Lost In Reality - Glitch In The System
File 2: Malfunction
File Date: May 26-28, 22xx
"If it must end, it must end like this."
"If it must end, it must end like this."
"If it must end, it must end like this."
The words echoed through Sigma's mind with a painful resonance. Never had Sigma questioned whether or not he would have been left for dead on the cold, steel floor of the trial room. He only thought of the endless, mechanical sleep that lied ahead. In fact, when he first opened his eyes and witnessed the endlessly stormy skies of the cyber world, he questioned whether or not he was still in the dreamland of his own mind.
Sigma stood up slowly, taking in each detail of the vast landscape surrounding him. He stared down at the transparent floor, then back up at the rainless storm clouds that overtook each inch of the sky. His gaze returned straight forward after a few seconds, and a new half-confused half-angered look came upon his face. All of a sudden, Sigma began dashing across the glassy plane at full, unobstructed velocity. For the next 30 or so minutes, he ran.
"What do you do, when you have both everywhere and nowhere to go?"
The running did not leave Sigma winded or tired; only infuriated. Sigma did not give up, as was his nature. No matter the situation, Sigma would fight until he stood alone atop the bodies of his conquered enemies. However, this battle which he currently faced was not a battle against man or beast, but against himself. And what a painful battle it was.
Zero and the Conductor watched Sigma's actions intently via the monitors in the Conductor's Room. They followed Sigma's every move, watching closely as Sigma's bewilderment disappeared and turned into a predatory fury. With a final act of desperation, Sigma slammed his mighty fist into the glassy ground with every inch of vehemence within him. The floor did not break, but rather it cracked and disintegrated into small clusters of light blue pixels which floated up into the air, disappearing as they rose. When the final pixels ascended, the gap within the floor (which was hexagonal in shape) was at least twice Sigma's size.
Zero, upon seeing this, looked at the Conductor with mild alarm. The Conductor looked down at Zero (as he was about a foot taller than him) and Zero could see a mild smile poke through the long, orange collar. "Don't worry. It's nothing irreparable. And besides, it's not like he's going to escape." Zero's semi-alarmed look faded and was replaced by mild befuddlement. The Conductor's smile grew. "Infinity is not two-dimensional. He's not going anywhere."
"But, how could anyone create a program so big? A program that stretched on infinitely? Doesn't it end somewhere?"
"Does the edge of a circle ever end? Watch and see." Zero looked back at the monitor and watched as Sigma stood up from the tremendous punch. Sigma backed away from the gap and turned around. Again, he began moving. This time he only walked, but he constantly looked around, trying to spot, well, anything he could. A few hundred yards later he saw something that caught his eye in a very disturbing way.
In front of him, just a few feet away, was a hole in the ground. The hole was hexagonal in shape, and at least twice Sigma's size. Sigma stopped moving and gasped in shock. Sigma turned around quickly and stared back towards the spot where he'd started. He immediately ran as fast as he could towards the original opening he'd created. In a minute or so, he was there. What he saw was the same sight he'd been staring at just moments ago. Infuriated, he ran past the hole in the other direction, using each ounce of strength he had. Less than a minute later, he saw the exact sight he feared he'd see. A hexagonal hole, at least twice his size.
"Whoa..." Zero saw the hexagonal hole just as Sigma did, and felt a stroke of inspirational genius which he knew didn't belong to him. The Conductor actually chuckled a little.
"We found out that no matter how thick the walls of a prison would be, the prisoner would never lose hope. He would never stop believing that at some point he would be able to break through those walls. So, we solved the problem. It's the same prison, but you can never see what's holding you back. Ingenious, no?" Zero nodded in agreement. "Now watch. Please." Zero again glued his face to the screen.
Sigma began running yet again, passing hole after hole after miserable hole, each identical in shape and size. His head was thoughtless, his face stuck in a fierce grimace. His movements were robotic, each limb moving in perfectly timed succession, in the exact same way hundreds of times over. The movements were so identical in nature that it almost startled Zero when Sigma made a sudden leap into the air.
"What's he..." But as soon as the words escaped Zero's mouth, Zero saw Sigma's intentions. His body was aimed directly at the hexagonal opening several yards ahead of him. Zero watched as Sigma's body passed through the gap (impeccably, with room to spare), traveling downward only by the force of the faux gravity built within the program. Like a comet Sigma's body fell through the blue nothingness that surrounded him. Within seconds, the blue void became a sea of clouds, all a violently shifting grey. As the clouds rushed past Sigma, fading into the emptiness above, Sigma could make out something below him: a floor that looked like it was made of glass, and the exact same rage-inducing vision of a hexagon-shaped hole in the ground, at least twice his size.
Sigma landed harshly on the hard surface, and began cursing under his breath. The Conductor looked upon him with a mild amusement and astonishment. "Hm. I guess it was a good thing to add Infinite Depth to the program. I honestly never thought we would actually use it." Sigma stood fully upright, and stared up at the storm above him. "I will give him one thing. He does not give up easily."
"I could've told you that." Zero returned to his regular nonchalant self. "What now?"
"Well, in order to start the next process, the subject has to give up the will to escape. Generally this takes a few hours, days, weeks at most. But, in this case, we may have to speed up the process." A minor frustration crossed Zero's face.
"SO, what now?" For a second, the Conductor seemed annoyed by Zero's impatience. However, he shook it off and smiled instead.
"We play God."
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The pain was excruciating. X couldn't focus his mind on anything except the unbearable agony coursing through his body. The pain was caused by the sensory fibers, the "nerves", which Douglas had to expose in order to attach X's new left arm. They had to be exposed for several days as Douglas added on X's arm piece by piece. The arm could not be built separately then attached to X at once, for some reason Douglas didn't explain. X wasn't angry... well, at least, he couldn't keep his mind off the pain long enough to even focus on anger. The only other thought that crossed his mind was the hope that Sigma was being dealt the same writhing agony.
A human would probably describe the pain as salt and lemon juice being poured onto a fresh wound (an agonizing prospect, no doubt), just to give you some idea. An animal, if it could talk, would describe it as the feeling of death, replayed over and over again. For X, the pain was merely a test of his own psyche, not his physical endurance. All X could do was tell himself that he could not stop the pain by his own means, but could only wait until the pain ended itself. His body would hold out. He had to convince himself of that. He had to make sure that his mind didn't snap like a twig.
"Through pain we grow stronger. Through pain we grow stronger." X chanted the words to himself as he stared at the holes in the wall, which were left from his previous temporary losses of self-control. It was shocking but not really unexpected for Douglas (who occupied the room adjacent to X's) to see X's powerful fist piercing the wall with enough intensity to cause chunks of metal to fly across the room and embed themselves in everything on the far side of Douglas' quarters. Douglas was only thankful that it was only the wall that was damaged, not X or anyone else.
Though the agony was intense and almost mind-shattering, to some extent, it did not last long. 2 days after the pain started the sensory fibers were reconnected to a section of X's new arm, and the pain ended. X held no grudge towards Douglas but was only thankful that it was over. A day later X had what could be considered a working limb, although it was really just a titanium endoskeleton attached to some wires and pneumatics. It was functional, if not a little crude. The rest of the arm would be basically outer armor and external systems. It was no problem for Douglas.
"All right. Let's see what you can do." X and Douglas were at a small training area within the base. "Hit it!" Douglas pressed a switch behind X and several targets popped up. Without missing a beat X began blasting away at the targets (each of which had a picture of Sigma lovingly stuck to the face) one after one with perfect aim, almost making it look like the shots were homing in on the target. A minute and a half later, each of the 30 targets were peppered with countless bullet holes, and X was pleased.
"You do good work Douglas. This one feels even more responsive than my last arm."
"I try my best. I even threw in an upgrade or two, if ya don't mind." X, who was staring at his new arm, turned back to Douglas with an emotionlessstare. "Now don't get all excited there."
"I'm sorry I was just... thinking. So..." X held up his arm. "What do I need to know?" Douglas grabbed X's arm lightly and turned it over so the palm was facing down. "Do you feel this slight bump in your wrist?" X put his right hand over it.
"Yes. What is it?"
"Bend your left hand slightly backward and put pressure on that point." X bent his hand and watched as it became separated from his wrist, sliding backwards and revealing a hole where his wrist ended. Out of that hole popped a small, cylindrical object which X caught with his left hand as it slid back into place. X and Douglas smiled simultaneously.
"Again you receive my approval." X seemed quite content. Douglas grabbed the object from X's hand.
"Flash and incendiary grenades right at your fingertips." Douglas threw the grenade behind him and it exploded with a burst of fire, sending Sigma targets flying through the air. "And, I have one more thing to show you."
"There's more?"
"Yeah. Clap your hands."
"You can't be serious."
"I'm as serious as death itself. Now clap." X clapped his hands twice, and the lights in the room instantly turned off. X sneered at Douglas, who was now smiling even wider.
"Very funny."
"I'm sorry. I just had to do that."
"Right." X tilted his hand back and popped out a flash grenade. "Nice job on the grenade upgrade, though. I commend you." X tossed the grenade back towards the targets where it exploded, lighting up the room for a split-second with a great white illumination. As the room lit up, X and Douglas both noticed that the other had a smile on his face. X turned around and casually exited the room, obviously satisfied. Douglas exited via the opposite side of the room, which sent him walking through the target range. As he moved, he noticed a Sigma-faced target that was untouched by X's shots. He stared at it for a second, and then punched it with all his might.
"If it's not death, it's too good for you." He shook off his hand and walked through the small, silver door at the back of the range. As the dust finally settled, the furious passion of resentment could be seen in each smoking aperture left from X's barrage. The area was a war zone, calmed only after the storm had passed through.
"Rage is the purest of power. The strongest walls of the strongest empires could not hold back the power of fury that lies within us all."
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"CURSE THIS DAMNABLE PLACE!" Sigma roared as he clenched his fists together and released an orb of scarlet energy that was powerful enough to send a sea of red light shooting through every visible iota of space. The blast disintegrated every visible inch of walking surface Sigma could see. When it ended, he was left with a purely empty space, devoid of anything except the pixels that formed his own manifestation. He floated silently in air, fully grasping that what he was looking at was pure infinity. The clouds were gone, so nothing obstructed his view of... nothing.
Sigma could not tell if he was falling. There were no external clues; no wind, no background; to gauge the movement of his body. The sensations he felt were nothing, if not he felt what could be considered lightheadedness. The 'lightheadedness', as is were, seemed to calm him down to where he was almost in a semi-meditational state, his anger replaced by an empty mind, free of the bombardment of sights, sounds, and thoughts that constantly punctured his psyche.
Serenity, though, is almost always short-lived.
With a flash, Sigma snapped back from the fantasy of the subconscious to the reality of the conscious. The sickening thud of Sigma's body against the hexagonal ground of his borderless fortress was like water being poured on his sleeping mind. His eyes suddenly opened wider than ever before, taking in the flux of time and space around him. He realized that his prison was rebuilding. He saw as eachsegment of the transparent floorwas restored, pixel by pixel, forming the agonizing walkway that only proved how Sigma had made no gains on his 'escape'. Even the clouds had returned. The same dark, foreboding, 'no chance in hell' storm clouds. Everything around Sigma was screaming at him...
"You cannot escape."
Sigma punched his fist into the ground. Futility surrounded him like an ocean of fire. However, just as Sigma had fallen to the lowest depressions of his mind, like an angel from a forsaken land, the voice came. "Sigma." The voice seemed to come from everywhere around him. Sigma didn't recognize the voice, but realized that it was the closest thing to a god that he could expect to find in this world.
For a split-second, a thought entered his mind; a thought that wouldn't have even brushed his psyche when he first entered the program. Sigma knew that the body he was in was not his actual self, simply a carbon copy brought to life in some other form of a world. That meant that, while his actions were controlled by his own mind, the actions of the world around him were controlled by another force; a force obviously more powerful than him at this point in time.
Sigma continued to think about his senses, about his self-being. Couldn't this force (if there was one of such magnitude) control his actions, thoughts, or perspectives of time and space? Sigma realized then that he had no idea how long he had been in the program (although he referred to it in his mind as a prison) since he had woken up. Even if the Force (as he whimsically called it) had not altered his sense of real time, he could not gauge the length of his stay in the barrier-devoid prison. He just hadn't paid that much attention to it. Sigma was actually amazed at how nothing (quite literally) could distract him so much.
The more Sigma thought of the Force, the more it disturbed him. "If this thing has so much control over me, why doesn't it take control of me? It obviously wants me to do something, but it doesn't want to use its own power. But what-" Sigma's thoughts were cut off by the voice, which spoke again but with a louder and more authoritative tone.
"SIGMA!" This outburst caught Sigma's attention, causing him to look up towards the looming clouds. He knew the source of the voice was not directly up, but it is a normal reaction to focus upwards when seeking any source of greater power.
"Who is it? Who are you?" Sigma's voice did not raise much; he figured that whoever was trying to communicate with him had at least the amount of omnipotence needed to hear him at any level.
"My identity is of no significance to you."
"YOU... YOU ARE THE ONE WHO PUT ME HERE, DAMN IT! I HAVE NO REASON TO LISTEN TO YOU!" Sigma was now fully standing and pulsing with furious energy.
"SIGMA! Unless you wish to stay here until tempus terminus you have no choice in this matter!" Sigma was silent, but still in a state of rage. "Look around you Sigma! You know just as well as I that you are trapped! If you still do not seek help I will oblige but know that freedom will be forever beyond your grasp!" The energy flowing through Sigma was now causing red, static-like charges to shoot out of his body.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"
"I want to change you. Alter you. Bend you. Break you. I want to push your psyche to the limit of destruction the pull you back and do it over again. But most importantly, I want to make you succumb to the fact that if you want to get out of here you must give up this pointless attempt to escape! Only if you give up will you have a chance to make it out of here with an inch of your sanity left!" The voice silenced and waited. Sigma responded by firing wild shots of red energy into the air above him.
"Everybody cracks. The only variable is time."
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"X! X! Message! Message!" Alia ran down the narrow, steel hallways of the Central Tower, finally catching up to X, who was staring at the blue vista leading to Giga City from one of the tower's many circular outlooks. "X! A message just ca-AAH!" Alia fell rather ungracefully to the floor, and was lifted by a now-startled X.
"Jeez... are you okay?" Alia looked up, slightly dumbfounded, but shook it off and handed X a small disk.
"I'm fine. Uh... here's a message that just arrived for you." X took the disk and inserted it into a small terminal on the wall of the hallway. "Um... that's all! See ya around!" Alia turned around and walked off, tripping again but not falling. X shook his head and turned to the terminal which now displayed a holographic screen. X ticked a few keys until an 'Open file?' message showed. With another keystroke the screen doubled in size and now showed an interesting sight.
The screen now showed a laughing, 2-dimensional yellow happy face with crosses for eyes, which turned around to show an anonymous message, written in inconsistent typefaces, like a ransom note. It read '3 weeks: Infection or reaction.' As X read it, his face turned strangely somber. The yellow face turned around again, and this time the face showed a tilted frown, topped by the same crossed eyes. The sight had such a grisly overtone to it; it was like watching a prelude to devastation. "But, Sigma's trapped. He can't harm anyone from where he is. The Mavericks are virtually destroyed. There can't be any threat..." As his thought ended the face turned yet again, this time revealing the message 'Laugh while you can.' The face continued to turn, cycling between the two faces and two messages. X was visibly disturbed, and he continued to stare at the spinning face, until...
"Hey, X!" The statement was particularly bad-timed, and it startled X quite a bit, but X tried his hardest not to show it. He turned around slowly, putting on his best 'faux-calm' appearance, to greet the eagerly-smiling face of Axl. "What's that?" X quickly turned half-around and hit a few keys, causing the smiley face to disappear and the disk to eject into X's open palm.
"Just a message sent by some joker." Axl looked like he was expecting to hear more. "It's nothing important." Axl just stared silently and smiled again. He then pointed to X's arm.
"How's the new arm working out? It seemed like you had a bit of an accident there." X extended his previously damaged arm and moved it around, extending his fingers and balling them up again.
"It seems to work out."
"Excellent." Axl whipped out his right-sided gun and twirled it around his finger. "Can't imagine battling without someone like you to save me, you know?" X tossed the message disk up and down in his hand and walked to the outlook. When he was fully outside he tossed the disk into the air and fired off a single shot, hitting the disk perfectly and shattering it into infinitesimal slivers that shimmered as they slowly drifted to the ground. X turned around and faced Axl again.
"You know, one day you are actually going to encounter a battle that will seem insurmountable and I won't be anywhere near it." Axl put his gun away and faced X again.
"I know. But two shots are still better than one, right? While it lasts, I mean."
"Right." X and Axl both smiled and walked off in opposite directions.
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Zero stared at the monitor with an unshattering focus. The Conductor standing beside him talked into a small headset attached to his large goggles. Zero watched as every word the Conductor said was transformed into a deep, powerful command within the program. The Conductor's voice was not changed radically, but changed just enough so a person hearing both voices at different times would only feel a slight sensation of déjà vu.
Sigma's vociferousness did not diminish as the Conductor spoke. In fact, with each word the Conductor spoke, Sigma's anger only heightened and intensified. At one point, for unknown causes and to the surprise of Zero, the red aura of pulsating energy surrounding Sigma turned a brilliant topaz color, tinged with specks of pure white. Zero wondered if this actually was the manifestation of Sigma's purest, most deep-seated anger. Zero realized how lucky he was that he was only seeing this materialization from within a program.
The topaz pulses of energy were constantly expanding as the two 'spoke'. The exchanges between Sigma and the Conductor were sharp and emotionally perfunctory. No side seemed to fully grasp the other, and no side backed down. It was a tennis match without a score, and in seemed to go on endlessly. Sigma would never give in to the likes of his captor, (anyone unlucky enough to fight him knew this,) even if his captor held the key to his freedom and was willing to give it up. As far as Sigma was concerned, any keyholder was either a target for life or an ally 'til death, and to switch roles was a feat punishable only by destruction.
"YOU TAKE ME FOR A FOOL! DO YOU EXPECT ME TO CONCEDE SO SIMPLY? TO STEP INTO THE MOUSETRAP WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT? I HAVE THE POWER TO DESTROY THIS FORSAKEN PLACE AND I WILL NOT GIVE UP UNTIL I DO SO!" The pulses of energy were expanding out and dissipating, like 3-dimesional ripples of air. Each pulse carried a greater radius than the previous one, and it wasn't long before the sphere of rhythmically beating energy surrounding Sigma reached the clouds overhead.
"Then do it! Escape! Destroy the prison that surrounds you! If you can tear down these barricades then do so! I will not stand in your way! Just know that when you DO give up, I will not be here to respond to your pleas!" It was at this time that the Conductor silenced himself and watched to see Sigma's reaction. Zero was very intrigued by the whole series of events up until now, and wondered if Sigma's rage would ever cease. It seemed like a lost cause to Zero.
The event which occurred next was quite spectacular. Like before, Sigma released a surge of energy throughout the whole of the program. Also, like before, the energy destroyed everything (Sigma excluded) which could be considered physical matter. However, the difference between the two blasts came in the form of the result. When Sigma first opened his eyes after the flash of energy, instead of seeing a blank sea of nonexistence, he saw something else. Something... different.
What Sigma saw was unrecognizable and, at first, indescribable. It seemed, upon first glance, to be a sinew of dark energy or electricity, standing vertically and rotating around Sigma like a satellite. Again, Sigma was unable to gauge his own movements, and so was unable to tell whether it was him or the energy strand that was revolving. Each time it passed by him Sigma got a better glance of what it actually was, but he was still unable to determine what "it" actually was. Whatever it was, Sigma soon realized that he wasn't supposed to see it.
The Conductor tapped away at a set of keys in front of him. He seemed in a frantic rush, like he was late for something. Zero waited until his keystrokes decelerated before speaking. "What was that black, sinewy thing?" The conductor tapped a final, few keys and Sigma fell back down to solid ground, the strand of energy gone and the clouds again abundant.
"It..." The delay said it all to Zero. "It... was nothing. Just a glitch. A quick fix." The Conductor ticked a key or two before noticing that Zero was still looking at him. "The program is not perfect; I make no claims of that. However, it is getting better every second. Besides, as long as the hole is too small to crawl through, the wall doesn't need to be rebuilt, right? Knotholes and potholes, nothing more."
"Right." Zero stared at the ground, and then returned his gaze to the screen. For whatever reason, him, the Conductor, and Sigma were all absolutely silent for the next twenty minutes.
Getting good, huh? Again, I do not want to spoil any twists, surprises, or gasp-inducing incidents. However, be assured that something interesting WILL PROBABLY happen in the next chapter. Coming Soon - File 3: Lost And Found