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[Now replaying: Log 3.22 - C://MemOS/Sam_v1/controlledmadness.exe]

Date: Error

Location: The Bunker at Progress’ Head // Zephyro’s Domain

//We’re all mad here, Alice//

//”Oooh-ah-ah-ah-ah!”//

[>>DATA CORRUPTED]

With Zephyro’s help, I managed to stumble forward until we reached the front lines. Several Old Guard fought in the fire-lit shadow of the Thing That Can Not be Questioned, or whatever it was called now. I didn’t care. My body burned so hot, a part of me that was still capable of rational thought feared my brain was going to melt. It was hard to care, though. I only had eyes for the prize, the solution and cure; eruptions of Logic, gushing cyan in an endless sea of black and red.

As I finally came within reach, I began pitting my strength against the horde, each step forward increasing the power of my draw. The struggle bore a steady stream of blue. It swirled out of the gnashing sea, swelling and twisting around me, until finally, I stood in a tiny tornado of cyan.

Despite the exhaustion, despite the world beginning to swim before my eyes, I inhaled as sharply as I could.

{INCOMING LOGIC - 387 LB}

{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 639 LB}

A shudder of rage-filled screams swept through the horde, servos whining like power drills, eyes flashing dark red like dying server farms, pustules bubbling and spewing bright green acid skyward. It reminded me of that one time I had money issues and took a job as a council advisory on a corporate merger. The mood in the meeting room had been much the same.

I was at least partially aware that I was chuckling, and that it sounded a little insane, but what about my trip so far hadn’t been crazy?

So why not indulge a little?

{CONSUMED LOGIC - 300 LB}

{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 339 LB}

{SAINTECH Alpha 8 2000X 1-Core Processor (Tier 0, Professional)

IS NOW

SAINTECH Beta 1 1200X 2-Core Processor} (Tier 1, Entry)

Only a single bell sounded this time, powerful and glorious.

It marched over the battlefield as if taking one giant step, swept over the soldiers I had summoned, and crashed into the gnashing cancer that was the Ferals.

While I was used to the beasts screaming their defiance to the sound, the Old Guard’s response hit me unexpectedly.

They cheered.

It stirred quiet memories of battles and board meetings alike, like a gust of wind going through a mail room, scattering polaroids.

The… soldiers? Guildspeople? Guardsmen?… The Old Guard rushed forward, and as my CPU load dropped below critical levels, I finally had time to take in the chaos around me.

There was a woman made of mirrored glass punching her way through the horde, each strike reverberating like an echo.

And that was one of the tamer Old Guard in regards to craziness.

A guy wearing a bandana over his face, a punk vest over his chest, and nothing below the waist but heart-print boxershorts threw something that looked like an exploding cat into the crowd, screaming something about breaking everything and everyone.

In the middle of the front lines, there were two young women in power armor. One had cat ears, the other was wearing a stark white, featureless mask underneath a nun’s habit. The cat-eared girl had two railguns mounted on the shoulders of her armor. I watched the air around them distort as they fired. The power of her guns would have put the ones I’d advanced for my praetorians to shame, each shot punching holes through several rows of monsters.

The nun, on the other hand, had flamethrowers. Plural.

Watching her expressionless mask glint in the firelight as she scorched Ferals by the dozens was a little disturbing, to say the least.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

To my right stood a guy in a green cloak, his face hidden in the shadow of his cowl. He peppered the battlefield with magically enhanced arrows from a longbow covered in runes.

Also, he was wearing a green snake like a shawl.

Overhead there was an honest-to-god crow flying over the battlefield. It dove down toward me, looked at me like a disappointed parent, then swooped back up. In its claws, it was carrying a crab that was dropping pies filled with gold coins.

They sparkled in the firelight as they flew through the air, then exploded, ripping through the Ferals like a cluster grenade.

It was absolute mayhem, beyond overwhelming to the senses. As always when thinking got too much, I followed the instincts that had gotten me through more battles than I could count and joined the fray.

I unwound Pharus from my arm, took up position in the second line, and started whaling into the horde.

Despite my exhaustion, it was obvious how important my CPU upgrade had been. I’d already begun noticing an increase in speed as I advanced through tier 0, but apparently, the power gap between tiers was even larger. It took me less time to aim my strikes, and it was easy to tell they were faster and more powerful than ever before.

Enemies like the spiders, which had almost killed me not hours earlier, now only needed what felt like a gentle tap tap to explode in a fountain of scrap and cyan sparks.

I inhaled, drawing in as much Logic as I could, but between the Old Guard taking their share, and the Ferals pulling against my draw with renewed vigor, I didn’t gather nearly as much as I did before.

{INCOMING LOGIC - 23 LB}

{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 362 LB}

A wolf made of black smog—perhaps a distant cousin of the hyena I had fought before— emerged from the horde, climbing atop its brethren. With a whir of smoke, it jumped, flying weightlessly over the ranks of its kind. By its trajectory, it was heading straight for an Old Guard that had gotten cut off up ahead.

Too late to warn them, even if they could hear me.

You’re going to lose them all, Sam. One after the other.

“Fuck you!”

I lashed out, chain unfurling as Pharus arced through the air. I had planned to merely knock the Feral off course, fully expecting my weapon to sink in without doing any lasting damage. But unlike with the acid hyena from before, my censer slammed into the dark mass with enough force to shatter the beast’s skull and emerge from the other side. The Feral dissipated in mid-flight, raining Logic and black droplets over the battlefield.

The Old Guard I had saved kept marching forward, not even bothering to around as he absorbed the Logic drenching him from above.

He was a werewolf-looking fellow, wearing blue overalls and a huge pouch for his tools. It also seemed he was sporting a lizard arm, but I couldn’t be certain. It changed form every few seconds. He was carrying a large ladder in one hand and a flaming electric scooter in the other, laying into the crowd while screaming “DAME EL PAGO DE MI SEGURO, O PINTARÉ LAS PAREDES CON TU SANGRE!”

He dropped the ladder, balancing it against his tool pouch, held the scooter up above his head with both hands, and howled.

Then everything around him lit on fire.

The werewolf walked out of the inferno, completely unscathed, nodded to me, and said: “I hope the firefighters are quicker on the paperwork this time.” Then he padded his tool sack to make sure it was unharmed, shouldered his burning e-scooter, clamped his ladder under his arm, and went to do something else.

What few Ferals survived the attack stumbled out of the fire towards us, and we made quick work of them, which turned the tide. As the fire petered out, we advanced, taking as much Logic as we could.

{INCOMING LOGIC - 205 LB}

{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 567 LB}

Within moments, we crossed the empty trench the werewolf had carved for us and slammed into a new front of monstrosities. I took a step back and checked the area behind us to make sure we weren’t overextending ourselves. It seemed good so far, but the advance had stretched the lines on our sides, so I nodded to Zephyro to hold the front, then dashed over to relieve our flanks as best I could.

Each step sent a small shock through my body as I sprinted over the broken mosaic, but I wasn’t as fast as I would have imagined, given the CPU upgrade.

{CPU Load: ▲ 73%}

{Core Temp: ▲ 75° C}

This place made no sense whatsoever. Why was moving my legs to attack different than moving my legs to get from A to B? Perhaps it was a filesize thing?

Then came another of those moments of battle clarity, where every distraction was swept aside, and singular focus ruled the moment. It only lasted a split second, just long enough for me to realize that despite my CPU load and temperature, I was thinking far more clearly. I remembered getting ambushed by enemies I knew were behind me several times in the past four hours, and now I was taking into account troop movements and flanks? Was this just my past experience, awoken by the familiar context of leading a battle, or was there something else at play?

“Chris, what’s the next CPU upgrade, and can we afford it?”

{SAINTECH Beta 2 2400X 2-Core Processor: REQUIRES 600 LB}

I winced at both the words hammering through me, and the cost. I could almost afford the upgrade, I just didn’t know if it was worth it mostly because I had no idea what any of these numbers meant, or how they translated to power inside this mad world.

I Idly wished I had paid more attention to my team working at that one hardware manufacturer when I had been in my late 20s. They had tried to explain to me why this one CPU was better than the other one, but only for servers or something. It had been beyond confusing, and I had to bribe them with pizza to stop their lecture. Of course, it became a joke to tell me about “threading” and “multi-core virtualization” whenever they wanted free pizza.

I smiled. They had been good people.

Then I arrived at the flank, flared Pharus, and all thoughts beyond fighting vanished.

The situation was different here, only a handful of Old Guard focusing on the biggest threat while the nun with the flamethrowers thinned out the smaller Ferals with ridiculous ease. I couldn’t tell her expression from under her mask, but she snorted derisively as she sprayed the area with liquid fire. “What models are these? Minus fifteen?”

The girl in the cat armor chuckled as she fired a sleek-looking pistol into the crowd. “I know, right? This is way better than the mines. More points, too.”

“True,” the nun said, “Plus, with this many, even you can hit one or two shots in a while.”

“Hey! My aim is just fine.”

“Your career average on hits per shot taken, or HPS, is significantly below average,” said a robotic voice from nowhere.

“Oh, shut up!” the catgirl said, and her ears folded down in a way even I would find cute if we hadn’t been in an active warzone.

“Focus, Ladies,” I said, flaring Pharus for another strike and hurling its head through the air to mark something that looked suspiciously like a giant Gazelle with curved horns and a shoddily built laser rifle on its back. “They’re bringing in the big guns,” I added, as Pharus’ fire spread over the Feral, marking it.

A second later, it had two fist-sized holes punched into its side and collapsed.

“See? I can aim.”

“Yeah, I saw,” the nun said. “Now, if only you hadn’t used the automatic aim on your railguns…”

“I didn’t!”

“While that is factually true,” said the disembodied robot voice, “you did however use your augments’ ability to ease aiming on targets marked by target painting devices.”

That voice reminded me an awful lot of Chris, so I pitied the girl. A lot.

“Think you can hold the line here?” I asked, cutting off a debate I knew was brewing.” We are moving toward the large Feral at the entrance of the plaza, and we can’t risk getting surrounded.”

“Sure thing, lady,” the woman in the cat armor said, and that was good enough for me, so I turned and headed for the back of our formation.