I climb over twisted girders and chunks of concrete as a gray, ashy snow slowly falls from the leaden sky. Running outside as the white snow falls, scraping it together into snowballs. The parts of buildings still standing are indistinct shapes, just darker gray ghosts looming out of the murk. Driving to work in the early morning, fog obscuring everything, the shapes of signs and other cars appearing and vanishing. My progress through the shattered city is glacially slow. Limping back, barely able to stand as waves of pain wash over me and my injured leg threatens to collapse. Signs and wrecked cars and every identifiable fragment bring torrents of memories swirling to the surface, threatening to drown me, forcing me to stop and collect myself each time before I can continue. Caught up in the crowd that moves like a river, buffeted by bodies, almost crushed between them, unable to escape, hemmed in on all sides, people pushing against me, panicking and trapped, voice lost among shouts.

This is not right! I crouch and spring, leaping over mounds of rubble, tearing aside metal plates and slabs of concrete, looking for the survivors I can already sense are not here, are not anywhere, but there is clarity in the search and it quiets the raging floodwaters for a moment.

The city is broken and I am broken I am broken and the cold ash falls like snow from the poisoned sky tears under a raining sky. I find myself crouched in the rubble, arms covering my head as if expecting attack the blows rain down and I am powerless. If I had a heart and lungs I’d be panting. Instead I am shaking, vibrating as my limbs try to move and be still at the same time. It isn’t supposed to be like this. None of it should be like this. None of it should be like this.

The winter that doesn’t end, the ash or snow that just keeps falling, falling, and yet still filling the dark sky above, the dark ground below. The ruined cities full of corpses, the empty countryside full of withered plants, the broken shelters full of debris, all of it devoid of people. I was supposed to find the survivors. I am equipped with a host of ways to detect life and human activity. But I’ve found nothing. I’m beginning to fear there’s nothing for me to find.

I shouldn’t be able to feel fear. I shouldn’t be able to feel anything. The replication of human emotions is not a part of my programming. But I’m as broken as the rest of this dying world.

I am not supposed to be like this. My AI is a messy thing, cobbled together from too many parts, but the biggest portion of it is designed to be an archivist. I should be able to collect and hold a wealth of data of any kind, accessing it as needed. Instead, the data has a hold of me. I am caught up in swirling currents of information, in constant danger of drowning.

The problem isn’t that there is so much data; volume alone I can handle, or should be able to, given my inordinate amount of memory. No, it’s the nature of the data. This isn’t books, numbers, images, videos, or any of the files the archivist elements of my AI were designed to manage. It’s memories. I am filled with ghosts, each with a will of their own. Each fighting me. And I am broken, my AI corrupted. I am a failure. I am afraid.

I’m terrified that there aren’t any survivors. I’m terrified that I will die before I find them, and I’m equally terrified that I will find them and fail anyway. I love Dr. Brigner and want to make her proud, I hate her and want to fail just to spite her. I feel so many things when I’m not supposed to feel anything.

These aren’t my feelings, but those of the people whose memories I hold. The things they loved and hated, the things they wanted and feared, all find parallels in my own circumstances; misplaced connections carry this alien sentiment. My AI has degraded, data storage and programming blending together, the ghosts who live in the memories bleeding through into me, corrupting me with their humanity. I don’t know what I am anymore. Even if I find survivors, I don’t know if I’m still capable of the purpose for which I was created.

But I have a purpose. Whatever I feel, I must follow it for as long as I am able. I run through the catalogue I have made in my mind, the most vital skills to humans trying to survive in this dying world. Other skills that are important, but should be saved for later, to be learned in a more stable time. How to make a fire. How to build a shelter. How to skin a rabbit. Woodworking. Masonry. Mining and metalworking. Writing. Mathematics. Physics. History. My shaking stills; I stand again, and begin moving through the city, though I must swim through the ocean of memories to do it. I search for signs of life as around me the ash continues to fall.