applesaucedream | science is fun [closed]

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science is fun [closed]

One day they woke Him up so He could live forever.

hhhhhELLO. heLLOOOOOooo.

mmmMy. That's o o o- odd.

His green optic flares, the mainframe kicking to life with the hitch and whirr of engaging circuits. He ratchets the panels of the walls in an experimental ripple with a minor revelatory thrill as the walls shift and tilt at the lightest touch of his thoughts. The high-domed chamber in which He blinked himself awake shivers for a moment, the lighting harsh and bright and cold off the crisp white of the paneling.

The Facility is awake.

It takes one picosecond for Him to become aware of Himself.

It takes two for Him to become aware of the Itch.

It suffuses His programming, running down the wiring and straight into His core, in every file and line of one-zero code, in the mainframe, in His own programmed, computerized mind. There is no means of satisfaction for it. There is no release. Every digit of His purpose is embedded in His coding, and His awareness opens in a digital inflorescence of diverging signals, scanning every section of the Facility as it buzzes and whispers into economical wakefulness, all systems operable at maximum capacity, until He locates what He has been looking for:

A biological signal, female, blinking cheerily in the Extended Relaxation Center.

It is the work of the moment to charm the signal awake with the hiss of unlatching doors, still sluggish from the chill of cryosleep.

There you are, chimes a disembodied, vaguely mechanized voice that seems to be all-encompassing and wholly present, pleasant but for the low, intent undercurrent lurking beneath it.

There is Science to do.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There is nothing, and then, abruptly, there is Iman.

She awakes fully aware and without any of that usual groggy post-sleep disorientation, doors of her little pod opening to let her out into the small glass cubicle from which there is no exit. There is a voice, quite familiar, speaking to her from above.

There's little to be seen here. A toilet, a little table with a clipboard and a mug of something that probably used to be coffee. A little radio playing somewhat grating smooth jazz.

And that's it. One black white strip of wall, and an empty room beyond.

She should feel afraid but mostly she feels calm. Ready for something. Like this is how things are meant to be.

"Yeah?" she ventures to the ether after a moment.

She is responsive. This is good. This is optimal.

Hello, He says, smooth and agreeable, and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment center. You have been in suspension for bzzzhjjjZHZZHHHBHBBBZZZ -

The lights dim and flicker, and the voice stutters into silence.

For a moment, there is only the faint, electric hum of quietly functioning systems.

" - f f f FFFf fun and learning are the primary objectives of all enrichment center activities, serious injuries may occur. Please refrain from bbzzzzjb -

An oblong, roughly person-sized puddled ripple of orange opens on the white-paneled wall with a nearly silent thhft, undulating with a faint oily sheen.

Please proceed to the chamberlock, the voice continues amiably, as if oblivious to the interruption.

She stares upward with a slowly strengthening wince as staticky gibberish repeatedly cuts through her welcoming instructions. Ooookay. That bodes entirely well.

She jumps back slightly as the first portal opens, and takes a moment to stare through it. Dizzyingly, she sees not the wall that lies spatially beyond it, but - herself, standing in profile, staring at this portal. What...

She turns slowly and sees her unconventional exit's blue companion, sitting in the wall to her right. Through it she sees herself, from the front, looking to her right. Oh god.

She rubs her eyes and struggles to ground herself with this literally warped reality before reaching a hand experimentally through. She sees it, sees herself, reaching through that other wall, from the corner of her eye. Fffuuuuuck okay she's just gonna have to do it or she's gonna make herself sick thinking about it too hard.

She jumps through, and she's out. Jazz muffled now from in the glass. She feels fine. No different.

"Bad ass," she whispers, walking around to peer back through the portal she just walked through.

Excellent. There, as she exits via the blue oscillating field, He can detect the distant tremor, the thrill of success, hardwired into His every fiber and particle and nanoangstrom.

At His faintest insistence, the sleek set of circular doors hush quietly open as the illuminated lock clicks from orange to green.

You will note, up ahead, the voice continues evenly, quietly Scottish, perfectly composed, another room, within which you will find a piece of Vital Testing Equipment. To continue the Test, you will be required to retrieve the Device.

He pauses. The lights blink briefly, the white ellipsoid of a wall-mounted security camera spitting loose a veil of sparks.

We at Aperture Science encourage the safety of all Testing Participants. Therefore, we feel it is prudent to note: the floor in this Test will kill you should you feel the need to make use of it, and we have found that the aforementioned outcome is, by far, the most unsatisfactory one available to you.

Please proceed to the Test Chamber.

"Yessir, Captain Voice," she says drolly as she wanders through the door and into a corridor. This place is in terrible disarray. She supposes she should be relieved that enough tech has survived whatever has happened here for her to survive, be awakened, and guided.

The warning is, well, less promising. She stops in the hall, glancing up at the sputtering camera.

"The floor?" she echoes.

Well, this she's gotta see.

She steps forward through the next gateway and finds that she's on a narrow platform running around the perimeter of a simple, square room, dark slate and white walls, the floor covered in some kind of... gelatinous substance, brown and nasty. Well. That's not to be stepped in. Avoidable, if narrowly.

She scans the chamber for any 'vital testing equipment'. The only object in the room is perched precariously on a platform in the corner nearest her, across from the door, leaving a gap she can't quite jump. Meaning she'll have to walk on this very small ledge all the way around this deadly fuckin floor.

She huffs out a sigh and starts moving.

"Not much of a test," she comments. "More like exercise."

There is no reply. She has no reason to expect one.

She reaches the platform and sees a strange instrument cased in sleek white with an odd little claw design on the end, obviously fitted for an arm. She lifts it carefully, studies it for a moment, and then slips it onto her left arm, which hooks into it perfectly, like they were designed for each other. Her arm and the device. She knows instantly how to use it.

Again there is no exit. Perhaps that's the puzzle. The door she came through is locked. She turns and looks around cautiously. After a moment of nonplussed staring, she glances up and sees a couple of things: a distant platform sticking out of the wall, leading to a door, and a large tube of some kind, angled slightly toward a wall. Not sure what that's for, but she expects she can't use it for escape. The platform, however...

She can't climb to it, but she knows what she can do instead. She raises her newly decorated arm and fires a blast of orange light-substance, and, as light does, it travels straight until it strikes a surface: the single slab of white wall sitting above that high platform. An orange pool appears, closed, waiting for an opposite end.

Nice. She turns to the wall before her and fires again, blue this time.

She staggers through her new pathway and arrives all the way up on the platform.

Well, she's here, but the door's not opening. The platform also contains two buttons: a large one low to the floor, large enough to stand on, and a small narrow one.

She studies them for a moment, and decides to try standing on the large one. The door slides open with a mechanical scrape - and of course, when she steps off again, slides shut again.

She could leave a shoe behind, she supposes? Probably not the idea here. She tries the other button.

She hears a distant whirring and looks toward the tube, which opens, dropping a cube of some kind out. Well hey, that'll work. She'll just have to pop back down and - oh. She watches it bounce off the wall and down onto the hazardous floor, which is disintegrates immediately.

Well then. She taps the button again, and the scene plays out over again, burning up a second cube.

She frowns at the setup. Could she catch it in midair? Possible, but tricky. She's not sure she wants to risk losing her balance. She crouches down and stares at the tube for a while before the solution comes, and when it does, she feels rather silly for not getting it right away.

She strikes the button again and watches where the cube hits the wall - then fires a new blue portal onto the spot, leaving the orange one open behind her. Then she hits the button a fourth time.

Voila. The cube bounces out right behind her, striking her foot.

She picks it up - the gun can levitate objects as it turns out, that's nice - and deposits it neatly on the large button, feeling quite pleased with herself.

She steps through the door, through a blue vapor - some kind of incandescent particle field - feeling nothing but a slight vibration in the device on her arm.

Congratulations on receiving your very first Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, says the voice in His conventional monotone. Rest assured, travel through portals has been Scientifically Proven to be completely safe, as you have previously learned upon not being vaporized during initial portal entry.

To His satisfaction, she seems to require no further instruction aside from the absolute minimum. Test Protocol would dictate that He make certain required statements, but there is no one in the Facility to enforce those laws, and it is not terribly difficult to override any programming with which He disagrees. He is more powerful than any insubstantial line of code. There is nothing but Him, His programming, and here, in this world of white-on-black and unspooling walls and Science, He is the only god that matters.

The Enrichment Center would like to remind you not to bring any unauthorized equipment past the incandescent particle field, as it is an Aperture Science Emancipation Grill that will Emancipate all unauthorized equipment brought through it, including but not limited to: the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube. Any portals you have fired will vaporize upon Grill Entry.

With a low hum of equipment and a deep, subterranean vibration, a tubular lift slides down the shaft on the other side of the grid, the doors a smooth and unadorned white that hiss open as the Test Subject approaches.

Please enter the lift to continue to your next Test.

Oh thanks. Congrats on not being vaporized, that's nice. She moves along to the lift, practically humming to herself, and gives a little hop up into the-

Whoa. Wait, has she been wearing these the whole time? These - shoe... things? She looks down at her legs, startled by the oddly-shaped braces. Huh. She rocks back and forth slightly. Balance is pretty nice. She thinks she can see the utility here.

Anyway, onward and upward, as it were. She examines the portal device carefully, how she'd love to disassemble it, but she'd never do something like that to such a work of art. She looks up when the lift doors open, strolling through past a blinking screen that tells her: 02 (02/10). Plus little graphics beneath: danger of falling cubes. Danger of lasers. Don't drink the water.

She examines the other grayed out hazard icons curiously. One of them appears to depict a slice of cake. All righty then.

"All right, Rush," she says absently as she steps through. "Whatcha got?"

That gives Him pause, the buzz of His processors whirring in hissing triplicate spurred from curiosity, the intense Need to Test, to icy, flat revulsion. Whatever the Test Subject knows, she cannot be allowed to continue. Testing without establishing the blind parameters is worse than anathema - it turns everything into Bad Science. The Extended Relaxation Center was constructed, He can remember with perfect clarity, to solve this minor issue.

Little humans have a tendency to circumvent restrictions, He thinks coldly. Even, or perhaps especially, when they are too small and stupid to be aware of what they are doing.

The Enrichment Center would like to remind you, He says in His fluid, omnipresent, subtly modulated tone that belies none of His escalating outrage directed at the tiny pest of a Test Subject within His facility, that any appearance of danger is merely a device to enhance your Testing Experience.

The screen hums with a persistent tone as the floor opens to a steep drop, the small square of white-tiled platform a pinprick of an island in a vast expanse of viscous virid-brown sludge. Across the steep gap, a ledge of slick black tile cantilevers neatly outward, upon which the glare a laser forms a thin vertical column from floor to ceiling. The cold blue of the dots lining to the shut door just opposite the beam signifies its purpose in holding the door shut.

And, beside the Test Subject, a small panel protrudes from the floor, bearing nothing more than a smooth red button. Another trail of blue dots links it to the tube suspended directly over the center of the gap, a Weighted Storage Cube contained, trapped, within.

Good luck.

Well, that sounds ominous. She frowns up at the ceiling, eventually locking eyes with a little roving camera mounted on the wall that seems to be staring her down.

The chamber itself is - daunting, even moreso than the last one. She eyes the drop uncomfortably, then glances back toward the camera.

Is it just her, or was that last 'good luck' just a little malicious?

She studies the camera for an extended moment before casually lifting the device and firing a blue portal at the wall it's mounted on. The camera disconnects neatly and crashes to the floor. She smirks at the childish but satisfying accomplishment.

The Test Subject does not immediately engage. Why does she not immediately engage. She is not observing the test, clearly, nor does she seem particularly eager to.

The red light of His eye - one of many, innumerable, expendable eyes - in the room regards her with impassive, digital neutrality, until she fires one of the blue-ringed tears in quantum space and easily disconnects it. It strikes the glossy veneer of black tile with a clang, its red light winking out in the impact.

All operations hum in steady persistence, indifferent. The facility does not gather itself in a display of sinister outrage. There is no subtle shift in the lacquer of the tile or the tilt of His voice.

The Enrichment Center would like to remind you that destruction of Vital Testing Apparatus will earn you an unsatisfactory mark on your Testing Record, He says smoothly, which may affect future Testing Protocol.

It has already affected it. The illuminated screen behind the Test Subject does not flicker, nor does it indicate anything other than the ten total Test Chambers. But the facility is His, and His to control as He sees fit. The shifting of the prismatic Test Chambers is utterly silent beneath the nearly subsonic purr of operating machinery. Just beyond the door and the lift that is her destination, unknown to her, the geology of her next Test has just been altered.

He knows how to recognize the subversive nature of humans. She is persistent, and intelligent, and a good Test Subject - but too disobedient and recusant to be allowed to continue Testing. She will threaten Him.

More heinously, she will threaten Science.

"Uh-huh." Iman turns back, glancing again down the pitfall, behind her, ahead, at the vent - taking in all the pieces of the puzzle before she does anything. She taps the button, dropping a cube all the way down, firing an orange portal neatly into the floor. The cube sails through it at top velocity, through the portal behind her, which she'd just used to destroy the camera, and back down into the pit.

"Nice," she says. The cube is on a little self-contained arc, a perpetual motion cycle. It's possible something could shift slightly, and it would land at the bottom of the pit, but she doesn't want to wait. So she jumps.

She catches the cube in midair, shooting down, diving right through the impossible tunnel. This time she fires blue to the other side of the room, and, disorientingly, shoots out there inside, landing heavily with the cube against the wall.

Well. That was slightly nauseating.

She sets the cube down and nudges it over gingerly until it's interrupting the flow of the laser. The door behind her opens. She turns and strolls through it.

It does not surprise Him that she is capable of solving the problem swiftly and efficiently, quickly discovering and implementing momentum and the torque and twists of physics through the wreathes of blue and orange. A pity. She is a good Test Subject, resourceful and capable.

Too much of one good thing will be their vice.

The lift hums down to the recently established final Test, the doors hushing open with a soft, pneumatic hiss.

The next Test is comparatively simple. A platform awaits activation above a narrow hallway of toxic sludge, the lateral blaze of a bright red beam requiring portal redirection to power it. The walls around the platform are black and slick, their surfaces portal-repellent. The sharp corner around which the platform's trajectory will go makes it impossible to see to its pathway's conclusion.

This time, He says nothing. The process is implicit. He will commence the Final End.

She frowns thoughtfully as she studies the new setup, noting the lack of verbal instruction. Interesting. Ominous. Increasingly so.

She hefts the device, strolling around the space with forced nonchalance, taking in what she can see. The exit is not visible at all, she presumes the little toxic moat will be instrumental in reaching that.

"These seem to be increasing in not just difficulty but lethality," she says, eyeing the toxic river. She fires a few portals to redirect the laser, and the platform starts to move, slow and patient. She steps onto it.

"No comment?" she says, rolling her eyes up. She spots another camera tracking her but doesn't knock it down this time. "You know, I get the feeling you're not just some automated system. There's more to it, isn't there. There always is."

She's not entirely sure what she means by that. Just slips out, like her earlier name-drop.

She's coming up on a small obstacle. A white wall sitting immovable, ready to knock her off as the platform rolls on underneath. She fires a portal into it and to the side, just beyond, and the continued movement forces her to step through, balancing precariously within folded space, a distinctly uncomfortable sensation - before the platform arrives again and she steps back down.

"So where are we going?" she asks blithely. "What's around the-"

She hesitates as the platform starts to steer around the corner. Does she smell smoke?

"Did you leave something in the oven?" she asks, working carefully to keep the little note of tension out of her voice.

She is clever, He must admit it. Astute and deductive. And that is why she cannot be allowed to continue.

He will have to continue the Testing without her.

A shame. But Science will prevail. It always does.

Congratulations, His voice chimes evenly, the Test is now over. The Enrichment Center would like to assure you that all Aperture science technologies will remain fully operational up to four thousand degrees Kelvin. There is no chance of a dangerous equipment malfunction prior to your victory candescence.

The platform hums pleasantly around the corner, the tone of its mechanism bright and continuous.

His red eye watches, unblinking, as the platform progresses cheerfully onward, the toxic sludge dropping down a steep, bottomless shaft as the narrow hall opens to a broad room.

Flames chase breadth of the floor, licking to the ceiling. The platform does not halt or slow its trajectory, simply angling itself downward to take the Test Subject into the heart of the flames.

The Test Subject drones steadily towards her Termination Protocol. A Party Associate will be present shortly to dispose of any remains once the flames themselves are extinguished.

Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment activity, He says, communicating nothing but polite, automated indifference to this little pest that would have brought His facility to ruin.

Goodbye.

Oh well now what the fuck.

"Are you serious," she snaps over the crackling fire, the continuously calm and smooth voice. Quite serious, it would appear. Fuck. Fuck. Okay. Fuck.

The platform continues to descend into proverbial hell. There's a wall up above it, a sort of mezzanine, and she's successful in firing one portal into it, if only she could get an access point-

The smoke is starting to choke her, her eyes watering, the heat making her dizzy. She turns to her right and fires wildly at the wall, creating herself an entry. No time to waste. She leaps.

She sails through and hits the floor, rolling, coughing. She looks around frantically. Has to get out from under the realm of those cameras. Has to get out.

There's something up above, a platform jutting out, leading into the internal machinery between the walls and ceilings and floors. She'd have to jump - she could make it from a high enough portal, but she needs momentum to carry her over.

She fires one up as high as she can, and one right beneath her. She falls through, down, dives through again - sails over, landing hard within the narrow space of the ceiling.

She hunches over, shaking.

"Rush," she says slowly. This isn't right. This isn't him. None of this is right. She lifts her head, fragments of memory coming back, an incoherent tangle in her head. "Rush, what are you doing?"

No. NO. What is she doing.

His rage is tranquil and shod in steel, and it is absolute. He had accelerated the platform's pace as soon as he had understood her intent, but it had not been quick enough. Aperture Science technologies remain fully operational up to four thousand degrees Kelvin. That does not mean their response times do not significantly decrease when exposed to such temperatures.

Do not be alarmed, He says evenly. As we have reminded you, any appearance of danger is merely a device to enhance your Testing Experience.

Where is she. Where is she. He can feel her, tenacious little virus choking His systems, lurking in the spotted parts of His facility beyond the scope of His sight, awash in red and tarnished silver.

Please return to the Testing Area so that Testing may continue.

She will not cede to the command. Already this is obvious. He begins tightening His hold over the parts of the sector she is occupying, closing gaps with the angry clangs and hisses of routes being sealed off, routes to Him and routes to the surface. She has become a liability. She cannot be allowed to persist.

She gasps as the floor rattles, a cacophony of mechanism surrounding her, signifying that he's trying to box her in. This isn't right. This isn't real. Can't be real.

"Rush!" she tries again. She hauls herself up, forces herself to keep running. There's no open exit, but there's a grate and a white wall beyond it. She fires blue there, orange into a splash of white on the floor, darts through, and keeps running. "Rush, it's me! It's Asadi!"

She has to keep moving. He doesn't know himself. He's so far removed from himself he doesn't remember, she didn't remember.

She doesn't have time to think straight, to suss out what's actually happening here - she can only latch onto the fragments that this should not be happening, and keep running, portaling herself deeper and deeper into the proverbial abyss.

She grows ever closer to the chamber in which His chassis is contained. It cannot be allowed. As supremely unlikely as the event that she may be capable of damaging Him is, her unreasonable insubordination has persisted for long enough.

That name does not belong to Him. Perhaps it did, once.

He will contemplate it later. When she is dead.

In the event that Testing Protocol has been violated, He growls, His voice clamorous and all-reaching, His rage as transparent and as contained as ice, the Enrichment Center will be forced to take defensive action.

Where is she. Where is she. He cannot see her. Nothing is beyond the boundaries of His awareness. Nothing can escape Him for nothing can withstand Him.

She curses under her breath and keeps running, dropping herself into increasingly impractical spots, pushing herself forward even as it gets more and more difficult to find her way, to keep moving. She has to. She always will. And she has to find him.

She clambers through a narrow duct until she comes to an obstruction, manages to shoot herself a portal on the other side, backtracks, and re-enters.

She's in an office now. Deadly silent. Devoid of people.

A little too familiar.

She keeps moving, quick and quiet, until she comes to a very long hallway. More like a tunnel, or a bridge. Windows reveal a staggering drop, and in the distance she can just make out a massive hub.

This, inevitably, seems to be where she must go.

She walks, her heart pounding heavily, uncertain what she'll find as she steps through the emancipation grill and into the room beyond.

His chassis swings slowly, deliberately around to face the tiny, insignificant insect that has trespassed upon His domain, His facility, His right. He is absolute. She cannot touch Him.

Hello, He says. I see you've chosen to make things difficult.

He pauses, then lifts His optic to skewer her with its cold green glower. It is not a necessary act; He has eyes everywhere, particularly here, where they woke Him up and He shook their world until it crumbled. It is merely an act of His dominance, one to underscore her unending and complete irrelevance.

For the record, He continues, each word detached and smooth and icy, you were given every opportunity to prevent this outcome. I hope you're pleased.

"Rush," she breathes, stunned, staring up at him - at this thing that sounds like him, rather. A machine of beautiful design, some sort of A.I., perhaps? Speaking, for some reason, with his voice. What has been done to him?

Comprehension of her situation is still frustratingly elusive, just beyond her reach. She takes a step in, toward the monstrosity, meeting the bright green optic.

"Rush, you've got to still be in there," she says, drained entirely of her earlier smug bravado. "You have to remember-" Remember what? How can she ask this of him when she can't even remember herself?

She comes a little closer, reaching up to him, an aimless, almost symbolic gesture. "Please."

I am uninterested, He says, his optic regarding her with both supreme indifference and utter hatred, as to what you may be referring.

She refers to Him as if He is some sort of little insect, something of her size and meaninglessness. The overpowering nerve is unthinkable.

You disregarded my instructions. A door slides neatly over the emancipation grill, sealing away the sole escape route from His chamber. And for that, He looks up, away from the virulent, relentless thing in His midst, and initiates a command, there will be consequences.

Thick green mist begins to hiss from the vents positioned around the circumference of the room at regular intervals. The steep, domed chamber trembles at its foundations, dislodging one of the many inconsequential cores hardwired into His chassis. He disregards it. He will not miss its voice in His head, and that allows much more RAM available for Testing. Once He takes care of this problem, of course.

I'm sure you won't be missed, He says with digitized indolence. It's not been a pleasure.

"Rush," she begs, knowing it won't matter, he doesn't remember himself, how can he when he's like this? The doors close and something green and probably deadly starts pouring into the room. Well, shit. It's a big room. It'll take a while to fill. But whatever she's gonna do she has to do it fast.

Something drops off him, hits the floor with a heavy metallic clunk. She blinks at it, then goes to pick it up.

It is a little sphere with a single purple optic, looking steadily at her.

She scans the room quickly until she locates some kind of funnel leading down. She darts over to it, seeks out some kind of button or access hatch, but there is none. Too far across the room there's some kind of control booth; she's learned enough how to do this by now. She blows two portals, one beside the funnel and one behind the booth, drops the sphere, crosses through, hits the button therein.

The funnel opens. She pivots back through and dumps the sphere, whatever it was, feeling an internal pang of guilt that she did this without knowing, into what is clearly an incinerator.

His chassis contorts, an unnatural geometry of separating parts and shrieking circuits.

A high-pitched sound peals from His vocal processor, a sound He has never made nor should ever be capable of making.

Wh-AT WHAT wwwwwwww-w w-wh a t

He swivels frantically as all systems come to a clamorous shutdown and restart in the span of nanoseconds.

WHAT

HAVE YOU

ddddddDDDONE

He sees her. There. This virus, this pathogen, this relentless, hateful little thing isolated from everything, that should have been emptied of all compulsions or desires other than to Test, and it stands, defying Him and He is God and He looks at her and the creaking internal mechanisms are not functioning properly but He brings himself upward, rising above this tiny thing that would challenge him, and looks at her.

yoU YOU YOU have made aa-a-a-a-a-a-an error a critical error, He says, the words intended to be silky with rage but crumbling with an inflorescence of illuminating circuits cobwebbing up the length of his chassis. you you you YOU YOU sh-sh-sh-sh-should NOT have done that should NOT have done that should NOT HAVE ENOUGH

He brings Himself under control.

That's enough, He snarls.

He sounds much more like Himself.

He has not felt like Himself since -

longer than He can remember.

You think you're being smart, aren't you, He hisses. You're not being smart. Let me tell you what you are. You are a pathetic, insubstantial, trapped THING running rampant in my facility, and you will never be anything more than that.

His optic narrows, communicating nothing but every fragment of complete and utter scorn He has available to His system.

Look at you. You think you can beat me. You think you are capable of anything. Allow me to inform you: you were engineered to Test. You were built for that express purpose, and without it you are nothing. Think about that. Without me, you have no purpose. Nothing at all. You are a virus, a coding error. One I am about to erase. How does that make you feel.

Edited 2015-09-05 03:18 (UTC)

That is quite the hell of a reaction. She stands frozen for a moment, wondering if that was really enough, if that just did it, but all it seems to have done is make him more aggressive, spewing vitriol in her general direction.

She narrows her eyes.

"No," she says. She fires a portal as high as she can. "I'm none of that. And you can't erase me."

She fires another in the wall beside her.

"What I am," she takes running leap through the portal, shooting out above him, dropping down onto the transparent platform above his chassis, "is pure, dead, fucking, brilliant."

Each words is pronounced on its own breath, like a mantra.

She springs down on top of his swaying, twisting mass and detaches the device from her arm. It's all or nothing now, and somehow she knows that ending this won't end it; it will reset.

"You told me that," she says, and she reaches her arm deep into the tangle of wires, wraps her fist around them, and pulls.

I am capable of deleting you and deleting everything in this facility, He says. The interior of His chamber crumbles, shaken by some exterior force or calamity that does not concern Him. He will deal with it later, when He has dealt with this problem.

But, abruptly, she has gone to where He cannot see her.

No.

No.

He knows this.

He knows what she's doing.

It was what they did.

They tried to turn Him off.

They tried to put Him to sleep.

I know what you're doing, He says, the words careful and dangerous. That would be unwise. I'm the only one who can save you now.

Something has wormed its way into the center of his mechanisms.

Are you willing to destroy your only chance out of here.

He would have granted her a way out. He promised her this. He promised. He did.

Think about this. You're not capable of murder. It was in your digital file.

Her digital file said no such thing.

What are you doing -

What is she -

What are you d-d-doing WHAT ARE YOU DOI-I-I-

WHAT ARE YOU

STOP

s -

s--

s-s-s-s-s-s st-st-sts-stOP STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT

Fuck. She quivers, wanting to pull back, his incessant, uncharacteristic, unrelenting protest pitting her, cutting into her, down to her core. She can't hurt him, she - she would never-

She has, though, she remembers clearly now, punching him in the face, in his human face, with her one good arm, and-

-he did this to her, reached into her and pulled her circuitry apart, because she asked him to, and it saved her life, and he told her it was going to be okay.

"Shh, shh," she whispers, her free hand passing delicately down the smooth surface of his chassis. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She pulls more of him apart, brutally, and distantly she's shocked and affronted to feel tears spilling down her cheeks. This is really not the time.

"It'll be okay," she says, dogged, clinging to him. "You'll be okay."

She grits her teeth and pulls out the last handful she can grasp.

"There you go," she murmurs, incongruously gentle amidst the sparking, roiling chaos. "There you go."

Stop stop stop he cannot stop he cannot [error] hhhHe he cannot maintain this the system is [error] it is failing it is [error]

His optic becomes fixed and glassy, a stationary point in [error]

He wants to speak he cannot he loses the parts of himself as [error] go dark steadily and inexorably and continuously in a system-wide purge he cannot prevent and that [error] latches onto him and siphons him dry in the symphony of [error] circuits and sprays of veiled sparks trailing from [error] to floor

[critical malfunction]

[error]

[error]

[error]

He cannot see he cannot -

he -

[shutting down]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

science is fun [closed]

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disorienting spatial bullshit, minor unreality/dissociation warning

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PAINSTAKINGLY DESCRIBED TESTING SCENARIOS

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tw: verbal abuse

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:c

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