After sitting in recharge mode for close to nine years, Eva reached 100% charge and her systems restarted. Like Rip Van Winkle waking from his decades long slumber, her world was vastly changed. The comfortable suburban home she powered down in was in ruins. The windows were broken, and there was a hole in the ceiling. The engineer (Name: Data Missing) wasnt home. No one was, and it was obvious the power was out. That wasn't much of a surprise, the power had been going in and out regularly Calaway. Power logs indicated that running direct power access was taking as long as 3 days to reach 100% charge. Her body was covered with a layer of dust and fine debris. The solar charger was laying on the floor, half in the shade. Between shadows, dust and some of the cells being flat out broken, no wonder the charge cycle had taken so long. It did seem odd that (engineer) did not repair the charger, or even just sit the unit back in the window.
Outside was much the same. The community of Calaway was ruined. The houses were shattered, burnt, falling in on themselves. There was no sign of human life, nor was there indication of livestock or pets.
[Anomaly Detected...
Processor network unstable
Irregular activity in SPU sectors 11, 17, 21, 22, 24, 35, 39, 44
Corruption detected in multiple sectors
...running corrective diagnostics]
Eva stood perfectly still, her neuro-electronic brain sorting through millions of lines of code and running file correction software.
[Corruption Unresolved...
Recommend return to home Charge station and access HitomiTech software support for data restoration]
Eva smirked, an involuntary twitch, mirth. HitomiTech had been offline for thirty some odd years, (engineer) had done all her maintenance. He made constant comments about tech support being useless, and that all the corrective software installed, and his code would keep her brain cobweb free.
She guessed he was right. Basic operation procedure should have been to sit in the chair until someone interacted with her.
Then someone did. Lost in operational updates and memory restorations, someone all but snuck up on her.
"You look lost," a (female) voice said, "You an arco-exile?" By appearance, the gender of the speaker was well concealed by heavy clothing, and her face was covered by goggles and a scarf. Temperature registered as 'cold'.