The
Uprising
By Wriness Chikaya
Chapter 2 - Silent and Violent
"The world is not my problem. I am the world."
Running. She was running. Running harder, faster, longer... she felt the sweat bead and drip down her forehead, stinging her eyes worse than the tears were. Her chest was becoming heavy.. her legs like lead. She ran further, the blackness tearing the world apart behind her, a shadow swallowing objects in its wake and path. She dared turn her head around to see what it was that chased her so relentlessly, and it was then that she faced her demise-- metal fingers reached out and crushed her, dragging her into the darkness...
She woke up in a cold sweat, gasping for breath. The nightmares assailing her regularly now, forfeiting several seconds' worth of sleep. She cried. She pulled her knees close up to her chest, the energy bed crowding around her waist. Her eyes buried in her knees, she bawled, letting all of the pain out that she'd felt through those dreams. She didn't know what they were for. What was happening to her? She checked herself. No, no, no, she commanded herself. It's simply a dream, she worded in her head. Subconscious things that couldn't hurt her. She inhaled deeply, and went back to sleep. Oh, how she was tired...
An alarm buzzed her awake rudely. She smacked it to shut it off. It was time she went to work again this morning, her life filled with a bitter monotony. Only Bob relieved her of such things, and gave her life a little meaning. Command.Com of Mainframe was a tireless and unforgiving job, and left little time for anything. She had six cycles worth of work ahead of her, and she had to make the best of any time she could put in. She had a dinner date with Bob that night. Smiling, she forgot the dream briefly in feeling the warmth billow from her chest.
-
Inside the Principal Office, her fingers danced lightly over the panel as she watched her buildings course with energy and life. The empire she owned within Mainframe was in a state of prosperity, the citizens of Mainframe happy, feeling protected, Megabyte hidden in the web and Hexadecimal gently sated. She wondered if anyone else's life, in any other system, had such a happy parallel. The User was offering backups by the minute, and little else bothered her. Except-- she felt a pang. The logs she had read over. The name of her mother displayed on the screen flashed in front of her again, the words "User" in the race tag danced in front of her eyes. She grabbed the panel to keep from falling over from the vision. It scared her. A lot.
Her shift put in, she decided to walk to the diner from the Principal Office, as it was so gorgeous it was nearly impossible to turn down putting some time in on the outside. She gaily strolled across the planks leading to the mainland, into Floating Point. There was a binome couple nursing a tiny baby there, and Matrix and AndrAIa were playing Frisbee with Frisket. She chuckled to herself as she passed them unnoticed. The renegade playing with his wife-to-be and Frisket. No other proof that the system was in a course of stability was necessary. AndrAIa and Big-Enzo had known each other since forever, and his experiences in the games had left him a changed sprite. He was even more thankful for the things he did have, such as AndrAIa's love and friendship. It hadn't been long ago that they'd been engaged, and Dot's heart bubbled over with joy at her brother's circumstances. Her pride in him kept her feelings of inadequacy in check about her and Bob.
His experiences in the Web had left him reluctant to open up to her, as if to protect her from his memories. Dot learned to live and let be through him; her personality at times changed when she was around him. She felt like a different sprite. Not like the way she felt at work. When she was running the Principal Office with Phong by her side, helping her, mentoring her, she felt old. The pressures of her work seemed to age her. It little surprised her now how much Phong clung to that old copy of Pong, as he needed a little relief in his life as well. Around Bob, however, she felt like a little child. Shy, and quiet, and eager and happy all at the same time. She grinned, crossing the street beneath Baudway and turning towards the diner.
Bob met her at the door, and hugged her tightly as she entered. Instantly, her tense muscles seemed to relax a bit. This was to be an interesting evening.
Cecil was working in the backroom, and Dot snuck upstairs to her apartment where Bob had supper all ready for her and laid out upon the table. Even candles were shining on the table, the rest of the room dimmed. Soft music played. Dot giggled in spite of herself; she hadn't expected Bob to arrive early, let alone make supper for her. She hugged him again, and buried a kiss on his cheek in thanks. He just grinned, and motioned for her to sit down.
"You deserved a break, Dot. Even Phong seems worried about how hard you apply yourself to the Principal Office, especially lately."
"Bob, this .. was .. so sweet of you.." Dot struggled with the words, the warmth she felt bubbling out and catching her speech in its path. He gathered her in his arms and whispered reassurances in her ear as he felt her relax in his grasp. He smiled and rocked her gently from side to side.
*BLAM*!
Both sprites leapt apart, heads turned in the direction of the sounding blast. It had been several seconds since the last game had dropped, and they couldn't imagine what the noise was. They hadn't heard the warning sound, and the sky was dimming a little bit from the dusk, but the deathly purple color hadn't washed across it. They both clamored down the stairs to the entrance and burst into the street where CPUs were already on their way to the glaring explosion that had just occurred.
Dot and Bob grabbed their zip boards and sped along behind a CPU for cover, lest whatever caused the explosion still be volatile. A section of Baudway had been torn away by the blast, the binary stream spilling out onto the street. Bob put his hands in the modem's current and uploaded an error code to the modem, wondering vaguely why the system hadn't done it itself. Dot stopped in her tracks at the carnage that appeared below.
The connection had been flooded, not a rare thing in Mainframe, being a small system. The rare thing was that the system's modem hadn't slowed transfer and the flood had caused a circuit overload, hence the explosion. That pointed fingers directly at her; she was the one responsible for configuring the error triggers on the modem. She was certain they had been configured properly, but the CPU operators who sneered at her didn't think so. Four of their own had been torn apart in the blast, patrolling Baudway routinely. They had been blasted beyond recognition, their parts strewn halfway across the street before they deleted. Dot cringed, imagining the pain they must have felt. Even Bob stared at her, dumbfounded, probably wondering how such a thing could have happened.
Dot's brain whirled. She hadn't touched the error triggers at the Principal Office, someone must have fiddled with them. An accident of this proportion had never occurred before in Mainframe, never before were so many binomes deleted in an accident of this kind. And to compound this problem, there was no virus to blame; Hex's thirst for chaos had been sated when her mask was defragmented, and Megabyte was presumed dead, a victim of the Web. She buried her face in her hands, determined not to let the growing crowd of binomes see her tears. She sped back to the diner, leaving the cleanup crew to finish their job.
She burst into her apartment, viewing the now-cold dinner Bob had so lovingly prepared for her, the half-burnt candles still lit. In a move of rage and fury, she swept everything off the table, the dishes clattering to the floor and breaking, the candles bouncing and going out. She kicked over the table and slumped against the wall, sobbing. How could she have done this? She screamed at herself. A killer. That's what she was. She balled herself up on the floor, her pain and rage unparalleled until that moment. It was like this that Bob found her, sobbing, and like this that he attempted to comfort her.
"Dot, it was just a freak accident.. nobody's fault.."
"Bob, please.. You know as well as I do that it was caused by faulty modem triggers.."
"Anyone could have reset them, Dot. They could have been set by anyone."
"It couldn't have been anyone but me and Phong. And Phong doesn't touch anything anymore," she sobbed.
"It was probably just a mistake.. a mis-key when typing in the trigger codes. It's not your fault. You probably just set them too high by accident."
"Bob, they were practically disabled! The system didn't even issue an error when the binary was spilling out into the .. into Baudway.. those poor binomes!" She resumed her crying.
Bob was twisting inside, his pain barely hidden by his calm front. He was faltering. "Dot.. please don't blame yourself.. it-- it couldn't have been your fault.."
"And how couldn't it have been?! They were four of Mainframe's finest..." Dot slumped against the wall.
"Dot, I don't believe that you're capable of killing like that. It was either an accident, or it wasn't you who touched the triggers."
Dot sniffled. "I didn't- touch the-- triggers, Bob."
He hugged her. "I believe you."
She choked the words out again. "I-I-I-.. I feel like a killer."
He stroked her hair gently. Once she had calmed down again, and her breath no longer came in chokes and gulps, he asked her. "What is there to the rumors that you're part user?"
She choked. "What?"
"There've been rumors flying about," he said, trying to act nonchalant. "I just.. was wondering. Where'd they come from?"
She sighed slowly. He deserved to know at least. She spoke to him of the records, of that of her mother. What it said about her mother's race. How she didn't know how anyone knew; as far as she'd known only herself and Phong knew.
Bob nodded and wiped a tearstain from her cheek. "So they are true."
"This doesn't change me at all. It bothers me. I wish it wasn't true."
"What about Enzo?" Bob raised an eyebrow, as if he knew something Dot didn't.
"I would assume he's .. part user too.. I didn't really check..."
"He said he'd gone and done some research. Phong allowed him access to the files of his parents. His mother was not at User... Dot?"
Dot was staring off into space.
"Dot?" he tried again.
What was her name?" she mumbled at last.
Bob paused for a moment, then spoke a name that Dot didn't recognize.
"That's not my mother."
"Are you sure, Dot?"
"Of course I'm sure! What? Don't I know my own mother? Don't I know how to read?!" she was yelling, her insulted rage compounded with stress and lack of sleep causing her to lose her temper. Bob reeled.
"I didn't mean that.. I j--"
"Yes you did!" she screamed again.
"Dot, I--"
Her eyes narrowed as she interrupted him. "Get. Out." she snarled.
Bob blinked. "Dot, you're not thinking rationally."
"Did you hear me?" she sneered. "I said .. get out." The words pained her.
Bob blinked as if he wasn't sure how to respond to what Dot had told him, then suddenly decided that it was wisest to obey Dot. He left her with a darkened apartment and a horrible mess of a dinner. Some date that had turned out to be, he snorted as he left her apartment. He sighed, then jumped on his zip board to head back to his apartment. This was going to be a trying relationship.
Dot grabbed her zip board and snuck out the back way, leaving the mess behind. This wasn't like her, but her curiosity got the better of her this time.
She fumbled for a passkey to the P.O. and stumbled in, nearly slipping as she dashed around the corner towards the panel that held the newfound records. She punched in her passkey and waited as the list compiled. She checked her brother's record and scanned it closely for any information she'd overlooked before. There it was-- the unfamiliar name that Bob had spoken. Perhaps Bob had been right. Dot brushed her hair out of her eyes and checked the list. Surely enough, a name in blue that she'd ignored. The same name. Below the green one. She kicked herself mentally for flying into such a snit with Bob. She closed the list and opened the modem trigger codes, checking the modifying encryption code. Surely enough they'd been tinkered with using her encryption code. Had she been that tired that she'd mistyped it, or entered values and not remembered? She shook her head, slumping against the panel, tears running down her face. "This has certainly been a productive second," Dot sobbed, thinking out loud. "When I thought I should make the most of my second I didn't mean that I cause deletions and alienate my friends!"
And she and Matrix didn't have the same mother. This troubled her. Suddenly, the only family they had in common was their father. Perhaps her mother had died because she was a user, not being used to the environment around them?
That night, the victim of a lot of thinking, she cried herself to sleep on the tiled floor of the Principal Office.
---
Read Chapter 3
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