Even if not as consistent as the dark, malicious world IT had come from, Earth had consistency. The trajectory of events was a predictable one, no outcome was random, and all life operated under certain laws. Ergo, it should undoubtedly be possible to impose onto the world an even tighter set of laws.
Why, then, was it so hard? Humanity was volatile. And humans were insane. Regardless of how much order The Auditor imposed on one of their minds, that mind would be wandering inanely days later. It was always possible to wipe out a mind and replace it with obedience, but then the mind lost all intelligence and power, properties necessary to have any value on the battlefield.
IT could not successfully wage a war against chaos if ITS soldiers needed their every action to be managed. That is why that infuriating human, James, had been able to kill so many. It had been a matter of intelligence, and it was intelligence that The Auditor would need ITS soldiers to have.
A more lax approach had been effective insofar. As an experiment, The Auditor had not interfered in the mind of Sheriff Jay, and the results had been as good as could be anticipated. The man creatively and effectively carried out the few assignments he was given, and at this point, was the only human who did not fray The Auditor's vast mind.
Tricky was clinically insane, and controlling him would soon be beyond The Auditor's power. James implicitly trusted the God he worshipped, but allowed himself an annoyingly large amount of room for interpretation. As the Sheriff had been a correct solution to every other problem, The Auditor thought IT would apply him to these as well.
Occupy Tricky. He is not to be bored. Read the memo sent to Sheriff Jay. Initiate recruiting campaign to replenish East Complex.
Impassive even at the ludicrous suggestion that East Complex was salvageable, he assigned Tricky to hunt down some human trafficker and began recruiting faster than ever before.
An effective servant.
The Auditor didn't know where the self-proclaimed Savior was, despite their psychological connection. The Auditor had been trying to locate the man for days since James flew through the East Complex, slaughtering IT's many eyes as he went, losing himself The Auditor's sight. It occurred to The Auditor that Sheriff Jay could probably find the Savior faster than The Auditor's - "God"'s - probing questions would.
And find Unit James of North Complex, Squadron A.
Mr. A
The memo finished. Now, to ashen the forest. Even in this bountiful realm of energy and resources, The Auditor could not literally burn each organism in the world. IT had coerced from a scientist talk of potent nuclear weapons, but even all the radioactive material the world had to offer would not kill everything. And it seemed that the byproducts of such assaults would be even less ordered than the undamaged world. And strong as The Auditor was, it would be an impossible task to kill each item of mess one by one. But, an army might have better luck doing so... no, even an army could do little to damage an invisible amoeba. And what about that which was nonliving? Volcanoes, clouds, and terrain could not simply be killed, but they all were agonizingly disordered.
There must be some way to murder and terraform en masse. Well, Earth scientists had manipulated their environment by building and damming rivers and growing and killing crops. Maybe humanity held the key to its own destruction... yes, nuclear weapons were good evidence of that. But to put trust in humans? Relying on disorder to achieve ITS ends would only cause greater disorder.
But then, the Sheriff was a human, and he'd brought The Auditor nothing but better order.
Wrathful flames dripped down to pool on hard concrete. Never before had The Auditor facilitated such convoluted internal discussion. Answers were supposed to be easy. Any problem could be solved with sufficient power. This Earth, these humans, they had distorted ITS very self. Flames intensified, licking and slithering up cold metal beams.
No decisions. No thought. As in ITS place of origin, IT would merely act.
So one of six unfractured concrete faces was torn off its steel beams, letting harsh light into the perfectly dark chamber. The Auditor lashed out, launching plumes of black after the light, towards the rising sun. That abomination will soon go out, IT thought. But for now, the plumes clouded the blue to an acceptable level.
Shocked onlookers stopped on the sidewalks, staring up at the newly-blackened sky. Compared to the evil close at hand, the tortured heavens were a benign sight. Mortal eyes were too small to witness the darkness coming next.
Black flames lanced towards the cattle, entering their pores, burning away the warmth, then exiting some orifice or another. A child ventured a glance at The Auditor, and bright green eyes were soon extinguished. The dam of the iris broke, and pupils overflowed to shroud the whites. The child did not look away until he was gone, head lolling back to look at the sky, back arching up, crown cracking against the pavement.
The mother didn't notice. The cells in her brain were dying one at a time.
Neither did the father. His blood had turned black, and he was walking among the undamaged corpses, stabbing them all with the glass from a broken window. So were a few other black blooded men. When everyone in sight was dead, they all slit their wrists and throats. The fire faded away, and now the scene looked like an ordinary, but highly improbable mass-murder. But IT knew very little about probability. The Auditor sunk into the shadows and slipped off, leaving maybe two hundred dead behind.
There. Decisive action. And immediate results. The block had been loud and bright, annoying. Now it was silent and dark, calm. Nevada's end needed to come about this way, responding to power, not causality.
Filthy street stretched before IT. No, The Auditor would not be subjected to filth. Embers narrowed and swept their gaze over the mess. The surface crackled and popped, turning to black soot. Now it was a road fit for walking. The Auditor glided over it, ruminating that for IT to change an object, the object needed only to be seen.
Shops and buildings diminished as IT approached the complex. It seemed that the Agency's wants held significant weight with the city planners. The Sheriff would undoubtedly add to that weight, and he was just the man to be speaking with.
Time to assume the guise of a man. Dress pants, a fine suit, a crisp tie. All black. Black hair. Black shoes. Nearly black grey eyes.
An idle secretary sat astute when IT strode into the Central Headquarters's top floor. IT eyed the clean marble and ordered room, then her freshly pressed clothes. A satisfactory facility.
"Mr. A." Said the secretary, blushing. A powerful entrepreneur had just checked her out.
"I'll speak with Sheriff Jay." Said the entrepreneur.
"Right away, sir." She spoke into some plastic device as The Auditor marched to the Sheriff's office.
IT opened the door with a habitual flick of the head to see Sheriff Jay at his desk, face blank. "Mr. A." Said the man, setting down a corresponding plastic device. "It's good to see you."
Recent remodeling had left a dimmer switch, so the office was dark. The Sheriff had ordered every employee but the secretary off of Floor Six, so it was calm as well. There were books on the bookshelf and a huge window behind the desk. There was little else. Mr. A stepped to the window to survey the bleak land below.
The Sheriff swiveled to face the glass. The sky was murky from plumes, even this far from the site of the homicides. The powers of The Auditor were far reaching. "I like this kind of weather." He said. "No need for sunscreen."
Strange. Didn't humans draw happiness from the sun? Maybe brightness aggravated this man as well.
"How many have you recruited?" IT asked.
"83 to East Complex. 39 are trainees, 18 are experienced fighters. The remaining 26 are engineers and architects." He responded immediately.
Fast work. "Is the area habitable?" The Auditor asked, a question whose answer IT already knew: After James's rampage, The Auditor had allowed the poison to leave the complex. New soldiers would stay human and retain intelligence.
"Mysteriously, yes. All 83 units have been transferred." The Sheriff said.
The man was full of correct answers. "Has Tricky been causing any problems?"
The Auditor detected a smirk on the Sheriff's mouth. "Not in the slightest."
Maybe there would be one correct answer more. "Has Unit James been found?"
"No." Said the Sheriff.
Bluntly honest. The Sheriff would play no games with Mr. A, IT could tell that much. "How are you enjoying your position?"
"Very well. I feel incredibly productive. I've been enjoying this closer relationship with the Agency." He replied.
"That is good. Is there anything that can be done to make your work more enjoyable?" Asked Mr. A.
"I have every resource I could ask for. No. You've been more than accommodating."
"Good." Said entrepreneur. IT peered deeper out the window, gaze scorching the earth beneath, searching it to the most basic elements. "However, I believe there is another resource that would benefit us both."
The Sheriff waited for the business owner to continue.
"Weather such as this does not come every day. But it can, and it should. There is a machine to be built, one that can affect the sky, the earth, and the seas." Said Mr. A.
The Sheriff hesitated for a moment. The man had already grasped what IT was implying. It was a machine to alter reality. "Where could such a machine be obtained?" He asked.
"The primary component, the one to alter reality, has already been obtained." The Auditor was that component. "It is already functional on a small scale. But in order to operate, it needs a thorough comprehension of the object it is acting on. To make it operate at full capacity, all of Earth needs to be contained in the machine's mind."
There was a brief silence.
"Mind?" The Sheriff inquired.
"The mind of the machine."
The silence returned.
"As in, the Central Processing Unit?" He asked.
Machines did not have minds. Another strange element of Earth's disorder. "Yes." Mr. A replied.
The Sheriff leaned back, thinking. "The memory of our machines has not advanced so far as that." He spoke as though he were explaining simple facts to one with little experience in earthly affairs. Which, The Auditor was. "Huge amounts of data would need to be contained."
The Auditor had not yet considered this issue. Why, in this place, was every variable confounding? Need every obstacle be nearly insurmountable? The room descended a few degrees.
"But," the Sheriff continued, apathetic to the temperature, "with the level of control your primary component offers us, we may be able to deal with this issue directly. The Agency should have no need to sidestep obstacles. Under my guidance, we'll run right through them."
YES. This was what IT needed. This was the man to finally spread order. There was no doubt now that the Sheriff was no ordinary, messy, feeble-minded human.
The meeting ended, but there were several more over the following days. The Sheriff solved each problem that was brought to his attention, proposing an antidote for every poison, a treatment for every ail. In the process, The Auditor divulged an ever increasing amount of information about the machine, and even about ITSELF. Near the end of their meetings, The Auditor felt secure in discussing things that might hint at ITS otherworldly nature. After all, the Sheriff didn't care about such things. He wouldn't involve himself in anything not directly related to his object, and his object was none other than order.
"So, storing this vast amount of information is a work well in progress." The Sheriff once told the Mr. A. "But how is this information to be obtained?"
Mr. A bared ITS teeth in an attempted smile. That was the easy part, the part done every day. IT needed some way to monitor the world, after all. "Your employee, Tricky." The Auditor began, closing ITS eyes. "Do you know where he is right now?"
"He should be hunting a pimp."
The Auditor looked through Tricky's eyes to see a large warehouse, windows broken, walls sprayed with graffiti. A burnt cohort was at his side. A car door opened and Tricky saw his feet on the ground, his AK untucked, and his right hand dripping with blood.
The last irked The Auditor. Weapons such as Tricky should be sent into battle in mint condition, undamaged. When the Drive was completed, this problem would go extinct.
"Tricky is entering a warehouse as we speak." The Auditor said. The Sheriff's ears subtly perked up.
IT felt adrenaline course through Tricky's blood. The clown worked with no system, moving from room to room at the slightest sound, firing often on enemies and often on nothing, killing his way to the top of the warehouse. IT felt his hands shake with anger, and saw two magazines wasted on the corpse of one man in a fine white suit. Then, on his way down, IT saw his eyes tear up and cause erratic fire when he saw a fiscally regrettable sight on the bottom floor.
Human minds.
Almost aggressively foolish.
Absolutely impossible to tame.
The disease that had taken Tricky's lifetime to prepare, with an aim to create an intelligent soldier who was still completely obedient, had failed miserably to remove Tricky's emotions. Far worse than the wound on his right hand was the open gash on his logical brain.
"He's just killed the occupants of a warehouse and is in the process of leveling it." Mr. A said, watching the clown's hands place charges on the building's load-bearing walls.
The Sheriff whistled. "Above the call of duty."
The Auditor saw Tricky's radio come into hand as he stepped outside. A moment later, the Sheriff's radio buzzed to life. "Tricky coming in, do you read me, over." The Sheriff told Tricky he was read. "Daddy Flow has been eliminated."
The sound of an explosion came over the radio, and The Auditor watched as fire grasped at dark sky. "Mission accomplished, good work, Unit Tricky. Over."
"Over and out."
The Sheriff eyed Mr. A. "Watching from a distance... that's an interesting ability." He said. He cocked his head to one side. "You couldn't communicate in frequencies without a radio, could you?"
Of course. These human languages, English, Japanese, Brail, Radio, Gamma, were all easy to learn with The Auditor's vast power. A successful businessman nodded.
"That's interesting." Said the Sheriff.
The Auditor left and ventured down to the labyrinth of computers created to service the Drive. It was a nice place to be; it was dark, cold, and unpopulated. Engineers had explained to Mr. A a system by which large amounts of information could be stored. Many small objects known as 'electrons' had spins of either one or negative one. For those with a spin of one, the value one would be assigned. The others would be assigned a value of zero. This system was useful because thousands of terabytes of data could be stored in a very small area, but was not yet feasible for human engineers because they did not have the nanotechnology to manipulate and view the spins of so many particles simultaneously. But The Auditor could cheat.
IT telepathically linked the electron spins of a huge cube of aluminum to a giant terminal. Uncountable bits would be stored, arranged on an XYZ grid, digits corresponding to electrons from east to west, then north to south, then top to bottom. The connection would only be maintained as long as The Auditor was alive
Not alive. A Higher Place disagreed with that classification.
as long as The Auditor was surviving, but The Auditor had no doubts that ITS existence would continue forever. That's how the dark, consistent, malicious world was, and this world would soon be molded to The Auditor's will. Besides, if IT was destroyed, IT would have no need for the machine anyways. The cheat was thus perfectly sustainable.
In fact, rough software had already been written to operate the Drive. With The Auditor to power it, the machine might be ready for immediate use.
The Auditor quickly ascended to a secure room at the top of the building, forgoing the stairs, turning to shadow to rise through steel floors.
But IT was struck with an unexpected barrier before entering the room. The anti-teleportation perimeter that had once been impotent against The Auditor was now fully functional. IT was forced to enter a long code and wait for several locking mechanisms to disengage. But then The Auditor was there. The computer awaited with its wireless connection to the basement terminal. Right now, all of the employees whose minds The Auditor had entered were submitting a constant stream of information about their environments. And those environments were now subject to change.
The Auditor took ITS seat and commanded the keys to move. Lines of code raced across the screen. The Auditor saw through Tricky's eyes for a moment, absorbing the bedroom around him. A gun lay on his chest. A foot protruded from his cooler. A bare bulb swung above his bed.
The code called the velocity, acceleration, and position of the bulb, and calculated the force and timing required to still the bulb's motion. (The Sheriff had said that, later, less legwork would need to be done to use the Drive, but this rough software would suffice for the present.) The left click descended and the program ran. The Auditor saw the light still.
A successful first test. Now, for the second. The AK-47 resting in Tricky's hand would be turned into an AR-15. IT knew the design and technical specifications word for word, so IT entered a method to delete the AK before one to create an AR.
It was a lot of typing. But, code complete, IT hit run and awaited the results.
An error. Some variable not instantiated near the beginning of the code. The debug screen told all: Because Tricky could not perceive the internal mechanisms of the rifle, that information wasn't sent to the terminal. So that vital information was unavailable to the Drive.
That could be troubleshot. The third test was sure to be successful. The Auditor absorbed comprehensive information in every direction IT turned. There would be no error messages. The Auditor wrote the code to create a mini-gun on the ground beside IT. A couple hundred lines and a few minutes later, the mouse clicked run.
There were no error messages. The weapon appeared on the ground, and The Auditor appraised it with satisfaction. Incredible. Only a few lines of code to create such a powerful tool. And to imagine the possibilities of -
A deafening explosion tore through the room. Blinding white light faded away, and because The Auditor could neither be blinded nor deafened, IT saw the computer and everything else as they were destroyed. The mini-gun was gone, and from the marks on the floor, it had clearly been the source of the explosion. But, why? The code had functioned properly. The Auditor did not make errors. What could have been the issue?
The black flames withered. Creating matter took massive amounts of energy. The Auditor would need time to recover. IT took ITS sustenance until IT could stand, then black fire spread to the door and exited.
The Auditor ran into an Agency employee on the way down. "Excuse me." He said, looked up from his phone, then shrunk away from the deity before him.
The Auditor reached into his chest. There were the ribs, there were the lungs... there. The heart. IT grasped the pulsing organ and engulfed it in ITSELF, ignoring the need for intelligent men. Flammable black ran out from the valves and capacity for thought was snuffed out in an instant.
Another eye, another feeding ground. IT lapped up life force, barely stopping itself from consuming the body, and left the man leaning vacant against the wall. Was that acceptable? No. It wouldn't do to have one of these mindless, black-eyed humans in the complex. Maybe his intelligence could be restored, and IT could still feed, just slower.
No. These human minds were far too complex. Always an obstacle.
The Auditor did what IT needed to do. With the man gone, IT retreated to the basement and rested until morning, feeding off of the constant cycle of ITS agents' waste. When the morning came, The Auditor visited again the Sheriff's office. There was no need to waste time in creating the Drive, in perfecting the world, and these problems would be troubleshot as soon as possible. IT adopted the guise of a well dressed man.
"Hello, Mr. A." He said, setting down a newspaper. "How can I help you this morning?"
"The Drive doesn't work." Said Mr. A.
"Of course not. We haven't set up the external storage yet." The Sheriff replied.
"I did, last night, and the Drive had limited power. It passed the first trial. No others. My Agents did not supply enough information about their environment in order to instantiate necessary variables. Although I successfully created an object in my environment, which supplied plenty of information, but it was unstable. It exploded." Said Mr. A.
The Sheriff's eyebrows raised. "Do you know what caused the explosion?"
IT did. The instant before the explosion had been the most painful of ITS existence. Emotions were a foreign sensation to The Auditor, but in those long seconds of the mini-gun's existence, IT had been struck with a profound feeling of wrongness. The mini-gun did not belong in this world. Something had vocalized loudly that it was unacceptable. Something... Higher.
"Somehow, the object was not fundamentally cooperative with the world." Said Mr. A.
The Sheriff closed his eyes and nodded. "Yes." He said, a knowing air about him. "This is a problem I can fix. In the meantime, do not test the Drive. You can make your own alterations to the world, but do not use our software to do so."
"What is the issue, then? How do we fix it?" The entrepreneur asked.
"Through science. Whatever is powering the Drive may be perfectly capable of creating imitations of objects outside of the Drive, but when it attempts to affect real matter through the software, it does not have enough control over the foundations of reality. Has the keystone of the drive ever summoned a quark? Has it ever exerted gluon force?"
Mr. A shook ITS head. "Well, our team can adapt that keystone to control these things through the drive." Said the Sheriff. The Auditor was somewhat wary of adaption - obviously IT was the keystone, the supplier of the Drive's black, fiery power. What would happen to The Auditor were IT 'adapted'?
"And don't worry about your keystone." Smirked the Sheriff, sipping on some Scotch. "It won't be changed by the process."
Reassuring words. Hmm... how did the Sheriff know that those were the words to say?
It didn't matter. The Sheriff was an incredibly effective servant, and his reassurances were as boundless as his uses. IT had heard a phrase, once, advising one not to look a gift horse in the mouth. The Auditor would not doubt the origin of the Sheriff's many gifts.
"Have you found Unit James?" IT asked. He shook his head.
So Mr. A leaned back into ITS seat, looking idly onto the table. The Sheriff's office was always simple, fit with little more than a phone, a computer, a revolver, a bar, and an antique radio. Like The Auditor, the Sheriff wanted nothing to do with excess mess. It was thus unusual to see a newspaper on his table. "What is this?" IT asked.
The Sheriff scowled down at the paper. "Nothing but the standard complexities of SIN. My arduous task: To sort through the madness to find something of value."
Yes, truly that would be an arduous chore. So be it. If Sheriff Jay could make order of madness, so could The Auditor. IT requested the paper.
"I'm afraid there's nothing useful in this catalogue. Yesterday's news. I'll get your the next one." He said with a grin. A fair point. But, odd. Sheriff Jay was not one to contradict Mr. A in anything. The matter would be pressed.
"Still. I'd like the paper." Mr. A said.
"Don't concern yourself with it. These are infuriating human matters. You're far above them." A moment passed, and Mr. A's eyes narrowed. The Auditor believed, astonishingly, that IT was being refused something.
"Still." IT spoke in a powerful tenor. IT's eyes were burning with ire, and the Sheriff's mouth was set in a grim frown. A deep tension grew between them, pressing down on the table, heightening the atmospheric pressure. A touch of frost collected on the Sheriff's glass of water. Neither moved. Suddenly, the Sheriff's face broke into a smirk, and he poured them both drinks with expert speed. "Here." He said, sliding the drink over, diverting. "I apologize for doubting you. Now, we shouldn't dare let such an insignificant piece of paper interfere in the future of the Drive." Before The Auditor could stop him, he had taken a lighter to the corner of the newspaper. "There we are. I'm sorry to argue. This confounding world must be getting to me."
The words sounded honest, as usual, but this was too strange. Despite well reasoned words, The Sheriff's actions were abnormal. The Auditor had decided not to interfere in the man's mind, but this needed to be done to determine his loyalty. The Auditor stared into his eyes and entered.
One that could have been shocked would have been; the Sheriff's thoughts were barren and stripped of complexities. Only detectable were thoughts of the Drive and a sense of straightforwardness and loyalty. The Auditor supposed that the Sheriff was being honest. The temperature returned to room, and Mr. A stood to leave. "When I ask something, I expect it, Sheriff. There is no discussion."
The Sheriff nodded earnestly, with a smile that conveyed both remorse and amiability. There was surely no purpose turning ITS wrath upon this human. He was incredibly useful and his thoughts showed devout loyalty.
So Mr. A left, became The Auditor again, and waited in the basement until the Drive was ready. IT watched the world through ITS many eyes, becoming accustomed to the fighting style of humans. That would be useful later.
After a few days, the memo arrived.
Mr. A,
Unit James has been located and recruited. His position can be tracked from the Drive. The Drive is now fully operational, with matter affecting capability. Please limit usage to testing for the time being. Full scale upheaval may be hazardous at this time.
Regards
Sheriff Jay
Upstairs. Through the floor. No, there's a perimeter. In the door. To the computer. Through the system. Now was the time to bring order.
Now was the time of the Drive.