Re: LAST. THING. STANDING. [S!1][ROUND ONE: TELEVISION LAND]
12-06-2011, 05:12 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Sanzh.
Kriok followed Winston as he led her along-- according to him, to a break room with a television. Her cybernetic mind drifted along several parallel processes. She busily considered how much time she had before she’d have to evacuate this channel, what tools and equipment she could make with the resources available here, and what to do with Agent Winston. Two of those lines of thought would have to wait, but one could be resolved easily enough. ”How long until they find his body?” She asked her hostage.
Winston didn’t like the alien, he was certain of that much.
He didn’t like that she had effectively taken him hostage. He didn’t like that she just expected him to comply with her questioning. He especially didn’t like that she killed his partner with no apparent regard for his life. He didn’t want to play out his relative fortune, but he certainly wasn’t going to help this bio-mechanical creature with whatever insidious plot it had concocted.
“Perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, there’s not many people on this level and it’s not that busy of a day.” Winston lied, hoping she didn’t notice his bluff. In reality, it would be closer to three minutes-- long enough to raise tension and doubt over Agent Winston’s survival, but short enough to not necessitate a commercial break and a disruption of the drama. He knew it’d be shorter than fifteen minutes, but he never attributed it to mechanics of his genre, always to the top-notch security of the building.
Kriok filed that knowledge away, pushing it to the back of her mind. The agent had stopped, proceeding to open a door to a break room. The room could be generously described as spartan-- aside from the television, it lacked any furniture that wasn’t directly utilitarian. Agent Winston moved to grab a remote-- Kriok kept her javelin launcher trained on him as he went through the motions.
The television flickered to life, displaying the harsh, flickering black and white pattern of a dead channel before Winston switched channels. He quickly cycled through a few channels-- sports, another channel of sports, news, a comedy, a documentary-- the channels blurred together until it went back to the beginning, showing a sports game once again. The device seemed exceptionally crude to Kriok-- it lacked the pure information content available in simulated realities and direct interfaces and was limited solely to a single visual and audio feed at a time. She idly wondered just how technologically backwards this locality was before her attention was redirected.
Winston began to speak. ”Is this what you’re after? You’ve come all the way to Earth... for a television?”
The cybernetic avian ignored his comment. He had no further information to provide, and she had decided how she was going to deal with him. She motioned towards the door with her improvised weapon.
“Lock the entrance.”
Agent Winston nervously complied, getting out a key and fumbling with the lock. He looked into the corner of his vision-- the alien was still close to him. But he had to at least try to stop the monstrosity. His hand went to his gun, but before he could draw the pistol Kriok had bludgeoned him with her own weapon, sending him sprawling into unconsciousness.
After positioning a chair as a make-shift barricade, Kriok turned her attention to Winston. She picked up his pistol, examining the synthetic polymers of its exterior. She still had some basic equipment she wanted to fabricate, and quickly set off to gathering materials.
Sweeping clean a table, she placed an assortment of items-- the pistol, a microwave oven, and an assortment of cutlery and kitchen utensils-- onto the temporary workspace. The ends of her fabricator arm began to extend and disentangle themselves, forming a wire-frame enclosure around her stock of materials. She closed her robotic eyes, losing herself in thought as the fabricator ran its automated sub-routines of disassembling and re-assembling the materials she had provided.
Her thoughts invariably drifted to the fact that she was in a fight to the death.
The possibility of death seemed much more frightening now. Psychologically, she had no reason to fear death-- if her body was destroyed, her mind could just be re-uploaded into a new body. For her, there was no link between mind and body: her own body was comparatively temporary, especially compared to some of the ones she had occupied in the past. She had died before-- her duties in frontier engineering often involved work in mining, and despite some degree of improvement in safety, accidents were unavoidable. She had become accustomed to the possibility of a tool mishap or a micro-meteorite impact pulverizing a robotic chassis. It would be an expensive set-back, but it was still something that could be recovered from. She had even come to grips with a permanent demise.
But not like this. Kriok didn’t want to die like this. She didn’t want the multi-verse, that cheering mass of countless onlookers, to witness her demise. She didn’t want the death of her civilization to be celebrated, the fact that she was the last of her kind to be used as a selling point for so much merchandise.
The fabrication process had finished. Kriok looked down at what she had made-- another four javelins for her current weapon, some length of synthetic rope, and a simple load-bearing thigh pack. She stashed the rope in her new container, strapping it on and moving towards loading the additional spikes. She went back to thought as she pushed each bolt in.
She wasn’t going to cooperate and play along with this death-match, she was certain of that much. There had to be a way out somehow, if not from the arena she was in then she could at least cheat death-- she already had, in a way, just by virtue of her cybernetic consciousness. She wasn’t sure if the other contestants shared her same vision-- she could ignore them and pursue her own work, however. And if she was to die, she would make sure there was no spectacle, no revelry and celebration accompanying her death.
There was a pounding on the door. Kriok turned to look-- Agent Winston had lied, they had already discovered Manderley’s body. Kriok needed to escape, she didn’t want to test herself against an uncertain enemy. She turned on the television, flipping to a random channel.
Agent Winston awoke to see Kriok leap through a television screen, the channel switching to an empty static once she had disappeared. The door then swung open, two agents aiming their pistols into the now-empty room. One of them helped Winston get up. He straightened his suit.
He was going to pursue that alien. Grabbing one of the agent’s pistols, he changed the channel to something other than static and leaped in, determined to bring Manderley’s murderer to justice.
Kriok followed Winston as he led her along-- according to him, to a break room with a television. Her cybernetic mind drifted along several parallel processes. She busily considered how much time she had before she’d have to evacuate this channel, what tools and equipment she could make with the resources available here, and what to do with Agent Winston. Two of those lines of thought would have to wait, but one could be resolved easily enough. ”How long until they find his body?” She asked her hostage.
Winston didn’t like the alien, he was certain of that much.
He didn’t like that she had effectively taken him hostage. He didn’t like that she just expected him to comply with her questioning. He especially didn’t like that she killed his partner with no apparent regard for his life. He didn’t want to play out his relative fortune, but he certainly wasn’t going to help this bio-mechanical creature with whatever insidious plot it had concocted.
“Perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, there’s not many people on this level and it’s not that busy of a day.” Winston lied, hoping she didn’t notice his bluff. In reality, it would be closer to three minutes-- long enough to raise tension and doubt over Agent Winston’s survival, but short enough to not necessitate a commercial break and a disruption of the drama. He knew it’d be shorter than fifteen minutes, but he never attributed it to mechanics of his genre, always to the top-notch security of the building.
Kriok filed that knowledge away, pushing it to the back of her mind. The agent had stopped, proceeding to open a door to a break room. The room could be generously described as spartan-- aside from the television, it lacked any furniture that wasn’t directly utilitarian. Agent Winston moved to grab a remote-- Kriok kept her javelin launcher trained on him as he went through the motions.
The television flickered to life, displaying the harsh, flickering black and white pattern of a dead channel before Winston switched channels. He quickly cycled through a few channels-- sports, another channel of sports, news, a comedy, a documentary-- the channels blurred together until it went back to the beginning, showing a sports game once again. The device seemed exceptionally crude to Kriok-- it lacked the pure information content available in simulated realities and direct interfaces and was limited solely to a single visual and audio feed at a time. She idly wondered just how technologically backwards this locality was before her attention was redirected.
Winston began to speak. ”Is this what you’re after? You’ve come all the way to Earth... for a television?”
The cybernetic avian ignored his comment. He had no further information to provide, and she had decided how she was going to deal with him. She motioned towards the door with her improvised weapon.
“Lock the entrance.”
Agent Winston nervously complied, getting out a key and fumbling with the lock. He looked into the corner of his vision-- the alien was still close to him. But he had to at least try to stop the monstrosity. His hand went to his gun, but before he could draw the pistol Kriok had bludgeoned him with her own weapon, sending him sprawling into unconsciousness.
After positioning a chair as a make-shift barricade, Kriok turned her attention to Winston. She picked up his pistol, examining the synthetic polymers of its exterior. She still had some basic equipment she wanted to fabricate, and quickly set off to gathering materials.
Sweeping clean a table, she placed an assortment of items-- the pistol, a microwave oven, and an assortment of cutlery and kitchen utensils-- onto the temporary workspace. The ends of her fabricator arm began to extend and disentangle themselves, forming a wire-frame enclosure around her stock of materials. She closed her robotic eyes, losing herself in thought as the fabricator ran its automated sub-routines of disassembling and re-assembling the materials she had provided.
Her thoughts invariably drifted to the fact that she was in a fight to the death.
The possibility of death seemed much more frightening now. Psychologically, she had no reason to fear death-- if her body was destroyed, her mind could just be re-uploaded into a new body. For her, there was no link between mind and body: her own body was comparatively temporary, especially compared to some of the ones she had occupied in the past. She had died before-- her duties in frontier engineering often involved work in mining, and despite some degree of improvement in safety, accidents were unavoidable. She had become accustomed to the possibility of a tool mishap or a micro-meteorite impact pulverizing a robotic chassis. It would be an expensive set-back, but it was still something that could be recovered from. She had even come to grips with a permanent demise.
But not like this. Kriok didn’t want to die like this. She didn’t want the multi-verse, that cheering mass of countless onlookers, to witness her demise. She didn’t want the death of her civilization to be celebrated, the fact that she was the last of her kind to be used as a selling point for so much merchandise.
The fabrication process had finished. Kriok looked down at what she had made-- another four javelins for her current weapon, some length of synthetic rope, and a simple load-bearing thigh pack. She stashed the rope in her new container, strapping it on and moving towards loading the additional spikes. She went back to thought as she pushed each bolt in.
She wasn’t going to cooperate and play along with this death-match, she was certain of that much. There had to be a way out somehow, if not from the arena she was in then she could at least cheat death-- she already had, in a way, just by virtue of her cybernetic consciousness. She wasn’t sure if the other contestants shared her same vision-- she could ignore them and pursue her own work, however. And if she was to die, she would make sure there was no spectacle, no revelry and celebration accompanying her death.
There was a pounding on the door. Kriok turned to look-- Agent Winston had lied, they had already discovered Manderley’s body. Kriok needed to escape, she didn’t want to test herself against an uncertain enemy. She turned on the television, flipping to a random channel.
Agent Winston awoke to see Kriok leap through a television screen, the channel switching to an empty static once she had disappeared. The door then swung open, two agents aiming their pistols into the now-empty room. One of them helped Winston get up. He straightened his suit.
He was going to pursue that alien. Grabbing one of the agent’s pistols, he changed the channel to something other than static and leaped in, determined to bring Manderley’s murderer to justice.