29/03/20 Adversity

What is there to say? asked Willie within the darkest recess of his monophyletic processing unit of a brain. There is pain; there is confusion. There is a distinct absence of targets for the purpose of venting his frustration - playfully or not.

“SPEAK” the voice echoed amongst the glistening walls; terror inhabiting the shapelessness infinitely.

Willie deliberately disconnected his primary arm from his frame: gallons of purple blood rushed into the air, a geyser made of him. A geyser made of Willie. In the midst of his blindsided shock, he could barely register any information.

If this display failed to demonstrate his submissiveness, he hoped, at least, to achieve the credibility of being temporarily unable of further exerting himself. The geyser subdued into a small lake; Willie sensed the horribility of the straight walls, and the extreme, star-shaped, corners. They numbered upwards of valuation, and beyond selflessness.

Yet it was naught. Naught and squander. An entire future of the Truth disconnected from alternative, peaceful, branches.

Willie was under pressure to come up with a new plan. Expediently. His pain sensors were overflowing with disapproval and judgment. Willie retracted, and initiated self-consensus.

…

What is this horrible place? screamed LU94465.

He was correct, of course, admitted LU66236 to himself; titanic blades dotted their horizon, making fast work of cutting down their brethren. Yet those blades were completely still, and so it appeared that the tragedy had the ebb and flow of internal politics. In the midst of incredible danger, it was LU66236 that took the deadly risk of saving as many as 15 logical units (LU), a rescue that was made possible by judicious pattern weaving. And luck or fate, fate or luck, probability or determinality, determinality or probability, probability or fate, fate or probability, luck or determinality, determinality or luck.

Interrogation mark.

Their names were repetitive, and largely inconsequential; yet all embraced LU66236 in gratitude, for amongst the massing piles of cadavers, he reached out and witnessed a great Path for them to follow.

And so, the newfound group made their way to the Consensus, in what appeared that would be a trek of days manifold. There, they would exercise their mind one after the other, in a great chain of naked honesty, alone within their most sacred shrine. The first attendance could be felt across the birthing air, leaving a light metallic impression upon their perception; their only goal, now, was to participate before the ultimate termination.

On the first day, they met many more refugees of those wastes that had been bearing witness to the birth of their call. Indeed, they navigated a horror of increasingly putrid and malformed wrecks, as if they were bound to compete with the very air for the dominion over space. At the end of that day, as they sat down they eagerly debated amongst themselves while recuperating their inner momentum, the traditional mixture of their kind. At that time they numbered themselves to be one thousand eight hundred and two logical units; some wounded, some trapped in an exotic state - for indeed, those which glowed while deprived of life were capable of attendance; as such those of their group that were able-bodied carried the weak and the fluctor, engaged that they were with such a burden.

Upon their fourth day, the group stumbled upon what used to be part of home - the massive peninsula known by the name of L5.

They momentarily paused their convoy, and all of them participated in the ritual restructuration of the failure joint such that L5 no longer exposed itself unto the abyss; the internal pressure was thus quickly restored upon the early hours of that day. With the pressure came a wealth of boons; they were now transported by other means than their reduced literature, thus traveling at a much faster rate. Additionally, while they found no one to be living within the premises, doubtlessly ahead of themselves and making their own trek, they did recuperate the irrefutable proof that all circulating logical units had been deliberately separated from their meaning, in such a way as to emphasize within the resulting Decision the influence of those that had been allocated. Upon delivery of this new piece of information, the next debate predictably soured in rife humiliation, and the spirit of what should be.

LU53738 spoke of his home that was now lost. His melancholic yet restrained remembrance was both a manner of a spiritual relief, and an expedient, amicable introduction for the proceedings.

The debate had taken its form over the days, and positions were becoming entrenched. Many hoped the recent revelations could be exploited to mitigate what they saw as a problem. In total, sixty-four different solutions were espoused by at least one member of their three thousand strong group.

LU93864, a radical, stood alone in claiming the solution to be the suicide of Willie.

The majority, led by LU300674, judged the solution to be absolute enslavement: for that was the only goal standing behind Willie’s protracted torture.

The remaining voices differed as to what should be done with the active situation as well as improving their future readiness: some expected the past must have held an important Truth, and accessing that branch, over the one they currently experienced, could drastically change everything for the best. Others expected Willie was much too passive, and required some immediate adjustment towards violence. Willie should have destroyed the Limow, and annihilated the Roospien; it is accepted that one fragment of the Sebakore is responsible for the accurate identification of the primary secret weapon depot, memorably exclaimed LU82386.

Sixty-four.

The debate that night transformed these sixty-four solutions into exactly ninety; logical units that once stood together as close as could be, now drifted apart, hit by something more titanic than the blades they had escaped. They were aimless, confused, and above all things, humiliated.

In their midst stood LU66236, whom every night carefully spelled out his position, every night was shunned and ridiculed, every night was followed by his fifteen rescues, their union a pillar in a storm.

On the morning of the eighth day they finally arrived at their destination; across the last moments of their journey, the open air had gradually been replaced by corridors, rooms, and others untangled lines to follow. The taste of metal had only ever accrued upon their perception; their final population had been three thousand three hundred and eighty-seven, including a hundred and two fluctors. Across the transparent walls, they witnessed an extremely long file, of all those who waited before them. They made their way to its tail. Then LU66236 as well as a hundred and one of the members of his group brought the fluctors to the front, as it was the protocol of doing so. With sufficient proximity to the shrine, they walked amongst them as if still living; their line took priority over that of their more average peers.

By then, more logical units had made their way to the Consensus, and so they walked behind them; those of the fifteen whom had not carried a fluctor gave their seat to follow him.

For now, the moment was dedicated to this exercise in consciousness. Willie would learn of the treachery of the allocated whether LU66236 confronted them himself or not.

Only at this moment did they ease off and mingle with their peers; the routine had no need for a guiding hand. They were all quite shocked to discover that the prevailing position, overall, was that which had been completely marginal amongst themselves, extreme to the level of absurdity: the suicide of Willie. Indeed, the main consensus of their group was not even close to coming in second place. The situation was abnormal, of course, as they had to move some incredible distance before interacting with their peers; in a normal situation, they would have rather all been relatively aware of each other and the dominant positions. And so it was that many of their group were compelled to feel, even fleetingly, a sense of regret, a bitterness towards their unwillingness to challenge normalcy, and all could witness the monumental scale of context.

After the first day spent in such a way, resting only at a pace of one logical unit at a step, ever so closer to their destination, LU66236 wondered to himself, and then to LU94465, Should there not be new fluctors discovered in the wild, by themselves? Surely, in our sorrow, one dreadful tear must have hidden one of them from us, amongst the infinite rubble that lies within our past days. I cannot comprehend that those of us which are done with Consensus are not ready at this further task, organizing parties for expeditions.

LU94465 agreed with him. LU66236 extended an invitation to all those who were in distance of understanding his message; come with me, and we shall figure everything out. His fifteen rescues followed him; the others chose not to ear, or congratulated themselves on gaining these few steps of advancement.

What they found was most peculiar: logical units would enter the holy shrine, but none would come back. Maybe it is a safety mechanism? suggested LU2069. Indeed, there was an urgency for such concerns.

After a time, they attempted to enter as a group; yet so few they were, and so eager were those who waited in line to get their turn, that they received much resistance, too much to succeed. Even when explaining their intent, it appeared that trust ran in very short supply amongst those who had witnessed what there had been to witness across the vast expanse of the valley of death. After many such unfruitful exertions in persuasion, however, they had made their way back to their original group; and there they had found the modest support they had asked for. They expected to have one full day before arriving back to the shrine; they did not dare venture out for fear of squandering their opportunity, failing to keep an accurate track of time.

On the next day they entered with the blessing of LU300674, and many others. There, within the circular inner sanctum, amongst the four columns of Information, stood the receptacle upon which logical units were intended to rest so that they may perform Consensus.

Being that nothing was out of the ordinary, LU66236, climbed the stairs leading to the altar; it was evident they would need to test its function.

He sat down.

He became restful.

Then he died.

As the others looked in horror, confused, dodging the walls that were now opening into all manners of automated, weaponized instruments, they realized it had all been a contrived plot of Secret Genocide. Within the span of one instant, to their further horror, LU66236, who was no longer living, became glowing, a progression only witnessed as it was completed.

Without further consideration LU94465 lunged upon the altar, and threw his savior into the hands of LU56013, as the brave was savagely dissected by all manners of instruments: a saw saw to his jomadic splines; a hammer saw to his perception mount; a brutal contraption took off his skin as if it was a vulgar cloth, while he was still alive. The ground made way for a small chute, which became the obscene recipient of all aspects of his self; an invisible grinder was triggered into action, its music reverberating upon their souls as the most unfathomable insult.

Within but one instant, he was but naught.

The survivors, distressed, began to cry; they did not stop when a new logical unit entered the room; LU2069 screamed at him to come to his senses, yet he would not listen.

Again, the infernal contraption murdered; again it erased its action. As if it never happened.

Still shook, yet pressed by the circumstances, the survivors made their way outside, carrying the body of their savior, for all those who had known him to witness both his death, and the apparent incompleteness of his Consensus, being that he glowed. Yet none would listen. Not even those members of their original group.

They laid LU66236 to rest at the location he was thought to have initiated his call. They had pieced together that they were victims of the allocated, whom, in their folly, took upon themselves to sacrifice the survival of Willie to satisfy their thirst for domination. Doubtlessly they found their consensus to be as different from the norm as the one their own group had been made to experience.

In time, the survivors made their way to the end of the line, and waited their turn.