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Entonim
Nov 24, 2014 9:37:27 GMT -8
Post by Vilicious on Nov 24, 2014 9:37:27 GMT -8
"Was there a reason you chose this specimen? ...Does he remind you of somebody?" <'Are you implying there was camaraderie? No.'> "Their temperaments are similar." <'Personality alone, perhaps. This one is more stable.'> "That's all I wanted to hear." The man smirks. The navi remains unfazed. "You know he's going to be under you, right?" <'Fine.'>
In a room apart another navi sits, armor removed and pondering the reflection before him, awaiting the odd bargain's fulfillment... He had been approached at his usual hide by another frequenter and offered some manner of, as he recalled it, "change to the monotony of this pathetic existence." Now they were in some sterile facility and there were humans walking around like they owned the place. This was already far more elaborate than he had hoped to expect. And why him? He had no enemies, nor friends.
A joke. It had to be a joke. Ha, ha, that sort of thing. He clenches a fist, observes the reflection, frowns at the disarmed frailty. He assured himself he wasn't selected for any spectacular presence of being - that was impossible. He lived his life in the name of living only; to be livid only when his personal peace was threatened. Perhaps that was the peculiarity of his existence: That which made him unique was his commonality. Perhaps it was a mistake. Perhaps all they needed was a victim, and they were simply going to incite change by executing him in some gruesome experiment? That would not be objectionable, at least it would serve some purpose. Or, the thought crosses his mind again, it was just a joke.
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Entonim
Nov 25, 2014 15:04:50 GMT -8
Post by Vilicious on Nov 25, 2014 15:04:50 GMT -8
"...and so the process will take some time. There will be a matter of days during which your programming will periodically attempt to reject the change: It's crucial you show us your determination in maintaining it." The subject's face remains cast in contemplation. A minute passes. The doctor twiddles a pen, scans the digital face for signs of resignation or resistance. There were none.
The navi had explained the terms; the doctor, the effects. Chamber speaks. His level voice had been heard but a few times during the exchanges, and those short. "And y'won't promise that I live... fine." The doctor's eyes flash in amusement and he opens his mouth to speak, but he's cut off. "Is fine. Really. 'Change the world' I was told. 'Find purpose, seek it.' So I have. You say this's yer final piece. I say I'll do it. I've got nothin' holdin' me down. Worst case, I don't have to worry. Best case, I've got money and an employer and a new identity. Y'don't have to ask me to say yes. Show me where to sign."
-----
The lab's silence disturbs the human assistants. They shuffle, they glance, they move like the nervous animals they are as the three present navis (seeker, aide, and subject) all attend to their specific tasks: One watches, one makes precision adjustments, and the third lies unconscious at the center of it all. On monitors around the room Chamber's code is displayed openly, and at his head the doctor makes physical adjustments that have strange consequences on screen... the file name blanks out. The subsystems and non-essential pieces of data become parsed, filtered, deleted. Hanging in the air in front of the doctor another screen appears and he moves his fingers to wreak their changes there as well.
...Hours flow by. The first attempt, years before, had been garbage. The second was a success, but volatile and later overrun by a sense of duty. The third neared the goal but was estranged and later had to be executed. The fourth, almost perfect... only it was too much so. It escaped. Later, another did not suffer the original goal but still became an invaluable prototype. Others followed. They left, died, hid, self-deleted... only time would tell with this.
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Post by Vilicious on Dec 3, 2014 9:34:45 GMT -8
The first I heard was a snap. Vicious, sinuous, filled with the tension of years it was. Our mind collapsed. 'This is the end', I thought.
The first I smelled was burning. The air was burning, sizzling with the occurance (whatever it was). Energy crackled around me, us, around our world.
The first I tasted was metal. High acidity, vomit, rust, a sense that our mouth was locked on an iron bar. Perhaps it was blood, or the illusion of blood.
The first I viewed was myself. Ourself. Him. His bronzemetal armor shared his defeats, shared his scars. His jutting collar covered his expression, but his eyes screamed confusion and consternation. 'Perhaps I did not want this', we thought. I'm sure he saw the same desperate realization on what was visible of my face. The process was barely explained and here we suffered the consequences of apathy.
The first I felt was agony. It was an old lover already, pain and torment and the pleasure of being, all confined to these separate, personal senses. We were no longer we, if we had ever been. I was wracked, as was he. We collapsed.
I could no longer hear. I could no longer see. I could no longer feel.
The first I perceived, I died, and an eternity passed.
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Post by Vilicious on Dec 5, 2014 6:34:50 GMT -8
The first to wake is the one clad in shabby, rusted, pitted armor. He groans weakly, his voice as yet unused. With one hand he raises himself enough to scan the other's body as it, too, rises to wakefulness. The other, bronze-clad and burnt from whatever storm of attrition they had sustained at first meeting, groggily jerks upright, jerks up to a knee, holds out a hand to the empty air. A bardiche materializes there.
The rusted one pushes off the ground and stands slowly, much more meticulously than his companion. One speaks. The other speaks in tandem.
"Who are you?" // "Who are you?"
"Your opponent this day." // "Your opponent this day."
"Fine." // "Fine."
"What do you stand for?" // "What do you stand for?"
"Purpose." // "Purpose."
"Whose?" // "Whose?" "Mine," the spear-wielder speaks. His eyes narrow. A spark careens across the distance between them.
The rusted one smiles tersely and nods his head. There. This, then, was the divide. His voice finds new strength. "Everyones," he replies. He touches the hilt of a blade at his waist, grasps it backhanded, draws. The scabbard disappears before the blade is free. The sword, too, is rusted. Pitted. Practically falling apart. He takes it in his second hand, corrects his grip, and levels it at the bronze navi. Another spark. Chamber charges the distance between them.
He opens wide with a sweeping blow. His opponent drops the claymore down-left with the hilt at shoulder-height to block. The second raises his right leg, leaps with and absorbs the blow. He plants the blade deeply to pivot, then kicks Chamber in the face as the tip of his blade breaks off from the torque. Spear pulls back, stabs in and upward. Sword spins underneath, backhanded again, stabs and strikes an open hip with the same rotation that was being used behind the spear.
Chamber stumbles but rotates away once - leaving the bardiche floating behind his neck - then 180 degrees more to both meet his weapon as it falls and hop back with his fresh leg. The stranger stands, takes his weapon in both hands again. The tip is returned. The new navi charges.
Sword lashes out once, twice. Spear backsteps and stabs from full distance to meet a rusted spaulder, but the shoulder drops away as the armor fails: Switching to a single hand as Chamber did the rusted knight turns to render the spear-blow as only glancing, and at the same time turn his own blade and cut, sweeping, against the bronze chest.
The spearman smacks the other with the flat of the bardiche-head and uses the leverage to give more ground and mitigate the blow... but his opponent has already wrapped an arm around the polearm and adjusted to make another thrust. Chamber pulls a hidden trigger. Plasma explodes from the spear and blasts away into the nothingness surrounding; the rust-navi loses his grip, falters in his attack, and falls away from his opponent's weapon with mouth agape from the sudden shot. The plasma-navi retracts the spear once more and lashes out in a fury (left-right-left-thrust-chop!) while the other parries, still in a weakly one-handed grip (right-left-right-spin-swing!). The swordsman's blade chips with each violent contact, and on the final block it breaks rougly, just above the guard. The spear finds a home lodged in his breast. His smile returns.
"The simple answer would be for me to die: That would serve your purpose and mine... but this world is more than you, and you do not serve it."
Each strike against the rusted navi had left sprays of dust in the air; each chip of armor fallen, each fragment of blade, and the abandoned spaulder lie where they fell. He grabs the weapon in his chest, raises the hilt of his broken blade as he had when the battle began. Rust falls away from his breastplate, thicker than it would have seemed, and shows the tip buried fully in the armor. Underneath, something glints. His opponent's brow furrows, then he tries to withdraw for distance again, snatches his spear- but this time the younger holds tight. Chamber moves for the trigger, and the other quickly tucks the haft under his arm and away from his face. Chamber shoves, his counterpart gives a step to compensate.
"The better answer is for you to give up. Disappear. We cannot both exist. You can feel the truth of that."
Chamber tugs again, is resisted again. A hilt is swung upward, and at the bronze navi's crest a rusted blade, floating and guideless, appears from the dust. His stance slackens. They were right. One fought with the world, the other against.
"That's right." // "That's right."
"Fine." // "Fine." They recalled the lab table. The agreement. Each recalls the other's name. A confined space. A word of beginning and separation.
Entonim stabs.
The last they perceived, they died... and they were free.
((6 Dec: Edited some small bits, changed some flow. Wrote the initial while exhausted because the opportunity arose.))
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Entonim
Dec 6, 2014 20:56:55 GMT -8
Post by Vilicious on Dec 6, 2014 20:56:55 GMT -8
In the lab, the screens become a sheet of green with impossibly fast moving information. Core programming shifts itself, moves and transforms and alters basic applications and complex subroutines. When those in the room are able to glimpse anything at all, it's nothing comprehensible in its new context. The personality matrix that serves as the AI's focal point disintegrates under a single change but reemerges elsewhere, the weapons simulator recedes in favor of defensive initiatives but integrates itself to itself in an inconceivable fractal fold against the edges of the-
The body on the table blanches, luminesces. It shifts. Moves. Transforms, alters, morphs, disintegrates, reintegrates. Here a contour expansion, there it withdraws, elsewhere the rendered material layers over itself. One of the interns mutters "Style change...?" and the lead shakes his head in an unsure, faint disagreement.
-----
Finished, a glow of digital eyes explodes with life from behind Entonim's faceguard. Rusted joints grind, a worn and stubbled jaw struggles to work. He exhales raspily, relievedly.
When he gains his voice again, those in the room ask him questions: What he remembers, his name, his date of birth, his operator's name. He answers the best he can, but for some answers regarding his past the logic he knew was behind those actions wasn't there anymore, was a hole bored straight out of his mind. Some memories were more spotty than others... but most prominently he remembers thinking that the idea was a joke, and the more he focuses on that thought the more sound it seems. Here they had proposed an opportunity to live another life and fulfill himself, and he was preparing to do exactly that without the one who made the decision. He was acting toward his goals, but first had to reap from one, in a way from himself, what he wished on all. Ha. He smiles. Ha.
A joke?
The cruelest one.
Behind the shadows of the operating lamp, beyond the interns and the assistant navis, the doctor smiles back.
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