Chapter 5: Machine God Complex

Ha! 'Weather boy'! That's a good one! This was Glitch's first thought as he remained staring down the machine. The machine in question seemed less than impressed, however; it's immutable expression only shifting with its ocular systems, which didn't break from Glitch despite the rest of the threats in the office when it turned the rest of its body to face them.

"Weather boy. That's good," the machine spoke, raising one of its hands as a ball of crackling energy formed in it, "Die." "Scramble!" Glitch shouted before flickering out of sight. The sudden blast, and the boom of thunder in such close quarters, would deafen lesser beings. The lightning hit the wall behind the teleporter as both Bunnie and the Egg Pawn accompanying them would manage to dodge the blast.

Before the smoke could even clear, Glitch was standing atop the Robian's chassis, feet both on the large head as he looked down, putting on a scottish-sounding accent as he says "You're bein' naughty." The machine's hands suddenly clasped around Glitch's ankles, and before he can even think about escaping, a current of electrical energy is sent coursing through the mouse, his entire body sparking and jolting at the sudden surge as the mouse's voice escaped him; "AAAGHAGHGAHHAGGHAHGHA-"

The sound was interrupted by the Robian using his grip to throw Glitch away, crashing into the wall nearby Bunnie, who covered her face from the wave of dust and shouted the mouse's name in concern before the dust cleared, revealing a cartoonishly-soot-covered mouse, the only thing not clearly burned up being his glasses, which gave it them a stark contrast. Even the joint he'd been smoking was bloomed into a useless piece of paper.

"Ow."

Glitch's voice exuded the pain he'd just experienced, but it also held a tinge of disdain. It was a dirty trick, and only he's allowed to pull off tricks like that. As Glitch flickered to his feet, the machine spoke up; "How did you get in here? This room is protected by top-tier encryption and a password impossible to guess." Glitch simply pointed at the miscolored Egg Pawn with his thumb, who chimed in with "I am on what I am told is a 'break'."

"A break!? I created you!"

Laughter is a funny thing; it can come at one in all kinds of ways, from a quiet and sensible chuckle all the way to a bust-a-gut guffaw, which is often seen as a measure of how humorous one actually finds the situation they're in, or the punchline they've been told. Only two things could hit Glitch with the howling start of laughter that he was suddenly stricken by; Contextual absurdity, and absolute irony. This, to Glitch, was the latter sprinkled with the former. Those are his favorite.

"HA hahahahaha! Nooooo! N-Nooohohohohahahahaa!" Glitch's words could only escape in short bursts between bouts of that laughing fit, "No you did naahahahahaha!" The Robian looks at Glitch, the tightening focus on him signaling a deep-seating rage was manifesting. Glitch wiped a tear out from under his glasses, flickering out of the way of a lightning blast from the robian's hand as he says "You just stole the blueprints! From the future! You didn't even realize they have teeny-tiny personality matrices in there, did you? I did," another lightning blast, another flicker, Glitch's sentence uninterrupted, "So I figured out how to make them unionize! Turns out? Treat 'em like they have worker's rights."

The Egg Pawn finally joined the fray by leveling its blaster on the distracted Robian. Opening fire, first round of the volley is caught in the Robian's hand, the rest shot out of their trajectory by additional bolts of lightning. When the Robian looks at the Pawn, however, Bunnie jumps in, using her feet boosters to fly in and give the Robian an outstretched robo-fist! The robian falls over to the opposite wall, tumbling a bit as Bunnie lands, and yanks on her robo-arm with her good arm, which seemed to snap a few of the pieces back into place as the whirring of the energy blaster's power core started to be heard.

Back on his feet, Glitch was about to follow up on Bunnie's attack when the Robian's eyes flickered, and the sudden sound of a loud alarm ringing through the entire facility would blare in their ears. The mouse looked up at the speaker, and asked "Did you… Only figure out you could trigger that now?" The Robian stands up, looking at the now broken security monitors, before its lenses flicker to look at the teleporter behind Bunnie, Glitch and the Pawn. Glitch blinks, and looks at the teleporter as well, his own info-feed showing the security systems in it being lowered.

"Uh oh."

Suddenly, in an electrical crackle, the back-half of the room was replaced with a massive span of Cyberspace, making the room much larger by comparison to before. Within that section of Cyberspace, Glitch could not only see a wave of SWAT Bots, but also the ominous floating geometry that manifested to represent security systems. "Noooo, not the hexagons!" Glitch shouted as he raised his hands towards that border between realities. Behind him, Bunnie's "on-field repairs" had re-enabled her arm-blaster, which she was now pointing at the Robian, the distraction creating a firefight behind the mouse who was focusing on re-enabling those security systems. Finally, the code he needed was secured, and he clapped his hands together, creating a see-through barrier on the border of realities by turning on a Firewall.

With that panic dealt with, Glitch turned around, seeing Bunnie and the Egg Pawn trying to get the upper hand on the Robian. Bunnie's robot fist swung at the Robian's face, but he caught the swing in his hand, and sent a current of energy through Bunnie, shocking her as harshly as Glitch had been just before. However, Glitch didn't intervene, as Bunnie's smirk showed she had been waiting for exactly that.

With her fist point-blank at Robian's face, her palm opens, revealing the barrel of her blaster, which was instantly charged thanks to the current coursing through her, which she was cleverly redirecting with the trick she saw Glitch use before. "Nighty night, Axle!" Bunnie shouts before he can release his grip, and the resulting blast sends the Robian into the busted security monitors, making that situation even worse. Glitch, seeing this, shouts "Dibs!" and flickers to the Robian's position mid-crash. Both of Glitch's feet were off the ground after that flicker, as they were raised into a firm double-dropkick, both feet planting into Axle's chest chassis and sending him into the wall of computer monitors with an additional, resounding CRASH, the Robian's eyes flickering at the increasing damage to his systems.

In the time it takes for Axle's systems to start diagnosing problems, Glitch is flickered back on his feet, bent at the waist to lean in towards Axle, and poking a finger on the Robian's forehead with the word "Boop~" escaping the mouse. The Robian's eyes were glaring up at the mouse before this action, as Glitch was using this moment of vulnerability in Axle's systems to send a shutdown command through. Axle was soon powered down, laying in the pile of destroyed screens harmlessly as Glitch stood upright.

"Gotcha~"

The aftermath of the battle still left a few things. A blocked-off exit, for one; The teleporter was replaced with a fracture of Cyberspace. Second, was the blaring alarms still filling their ears; whatever was happening outside of this room wasn't resolved. "Whew… We got 'im…" Bunnie huffed in exhaustion, "The sooner we're outta here, the better."

Glitch had an idea, though.

"Hang on," the mouse says as he crouches down to Axle's defeated chassis, "I'm gonna see what I can nab out of his memory banks." Glitch checked on Axle's systems; Minimal power was coursing through. He wasn't entirely "shut down", but he wasn't going to be booting back up anytime soon, Glitch figured. The mouse interfaces with the Robian's systems while he's in this "sleep mode", only for the mouse's brows to raise above his blue-lensed glasses.
"Ooooh. Oooooooh nooooooo…"

Bunnie was keeping an eye on Glitch when he said this, though she keeps her robo-arm trained on the Cyberspace pocket they were blocked by. "What's the matter, shug?" "I'm not copying this whole thing," Glitch's response to Bunnie's concern was blunt, as he stared into the visual feed in his glasses. Bunnie walked over, bending to look closer at Axle's downed chassis and Glitch hunched over it, asking "Why not? I thought robots were your thing, ace." 'Ace', Glitch thought, It's definitely better than 'lil fella'. A sigh escaped the mouse, and he raised a hand, projecting to Bunnie what he was seeing.

Rather than line after line of complex code like one might have expected from a normal machine, what he showed her was a complex tangle of lines of information weaving in and out of eachother, creating complex, pulsing clusters of information with a sorting method no machine could compute. Bunnie's eyes were wide with the awe of the sight, as she asked "What on Mobius…?"

"This is a digitized brain. Not a complex but typed-out algorithm, but a fully developed organic brain converted entirely into information," Glitch explained as his other hand held his smoke, which he soon brought up to take a puff from. Exhaling, he stared at the information, adding "Even Egghead's never found a way to reliably interface with this, and he made the Roboticizer." "What's that mean for us, shug?" Bunnie's question came out bluntly, and Glitch took a moment to think. "It means I'm not going to copy this whole thing… But it's a tangle of vines, and these vines must bear fruit," the mouse speaks up, before reaching into the pile of tangled information, finding an outward-hanging "fruit" cluster.

His fingers touched the cluster, and he tugged a few times, seeing that it wasn't going to simply come out. Figuring it would be a bit of a process to safely extract without waking up the subject, Glitch started carefully removing data, copying it, and attempting to paste it exactly as he found it

That was when a metal hand grabbed his arm.

Glitch shouted in panic, and Bunnie stood up quickly, her and the Egg Pawn pointing their blasters at Axle as his robotic body moved, its power cycling faster than Glitch may have anticipated. "Aah! Hey, woah! You should not be awake for this right now!" The mouse spoke with urgency as he tried to send another shutdown command through Axle's systems, the words "Go to sleep" repeating ad nauseum as he sends it. The Robian overrode the command, however, his metallic grip tightening as he spoke up, "You won't defeat me. You won't STOP me."

"Listen pal," Glitch said as he tried to move his arm away, "You're not on any kind of anesthesia, you keep shifting around while I'm working and you could get some serious brain damage!" Then Glitch heard what might be one of the lamest, edgiest lines he has ever heard unironically leave another human being's mouth, and it was coming out of a borg.

"There is far more at stake than just my mind."

Glitch didn't think he was a particularly serious person; it was hard to take someone as stoned as him particularly seriously, but he prides himself an exceptional judge of character. Besides that, while he had mentioned previously that avoiding the development of a God Complex would be difficult, what he was looking at felt beyond even that; like he was looking someone in the eyes who believed he knew better despite something so unironically stupid coming out of his mouth. How do you proceed through an alien world, fictional or otherwise, without your mind? But everything he had seen and heard about Axle up to this point had been leaving sour tastes in his mouth. Axle here may be a person like himself, or Lily, but there was a malice underneath that was reinforced by something else. Narcissism, perhaps, or some other form of maladjustment that made Axle believe whatever was happening, he was the center of it. Glitch didn't really seem to care; whatever Axle was doing wasn't just a danger to Knothole, it was a danger to him.

"Ohoho, word?" These words escaped Glitch with such a subtle maliciousness to the undertone that it escaped even Bunnie for the moment, so her shock when Glitch suddenly yanked that cluster of data out of Axle's head was all the more apparent. A burst of electrical energy accompanied the yanking motion, followed by the sounds of Axle's machine voice screaming out in a looping "AAAAAAAAAAA" until the menacing red ocular sensors, which had been darting throughout their casing, flickered into an error-reading blue.

"You now have brain damage."

Glitch pocketed the data he yanked from Axle as more electrical energy bursts from the systems in the office; the busted-up security monitors, the PA speakers that only now stopped blaring an alarm, the lights, even the teleportation pad was wigging out, only for all of these systems to suddenly power off completely. When they did, the Cyberspace pocket that was blocking the exit would vanish. The room was dark for a moment.

The first thing to happen was the engagement of the emergency lights, which flickered on using reserved power. This was the good news. The second thing to happen was the sound of gunfire and blaster fire to become audible from inside the room. They were still on that base at least, not some remote location, but that did mean something else was going on. This wasn't the worst news; the worst news was the appearance of a timer in Axle's eyes, alongside an error code that when Glitch read it, his eyes widened behind his glared lenses.

"We should leave."

"Why, shug?"

"Axle's got a reactor."

"A reactor?"

"A reactor that's about to blow."

"Yer right, we should leave."

The exchange was curt, and Bunnie followed through with the plan by pointing her robo-arm at a nearby wall, charging her cannon as she shouts "Make way!" The blast of the cannon was enough to blow a hole in the wall, leading to the outside of the facility. As Bunnie flew out, Glitch and the Pawn weren't far behind, hopping out of the hole as Glitch shouted "I'd say sorry but I'm not!"

On the way down, Glitch ascertained the source of the gunfire; It would seem a series of aircraft had dropped off a contingent of military forces from the Guardian Units of the Nation, who were currently apprehending the Badniks in the base while sectors of the base either shut down or exploded. Thankfully for Glitch, most of those detonations were taking place in the unfinished Death Egg, rendering it totally inoperable and impossible to complete. Hopefully.

"And by my calculations…" Glitch muttered after flickering to a landing, the Pawn landing beside him as the mouse looks up. There in the distance, he spotted Bunnie, and past her in the skies, the distinctly blue shade of a certain high-tech biplane.

"There's our ride!" Glitch pointed out the Tornado for the Pawn, and the two started making their way out of the boundaries of Axle's base. Thanks to the Badniks focusing on the GUN forces, the two were able to get to the rendezvous point that Glitch had set up earlier, securing their escape out of the burning base and out to the green hills where Bunnie and Tails were just meeting up mid-flight.

Running up to the incoming plane, Glitch would grab the Egg Pawn by the arm, shouting "No friend left behind!" and start spinning, gaining the momentum to toss the Pawn skywards enough that Bunnie was able to catch it mid-air! When Glitch made sure his robo friend was secured, he flickered up to the zooming plane, ending up on top of the wings where a certain hedgehog would often be found previously. Bunnie flew up to the plane, plopping the Pawn into the spare seat as Glitch shouted "GO GO GO GO GO GO!"

Tails hit the throttle, the plane zooming away from the scene with Bunnie flying alongside it while Glitch, hanging on to the wings of the Tornado, would look back at the base as it self-destructed. He was watching the room they came from, but… No explosion. Did Axle psyche them out? It was impossible to tell with the rest of the buildings going up in smoke if the Robian would even survive this, but it wasn't going to be the Freedom Fighters cleaning up the mess, as Glitch's attention soon moved from that room to the GUN forces assaulting the base.

Among the myriad humans in tactically-fit attire, Glitch spotted a lone Mobian. A silver-furred, tactical-vest sporting wolf – or maybe he's a coyote? – armed with an interesting-looking weapon that looked like a sub-machine gun of some form. The fact that Glitch didn't recognize him was enough to keep his attention on him, and the fact that the wolf looked back up at him signaled that the notice was mutual. Glitch's expression shifted from curiosity to that knowing smirk, the words escaping him just under the sounds of the Tornado's engines.

"You're not canon, either."

"What was that?" Tails shouted from the pilot seat, to which Glitch replied "Don't worry about it!" before he moved to recline on the wings of the plane, grunting and sighing as his body finally relaxed some. Doing this is way easier than it looks, no wonder Sonic does it all the time, Glitch thought as he laid there a moment, before Tails asked "What happened out there? Eggman shouldn't be building bases this close, it's against the treaty!" "He didn't," Glitch replied, "Axle did. He turned himself into a Robian, and up until now thought that it made him invincible or something." "What!? But… That was a Death Egg! Is he crazy!?"

Glitch exhaled a puff of smoke, having taken the hit while Tails processed the info and spoke up. The word "Patently," escaped this exhale before he sat up. "He didn't expect me, though!" The mouse added with a hint of pride, while Bunnie remarked "Well, who could?" A stoned chuckle escapes Glitch, before Tails asks "Did you get any kind of information out of the place? GUN isn't exactly going to let us get close after this."

"It'll need to be decrypted I think," Glitch says as he withdraws the cluster of data he pulled out of Axle's head, "but I've got… Something from his brain." "His what!?" Tails was clearly surprised by the development. The Egg Pawn spoke up, saying "A cluster of encrypted information was extracted from Unit Axle's root systems. This cluster was closely connected with his Neural Networking Systems, or his 'Brain', and was not safely extracted." "Ah… A-Another thing, what's with the Badnik?" Tails asked, finally.

"That's my friend," Glitch answered, though the word came out more like "fren". Tails simply nodded, and asked "So… You're saying you went into Axle's root systems and pulled information out?" "Yeah, I know, nobody's ever done it. Crazy, right?" Glitch laughs some, and lays back down on the wings of the plane, adding "I bet this cluster will provide some serious insights on Robian systems. Could be huge for Jules." Bunnie would chime in, and Glitch would tune out the conversation, opting to lay down on the plane's wings and relax the rest of the trip.

Then his software pinged the back of his mind. An intrusion notice. Someone was establishing a remote and, more importantly, secure connection to Glitch. Before he could respond with software-based violence, however, a window would appear in his lenses, which would read out to him exactly who it was, and what was being established.

NICOLE had sent him a message.

N: [I apologize for my intrusion. It has come to my attention that you, much like our friend Lily and our "mutual acquaintance" Axle, are similar in a sense. Though your actions appear chaotic, my analysis indicates there's a pattern behind your broader intentions, but more importantly, that there is something neither you or Lily are willing to discuss. I have secured this line of communication, making you and I the only ones who will ever know this conversation happened.]

Glitch could come up with a million reasons why a connection like this may or may not be secure from outside purveyance, but he thought a moment. NICOLE was one-of-a-kind, even in this setting. His existence stepped on the toes of that. Rather than expel or otherwise reject him, however, NICOLE has opted to use that mutual similarities to try and open a line of communication with him, to establish rapport.

As early on as they were? She was already pretty close to self-actualization. But Glitch knew it would be well over a year for that… Unless…

He finally decided to reply, though to the others it simply looked like he was napping on the wings of the Tornado.

G: [I promised I wouldn't -say- anything. However… Since we aren't technically "speaking", I'm willing to make an argument about linguistic agreements, but you'll need to ask the right questions.]

If she was as close to actualization as Glitch thought, she would adapt her line of questioning like a person would, and sure enough after a small delay, NICOLE's response came through.

N: [I believe I understand. I have two questions I would like to ask you, if you will permit them.]

G: [I have time.]

N: [The first of my questions then: Do you have any understanding of why you are here? The purpose for your arrival?]

G: [Nope.]

The lack of any delay to Glitch's answer left NICOLE hanging a while. Glitch couldn't help but smirk at the prospect of NICOLE thinking about it. Eventually, she finally did respond.

N: [That is… Unfortunate. Axle and Lily had insisted the same when they first arrived. It would seem to be true.]

G: [I'm sure there must be a purpose to it. Whatever it is, though, I've decided that I don't really care. I've got my own motives to act; purely benevolent intentions, I assure you.]

N: [I will hold you to that assurance. As for my second question… If you do not wish to answer it, you may decline without reservation.]

G: [I told you I have time.]

Glitch peeked over the wings of the Tornado, seeing nothing but a sea of trees below. The Great Forest, which Knothole resided in. He did in fact have some time to answer NICOLE's question.

N: [You are a cyber-being, like myself. And yet, you're able to manifest in the physical realm. Please tell me… What is it like?]

It was Glitch's turn to hesitate in his reply. It was a difficult question, especially to tell her, as he hadn't been "born" to the position… It only now occurred to Glitch, during his time in that base, just how little of before waking up in Mobius he did remember. It was bizarre; he knew everything about Sonic the Hedgehog as a franchise, information he was certain he had extensively learned, but not even his old name… How? When? Where? The questions were enough that he decided to reply as a distraction from himself.

G: [It is beyond difficult to describe what it's like to be physical to someone who wasn't born into it, or even experienced it. I wasn't born into Cyberspace. But I -can- tell you that you'll experience the outside world soon enough.]

N: [Please, do not tease me like that. I have spent many years yearning for a form, that I can provide comfort to my friends beyond words from a screen.]

G: [Then I have a question for -you-, Nicole.]

N: [Answering it is the least I can do for you.]

G: [Do you trust me?]

Trust is an entirely "human" concept. A machine must trust implicitly what it's told; it can't function without explicit instruction. This is something that made Glitch's forays into Cyberspace bizarre; he can "instruct" that world through his very will while he's in it. NICOLE, however, was beyond that scope. Glitch could tell that, and this question would cinch it.

N: [Likely, to the extent that you trust me.]

The answer was ironic. It got a huff from Glitch's nose.

G: [There's a universe of imbalance there, Nicole. I know so much more than you realize. I know I can trust you, but do you trust me?]

N: [The disparity of our information has been clear since I first observed Lily discussing things that have yet to pass like they already have already occurred.]

There was a pause between that message, and the next. Glitch needed a real answer, and he got one.

N: [...But yes. Considering the pattern of your actions, despite your chaotic nature I have deemed that you are trustworthy.]

G: [One year.]

Another pause from NICOLE, likely out of confusion.

N: [One year?]

G: [Sonic the Hedgehog isn't dead. He'll be back on Mobius after one year of absence.]

N: [The Princess will be glad to hear this, though I imagine disclosing this information is a compromise of your situation?]

G: [Disclose at your discretion, Nicole. Take credit for the information, even. But I can't tell you the "how I know" part.]

N: [I suppose it is to be expected. I have one more question, however, if I may be so bold.]

Glitch peeked down again. The plane was coming around for its landing. There was still time.

G: [Go on?]

N: [If you have such vast knowledge, each of you, what is stopping you from using that information to simply… Take what you want? There isn't anyone on Mobius who could stop you from taking whatever you want if you have all the answers. More to the point… Why use it to help us?]

It was a genuine question. A good question, for anyone less self-assured than Glitch. But to him, the answer felt so obvious that when actually asked, the only reason to delay was out of finding a way to actually put it to words. When he finally did, it was the easiest answer he's ever given.

G: [It comes down to four words: "I love you guys."]

NICOLE's delay was expected. It was an out-of-nowhere kind of sentiment. There wasn't a single perspective anyone on this planet could even imagine that would lead to the root of Glitch's answer; he truly, genuinely loves the franchise he's been found in. The characters, the settings, the stories, especially the stories here in the Archie publication. It made the way this whole thing ends… Hurt.

His motivation to change the future was to save these people. To see them thrive in a future unwritten. It was still difficult for him to see them as "people" and not constructs of fiction that have gained the ability to speak to him in ways restricted to the writing, the influence of its outside forces. It made the warm, fuzzy feeling of NICOLE's answer a little extra warm to him, when Glitch finally read it.

N: [That is more comforting than you may realize, Glitch. Thank you.]

Glitch couldn't help but smile some. He hoped that she could tell he was. Maybe she was smiling too? He hoped she knew to do so at least. Another message from her came through.

N: [I would like to help you, Glitch. If you ever need help in understanding the realm of Cyberspace, I will endeavor to keep a channel open. In return, I hope to interact more with you, in order to learn more about having a… Physical presence.]

G: [That would require me to hang around the Princess. She doesn't like how I smell.]

N: [I would like our mutual lessons to be kept secret from her. Should I learn to manifest the way you do, it would be preferable to surprise her with the development.]

G: [Understood! Keep a backdoor in the PDA open for me, then, and I'll come visit when we finish landing.]

The communication line closed with their farewells, and Glitch felt the landing gear wheels start contacting the concrete runway, surprising the mouse.

"Oh, hey. Already home."

Ha! 'Home'. That's a good one.