What first draws your eyes is the sun, and it's been so long that you'd almost forgotten how bright it was until you find yourself flinching and turning away. Your eyes water, stinging.

A golden field of wheat stretches before you as far as you can see. The breeze that ruffles the grass is soft, like a mother's touch, and the sun-baked earth below your feet is hard and crumbly. All you can hear is the sound of wind rushing through the stalks. The air is clean and cool and sweet.

As your eyes slowly survey the expanse before you, you realize something.

You've been underground for at least two hundred years.

This is a different sky than before. This is a different place. And you missed it all.

Everything you look at now is new. The wheat field is new. The sun and the clouds are new. You can't remember much, but none of what you're looking at is the same as what you do remember.

The world itself is huge, and you've seen so little of it.

You look at the scorched companion cube sitting beside you.

You're not brain-damaged enough to actually believe that it can talk, but you can't really help the instinct that leads you to bend over and pick it up. It leaves black smudges on your hands, but you're dirty enough already that it honestly doesn't bother you.

"Hello." You whisper.

Your voice is rusty. It's almost a croak, hoarse and rough. Your throat is dry, and choking out that one word takes an inordinate amount of effort - but it's a start, right?

Practice makes perfect.

It's been so long since you've said anything. But now you're here, and the world you see is so incredibly vast that you could run through the field screaming and no one would hear you for miles.

From isolation to isolation.

But this is different.

You have moved from an underground prison to a place of endless possibilities, and you feel certain that if you just walk far enough, you will find someone.

You begin to walk, your companion cube cradled in your arms. You don't know where you're going. You don't even know if there's anywhere to go to. It's been so long. What if there's nothing left?

But for some reason, you can't bring yourself to care. You just need to move, even if you have nowhere to go.

You wonder what She is doing, and you feel a pang of resentment.

You wonder where He is right now, and you feel a pang of loneliness.

You've lived in silence for so long that you find yourself wishing more and more that you had someone with you to fill it with, now that you're finally ready. But what does it say about you that the closest thing to friends you've ever had were two homicidal computer AI's?

You were never truly lonely while underground, even though you were the only human in the entire facility. There was Her, with her looming presence, her snide remarks, her security cameras following your every move. There was Him, with his endless chatter, his awkward bumbling, his oddly expressive optic.

Are you going to miss them?

But you decide not to worry about it, and brush it aside - because there are other things to think about.

Because the sky is blue and beautiful and stretches on forever, and you want to see all of it.