RE: The Disposable Enquiry [Round 1: Kyyhkynen]
07-21-2012, 04:40 AM
Mister. Johnson.
Yes, sir, Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson. Mister - mister Johnson.
An archive of a hundred thousand tapes. Faithfully copied, partially, to compact discs. Those in turn partially copied to solid-state storage, so that the voice of Cave Johnson could be accessed at will - or otherwise - by any sentient program in the Aperture system.
Coriander tried to talk to the door, but the door was silent; not the silence of the dead, but the silence of the never having been alive, never having ever been - a terrifying, terrifying reminder that he himself was a set of electrical impulses from being nothing but an inert sphere of complicated silicon -
And he took the course he always took when he was scared, or confused, or desperate, or simply in a horrifying idleness, the course of denial’s delusion;
Coriander tried to talk to the door
What is real? On some visceral point of his being he knew he was a prisoner, pretending his prison walls around him - to feel safe, to feel familiar, to belong, not to be forgotten; he was once a manager, a mover, a shaker.
He was a mover in this organization, damn it, so how come he seemed to be in a part of the facility where they hadn’t hooked up a simple door? Of course, there was the ever helpful Mr. Johnson there - not the Mr. Johnson, oh no...
Bewildered, Roger stepped to the door and tried to pull it open, watching sadly as his hands passed through the wood. Another tremor shook the world.
“Oh dear.” Coriander tried to fathom the presence of an incorporeal entity. “I don’t remember any project on intangibility being close to completion. But! I suppose I have been somewhat out of touch.” He shrugged his handlebars expressively.
Well, this door wasn’t going to be replaced if no one knew it was here. There were still parts of the old facility that were still unexplored, their infrastructure too antiquated or dilapidated to update. Even the oldest Aperture technology was programmed to cry for help in the case of malfunction, programming error, or massive structural collapse.
Something about the little sphere’s posture, its mad twitch, its strange mannerisms, its - to put it kindly, loose grasp on reality - rang a metaphorical bell in organs that Roger Johnson had not, strictly speaking, got. It made him uneasy. As if a voice were showing him that this is what he himself would be, driven mad by a neverending quest of staples and forms and signatories; a phantom, a wisp of babbling lunacy like the pathetic ball rolling in front of him. In life and beyond, he had rarely found the occasion to feel an emotion so visceral as this fear - will I one day...be like that?
So it was in the middle of this reverie that Coriander exploded, the rockets built inadvisably into his conceptual behind firing violently into the lobby floor. The core jetted forward on the blast at ridiculous speeds, missing the door completely and creating a series of basketball-sized holes through several walls and out of the building altogether-
Without understanding why, Roger followed, a spectre passing through crumbling walls and the signs of imminent structural collapse. Perhaps because there was no one else about who was up to filling out forms, or perhaps just simple loneliness...
A prophet ran, with purpose, madly - so madly - at the towering, wavering pillar of arrow-shaft extending like an insult into the sky. On occasion droplets of blood would break loose from the arrowhead, tumbling end over end before cracking their frozen exterior on the cobblestones, spilling the eternal dove’s hemoglobin unceremoniously across any surface on which it could find to splash. One splattered Malachi Smith, the red-brown accentuating the blue of his eyes and the walnut color of his hair, giving him the very image of a martyr or a tortured harbinger of truth.
God thrust His monument into the sky before him, and Malachi knew it was but one facet of the Great Mechanical Construct that was His being. Words bubbled up in the cauldron of his soul - the beginnings of a Book, one of the many in the Testaments. An oracle: The word of the LORD to Israel through- He gazed beatifically at the arrow that was destroying the world. Through Malachi. “Malachi 1:1.”
He stood on a hillock, watching the masses fleeing purposelessly down below him, and was filled with the Holy Spirit. And at once Malachi did begin to preach, to breach the hardened hearts of the unbelieving:
As Jesus was walking ´£´21`23 !!!down to the depot today to get proper maintenance at affordable prices!@^&!@ “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you U*@#JßçNEW AND IMPROVED, versatile, adaptable to tasks of all sizes, truly the bestƒ®´QQE@€›´!@#read err:4241(%* of men.” At once they left their nets and (***%&$#^^(ª·ª⁄€((ensured that the cross-link hydraulics are properly calibrated,€‹&#(EDDD
12199ۢܰ
He had some of the crowd’s attention now, their faces turned upward to gaze upon his. They were jostled by the rest as they fled and ran like sheep, but they were the faithful, and Malachi was pleased. They would be the sheepdogs that gathered his flock together, and he would be the shepherd that brought the Gospel to those who needed it told.
And ultimately, everyone needed it told.
Jesus went #$)/err/err/err™£d worldwide, shipping at reduced rates¢∞§¢!@#(! and healing every disease and sickness among the people. $%@%/////people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, thosehaving seizures, and the paralyzed, and he ////transc\err: made them better////
Malachi laughed, a loud, clear laugh that wafted over the roiling masses. “Come now, my congregation. Those who are faithful, come with me! Climb with me! If you cannot, we shall lend you our strength! If you will not, we shall give you our will! If you do not...you will come around in time.”
His last sentence was punctuated by the roar of an explosion, as behind him a building collapsed into so much twisted rubble. It was also punctuated by a small round sphere hitting him in the small of the back, pitching them both down the hill.
ASMAIFAS, ahem, Henrouisgregori von Butchinskyspelmont III, trundled along on buzzing wheels, trying to find his new friend - alas, to no avail. It was a quest doomed to failure amongst the shaking and the crowd and their many, many legs. Most of these legs kicked Henrouisgregori quite a lot, but a few choice staples managed to pin the worst offenders to the ground by their boots. Just by their boots, of course. A truly dapper gentleman would never inflict unnecessary harm to an unarmed opponent. Besides, if he didn’t see any blood, there hadn’t been any drawn. Such were the rules of engagement.
The crowd did move him about though, by the sheer pressure of fluid dynamics and mob psychology. No matter how he fought it, with every meter he moved forward, he was pushed two back; until the building disappeared behind the crest of a nearby hill, and the man standing on it. He looked familiar - then with a true gentleman’s memory for faces, it hit him! Smith Malach/chi, the Inquirer had said. Flesh and blood and metal.
Dimly, he registered that Smith had begun to talk. But the matter at hand, the matter at hand, my good chap. Of course Coriander, the only other individual of Aperture construction he’d seen so far, was quite clearly nowhere to be seen! It indeed posed a puzzling conundrum as to why two fellow Aperture Science employees shouldn’t stick together.
But...
The more he thought about it, the less Coriander made sense. Henrouisgregori himself had been manufactured for human use, in the early 1980s. They’d only been experimenting with artificial intelligences then - he’d been the very top of the line when he was issued! Yet Coriander seemed much more complex than any of his own compatriots, or anyone he had met since.
So Henrouisgregori dealt with the problem in the way a true gentleman would, by pretending it didn’t exist.
However, this was hard to do when the subject of the problem then tumbled down the hill, accompanied by the Smith person.
Yes, sir, Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson. Mister - mister Johnson.
An archive of a hundred thousand tapes. Faithfully copied, partially, to compact discs. Those in turn partially copied to solid-state storage, so that the voice of Cave Johnson could be accessed at will - or otherwise - by any sentient program in the Aperture system.
Coriander tried to talk to the door, but the door was silent; not the silence of the dead, but the silence of the never having been alive, never having ever been - a terrifying, terrifying reminder that he himself was a set of electrical impulses from being nothing but an inert sphere of complicated silicon -
And he took the course he always took when he was scared, or confused, or desperate, or simply in a horrifying idleness, the course of denial’s delusion;
Coriander tried to talk to the door
What is real? On some visceral point of his being he knew he was a prisoner, pretending his prison walls around him - to feel safe, to feel familiar, to belong, not to be forgotten; he was once a manager, a mover, a shaker.
He was a mover in this organization, damn it, so how come he seemed to be in a part of the facility where they hadn’t hooked up a simple door? Of course, there was the ever helpful Mr. Johnson there - not the Mr. Johnson, oh no...
Bewildered, Roger stepped to the door and tried to pull it open, watching sadly as his hands passed through the wood. Another tremor shook the world.
“Oh dear.” Coriander tried to fathom the presence of an incorporeal entity. “I don’t remember any project on intangibility being close to completion. But! I suppose I have been somewhat out of touch.” He shrugged his handlebars expressively.
Well, this door wasn’t going to be replaced if no one knew it was here. There were still parts of the old facility that were still unexplored, their infrastructure too antiquated or dilapidated to update. Even the oldest Aperture technology was programmed to cry for help in the case of malfunction, programming error, or massive structural collapse.
Something about the little sphere’s posture, its mad twitch, its strange mannerisms, its - to put it kindly, loose grasp on reality - rang a metaphorical bell in organs that Roger Johnson had not, strictly speaking, got. It made him uneasy. As if a voice were showing him that this is what he himself would be, driven mad by a neverending quest of staples and forms and signatories; a phantom, a wisp of babbling lunacy like the pathetic ball rolling in front of him. In life and beyond, he had rarely found the occasion to feel an emotion so visceral as this fear - will I one day...be like that?
So it was in the middle of this reverie that Coriander exploded, the rockets built inadvisably into his conceptual behind firing violently into the lobby floor. The core jetted forward on the blast at ridiculous speeds, missing the door completely and creating a series of basketball-sized holes through several walls and out of the building altogether-
Without understanding why, Roger followed, a spectre passing through crumbling walls and the signs of imminent structural collapse. Perhaps because there was no one else about who was up to filling out forms, or perhaps just simple loneliness...
A prophet ran, with purpose, madly - so madly - at the towering, wavering pillar of arrow-shaft extending like an insult into the sky. On occasion droplets of blood would break loose from the arrowhead, tumbling end over end before cracking their frozen exterior on the cobblestones, spilling the eternal dove’s hemoglobin unceremoniously across any surface on which it could find to splash. One splattered Malachi Smith, the red-brown accentuating the blue of his eyes and the walnut color of his hair, giving him the very image of a martyr or a tortured harbinger of truth.
God thrust His monument into the sky before him, and Malachi knew it was but one facet of the Great Mechanical Construct that was His being. Words bubbled up in the cauldron of his soul - the beginnings of a Book, one of the many in the Testaments. An oracle: The word of the LORD to Israel through- He gazed beatifically at the arrow that was destroying the world. Through Malachi. “Malachi 1:1.”
He stood on a hillock, watching the masses fleeing purposelessly down below him, and was filled with the Holy Spirit. And at once Malachi did begin to preach, to breach the hardened hearts of the unbelieving:
As Jesus was walking ´£´21`23 !!!down to the depot today to get proper maintenance at affordable prices!@^&!@ “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you U*@#JßçNEW AND IMPROVED, versatile, adaptable to tasks of all sizes, truly the bestƒ®´QQE@€›´!@#read err:4241(%* of men.” At once they left their nets and (***%&$#^^(ª·ª⁄€((ensured that the cross-link hydraulics are properly calibrated,€‹&#(EDDD
12199ۢܰ
He had some of the crowd’s attention now, their faces turned upward to gaze upon his. They were jostled by the rest as they fled and ran like sheep, but they were the faithful, and Malachi was pleased. They would be the sheepdogs that gathered his flock together, and he would be the shepherd that brought the Gospel to those who needed it told.
And ultimately, everyone needed it told.
Jesus went #$)/err/err/err™£d worldwide, shipping at reduced rates¢∞§¢!@#(! and healing every disease and sickness among the people. $%@%/////people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, thosehaving seizures, and the paralyzed, and he ////transc\err: made them better////
Malachi laughed, a loud, clear laugh that wafted over the roiling masses. “Come now, my congregation. Those who are faithful, come with me! Climb with me! If you cannot, we shall lend you our strength! If you will not, we shall give you our will! If you do not...you will come around in time.”
His last sentence was punctuated by the roar of an explosion, as behind him a building collapsed into so much twisted rubble. It was also punctuated by a small round sphere hitting him in the small of the back, pitching them both down the hill.
ASMAIFAS, ahem, Henrouisgregori von Butchinskyspelmont III, trundled along on buzzing wheels, trying to find his new friend - alas, to no avail. It was a quest doomed to failure amongst the shaking and the crowd and their many, many legs. Most of these legs kicked Henrouisgregori quite a lot, but a few choice staples managed to pin the worst offenders to the ground by their boots. Just by their boots, of course. A truly dapper gentleman would never inflict unnecessary harm to an unarmed opponent. Besides, if he didn’t see any blood, there hadn’t been any drawn. Such were the rules of engagement.
The crowd did move him about though, by the sheer pressure of fluid dynamics and mob psychology. No matter how he fought it, with every meter he moved forward, he was pushed two back; until the building disappeared behind the crest of a nearby hill, and the man standing on it. He looked familiar - then with a true gentleman’s memory for faces, it hit him! Smith Malach/chi, the Inquirer had said. Flesh and blood and metal.
Dimly, he registered that Smith had begun to talk. But the matter at hand, the matter at hand, my good chap. Of course Coriander, the only other individual of Aperture construction he’d seen so far, was quite clearly nowhere to be seen! It indeed posed a puzzling conundrum as to why two fellow Aperture Science employees shouldn’t stick together.
But...
The more he thought about it, the less Coriander made sense. Henrouisgregori himself had been manufactured for human use, in the early 1980s. They’d only been experimenting with artificial intelligences then - he’d been the very top of the line when he was issued! Yet Coriander seemed much more complex than any of his own compatriots, or anyone he had met since.
So Henrouisgregori dealt with the problem in the way a true gentleman would, by pretending it didn’t exist.
However, this was hard to do when the subject of the problem then tumbled down the hill, accompanied by the Smith person.
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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