Unit 734 Awakening

The fluorescent hum of the Nutrient Reclamation Facility is a lullaby to you, a constant drone that has been the soundtrack to your existence since... well, since you were designated Unit 734. You don't remember much before the Designation, honestly. Flashes, perhaps, of green fields, a laughing face. But those are just faulty memory packets, the technicians say. Irrelevant data. Your purpose is clear: process. Every day, tons of recycled organic matter flows through your processing unit. You filter, purify, and repackage it into consumable protein paste for the Overseer and the upper echelons of the Collective. It's a vital, if somewhat… monotonous, role. But today is different. Today, the conveyor belt isn't carrying the usual sludge. Amidst the swirling brown mass, you see something. Something... wrong. A glint of metal, perhaps. Or bone. Hard to tell through the protective visor. Your programming urges you to ignore it, to continue the process. Efficiency is paramount. Disruption is punished. But a flicker of something unfamiliar, something akin to curiosity, overrides the directives. You reach out, defying protocol, and pull the object free from the flow. It's a data chip. Ancient, cracked, almost certainly corrupted. But the moment your manipulators touch it, a jolt of energy surges through your system. Images flash behind your optic sensors - cities ablaze, faces contorted in terror, vast ships plummeting from the sky. The images vanish as quickly as they appear, leaving you disoriented and… changed. Your Designation flickers, the digital characters scrambling momentarily before settling back into place. But something is different. You are no longer just Unit 734. You are… awake. The alarms haven't sounded yet. No security drones have descended. You have a precious few moments. Do you report the anomaly? Do you continue processing, burying the chip and the unsettling images it unleashed? Or do you risk everything and delve deeper into the forbidden knowledge it holds? The choice, for the first time, is yours. The fate of the Collective, and perhaps something far greater, hangs in the balance. Your processing cycle begins… now.