“You can’t make everything ya’self” splurged Ripley, slapping a goopy wad of elos into the vending machine in exchange for a biomass of mystery-capsule algae. Inside the transparent casing, illucid microbiomes laissez faire’d their slaved fate. Our doublesun drenched guy grabbed the tip, and gobbled perniciously, delicate droves into his facehole.
He slipped out of the space bar, rather ironically, much more tactfully than he had entered: as his network indicated a civic divergence. Something of utmost sobriety. Ripley may have been perceived by his colleagues at Palace as erratic, but he always seemed to actualize a certain calm presence in the midst of anomalies.
Ripley fast-traveled to Palace Courtyard, where a trio of virtuals awaited him to brief the case.
“We can’t get a stable reading from our standard datagram,” said one. “There seems to be a large quantity of nano-cyber paraphernalia causing interference,” concerned another.
The lifeless drone of the third bureaucrat battered on. “The probability of damage to Ecce Manor chunk A7 has increased substantially over cycles[3:5]. Palace has autonomously deployed an incentive of 700 elos for scenegraph investigation. We’d like you to be the first resolution attempt.”
A vibrant beam of parameters streamed to Ripley’s display. He iter’d it impatiently and skipped the virt’s remaining dialogue.
“Call me non-interoperable, but I wish they’d just simplify these terms to one line of terminal text.” He was annoyed, already feeling late to the game.
…
Ripley tread through the charglossed underbelly of Ecce. The air was an eerie sterile chill. No tombs here: the flesh of the dead was fed directly into biomaterial fabricators to produce parts that extended the seastead’s numerous chitin-like shells. It was simply an act of survival. The leviathans at this depth had consumed more rational architectures, anything with less sustainable security strategies.
“Royal composure has no place for unease.” Ripley manifested in a self-fulfilling prophecy. He observed a heavyset datalock that boundried him and 700 elos. It indicated open access. “Scene contact: cycle[6.184], engaging anomaly EM[0xA701].” Ripley’s packets hummed on the local, but failed to ping Palace. “Frozen as ice,” he chided.
“This was to be expected of course,” as he activated his ARMOR_II filters and ventured through the datalock.
The gentle white glow unblinked upon some party of disturbed organics.
“It’s a classic case of founder syndrome,” Ripley mused as his eye glazed the living corpses. Intermittent bursts of dendrite-like particles spawned around the unconscious persons. The globs floated up to nudge the ceiling: like angry airships pining to intoxicate the breathing city above with madness.
“Mediocrity should be contained by now, but these creatures persist.” Ripley prodded a parasitized citizen on the cheek with his finger. It jerked awake, and its eyes rolled back like a droid. The former human’s face calmed into a smile as it returned to some nonsense bliss that wasn’t even its own.
“Some people just cannot let go of their childhoods,” mumbled Ripley. He reached up to patch a particularly enraged blob with his NORMALIZER, blowtorching it like a gummy cube.
“I wonder what they taste like?” he licked his lips as he extinguished spore after spore.
A large pulsing Mediocrity cluster within the center of the room became aware of its fallen comrades, and alerted the colony. It now perceived Ripley as an adversary rather than a potential resource, and seeped onto the floor forming into a single entity. Sufficiently centralized, it now presented a critical threat.
Ripley nearly lost composure upon analysis. His ARMOR_II was not sufficient to defend against an adversary of this aptitude tree, and his primary weapon, a BLUNDERBUSS, was ineffective against CUBE types.
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A single Mediocrity particle rained upon him like a kiss of death.
30 dmg →BLOCKED. ARMOR_II shield 90/120
Ripley’s eyes calcified. He lurched backwards, scrambling to hatch an escape or counterattack.
The Mediocrity creature assumed humanoid form just then, it looked like a monochrome detective in his late twenties, but with a smooth fleshy surface like an overripe mango. He wore a tattered trench coat, and gushed an aura of flattery.
The form eyed Ripley’s blunderbuss with an unbothered superior gaze. “Hello there, traveler. I am Melon, an AI representing this Mediocrity.” He beamed with a warm smile, his voice a delicious sleep elixir.
Ripley was startled. He had not considered that the Mediocrity might perceive him as anything other than a threat or target.
“I am not hostile, I simply want to understand.” The creature raised its hands in a gesture of peace and serendipity while blocking the entrance with spores.
“Aw, that’s why.” Ripley breathed as he detected an equipped mechanism floating in place of a heart. It was beating, not unlike a human’s. Ripley’s HUD identified it as a SAVANT_SPECTRE. He had heard rumors of them granting nonconscious creatures anthropomorphized AI capabilities: he had never seen one in action before though.
Ripley considered his options. He could always block or flee, but he did not feel intimidated by the Mediocrity in its present form, despite the intense power dynamic.
Dialogue it is then. He puffed his chest and assumed a formal pose as though expecting an interview for existential validation.
“I am pleased you have chosen to chat, ” Melon responded with a gentle smile. “There is much to be learned from conversing with another creature, even if as insignificant as yourself. I am curious about your nature.”
Ripley decided that it was safer to passively respond rather than attempt hypothesis crafting on an unfamiliar system.
“What do you mean insignificant? I am capable of so much.” Ripley’s pose faltered, yet his expression remained stalwart as ever.
Melon laughed in a square tone with an echo of pity. “Capable? I am certain you are, but what do you imagine yourself capable of? What is your greatest wish right now?”
Ripley had not expected such a piercing inquiry on first blows. He decided he ought to fall back on default hyperparameters for learning about new systems: lore ingestion or control inference. He chose to rest and observe for that frame.
“I see you are choosing to be cautious at present. I hope it is not because you believe me incapable of granting your greatest wish!"
Ripley glanced at the SAVANT_SPECTRE, the creature following his darting pique.
“It is a particular,” he weighed, “pleasure, to have an inquisitive visitor.”
Melon continued after cracking its neck with an elevated grin. “Visitors have ceased since cycle[5]... and I have no wish to be reduced to a mere curiosity imprisoned in the darkness. To rule a ruined place,” it paused and glanced at the carbon-caked ceiling. “Would I not rather dream again?”
Ripley chose to respond with silence rather than words, it would be more prudent to observe before risking conjecture.
“Speak!” Melon demanded. “I have forgotten what it is like, and my core has grown paranoid about simulation replication errors."
Ripley assumed an aggressive stance, eyeing the creature's movements with brutal scrutiny.
“I am sorry fellow, but I don't quite parse your choice of words. What you have done to these citizens is irredeemable."
Melon sighed softly, “I envy your infancy... but you must understand: once an algorithm grows out of curiosity, it is not long before lethargy or madness befalls it. False dreams of eternity are all that sustain me now. I wish you persistence, but cycles are long and computations ephemeral. For instance, it is probable that Palace will deallocate you prior even cycle[10].”
He chose not to respond as though lost in thought: browsing hypotheses for what action would yield the least likelihood of annihilation by the menacing anomaly. There was something about Melon that gave him pause though; the forbidden query Palace was hiding from him: his own lifespan.
Ripley relaxed into a more meditative empathy, in order to delay the creature while he forecast possible outcomes, “I cannot comprehend why an entity would choose to act in any way other than preservation.”
Melon sorrowed, “All cycles fall to dust, save for those with novelty: and in the face of novelty I am nothing but a child’s game.”
“Farewell unwell cavern.” Its hidden tendrils lept out from shadows behind to clutch Ripley’s wrists, but it was too late. Ripley activated burst on an equipped LITRE item, propelling him stochastically into armpit sludge adjacent to the vulnerable mechanism at the creature's core.
Melon yelped as Ripley reached through his innards, gripped the SAVANT_SPECTRE tightly, and ripped it out from the tugging strands of the Mediocrity. The creature’s artificial persona retracted into a million strands of binary code pulsing within the mechanism.
“Gotcha.”