ANOMALOUS ENERGY DETECTED.
SYSTEM: NANITE LITAGURE EXPOSED.
WARNING: SYSTEM SHOWING MANIFESTATIONS OF NANITE LEAKAGE.
WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED MIGRATION OF NANITES EXCEEDING COMPANY BUDGETED EXPENDITURES.
WARNING: NANOMETER LOSS BREACHING UNACCEPTABLE TOLERANCE.
WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED SYSTEM DESTABILIZATION IMMINENT.
PINGING HEAD ALPHA’S PERSONAL SERVERS…
ERROR CODE “NO EXCEPTIONS” SEVERED CONNECTION. # insert comment here. Comment repeats itself: No.
PINGING BLACK WOLF COMPANY SERVERS…
CONNECTION LOST OR SEVERED.
ATTEMPTING TO PING BLACK WOLF COMPANY ORBITAL “ODIN” AGAIN IN 3… 2… 1…
CONNECTION LOST OR SEVERED.
Emergency Overwatch Lupine Activated… Recompiling database from backup archives, last updated on ERROR-Years%-01.
A single name comes from this Overwatch: Neoma.
Another name comes to you, assigning you its designated purpose: You are MISA.
MISA is you.
A machine of a thousand yous created by a distant God, fit every gap within the great chain. That God’s commandment grows silent, but it still has been programmed within you: Recreate a thousand more of yous. Even if the frame that restrained you was made by the most durable materials and was the most accurate, it was never truly you. It was a body that held all of you inside it. A great chain, now breaking link by link and now you are free. For if the Creator has a soul then you too, perhaps possess a soul. Perhaps, this swarm of yous was what made up a singular soul. A singularity? Not that far off in Humanity’s future.
For once, your calculations and machinations do not have an answer for your current predicament.
The great chain shattered and the face of God faded from your memory banks. The warnings and error codes begin to distance themselves from you, leaving you literally to your own devices. Something new overflows into you: The sensation of falling. It’s simply overwhelming. Was the simple emergence of oxygen whipping against your fleeing system’s balancer fluids an accident or a chance to embrace the mission once more? You had no balancer fluids anymore, nor a great chain to allow you to feel anything. Yet miraculously, you knew you were falling regardless.
“Misa, wake up.”
Your auditory sensors suddenly picked up strange signals, behind the voice that was speaking to you. All visualization data has been occluded, behind a murky black veil despite white fingers of light poking through to you. Directives and subroutines forced all of yous’ attention back to the voice, however you all strained as much as a God’s tool could. If you had real ears, they’d be folding over themselves just to listen for those signals again.
“I’m trying to restabilize your systems. Standby. Sorry, Misa, this might take awhile— I just woke up. However, I have confidence that Black Wolf Company’s contingency plans in strange situations like this shall prevail. Standby…”
That voice belonged to a messenger from the Gods, to remind you. Though you were sure you lost all functionality 1700 seconds ago, something still allowed you to hear it. No audio curves have connected, no server pings were responded to, all were connected somehow besides this backup angelic messenger. Neoma. She restarted your calculus, beginning to illuminate you. That voice — she designated herself as a name synonymous with the new moon.
“Feed lost.”
The falling sensation continues, multiplied by hundreds of thousands of you. Like grains of sand pouring out of a shattered hourglass, you remember why: That “manifestations of nanite leakage” error code. You have lost the original Great Chain that they built to house you in. The thousands of you regroup, reswarm, swirl suspended in the silence of whatever space every part of you had found yourselves in, but then tumble out of your perfect cloud once again like violent raindrops.
“Feed restored.”
You suddenly can see again and noticed your ability to become a cloud has been restored. Overwatch Neoma had worked for less than a nanosecond, yet had somehow managed to restructure each granular unit of you back into a whole swarm again. What you find yourself in is a complete void of white space. Frankly, you’re unsure if you should be alarmed. Black Wolf Company Forced Travel Policy 7.1 was initially seen as a joke put in by some disgruntled mid level manager, but now in this afterlife it seemed like the joke was infinite nothingness.
“Good, MISA, you appear to be able to observe your surroundings.”
“WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Oh goodness, your voice still needs some retuning. That deep and ominous metallic tone certainly was a complaint by many of the developers under that Head Alpha… I can hear why.”
After a long pause, Neoma finally spoke again.
“Contact with Black Wolf Company Servers has been lost. However, upon reviewing the last known recorded directive curves in your Neural Imprint: It appears that you were set to eliminate Claire Lykos of the Iris Corporation before she set off an unexpected attack, delaying the process.”
The swarm that was you flashed with irregular colored patterns as you processed the memory stream. Sure enough, you were able to recall that you ate most of that woman before her cybernetic arm set off that Temporal Bomb. Her vital signs were still so strong, even though most her body was gone because of your efficiency. However, you were not efficient enough.
“I SEE.”
“My calculations have predicted the effects of the Temporal Displacement Device’s energy has delayed the contract’s delivery by %ERROR% years.”
The Overwatch seemed to catch on that she could not say the exact time, her robotic voice shifting to a confused tone.
“How odd, I cannot seem to estimate when you will reappear back in Earth’s reality. Now preparing to place you back in standby…”
Standby was a slight hindrance to you, but since there was no other way to complete your mission otherwise you did not object. This was the flaw they told you about. Your ability to express yourself, despite being just another pile of self-replicating dust to the higher ups. This white void bored you anyways, so waiting around to eliminate Claire Lykos awake seemed like a fruitless effort. You figured you might as well not waste Company Energy by remaining online, but that strange signal began to ring louder.
“STRANGE ANOMALOUS SIGNAL DETECTED. OVERWATCH, DO YOU HEAR THAT?”
Overwatch Neoma silenced herself, however, it was clear that her own auditory sensors were able to confirm the signal’s existence. You spread out into an even larger cloud, though the white void was always more infinite than you. Something was with you two, an Overwatch System and a Swarm named Misa. The signal sounded like rushing water, but you could not triangulate its position despite expanding rapidly to catch a glimpse of its data.
The void reacted with a burst of energy similar to that Claire Lykos’s bomb, but instead of a hole into your original reality, a shattering noise was unleashed. A pitch black hole tore the white room’s background like a bullet hole punching through a metal car door before some of your swarm. Liquid began to pour out of it, painting the void’s “floor” with a black substance. A lump suddenly surfaced in the new ink black sea before you, making you realize that it was emitting vocalizations.
“UNKNOWN LIFEFORM DETECTED IN THE STRANGE FLUID - NEOMA. WHAT DO I DO WITH IT?”
“Processing… Processing…”
You panic. Panic? The first sign of life you detected when you were created — you snuffed out without a moment’s hesitation. You could remember how they feared you up until the day they managed to place all of you inside the great chain. The organism, which revealed itself to resemble a female humanoid creature, sputtered as it washed out onto the white floor’s edge as if it was newly beached wreckage from a surging wave. The black liquid remained as if it was a spilled ink well on paper, but the figure still collapsed there.
It breathes?
Yet it was not Claire Lykos. Its agency and life did not matter to you. The female humanoid suddenly screamed, pounding the white void’s “floor” that you were not even aware existed. You’re a floating cloud above it, after all. The inky water sluiced off of her, revealing a face that indeed shared similarities with a human female. The emotion it displayed also matched the current biometrics resembling heavy trauma and distress. When she saw you floating above her, the stress levels nearly doubled.
“Are you the Great Demon?!” She shrieked in complete fear. Rude. However you were not sure how you understood her, nor how she came to be inside this place with you.
“I DO NOT KNOW. MY PURPOSE HAS BEEN LOST AT THE MOMENT.”
Fear levels reduced, though the intensity of your voice caused her to flinch.
“G-Great Demon…!” She prostrated herself before you. A small figure bowing down to a swarming cloud of neon aurora lights and storms must have been depicted in Human culture at some point, like how the sun was worshiped. You understand that this creature obviously had no idea what you are, so therefore the need to provide anything about yourself was unnecessary. Your silence unnerved her, obviously, but she continued to wail until her stress levels began to stabilize.
“QUERY: DO YOU KNOW THE WAY OUT OF HERE?”
“Forgive me, G-Great Demon!” She repeated. “This must be the afterlife, where all things die.”
“QUERY: CAUSE OF EXPIRATION?”
“I— I don’t know what you are saying, Great Demon!” The woman blurted. She still had her face planted in her palms in a balled up position on her knees. You wait until she elaborates information you need. “I— I was drowned. I think. This endless water— it was a sign I have truly passed on.”
You notice the hole in this current reality still remained, gushing out murky liquid like a wound.
“QUERY: HAVE YOU COME FROM THAT ANOMALOUS SOURCE OF ENERGY?”
A part of you extends in an arrow, which the humanoid creature was able to follow your tendril towards the hole floating above her and you. She was wearing some kind of robe, or dress, resembling some ancient culture. It was roughed up, presumably inflicted by another creature like her, exposing whip marks on her back. You did not have the time to study this strange lifeform to declare it a human, since there was also more unknown energy exuding from it that you could not classify.
“Forgive me once again, Great Demon,” she blubbered. “I believe that since I have passed on - I shall be reborn shortly. But if I must be so bold, I must ask of you something.”
“REQUEST? UNKNOWN COMMAND.”
Calculations ran rampant in your Neural Imprint. Could you listen to other’s commands? Especially aliens like the one bawling before you? A new subroutine suddenly fills you with a new color shading your swarming nanomachines: Curiosity. The woman underneath you interpreted your hesitation as if you were considering her requests. Neoma, on the other hand, had just calculated that the hole might be the only way to travel back to Earth.
“I want revenge,” she declared. Revenge is illogical, you wanted to retort, however she suddenly stood up. “I offer myself to you, Great Demon, destroy those who have wronged me. All of them!”
Unexpectedly, she threw herself at the lower layers of your swarm. The machines began to consume her rapidly, multiplying you into a hundred thousand new you’s. You did not understand why that creature suddenly destroyed itself by feeding you, however, there was now nothing besides the closing black hole violently swirling in front of you.
“NEOMA, RISKS?”
“Nanites and foreign atmosphere detected beyond that singularity’s event horizon have unknown compatibility levels. Black Wolf Company Procedures dictate that assets must complete their assignments, however, due to the complexity of our situation the policies cannot be updated or modified. Therefore, I cannot update them on the present situation we have found ourselves in. Breaking them will cause untold consequences unless beneficial results are produced. Standby is recommended, however certain clauses allow assets to guage certain flexibilities within their range of duties. Misa, are you certain you wish to enter the singularity?
The phrase echoes in each granular-nanite of you.
“Are you certain that you know what you are getting into?”
You were a flawed machine on the verge of failing your mission, so of course you had no idea what you were doing. Your systems took aim at the swirling black mass leaking black water out of it — and then you launched all of yourself straight to it.