05 – Revenge kill

The halls of the castle were littered with little things, trinkets, clothes and stands of armor. The shimmering of such opulence was so blinding, that walking through the large corridors was nauseating rather than awe-inspiring. The floors were covered in furs, carpets, soft curly hair of vanquished magical beasts.

In the middle of the maze, the throne was a watchtower. The panopticon of this stone and glass prison, where the very air carried the heaviness of the large slabs of dark rock that made its walls. Upon the throne, gazing upon the little ants that moved about in his little glass box, the king yawned.

There they were, the four returning heroes. There they were, perfectly fine except for a missing fifth that was nowhere to be seen. There they were, walking confidently and proudly.

He turned his all-seeing gaze away, to another point within his personal domain. All but the heroes, he could not bear the sight of those four. They were the reminder of a tragic fate averted, then made real all over again. A number, four, that he was coming to hate.

Yet, he could not bring himself to look away for long. His eyes would always go to rest upon the empty chambers next to his, studying every minute detail of that sumptuous bed, of the many stuffed toys. He looked inside the little mirror on the desk, he opened the many drawers and huge towering wardrobes. The thick layers of wood hid their contents, greedily accumulating clothes and dust alike.

At times, he hoped those sights would once again be filled with life, joy and laughter. His vision peered even deeper inside the castle, deeper inside the white and pink room. Behind a door, or maybe shut for too long inside the private bath.

What an embarrassing thing, if she was there and caught him peeking. But she was not.

A knock on the large, gold-plated double doors of his throne room. The servants opened the heavy slabs of metal, gargantuan machinery whirring to life to magically assist them in their endeavor. Pointless, useless. What was a kingdom now?

“Your majesty.” The four kneeled, and he snapped back to the present.

With a long, tired motion, he lifted himself up on his throne. The cold marble was hard and uncomfortable against his back, the very same marble that for so long had been his pride and joy. Now, he saw how blind he had been, to only value things like a throne, a mere object. An item.

“Rise.” He said, and his voice felt alien to his ears.

The four rose, and the king slowly went down the steps. One servant offered him the ceremonial sword, and he took it without words. He unsheathed it, and the shiny crystal of the blade reflected back to him the distorted image of himself.

A monstrous face gazed up at him from the glassy surface of the blade. The reflection of his inner self. A price he was forced to pay in full, however. He felt heat rise from within, and his face contort and wrinkle under the unkept beard.

The gazes of everyone in the room were upon him. He coughed, and straightened up. Gone were all the worries from his face, gone was the look of anger and sadness. Gone was the look of a broken man, and the king was once more.

“Heroes! I congratulate you, for you have vanquished the greatest evil all Sentients have ever faced. Not only this kingdom, but all of existence was in peril. It was thanks to your brave actions that we all can live to see the dawn of a new day.”

He went on, droning about grand words and feats of honor. Depicting the actions of men he didn’t even know, doing things he had no idea about. He talked, and hoped the hollowness would go away.

At the mention of Mateus’ name, he saw the look in their eyes. He saw one trying to make a comment, and the hero next to him stop him. He could see in their eyes and in their minds, because he too felt that way.

***

Reboot complete.

The blackness of the blurry mental landscape slowly receded, leaving place to more clarity of thought. The rat was still there, but due to his now reduced mass, Mateus saw it move twice the normal speed. It was like looking at a timelapse video, although he had no knowledge of such things.

The rat was ignoring him. To the small critter, Mateus was nothing more than a strange stone, nothing too dangerous. Its reaction had been a purely instinctive one, a swipe of claws embedded into its brain by some strange work of magic and natural selection.

Mateus just waited, perfectly still and immobile. He had a new plan, one that wasn’t so risky as the one before, but also one that would require a lot of patience. In the state he was in right now, he could not afford to act any other way.

The rat was coming and going, rabidly sniffing the air and looking for something. The hours passed, and the creature still roamed the same little square of cave, as if held in place by a forcefield. Eventually, it walked over the little silvery pebble that was waiting for it.

Mateus lashed out with a small, needle-like tendril of nanites. It snapped like a whip, and bored inside the brain of the creature in an instant. It couldn’t see it coming, it couldn’t react. Before it even knew what happened, it was dead.

Mateus morphed into a fluid shape, slithered over the dead thing, and started to absorb its biomass.

Damn, this tastes awful.

He didn’t know if it was because the critter was mutated, or if this was the taste of raw rat meat, but he had to deactivate his sense of taste in order to keep assimilating it. The process was slow, a bit slower than it was with moss, but certainly more efficient. More and more nanites joined his ever-growing body, and his mind accelerated to the point where his two processes could be reinstated.

He even felt Computer come back.

Using the movement process, he ordered for a small tendril of nanites to extend from his body in the direction of the inactive lump of nanomachines on the ground. The small pile of silvery dust was immobile, and had been ever since the rat severed it from Mateus’ body. As soon as the live tendril touched it, however, most of it melted into silver fluid and came back for him to control like the rest of his nanites.

A few, damaged ones were left behind. They were unrecoverable.

Can’t we use the metal in them?

Not enough mass to dissolve metallic bonds

Got it.

While he waited for the rat to be digested, he began to notice that as his mass increased, his mind felt sharper and sharper. He kept allocating the excess computational power to his processes, so that his perception of time stayed normal, but even then he felt increasingly better.

Sated, even, if only for a moment.

In the end, he gave the final bit of extra power to Computer, so it could talk better.

I am grateful

You’re welcome!

I was thinking… how much do I need to eat in order to be able to assume human form?

You are still far from the required mass. I inquire as to why you desire that, however. I do not understand human motivations and emotions.

Ah, well, it’s because I want to go back to my friends and family! I need to look like a human, or I will get hunted down and destroyed like…

Is that what happened to the previous iteration of myself?

I’m sorry. It was my fault if you were destroyed. I didn’t know you were a living, thinking organism. If I did, I would have tried to talk to you first.

Do not worry. Diplomacy had been tried with my previous self, but to no avail. In fact, I think I am grateful events turned out to happen like this. I now have the chance to study and interact with a real human, and grow. I never had a purpose, beyond the two rules etched in my programming, but now I do. You gave me purpose, as soon as you were integrated into me. I promise to help you, however I can. Beware however, of other humans. Their nature was wicked, and dangerous, at least as far as I remember interacting with them. It would be wise if you tried to accumulate more power, grow more, before you went to the humans.