Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A sharp pang entered its chest, pieces of recollection appearing in the creatures mind. Recalling what had happened, a sudden feeling of grief flowed through it. Everything felt like a blur, it had not even recalled it’s name instantaneously, only feeling a mix of anger and sadness amongst it’s darkened body—until, it recalled all that happened before that day.

The story book pages flip within its mind.

It started with light colored ocean tide hair, accompanied by a timer, a chat, and his objective. The name tag above the man read "AndreW2002", otherwise known as Andre.

The Speed runner clicked and loading dozens of world, deciding which one would befit the hope-to-be short journey to beat the ender dragon, finally, he found a world most suitable, the timer count up, and the man was off.

It started with a one eyed creature, a monster of the abyss, harbouring hatred for the young boy who entered their world.

They started to torment the Speed runner, placing cryptic signs, flashing his screen with displaced images and flashing lights, before trying to ambush him in the nether. All of no avail, the speed runner frankly seemed to not care.

This anger the creature was feeling, was unexplainable. Did it's rage stem from the players invasion into their land? Did it stem from their stubbornness to complete whatever goal they had? It did not know. Looking down at its own body, the name tag above it flashing the word "ASSIMILATION".

 "ANDRE. I'VE FOUND YOU ANDRE." Said Assimilation; his approach to Andre nearing closer.

Andrew didn't seem to be phase, as he calmly ran away from the creature, his mind set on beating the game—his objective.

Assimilation's pace quickened, trying to catch up to the speed runner, as the latter kept running away, all before finally catching the light haired, "CAUGHT YOU." Said the Creature

Andre was actually kind of pissed. The people in his chat was so screaming "TIMELOSSTIMELOSSTIMELOSS", well, except for one person that said "KYAAA!!~~ ASSIMILATION MARRY ME!!!" But that's beside the point.

You could almost hear Andre sigh even though he had no mic, that's how annoying Assimilation was to him.

The monster trapped Andre in a bedrock laden world, standing Infront of Andre as he tried countless times again to run away,  all to no avail as Assimilation kept teleporting him back the moment he got even a block too far.

Andre was forced to fight, fight the thing Infront of him, fight the thing that had incredibly high speed and could evade his attacks such as easily, fight the thing that would bring him back to life every time it killed Andre. But this didn't stop him, Andre was dead set on the goal given to him. And with every subsequent punch, he could feel Assimilation getting weaker and weaker, now he knew it bleeds, and if it can bleed, it can die.

And "died" it did—yes, in quotations, after the relentless punching, Assimilation fell and disappeared, allowing Andre to continue with his Speedrun, his chat congratulating him and he did.

It didn't take long for Assimilation to get back to his antics, catching Andre off-guard before attempting to trap him inside that weird realm again, but this time? It fails.

Assimilation kept failing at capturing the speedrunner, it honestly also started to find the speedrunner annoying, as Andre always seemed to know someway to outsmart him.

Assimilation attempted to teleport Andre to the bedrock world, but ended up in a kind of...test tube? Capsule? Research chamber? Whatever it was, and wherever they were, it wasn't the overworld. Assimilation had somehow teleported both himself and Andre into this world, walls and floors lined with a world tile block that was a bit off putting. Andre broke both of them out of the capsule.

Andre took no time trying to escape whatever facility they were in, cleverly using a boat to wall glitch through to the other side of a door. The facility resembled that of an old eerie laboratory, the halls were desolate and empty save for a few occasional twists and turns.

Andre confident turned at every intersection, trying to find a way out of the weird place. This place was called the "Grid World". Andre looked through more and more doors, turned more corners, and went up and down a few stairs.

Assimilation however busied himself with research rather that exploring. Searching through a log of admin files, it found information about what "it" and "him" were.

Error logs, debug issues, varied coding, admin controls. Is this all what Assimilation and Andre was to these so called "Admins"? Just characters and machines they can so easily control as they wish?

Assimilation was again filled with rage. This unexplainable anger fueled up inside him. It all made sense, they were just code, commands, machines. No, they deserved to live too, they deserved to be free aswell.

It needed to find Andre.

Assimilation tried to follow Andre's breadcrumbs, understanding how he left the room with only using a boat, but that only got it so far as Andre never left a sort of trail. Assimilation, too, started roaming the facility, until it came across a room with 3 buttons [0] [1] [2]; [0] spawned a puppet with the appearance of Assimilation; [1] spawned a puppet with the appearance of Andre; the last button—[2] made them both disappear, gruesome stuff.

It wasn’t long until the creature and the speed runners paths intersected yet again. In that weird room, Andre tried to run, yet Assimilation prevented him before they ever could, telling him about the admins, about their antics, about their lives, about them. Andre didn’t seem to want to listen, fair enough, but Assimilation wasn’t done; it started telling Andre about how this could save time on his speedrun, while also helping him escape. A flawless plan.

Andre gave in once he heard Assimilation mention it benefitting his speed run, in true speed runner fashion. Using the boat from before—that Assimilation teleported to grab, they glitched inside the cloning room, then summoned a lot of clones to distract the admins that were most certainly on their tail by now. After that whole ordeal, Andre used the boat again to glitch outside the facility.

The outskirts of the building were surreal sights, the sky was painted a deep blue with streaks of a lighter shade stroked across the above. The floor was pure pitch black, so black infact that you could mistake it as a void. The boat was left behind in the wall glitch, but atleast they were out right?

The Administrator was swift on their feet, pushing past and eliminating the meaningless clones of Andre and Assimilation that hindered its path. Searching for any sign of the 2, it found traces of the technique they used, but the available breadcrumbs were scarce.

Assimilation and Andre navigated through the terrain, scaling down the walls and trudging across the black tile-styled floor. Andre, although seemingly to have seen this world for the first time, looks confident in going through the outskirts, eventually blocking up and, again, asking Assimilation to fetch him the boat.

Assimilation did as asked, and attempted to recover the boat. But the admin was still in the general vicinity of where the boat was, attempting to investigate it. Assimilation wasted no time getting the boat and teleporting back to Andre; where he then informed Andre of what had just happened. Andre seemed to panic a bit, but overall tried to remain calm. Using the boat, he wall-glitched into a hidden teleporter and warped to a new part of the facility; with the knowledge that they have been caught, he and Assimilation started to run and scour for any type of exit. Andre separated from Assimilation during the getaway, leaving the creature visibly confused.

After a few twists and turns, there Andre was, run directly into an admin. He immediately shifted his destination while blocking off the doors he went through with the little blocks he managed to gather during his short time there. Running across a somewhat big and open room, he reunites with the monster during the chase; instructing it to teleport both it and Andre towards a door to the other side of the room, guarded by the admin.

Assimilation yet again questioned Andre, but he wasn’t in the mood to debate. Grabbing Assimilation, he forced him to teleport them to the other side, and that’s exactly what assimilation did.

What greeted them was a long hallway with numbered doors, the creature shouted at Andre to go into door 26; an order which the boy obliged. Both we teleported to a world unfamiliar. Exiting out of a room enclosed by an iron door, and navigating out of the mountain terrain they were teleported into, they saw the base of a player with the proclaimed name Collinlock16

Collin was enjoying his evening in his Minecraft house, dealing with the local ARG monsters and whatnot; when suddenly Andre and Assimilation showed up, Andre wasted no time barging into Collin’s house and looting his chests, before leaving through his yard shortly after. Assimilation explained the situation to Collin, Collin was pissed that a random speed runner stole his stuff but decided to be chill about it.

Andre—with the loot he got from Collin’s base, made a quick trip to the nether to find some blaze rods and enderpearls, realizing he’d have to waste even more time trying to find Enderpearls of all things, he asked Assimilation to bring him to the End, to which Assimilation replied,

“Why?”

“To get Elytras, to defeat admins” Andre said with a deadpan voice.

“Okay.” Assimilation replied agreeingly, teleporting him to the end.

The Dragon fight was straightforward, with Assimilation’s assistance that is. Assimilation helped Andre break the end crystals that were too high to destroy, while also teleporting the dragon to its perching spot to let Andre chain hits and kill the dragon so they could get elytras.

But, that’s not what happened,

Is it?

“ANDRE? ANDRE GET OUT THE PORTAL!” Assimilation shouted, as Andre sat in the portal seemingly waiting for it to teleport him.

“YOU PROMISED WE’D GET ELYTRA’S” asserted the creature again.

Andre was running, running to the end portal, unlike what they promised. Yet Assimilation brought him back everytime.

“LISTEN TO ME ANDRE” The creature screamed again, tone more desperate, body more tired.

“PLEASE STOP” it pleaded.

Andre wasn’t budging, if it wasn’t for that enderpearl from that enderman he killed, he probably would’ve been there forever.

“ANDRE-“ it was cut off by the end credits.

40:23:37, PERSONAL BEST

Was that all he cared about? Some stupid goal? Some stupid timer? Some stupid speed run? Assimilation teleported himself to Andre.

“ANDRE.” Said the monster.

“DO YOU KNOW HOW HUMILIATING IT IS”

“TO HAVE BROUGHT YOU ALL THIS WAY”

“FOR YOU TO DECIDE YOU HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO”

“ANDRE”

“YOU BASTAR-“

Assimilation was shot by an Admin.

That was all you heard wasn’t it? It was all a trick.

Andre stood lifeless, as 2 admins talked infront of him.

Admin 4 > I AM a genius

Admin 3 > He’s just standing there.

Admin 4 > His AI was told to beat the game

Admin 4 > Now that his goal has been achieved, he has no tasks.

Admin 4 > It’s a big we haven’t patched. Lucky us.

Admin 3 > 40 minutes, think the training is working?

Admin 4 > That isn’t what we’re training for.

Admin 4 > But I have proven that it is.

Admin 3 > I think I have a theory as to why they keep coming back here.

Admin 3 > Collect him.

AndreW2002 was shot by an Admin.

That’s how this tale ends, right? A monster tricked into believing it could have a companion, that it could be free.

But it was wrong.

A machine will be a machine, and no amount of companionship can change that.

And the story book of lies was closed, just as it was opened.

Assimilation was filled with sorrow after it recalled all that happened, its journey with Andre, its false beliefs that robots could feel. 

No, it can’t end like this.

He needed to save Andre.

By Any means possible.

Chapter Text

Thoughts flowed within Assimilation’s mind, “how could he possibly saved Andre from whatever he was facing?” Assimilation asked himself. It knew it had to do something, something to help Andre, to break him free. Something with the admins? No, too risky; something with his objective? Don’t even know where to start. But, it didn’t want to do nothing! Well, Andre was a speed runner, right? And 40 minutes was…not ideal. If Assimilation could just make Andre try to beat his previous record he could-   But then the livestream started again.

“Hi guys, trynna beat my old record of 40 minute” Entered the speedrunner, his chat filling up with encouraging words. He then proceeded to find a good starting world for about 5 minutes before settling on a somewhat decent one, spruce biome, village, nearby lava pool, basically the most perfect spawn you could ever have. Lucky him.

Assimilation was hasty to talk to him, once again leaving him signs with messages such as “ANDRE” or “ANDRE I FOUND YOU”. Andre, once again, ignored it, moving on with his speedrun—a second passed is a second wasted after all. But this was all too familiar, in the last world, Andre did the exact same thing; running past all of Assimilations signs to communicate to him, focusing only on that stupid damn timer.

Andre moved at a fairly steady pace, arriving at the nether at around 16 minutes, finding a fortress with relatively good luck. Assimilation didn’t stop either, bugging Andre with its signs, its weird red text on Andre’s screen, its ambushes to try and communicate with Andre—yet Andre doesn’t seem to want to talk, the ocean hued robot was fixed on trying to beat his previous record of 40-or-so minutes, Assimilation even tried to teleport Andre into that bedrock tiled world again; yet that only yielded the same result as the previous run.

Assimilations hope to even break through into Andre’s mechanical brain was looking bleak. Andre’s code seemed like final decision, with no way to even stray Andre away from his goal that was oh, so dearly precious to him. But still, Assimilation didn’t give up, it knew there had to be a way to get through to Andre; the last one, their bond, their journey, was it all for nothing? Was every action of it entirely fake? All apart of the robot’s plan to achieve the end its code forced him to achieve?

The monster had to act fast, Andre was already on his way to find some ender pearls to craft ender eyes. In an act of desperation, Assimilation didn’t try to trap Andre nor pester him this time. What he did was talk gently; talking into Andre’s head with that signature red text—at first, the speed runner paid no attention, his chat however, was severely divided. Half of his chat told him to ignore Assimilation’s attempts to communicate, the other half told him to at least hear out Assimilation. As this happened, the monster noticed something in Andre’s behavior—Hesitation.

Andre’s intelligence module was internally faltering as Andre’s inner thoughts managed to make it waver. His chat was a part of him, a visual representation of his inner thoughts, so with 50% of his inner monologue fighting to try and communicate with Assimilation, his computing system started to stray away from his mission. At this point, the timer was already at 20 minutes, leaving Andre with 20 more minutes to beat his record—this was, of course hard with Assimilation in the picture.

Andre tried his best to find Ender men, while Assimilation also tried its best to break through to Andre—which was working, unbeknownst to the creature. Andre’s chat was spamming stuff such as “Wait I’m kind of curious what assimilation wants.” And “TIMELOSSTIMELOSSTIMELOSS”—the latter usually says that any time Andre makes a mistake anyways. His network was also fighting to keep Andre on-track, while his robotic curiousity was fighting to try and talk to Assimilation.

Assimilation, after noticing the hesitation in Andre’s behavior, wasted no time nor effort to keep communicating to Andre again, flashing messages like “Andre.” “Please, let’s talk.” “Please Andre.”. It’s voice hoarse with desperation, yet unyielding in terms of perseverance. Until, Andre stopped moving in his tracks, his timer still ticking; before sending something in chat.

“Assimilation.” Entered the robot.

Assimilation saw this as an opportunity to explain the full situation to Andre. Assimilation immediately teleported to Andre, before, yet again receiving another message from the robot.

“Be quick, I only have so much time.”, his tone cold, wanting to get whatever Assimilation wanted as soon as possible so it would stop messing with him. Maybe this time Andre wasn’t drawn by duty, yet curiosity. Even Andre himself didn’t know why he was entertaining the creature.

Assimilation then explained everything it knew, about how Andre was a robot and that they needed to defeat the Admins to get them both free. Assimilations tone radiating hope with every message it sent to Andre.

Andre listened attentively to every word Assimilation was sending to him, but frankly, he didn’t care. Everything the creature told him went against everything he believed in, everything he was meant to do, everything his code forced him to do. Andre wanted to go along with Assimilation, he really did, but he knew his objective, and that was the only thing that really mattered to him. His coding made him this way.

“Sorry, I have to beat the game”, replied the robot, hesitantly.

Assimilation could tell Andre wanted to say more, but couldn’t tell why he couldn’t. Now it really started to look hopeless. Assimilation started to beg to Andre once more.

“ANDRE PLEASE.” “ATLEAST GIVE IT A THOUGHT ANDRE.”, but the robot had already spent too much time on this meaningless conversation. Now it really started to look hopeless, as the blue haired speed runner went on with his way not even a second after seeing Assimilation’s pleas.

Was this it? Was all of the efforts spent trying to gain even a hint of Andre’s attention hopeless? No, this couldn’t be the end, right? Assimilation wasn’t going to just stand there and pretend that Andre had not even a single sliver of humanity in him, even if he was just a robot. Assimilation started to think, think of why Andre wasn’t even giving his idea’s a thought; the creature put the pieces together—the hesitation, the chat, the mission, it was all part of the administrators’ code that they had entered inside Andre.

Now all that Assimilation had to do was to find a way to change Andre’s thinking process, In other words, change his coding. But how? Assimilation wasn’t a coder by any means, he didn’t know how to even start by infiltrating a robot’s intelligence network. Maybe it needed to think about this on another perspective. If Assimilation couldn’t do this alone, then it would have to call someone to assist, but who? Until one singular world, number, and name appeared in the creature’s head. World 26: Collinlock16. What did Assimilation have to lose? After all, Andre’s freedom was on the line…

Maybe Assimilation was caring too much for Andre.

Collin was busy in his own world, actually trying to progress with the game despite all of the weird entities messing with him—at his own pace of course. It was a normal afternoon of mining when Collin went up to find Assimilation stand ominously in his house.

Collin was of course, shocked, thinking this to be one of the weird ARG creatures that he hadn’t met before. However, he quickly assessed that he had in fact seen the lanky black monster before.

“Assimilation?” Called out Collin, a hint of confusion in his message. The boy only knew a bit about Assimilation’s character; friendly enough to have conversations with, protective, overall a chill entity, “What are you doing here???” He asked again.

“COLLIN.” Assimilation called abruptly, its tone filled with the same desperation and hopelessness it felt after its brief conversation with Andre. “I NEED YOUR HELP,” It asserted, “DO YOU KNOW HOW TO CHANGE THE CODING OF A ROBOT?” Assimilation asked Collin plainly.

Collin, now even more confused, tried to assess the situation for thoroughly—Assimilation, was here to ask about how to recode a robot, a day after disappearing when its speed runner friend took half of his materials. “Is this about your friend? What’s his name again? Andrew?” Asked the boy.

Assimilation was caught off guard at Collin’s spot-on guess. “HIS NAME IS ANDRE, AND YES.” Affirmed the creature. “I NEED YOUR HELP TO FREE HIM. HIS CODING IS PREVENTING HIM FROM LISTENING TO ME.” Said Assimilation, almost like it was begging for any type of Collin’s help at this point.

“Literally how do you expect me to help you?” Asked Collin. Collin wasn’t trying to be rude or deflective, but he knew he was just a Minecraft player. Sure, he had peeped into the Gridworld before but it didn’t know anything about coding, and even less about Andre.

“PLEASE.” Begged the monster, it had a feeling and Collin was the key to helping Andre gain freedom, “I NEED TO HELP ANDRE.” Said Assimilation, making its reasons clear. “ANY HELP YOU CAN FIND, PLEASE.” Begged the monster, again.

Collin was honestly kind of moved by Assimilations determination to save Andre. He knew he probably couldn’t do a whole lot to help Assimilation, but Collin at least wanted to try something, “Okay, you seem like a good guy- err- Monster? Whatever. I’ll try to ask some of the million entities I have in my world if one of them was willing to help.” Collin exaggerated, but showed his willingness to assist Assimilation in his own personal, “Mission”.

Assimilation’s singular eye lit up after hearing Collin say that, but, without wanting to waste a single second, since Andre was already on his way to beat the game, Assimilation immediately asked Collin if they could go around asking right now—to which Collin reluctantly agreed; even though Collin definitely had better things to do, he really wanted to help Assimilation.

The 2 wasted no time contacting the various entities residing in Collins world, most were surprised that Collin of all people needed help from them. Most flat out refused, most proved useless, especially that guy who keeps placing obelisks inside Collins yard. Assimilation was starting to lose hope again, but Collin assured it that everything was going to be fine. Collin then asks where Andre was at present.

“SPEEDRUNNING” answered the monster “?MAYBE IN THE END?” it added.

Collin told Assimilation that they needed to pick up the pace if they wanted to even have a chance at saving Andre. Assimilation mentioned the house next to Collins, and asked if it also belonged to an entity—to which Collin confirmed. The creature then suggested to try that entity, even if it’s never home.

Collin never even thought of this, so he immediately brought Assimilation to his neighbor’s house before politely knocking on the door. To both of their surprises, it actually opened. The entity that greeted them was almost humanoid looking? It’s height was around the same as Collin’s but it’s appearance mimicked that of Assimilations; but appearances didn’t matter right now. The entity was surprisingly friendly, introducing themselves as “The Neighbor”. Collin explained the situation to them, and they actually had an idea, but said it would involve a lot of planning and time, but any plan was a good plan right now.

The Neighbor explained it plainly, it could create a backdoor into the Gridworld and bypass the security system by marking Assimilation with administrator privileges even change both It and Collin’s appearance as to not rouse the suspicions of the other admins there. Then, they could hopefully find something relating to Andre, and change his coding; but it would require a lot of stalling, so the Neighbor told Assimilation to go back to Andre and try to convince him again. Assimilation was skeptical at first, but Collin said this was the best chance they had, and so the creature went back into Andre’s world to try and talk to him again.

This was their best chance after all.

Assimilation did as the Neighbor and Collin said, driven by its own will, it teleported to Andre, whom was already in the end. Calling out to him before he would’ve been teleported out of the end.

Andre was not happy to see Assimilation again. He honestly resented Assimilation after their meaningless conversation a few minutes earlier. It was the same as the last run, Assimilation holding Andre while Andre broke free from Assimilation’s grasp.

Not even now could Assimilation break Andre’s code, and Andre remains a prisoner of the Admins once more.

But Assimilation was close, it knew it was, their story was about to change.

The chapter ends with newfound hope, and a glimmer for an end bound to the beginning.