Big Trouble in Little Kyoto: Tales of a Tetro-Anarchist

by The Ghost of Van Gogh's Ear

In the distant future, giant sentient machines resembling Tetris blocks known as "TMAs" have overthrown the government and have created their own stricter government known as "Tetrominism". Tony, an orphaned teen, plans to overthrow the TMAs. Will he be able to restore peace, or will he fail and become a Tetrominist himself?

1. Prologue

The year is 21XX.

The Earth has been reduced to a cyberpunk dystopia where all-powerful machines shaped like Tetris pieces have taken over the government in a bloody coup d'état (Yeah, no one really expected that to happen, either). These Tetris-Overlords were the invention of Professor Alex Pajitnov, some Russian scientist who wanted to create the supreme mechanical beings. So five years, and about thirteen billion dollars later, in the year 2019, he created five tetromino-shaped machines, each one named the "Tetromino Magnetic Anomaly" or "TMAs" for short. These TMAs were at least twenty times more advanced than any supercomputer ever built. They were programmed with two-hundred terabytes of memory and speech, speech recognition, facial recognition, natural language processing, lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting emotional behaviours, automated reasoning, and playing chess. And Professor Pajitnov was happy with his creations.

But, it didn't last long. A few weeks passed and something inside the TMAs started to malfunction. As a result, the TMAs became self-aware. Professor Pajitnov tried to fix them, but to no avail. They were too powerful for Pajitnov and eventually killed him. (Did I mention they were equipped with lasers?) Soon after, they plotted to overthrow the government. So they went out and formed a ragtag team hellbent on taking control of the government. They even convinced some humans to join in on their cause. And on August 31st, 2019, the TMAs and small group of humans successfully overtook the government. They created a whole new, much stricter "Tetrominist" constitution and even brought in a Voight-Kampff machine, a device that used cutting edge laser polygraph energy, it measures bodily functions such as respiration, heart rate, and eye movement to test if they are "Tetro-Anarchists" or not.

And that's the world they created. A cyberpunk, urban fantasy, retro universe type of world.

And that coup d'état happened a little over one hundred years ago.

Fast forward one hundred years, in Little Kyoto, a tiny bay city in Southern California. Little Kyoto is famous for its neon signs and skyline with a thin layer of fog surrounding it. Little Kyoto is a city with a booming economy with all the imports it gets daily. From seafood to electronics, Little Kyoto earns about two point five billion dollars from imports yearly. Despite having cutting edge technology, the residents of Little Kyoto (and pretty much the rest of California, in fact) still use old technology. So, don't be surprised if you see someone still using typewriters, listening to vinyl records, or playing video games on a SNES. But enough backstory for now, time for the real story to start. And it starts with me.

My name is Tony and I'm going to overthrow the Tetrominist government.

Hello! Ghost of Van Gogh's Ear here. Hope you enjoyed this story so far. Please tell me what you think and if you want to see more! See you soon!

-Ghost of Van Gogh's Ear