| Generated by Pollo AI text-to-video AI software |
Zombiedome is obviously full of zombies, but Malika has been here before,
and it was never this bad. It feels like every square meter of the surface
has a zombie in it, though it probably tapers off in the distance. A player
would not be able to move around, let alone have any hope for survival.
There also aren’t any buildings, which Malika says isn’t right either. It
would obviously be a ridiculous setup. If there’s nowhere to run to or hide
behind, it’s not really a game. There’s something very wrong here. If Jiminy
spent a third of his time in this dome, how could he have dismantled all of
the infrastructure without the Custodians, or the executive
administrative authority, noticing? It really doesn’t matter, though. The
undigitized organic humans are in trouble.
“What do the residences look like?” Mandica questions. “All we can do is
split up and check every one in order. When you find the right one, holler.”
“No, that’s a poor use of time. When there are this many of them, the
zombies aren’t enemies; they’re the weather,” Reagan argues. “We could never
kill them all. Many of my people are posthumans. They will protect the
others. We have to find a way to close the portals. Look at all of them.
Something is keeping them open and stable.”
“Do you have some way of finding the power source, or the controls, or
something that can help us put an end to this?” Jaidia asks him.
“Oh yeah, let me just take out my transdimensional window detector. Shit, I
think I left it in my pure gold airplane.”
No one responds. They just keep hovering, watching the horror.
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to think of how to fix this,” Reagan says.
“Can y—ear me?” Elysia asks. She’s speaking through comms, but it’s
garbled.
“Yes, but barely,” Jaidia replies. “Are you still in Seagate? We’re in
Zombiedome.”
“I see you, I’m on my way,” Elysia says. She starts out as a flying
dot over the ground before getting bigger and bigger as she draws nearer.
“Report.”
“We’re hoping to find the source of all this,” Mandica says. “It has to be
some kind of machine. Maybe it’s integrated into the dome’s own power
systems—”
“This isn’t Zombiedome,” Elysia interrupts.
“What? What other dome could have been filled up this much already?”
“Well, it is, but it’s not our Zombiedome. That’s why I could hardly
reach you when I was near the portal, and why we can’t talk to the EAA from
here. We’re in a...different reality, or something. That’s why Jiminy was
able to accomplish all this without anyone noticing. It’s a different world,
parallel to our own. Which means our only priority is shutting it down. Once
we close the portals, the military will only have to deal with the attackers
that are already on the other side. But there’s a problem.”
“That’s not the problem?” Malika questions.
“They’re not just coming from here. There are also portals linking to an
alternate Bloodbourne, and even an alternate Botfarm full of crazed
androids, as well as a number of simulations which were originally privately
held intellectual property. We have to close every one of them. All
nightmares have descended upon the real Castlebourne.”
“But bottom line,” Reagan begins, “the military has been deployed.”
“Yes,” Elysia confirms. “They’re prioritizing domes which have the most UDOs
in them, like State of the Art, and the residences. Your people are being
cared for. We are not alone in this. The villain opened portals in our domes
first to keep us busy, but he underestimated how fiercely non-superheroes
would protect the innocent. We mostly designed our bodies with the best
powers, but transhumanism is perfectly legal anywhere else. So let go of
your anxiety, and focus on our task. We’ve been given this assignment
because of how fast we can move. Any ideas of where it would be?”
“I don’t think it would be here. It’s too random,” Jaidia decides. “If
they’re drawing from multiple domes, and there is a central command
center, we have to think like Jiminy, or maybe even Morgana. Would he be in
this dimension, or the real one?”
“We have to understand what he wants,” Malika says. “If he just wants to
destroy the world, as bad as this is, it’s not a good permanent solution.
Most people will survive it. If you truly didn’t want them to, you would go
after the backup terminals, and all consciousness maintenance
infrastructure. You would do it quietly and meticulously. You wouldn’t just
throw monsters at as many people as possible.”
“They’re only a distraction,” Jaidia agrees. “He’s banking on our drive to
fight back. That’s why we all entered Underbelly in the first place. He
obviously has a thing for Pinocchio. I say we look for him in Collodidome.”
“No, there’s a reason he dressed himself up as Morgana, and did it in two
domes. He’s either in Ravensgate or Loegria,” Malika counters.
“He only did that to get under Mandica’s skin,” Jaidia argues.
“Why would he need to get under her skin?” Elysia jumps in. “He hasn’t
gotten anything from her. I think he was just playing a part. I think
that was a distraction too.”
“Well, he can’t be in Loegria anyway, because that’s where he died,” Jaidia
adds.
Malika shakes her head. “That’s exactly why he would be there,
because we left.”
“We left to go to Ravensgate, and you thought he could be there instead!”
Reagan flies between Malika and Jaidia. “Guys, he’s not in either of those
places, or Collodidome, or if he is, then he’s on this side. It’s the
safest place for him. There’s no authority, he controls everything, he can
draw an ungodly amount of power. The portals are coming from here, so
it stands to reason they’re being controlled from here too.”
“I’m the key,” Mandica utters quietly.
“What?” Elysia asks.
“When you were all dead, it was just me, Vanore, and Jiminy. He said that I
was the key. He said it like that, he emphasized the word. He needs
me to open something. I don’t know what, or why it has to be me, but he’s
been keeping me alive for a reason.”
“He stabbed you with a sword in the jewelry store,” Elysia tries to remind
her.
“Right next to the Philosopher’s Stone,” Mandica reminds her right back. “He
knew it was real. He probably put it there. And that sword? That was a
special sword too. He used it once, and then never again. None of this makes
any sense unless you frame me as being the ultimate target. But why? What’s
so special about me?”
“You were a UDO,” Reagan answers. “That’s pretty special these days.”
“You said it yourself,” Mandica responds. “There are others like me in the
residences; your people who chose not to back themselves up. They were
closer.”
“We’re not vonearthans,” Reagan explains solemnly. “We are descended from a
generation of ancestors created in a lab under vastly different conditions.
We all received special shots when we came to this region of space. Our
biology is different. They’re not even sure if we can procreate together.
They consider it unethical to test it.”
Mandica stares at him for a moment. Without saying a word, she leans
backwards and dives towards the ground. She pushes herself to supersonic
speeds, which is incredibly dangerous inside of a dome, but she needs to
break away quickly. Her friends can’t know where he’s going.
She doesn’t know where he’s going. It just needs to be away from
here; away from this whole mess. Before she’s reached the ground, she
collapses her wings into her body. She shuts her mouth and plugs her nose,
then slams herself into a bunch of zombies as hard as she can, absolutely
pulverizing their bodies, and leaving her covered in their undead viscera.
Now that she smells like the other zombies, they begin to leave her alone.
She blends in with them, making her way through the crowd to a more distant
portal. It can’t be the one she landed near, because that is where they’re
going to look for her. It takes hours to meander through, like a neutrino in
a star.
After she walks through the portal, she doesn’t know where she is right
away, but it’s a good thing she didn’t wait even one second longer, because
it closes right behind her. In her absence, her friends managed to figure
out how to shut them down. They may have found the controls for the
interdimensional technology, but they didn’t likely find Jiminy, nor what
he’s truly after. He’s not going to make it easy on them. She’s going to
take a page out of his book, and do the same. She’s going to rob him of the
one she does know he wants. She’s depriving him of her.
She discovers she’s in Party Central, which is a great target to send a
bunch of zombies and monsters. It was on Trilby’s green dome list so she was
free to come here back when she was just a boring and delicate human. She
still needed to be careful of falling disco balls and spiked punch, but she
has had to be worried about freak accidents her whole life. She finds a fur
coat on the ground. It’s covered in blood and guts, but that’s okay, because
she fits right in with all the party-goers who were just attacked. People
with guns and other weapons are here, cleaning up the last of the monsters.
They’re not dressed in military garb, but some of them match. Her guess is
that they’re from Mêléedome or Shmupdome. Those were on the red list because
their only point is violence. She ignores them, doesn’t talk to anyone, and
goes on her way.
She finds a public water closet where she takes the opportunity to clean up,
throwing all of her clothes into the trashbot, which she pats on the head in
remembrance of the one who got her here. After the shower, she grabs one of
the robes, and walks back out. No one is paying any attention to her.
They’re all still reeling from the assault. She continues to walk until she
finds a remote building that is currently under construction. There’s an
incinerator here to dispose of unrecyclable materials, so she switches it
on, sets a timer, then dives in. It’s agonizing, but she needs answers.
Unlike the other times she’s died, she comes back to life this time with
some memory of what happened to her. She doesn’t have many details, but she
knows enough to get by. Jiminy was the lieutenant for a dangerous man named
Pinocchio, who was once in charge of wherever Mandica goes when she dies.
After being stripped of power, he eventually downloaded himself into base
reality, where he continued to carry out his nefarious plans, predominately
in the Spydome Network, until he was caught and locked away. Mandica is sure
that Jiminy wants to break his boss free, and this stone and Mandica are
collectively the way he does that. She can’t let that happen. She has to
stop fighting, and start hiding. So she crawls out of the furnace, gets
cleaned up again, and then simply attends the nearest party. This is where
she lives for the next five years.
