Omni - DTAE

Instructions

finished, finally! as you can see in the project, my original piece was very different, but i struggled so much with the shading i decided to redo it :-: i’m SUPER happy with the finished product, it was a fun style experiment! ── ⋆⋅bio⋅⋆ ── • Athena • She/her • Seeker since age 10(Read the story to find out more!) • Loyal, empathetic, stubborn • Pessimist ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ── ⋆⋅story!⋅⋆ ── The great city of Notitia, one of the last ‘advanced’ cities in the world, was crumbling to the ground. Its ancient infrastructure was hanging by a thread, and the art of Building had been lost long ago. Thousands of years before, the Builders existed. They covered the earth in cities, until there was nothing left they needed to Build. But once all the cities were built, they slowly lost their art, not needing to create any new permanent structures. The Builder’s technology made great leaps instead, and they worked on vast computers and wiring systems, but now that the city itself was falling apart, cameras and screens couldn’t do much to fix it. When the first building fell almost sixty years ago, Notitia’s Council decided to take action. They needed to find what the Builders’ techniques were to repair the city. The Builders used to have entire archives of their work, but age, decay, and wars had destroyed almost all information about them, turning them into mere legends. The Council came up with a way to find this information: a new race of cyborgs called Seekers. They would be given technology that allowed them to record, store, process, and communicate information at incredibly high speeds. Since no one volunteered to join his project, they decided to take in children no one else did: orphans. They gave them an opportunity for a successful life, or so the Council claimed. ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── I didn’t want to be taken. My life was fine without all this technology at my fingertips. Is serving a ‘higher cause’ really worth being stripped of freedom and choices? ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── “Hey, Athena,” A voice behind me jolted me back to present day. “are you done brooding yet? We have a building to search, remember?” It was my teammate, Calista. All Seekers were given a partner to scour different parts of the city with, and I was partnered with Calista a little over two months ago. To the Council, we were nothing but effective workers, percentages on a screen, but to me, she was more than just a partner to relay information to. She was a friend. “I’ve been thinking…” I started, feeling Calista’s gaze turn toward me, “what if we *do* find the Answer, and the city gets repaired?” “Wow,” Calista remarked, “that might be the most optimistic thing I’ve ever heard from you.” “Gee, thanks,” I said dryly, before continuing, “what would we do then? Would all Seekers just live normal lives? Or would we continue Seeking the Answer to another impossible question?” It was hard to imagine finding the Answer. There were hundreds- if not a thousand- Seekers, constantly snooping for information, inside the city and out. Even after decades of work, leafing through ancient texts, going through every museum, only a fraction of useless information had been found about the Builders. At the rate the buildings around them were falling, nothing would be left of the city once the Answer was found. “I don’t know,” Calista admitted at last. “I don’t think the Council would let go of their precious Seekers, even when our mission is fulfilled.” I wanted to keep talking with her, but Calista made her impatience clear as she ushered me forward into the building. We had been sent to investigate it for information- it had been abandoned for years, and was one of the older buildings in the city- but I doubted we would find much. Calista and I had been sent to Seek in this city many times before, without any luck. The building before us was short in comparison to the towers around it, but it seemed to hold up fairly well. It didn’t have any haphazard supports that suggested it was about to collapse, and all of its walls were straight and uncracked. The buildings’ dark, empty windows seemed to stare at me, and I found myself looking away anxiously. -Why am I so nervous all of a sudden?- I wondered, knowing Calista could sense my unease. I tried to quiet myself, take a deep breath before entering. Unsurprisingly, the building was empty. Everything was coated in a thick lay er of dust, and stray wiring stuck out of places where there used to be lights. As we entered, our robotic eyes cast a dim fluorescent glow over the room, illuminating cracks spiderwebbing down the walls. Guess it wasn’t as stable as I thought. That was when my eyes caught them. Footprints on the floor, and fresh, the dust newly disturbed. “We’re not alone,” I whispered. ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── -the end! sorry about the abrupt ending, i didn’t want to make the story any longer than it already was :P-