The woman’s fingertip, pale as bleached bone, detached the small button from the smooth socket at her temple. It relinquished its hold with a soft click, a severing of the tendril that had momentarily plunged her consciousness into the crude, chaotic currents of a forgotten age. She placed the obsidian sliver into the receiving cradle of the communal archive unit, its matte surface absorbing the faint shimmer of the device. The unit pulsed once, a silent acknowledgement of the data ingested into the collective memory. The air in the sector was recycled, sterile, devoid of individual scent. The walls, seamless expanses of bio-engineered concrete, curved inward, meeting a vaulted ceiling that pulsed with a soft, ambient luminescence—a shared light for the collective. She unseated herself from the communal rest module, the magnetic seals releasing with a quiet hiss. Her movements were fluid, economical, mirroring the practiced efficiency of those around her. She stood at the window. Just a break in the seamless curve of the sector's wall. Beyond the reinforced glass, a row of geometric precision stretched to the horizon. Towering concrete structures, their surfaces devoid of ornamentation, rose in perfect alignment, forming a grid-like cityscape that seemed to defy the very notion of organic growth. Walls, vast and unyielding, carved the world into precise sectors, their surfaces reflecting the dull, omnipresent light of the collective. There were no trees, no open spaces, only the relentless repetition of right angles and parallel lines. Above, slender, wingless vehicles, powered by an unseen force, moved with silent efficiency along predetermined routes, like blood cells flowing through the arteries of a colossal organism. The sky, glimpsed only in narrow strips between the towering structures, was a uniform grey, no clouds or any hint of natural weather patterns. It was a world engineered for maximum efficiency, a hive made of concrete and steel, where individuality had been sacrificed for the sake of the collective—a stark contrast to the chaotic, untamed world she had just witnessed.

  Sensory input was regulated, curated for optimal cognitive function within the network. Individual whims for external stimuli were… inefficient.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  There was no jostling, no individualistic pattern. Her partner, Unit 91-Alpha, materialized beside her, his presence a shared awareness within the immediate vicinity of the network.

  Unit 91-Alpha: Temporal divergence query. Location accessed? His thought resonated within their shared consciousness.

  Her internal response was immediate. Designated archive: Early-technological era. Approximately three thousand cycles prior to Collective integration.

  Unit 91-Alpha: My data stream for that period is… incomplete. Environmental parameters? Societal structure?

  She paused, her gaze unfocused, still seeing the ghosts of that long-vanished time. The stark light from the ceiling caught the sharp angles of her face, revealing a weariness that seemed to go beyond mere hours.

  His response, a blend of internal resonance and spoken word, was swift. "I haven't viewed that era yet. What was it like?"

  Her shoulders shifted with less than a bump. "Their understanding… rudimentary. Their technologies… unrefined. They wielded them with a recklessness born of ignorance. Their communication was fragmented. Their knowledge a patchwork of superstition and developing science. They were driven by primal urges, by conflicts rooted in resources and beliefs that seem utterly irrational now."

  The silence returned, heavy and absolute, broken only by the faint hum of the communal archive unit, still processing the echoes of a world long gone.

  He reached out, his hand hovering near hers, a gesture of shared understanding. He frowned slightly, his presence a subtle pressure in their shared awareness. “And how did they live?”

  She turned away, her silhouette stark against the ambient glow of the sector. The seamless walls stretched out before them, an endless testament to a world meticulously planned and ruthlessly controlled. And she said, “Like Savages.”