178a.jpg [https://github.com/alexiussssss/romac/blob/main/178a.jpg?raw=true]
Dr. Honne Lars Kapa :
-=TEMPORAL RESEARCH DIVISION=-
ENTRY 3134: INTERVIEW WITH BOT 17-94-15
A ripple in the network was giving me a ghastly headache today. The connection to AN.NET kept dropping, messing with my focus, making it difficult to think and to remember things.
"What is it you think you saw?" I asked the drone tiredly. This whole interview was getting on my nerves. I really didn't want to do it and yet I was already here. How did I even get here? I couldn't remember. My memories of this morning were indistinct, had seemingly fallen out of my brain as if licked away by a giant, illusory tongue.
[ SUBJECT CHARLES SNIPPY IS THE SOURCE OF THE TEMPORAL DISRUPTION INCIDENT! ]
"Can you be more specific?"
[ I POSSESS VIDEO AND AUDIO RECORDINGS OF THE INCIDENT IN ALL KNOWN VISUAL AND AUDITORY BANDS ]
"Is that so?"
[ AFFIRMATIVE ]
"Mhhmm... hmmm."
...
Charles? Who is this Charles?
Could it be one of the survivors we've picked up from Cube 15? An inside job? Temporal sabotage?
I didn't really believe in 1% terrorists.
All temporal errors were caused by improper use of temporal-jump watches in my firm opinion.
I made a mental note to check up on this Charles fellow after the interview.
A sudden, inexplicable wave of extreme nausea overcame me as my vision shifted from 1st to 3rd person and back again.
Ripples in the network? Damn!
Something was clearly wrong with this sector's Neural Server.
[LISTEN TO ME, DOCTOR! SUBJECT 04477645 MUST BE STOPPED BE-EFORE IT'S TOO LA-ATE!] The bot chimed, stuttering. [THE SAFETY OF EUREKA'S SERVERS HAS BEEN COMPROMISED! 04477645'S WAVE PATTERN HOSTS A TEMPORAL STORM THAT IS SABOT-TAGING THE THE NEURAL NETWORK'S STABILITY, PERMIT HIS IMMEDIATE TERMINATION!]
This bot was clearly broken.
"The patient is insane," I wrote on the G-pad, wanting to get it over with. I even drew an apple-house to illustrate my point.
The G-pad responded with:
--------============-----------
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
RE: G-DIR INSURANCE DEPARTMENT.
CASE RESOLUTION:
LOBOTOMY FOR ALL
--------============-----------
Yesh, that was much faster than usual.
Bloody Insurance Department is constantly meddling with our research.
I tried writing an angry response, but the e-pen slipped out of my glove, fell to the floor and rolled off to the side.
Argh!
The mitten-like design of the gloves clearly didn't work in favor of writing things.
I didn't understand why exactly I had to use the G-pad at all when my every single thought was being auto-recorded on the server. Stupid backwards-compatible-tech backup protocol.
"Lobotomy... Well, the insurance agency has spoken. That's a reformatting for you." I spoke to the bot, when I finally found my e-pen. "Don't feel too bad though - We are also thinking of upgrading your model to a more cubical version. Spheres are so past season." I added, for some reason thinking about hurting the bot's feelings.
Wait just a second... Lobotomy... for... FOR ALL?
There's only me and the bot in the room...
As I turned around, I found myself staring right into a 3-eyed mechanical arm that was humming ferociously.
Its color changed from blue to amber to red.
It was arming an ion beam, I realized far too late.
[I'm sorry,] Annie whispered, her voice reverberating inside my mind, overpowering my own thoughts. [Hug me.]
Like a small metal hook, her voice anchored onto my perception of self and dragged it somewhere off to the side into the 3rd person perspective of visualization.
I saw the Ion beam obliterate my own head.
The pen fell out of my hand for the last time and froze in the air as the entire world stopped.
The 3 last seconds of my life, looped over and over in my vision with a little menu that flickered overhead that didn't bode well for me whatsoever:
CONNECTION ERROR. PHYSICAL-HOST-DUPLICATE BODY 11-24-19 IS NOT RESPONDING.
Duplicate?
This notice, this indisputable fact crashed into my understanding of my sense of self.
I wasn't the real doctor? I was just a duplicate?! A copy made by the real Dr. Honne because he couldn't be bothered to interview a drone himself?! How many of my colleagues were fake like me? How many Cube 15 employees stopped going to their job, sent a copy to do it? How many of us thought that we were real when the weird ripples in the network began messing with our perception?!
With each thought, new questions arose in my mind.
How many employees did Cube 15 really have?
How many people lived in Eureka?
How many citizens of Eureka were fake, copies of users that were to lazy to do things themselves?
When the answers came back back to me, arranged into nice chart by Annie my digital mouth dropped in abject horror.