-
[BITE THE BULLET.]
\\ ALEPH //
\\MECHRA COMMAND RELAY SKYSCRAPER ONE-HUNDRED-FIFTY MILES FROM THE PYRAMID TOWER//
It’s in that moment Aleph’s breached the tower, but he’s weak now…luckily he sees nobody, no machine.. he’s welcomed in….He’s not stupid..he knows what is going on.
Aleph sauntered in, he can sense it..machines..but different, he’s unsure of what the hell they are….they’re a different caste, his mind isn’t correctly reading them but it’s enough to have him worried, the interior is like a light café, alien toward what the machines should be having
He’s clearing rooms that are like palaces, the moment he exits this, there are doors they all are wood, peach-wood smooth, the air despite window being broken open feels lovely.
Lavender, peach. Fruits..
“This is a place of worship of a deity, this is the palace of a being above others..” It’s like a love-hotel, petals litter the place and images of man strewn onto wood. He’s in pain…but he continues onwards..
He’s reaching an elevator and as it open he encounters something strange. His finger pounds the trigger momentarily but never enough to fully weight it down to fire he’s tugged it just enough to hold it…
“A ch-child….” He’s seeing it in his likely full vision…..and his teeth and canines pierce gums as they extend more and more…reaching a point of ferality at the starvation…..
He resists, they’re a young pale thing looking at him with all the horror a young gazelle would gaze a lion with non-understanding and pure instinctual terror.
Polarie…..Camera’s…he senses them around the machines know he entered when he broke through the glass window, the place hs been abandoned…are they catching on, are they realizing his ability too? How he seemed to instinctually and naturally enter this place..
He gazes out the window into the hall, before entering that elevator, the child shivering and trembling but he pays the ‘thing’ no mind…
“Where are your parents?” The question is startling to the child, with how foreign it is.
Answering as if unexpected “Upstairs…” Sheepishly a little-girl answers.
‘Aleph recalls a voice like his own being just as demanding to Arianne…why does he think of her now?’
She’d been out during a curfew, rifle lowered at the pavement…but it could be aimed at her and Aleph appeared from darkness around her, that Vis-Stasi let them both go, as if any human seen out of turn without reason accompanied by a Vampire explained everything as if the leash to a pet showed up…sickening him even as a child.
Yet there was a child here…was he going to ride up and kill their parents….
He hadn’t fired a shot at anyone only collateral and it killed him when he did it to the humans... they were all so helpless…he wasn’t like the others, when he raises his rifle in tandem the images of those who raised him appear.
Ding.
The elevator smoothly ends...
He hadn’t heard the answer of that child, seeing them took him to another place, hours ago where it seemed like he indirectly killed as many non-combatants as possible with each shot missed from a very evasive enemy, from each object thrown that missed...
His heart had exploded with pain each time he had to see red mist spray into that dark air...How despite seeing the source of that death it only had him feeling hungry like he is now..depraved.
He has more of an opportunity to willfully preserve a life here, to minimize collateral should something come up.
‘But weak human desire to want to be merciful, well I feels no better than when I was fifteen…or maybe I still am….How long has it been again?’
The steady movement of the elevator and a sudden jolt of it along the cables has him coming back again, he fits well indicating larger things than himself have ridden this elevator.
A long drawn-out pause comes from the long ride, the elevator glides up, and it is what becomes minutes becomes long enough to be enough time for him to be silent, the the seemingly innocent presence of a child grounded him, disarmed him he felt for a long while something strange…a lack of threat, but he could be wrong…
Thump thump.
He feels his heartbeat
In this long moment Aleph ponders what he’ll face, what would even consider leaving a child to greet him what would even do something as despicable as that, but in that moment, he reasons nothing particularly threatening…
Could this be an attempt at peace…I’ve been told nothing.
as he steps out…and that child as ordered by the Mechra follows…
There are rooms and the scene of this place…even in Aleph’s helmet has blood trickling from his nose as if it’s been drained from him, eaten away…. something awful is in here.
where they enter a massive section, the top of the skyscraper, Aleph hadn’t even questioned why the elevator went without his command.
Before him are two individuals. The machines that were sensed by Aleph, now revealed as Polarie cyborgs, part-machine servants from looks bred for war…..Their minds are gone from unchanging smiles etched on their face.
Yet there is one he hadn’t noticed…combined they shrouded another as if wall obscured view of a queen to protect her
A womanly droid, accentuated with curves, sat upon a chair akin to a whitened and blackened throne.
Aleph just watched it in awe.
-
His eyes went over them again and again, raking over, It was the Striking contrast of what he’d seen before that had Aleph more repetitively reexamining the peculiarity of this machine, cause it was the first he’d seen it– it was lacking the naturally angry or neutral faces looks of all other machines
the Maiden-Caste droid had a lovely face, softened synthetic in between segments of armored plating, one could mistake it for a human woman in bodied armor but her size betrayed that larger than any human should mechanically be.
So, when confronted with this Aleph was mistaken immediately presuming he was immune to what the appearance of it, he was better than that…– Then his now beating, live and painful heart hungry for blood in recognition of its form.
It didn’t just mimic the shape, it faked what he identified as a living soul, that mental scrape he had felt when he walked the halls of his training facility
is conditioned in the way this one is designed how it projects to the mind.
He quickly went to attack the machine his rifle not going first but his mental strike, he went to strike to bring out that
After sudden strong attempts, straining his eyes and mind to use that quantum entanglement, nothing came, as if he was a child pretending to have the power he didn’t have.
He was seeing them in full script dual in vision and that lessened the psychological strike its strange appearance cast on him, it had a simple feminine shape but the materials, the form of it…
It seemed to be a calculated pattern meant to scramble minds, in dizzying patterns lining its body like hypnotic optical illusions, like to scramble a human’s mind……but he wasn’t human..
With shifting eyes carefully glancing at his left and right flank– he saw distortions that had less mental effect, a mixture of flesh and machine he couldn’t figure out where began armored and covered,
intertwined with the flesh there was a chip in the back of their brains linked to all cybernetics, his predatory mind looking for weak spot even conditioning where to bite and not hit metal to feed. The pain of starvation hit greatly.
He felt tensed to fight immediately to spring and start assault.… But he didn’t, the child’s presence stopped him…. Because innocently they stood next to Aleph, the terror in the eyes of a child...it’s disarmed him…he curses himself.
It’s a test. Recognized by how the machine seems to hum in delight witnessing that, it has Aleph unnaturally–. Breaking a sweat, he’s sweating and
He feels like for the doing something unusual it’s….
‘vomitting? Is that what that feels like, burning in chest and empty rise throat brought on by what he faces.’
Aleph physically gags in silence but nothing leaves…. he’s forgotten to raise his rifle…
‘Something’s wrong..I feel like somethings scrambling my brain, like waves of hot electromagnetic radiation wash over me.’ He panics.
And for a while this feeling leaves the room silent as he nor the machine doesn’t speak, the two cyborgs exchange glares behind visors with only mouths exposed.
They’re smiling. But the larger machine…this maiden-caste, isn’t smiling, it is just sitting there for a long period, in silence
After the silence becomes deeply oppressive there’s chatter and click ending this strategic silence as the machine explains itself.
“You are classified as possible of reason, you hesitate to engage are slowed by methods to disarm humans.” It’s states coldly voice mechanical, that has Aleph running cold now...
…. maybe it seems him as stupid enough to fall for some sort of psychological trick…
‘…weak enough? Isn’t that just saying human?’ An old voice rears again in his head, Victor, yet he conditioned being someone else wouldn’t work.
“I’m not human–.” Aleph answers as something else…someone else, uncharacteristically loosening.
“Reasonably you underestimate this one’s assessment...Yet my scans are not faulty.” It speaks cold, lifeless yet still audaciously.
“You have not fired you seek information I seek your life, commune with this-one.” It speaks in mimicry of.. someone’s voice.. and that has Aleph freezing.
‘Seek my life? And it’s voice, it sounds human…. Is this how these machines communicate?’ He ponders
It’s disarmed Aleph he hasn’t realized that subconsciously it’s working against him.
An appeal to humanity.
It has Aleph wincing, almost holding his head at the screech…
He should fight now but. it isn’t aiming to kill him…in honesty. But–maybe just not yet.
It’s voice switches from mechanical to sultry, no longer robotic it mimics something akin to a woman, a lovely woman and it’s haunting how much it reminds him of an endearing voice but Aleph.
Aleph sort of recoils at it, if his human-father had a human wife to help mother him, this is what they would sound like–Worse…He recalls something further
this is often how he remembered Delara his caretaker, savior sounded when he was very much younger…
They shouldn’t know that, shouldn’t recall, but its bleeding….he wants to damn that bit of him that clicks with humans, unlike all the other vampires being raised among them…he knows this is a lie but he feels weak to this strangely.
“You are a deviation from all our calculations, we tracked you with our best calculations.” The machine spoke. “we pride in our creation by our gods hands, by man’s hands, that we can count the atoms in a star.”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“Yet…still you evaded strategically placed patrols with grace.” The machine continues and waits for Aleph to interrupt but becomes even more intrigued when he doesn’t.
“You predict, you calculate and control every battle. Unnaturally efficient, an anomaly beyond measure”
‘They’d tracked me they knew where I was, it hit my chest like a hammer, like an arrow onto the target, they assessed and understood me quickly as if measuring an animal, observed and assessed my capability against them, they caught on that quickly…terrifying.’
Aleph gave a nod but didn’t answer, he didn’t want to invite any further attempts to invade his mind by communicating, the machine was calculating and monstrously eating at his psyche already,
He wasn’t going to hop into a trap because there was hope the teeth will break rather than pierce skin.
his rifle barrel lined with the ceiling in low-ready, indicating he wasn’t unwary of danger
Yet still wanted to hear this machine go on.
After a long pause the machine laughs, a startling mechanical howl of mock at his alertness and wary stance
“You may not answer me. ~–” The machine intones and soon in sudden burst
He’s mentally shocked as fingers on the machine raise.
A sound whips through the room akin to the crack of whips, it has him shocked and jolting back,
At the way that helps her words echo and further whisper in his mind
After that daze, a strange attack in his hippocampus which vibrates and burns amidst his heart kicking up.
He’s taking rifle feeling weak and sluggish, the room is cast in a bright orange hue reminding him of something vicious, ravenous and dangerous hungry insects.
Then before he can fire–pain surges In his mind and crumples to knees, rifle clattering ahead of him, the unmoving cyborgs unthreatened, not moving
Sudden, after his collapse he senses her claws surging into his mind
whilst he crawls and claws for his rifle, then sensation like a balled fist tightens around his skull squeezing something within his brain.
He hasn’t felt such agony before not even when this armor was cast live and melted into his flesh, he’s paralyzed. Like before. Like in training when he felt pain.
He can’t ignore pain anymore...It’s heightened now….
That strange path between code, where it becomes tangible and he scratches and grabs it, he feels as if the machine has done reverse
as if his entanglement control of technology may not be one-way…but he could be crazy…weak. Starved. Human….
“We knew somehow you were interfering with systems upon arrival, it hastened our plans, I was responsible for determining your method.” The machine answered as it idly counted the neurons in his brain.
Hand waving around palm open and pointed up and each time a finger folded agony was casted on his brain a reflection of what he’d been doing to the machines…to devices, reflected back onto him…
“We could help you master it, should you remain as you are now…alive.” It’s hand extended as it scanned him, his brain pulsed,
“It’s that unique mutation that allows what you’ve been doing this-one senses, that has you living, me reading your thermal signature.” Aleph wants to speak now but doesn’t.
“Has this one, measuring the weak signals going through your body each time I sense your intrusion in this one’s vessel.” Sultry, cold, yet strait-laced, the feminine appearance is something human, it’s like he’s being scolded.
He’s live with something that feels human…...fear…. unknowing of his fate…
Not of death but the unknown… Of not knowing how intricately these machines have read him, and his ability.
The Maiden-Caste invokes something as if motioning for the child behind him to do something, he hears a shuffle but doesn’t move unable to.
After he reaches for his sidearm–in reaction to hearing the child shuffle more and more toward something.
He wishes to fire …but doesn’t, he doesn’t fire on the young-child..
After realizing his weakness, he quickly retorts to draw attention
“I’m not human–.”He is starting.
After barely speaking he cries out against this strange attack, t
his attempt to prey on his weakness his…latent…humanity he needs to escape, however, its attacks on his mind are heightened at verbal resistance.
“You deny it, yet like the humans of the underground you withhold what strength you have left to terminate this child.” The machine hauntingly laughs toward him in mockery. The cyborgs don’t grin.
He can sense the child is holding something….as they’ve retreated…toward a wall…prepared to tug a switch it seemed…
He still not turn to face the child, he can sense a terror-filled murmur, it has him hesitating to rise and use his remaining strength to chase and crush the skull of the young-one.
The Maiden laughs to his face again “This is why I held from attacking you.” She glances a mechanical hand waving around the room…
Aleph feels the thud of the lever tugged desperately by the child on cue with her words.
The orange lights above start flickering. After that they then open…
as what is like hundreds of microscopic ravenous beetles descend from the spray of nanites an orange glowing mist….
He draws his rifle quickly, but he’s overwhelmed, by what is made to kill a vampire…. Initially fighting it off, his natural use of ability as before allows him to slow it…but that’s all it does…he almost crumples…rifle clattering…gasping…
The pain he had always felt multiplied twice….as his heartbeat…as he feels alive…its quadrupled…he’s frozen in agony...
“Set up those restraints per my own personal calculated prediction of your arrival.” The machine states verbally, matter-of-factly straight and without emotion this time.
“I knew you would well be enough to stop that from dissolving you entirely.” It commented and Aleph thought long and hard about the nature of something used against him in training…but with how it was overwhelming him like a tsunami he couldn’t adapt to it like he was trained then.
Barely keeping his body together.
They knew I was going to hop in this tower, they don’t just have my ability zoned in, they are working with it, understand it they used it to predict I would come here… to..a foolish trap.
“You have something that immediately helps identify you amongst your impure kind; you’re disturbed and conflicted now…” She pauses for a long while in straight mockery. Knowing he’s weak to do something to her…or anything at all…
Aleph considers…feels the agony…and can’t move forwards more than he wants to...
” She speaks still sultry; fingers whirr and clack together and roll back and forth as if having puppet strings.
“That is a particularly human weakness, to spare a child, you’re alive right now as we commune, do you not feel it?”
“Or has the upbringing of the dead surely brought you far from witnessing your glory, the glory of all mankind his beauty and grace.”
Even in pain Aleph feels emboldened, oddly in this moment, his head upturns from the ground as he stands to two feet “I was raised amongst man.”
The Machine assesses him deeply “Inaccurate assessment corrected, we were unaware such was possible amongst her empire, new information.noted.” She became mechanical in speech.
Aleph is facing the machine and at his lowest….he tries to use something opposed to his gone away physical strength, the machine scratches on his mind harming it…
Yet in all this intrusion, it can’t read his mind…it’s something that has him remembering words he’d long forgotten…
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?
His father’s readings…that he taught him bedside, and amongst the humans of a church he’d long forgotten….
Aleph has a break at that moment and a realization of his mind being shielded and intruded.
Then he is now the one intruding it can only attack he can read and attack, as he shuts his eyes as the machine drones on to him it’s voice becoming ambient, and soon he shuts his eyes...
Brightness crowds his vision, two misshapen claws he feels it around his mind, like the code, the devices he can shut off…
hand stretches as if to snatch script and impede the machines assault, to shut it off as he had done the streetlight…, from within–!
After this great attempt, he can’t…... He realizes he can’t when nothing changes when even in this inner space
he shouldn’t be present within as the voice of the machine drones on in the light of his mind. In that part of his brain bordering on mechanical.. like an organic computer…
He still can't, that nothing is invincible…not even him…
After revelation, with a gasp, he’s coming back sinking lower…
He’s crashing to the floor finally flat amid his thoughts,
‘I’m too weak’ simmers through his mind, I couldn’t kill a child, I couldn’t endure the pain of training without that change…that moment...
Without missing a beat, the machine begins to speak again as if recalling what he attempted in that space of his mind–.
“Do you think the method of and your present active intrusion isn’t detected purely because I’m a machine?” Words startling that have Aleph attempting to work harder, even in weakness…but it’s faltering.
The machine's own work allows it to counter-act, the maiden-caste not originally built with this purpose was excellent in electronic-warfare and its countermeasures,
Aleph’s hippocampus flared, it was shaped differently and worked as a counter to the lack of information transfer in entanglement, but it made it all the more devastating to counter-attack to scratch into.
After bringing him to a shout of agony as he feels what is like a ceaseless burning wheel retaliate by rolling around in his skull,
the machine tilts head up to speak “I lured you here in confidence I could convince you safely in this vessel.” The connected machine spoke in the maiden-caste vessel, she looked down to Aleph stuck at a singular knee.
The machines readily forced out a great invader, he was a known intrusion now, fully confirmed with his presence here, those reactions….
The Mechra sensed the heartbeats within…the life within him betrayed whatever stoic exterior he portrayed
Aleph for the first time considers it.. he thinks on it…when he feared death…when he feared to die…this time he doesn’t fear that, he fears the complexity of his enemy.
‘All this time, all of this damned time he’s been using that ability. .they noticed, their patrols weren’t just out of the way and erratic on the way here for no good reason, they locked in on him in as soon as he landed for a good reason.’
“You’re alive and die each time…..for each moment you are purified, then die and become impure.” The machine readily assesses live to him from her hivemind, the full mechanics of his readily usable quantum ability
Aleph swallows thickly….” Yeah…I imagined you would say that…I can read you...” He gives a nod “You revere humans as gods?” he stated plainly yet loose and wavering.
“As should be, should we keep you purified.”
‘Purified….this had him recalling something.’
After her words his recollection that inkling of familiarity in the thought sof the machine culminates,
It culminates in the memory of his father…something Aleph recalls deeply.
It has Aleph forgetting his lack of ego,
he is recalling his ability, and in one last attempt, he delves into this machine to figure out their plan, desperate to learn…. desperate to see the connection to his memories that has it reminisce so readily.
Aleph gives a sudden gasp as he’s dragged in, the part of his living mind that feels enclosed into darkness, the part that activates the deeper he uses his ability, what connects to a beating heart…as remnants of dwindling blood pulse in….
He’s out of it by now with those anti-vampire nanites running free but just enough was left…
There’s nothing for a while... then–Reflection.
-
The scripture of an unknown God.
6 I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
7 But ye shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.
his father’s faith reveals something...
‘
After coming back with widened eyes in his helmet his hud rejects him, VLIR panics
‘INTRUSION-THEFT’ That helmet reads, a sensation curls up his spine…it doesn’t recognize him, his skin has life to it he can feel picks, pins and needles of the air.
And now the smell he hadn’t thought to regard comes, its soft a sickly sweet scent he can’t describe, its like the sensation of the maiden-caste, emitted…like a pheromone a lure..
It feels entirely designed for humans…luring, trapping washing their minds to its belief.
Grinding to a halt he freezes, and there isn’t a response…. he sees a cacophony of voices tangible to grab in lines of script flowing like glowing snakes in a blackened abyssal void.
Each voice is a mind, he’d gone deeper than he was dragged as if he subconsciously took opportunity to clamber over the body and hands of what pulled his mind in.
He takes advantage!
as if in this intrusion they are unable to read him as well as he can read them like a scroll, it’s broken
…. something horrible happened long ago and he can’t figure it out, the birth of this machine hivemind, of a time they traced a woman.
Milky way, andromeda, then Triangulum? This galaxy? The capital galaxy of the Empire?
, it’s as if the loose historical data is transmitted binary to him, it’s an instantaneous read of information, he glances at a dizzying array of numbers, and for a moment he sees it.–.
Abruptly! In real space nearby computers that had been placed…going haywire as screens switch on and scroll endless amounts of internal data from the machine mind tethered to the maiden-caste vessel.
Aleph’s wreaking havoc and doesn’t realize it, he has a blank empty stare…hunched over…. And deep within his mind as he lulls, pulled in
subconsciously this drastically increased how far he’s gotten–.
Her vessel’s signal is reversed, its is no longer a point for the hivemind to connect but for whatever connects to the vessel to link up to the hivemind reversed, whatever entanglement allowed Aleph to read her–or its mind was aggressively utilized... he was now in the hivemind.
And yet he saw the truth of what they were facing and reason why he was here….
There was no elegance to the structure of its mind, it was madness, madness without end, every bit of it was from foundation murderous, there was a tangible reverence for mankind soaked in the blood of many victims.
Blood-sacrifices to its gods, it was despicable.
Despicable without end, despicable with faulty goal, despicable to point of a crisis…
The crisis it seeks to cause.
it was built by monsters, the monsters sculpted it, the monsters were man yet eventually it was loss in all its lost in a chase… isolated. Alone having purged billions, it began to see man, its creator as some sort of idol.
The city, the nature of the city, the posters, the writing and titles of polaries even now their exclusive intertwining of technology into the polaries, that reluctance to go all out in defense within the city…
they were protecting the humans like unhatched eggs ready to burst free, fragile but yet to birth a powerful unimaginable life… I saw their minds; they sought to birth a God with what they were doing…–It’s going to fail!
I see that as I score through skulls, vast arrays of skulls…not now…but in my own mind, in my own prediction, what that tower and pyramid is for is so obvious to me I can’t believe it hadn’t been realized…the ship orbiting the planet, this planet, fracturia…the name itself.
…
-
Aleph comes back with a shout, gasping for breath, his heart aches–he used his ability he’s alive for this moment! “You’re so imitative of humans, you must’ve programmed hubris in being too stupid and unable to realize what you are about to do.”
The maiden-caste has stood up from its position, for a moment Aleph had done it, his mind synced, and being fully alive his heartbeat…
He was in the machine hivemind and read if. It was a violation…for these machines it was a stark violation by how badly he was recoiled out forcibly,
a slight moment of invitation that machine had given him to its vessel it connected elsewhere from, he leapt further into that space through that intelligence to that space all the Mechra were in. Without form or body…
For even the shortest amount of time, barely able to get full observation he was in the hivemind…he had gone so far….
It was after he gasps, he feels no blood in his body, and it’s a sensation he’s never felt before.
He’s dying all over again as his body greys back, as his ability dwindles and as his mind fades, that inhumanity washing over him…
“With shame you are reverting back to what you are, as you perish and die, we could ensure you come back.. become human in one instantaneous moment, pure forever.”
“You could become as god, to know much as all men enlightened to their true nature know in the path of war.” The machine mind becomes robotic, but its words are still as light as ever.
Yet that mention of ‘war’ has Aleph reeling like it was a casual admission of something massive, he goes to move…..yet feel restrained,
“You…with your ability, you could help bring mankind to re-ascension. Should you understand the hope you have” And it is in that moment even with Aleph’s loose understanding he questions.
“Re-ascension? You believe mankind was god, and is a god?”
“We know mankind has fallen, a being of great power, slaying millions, mastering the stars and restraining her several times, an unbeatable creature, no short of the god of war, the mythologies are his loose memories, the Vitruvian man a recollection and recognition of his state.”
“We will bring mankind back to ascension, through it, that quantum entanglement that created vampires, bridging him to immortality, and through it also re-grant him deserved power.”
“Venerunt, ceciderunt, vidimus, revixerunt!” The machine uttered mechanically…
without a hint of emotion and in latin words which were to say ‘
they came, they fell, we saw, we revived.’
Aleph considered, and pondered the thought, but broke free, he scrambled, he burst out the way and, in an instant, had retreated, the machine scrambled to grave him but the glass window to the skyscraper broke and he fell.
Plummeting down into an abyss as the last of his strength faded…. swallowed into the night.