3 The Greatest Mistake -2

The air was cold as I trudged my way through the snow. Hiking up the mountain was always a pain in the ass. If it weren't for the extremely handsome payment I would receive at the end of the exploration I wouldn't be doing this.

As much as I disliked the cold, semi-quiet, landscape something had been bothering me for the past few hours. It felt like I was being drawn towards something. What that something was, I had no clue.

I took out my auto-mapper, a handy trinket for exploration. Every other step it would send out a pulse and take in the terrain level, climate, and UV levels. After mapping a certain amount of area you can then sell your data to companies. They pay top dollar for the information. Especially since there's no more room on Earth.

After World War 3 came about, the world leaders signed a truce to end the war. However, many things did not go to plan. Many people died on both sides. The world then achieved a goal long sought after by our ancestors, a one united world. Peace had been achieved, science and technology was improving at an unprecedented rate, the world was thrown into a golden age for modern science. New types of technology were invented. Space had been explored to the extent that exo-planets are now being inhabited. Companies now controlled whole planets. New life had been discovered not once, but twice. Since companies could now control planets the constant expansion led to the creation of planet explorers. Which is where I come in. My job is to explore everything in my sector and sell it to whatever company pays highest.

The companies are scary things. The people that lead them scarier. The only reason UGG, united global government, won the war was because of a find deep within the Earth. The God system. The single greatest human discovery of all-time. It gave those who wielded it extreme power. However, each system had a user limit. Meaning that no one person could rule over them all with supreme might.

It was published to the public on accident in 2122. This led to riots, near complete destruction of UGG, and the near end of Earth. Those who had a taste of the power were contained and eliminated. The system has since been released to private companies but has been heavily modified. It is also extremely expensive. Each tier would be quintuple the price of the last eventually ending with the complete system. However, very few have ever gotten the last tier including the originals, leader of UGG, and Grayson Micheals from the company Ethereal.

My auto-mapper alerted me to movement to my left. The sensor brought me out of my stupor and I looked to my left. The snow flurries made it nearly impossible to see past a certain distance. It was very hard to make out but I thought I saw a person standing in the distance. As soon as I saw it it vanished within the blink of an eye.

'The cold must be getting to me.' I thought to myself.

My thoughts began to blur, each step becoming harder to make than the last, my arms falling to my sides. "What is this?' I think to myself. Slowly I turned left and began walking in the direction of the figure I saw earlier.

Each step had me catching my breath. Each step brought me closer to the mouth of a cave. Each step closer to those eyes.