What is Power?

SELF LIFE

Inside a dark apartment in the east wing of the Custody’s building, lying inside a cradle lit by the faint azure lights of the crib mobile hanging above it, the only light source of the room, a placid slumber had overtaken a baby, with a fluffy toy still in his hand. Minoto sat next to it, gently rocking the cradle back and forth, his eyes fixed at his child.

Images of Tawa flash through his mind. The days they spent together, the care and the help they gave each other through work and daily life. Her power, her passion, her love. And now, the flashes in his mind were all that remained. Minoto didn’t know what to do, and had spent the past few days locked in his room, caring for his child, and blaming his lack of strength and resolution as the cause of Tawa’s end. He wanted to bring peace to the wretched society he lived in but had lately started to doubt this belief. Unwanted questions rose from the darkest depths of his mind, asking him if the world deserved the peace he wanted, telling him to look for a personal peace, make his personal space bloom and leave the rest of the world to rot like it so desperately seems to want. He could usually push away these unwanted wants, but, without Tawa’s support and warmth, fighting them became harder and harder.

A knock came from the door. He didn’t bother to answer. A few seconds passed, and a thin envelope slipped underneath the door. Slowly rising from the chair, Minoto dragged his feet to it and opened it. A thin card in the shape of a crown, bearing the azure logo of the Custody in orange borders. This card was the requirement to access the highest floors of the building, where the overseer resided. There was nothing else in the envelope, but he knew this meant the overseer wanted to see him now. He pondered on what to do for a minute, unsure if his current status was fit for such a prominent visit, but eventually decided to answer the call. Outside of the room, two people were waiting for him.

“You are to meet the overseer.” One of them said. Their uniforms were slightly different than that of a custodian, with orange details that contrasted with the iconic azure of the Custody.

“Yes, I’ve seen the envelope. I’m going to her office now.”

“The overseer is not in her office right now. Let us escort you to her.”

Before Minoto could answer, they grabbed his arm and walked him outside the building. As they entered a vehicle with darkened windows, the pads of hard rubber attached to its bottom compressed into the ground.

“Koita’s Great Theater of Mediaturgy.” The person sitting on his left spoke out loud.

“Departing.” The car answered with a soft rumble. A half-transparent map detailing the path appeared before the front windscreen. The car lifted from the ground and accelerated towards its destination.

An everlasting minute passed in silence.

“Why did the overseer call me? Are you her bodyguards?” Minoto asked, trying to hide the discomfort.

The people sitting next to him didn’t even bother to answer, and the ride continued in silence. After ten painful minutes, the vehicle had reached its destination. The base of the theatre was very simple, a plain white cube with a rectangular door and rectangular windows but the eyedeas gave the building an ostentatious look, creating a great dissonance between the building and the augmented reality. Feathered wings of light sprouted from the big cube’s sides, swinging up and down to create a small tornado of colored clouds. Hurtling inside of it were screens projecting clips of the theater’s most famous plays. The plain wall was embedded with AR decorations: weirdly shaped columns, pediments covered with shiny jewels, depictions of battles and love stories carved out of immaterial marble, and semi-transparent statues climbing out of the cement. The only detail that wasn’t AR was the logo of the MADAM, smiling lips of multiple colors surrounded by white, sticking out above the main door.
They got out of the car and entered the building, using their eyedeas to open the otherwise hidden main entrance. Climbing a grandiose set of stairs and opening a luxurious curtain, they reached the gallery, where the overseer was seated in the shadow of her personal balcony.

Everyone knew Mazabo Progoras, local billionaire of Koita, co-founder of the Custody and deeply involved with the city’s politics. Almost no one, however, knew of her position as overseer, or how she had gotten such power. Minoto didn’t know her age, but he knew it was not an age any normal human could reach. But Mazabo didn’t try to hide her wrinkles, on the contrary, she was proud of them. Each line on her skin was a year she passed in a position of utmost wealth. Instead of hair, a pattern of slits that let out mist decorated her cranium. Her spectacled face peaked out from a cloud of gas the same color as the smoke of her electronic smoking pipe. The smoke reflected on her white suit, which shined even without the need of an eyedeas.

“Good evening, overseer.” Minoto was brought to sit next to her.

“Isn’t art beautiful?” She said without moving her head from the show.

Minoto looked over to the stage. An actress in a white gown was dancing together with the projection of an anthropomorphic animal. Unlike the actor’s clothes, the projection wasn’t augmented reality, but a sea of three-dimensional lights projected onto the stage. The various parts of its body were a mix of colors, made to reflect the AR clothes of the public. The moment Minoto sat on his seat, the projection’s color darkened to mimic his black suit. The actress and the projection acted sometimes in tandem, sometimes as if they were alone. It was during these last moments that the actress phased through her partner of light, trying to ignore it but still flinching every time the lights went through her body.

“It’s weird,” Minoto tried to comment on the performance, “I can’t understand what the play is about, but for some reason it’s making me feel emotional.”

“I’m glad you understand.” Mazabo answered with a smile. “While we’re on the subject, there is another beautiful piece of art I’d like you to see.”

She gestured to a brawny man standing beside her. A small, black cube reached the overseer’s hands. She licked her finger and pressed it on the box, which opened after a click. Inside of it, sitting on a red cushion, was a small, decorated piece of metal. It was the image of a stylized drum sitting inside long and narrow petals, giving it the look of a jasione flower, surrounded by an olive branch.

Mazabo picked up the small, ornate artifact and put it between Minoto and herself.

“This is an answer.” She said with her raspy and deep voice. Minoto looked at it for a second, but, unable to understand, looked back at the overseer.

“I’ve heard about your loss,” she continued, “Sadly, these are the risks that come with this job. You are free to quit any time you want. It’s a sensible answer, no one will blame you for choosing it. But at a time like this one, I believe having multiple answers can help us not let the events that afflict it take over our life. This small object is a chip, and a new answer to your problem.”

“What is it for, overseer?”

“It won’t bring back Tawa. It won’t ease the pain of mourning. But it will give you the strength you are missing. Any day that passes is another day where the chimera can strike again. We don’t want more lives distraught because of it. This world doesn’t need more hate, and with this chip you can be the one to bring us closer to peace.”

Minoto stared at the chip, but his eyes were looking back at his life. “I-I… I’m not fit for this kind of life. I was never able to save anyone, I just helped when I could and hoped it would be enough. I’m not enough for this world.”

“We’re a greedy people. We know our limits and we constantly ask to surpass them. But we don’t need to reach such ambitious objectives, as long as they’re there and we keep trying to get close to them, it’s going to be ok. I won’t ask you to fight for me or the Custody, Minoto. What I’m giving you is the chance to fight for Tawa, for your family.”

“I don’t know if that’s what she would have wanted.”

“But is it what you want for her?”

From the stage, the music rose up into a climax of organs, trumpets and violins. A strong wind blew from below. The projection of light blew up into a million sparks that quickly dissipated in the air, and the room went dark.

“…What does it do?”

Mazabo inhaled from the pipe and restored the cloud that the wind had blown away from her head. “This is the Kei. Human technology. Who knows how long it’s going to be before we’re able to make it ourselves? It was made to connect an AI with every nearby machine. A sort of automatic hack to force access into a device. Of course, you know what this means.”

“Will I be able to control people?”

“People might be too hard, but it won’t matter. There are many machines out there that are better than people.”

Minoto's eyes wavered. Could he shoulder the responsibility of such a power?

The curtain behind them moved and another bodyguard appeared.

“A man has gone rogue in Shinemi square. We suspect a powerful glitch has taken over his body. He has already taken down multiple custodians. We are struggling.” she whispered between them.

Mazabo, hinting a smile, looked into Minoto’s eyes.

***

The light of the sun, filtered through the eternal wall of dark clouds, painted the square grey. Next to a bright fountain, stood a man whose eyes had turned copper. Alone, as the square had already been evacuated, he was desperately punching the water sitting in the small pond of a fountain. The growls he produced had an uncanny resemblance to a human voice, but they would never be attributed to a person if heard blind. As if answering his aggressions, the water rose to hit him in the face. Pushed to turn around, for a brief moment the man saw the barrel of Minoto’s gun, before a flash of light ate his head. The body flew into the murky water of the fountain while Minoto stood there to watch. Underneath a lily pad, the water around the glitched man’s head began to bubble. Water dripped from his clothes as he rose, and a brown smoke fired out the hole where the left side of his head once was.

“I don’t suppose you’re willing to talk?”

The man’s body suddenly distorted. His torso stretched out of his body and the sound of his bones rearranging filled the air, while his skin was pulled so hard that it started to rip open and seep blood. His hands turned into long claws and carelessly threw them at Minoto.

Two glowing bullets rapidly pierced the glitched man’s arms, but the projectiles couldn’t stop their movement and Minoto was launched into the outdoor tables of a bar. The glitch’s arms were used more as whips than limbs. Minoto was there to try out his new powers, but stopping the glitch was his main priority. He threw an EMP grenade at it, which stopped the copper smoke from overflowing out of the glitch’s head, together with all its movements. But this wasn’t the end of the fight, glitches went against normal programming, and overruled most processes. In the few seconds Minoto had gained, he looked around for a way to end the glitch, but all he could see was the greenery of the bar’s decorations.

To stop a glitch, you needed to stop the femtobots from going berserk. Thankfully, they became powerless when there was a small number of them, so the best way to get rid of a glitch was to either destroy it completely or separate it in many small parts, making it lose all power.

“Think outside of the box” he remembered Tawa telling him this was the advice that most often saved her from tough situations.

The thick cloud of smoke resumed to gush out of the glitched man, faster than ever. Minoto ripped a bonsai tree planted in a pot that had fallen from a table and firmly held its trunk. He closed his eyes and began to think about the femtobots it was made of. The roots morphed and shifted into a round hilt and the branches rearranged into a sharp blade. He launched himself at the glitch and swung his weapon. The now sharp wood clanked on the man’s skin. His carefully aimed slashes pierced the glitch’s stomach and cut it open, creating a second fountain of smoke. As Minoto flung his weapon at him, leaves kept detaching from its branches and flung themselves at the glitch, digging themselves into his skin like darts on a dartboard. The attack kept working, until, piercing the glitch’s arm with the branch, its skin began to wrap around the weapon like slime and snapped in two. Minoto backed away from the monster, but let the bonsai spring into a thousand spikes that burst from inside its arm and ripped it off the glitch’s main body.

Uncaring of the lost arm, the monster began jumping around the square to land on Minoto, but each time it landed, Minoto made roots burst out of the asphalt below, puncturing its body full of holes. The glitch rapidly learned this pattern, and as wood sprung from the ground, it turned its body to avoid it. It stretched more and more, until the body became but a forgotten memory of the human shape it had before. Slithering towards Minoto with its limbs tip tapping around the place, the face twisted, and the teeth grew like a barbed wire lining its head. It had gained speed in its current movements, and Minoto had a hard time keeping up with it.

“Think outside of the box.” he closed his eyes and focused. He decided to take the power it was throwing on the nearby life and push it inwards. His insides began to feel electrified. He could feel his will increase and strengthen. His eyes opened flashing a deep blue color, and before he noticed, he was dodging the glitch before his brain told him to move his muscles. His body still followed his will, but now moved on its own. Around his waist, his skin transformed and became a belt of blades that spun around itself like a saw blade, cutting through the monster that had tried to wrap itself around him. He spread his hand around the glitched man’s neck and from his fingers grew small needles that impaled it and let out an electric shock. The monster screeched and began thrashing around, pushing Minoto away. It plunged its hand into the earth, getting a grip on the rocks below but breaking many bones in the process.

A boulder flew over Minoto’s head and crashed into the head of the spinning drill that his hands had turned into. Digging through the rock with his whole body, Minoto jumped up in the air and dived towards the glitch’s head. Its arms swung and its jaws opened with the intent to maul him, but, to the monster’s surprise, Minoto phased through everything and vanished in the shadow behind him. Before it could turn around and realize that the Minoto who had jumped at him was nothing but an illusion of its own eyedeas, the real one had sped towards it on small wheels that grew under his feet, with the front of his body turned into a meat grinder. An explosion of rust-colored smoke filled the square, and nothing remained of the glitch.