Faulty balance

Now, once again, they returned to the usual impasse, until something familiar gained their attention. An alarm they heard before roared, transporting all the participants to another virtual arena. Someone activated another device, this time for the seventh round, overseen by Zude, the full-metal CEO.

Each participant used the occasion to check on each other, especially the Drums, who shared info about each of their current predicament. They even left the others to take a lead on the order, just so they could talk a bit more and after much deliberation, they took the same decision-” We stay with them”.

Marc wanted to use the occasion to get a better look at Anna’s C.T.D, but even now, it was missing. She then received from the management a claw-like gun, which the girl immediately recognized. With that it was confirmed, Half was taken out of commission, leaving only their claw-weapon behind for their partner to defend themselves it.

The rest of the competitors learned something new as well- Even if the C.T.D is eliminated, if the patient can still go on, they will be forced to continue playing, no matter what. And the presence or absence of the C.T.Ds made a lot of difference in the contents, as the final scores of the round showed. Anna came last place, and as such had installed into her the crumbs of the prosthetics selection, a two-piece left arm, with no rotative joints. She could lift it up and down, had very limited left-right movement from her shoulder and it had no fingers, only a sharp knife instead of a palm.

As for the rest, Savan came in sixth place and while their new right arm was more mobile than Anna’s, it was a bit heavier than their left organic limb, which made the clopy lose balance from time to time. Marc and Anna tied for first place, but the boy used his status to avoid any operation done on him, while the girl remembered how exposed she actually was from her previous attack, and had the doctors replace her upper back and shoulders.

Her new prosthetics could be retracted or expanded, and formed from her neck, down to her waist a sort of poncho made from durable aluminum. If she crouched, it protected even more of her body.

Syna, Allan, Siranis, and Billy each also got limb replacements, with the first three getting basically new arms that worked like the flesh ones, while the last got sharp-edge legs that made it very difficult for him to walk around on, but his wooden face sketched no picture of his thoughts. His partner picked him up and sat on his shoulder, after which Serviceman took a sharp glance at his competitors, focusing especially on Angie and Vivar.

-----

Soon enough, the cubes hovered above them, slowly landing to pick them up. Syna and Angie let Vivar know that they found out about their mutual friend and advised him to tell the rest about it. And asked for an assurance that they could trust her. The hacker added a question as well.

-” Just to let all of you know, three interviews were done in the city, one with someone claiming to be Diaz Cid, the former champion. What do you think about this?”

Angie and Savan were the first to claim that it was probably fake, Marc abstained and Vivar understood her concern, but he was firmly convinced that he was the real Diaz, so the knight replied with his own question.

- “What is more difficult to do with our current technology, copy a human consciousness, transfer it or suppress and mold it?”

Syna bit her a lip, as she never thought of putting the problem from that perspective, but once she knew on what to redirect her attention-” On a scale? Copying is very difficult, probably impossible now to do it without damages to the copy and original mind; the transfer from a brain to a synthetic one is mid, while more possible, and the last option is the fastest, easiest, and…cheapest”, Syna replied with sorrow in her voice.

-” I understand your predicament. I advise you to stop thinking about it until Sovereign finishes his scan of the footage. Until then, try to get Ingress to understand you as well and make them work closely with you. I can promise you, as an ally, they will be indispensable”.

-----

The programmed nights of the Playground caught them once again, this time with less shouting, less pouting, and more thinking. A tension grew inside each of the separated groups, and neither knew how to handle it or even wanted to. Anna was paranoid now, keeping a distance between her and the others since they now knew that she was alone among them. Savan tried a few times to cheer her up, but each attempt was slapped away by the girl. Besides the fear, her resentment of Savan’s people made her even more aggressive towards the clopy, but tried to keep it to a minimum.

The latest attempt, though, drove Anna to her limits, but she didn’t snap with anger and vitriol, instead, only contempt and malice spewed from her tongue:

-” You and your kind are just poor imitations of us, created only so you can’t complain, can’t revolt and to just have that artificial smile plastered all over your face. All I, we wanted was to just leave this city and their stupid people and just…”

Savan sat down, parallel to the girl, at a comfortable distance for her. She, like every time it happened, didn’t address her insult about their kind, instead, they told her a story about two brothers they met. How the two knew nothing about the city, how they were excited to begin a new life in order to help their village and how they met the older brother a few days ago. In the end, Savan asked her a question they had wanted to ask a human for a long time.

-” Tell me, do you actually think a human could survive outside the city as they are now?”

-” What do you mean?”, grumbled Anna.

-” I don’t believe that”, continued Savan as she answered their question. “ Neither humans nor clopys could survive in the desert. I heard the stories of other groups, trying to make it, to build something. And I don’t think that they made it. The only ones that can not only just live, but thrive, are the ones like Vivar, Azin…Half.”

The girl didn’t know what to say to all of it, especially since it came from something she never considered able to have such thoughts. A C.E was supposed to just be an automaton that followed tasks, a set behavior and that’s it. But there it stood, to her side, one that appeared to be different from their pre-set models. Still, Anna thought that maybe it was just spouting back platitudes from something they read or heard somewhere, so they asked about it.

-” Well yeah, kinda. Not exactly what I said, but my main idea came from books, critics, novels, and shows I listened to and watched about situations like the one we live in. I don’t think I’m the only one that thinks that becoming more like the C.T.Ds might save us, but I got tired of waiting until someone proves it.”

-” You were listed as a willing participant, but I thought that it was just a marketing ploy”, responded Anna. “I and my brother didn’t. After we became unemployed for over a year, they captured us while we tried to sneak out of the city, and forced us to participate”. The girl stopped talking all of the sudden, with her face getting red as a tomato, and it was twitching between annoyed and flustered.

They sat in silence for a good few 10 minutes, with Savan waiting for her to continue or to say something. Anna still couldn’t get that feeling to treat the clopy as a normal person, but she did take the a first step.

- “ I’m sorry, ok? For being such a dick towards you, but if it’s fine with you, I would rather not go on with this conversation. For now. Can you just leave me alone?” she asked faintly.

Savan agreed and, using their right arm to prompt herself up, they put too much power into it and launched their entire body in a tumble. 

-“Learning curves, am I right?”, jokingly added Savan to cover for the mistake, while staring at the girl upside down. It didn’t get any giggle out of Anna, but a short snort, which was enough to bring a smile out of the clopy.

-----

Angie, Syna, and their new companion were having a feast for kings, especially since the Siranis were able to provide them with wild game from the Playground. 

-“ Giant rats with horns”, outlined a visible gluttonous miner girl, who seemed almost ready to dine on it while it was raw. Syna didn’t appear that excited about their banquet, but a roast later changed her mind on the subject.

Siranis wasn’t much of a shooter, but a sniper rifle with a computerized target guide and different types of bullets created by the C.T.D would make anyone a sharpshooter. Still, his skills weren’t the issue for the girls, they were more afraid of whom put him in the race, Robert. 

-“ Spy, voluntary or not, would still be a problem for us”, mentioned the hacker. So, after some thorough body-search and program check, they managed to find 4 listening devices just on him, while the C.T.D was infected with thousands of spyware and other such viruses. Easy to remove one by one, but a bother to do it for an entire swarm of those critters.

The spring cleanup couldn’t have finished more promptly, as just right after they were done with cleaning the two, Sovereign finished his scan as well.

-“ Conclusion: Found only three discrepancies, a bent elbow at a 4.5 degree more than humanly possible, a light dispersion that appears scratched, and virtual smudge on a robotic joint”. 

All of these could have been errors, or just small mistakes during the recording process, but they could also be “ Signs of virtual props. Fuck”, cursed Syna after kicking a rock. She requested to be left alone with her thoughts, which Angie and Siranis agreed to without fuss.