at the little robot that was trying to push the door open and decided to help it, he put both hands on the heavy door and although it looked like wood at first he realized it was cold and had a smooth metallic feel to it.

'How weird, what's this place?'

As he pushed the door open a bright light started seeping out of the room inside.

In the middle of the room was a single rock the size of a washing machine, Sam looked around and since it was the only thing in this room he walked towards it.

'Hmm...?'

On top of the stele was a cavity in the shape of a hand, he obviously understood what he had to do but he started hesitating. He looked at the small robot who was also looking at him and didn't do anything else, it was completely immobile.

"So you want me to do it without giving me any information?"

He sighed, he didn't know the origin of this small robot and he didn't understand its goal either but it was quite possibly it that had healed him and so he decided to put his hand there, for some reason he felt like the tiny robot was asking for help and that made him put his hand on the stele.

He felt nothing at first and then a small pain on his palm as if something have gone in, he lifted his hand and turned it around to check if there was something but nothing happened.

He looked at the robot curiously and he just saw it lifelessly crumbling to the ground.

"Hey! What happened ?"

He said while rushing next to it, for some reason he didn't treat it as a robot and was genuinely worried about it, inside him he felt like this A.I was kind of different from the A.I.s he was used to see.

[No need to worry Sam, I just transferred my consciousness inside you !]

Sam was surprised by the sudden robotic voice and looked around himself but except le lifeless robot and the stele there was nothing else and of course nobody else!

'Am I imagining things ? Maybe there is a toxic gas in these caves and I've inhaled too much of it...'

As he was about to leave the cave Sam heard the voice once again.

[I'm not your imagination, I'm the robot !]

Sam suddenly looked at the robot again but obviously the voice didn't come from it, he then looked at his palm that he had put on the stele and understood what had happened.

"So you went through my hand to transfer your consciousness inside me ? What are you ? What kind of magic is that ?"

Sam asked in a daze, he had tons of questions to ask the voice and he was most curious about how transferring a consciousness to another body was possible.

[I am an A.I, I was created 76 million years ago and I was supposed to be moved from this place soon after but a tragedy hit my creator and I ended up waiting here for way too long.]

'The first modern human is at most 200.000 years old so who the fuck was alive 76 million years ago and had such an insane technology?!'

[My creator isn't human, I am able to speak your language only because I downloaded it from your brain.]