RE: The Big Damn Fight- Humanity's Only Hope!
07-05-2016, 07:50 AM
William William William, first of his name, first ever human mind to travel between dimensions and universes and all that other shit, not actually the first ever person to have their mind uploaded into a laptop (hey, your kink is not my kink and that’s okay), was in fact right now formulating four hundred billion new ways to be angry.
He deserved more than this.
He’d figured it wouldn’t be too much trouble, to be poured across realms, and it would be fairly simple to bring him back, chock full of information and accolade-winning papers. Being a laptop wasn’t actually all that bad. He could think several orders of magnitude faster than most other intelligent beings, and plus, he had games installed.
But this? This was humiliation. This was being lost in space. This was having his life threatened by random pus monsters, random lizard monsters, and random supermodel monsters. That’s right, supermodel monsters. His Magic-Eye™ saw everything. But it’s not as if anyone would listen to poor William, noooo. He would have bet his motherboard most of his fellow ‘fighters’ were even aware that he was something more than just a mere appliance. Unappreciated, that’s what he was, unappreciated in his time.
These were the motivations that ran through William’s processors as a remote-controlled droid lashed him to his own mech - a monstrosity strapped inside of a scavenged alien scoutship. With a series of squeaks and grunts, the half-wrecked launcher tilted itself towards the hulking alien mothership, a harpoon aimed at the heart of the whale.
“I will be remembered for this,” WWW began, but his speech was tragically cut short by the launch, or at least it was stretched out into unintelligible strings. Not that anyone was around to hear or read or anything. For perhaps the first time in his life, he was alone.
William had always been popular. This combined with a brilliant mind for historical research and a sense of overpowering self-confidence made him the ideal candidate amongst the faculty when it came to the past-viewing project. His colleagues smothered him in accolades and praises, rewarded him for his work, and there had never been a shortage of friends.
But now as he sailed across the empty spaces, he began to realize how false those smiles had been. How sarcastic the prizes, how enthusiastically they had buttered him up for this assignment. How much they had wanted him out of their lives, how much they hated him. He had never wanted to believe - no! He would save them all, and he would show them all how amazing he was. He would save this simulated human race, and he would bring them glory and power and joy! They would flourish under his name, and he would be William, King Laptop the First!
To chase the thoughts away, he pulled up his most cherished artifact from the late 20th century: a recovered clip from a blockbuster movie - one of only six that they could rescue from a refurbished LaserDisc found in the ruins of Old Dallas. He recited the words from memory as the low-resolution ‘President’ spoke them out loud:
“...Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom…”
Out the corner of his Magic-Eye™ he saw a hail of gunfire dissolve against the mothership’s force fields, even as his pirated ship effortlessly slipped through them.
“...Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation.”
Behind him, a titanic alien beast swatted a swathe of shitty mechs out of the sky. They shattered against each other, tumbling into the titan’s maw.
“We are fighting for our right to live.”
A minor asteroid imploded, forming a tiny, momentary black hole that swallowed another titan whole.
“To exist.”
As it went screaming into the void, sickly purple tentacles lashed out and pulled in a fleeing civilian ship. In another second, the black hole was gone.
“And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice:”
To describe the state of affairs in the shortest, most succinct way possible: the mothership was advancing. The humans were losing.
“‘We will not go quietly into the night!’”
The darkness rose like bile in humanity’s doomed, collective throat: a guillotine of screams as the alien vanguard pushed on, pushing the defenders back, back, back.
“We will not vanish without a fight!”
William looked back at the last minute and saw, far behind him, the frantic maneuvers of the other battlers trying to stop the advance. Pink mech. Silver mech. Yellow monstrosity of a mech. Some other ones he couldn’t quite place. Maybe they would remember him. Or would his be the Tomb of the Unknown Laptop?
“We're going to live on!”
A docking port came snaking out towards him. Now or never.
“We're going to survive!”
He synthesized a deadly computer virus. Just like the movie. Let it run through him, waves of pain and pleasure. Force fed it into the mothership’s systems, even when it ran like fire through his own.
“Today we celebrate…”
With the last scrap of his consciousness, he triggered the mech’s self-destruct.
“Our Independence Day!”
He deserved more than this.
He’d figured it wouldn’t be too much trouble, to be poured across realms, and it would be fairly simple to bring him back, chock full of information and accolade-winning papers. Being a laptop wasn’t actually all that bad. He could think several orders of magnitude faster than most other intelligent beings, and plus, he had games installed.
But this? This was humiliation. This was being lost in space. This was having his life threatened by random pus monsters, random lizard monsters, and random supermodel monsters. That’s right, supermodel monsters. His Magic-Eye™ saw everything. But it’s not as if anyone would listen to poor William, noooo. He would have bet his motherboard most of his fellow ‘fighters’ were even aware that he was something more than just a mere appliance. Unappreciated, that’s what he was, unappreciated in his time.
These were the motivations that ran through William’s processors as a remote-controlled droid lashed him to his own mech - a monstrosity strapped inside of a scavenged alien scoutship. With a series of squeaks and grunts, the half-wrecked launcher tilted itself towards the hulking alien mothership, a harpoon aimed at the heart of the whale.
“I will be remembered for this,” WWW began, but his speech was tragically cut short by the launch, or at least it was stretched out into unintelligible strings. Not that anyone was around to hear or read or anything. For perhaps the first time in his life, he was alone.
William had always been popular. This combined with a brilliant mind for historical research and a sense of overpowering self-confidence made him the ideal candidate amongst the faculty when it came to the past-viewing project. His colleagues smothered him in accolades and praises, rewarded him for his work, and there had never been a shortage of friends.
But now as he sailed across the empty spaces, he began to realize how false those smiles had been. How sarcastic the prizes, how enthusiastically they had buttered him up for this assignment. How much they had wanted him out of their lives, how much they hated him. He had never wanted to believe - no! He would save them all, and he would show them all how amazing he was. He would save this simulated human race, and he would bring them glory and power and joy! They would flourish under his name, and he would be William, King Laptop the First!
To chase the thoughts away, he pulled up his most cherished artifact from the late 20th century: a recovered clip from a blockbuster movie - one of only six that they could rescue from a refurbished LaserDisc found in the ruins of Old Dallas. He recited the words from memory as the low-resolution ‘President’ spoke them out loud:
“...Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom…”
Out the corner of his Magic-Eye™ he saw a hail of gunfire dissolve against the mothership’s force fields, even as his pirated ship effortlessly slipped through them.
“...Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation.”
Behind him, a titanic alien beast swatted a swathe of shitty mechs out of the sky. They shattered against each other, tumbling into the titan’s maw.
“We are fighting for our right to live.”
A minor asteroid imploded, forming a tiny, momentary black hole that swallowed another titan whole.
“To exist.”
As it went screaming into the void, sickly purple tentacles lashed out and pulled in a fleeing civilian ship. In another second, the black hole was gone.
“And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice:”
To describe the state of affairs in the shortest, most succinct way possible: the mothership was advancing. The humans were losing.
“‘We will not go quietly into the night!’”
The darkness rose like bile in humanity’s doomed, collective throat: a guillotine of screams as the alien vanguard pushed on, pushing the defenders back, back, back.
“We will not vanish without a fight!”
William looked back at the last minute and saw, far behind him, the frantic maneuvers of the other battlers trying to stop the advance. Pink mech. Silver mech. Yellow monstrosity of a mech. Some other ones he couldn’t quite place. Maybe they would remember him. Or would his be the Tomb of the Unknown Laptop?
“We're going to live on!”
A docking port came snaking out towards him. Now or never.
“We're going to survive!”
He synthesized a deadly computer virus. Just like the movie. Let it run through him, waves of pain and pleasure. Force fed it into the mothership’s systems, even when it ran like fire through his own.
“Today we celebrate…”
With the last scrap of his consciousness, he triggered the mech’s self-destruct.
“Our Independence Day!”
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So very British / But then again | People are machines Machines are people | Oh hai there | There's no time
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Superhero 1920s noir | Multigenre Half-Life | Changing the future | Command line interface
Tu ventire felix? | Clockwork for eternity | Explosions in spacetime