The time still wasn't readable through the clouds. A significant part of the ashen clouds cleared up during these seven years. But the sun is rarely seen during the day.

Twelve in the morning? That's what Violetta's inner clock said. The analog clock in her hand said so too.

“Twelve in the morning, July of 2107. Thinking that this was once the hottest month on calendar is rather unusual. “, Violetta said. She stopped walking to brush off the mixture of frost and ashes that stuck onto her shoulder.

“The sun is probably that hard on the other side of the clouds. We're covered up that thick that it's still so cold even with those holes. “, Aiden replied, his hair was an ashen blue. He had stopped trying to get the ashes out of his hair ever since they started traveling. The wasteland always bought new ashes to his hair and it was tedious.

They were now in a town, most of the territory was some shade of gray from the load of ashes sticking on them. The shop displays seemed broken and most of the display stolen. It left them to look into the back of the shop with empty shelves.

The ground was gray and covered with a thick layer of ashes that traveled here from the other side of the world.

“This was either the work of desperate humans to survive,"

Violetta sighed, defeated.

"-or wicked robots who didn't have anything to do with themselves.“

She looked at one display, it seemed to be of a toy store. She tried to envision what it might have looked like, but she wasn't sure. Envisioning was a brain activity in humans. She neither had a brain or a mind. But it was a challenging thought of whether she had a mind or not. Was a mind programmable? Or was she storing the information she learned into strings of code to take out later?

“I can tell you're thinking of something complicated, it would be better for your wires to not. “, a pair of hands turned Violetta's head away from the shop. She snapped back into present with the sight of a gray water droplet running down her nose.

Her wires tended to heat up when thinking for the last few days, guess she needed some off-time.

“We should take some off time, we still don’t know how this continuous work affects your wiring and it could be dangerous.”, Aiden looked around as if to prove a point for his next sentence, “We are the only ones here and if anything was to happen to you, you’d be done for.”.

“You’re right, but we should look around for a space which isn’t these stores. I don’t know the nature of robots now. We have only encountered four of them, but seeing the damage done to these buildings I say to be careful about where to stay.”, Violetta wanted some off-time herself. But possible dangers would have her on edge between off and on.

At this point the two had stopped in the middle of a small town. Small businesses lined both sides of the street with breaks only to lead to obscure dead-ends.

“According to places we have been to, this seems to be the town of “Diledon”. The town has a strong industrial zone on the outer ends but especially on the west side. It seems we are rather close to one of the factories, we should go and check the place out for ourselves to camp the day out.

Factory? As much as a faint feeling of unsafe loomed over that word for Violetta, she tried to encourage herself.

It took around fifteen minutes to get out of the town. Well at least Violetta speculated it was fifteen minutes. The moment they started walking she tried to drown out any assumptions about the factory.

The factory walls were rusty but covered with the same ash which dimmed the rust. The two metal doors were wide open and windows half intact. Aiden took his first steps into the empty factory with pride. Violetta took her time to examine around. Sure, both were wise but one still had pride while the other remained careful.

Only some faint lights from the outside were lighting up a few spots in the factory.

“Do you think the lights work in here?”, Aiden asked, he walked around a fallen door. He didn’t notice faint blue-green eyes in the dark.

“I don’t know. Depends where they got their power from.”.

Sandra was.. terrified? Robots scouting her home from time to time was normal to her, but coming this close was already a red flag. The box she managed to drag in one day did a favor hiding her crouching body. Though when she peeked from beside it, her eyes were visible.

Two other robots had come into her home with only a few words exchanged between them. Did they even feel she was with them? She hoped not.

The two were not something she saw a lot. Especially robots with weird hair, like these two. The male seemed to have blue hair, which seemed to dim from a gray powder that stuck to it. The female’s hair seemed a bit more kept. It was a pale purple and aside from her shoulders no other part of her body seemed covered with the gray powder.

Living with the same outfit so much time made the visit much more of a surprise to Sandra. Used to seeing her pale green work clothes, seeing vibrant colors in casual clothes the two wore was unusual.

They looked more like humans than robots.