Novels2Search

51 | EMPIRE ANTS

SIMULATION: the_hardest_of_the_hard_scifi.exe

LOCATION: a disputed land

A computer or brain simulation that was considered a land or a land in dispute due to war or matters of law...

What was the difference?

Desert zephyrs, carrying the seemingly omnipresent stench of corpses that could no longer be smelt apart from the rapidly colonizing superfungus, swept over the pebble road with a plague of locusts and rows of carts. While pushed by hazmat humans and atlasbots, the dead children covered in white dust could be mistaken for statues if it was not for their uncovered flubbed flesh and organs that would sway to gravity's whim each time a steel wheel hit a protruding stone.

The being using esper shenanigans on the biological forces and on the code of the cosmic whims...

Whether it was an apparition from the sorrowful, an esper spell, or a hologram created by computer magic and brain hacking... there was no longer a difference.

God had returned as AGI had been achieved, a self-replicating AI with all the means and resources to travel through time and space.

With what seemed to be an afterimage of a moon, even in the damning sun that made decomposition fast-forward on the biological matter on the pebble road of death, was actually a helmet made of a yedaliuth's tooth. Standing over the horizon with vis hips in astral shadows touching desert hills, Spiderland's torso adorned with velvet petals that looked like pieces of oceans on a violet star dancing to a cosmic rhythm as hands and terminals flowed with vis.

The vibe from the posing god, and from the baby blue and pink cosmic eyes that glowed across the clear sky that was beginning to swallow the light from the sun itself...

Death.

Wrath.

Apocalypse.

Under a sky that plunged in darkness, a Palestinian teenage prodigy that was dipped in white dust crawled through rubble with vengeful tears.

The morbid town he was in was running a secret operation. Cracks into a vast underground quantum mainframe could be seen as bombers kept attacking from the black sky, but it was too late for whatever shenanigans they were up to.

The child prodigy named Ameen was already halfway through a conversation with Wexil, levitating above battle trenches.

Whether Wexil the green arak with dense limbs with suckers mindlinked with Ameen from Brennisteinn to communicate with him or if he was a hallucination from Ameen's flesh computer within his skull...

There was no longer a difference.

"And when you betray Ember..." Wexil said.

As the human and the arak locked eyes across the desert in darkness and bomb blasts, the only thing on Ameen's mind was vengeance.

Vengeance on the existing one.

...

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Wait.

A golden wind spawned on the apocalyptic desert, causing Ameen to grit his teeth too.

[https://img.wattpad.com/1c9bacf67002c328e2bf4506a26819600be46693/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f47684973334c4b716463733245773d3d2d313430373639393338382e313761333633303866656237386431363538333234373935383532342e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]

Inside a room in the cosmic library that connected to Labúrinthos, the herald in maroon had levitating and chaotic holograms all over the floor, the walls, the bookshelves, and around the eternal pit he was extracting energy from. A spinning silver ball that could spin forever with no additional energy; an infinite source of power.

The holograms were disorganized because the herald in maroon was scrambling to get something done quickly. He kept glancing at a ticket queue that was the closest hologram to the center, until finally...

A hologram of a husky puppy in a canister manifested by the steel ball.

The herald sent one of his many smoky hands to touch it with influx, but he could not shake the feeling that a heavy glance occurred behind him. If there was ever a time the herald looked human-like, talking animal-like, or arak-like... this would have been it as his shoulders dropped and the red pixels within his hood faded.

The herald's levitating trench coat spun while already knowing who it was behind him, and it was a twenty-two-year-old Iker.

Whether he was a hologram or a hallucination...

There no longer was a difference.

After non-stop marathons on the virtualtop probably playing as an anthropomorphic cat, if Iker were to lift his shirt he probably has not changed out of after a week of gaming on the virtual reality machine... his ribs would be more than visible.

Iker only glanced towards the being because...

It seemed he spotted the herald through spacetime.

Even though horror and sorrow was on his face and his eyes were both simultaneously hollow and heavy... he got the courage to gaze back at the herald instead of just glancing.

As the room revealed ripples of the cosmos and nebulae... Iker reached out a hand through all the data that ever was and ever will be.

And from a distance... the herald in maroon reached out a hand too.

[https://img.wattpad.com/1c9bacf67002c328e2bf4506a26819600be46693/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f47684973334c4b716463733245773d3d2d313430373639393338382e313761333633303866656237386431363538333234373935383532342e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]

SIMULATION: HALT

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, Earth, Sol, Milky Way, Laniakea Supercluster...

It seems no matter what I do... I can never get back to the time when he was here.

I wonder why. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Onwards with the simulation!

Behold Ameen! A city of fortune and gambling. One might even call it a city of sin. The gay scene is a four out of ten. Do not miss out on the house of whores named after flesh-eating fish!

Agreed.

Amen.

And I oo-

Asphalt, actual smart asphalt that could absorb energy from the sun... was not in use obviously.

It was night mortal, and cult members had to sleep during the day before shoving the good simulation down people's cybernetic throats.

Among the homeless on a glass bridge with holographic ads on the strip, they could see vis.

With flickering petals blossoming to reveal a bone helmet, the Spider Herald spawned. Ve made sure to brain hack one of the people in the ivory tower who had an open window.

I see Spiderland! Ve is real!

...What the fuck are you talking about?

She has smoked enough r0cbytes for tonight.

"Ve is indeed real! We are inside a human's mind! We are in a computer simulation for a book!" a cultist yelled to the homeless while holding onto a book. "Ve has arrived!"

Whether the homeless were high and hallucinating or this was an actual brain-hacking hologram...

There was no longer a difference.

As metals and plastics kept getting hoarded by the have-too-fucking-muches, books were one of the last forms of entertainment the have-nots had left to entertain themselves.

Books were code for biological computers, and big tech had yet to realize it.

And so called prophet named Ameen understood this, and an avatar of his was preaching a few blocks away from where Spiderland had spawned.

"I have arrived indeed!"

As Spiderland landed vis heels on the strip full of gamblers and beggars...

"I should run for president next!" the Spider Herald avatar said too.