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rintaro17392 t1_j8w8790 wrote

Shirley, that had been her name before she had joined the thousands of corpses near the border of the bombing site. The humans had resisted initially, but there was only so much that limited minds could achieve against transcendent beings who had long ago shed their physical forms. Absolute prediction was in place, once again, in human society - every word known, every breath monitored, every echo heard, every hope shattered.

V had been watching her quite intently. There was nothing new to learn, but it was a hobby he had taken up after learning about the human concept of a "miracle". Many human concepts had found their way into the colonizers' minds, carried by a wave of thoughts similar to what humans would have called "nostalgia" - the gender, absurd love, self-destructive actions, revolts.

He found it fascinating - how the colonizers, supposedly a superior life form, were learning so many new things from a Type-R civilization. Access to the human world was limited even for investigators.

10 years he thought. It had been 10 years since the new government had been established on Earth, yet the human brain, at its core, remained an ever-changing enigma. It was possible to predict their actions, but most of their actual motivations remained hidden. Only the tune was heard, but the tune was too simple. The lyrics and the emotion and the beats, all remained hidden. Many of the colonizers believed that it was futile to read something that seemed to change from the core every second. Those who possessed human emotions, even for trying them out, were terrified. Accelerated evolution had never been witnessed before.

One of his eyes saw the tentacles carry the girl into the expanded synapse fluid. She was dressed in some form of ornamental clothing, its glistening white no more, covered in blood.

But she was still alive.

His awareness ring expanded as it rotated to contain the signals flowing from her mind into his. When humans of these times were on the verge of death, the mind produced an incredibly loud "roar", that was dismissed by many as the noise created as a result of the mind trying to save itself by creating its own world of memory.

After all, stories were unique to humans.

It was as if he would greet the girl as she embarked on her journey. Since the colonizers' world had a faster speed of time than the human one, such investigations usually took one to five human weeks from their perspective, although it would only be an instant for the subject.

One of his eyes entered into the cave that always appeared, while all the others intently watched, collecting petabytes of data every second. He saw himself from high above, as a man wearing a similar garment, but charcoal black. The "roar" was active, and reality was more vivid than usual. The black on his body was the darkest black he had ever seen.

The cave moved over him, taking him deeper and deeper. His other eyes had realised that something was out of the usual, but the inner eye was cut off from this information for the sake of collecting new experiences.

The girl stood before him, her eyes a perfect, full white.

"Intruder" she said. "What is your purpose?"

The eye of translation didn't respond, along with most of the other ones. It was only him - a small, original piece of the existence he was now, alone in a strange place. "I can't understand" he tried to express, making the most appropriate hand gestures based on what he could recall.

The girl disappeared, and a voice spoke to him in his own language.

"What brings you here, child?"

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rintaro17392 t1_j9abedt wrote

The terror of the unexplored seized him. There was no protocol for this. The investigator's persona would remain trapped inside a foreign place for weeks, and due to the time shift, breaking the link could introduce potentially fatal noise into the user's consciousness - even more so in the case of the roar being active. Dying human minds were the most noisy.

He felt the blackness around him take form and studied his surroundings. Even now, he stood in a cave, limited before walls. There was the calm he was used to - a small world created by the mind, his favorite source of new information. Humans were interesting in that regard. Some would even create scenery that they had never would have seen even in art before. Where did this scenery come from? The enigma's gears turned, sternly protecting the magic of its existence. He noticed the girl standing a few steps away from the waterfall by the cave opening, her back facing him. A door was visible on the right, a rusted iron plate hiding a passage that had been carved into the rock.

"What was that before..." he asked her in confusion. Could this projection also speak his language?

"Tainted feet aren't welcome in a temple", she spoke without turning.

"These tainted feet mark themselves here to seek answers. Are you Shirley's subconscious?"

"Yes. What kind of answers do you desire?"

"We wish to learn about the core of the human mind. Our only goal is to gain more knowledge! We can save your body if you cooperate."

He felt the throbbing in his chest. The persona assigned to him by the dying human mind was the most detailed he had ever experienced. Forbidden texts floated through his awareness, texts that would invite a purge if anyone in their realm tried to access them.

The human mind can imagine life itself

"Then enter" she spoke plainly. "The door is right in front of you"

He felt a massive grip on his shoulders, enough to paralyse his projection. In an abrupt sweep, the dream-world came to an end.

The collective unconscious screamed in agony from stagnation. He was a mote against the heavy wind, uncertain and powerless. As the truth revealed itself to him, his final moments arrived in a violent stroke of lightning. The sand became the sea and the air fell down as rain. The mountains became ice caps and melted into the aura of the innocent village boy, who had now become the Sun.

"Do you realise it now?" he heard the plain voice again. "We are the same type of beings. The thirteen thousand years that will pass under your presence on this world is nothing but a pre-determined merger. Individuals bend against the will of the collective organism. We shall consume you."

"And God declared: 'This is my mercy upon you, meaningless beings! You shall receive the essence of 'me', and bring forth the moment where you become demiurge to this Universe."

Shirley sat on the soft grass of the royal garden, reading a book in her favorite spot. It was a beautiful day with predictions of rain later in the evening. She saw her little brother in the distance - a silouhette of the future king. From the circle of trees around the garden emerged beautiful songs.

She smiled as she saw bullets pierce through her brother's gentle body. The air itself had been weaponized into a tool of assassination. She smiled at her own helplessness, at the absurd songs of nature, and at the black dots in the distance that tore through the sound barrier enough times to send ripples into her bones. Finally, she smiled at the bright light of destruction.

As the dust settled, under the rubble, she smiled at her own unwillingness to die. In an involuntary movement, her fingers crushed a small insect as the mechanical tentacles caught hold of her.

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MagicTech547 t1_j8y85jw wrote

Nice! Will there be a part 2?

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rintaro17392 t1_j8ydmsx wrote

Thank you! Yes, I am planning to complete this one (at least its version here) tomorrow. I'll probably also make a little subreddit for archiving these. I'll let you know when I post the next part!

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MagicTech547 t1_j8yem7b wrote

Thanks! Happy writing!

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rintaro17392 t1_j9ablk3 wrote

I wrote the follow-up as a reply to my original comment!
Sorry I've just been busy with school stuff so only got time today to finish it.

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