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Kamukura Izuru has become very well acquainted with boredom.
He has already analyzed his cell thousands of times. He knows it as well as his opisthenars, the lumps in his mattress, the boredom gnawing at his frontal cortex. He knows its exact volume (41.360492 cubic meters,) the defects in the design (the back right corner where some concrete chipped away and the left wall where a cinderblock shifted 0.000003 millimeters out of place as the mortar was laid and dried,) and all that lay just beyond the borders of his confinement (dirt, dirt, a separate part of the labyrinthine tunnels connecting the Hope’s Peak underground, a passageway from the room where he was created, a chemistry lab, and dirt.)
Kamukura also figures that there is not much of a chance for him to leave. The only logical place would be through the passage. The lab has mid-level security researchers, the tunnel is for use by the general faculty (he can judge this through the whispers he hears through the walls and from the vent,) and his existence relies solely on the fact that the general public does not know about him.
In the corner spot he can clearly see the rebar. It would be quite easy to break the concrete part of the wall. However, further inspection of the other walls and floor revealed thick sheets of steel encasing the cell. In addition, even his superior intellect cannot deduce how far, exactly, he is beneath the surface, nor the size and full layout the building on top of him. This eliminates the dirt beneath him and the dirt behind him. He could break away the decrepit toilet and pitiful sink in the corner with the crack, which would aid him in putting a hole through the wall, and use part of his bed frame as a crude digging mechanism. In theory, he could tunnel his way out. However, as perfect as his building skills are, he lacks the materials to keep it stable. The tunnel would sooner collapse around him, cut off his oxygen, and he’d perish. He would be Eurydice swallowed by the Earth, an ephemeral candle flame.
Not that he would mind. The notion of death and dying is decidedly . . . less boring. He does not fear it. He welcomes it. Furthermore, the only difference between this and his current situation is that there’s a vent (the opening is 0.0464515 square meters, too small to squeeze through) in the ceiling that provides breathable air. It also reeks vaguely of formaldehyde and hydrochloric acid. Kamukura thinks he might be less bored if it stops.
The passage, therefore, is the only logical means of escape. Kamukura hears the idle chatter of guards down the hallway, 11.037 meters behind that thick metal door 3.66 meters in front of him. It would be painfully easy to take them down. He could flick his wrist, and they would all lie sprawled against each other, more ants than Myrmidons. Yet he’s heard enough of their hushed gossip to know that his teachers are not willing to unleash Prometheus and his fire among the mortals. Hope’s Peak Academy is playing a game of chess, trying to outmaneuver the media, the government, even supposed moles among the faculty, trying to keep them from discovering a needle of truth in a haystack of rumors about student disappearances and scandal. The steering committee is keeping his existence sealed tight in a jar. His untimely escape would spell disaster for the school, it would have to shut down, but it would all be so predictable and boring.
Kamukura Izuru will either bring light to the world, or devour it in flame. He has analyzed each possibility, traveled through every thread, down to the last minute detail. He is uncertain which fate he prefers, if any.
Every twelve hours his teachers, eagles in white lab coats and crisp suits, swoop down upon him to perform tests, to peck at his brain. They worship at his feet when they finish gathering data. They sing praises, chant hymns to their victory over something as trivial as mortal limitation. To them he is a creature above human. He is godlike. He is Koios among men, Prometheus incarnate. He is the hope of all humanity. They are all too happy to sacrifice their dignity at his shrine.
His teachers (all of them) are nothing more than the talentless parasites they raved about before he woke up. They injected him with distaste towards the masses, and so the masses shall feel his apathy.
Kamukura Izuru, for all his omniscience and omnipotence, has never felt like a god. In reality, he is a machine. He is cold, and gods are supposed to feel some kind of warmth towards their worshipers. He is smooth and efficient. He never fails to fulfill his teacher’s requests, and gods are fickle, flighty, and fallible. He thinks, therefore he is. He is something real and tangible.
Gods (and he’s analyzed the possibility thousands of times) are not.
Kamukura knows that his teachers visit him with nourishment (miso soup and water,) riddles, stories to analyze for themes, math problems, and unsolved scientific quandaries. They stay for an hour. He idles for eleven. He does not mind the abnormal meal schedule. He is not human, therefore he does not succumb to human failings such as hunger. He does not mind that each bite he takes tastes less and less like daichi, soybean paste, and vegetables, and more like lukewarm water. Erysichthon and Tantalus are fools, nothing more.
Kamukura’s teachers have visited him exactly 310 times. He has been awake for 155 days. He doesn’t mind spending most of those days sitting on his lumpy mattress, leaning against the wall, limbs stretched out minus one foot (the right one) tucked under him, gazing upon that thick metal door, mind both idling and racing through a universe of facts and figures, boredom a broken muffler constantly roaring in his subconscious. He has taken a two hour nap exactly ten times since waking fully for the first time. Furthermore, he spends an hour each period between visits pacing the confines of his room (Kamukura Izuru is not human in any way, mentally or physically, but he does experience fatigue after staying awake for too long and he does get bedsores.) He moves as a flickering shadow in the dim light of his cell, cast by an ember wrapped in a fennel stalk.
4.389 hours after the two-hundred and twelfth visit, during exercise, Kamukura stopped abruptly in front of that thick metal door. He stood there, observing it intently. He brushed his fingertips against where the doorknob should be on an ordinary door, and it opened in an instant, quiet whirr. The fluorescent lights in a metallic hallway blinded him after so long in the dimness, but his eyes adjusted the moment after. He stared down the hallway, til it ended in a perpendicular passage. The guards had their backs to him, and he could hear whispering from 11.037 meters down the hallway. One of them peeked over his shoulder in jest with one of his coworkers, and froze in the crosshairs of his gaze, seeing Kamukura emerging from the deepest depths of Erebus. Then the guard gestured to his coworkers and they sprinted across the hallway towards him, reaching for their weapons, and Kamukura Izuru slid into motion, like black smoke billowing across the sterile hallway, and bullets whistled past him but his eyes stayed trained on the guards, and the wiser ones scrambled back and called in for reinforcements and he slammed a foolish one that had still charged anyways into the wall and he smeared it with such a rich crimson and it was beautiful because it broke up the monotony of the blue-gray and—
No, that outcome was too predictable. He put that thread down.
Kamukura Izuru stood at the threshold, bathed in the harsh light, eyes trained on the guards’ backs until the door hissed shut and he returned to routine.
At that time, Kamukura Izuru also realized something he already knew.
There is no sword of Damocles hanging over his head. There is no Orpheus at the end of the tunnel, no dead Patroclus to spur him into battle, no low-hanging fruit or pool of water there. He cannot even make the effort to quench his boredom. The only thing chaining him to that mattress is his own apathy. His teachers know this, and the closed door jeers at him from across the room.
(He is not upset by this. It is merely a statement of fact, nothing more.)
So, Kamukura lets his teachers peck his brain and worship at his feet, he eats his miso soup and drinks his water, he does his exercise, he takes his nap, and he lounges in the exact same spot, with his exact same leg tucked under him (the right one, it’s always the right one) and the corresponding arm draped over it, completely still. He gazes at the wall, unblinking. It’s what he’s doing right now.
He analyzes, because it’s all he can do.
He can’t shut it off. It will never shut off
The boredom is going to kill Kamukura before anything else does.
There is only one thing that separates him from god, man, and machine, and it’s the only thing he cannot deduce. A man’s purpose is their career or people who depend on them. A god has a concept to represent, and disciples to guide. Each machine has a task, something it was built to do. Kamukura has no purpose. He does not care for the scientists who will be visiting him in exactly 5.432 hours. He does not strive to improve his answers, to please them even more than they already are. He idles when he is alone. His analyses shows no signs of him ever showcasing the hope of humanity to the greater world. Fire shall remain on Olympus. He is alone. He has no friends, no family, no one, no, nothing that is going to get him out—
The door opens.
Oh?
The logical conclusion would be that it’s his teachers, coming for his grand entrance to or quiet exit from the world. It is too early for them to want his prophetic utterances, the fumes are withheld. Instead, it’s two teenage girls, most likely students. The girl in front walks like she knows exactly where she is, so this intrusion is not accidental. That’s all the notice he pays her at first, since the girl’s appearance is carefully crafted to entice, and his deduction of her first impression tells him that analyzing the other girl, walking just behind her and to the right, before her would please her immensely.
(Kamukura Izuru does not care how either of them feel. The girls are here to entertain him, whether they know it or not, and reactions, no matter how predictable they are, equate a momentary inhalation for the screaming boredom at his frontal cortex.)
He locks onto the other girl. She is smaller and darker, less curves and more angles. She treads more carefully, she can smell the danger. Two knives are strapped to her middle, and she wears a camouflage bulletproof vest. A soldier, but right now, she’s playing the role of bodyguard. Her eyes dart back and forth between him and her comrade (they could not be more different, but they are similar enough they could be sisters,) and he knows that she is used to being in the crosshairs. Her serious expression tells him she thinks she knows about being machinery, that she believes herself to be an automaton in the deepest recesses of her consciousness. However, the light behind her eyes tells him that she is repressing something. Machines cannot repress something that is not there.
In another lifetime, Kamukura Izuru might have pitied her, maybe even empathized with her. However, Kamukura Izuru does not care for parasites, and she leeches all of her self worth off of the girl in front.
The girl in front. His eyes shift to her, and she stiffens only slightly under his gaze for a split second, then continues on.
If the soldier is Epimetheus, this girl is Pandora. The soldier stops at the line where the light from the doorway stops, but the other girl steps closer, into the darkness. A smile tears her face in two, and her eyes glimmer in excitement and ecstasy, as if she’s meeting a celebrity, or a god. However, when Kamukura digs deeper, he sees blood, he sees Troy collapsing in ruin. He sees despair, spreading greedy fingers of inferno across the entire world.
He digs even deeper, and he sees someone who is as well acquainted with boredom as he is. In addition, she might have a muffler.
Suddenly, the chess board is back. Hope’s Peak Academy is playing a game, but they have no idea who their real opponent is. She is busy assembling her pieces and memorizing the layout of the board.. The way the girl in front squeals and bounces on the balls of her feet and waves her arms triumphantly tells him that she’s just found her queen.
Kamukura lets her speak. Whatever offering she brings him will likely not be boring.