Tale:Ineluctable, Naturally

The sun wasn't due to rise for hours, the only light Lothair could see was a single flashing underscore on his terminal. Twice a second, a few million electrons collided with the surface of the terminal, the resulting light hardly enough for Lothair to even see his hands. He did not need to see his hands to go through the commands he had been dozens of times before. As he entered his credentials, he gained access to the remote server.

He tabbed through page after page until he found the program. The computer ran slowly to consume power as it was nighttime after all. Lothair sipped on a cold silbermilk, bitter and miserable because it was cold. At least it fought back the worst of the exhaustion from work at this hour. Some of the juniors kept their cups in the server room to keep them at least lukewarm, but the risk of spillage was far too great. While Lothair waited for the terminal to load, he wiped the forming condensation from its screen. He shuddered and pulled on another layer, still not yet warm from the trek from his flat to here.

The terminal finally loaded the program and a countdown next to it. All he would need to do is load the program he and his colleagues had been testing for years. Lokira was among the last planets to legalize semantic dynamos, so most of their work was in implementation with local systems than in research. The time came, the program began, and Lothair wasted no time leaving the office. He kept to the middle of the hallway to avoid tripping on someone, but his foot caught on improvised blankets and scraps of fabric all the same.

The lights came on as Lokira's terminator line moved closer