system out: {hello world}

The lighting inside Laboratory X turned emergency red. Miazaki was walking in long steps, pretending he wasn't running moments ago. He disguised his pants as long inhales and exhales. 

Fear and relief fought within him like two same poles of magnates brought together by forced yet can't help but rebel each other. He was in his office, sweaty palm clenched around the USB driver. He avoided looking at the busy poster in a frame above his desk.

A wire connected his computer to a sunglasses with a retro cartoonish design. He hastily connected the USB driver to the computer as menacingly calm footsteps got louder and louder. 

The download took too long but the footsteps didn't.

' DAMN IT!' He cursed internally, the loading bar didn't even hit 50% yet. 

'That's one heck of a firewall..' He opened a drawer of his desk, slow as a snail while looking at the door. This was a lost cause so next step it is.

'This whole thing was a lost cause to begin with..' 

A loud thud happened as the boss touched the door knob of Miazaki's office. The boss rose an eyebrow coldly as he approached the desk confidently. Miazaki was laying face down on the ground, obviously unconscious. The boss's null eyes scanned the desk. Computer, paper work of the current project and some one thousand pages programming languages books. 

The boss lifted some papers to find more papers and pintables. Code was written on paper with red highlights on the bugs. 

"How old fashioned, you always amused me Miazaki. Too bad it came to this.

Ash headed out of the restroom, heart pounding in his ears only to find the boss dragging unconscious Miazaki on his shoulder. 

"W-what happened?" Ash asked with a faint voice, meek as usual.

"Miazaki collapsed, exhaustion probably." The boss explained calmly.

"I.. see allow me to help you.." 

"I got this, you should get back to work. We are swamped right now." Despite the soft spoken nature of the boss the order was clear.

"Yes boss."

Ash walked back to his office thinking.

'Miazaki? The guy that pulls three all-nighters like nothing ? Didn't he take a leave till yesterday? Well don't think about it. I can't do much even if I wanted to.' 

He passed Miazaki's office, open door and messy desk and something hidden in plain sight. A funny looking sunglasses were in the center of the framed picture above Miazaki's office. 

'No.. the funny copy of the melted clocks painting with stickers added to it did not have sunglasses.' He questioned his memory, repeatedly remembering the route from the restroom to his office passing by Miazaki's office, the always open Miazaki's office where he glanced that picture everyday.

He tip toed his way to the picture only to find the sunglasses arms taped to the glass of the frame, threatening to slip any minute. While he frees the sunglasses from the tape something falls from behind the painting to the ground. 

He jumps like it's a giant rat but it's actually a piece of wet fabric inside a Ziploc bag. Not priding himself in his decision making skills he puts the sunglasses in his pocket and picks up and takes the fabric out. He had some pride in his chemistry skills though.

Eyes wide open, he puts it in the bag immediately.

'Chlorophorm?! No, close enough though. A similar compound, works slower but last much much longer. No no no, I could be wrong.' He looked in panic left and right.

"Warning! stop moving." An automatic voice spawned from his pocket, he's just frozen in fear now. 

He was back at the restroom's stall. Now inspecting the back of the sunglasses, it had a processor, RAM and a small memory chip mixed with other junk and buttons Ash couldn't tell what it was. All embedded into the two lenses. 

He pressed a blue button on the left arm and an autotuned voice spoke, luckily he found the volume buttons on the other arm quickly enough.

- Miazaki's consciousness transferring project, prototype stage.- 

"What the..?" He thought he was hallucinating, the windows XP startup sound that follows didn't help negate such theory.

#Emergency state... working on calling the police.. still working on the fire wall.#

 "Huh?" 

#This voice.. You much be assistant Ash according to the sonic data.#

"You really...transferred your consciousness?"

#Unstable prototype. Need more years to complete. No talk. Need processor power for something else.# 

"It's no use. All devices are tempered with.. police, fire department, you name it. No calls gets through, even outside. Save the processing time." He looked at the ground.

#Perhaps you're sharper than you let on.#

"Not really. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time." 

#How much do you know..?#

"Boss stealing the research of Y. Blackmail and tempering with Y's car; sending the poor thing to a coma?" He took a deep shaky breath. " That's what happen when you get overwhelmed with work and hide under a desk."

#...# 

"Yeah, you won't get it. What was you thinking anyway? Your body is with the boss now." 

#I found evidence. I imagined I can easily break through the fire wall and get to the police after stealing the evidence, so I focused on breaking into the boss's devices.#

# Guess that's how far a half assed plan and code with 400 warnings gets you.#

Ash went back to work with a sunglasses in his pocket and one tenth of his ability to function.

'It's no use, the footage of me entering Miazaki's office and taking the sunglasses must be in the camera. It's a matter of time..'

At eight pm he was finally able to get back home, or to the employee's housing near the laboratory to be exact. He looked at his key in his hand, about to open the apartment's door. He walked away.

At the residence gate he told the security about meeting with a friend before heading out.

#Meeting a friend in work clothes. Boss must love how easy you're making it.#

"You got the evidence?" Ash looked at the port in the sunglasses arm.

#Yes.#

"Let's go."

#Police? The nearest station is almost ten kilometers.# He questioned.

"It is all screwed anyway. Even before this."

He jogged. Car's rarely passed here in this isolated area, neither of them is from this city to begin with. 

The walk was indeed long, especially for someone who didn't go outside for so long. He slowed down, looking up at the bleak sky where two stars barely shone and the red fast moving dot of an airplane will probably reach its destination before them. 

The eerie air of the empty well lit streets started to get to him. The lack of sounds made his own footsteps feel foreign, perhaps because he didn't walk outside the laboratory's sound absorbing floors for a long time. The outside air freshened his lunges. 

"Kinda nice.. to be outside."

#Wish I can poke fun at this sentence, but my house is made of glass.#

"This is crazy though, the whole transferring your consciousness thing." 

#Still far from complete if you asked me what I had for dinner I couldn't tell you, still need to install object sensing system. Sound sensors alone not enough..#

He flinched at the ringing of his phone, an unknown number. His fingers were far from the accept button but the call started anyway emphasizing how tampered with the phones were. 

"Hello, Ash. Mind if you come to my office and bring your glasses friend with you?" The soft spoken unrefusable order said. 

He stared at the screen, even the half transferred mind started to mingle with worry at the long pause.

"You know boss, I thought for a long time now.. about quitting."

"How cruel of you Ash, aren't you worried about your coworker?"

"We're not even on the same team." His shaking finger ended the call, a drop of sweat trailed down his neck. 

#Keep going while we could.# 

The sunglasses couldn't see the fear and guilt it his eyes but the pause supplied sufficient information.

#It was all screwed even before this. Don't think about me, I knew what I was getting myself into.#

"Why the Chlorophorm cousin though?"

#Big chance the police won't do anything about the boss from a regular report. But a knocked out person would've change that.#

"If we only could call the polic-"

#CAREFUL !# 

Ash jumped from the warning only to bump on someone with a knife behind him, the auto tone warning had a shock factor on the masked man too.

#RUN#

And running he did, scrawny legs scrambling away. One hand on his pocket to secure the sunglasses. Adrenaline took off in his system, giving the burst needed to make an initial distance.

'If I could reach the main street!'

The masked man was not far from catching up to him, as well as his physical limitation.

He eyes a trash can not so far away, suppling the last bit of adrenaline his neurons can make and spread in his muscles.

He manages to reach it, taking the lid before kicking it in the attackers way. It did less damage than the lid he threw like a giant frisbee, hitting the man enough to stop him temporarily.

"Aaah!" Ask screamed in pain. A muscle cramp like an electric shock ran through his arm and shoulder.

#What happened?!#

He ignored the question, barely running, the main street was on the sight. A dingy super market was the closest to him.

#Not this way NOT this way! Turn! Don't enter the main street! The police station is the other way! Not the time for a water break !# Said the glitching code.

The masked man lurked in the last inch of the laboratory street, eyeing Ash gulping water inside the super market like an almost dying man.

He waited until Ash head out of the super market with two big plastic bags, walking in a bystreet. A known shortcut to the police station.

The man walked slowly, he concluded with the physical state of Ash he could catch him in the quite bystreet before he would reach the station.

Upon entering the wet street he eyed Ash, no longer with the plastic bags. Abandoned bottles of bleach and flash were hard to spot on the corners of the street.

'I think I'm far enough.' He takes a breath again like a drowning man.

A voice came from his phone.

"Ash, wouldn't you care if your not so coworker got hurt?"

The Surprise and muscle fatigue made him trip on nothing. Falling to his knees.

#What you think you're doing! Get up. You're almost at the destination!#

"Shut up Mr.google maps." He cried and yelled in pain.

#CAREFUL!#

He thought he knew pain, but the knife in his calf suggested other wise. He let a silent scream as tear poured from his eyes. The masked man almost towered him before collapsing on the ground, as the gas kicked in.

# Please don't let it end here.# The cracked sunglasses said, suffering some damage from Ash's fall.

"Well, I wasn't good enough for anything to begin with..." His vision blurred.

"Actually.. That's not true. I crumbled from the first hurdle....Boxed myself in that sentience and let myself slip away. And look at me now, A mere lab assistant..."

Maybe it was anger, or conviction. Or maybe he felt he could've pulled himself together instead of clinging to the illusion of -it's all screwed- crawling to get a second chance to reform the deformed, no maybe a chance to live the rest.

He crawled and dragged his leg.

The sunglasses was glitching more, the last sentence was hard to find a response to.

#I made mistakes. Thought I knew better than everyone, isolated them all and thought I could do it all alone. Crawl Ash, at least you're not a sunglasses.#

Two police officers were frightened at the sight of a crawling man.

Three weeks after, Miazaki looked at the news from his hospital bed waiting for his discharge.

-Laboratory X lead scientist arrested for heinous acts- was in the lower bar now as the case died down.

The police also was done with taking information from them, luckily to Ash claiming the two planned this for a while and the sunglasses was noting more than a glorified usb with a small navigation program since all devices were tempered with.

The cpu also broke from the fall, letting the police believe that and focus on Y's case so project consciousness transferring still a secret. A two people's secret now.

Speaking of who, despite all that crying Ash healed faster than him.


"Good, the stab wound on your arm is almost heal now. Please visit next week for a check up." The doctor said.

He made sure to say goodbye to his hospital friend, asking him to hang out when he get discharged.

The genital sun of the autumn morning was too strong for his eyes but the warmth on his skin amended for it. A fiat car stopped in front of him.

"Wanna go job hunting?" Ash rolled the window.

"Why not." He smiled, entering the car.