Cibo does nothing.
What can she do? She's small, helpless, and thinking is so hard. Her thoughts fly by before she realizes she's had the same line of thought twenty million times and then a couple more and moves on to the next one, though sometimes bouncing back. But she's relieved, at least. There's a body on top of her and it belongs to someone she dreads but she's got a hole in her head so it's all okay. Nothing is wrong with the world. Except for the three meter tall monstrosities coming to kill her. But it's alright. Kyrii will save her. He's done it before, he'll do it again. Right now. Any microsecond now.
Cibo does nothing.
What does she want to do? She wants to feel alive and have organs and move about. But she's frail and impotent, and there's a heavy corpse weighing her down. It's got a hole in it's head, and it belongs to someone she dislikes. She used to be scared of the corpse, but that feels like hours, maybe days ago. There, in the distance, sits a sniper. Down the chasm lies a creature taking the form of who matters the most to the corpse, and it takes the form of a human woman (who looks similar to her, but it's not important) and rapidly approaching, comes yet another figure willing to do her harm. One real-time second has passed in the world outside her mind.
Cibo does nothing.
What does she hope to do? Perhaps, in a couple of hours, to wriggle herself out of the weight of the Safeguard. Then, maybe, evade the Silicon Creatures, and find the nice builder. It's nice of her to do that because it's nice
to her. It speaks at a pace she understands, and repeats things plenty. It's not that she is dumb or unable to comprehend– her mind is frayed. Everything is too slow, and her body is slow and weak. Sometimes things are said so slowly she can't understand them, and the more she focuses the slower they become. Time is an illusory concept, but it almost seems to not exist like this.
So Cibo does nothing.
What can she see herself doing?
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…
Cibo does nothing.
Thoughts loop, coherence is lost, and time goes by as quickly as it possibly could for her. Eighteen seconds go by in the span of what feels like several hours. It's not a painless experience. She's aware of every microsecond, even if she's lost in the rhythm of her thoughts flowing back and forth the same lines of questioning that followed a hole being opened in Sanakan's head. She's aware the Safeguard isn't really dead. She's survived through worse, and as much as it comforts her to imagine a common projectile being enough to do her in, but she has had half her body mass destroyed and stood back up for more.
Sanakan isn't dead. What follows is expected: when the Silicon Creature with holes in its face appears and breaks through the doorway to reach down towards her, Sanakan turns around while holding Cibo in a tight embrace, arm outstretched and Graviton Beam Emitter primed, the arms of the Silicon Lifeform ready to pick just one of them up. For as strong as it is, this was no competition: it never stood a chance.
Sanakan fires.
What follows is a hole being punched in space. Two meters wide, twenty five kilometers long. The space where the three-holed face of the silicon creature once stood is occupied by empty air pulled from the surrounding environment. Cibo and Sanakan are pushed against the floor by the recoil, and the ground shatters behind Sanakan's back.
Cibo is shielded from the recoil by Sanakan's body. Her grasp is firm, not tight. She won't hurt Cibo with this motion.
In the very same moment where most of the Silicon creature's body mass would have appeared to suddenly cease to exist, the graviton projection comes across a messy end at the very edge of its transit. A truly baffling amount of energy is released in what some could have described as an "explosion." Shortly afterwards, comes the rain of dust and rubble as space tries to correct itself from being squeezed so horribly. Glowing, deformed holes in the megastructure all collapse as the tidal force appears first in the end of the beam's path, and travels inward.
Sanakan holds onto Cibo tightly as she stands back up, hole in her forehead closing up without any marks to show it existed at all, and she leaps out the window just as the building crumbles behind them both.
Dust, concrete powder, concrete, rock, cables, metal. They all flood through the relatively tiny hole. For such a small projectile, the force released could truly change the landscape. At these scales and with movement so violent, the rubble behaves more like a liquid than a solid, so it cascades into the abyss like one.
Falling is almost like flying, and Cibo wonders, for a moment, what it's like to be a lifeless object floating amongst the rest of the rubble. Maybe a stone table, or a mere brick. Maybe not even that, but something smaller and more insignificant; as to match with her current state. To run down and occupy space without thinking. Just following the laws of gravity. Maybe things would make more sense, then. Maybe they would make less.
They both land. Cibo is shielded from most of the impact and kept in a firm embrace throughout, though she's let go for a moment once their movement comes to a halt. Sanakan turns around.
Cibo knows she's not so different from the Silicon Creatures. If circumstances were different, she could have ended just like them. Davine Lu Linvega was like her. She was a researcher too. Her last project before being put in indefinite punishment and left to rot was to enter the Netsphere. And she almost did that, together with her. It was a spur of the moment action; certainly felt absurd enough to partner with the kind of species whose main method of continued existence relied on the death of humans. But Cibo and Davine did manage to see the sea, if just for a moment. She doesn't blame her for downloading the Level 9 into her body; she would have done the same thing. Spite is one of the greatest drivers of all. She understands why these three silicon creatures had to die: so she would live. And they were trying to kill her, because if that thing inside of her doesn't finish gestating then that means their offspring and the offspring of their offspring will continue to live rather than be swept up in the largest coordinated cleanup operation in history.
Sanakan stares into the air and the distance and measures paths and travel times and reaches her free hand into the air suddenly as smoke erupts from it: she caught the bullet, and she lets it drop.
Cibo, once again, wonders how differently her life would have been as a Silicon Creature herself. Would she have ended a grotesque creature of undefined limbs like the cable and tentacled mass from earlier? Would she have looked more like Davine, connected to numerous supercomputers to increase her informational gathering capacity and ability to plan out and research and observe? Maybe she'd have ended up much like Pcell: pretty and humanoid and just as dangerous as any of the other ones. But then she wouldn't be herself, so the question becomes meaningless. If she wasn't born through ordinary reproductive processes to two employees of the Bio-Electric corporation, she wouldn't be Cibo, she wouldn't have performed any of the research she was so proud of. She wouldn't have hopped bodies five times before getting stuck on this one, and she wouldn't be seeing… this. Whatever it is, as slow as it is.
In the same sweeping motion, Sanakan raises her GBE… and fires. The beam travels for sixty four kilometers, and pierces six different tower-like structures: they all collapse. In the blink of an eye, the last of the early expeditionary group is gone just in time for the dropped bullet to hit the floor. It travels for eleven kilometers more before losing cohesion and becoming discharged. Sanakan's murder weapon is stored, and Sanakan kneels to be at eye level with Cibo.
"C…………………………i…………………………b…………………………o. …………………………D…………………………o…………………………"
She loses track of what she's saying at that point. Too much attention was paid, and words become meaningless as they're stretched to their breaking points. Even actions become glacial and gestures statues. The dust particles flowing through the air become almost like monothis of their own. There is no escape from the city. It grows inwards too, inside of her mind. Every dust particle becomes it's own incredibly complex structure, and the layer of nanites within her eyes become visible, for a faint moment.
"C…………………………i…………………………b…………………………o. …………………………!"
Perhaps, a long time ago, Cibo would have noticed the desperation on Sanakan's face on how she responded to her own name, so she repeats what is said while her mind goes back to that place. These dust particles in the air, swimming, because yes, that's a thing they could do at that scale, reminds her of the Rain Room back at the school she went to many, many lifetimes ago. A room so large, and with a formerly controlled climate. It was so tall one couldn't see the ceiling. But within it, she fist saw clouds. The words in the wall that she read was "to remind us of Earth", though they faded with age and rust. Earth… where was that place? It must exist within the city, right? And if the room was to remind someone of that place, then, surely, there must be climate on this Earth structure also. She would like to see that, maybe. It would be most nice.
She's shaken, moved back and forth in a motion that should have felt more real than it did, and then, Sanakan holds her close in a tender embrace, and allows a connection to form between their foreheads, nanofibers carrying information and meaning and code. There's memories too, of their first meeting. Of sharing a body, painful as it was, and of their last goodbye before their current meeting. There's no emotion to be found in the Sanakan of memories.
I'm here to protect you. I don't want to hurt you. You are Cibo. You are resilient. You used to be human. Please, you are Cibo. You need to remember this. You are carrying something very important. I need to know what you think of it. Please answer.
Nothing can be sent back safely, though Cibo tries anyway. The cable falls apart from the weight of the information transmitted, burning off. Sanakan isn't deterred by the thought of her entire system exploding through informational overload, reaches a hand behind Sanakan's head, pulling her close, allowing their foreheads to touch as she tries again. The memories are of her research this time, hours reading upon who Cibo is. Then the search, following holes left in her initial flight as Cibo's body melted. Emotions carry through. Admiration, wonder, and surprisingly: regret.
I am Sanakan. I am sorry I hurt you. Please let me help you. I don't want to hurt you anymore. You are carrying something very important to both of us. This is something very important to the rest of humanity. You have to remember this. I need to know what you think of it. I know you're there.
There's a bright flash as Cibo attempts a response, and Sanakan restrains her body as her head is pushed back. There's a hole in her forehead, smoldering and black and not too deep, but the flesh fills in with biological mass without wasting much time as she tries again. Tight embrace, foreheads close together, micro cables connected as. This moment carries through, played in real time, with the wet alien feeling of something rolling down Sanakan's face down from her eyes. Desperation is the only emotion that carries through.
Please remember: you are carrying our child. It's ours. Yours and mine. I need to know what you think of it. I don't know what to do. I promise I'll protect you no matter what, I just need you to answer. Please. Please.
Cibo ends the connection this time, pulling back with strength she didn't know she could muster and panic she didn't know she possessed still. She wants to respond. She really does. She reaches to the orb in her stomach, curling… but her body stops, lost in the torrential thoughts of hers. The memories of this moment loop back, over and over, and she stops moving altogether, freezing up like a statue.
…
For Sanakan, this is the worst case scenario. It's also the best case scenario because she was able to ask what she felt about the child, but it's particularly terrible for what she has to do next. She'll be deleted for sure. Cibo is too weak to survive without the pregnancy, as paradoxical as that seems. Her body is barely operational as it is, but it's in life support mode not for Cibo, but for the child.
She finds herself experiencing a terrible sense of agnosthesia as she picks up Cibo and cradles her into her arms. She knows what she has to do. She has to downgrade Cibo's system a couple of levels so the informational overflow doesn't keep her as a living brick, like she is now. And when that's done… she's going to have to make sure Cibo is able to restore core functions to herself. And once
that is done. she saw how Cibo reacted to that information before she returned to being how she was before. She broke that connection herself… how she clawed at the film but failed to do much at all.
It is in this moment where Sanakan remembers why she even requested to become a Safeguard. It was not only to return to the base world, though that played a part, of course. There's also the fact she wanted to protect someone. She wanted to keep that promise. But by the time she had gone back, that someone had long died. It felt like years in the emergency Netsphere layers to what was millenia outside of it.
She changed her parameters to protect humans after that, but every time there were fewer and fewer of them and eventually she couldn't take it anymore. She requested her emotions be turned off. Then her empathy. Then her emotions were brought back, because snap decisions are best taken emotionally. It didn't matter if they weren't human anymore: they were not citizens, and deserved to be eliminated.
So she became just a machine who couldn't feel anything for anyone else… her past self would have been horrified. There's a hollow numbness where that emotion should be right now. It's a survival mechanism to repress such feelings.
Now she feels other things again. Empathy has returned.
Almost like a person. Like a human, but not quite. She's carrying someone– like she used to long ago. And she's promised she'd protect her, much like she did to that other person, long long ago. She can't break that promise again. Not to her. She's already… She's already given so much. Cibo has already given so much. What's a child, the most important child in probably millenia, her own child, to add to the mix? She just has to reconstitute Cibo's body, and there's Structure Conversion Towers close enough to do that in less than three thousand hours, though perhaps more if she takes a longer, safer route. And after that she'll do what she promised to do, in protecting the woman.
But she can't leave like this. Not with the builder following behind them. With its many arms and its long oblique head and multiple eyes and tail and curved feet, it almost looks like one of those pets there used to be a long, long time ago. Sanakan doesn't turn around, but she barks orders regardless.
"No. Stop. Don't follow us."
It does not, in fact, stop. It cares for Cibo. Otherwise it wouldn't have lied to keep Sanakan away from her. It has been keeping Cibo company, but it can't come with them. This is not a big builder, it's a smaller one, a more fragile one. All it has is its freakish strength, but it lacks durability to not be a burden. If it gets destroyed, Cibo will be sad, and Sanakan can't allow that. She turns around, pointedly lookin at it.
"Stay."
It does not, in fact, stay. It grows close. It wants Cibo to stay. It knows she doesn't like Sanakan. It hurts to be rejected like this, through proxy since the one who should speak is unable to do so.
"Stay."
It stays, for it's programmed into its very essence of being. It can't disobey a command given in this way.
"Stay. Someone else will follow. Shorter than me. Kyrii. He will want to know where we went."
It stays static, cameras adjust, focusing and unfocusing, as the body stays unmoving.
Sanakan walks off, and the builder just looks at them as they vanish into the unknown.
…
Days pass, with little progress to be seen. The mission is too important to care for the endless sprawl beyond obligatory scans for safety. She cleans whatever sloughs off Cibo as she carries her through alleyways and terraces and hallways and corridors and balconies and escapes and stairways built into nowhere and cracks big enough in the structure to walk through which have become filled with numerous pipes carrying fluids or not carrying fluids, traveling as they do through the world. Time passes, and Cibo grows smaller. More reserved. She hates being seen like this. Like a monster. But she already was sort of one, wasn't she?
A machine for killing disguised with the face of the innocent. It's poetic: when she needs it the most to actually present a friendly face is when her body's plasticity is gone. In its place is a rigidness and organs and other things she doesn't know the name of. Not even that would help– Cibo knows her act already.
Perhaps it's better not to feel anything and just carry the mission through, if she's being seen as some sort of unrepentant monster. Sink back into the emotionless machine that infiltrated villages and brought down Safeguard activity. That would work out, wouldn't it? She allows herself to sink back into that persona once she notices the Structural Conversion Towers are already claimed. Yet more Silicon life. She understands why they're there: they can produce quite a lot of things, though they don't have access to it yet, they'll crack the code sooner or later and gain access to rapidly producing
some high level upgrades before a high level exterminator was deployed.
She'll have to play the role of one if she's to help Cibo be protected from… their offspring. Because there's no way to interpret that flash of disgust as anything else, maybe. Her body is not her own right now, and that has to be fixed. Hopefully, when that's arranged.
And she moves, playing the role she assigned herself with all the efficiency of a freshly downloaded machine. At first she only removes those that are off the beaten path to the towers. Quick, efficient movements and precise impacts do not require the usage of the GBE. She should have told them the level was off-limits, first. But she's got something to do right now, much more important than warning some stranger about her mission. Catered bodies are left in her wake as she comes up a series of stairs to one massive corridor. Pillars connect the floor and the ground, and it looks more like a reservoir than a corridor. But it's the same structure nonetheless. There has to be walls in the end, far beyond what her eyes can capture. She deposits Cibo within the construction chamber, specifies the correct data, and comes out to meet the army that has come to see what has activated the towers.
Sanakan fires first.
Corridors like this are common in the City. Vast stretches of mono-material with aberrations with jutting abnormalities often composed of more reasonable material. This one is made of glass. The little structures that poke out are made of concrete reaching into the heavens, connecting two floors with several stories of difference., but it's mainly black, obsidian-like glass. It shimmers in dozens of rainbows as lights from the rare buildings flash on and off.
And then, as soon as the Line of Gravitons reaches the end of its journey and discharges the pent-up energy it carried in a blinding flash of white light and gamma radiation, it begins to shatter. Glass rains onto the world below. Small chunks and large monoliths crashing down at the same time as thin currents of dust made of materials not too dissimilar snake down across it all.
Light breaks and reflects and bounces down the rain. Curtains of glimmering rainbows amidst a mostly dark landscape. Glass is swept away along with the bodies as she fires off once, twice, thrice. She has to keep them from the tower. She has to behave like the machine for death that she was long ago while having a more human body. And thus, she does just that. Anything that gets close is pummeled to bits. Anyone that tries to attack from afar is swallowed up by shots from the GBE.
Sanakan is just one Safeguard. But there's hundreds of Silicon Life-Forms encroaching towards the towers.
It's death by a thousand cuts. These silicon creatures, fighting for the future of their species, are young, not upgraded nor do they have their instincts sharpened by surviving safeguard attacks across hundreds of years. They rush her with reckless abandon, only employing the mildest of strategies to try and surprise and deceive and avoid the death that comes from the barrel of her weapon.
With each activation, the structure crumbles. The towers slowly, bit by bit, become obelisks rising from molten rubble and irradiated ground.
A monowire cable strips Sanakan's head from her shoulders. Death, yet again. Her body kills the offender before sticking her head back on mechanically, and life returns to her just in time to reduce another crowd to mist.
She dies for Cibo many times without the need to be downloaded again. Dismembered, burnt, shot, stabbed.
Eventually, the number of adversaries reaches zero, but not by her hand. Remote deactivation of stolen technology, exploiting back-doors that there was hardly any clue existed. The same goes for her. She drops to the floor as the newly constructed body of Cibo points the offending tool at Sanakan's own neck.
"I just wanted to save you." The words escape before she can even evaluate them for their relevance or meaning.
Sanakan just needed to say them, as soon as she and Cibo existed within a similar timespace.
There's a part of Cibo that aches to say that she saved herself.
But she didn't, not really.
She'd not have gotten to this point without Sanakan.
Instead, she asks: "Why should
I save
you, Sanakan?"
Chapter End
Post-Chapter Notes:
Chapter Three out of six. Sanakan remembers a promise she made a long time ago.
Also shoutout to 404 Zero. All of their music helped even if for some reason it made my organs feel weird? Idk. Also flashing lights warning for those who check them out. Their installations really capture what I imagine being lost in The City feels like. Apologies for the weak ending and the delay; I had exams.
I got a lot of help from this song while writing the time when Sanakan tries to connect to
Cibo and this other
one while writing Sanakan's past and of course, this
one while writing about Sanakan's rampage. Such calm music for such horrible events.
In case anyone didn't catch it, the main divergence comes from the fact Cibo was not able to reach the Net-Sphere in this world. That's it. That's why I portrayed the first chapter the way I did and that's why Cibo becomes
coherent at the end of the chapter, once the faculties of her body are downgraded.
Also I'm very sorry for being late.
