Ch 12
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Chapter 13
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“This is bad.”
Racie’s head rotated very slowly to look with the flattest glare humanly possible at the metal ball, which like her was peeking ever so slightly out from behind the corner of the… Well, it was more of the inside of a pipe than an actual wall. Whatever this place was, it was not designed with the sort of shenanigans taking place in mind.
In fact, as Racie considered this particular point, she noticed high above the party in their painful predicament was a huge tangle of heavy industrial-grade cables, sagging with the weight of some small object caught in the middle of them. Flashes illuminated it slightly as it lay hidden in the darkness, flashes of green from Gofers as his inexperience was costing him serious ground, and other flashes, very subtle, flashes from…
“We need to go there.” Racie pointed towards a large machine at the back of the action, with massive wires leading from it into the wall. “If that’s where the little glowing guy is coming from, I can shut him down for good.”
“You’re not gonna get over there.” AI protested. “By the time you get halfway across the room, you’ll get spotted and picked apart by the massive thing with massive teeth. There’s no way you can get over there without being noticed.”
“I would like it on the record that I did try to stop you from noticing the ladder.” AI continued as Racie reached the top of the ladder and began crawling quietly along the scaffolding. “Please tell me you’ve got another really great plan for how to cross that massive gap without standing up.”
“You bet I do.” Racie grinned, snatching the silver ball out of the air and chucking it towards the present party, but the anti-gravity kicked in almost immediately, ending the flight before it began. “Are you serious?! You just tried to threw me over there and get me killed!!”
“You’re a robot, you can’t get killed.” Racie rolled her eyes.
“Then what’s gonna happen with this guy, huh?” AI shot back, exasperated. “Take a millennium-long nap, maybe? Like an AI would ever do that.”
Their back-and-forth argument was interrupted by a cry from Cordax, who wrestled himself backwards and, albeit unbeknownst to those watching, had regained some visceral memory of being stomped to pieces, as the looming limb of the gunk-covered monster now threatened to do the same. Evidently his power nap had expired not long ago, and now he lay, coiled in fear, watching the ominous stomper of the creature aim its vicious maneuver.
Gofers slammed his shoulder into the mouth of the creature, driving it back slightly as it tried and failed to once again bite into Gofers’ bony hide. Winger was busy trying to write more commands in the near-darkness, the creature swinging Gofers around in its bite like a dog thrashing a toy around. The dancing hologram had disappeared for a moment.
“Really though, would you fly over there and start being a problem for people?” Racie winced, clutching her side again. “I can’t possibly get over that gap without being noticed by this crowd, and there’s no other way tor each that machine.”
“Two things.” AI replied, even as Gofers got thrown half the length of the room, crashing into several large glass tubes. “One, I’m very offended at your attempt to throw me and make me participate in your hair-brained schemes, and two, I am by no means prepared to have to deal with revealing myself to Cordax what are you doing if you throw me agai- NO DON’T TOUCH THA-”
The restart button had been pressed on the small silver sphere, and Racie tossed it aside once more, taking a couple of deep breaths before forcing herself to stagger upwards. The silver ball landed unnoticed by the crowd during the conflict, as the massive creature had lunged at Winger and was only being held back by Gofers furiously tugging on its gilled cheek.
“Sorry, I had to set up a message to rally the ol’ troops.” The hologram interrupted, suddenly appearing high above the party once more. “So you’re probably wondering when you’ll learn about my master plan to rule the world, and since you’re so well preoccupied at the moment, I suppose you wouldn’t mind being regaled.”
“Could you go back to being quiet?” Gofers groaned, finally finding the leverage to lift the gunk-lathered monster up by its teeth and hurl it into the wall. “I’m getting awfully tired of your tirade so far.” The skeleton retrieved another inscribed piece of rubble from Winger, who was behaving far more confident now that the fight was turning around.
“Hey, I’m talkin’ here!” The hologram bellowed, and from some unseen crevice flew a small glass object, which shattered against Winger’s helmet ineffectively. As Winger turned to discern its point of origin, he fell sideways to the ground, completely unresponsive. Out from the crevice crawled three more Dreamers, one of which held a large amount of the glass Tears, poised to throw another.
“So it went kind of like this:” The hologram sat down in the middle of the air, oblivious to the sphere turning back on or Racie crying out as she landed painfully on the other side of the gap. “A long while ago Volume got a hold of something called the Weeping Mirror. Apparently it’s made up of many fragments of metal from different places, but that’s not extremely important. Around the same time he bumbled across that little relic, he also got wind of a group of dead people on the outskirts of civilization.”
“Now that alone was suspicious enough, but it turned out these things were utterly invincible!” The hologram spun about in emphasis while the gunky creature had recovered and charged at Gofers, picking him off the ground and ramming him into the opposite wall. “And he determined exactly how to make them, too, which he detailed down in his personal AI. Oh, how funny that is! The high and mighty Volume’s so incompetent he needs artificial intelligence to make up for his lack of any.”
Cordax watched in horror as the ferocious beast brought its fanged jaws down on Winger, the only thing remaining being his now severed left arm. “And that AI, which also happened to be the AI used by the entire police department, now had the recipe for how to make an invincible army of Dreamers, the name of which I learned from some little online sleuthing. I have you to thank for that, by the way.” He suddenly turned and pointed right at Racie, who recoiled in horror at the motion.
“And you know what’s even funnier than all that?” He loomed over her, his massive orange Pakari grinning wildly. “When I was making them, I had to operate under the silly little obedience rules that Ghid set up to keep me in line. Even when I was sending off massive hordes to follow that Renner idiot and smother his little resistance effort, I still had to follow my perceived ‘orders’, however I could twist them to work.”
“But just a little while ago some nice police officer informed me I could just give myself the clearance to do whatever I want! Me!” He reeled back, throwing his hands towards the ceiling. “ME!! I can just FREE myself! And now, I’ve given myself the clearance to take over the world through that mind-control-thing Volume invented and forgot about as a nuclear option if the police ever turned on him. I’d think that would be against union guidelines, though; do you think he ever told them he did that?”
Gofers was being ineffectively restrained by two of the new Dreamers, able to free himself but in the utmost horror at Winger becoming hors d’oeuvre for the fishy friend. Cordax was staring at the arm and preparing to go into shock, while the silver ball housing AI watched ineffectively, unable to do anything lest he-
No wait there he goes.
“Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size, buster?” AI growled, turning on his hologram and increasing the size as large as he could - which wasn’t even half the size of Zippy’s. The gunk monster looked up in confusion, his mouth full of Winger, trying to determine which of the collections of lights was its master.
“Excuse me?” Zippy loomed downwards. “Who exactly are you supposed to be?”
“That’s not important.” AI responded, undeterred by the hologram’s size. “What is important is the fact that I forgot what I was going to say when I got here, I kind of had a mental speech prepared about how you’re wrong and stuff, um.” He kept up his grimacing expression, trying not to let his words get to his performance. “Aside from being a horrible person, how’re you doing?”
“You’re stalling to give her time, it won’t work.” Zippy frowned, another Dreamer climbing out of the computer area and ascending the scaffolding. “Did you really think I’d let my ultimate plans get stopped by a Nobody, a Nothing like yourself?”
“What defines a nobody, or a nothing?” AI retorted. “Is it just your perception of them? And what makes you any less of a nobody than myself?” The gunk creature was getting increasingly confused, leaving a massive window open for Cordax to act, who was still transfixed on the severed arm. “Is it your pompousness, or your ego which gives you claim to the title of someone?”
“It’s because I am inherently superior because of who I am as a person.” Zippy leaned back and adjusted his absurd hat. “I’m just better than you on a fundamental level, on top of all my accomplishments and recognition. My clout isn’t what makes me; it’s a reflection of what I deserve.”
“Is that’s why Ghid’s here?” Racie pointed up towards the tangle of wires, trying very poorly to evade the grip of the Dreamer sent after her. The Dreamer stopped and looked upwards, along with the rest of the Dreamers in the room, towards the small object caught in the collection of cables. Illuminated by the orange glow of the projected Pakari, Zippy’s expression dropped in horror as the blank, reflective eyes of Tott’s cold visage appeared to glow a bright orange.
“N-No. How did he… He DIED!” Zippy bellowed at the static figure nestled above. “I SAW the tower fall! He’s DEAD!! You’re DEAD!! You HAVE to be!” His hologram sank away from the tiny figure, shrinking in size as it did so. All the Dreamers chattered their jaws in retaliation of the wooden puppet’s existence, unaware that Racie had slipped away and Gofers was bracing himself.
“How did you know. HOW DID YOU K-” Zippy spun around, but Racie had disappeared. At the same moment, Gofers threw his weight forward, dragging both Dreamers off their feet and smashing them into each other. The gunk-lathered leviathan bellowed and swung about, but Gofers rolled and scooped up the dismembered arm of his superior, pressing the limp finger into a chip of debris and writing out a word as the massive jaws of the monster smashed past him and through more equipment.
“You really think you’re something because of that?” AI snapped, his littler hologram floating higher into the air. “It’s not about what other people think you are, or how much of an impact you make, but why you do it. Some people are headlines, Zippy, and some of them are just footnotes, but you’re not even a quotation mark in your own story.”
“I have power!” Zippy growled, growing in size again to loom over the spherical silver device even as Gofers ate the piece of rubble he had scrawled on and bellowed green flames. “I AM POWER!! How can I possibly be anything less than the main man here? I am KING!”
The bellow of pain from the eternally-frowning fish brought the artificial intelligence’s attention back to the present. Gofers had carved through his teeth with fiery hands, kicked him into the air, and sent a burning green heel straight through his body, which seared and bubbled from the impact, melting off in either direction as the dreaming Winger lay inside its now open maw, otherwise unharmed. The lights grew even dimmer.
“What did-” Zippy looked back at the computer terminal, as Racie had bloodied her knuckles smashing off the cover and had clearly done some tinkering. “I can’t- No. I can’t be done. This can’t be over so soon. I had everything… I had it all… and…”
“And now?” AI loomed over the shrinking form of the police operations artificial intelligence unit and unofficial mascot of the local law enforcement, who kicked back up his energy one last time. “I can’t have been beaten by anyone! Who are you- WHO ARE YOU??!?”
The smaller light loomed with a scowl.
“No one in particular.”
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Ch 14
I stayed up late to pump this one out for you
