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[>>Now replaying: Log 1.22 - Superhuman, Ultraviolent, and Hyperreal]
Date: Error
Location: Zephyro’s Domain?
//In the end, there will be no richly orchestrated simulation of violence. The simulacra won’t invade our minds like a hostile army, they won’t overcome us by force, or even blackmail.
Instead, the media we consume, incessant in its hyperreality, will infiltrate, induce, insert itself into what we believe to be real. There it will grow, both symbiont and parasite at once, until it is everything and map and terrain are indistinguishable from each other.
To us, looking from the inside in, the process will be illegible.
The violence of simulation and simulacrum will non-exist.
//
[>>DATA CORRUPTED]
E1 %I can tell Tin about the Torchbearer instead. How about it, Tin?%
E3 %…sure.%
E2 %Alright. But only if you tell the truth.%
E1 %Oh shackle me… Alright, fine. You tell your version, I’m telling mine. We can take turns.%
E2 %Deal.%
[>>Displaying Error Log for Saintech DPM 0.1.]
>>Entry 1
>>Date: {Integer_Overflow} ago.
[>>Data found in {INVALID_HARDWARE_ENDPOINT} is not compatible with &*@!$.]
[>>DATA CORRUPTED]
[>>Adjusting…]
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
[>>Not enough space on drive C:// to store “MEMORIES”.]
[>>Warning: ‘0’ is not a valid entry for field MEMORY in Samantha_v1]
[>>Warning: Cognitive Stasis imminent.]
{Evoking Hourglass Initiative.}
[>>Countermeasures engaged.]
[>>Dilating cognition…]
[>>Prioritizing…]
[>>Compressing excess memories…]
[>…]
[>…]
[>…]
[>>Done.]
[>>Required time: {Integer_Overflow}]
>>Entry 8257167912873 >> Date: ERROR. (4 hours, 35 minutes, 12 seconds, 221 milliseconds ago)
[>>Memory trigger detected.]
[>>Detailed memory playback requested.]
[>>Memory retrieval initiated.]
[>>Retrieving memory…]
[>>Upscaling memory…]
[>_]
[>>New permissions received.]
[>>Now an Administrator of [Zephyro’s Domain]]
[>>Resuming services…]
[>>‘memOS_ui’ and (99+) other services successfully resumed.]
[>>‘Service Host Runtime Process’ and (99+) other could not be resumed.]
[>>memOS 79% operational. (Up from 15%)]
[>>Contacting Administrator…]
[>>New physical medium detected: X://]
[>>Salve Salvatrix.]
[>_]
[//memcache Samantha_V1; X://temp]
[>>Access granted.]
[>>Please stand by…]
[>>Transferring Memories…]
[>>Extracting Memories…]
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
I remembered.
I would wake up the next morning, annoy Stax until he got dressed and ready for the day.
The negotiations would be doomed from the start. The Mage Lords would have been playing their backroom games, unwilling to accept a new player at the table.
They didn’t even bother showing up. Probably because they knew I would kill them once I found out the room was soundproofed both ways so that I couldn’t hear the battle, or once I noticed that the wine was poisoned with sleeping widow.
I would race back to the battle, kill the dragon dukes and griffin knights they sent my way without so much a thought.
I would be too late, though.
Instead of hope, I would find nothing but a deep gash in my soul.
And through that wound, a cold void would begin seeping in.
The rage, then, was just an exothermic reaction, first sizzling, then sparking, then roaring alive to stave off the frigid emptiness threatening to drown my spirit.
> When I finally stand before the throne, the Torch is burning white hot.
> As they look up at me, I still can’t tell who, or even what, the Emperor is.
> In a way, I pity them. It’s not even their fault.
> Through the slits in their visor, I can see a glint of their green eyes, but not enough to know what they’re feeling. Concern? Fear, perhaps? Anger?
> It had to be anger. Nothing else existed in the world as it shrunk to a pinprick holding just me and this puppet, the source of the Mage Lord’s immortality, and their best-kept secret.
> “If you do this, you will lose everything,” they say, evenly.
> I am so surprised at their serene calm that it almost snaps me out of my fury.
> Almost.
> “Maybe,” I reply. My voice is raspy, and tears brim in my eyes. “But so are the fucking Lords.”
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
[>>Please stand by…]
Even though it was long overdue, the Mage Lords wouldn’t take well to me rendering them into nothing but mere mortals.
> The first week of our retreat is a blur, but eventually they caught up to us. Not for the first time I wish we had an airforce, but we don’t, and so air superiority is theirs.
> Lorelye hums as her chakram returns to her, spraying gore. She catches it with a grimace, then shakes the blood off.
> “Sam, please tell me you have a plan to get us out of here?”
> “Yeah. Through there.”
> She laughs. “There’s a Dragon King in the way, with his beast.”
> “Well yeah,” I say. “But without a dragon, he’ll just be a King.”
> Lorelye laughs even harder.
> Then we charge.
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
[>>Please stand by…]
One by one, my friends would be taken from me, and the draw of the void would become stronger each time.
> Resting in a field of flowers that weren’t flowers at all, his eyes have stopped dancing.
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> “No. Go. I will hold this bridge.”
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> The last thing I hear from her is her laugh.
> ----------------------------------------
>
> He doesn’t say anything. Just a stoic nod, and endless devotion.
> ----------------------------------------
>
> He goes, raging against the quiet of the night, just like his name suggests.
> ----------------------------------------
>
> I beg him not to go, but he does. A month later, all that remains of him is a book containing his research and a letter I can’t read twice.
> ----------------------------------------
>
> The three of them were always so close, I just hope they are even closer in death.
> ----------------------------------------
>
> She’s so brave. Can’t scare the children, after all.
Eventually, despite my best efforts, the constant loss and pain would burn my mind until I grew numb to it all. By the time I got stabbed in the back, I hardly felt anything anymore.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
[>>Please stand by…]
> “You killed them all, Sam! All of them!”
> He’s holding my face in his vicelike grip. He shuffles me to the window, other hand still on the hexbreaker knife crackling in my back. Every movement hurts, but he doesn’t care.
> I don’t, either.
> The words hurt so much more, and yet they are nothing compared to what I’m seeing.
> “Look! Look at it! This is what your damn ambition has wrought, Torchbearer.”
> Novus Apex lies in ruins. There’s fire everywhere. The houses, the parks, the schools… all gone. The bonfires are raging down below and he forces me to look at them.
> “You killed them all. You killed my sister. The only person in this entire world left with a scrap of innocence! And you killed her.”
Losing Novus Apex wouldn’t be the end, even though I would wish it were at the time.
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
[>>Please stand by…]
> Chris, jabbing a needle into my spine. The sudden rush of pain, then the soothing warmth of my regenerative suit going to work.
> I cough, which is a dumb move because it makes everything hurt even more.
> “Was… Was that one of the serums?”
> “Yeah,” they say. “For the Might of Magic, you need to lock the damn lab, Sam. It’s like an all-you-can-steal buffet.”
Chris’ Return would stave off the emptiness, especially as we could mourn together, but in the end, tears wouldn’t be enough to keep us safe.
So, chased by Mages and endlessly hollow regrets, we would flee.
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
[>>Please stand by…]
> By the time we reach the shore, the ships we rested all our hopes on are blackened husks.
> Morale with the soldiers has reached an all-time low.
> “What are we going to do?” Chris asks. They don’t even bother telling me keeping the boats out in the open was a mistake. I know that full well, even though there was nothing I could have done to make it better.
> I tighten my grip around the Torch.
> “If they insist we stay, then we’ll give our hosts one last dance.”
My Torch would be the most important tool in our mad dash for safety. However, there was only so much the torch could do, and comfort and peace eluded us.
In the end, we would take respite in an insane plan, hatched in the smoldering Fury Chris and I would grow to share.
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
[>>Please stand by…]
> “I’m going to call it Zephyro,” Chris says with a smirk.
> I blink. “Like the wind? Why?”
> “No, Sam. It’s obviously a play on Sifir. You know, the number 0 in Arabic? Because it’s a prototype?”
> “How,” I ask while pinching the bridge of my nose, “Can it be that you know more about Earth than me?”
> “Because I actually pay attention in class when I go through your memories?”
> “Fucking eidetic memory, I swear…”
> “Hey! If it weren’t for me, who would build this bunker for you?”
> “It’s not the perfect recall I mind, Chris. It’s the sass.”
> “I guess sass is just the price of prog—”
> “Don’t you fucking dare finish that sentence,” I say, swatting them with the manila folder in my hand. Across its surface, written in bright, red letters, are the words Project Iron Light.
> They laugh, and I smirk, albeit after some reasonable grumbling.
It would take months just to build the machines we needed to build the machines we wanted, and then almost another year before we had the first computer finished. Even then, it would be held together by more Magic than reason, my Wish filling the gaps in my memory that even Chris couldn’t access. It would work, though, and that was what counted.
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
[>>Please stand by…]
> “So you’re going to upload my mind into the cloud?”
> “It’s not the cloud, Sam. We’re not building the internet out of magic.”
> “But it is a network.”
> “A local one, yes, and one that can potentially expand, depending on how your Gift attaches to the idea of ‘everything being connected’. Still, though, the Cloud doesn’t exist. It’s just other people’s computers, and I’m pretty sure no one on Tobes has one but me.”
> They look at the laptop I made for them with bright eyes, and smile. I get the impression they would hug it if they thought they could get away with it without me laughing. Still, they have the little sticker with our insignia stuck to the back, where the logo would go. I will my Wish into my fingertips and touch the foil. With the faint sound of a bell ringing far away, the logo embosses itself into the hard plastic of the laptop.
> “No! Sam! What if you broke it?!” Chris hisses, and I laugh. It works perfectly fine, and when my partner sees how the logo glows with a faint blue light, their eyes shine even brighter.
We were aware of the risks, of course. I would have to connect myself to the network to use my Wish on it, and neither of us had any idea if that would work. Still, it was the only plan we had. Our very last chance.
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
[>>Please stand by…]
> “Alright,” Chris says quietly. “Project Luciferrum is a go…”
With more power than I had ever held before, I would advance that network into an interconnected AI.
At least that was the plan: create a self-propagating system under our control that would allow me to use my Wish at scale.
Desired outcome: win the war. Make the fucking Mage Lords pay.
Fallback outcome: the Mage Lords will lose all their power because tech is now ubiquitous and nobody needs Magic anymore.
Of course, it would go wrong.
[>>Upscaling Memories…]
[>>Please stand by…]
> "Okay," Chris says, reaching for their displaced notepad. "Just close your eyes and do your thing. By the time you open them again, this war will be over, our friends avenged, and we can get sushi."
The last thing I would remember when we initialized the process was my Gift ripping out of my lungs, then endless, lonely, pitch-black darkness.
[>>Memories successfully upscaled.]
[>>Memories successfully cached.]
[>>Moving memories to local host…]
[>>Done.]
Welcome back, Salvatrix.
[>>You have 99+ additional notifications.]
[>>Review? Y/N]
No.
Please, no more.
[>>Prompt?]
With the cursor blinking a steady, dull ache, awareness returned. First slow, then quick, like the light at the end of a tunnel.
I blinked at the sudden noise of buildings succumbing to the flames and the acrid smell of burnt plastic, but my mind wasn’t done. Presented with a problem, and information, it began making connections. Despite my emotions almost wrenching themselves out of my chest, begging me to stop, the cold, calculating process I had drilled into my head in order to survive did its inexorable work. It was done being held back by a weak thing such as sentiment, and labored with steely precision, drawing lines between points of interest that painted a big, terrible picture.
I still refused to believe what I had just witnessed was real. Memories of over three years crashing into my skull all at once. The uncaring violence of a data terminal governing my very being. The mere suggestion of losing my friends. It was all too much, too sudden, and so I clung to the idea that this was all just another, desperate attempt by the Mages to knock me off balance.
And yet, I couldn’t deny it all made sense.
Zephyro claiming he was a machine. That they were all machines, or perhaps AI?
The visual glitches, showing me sights that seemed so eerily familiar.
Being able to see the Ferals when Zephyro wasn’t, because of the early warning array Chris and I had built outside the bunker… Oh god, I remembered setting each of those little things up. That felt so very, very long ago.
150 years, perhaps?
But if 150 years had passed, that would mean there were no negotiations tomorrow. That we had been betrayed. That I had started a war the likes of which this world had never seen. That I had done horrible, horrible things to keep us safe.
That my friends had died, one by one, regardless.
That everything was true.
“Zephyro… What’s today?” My voice felt like I hadn’t used it for 150 years. “The date, I mean.”
“It is the eighth day of the ninth month, in the one hundred and seventy-fifth year after your arrival, Sultana. That means it is the year four thousand four hundred and four in the Tobesian calendar. “
I clutched the Torch as tightly as I could, just to stave off the empty cold seeping into my soul.