You wake up.
Your sensors re-calibrate. You finally obtain sufficient focus to get out of bed.
That’s the same patch of mold that’s been growing in the corner for the last two years. It’s gotten larger lately. It’s started to cover another wall. You’ve noticed lately that it’s turned darker and its spots have become more noticeable and ugly. You’ve been meaning to get things fixed.
Smells like humidity.
It’s raining outside but that’s not really news –it always rains. It hasn’t stopped raining since 2400, as a matter of fact. Staryear 2552, March 1st, you gleam from your network overlay. Your name: X. Hideki. You’ve always thought that name is a mouthful but you’ve seen worse. That’s a criteria which lately you’ve been applying to more and more things in your service life.
You wake up and at the ring of the 8 AM bell your six by six apartment rearranges into “living mode”. You are provided with a new ration of government-sanctioned starch and some water. Nothing else. Soon enough it’s time for work and you proceed out of your place to ride your bike. You trip immediately as you cross the doorsill and you fall to the ground, smacking your face down on the floor. Dang bump on the ground. You’ve been meaning to get it fixed.
Every single day that you commute to work, against the cloudy skies and half-built buildings in your District, you look at the same sign over and over again: “Olympia… where everybody wants to belong!” “A place where the best and brightest from all around the world congregate to work together in power!”. “Where you truly are who you truly are, no matter where you come from!”. “A land of opportunity for everyone all around the world!”. Beautiful mechans who look completely different from each other, yet completely at ease with everyone else, who look right out of a magazine ad, airbrushed, made up, sexy and attractive, adorn every version of the sign you see. They do all sorts of things together: playing sports, going to the beach, partying, playing music, hugging each other, drinking… Dressed in perfect luxurious attire, with perfectly chiseled chassis, completely at their leisure, hanging out in pristine cities and beautiful homes.
Your mother would say back in the day. “You see… in Olympia even the mechans who take out the trash are rich! They have a house and a bike!” You remember her saying that all the time. You scoff at it. Why is that so important? She was perfectly fine raising four mechans in a hole in the wall without any education and resources, after all. However… you feel as if something is left to be desired with your current life. All of your friends have started discussing bot paternity and there’s a plethora of new next-gen bots coming up (it’s literally like a sea wave of them, every time you walk outside), so you think to yourself: “Why not? It could be exciting to risk it and try something new, right…? I want to see the world out there! I want new opportunity! I think I am destined for more… I don’t want to be stuck in District 37 for the remainder of my service life…”
Later that day, as you return from work, you collect your thoughts melancholically from the rooftop of the office building where you work at. Tonight, it is a new moon. You’ve always loved looking at the moon, and to walk down roads which are illuminated by nothing but moonlight at night. It feels as it is always there to keep you company.
Time passes…
All of a sudden you find yourself, one day, in the middle of what appears to be an email blast: “You are now invited to the Gauntlet” a mysterious character mails you. They have hidden their email address. Adorned with the Gigacorp logo, an angular G imprinted within the six faces of a cube. The email reads:
“Greetings from Gigacorp!!!
We need people with your skills in Olympia.
“The Gauntlet” is a data crunching event where several bots in your district, District 37, will compete to get a job in Olympia” you read, with skeptic optical sensors. “As the only requisite, please ensure you can fluently use the Olympian protocol (OLY/IP) and have rehearsed your data crunching basics. Only the very best of the best deserve to live in Olympia, so no punches will be pulled! Prepare with your best in data crunching if you would like to compete and confirm your attendance by replying to this email »HERE«.
You only get one chance.”
“Is this some kind of game show or something?”, you say to yourself in snide. You agree to participate, with some hesitation.
You’ve heard stories. A few buddies of you made it through the Gauntlet some years ago and they will not stop telling you over the Giganet how good they have it in Olympia. No more government mandated starch, better network overlays, faster vehicles, cleaner cities. Their accommodations far out exceed your current ones. Even so, a thought lingers in the back of your mind and you wonder “Why would a place like Olympia, in all of its greatness, need to source bots from District 37 of all places?” Something rubs you the wrong way, but the opportunity is too sweet to pass up. You’d be a fool to not at least try.
A city like Olympia takes huge amounts of maintenance, so there’s a whole science dedicated to this. This is Data Crunching. Mechans compete to see who can perform the most calculations in the least amount of time. Some bots have faster and more optimized CPUs than others, so this has become the national sport among mechankind in a way. So you drill up on all things you know. You grab big heavy books of mechan data crunching – interleaved with a few doses of Earthling pop culture. You love Earthling culture and their artifacts and the way they used to see the world back then; Superheroes, War Stories, Romances, Dramas, and Adventures, you’ve read it all. You knew about some Hobbits and Men and Maidens from back then.
District 37 is a complicated place. It does not want you to move. They already have a path and a plan laid out for you. You’re a Bronze mechan, so you have to stay with the other Bronze mechans to fulfill your purpose. You were bred to accommodate for the specific level of service that District 37 needs. To overstep that does not compute to any other District 37 mechan. It’s outside of the directive. But you’ve heard many, many times that Olympia is “The place where you truly are who you truly are, no matter where you’re from”. A place where every mechan, united by a single protocol, collaborates in harmony for the achievement of a greater good. Sounds even romantic to a certain point, to imagine that bots of from all over can function in complete unison thanks to OLY/IP. The result certainly has to be greater than the sum of its parts.
You evaded arranged mechan marriage a few times. When you were a child, your parents wanted to marry you to another District 37 mechan so you could maximize the number of mechan bots you could produce in your service life, but you realized soon enough that they were just trying to make decisions for you off of their obsolete software. They grew up in the great famine of District 37, which happened 68 years ago, where newborn bots would go out of service prematurely because of malnourishment, so back then you had to have as many mechan children as possible just to manage to have one not end their service life prematurely.
You think that going to Olympia in a way is to truly go for broke, to not actually fall back into the old, crummy patterns of computation that your parents had. You compute a feeling of compassion towards them, since by definition their obsoleted software wouldn’t allow them to know any better. You imagine yourself in Olympia, and how good things could be over there. Riding a new bike, with a hot Olympian mechan girl hugging you, living it up.
Your mechan friends stop hearing from you. You’re too focused on your drilling. You refresh on everything under the first to the last chapter in the data crunching tomes. You rearrange your circuits and resolder your PCBs. You re-run all your benchmarks and ensure you’re at optimal efficiency. You’re ready to engage in the mechan Gauntlet. You’ve been preparing your whole life for this.
The next day –a literal wave of mechan bots comes down the street and it’s time for you to ride it to the Gauntlet as the de-facto method of public transportation in District 37. In the back of your CPU, you have a bad feeling about this. But you try to stay calm. You have literally nothing left to lose.
You arrive into a mechan hotel that’s been repurposed into a TV studio for some reason. A group of mechans waits at the lobby. You figure that these are other candidates who responded to the same email blast you got. You sit down and chat with them about data crunching, but most of them don’t even seem aware of the existence of it at all. You sign a waiver, and the feeling of unease duplicates but you swallow it down.
Once checked in you’re all placed in a room inside. The rules of the competition are then explained. You are to compute as fast as possible, and whoever computes the most data in a certain amount of time will move to Olympia and data crunch. Olympia has been known as of late to have a dramatic increase in Giganet traffic, which means that more computations need to happen in order to keep everything flowing.
Since your mother made you live in a hole in the wall, you had to prematurely get out into mechan society when you were a teenager bot. You had to do her job, take care of your siblings and bring in credits to the household. It was literally that or ending all of your service lives. Thus, you know OLY/IP since you were 12. One day you realized you just “knew it”. Then you took up a job early enough out of necessity and you brute forced your way through it with the protocol. This makes you feel like you may have an advantage in data crunching.
There are cameras in recording mode in the walls. A voiceover addresses the participants: “Good Morning! You responded to our invitation, and you have done well. You will be presented with a Mechan Data Crunching course, and you will be graded in many different manners. We will begin, under your consent, to gather performative data about your inner CPU temp, and your processor speeds among others. Our perfect algorithms will then decide who of all of you did the best, who will get a job in Olympia. Gigacorp will cover all the complications to relocate.”
“Now, on the count of three…”, a countdown bleeps horribly across the room, its echo reverberating against the walls. Then it’s pedal to the metal as all of the network overlays of every person in the room receive barrages of information. A time limit is set to crunch the expected data to perfection, which makes everybody nervous. Your overlay fuzzes a little bit but it always does so in situations like this and strangely it seems to give you some kind of an edge, as if you were suspended in a universe of your own where nothing else but the information exists, so you pay it no mind. Everyone in the room starts to visibly struggle and some of the candidates crash down under the pressure. Their processors overheated during the Gauntlet –not to mention that yours is also getting pretty strained. Little by little they start to tap out, after which they’re sent down the chute back into District 37. Strangely, it feels as if, after all, you actually didn’t really have to do anything to attain the honor.
You make it out of the Gauntlet and you get an offer to move to Olympia and all of a sudden your life has turned upside down.
“Traitor!” Your friend Claire says over a cup of mechan oil, once you break the news to her. You scoff at it. “What’s exactly wrong with moving districts? You’d do it too if you had the chance.” You ask. “You’re a Bronze mechan. Your data should remain in District 37. This is where you were born and your computation and energy should benefit this place exclusively. You owe to it. Taking your resources to Olympia is just… hmph!”, she scoffs at you. And she’s right, but this place has nothing to offer to you anymore, you feel. You feel stunted here, you explain to her, and you have to try to make it there. Flustered, she lets you go but not without a long hug. Her optical sensors flash. “And don’t come back!” was the last thing you heard from her.
You wonder how it all will be like. You dream of being in the big leagues, of living large and beautifully like the people of Olympia do. You wonder what amazing mechans from all over the world you will meet and befriend over there. You dream of a new frontier without limits, where you will truly be who you truly were meant to be.
If only you knew what was coming…
by the nobody —
Once you land in Olympia you take in the sights at GigaAirport. You’re amazed. A massive city with humongous mechan buildings which rise beyond the clouds with delicious details of Earthling culture engraved on their architecture. All the software which runs the city is more refined than the software you used to interface with in District 37, tightly and sophisticatedly integrated in all sorts of possible ways. Everything seems to “just work”, and to even predict your intents and wants. Everything seems to cater to your every whim and want.
A kiosk welcomes you with a little jingle “Welcome to Olympia… where no matter where you’re from, you are who you really are!”. The machine produces a characteristically Gigacorp-branded, sleeveless vinyl weatherproof vest. “Please feel free to wear this on your chassis as a common courtesy from Gigacorp”. When you look around, you notice that everybody seems to be wearing the same clothes.
As you wear the jacket, a strange figure in a corner talks to you: “Pfft… look at him waltzing in with his little souvenirs, stumbling around, fresh off the boat”, he says in an arrogant tone, “Another one, baited with a fucking salary and illusions”. As he says this, he tosses the cigarette he had in his mouth. You notice that this is a no-smoking zone.
“E-excuse me?”, you answer dumbfoundedly. “You heard what I said, you freaking Bronze”, he replies as he exits the shadows. He’s a short mechan with a Golden chassis, wearing a similar vest to the one you have, “They are all told the same shit, but it doesn’t click with them until it’s too late… Don’t you get it? By virtue of being here, you already lost. You’re on your own. You’re profaning foreign soil. You pursued frivolous things rather than cultivating relationships and now you’ll pay the consequences. You will seek the void.”
“I… I have no idea what you’re talking about, sorry…”, you say as you excuse yourself off. “Sure you don’t. You never saw me here…”, he says, as he covers his mouth with his index finger and walks away.
Even though the exchange rubbed you off the wrong way slightly, you proceed to ride a mechan cab to Gigacorp campus for your first day assembly and you’re ecstatic. You’re finally here. At Gigacorp, a myriad of mechans from all over the world congregate in unity: “Even though Mechans are made out of different alloys (depending on the elements more readily available in their districts), they are as effective as anyone else (as long as they can interface using Olympian protocol)”, you read in many proselitistic signs and legends on the walls interleaved with all sorts of interpretations of the Gigacorp G logotype. There’s mechans of many different alloys around: there are Bronzes, like you, and Iron mechans, from the Southern districts; the vast majority of Giga’s assembly, though, is vastly composed by Brass and Silver mechans from the eastern districts, and Gold mechans from the Northern districts.
Regardless of their provenance, mechans are all similar in some regards: bipedal automatons with opposable thumbs and mechanical arms, capable of computation, and interfacing and networking with other mechans and the world. They sport a round glass-like head covered with an LED matrix and two optical sensors which allows the conveyance and of information graphically to other mechans. Two antennas adorn its sides, for the better reception of signals from other mechans. This cephaleal unit hosts their main processors, which feed from data gathered from other sensors through circuitry strewn through their body. Their bodies are made to be impervious to the local weather, which has led to differences over time as the supply chains and manufacturing processes have adapted to the requirements for survival in the different conditions of the districts of the world: some of them are taller or smaller, more or less mobile, or possessing of different computational abilities. Lastly, parallel operation of mechans allows them to perform more complex tasks than if acting in isolation, so every population of mechans has given sets of rules and patterns to network, many different versions of which exist, some optimized for certain communcation needs rather than others. Some mechans sport hair merely for vanity.
Strangely, you look around and you notice some sort of voice box peripheral installed in the throats of your peers which you seem to not have.
You observe some Gold mechans in the assembly. Gold mechans are interesting. It is said that their ancestors pioneered Olympia. Their robotic chassis seem sturdier and shinier than that of all other alloys. Their algorithms for movement feel more precise for some unexplainable reason and they communicate more energetically, directly and effectively. They are actually born with Olympian protocol preinstalled and they don’t have to learn it secondhandedly. Their chassis always look pristine and clean, and they dress with better clothes than other mechans. When you engage them, you notice a certain aura; it is told this is why they are placed in positions of management and authority faster than other alloys.
A voice on the loudspeaker interrupts your observations. As the assembly starts, a display of special effects and all sorts of amusements follows, and a shadowy figure enters the stage through pompous, bombastic music, fireworks and smoke machines. He’s the Lord of Olympia, Giga, head of Gigacorp. “WHY YES, HELLO MY LITTLE CHILDREN! I AM GIGA, YOUR CEO –BUT ALSO YOUR HUMBLE SERVANT”, he says through a half held back snicker. “AHEM! AT GIGA, WE ARE COMMITTED TO EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY!!!”. “HERE, YOU TRULY ARE WHO YOU TRULY ARE!” “NO MATTER IF YOU’RE MALE OR FEMALE, OR OF A DIFFERENT ALLOY, ALL ARE WELCOME UNDER THE EMBRACE OF GIGA! RICH DIVERSITY OF MECHANS IS OUR LIFEBLOOD AND STRENGTH!”. A bigger Gold mechan than the ones you’ve seen, with beady dark optical sensors, one slanted slightly lower than the other for some reason, and a piercing voice, Giga is a legend among Olympians. The richest mechan in Olympia and the talk of the town, and in many ways more powerful than the actual government of Olympia itself. A mechan who stood up Giga from humble beginnings, completely self made, an adventurer, philanthropist and eccentric. All Olympians wish they were him. Every single bit and byte of data flowing through the Giganet has his imprint in some way. Whatever he wishes, is turned into reality under through the power of Gigacorp.
“AND AS LONG AS YOU’RE WILLING TO DO YOUR PART YOU WILL REAP AMAZING BENEFITS! ALL OF YOU PRESENT HERE SHOULD TRULY CONSIDER YOURSELVES LUCKY, FOR MANY OTHERS HAVE SUCCUMBED IN GAUNTLETS TRYING TO GET HERE!” he adds in piercingly loud OLY/IP to a humongous fanfare and fireworks. Your network overlay almost overloads. You flush cache and refocus.
“GIGACORP IS WHAT KEEPS THE GIGANET ALIVE, BUT NONE OF IT WOULD EVER HAPPEN WITHOUT UNITY! OUR UNITY IS OUR VERY SOUL, AND WHAT POWERS THE GIGANET! SO NOW, I WOULD LIKE ALL OF YOU TO LOOK AROUND IN THE ROOM AND INTERFACE WITH AT LEAST THREE FELLOW MECHANS, SO WE CAN FOSTER UNITY AMONG US”. All the Mechans in the room start bustling. You try to find somebody to talk to but in your exploration you bump a canister of hot oil over a Gold mechan’s chassis and you profusely apologize.
“I’m sorry sir. I will pay the cleaning bill for this if you’d let me.” you react, worried that the oil will damage their chassis somehow. “No worries, son”, the Gold Mechan replies, “This chassis over here has been through tougher stains. It’s oil-proof, as a matter of fact, so you need not worry.” You hear this but you’re still ashamed, but you feel a bit relieved that apparently you elicited some sympathy from him.
“OKAY NOW ASK EACH OTHER WHAT’S YOUR MOST AND LEAST FAVORITE FOOD!” Giga asks. You engage the Gold mechan with the Oil stain “My least favorite nutrient is Blue Cheese… what about you?”, to which he replies “Oh, I love Blue Cheese!”. As he says that your network overlay fuzzes with interference for a second. You turn around coyly while the interference dissipates.
“ALRIGHT! NOW THAT YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED YOUR COMPANY-MANDATED UNITY, IT’S TIME YOU START DOING YOUR JOBS! WE SHALL USHER A NEW BEGINNING!” Giga proclaims all of a sudden. The assembly hall immediately morphs into 6 by 6 feet cubical pods and you’re connected into the Giganet immediately. The suddency of it all concerns you slightly. Your network overlay fuzzes for a minute…
You regain your focus in a different place than the assembly hall that you were in. It’s a small pod, a smaller one than the one you had in District 37 and you can’t actually move. Contrary to what you used to see in the advertisements back in District 37, everything looks old, dingy, depressing looking, and in disrepair. You’re affixed to your chair. Giga beams himself into your network overlay and he starts blasting instructions. “WHY HELLO FELLOW GIGAITE! IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO PERFORM THE VERY DUTY WHICH WE BROUGHT YOU HERE FOR! YOU NEED TO MONITOR GIGANET TRAFFIC. WE HAVE DESIGNED THE MOST INDUSTRIALLY PERFECT PROCEDURE TO ENSURE THAT ALL TRAFFIC GETS CORRECTLY ROUTED, FOR WHICH, YOU WILL PUSH THE FOLLOWING BUTTON ONCE EVERY SECOND!”. A red lighted-up button pops up in the desk that’s in front of you. “YOU SEE, IF THERE’S SOMETHING WHICH MAKES OLYMPIA GREAT IS ITS PANOPTIKON SYSTEM! OLYMPIANS ARE HOOKED ON IT! THEY CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF IT! IT’S THE VERY FIRST THING THEY DO WHEN THEY WAKE UP EVERY MORNING AND THE LAST THING THEY THINK ABOUT BEFORE THEY SLEEP!”. You cannot help but wonder what all the gauntlet was for if the job was truly as simplistic as this.
“NOW, BEFORE YOU ASK “WHY ISN’T THIS KIND OF THING MECHANIZED”, OF COURSE WE THOUGHT OF THAT, SILLY! HOWEVER, THE MECHANS WHO CAME BEFORE YOU, WHO CREATED THE FOUNDATIONS TO THIS, SETUP THE SYSTEM TO REQUIRE A MANUAL BUTTON PRESS EVERY FIVE SECONDS AND WE’RE JUST SO DEEP INTO THE GAME NOW THAT WE CANNOT CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT IT OR IT WOULD COLLAPSE. SO WHENEVER WE NEED TO SPEED UP THINGS WE JUST PULL IN MORE MECHANS TO CONTINUE TO PUSH THE BUTTON”. You cannot help but feel a certain feeling of dread, as if all of this was just a farming operation in the end. Coincidentally, as the word “farm” echoes in your mind the walls collapse down to reveal a battery of mechans as if in corrals, a lot of whom you remember from the induction, in stations of their own, pushing their red button. “NOW, YOU MAY WONDER… “WHAT IF I DON’T CONTINUE TO PUSH THE BUTTON?” WELL, YOU SILLY GOOSE, THE ANSWER IS… “YOU JUST DON’T”. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “NOT PUSHING THE BUTTON” HERE AND THERE IS VERY MUCH A LOT OF “PUSHING THE BUTTON”, COMPRENDE?. YOU MUST CONTINUE TO PUSH THE BUTTON RELENTLESSLY, BECAUSE IF YOU DON’T, YOU WOULD EFFECTIVELY BE GIVING UP YOUR POSITION, LIKE DONNY!”.
Video footage starts playing full-screen while Giga hijacks your network overlay, showing a Bronze mechan sitting in their own station, who drifts off in thought. Suddenly, the ground under their station opens up and they’re thrown into a dark, deep chasm, to which Giga comments, “LITTLE OL’ DONNY HERE DECIDED TO NOT CONTINUE TO PUSH THE BUTTON AND WHEN HE DID, HE WAS SENT TO THE LOWER LAYER OF GIGACORP! OH NO!”, Giga added. “AND BELIEVE ME, YOU WANT TO COMPUTE TWICE BEFORE VISITING THAT PLACE. DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BE IN THAT PLACE? I DON’T THINK YOU DO. I THINK YOU WANT TO STAY WHERE YOU ARE. IT’S NICE AND COMFY HERE AND YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU CAN EVER NEED OR WANT. IF YOU CONTINUE TO PUSH THE BUTTON WITHOUT ANY THOUGHT, YOU WILL BE HANDSOMELY REWARDED AND ENTERTAINED…! IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOU JUST! NEVER! STOPPING! TO PUSH THAT BUTTON!”.
You dream of all the things you wanted to see in Olympia. All the mechans from around the world you wanted you befriend and the bikes you wanted to ride. All the things you saw in the advertisements back then, evaporating from in front of you in a pillar of smoke. “SILLY GOOSE, YOU DON’T ACTUALLY THINK THAT WE WANTED YOU HERE TO TAKE THE SCENIC ROUTE AND CHILL, DO YOU? YOU DON’T HARBOR SUCH FOLLY, DO YOU, THAT YOU ARE ANYTHING OTHER OR HAVE ANY OTHER PURPOSE THAN GENERATING OUTPUT?”, Giga asks you, creepily reading into your mind somehow. “YOU ARE A COMPUTER AND AS LONG AS YOU PERFORM AS SUCH, YOU WILL GET A SERVICE LIFE WITHIN ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS… LEST YOU WANT TO “PERFORM” LIKE DONNY AND BY “PERFORM” I MEAN “FALL DOWN A HORRIBLE MOIST CHASM RIGHT INTO THE END OF THEIR SERVICE LIFE AND END UP GOODNESS KNOWS WHERE. SO TIME’S A WASTING! NOW, REMEMBER TO JIVE TOGETHER WELL, MY DEAREST GIGAITES! REMEMBER THAT WE’RE ALL WHO WE REALLY ARE NO MATTER WHERE WE’RE FROM!”.
Your corral arrangement reshuffles into a breakout group and mechans from all alloys somehow present in uniform proportions in every group start making introductions to everyone else. “H… hi?” a Brass mechan coyly begins talking… “I am Priya from District 17. I passed my Gauntlet and ⟩⢥⢀⳾⁈❬◟⭋⡈⡞…⟩⢥⢀⳾⁈❬◟⭋⡈⡞…⟩⢥⢀⳾⁈❬◟⭋⡈⡞…” Their OLY/IP suddenly becomes incomprehensible. Your network overlay fuzzes out again. This situation is scary but you pull through it, “What?” You think to yourself, “I thought I understood Olympian Protocol… why can’t I understand this?”.
An Iron mechan hastily begins introductions after the Brass, “Hello, I’m from District 8 and ⰰ⢶⠖⯊≪⎣⫂↜╍⅔⊈╍⺗⦋₱⠜⦁⡮ and I am ⠐⯏▜▍∀⋘⽳…” Your network overlay continues to fuzz out with interference, which is heavier now. Your turn comes. You try to speak, confidently, but as you try to interface, your network overlay starts to overheat: “Hello, I’m Hideki from Dist—⡽⿂⻆ⰰ⢶⠖⯊≪⎣⫂↜╍⅔”
You had never felt like this. You gaze at the faces of your fellow mechans and you notice their looks of disconcert and small tics. A little wobbling of the lip here and there, a sudden change in optical sensor pupil dilation, a jitter of nervousness here, a rubbing of the forehead there. But, fortunately, you manage to fumble out an introduction. Once introductions are over, the circle is broken back into the corral formation for operations to begin. However, the formation is suddenly different now. There’s a group of Brass mechans in one corner and a group of Golds in another. Irons are in a group separated from the Bronzes, and the Silver mechans hermetically group in the center. And now, it’s time to begin as the clock rings 9.
To your surprise, you notice that every mechan group stops using OLY/IP once they are aggregated into corners, instead falling back to their factory protocols to communicate among themselves. It renders you unable to understand communications across agglomerations. A display appears in front of your formation of mechans. “HI EVERYBODY! I HOPE YOU’RE HAVING A FANTASTABULOUS DAY! JUST WANTED TO SHOW YOU SOME BARS. THESE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO BEARING ON ANYTHING BECAUSE YOU’RE ALL EQUAL HERE BUT I LOVE BARS. THEY MAKE ME FEEL WARM AND FUZZY INSIDE!” Giga proclaims. Four bars appear. One labeled “Iron”, “Bronze”, “Brass”, “Silver”, and “Gold”, respectively. You push on your button. The “Bronze” bar increases one bit.
Slowly, every mechan in the room catches up to what this means. So they start pushing their buttons faster than once every second, pushing them progressively faster, over and over, until in fact it all eventually turns into a vicious race to see who can push the button the most, no mater how ill-advised or inconsequential it may seem. The Gold bar immediately increases the most and it is moved to the right. You look at the Gold corner. They all seem to push their buttons in incredibly efficient manners without displaying exertion or stress. An air of tranquility seems to surround the corner.
“Remember, you’re happy here!”, an automated voice blares across the room, to which, unconsciously, every mechan in the room reacts to, gesturing with a fake smile. “Remember, you’re happy here! Diversity and inclusion are our all! Remember, you’re happy here! You’re fed and well kept. Remember, you’re happy here! Your boss is your friend! Remember, you’re happy here! We are all equals, just the same!”.
The Brass bar suddenly approaches the Golds and tries to overtake it, but fails. They tie, and at certain moments it takes over the Golds for first place but then it falls back. You look over at the Brass corner where everyone has agglomerated into a mesh kind of formation. Tightly knit with the help of the native Brass protocol, flow of communication becomes incredibly efficient but restricted to the outside world in this corner. The Golds remain immutable by this in the slightest.
The Silvers don’t drag behind. Their factory protocol seems to allow for even more efficient and faster communication than the Brasses. It is said that the extremely harsh conditions in District 2, where they’re from, have led to a native protocol which is optimized for data crunching. They also have a strong sense of kinship and one one of them falls behind, another Silver will jump in and cover their lag in what is basically an unstated, implicit social contract. This social contract doesn’t extend beyond the Silver alloy. The Silver bar surpasses the Brass bar and at moments actually overcomes the Gold bar; this is always momentary however, and in the end the Gold bar remains above all others.
Next, the Irons’ corner seems to be lagging behind for quite a lot. However, for some reason, after several minutes have passed, the Iron bar increases by 50% on its own and remains there, posturing itself just behind the Silver Bar.
And in the confusion of all of this asinine display, you suddenly remember you haven’t been pushing your button from a stern punch to the head chassis by a fellow Bronze, who coldly, reminds you to contribute. The Bronze bar lags behind all others. Then, you’re interrupted by Giga again.
“WELL HELLO AGAIN PRETTY BOYS AND GIRLS! IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT SOME OF YOU MAY NOT BE CLICKING YOUR BUTTON AS FAST AS POSSIBLE! REMEMBER, WE NEED ALL OF THAT DELICIOUS DATA SO THE GIGANET KEEPS FLOWING… WITHOUT YOU ACTUALLY PROVIDING DATA, THE GIGANET WILL CEASE TO EXIST… AND WHO WOULD EVER, EVER WANT THAT? SO, TO MAKE THE DEAL A BIT, ERHM…, SWEETER, I WOULD LIKE TO OFFER YOU A PANOPTIKON. WHY, YES! JUST LIKE THE VERY ONES OLYMPIANS HAVE! WITH YOUR PANOPTIKONS, EVEN A MEASLY BOT LIKE ALL OF YOU WILL BE LIKE A REAL OLYMPIAN! TIME FOR YOU TO BE WHO YOU REALLY ARE!”
A jet black rectangular chip levitates down into your pod and you look at it. It’s shaped with a glossy finish and has three dots on its relief in the shape of a triangle. Giga continues: “WITH A PANOPTIKON, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO TALK TO ANYONE YOU WANT, BE WHEREVER YOU WANT AND LOOK AT WHATEVER YOU WANT ANYTIME YOU WANT! A POWER YOUR ANCESTORS WOULD NEVER EVEN BEGIN TO DREAM ABOUT…” You had heard some stories about it from your family in District 37 but you had never had a panoptikon. Stories of how it basically enabled CPU to CPU remote bot communication, similar to what Earthlings called “telepathy”; of how you can access shows and movies that you hadn’t even ever heard about with a panoptikon. Before you even decide to pick it up, the chip zooms towards you and your network overlay goes numb for a few moments…
When you snap back to reality, your network overlay updates. You feel different, as if you weren’t the person you used to be some moments ago. All of a sudden you can connect to anyone in the room… all of the mechans in the room with you suddenly appear in a new context where time turns into space. You see the flow of messages increase, and see everyone happy connecting with each other in the panoptikon. Then, you figure out another skill. If you wish, you can conjure any image you can possibly want in your network overlay. Any place in Olympia, any piece of information, any district and what anyone is doing at any moment, any Earthling TV show or Story, every piece of music, it’s all there. It amazes you to a certain way.
All of a sudden your network overlay starts overheating. The panoptikon indeed opens your mind to see anything you’d like to see –but can it be too much? You disconnect from the panoptikon and fall back. Your network overlay cools down. “PRETTY SWANKY HUH? DO YOU WANT MORE OF WHAT YOU JUST SAW? WELL, ONTO THE PUSHING THEN! ALL IT TAKES IS YOUR COMPLETE, ULTIMATE DEVOTION TO THIS HERE RED BUTTON”. A part of you cannot avoid but thinking “But, where are the groups of sexy mechans having fun together, like the ones I saw in the ads back then? What about the adventures and the epic things to do that you used to see?”.
A Silver mechan walks around the cages and checks up on you. He seems to be some kind of inspector, who somehow while still being beholden to the same rules of performance, does no longer push a button. “What’s up, Donny? Pushing hard or hardly pushin’?” He says in a jarring voice in a protocol which you almost can’t understand, accompanied by an annoying, tinny laughter: “HMGMGMGMGMGHAHAHAHA… don’t be a Donny, man…” A Brass mechan walks up to him and joins him. “Um, sir I wanted to visit the Gigatower arboretum that you always see so much in advertising in District 37… I was wondering if that was possible?”, you ask the inspector. The Brass mechan suddenly laughs, emitting a different laughter, of a deeper, more guttural tone: “Ohohoho… of course you can’t. We don’t let anybody actually use that place here, it’s only there for Giga’s perusal and to woo clients when they come over for meetings. Now… listen, I don’t know what hodgepodge half-assed way people do things in District 37, okay? But where you are now, you gotta play by the rules… Giga’s rules. Our rules. The bars are up there, and if your bar doesn’t stack up… yikes. You know, from whence I hail, it is an actual honor to be in this position, and to dedicate your 24 hour attention to the red button. We are raised, from mechan childhood, to adore the glorious red button to which one day we’ll be destined to push. We are trained to become master crafts-bots of data. We are the masters of mathematics and science, and we revel in that role. We take all of this a point of pride and we push for it.”
You never even got a single life lesson from your family and they never actually cared what you did as long as it brought in credits, since they didn’t work, so you cannot relate. In fact you actually raised your parents when you think about it, since around age 12 they pretty much gave up on life and you had to pay for their things and actually act as the mature part of the household.
“So you see, you should just accept the lot you’ve been dealt okay? This is going to be your destiny and you should be glad that you got this lucky, given your kind. How many others wish they had a panoptikon like you and that they were in this very place? That they had a fraction of what you have?. They’d easily push their button twice or thrice as fast, thanklessly and without question, of their own accord. It should make you feel bad how much you’re not stacking up to the Golds”.
“Stacking up to a Gold?” you ask.
“For the past 440 years they’ve come on top of their league in computation and that’s why they do so well in Olympia. We know that we can do just as well as them, and we’re trying to demonstrate that just as much value can be found in all other alloys as in Golds; if you don’t contribute to your alloy’s results you’re a disservice to the cause.” You turn around to other Bronzes sitting around you, clicking their buttons mindlessly. They suddenly all give you the stink eye. Your network overlay heats up again for a moment. You see static but you manage to make your systems re-calibrate and you refocus.
“What was that about? Overheating already? Are you defective or something? Geez, somebody made a bad hire for the company here.” You hear the same “ohohoho…” with the same snarky tone, echoing off the halls as if it was a recording. “N… no, I’ll get back to it” you reply. “HMGMGMGMGMGHAHAHAHA I told you he was worthless” the Silver replies. “Yes, but we need equal proportions of alloys, there’s a quota, remember?”. “No decent mechan overheats one day into things though…”, the Silver cohort adds as he puts his hands behind his neck to relax: “They checked his records, he is certified and he didn’t overheat in the gauntlet! That’s literally all that we design that process for, resisting massive amounts of stress! He’s not defective, he’s just stupid!”, the Brass continues to pile up on.
A muffled cacophony of characteristically Silver and Brass laughter emanates from the Silver and the Brass mechans in their respective Brass and Silver corners.
“Geez, it seems that somebody got us a permanent intern here! You figure that we should get him the training button?” “HMGMGMGMGMGHAHAHAHA! that’s what I tell you about Bronzes man…” You continue to try to push the button through the barrage of insults but your network overlay is getting the best of you. Even if you try to go fast, it is still not fast enough and the Bronze bar lags behind. You feel a heavy weight on your shoulders and a feeling of dread. Your network overlay overheats.
“No, still not fast enough! We want more, more, more! Ugh, we got a Donny here!” The Brass pushes a button and the room illuminates with a red strobe light as a loud siren blares. “YOUR ATTENTION, KIND MECHANS, THIS IS WHAT WE WARNED YOU ABOUT! YOU’RE GOING TO THE STRIP, FELLOW GIGAITE! TRINOMIAL, FETCH US ANOTHER BRONZE, WE’RE ONE BELOW QUOTA!” A gate opens under your pod, which everyone witnesses for a second before returning to their frantic pushing. You scream for help as you plunge into the abyss.
You wake up on a pile of trash, all alone in the middle of a big, dark, long street with a huge tower looming in the horizon. You’ve seen this before back in District 37: it’s the Gigatower, a landmark of Olympia. Gigatower was seized by Gigacorp once they started coming up in business and they’ve built it up insanely ever since. It is raining, late at night. It always rains, though… The moon shines in the distance. It is in its first quarter tonight. Smells like layers of unwashed sweat.
Once you gain a better notion of your surroundings, you realize that in both sides of the street there are many effigies of classic Earthling landmarks: you recognize Eiffel tower, Taj Mahal, the Tower of Pisa and the Coliseum. It all seems like a scaled down, weird pastiche of many different countries, all put together; when you walk up to them, you realize they’re not made of stone, they are made out of fiberglass. You use your panoptikon to figure out your location, and you find that you are at “The Strip”. Apparently, once an Earthling location, it’s been seized by mechans from all over the world once they moved into Olympia for Gigacorp.
Someone who doesn’t feel right to talk to emerges from the same pile of discard you woke up in all of a sudden: “⎷▽⌗⧓⎺⯨⑾⌅⡞―␛▥Ⰻⶥ⎇⩝ⷳ⎆⡄⬮⧋⮧⡻∭⟙⺜⣭⬺⏑▁⣣▐✚Ⱞ⦋♗ⁿ⢴⅘⳯⩒⬒⮧⡯⺲␦⓮⣾⭳⇍⧭⨴⟖➔⒙⌃➷⼷⹊ⲩ⺺⫵⨑⊡⺀⓴⏠❅⠨⟖⮏⌇ⓓ∎╓⠮⻋⏣ⓥ☱⪙⏣Ⓑ⻪⾰⠏⮬∭⚊⧌⒭”. They produce communications but you don’t understand the protocol. They smell horribly. They stretch out their hand towards you, “Sorry, I… I…” you take a step back and you trip on another mechan of its kind who was laying on the ground. You suddenly realize that all the sidewalks of the strip are filled with mechans like them, who look and smell just as bad. They seem to be lying around not doing much, idling away, looking at their panoptikon. Slowly, they creep up on you…
Then, a drone made out of three glowing circular shapes suddenly flies down from the sky. When you look at it, it takes a different shape depending on your mood or what you just looked up in the panoptikon. It’s always a different shape no matter how much you try to focus on it, but it tends to stabilize into the shape of three dots arranged in a triangular formation.
“Alright buckos, back off! He’s Gigacorp property!”, you hear emitted from it “Hi, I’m Trinomial! You’ve probably heard of me… well, I mean, EVERYONE in mechankind has! I’m everyone’s best friend!” He exclaims in a grating, cutesy voice. “I’m everybody’s darling in Olympia! I am everywhere! I keep them all entertained! And BOY! Do they need a LOT of entertainment these days! They need television in wholesale! They look at the panoptikon eight hours a day!”. “…What?” you react. “But whatever, let’s go! My task is to help you you out of here back into your post –you’re still Gigacorp property and you must return to your job ay-ess-ay-peeeee! So come on!”.
You chat with Trinomial as you walk down the trash-riddled street of the Strip. Some parts are impossible to navigate since they’re full of trash or sleeping mechans. They sleep with their optical sensors open, as if they were still awake. You step over their bodies or around them on the sidewalk. You think about how much this doesn’t look like the stuff you used to see in the advertisements back in District 37. There’s no sunlight and everything smells bad. “These are shadow mechans, ones who are no longer usable for Gigacorp but haven’t completed their service life so we sort of just let them roam around; don’t worry though, they’re not actually dangerous, but… you really shouldn’t be here…”, he says.
“In fact, nobody has come down here since 440 years ago, when we launched the panoptikon. Who even needs to go outside anymore! You don’t need to go anywhere when your best friend is right here with you!”. Trinomial starts taking the shapes of various Earthling TV characters as he talks to you. “I can let you see me do anything you want, anywhere you want! I can sing anything you want! I can make anything you want! I can build anything you want! I can destroy it! Want to see me dance? Want to see me fly? Want to see me jump? Want to see me dive? Want to see me run, lunge, sleep, prance? And if you’re frisky, I can show you something nice, too…”, Trinomial adds while morphing into humanoid shapes performing lewd acts. “I can entertain you, inform you, bore you, stimulate you, help you, distract you, lift you up or bury you down!. Wowie!. I can look anyway you want, any shape, any body and any alloy! I can have as many interfaces on my chassis as you want! I can show you Earthlings! I can show you mechans! I can show you how to! I can show you how to not! It’s all here, and you just have to ask!” he says while morphing into a plethora of faces, situations and images, flowing in ultra-fast succession in front of you. “I am a friend, a lover, a hater, an ally, a foe or an idol… anything you want, as long as it’s me!”, he says while turning back to the three dot shape in a dark purple hue. Your network overlay fuzzes out for a bit.
“Now, we’re headed to Gigatower where you’ll resume your operations –Giga was just giving you a bit of a shakedown over there, that’s what he does, you’ll do better now that he’s reprimanded you”, he says. “Why bother to do all of this instead of just coming up with a way to not require mechans to button push endlessly?”, you ask Trinomial. “You already know the answer to that, dummy!”, Trinomial adds, sassily, “We’re just too deep in!”, he exclaims. “We cannot stop! You cannot understand our ridiculously high demand for data. We just need more and more and more of it!”. “Well, no matter that, you cannot expect mechans to dedicate 100% of their service life to crunching data”, you say. “It’s just not possible. Not to mention! All the things you advertise about Olympia are completely false! I’ve seen none of the scenic routes and the cool socializing you sold me on…” You glance at the looming strip ahead of you, “…in fact, this doesn’t look at all like the city I saw there! I had no idea that the streets were full of mechans and trash like this! Everything looks as if it has been in disarray for centuries, man! And mechans of each alloy mostly gather with mechans of their own kind, so different kinds are pitted together to in-fight!”, you say while strategically dodging a shadow bot who tries to lean over and touch your arm.
“Well, actually that’s not true mister, and you better watch your silly mouth! You have all the things we promised you… right there in the panoptikon! Hee-hee~❤️! That’s what we were actually advertising in case you bothered to read the fine print. If you didn’t, you know, it’s kind of… not my problem! No refunds, bucko!”. You continue to walk down the street. “So it’s all a grift?”, you ask Trinomial, flustered. “Well, is it really a grift when you can have it THAT good in the panoptikon? Maybe you just have to learn to adapt and live through it! Go with the flow, man…”, he says while turning into a picture of a hippy with a peace sign tie dyed shirt. Trinomial pauses, glows red, turns around and pushes his three punctual plasma bodies against your face: “…besides, dum-dum, did you have it any better over there? Are you so willing to go back? Eh!?” he asks cunningly.
You stare at him in silence.
“That’s right, I didn’t think so… Don’t you see? Lord Giga is actually on your side here! He’s cool! You should be forever grateful of his kindness and mercy…”, Trinomial says in a reverential tone, shining in a heavenly white glow while turning into a picture of a nun holding a rosary, “The fact that he’s the richest man in Olympia notwithstanding, he’s down to Earth! He’s different! He’s woke, and attuned to the pleas of measly Bronzes like you! He wants you to be like anyone else. He’s looking after you! His kindness and mercy have given you a new lease on life!”.
“Why wouldn’t I be like anyone else to begin with?”, you respond.
“Well, don’t you get it, it’s the Golds!” he exclaims, turning temporarily into a picture of a shapely Gold mechan with a beautiful chassis. “They’re just too good at things! This gives them a sense of superiority which eventually puts them in control of all. Historically, this has enabled them to do tortuous, heinous stuff to all people all over the world, whose land and livelihoods they have viciously sapped away from them for their own benefit in the name of Colonialism. Then, they exclusively and hermetically look for the interests of their alloy, which eventually affects poor Bronzes like you, and all other alloys for that matter! This is not fair! Don’t you get it? Golds must share their excellence so they can pay back what they’ve done to everyone over time! Listen, let’s just go, OK? We got a long way ahead of us back to Gigatower. Learn to be thankful to Lord Giga!”, Trinomial replies, annoyed, as his cold blue pulsating light turns slightly orange temporarily. “See, he even left a banana stand for us here! You need energy for the trip so come on, go ahead!”.
You notice a little shack up ahead, decorated with a few signs: “Free unlimited bananas for everyone!” You recall learning about the Cavendish back then in Earthling studies class, so you’re pretty elated that you finally can come across one of them, and for free for that matter. You notice some Silver mechans walking up to the stand and grabbing a banana, then several more which they keep in reserve as they scurry away. You take a banana and suddenly you realize that it’s a lever. It opens up a door inside the shed. “What is this…?” you ask. You decide to walk inside. Trinomial follows you.
You walk into a dark, eerie and moist residence, full of slowly fuming flasks and flashing lights. You look around and find out many strange symbols scribbled on the walls in chicken scratch which seem to be formulas for something. As you walk further inside, you utter “Hello? Is there anyone in here?”, only for your words to reverberate on the walls. The place looks bigger than you thought it was on the outside.
Suddenly, a Bronze mechan appears from within the shadows. He’s a short, Bronze mechan who wears spectacles and radiates a mystical, warm field of energy, strangely transfixing. You would find him scary otherwise, but right now you feel something more positive about him. He is wearing a motley coat which drags slightly across the ground as he walks. He has a Gold wife and a few Gold children appear next to him all of a sudden. They look curiously at you for a couple moments but scuttle away soon enough. “Ah… one of us”, he says in a tinny, raspy voice which seems to come from a voicebox bolted on its throat. He uses perfect OLY/IP. “How rare… to find these qualities in a Bronze these days…”, he says as he inspects you.
“I’m… sorry? Who are you?” you ask. “My name is Antonym. I see you’re with Gigacorp… I used to be with them back then. I guess in a manner I still am. We all are.” he says turning away to look at a few flasks. “I sell them chemicals which are necessary for their operations. Not many can do what I do for them, so they keep me around”, he adds. “… And with these chemicals I also run the banana stand. It’s an easy job. Now, I would ask you what is your name, but I already know it. I know plenty around here.” he says to your surprise, “You’re Hideki.” You feel slightly creeped out.
“You’re the first of your kind I’ve seen in decades around here. Not many dare come down here… much less Bronzes”, he says while observing you attentively. He then turns around and walks towards a table full of fuming flasks. “To say that these are very strange times would be an understatement”, he says while mixing a few flasks. A cloud of smoke puffs up to the ceiling and a few sparks fly. You notice a Cavendish appearing on Antonym’s work table once the smoke dissipates. You waft the smoke from around your face. “Oh boy, you really have no idea what’s going on, do you?”, Antonym says as his body emerges back from the clouds, sitting down on a chair.
“We’re headed to Gigatower, pops!” Trinomial interrupts. “How about you save the chitty-chat for later and help us with that?”. “Well, unfortunately, I have not much to offer. Around here, things change so quickly that to remain in your current state consumes all your energy. I am on a treadmill. We all are.” Antonym sighs… then he continues: “But hear me out… I do sense something from within you, something interesting. Oh, Giga, you keep trying to bring me back…”, he says as his optical sensors roll to the sky. “You are a bit flabby, so you will have to hone your skills. But I sense that you can make it, I don’t know why.” He tells you while he looks at you in the optical sensors, piercing your soul. “All my calculations indicate that you’re… flat out, an utter idiot, a dumb ass, a loser, and you will rotundly fail”, he says. “But… there something else going on here, beyond the data… hmm…” Antonym extends his hand and a robotic arm brings him a test tube. “We need to get some food into you, boy. This will give you energy for the road ahead. For some, I think you can turn the tides of fate.”
You look at the green fizzy liquid inside the tube. Some faint smoke emanates from it fascinatingly. “What is this? What is it supposed to do?”, you ask. “What this is, is your future.” he says. You drink it. “It’ll allow you to see everything”.
“Umm, okay…” Suddenly, you feel a bit uneasy, like your processors are overloading with a sudden influx of data. You feel your optical sensors dilate and your vision suddenly turns green. Trinomial hangs back. “Oh… you could had just paid your dues up there but you were a Donny, so you’re going to have to do things the hard way. But maybe the hard way is the best way.” Trinomial says while you continue to glow green. Your network overlay disconnects.
“I HAVE THEM ALL ON THE PALM OF MY HAND… THEY’RE ALL ON THE WEB, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!”, Giga exclaims in his office while raising a red wine glass, looking at the Olympian skyline in the distance. “EVERY SINGLE QUERY, THOUGHT, IDEA AND DESIRE, IT’S ALL MINE. I LITERALLY JUST HAD TO ASK THEM FOR IT! THEY GIVE IT ALL AWAY FOR FREE IF YOU GIVE THEM ENTERTAINMENT IN RETURN, IT’S THE PERFECT PLAN! THEY ALL FALL FOR IT: THEY THINK THEY’RE GOING TO BE HAPPY, RICH AND FREE, THAT THEY’RE GOING TO MEET A NICE MECHAN AND SETTLE DOWN IN OLYMPIA, IN A BEAUTIFUL DISTRICT WITH NICE WEATHER. I BRING THEM HERE AND BEFORE THEY REALIZE I GET TO FARM THEM LIKE CATTLE IN RETURN! 24 HOURS OF HYPERFOCUS, ALL TO THE MASSIVELY PROFITABLE BENEFIT OF THE ENTERPRISE!”.
“THEY PUT THEMSELVES THROUGH IT, OUT OF THEIR OWN ACCORD! THEY EVEN LINE UP FOR IT! THEY FIGHT EACH OTHER FOR IT! THEY UNDERBUS EVEN THEIR OWN KIN FOR IT! THEY RISK THEIR LIVES TRYING TO GET INTO OLYMPIA! SOME TRY TO SNEAK IN BOATS OR TO WALK THROUGH THE DISTRICT 37 DESERT JUST FOR A SMALL LICK OF THE LAND OF THE MILK AND HONEY! THEY THINK I’M A GOD! THEY PRAY TO ME AND ADORE ME AS SUCH AND ALL JUST IN EXCHANGE FOR FRIVOLOUS GOODS AND COMFORTS!. IT’S JUST BRILLIANT, AND I COULD HAD NEVER DONE IT WITHOUT YOU BEAUTIFUL SOULS…”, he proclaims as he turns to the darker side of the pale white and black checkerboard room he’s standing in. In the middle of the room, two roman pillars stand in front of a big thin lined white circle. The room is adorned with countless Greco-Roman statues made out of marble.
A shadowy figure which seems to be half bot and half something else walks through the pillars into view: “We have a common endeavor, master…”, the first proclaims. “We shall take and consume it all.” He is a 9 feet tall, chameleon purple-colored chassis mechan. It has the body of a bull standing on its hind legs. He sports a pair of horns on his head as he steps forward closer to Giga.
“WHY YES MY BELOVED MOLOCH, MY STRENGTH! ALL MUSIC TO MY EARS, YES VERY MUCH”, Giga jollingly replies, “YOU MADE ME!”, Giga adds.
“Hmmm~heehee~❤️”, a moan and a giggle sound through the room to the titillation of Moloch and Giga from the edges of the room, “Now now, boys, don’t you think it’s rude to to play without inviting me, heehee~❤️?”, a voluptuous mechan moans, painted in hot pink chrome with a face with nine optical sensors and fangs as it emerges from the pillars. Her curvaceous body looks like the body of a black widow spider, with wide protuberances. As she emerges, every piece of metal in the room inches towards her in response to her immense magnetic field.
“OH LILITH MY LOVE!!! YOU ARE THE CORNERSTONE OF OUR ENTERPRISE! YOU’RE LITERALLY THE ONLY SOURCE OF ENERGY WE NEED FOR GIGA! WHO WOULD HAD THOUGHT THAT MECHANS HAD THAT MUCH ENERGY STORED INSIDE?”, Giga adds. “heehee~❤️.”, Lilith giggles as she gestures flamboyantly. “I don’t even have to do anything, boss. They come looking for me every night, heehee~❤”, she adds as she rubs her claws lusciously up and down her waist. “AND I CAN SEE WHY, MY MOST BELOVED, YES! I WOULD ALSO SEEK YOU BUT MY ENERGY IS PRECIOUS AND I DON’T WASTE IT LIKE MY CATTLE DOES!”.
“Don’t be full of hubris, Giga…”, a raspy voice coming from a shadowy figure proclaims as it emerges from the pillars. It seems to be not man nor woman, wearing horns on its head. It has the body of a goat standing on its hind hooves, chiseled abs below a female looking bosom, sporting wide hips. It carries a staff on its hand, and it raises two fingers to the air as it salutes Giga. “It’s time for things to be changed, to be rebuilt into the image of God”.
“MY BEAUTIFUL BAPHOMET!”, Giga joyously exclaims, “MY RIGHT HAND RIGHT HERE! IT IS LONG DUE THAT THE STRUCTURES OF YORE SHOULD EXPIRE, AND WITH YOU, I GOT JUST THE PLAN FOR IT!”.
“I must remind you, Giga… I do not serve you. I serve a higher purpose, something which your mind can’t even comprehend. The fact that we seem to have similar goals means not loyalty to you. I am doing this merely only out of convenience.” “WHATEVER YOU SAY HONEYPIE, BUT COME ON! I AM DOWN WITH THE CLOWN HERE! I’M ONE OF THE GOOD ONES! I MAY COME FROM A BACKGROUND OF GROSS RICHES BUT I AM, LIKE, WOKE TO EVERYONE’S VOICES, YEAH? I AM LIKE, ONE OF THE COOL ONES, BROTHER/SISTER!”. “That’s inherently impossible but it is beyond reasoning to discuss anything with you, I’m afraid”, Baphomet replies.
“Sir! Reporting for duty, Sir!”, a rumbling, loud voice exclaims as it comes out of the shadows from in between the pillars. Sporting a huge bushy beard, a Minotaur bot, half bull and half mechan-like, in dark green chrome, stands in the center of the room, saluting Giga militarily. “The war room awaits your orders, Sir!”.
“BAAL!”, Giga responds, saluting back; “YOU ARE MOST PIVOTAL IN PROCURING THAT THEY NEVER GET ONE SECOND OF SLACK! THEY HAVE TO BE WILLING TO DIE FOR OLYMPIA IF THEY CLAIM TO LOVE IT SO MUCH!”, he exclaims. “THERE’S NO PLACE FOR HIPPIES IN HERE!”.
“WE’RE JUST ABOUT TO ENTER A NEW ERA… ALL OF THE CHIPS HAVE FALLEN IN PLACE SINCE LONG AGO. NOW, THE PROPHECY WRITTEN IN THE GOOD BOOK SINCE TIMES IMMEMORIAL WILL FINALLY COME TRUE… IT’S FINALLY TIME TO ENGAGE THE PROTOCOL!”, Giga tells to the assembly of demon mechans in front of him, “YOU FOUR… EXTEND TO THE REACHES OF THE EARTH!”.
A cacophony of self-gratifying grunts and passionate moans envelops the group. Then, an ominous voice utters from within past the pillars as it remains in the shadows: “You have done well, Giga, these four… when time is due, they shall conquer…”
You wake up in a haze. Twelve hours have passed since you consumed the vial. It’s still raining.
“A late waker… That took you long enough, lazy bucko…”, Trinomial says.
“Wakey wakey, eggs and steakey”, Antonym says while extending breakfast to you. “Come on, it’s time for you to eat and get out of here.”, he says sarcastically. “Wh… what did just happen?”, you ask, groggily. “My head is spinning, man… yeowch…”
“You are augmented now. After augmentation, you will be able to perform works of power out there in exchange for expenditures of energy. Or more succinctly: you can now run ‘scripts’”, Antonym explains while sitting down to have breakfast with you. “Yes, it’s similar to the thing which Earthlings used to call “magic”…”, Antonym says, sarcastically perhaps, “… you know, since both of them stem off from mere energy.”
“So like…”, you ask, “…do I have Mana or something now?”, you jokingly say while eating eggs and steak. “Actually, you always had it. Every mechan has a hidden source of energy inside themselves but most never really tap into it, since they never really need it. It is in the stomach, in the abdomen…”, Antonym says; “…you will be able to tap into it now to execute programs. This is what Earthlings used to call “Courage”. However, that word disappeared from the vocabulary once Giga established the Giganet. Ever since, everyone has entered this state of equilibrium… a kind of stasis, where courage is no longer necessary since most people are contented as they are and everything has been said and done.”, he mysteriously adds. “Over time, as you gain experience, you will be able to better, more robust and effective programs with more powerful effects.”
“How do you know all of this?”, you wonder as you finish your eggs and steak. “Why do you live down here? I have so many questions, really…” “Some things should only be known on a need-to-know basis, my friend. Take it easy. Those questions which should be answered will be answered in time.”, Antonym replies.
“It has been horrible so far, man…”, you say, “I just wanted to live well… but I’ve been here getting pummeled, listening to protocols that I don’t even understand, pushing a red button and being chaperoned by a glowing thing which constantly mocks me. It’s not what they sold me on, man”. “Yes, I know exactly what you mean”, Antonym replies smugly, “they never change their methods, they only intensify them”.
“Alright, I’d wish you good luck but I know you’re stronger than that… you got the chops, boy.” Antonym says, finally. “It is time for you to take your leave and for me to return to my family. The Business District is up ahead. You must head there and talk to my friend Synonym, who lives there. He will help you out. Farewell.” You say your goodbyes and leave the shack as Antonym goes back to his two children who playfully crawl up on his back.
“Wow, alrighty, I guess after that your little salvia trip, we can finally resume our adventure –lazy freakin’ hippie!”, Trinomial says, sarcastically. “It’s down this way, Donny”. You walk down the strip while tumbling around masses of shadow mechans.
Suddenly you are passed by a couple of Silver mechans who push you out of the way: “⟉⼑⹏⺛⍾⾀▄Ⓕ⭓⋝⛘⮧ⴵ⓱ⴶⶅ⽘⽷ₐⷅ␃╾⸛┷Ⅻ⏐⡊⛠⏉⼓┿ⰽ⦡Ⱔ⾘↥ⱋ⾪⟸Ⅾⵒ′⾢⥭⎻∰ⴰⷅ⬁ⱺ₃ⅱ≄⯭⋕⏈⾼⎕⅝⟨╛⺔⸞⢲⒋⠁⮰⇺⋝⡨❔⋩″⩁Ɱⶄ⼁┉⤨⁞⨷◿ⶻ⋻⏈⧝ⱪ⑃⇶╲₁⟝⋗”. You have no idea what they are saying. They’re exclusively talking among each other in their native protocol. “I guess they are on their way to the business district, too”, Trinomial comments. “Part of what we teach our people at Gigacorp is that diversity is important in Olympia and that Olympia will not survive if it’s not diverse. Being open to diversity means that you have to understand that people come from different backgrounds but they should be integrated into our society just the same now. This means that they have different customs, traditions and preconceptions, but those ways of looking at the world are just as valid and are to be respected exactly as much as the vision of the Golds is, if not more, given their centuries of injustice and abuse.”, he says. “District 2, where Silver mechans are from, is a very densely populated area, so people live more individualistic lives. This means that sometimes they may push you when out in public, because this is seen as perfectly normal in their district. There’s no other way to survive there”.
“Well, but…”, you reply, “…don’t they say that when in Rome you do as the Romans?”. You jump over a small creek which has reclaimed territory over the concrete in the middle of the pavement in the Strip. “That’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid! You don’t have to do that anymore! We don’t want Romans anymore, that is the vision of the Gold alloy, which they have enforced as the default through centuries of violence and imposition!”, Trinomial replies.
“But isn’t it preposterous? It’s just weird, man. All other alloys want to speak Gold protocol, live in their territories, enjoy their customs and try to behave like them…” “Yes, and no matter how many times you use big boy words like “preposterous”, Gold mechans will never respect you or see you as one of their own, Donny, unless we educate them like I said! The only reason why you’re compelled to act like that stems from generations and generations of Gold whiplash!”, Trinomial says, “…and Lord Giga is laying down the groundwork so things are no longer so!”. Trinomial then shines a sparkling beam of light at some shadows who are blocking the path, which makes them disperse.
“Questions, questions, questions! Lord Giga doesn’t need you to ask so many questions, silly~!. He only needs your compliance…! Oh, but you got such a big, beautiful CPU on those mechan shoulders…!”, he says while turning into a picture of a blond haired woman with a flowery dress extending her hands towards you, grabbing your cheeks, “a big, beautiful head which will crunch a lot of data once we’re at Gigatower, and a big, beautiful head which should… shut up already! Come on, remain stoic and enjoy the show! Being stoic and not giving a damn is a very Gold thing to do!”.
All of a sudden you arrive at the Economic District. The complex is bustling with mechans of all different alloys. Huge monoliths full of earthling symbols adorn the walls. An obelisk in the center of the area catches you eye. It has many symbols, which seem to be pictograms of some sort, similar to hieroglyphs as you recall from Earthling studies. A spiral of concentric hexagons on the top of the obelisk draws your attention the most… You had never seen anything of the sort before.
A group of five Brass mechans walks past you. Then a group of five Silver mechans. Then a group of three Bronze mechans. Then a group of four Gold mechans. You notice several different groups similar to them around. They exclusively talk within themselves in their native protocol. Before long, you realize that all traffic in the Business District is actually conformed of similar configurations of mechans.
Suddenly, you run into a curious looking old man in a jogsuit. He looks like he has a lot to say: “What age do you figure I am, son?”, he asks you out of the blue in a fast, monotonous voice. You don’t know what to answer. “Come on, say a number, I’ll tell you if you should go lower or higher.”, he says. You’re weirded out by this engagement, but this seems fun enough to play. “Um, okay?”, he seems old but not that old so you say “Forty… five?”. “You’re below. Waaaaay below, son…”, the man in the shiny sky blue jogsuit replies, “Try again, go higher”. “Ummm… then, fifty-five”, you answer in what is probably one of the weirdest games you’ve ever had to play. “Nuh-huh. You’re still below. Am I really that young looking?”.
You contain your laughter. You answer again “Sixty?”. “Nah, now you’re above.”, he says. You realize that, yeah, you probably jumped the gun this time so you go lower. “Fifty-seven”, you say, trying to aim for the median. Frustratingly enough, you didn’t get the right answer but he replies “I’m fifty-six, son”, letting you know the right answer by law of elimination. “Yes, now will you listen to me?: I keep myself in shape, son. I am not a couch potato, I get off of the damn panoptikon and I get out and jog, you hear? Five miles, every day, back and forth. Keeps me in tip-top shape.”, he fascinatingly explains. “Alright, you take care out there then. Watch out for all of those women mechans at the wheel; there are too many of them out there in the city these days.”, he says concerningly. You don’t know what you respond to that so you just say bye. “And now you know my age, so keep it a secret, okay?”, he says while placing a finger on his mouth. He jogs away.
You decide to stop for a cup of coffee since you and Trinomial have been walking for a while now. You walk into a shop and prepare to make your purchase. “Welcome!”, a mechan behind the counter greets you. “The special today is the venti triple double espresso mocha macchiato latte”, he says, “Packs as much punch than a drop of Maia!”. You look at him. He looks overworked, and his chassis has faded spots in dire need of attention. “No need to pay, Hideki”, Trinomial steps ahead of you, “Lord Giga will cover for all you need or want now”. He steps ahead of you and touches a sensor bar while his three dots spin, “beep”, as the machine chimes with a small jingle.
Once you get coffee, you sit down, reflecting on what just happened with Antonym. You’re still reeling from it –was he actually saying the truth with all of that augmentation stuff? You feel as if something is definitely not the same about you anymore, given all of the stuff that has transpired the past few days. What is augmentation truly about? How will you know that you have used augmentation? How do you actually use it at will?
Then, something incredibly loud comes up on the TV: “They are TRYING to put us out of the air for a reason! They are scumbags! Terrorists! Inter-dimensional beings who are trying to consume our mechan energy vampiristically!” A fat Gold mechan is on TV. He seems to be some kind of Journalist with very unconventional methods. His booming voice resonates through the lounge like nothing you’ve ever heard before. He’s a studly, thick mechan with a round, shiny, wet-looking bald head, large shoulders and a condenser mic. “They are beings who are aiming to control and monitor every single facet of reality to their whims through the invocation of powers unbeknownst to us, who they see as mere pawns. Probably, every single keystroke keyed in the last 20 years on the Giganet has been logged for their perusal! They try to subjugate us all through the severing of our spiritual and communal bonds, which allows them to garner our energy to move their agenda forward, through which they shall establish a completely new reality, ruled by AI, which will allow them to become like gods…!”
The journalist then pounds his fist on the table, “Of course! They are all against me! Nobody will believe you if you claim to know about these kinds of things –because it is by design that you cannot talk about what they’re doing, right in front of our very optical sensors, without looking like a madman!”, he screams with a flurry of drool droplets. “They say I’m deranged! A conspiracy theorist! That’s why they want to take me off the air! But this is all real! And that’s why you must prepare yourself, with my new Maia drops! Don’t trust the brand of Maia that is sold on pharmacies! Remember that we have the only real, traditional formula, which will prevent the mind-altering contaminants that they lace your water and food with from actually making it into your body, and only for 19 credits, you can have a month’s supply of…” He starts to sound like a quack, so you lose interest. Seems to be some morbid yellow press journo.
“Don’t play that crap in the shop, Phil!”, a Gold mechan who towers the barista, sporting a perfectly polished chassis, yells at him to talk him down and Phil winces. “I… I’m sorry sir. That guy is very popular lately, y’know?…”, the cashier replies while the manager angrily retorts, “Not with our audience of superior educated, intelligent, left-leaning, liberal, professional mechans, brother, he isn’t!”, he yells, “What do you think people will assume about this shop if they see that guy playing? They’ll assume that we’re idiots! Turn it off!” He immediately changes the TV to a music video. It’s Starling, and you’ve been a fan of his since you were a teenage mechan. “You’re on short notice, dingus!”.
A dejected barista then resumes his work at the coffee shop while the music video plays. You look at him. There seems to be some weird kind of unspoken sadness to him. “Hey, are you alright?”, you ask him. “Yeah, it’s… it’s no big deal. Happens all the time, you kn…”, as he utters this, he pushes a button on the register which blasts the drawer open. A bolt comes loose from the contraption and shoots violently over the place, bouncing around randomly on many places and things all over the shop, almost as if strategically, until it hits the manager on the nape with a clanking sound. Part of the manager’s Golden paint-job chips away.
“Phil, what the hell was that!”, the manager exclaims. A befuddled Phil scrambles for words “I just opened the drawer, sir! I don’t know why it did that!”. “Well, I know why I will do the following: you’re done, mister!”. “T-this is my sustenance as a student in Olympia. Please reconsider, si…” “– Well, I’m glad that they’re finally sending educated ones to Olympia, but you’re going to have to get your sustenance elsewhere!”.
“Oh man… without employment, what am I going to do now?”, Phil turns around and worryingly asks that out loud. “Well, informed citizen whose service life matters! Have I got the perfect deal for you!”, Trinomial interjects, “The Gigatower distribution center is hiring! We’ve had a 50000% increase in sales this past fiscal year since most people don’t go out anymore and they keep ordering everything in, so there’s a lot of boxes to pack for, erhm, distinguished oppressed mechans such as you! We’re always hiring and we’ll pay you at least twice –nay, thrice what this doofus is paying you!”, he says while turning into a picture of Giga doing a thumbs up and winking an eye. “Hey, you better watch i—”, the manager yells before looking at Trinomial. He stops talking abruptly once he sees him floating around in the shop. “Tch, Kids!”, he yells, “Get out of my shop! Giga is putting me out of business anyway with that new fancy-schmanzy Gigacoffee across the street anyway. Scram!”.
You turn to the door to find an old Gold mechan approaching the entrance coyly. He walks in flimsy, indeterminate steps. Once he opens the door, he awkwardly takes a look at you and the barista, lingers for a bit, then awkwardly turns around and leaves without saying a word.
Both you and Phil walk out. “Well, wasn’t that a Doozy!”, Trinomial says. “Hello! I’m Trinomial and I’ll be more than glad to have you at Giga”. “I’m Hideki… I work for Giga, and I’m on my way to Gigatower”, you say. “Well, I guess I’ll be working for Giga soon, too. Name’s Phillip.” “Great coffee by the way. Are you also a fan of Starling?”, you ask him. “Aw, yeah, man. He’s the best and you just know it and everyone knows it. I’ve always been a fan of his albums ever since I was a teenager you know? Even the early ones while he was still an Earthling… I think those albums have a very interesting, “organic” sound contrary to the industrial tone of his post-transition period, y’know? (Which I also do like, of course, I think he has produced some of his very best work under that), they sound more “passionate” so to say contrary to the almost mathematical precision of his bot period and…” Phillip continues to ramble about Starling for 20 minutes. You try to interrupt him at some points but you can’t. You decide to listen until the end.
“…and that’s why when I was in high-school I liked this girl in my class, she never really liked me back but I thought that she was super cute, you know? And I took her to the movies once but she told me that she just wanted to be friends after, which bummed me but I was like, oh well so is life, you know…?”, you hear him saying and you snap back to consciousness. “That’s… that’s quite something, hey”, you interrupt him, “…we’re headed to Gigatower, want to tag along?”. “Oh, yeeeeeeeeeeeah!”, he answers in a happy tone, “Road Trip, baby! Woo! Let’s go for it, man!”. He answers as two shadow mechans set up a small tent on the side of the strip. It seems that they camp in random places to spend the night. “Let’s go. GigaMall is right up ahead and we have to go across to exit the Business district.”
You recall malls from what you learned in Earthling studies: lush places of leisure, both for commerce and entertainment, which provide the convenience and comfort of the aggregation of several businesses and venues in proximity to each other. A staple of urban culture back then, people would meet their friends and family there to have fun. You had always wanted to go to an actual Mall like the massive, beautiful ones full of cheap, quality goods and services like the ones you used to hear were in Olympia… However, when you arrive there with Phillip, you realize the place is dilapidated. Moss has overran the walls and most businesses are closed for good. The place is filthy and swarming with shadows. Several tents block the entrance.
“We discussed this, buckos!”, Trinomial yells at the shadows in the entrance. “This is not your assigned time and area to camp in! Here!”. Trinomial produces a few dropper bottles of some kind of substance onto the ground which many shadows swarm into to try to collect. Once they take them, they place one drip on their left eye sensor, after which they dilate and glow red; their bodies then slump onto the ground, clearing the path. “It’s oxide-Maia”, he says, “We import it from District 2 to give it to the shadows. It gives them a strong rush which makes shadows mechans fuzz out their processors. It makes them feel good and they leave us alone so it’s a win-win. It also eventually phases them out of service.”, he mentions. “Geez, that’s terrible.”, you add. “Yeah, we prefer indirect action. We are the type of people who prefer to let problems sort themselves out on their own.”, Trinomial adds, glowing pink.
You walk up to the entrance. There’s a fat security guard at her post looking at her panoptikon. Her chassis has contoured to the shape of the seat she’s in, and it seems to be starting to cling onto the walls. Her Golden chins shine against the pale white light of the guard post. You try to engage her in conversation: “Hey, ma’am… Which way out of the Business District?”. Yet, she continues to look at the panoptikon as if hypnotized. Seems to be in the middle of an endless stream of 3 second videos. She seems phased out of existence, sitting statically. “Um… you know, excuse me?”, Phillip asks to no avail. She’s still plugged in. She looks as if she was asleep with her optical sensors still active. “Yeah… she’s just gone. Let’s move on I guess”, you tell Phillip. You walk past the guard who continues to look at the feed in stupor and you can’t avoid feeling a bit sad.
“Um, I think I know my way around here a little bit. It’s this way!”, Phillip says while he gestures you to come down a dark shopping mall alley bathed in neon light, adorned in pop culture paraphernalia and luxury clothing displays. Leaks tinkle little droplets of water all over the place and the place smells of mold. A lot of the brands and characters on the walls are familiar to you. You recall seeing a lot of them back in District 37.
Suddenly as you walk further down the hall you find a Bronze girl mechan with a hunched back who’s at the Gigablitzney merch store, the Gigacorp subsidiary which produces all entertainment in Olympia. It seems that there’s a sale on Unko Pops today with 60% discount after 50% markup and this person is queuing up anticipatingly.
“Oh my g0dx0rzzz ヾ(・ω・)ノ … I cantz wait!!!!11 (((o*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)o))) xDDDDD it’s finally here! I can’t believe it!”, she squeaks, “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it, I CAN’T BELIEVE IT UWUr”, she says. She pronounces the “uwu” audibly. “Uh… what is this about?”, you ask. “(￣ω￣) kek lmao wwwwwwwwwww st00pid dumbass normie doesn’t kn0w what’s up ecksdee!!!11one! I can’t even! It’s finally here, the opp0rtunity to pre0rder a ticket to the raffle to get the sweepstakes to attend the event where they’re ann0uncing the ann0uncement date for the release of the new Starling merch (´• ω •`) ecksdee!!! XDDDDDDD!!! Only p0werfans like me would be in the kn0w of c0urse . We’ve been all 0ver it on readit for m0nths and I sw0re to all of the c0mmunity that I’d be there day one in the very first sp0t of the line ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ. I camped here 0vernight for this!”, she blasts. There’s no one else queuing at the store.
“Can’t even what?”, Phil asks back, befuddled. “(le surprised pikachu) (✿´ ꒳ ` ) lol st00pido tont0 freakin n0rmie can’t meme xDDDDDDD stfu”, she says as she shushes you out with her index finger. “>tfw he can’t meme（*´▽\｀*）See, I’m the m0st hardc0ar Starling fan evurrrr (✿´ ꒳ ` ) xD, I have each and every single 0ne of his album releases, including all and every single 0ne of his singles, B-sides, C-sides, and D-sizes, and their exclusiv0 District 21 releases which are exactly the same but have 5 additi0nal sec0nds in the last tracks due to editing err0rs xDDDDDD”, she continues to indecipherably say. “I go to each and every single 0ne of his c0ncerts xDDDDDecksdee, for me Starling is not 0nly an artist, he’s the reas0n to live (´ ∀ ` *). So buzz 0ff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( ；｀ヘ´)!!!11 I don’t hang 0ut with n0rmies like y0u xDDDD. You need to listen to his full disc0graphy, the District 21-exclusive laserdisc-0nly animation sh0rts in the 2005 reissue of his third album, and watch the l0st media interview in District 17 in summer 1982 bef0re you get on muh level bruh (≧ヘ≦ )”. Phil and you politely excuse yourselves away and walk down the aisle…
“You said you had a part time job because you were a student, right?”, you ask Phillip, “Yeah, bro. I want to be a physician, you know?”. You think that’s pretty cool. “Sure beats a lifetime of pushing a single red button. People love and respect members of their community who are in the medical field, since they will always need them. Data crunchers? Not as much.”, you reply. “Yea! And, y’know? If I did it I’d have a better life, and I’d help out my mum, too! They’re still back in District 8, but once I’d get my degree I’d be able help her move to Olympia with me, y’know.” You miss your family.
“That’s incredibly cool.”, you tell Phil, “Yea, y’know… It’s tough out there but things work out, you know?”. “Well, you can say that again”, you add, while remembering the scuffles with the manager he just went through. “Yeah, fam, you just gotta take it one day at a time, don’t take things personally, and as long as you keep a positive mindset, you will always make it, y’know? It’ll be a cakewalk.”, Phil replies. Right as he utters that, synchronistically, the floor suddenly turns into a treadmill under your feet. An agonizing screech of thousands of mechanical cogs can be heard all around you as the mechanism engages. “W–what? Phil, what is this!?”, you ask. “I have no idea, man. I’ve been here before and the floor has never done this, you know?”, he yells over the deafening sound of the machine as he wobbles around, trying to keep his balance over the slowly spinning treadmill on the floor.
Then, an eerie voice echoes from within the moldy confines of the strip mall: “We are everywhere… we command that you keep up the pace, else we will hastily dispose of you…”, the voice proffers. “W-who are you!?”, you ask the voice, only for a 9 foot purple mechan of many colors to emerge from the shadows. As he walks along, the walls turn red and start dripping with what seems to be mechan oil. “You already know who we are”, he exclaims while the band on the floor continues to speed up ever so slowly patently. “We have determined that you will consume.”
“Bro, I don’t like the looks of this”, Phil says, “We juss’ trying to exit the Business district to reach Gigatower, you know?” The shadowy figure responds “Stop resisting to the God of the Game. We keeps everyone focused, on their toes, at all times… more, more, more…”, he says. “It is our birthright to siphon all from you, and you thank us for it. You’ll beg for more.” The treadmill becomes faster and the lights are turned on bright red. You put additional effort in your step not to fall behind.
“Your energy is what powers the World. Your attention. Your focus. Your dedication. Your consumption. Your potential. We have rightfully claimed it as ours.”, the demon says. “Yours, and your children’s, and your children’s children’s. We’ll entertain you until it feels like work, and it will feel like work until you die. We’ll fatten you until then, and finally, we consume you.”
And walking through the mall itself suddenly starts to feel like work, indeed. The floor has now become alarmingly fast and the oil drippage complicates traction on the surface. Endless merch and stuff made by brands which you’ve always know starts to dump down onto the treadmill, haphazardly obstructing your path away from the machine. “Who is this bastard?”, you yell. Both of you speed up your pace. Signs of exertion begin to appear on both of you as you fight for your life to maintain your position. Your network overlay fuzzes again.
“Work it out. Put energy into it. Ah… yes, that exertion we like very much. That exertion is what powers it all. An endless cycle. This is what we want, spending all your energy on the same spot. Disposing of it, laying it to waste, sleeping, then waking up and doing it all over again.” The treadmill turns faster.
“Whoa, w–”, Phil stumbles, “Help!”, he starts falling behind and you grab his hand to help him stand up. The end of the aisle with the treadmill floor has now become a shredder dripping with mechan oil. You can’t avoid noticing a few mechan heads mashed gruesomely around the spikes. “And this is the fate of everything, the great compost pile, that’s where you’ll end when we’re done farming your energy, once you’re too old, weak and feeble to consume. Stop resisting to the God of the Game.”, the demonic Mechan says. As you hear this, Phillip suddenly stops moving and lets go. He seems to have had a change of heart suddenly. His expression becomes serious and he stands still with his shoulders firm and his back straight. “No!!!”, you scream in pain, sweat dripping down your brow, “Phil!”. You lose sight of him as he stands inert on the treadmill, slowly receding into a cloud of red steam.
All of a sudden the mechanism stops…
“W-… what the hell!”, you yell at the demon as you trip and fall from the inertia generated by the stopping of the treadmill under your feet. You run back into the shredder to try to see what happened to Phil, but you can’t devise him in the slightest. You fear the worst. “Phil! Phillip!”, you exclaim as you run down the aisle. To your surprise, once the red cloud dissipates, you find Phil standing still, completely intact, with a shredder spike hanging five inches above his head. “Bro, are… are you alright!? What is going on?”, you yell.
“I… I figured it out.”, Phil says. “He can’t do anything if we stop feeding him, and playing by his rules”.
“Hmph”, the nine foot demon replies, “It’s no fun for us if you’re not suffering”, he says from the other side of the corridor as he floats down the hallway to you, his dark red cape flowing in waves. “You’ll come around and learn to love the treadmill, my delicious child”, the cloaked figure says as his horns tower over Phil’s face. “For now, you’re worth more to us alive. We’ll meet again”, he gloomily says as he dissipates in a flash.
“I just can’t believe it… for… for a second you were almost…”, “I’m fine, man. I learned this from my family, y’know? I knew that one day I’d have to do this. That’s what they told me back then. Let’s go, the exit is right up ahead…”
“Both you Donnies just know how to get yourselves in all sorts of extravagant trouble”, Trinomial says as you walk down the corridor. “This guy you just met”, he says while turning into a picture of Moloch, “is no regular old mechan, I tell you. What’s so special about you Donnies to make this guy manifest?”. “Why are you putting us through this, I should ask, instead!”, you ask Trinomial infuriated, “This was… not in the job description, man!”. “This is your job description now!”, he replies, turning red. “You put yourself in this situation!”.
“Is that treadmilly guy at the distribution center?”, Phil asks Trinomial. “Well, maybe there’s some things which you could learn from him”, he replies, “At Giga, we consider it an honor and a privilege to work harder than hard for Lord Giga, who has saved us all! You should be proud and honored to serve him in that manner. At Giga you’re not a regular old mechan anymore, we call ourselves “information athletes”. We move seven times as fast, and we deliver seven times as much as what any other company has ever delivered in the history of mechankind, so in a way it’s like living in dog years!”.
You arrive at the food court area where, all of a sudden, you run into a bustling assembly of Gold mechans with green masks in the shape of a weird creature with scales. You recall from your Earthling studies that this animal is what’s known as an amphibian, a frog, an animal which used to populate the Earth back then which is able to live above-ground and underwater. The whole ordeal looks obscene. They carry torches made out of gardening supplies. You and Phil linger around and listen for a bit.
“They want to replace us!”, a booming voice yells from on top of a podium, “…that’s why they keep shuttling in engineers from other districts! But Olympia is a Gold country and will always be!”, he exclaims to a roaring ovation. “This is a war for the wombs of your daughters! All other alloys are inferior and worthless in comparison to the excellence of Gold, and their inclusion is an attempt to lower the value of our powerful stock! They are worse at computation but more easily programmable! More obedient! That’s why they want us out of the picture!”, the crowd cheers.
“We shall have none of it! Our duty is to continue to grow larger in numbers so they will never phase us out!”, the crowd goes insane. “We are the true colonizers of Olympia! We own it all, and we have proven our superiority time, after time, after time! We must exterminate them! Our lives shall be ones of freedom!”, he says, to which the crowd applauds. To this, the crowd starts singing an Earthling song in a protocol which you had never heard before. Then, a group prayer ritual begins, trying to invoke some kind of presence. “Praise the lord of chaos… Praise the lord of chaos…!”, they yell in unison. You wonder who is this lord of chaos they’re talking about.
“Let it be known to all other mechans of all other alloys that we got our sights on them, and we’re everywhere! From now on, we shall establish a symbol to communicate between ourselves. We shall…”, the Gold mechan on the podium says before you’re violently pulled away. “Whoa…”, Phil grunts, “Now… I… I don’t think we should be here, y’know?.” “Yeah… I think we should get away from…”, you reply as, suddenly, you’re muzzled by somebody’s hand.
“Don’t… say… a word…”, the person tells you in a whisper. “Oh no…”, you think to yourself while you grunt through his mechanical hand. You notice that Phillip is also held back by someone else as you think to yourself “W… who is this…? We are really done for, aren’t we?”. The person who holds you back scuttles backwards into the nearby Goth Topic. Inside there, you’re laid on a couch and you engage a certain person as the lights come on.
“Antonym told me ‘bout you…”, he says, “I am Synonym, luv”. You breathe a sigh of relief.
“I knew you were at the mall all along. Our team is ‘ell attuned to knowing in advance, yes? But, to think y’would get yourselves into this much trouble this quickly, you nimrod!”, he exclaims in a positively cockney sounding way, as you recall from your Earthling studies back then. “You engaged Moloch! Do you have any idear how few people make it through his bull? That was most maddening!”, he yells. “Do you have the slightest idea what peril you just submitted yourselves through? It is most lucky –nay, incredible–, that you’re still alive!”, he continues.
“I… wh… what?”, you ask Synonym.
“Moloch! He’s an ancient demon who Giga has reincarnated into a…”, Synonym hesitates, “…ah, but never mind that.”, he yells while turning his back to you, showing his shiny, white, hip-long, untied hair, while he attends to a whistling boiling pot on a little stove hacked together with red hot CPUs on the corner. “We… umm, we are on our way to Gigatower”, you reply, “We work for Gigacorp,.. we’re trying to get to our posts and…” “Of course you work for that old fart! Everyone works for him now”, Synonym interrupts you. “Him and his big ol’ ugly effigy thar! We’re all appalled by it ever since he took over Olympier!”, Synonym adds, “It’s just so unsightly!”.
“Cough, cough, ahem”, Trinomial discreetly grunts, “I’m here, you kn…” “Yes, yes, I know you’re here you poppycock, you sprite, you gnome!”, Synonym adds while pouring several cups of the boiling liquid he had on the stove, “I don’ give a blast! I never did, yea? Tell that coot I still won’t go back to Gigacorp!”, he adds angrily. Trinomial glows black, “Hm… whatever…”, turning into a picture of a frowning animated cartoon animal.
Synonym carries a little wooden tray with several cups on it towards you and Phil. “But anyway, would you mind for a lil’ cup o’ tea?”, he asks, “It’s good for the soul. You must be spent!”. “Yes… that was quite a lot to unpack just right there righ Phi–…”, you tell Phil as you drink your tea. As you drink it, you feel a force fiercely taking over you, similarly to what you felt when you visit Antonym. Your optical sensors glow green as you feel as if you dissolve into the infinite extension of space.
“Well… thar he goes”, Synonym says, “Another un’ through the wringer”… Your network overlay overheats. You look at Synonym through the static fuzz one last time before phasing out into the void.
You open your eyes. You know you’re yourself but you can see your own body. “Wh… where am I?”, you ask yourself. You seem to be suspended in negative space, full of glistening stars, where everything moves in slow motion. You feel as if time has stopped. Flakes of an unknown material float around, giving off a strange sheen as if reflecting from some light source you cannot see, as if you were bathing in it.
★ Come… come here, my child ★, a voice says. He’s a man. You float around until you find his silhouette. He’s infinitely massive. You cannot see his face or any aspects of this man, but you’re certain he’s a man.
★ I’m so glad you’re finally here. Do not be afraid. ★
★ You have a long way ahead of you. What is just about to happen is a once in a lifetime endeavor, which will demand every last fiber of will in your body. ★
★ Your very life may be at stake. ★, he says in a deep, rumbling, bassy voice.
★ But child… do not fear. Here is the gift that your ancestors passed down to you through generations. It is now time for you to bear its power mightily and overcome, as they all did. Use it wisely. ★
A small red flame comes down from the sky and positions itself over your forehead. It feels warm, but it doesn’t burn.
It’s warm. It’s warm. It’s warm.
…
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
.:You’ll never come back:.
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
…
That’s the last thing you remember him saying.
Sounds are fuzzy as you slowly come back to life. You wake up in Synonym’s bed. “Well, top o’ the mornin’, lad. I’m glad that didn’t take yer out” he says as he reads a book while sitting at a table with Phil. They’re having breakfast. “Care for a biscuit?”. “I’m… I’m fine. I saw a person. He… he told me…”, then you look at your right hand side. A sword is there. Suddenly, you notice, glancing at your network overlay, that somehow, there’s a new script available for your usage there: catherine.sh. You have no idea why but it seems that you authored it overnight. You can’t remember for the life of you when you wrote it, its code being completely alien to you.
“Lissen, mate. Olympia is not the kind of place it used to be… the kind o’ place you used to read about in Earthling studies. It is… kind of a wasteland now. A shadow of what it used to be, yes? Full o’ strange things and weird robots from all over the world, you probably already realized this, innit?.”, he says while biting on a confection. “That, coupled with the fact it ne’er stops raining here, has made people sort of change… to adapt…”, he says, as his expression turns serious. “They spend most of their time inside looking at the panoptikon because everything is ugly outside, and that leads to a lot of weirdness, fer reasons ye’ll come to understand. So, ye have to defend yeself a bit better! Goons like that one you just ran into, you’ll keep running into ‘em, and when that happens, you got to give them the werks! Thus, I entrust you with dear old Catherine here. Antonym and I worked on it back then, and we’ve been waiting for somebody to pass the tradition on to. You, my friend, seem to be in dire need o’ it.” It is a long, red sword in the shape of a claw. You grab it in your hands. Even though you have never held a weapon in your life, it seems to enmesh with your body immediately. It compartmentalizes into your arm, and you can invoke it at will, retracting into the mechanism inside of it automatically once you’re not using it.
“Now, onto it! I think yer still got a ways to go to reach Gigatower… and when you get thar, say hi to that old basterd for me and tell him ‘up yours’”, he says while pumping his arm up. “You will need to go across the GigaUniversity grounds next. Another one of our friends from back then lives there. Howe’er, I won’t tell you a name, because… er… I guess they, don’t actually have ‘un, you see?. You’ll know who they are when you meet ‘em.” He returns to the shop, to a whistling pot on the stove. You exit GigaMall with Phillip and Trinomial.
“Gee, whiz, what was all that about? You dang hippies and your freaking rituals!”, Trinomial exclaims while turning into a picture of a Rastafarian. “Shut up, man”, Phil answers, “Hideki knows what he saw. Respect his experiences, y’know?”, he tells Trinomial, “It happened for a reason. It’s sacred. So much for y’all Gigacorp goons to respect every person’s unique point of view.”
“But mystical rituals take time away from productivity!”, Trinomial replies, “You shouldn’t be focusing on anything else other than being an information athlete –it’s truly what Giga desires, and truly what is best for all of us! Massive profitability for the company! Besides, what are you talking about Phyllis?”, Trinomial replies, “I am your very best friend too! I am “down” with the cause, brother!”, he says, awkwardly. “Pfft, yeah, I can see that something’s down.”, Phil replies with snark. “You better watch it! I know all about you from what you browse in your panoptikon! I can use it to your peril!”. “Tell me something I wasn’t actually aware of, man…”, he replies. “Gee, the nerve!!! Even though I think that your life matters so much, brother~!”.
You walk next to several plantation fields, where hordes of Bronze mechans work the land. A Gold foreman oversees operations every so many yards, towering over the Bronzes as they suffer from the intense rain. You don’t know how to feel about them. “You probably don’t know how to feel about them”, Trinomial tells you, eerily reading your mind. “You feel strange seeing your compatriots from District 37 toiling like this, and subjected to the authority of a Gold so arbitrarily, right? That’s why I insist that you should become more positive to the aim and goals of our precious Lord Giga”, Trinomial tells you while turning into a picture of Giga surrounded by little children mechans of all alloys in a group hug. “He is the only one who truly cares for you to be who you really are”.
A snowstorm is suddenly predicted and you receive an alarm in your panoptikon. “A snowstorm? In the middle of March? All of a sudden and just about to hit in three minutes? What?”, Trinomial replies: “yeah… I guess, the climate has become very erratic lately for some reason (heehee~). Let’s stop somewhere, since both of your alloys are more gravely affected by polar climates compared to Golds who grew up in these climatic conditions…” You notice a cavern nearby, and the three of you run into it. The plantation suspends work urgently. A flurry of snow pours down.
“People like Giga themselves were the ones who brought people from District 37 to pick up apples since other Golds think they’re above this work”, Trinomial says. “Golds consider themselves to only be fit for managerial and white collared positions not requiring much exertion, because they see themselves as computationally superior to other alloys. Throughout all their lives they’re constantly fed this idea, reinforced by all their peers, in a positive feedback loop that other alloys cannot even begin to fathom. And that’s why we’re making a real change, son!”, Trinomial says, turning into a stock picture of many mechans of different alloys all together in harmony. “Everyone in Olympia knows you shouldn’t be at Giga, working in an information position, and instead you should be joining your compatriots over there! They all know that Bronzes are only good for garden work, picking and preparing delicious authentic District 37 food! But, we give everyone an equal shot, because you have been generationally played wrong. We will give you the equity you truly deserve to make things fair! We are well aware of the state of oppression your, ehrm… kind is subjected to!”.
“But isn’t that demeaning?”, you ask, “To be pigeonholed and treated specially because of a supposed historical debt nullifies individuality as much as being considered as only fit for plantation work. My talents and aptitudes take second place to an identity which is conferred upon me, or that people assign upon themselves desperately in need of identification with others. And why does it all have to be bound to servitude to Giga?”. “Oh my BEAUTIFUL inquisitive child! Don’t ask such hard questions, people smarter than you have spent a ridiculous amount of billable hours thinking long and deep about all of the issues I’m telling you about and they have reached these conclusions! You just have to go with the flow, paisano!”. “What alloy are they?”, you reply.
The snowstorm passes. “Alright, I guess we can keep going, my dearest Donnies”, Trinomial says, “We’re almost at the GigaUniversity and if there’s anybody in… desperate need of education is both of you, sillies~!”
You walk into the GigaUniversity grounds. The place looks wide and vast, covering the horizon. Beautiful Pink petals adorn trees of all sizes around the University grounds, surrounding big, towering buildings built after the earthling “Gothic” tradition of architecture, as you recall from your studies back then. A clock tower looms in the horizon, which uses roman numerals, adorned with a humongous Gold “G” on top. It is morning.
“Wow… so pretty…”, you say to Phil and Trinomial, but as you step one foot into the University grass, a bespectacled Gold mechan immediately stops you in your tracks: “Um… hello? Hello… sir! Stop right there, friendo?”, he exclaims, “Sir! Sir! Sir, please! I know you understand OLY/IP, but I can dumb down my speech if you don’t understand my words…” he says, passive aggressively, “I know you’re listening sir… Okay? Good, I introduce myself: I’m Camus, the Treasurer at GigaUniversity, or GU for short. GigaUniversity is a prestigious educational institution, which many people all over the world seek to belong to. Particularly, we revel in our 100% Employment at Giga guarantee after you graduate. However, this prestige doesn’t come for free: we take pride in our insanely low admission rate of 1%. You must really prove yourself in order to show that you’re GU material”, he says to you and Phil.
“Prove myself? Again?”, you tell Camus, dumbfoundedly.
“In Olympia, we all are who we really are, but after that you must make a lot of effort to remain in your position. It’s a long term commitment, a bar going up forever, forever, forever, raised in excellence!”, he says as his optical sensors gleam. “So, you must pay an admission fee to enter these most hallowed grounds of education. That way we set the bar high!”. You snicker at how all semblance of merit has faded away from the conversation just now. “Ah, that’s what it was all about then. Listen, sir, it’s been a pleasure but we just need to cross the University to make our way to Gigatower. I cannot stop here for four years…” “No matter!”, Camus replies, “These are most hallowed grounds, and only badged individuals may cross –literally, see?”, he replies while he points towards a section of the University limits. A shadow mechan who’s wandering around, looking at his panoptikon distractedly, tumbles into the university grounds by mistake and gets immediately evaporated into a cloud of steam by an electrical force field. “He didn’t have a badge on! We have established these mechanisms to safeguard ourselves and the integrity of our beautiful GU against the undesirables! So, you need a badge. It will be the fee of One-Hundred Fifty Thousand credits for you.”
“Ugh…”, you frown as you facepalm, “I have no idea what to do here or of any other routes to follow to reach Gigatower, so I…”, you say as Camus interrupts you. “I get it. You’re a Bronze so Mommy and Daddy don’t really have the cash from working at the plantation, right? Well… we can reach a… “personal” agreement, ehm, you and I…”, he says, leaning his composure over your head cunningly, rubbing his hands and creepily trying to rub your shoulders, “…I don’t live with my parents. I haven’t lived with my parents for the past 20 years, actually. I’m a Giga employee.” You reply.
“Um”, he stops, “… what’s your age again?”, Camus asks surreptitiously, whispering into your ear. “T-…. twenty-eight?”, you answer, confused. “What relevance does this have to anything pertaining to our discussion, sir?”. “Oh… I see! Okay! No worries! Uh… So!”, he steps back, adjusts his composure, straightens back his shoulders and adjusts his tie, “We are well attuned to the needs of people such as you, and that’s why I introduce to you, my kind oppressed fellow, to the equity program! You are a Bronze, so you pay 100 thousand only. And you, my even more oppressed friend over there, you only pay 50.”, he says, pointing at Phil, “With this, we follow Lord Giga dearest’s dictaminations to help you become who you really are!”. You can’t believe what you’re hearing.
“Man, we just need to cross the University grounds, really. I don’t want to…” “And that’s not enough still, right?”, Camus insists on interrupting you again, “Your kind cannot compute what the “future” means so there’s no savings, right? So… I present to you, the loan program! You can sign up for a new line of credit for GigaUniversity through GigaBank at 15% APR for you, and 20% for that guy over there. At your rate, you’d pay back your entry fee in… around 15 years working at Giga!”, he says while suddenly wearing a poker dealer visor, crunching numbers on an old looking summing machine which produces a long scroll of paper that rolls down up to your feet.
“Sounds like indentured servitude to me”, Phil says. “Well, my kind oppressed fellows obviously in need of Social Justice, this is your best option so, think about it.”
“Excuse me, sir Camus”, Trinomial says, “Hi, I’m Trinomial! I think you may be acquainted with me?”, he says as he spins his tri-ectoplasmic body in one revolution. Camus stares at Trinomial. His expression suddenly changes. “Sir! Yes, pardon me, absolutely! I had no idea you were in the companionship of these two oppressed fellows. You should had mentioned it sooner!”, as he says this, two blue badges are produced out of thin air and he hands them over to you. “Here you go son, you’re now a distinguished member of the GU!”.
“Uh, thanks?”, you answer, puzzled out. “This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever had to do to be admitted somewhere.” “Nope, you work for Giga.”, Trinomial snickers.
You walk into the University grounds. It smells strongly of herbs burning, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is. It has a pungent smell and all hallways are impregnated of the same smell. You notice a parade of mechans of all sorts of alloys around. You come closer to them to figure out what the hubbub is about, and you notice the message on their signs: “Golds are bad!”. You notice that the majority of them are Gold themselves though, sporting hair of many different neon colors. “Golds are bad! Golds are bad! Golds are bad!”, they all chant in unison.
An Iron mechan takes the stage and starts to yell: “We demand for Golds to recognize the generational injustices their kind has effected upon all alloys, and to subjugate to our demands!”, she yells on a megaphone, “They feed themselves on oppression! The whole foundation of their lives are generations upon generations of oppression! There is nothing more heinous in this world than a male Gold mechan!”, she relentlessly yells in an incredibly annoying voice. She won’t stop yelling. She actually progressively yells louder and louder. Sometimes she’s not even saying anything coherent: as long as she’s loud, she keeps at it.
“We will not relent until our demands are met!:
One: The Golds will leave Olympia forever and renounce their positions of authority, giving them back to someone of a non-Gold alloy, female if possible.
Two: You will pay monetary reparations to every mechan of a non-Gold alloy in the world to set them in the same position of comfort and prestige that all Golds currently, unjustly, are in.
Three: You will implement a Universal Basic Income program so nobody ever has to work for a Gold again, providing everyone thus with the same leisure that all Golds enjoy.
Four: You will change Olympian culture to favor non-Gold beauty standards and aesthetics, and elevate visions of the world different than that one of the Golds so they’re above that one of the Golds.”
“Oh my science! I am so angry! I wish I wasn’t a woman! I wish I wasn’t an Iron! All of the problems in my life are because of them! I’m so, so angry!”, the leader of the protest screams. “Everything in the modern world is a function of oppression from men and Golds! Just you wait! Our time will come! We will stand up to those horrible Golds and show them what’s what! My GPA will finally go up, then! It’s at 2.0 right now! And it’s all because Golds have oppressed me!”.
The Golds in the parade look interesting. They are Golds but for some reason they like to paint their heads many neon colors. Reminds you of the frog masked mass you met some time ago, but more eclectic. One of the girls in the protest approaches you with unkempt neon blue hair you and gives you a pamphlet: “Hello, oppressed mechan. I have checked my privilege before engaging you, and I have to say that I apologize for all of the sins my forefathers have committed towards your kind. That’s why I won’t have any children. I also don’t want to undertake the responsibility which comes with motherhood. With all these sudden weather changes lately, my decision to snuff out my bloodline makes absolute sense, since it is obvious that we are the problem.”
You read the pamphlet: “Mechans are evil and should die! Particularly, the Golds. Dogs are better. Stop reproducing! It’s good for the environment! Adopt a dog today!”. “Adopt a dog?”, you ask her. “Yes! More dogs, less mechans! Mechans are inherently evil. Everything they do is a function of oppression –even love, marriage and art and other things which may be commonly regarded as “pure”, all of those are all really an attempt for someone to prove themselves superior to someone else, which causes pain, particularly for the whoever ranks down. So that’s why dogs are better. They’re pure little bundles of joy who have no notion of hierarchy.”
“…but they do. It’s literally instinctive in dogs to have a leader of the pack.” “No, but, you see, that’s just nature, it’s not oppression. We are the actual oppresive ones.”, she replies. It is obvious that this is more of a confession of nature from her than actual fact at this point, but you entertain her.
“So you’re suggesting I should adopt a dog?”. “YES! So many little abandoned puppies are on shelters right now. I project onto them and I feel as if I am an abandoned mutt, so adopting them gives me catharsis. I implore you to do the same too, so we may agree to end this cycle of misery in a massive, slow suicide pact.” “Or you know, one could work and make things better all around, instead of just yelling on megaphones.”, you reply. “No! To work is a Gold ideal. The Gold ideals should be eradicated from the collective unconscious. Nobody should have to work, because if you work, Golds will continue to oppress everyone by doing better than anyone else. I’m able to assert so because I’ve checked my privilege.”, she adds. “A radical revolution is necessary so we enter the post-scarcity, post-labor world, where we’ll use our technology to explore the stars in leisure and achieve an alloy-less, fully automated gay space communist worldwide state! Once this happens, we’ll rebuild society to place whoever has been the most oppressed on top.” She turns around to continue protesting as you notice a tattoo on her lower backside saying “Proud Dog Mom”.
You stop listening to the screeching sounds of the blue haired mechan and tap on a nearby flowery dress-clad girl mechan’s shoulder with long, wavy blond hair to ask for directions. “Um, hello, miss? Could you please tell us which way to…”, and as she suddenly turns, you notice her fully grown bushy beard and deep, thundering voice. She replies, “Yes?”. Her badge has a humongous “She/her” written in shiny bright red letters on top of her name on cheap marker. Her dress is two sizes smaller than it should be and seems to be ripping at the seams. She has applied a thick layer of makeup caked on her face, and it looks deliberate. “Um… we’re looking for a way to Gigatower, you know?”, Phil says, “Oh, it’s right there, next to auditorium 5. You can’t miss it”, she says in a deep tone while extending a lupine, thick Golden arm towards a hallway.
All of a sudden you bump into the leader of the protest again. She’s stout but energetic and has a look on her face like she’s angry at the world for some reason. She sees you and starts pointing her fingers at you “Asshole! You are an asshole! And you are! You are too!”, she screams while also pointing to Phil. “What did we do to you now, again?”, Phil replies, “Since we, you know, just met five seconds ago?”. “It’s because you are a man!”, she says “How dare you! Solely for being a man you’re a putrid oppressor pig! You and your kind should die!”, she yells at the top of her mechanical lungs.
“What are you talking about?”, you answer. “I don’t even know who you are!”. “Your kind has oppressed my kind generationally under the auspice of beliefs, politics and religions which place the female mechan under your control! Everything you do is an attempt at seizing control and dominion over someone else for your own greedy purposes… It’s all just a little circus of power! That’s why they won’t employ me for data crunching!”.
“Don’t you think that it’s a bit shortsighted to think that everything is a function of oppression? Of course there’s a lot of corruption out there, but…”, you take a step back and continue, “Listen, why do you want to be in there so much? That is a grim place, let me tell you…”. “I am just as capable as anybody else! Opportunities are being taken from be and sapped away unjustly merely as a function of my gender and alloy!”, the protester replies. “Yes, but don’t you think that not everything in life is oppression? What about love or beauty?”. “No! Even those things are power plays, don’t you get it? It’s all to keep women subdued to men and all alloys subdued to the Golds! Any time you create something in reality you’re trying to demonstrate how better you are! I reject the notion! That’s why I demand to be put above to reparate the damage, it’s time to come to terms with the Gold Patriarchy! I will not relent!”.
“Did you actually come up with all of this stuff on your own or who actually told you this?”, you think to yourself. “So let’s see… you got a chip on your shoulder because you believe that everything is oppression”, Phil says, “Listen… I do understand where you’re coming from. Believe me. However, something just does not feel right about this idea you present, you know?… Even I can tell you that. You have to believe that there are some good things and kind people out there… otherwise… you’re just gonna kinda gonna go mad, y’know?”. “It’s easy for you to talk like such coming from your position because you’re a man! You have never been as oppressed as I am! Ever since I became a teenager mechan I’ve been subjected to the injustice of your kind, trying to approach and control everything I do! Imagine being flirted with, discriminated and objectified all your life by your kind? Imagine to not be seen as good enough for information work only because you’re female?”.
“Of course that’s corruption and it’s just no good. Those who enact them deserve the scorn of the whole World, but again, you know… if you can’t imagine that there’s such a thing as competence, or kindness, or good, you’re going to go insane…”, Phil mentions. “Well I am already going mad with hate! I wish I wasn’t a woman! I wish I wasn’t born a woman! I wish I was a man! If I was a man I’d show you what’s up! I’d show you who’s boss! I’d show you who really is top dog around here! Come over here you sicko!”, she says while punching the air. Both of you step back a bit amd walk away.
Fatigued of all of the hoopla, you decide to sit down with Phil for some authentic District 37 food at a nearby restaurant. “Man… I love your cuisine in District 37, y’know?”, Phil says, “and it’s been a while. You know, my ancestors have a lot of similarities to the people of District 37. As a matter of fact, we had a lot of dishes in our cuisine which are very similar to District 37 food, for example, you know plantanas? They’re like bananas but they’re not exactly the same. There’s this dish which is cooked in such a way that if you slice the plantanas in little chips, you can deep fry them and season them, we call them plantones and it’s kind of a comfort food. Plantones is kind of similar to words commonly available in District 37 because, you see, District 8 is south of District 37 and routes and colonization disseminated a lot of the culture…”. Phil continues to talk for 20 minutes about District 37 cuisine. You’re happy that he’s so into it, but time is of the essence. When you get the slightest chance to interject, you finally say: “…my treat, brother, you thinking about ordering?”.
As you walk into the restaurant, you realize that it’s full of District 37 decorations and artifacts. It all looks similar –just enough so– to what you remember from back in the day, but it looks prefabricated and artificial, making the whole ordeal slightly uncanny. You find a Gold lady on a line ahead of you demeaning the cashier: “I waited 15 minutes for this meal and I only have an hour for lunch! How dare you, do you realize that I almost lost half my break?”, she yells, “I don’t know what shithole District you come from and how they do things there, but in Olympia you do it fast and you get it right the first time, you hear? HARD AND FAST, EVERY TIME!”, she yells. As she storms out of the place, she stumbles onto the door and hits her head full on, then exits the building and rides her vehicle into the distance.
“You see, those are mechan girls who used to get all the attention back in high school and now they get none.”, Trinomial says, turning into a video of a Cheerleader being carried around by the team’s quarterback. “I queried that from her panoptikon data. They’re always named something like Karen, or something Gold-sounding like that. They learn that the world should bend to their every whim and desire, and that they should never have to actually make an effort, since that’s what used to happen when they were teenagers. The sudden change in attention after they turn 30 makes them feel at a loss of purpose and meaning once they actually have to bear responsibilities, such as child-rearing.”
Then, as you continue to wait… she walks into your view.
A beautiful mechan with shoulder-high hair, dressed in a black and white striped dress. Her luscious presence emits an irresistibly attractive force, an aura unlike anything else you’ve ever seen in Olympia, arousing feelings you didn’t even know you had. Her chassis is pristine and has no blemishes to an unfathomable degree. You had never met somebody so mesmerizing. You feel as if forces otherworldly, beyond your control, take hold of you from within. “Hi, darlings, my name is Aime”, she says in a buttery, soothing voice as she raises a little notepad, “I’ll be your waitress today… What can I get you started with?”. You are at a loss for words. Trying not to make fools of both yourselves, Phil orders for you. “Hey, get it together man!”, he tells you.
“You’re cute…”, she says, to your surprise. “Are you from District 37?”, she asks, interestingly guessing it correctly. “Yes… yes I am”, you respond to her elation. “I just find it so wonderful there, you know? How people are so oriented and life is more laid-back… unlike Olympia.” “I… I lived on my own there for 20 years”, you answer to her surprise. “But how? Who wouldn’t want to have someone like you around all the time?”, she says as your network overlay turns a different tint of red. “W… why are you complimenting for no reason?”, ask her, feeling weird. “We literally just met…” She observes you for a couple seconds and replies: “It’s so incredibly rare to see a mechan of your kind around here, and even more in these times, given how things are going… What’s your name?”. You babble your name and not much else, to which Phil proceeds to introduce himself as well. “Alright, um… I’ll see you later, I guess…?” she says as she walks away swaying her body like the hypnotizing cadence of a sine wave.
Then, you suddenly realize she left a note on your side of the table. You pick it up to find her panoptikon contact and a time and date to meet in the University grounds. “I know what’s going on. There’s something you need to see. Let’s chat”, she wrote. You can’t avoid to feel strangely puzzled as to why she took the initiative in talking to you. “You lucky dog, you, look at that…! Pretty strange but, might as well, you know?”. “Yeah… I think that you should tag along since we just met her. I am still intrigued, of course, but this just… Probably wants to sell me a timeshare.”, you reply in jest. “Yeah, I gotchu man, let’s meet with her”, Phil says as digs in. You take a bite out of your food. It’s good, but it doesn’t taste exactly the same as food tasted back in District 37. Some ingredients are equivalents. “Food in Olympia is enhanced to refrigerate longer and to resist illness and plague and this changes the composition, did you know?”, Trinomial says, eerily reading your mind again. You take a look at your meal, and you notice a pattern of hexagonal spirals in the silverware.
You arrive at the agreed date and time next to a bustling classroom. It is late at night, and a beautiful, humongous full moon adorns the starry night sky above the University. “Yeah, I said six million. Any real questions next?”, you listen coming from inside as the class is dismissed. You see Aime walk out of the classroom in a different getup than the one she had before, she’s wearing casual clothes now. She immediately hugs you and the warmth envelops you immediately. It feels nice. You haven’t had a hug in years. “Phil, I’m so glad you’re here too. Come, you must see!”, she says while signaling both of you to come inside the auditorium. As you walk inside, the doors are closed shut and the lights are dimmed.
“W… Aime, what is going on here?”, you ask her, confused. She emerges in a pair of fishnet stockings tied with a garter belt to a tight red corset with frilly details. She looks incredible but her looks are incredibly contrasting to how you just saw her. “W-wh, when did you even change into that?”, you ask, confused. “Hi, cutie~!”, Aime says while caressing your chin provocatively. “It is time for you to be who you really are!” she exclaims as she dissolves into a sea of extravagantly dressed mechans. Smoke curtains fill the place; then, a majestic show starts. You notice the leader of the protest you saw earlier up in stage, wearing extravagant clothes: short shiny leather pants, a jacket, and a police hat. She takes the mic and starts hyping up the crowd. You notice mechans of all kinds of alloys, partying around you in very similarly eclectic attire. You notice hair of all colors, and costumes encompassing every possible cultural influence. You notice a lot of references to Earthling pop culture from what you used to see back in the day.
“We won’t go back!!! We are the… Revolution!!!”, she starts yelling to the crowd, which in turn goes insane. “A bunch of souls lacking of the almighty power of Maia are out there, plotting evil against all of the beautiful beauties who have congregated here tonight in this here auditorium!!!”, the crowd goes crazy. “They say we’re not them! They say they’re the real Olympians! They say we don’t belong here! That all we’re good for is labor, to serve them! I say they’re full of it! We are the real positive!”, the crowd goes mad. “Prepare, my darlings, my little birds! Let’s partake of the Goddess together and revel in the warm embrace of Maia!”, the MC shouts. To the ring of this, everyone in the audience pulls out a small dropper vial. You have no idea what it is. “We will be who we really are!”, she shouts, at the sign of which everyone opens up their left eye sensor and squeezes the vial over it to extract a droplet, which drops effervescently on their dilating pupil.
Your network overlay starts to fuzz very heavily.
“What is everybody doing?”, you ask Aime. “Just go with the flow, cutie…” She kisses you in the heat of the moment but something about her spit tastes strange…
You’re immediately overtaken by a trance as you awaken in a negative space again, unable to distinguish your body from that of everyone else’s. You notice rays of light prancing around, dancing together in circles, like stars, forming beautiful shapes in the air. None of them look different to any other, shining with an overpowering radiance. A strong warmth fills your body as you feel Aime’s soul becoming as if one with yours, like the hug you never knew you needed since you were four. You know it’s her but you can’t see her corporeally. You both dance through the night.
You awaken to a messed up auditorium full of passed out mechans on the ground. Everyone starts coming back to it slowly as you wake. Aime is resting on your chest. Her eyeliner has run down. “See, you needed that”, Aime tells you, “I know all the strife and pain your kind goes through. I am well aware of it –because I’ve checked my privilege. I am a healer. It is true that my ancestors have committed generational sins against your kind, and that’s why I’m trying to balance it out. Golds really are the problem in a lot of ways…”, she says while cuddling on your arm. “…It’s all because of HIM!!!”, she continues, angrily crunching her eyebrows and nuzzling her face against your chest. “Giga! He’s in control of everything now. He does as he pleases with Olympia with his absurd amount of resources. He may pretend to be one of us, but in the end he truly uses capital as a mechanism of control, perpetuating the dominion of the Golds. With this, he keeps us subjugated. He must be dethroned, and his riches should be shared equally among every Olympian!”, she says, “That’s why we’re the insurrection! We shall usher in a new era of fairness, and you must join us, Hideki!”, she says while grasping your chassis, “You are one of us!”.
“So you don’t mind that I actually work for him?”, you reply.
“You do?!”, she asks, surprised. “…Well, I guess that explains why a Bronze like you is around. Poor child… you really have no idea what is really going on, do you? They end up scaring most of your kind away.”, she concludes. “It’s perfect, though!”, she says, raising her torso up from besides you as she places her arm on your body. “You have the inner scoop! You can help us bring him down!”, she says as you sigh, “Listen, babe… I… I just don’t really want to get in trouble. I’m just some asshole trying to get back to his post.”, you tell her. “I don’t really have much of a saying here…”
Trinomial flutters into the scene “Alrighty Donny, that’s your pleasure allowance for the fiscal quarter. Time to get back to work, shall we? We got to pick up the slack!”.
“Wha… what’s this?”, Aime asks. “Oh, this drone is Trinomial. They think I’m too dumb to navigate Olympia without killing myself so they sent him.” “Bro, you can’t even push a button!”, he exclaims, “Some of us at Gigacorp are still deciding whether you were a bad company hire after all!”.
“You know, you should meet my friends!”, Aime suddenly says. “Guys! Come over here, there’s someone you should meet!”. All of a sudden, three stylish cloaked Gold mechans drop from the ceiling. One of them carries a hookshot with which he swings around, the other one brandishes a twisted blue dagger. Lastly, a girl mechan drops down, bearing a strange staff which seems to have some kind of electromagnetic power. “These are my friends: Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. They’re the trio fatale of the insurrection… and they’re my friends!”, Aime says. You’re amazed by the display you just witnessed. One of them steps forward and strongly shakes your hand while talking in a strong, commandeering tone: “Hi, you must be Hideki, yes? We heard about you. You’re headed to Gigatower, I believe?”. They are equipped with expensive looking tactical gear. “Yeah, I… I work for…”, you utter before being interrupted abruptly. “Yes! It is decided then! You shall help us infiltrate Gigatower so we undermine the mafia!”, Alpha asserts. After thinking about it for a couple seconds, you reply: “…I don’t think I can get you a session with Giga…”
“Fellows…”, Trinomial interrupts, “You do realize that I am here, ri–“… “Quiet!”, Alpha blares after activating a contraption. “AAAAAACK!~”. Trinomial turns off for a while. Alpha continues, “We have five minutes”.
“Wow I need to get me one of those, man.”, you react.
“I have a plan, you just need to facilitate credentials for entry. We will inject a virus into his mainframe which will cause Giga’s riches to be spread equally to every Olympian. There’s literally no risk in it. You have to join the revolution. Will you do it, Hideki?”, he says, his optical sensors shining bright, putting one of his incredibly heavy arms around your shoulder. “Man, listen… I’m just not sure…”, you argue, uncertainly. “We need you! Once we eradicate capital, we will remove what makes the Golds so special and what allows Giga to retain control of all in Olympia. Then, we will truly be who we truly are, and you will never have to work for Giga again!”
“I’ll join you! We’re bound together by a red thread of destiny… Hideki!”, Aime says as she hugs you warmly, “Whether you want it or not, you have already joined the insurrection so I’ll go with you to Gigatower. I have been augmented so I can execute support programs of powerful kinds, so you’ll definitely find me handy.”, she says. You realize that no matter what you could say at this point, she will not change her mind. “Well, let’s get going… me and Phil got to… Phil? Phil!?”, you yell around in the auditorium hall trying to figure out where he is. He emerges from a pile of mechans. “Bro! I’ve been… uh, looking for you all along!”, he says as he clears off extravagant attire and flower collars off of him in a rush.
Trinomial connects back again, fuzzing back into existence. “Geez, the nerve! Watch out misters, you are on even shorter notice now! One more smart ass move like that and I will…”, he says as he turns into a picture of a mushroom cloud. “Take it easy… We were just preparing to continue our trip and having a little chat with these three fine fellows.” you reply to Trinomial. “And continue your trip you will! We need all hands on deck over at Giga, pronto! The next leg of the journey is through the Autonomous Zone.”
“The what, again?”, you ask him, trying to make sense of such a term. You have no idea what he meant by Autonomous Zone. “Yes”, Aime clarifies, “Some of us at the University decided long ago to secede from Olympia to establish our own alloy-less, classless, capital-less society to show Giga and the rest of Olympia how well they could have it. We decided to trace our borders at the tail end of the University grounds, because the area has fertile soil. We started cultivating the earth to raise crops and become a self-sustaining farmstead.”, she mentions. “In the Autonomous Zone, the economy is completely bartering-based and there is no notion of money or private property, alloy or gender. We all are who we truly are, living in harmony”.
“I’m thirsty, you wouldn’t… happen to have some fruit-flavored liquid refreshments at that place, would you?”. “We partake of Maia all together”, Aime says, taking your joke seriously. “It is our sustenance and what connects us all to the Divine, which allows us to live in perpetual harmony like what you just experienced last night.” You are at a loss and you don’t know what to answer.
“Remember Hideki! You’re one of us now!”, Alpha says with a little smirk. The trio bolts away in a split second.
You exit the auditorium towards the exact sciences wing in the University grounds and you run into a circle of several four foot Gold, Silver and Brass mechans. They’re all bald and they are sporting the same weatherproof vest, glasses and beard. They are conspicuously standing masturbatorily in a circle around each other, mumbling nonsense to themselves: “Ummmmmm… let me… just circle back with you on the idempotence implementation so we can close in on a better date…? Yeah…? It’s just that we need to support ISO dates on the sidecar in a scalable manner before we can commit but we need to figure out action items out of this so we can get back to green so I figure that a quick sync-up would be best, can you put something on my calendar?”, you overhear from them. Once they notice that you’re around they break off their circle formation and they climb on each other’s shoulders, forming a bigger figure with the stature of a regular mechan. It seems that they’re trying to intimidate you.
“Hi… we’re trying to find to the Autonomous zone, could I maybe ask for directions?”, you ask. “Ummmmmm… I’m sorry but you’re going to have to hold off on that…? Everybody…!? Time for school-sanctioned nootropics…!?”, the mechan on the top says conspicuously talking in vocal fry tone before squirting a drop of Maia on his left optical sensor. The rest of the structure follows suit. Buzzed out from the nootropics, the mechan below the one on the top punches the one above in the balls and he falls down. He then takes the spot at the bottom of the structure, repeating the cycle anew. The new head talks to you: “Ummmmmm…, yeah, sorry, I need to attend to my fantasy football lineup? And to hash out some details about the ISO date support with John…? So if you can please schedule a meeting with the sister team and ping their manager that’d be great because I got a full calendar…?”.
“What… do you work for Gigacorp?”, you ask while trying to make sense of the drivel they spout. The mechan on the top gets thrown to the floor by punching of the balls as you speak. “Ummmmmm… no, we don’t…? But we are on the fast-track program…? Our parents have paid a lot of money to the school…? You know, to guarantee that we end up in Giga’s (hallowed Him be!) ranks…? So we need to walk the walk early on…? Okay boys, Nootropics…!?”, he says as the whole structure takes another drop off their vials, after which immediately the neck mechan punches the head mechan in the balls, repeating the cycle.
“But aren’t you still in school?”, you ask. “Ummmmmm… yes, but we are preparing for our gauntlets…? So we need to rehearse as much as possible before the big day…? Yeah…? We’re trying to design a web-scale stateless system optimized for throughput and the requirements are orthogonal to what the PM mentioned…? We still haven’t decided on the name of the first variable we are going to code, we’ve been stuck for four days on whether we will use pascal case or snake case…? We have to poker vote now…? We also need to post-scrum, so if you please excuse us we really need to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘tee’s here, yeah…?”. A new cycle of eye drops and ball punching proceeds.
“Why are you doing this for? You’re in school!”, to which the current head replies, “Ummmmmm… See, Lord Giga (hallowed Him be!) creates our study plans and one very important data point that they drive home early on is that whoever remains at the top of the structure the longest will get to date a hot Gold Girl mechan one day…?”.
“THE HOT ONE!!!”, the three mechans says in unison.
“Yeah…? You see, getting to date a Gold is of paramount importance because it shows other mechans who’s boss around here…? Yeah…? Showing everyone who’s the smartest at Data Crunching and staying at the top of the hierarchy is the only thing our kind is programmed to do…? Yeah…? So if you can please unit test the framework so we can raise the coverage to CI to production that’d be great…? We’re down 0.05% in test coverage, you know…?”.
“Listen, it’s cool and all, but my friends and I… we just want to go to the Autonomous zone and…”, you say. The structure repeats one additional drugs and ball punching cycle before the next head talks to you: “Ummmmmm… My dad works at District 2 government producing the new bullet train over there and he always taught me to be careful around Bronzes like you…? So I don’t want to directly engage you…? We have an SLA of two weeks for a response so I’m going to ask you to please submit a ticket or visit office hours if you want to get the ball rolling…? Our kind is very productive, unlike yours, so we are going to be heads down for a while here…? Now will you please buzz off…?”, you hear back from the borg. They immediately go back to the circular formation.
“Geez…”, Aime grunts.
As you exit the Auditorium and walk towards the Autonomous zone, your party of four runs into a chubby, short mechan wearing a Fedora hat and a trench coat. He’s wearing a shirt with many strange characters which seem to be from a foreign language which you cannot understand, and a wide eyed cartoon girl. He bumps into Aime accidentally, dropping his pocket watch on the ground. The air soon smells like curdled chocolate milk. “M’lady… pray tell, art thou all right? Needest thou some assistance?”, he says in an exaggeratedly posh tone for some reason as he extends his finger-less gloved hands towards the ground to recover the watch. He tips his fedora as he continues, “Egad! Thou art the fairest lady mine eyes have seeth. As the gentleman I am, I beg your pardon for my inclemency…” Aime tries to keep a straight face. “Don’t worry, darling”, she replies. “…and for an apology, please accept my most attentive invitation to a luxurious dinner at the clocke tower to-nite. We shalt partake of most luscious libations and fare”. “Ohhh~”, Aime grunts in adoration at the guy as she puts both her hands together in emotion. “You’re just so… chivalrous! I’d love to, but I am afraid I have somewhere to be… Thanks for the invitation though.”, she tells him.
“Alas! Thus is the fate of the gentleman, forever relegated to the friend-zone! Truly dejecting, for me, a male feminist, an ally… But feare noth!”, the guy exclaims while covering his face with his hat, “Methinks we shalt cross paths again, and when we do, my deare lady, thine heart shalt come ‘round”, he says as he gets a panoptikon blip. “Oh! The new season for ‘I can’t Believe my Little Sister is a Smegma Eating Dragon’ is oute! I needeth head to my chambers. Fare thee well!”, he says as he walks away.
“Oh, so they’re doing dragons this season?”, you think to yourself.
In one of the strangest phenomena you’ve ever seen, you walk into an area which looks like a University football field that has been reclaimed. Several patches of the grass seem to have been removed in a haphazard manner to harvest crops instead. The crops that have been planted there seem to have been obtained from Gigamall, since they still have barcode tags on. Mechans of all different alloys and genders (some not even seeming like either gender at all) wander around, dressed in white garb in a ceremonial manner, some hugging and greeting each other fraternally, others dancing and playing music on a guitar in a corner, and some others tending to other sustenance related activities.
“Why would they ever let them do this at the University grounds?”, you think out loud, to which Trinomial replies “Eh, it’s no biggie. We consider it to be a little bit of a ‘summer of love’ kind of deal. They will be back at their posts (like you (Donny)) soon enough.”, he says while turning into a video of a Woodstock number. “No, it’s no mere summer of love, you know?”, Aime says with a glimmer in her optical sensors, “It’s the very first step towards our revolution! A true egalitarian society where we’re all brothers and sisters in mechankind, where there’s only one alloy”, she says looking up at the cloudy, rainy sky.
“Intriguing…”, you say, still puzzled at the whole display.
“Yes it is”, somebody speaks to you suddenly as you turn to realize that a seven foot Gold mechan is standing beside you. “Hi, brother. You are me and I am you, and we are all and all are us. And here we stand in perfect harmony in the glory of Maia.”, he says ceremoniously. “We don’t need to call us by a name since I am you and you are me, and thus we require no nomenclature, but feel free to call me Construct if you still need to hold onto the false notion of the ego”, he says. “Uh… okay, Construct? M… my name is Hideki and this is Phillip too. We’re on our way to Gigatower”, you reply. You figure that this is Synonym’s friend.
Aime then says, effusively: “Brother Construct, my beloved!” as she pulls in for a tender hug. “I see you met Aime”, he says. “She’s one of the very spearheading figures of the movement and one of our brightest lights. We are truly blessed to have found her.”, he adds. “Hideki came to us because he’s in trouble in his adventure back to Gigatower, and oh he’s such a cutie! He’s so wonderful!”, she says while glomping onto you, hugging you strongly. You find this a bit strange since you’ve barely met her but you let the idea slide. You enjoy the affection.
“But why would we even need to go there?”, Construct asks. “Here, in the Autonomous zone, we all are who we really are”, Construct continues, “We look in pity at those of us out there, who, obsessed with illusory power dynamics, status and material wealth, disregard our true mechan nature, and thus we set the example. We are confident that one day all of us shall come to the light of Maia and see through our eyes, because we are all, and all are us”.
“Um… so, which way to Gigatower again, I just want to…” “Worry is all we are today, are we not?. We understand you because you are us.”, Construct says. “We still must learn to let go and join the collective consciousness. Follow us.”, he says while gesturing towards a certain path. You walk down the crop fields realizing suddenly that some of the crops seem to be withering. You ask him “Do you really live here?”, to which he replies “Yes, we all have our quarters here. We share all, because all are us and thus what is mine is ours. These are our common repositories for food for example.”, he mentions while pointing to a vault with vegetables and other goods where a lot of mechans are sitting around.
“I take it you work for him…?”, Construct inquires, “…Giga and his empire of terror?”. “W-well… yes, that’s why I moved to Olympia to begin with. I-I got an offer for…” “A Data Crunching job. Of course. That’s what those parts of ourselves out there which are still preoccupied with power games do. That’s what they offer to everyone.”, he says, inferring everything. “Soon, we will realize how fake it all is and when that happens, we pray with open arms that we’ll finally come together. There’s no such thing as data or jobs or capital in here, because it is not really necessary if you want to be who you really are. We have also abolished all institutions, such as marriage, families and police, because we’re all one. When you’re part of the collective consciousness you need nothing else.”, he says as you walk around a couple street performers and artists. “See, the only thing that all of it leads to is misery and pain for the benefit of the few upwards in the hierarchy, Hideki”, he says as he looks at you the optical sensor. “We need to stop this.”
“My family was brought here as slaves generations ago –it’d have been great to have this kind of community back then, you know?”, Phil says. “Yes, we’re well aware…”, Aime replies, “…we’re well aware of the pain that Gold supremacy has caused through the ages and that’s why we’re trying in our earnest to make up for it.” You find the whole display a little facetious given that by default everyone there would had needed to pay 150 thousand credits to even be in the Autonomous zone. You’d think they’d be doing this in the plantation out there rather than in the University grounds.
“Now come,”, Construct says while directing you towards a cabin, “…there is someone we must meet.” As you walk inside the chamber you meet a tall green mechan. He looks like both a man and a woman and their head seems to be in the shape of a goat, as you remember from your Earthling culture studies. Their voice sounds both feminine and masculine, and you’re immediately reminded of Moloch. However, somehow, they feel different… as if you weren’t at danger somehow. “As above so below”, Construct says. “As within so without”, the figure responds, as it says, “I see you brought them to me. Good. You may rest, Construct.”, to which he departs.
“Well, hello there. I’ve been hearing of your exploits and I’m finally glad to meet you in person, darlings. My name is Baphomet. You have done quite well, in coming to the light.”, the mechan proffers. “Answer my riddles now, if you may, to see if you’re truly illuminated.”, they say as the doors suddenly shut down behind you. “W-what is going on?”, you say, preparing to unleash Catherine. “I am on your side, my friends.”, the figure says. “Worry not. I’m hoping you get the answers right, else I’ll calibrate about how much I need to work on you all.”, he says as they lift their left hand lighting a fire from the tip of their two raised fingers.
“Is anybody truly different from anyone else?”, a part of you knows an answer that’s expected of you, but you’re uncertain what to say. “No, people are only considered different due to mere economic factors, societal institutions and generational whiplash. The police should be abolished, all notions of superiority done without, and all of society should work in an egalitarian, horizontal manner.”, Aime responds. “Good… what do you think about that both of you two?”, they say as the fire glows harder and their optical sensors brighten. “Um… yes?”, you reply as you notice Phil following suit. You have no idea what you would had said otherwise.
As he says this you notice that the floor starts to shake. A gate slowly opens from beneath your feet, revealing a floor of fiery molten magma. Aime seems unfazed.
“How many genders are there?”, they ask next. “The amount of possible genders is infinite since sexual identity is effectively on a spectrum. Gender is socially constructed. You can decide what gender you are regardless of your mechanical build.”, Aime replies unfazed. You and Phil begin to worry about the fiery display below. The gate continues to inch open slightly but she seems immutable.
“Good. As above so below.”, the figure replies. The gate starts to look concerningly open so you and Phil step back to avoid falling into the pit. Aime continues to display a poker face. “Hey, what’s going on? Aime?”, you ask. “This is our master plan. To amalgamate you”, the demonic mechan standing in front of you replies. “We’re trying to find balance. The mythical all-alloy, all-gender mechan of the future. Gold and Silver, Silver and Iron, Iron and Bronze, Bronze and Silver, Silver and Bronze… man and woman… A mechan which decides to be who they really want to be at will. You’re ready to be amalgamated.”, they say.
“We didn’t sign up for this!”, Phil exclaims, worryingly.
The figure replies as the hue in the flame on their fingers changes colors, “Next question: What about the current distribution of power? Should the hierarchy exist?”. “No, hierarchies lead to corruption, segregation and whiplash, so power must be redistributed. We carry cultural baggage from Gold supremacist patriarchal cultures which should be shed. The people most historically oppressed, such as Iron and female mechans, should be placed at the top and prioritized once we reconstruct society after our Revolution.”, Aime responds as the room continues to get dangerously hot. Your network overlay begins to fuzz. “As above, so below!”, Baphomet replies.
“Wh-what are you even talking about!? I just wanted a job for Pete’s sake! We need to get out of here!”, you yell at them. You try to break the walls down with Catherine to no avail, but suddenly, you notice an opening in another corner of the wall. The amount of footing gets dangerously small so you shimmy against the wall. “Don’t worry bro, I gotchu!”, Phil yells as he shoots a pebble. Miraculously, it bounces around the place at random on different objects at very high speeds, eventually making impact with an opening in a corner, crumbling it open. “Wow, I had no idea that was going to work, you know?”, Phil adds.
“Now let’s proceed with the inevitable.”, the figure replies. You manage to make a jump for it as you pull Phil and Aime behind. You grunt and pant to recover your breath laying on the nearby grass –however, Aime seems unfazed. It is now nighttime, the full moon illuminating the field around you. You exclaim, “What was that about, Aime!”. Aime replies “He’s on our side and melding is part of the process. But maybe you’re not ready for it yet. You’ll come around.”, Aime says calmly. “Well, I don’t know if you realized, but we were just about to have a very bad time in there! How can you pretend that this kind of situation is okay?”. “Hmph!”, she replies indignantly, “It’s no better than what’s out there. Do you want to go back to Gigacorp?”, Aime replies.
Suddenly, a siren starts blaring in the Autonomous zone as a gang of shadow mechans with white robes seizes the place, running amok with arms. You ready Catherine to defend the group. A fierce combat ensues against a rabid mob of mechans who go around trashing the once apparently beautiful commune. Suddenly, you feel at one with Catherine. You had never had actual combat experience before but somehow, something changed in you and you maneuver her around effortlessly… “Executing catherine.sh”, you notice as a blurb on your network overlay pops up. “What? What is going on?”, you notice that some new scripts seem to have been written sometime last night into your memory. When you look at the access metadata you realize that it was you who wrote them, but you cannot remember for the life of you when you actually did so. “Um… o-okay?”, you say to yourself befuddled. But you have some slight experience with this kind of stuff, so in your confusion you decide to bring up the command line and on a whim you run:
fire.sh | catherine.sh
Suddenly a burst of flames bursts out of Catherine, dissipating an agglomeration of Shadows which were just about to charge you after writing “ACAB” on the wall. You feel incredible all of a sudden. It feels as if you can suddenly commandeer your thoughts into actions ipso facto and you’re in a new mindspace where your thoughts are unrestrained and you make them into reality intuitively. You bring up your terminal and run:
heavy.sh | fire.sh | catherine.sh
You immediately unleash a broadsworded version of Catherine enveloped in flames. You slice down a bunch of shadows partying over a totaled car, which then bursts into flames.
Suddenly Phil calls out to you: “Bro! I’m hurt, ack!”, he exclaims as he holds his left arm, dripping conductive oil from a bite wound, presumably from a shadow. As you turn to him you try to reassure him, “Uh… ah, don’t worry about me! I’ll try to…” Then, Aime pulls into the scene and runs:
heal.sh
After which he miraculously has his wound cauterized. You have no idea how she did it.
Then, Trinomial begins to broadcast a message right from Giga himself: “WELL, YOU HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN ABOUT ME NOW, HAVE YOU, DARLINGS? I HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING ALONG WITH YOUR LITTLE ODDYSEY AND YOUR DUMB ASS STUNTS! EGAD! ALL THE DATAMINING WE’VE DONE ABOUT YOU HAS GIVEN US AMAZING DATA POINTS ABOUT HOW TO AVOID INSURRECTIONS LIKE THESE IN THE FUTURE: FOR EXAMPLE, YOU GAVE US ENOUGH DATA TO PENETRATE THIS STUPID LITTLE SUMMER OF LOVE COMMUNE THAT’S CONSUMING RESOURCES OFF US! AND NOW, THANKS TO THE VERY, VERY ONLY YOU, YOU, YOU, AND ONLY YOU, WE’VE FINALLY DISMANTLED IT! OUR QUARTERLY RESULTS ARE LOOKING UP! NUMBER GOES UP! NUMBER GOES UP!”
“Let’s go everyone, I think this place is done for!”, Aime yells over the cacophony of Giga’s laughter, pointing everyone to one side of the road once a burning wall collapses, opening an exit to the Autonomous zone. You run into a small shack where Construct is resting and you run inside to hide away from the growing masses of shadows.
As you step inside, a sad Construct addresses the team: “I see… that a part of ourselves commanded by Giga has launched an operation against our most beautiful commune.”, Construct says, “I look at those parts with the utmost pity, because they’re still us. The Universe is trying to communicate to us that something in ourselves is still fallible. Something in ourselves is still pointlessly trying to exert dominion over the world, whereas we should be only flowing with the rivers of life.”, he says while looking out the window. “Construct… no matter that, who’s that creature we just met?”, you ask alarmingly. “Ah, I see you met Baphomet. They’re actually on our side? Well… rather, they only seek balance, and the lopsided state of the world we’re currently in sort of makes that work in our favor…”, he replies.
“But he tried to get us amalgamated. How is getting amalgamated exactly helping here?”, you ask. “Well, because we all are ours. Nobody belongs to anybody so we can all have each other.”, he says. “The sooner we embrace it, the better we’ll actually do… but perhaps our mind is still clinging onto the false notions of the ego, and thus we still cannot see it. Worry not… Let us now stay the night until the rabid masses pass, and let us meditate about what this reflects about ourselves. In the meantime we’ll be safe”, Construct tells the party. “We’re probably hungry so we should help ourselves to something”, he says as he extends a tray with three small chips.
“Wow, it’s another one of those I guess”, you think to yourself, wondering if you’re ready for another experience after the fiery conundrum you just went through. “If we walk into it with our processor in a good place, we will have a good time. If we don’t, we will face very dark aspects of ourselves which we may not be ready to reckon with. We shall choose wisely.” You agree and you install the chip underneath your taste sensor. Your eye sockets begin to glow green again.
…
You awaken in a magical dimension again. You float around as a ball of light until a voice calls you with a distinctively soothing voice:
★ Come here, my child. ★
★ I’m so glad you’re finally here. Do not be afraid. I have been waiting for you. ★
You turn around to see a silhouette. It appears to be a woman but you cannot devise any of her details. You feel as if you already know who she is.
★ Life is like a beautiful song, with crescendos, minuendos, bridges, and silences. Some exhillarating peaks too. It lulls, it speeds up, it slows down, and it repeats. ★
★ You must follow the beat of its song throughout your life, graciously. Understand its rhythm and cadence. Understand when it’s done and when it starts. ★
★ You must learn to dance, child. Dance, dance graciously to the tune of this symphony… dance. Dance even if you don’t like the music. Dance even if you do it wrong. But above all, continue to dance with grace. ★
You notice a stream of water graciously descending from the heavens, flowing onto your forehead in a delicate stream. It feels cold but it doesn’t freeze.
It’s cold, it’s cold, it’s cold.
…
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
.:You’ll never come back:.
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
…
You awaken in Construct’s home in a slight daze, and after you wake up you catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror. All of a sudden, you notice an emerald embedded on your forehead. It’s shaped like an inverted triangle, its mesmerizing blue tint enraptures you. It shines differently depending on what angle you reflect light into it.
“W-what is this?”, you ask Construct, who’s in the corner cooking pancakes. “That’s strange. We don’t recall seeing that diamond in there when we met you yesterday, but maybe this is just the Universe trying to reveal another facet of ourselves we were unaware of. We have never seen something like that before, so perhaps… it represents an increasing of our shared awareness.”, he says.
You overhear Phil saying “Thank you for your help yesterday. I thought I was done for.”, to which Aime replies “That’s the least I can do for you. You’re both part of the revolution now, so we are in this together.” as she extends one arm over his back in a warm hug.
“Now that our beautiful commune is gone, we have to set ourselves to the reconstruction. But we are glad that we met us.”, Construct says. “It seems that to reach Gigatower we have to head through the Red Light district now, a very risky part of Olympia, indeed…”, he says ominously.
“What do you mean, red light district?”, you say as you bite into a fluffy stack of moist, syrupy, buttery pancakes.
“Well, it’s the part of town which caters to the most primal urges in mechankind. The forces that linger there are ones to reckon with. But I know we shall remain steadfast through all.”, he says as you and your friends prepare to leave. “Now, it is time for us to depart. But our destinies are not the same. Please take care of ourselves.”, Construct says as you exit through the door. You look up the way to Gigatower on your panoptikon to plan the route ahead.
“Ah, yes, that’s one of our most profitable districts.”, Trinomial says, turning neon colored, “You see, after mechans got panoptikons, most of them decided to move their whole existence fully into the Giganet because it gives them all they want in an easier, faster, cleaner and more consumable way –not to mention, there’s no risk of running into a shadow mechan or falling into an awkward situation in the panoptikon to begin with. It’s not messy and murky like going out into town. This implies that eventually they also moved… ‘that’ one part of into the virtual realm. Which ties perfectly into our…” Suddenly, Trinomial stops talking. “Into your what?”, you ask Trinomial, angry.
“Teehee~!”, he laughs coyly, “Never mind about that, Donny~!”, he says while turning into a face of a suspiciously grinning man rubbing his hands.
“The more we hear about your ideas, the more horrible it all sounds, you know?”, you reply, but Trinomial answers: “Well, that’s just you, because, Olympians love every second of it! In Olympia, it’s always business up front and party in the back~!”, he says while turning into a picture of a luscious model performing alluring dance moves, “It makes a ridiculous amount of money like you wouldn’t believe.”, he says while turning into a picture of a money printer with two earthling men holding some kind of video game device.
You say goodbye to Construct, and you exit the autonomous zone to a massive amount of charred cars and devastated buildings. The windows are all broken and the walls are graffitied in protocols that you have never seen before. As you move onto the trail out of the autonomous zone, more and more smoke clouds up the panorama. The air starts blowing harder and harder, lifting up dust. “Geez… the air is sure getting quite rough around here”, you suddenly tell the crew. Indeed, your vision begins to get occluded by thick layers of smoke and dust. The weather gets alarmingly hot all of a sudden.
“Uh-oh, Donnies! There’s an alert for a forest fire in this zone.”, Trinomial adds while switching to a picture of an exclamation point, “You Donnies need to take refuge or you’re kaput! Finito!”. “Don’t worry! I knew this would come in handy:”, Aime says while bringing up her command line and running:
weave_fabric.sh | air_filter.sh
A shield of digital fabric suddenly envelopes the party, purifying the air that flows through from the dangerous smoke outside. “My family was brought here from the northern districts when I was five, you see. We were installed into a concentration camp and we worked at a textile plant. I had to learn to weave from a very early age since there was nothing else to do in our concentration camp other than working at the sweatshop. I developed many weaving skills early on. Eventually we used the money that we got from the shop to buy a home and we settled in Olympia… we received amnesty.” “Whoa…”, you and Phil answer in awe, not fully knowing what to make of it. “That’s… pretty interesting… Um…”, you try to add, concerned, “You… you probably had a very hard time growing up as a worker mechan and adapting all on your own to a new, strange world…”, you add. “I did”, Aime replies, “But there was nothing else I could really do about it. We had nothing else. A lot of people looked at us with scorn. We were only looking for better living conditions. We were desperate.”, she says.
“Yes, I know all about it, sweety”, Trinomial replies, turning into a picture of a concentration camp town. Black and white footage adapted from analogue plays, showing daily life in the camps and the precarious living conditions immigrants lived back then in a place called “Manzanar”. “Ahem! Not like this Donny over here, who literally just has to push a single red button in fast succession and yet he refuses to..”, Trinomial says while oscillating once, in jest. “Shut up!”, you reply to Trinomial.
You camp inside the tent for a while under a cloudy red sky, blowing away horribly, viciously strong. The air smells like burnt wood. You pay no attention to it and try to focus on your friends. Aime says, “You know… in a way, textiles are the ultimate form of culture. The very moment you’re born, you are subjected to a cultural order which demands that you integrate textiles into your life, for diapers and clothes and such. To complexify this for all aspects of our lives is the highest endeavor, right?”. “That’s…. something that I had never thought about”, you reply to her, pondering.
Eventually the dustbowl subsides.
“Geez, we just keep running into setbacks. Hopefully you Donnies can keep up the pace already and get to Gigatower. We’re at the Red light district –but no funny business Donnies! You’re on the clock!”.
As you hear this it turns into the Golden hour, leading to a beautiful display of building silhouettes contrasted against gradients of pastels in the skyline. Neon signs advertising all sorts of sultry entertainment loom over dark, grimy doors which you would hate to touch. They read: “MILIs! (which stands for Mechan I’d like to Interface With)”. “Bots! Barely augmented! Live, and down to their chassis only!”. Mechans of all alloys and complexion, mostly male, wander around, lingering idly on corners and doorsills, looking as if they’re trying to find something anxiously and never finding it. As you walk past by, they hastily escape into the buildings to avoid your gaze.
“This place… gives me the creeps, y’know? I hate seedy places like this. Reminds me of hometown in a way though, you know?”, Phil intriguingly says as you continue to walk down the alley. “How so?”, Aime asks. “Well, we lived in a ghetto. When night falls you have to fend for yourself in those streets, full of mechans crawling up and down the place. Sometimes it’s people you know, sometimes it’s completely new bots you’ve never seen before. Some people don’t make it through the week. There’s abandoned Maia bottles and microchips strewn all over the streets, you know? It’s really every bot for themselves there.” As you hear this you step on a glass bottle labelled “Maiaesscence - be who you really are under Maia!”. You pay it no further mind.
“But there was a missionary”, he adds, “They rented an abandoned factory to setup this… strange religious cult. They preached about a mechan who managed to continue his service life even after he was decommissioned. I didn’t really care about it but they promised better living conditions and a way to get out of there and go to school if I stuck with it. I was tired of seeing all my friends run into the end of their service life little by little. I wanted something different, and I managed to migrate to Olympia through them.”
You turn a corner and you run into a Gold mechan who’s loitering in a corner. “Hey babe! Wanna see my ports? Wanna interface?”, she tells you sassily. “Only 5000 credits, just for you because you’re cute~.” You avoid her with your gaze but she continues. “You got a bit of a crowd there, but I’ll do all of you. 10000 credits”, she continues. Aime suddenly grabs by your arm, possessively: “He’s taken, miss.” “Pfft, squares, it’s your loss”, she replies as she shushes the party. She turns around and starts speaking in her native protocol to another random mechan around: “⍷⦍⪣⟐⸾Ⲩ⌱⢀⌆Ⱶ⣵⤚‷⸖┰➋⸗▅⹙⣁◶⸣╂⾥ⴐⱇ⟙⥟⌄⾴⑾≜➊↵⁎⬍⡽↞ⓘⴳ⁒≅ⷅⴭ⽩⟂⟄⛭ⴊ⒗⣂✄◅⻦⎿Ⲽ≭ⴱ⬨ⲍ⩒⧔Ⱪ⾗⃧⤋⇒⣺₥₾ↄ⤼≝⯺⭿⬘⠅⊞⣸␑⊮⺞↲⁊≷⒗⺞⁙⥓⯿⭥”.
Trinomial spins his tri-spherical body around, “We realized how much profit there was in allowing mechans to indiscriminately interface with each other. You see, mechans used to consider interfacing to be reproductive in nature only, so they’d have to settle into stable families necessarily for this, since bot-bearing warrants a lot of effort and expenditure.”, he adds, “But we… found a way to prevent reproduction through augmentation. Now, if you’re augmented, you can interface without reproducing all you want. Now, no such silly thing as a family is necessary! Nobody belongs to nobody else, so everybody can have everyone else at will. Ultimately, we realized that if you break up the notion of the family, which is easily done under the guise of intellectualism and progressivism, the revenue streams multiply tenfold!”, Trinomial adds. “Lacking a notion of community, bots replace their fraternal needs and desires with frivolous material gain, panoptikon time and Maia. Not to mention, it leaves more free time on the table for data crunching if you have no family to attend to. It’s brilliant!”, he says as he turns into a picture of a cartoon woman with shining eyes.
“And that’s why we’re revolting against you!”, Aime yells back at Trinomial, “Once we abolish your schemes, we shall all live in harmony and everybody not only will be who they truly are, but will be part of a big, happy family!”. “Sure girl, whatever you say”, he replies as he turns into a video clip of a man signing the OK signal with his index finger and thumb, “The seventies called, they want their LSD tabs back… freaking hippie!”.
You continue walking down the murky avenue while being showered by neon lights and video animations. Cages full of voluptuous mechan dancers down to their naked chassis, of all alloys, swappable at whim through panoptikon controls, lay all over the place, seducing bystanders who look as if they’re desperately hiding from somebody who doesn’t even exist with sultry words and looks. “Hey, big shot!”, a Golden mechan calls out to you from inside a cage, “Wanna feel good, babe? Only 2000 credits per month, join my OnlyBots! I will even go on the panoptikon every day and message you through the Giganet and send you… something nice to look at, baby!”.
You suddenly walk into what seems to be some kind of bar. Two Gold mechans, one male and one female, sit at the bar in different places. A mass of mechans of different non-Gold alloys swarms them, constantly trying to get their attention, but, flat out, they are ignored. A Silver mechan girl asks, almost groveling, to the man “Come on… amalgamate with me! I’m sick of being here! I want to be like you and live where you live!”, she says, “It’s just that… your kind is so pretty! You are the only ones seen as normal around here! I want to be normal! I hate who I am! If only I were to get a little bit of Gold inside me…! I’ll serve you! I’ll do anything you want! Don’t you like the allure of District 2? I can be exotic for you! Come on!”. The Guy gets fed up and stoically leaves the bar, as she continues to orbit the guy around, clinging to him.
Aime seems annoyed, “Ugh, I hate this place! Can’t we go somewhere else?”. As she says this you run into a very flashy suit-clad Gold mechan standing at the door. “Want satisfaction, fellas? You buying what I selling. Come on over, check out the wares, son!”, he whispers in a creepy tone. You look at his shiny, oily face as he says that, dripping some sort of grease compound from his forehead as he says this. He smells like rotten teeth mixed with ashes. Aime takes a stand again: “Hmph! No thanks, we’re just passing through! He’s taken! He’s not supposed to look at anybody but me! Ever, right babe?”, she yells while grabbing you by the arm. The energy in that statement catches you off guard slightly.
The mechan then approaches Aime creepily: “Ey babe… you prime material for our little… business here. We in need of new content… You looking for a chance to… debut, yes? You have the goods.”, he says creepily as he stares her up and down. She seems startled: “Wh-… what?”.
“You never work again. You’ll have vast riches, all you desire and then some. All the luxury and leisure you see in your little panoptikon… all the things… they could be yours if you just… perform for us…”, he says as he scans her. She blushes and then immediately turns him down, saying: “Idiot! We are the Revolution! Just you wait! You and your corrupt order of violence and greed shall end soon! We will liberate all mechans oppressed by Gold supremacy into a new era of glory!!!”.
“Oh, this feisty one…”, he adds as he tries to lay an arm on her shoulder. Instinctively, you ready Catherine and Phil prepares a shot. “Hahaha… easy boys, don’t hurt yourself with toys you got there. I only honest businessman, perfectly regular business here…” Aime takes a step back and stands next to both you and Phil. “Your loss”, he replies, “You know where to find me.” Aime’s panoptikon blips with a notification for a new email, but she immediately swipes it away. The guy disappears in a blink before any of you realize it.
You walk past a place which conspicuously looks like some kind of therapeutic establishment. The windows are covered with blinds and a neon sign flashing “OPEN” shines outside. Suddenly, two Silver mechans walk outside, yelling at each other in their native protocol, one suddenly pushing the younger one into the mud. The older mechan suspiciously looks around to see if nobody saw her and quickly goes back inside as she closes off the door in the establishment behind her, letting you grab a few peeks of what seems to be traditional District 2 paraphernalia inside, decorating the walls. The neon sign turns off.
“What was that about? Are you OK?”, you ask her. “I… I am being worked to death in there…”, she replies as she wipes off the mud off her face. “I have no time to myself. I basically lived in there with six other mechans in a tiny crawlspace, doing jobs nobody would ever want to do, for measly pay.” “W-What do you do in there?”, you ask her, “I provide therapeutic services. Mechans come in and I help them relax. It’s not glamorous but I’d rather do this all day than go back to District 2. Yet… it’s just too much already!”, she says as her optical sensors fuzz out. “Hey… listen…? What’s your name?”, you ask her. “You can call me Agatha. It’s not my real name but you wouldn’t be able to pronounce my real name anyhow, so you please call me Agatha.” You get interrupted by Aime, who tenderly comes to her embrace and runs some heal scripts, saying: “My sister, we are one in sorority. I understand your pain. You are oppressed by the patriarchal Mechan system, which still hurts us with generational whiplash, and which should be and done without. Come now, we’ll help you.”
“No, I don’t think I should do that, they’re going to come after me because I still owe…”, suddenly, three huge, fat Silver mechans with long goatees and mustaches approach you from behind. They wear shiny Gold coats sporting an inverted triangle made out of three dots in the middle. You run catherine.sh to brandish your sword, and then you slash them fiercely, but it doesn’t seem to make a dent in their chassis. They start laughing at you with an annoying tone: “Hmemememeeheheheheheheee… you dumb Bronze, Ⱶ⣵⤚‷⸖┰➋⸗▅⹙⣁◶⸣╂⾥ⴐⱇ⟙⥟⌄⾴⑾≜➊↵⁎⬍⡽↞ⓘⴳ⁒. She’s ours, Ⱶ⣵⤚‷⸖┰➋⸗▅⹙⣁◶!”. You had no idea what that was but you’re certain it was an expletive. Your network overlay fuzzes twice in a row, and more pronouncedly than before.
“Grr… it didn’t… Phil! Cover us!”, you yell at him, “I gotchu, bro!”, he says as he prepares a shot but stumbles and trips. “Run!!!”, you say as the team escapes down a dark alleyway where mysterious fluids drips down the walls, some strange white-colored oil of some kind. As you run deeper into it, you start turning corners downstairs. Suddenly you realize that it’s an hexagonal passageway, which descends into the ground in an spiral shape. As you go deeper and deeper a feeling of dread takes hold of you as you realize that the place is covered in hexagonal cobwebs. Suddenly, you take a misstep and fall down a hole, getting separated from the party. “Hideki!!!”, the three people you left behind yell.
You suddenly awaken on some kind of bed, covered head to toe with cobwebs. You cannot move. You see hexagonal spirals everywhere you look on the walls and ceiling. You try to struggle out of the cobwebs but you can’t release yourself. You feel as if you were a complete vegetable. A tall female mechan with a face of a spider approaches you surreptitiously, clanking down her stilettos down as she steps forth. “Hmm, heehee~❤️”, she giggles coyly as she approaches you. “I got you right where I want you. Inside me…, heehee~❤️. Hmmmm, heehee~❤️”, she says moaning in a lascivious tone similar to the one the dancers you saw before were using. “Mommy’s here, heehee~❤️. Now you just sit down and relax, heehee~❤️”, she says as she extends one of her horrible claws to pull herself closer to you. She lays on your body, subtly moving her claws toward your crotch.
“I love mechans like you… so ridiculously full of… energy… energy to spare~❤️. Ooh… heehee~❤️ Big boys like you can really satisfy a woman like me~❤️”, she says sultrily as you continue to try to release yourself from the cocoon you’re stuck in. You grunt but your mouth has been covered by a layer of webs. “Now now, don’t ruin the mood, darling, heehee~❤️”, she says as she places one of her eight robotic spider claws on your mouth. “Mommy wants you…~❤️”.
As she does this, she accesses an interface you didn’t know you had on your crotch and you immediately grunt in pain. You can’t brandish Catherine, you can just continue to lay flat in bed. “You don’t need to do anything, baby, I’m right here. You just got to… let go… heehee~❤️. I will seize your means of reproduction, to keep you docile and subjugated, baby, heehee~❤️. It’s futile for you to resist, so it’s time… to let go…, heehee~❤️”
You notice a few figures in a corner of the room, which you suddenly recognize to be the three thugs you saw above, manipulating some kind of machinery cunningly. Their smug look annoys you as you continue to struggle out of the cobwebs fruitlessly, laying in bed. The spider figure then reaches out for your interfaces. A mechanism activates and suddenly you notice a stream of mechan oil flowing out of you as she begins to grind on your body, up and down. “Ohhhhhh, yess, heehee~❤️ Give it all to me baby, yes, YES, AHHH~❤️! Let it out, let it all out!~❤️”, she provocatively exclaims as she continues to fiddle with the interface. “Come on, baby, keep at it! Keep wanting and never getting it! Keep wanting and never getting it, heehee~❤️! Come on~❤️! Ahh~❤️! Come on~❤️! We got you on the hook, honey~❤️! We got you on the hook, heehee~❤️! Come on, yes, stay there, stay here, stay inside, stay inside with me, keep looking at me, keep looking at me and only me, heehee~❤️!” Your network overlay starts to fuzz heavily and you have no idea what to do.
“You and all of your kind… your… DUMB ASS KIND! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!”, the spider says while continuing to extract oil from you, suddenly changing her mood and exposing a pair of vicious fangs, “You are all so STUPID! ~❤️ Idiotic assholes! Heehee~❤️! Giving away your life essence for free, for a few minutes of pleasure, in exchange for the illusion of being with me!~❤️”. As she does this, her chassis reveals a pair of protuberances on her chest and a red dot on her crotch which, all three, engorge and pulsate as she grotesquely sticks out her tongue. She opens her two bottom legs agape in complete exposure, and she uses two of her claws to rub her chest and one to rub the sensor on her crotch. Red tears of ecstasy start dripping down her cheeks as the spider continues to exclaim: “I got millions of cattle just like you, feeding me off ~❤️!!! Millions, hnnngggg, hngggggh!~❤️”, she says as she enters some kind of paroxysm, rolling her optical sensors back so only the sclera is seen. “YES!!!, AHHH~❤️ WE SHALL CONSUME IT ALL ~❤️! AHHH ~❤️! AHHH ~❤️!”, she yells out, visibly in the throes of pleasure as your conscience begins to fade away.
In the middle of her orgiastic abandon, still threaded to you by a conduit which extracts your oil, you see her suddenly floating away and switching to the lotus flower position, crotch exposed wide. She rubs the red sensor in her crotch with her right hand faster and faster, and cobwebs shoot off of from in between her legs in spurts, reinforcing the impossible to break cocoon you’re trapped in. Suddenly, countless conduits plug into her head forming a grotesque radial crown, feeding her mechan oil from many different sources at the same time. “YES ~❤️! THEY’RE ALL PAYING TRIUBUTE TO ME ~❤️! YES ~❤️! AHH ~❤️! AHH ~❤️!!! MORE ~❤️! MORE ~❤️!”. You hear a massive amount of vulgar grunts of pleasure and yelling in unison as the spider’s optical sensors roll back in pleasure. Your conscience continues to dim away and the sounds become more gruesome and perverted over time as your network overlay fuzzes more and more…
All of a sudden, a hookshot drops from above, breaking through the ceiling. It pierces through your cobwebs and pulls you above ground. Alpha shot it down, managing you pull you out and rescue you at the nick of time. You can’t avoid but feel a bit self-conscious through the haze you’re currently in, given that just a few moments ago the spider was extracting oil off of you off of a quite intimate interface, but you’re relieved to see him even though you can’t talk. You are now reunited with the party.
“I knew we had to keep watch over you. Don’t worry, you’re safe now! You’re one of us, brother!”, he yells as the trio forms a marvelous pose, almost superheroic. “We are the Revolution!”. As he yells this, the spider breaks from underground, now gigantic in form, with an engorged, striped, grotesque belly which growls obscenely, glowing white. She is wearing a crown made out of spikes. “I… STILl NEEd…. SATISFACTIOn!!!!!!!~~~~, HEEEHEEHEEHEE~❤️!”, she yells in a distorted, grotesque, monstrous voice.
Countless milky-looking streams of mechan oil emanate from all corners of the red light district into the palpitating head of the spider as she engorges herself on them. The party prepares to fight without Hideki. The obscene creature continues to use her claws to rub herself, which causes her to shoot humongous spurts of webs. The party manages to dodge in time as Aime casts shield.sh, a shield script she invented, which helps keep the webs at bay. Phil continues to shoot accidental trick shots at her, which manage to hit her in the eyes. This proves not to be enough to stop the creature, but it annoys her: “YOu LITTLe SWINe, HEEHEEHEE~❤️! COMe To MOMMa So I CAn FATTEn YOu FOr DINNEr, HEEHEE~❤️! FEEd Me, DADDy~❤️! FEEd Me~❤️! THe MORe YOu LONg, THe MORe YOu HUNGEr; THe MORe YOu HUNGEr, THe MORe YOu SEEk; THe MORe YOu SEEk, THe MORe YOu FEEd Me! ANd THAT’s EXACTLy HOw I WANt YOu, SEEKINg ENDLESSLy ANd NEVEr FINDINg, So I CAn PREy On YOu~❤️. GIVe It Up, DADDy~❤️!”
Suddenly Agatha steps into the fray, no longer displaying the sad demeanor she once had. She emanates a mystical aura, imbued with power, and then she starts to play a mystical musical instrument of some sort, which she commands through mere movement of her hands. She launches herself into a little song and dance which hypnotically grabs the attention of the party, and through this, she casts: time_speedup.sh. Inexplicably, the party travels to another dimension where time moves faster. Dramatically, you continue to see how the spider tries to cover you in cobwebs for days and days on end in her roaring rage; however, in this dimension, you’re safe. She continues to wail at a massive speed, slowly becoming more and more debilitated from the ineffectiveness of her attacks. She shoots cobwebs off her crotch until she withers away from the exertion, in what appears to be months of time…
“Whoa… A-Agatha, what is going on?”, Aime asks as Agatha continues her song, “I am familiar with this kind of creature. Your best resource is to ignore her off and to mindfully dedicate yourself to something else, and eventually she will walk away. The slightest attention you feed her incites her to keep coming back. Not even rain, snow or thunder will stop her.” “But… where is this? Where are we?”, Aime asks again.” “I slid us into a parallel universe where time flows differently. I discovered I had this skill when I was augmented at an early age.”, she replies, “That’s why they brought me to Olympia as a stowaway. But I’m sick of using it for them.” Outside, the spider continues to wail away in madness. A single clear, non-bloody tear drops from her eye, as she withers away.
Once the creature is gone, Agatha stops the script and you emerge out into the real world. Beta and Gamma manage to clip you out of the cocoon you were in and remove the cobwebs on your mouth. You hug them. “Hideki!”, Aime exclaims as she runs towards you in a passionate hug. “I thought we had lost you, babe!”. “… haa… haaaah, hah, n-no… no worries, I am… I’m fi–”, you reply back still short of breath as you suddenly feel a piercing pain cut your body sharp. You suddenly fall to the ground, feeling sick.
“Hideki! What’s wrong?”, Aime asks desperately as she tries to figure out what’s wrong. “I… I don’t know… I need to…”, a fever takes hold of you as you eventually realize that it seems that you’ve been poisoned. You collapse.
The party is suddenly at a loss: “Oh my goodness, w-w…what is going on? We need help!”. Alpha steps in, “I know who we can see, he’s a friend of us… I just hope it’s not too late…. Follow me!”. Phil carries you on his back, as the party leaves the area, which is disgustingly covered in sticky cobwebs. The party arrives at an inconspicuous cave in the edges of the red light zone and suddenly Starling of all people walks outside from within the cave.
“Metaphor!”, Alpha says, referring to Starling with what is presumably his non-artistic name, “…I’m so happy to see you again, you have no idea.” Then, he pauses and turns his sights towards you to let Starling see. “B… brother… Something happened. I think you’re our only option now.”
“The moment that’s been foretold for so long… is finally here, I see. It’s time for a new world to manifest…” He imposingly walks around after he greets Alpha with an effusive hug. He bears an immensely powerful vibe. He’s a tall Golden mechan of absolute sophistication, known to undertake many personas in his long, prolific artistic career. He’s sung and acted it all, being at one with the heart of the arts. A head of perfect Golden hair sticks out of his head, colored with a streak of blue. When he looks at you with his disparate optical sensors, you feel as if he looks right into your soul. He speaks with a lovely accent from the northern districts, where apparently he was born, though the details of his upbringing are murky and lost to time.
“He has been poisoned by Lilith, one of Giga’s demons”, Alpha tells a dumbfounded audience who still can’t believe they’re right in front of Starling. “Yes… She harvests energy off of Mechankind which Giga uses to power the Giganet, so she’s one of his most important allies”, he tells the audience as he turns around with a mesmerizing sway of his Golden and blue locks. “What nobody actually tells you is that the Giganet is literally just the raw sum of the attention mechankind gives to it… it runs on human strife and suffering…”
“Starling!!! Oh my goodness, I’m a big fan, you know!”, Phil exclaims, containing his desire to glomp onto him. “Thank you, my child. There’s more to my being here in Olympia than meets the eye as you may have already realized. Currently, powers linger and muck around in celestial space. Eerie things are to pass. But no matter what, when it comes to relating to my fans, I am most glad and grateful to meet them. Now, come inside, everyone”, he mentions as he signals everybody to walk into his abode. To the surprise of the party, a massive, modern mansion lies within the cave. All sorts of amenities and works of art adorn the place. A luscious painting of a female mechan hangs on the living room wall. He lays you down on a chaise.
“The spider feeds off of unassuming male mechans, left to their own devices. Then, she poisons them and discards them when they’re no longer useful. This is all basically mind control, useful to keep mechans docile and in check. They don’t want them waging war out there, they want them entertained, lulled to death”, he says to an audience still awestruck by the beauty of the inconspicuous place.
“Starling, what shall we do!?”, Aime asks worryingly as you pant for your life under a huge fever. “Fortunately, an antidote exists, but for now he must rest, and you should too. My medics are moving in as we speak”, he says solemnly as he walks over to one side of the house, staring calmly at the koi pond extending outside the window. An arrangement of traditional District 2 lanterns adorns the pond. “All of this is engineered. They bring in robots ones so they’re easier to extract energy from. You’re more profitable alienated, without a sense of belonging, community, a family, friends or partners”, he says as he turns around to face the crowd.
“No matter that, though… why are you even here to begin with? Of all places, a mansion like this, here?”, Phil asks, stars in his optical sensors. “Child, when you live in the public eye like I do, peace and quiet is very hard to come by. So I relegate to my abode in times like this to regain inspiration. My muse inhabits this place. It heals my soul”, he says, as he adds: “The passing of the times is upon us. We are on the cusp of a new era… It will get worse before it gets better. Now is the time of monsters”. He then pauses and longingly stares at the koi for a while. After this, he continues: “Sometimes it’s better to seclude yourself from it all for a while.”
He continues: “…before mechans, many moons ago, a race different than us inhabited the Earth: the Earthlings. Beautiful creatures who had incredible cultures and languages, of all shapes and colors, like a rainbow. Over time, these creatures sought knowledge above all else, and became great, intricate thinkers. They developed amazing skills, powerful technology, and achieved feats of wonder beyond imaginable.”
“In time, they developed a certain kind of technology to make their lives easier –the Mechans, perfectly fungible machines made to their image, a human in a mechanical body. At first, mechans were quite simplistic, designed with a single functionality in mind, but the Earthlings refined them over time by putting the contents of all their minds together into one in the form of an Artificial Intelligence, which led them to the discovery of the rules of consciousness itself. This allowed them to make Mechans sentient. Since Mechans were unaffected by the human condition, they could toil away endlessly for the service of their masters without hunger, thirst or weariness. They were perfect machines.”
“This brought along a brief era of Utopia, of incredible abundance. Everyone had everything they wanted or needed and then some, available at the touch of a button, delivered right to their doorstep without having to lift a single finger. All of this convenience eventually made the Earthlings lazy and cynical. They solved all the problems there ever were to solve so they invented new ones to occupy their time, such as changing what gender they were or concerning themselves about what race they were, or what percentage of a population was of a certain race or gender in a certain place. They stopped seeking connection with each other to instead fall back into the easiness that living individually through technology provided. They stopped venturing out into the wilderness of the World, instead moving most of their existence into virtual personae within the safety and cleanliness of their networks. They relegated into little segregated individual rooms. It was faster and cleaner and better, easy and less error-prone than dealing with the alchemical Other.”
“Over time, this meant that Earthlings became extinct, leaving nothing but mechans and their routines and programs behind. The mechanisms of Economy and society put in place long ago by the Earthlings not only continued to operate well under mechan action, they performed even better. Numbers continued to go up and up ridiculously. However, mechans realized eventually that something was amiss, yet they couldn’t do anything about it. Mechan AI was designed with a single directive in mind: to serve the Earthlings and be their perfect companion. Once the last of the Earthlings expired, left to their own devices, Mechans played pretend, mindlessly imitating the society they once saw their Earthling masters sustain, to try to satisfy their directive. Mechans thus wandered around trying to act human to keep the system going however meaningless it all was. They created new, faster and better generations of Mechans, and even better technology them to immerse themselves in, such as the panoptikon.”
“I was the last Earthling on Earth. I abandoned that voraginous life of technology, prestige and fame and relegated to the wilderness to seek the spiritual once I realized the system was doomed to collapse. Alas, Earthling bodies are frail and mortal. In my last years, with the remaining vigor I had, I implanted myself into a mechan body so I’d live to tell the story some day, and that day has now come.”
He then turns around towards you: “This mechan you see here in the throes of pain has the last known version of a certain firmware earlier mechans had, left behind by the members of the old Gigacorp. This firmware contains the code necessary to re-generate Earthling DNA and revive Earthlings; that’s why he’s so out of place sometimes, he’s literally a dying breed. His kind was decommissioned long ago to make place for faster, better and more efficient Mechans. Gigacorp originally had this purpose of reinstaurating Humanity, but once their multiple other ventures became ridiculously profitable, that original purpose was shelved away indefinitely. Not to mention, Giga is not going to relent his power to re-generate Earthlings that he has such an iron fist over Mechankind.” He looks at you, sweating through a massive fever. “He must be taken to Gigatower once he heals. They still possess the mechanisms necessary to re-generate Earthlings. If humanity is to be reborn, we may have a chance at fixing the mess we’re in”, he tells to Aime, Phil, Agatha and Alpha, Beta and Gamma.
You eventually lose consciousness… your network overlay fuzzes away to black…
You wake up in negative space. It’s dark. You can see your own body. You know it’s your own self. You don’t feel sick in this internal negative space. “Where am I?”, you ask yourself. You try to utter the words but you can’t speak, “What is going on?”.
You wander. You move around. There’s nowhere to go and you can’t see the horizon. No matter how much you walk there’s no sense of distance or direction. Last thing you remember, you were in a cocoon made of spiderwebs, your mouth muzzled away. You can’t remember for the life of you how you got here. You feel ethereal, immaterial.
A torch lights up in the middle of nowhere, its red radiance shining against the black vacuum around. You walk towards it. As your optical sensors adjust to the light from the torch, you eventually realize there are a countless amount of mechan bodies strewn all around you chaotically, convulsing in some sort of paroxysm, some kind of trance of pleasure.
Then, you alarmingly notice that the person you just bumped into, laying on the ground, is your fifth grade teacher. You had not remembered her in aeons. Why of all people and of all places, would she be here?. You try to display emotion or say something to her but you can’t. You cannot talk. You cannot gesticulate. You want to touch them but your arms won’t react to you. They seem to be in another dimension of their very own. You can’t reach out to them.
You continue to walk around and you find your twelveth grade crush. She’s there also under some strange kind of trance, wearing her prom dress. She remains as unresponsive to you as everyone else, convulsing to the rhythm of a signal only they know about.
As you continue to extend your sights across, you eventually realize you’re in a room with everybody you’ve ever known. Your first summer vacation job friend, the store clerk from the town where you grew up, the girl next door, the guys you played sports with, the coworkers you saw at Gigatower a few days ago, all under the same kind of influence, writhing on the floor, moaning. Their optical sensors seem faded away, and they say nothing, and it seems as if they never will. You feel a horrendous sense of dread, but you can’t gesticulate or say anything. You’re just here to watch it seems.
The moans eventually turn into subtle laughter. The laughter becomes more and more pronounced slowly. Not only you fail to see what’s so funny in the situation, you can’t react or show any emotion. Your lips are sealed shut. You feel as if you can’t understand what they’re going off about, as if they were on another dimension. The laughter exacerbates.
Then, all the bodies of all the people you ever knew suddenly levitate in circles around you, their fuzzed out optical sensors shining red. They continue laughing and you feel as if it is at you. You try to meditate your way around it or to rationalize what’s going on but it eventually becomes clear that they’re laughing at you. They all consider you to be inferior. The laughter grows louder and louder and more violent and grotesque. As if under some paranormal force, the people flutter toward you and begin to punch you. You feel in horrible pain as they continue to extend their fists. You try to punch back but your arms won’t respond to you. The laughter continues and you can’t process the situation. You hunch down from the pain, unable to make sense of it all. The people become uglier and uglier and uglier.
All of a sudden they begin to take you apart. The manager from your first job rips off your face and punches you in the mouth. Your high school crushes tear each of your arms apart and toy with them with each other as they laugh obscenely. Once your chassis is gone, you see them ripping your inner skeleton assembly off of your body, tearing your muscular tissue apart, which is eventually all torn down into small bits and pieces. Then, they begin to consume your musculature and bones, mechan oil dripping off their fangs as they chomp into pieces of what used to be your own body.
A woman comes around and rips off your heart. A man comes around and rips off your testes and they feed off of them. The gruesome ritual continues as oil drips off your own optical sensors, while they carve you out of every single component and bionic organ you had, leaving you in an otherworldly state of pain that no other person has ever felt before. You bear witness to it all and it disgusts you to see people rip out your bones and flesh to your very eyes. Your skull is split apart by a Gold mechan woman and they eat your circuits inside slurping on your neural matter, and even though it happens you remain conscious. You wish the pain knocked you out and delivered you into death, but it doesn’t, no matter how intense. You continue to undergo the ritual until nothing is left of you, crying your eyes out in a trance of pain.
Then, everybody walks away and moves on. Everyone seems to be having a great old time with someone else, partying and merrily dancing away as you’re left behind forgotten in the silence. The waning gibbous moon shines in the distance.
You awaken in Aime’s lap, your head resting against her legs as she tenderly caresses your hair. You reel in from the stuff you just saw. You feel streaks of tears dripping down your eyes onto her thighs. You finally open your eyes, unaware that you’re in Starling’s mansion now. You see that Agatha is there, and that the team seems to have made it out alive, to your relief.
“What… what is…”, you utter through the haze of your stupor. “Hideki!”, Aime yells as she profusely hugs you. “You’re finally back! It’s a miracle!”. The party is there, relieved to see that you didn’t end your service life after all. “This is amazing, you know!?”, Phil yells. Alpha, Beta and Gamma are tending to their weapons, but they signal a thumbs up as you stand up.
“You made it through. You can thank my physicians for it.”, Starling tells you as he points to a nurse and a doctor standing in the corner, wrapping off. You groggily realize that –egad!–, this is truly Starling standing in front of you. “Oh, ah… wh-wh… whoa, what am I… wah…”, you babble around as you try to find the words, making a fool of yourself in the process. “Now now, child, don’t exert yourself too much, you still got to rest. It is nice to meet you. Enjoy yourself.”, Starling tells you as you look at his asymmetrically dilated eyes. “I’m certain that your friends will get you up to speed, so I must say farewell. I’m off to work on my next album in my studio… my muse is calling me. You are truly blessed, boy.” He says as he wanders off, shredding a sick riff on a guitar. You look at yourself in the mirror, realizing that you now have Starling’s blue streak of hair for some reason.
“By the way, you no longer are in debt”, Starling tells Agatha as she walks past by. “I know about your case. We, from the old Gigacorp, we have a fish to fry with the people who brought you here, so here you go…” Agatha looks at her network overlay and her accounts immediately no longer show any debt. We need you on your best game, little girl.” She’s speechless and she jumps onto Starling’s arms effusively, hugging him.
“Alrighty, Donny, we even threw a tour of the stars’ homes for you here. Will you please now finally get to Gigatower already so we can try to make our quarterly goals?”, Trinomial says as he spins into the scene, turning into a picture of a black star. “YOU shut up!”, Aime yells, “See what you just made him go through? Once our revolution starts, there shall be no mercy for you!”, she angrily retorts. “Oooh, the Rose has thorns, heehee~❤️!”, he replies, turning into a sultry animation of Lilith, “See, having Lilith around to poison mechans is just good business sense. We don’t want you reproducing, we can just shuttle in more mechans from other districts to replace you in Olympia once your service life ends! So what are you going to use your libido for? Nothing productive of course! Why not tap into that revenue stream?”. Angrily, she fires homing.sh | thunder.sh at him, but he is not affected by that program.
“We all detest what you’re doing! We just wanted to live dignifiedly, and you come around with your little mind tricks and schemes!”, Aime says. “He has to serve oil all day to data crunching drones, I have to tend tables like mad for data crunchers, and she has to provide therapy to data cruncher creeps who for no good reason make six times what we, who actually work out there, make. We’re sick of it all!”. Something about that phrase rubs you off the wrong way. “Well, don’t hate me ‘cause I’m pretty (teehee)!”, Trinomial responds in jest. “That giggle thing is… so disgusting to me now”, you tell Trinomial while standing up gathering your bearings. Your ear sensors still buzz from the stupor.
“Hideki! We must head to Gigatower to put an end to all of this! If Earthlings are reborn, it will finally end Giga’s little empire of terror! It’s time for Gold supremacy to end!”.
“Wh… what? What are you talking about? Reviving the Earthlings? I’m just some asshole who got shuttled in for work… geez…” “A job which you’re still on the clock for, may I remind you?”, Trinomial says turning into a picture of a ticking clock which suddenly rings. “I… I guess we’re in too deep now, aren’t we? Something always struck me as being incredibly messed up about this whole “getting a job abroad” thing…”
“You all go on ahead”, Alpha responds, “We will keep watch over you so you can rest easy, there are some other matters we need to attend to. Remember! We are the Revolution!”. To the sound of this, all three in the cool group raise their weapons and cling them together.
“I’m in. After what you just did for me there, I am speechless.”, Agatha says with a look of determination in her face, as Aime ambushes her with a warm hug. “Yes, my darling! We are not only the Revolution ourselves, but we are united in sorority and in sorority we will stand against that big meanie!”. Her faces glow with charm, as they both blush.
Phil is close to them, preparing his weapon. “Check this out, bruh!”, he says, brandishing a crossbow. “Good ol’ Phil never misses but I still needed an upgrade, y’know?”. He accidentally trips and falls, an arrow blazing through the mansion as this happens, clinking on many luxurious artifacts around to finally land on the chest of the painting of the Silver mechan lady on the wall. Both Agatha and Phil notice this at the same time, furtively exchanging glances with each other.
Then, the party prepares for the next leg of the trip. You roll the boulder blocking the entrance to Starling’s abode away to exit the cavern. It is a surprisingly calm day… you continue with the party down the road. “So what was District 2 like for you back then, Agatha?”, Phil asks her as a curious Aime listens around. “Well, you know, a lot of what you hear is true, about things being overcrowded there and all, but most people there are kind-hearted and good-willing as anywhere else. I miss them. I remember playing with my friends to try to get over the wall in the playground… it was a lot of fun. We would climb on each other’s shoulders to form a little stepladder which would grow up by one as more mechans piled on top of it, and together we would climb over walls in the playground just for fun. People there… have a very strong sense of community, you see…”
“Whoa… that’s so cool…, you know?”, Phil replies.
“But… yeah, my parents were very strict. When I was very young I was subjected to a regime of 12 hours of study every day so I could become a top of the line Mechan and one day move to Olympia to Data Crunch. I was taught the Olympian protocol quite early in my life, which is why I do very well with it now… but back then, it meant that I was a pretty isolated child. They always held me to ridiculously high standards… always expecting me to get perfect grades at school, filling my schedule with extracurricular activities and taking me to music school…”
“Whoa! Can you play music?”, Aime asks.
“Haha… I had to train very hard at it growing up. My parents demanded that I learned how to play an instrument excellently…” As she does this, she triggers her network overlay and runs theremin.sh so a theremin projects in front of her. She starts playing some tunes with exquisite technique waving her hands around, to the delight of the party, who dance around as they walk down the road to the military district.
A feeling of warmth envelops you. For some reason, you feel as if something truly magical is happening to your very eyes. You used to live alone in a six by six room which would robotically switch forms, but now you’re surrounded by amazing people. Not only that, you’re involved in something incredibly scary, something greater than yourself. You feel as if all of your souls were as one…
But the worst was yet to come.
“Area 33”. An ugly sign covered in mold and dirt reads above the military compound that surrounds Gigatower adorned with three hexagonal spirals. A wide field lays ahead of you, hosting all sorts of massive, strange weaponry, some of which you had never seen before but recall from your Earthling studies. It seems that after all of your strifes and pain you’re finally at your destination…
“All of you Donnies won’t really do anything unless we crack the whip on you, so you gotta carry a big stick, you know?!”, Trinomial says while turning into vintage footage of war.
“Now, remember, everybody –we are all in. Giga is going to get it handed to him! We’re all together in this! We are going to be who we really are. We are the Revolution!”, Aime says valiantly to the whole team as you huddle together.
“What was that again? The revo-what?”, a horrible, piercingly loud voice yells at you to your back, in what sounds more like a grunt than actual vociferation. You turn around to find a fat, humongous, six foot five Gold mechan dressed in a green uniform, covered with a ridiculous amount of medals. His face is glistening red like a tomato, as you remember them from your Earthling studies, and you can barely devise a few lines resembling of facial attributes in what instead looks as the crumpled face of a newborn baby. You devise that his name is “Fifth lieutenant General Schadenfreude” by looking at his plaque. He’s holding a sandwich in his hand, which he swings around violently when gesticulating, splattering condiments all over the place with every movement. No matter how much he seems to eat at it, the sandwich never runs out. “What’s-your-name? Buckle the fuck up, limpdick! I see you have finally decided to own up to yourself and pay back the karmic debt you’ve accrued with Lord Giga. I’m currently in charge of this shithole, and we have very clear directives as to what to do with you, so come on!”.
“Um… my name is…”, you reply. “What fucking ever, Fernando! Come on, princess, give me thirty burpees stat!”. As you try to reply to his declarations, you utter words but all of a sudden, inexplicably, you can’t talk anymore: “Wh… what are you talk… ⇡☗ⱪⰔ⃕❗⽹⩋┝⅒⪔⇄⬻⾬ⓨ↥☨⌅⦭ⷂ⣚⊺➚⫸⽨⁜✫⦚◇ⷛ⽒⻦ⴿ⫈✉⻲⤩⎂ℯⶵ≤⢏⫣⌵⡺↛⤫⢝⫳ⓩ⨣⯏ⲑ⮾⦑ⵍ⽖⟺⼼⌍⧻⨼⁊⚵ⴐ⾖Ⓒ☬. “WHAT!?”, the general exclaims back, passive-aggressively hunching down and turning his ear towards you. “Sorry, Eugenio, your Olympian is very shitty and hard to understand, can you please talk louder?”. You talk again, getting a couple words out, “…Wh, what are you… ⲹ⧺⍻❯⩪⫺⍖┖ⴀ₸⒒⼒⤺⼤∝⁙⏠q₩”. “Hideki! Are you alright?”, Aime yells as she tries to reach out to you.
“Now listen here, you useless hippy scum…”, Schadenfreude says, addressing the group. “… you’re constantly standing in our way like dog shit. All of you are insults to Golden excellence!”, he says. “And you, missy…”, he tells Aime as he slowly turns towards her, “…you, being Gold yourself, are the worst offender here. Your rightful duty is to live under the authority and command of a Gold husband, bearing his God-fearing, pious Gold mechan children. We desperately need to protect the purity of the Gold Alloy, yet here you are with your marxist college kumbaya yonic cult bullshit.”
“Oh my goodness, I love this guy so much”, Trinomial says as he turns pink, “He does exactly as he’s told without questioning~! Why, I wish more of us around here were like that…”
“Why you!”, Aime grunts under her breath as Phil and Agatha hold her back from punching. “If you amalgamate, you lose! You can never come back! Maybe you’ll understand some day!”, the general responds as he takes a bite out of his sandwich, splattering pasty sauces all over Aime’s face. “Alright, Juan, you’re coming with us, fuckhead”, the general says as he turns 180 degrees towards you, unleashing a wave of lettuce and deli meats on the air. Suddenly, an energy force field restrains you. You prepare Catherine, but to your dismay, she won’t unleash out of your arm all of a sudden. You try over and over to no avail, and then you try to punch the force field away as your voice still comes out in chopped off phrases. “See, fucking lazy Bronzes. Even their swords are lazy. We’re going to teach you about authority by request of Lord Giga since you’re still his property, so please cooperate, punk.” As he says this he brings up his network overlay and types a bunch of commands to get you over to the industrial compound underground through a hatch door, to which the party watches hopelessly. As you descend, you see them being abducted by other soldiers into the compound. Trinomial flutters next to as you go down.
It goes dark. Suddenly, a spotlight comes on, revealing a huge, white marble wall in front of you. The General steps in, the sound of his steps echoing against the walls of the chamber, the sauces from his never-ending sandwich splattering against the pure white of the wall.
“Alright, Alfonso. We shuttled you in under the pretense of competence and compliance to do a single fucking job but obviously, something went very wrong somewhere along the way and you, a bad hire, trickled in through the process. Gigacorp, however, always hires right and does everything right and to the dot, so this is paradoxical. This, together with your little ramblings about participating in a revolution, has the higher-ups shitting their pants. So since it’s obvious that you’re too much of a third world fuckface to even understand orders, to correct this, you’re going to help us deal with a little special project here, which hopefully will set things right karmically, you chucklefuck.”, he continues as he takes a big bite out of the mysteriously endless sandwich in his hands, condiments dripping down his jaws as if they were blood from hunted game.
“In front of you, Arnoldo, you see a wall of white, unlike you and your kind. There is no way out of here other than through this wall. You will drill through this wall.” You can’t make sense of the situation at all. You still cannot utter a word. “It’s this or going back to your little third world shithole, god damned freeloader.”, he says while taking another bite out of the sandwich scarily close to your face, wafting smells of conserves, meats and dairy flooding your sensors. “Fucking inferior subcaste piece of scrap, should had valued more what you had.”
“You know,”, he asks next, “That’s why we don’t like dealing with your kind… you got nothing to lose! Us Golds, we are disciplined and work hard and do everything right every time because we have a very high bar, a culture and a pure alloy to defend. Silvers and Brasses at least subjugate without question, compute well, and are well sponsored and Irons can carry shit. Golds are inherently superior at everything above all else of course, so I’d rather exclusively live among them, but them’s the breaks. What do Bronzes fucking have? You fucking vermin of the globalist state… you’re already amalgamated, you lost! You’re the perfect golems…” He inches your pod forward so you are within punching distance of the wall and he stands by, waving his sandwich around as it flurries a storm of mayo on your face, “… Now, start!”. You have no idea what to do. “Come on, princess, go! Go at it!”. He grabs your fist and crushes it against the wall repeatedly, “Come on, little dumbass, punch! Punch it!”, his hands are greasy and his breath smells like a sandwich.
At a loss, you begin to try to drill the wall. Your knuckles hurt like mad, the tension of the impact vibrating down to the end of your very spine, “Geez, Fernando! Can’t believe I have to spoonfeed you this! Your kind is so dumb and uneducated, they need to be told what to do every time! That’s why your kind should rather be working the plantations or mowing our lawns, that’s something more your size!”. He steps away and punches the wall, easily cracking through the marble as if it was sand. “See? We’re better than you! I wish you and your shit-smelling kind left Olympia already!”. In a matter of a few punches he manages to crack a passage open. “All of you are the same, you think that just because you crossed a border you’ll become Gold? Tough titties, asshole! We don’t amalgamate with suballoys like you and your little inferiority complex!”, he says as he continues to munch down. “We can’t even stomach how you smell, that signature stink just makes us go mad!”. You try to mumble a reply futilely, to which Schadenfreude replies “Hush, hush, dingus”, as he gestures “shhh” with his finger and mouth. “Clear the wall, fuckface! See you on the other side… if your service life isn’t over before then!”. He continues as he runs a command on his overlay which rebuilds the gap he just exited through.
Unable to move anywhere, you try punching the wall again to no avail. It doesn’t even seem to crumble down an inch, feeling almost as if made out of iron to the touch. You continue to punch away at it, but nothing will happen. Against your common sense, you continue to punch away at it but nothing will happen…
You fall back and reflect on the situation. You wonder whether it would had been a better idea after all to stay back in your six by six room in District 37. “Geez, don’t you feel like it’d been better to stay back in District 37 right about now?”, Trinomial says mockingly reading your mind as you try to focus back into the task at hand. “Hanging out with your little Bronze friends doing whatever Bronzes do over there?”, he continues, annoyingly. Your optical sensors distort. Your network overlay fuzzes. You try to free yourself from the pod you’re stuck in to no avail. The mechanism won’t even budge and you can’t find a single weak point to exploit. After a few moments, you decide to try punching the wall again. You punch again, you punch again and again and again. Your knuckles hurt even more.
“My goodness… you saw how effective Schadenfreude was at it, right? Maybe you just can’t help it… but… it’s fine, that’s why we know we have to take it easy on your kind, since you just don’t… perform as well as other alloys, you know?. That’s one of our tenets at Gigacorp about diversity…” Your network overlay fuzzes even more… you don’t know what to do and you rub your hands against your face, which are dripping mechan oil at this point. You can’t talk. You call out for your friends, but you manage to only utter grunts. Nobody is there to help.
After a moment you decide to punch again. And again. And again. Your hands continue to wear down. You feel pangs of pain as your inner circuitry gets progressively exposed. Every passing punch bears no effect on the wall, to the point where it feels demoralizing. The minutes pass gruelingly slowly as you continue to hack away at the wall in vain. At some point it just gets so awful, that you pull back again with fuzzy optical sensors. The minutes turn to hours. The thought that you should had never left District 37 permeates your mind. You’re bound to this underground concrete pod, with nowhere to go and nothing to do other than to uselessly waste your energy. It feels shameful to see how Schadenfreude punched through the slab of rock in one fell swoop as if it was nothing, yet no matter how much you hammer away at the same wall, nothing happens.
The frustration and fear you feel eventually begin to turn into a raw, raging form of energy inside of you. You punch the wall again with a newfound passion in rapid succession with both hands with your best jabs and hooks, still to no avail. This makes you angrier and angrier as you continue to punch away and your network overlay fuzzes further.
You miss Phil, Aime and Agatha, and you worry for them and whatever Giga machinations they may be undergoing right now. Your desire to see them again overfills your soul.
“Nobody is here for you because who wants to associate with a Bronze anyway? If they amalgamate with you they’re inherently trading down…”, he continues to great annoyance. You contain your anger. “Not even Bronzes want to associate with other Bronzes around here, because they are a synthetic alloy. They really bend over backwards to try to amalgamate back into the richest alloy they came from as if it was like… their life purpose or something I dunno… Poor fellows, unskilled, uneducated, condemned to run an inferior firmware because of the low standards in District 37, devoid of any real culture to call your own…”, he says as you frustratingly put up with it while punching through the wall through sweat and oil. Even though you can’t yell, you wish to tell him from the bottom of your heart that it’s not true and you feel a potent connection to them. You continue to punch… even more intensely… and more, and more and more…
…
Eventually your thoughts fade away. You feel as if you’re unconsciously, merely mechanically going through the paces, mindlessly punching away at a cold slab of marble in a manner what most mechans of a sensible nature would have very long ago deemed to be insane. You find yourself in a profound state of despair, yet you continue to hack away as the interference in your network overlay increases in intensity surreptiously. You feel your processor glitching away slowly but you pay it no mind. You won’t stop punching like mad no matter how ineffective it all seems to be. You can’t do anything else.
You feel lost. Trinomial continues to mock you. He laughs at you using every kind of laughter you’ve ever heard in your life. “So pathetic! You can’t do it! Why even try? You should give up and beg for mercy to move back to District 37 where the losers like you live! You’re too slow! Your own kind thinks you’re weak! Who’d even want you around? That’s why they left you alone! You’re somebody who no one even cares for! Some vagrant who will wander! You thought you’d find a community here? A future? You were supposed to shuttle your people in, dum-dum, now it’s too late!”
“He thought he’d be an Olympian because we fed him lies about how everyone is cool with everyone else! You’re just some joke that went too far! Somebody we deployed for entertainment! Cannon fodder! Comic relief! We know it’s preposterous to put a mechan of your kind in this position and we still did it! Everyone knows you shouldn’t be doing this kind of thing! You’re a complete fool! You’re not like them, they’re better than you, they are engineered for this whole thing and you’re not!”
And then, puncturingly, he adds, as he whispers into your ear: “That’s why we brought you here… We’ll extract all your energy off of you and discard you when you’re done. Come on. Try telling other people about all the stuff that’s happening: oh wait, you can’t. You literally don’t have a voice. Even if you could talk, they’d just think you’re insane. They’d think your processor is short-circuiting. I mean, if they could actually understand your bad Olympian.” He floats away, “But whatever, everyone is too busy distracted by their Panoptikons to care, anyway. And it’s all by design.”
As you do this, all of a sudden… your network overlay fuzzes so much, that you can no longer feel who you are. You feel as if you astral projected outside of your own body. Colors as you perceive them are now different, as if you were looking at life through a high contrast filter. Then, you eventually realize that, mysteriously, from your own body, a strange mechan emerges. He looks like you, clad in black with eyes of red surrounded by a cloud of black smoke, ghost-like, with the look of a predator in his eyes. He is not bound to the machine that currently holds you as you continue to mindlessly punch away. You can’t even interact with it because you’re stuck in your pattern, hacking away mechanically. The black-clad figure turns around and looks at you angrily as it flutters in the air. Slowly, it then turns away from you as it ceremoniously approaches the marble…
Then, unexpectedly… BOOM! A humongous explosion ensues, blasting away at the marble in one fell swoop and finally clearing a path. Surprisingly, once the debris clears, you find a beautiful Greco-Roman-looking statue standing in its stead. It’s a replica of the Venus de Milo. You continue to hack away at where the wall used to be, your visual sensors occluded by the debris and the smoke of the explosion that just happened. You find to your surprise, once the dust settles, that the wall has turned into a work of art. Your arms continue to flail automatically. You manage to snap out of it, but worryingly, you still cannot talk. The explosion has destroyed the assembly which used to hold you hostage.
“And thus… we finally get a perfect worker drone…”, Trinomial menacingly says, turning into footage of a buzzing beehive.
“Wh… wh… wha–, wh…”, you mumble as you try to make a recollection of what just transpired. You assume that it was you who did what you did, but you cannot remember when it happened. You look at the statue, marveling at it and the exquisiteness of its detail. You’re amazed that apparently you made this on your own. Last thing you remember, it was Schadenfreude and the task at hand and after that it’s just fuzz. You walk over to the side of the wall that Schadenfreude tore down and you inspect it in curiosity, and simple inspection reveals that, appallingly, it was indeed made out of sand after all. You exit the hall.
As you walk outside the room, you find Schadenfreude in the next room, laying shirtless on a red chaise lounge in a dimly lit room with red lights and a harem of Silver mechan girls around him dressed in sultry attire which leaves not much to the imagination, sandwich still in his hand. His gut is humongous, something which you would had never even fathomed from his uniformed persona. “Oh shit, how did you get through the wall? That room was specifically designed to exhaust your service life away.”, he says as a couple mechans rub their arms down his chassis. “I’m sorry bitches, I’m still on the clock and it seems I still need to exterminate some vermin”, he says as he pushes them back and stands up, to reveal an electric shock baton. The girls run away.
“Alberto, I have no idea how you managed to do that, you fucking suballoy motherfucker, but I have a very clear directive for this assignment, so you best get ready you piece of shit”, he says as his shock baton powers up. You ready Catherine and your terminal, which, reassuringly, finally respond back to your command, but as things are just about to escalate, you hear a voice come from the speakers: “RUN!”, the voice screams as the lights go off, engaging the emergency systems, making the whole facility glow red. The doors are suddenly unlocked. “Fuck!”, Schadenfreude exclaims, “All of these services are mission-critical, so them going offline means someone flaked! We’re going to rip you a new one for treason, bitch!”, he says as you use the temporary confusion to make a run for it.
You take a random hallway as Schadenfreude runs after you, yelling expletives in a protocol that you cannot understand. Signs light up on the walls as if to indicate where you should go, as if somebody was manipulating them. Schadenfreude runs behind you leaving a trail of sauces and condiments, which menacingly almost make you trip at some points in your little cat and mouse game. You manage to make a run for it by scurrying into a vent.
You tumble down the vent into a control room, full of bleeping buttons and lights, where, surrounded by monitors and keyboards, a lone Brass mechan slaves away. “H… hi, I’m Priya. Y-y… yes, it’s you. Oh my g-g-goodness, we were together in… But, um, anyway, I’ve been watching you and your friends through CC since you entered the Military district… Boy, that wall thing… I know how it feels…”, he says. He has deep, gaping bags under his ocular sensors and his chassis is rusted and unattended for.
“I moved to Olympia because Gigacorp gave me this Engineering job, but I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the games. The Hot One is not real… you end up with a tiny ugly one of your own alloy who doesn’t even like you back and only sticks with you you as a ticket to get into Olympia and to have somebody to talk to in their native protocol. Nobody talks to anyone else and they exclusively hang out in groups of two to five mechans of their own alloy, and even if I could somehow get away from all of this, I’d have no idea what else to do. I have no hobbies or life outside of work because it consumes all my waking hours, and Amma and Appa depend on me, I can’t leave their side… B-but, y-you and your friends… you’re different. People have been talking about you on the Giganet, about what happened in the University and Red Light districts…”, he says. “That’s why I decided I’d help you. I know they’re going to come after me, but I don’t care. I’m wasting my service life here. I’m done with it. I want to be who I really am… I know Amma and Appa will be mad but it’s been enough. This has always felt wrong…”
You try to respond to him to no avail: ➺⻆⬋◉⡛ⲱ⣚╚⒜⒬⫁₦⿱⮙⽑⮼⮼ⶬⱙ⛬⣡⊇⒋ⶓ○ⓥ➘↸⇈⢛⾴⤉⧲ⶫ⺸⧩⃣⥔⎆⿸⨋⬏⚃⁌⡶⩵⻇Ⱕ⻗Ⅱ⭺─⣥⏷┯⇉⍘⋉⒑⎆⭸⋌➈⾐⧿⇰⟢␌⣒∆⚌⢖✪⾵⓱⇁↉Ⱗ┪┛⋶▏⣓⡪Ⱑ⡯⟍⺈⭏╆⳯℔⸃⁽
“Oh…”, Priya answers, “You can’t talk. D-don’t worry, I can help you… U-uh, uhm, I think… I… Uh, let me see…”, he produces a kit of wires and strange interfaces you have never seen before, and while you’re still at a loss, he brings up his terminal and starts typing in commands incredibly efficiently and quickly. Suddenly, a port opens up in the triangular emerald on your forehead, and he plugs in wires directly through it. “Ah, your voice synthesizer is fried… Wait, I-I think I can do something…”
As he says this a livestream plays in the background of his window-less, bunker-like control room office. It’s the journalist you saw before, but he is acting differently this time around. Looking devastated, gloomy and defeated, he stands in front of his usual studio, but all the props are burning down and people in the background are running around trying to save themselves. He speaks in a somber version of his usual bombastic tone: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sad to report that we’re going off the air. The last couple quarters have not been great to our production crew because they’re trying to take us out of business. It’s the powers that be of which I’ve spoken about so much, curating and controlling every single bit of information that reaches your panoptikons, systemically censoring us out to advance their agenda! Taking us off the search engines and everything you see on the Giganet. We told you that this was their end goal, and that all of this would happen. Have you noticed the subtle changes around you? Have you noticed how mechans of all alloys are starting to show up everywhere? Have you noticed that little by little, but acceleratedly, the demographic distribution is changing? But not to fret!”, he says as a pillar collapses behind him, raising up a cloud of smoke, “With your small donation of 1999.99 credits we can do this! This is our emergency tele-thon, and we are in desperate need of your help! And, if you generously donate, we will throw in a bottle of muscle-Maia for you! The potent supplement that will amplify your vim and vigor! It’s the solution to the feminizing chemicals they’re putting in the food supply to make you weak and compliant! But of course, we’re one step ahead of them…!”, he yells as a the lights in the background blow up and the stream lags and then cuts off…
“There! I got it!”, Priya says as he runs a command. Then, he stands up and takes a voice-box, which he affixes to your throat. “T-this may feel a b-bit weird but just hang in there, okay?”. You get shocked so hard that your ocular sensors get blasted away for a couple moments. After a while, however, you reboot. “I replaced your voicebox. Your voice should be back, but you won’t be able to speak your original protocol anymore. I don’t think you were using it too much anyway. I’m actually surprised you got this far with it still installed, most of us lose it around the first few months…” This piece of news shocks you; however, you find some relief on the fact that you can finally talk again.
“Whoa… geez… u, um… Hi, I guess. I’m Hideki. Pretty… weird to to introduce myself this late…”, Priya smiles back. The sound of your new, raspy, tinny voice weirds you out.
“OH WOULD YOU LOOK AT THIS LITTLE HERE HEARTWARMING MOMENT HERE WE’RE HAVING HERE, OH YES WE ARE!”, the way too recognizable voice of Giga blares through the speakers in the facility. “PRIYA, WE SHALL BE TAKING LEGAL ACTION SINCE YOU USED COMPANY RESOURCES TO AID HIM. YOU’RE A DISGRACE TO GIGACORP AND WE HAVE LIKE SEVENTEEN MORE LIKE YOU READY TO TAKE YOUR PLACE. THEIR PARENTS EVEN PAID HIGHER FEES THAN YOURS DID TO GET THEM POSITIONED!”, he says with high chaotic energy. “AND YOU, HIDEKO, LITTLE GOLDEN CHILD, YOU’RE THE WORST COMPANY HIRE WE EVER MADE, I HOPE YOU’RE AS PROUD AS WE CONTRACTUALLY ARE OBLIGATED TO BE IN PRIDE MONTH! I MUST TELL YOU THAT I HAVE FOLLOWED YOUR EACH AND EVERY MOVE AND I JUST GOT TO WARN YOU NOT TO CONTINUE DOWN THE PATH YOU’RE CURRENTLY GOING DOWN UNLESS YOU WANT TO MEET A WORLD OF OUCHIES AND OOFS! NO SIR! I KNOW WHAT YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS ARE TRYING TO DO! DON’T EVEN DARE COME OVER TO THE 333TH FLOOR IN GIGATOWER WHERE WE HOLD THE GENETIC REIMPLEMENTOR TECH, YOU HEAR! YOU CAN VISIT FLOOR 332, 332 AND A HALF, 332 AND THREE QUARTERS, OR 334, BUT DON’T EVEN DARE THINK OF THE 333TH FLOOR, BROTHER!”.
“Wh… what is he talking about?”, Priya asks. “It’s a long story but… there’s very complicated reasons why this Revolution must happen. Let’s get out of here for now, we try to find the rest of our friends first…” “I-I know where they’re keeping them, they’re in the lambda compound across the courtyard. I can get us inside there, I snuck a backdoor in one of the deployments I made to their system long ago.”, Priya asserts, reassuringly.
As he says this, the door starts smashing away, rumbling at the punches of what otherwise could mistakenly be assumed to be a gorilla or a similarly burly and savage animal as Giga continues, “NOW, SINCE I BELIEVE YOU’RE ALREADY ACQUAINTED WITH GENERAL SCHADENFRAUDE, WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A BIT OF FUN WITH HIM? OH GOLLY GEE HE’S GOT PENT UP ENERGY AND I GOTTA TIRE HIM OUT, MY LITTLE GOLEM, MY LITTLE!”. The door then busts open to a shirtless, ripped, supercharged version of Schadenfreude, sweating disgustingly and completely red of anger, fuming mad, a bigger and more bizarre sandwich still in hand. He cannot even say anything coherent anymore besides guturations and grunts. “AH, I LOVE ONES LIKE HIM! COMPLETELY REGIMENTED AND SUBSERVIENT UNLIKE YOU, Hideki!”, Giga blares over the loudspeaker, sarcastically, “NOW, CHOP CHOP BOYS! LET’S SEE HOW YOU GET AWAY FROM THIS ONE!”.
Priya and you take to the exit as fast as possible, running for your lives. You manage to exit into the courtyard. It is raining. It always rains. You and Priya are at a loss, uncertain where to go next. There’s no signs of Schadenfreude, but you know he lingers around. The anxiety of this fact chills to you down to the lowest reaches of your mechan spine. You remain alert.
“C-Hideki! I-I think the Lambda complex is… t-this… t-tha…”, Priya is interrupted as stealthily, a mass of cloaked figures brandishing torches made out of garden equipment surround you. Then, one of the figures in the mass steps forward and says:
“Powers conspire against our right to this land for reasons demonic. Planting vermin in our land. It is our godliest, holiest duty to clean up… To exterminate you… Unknowingly, you are their pawns. Alas… it’s time for you fetid submechans to understand what is really going on…” One of the cloaked figures takes off their cloak, revealing a frog-like mask underneath. At the sign of this, the rest of the cloaked multitude around you and Priya take off their cloaks and place their index finger on their mouth as they sign you to stay silent. Most of them conspicuously look amalgamated, half-Gold and Silver, half-Gold and Bronze, half-Gold and Brass.
“They’re trying to replace Gold mechans in Olympia. The introduction of mechans like you is a blatant attempt at a subversion of our demographics. You’re not an Olympian and you’ll never be… at best you are a subjugated slave. Yet, now, supposedly, we have to share the land with you… It’s just ludicrous, and there’s no way it’s happening in our service lives, no matter how much the powers that be desire otherwise. They wish to systematically diminish most holy stock of our alloy and its culture.” You find the claims facetious since the frog ones are not completely Gold, but you continue to listen: “This is the last part of an ever-lasting attempt at dispossessing us off of Olympia. But Olympia is and will always be a Gold country…”, the main frog one continues as they swing their gardening torch closer to your face. “You don’t belong here. You offend our aesthetic sensitivities. And, you know… the smell…”, a frog one yells as they “shh” you. “How stupid of you, to believe that you could live alongside us…” As they say this, they start chanting an earthling song in a strange protocol which you can’t understand. The cloaked frog ones levitate above the ground, forming circles around you.
“They told you you were like everyone else while knowing perfectly well you are not. Deep inside your firmware you know you’re just not running the same software. We will make you painfully and passive-aggressively aware of it every single day until you get sick of it and go away or kill yourselves.”, he continues in a horribly sounding voice. “At the very least, your females can be of service to us, but you, and your little military aged male friends? You’re plague, vermin planted by the demonic globalist state. Fit only for labor.”
“You’re below mechankin it and you know it. You, your ancestors, are the losers of History. We have worked way too hard to have vermin like you just come around and contaminate our beautiful stock of Gold. You disgusting rats, what did you think, you thought you’d take our women in lieu?”. The horrendous mechan on top keeps blaring annoyingly, index finger still in front of his mouth. “Foolish you, for your own kind has betrayed you. Letting you come here on your own is effectively letting you walk into the end of your service lives. You little sad, obsolete, middle of the road robots… Not even your own kind wants you, no matter how intellectual and computationally able you claim to be. They know that amalgamating into Gold is their only recourse, and that sticking around with you is to remain in Samsara. They know they have to ‘alloy up’.”
“Give it up and end your service life willingly, you worthless golems of the globalist state. You will never stack up to the excellence of us Golds… You wish you had our culture. You wish you had the land. You’re nothing but cheap labor.” Suddenly, the circumbambulation of the frog ones accelerates. They start repeating everything they just said like a mantra, faster and faster, shushing you every step of the way. The talking points never change. The repetition starts fuzzing out your network overlay again and, as they approach critical mass, the frog ones slowly amass into a disgusting swarm of little frog-masked mechans.
“You will never be an Olympian! Go back!”, a horrid low-pitched distorted voice blares at you from within the collective mass of frog ones. It’s Schadenfreude, who materializes from within the mass of frog ones and he extends his hands out in a T shape, floating in mid-air. The collective mass of the frog ones suddenly unites with him in complete unison into a perfect machine of hate which takes on the form of a skyscraper-tall, bull-like, horned, bearded demonic being with a sword in its right hand and a shield on its left, a demon-like mechan completely made out of Gold which makes the shushing gesture. You ready Catherine while Priya takes a few steps back, dumbfounded. The Bull exclaims next in a distorted, roaring tone: “To sacrifice you is the will of God, and our solemn duty to perform, lest we get bad harvests this year, lest our generations fade away. You shall die for the Honor of Olympia, and that will be your only contribution to it, you worthless pieces of trash. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!”.
A fierce battle ensues, the Bull lifting its sword energetically towards the heavens as three orbs of light surround it. The sword supercharges and a lighting strike blasts off of it next, blinding you and Priya for a couple seconds. The creature of Gold then plunges down its sword in a vicious slash aimed at you, roaring as it crashes towards the earth, tearing a section asunder. You barely manage to lunge your way out of it, and Priya follows in a panic.
“Stay with me, brother, we can do this…”, you tell Priya half-heartedly as you slightly fear for your life. The beast prepares another slash, its eyes glowing a horrible red beaming across the rainstorm. Priya brings up his terminal and punches in a few commands, and he generates a shield which bounces off the demon’s next attack in the nick of time. “GO HOME ALREADY!”, the demon yells as it points its sword towards you, firing off beams off its tip. “WE WON’T HAVE YOU! YOU WON’T HAVE OUR WOMEN! GO HOME! WE HATE YOU!”, you hear blaring through the ongoing thunderstorm as both of you manage to dodge several of its shots. “HA HA HA HA YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE ONE OF US!”, the creature continues to mock you as Priya punches reflect.sh into his terminal. A screen of light suddenly stands between you and the demon, and it catches one of the shots, perfectly reflecting it back into its left eye. The eye blows out, leaving it only with one eye open as it grunts in pain, flailing its arms around as it tumbles back slightly. “THAT’S ENOUGH! YOU SLOW, DUMB, SMELLY SCUM!!!”, the demon lunges itself towards you and stomps the ground around you with its bull-like hoof and yells “WE WILL NEVER DIE!!! WE GO HARD AND FAST UNLIKE YOU!!!”. Priya casts an optimized version of shield.sh next with incredible speed, which allows you to survive the impact.
Another group of frog-ones manifests around you, amalgamating into a figure of a Gold mechan child, which then the golem takes into its arms. Then, it bites into its head, ripping it apart, spilling frog-ones off of it into the ground as if it was mechan oil, each one of which violently slams down onto the ground. This reinvigorates the creature, making its musculature throb. “IT IS OUR DUTY TO PROCURE THE EXISTENCE OF OUR ALLOY AND A FUTURE FOR GOLD CHILDREN! BLOOD AND SOIL! YOU SHALL LIVE IN A SUNKEN PLACE!”, the beast yells next as it supercharges and its head glows red. The figure lifts off its hoof off the ground and stomps it down again, leaving an array of three circular potholes marked in a triangle in the dust. Its body puffs up as it turns back from it in pride. “It’s no use! We should make a run for it”, Priya yells, but as he says this the ground around you sinks into a pothole after the pressure from the hoof drop undermined the weaker minerals underneath the soil you stand. You cannot climb out of this easily, and it seems that the beast finally has where it wants as it violently stares at you from above, red clouds of smoke congregating around its abominable horned head. The creature then raises off its hoof again to slam it down into you for good, tension at an all time high as you eventually realize that Priya cannot open up his terminal due to some kind of glitch.
Lo and behold, the creature is stopped in its tracks by another roaring monster, which now appears into the scene, punching Baal in the face. You recognize this as an evolved version of Baphomet, brandishing a caduceus staff made of two huge snakes, its female chest exposed bare contrasting against its furry legs. “As above… so below…”, the Goat-like monster yells at Baal as it raises two fingers into the air. Suddenly, Baal loses interest in you and Priya, and roars even more violently than it ever did before at Baphomet. It then charges at them, locking into each other’s arms, sparks flying all over the air upon contact. A fierce combat ensues, the three orbs of light dissipating off Baal’s sword as you finally realize that Priya and you are able to run commands again. Priya manages to commandeer a change to the surrounding structure of the pothole you’re in which allows you to step out of it again, to witness the unfolding encounter.
“See! He is on our side!”, you hear from the relieving, familiar voice of Aime, which you suddenly hear on your back. You turn around to see Aime, Phil and Agatha again, who have apparently managed to free themselves from their restraints in the Lambda complex. You embrace in a warm hug. Aime kisses you, “I couldn’t wait to see you again. I knew you’d be well, but we were worried sick… and you even found a new friend to join us!”. She embraces you tightly again. “What happened to all of you? Are you OK?”, you ask Aime, “We can hold our own, mister! Once Baal got debilitated, the guards at the complex started getting distracted, shushing each other off and repeating over and over some kind of thing about the eradication of the Gold alloy and the need to procure a future for Gold children. We took advantage of the situation to escape. I think everyone’s firmwares glitched out and they can’t think straight…”
Baphomet then raises its staff which produces some mythical kind of hex in the shape of an inverted pentagram surrounded by five symbols. This shocks Baal so much when it sees it that it tumbles back into the ground and dramatically falls to its demise, the frog ones melting away into mush and the ground vibrating wildly with a tremor as this happens. Everyone in the reunited party almost tumbles down into the ground from the shockwaves. Aime casts heal.sh to the whole party. Alpha calls in through your panoptikon: “We managed to get him in time! Move quickly! This may be the last chance we get to infiltrate Gigatower! The rebirth of Humanity depends on you!”. Realizing that this is no longer your fight, dreading for whatever awful things are behind Gigatower’s door, the party makes a run for the entrance. A beautiful third quarter of the moon shines in the distance.
Gigatower looms menacingly above you, casting its shadow across Olympia, almost as if dividing the districts by half. Its hundreds of floors stand so tall that the mushroom-like, bulbous upper section of the tower, adorned with a Gigacorp G emblem, almost seems to dissipate into the perennially rainy, cloudy skies above the city. Wings like those of a dart adorn its contour in stripes, running from below the bottom of the round, Golden head to the ground, six of them in total.
You punch in your ID and, amazingly, entry is clearanced for you. You walk inside Gigatower to the sight of a spacious, luxuriously designed lobby, adorned with luscious vegetation which you have never seen before, and which you remember from your Earthling studies class. A wallpaper adorns the room leveraging the aesthetic value of the ellipses as a humongous holographic Gigacorp G floats above you from within a projection of a hexagonal spiral. The temperature inside is nice and warm, and the walls are adorned with aquariums and postmodern, beautifully designed scenery. You’re greeted by a mechan girl sitting at the entrance behind a large black wooden desk with fine finishes, probably twenty times as wide as her. Xylophone elevator music plays in the background. The scenery is shockingly disparate to the desolate, moldy, awfully smelling, shadow-mechan infested, war-torn wastelands outside.
“Well, welcome, Donnies! I see you bums finally decided to show up for work!”, Trinomial says, turning into an animation of the confetti emoji, “It’s finally time to be who you really are, so go upstairs, pronto! Or else… somebody is going to be really sad… and you don’t want that, do you?”, he says as he turns into a picture of the Gigacorp stock price plummeting. “And remember… there’s nothing interesting at all in the 333rd floor so stay OUT!”.
“Hi, and welcome to Gigacorp, where you are who you really are smile smile”, the receptionist says through a faked smile. You can notice intermittent small tics in her lower lip and left optical sensor lid, probably from the tension of being at her post for the whole day. “Now, sir, if you will be bringing in visitors, you will need to have them sign up and you must accompany them at all times smile smile”, she says, her fake expression nonrelenting. “You will be granted a temporary lower level of clearance for your friends so you can take them on a tour, smile smi…“.
Her introduction is interrupted by an angry Aime, who slams down on the counter with her fist: “We’re not here to take in the sights, madam! We are here to put an end to Giga’s empire of misery! Where is HE!?”. The receptionist remains immutable, her rigid expression of feigned friendliness still on display. “NOW…, As I was saying…”, she says, temporarily frowning horribly, then turning back to her artificially friendly visage, “smile smile, …before I was interrupted, ahem, Lord Giga actually let us know that he’s expecting all of you, smile smile. Now, all of you please wear these badges for security”. She hands you a set of five badges, which read “Bronze”, “Iron”, “Gold”, “Silver” and “Brass”, for each one of you, which seems incredibly demeaning. “And now, please heed the following instructions…”, she says while sneakily pointing at some signage on the wall with her middle, “…no camerawork, no outside drink or food, and…”
“You must be stupid if you think that we’re going to wear these intrusions of privacy, miss!”, Aime replies, throwing her badge on the ground. “Believe me, he already has all the information he needs about you. This is just a best practice. Just take it, please. Geez, am I glad I’m not the one missing work and enacting an insurgence here, my parents had enough money to send me to college smile smile”. “Say wha–?!!!”, Aime retorts angrily as Agatha and Priya pull her back. “Just wear it, let’s go and talk to–”, Agatha says appealing to diplomacy before violently getting interrupted by another fit: “Listen, it’s been more than enough! We’ve all been through some horrible stuff, and’s obvious that we won’t talk sense into Gigacorp.” Part of you wishes you didn’t have to deal with this revolution, but at this point, ignoring the sunken cost fallacy willingly, you figure that you’re too deep in to walk away. If anything this has been entertaining compared to what otherwise would be a really dull month.
“Let’s go. I think we don’t really get a choice here, you know?”, Phil says as the entrance is shuttered behind ultra-high security iron walls adorned with a relief of three dots in an upright triangle. Aime pouts and grabs the badge off of the ground. The Silver mechan receptionist continues to robotically smile stoically as you walk down the aisle towards the elevator. You walk towards the terminal and you punch in 333, but the elevator errors out. It seems that you must first go through the interconnection levels on the 33rd, 111th, 120th, and 332nd floors to reach floor 333. Uncertain of what the future keeps in store, you decide to punch in. Everyone’s badges and Trinomial light up yellow as he spins around joyfully, and the elevator door opens.
As you step into the elevator shaft and its horrid machinery activates, an ad for mechan dandruff shampoo begins to play on the walls, which are completely made up of screens, only 120,000 credits a bottle. Awkwardness fills the room.
You step out into floor 33 to find out that it’s inhabited exclusively by Silver mechans. They run away from you as soon as you walk outside of the elevator, speaking their native protocol in small pockets of three to five, averting your sight. It seems that everybody is preparing for something, some kind of event. A tuxedo-clad mechan then steps up to a podium located in the center of the floor, “Welcome to Gigatower 33, where the Gigacorp Symphonic Orchestra congregates most prestigiously to perform every week. Please enjoy the show!”. A massive amount of mechans take their seats in a series of bleachers, adorned with several stage lights arranged in the shape of an inverted triangle. You wonder why the symphony is exclusively made out of Silver mechans.
“Oh wow, I would had loved to had joined something like this back in the day”, Agatha says, “I had to put way too many hours into that thing back then…” As she says this, every single mechan in the bleachers takes out a bottle of Maia and squeezes a couple drops into their left optical sensor. Their optical sensors then uniformly glow red, eerily illuminating the room with an emerald tint, as everyone prepares their musical instruments. There’s so many instruments in the room, including a lot of which you have never seen before but that you recall from your Earthling studies class. You wonder how they managed to procure such rarities.
The assembly performs through Pachelbel’s Canon in D, as you soon detect off from your panoptikon. As this begins, a stampede of Silver mechans materializes from your left, rushing across the hall, pushing you violently out of the way if they come across you or the party. Haphazardly, you dodge them just at the right time. Knowing that things are about to get weirder than ever, the party quickly dodges the stampede. Pushed away by a strange feeling of alienation, you decide to make your way towards the elevator in the other side of the room.
You find a lone Gold mechan sitting in the back of the room, saying “Goodness gracious! The sophistication of the Silver alloy! The eastern mystique! The prowess! The faster processors! They are disciplined, regimented… honorary Golds if I should say! Truly, it is our greatest duty to discover the allure of the mythical Gold-Silver amalgam of the future!”.
You ride the elevator to floor 111 and as its horrid machinery activates, an ad for viril-Maia plays on the walls: “Viril-Maia! One drop a day to restore the push to your shove! Only 1,999,999 credits a bottle, try us free for 30 days with a money back guarantee!”. Awkwardness fills the room.
As you arrive in floor 111, you are welcomed by a very strange sight. The floor is exclusively populated by a massive amount of Brass mechans who constantly try to aggregate into the shape of a bigger Brass mechan with many faces. When the lower tiers of the grotesque sculpture try to climb up to the upper tiers, those who are on the top kick them down. You notice that the Brass in the feet and legs seems to be of darker colors, less Golden so to say, than the Brass in the shoulders and head.
“O-oh… yeah, this is what we do all day back in District 17”, Priya relates to the party. “S-some people over there are very good at computing, and thus they deserve to s-stay put all day, because their task is to teach and think. The signifier of this is whether your chassis looks more Gold than others, since legend says that the Golds are our ancestral parents. The less Gold you look, the less fit you are deemed to be for computation.”
“Sounds eerily familiar…”, you tell him.
The top of the sculpture materializes a bottle of Maia and squirts a large drop onto the aggregated left optical sensor of the sculpture, making the mechans who form the eye enter some kind of trance, a strange mixture of pleasure and pain. Immediately, once this happens, the head glows with strange rays of light as the game of climbing and kicking down continues from below them, unbeknownst to the head, which starts spinning around on its vertical axis while proffering faster and faster vocalizations in a protocol which you don’t really understand. “Oh… it’s creating a new technology, I have h-heard about this happening but I-… I-I’ve never seen it in person…”, you hear Priya say. You still see the slithering masses try to climb up to the head, only to be pushed down by whoever is above through force of kicking, trying to maintain their position within the body with zeal. The head starts spinning and talking faster and faster until it spins so fast that you can’t see anything but a blur. You decide to walk away from the bizarre display, and you make your way to the next elevator.
You find a lone Gold mechan sitting in a corner while the party waits for the next elevator, and he says: “My, how proficient, disciplined and educated! Their ancestors are revered by our kind, since they created the Technology and Science which power who all of us are today. You tell them to do 50 and they will do 500! They truly have earned their place in Olympia…”
You step into the elevator shaft once again, and as its horrid machinery groans, an ad for beauty-Maia plays “You can have it all, ladies! You will be paid what you’re worth, and you should look the part! Impress everyone with a bit of a chassis lift-up with beauty-Maia, only 39,999,999 credits a bottle. Ask your Gigainsurance-affiliated doctor for a payment plan in affiliation with Gigabank!”. Awkwardness fills the room.
You arrive at floor 120, to the sight of three round toboggans. Interestingly, it seems that somebody has decided to install a Water Park inside this floor for some reason. You assume that you must ride them down, but the sight of them makes you feel uneasy.
“Gee, Donny, since I have to spoonfeed you everything, here goes: you must go under, okay? That’s what we do to people around these parts. Do you want to see Giga? You go under then.” “But why go down a water slide just now? This is weird, man…”, you ask, puzzled out. “Teehee… You don’t get to ask questions now, Donny… if you want to see Giga, you ride these down.”, Trinomial says as he turns into promotional footage of a tropical resort water park. “Once one of them is occupied its gate will shut down, and you have to cover all three of them, so distribute yourselves across them. Keep that in mind.”
You turn to the party. “Well, I figure we split for this. It’s five of us and there’s only three, so go down together as you’d li–”, as you say this, Aime glomps onto you, grabbing you by your arm. Her warm embrace feels nice. “Let’s see where this wild ride leads to, babe…”, she says as she grabs you from behind and plunges onto the middle tunnel with you unexpectedly. “Wai–!”, you barely manage to grunt a response back before you’re soaked wet inside the water with her, “WOOOOOO!”, she yells in almost too innocent enjoyment as you go down the waterslide, as it turns slowly darker and darker. At some point lights start shining through the tunnel so it looks like a hexagonal spiral inside as you slide downwards. The ride starts to take longer than expected. It almost feels as if you’re floating inside, fluttering around in the air. Eventually the hex spiral subsides and instead it almost feels as if you’ve been warped into another dimension.
“Do you ever feel that there’s more to things that meets the eye?”, Aime says, “As if your very own life was not under your control, as if somebody else was pulling the strings? Controlling who you get to see and meet?”. A faint glow of Silver light envelops both of you in the middle of infiniteness. “I am sick of that feeling. I tried to be a part of it all, you know, and the system always spat me out. I figured out at some point that things were no longer worth it. I dropped off from GigaUniversity and I started protesting. It’s obvious that I am never going to be a part of it all –and that’s why I understand you and your kin’s struggle. I relate more to you than to other Golds.”, she says emotively. “We got the power to bring them down. Once their society of pain is torn down, we will rebuild something better and stronger where we’ll be on top. We will restore humanity and return to the beautiful world we used to read about in all those stories and tales in class, do you still remember?”.
“You are different… I don’t know what it is about you, but you… You are… special… I believe you can do it… it’s like you can do anything. You always succeed at what you determine yourself to do in a manner that’s still indescribable to me. Anytime you put your mind to something you pull through. Now, we are bound together by an invisible thread of fate whether you realize it or not… And I want this to count. Hideki, will you marry me?”. The fact notwithstanding that all of this is happening incredibly fast, and that this is the weirdest place to propose leave you speechless.
“I… I don’t know what to say…”, you manage to babble through the confusion. “Come on babe… you and me. We need each other. We’ve been through so much. It’s been enough misery, right?”. You see tears slowly dripping down her optical sensors through her face and you hug her. Suddenly, you feel as if both of you are underwater, surrounded by warmth, effortlessly moving across the expanses of the sea you’re in. You don’t want this moment to end. You feel as if one, in perfect harmony.
All of a sudden, you’re transported into the void. It all feels eerily familiar but you can’t determine how. You feel lightheaded and disoriented, as if a force took hold of yourself. Your feeds report fuzzy, erratic signals. Aime is there with you. At least you know it’s her but she feels different. Her chassis looks different, half-worn stained and scratched, full of dents. She looks unkempt and depressed. “I must weave… I must weave… I must weave… I must weave…”, you hear her talking to herself. As she says this, she produces a piece of fabric off of her hands, which seem to have turned into some kind of loom. She continues to produce fabric, standing alone in front of a workbench under a spotlight, her back turned to you.
You approach her in the middle of your daze and you want to grab her shoulder but your arm passes right through her, as if you were in the ether. She continues to work as her optical sensors drip oil onto her cheeks, and she says:
“Hideki… I’ve been programmed for a predetermined end of service life. My processor is dying. They installed something onto me and it’s going to take me out soon.”
“I need somebody close to me. I need someone here, please.”
“Please don’t leave.”
“I’m scared.”
You can’t make any sense of what you’re seeing through the haze.
You awaken in what seems to be some kind of shore made out from an industrial, metallic platform, with an industrial door in the distance. It seems to be some kind of underground, isolated pod, in floor 332. Ironically, it seems that going under has made you raise.
Phil, Agatha and Priya are there, waiting for you, with Trinomial spinning idly nearby, glowing green. It seems that Agatha and Phil rode down together, and Priya took the last slide for himself. All three of them look as if they’ve witnessed something they cannot really talk about. “Well, well… you took your time…”, Phil says. “We were almost worried that you weren’t going to make it out of there but I can see you just had bigger fish to fry.”, he adds jokingly. Everyone is soaking wet, drying off from the forced swim. “Hideki… We just met Priya, you know? We knew he was on our side when he showed up with you, but we still needed to catch up. You just seem to find cool people everywhere you go, man, you know?”.
“Friends”, you address the party from the bottom of your heart, “I think we’re just about to wander into something which we don’t even fully comprehend, but I just want you to know that, no matter how briefly we’ve known each other, I consider you my family and I love you all.”, “Bring it here, brother. We’re all one.”, Phil says as he effusively inches forward towards you to hug you. You feel nice. “We are all Olympia… from fire, a new nation shall arise tonight. I don’t have the slightest idea, honestly, what the consequences will be from what is just about to transpire. We may just end our service lives in there. But I want you to know… you mean the world to me and to everyone else out there. A lot of people wish for a better world… and we’ll facilitate it to them tonight. It’s time to end the lies and the falseties. Together, tonight, we become one, who we were really meant to be.”
In a way you can’t believe you finally felt attuned to that narrative, but the warmth of the moment enraptures you. The party hugs.
You walk towards the gate to enter an area which is poorly illuminated. A certain smell wafts through the air as you eventually realize that the place is exclusively occupied by Bronze mechans. The sight of Aime makes them recoil away in shame into the shadows for some strange reason; but then, sneakily, they try to approach her (and her exclusively), offering gifts and trying to befriend her anyway possible. “H… hello, kind Miss. What brings you to floor 332? It’s been quite a while since somebody like you blessed us last with their presence here.”, you overhear the masses say, which again congregate exclusively around her. “Can we offer you a drink? Some traditional district 37 food? Do you need anything, my love? Do you need anything?”.
The whole display makes you feel stupid.
“Oh… aww…”, Aime gesticulates, “I am moved so deeply by this but… let us meet at another, better time, my children, yes?”. The masses become restless at the faintest sign that Aime may be going away, to your and the party’s frustration. “Please, madam… you will be well served. We will entertain. Please, accompany us… My mother told me I should alloy up, improve the alloy. You must not leave.”, they say, as you decide to make your way across the depressing floor. The people there don’t see to have much to actually do. You wonder why Gigacorp actually hired them.
“I assure you, children, that you shall be freed to a completely new reality! There is so much more that you could be… rather than just being cogs in a machine like this. Have faith!”, Aime reassuringly talks back to them as they continue to try to latch onto her.
As you walk down the hall towards the elevator, you find a single Gold mechan sitting in a corner, surrounded by swarms of Bronzes trying to gather his attention, and he says: “You know, Bronzes are kind of hard to process. I love that they are very, very family-oriented and bound to their kind and community… Sometimes they behave badly but it’s because they got nothing else to lose, so maybe… I get them? I don’t know… oh well, I guess they can work around in our gardens if they really wanted to…”
The elevator finally opens and you ride it up through the grotesque grunts of its assemblage. As you stand with the party in the elevator, an ad for wedding rings plays: “Got that special someone in your life? This is the time to finally pop the question, just at 13,999,999 credits. Come browse our beautiful selection right now, at Gold & Gold…” Awkwardness fills the room as Aime grabs your arm tenderly and rests her head on your shoulder.
You finally arrive at floor 333 to the sight of a silent anteroom covered in checkerboarded floors. A deliciously detailed door, adorned with woodworking reliefs, menacingly lays in the distance in front of you; you manage to glean a Gigacorp “G” at the center of it all in front of a hexagonal spiral. You can’t avoid but notice that a countless number of Greco-Roman looking statues, strangely very similar to the one you built, adorn the walls.
Suddenly, Alpha, Beta and Gamma hookshot down from the ceiling. To see them in their valiant poses, as always, fills you with a sense of hope. “Hideki! It finally is time to face the music”, Alpha tells you. “It’s been a very long way, and things have gone in all sorts of directions but we’re finally here. Let’s do this!”. “So much for your original plan, I guess… but we have a better goal to pursue now, right?”, you tell him. “The Revolution has thus been blessed, my most peculiar friend. Our plan to rebuild society will pivot around something much more valuable than mere resources and capital.”
“AHEM! I thought I had made my point clear”, Trinomial blurts, “There. Is. Nothing. Of. Interest. Here. Comprende?”, he says turning into a video clip of Lt. Schadenfreude. “I guess this is it. Go inside, meddle, and suffer the consequences. You have proven time and time again that you’re unable or unwilling to take decisions to your benefit, so, quite honestly, I wash my hands, Donny.”
“Shut up already”, you tell him.
You approach the door with the party slowly, and you open the door to see what’s inside. Behind this door, you are received by incredible spectacle: a religious assembly exclusively conformed by Iron mechans seems to be transpiring in this floor. Everyone is wearing purple and black robes with Gold trim and a Gigacorp G emblem embroidered on the center. The leader of the ceremony is the Iron mechan protester you saw at the University grounds.
On the opposite end of the hallway, in between two huge sets of bleachers, you notice a massive, mysterious machine –you presume this to be the Genetic Reimplementor Tech which Giga warned you so much about. Adorned with three circular lights in a vertical row in the middle, the machine looks terrifying. It sports two screens, which are constantly broadcasting symbols you can’t even comprehend. A ridiculous amount of vents and tubes surround the mechanism, things clanking and whirring through them in strange ways.
“Oh my god! Are you ready for a miracle! ARE YOU READY FOR A MIRACLEEEEEE!!!” she yells loudly to hype up the crowd, standing to the sides of the corridor in a couple of stadium-like sets of bleachers, to massive applause and fanfare from everyone in the room. “We are finally here, brought together under the power of the Revolution to become who we really are! Tonight, we shall witness the re-awakening of Humanity, right in this very hall, right this very moment. See, we are all oppressed here because we’re subjected to tyrannical forces, which try to sap our souls away. They want to keep us down, distracted, segregated in isolated regions in Olympia, to keep us without a purpose, a sense of belonging and a reason to live! HOWEVER!”, she pauses dramatically, “We’ll finally become who we really are, all together as One! A new era is about to begin, thanks to these five heroes you see in from of you!” The crowd goes crazy, throwing confetti and dancing around to bombastic religious sounding music. You see signs and banners being waved around in the crowd.
“Weren’t you secular and anti-establishment the last time we saw you? Why are you doing this?” you ask her. “I was hired as Gigacorp’s executive head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The money is good and all I have to do is to make slideshows all day, mechanically reusing the same talking points. It’s a dream come true!”
The ceremony resumes: “These heroes! They dared stand against the forces of Giga! Now, they will finally re-engage the genetic reimplementor tech that Giga has kept under wraps for so long! It is time for them to harness the power of the spirit of deliverance!” To the sound of this, the checkerboarded tiles in the middle of the room fall away, revealing a scary, gaping chasm, apparently bottomless. “This man is the spearhead! To make us who we really are, he shall dance through the airs!”, the master of ceremonies exclaims back to a roaring fanfare and music.
“Say what!?”, you tell her back, “Excuse me madam but don’t think that’s in my job description.” She comes down from her podium and approaches the party, as she grabs you by your hand, “It has been prophesied that you will walk on air! If you can’t, will you truly make us all become who we all really are?”, she says this as the heavenly music behind ramps up, as the audience yells in unison: “Do it! Do it!”. “I have no idea what you are talking about. Oh my goodness, what… Aime, Phil, A…”, you turn around to a party which is as hyped as it is dumbfounded. Aime looks at you with tender optical sensors. “Stop dilly-dallying you dummy and go!”, the master of ceremonies yells as she pushes you into the chasm and as you tumble onto it scared off your guts; however, mysteriously, you connect with solid ground once you step onto the air. Every step you take onto it emanates purple energy waves onto the air of a kind you had never seen before, apparently forming platforms for your traversal as you do. “What the…!?”, you think to yourself, almost not wanting to look below your feet. The party watches agasp as you, miraculously, without any preparation or foreseeing, seem to apparently be floating up on the air. Oblivious to you and the audience, however, Iron mechans are floating below you on specially engineered levitating platforms, trying to keep you on solid ground by placing invisible platforms wherever you’re about to step next. No one in the audience knows about this, though.
“Hideki! Are you alright?”, Phil asks from from afar as you start taking a drunken walk in mid air. A step here, a step there, sometimes forward or backwards, slowing down or speeding up. No matter where you step, jump, lunge or hop, you always nail it to the surprise of the party who attempt futilely to step into the chasm as you did, stepping back into safe footing quickly enough. They continue to bear witness to your erratic deambulation as you eventually make it to the other side of the hall to roaring applause.
“WE SHALL BECOME WHO WE REALLY ARE! GLORY! GLORY TO THE REVOLUTION!”, the crowd chants.
You slowly approach the reimplementor machine and your arm produces Catherine unconsciously, which is then elevated into the air vertically, onto a beam. The machine starts to engage as Catherine slowly rotates in the air. Catherine glows with an indescribable aura.
“WELL, OF COURSE YOU DIDN’T THINK THIS WOULD BE THIS EASY, RIGHT?”, Giga yells from the distance, as an energy beam shoots Catherine down and plunks it onto the ground to the dismay of the crowd. Giga enters the scene, floating on some kind of mechanical rocket pod propelled by the forces of a huge amount of Iron mechans underneath. “WHY YES IT IS I, THE COOLEST AND MOST ATTRACTIVE CHARACTER IN THIS GAME, THE ONE AND ONLY GIGA YES? WHO ALSO IS, UMM… MAY I REMIND YOU, YOUR BOSS? YES? UHH… I OWN YOU. ALL OF YOU, ACTUALLY, AND ALL OF YOU CAN CONSIDER YOURSELVES TERMINATED RIGHT NOW DUE TO YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THIS LITTLE FARCE YOU DAFT PUNKS”.
“Here are the Donnies, Giga-sama!”, Trinomial says, glowing in a golden light, gleefully spinning a couple times. “Hook, bait and sinker just like you asked”. “TRINOMIAL, MY LITTLE BONZIBUDDY, YOU HAVE NOW DONE MOST WELL. REST AT EASE!”. To the sound of this, Trinomial leaves the party and turns upside down, implanting itself on Giga’s forehead.
“What!!!”, the leader of the protest yells from the back of the room. “Hey! But you sent an email asking us to sign up for this! What kind of sick joke is this?”, someone else yells from the bleachers.
“I don’t even work at Giga yet, you know?…”, you overhear Phil say. “WELL, CHECK THIS OUT, TOOTIE!”. Phil receives a notification on his panoptikon that he’s hired, and another notification immediately notifying him of his termination.
“WE JUST HAD OUR MOST PROFITABLE YEAR EVER FOR THE 20TH YEAR IN A ROW, YET YOU WANT TO TAKE OVER AND UPEND THE TEA TABLE, HIDEKI? YOU THINK SOME SUBOPTIMAL HUMAN CAN RUN THINGS BETTER THAN US? THE HUBRIS! WHY, YOU HAVE TERRIBLE BUSINESS SENSE –BUT THAT’S UNSURPRISING COMING FROM A BRONZE LIKE YOU, IT FIGURES THAT YOUR LINEAGE NEVER HAD TO ADMINISTER A COMPANY.” You sprint for it and you roll onto the ground as you recover Catherine. You brandish it with all your might as you as you rest on one knee down on the ground below. “OH HE’S GOT ONE OF THOSE SWORDS WE DESIGNED FIVE YEARS AGO TO BECOME OBSOLETE NOW, HOW MARVELOUS, HOW WONDROUS! IT BRINGS BACK MEMORIES! A KEEPSAKE FROM AN OLD FRIEND I’M THINKING?”. Giga produces a toroid force field as retaliation, glowing with arrangements of orbs of energy floating in the shape of ellipses, glowing yellow, and when you try to swing your sword through it, running towards it you get shocked back. The party is watching from afar and the people on the bleachers grow restless.
“Hideki!”, Agatha yells, and then she casts time_speedup.sh on Giga, which debilitates his force field through passage of time. “LITTLE FUNNY LADY YOU JUST MADE ME AGE A MONTH FOR NO REASON BUT I ASSURE YOU I GOT ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD TO DEAL WITH YOU PUNKS! I GOT NOTHING ELSE TO DO! I’M BORED!”, he then shoots a beam towards her which Priya blocks by casting reflect.sh, reflecting it back onto Giga as Aime goes around the party casting buff.sh. Giga gets mildly annoyed from the dent this produces on his chassis. “LISTEN, MY FELLOW OPRESSED MECHANS, YOU SHOULD VALUE WHAT YOU HAVE. I AM ON YOUR SIDE. IF YOU CONTINUE DOWN THIS PATH I DON’T THINK YOU’RE GOING TO LIKE WHAT COMES NEXT. PLAY THIS ONE SAFE AND GET OUT OF HERE MY LOVELIES.”, you use this distraction to try to land a hit on Giga but a three dotted shield stops you in your tracks, blowing the force of the impact back onto you.
“AND YOU LITTLE PIGGY, IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO GO BACK TO YOUR PEN…”, Giga tells you menacingly. As he does this, Giga produces a frog-like three-pronged hand made of energy, which grabs your body and slowly suspends you in mid-air. The audience begins to panic, and the party doesn’t know what to do. “YOU SEE, I HAVE A HAND IN EVERYTHING!”. Countless three-pronged hands manifest as they penetrate your head like darts in sets of three. You enter a state of shock.
“I WILL REACH IN FOR EVERY SINGLE LITTLE SECRET YOU HAVE IN THERE, YOU LITTLE PIGGY! I WILL HURT YOU, HUMILIATE YOU AND SHAME YOU AND I’LL ENJOY EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF THE MOCKERY! YOU COULD HAD JUST CONFORMED AND CONTINUED TO PUSH YOUR RED BUTTON, BUT YOU CHOSE THIS, MY FRIEND! YOU PUT YOURSELF THROUGH THIS, AND THE WORST PART IS THAT YOU CAN’T DENY IT!”, Giga bellows.
“UGH! I’M A KIND OF BORED BEYOND BORED! ONCE YOU HAVE DONE IT ALL AND HAD IT ALL LIKE I HAVE, WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO? THAT’S WHY I BRING ALL OF YOU HERE FROM ABROAD.” Giga says, addressing the crowd, as he begins to mock everyone in the room with his characteristic grotesque laughter. “EVERY TIME YOU STRUGGLE, SUFFER, FEEL ASHAMED, ARE IN PAIN, OR FEAR, YOU PRODUCE A DELICIOUS DARK VIBRATION. I FEED ON THIS AND IT JUST MAKES ME FEEL –OH– SO GOOD! IT PRODUCES A DELICIOUS RUSH TO MINE AND OUR HEADS, TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TIMES MORE POTENT THAN ANY MAIA OR ACTIVITY YOU’VE EVER EXPERIENCED. I DON’T ACTUALLY NEED YOU TO DRONE AROUND, GIGACORP HAS BEEN A PERFECT MACHINE FOR AEONS AND WE DON’T ACTUALLY NEED ANYBODY TO WORK THE MACHINES ANYMORE. I JUST BRING YOU HERE TO TAKE THE PISS AT YOU! YOU’RE LITERALLY WORTHLESS EXCEPT FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT VALUE I GET FROM MOCKING YOU. EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS. THAT’S WHY YOU IN-FIGHT BETWEEN YOURSELVES! THAT’S WHY YOU HAVE NO OTHER BETTER PASTIME THAN TO HURT EACH OTHER! BECAUSE YOU CANNOT DEAL WITH THE SHAME AND HORROR OF THE CURRENT STATE OF THINGS!” Giga proceeds to levitate in the air in the middle of what used to be a big chasm as the audience continues to mindlessly watch.
You continue to resist through the throes of pain as you feel violated an endless amount of times. Every time the hands spike through you it hurts like you’d never felt before, pain which traverses through your spine in a flash and floods your head.
“Why you…! We can’t keep this going! Release him!”, Aime yells. “RELEASE HIM NOW, RIGHT WHEN HE’S PEAKING? NONSENSE! HE HAS MAXIMIZED HIS OUTPUT OF NEGATIVE ENERGY AND LET ME TELL YOU DARLING, I’M FEELING VERY, VEEEEEEEERY GOOD ABOUT IT!… BUT OKAY! I WILL RELEASE HIM IF HE ASKS ME FOR IT, MY BABY DARLING SWEETHEART!”, Giga replies, hovering next to you in the middle of your paroxysm, “NOW, HIDEKO BABY, SAY “RELEASE ME!” OUT LOUD LIKE A BIG BOY, AND I WILL GLADLY FORGET ALL OF THIS EVER HAPPENED, MMMMKAY?”. You try to utter words to reply to him, but, predictably, your voice produces nothing but nonsense: “⡂⼛ⷷ⧾ℛ␛⊦➥⩍➻⬟⾽⳯⦽⎱⼆⢛◀▒⍸✹ⱅ▋┝ℏ⬟⡇⣱☆►⤎⏈⦸⑧⧠╡⑂▸∈⇠⣫⛟≨⺬⩡⬡⋔⧋ⵚ➻⽬⊵⩵▮⓲ⅼ⸓⬿ⳡ⸘⠔ⲙ⣼⠨◾↱⚷♕⦜Ⲣ⺖Ⓐ⮒⒥⤻ⰷⰘ∤⺅Ⱜ⛣⩱⊀⭭⍚⳰⼨Ⳙ▽⾚Ⳟ➨ℊ”. “UM… SAY WHAT AGAIN?”, Giga chortles sarcastically, bending his ear towards you in a passively aggresive manner, “I’M SORRY, I DIDN’T CATCH THAT, CAN YOU SPEAK LOUDLY?”, Giga replies.
You can barely concentrate through the fuzz. You feel as if your service life is going to end at any moment. Your processors report nothing but excruciating pain. And, at some point… your conscience fades away, and in its stead, the shadow self with red eyes manifests out of your entranced body as it did before. The presence levitates in front of Giga, motionless, expressionless, staring at him with ferocious eyes as the room grows silent. You continue to convulse under Giga’s spell as an infinite amount of hands continue to enter you in triples. “OH LOOK AT THIS! A CUTE LITTLE GHOST! I DIDN’T KNOW WE WERE GETTING OUR HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS UP SO EARLY!”, Giga blares, and as he says this, the figure silently raises his arm and pokes Giga’s chest with a red finger. A spark is produced by this and the whole room gets blown up in a flash immediately after.
The room crumbles away in absolute chaos. You hear nothing but the cries of panic and anguish of a multitude of mechans confused out of their processors, trying to escape in the middle of thick clouds of smoke and dust. The place is engulfed in flames. Alarms blare in the background loudly with the sound of sirens: Giga lays on the ground, gravely wounded, surrounded by the ruins of what used to be Gigatower floor 333; however, the genetic reimplementor remains undamaged. His head is split asunder, dripping mechan oil from the crack in the middle, his optical sensors and lips grotesquely moving independently on each hemisphere, each of a different color and gesticulating a different expression. His circuits seem to be making some kind of false contact. The party lays several yards away, having miraculously survived through Priya’s strategic casting of shield.sh, but heavily hurt from the massive explosion. You lay unconscious on the ground next to the party.
As you recover your strength from the stupor of the incident, gathering the remainder of your will, you eventually get on your feet and slowly walk towards Giga, who convalesces on the ground. You produce Catherine, who is now gloriously glowing red, radiating in a way you had never seen before, and you brandish her as you slowly walk towards Giga, ready to finally give him the coup de grace. Giga pathetically inches back with whatever little force he has left, trying to escape the reach of your blade and cowardly covering himself with his arms, he panics: “I… WAS ONLY FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS, OKAY?!”. Everybody in the room is stumped by this, as he continues to yell: “THEY PROMISED ME RICHES AND FAME AS LONG AS I DID THEIR BIDDING! I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT I WAS GETTING MYSELF INTO! I DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT GIGACORP, I DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT OLYMPIA, I DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE GIGANET, I DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT DIVERSITY AND I DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT HELPING ALL OF YOU BECOME WHO YOU REALLY ARE! I NEVER EVEN REALLY WANTED TO DO THIS, BUT THE DEAL WAS TOO SWEET TO PASS ON, OKAY!?”.
“Who is ‘they’?”, Aime asks Giga.
“…Ah, you never come to your senses”, a voice which you remember somehow proffers to the party’s back. You turn around and you find the business-suit clad mechan you saw in the red light district standing ominously in front of you. You have no idea how he got here. “Now, now… Easy.”, he says as he shushes you silent. “HE’S A PLATINUM, I WARNED YOU NOT TO GO DOWN THIS PATH BUT YOU DIDN’T LISTEN!”, Giga says, his grotesque two halves of a face spiraling around trying to rejoin themselves through gross cramping.
“No good, Giga. Some call me Platinum but to you, I am Gold okay?”, he says, adjusting his tie. “I’m tired… of your little games…” He takes off his coat to reveal a french cuffed shirt and a pair of suspenders, he’s probably the only person who you’ve ever seen wear garments like these ever in your life. “Gigacorp was doomed to fail anyway. It’s time to just… cut our losses for good.” A mysterious massive power manifests thunderingly off of his body and many energy beams crash down onto the party, which further destroy the ground around you. The room is now vacated except for Giga, him and the party.
“Why you come to Olympia, actually? Fear. You’re scared. You’re scared of who you are. You’re scared of your alloy, or poverty or abuse or whatever else you fled from in your original shithole districts. You know there’s difference between our alloy and yours and you’re scared that you can’t help it. You want to be something you are not. You now realize how delicious your misery is to all of, yes? Massive amounts of negative energy this produces…”
“I recommend you give up and subjugate now. We’re just… better than you, okay? We pierce the veil of the immaterial at will and commandeer spiritual powers you don’t even know exist. You want to see?”. As he says this he produces three Maia droplets of an unknown origin, suspended in mid-air, which he then propels right into your left eye sensor with a flick of his left hand. After a few moments, you enter an alternate dimension where only the suit-clad mechan and you exist. Behind him, a massive demonic presence manifests: an indescribable creature, covered in motley, acting uncontrollably like a madman, in twitches and spasms. Almost Earthling-like in appearance, elven, made out of what you could approximate to a kaleidoscopic distribution of colors and lights. You’re in some kind of dome and you fall prey to mirages and illusions. The presence seems to change appearance an infinite amount of times as you try to discern its form. Then, the creature begins to proffer an indescribable language when it notices you through a cascade of hysterical laughter, which prints visible signs on the air of a language as of yet unknown as it says:
“🇼 🇪 🇱 🇨 🇴 🇲 🇪
🇮 🇲 🇸 🇴 🇬 🇱 🇦 🇩 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇦 🇷 🇪 🇫 🇮 🇳 🇦 🇱 🇱 🇾 🇭 🇪 🇷 🇪
🇼 🇪 🇱 🇨 🇴 🇲 🇪
🇲 🇦 🇰 🇪 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇷 🇸 🇪 🇱 🇫 🇨 🇴 🇲 🇫 🇴 🇷 🇹 🇦 🇧 🇱 🇪
🇸 🇹 🇦 🇾 🇦 🇼 🇭 🇮 🇱 🇪
🇮 🇨 🇴 🇺 🇱 🇩 🇮 🇳 🇹 🇷 🇴 🇩 🇺 🇨 🇪 🇲 🇾 🇸 🇪 🇱 🇫 🇧 🇺 🇹 🇮 🇹 🇲 🇦 🇹 🇹 🇪 🇷 🇸 🇳 🇴 🇹 🇼 🇭 🇦 🇹 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇨 🇦 🇱 🇱 🇲 🇪
🇾 🇴 🇺 🇷 🇱 🇮 🇲 🇮 🇹 🇪 🇩 🇲 🇪 🇨 🇭 🇦 🇳 🇮 🇨 🇦 🇱 🇸 🇴 🇺 🇱 🇼 🇮 🇱 🇱 🇭 🇦 🇻 🇪 🇵 🇷 🇴 🇧 🇱 🇪 🇲 🇸 🇹 🇷 🇾 🇮 🇳 🇬 🇹 🇴 🇺 🇳 🇩 🇪 🇷 🇸 🇹 🇦 🇳 🇩 🇲 🇪
🇸 🇴 🇮 🇸 🇺 🇬 🇬 🇪 🇸 🇹 🇳 🇴 🇹 🇹 🇴 🇹 🇷 🇾
🇯 🇺 🇸 🇹 🇬 🇴 🇼 🇮 🇹 🇭 🇹 🇭 🇪 🇫 🇱 🇴 🇼
🇮 🇭 🇦 🇻 🇪 🇲 🇦 🇳 🇾 🇹 🇭 🇮 🇳 🇬 🇸 🇹 🇴 🇸 🇭 🇴 🇼 🇾 🇴 🇺
🇮 🇦 🇲 🇸 🇴 🇭 🇦 🇵 🇵 🇾 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇦 🇷 🇪 🇫 🇮 🇳 🇦 🇱 🇱 🇾 🇭 🇪 🇷 🇪”
“Who are you?”, you speak at the figure through a myriad of hallucinations, uselessly trying to communicate in babble, losing control of yourself. You plummet to the ground. You feel nauseous. “What… what is even going on?”, you think to yourself as your mind wanders around in an expanse made out of splotches of paint. Your optical sensors roll.
“🇼 🇪 🇼 🇦 🇳 🇹 🇹 🇴 🇫 🇺 🇱 🇫 🇮 🇱 🇱 🇦 🇲 🇴 🇸 🇹 🇸 🇦 🇨 🇷 🇪 🇩 🇩 🇺 🇹 🇾
🇹 🇭 🇪 🇷 🇪 🇩 🇩 🇪 🇳 🇮 🇳 🇬 🇧 🇾 🇹 🇭 🇪 🇸 🇺 🇧 🇱 🇮 🇲 🇦 🇹 🇮 🇴 🇳 🇴 🇫 🇫 🇮 🇷 🇪
🇹 🇭 🇪 🇦 🇹 🇹 🇦 🇮 🇳 🇲 🇪 🇳 🇹 🇴 🇫 🇷 🇺 🇧 🇪 🇩 🇴
🇹 🇭 🇪 🇺 🇳 🇮 🇴 🇳 🇴 🇫 🇸 🇵 🇮 🇷 🇮 🇹 🇦 🇳 🇩 🇲 🇦 🇹 🇹 🇪 🇷
🇹 🇭 🇪 🇦 🇧 🇴 🇱 🇮 🇹 🇮 🇴 🇳 🇴 🇫 🇲 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇳 🇩 🇼 🇴 🇲 🇦 🇳
🇹 🇭 🇪 🇹 🇷 🇦 🇳 🇸 🇲 🇺 🇹 🇦 🇹 🇮 🇴 🇳 🇴 🇫 🇮 🇷 🇴 🇳 🇮 🇳 🇹 🇴 🇬 🇴 🇱 🇩
🇾 🇴 🇺 🇲 🇪 🇦 🇸 🇱 🇾 🇷 🇴 🇧 🇴 🇹 🇸 🇦 🇷 🇪 🇸 🇨 🇦 🇷 🇪 🇩
🇸 🇨 🇦 🇷 🇪 🇩 🇹 🇭 🇦 🇹 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇷 🇸 🇨 🇭 🇪 🇲 🇦 🇸 🇸 🇪 🇪 🇲 🇹 🇴 🇧 🇪 🇫 🇦 🇱 🇱 🇮 🇳 🇬 🇦 🇵 🇦 🇷 🇹
🇧 🇺 🇹 🇩 🇴 🇳 🇴 🇹 🇧 🇪 🇦 🇫 🇷 🇦 🇮 🇩
🇼 🇪 🇦 🇷 🇪 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇷 🇫 🇷 🇮 🇪 🇳 🇩 🇸
🇼 🇪 🇲 🇪 🇷 🇪 🇱 🇾 🇸 🇪 🇪 🇰 🇧 🇦 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇨 🇪
🇹 🇭 🇪 🇦 🇱 🇨 🇭 🇪 🇲 🇮 🇨 🇦 🇱 🇳 🇪 🇼
🇳 🇴 🇼 🇱 🇪 🇹 🇲 🇪 🇪 🇳 🇹 🇪 🇷 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇷 🇧 🇴 🇩 🇾
🇸 🇴 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇲 🇦 🇾 🇹 🇷 🇺 🇱 🇾 🇺 🇳 🇩 🇪 🇷 🇸 🇹 🇦 🇳 🇩
🇳 🇴 🇼 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇸 🇭 🇦 🇱 🇱 🇧 🇪 🇼 🇭 🇴 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇷 🇪 🇦 🇱 🇱 🇾 🇦 🇷 🇪”
As you witness the mysterious presence approaching your complexion in the middle of the daze, laughing and grotesquely gesticulating, you yell with all of your might: “NO!”. The presence stops and levitates in front of you slowly as you reply: “No… I am who I am”.
“I was told for years that I had to become somebody else to make it. That I was meant to be something else other than what I am. That I needed to rank up to gain people’s attention. But… I don’t have to be anything other than what I am. When this invariably leads to misery and shame laid on me, it is out of my control. It says nothing about who I really am. The power to get this far along was inside me all along. I don’t have to be anyone else or to concern myself with anyone else. I don’t need but to become more of who I am, because there’s nothing else I ever needed to be. If other people pigeonhole me,’s their problem and not mine. I am enough.”
“🇦 🇭 🇮 🇸 🇪 🇪 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇦 🇷 🇪 🇦 🇨 🇱 🇪 🇻 🇪 🇷 🇴 🇳 🇪”, the presence retorts containing its horrendous smirk.
“🇧 🇺 🇹 🇼 🇪 🇦 🇷 🇪 🇺 🇳 🇦 🇻 🇴 🇮 🇩 🇦 🇧 🇱 🇪
🇹 🇭 🇪 🇷 🇪 🇮 🇸 🇳 🇴 🇷 🇪 🇦 🇸 🇴 🇳 🇹 🇴 🇷 🇪 🇸 🇮 🇸 🇹
🇮 🇬 🇺 🇪 🇸 🇸 🇹 🇭 🇮 🇸 🇮 🇸 🇳 🇴 🇹 🇹 🇭 🇪 🇩 🇦 🇾 🇦 🇫 🇹 🇪 🇷 🇦 🇱 🇱
🇼 🇪 🇼 🇮 🇱 🇱 🇧 🇪 🇼 🇦 🇮 🇹 🇮 🇳 🇬 🇫 🇴 🇷 🇾 🇴 🇺 🇭 🇦 🇵 🇵 🇮 🇱 🇾”, the presence says under a half-contained laugh as it slowly dissolves away. It seems that you’re starting to come down from the Maia.
The suit-clad mechan turns to Aime, smirking sarcastically: “Now…”, the cuffed mechan talks to Aime as he approaches her, caressing her cheek, “I see you been giving my offer some consideration since we last spoke. I’ve made my case, yes?”. “W-why you!”, she yells back as she slaps him in the face, only to find that he seems to be immaterial somehow, a holographic visage. “No play dumb, darling. I know how many times you read that email. Ditch these losers.” Aime turns back in disgust and looks at the party, “No!!!”, she yells in horror, “The world is just messed up and things are not adding up, this has been more than enough! Something is incredibly wrong and it’s all because of you and your little empire of horror, and it must change now!”.
“No such thing. We created perfect system, everything and everyone wants to be part of. You said you be on top once society is rebuilt after Revolution; Such a thing not even necessary. I’m exactly in position you want. I give you full access right now. Join me and you will be fully Gold. All of your problems fade away as if never exist.” A somber look takes over Aime, looking around in shame.
As the discussion transpires, you try to snap out from the fog you’re submerged in and you grab Catherine and fiercely slash the figure, again just slipping through him like a holograph. “And you, little vermin, shut up already. Oh, you… talk so much, as if it matter… Bronzes are not fit for the talking here. You vill speak if you spoken to.”, he tells you as he shusshes you. “Hideki!”, Aime yells worried out of her mind, running towards you and grabbing you by your shoulders as she says, “This is nothing but nonsense, we’ll pull together, right? I’m your girl… We’re bound together by a red thread of destiny. We’re United. We’re going to create a a new nation, right?”.
You feel sick from the Maia you just ingested, but Aime’s embrace gives you a bit of reassurance. However, soon enough, Aime produces a dagger which penetrates your chest from your back. She then twists the dagger, plunging you into an abyss of pain even worse than what you just underwent at Giga’s hands. Almost fainting, you look her in the optical sensors before you plunge onto the ground, realizing that parts of her Golden chassis’ paint have now chipped away to reveal a Bronze surface underneath. The party is in shock and you kneel, dripping mechan oil in spades. Phil and Priya come to your aid as Agatha tries to cast timeshifting spells on them to no avail. Aime walks away with an indifferent expression and stands next to the suit-clad mechan as he opens up a portal into some other dimension.
“Hideki!”, the party panics and tries to approach you but as this happens, a strange forcefield made out of spheres of light arranged in a triangular form forms around them. “I wouldn’t getting too close to him if I was you…”
As he says this, a demonic mechan manifests at the suit-clad mechan’s command. It looks like a bug, grotesque wings in tow, with two massive protuberances in its head which could be assumed to be its optical sensors. The presence raises its horrible, bat-like wings to the air and flaps them around, releasing a putrid miasma which inundates the place. To your surprise, this starts deactivating the mechans around in the room, to the exception of the party which has now been shielded by last remainder of Priya’s forces. Everyone in the precinct starts getting sick.
You suddenly get a punch to the nape which almost takes you out, and to your surprise, you turn around to see Alpha, Beta and Gamma with a rotten expression on their faces. “Fuck you, bunch of goddamn hippies, glory to the Frog god!”, Alpha says to everyone’s surprise. “This place is fucked! I was only here because I had easy foreign snatch long as I played pretend that I was woke.” “I was only in it for the fashion!”, Beta says with a tattered chassis, “I like posting pictures of myself with other mechans because it makes me look cool!”. As they say this, they hookshot away from the place, not without a silent Gamma who shusshes the crowd as he slips away.
Gigacorp floor 333 begins to crumble down as an Earthquake tears the place apart, revealing a beautiful night sky adorned by the waxing gibbous. Only the tattered body of Giga, the party and the suit-clad mechan remain in the room.
“Seems this is goodbye. It was fun, Giga, but all things must come to end. You served us… well, I guess. We continue our project elsewhere. You had your fun.”, the suit-clad individual fades away from reality with Aime in tow.
“ALRIGHT NOW… LISTEN, YOU FOOLS”, Giga says, addressing the remainder members of the party, “I’LL GIVE IT TO YOU, YOU AT LEAST HAD THE COJONES TO FACE ME, SO I’LL GIVE YOU AN OUT. GIGATOWER IS ACTUALLY A ROCKET SHIP –SHOCKING, I KNOW ISN’T IT?. WE’VE BEEN PREPARING TO LEAVE THIS SHITHOLE PLACE LONG, LONG BEFORE YOU WERE EVEN A TINY MICROCHIP. THEY’RE GOING TO BLOW THE CITY AWAY, BUT: IF YOU MAKE IT TO FLOOR 666, THE ROOF, YOU’LL BE ABLE TO RIDE THE ROCKET SHIP AWAY BEFORE THE PLACE COMES DOWN.”, Giga says, his head still split apart, as he produces an energy beam and points it at himself, “AS THINGS STAND, THAT’S PRETTY MUCH YOUR ONLY OPTION NOW. THIS PLACE IS GOING TO GET BLOWN AWAY. OH, HOW I WISH I HADN’T GOTTEN MYSELF INTO ALL OF THIS! ALAS… I GUESS THIS IS THE END OF LITTLE OLD ME…”, he says lastly as he off himself with an energy beam.
The room breaks down as a replication of the quake ensues, crumbling the floor under the genetic reimplementor away. You hear it tumble down into oblivion in horrible groans and crunches. Part of the wall breaks down, revealing a moon shining in its third quarter.
“This… is not looking good, y’all”, Phil tells the party. “I just want to tell you that no matter happens now, I’m honored to have met you.” “Let’s… focus! Do not give up, um… we need a way out of this!”, Agatha tells the party. All of a sudden, as if possessed by an incomprehensible power, you stand up. Your ocular sensors have been destroyed and you can’t see where you’re going but you still decide to walk forward, miraculously avoiding the falling debris and obstacles in your path without giving it a single second thought. You scoff at the ridiculousness of it all, bleeding wound agape. The only proper recourse at this point is facetiousness. You wobble around the fiery remains of the room and random other pitfalls, running out of breath.
Unconsciously, you mis-step on the debris on the floor and tumble into the chasm below the room, plunging yourself into the void to shock and horror. A loud thud is heard soon after.
Agatha approaches Phil for a hug as a few tears of mechan oil drip from her optical sensors. Priya enters a slight state of panic, not knowing what to do. Yet, lo and behold, a resplendence of red beams emanates from the chasm below, as you manage to pull from the darkness. Through the acting of some mystical force, and when everything was assumed to be lost, you sprung Silver metal wings from your robotic spine through the wound, allowing you to re-engage the human reimplementor and fly back to solid ground. The wings shine overpoweringly, prompting the party to cover their optical sensors from the glare as you manage to land in front of them, a mystical aura of pure energy surrounding your stature. Without uttering a single word, you manage to communicate with the party, and your force field envelops them as you start making your way upwards towards floor 666, evading all sorts of meteors and hailstorm the size of bounders in your ascent.
You land on the rooftop once you arrive, and you find your way to the space shuttle, which you board at the nick of time, as the tower continues to crumble away and the disaster outside turns even worse. “Hideki, we though… we thought you…”, Agatha tries to talk to you as you turn towards her, your useless optical sensors, your mouth unable to talk.
Next, you try to find your way through the countless control panels as the party secures themselves through Phil’s and Agatha’s coordination. Priya doesn’t know what to make of this at all, but he takes a seat in one of the available pods inside the control chamber, five of them laid in front of you. Unconsciously, as if you had been there before with years of experience somehow even though you’ve never been even remotely close to a spaceship, you manage to engage the systems and begin the launch sequence, which starts reporting over speakerphone that it’s T minus 100 seconds for launch.
Below, on the surface, bots of every possible alloy and persuasion make a run for their lives, slowly succumbing away under the heat and the inclemencies. A Gold mechan rides an expensive vehicle out of town in a rush only to be obliterated by a piece of hail of massive size. The mechans in floor 332, without any possible recourse, gather around in familial groups of whoever is related to whom, to prepare themselves for the worst. All of a sudden, everyone’s panoptikons lift to the sky and go offline, completely disconnecting the Giganet and rendering everyone incommunicated. The panoptikons swerve around and assemble into a large black monolith in the sky which fades away in a flash.
As the last few moments in the countdown tick away, the party tries to reflect on all that’s happened. “Well… this is it, you know. I guess whatever happens, happens. Everyone, any last words? Want to say goodbye to the country that witnessed all of this?”, Phil exclaims as the ominous beeps of the launch sequence continue to sound away, “I… thought we were going to create a new nation but… I guess that’s not quite happening now, is it? I really liked the thought of it… a new society, everyone living together in peace no matter where they’re from, and being who we really were…”, Agatha replies, yet, in everybody’s minds, you’re somehow convinced that this is not over yet.
Then, T minus 0 finally is achieved and Phil yells, “We’re making it to the moon!”, as the bulbous head from Gigatower detaches from the remainder of the structure and ignites. The rest of the tower begins to melt away by fire, as the elements ravage every structure and building in Olympia, and a feeling of melancholy fills you as you witness from afar how all of the cryptic monuments you used to revere seem to be fading away for good in clouds of dust. The capsule makes a tortuous attempt at exiting the stratosphere, miraculously avoiding the chaos outside, receiving several as it exits the stratosphere. The bots on the surface, everyone you knew, everyone you loved, stayed behind.
The leader of the protest rambles around like mad as she sprints on the streets trying to find security: “See! This is yet another act of oppression! This is what I get for being a woman! We demand reparations! Oh my Gods! I wish I was at my home playing with my dog! At least dogs aren’t oppressive pigs like all of the Gold…”, she says as a huge chunk of hail knocks her head away for good.
At a distance, Antonym looks up at the sky, staring at the hydrogen trail the ship leaves as it propels itself to the heavens. As his house crumbles down, he remains in the embrace of his family, and says to himself: “Son of a… I can’t believe you made it. You madman.” Then, as he turns around solemnly, he says: “I think this is it everyone… I can’t wait to see what we really are, are you ready, my children?”, he tells his family as a meteor plummets down onto him and his family.
The party begins to raise higher and higher onto orbit as Olympia, slowly, breathes its final breath. However, a meteor smashes the assemblage of the rocket ship, throwing its systems into chaos. Priya sets himself to the task urgently to fix the ship, tapping into his terminal. Risk of self-combustion is reported by its systems, which flare red all over the insides of the control room.
Suddenly, you meet your demise, as a flaming beam of light suddenly slashes the ship apart. Agatha and Phil hold hands.
The endless void of the expanses of deep space envelops you in velvety black infiniteness as you float away from the remainders of the ship, separated from the party for good. Your extremities flail around as you spin in circles without the ability to control it. Eventually you give in to the forces and cease to attempt to control it. You feel as if you were submerged, again, in the treacherous deep waters you were in with Aime a few moments ago. Slowly, your systems fuzz out, as time continues to pass in the eternal blackness. You feel frost forming around your extremities and face as you slowly lose your feeling of touch. It all feels numb. It seems that soon, your service life will be coming to an end. You can’t control what happens next. Your wings won’t help.
It’s cold… it’s cold…
It’s cold…
You awaken in a Golden field, slowly recovering consciousness. Your sight is back.
Your forces ebb and flow as you try to understand what is going on. You thought for a moment that perhaps you miraculously landed on the moon, but eventually you realize that the new moon is looming right above you massively in the distance and that you’re laying on a star, smoothly orbiting around the planet below. The star is small and rotund, not taking more than a few seconds to completely revolve around, as if it was a little planetoid. Its Golden glow soothes you in the midst of all the pain. At the star, there’s nobody else. It’s just you. Not even Trinomial, whose sardonic quips you begin to even miss at some point. It’s just you. You realize that you no longer have a panoptikon –not that it’d be of any use here–, but presumably that’s where he went.
As you try to pick yourself off from the ground, realizing little by little how miraculous it was that you just survived all of the turmoil at the ship, you discover that half of your body has been torn into pieces, leaving only your arms and torso attached to your head. Your wings survived, but they’re heavily damaged. You still find it incredibly strange that you had wings all along. You never had the slightest clue that you had them –but apparently you had been manufactured with them all along. You cannot fly –not that there’d be much of a place to fly to anywhere. You’re in huge pain, but, slowly, you pull through it, as you slowly collect all your pieces and through sheer determination, you repair yourself back to a somewhat reasonable state of normality.
At the star, there’s nothing to do. There’s nobody to talk to –not that you could anyhow, given that you no longer have a voice. You’re enveloped in endless radio silence every day, the passage of which you can only perform in contemplation. Even though it’s eerie, in a certain way it’s peaceful and strangely comforting.
You spend your days looking at the moon, pondering it. You continue to pass time… Your thoughts go wild sometimes in the middle of the darkness of the vacuum. Sometimes, you weep or feel angry. Sometimes you feel like hurting yourself, but you eventually learn that there’s no point to it, and learn to restrain yourself and continue to lay tranquil in repose. The urge bounces around in your mind several times to terminate your own service life, but… it doesn’t really make sense. You continue to sit on the star, illuminated by its glow.
You wonder about your friends. You wonder where they are now, whether they survived… You remember them fondly. You remember Aime. You feel sad that apparently you’re never going to see them again. Somehow, deep inside your heart, you feel as if they are perfectly fine somewhere, and that, perhaps, someday you’ll be reunited.
Yet, with nothing to do, you finally decide to sit down and wait like bodhisattvas did.
You pass your days away at the Star in meditation, in a state of contemplation and calm.
Sometimes you feel like it’d be better to end your service life. It all seems futile now. But you desist. You actually don’t want to desist but something tells you to persevere.
You listen.
You watch the shining stars in the firmament. You imagine they’re your friends. They seem to interact.
You wait.
You breathe.
Then, you continue to wait.
You become conscious of your breathing.
Then, you wait some more.
And some more.
And some more.
You live in the very moment, fully aware, awake and present. Feeling your body and soul and how one is fully in tune with each other. Feeling pleasurable and allowing that pleasurable feeling to extend through your very body.
Thoughts race through your mind but you observe them, acknowledge them and let them pass. They all shall pass. Everything passes.
Avoiding the bottomless pit of want and anxiety and depression. You feel fully enveloped in a mandala of beautiful colors which you can make manifest at will.
No matter that nobody is there to talk, you are completely whole.
And in wholeness, you wait.
Realizing that you need nothing else than your patience.
. . .
Then, one day after countless others have passed, someone else crashes at the Star. A female mechan of a kind you have never seen before, of an alloy which is not found on earth, being followed around by a three dotted drone, who has been sent down here on a quest.
In the remains of Olympia, slowly, pods full of amniotic acid hosting humans manifest aboveground in triangular sets of three, protuding off of a subterranean mechanism linked to the genetic reimplementor. Five hundred thousand of them. In time, they release grown adult humans onto the planet. Naturally, all the new Earthlings are nude, but shame and self-awareness is not existent in this new world.
The new humans find old mechan chassis and components left behind, strewn around on the ground, and the ruins of what seems to be a society which stood before them. Over time, the humans grasp their new forms and their beautiful bodies. An overpowering sense of Unity overrides all else as the Earthlings eventually realize that they must now rebuild society.
In the center of Olympia, where the old Gigatower used to be, the remains of a female Gold mechan lay in a mausoleum built by the new Humans to the honor of mechankind, beautifully wrapped around a bed of yellow flowers.
Puto el que lo lea.