Act -5: Dawn of Desolation
The year is 2133, and a man by the name of "Manuel" reclines in his office, a phlegmatic, strategic force that is subduing the senate of the USA and auxiliating an obfuscated cybertunnel to Vienna. His phone rings after he had convected yet another nicotine inhaler. He responds.
"Holy shit, Manuel! I have some SCINTILLATING news!"
The call is from his brother, an eccentric bioelectrical engineer by the name of Proaja Autumn.
Following Autumn's ecstatic announcement, Manuel exhales, with a hint of authentic confoundment, "Wait… you signed the founding papers?"
Autumn is enraptured. He has just signed the founding papers to a trillion-dollar conglomerate, following his Nobel Prize accolade for producing revolutionary breakthroughs in the field of bioengineering and, what is now referred to as "ultra-artificial intelligence", or UAI.
However, Manuel doesn't express any vehemence or exhilaration. Instead, his voice is nothing but an aggregate of… desiderium. Envy.
"Is that so…"
"Yes! Dude, aren't you excited?! Like—
Manuel audibly clears his throat,
"I have to go. Later."
His hands tremble before the device is subsequently hurled into the wall, fractured into many small, asymmetrical pieces.
"I need some fresh air."
Heading outside, he notices how the sun refulges less today. The hues of the world, less prismatic. Citizens, sparse and antipathetic.
A figure in black bumps into him, seemingly by accident. Has a strange scent.
Unbothered, Manuel walks on.
And then he collapses.
He finds himself back in his apartment. Wandering, he picks up his phone by habitude.
"Wait… didn't I just break it?"
He grips his thorax and begins hyperventilating, seemingly from no clear catalyst.
He then feels a strong urge to commit suicide.
He strikes a lamp, refusing to acquiesce,
"Is this some new bullshit technology… shit..."
Laboriously, he walks to the restroom, inducing regurgitation. Suspecting synthetic toxins.
"This… couldn't have been coordinated by an adversary…"
He trips, and with his volition capitulating, he reaches for a firearm.
As soon as he points the weapon beneath his mandible, he notices a half-eaten almond in the corner of the room.
"Wait…"
He weeps. Fractures the mirror with his bare hands. Radial arteries and venules burst. The pain is a mere distraction.
"N-no way… that fucking…"
Still intoxicated, he emphatically injects himself with a tranquilizer and then a beta-blocker, falling into a syncope before the overwhelming suicidal instincts can re-emerge.
For a moment, the world oscillates.
The convergence of the corporation Autumn had founded, 'Lucidity', is currently, a global revolution, but a cataclysm to those with cynical perspicacity.
Dr. Proaja is apotheosized for being a genius, a visionary, one-in-a-generation, while in truth,
"Hook, line and sinker. Collect his corpse at noon."
A subordinate nods to Autumn's command, slightly intimidated by his deceitfulness masquerading as charm and naïveté.
However.
He is still naïve to think Manuel will capitulate so simply.
Awake and revitalized, he makes a call to a certain lobbyist,
"Start smearing Dr. Proaja Autumn, now. Or you will lose your wife tonight."
The interlocutor, not missing a beat, exhales, "Quite the power play, Manuel. What gives—
A bullet shatters the interlocutor's window, and Manuel subsequently imperates, "Time, Johan."
Act -4: Veracious Apophenia
Everything arrives at a disjunction.
But there is time for an ephemeral decompression right now.
Under a stream of dihydrogen monoxide, Manuel tends to his wound to inoculate against an infection. He begins by letting the warm water run over the injury, administering antibiotic cream, and then wrapping it in a bandage before ingesting a high dose of fluoxetine.
He picks his favourite suit. Tailored and flawlessly ironed, the clean, carbon hue emitting nothing but power and control, a synecdochic anathema to his current state.
Only until then, he collapses voluntarily, holding his face as if it were falling apart.
Johan's smear campaign is stable and predictable. Many people are vilifying Autumn now, the propaganda being that he, and Lucidity, are intending on augmenting orphans into biomechanical weapons.
However.
In the subsequent dawn, Manuel books a flight to Kyiv.
An underground facility denies him access.
"Contact Dr. Proaja Autumn, I am his brother."
Access denied.
"I didn't want to use my contingency."
An implosion on the north-west bursts into a cacophony of destruction, contrary to where he is standing.
Security systems identify the inimical threat. Trained personnel exact their rifles to the middle of Manuel's thorax, and then they shoot themselves sequentially.
Manuel discards a signal redirector device and unlocks the entrance using one of the sentinels' ID.
"Such vermin only deserve expurgation." He mutters before sprinting past all panicking facility workers, conceitedly adjusting his tie before his ascension to the target floor by an elevator.
"There you are, ignoramus." Manuel exclaims, identifying the primary prey.
2mm pupil dilation. Volatile Myocardial fibrillations.
Communications were already neutralized. Autumn can't call for backup.
Autumn stands and exhales, "You should have just pulled the trigger—
"Predictable provocation. Drop the scripts and let's handle this like reasonable men." Says Manuel before he abruptly lurches forward, Autumn barely evading a future forced interrogation.
Manuel recapitulates, "You made a fatal mistake, brother."
He subsequently wears a full-face respirator, and a pervasive chemical leak resembling chloroethyl sulfide penetrates Autumn's pulmonary system as Manuel performs a quick ocular surgery, hiding a note behind Autumn's cornea.
"Just in case."
He then swiftly abandons the facility.
The facility is then detonated. Cherry on top.
He bursts into a velocity of 16 m/s, norepinephrine invigorating every fiber of his corpus.
Johan calls. He responds.
"Manuel, Lucidity is reporting the assassination of Autumn, was this part of your plan?"
Manuel exhales sharply, "Huh?! As much as I hate him, I wouldn't go that far… Did he really die? Fuck…"
And then a call from Lucidity Corp. A firm in Mississippi, just as planned.
"Yeah… I'm his brother, and I… don't know how to express my feelings right now. He was a genius. And I feel that… I am the only one who can continue his legacy." Says Manuel, weeping performatively.
The next day, he arrives at the office. A banal allegory.
Primary executive agent. Victory is secured.
But it may be a pyrrhic one.
Lucidity's public feats were quantum technology, computers and such.
However, obfuscated, they possess a controlled program for gifted orphans, gradually conditioning them to become cybernetically meliorated weapons.
The first promising asset is a multipurpose, hyperintelligent model of the "Eliminator" series. M50.
To the public, Lucidity is a company, an aggregate of technological revolution.
But to the nation's powers, it is a direct benefactor of the military. Fabricating sentient, augmented assassins for many of its ambitions.
The lead engineer monologues to Manuel, demonstrating data graphs,
"We have innovated what we like to call 'hyperalloy titanium' in this model, a material that can endure sustained fire…"
"Uh, Sir?"
Manuel fell somnolent. He wakes and then stands, "Have any contingency for if these things turn against us? Start feeling things they shouldn't?"
"Uh, yes, Sir. We control their neurochemistry and hormonal balance to never be volatile. I can show you a graph if—
"All good. As long as you can bring the product north, just spare me the details."
Condescendently, Autumn gives a pat on the shoulder to the lead engineer, walking off.
"I'm taking the day off. Only contact me in crisis."
Acquiescing, the engineer nods.
"Perfect. He's still alive." Manuel mutters as he mounts his vehicle, driving off at 684 KPH, magnitudes higher than the speed limit. But who's stopping him?
Only himself.
Act -3: Abysmal Apotheosis
As soon as he steps inside his apartment, he feels a frigid steel pressing against his temple, and then, as if he previsioned the event, he twists his ankle and sweeps the adversary's legs in one efficient motion, and the gun's trajectory, as if fated, curls right into Manuel's grasp.
"Autumn. This is your end."
He is then startled by a cacophonous rev of an engine, but how could it be? He already turned off his automobile.
A gust of wind materializes into a projectile he barely evades, and what halts is what appears to be a… child.
"Cease."
Before the toddler explodes into an inhuman velocity towards Manuel's throat, Manuel obnubilates the room with a flashbang just in time and escapes through the nearest window.
"Luca, the asset is loose, what is the meaning of this?" he phlegmatically inquires through his cell phone while starting his car's engine.
"I-I have no idea! Someone raided the building! They must've—"
No signal.
"Damn it… you fucking…"
No time for exasperation. Autumn assembles a sniper rifle and deflates one of Manuel's tires, and he hops off the vehicle, following its spinning trajectory to utilize it as a shield. He predicts the child blitzing from behind and sidesteps the fatal strike, shooting him thrice in the extremities, a vulnerability in the titanium chassis.
He finds an opportunity, a tight window, and obliterates Autumn's shoulder from an impossible angle. He's ephemerally perplexed, and that's all the time Manuel needs to penetrate the child's skin with a short blade, illustrating a scintilla of blood into a sample. Autumn attempts to aim at his brother again, only for Manuel's blade to be thrown at a blistering velocity, penetrating his cerebrum and killing him instantly.
The child prototype, inexperienced and undisciplined, swings at Manuel, only for his momentum to be diverted straight into the concrete, and is subsequently deactivated.
He exigently returns to the laboratory, asserting,
"I need this sample tested, now. Find any matches in the database."
The engineer hurries…
"Uh…", the doctor's voice barely above a whisper.
The second monitor displays a very familiar individual. Manuel's pupils dilate.
He turns to the engineer, his tone quiet and dangerous, "Where is the prototype?"
"O-oh, it should be right he… re…?"
The facility is vacuous.
An epiphany strikes Manuel. His suspicion was confirmed.
Full circle, vicissitudes turn a mellifluous psychological cacophony. Manuel is paralyzed.
A circumfluence of what can only be felt but not thought of. All this time, there was no strategy. There was only the desperation of a man who would do anything for retribution—even if that meant sacrificing the only remainder of what he has. Manuel was outmaneuvered not by a superior calculation, but by a line not even he would cross.
Somewhere in a facility deep underground, Autumn is still vital, his previous "death" only misdirection.
"Initiate." He whispers to the child prototype, now under his possession.
In an infantile yet mechanical movement, it stands, "All systems online."
"State your model number."
"M100."
Autumn lies satiated, apartment, ruinous, with scheming papers and sticks all over.
He hands a note to the M100.
"Follow these coordinates and reside in the vacuous apartment northeast to Glacier Park."
"Affirmative." It subsequently disintegrates into a raw burst of velocity, navigating the labyrinthine halls of the facility in mere milliseconds before it arrives at the coordinates. It stares off into the ameliorated, sterile sky, a synecdoche for an anomalous pattern. An avian disrupts the symmetry.
He logs the discomfort and moves forward to his proposed habitat.
Act -2: Vous Péjorer
The door creaks open. Two caretakers, ostensibly human.
After 1.900000009s, the paternal unit turns to face M100. Too precise.
A scintilla of a homosapiens' scent floats into M100's Olfactory sensors, and he bursts outside. Nothing but frost and marble.
Someone—or something—must be spectating.
Four armed men shout—
Decapitated sequentially, their inertia synchronous. Beta endorphins release as the blood paints the marble in straight lines.
Communications activate.
"A. Anon here. There is an incinerator west to the first corridor."
And so he incinerates.
Something seems off about the maternal unit. M100 is subconsciously averse to interacting with it. He logs the anomaly and kills the unit.
The corpse vanishes after a while, disemboweled, spleen weighing 12g.
The maternal unit then proceeds to serve him a meal, a succulent plate of truffle and steak.
He finishes his plate and formally thanks the unit, which is void of any reciprocation except a faint smile.
He explores the habitat. A fridge sensing him, leading him to subsequently annihilate it, shattering into many moderately sized pieces.
Eight total windows. No cameras.
He proddles to his personal room, inquisitively opening a drawer. It's vacuous.
Dehydrated, he walks back downstairs to the fridge to drink from a bottle of water.
The homosapiens scent is then amplified. He identifies the source in nanoseconds and proceeds to execute it.
"HEY HEY HEY! STOP!"
He halts, the boy cowering in fear.
"This is private property. You have 5.555555555 milliseconds to leave after the end of this sentence."
"W-WHAT?! NO—"
"Keep him." A voice penetrates his eardrum.
"Affirmative."
He observes the specimen collapse into a syncope from his sudden mercy.
He steps down to poke it.
"Avian?", he inquires.
It's unresponsive. He waits for 4 minutes and 4.1s.
The boy trembles awake, discombobulated.
"State your nomer." M100 quietly demands.
He whimpers. "D-daniel…"
He logs the specimen's emotional volatility. A primitive algorithm.
He stares at it for 1.5s before meticulously moving his hand over and resting it on Daniel's shoulder. His respiration then equilibrates.
Fear, now acquiescent vigilance. M100 logs the pattern.
Act -1: In Et Extra
Daniel eventually leaves, reluctantly intrigued, quite literally mortified.
A few months. Mundane development, temporal patterns compiling.
After 1 month, 1 day, 2 hours, and 2 minutes, "A. Anon" decides to disconnect his signal to M100, and effacing all memories preceding that.
Fluorescent lumia strikes a vacuous facility.
"I will resign my position." A devitalized Manuel exclaims, abandoning his badge while subsequently whispering something to the lead engineer. His pupils dilate.