 |
| Generated by Google ImageFX text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3 |
The people who work in the Garden Dimension are not pleased to learn that
Briar de Vries pushed the prisoner down a well, but they let it go when they
realize that A.F. is no ordinary man. He’s in a posthuman body, reluctantly
gifted to him by the infamous Team Matic. He’s not immortal, but he’s harder
to hurt, and quicker to heal. The walls of the well are smooth and wet. It
was designed with an ancient aesthetic, but constructed using modern
techniques, so it hasn’t experienced any wear and tear. He’s not getting out
of there unless he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, or fly on his
own power. He’ll survive, but not for long. Briar hasn’t clarified what he
thinks his endgame is, but they’re letting him do what he thinks is best,
for now.
It’s the next day now, and everyone appears to be up to speed. Hogarth
Pudeyonavic’s artificial universe, Fort Underhill predominately houses
people who used to be dead. Now Ingrid realizes why they didn’t call it Fort
Hogarth, or something. She may have built it, but it was Ellie Underhill who
used her immense powers to resurrect 120 billion people from the afterlife
virtual simulation they were in, into new substrates in base reality. She
evidently did it all at once. The thing about this situation, though, is
that there was no longer anywhere for them to go when they died. Their
bodies are no more invincible than A.F.’s. Some of them had spent thousands
of years in the simulation, having died on Earth in ancient times. To them,
coming back to a physical plane of existence wasn’t really a gift, even
though the servers they were being stored on were about to be shut down.
Hogarth came up with a solution. It is she who has the power to
demolecularize her body, and respawn elsewhere. Someone—it’s unclear
who; perhaps Hogarth herself—replicated this ability in everyone. Now they
all respawn. It’s relatively rare, because they’re kind of living in
a utopia, so it’s not like people are dropping like flies, but it’s a nice
contingency. Visitors from Salmonverse can still die in most places in Fort
Underhill, but they too are protected as long as they remain in the Crest
Hotel, as a safety feature for diplomatic reasons.
Ingrid is looking down the wall at the prisoner. A.F. seems very calm. She
can’t fully make out his face this far away, and in this poor lighting, but
it kind of looks like contentment from here. She needs to get him out of
there. She needs to talk with him herself. This well-centric moral lesson
was a stupid idea. There’s a rope here, but it doesn’t feel like it’s sturdy
enough to hold a person. It’s just meant to pull up water in a bucket. This
unique jail was meant to be relatively self-sufficient. When you water some
of the ground on the bottom of the thorny walls, nutrient-rich mushrooms
grow in a matter of hours, reportedly providing all the nourishment a
prisoner needs.
Killjlir Pike—who Ingrid is convinced made up their own name—walks in from
the corridor. Ingrid heard them coming a mile away. As a seasoned warrior,
Ingrid knows how to be stealthy. She wasn’t arbitrarily handed the job of
running the entire offensive branch of her civilization’s military. She
earned it. She earned it in her enemies’ blood, and her own. She sometimes
can’t help but sneak up to people, even when surprise is not her intention.
Killjlir is the polar opposite. They have no personal experience with war,
nor bloodshed of any kind. They were indeed handed their role as leader of
their people. The Andromeda Consortium is an incredibly bizarre and
dysfunctional web of alliances that always opposed the Detachments, over
which Ingrid presided in the Fifth Division parallel reality. These
alliances are based on an incomprehensible mess of so-called hierarchies.
Two factions can war with each other, and they can recruit allied factions
into that, even if there’s a conflict of interest. Literally, one faction
will fight this war on both sides. It doesn’t make any sense.
Killjlir’s official title is First Among Us. The Andromedans might be
fighting each other every which way, but they all answer to Killjlir. The
way the Consortium apparently sees it, the First World is superior to all
others. But this doesn’t make sense either. Not only is the First World not
the planet where humans originally lived, because that was in the Milky Way,
but it’s not even the first planet that was settled in the Andromeda Galaxy.
They discovered it something like three hundred years later. They don’t
dispute this fact in their history, they just don’t see the problem with
using the term. Only a First Worldian can become First Among Us, but that’s
the only requirement. Ingrid believes that the successor is chosen due to
their attractiveness, but she’s never heard anyone admit that. They don’t
have to have any diplomatic experience, or leadership skills, or even basic
intelligence. That’s what leads Ingrid to believe that it’s only about
superficial qualities, but again, she doesn’t really know. All she knows is
that Killjlir is an idiot, and they don’t get along. The sentient tree
forced them both to represent the interests of the Fifth Division
collaboratively, but it was clear from the beginning that Ingrid was going
to have to do all the work.
“What are you doing?” Killjlir asks?
“Getting some water,” Ingrid lies.
“You’re gonna drink water from where there’s a person?”
“What’s it to ya?”
“I can help. Do you want me to help?”
“You don’t know what I may need help with,” Ingrid reasons.
“I bet I do.” They glide over to look down the well. “How’re ya doing down
there?”
“Oh, I’m great!” A.F. responds. “How ‘bout you?”
“Hang in there! We’re gonna rescue you!”
“We are?” Ingrid questions.
Killjlir closes their eyes, and shakes their head to silently respond to
Ingrid. “Hold your breath!” they call down to A.F. They take a little bottle
from their oversized sleeve, pop the cork, and drop the whole thing down the
wall.
In an instant, the water shoots up like a geyser. A.F. is sent flying into
the ceiling, where he’s impaled on a couple dozen thorns, which hold him in
place while the water settles back down. Ingrid is speechless as she sloughs
the chemicals off of her body. It’s not just water, but some kind of
hyperreactive polymer. She’s never seen it before. “What. The. Fuck!”
Killjlir tilts their head as they’re looking up at A.F. Blood begins
dripping down on their faces, which Ingrid is too upset to block, and
Killjlir seems curious about it, as if they’ve never seen blood before
at all. “That was more powerful than I realized.”
“Was that your first kill?” Ingrid asks them.
“No,” A.F. ekes out from the ceiling. “She’s not killed me, I’m fine.” He
groans and struggles to move, millimeter by millimeter, until pulling
himself back off of enough thorns to let gravity take over. He falls down,
smashing his face on the well between them before crash landing on the
ground.
“Sorry,” Killjlir says, like their only crime was forgetting a friend’s
middle name.
“You’re lucky he’s hard to kill,” Ingrid scolds. “We would have been
screwed. And I need to talk to him.”
A.F. laughs as he’s still lying facedown on the dirt. “It’s too late.”
“I knew it,” Ingrid says angrily. “You wanted to be down that damn
well. Or at least you didn’t care.”
He rolls himself over, revealing a bloody smile. “Did you really think we
didn’t know about respawning? Do you really think that the First Explorer
didn’t tell us everything? She’s omniscient!”
“She’s called the First Explorer?” Killjlir asks, with an air of seriousness
that Ingrid has never seen in them before. “Tell me, is she called the First
Explorer?”
He laughs again. “Yeah.”
Killjlir pulls a dagger out of their other sleeve. Their newfound stoicism
has not subsided. They kneel by A.F., and unceremoniously drive the dagger
into his neck, through his brain, and out the top of his head.
Ingrid doesn’t know whether she should be impressed, or horrified. Probably
both. “Was...that your first kill?”
Killjlir hastily removes most of their elaborate dress, and tosses it down
the well. They’re now wearing a sleek and stylish uniform. “Help me.” They
bend back down, and lift A.F.’s dead body’s shoulders up.
Still shocked, but following her instincts, Ingrid reaches down and grabs
the legs. Together, they bend him at the waist, and throw him back down the
well, rear end first. “What are we doing here? What the hell is going on?”
Killjlir takes off their gemstone necklace, sets it down on the edge of the
well, and hovers the water bucket over it. “Get ready to run. If you get cut
by a thorn, don’t stop. Just keep going. I’ll heal you.” Without another
word, they smash the gem with the bucket, and scrape it all down the well
with everything else. There’s an immediate boom, and the ground trembles.
The top stones begin to break apart, and crumble into the hole. Killjlir
takes Ingrid by the arm, and ushers her out into the corridor. They then
quickly let go, and run in front.
Ingrid does get cut as she’s racing down the tunnel behind a person she
thought she knew well enough. They have seemingly been faking their entire
personality this whole time? Is the same true for the rest of the
Andromedans? Are they not as dumb as they come off? Is there a method to
their madness that goes beyond anyone’s comprehension? They keep running
until they get to the exit, not looking back, but knowing that the bower is
collapsing behind them, and getting sucked into the well.
Once they’re free, Killjlir stops suddenly, spins around, and wraps their
arms around Ingrid. The wood and thorns continue to be pulled away, as do
some leaves, blades of grass, and other plants which happen to be nearby. It
tries to pull them down with the debris, but Killjlir is steadfast, digging
their heels into the ground more and more the stronger the implosive force
becomes. When it’s all over, they’re standing in a barren patch about the
size of the thorn barrow that once stood there.
“Can you tell me what happened now?” Ingrid requests as the dust
settles.
“That’s what I would like to know.” Leader of this dimension, Storm
Avakian is standing next to them, just removing her hand from Briar de
Vries’ shoulder, who presumably teleported her here from wherever.
Before anyone else can speak, a thunderous roar screams down at them from
the sky. The comfortable minimal sunshine that once blanketed these lands
during the day brightens more than it ever has since Ingrid arrived. It’s
blinding. The dimensional barrier that Onyx was talking about is flickering
as bolts of lightning shoot along the surface. “We’re too late,” Killjlir
says. They sigh and look at Storm. “Prepare for war.”
No comments :
Post a Comment