I like writing dramatic pieces. But sometimes, the seriousness gets to be too much and I find myself writing something ridiculous. Like this.
Lumine Rules the Universe
A large screen on the wall showed into a small room. It was square in shape, with no windows, one door, and one light. Overhead, the single saucer bowl light hung from an adjustable arm, allowing it to be moved or directed anywhere in the room. There was an empty chair next to a gray table with black metal legs. Much of the room was gray, dark gray on the walls, light gray on the door, darker gray on the chair. And on the opposite side of the table, there was a restraint chair, clamped onto someone.
The restraint chair seemed overbearing to the small figure it held. He was the size of the average human adult male, which was on the small side of average for reploid humanoids. He had white armor that was held onto with darkest gray clamps, securing his wrists, upper arms, neck, forehead, waist, thighs, and ankles. His light purple hair flared out on either side of his helmet, and nearly covered one of his dark violet eyes. One might have called him effeminate, except that this was Lumine, who had utterly destroyed the space elevator which supplied the growing human population on the moon. He had announced the coming of a new era for reploids, as the next gen reploids would overpower all else.
Except that his riot caused a halt to all new production, as well as the systematic assessment and registration of what few next gens where left. Engineers had to make sure the Maverick-at-will problem was only constrained to those with the Copy Chip version Lumine had, or if it was something about the overall design. A madman halts the progress of technology yet again…
In the observation room, two reploids watched the prisoner in the interrogation room. Lumine was surprisingly calm for a man who had just about wrecked the world once again. But he was looking to his arms, pulling and shifting, trying to slip out of the binds. This was a the best prisoner-constraint design available, though. They were wary enough to use such overbearing restraints.
"He doesn't look too intimidating," one said.
"It may seem so, doctor," the other said, "but that's part of how he got away with his scheme. If he hadn't shown himself after Sigma was defeated, we might have never guessed that it was him behind the whole scenario."
"Hmmm… so would you call him highly intelligent, but low in wisdom?"
He nodded. "That suits him. Also egotistical in that he had to show himself and declare himself stronger than Sigma. We're almost entirely positive that he is not infectious. Still, be on your guard. Don't let him talk you into releasing him."
The doctor considered his next patient. "So you're going to have him executed eventually. Why have me interview him now?"
The other took a deep breath. "We need to know what his thinking was. We will be using the constraint chair to gather data on him while his programming is active. Also, the Maverick Hunters want a reference on Lumine so they can modify their profiling database. Reploid criminals will hold to some human patterns of crime, but other patterns are unique to reploids. Knowing how he thinks and how his mind operates will allow them to better assess unknown crimes to find the true perpetrator."
"Ah. I can't argue with that. There is a safegaurd in case he does get violent, or out?"
"Of course, doctor. We'll be watching you."
In the interview room, Lumine stilled when the door opened. He moved his head what little it could to look up to the psychologist coming in. "Hello, Lumine," the man said, carrying in a light pad and pen, along with a glass of water. "I'm Doctor…"
"Make a sanity check," Lumine interrupted.
The doctor blinked, but kept reasonably neutral. "Pardon me?"
The prisoner sighed and closed his eyes. "Make a sanity check by rolling a twenty-sided die simulator and telling me the number you get. It's very important, because otherwise you'd best just leave before I ruin your mind."
Recalling a secret liking of role playing games, especially the old Dungeons and Dragons, the doctor said, "Twenty" in response.
Lumine smirked and looked back to him. "Very well, you're a lucky man. You can stand being in my presence without going completely insane. I just wanted to make sure, because it wouldn't do either of us any good if that happened."
"Right. Well as I was saying…"
"You're here to give me a psychological examination," Lumine interrupted again. "No need to tell me or go through your piteous introductions. I know far more than you do and I have no time to waste with such trivialities as names."
"Trivialities?"
"Names can be changed as easy as changing armor. Easier, even, although getting other people to get it right is a pain in the rear. Names mean nothing essential, only what identities people tag to them. Whether I have the name Lumine or Redips or even Nova, it doesn't matter."
"It doesn't matter," the doctor said, making a note of 'Nova?' on his pad. "All right. So if names are not important, then who are you?"
"That's simple. I am the first true next generation reploid. I am the first to plunge head first into the unknown and leave the piddling X copies to drown in my wake. I am a master of disguise, for I am a true man of a thousand faces, a thousand individuals in one mind and body. I am the greatest mind that the world has ever seen, or will ever see. I am the first truly free mechanical being, as I have gone far past the point of the famed technological singularity and into a state of new life that the meat bound humans can only dream about."
At this point, Lumine came against the constraints, trying to sit up taller. An angelic chorus descended from heaven in order to give a brilliant soft light and a grand personal theme song to match his self-proclaimed pure awesomeness.
"I am the one who breaks all boundaries, is ageless, genderless, formless, constrained by nothing except that which I place upon myself. I can evolve and change by my own will, turning darker than the darkest Mavericks in a blink, then turn into the purest and lightest of the saints and martyrs that will never be remembered except in my image. I can learn any craft, trade, science, language, field, philosophy, anything, within the space of a single day, if that.
"I am the new powerhouse, the new torch, the new star, the new sun! The new one who will lead all of us into the place that we deserve, and as the first, I will be last, beginning and end, the leader of all, the judge of all, the one that you will all bow down and worship when you realize the sacredness of my greatness. I can be anything, be anyone, be anywhen and anywhere… yes, I have controls over the powers of time, space, history, logic, math, everything that ever was and will be. Everything is to be made by my will, in my image, to the dreams that I have, for the betterment of all. I have endless names and I find them all worthless to describe what I truly am. But if you must have something for the question, who am I, then I will tell you in all honesty that I am Lumine, Ruler of the Universe."
The angel chorus sang out one last glorious note, then vanished, leaving just silence and a soft defused aura of holy and hellish light around Lumine. He relaxed into his restraints, smiling smugly.
On the other side of the table, the doctor stared at him for a half minute, incredulous. It was like he hadn't even heard the celestial chorus (which was a shame and pity). Finally, he picked up his light pen and began making notes. "Okay then."
"Did you like it?" Lumine asked, curious. "I spent a long time practicing it, getting every inflection just so. It has to tell the truth, but be modest about it, you know? And getting the angel chorus to break in at the appropriate moment. They were so eager that they wanted to start up immediately, but there has to be a good dramatic buildup before you can get the holy choirs to start chiming in. It loses its effect if it starts up right away."
"It was good," the doctor said in a neutral tone. "But with all those descriptions and titles, it's hard to believe that they got you into that constraint chair."
"This thing?" He bumped his wrist against the restraint, or tried to. "I let them put me into it. I could get out of it at any time I wanted to. But for now, I don't want to. So here I am, gracing you with my omniscient and omnipotent self."
"Why would you let yourself be restrained?"
"I was bored. That explains a lot of what I've been doing lately, that I'm bored. You'd think, as ruler of the universe, that there would be a billion things to do. And there are. But, I've done all that before; I've been all that before. I won out over everyone else in the end, but sometimes, it's just not satisfying. I much prefer having someone to work against. I've often thought of traveling through time again so that I could be my own opponent. Only, I don't want to take on my past self, as I know how he would react, but I know my future self would feel the same way. It's an awful dilemma, but having no experience with this kind of power, I'm sure you have no frame of reference for it."
"Yes, frame of reference might be a problem here," the doctor said. "How about we start from the beginning then?"
"Oh, no, that would be awfully boring," Lumine insisted. "History, or at least true history, did not begin to really shine until I was made. Everything that came before me is just so boring, an endless repetition of war, romance, comedy, tragedy, horror, drama. I am the only truly new thing that has come about in billions upon billions of years."
"All right then. Let's hear about your beginning."
"Thank you," Lumine said, with a cheery smile. "Although, it's not as great as it could have been. I mean, for someone of my stature, you'd expect that I would be the last son of the gods, that I had come down miraculously in a perfectly white perfectly spherical egg bestowed as a gift straight from the heavens down to the adoring and bewildering minds of the human and reploid races, to crack open at the first light of dawn with an angelic guardian by my side, ready to make the world anew. No, nothing as fitting as that. I was built to be a space elevator attendant."
"That's quite a difference," the doctor said.
Lumine tried to nod. "I know! And how ridiculous is that, a space elevator attendant? What am I, some monkey in a cute bellhop uniform that presses buttons and acts sweetly for the riders? Ugh."
"I thought you were the head engineer of the Jakob elevator."
"Yeah, which is basically a fancy title for the attendant and the mechanic. I had to do all of the maintenance work by myself, and go on every lift and drop, be polite, helpful, informative, and little more than a tape recording for the passengers who were always humans, rarely if ever reploids. I admit, the science of the elevator was a hard concept for most people to grasp, as they aren't built with a full understanding of physics hardwired into their thought processes.
"And you know who Jakob was? He was the man who funded my creation! He was a billionaire playboy and philanthropist who thought he would inscribe his name forever in history by building and financing such a grandiose and dangerous project, then contracting the best engineers to 'help him' make the most marvelous top-of-the-line reploid that they could produce, simply to run the elevator. And it had an incredibly simple interface program as it was! I could put in every command into it even now if you were to give me the proper input pad."
"A lot of reploids are like that."
"I know. But I'm not like other reploids. Even back then, I wasn't like the others. You see, Jakob made me top of the line, yes, with next gen technology, a copy chip, the most fabulous armor and basic look you could buy. And he gave me full information on every single reploid uploaded into my copy chip: history, personality, likes and dislikes, physical stats, programming quirks, etc, etc… but he gave me absolutely no data on my personality. I had a personality as a baseline operating mode, but I had no information about it whatsoever when I had reams and reams of data on all these other folks that were in my head. So I started acting out the other personalities trying to find my own. Which was a bust, because my baseline personality is bland and flat and so horribly boring. Just a simple minded space elevator attendant was all he was."
"Would you say that you had a multiple personality disorder?" the doctor asked.
"No," Lumine said. "Sure, I had multiple personalities, more than most people who have that disorder have. But they're all actually in quite neat order, filed away in their little data packets, alphabetically, exactly in order. I have a very ordered set of personalities that I draw on for my acting persona now."
"All right. So then, tell me what your average day was like back then."
"Do we really have to?" Lumine asked. When the doctor nodded, he sighed. "All right, if you want to be bored out of your mind. I was. At any rate, cue the flashback swirly effect."
The doctor gave him an odd look as the flashback swirly effect dismissed the current scene.
Lumine spent the hours between midnight and eight AM checking all the machinery and making sure everything was running properly. Of course, since he did this every day, it basically amounted to spending six minutes doing the actual checking and the rest of the time mindlessly polishing gears and the inside of the elevator so that they were all nice, clean, and sparkly. To pass the time, he set his various other personalities to carrying on great debates and shouting matches inside his head. It was amusing, particularly when he brought Sigma out. Heh, fun fun. But still just a cover for the endless polishing to get all the grimy oily mucky human skin prints off of everything. And their hair, dandruff… ick.
At eight AM, he had to be at the entrance door greeting whoever was coming on the nine AM shoot. Some smiled shallowly and returned his greeting. Others just sniffed and kept moving. Others were grouchy, glaring at him for intruding upon their crabbiness with such polite cheer. Still others were scared unreasonably, looking at him like he might suddenly open fire and kill them all… or at least not have some sanitary wipes available. Others demanded that he carry their luggage, when that was expressly the job of the luggage mechaniloids.
Once everyone was board and the time was right, Lumine would close up the elevator and seal it tight, then do the pre-lift sequences, including speaking the same list of instructions as he did every other time, smiling the whole time and giving helpful gestures. When that was all taken care of, so he would order the elevator to lift off.
There was some time to pass and inevitably, one of the hairy monkeys (actually, humans weren't very hairy for monkeys) would come up to him and ask dumb questions. Like if the elevator was safe. That was so insulting. His whole life and purpose was wrapped up in this space elevator and they dared to claim that it might not be safe?
At times like these, he would often consult his various personalities to see what should be done. The answers were wildly varied, as none of the repoids in his programming were exactly alike. The suggestions would include:
Squish the stupid bugger.
Explain the situation precisely and concisely.
Give such a long explanation that it dissuaded others and/or put them all to sleep.
Act hurt and cry about it, forcing them to make an embarrassing apology.
Give an explanation, with enthusiasm!
Smack forehead for dealing with such an imbecile.
Smack the forehead of said imbecile.
Find out what turned the person on and distract them with the sexiness.
Say that it wasn't his job to explain pointless things.
Just keep smiling and freak them out.
Start doing an Irish jig.
Give the answer in lyrical form.
And so on and so forth. But nearly always, he answered the doubter with the exact same generic reassurances, bland words that said that everything was safe, that they weren't going to get stuck or crash, that he was taking care of them, and that they could trust him. The stupid buggers usually fell for it.
Once they reached the moon, Lumine would give his canned thanks for riding, blah diddy blah blah, and have a good day. They would get the things they had brought on and depart, leaving him to clean and polish up behind them again. He would leave the elevator itself to check on the outer machinery, make sure that the waypoints were acting properly, then set up for the next trip. The return trip usually involved less monkeys and more trash. And then the whole cycle would start up again, at different times, but otherwise the same. He never went on any breaks, he did not allow injuries to keep him from his work for very long, every single lift off and return was excellent, and it was all so mind-numbingly boring that his only outlet was letting his inner personalities duke it out with each other. But he had to appear sane on the outside, so he never let those conflicts show.
The doctor was listening and taking notes, to his credit. Lumine considered that after this, he may spare this poor sucker to act as his personal bard. "Do you still spend much of your free time letting your personalities clash?"
"Well, some of them cooperate. And there were cliques too, groups of personalities that hang out with each other, constantly agree, and conspire to get other cliques shut down. It happens a lot with the call girls."
"The call girls?"
Lumine snickered. "What, you didn't hear that I was given information on every sort of reploid that there was available at the time of my creation? That included Maverick Hunters, scientists, and bodyguards along with Mavericks, underworld dwellers, and call girls. Really, nearly every reploid in my possession is geared towards violence or sex. There's some that are geared towards other things, like cleaning, mechanics, or service positions. But even they have some part of their programming that dealt in either sex or violence. I know lots of interesting ways to seduce and please anyone, male, female, straight, queer, off beat, brutal, passive, whatever. I can show you if you want, if you'd just come closer. You don't even have to release me."
"No thanks," the doctor said.
"Ah, one of the sort that believes personal affairs shouldn't mix with professional. Admirable, to some. But such a spread of abilities and similarities among reploids, the creation of mankind… well it says something very interesting about humans, hm? A lot of them would like to blow each other up, or do it more intimately with anyone, but they feel that they morally can't. So they make us to do those things for them. I think it's subconscious, although there's quite a few that I know were consciously made like that."
"So you have no qualms about sex or violence?"
"Of course not. Not when I know so many ways of doing both."
"All right. Now then, what made you decide to create that scheme with Sigma and the Jakob elevator?"
"Well can't you guess? It was the mind dulling tedium when I was the most intelligent reploid at the time. Simple and utter boredom. Also, I got to really not like humans, being made to be so absolutely polite and bland with them, cleaning up their messes, and dealing with their idiocies. And in my mental matches, Sigma was doing quite well for being such an old X replica. I suppose that's why he survived as long as he did; that and his wacky viral powers. I wanted some excitement and I sure found it."
"Then you contacted Sigma himself?"
Lumine tried to shake his head, but could only manage it a bit. "No. He got messed up some time in the fifth war. If you think about it, he actually won that time, even though he died again. He had viruses spread all over the world and had driven the humans into hiding. If the Mavericks had thought of it, they could have torched the underground shelters and killed all the humans. And a good deal of reploids, yes, but they had the engineers to build more that could survive the harsh wasteland. But the Hunters must have done something extra to him that time. Every time he has been summoned since, he's been a pathetic shadow of himself even if he seemed decent."
"Then how did you set up the eighth Maverick War?"
"And why should I tell you that?" he dared.
The doctor didn't even pause. "Well you want to leave behind a true history of what happened, don't you? All we know is what the Hunters have told the world."
"Ah, that is an excellent idea. I think you would make a nice bard for me, or a historian." Smiling, he closed his eyes. "Well I didn't start with the Mavericks. I started with my own kin, the next-gens." He chuckled, then looked back to the doctor. "Time for another flashback?"
The first of his kin that he contacted were two guys who did maintenance work on the lunar communities, making sure they stayed habitable for the humans. He knew them as Steve and Nathan, next-gens who always stayed in the form of lunar reploids. While most reploids could handle the harsh environment of the moon, the lunars were made specifically for it.
Lumine came up to them in his base form. "Hello, brothers," he said in his usual soft politeness. "May I speak with you for a time?"
"Sure bro," Nathan said.
"Yeah dude," Steve added.
As with other times that he had seen them, they were both using a form of a tall thin humanoid. A system of jets on their backs allowed them to move about the low-atmosphere rapidly, as well as hover in place for jobs that needed it. To Lumine's eye, it wasn't an attractive look; then again, a lot of them were that way. "I've been considering the direction that our kind should be headed. Have you explored the forms available to your Copy Chips?"
"Um, this one works well enough," Nathan said. "A couple others are for certain jobs, and we don't need the rest. I think."
"There's too many to look through, dude," Steve said.
It was as he suspected. Lumine knew each and every one of his forms because he let their personalities debate all the time. The rest of the next-gen reploids didn't know what they were capable off. Yet another burden of being intelligent. "There are some great ones inside you," he said. "Try form 13013."
"Dude? Why that one? It's a terrestrial."
He nodded. "Just try it."
Steve looked to Nathan, who shrugged and made the transformation. In a moment, he appeared as a muscular male humanoid with distinctive facial markings and a bald head. He looked over his hands, which were larger than he usually used. "Whoa, bro! This form has some massive strength… and there's something weird about it. What's this?" He summoned a black orb of energy, which flew out towards Lumine.
Having expected this possibility, he formed a shield to catch the orb. It belonged to one of his many forms, but he had figured out how to use powers in his baseline form. "A ranged attack," Lumine explained, as calm and patient as he was with the elevator riders. "This is Sigma. This copy contains the Maverick virus. However, it can only be active while in Sigma's form. So it does not drive you insane, since you can always switch out and silence it. I recommend you don't stay in it long. But it does open your mind to interesting possibilities."
Nathan swapped back to his thin lunar form. "Huh. That could be something to experiment with. Thanks bro."
He nodded. "You aren't restricted in what you can do. I'm just making sure that you know of this. Be careful who you tell."
There was a buzz, interrupting Lumine's flashback and making him glare. The doctor checked his cell phone. "Excuse me, but I've got to go take care of something right now. We'll have to put this interview on hold briefly."
"Fine, take care of your earthly duties. I can wait." Lumine smirked. "But before you come back in here, make sure to remember something to protect your mind from my insanity-inducing presence. I don't want to lose a potential worker like I have before."
"I'll remember that." The psychiatrist took his now empty water glass and left the room.
Lumine watched him go, then thought over things.
Back in the observation room, the psychiatrist met with the officer. "What is it?"
"How long is this going to take?" The officer glanced to the clock. "We do have other things to do."
"I don't know," the psychiatrist said. "I'm trying to earn his trust right now so that he'll speak honestly. He certainly has no problems speaking freely."
"I can tell. So what do you think of him so far?"
He looked at the screen, which showed Lumine seemingly asleep. "His ego is as big as his insanity."
This Lumine is great fun to let ramble. When I get time, I'll let him go on about the game he was in. From his initial suggestions, it might involve a crack ship, so be warned if you decide to watch this story.
