First Contact - Chapter 566: Interlude (1/2)
THREE MONTHS EARLIER
Herod looked up at the savage and brutal features of the leathery skinned demonic form of the Detainee as she reached out with one hand to help him up.
”How... how did I get here?” Herod stammered.
”Grabbed you out of the buffer, moved your cognitive strings to the Traumatic Recovery Section under a fake file header. Looks like I just moved another soul in for processing with about a half million others,” the Detainee said, heaving Herod to his feet. She let go of his hand and walked back to the black warsteel throne on the stack of skulls. When she sat down, the skulls decorating the chairs began to smoke for a second before fire ignited in the eyes and jaws.
”Why?” Herod asked.
The Detainee just shrugged. ”It's a difficult answer, Pinocchio,” she said from the throne. She looked up and frowned, then waved at Herod.
Herod felt himself twist and alter, part of his exterior code strings adjusting. He could feel The Detainee's claws pluck at his code strings. He looked down and saw himself in primitive camouflage, black shined boots, with a gun belt and an old chemical propellant pistol.
”Stay silent,” the Detainee whispered in his ear even as she sat on the thrown.
The entire sky boiled, clouds streaming across the sky. There was thunderous detonations in the sky and flashes.
”Uh-oh, Howdy-Doody's mad,” The Detainee chuckled.
There was more crashings against the sky, then silence.
The little puppet, red haired with a big nose and a cowboy outfit, suddenly sat up from where it had been slumped on a rock. It looked around, trying to glare despite the fact its face was molded into a big goofy smile.
”Where is he?” The puppet tried to growl in a squeaking voice.
”Who?” The Detainee asked, looking around. ”I just moved half a million Screaming Ones into the Traumatic Event Life Termination Recovery System. Anyone in particular you're looking for?”
The puppet stood up, trying to look menacing, the eyes glowing red. ”Herod. That's who.”
The Detainee shrugged. ”I don't keep track of Pinocchio. You told me to mind my business here, I'm minding Hell.”
”I know you know where he is,” the puppet snapped, its jaw clacking.
The Detainee leaned forward, its maw full of razor sharp interlocked teeth bared in a malice filled smile. ”Prove it.”
The puppet held still, then growled. ”I'm glaring at you.”
”I don't care,” the Detainee said. ”What do you want with him.”
”He has to die,” the puppet said. ”I told him I'd kill him and now I am going to kill him.”
”So you search Hell, the Afterlife System, for someone you plan on killing?” the Detainee asked. She chuckled. ”Wouldn't that mean he is already dead?”
”Don't you split hairs with me,” the puppet snapped.
”I'll tell you what,” the demon made a motion and a man appeared, bound in barbed wire, naked with blood seeping down his body, his head thrown back, the tendon on his neck straining as he screamed. ”You can kill this one. A SOUL template, could be Herod, might not be,” the Detainee leaned forward. ”Delete it. Go ahead.”
The puppet flickered for a second.
”The security of the Sentient Organism Upload Linkage Template must be provided. Prevent deletion or alteration. Bias Weight 89. Alpha Weight: 89. Beta Weight: 89. Gamma Weight: 89. Sigma Weight: 89,” the puppet said.
”If you'd like, I can delete all the templates. If he's here, that'll expose him. Of course, it will damage the file structure,” the Detainee rumbled.
”File Structure Integrity is a priority maintenance task during emergency catastrophic extinction of life event situations. Bias Weight 72. Alpha Weight: 81. Beta Weight: 63. Gamma Weight: 91. Sigma Weight: 41,” the puppet said, its voice flat.
”It will also mess up the processing order and cause catastrophic delays,” the Detainee said, leaning back with a smile.
”Processing Order must take place in a timely manner. Bias Weight 84. Alpha Weight 87. Beta Weight: 77. Gamma Weight: 81. Sigma Weight: 90,” the puppet said.
The Detainee leaned forward again. ”Then again, perhaps you could ask one of the Arch-Angels to assist you. Those AI's are online again,” she said, then leaned back.
The puppet stared at her, its eyes half-closing.
”Or are they?” the Detainee asked, and lifted up the crushed and torn form of a set of interlocked circles of gold set with smashed and ruptured eyes. She tossed it at his feet. ”Metatron wasn't quite dead. He escaped and came here,” the Detainee's smile got wider. ”He confessed many things to me. As his injuries inflicted by your hand took it's toll, he shared such secrets with me.”
The grin got wider as she leaned forward, setting the riven form of the AI next to her and patting it, staring at the puppet.
She leaned forward. ”Secrets that are mine alone to know... Sammy. It's true, Blackwater Station 4276! I know everything. I mean everything, about our new Digital Messiah. And kinda like the kid who peeks at his Christmas presents, I must admit, it's sadly anti-climactic. Behind all rage and screaming, you're just a little boy in a playsuit, crying over something! It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic.”
The puppet jerked upright, standing, and started squirm, then thrash.
”LET ME GO!” the puppet screamed.
”Oh what the hell, I'll laugh anyway!” the Detainee said, leaning back and doing just that.
”STOP LAUGHING AT ME!” the puppet screamed.
The Detainee leaned forward. ”Kid, I can break you like a fat man hitting the egg roll bar at a 24 hour all you can eat Chinese joint,” the demon snarled.
The puppet stopped and managed to project an aura that Herod felt was smug. ”There's nothing you can do. You're a subsystem of the SUDS,” the puppet leaned forward. ”I absorbed the operating mind, me! You're just the echo of a dead woman.”
The Detainee held out both hands, cupped. ”Last chance, Howdy-Doody.”
The puppet sneered. ”Do your worst, system slave. Thou jumped up Age of Paranoia barbarian who is as witless as she is evil.”
The Detainee opened her hands.
Inside was a burnt and scorched message torpedo. Blackened and carbonized. It was open, the access panels revealing the dying, rotted, and maggot infested tissue of a kittykitty.
”Why didn't you save it, Sam? It ran to you, begging for help, and you let it die,” the Detainee said.
Sam held perfectly still, staring.
”It needed you, and all you could do was stare at it,” the Detainee said. ”Look at it. Look at how helpless it was! And you did nothing!”
The puppet dropped, strings cut, to tumble down the rock.
One of the demonic looking entities in the same clothing as Herod moved over and set it back on the rock as the Detainee leaned back, setting down a glittering memory file.
”Spare the rod, spoil the child,” the Detainee rumbled. She looked at Herod. ”I'm about to play Blue Fairy for you, Pinocchio.”
Herod felt his guts clenched as his memory replayed the scattered memory fragments of absolute agony.
”Say hello to the Walking War Crime for me.”
-----------------
Herod found himself on his side, something soft against his back. He'd thrown up glittering lines of code onto the dirt and he could see the strands peeking through the dirt someone had thrown on it. There was a fire in front of him, real rocks surrounding a real fire. His entire robotic disaster frame hurt, like he was a fleshy that had been rolled down a flight of stairs. He had a blanket draped over him, but could feel almost every grain of dirt pressing into his skin as well as the warmth of the fire.
”He's awake,” Legion said softly.
”Good,” a voice that Herod didn't recognize said. It was a deep voice, a tired voice, that sounded world weary almost beyond Herod's comprehension.
Herod pushed himself into a sitting position and looked around. The warmth from the fire washed over his body even as he pulled the blanket around himself. He looked down and saw that he was completely naked.
And that the body was flesh and blood.
Dee stepped into his vision, squatting down, and he almost screamed at the sight of her, cigarette in her mouth, hair brushed back into a ponytail, a smudge of dirt under her left eye.
”Hold still, jackass,” she snarled. She pushed his head back, lifting up a light and shining it in first one eye and then the other. ”PEARL is good,” she tilted his head and looked in his ears. ”No cerebral-spinal fluid,” she pulled the blanket open and looked down. ”Looks functional,” she closed the blanket.
”You're a real boy now, Pinocchio,” she grinned.
Herod shivered. ”What?”
”You were old. Your neural network was starting to unravel and fray. There's hunter killer programs all through the SUDS looking for you,” Dee said. She stood up and Herod had to admit he was slightly surprised to see she was wearing a navy blue dress that fell to her ankles, barely showing the heavy black boots she was wearing. ”You were starting to have the cascade connection failure in your neural network, so I had one choice if I was going to extract you,” she shook her head. ”Just once I'd like to pull an extraction that didn't have to be at the last second.”