What is Purpose?

SELF LIFE

The snow sped past his face as he jumped from rooftop to rooftop. Jets of pressurized air pushed him into the air, dressing arches in the sky with his own body. His eyes shined blue against the dark, cloudy sky. Minoto made his way to the research lab facing Daishori Square. The laboratory occupied the first four floors of the building and was entirely run by the Vivere. Its entrance was already surrounded by a couple of Ogun cars, with the officers waiting behind them. Minoto landed on top of the building, his fall slowed down by the air escaping his feet. He quietly went down to the bottom floor, where a couple of terrorists had set up a miniature fusion bomb. The device used the same concept as a hydrogen bomb, but in a much smaller scale. Still, its effects were devastating, and could easily turn the first few floors into a molten ball of fire.

The doors morphed around Minoto to let him through without making any noise, and he reached the terrorists. Their faces were hidden by AR masks that mimicked the chimera’s visor. There weren’t many, but some groups of people were “inspired” by the chimera's terrorist acts. Although they had never met it, they shared a common feeling of hatred towards authorities and desire for change.
Minoto stayed hidden and got close to them. With a small remote hack, he made their eyedeas recognize his own body as see-through, projecting the environment behind him on himself and effectively making himself invisible to the terrorist’s eyes.
He slammed one of the terrorists on a scale built on the desk in front of him, which quickly morphed to encase his head and lock it on place. The other began blindly shooting behind his partner until his weapon turned into a metallic bouquet and stopped functioning. Coming out of his invisibility cloak, Minoto pinned the terrorist on the wall.

"Where is the bomb?"

"Kill me now!"

"You would prefer dying in the name of the Chimera? A random person you've never met?"

"The government has ruined our lives and is trying to hide it!

"You're just parroting things you heard from others. You are willing to lose your life for ideals that aren't even yours. What you've been told is wrong, and even if it wasn't, what do you think destroying a laboratory is going to get you?"

"Our voice will be heard!"

"They're going to rebuild it. And in a couple of months, they'll forget you. Maybe even less."

“We live in a cardboard box! Our mother died because she couldn’t afford to buy the medicines that she needed to survive! What do you expect us to do when the medicines this laboratory makes have more value than her life?!”

“Terrorism isn’t the answer. You want to be heard by the people, but those people will hate you for destroying a laboratory researching medicines, and your just cause will be associated with this terrible act. The end doesn’t justify the means.”

The terrorist answered by spitting on the custodian's face. His expression remained blank.
Minoto's hand was already spread out on the terrorist's head. His fingers began to slowly creep around his face, extending from the hand like a snail extending the neck out of its shell, growing thinner and thinner as they crawled over the terrorist's skin. They coiled around his eyes and slowly made their way underneath the eyelids.
The terrorist struggled in a panic. His mouth let out incoherent pleas of help as he tried to detach Minoto’s hand from his face. But Minoto’s strength overwhelmed him.

“Don’t move. I’m accessing the footage of your eyedeas.”

Minoto clearly saw the bomb being hidden under a bathroom tile, and a virtual timer being turned on at 10 minutes. The footage was recent, but he didn't have much time.
Throwing the terrorist to the ground, he rushed to the toilet, pushing everything aside. He smashed his now metallic hand on the floor and, without even looking at the timer, grabbed the device. He began jumping through the ceiling, his feet boosted by blasts of air. The cement crumbled around him as the other hand had turned into a battering ram. He jumped from floor to floor until he reached the roof. With the biggest boost yet, he launched himself into the air, and the pavement under his feet cracked around the air let out by the jets. The bomb was propelled into the sky and eaten by the clouds.

The dark mass of gaseous water that tucked away the sky lit itself with bright, orange colors, finally giving the cosmos behind them a chance to show themselves. The now bright clouds split open and, for the first time during this mission, Minoto's expression changed to a curious one. It was his first time looking being the clouds, but what dazzled him weren’t the stars, for none were visible. Green, red, yellow, blue. These were the colors that painted the dark heavens with their soft glow, a river of dim watercolor paint lazily flowing in space.

The immeasurable second of awe came to a close when the clouds quickly closed back into themselves, jealousy keeping their treasure from undeserving eyes.
The shockwave of the bomb reached Minoto and sent him crushing back into the roof. The entire construction shook.
He got up and walked to the edge of the roof. Looking down he noticed a woman walking past the laboratory, ignoring all the chaos and Ogun cars. The building stopped shaking when a small chunk of rust, growing off the side and hidden by the AR, broke off from the building and began falling towards her.

"Jeez." Minoto sighed.

He launched himself towards the woman, surpassing the speed of the falling rust. He tackled her and pushed out the way as the rust crashed onto the walkway behind them.

“Are you ok?”

“Sorry, I was working at a project!” The woman said while still moving her eyes around the place, interacting with her eyedeas. “I really hope this won’t slow down my schedule.”

Minoto was hit by a wave of nostalgia. It hadn’t been long since he started working as a custodian, but before that, he used to go from meeting to meeting while working at his eyedeas, he even worked while showering, just to make sure he’d meet the number of hours needed in the day. He had almost forgot. He accepted this job hoping to improve this aspect of people’s life as well. What was the difference between this worker and those terrorists?
He brought the woman to the Ogun officers and decided to head to Wafi, his guardian. He was confident that the Custody had the means to improve society’s situation, and only now he wondered what the Custody was doing about that, if it was doing anything at all.

But Wafi denied him as soon as she understood his intentions.

“You can’t decide the actions of the Custody! I know you’ve gotten a big promotion, but you’re not the overseer yet.” The guardian reprimanded him.

“I’m not deciding for the Custody, this is what it should have always been about, making sure people live a peaceful life. This involves not letting them know about the femtobots, dealing with glitches and external influences, but I believe that making people happy should also be a main part of our job.”

“That’s a valid campaign speech, but we’re a company, not a political party. If you want to change society then ask the government.”

“Guardian Wafi, we all know a government only has its power as long as its vaults have money. This isn’t a question of politics, it’s about what the Custody could do if it just tried.”

“I understand what you mean, Minoto. Truly, I want peace too, but this isn't something we can decide. There isn't much I can do..." Wafi fell silent. She looked at Minoto's eyes, dark, big, wishful.

"Maybe Pukiba Netestin can." She said, but her voice lacked confidence. "He's... in a special position in the Custody. He might have more influence.”

"Special position?"

"You'll understand once you see him. If you manage to get his endorsement and go to the overseer, you could have a chance. But you're setting up a life of disappointments. I fully disapprove of this choice, but the life is yours."

"You have my thanks, guardian Wafi. As for my life... there isn't much else to do with it. What is left I give to my kid."

***

There wasn't much information about Pukiba Netestin. He had a huge laboratory all to himself in the hills outside of Koita and spent his life there. Very dedicated to his job, unknown age but probably as old as overseer Mazabo. His official job was researcher, but he was apparently given the position directly by Mazabo when he wasn't even in the Custody.

"It definitely seems like she gives him special treatment." Minoto thought out loud while sitting in the pilot seat of his apter helicopter. The vehicle was thin could only fit another person behind the pilot. In place of the rotor, it used a similar technology to the one cars and bikes used to hover, making it able to fly short distances.

Minoto landed on the laboratory's heliport. The facility was shaped like an edgy dome, lacking in curves, it was a collection of polygons stacked on top of each other, and oddly had no eyedeas implementation to change its colors or add to its form. It was a dark eye in what little remained of the outskirts' vegetation.
Minoto rang the bell, weirdly also analogical and not tied to the eyedeas, and waited in silence. The door opened, but no one was there. He made his way inside and entered a different world. The air was painted blue, but the walls and rocks around him reflected all the colors of the rainbow. The ground was uneven and covered in dirt. A weak breeze flew in from unknown places. Minoto entered a small field and rustled trough tall red grass, his feet now stepping on soft sand, while pink leaves and green flowers fell from trees of coral.

He wandered around this colorful forest, until the soft cry of an unrecognized animal brought him to who he was looking for:
A white-haired man was sitting on a rock. His eyes were of an azure so bright they almost looked white. His long hair fell inside an old-style sleeveless shirt and reached the carmine grass growing around him. His hands, thin and full of veins, were tinkering with the body of a small animal. Many different parts from various kinds of animals sat around him, thoroughly cleaned, and kept as if they were pieces of a precious toy.

"Are you Pukiba Netestin?" Minoto asked, not looking away from the peculiar animal that the man was fidgeting with.

"I'm the human of the enclosure, yes." He answered with a smile on his face, but without stopping his work.

The animal was a small race of dog, a pug, but its fur was a dark shade of purple and multiple fins came out of various points of its fat body. The fins, which came out of its back and replaced both the front legs, the back legs, and the tail, resembled those of a Betta fish. They looked like they were made of cloth and had hundreds of creases that wrapped around themselves. The animal lied on its side while Pukiba stroked its short fur with his index finger.

“What are you doing?” asked Minoto.

“Following the will of nature.” the man answered.

That looks like the opposite of nature, is what Minoto thought, but he decided it was better to ignore the issue. "I'm Minoto Tonpura, a custodian. I’m here to talk about the Custody, and the changes it could bring to our society."

"Custody and change are inseparable, but not for the reason you think."

“The Custody has the power to bring huge changes to the world, even just with the technology it hides from the public. I know it's hidden because of the dangers that it might bring, but I think that with the right precautions we might be able to make the world a better place for the people living in it.”

“But the world is already a beautiful place, just look at it!”

“Aren’t you aware of all the suffering that goes on outside of this dome?”

“I don’t care if there is life on Mars, I’m happy with having a good life here on Earth.”

“I understand you might have been here for a long time, but the pain of the people isn’t happening that far away. Really, it’s just outside the door. Don’t you want them to be happy?”

“The people on Jupiter’s moon still haven’t recovered from the union’s fall.”

“Sorry sir, but you’ve lost me there. We don’t have extraterrestrial colonies. Let’s focus on the issue at hand. Do you know why the Custody isn’t using the knowledge it has for the people?”

“But it is, or else you wouldn’t know it. The only thing is, the Custody doesn’t get to decide.”

“Why not? Who is stopping us?”

“It isn’t called the Liberty, is it? We are bound by the rules and to go against them would make you external influence. We must follow the purpose the humans gave us.”

“The rules can be changed!”

“And that is what the chimera is trying to achieve! You two are sides of the same coin.”

“I’m not a terrorist. I’m trying to bring change through peaceful means, not destruction.”

“Don’t forget, little custodian, that even though the two sides of the coin are different, their worth is still the same.”

“I’m sorry but I have to disagree. You can put peace and destruction on the same level. What about the lives that have been lost because of the chimera?”

“What lives?” Pukiba laughed from the depths of his old lungs. He kept on laughing until his body couldn’t handle it anymore and began coughing. But as he coughed, a brownish mist was pushed out of his mouth.

“...What is that?” Minoto asked, pointing out the shiny mist.

“What a redundant question.”

“Are you… glitching?”

“I have been like this since before you were born!”

“How is that possible? Every glitch I’ve met immediately lost all control. How can a glitch be sentient?”

“Nothing can defy the laws of physics, but the laws of physics can defy us. What you’ve seen is nothing more than machines acting out a program. We call it a glitch when it’s not the program we want. But I like to believe, and I’m sure you would see it too if you could understand them, a glitch is simply a machine doing what it wants to do, and not what it was programmed to do.”

Minoto looked around himself and noticed that the wind blew a fine reddish powder off the grass surrounding them. The rusty grains revealed a green color underneath them, but it quickly oxidated into rust.

“This whole place is glitching!” Minoto exclaimed, putting a hand over his mouth and nose. “You say it’s nature, but what I see here is a bomb ready to explode! How can I know if you are someone who has somehow managed to control a glitch, or just a glitch that has learned to speak?”

“That,” Pukiba laughed, “Is a great question! I could never come up with such a question, as I don’t see the difference between the two things, and for the same reason, I could never come up with an answer.”

“Pukiba Netestin, I can’t leave you without doing something. It is my duty to destroy glitches, but that is only because of their inherent danger. How can I know you won’t go out of control? How can I know you won’t glitch all the life around you?”

“I could ask you the same questions.” Pukiba looked at Minoto in the eyes with a big smile.

“I am in full possession of my senses.”

“Isn’t the chimera as well?”

“This is not about the chimera!” Minoto screamed.

The old man laughed. He laughed and coughed as smoke came out of his mouth and tears of rust came out of his eyes.

“I can assure you,” he said between his laughter, “That I would never betray my nature’s will!”

“Then I’ll have to stop you before you lose control.” Minoto said as his hand turned into a long and thick knife and approached the man.

“I’m innocent! I haven't hurt any flies yet! I thought you wanted to stop this. Didn't you want to bring change through peaceful means?”

Minoto stopped. Pukiba began clapping his old hands.

“Before you say anything," Pukiba continued, keeping his smile, "Let me tell you that you are right! Your objective is to destroy me here and now, going against it would turn you into external influence. Just like the chimera!”

At yet another mention of the chimera, Minoto screamed in anger and jumped at the man, pinning him to the ground and pointing the knife at his neck. Minoto breathed quickly through his mouth, Pukiba looked at him in silence.

“Are you in full possession of your senses?” The old man's bright eyes, surrounded by rust, shone through strands of white hair that fell on his face.

Minoto’s knife stabbed the ground, then quickly turned back into a hand.

“I’ll ask the overseer.” Minoto gritted his teeth.

He stood up and went for the door. He had no intention of turning back, but he changed his mind when he heard Pukiba's voice behind him.

“Justice is subjective, little custodian!”

An old man with long, white hair stood in the middle of a patch of tall, carmine grass. Walls of various colors surrounded him, and an animal that looked like a hybrid between a pug and a betta fish swam graciously through the air around him.