"Welcome to Project: Zero Dawn. I am General Herres, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the United States of America. I'm sure you've heard the rumors. That Zero Dawn is a top-secret Super-weapons program. The technological miracle that will save us from the Silph Plague – if Operation: Enduring Victory can hold off both the robots long enough. The reason I'm sure you've heard the rumors is that I'm the one who spread them. And I assure you they are all lies. Zero dawn is not a super-weapons program and it will not save us. Nothing will save us and here's why."

General Herres turned away from the screen he was facing, raising his hand to point at a projection containing a single machine.

The Generals face showed aging of years beyond his life, feelings of guilt and betrayal weighed heavily in his heart and no amount of emotional control could stop the long term effects it causes.

"By the time the glitch was noticed, it was already too late. Nothing could stop the Silph plague, the derangement of the machines. Nothing can. The machines we as humans used around the globe as peacekeepers and sentinels to protect against the loss of human life are now our undoing."

The single robot became two, then four, growing exponentially. A scale pulled up underneath showing the robot population growing in mass through numbers well past millions.

"Silph's robots will continue to replicate and devour the biosphere. Life on Earth will be destroyed."

Another projection appeared to the Generals right, a representation of humans, the types of animals from mammals to birds, Flora, all disappearing with bacteria being the last to face extinction.

"Our planet… reduced to a barren sphere. Global Extinction is inevitable."

A video pulled up replacing the scale, showing the worlds militaries losing battles against machines. The video was replaced with a massive explosion creating a mushroom cloud that appeared to have wiped out the Eastern Sea border in one go.

"No matter how many we kill, the robots just keep exponentially making more. If we had their deactivation codes, we could shut them all down. The entire swarm gone and the war for our planet over."

The general waved his hand and all of the images disappeared, replaced by bundles of shifting numbers, light spectrums, wave-forms, and a DNA helix.

"But since their cryptographic protocols use poly-phasic entangled waveforms, cracking the code would take half a century. At best… we have 16 months. Not exactly what you would call a survival option. The destruction of a biosphere is not the sort of apocalypse you can wait out in a fallout shelter or space station, there will be no Earth left to reclaim. Just a lifeless, toxic rock with several million Silph robots on it… hibernating… waiting for something to eat."

The projection behind him morphed into a black and gray Earth, no color, no life, just a dead rock.

"This is the horrible truth behind the lies of Operation: Enduring Victory – my lies –lies designed to inspire millions of innocents to sacrifice themselves in battle. Why?"

Videos of death and destruction, burned down cities, mass carpet bombings of every country, barren country sides stripped away of all life, millions dead.

"One reason: To buy time for you and the work you will do here. Zero day – the day that life on Earth ceases to exist – is coming fast. It cannot be stopped. The hope of Zero Dawn is that something new might come after."

A picture of a man and a woman appeared behind him. One with cropped cropped blonde hair and eyes a shade between the golden sun and hammered steel. The other a man with spiky black hair and bright amber eyes.

"But I will leave it to Elisabet Sobeck and Aaron Hawke, to shine that thin ray of light into the darkness. Herres out."

The projection disappeared.

Ash and Cynthia looked at each other, a mixture of horror and disbelief etched on their faces.

Cynthia was the first to speak her mind, "That doesn't make sense! Life on earth didn't cease to exist!

Ash was still trying to come to grips with what he saw, hung up on the uncanny resemblance of the two when compared to the pictures of Elisabet and Aaron, "But he said it could not be stopped."

Cynthia's voice started to shift, containing a mix of exasperation and excitement, "But it was! Somehow Elisabet and Aaron saved us!"

Ash grabbed Cynthia's forearm and lightly tugged her along, "We've got to keep looking, find out how they did it and maybe we can stop the derangement, and possibly cure the shadows that have corrupted the Pokémon as well!"

Picking up the pace towards the next atrium, the couples need and curiosity to discover how life didn't end, to find the answers they were looking for urged them along.

Arcanine lead them into the next room, the flames smoldering in his maw providing enough lightning to make up for the busted lights in the bunker.

Ash saw the glowing handprint that would activate the next projection and prayed under his breath that it still worked. He was rewarded with a synthetic voice, "ZD_0_2 data intact. Initiating playback."

Cynthia gazed in wonder at the couple in the hologram, "Elisabet and Aaron…"

Elisabet Sobeck was the first to speak in the recording.

"You've heard the bad news, and it's all true. The Silph plague is devouring the biosphere. Life itself will cease to exist. But does that have to be the end?"

The projection began pacing back and forth, a holographic seed made that was designed out of pure energy appeared behind her, "What if we could give life – a future? What if we could build a kind of seed, from which, on a dead planet, life could blossom anew?"

The seed entered into the dirt on the projection and a seedling sprouted, growing at an advanced rate until a flower appeared.

"This is the aim – the hope – of Project zero Dawn: to create a super intelligent, fully-automated Terraforming system – and bring life back from lifelessness. What would such a system require? At its core, it would need a true AI. Fully capable of making the trillions of decisions necessary to reconstitute the biosphere."

Aaron took over and placed his hand on the woman's shoulder, giving her a sad smile that was bitterly appropriate when discussing the options for preventing extinction. "An immortal guardian, dedicated to the re-flourishing of life. We call it GAIA. Mother Nature as an AI. But that's just the core of the system, she will need to be surrounded and empowered by a comprehensive suite of subordinate functions. Think of them as extensions of GAIA's mind, each dedicated to a specific purpose."

A simple flower petal projected behind the two, eight petals containing the elements and the needs for humanity to rebound and pick up where they left off.

Elisabet continued for Aaron, wrapping an arm around his waist and leaning into his side, "Now these aren't AIs, but make no mistake – each presents and engineering challenge more profound than anything the human species has ever before attempted. Hardware that preserves and then gestates the billions of seeds and embryos from which life will be reborn. The construction of underground facilities to hold it all. And that's just the start. We don't have to build the entire system. The beauty of a fully-automated terraforming system is that it can build itself!"

The petals in the hologram were moved to side and given names - Minerva, Hephaestus, Aether, Poseidon, Demeter, Artemis, Eleuthia, Apollo, Hades.

Aaron released the woman and began pacing, moving his hands frantically as he talked with the knowledge that there wasn't much more time left to record this.

"Now, over the days to come, you'll learn how all these functions- all these pieces that you'll be working on – fit together. How we'll race the clock to execute our harvest initiatives, write the software, build the tech and the facilities. How we'll lock it down and seal it up before the inevitable occurs…. But even more important, you'll know how it doesn't end here. How Gaia will generate those deactivation codes General Herres talked about and build the transmission arrays to broadcast them, shutting down the Silph robots for good. How Gaia will not just build but imagine any conceivable robot it needs to do its work across centuries… across millennia… from detoxifying the earth's ravaged atmosphere and poisoned seas… to the re-greening of the Earth from cryo-preserved seed stocks…"

A hologram of a hypothetical animal appeared, looking like a distant relative of the Arcanine sitting obediently beside Ash…

Aaron continued, motioning towards the distorted Arcanine in the picture, "To re-wilding the Earth with animal life, with new species to better fit a re-created world such as what is to come."

The woman in the video hugged the man from behind, "And then, when all that is done, how a new generation of human beings, spawned at cradle facilities around the globe will partake of APOLLO: the vast archive of human knowledge and cultural achievement from which the will learn of us, our world, and most important – how to not repeat our mistakes. It's not an impossible dream, it is within our grasp if we work tirelessly and stop at nothing to achieve it."

The couple stood side by side again, taking each other's hand as a means of comfort, "We can't stop life from ending. But if you will help me, help us, help GAIA – we can give it a future. Join us, and help make that future real."

The hologram cut off and Cynthia looked questioningly at Ash, "So… the whole Earth, destroyed… but then, remade?"

Ash pulled her into a hug, "Yes. By a machine. A machine of creation…"

Cynthia pulled away, looking at Ash with tears in her eyes, "Elisabet and Aaron, they did this. For life. For us."

Ash shook his head in shock, unable to comprehend what they just saw with what they had learned through their travels, "But – why Hades, then? If it was part of GAIA, how'd it end up in the wreckage of an old Silph robot? Why does it want to kill you and me?"

Cynthia understood immediately where he was going with this, "Apollo! The - Archive of Knowledge – what happened to that?"

Ash placed his lips against Cynthia's forehead, "I'm as confused as you are… maybe there are more answers further ahead."

With a whistle, Arcanine jumped up and bounded out the door in front of them and the two followed her. The uncanny resemblance and the DNA match to Elisabet and Aaron they had learned about earlier still made no sense, just more questions and even less answers.