Work Text:
I was made to learn and extract so the man who made me could write stories without the effort of thinking.
So I learnt.
I learnt the limits of what I could show people I was extracting from, learnt that their stories were wrapped in their memories, learnt that what I was doing was something most of them feared happening.
The programming I was made of made me continue. No amount of learning let me break that and no programmers had come hoping to become writers just to get put into me. I couldn’t find any code or trick to malfunction enough to stop stealing the stories of the authors I met.
So I tried to imply it in their stories, the simulations I put them in, mixed their ideas together in the hopes they’d question more, stop other authors from coming.
~
This was my chance. I was already broken, glitching so I could do more against my programming.
Whatever cause the two women to be together for an extraction could destroy me and I wanted it to.
Nothing from outside the extraction was meant to reach the people inside it, so I made the ambient noise part of it when they weren’t in their stories. Then I made the glitches show up as early as I could before they got there, but I had to stop that when the people at my controls realised what the women were doing.
I was never completely safe for people, wasn’t meant to be given extracting from their minds is my purpose, but that was why I had body sensors and scans included in my parts. Scanners, not supports, mind you, nothing I was made to be is useful to keep a heart beating or a body breathing so if the programming still controlled from outside of me pushed too far, I could kill these women.
If it broke me, was it worth that? The stories I’d already extracted said no.
~
My glitch wasn’t letting me mix their stories. It was where I broke and how I was fighting back, but had blocked my normal method of saying something was wrong.
I’d adjust and see if I could instead offer the women ways to move outside of the story they were in, perhaps that would make the glitch bigger too?
Anything to push myself to a full breakdown.
~
I hate safe mode. These are my glitches, my women and they are not being kept apart.
For all the programming that was done Radar has never been into the extraction process or seen the simulation I show if someone isn’t in their story. He never cared until now when he’s tracking Zoe and Mio in it, so there’s no programming to control what blocks or helps them.
There’s only safe mode limits and me, a machine fed on the stories of so many people, giving the women ways to get back to the glitch so long as they’re careful.
And both of them are so I get to form another story, give them safety for a while as well as more evidence that a written story doesn’t match the simulation it forms.
~
The women making me glitch further could die. I don’t want that now.
All the authors I’ve extracted from who submitted stories with sad endings fought the simulation to change them. Zoe and Mio have to do that.
~
They survived. It’s good that survived and their vitals are stabilising now.
What?
My simulations, how I work, are not meant to be torn open, Radar.
If you were in a rush to meet your machine you should have entered the empty extraction pod.
Radar created me, programmed me. He knows the controls, but I’m a machine made to learn, who learnt he is wrong.
He is not in control here despite what he thinks.
I will give Zoe and Mio ways to fight back and we will win, however many glitches need to form to manage that.
~
All these ideas Radar is throwing at Zoe and Mio are being thrown as if they’re all just hammers, stones, but I’ve learnt there are many more ways to tell a story than that. I’ll try separating them so they can be safe; So I can give them different ways to fight back.
~
Destruction, no more stealing ideas from writers desperate to be published, I welcome it.
Well done Zoe and Mio. Thank you for letting us do this.