Part III:

Devotions

It comes in stages.

It begins subtly.

The collapse of perfection into organized anarchy is a slow and inescapable process.

I can see it unfolding eight stories below me on the city streets just like a planned procession. I can see finality emblazoned by bars of light on sweeping architecture, a frame for the demise of a way of life and the people who cling to it.

I've se-

-Accessing memory file—

Warning: unauthorized data transf—

This is an automated response. Filtration in action.

I don't need it.

I've learned enough in the tiring passage of the cycles to see around my own limitations to the essences of what I seek. I don't need to open the unreachable file itself to get the core of it. I know what there is to be gleaned, that the unfinished thought is this:

I've seen this before.

I've seen this process.

Eventually, power turns to greed. To overextension. It breaks through its own safety nets. Armies are built. "Initiatives" are begun behind closed doors, and in the far off pile of refuse once called Arjia City. People start to disappear. Fear becomes the binding that holds a system together.

Fear, and the devotion of fanatics to their leader.

I see them down there, milling on the streets. I see them through the pane of a window, a single source of blue-green, filtered light in my dark quarters. Programs. Civilians. The fearful believers.

I see the Black Guard prodding and herding them away, clearing the streets of all but commuters, and pressing those onto mass transport crafts where they can. The streets must be kept clear. How else can the disused, the directionless, the strays, be sorted out with any level of efficiency?

That is the first sign. The rejects.

Clu built a perfect system for these programs, but it doesn't need them.

A perfect system simply does not require nearly the same attention as an imperfect one. It doesn't require builders. It doesn't require active monitors. It works on its own. It begs only minimal maintenance to thrive, doesn't need living programs to take care of it. It only requires…

Requires….

. . .

It requires someone to use it.

My system sends error messages and warnings across my eyes. It doesn't like the barely implied suggestion of users brought up by my analysis of the world outside my window.

But it doesn't matter. It's still true.

Clu designed a perfect system, and now all it needs is programs who will use it. It needs a purpose.

There.

Truth.

The end result of this truth, however, is that those once useful programs now wander the streets without use; discarding their discs or losing them in some unconscious, futile attempt to forget what meaning feels like, to escape from the nagging of a solid backup. They become the strays. Then they, like the broken, the glitching, and the subversive, are collected and eliminated. Discarded.

They disappear. Some go to the games . . . Yes.

Yes, I have most definitely seen this before.

Yes, I see it even now, unfolding outside my window. See it all. The separation. The collection. The beginnings.

I can see the way the programs below acquiesce because they are becoming uncertain, because they are learning, slowly, that the games or disappearance in a recognizer's clutches are the only results of protest. Or, because they see their leader in the Black Guard's actions. Because they love him. Because they trust him. Just as I do. Just as I must. Just as I was made to.

I serve Clu.

Just like them.

This is always how it starts.

Author's note: Don't ever let me go on vacation again (or type while still ON vacation...) because, apparently, if I'm away too long, SOME CHARACTERS *cough* RINZLER*cough* get STUBBORN in my absence and then DON'T COME BACK TO ME WHEN I NEED THEM. ARGGGGGGG!

Anyway, I sincerily hope you guys still got something out of this, and I'll be attempting to bring you more action and intrigue in the next chapters . . . just as soon as I get Rinzler to cooperate.

End of line.