The horde that came from the noises the brothers made were filling the fence entrance pole-to-pole. The immediate benefit was that the undead were stuck in between them giving them the opportunity for them to attack without getting overwhelmed. Joaquim kept kicking the crawlers due to already getting used to performing influx jumps, while Gabe's fireflies flew to the back to incinerate the middle and back rows.
"I will let you say what you have to say once were done here," Gabe said. "I get how you feel."
"Do you?" Joaquim asked.
Gabe always had to have the last word, so when he surprisingly stayed silent, Joaquim was also surprised by a bloody hand grabbing his ankle. Before the human zombie threw its other hand using Joaquim as an anchor while other feline zombies tried to ambush, Joaquim spun to use his other leg to kick the dead human away, then he hopped back once more to dodge the opportunistic ambush. The undead talking animals' moans were uncanny... Joaquim would describe it as if their growls were fused with a staticky fire alarm. There were moments they would stop appearing solid and would glitch into black and white pixels.
"There's too many of them!" Joaquim yelled while running backwards. Even the zombies that were torched by the influx fireflies in the back were immediately replenished.
"I am sorry. It's my fault I got us into th–"
"Let's get in here."
Inside the same square fenced off by rusty wires they were in, Joaquim influx jumped to the computer lab doors to pry it open. His influx jumps and kicks were now precise; he was able to jump to them quickly while not focusing so much influx that he could burst through them. They would need the doors after all.
Joaquim glanced behind him to find that Gabe came up with a clever idea. The front zombies did react to fire, so Gabe willed a swarm of fireflies to form a fireball, causing a bunch to clump up in the entrance. The zombies were stuck in between both walls again, while the felines inside the square caught fire.
"Good thinking," Joaquim complimented.
"... well," Gabe said. "Clearly I haven't been thinking enough."
He did not even hesitate to run inside with Joaquim—he was already past the pried doors trying to dig in his sneakers to stop his momentum—and he slammed it shut with no influx in his arms at all.
"You should start practicing your punches," Gabe said. "Influx passively protects you, but it won't do that to your upper body if you are not using that part of your body in the first place. Once it protects you on its own all over, you can start focusing on kicks again if that's what you prefer."
Joaquim gave him one nod and walked past him, beginning his investigation to find out what screen was casting the ominous maroon effulgence inside the corridor they were in.
[https://img.wattpad.com/1c9bacf67002c328e2bf4506a26819600be46693/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f47684973334c4b716463733245773d3d2d313430373639393338382e313761333633303866656237386431363538333234373935383532342e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]
We can still talk like this? How?
We had a lot of influx while we were alive. You could say we had the majority of it. Baph0... it seems were are just influx. Were like... just data now.
We were called spirits back in my day.
... are you mocking me goat man?
Yup.
... very funny. Baph0, I now know what is in that briefcase.
Huh?
Pulp Fiction.
The movie?
What else would I be talking about?
... it seems so random to bring up at a time like this.
It's not random... I need to show you why. You have to promise me to commit to the bit though.
... can you start making sense already?
If you are going to make fun of me for being traditional... you should at least know the value of allegories. The value of encrypting a message in metaphors and shit.
Okay... be cryptic then I guess. Go off sis.
Yaw kissed his teeth before speaking again.
... well, we have to be in this information war.
Anyways... why are you bringing up this fucking movie?
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Because of what I just said idiot.
... right. Okay. What bit do you need me to commit to? I promise not to make fun of you anymore. At least for this bit.
... I see what you did there. There's no need to change who you are... you keep me in check. I just need you to be serious for now. I need you to imagine the briefcase scene as best as you can... as if we were running a simulation of it. Picture yourself like a programmer or graphic designer placing each asset in the scene. Picture Samuel L. Jackson, the briefcase, the rocks that make up the wall.
Why that scene specifically? John Travolta opened it too.
Because a gun is pointing at Samuel L. Jackson. It will be in the universal mind... the universal simulation... more vividly. Placebos and emotion and shit.
... isn't our cosmos inside a human brain? Would it not be a computer simulation then?
Well, there are artifacts that suggest we were in environments made of python scripts... but even if we are currently inside a mind... it's still is a simulation. Computer scientists are so busy trying to run simulations on machine learning and metal chips... when humanity has been doing it since the dawn of time.
... Stories. Books. At the end of the day... it is just mortals looking at and creating a medium.
Two things prompting each other. Sometimes more than two. A session. Finally! We are on the same wavelength.
... we wouldn't have been enemies for so long if it was easy for us to be on the same wavelength.
... fair point kid. How's your brain simulation going along? Are you capable of rubbing two brain cells together?
... I can see it now.
Spawn... for the lack of a better term... around three feet away from the guy with the gun. We are going to walk up to it together. We will see the same thing. The item changes in the briefcase from time to time... if anything... what theory a person believes in about the briefcase says more about the person than the movie. We will see what the existing one sees if we commit to the bit.
Baph0 and Yaw spawned as glowing data silhouettes and hovered up to the briefcase while Samuel L. Jackson left it open while sitting perfectly still. Not even a heartbeat. The gods stood over the briefcase for a solid moment while staring at what was inside.
Oh... it was right in the title.
Pulp fiction! Yaw remarked telepathically while cleaning his teeth with purple nutsedge. The two gods were mesmerized to finally see what was in the briefcase.
I think I know what you're trying to tell me. However... I can feel ourselves... fading.
Yaw adjusted his sunglasses before disintegrating with Baph0.
[https://img.wattpad.com/1c9bacf67002c328e2bf4506a26819600be46693/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f47684973334c4b716463733245773d3d2d313430373639393338382e313761333633303866656237386431363538333234373935383532342e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]
The fetor of corpses was more pronounced than the baleful crimson beam that emitted from the chamber Joaquim and Gabe were traipsing to. The hums from analog monitors and the screeching, warbling, and trimming from dial-up machines now drowned out the screams of the undead outside slamming onto the steel doors the brothers locked.
The taps from Joaquim's bloody dress shoes and Gabe's sneakers reverberated with the ominous canticle coming from the open entrance they arrived to. Neither of them dared to glance inside... at least not yet.
"Seeing you sneakily walk with that suit on... you could be the next Bond," Gabe whispered.
"... you trying to make up for what you did in other timelines?"
"Yea... but I mean what I said too."
There was sincerity in what his brother said, but it was time for Joaquim to slide an eye past the rusty door hinge barely hanging right by his temple.
Under dusky glares from tech and flickering lights sat a desecration of a knightly roundtable in the center of a rusty and scavenged PC bang. A row of bulky monitors installed side-to-side covered the entire circumference, and sitting across from each one was a zombie swine sitting perfectly still. At the head of the table sat the pale king with arms covered with lips and a crown made of static, sitting in front of a hologram motionless too.
Were they dead or alive?
The door hinge fell.
CLANK!
"FUCK!" Joaquim yelled.
However... none of the undead moved.
Joaquim was still suspicious, and his steps of trepidation reflected that. However, Gabe was standing in trepidation. When Joaquim glanced back, he did not even bother looking inside.
"Common."
After squeaks from sneakers echoed from the hallway he came from, Joaquim turned around to walk closer while avoiding torn cubicle dividers. His eyes followed a dirty printed page that fell off from the roundtable to the side of Joaquim's sole.
We have reached the beneficial threshold of polarizing society through political opinions. The ones that could be radicalized have already been radicalized and will destabilize elections across the world. We need to keep engagement high, so let's train our chat bots to increase illiteracy among the population. If we can systemically program their citizens to believe words mean something else... the same way we trained them to start using the word "hostages" dishonestly, it has the benefit of sneakily programming them into serving our interests while they have no idea that they have been manipulated. Manipulating language itself is much more effective now. Forcing them to adopt more extreme political ideas is too heavy handed at this point. If we can get them to not even be able to speak coherently anymore... even better. Please see the 21st century case study of Roseanne for a model to emulate... the Biblical myth of the Tower of Babylon was quite helpful into learning how babylonize her.
Isn't it fun to destabilize the government, then shift the blame to them and say it's all big governments fault while making it smaller? Our conservatives fall for it every time!
I believe in personal responsibility and all that... but I already have enough lawsuits against me.
Ember Comsa
Joaquim looked up at the monitors to find that the pigs were sitting in front of a mathematical model. All the plotted points on the graph... when analyzed holistically... looked like a tower. The word Babel sat at the top of the mathematical simulation. To the side of each of them, were chatbots generating and sending messages across all the data that ever was and ever will be. When Joaquim finally stood behind the pale king, he saw that his hologram showed the same tower but with much more statistical detail.
So far, the undead were still motionless.
Gabe was visible under steep shadows, but he was nowhere close to the table.
"Common," Joaquim whispered again.
When Gabe picked up the pace, he approached a monitor to read the screen.
"These bot messages... they are so pulpy."
Joaquim shook his head at him.
"Not even," Joaquim said. "If anything... they have no pulp at all."
Flickers of bright lights appeared and vanished around Joaquim.
In the same t-pose he was in while no clipping out of bounds, behind a Joaquim that had air vanish from his lungs, an instance of the pale king made of influx entered the body that was sitting in front of the hologram.
The pale king and his swine summons stood up.