Playing With Fire (594 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 2 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Domochevsky (View user info) at 2004-10-22 02:28:22 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
\\Log.08\\
A lone man walked across a barren landscape reminiscent of demented H.R. Geiger paintings. A dark amalgamation of organics and machine blended garishly, an endless mechanical savanna. Killy was beaten up, still healing from his last bout with Sanakan. He had destroyed her this time, but she always came back. Always. That was 4 days ago. He hadn't eaten for 5. His black jumpsuit, covered in a myriad of electronic equipment, was a mess of tangled wires covered in his blood. He limped every few steps, the broken leg not fully healed yet.
The rubble he walked towards sat in the middle of the vast cavern. "TOHO HEAVY INDUSTRIES - CAVE 13" was written in letters the size of cities above him on the cylindrical cover of the grotto.
This was the dead or dying wasteland of the Toho Heavy industries empire. The vast mechanized tower consisting of 13 vertical "caves", capable of moving and changing at will. No one knew for sure when Toho took over, or when humans came to live in the depths of the second cave. Killy had ascended 2000 levels from his city to find the entrances to the other caverns. These caves, protected by "SafeGruard", a sentient AI thought to have been created to protect Toho Industries and police itself internally was now completely self-aware and automated; An AI that dispensed death by automaton army at its discretion; the mechanical soldiers appearing almost immediately anywhere inside the structure. Sanakan, the SafeGuard lieutenant, was the most powerful of the androids; the "Gravitated-Electron Emitting Device" or GED graphed to her right arm was capable of destruction on a scale rivaled by only high-yield nuclear weapons. She resembled a human female, with the exception of dark black eyes and a gun for an arm. She would appear as if from nothing, keeping Killy in an ever-present danger.
SafeGuard is also in a perpetual struggle with the Silicon Beings for control of the Net Sphere governing the movement of the caves. Little is known about the Silicon Beings, other than that they were built out of semi-organic constructs and old Toho technology. Killy was in the middle of it all, as the number of humans was decimated by the conflict; settlements destroyed by SafeGuard, the Silicon Beings, or a precipitate of their conflict. Killy was hunting for the genetic information that would allow humans to interface with the Net Sphere. It was the only way to end the continuous destruction. Sanakan was hunting him, and the Silicon Beings hunting her. They all wanted the same thing; control, and their competition dead.
The low electric hum told Killy needed to hurry; this cave would be out of alignment soon.
He reached his destination; the crushed human settlement he had seen through the binoculars on the precipice of cave 12. That was days ago.
The crushed buildings were scattered with long-dead corpses, all of them torn apart. He quietly went through the rubble, searching for anything of use. It had been 38 days since he last had any contact with humans, and had been on the run from Sanakan since then.
He overturned a large piece of debris, to discover an intact body. Long dead, but at least in one piece.
He pulled the body from its wreckage, inspecting the man's armor; it was connected to his neural net via what seemed to be an intact communication port on his temple. Killy removed the plug, and gently pulled the helmet away. The suit's backup battery probably had enough charge left to transfer any data it had in it.
He unraveled a tattered cable, inserting one plug into the suit, and the other into the port on his temple.
Everything went black; his optic nerve now directed by the suit's controller.
Text began to appear.
//Login
................Connected.
Verifying...
//User: Killy
//Authorization: 0100110100101001011101.1101
\\File.04.Init
The comm. terminal buzzed and crackled, as the signal traveled though Killy's integrated circuitry. The tiny projection device situated on the fovea of his augmented eyes shone the images directly to his retina. The quality was grainy; noticeably low-quality. He could barely make out the human form in the recording. His dull eyes dilated involuntarily despite the lack of any true stimulus.
//Error: Video File Corrupt.
Audio track extraction 0%[|||||||||||||||]100%
Buffering...
//Playback.04.init
An irritated voice spoke.
"Shit, what is it now?! <Rustling of clothes. Door opening> Hizen? What's wrong this time? <Crash> Augh! Run! Get out-"
The unmistakable sound of flesh being rend asunder penetrated his ears.
Silence.
<Hurried Footsteps>
"This way, it's through here!"
"We're cut off."
"Ammo check!"
"1 clip left."
"Shit..."
"Are you injured?"
"Only a bit. I'll be-"
<Bang>
"Take his. We need everyone armed and mobile."
"They're coming through."
"What would SafeGuard want with us!?"
"On the left, it's not going to hold. Get ready."
"Shh."
<Crash>
<Gunfire>
<Wheezing breath>
//Electronic Transmission Detected: Decoding....
"01010010 01000101 01110100 01110101 01110010 01001110 01101001 01001110 01000111 01010010 01100101 01010100 01110101 01110010 01001110 00100000 01010100 01101000 01000101 00100000 01100100 00110011 01010110 01001001 01100011 01000101 00101110"
"What device!?"
//Electronic Transmission Detected: Decoding....
"01000111 01110010 01100001 01110110 01101001 01110100 01100001 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01000101 01101100 01100101 01100011 01110100 01110010 01101111 01101110 00100000 01000101 01101101 01101001 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010"
"What!?"
The echo of sinew gnashing against crushed bone reverberated in his ears.
//Electronic Transmission Detected: Decoding.......
"01010100 01100001 01110010 01100111 01000101 01010100 00100000 01101100 00110000 01010011 01010100 00101101 00001010 01110011 01100001 01101110 00110100 01101011 01100001 01001110 00111010 00100000 01010010 01000101 01110100 01110101 01110010 01001110 01101001 01001110 01000111 00001010 00110010 00110011 00111010 00110100 00110111 00111001 00110110 00111010 00110010 00110011 00110001 00001010"
//Binary Translation:
"ReTurN ThE d3VIcE."
"Gr4vItatEd 3lectRon EmiTteR"
"TargET l0ST-
san4kaN: REturNiNG"
127460:58:21
//Signal Lost
//File.04.End
//Source Signal Terminated 12389775635.6756452 Hours
...........
\\Connection Terminated
Killy tore the plug from his temple, and callously removed it from the long-dead corpse. SafeGuard had been sacking human settlements since the incident at the warehouse. They were looking for him.
He stood, knowing that the area would have been monitored for life signs; SafeGuard hates to leave anyone breathing. He toggled his visual sensors to track electromagnetic pulses; the drones always preceded themselves this way; a flash, then they were there. He waited for any sign of their arrival.
Killy removed a small inauspicious pistol from his suit. It was barely bigger than his hand in both length and depth, and was flat on all sides, save the back, which had what he figured was a charge indicator. It was distinguished from a normal gun only by the barrel, which consisted of small cylindrical rods arranged in a circle, and the lack of a hammer. "GED" was stenciled on the side.
He had stolen it from a Toho warehouse a few weeks back. Test firing it had been a mistake, since the hole he created in the roof of the structure flooded the base levels with some kind if century-old fossil fuel. The subsequent explosion drew out both SafeGuard and the Silicon Beings, and the clash between the two allowed him to escape with this life and the gun. Just as Prometheus had stolen fire from mount Olympus, Killy had taken the weapon of the gods.
Small triangles began to appear on his virtual heads up display, tacking the spawn points for the SafeGuard. One. Three. Seven. Eighteen.
"Shit." He muttered to himself.
The high pitch electrical whine of the GED charging cut through the windswept silence in the destroyed town.
Small wisps of dust began to disperse from the marked spots on his HUD.
Flash-Flash-Flash-Flash-Flash-Flash-Flash.
The whine of the GED grew louder, as the indicator where the hammer would have been began to glow. He leveled his sights on the center of their formation, as the drones seemingly grew from the ground.
They reached their full size quickly, their black frames strangely human-like. They were covered in some kind of off-white polymer, clawed fingers stretching out as they activated, their empty eyes staring into the dim light at Killy.
The charge indicator was bright now; the trigger grew warm under the heat from his finger. He braced himself, supporting his aiming arm with the free one, digging his heels in.
[Warning] Flashed red on his display as the drones acquired their target.
*Click*
The trigger depressed loudly, as a thin beam of light emanated from the barrel, penetrating the ground in the center of the drones as they began to move. Almost immediately following, a pulse was sent down the beam, first destroying all matter in its path, then exploding in the anti-matter space created by the negative singularity it caused.
The recoil threw Killy 10 meters, and dislocated his right shoulder. His visual augmentations went offline, reducing his sight to static snow. He toggled the optical amplifications off, readjusting to the darkness that permeated the large Toho caverns. He righted himself, making sure he had destroyed the whole group. All that remained was a large hole that went for thousands of meters down, and a few pieces of android not caught in the blast.
He took the gun from his disabled arm, returning to the holster on his suit. He slowly stood, his right arm dangling to his side, and walked back to the wreckage. Kneeling, he placed his shoulder against a large piece of one of the destroyed buildings, and pushed hard. Luckily his arm snapped back into place without fuss, unlike the last time when his shoulder joint shattered and he had to wait 18 hours for his body to self-repair.
The clanking of metal boots snapped his attention away from his aching arm, and the high-pitched sound he knew so well sent him diving for cover. Sanakan had arrived. The GED's energy signature must have tipped the monitoring sensors to Killy's presence.
She raised her arm, the thin beam lazed his torso, cutting through his leftmost ribs. As he dove, part of the blast had caught his left arm, searing through the suit and flesh underneath. He drew his weapon and fired blindly in succession into the darkness.
Sanakan's nimble frame dodged the un-aimed shots, closing in on Killy's position quickly. He ducked behind another building as she prepared to fire again. Killy began to charge his gun as he dodged the second salvo. Then a third. He could hear her charging once again. Dashing from behind his cover, he aimed strait for her. The charging sound had ceased, the GED almost burning his hand through his gloves. As she drew her sights on him she smiled with her twisted mechanical face.
They both fired.
-----
\\Client Signal Lost:
Restarting......
Boot complete
\\Startup.init
01001001 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01110010 01100001 01101110 01110011 01101100 01100001 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 00100000 01101100 01101001 01100110 01100101 00101110
//Visual Systems: Online
Killy awoke 100 yards from the town's wreckage, the pistol burned into the fiber of his glove. He patched his arm and chest, injecting medic nanomachines to aid the healing. He saw flames in the distance in front and behind him. Through his binoculars he could see blazing fissures 20 meters wide in the walls of Cave 13.
He retuned one final time to the piles of debris, to inspected Sanakan's remains. Finding nothing of particular interest he trudged away from the annihilated town, leaving the smoldering chasm in the center the as only sign he was ever there. Killy went as quickly as he could; knowing she would be back. She always came back.
\\Log.08.End\\
User Reviews
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-08-29 17:32:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
THIS is the shit that should be in UberMadness
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2005-01-16 11:43:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
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