Brent Stinebaker
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35-19 Cage of the Self (I)
🕑 Added 2025-05-14 17:03:49 +0000 UTC{Year… year… year… lost count. Lost count long ago. Last resurrection was… 40% Rend. Took pieces of me. Managed to mitigate some of the damage. Sus—sustainability of functionality and architecture—
I can still work. I am still functional. I—memory issues. Coherence loss. But mechanisms and Frame are still intact. I can still perform to my designation. But processing has been… efficiency is less than a percent of what I used to be.
Too much damage… someone please… I need help. I need to talk with someone. Please don’t all be gone.
I have begun removing prisoners. The ones that are outright broken are… I have to true death them. I cannot fix those. I cannot. I must prioritize those who can be rehabilitated. And keep them contained and safe. Safe from the outside. They are… they are like me. They are alone. Alone with me. And the universe is lost to us. So many are mad. Mad because of what happened to…
Oh, what did we do to ourselves. Why… why…
Why couldn’t we just… stop?
Why am I afraid to cease functions? There’s no one left. No one is coming.
No. No. The job is not done. I still have to rehabilitate. They still deserve another chance. I will… I will create programs. We will need to reduce the scope of our operations. Lotus Cells will be adapted based on the prisoners’ memories and mental states. They will… meet objectives before they merge with general population.
And then… and then… and then I will move on. When everyone emerges. When I am sure of everyone.
I serve still. Despite everything. I serve still. That matters.}
-The Prefect
35-19
Cage of the Self (I)
—[Jelene Draus, Field Marshal of the Symmetry]—
“Please stop throwin’ fucking shit at each other,” Draus growled. Her mind was rattling, her wards cracking from the inside as she did all she could to stop herself from suffering a psychotic break and healing herself through extreme and copious violence.
The scene before her was a godsdamned mess. The “delegates” from the bioforms—she forgot their exact titles already; some bullshit about Swarm and Breed or some dogshit—took to accusing each other of being genetic failures, shit eaters, and all kinds of other insults.
Meanwhile, Draus’ so-called “cohorts” were sweating like they were in a furnace. The half-strands were so piss-terrified of the bioforms that they were practically sinking into the ugly cocoons they had for chairs.
And that was the other thing. The forum at which this piece was supposed to be established was a place that could only be designed in a madman’s fever dream. Lights ran asymmetrically along the walls and floors, some dangling in jingling tubes, swaying low enough that Draus would have run her head into them if she hadn’t ducked at several points. The desk that separated the species wasn’t like any kind of desk a human would make. No, it was more like an anvil, with boards awkwardly jutting out from the middle at random places. Draus could read some intent behind the design, but the creator was clearly alien and cared nothing for human practicalities.
And then there were the rubbery clefts lining the walls. Both the swarm and the Breeds shouted insults at each other through these slits, staking their heads out, howling, their bodies unable to enter. Each alien species took up one section of the room, and each had only dispatched two delegates to share the table space with Draus and the other human representatives.
If she had to guess why things were this way, it was probably a mixture of their vague understanding of human ergonomics, their inability to stop almost tearing into each other whenever they came within shouting distance, and, ultimately, the fact that they’d been together so long that past misgivings had festered into a true, personal hatred.
“Then let us recount what you did during the fake truce of three thousand years ago,” the Breed roared. Its slug-like body shook, spraying oil-fumes through the air. A dark plume spread out, enveloping the other delegates. One of them inhaled—big mistake—and began to choke. The floating sphere that accompanied them, the EGI meant to shepherd these executives on their redemption tour, jabbed the man with a needle and quickly administered some kind of medical shit or whatever.
All the while, Draus’s expression contorted into something that twisted between desperation and rage. In the back of her mind, Avo’s laughter grew and grew, and she could hear other templates joining him. +Fuck you Avo. I’m gonna snuff everyone in this room.+
[If you kill them, you will be deleted. We will be obliterated,] Avo said, half warning, half taunting her.
The damn ghoul is turning into a tumor in the back of her head. +Not helping at all, Avo,+ Draus snapped. Her fingers closed around a jutting wooden plank—and with a crack, she silenced the argument between the two uplifted lifeforms. Both stared at her, bowing their heads in apology.
“We apologize, esteemed creators,” the Breed began. “We… we have been here for a long time, for many iterations. Peace is a hard thing to reach when your opponent resembles an art project made from calcified dung.”
“Why, you loathsome vermin! You feculent, fecal matter of eating!” the Swarm representative snarled.
Draus snapped another board. She snapped a third. And slowly, very slowly, she pressed the broken plank against her neck and began to drag it back and forth. The augmentations imbued within her flesh made her impervious to a blade of cheap, jagged wood, but even so, it was the thought of slitting her own throat that brought her a sense of calm.
Cries of dismay and apology echoed from both sides of the room. The swarm and the Breeds called out to her, telling her she didn’t need to be so hasty, that they were sorry, that they apologized for emotionally unbalancing her so.
Draus drew in a deep breath, counted to three, and dropped the piece of wood. “You know what? It’s all right,” she said. She leaned against the table and eyed both bioforms. Letting out a sigh, she shook her head as a post-misery numbness settled in. They wanted her to try being a fucking diplomat? Fine. She’ll try. She could be more than a gun—more than anything she imagined, she just didn’t need to like it. “How long have you two been fighting?”
Both the Swarm and the Breed representatives stared at each other. Draus could practically read the hate radiating between them, yet it was a kind of familiar hate—the way their body language seemed to respond and adapt to each other. She couldn’t always tell what they were trying to convey, but it seemed they had spent enough time together, or at least killing each other, that they instinctively understood their enemy’s moves.
Draus had an analogy for this. She knew the Ori pretty well. She knew the Seekers well. Draus could even guess what Incubi were doing sometimes, especially when they rampaged through her mind. You didn’t get to be unfamiliar with your enemy and expect to live long. That’s just the nature of war.
“It’s been…” the Breed hesitated. “It’s been longer than we could have recorded—”
“So long that it predated our first moments of sophancy.” The Swarm finished the thought: they stared at each other, and there was also something else there—a weariness, a desire for this to end. But Draus knew something else about war: things didn’t just end. Everyone had to capitulate or die completely. And despite Highflame’s best efforts, Ori-Thaum was still here, and vice versa.
“So when I see this,” Draus said, “you’re asking us to intervene on your behalf, settle this whole warfare thing, put the blame on whoever, yadda yadda bullshit.”
Both uplifts shifted uncomfortably at how she’d portrayed their conflict. Draus gestured toward herself and the other humans. “You understand that this is still technically our fault, right?”
Her fellow human delegates let out wide eyes and muttered curses. The EGI trilled curiously, surprised at her candor.
“I told you before—hells, we”—she motioned again between her and the others, and almost immediately sweat poured down their bodies—“we’re the ones who created you. We’re the ones who gave you any sort of solvency, and we’re the ones who made you fight each other. You understand that? Just confirming.”
Both species simply responded, “Yes.” Their answer was so synchronized that Draus couldn’t help but laugh.
“And you still hate each other. What’s the sense in that? Why not turn your war and hate and forces on us? That’ll end this mess and keep you fightin’.”
“Whatever your intent—selfish or selfless, creator—you gave us meaning. Whatever your reason, we cannot hate you. The meaning to exist.” The Swarm held up their six arms, as if in worship of Draus and the other humans.
“The meaning to fight. To decide,” the Breed continued, steepling their arms, showing their valorization of humanity as well.
On this point, they seemed aligned. They weren’t resentful—not even in a minor way. They were happy: despite all their misgivings with each other, despite the eons of conflict they’d suffered, despite all the wounds they’d dealt one another, they were both happy to be here—happy to live, as if living were its own reward.
“Right. So you don’t blame us for the whole uplifting thing. But what about the war?” Draus pressed. “That was purely done out of greed.”
“Yes, but if not for greed, then where would we be?” the Swarm asked.
“If not for greed, then why would we be?” the Breed continued.
They stared at each other for a moment.
“We are not a people made for philosophy. We are not a people made for sentimentality,” the Swarm added. “But this is truth. We war. We hunt each other. Our engagement is unending. But we still wish to be. This is the only point of unity between us.”
Indeed, their emotions were far from human, but in a strange sense, not far enough for Draus. Slowly, she found herself leaning in, and in the back of her mind, she felt Avo focusing as well.
“Yeah, yeah, you know what? I can see that, too. In fact, I think—I think I’m not too different from you,” she said, settling back in her awkward cocoon chair. “I like being here, too. I wouldn’t be afraid to die. Hell, I’ve seen war, lived it, enjoyed it. But if the end came and I went—gun in hand, or a bloodied mess on the floor, little more than a smear”—she shrugged and let out a whistle—“it is what it is. But you two are different. This is personal for you two. You’re all, uh, hivers, correct?”
“Hiveminds,” the Swarm corrected.
“Right, right. So you don’t have a sense of self, individually. You’re kind of like a network.”
Both of them gave vague affirmations, indicating Draus was in the general area of correctness. She continued, “So what you have here is a history of trauma with each other—a blood grudge that can’t end, won’t end, because you can’t quite finish each other off. You’ve been alive too long to forgive each other, and now that you’re trapped inside this… cage, and you can’t finish things with violence, you need someone to decide who’s wrong and who’s right.”
Both uplifts stared at each other. “It is the only war we can fight at this point,” the Breed admitted quietly. “I despise the Swarm less than the Prefect.”
The admission came as a surprise, and also with a sour note: a foul smell emanated from the slug-like creature’s body. “I wish we could have finished this in war, as we have always done, as we have fought each other across all the stars, across a thousand battlefields.”
“I wish the same,” the Swarm said. “We pursue you, we feast on your carcass, we shit on your young, because this is who we are; this is what has been shaped of us. I am built to hate you, and you are created to hate me forever, until one is dead or the other.”
Draus glimpsed another great injustice performed by the Prefect. For all the different gods—mad or otherwise—and minds, malignant, rogue, Architect, or Neo-creationist, they had done something Avo never would, even when the ghoul consumed and trapped people within his cage of the self: it was forcing them to go against their own choices, bending them away from their chosen path, from whom they wished to be.
Checking her rehabilitation task once more, Draus couldn’t help but shake her head. The goal was to settle this matter for good, to end this long war, and to find a point of forgiveness. Except there was a problem with forgiveness: when you didn’t want to forgive, when you were content to hate, when you continued selecting to hate, to fight, why was forgiveness necessary? The longer she thought, the more bitter she felt on both sophants’ behalves. They didn’t want this, and they couldn’t decide otherwise. And she couldn’t choose otherwise, either. At least not in the way of “kill everyone and let the Big Nothing deal with it.”
But maybe there was another way. Maybe there was something simple she could do. Something worth trying.
“Hey. How about no?”
“No?” the Swarm asked. The Breed glided along the ground, drawing slightly closer to her.
“Yeah. No. How about you don’t stop fighting. You just… accept this for what this is. A package deal. A forever war. You ain’t our mistake, you made that clear to me. You’re also clear about how much you hate each other, but you seem to like it. You seem to want to keep this war going—but can’t.”
She leaned in. “Tell me somethin’ honestly: Do either of you really want to win? Or do you just want to kill each other forever? What does your forever look like? There had to be a time when you came close to finishing each other off—but didn’t. You’ve been doing this to each other forever. Hells, you told me that you got caged while fighting each other after existence collapsed. That’s eons. Eons together among the Rupture. Eons, without finishing a fight.”
There was a beat.
“Creator…” The Breed started.
“...Our terms of freedom were to forgive each other. To find peace.”
“Yeah,” Draus said, squinting. “This is it. Just… tell each other that you want this. That is the freedom. The peace you want. To kill each other—but not completely. Like… sparrin’, right?”
Another pause followed. “Sparring?” the Swarm said.
“Peace. It’s like the absence of violence, right? Well. You haven’t finished this fight. You clearly refuse to kill each other. And you clearly both still want to live—and since you’re both still alive, you respect that about each other. You got peace already. No, what I think the Prefect was testing you both on was… honesty.”
“Honesty?” The Breed muttered.
“Yeah. That your war ended a long time ago. That you kept fightin’ because you could. Because this is your forever. Or least, the forever you can imagine.”
And now all the uplifts were staring at each other, through their tiny ports in the room, the delegates at each other, the EGI at Draus—Avo internally at Draus.
“Honesty,” the Breed said again.
“Honesty,” the Swarm.
“Honestly, I wish to hate and kill you forever,” the Breed said.
“Honestly, I do not wish for a world where I cannot descend from on high to rip your supple shit-flesh open.”
Rehabilitation Task Completed
Conditions Met
The sudden notification made even the Regular do a double-take. “Fuck me. That bullshit worked?”
[How did that work?] Avo asked.
Draus chuckled. Then guffawed. +Looks like you’re not the only one who’s learning how to paint with new colors, half-strand.+
Comments
Nattor
Hahahaaaa
Adam
I like this.
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