[Log 3.15]
[XV - The Devil]
[Part 2 - Lucifer]
[//reverse CaBd15.pZc]
[>>poGarYty rIverseO]
I weighed the torch… scepter… mace… thing… I weighed Pharus in my hand and idly thumbed the button that ignited it. Blue flames came to life inside the golden cage, chasing deep shadows from Zephyro’s form and mine. Compared to v.01, the fire glowed a bit brighter, but I didn’t see any obvious differences beyond that. Had the cage been golden? I couldn’t remember, and it didn’t matter right now.
It was time to test my new theory. If I held my hand over the flames, but they were cold to the touch. No, not quite… They felt like they could hurt if I wanted to. But hurt what? It wasn’t like I had real flesh I could burn. It was all just a metaphor. Pain was completely unnecessary.
I swirled the mace in my hand as we walked, making our shadows dance on the walls of crumbling houses. Zephyro eyed me briefly, but didn’t say anything and resumed keeping an eye on the rooftops.
“Hey, why do things hurt in here?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the shadows of nearby alleys.
“Because we are alive, Sultana, and to live means to be in pain. Thus, there is always suffering in life.”
I scoffed. I couldn’t help myself. It was such a 2000s-emo-band reply that I couldn’t take it seriously. But when I looked at him, I found him holding my gaze, unsmiling.
“This is a good thing, Sultana. It means that as long as you feel pain, you are alive, and being alive is joyful. Thus, there is joy to be found in pain, and we must remember that always.”
This time, I broke eye contact first. I scanned the rooftops and glanced into alleyways, but found them deserted. If around us the fires hadn’t raged, the air hadn’t tasted hot and full of destruction, and the sky wasn’t collapsing in itself, I would have thought the world had come to a complete halt, frozen like an Excel sheet with more than nine thousand tabs. Next to us, another house burst into flames with a loud crack. Zephyro and I gave it an exhausted glance, but didn’t stop walking.
“No,” I returned to the conversation after finishing my quick scan, not finding any immediate threats, “I meant why don’t you disable the pain? It’s your domain, right?”
“I can not, Sultana.” Now it was his time to scoff, and I cringed a little. “What Vizier would I be if I had the ability to spare my people pain and not make use of it? No, I do not know why you and I, or anyone in my Domain feels hurt, nor can I control it. I only know that if there is struggle, there is pain, and thus, there is life.”
I didn’t reply immediately. His philosophical nonsense nagged at my thoughts, and I wanted to argue and prove him wrong, but this was not the time.
I returned to my thoughts instead. Pain seemed to do the same thing here as it did in the real world, then; Warn people that something dangerous was happening and they needed to stop it. There was probably some line of kernel code that all these AI shared, maybe something in the original memOS that Chris had added to create instinctual self-preservation, and it just happened to manifest itself as pain. Just like Electronic Warfare Suites manifested as weapons, and worker robots looked like carpenters or smiths. Maybe it was just artifice imitating life. Maybe I had done something wrong with my Wish. I couldn’t know. The entire line of questioning was pointless.
In the end, I had fewer pieces of the puzzle than I liked, but enough to work with.
There was memOS, which repaired my personality matrix, which in turn made me feel pain when it got corrupted, warning me.
Then there was my CPU, which had to work harder the more stuff I did, and that raised my core temperature. If the temperature went up too high, I’d feel exhausted, just like I someone in real life. It also turned my thoughts into single-minded sludge, and ‘physical’ activities felt harder and harder until I eventually collapsed from overexertion.
Lastly, there was my armor, which absorbed attacks against my personality matrix, until I reached a certain temperature threshold. Probably to keep me from overheating and completely melting my CPU after one hit. I was pretty sure that would effectively kill me as well.
Still, feeling exhausted wasn’t nearly as bad as feeling a broken bone stab into your guts. I should probably try and get a bit more regeneration, then. Perhaps… Could I just advance memOS? I took a breath…
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 202 LB}
{INSUFFICIENT LOGIC}
…and deflated. Well, damn. How much Logic did you need to upgrade memOS to… I didn’t know; memOS 98 or whatever?
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
{memOS 11 - Release_ver: REQUIRES 300 LB}
Okay, that was new. Certainly helpful, if fucking annoying. Sure, maybe I hadn’t exactly needed it, but why hadn’t that been a feature before? Seriously, it was like Chris was making the entire thing up as we went along.
Actually, maybe they did. The notifications had been improving while I was in here, focusing on whatever was needed and leaving out unimportant stuff. I briefly imagined getting the entire hardware readout hammered into my brain every time I changed something, and actually flinched at the thought. Not only would it be incredibly uncomfortable, but it would also distract me from the action and take up unnecessary space. Just imagine the time it would take to read through all of that every single time… Who would do something like that?!
Anyway, 300 Logic Bytes were far outside my budget. If I couldn’t upgrade memOS, perhaps I could just reinforce my personality matrix.
{SAINTECH DPM v0.3: REQUIRES 30 LB}
Alright, far more manageable. Remembering Zephyro’s warning, I pondered how to not make a spectacle of the improvement. As much as I liked to hear that Bell again, it seemed to attract the Ferals and perhaps even the Shackled. The first few times I had used my Wish, I had been frantically grabbing for that ephemeral reverberation in my soul. It had taken me years before I truly understood the Wish, and it only become second nature during the retreat from Advance’s Pinnacle.
While Logic sounded very much the same, it felt slightly different. Back in my body, the Wish had suffused me completely, pouring out of my soul like a well to soak into every fiber of my being. Now, it was like there was a thin membrane surrounding the energy which made handling it completely different. Pouring from a bag as opposed to dipping the cup, so to speak.
During my first weeks on Tobes, I found out that by controlling my breathing, I could control how I poured out my Wish. I had fallen into the same mindset subconsciously while handling the Logic. Later, I found out it wasn’t truly my breath, but my state of mind that mattered. My willpower, persistence, and focus.
I centered my thoughts on the concept of my identity, of what made me, me. I thought of the endless dark I had woken up in. I thought of fear. I thought of not wanting to lose myself. Coward.
I gritted my teeth. No. NO! Never again! I thought of resistance and perseverance. Of momentum and inertia. Of that endless, roaring stream of fire that would always give me strength and wash me clean of weakness. If I hadn’t listened to Patti, I could have killed them all. She would still have been alive, and Stax and Lorelye and Olre and everyone else. I would have kept them safe. I would have kept control. I would have saved the world, and no one would have called me Tyrant Divine anymore.
Is that really who you want to be Sam?
Yes. This was who I am. This was me! I am I control.
I took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully, willing the Wish to be quiet.
{CONSUMED LOGIC - 30 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 172 LB}
{SAINTECH DPM v0.1
IS NOW
SAINTECH DPM v.025 BETA}
{Memory: 16/20 LKB RAM}
The sound of the bell rung through the streets with the force of a 500.000 Watt concert speaker. Dust exploded away from us in a small whirlwind. Zephyro whirled on me. He looked like he wanted to slap me across the face. I was still breathing out, the shock pulling the air from my lungs. Before I could stop it, I noticed another chunk of my Logic slip through my mind and into my core. No, no, no stop! FUCK! I AM IN CONTROL. STOP!
{CONSUMED LOGIC - 60 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 112 LB}
{SAINTECH DPM v.025 BETA
IS NOW
SAINTECH DPM v.069 ALPHA}
{Memory: 17.5/20 LKB RAM}
Another knell mixed with the first, their resonance intermingling and crashing against each other. The ground under my feet shook. My clothes whipped around me and Zephyro stumbled a few steps back, his angry yells lost in the cacophony. He leaned forward to not get blown back. The Fire whipped back so hard that several of the houses around me were extinguished. A few housefronts cracked, shattered, and collapsed.
NO! No! Please! No…
{CONSUMED LOGIC - 90 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 22 LB}
{SAINTECH DPM v.025 BETA
IS NOW
SAINTECH DPM v.9}
{Memory: 20/20 LKB RAM}
A third bell joined just as the first one started to fade. It was softer, distant. It filled the silence between the other two with a haunting, hollow sound that slipped into cracks and crevices and pushed in deep, ceaselessly looking for where a soul would hide in the dark.
For a split second, I was back in the camp again, with the bandits. My sword lay to the side. Hands pressed me into the mud. I was screaming, terrified and angry, terrified of how angry I was and angry about how terrified I felt. A man was writhing in front of me as my Wish streamed out of me and into him. I had still thought of him as a man, even though his screams had no longer been human. The hands holding me had slipped away when his fourth mouth started speaking.
“The torch lights the endless sky it points the way for them and for you I will do anything and everyone will come and rejoice for the flame will nourish you with heat and scorch your bones free of sin…”
When the memory faded I noticed I was screaming. The world glitched around me, structures re-forming themselves into half-realized impossible nightmares. Windows like mouths showing nothing, stairs reaching up into the empty sky above like fingers clawing for help. The mosaic below our feet, showing my Torch in intricate detail, cracked. Behind us, the arch crumbled and rose again as a towering monstrosity of obsidian and flesh and cables. The bells tolled and tolled and the world changed and changed and Zephyro was on the floor and it was all my fault and I would never be in control ever again. I fell to my knees, dry-heaving sobs that didn’t want to emerge.
{INSUFFICIENT LOGIC}
A pillar of cyan erupted from my chest and shot into the sky, washing over the entire world. The city glitched again, and bathed in blue it re-formed.
The nightmare was over as the last decibel of the third bell faded. I fell forward, the sharp stones of the cracked mosaic jabbing into my palms as I steadied myself.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—“ I took a deep breath.
“FUCK!” I slammed my hand down in the middle of the torch on the mosaic, and a few stones flew away. A few others glinted in the light of the emerging fire and read
[PM Integrity: 99%]
My hand was bleeding. Someone touched my shoulder and I flinched, whirling. It was the Vizier.
“I didn’t mean to, Zephyro, I…”
“I know, Sultana. I know.” His eyes dripped compassion like honey and I wished I could be weak enough to just drown myself in them. Instead, I hit the damn mosaic again, harder this time. My knuckles split open. The cracks running over the emblem widened.
[PM Integrity: 98%]
I shrugged him off and got to my feet. “If they didn’t know I was here before, they do now. Let’s go.”