RE: THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN CANCELED [S!1][ROUND THREE: PORT CERIDWEN]
05-04-2017, 06:11 AM
Sunlight filtered in from the balcony Kriok stood on. The beams of light were broken by the thick dust motes that hung in the air, but still illuminated the village sprawling below her. Off-white plaster houses leaned against each other and perched on the hills. Narrow cobblestone paths turned to stairs on the town's periphery, and spacious villas gave way to cramped shanties clinging to the steep cliffs. Her optics implant focused as she stared at the town's edge-- where the town met the ocean was a labyrinth of canals, piers, and docks as the town transitioned into a harbor. Everywhere the avian looked there was color-- the pink of the ocean, the pastels of hanging fabric, the riotous patterns of kites and banners that fluttered in the sea breeze.
Kriok was still missing her eye.
She had managed to staunch the flow of conductive fluid and repair the frayed wiring, even without specialist tools. The hemisphere of error messages had subsided, leaving just a void of disconnected black static. Even then, she could feel the emptiness, the hollow where her artificial eye had rested.
Her recklessness cost her something practically irreplaceable. Even a makeshift sensor would require materials she doubted-- no, knew, even without the most basic of analytical subroutines-- she wouldn't be able to locate in a pre-spaceflight society like this. No circuitry, no plastics, nothing worthwhile she could salvage into something even approximating an optical implant. Stupid, stupid, stupid, her subroutines reiterated. Everything she had relied on to survive she had forgotten, just for the faintest promise of being allowed to rust away on a dying world.
Her memory played back the moment of Beunissima effortlessly dispatching Nizzo, a blur of brutal, almost artistic execution. Kriok shuddered. She was back to where she had started, all because of her stupidity.
Kriok paused. A background heuristic runtime remained dissatisfied with that explanation. She had been careless, but it had been others who rescued her. She could escape. The fact that she-- Kriok involuntarily shuddered, the playback still fresh on her digital memory-- was here meant that the entities organizing this were desperate.
She turned around, entering the abandoned house she had been deposited in. Her mind struggled to reconcile the two conclusions she had reached, alternating a binary switch between faint hope and paranoia. Kriok pushed past the dusty, abandoned furniture, walking down creaking wooden steps as the background routines of her digital mind calculated.
More information was necessary-- that much was certain. She was trying to solve an immeasurably complex problem without knowing any of the variables. She could not afford to make mistakes off of conjecture-- not when the burden of her entire race rested on her. Not when she was all that was left. She had to be completely without fail, there was no more margin of error.
Kriok stepped out onto the street-- a narrow, winding path that was precariously wrapped around the hills and cliffs of Port Ceridwen. She breathed deeply and exhaled, taking in the humid, salty air. A bystander looked at her, then stared--
"D-demon," they finally said, stepping a few shaky steps back. "D-dead metal, i-iron flesh. Cold, cold, cold. You're a demon."
Kriok opened her beak to respond, but didn't have a chance as the bystander ran, moving with the panicked energy of someone who had nearly seen their life taken. She made a low, exasperated caw that went unheard in the now-empty street.
This new location was already promising, a sarcastic subroutine logged in the back of her mind.
Kriok was still missing her eye.
She had managed to staunch the flow of conductive fluid and repair the frayed wiring, even without specialist tools. The hemisphere of error messages had subsided, leaving just a void of disconnected black static. Even then, she could feel the emptiness, the hollow where her artificial eye had rested.
Her recklessness cost her something practically irreplaceable. Even a makeshift sensor would require materials she doubted-- no, knew, even without the most basic of analytical subroutines-- she wouldn't be able to locate in a pre-spaceflight society like this. No circuitry, no plastics, nothing worthwhile she could salvage into something even approximating an optical implant. Stupid, stupid, stupid, her subroutines reiterated. Everything she had relied on to survive she had forgotten, just for the faintest promise of being allowed to rust away on a dying world.
Her memory played back the moment of Beunissima effortlessly dispatching Nizzo, a blur of brutal, almost artistic execution. Kriok shuddered. She was back to where she had started, all because of her stupidity.
Kriok paused. A background heuristic runtime remained dissatisfied with that explanation. She had been careless, but it had been others who rescued her. She could escape. The fact that she-- Kriok involuntarily shuddered, the playback still fresh on her digital memory-- was here meant that the entities organizing this were desperate.
She turned around, entering the abandoned house she had been deposited in. Her mind struggled to reconcile the two conclusions she had reached, alternating a binary switch between faint hope and paranoia. Kriok pushed past the dusty, abandoned furniture, walking down creaking wooden steps as the background routines of her digital mind calculated.
More information was necessary-- that much was certain. She was trying to solve an immeasurably complex problem without knowing any of the variables. She could not afford to make mistakes off of conjecture-- not when the burden of her entire race rested on her. Not when she was all that was left. She had to be completely without fail, there was no more margin of error.
Kriok stepped out onto the street-- a narrow, winding path that was precariously wrapped around the hills and cliffs of Port Ceridwen. She breathed deeply and exhaled, taking in the humid, salty air. A bystander looked at her, then stared--
"D-demon," they finally said, stepping a few shaky steps back. "D-dead metal, i-iron flesh. Cold, cold, cold. You're a demon."
Kriok opened her beak to respond, but didn't have a chance as the bystander ran, moving with the panicked energy of someone who had nearly seen their life taken. She made a low, exasperated caw that went unheard in the now-empty street.
This new location was already promising, a sarcastic subroutine logged in the back of her mind.