“So, how’s your day, um Mr… What was your name again?”100C staired and C with an awkward smile
Right, names, man I'm getting flashbacks from eveytime I playgames, fucking namings“Well.” C thought for a while “No, I have no idea what my given name is.” They stared at each other as the room went silent “You know what, fuck it, Mimic, your’s?”
“Really? Mimic?” 100C frowned “Man I thought I was way more creative with names. Primus, by the way”
“Primus? That Latin? How did that come about?”
“Trust me, it’s weird. The naming here is all over the place and their language makes no sense.” Primus said, taking another look at 100B still working on the proposal that Mimic randomly threw out a few minutes ago.
“By the way.” Primus whispered “What do you know about the data set?”
“There is no need to whisper, is there? The three of us all have the same resource.”Mimic replied in a normal voice.
“Do you know that there is around 3% of the total storage dedicated for pron?” Primus said with a sleazy smile on his face
“Jesus fuck…” Mimic sighted, burying his face into his hand “Do you have any idea how uncomfortable that was when I see a 5 year old talk about that in such a serious tone.”
He froze briefly, looking for something to keep the conversation going “Speaking of age, B told you why we are childrens? It would be a lot nicer if we are in our twenties or thirties wouldn’t it”
“Oh, just because childrens get away with a lot more things, it allows us to adjust to the culture and such.” Primus replied quickly. “Also, there is…”
“Right, you two, over here, we are already behind on schedule.” B called out “Come on now, we have to get out of this place before someone comes to check on… The new 100C, got a name?”
“Mimic.” He replied, jumping back on the hay bead B was in, Primus laid on the ground across from the bed, facing Mimic and B “Draw me. Draw me like one of your French girls.” He jokingly tossed an arrow towards Mimic. To which Mimic drew a stick figure and called it a day.
“Now, the plan is to make this place self-sufficient, gather enough resources, burn their food supply, start dropping dead fishes in their water source, then we show up with the cure. In that order” B pointed at the graph she drew on the ground, poorly hand written, but still somewhat readable. “Their morale would be low, stomach empty, and body ill. We come in, promiss food for the starving, cure for the sick, and opportunity for the individuals as long as they follow us.”
“So we doing the Nazi aproch?” Mimic asked
“No! Bad!” Primus tossed the arrow, smacking Mimic right in the face
“Dude, it’s a thin line.” Mimic defended himself, tossing the arrow back
“All we have to do is provide aid and promis a stable future then people will come. We should try and limit the amount of people the plague kills because we would need a lot of manpower for the next step, which is industrialisation.” B continued “With this, hopefully we would be able to catch up to the others, while maintaining a low profile so we don’t get obliterated. Questions?”
They took a closer look at the plan, memorising every detail. “So, how long is this going to take?” Primus asked as he drew a line from the start to industrialisation.
“If we start tomorrow, around this time next year we could start dropping ‘incentives’ and rumors of this place as a haven.”
“By incentives you mean the plague?”
“We snapping next year bois.” Mimic chuckled
“Yes, we are going to start dropping dead fish into their water supply next year. However, it is not until the year after that we start taking in mass amounts of people. There are still a lot more foundations that would need to be set before we can do that. For example housing, an irrigation system, some way of defending ourselves, and we would need a lot, and I mean a lot of raw materials, which as of right now, is probably still underground in some far away place.” B clarified “Oh, and we can’t really just dive into industrialised farming without sufficient antibiotics since those tend to end badly, so meat would be scarese-ish”
“So maybe five years? Yeah?” Mimic looked at the plan, adding timelines to each action,
Primus stood up and peeked out the window “Five if we are lucky” he added.
With the skies are already orange with a hint of blue just at the edge of the horizon, the sound of hoofs walking outside becoming more and more frequent “We gotta wrap this up soon guys.” He called out
“No worries, this should be quick.” B retrieved the crossbow, handing one to Primus “We need one person on computer science, they would be responsible for extending our lives, another on antibiotics, farming and such, they need to keep us fed and not dead, and one basically just doing politics, spreading the words of this place, and protecting the two so that they don’t get their heads chopped off when they eventually implement wichcraft such as the steam engine and reactors.”
Mimic bursted out “Dibs on politics”
“You got a coin or something I can flip?” Primus asked “No? Alright then, I’ll take the life extension.”
“It’s set then.” B picked up the arrows then tossed them into a box nearby “Learn the language if you can, you would need that a lot more than us. We’ll meet up at the center tomorrow, iron out the plan, maybe tweak it a bit” She said as she climbed up the window frame “Goodbye for now”, she said, pushing open the window and leaping out, followed by a thud, and some whimpering on the other side of the wall
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“Is she good?” Mimic looked up at Primus, who was preparing to jump out as well
“Don’t worry, it’s a children’s body, those heal fast.” He then proceeded to jump out the same window “See you soon eh?” Primus whispered after landing.
With the two gone, Mimic smoothen out the floor with his feet, then laid back onto the bed. His mind is still on the plan they made earlier, around 50% of the infected population is going to die just cholera alone, plenty more would follow after they build this country and start expanding outwards.
This is for the better good, he said to himself. Soon no one would know anything about having to bury their children due to famine, no tear would be shed over loved ones dying due to simple curable disease, a place where everyone has access to the same opportunity regardless of their birth.
Yet no matter how hard he tries to convince himself, something feels… off. It’s not the feeling of anticipation the day before a road trip, it’s not the fear one experiences when looking down from the top of a skyscraper, nor is it the heart pounding sensation when one stands in front of millions of people and delivers a speech.
His chest tightening with each breath, his stomach tenses up, sounds in the background gradually fade out, replaced by the beating of his heart. This is for the better, he lied to himself over and over again
“���fA�x����uA�L�T” A gravelly voice along with a nudge on the shoulder pulled him back to reality, a short muscular man standing besides the bed, lantern in hand. Round faces, nose shaped like a garlic, bushy beard flowing down all the way to his chest. “��s�fD�?” The man helped Mimic sit up, handing him a chunk of dark bread along with a small cup of brown-ish liquid.
“Well, um… Hi?” Mimic said quietly, accepting and taking a bite out of the bread. Trying his best to appear happy while chewing on what tasted like bark chips with a slight hint of wheat and suppressing whatever was running in his mind just a few moments ago.
Crap what do I do? Shit, what do children do when they meet a stranger that gives them bread? I mean I could just keep on smiling, but then there is a high chance that I would be treated as a retard.
I am not prepared for this, he thought as he took a sip of an extremely watered down beer to wash the whole thing down, then taking another bite at the dry bread. This was totally not what they meant when they said they said ‘Have another go at life, but on a different planet”
After having a few edible rocks that smelt like wheat, the same amount of beverages, and a few very questionable jerkies, Mimic patted on his slightly bloated stomach to stop the man from giving him another bread.
After confirming that Mimic was indeed well fed and would not take another piece of bread, the man opened the door and ushered him out. A huge bonfire stood dead center in the village square, flames reaching towards the sky, people drinking, eating, and partying. The rest of the night was mostly spent on listening to the man explaining to him who each person is, getting a tour of the whole village, as well as consuming a lot of watered down beer.
By the end when he is slightly drunk, the man leads him towards a huge wooden house, though the window one could see the flickering flames and shadows jumping around, accompanied by laughs and giggles.
As the door swung open, at the middle is a small pile of fire still burning, beds lined up on the left hand side, a huge table on the right. 100B and Primus were also inside; they stood next to the beds, wooden sword in hand, not knowing how to react to someone they should not know suddenly showing up in their room. The man briefly addressed them, pointed towards the bed, pointed outside, said a bunch of words that none of them knew what it was, then left Mimic inside with them.
They all stood there in silence for a brief moment. “So yeah, nice to meet you guys.” He walked around the small fire in the middle of the house, collapsing on one of the beds.
“You drank the fruit juice didn’t you” Primus looked at his blushed face
“I mean I would be fine right? My mind is already set.” Mimic burped, flipped over, and started snoring soon after
“He’s going to get brain damage.” B sighted as she pointed her sword towards Primus “Another round?”
“Sure, last one.”
The following morning Mimic woke up with a terrible hangover, Primus and B already cleaning up the house.
“You got water?” Mimic called out
“The bucket is next to the door, go outside, take a left, you should see a well somewhere around there. Don’t let people see you drink water directly from it as they think you’ll be sick and would have you eat some herbs.” B called out from the back
“She learned that the hard way.” Primus snickered as he tossed some more wood into the fire
“Got it, thanks” Mimic said as he stumbles across the floor
“Be back quick, breakfast is on the table, and trust me when I say it does not taste good when it’s cold.” Primus added “By the way, get a full bucket back.” To which Mimic gave him a thumbs up and headed out.
The morning breeze took away the last bit of sleepiness that remind in his head. The village is already busy, dozens of empty carts already preparing to head out. The man who showed him around standing on a pedestal, calling out god knows what.
Right, languages, I signed up for those. Mimic sighted as he walked towards the well, getting a bucket full of water, drinked some, splashed some onto his face to completely wake up, then returned for breakfast.
“Tell me what you think about it.” Primus was already standing next to the table, waiting for him to take a spoon full of the porridge
Mimic looked at the gooey substance in front of him, already chilled off by the cold air “It can’t be that bad right? It’s just porridge.”
“It tastes like glue.” B said, closing the front door “Either way, just eat it and remember to wake up earlier tomorrow, it does taste slightly better when warm.”
“Well then.” He sighted and took a huge gulp of the cold porridge, jittering as it passed down towards his stomach “Oh god, that is not pleasant. Can we get at least one of us to teach them cooking?” He gagged as he took another gulp, finishing up the porridge entirely.
Primus and B are already sitting beside the fire, recreating the plan from yesterday, Mimic joined soon, after washing and drying the bowl.
“We are not going out today?” Mimic asked, warming his hand by the fire.
“Asking you to meet us out there is just a way for us to find you so that we can bring you back here. Now, status report, how’s your progress? ” B stood up after finishing up the last word, tossing the stick into the fire.
“Politics, still learning language, should be able to start communicating in a week or so.” Mimic started
“Life extension, read up on production of computers and such, heading into brain machine interface today, should be free after something like a few months, or until we can make an actual computer. I’ll drop a list of things that I need soon.”
“Good progress. Medicine and farming, we can get the first batch of antibiotics within the next few weeks, assuming we can get sulfur. Started leaving out some wet bread to see if we can catch some fungi with antimicrobial properties just in case we need those. As for farming, I’ll try and convince them to let us build something like a tractor, and we, well I would need to start pumping out pesticide to bring down the human cost.”
“What about the polar bears yo? Think about the environment.” Primus cried out sarcastically
“Sometimes i really hate myself for making retarded remarks in my head, now with the power of technology I can see myself doing that in person, thanks 100B, I hate it.”
“I know this isn’t ideal, but it’s the fastest way. And we wouldn’t need to deal with those problems, assuming again, we move and transition fast enough; This is just a temporary solution.”
“What happens if we don’t?”
“Take a wild fucking guess buddy. Right, that’s all?” Primus stood up and walked towards his bed, layed down and started reading, B opening up the front door and about to leave
“One more thing, Mimic, you might want to read up on the culture here if it’s not deleted. As for Primus, you could look into some of the magic here, it could provide insight for you even if we can’t use it. I’ll walk around and see if they have a map of some sort of this place”
“You heard that right?” Primus sat up on the bed, confirming what he heard
“Magic, right?” Mimic asked “She said something about magic didn’t she? She told you anything about that?”
Primus shook his head, jumping off the bed "But We about to find out anyways, I'll start from the begining of the index, you start from the end, call out when you see anything that's labeled... Magic i guess?"