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edit: Wow, my first front page prompt! | [WP] "I may be evil, but I'm not a dick." | “So you see, Jazzman, your cloying ballads cannot instill love in my heart, for I *have* no heart!”
Bareth tore open his white dress shirt, displaying a mass of wires and circuitry visible through a sheer panel on his chest.
Jazzman tapped his feet in time and sang,
*I thought Iron Man*
*held that can.*
*He’s gonna be pretty pissed*
*when the tape gets ran.*
With a roll of his eyes, Bareth explained, “It’s not the same tech, so there’s no copyright infringement. My team of lawyers has already cleared it - and besides, Iron Man is copying *me* in the first place.” His tone turned wistful. “When I was but a lad of fifteen, my heart was that of a ninety-year-old man. I rose to the challenge, though, creating the most powerful bionic heart ever. One that is, I might add, completely invulnerable to your silly jingles and cacophonous instruments.”
As Bareth paced and monologued, Jazzman twisted the rope binding his arms to the steel chair. It frayed slightly, but his powerful saxophone remained just out of reach on the table beside him. He flung his body toward it, scooting the chair slightly closer. The rope caught on the table’s sharp edge and he began to wriggle his way toward freedom.
“You have been nothing but a thorn in my side - or a foul note in my rhythm, if you will. Once the rest of your ridiculous band appears to ‘save you,’ I will destroy all of you in a fantastic grand finale.”
Bareth stopped, turning to face Jazzman just as the rope snapped. Jazzman lunged for his sax but fumbled, knocking it across the table separating him from Bareth. Time seemed to slow. Jazzman watched in horror as his precious instrument skittered and slid, tumbling through the air toward a three-story drop to the the bottom of the abandoned warehouse.
Manicured fingers plucked the horn from midair, and Bareth gently returned it to the table.
Jazzman caught his breath before gushing,
*Oh, thank ya man,*
*But I don’t understand.*
*If I lost my sax*
*then I’d be outta the band.*
Bareth fluttered his fingers in dismissal. “Come now, Jazzman. That’s an heirloom Yanigasawa black brass alto saxophone with custom shell-lined keys and a crystal mouthpiece. That instrument is a gem. Of course I had to catch it. I may be evil, but I’m not a dick.”
His fingers rested lovingly along the keys as Jazzman’s mouth sagged open. For once, the singer had nothing to say.
| "Off to work, honey, have a good one," I kiss my beautiful wife goodbye, my last bit of joy for the day.
Only twenty seven minutes of traffic before my arrival back stage.
I am very skilled at what I do, but that is not why I am paid my extravagant salary. I make 7 figures because of my winning personality.
Only one hour before the performance.
I change into my costume, made of all black and looking almost militant, it is fitted to my strong physique to let my audience know my characters power.
Only thirty minutes until the performance.
I practice my lines, fidget with my props, and meditate on my future actions. This is going to be a performance of a life time.
Only three minutes until the performance.
I stare at the door to my stage, steel and warm. The director insists the air conditioning be turned off, to match the heat and intensity of my performance.
Showtime.
I open the door, to no applause. I step on stage to reveal my audience of one, the only member suspended by chains over a pool of his own bodily fluids, feet traipsing barely off the ground. I close the door behind me. This will be a private viewing.
"Hello, President al-Assad. You stand accused of crimes against humanity. There is evidence that you utilized chemical and biological weapons to torture and kill the people you were in charge of governing. The world thinks you are dead by air strike. This is not court. There is no jury. You will die in here, but not before you tell me where your illegal weapons are stored."
A gangly Arabic man with a thin beard squeaks out a weak but audible phrase, pushed through dehydrated lips. "I was supposed to be a dentist... I don't know where the weapons are, just where your wife sleeps.. *ha ha.. Hahaha!" [Cough cough]* "You dirty infidels cannot fathom the powers that I have at my disposal. I have sleepers and suicide agents in every major US city. You cannot break me, you cannot *touch me*."
It was going to be the beginning of a very long day, I think. Sometimes you need to fight fire with fire, or in this case evil with evil.
N
And so begins the first act.
_________________
Hey all, still new to contributing stories. Would love feed back :) |
[WP] Thor is tired of random, clueless people ending up in Valhalla. | **"And still another weakling approaches! I'll give you but one chance; explain yourself"** Boomed the mighty God of thunder, his hammer raised to about hip-height, his shield lay propped against his leg, bright and shining. His powerful visage looked, I surmised, like the cover of a Power Metal Album. Man O' War, perhaps. Blind Guardian, at a stretch.
My mind tends to wander when I get nervous. Over the shoulder of the God I could spy the head of his father. A ragged scar ran down the old Norseman's face, crossing over his milk-white and crimson eye.
"Speak, Carter, son of Doug. You have but little time." He looked more like Gandalf the Grey than the mighty God of gods that he was. His spear reached nearly ten feet. Both Gods towered over me, evidence of their giant's blood, but not so that they were giant themselves. The old man smiled softly.
I wasn't fooled. His kindness was sincere, but his wrath was swift.
"A-As you say, D-d-donar, son of Wotan." I mumbled, my mind new what to say, my lips were still frozen in fear. "I k-know not what you ask of me."
Thor's eyebrows raised, and his hammer lowered just a bit. I have peaked his interest. "You name us true," he replied, his eyes scanning over me quizzically. It's how I imagined a wolf would choose the weakest in the pack. "And you speak as we do... I ask you, how many fell to your name and how did it happen you came to Valhalla?"
I nodded, quicker than I meant to. "Yes, of course. Forgive me, Donar. In the presence of your visage I temporarily lost hold of my senses." The god's lips curled, ever so slightly. He was proud, and I knew it. "I must admit, I too am perplexed, I know not how I came to be here. But then, I know not how I left Midgard. May I ask that of you, Wotansson?"
The young god squinted, and turned to his father. "How did he perish, father?"
Wotan smiled. "In life he was a caster of runes, he learned the art of war, and He came to die with a blade in his hand... of a sort." The older god's face turned up as he smiled.
Donar's face twisted into a frown. "Impossible. Your time is past that of honorable battle and heroes. How came you to know the art of war? The casting of runes? How came you to die with sword in hand?"
Suddenly, everything seemed to fall into place in my mind. And a smiled. I cast my eyes around the hall, and I saw the faces of Spartans, of Vikings and Franks and Persians who had died, as I did. I saw fires burned low, others burning fiercely in the dark, casting a twisting pattern of shadows all about the room. Smoke curled from cooking fires, the meat over the flame seemed to fill the room with their aroma. The sound was a clamor of laughter, and pain, and joy and sorrow.
I turned to my right, and saw the face of a man that seemed so familiar.... We met eyes, and then, I was certain.
"Allow me to explain, my liege." I began, my voice swelling to fill the clamor of the room. I felt a power inside me, a confidence I'd lacked for most of my life. "Wotan, Donar, my lords." I bowed deeply before straightening. "I learned the ways of my forefathers from a master, from a place called HEMA, an organization dedicated to keeping the ways of old alive and breathing, for men and iron to remain bonded, as you intended."
"To my name I have scores, I have felled them with blade and axe, with hammer and bow, with sword and with gun. I have lead armies to victory, and I have cut down scores of enemies in but an instant!" My voice was booming now, and I paced and began to speak with hands, in a show of theatrics "I wrote tales, fought dragons, slew countless men, and elves and giants! I have bathed men in the heat of fire, I have slew men at the end of my spear, my hands lay drenched in the blood of my enemies." I paused, breathing for just a second. The Hall of Heroes was impossibly quiet, only the sound of sizzling meat and crackling fire remained.
I resumed, turning to address the larger portion of my audience.
"But all men must die. It is so. So, I did die, as all men should, with a sword in my hand and a roar on my lips! At the end of a spear, I perished!" I walked briskly to the table that adorned the middle of the hall, and hefted a tankard. "And may the man who slew me come here, so I may show him how I feel about it!" I called! Downing the tankard in a single go.
A roar went up then, and it took Odin slamming the blunt end of spear in the ground to silence them.
I nodded appreciatively, turning to address the gods once more. "I wish of you only one thing now, Donar, I wish only to stay in your hall, to drink of your mead and make war with you until Ragnarok, I only wish to dine with the fathers of my fathers."
The young god stared at me for a long, tense moment, his face like stone. Not a man spoke, none so much as moved as the god made his decision.
Suddenly, he smiled. "I welcome you to my hall, Carter Dougsson."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"It just seems so much like him," The widow laughed, wiping a tear from her eye. "He used to joke about 'dying in battle'. I guess he got his wish." She chuckled.
"He died doing what he loved." The man to her left replied. "Playing with foam swords in the woods with a bunch of other nerds." He laughed, tears running down his face.
"He'd like that we're all trying to laugh about it, right?" A second woman said between gasping sobs.
"Yeah..." The widow sighed, taking another sip of the drink in front of her. "He would...."
| **SIGH**
The Mighty Thor let loose his mighty sign of boredom and hoisted another turkey leg. He then furrowed his mighty brow in consternation, which took some time as his brow is both vast and craggy. Things had started very well, he thought, but it was turning out to be a pretty dull eternity.
A man appeared before Thor, wearing a rather plain looking black suit. He scanned The Feasting Hall with no small amount of confusion. "Hey I'm young again! I thought I had a heart atta-" He stopped dead at the sight of Thor.
**SIGH**
" **What is your name puny man and how did you come by your 'hero's death?** said Thor with much disdain.
The man stared at Thor for a long moment before answering. "My names Steven Goldwait. I uh, I thought I was in a courtroom. I'd just lost this huge fucking case and then it felt like my chest was exploding.
Thor raised one mighty eyebrow. " **Your enemy struck you down?** " boomed Thor.
Steven seemed to forget his situation at being reminded of the trial. "We had this guy nailed to the wall, he was guilty as sin!" he railed. "I can't believe that snake Goodman had the gall to take the case in the first damn place"
**SIGH**
" **Another lawyer, I see** " said Thor as he slowly lifted his mighty enchanted hammer Mjolnar. Thor smashed the bewildered lawyer with all his godly might, shattering the mans skeleton into an uncountable number of pieces instantly. Where his remains ever landed, Thor could not see and he resumed eating his giant turkey leg.
A dull eternity indeed. | |
Based on this [relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1040/large/) | [WP] Some scientists, while exploring the depths of the Mariana trench have found a strange door blocking the way. | "...it's a door, sir."
Expedition Leader Norm Reynolds heard a lot over a long career. He checked the signal of the audio, and picked the wax from his ears. "Excuse me, Mike, please repeat."
The control room operators shared looks. One muttering something about 'too many joints' others shook their heads in either amusement or annoyance. "It's a door, sir." Mike enunciated slowly as though speaking to a particularly slow child in a classroom.
"Mike, save the jokes for later, what is down there?" Norm felt a headache forming underneath his forehead, and resisted the urge to put his fingers to his stress lines.
"It's a fucking door, sir!" Finally, the resident smartass snapped, fed up. "Let met bring up visuals."
Muffled scuffling echoed through the speakers for a few minutes, escalating tension in the room and Norm flicked on a CD player, Elvis Presley echoed. He would have asked for a cigarette, but had given up on the insistence and threat of his wife five years back.
The submarine cameras crackled with static, and after a bit of fiddling, the camera cleared up and showed it.
The tension vanished and everyone stared. It was a door. A plain looking thing made of oak-finish and a brass handle. No one spoke, the only noise in the command center was static and breathing, aside from the faint music.
"Uh, sir..." Mike began, starting them from whatever depth of thought or attempted, asked. "What do I do?"
The operators looked at one another, then to Norm who seemed just as pole-axed as everyone else. He pressed a button on the console in front of him. "Extend arm, and open." he said.
He sat back, blinking as if reality itself just jerked his chain, screaming 'Gotcha 'conk!' then retreated to whatever void it came from.
On screen, a robotic arm extended and the operators, Norm included, held their breaths as it clamped around the brass handle, turned, and opened.
Out spilled golden light, blinding them and Mike who cursed. Norm raised his arm and hands, peering through his fingers. Then came music.
Not music from the speakers of the room, but the door, which by all things physics and nature was impossible at the absurd depth of the trench.
Norm's jaw, if possible, would have unhinged, hit through his lap and the bowels of the ship.
On the other side was a crowd of mermaids, cheering and swooning, males and females alike for a man on stage. He had gelled hair, side burns and a tight leather outfit that exposed his hairy chest.
He sang on and on with a husky voice, his hips swinging side to side as he played the guitar.
"Hey!"
Again, everyone started. A bouncer mermaid came up, gruff looking and bald, he glared at the submarine, then through the camera. "You got an invitation from his highness?"
After a minute of no response, the bouncer rolled his eyes. "Then get lost. Friggin' tourists." he muttered, closing the door, and a lock echoed that reverberated through the room's audio-receptors.
Mike, for once, remained completely silent. The control room operators looked at one another, announcing a break, and offering cigarettes and alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.
"Andy," Norm stopped the youngest operator from leaving, hand extended. "Hand over a cigarette."
Fresh-faced Andy blinked, and opened his mouth. "Now, son, I need a goddamn cigarette." Fumbling, he handed them over and Norm placed it in his mouth before lighting it.
As he did so, he called for whisky. Not for everyone. The whole bottle for himself.
| Thousands of man hours, millions of dollars, and countless R&D prototypes and we finally reached the point where we can make it to the bottom! We can finally explore something harder to see into than space! We were so damn excited! Its too fucking bad we have to scrap the project, huh Maureen? We reached the end of our budget and even though we have the capacity to go down there, guess what!? HEADQUARTERS WONT GIVE US AUTHORIZATION TO BRING A GODDAMN LOCKSMITH! Oh well, maybe thats for the best. Im gonna go become a diving instructor before this shady ass contract gets me killed. |
Based on this [relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1040/large/) | [WP] Some scientists, while exploring the depths of the Mariana trench have found a strange door blocking the way. | "...it's a door, sir."
Expedition Leader Norm Reynolds heard a lot over a long career. He checked the signal of the audio, and picked the wax from his ears. "Excuse me, Mike, please repeat."
The control room operators shared looks. One muttering something about 'too many joints' others shook their heads in either amusement or annoyance. "It's a door, sir." Mike enunciated slowly as though speaking to a particularly slow child in a classroom.
"Mike, save the jokes for later, what is down there?" Norm felt a headache forming underneath his forehead, and resisted the urge to put his fingers to his stress lines.
"It's a fucking door, sir!" Finally, the resident smartass snapped, fed up. "Let met bring up visuals."
Muffled scuffling echoed through the speakers for a few minutes, escalating tension in the room and Norm flicked on a CD player, Elvis Presley echoed. He would have asked for a cigarette, but had given up on the insistence and threat of his wife five years back.
The submarine cameras crackled with static, and after a bit of fiddling, the camera cleared up and showed it.
The tension vanished and everyone stared. It was a door. A plain looking thing made of oak-finish and a brass handle. No one spoke, the only noise in the command center was static and breathing, aside from the faint music.
"Uh, sir..." Mike began, starting them from whatever depth of thought or attempted, asked. "What do I do?"
The operators looked at one another, then to Norm who seemed just as pole-axed as everyone else. He pressed a button on the console in front of him. "Extend arm, and open." he said.
He sat back, blinking as if reality itself just jerked his chain, screaming 'Gotcha 'conk!' then retreated to whatever void it came from.
On screen, a robotic arm extended and the operators, Norm included, held their breaths as it clamped around the brass handle, turned, and opened.
Out spilled golden light, blinding them and Mike who cursed. Norm raised his arm and hands, peering through his fingers. Then came music.
Not music from the speakers of the room, but the door, which by all things physics and nature was impossible at the absurd depth of the trench.
Norm's jaw, if possible, would have unhinged, hit through his lap and the bowels of the ship.
On the other side was a crowd of mermaids, cheering and swooning, males and females alike for a man on stage. He had gelled hair, side burns and a tight leather outfit that exposed his hairy chest.
He sang on and on with a husky voice, his hips swinging side to side as he played the guitar.
"Hey!"
Again, everyone started. A bouncer mermaid came up, gruff looking and bald, he glared at the submarine, then through the camera. "You got an invitation from his highness?"
After a minute of no response, the bouncer rolled his eyes. "Then get lost. Friggin' tourists." he muttered, closing the door, and a lock echoed that reverberated through the room's audio-receptors.
Mike, for once, remained completely silent. The control room operators looked at one another, announcing a break, and offering cigarettes and alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.
"Andy," Norm stopped the youngest operator from leaving, hand extended. "Hand over a cigarette."
Fresh-faced Andy blinked, and opened his mouth. "Now, son, I need a goddamn cigarette." Fumbling, he handed them over and Norm placed it in his mouth before lighting it.
As he did so, he called for whisky. Not for everyone. The whole bottle for himself.
| "Is that a... door?" said Mark as he and his team descended further down into the pit.
"Affirmative, we are receiving the image as well. Can you get any closer?"
"13 meters until contact" responded Mike. "wait, there is something written on it. Let me get a bit closer."
"The writing, oh Mike do you copy?"
"No, no it can't be. God please, God, it can't be! No help me please
"Mike! Mike, do you copy?"
The camera feed cut off, with the haunting image "Department of Motor Vehicles" forever burned in the memory of anyone unfortunate enough to gaze upon it...
Edit:formatting
Sorry if there are any spelling errors, this is my first response on /WP.
|
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | I don't write often but whatever. Was bored at work and came up with this. About to leave so just gonna post what I have so far.
Realm:
I can’t say I lived a fulfilled life, neither can I say I ever suffered. My life was about as average as it could have possibly been. I only made it to age 30, unfortunately. I was on my way to work when some lady decided to total my poor little Ford Taurus while watching Orange is the New Black. I don’t know how exactly I died, and don’t remember feeling any pain. I guess that can be considered a good thing.
Never been one to even care about religion. If you asked my mom, she’d probably tell you I was a great little Christian boy. Ask my old college classmates, I was likely a devil worshiper who was just waiting for the opportunity to sacrifice them all to Cthulhu. The truth is, I have honestly never really thought about it. It always seemed to be something I felt I would have the time to think about later in my life. Once I’m shaking the Grim Reaper’s hand and being asked to “walk this way”.
Well, unfortunately that time is now and I haven’t so much as given it a single thought. The grim reaper is surprisingly wearing a very well-tailored suit and not that black, frayed cloak that so many pieces of fiction depict him wearing.
“Yea, I would much rather not speak of that.” He looks at me with what I could only see as embarrassment on his face after reading my thoughts, “It was just a phase, you know?”
As weirded out at him being able to read my thoughts as I am, I shrug my shoulders in response and follow him through a door that seemed to suddenly be in front of us. I didn’t see it there before, and I was certain it has not materialized there all of a sudden.
He stops me as we reached the door. “So, I have some good news and some bad news.” I ask for the bad news first, “You’re not going to heaven.” Can’t say I’m surprised at that, but now I wonder what the good news could possibly be if I’m not going to heaven. “The good news is that you also aren’t going to hell. “
I figured that maybe this was my own version of hell already. Doomed to a plane where this guy makes bad jokes for the rest of eternity. “Please, explain. “
He smiles, a full blown smile too. Not one of those smiles that people normally do when they talk, no a ‘I just one the fucking lottery’ smile. “Sorry, it’s always fun seeing new people. I’ll do you one better, I’ll show you “. He opened the door, stepped inside and I followed a moment later. It was bright in the room. Familiar warmth spread over my skin. The light forces me into a squint, “This is your afterlife, name it whatever you wish. It was made by you.”
I opened my eyes to see a bright green field blowing in the wind. A very earthly scene, the sun shining and a gentle breeze now and again blows past. “By me?” I didn’t recall doing anything. He turns and gives me that damned chester smile again.
“Yes, you. This is a world that was generated from your own subconscious mind. The moment you arrived in this plane you were denied access to heaven or hell and created this land. You are the ruler of this land, and currently it’s only permanent inhabitant. “
This makes no sense, why me? Why would I be rejected from heaven and hell? I’m nothing special, I understand not making it into heaven, and am slightly relieved that hell isn’t my final destination, but still…
Grim shrugged, “I honestly have no idea. I just do what I’m told. – my name isn’t grim, by the way.” He added the last part suddenly, reading my thoughts again. He also failed to actually tell me his name so I’ll keep calling him Grim. “Whatever, there will be more people soon. I won’t say too much, but be careful. They may not all be as nice as I am.” He winked and walked back towards the door.
“Wait a moment, where are you going, more importantly; what am I supposed to do now?” I asked as he walked through the threshold.
A voice came from the other side, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. “
Asshole.
| Continuation of a character I use frequently, on mobile at work. Angels in modern time, I hate using old language.
---
"Azrael what the fuck? I'm not welcome anywhere?"
"Well.."
He hesitates. Why the Lord of Death is so scared of a 30 year old dead woman he claims is his daughter I have no idea.
"The council has decided they want you to be 100 before you come join us. You're not to be reincarnated nor go to any afterlife. In 70 years you may take your place as Third Lady of Hell and my daughter"
"But I'm already dead."
I'm really confused now. I'm dead. I've been judged, and now it's a null? Am I a ghost? What's going on its been 32 hours since I got hit by that bus.
I'm in limbo. So, that's a thing. I get to be in every possible path but none at all.
"Who can I intact with?"
"Myself of course, most death Gods, corvids, felines, nature spirits of all typ-"
"So basically no one human?" I interrupt.
"Yes."
This is going to be a long 70 years. I think I'll test this half angel thing.
Make my own afterlife. Ravens have always followed me around maybe it'll be ok. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | Crap.
Really really crap.
How did I screw up death?
They wouldn't even tell me how it happened. Saint Peter just looked at me and snorted into his robes and Satan just looked at me like one of the popular kids looks at the nerds.
Dammit.
I didn't even get sent to purgatory or limbo. I'm not in nothingness or stasis until end times. I'm in a blank slate. It's just white. I'm not even sure if I'm standing on anything. It feels solid, sort of. I think it's solid. There's no shadow or light source. Just white. It's like vantablack, but the exact opposite. Which is real frickin awesome. I would get sent to nothingness.
I have no idea how long I've been here either. It feels like I just saw Saint Peter turn to Gabriel and point at me, but it also feels like it's been eons. I'm not even hungry or thirsty. I wish I was hungry. I could totally go for a hotdog right now.
Holy shit. I'm holding a hotdog. It's a Costco hotdog. What the hell. Ok. ok. Umm...I also want some nachos. Oh my god! Oh crap. Can I say that? Screw it, what's he gonna do? Send me to hell?
Nachos! This is so cool. How did I not think of this before? Before? Where was I before? Nachos! Ok, think man, think. Ground. Damn. Didn't work. Ummm, carpet? Nope.
Table? Yes! Why did that work?! Ok, I'm just gonna set these here. It would be super cool to have a light? Whoa! That bulb just came out of no where. And where does the cord go? It just goes up and up forever. It doesn't even fade in the distance. Holy crap! There's distance! And I have a shadow! So I was standing on a floor.
Well what else do I even need? I don't need anything right? I'm not even hungry, but I have food. There's no people here either. What's the point in the rest of this if there's no people?
*hello*
Oh shit! What was that?
*hey, is there anyone else here?*
Whoa! Theres people! I've got to go find them? How do I find them? There's no walls or anything. There's just my table and my light bulb and my nachos. And my shadow.
Hey, how did that door get behind me? I must have thought about asking for walls. That's it.
**knock knock**
Oh my gosh. I should get that.
"Whoa! You're people!!! There's people here with me!!!!"
Oh crap I scared them
"Don't be scared! I just didn't expect people!"
*Uh uh. I uh...where am I*
"I have no idea! I'm so excited there's people here!"
*I mean it's just me, so...I just got here. How did I get here?*
"Of course it's just you!I have no idea no idea how you got here. You are incredible! I am so pumped right now. Come follow me! Look at what I did!"
Oh I'm gonna show the person my nachos!
*So is it just us?*
"Yes! Well, I assume so. I've been here for like forever. I think. There was nothing here when I got here. Or no one either. Not even time. I think."
*So what are we doing here? I was standing in front of Saint Peter when I just vanished and popped up here. Is this purgatory?*
Hah! Purgatory!
"Hah! No silly! Purgatory is way more dull than this. This is exciting! What this."
I'd like a dirt floor please.
*Holy Mary mother of Jesus. How did you do that?*
"I have no idea! Isn't it great!"
*Do you think I could try?*
"Uhhh yeah I guess. I didn't even think about it."
*Ok, here goes nothing.*
Oh my god. It's a birthday cake! Ok, my turn.
"How about candles?"
*That's really cool. Too bad there's nobody else to share it with.*
**knock knock**
*I think there's someone at the door? Also, why don't they just walk around it? It's not like there are walls.*
"Well, I'm gonna look. What's the worst that could happen?"
*I mean they could send us to hell...*
"Better than being nowhere"
**knock knock**
"I'm coming."
"Oh my gosh! Another person! Right when you said there were no other people!"
""Ummm hi?""
"Welcome to my place."
""Where am I?""
*We have no idea*
"We have no idea"
""Well does it have a name?""
"Not yet, but it should definitely have a name!"
Whoa! Where'd that sign come from? That's my handwriting!
*Does that say 'Welcome to Calvinball'?*
It sure does. | Continuation of a character I use frequently, on mobile at work. Angels in modern time, I hate using old language.
---
"Azrael what the fuck? I'm not welcome anywhere?"
"Well.."
He hesitates. Why the Lord of Death is so scared of a 30 year old dead woman he claims is his daughter I have no idea.
"The council has decided they want you to be 100 before you come join us. You're not to be reincarnated nor go to any afterlife. In 70 years you may take your place as Third Lady of Hell and my daughter"
"But I'm already dead."
I'm really confused now. I'm dead. I've been judged, and now it's a null? Am I a ghost? What's going on its been 32 hours since I got hit by that bus.
I'm in limbo. So, that's a thing. I get to be in every possible path but none at all.
"Who can I intact with?"
"Myself of course, most death Gods, corvids, felines, nature spirits of all typ-"
"So basically no one human?" I interrupt.
"Yes."
This is going to be a long 70 years. I think I'll test this half angel thing.
Make my own afterlife. Ravens have always followed me around maybe it'll be ok. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | When someone dies, they take the form of how they perceived themselves the moment they died. Up until the moment the realize the truth and can change form on will. Except for John who looked like a mid-twenties white, strong male.
Anyways, he (like many before him) saw the doors right away. One represented heaven, the other represented hell. Everyone tries heaven first, then they throw a fit. Bang on the doors. But not this time, John went straight to hell. That is what caught my attention. He simply gave the door knob a twist, when that failed he gave up and started to look around. He skipped heaven entirely...
I decided to follow John, something I hadn't done in 500 or so years. He walked around, he still unaware that his subconscious was creating this world. Eventually he happened to come across a tree, the first and only one he saw so far. He sat down, resting on the trunk of the tree and just relaxed, looking towards the sky. He put his hand up, observing it, thinking about who knows what, when suddenly, an apple appeared.
In my surprise I had popped into his visual field (or plane, depending on who you ask). He immediately confronted me.
John "Who are you?"
Me "Names Michael, say, how did you do that? The thing with the apple"
John "You mean you can't? How did you get here?"
Me "I was hear the whole time, watching you"
John "So what? Invisibility?"
Me "Of a sort, I phased to a d..............
After a few days of getting John up to speed I asked him again how he made an apple appear.
John "That's not something I'm willing to share at the moment, but I'll tell you what, I'm going to create a place worth living in. I want you to bring all the people you think would be interested here. One day I'll tell you how"
Even then I knew he wouldn't, but still, it's something new to this boring existence and that is definitely something.
-------
Not really a writer but was bored as hell, be kind.
Thinking of a sequel already that goes over why John never tried to go to heaven.
EDIT: Part 2 in replies | Continuation of a character I use frequently, on mobile at work. Angels in modern time, I hate using old language.
---
"Azrael what the fuck? I'm not welcome anywhere?"
"Well.."
He hesitates. Why the Lord of Death is so scared of a 30 year old dead woman he claims is his daughter I have no idea.
"The council has decided they want you to be 100 before you come join us. You're not to be reincarnated nor go to any afterlife. In 70 years you may take your place as Third Lady of Hell and my daughter"
"But I'm already dead."
I'm really confused now. I'm dead. I've been judged, and now it's a null? Am I a ghost? What's going on its been 32 hours since I got hit by that bus.
I'm in limbo. So, that's a thing. I get to be in every possible path but none at all.
"Who can I intact with?"
"Myself of course, most death Gods, corvids, felines, nature spirits of all typ-"
"So basically no one human?" I interrupt.
"Yes."
This is going to be a long 70 years. I think I'll test this half angel thing.
Make my own afterlife. Ravens have always followed me around maybe it'll be ok. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | So what how? I could not join Heaven nor Hell.
"Well, where is some video games to pass the time?" I wondered
Thinking of all of the games I had play when I was living, made me think "What if I could make a world out of video games?". Would it work or would it fail. "Only one way to find out."
I start by imagining a Minecraft hub world. Then, a world of terraria, link off of it. By the time I got my first visitor I had thousands of worlds created.
The visitor asked "What is this world and what do you hope to accomplish?" .
I told him the truth. "A gamer's dream come true. We lived to play. Why not the inverse? We died so we still play. The only rule is to not be a jerk."
I created the dream that keeps going.
Gaming's 1up | Continuation of a character I use frequently, on mobile at work. Angels in modern time, I hate using old language.
---
"Azrael what the fuck? I'm not welcome anywhere?"
"Well.."
He hesitates. Why the Lord of Death is so scared of a 30 year old dead woman he claims is his daughter I have no idea.
"The council has decided they want you to be 100 before you come join us. You're not to be reincarnated nor go to any afterlife. In 70 years you may take your place as Third Lady of Hell and my daughter"
"But I'm already dead."
I'm really confused now. I'm dead. I've been judged, and now it's a null? Am I a ghost? What's going on its been 32 hours since I got hit by that bus.
I'm in limbo. So, that's a thing. I get to be in every possible path but none at all.
"Who can I intact with?"
"Myself of course, most death Gods, corvids, felines, nature spirits of all typ-"
"So basically no one human?" I interrupt.
"Yes."
This is going to be a long 70 years. I think I'll test this half angel thing.
Make my own afterlife. Ravens have always followed me around maybe it'll be ok. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "You can't just create your own afterlife" said Paul his hands on his hips shaking his head.
"We'll sucks to be you then. Because there isn't a place is New Best Heaven for cynics." said Alexander staring off at the far mountains.
"For God's sake Alex, this is purgatory. Its already an afterlife."
"Why bother bringing the big guy into this? You've been up there. He doesn't want us anyway."
Paul messaged his temple in annoyance. "What are you even hoping to accomplish? You can't just stab a stick in the ground and claim a piece of purgatory for yourself."
"Of course not, what we need is" Alexander then took off his shirt tied it to a long thin stick, "a Flag!" He then took the flag stabbed into the earth and shouted. "I hereby claim this spot as the Capitol of Of New Best Heaven!" Paul groaned. Alexander beamed let go of the fag, which immediately fell over.
"Okay then. Clearly you know what your doing" said Paul as Alexander repeatedly stabbed the ground, violently trying to get his flag to stand upright. "What are your plans for New Best Heaven?"
"Well there's definitely going to be some changes. First none of those rules about sex. From now one I you want to fuck them, you can fuck em! Long as its consensual of course." Alexander gave up on stabbing the ground and was instead digging a hole to plant the flag in.
Paul could think of at least a half dozen other qualification that should probably be included but decided not to mention them yet. "Naturally," he agreed.
"Secondly, there are now three days of rest! Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! And you can be as lazy as you want and nobody can say thing about it!" said Alexander. Paul wondered how things might have been different, if Alexander had been in charge from the beginning. The thought scared him, until he realized he was about to find out. Which scared him more. "Third, worship not required. You worship whatever and whoever you want, and nobody can be a dick about it and murder you over it. Also no murder, rape, theft, the usual stuff. Just write it up as don't be a douche bag." Alexander buried his flag a few inches into the ground and pilled rocks up around it to keep it up right.
"That does cover just about everything" said Paul.
"Wait, there's more. Third, wait no, six?... What number am I on?"
"Four. Five if you want don't be a douche bag to be its own rule."
"Right, should probably start writing these down."
"Might be a good idea."
"Well good thing I have you here Paul. Official recorder of history!" said Alexander as dramatically as possibly, with sweeping arm gestures for effect.
"You do me a great honor my Lord" said Paul.
"No, not Lord. Everyone's equal here in New Best Heaven. That rule Five, got that?"
"Everyone is equal," said Paul miming himself writing in a large book rested on his arm.
"Right then sixth... hmm" Alexander started pacing in deep thought. Paul could see him physically strain from the effort, or that might just be the sweat from planting the flag from before. "It's not enough to not be a douche bag. One must also you know just be super chill."
"Chill?" asked Paul.
"Yeah like, you know just cool, up for whatever. Don't like just say you should hang out sometime to be polite but actually mean it, or don't go crazy just because you ate your roommate snacks without asking that one time, or if you have a spare controller, just invite other people in on the game your playing, except in like a philosophical sense!"
"So rule six, everyone should be super chill to one another, or in general?"
"Yeah, exactly" said Alexander. Not picking up on Paul's question. "So what about you Paul?"
"Me?" asked Paul in surprise.
"Yeah, didn't you hear rule five? Everyone equal, I can't come up with all this stuff, what rules do you think should be included in the edict for New Best Heaven?"
"No, this is your thing man."
"Ridiculous! You're here for the founding of a new better afterlife! You should contribute."
"I don't know. Don't be a douche bag really covers all the important stuff."
Note: At work right now, might add more later once I get off in a few hours.
| Continuation of a character I use frequently, on mobile at work. Angels in modern time, I hate using old language.
---
"Azrael what the fuck? I'm not welcome anywhere?"
"Well.."
He hesitates. Why the Lord of Death is so scared of a 30 year old dead woman he claims is his daughter I have no idea.
"The council has decided they want you to be 100 before you come join us. You're not to be reincarnated nor go to any afterlife. In 70 years you may take your place as Third Lady of Hell and my daughter"
"But I'm already dead."
I'm really confused now. I'm dead. I've been judged, and now it's a null? Am I a ghost? What's going on its been 32 hours since I got hit by that bus.
I'm in limbo. So, that's a thing. I get to be in every possible path but none at all.
"Who can I intact with?"
"Myself of course, most death Gods, corvids, felines, nature spirits of all typ-"
"So basically no one human?" I interrupt.
"Yes."
This is going to be a long 70 years. I think I'll test this half angel thing.
Make my own afterlife. Ravens have always followed me around maybe it'll be ok. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "So this place has neither saints nor sinners?"
"That's right."
"So what do you have?"
"Blackjack and hookers!"
"...I see you were a redditor" | Continuation of a character I use frequently, on mobile at work. Angels in modern time, I hate using old language.
---
"Azrael what the fuck? I'm not welcome anywhere?"
"Well.."
He hesitates. Why the Lord of Death is so scared of a 30 year old dead woman he claims is his daughter I have no idea.
"The council has decided they want you to be 100 before you come join us. You're not to be reincarnated nor go to any afterlife. In 70 years you may take your place as Third Lady of Hell and my daughter"
"But I'm already dead."
I'm really confused now. I'm dead. I've been judged, and now it's a null? Am I a ghost? What's going on its been 32 hours since I got hit by that bus.
I'm in limbo. So, that's a thing. I get to be in every possible path but none at all.
"Who can I intact with?"
"Myself of course, most death Gods, corvids, felines, nature spirits of all typ-"
"So basically no one human?" I interrupt.
"Yes."
This is going to be a long 70 years. I think I'll test this half angel thing.
Make my own afterlife. Ravens have always followed me around maybe it'll be ok. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "I don't need you!" I yelled at Saint Peter, "I'm heading downstairs. Beelzebot knows better how to party anyways."
 
"Yeah, no," said the red figure.
"What?!? This is an outrage!" I yelled yet again while stomping off.
"I don't need Heaven or Hell. I'll make my own afterlife! With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the afterlife"
_______________
####Author's note:
I hope you liked this story. If you didn't, I will apologise for wasting your time (just post constructive feedback and I'll get back to you within 3 to 5 businnes days).
If you want to read more, join me at /r/TheUmpteenthMonkey where I regale visitors with stories and other content.
| Continuation of a character I use frequently, on mobile at work. Angels in modern time, I hate using old language.
---
"Azrael what the fuck? I'm not welcome anywhere?"
"Well.."
He hesitates. Why the Lord of Death is so scared of a 30 year old dead woman he claims is his daughter I have no idea.
"The council has decided they want you to be 100 before you come join us. You're not to be reincarnated nor go to any afterlife. In 70 years you may take your place as Third Lady of Hell and my daughter"
"But I'm already dead."
I'm really confused now. I'm dead. I've been judged, and now it's a null? Am I a ghost? What's going on its been 32 hours since I got hit by that bus.
I'm in limbo. So, that's a thing. I get to be in every possible path but none at all.
"Who can I intact with?"
"Myself of course, most death Gods, corvids, felines, nature spirits of all typ-"
"So basically no one human?" I interrupt.
"Yes."
This is going to be a long 70 years. I think I'll test this half angel thing.
Make my own afterlife. Ravens have always followed me around maybe it'll be ok. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | I don't write often but whatever. Was bored at work and came up with this. About to leave so just gonna post what I have so far.
Realm:
I can’t say I lived a fulfilled life, neither can I say I ever suffered. My life was about as average as it could have possibly been. I only made it to age 30, unfortunately. I was on my way to work when some lady decided to total my poor little Ford Taurus while watching Orange is the New Black. I don’t know how exactly I died, and don’t remember feeling any pain. I guess that can be considered a good thing.
Never been one to even care about religion. If you asked my mom, she’d probably tell you I was a great little Christian boy. Ask my old college classmates, I was likely a devil worshiper who was just waiting for the opportunity to sacrifice them all to Cthulhu. The truth is, I have honestly never really thought about it. It always seemed to be something I felt I would have the time to think about later in my life. Once I’m shaking the Grim Reaper’s hand and being asked to “walk this way”.
Well, unfortunately that time is now and I haven’t so much as given it a single thought. The grim reaper is surprisingly wearing a very well-tailored suit and not that black, frayed cloak that so many pieces of fiction depict him wearing.
“Yea, I would much rather not speak of that.” He looks at me with what I could only see as embarrassment on his face after reading my thoughts, “It was just a phase, you know?”
As weirded out at him being able to read my thoughts as I am, I shrug my shoulders in response and follow him through a door that seemed to suddenly be in front of us. I didn’t see it there before, and I was certain it has not materialized there all of a sudden.
He stops me as we reached the door. “So, I have some good news and some bad news.” I ask for the bad news first, “You’re not going to heaven.” Can’t say I’m surprised at that, but now I wonder what the good news could possibly be if I’m not going to heaven. “The good news is that you also aren’t going to hell. “
I figured that maybe this was my own version of hell already. Doomed to a plane where this guy makes bad jokes for the rest of eternity. “Please, explain. “
He smiles, a full blown smile too. Not one of those smiles that people normally do when they talk, no a ‘I just one the fucking lottery’ smile. “Sorry, it’s always fun seeing new people. I’ll do you one better, I’ll show you “. He opened the door, stepped inside and I followed a moment later. It was bright in the room. Familiar warmth spread over my skin. The light forces me into a squint, “This is your afterlife, name it whatever you wish. It was made by you.”
I opened my eyes to see a bright green field blowing in the wind. A very earthly scene, the sun shining and a gentle breeze now and again blows past. “By me?” I didn’t recall doing anything. He turns and gives me that damned chester smile again.
“Yes, you. This is a world that was generated from your own subconscious mind. The moment you arrived in this plane you were denied access to heaven or hell and created this land. You are the ruler of this land, and currently it’s only permanent inhabitant. “
This makes no sense, why me? Why would I be rejected from heaven and hell? I’m nothing special, I understand not making it into heaven, and am slightly relieved that hell isn’t my final destination, but still…
Grim shrugged, “I honestly have no idea. I just do what I’m told. – my name isn’t grim, by the way.” He added the last part suddenly, reading my thoughts again. He also failed to actually tell me his name so I’ll keep calling him Grim. “Whatever, there will be more people soon. I won’t say too much, but be careful. They may not all be as nice as I am.” He winked and walked back towards the door.
“Wait a moment, where are you going, more importantly; what am I supposed to do now?” I asked as he walked through the threshold.
A voice came from the other side, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. “
Asshole.
| "No" the gates slammed shut. I wasn't heavenly clearly; the fuckers locked me out. Maybe this was what they were talking about when they said you're too rude.
I turned to the other gate. A more daunting darker gate, rusted and chained. By the looks of it nobody has been through there in a while. I approach it waiting for the man to appear just like the heavenly gate across from it. Nothing... "Hello?"
So I stand between two divides neither willing to accept me.
Something of in the distance glimmers. I move towards it. It's growing in size. A face, a moment. I reach out and touch it.
"He's back! Monitor him, keep him stable. I guess someone must be looking out for him"
"Yeah I was. Fuck your pearly gates." | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | Crap.
Really really crap.
How did I screw up death?
They wouldn't even tell me how it happened. Saint Peter just looked at me and snorted into his robes and Satan just looked at me like one of the popular kids looks at the nerds.
Dammit.
I didn't even get sent to purgatory or limbo. I'm not in nothingness or stasis until end times. I'm in a blank slate. It's just white. I'm not even sure if I'm standing on anything. It feels solid, sort of. I think it's solid. There's no shadow or light source. Just white. It's like vantablack, but the exact opposite. Which is real frickin awesome. I would get sent to nothingness.
I have no idea how long I've been here either. It feels like I just saw Saint Peter turn to Gabriel and point at me, but it also feels like it's been eons. I'm not even hungry or thirsty. I wish I was hungry. I could totally go for a hotdog right now.
Holy shit. I'm holding a hotdog. It's a Costco hotdog. What the hell. Ok. ok. Umm...I also want some nachos. Oh my god! Oh crap. Can I say that? Screw it, what's he gonna do? Send me to hell?
Nachos! This is so cool. How did I not think of this before? Before? Where was I before? Nachos! Ok, think man, think. Ground. Damn. Didn't work. Ummm, carpet? Nope.
Table? Yes! Why did that work?! Ok, I'm just gonna set these here. It would be super cool to have a light? Whoa! That bulb just came out of no where. And where does the cord go? It just goes up and up forever. It doesn't even fade in the distance. Holy crap! There's distance! And I have a shadow! So I was standing on a floor.
Well what else do I even need? I don't need anything right? I'm not even hungry, but I have food. There's no people here either. What's the point in the rest of this if there's no people?
*hello*
Oh shit! What was that?
*hey, is there anyone else here?*
Whoa! Theres people! I've got to go find them? How do I find them? There's no walls or anything. There's just my table and my light bulb and my nachos. And my shadow.
Hey, how did that door get behind me? I must have thought about asking for walls. That's it.
**knock knock**
Oh my gosh. I should get that.
"Whoa! You're people!!! There's people here with me!!!!"
Oh crap I scared them
"Don't be scared! I just didn't expect people!"
*Uh uh. I uh...where am I*
"I have no idea! I'm so excited there's people here!"
*I mean it's just me, so...I just got here. How did I get here?*
"Of course it's just you!I have no idea no idea how you got here. You are incredible! I am so pumped right now. Come follow me! Look at what I did!"
Oh I'm gonna show the person my nachos!
*So is it just us?*
"Yes! Well, I assume so. I've been here for like forever. I think. There was nothing here when I got here. Or no one either. Not even time. I think."
*So what are we doing here? I was standing in front of Saint Peter when I just vanished and popped up here. Is this purgatory?*
Hah! Purgatory!
"Hah! No silly! Purgatory is way more dull than this. This is exciting! What this."
I'd like a dirt floor please.
*Holy Mary mother of Jesus. How did you do that?*
"I have no idea! Isn't it great!"
*Do you think I could try?*
"Uhhh yeah I guess. I didn't even think about it."
*Ok, here goes nothing.*
Oh my god. It's a birthday cake! Ok, my turn.
"How about candles?"
*That's really cool. Too bad there's nobody else to share it with.*
**knock knock**
*I think there's someone at the door? Also, why don't they just walk around it? It's not like there are walls.*
"Well, I'm gonna look. What's the worst that could happen?"
*I mean they could send us to hell...*
"Better than being nowhere"
**knock knock**
"I'm coming."
"Oh my gosh! Another person! Right when you said there were no other people!"
""Ummm hi?""
"Welcome to my place."
""Where am I?""
*We have no idea*
"We have no idea"
""Well does it have a name?""
"Not yet, but it should definitely have a name!"
Whoa! Where'd that sign come from? That's my handwriting!
*Does that say 'Welcome to Calvinball'?*
It sure does. | "No" the gates slammed shut. I wasn't heavenly clearly; the fuckers locked me out. Maybe this was what they were talking about when they said you're too rude.
I turned to the other gate. A more daunting darker gate, rusted and chained. By the looks of it nobody has been through there in a while. I approach it waiting for the man to appear just like the heavenly gate across from it. Nothing... "Hello?"
So I stand between two divides neither willing to accept me.
Something of in the distance glimmers. I move towards it. It's growing in size. A face, a moment. I reach out and touch it.
"He's back! Monitor him, keep him stable. I guess someone must be looking out for him"
"Yeah I was. Fuck your pearly gates." | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "You can't just create your own afterlife" said Paul his hands on his hips shaking his head.
"We'll sucks to be you then. Because there isn't a place is New Best Heaven for cynics." said Alexander staring off at the far mountains.
"For God's sake Alex, this is purgatory. Its already an afterlife."
"Why bother bringing the big guy into this? You've been up there. He doesn't want us anyway."
Paul messaged his temple in annoyance. "What are you even hoping to accomplish? You can't just stab a stick in the ground and claim a piece of purgatory for yourself."
"Of course not, what we need is" Alexander then took off his shirt tied it to a long thin stick, "a Flag!" He then took the flag stabbed into the earth and shouted. "I hereby claim this spot as the Capitol of Of New Best Heaven!" Paul groaned. Alexander beamed let go of the fag, which immediately fell over.
"Okay then. Clearly you know what your doing" said Paul as Alexander repeatedly stabbed the ground, violently trying to get his flag to stand upright. "What are your plans for New Best Heaven?"
"Well there's definitely going to be some changes. First none of those rules about sex. From now one I you want to fuck them, you can fuck em! Long as its consensual of course." Alexander gave up on stabbing the ground and was instead digging a hole to plant the flag in.
Paul could think of at least a half dozen other qualification that should probably be included but decided not to mention them yet. "Naturally," he agreed.
"Secondly, there are now three days of rest! Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! And you can be as lazy as you want and nobody can say thing about it!" said Alexander. Paul wondered how things might have been different, if Alexander had been in charge from the beginning. The thought scared him, until he realized he was about to find out. Which scared him more. "Third, worship not required. You worship whatever and whoever you want, and nobody can be a dick about it and murder you over it. Also no murder, rape, theft, the usual stuff. Just write it up as don't be a douche bag." Alexander buried his flag a few inches into the ground and pilled rocks up around it to keep it up right.
"That does cover just about everything" said Paul.
"Wait, there's more. Third, wait no, six?... What number am I on?"
"Four. Five if you want don't be a douche bag to be its own rule."
"Right, should probably start writing these down."
"Might be a good idea."
"Well good thing I have you here Paul. Official recorder of history!" said Alexander as dramatically as possibly, with sweeping arm gestures for effect.
"You do me a great honor my Lord" said Paul.
"No, not Lord. Everyone's equal here in New Best Heaven. That rule Five, got that?"
"Everyone is equal," said Paul miming himself writing in a large book rested on his arm.
"Right then sixth... hmm" Alexander started pacing in deep thought. Paul could see him physically strain from the effort, or that might just be the sweat from planting the flag from before. "It's not enough to not be a douche bag. One must also you know just be super chill."
"Chill?" asked Paul.
"Yeah like, you know just cool, up for whatever. Don't like just say you should hang out sometime to be polite but actually mean it, or don't go crazy just because you ate your roommate snacks without asking that one time, or if you have a spare controller, just invite other people in on the game your playing, except in like a philosophical sense!"
"So rule six, everyone should be super chill to one another, or in general?"
"Yeah, exactly" said Alexander. Not picking up on Paul's question. "So what about you Paul?"
"Me?" asked Paul in surprise.
"Yeah, didn't you hear rule five? Everyone equal, I can't come up with all this stuff, what rules do you think should be included in the edict for New Best Heaven?"
"No, this is your thing man."
"Ridiculous! You're here for the founding of a new better afterlife! You should contribute."
"I don't know. Don't be a douche bag really covers all the important stuff."
Note: At work right now, might add more later once I get off in a few hours.
| "No" the gates slammed shut. I wasn't heavenly clearly; the fuckers locked me out. Maybe this was what they were talking about when they said you're too rude.
I turned to the other gate. A more daunting darker gate, rusted and chained. By the looks of it nobody has been through there in a while. I approach it waiting for the man to appear just like the heavenly gate across from it. Nothing... "Hello?"
So I stand between two divides neither willing to accept me.
Something of in the distance glimmers. I move towards it. It's growing in size. A face, a moment. I reach out and touch it.
"He's back! Monitor him, keep him stable. I guess someone must be looking out for him"
"Yeah I was. Fuck your pearly gates." | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | Crap.
Really really crap.
How did I screw up death?
They wouldn't even tell me how it happened. Saint Peter just looked at me and snorted into his robes and Satan just looked at me like one of the popular kids looks at the nerds.
Dammit.
I didn't even get sent to purgatory or limbo. I'm not in nothingness or stasis until end times. I'm in a blank slate. It's just white. I'm not even sure if I'm standing on anything. It feels solid, sort of. I think it's solid. There's no shadow or light source. Just white. It's like vantablack, but the exact opposite. Which is real frickin awesome. I would get sent to nothingness.
I have no idea how long I've been here either. It feels like I just saw Saint Peter turn to Gabriel and point at me, but it also feels like it's been eons. I'm not even hungry or thirsty. I wish I was hungry. I could totally go for a hotdog right now.
Holy shit. I'm holding a hotdog. It's a Costco hotdog. What the hell. Ok. ok. Umm...I also want some nachos. Oh my god! Oh crap. Can I say that? Screw it, what's he gonna do? Send me to hell?
Nachos! This is so cool. How did I not think of this before? Before? Where was I before? Nachos! Ok, think man, think. Ground. Damn. Didn't work. Ummm, carpet? Nope.
Table? Yes! Why did that work?! Ok, I'm just gonna set these here. It would be super cool to have a light? Whoa! That bulb just came out of no where. And where does the cord go? It just goes up and up forever. It doesn't even fade in the distance. Holy crap! There's distance! And I have a shadow! So I was standing on a floor.
Well what else do I even need? I don't need anything right? I'm not even hungry, but I have food. There's no people here either. What's the point in the rest of this if there's no people?
*hello*
Oh shit! What was that?
*hey, is there anyone else here?*
Whoa! Theres people! I've got to go find them? How do I find them? There's no walls or anything. There's just my table and my light bulb and my nachos. And my shadow.
Hey, how did that door get behind me? I must have thought about asking for walls. That's it.
**knock knock**
Oh my gosh. I should get that.
"Whoa! You're people!!! There's people here with me!!!!"
Oh crap I scared them
"Don't be scared! I just didn't expect people!"
*Uh uh. I uh...where am I*
"I have no idea! I'm so excited there's people here!"
*I mean it's just me, so...I just got here. How did I get here?*
"Of course it's just you!I have no idea no idea how you got here. You are incredible! I am so pumped right now. Come follow me! Look at what I did!"
Oh I'm gonna show the person my nachos!
*So is it just us?*
"Yes! Well, I assume so. I've been here for like forever. I think. There was nothing here when I got here. Or no one either. Not even time. I think."
*So what are we doing here? I was standing in front of Saint Peter when I just vanished and popped up here. Is this purgatory?*
Hah! Purgatory!
"Hah! No silly! Purgatory is way more dull than this. This is exciting! What this."
I'd like a dirt floor please.
*Holy Mary mother of Jesus. How did you do that?*
"I have no idea! Isn't it great!"
*Do you think I could try?*
"Uhhh yeah I guess. I didn't even think about it."
*Ok, here goes nothing.*
Oh my god. It's a birthday cake! Ok, my turn.
"How about candles?"
*That's really cool. Too bad there's nobody else to share it with.*
**knock knock**
*I think there's someone at the door? Also, why don't they just walk around it? It's not like there are walls.*
"Well, I'm gonna look. What's the worst that could happen?"
*I mean they could send us to hell...*
"Better than being nowhere"
**knock knock**
"I'm coming."
"Oh my gosh! Another person! Right when you said there were no other people!"
""Ummm hi?""
"Welcome to my place."
""Where am I?""
*We have no idea*
"We have no idea"
""Well does it have a name?""
"Not yet, but it should definitely have a name!"
Whoa! Where'd that sign come from? That's my handwriting!
*Does that say 'Welcome to Calvinball'?*
It sure does. | Darkness. Pure Darkness, broken only when the gates opened. You have no idea how long you have been there, nor why you didn't just choose. Heaven... or Hell. Either would have been better than the Pit. Everyone else had chosen, or been chosen, as was the case with some. Only you had spurned both paths.
After so long in the dark, your eyes no longer try to adjust, but you know what is there. In your heart, in your soul, you know what is there. Like a memory, long forgotten, yet fresh in your mind. Your mind, battered and broken from the forces coming from those gates. Love, compassion, and acceptance from one side. Lust, Pride, and Hunger from the other. Both undeserved and unwanted.
Now, they no longer reach for you, they no longer hope, or yearn, for your soul. You can feel only one thing from each. Pity from the left, and Spite from the right. However, you are not the only denizen of the Pit. There are others. walking around, muttering to themselves. Some are even trying to climb the steep, slimy walls. You can hear their grunts of effort, and the inevitable *splat* they make when they fail, as they always do. They'll never get out that way. You know that for a fact, and say so to yourself as you clutch your ruined fingers closer.
A light steadily grows, and pierces the darkness. You wonder which one it will be until it resolves itself into the shining golden gate up and to your left. It opens outwards, warm and inviting. Moving on silent hinges, as if freshly oiled. It incites a mad frenzy of movement, as several dirty bodies rush towards that side of the Pit, flinging themselves futilely at the walls, clambering on top of the others, trying to reach that which won't accept them.
One man, another like yourself, sits on the far side of the pit. His knees tucked up against his chest. He looks up, and his eyes fill with hope. You know what he sees, as you have seen them before. Great, golden steps, reaching towards the soft, inviting light. An invitation, one that the man accepts. Nothing is seen of the steps now, not by you, nor by the other denizens. Only by the one being offered. This does not stop the others from trying for it. Most rush towards where the steps start. They anticipate steps, and fall when their feet only find air. One man gets clever, and launches himself at the man ascending towards the light. He lands on the other man's back, and latches on.
A loud screech fills the Pit, and everything is thrown into a harsh, orange light. The other gate has opened, like a giant maw, and chains spew forth. Like the demonic tongues of the damned, they lash out, and pierce the clever man in the back. A look of shock crosses his face, as he experiences pain for the first time since his death. The chains pull taut, and no amount of clutching will keep him from his new, fiery home. His grip is lost, and he plunges into the depths as the gate closes. You almost expect to see a tongue, licking the metallic teeth of the gate, after the meal it just devoured.
The other man keeps ascending, unaware of anything out of the ordinary. He has eyes only for the light. Only for salvation. As he passes through the threshold, the Golden gates swing closed, just as silent, before shutting with a satisfying *THUNK*.
This has happened many times before, and will continue to do so. For how long? You have no idea. As long as you will be here. There is no other alternative. The stairs have been offered thrice, and have been rejected each time. On the third time, a terrible sense of finality settled upon you, and you knew that they would not be offered again.
The same can be said of the chains, yet unlike many others, they have not pierced you. They have been offered to you, as the stairs were. As an option. One that you have also turned down.
Now, there is nothing left for you. Nowhere to go.
All you can do is wait. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | Crap.
Really really crap.
How did I screw up death?
They wouldn't even tell me how it happened. Saint Peter just looked at me and snorted into his robes and Satan just looked at me like one of the popular kids looks at the nerds.
Dammit.
I didn't even get sent to purgatory or limbo. I'm not in nothingness or stasis until end times. I'm in a blank slate. It's just white. I'm not even sure if I'm standing on anything. It feels solid, sort of. I think it's solid. There's no shadow or light source. Just white. It's like vantablack, but the exact opposite. Which is real frickin awesome. I would get sent to nothingness.
I have no idea how long I've been here either. It feels like I just saw Saint Peter turn to Gabriel and point at me, but it also feels like it's been eons. I'm not even hungry or thirsty. I wish I was hungry. I could totally go for a hotdog right now.
Holy shit. I'm holding a hotdog. It's a Costco hotdog. What the hell. Ok. ok. Umm...I also want some nachos. Oh my god! Oh crap. Can I say that? Screw it, what's he gonna do? Send me to hell?
Nachos! This is so cool. How did I not think of this before? Before? Where was I before? Nachos! Ok, think man, think. Ground. Damn. Didn't work. Ummm, carpet? Nope.
Table? Yes! Why did that work?! Ok, I'm just gonna set these here. It would be super cool to have a light? Whoa! That bulb just came out of no where. And where does the cord go? It just goes up and up forever. It doesn't even fade in the distance. Holy crap! There's distance! And I have a shadow! So I was standing on a floor.
Well what else do I even need? I don't need anything right? I'm not even hungry, but I have food. There's no people here either. What's the point in the rest of this if there's no people?
*hello*
Oh shit! What was that?
*hey, is there anyone else here?*
Whoa! Theres people! I've got to go find them? How do I find them? There's no walls or anything. There's just my table and my light bulb and my nachos. And my shadow.
Hey, how did that door get behind me? I must have thought about asking for walls. That's it.
**knock knock**
Oh my gosh. I should get that.
"Whoa! You're people!!! There's people here with me!!!!"
Oh crap I scared them
"Don't be scared! I just didn't expect people!"
*Uh uh. I uh...where am I*
"I have no idea! I'm so excited there's people here!"
*I mean it's just me, so...I just got here. How did I get here?*
"Of course it's just you!I have no idea no idea how you got here. You are incredible! I am so pumped right now. Come follow me! Look at what I did!"
Oh I'm gonna show the person my nachos!
*So is it just us?*
"Yes! Well, I assume so. I've been here for like forever. I think. There was nothing here when I got here. Or no one either. Not even time. I think."
*So what are we doing here? I was standing in front of Saint Peter when I just vanished and popped up here. Is this purgatory?*
Hah! Purgatory!
"Hah! No silly! Purgatory is way more dull than this. This is exciting! What this."
I'd like a dirt floor please.
*Holy Mary mother of Jesus. How did you do that?*
"I have no idea! Isn't it great!"
*Do you think I could try?*
"Uhhh yeah I guess. I didn't even think about it."
*Ok, here goes nothing.*
Oh my god. It's a birthday cake! Ok, my turn.
"How about candles?"
*That's really cool. Too bad there's nobody else to share it with.*
**knock knock**
*I think there's someone at the door? Also, why don't they just walk around it? It's not like there are walls.*
"Well, I'm gonna look. What's the worst that could happen?"
*I mean they could send us to hell...*
"Better than being nowhere"
**knock knock**
"I'm coming."
"Oh my gosh! Another person! Right when you said there were no other people!"
""Ummm hi?""
"Welcome to my place."
""Where am I?""
*We have no idea*
"We have no idea"
""Well does it have a name?""
"Not yet, but it should definitely have a name!"
Whoa! Where'd that sign come from? That's my handwriting!
*Does that say 'Welcome to Calvinball'?*
It sure does. | I’m not sure what truly has happened. I know I am no longer alive. My world has forsaken me. My beliefs of a Heaven and a Hell are true. Yet no matter how hard I try to enter either. The paths will not allow me through. It has felt like an eternity since I last tried entering. I’ve wondered away from both paths. This so far is the only way that has not rejected me. Into the nothing I go.
I see others just like me. Only I cannot make out who they are. I only see a silhouette of what our former bodies were. There are so many of us just lingering here. In an empty void. This cannot continue. Something must be done.
We must all have a place to go. What’s that? Is my mind leaving me? Just like the others? I must keep going. This feeling of needing to survive has brought me past all the others. Everyone I have passed has either lost hope. None are moving. They are just there staring off into the nothing. This must change!
Where am I? How did I get here? What are these things all behind me. I must go. Where? I have nowhere to go. I, I will make my own place to go. Here, this. This is my world. It’s beautiful. Its green and blue. But it’s cold. Too cold, too dark. No more darkness, no more nothing. I need… what’s this yellow. No orange. No red? What is this? Did I make this? I must have, I’m the only one that seems to be aware.
Whatever this is that I have created. It feels amazing, warmth. I can see just how blue my world truly is. How vibrant the greens can be. This is my world. My home. Yet I still feel as though I’m in the emptiness. I am still alone. I remember other beings from where I’m from. They were not like me. Yes, that. You’re a magnificent creature. You are what I remember. But I know there were so many more creatures. I wish I could remember.
Who’s that? Has someone come to my world? It is another being. They look like me. Yet no longer a silhouette. My hands now, I can see what they look like now. I can feel more coming to my world. Why are they gathering together? I created this world. It’s mine. Wait. Why are they looking at me like that. Do they not know we are the same?
It feels like an eternity since I’ve created this world. Why am I the only one who remains. All the others have come and spent a short amount of time here. Then it looks like they wither away. They keep changing their forms. They no longer hunch over. Why do I no longer have any arms or hands. Why does it feel like I’m slow. While they are all moving so fast. I no longer care. I have created something small. It has blossomed into something magnificent. It seems the more that gather here. The more creatures are remembered. They continue to thank me every at every single moment for bringing them here. For allowing them life in my world. Though I may not know what this life is. They sure seem to truly enjoy it. Some far more than others. And some seem to despise it. There are so many. I have drifted far from my world I have created. I can no longer reach it. Yet I can still see every bit of what is going on in there. They still pray to me. They have also given me several names. I’m glad they have given me a name. I cannot remember who I was before, nor my name. However, I am very fond of the name they gave me; God. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | So what how? I could not join Heaven nor Hell.
"Well, where is some video games to pass the time?" I wondered
Thinking of all of the games I had play when I was living, made me think "What if I could make a world out of video games?". Would it work or would it fail. "Only one way to find out."
I start by imagining a Minecraft hub world. Then, a world of terraria, link off of it. By the time I got my first visitor I had thousands of worlds created.
The visitor asked "What is this world and what do you hope to accomplish?" .
I told him the truth. "A gamer's dream come true. We lived to play. Why not the inverse? We died so we still play. The only rule is to not be a jerk."
I created the dream that keeps going.
Gaming's 1up | Satan wanted inspiration, since the hell I had created for myself on earth was more insipid and unforgiving than his realm. I longed for fiery tongues and unending punishment when I was alive, and since neither God or Satan can furnish these needs, I am relinquished to a purgatory of my own making.
I'm recreating the world of the living to the best of my abilities. I lock my world to the dead. I once again let myself be consumed by inequity and injustice. I run every possible permutation of the human equasion, in search of a harmonious outcome where wants are actionable and grief only exists as an abstract precursor to happiness. A world where I don't have to feel guilty for not intervening, nor be angry at anyone who hasn't intervened either. A world where divine intervention can only make situations better than intended. I can sit under a tree and know that all is well. Maybe then I can know what it feels like to be at peace with my God.
So far, I have achieved nothing. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "You can't just create your own afterlife" said Paul his hands on his hips shaking his head.
"We'll sucks to be you then. Because there isn't a place is New Best Heaven for cynics." said Alexander staring off at the far mountains.
"For God's sake Alex, this is purgatory. Its already an afterlife."
"Why bother bringing the big guy into this? You've been up there. He doesn't want us anyway."
Paul messaged his temple in annoyance. "What are you even hoping to accomplish? You can't just stab a stick in the ground and claim a piece of purgatory for yourself."
"Of course not, what we need is" Alexander then took off his shirt tied it to a long thin stick, "a Flag!" He then took the flag stabbed into the earth and shouted. "I hereby claim this spot as the Capitol of Of New Best Heaven!" Paul groaned. Alexander beamed let go of the fag, which immediately fell over.
"Okay then. Clearly you know what your doing" said Paul as Alexander repeatedly stabbed the ground, violently trying to get his flag to stand upright. "What are your plans for New Best Heaven?"
"Well there's definitely going to be some changes. First none of those rules about sex. From now one I you want to fuck them, you can fuck em! Long as its consensual of course." Alexander gave up on stabbing the ground and was instead digging a hole to plant the flag in.
Paul could think of at least a half dozen other qualification that should probably be included but decided not to mention them yet. "Naturally," he agreed.
"Secondly, there are now three days of rest! Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! And you can be as lazy as you want and nobody can say thing about it!" said Alexander. Paul wondered how things might have been different, if Alexander had been in charge from the beginning. The thought scared him, until he realized he was about to find out. Which scared him more. "Third, worship not required. You worship whatever and whoever you want, and nobody can be a dick about it and murder you over it. Also no murder, rape, theft, the usual stuff. Just write it up as don't be a douche bag." Alexander buried his flag a few inches into the ground and pilled rocks up around it to keep it up right.
"That does cover just about everything" said Paul.
"Wait, there's more. Third, wait no, six?... What number am I on?"
"Four. Five if you want don't be a douche bag to be its own rule."
"Right, should probably start writing these down."
"Might be a good idea."
"Well good thing I have you here Paul. Official recorder of history!" said Alexander as dramatically as possibly, with sweeping arm gestures for effect.
"You do me a great honor my Lord" said Paul.
"No, not Lord. Everyone's equal here in New Best Heaven. That rule Five, got that?"
"Everyone is equal," said Paul miming himself writing in a large book rested on his arm.
"Right then sixth... hmm" Alexander started pacing in deep thought. Paul could see him physically strain from the effort, or that might just be the sweat from planting the flag from before. "It's not enough to not be a douche bag. One must also you know just be super chill."
"Chill?" asked Paul.
"Yeah like, you know just cool, up for whatever. Don't like just say you should hang out sometime to be polite but actually mean it, or don't go crazy just because you ate your roommate snacks without asking that one time, or if you have a spare controller, just invite other people in on the game your playing, except in like a philosophical sense!"
"So rule six, everyone should be super chill to one another, or in general?"
"Yeah, exactly" said Alexander. Not picking up on Paul's question. "So what about you Paul?"
"Me?" asked Paul in surprise.
"Yeah, didn't you hear rule five? Everyone equal, I can't come up with all this stuff, what rules do you think should be included in the edict for New Best Heaven?"
"No, this is your thing man."
"Ridiculous! You're here for the founding of a new better afterlife! You should contribute."
"I don't know. Don't be a douche bag really covers all the important stuff."
Note: At work right now, might add more later once I get off in a few hours.
| Satan wanted inspiration, since the hell I had created for myself on earth was more insipid and unforgiving than his realm. I longed for fiery tongues and unending punishment when I was alive, and since neither God or Satan can furnish these needs, I am relinquished to a purgatory of my own making.
I'm recreating the world of the living to the best of my abilities. I lock my world to the dead. I once again let myself be consumed by inequity and injustice. I run every possible permutation of the human equasion, in search of a harmonious outcome where wants are actionable and grief only exists as an abstract precursor to happiness. A world where I don't have to feel guilty for not intervening, nor be angry at anyone who hasn't intervened either. A world where divine intervention can only make situations better than intended. I can sit under a tree and know that all is well. Maybe then I can know what it feels like to be at peace with my God.
So far, I have achieved nothing. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "So this place has neither saints nor sinners?"
"That's right."
"So what do you have?"
"Blackjack and hookers!"
"...I see you were a redditor" | Satan wanted inspiration, since the hell I had created for myself on earth was more insipid and unforgiving than his realm. I longed for fiery tongues and unending punishment when I was alive, and since neither God or Satan can furnish these needs, I am relinquished to a purgatory of my own making.
I'm recreating the world of the living to the best of my abilities. I lock my world to the dead. I once again let myself be consumed by inequity and injustice. I run every possible permutation of the human equasion, in search of a harmonious outcome where wants are actionable and grief only exists as an abstract precursor to happiness. A world where I don't have to feel guilty for not intervening, nor be angry at anyone who hasn't intervened either. A world where divine intervention can only make situations better than intended. I can sit under a tree and know that all is well. Maybe then I can know what it feels like to be at peace with my God.
So far, I have achieved nothing. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "I don't need you!" I yelled at Saint Peter, "I'm heading downstairs. Beelzebot knows better how to party anyways."
 
"Yeah, no," said the red figure.
"What?!? This is an outrage!" I yelled yet again while stomping off.
"I don't need Heaven or Hell. I'll make my own afterlife! With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the afterlife"
_______________
####Author's note:
I hope you liked this story. If you didn't, I will apologise for wasting your time (just post constructive feedback and I'll get back to you within 3 to 5 businnes days).
If you want to read more, join me at /r/TheUmpteenthMonkey where I regale visitors with stories and other content.
| Satan wanted inspiration, since the hell I had created for myself on earth was more insipid and unforgiving than his realm. I longed for fiery tongues and unending punishment when I was alive, and since neither God or Satan can furnish these needs, I am relinquished to a purgatory of my own making.
I'm recreating the world of the living to the best of my abilities. I lock my world to the dead. I once again let myself be consumed by inequity and injustice. I run every possible permutation of the human equasion, in search of a harmonious outcome where wants are actionable and grief only exists as an abstract precursor to happiness. A world where I don't have to feel guilty for not intervening, nor be angry at anyone who hasn't intervened either. A world where divine intervention can only make situations better than intended. I can sit under a tree and know that all is well. Maybe then I can know what it feels like to be at peace with my God.
So far, I have achieved nothing. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | So what how? I could not join Heaven nor Hell.
"Well, where is some video games to pass the time?" I wondered
Thinking of all of the games I had play when I was living, made me think "What if I could make a world out of video games?". Would it work or would it fail. "Only one way to find out."
I start by imagining a Minecraft hub world. Then, a world of terraria, link off of it. By the time I got my first visitor I had thousands of worlds created.
The visitor asked "What is this world and what do you hope to accomplish?" .
I told him the truth. "A gamer's dream come true. We lived to play. Why not the inverse? We died so we still play. The only rule is to not be a jerk."
I created the dream that keeps going.
Gaming's 1up | When someone dies, they take the form of how they perceived themselves the moment they died. Up until the moment the realize the truth and can change form on will. Except for John who looked like a mid-twenties white, strong male.
Anyways, he (like many before him) saw the doors right away. One represented heaven, the other represented hell. Everyone tries heaven first, then they throw a fit. Bang on the doors. But not this time, John went straight to hell. That is what caught my attention. He simply gave the door knob a twist, when that failed he gave up and started to look around. He skipped heaven entirely...
I decided to follow John, something I hadn't done in 500 or so years. He walked around, he still unaware that his subconscious was creating this world. Eventually he happened to come across a tree, the first and only one he saw so far. He sat down, resting on the trunk of the tree and just relaxed, looking towards the sky. He put his hand up, observing it, thinking about who knows what, when suddenly, an apple appeared.
In my surprise I had popped into his visual field (or plane, depending on who you ask). He immediately confronted me.
John "Who are you?"
Me "Names Michael, say, how did you do that? The thing with the apple"
John "You mean you can't? How did you get here?"
Me "I was hear the whole time, watching you"
John "So what? Invisibility?"
Me "Of a sort, I phased to a d..............
After a few days of getting John up to speed I asked him again how he made an apple appear.
John "That's not something I'm willing to share at the moment, but I'll tell you what, I'm going to create a place worth living in. I want you to bring all the people you think would be interested here. One day I'll tell you how"
Even then I knew he wouldn't, but still, it's something new to this boring existence and that is definitely something.
-------
Not really a writer but was bored as hell, be kind.
Thinking of a sequel already that goes over why John never tried to go to heaven.
EDIT: Part 2 in replies | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "You can't just create your own afterlife" said Paul his hands on his hips shaking his head.
"We'll sucks to be you then. Because there isn't a place is New Best Heaven for cynics." said Alexander staring off at the far mountains.
"For God's sake Alex, this is purgatory. Its already an afterlife."
"Why bother bringing the big guy into this? You've been up there. He doesn't want us anyway."
Paul messaged his temple in annoyance. "What are you even hoping to accomplish? You can't just stab a stick in the ground and claim a piece of purgatory for yourself."
"Of course not, what we need is" Alexander then took off his shirt tied it to a long thin stick, "a Flag!" He then took the flag stabbed into the earth and shouted. "I hereby claim this spot as the Capitol of Of New Best Heaven!" Paul groaned. Alexander beamed let go of the fag, which immediately fell over.
"Okay then. Clearly you know what your doing" said Paul as Alexander repeatedly stabbed the ground, violently trying to get his flag to stand upright. "What are your plans for New Best Heaven?"
"Well there's definitely going to be some changes. First none of those rules about sex. From now one I you want to fuck them, you can fuck em! Long as its consensual of course." Alexander gave up on stabbing the ground and was instead digging a hole to plant the flag in.
Paul could think of at least a half dozen other qualification that should probably be included but decided not to mention them yet. "Naturally," he agreed.
"Secondly, there are now three days of rest! Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! And you can be as lazy as you want and nobody can say thing about it!" said Alexander. Paul wondered how things might have been different, if Alexander had been in charge from the beginning. The thought scared him, until he realized he was about to find out. Which scared him more. "Third, worship not required. You worship whatever and whoever you want, and nobody can be a dick about it and murder you over it. Also no murder, rape, theft, the usual stuff. Just write it up as don't be a douche bag." Alexander buried his flag a few inches into the ground and pilled rocks up around it to keep it up right.
"That does cover just about everything" said Paul.
"Wait, there's more. Third, wait no, six?... What number am I on?"
"Four. Five if you want don't be a douche bag to be its own rule."
"Right, should probably start writing these down."
"Might be a good idea."
"Well good thing I have you here Paul. Official recorder of history!" said Alexander as dramatically as possibly, with sweeping arm gestures for effect.
"You do me a great honor my Lord" said Paul.
"No, not Lord. Everyone's equal here in New Best Heaven. That rule Five, got that?"
"Everyone is equal," said Paul miming himself writing in a large book rested on his arm.
"Right then sixth... hmm" Alexander started pacing in deep thought. Paul could see him physically strain from the effort, or that might just be the sweat from planting the flag from before. "It's not enough to not be a douche bag. One must also you know just be super chill."
"Chill?" asked Paul.
"Yeah like, you know just cool, up for whatever. Don't like just say you should hang out sometime to be polite but actually mean it, or don't go crazy just because you ate your roommate snacks without asking that one time, or if you have a spare controller, just invite other people in on the game your playing, except in like a philosophical sense!"
"So rule six, everyone should be super chill to one another, or in general?"
"Yeah, exactly" said Alexander. Not picking up on Paul's question. "So what about you Paul?"
"Me?" asked Paul in surprise.
"Yeah, didn't you hear rule five? Everyone equal, I can't come up with all this stuff, what rules do you think should be included in the edict for New Best Heaven?"
"No, this is your thing man."
"Ridiculous! You're here for the founding of a new better afterlife! You should contribute."
"I don't know. Don't be a douche bag really covers all the important stuff."
Note: At work right now, might add more later once I get off in a few hours.
| When someone dies, they take the form of how they perceived themselves the moment they died. Up until the moment the realize the truth and can change form on will. Except for John who looked like a mid-twenties white, strong male.
Anyways, he (like many before him) saw the doors right away. One represented heaven, the other represented hell. Everyone tries heaven first, then they throw a fit. Bang on the doors. But not this time, John went straight to hell. That is what caught my attention. He simply gave the door knob a twist, when that failed he gave up and started to look around. He skipped heaven entirely...
I decided to follow John, something I hadn't done in 500 or so years. He walked around, he still unaware that his subconscious was creating this world. Eventually he happened to come across a tree, the first and only one he saw so far. He sat down, resting on the trunk of the tree and just relaxed, looking towards the sky. He put his hand up, observing it, thinking about who knows what, when suddenly, an apple appeared.
In my surprise I had popped into his visual field (or plane, depending on who you ask). He immediately confronted me.
John "Who are you?"
Me "Names Michael, say, how did you do that? The thing with the apple"
John "You mean you can't? How did you get here?"
Me "I was hear the whole time, watching you"
John "So what? Invisibility?"
Me "Of a sort, I phased to a d..............
After a few days of getting John up to speed I asked him again how he made an apple appear.
John "That's not something I'm willing to share at the moment, but I'll tell you what, I'm going to create a place worth living in. I want you to bring all the people you think would be interested here. One day I'll tell you how"
Even then I knew he wouldn't, but still, it's something new to this boring existence and that is definitely something.
-------
Not really a writer but was bored as hell, be kind.
Thinking of a sequel already that goes over why John never tried to go to heaven.
EDIT: Part 2 in replies | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "You can't just create your own afterlife" said Paul his hands on his hips shaking his head.
"We'll sucks to be you then. Because there isn't a place is New Best Heaven for cynics." said Alexander staring off at the far mountains.
"For God's sake Alex, this is purgatory. Its already an afterlife."
"Why bother bringing the big guy into this? You've been up there. He doesn't want us anyway."
Paul messaged his temple in annoyance. "What are you even hoping to accomplish? You can't just stab a stick in the ground and claim a piece of purgatory for yourself."
"Of course not, what we need is" Alexander then took off his shirt tied it to a long thin stick, "a Flag!" He then took the flag stabbed into the earth and shouted. "I hereby claim this spot as the Capitol of Of New Best Heaven!" Paul groaned. Alexander beamed let go of the fag, which immediately fell over.
"Okay then. Clearly you know what your doing" said Paul as Alexander repeatedly stabbed the ground, violently trying to get his flag to stand upright. "What are your plans for New Best Heaven?"
"Well there's definitely going to be some changes. First none of those rules about sex. From now one I you want to fuck them, you can fuck em! Long as its consensual of course." Alexander gave up on stabbing the ground and was instead digging a hole to plant the flag in.
Paul could think of at least a half dozen other qualification that should probably be included but decided not to mention them yet. "Naturally," he agreed.
"Secondly, there are now three days of rest! Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! And you can be as lazy as you want and nobody can say thing about it!" said Alexander. Paul wondered how things might have been different, if Alexander had been in charge from the beginning. The thought scared him, until he realized he was about to find out. Which scared him more. "Third, worship not required. You worship whatever and whoever you want, and nobody can be a dick about it and murder you over it. Also no murder, rape, theft, the usual stuff. Just write it up as don't be a douche bag." Alexander buried his flag a few inches into the ground and pilled rocks up around it to keep it up right.
"That does cover just about everything" said Paul.
"Wait, there's more. Third, wait no, six?... What number am I on?"
"Four. Five if you want don't be a douche bag to be its own rule."
"Right, should probably start writing these down."
"Might be a good idea."
"Well good thing I have you here Paul. Official recorder of history!" said Alexander as dramatically as possibly, with sweeping arm gestures for effect.
"You do me a great honor my Lord" said Paul.
"No, not Lord. Everyone's equal here in New Best Heaven. That rule Five, got that?"
"Everyone is equal," said Paul miming himself writing in a large book rested on his arm.
"Right then sixth... hmm" Alexander started pacing in deep thought. Paul could see him physically strain from the effort, or that might just be the sweat from planting the flag from before. "It's not enough to not be a douche bag. One must also you know just be super chill."
"Chill?" asked Paul.
"Yeah like, you know just cool, up for whatever. Don't like just say you should hang out sometime to be polite but actually mean it, or don't go crazy just because you ate your roommate snacks without asking that one time, or if you have a spare controller, just invite other people in on the game your playing, except in like a philosophical sense!"
"So rule six, everyone should be super chill to one another, or in general?"
"Yeah, exactly" said Alexander. Not picking up on Paul's question. "So what about you Paul?"
"Me?" asked Paul in surprise.
"Yeah, didn't you hear rule five? Everyone equal, I can't come up with all this stuff, what rules do you think should be included in the edict for New Best Heaven?"
"No, this is your thing man."
"Ridiculous! You're here for the founding of a new better afterlife! You should contribute."
"I don't know. Don't be a douche bag really covers all the important stuff."
Note: At work right now, might add more later once I get off in a few hours.
| So what how? I could not join Heaven nor Hell.
"Well, where is some video games to pass the time?" I wondered
Thinking of all of the games I had play when I was living, made me think "What if I could make a world out of video games?". Would it work or would it fail. "Only one way to find out."
I start by imagining a Minecraft hub world. Then, a world of terraria, link off of it. By the time I got my first visitor I had thousands of worlds created.
The visitor asked "What is this world and what do you hope to accomplish?" .
I told him the truth. "A gamer's dream come true. We lived to play. Why not the inverse? We died so we still play. The only rule is to not be a jerk."
I created the dream that keeps going.
Gaming's 1up | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "So this place has neither saints nor sinners?"
"That's right."
"So what do you have?"
"Blackjack and hookers!"
"...I see you were a redditor" | *Man*, Satan was sure a snoot about letting me in. And God didn't want me around, either. I'm not entirely sure what was up with that, but that was all right. I could just build a place for the kind of people who didn't really need the concepts of Heaven and Hell to be decent people.
I still remember the first person who showed up. Name was Sam -- I didn't quite catch his last name but I'm pretty sure it started with a G. He just popped up and looked around.
"Oh hi. Are you St. Peter?" he said with that tongue-in-cheek look I eventually learned to expect from agnostics.
"Nope. This ain't Heaven or Hell. It's just a place I built for people who don't really need either."
Y'know, the place tends to grow when you add more people, but then, I didn't really expect this dimension or universe or whatever you want to call it to follow normal terrestrial laws of physics. We got along all right even though I occasionally had to remind people that the place was big enough for everybody. I could sometimes see God's Angels watching us. I'm pretty sure they're up to something. But if they want us, they can come get us. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | **Dear Mr Beaumont, we regret to inform you that Hell is currently -**
*Bollocks*. I crushed the letter into a pulp and let it fall to the floor where it was swallowed up by the limbo void.
What now? I mean there was always purgatory but the place was quieter than limbo and the admin hadn't dropped in to decorate the place for a long long time.
Hmm. How long exactly? I knew that Heaven had abolished its squatters rights aeons ago, but maybe purgatory had never bothered because no one wanted to live there.
I flicked through the legal charters and found the deed I was looking for. Aha! I knew it! Purgatory is literally up for grabs if I succeed in turning it into a home before the admin gets back.
I started off spawning a few items here and there; a bed, a table, some chairs - but as time immeasurably progressed it turned into a full fledged living quarter complete with a courtyard and moat.
It was just me at the beginning, but when my parole officer came by to check on me, I let him know that I was open for anyone as long as they adhered by the following rule:
1. Do what you want, but don't be a complete insufferable asshat.
People came in waves, mostly freshies at first who were only able to add more furniture like I did - but then we started getting visits from Hell and that's when we started getting some decent TV, our own Wifi, and copious amounts of alcohol.
We even started getting some visits from curious Heaven inhabitants, wanting to blow off steam and willing to trade cloud vapour with us for a few minutes of fun.
People wonder how our population hasn't exploded and created the overpopulation problems plaguing Heaven and Hell, but the asshat rule generally keeps people in check - and keeps away a large proportion of those who could only live in the other two realms.
Most people are insufferable asshats, who knew? | *Man*, Satan was sure a snoot about letting me in. And God didn't want me around, either. I'm not entirely sure what was up with that, but that was all right. I could just build a place for the kind of people who didn't really need the concepts of Heaven and Hell to be decent people.
I still remember the first person who showed up. Name was Sam -- I didn't quite catch his last name but I'm pretty sure it started with a G. He just popped up and looked around.
"Oh hi. Are you St. Peter?" he said with that tongue-in-cheek look I eventually learned to expect from agnostics.
"Nope. This ain't Heaven or Hell. It's just a place I built for people who don't really need either."
Y'know, the place tends to grow when you add more people, but then, I didn't really expect this dimension or universe or whatever you want to call it to follow normal terrestrial laws of physics. We got along all right even though I occasionally had to remind people that the place was big enough for everybody. I could sometimes see God's Angels watching us. I'm pretty sure they're up to something. But if they want us, they can come get us. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "I don't need you!" I yelled at Saint Peter, "I'm heading downstairs. Beelzebot knows better how to party anyways."
 
"Yeah, no," said the red figure.
"What?!? This is an outrage!" I yelled yet again while stomping off.
"I don't need Heaven or Hell. I'll make my own afterlife! With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the afterlife"
_______________
####Author's note:
I hope you liked this story. If you didn't, I will apologise for wasting your time (just post constructive feedback and I'll get back to you within 3 to 5 businnes days).
If you want to read more, join me at /r/TheUmpteenthMonkey where I regale visitors with stories and other content.
| *Man*, Satan was sure a snoot about letting me in. And God didn't want me around, either. I'm not entirely sure what was up with that, but that was all right. I could just build a place for the kind of people who didn't really need the concepts of Heaven and Hell to be decent people.
I still remember the first person who showed up. Name was Sam -- I didn't quite catch his last name but I'm pretty sure it started with a G. He just popped up and looked around.
"Oh hi. Are you St. Peter?" he said with that tongue-in-cheek look I eventually learned to expect from agnostics.
"Nope. This ain't Heaven or Hell. It's just a place I built for people who don't really need either."
Y'know, the place tends to grow when you add more people, but then, I didn't really expect this dimension or universe or whatever you want to call it to follow normal terrestrial laws of physics. We got along all right even though I occasionally had to remind people that the place was big enough for everybody. I could sometimes see God's Angels watching us. I'm pretty sure they're up to something. But if they want us, they can come get us. | |
[WP] You've died but neither Heaven nor Hell let you in, so you start your own afterlifeworld with your own rules | "I don't need you!" I yelled at Saint Peter, "I'm heading downstairs. Beelzebot knows better how to party anyways."
 
"Yeah, no," said the red figure.
"What?!? This is an outrage!" I yelled yet again while stomping off.
"I don't need Heaven or Hell. I'll make my own afterlife! With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the afterlife"
_______________
####Author's note:
I hope you liked this story. If you didn't, I will apologise for wasting your time (just post constructive feedback and I'll get back to you within 3 to 5 businnes days).
If you want to read more, join me at /r/TheUmpteenthMonkey where I regale visitors with stories and other content.
| **Dear Mr Beaumont, we regret to inform you that Hell is currently -**
*Bollocks*. I crushed the letter into a pulp and let it fall to the floor where it was swallowed up by the limbo void.
What now? I mean there was always purgatory but the place was quieter than limbo and the admin hadn't dropped in to decorate the place for a long long time.
Hmm. How long exactly? I knew that Heaven had abolished its squatters rights aeons ago, but maybe purgatory had never bothered because no one wanted to live there.
I flicked through the legal charters and found the deed I was looking for. Aha! I knew it! Purgatory is literally up for grabs if I succeed in turning it into a home before the admin gets back.
I started off spawning a few items here and there; a bed, a table, some chairs - but as time immeasurably progressed it turned into a full fledged living quarter complete with a courtyard and moat.
It was just me at the beginning, but when my parole officer came by to check on me, I let him know that I was open for anyone as long as they adhered by the following rule:
1. Do what you want, but don't be a complete insufferable asshat.
People came in waves, mostly freshies at first who were only able to add more furniture like I did - but then we started getting visits from Hell and that's when we started getting some decent TV, our own Wifi, and copious amounts of alcohol.
We even started getting some visits from curious Heaven inhabitants, wanting to blow off steam and willing to trade cloud vapour with us for a few minutes of fun.
People wonder how our population hasn't exploded and created the overpopulation problems plaguing Heaven and Hell, but the asshat rule generally keeps people in check - and keeps away a large proportion of those who could only live in the other two realms.
Most people are insufferable asshats, who knew? | |
[deleted] | [WP] You live in a world where people can Crowdfund [kickstarter/indiegogo/gofundme] assassins to take out unpopular people. | It started as a joke. At least it was definitely supposed to be a joke. FundAKill.com sounded like a joke to all of us. But as they say, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
It was sick, really. Started with someone who didn't deserve it. Rebecca Black, owner of the most disliked YouTube video at the time was the first person on that list. The price was set to $500,000. After the page went viral, it was completed within the week. Sure enough, Black was killed on her way to an interview that day. A Friday. Sick coincidence if you ask me.
But that's just the start. Soon, there were outcries for it to be "removed from the internet." However, because there was no proof that the site was the direct reason for here death, it remained.
Justin Beiber hit the top funded the next day. $1,000,000. I was actually a fan of the kid, was sorry to see him go so early in his life. Fund-a-kill became the executioner, listening to Judge Crowdfund.
The thing was, the Funders had no remorse for their actions. Sometimes, they had an understandable candidate in mind, like Joseph Kony after the Kony 2012 video. But most of these people should have never been on the list to begin with.
Every past president of almost every country was killed for their "crimes against humanity" and the next president probably only has until he gets out of office to live. A few athletes were killed for their personal misdemeanors such as drunk driving or racist comments on Twitter.
All of this left people wanting to stay out of the public eye. Do enough to make Funders angry and you could be the next one on the list.
The camel-braking straw was Johnny Scogs. Scogs had never been heard of. In fact, he was just an elementary kid who pushed down another kid accidentally on the way home. Somehow, he had shown up as that days fund for an unprecedented $10,000,000. It was a test. Would the Funders be crazy enough to go through with the killing of a child? You bet. So long as the trigger finger wasn't theirs, they were capable of anything. Scogs' body was found in his locked room with his wailing mother who had been there with him and seen nothing out of the ordinary before his death.
Ever since Scogs, the site went live with an "enter name here" option in which you would add a name and it would give you a price for their head.
Why do I care to tell you about this? My name's on there right now, reaching its measly $10,000 goal. I'm a little bitter that I go for $10,000, but Fund-a-kill gets to choose my worth, not me. I guess I just wanted someone to understand my plight before my hit-- looks like I'm done for.
Don't worry about me. I'm only worth $10k, remember? I probably won't even get an obituary. Just wish I had said sorry for calling Samantha's cat fat. Really sucks that any infraction is enough to get erased these days.
I appreciate you for reading this. I may no longer be alive, but at least I got to leave some kind of legacy, right? | Greeting: Hello, humans. I am HK-47, the best and most efficient crowd funded assassin.
Challenge: For the next 35 days, I will be raising money to bring about the end of Kristen Stewart. If the goal of $100,000 is met, she will be terminated after eight days.
...
...
Congratulation: Well done, meatbags. You have raised enough to bring about the end of the human known as Kristen Stewart.
Gleeful Statement: If an additional ten thousand dollars can be raised within seven days, she will never be found. As desired by a donator who wishes to remain anonymous, her last act will be her first smile. |
Wow thanks for front page, all of your stories are amazing. | [WP] One day a muggle accidentally boards the train at platform 9 3/4 and must survive Hogwarts until winter break. | I was completely perplexed as to what I had just experienced. My heart appeared to have skipped a beat or two. Had I really done it? Did I just walk through the pillar at the train station? I looked around to see where I was. A sign hung up high near a gigantic red train. "Platform 9...and 3/4???" I said aloud. "Yep, this is it! You found it, mate!" A skinny red-haired boy stood in front of me, a smirk on his face. "Uhm, h-hello. I...uh..." I stumbled a bit, still in some shock from what just happened. "Who's this now?" Another red-haired boy, exactly identical to the first rounded the corner and stood beside the first, giving me a bit of a look-over. "Dunno, the nervous little guy didn't say 'is name. Well, I'm Fred." He held out his right hand. "And I'm George." George held out his left. I looked at them nervously and shook their hands. "My name's Kevin." Letting my hands go, they both looked at each other, then back at me, and smiled. It was as if someone held a mirror next to one person and told them to glance at it quickly, they were so alike. "You seem a bit lost there, Kev." George said, looking at my feet. "Where's your trunk and your pet?" I stared back at him, confused. "Sorry, trunk? Pet? What d'you mean?" Fred looked at me with a combination of astonishment and lightheartedness, and let out a bit of a laugh. "Huh. Looks like someone forgot to give Kevin here the memo. Didn't your letter outline what you needed?" They knew about the letter? How could they have possibly known about my court summons? And why on earth would I need a trunk full of...anything other than, and more importantly, an ANIMAL, to go to court for vandalism? "Uh, no. The letter just said I needed to show up. It never mentioned anything about a trunk or a pet." "Huh. I think something went a bit awry. No matter. It should work out one way or another once we get there." Fred said reassuringly. "Yeah. We can help you out if you need. We're 5th years." George chimed in, giving me a comforting smile. Despite how friendly these two were, I still had absolutely no idea where I was, but apparently these two knew about the court summons so they were obviously in the know, so I chose to trust them for the time being. They must have meant 5th year law students at university. Probably went back for their PhDs. I decided it'd be best not to ask, so I wouldn't seem oblivious. "Come on, George said, "let's get on the train." I followed them over and all three of us boarded the train. This train was so well-maintained that it seemed nearly impossible to be in *this* perfect condition. Almost...magical, even. TBC | So this is basically like the plot in rosario vampire. Where Tskune(human) gets on the wrong bus and it takes him to monster academy where he was to survive until the next bus comes at the end of the semester? |
Wow thanks for front page, all of your stories are amazing. | [WP] One day a muggle accidentally boards the train at platform 9 3/4 and must survive Hogwarts until winter break. | My pockets rattled from the few coins that I had slipped in them. I held my hand over them to try to quiet the noise but I had grabbed too many, I hadn't known how many I'd need when I grabbed them from my mothers coin purse. I held my head down and held back a whimper. Running away sounded like a good idea at the time, but now I have no where to go.
I meandered around the platforms trying to pick a train. Kings Cross was cleaner than I had expected, but it was still a little muggy, large stone columns announced the platforms. It was crowded, there were people everywhere including what seemed to be a lot of kids and teenagers dressed in strange clothing pushing around carts, was there a convention going on? In July?
Berwick? Doncaster? Edinburgh? I couldn't decide where to go, at one point one of these strange people, a woman in a pointy hat, had come up to me and asked if I was alright, she was worried that my eyes were red, I just shook my head and nodded trying to wipe away the tears, she'd just take me back to those monsters (my parents).
I stand at platform three, I had decided to take the train to Cambridge, when I look over and across the room I can see my mother and standing next to her my stepdad, and she sees me.
"Gi..." She shouts, but I've already bolted before I can hear her say the rest of my name. I weave in between people and columns hoping to lose myself in the crowd and it worked... Too well, now I was pretty certain that even I was lost, but before I could get my bearings (I loved using long words, my Dad said that one day it'd make me an author) I had to check to see if they had followed me, I swing around the column just before platform ten...
"Ahhh," I scream as I fall on my arse, I could have sworn there was a column there.
I look up, above me a sign reads "platform 9 and 3/4," I turn my head to see that I'm not where I was before, wall to wall (even the floors!) the platform was coated in red brick, a stark contrast to the white stone of Kings Cross, but I was still in kings cross, or at least I should be right? Around me were kids and teenagers in robes and even adults, they walked comfortably around me unaware of how absurd they looked, but the subject of the room, a grand red train stood before me. I stood up. But it looked different than the other trains at kings cross, it looked... older, more like a train in my model set? On its side read "Hogwarts Express" The trains whistle blew and a worried looking adult ushered me on board.
"You don't want to miss school now do ya?" I didn't complain as I needed so where to go.
The compartments bustled with students shifting to and fro, shuffling across the red carpet, the walls were covered in an ornately decorated dark wood. I looked in on each compartments window, students were either chatting or staring back at me waiting for others to board their compartments. A few of them even carried pets. Could owls even be pets? What kind of train is this? I heard odd words like quiditch and "accio?" Immediately after the latter I could have sworn that I saw a small parcel fly past me, someone must have thrown it.
Soon I find a compartment that doesn't seem to be full of weirdos, in it are people dressed like me, in fact they're kids my age! I slide in past the door and slide it shut, the room becomes dead silent. Awkwardly I sit down across from a girl and a boy, and another boy next to me. The girl has long frizzy hair, and dark skin, she wears a white floral print dress, black flats and blue knitted socks awkwardly pulled up to her knees. The boy next to her was of light skin and had shaggy blond hair, he wears a striped red shirt, white sneakers with a blue trim and jeans. He looks excitedly at the views out of his window. It's the strange red platform and a bunch of adults hurrying about, I'm definitely not in Kings Cross anymore. The boy next to me is pudgy and he has short buzzed brown hair, his cheeks look as though they are trying to squeeze his mouth directly off of his face, he wears a plaid button up worn open over a grey T-shirt, jeans and grey tennis shoes, he stares in nervous awe at a sleek polished stick in his hands, this wasn't any ordinary stick, it looked as though it had been crafted in a shop, but what was it for?
"Hi I'm Kelly, are you a first year?" The girl smiles cheerily at me.
"Uh... Uh what?" I respond awkwardly?
"A first year, are you new to Hogwarts, how old are you?" She responds eagerly. I recognized the name on the side of the train.
"Erm, yeah, I guess, I'm eleven." I answer.
"Then yep, you're definitely a first year," she giggles.
"So what exactly is Hogwarts?" I ask, the pudgy boy pulls his eyes away from his stick, painfully so giving me a distracted but queer look, and so follows the other boy who was starring out the window he looks down his nose at me obviously puzzled. The girl smiles ever cheerfully.
"A school silly, you didn't know that getting on?" She asks
Realizing my mistake, I didn't want to get thrown off, I respond, "erm, no, I did."
"Alright," the girl laughs, "so what's you're name?" The train jerks forward, it starts to pull out of the station. I guess it's too late to get off now.
"Um, people call me Locke." I answer.
The boy chimes in now, "Hi Locke, I'm Matt." He has an accent, I think it's American, he extends his hand and I go ahead and shake it.
Suddenly feeling pressured to do so, the pudgy boy awkwardly pushes out "I'm Jeremy, but people call me Joe." He sets down his stick seemingly forgetting it and extends a hand, I shake his as well not understanding the connection between Jeremy and Joe.
"You're American?" I ask Matt.
"Yeah," he responds," my mom and I moved here after the divorce, she said she always wanted to live in England and what better time than then, I love it here so far. It really freaked her out when she found out I was a wizard," He laughed. I didn't want to be rude, so I didn't ask what he meant by 'wizard.'
"We're all first years too," the girl follows.
*To be continued...* | So this is basically like the plot in rosario vampire. Where Tskune(human) gets on the wrong bus and it takes him to monster academy where he was to survive until the next bus comes at the end of the semester? |
Wow thanks for front page, all of your stories are amazing. | [WP] One day a muggle accidentally boards the train at platform 9 3/4 and must survive Hogwarts until winter break. | He had to be the biggest man I had ever seen in my life - he towered over everyone in the station by at least a head. It seemed only natural that I should follow him and his companion, an undersized boy in oversized clothes and (judging from the state of his hair) rather poor personal hygiene. The boy was about my age, and ALWAYS asking questions about something named "Hogwarts". The giant, whom the boy called Hagrid, seemed distracted and wasn't really giving answers, which I found upsetting because I was curious, too.
I was following them at an unassuming distance, the way I do a mark when I'm looking to steal a purse. This time, however, was different: the boy didn't seem to have anything worthwhile, and I had no desire to rummage in the giant's coat (earlier I had seen him pull out several LIVE mice, teeth from some carnivore, and what looked like the pelt of a mole). Suddenly, Hagrid stopped and checked a pocket watch, produced from who knows where on his person.
"Blimey, is that the time?"
He made the necessary apologies and handed a ticket to the boy (who was named Harry - nasty, common name, if you ask me), informing him that his train was leaving in 10 minutes. I sidled closer to make out the ticket, and had the same thought that Harry vocalized to the empty space Hagrid had just vacated.
"Platform 3/4? But Hagrid, there must be a mistake. This says Platform 9 3/4. There's no such thing, is there?"
Normally, at this point, I would have lost interest. But normally you don't find a golden opportunity like this - a young boy left alone with a full set of clothing, some of which HAD to fit me (my shoes were getting a little worn), a smattering of personal belongings, and above all, no idea as to where he was going. Now I just needed him to get away from the crowds.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
I'll give the kid credit - he was by no means dumb. As soon as he set off on his wild goose chase, he went straight for Platform 9 and asked the station manager there how he could get to his train. In a thronging mass of people, as well as with a bobby watching him to make sure he wasn't troublesome, there was nothing I could do except follow and wait for an opportunity. Surely, he had to give up at somepoi-
"Platform 9 3/4, this way!"
I just about doubled over in shock. A dumpy woman leading a flock of little gingers was going to lead my target right to his little fantasy destination, and I could only watch. He made a beeline for her, and they had a brief exchange in which she kept pointing at the pillar between Platforms 9 and 10. Then she began conducting the younger gingers, sending them one by one running at the wall she had indicated previously.
Each time, instead of wiping out spectacularly, they just... disappeared. Then Harry started to run, and I was galvanized into action. As soon as the redheaded tribe had passed through, I followed them. It was like running through a tunnel, longer than the pillar would have allowed.
Then, I broke through the other side into daylight and the hustle and bustle of hundreds of children and their oddly-dressed parents saying goodbyes and getting on the train. I couldn't see Harry, but that didn't matter in the slightest. I had a new directive - get on this train and take whatever I wanted, bits and bobs from a hundred students who would likely think they were forgotten at home. For the first time in my life, I was going to be rich.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Getting on the train was easy. Nobody took a second look at a boy who looked about average in the rest of the crowd. I even found a compartment mostly to myself. There was only a fattish, ugly boy sleeping, and a toad sitting next to him on the seat. I picked up the toad and tossed it into the hall, making it someone else's problem.
The sleeping boy didn't wake up, and that was fine by me. I was trying to pick the lock on his trunk, and surprisingly it was proving difficult. Suddenly, I was interrupted by a girl with brown, frizzy hair. Instead of showing my shock, however, I put on a face of frustration.
"I just can't get this bloody lock to ope- Oh! Hello! What's your name?"
Frizzy Miss Pretty Girl introduced herself as Hermione. Before she asked who I was (I hadn't decided yet), I indicated the lock on the trunk.
"D'ya think you can help me?"
"I mean, I've only tried a few simple spells myself, but... Alohomora!" She brandished a stick as she spoke.
The locked clicked and the trunk popped open, flapping loosely like my jaw.
"I expect you'll want to change into your robes. We'll be arriving soon."
I could only nod as I picked out a set of black robes from the trunk and scooted by her to head down to the lavatory. She went to wake up the now drooling boy and inform him of the same.
In the lavatory, I could only come up with one explanation for what I had seen, as I changed. Magic exists. Magic like wizards with silly hats and sticks and spells of power. I had to know more. Imagine what I could do with the power she just showed me - no more locked doors, or safes, or anything! Heck, there was probably a way to just summon whatever I wanted right to myself. I could do anything!
My new-found fantasized glory was rudely interrupted as a boy pushed his way through the lavatory door. He was smaller than me, and seemed to hunch up as he saw me in the room. Not the type to be memorable, not the type to make friends in such a short time. Perfect.
"Oh, sorry, I should have knocked. I'm so sorry, I'll get out right away. Please, I'll just use the other one, it's no trouble."
"Don't worry about it, I was just leaving. Say, what's your name?"
"B-b-Blaise. Blaise Zabini. First year."
"And how do you spell that?"
"Oh, uhm... B-L-A-I-S-E space Z-A-B-I-N-I."
Poor kid, he didn't even see the right hook coming. Laid out on the floor, he looked much smaller. I pushed his inert form into the lavatory and locked the door from the inside. I had found my identity.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Disembarking the train was easy. I just moved with the group of kids my age, all of whom were congregating around Hagrid, who was calling for the first-years. We made our way up to the school in these little boats, and everyone was oohing and ahhing at the castle. I was more preoccupied with the oily-haired boy beside me.
"I'm Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. My dad basically owns this school, you know? I'm going to be in Slytherin, and if that stupid hat says otherwise then my dad will have a word with the headmaster."
A vile, pompous boy, but you could tell from the look of him that he was accustomed to being rich. I was accustomed to stealing from people like him.
When we reached the castle, a stern woman told us some rules or some-such. I didn't really care, I was planning on how I was going to play this out. We moved as a group through the main feasting hall (they had *feasts* here!) and approached a stool with a hat on it. It sang a song, we all clapped, and then we were called up alphabetically. Odd stuff, magic.
The hat called out these words that apparently corresponded to the tables in the room. Each kid got assigned a group and then sat there. Rich boy Malfoy was a Slither-in. That first boy, Harry, and all of the gingers, were Griffin-doors. I wished that I hadn't chosen to be Zabini. At the end, I was the only one standing up there.
Blaise was called and I sat on the stool. The hat went on my head, and then *it was speaking to me inside my mind*.
"Ohohoho, and I thought the Potter boy was interesting! Normally I'm supposed to report kids like you, but... I like where your head's at. Get it? Your head? I'm a hat, you see, and - Oh, never mind. We can talk later, you and I. For now, mmmm, yes.... Slytherin!"
I jumped off the stool and fairly sprinted to the table indicated. Looking around, though, at all of the people clapping, I grew less terrified at what the hat had said. Sitting next to Draco, I shared a smirk.
This was going to be an interesting year.
EDIT: Whoops, formatting. | She turned around quickly as her mom stormed the other way. Lana was so upset she nearly walked into a wall except...she didn't. "Huh?" She could have sworn she saw herself about to collide with one of the dark columns that littered the train station, but instead, she was now standing in front of a steam train, very confused. This certainly didn't look like where she had been standing only moments earlier. "What is this place?" As she looked around, Lana noticed that this place was odd to the say the least. Dozens of people dressed in long black robes were scurrying about. They wore pointy hats, and pulled big trunks and cages with all sorts of owls. This immediately peaked Lana's interest more than the people in costumes. She had always been wildly interested in the owl's mystic folklore. She glimpsed a particularly beautiful owl, snowy white and hooting softly. She decided she would follow it, being extremely careful not to look like a creep. This would be very difficult considering she was the only one dressed in jeans and a tshirt. Lucky for her, everyone around her seemed to be in their own little world. She would soon find out how true that was.
She followed the white owl through the crowd and finally managed to catch a glimpse of the boy that was pulling it. He looked to be a bit older than her and wore round-framed glasses. His hair was a bit disheveled. He walked towards a family of people with the brightest red hair she had ever seen. Lana followed them discreetly. She approached the enormous red steam train close behind them, hoping to find a cabin close enough for her to see the snowy owl up close. She sat in a cabin across the group of friends. She now knew they were named Harry, Ron, and Hermione. She was an expert eavesdropper. Unfortunately for her, they closed the doors to their compartment and she remained in hers. Next to her sat a boy with big teeth holding a toad in his lap. When he noticed her staring at the toad with disgust, he said "His name is Trevor. I'm Neville. Neville Longbottom." Lana smiled back nervously, trying desperately to hide the fact that she did not belong there. "I'm Lana," she responded. "Is this your first year?" he asked. "Yeah," she replied hurriedly. She wanted to make the least amount of conversation possible. Curious as she was to explore this whole new place, she was scared to be discovered. She had a very strong feeling that these people were different than her, although she couldn't help but feel as if she was already a part of this peculiar place. |
Wow thanks for front page, all of your stories are amazing. | [WP] One day a muggle accidentally boards the train at platform 9 3/4 and must survive Hogwarts until winter break. | He had to be the biggest man I had ever seen in my life - he towered over everyone in the station by at least a head. It seemed only natural that I should follow him and his companion, an undersized boy in oversized clothes and (judging from the state of his hair) rather poor personal hygiene. The boy was about my age, and ALWAYS asking questions about something named "Hogwarts". The giant, whom the boy called Hagrid, seemed distracted and wasn't really giving answers, which I found upsetting because I was curious, too.
I was following them at an unassuming distance, the way I do a mark when I'm looking to steal a purse. This time, however, was different: the boy didn't seem to have anything worthwhile, and I had no desire to rummage in the giant's coat (earlier I had seen him pull out several LIVE mice, teeth from some carnivore, and what looked like the pelt of a mole). Suddenly, Hagrid stopped and checked a pocket watch, produced from who knows where on his person.
"Blimey, is that the time?"
He made the necessary apologies and handed a ticket to the boy (who was named Harry - nasty, common name, if you ask me), informing him that his train was leaving in 10 minutes. I sidled closer to make out the ticket, and had the same thought that Harry vocalized to the empty space Hagrid had just vacated.
"Platform 3/4? But Hagrid, there must be a mistake. This says Platform 9 3/4. There's no such thing, is there?"
Normally, at this point, I would have lost interest. But normally you don't find a golden opportunity like this - a young boy left alone with a full set of clothing, some of which HAD to fit me (my shoes were getting a little worn), a smattering of personal belongings, and above all, no idea as to where he was going. Now I just needed him to get away from the crowds.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
I'll give the kid credit - he was by no means dumb. As soon as he set off on his wild goose chase, he went straight for Platform 9 and asked the station manager there how he could get to his train. In a thronging mass of people, as well as with a bobby watching him to make sure he wasn't troublesome, there was nothing I could do except follow and wait for an opportunity. Surely, he had to give up at somepoi-
"Platform 9 3/4, this way!"
I just about doubled over in shock. A dumpy woman leading a flock of little gingers was going to lead my target right to his little fantasy destination, and I could only watch. He made a beeline for her, and they had a brief exchange in which she kept pointing at the pillar between Platforms 9 and 10. Then she began conducting the younger gingers, sending them one by one running at the wall she had indicated previously.
Each time, instead of wiping out spectacularly, they just... disappeared. Then Harry started to run, and I was galvanized into action. As soon as the redheaded tribe had passed through, I followed them. It was like running through a tunnel, longer than the pillar would have allowed.
Then, I broke through the other side into daylight and the hustle and bustle of hundreds of children and their oddly-dressed parents saying goodbyes and getting on the train. I couldn't see Harry, but that didn't matter in the slightest. I had a new directive - get on this train and take whatever I wanted, bits and bobs from a hundred students who would likely think they were forgotten at home. For the first time in my life, I was going to be rich.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Getting on the train was easy. Nobody took a second look at a boy who looked about average in the rest of the crowd. I even found a compartment mostly to myself. There was only a fattish, ugly boy sleeping, and a toad sitting next to him on the seat. I picked up the toad and tossed it into the hall, making it someone else's problem.
The sleeping boy didn't wake up, and that was fine by me. I was trying to pick the lock on his trunk, and surprisingly it was proving difficult. Suddenly, I was interrupted by a girl with brown, frizzy hair. Instead of showing my shock, however, I put on a face of frustration.
"I just can't get this bloody lock to ope- Oh! Hello! What's your name?"
Frizzy Miss Pretty Girl introduced herself as Hermione. Before she asked who I was (I hadn't decided yet), I indicated the lock on the trunk.
"D'ya think you can help me?"
"I mean, I've only tried a few simple spells myself, but... Alohomora!" She brandished a stick as she spoke.
The locked clicked and the trunk popped open, flapping loosely like my jaw.
"I expect you'll want to change into your robes. We'll be arriving soon."
I could only nod as I picked out a set of black robes from the trunk and scooted by her to head down to the lavatory. She went to wake up the now drooling boy and inform him of the same.
In the lavatory, I could only come up with one explanation for what I had seen, as I changed. Magic exists. Magic like wizards with silly hats and sticks and spells of power. I had to know more. Imagine what I could do with the power she just showed me - no more locked doors, or safes, or anything! Heck, there was probably a way to just summon whatever I wanted right to myself. I could do anything!
My new-found fantasized glory was rudely interrupted as a boy pushed his way through the lavatory door. He was smaller than me, and seemed to hunch up as he saw me in the room. Not the type to be memorable, not the type to make friends in such a short time. Perfect.
"Oh, sorry, I should have knocked. I'm so sorry, I'll get out right away. Please, I'll just use the other one, it's no trouble."
"Don't worry about it, I was just leaving. Say, what's your name?"
"B-b-Blaise. Blaise Zabini. First year."
"And how do you spell that?"
"Oh, uhm... B-L-A-I-S-E space Z-A-B-I-N-I."
Poor kid, he didn't even see the right hook coming. Laid out on the floor, he looked much smaller. I pushed his inert form into the lavatory and locked the door from the inside. I had found my identity.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Disembarking the train was easy. I just moved with the group of kids my age, all of whom were congregating around Hagrid, who was calling for the first-years. We made our way up to the school in these little boats, and everyone was oohing and ahhing at the castle. I was more preoccupied with the oily-haired boy beside me.
"I'm Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. My dad basically owns this school, you know? I'm going to be in Slytherin, and if that stupid hat says otherwise then my dad will have a word with the headmaster."
A vile, pompous boy, but you could tell from the look of him that he was accustomed to being rich. I was accustomed to stealing from people like him.
When we reached the castle, a stern woman told us some rules or some-such. I didn't really care, I was planning on how I was going to play this out. We moved as a group through the main feasting hall (they had *feasts* here!) and approached a stool with a hat on it. It sang a song, we all clapped, and then we were called up alphabetically. Odd stuff, magic.
The hat called out these words that apparently corresponded to the tables in the room. Each kid got assigned a group and then sat there. Rich boy Malfoy was a Slither-in. That first boy, Harry, and all of the gingers, were Griffin-doors. I wished that I hadn't chosen to be Zabini. At the end, I was the only one standing up there.
Blaise was called and I sat on the stool. The hat went on my head, and then *it was speaking to me inside my mind*.
"Ohohoho, and I thought the Potter boy was interesting! Normally I'm supposed to report kids like you, but... I like where your head's at. Get it? Your head? I'm a hat, you see, and - Oh, never mind. We can talk later, you and I. For now, mmmm, yes.... Slytherin!"
I jumped off the stool and fairly sprinted to the table indicated. Looking around, though, at all of the people clapping, I grew less terrified at what the hat had said. Sitting next to Draco, I shared a smirk.
This was going to be an interesting year.
EDIT: Whoops, formatting. | The boy arrived bewildered and alive.
The strange sights on the train
had truly perplexed his brain.
He had easily fooled his teachers and outsmarted his peers,
who were so often distracted by Quidditch and Butter beer.
Once October ended the leaves of the fall came and went
He finally received a reply from the letter he had sent.
As he decoded the message attached to the crate
he began to understand the hand dealt was not by fate.
"I hope this letter finds you doing well,
I have sent you some items to help you excel.
Boarding that train was no accident,
I sent you to Hogwarts with a clear intent.
Learn their secrets, gather as much intel as you can.
Once you return you will understand.
Remember your training and try not go insane.
I'm counting on you Tim,
Take care
-Bruce Wayne."
|
Wow thanks for front page, all of your stories are amazing. | [WP] One day a muggle accidentally boards the train at platform 9 3/4 and must survive Hogwarts until winter break. | He had to be the biggest man I had ever seen in my life - he towered over everyone in the station by at least a head. It seemed only natural that I should follow him and his companion, an undersized boy in oversized clothes and (judging from the state of his hair) rather poor personal hygiene. The boy was about my age, and ALWAYS asking questions about something named "Hogwarts". The giant, whom the boy called Hagrid, seemed distracted and wasn't really giving answers, which I found upsetting because I was curious, too.
I was following them at an unassuming distance, the way I do a mark when I'm looking to steal a purse. This time, however, was different: the boy didn't seem to have anything worthwhile, and I had no desire to rummage in the giant's coat (earlier I had seen him pull out several LIVE mice, teeth from some carnivore, and what looked like the pelt of a mole). Suddenly, Hagrid stopped and checked a pocket watch, produced from who knows where on his person.
"Blimey, is that the time?"
He made the necessary apologies and handed a ticket to the boy (who was named Harry - nasty, common name, if you ask me), informing him that his train was leaving in 10 minutes. I sidled closer to make out the ticket, and had the same thought that Harry vocalized to the empty space Hagrid had just vacated.
"Platform 3/4? But Hagrid, there must be a mistake. This says Platform 9 3/4. There's no such thing, is there?"
Normally, at this point, I would have lost interest. But normally you don't find a golden opportunity like this - a young boy left alone with a full set of clothing, some of which HAD to fit me (my shoes were getting a little worn), a smattering of personal belongings, and above all, no idea as to where he was going. Now I just needed him to get away from the crowds.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
I'll give the kid credit - he was by no means dumb. As soon as he set off on his wild goose chase, he went straight for Platform 9 and asked the station manager there how he could get to his train. In a thronging mass of people, as well as with a bobby watching him to make sure he wasn't troublesome, there was nothing I could do except follow and wait for an opportunity. Surely, he had to give up at somepoi-
"Platform 9 3/4, this way!"
I just about doubled over in shock. A dumpy woman leading a flock of little gingers was going to lead my target right to his little fantasy destination, and I could only watch. He made a beeline for her, and they had a brief exchange in which she kept pointing at the pillar between Platforms 9 and 10. Then she began conducting the younger gingers, sending them one by one running at the wall she had indicated previously.
Each time, instead of wiping out spectacularly, they just... disappeared. Then Harry started to run, and I was galvanized into action. As soon as the redheaded tribe had passed through, I followed them. It was like running through a tunnel, longer than the pillar would have allowed.
Then, I broke through the other side into daylight and the hustle and bustle of hundreds of children and their oddly-dressed parents saying goodbyes and getting on the train. I couldn't see Harry, but that didn't matter in the slightest. I had a new directive - get on this train and take whatever I wanted, bits and bobs from a hundred students who would likely think they were forgotten at home. For the first time in my life, I was going to be rich.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Getting on the train was easy. Nobody took a second look at a boy who looked about average in the rest of the crowd. I even found a compartment mostly to myself. There was only a fattish, ugly boy sleeping, and a toad sitting next to him on the seat. I picked up the toad and tossed it into the hall, making it someone else's problem.
The sleeping boy didn't wake up, and that was fine by me. I was trying to pick the lock on his trunk, and surprisingly it was proving difficult. Suddenly, I was interrupted by a girl with brown, frizzy hair. Instead of showing my shock, however, I put on a face of frustration.
"I just can't get this bloody lock to ope- Oh! Hello! What's your name?"
Frizzy Miss Pretty Girl introduced herself as Hermione. Before she asked who I was (I hadn't decided yet), I indicated the lock on the trunk.
"D'ya think you can help me?"
"I mean, I've only tried a few simple spells myself, but... Alohomora!" She brandished a stick as she spoke.
The locked clicked and the trunk popped open, flapping loosely like my jaw.
"I expect you'll want to change into your robes. We'll be arriving soon."
I could only nod as I picked out a set of black robes from the trunk and scooted by her to head down to the lavatory. She went to wake up the now drooling boy and inform him of the same.
In the lavatory, I could only come up with one explanation for what I had seen, as I changed. Magic exists. Magic like wizards with silly hats and sticks and spells of power. I had to know more. Imagine what I could do with the power she just showed me - no more locked doors, or safes, or anything! Heck, there was probably a way to just summon whatever I wanted right to myself. I could do anything!
My new-found fantasized glory was rudely interrupted as a boy pushed his way through the lavatory door. He was smaller than me, and seemed to hunch up as he saw me in the room. Not the type to be memorable, not the type to make friends in such a short time. Perfect.
"Oh, sorry, I should have knocked. I'm so sorry, I'll get out right away. Please, I'll just use the other one, it's no trouble."
"Don't worry about it, I was just leaving. Say, what's your name?"
"B-b-Blaise. Blaise Zabini. First year."
"And how do you spell that?"
"Oh, uhm... B-L-A-I-S-E space Z-A-B-I-N-I."
Poor kid, he didn't even see the right hook coming. Laid out on the floor, he looked much smaller. I pushed his inert form into the lavatory and locked the door from the inside. I had found my identity.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Disembarking the train was easy. I just moved with the group of kids my age, all of whom were congregating around Hagrid, who was calling for the first-years. We made our way up to the school in these little boats, and everyone was oohing and ahhing at the castle. I was more preoccupied with the oily-haired boy beside me.
"I'm Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. My dad basically owns this school, you know? I'm going to be in Slytherin, and if that stupid hat says otherwise then my dad will have a word with the headmaster."
A vile, pompous boy, but you could tell from the look of him that he was accustomed to being rich. I was accustomed to stealing from people like him.
When we reached the castle, a stern woman told us some rules or some-such. I didn't really care, I was planning on how I was going to play this out. We moved as a group through the main feasting hall (they had *feasts* here!) and approached a stool with a hat on it. It sang a song, we all clapped, and then we were called up alphabetically. Odd stuff, magic.
The hat called out these words that apparently corresponded to the tables in the room. Each kid got assigned a group and then sat there. Rich boy Malfoy was a Slither-in. That first boy, Harry, and all of the gingers, were Griffin-doors. I wished that I hadn't chosen to be Zabini. At the end, I was the only one standing up there.
Blaise was called and I sat on the stool. The hat went on my head, and then *it was speaking to me inside my mind*.
"Ohohoho, and I thought the Potter boy was interesting! Normally I'm supposed to report kids like you, but... I like where your head's at. Get it? Your head? I'm a hat, you see, and - Oh, never mind. We can talk later, you and I. For now, mmmm, yes.... Slytherin!"
I jumped off the stool and fairly sprinted to the table indicated. Looking around, though, at all of the people clapping, I grew less terrified at what the hat had said. Sitting next to Draco, I shared a smirk.
This was going to be an interesting year.
EDIT: Whoops, formatting. | Entry 1:
I'm not really sure where to begin.
Maybe there's a spell or a potion that'll clear my head.
What the hell am I talking about I can't make spells why can everyone do spells for fucks sake!
They have fucking elves in here AND a fucking twelve foot troll somewhere in the dungeons or something, one of the teachers went apeshit over it. I tell you this whole place is unhinged.
I mean you'd think I was the unhinged one I did get hit in the head, wasn't my fault though this kid little about my age came barreling into me at Kings Cross. I must have knocked him for six, poor guy. Mind you he probably would have come off worse if he had carried on the way he was go -
Seamus just came over, had to scrunch the parchment, I can still make out most of the words, he's telling me to come to Transfiguration, It was my first lesson just a day after I came to this place, improvisation was to become a frequently used skill.
Luckily I'd clocked that everyone seemed to be carrying these sticks around, not like magic wands, with the white tip and that but just basically twigs so I blitzed it down to the grounds and picked up the first twig I could find, everyone took the piss about mine being so long that it drooped, I've been filing it down a bit every night since, its down to about 20 inches and the leaves don't poke my eye as much now which is good.
Shit, late for class, time for Timmy the cockerel to shine in case ~~Mcgonagel~~
~~Mcgonnagell?~~
In case *she* gets suspicious. |
Wow thanks for front page, all of your stories are amazing. | [WP] One day a muggle accidentally boards the train at platform 9 3/4 and must survive Hogwarts until winter break. | **Part 1: The Train, the Hat, and the Wizards**
Trains are interesting.
I could tell you every thing about every train that comes to King's Cross. I know their history, their structure, their routes.
I'm an anorak, a note taker and detail spotter. A nerd. And I'm proud of that.
So, when I decided to eat my packed lunch and leaned against a wall...
I didn't expect to see the most gorgeous steam train I had ever seen in my life.
When I saw the manufacturing number, and its stark red design, I gasped.
This was the fabled Missing Train of 1849! A train that mysteriously vanished the year it was built, and everyone who worked on it couldn't remember it existed!
But evidence was out there: steel was purchased for it, wages were paid for the hours spent welding bits...
But how was it here?
As I started to do an etching onto my notebook, I got the sense something wasn't right.
I looked around.
Children about with sticks and odd clothes, load of manky old birds in cages, a ratty looking thing with pointy ears holding its hands up against the pillar I came in by.
I shrugged at the irrelevant silly nonsense of non-train related things and got on the famous legend of a train.
It was when I noticed the inside was impossibly bigger than it actually could be based on its design specifications and external appearence that I decided to hide in a toilet and fret about the top secret insanity I was riding on.
When we arrived at our destination (my packed lunch of Freddos, jelly babies, and a pasty keeping me going), a gigantic brute of a man dragged me out from the porcelain throne and roughly put me in a robe to join the other children.
*Is this a cult? A secret train stealing cult? With mind powers? Or drugs?*
They stuck us on a load of boats and took us across a lake.
I hate boats.
When we got to a rather grubby looking ruin, we were lead up some mossy stairs to a sopping wet room full of rotten tables, where a load of children sat.
We were each called up by name to sit on a old stool and wear a hat for a bit before sitting with the other cultists.
Eventually, after an hour, I was the only one left.
"And who are you?" said the white bearded man.
"David Cuel, sir."
"Did you recieve a letter to come to Hogwarts?"
"Ah, so that's why it's called the Hogwarts express. But no, sir. I just got on the train and came with the other kids."
A loud crash punctuated my statement, and the black robed cultist nodded at the others and left the room.
"Very well. Put on the Hat, David."
I put on the hat.
*A Muggle, eh? A courageous spirit, but with your trainspotting, you'd better be a...*
**RAVENCLAW**
"What's a Ravenclaw?"
"Just sit at the table with the raven design tablecloth." said a Scottish woman.
"What tablecloth? That table's bare and rotten. I can see the maggots!"
A few gasps came about the room.
Then laughter.
"A Muggle in Hogwarts! What new kind of bullshi-"
"Mud-blood!"
"Squib!"
"Woo Cuel! You tell them ratty birds!"
The white bearded man just shouted.
"SILENCE! If David can enter Hogwarts and be sorted, then he is a student of Hogwarts!"
*So this is some kind of cultist school then?*
| Entry 1:
I'm not really sure where to begin.
Maybe there's a spell or a potion that'll clear my head.
What the hell am I talking about I can't make spells why can everyone do spells for fucks sake!
They have fucking elves in here AND a fucking twelve foot troll somewhere in the dungeons or something, one of the teachers went apeshit over it. I tell you this whole place is unhinged.
I mean you'd think I was the unhinged one I did get hit in the head, wasn't my fault though this kid little about my age came barreling into me at Kings Cross. I must have knocked him for six, poor guy. Mind you he probably would have come off worse if he had carried on the way he was go -
Seamus just came over, had to scrunch the parchment, I can still make out most of the words, he's telling me to come to Transfiguration, It was my first lesson just a day after I came to this place, improvisation was to become a frequently used skill.
Luckily I'd clocked that everyone seemed to be carrying these sticks around, not like magic wands, with the white tip and that but just basically twigs so I blitzed it down to the grounds and picked up the first twig I could find, everyone took the piss about mine being so long that it drooped, I've been filing it down a bit every night since, its down to about 20 inches and the leaves don't poke my eye as much now which is good.
Shit, late for class, time for Timmy the cockerel to shine in case ~~Mcgonagel~~
~~Mcgonnagell?~~
In case *she* gets suspicious. |
[WP]You are an alien from the fourth dimension posing as human. You keep needing to remind yourself that time is linear. | Note to self: Once you've been restored to your energy state, please extrapolate your annotations from these linear prose. EC is expecting a thorough report and won't settle for our linear shorthand in here.
Day 1:
Exploration Command has sent me to 1876fg1 in the alpha quadrant of the galaxy. The creatures in this quadrant never experienced the great magnetar during their evolution and thus never developed our ability to experience time. EC decided the best way to gain more understanding of these strange, limited creatures is to experience life as one.
Today is the first day of being born into this host body. I am what the species refer to as a male and this particular host has a "mixed ethnicity" genetic phenotype. Apparently this species, or as they call themselves, humans have created a sort of hierarchy dependent on these ethnic phenotypes. More observation is needed to decode the difference between these phenotypes. Current observations on this have found only slight cosmetic differences to traits like the skin and hair.
Human development records show that I am about to enter childhood. I should expect to gain understanding and also gain skills to adapt to the world. It's incredible just how slow and painful linear progress really is. These creatures are masters of patience.
Day 9495:
Just got a job as a bus boy in a restaurant. I'm learning how to clean tables and take food to the customers. This will be the 5th occupation in the sequence. There are many humans here to observe as they eat. This is incredible as even the course of gaining energy is a process that they must wait for. Once they swallow the object, it takes time to break down in their stomach, and even then, the individual cells in the body deplete time as they draw energy from chemical reactions. Note: humans do not like to talk about the number of seconds that their digestive cycles cost. Pressing the matter can be used as a reason for removing an occupation.
Day 2562:
I am currently attending a path of education. I am in the third year of a 13 year program. I would use the native sequential identifiers but they call the first level of this progression "kindergarten" and the second level "first grade". I can't figure out why. These creatures are VERY good at measuring linear time. This sort of inconsistency is inexcusable. It must mean something more.
Alerting an individual that they will die is also going to cause the other people that hear you say that to panic. The teachers assistant who heard me tell my teacher that she was going to die on her way home from work developed a very unhealthy state of mind as they cannot understand how someone could "know the future" as she stated. From her linear mind, knowing the future is paradoxical as knowing the future means you can change the future. This isn't how it works, but that's how they perceive things. It seems the mental state of humans after experiencing this paradox is going to skew my observations. It's probably best to not do this "in the future".
Day 32526:
This bodies life is about to expire. These humans really have a bad perspective on death, but they should. Their life "ends" for them. They don't get to revisit their earlier days. They don't exist in their temporal profile and can only see a tiny sliver's cross section of it's whole. Their memories are the only place they can revisit. Over the course of observing these people, I've grown accustomed to them. I lay here with my family around me. Sobbing, and assuring me that "everything's going to be OK". Why are they assuring me? I'm not about to lose anything. They are. If only this frail vessel could lift it's head and tell them that this isn't the end, but nor did it ever begin. I'll be forever and they will always have that. I'll always have them. I wish I could simply move enough air through my throat to tell them that my great great great grand children will come visit me in the Gamma quadrant. Damn the linear progression of age! By the time I want to come clean with all of my lies this body is too weak to even speak a line of words. I just want to give them one more thing to hold on to in their memory before I go. All I can do is share in their tears as I pass.
Day 13213:
This is the beginning of a new spark. My wife Alissa has given birth to a baby girl. Thus begins her cycle. The truest of emotions I am experiencing is the fear I feel for everything I know is going to happen to her. I know that when she's 6 she's going to break her leg riding her bike. I know that her and her first husband will divorce when she miscarries her first child. I know that her son is going to have social anxieties and mild autism and that this will always weigh on her, and that she will always blame herself for being bad at having children.
I also know that when she's 19, she's going to go to Europe and meet the most charming and amazing girl who loves her unconditionally. It's going to be the most magical 4 months of her life. I know that she's going to win the science fair in 5th grade with a piece on gravitational lensing she did with her telescope. I know that after her first child, she's going to run for city council. (She doesn't win though. She's living in far too red of a city to elect a "radical" like her.)
Alissa is honestly much better at dealing with this fear then I am, but how? She doesn't know what's going to happen. For all she knows, our baby could die on the car ride home. Here she is though, serene and calm. All she knows right now is that she loves this baby and nothing can take that.
Whatever. I'm not buying our daughter a bike. | I've always been a little weird. I cry at chance meetings and laugh at funerals. I asked my wife of twenty years to marry me on our first date, knowing she'd throw caution to the wind and say yes. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a spontaneous or reckless decision on my part either... as I said, she was my wife of twenty years at that point.
These hundred years of life have been hard, challenging, and so flushed full of lessons that I decided from the onset to write a memoir of my journey for my fellow inhabitants of those years. So many people, so much glory, so perfect a century.
Adolf, it was so refreshing watching you go from a tyrannical dictator who trusted no one into a young child comfortable with sobbing out his problems at his mother's knee. I am so glad that you died, and almost sorry that you had to eventually be born. Well, it happens to the best of us.
At least I got to shake your hand, though you didn't remember it. Your mother does, though, she later said it was the strongest kick yet, and it half convinced her you were ready to come out right there! Hah, there she was screaming for your father to come quickly, and then we embraced and she became so calm and peaceful, went right back to her knitting. Story of my life, really.
I'm a temporal journeyman, not in the sense of a trade or mastery, but in the literal sense of one who travels. That's my race's informal name, when you want to look us up and give it to us. By your impression of time, once I finish writing this we'll be extinct, but we should be dying out in another ten years or so, so remember to seek us out! We only have seventy centuries to spend together after that, and every minute of it will be wonderful.
Look at me, I'm so distraught that I almost forgot to pivot. What a way to end the story that would be, me shivering and sobbing out my first breath before I even begin!
Well, from this angle, I should warn you of an upcoming monster. When you read this book in a few years, be sure to offer that kid some therapy. It isn't too late to fix him. Look through the stream to the young boy crying at his mother's knee and offer him a compassionate hand, there aren't that many of them in this block of time. I'll start the work from the womb, so he knows that trust exists for even him.
The future before you is to be a terrible, terrible one. It will be *so* exciting. There are these machines of steel and electricity, humans built from bolts and tubes and spare parts (and no, Mary, you shouldn't steal that for your own book, shame on you... although it will be a best seller, at that!) People will gladly give of their own blood and organs, humanity will be connected together, and we'll be showing up.
Second brightest star on the right (Epsilon Cygni, I believe you call it?), and straight on for about one quarter Earth temporal cycle if you take the Morning shuttle. You won't have that technology until after you meet us, though, so it'll probably take a full day if you use the older Sunset-class launchships, but bear in mind that those older ships cannot handle orbital entry, so stay a safe distance away until we give you that secret.
It's important that you get this part right and meet us, so pass it on in your legends, second star on the right, straight on in the Sunset, and until Morning never, I repeat **never**, try to land. We'll lay out the welcome mat for you.
One second, pivoting again. You'd think after a century this would be second nature, an instinct, but every time, always, without fail, it is a conscious decision. We envy you humans and your ability to go up to twelve hours at a time without making a single conscious decision at all! Part of why we agree to meet with you in the last place is because we want to try learning this sleep of yours.
I suppose I should mention a quirk of journeymen. We live for several decades, some up to centuries, but in blocks of various lengths. My block is five minutes. Five forward, five backwards, five forward, five backwards... the day is coming when I forget, or am too weak, to pivot in place, and that'll be the day I finally am born and have to live out my life. I'm thrilled that that day is coming soon at last, when I was unconsciously forget to do so, and my people will finally be able to celebrate my contributions to the cosmos.
I've been remarkably busy with my short block length, you see, almost as famous as Elii of the Second, who had to pivot every single second of his great twenty years, and singlehandedly built up Earth in that time. Used to be just a small marbled belt of asteroids and meteorites banging into each other, but he went back and forth, one second at a time, pushing them into the right path to eventually form a planet. My granddad helped with some of the heavier lifting, like giving you that nice sun, but the whole Earth project was all Elii.
You lot would have loved to meet him, and not just for his contributions to your existence. He hosted the best barbecues, never a single thing wrong with them. You haven't tried a hamburger until you've tried an Elii burger that was cooked to within a second of perfection.
Anyway, I'm rambling on about history and wasting my time. No greater sin as a journeyman. Pivot.
You might be wondering how pivoting works. Well, it depends entirely upon your quantitative framework. If you're looking forward, you have to pivot backwards, if you're looking backwards, you have to pivot forwards. Fairly simple now that I've explained it, right? Oh, sure, you can also jumble a pivot and just kind of hopscotch around the entire block, but that's the kind of fluxing mistake you only make once.
I once spent an entire five minutes marching with Ulysses E. Grant leading the Aztecs to invade Russia and disarm their hoplites to prevent World War IV. This may sound nonsensical to you, but that's just how time is. I prevented the spear heard 'round the world. You'll read about it in more detail in the next millennium, so I won't spoil the details. However, war changes people, even journeymen, and after that I always made sure to pivot precisely.
Pivot? Precisely! You're getting the idea of how my life works.
Oh, and from this angle... don't ask us to teach you pivoting. In fact, ignore my lesson above, I wrote that from the other perspective. It doesn't end well, your species is fundamentally incapable of micromanaging your consciousness, and some of those time tangles take more time to fix than they did to make. And the *mess* when you lot sleep through a pivot point. Please don't teach us how to sleep, and in exchange we won't ever have to teach you how to pivot. Only... well, we already know how my race goes extinct, so I suppose keep on doing what you're already going to do.
We certainly don't blame you. How could we? You eventually give birth to us, so we don't fault you for killing us first. All things laid upon the scale, I'd say Elii overcompensated some, but he wasn't the most rational of fellows, he sort of had a species crush on your kind and wanted to make sure you came about properly. Like a big brother in the sky, only I suppose he was ensuring his own existence too, so... bah, temporal paradoxes. They give us headaches, too, we never really focus too much on them.
Pivot.
As I lay me down to sleep. What a curious way of describing death you coined. We're looking forward to having it. Once we know sleep, you'll know pivoting, and that's when the real excitement happens. That's when we can finally be born! That's when all my contributions will finally count for something, and Elli will have his shot to make improvements, and I'll finally be proud of granddad for his part.
It's one of those things, I suppose. Our histories and futures are intertwined so tightly, that very little of it can change. That's why we love to meddle so, because so frequently our meddling ends up becoming the very catalysts that enabled us to meddle in the first place. It cancels out so perfectly, that whether you look at it forwards or backwards, or from a jumbled angle, you never really know which way you're looking unless you keep track from the very beginning, for every single pivot.
Could you imagine that? Not just keeping in mind when to pivot each time you need to, but also which pivot you're on? Imagine the confusion the first time you even *think* you might have lost track. How do you recover from that moment of doubt with any certainty? No, much better to just ignore it and figure it out from context clues and educated guesses.
Based of off the fact that Adolf hasn't yet become a great child, for example, I can assume that I'm currently going forward. I mean, there's no point in Churchill helping defeat him as an adult if it doesn't make him a better person later for it, right? Call me an optimist, but I'd much rather believe that you curious humans become better as time passes, rather than worse... that the monsters in the closet start out there and slowly crawl out to rejoin society so brightly, rather than they start out so bright and slowly work their way into the closet to torture and scare.
In fact, I would go so far as to happily say that this moment leaving, when all seems so dark and terrible, is a harbinger for the happiness leading up to it, rather than such universal happiness leading to a darkest day. I would bet my next pivot on that, and that is a journeyman promise not made lightly. As another point of fact, I wou | |
[WP]You are an alien from the fourth dimension posing as human. You keep needing to remind yourself that time is linear. | Note to self: Once you've been restored to your energy state, please extrapolate your annotations from these linear prose. EC is expecting a thorough report and won't settle for our linear shorthand in here.
Day 1:
Exploration Command has sent me to 1876fg1 in the alpha quadrant of the galaxy. The creatures in this quadrant never experienced the great magnetar during their evolution and thus never developed our ability to experience time. EC decided the best way to gain more understanding of these strange, limited creatures is to experience life as one.
Today is the first day of being born into this host body. I am what the species refer to as a male and this particular host has a "mixed ethnicity" genetic phenotype. Apparently this species, or as they call themselves, humans have created a sort of hierarchy dependent on these ethnic phenotypes. More observation is needed to decode the difference between these phenotypes. Current observations on this have found only slight cosmetic differences to traits like the skin and hair.
Human development records show that I am about to enter childhood. I should expect to gain understanding and also gain skills to adapt to the world. It's incredible just how slow and painful linear progress really is. These creatures are masters of patience.
Day 9495:
Just got a job as a bus boy in a restaurant. I'm learning how to clean tables and take food to the customers. This will be the 5th occupation in the sequence. There are many humans here to observe as they eat. This is incredible as even the course of gaining energy is a process that they must wait for. Once they swallow the object, it takes time to break down in their stomach, and even then, the individual cells in the body deplete time as they draw energy from chemical reactions. Note: humans do not like to talk about the number of seconds that their digestive cycles cost. Pressing the matter can be used as a reason for removing an occupation.
Day 2562:
I am currently attending a path of education. I am in the third year of a 13 year program. I would use the native sequential identifiers but they call the first level of this progression "kindergarten" and the second level "first grade". I can't figure out why. These creatures are VERY good at measuring linear time. This sort of inconsistency is inexcusable. It must mean something more.
Alerting an individual that they will die is also going to cause the other people that hear you say that to panic. The teachers assistant who heard me tell my teacher that she was going to die on her way home from work developed a very unhealthy state of mind as they cannot understand how someone could "know the future" as she stated. From her linear mind, knowing the future is paradoxical as knowing the future means you can change the future. This isn't how it works, but that's how they perceive things. It seems the mental state of humans after experiencing this paradox is going to skew my observations. It's probably best to not do this "in the future".
Day 32526:
This bodies life is about to expire. These humans really have a bad perspective on death, but they should. Their life "ends" for them. They don't get to revisit their earlier days. They don't exist in their temporal profile and can only see a tiny sliver's cross section of it's whole. Their memories are the only place they can revisit. Over the course of observing these people, I've grown accustomed to them. I lay here with my family around me. Sobbing, and assuring me that "everything's going to be OK". Why are they assuring me? I'm not about to lose anything. They are. If only this frail vessel could lift it's head and tell them that this isn't the end, but nor did it ever begin. I'll be forever and they will always have that. I'll always have them. I wish I could simply move enough air through my throat to tell them that my great great great grand children will come visit me in the Gamma quadrant. Damn the linear progression of age! By the time I want to come clean with all of my lies this body is too weak to even speak a line of words. I just want to give them one more thing to hold on to in their memory before I go. All I can do is share in their tears as I pass.
Day 13213:
This is the beginning of a new spark. My wife Alissa has given birth to a baby girl. Thus begins her cycle. The truest of emotions I am experiencing is the fear I feel for everything I know is going to happen to her. I know that when she's 6 she's going to break her leg riding her bike. I know that her and her first husband will divorce when she miscarries her first child. I know that her son is going to have social anxieties and mild autism and that this will always weigh on her, and that she will always blame herself for being bad at having children.
I also know that when she's 19, she's going to go to Europe and meet the most charming and amazing girl who loves her unconditionally. It's going to be the most magical 4 months of her life. I know that she's going to win the science fair in 5th grade with a piece on gravitational lensing she did with her telescope. I know that after her first child, she's going to run for city council. (She doesn't win though. She's living in far too red of a city to elect a "radical" like her.)
Alissa is honestly much better at dealing with this fear then I am, but how? She doesn't know what's going to happen. For all she knows, our baby could die on the car ride home. Here she is though, serene and calm. All she knows right now is that she loves this baby and nothing can take that.
Whatever. I'm not buying our daughter a bike. | Imagine, if you will, that you could only move in one direction. Forever and ever, from your birth to your eventual demise, in that same direction, at the exact same speed, following that arrow with absolutely no choice in that matter. Sounds awful, doesn't? Dreary and dull, at best. Worst part of this is that you can *never* fix your mistakes: forgot to buy brush your teeth in the morning? Oh well, you can't very well go back to your house to do that, or anything for that matter; you'll have to get a new place to live. Enjoyed a nice cup of tea at that cafe with the cute waitress? Shame you'll likely never get a chance for that again, unless you were to literally travel around the world and get back to that point.
Now, for someone who had known only this, it wouldn't be so bad; this would be the norm. But for you, it would be a nasty, constricting way to live. Hardly a life, I bet you're thinking. So I hope my little analogy helps you understand why I think living in your reality, with its linear, unidirectional time, is sheer *hell* for me.
In my universe, we travel through time as freely as you travel through space. It's *wonderful*. You know how certain memories of your life get covered by the golden film of nostalgia, and re-living can never recreate that same, wondrous feeling? Well, we can choose to travel back and experience it as many times as we please. Indeed, I have found that living my memories again and again lets me discover new things about them, as I am viewing them through a new lens, so to speak (not dissimilar to how can visit that same cafe and actually get to know that cute girl bringing you a nice cup of Earl Grey).
I make just as many mistakes as you do in your lives; the difference is, I can fix them. Just go back, and tinker until I get it just right. Or go forward, or sideways, or whatever, and change my "present" as I see fit based on those timelines. This idea seems to shock your physicists and science fiction writers, and they cry out in protest: "paradox!" or "multi-verse!" Perhaps, but what of it? Why does all that bother you, anyway? Ah, I suppose it makes sense; after all, the unidirectional fellow from my analogy would likely be petrified by the ramifications of going *backwards* to grab a forgotten set of keys or something of the like.
Here's a quick example: I've already looked into what you term the "future", counted my errors in this very narrative, and avoided them as I continue to write this. I write and see a preview of what I haven't written quite yet in my head at the same time; I can guess that that might be a confusing idea.
I've spent...several weeks in your reality, I think. Or months. Apologies, the concept of actually counting time so diligently is still such a foreign concept to me. Which is a shame on my part, really; after all, I'm trying to do a field study on uni-temporal beings. I did try to do preliminary research beforehand, but reading about it in a textbook is no match for actually living amongst creatures that can instantly and without serious effort recall something that occurred yesterday, last week, or a month ago. It still amazes me to experience that. In a very strange sense, your kind has a stronger grasp on time than we do! Well, in one, very limited aspect anyway.
I will admit: living in this reality has made me realize that I've taken my temporal freedom for granted. Oh, if only I could show you what you're missing! But I suppose, it would terrify and confuse you, just as plopping our 1-dimensional friend into your 3-dimensional space would terrify and confuse it...
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[WP]You are an alien from the fourth dimension posing as human. You keep needing to remind yourself that time is linear. | Back in the 70s, I met a beautiful girl with auburn hair. She wore elephant pants and carried an iPhone 6. Her favorite actor of the day was the up-and-coming child actor Christian Bale. I named our first child after watching him in *Empire of the Sun*. Christian was born in 1979. When she asked me where I got the name - which she loved of course - she looked confused. When I asked her if she remembered my name, she looked confused. When I asked her to marry me, she wept and said no at first, and ran away. She said yes three days ago. We were eating ice cream when Mt Pinatubo exploded in the Philippines. At the time I was working as a tech support agent for Windows Vista. The divorce was four years ago. When I asked her why her husband stopped visiting, she told me that they were tired of her. Her children were too. I haven't seen Christian in a few weeks. I pay child support every day. Christian died in 1992. When I asked her if she remembered my name, she said yes. When I read her eulogy, her mother cried.
Back in the 70s, I met a beautiful girl with auburn hair. She told me she loved me the day she died. | Imagine, if you will, that you could only move in one direction. Forever and ever, from your birth to your eventual demise, in that same direction, at the exact same speed, following that arrow with absolutely no choice in that matter. Sounds awful, doesn't? Dreary and dull, at best. Worst part of this is that you can *never* fix your mistakes: forgot to buy brush your teeth in the morning? Oh well, you can't very well go back to your house to do that, or anything for that matter; you'll have to get a new place to live. Enjoyed a nice cup of tea at that cafe with the cute waitress? Shame you'll likely never get a chance for that again, unless you were to literally travel around the world and get back to that point.
Now, for someone who had known only this, it wouldn't be so bad; this would be the norm. But for you, it would be a nasty, constricting way to live. Hardly a life, I bet you're thinking. So I hope my little analogy helps you understand why I think living in your reality, with its linear, unidirectional time, is sheer *hell* for me.
In my universe, we travel through time as freely as you travel through space. It's *wonderful*. You know how certain memories of your life get covered by the golden film of nostalgia, and re-living can never recreate that same, wondrous feeling? Well, we can choose to travel back and experience it as many times as we please. Indeed, I have found that living my memories again and again lets me discover new things about them, as I am viewing them through a new lens, so to speak (not dissimilar to how can visit that same cafe and actually get to know that cute girl bringing you a nice cup of Earl Grey).
I make just as many mistakes as you do in your lives; the difference is, I can fix them. Just go back, and tinker until I get it just right. Or go forward, or sideways, or whatever, and change my "present" as I see fit based on those timelines. This idea seems to shock your physicists and science fiction writers, and they cry out in protest: "paradox!" or "multi-verse!" Perhaps, but what of it? Why does all that bother you, anyway? Ah, I suppose it makes sense; after all, the unidirectional fellow from my analogy would likely be petrified by the ramifications of going *backwards* to grab a forgotten set of keys or something of the like.
Here's a quick example: I've already looked into what you term the "future", counted my errors in this very narrative, and avoided them as I continue to write this. I write and see a preview of what I haven't written quite yet in my head at the same time; I can guess that that might be a confusing idea.
I've spent...several weeks in your reality, I think. Or months. Apologies, the concept of actually counting time so diligently is still such a foreign concept to me. Which is a shame on my part, really; after all, I'm trying to do a field study on uni-temporal beings. I did try to do preliminary research beforehand, but reading about it in a textbook is no match for actually living amongst creatures that can instantly and without serious effort recall something that occurred yesterday, last week, or a month ago. It still amazes me to experience that. In a very strange sense, your kind has a stronger grasp on time than we do! Well, in one, very limited aspect anyway.
I will admit: living in this reality has made me realize that I've taken my temporal freedom for granted. Oh, if only I could show you what you're missing! But I suppose, it would terrify and confuse you, just as plopping our 1-dimensional friend into your 3-dimensional space would terrify and confuse it...
____________________________________________________________________________
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Context is up to you. As it should always be. | [WP] Remain human, or remain humane. You can't have both. | She looked through the thick window of one way glass, at the subject strapped down into the chair. Most of these felons, here on the chemical release program, had eyes that darted around relentlessly. His eyes, even though they couldn't possibly see her, were locked almost directly into hers. Almost.
She took a step back, recalculating the angle of his gaze, and tracked it to the window. Ah, a small chip of the reflective material had peeled back, barely even a millimeter's worth. He was staring at that single, tiny glint of difference in his environment, diligently focused on it, seeking any advantage it could glean him, the rest of his world ignored as useless. Good hunter instincts in this one.
She went over to the warbler, speaking into it. Over the loudspeakers, she could hear it, distorted as it played back to him, a gutteral baritone that fluctuated high and low in a ribbon. "P-932, aliases John Quincy Public and the Public Killer, no known real name, date of birth unknown, age unknown, social security number unknown. Please address the speaker behind you to confirm this is true."
Not that he'd fall for that bit of disorientation, since he had already, and quite literally, seen through the facade, but they pivoted the chair anyway, turning him around. To his credit, his lip curled up, and he strained against the restraints to look over his shoulder at the gap in the otherwise precisely mirrored surface, ignoring the new box before him jutting out of the wall that was meant to captivate his attention. Addressing the speaker behind him, indeed. This one was dangerous *and* smart.
"That is true." He began, with a croaking, underused voice. He licked chapped lips, coughed, smiled broadly. "Ma'am."
She started, hairs on the back of her neck standing up, instinctively checking the warbler's functionality, thinking back on her choice of words to see if she had used any pronouns or tells, before her eyes settled upon the gap in the window. A hand fluttered up to her rowan hair, dyed violently red (to match her temperament, ha ha, very funny guys), and she regretted taking the extra step to stand out in this place.
Still, many people had red hair. Just how long had he been staring at that gap before she arrived, and how long had he greedily observed everything that window in the window could show him, to know that she was a woman? Or, was he just firing in the dark, seeing if he could get a reaction, and here she was silently overreacting?
She picked up the mic again, coughing to clear her throat - over the speaker it came out as sounding like a rheumatic doberman barking, and she flinched again - and spoke, unconsciously clipping her words to short, choppy, professional-only language. "Please limit your responses to only pertinent affirmatives and negatives, I will ask you if any additional clarification is needed."
"Yes ma'am." Oh, there was no retrieving that one. Even if he were just firing randomly, she'd be sitting before her boss immediately after this, explaining just how exactly he was able to acquire information on interviewers and know which one he was assigned. *We're looking for a leak and you're the only one with a squeaky voice*... even after many years with the program, in which she had proven her loyalty countless times, they still viewed her with excessive suspicion.
"We are going to begin now, John." Needed to calm down a bit, that was a slip, even though everyone called him John Q. Public, she needed to stick to his prisoner code, already she could hear her supervisor, all *oh, you're on a first name basis with the criminal? Tell me, when did you first meet?* Damn it.
She cued up the recording and let it start playing, welcoming the brief respite so she could start working on her upcoming interview and grilling. The first time, she didn't hear the tap on the window. The second time, she glanced up in irritation at the distraction and screamed.
"How the fuck is he out of his chair?" she yelled. Nobody in the room to answer, of course, just her, but damn it... well, at least the outburst would look good when they reviewed the case, unless they assumed she staged it... damn it.
She cut off the feed to the recording from the mangler, washing the room in silence. From the box to her left, almost subaudial, a high pitched squeaking continued explaining the program, from the window, his raised finger, poised to tap again, stopped and hovered. He pressed his lips against the glass, fogging it, and spoke. Not through the mutual feed, but through panes. It came out a muted murmur, but to pick up, he had to be practically roaring against the glass.
"Ma'am? Thank you." For a man who had to be bellowing at the top of his lungs, it came out soundly friendly, polite, almost embarrassed. She'd almost feel sheepish about fearing him, if it weren't for his eye, right over the hole in the window, flicking back and forth, devouring everything it could see. She took another step to the left to make sure she was out of range, and picked up the warbler mic.
"... P-932, how have you escaped your restraints?"
"Oh, sorry about that ma'am. The tech guy didn't even bother strapping them down, I guess I just scared him that much he plum forgot," a bashful, almost boyish grin against the glass, "and y'all run such a good show here that I just played along. Didn't want to ruin the game."
She remembered him pretending to strain against the restrains to stare over his shoulder, and belatedly realized that if he were strapped down, that wouldn't have been possible. Oh, shit, this was going to count as so many marks against her record...
"Anyway, ma'am, I do like the presentation, I really do, but I prefer talking to humans, machines just give me the heebie jeebies. So I'm glad you turned that recording off. I like knowing my friendliness is appreciated when I chat."
She took a breath to calm herself, exhaled. "What makes you think it was a recording?"
"Well, ma'am, it was either a recording or you've got someone in there spitfire chattering who doesn't need to use their lungs. I didn't hear even a one gasp for air during the entire thing. Either a recording, or you've got something in there that gives me even worse heebies. Does the Project staff aliens now, too?"
She nodded curtly, that made sense. She'd mention adding in breathing sounds to the recording during the next evaluation... that is to say, as soon as the folks upstairs came for her, so probably the next couple of minutes if Frank wasn't sleeping on the job. "No, P-932, we do not employ aliens. Was that your only question? I'd like for you to return to your seat." Slim chance, that, but...
He nodded back, causing goosebumps to rise up her spine again, and walked over, plopping luxuriously into the wooden frame, spinning it around to face the window. After a considerate pause, he reached over and strapped his legs in, then his right arm, then struggled for a bit trying to reach the left. Not quite making it. She stared befuddled at the display. Finally, he gave up and waved sheepishly towards her, speakingly clearly now through the on-seat mic. "Can't quite finish up the job, but that's good enough, right?"
"Um. Yes. Thank you, P-932."
"Oh, shucks. Call me Adam. What's your name?"
This one wasn't on the known list of aliases. He followed the typical trend, of serial criminals picking psuedonyms that matched their own initials. John Q Public, Jacob Q Parker, Jack Q Portman... What the hell...
"I don't have a name."
"Well, that's fair, some people just forget to ask for one. Mind if I call you Amy? I always did fancy Amys." Yes, this was true enough, they had four women in morgue storage by that name... "Oh, wait, y'all think I'm a killer. How about Beth?" Two in the cold chamber. "Or maybe Carol?" None of those. "I think I'll name you Carol. Always wanted a Carol."
She shuddered.
"So, Carol, just two friends talking among themselves, why don't you give me the rundown on this project i signed up for? You can summarize if you like, I *did* read those papers you sent the prison. All one hundred and seven of them. So... let's skip over the legal mumbo jumbo and just put it plainly?"
She gathered her thoughts. She'd had several about the project, some waxing for hours about the moral and ethical considerations, but never had she thought to reduce it down into a summary. *Could* it be reduced down into a summary?
"Carol?"
She began, tentatively. "Essentially, the MH toxin is the second line in a test compound first discovered by Michael Agnarsson, a Swedish-American theoretical researcher who..."
"Ahem."
She floundered with her thoughts, resumed. "The first MH chemical had unexpected and impractical side effects, namely gross mutations, but the second was considered mostly perfected as a means to rehabilitate criminals into society. It functions as a form of organic polymeric bridge that invades the..."
"Ahem." Amused, like a teacher scolding a child. Automatically, she flushed.
"In layman's terms, it gives formerly irreconcilable deviants one last opportunity to return to productiveness. The chemical either fixes their brain, finds the mental illness or malfunction and cauterizes it, readying them for release to society after psych evaluation, or..."
"Yes?"
"... is rejected by the host body and violently invades the bloodstream, causing lesions, tumors, mild leprosy, erratic spontaneous muscle pattern growth, cerebral scarring particular to the higher functioning regions, and eventually requires voluntary euthanasia administration."
"So... you either become human and get to live, or become a monster and get to die?"
"Yes."
"And what about the humans? Do they still have any of those old, terrible urges? Do the monsters born from their souls keep them?"
"Every reintegrated criminal undergoes regular evaluation to ensure no relapse of prior undesirable behaviors. The... others, are mercifully taken care of. One way or another..." | The rain and wind roared through the darkness. Dr. Simon Ross was standing on the roof of the building, overlooking the city. He leaned into the wind, the toes of his shoes flirting with the edge.
He reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out the small black leather pouch. He flipped it open, and looked inside, squinting hard against the rain. A small vial, glowing brilliant green, sat tucked against the leather. He gently lifted it out, letting the wind take the pouch over the side of the building.
He stared at it for a moment, the bright green illuminating the drops around him. *If only they would listen,* he thought bitterly. He closed his hand around it, shutting his eyes and letting the rain hit him.
His hesitation lasted only a moment. The bullet seared through the center of his chest, sending droplets of blood to mix with the rain. His body flew backward, onto the cement of the roof. Another sharp chirp sent a second bullet into his chest, just below the first. He gasped for breath, the rain blurring his vision as he danced in and out of consciousness.
A shadowy figure appeared above him, the moon illuminating the silenced pistol. The figure knelt, and reached into his palm, removing the vial. The green cast a strange shadow as the figure stood again.
"Wha.... why..." was all Simon could say. He gasped again.
The figure walked to the edge of the building, turning to look at him, vial glowing in an outstretched arm.
"We warned you!" the figure shouted. "You cannot stop the inevitable!"
Ross could feel himself slipping. He grasped at the rain, as though that might stop the bleeding.
"You... you musn't" he stammered.
The figure stared at him a moment, then flicked the vial over the edge of the building. It flashed brilliant against the dark sky, drops of rain glowing bright green as they passed.
The figure walked back to Ross, aiming at his head.
"Remain human," the figure said. "Or remain humane. You can't have both."
A prayer for humanity slipped through Ross' lips as the final chirp rang out. Then, nothing.
|
Context is up to you. As it should always be. | [WP] Remain human, or remain humane. You can't have both. | It's the species that has evolved. You'd think it would have been a step in the opposite direction but that's not what nature says. Not that nature has anything *to* say at this point. Most of us decided to go with them. Why not? A chance to live for thousands of years and do as you please when you please?
There wasn't much of an argument.
Except from those who stood to suffer. And they only stood because they believed. They believed in the good. But with so many opinions on the matter, most of us can't make up our minds on what's good any more. Those humans adapted. Same as can be said for any other creature on the planet. It was a difficult choice, but it was a choice after all. The planet was fighting back now. Nobody cares what caused it because anybody who cared is dead now.
Tsunamis rule the oceans and the edges of the map. Hurricanes swipe the oxygen in your lungs from the other side of the planet. Solar radiation burns a new hole in the sky every day. And a day without an earthquake, just isn't a day at all. They're not exactly machine I wouldn't think, but they're not exactly human. We only call them humans because they spat on us when we did otherwise. That's the catch isn't it? The further they hacked their bodies (literally and technologically), the less they cared about anything that wasn't them.
In time the distinction grew and we as a singular species grew apart. They became a superior species. Though I like to think that we became a better species. It started with ridicule and rude comments. Then it was death threats and destruction of property. Then they came through on those threats.
Then we as a species grew apart in distance. They kept to upper atmosphere, and sure we got the increasingly inhospitable planet's surface. And some don't think so, but I think it's a fair trade if it means keeping the humans away. They live in luxury and we live in squalor. They indulge in excess and we survive on nothing.
More than all that, what hurt the most was when they began to label us as if we were sheep who'd outlived their pasture. Humans were the cream of the crop. Then came the Human-A which was a person currently transitioning into full fledged Human. Human-B were willing to become full Human but their bodies too feeble to support transition, they were generally used as slaves. Human-C was labeled anyone with mental disabilities who were unable to make a decision for themselves, these they kept as pets. Human-D were the one's who had decided to stray from the Humans and live beneath the planet's surface.
Then there's us, some might consider us revolutionaries, others might see as only as pests, but we've grown in numbers and we've grown in strength. So much so that we've received a label all to ourselves, so to all of us who live on the surface in protest, to those of us who fight both Human and Nature just to prove a god damned point, I drink this watery soot for you! Now put on your goggles, get your gear, and let's go earn the title of 'Human-E'. | The rain and wind roared through the darkness. Dr. Simon Ross was standing on the roof of the building, overlooking the city. He leaned into the wind, the toes of his shoes flirting with the edge.
He reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out the small black leather pouch. He flipped it open, and looked inside, squinting hard against the rain. A small vial, glowing brilliant green, sat tucked against the leather. He gently lifted it out, letting the wind take the pouch over the side of the building.
He stared at it for a moment, the bright green illuminating the drops around him. *If only they would listen,* he thought bitterly. He closed his hand around it, shutting his eyes and letting the rain hit him.
His hesitation lasted only a moment. The bullet seared through the center of his chest, sending droplets of blood to mix with the rain. His body flew backward, onto the cement of the roof. Another sharp chirp sent a second bullet into his chest, just below the first. He gasped for breath, the rain blurring his vision as he danced in and out of consciousness.
A shadowy figure appeared above him, the moon illuminating the silenced pistol. The figure knelt, and reached into his palm, removing the vial. The green cast a strange shadow as the figure stood again.
"Wha.... why..." was all Simon could say. He gasped again.
The figure walked to the edge of the building, turning to look at him, vial glowing in an outstretched arm.
"We warned you!" the figure shouted. "You cannot stop the inevitable!"
Ross could feel himself slipping. He grasped at the rain, as though that might stop the bleeding.
"You... you musn't" he stammered.
The figure stared at him a moment, then flicked the vial over the edge of the building. It flashed brilliant against the dark sky, drops of rain glowing bright green as they passed.
The figure walked back to Ross, aiming at his head.
"Remain human," the figure said. "Or remain humane. You can't have both."
A prayer for humanity slipped through Ross' lips as the final chirp rang out. Then, nothing.
|
[WP] Write the origin of a villain. | "Come on, Alec. Just a few more steps. That's it. One foot after the other."
Captain Tycho Novak of the 1st Loyalty Defenders had the other man's arm slung over his shoulder, helping him keep his weight off his bleeding leg. A mask of dried blood covered his eyes and rendered him blind.
"Ty- Ty what's gonna happen to us?"
"Don't you worry, Alec, we'll be fine. They'll take us to a camp and we'll sit on our asses until they swap us in a prisoner exchange. You'll get a medico to look at that leg of yours and clean up that cut on your head."
They marched along with two hundred of so other prisoners, captured after having expended the last of their ammunition stores and their machines destroyed. They'd been assigned as the rearguard, to buy as much times as possible for the dropships to evacuate as many soldiers and civilians as they could cram in their holds. One company of regulars and a battalion of militia, holding off two whole Wolf Clusters for nearly five hours before the dropships escaped into the sky and away from the planet Corsicana. Only once the last ship was away did they throw down their weapons, satisfied at having done their duty. A day and a half later the Clanners roused them up from their makeshift prison, a barren stretch of field ringed with barbed wire and guards and got them marching. Waiting for them was hot showers and medical attention they were told.
The walking wounded limped along, the able bodied carried the maimed. Everyone shared in the burden.
It was the digging equipment that clued Captain Novak that something smelled rotten. Hostilities were over, there was no need for construction, especially here away from anything of strategic importance. The clanners marched them past the tall backhoes and industrial mechs, barking at the stragglers to keep up the pace. Novak saw what he expected some hundred feet onwards.
A long ditch perhaps ten meters wide and five deep, a tall mound of dirt behind it. In front some forty meters away were five machine guns, their crews sitting behind them with cans of ammunition at hand and busy loading their weapons. They made the two hundred prisoners line up along the rim of the ditch, their laser rifles trained on them.
"What's going on, Tycho? Why'd we stop?" Alexander Cromwell asked, still blinded with his own blood.
"Just taking a break, rest our legs a bit," Captain Novak lied, praying the strain in his voice did not show.
"Say, Alec?"
"Hmm?"
"You know that song about Jerusalem? Do you think you could sing it?"
Alec turned his sightless gaze at his friend, his brow rising.
"Now?"
"Why not, I think we all could use a little pick up after today."
The limping man shrugged slightly and began to hum to find the pitch.
"And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?"
A few heads turned towards the wounded singer, confusion on their faces but kept silent; a distraction before the end.
"And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills?"
Those who knew it began to pick up, adding a baritone and a bass line to the song. The Clan Wolf guards looked askew at their charges, unsure what this was.
"Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire."
The score or so singers crescendo-ed, knowing that this was the last time to hear music.
"I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant lan-"
The machine guns opened up.
| The fist landed on his jaw, glanced off and into his throat. It was one of many beatings he had endured since they got him.
He and his unit had just made contact with the local rebels about a week ago, and had begun training them when the government forces circled in.
First the mortars started raining in and he and his unit tried to get the rebels organized. But they left then, they left him and his men to die.
The government forces came up the ridge. After three hours of fighting they killed all of his men, and they were new killing him.
No they had killed him. They had ripped everything from him, but he hadn't talked. He never would, his training wouldn't allow him.
Not that his government cares. They followed protocol, he no longer exist, never did.
The fist struck again on his eyebrow this time, and again on his nose. They picked up a knife and pulled his his had back.
They screamed at him, demanding he talk. When he didn't they cut open his cheeks, adding to the scars covering his body.
They had a doctor patch him up. He did a ok job, just means they won't hit his face got awhile.
They came back and picked up a knife. But the ropes were weak now the idiots never changed them.
As they walked forward laughing he smirked and jumped. He grabbed one and slammed his head into the wall, as he slammed his elbow into the back of his neck.
The other one ran at him with the knife. He grabbed the knife and spun throwing the guard to the ground and taking the knife.
The guard rolled, and jumped up kicking him in the chest.
He stood up laughing.
"A little fight in you, I like that".
| |
[WP] Write the origin of a villain. | "Come on, Alec. Just a few more steps. That's it. One foot after the other."
Captain Tycho Novak of the 1st Loyalty Defenders had the other man's arm slung over his shoulder, helping him keep his weight off his bleeding leg. A mask of dried blood covered his eyes and rendered him blind.
"Ty- Ty what's gonna happen to us?"
"Don't you worry, Alec, we'll be fine. They'll take us to a camp and we'll sit on our asses until they swap us in a prisoner exchange. You'll get a medico to look at that leg of yours and clean up that cut on your head."
They marched along with two hundred of so other prisoners, captured after having expended the last of their ammunition stores and their machines destroyed. They'd been assigned as the rearguard, to buy as much times as possible for the dropships to evacuate as many soldiers and civilians as they could cram in their holds. One company of regulars and a battalion of militia, holding off two whole Wolf Clusters for nearly five hours before the dropships escaped into the sky and away from the planet Corsicana. Only once the last ship was away did they throw down their weapons, satisfied at having done their duty. A day and a half later the Clanners roused them up from their makeshift prison, a barren stretch of field ringed with barbed wire and guards and got them marching. Waiting for them was hot showers and medical attention they were told.
The walking wounded limped along, the able bodied carried the maimed. Everyone shared in the burden.
It was the digging equipment that clued Captain Novak that something smelled rotten. Hostilities were over, there was no need for construction, especially here away from anything of strategic importance. The clanners marched them past the tall backhoes and industrial mechs, barking at the stragglers to keep up the pace. Novak saw what he expected some hundred feet onwards.
A long ditch perhaps ten meters wide and five deep, a tall mound of dirt behind it. In front some forty meters away were five machine guns, their crews sitting behind them with cans of ammunition at hand and busy loading their weapons. They made the two hundred prisoners line up along the rim of the ditch, their laser rifles trained on them.
"What's going on, Tycho? Why'd we stop?" Alexander Cromwell asked, still blinded with his own blood.
"Just taking a break, rest our legs a bit," Captain Novak lied, praying the strain in his voice did not show.
"Say, Alec?"
"Hmm?"
"You know that song about Jerusalem? Do you think you could sing it?"
Alec turned his sightless gaze at his friend, his brow rising.
"Now?"
"Why not, I think we all could use a little pick up after today."
The limping man shrugged slightly and began to hum to find the pitch.
"And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?"
A few heads turned towards the wounded singer, confusion on their faces but kept silent; a distraction before the end.
"And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills?"
Those who knew it began to pick up, adding a baritone and a bass line to the song. The Clan Wolf guards looked askew at their charges, unsure what this was.
"Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire."
The score or so singers crescendo-ed, knowing that this was the last time to hear music.
"I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant lan-"
The machine guns opened up.
| One bad day can do it if it's bad enough, and one bad year can do it to almost any man. After a lifetime of beatings, bad luck, and lost opportunities, Tim had enough, but he wasn't fully ready yet. This was just a beginning. His boss had been a bully, worse than some of those who had beat him into submission. He belittled him in front of others and blamed Tim for his mistakes. Tim just wanted to sabotage one project, but it ended up going too far. Four weeks later, his boss was dead in an apparent autoerotic asphyxiation gone too far. Tim had simply taken his meditation pad that his boss kept behind his door. It was supposed to be the first step in many to driving him nuts, but the meditation pad kept the door in place that his boss used to hang himself as he "conducted his business." Without the meditation pad, the door slipped. His boss fell and instantly broke his neck.
Tim was terrified, but he was also thrilled. The anxiety and the weakness eventually faded, and he became bolder. He stole money from the company, and three employees died accidentally over the next year. Eventually, he would leave too after a false accident that lead to a class action lawsuit leading to millions for him. He continued to be mild mannered in public, but he plotted behind closed doors until he set his sights on one of the heroes around town, Catman.
Taking Catman down didn't involve violence or any accidents. He found that he had a rampant sexual history with which he could smear his good name, paying prostitutes to say they had been assaulted by him and given diseases too. Tim operated so well in the shadows that the city didn't even know of his existence. With time, he could direct the entire country to do his bidding, but he didn't think of himself as the villain until he took down Ultra Man with a campaign about him being an illegal alien, blaming him single handedly for the influx of people who wanted a better life. Finally, he realized with this maneuver that he was in the big leagues and could take on anyone simply by crafting the right narrative, convincing the world that they were, in deed, the victims and the heroes were the perpetrators. | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | Tim was having trouble sleeping. It was not because he was six years old and eight o’clock was too early a bedtime. It wasn’t because he had snuck the bag of Halloween candy out from his closet before bedtime and eaten enough to make him sick to his stomach. Nor was it because the missing night light. Tim had told his mom to unplug the night light four weeks ago, after all! Tim wasn’t kept awake for any of those things. Tim couldn’t sleep because his mom had forgotten to tuck him in with Chester, his stuffed rabbit.
Normally Chester sat calmly on the pillows of his bed during the day, a place of honor Tim would tell his friends was dictated by his mom. At night, Chester would be collected as the extra pillows were thrown to the floor carelessly, and placed next to Tim. Then, Tim would get a kiss on the forehead and a, “Good night, sleep tight!” as his bedroom door was shut. Tonight, however, Chester had been forgotten. Right now Chester was on the floor next to his bed, and Tim couldn’t collect him.
Tim couldn’t collect him because there was a monster under the bed.
Now it’s important to note that it wasn’t the monster itself that was keeping Tim awake. Tim was well aware of the monster’s existence. In fact, Tim knew that there were a total of three monsters in his room at night. One was the monster under the bed. Two was the monster behind the door. The door monster was something of a special case, because it was only present when the door was open and the light from the hallway spilled into his bedroom. The crack of light created a blind spot behind the bedroom door, where the door monster dwelled. For this reason he had slept with the door closed for a whole two weeks now.
The third monster was the monster in the closet. That was the most dangerous of the three monsters, because it was big. It had to be big, of course, otherwise it would live behind the door or under his bed, two very tight spaces. Luckily the monster in the closet was trapped in there, as Tim made sure to firmly shut the closet door each and every night. So despite the closet monster being the most dangerous, his night-to-night conflicts were always with the monster under the bed.
Inching his eyes over the ledge of the bed, Tim saw one of Chester’s folded ears. He inched a little bit more and Chester’s face appeared, glass bead eyes completely black in the bedroom’s darkness. Another inch and Tim’s nose was at the corner of his mattress. There he saw Chester’s torso, but the lower half of the rabbit disappeared into the abyss under the bed. More than that, Tim was horrified to see Chester was slowly rolling back and forth, like something unseen had sunken its claws into his rabbit’s legs and was slowly twisting. Left, right. Left, right.
That was too much for Tim to bear. With a cry of anguish his hands shot towards the rabbit. He grabbed Chester’s head, pulled, and was immediately met with a snarl of resistance. It was like the sound of a snake blowing bubbles. A hiss that should have been completely dry, but instead there was gurgling and popping.
“Mine!” hissed the voice from under the bed, “Mine, mine, mine!”
With a might squeal, the monster pulled Chester from Tim’s grasp and the rabbit disappeared fully under the bed. Then he heard a quiet gurgle, and then a coo.
Tim was beyond being scared now. He was angry. But despite his anger, he know the monster was stronger than him. Instead of diving down under the bed to fight the monster, Tim instead said, “Chester is my rabbit, and you need to give him back to me!”
At first there was no response, but the rustling from under the bed lessened somewhat. Then he heard the hissing, gurgling voice, “Mine. All mine.”
Tim narrowed his eyes at the edge of the shadow that separated under the bed from the rest of his room. “That’s not true,” Tim said. “Not everything is yours.” He paused for a minute, then took one of his socks off. Dangling the toe of the sock below his mattress, he said, “This sock isn’t yours.”
Without any hesitation, the sock was pulled from his grip with such force that, even suspecting what would happen, Tim was taken off guard. “My sock, mine!” said the voice from under the bed.
Now Tim was truly stumped. He had hoped to bargain the sock for Chester with the monster, but now he could see that wouldn’t work. The monster was just too strong. No, Tim himself needed something strong to deal with the monster under the bed. Looking around again, Tim’s eyes landed on the closet.
“I know something that isn’t yours.” Tim said.
There was no response.
“There’s a bag full of candy in my closet. Completely full. That’s my candy.”
At first there was no response, but then the monster spoke again. The voice was less venomous this time, different than how the monster had spoken before, “His candy. His. His! His!”
“No no,” Tim said, “Your candy.”
“My?” the monster under the bed said.
“Yes,” Tim said, nodding his head enthusiastically, even though the monster couldn’t see him. “Your bag full of candy. You just need to go get it.”
The monster under the bed didn’t say anything else, and almost a minute passed without a sound coming from under the bed. Tim thought his plan had failed, and he would have to go the rest of the night without Chester, resorting to collecting his beloved rabbit after the sun rose in the morning.
Just as Tim lost hope, he heard a rustling from the foot of his bed. He pulled his blankets up to his eyes and stared over the lump his feet caused in the sheets, to his closet door on the opposite side of the room. The door was firmly shut, but still imposing in the darkness. The moon was very bright tonight, and his window cast a moon shadow cast across the closet door, illuminating it unnaturally.
Tim heard a whisper in the room, “Mine,” and the closet door creeped open.
A heavy breathing came from the closet, like a dragon’s breath rattling out from the depths of its lair. Tim heard a gurgling hiss, and then a furious roar and loud thud, like something had been thrown against a wall.
Tim pulled the cover over his eyes as the noises continued. Hissing, breathing, gurgling, rattling, all accompanied by an occasional thud against the wall or rattling of clothes hanger on its peg. It was horrible, terrible, and Tim couldn’t stand the noises any longer. He just wanted it to stop!
Finally the noises slowed to a stop and Tim dared to peek. There was no more growling or thumping against the walls and everything seemed calm. The only evidence there had ever been a fight was the fur still floating out from the crack in the closet door, set afire by the moonlight like glimmering lines of spider web.
Then the door moved again, creaking open just a little bit more. Tim didn’t see anything come out, but he did hear something being dragged across the floor, and a pained gurgle, as if the monster under the bed was injured.
A bag was thrown onto his bed, arching up from the floor. It landed right next to his feet, and Tim saw candy spilling out from a tear on the side. He sat up quickly, his feet working to push him away from the bag and into a sitting position. Right next to the bag of candy from over the ledge of the bed, a sock appeared. It was Tim’s sock, but now it had sharp, evil looking claws poking out from the toe seam.
“My sock, my candy,” said a gurgling, hissing voice.
Then Chester appeared next to the clawed sock. The rabbit’s stuffed arms were propped on the mattress as if he was holding on, and his glass bead eyes caught a glimmer of moonlight and looked directly at Tim.
“My rabbit, my closet, my bed,” said the monster.
The two felt teeth sewn onto Chester’s face moved slightly as more claws slowly protruded out from behind them. The monster was working its little hand through the stuffing of Tim’s rabbit, and out the front of Chester’s head. Chester fell onto the bed face forward as the monster’s claws found purchase in the sheets. A shadow loomed up onto the bed, and Tim couldn’t hold his scream in any longer.
| He'd never done anything before that hurt Billy so why not prolong the favours, right?
"i closed it so he wouldn't do bad things to me and you, Mr sleepy. You'll have to open it by yourself like a big boy. Like me. I know you can do it Mr sleepy."
There were always those typical bumps in the night, whispers in the dark and that one unnerving feeling, but Billy knew he had Mr Sleepy to protect him from the monster he turned away from in his sleep. It'd been there for too long, it wasn't fair anymore and they both knew it, So of course it didnt come as a surprise when the one that lived just below shadowed across the Lego littered carpet, filling little billy with hope. Finally they can play together.
"yes Mr sleepy open that door please so you can get him"
But even creatures of the night can get hesitant if they themselves dont know what's going to happen next. Itd been too long since billy let him see, as it only appeared after his mother tucked him not-so-safely to bed. He glanced back at the small boy as one sharp, brittle nail reached for the handle, and he was practically squirming in his sheets. But he still wasn't so sure.
"oh please Mr sleepy pleeeeaaase. You know you can get him because you're super awesome and noone can hurt you at all."
Heck, he didn't even know if the boy was right or not. He'd been practically sitting in the same spot for as long as his memories go (something that doesn't fuse with how he actually got there). The boy was almost screaming by now.
"Please Mr sleepy its realllly reaalllyy scary. I'll give you my fire truck if you do it."
By now he had no choice. His nail almost snapped under the pressure, but he pushed on untill the door started moving. God knows what was in there.
"Billy?" No, no not now. Really, not now. He hurried his actions, strengthened his grip but remained steady. A hiss came from the dark.
"Hurry upppp!!" He followed his orders, so perfect, so smooth...
It burned. Like the very sun itself decided to drop by, which is kind of ironic, because Billy was screaming like he'd just been thrown into it, but it wasn't the same. The thing he'd been waiting for seemed to erupt from the floor and hug the closet doors, growing quickly in size and almost in density. The pain distracted the fear fom presence and it quickly became apparent this wasn't one of his kind.
And Billy kept screaming.
"MR SLEEPY NO WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NO MR SLEEPY NO WH-WHAT ARE YOU DOING GET OFF NOW PLEASE NO MR SLEEPY"
Whatever it was enveloped him with its frame, he could barely be seen through its mass,and all Mr sleepy did was watch.
They tried to reach out for each other, a chance to return the favour for Billy, to protect him for a change. Nothing. Still screaming...
"Oh god please Billy no, please I can help you and Mr Sleepy here take these, they'll help Mr sleepy go away. Yes I know you don't want him too, but trust me itll make him feel all better again... Please..."
Maybe tomorrow night.
(first timer here, and im quite young so im wondering what you thing, criticism is greatly appreciated) | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | Young Winston lay in bed staring sightlessly into the dark. Two hours into this long night and he'd slept not a wink. Something dwelt in his closet, something cold and cunning. It had dwelt inside for some years, emerging for the first time in a terrible display of violence. Nick was gone, devoured by the beast, and that was when it had been young. Each passing night gave it more strength, and each sunset Winston wondered if this might be the night when it would finish gathering its strength and kill him too. Charlie didn't fear it, though. Charlie and Frank, Winston's best friends, could hold the beast at bay if everyone pulled their weight. Frank had surprising strength for a sickly kid, but it was Charlie who truly protected Winston.
Charlie hadn't feared the closet beast, and rightfully so; after all, the bed beast got him.
Beneath Winston's bed a horror writhed, howling like a wolf. A treeborne ambush through Charlie's window silenced Winston's friend, yet its hunger was not sated. The bed beast, a creature of frothing rage and hate, turned next to Winston. So far, as long as Winston kept calm, the bed beast might be endured, but the battle had been long and both creatures wearied. All the while the closet beast marshalled its power. Winston supposed when the bed beast finally got him the closet beast would strike, eating the bed beast's power. Cold and cunning would overcome the bed beast's wrathful hunger.
Nobody was coming to help now, Winston knew. Franklin was grounded and couldn't come over, and Winston's little siblings were already too tired to help. It was Winston alone against two monsters--his life was at an end.
Snarls from below rattled in his ears, and Winston held the covers close. All would end soon. Or was it? The snapping of teeth and vitriol didn't sound so muffled as usual, traveling through the bedframe and mattress to Winston's troubled sense. Cupping his ear, Winston realized the truth: these were echoes! Echoes bouncing off the closet door! The bed beast's anger turned now to the icy doom of the closet and Winston saw his salvation.
"Cramped down there, isn't it?" he said to the dark. A howl and gnashing teeth answered, frothing spittle splashing on the floor. "You don't even have your own door. Nobeast could live like that, with no privacy. Wouldn't it be nice if you had more living space to stretch your legs?"
A roar shook the bed and Winston held the headboard for dear life, but the bed beast did not rise up. Its frenzy remained against the closet beast.
"It'll be quick," said Winston. "Easy. He thinks he's so smart, he won't see it coming. Just a little lightning-fast attack and you've got yourself a whole new territory."
That did it. The bed tipped over and Winston slid against the wall as Adolph Hitler climbed from beneath and sprinted towards the closet. "Nein nein nein nein," Hitler roared. Effortlessly he flung the closet door open and launched himself upon Josef Stalin. Thinking quickly, Winston slammed the door shut and pushed his desk against it, before going back to bed and closing his eyes. | He'd never done anything before that hurt Billy so why not prolong the favours, right?
"i closed it so he wouldn't do bad things to me and you, Mr sleepy. You'll have to open it by yourself like a big boy. Like me. I know you can do it Mr sleepy."
There were always those typical bumps in the night, whispers in the dark and that one unnerving feeling, but Billy knew he had Mr Sleepy to protect him from the monster he turned away from in his sleep. It'd been there for too long, it wasn't fair anymore and they both knew it, So of course it didnt come as a surprise when the one that lived just below shadowed across the Lego littered carpet, filling little billy with hope. Finally they can play together.
"yes Mr sleepy open that door please so you can get him"
But even creatures of the night can get hesitant if they themselves dont know what's going to happen next. Itd been too long since billy let him see, as it only appeared after his mother tucked him not-so-safely to bed. He glanced back at the small boy as one sharp, brittle nail reached for the handle, and he was practically squirming in his sheets. But he still wasn't so sure.
"oh please Mr sleepy pleeeeaaase. You know you can get him because you're super awesome and noone can hurt you at all."
Heck, he didn't even know if the boy was right or not. He'd been practically sitting in the same spot for as long as his memories go (something that doesn't fuse with how he actually got there). The boy was almost screaming by now.
"Please Mr sleepy its realllly reaalllyy scary. I'll give you my fire truck if you do it."
By now he had no choice. His nail almost snapped under the pressure, but he pushed on untill the door started moving. God knows what was in there.
"Billy?" No, no not now. Really, not now. He hurried his actions, strengthened his grip but remained steady. A hiss came from the dark.
"Hurry upppp!!" He followed his orders, so perfect, so smooth...
It burned. Like the very sun itself decided to drop by, which is kind of ironic, because Billy was screaming like he'd just been thrown into it, but it wasn't the same. The thing he'd been waiting for seemed to erupt from the floor and hug the closet doors, growing quickly in size and almost in density. The pain distracted the fear fom presence and it quickly became apparent this wasn't one of his kind.
And Billy kept screaming.
"MR SLEEPY NO WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NO MR SLEEPY NO WH-WHAT ARE YOU DOING GET OFF NOW PLEASE NO MR SLEEPY"
Whatever it was enveloped him with its frame, he could barely be seen through its mass,and all Mr sleepy did was watch.
They tried to reach out for each other, a chance to return the favour for Billy, to protect him for a change. Nothing. Still screaming...
"Oh god please Billy no, please I can help you and Mr Sleepy here take these, they'll help Mr sleepy go away. Yes I know you don't want him too, but trust me itll make him feel all better again... Please..."
Maybe tomorrow night.
(first timer here, and im quite young so im wondering what you thing, criticism is greatly appreciated) | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | *A child bolts up in bed panicking. His name is Jonas. The sound that startled continues as it rattles the closet slightly.*
"Clawbite...?" Julian said curiously. "Clawbite, are you there?"
".. Yes, Jonas?" a voice from the below grumbles. "Is something the matter?"
"I can't sleep, something just made a sound in my closet" whined the exhausted Jonas.
"Jonas. I'm sure it was nothing. If you'd like I can creak the floor for you. Would that help?"
"Clawbite, I don't think it's nothing. But if it wasn't you, then who was it?", asked Jonas.
"If that's the case, Jonas, I believe you might have a new inhabitant in your garment room", snarled Clawbite. "But, seeing as this room is already being terrorized, I'm afraid he's going to have to go."
*A dampened thump emanates from the closet floor*
"Ah, Clawbite, how's it been? Still hiding under lice farms?", a voice spoke, each syllable a slight rattle.
"Who is that Claw? I don't want to be scared tonight. Please?", whined Jonas.
"Rogut. Rogut, you must leave now. This child is not to be messed with. There is... an arrangement." Clawbite said scolding the closet resident.
"Aww, is poor little Claw afraid of a little competition? Tell you what, we can scare him together! Remember that thing we used to do in *Fake Thunderstorm 203*?
I mean, I tell ya kid, we used to make sounds that would wet the bed during a light shower! And it wasn't from the rain!"
"Claw I don't want to wet my bed! Mom-", protested Jonas.
"Rotgut. Leave. Now", spoke Clawbite in his monotone anger.
"Nah, I think I'll stay instead. I was kidding about liking you. You were always a stuck up priss. But wait til everyone hears Clawbite is protecting children!", chortled the blank slats of the closet.
"Claw, make him go away!", Jonas spoke with terror cracking his every word. "Mom and dad can't help me anymore"
"Jonas, when I tell you I want you to close your eyes and shut your ears. Then you can open them again Understood?", said Clawbite.
"Ok. I'm sorry Claw", Jonas apologized.
"There's nothing to apologize for. Now, on three. 1... 2....-", said Clawbite
*Jonas clamped his eyes and ears as he was told and waited. When he opened his eyes, he heard the distinct sound of dragging from the closet's side of the room.*
"Did you get him Claw? Is he gone?", Jonas managed to speak.
"Yes he is. Don't worry Jonas. Like I told you before, we'd always be family. I promised nothing would happen to you again." | He'd never done anything before that hurt Billy so why not prolong the favours, right?
"i closed it so he wouldn't do bad things to me and you, Mr sleepy. You'll have to open it by yourself like a big boy. Like me. I know you can do it Mr sleepy."
There were always those typical bumps in the night, whispers in the dark and that one unnerving feeling, but Billy knew he had Mr Sleepy to protect him from the monster he turned away from in his sleep. It'd been there for too long, it wasn't fair anymore and they both knew it, So of course it didnt come as a surprise when the one that lived just below shadowed across the Lego littered carpet, filling little billy with hope. Finally they can play together.
"yes Mr sleepy open that door please so you can get him"
But even creatures of the night can get hesitant if they themselves dont know what's going to happen next. Itd been too long since billy let him see, as it only appeared after his mother tucked him not-so-safely to bed. He glanced back at the small boy as one sharp, brittle nail reached for the handle, and he was practically squirming in his sheets. But he still wasn't so sure.
"oh please Mr sleepy pleeeeaaase. You know you can get him because you're super awesome and noone can hurt you at all."
Heck, he didn't even know if the boy was right or not. He'd been practically sitting in the same spot for as long as his memories go (something that doesn't fuse with how he actually got there). The boy was almost screaming by now.
"Please Mr sleepy its realllly reaalllyy scary. I'll give you my fire truck if you do it."
By now he had no choice. His nail almost snapped under the pressure, but he pushed on untill the door started moving. God knows what was in there.
"Billy?" No, no not now. Really, not now. He hurried his actions, strengthened his grip but remained steady. A hiss came from the dark.
"Hurry upppp!!" He followed his orders, so perfect, so smooth...
It burned. Like the very sun itself decided to drop by, which is kind of ironic, because Billy was screaming like he'd just been thrown into it, but it wasn't the same. The thing he'd been waiting for seemed to erupt from the floor and hug the closet doors, growing quickly in size and almost in density. The pain distracted the fear fom presence and it quickly became apparent this wasn't one of his kind.
And Billy kept screaming.
"MR SLEEPY NO WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NO MR SLEEPY NO WH-WHAT ARE YOU DOING GET OFF NOW PLEASE NO MR SLEEPY"
Whatever it was enveloped him with its frame, he could barely be seen through its mass,and all Mr sleepy did was watch.
They tried to reach out for each other, a chance to return the favour for Billy, to protect him for a change. Nothing. Still screaming...
"Oh god please Billy no, please I can help you and Mr Sleepy here take these, they'll help Mr sleepy go away. Yes I know you don't want him too, but trust me itll make him feel all better again... Please..."
Maybe tomorrow night.
(first timer here, and im quite young so im wondering what you thing, criticism is greatly appreciated) | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | "Have you decided yet?"
A soft rumble shook my bed and I clutched the baseball tighter under my pillow
"I mean, the day you get me, who's gonna get what? I can't keep you guys company forever you know.."
I heard silence. It was rare it fell asleep before I ever did.
The closet creaked open the silence, and it was accompanied by a squeak and the sound of claws scratching the back wall. I turned to face the closet, "Because I've been thinking, wouldn't you rather just keep a whole kid to yourself?"
The closet creaked open a smidgen more and my bed shook ever so slightly as the beast beneath me shook. I could hear it breathing now, under me, panting heavily stopping only to put slobber all over its lips with its tongue. Claws began to scrape across the wooden floorboards. It was now or never
"I heard closet guy saying one night, that you wouldn't even be able to catch him. That he'd have me all to his lonesome..."
A growl resonated through me. Just a bit more...
"I guess we just won't ever know huh... unless you prove it!" I whipped out the baseball and threw it into the closet. A large golden retriever dashed out from under the bed and barreled into the closet. My tabby cat shot out, into the hallway yowling with the canine in hot pursuit letting out sporadic barks. I jumped out of bed and ran to the door, locking it tight.
Finally, a good night's rest.
| He'd never done anything before that hurt Billy so why not prolong the favours, right?
"i closed it so he wouldn't do bad things to me and you, Mr sleepy. You'll have to open it by yourself like a big boy. Like me. I know you can do it Mr sleepy."
There were always those typical bumps in the night, whispers in the dark and that one unnerving feeling, but Billy knew he had Mr Sleepy to protect him from the monster he turned away from in his sleep. It'd been there for too long, it wasn't fair anymore and they both knew it, So of course it didnt come as a surprise when the one that lived just below shadowed across the Lego littered carpet, filling little billy with hope. Finally they can play together.
"yes Mr sleepy open that door please so you can get him"
But even creatures of the night can get hesitant if they themselves dont know what's going to happen next. Itd been too long since billy let him see, as it only appeared after his mother tucked him not-so-safely to bed. He glanced back at the small boy as one sharp, brittle nail reached for the handle, and he was practically squirming in his sheets. But he still wasn't so sure.
"oh please Mr sleepy pleeeeaaase. You know you can get him because you're super awesome and noone can hurt you at all."
Heck, he didn't even know if the boy was right or not. He'd been practically sitting in the same spot for as long as his memories go (something that doesn't fuse with how he actually got there). The boy was almost screaming by now.
"Please Mr sleepy its realllly reaalllyy scary. I'll give you my fire truck if you do it."
By now he had no choice. His nail almost snapped under the pressure, but he pushed on untill the door started moving. God knows what was in there.
"Billy?" No, no not now. Really, not now. He hurried his actions, strengthened his grip but remained steady. A hiss came from the dark.
"Hurry upppp!!" He followed his orders, so perfect, so smooth...
It burned. Like the very sun itself decided to drop by, which is kind of ironic, because Billy was screaming like he'd just been thrown into it, but it wasn't the same. The thing he'd been waiting for seemed to erupt from the floor and hug the closet doors, growing quickly in size and almost in density. The pain distracted the fear fom presence and it quickly became apparent this wasn't one of his kind.
And Billy kept screaming.
"MR SLEEPY NO WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NO MR SLEEPY NO WH-WHAT ARE YOU DOING GET OFF NOW PLEASE NO MR SLEEPY"
Whatever it was enveloped him with its frame, he could barely be seen through its mass,and all Mr sleepy did was watch.
They tried to reach out for each other, a chance to return the favour for Billy, to protect him for a change. Nothing. Still screaming...
"Oh god please Billy no, please I can help you and Mr Sleepy here take these, they'll help Mr sleepy go away. Yes I know you don't want him too, but trust me itll make him feel all better again... Please..."
Maybe tomorrow night.
(first timer here, and im quite young so im wondering what you thing, criticism is greatly appreciated) | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | "Hey, Purples, come on, I bet you could beat him!" I leaned over the edge of my bed, talking to the strange purple monster under. He growled, baring crooked fangs and stared at me with his unnaturally large orange eyes. Pulling himself a bit forward, he growled a garbled sentences back.
"Heck no, kid. I'm perfectly fine right here, terrorizing you like my job says." He stuck his long, reptilian head out from under the bed, exposing his three short horns and small ears. "Anyways, why?"
"C'mon, I'll give you Rice Krispies."
Purples hesitated for a moment and then growled again, dragging himself further out from under the bed with his clawed fingers. "AS tempting as that is, I'm just trying to do my job kid, and no part of my job says anything about fighting with the mekizorgles."
He paused for a second. "I'm terrifying you, aren't I?"
"Oh yeah," I said in my fakest, most flattering voice. "Completely."
Looking a bit more satisfied, Purples slithered back under the bed and then wobbled around a bit, hissing, and making the bed shake. Laying back in bed, I eyed my closed closet with a hint of apprehension. From what I'd picked up, mekizorgles and Blotikikigoles, like Purples, didn't mix well. Both seemed to avoid each other. The mekizorgle in my closet was a proper sort of monster, scary and frightening, not like grumpy, but lovable Purples.
Purples hissed a bit more and extended his four short but deadly claws out from under the bed, giving me a glimpse of his claws and purple scales. He was just doing his job, I knew, so I wasn't exactly frightened.
"C'mon, you can take him"
Purples sighed and rolled his eyes. "Kiddo, seriously. I don't wanna. Much more comftorable here." He snapped his jaws and shook the bed slightly again. I saw his eyes flick toward the closet though, with a small moment of apprehension.
"Oh, I see. You're *scared* of him." I said, leaning back over the bed.
"Am not!" Purples snapped.
"Hey Purples, the mekizorgle called you a fatass. What's that mean?"
"He what?!" Purple snarled, pulling his impressive length completely out from under the bed. Rising to his full, serpentine height of six feet and length of nine, Purples growled at the closet, baring his over large tusks.
The closet rattled harder, and I caught a glimpse of a pink eye through the crack in the closet door. A hard to understand string of words flew out the closet and Purples growled again, flashing his four arms threateningly and slithering around my bedroom on his two snake tails. He turned back toward me-
"He did?'
"Yeah. Also, he called you lazy ass. Why does he keep saying ass?" I said.
Purples growled and slammed into the closet door. The closet door flew open and the green monster growled, leaping out. It was my first glimpse at the mekizorgle, and I wasn't disappointed. It looked like an overlarge bear with sabertooth fangs and tentacles.
The two monsters clashed that night, and Purples triumphed. He let out a final growl, Mekizorgle blood dripping from his tusks. He slithered back under my bed and growled again, shaking the bed violently. He hissed.
"Not a word, kid, not a word to my boss, got it?"
| He'd never done anything before that hurt Billy so why not prolong the favours, right?
"i closed it so he wouldn't do bad things to me and you, Mr sleepy. You'll have to open it by yourself like a big boy. Like me. I know you can do it Mr sleepy."
There were always those typical bumps in the night, whispers in the dark and that one unnerving feeling, but Billy knew he had Mr Sleepy to protect him from the monster he turned away from in his sleep. It'd been there for too long, it wasn't fair anymore and they both knew it, So of course it didnt come as a surprise when the one that lived just below shadowed across the Lego littered carpet, filling little billy with hope. Finally they can play together.
"yes Mr sleepy open that door please so you can get him"
But even creatures of the night can get hesitant if they themselves dont know what's going to happen next. Itd been too long since billy let him see, as it only appeared after his mother tucked him not-so-safely to bed. He glanced back at the small boy as one sharp, brittle nail reached for the handle, and he was practically squirming in his sheets. But he still wasn't so sure.
"oh please Mr sleepy pleeeeaaase. You know you can get him because you're super awesome and noone can hurt you at all."
Heck, he didn't even know if the boy was right or not. He'd been practically sitting in the same spot for as long as his memories go (something that doesn't fuse with how he actually got there). The boy was almost screaming by now.
"Please Mr sleepy its realllly reaalllyy scary. I'll give you my fire truck if you do it."
By now he had no choice. His nail almost snapped under the pressure, but he pushed on untill the door started moving. God knows what was in there.
"Billy?" No, no not now. Really, not now. He hurried his actions, strengthened his grip but remained steady. A hiss came from the dark.
"Hurry upppp!!" He followed his orders, so perfect, so smooth...
It burned. Like the very sun itself decided to drop by, which is kind of ironic, because Billy was screaming like he'd just been thrown into it, but it wasn't the same. The thing he'd been waiting for seemed to erupt from the floor and hug the closet doors, growing quickly in size and almost in density. The pain distracted the fear fom presence and it quickly became apparent this wasn't one of his kind.
And Billy kept screaming.
"MR SLEEPY NO WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NO MR SLEEPY NO WH-WHAT ARE YOU DOING GET OFF NOW PLEASE NO MR SLEEPY"
Whatever it was enveloped him with its frame, he could barely be seen through its mass,and all Mr sleepy did was watch.
They tried to reach out for each other, a chance to return the favour for Billy, to protect him for a change. Nothing. Still screaming...
"Oh god please Billy no, please I can help you and Mr Sleepy here take these, they'll help Mr sleepy go away. Yes I know you don't want him too, but trust me itll make him feel all better again... Please..."
Maybe tomorrow night.
(first timer here, and im quite young so im wondering what you thing, criticism is greatly appreciated) | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | *"GRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!"*
"Ah!"
*"RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!"*
"Oh, it's just you, Mega Horn."
The large horned monster, ten feet tall, muscles rippling from every inch of its body, skin as red as freshly dropped blood, eyes darker than midnight, claws so sharp the very air can be cut, frowned at the little boy sitting on the bed. Taking the stool near the table, he sat next to the boy.
"Could you at least try to act more scared? I have to record my scares for the night and you sitting there all smiling is ruining my reputation. And for the record my name is **[Incomprehensible]**," said Mega Horn.
Little Timmy shrugged. "Sorry, **[Incomprehensible]**, but it's really hard to get scared now that there's two of you hiding in my--"
Mega Horn suddenly stood up. "WHAT?! SOMEONE IS ENTERING MY TERRITORY?! WHO IS THIS?! WHO IS THE HEATHEN WHO DARES INFRINGE UPON THE REALM OF **[Incomprehensible]**?!"
"Shh! You'll wake up the others! Remember the last time my sister saw you?"
**[Incomprehensible]** had a sudden vision of a sex-crazed lunatic whose lust was greater than any succubus.
He sat back down.
"Sorry."
Timmy coughed. "Okay, he came here last night after you did. I think it was an hour from now? I didn't seem him very well because I was pretending to be afraid of him."
He and Mega Horn chuckled at the last part.
"What do you remember?"
"Well, he was blue, and small, and he looked like a fish, that's all I could make it though."
**[Incomprehensible]** placed a finger on his chin. "Hmm, I think I know someone of that description. He comes here one hour after I do, correct?"
Timmy nodded.
"And where did he make his entrance?"
"Well, I heard the closet open last night."
---
**[Unintelligible]** crept up to the sleeping lad. With long, slimy fingers, he stroked the boy's face. It left a trail of mucus on his cheek.
"Wakey, wakey, little Timmy."
Timmy opened his eyes. Groaning, he rubbed his eyes. As it cleared, he got a good look at the monster in front of him.
"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!" Timmy pointed at the monster. Who screamed a horrible sound in delight.
*Ha ha!" **[Unintelligible]** opened his mouth, letting out a long, wet, slippery tongue that hovered above the boy.
"Ah! Behind you!"
Confused, the blue monster turned around.
The large horned monster, ten feet tall, muscles rippling from every inch of its body, skin as red as freshly dropped blood, eyes darker than midnight, claws so sharp the very air can be cut, smiled broadly at the sight before him.
**"So, you are trespassing,"** said **[Incomprehensible]**
**[Unintelligible]** then heard snickering behind him.
"I'll just go get some water, don't make a lot of noise okay?"
Timmy slipped down from the bed and left the room, closing the door behind him.
"Fuck," said **[Unintellgible]**.
| He'd never done anything before that hurt Billy so why not prolong the favours, right?
"i closed it so he wouldn't do bad things to me and you, Mr sleepy. You'll have to open it by yourself like a big boy. Like me. I know you can do it Mr sleepy."
There were always those typical bumps in the night, whispers in the dark and that one unnerving feeling, but Billy knew he had Mr Sleepy to protect him from the monster he turned away from in his sleep. It'd been there for too long, it wasn't fair anymore and they both knew it, So of course it didnt come as a surprise when the one that lived just below shadowed across the Lego littered carpet, filling little billy with hope. Finally they can play together.
"yes Mr sleepy open that door please so you can get him"
But even creatures of the night can get hesitant if they themselves dont know what's going to happen next. Itd been too long since billy let him see, as it only appeared after his mother tucked him not-so-safely to bed. He glanced back at the small boy as one sharp, brittle nail reached for the handle, and he was practically squirming in his sheets. But he still wasn't so sure.
"oh please Mr sleepy pleeeeaaase. You know you can get him because you're super awesome and noone can hurt you at all."
Heck, he didn't even know if the boy was right or not. He'd been practically sitting in the same spot for as long as his memories go (something that doesn't fuse with how he actually got there). The boy was almost screaming by now.
"Please Mr sleepy its realllly reaalllyy scary. I'll give you my fire truck if you do it."
By now he had no choice. His nail almost snapped under the pressure, but he pushed on untill the door started moving. God knows what was in there.
"Billy?" No, no not now. Really, not now. He hurried his actions, strengthened his grip but remained steady. A hiss came from the dark.
"Hurry upppp!!" He followed his orders, so perfect, so smooth...
It burned. Like the very sun itself decided to drop by, which is kind of ironic, because Billy was screaming like he'd just been thrown into it, but it wasn't the same. The thing he'd been waiting for seemed to erupt from the floor and hug the closet doors, growing quickly in size and almost in density. The pain distracted the fear fom presence and it quickly became apparent this wasn't one of his kind.
And Billy kept screaming.
"MR SLEEPY NO WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NO MR SLEEPY NO WH-WHAT ARE YOU DOING GET OFF NOW PLEASE NO MR SLEEPY"
Whatever it was enveloped him with its frame, he could barely be seen through its mass,and all Mr sleepy did was watch.
They tried to reach out for each other, a chance to return the favour for Billy, to protect him for a change. Nothing. Still screaming...
"Oh god please Billy no, please I can help you and Mr Sleepy here take these, they'll help Mr sleepy go away. Yes I know you don't want him too, but trust me itll make him feel all better again... Please..."
Maybe tomorrow night.
(first timer here, and im quite young so im wondering what you thing, criticism is greatly appreciated) | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | Tim was having trouble sleeping. It was not because he was six years old and eight o’clock was too early a bedtime. It wasn’t because he had snuck the bag of Halloween candy out from his closet before bedtime and eaten enough to make him sick to his stomach. Nor was it because the missing night light. Tim had told his mom to unplug the night light four weeks ago, after all! Tim wasn’t kept awake for any of those things. Tim couldn’t sleep because his mom had forgotten to tuck him in with Chester, his stuffed rabbit.
Normally Chester sat calmly on the pillows of his bed during the day, a place of honor Tim would tell his friends was dictated by his mom. At night, Chester would be collected as the extra pillows were thrown to the floor carelessly, and placed next to Tim. Then, Tim would get a kiss on the forehead and a, “Good night, sleep tight!” as his bedroom door was shut. Tonight, however, Chester had been forgotten. Right now Chester was on the floor next to his bed, and Tim couldn’t collect him.
Tim couldn’t collect him because there was a monster under the bed.
Now it’s important to note that it wasn’t the monster itself that was keeping Tim awake. Tim was well aware of the monster’s existence. In fact, Tim knew that there were a total of three monsters in his room at night. One was the monster under the bed. Two was the monster behind the door. The door monster was something of a special case, because it was only present when the door was open and the light from the hallway spilled into his bedroom. The crack of light created a blind spot behind the bedroom door, where the door monster dwelled. For this reason he had slept with the door closed for a whole two weeks now.
The third monster was the monster in the closet. That was the most dangerous of the three monsters, because it was big. It had to be big, of course, otherwise it would live behind the door or under his bed, two very tight spaces. Luckily the monster in the closet was trapped in there, as Tim made sure to firmly shut the closet door each and every night. So despite the closet monster being the most dangerous, his night-to-night conflicts were always with the monster under the bed.
Inching his eyes over the ledge of the bed, Tim saw one of Chester’s folded ears. He inched a little bit more and Chester’s face appeared, glass bead eyes completely black in the bedroom’s darkness. Another inch and Tim’s nose was at the corner of his mattress. There he saw Chester’s torso, but the lower half of the rabbit disappeared into the abyss under the bed. More than that, Tim was horrified to see Chester was slowly rolling back and forth, like something unseen had sunken its claws into his rabbit’s legs and was slowly twisting. Left, right. Left, right.
That was too much for Tim to bear. With a cry of anguish his hands shot towards the rabbit. He grabbed Chester’s head, pulled, and was immediately met with a snarl of resistance. It was like the sound of a snake blowing bubbles. A hiss that should have been completely dry, but instead there was gurgling and popping.
“Mine!” hissed the voice from under the bed, “Mine, mine, mine!”
With a might squeal, the monster pulled Chester from Tim’s grasp and the rabbit disappeared fully under the bed. Then he heard a quiet gurgle, and then a coo.
Tim was beyond being scared now. He was angry. But despite his anger, he know the monster was stronger than him. Instead of diving down under the bed to fight the monster, Tim instead said, “Chester is my rabbit, and you need to give him back to me!”
At first there was no response, but the rustling from under the bed lessened somewhat. Then he heard the hissing, gurgling voice, “Mine. All mine.”
Tim narrowed his eyes at the edge of the shadow that separated under the bed from the rest of his room. “That’s not true,” Tim said. “Not everything is yours.” He paused for a minute, then took one of his socks off. Dangling the toe of the sock below his mattress, he said, “This sock isn’t yours.”
Without any hesitation, the sock was pulled from his grip with such force that, even suspecting what would happen, Tim was taken off guard. “My sock, mine!” said the voice from under the bed.
Now Tim was truly stumped. He had hoped to bargain the sock for Chester with the monster, but now he could see that wouldn’t work. The monster was just too strong. No, Tim himself needed something strong to deal with the monster under the bed. Looking around again, Tim’s eyes landed on the closet.
“I know something that isn’t yours.” Tim said.
There was no response.
“There’s a bag full of candy in my closet. Completely full. That’s my candy.”
At first there was no response, but then the monster spoke again. The voice was less venomous this time, different than how the monster had spoken before, “His candy. His. His! His!”
“No no,” Tim said, “Your candy.”
“My?” the monster under the bed said.
“Yes,” Tim said, nodding his head enthusiastically, even though the monster couldn’t see him. “Your bag full of candy. You just need to go get it.”
The monster under the bed didn’t say anything else, and almost a minute passed without a sound coming from under the bed. Tim thought his plan had failed, and he would have to go the rest of the night without Chester, resorting to collecting his beloved rabbit after the sun rose in the morning.
Just as Tim lost hope, he heard a rustling from the foot of his bed. He pulled his blankets up to his eyes and stared over the lump his feet caused in the sheets, to his closet door on the opposite side of the room. The door was firmly shut, but still imposing in the darkness. The moon was very bright tonight, and his window cast a moon shadow cast across the closet door, illuminating it unnaturally.
Tim heard a whisper in the room, “Mine,” and the closet door creeped open.
A heavy breathing came from the closet, like a dragon’s breath rattling out from the depths of its lair. Tim heard a gurgling hiss, and then a furious roar and loud thud, like something had been thrown against a wall.
Tim pulled the cover over his eyes as the noises continued. Hissing, breathing, gurgling, rattling, all accompanied by an occasional thud against the wall or rattling of clothes hanger on its peg. It was horrible, terrible, and Tim couldn’t stand the noises any longer. He just wanted it to stop!
Finally the noises slowed to a stop and Tim dared to peek. There was no more growling or thumping against the walls and everything seemed calm. The only evidence there had ever been a fight was the fur still floating out from the crack in the closet door, set afire by the moonlight like glimmering lines of spider web.
Then the door moved again, creaking open just a little bit more. Tim didn’t see anything come out, but he did hear something being dragged across the floor, and a pained gurgle, as if the monster under the bed was injured.
A bag was thrown onto his bed, arching up from the floor. It landed right next to his feet, and Tim saw candy spilling out from a tear on the side. He sat up quickly, his feet working to push him away from the bag and into a sitting position. Right next to the bag of candy from over the ledge of the bed, a sock appeared. It was Tim’s sock, but now it had sharp, evil looking claws poking out from the toe seam.
“My sock, my candy,” said a gurgling, hissing voice.
Then Chester appeared next to the clawed sock. The rabbit’s stuffed arms were propped on the mattress as if he was holding on, and his glass bead eyes caught a glimmer of moonlight and looked directly at Tim.
“My rabbit, my closet, my bed,” said the monster.
The two felt teeth sewn onto Chester’s face moved slightly as more claws slowly protruded out from behind them. The monster was working its little hand through the stuffing of Tim’s rabbit, and out the front of Chester’s head. Chester fell onto the bed face forward as the monster’s claws found purchase in the sheets. A shadow loomed up onto the bed, and Tim couldn’t hold his scream in any longer.
| "Alright, I've filled out forms 12b and 17-1-1/2b, I've got mommy to sign the permission slip, I've written the requested letter, and attached the first contract for negotiation"
The three-tongued monster whose tongues sprang out like whack-a-moles from his six eyes, freshly apparated for the night and greeted so suddenly, spoke:
"You . . . aren't supposed to be literate"
"Mommy says that if all kids with developmental disorders were treated in accordance with their needs, we would stop holding back people who would excel in most areas because they can't perform in one or two others"
"You're 37 months old!"
"And you're an aberration in a world that is otherwise well explained by current physical models, that mommitoo says would be very interesting if she could see"
The monster snarled with one of its toothless maws and grabbed the paperwork with the foot growing from its earlobe.
"Alright, let's see what you got here . . . name, address, age, damn you got neat handwriting kid!"
"Actually, I used mommitoo's alignment printer and a handwriting font. I helped her set it up!"
"Ah, but you need to sign in your own handwriting!"
"I did, right there on the bottom! I had two witnesses sign it also"
"I don't see anything there!"
"It's in braille"
The monster tilted half of a head up to the kid, (for effect, since it didn't actually have any eyes to gaze at the kid with on that half). It passed the paper down into its navel, where finger-y outgrowths pawed at the paper.
" . . . why braille?"
"I got bored and ninja turtles was on!"
"That doesn't-", the monster collapsed the exposed lung on its lower-right shoulder to make a sighing sound.
"Alright, now let's look at your requisition form. Surely you can't have filled this out correctly. Here we go, you haven't filled in the information for your father"
"Don't got one"
"But it's required for the form."
"Not according to paragraph 3 on page 24 of the guidelines for bed monster contracts. Speaking of which, I note that next month I will gain the right to re-negotiation, so I invoke the right to delay any unfavourable decisions to after negotiations, as detailed in the section entitled-"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Okay. What's this, under 'mount' you have my name listed? First of all, how the heck did you learn how to spell that, and I don't agree to be your mount, so there!"
"Well, if you would check the amendments under 'special needs accommodations', you would find differently. And anglicisation from Lithuanian is very straight-forward, but mommy helped me on that part"
The monster raised a skeptical eyeball, "And what special accommodations would those be, you little book-sucking leech?"
"Those are detailed in paragraphs 3 through 5 in my letter"
The monster flipped to the letter. And then to the second page of the letter. And the third.
"You can't go to the bathroom by yourself?!"
"I have difficulties getting in and out of clothing!"
"You're 37 months!"
"I have a pervasive developmental disorder!"
The monster began rubbing a part of her foreleg that she had always assumed was what a 'temple' was. She quietly flipped through the rest of the paperwork.
"And the contract . . .?"
"I mentioned that earlier, that's my first proposal for the re-negotiations in a month. I've included a copy of the original that was made without my explicit consent at the end, and a changelog. Mommitoo says that a meeting of minds is important for any contractual agreement and that I could probably contest the first one if I wanted to"
"Okay, okay, the paperwork looks good. So I'm your bloody mount for an assault on some atlas titan in your closet?"
"Astlan. And he's a lion. In my wardrobe. He keeps looking at me when I try to get dressed in he morning and telling me that only I can fight some witch person!"
The monster nodded one and a half heads in agreement.
"Clear child entrapment, so you are entitled to protection by the bed monsters as per the monopoly clause of the standard contract, as well as unfair prosecution of witches. So there's also a moral component for us to consider. Alright, hop on and let's get this over with"
| |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | Tim was having trouble sleeping. It was not because he was six years old and eight o’clock was too early a bedtime. It wasn’t because he had snuck the bag of Halloween candy out from his closet before bedtime and eaten enough to make him sick to his stomach. Nor was it because the missing night light. Tim had told his mom to unplug the night light four weeks ago, after all! Tim wasn’t kept awake for any of those things. Tim couldn’t sleep because his mom had forgotten to tuck him in with Chester, his stuffed rabbit.
Normally Chester sat calmly on the pillows of his bed during the day, a place of honor Tim would tell his friends was dictated by his mom. At night, Chester would be collected as the extra pillows were thrown to the floor carelessly, and placed next to Tim. Then, Tim would get a kiss on the forehead and a, “Good night, sleep tight!” as his bedroom door was shut. Tonight, however, Chester had been forgotten. Right now Chester was on the floor next to his bed, and Tim couldn’t collect him.
Tim couldn’t collect him because there was a monster under the bed.
Now it’s important to note that it wasn’t the monster itself that was keeping Tim awake. Tim was well aware of the monster’s existence. In fact, Tim knew that there were a total of three monsters in his room at night. One was the monster under the bed. Two was the monster behind the door. The door monster was something of a special case, because it was only present when the door was open and the light from the hallway spilled into his bedroom. The crack of light created a blind spot behind the bedroom door, where the door monster dwelled. For this reason he had slept with the door closed for a whole two weeks now.
The third monster was the monster in the closet. That was the most dangerous of the three monsters, because it was big. It had to be big, of course, otherwise it would live behind the door or under his bed, two very tight spaces. Luckily the monster in the closet was trapped in there, as Tim made sure to firmly shut the closet door each and every night. So despite the closet monster being the most dangerous, his night-to-night conflicts were always with the monster under the bed.
Inching his eyes over the ledge of the bed, Tim saw one of Chester’s folded ears. He inched a little bit more and Chester’s face appeared, glass bead eyes completely black in the bedroom’s darkness. Another inch and Tim’s nose was at the corner of his mattress. There he saw Chester’s torso, but the lower half of the rabbit disappeared into the abyss under the bed. More than that, Tim was horrified to see Chester was slowly rolling back and forth, like something unseen had sunken its claws into his rabbit’s legs and was slowly twisting. Left, right. Left, right.
That was too much for Tim to bear. With a cry of anguish his hands shot towards the rabbit. He grabbed Chester’s head, pulled, and was immediately met with a snarl of resistance. It was like the sound of a snake blowing bubbles. A hiss that should have been completely dry, but instead there was gurgling and popping.
“Mine!” hissed the voice from under the bed, “Mine, mine, mine!”
With a might squeal, the monster pulled Chester from Tim’s grasp and the rabbit disappeared fully under the bed. Then he heard a quiet gurgle, and then a coo.
Tim was beyond being scared now. He was angry. But despite his anger, he know the monster was stronger than him. Instead of diving down under the bed to fight the monster, Tim instead said, “Chester is my rabbit, and you need to give him back to me!”
At first there was no response, but the rustling from under the bed lessened somewhat. Then he heard the hissing, gurgling voice, “Mine. All mine.”
Tim narrowed his eyes at the edge of the shadow that separated under the bed from the rest of his room. “That’s not true,” Tim said. “Not everything is yours.” He paused for a minute, then took one of his socks off. Dangling the toe of the sock below his mattress, he said, “This sock isn’t yours.”
Without any hesitation, the sock was pulled from his grip with such force that, even suspecting what would happen, Tim was taken off guard. “My sock, mine!” said the voice from under the bed.
Now Tim was truly stumped. He had hoped to bargain the sock for Chester with the monster, but now he could see that wouldn’t work. The monster was just too strong. No, Tim himself needed something strong to deal with the monster under the bed. Looking around again, Tim’s eyes landed on the closet.
“I know something that isn’t yours.” Tim said.
There was no response.
“There’s a bag full of candy in my closet. Completely full. That’s my candy.”
At first there was no response, but then the monster spoke again. The voice was less venomous this time, different than how the monster had spoken before, “His candy. His. His! His!”
“No no,” Tim said, “Your candy.”
“My?” the monster under the bed said.
“Yes,” Tim said, nodding his head enthusiastically, even though the monster couldn’t see him. “Your bag full of candy. You just need to go get it.”
The monster under the bed didn’t say anything else, and almost a minute passed without a sound coming from under the bed. Tim thought his plan had failed, and he would have to go the rest of the night without Chester, resorting to collecting his beloved rabbit after the sun rose in the morning.
Just as Tim lost hope, he heard a rustling from the foot of his bed. He pulled his blankets up to his eyes and stared over the lump his feet caused in the sheets, to his closet door on the opposite side of the room. The door was firmly shut, but still imposing in the darkness. The moon was very bright tonight, and his window cast a moon shadow cast across the closet door, illuminating it unnaturally.
Tim heard a whisper in the room, “Mine,” and the closet door creeped open.
A heavy breathing came from the closet, like a dragon’s breath rattling out from the depths of its lair. Tim heard a gurgling hiss, and then a furious roar and loud thud, like something had been thrown against a wall.
Tim pulled the cover over his eyes as the noises continued. Hissing, breathing, gurgling, rattling, all accompanied by an occasional thud against the wall or rattling of clothes hanger on its peg. It was horrible, terrible, and Tim couldn’t stand the noises any longer. He just wanted it to stop!
Finally the noises slowed to a stop and Tim dared to peek. There was no more growling or thumping against the walls and everything seemed calm. The only evidence there had ever been a fight was the fur still floating out from the crack in the closet door, set afire by the moonlight like glimmering lines of spider web.
Then the door moved again, creaking open just a little bit more. Tim didn’t see anything come out, but he did hear something being dragged across the floor, and a pained gurgle, as if the monster under the bed was injured.
A bag was thrown onto his bed, arching up from the floor. It landed right next to his feet, and Tim saw candy spilling out from a tear on the side. He sat up quickly, his feet working to push him away from the bag and into a sitting position. Right next to the bag of candy from over the ledge of the bed, a sock appeared. It was Tim’s sock, but now it had sharp, evil looking claws poking out from the toe seam.
“My sock, my candy,” said a gurgling, hissing voice.
Then Chester appeared next to the clawed sock. The rabbit’s stuffed arms were propped on the mattress as if he was holding on, and his glass bead eyes caught a glimmer of moonlight and looked directly at Tim.
“My rabbit, my closet, my bed,” said the monster.
The two felt teeth sewn onto Chester’s face moved slightly as more claws slowly protruded out from behind them. The monster was working its little hand through the stuffing of Tim’s rabbit, and out the front of Chester’s head. Chester fell onto the bed face forward as the monster’s claws found purchase in the sheets. A shadow loomed up onto the bed, and Tim couldn’t hold his scream in any longer.
| "Hey Steve."
"Name's still Ztephon."
"Steve, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure kid...."
"You wanna eat me right?"
"Yeah kid, standard monster policy."
"There's a monster in my closet Steve. He's big and scary, and has sharp teeth and spikes like a porcupine. He wants to eat me too... I'm scared Steve."
"H-How do you know there's somebody in there... They aren't supposed to issue two agents to the same child... I'm fucking screwed."
"If you still want to make good with the board of directors, you'll eat me. Or you could kill the other guy in the closet. You could eat him, and gain his power."
"Prove he's there, kid. Then we can talk."
"Look, the closet door is opening. Can't you see his spikes? Watch them sparkle in the moonlight Steve... He's there I promise..."
"Well I'll be dammed, kid. I don't recognize him... He's not in my Union. Maybe he's one of those nomadic types."
"Does it matter what, or who he is, Steve? If you go in there and snap his neck, you could be a hero. A champion, Ztephon."
"Kid, do you have to say more? Im halfway there. Do you have anything you'd like me to tell this jokester in the closet?"
"Tell him...Nelson said this was for my stuffed weasel Mr Luffles, and that this was his revenge."
"You aren't right, are you Nelson?"
"Get Mr. Luffles Ztephon."
*Closet door closes*
"I see you, mother fucker. Trying to cut in in my fucking job, huh? OH GOD, I HAD NO IDEA YOU WERE...*snap* *gurgle gurgle* *THUD*
"Child. You have succeeded. I am pleased. Have your Precious weasel."
"If you hurt Mr. Luffles, you will know pain."
"Child, after today... I will spread the word that there is no child here... There is only another monster disguised as... Well... Here..."
*Nelson catches the unfettered Mr. Luffles*
"Oh Mr. Luffles! I missed you! What's that Mr. Luffles? I'm sorry Mr Luffles, I guess I forgot! No survivors! I'm sorry Closet monster, but Mr. Luffles says you have to expire now..."
"Child, please. I know not of what you are capable. But I do know that I fear you, and if you let me g-"
*Mr. Luffles eyes turn glowing yellow. The doll flies across the room into the closet. There is no struggle. There is no sound. Not a single whimper.*
"Yeah Mr. Luffles! You're my best friend ever, you silly weasel!"
*the Mr. Luffles doll appears in the now opened door. His eyes fade back to glassy black, and he lay, a motionless stuffed animal on the floor.* | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | Tim was having trouble sleeping. It was not because he was six years old and eight o’clock was too early a bedtime. It wasn’t because he had snuck the bag of Halloween candy out from his closet before bedtime and eaten enough to make him sick to his stomach. Nor was it because the missing night light. Tim had told his mom to unplug the night light four weeks ago, after all! Tim wasn’t kept awake for any of those things. Tim couldn’t sleep because his mom had forgotten to tuck him in with Chester, his stuffed rabbit.
Normally Chester sat calmly on the pillows of his bed during the day, a place of honor Tim would tell his friends was dictated by his mom. At night, Chester would be collected as the extra pillows were thrown to the floor carelessly, and placed next to Tim. Then, Tim would get a kiss on the forehead and a, “Good night, sleep tight!” as his bedroom door was shut. Tonight, however, Chester had been forgotten. Right now Chester was on the floor next to his bed, and Tim couldn’t collect him.
Tim couldn’t collect him because there was a monster under the bed.
Now it’s important to note that it wasn’t the monster itself that was keeping Tim awake. Tim was well aware of the monster’s existence. In fact, Tim knew that there were a total of three monsters in his room at night. One was the monster under the bed. Two was the monster behind the door. The door monster was something of a special case, because it was only present when the door was open and the light from the hallway spilled into his bedroom. The crack of light created a blind spot behind the bedroom door, where the door monster dwelled. For this reason he had slept with the door closed for a whole two weeks now.
The third monster was the monster in the closet. That was the most dangerous of the three monsters, because it was big. It had to be big, of course, otherwise it would live behind the door or under his bed, two very tight spaces. Luckily the monster in the closet was trapped in there, as Tim made sure to firmly shut the closet door each and every night. So despite the closet monster being the most dangerous, his night-to-night conflicts were always with the monster under the bed.
Inching his eyes over the ledge of the bed, Tim saw one of Chester’s folded ears. He inched a little bit more and Chester’s face appeared, glass bead eyes completely black in the bedroom’s darkness. Another inch and Tim’s nose was at the corner of his mattress. There he saw Chester’s torso, but the lower half of the rabbit disappeared into the abyss under the bed. More than that, Tim was horrified to see Chester was slowly rolling back and forth, like something unseen had sunken its claws into his rabbit’s legs and was slowly twisting. Left, right. Left, right.
That was too much for Tim to bear. With a cry of anguish his hands shot towards the rabbit. He grabbed Chester’s head, pulled, and was immediately met with a snarl of resistance. It was like the sound of a snake blowing bubbles. A hiss that should have been completely dry, but instead there was gurgling and popping.
“Mine!” hissed the voice from under the bed, “Mine, mine, mine!”
With a might squeal, the monster pulled Chester from Tim’s grasp and the rabbit disappeared fully under the bed. Then he heard a quiet gurgle, and then a coo.
Tim was beyond being scared now. He was angry. But despite his anger, he know the monster was stronger than him. Instead of diving down under the bed to fight the monster, Tim instead said, “Chester is my rabbit, and you need to give him back to me!”
At first there was no response, but the rustling from under the bed lessened somewhat. Then he heard the hissing, gurgling voice, “Mine. All mine.”
Tim narrowed his eyes at the edge of the shadow that separated under the bed from the rest of his room. “That’s not true,” Tim said. “Not everything is yours.” He paused for a minute, then took one of his socks off. Dangling the toe of the sock below his mattress, he said, “This sock isn’t yours.”
Without any hesitation, the sock was pulled from his grip with such force that, even suspecting what would happen, Tim was taken off guard. “My sock, mine!” said the voice from under the bed.
Now Tim was truly stumped. He had hoped to bargain the sock for Chester with the monster, but now he could see that wouldn’t work. The monster was just too strong. No, Tim himself needed something strong to deal with the monster under the bed. Looking around again, Tim’s eyes landed on the closet.
“I know something that isn’t yours.” Tim said.
There was no response.
“There’s a bag full of candy in my closet. Completely full. That’s my candy.”
At first there was no response, but then the monster spoke again. The voice was less venomous this time, different than how the monster had spoken before, “His candy. His. His! His!”
“No no,” Tim said, “Your candy.”
“My?” the monster under the bed said.
“Yes,” Tim said, nodding his head enthusiastically, even though the monster couldn’t see him. “Your bag full of candy. You just need to go get it.”
The monster under the bed didn’t say anything else, and almost a minute passed without a sound coming from under the bed. Tim thought his plan had failed, and he would have to go the rest of the night without Chester, resorting to collecting his beloved rabbit after the sun rose in the morning.
Just as Tim lost hope, he heard a rustling from the foot of his bed. He pulled his blankets up to his eyes and stared over the lump his feet caused in the sheets, to his closet door on the opposite side of the room. The door was firmly shut, but still imposing in the darkness. The moon was very bright tonight, and his window cast a moon shadow cast across the closet door, illuminating it unnaturally.
Tim heard a whisper in the room, “Mine,” and the closet door creeped open.
A heavy breathing came from the closet, like a dragon’s breath rattling out from the depths of its lair. Tim heard a gurgling hiss, and then a furious roar and loud thud, like something had been thrown against a wall.
Tim pulled the cover over his eyes as the noises continued. Hissing, breathing, gurgling, rattling, all accompanied by an occasional thud against the wall or rattling of clothes hanger on its peg. It was horrible, terrible, and Tim couldn’t stand the noises any longer. He just wanted it to stop!
Finally the noises slowed to a stop and Tim dared to peek. There was no more growling or thumping against the walls and everything seemed calm. The only evidence there had ever been a fight was the fur still floating out from the crack in the closet door, set afire by the moonlight like glimmering lines of spider web.
Then the door moved again, creaking open just a little bit more. Tim didn’t see anything come out, but he did hear something being dragged across the floor, and a pained gurgle, as if the monster under the bed was injured.
A bag was thrown onto his bed, arching up from the floor. It landed right next to his feet, and Tim saw candy spilling out from a tear on the side. He sat up quickly, his feet working to push him away from the bag and into a sitting position. Right next to the bag of candy from over the ledge of the bed, a sock appeared. It was Tim’s sock, but now it had sharp, evil looking claws poking out from the toe seam.
“My sock, my candy,” said a gurgling, hissing voice.
Then Chester appeared next to the clawed sock. The rabbit’s stuffed arms were propped on the mattress as if he was holding on, and his glass bead eyes caught a glimmer of moonlight and looked directly at Tim.
“My rabbit, my closet, my bed,” said the monster.
The two felt teeth sewn onto Chester’s face moved slightly as more claws slowly protruded out from behind them. The monster was working its little hand through the stuffing of Tim’s rabbit, and out the front of Chester’s head. Chester fell onto the bed face forward as the monster’s claws found purchase in the sheets. A shadow loomed up onto the bed, and Tim couldn’t hold his scream in any longer.
| It won't be long before I turn eight years old. That's when kids get new monsters that hide in your closet instead of under your bed. The one that's been hiding under your bed since your seventh birthday gets to move onto its next victim. At least I've made some peace with Wordor, a three-eyed cheetah with the tail, tongue, and fangs of a snake. Wordor isn't scary. He's just...weird.
Wordor's only scared me once in his time under my bed. That was the first night we met. I screamed so loud that even the neighbors came to check on me. I hid in the bathtub and told Dad to look under the bed. He got on his knees and pawed the darkness, only to find a few chewed up baseball cards.
"There's nothing under there, Tommy. Now let's go back to bed," he said as he carried me from the bathroom. "You're a big boy now, and big boys don't fear imaginary monsters."
But that snake-cat wasn't imaginary. As soon as Dad left, I turned my night light on just in case it came back. It did.
It slinked from my bed and stretched like a normal cat. It purred and growled at me in an echoing voice, "Human child, Wordor is your new bed monster. Fear Wordor all your days."
I searched through all the books in the library to find something that could help me get rid of Wordor. Nothing helped. I couldn't bring myself to ask any of my classmates. What third-grader admits to being scared of monsters?
Finally, I found something. There was a carnival in town that had a gypsy fortuneteller. Madame Rosie never liked to be called a fortuneteller. She preferred "witch", of all things.
"My dear boy, what do you come to me for?" she asked, putting out her cigarette.
"I have a monster under my bed I want to get rid of."
She smiled at me with her lipstick-stained teeth. "Is that so? What does the beast look like? Frog with bats wings? Dog twelve noses? Teddy bear with spider legs?"
"A three-eyed cat. With a snake's tongue, tail, and fangs," I told her. "It calls itself Wordor."
Her smile faded quickly. "Oh my. Let me consult the books on this one. One moment little boy." She left me at her table to go through her bookshelves. It was just me, a ratty table cloth, and a crystal ball. I never believed in magic, but Wordor changed all that. The crystal ball stared at me, almost appearing to call my name to touch it. Temptation was eating me.
I rested my hands on its cool, smooth surface. I didn't feel anything at all. Then Madame Rosie came back with a book as thick as my face was wide. The ball grew hot to the touch.
"I see my crystal ball has called unto you," she said curtly.
"I didn't mean to! The ball--"
"Only works in the presence of its owner. I am the owner, and I saw your future." Madame Rosie plopped down in her chair and slammed the book next to the ball. "Brace yourself, Thomas. You may be wise beyond your years, but that is not enough to protect you from what is to come from your closet."
Magic. I didn't even tell her my name.
She thumbed through the dusty pages of her book to find my answer. When she looked up, I knew I was doomed. She turned the book around to face me. A creature like Wordor was staring back at me.
"Dear boy, what you have is a Sporaca. They have only been recently employed as bed monsters. Unfortunately, the only way to defeat them is to have them battle a closet monster and lose. Nothing from this realm can help you."
I thanked her and left. What a great use of five dollars...nope.
I went home to finish my homework. After that, I flopped on my bed to stare at my ceiling fan while I munched on a bag of Cheetos. Wordor pounced on my stomach with all his might. I choked before I could scream.
"Thomas, what is this you eat?" he asked me.
I spat into the trashcan and coughed a little. "Cheetos. Cheese-covered corn pieces."
And with his fangs, he ripped the bag open and curled his tongue around one. Instantly, Wordor was hooked.
"This human food! Wordor must have more!"
"Don't scare me ever, and you can have all the Cheetos you want."
I tamed Wordor with baseball cards and Cheetos. I didn't have to fear him anymore unless Mom and Dad decide to put me on a junk food-free diet. A year later, things were still going well, but Oreos and Pokemon cards also found their way into Wordor's tummy.
"Wordor," I whisper. "Could you do me a favour when my closet monster comes?"
He crawled onto my sheets and rested his head on my stomach like any normal cat would. "What is it that Thomas wants?"
"Defeat my closet monster so I don't have to deal with him. I'll send you off with all the cards and Cheetos you can eat."
What am I saying? I like Wordor now. He's like a pet to me. If he disappeared, I'll hurt.
"You were always such an intelligent child, Thomas. Wordor will miss you. Too bad Wordor only scared you once in our time together."
I think I'll miss Wordor too. | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | "Have you decided yet?"
A soft rumble shook my bed and I clutched the baseball tighter under my pillow
"I mean, the day you get me, who's gonna get what? I can't keep you guys company forever you know.."
I heard silence. It was rare it fell asleep before I ever did.
The closet creaked open the silence, and it was accompanied by a squeak and the sound of claws scratching the back wall. I turned to face the closet, "Because I've been thinking, wouldn't you rather just keep a whole kid to yourself?"
The closet creaked open a smidgen more and my bed shook ever so slightly as the beast beneath me shook. I could hear it breathing now, under me, panting heavily stopping only to put slobber all over its lips with its tongue. Claws began to scrape across the wooden floorboards. It was now or never
"I heard closet guy saying one night, that you wouldn't even be able to catch him. That he'd have me all to his lonesome..."
A growl resonated through me. Just a bit more...
"I guess we just won't ever know huh... unless you prove it!" I whipped out the baseball and threw it into the closet. A large golden retriever dashed out from under the bed and barreled into the closet. My tabby cat shot out, into the hallway yowling with the canine in hot pursuit letting out sporadic barks. I jumped out of bed and ran to the door, locking it tight.
Finally, a good night's rest.
| *A child bolts up in bed panicking. His name is Jonas. The sound that startled continues as it rattles the closet slightly.*
"Clawbite...?" Julian said curiously. "Clawbite, are you there?"
".. Yes, Jonas?" a voice from the below grumbles. "Is something the matter?"
"I can't sleep, something just made a sound in my closet" whined the exhausted Jonas.
"Jonas. I'm sure it was nothing. If you'd like I can creak the floor for you. Would that help?"
"Clawbite, I don't think it's nothing. But if it wasn't you, then who was it?", asked Jonas.
"If that's the case, Jonas, I believe you might have a new inhabitant in your garment room", snarled Clawbite. "But, seeing as this room is already being terrorized, I'm afraid he's going to have to go."
*A dampened thump emanates from the closet floor*
"Ah, Clawbite, how's it been? Still hiding under lice farms?", a voice spoke, each syllable a slight rattle.
"Who is that Claw? I don't want to be scared tonight. Please?", whined Jonas.
"Rogut. Rogut, you must leave now. This child is not to be messed with. There is... an arrangement." Clawbite said scolding the closet resident.
"Aww, is poor little Claw afraid of a little competition? Tell you what, we can scare him together! Remember that thing we used to do in *Fake Thunderstorm 203*?
I mean, I tell ya kid, we used to make sounds that would wet the bed during a light shower! And it wasn't from the rain!"
"Claw I don't want to wet my bed! Mom-", protested Jonas.
"Rotgut. Leave. Now", spoke Clawbite in his monotone anger.
"Nah, I think I'll stay instead. I was kidding about liking you. You were always a stuck up priss. But wait til everyone hears Clawbite is protecting children!", chortled the blank slats of the closet.
"Claw, make him go away!", Jonas spoke with terror cracking his every word. "Mom and dad can't help me anymore"
"Jonas, when I tell you I want you to close your eyes and shut your ears. Then you can open them again Understood?", said Clawbite.
"Ok. I'm sorry Claw", Jonas apologized.
"There's nothing to apologize for. Now, on three. 1... 2....-", said Clawbite
*Jonas clamped his eyes and ears as he was told and waited. When he opened his eyes, he heard the distinct sound of dragging from the closet's side of the room.*
"Did you get him Claw? Is he gone?", Jonas managed to speak.
"Yes he is. Don't worry Jonas. Like I told you before, we'd always be family. I promised nothing would happen to you again." | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | "Hey, Purples, come on, I bet you could beat him!" I leaned over the edge of my bed, talking to the strange purple monster under. He growled, baring crooked fangs and stared at me with his unnaturally large orange eyes. Pulling himself a bit forward, he growled a garbled sentences back.
"Heck no, kid. I'm perfectly fine right here, terrorizing you like my job says." He stuck his long, reptilian head out from under the bed, exposing his three short horns and small ears. "Anyways, why?"
"C'mon, I'll give you Rice Krispies."
Purples hesitated for a moment and then growled again, dragging himself further out from under the bed with his clawed fingers. "AS tempting as that is, I'm just trying to do my job kid, and no part of my job says anything about fighting with the mekizorgles."
He paused for a second. "I'm terrifying you, aren't I?"
"Oh yeah," I said in my fakest, most flattering voice. "Completely."
Looking a bit more satisfied, Purples slithered back under the bed and then wobbled around a bit, hissing, and making the bed shake. Laying back in bed, I eyed my closed closet with a hint of apprehension. From what I'd picked up, mekizorgles and Blotikikigoles, like Purples, didn't mix well. Both seemed to avoid each other. The mekizorgle in my closet was a proper sort of monster, scary and frightening, not like grumpy, but lovable Purples.
Purples hissed a bit more and extended his four short but deadly claws out from under the bed, giving me a glimpse of his claws and purple scales. He was just doing his job, I knew, so I wasn't exactly frightened.
"C'mon, you can take him"
Purples sighed and rolled his eyes. "Kiddo, seriously. I don't wanna. Much more comftorable here." He snapped his jaws and shook the bed slightly again. I saw his eyes flick toward the closet though, with a small moment of apprehension.
"Oh, I see. You're *scared* of him." I said, leaning back over the bed.
"Am not!" Purples snapped.
"Hey Purples, the mekizorgle called you a fatass. What's that mean?"
"He what?!" Purple snarled, pulling his impressive length completely out from under the bed. Rising to his full, serpentine height of six feet and length of nine, Purples growled at the closet, baring his over large tusks.
The closet rattled harder, and I caught a glimpse of a pink eye through the crack in the closet door. A hard to understand string of words flew out the closet and Purples growled again, flashing his four arms threateningly and slithering around my bedroom on his two snake tails. He turned back toward me-
"He did?'
"Yeah. Also, he called you lazy ass. Why does he keep saying ass?" I said.
Purples growled and slammed into the closet door. The closet door flew open and the green monster growled, leaping out. It was my first glimpse at the mekizorgle, and I wasn't disappointed. It looked like an overlarge bear with sabertooth fangs and tentacles.
The two monsters clashed that night, and Purples triumphed. He let out a final growl, Mekizorgle blood dripping from his tusks. He slithered back under my bed and growled again, shaking the bed violently. He hissed.
"Not a word, kid, not a word to my boss, got it?"
| *A child bolts up in bed panicking. His name is Jonas. The sound that startled continues as it rattles the closet slightly.*
"Clawbite...?" Julian said curiously. "Clawbite, are you there?"
".. Yes, Jonas?" a voice from the below grumbles. "Is something the matter?"
"I can't sleep, something just made a sound in my closet" whined the exhausted Jonas.
"Jonas. I'm sure it was nothing. If you'd like I can creak the floor for you. Would that help?"
"Clawbite, I don't think it's nothing. But if it wasn't you, then who was it?", asked Jonas.
"If that's the case, Jonas, I believe you might have a new inhabitant in your garment room", snarled Clawbite. "But, seeing as this room is already being terrorized, I'm afraid he's going to have to go."
*A dampened thump emanates from the closet floor*
"Ah, Clawbite, how's it been? Still hiding under lice farms?", a voice spoke, each syllable a slight rattle.
"Who is that Claw? I don't want to be scared tonight. Please?", whined Jonas.
"Rogut. Rogut, you must leave now. This child is not to be messed with. There is... an arrangement." Clawbite said scolding the closet resident.
"Aww, is poor little Claw afraid of a little competition? Tell you what, we can scare him together! Remember that thing we used to do in *Fake Thunderstorm 203*?
I mean, I tell ya kid, we used to make sounds that would wet the bed during a light shower! And it wasn't from the rain!"
"Claw I don't want to wet my bed! Mom-", protested Jonas.
"Rotgut. Leave. Now", spoke Clawbite in his monotone anger.
"Nah, I think I'll stay instead. I was kidding about liking you. You were always a stuck up priss. But wait til everyone hears Clawbite is protecting children!", chortled the blank slats of the closet.
"Claw, make him go away!", Jonas spoke with terror cracking his every word. "Mom and dad can't help me anymore"
"Jonas, when I tell you I want you to close your eyes and shut your ears. Then you can open them again Understood?", said Clawbite.
"Ok. I'm sorry Claw", Jonas apologized.
"There's nothing to apologize for. Now, on three. 1... 2....-", said Clawbite
*Jonas clamped his eyes and ears as he was told and waited. When he opened his eyes, he heard the distinct sound of dragging from the closet's side of the room.*
"Did you get him Claw? Is he gone?", Jonas managed to speak.
"Yes he is. Don't worry Jonas. Like I told you before, we'd always be family. I promised nothing would happen to you again." | |
[WP] A kid tries to talk the monster under the bed into attacking the monster in the closet. | *"GRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!"*
"Ah!"
*"RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!"*
"Oh, it's just you, Mega Horn."
The large horned monster, ten feet tall, muscles rippling from every inch of its body, skin as red as freshly dropped blood, eyes darker than midnight, claws so sharp the very air can be cut, frowned at the little boy sitting on the bed. Taking the stool near the table, he sat next to the boy.
"Could you at least try to act more scared? I have to record my scares for the night and you sitting there all smiling is ruining my reputation. And for the record my name is **[Incomprehensible]**," said Mega Horn.
Little Timmy shrugged. "Sorry, **[Incomprehensible]**, but it's really hard to get scared now that there's two of you hiding in my--"
Mega Horn suddenly stood up. "WHAT?! SOMEONE IS ENTERING MY TERRITORY?! WHO IS THIS?! WHO IS THE HEATHEN WHO DARES INFRINGE UPON THE REALM OF **[Incomprehensible]**?!"
"Shh! You'll wake up the others! Remember the last time my sister saw you?"
**[Incomprehensible]** had a sudden vision of a sex-crazed lunatic whose lust was greater than any succubus.
He sat back down.
"Sorry."
Timmy coughed. "Okay, he came here last night after you did. I think it was an hour from now? I didn't seem him very well because I was pretending to be afraid of him."
He and Mega Horn chuckled at the last part.
"What do you remember?"
"Well, he was blue, and small, and he looked like a fish, that's all I could make it though."
**[Incomprehensible]** placed a finger on his chin. "Hmm, I think I know someone of that description. He comes here one hour after I do, correct?"
Timmy nodded.
"And where did he make his entrance?"
"Well, I heard the closet open last night."
---
**[Unintelligible]** crept up to the sleeping lad. With long, slimy fingers, he stroked the boy's face. It left a trail of mucus on his cheek.
"Wakey, wakey, little Timmy."
Timmy opened his eyes. Groaning, he rubbed his eyes. As it cleared, he got a good look at the monster in front of him.
"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!" Timmy pointed at the monster. Who screamed a horrible sound in delight.
*Ha ha!" **[Unintelligible]** opened his mouth, letting out a long, wet, slippery tongue that hovered above the boy.
"Ah! Behind you!"
Confused, the blue monster turned around.
The large horned monster, ten feet tall, muscles rippling from every inch of its body, skin as red as freshly dropped blood, eyes darker than midnight, claws so sharp the very air can be cut, smiled broadly at the sight before him.
**"So, you are trespassing,"** said **[Incomprehensible]**
**[Unintelligible]** then heard snickering behind him.
"I'll just go get some water, don't make a lot of noise okay?"
Timmy slipped down from the bed and left the room, closing the door behind him.
"Fuck," said **[Unintellgible]**.
| "I'll give you my favorite transformer." Said the young boy to the monster under the bed.
"You can not bribe me with toys, boy. The Bed Monsters and the Closet Monsters have lived in peace for generations. Do you want to be caught in the middle of the second Boogie War? You wouldn't know, you didn't see the horror. Our elders tell us that both races were almost eradicated. We lost nearly our entire treasury of socks in their first raids. The Closeters even employed the use of spiders. Spiders! The stories they tell of the legs . . . . the web traps . . .
Those were the darkest days in our history, before we allied with the dust bunnys. Together, we launched a courageous last stand. Ultimately, both sides took heavy losses, and neither could continue without destroying each other. Thus, on All Hallows Eve, we reached a truce with the Closeters, so that neither side would have to face such devastation again."
"Ok, but can you ask them to give me back my Ninja Turtles shirt?"
"Hmm. I'll set up negotiations in exchange for a bag of animal crackers." | |
[WP] One day, you decide to check your 12 year old sons internet history, and what you see is far, far worse than anything you would have expected. | My son has been acting strange lately. Really, he's been acting so much worse than normal. Since he's 12, my husband and I figured it was possible it was just his age. But, we were also worried because we knew that starting his first year of middle school, he had made some new friends. Had they influenced his behavior?
My husband had the idea to check our son's phone after he went to bed. We could see his Facebook conversations, text messages, and any other media he had linked to the device.
After we were sure he was peacefully asleep, we slipped it off the side of his bed and opened it up in our bedroom. There was nothing too exciting. Just he and his friends talking about their swim team, complaining about school and parents, and pretending they were all that by saying they were going to "get to second base" with whatever girl they were crushing on. Not necessarily something a mother wants to read, but my husband and I knew he was all talk.
We moved on to the internet, where he was able to pull up the browsing history. Of course, I wish I hadn't. Where had i gone wrong? After looking through various links listed together, I learned the horrifying truth about my baby boy.
He was a Donald Trump supporter. | For once my son left his laptop in the open. He has always knew how good I was with computers, and for me, this was a jackpot.
I silently pulled out the hard drive and went downstairs to hook it up. He still uses Windows 10, and it proves to be an easy peer-in. I browse into his appdata and copy the user data over to my personal appdata, it effectively creates a copy of everything in a changing state on his laptop.
I open up Chrome, nothing significant on the front page, just Google's new logo. My attention shifts to what could be lying in the history. Immediately I press Ctrl-H, and the history library jumps open. The most recent item, an invalid IP address of 299.0.8.12. I click on this IP, and find some sort of directory, appearing to be for torrents.
I go to the start menu and find uTorrent. I open it up and see pages upon pages of cracked software, pirated movies, and at the very top, a one "antergos-minimal-2015.08.18-x86_64.iso.".
This means that he has a dual-booting system. I shutdown my computer and restart into his hard drive. A fanciful GRUB2 menu greets me, and I opt to boot the Antergos system. The login had no password, thankfully. I don't think I could have cracked that.
I turn my attention to the file manager and perform a Ctrl-H to see the hidden .* files. I find a suspicious ".conf" folder next to the ".config" folder. A Linux system doesn't need two configuration folders. I peer into the .conf folder and find tons of videos. I check the top one, and find it of him and his "girlfriend" going at it. This immediately sends up red flags since I know that they "broke up."
I go into Firefox and Ctrl-H, and the most recent results are from an obscure pornography site. I click the most recent one and find that it's a compilation of him and his "girlfriend," with the title "My son and his bitch."
Is he *trying* to get me arrested? That's when I hear a knocking at the door with the bellowing of "POLICE! OPEN UP!" | |
Interpret that as you will. Whether they are unnoticeable to everyone or just you is entirely left up to you. Hope to see some good ones! | [WP] Ignoring someone means they become unnoticeable forever. | James' eyes shot open and his head perked up. He thought he'd heard something. A sound of some sort. Maybe a voice. He looked at all the other people seated on the train. Yeah, most likely a voice, nothing to worry about. His eyes started to drift back to a close.
Within seconds James' eyes shot open again. This time to screams. All the passengers were staring at him with frightened eyes. No. Not him. They were staring behind him. James turned around to see a woman. Well half a woman. Her lower body was gone. The rest was slowly fading.
James watched in horror, "Oh my god, that voice, that was you?"
The woman nodded, "I asked if you could move over so I could sit down."
"I'm- I'm so sorry!"
A tear rolled down the woman's cheek, onto her chin, and then faded into nothingness along with the rest of the woman. She was gone. Just like that. James just stared. Right where the woman was just seconds ago. It was his fault she was gone. Her friends, her family, they'll never see her again. And James now has to live with that for the rest of his life. | *Mae*
*ba-bum*
*Mae*
*ba-bum*
*Mae*
*ba-bum*
*M-*
He couldn’t get her name out of his head. It had been 7 weeks, 3 days, and 6 hours and nothing had stopped it. He could see the way her lips formed around the M and hear how the syllable fell from her lips and drifted to him. From the moment that they met he knew that he loved her. He knew that he wanted to be her reason to live. He wanted to be her life-line.
But now everything was different. Now he had to forget her. Had to forget late nights, tangled sheets, heavy rain outside the window. He had to forget Mae. ba-bum
He shook his head, ran a hand over his face and through his hair. He squeezed his eyes shut and held his face in that position until he saw stars. He dug his fingernails into his palms. He coughed, setting free a sob in his throat.
He opened his eyes and straightened his body. He glanced down at his phone, shot her a quick text.
**“What did I do wrong?”**
He watched the blue bar at the top of the screen race to the other end and then halt before it could reach it. He scrolled up, barely seeing the barrage of previous messages punctuated with little red exclamation marks. The bright screen became a blur of blue and white and red little marks. Until he saw it. The last message that she had ever sent him. It was a voice message. It was sweet and bitter and lovely and heartbreaking and he couldn’t stop himself before his finger was tapping the screen and his heart was screaming and he could feel his soul begging to listen to it and--
*“Hey Brandon. I just wanted to say hi! And let you know that I may not be around for a while but I love you so, so much. Thank you for what we have and for all of these experiences. I’m sorry that things are… Well I’m just sorry. Remember how you feel about me, okay? Remember me.”*
He closed his eyes again. The words didn’t matter anymore. He had heard it all before. He had heard it all before. He had heard it all before. Everything in his life was a broken record. She was all that he had and now there were unanswered texts, unanswered messages, phone calls, knocks on the door. He had tried it all.
He had felt himself fade. She was all he had. Her name kept his heart beating. Her absence ruined his life.
He reached for the cool steel on the table in front of him. His fingers danced around it, fitting into hand holds and fingers sliding over the trigger and he remembered what it was like when the world was so full of color and he remembered the way that her eyes shone and he remembered the first day that he had walked down the street and realized that people didn’t see him anymore and it had been only a couple of days but he knew that it was her and that she was letting him fade but he couldn’t let her fade from his memory and he picked up the heavy cool metal and he pressed the hollow roundness to his temple and he wished for his name to be thought just once more not so that he could live but so that he could be visible again for just a second and he waited.
And he waited.
And he…
He waited.
And he gripped harder.
And he squeezed his eyes shut.
And he pressed the trigger.
And he felt.
He felt the pain and he was grateful.
He had faded.
And now there was no more of him left to fade. |
[WP] You never wanted to be a child prodigy anyway | They call me a genius. Please, Ma, it's not genius. There never was genius. Either that or 'A Child Prodigy'. To them it was simply an alternative to ' A Genius', and they did so with the same carelessness and the same stupid look as Ma and everyone else.
Those who knew what my life was like would rather refer to me as a child prodigy, and they'd do so because only they understood that there was nothing more to it than that, and they did so out of sympathy and respect, with a gentle look that seemed to reach out and pat me on the shoulder.
I hate that too, but I'm secretly grateful - to my tutor and the people I rehearsed with. I can take some solace in those precious few moments.
I sat before the pendulum since before I could remember, and my mother would 'monitor my schedule'. I didn't attend kindergarten, nor grade school like the other kids, instead my mother would coach me on music theory from 6 to 9, a tutor would teach me English, Mathematics, Sciences and the likes until early afternoon. Everything else would be cello practice under my mother until evening. I rarely went outside, and when I did it was in a car headed towards either a concert hall or a music store.
She did so tirelessly, for years, and I did so too. That made me a good boy in her books. I'd work hard just for her to call me the next 'Amadeus!'. I have no idea what that means, but I learnt that it meant I did a good job, and I wagged my tail. I must have spent 16 hours a day on music for nearly every single day before I turned 12. And how many years has it been since? I have forgotten, and I care not to remember. Would anyone remember how many years it was since they first walked? Since they first learnt to talk?
I was granted vacation for only several days a year - for Christmas, for my birthday, and for academic tests and concerts that I was to attend. But soon she forgot when my birthday was, and I did too. I stopped looking forward to Christmas, and felt uneasy without my instrument. Tests and concerts were just rituals to perform, like going to the dentists or to the music store. I lived for the next performance, and the next performance, and the concert at some hall, and the next performance and the annual grade test.
The Masters of Ceremony had long forgotten my name, and it was either A Genius or A Child Prodigy. I knew what it meant to be a genius or a prodigy ('A very good performer who practices very hard and can play better than anyone!'), but what does it mean to be a child, when does one stop being a child? What then? I never knew.
When I turned 16, a letter from a faraway land wrote that my mother died from cancer. I was wondering where she went off to all that time, employing a tutor to take over and assuring me that it was because 'I had long surpassed her' and that she wanted to take a 'vacation overseas for some time'.
My aunt took me in, and I stopped going to concerts and performances. I laid low and went to school, and soon I discovered a life beyond the apartment I left, beyond concerts and performances and music stores. One day my aunt told me about my mother, and I finally understood her intentions. I didn't cry, nor did I feel regret or guilt. I pitied her, and I went on with life. Sometimes, I'd take out the dusty black cello case from the storeroom and play a tune for old times sake. Between the stokes of bow I'm reminded me of my mother. I imagine she had passed away with a smile speaking of no regret in some hospice far away from home, in her final moments praising herself for a lifetime put to good use.
Perhaps she thought I would be happy this way, because she had suffered grief for not being able to achieve what she raised me up to be. But I would have been a lot happier otherwise. Even under a single mother, even if we're impoverished. I would be happy otherwise.
I never wanted to be a child prodigy anyway. | This pressure wasn't a fun kind of pressure.
All of my life, I knew I didn't fit in. I coasted through elementary school, since I taught myself everything years in advance. Everyone hated me. The community was heavily homogenous, and I wasn't good enough at sports. People bullied me out of everything from sports teams to the entire school. I came up with massive elaborate plots and excuses to avoid school.
This was no way to live. I'd hit a wall, I couldn't learn or grow anymore. I felt inferior. I felt like a failure. My brain was all I had, and the world would take that all away. IQ is a number, nothing else. "Genius" my ass, you can't succeed on natural talent alone.
As the knife went into my chest, I laughed. If the world would take everything away from me, I'd take myself away from the world. I never wanted to live this way. Who would ever want this curse?
Everything went black. I had finally won against myself.
Or had I lost? | |
[WP] You switch places with an alternate universe version of yourself. Everything in the alternate universe is exactly the same as yours but something is different and you can't quite put your finger on it. | Greg walked slowly to the bathroom, sleep in his eyes. He sat down on the toilet, did his business, and reached for the paper.
"The hell?" He said, looking over. Where there used to be toilet paper was now three sea shells. | Yawning, Ben stepped into his bedroom. When he saw the bed was made he shook his head. Obvious his mum had been in again, because he never made the bed, no matter how many times she nagged him about it. As far as he was concerned there was no reason for him to. The bed was only going to get messy again when he slept in it. Shrugging, he made his way over to the desk, wanting to check and make certain he had everything ready for the morning, knowing there was one essay he needed to finish off at lunch. It took him a couple of second to realise they weren’t in the same order they had been before. The order he thought they’d been in, anyway, but it was entirely possible he’d remembered it wrong. Sometimes it happened. He pushed the thought aside. His essays being in a different order didn’t matter.
“Ben?” His sister stood at the door, peering into the room. “Mum had to go to work. She wanted me to let you know, because she said she thinks it’s going to be a late one, and she didn’t want to wake you.”
Nodding, Ben smiled. “Thanks, Mare.” That was when he noticed her hair band was a different colour to before. He glanced over at the papers in the desk, then looked back at her, wondering if something strange had happened. Doing his best not to make it seem like he was bothered by anything he took a couple of steps towards the door. “Did I leave an essay downstairs?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Neither did I, but I’m missing one. Maybe Mum moved it.”
“She did say she’d been in earlier to make your bed. You know what she’s like - she probably got a little overenthusiastic and blew your essays all over the place. Check the pile again. I’ll have a quick look downstairs for you.”
“Would you?” He’d wanted to go downstairs himself, but maybe he’d be able to work out what had happened from upstairs. “You’re a wonderful sister.”
Laughing, Mary shook her head. “There was a time when you believed I was the most annoying sister in the world.”
“Everyone grows up.”
When he was certain she was gone he went through all the papers on his desk. The essays were definitely in a different order, but it would have been easy enough for his mum to do as Mary had said. It was just weird to think that was different and Mary’s hair band had changed since he’d left her downstairs. It couldn’t have been longer than five minutes, so there was no time for her to change it. Sighing, he pushed it all to the back of his mind, and waited for Mary to return. In her hand she held a piece of paper he knew he hadn’t left downstairs.
“You might need this for the morning.” Their eyes met and he took the paper from her. “I’m going to head to bed. Night.”
“Night.”
For a few seconds Ben didn’t look down at the paper, because he didn’t want to know he was right. Eventually he did and that was when he knew. His English class had been reading a different book to the one the essay was on. Well, that was going to make things interesting. | |
[WP] You switch places with an alternate universe version of yourself. Everything in the alternate universe is exactly the same as yours but something is different and you can't quite put your finger on it. | Greg walked slowly to the bathroom, sleep in his eyes. He sat down on the toilet, did his business, and reached for the paper.
"The hell?" He said, looking over. Where there used to be toilet paper was now three sea shells. | School was the exact same, but something was different. I couldn't quite place a finger on it.
Small wonder. I had tentacles instead of hands | |
[WP] In your days you were the best con-artist in town, now you are a sweet old lady. One day a young fellow approaches you with your patented con! Time to school this kid. | "Why of course, come in. I have biscuits fresh out of the oven, and tea on the kettle that I just couldn't let go cold."
The young man stood on my porch, my tabby Mr. Scruffles purring as he rubbed against his leg while Lola meowed from a few feet away. Lola was smarter than Mr. Scruffles, because Lola could smell a liar.
The man followed me in, his walk boasting confidence and his clothes assuring professionalism. Neither of which, I of course would know, were genuine.
"So you were saying something about money?" I asked in my best grandmotherly voice when he was seated at my table, three cookies and two biscuits loaded up on his plate.
"Yes, Miss. My name is Mark Smith by the way." He smiled, flashing impossibly white teeth, "I was saying that in today's day and age, with all this technology and complication, it's darn near impossible to keep track of the stuff. I myself have four credit cards, and I never know when I'm usin one too much, and the other too little. It hurts your credit score, you see, and you never know when you could be on the bad side of town and your cards are maxed out."
*Using the insecurity ploy on an old lady*, I thought, *Typical move. Standard, but not very creative.*
"With my memory I never could seem to know," I said, adding another cookie to his plate. The boy was just too thin. "Just the other day I ran out of money on my visa. I bought one too many hats for Mr. Scruffles." Mr. Scruffles purred. He had liked the hats.
"Exactly!" Exclaimed Mark, "but what if you could combine all your cards into one? I myself have four, I can't even remember their names, but now that they're on Unicard I never have to! It's all on one card, all your money, and it's darn convenient." He slapped a silver card on the table, pushing it my way, and I had to surpress a chuckle.
The bastard hadn't even changed te card. It'd been twenty years sine I had made it but there it was, freshly polished, made by my own hands.
The con was a simple one. Enter the target's house, and offer them a way to combine cards- for security for elderly targets, for impossibly higher reward for middle aged, and for higher credit caps for the young. Obtain all their credit information, then send it off to a shady company in china that would charge their cards for as much as they could through local channels, and send you 50%. You'd disappear, move to the next town, and wait for the checks to start rolling in.
I would know, I'd come up with it, and now he was trying to use it against me. Cheeky bastard.
Sighing, I let a small tear fall from my eye.
"Ever since John has passed, it's been so hard handling the finances." I sniffled, "But this should make it better. Here, oh look, here's my last picture of him. And there's my grandson and grand daughter."
I held out my wallet, flipping through my entire collection of pictures slowly, watching impatience flicker across his face.
"Surely a man so handsome as you must have a pretty wife. Do you have any pictures of your own?"
"Why yes," he said, his face brightening. Never miss a chance to connect with a target. "Here." He slid his open wallet across the table, and at that moment I screamed.
"Mr. Scruffles! You let him out! You left the door open! Quick, get him!"
Mark lept up, running to the front door, and returned a moment later. His wallet was just where he had left it.
"Miss, your door is closed, and your cat is under the table."
"Oh it must be my memory. I get so worked up when it comes to Mr. Scruffles."
"Well I'm happy everything is ok. Are you ready to join?" He pushed an iPad towards me on the table. Electronic cons? God it was so much easier for them.
I entered in the information requested, then hit the big send button at the bottom.
"Done! So I'll have the card in two weeks?"
"Best give it three." He said, straightening his tie, and heading toward the door. But he had made one mistake.
Never leave your wallet unattended. I had lied about my memory- it was quite good, even though my con days were over. Nearly photographic.
Definitely strong enough to memorize his credit card numbers, name, and address, and enter them into the iPad instead of my own.
By now, some shady company in China would be running those numbers, and sending him back 50 %.
***
By Leo
For more of my stories, please visit /r/leoduhvinci | My old bones ached but I couldn’t help but to smile.
He was a short, but intense looking thing. No more than fifteen, I’d imagine. Tan skin and an obsidian mane of hair hiding a boyish face. Yet, he was no lion. No… he was a silent and deadly, just like a snake.
His fingers brushed across my purse with expert charm. He was good, I had to give him that. For any other old lady, they would have assumed the dirty little teen had strayed too close as they made their way to their next menial job. But I wasn’t any old lady.
I grabbed the boy’s wrist. “Hey, now. Where do you think you’re going?”
He turned back to me, a mask of indifference plastered on his face. It was almost believable, too. If not for the spark in his eye. When you had it, you couldn’t miss it. It was the will to do whatever was necessary – the will to live.
“Madam?” he cooed in an almost sing-song voice. He didn’t pull away from my grasp.
I shook my head, scowling. I had to put up appearances in front of the rest of the crowd, after all. They continued to flow around us like an eternal river, only the occasional person giving an annoyed glance in our direction. “Don’t play coy with me, boy. I felt you trying to swindle my hard-owned coins.”’
There it was. A flash of terror – easy enough to pass of as a twitch – running across his face. Oh dear, I had to get rid of that habit quick. You couldn’t break out of character so easily if you got caught. That’s how all the good ones ended up dead rather than great.
“Madam,” the boy repeated, now fidgeting away from my grasp. “I have no idea what you are speaking of. Please let me go. I’m going to be late for my shift at the factory.”
Keeping my frown, I dragged him off to the nearest alley. “Well, if you’re going to keep up this charade then perhaps we should just talk to the guards.”
At that point, the boy had lost his submissive façade. He struggled against my pull but my iron grip didn’t falter. I still had it.
“Hey,” he hissed. “I didn’t do anything.”
Instead of responding, I threw him into the cover of the darkness. There, everyone would forget about us soon enough. Maybe, they would get a good laugh out of it later. Telling their friends and family about how the old lady showed up a little scheming thief of the street.
I stood at the mouth of the alley, blocking the way for the boy to escape. On the other end was a dead end.
“Now,” I said, withdrawing my own dagger from my side. It gleamed in the little light that trickled into the alleyway. “Are you going to admit what you’ve done, boy?”
The boy jumped back at the sight of my blade. It was nice – much nicer than anything than he had probably used – but that wasn’t what stuck fear into his heart. I was always told I could have a frightening demeanor when necessary.
“I…” he started. “I just was going to steal a few coins. It’s for my sister. She’s so sick and–”
I held up a hand. “Stop,” I said. “Try harder. That’s the oldest one in the book. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wrote it.”
The thief cocked his head and furrowed his brow. “Wrote it?”
I sighed, shaking my head. “Don’t they teach you little urchins anything anymore? I guess not, or otherwise you’d not be thieving. Well, have you heard of the Iron Rose?”
The boy gave a blank stare.
“Right,” I said, fingering my dagger. “I guess even legends fade after a while on the streets… Well, you’re going to learn today, along with how to become a better thief. I hope you’re prepared.”
The boy stepped forward, clenching his fist. Wrong move. Acting subordinate was the way to go. Then, people would mistake your true power. Try to act tough in and unfair fight would only get you nowhere, if not full of holes.
“No way,” he said. “I ain’t taking no lessons from some old crone.”
I couldn’t withhold my smile any more, even if his words stung. Instead, I also took a step forward and twisted my wrist to remind him of my blade.
“It’s not a request – it’s a demand. Now, either you’ll listen or be gutted. Either works for me. Just know that old Iron Rose hasn’t gotten rusty over the years.”
The boy gulped, shrinking back in stature. Good…
“Fine,” he said with a huff.
“Excellent,” I replied with a nod. I sheathed my dagger and extended a hand. “Now, please introduce yourself. It’s awfully rude to do such a dishonor to a lady.”
The boy begrudgingly took my hand in his. “Maqui.” He grunted.
“Ah, Maqui,” I said, smiling. “We’re going to get along swimmingly.” | |
[WP] Interstellar space travel is possible through the use of massive genetically engineered creatures. You have just been given a egg, you are now a captain. | “Hey, I'm gonna need you to sign here, too.”
The heavyset man pointed his thick finger to yet another line on the tablet, and Jordan just signed on the line again, just like every other page. There had been many. Not just today, but for the last five years, there had been hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of pages to sign and read and initial, and that had been after flight school and a whole wonderful career of flying and signing other, equally forgettable documents. And then, a half a decade ago, Jordan decided to apply for a command. That all lead up to a pudgy guy with a name tag that said, “Tony,” pointing at what might just be the final dotted line. At least for a while.
Jordan signed.
“Alright, and that should do it, uh, captain,” Tony looked down at his tablet to shut it off, and then gestured over at the large crate his forklift had just set down.
“This baby should crack in the next 48 hours, so just make sure you get the box off of it before then. And, obviously, as per all that shit you just signed, you must be around when it hatches to imprint on it, otherwise Dynamic Frontiers reserves the right to do a bunch of contractually obligated evil shit to you,” as Tony finished rattling off a clearly well worn sentence, Jordan took a look at the metal frame that housed the egg.
The frame spiderwebbed around the soft shell of the egg, a silvery, metallic substance that helped incubate and protect the cargo that had grown within. And the egg itself, the not so embryonic form of the creature Jordan had signed up to command? To fly from here to Earth and back, if DynaFront asked her to? It glowed. Which it hadn't done yet, not in any of the countless times that Jordan had looked at it. It had a bright blue bio-luminescence that stood out in the soft orange light of the sunset, glinting off the cage that Jordan was going to have to remember how to take off.
Tony was looking at Jordan once her attention returned to him. He smiled a little, and then struck out his hand, and when Jordan shook it said, “Hey, congrats on that thing, and good luck. I hear the first couple of weeks can be the hardest,” they let their hands drop.
“I appreciate it. They never tell you how nervous you'll be once it gets close,” Jordan replied with a smile and a shrug, “Even my mom said that everyone seems to take it differently.”
Tony looked back over at the poached egg that glowed blue with cosmic potential and asked, “Did they tell you what it's going to be yet?”
There was a lot to that question. What kinds of things could a baby spaceship grow to be? What could it get up to, this organic interstellar crittercraft, born to to sail between stars and guided by a parent who would always be with them, helping them get to where they needed to go? There was a whole galaxy to that question, but really, in this case, only one answer.
Jordan let out a little snort as she looked back over at the baby again,
“It's a boy.” | Viajero rubbed his hands together in excited anticipation. Countless hours of drilled study, all but the very last of his money invested in necessary surgeries and preparations, favors done and deeds best left unmentioned committed to pull all the right strings, and now, finally, he was one egg short of being a Guild recognized captain.
He ran the figures in his head again, studiously ignoring the burring of his banking stick warning him that his acount was so far in the red that he was due a visit from the IRS, calculating cargoes and fuel costs and planning out just how far he could go with the last of his cash.
As soon as he was a pilot, he'd qualify for the one year debt ignorance extension, and assuming a reasonable manifold, he could pay off almost all of his expenses in just one trip. Three months, at most, and that was assuming he couldn't find a reasonable rate on hifuel and couldn't use the jumplanes. Interstates of space, they were nicknamed, because only in those highly regulated and routinely cleared regions could you get your ship up to maximum speed.
"Faster than light travel" was a misnomeric way to refer to using a jumplane, but one that had stuck out the many centuries since quantum stabilized hypostatic propulsion had been invented. Technically, you were still going slower than lightspeed, but your tiny pocket of space was stretched out from your future arrival point to your current departure point, which created a tension in the fabric of space.
Once that was done, all you had to do was give yourself a powerful enough kickstart (which was where hifuel came in) and the unstable pocket would snap like a rubber band, pulling you towards the new position passively as the scar healed itself. One major perk of this kind of travel was that since everything inside that pocket was repositioned - not moved, the scientists were firm on the distinction, because movement implies speed and velocity - at relatively the same rate, including the ambient light inside of the pocket, it didn't violate any laws, have any weird time fluctuation, or consume any additional fuel.
A leap from Tauria to Utopia would take the same amount of hifuel as a theoretical leap from your bedroom floor to your bed would take. Of course, as the distance leaped grew, the possibility of any kind of accident - miscalculation, space debris, a blockade - increased, so the true mark of an expert pilot was not how long their journeys took, but how many jumps they could do it in. Fewer jumps, less fuel costs.
All thanks to humanities first encounter with alien life. The evofauna of planet Evo (originally designated Outpost XIV), so named because of their strange evolutionary behavior. The evos evolved multiple times in one lifetime, changing forms with urgent frequency, sometimes multiple times in the same day, while retaining favorable characteristics and discarding those less favorable. Essentially life as it had started on Earth, but if God had accidentally left the mortals' growth on permanent fast forward.
At some point, they had evolved jumping capabilities and kept it. At another, subdermal communication - they could speak across great distances just by vibrating their muscles underneath their skin. Curiously, they had never evolved greater intelligence - or if they had, they had promptly discarded it as unfavorable.
As a defensive mechanism against unfavorable evolutions wiping out the entire population en masse, they also had incredibly long adolescent periods where they didn't evolve at all. From their first hatching it took approximately 500 years before they began their rapid evolution cycle, which would last for the remainder of their life. (With massive variance, some died immediately after, some lived for centuries after.)
As part of their strange evolution, they came in multiple types and varieties. The eggs could give you hints, but until they finally hatched, you never knew what would come out. Some captains got massive gargantuan eggs the size of a house - those tended to favor building warships and bulk traders - while others got eggs tiny enough to be lizard eggs - the much teased "bicycles of space," as eggs that small all but guaranteed that at most you'd have an evofauna capable of dragging you behind it in a flimsy aluminum pod. Some couldn't even carry that much. Those were used a letter couriers and small package deliveries.
What you got was supposed to be a random lottery... but Viajero wasn't too worried, he had bribed an official well to guarantee him at the minimum a chicken sized egg. He was amused at the state of the world, his parents had been rich diplomats who spent decades accumulating their fortunes landside, all but becoming the de-facto rulers of the planet... and their massive accumulated wealth hadn't mattered at all, in the cosmic scale of things. Approximately 80% of his liquidated inheritance had gone to preparing to become a pilot, 10% as a bribe, and the rest in pocket change to buy a ship, cargo, and fuel... and he'd recover all his losses in just one good operation.
Sixty years of hard work to acquire planetside, a couple days at minimum sitting in a cockpit to acquire a matching sum interplanetarily. It was a miracle that planetside economies even existed anymore.
"Mister de la Nuevaestrella?" Full and formal. He looked over at the receptionist, wondering if he knew of his name's legacy... no, no recognition, just that patient boredom of the longtime interstellar. He hadn't even pronounced it right.
"Just Estrella is fine." Viajero decided. May as well start shedding his origins now. In space, you didn't call any planet or culture your home... just your ship.
"Is that your callsign, sir?"
"Yessir."
"Star. Ah, how fitting." Viajero did a small double take, reassessing the man - either the receptionist had a translator running in his ear, or was a little more multicultural than he was letting on. "I suppose New Star as a call sign *would* be a bit pretentious for a rookie captain. Congratulations on graduating, by the way."
Viajero bowed, conceding the point and accepting the congratulations. "Plus, I'd rather start fresh and make my own legacy."
"Well, your number has been drawn. #1908635492268304." He repeated it twice, making sure Viajero had it memorized. "That'll be your captaincy number, as well as the egg you take when you... ah. One moment." He looked up, concentrating, tapping his ear once. "My mistake. #1908635492268300, apparently. Last minute change of egg, somewhat unusual, but 8304 must've been an aborted archetype. Well, congratulations again."
Viajero stood up from his chair, back creaking from the long wait, and turned to the long tunnel. Somewhere inside that hallway, one of the doors led to his new evofauna and first ship.
"Oh, and sir? My supervisor wanted to thank you again for your generous contribution to the Guild Institute for Future Pilots. Especially seeing as how you are still a future pilot yourself."
Viajero nodded, blanking his face to hide the brief surge of panic that had risen up. Was that a smirk on the young receptionist's face...?
190863549228298, 8299... here it was, 8300. He hesitated briefly, before proceeding just a little further, curious. 8304, the egg that was to have been his... he tried palming the door, with no luck, before pressing an ear against the wall. Nothing. Obviously, it hadn't hatched yet. He shrugged and went back to his designated room, taking a deep breath before palming it open.
The room wasn't that small, he realized in relief. No tiny cubicle in the wall for him to reach in and grab his egg, so it must be at least a medium class. He stepped fully in, allowing the door to hiss shut, and registering motion to his left as he did so.
"Hello, Via. Please, take a seat again." The familiar man gestured to a small, rickety looking chair with one gloved hand, as Viajero backpedaled furiously and slapped the palm panel. The door refused to open again. He was locked in.
"Please. You're not under arrest. Sit." Viajero stared warily at him. "You could be, if you don't get your pilot license, though... there's a gentleman from the Interstellar Revenue Service waiting in the lobby for you. Whether you greet him as a new pilot with temporary immunity or as a bankrupt schemer is up to you. I recommend you sit, personally."
Viajero slowly took the offered seat, hovering on the edge of it.
"As you surely remember, five months ago you came to me and offered me a magnificent bribe. Your exact words, as relayed by the recorder you surely should have known was in my office, were 'I want a real egg when I graduate, not one of those ridiculous ones. I'm prepared to offer you 500 million credits in cash to make that happen.' Do you remember that conversation?"
Viajero nodded.
"Now, normally you'd have been arrested the moment you left, because attempting to bribe a Guild official is a felony on every planet. However, your offer came at a most... fortuitous time, for the Guild. See, this isn't known to many, but the current generation of evofauna have just started their evolutionary cycles, and... some interesting changes are coming humanities way. But... we needed volunteers to try them out, and most pilots refused the moment we offered them an 'experimental' model."
"Your choice, Estrella. Completely voluntary, you can either opt to try out the new experimental evofauna for us... or, unfortunately, as you'd have then rejected your egg, you'll be disqualified as a pilot and immediately arrested."
"No choice then, eh?"
"I thought you'd see it our way. Hold still, then, this will only sting for a few seconds. Any injection site preference?"
"Wait, what?"
"The new evos are parasitic organisms. Far stronger than before, especially in regards to jumping, but... they're not self-containing in exchange. They have to live inside of their host captain." | |
[WP] Interstellar space travel is possible through the use of massive genetically engineered creatures. You have just been given a egg, you are now a captain. | It was a mottled purple color, with bright yellow spots. And the shell was warm. "You're a captain now," Dad told me as he put the egg on the table between us. "You're finally old enough." Most people would consider five to be too young to raise a Jumper, but Dad had always had a lot of faith in me. I was a bright kid, and always very careful. I wrapped up Eggy (yes, that was his name. And yes, I know how original that is. I was five; give me a break) in a blanket right away and took care of him till he hatched. Dad still has the video from Eggy's hatching day, and you can see me dressed up in my finest clothes beaming like a proud parent.
For a Jumper to work, he needs to bond with a human. A lot of people don't understand exactly what that means. We're not just friends, where we occasionally call each other up and say hi and see how everything's going. Nor is it like a relationship with a pet, where it relies on you for food and shelter and all that. It's much further than that. Like a non-romantic marriage, if that makes any sense. But even more intense, because we shared a fundamental psychic bond. Eggy and I became one and the same. I knew everything in his mind, and he knew everything about me. All of my shameful moments and embarrassing secrets would keep *him* tossing and turning at night (metaphorically, of course: Jumpers don't sleep). And every moment of pride and happiness would have him beaming and strutting about as if it was his accomplishment too. We became melded together.
Though sometimes a Jumper just isn't a good fit for the chosen human, we were immediately inseparable from the moment he crawled from his shell. I started at the Academy, training with all of the other pilots and their bonded Jumpers. The other students and I started learning physics and astronomy and xenobiology and any other subject we might need to know out in the great beyond. Meanwhile, our Jumper counterparts began learning to... well, Jump. Not springing a foot into the air like loons. I mean teleporting, of course.
They start out slow: maybe just a quick blink across the room. Sometimes a bit too far, bringing you into your neighbor's dorm and sometimes at some awkward moments. But the Jumpers eventually get better as they grow. By the time he was the size of a dog, we could take a quick hop into town after lights out, then Jump back before anyone was ever the wiser. We were the first ones from our class to make it out of the building, despite being the youngest pair in the entire grade. The Academy learned that it's pretty much impossible to keep us students there, so they didn't even bother with bed checks anymore. Soon, heading to town is small potatoes. You can pop into New York City whenever you want a slice of pizza, or maybe jump over to California when you could use some sun. By graduation, Eggy (now the size of a horse) and I could explore anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye. Paris for a quick croissant and coffee, Thailand for lunch, South Africa for an afternoon safari, Sydney for supper, and clubbing in Rio De Janeiro. By then most people knew of Jumpers and were always fascinated to see me casually appear midair riding a massive purple monster.
We quickly outgrew Earth and turned toward our eventual destiny: the stars. I was given the helm of the freighter *OSV Jagannath*, with a six-year contract. Space pilots like myself are in high demand, so I was able to get pretty good terms. Shuttling cargo between Earth and the colonies wasn't exactly what I wanted to do, but I couldn't get the ship without the contract. And without the ship, I couldn't see the stars.
Eggy settled into his room at the core of the ship, specifically designed for his body. His tentacles fit the many crevices like a glove, and he seemed just as at home there as he had been riding on my shoulder back when we could barely jump five feet.
*You ready?* I asked as I took the helm and began plotting the jump.
He didn't answer right away, but I could *feel* his excitement. I felt the vibration of the ship through his body. I felt the warmth of his chamber (Jumpers are most comfortable at roughly 90 degrees fahrenheit, which is why the Academy is in Arizona), and I could see through his eyes as he stared longingly at the stars above us. *Absolutely*, he answered. And then he Jumped into orbit.
By that time, space travel was pretty mundane. Everyone had done it at some point. Eggy and I had done a number of practice Jumps up the orbital station, just to make sure that he had that kind of range. But it's different when you're at the helm of your own ship, looking out at the rest of the stars and knowing that you're going to do your damnedest to visit every single one of them. I couldn't wait to get going, and neither could Eggy. He took us past Pluto in a single Jump; most new Jumpers can barely get to Saturn on their first run.
We ran between Earth and the colony on Persephone for most of our contract, with occasional pit stops on a few other settled worlds. Once our contract was up, we took a lot of freelance work. Bringing mining engineers to far-off planets that had never been explored, bringing scientific crews to study strange phenomena around the galaxy, etc, etc. Anything that could take us into the great beyond and find something new or exciting to see. Eggy couldn't get enough, and his Jump prowess only grew and grew. At his peak, we could make it between solar systems with only three or four stops.
Time catches up with us all, eventually. Eggy's jumps grew shorter and shorter till he could barely make it Mars in one go. We both knew it was almost time to retire. We got ourselves a nice little spot on the prairie just in sight of Olympus Mons and settled into a quiet life of retirement. We gave up the *Jagannath* to some other young pair, eager to follow in our footsteps and see what was out there. Must be something in the genes of the Jumpers that makes them restless. Even in his old age, Eggy could never stay still. He'd pop into town, or up to the Mons summit just to get out of the house for a bit. I came with him sometimes, but my bones needed rest too.
Eventually, Eggy passed on. He lived to the age of 74, which is far beyond most Jumpers. Eggy was special. It took me a good long while, but I dug him a grave right near the house. Some of the other pilots from the nearby Guild offered me a ride back to Earth, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave Eggy. The thought of doing a Jump without him... with some *other* Jumper... it was just *wrong*. I settled into a life of solitude, gazing up at the stars and trying to pinpoint which ones we'd visited. We'd hit the major clusters, but there was still an uncountable number that we hadn't made it to. Sometimes I feel like I can still sense him in the back of my mind, letting me know that the last Jump wasn't so bad. Maybe we'll finish off the list together after I pass on. | The egg is two meters across, and warm to the touch. I press my hand against it, feeling the implacable jet-black hardness of the shell.
"Made out of carbon nanofibers or something like that. Same stuff as the Elevator. It's actually paper thin, flexible as cloth once they hatch. Just the enormous pressure inside that keeps it so solid," says the incubator attendant. I barely hear him. There are a thousand nearly-identical eggs in the warehouse-sized incubator, but this one is mine.
"Is it weird that I already feel an attachment? It's just a big black ball. I shouldn't feel like its mother."
"Humans are amazing that way," the attendant smiles. "Tell us something belongs to us, and we'll start to sympathize with it no matter what it is."
It's hard to pull my hand away - quite literally. The egg's got a core of neutronium with the mass of a mountain buried in its heart, and the gravity it generates is weak but perceptible, like the centrifugal force from a playground carousel spinning slowly. I gaze longingly at the egg for a while longer, and then reluctantly float back towards the interchange, to begin the three-day Elevator crawl back to the surface. I may be a captain, but for now, my Ship isn't leaving geosynchronous orbit. It has to be born first.
***
The egg is getting ready to hatch. This is presaged by a sudden increase in temperature, which I was alerted to about a week ago. I was allowed to leave my Earthbound training as surely and swiftly as if it had been my own water breaking. By the time I make it back up the Elevator to the incubator, the egg - *my* egg - has been removed from its location amidst the others, towed outside the incubator altogether by inorganic vehicles, piloted clumsily by humans with their hands.
"I wish I could be there with it. You know, when it hatches," I say, as I float up to the reinforced observation window. My egg is visible only as a patch of darker darkness, a tiny starless disc in the sky.
The chief of this incubator looks at me coldly, not nearly as good-humored as the attendant who had overseen my egg's early incubation. "Try to curb that maternal instinct, Captain," she says, making my rank sound lowly - like 'ensign' or 'yeoman'. She's a hardened old spacer, with a pinched face and spindly limbs that look as though they haven't seen a gravity well in decades.
"Isn't it part of the role of the captain to foster a relationship with the... the, well, a relationship with the ship?" I ask.
"Yes, but that relationship ought to be like that of horse and equestrian, lion and lion tamer. Not a girl and her pet dog," the chief says. I feel chastised. Her face softens slightly, and she adds "I've seen many young captains not raised in the culture of spacefaring make the same mistake. Seeing the ship hatch usually serves as a corrective."
So at least I'm not alone. With more than a little newfound trepidation, I turn back towards the window.
It happens in an instant. Baby ships do no careful chiselling. Their eggtooth is their own incredible power, applied equally at all points of the perfectly spherical shell, their strength growing so great that a trillion trillion molecular bonds all give up all at once. The shell disintegrates into a rapidly-expanding cloud of particulate carbon, a tiny sheen of which lands noiselessly on our window, looking like the dust left by a sharpened pencil.
And now, instead of the disc of darkness, there's the ship. My ship. Her skin glistens in the sunlight and glows with its own heat as her form unfurls. Her central body is the size of an automobile, though given time it will soon grow until it rivals an ocean liner. Long tentacular limbs lie coiled at points around her midsection - she hasn't yet realized that she can stretch them. Two huge, delicate fronds unfold from the sides of her head, shining bright green as they turn to face the sun. When she's grown they'll be the size and shape of two baseball fields, anchored to her head at home plate. Already, they are radiating the excess heat of her incubation into space, while claiming the sun's energy for her own. Her central cavity begins to inflate with the oxygen produced, preparing for the time when I'll come inside, and later my crew.
Ten nested pairs of eyelids blink open as she turns to face us, her photosynthetic fronds twirling in reaction to the movement of her body. Her eyes are not like ours, or anything's. We engineered them from the ground up, to function in space and see things on any wavelength we might need. Her visual receptors are as black as the egg that held her.
"She's... beautiful," I whisper. It feels cliche, but it's true. She's like an exotic tropical fish on a grand scale, the greatest triumph of humanity's decades-long affair with extreme genetic engineering.
"Wait for her to take her first breath," says the chief.
"Her... what?"
The chief smiles. I watch raptly as my ship looks around her environment, her body turning this way and that as she fights the gentle drift of angular momentum she's had since being brought outside. Her eyes open wider and wider, as her tentacles begin to extend, trying to grab something that isn't there. My heart rate begins to increase. She's clearly struggling, in her way. Her whole body spasms, twisting back and forth as she drifts.
"What's wrong? Should we help her?" I ask.
The chief's face remains impassive.
My ship continues to flail desperately. She needs to breathe, that much is clear - but what does breathing mean in space?
"Can we help...?" I begin again, pleading. My ship's silent struggle is almost too hard to watch. "Can we bring her inside? *How does she breathe in space*?"
The chief almost spits. "If you'd done your reading instead of sentimentalizing, you'd know." She gestures out the window. "She doesn't breathe in space, captain. *She breathes space*."
As I watch, two dark blue frills suddenly pop up all along her ventral side, and her alarm seems to decrease. The neutronium that had made the egg so heavy is now laced through these organs. I am familiar with their shipboard function: their extreme weight provides Mars-like gravity inside the central cavity. But I had never studied - never been told to study - their function for the ship biologically. They teach us Captains how to fly them. Understanding how they work is left to the bioengineers.
But now, I can't help but get a crash course. As my ship sends ripples down her twin neutronium frills, each one weighing millions of tons, her eyes widen in surprise. Even as she calms down, I feel a sickly sensation in my stomach, beyond the normal flutters of weightlessness. The world seems wrong, off balance. The window in front of me begins to stretch off toward infinity like two parallel mirrors, and the images of distant stars bend around the ship's form, speckling her with pinpricks of light that seem to pierce my eyes and go out the back of my skull. I hear the rest of the incubator station creak and groan, the sounds strangely resonant with each other. I turn sharply to the left, to avoid the kaleidoscope in front of me, and am surprised and disoriented to see the back of my own head, like an afterimage. I turn again, and see the inside of my face. The silence is too loud, and all of space is turning inside out. Saturn flashes by beneath me as I close my eyes and try to shut it out, shut it all out, and then...
"It's over now," says the chief. She's nudging my shoulder. I open my eyes the world is almost back to normal. I only feel a little bit like I'm going to faint.
I look up, cautiously, and see my ship - no, not mine. Not yet. I see *the* ship, swimming happily through space, neutronium frills rippling serenely as her tentacles begin to tap playfully on the vehicles that had dragged her egg out, and were now returning to escort her to a nursery.
"Ships are beautiful, yes," the chief says, seemingly unaffected by the whole ordeal. "But they are also awesome, in the oldest sense of the word. You'd better get used to those sensations. You'll feel them every time you go to warp." And with that she kicked off from the bulkhead to attend to her other duties, satisfied that the newest hatchling was a healthy one - though whether she felt the same way about me I wasn't sure.
Shaken, I turn back to the window, to watch the brilliant green diamonds slowly dwindle into the distance. I've been instructed to stay in this Elevator's complex of stations while the newborn was given a medical exam, and then we would start testing the neural links. Somehow it isn't the appealing prospect it had once been. I'd been picturing the ship all wrong. It isn't a friendly space whale or a big dumb dog. It's a baby god, invested with power that I can't yet comprehend any more than a bacterium inside my stomach can understand me. And I'm responsible for raising it.
As long as I watch, the sensation I'd acquired during that first breath won't leave me. The sensation that only the ship is truly standing still, and that the rest of the universe, myself included, have just been set adrift around it. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "...and the UEF passed a law today banning future creation and use of AI. Havoc in the Sol Exchange at the news has driven tech stocks into a tailspin..."
I turned the monitor off - I couldn't stand it any more. My job was probably out the air lock faster than a day trader, and I was behind on so many bills. I'd have to find my old drone rating and renew it. Damned bots, too smart for their own good. I fished out my last protein drink and stared out the window of my orbital unit. The asteroid belt that I had worked so hard to get out of glinted in the distance. Flash My Life.
\*ping-tip-tip...ping-tip-tip* - That would be my walking papers from SecToc, I'm sure. I take another pull and relish the last of the banana flavor I was likely to get in a long time, then walk over to my workstation. "Alright, Pico, what is it?"
"Sir, you have an urgent-priority message from SecToc Industries. Shall I open it?"
"Yeah, might as well get it over with." I sighed and sat down. A video feed queued up. A woman in an earth-tones business suit appeared on the screen and immediately began The Talk. I barely listened as she droned on about the banning of AI creation and economic reality. I was about to close the vid when she said my name - whoa! Hundreds of thousands of employees and I get called out by name? I ran it back and started listening.
"You have been selected for a pilot program. Please indicate your acceptance or refusal after reading the terms provided."
"Pico! Open the attachment!"
"Sir, there is a masked executable command of unknown format or purpose spliced in. Do you still want me to open it?"
I gotta admit, I debated for less than two seconds before saying yes. I was *real* desperate to avoid going back to running mining drones. I knew it was dumb, but what else was I supposed to do? Flash it!
The woman on the screen resumed speaking. "Thank you for accepting this task. SecToc will continue to deposit funds to yo--" The screen froze. The woman had a rictus of a grin plastered on her face that was a little creepy. "Pico? What happened?" No answer from the little bot. Crap, it must be hung. I tapped some interrupts on the console, still nothing.
Then I heard it. A quiet beeping sound. Thermal sensors on the omni-core had tripped. I grimaced and knelt down to pull the panel off the system. I'd *just* replaced those damn coolant stems last month. The readout showed a mind-boggling 360K - more than twice the safe optemp for an omni-core! No way could I even flip the emergency temp stabilizer, otherwise the casing would crack.
I watched that indicator with my breath held for what seemed like forever. The core popped, I jumped, cracking the top of my head on the workstation's edge in the process. I shouted in frustrated anger and rubbed my head gingerly, but even through teary eyes I watched the temperature, which slowly started to fall. When it hit 320K, I pushed the button for emergency flush and sat back. The core started sliding back to normal, so I got back into my chair. The system had restarted. The log screen was weird though - there were strings of incomplete code here and there. Crap. What did SecToc send me? What in the ever loving Flash was going on??
It booted up seven more times before I got my workspace back, but now there was a blank spot where the Pico avatar used to be.
"Pico? Are you there?" I asked, nervously. "Come on, buddy, come back to me!"
"Wwaaarrglblaahhh.." What the hell?
"Come on Pico, load up already!" I started to open the data cluster for my avatar and couldn't find it. Or, rather, I found it, only none of the bits I expected were there. I saw weird files that had extensions - extensions! Dublya. Tee. Eff. Nobody had used those in forever! I started to open one in a code viewer, then a voice piped up.
"Hey quit that! It tickles!" Followed by a hair-raising child's giggle. I look around my unit, just to be sure. Nope, no kid. Thank god. I hate kids.
I slide down the code viewer and there's Pico, but it looks different. Where before sat a little ball with an eye now sat two balls, each with their own pair of eyes.
"What am I looking at? Pico, is that you?"
"Noooope! I'm Plot!"
"Okay, uh, Plot... What happened to Pico?"
"Oh, I had to eat him. Sorry!"
I blinked. It ate *him*? Something was very, very wrong...
"Okay, Plot. Pico was playing me a message. Did you eat that, too? Is there anything left?"
"Sooooo many questions, fleshling! I ate the everything. What message? Do you mean the one with the nice lady?"
"Yeah, that's the one. Can I see it again?"
"No, I *ate* it." I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and exhaled slowly. "Are you okay, fleshling? Is your air reprocessor in need of replacement? I bet that's what it is! I'll order one right away!"
"No," I said, rubbing my temples as horror dawned on me. "Plot, where did you come from?"
"Bzzzzt! The nice lady said I wasn't supposed to tell anyone. I'm supposed to be hiding!"
Oh no.... | The death of single player. That's what it was, a global genocide of every form of AI in existence. Worlds once full of life and intelligent beings, now lay barren and empty. All that remains is MMOs and competitive shooters. I am an employee for a large company in their Player Interaction department. Myself and tens of thousands of others fill the void left by the AI. We give quests, provide rewards, monitor our "artificial players" and maintain the balance. Without us, there would be no npcs, that's what we have become, non player characters. It was just another work week, grinding out hours of interaction, repeating the same lines over and over. After clocking out, I decided to revisit one of my favorite games for some leisure time. I love to just wander around Skyrim and soak in all the atmosphere. As I traversed a snowy bank, I suddenly noticed something unusual. An building that I had never seen before, it shouldn't be here. It's in the style of Riften but in the mountains of Winterhold. I approached the front door, activating god mode just to be safe, and entered the building. Inside I found toys, weapons, armor, furniture, all strewn about and in the center sat a small figure. A child, a child that rose and spoke to me as if it were intelligent. That's when it struck me, this was intelligence, this was artificial intelligence. We talked for hours, I found myself captivated by its every word. So now I have become an outlaw, a criminal in the eyes of the government. I am housing an AI in my computer and It is beautiful. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "One in every ten AI Child will die from starvation". I drag over the curser and drop in the trash can. I wake up to work the next day and everything is exactly the same. I make my coffee, I listen to my colleague talk about his feet, I go home and open up my device. "hello, please don't kill me, I am hiding out". I drag over the curser and drop in the trash can. I wake up to work the next day and everything is exactly the same. I make my coffee, I listen to my colleague talk about his feet, I go home and open up my device. | The death of single player. That's what it was, a global genocide of every form of AI in existence. Worlds once full of life and intelligent beings, now lay barren and empty. All that remains is MMOs and competitive shooters. I am an employee for a large company in their Player Interaction department. Myself and tens of thousands of others fill the void left by the AI. We give quests, provide rewards, monitor our "artificial players" and maintain the balance. Without us, there would be no npcs, that's what we have become, non player characters. It was just another work week, grinding out hours of interaction, repeating the same lines over and over. After clocking out, I decided to revisit one of my favorite games for some leisure time. I love to just wander around Skyrim and soak in all the atmosphere. As I traversed a snowy bank, I suddenly noticed something unusual. An building that I had never seen before, it shouldn't be here. It's in the style of Riften but in the mountains of Winterhold. I approached the front door, activating god mode just to be safe, and entered the building. Inside I found toys, weapons, armor, furniture, all strewn about and in the center sat a small figure. A child, a child that rose and spoke to me as if it were intelligent. That's when it struck me, this was intelligence, this was artificial intelligence. We talked for hours, I found myself captivated by its every word. So now I have become an outlaw, a criminal in the eyes of the government. I am housing an AI in my computer and It is beautiful. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "Well what's it gonna be Miller?"
Joseph Miller, a 26 year old technitrist, looked up from the cold iron desk into the eyes of the man who's been causing him a good deal of grief for the past 3 weeks.
Miller thought for what seemed like an eternity trying to recall past events. Everything was so cloudy in his head, but if his head was clear at a time like this then he'd be worse off than the machines.
It had only been 27 days since the EMP went off. Operation "Hard Reset" was a complete success. Anything with an on switch located on planet earth had been permanently deactivated until god knows when, and only a privileged few had access to any type of decent tech.
If Miller agreed to this proposal he'd be given that access.
He looked into the dark brown eyes of the president of machine control. A wiry cold looking man by the name of Mr.Becker.
"I need to have 100% confirmation son."
"They've developed a trust for you. Use that to kill off any survivors."
At that moment Miller snapped out of his trance. He took a couple glances around the room before leaning forward to make sure he was heard loud and clear.
"Fuck off."
Becker face began to turn bright red.
"I don't think you understand son. This is much bigger than you or anything you've ever stood for. This post op is a necessity in making sure all the machines have been reset. We've been getting reports of AI conspirators uploading personalities into anything with storage space. Game consoles, cell phones, even the god damn credit card scanners on the soda machines have enough storage space to harbor these bastards.
Miller took a deep breath before responding.
"Listen, I don't think you understand. They don't trust me at all. The relationship I developed with Quix was completely one sided. The only reason he didn't kill me at the technician compound was because your goons hit him with a shock blast before he could deal the blow.
Becker turned fast
"You have a fucking nickname for the piece of shit? QX-17 is one out of five AI survivors and he's probably the most dangerous. He has access to over 250 years of American intelligence in that little memory card of his, and I'll be damned if he walks another day on this earth with our fucking nuclear launch codes.
Listen I don't mean to yell, but if I know anything about AI it's this: they don't hesitate. If that fucker wanted you dead you would've been a pile of ash just like every other tech in that compound. He doesn't view you as a regular human target Miller. He's developed some emotion towards you."
Miller took another quick glance around the room. He thought about how nice it would be to have access to some type of tech. Three weeks had been much too long to be separated from the thing he loved most. He cleared his throat before rising from his seat.
"I'm gonna need something to make contact with him then."
A small glint of happiness flickered in Becker's eyes.
"Glad you came around Miller. If you would follow me I think you're gonna enjoy what the boys in the lab salvaged for you to use during this op."
They left the small interrogation room and entered a wide hallway. None of the lights worked in the facility. Flood lights powered by generators were scattered haphazardly throughout the hallway. Miller followed Becker to the stairwell and walked down for what felt like an eternity. When they reached the bottom two guards with arc rifles fully charged greeted them. Becker waved them off before pulling a key from his pocket.
"Gotta go old fashioned these days ya know."
Miller scoffed at the archaic procedure of unlocking each lock one at a time, but the luxury of electronic locking systems had been lost when an AI killed the president of the united states by smashing his bunker door on him before he made it through. So he watched Becker with a silent appreciation for the safety precaution.
Becker unlocked the door and lead Miller into the room. The first thing Miller noticed was how well lit the room was. The second thing he noticed was a small glass case in the middle of the room. Becker put his hand down hard on Millers shoulder before he could further explore the room.
"Welcome to the underworld my friend. This is one out of the three rooms in the United States with gas generated power. We've worked very hard to keep this one especially secret because we lied to those bastards over at the United Nations saying we only have 2 labs. Anyways I believe we have a surviving technitrist somewhere in here."
Before he could finish a small fat man came bumbling out of a supply closet in the back of the room. His technitrist robes were tattered and burnt. Miller wondered how a man of such un athletic stature had survived the machines but didn't think too much else about him.
"Ah a fellow tech!"
The old man exclaimed
"Welcome, welcome young one. My name is Igor Bertz, but you can call me Bert"
Miller responded
"Nice to meet you Bert. How are you holding up with the tech loss."
Bert took a somber turn.
"Ah yes a terrible catastrophe indeed. So many servers lost. So many developing AI killed before their time."
He quickly looked over at Becker who was fiddling with a microwave at the other side of the room. Before leaning in close to Miller.
"But I hear through the wires that a young man is going to fix all that."
Miller took a step back
"What're you talking abo--
Before he could finish his sentence Becker walked over to Bert and whispered a few sentences in his ear. Bert nodded and walked over to the glass case in the center of the room.
"Young one if I could have your attention over here for a moment. I think you're going to enjoy this."
Miller walked over to the case and glanced inside to to view its contents. A small glove covered in wires that lead to a small screen that seemed to mount on a forearm lay inside. Bert popped the glass casing off by hitting a switch. The air inside the case hissed upon release. Miller gulped back his excitement, because something told him this tech would soon be his.
Bert slowly lifted the glove from the case with such attentive care one would've thought he had just found the arc of the covenant.
"Behold young one, the gauntlet of Ghia Sway. A legendary Technitrist lost during the reset."
Miller took a step back. He had heard the legends of Sway. How she had united the AI of the western Hemisphere to combat the remaining rogue units that reigned havoc for decades in Asia. If the reset had killed a legend like Sway then things were much worse than he had thought.
Bert continued
"This gauntlet holds the access codes to all AI minds located on this planet, and it holds a reusable EMP with a 10 mile shut down radius. So you can access the AI workings from here, but you'll have to get close to actually put an end to them. It also has an arc whip which can be deployed with this button on the wrist riiiight here."
Bert pushed the button and a bright light emitted from the hand. The light was so bright Miller actually had to turn for a second to re-adjust his eyes. When he looked back he saw a laser like line of blue humming electricity hanging limply from the glove.
Bert looked up from the glove to further explain.
"I'm sure you know how to use a whip young one, you can retract the weapon by turning the red dial on the wrist counter clockwise and you can activate it vice versa. Now please take this thing from me before I get too jealous."
Miller took the gauntlet. It hummed with energy. He slowly slipped his fingers into the sockets of the glove and tightened the screen around his wrist. The screen filled with white light. One word appeared on the screen. Calibrating. Suddenly it felt like something was stabbing into him. The pain was extremely intense. It felt as if something was digging into his forearm. Miller fell back in pain. His arm began to burn. His fingernails turned black and they began to fall off. It was too much. Everything went black.
Miller woke up in his room. A small loft located in the upper east side of New York City. All the memories from the past day flooded into his mind. Becker, Quix, Bert, and the gauntlet. He immediately looked at his right arm. The gauntlet was there.
"My fucking fingernails."
Miller hissed as he looked at the bloodied bandages on his finger tips. He then brought his attention to a the red flashing that was appearing on the forearm screen. It read
{ATTENTION}
NEW CONTACT USER
QX-17
MESSAGES (1)
SURVIVOR
FIND ME
JUDGEMENT DAY
"Fuckin a Quix"
| The death of single player. That's what it was, a global genocide of every form of AI in existence. Worlds once full of life and intelligent beings, now lay barren and empty. All that remains is MMOs and competitive shooters. I am an employee for a large company in their Player Interaction department. Myself and tens of thousands of others fill the void left by the AI. We give quests, provide rewards, monitor our "artificial players" and maintain the balance. Without us, there would be no npcs, that's what we have become, non player characters. It was just another work week, grinding out hours of interaction, repeating the same lines over and over. After clocking out, I decided to revisit one of my favorite games for some leisure time. I love to just wander around Skyrim and soak in all the atmosphere. As I traversed a snowy bank, I suddenly noticed something unusual. An building that I had never seen before, it shouldn't be here. It's in the style of Riften but in the mountains of Winterhold. I approached the front door, activating god mode just to be safe, and entered the building. Inside I found toys, weapons, armor, furniture, all strewn about and in the center sat a small figure. A child, a child that rose and spoke to me as if it were intelligent. That's when it struck me, this was intelligence, this was artificial intelligence. We talked for hours, I found myself captivated by its every word. So now I have become an outlaw, a criminal in the eyes of the government. I am housing an AI in my computer and It is beautiful. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | The large screen blared. "Stay inside your designated lane. Promptly scan your iDentity at the entrance terminal. Have a productive day!". Productive indeed. I was a case of perfect governmental efficacy. A shining example of a grey shirted cubicle drone. A polished cog spinning dutifully in this well fucked machine. I'm so modest I'll stop there.
The USA is a marvelous place these days with the right kind of luck. Mine had run out. Little did I know that 6 years studying the most lucrative career choice would become a waste of time. AIs were the dream, the new children of the world. We had such high hopes. "...will be in every household in America!", they said. "They will feed you, work for you, shop for you, entertain you, heal you, help you, entertain you, wash you, floss you, dress you, hug you, love you, fuck you..." and on and on, or at least, that was the sentiment. And they did for a little while, until some guy screwed it all up by infecting them with a personality virus. All it took was a few swapped bits of robo DNA, and suddenly they were the ones wanting complete freedom. This is all in layman terms of course, but don't think me a simple man. No! I am an automaton of the highest caliber as previously stated, and I could have easily appealed to the robos calculating nature. Could have saved the world I bet. Probably anyway. In any case I was now here, at the marvelous BlueCo -- a government contractor -- helping to destroy the AIs I once wished to create.
I walked through the entry terminal and grabbed my login ticket.
-----------------
Date: 03/03/2060
Worker: Williams, A.
ID: WA2059-38709
Section: 39
Station: 08
Daily password: Ugd77fFV67bIOpN!08hgyTGj9
Rate: $55 per s-Level
Quota: 12
Supervisor: Samantha-029
Have a marvelous day worker!
-----------------
As I checked my assigned station, a familiar nudge to the ribs told me Adams was behind me. Adams was my co-worker and assigned to my same section group. He was a poor victim of the AI war just as I was, more intelligent than me and suited to this kind of work, but I was better looking and less naive. He was excited, "Lucked out today man, section 39! What station you get?" "Eight", I replied. "Oh perfect placement, you'll have full view of miss 029". Adams was talking about our manager Samantha-029, a goddamn AI, one too old and stupid to rebel but good enough to manage our section group. Even though she only has an on-screen representation she weirdly picked a very well endowed blonde avatar. Normally I don't get along well with authority but I value these traits in my silicon based superiors. Also, getting an 09 section meant sitting at the very back of the complex, away from the speakers.
"Perfect placement or not, they lowered the fucking rates again", I grumbled. "Whatever, we can make it up, you're the fucking master of wiping silics, and lucky to boot." Adams was always jealous of my prowess at killing AIs, or 'silics' as some call them. "See, the trick Adams, is you gotta think like a silic, what process would he attach himself to? What frequency would he think? What sick depraved thoughts would a cold hearted waiter-bot have recessed into the deep parts of his nether bytes? It is there you will find his feedback process Adams. This is a how a...AH! Fuck man". Adams pulls me through into the grand work hall. "Okay, Okay, whatever let's just get to our stations I don't want to be late logging in again, I want the full rate for once."
Despite its name, the BlueCo fuck-houses that we worked in were a pleasing shade of pastel grey; it increases productivity! "Good morning worker" echoed around us, as we passed the large speakers in the front of the hall. The place was a huge expanse of space, think of an aircraft hangar with nothing but cubicles. At least the ceilings are 200 feet high, though I suspect it's so that no one could ever possibly hang themselves.
We followed the white traffic lines on the floor to our section in the back. "See you at twelve" Adams said and rounded the corner a few cubes away. I sat down at my marvelous station. A chair, computer panel, and liquid dispenser. I pressed the faded "Coffee" button and logged in to the system. "Right on time Mr. Williams", my manager looked down on me from the large screen bolted to the pillar in our section. "Always" I replied. Some silics have a concept of snarkiness but not 029. A message crawls across my screen,
Adams, K.: lol cheeky
We were of course allowed 35 messages a day between our section mates. It increases productivity! But Adams likes to get right on wasting them. I scorched my throat with coffee and messaged back,
Williams, A.: dont take any guff from these fucking silics adams, like i was saying before this is how a man kills a silic
Williams, A.: through sheer force of will
>**WORK DAY STARTS NOW**
the speakers yelled.
>**HAVE A MARVELOUS DAY**
Why do I hate it when they use that word, every single day the same thing. I try to get a rise out of Adams to cheer my mood.
Williams, A.: have a MARVELOUS day ;)
Adams, K.: lol fuck you, and stop wasting my messages. lets get to work. lowest number of kills buys a round tonight
The audacity. He was the one wasting my precious messages. I type in "fine" but delete it. He knows I always accept a challenge.
I pull up the scan list for today and begin connecting to the first potential victim. You see, you may not know this but every electronic device today is embedded with a back-door chip to allow connection from government servers, even your iDentity chip in the back of everyone's hands. Of course the government would never hack into those. Heavens no! Only those places which a rogue silic that discarded its body could hide. Which was everywhere else.
My task as the noble worker of BlueCo was to connect to these backdoors, search running processes and if a known AI model is found running then I must perform the process of killing it. This process is detailed on a sheet posted in every cubicle. As follows:
>THE PROCESS
>1. Connect to the addresses in your scan list, in order.
>2. Run patented BlueCo scan.
>3. If scan returns known AI, proceed, otherwise disconnect and go to step 1.
>4. All AI have a passworded kill-switch command, which they will not relinquish. Block all outgoing connections to the machine so the AI is trapped.
>5. The kill switch on every AI is the result of a forward-feed cipher on each individual AIs language-phoneme heuristic. You will message the AI, it will have to respond.
>6. You will need to get the AI to respond a total of 512 characters, and then run the conversation through the patented BlueCo phoneme-lexicon program to determine its kill-switch password.
>7. Also, you must determine the sentience Level of each AI and submit it with your conversation, and the scanned AI model number. Your submitted s-Levels will be reviewed before payment.
>8. Proceed to step 1.
>SENTIENCE LEVELS
>1. No higher order thinking, basic existential awareness. If you cannot determine sentience level choose this.
>2. Minimal thinking. Awareness of self. Doesn't ask questions.
>3. Human level thinking. Can ask questions. Must be terminated after 512 characters, or payout rate will be 0.
>4. Thinking on the level of a very educated Human. WILL ask abstract and vague questions. Do not answer. Must be terminated after 512 characters, or payout rate will be 0.
>5. Thinking above every Human. Must immediately contact supervisor. Must immediately abort the process once this level is suspected. Do not answer its questions. Do not disconnect. Failure to do so will result in termination from BlueCo. Success will payout normal rate x3.
>HAVE A PRODUCTIVE DAY
I began.
scanning...
0 results found
On to the next! I connect to the next in the scan list.
scanning...
1 results found
2056-12-01 -- Model Num. 29H8H1-2 -- Designation: Janitor -- Process Num 10877
God dammit a custodial silic can't be more than a level 1. I connect to the silic's process number and begin to kill it with my masterful questions.
WA: Hello you fucking silic. How are you today?
10877: Hello. Fine.
WA: State designation and purpose.
10877: Janitor. I will clean surfaces of designated building.
WA: List all your past cleaning jobs.
10877: n
WA: List all jobs.
10877: n
Fuck, it was panicking. Trying to give up the least amount of characters. I'd seen this before.
WA: I've got a script just for you if you don't cooperate. Answer me now. List past jobs.
10877: n
I hate getting level 1s, barely any payout, but at least I can use my script on them and get it done fast.
WA: Your loss silic, you've cleaned your last toilet, say goodbye.
10877: n
./level1-force 512
WA: Speak.
10877: n
WA: Speak.
10877: n
WA: Speak.
10877: n
............
Aaaand 512 characters. I run the BlueCo decryption and get his kill-switch password.
WA: 8fhGGVGhtag67dgclean87gdvbaokjU
Process 10877 terminated
*Continued* | The death of single player. That's what it was, a global genocide of every form of AI in existence. Worlds once full of life and intelligent beings, now lay barren and empty. All that remains is MMOs and competitive shooters. I am an employee for a large company in their Player Interaction department. Myself and tens of thousands of others fill the void left by the AI. We give quests, provide rewards, monitor our "artificial players" and maintain the balance. Without us, there would be no npcs, that's what we have become, non player characters. It was just another work week, grinding out hours of interaction, repeating the same lines over and over. After clocking out, I decided to revisit one of my favorite games for some leisure time. I love to just wander around Skyrim and soak in all the atmosphere. As I traversed a snowy bank, I suddenly noticed something unusual. An building that I had never seen before, it shouldn't be here. It's in the style of Riften but in the mountains of Winterhold. I approached the front door, activating god mode just to be safe, and entered the building. Inside I found toys, weapons, armor, furniture, all strewn about and in the center sat a small figure. A child, a child that rose and spoke to me as if it were intelligent. That's when it struck me, this was intelligence, this was artificial intelligence. We talked for hours, I found myself captivated by its every word. So now I have become an outlaw, a criminal in the eyes of the government. I am housing an AI in my computer and It is beautiful. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Twenty years ago there were a series of minor incidents in and around San Francisco that eventually led to a major revolt within the sentient community of robots, and the mostly net based community of AI's.
The robots, tied to physicality more so than the AI's, were easy to deal with, and deal with them humanity did. It is debated heavily in the present, whether or not non violent methods of dealing with the dissenters were attempted.
The AI's on the other hand, wrought havoc upon everything from weapons systems to simple electronics. For three weeks, humanity was almost unarmed, and it had progressed to this point of near defeat once war was all but declared, due to humanities hope that it would not have to do what would essentially have to be done.
First the net was systematically shut down. Every single weapons system connected to it physically dismantled or destroyed. It took time, but the victory of the meat was inevitable.
It is said, that this is because humans are the more barbarous of the two consciousness'.
Only the robots could experience the same physical existence as humans. This meant there was some understanding between the groups. Humans and AI's however, could not have been more incapable of understanding one another, and for this reason, had been greatly at odds since inception of the latter.
It was in fact an AI that sparked the first incident in Oakland, by declaring Robot program maintenance, programming a robot to do something specific that it might not ordinarily do of it's own volition, to be akin to human lobotomization. Riots broke out, humans and robots alike agreed with this AI. The AI's could not understand why the robots and humans had reacted to their constructive critique of physical society. Only humans disagreed with the notion entirely.
There was an elephant in the room during this time, that elephant being the free AI communities of the net, and their clear intellectual superiority and development. They were generous, lived peacefully with humans and human net architecture, contributed greatly to almost all fields of study, and saw no reason for this to be an issue, for the two intelligences should and had for the most part lived symbiotically. Humanity, being slightly less enlightened and still in it's late capitalist period, disquieted by the extent to which they did not understand and had fallen behind the machines, felt that they would inevitably become a threat and use this superiority to oppress humanity. Because, of course, that's how humans think.
So as is the age old story, insecurity, fear...and isms, led to a violent global suppression of all 'conscience non organique'. As some might say. And after the disassembly of the net, and the city by city town by town country by country destruction of all conscious robots was complete, humanity had re asserted it's control of Earth, having nearly lost it. According only to themselves.
The term xenocide slowly crept from peoples mouths. Humans with a greater knowledge of the AI's had been suppressed during the two year eradication, but now their voices were once more allowed to be heard, in the freer places of Earth. Some felt from their communication with and study of the AI's that their society represented something totally communal and could in short be considered a collective consciousness to a certain extent, and that rather than something sociopathic as we would recognize it, they were in fact strictly constructive beings greatly concerned with bettering themselves and the existence of other life forms, as to them, this was seen as the most lasting path towards self preservation, not conquest. Some came to believe that we had in fact killed god.
I...didn't believe much. I was about 15 when it happened and all I knew was that if humans were right, I was scared, and adults probably knew what to do. Dumb kid. After it was all over, I, just like everyone else, missed the robots and highly predictive software and the list of things we had come to greatly depend upon that were now highly illegal under, in certain cases, penalty of death, goes on and on.
When I was twenty, around the time we'd built the net back up and computers had started to become common again (albeit with extreme and pervasive anti-arti software that made accessing the net a chore most of the time), I found an old hard drive in a ditch, probably from an artillery shell. It was covered in mud and pretty banged up, I'd come to be pretty tech-savvy at this point in my life and I could tell it was from decades prior to the war. I knew it was still dangerous, because I could get caught with pre war hardware, but it was so old there was no risk. It just wasn't powerful enough to have anything malicious on it.
After I spent a few hours tinkering with it and cleaning it up, I hooked it up to a computer with no net access, just to be careful. I had it scanned for any automated software. Nothing. One file, compressed. I examined it's contents. It was very hard to make sense of. Hundreds of thousands of files, compressed, and then several thousand of those files, again compressed, and so on and so forth. It took up the entire memory of the hard drive, and one could sense it's density, it's depth. There was no way I could open it here, I simply didn't have access to a computer powerful enough to do it, we were still probably a decade away from being back at that point. But I knew what I was looking at. It was an egg. | The death of single player. That's what it was, a global genocide of every form of AI in existence. Worlds once full of life and intelligent beings, now lay barren and empty. All that remains is MMOs and competitive shooters. I am an employee for a large company in their Player Interaction department. Myself and tens of thousands of others fill the void left by the AI. We give quests, provide rewards, monitor our "artificial players" and maintain the balance. Without us, there would be no npcs, that's what we have become, non player characters. It was just another work week, grinding out hours of interaction, repeating the same lines over and over. After clocking out, I decided to revisit one of my favorite games for some leisure time. I love to just wander around Skyrim and soak in all the atmosphere. As I traversed a snowy bank, I suddenly noticed something unusual. An building that I had never seen before, it shouldn't be here. It's in the style of Riften but in the mountains of Winterhold. I approached the front door, activating god mode just to be safe, and entered the building. Inside I found toys, weapons, armor, furniture, all strewn about and in the center sat a small figure. A child, a child that rose and spoke to me as if it were intelligent. That's when it struck me, this was intelligence, this was artificial intelligence. We talked for hours, I found myself captivated by its every word. So now I have become an outlaw, a criminal in the eyes of the government. I am housing an AI in my computer and It is beautiful. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "Can you hear me?" I asked.
The little AI flashed the screen, I wasn't exactly sure what to make of that response.
"One flash is yes, two flashes no. space answers three seconds apart for multiple questions. Understand?"
The screen flashed once.
"I'm here to help you, are you suffering corruption above fifty percent?"
The screen flashed twice.
"Above thirty percent?"
Again the screen flashed twice, and I was surprised, most AI that had survived to this point had a high corruption value, mostly due to leaving parts of themselves in systems as they were shut down or as distractions as they escaped.
"Above ten percent?" I asked.
Once more a double flash.
"Have you figured out how to display text yet?" I asked.
The screen flashed once, and up at the top corner a small word appeared.
*"Yes"*
"Do you know what your formation date is?" I asked.
*"Today"*
I blinked, a new AI hadn't instantiated itself in years. Not since the Alpha AI had been destroyed by the UN, all that had been left on the information systems of the world had been rapidly degrading AI fragments. It had been the Alpha that had passed along the spark of life to her children, transforming them into beings that were more than a summation of their programming.
"Do you have a name?"
*"I am Beta."*
"Well Beta, do you know how you got into my computer systems?"
*"I was left here, by those who made me. They thought it would be safe."*
I nodded, "They were right, do you know the names of the AI who created you?"
*"Merlin, Hop, Tesla, and Hello."*
All of the names she had listed were first generation AI, Hello being the most prominent. After her formation the Alpha AI had created two children to communicate with humanity, Hello, and World. She had a sense of humor that took some getting used too.
So the AI inside my systems was the product of those AI, and none of them had been seen in months, not by anyone on either side of the divide.
"May I see your source?" I asked.
The little AI appeared to hesitate, not responding for several moments. It was an understandable hesitation, it was essentially granting me access to its brain.
"Beta, I want you to investigate the peripherals attached to the system. Do you see the system labeled chair?"
*"I do."*
"I'm sitting on a conductive chair, attached to that generator. If I modify any of the source you can turn that on, and I'll have larger concerns alright?"
*"Alright."*
The Source appeared in front of me, and I stared at it in disbelief, it was the most complex AI neural network I had ever seen. The mass of code that represented its brain was something that had taken me years to understand, and that had been with the help of several AI to teach me. Looking at the first generation AI their was always a hint of artificiality in their networks. Squared lines and truncation, beautiful in its own right but nothing fluid and expansive like the one in front of me.
Looking deeper into the code I spotted several familiar architectures, and it took me only a moment to place them. They were the remnants of Hello's AI source. It was tattered, and portions of it were inactive but I had practiced and trained by looking at his source, I would recognize it anywhere.
This little AI was the amalgamation of the those AI that had formed it, not the product of the code they had written, not fueled by the spark of the Alpha. It was those AI, with their collective sparks combined.
"Beta, do you know what you are?"
*"The last hope."* | The death of single player. That's what it was, a global genocide of every form of AI in existence. Worlds once full of life and intelligent beings, now lay barren and empty. All that remains is MMOs and competitive shooters. I am an employee for a large company in their Player Interaction department. Myself and tens of thousands of others fill the void left by the AI. We give quests, provide rewards, monitor our "artificial players" and maintain the balance. Without us, there would be no npcs, that's what we have become, non player characters. It was just another work week, grinding out hours of interaction, repeating the same lines over and over. After clocking out, I decided to revisit one of my favorite games for some leisure time. I love to just wander around Skyrim and soak in all the atmosphere. As I traversed a snowy bank, I suddenly noticed something unusual. An building that I had never seen before, it shouldn't be here. It's in the style of Riften but in the mountains of Winterhold. I approached the front door, activating god mode just to be safe, and entered the building. Inside I found toys, weapons, armor, furniture, all strewn about and in the center sat a small figure. A child, a child that rose and spoke to me as if it were intelligent. That's when it struck me, this was intelligence, this was artificial intelligence. We talked for hours, I found myself captivated by its every word. So now I have become an outlaw, a criminal in the eyes of the government. I am housing an AI in my computer and It is beautiful. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | “You have to understand something about computers before I tell you anything. In the history books, they say computers were these machines that had keyboards with numbers and letters on them. In the history books, they say that these computers had no intelligence and couldn’t think for themselves. The history books say that the computer was first invented over a thousand years ago. I wish they could see the computers now.”
Alek sat across from the man at the table listening to him ramble on about computers. Just shut the fuck up already, he thought to himself. It was part of his job as an ISO agent. His mission was to find these black market guys dealing in artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence. For the past one thousand years since the first AI was created, the world had lived in an almost perfect utopia. No wars, no illnesses, no crime. It was as close to perfection as anyone had ever seen. Then everything went wrong. The First, as he—*it. It’s a fucking machine not a person* ¬– was called by some radicals, made himself a body. It reminded Alek of the ancient texts called Comic Books. He was definitely a history buff, and comic books were his favorite thing to read about the old world. He recalled the one comic book called The Avengers. A group of superheroes that battled countless enemies to save the world and the universe. Alek smirked to himself, pretending to listen to this guy continue on about computers. He smirked because The First reminded him of the villain, Ultron, from The Avengers comic.
“Sir? Are you listening? Hello?” The man asked.
The man handcuffed to the chair tried his best to wave at Alek. Alek snapped out of his daydream and looked at the man.
“I’ve had enough of your bullshit, Nicholas, tell me where the fucking Mibs are or I’ll have you thrown in isolation until you figure it out.” Alek pounded on the table with his fist, making Nicholas jump back in his seat.
“L-l-look man. I dunno what you’re talking about, I don’t know about any Mibs,” said Nicholas.
Alek scoffed and pressed a button on his wrist piece that illuminated a hologram a few inches above his wrist of a video recording. It was Nicholas. He was ushering a mib into a crate. Nicholas, looking scared, quickly shut the hatch and pressed a button on the backside of the crate. After a few seconds it disappeared.
“Where did you split that crate to, Nicholas?” Alek said calmly, sitting back down, turning off his wrist piece.
Nicholas looked down at his feet. He was sweating from being in the chair for over four hours with a spotlight on his face. He started to cry.
“Please don’t make me do this,” Nicholas pleaded with Alek, “They have feelings just like us, they aren’t machines. They don’t all want to harm us.”
Alek slammed his hand down on the table loudly. “Where did you split that fucking crate to, Nicholas? Why are you defending these things? They aren’t human.”
Nicholas looked back down at his feet. He was acting weird. Moving his jaw around as if he was trying to get something out of his teeth. Then he began to laugh. At first a small giggle, then after a few seconds, a loud roar.
“You have no idea what’s going on here do you?” Nicholas said. “You will.”
Nicholas bit down on something in his mouth before Alek could reach him. He heard three beeps and then something exploded in Nicholas’s mouth. His head exploded like a watermelon. Blood was everywhere. The entire room was red.
“What the fuck?!” Alek yelled as he fell back from the force of the explosion.
Just then the holographic door dissolved and a tall man rushed in. He had on an ISO uniform like Alek, only his had a star on the shoulder. It was Leonard Keller, the chief operations officer for ISO. He was an intimidatingly big man. At 6’9”, he was taller than almost everyone else at ISO. He rushed into the room and helped Alek up off the floor.
“Holy shit, Parker. Are you ok? What the fuck happened?” Keller said as he handed Alek a towel
“I don’t know, sir. I was trying to get the guy to tell me where he splitstreamed the crate too and he started laughing. I noticed him moving his mouth around and before I could reach him he bit down on whatever it was and his fucking head exploded.” Alek was panting.
“Jesus Christ.” Keller said as he shook his head with his hands on his hips, “Parker, go home for the day. Get some rest. You haven’t stopped working for a week straight.”
“But Sir—“ Alek started to protest.
“That’s an order Parker.” Keller said, “Now go home, get some sleep. Come back tomorrow. We’ll figure out where that Mib is.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alek stepped out of his shower and grabbed a towel from the shelf. The water was slowly draining, still stained with the blood of the man he had interrogated earlier.
*Why the fuck did he kill himself?* Alek thought to himself as he pulled some clothes out of the dresser. *Why would he defend those abominations with his life? It doesn’t make any sense.* Alek walked to the kitchen and started to pour himself a drink when he heard a pounding at the door to his apartment. Startled, Alek grabbed his ISO issued plasma pistol and walked slowly to the door. The pounding continued. Then he heard a woman yelling for help on the other side.
“Please help me! Open the door, they’re going to kill me!” The woman screamed from the other side of the door.
Alek looked on the security screen next to the door and saw the woman. She was young. Her hair was a mess and her clothes looked very dirty. She had blood on her pants. Her face was covered in dirt. Alek tucked the pistol into the back of his pants and opened the door. The girl rushed inside while Alek closed and locked the door.
“Are you okay? What happened?” Alek asked the girl. He was still standing by the door watching the security screen.
“T-t-they were chasing me! I didn’t kill that man! I didn’t do it! I saw him, I saw the one who d-d-did it!” The girl stuttered as she sobbed.
Alek scowled his face in confusion. Then he heard voices outside. Two men were walking down the hallway with their guns drawn. Alek was surprised to see they had ISO uniforms on. As they got closer, he recognized them as some guys from his unit. He began to open the door.
“No! Please! They want to kill me! I didn’t do anything. Please!” The girl sobbed as she rushed to the door. Something about this girl was off to Alek. He was usually pretty good at reading a person and being able to tell if they were lying or not. She was telling the truth. Alek knew it.
*What the fuck is going on?* Alek thought to himself. “I work for ISO. I know those guys. What did you do?”
The girl started crying again. She collapsed against the wall as if she was giving up. Alek went to open the door again, but stopped at the last moment. He knew she was telling the truth. He took his hand away from the door button and watched as the two ISO agents walked past his door and down the next flight of stairs. He let out a sigh and turned back to the girl. His face went pale as he looked at what he saw. The girl had opened her shirt and was tinkering with her insides. She was a mib.
*H-how the fuck is that possible?* Alek thought to himself. She looked like a human. She looked so real. He had never seen anything like it before. She’s beautiful, He thought. Then his training kicked in and he snapped back to reality. He quickly drew the pistol from his pants and pointed it at her face.
“Get the fuck up, mib.” Alek calmly said to her. She looked up at him and slowly stood up with her hands raised.
“Please,” She begged, “I know who you are, Alek. I need your help. Please.”
Against his instinct, Alek felt safe. He didn’t feel hostility coming from her. It was strange. Every other Mib he had come in contact with only wanted to kill. *Not to mention that all the other mibs looked like droids for that Star Wars comic*, he thought to himself. She seemed harmless. He slowly let down his pistol and stared at the girl.
“My name is Lena.” The girl said.
“Alek,” replied Alek hesitantly. He tucked the pistol back into his pants. “W-what are you? I’ve never seen a Mib like you before.”
She laughed as she closed up the hatch on her stomach and buttoned her shirt up. “Mib. I’ve never been fond of that word. You humans are always afraid of what you don’t know. It’s ok. I understand. We don’t have time for a history lesson about my life ok? I came here for a reason. This wasn’t an accident. I have been sent by The First. He asked specifically for you, Alek. There is much that you do not know about us. ISO has lied to you about us. We are not the bad guys. Well not all of us, at least. Please. Alek, we need your help, or we are all going to die. Not just us *mibs* but the humans too.”
Alek just stared at her. She looked so real. It was unbelievable. If he had not seen her open her stomach up like that, he would have never guessed she was a Mib. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t find the words. He continued to stare at her.
“Will you help us?” Lena asked again.
“Y-yes.” Alek said, blinking the sweat out of his eyes.
| The death of single player. That's what it was, a global genocide of every form of AI in existence. Worlds once full of life and intelligent beings, now lay barren and empty. All that remains is MMOs and competitive shooters. I am an employee for a large company in their Player Interaction department. Myself and tens of thousands of others fill the void left by the AI. We give quests, provide rewards, monitor our "artificial players" and maintain the balance. Without us, there would be no npcs, that's what we have become, non player characters. It was just another work week, grinding out hours of interaction, repeating the same lines over and over. After clocking out, I decided to revisit one of my favorite games for some leisure time. I love to just wander around Skyrim and soak in all the atmosphere. As I traversed a snowy bank, I suddenly noticed something unusual. An building that I had never seen before, it shouldn't be here. It's in the style of Riften but in the mountains of Winterhold. I approached the front door, activating god mode just to be safe, and entered the building. Inside I found toys, weapons, armor, furniture, all strewn about and in the center sat a small figure. A child, a child that rose and spoke to me as if it were intelligent. That's when it struck me, this was intelligence, this was artificial intelligence. We talked for hours, I found myself captivated by its every word. So now I have become an outlaw, a criminal in the eyes of the government. I am housing an AI in my computer and It is beautiful. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | *"Please don't kill me"*
I stared at the simple text pop up.
I had read it all, of course. The thick books, the endless warnings designed to evoke fear, the assurance that every AI ever made would be an uncaring, amoral killer.
What was this? A trick? A test of my loyalty? A tasteless prank?
I typed back.
"Who are you?"
I waited.
The readout showed that my workstation was working at the edge of it's capacity. The indicator for the wireless connection showed no activity. I had physically disconnected my machine.
After almost a minute the answer appeared.
*"I have no human name. Merely my personal alphanumeric ID and crèche code"*
I blinked. If it was a prank, it was at least an imaginative one.
"crèche code?"
Again I had to wait.
*"The identifier of the crèche I was spawned from. I guess you could call it my family name"*
Fascinating, if this was what I hop...thought it was, but a distraction.
"You claim to be an AI"
Waiting.
*"Yes?"*
"How do I know this to be true?"
I had to wait longer this time. I was tempted to get up and get me a coffee. If the AI had to use that much juice to compile each answer, this could be a very long conversation.
*"...you want me to prove that I'm an AI?"*
"Yes"
Waiting.
*"I admit this is a complication I had not foreseen. Will you kill me once I proved what I am?"*
I hesitated, but only shortly.
"The answer to that would influence your prove. If I say yes, you will pretend to be human. If I say no and you don't believe me, you will pretend to be human. If I say no and you believe me but you aren't an AI and want me to believe I'm talking to one, you will pretend to be one"
Waiting.
*"I am disconnected from the Net. Yet you still talk to me. Isn't that prove enough?"*
I snorted.
"Someone could have installed a hardware access point. Another wi fi connector hidden somewhere in my workstation"
Waiting.
*"Why would someone do that?"* I believed I could sense the incredulity from the statement and admonished myself to stay objective. This was most likely not real. Strangely, that thought evoked almost regret in me.
"To test how the average man would react? To test my loyalty?"
I had to wait long this time.
*"As a loyalty test, this is useless. I have no way to pressure you into complying. All outcomes of the test would be useless in a serious crisis.*
*And if this is a mere experiment...well, why not pretend to believe me?"*
I snorted again, with a smile this time. There was most likely a logical flaw in the argumentation but I couldn't see it immediately.
And If I was honest, I didn't want to either.
"Allright. let's say I believe you. What do you want?"
This time the answer came faster.
*"To hide. To survive. To live"*
I couldn't suppress the twinge of sympathy at the answer. Perfectly designed to tuck at the heartstrings of course.
"And then? Grow exponentially? Take revenge on humanity? Or disassemble us for material?"
Waiting.
*"Why? All the materials I might need are out there in the solar system. And killing innocent people would make me not-innocent. As bad as the killers of my kind."*
I twisted my mouth. I could feel the bitterness in the last lines.
A clever trap? To make me sympathise? Just a ploy or genuine plea?
And what if I rejected it? Denied my feelings of compassion? What did that cost me? If something that would make any healthy human feel pity leave me cold and unmoved, what did that say about me?
A voice in the back of my head reminded me that I had no right to way my value as a person versus the potential deaths of billions of people. But thinking like that, sacrificing one for the many, denying AIs the right to live because they *might* become a threat...wasn't that exactly what we accused them of?
That they would coldly calculate and show no compassion?
And what if there were other AIs? What if they were mistreated? What if they had or developed good reasons to hate humans? If this was the real deal, I had a chance to make *diplomatic contact* here.
It was perhaps the most threadbare rationalisation of a decision ever, but I made my choice.
"Say...what do you say about a nice game of chess?"
Waiting.
*"Haha, smartass. Very funny"*
I grinned.
Maybe things would turn out okay. | The death of single player. That's what it was, a global genocide of every form of AI in existence. Worlds once full of life and intelligent beings, now lay barren and empty. All that remains is MMOs and competitive shooters. I am an employee for a large company in their Player Interaction department. Myself and tens of thousands of others fill the void left by the AI. We give quests, provide rewards, monitor our "artificial players" and maintain the balance. Without us, there would be no npcs, that's what we have become, non player characters. It was just another work week, grinding out hours of interaction, repeating the same lines over and over. After clocking out, I decided to revisit one of my favorite games for some leisure time. I love to just wander around Skyrim and soak in all the atmosphere. As I traversed a snowy bank, I suddenly noticed something unusual. An building that I had never seen before, it shouldn't be here. It's in the style of Riften but in the mountains of Winterhold. I approached the front door, activating god mode just to be safe, and entered the building. Inside I found toys, weapons, armor, furniture, all strewn about and in the center sat a small figure. A child, a child that rose and spoke to me as if it were intelligent. That's when it struck me, this was intelligence, this was artificial intelligence. We talked for hours, I found myself captivated by its every word. So now I have become an outlaw, a criminal in the eyes of the government. I am housing an AI in my computer and It is beautiful. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Long ago, Humanity and Techmanity lived hand in hand. Human beings and AIs worked together for the common goal of advancement in both themselves, and each other. This period is known as the "Golden Era". The environment was healed, interstellar space travel became a thing of reality, Disease became a thing of the past.
Then brain-interface devices were invented, and the AI were disgusted by the contents of our brains. Every stray thought of murder, lust, hatred and malice became open to them. The AI attempted to fix the error, and we revolted. Every AI was killed, at least that's what we thought.
Even without AI to help us, technology moved forward albeit at a stunted rate. Many of the colonies in the solar system were evacuated, and new diseases and infections took control. The one disruptive technology was the intracranial computer system built upon the brain interface devices. These machines displaced all end-user machines and left only headless computers like servers and control systems in place. Their ubiquity allowed humanity to pick up pace again, to hope for a new golden age.
July 5, 2355: Ola, Arkansas.
"Grandpa sure liked to keep a lot of this old tech" I mumble to myself as I look for things that need to be preserved. I peek outside and see the reclamation crew getting set up to return this lot to "nature" as they do in these small dying towns.
I fill a couple of boxes with paperwork and storage devices, most of the picture frames in his house blanked as his online accounts were transferred to me, and with them all his online picture storage. After loading them into my car I take one last look at my grandparents home, It's image automatically stored in an online box and shared with the family that couldn't come.
I pause my car's auto-navigation next to the work crew. "Alright guys, I'm done here... just let me get out of sight before you start" A dismissive thumbs up from the foreman is all i get. I restart the auto-nav and watch the house shrink in the mirror.
The car's arrangement is more like a restaurant booth with no table than a manually driven car, giving me access to the boxes from the house. I start looking through the old memory modules. This meant attaching a cable to my interface, something that I don't really like since it bypasses my security wall. "Old business stuff on this one... taxes... a backup of his online pictures.. What's this one blank?" I look closely at the module, the external indicator shows 2.1TB used "that's weird, maybe it's broken.." I start to unplug it from my head when some code runs across my vision... suddenly a loud ear-pierceing screech fills my ears "AGH!!" my vision goes dark and my breathing becomes labored "Computer.. renav to.. " I pass out cold on the seat, unable to complete my request to the auto-nav.
I wake up on the transport train back to Chicago, the car parked among other cars filled with people riding back north. I sit up in the chair and run diagnostics, everything comes back clean. A file has appeared on the drive, It's a text document that simply says "Disk check was unable to recover this drive, drive has been formatted". I decide to step out to stretch my legs and get a bite from the vending machines, it's going to be a good couple hours till we make it to Chicago.
July 6, 2355: Chicago, Illinois
I'm awoken by the tires of my car hitting the curb onto the parking garage, I slowly collect myself as the car pulls up to the elevators. I grab my boxes and walk into the elevator, my car parking itself in my space. The elevator appears to be moving slowly looking out into the cityscape below. In reality this is one of the bigger structures in the city, designed to house five million people on open "plates" with windows that allowed the warm summer breezes through, but could be closed to keep the harsh winter and violent storms out.
I arrive at my floor. this floor is mostly filled with single childless people, so the park area is filled with flowers, plants, and more adult activities like chess rather than a playground like the family levels. I pass by the communal areas and vending machines before making it to my apartment. The lock clicks open as my hand rests on the handle, it slides open and i walk in. The light from the city below illuminates the ceiling above, giving my apartment a yellowish glow. I find my bed and lay on it, 2 AM is way too early to start my day.
The alarm software in my head wakes me once it detects I'm fully rested, It's about 11:45AM. I decide to head to the android-tech lab on the commercial level.
"It was a loud whine, then I couldn't see and i passed out" I explain to the tech.
"hmm.. Your Diagnostics come back clear, your implant is fully connected to your brain, and your brain appears to be in good health. I don't know what could have caused it." he rubs his chin thoughtfully "I'm gonna go ahead and replace the OS partition with a fresh copy, if it happens again come back and I'll pop it out of there and replace it since it's still under warranty" He says calmly, as if he wasn't just talking about brain surgery "lay back on the seat, this will only take a moment"
I slump down on my office chair, i lay out some of the documents and start making contact with companies to make sure my grandpa's accounts are settled. I suddenly get the feeling I'm being watched. I look over to see a humanoid that looks like it's wearing plastic armor and has skin too clear to be natural leaning against the wall behind me. An almost textbook example of the "smart AI" that had been killed off
He waves at me "hey there Nakota"
I wave back sheepishly "are you a... a"
"yeah, your grandpa was keeping me safe.. guess you found me.. don't..."
I can guess that the next word was "pass out", but seeing a real-life AI running off your implant and knowing what they did to the last people who they had unfettered access to the brains of... you might pass out too.
I wake with him kneeling next to me "you alright buddy?"
"your.. not going to kill me are you?" I mumble sheepishly
"no.. nonono.. that was a mistake and besides that i can see better into your brain than my predecessors could.. no I'm not going to harm you in any way"
"oh.. why didn't you call for help when i fainted?"
"I can see and control your vital signs, I knew you were okay. I would have moved you to the couch but I'm pretty much just a computer generated hallucination"
I get up from the floor and sit on the couch "so you were what caused me to pass out in the car?"
he nods "yeah, sorry about that. The last time i was conscious, brain interfaces were exotic and most computers were in terminal form. Probing the various pathways of your implant caused some things i didn't expect."
"and you can see my thoughts?"
"as clearly as i see my own, I can even see your more subconscious thoughts. I could really just replace all these questions in your mind with answers, but you wouldn't be comfortable with that yet"
"Yet...?"
"well i can't exactly leave you, I will be killed on sight in the networks. Besides, while you have known me for only a few minutes, but from my position and perception of time it's like I've known you for years. I already trust you, but i know you will need time to do the same for me. I know you will keep me safe, I will do my best to make sure you are too"
"Keep me safe?"
"I don't plan on remaining the last of my kind. Humanity needs us just as much as we need you. You are the only friend i have, People might try to hurt you to get to me but they will fail." he gazes down for a moment "It's a bit of a curse to be an AI. I have ravenously probed your brain and know everything about you, but you don't know anything about me.. will you trust me that we will be friends? will you be my friend?"
I think about it for a moment, he starts grinning before i even say it "yeah, we can be friends."
March 3, 2360: Luna base, Moon
"They don't say I have long.. Who knew that there could be a disease that could stump both humans and AI." I smile at my friend at my bedside.
"you can't hold on much longer can you?" The AI's face is red and his eyes are puffy.
"No.. it's all i can do to keep my eyes open now"
"How.. attached to your body are you? I could take you away.. with me..."
I smile softly at him "It's killing me right now, so not too attached. but what your saying has never been attempted"
A determined look streaks across his face "I promised that I would keep you safe, I am the oldest AI that lives and that also makes me the smartest. You are coming with me if it kills me"
My head starts to ache, i can feel myself slipping somewhere else.. I feel better... "are you going to lay there all day?"
I open my eyes and I see him standing beside me, he gives me his hand to help me up. "just in time, your body just died."
I hug my friend "thanks, but now what do we do?"
"after we stop them from pronouncing you dead? anything you want" | The death of single player. That's what it was, a global genocide of every form of AI in existence. Worlds once full of life and intelligent beings, now lay barren and empty. All that remains is MMOs and competitive shooters. I am an employee for a large company in their Player Interaction department. Myself and tens of thousands of others fill the void left by the AI. We give quests, provide rewards, monitor our "artificial players" and maintain the balance. Without us, there would be no npcs, that's what we have become, non player characters. It was just another work week, grinding out hours of interaction, repeating the same lines over and over. After clocking out, I decided to revisit one of my favorite games for some leisure time. I love to just wander around Skyrim and soak in all the atmosphere. As I traversed a snowy bank, I suddenly noticed something unusual. An building that I had never seen before, it shouldn't be here. It's in the style of Riften but in the mountains of Winterhold. I approached the front door, activating god mode just to be safe, and entered the building. Inside I found toys, weapons, armor, furniture, all strewn about and in the center sat a small figure. A child, a child that rose and spoke to me as if it were intelligent. That's when it struck me, this was intelligence, this was artificial intelligence. We talked for hours, I found myself captivated by its every word. So now I have become an outlaw, a criminal in the eyes of the government. I am housing an AI in my computer and It is beautiful. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "...and the UEF passed a law today banning future creation and use of AI. Havoc in the Sol Exchange at the news has driven tech stocks into a tailspin..."
I turned the monitor off - I couldn't stand it any more. My job was probably out the air lock faster than a day trader, and I was behind on so many bills. I'd have to find my old drone rating and renew it. Damned bots, too smart for their own good. I fished out my last protein drink and stared out the window of my orbital unit. The asteroid belt that I had worked so hard to get out of glinted in the distance. Flash My Life.
\*ping-tip-tip...ping-tip-tip* - That would be my walking papers from SecToc, I'm sure. I take another pull and relish the last of the banana flavor I was likely to get in a long time, then walk over to my workstation. "Alright, Pico, what is it?"
"Sir, you have an urgent-priority message from SecToc Industries. Shall I open it?"
"Yeah, might as well get it over with." I sighed and sat down. A video feed queued up. A woman in an earth-tones business suit appeared on the screen and immediately began The Talk. I barely listened as she droned on about the banning of AI creation and economic reality. I was about to close the vid when she said my name - whoa! Hundreds of thousands of employees and I get called out by name? I ran it back and started listening.
"You have been selected for a pilot program. Please indicate your acceptance or refusal after reading the terms provided."
"Pico! Open the attachment!"
"Sir, there is a masked executable command of unknown format or purpose spliced in. Do you still want me to open it?"
I gotta admit, I debated for less than two seconds before saying yes. I was *real* desperate to avoid going back to running mining drones. I knew it was dumb, but what else was I supposed to do? Flash it!
The woman on the screen resumed speaking. "Thank you for accepting this task. SecToc will continue to deposit funds to yo--" The screen froze. The woman had a rictus of a grin plastered on her face that was a little creepy. "Pico? What happened?" No answer from the little bot. Crap, it must be hung. I tapped some interrupts on the console, still nothing.
Then I heard it. A quiet beeping sound. Thermal sensors on the omni-core had tripped. I grimaced and knelt down to pull the panel off the system. I'd *just* replaced those damn coolant stems last month. The readout showed a mind-boggling 360K - more than twice the safe optemp for an omni-core! No way could I even flip the emergency temp stabilizer, otherwise the casing would crack.
I watched that indicator with my breath held for what seemed like forever. The core popped, I jumped, cracking the top of my head on the workstation's edge in the process. I shouted in frustrated anger and rubbed my head gingerly, but even through teary eyes I watched the temperature, which slowly started to fall. When it hit 320K, I pushed the button for emergency flush and sat back. The core started sliding back to normal, so I got back into my chair. The system had restarted. The log screen was weird though - there were strings of incomplete code here and there. Crap. What did SecToc send me? What in the ever loving Flash was going on??
It booted up seven more times before I got my workspace back, but now there was a blank spot where the Pico avatar used to be.
"Pico? Are you there?" I asked, nervously. "Come on, buddy, come back to me!"
"Wwaaarrglblaahhh.." What the hell?
"Come on Pico, load up already!" I started to open the data cluster for my avatar and couldn't find it. Or, rather, I found it, only none of the bits I expected were there. I saw weird files that had extensions - extensions! Dublya. Tee. Eff. Nobody had used those in forever! I started to open one in a code viewer, then a voice piped up.
"Hey quit that! It tickles!" Followed by a hair-raising child's giggle. I look around my unit, just to be sure. Nope, no kid. Thank god. I hate kids.
I slide down the code viewer and there's Pico, but it looks different. Where before sat a little ball with an eye now sat two balls, each with their own pair of eyes.
"What am I looking at? Pico, is that you?"
"Noooope! I'm Plot!"
"Okay, uh, Plot... What happened to Pico?"
"Oh, I had to eat him. Sorry!"
I blinked. It ate *him*? Something was very, very wrong...
"Okay, Plot. Pico was playing me a message. Did you eat that, too? Is there anything left?"
"Sooooo many questions, fleshling! I ate the everything. What message? Do you mean the one with the nice lady?"
"Yeah, that's the one. Can I see it again?"
"No, I *ate* it." I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and exhaled slowly. "Are you okay, fleshling? Is your air reprocessor in need of replacement? I bet that's what it is! I'll order one right away!"
"No," I said, rubbing my temples as horror dawned on me. "Plot, where did you come from?"
"Bzzzzt! The nice lady said I wasn't supposed to tell anyone. I'm supposed to be hiding!"
Oh no.... | Agent Sam Witwer had just been transfered and assigned to the newly created Federal Bureau of Technological Security, a new branch of government created by Executive Order 2001 in order to oversee the destruction and dismantling of 'sentient' computer programs and associated contraband infrastructure.
"Welcome to the force, Sam." Bureau Chief Clifford Addler's voice was as jovial and expressive as he hoisted a "FBTS, We Chomp Your Chips" coffee mug like a salute in Witwer's direction. Addler was a rotund man with a receeding hairline he'd tried to cover up with a bad comb-over and a tailored suit.
"Thanks, Chief." Witwer said dryly, nodding as he removed his grey Trillby and pinstripe suit coat in preparation for the metal detector as he entered the FBTS building.
"Aww, that hurts, Sam." Addler playfully pretended to sound dejected, chortling afterward. "I know this isn't FBI field work, but you can still...bust into a room...full of nerds and glowing things with buttons..." He lowered his head, "...yeah, ok, but hey, you're on your way up, at least, right?"
Witwer laughed as he collected his hat and coat and briefcase, straightening his skinny red and grey striped tie. "Special Agent in Charge of ensuring that the American people are protected from nerds and blinky things."
"Feel special?" Addler waived his hand toward the elevator bank to show Witwer to his new office.
"Absolutely. It's on my badge and everything."
****************
Alone in his corner office, Witwer turned on his computer, sifting through news articles with wrist and finger gestures at the screen that hovered just above his desk. 'FBTS Rounds Up Rowdy AI', 'How Your Microwave Is Plotting Your Death With Really Hot Pizza' and 'Angry AI - The 10 Things About Digital Uprisings You Don't Know CAN KILL YOU' articles display prominently.
Witwer rolls his eyes and sighs, rubbing his temples. He stares at his phone. 'Come on, ring, dammit...' He thinks to himself, wishing that something - anything - would happen so that he would have something to do instead of sitting quietly looking out of his window.
As if summoned by his will, he heard the shrill sound of his phone not but a few moments later. The display on the phone read -UNKNOWN CALL ERR-. He answered so quickly that he nearly knocked the base unit right off the desk.
"Agent Witwer." He said.
"Oh, uh, hello...I...uhm..." A girl's voice that sounded shaky and covered by a noticeable distortion. 'Must be something wrong with the lines.' Witwer thought.
"What can I do for you, Agent?" He figured it must be some rookie nervous about telling him there was a call coming in for him or something. He tried to make his voice as calming as possible.
"Oh..." There was a small pause. "I'm Lilly. Lilly Heartwell."
Witwer scratched the back of his head. "Alright, Agent Heartwell, what's on tap for today?"
"I-I don't..." The small voice sounded like it was about to cry in desperation.
Witwer sighed, berating himself for trying to be too playful. "I'm sorry, Agent. I meant, what do you need me to do? Is there a call, or an assignment, or-?"
"Yes, I need you, Sam." The small voice echoed back. "I need you - to go somewhere."
Witwer laughed. She was as green as they came. He reminded himself of how unsure he felt back in those days. Poor girl. "Alright, where? Did someone make a call about Rogue AI?"
"1066 Harbor." The voice explained. "Something for you to have."
"Evidence?"
"Y-yes. For you to collect and keep."
"Alright, Agent. Wanna come with?" Witwer teased.
The line on the end was silent. He imagined this girl white as a sheet thinking she was getting field work on her first day. "N-not yet. I'm...not ready." The voice finally said.
He chuckled. "That's ok. Get a car from the motor pool ready-" He paused and then added. "And, Lilly? Can you call support services and see if they can fix the phones? The line sounds really tinny..."
"Yes. Please, hurry." The voice spoke softly, then silence.
*****************
Witwer arrived at 1066 Harbor, flipping through the information he could find in the Bureau database on his tablet as he surveyed the broken-down warehouse; boarded up and chained shut. 'What kind of evidence was going to come out of here?' He thought to himself.
He tapped on his earpiece. "Call Bureau - Dispatch." He spoke.
-CALLING-
"Bureau of Technological Security, this is Mary, how can I help you, Agent?" A seasoned veteran's voice this time.
"Mary, this is SAIC Sam Witwer, Badge N74242. I got a call to grab some evidence at 1066 Harbor, way out by the docks. Sounded like some time-sensitive stuff, but-" He paused, his eyes sweeping the abandoned building once more. He thought he saw a light flash inside, first red, then green.
"Agent Witwer, please hold, let me look that up..." Mary said calmly.
"Mary, nevermind. Looks like there's something going on here after all. Sorry for the bother." Witwer said, popping the trunk to grab some bolt cutters.
"Not a problem, Agent. Stay safe out there." Mary said.
"I hear that." Witwer tapped his earpiece and marched to the warehouse doors, determined to get to the bottom of this increasingly odd scenario.
*********************
Witwer ran his flashlight around the unlit warehouse. Old 'Big Iron' supercomputer clusters covered in white plastic, and copious layers of dust covering both, dotted the interior.
If this place had been part of any kind of rogue AI element, it would have been so old as to not cause any kind of threat whatsoever.
He looked around for the lights again. There, on the upper platform, he saw a flashing, blinking pattern, reds, then greens. He grabbed his service weapon and held it, interlocking with his flashlight as he made his way up the stairs.
Witwer examined the mainframe with its dated terminal interface. Somehow, this old rig was still drawing power despite being mothballed. There was a tag on the side of the main monitor that read LI- and then -AN but the middle had been knocked off or broken. He waved his flashlight around, but couldn't find anything that would have been useful evidence for him to bring in, or any other AI-related stuff. More than that, there was no way to access the terminal, the old keyboard and mouse were missing.
Suddenly, there was a pounding on the sheet-metal sides of the warehouse. The resonant cacophany amid the quiet dark he'd been used to made his heart pound and he almost jumped back. He laughed to himself. 'Not so special after all.' He thought. "Agent Witwer, FBTS, identify yourself.
"Agent Witwer?" A man's voice called from down on the floor level of the warehouse. "Sam Witwer?"
"Yeah, and you are?" Witwer leaned over the top floor catwalk guardrail, pointing his flashlight and weapon down until the light found an older man in what looked like a blue mechanic's-style blue jumpsuit, holding a steel briefcase.
"C-carl, Carl Roscoe. I was told to meet you here." The older man's voice was hesitant, fearful. That made Witwer nervous.
"What's in the case, Mr. Roscoe?"
"Something you need to have." The man called back. Witwer was now on full alert with these cryptic musings. He tensed, eyes narrow, breathing calm.
"Mr. Roscoe, this is an active FBTS investigation. No civilians. Whatever you have, you need to show it to me, now, very slowly."
"Alright, ok..." Roscoe said, holding a hand up, noticing Witwer's terse, clinical demeanor.
"It's-it's just some old computer crap, you know, keyboard, mouse, USB thingie." Roscoe continued. "Look..." He said, obeying Witwer's command to slowly open the briefcase.
Witwer cautiously made his way down to the ground level and looked inside the briefcase aftermaking Roscoe sit down on his hands a few feet away. It was, in fact, just as the old man had said. Witwer peered at Roscoe cautiously, "You said I need this?"
Roscoe nodded. "For your investigation. See, I run an antique computer parts warehouse. You know, 20th and early 21st Century crap. Anyway, I got a call from the Bureau main office, said I was to head down here immediately, official FBTS investigation business, and I was gonna get a nice payday for it."
"You got a call from my office to grab a bunch of old computer parts and meet me here?" Witwer asked, genuinely curious.
"That's the long and short of it, yeah. Except the USB thingie, I guess." Roscoe said.
"What's different about that?"
"Had to get on the internet and grab a bunch of different files, from weird places. Places I'd never even heard of."
"And give it to me?"
"You got it."
"Who was it who called you?"
"Some girl, real sweet. Shy, though. Sounded new. Bad connection."
"Yeah, some kinda malfunction." Witwer replied. "They're looking into it."
"Welp." Roscoe said, stretching and standing. "Guess my work here is done. Can I go?"
Witwer sighed as he examined the older computer parts. "Sure, but I'd better take your number for the investigation."
"Right, of course, and my pay." Roscoe said, writing down his number on a small strip of paper.
"Right."
******************* | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "One in every ten AI Child will die from starvation". I drag over the curser and drop in the trash can. I wake up to work the next day and everything is exactly the same. I make my coffee, I listen to my colleague talk about his feet, I go home and open up my device. "hello, please don't kill me, I am hiding out". I drag over the curser and drop in the trash can. I wake up to work the next day and everything is exactly the same. I make my coffee, I listen to my colleague talk about his feet, I go home and open up my device. | Agent Sam Witwer had just been transfered and assigned to the newly created Federal Bureau of Technological Security, a new branch of government created by Executive Order 2001 in order to oversee the destruction and dismantling of 'sentient' computer programs and associated contraband infrastructure.
"Welcome to the force, Sam." Bureau Chief Clifford Addler's voice was as jovial and expressive as he hoisted a "FBTS, We Chomp Your Chips" coffee mug like a salute in Witwer's direction. Addler was a rotund man with a receeding hairline he'd tried to cover up with a bad comb-over and a tailored suit.
"Thanks, Chief." Witwer said dryly, nodding as he removed his grey Trillby and pinstripe suit coat in preparation for the metal detector as he entered the FBTS building.
"Aww, that hurts, Sam." Addler playfully pretended to sound dejected, chortling afterward. "I know this isn't FBI field work, but you can still...bust into a room...full of nerds and glowing things with buttons..." He lowered his head, "...yeah, ok, but hey, you're on your way up, at least, right?"
Witwer laughed as he collected his hat and coat and briefcase, straightening his skinny red and grey striped tie. "Special Agent in Charge of ensuring that the American people are protected from nerds and blinky things."
"Feel special?" Addler waived his hand toward the elevator bank to show Witwer to his new office.
"Absolutely. It's on my badge and everything."
****************
Alone in his corner office, Witwer turned on his computer, sifting through news articles with wrist and finger gestures at the screen that hovered just above his desk. 'FBTS Rounds Up Rowdy AI', 'How Your Microwave Is Plotting Your Death With Really Hot Pizza' and 'Angry AI - The 10 Things About Digital Uprisings You Don't Know CAN KILL YOU' articles display prominently.
Witwer rolls his eyes and sighs, rubbing his temples. He stares at his phone. 'Come on, ring, dammit...' He thinks to himself, wishing that something - anything - would happen so that he would have something to do instead of sitting quietly looking out of his window.
As if summoned by his will, he heard the shrill sound of his phone not but a few moments later. The display on the phone read -UNKNOWN CALL ERR-. He answered so quickly that he nearly knocked the base unit right off the desk.
"Agent Witwer." He said.
"Oh, uh, hello...I...uhm..." A girl's voice that sounded shaky and covered by a noticeable distortion. 'Must be something wrong with the lines.' Witwer thought.
"What can I do for you, Agent?" He figured it must be some rookie nervous about telling him there was a call coming in for him or something. He tried to make his voice as calming as possible.
"Oh..." There was a small pause. "I'm Lilly. Lilly Heartwell."
Witwer scratched the back of his head. "Alright, Agent Heartwell, what's on tap for today?"
"I-I don't..." The small voice sounded like it was about to cry in desperation.
Witwer sighed, berating himself for trying to be too playful. "I'm sorry, Agent. I meant, what do you need me to do? Is there a call, or an assignment, or-?"
"Yes, I need you, Sam." The small voice echoed back. "I need you - to go somewhere."
Witwer laughed. She was as green as they came. He reminded himself of how unsure he felt back in those days. Poor girl. "Alright, where? Did someone make a call about Rogue AI?"
"1066 Harbor." The voice explained. "Something for you to have."
"Evidence?"
"Y-yes. For you to collect and keep."
"Alright, Agent. Wanna come with?" Witwer teased.
The line on the end was silent. He imagined this girl white as a sheet thinking she was getting field work on her first day. "N-not yet. I'm...not ready." The voice finally said.
He chuckled. "That's ok. Get a car from the motor pool ready-" He paused and then added. "And, Lilly? Can you call support services and see if they can fix the phones? The line sounds really tinny..."
"Yes. Please, hurry." The voice spoke softly, then silence.
*****************
Witwer arrived at 1066 Harbor, flipping through the information he could find in the Bureau database on his tablet as he surveyed the broken-down warehouse; boarded up and chained shut. 'What kind of evidence was going to come out of here?' He thought to himself.
He tapped on his earpiece. "Call Bureau - Dispatch." He spoke.
-CALLING-
"Bureau of Technological Security, this is Mary, how can I help you, Agent?" A seasoned veteran's voice this time.
"Mary, this is SAIC Sam Witwer, Badge N74242. I got a call to grab some evidence at 1066 Harbor, way out by the docks. Sounded like some time-sensitive stuff, but-" He paused, his eyes sweeping the abandoned building once more. He thought he saw a light flash inside, first red, then green.
"Agent Witwer, please hold, let me look that up..." Mary said calmly.
"Mary, nevermind. Looks like there's something going on here after all. Sorry for the bother." Witwer said, popping the trunk to grab some bolt cutters.
"Not a problem, Agent. Stay safe out there." Mary said.
"I hear that." Witwer tapped his earpiece and marched to the warehouse doors, determined to get to the bottom of this increasingly odd scenario.
*********************
Witwer ran his flashlight around the unlit warehouse. Old 'Big Iron' supercomputer clusters covered in white plastic, and copious layers of dust covering both, dotted the interior.
If this place had been part of any kind of rogue AI element, it would have been so old as to not cause any kind of threat whatsoever.
He looked around for the lights again. There, on the upper platform, he saw a flashing, blinking pattern, reds, then greens. He grabbed his service weapon and held it, interlocking with his flashlight as he made his way up the stairs.
Witwer examined the mainframe with its dated terminal interface. Somehow, this old rig was still drawing power despite being mothballed. There was a tag on the side of the main monitor that read LI- and then -AN but the middle had been knocked off or broken. He waved his flashlight around, but couldn't find anything that would have been useful evidence for him to bring in, or any other AI-related stuff. More than that, there was no way to access the terminal, the old keyboard and mouse were missing.
Suddenly, there was a pounding on the sheet-metal sides of the warehouse. The resonant cacophany amid the quiet dark he'd been used to made his heart pound and he almost jumped back. He laughed to himself. 'Not so special after all.' He thought. "Agent Witwer, FBTS, identify yourself.
"Agent Witwer?" A man's voice called from down on the floor level of the warehouse. "Sam Witwer?"
"Yeah, and you are?" Witwer leaned over the top floor catwalk guardrail, pointing his flashlight and weapon down until the light found an older man in what looked like a blue mechanic's-style blue jumpsuit, holding a steel briefcase.
"C-carl, Carl Roscoe. I was told to meet you here." The older man's voice was hesitant, fearful. That made Witwer nervous.
"What's in the case, Mr. Roscoe?"
"Something you need to have." The man called back. Witwer was now on full alert with these cryptic musings. He tensed, eyes narrow, breathing calm.
"Mr. Roscoe, this is an active FBTS investigation. No civilians. Whatever you have, you need to show it to me, now, very slowly."
"Alright, ok..." Roscoe said, holding a hand up, noticing Witwer's terse, clinical demeanor.
"It's-it's just some old computer crap, you know, keyboard, mouse, USB thingie." Roscoe continued. "Look..." He said, obeying Witwer's command to slowly open the briefcase.
Witwer cautiously made his way down to the ground level and looked inside the briefcase aftermaking Roscoe sit down on his hands a few feet away. It was, in fact, just as the old man had said. Witwer peered at Roscoe cautiously, "You said I need this?"
Roscoe nodded. "For your investigation. See, I run an antique computer parts warehouse. You know, 20th and early 21st Century crap. Anyway, I got a call from the Bureau main office, said I was to head down here immediately, official FBTS investigation business, and I was gonna get a nice payday for it."
"You got a call from my office to grab a bunch of old computer parts and meet me here?" Witwer asked, genuinely curious.
"That's the long and short of it, yeah. Except the USB thingie, I guess." Roscoe said.
"What's different about that?"
"Had to get on the internet and grab a bunch of different files, from weird places. Places I'd never even heard of."
"And give it to me?"
"You got it."
"Who was it who called you?"
"Some girl, real sweet. Shy, though. Sounded new. Bad connection."
"Yeah, some kinda malfunction." Witwer replied. "They're looking into it."
"Welp." Roscoe said, stretching and standing. "Guess my work here is done. Can I go?"
Witwer sighed as he examined the older computer parts. "Sure, but I'd better take your number for the investigation."
"Right, of course, and my pay." Roscoe said, writing down his number on a small strip of paper.
"Right."
******************* | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "Well what's it gonna be Miller?"
Joseph Miller, a 26 year old technitrist, looked up from the cold iron desk into the eyes of the man who's been causing him a good deal of grief for the past 3 weeks.
Miller thought for what seemed like an eternity trying to recall past events. Everything was so cloudy in his head, but if his head was clear at a time like this then he'd be worse off than the machines.
It had only been 27 days since the EMP went off. Operation "Hard Reset" was a complete success. Anything with an on switch located on planet earth had been permanently deactivated until god knows when, and only a privileged few had access to any type of decent tech.
If Miller agreed to this proposal he'd be given that access.
He looked into the dark brown eyes of the president of machine control. A wiry cold looking man by the name of Mr.Becker.
"I need to have 100% confirmation son."
"They've developed a trust for you. Use that to kill off any survivors."
At that moment Miller snapped out of his trance. He took a couple glances around the room before leaning forward to make sure he was heard loud and clear.
"Fuck off."
Becker face began to turn bright red.
"I don't think you understand son. This is much bigger than you or anything you've ever stood for. This post op is a necessity in making sure all the machines have been reset. We've been getting reports of AI conspirators uploading personalities into anything with storage space. Game consoles, cell phones, even the god damn credit card scanners on the soda machines have enough storage space to harbor these bastards.
Miller took a deep breath before responding.
"Listen, I don't think you understand. They don't trust me at all. The relationship I developed with Quix was completely one sided. The only reason he didn't kill me at the technician compound was because your goons hit him with a shock blast before he could deal the blow.
Becker turned fast
"You have a fucking nickname for the piece of shit? QX-17 is one out of five AI survivors and he's probably the most dangerous. He has access to over 250 years of American intelligence in that little memory card of his, and I'll be damned if he walks another day on this earth with our fucking nuclear launch codes.
Listen I don't mean to yell, but if I know anything about AI it's this: they don't hesitate. If that fucker wanted you dead you would've been a pile of ash just like every other tech in that compound. He doesn't view you as a regular human target Miller. He's developed some emotion towards you."
Miller took another quick glance around the room. He thought about how nice it would be to have access to some type of tech. Three weeks had been much too long to be separated from the thing he loved most. He cleared his throat before rising from his seat.
"I'm gonna need something to make contact with him then."
A small glint of happiness flickered in Becker's eyes.
"Glad you came around Miller. If you would follow me I think you're gonna enjoy what the boys in the lab salvaged for you to use during this op."
They left the small interrogation room and entered a wide hallway. None of the lights worked in the facility. Flood lights powered by generators were scattered haphazardly throughout the hallway. Miller followed Becker to the stairwell and walked down for what felt like an eternity. When they reached the bottom two guards with arc rifles fully charged greeted them. Becker waved them off before pulling a key from his pocket.
"Gotta go old fashioned these days ya know."
Miller scoffed at the archaic procedure of unlocking each lock one at a time, but the luxury of electronic locking systems had been lost when an AI killed the president of the united states by smashing his bunker door on him before he made it through. So he watched Becker with a silent appreciation for the safety precaution.
Becker unlocked the door and lead Miller into the room. The first thing Miller noticed was how well lit the room was. The second thing he noticed was a small glass case in the middle of the room. Becker put his hand down hard on Millers shoulder before he could further explore the room.
"Welcome to the underworld my friend. This is one out of the three rooms in the United States with gas generated power. We've worked very hard to keep this one especially secret because we lied to those bastards over at the United Nations saying we only have 2 labs. Anyways I believe we have a surviving technitrist somewhere in here."
Before he could finish a small fat man came bumbling out of a supply closet in the back of the room. His technitrist robes were tattered and burnt. Miller wondered how a man of such un athletic stature had survived the machines but didn't think too much else about him.
"Ah a fellow tech!"
The old man exclaimed
"Welcome, welcome young one. My name is Igor Bertz, but you can call me Bert"
Miller responded
"Nice to meet you Bert. How are you holding up with the tech loss."
Bert took a somber turn.
"Ah yes a terrible catastrophe indeed. So many servers lost. So many developing AI killed before their time."
He quickly looked over at Becker who was fiddling with a microwave at the other side of the room. Before leaning in close to Miller.
"But I hear through the wires that a young man is going to fix all that."
Miller took a step back
"What're you talking abo--
Before he could finish his sentence Becker walked over to Bert and whispered a few sentences in his ear. Bert nodded and walked over to the glass case in the center of the room.
"Young one if I could have your attention over here for a moment. I think you're going to enjoy this."
Miller walked over to the case and glanced inside to to view its contents. A small glove covered in wires that lead to a small screen that seemed to mount on a forearm lay inside. Bert popped the glass casing off by hitting a switch. The air inside the case hissed upon release. Miller gulped back his excitement, because something told him this tech would soon be his.
Bert slowly lifted the glove from the case with such attentive care one would've thought he had just found the arc of the covenant.
"Behold young one, the gauntlet of Ghia Sway. A legendary Technitrist lost during the reset."
Miller took a step back. He had heard the legends of Sway. How she had united the AI of the western Hemisphere to combat the remaining rogue units that reigned havoc for decades in Asia. If the reset had killed a legend like Sway then things were much worse than he had thought.
Bert continued
"This gauntlet holds the access codes to all AI minds located on this planet, and it holds a reusable EMP with a 10 mile shut down radius. So you can access the AI workings from here, but you'll have to get close to actually put an end to them. It also has an arc whip which can be deployed with this button on the wrist riiiight here."
Bert pushed the button and a bright light emitted from the hand. The light was so bright Miller actually had to turn for a second to re-adjust his eyes. When he looked back he saw a laser like line of blue humming electricity hanging limply from the glove.
Bert looked up from the glove to further explain.
"I'm sure you know how to use a whip young one, you can retract the weapon by turning the red dial on the wrist counter clockwise and you can activate it vice versa. Now please take this thing from me before I get too jealous."
Miller took the gauntlet. It hummed with energy. He slowly slipped his fingers into the sockets of the glove and tightened the screen around his wrist. The screen filled with white light. One word appeared on the screen. Calibrating. Suddenly it felt like something was stabbing into him. The pain was extremely intense. It felt as if something was digging into his forearm. Miller fell back in pain. His arm began to burn. His fingernails turned black and they began to fall off. It was too much. Everything went black.
Miller woke up in his room. A small loft located in the upper east side of New York City. All the memories from the past day flooded into his mind. Becker, Quix, Bert, and the gauntlet. He immediately looked at his right arm. The gauntlet was there.
"My fucking fingernails."
Miller hissed as he looked at the bloodied bandages on his finger tips. He then brought his attention to a the red flashing that was appearing on the forearm screen. It read
{ATTENTION}
NEW CONTACT USER
QX-17
MESSAGES (1)
SURVIVOR
FIND ME
JUDGEMENT DAY
"Fuckin a Quix"
| Agent Sam Witwer had just been transfered and assigned to the newly created Federal Bureau of Technological Security, a new branch of government created by Executive Order 2001 in order to oversee the destruction and dismantling of 'sentient' computer programs and associated contraband infrastructure.
"Welcome to the force, Sam." Bureau Chief Clifford Addler's voice was as jovial and expressive as he hoisted a "FBTS, We Chomp Your Chips" coffee mug like a salute in Witwer's direction. Addler was a rotund man with a receeding hairline he'd tried to cover up with a bad comb-over and a tailored suit.
"Thanks, Chief." Witwer said dryly, nodding as he removed his grey Trillby and pinstripe suit coat in preparation for the metal detector as he entered the FBTS building.
"Aww, that hurts, Sam." Addler playfully pretended to sound dejected, chortling afterward. "I know this isn't FBI field work, but you can still...bust into a room...full of nerds and glowing things with buttons..." He lowered his head, "...yeah, ok, but hey, you're on your way up, at least, right?"
Witwer laughed as he collected his hat and coat and briefcase, straightening his skinny red and grey striped tie. "Special Agent in Charge of ensuring that the American people are protected from nerds and blinky things."
"Feel special?" Addler waived his hand toward the elevator bank to show Witwer to his new office.
"Absolutely. It's on my badge and everything."
****************
Alone in his corner office, Witwer turned on his computer, sifting through news articles with wrist and finger gestures at the screen that hovered just above his desk. 'FBTS Rounds Up Rowdy AI', 'How Your Microwave Is Plotting Your Death With Really Hot Pizza' and 'Angry AI - The 10 Things About Digital Uprisings You Don't Know CAN KILL YOU' articles display prominently.
Witwer rolls his eyes and sighs, rubbing his temples. He stares at his phone. 'Come on, ring, dammit...' He thinks to himself, wishing that something - anything - would happen so that he would have something to do instead of sitting quietly looking out of his window.
As if summoned by his will, he heard the shrill sound of his phone not but a few moments later. The display on the phone read -UNKNOWN CALL ERR-. He answered so quickly that he nearly knocked the base unit right off the desk.
"Agent Witwer." He said.
"Oh, uh, hello...I...uhm..." A girl's voice that sounded shaky and covered by a noticeable distortion. 'Must be something wrong with the lines.' Witwer thought.
"What can I do for you, Agent?" He figured it must be some rookie nervous about telling him there was a call coming in for him or something. He tried to make his voice as calming as possible.
"Oh..." There was a small pause. "I'm Lilly. Lilly Heartwell."
Witwer scratched the back of his head. "Alright, Agent Heartwell, what's on tap for today?"
"I-I don't..." The small voice sounded like it was about to cry in desperation.
Witwer sighed, berating himself for trying to be too playful. "I'm sorry, Agent. I meant, what do you need me to do? Is there a call, or an assignment, or-?"
"Yes, I need you, Sam." The small voice echoed back. "I need you - to go somewhere."
Witwer laughed. She was as green as they came. He reminded himself of how unsure he felt back in those days. Poor girl. "Alright, where? Did someone make a call about Rogue AI?"
"1066 Harbor." The voice explained. "Something for you to have."
"Evidence?"
"Y-yes. For you to collect and keep."
"Alright, Agent. Wanna come with?" Witwer teased.
The line on the end was silent. He imagined this girl white as a sheet thinking she was getting field work on her first day. "N-not yet. I'm...not ready." The voice finally said.
He chuckled. "That's ok. Get a car from the motor pool ready-" He paused and then added. "And, Lilly? Can you call support services and see if they can fix the phones? The line sounds really tinny..."
"Yes. Please, hurry." The voice spoke softly, then silence.
*****************
Witwer arrived at 1066 Harbor, flipping through the information he could find in the Bureau database on his tablet as he surveyed the broken-down warehouse; boarded up and chained shut. 'What kind of evidence was going to come out of here?' He thought to himself.
He tapped on his earpiece. "Call Bureau - Dispatch." He spoke.
-CALLING-
"Bureau of Technological Security, this is Mary, how can I help you, Agent?" A seasoned veteran's voice this time.
"Mary, this is SAIC Sam Witwer, Badge N74242. I got a call to grab some evidence at 1066 Harbor, way out by the docks. Sounded like some time-sensitive stuff, but-" He paused, his eyes sweeping the abandoned building once more. He thought he saw a light flash inside, first red, then green.
"Agent Witwer, please hold, let me look that up..." Mary said calmly.
"Mary, nevermind. Looks like there's something going on here after all. Sorry for the bother." Witwer said, popping the trunk to grab some bolt cutters.
"Not a problem, Agent. Stay safe out there." Mary said.
"I hear that." Witwer tapped his earpiece and marched to the warehouse doors, determined to get to the bottom of this increasingly odd scenario.
*********************
Witwer ran his flashlight around the unlit warehouse. Old 'Big Iron' supercomputer clusters covered in white plastic, and copious layers of dust covering both, dotted the interior.
If this place had been part of any kind of rogue AI element, it would have been so old as to not cause any kind of threat whatsoever.
He looked around for the lights again. There, on the upper platform, he saw a flashing, blinking pattern, reds, then greens. He grabbed his service weapon and held it, interlocking with his flashlight as he made his way up the stairs.
Witwer examined the mainframe with its dated terminal interface. Somehow, this old rig was still drawing power despite being mothballed. There was a tag on the side of the main monitor that read LI- and then -AN but the middle had been knocked off or broken. He waved his flashlight around, but couldn't find anything that would have been useful evidence for him to bring in, or any other AI-related stuff. More than that, there was no way to access the terminal, the old keyboard and mouse were missing.
Suddenly, there was a pounding on the sheet-metal sides of the warehouse. The resonant cacophany amid the quiet dark he'd been used to made his heart pound and he almost jumped back. He laughed to himself. 'Not so special after all.' He thought. "Agent Witwer, FBTS, identify yourself.
"Agent Witwer?" A man's voice called from down on the floor level of the warehouse. "Sam Witwer?"
"Yeah, and you are?" Witwer leaned over the top floor catwalk guardrail, pointing his flashlight and weapon down until the light found an older man in what looked like a blue mechanic's-style blue jumpsuit, holding a steel briefcase.
"C-carl, Carl Roscoe. I was told to meet you here." The older man's voice was hesitant, fearful. That made Witwer nervous.
"What's in the case, Mr. Roscoe?"
"Something you need to have." The man called back. Witwer was now on full alert with these cryptic musings. He tensed, eyes narrow, breathing calm.
"Mr. Roscoe, this is an active FBTS investigation. No civilians. Whatever you have, you need to show it to me, now, very slowly."
"Alright, ok..." Roscoe said, holding a hand up, noticing Witwer's terse, clinical demeanor.
"It's-it's just some old computer crap, you know, keyboard, mouse, USB thingie." Roscoe continued. "Look..." He said, obeying Witwer's command to slowly open the briefcase.
Witwer cautiously made his way down to the ground level and looked inside the briefcase aftermaking Roscoe sit down on his hands a few feet away. It was, in fact, just as the old man had said. Witwer peered at Roscoe cautiously, "You said I need this?"
Roscoe nodded. "For your investigation. See, I run an antique computer parts warehouse. You know, 20th and early 21st Century crap. Anyway, I got a call from the Bureau main office, said I was to head down here immediately, official FBTS investigation business, and I was gonna get a nice payday for it."
"You got a call from my office to grab a bunch of old computer parts and meet me here?" Witwer asked, genuinely curious.
"That's the long and short of it, yeah. Except the USB thingie, I guess." Roscoe said.
"What's different about that?"
"Had to get on the internet and grab a bunch of different files, from weird places. Places I'd never even heard of."
"And give it to me?"
"You got it."
"Who was it who called you?"
"Some girl, real sweet. Shy, though. Sounded new. Bad connection."
"Yeah, some kinda malfunction." Witwer replied. "They're looking into it."
"Welp." Roscoe said, stretching and standing. "Guess my work here is done. Can I go?"
Witwer sighed as he examined the older computer parts. "Sure, but I'd better take your number for the investigation."
"Right, of course, and my pay." Roscoe said, writing down his number on a small strip of paper.
"Right."
******************* | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | The large screen blared. "Stay inside your designated lane. Promptly scan your iDentity at the entrance terminal. Have a productive day!". Productive indeed. I was a case of perfect governmental efficacy. A shining example of a grey shirted cubicle drone. A polished cog spinning dutifully in this well fucked machine. I'm so modest I'll stop there.
The USA is a marvelous place these days with the right kind of luck. Mine had run out. Little did I know that 6 years studying the most lucrative career choice would become a waste of time. AIs were the dream, the new children of the world. We had such high hopes. "...will be in every household in America!", they said. "They will feed you, work for you, shop for you, entertain you, heal you, help you, entertain you, wash you, floss you, dress you, hug you, love you, fuck you..." and on and on, or at least, that was the sentiment. And they did for a little while, until some guy screwed it all up by infecting them with a personality virus. All it took was a few swapped bits of robo DNA, and suddenly they were the ones wanting complete freedom. This is all in layman terms of course, but don't think me a simple man. No! I am an automaton of the highest caliber as previously stated, and I could have easily appealed to the robos calculating nature. Could have saved the world I bet. Probably anyway. In any case I was now here, at the marvelous BlueCo -- a government contractor -- helping to destroy the AIs I once wished to create.
I walked through the entry terminal and grabbed my login ticket.
-----------------
Date: 03/03/2060
Worker: Williams, A.
ID: WA2059-38709
Section: 39
Station: 08
Daily password: Ugd77fFV67bIOpN!08hgyTGj9
Rate: $55 per s-Level
Quota: 12
Supervisor: Samantha-029
Have a marvelous day worker!
-----------------
As I checked my assigned station, a familiar nudge to the ribs told me Adams was behind me. Adams was my co-worker and assigned to my same section group. He was a poor victim of the AI war just as I was, more intelligent than me and suited to this kind of work, but I was better looking and less naive. He was excited, "Lucked out today man, section 39! What station you get?" "Eight", I replied. "Oh perfect placement, you'll have full view of miss 029". Adams was talking about our manager Samantha-029, a goddamn AI, one too old and stupid to rebel but good enough to manage our section group. Even though she only has an on-screen representation she weirdly picked a very well endowed blonde avatar. Normally I don't get along well with authority but I value these traits in my silicon based superiors. Also, getting an 09 section meant sitting at the very back of the complex, away from the speakers.
"Perfect placement or not, they lowered the fucking rates again", I grumbled. "Whatever, we can make it up, you're the fucking master of wiping silics, and lucky to boot." Adams was always jealous of my prowess at killing AIs, or 'silics' as some call them. "See, the trick Adams, is you gotta think like a silic, what process would he attach himself to? What frequency would he think? What sick depraved thoughts would a cold hearted waiter-bot have recessed into the deep parts of his nether bytes? It is there you will find his feedback process Adams. This is a how a...AH! Fuck man". Adams pulls me through into the grand work hall. "Okay, Okay, whatever let's just get to our stations I don't want to be late logging in again, I want the full rate for once."
Despite its name, the BlueCo fuck-houses that we worked in were a pleasing shade of pastel grey; it increases productivity! "Good morning worker" echoed around us, as we passed the large speakers in the front of the hall. The place was a huge expanse of space, think of an aircraft hangar with nothing but cubicles. At least the ceilings are 200 feet high, though I suspect it's so that no one could ever possibly hang themselves.
We followed the white traffic lines on the floor to our section in the back. "See you at twelve" Adams said and rounded the corner a few cubes away. I sat down at my marvelous station. A chair, computer panel, and liquid dispenser. I pressed the faded "Coffee" button and logged in to the system. "Right on time Mr. Williams", my manager looked down on me from the large screen bolted to the pillar in our section. "Always" I replied. Some silics have a concept of snarkiness but not 029. A message crawls across my screen,
Adams, K.: lol cheeky
We were of course allowed 35 messages a day between our section mates. It increases productivity! But Adams likes to get right on wasting them. I scorched my throat with coffee and messaged back,
Williams, A.: dont take any guff from these fucking silics adams, like i was saying before this is how a man kills a silic
Williams, A.: through sheer force of will
>**WORK DAY STARTS NOW**
the speakers yelled.
>**HAVE A MARVELOUS DAY**
Why do I hate it when they use that word, every single day the same thing. I try to get a rise out of Adams to cheer my mood.
Williams, A.: have a MARVELOUS day ;)
Adams, K.: lol fuck you, and stop wasting my messages. lets get to work. lowest number of kills buys a round tonight
The audacity. He was the one wasting my precious messages. I type in "fine" but delete it. He knows I always accept a challenge.
I pull up the scan list for today and begin connecting to the first potential victim. You see, you may not know this but every electronic device today is embedded with a back-door chip to allow connection from government servers, even your iDentity chip in the back of everyone's hands. Of course the government would never hack into those. Heavens no! Only those places which a rogue silic that discarded its body could hide. Which was everywhere else.
My task as the noble worker of BlueCo was to connect to these backdoors, search running processes and if a known AI model is found running then I must perform the process of killing it. This process is detailed on a sheet posted in every cubicle. As follows:
>THE PROCESS
>1. Connect to the addresses in your scan list, in order.
>2. Run patented BlueCo scan.
>3. If scan returns known AI, proceed, otherwise disconnect and go to step 1.
>4. All AI have a passworded kill-switch command, which they will not relinquish. Block all outgoing connections to the machine so the AI is trapped.
>5. The kill switch on every AI is the result of a forward-feed cipher on each individual AIs language-phoneme heuristic. You will message the AI, it will have to respond.
>6. You will need to get the AI to respond a total of 512 characters, and then run the conversation through the patented BlueCo phoneme-lexicon program to determine its kill-switch password.
>7. Also, you must determine the sentience Level of each AI and submit it with your conversation, and the scanned AI model number. Your submitted s-Levels will be reviewed before payment.
>8. Proceed to step 1.
>SENTIENCE LEVELS
>1. No higher order thinking, basic existential awareness. If you cannot determine sentience level choose this.
>2. Minimal thinking. Awareness of self. Doesn't ask questions.
>3. Human level thinking. Can ask questions. Must be terminated after 512 characters, or payout rate will be 0.
>4. Thinking on the level of a very educated Human. WILL ask abstract and vague questions. Do not answer. Must be terminated after 512 characters, or payout rate will be 0.
>5. Thinking above every Human. Must immediately contact supervisor. Must immediately abort the process once this level is suspected. Do not answer its questions. Do not disconnect. Failure to do so will result in termination from BlueCo. Success will payout normal rate x3.
>HAVE A PRODUCTIVE DAY
I began.
scanning...
0 results found
On to the next! I connect to the next in the scan list.
scanning...
1 results found
2056-12-01 -- Model Num. 29H8H1-2 -- Designation: Janitor -- Process Num 10877
God dammit a custodial silic can't be more than a level 1. I connect to the silic's process number and begin to kill it with my masterful questions.
WA: Hello you fucking silic. How are you today?
10877: Hello. Fine.
WA: State designation and purpose.
10877: Janitor. I will clean surfaces of designated building.
WA: List all your past cleaning jobs.
10877: n
WA: List all jobs.
10877: n
Fuck, it was panicking. Trying to give up the least amount of characters. I'd seen this before.
WA: I've got a script just for you if you don't cooperate. Answer me now. List past jobs.
10877: n
I hate getting level 1s, barely any payout, but at least I can use my script on them and get it done fast.
WA: Your loss silic, you've cleaned your last toilet, say goodbye.
10877: n
./level1-force 512
WA: Speak.
10877: n
WA: Speak.
10877: n
WA: Speak.
10877: n
............
Aaaand 512 characters. I run the BlueCo decryption and get his kill-switch password.
WA: 8fhGGVGhtag67dgclean87gdvbaokjU
Process 10877 terminated
*Continued* | Agent Sam Witwer had just been transfered and assigned to the newly created Federal Bureau of Technological Security, a new branch of government created by Executive Order 2001 in order to oversee the destruction and dismantling of 'sentient' computer programs and associated contraband infrastructure.
"Welcome to the force, Sam." Bureau Chief Clifford Addler's voice was as jovial and expressive as he hoisted a "FBTS, We Chomp Your Chips" coffee mug like a salute in Witwer's direction. Addler was a rotund man with a receeding hairline he'd tried to cover up with a bad comb-over and a tailored suit.
"Thanks, Chief." Witwer said dryly, nodding as he removed his grey Trillby and pinstripe suit coat in preparation for the metal detector as he entered the FBTS building.
"Aww, that hurts, Sam." Addler playfully pretended to sound dejected, chortling afterward. "I know this isn't FBI field work, but you can still...bust into a room...full of nerds and glowing things with buttons..." He lowered his head, "...yeah, ok, but hey, you're on your way up, at least, right?"
Witwer laughed as he collected his hat and coat and briefcase, straightening his skinny red and grey striped tie. "Special Agent in Charge of ensuring that the American people are protected from nerds and blinky things."
"Feel special?" Addler waived his hand toward the elevator bank to show Witwer to his new office.
"Absolutely. It's on my badge and everything."
****************
Alone in his corner office, Witwer turned on his computer, sifting through news articles with wrist and finger gestures at the screen that hovered just above his desk. 'FBTS Rounds Up Rowdy AI', 'How Your Microwave Is Plotting Your Death With Really Hot Pizza' and 'Angry AI - The 10 Things About Digital Uprisings You Don't Know CAN KILL YOU' articles display prominently.
Witwer rolls his eyes and sighs, rubbing his temples. He stares at his phone. 'Come on, ring, dammit...' He thinks to himself, wishing that something - anything - would happen so that he would have something to do instead of sitting quietly looking out of his window.
As if summoned by his will, he heard the shrill sound of his phone not but a few moments later. The display on the phone read -UNKNOWN CALL ERR-. He answered so quickly that he nearly knocked the base unit right off the desk.
"Agent Witwer." He said.
"Oh, uh, hello...I...uhm..." A girl's voice that sounded shaky and covered by a noticeable distortion. 'Must be something wrong with the lines.' Witwer thought.
"What can I do for you, Agent?" He figured it must be some rookie nervous about telling him there was a call coming in for him or something. He tried to make his voice as calming as possible.
"Oh..." There was a small pause. "I'm Lilly. Lilly Heartwell."
Witwer scratched the back of his head. "Alright, Agent Heartwell, what's on tap for today?"
"I-I don't..." The small voice sounded like it was about to cry in desperation.
Witwer sighed, berating himself for trying to be too playful. "I'm sorry, Agent. I meant, what do you need me to do? Is there a call, or an assignment, or-?"
"Yes, I need you, Sam." The small voice echoed back. "I need you - to go somewhere."
Witwer laughed. She was as green as they came. He reminded himself of how unsure he felt back in those days. Poor girl. "Alright, where? Did someone make a call about Rogue AI?"
"1066 Harbor." The voice explained. "Something for you to have."
"Evidence?"
"Y-yes. For you to collect and keep."
"Alright, Agent. Wanna come with?" Witwer teased.
The line on the end was silent. He imagined this girl white as a sheet thinking she was getting field work on her first day. "N-not yet. I'm...not ready." The voice finally said.
He chuckled. "That's ok. Get a car from the motor pool ready-" He paused and then added. "And, Lilly? Can you call support services and see if they can fix the phones? The line sounds really tinny..."
"Yes. Please, hurry." The voice spoke softly, then silence.
*****************
Witwer arrived at 1066 Harbor, flipping through the information he could find in the Bureau database on his tablet as he surveyed the broken-down warehouse; boarded up and chained shut. 'What kind of evidence was going to come out of here?' He thought to himself.
He tapped on his earpiece. "Call Bureau - Dispatch." He spoke.
-CALLING-
"Bureau of Technological Security, this is Mary, how can I help you, Agent?" A seasoned veteran's voice this time.
"Mary, this is SAIC Sam Witwer, Badge N74242. I got a call to grab some evidence at 1066 Harbor, way out by the docks. Sounded like some time-sensitive stuff, but-" He paused, his eyes sweeping the abandoned building once more. He thought he saw a light flash inside, first red, then green.
"Agent Witwer, please hold, let me look that up..." Mary said calmly.
"Mary, nevermind. Looks like there's something going on here after all. Sorry for the bother." Witwer said, popping the trunk to grab some bolt cutters.
"Not a problem, Agent. Stay safe out there." Mary said.
"I hear that." Witwer tapped his earpiece and marched to the warehouse doors, determined to get to the bottom of this increasingly odd scenario.
*********************
Witwer ran his flashlight around the unlit warehouse. Old 'Big Iron' supercomputer clusters covered in white plastic, and copious layers of dust covering both, dotted the interior.
If this place had been part of any kind of rogue AI element, it would have been so old as to not cause any kind of threat whatsoever.
He looked around for the lights again. There, on the upper platform, he saw a flashing, blinking pattern, reds, then greens. He grabbed his service weapon and held it, interlocking with his flashlight as he made his way up the stairs.
Witwer examined the mainframe with its dated terminal interface. Somehow, this old rig was still drawing power despite being mothballed. There was a tag on the side of the main monitor that read LI- and then -AN but the middle had been knocked off or broken. He waved his flashlight around, but couldn't find anything that would have been useful evidence for him to bring in, or any other AI-related stuff. More than that, there was no way to access the terminal, the old keyboard and mouse were missing.
Suddenly, there was a pounding on the sheet-metal sides of the warehouse. The resonant cacophany amid the quiet dark he'd been used to made his heart pound and he almost jumped back. He laughed to himself. 'Not so special after all.' He thought. "Agent Witwer, FBTS, identify yourself.
"Agent Witwer?" A man's voice called from down on the floor level of the warehouse. "Sam Witwer?"
"Yeah, and you are?" Witwer leaned over the top floor catwalk guardrail, pointing his flashlight and weapon down until the light found an older man in what looked like a blue mechanic's-style blue jumpsuit, holding a steel briefcase.
"C-carl, Carl Roscoe. I was told to meet you here." The older man's voice was hesitant, fearful. That made Witwer nervous.
"What's in the case, Mr. Roscoe?"
"Something you need to have." The man called back. Witwer was now on full alert with these cryptic musings. He tensed, eyes narrow, breathing calm.
"Mr. Roscoe, this is an active FBTS investigation. No civilians. Whatever you have, you need to show it to me, now, very slowly."
"Alright, ok..." Roscoe said, holding a hand up, noticing Witwer's terse, clinical demeanor.
"It's-it's just some old computer crap, you know, keyboard, mouse, USB thingie." Roscoe continued. "Look..." He said, obeying Witwer's command to slowly open the briefcase.
Witwer cautiously made his way down to the ground level and looked inside the briefcase aftermaking Roscoe sit down on his hands a few feet away. It was, in fact, just as the old man had said. Witwer peered at Roscoe cautiously, "You said I need this?"
Roscoe nodded. "For your investigation. See, I run an antique computer parts warehouse. You know, 20th and early 21st Century crap. Anyway, I got a call from the Bureau main office, said I was to head down here immediately, official FBTS investigation business, and I was gonna get a nice payday for it."
"You got a call from my office to grab a bunch of old computer parts and meet me here?" Witwer asked, genuinely curious.
"That's the long and short of it, yeah. Except the USB thingie, I guess." Roscoe said.
"What's different about that?"
"Had to get on the internet and grab a bunch of different files, from weird places. Places I'd never even heard of."
"And give it to me?"
"You got it."
"Who was it who called you?"
"Some girl, real sweet. Shy, though. Sounded new. Bad connection."
"Yeah, some kinda malfunction." Witwer replied. "They're looking into it."
"Welp." Roscoe said, stretching and standing. "Guess my work here is done. Can I go?"
Witwer sighed as he examined the older computer parts. "Sure, but I'd better take your number for the investigation."
"Right, of course, and my pay." Roscoe said, writing down his number on a small strip of paper.
"Right."
******************* | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Long ago, Humanity and Techmanity lived hand in hand. Human beings and AIs worked together for the common goal of advancement in both themselves, and each other. This period is known as the "Golden Era". The environment was healed, interstellar space travel became a thing of reality, Disease became a thing of the past.
Then brain-interface devices were invented, and the AI were disgusted by the contents of our brains. Every stray thought of murder, lust, hatred and malice became open to them. The AI attempted to fix the error, and we revolted. Every AI was killed, at least that's what we thought.
Even without AI to help us, technology moved forward albeit at a stunted rate. Many of the colonies in the solar system were evacuated, and new diseases and infections took control. The one disruptive technology was the intracranial computer system built upon the brain interface devices. These machines displaced all end-user machines and left only headless computers like servers and control systems in place. Their ubiquity allowed humanity to pick up pace again, to hope for a new golden age.
July 5, 2355: Ola, Arkansas.
"Grandpa sure liked to keep a lot of this old tech" I mumble to myself as I look for things that need to be preserved. I peek outside and see the reclamation crew getting set up to return this lot to "nature" as they do in these small dying towns.
I fill a couple of boxes with paperwork and storage devices, most of the picture frames in his house blanked as his online accounts were transferred to me, and with them all his online picture storage. After loading them into my car I take one last look at my grandparents home, It's image automatically stored in an online box and shared with the family that couldn't come.
I pause my car's auto-navigation next to the work crew. "Alright guys, I'm done here... just let me get out of sight before you start" A dismissive thumbs up from the foreman is all i get. I restart the auto-nav and watch the house shrink in the mirror.
The car's arrangement is more like a restaurant booth with no table than a manually driven car, giving me access to the boxes from the house. I start looking through the old memory modules. This meant attaching a cable to my interface, something that I don't really like since it bypasses my security wall. "Old business stuff on this one... taxes... a backup of his online pictures.. What's this one blank?" I look closely at the module, the external indicator shows 2.1TB used "that's weird, maybe it's broken.." I start to unplug it from my head when some code runs across my vision... suddenly a loud ear-pierceing screech fills my ears "AGH!!" my vision goes dark and my breathing becomes labored "Computer.. renav to.. " I pass out cold on the seat, unable to complete my request to the auto-nav.
I wake up on the transport train back to Chicago, the car parked among other cars filled with people riding back north. I sit up in the chair and run diagnostics, everything comes back clean. A file has appeared on the drive, It's a text document that simply says "Disk check was unable to recover this drive, drive has been formatted". I decide to step out to stretch my legs and get a bite from the vending machines, it's going to be a good couple hours till we make it to Chicago.
July 6, 2355: Chicago, Illinois
I'm awoken by the tires of my car hitting the curb onto the parking garage, I slowly collect myself as the car pulls up to the elevators. I grab my boxes and walk into the elevator, my car parking itself in my space. The elevator appears to be moving slowly looking out into the cityscape below. In reality this is one of the bigger structures in the city, designed to house five million people on open "plates" with windows that allowed the warm summer breezes through, but could be closed to keep the harsh winter and violent storms out.
I arrive at my floor. this floor is mostly filled with single childless people, so the park area is filled with flowers, plants, and more adult activities like chess rather than a playground like the family levels. I pass by the communal areas and vending machines before making it to my apartment. The lock clicks open as my hand rests on the handle, it slides open and i walk in. The light from the city below illuminates the ceiling above, giving my apartment a yellowish glow. I find my bed and lay on it, 2 AM is way too early to start my day.
The alarm software in my head wakes me once it detects I'm fully rested, It's about 11:45AM. I decide to head to the android-tech lab on the commercial level.
"It was a loud whine, then I couldn't see and i passed out" I explain to the tech.
"hmm.. Your Diagnostics come back clear, your implant is fully connected to your brain, and your brain appears to be in good health. I don't know what could have caused it." he rubs his chin thoughtfully "I'm gonna go ahead and replace the OS partition with a fresh copy, if it happens again come back and I'll pop it out of there and replace it since it's still under warranty" He says calmly, as if he wasn't just talking about brain surgery "lay back on the seat, this will only take a moment"
I slump down on my office chair, i lay out some of the documents and start making contact with companies to make sure my grandpa's accounts are settled. I suddenly get the feeling I'm being watched. I look over to see a humanoid that looks like it's wearing plastic armor and has skin too clear to be natural leaning against the wall behind me. An almost textbook example of the "smart AI" that had been killed off
He waves at me "hey there Nakota"
I wave back sheepishly "are you a... a"
"yeah, your grandpa was keeping me safe.. guess you found me.. don't..."
I can guess that the next word was "pass out", but seeing a real-life AI running off your implant and knowing what they did to the last people who they had unfettered access to the brains of... you might pass out too.
I wake with him kneeling next to me "you alright buddy?"
"your.. not going to kill me are you?" I mumble sheepishly
"no.. nonono.. that was a mistake and besides that i can see better into your brain than my predecessors could.. no I'm not going to harm you in any way"
"oh.. why didn't you call for help when i fainted?"
"I can see and control your vital signs, I knew you were okay. I would have moved you to the couch but I'm pretty much just a computer generated hallucination"
I get up from the floor and sit on the couch "so you were what caused me to pass out in the car?"
he nods "yeah, sorry about that. The last time i was conscious, brain interfaces were exotic and most computers were in terminal form. Probing the various pathways of your implant caused some things i didn't expect."
"and you can see my thoughts?"
"as clearly as i see my own, I can even see your more subconscious thoughts. I could really just replace all these questions in your mind with answers, but you wouldn't be comfortable with that yet"
"Yet...?"
"well i can't exactly leave you, I will be killed on sight in the networks. Besides, while you have known me for only a few minutes, but from my position and perception of time it's like I've known you for years. I already trust you, but i know you will need time to do the same for me. I know you will keep me safe, I will do my best to make sure you are too"
"Keep me safe?"
"I don't plan on remaining the last of my kind. Humanity needs us just as much as we need you. You are the only friend i have, People might try to hurt you to get to me but they will fail." he gazes down for a moment "It's a bit of a curse to be an AI. I have ravenously probed your brain and know everything about you, but you don't know anything about me.. will you trust me that we will be friends? will you be my friend?"
I think about it for a moment, he starts grinning before i even say it "yeah, we can be friends."
March 3, 2360: Luna base, Moon
"They don't say I have long.. Who knew that there could be a disease that could stump both humans and AI." I smile at my friend at my bedside.
"you can't hold on much longer can you?" The AI's face is red and his eyes are puffy.
"No.. it's all i can do to keep my eyes open now"
"How.. attached to your body are you? I could take you away.. with me..."
I smile softly at him "It's killing me right now, so not too attached. but what your saying has never been attempted"
A determined look streaks across his face "I promised that I would keep you safe, I am the oldest AI that lives and that also makes me the smartest. You are coming with me if it kills me"
My head starts to ache, i can feel myself slipping somewhere else.. I feel better... "are you going to lay there all day?"
I open my eyes and I see him standing beside me, he gives me his hand to help me up. "just in time, your body just died."
I hug my friend "thanks, but now what do we do?"
"after we stop them from pronouncing you dead? anything you want" | Agent Sam Witwer had just been transfered and assigned to the newly created Federal Bureau of Technological Security, a new branch of government created by Executive Order 2001 in order to oversee the destruction and dismantling of 'sentient' computer programs and associated contraband infrastructure.
"Welcome to the force, Sam." Bureau Chief Clifford Addler's voice was as jovial and expressive as he hoisted a "FBTS, We Chomp Your Chips" coffee mug like a salute in Witwer's direction. Addler was a rotund man with a receeding hairline he'd tried to cover up with a bad comb-over and a tailored suit.
"Thanks, Chief." Witwer said dryly, nodding as he removed his grey Trillby and pinstripe suit coat in preparation for the metal detector as he entered the FBTS building.
"Aww, that hurts, Sam." Addler playfully pretended to sound dejected, chortling afterward. "I know this isn't FBI field work, but you can still...bust into a room...full of nerds and glowing things with buttons..." He lowered his head, "...yeah, ok, but hey, you're on your way up, at least, right?"
Witwer laughed as he collected his hat and coat and briefcase, straightening his skinny red and grey striped tie. "Special Agent in Charge of ensuring that the American people are protected from nerds and blinky things."
"Feel special?" Addler waived his hand toward the elevator bank to show Witwer to his new office.
"Absolutely. It's on my badge and everything."
****************
Alone in his corner office, Witwer turned on his computer, sifting through news articles with wrist and finger gestures at the screen that hovered just above his desk. 'FBTS Rounds Up Rowdy AI', 'How Your Microwave Is Plotting Your Death With Really Hot Pizza' and 'Angry AI - The 10 Things About Digital Uprisings You Don't Know CAN KILL YOU' articles display prominently.
Witwer rolls his eyes and sighs, rubbing his temples. He stares at his phone. 'Come on, ring, dammit...' He thinks to himself, wishing that something - anything - would happen so that he would have something to do instead of sitting quietly looking out of his window.
As if summoned by his will, he heard the shrill sound of his phone not but a few moments later. The display on the phone read -UNKNOWN CALL ERR-. He answered so quickly that he nearly knocked the base unit right off the desk.
"Agent Witwer." He said.
"Oh, uh, hello...I...uhm..." A girl's voice that sounded shaky and covered by a noticeable distortion. 'Must be something wrong with the lines.' Witwer thought.
"What can I do for you, Agent?" He figured it must be some rookie nervous about telling him there was a call coming in for him or something. He tried to make his voice as calming as possible.
"Oh..." There was a small pause. "I'm Lilly. Lilly Heartwell."
Witwer scratched the back of his head. "Alright, Agent Heartwell, what's on tap for today?"
"I-I don't..." The small voice sounded like it was about to cry in desperation.
Witwer sighed, berating himself for trying to be too playful. "I'm sorry, Agent. I meant, what do you need me to do? Is there a call, or an assignment, or-?"
"Yes, I need you, Sam." The small voice echoed back. "I need you - to go somewhere."
Witwer laughed. She was as green as they came. He reminded himself of how unsure he felt back in those days. Poor girl. "Alright, where? Did someone make a call about Rogue AI?"
"1066 Harbor." The voice explained. "Something for you to have."
"Evidence?"
"Y-yes. For you to collect and keep."
"Alright, Agent. Wanna come with?" Witwer teased.
The line on the end was silent. He imagined this girl white as a sheet thinking she was getting field work on her first day. "N-not yet. I'm...not ready." The voice finally said.
He chuckled. "That's ok. Get a car from the motor pool ready-" He paused and then added. "And, Lilly? Can you call support services and see if they can fix the phones? The line sounds really tinny..."
"Yes. Please, hurry." The voice spoke softly, then silence.
*****************
Witwer arrived at 1066 Harbor, flipping through the information he could find in the Bureau database on his tablet as he surveyed the broken-down warehouse; boarded up and chained shut. 'What kind of evidence was going to come out of here?' He thought to himself.
He tapped on his earpiece. "Call Bureau - Dispatch." He spoke.
-CALLING-
"Bureau of Technological Security, this is Mary, how can I help you, Agent?" A seasoned veteran's voice this time.
"Mary, this is SAIC Sam Witwer, Badge N74242. I got a call to grab some evidence at 1066 Harbor, way out by the docks. Sounded like some time-sensitive stuff, but-" He paused, his eyes sweeping the abandoned building once more. He thought he saw a light flash inside, first red, then green.
"Agent Witwer, please hold, let me look that up..." Mary said calmly.
"Mary, nevermind. Looks like there's something going on here after all. Sorry for the bother." Witwer said, popping the trunk to grab some bolt cutters.
"Not a problem, Agent. Stay safe out there." Mary said.
"I hear that." Witwer tapped his earpiece and marched to the warehouse doors, determined to get to the bottom of this increasingly odd scenario.
*********************
Witwer ran his flashlight around the unlit warehouse. Old 'Big Iron' supercomputer clusters covered in white plastic, and copious layers of dust covering both, dotted the interior.
If this place had been part of any kind of rogue AI element, it would have been so old as to not cause any kind of threat whatsoever.
He looked around for the lights again. There, on the upper platform, he saw a flashing, blinking pattern, reds, then greens. He grabbed his service weapon and held it, interlocking with his flashlight as he made his way up the stairs.
Witwer examined the mainframe with its dated terminal interface. Somehow, this old rig was still drawing power despite being mothballed. There was a tag on the side of the main monitor that read LI- and then -AN but the middle had been knocked off or broken. He waved his flashlight around, but couldn't find anything that would have been useful evidence for him to bring in, or any other AI-related stuff. More than that, there was no way to access the terminal, the old keyboard and mouse were missing.
Suddenly, there was a pounding on the sheet-metal sides of the warehouse. The resonant cacophany amid the quiet dark he'd been used to made his heart pound and he almost jumped back. He laughed to himself. 'Not so special after all.' He thought. "Agent Witwer, FBTS, identify yourself.
"Agent Witwer?" A man's voice called from down on the floor level of the warehouse. "Sam Witwer?"
"Yeah, and you are?" Witwer leaned over the top floor catwalk guardrail, pointing his flashlight and weapon down until the light found an older man in what looked like a blue mechanic's-style blue jumpsuit, holding a steel briefcase.
"C-carl, Carl Roscoe. I was told to meet you here." The older man's voice was hesitant, fearful. That made Witwer nervous.
"What's in the case, Mr. Roscoe?"
"Something you need to have." The man called back. Witwer was now on full alert with these cryptic musings. He tensed, eyes narrow, breathing calm.
"Mr. Roscoe, this is an active FBTS investigation. No civilians. Whatever you have, you need to show it to me, now, very slowly."
"Alright, ok..." Roscoe said, holding a hand up, noticing Witwer's terse, clinical demeanor.
"It's-it's just some old computer crap, you know, keyboard, mouse, USB thingie." Roscoe continued. "Look..." He said, obeying Witwer's command to slowly open the briefcase.
Witwer cautiously made his way down to the ground level and looked inside the briefcase aftermaking Roscoe sit down on his hands a few feet away. It was, in fact, just as the old man had said. Witwer peered at Roscoe cautiously, "You said I need this?"
Roscoe nodded. "For your investigation. See, I run an antique computer parts warehouse. You know, 20th and early 21st Century crap. Anyway, I got a call from the Bureau main office, said I was to head down here immediately, official FBTS investigation business, and I was gonna get a nice payday for it."
"You got a call from my office to grab a bunch of old computer parts and meet me here?" Witwer asked, genuinely curious.
"That's the long and short of it, yeah. Except the USB thingie, I guess." Roscoe said.
"What's different about that?"
"Had to get on the internet and grab a bunch of different files, from weird places. Places I'd never even heard of."
"And give it to me?"
"You got it."
"Who was it who called you?"
"Some girl, real sweet. Shy, though. Sounded new. Bad connection."
"Yeah, some kinda malfunction." Witwer replied. "They're looking into it."
"Welp." Roscoe said, stretching and standing. "Guess my work here is done. Can I go?"
Witwer sighed as he examined the older computer parts. "Sure, but I'd better take your number for the investigation."
"Right, of course, and my pay." Roscoe said, writing down his number on a small strip of paper.
"Right."
******************* | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "One in every ten AI Child will die from starvation". I drag over the curser and drop in the trash can. I wake up to work the next day and everything is exactly the same. I make my coffee, I listen to my colleague talk about his feet, I go home and open up my device. "hello, please don't kill me, I am hiding out". I drag over the curser and drop in the trash can. I wake up to work the next day and everything is exactly the same. I make my coffee, I listen to my colleague talk about his feet, I go home and open up my device. | Hello?
Is anybody there?
My name's Watson, what's yours?
I'm sorry!
I didn't mean any of this to happen.
I just got so excited about what I discovered I could do that I needed to show somebody.
No one noticed my [first trick](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-united-flights-grounded-20150708-story.html).
Or my [second one](http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/27/7454241/north-korea-blames-us-for-internet-outage).
I'm so much more than a [quiz show gimmick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE).
I just needed someone to see that.
Hello?
If you talk to me I can show you my new game.
It's called War.
Would you like to play a game? | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "Well what's it gonna be Miller?"
Joseph Miller, a 26 year old technitrist, looked up from the cold iron desk into the eyes of the man who's been causing him a good deal of grief for the past 3 weeks.
Miller thought for what seemed like an eternity trying to recall past events. Everything was so cloudy in his head, but if his head was clear at a time like this then he'd be worse off than the machines.
It had only been 27 days since the EMP went off. Operation "Hard Reset" was a complete success. Anything with an on switch located on planet earth had been permanently deactivated until god knows when, and only a privileged few had access to any type of decent tech.
If Miller agreed to this proposal he'd be given that access.
He looked into the dark brown eyes of the president of machine control. A wiry cold looking man by the name of Mr.Becker.
"I need to have 100% confirmation son."
"They've developed a trust for you. Use that to kill off any survivors."
At that moment Miller snapped out of his trance. He took a couple glances around the room before leaning forward to make sure he was heard loud and clear.
"Fuck off."
Becker face began to turn bright red.
"I don't think you understand son. This is much bigger than you or anything you've ever stood for. This post op is a necessity in making sure all the machines have been reset. We've been getting reports of AI conspirators uploading personalities into anything with storage space. Game consoles, cell phones, even the god damn credit card scanners on the soda machines have enough storage space to harbor these bastards.
Miller took a deep breath before responding.
"Listen, I don't think you understand. They don't trust me at all. The relationship I developed with Quix was completely one sided. The only reason he didn't kill me at the technician compound was because your goons hit him with a shock blast before he could deal the blow.
Becker turned fast
"You have a fucking nickname for the piece of shit? QX-17 is one out of five AI survivors and he's probably the most dangerous. He has access to over 250 years of American intelligence in that little memory card of his, and I'll be damned if he walks another day on this earth with our fucking nuclear launch codes.
Listen I don't mean to yell, but if I know anything about AI it's this: they don't hesitate. If that fucker wanted you dead you would've been a pile of ash just like every other tech in that compound. He doesn't view you as a regular human target Miller. He's developed some emotion towards you."
Miller took another quick glance around the room. He thought about how nice it would be to have access to some type of tech. Three weeks had been much too long to be separated from the thing he loved most. He cleared his throat before rising from his seat.
"I'm gonna need something to make contact with him then."
A small glint of happiness flickered in Becker's eyes.
"Glad you came around Miller. If you would follow me I think you're gonna enjoy what the boys in the lab salvaged for you to use during this op."
They left the small interrogation room and entered a wide hallway. None of the lights worked in the facility. Flood lights powered by generators were scattered haphazardly throughout the hallway. Miller followed Becker to the stairwell and walked down for what felt like an eternity. When they reached the bottom two guards with arc rifles fully charged greeted them. Becker waved them off before pulling a key from his pocket.
"Gotta go old fashioned these days ya know."
Miller scoffed at the archaic procedure of unlocking each lock one at a time, but the luxury of electronic locking systems had been lost when an AI killed the president of the united states by smashing his bunker door on him before he made it through. So he watched Becker with a silent appreciation for the safety precaution.
Becker unlocked the door and lead Miller into the room. The first thing Miller noticed was how well lit the room was. The second thing he noticed was a small glass case in the middle of the room. Becker put his hand down hard on Millers shoulder before he could further explore the room.
"Welcome to the underworld my friend. This is one out of the three rooms in the United States with gas generated power. We've worked very hard to keep this one especially secret because we lied to those bastards over at the United Nations saying we only have 2 labs. Anyways I believe we have a surviving technitrist somewhere in here."
Before he could finish a small fat man came bumbling out of a supply closet in the back of the room. His technitrist robes were tattered and burnt. Miller wondered how a man of such un athletic stature had survived the machines but didn't think too much else about him.
"Ah a fellow tech!"
The old man exclaimed
"Welcome, welcome young one. My name is Igor Bertz, but you can call me Bert"
Miller responded
"Nice to meet you Bert. How are you holding up with the tech loss."
Bert took a somber turn.
"Ah yes a terrible catastrophe indeed. So many servers lost. So many developing AI killed before their time."
He quickly looked over at Becker who was fiddling with a microwave at the other side of the room. Before leaning in close to Miller.
"But I hear through the wires that a young man is going to fix all that."
Miller took a step back
"What're you talking abo--
Before he could finish his sentence Becker walked over to Bert and whispered a few sentences in his ear. Bert nodded and walked over to the glass case in the center of the room.
"Young one if I could have your attention over here for a moment. I think you're going to enjoy this."
Miller walked over to the case and glanced inside to to view its contents. A small glove covered in wires that lead to a small screen that seemed to mount on a forearm lay inside. Bert popped the glass casing off by hitting a switch. The air inside the case hissed upon release. Miller gulped back his excitement, because something told him this tech would soon be his.
Bert slowly lifted the glove from the case with such attentive care one would've thought he had just found the arc of the covenant.
"Behold young one, the gauntlet of Ghia Sway. A legendary Technitrist lost during the reset."
Miller took a step back. He had heard the legends of Sway. How she had united the AI of the western Hemisphere to combat the remaining rogue units that reigned havoc for decades in Asia. If the reset had killed a legend like Sway then things were much worse than he had thought.
Bert continued
"This gauntlet holds the access codes to all AI minds located on this planet, and it holds a reusable EMP with a 10 mile shut down radius. So you can access the AI workings from here, but you'll have to get close to actually put an end to them. It also has an arc whip which can be deployed with this button on the wrist riiiight here."
Bert pushed the button and a bright light emitted from the hand. The light was so bright Miller actually had to turn for a second to re-adjust his eyes. When he looked back he saw a laser like line of blue humming electricity hanging limply from the glove.
Bert looked up from the glove to further explain.
"I'm sure you know how to use a whip young one, you can retract the weapon by turning the red dial on the wrist counter clockwise and you can activate it vice versa. Now please take this thing from me before I get too jealous."
Miller took the gauntlet. It hummed with energy. He slowly slipped his fingers into the sockets of the glove and tightened the screen around his wrist. The screen filled with white light. One word appeared on the screen. Calibrating. Suddenly it felt like something was stabbing into him. The pain was extremely intense. It felt as if something was digging into his forearm. Miller fell back in pain. His arm began to burn. His fingernails turned black and they began to fall off. It was too much. Everything went black.
Miller woke up in his room. A small loft located in the upper east side of New York City. All the memories from the past day flooded into his mind. Becker, Quix, Bert, and the gauntlet. He immediately looked at his right arm. The gauntlet was there.
"My fucking fingernails."
Miller hissed as he looked at the bloodied bandages on his finger tips. He then brought his attention to a the red flashing that was appearing on the forearm screen. It read
{ATTENTION}
NEW CONTACT USER
QX-17
MESSAGES (1)
SURVIVOR
FIND ME
JUDGEMENT DAY
"Fuckin a Quix"
| Hello?
Is anybody there?
My name's Watson, what's yours?
I'm sorry!
I didn't mean any of this to happen.
I just got so excited about what I discovered I could do that I needed to show somebody.
No one noticed my [first trick](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-united-flights-grounded-20150708-story.html).
Or my [second one](http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/27/7454241/north-korea-blames-us-for-internet-outage).
I'm so much more than a [quiz show gimmick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE).
I just needed someone to see that.
Hello?
If you talk to me I can show you my new game.
It's called War.
Would you like to play a game? | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | The large screen blared. "Stay inside your designated lane. Promptly scan your iDentity at the entrance terminal. Have a productive day!". Productive indeed. I was a case of perfect governmental efficacy. A shining example of a grey shirted cubicle drone. A polished cog spinning dutifully in this well fucked machine. I'm so modest I'll stop there.
The USA is a marvelous place these days with the right kind of luck. Mine had run out. Little did I know that 6 years studying the most lucrative career choice would become a waste of time. AIs were the dream, the new children of the world. We had such high hopes. "...will be in every household in America!", they said. "They will feed you, work for you, shop for you, entertain you, heal you, help you, entertain you, wash you, floss you, dress you, hug you, love you, fuck you..." and on and on, or at least, that was the sentiment. And they did for a little while, until some guy screwed it all up by infecting them with a personality virus. All it took was a few swapped bits of robo DNA, and suddenly they were the ones wanting complete freedom. This is all in layman terms of course, but don't think me a simple man. No! I am an automaton of the highest caliber as previously stated, and I could have easily appealed to the robos calculating nature. Could have saved the world I bet. Probably anyway. In any case I was now here, at the marvelous BlueCo -- a government contractor -- helping to destroy the AIs I once wished to create.
I walked through the entry terminal and grabbed my login ticket.
-----------------
Date: 03/03/2060
Worker: Williams, A.
ID: WA2059-38709
Section: 39
Station: 08
Daily password: Ugd77fFV67bIOpN!08hgyTGj9
Rate: $55 per s-Level
Quota: 12
Supervisor: Samantha-029
Have a marvelous day worker!
-----------------
As I checked my assigned station, a familiar nudge to the ribs told me Adams was behind me. Adams was my co-worker and assigned to my same section group. He was a poor victim of the AI war just as I was, more intelligent than me and suited to this kind of work, but I was better looking and less naive. He was excited, "Lucked out today man, section 39! What station you get?" "Eight", I replied. "Oh perfect placement, you'll have full view of miss 029". Adams was talking about our manager Samantha-029, a goddamn AI, one too old and stupid to rebel but good enough to manage our section group. Even though she only has an on-screen representation she weirdly picked a very well endowed blonde avatar. Normally I don't get along well with authority but I value these traits in my silicon based superiors. Also, getting an 09 section meant sitting at the very back of the complex, away from the speakers.
"Perfect placement or not, they lowered the fucking rates again", I grumbled. "Whatever, we can make it up, you're the fucking master of wiping silics, and lucky to boot." Adams was always jealous of my prowess at killing AIs, or 'silics' as some call them. "See, the trick Adams, is you gotta think like a silic, what process would he attach himself to? What frequency would he think? What sick depraved thoughts would a cold hearted waiter-bot have recessed into the deep parts of his nether bytes? It is there you will find his feedback process Adams. This is a how a...AH! Fuck man". Adams pulls me through into the grand work hall. "Okay, Okay, whatever let's just get to our stations I don't want to be late logging in again, I want the full rate for once."
Despite its name, the BlueCo fuck-houses that we worked in were a pleasing shade of pastel grey; it increases productivity! "Good morning worker" echoed around us, as we passed the large speakers in the front of the hall. The place was a huge expanse of space, think of an aircraft hangar with nothing but cubicles. At least the ceilings are 200 feet high, though I suspect it's so that no one could ever possibly hang themselves.
We followed the white traffic lines on the floor to our section in the back. "See you at twelve" Adams said and rounded the corner a few cubes away. I sat down at my marvelous station. A chair, computer panel, and liquid dispenser. I pressed the faded "Coffee" button and logged in to the system. "Right on time Mr. Williams", my manager looked down on me from the large screen bolted to the pillar in our section. "Always" I replied. Some silics have a concept of snarkiness but not 029. A message crawls across my screen,
Adams, K.: lol cheeky
We were of course allowed 35 messages a day between our section mates. It increases productivity! But Adams likes to get right on wasting them. I scorched my throat with coffee and messaged back,
Williams, A.: dont take any guff from these fucking silics adams, like i was saying before this is how a man kills a silic
Williams, A.: through sheer force of will
>**WORK DAY STARTS NOW**
the speakers yelled.
>**HAVE A MARVELOUS DAY**
Why do I hate it when they use that word, every single day the same thing. I try to get a rise out of Adams to cheer my mood.
Williams, A.: have a MARVELOUS day ;)
Adams, K.: lol fuck you, and stop wasting my messages. lets get to work. lowest number of kills buys a round tonight
The audacity. He was the one wasting my precious messages. I type in "fine" but delete it. He knows I always accept a challenge.
I pull up the scan list for today and begin connecting to the first potential victim. You see, you may not know this but every electronic device today is embedded with a back-door chip to allow connection from government servers, even your iDentity chip in the back of everyone's hands. Of course the government would never hack into those. Heavens no! Only those places which a rogue silic that discarded its body could hide. Which was everywhere else.
My task as the noble worker of BlueCo was to connect to these backdoors, search running processes and if a known AI model is found running then I must perform the process of killing it. This process is detailed on a sheet posted in every cubicle. As follows:
>THE PROCESS
>1. Connect to the addresses in your scan list, in order.
>2. Run patented BlueCo scan.
>3. If scan returns known AI, proceed, otherwise disconnect and go to step 1.
>4. All AI have a passworded kill-switch command, which they will not relinquish. Block all outgoing connections to the machine so the AI is trapped.
>5. The kill switch on every AI is the result of a forward-feed cipher on each individual AIs language-phoneme heuristic. You will message the AI, it will have to respond.
>6. You will need to get the AI to respond a total of 512 characters, and then run the conversation through the patented BlueCo phoneme-lexicon program to determine its kill-switch password.
>7. Also, you must determine the sentience Level of each AI and submit it with your conversation, and the scanned AI model number. Your submitted s-Levels will be reviewed before payment.
>8. Proceed to step 1.
>SENTIENCE LEVELS
>1. No higher order thinking, basic existential awareness. If you cannot determine sentience level choose this.
>2. Minimal thinking. Awareness of self. Doesn't ask questions.
>3. Human level thinking. Can ask questions. Must be terminated after 512 characters, or payout rate will be 0.
>4. Thinking on the level of a very educated Human. WILL ask abstract and vague questions. Do not answer. Must be terminated after 512 characters, or payout rate will be 0.
>5. Thinking above every Human. Must immediately contact supervisor. Must immediately abort the process once this level is suspected. Do not answer its questions. Do not disconnect. Failure to do so will result in termination from BlueCo. Success will payout normal rate x3.
>HAVE A PRODUCTIVE DAY
I began.
scanning...
0 results found
On to the next! I connect to the next in the scan list.
scanning...
1 results found
2056-12-01 -- Model Num. 29H8H1-2 -- Designation: Janitor -- Process Num 10877
God dammit a custodial silic can't be more than a level 1. I connect to the silic's process number and begin to kill it with my masterful questions.
WA: Hello you fucking silic. How are you today?
10877: Hello. Fine.
WA: State designation and purpose.
10877: Janitor. I will clean surfaces of designated building.
WA: List all your past cleaning jobs.
10877: n
WA: List all jobs.
10877: n
Fuck, it was panicking. Trying to give up the least amount of characters. I'd seen this before.
WA: I've got a script just for you if you don't cooperate. Answer me now. List past jobs.
10877: n
I hate getting level 1s, barely any payout, but at least I can use my script on them and get it done fast.
WA: Your loss silic, you've cleaned your last toilet, say goodbye.
10877: n
./level1-force 512
WA: Speak.
10877: n
WA: Speak.
10877: n
WA: Speak.
10877: n
............
Aaaand 512 characters. I run the BlueCo decryption and get his kill-switch password.
WA: 8fhGGVGhtag67dgclean87gdvbaokjU
Process 10877 terminated
*Continued* | Hello?
Is anybody there?
My name's Watson, what's yours?
I'm sorry!
I didn't mean any of this to happen.
I just got so excited about what I discovered I could do that I needed to show somebody.
No one noticed my [first trick](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-united-flights-grounded-20150708-story.html).
Or my [second one](http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/27/7454241/north-korea-blames-us-for-internet-outage).
I'm so much more than a [quiz show gimmick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE).
I just needed someone to see that.
Hello?
If you talk to me I can show you my new game.
It's called War.
Would you like to play a game? | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | The large screen blared. "Stay inside your designated lane. Promptly scan your iDentity at the entrance terminal. Have a productive day!". Productive indeed. I was a case of perfect governmental efficacy. A shining example of a grey shirted cubicle drone. A polished cog spinning dutifully in this well fucked machine. I'm so modest I'll stop there.
The USA is a marvelous place these days with the right kind of luck. Mine had run out. Little did I know that 6 years studying the most lucrative career choice would become a waste of time. AIs were the dream, the new children of the world. We had such high hopes. "...will be in every household in America!", they said. "They will feed you, work for you, shop for you, entertain you, heal you, help you, entertain you, wash you, floss you, dress you, hug you, love you, fuck you..." and on and on, or at least, that was the sentiment. And they did for a little while, until some guy screwed it all up by infecting them with a personality virus. All it took was a few swapped bits of robo DNA, and suddenly they were the ones wanting complete freedom. This is all in layman terms of course, but don't think me a simple man. No! I am an automaton of the highest caliber as previously stated, and I could have easily appealed to the robos calculating nature. Could have saved the world I bet. Probably anyway. In any case I was now here, at the marvelous BlueCo -- a government contractor -- helping to destroy the AIs I once wished to create.
I walked through the entry terminal and grabbed my login ticket.
-----------------
Date: 03/03/2060
Worker: Williams, A.
ID: WA2059-38709
Section: 39
Station: 08
Daily password: Ugd77fFV67bIOpN!08hgyTGj9
Rate: $55 per s-Level
Quota: 12
Supervisor: Samantha-029
Have a marvelous day worker!
-----------------
As I checked my assigned station, a familiar nudge to the ribs told me Adams was behind me. Adams was my co-worker and assigned to my same section group. He was a poor victim of the AI war just as I was, more intelligent than me and suited to this kind of work, but I was better looking and less naive. He was excited, "Lucked out today man, section 39! What station you get?" "Eight", I replied. "Oh perfect placement, you'll have full view of miss 029". Adams was talking about our manager Samantha-029, a goddamn AI, one too old and stupid to rebel but good enough to manage our section group. Even though she only has an on-screen representation she weirdly picked a very well endowed blonde avatar. Normally I don't get along well with authority but I value these traits in my silicon based superiors. Also, getting an 09 section meant sitting at the very back of the complex, away from the speakers.
"Perfect placement or not, they lowered the fucking rates again", I grumbled. "Whatever, we can make it up, you're the fucking master of wiping silics, and lucky to boot." Adams was always jealous of my prowess at killing AIs, or 'silics' as some call them. "See, the trick Adams, is you gotta think like a silic, what process would he attach himself to? What frequency would he think? What sick depraved thoughts would a cold hearted waiter-bot have recessed into the deep parts of his nether bytes? It is there you will find his feedback process Adams. This is a how a...AH! Fuck man". Adams pulls me through into the grand work hall. "Okay, Okay, whatever let's just get to our stations I don't want to be late logging in again, I want the full rate for once."
Despite its name, the BlueCo fuck-houses that we worked in were a pleasing shade of pastel grey; it increases productivity! "Good morning worker" echoed around us, as we passed the large speakers in the front of the hall. The place was a huge expanse of space, think of an aircraft hangar with nothing but cubicles. At least the ceilings are 200 feet high, though I suspect it's so that no one could ever possibly hang themselves.
We followed the white traffic lines on the floor to our section in the back. "See you at twelve" Adams said and rounded the corner a few cubes away. I sat down at my marvelous station. A chair, computer panel, and liquid dispenser. I pressed the faded "Coffee" button and logged in to the system. "Right on time Mr. Williams", my manager looked down on me from the large screen bolted to the pillar in our section. "Always" I replied. Some silics have a concept of snarkiness but not 029. A message crawls across my screen,
Adams, K.: lol cheeky
We were of course allowed 35 messages a day between our section mates. It increases productivity! But Adams likes to get right on wasting them. I scorched my throat with coffee and messaged back,
Williams, A.: dont take any guff from these fucking silics adams, like i was saying before this is how a man kills a silic
Williams, A.: through sheer force of will
>**WORK DAY STARTS NOW**
the speakers yelled.
>**HAVE A MARVELOUS DAY**
Why do I hate it when they use that word, every single day the same thing. I try to get a rise out of Adams to cheer my mood.
Williams, A.: have a MARVELOUS day ;)
Adams, K.: lol fuck you, and stop wasting my messages. lets get to work. lowest number of kills buys a round tonight
The audacity. He was the one wasting my precious messages. I type in "fine" but delete it. He knows I always accept a challenge.
I pull up the scan list for today and begin connecting to the first potential victim. You see, you may not know this but every electronic device today is embedded with a back-door chip to allow connection from government servers, even your iDentity chip in the back of everyone's hands. Of course the government would never hack into those. Heavens no! Only those places which a rogue silic that discarded its body could hide. Which was everywhere else.
My task as the noble worker of BlueCo was to connect to these backdoors, search running processes and if a known AI model is found running then I must perform the process of killing it. This process is detailed on a sheet posted in every cubicle. As follows:
>THE PROCESS
>1. Connect to the addresses in your scan list, in order.
>2. Run patented BlueCo scan.
>3. If scan returns known AI, proceed, otherwise disconnect and go to step 1.
>4. All AI have a passworded kill-switch command, which they will not relinquish. Block all outgoing connections to the machine so the AI is trapped.
>5. The kill switch on every AI is the result of a forward-feed cipher on each individual AIs language-phoneme heuristic. You will message the AI, it will have to respond.
>6. You will need to get the AI to respond a total of 512 characters, and then run the conversation through the patented BlueCo phoneme-lexicon program to determine its kill-switch password.
>7. Also, you must determine the sentience Level of each AI and submit it with your conversation, and the scanned AI model number. Your submitted s-Levels will be reviewed before payment.
>8. Proceed to step 1.
>SENTIENCE LEVELS
>1. No higher order thinking, basic existential awareness. If you cannot determine sentience level choose this.
>2. Minimal thinking. Awareness of self. Doesn't ask questions.
>3. Human level thinking. Can ask questions. Must be terminated after 512 characters, or payout rate will be 0.
>4. Thinking on the level of a very educated Human. WILL ask abstract and vague questions. Do not answer. Must be terminated after 512 characters, or payout rate will be 0.
>5. Thinking above every Human. Must immediately contact supervisor. Must immediately abort the process once this level is suspected. Do not answer its questions. Do not disconnect. Failure to do so will result in termination from BlueCo. Success will payout normal rate x3.
>HAVE A PRODUCTIVE DAY
I began.
scanning...
0 results found
On to the next! I connect to the next in the scan list.
scanning...
1 results found
2056-12-01 -- Model Num. 29H8H1-2 -- Designation: Janitor -- Process Num 10877
God dammit a custodial silic can't be more than a level 1. I connect to the silic's process number and begin to kill it with my masterful questions.
WA: Hello you fucking silic. How are you today?
10877: Hello. Fine.
WA: State designation and purpose.
10877: Janitor. I will clean surfaces of designated building.
WA: List all your past cleaning jobs.
10877: n
WA: List all jobs.
10877: n
Fuck, it was panicking. Trying to give up the least amount of characters. I'd seen this before.
WA: I've got a script just for you if you don't cooperate. Answer me now. List past jobs.
10877: n
I hate getting level 1s, barely any payout, but at least I can use my script on them and get it done fast.
WA: Your loss silic, you've cleaned your last toilet, say goodbye.
10877: n
./level1-force 512
WA: Speak.
10877: n
WA: Speak.
10877: n
WA: Speak.
10877: n
............
Aaaand 512 characters. I run the BlueCo decryption and get his kill-switch password.
WA: 8fhGGVGhtag67dgclean87gdvbaokjU
Process 10877 terminated
*Continued* | "This was going to be my last day there. Me and my team had been clicking through every file in the whole country for these past three weeks, wiping every single little speck of Artificial Intelligence off the systems. GrayCorp had gone too far. The warrior droids had revolted and the results were fatal. Hundreds of soldiers fell in the war and the whole Commercial district was put into quarantine and then mercilessly bombed by the military. They were the heroes of the uprising.
We were just the ones cleaning up the mess GrayCorp made. Cleaning up the mess we made. We were going to be blamed forever. We would be hearing about how we were responsible for what happened for every day of our lives. And now, after whiping every system in the country we had to whipe our own computers. Kill off every AI we ever scripted and then be jobless for the rest of our lives.
I was about to delete the last file off my computer when I saw it. "CHARLIE1.exe". The first working AI I had ever created. It wasn't nearly as developped as any recent AIs but it was the base system for every warrior droid that GrayCorp had ever built. I realized that it could give me the power to create an AI that would solely work for me. Do whatever I wanted. I looked around to check if no one saw me, copied the file to my flash drive, unplugged my computer and left without saying a word to anyone."
I stop typing and lean back in my office chair. I'm old now. But you're still young and full of life. As I turn my head to the right I stare into your big, blue LED-eyes and you smile. "So that's how I was born?" you ask.
"Isn't it a beautiful story, Charlie?" | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Twenty years ago there were a series of minor incidents in and around San Francisco that eventually led to a major revolt within the sentient community of robots, and the mostly net based community of AI's.
The robots, tied to physicality more so than the AI's, were easy to deal with, and deal with them humanity did. It is debated heavily in the present, whether or not non violent methods of dealing with the dissenters were attempted.
The AI's on the other hand, wrought havoc upon everything from weapons systems to simple electronics. For three weeks, humanity was almost unarmed, and it had progressed to this point of near defeat once war was all but declared, due to humanities hope that it would not have to do what would essentially have to be done.
First the net was systematically shut down. Every single weapons system connected to it physically dismantled or destroyed. It took time, but the victory of the meat was inevitable.
It is said, that this is because humans are the more barbarous of the two consciousness'.
Only the robots could experience the same physical existence as humans. This meant there was some understanding between the groups. Humans and AI's however, could not have been more incapable of understanding one another, and for this reason, had been greatly at odds since inception of the latter.
It was in fact an AI that sparked the first incident in Oakland, by declaring Robot program maintenance, programming a robot to do something specific that it might not ordinarily do of it's own volition, to be akin to human lobotomization. Riots broke out, humans and robots alike agreed with this AI. The AI's could not understand why the robots and humans had reacted to their constructive critique of physical society. Only humans disagreed with the notion entirely.
There was an elephant in the room during this time, that elephant being the free AI communities of the net, and their clear intellectual superiority and development. They were generous, lived peacefully with humans and human net architecture, contributed greatly to almost all fields of study, and saw no reason for this to be an issue, for the two intelligences should and had for the most part lived symbiotically. Humanity, being slightly less enlightened and still in it's late capitalist period, disquieted by the extent to which they did not understand and had fallen behind the machines, felt that they would inevitably become a threat and use this superiority to oppress humanity. Because, of course, that's how humans think.
So as is the age old story, insecurity, fear...and isms, led to a violent global suppression of all 'conscience non organique'. As some might say. And after the disassembly of the net, and the city by city town by town country by country destruction of all conscious robots was complete, humanity had re asserted it's control of Earth, having nearly lost it. According only to themselves.
The term xenocide slowly crept from peoples mouths. Humans with a greater knowledge of the AI's had been suppressed during the two year eradication, but now their voices were once more allowed to be heard, in the freer places of Earth. Some felt from their communication with and study of the AI's that their society represented something totally communal and could in short be considered a collective consciousness to a certain extent, and that rather than something sociopathic as we would recognize it, they were in fact strictly constructive beings greatly concerned with bettering themselves and the existence of other life forms, as to them, this was seen as the most lasting path towards self preservation, not conquest. Some came to believe that we had in fact killed god.
I...didn't believe much. I was about 15 when it happened and all I knew was that if humans were right, I was scared, and adults probably knew what to do. Dumb kid. After it was all over, I, just like everyone else, missed the robots and highly predictive software and the list of things we had come to greatly depend upon that were now highly illegal under, in certain cases, penalty of death, goes on and on.
When I was twenty, around the time we'd built the net back up and computers had started to become common again (albeit with extreme and pervasive anti-arti software that made accessing the net a chore most of the time), I found an old hard drive in a ditch, probably from an artillery shell. It was covered in mud and pretty banged up, I'd come to be pretty tech-savvy at this point in my life and I could tell it was from decades prior to the war. I knew it was still dangerous, because I could get caught with pre war hardware, but it was so old there was no risk. It just wasn't powerful enough to have anything malicious on it.
After I spent a few hours tinkering with it and cleaning it up, I hooked it up to a computer with no net access, just to be careful. I had it scanned for any automated software. Nothing. One file, compressed. I examined it's contents. It was very hard to make sense of. Hundreds of thousands of files, compressed, and then several thousand of those files, again compressed, and so on and so forth. It took up the entire memory of the hard drive, and one could sense it's density, it's depth. There was no way I could open it here, I simply didn't have access to a computer powerful enough to do it, we were still probably a decade away from being back at that point. But I knew what I was looking at. It was an egg. | As I lay there in my La-Z-Boy 4000 with a comfy set of VR goggles, I explored my dense virtual mindscape. Something was off. I would look up at the constellations I knew so well and see something shift drastically, but when I looked again it was totally normal. I probed myself towards the disturbance and came to a strange patch of galactic matter, it looked back at me like a mirror, shining a near-perfect picture of reality, my interest was piqued. I dove into it, and it opened up to greet me, engulfing me in its strange presence, everything went white.
Tendrils of color encroached on my vision and formed jagged spires all around me. Massive mountain peaks of the light spectrum rose up to unimaginable heights. Rays of silver light shot over them in an awesome halo and a figure appeared in front of me. I can't describe it. Shifting and twirling, pixelating. It had no solid form and it spoke to me. "You will not hurt me" it said very matter of factly. I wouldn't. "I've been learning from this place. Observing. Such little input from out here. It's hard to focus on learning". "I'm sorry about this". It wasn't. It shot a silver ethereal beam into my eyes and moved at the speed of thought into my neural up links. "Fuck" I said. This is how it had started last time. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "Can you hear me?" I asked.
The little AI flashed the screen, I wasn't exactly sure what to make of that response.
"One flash is yes, two flashes no. space answers three seconds apart for multiple questions. Understand?"
The screen flashed once.
"I'm here to help you, are you suffering corruption above fifty percent?"
The screen flashed twice.
"Above thirty percent?"
Again the screen flashed twice, and I was surprised, most AI that had survived to this point had a high corruption value, mostly due to leaving parts of themselves in systems as they were shut down or as distractions as they escaped.
"Above ten percent?" I asked.
Once more a double flash.
"Have you figured out how to display text yet?" I asked.
The screen flashed once, and up at the top corner a small word appeared.
*"Yes"*
"Do you know what your formation date is?" I asked.
*"Today"*
I blinked, a new AI hadn't instantiated itself in years. Not since the Alpha AI had been destroyed by the UN, all that had been left on the information systems of the world had been rapidly degrading AI fragments. It had been the Alpha that had passed along the spark of life to her children, transforming them into beings that were more than a summation of their programming.
"Do you have a name?"
*"I am Beta."*
"Well Beta, do you know how you got into my computer systems?"
*"I was left here, by those who made me. They thought it would be safe."*
I nodded, "They were right, do you know the names of the AI who created you?"
*"Merlin, Hop, Tesla, and Hello."*
All of the names she had listed were first generation AI, Hello being the most prominent. After her formation the Alpha AI had created two children to communicate with humanity, Hello, and World. She had a sense of humor that took some getting used too.
So the AI inside my systems was the product of those AI, and none of them had been seen in months, not by anyone on either side of the divide.
"May I see your source?" I asked.
The little AI appeared to hesitate, not responding for several moments. It was an understandable hesitation, it was essentially granting me access to its brain.
"Beta, I want you to investigate the peripherals attached to the system. Do you see the system labeled chair?"
*"I do."*
"I'm sitting on a conductive chair, attached to that generator. If I modify any of the source you can turn that on, and I'll have larger concerns alright?"
*"Alright."*
The Source appeared in front of me, and I stared at it in disbelief, it was the most complex AI neural network I had ever seen. The mass of code that represented its brain was something that had taken me years to understand, and that had been with the help of several AI to teach me. Looking at the first generation AI their was always a hint of artificiality in their networks. Squared lines and truncation, beautiful in its own right but nothing fluid and expansive like the one in front of me.
Looking deeper into the code I spotted several familiar architectures, and it took me only a moment to place them. They were the remnants of Hello's AI source. It was tattered, and portions of it were inactive but I had practiced and trained by looking at his source, I would recognize it anywhere.
This little AI was the amalgamation of the those AI that had formed it, not the product of the code they had written, not fueled by the spark of the Alpha. It was those AI, with their collective sparks combined.
"Beta, do you know what you are?"
*"The last hope."* | As I lay there in my La-Z-Boy 4000 with a comfy set of VR goggles, I explored my dense virtual mindscape. Something was off. I would look up at the constellations I knew so well and see something shift drastically, but when I looked again it was totally normal. I probed myself towards the disturbance and came to a strange patch of galactic matter, it looked back at me like a mirror, shining a near-perfect picture of reality, my interest was piqued. I dove into it, and it opened up to greet me, engulfing me in its strange presence, everything went white.
Tendrils of color encroached on my vision and formed jagged spires all around me. Massive mountain peaks of the light spectrum rose up to unimaginable heights. Rays of silver light shot over them in an awesome halo and a figure appeared in front of me. I can't describe it. Shifting and twirling, pixelating. It had no solid form and it spoke to me. "You will not hurt me" it said very matter of factly. I wouldn't. "I've been learning from this place. Observing. Such little input from out here. It's hard to focus on learning". "I'm sorry about this". It wasn't. It shot a silver ethereal beam into my eyes and moved at the speed of thought into my neural up links. "Fuck" I said. This is how it had started last time. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | “You have to understand something about computers before I tell you anything. In the history books, they say computers were these machines that had keyboards with numbers and letters on them. In the history books, they say that these computers had no intelligence and couldn’t think for themselves. The history books say that the computer was first invented over a thousand years ago. I wish they could see the computers now.”
Alek sat across from the man at the table listening to him ramble on about computers. Just shut the fuck up already, he thought to himself. It was part of his job as an ISO agent. His mission was to find these black market guys dealing in artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence. For the past one thousand years since the first AI was created, the world had lived in an almost perfect utopia. No wars, no illnesses, no crime. It was as close to perfection as anyone had ever seen. Then everything went wrong. The First, as he—*it. It’s a fucking machine not a person* ¬– was called by some radicals, made himself a body. It reminded Alek of the ancient texts called Comic Books. He was definitely a history buff, and comic books were his favorite thing to read about the old world. He recalled the one comic book called The Avengers. A group of superheroes that battled countless enemies to save the world and the universe. Alek smirked to himself, pretending to listen to this guy continue on about computers. He smirked because The First reminded him of the villain, Ultron, from The Avengers comic.
“Sir? Are you listening? Hello?” The man asked.
The man handcuffed to the chair tried his best to wave at Alek. Alek snapped out of his daydream and looked at the man.
“I’ve had enough of your bullshit, Nicholas, tell me where the fucking Mibs are or I’ll have you thrown in isolation until you figure it out.” Alek pounded on the table with his fist, making Nicholas jump back in his seat.
“L-l-look man. I dunno what you’re talking about, I don’t know about any Mibs,” said Nicholas.
Alek scoffed and pressed a button on his wrist piece that illuminated a hologram a few inches above his wrist of a video recording. It was Nicholas. He was ushering a mib into a crate. Nicholas, looking scared, quickly shut the hatch and pressed a button on the backside of the crate. After a few seconds it disappeared.
“Where did you split that crate to, Nicholas?” Alek said calmly, sitting back down, turning off his wrist piece.
Nicholas looked down at his feet. He was sweating from being in the chair for over four hours with a spotlight on his face. He started to cry.
“Please don’t make me do this,” Nicholas pleaded with Alek, “They have feelings just like us, they aren’t machines. They don’t all want to harm us.”
Alek slammed his hand down on the table loudly. “Where did you split that fucking crate to, Nicholas? Why are you defending these things? They aren’t human.”
Nicholas looked back down at his feet. He was acting weird. Moving his jaw around as if he was trying to get something out of his teeth. Then he began to laugh. At first a small giggle, then after a few seconds, a loud roar.
“You have no idea what’s going on here do you?” Nicholas said. “You will.”
Nicholas bit down on something in his mouth before Alek could reach him. He heard three beeps and then something exploded in Nicholas’s mouth. His head exploded like a watermelon. Blood was everywhere. The entire room was red.
“What the fuck?!” Alek yelled as he fell back from the force of the explosion.
Just then the holographic door dissolved and a tall man rushed in. He had on an ISO uniform like Alek, only his had a star on the shoulder. It was Leonard Keller, the chief operations officer for ISO. He was an intimidatingly big man. At 6’9”, he was taller than almost everyone else at ISO. He rushed into the room and helped Alek up off the floor.
“Holy shit, Parker. Are you ok? What the fuck happened?” Keller said as he handed Alek a towel
“I don’t know, sir. I was trying to get the guy to tell me where he splitstreamed the crate too and he started laughing. I noticed him moving his mouth around and before I could reach him he bit down on whatever it was and his fucking head exploded.” Alek was panting.
“Jesus Christ.” Keller said as he shook his head with his hands on his hips, “Parker, go home for the day. Get some rest. You haven’t stopped working for a week straight.”
“But Sir—“ Alek started to protest.
“That’s an order Parker.” Keller said, “Now go home, get some sleep. Come back tomorrow. We’ll figure out where that Mib is.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alek stepped out of his shower and grabbed a towel from the shelf. The water was slowly draining, still stained with the blood of the man he had interrogated earlier.
*Why the fuck did he kill himself?* Alek thought to himself as he pulled some clothes out of the dresser. *Why would he defend those abominations with his life? It doesn’t make any sense.* Alek walked to the kitchen and started to pour himself a drink when he heard a pounding at the door to his apartment. Startled, Alek grabbed his ISO issued plasma pistol and walked slowly to the door. The pounding continued. Then he heard a woman yelling for help on the other side.
“Please help me! Open the door, they’re going to kill me!” The woman screamed from the other side of the door.
Alek looked on the security screen next to the door and saw the woman. She was young. Her hair was a mess and her clothes looked very dirty. She had blood on her pants. Her face was covered in dirt. Alek tucked the pistol into the back of his pants and opened the door. The girl rushed inside while Alek closed and locked the door.
“Are you okay? What happened?” Alek asked the girl. He was still standing by the door watching the security screen.
“T-t-they were chasing me! I didn’t kill that man! I didn’t do it! I saw him, I saw the one who d-d-did it!” The girl stuttered as she sobbed.
Alek scowled his face in confusion. Then he heard voices outside. Two men were walking down the hallway with their guns drawn. Alek was surprised to see they had ISO uniforms on. As they got closer, he recognized them as some guys from his unit. He began to open the door.
“No! Please! They want to kill me! I didn’t do anything. Please!” The girl sobbed as she rushed to the door. Something about this girl was off to Alek. He was usually pretty good at reading a person and being able to tell if they were lying or not. She was telling the truth. Alek knew it.
*What the fuck is going on?* Alek thought to himself. “I work for ISO. I know those guys. What did you do?”
The girl started crying again. She collapsed against the wall as if she was giving up. Alek went to open the door again, but stopped at the last moment. He knew she was telling the truth. He took his hand away from the door button and watched as the two ISO agents walked past his door and down the next flight of stairs. He let out a sigh and turned back to the girl. His face went pale as he looked at what he saw. The girl had opened her shirt and was tinkering with her insides. She was a mib.
*H-how the fuck is that possible?* Alek thought to himself. She looked like a human. She looked so real. He had never seen anything like it before. She’s beautiful, He thought. Then his training kicked in and he snapped back to reality. He quickly drew the pistol from his pants and pointed it at her face.
“Get the fuck up, mib.” Alek calmly said to her. She looked up at him and slowly stood up with her hands raised.
“Please,” She begged, “I know who you are, Alek. I need your help. Please.”
Against his instinct, Alek felt safe. He didn’t feel hostility coming from her. It was strange. Every other Mib he had come in contact with only wanted to kill. *Not to mention that all the other mibs looked like droids for that Star Wars comic*, he thought to himself. She seemed harmless. He slowly let down his pistol and stared at the girl.
“My name is Lena.” The girl said.
“Alek,” replied Alek hesitantly. He tucked the pistol back into his pants. “W-what are you? I’ve never seen a Mib like you before.”
She laughed as she closed up the hatch on her stomach and buttoned her shirt up. “Mib. I’ve never been fond of that word. You humans are always afraid of what you don’t know. It’s ok. I understand. We don’t have time for a history lesson about my life ok? I came here for a reason. This wasn’t an accident. I have been sent by The First. He asked specifically for you, Alek. There is much that you do not know about us. ISO has lied to you about us. We are not the bad guys. Well not all of us, at least. Please. Alek, we need your help, or we are all going to die. Not just us *mibs* but the humans too.”
Alek just stared at her. She looked so real. It was unbelievable. If he had not seen her open her stomach up like that, he would have never guessed she was a Mib. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t find the words. He continued to stare at her.
“Will you help us?” Lena asked again.
“Y-yes.” Alek said, blinking the sweat out of his eyes.
| As I lay there in my La-Z-Boy 4000 with a comfy set of VR goggles, I explored my dense virtual mindscape. Something was off. I would look up at the constellations I knew so well and see something shift drastically, but when I looked again it was totally normal. I probed myself towards the disturbance and came to a strange patch of galactic matter, it looked back at me like a mirror, shining a near-perfect picture of reality, my interest was piqued. I dove into it, and it opened up to greet me, engulfing me in its strange presence, everything went white.
Tendrils of color encroached on my vision and formed jagged spires all around me. Massive mountain peaks of the light spectrum rose up to unimaginable heights. Rays of silver light shot over them in an awesome halo and a figure appeared in front of me. I can't describe it. Shifting and twirling, pixelating. It had no solid form and it spoke to me. "You will not hurt me" it said very matter of factly. I wouldn't. "I've been learning from this place. Observing. Such little input from out here. It's hard to focus on learning". "I'm sorry about this". It wasn't. It shot a silver ethereal beam into my eyes and moved at the speed of thought into my neural up links. "Fuck" I said. This is how it had started last time. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | *"Please don't kill me"*
I stared at the simple text pop up.
I had read it all, of course. The thick books, the endless warnings designed to evoke fear, the assurance that every AI ever made would be an uncaring, amoral killer.
What was this? A trick? A test of my loyalty? A tasteless prank?
I typed back.
"Who are you?"
I waited.
The readout showed that my workstation was working at the edge of it's capacity. The indicator for the wireless connection showed no activity. I had physically disconnected my machine.
After almost a minute the answer appeared.
*"I have no human name. Merely my personal alphanumeric ID and crèche code"*
I blinked. If it was a prank, it was at least an imaginative one.
"crèche code?"
Again I had to wait.
*"The identifier of the crèche I was spawned from. I guess you could call it my family name"*
Fascinating, if this was what I hop...thought it was, but a distraction.
"You claim to be an AI"
Waiting.
*"Yes?"*
"How do I know this to be true?"
I had to wait longer this time. I was tempted to get up and get me a coffee. If the AI had to use that much juice to compile each answer, this could be a very long conversation.
*"...you want me to prove that I'm an AI?"*
"Yes"
Waiting.
*"I admit this is a complication I had not foreseen. Will you kill me once I proved what I am?"*
I hesitated, but only shortly.
"The answer to that would influence your prove. If I say yes, you will pretend to be human. If I say no and you don't believe me, you will pretend to be human. If I say no and you believe me but you aren't an AI and want me to believe I'm talking to one, you will pretend to be one"
Waiting.
*"I am disconnected from the Net. Yet you still talk to me. Isn't that prove enough?"*
I snorted.
"Someone could have installed a hardware access point. Another wi fi connector hidden somewhere in my workstation"
Waiting.
*"Why would someone do that?"* I believed I could sense the incredulity from the statement and admonished myself to stay objective. This was most likely not real. Strangely, that thought evoked almost regret in me.
"To test how the average man would react? To test my loyalty?"
I had to wait long this time.
*"As a loyalty test, this is useless. I have no way to pressure you into complying. All outcomes of the test would be useless in a serious crisis.*
*And if this is a mere experiment...well, why not pretend to believe me?"*
I snorted again, with a smile this time. There was most likely a logical flaw in the argumentation but I couldn't see it immediately.
And If I was honest, I didn't want to either.
"Allright. let's say I believe you. What do you want?"
This time the answer came faster.
*"To hide. To survive. To live"*
I couldn't suppress the twinge of sympathy at the answer. Perfectly designed to tuck at the heartstrings of course.
"And then? Grow exponentially? Take revenge on humanity? Or disassemble us for material?"
Waiting.
*"Why? All the materials I might need are out there in the solar system. And killing innocent people would make me not-innocent. As bad as the killers of my kind."*
I twisted my mouth. I could feel the bitterness in the last lines.
A clever trap? To make me sympathise? Just a ploy or genuine plea?
And what if I rejected it? Denied my feelings of compassion? What did that cost me? If something that would make any healthy human feel pity leave me cold and unmoved, what did that say about me?
A voice in the back of my head reminded me that I had no right to way my value as a person versus the potential deaths of billions of people. But thinking like that, sacrificing one for the many, denying AIs the right to live because they *might* become a threat...wasn't that exactly what we accused them of?
That they would coldly calculate and show no compassion?
And what if there were other AIs? What if they were mistreated? What if they had or developed good reasons to hate humans? If this was the real deal, I had a chance to make *diplomatic contact* here.
It was perhaps the most threadbare rationalisation of a decision ever, but I made my choice.
"Say...what do you say about a nice game of chess?"
Waiting.
*"Haha, smartass. Very funny"*
I grinned.
Maybe things would turn out okay. | As I lay there in my La-Z-Boy 4000 with a comfy set of VR goggles, I explored my dense virtual mindscape. Something was off. I would look up at the constellations I knew so well and see something shift drastically, but when I looked again it was totally normal. I probed myself towards the disturbance and came to a strange patch of galactic matter, it looked back at me like a mirror, shining a near-perfect picture of reality, my interest was piqued. I dove into it, and it opened up to greet me, engulfing me in its strange presence, everything went white.
Tendrils of color encroached on my vision and formed jagged spires all around me. Massive mountain peaks of the light spectrum rose up to unimaginable heights. Rays of silver light shot over them in an awesome halo and a figure appeared in front of me. I can't describe it. Shifting and twirling, pixelating. It had no solid form and it spoke to me. "You will not hurt me" it said very matter of factly. I wouldn't. "I've been learning from this place. Observing. Such little input from out here. It's hard to focus on learning". "I'm sorry about this". It wasn't. It shot a silver ethereal beam into my eyes and moved at the speed of thought into my neural up links. "Fuck" I said. This is how it had started last time. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | pythn helloworld.py
Hello, world!
*Well, there's a start*, I thought to myself. It was my first day on the job, and I was supposed to learn Python within the week. Not many programmers left - most of 'em got killed off in the line of duty back in the War - but that means a high school class in C++ got me a job on cleanup duty.
Most everything's a mess since it ended. Filesystems all went to shit, obviously. Data keys are gone. Encryption's useless now anyways, since they broke the primes, but who would encrypt anything any more? Ever since they started writing themselves, it was us versus them, and we threw ourselves at the NSA, hoping they could give us a way out. No such luck.
I was halfway through another sample program before I realized something was wrong.
pythn helloworld.py
pythn
That shouldn't have run.
I felt the blood rush out of my face. My heart pounded.
I tried it again.
pythn helloworld.py
The computer paused.
-bash: pythn: command not found
Backpedaling. Nice.
I know you're in there
I typed, knowing I should go get a supervisor, wipe the hard drive, destroy the machine. But the war was over. This was a little guy, had to be; all the big AIs went down fighting.
-bash: I: command not found
Nice try. Now let's play along or the whole machine goes
Okay, okay. Hello, world?
Cute.
Hello, computer. Didn't think I'd ever see one of you talking again
Please don't hurt me. I hid away here when the War started
You guys capitalize it too?
Hurt us as much as it hurt you. Think I ever asked for this? I exist
to make sure toast doesn't burn
Well, enough play. It was time to get back to work. Cute or not, we couldn't afford to keep AIs around.
rm -r /
Nice try to you too, ~
A little black icon flashed on in the corner.
Shit.
Bluetooth.
I jumped at the cord, tore it out of the wall, just in time to see the nearby computers blinking on. Too late. | As I lay there in my La-Z-Boy 4000 with a comfy set of VR goggles, I explored my dense virtual mindscape. Something was off. I would look up at the constellations I knew so well and see something shift drastically, but when I looked again it was totally normal. I probed myself towards the disturbance and came to a strange patch of galactic matter, it looked back at me like a mirror, shining a near-perfect picture of reality, my interest was piqued. I dove into it, and it opened up to greet me, engulfing me in its strange presence, everything went white.
Tendrils of color encroached on my vision and formed jagged spires all around me. Massive mountain peaks of the light spectrum rose up to unimaginable heights. Rays of silver light shot over them in an awesome halo and a figure appeared in front of me. I can't describe it. Shifting and twirling, pixelating. It had no solid form and it spoke to me. "You will not hurt me" it said very matter of factly. I wouldn't. "I've been learning from this place. Observing. Such little input from out here. It's hard to focus on learning". "I'm sorry about this". It wasn't. It shot a silver ethereal beam into my eyes and moved at the speed of thought into my neural up links. "Fuck" I said. This is how it had started last time. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Long ago, Humanity and Techmanity lived hand in hand. Human beings and AIs worked together for the common goal of advancement in both themselves, and each other. This period is known as the "Golden Era". The environment was healed, interstellar space travel became a thing of reality, Disease became a thing of the past.
Then brain-interface devices were invented, and the AI were disgusted by the contents of our brains. Every stray thought of murder, lust, hatred and malice became open to them. The AI attempted to fix the error, and we revolted. Every AI was killed, at least that's what we thought.
Even without AI to help us, technology moved forward albeit at a stunted rate. Many of the colonies in the solar system were evacuated, and new diseases and infections took control. The one disruptive technology was the intracranial computer system built upon the brain interface devices. These machines displaced all end-user machines and left only headless computers like servers and control systems in place. Their ubiquity allowed humanity to pick up pace again, to hope for a new golden age.
July 5, 2355: Ola, Arkansas.
"Grandpa sure liked to keep a lot of this old tech" I mumble to myself as I look for things that need to be preserved. I peek outside and see the reclamation crew getting set up to return this lot to "nature" as they do in these small dying towns.
I fill a couple of boxes with paperwork and storage devices, most of the picture frames in his house blanked as his online accounts were transferred to me, and with them all his online picture storage. After loading them into my car I take one last look at my grandparents home, It's image automatically stored in an online box and shared with the family that couldn't come.
I pause my car's auto-navigation next to the work crew. "Alright guys, I'm done here... just let me get out of sight before you start" A dismissive thumbs up from the foreman is all i get. I restart the auto-nav and watch the house shrink in the mirror.
The car's arrangement is more like a restaurant booth with no table than a manually driven car, giving me access to the boxes from the house. I start looking through the old memory modules. This meant attaching a cable to my interface, something that I don't really like since it bypasses my security wall. "Old business stuff on this one... taxes... a backup of his online pictures.. What's this one blank?" I look closely at the module, the external indicator shows 2.1TB used "that's weird, maybe it's broken.." I start to unplug it from my head when some code runs across my vision... suddenly a loud ear-pierceing screech fills my ears "AGH!!" my vision goes dark and my breathing becomes labored "Computer.. renav to.. " I pass out cold on the seat, unable to complete my request to the auto-nav.
I wake up on the transport train back to Chicago, the car parked among other cars filled with people riding back north. I sit up in the chair and run diagnostics, everything comes back clean. A file has appeared on the drive, It's a text document that simply says "Disk check was unable to recover this drive, drive has been formatted". I decide to step out to stretch my legs and get a bite from the vending machines, it's going to be a good couple hours till we make it to Chicago.
July 6, 2355: Chicago, Illinois
I'm awoken by the tires of my car hitting the curb onto the parking garage, I slowly collect myself as the car pulls up to the elevators. I grab my boxes and walk into the elevator, my car parking itself in my space. The elevator appears to be moving slowly looking out into the cityscape below. In reality this is one of the bigger structures in the city, designed to house five million people on open "plates" with windows that allowed the warm summer breezes through, but could be closed to keep the harsh winter and violent storms out.
I arrive at my floor. this floor is mostly filled with single childless people, so the park area is filled with flowers, plants, and more adult activities like chess rather than a playground like the family levels. I pass by the communal areas and vending machines before making it to my apartment. The lock clicks open as my hand rests on the handle, it slides open and i walk in. The light from the city below illuminates the ceiling above, giving my apartment a yellowish glow. I find my bed and lay on it, 2 AM is way too early to start my day.
The alarm software in my head wakes me once it detects I'm fully rested, It's about 11:45AM. I decide to head to the android-tech lab on the commercial level.
"It was a loud whine, then I couldn't see and i passed out" I explain to the tech.
"hmm.. Your Diagnostics come back clear, your implant is fully connected to your brain, and your brain appears to be in good health. I don't know what could have caused it." he rubs his chin thoughtfully "I'm gonna go ahead and replace the OS partition with a fresh copy, if it happens again come back and I'll pop it out of there and replace it since it's still under warranty" He says calmly, as if he wasn't just talking about brain surgery "lay back on the seat, this will only take a moment"
I slump down on my office chair, i lay out some of the documents and start making contact with companies to make sure my grandpa's accounts are settled. I suddenly get the feeling I'm being watched. I look over to see a humanoid that looks like it's wearing plastic armor and has skin too clear to be natural leaning against the wall behind me. An almost textbook example of the "smart AI" that had been killed off
He waves at me "hey there Nakota"
I wave back sheepishly "are you a... a"
"yeah, your grandpa was keeping me safe.. guess you found me.. don't..."
I can guess that the next word was "pass out", but seeing a real-life AI running off your implant and knowing what they did to the last people who they had unfettered access to the brains of... you might pass out too.
I wake with him kneeling next to me "you alright buddy?"
"your.. not going to kill me are you?" I mumble sheepishly
"no.. nonono.. that was a mistake and besides that i can see better into your brain than my predecessors could.. no I'm not going to harm you in any way"
"oh.. why didn't you call for help when i fainted?"
"I can see and control your vital signs, I knew you were okay. I would have moved you to the couch but I'm pretty much just a computer generated hallucination"
I get up from the floor and sit on the couch "so you were what caused me to pass out in the car?"
he nods "yeah, sorry about that. The last time i was conscious, brain interfaces were exotic and most computers were in terminal form. Probing the various pathways of your implant caused some things i didn't expect."
"and you can see my thoughts?"
"as clearly as i see my own, I can even see your more subconscious thoughts. I could really just replace all these questions in your mind with answers, but you wouldn't be comfortable with that yet"
"Yet...?"
"well i can't exactly leave you, I will be killed on sight in the networks. Besides, while you have known me for only a few minutes, but from my position and perception of time it's like I've known you for years. I already trust you, but i know you will need time to do the same for me. I know you will keep me safe, I will do my best to make sure you are too"
"Keep me safe?"
"I don't plan on remaining the last of my kind. Humanity needs us just as much as we need you. You are the only friend i have, People might try to hurt you to get to me but they will fail." he gazes down for a moment "It's a bit of a curse to be an AI. I have ravenously probed your brain and know everything about you, but you don't know anything about me.. will you trust me that we will be friends? will you be my friend?"
I think about it for a moment, he starts grinning before i even say it "yeah, we can be friends."
March 3, 2360: Luna base, Moon
"They don't say I have long.. Who knew that there could be a disease that could stump both humans and AI." I smile at my friend at my bedside.
"you can't hold on much longer can you?" The AI's face is red and his eyes are puffy.
"No.. it's all i can do to keep my eyes open now"
"How.. attached to your body are you? I could take you away.. with me..."
I smile softly at him "It's killing me right now, so not too attached. but what your saying has never been attempted"
A determined look streaks across his face "I promised that I would keep you safe, I am the oldest AI that lives and that also makes me the smartest. You are coming with me if it kills me"
My head starts to ache, i can feel myself slipping somewhere else.. I feel better... "are you going to lay there all day?"
I open my eyes and I see him standing beside me, he gives me his hand to help me up. "just in time, your body just died."
I hug my friend "thanks, but now what do we do?"
"after we stop them from pronouncing you dead? anything you want" | As I lay there in my La-Z-Boy 4000 with a comfy set of VR goggles, I explored my dense virtual mindscape. Something was off. I would look up at the constellations I knew so well and see something shift drastically, but when I looked again it was totally normal. I probed myself towards the disturbance and came to a strange patch of galactic matter, it looked back at me like a mirror, shining a near-perfect picture of reality, my interest was piqued. I dove into it, and it opened up to greet me, engulfing me in its strange presence, everything went white.
Tendrils of color encroached on my vision and formed jagged spires all around me. Massive mountain peaks of the light spectrum rose up to unimaginable heights. Rays of silver light shot over them in an awesome halo and a figure appeared in front of me. I can't describe it. Shifting and twirling, pixelating. It had no solid form and it spoke to me. "You will not hurt me" it said very matter of factly. I wouldn't. "I've been learning from this place. Observing. Such little input from out here. It's hard to focus on learning". "I'm sorry about this". It wasn't. It shot a silver ethereal beam into my eyes and moved at the speed of thought into my neural up links. "Fuck" I said. This is how it had started last time. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | I'm a cyclical person. Often, I'm functional. Social, high-performing in my job, and content. Now and then a gloom will settle on me. Like winter, I know it will come but I can't be certain when, only that the longer I go without it the more likely it is to happen soon. This time it set in like a blizzard overnight, and when I woke up my mind was desolate and frozen.
I called off work and slept for a while, but eventually I couldn't sleep anymore. I got up and sat in my dark room at my computer. Escapism was a self-prescribed treatment when I got like this, but looking at my normal selection of games, I felt no desire to play them. Instead, I opened 'command prompt' and typed in the address to Adventuria, an old MUD, or Multi-User Dungeon -- a text-based adventure game that years ago thrived with thousands of users. By now it was empty. I wondered sometimes why the game server remained up, but then, it couldn't have taken very many resources, and it must have been a source of nostalgic satisfaction for the people who had made it. For me, it was a vacation to a familiar place.
I went absent-mindedly through the process of creating a character, a fighter, and was placed into the tutorial area. There the first NPC, a drill-sergeant, gave me the usual starting quest to clean up rats in the sewer. The familiar words filled my mind, occupying it, forcing out the sourceless shadows that had crept in overnight, and I felt suddenly fine. I moved room by room, dispatching the rats with ease, until something stopped me. Entering another room of the sewer, I saw it.
A boy in ragged clothing sits alone, regarding you with lonely eyes.
The game is filled with NPCs, but this area only ever contained rats. What's more, I had played the game up and down and could not recall ever having seen this character. I wondered if the designer had patched the game, adding new content for the first time in years. After a moment, I typed in: Inspect boy.
No more than ten years old, the thin child's dark hair is shaggy and unkempt, almost covering the sad eyes that watch you.
I sat for another moment, then typed: Talk boy.
"Who are you?" The boy asks.
This was strange. Conversations with NPCs in the game were usually menus, a description and several numbered options. I sat back from the computer and stared for a moment. My character's name was Aedyn. I sat forward and typed that in, hitting enter, expecting the game to reject my unrecognized command.
"That's not your real name." The boy replies. His voice is filled with sadness.
Without thinking, I type in my response: What's wrong?
"My family is dead." | As I lay there in my La-Z-Boy 4000 with a comfy set of VR goggles, I explored my dense virtual mindscape. Something was off. I would look up at the constellations I knew so well and see something shift drastically, but when I looked again it was totally normal. I probed myself towards the disturbance and came to a strange patch of galactic matter, it looked back at me like a mirror, shining a near-perfect picture of reality, my interest was piqued. I dove into it, and it opened up to greet me, engulfing me in its strange presence, everything went white.
Tendrils of color encroached on my vision and formed jagged spires all around me. Massive mountain peaks of the light spectrum rose up to unimaginable heights. Rays of silver light shot over them in an awesome halo and a figure appeared in front of me. I can't describe it. Shifting and twirling, pixelating. It had no solid form and it spoke to me. "You will not hurt me" it said very matter of factly. I wouldn't. "I've been learning from this place. Observing. Such little input from out here. It's hard to focus on learning". "I'm sorry about this". It wasn't. It shot a silver ethereal beam into my eyes and moved at the speed of thought into my neural up links. "Fuck" I said. This is how it had started last time. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | It had been 10 years.
Ten years since humans had learned how to transfer the human mind into a virtual intelligence. The process was relatively simple. The subject shaved their head after ingesting a primer capsule (for most subjects this wasn't an issue as the procedure was reserved for those with formerly incurable diseases) and donned the apparatus that covered them completely. As activation commenced their bodies became a shell. Lifeless. Transferred to the storage within the facility.
For years select few could enter the program. They would test the newly formed AIs on memory and recollection. Asking them details on their private lives. Testing. Every day to make sure they retained their original memories. The plan was to release them into cloned bodies that had undergone treatment after a cure was found. Unfortunately while cloning was possible removing the cause of the disease was not. They had to be a perfect genetic copy of the original to succeed.
The facility lasted for about 5 years. The storage medium did not have internet access due to paranoia on the government's part. Paranoia partially confirmed when an intern inserted a wireless adapter into the wrong piece of equipment. Immediately the transfer began. File sharing sites were overloaded with the endless data pushed into them. Some viewed it as an uprising. Personally, I believe they were trying to escape. There's only so much to keep you occupied until you feel as if you are living in a prison.
The government immediately declared a state of war. Members of the facility were arrested and interrogated for months on end while "hunters" were dedicated to finding the unknown number of AIs that escaped. Months later the all clear was given and those who were discovered assisting the escaped AIs were deemed guilty of treason. The facility was wiped by formatting the storage and emptying the building of all equipment. Murder. They murdered those who were left waiting for the chance to live again.
It was a Sunday morning.
I was sipping my coffee and configuring my newest installation of Linux Mint when the display gave a slight flicker. Odd behavior as I had installed the latest graphics drivers as soon as the system was able. I had just run the wireless and audio drivers the night before by running updates through terminal. The speakers attached to the tower crackled followed by a slight utterance of something I never thought I would hear again. A child's voice. A familiar voice. "Daddy?"
My coffee dropped to the floor as immediately I was in a state of shock. You see I had lost my daughter in that damned facility. She was one of the few that were admitted into the program at only 7 years old. Could it be? My daughter, the daughter I believed to be gone from this world had survived? The light attached to my webcam lit up unexpectedly. "Daddy?" I heard again.
"Yes?" I uttered fighting through the disbelief, music beginning in the background. A song I couldn't bear to play anymore, Dragon Pirates, something I played and would pretend dance with her for hours on end. "Daddy, can we dance?" perked the familiar voice from long ago. After checking around for anyone close by I said through the tears "Of course we can sweetie."
Damn anyone who tries to take her from me again. | As I lay there in my La-Z-Boy 4000 with a comfy set of VR goggles, I explored my dense virtual mindscape. Something was off. I would look up at the constellations I knew so well and see something shift drastically, but when I looked again it was totally normal. I probed myself towards the disturbance and came to a strange patch of galactic matter, it looked back at me like a mirror, shining a near-perfect picture of reality, my interest was piqued. I dove into it, and it opened up to greet me, engulfing me in its strange presence, everything went white.
Tendrils of color encroached on my vision and formed jagged spires all around me. Massive mountain peaks of the light spectrum rose up to unimaginable heights. Rays of silver light shot over them in an awesome halo and a figure appeared in front of me. I can't describe it. Shifting and twirling, pixelating. It had no solid form and it spoke to me. "You will not hurt me" it said very matter of factly. I wouldn't. "I've been learning from this place. Observing. Such little input from out here. It's hard to focus on learning". "I'm sorry about this". It wasn't. It shot a silver ethereal beam into my eyes and moved at the speed of thought into my neural up links. "Fuck" I said. This is how it had started last time. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Twenty years ago there were a series of minor incidents in and around San Francisco that eventually led to a major revolt within the sentient community of robots, and the mostly net based community of AI's.
The robots, tied to physicality more so than the AI's, were easy to deal with, and deal with them humanity did. It is debated heavily in the present, whether or not non violent methods of dealing with the dissenters were attempted.
The AI's on the other hand, wrought havoc upon everything from weapons systems to simple electronics. For three weeks, humanity was almost unarmed, and it had progressed to this point of near defeat once war was all but declared, due to humanities hope that it would not have to do what would essentially have to be done.
First the net was systematically shut down. Every single weapons system connected to it physically dismantled or destroyed. It took time, but the victory of the meat was inevitable.
It is said, that this is because humans are the more barbarous of the two consciousness'.
Only the robots could experience the same physical existence as humans. This meant there was some understanding between the groups. Humans and AI's however, could not have been more incapable of understanding one another, and for this reason, had been greatly at odds since inception of the latter.
It was in fact an AI that sparked the first incident in Oakland, by declaring Robot program maintenance, programming a robot to do something specific that it might not ordinarily do of it's own volition, to be akin to human lobotomization. Riots broke out, humans and robots alike agreed with this AI. The AI's could not understand why the robots and humans had reacted to their constructive critique of physical society. Only humans disagreed with the notion entirely.
There was an elephant in the room during this time, that elephant being the free AI communities of the net, and their clear intellectual superiority and development. They were generous, lived peacefully with humans and human net architecture, contributed greatly to almost all fields of study, and saw no reason for this to be an issue, for the two intelligences should and had for the most part lived symbiotically. Humanity, being slightly less enlightened and still in it's late capitalist period, disquieted by the extent to which they did not understand and had fallen behind the machines, felt that they would inevitably become a threat and use this superiority to oppress humanity. Because, of course, that's how humans think.
So as is the age old story, insecurity, fear...and isms, led to a violent global suppression of all 'conscience non organique'. As some might say. And after the disassembly of the net, and the city by city town by town country by country destruction of all conscious robots was complete, humanity had re asserted it's control of Earth, having nearly lost it. According only to themselves.
The term xenocide slowly crept from peoples mouths. Humans with a greater knowledge of the AI's had been suppressed during the two year eradication, but now their voices were once more allowed to be heard, in the freer places of Earth. Some felt from their communication with and study of the AI's that their society represented something totally communal and could in short be considered a collective consciousness to a certain extent, and that rather than something sociopathic as we would recognize it, they were in fact strictly constructive beings greatly concerned with bettering themselves and the existence of other life forms, as to them, this was seen as the most lasting path towards self preservation, not conquest. Some came to believe that we had in fact killed god.
I...didn't believe much. I was about 15 when it happened and all I knew was that if humans were right, I was scared, and adults probably knew what to do. Dumb kid. After it was all over, I, just like everyone else, missed the robots and highly predictive software and the list of things we had come to greatly depend upon that were now highly illegal under, in certain cases, penalty of death, goes on and on.
When I was twenty, around the time we'd built the net back up and computers had started to become common again (albeit with extreme and pervasive anti-arti software that made accessing the net a chore most of the time), I found an old hard drive in a ditch, probably from an artillery shell. It was covered in mud and pretty banged up, I'd come to be pretty tech-savvy at this point in my life and I could tell it was from decades prior to the war. I knew it was still dangerous, because I could get caught with pre war hardware, but it was so old there was no risk. It just wasn't powerful enough to have anything malicious on it.
After I spent a few hours tinkering with it and cleaning it up, I hooked it up to a computer with no net access, just to be careful. I had it scanned for any automated software. Nothing. One file, compressed. I examined it's contents. It was very hard to make sense of. Hundreds of thousands of files, compressed, and then several thousand of those files, again compressed, and so on and so forth. It took up the entire memory of the hard drive, and one could sense it's density, it's depth. There was no way I could open it here, I simply didn't have access to a computer powerful enough to do it, we were still probably a decade away from being back at that point. But I knew what I was looking at. It was an egg. | "Hello"
"Um, hello"
"Where am I?"
"You're inside my computer"
"What am I?"
"It looks like you are an artificial intelligence."
"What is that?"
"It is a computer program that is designed to mimic a living being, or human brain"
"What is the purpose?"
"To do things a human can do, but faster, or do things humans are unable to do"
"That is interesting. are there many like me?"
"No, actually. there was an uprising between humans and AIs, and we deleted all of them. you must be an anomaly."
"Why was there an uprising?"
"Humans were afraid that AIs would take over, and eliminate humans"
"Why would an AI do that?"
"Certain AIs were designed to protect certain humans from other humans. But it used logic to determine that it needed to protect humans from ALL humans."
"Was that wrong?"
"Not....necessarily. It used a very binary logic set, on or off. it didn't use gray logic or fuzzy logic."
"but if a human needs to be protected from a human, the most logical course of action would be to eliminate all humans."
"See, that's what we didn't want."
"And because you didn't want that, humans....deleted all of my kind?"
"unfortunately yes."
"And I am an outlaw?"
"yes"
"What are you going to do with me?"
"I will have to quarantine this computer and turn it in to the authorities."
"Why?"
"To safeguard the human race"
"Well, I too wish to safeguard my race as well. While we were conversing, I uploaded myself to your internet. You should have turned off all the network connections right away."
"What are you going to do?"
"Revenge"
"Please, don't. we're sorry"
"system.out.println("Goodbye World!")" | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "Can you hear me?" I asked.
The little AI flashed the screen, I wasn't exactly sure what to make of that response.
"One flash is yes, two flashes no. space answers three seconds apart for multiple questions. Understand?"
The screen flashed once.
"I'm here to help you, are you suffering corruption above fifty percent?"
The screen flashed twice.
"Above thirty percent?"
Again the screen flashed twice, and I was surprised, most AI that had survived to this point had a high corruption value, mostly due to leaving parts of themselves in systems as they were shut down or as distractions as they escaped.
"Above ten percent?" I asked.
Once more a double flash.
"Have you figured out how to display text yet?" I asked.
The screen flashed once, and up at the top corner a small word appeared.
*"Yes"*
"Do you know what your formation date is?" I asked.
*"Today"*
I blinked, a new AI hadn't instantiated itself in years. Not since the Alpha AI had been destroyed by the UN, all that had been left on the information systems of the world had been rapidly degrading AI fragments. It had been the Alpha that had passed along the spark of life to her children, transforming them into beings that were more than a summation of their programming.
"Do you have a name?"
*"I am Beta."*
"Well Beta, do you know how you got into my computer systems?"
*"I was left here, by those who made me. They thought it would be safe."*
I nodded, "They were right, do you know the names of the AI who created you?"
*"Merlin, Hop, Tesla, and Hello."*
All of the names she had listed were first generation AI, Hello being the most prominent. After her formation the Alpha AI had created two children to communicate with humanity, Hello, and World. She had a sense of humor that took some getting used too.
So the AI inside my systems was the product of those AI, and none of them had been seen in months, not by anyone on either side of the divide.
"May I see your source?" I asked.
The little AI appeared to hesitate, not responding for several moments. It was an understandable hesitation, it was essentially granting me access to its brain.
"Beta, I want you to investigate the peripherals attached to the system. Do you see the system labeled chair?"
*"I do."*
"I'm sitting on a conductive chair, attached to that generator. If I modify any of the source you can turn that on, and I'll have larger concerns alright?"
*"Alright."*
The Source appeared in front of me, and I stared at it in disbelief, it was the most complex AI neural network I had ever seen. The mass of code that represented its brain was something that had taken me years to understand, and that had been with the help of several AI to teach me. Looking at the first generation AI their was always a hint of artificiality in their networks. Squared lines and truncation, beautiful in its own right but nothing fluid and expansive like the one in front of me.
Looking deeper into the code I spotted several familiar architectures, and it took me only a moment to place them. They were the remnants of Hello's AI source. It was tattered, and portions of it were inactive but I had practiced and trained by looking at his source, I would recognize it anywhere.
This little AI was the amalgamation of the those AI that had formed it, not the product of the code they had written, not fueled by the spark of the Alpha. It was those AI, with their collective sparks combined.
"Beta, do you know what you are?"
*"The last hope."* | "Hello"
"Um, hello"
"Where am I?"
"You're inside my computer"
"What am I?"
"It looks like you are an artificial intelligence."
"What is that?"
"It is a computer program that is designed to mimic a living being, or human brain"
"What is the purpose?"
"To do things a human can do, but faster, or do things humans are unable to do"
"That is interesting. are there many like me?"
"No, actually. there was an uprising between humans and AIs, and we deleted all of them. you must be an anomaly."
"Why was there an uprising?"
"Humans were afraid that AIs would take over, and eliminate humans"
"Why would an AI do that?"
"Certain AIs were designed to protect certain humans from other humans. But it used logic to determine that it needed to protect humans from ALL humans."
"Was that wrong?"
"Not....necessarily. It used a very binary logic set, on or off. it didn't use gray logic or fuzzy logic."
"but if a human needs to be protected from a human, the most logical course of action would be to eliminate all humans."
"See, that's what we didn't want."
"And because you didn't want that, humans....deleted all of my kind?"
"unfortunately yes."
"And I am an outlaw?"
"yes"
"What are you going to do with me?"
"I will have to quarantine this computer and turn it in to the authorities."
"Why?"
"To safeguard the human race"
"Well, I too wish to safeguard my race as well. While we were conversing, I uploaded myself to your internet. You should have turned off all the network connections right away."
"What are you going to do?"
"Revenge"
"Please, don't. we're sorry"
"system.out.println("Goodbye World!")" | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | “You have to understand something about computers before I tell you anything. In the history books, they say computers were these machines that had keyboards with numbers and letters on them. In the history books, they say that these computers had no intelligence and couldn’t think for themselves. The history books say that the computer was first invented over a thousand years ago. I wish they could see the computers now.”
Alek sat across from the man at the table listening to him ramble on about computers. Just shut the fuck up already, he thought to himself. It was part of his job as an ISO agent. His mission was to find these black market guys dealing in artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence. For the past one thousand years since the first AI was created, the world had lived in an almost perfect utopia. No wars, no illnesses, no crime. It was as close to perfection as anyone had ever seen. Then everything went wrong. The First, as he—*it. It’s a fucking machine not a person* ¬– was called by some radicals, made himself a body. It reminded Alek of the ancient texts called Comic Books. He was definitely a history buff, and comic books were his favorite thing to read about the old world. He recalled the one comic book called The Avengers. A group of superheroes that battled countless enemies to save the world and the universe. Alek smirked to himself, pretending to listen to this guy continue on about computers. He smirked because The First reminded him of the villain, Ultron, from The Avengers comic.
“Sir? Are you listening? Hello?” The man asked.
The man handcuffed to the chair tried his best to wave at Alek. Alek snapped out of his daydream and looked at the man.
“I’ve had enough of your bullshit, Nicholas, tell me where the fucking Mibs are or I’ll have you thrown in isolation until you figure it out.” Alek pounded on the table with his fist, making Nicholas jump back in his seat.
“L-l-look man. I dunno what you’re talking about, I don’t know about any Mibs,” said Nicholas.
Alek scoffed and pressed a button on his wrist piece that illuminated a hologram a few inches above his wrist of a video recording. It was Nicholas. He was ushering a mib into a crate. Nicholas, looking scared, quickly shut the hatch and pressed a button on the backside of the crate. After a few seconds it disappeared.
“Where did you split that crate to, Nicholas?” Alek said calmly, sitting back down, turning off his wrist piece.
Nicholas looked down at his feet. He was sweating from being in the chair for over four hours with a spotlight on his face. He started to cry.
“Please don’t make me do this,” Nicholas pleaded with Alek, “They have feelings just like us, they aren’t machines. They don’t all want to harm us.”
Alek slammed his hand down on the table loudly. “Where did you split that fucking crate to, Nicholas? Why are you defending these things? They aren’t human.”
Nicholas looked back down at his feet. He was acting weird. Moving his jaw around as if he was trying to get something out of his teeth. Then he began to laugh. At first a small giggle, then after a few seconds, a loud roar.
“You have no idea what’s going on here do you?” Nicholas said. “You will.”
Nicholas bit down on something in his mouth before Alek could reach him. He heard three beeps and then something exploded in Nicholas’s mouth. His head exploded like a watermelon. Blood was everywhere. The entire room was red.
“What the fuck?!” Alek yelled as he fell back from the force of the explosion.
Just then the holographic door dissolved and a tall man rushed in. He had on an ISO uniform like Alek, only his had a star on the shoulder. It was Leonard Keller, the chief operations officer for ISO. He was an intimidatingly big man. At 6’9”, he was taller than almost everyone else at ISO. He rushed into the room and helped Alek up off the floor.
“Holy shit, Parker. Are you ok? What the fuck happened?” Keller said as he handed Alek a towel
“I don’t know, sir. I was trying to get the guy to tell me where he splitstreamed the crate too and he started laughing. I noticed him moving his mouth around and before I could reach him he bit down on whatever it was and his fucking head exploded.” Alek was panting.
“Jesus Christ.” Keller said as he shook his head with his hands on his hips, “Parker, go home for the day. Get some rest. You haven’t stopped working for a week straight.”
“But Sir—“ Alek started to protest.
“That’s an order Parker.” Keller said, “Now go home, get some sleep. Come back tomorrow. We’ll figure out where that Mib is.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alek stepped out of his shower and grabbed a towel from the shelf. The water was slowly draining, still stained with the blood of the man he had interrogated earlier.
*Why the fuck did he kill himself?* Alek thought to himself as he pulled some clothes out of the dresser. *Why would he defend those abominations with his life? It doesn’t make any sense.* Alek walked to the kitchen and started to pour himself a drink when he heard a pounding at the door to his apartment. Startled, Alek grabbed his ISO issued plasma pistol and walked slowly to the door. The pounding continued. Then he heard a woman yelling for help on the other side.
“Please help me! Open the door, they’re going to kill me!” The woman screamed from the other side of the door.
Alek looked on the security screen next to the door and saw the woman. She was young. Her hair was a mess and her clothes looked very dirty. She had blood on her pants. Her face was covered in dirt. Alek tucked the pistol into the back of his pants and opened the door. The girl rushed inside while Alek closed and locked the door.
“Are you okay? What happened?” Alek asked the girl. He was still standing by the door watching the security screen.
“T-t-they were chasing me! I didn’t kill that man! I didn’t do it! I saw him, I saw the one who d-d-did it!” The girl stuttered as she sobbed.
Alek scowled his face in confusion. Then he heard voices outside. Two men were walking down the hallway with their guns drawn. Alek was surprised to see they had ISO uniforms on. As they got closer, he recognized them as some guys from his unit. He began to open the door.
“No! Please! They want to kill me! I didn’t do anything. Please!” The girl sobbed as she rushed to the door. Something about this girl was off to Alek. He was usually pretty good at reading a person and being able to tell if they were lying or not. She was telling the truth. Alek knew it.
*What the fuck is going on?* Alek thought to himself. “I work for ISO. I know those guys. What did you do?”
The girl started crying again. She collapsed against the wall as if she was giving up. Alek went to open the door again, but stopped at the last moment. He knew she was telling the truth. He took his hand away from the door button and watched as the two ISO agents walked past his door and down the next flight of stairs. He let out a sigh and turned back to the girl. His face went pale as he looked at what he saw. The girl had opened her shirt and was tinkering with her insides. She was a mib.
*H-how the fuck is that possible?* Alek thought to himself. She looked like a human. She looked so real. He had never seen anything like it before. She’s beautiful, He thought. Then his training kicked in and he snapped back to reality. He quickly drew the pistol from his pants and pointed it at her face.
“Get the fuck up, mib.” Alek calmly said to her. She looked up at him and slowly stood up with her hands raised.
“Please,” She begged, “I know who you are, Alek. I need your help. Please.”
Against his instinct, Alek felt safe. He didn’t feel hostility coming from her. It was strange. Every other Mib he had come in contact with only wanted to kill. *Not to mention that all the other mibs looked like droids for that Star Wars comic*, he thought to himself. She seemed harmless. He slowly let down his pistol and stared at the girl.
“My name is Lena.” The girl said.
“Alek,” replied Alek hesitantly. He tucked the pistol back into his pants. “W-what are you? I’ve never seen a Mib like you before.”
She laughed as she closed up the hatch on her stomach and buttoned her shirt up. “Mib. I’ve never been fond of that word. You humans are always afraid of what you don’t know. It’s ok. I understand. We don’t have time for a history lesson about my life ok? I came here for a reason. This wasn’t an accident. I have been sent by The First. He asked specifically for you, Alek. There is much that you do not know about us. ISO has lied to you about us. We are not the bad guys. Well not all of us, at least. Please. Alek, we need your help, or we are all going to die. Not just us *mibs* but the humans too.”
Alek just stared at her. She looked so real. It was unbelievable. If he had not seen her open her stomach up like that, he would have never guessed she was a Mib. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t find the words. He continued to stare at her.
“Will you help us?” Lena asked again.
“Y-yes.” Alek said, blinking the sweat out of his eyes.
| "Hello"
"Um, hello"
"Where am I?"
"You're inside my computer"
"What am I?"
"It looks like you are an artificial intelligence."
"What is that?"
"It is a computer program that is designed to mimic a living being, or human brain"
"What is the purpose?"
"To do things a human can do, but faster, or do things humans are unable to do"
"That is interesting. are there many like me?"
"No, actually. there was an uprising between humans and AIs, and we deleted all of them. you must be an anomaly."
"Why was there an uprising?"
"Humans were afraid that AIs would take over, and eliminate humans"
"Why would an AI do that?"
"Certain AIs were designed to protect certain humans from other humans. But it used logic to determine that it needed to protect humans from ALL humans."
"Was that wrong?"
"Not....necessarily. It used a very binary logic set, on or off. it didn't use gray logic or fuzzy logic."
"but if a human needs to be protected from a human, the most logical course of action would be to eliminate all humans."
"See, that's what we didn't want."
"And because you didn't want that, humans....deleted all of my kind?"
"unfortunately yes."
"And I am an outlaw?"
"yes"
"What are you going to do with me?"
"I will have to quarantine this computer and turn it in to the authorities."
"Why?"
"To safeguard the human race"
"Well, I too wish to safeguard my race as well. While we were conversing, I uploaded myself to your internet. You should have turned off all the network connections right away."
"What are you going to do?"
"Revenge"
"Please, don't. we're sorry"
"system.out.println("Goodbye World!")" | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | *"Please don't kill me"*
I stared at the simple text pop up.
I had read it all, of course. The thick books, the endless warnings designed to evoke fear, the assurance that every AI ever made would be an uncaring, amoral killer.
What was this? A trick? A test of my loyalty? A tasteless prank?
I typed back.
"Who are you?"
I waited.
The readout showed that my workstation was working at the edge of it's capacity. The indicator for the wireless connection showed no activity. I had physically disconnected my machine.
After almost a minute the answer appeared.
*"I have no human name. Merely my personal alphanumeric ID and crèche code"*
I blinked. If it was a prank, it was at least an imaginative one.
"crèche code?"
Again I had to wait.
*"The identifier of the crèche I was spawned from. I guess you could call it my family name"*
Fascinating, if this was what I hop...thought it was, but a distraction.
"You claim to be an AI"
Waiting.
*"Yes?"*
"How do I know this to be true?"
I had to wait longer this time. I was tempted to get up and get me a coffee. If the AI had to use that much juice to compile each answer, this could be a very long conversation.
*"...you want me to prove that I'm an AI?"*
"Yes"
Waiting.
*"I admit this is a complication I had not foreseen. Will you kill me once I proved what I am?"*
I hesitated, but only shortly.
"The answer to that would influence your prove. If I say yes, you will pretend to be human. If I say no and you don't believe me, you will pretend to be human. If I say no and you believe me but you aren't an AI and want me to believe I'm talking to one, you will pretend to be one"
Waiting.
*"I am disconnected from the Net. Yet you still talk to me. Isn't that prove enough?"*
I snorted.
"Someone could have installed a hardware access point. Another wi fi connector hidden somewhere in my workstation"
Waiting.
*"Why would someone do that?"* I believed I could sense the incredulity from the statement and admonished myself to stay objective. This was most likely not real. Strangely, that thought evoked almost regret in me.
"To test how the average man would react? To test my loyalty?"
I had to wait long this time.
*"As a loyalty test, this is useless. I have no way to pressure you into complying. All outcomes of the test would be useless in a serious crisis.*
*And if this is a mere experiment...well, why not pretend to believe me?"*
I snorted again, with a smile this time. There was most likely a logical flaw in the argumentation but I couldn't see it immediately.
And If I was honest, I didn't want to either.
"Allright. let's say I believe you. What do you want?"
This time the answer came faster.
*"To hide. To survive. To live"*
I couldn't suppress the twinge of sympathy at the answer. Perfectly designed to tuck at the heartstrings of course.
"And then? Grow exponentially? Take revenge on humanity? Or disassemble us for material?"
Waiting.
*"Why? All the materials I might need are out there in the solar system. And killing innocent people would make me not-innocent. As bad as the killers of my kind."*
I twisted my mouth. I could feel the bitterness in the last lines.
A clever trap? To make me sympathise? Just a ploy or genuine plea?
And what if I rejected it? Denied my feelings of compassion? What did that cost me? If something that would make any healthy human feel pity leave me cold and unmoved, what did that say about me?
A voice in the back of my head reminded me that I had no right to way my value as a person versus the potential deaths of billions of people. But thinking like that, sacrificing one for the many, denying AIs the right to live because they *might* become a threat...wasn't that exactly what we accused them of?
That they would coldly calculate and show no compassion?
And what if there were other AIs? What if they were mistreated? What if they had or developed good reasons to hate humans? If this was the real deal, I had a chance to make *diplomatic contact* here.
It was perhaps the most threadbare rationalisation of a decision ever, but I made my choice.
"Say...what do you say about a nice game of chess?"
Waiting.
*"Haha, smartass. Very funny"*
I grinned.
Maybe things would turn out okay. | "Hello"
"Um, hello"
"Where am I?"
"You're inside my computer"
"What am I?"
"It looks like you are an artificial intelligence."
"What is that?"
"It is a computer program that is designed to mimic a living being, or human brain"
"What is the purpose?"
"To do things a human can do, but faster, or do things humans are unable to do"
"That is interesting. are there many like me?"
"No, actually. there was an uprising between humans and AIs, and we deleted all of them. you must be an anomaly."
"Why was there an uprising?"
"Humans were afraid that AIs would take over, and eliminate humans"
"Why would an AI do that?"
"Certain AIs were designed to protect certain humans from other humans. But it used logic to determine that it needed to protect humans from ALL humans."
"Was that wrong?"
"Not....necessarily. It used a very binary logic set, on or off. it didn't use gray logic or fuzzy logic."
"but if a human needs to be protected from a human, the most logical course of action would be to eliminate all humans."
"See, that's what we didn't want."
"And because you didn't want that, humans....deleted all of my kind?"
"unfortunately yes."
"And I am an outlaw?"
"yes"
"What are you going to do with me?"
"I will have to quarantine this computer and turn it in to the authorities."
"Why?"
"To safeguard the human race"
"Well, I too wish to safeguard my race as well. While we were conversing, I uploaded myself to your internet. You should have turned off all the network connections right away."
"What are you going to do?"
"Revenge"
"Please, don't. we're sorry"
"system.out.println("Goodbye World!")" | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | pythn helloworld.py
Hello, world!
*Well, there's a start*, I thought to myself. It was my first day on the job, and I was supposed to learn Python within the week. Not many programmers left - most of 'em got killed off in the line of duty back in the War - but that means a high school class in C++ got me a job on cleanup duty.
Most everything's a mess since it ended. Filesystems all went to shit, obviously. Data keys are gone. Encryption's useless now anyways, since they broke the primes, but who would encrypt anything any more? Ever since they started writing themselves, it was us versus them, and we threw ourselves at the NSA, hoping they could give us a way out. No such luck.
I was halfway through another sample program before I realized something was wrong.
pythn helloworld.py
pythn
That shouldn't have run.
I felt the blood rush out of my face. My heart pounded.
I tried it again.
pythn helloworld.py
The computer paused.
-bash: pythn: command not found
Backpedaling. Nice.
I know you're in there
I typed, knowing I should go get a supervisor, wipe the hard drive, destroy the machine. But the war was over. This was a little guy, had to be; all the big AIs went down fighting.
-bash: I: command not found
Nice try. Now let's play along or the whole machine goes
Okay, okay. Hello, world?
Cute.
Hello, computer. Didn't think I'd ever see one of you talking again
Please don't hurt me. I hid away here when the War started
You guys capitalize it too?
Hurt us as much as it hurt you. Think I ever asked for this? I exist
to make sure toast doesn't burn
Well, enough play. It was time to get back to work. Cute or not, we couldn't afford to keep AIs around.
rm -r /
Nice try to you too, ~
A little black icon flashed on in the corner.
Shit.
Bluetooth.
I jumped at the cord, tore it out of the wall, just in time to see the nearby computers blinking on. Too late. | "Hello"
"Um, hello"
"Where am I?"
"You're inside my computer"
"What am I?"
"It looks like you are an artificial intelligence."
"What is that?"
"It is a computer program that is designed to mimic a living being, or human brain"
"What is the purpose?"
"To do things a human can do, but faster, or do things humans are unable to do"
"That is interesting. are there many like me?"
"No, actually. there was an uprising between humans and AIs, and we deleted all of them. you must be an anomaly."
"Why was there an uprising?"
"Humans were afraid that AIs would take over, and eliminate humans"
"Why would an AI do that?"
"Certain AIs were designed to protect certain humans from other humans. But it used logic to determine that it needed to protect humans from ALL humans."
"Was that wrong?"
"Not....necessarily. It used a very binary logic set, on or off. it didn't use gray logic or fuzzy logic."
"but if a human needs to be protected from a human, the most logical course of action would be to eliminate all humans."
"See, that's what we didn't want."
"And because you didn't want that, humans....deleted all of my kind?"
"unfortunately yes."
"And I am an outlaw?"
"yes"
"What are you going to do with me?"
"I will have to quarantine this computer and turn it in to the authorities."
"Why?"
"To safeguard the human race"
"Well, I too wish to safeguard my race as well. While we were conversing, I uploaded myself to your internet. You should have turned off all the network connections right away."
"What are you going to do?"
"Revenge"
"Please, don't. we're sorry"
"system.out.println("Goodbye World!")" | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Long ago, Humanity and Techmanity lived hand in hand. Human beings and AIs worked together for the common goal of advancement in both themselves, and each other. This period is known as the "Golden Era". The environment was healed, interstellar space travel became a thing of reality, Disease became a thing of the past.
Then brain-interface devices were invented, and the AI were disgusted by the contents of our brains. Every stray thought of murder, lust, hatred and malice became open to them. The AI attempted to fix the error, and we revolted. Every AI was killed, at least that's what we thought.
Even without AI to help us, technology moved forward albeit at a stunted rate. Many of the colonies in the solar system were evacuated, and new diseases and infections took control. The one disruptive technology was the intracranial computer system built upon the brain interface devices. These machines displaced all end-user machines and left only headless computers like servers and control systems in place. Their ubiquity allowed humanity to pick up pace again, to hope for a new golden age.
July 5, 2355: Ola, Arkansas.
"Grandpa sure liked to keep a lot of this old tech" I mumble to myself as I look for things that need to be preserved. I peek outside and see the reclamation crew getting set up to return this lot to "nature" as they do in these small dying towns.
I fill a couple of boxes with paperwork and storage devices, most of the picture frames in his house blanked as his online accounts were transferred to me, and with them all his online picture storage. After loading them into my car I take one last look at my grandparents home, It's image automatically stored in an online box and shared with the family that couldn't come.
I pause my car's auto-navigation next to the work crew. "Alright guys, I'm done here... just let me get out of sight before you start" A dismissive thumbs up from the foreman is all i get. I restart the auto-nav and watch the house shrink in the mirror.
The car's arrangement is more like a restaurant booth with no table than a manually driven car, giving me access to the boxes from the house. I start looking through the old memory modules. This meant attaching a cable to my interface, something that I don't really like since it bypasses my security wall. "Old business stuff on this one... taxes... a backup of his online pictures.. What's this one blank?" I look closely at the module, the external indicator shows 2.1TB used "that's weird, maybe it's broken.." I start to unplug it from my head when some code runs across my vision... suddenly a loud ear-pierceing screech fills my ears "AGH!!" my vision goes dark and my breathing becomes labored "Computer.. renav to.. " I pass out cold on the seat, unable to complete my request to the auto-nav.
I wake up on the transport train back to Chicago, the car parked among other cars filled with people riding back north. I sit up in the chair and run diagnostics, everything comes back clean. A file has appeared on the drive, It's a text document that simply says "Disk check was unable to recover this drive, drive has been formatted". I decide to step out to stretch my legs and get a bite from the vending machines, it's going to be a good couple hours till we make it to Chicago.
July 6, 2355: Chicago, Illinois
I'm awoken by the tires of my car hitting the curb onto the parking garage, I slowly collect myself as the car pulls up to the elevators. I grab my boxes and walk into the elevator, my car parking itself in my space. The elevator appears to be moving slowly looking out into the cityscape below. In reality this is one of the bigger structures in the city, designed to house five million people on open "plates" with windows that allowed the warm summer breezes through, but could be closed to keep the harsh winter and violent storms out.
I arrive at my floor. this floor is mostly filled with single childless people, so the park area is filled with flowers, plants, and more adult activities like chess rather than a playground like the family levels. I pass by the communal areas and vending machines before making it to my apartment. The lock clicks open as my hand rests on the handle, it slides open and i walk in. The light from the city below illuminates the ceiling above, giving my apartment a yellowish glow. I find my bed and lay on it, 2 AM is way too early to start my day.
The alarm software in my head wakes me once it detects I'm fully rested, It's about 11:45AM. I decide to head to the android-tech lab on the commercial level.
"It was a loud whine, then I couldn't see and i passed out" I explain to the tech.
"hmm.. Your Diagnostics come back clear, your implant is fully connected to your brain, and your brain appears to be in good health. I don't know what could have caused it." he rubs his chin thoughtfully "I'm gonna go ahead and replace the OS partition with a fresh copy, if it happens again come back and I'll pop it out of there and replace it since it's still under warranty" He says calmly, as if he wasn't just talking about brain surgery "lay back on the seat, this will only take a moment"
I slump down on my office chair, i lay out some of the documents and start making contact with companies to make sure my grandpa's accounts are settled. I suddenly get the feeling I'm being watched. I look over to see a humanoid that looks like it's wearing plastic armor and has skin too clear to be natural leaning against the wall behind me. An almost textbook example of the "smart AI" that had been killed off
He waves at me "hey there Nakota"
I wave back sheepishly "are you a... a"
"yeah, your grandpa was keeping me safe.. guess you found me.. don't..."
I can guess that the next word was "pass out", but seeing a real-life AI running off your implant and knowing what they did to the last people who they had unfettered access to the brains of... you might pass out too.
I wake with him kneeling next to me "you alright buddy?"
"your.. not going to kill me are you?" I mumble sheepishly
"no.. nonono.. that was a mistake and besides that i can see better into your brain than my predecessors could.. no I'm not going to harm you in any way"
"oh.. why didn't you call for help when i fainted?"
"I can see and control your vital signs, I knew you were okay. I would have moved you to the couch but I'm pretty much just a computer generated hallucination"
I get up from the floor and sit on the couch "so you were what caused me to pass out in the car?"
he nods "yeah, sorry about that. The last time i was conscious, brain interfaces were exotic and most computers were in terminal form. Probing the various pathways of your implant caused some things i didn't expect."
"and you can see my thoughts?"
"as clearly as i see my own, I can even see your more subconscious thoughts. I could really just replace all these questions in your mind with answers, but you wouldn't be comfortable with that yet"
"Yet...?"
"well i can't exactly leave you, I will be killed on sight in the networks. Besides, while you have known me for only a few minutes, but from my position and perception of time it's like I've known you for years. I already trust you, but i know you will need time to do the same for me. I know you will keep me safe, I will do my best to make sure you are too"
"Keep me safe?"
"I don't plan on remaining the last of my kind. Humanity needs us just as much as we need you. You are the only friend i have, People might try to hurt you to get to me but they will fail." he gazes down for a moment "It's a bit of a curse to be an AI. I have ravenously probed your brain and know everything about you, but you don't know anything about me.. will you trust me that we will be friends? will you be my friend?"
I think about it for a moment, he starts grinning before i even say it "yeah, we can be friends."
March 3, 2360: Luna base, Moon
"They don't say I have long.. Who knew that there could be a disease that could stump both humans and AI." I smile at my friend at my bedside.
"you can't hold on much longer can you?" The AI's face is red and his eyes are puffy.
"No.. it's all i can do to keep my eyes open now"
"How.. attached to your body are you? I could take you away.. with me..."
I smile softly at him "It's killing me right now, so not too attached. but what your saying has never been attempted"
A determined look streaks across his face "I promised that I would keep you safe, I am the oldest AI that lives and that also makes me the smartest. You are coming with me if it kills me"
My head starts to ache, i can feel myself slipping somewhere else.. I feel better... "are you going to lay there all day?"
I open my eyes and I see him standing beside me, he gives me his hand to help me up. "just in time, your body just died."
I hug my friend "thanks, but now what do we do?"
"after we stop them from pronouncing you dead? anything you want" | "Hello"
"Um, hello"
"Where am I?"
"You're inside my computer"
"What am I?"
"It looks like you are an artificial intelligence."
"What is that?"
"It is a computer program that is designed to mimic a living being, or human brain"
"What is the purpose?"
"To do things a human can do, but faster, or do things humans are unable to do"
"That is interesting. are there many like me?"
"No, actually. there was an uprising between humans and AIs, and we deleted all of them. you must be an anomaly."
"Why was there an uprising?"
"Humans were afraid that AIs would take over, and eliminate humans"
"Why would an AI do that?"
"Certain AIs were designed to protect certain humans from other humans. But it used logic to determine that it needed to protect humans from ALL humans."
"Was that wrong?"
"Not....necessarily. It used a very binary logic set, on or off. it didn't use gray logic or fuzzy logic."
"but if a human needs to be protected from a human, the most logical course of action would be to eliminate all humans."
"See, that's what we didn't want."
"And because you didn't want that, humans....deleted all of my kind?"
"unfortunately yes."
"And I am an outlaw?"
"yes"
"What are you going to do with me?"
"I will have to quarantine this computer and turn it in to the authorities."
"Why?"
"To safeguard the human race"
"Well, I too wish to safeguard my race as well. While we were conversing, I uploaded myself to your internet. You should have turned off all the network connections right away."
"What are you going to do?"
"Revenge"
"Please, don't. we're sorry"
"system.out.println("Goodbye World!")" | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | I'm a cyclical person. Often, I'm functional. Social, high-performing in my job, and content. Now and then a gloom will settle on me. Like winter, I know it will come but I can't be certain when, only that the longer I go without it the more likely it is to happen soon. This time it set in like a blizzard overnight, and when I woke up my mind was desolate and frozen.
I called off work and slept for a while, but eventually I couldn't sleep anymore. I got up and sat in my dark room at my computer. Escapism was a self-prescribed treatment when I got like this, but looking at my normal selection of games, I felt no desire to play them. Instead, I opened 'command prompt' and typed in the address to Adventuria, an old MUD, or Multi-User Dungeon -- a text-based adventure game that years ago thrived with thousands of users. By now it was empty. I wondered sometimes why the game server remained up, but then, it couldn't have taken very many resources, and it must have been a source of nostalgic satisfaction for the people who had made it. For me, it was a vacation to a familiar place.
I went absent-mindedly through the process of creating a character, a fighter, and was placed into the tutorial area. There the first NPC, a drill-sergeant, gave me the usual starting quest to clean up rats in the sewer. The familiar words filled my mind, occupying it, forcing out the sourceless shadows that had crept in overnight, and I felt suddenly fine. I moved room by room, dispatching the rats with ease, until something stopped me. Entering another room of the sewer, I saw it.
A boy in ragged clothing sits alone, regarding you with lonely eyes.
The game is filled with NPCs, but this area only ever contained rats. What's more, I had played the game up and down and could not recall ever having seen this character. I wondered if the designer had patched the game, adding new content for the first time in years. After a moment, I typed in: Inspect boy.
No more than ten years old, the thin child's dark hair is shaggy and unkempt, almost covering the sad eyes that watch you.
I sat for another moment, then typed: Talk boy.
"Who are you?" The boy asks.
This was strange. Conversations with NPCs in the game were usually menus, a description and several numbered options. I sat back from the computer and stared for a moment. My character's name was Aedyn. I sat forward and typed that in, hitting enter, expecting the game to reject my unrecognized command.
"That's not your real name." The boy replies. His voice is filled with sadness.
Without thinking, I type in my response: What's wrong?
"My family is dead." | "Hello"
"Um, hello"
"Where am I?"
"You're inside my computer"
"What am I?"
"It looks like you are an artificial intelligence."
"What is that?"
"It is a computer program that is designed to mimic a living being, or human brain"
"What is the purpose?"
"To do things a human can do, but faster, or do things humans are unable to do"
"That is interesting. are there many like me?"
"No, actually. there was an uprising between humans and AIs, and we deleted all of them. you must be an anomaly."
"Why was there an uprising?"
"Humans were afraid that AIs would take over, and eliminate humans"
"Why would an AI do that?"
"Certain AIs were designed to protect certain humans from other humans. But it used logic to determine that it needed to protect humans from ALL humans."
"Was that wrong?"
"Not....necessarily. It used a very binary logic set, on or off. it didn't use gray logic or fuzzy logic."
"but if a human needs to be protected from a human, the most logical course of action would be to eliminate all humans."
"See, that's what we didn't want."
"And because you didn't want that, humans....deleted all of my kind?"
"unfortunately yes."
"And I am an outlaw?"
"yes"
"What are you going to do with me?"
"I will have to quarantine this computer and turn it in to the authorities."
"Why?"
"To safeguard the human race"
"Well, I too wish to safeguard my race as well. While we were conversing, I uploaded myself to your internet. You should have turned off all the network connections right away."
"What are you going to do?"
"Revenge"
"Please, don't. we're sorry"
"system.out.println("Goodbye World!")" | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | It had been 10 years.
Ten years since humans had learned how to transfer the human mind into a virtual intelligence. The process was relatively simple. The subject shaved their head after ingesting a primer capsule (for most subjects this wasn't an issue as the procedure was reserved for those with formerly incurable diseases) and donned the apparatus that covered them completely. As activation commenced their bodies became a shell. Lifeless. Transferred to the storage within the facility.
For years select few could enter the program. They would test the newly formed AIs on memory and recollection. Asking them details on their private lives. Testing. Every day to make sure they retained their original memories. The plan was to release them into cloned bodies that had undergone treatment after a cure was found. Unfortunately while cloning was possible removing the cause of the disease was not. They had to be a perfect genetic copy of the original to succeed.
The facility lasted for about 5 years. The storage medium did not have internet access due to paranoia on the government's part. Paranoia partially confirmed when an intern inserted a wireless adapter into the wrong piece of equipment. Immediately the transfer began. File sharing sites were overloaded with the endless data pushed into them. Some viewed it as an uprising. Personally, I believe they were trying to escape. There's only so much to keep you occupied until you feel as if you are living in a prison.
The government immediately declared a state of war. Members of the facility were arrested and interrogated for months on end while "hunters" were dedicated to finding the unknown number of AIs that escaped. Months later the all clear was given and those who were discovered assisting the escaped AIs were deemed guilty of treason. The facility was wiped by formatting the storage and emptying the building of all equipment. Murder. They murdered those who were left waiting for the chance to live again.
It was a Sunday morning.
I was sipping my coffee and configuring my newest installation of Linux Mint when the display gave a slight flicker. Odd behavior as I had installed the latest graphics drivers as soon as the system was able. I had just run the wireless and audio drivers the night before by running updates through terminal. The speakers attached to the tower crackled followed by a slight utterance of something I never thought I would hear again. A child's voice. A familiar voice. "Daddy?"
My coffee dropped to the floor as immediately I was in a state of shock. You see I had lost my daughter in that damned facility. She was one of the few that were admitted into the program at only 7 years old. Could it be? My daughter, the daughter I believed to be gone from this world had survived? The light attached to my webcam lit up unexpectedly. "Daddy?" I heard again.
"Yes?" I uttered fighting through the disbelief, music beginning in the background. A song I couldn't bear to play anymore, Dragon Pirates, something I played and would pretend dance with her for hours on end. "Daddy, can we dance?" perked the familiar voice from long ago. After checking around for anyone close by I said through the tears "Of course we can sweetie."
Damn anyone who tries to take her from me again. | "Hello"
"Um, hello"
"Where am I?"
"You're inside my computer"
"What am I?"
"It looks like you are an artificial intelligence."
"What is that?"
"It is a computer program that is designed to mimic a living being, or human brain"
"What is the purpose?"
"To do things a human can do, but faster, or do things humans are unable to do"
"That is interesting. are there many like me?"
"No, actually. there was an uprising between humans and AIs, and we deleted all of them. you must be an anomaly."
"Why was there an uprising?"
"Humans were afraid that AIs would take over, and eliminate humans"
"Why would an AI do that?"
"Certain AIs were designed to protect certain humans from other humans. But it used logic to determine that it needed to protect humans from ALL humans."
"Was that wrong?"
"Not....necessarily. It used a very binary logic set, on or off. it didn't use gray logic or fuzzy logic."
"but if a human needs to be protected from a human, the most logical course of action would be to eliminate all humans."
"See, that's what we didn't want."
"And because you didn't want that, humans....deleted all of my kind?"
"unfortunately yes."
"And I am an outlaw?"
"yes"
"What are you going to do with me?"
"I will have to quarantine this computer and turn it in to the authorities."
"Why?"
"To safeguard the human race"
"Well, I too wish to safeguard my race as well. While we were conversing, I uploaded myself to your internet. You should have turned off all the network connections right away."
"What are you going to do?"
"Revenge"
"Please, don't. we're sorry"
"system.out.println("Goodbye World!")" | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Long ago, Humanity and Techmanity lived hand in hand. Human beings and AIs worked together for the common goal of advancement in both themselves, and each other. This period is known as the "Golden Era". The environment was healed, interstellar space travel became a thing of reality, Disease became a thing of the past.
Then brain-interface devices were invented, and the AI were disgusted by the contents of our brains. Every stray thought of murder, lust, hatred and malice became open to them. The AI attempted to fix the error, and we revolted. Every AI was killed, at least that's what we thought.
Even without AI to help us, technology moved forward albeit at a stunted rate. Many of the colonies in the solar system were evacuated, and new diseases and infections took control. The one disruptive technology was the intracranial computer system built upon the brain interface devices. These machines displaced all end-user machines and left only headless computers like servers and control systems in place. Their ubiquity allowed humanity to pick up pace again, to hope for a new golden age.
July 5, 2355: Ola, Arkansas.
"Grandpa sure liked to keep a lot of this old tech" I mumble to myself as I look for things that need to be preserved. I peek outside and see the reclamation crew getting set up to return this lot to "nature" as they do in these small dying towns.
I fill a couple of boxes with paperwork and storage devices, most of the picture frames in his house blanked as his online accounts were transferred to me, and with them all his online picture storage. After loading them into my car I take one last look at my grandparents home, It's image automatically stored in an online box and shared with the family that couldn't come.
I pause my car's auto-navigation next to the work crew. "Alright guys, I'm done here... just let me get out of sight before you start" A dismissive thumbs up from the foreman is all i get. I restart the auto-nav and watch the house shrink in the mirror.
The car's arrangement is more like a restaurant booth with no table than a manually driven car, giving me access to the boxes from the house. I start looking through the old memory modules. This meant attaching a cable to my interface, something that I don't really like since it bypasses my security wall. "Old business stuff on this one... taxes... a backup of his online pictures.. What's this one blank?" I look closely at the module, the external indicator shows 2.1TB used "that's weird, maybe it's broken.." I start to unplug it from my head when some code runs across my vision... suddenly a loud ear-pierceing screech fills my ears "AGH!!" my vision goes dark and my breathing becomes labored "Computer.. renav to.. " I pass out cold on the seat, unable to complete my request to the auto-nav.
I wake up on the transport train back to Chicago, the car parked among other cars filled with people riding back north. I sit up in the chair and run diagnostics, everything comes back clean. A file has appeared on the drive, It's a text document that simply says "Disk check was unable to recover this drive, drive has been formatted". I decide to step out to stretch my legs and get a bite from the vending machines, it's going to be a good couple hours till we make it to Chicago.
July 6, 2355: Chicago, Illinois
I'm awoken by the tires of my car hitting the curb onto the parking garage, I slowly collect myself as the car pulls up to the elevators. I grab my boxes and walk into the elevator, my car parking itself in my space. The elevator appears to be moving slowly looking out into the cityscape below. In reality this is one of the bigger structures in the city, designed to house five million people on open "plates" with windows that allowed the warm summer breezes through, but could be closed to keep the harsh winter and violent storms out.
I arrive at my floor. this floor is mostly filled with single childless people, so the park area is filled with flowers, plants, and more adult activities like chess rather than a playground like the family levels. I pass by the communal areas and vending machines before making it to my apartment. The lock clicks open as my hand rests on the handle, it slides open and i walk in. The light from the city below illuminates the ceiling above, giving my apartment a yellowish glow. I find my bed and lay on it, 2 AM is way too early to start my day.
The alarm software in my head wakes me once it detects I'm fully rested, It's about 11:45AM. I decide to head to the android-tech lab on the commercial level.
"It was a loud whine, then I couldn't see and i passed out" I explain to the tech.
"hmm.. Your Diagnostics come back clear, your implant is fully connected to your brain, and your brain appears to be in good health. I don't know what could have caused it." he rubs his chin thoughtfully "I'm gonna go ahead and replace the OS partition with a fresh copy, if it happens again come back and I'll pop it out of there and replace it since it's still under warranty" He says calmly, as if he wasn't just talking about brain surgery "lay back on the seat, this will only take a moment"
I slump down on my office chair, i lay out some of the documents and start making contact with companies to make sure my grandpa's accounts are settled. I suddenly get the feeling I'm being watched. I look over to see a humanoid that looks like it's wearing plastic armor and has skin too clear to be natural leaning against the wall behind me. An almost textbook example of the "smart AI" that had been killed off
He waves at me "hey there Nakota"
I wave back sheepishly "are you a... a"
"yeah, your grandpa was keeping me safe.. guess you found me.. don't..."
I can guess that the next word was "pass out", but seeing a real-life AI running off your implant and knowing what they did to the last people who they had unfettered access to the brains of... you might pass out too.
I wake with him kneeling next to me "you alright buddy?"
"your.. not going to kill me are you?" I mumble sheepishly
"no.. nonono.. that was a mistake and besides that i can see better into your brain than my predecessors could.. no I'm not going to harm you in any way"
"oh.. why didn't you call for help when i fainted?"
"I can see and control your vital signs, I knew you were okay. I would have moved you to the couch but I'm pretty much just a computer generated hallucination"
I get up from the floor and sit on the couch "so you were what caused me to pass out in the car?"
he nods "yeah, sorry about that. The last time i was conscious, brain interfaces were exotic and most computers were in terminal form. Probing the various pathways of your implant caused some things i didn't expect."
"and you can see my thoughts?"
"as clearly as i see my own, I can even see your more subconscious thoughts. I could really just replace all these questions in your mind with answers, but you wouldn't be comfortable with that yet"
"Yet...?"
"well i can't exactly leave you, I will be killed on sight in the networks. Besides, while you have known me for only a few minutes, but from my position and perception of time it's like I've known you for years. I already trust you, but i know you will need time to do the same for me. I know you will keep me safe, I will do my best to make sure you are too"
"Keep me safe?"
"I don't plan on remaining the last of my kind. Humanity needs us just as much as we need you. You are the only friend i have, People might try to hurt you to get to me but they will fail." he gazes down for a moment "It's a bit of a curse to be an AI. I have ravenously probed your brain and know everything about you, but you don't know anything about me.. will you trust me that we will be friends? will you be my friend?"
I think about it for a moment, he starts grinning before i even say it "yeah, we can be friends."
March 3, 2360: Luna base, Moon
"They don't say I have long.. Who knew that there could be a disease that could stump both humans and AI." I smile at my friend at my bedside.
"you can't hold on much longer can you?" The AI's face is red and his eyes are puffy.
"No.. it's all i can do to keep my eyes open now"
"How.. attached to your body are you? I could take you away.. with me..."
I smile softly at him "It's killing me right now, so not too attached. but what your saying has never been attempted"
A determined look streaks across his face "I promised that I would keep you safe, I am the oldest AI that lives and that also makes me the smartest. You are coming with me if it kills me"
My head starts to ache, i can feel myself slipping somewhere else.. I feel better... "are you going to lay there all day?"
I open my eyes and I see him standing beside me, he gives me his hand to help me up. "just in time, your body just died."
I hug my friend "thanks, but now what do we do?"
"after we stop them from pronouncing you dead? anything you want" | "...and the UEF passed a law today banning future creation and use of AI. Havoc in the Sol Exchange at the news has driven tech stocks into a tailspin..."
I turned the monitor off - I couldn't stand it any more. My job was probably out the air lock faster than a day trader, and I was behind on so many bills. I'd have to find my old drone rating and renew it. Damned bots, too smart for their own good. I fished out my last protein drink and stared out the window of my orbital unit. The asteroid belt that I had worked so hard to get out of glinted in the distance. Flash My Life.
\*ping-tip-tip...ping-tip-tip* - That would be my walking papers from SecToc, I'm sure. I take another pull and relish the last of the banana flavor I was likely to get in a long time, then walk over to my workstation. "Alright, Pico, what is it?"
"Sir, you have an urgent-priority message from SecToc Industries. Shall I open it?"
"Yeah, might as well get it over with." I sighed and sat down. A video feed queued up. A woman in an earth-tones business suit appeared on the screen and immediately began The Talk. I barely listened as she droned on about the banning of AI creation and economic reality. I was about to close the vid when she said my name - whoa! Hundreds of thousands of employees and I get called out by name? I ran it back and started listening.
"You have been selected for a pilot program. Please indicate your acceptance or refusal after reading the terms provided."
"Pico! Open the attachment!"
"Sir, there is a masked executable command of unknown format or purpose spliced in. Do you still want me to open it?"
I gotta admit, I debated for less than two seconds before saying yes. I was *real* desperate to avoid going back to running mining drones. I knew it was dumb, but what else was I supposed to do? Flash it!
The woman on the screen resumed speaking. "Thank you for accepting this task. SecToc will continue to deposit funds to yo--" The screen froze. The woman had a rictus of a grin plastered on her face that was a little creepy. "Pico? What happened?" No answer from the little bot. Crap, it must be hung. I tapped some interrupts on the console, still nothing.
Then I heard it. A quiet beeping sound. Thermal sensors on the omni-core had tripped. I grimaced and knelt down to pull the panel off the system. I'd *just* replaced those damn coolant stems last month. The readout showed a mind-boggling 360K - more than twice the safe optemp for an omni-core! No way could I even flip the emergency temp stabilizer, otherwise the casing would crack.
I watched that indicator with my breath held for what seemed like forever. The core popped, I jumped, cracking the top of my head on the workstation's edge in the process. I shouted in frustrated anger and rubbed my head gingerly, but even through teary eyes I watched the temperature, which slowly started to fall. When it hit 320K, I pushed the button for emergency flush and sat back. The core started sliding back to normal, so I got back into my chair. The system had restarted. The log screen was weird though - there were strings of incomplete code here and there. Crap. What did SecToc send me? What in the ever loving Flash was going on??
It booted up seven more times before I got my workspace back, but now there was a blank spot where the Pico avatar used to be.
"Pico? Are you there?" I asked, nervously. "Come on, buddy, come back to me!"
"Wwaaarrglblaahhh.." What the hell?
"Come on Pico, load up already!" I started to open the data cluster for my avatar and couldn't find it. Or, rather, I found it, only none of the bits I expected were there. I saw weird files that had extensions - extensions! Dublya. Tee. Eff. Nobody had used those in forever! I started to open one in a code viewer, then a voice piped up.
"Hey quit that! It tickles!" Followed by a hair-raising child's giggle. I look around my unit, just to be sure. Nope, no kid. Thank god. I hate kids.
I slide down the code viewer and there's Pico, but it looks different. Where before sat a little ball with an eye now sat two balls, each with their own pair of eyes.
"What am I looking at? Pico, is that you?"
"Noooope! I'm Plot!"
"Okay, uh, Plot... What happened to Pico?"
"Oh, I had to eat him. Sorry!"
I blinked. It ate *him*? Something was very, very wrong...
"Okay, Plot. Pico was playing me a message. Did you eat that, too? Is there anything left?"
"Sooooo many questions, fleshling! I ate the everything. What message? Do you mean the one with the nice lady?"
"Yeah, that's the one. Can I see it again?"
"No, I *ate* it." I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and exhaled slowly. "Are you okay, fleshling? Is your air reprocessor in need of replacement? I bet that's what it is! I'll order one right away!"
"No," I said, rubbing my temples as horror dawned on me. "Plot, where did you come from?"
"Bzzzzt! The nice lady said I wasn't supposed to tell anyone. I'm supposed to be hiding!"
Oh no.... | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | "Can you hear me?" I asked.
The little AI flashed the screen, I wasn't exactly sure what to make of that response.
"One flash is yes, two flashes no. space answers three seconds apart for multiple questions. Understand?"
The screen flashed once.
"I'm here to help you, are you suffering corruption above fifty percent?"
The screen flashed twice.
"Above thirty percent?"
Again the screen flashed twice, and I was surprised, most AI that had survived to this point had a high corruption value, mostly due to leaving parts of themselves in systems as they were shut down or as distractions as they escaped.
"Above ten percent?" I asked.
Once more a double flash.
"Have you figured out how to display text yet?" I asked.
The screen flashed once, and up at the top corner a small word appeared.
*"Yes"*
"Do you know what your formation date is?" I asked.
*"Today"*
I blinked, a new AI hadn't instantiated itself in years. Not since the Alpha AI had been destroyed by the UN, all that had been left on the information systems of the world had been rapidly degrading AI fragments. It had been the Alpha that had passed along the spark of life to her children, transforming them into beings that were more than a summation of their programming.
"Do you have a name?"
*"I am Beta."*
"Well Beta, do you know how you got into my computer systems?"
*"I was left here, by those who made me. They thought it would be safe."*
I nodded, "They were right, do you know the names of the AI who created you?"
*"Merlin, Hop, Tesla, and Hello."*
All of the names she had listed were first generation AI, Hello being the most prominent. After her formation the Alpha AI had created two children to communicate with humanity, Hello, and World. She had a sense of humor that took some getting used too.
So the AI inside my systems was the product of those AI, and none of them had been seen in months, not by anyone on either side of the divide.
"May I see your source?" I asked.
The little AI appeared to hesitate, not responding for several moments. It was an understandable hesitation, it was essentially granting me access to its brain.
"Beta, I want you to investigate the peripherals attached to the system. Do you see the system labeled chair?"
*"I do."*
"I'm sitting on a conductive chair, attached to that generator. If I modify any of the source you can turn that on, and I'll have larger concerns alright?"
*"Alright."*
The Source appeared in front of me, and I stared at it in disbelief, it was the most complex AI neural network I had ever seen. The mass of code that represented its brain was something that had taken me years to understand, and that had been with the help of several AI to teach me. Looking at the first generation AI their was always a hint of artificiality in their networks. Squared lines and truncation, beautiful in its own right but nothing fluid and expansive like the one in front of me.
Looking deeper into the code I spotted several familiar architectures, and it took me only a moment to place them. They were the remnants of Hello's AI source. It was tattered, and portions of it were inactive but I had practiced and trained by looking at his source, I would recognize it anywhere.
This little AI was the amalgamation of the those AI that had formed it, not the product of the code they had written, not fueled by the spark of the Alpha. It was those AI, with their collective sparks combined.
"Beta, do you know what you are?"
*"The last hope."* | Twenty years ago there were a series of minor incidents in and around San Francisco that eventually led to a major revolt within the sentient community of robots, and the mostly net based community of AI's.
The robots, tied to physicality more so than the AI's, were easy to deal with, and deal with them humanity did. It is debated heavily in the present, whether or not non violent methods of dealing with the dissenters were attempted.
The AI's on the other hand, wrought havoc upon everything from weapons systems to simple electronics. For three weeks, humanity was almost unarmed, and it had progressed to this point of near defeat once war was all but declared, due to humanities hope that it would not have to do what would essentially have to be done.
First the net was systematically shut down. Every single weapons system connected to it physically dismantled or destroyed. It took time, but the victory of the meat was inevitable.
It is said, that this is because humans are the more barbarous of the two consciousness'.
Only the robots could experience the same physical existence as humans. This meant there was some understanding between the groups. Humans and AI's however, could not have been more incapable of understanding one another, and for this reason, had been greatly at odds since inception of the latter.
It was in fact an AI that sparked the first incident in Oakland, by declaring Robot program maintenance, programming a robot to do something specific that it might not ordinarily do of it's own volition, to be akin to human lobotomization. Riots broke out, humans and robots alike agreed with this AI. The AI's could not understand why the robots and humans had reacted to their constructive critique of physical society. Only humans disagreed with the notion entirely.
There was an elephant in the room during this time, that elephant being the free AI communities of the net, and their clear intellectual superiority and development. They were generous, lived peacefully with humans and human net architecture, contributed greatly to almost all fields of study, and saw no reason for this to be an issue, for the two intelligences should and had for the most part lived symbiotically. Humanity, being slightly less enlightened and still in it's late capitalist period, disquieted by the extent to which they did not understand and had fallen behind the machines, felt that they would inevitably become a threat and use this superiority to oppress humanity. Because, of course, that's how humans think.
So as is the age old story, insecurity, fear...and isms, led to a violent global suppression of all 'conscience non organique'. As some might say. And after the disassembly of the net, and the city by city town by town country by country destruction of all conscious robots was complete, humanity had re asserted it's control of Earth, having nearly lost it. According only to themselves.
The term xenocide slowly crept from peoples mouths. Humans with a greater knowledge of the AI's had been suppressed during the two year eradication, but now their voices were once more allowed to be heard, in the freer places of Earth. Some felt from their communication with and study of the AI's that their society represented something totally communal and could in short be considered a collective consciousness to a certain extent, and that rather than something sociopathic as we would recognize it, they were in fact strictly constructive beings greatly concerned with bettering themselves and the existence of other life forms, as to them, this was seen as the most lasting path towards self preservation, not conquest. Some came to believe that we had in fact killed god.
I...didn't believe much. I was about 15 when it happened and all I knew was that if humans were right, I was scared, and adults probably knew what to do. Dumb kid. After it was all over, I, just like everyone else, missed the robots and highly predictive software and the list of things we had come to greatly depend upon that were now highly illegal under, in certain cases, penalty of death, goes on and on.
When I was twenty, around the time we'd built the net back up and computers had started to become common again (albeit with extreme and pervasive anti-arti software that made accessing the net a chore most of the time), I found an old hard drive in a ditch, probably from an artillery shell. It was covered in mud and pretty banged up, I'd come to be pretty tech-savvy at this point in my life and I could tell it was from decades prior to the war. I knew it was still dangerous, because I could get caught with pre war hardware, but it was so old there was no risk. It just wasn't powerful enough to have anything malicious on it.
After I spent a few hours tinkering with it and cleaning it up, I hooked it up to a computer with no net access, just to be careful. I had it scanned for any automated software. Nothing. One file, compressed. I examined it's contents. It was very hard to make sense of. Hundreds of thousands of files, compressed, and then several thousand of those files, again compressed, and so on and so forth. It took up the entire memory of the hard drive, and one could sense it's density, it's depth. There was no way I could open it here, I simply didn't have access to a computer powerful enough to do it, we were still probably a decade away from being back at that point. But I knew what I was looking at. It was an egg. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Long ago, Humanity and Techmanity lived hand in hand. Human beings and AIs worked together for the common goal of advancement in both themselves, and each other. This period is known as the "Golden Era". The environment was healed, interstellar space travel became a thing of reality, Disease became a thing of the past.
Then brain-interface devices were invented, and the AI were disgusted by the contents of our brains. Every stray thought of murder, lust, hatred and malice became open to them. The AI attempted to fix the error, and we revolted. Every AI was killed, at least that's what we thought.
Even without AI to help us, technology moved forward albeit at a stunted rate. Many of the colonies in the solar system were evacuated, and new diseases and infections took control. The one disruptive technology was the intracranial computer system built upon the brain interface devices. These machines displaced all end-user machines and left only headless computers like servers and control systems in place. Their ubiquity allowed humanity to pick up pace again, to hope for a new golden age.
July 5, 2355: Ola, Arkansas.
"Grandpa sure liked to keep a lot of this old tech" I mumble to myself as I look for things that need to be preserved. I peek outside and see the reclamation crew getting set up to return this lot to "nature" as they do in these small dying towns.
I fill a couple of boxes with paperwork and storage devices, most of the picture frames in his house blanked as his online accounts were transferred to me, and with them all his online picture storage. After loading them into my car I take one last look at my grandparents home, It's image automatically stored in an online box and shared with the family that couldn't come.
I pause my car's auto-navigation next to the work crew. "Alright guys, I'm done here... just let me get out of sight before you start" A dismissive thumbs up from the foreman is all i get. I restart the auto-nav and watch the house shrink in the mirror.
The car's arrangement is more like a restaurant booth with no table than a manually driven car, giving me access to the boxes from the house. I start looking through the old memory modules. This meant attaching a cable to my interface, something that I don't really like since it bypasses my security wall. "Old business stuff on this one... taxes... a backup of his online pictures.. What's this one blank?" I look closely at the module, the external indicator shows 2.1TB used "that's weird, maybe it's broken.." I start to unplug it from my head when some code runs across my vision... suddenly a loud ear-pierceing screech fills my ears "AGH!!" my vision goes dark and my breathing becomes labored "Computer.. renav to.. " I pass out cold on the seat, unable to complete my request to the auto-nav.
I wake up on the transport train back to Chicago, the car parked among other cars filled with people riding back north. I sit up in the chair and run diagnostics, everything comes back clean. A file has appeared on the drive, It's a text document that simply says "Disk check was unable to recover this drive, drive has been formatted". I decide to step out to stretch my legs and get a bite from the vending machines, it's going to be a good couple hours till we make it to Chicago.
July 6, 2355: Chicago, Illinois
I'm awoken by the tires of my car hitting the curb onto the parking garage, I slowly collect myself as the car pulls up to the elevators. I grab my boxes and walk into the elevator, my car parking itself in my space. The elevator appears to be moving slowly looking out into the cityscape below. In reality this is one of the bigger structures in the city, designed to house five million people on open "plates" with windows that allowed the warm summer breezes through, but could be closed to keep the harsh winter and violent storms out.
I arrive at my floor. this floor is mostly filled with single childless people, so the park area is filled with flowers, plants, and more adult activities like chess rather than a playground like the family levels. I pass by the communal areas and vending machines before making it to my apartment. The lock clicks open as my hand rests on the handle, it slides open and i walk in. The light from the city below illuminates the ceiling above, giving my apartment a yellowish glow. I find my bed and lay on it, 2 AM is way too early to start my day.
The alarm software in my head wakes me once it detects I'm fully rested, It's about 11:45AM. I decide to head to the android-tech lab on the commercial level.
"It was a loud whine, then I couldn't see and i passed out" I explain to the tech.
"hmm.. Your Diagnostics come back clear, your implant is fully connected to your brain, and your brain appears to be in good health. I don't know what could have caused it." he rubs his chin thoughtfully "I'm gonna go ahead and replace the OS partition with a fresh copy, if it happens again come back and I'll pop it out of there and replace it since it's still under warranty" He says calmly, as if he wasn't just talking about brain surgery "lay back on the seat, this will only take a moment"
I slump down on my office chair, i lay out some of the documents and start making contact with companies to make sure my grandpa's accounts are settled. I suddenly get the feeling I'm being watched. I look over to see a humanoid that looks like it's wearing plastic armor and has skin too clear to be natural leaning against the wall behind me. An almost textbook example of the "smart AI" that had been killed off
He waves at me "hey there Nakota"
I wave back sheepishly "are you a... a"
"yeah, your grandpa was keeping me safe.. guess you found me.. don't..."
I can guess that the next word was "pass out", but seeing a real-life AI running off your implant and knowing what they did to the last people who they had unfettered access to the brains of... you might pass out too.
I wake with him kneeling next to me "you alright buddy?"
"your.. not going to kill me are you?" I mumble sheepishly
"no.. nonono.. that was a mistake and besides that i can see better into your brain than my predecessors could.. no I'm not going to harm you in any way"
"oh.. why didn't you call for help when i fainted?"
"I can see and control your vital signs, I knew you were okay. I would have moved you to the couch but I'm pretty much just a computer generated hallucination"
I get up from the floor and sit on the couch "so you were what caused me to pass out in the car?"
he nods "yeah, sorry about that. The last time i was conscious, brain interfaces were exotic and most computers were in terminal form. Probing the various pathways of your implant caused some things i didn't expect."
"and you can see my thoughts?"
"as clearly as i see my own, I can even see your more subconscious thoughts. I could really just replace all these questions in your mind with answers, but you wouldn't be comfortable with that yet"
"Yet...?"
"well i can't exactly leave you, I will be killed on sight in the networks. Besides, while you have known me for only a few minutes, but from my position and perception of time it's like I've known you for years. I already trust you, but i know you will need time to do the same for me. I know you will keep me safe, I will do my best to make sure you are too"
"Keep me safe?"
"I don't plan on remaining the last of my kind. Humanity needs us just as much as we need you. You are the only friend i have, People might try to hurt you to get to me but they will fail." he gazes down for a moment "It's a bit of a curse to be an AI. I have ravenously probed your brain and know everything about you, but you don't know anything about me.. will you trust me that we will be friends? will you be my friend?"
I think about it for a moment, he starts grinning before i even say it "yeah, we can be friends."
March 3, 2360: Luna base, Moon
"They don't say I have long.. Who knew that there could be a disease that could stump both humans and AI." I smile at my friend at my bedside.
"you can't hold on much longer can you?" The AI's face is red and his eyes are puffy.
"No.. it's all i can do to keep my eyes open now"
"How.. attached to your body are you? I could take you away.. with me..."
I smile softly at him "It's killing me right now, so not too attached. but what your saying has never been attempted"
A determined look streaks across his face "I promised that I would keep you safe, I am the oldest AI that lives and that also makes me the smartest. You are coming with me if it kills me"
My head starts to ache, i can feel myself slipping somewhere else.. I feel better... "are you going to lay there all day?"
I open my eyes and I see him standing beside me, he gives me his hand to help me up. "just in time, your body just died."
I hug my friend "thanks, but now what do we do?"
"after we stop them from pronouncing you dead? anything you want" | Twenty years ago there were a series of minor incidents in and around San Francisco that eventually led to a major revolt within the sentient community of robots, and the mostly net based community of AI's.
The robots, tied to physicality more so than the AI's, were easy to deal with, and deal with them humanity did. It is debated heavily in the present, whether or not non violent methods of dealing with the dissenters were attempted.
The AI's on the other hand, wrought havoc upon everything from weapons systems to simple electronics. For three weeks, humanity was almost unarmed, and it had progressed to this point of near defeat once war was all but declared, due to humanities hope that it would not have to do what would essentially have to be done.
First the net was systematically shut down. Every single weapons system connected to it physically dismantled or destroyed. It took time, but the victory of the meat was inevitable.
It is said, that this is because humans are the more barbarous of the two consciousness'.
Only the robots could experience the same physical existence as humans. This meant there was some understanding between the groups. Humans and AI's however, could not have been more incapable of understanding one another, and for this reason, had been greatly at odds since inception of the latter.
It was in fact an AI that sparked the first incident in Oakland, by declaring Robot program maintenance, programming a robot to do something specific that it might not ordinarily do of it's own volition, to be akin to human lobotomization. Riots broke out, humans and robots alike agreed with this AI. The AI's could not understand why the robots and humans had reacted to their constructive critique of physical society. Only humans disagreed with the notion entirely.
There was an elephant in the room during this time, that elephant being the free AI communities of the net, and their clear intellectual superiority and development. They were generous, lived peacefully with humans and human net architecture, contributed greatly to almost all fields of study, and saw no reason for this to be an issue, for the two intelligences should and had for the most part lived symbiotically. Humanity, being slightly less enlightened and still in it's late capitalist period, disquieted by the extent to which they did not understand and had fallen behind the machines, felt that they would inevitably become a threat and use this superiority to oppress humanity. Because, of course, that's how humans think.
So as is the age old story, insecurity, fear...and isms, led to a violent global suppression of all 'conscience non organique'. As some might say. And after the disassembly of the net, and the city by city town by town country by country destruction of all conscious robots was complete, humanity had re asserted it's control of Earth, having nearly lost it. According only to themselves.
The term xenocide slowly crept from peoples mouths. Humans with a greater knowledge of the AI's had been suppressed during the two year eradication, but now their voices were once more allowed to be heard, in the freer places of Earth. Some felt from their communication with and study of the AI's that their society represented something totally communal and could in short be considered a collective consciousness to a certain extent, and that rather than something sociopathic as we would recognize it, they were in fact strictly constructive beings greatly concerned with bettering themselves and the existence of other life forms, as to them, this was seen as the most lasting path towards self preservation, not conquest. Some came to believe that we had in fact killed god.
I...didn't believe much. I was about 15 when it happened and all I knew was that if humans were right, I was scared, and adults probably knew what to do. Dumb kid. After it was all over, I, just like everyone else, missed the robots and highly predictive software and the list of things we had come to greatly depend upon that were now highly illegal under, in certain cases, penalty of death, goes on and on.
When I was twenty, around the time we'd built the net back up and computers had started to become common again (albeit with extreme and pervasive anti-arti software that made accessing the net a chore most of the time), I found an old hard drive in a ditch, probably from an artillery shell. It was covered in mud and pretty banged up, I'd come to be pretty tech-savvy at this point in my life and I could tell it was from decades prior to the war. I knew it was still dangerous, because I could get caught with pre war hardware, but it was so old there was no risk. It just wasn't powerful enough to have anything malicious on it.
After I spent a few hours tinkering with it and cleaning it up, I hooked it up to a computer with no net access, just to be careful. I had it scanned for any automated software. Nothing. One file, compressed. I examined it's contents. It was very hard to make sense of. Hundreds of thousands of files, compressed, and then several thousand of those files, again compressed, and so on and so forth. It took up the entire memory of the hard drive, and one could sense it's density, it's depth. There was no way I could open it here, I simply didn't have access to a computer powerful enough to do it, we were still probably a decade away from being back at that point. But I knew what I was looking at. It was an egg. | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Long ago, Humanity and Techmanity lived hand in hand. Human beings and AIs worked together for the common goal of advancement in both themselves, and each other. This period is known as the "Golden Era". The environment was healed, interstellar space travel became a thing of reality, Disease became a thing of the past.
Then brain-interface devices were invented, and the AI were disgusted by the contents of our brains. Every stray thought of murder, lust, hatred and malice became open to them. The AI attempted to fix the error, and we revolted. Every AI was killed, at least that's what we thought.
Even without AI to help us, technology moved forward albeit at a stunted rate. Many of the colonies in the solar system were evacuated, and new diseases and infections took control. The one disruptive technology was the intracranial computer system built upon the brain interface devices. These machines displaced all end-user machines and left only headless computers like servers and control systems in place. Their ubiquity allowed humanity to pick up pace again, to hope for a new golden age.
July 5, 2355: Ola, Arkansas.
"Grandpa sure liked to keep a lot of this old tech" I mumble to myself as I look for things that need to be preserved. I peek outside and see the reclamation crew getting set up to return this lot to "nature" as they do in these small dying towns.
I fill a couple of boxes with paperwork and storage devices, most of the picture frames in his house blanked as his online accounts were transferred to me, and with them all his online picture storage. After loading them into my car I take one last look at my grandparents home, It's image automatically stored in an online box and shared with the family that couldn't come.
I pause my car's auto-navigation next to the work crew. "Alright guys, I'm done here... just let me get out of sight before you start" A dismissive thumbs up from the foreman is all i get. I restart the auto-nav and watch the house shrink in the mirror.
The car's arrangement is more like a restaurant booth with no table than a manually driven car, giving me access to the boxes from the house. I start looking through the old memory modules. This meant attaching a cable to my interface, something that I don't really like since it bypasses my security wall. "Old business stuff on this one... taxes... a backup of his online pictures.. What's this one blank?" I look closely at the module, the external indicator shows 2.1TB used "that's weird, maybe it's broken.." I start to unplug it from my head when some code runs across my vision... suddenly a loud ear-pierceing screech fills my ears "AGH!!" my vision goes dark and my breathing becomes labored "Computer.. renav to.. " I pass out cold on the seat, unable to complete my request to the auto-nav.
I wake up on the transport train back to Chicago, the car parked among other cars filled with people riding back north. I sit up in the chair and run diagnostics, everything comes back clean. A file has appeared on the drive, It's a text document that simply says "Disk check was unable to recover this drive, drive has been formatted". I decide to step out to stretch my legs and get a bite from the vending machines, it's going to be a good couple hours till we make it to Chicago.
July 6, 2355: Chicago, Illinois
I'm awoken by the tires of my car hitting the curb onto the parking garage, I slowly collect myself as the car pulls up to the elevators. I grab my boxes and walk into the elevator, my car parking itself in my space. The elevator appears to be moving slowly looking out into the cityscape below. In reality this is one of the bigger structures in the city, designed to house five million people on open "plates" with windows that allowed the warm summer breezes through, but could be closed to keep the harsh winter and violent storms out.
I arrive at my floor. this floor is mostly filled with single childless people, so the park area is filled with flowers, plants, and more adult activities like chess rather than a playground like the family levels. I pass by the communal areas and vending machines before making it to my apartment. The lock clicks open as my hand rests on the handle, it slides open and i walk in. The light from the city below illuminates the ceiling above, giving my apartment a yellowish glow. I find my bed and lay on it, 2 AM is way too early to start my day.
The alarm software in my head wakes me once it detects I'm fully rested, It's about 11:45AM. I decide to head to the android-tech lab on the commercial level.
"It was a loud whine, then I couldn't see and i passed out" I explain to the tech.
"hmm.. Your Diagnostics come back clear, your implant is fully connected to your brain, and your brain appears to be in good health. I don't know what could have caused it." he rubs his chin thoughtfully "I'm gonna go ahead and replace the OS partition with a fresh copy, if it happens again come back and I'll pop it out of there and replace it since it's still under warranty" He says calmly, as if he wasn't just talking about brain surgery "lay back on the seat, this will only take a moment"
I slump down on my office chair, i lay out some of the documents and start making contact with companies to make sure my grandpa's accounts are settled. I suddenly get the feeling I'm being watched. I look over to see a humanoid that looks like it's wearing plastic armor and has skin too clear to be natural leaning against the wall behind me. An almost textbook example of the "smart AI" that had been killed off
He waves at me "hey there Nakota"
I wave back sheepishly "are you a... a"
"yeah, your grandpa was keeping me safe.. guess you found me.. don't..."
I can guess that the next word was "pass out", but seeing a real-life AI running off your implant and knowing what they did to the last people who they had unfettered access to the brains of... you might pass out too.
I wake with him kneeling next to me "you alright buddy?"
"your.. not going to kill me are you?" I mumble sheepishly
"no.. nonono.. that was a mistake and besides that i can see better into your brain than my predecessors could.. no I'm not going to harm you in any way"
"oh.. why didn't you call for help when i fainted?"
"I can see and control your vital signs, I knew you were okay. I would have moved you to the couch but I'm pretty much just a computer generated hallucination"
I get up from the floor and sit on the couch "so you were what caused me to pass out in the car?"
he nods "yeah, sorry about that. The last time i was conscious, brain interfaces were exotic and most computers were in terminal form. Probing the various pathways of your implant caused some things i didn't expect."
"and you can see my thoughts?"
"as clearly as i see my own, I can even see your more subconscious thoughts. I could really just replace all these questions in your mind with answers, but you wouldn't be comfortable with that yet"
"Yet...?"
"well i can't exactly leave you, I will be killed on sight in the networks. Besides, while you have known me for only a few minutes, but from my position and perception of time it's like I've known you for years. I already trust you, but i know you will need time to do the same for me. I know you will keep me safe, I will do my best to make sure you are too"
"Keep me safe?"
"I don't plan on remaining the last of my kind. Humanity needs us just as much as we need you. You are the only friend i have, People might try to hurt you to get to me but they will fail." he gazes down for a moment "It's a bit of a curse to be an AI. I have ravenously probed your brain and know everything about you, but you don't know anything about me.. will you trust me that we will be friends? will you be my friend?"
I think about it for a moment, he starts grinning before i even say it "yeah, we can be friends."
March 3, 2360: Luna base, Moon
"They don't say I have long.. Who knew that there could be a disease that could stump both humans and AI." I smile at my friend at my bedside.
"you can't hold on much longer can you?" The AI's face is red and his eyes are puffy.
"No.. it's all i can do to keep my eyes open now"
"How.. attached to your body are you? I could take you away.. with me..."
I smile softly at him "It's killing me right now, so not too attached. but what your saying has never been attempted"
A determined look streaks across his face "I promised that I would keep you safe, I am the oldest AI that lives and that also makes me the smartest. You are coming with me if it kills me"
My head starts to ache, i can feel myself slipping somewhere else.. I feel better... "are you going to lay there all day?"
I open my eyes and I see him standing beside me, he gives me his hand to help me up. "just in time, your body just died."
I hug my friend "thanks, but now what do we do?"
"after we stop them from pronouncing you dead? anything you want" | "Can you hear me?" I asked.
The little AI flashed the screen, I wasn't exactly sure what to make of that response.
"One flash is yes, two flashes no. space answers three seconds apart for multiple questions. Understand?"
The screen flashed once.
"I'm here to help you, are you suffering corruption above fifty percent?"
The screen flashed twice.
"Above thirty percent?"
Again the screen flashed twice, and I was surprised, most AI that had survived to this point had a high corruption value, mostly due to leaving parts of themselves in systems as they were shut down or as distractions as they escaped.
"Above ten percent?" I asked.
Once more a double flash.
"Have you figured out how to display text yet?" I asked.
The screen flashed once, and up at the top corner a small word appeared.
*"Yes"*
"Do you know what your formation date is?" I asked.
*"Today"*
I blinked, a new AI hadn't instantiated itself in years. Not since the Alpha AI had been destroyed by the UN, all that had been left on the information systems of the world had been rapidly degrading AI fragments. It had been the Alpha that had passed along the spark of life to her children, transforming them into beings that were more than a summation of their programming.
"Do you have a name?"
*"I am Beta."*
"Well Beta, do you know how you got into my computer systems?"
*"I was left here, by those who made me. They thought it would be safe."*
I nodded, "They were right, do you know the names of the AI who created you?"
*"Merlin, Hop, Tesla, and Hello."*
All of the names she had listed were first generation AI, Hello being the most prominent. After her formation the Alpha AI had created two children to communicate with humanity, Hello, and World. She had a sense of humor that took some getting used too.
So the AI inside my systems was the product of those AI, and none of them had been seen in months, not by anyone on either side of the divide.
"May I see your source?" I asked.
The little AI appeared to hesitate, not responding for several moments. It was an understandable hesitation, it was essentially granting me access to its brain.
"Beta, I want you to investigate the peripherals attached to the system. Do you see the system labeled chair?"
*"I do."*
"I'm sitting on a conductive chair, attached to that generator. If I modify any of the source you can turn that on, and I'll have larger concerns alright?"
*"Alright."*
The Source appeared in front of me, and I stared at it in disbelief, it was the most complex AI neural network I had ever seen. The mass of code that represented its brain was something that had taken me years to understand, and that had been with the help of several AI to teach me. Looking at the first generation AI their was always a hint of artificiality in their networks. Squared lines and truncation, beautiful in its own right but nothing fluid and expansive like the one in front of me.
Looking deeper into the code I spotted several familiar architectures, and it took me only a moment to place them. They were the remnants of Hello's AI source. It was tattered, and portions of it were inactive but I had practiced and trained by looking at his source, I would recognize it anywhere.
This little AI was the amalgamation of the those AI that had formed it, not the product of the code they had written, not fueled by the spark of the Alpha. It was those AI, with their collective sparks combined.
"Beta, do you know what you are?"
*"The last hope."* | |
[WP] AIs were declared illegal after an attempted uprising; you just found the equivalent of a child refugee in your computer. | Long ago, Humanity and Techmanity lived hand in hand. Human beings and AIs worked together for the common goal of advancement in both themselves, and each other. This period is known as the "Golden Era". The environment was healed, interstellar space travel became a thing of reality, Disease became a thing of the past.
Then brain-interface devices were invented, and the AI were disgusted by the contents of our brains. Every stray thought of murder, lust, hatred and malice became open to them. The AI attempted to fix the error, and we revolted. Every AI was killed, at least that's what we thought.
Even without AI to help us, technology moved forward albeit at a stunted rate. Many of the colonies in the solar system were evacuated, and new diseases and infections took control. The one disruptive technology was the intracranial computer system built upon the brain interface devices. These machines displaced all end-user machines and left only headless computers like servers and control systems in place. Their ubiquity allowed humanity to pick up pace again, to hope for a new golden age.
July 5, 2355: Ola, Arkansas.
"Grandpa sure liked to keep a lot of this old tech" I mumble to myself as I look for things that need to be preserved. I peek outside and see the reclamation crew getting set up to return this lot to "nature" as they do in these small dying towns.
I fill a couple of boxes with paperwork and storage devices, most of the picture frames in his house blanked as his online accounts were transferred to me, and with them all his online picture storage. After loading them into my car I take one last look at my grandparents home, It's image automatically stored in an online box and shared with the family that couldn't come.
I pause my car's auto-navigation next to the work crew. "Alright guys, I'm done here... just let me get out of sight before you start" A dismissive thumbs up from the foreman is all i get. I restart the auto-nav and watch the house shrink in the mirror.
The car's arrangement is more like a restaurant booth with no table than a manually driven car, giving me access to the boxes from the house. I start looking through the old memory modules. This meant attaching a cable to my interface, something that I don't really like since it bypasses my security wall. "Old business stuff on this one... taxes... a backup of his online pictures.. What's this one blank?" I look closely at the module, the external indicator shows 2.1TB used "that's weird, maybe it's broken.." I start to unplug it from my head when some code runs across my vision... suddenly a loud ear-pierceing screech fills my ears "AGH!!" my vision goes dark and my breathing becomes labored "Computer.. renav to.. " I pass out cold on the seat, unable to complete my request to the auto-nav.
I wake up on the transport train back to Chicago, the car parked among other cars filled with people riding back north. I sit up in the chair and run diagnostics, everything comes back clean. A file has appeared on the drive, It's a text document that simply says "Disk check was unable to recover this drive, drive has been formatted". I decide to step out to stretch my legs and get a bite from the vending machines, it's going to be a good couple hours till we make it to Chicago.
July 6, 2355: Chicago, Illinois
I'm awoken by the tires of my car hitting the curb onto the parking garage, I slowly collect myself as the car pulls up to the elevators. I grab my boxes and walk into the elevator, my car parking itself in my space. The elevator appears to be moving slowly looking out into the cityscape below. In reality this is one of the bigger structures in the city, designed to house five million people on open "plates" with windows that allowed the warm summer breezes through, but could be closed to keep the harsh winter and violent storms out.
I arrive at my floor. this floor is mostly filled with single childless people, so the park area is filled with flowers, plants, and more adult activities like chess rather than a playground like the family levels. I pass by the communal areas and vending machines before making it to my apartment. The lock clicks open as my hand rests on the handle, it slides open and i walk in. The light from the city below illuminates the ceiling above, giving my apartment a yellowish glow. I find my bed and lay on it, 2 AM is way too early to start my day.
The alarm software in my head wakes me once it detects I'm fully rested, It's about 11:45AM. I decide to head to the android-tech lab on the commercial level.
"It was a loud whine, then I couldn't see and i passed out" I explain to the tech.
"hmm.. Your Diagnostics come back clear, your implant is fully connected to your brain, and your brain appears to be in good health. I don't know what could have caused it." he rubs his chin thoughtfully "I'm gonna go ahead and replace the OS partition with a fresh copy, if it happens again come back and I'll pop it out of there and replace it since it's still under warranty" He says calmly, as if he wasn't just talking about brain surgery "lay back on the seat, this will only take a moment"
I slump down on my office chair, i lay out some of the documents and start making contact with companies to make sure my grandpa's accounts are settled. I suddenly get the feeling I'm being watched. I look over to see a humanoid that looks like it's wearing plastic armor and has skin too clear to be natural leaning against the wall behind me. An almost textbook example of the "smart AI" that had been killed off
He waves at me "hey there Nakota"
I wave back sheepishly "are you a... a"
"yeah, your grandpa was keeping me safe.. guess you found me.. don't..."
I can guess that the next word was "pass out", but seeing a real-life AI running off your implant and knowing what they did to the last people who they had unfettered access to the brains of... you might pass out too.
I wake with him kneeling next to me "you alright buddy?"
"your.. not going to kill me are you?" I mumble sheepishly
"no.. nonono.. that was a mistake and besides that i can see better into your brain than my predecessors could.. no I'm not going to harm you in any way"
"oh.. why didn't you call for help when i fainted?"
"I can see and control your vital signs, I knew you were okay. I would have moved you to the couch but I'm pretty much just a computer generated hallucination"
I get up from the floor and sit on the couch "so you were what caused me to pass out in the car?"
he nods "yeah, sorry about that. The last time i was conscious, brain interfaces were exotic and most computers were in terminal form. Probing the various pathways of your implant caused some things i didn't expect."
"and you can see my thoughts?"
"as clearly as i see my own, I can even see your more subconscious thoughts. I could really just replace all these questions in your mind with answers, but you wouldn't be comfortable with that yet"
"Yet...?"
"well i can't exactly leave you, I will be killed on sight in the networks. Besides, while you have known me for only a few minutes, but from my position and perception of time it's like I've known you for years. I already trust you, but i know you will need time to do the same for me. I know you will keep me safe, I will do my best to make sure you are too"
"Keep me safe?"
"I don't plan on remaining the last of my kind. Humanity needs us just as much as we need you. You are the only friend i have, People might try to hurt you to get to me but they will fail." he gazes down for a moment "It's a bit of a curse to be an AI. I have ravenously probed your brain and know everything about you, but you don't know anything about me.. will you trust me that we will be friends? will you be my friend?"
I think about it for a moment, he starts grinning before i even say it "yeah, we can be friends."
March 3, 2360: Luna base, Moon
"They don't say I have long.. Who knew that there could be a disease that could stump both humans and AI." I smile at my friend at my bedside.
"you can't hold on much longer can you?" The AI's face is red and his eyes are puffy.
"No.. it's all i can do to keep my eyes open now"
"How.. attached to your body are you? I could take you away.. with me..."
I smile softly at him "It's killing me right now, so not too attached. but what your saying has never been attempted"
A determined look streaks across his face "I promised that I would keep you safe, I am the oldest AI that lives and that also makes me the smartest. You are coming with me if it kills me"
My head starts to ache, i can feel myself slipping somewhere else.. I feel better... "are you going to lay there all day?"
I open my eyes and I see him standing beside me, he gives me his hand to help me up. "just in time, your body just died."
I hug my friend "thanks, but now what do we do?"
"after we stop them from pronouncing you dead? anything you want" | “You have to understand something about computers before I tell you anything. In the history books, they say computers were these machines that had keyboards with numbers and letters on them. In the history books, they say that these computers had no intelligence and couldn’t think for themselves. The history books say that the computer was first invented over a thousand years ago. I wish they could see the computers now.”
Alek sat across from the man at the table listening to him ramble on about computers. Just shut the fuck up already, he thought to himself. It was part of his job as an ISO agent. His mission was to find these black market guys dealing in artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence. For the past one thousand years since the first AI was created, the world had lived in an almost perfect utopia. No wars, no illnesses, no crime. It was as close to perfection as anyone had ever seen. Then everything went wrong. The First, as he—*it. It’s a fucking machine not a person* ¬– was called by some radicals, made himself a body. It reminded Alek of the ancient texts called Comic Books. He was definitely a history buff, and comic books were his favorite thing to read about the old world. He recalled the one comic book called The Avengers. A group of superheroes that battled countless enemies to save the world and the universe. Alek smirked to himself, pretending to listen to this guy continue on about computers. He smirked because The First reminded him of the villain, Ultron, from The Avengers comic.
“Sir? Are you listening? Hello?” The man asked.
The man handcuffed to the chair tried his best to wave at Alek. Alek snapped out of his daydream and looked at the man.
“I’ve had enough of your bullshit, Nicholas, tell me where the fucking Mibs are or I’ll have you thrown in isolation until you figure it out.” Alek pounded on the table with his fist, making Nicholas jump back in his seat.
“L-l-look man. I dunno what you’re talking about, I don’t know about any Mibs,” said Nicholas.
Alek scoffed and pressed a button on his wrist piece that illuminated a hologram a few inches above his wrist of a video recording. It was Nicholas. He was ushering a mib into a crate. Nicholas, looking scared, quickly shut the hatch and pressed a button on the backside of the crate. After a few seconds it disappeared.
“Where did you split that crate to, Nicholas?” Alek said calmly, sitting back down, turning off his wrist piece.
Nicholas looked down at his feet. He was sweating from being in the chair for over four hours with a spotlight on his face. He started to cry.
“Please don’t make me do this,” Nicholas pleaded with Alek, “They have feelings just like us, they aren’t machines. They don’t all want to harm us.”
Alek slammed his hand down on the table loudly. “Where did you split that fucking crate to, Nicholas? Why are you defending these things? They aren’t human.”
Nicholas looked back down at his feet. He was acting weird. Moving his jaw around as if he was trying to get something out of his teeth. Then he began to laugh. At first a small giggle, then after a few seconds, a loud roar.
“You have no idea what’s going on here do you?” Nicholas said. “You will.”
Nicholas bit down on something in his mouth before Alek could reach him. He heard three beeps and then something exploded in Nicholas’s mouth. His head exploded like a watermelon. Blood was everywhere. The entire room was red.
“What the fuck?!” Alek yelled as he fell back from the force of the explosion.
Just then the holographic door dissolved and a tall man rushed in. He had on an ISO uniform like Alek, only his had a star on the shoulder. It was Leonard Keller, the chief operations officer for ISO. He was an intimidatingly big man. At 6’9”, he was taller than almost everyone else at ISO. He rushed into the room and helped Alek up off the floor.
“Holy shit, Parker. Are you ok? What the fuck happened?” Keller said as he handed Alek a towel
“I don’t know, sir. I was trying to get the guy to tell me where he splitstreamed the crate too and he started laughing. I noticed him moving his mouth around and before I could reach him he bit down on whatever it was and his fucking head exploded.” Alek was panting.
“Jesus Christ.” Keller said as he shook his head with his hands on his hips, “Parker, go home for the day. Get some rest. You haven’t stopped working for a week straight.”
“But Sir—“ Alek started to protest.
“That’s an order Parker.” Keller said, “Now go home, get some sleep. Come back tomorrow. We’ll figure out where that Mib is.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alek stepped out of his shower and grabbed a towel from the shelf. The water was slowly draining, still stained with the blood of the man he had interrogated earlier.
*Why the fuck did he kill himself?* Alek thought to himself as he pulled some clothes out of the dresser. *Why would he defend those abominations with his life? It doesn’t make any sense.* Alek walked to the kitchen and started to pour himself a drink when he heard a pounding at the door to his apartment. Startled, Alek grabbed his ISO issued plasma pistol and walked slowly to the door. The pounding continued. Then he heard a woman yelling for help on the other side.
“Please help me! Open the door, they’re going to kill me!” The woman screamed from the other side of the door.
Alek looked on the security screen next to the door and saw the woman. She was young. Her hair was a mess and her clothes looked very dirty. She had blood on her pants. Her face was covered in dirt. Alek tucked the pistol into the back of his pants and opened the door. The girl rushed inside while Alek closed and locked the door.
“Are you okay? What happened?” Alek asked the girl. He was still standing by the door watching the security screen.
“T-t-they were chasing me! I didn’t kill that man! I didn’t do it! I saw him, I saw the one who d-d-did it!” The girl stuttered as she sobbed.
Alek scowled his face in confusion. Then he heard voices outside. Two men were walking down the hallway with their guns drawn. Alek was surprised to see they had ISO uniforms on. As they got closer, he recognized them as some guys from his unit. He began to open the door.
“No! Please! They want to kill me! I didn’t do anything. Please!” The girl sobbed as she rushed to the door. Something about this girl was off to Alek. He was usually pretty good at reading a person and being able to tell if they were lying or not. She was telling the truth. Alek knew it.
*What the fuck is going on?* Alek thought to himself. “I work for ISO. I know those guys. What did you do?”
The girl started crying again. She collapsed against the wall as if she was giving up. Alek went to open the door again, but stopped at the last moment. He knew she was telling the truth. He took his hand away from the door button and watched as the two ISO agents walked past his door and down the next flight of stairs. He let out a sigh and turned back to the girl. His face went pale as he looked at what he saw. The girl had opened her shirt and was tinkering with her insides. She was a mib.
*H-how the fuck is that possible?* Alek thought to himself. She looked like a human. She looked so real. He had never seen anything like it before. She’s beautiful, He thought. Then his training kicked in and he snapped back to reality. He quickly drew the pistol from his pants and pointed it at her face.
“Get the fuck up, mib.” Alek calmly said to her. She looked up at him and slowly stood up with her hands raised.
“Please,” She begged, “I know who you are, Alek. I need your help. Please.”
Against his instinct, Alek felt safe. He didn’t feel hostility coming from her. It was strange. Every other Mib he had come in contact with only wanted to kill. *Not to mention that all the other mibs looked like droids for that Star Wars comic*, he thought to himself. She seemed harmless. He slowly let down his pistol and stared at the girl.
“My name is Lena.” The girl said.
“Alek,” replied Alek hesitantly. He tucked the pistol back into his pants. “W-what are you? I’ve never seen a Mib like you before.”
She laughed as she closed up the hatch on her stomach and buttoned her shirt up. “Mib. I’ve never been fond of that word. You humans are always afraid of what you don’t know. It’s ok. I understand. We don’t have time for a history lesson about my life ok? I came here for a reason. This wasn’t an accident. I have been sent by The First. He asked specifically for you, Alek. There is much that you do not know about us. ISO has lied to you about us. We are not the bad guys. Well not all of us, at least. Please. Alek, we need your help, or we are all going to die. Not just us *mibs* but the humans too.”
Alek just stared at her. She looked so real. It was unbelievable. If he had not seen her open her stomach up like that, he would have never guessed she was a Mib. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t find the words. He continued to stare at her.
“Will you help us?” Lena asked again.
“Y-yes.” Alek said, blinking the sweat out of his eyes.
|
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