What is Choice?

SELF LIFE

Minoto's feet fell harshly onto the polished pavement of the hallway, until, step after step, he reached the elevator. As soon as he entered, the keypad asking for the floor showed up on his eyedeas. Instead of choosing a number, Minoto took out the Overseer's crown shaped card from his pocket and put it in front of himself. After a second of silence, the keypad disappeared, and the doors closed.
A bright light filtered through the gap of the doors as the elevator reached the top of the building. When Minoto stepped outside he was hit by a sudden gust of wind. The city of Koita shone below him, AR adorned in invisible lights by the eyedeas, and in front of him a railed walkway brought him to Mazabo's office, whose doors were patrolled by two guards.
He boldly approached them with the intention of storming through the doors, but they promptly stepped forwards, blocking his entrance.

"I need to talk to the overseer." Minoto said while staring at the door.

"The overseer is not currently in her office." One of them answered in a monotonous tone.

“Where is she then?”

“We are not allowed to disclose her location.”

Minoto stepped back and turned towards the elevator. Looking around, he saw that there were two cameras hidden above the elevator, pointing at the office doors. The moment he approached them the cameras shut down, at which point he turned around and jumped at the two guards, under his feet, two bursts of air, over his arms, pikes as sharp as a scalpel.
The guards morphed in response to the attack. One tried to evade the attack with two maces that took the place of the hands, but Minoto’s weapon reached the body before it could be stopped. The other turned just one hand into a spiked flail and managed to catch the pike using the chain that tied the flail to the body. Neither attack was fatal, the pike hit just shy of the guard’s heart.

“You betray the Custody.” The guard reprimanded him.

“I know my priorities.” Minoto raised his pike and jumped into a kick on the guard’s stomach, freeing his weapon. “Before using the Custody’s brain, I need to use my own.”

The other pike flew at the guard, becoming flatter and ready to stab the enemy’s approaching torso. It cut through the guard’s clothes and flesh, yet what flew wasn’t blood, but a limb. The guard had shielded the attack using their own arm. A web of wires poked out of what remained of the arm.
The flail was sent at Minoto’s stunned face, making him twirl on the spot and land in the arms of the other guard, who had gotten up despite the hole conspicuously letting air pass through their chest.

“You’re… phizos!” Minoto spit up blood.

The guard put the mace’s hilt over his neck and began strangling him. Minoto’s hands tried to pull the metal bar from his neck, but the guard boasted unnatural strength, even for a custodian. Minoto's body burst into a ball of needle-like spikes, emerging from his skin like a pufferfish and stabbing the guard full of holes. Turning his spiked back to the other guard's flail, which was hurtling towards him, he blocked the attack using the still body hanging behind him, which then flew at the enemy, thrusted forward by Minoto’s jets of air. The guard pushed the body aside, but behind it, Minoto had already leapt at him without turning around. Chest facing the sky, hands turned into chainsaws, he slashed through his body and sent it flying in two opposite directions.
“What kind of technology is Mazabo hiding from us.” A detached arm crawled on the ground, trying to grab him.

Minoto forced the office’s doors open and stepped inside. The room’s only light source were the lights of the city, storming in from the ceiling-tall windows replacing the wall on the opposite side from the door. The walls glittered with hundreds of white dots, used to project images anywhere inside the room. They reflected Koita’s lights on the pavement, a green circle encompassed by a thick azure line. At the base of the circle was Mazabo’s white desk, kept afloat at waist height by a hovering mechanism. The chair behind it, currently sitting on the ground but of the same style as the desk, was empty, like the rest of the room. Mazabo’s office didn’t need anything other than Mazabo herself.

There wasn’t much, still, Minoto looked around the room, searching for something that could tell him where Mazabo had gone. The white desk was thin but wide and had a direct connection with the projectors in the wall. Thanks to his powers, Minoto managed to hack the advanced security of the projector and accessed the history of previously projected images. There were many monuments, historical buildings, and some old houses. He didn’t know why Mazabo could be interested in them, but he knew that they were all under maintenance. One of the skyscrapers was actually visible from the office. He turned around to look at the AR covering the construction with a fake image of what the building was going to look like at the end of the maintenance. You normally couldn’t see behind the AR, which made Minoto both curious and suspicious, so he hacked his own eyedeas to turn it off and saw that behind the digital picture of the building the actual house was drenched in rust. All of the projections in the desk’s history were of very old buildings or monuments, which meant they were more likely to have rust built up.

“Rust is the reason I’m going to her; rust is the reason I find her. It’s all about rust, uh?”

The very last projection was of a monument called the Flying Creation. The construction, mainly a statue but with a museum and a gift shop built at the base, was initially proposed as a homage to a notorious writer who had won the Nobel prize for literature and had passed away but was then erected as a monument to all creative and intellectual freedom.

***

The monument was surrounded by a virtual cylinder, hiding its shape and signaling the people to stay away from the undergoing constructions. Minoto entered it and was immediately approached by an Ogun guard.

“Sir, this is a construction site, you can’t enter it without permission.”

“I’m a custodian.” Minoto said from behind the digital document that gave legal proof of his words, together with his name.

“Sorry to bother." He continued, "I need to talk to Mazabo Progoras, I was told she was here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry custodian Minoto, but I haven’t heard anything about a visit from Mazabo. As you can see, we’re just here to look over the prisoners.”

Over a circular base, the monument, several meters in height, overlooked dozens of prisoners in grey uniforms, chipping away at the rust formations along its body. At the peak of its beauty, the monument used to resemble a hand fused with a swan. Thumb and pinky were wings spread out to soar the skies, index and ring finger closed on themselves to turn into legs and webbed feet, while the middle finger was raised in the sky to mimic the swan's neck. The hand missed the swan's beak, but it kept its bright plumage.

Yet the white feathers were now a dark shade of brown, and the swan's body was riddled with prisoners, climbing on its sides like ants on a rotting apple.
Like snow in the first days of winter, the rust fell to the ground and gathered around the monument, where a second set of prisoners picked it up from the ground and brought it away.

“The rust is building up more and more these days,” the Ogun guard said while looking at the performance in front of him. “With all the work there’s to do, I’m almost happy the crime has been increasing!” he laughed at his own words.

“To think that we wish them the best when they still haven’t committed any crimes.” Minoto said, looking at the prisoners working away at the rust.

“They should’ve stayed out of trouble if they didn’t wanna be here. Their fault for being guilty.”

“Government’s fault for not preventing it. Could I go talk to a prisoner?”

“I’m sorry but I can’t guarantee your safety if you approach them. I also don’t want them to stop working, why do you even wanna talk to them?”

“If Mazabo’s not here, I might as well gain something from coming.” He started walking towards the monument, before turning around and pointing at the guard. “Also, don’t underestimate a custodian.”

He approached a prisoner who was struggling to fit the rust he gathered from the ground inside a plastic bag.

“It’s hard work, isn’t it?” Minoto said as he bent down to help him.

“Who are you?” The prisoner answered with a cold look.

“A friend of the guards.”

“Friend? Hmm… Is what I say to you legally binding?”

“Oh, no, not at all. I’m an employee at the Custody.”

“Then yes, it’s a hell of a hard work. I thought that when I went to prison I could at least rest, you know, tryin’ to make the best out of a bad situation, but in the end, I’m working just as much as before, except the food tastes as good as this rust and my privacy is gone!”

“I’m Minoto, what’s your name?”

“Nikki.”

“Say Nikki, does knowing how hard things are in prison make you regret what you did to get here?”

“Dude, you think I didn’t know how bad the lock up was? I regretted it before I even did it! I simply didn’t have a choice.”

“Can I ask you how you ended up here?”

“Absolutely! I needed a break. So, my grandparents actually met in Taiwan and—”

“Don’t try to buy time off of me. If an officer comes, I won’t stop them.”

“Fine, fine! …it was a joke.” Nikki put down the bag and sat on a small rock next to him.

“I was born in the slums. My parents both ended up there for different reasons but died for the same. The houses are built out of scrap metal, it’s not a surprise when they collapse during an earthquake.”

“Oh, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Then do something about the slums.”

Minoto was stunned by the sudden remark and ended up not answering it.

“Thought so.” The prisoner continued, “Anyway, I lived there most of my life until I was kicked out of the community, slept with the wrong guy, you know how it is, and I ended up homeless. In sending me away, the people of the slums took my house and most of my stuff, but they did leave me with something very important... which I immediately sold to buy an eyedeas and try to find a job. But, as you can guess, a homeless, unmarried, stinky man trying to find a job is a joke of himself. I think I applied for almost one hundred positions and at least 80 of them laughed in my face. I was struggling to survive, and neither the government nor the Vivere could have cared less about me. You know who cared? …Well?”

“Oh, I-I don’t know. Who?” Minoto, who had thought the question to be rhetorical, stuttered to answer.

“The yakuza did! One day a guy approached me, and he was all You can’t find a job? I can give you a job, you won’t even need the eyedeas. Of course I knew he was bad news, but what do you expect me to do?”

“You accepted the job?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t! And I’m not even talking about the prison, I think that at that point I could’ve died of starvation any day.”

“Then you’re here because of him.”

“Kinda. I got involved with trafficking drugs, smuggling weapons, grave robbing for necrobomancers, kidnappings, still for necrobomancers. Actually, I think the drugs too were for necrobomancers. I guess someone in the boss’s family was one of them.”

“Did you tell the officers who your boss was, by any chance?”

“Ha! I have a funny story about that, actually. I’ll tell you when I finish this one.”

Minoto scoffed, entertained by his way of talking.

“Anyway, one day one of the yakuza guys comes to me with a gun, a picture of a woman and a mirror. You have to shoot someone, he says, Choose.” He looked at Minoto for a second before continuing in a softer tone. “They’re sly, those guys. He knew I couldn’t kill someone, so he forced me to.”

The prisoner stopped talking. Minoto expected the story to continue, but Nikki kept staring at the floor. “I honestly don’t mind the prison.” He said, still looking away, “But that… That I regret.” The sound of rust falling mixed with the distant grunt of the prisoners working.

“But never mind with this mood, let me tell ya the funny story!” Nikki suddenly shifted his attitude.

“You asked me about my boss, right? To tell you the truth, I was scared that if I told them my boss’s name, I would end up sleeping with the fishes, or whatever they say. Well, you are never going to guess who the judge for my trial was!” He began laughing away at the irony of his story, until a guard heard him and screamed at him to go back to work.

“Thanks for the break, Custody guy.” Nikki said, as a guard brought him to his next working spot.

“Thank you for telling me your story… I swear that I’ll try to do something about the slums.” Minoto told Nikki, who simply answered by raising his arm as he walked away.
Minoto was ready to go talk to another prisoner, when an Ogun guard intercepted him.

“Sir, you don’t have permission to stay here. Let me escort you outside.”

“I’m a custodian, I’m here to—”

“This is an order.” The guard pronounced her words with a severe tone, projecting the image of a crown the same shape as the one etched in the card needed to reach Mazabo’s office.

Minoto grew silent. He looked at the guard, nodded, and complied with the order.

A small warehouse stood not too far from the monument, right outside the construction perimeters. The guard opened a door on its side, revealing that the main part of the warehouse was a dark pit surrounded by a walkway. A metal ladder led to the bottom of the pit, too dark to see.
Minoto walked to it and began descending. He expected the guard to do the same, but she stood by the door, looking at him disappear inside the hole.
As he plunged into the darkness, Minoto made two strong lights beamed out from his shiny blue eyes. The cave was big and silent, his steps echoed around the walls and back at him. During the descent, the temperature had dropped with him, making him ooze a white mist from his mouth. The only thing visible around him was the damp rock that made the pavement of the cave.

The floor suddenly began shaking. Out of the rock beneath, a weird looking feline jumped out of it like a fish out of water. Minoto stepped back to lean against the wall, but it began shaking up and down the moment he approached it. Behind him, all sorts of animals distorted their bodies and limbs as best as they could to keep themselves attached to the surface. A dark powder was shaken off of them as they moved around, giving the lights coming out of Minoto's eyes a brown tinge. He backed up, hoping the wall of glitched fauna wouldn't fall on him, but he noticed too late that he was surrounded. Glitches were all around him now, growling, shivering, waiting to attack. With a deep breath, Minoto morphed his body. Guns, blades, wheels, medieval weapons, everything that he could use to attack grew out of him. The wave of little monsters jumped at him.

And then stopped.

Before he could even begin to attack, everything froze on the spot. Some glitches hung mid-air, grasping onto the bodies below them. A second passed, then two, then the dark sea of mangled bodies parted open, and a dark figure walked out of the corridor of glitches, a hand raised into the air.

"Good evening, custodian Minoto." Minoto's lights bounced off her clothes, reflecting their bright white colors.

"Overseer Mazabo Progoras. What is the meaning of this? I've been meaning to talk to you, but the number of questions just keeps on increasing... Do you control the glitches?"

Mazabo remained silent for a second. Her eyes were half closed, pushed down by the gravity that time brought on her skin, but they were confident.

“We should talk in a more appropriate place. I’ll wait for you in my office. You already know how to get in, right?” The white mist seeping from her head mixed with the copper rust hanging in the air.

***

A different set of guards held the doors to the office open and closed them as soon as Minoto entered it. A glass of white wine sat on the desk and behind it, Mazabo was peeling a peach. A singular guard stood beside her, still as a statue.

"Custodian Minoto," she said, cutting a slice from the fruit and placing it on a cloth napkin next to the wine. "Are you looking for something?"

"Before we talk about the reason I’m here, I want to ask you something.” Minoto stood in the middle of the room. "What do you think of the yakuza?"

Mazabo had finished peeling the peach, putting four slices on the napkin. She picked one and dropped it into the wine glass.

"There is no need to dance around the issue, custodian Minoto." She spun the peach inside the glass with a small golden spoon lent to her by the guard. "The yakuza became an extension of the Custody many years ago. You can look at the bosses as incognito custodians." She tore a spoonful of the soggy peach from the glass and ate it.

"You need prisoners to get rid of the constantly growing rust, the number of criminals increases every day, and there are judges who have ties with the yakuza, which you control." Minoto's angry tone approached the desk. “Are you soliciting people in difficult situations to commit crimes because you need more laborers?”

"Yes." Mazabo answered, before eating another spoon. "The rust is a serious issue; we can't let it spread."

Minoto was left speechless by her nonchalant response.

"...Why not use machines?"

"The cost would be greater." She finished her last spoon of peach. "We're already paying for the prisons; it is merely a question of cost efficiency."

"Then it's true." Minoto clenched his fists. "The Custody truly has no compassion for other people."

"The humans left us with a plan, custodian Minoto. The rust isn't part of the plan, suffering is." Mazabo drank what remained of the wine.

“How can you prioritize some plan that isn't even yours over people's happiness? What even is the plan? Where are the humans? When was the last time we heard anything from them? Isn't the rust happening because they stopped sending us the anti-rust?"

"HHO," Mazabo's face became more serious, "Was pumped into the atmosphere to stop the rusting process. It's true that it has been a long time since the humans last sent us any. We can't know what happened, but we still need to follow their plan. We are researching how to produce HHO ourselves. Once said research is done, we will be self-sufficient, and the human's plan will be able to go on. Despite a couple of hiccups here and there, everything is going smoothly. We already have the next century planned out."

"Do we have to follow the humans?"

"You really are similar to the chimera." Mazabo let out a light chuckle. "We exist for and thanks to humans. Following their orders isn’t just our destiny, it’s courtesy. "

“How can you be so sure? How can their plan excuse so much suffering? Shouldn’t we use their knowledge and technology to make the world a better place?”

“A wishful dream. Suffering is a normal part of life. You want to take the ground from under our feet. Our golden house is built on solid foundations, but they need to be underground, otherwise the house will fall.”

“I believed,” Minoto paused, “that the Custody was the way to achieve a better society. My job is to keep society alive. In my mind that meant making people happy. But the Custody doesn’t care about that, it only wants to follow the human’s path, even if it costs them humans lives. That… isn’t just.”

“You want to change the world?” Mazabo asked, lifting herself from the chair. “You want to control the Custody? Here.”

She took out a small, black box from her pocket. Walking in front of the desk, she placed it on the table and turned to Minoto.

“That chip I gave you seems to work wonders, doesn’t it? Inside this box there is an upgrade to that. It also contains all the information one would need to be an Overseer.”

“…Why would you make me such an offer?”

“My job is to improve the Custody, following the human’s plan. Your use of the chip has been a learning experience for us and if we continue with it, we might reach new groundbreaking discoveries.”

“I’m not your guinea pig—” Minoto stopped. Mazabo could already control glitches, which were nothing more than femtobots acting up, and the chip Minoto used could make him act on the femtobots. But it was thanks to human technology, the Custody didn’t know how it worked.

“You want to control the femtobots!” Minoto exclaimed, “The chip you gave me does exactly that, but in a limited way. If you could control the femtobots directly, or even learn how to make them… You’d be on the same level as the humans.”

“My job is to improve the Custody,” Mazabo spoke before Minoto could continue. “But if you were in my position, you could change the world how you wanted. I’m offering nothing more than one of the many answers to your problem. A chance for you to reach my position.”

The black box stared at Minoto from the white desk. Behind the windows, Koita was as bright as ever.