DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Strange how fire can look like water. How it flows and crashes and froths. A wave there, then gone. A new one resurfaces to dance with others, to become them. What would one call such a thing? He’d know when the time came.
These are the thoughts that flooded Duncan’s mind as he stood mesmerized by the Hive Core. A writhing ball of energy that controlled . . . everything.
“How much longer?” Duncan asked QWERTY. Arguably more machine than man at this point, he was hunched over the service node decrypting the cauldronic mainframe to create a chiral portal, resetting the Core and thereby giving them reign over the Hive. In other words, to rule the world.
QWERTY delicately guided the service node’s arm. “Clavs are stalled, gyrons are fluid, and power diversion is imminent.”
“You look like you’re stirring a pot with that thing,” Duncan said. “And Federation Standard, please. You sound like a fucking robot.”
QWERTY raised his mechanical arm, all rods and pistons, and clacked his three “fingers” that looked more like tongs. “Almost. Forty-nine-point-three-five percent. To be precise.”
“Jesus,” Duncan said. He rolled his shoulders, the jet pack strapped there heavy with the reminder of what he had to do next.
“A mythological man,” QWERTY said, “composed of a collection of individuals to create a unified archetype that would provide spiritual sanctuary, but also be the impetus of wars and later inspire–”
“QWERTY?”
“Yes, Duncan?”
“Why do I give a fuck?”
The Hive Core reflected on QWERTY’s visor in all its fluidic glory but shrunken down so small Duncan could hold it in his hand. “Because you are about to become a powerful man. A powerful archetype.”
Duncan chewed the inside of his cheek. “And you’re telling me all this as a cautionary tale, right? That my name will be something cute and benign at first, giving people all the feel-goods, and then drive star systems to war only to fizzle to a sad legend that gives people a bad taste in their mouths, or worse?”
“Duncan?”
Duncan liked the sound of his name. “Yeah?”
“I’m just fucking with you.” QWERTY wheezed out a laugh that was very human and went back to work.
“Asshole,” Duncan said and went back to being mesmerized.
That fire, that water, that whatever it was illuminated the entire Trench Sector, whose grandeur Duncan hadn’t appreciated until now. Maybe it was the idea of what the future held, how he would direct it, what he would name it. Still, it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Catwalks, scaffolding, beams and cables crisscrossed vistas that had no ceilings, no walls, all ejecting from an ancient structure his people had built upon, erasing the bedrock of what had come before. Volumetric light cradled all of this in its glory.
Duncan raised his hand and caressed the distant repair drones that hovered around the Core delivering fuel catalysts. Though he was few hundred meters away, he truly felt their worn surfaces, and assured them, too, that he would provide for them.
“You used to be a drone pilot,” he said to QWERTY. “What was it like?”
“Long hours. The mind-link is brutal, until you get used to it, which you never do.”
“I know,” Duncan said.
“Why’d you ask, then?”
“I needed to hear you say it.”
QWERTY scoffed. “Listen to you, sounding all saviorlike. Am I supposed to believe you’ve transcended and you’re not the same Duncan who would start fires in trash bins? Strategically placed around fuel canisters, set up like a giant Domino game that went BOOM?”
Duncan turned from his view of the dying and birthing plasmatic waves. “Almost done? Because I don’t have time for this.”
QWERTY’s visor reflected Duncan with the distant Core behind his head. It was off center, so he shifted his stance. There. Perfect. Like a crown.
“Yeah,” QWERTY said.
“Good.”
Duncan relished in the Core once again. It was larger now, pulsing to a new beat. QWERTY did his job well. Too well. Duncan shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. After all, he couldn’t do this alone, even though he had the most difficult part. The part that could end him or begin him.
Duncan checked his pack’s monitor, then its shoulder straps. Digital vitals didn’t matter if his pack fell off. Everything looked good. Too good. It couldn’t be this easy, right? Why had no one attempted it before? Slaves too long, he supposed, squashed under the two-times Earth gravity. Physically and metaphorically.
Not him. Not QWERTY.
“I’m . . .” Duncan said.
“We’re a go!” QWERTY strutted around the service node as if a primitive man discovering fire for the first time.
Duncan smiled, as if he had a choice. “Sorry,” he finished. QWERTY didn’t hear, still circling the node. Duncan would tell him one day. After all this was his.
QWERTY stopped to catch his breath. Human enough, Duncan supposed.
Duncan powered his pack, tested comms, navigational systems, everything. Twice.
He left the ground, and the ground left him. He nodded to his subjects. The drones, the struggling laborers staring at welding sparks. Tiny dots, like distance stars. They didn’t see him, but he saw them.
“One hundred meters,” crackled QWERTY on the comms.
It was cold up here except for the pack’s exhaust on the backs of Duncan’s legs.
“Fifty meters.”
Duncan was a single-celled organism dropping into the miasma.
Ready.
For–
“Name it,” QWERTY said.
Name it?
“The system. Your empire. Whatever you want to fucking call it. It needs a fucking name, a title.”
Inspiration hadn’t struck, like it should have. A man facing a god to become one.
“Don’t tell me you don’t have one. Fuck I told you this. As part of the cauldric declaration of the code base, this thing needs a fucking name to execute. You know this. You knew this.”
He did know this. He knew this.
Duncan shuttled toward the core without inspiration, without time, burning hotter than a bin fire, and–
BOOM.
Leave a Reply