Ever leap out of a car?
Here's your protagonist's first fight flashback: It fucking hurts.
Not a worry when living in the Medium though.
We all float here.
Now, where was I?
Ah yes.
Tuesday.
Tentacle Tuesday.
Since today is going to suck already; here's a history lesson:
The original, human, Tchaikovsky died of cholera. Just a random fact I remember.
The original, vehicular, Tchaikovsky is probably sitting in a scrapyard on whatever is left of Earth. If he lives, I hope some alien is driving him with the hood down, blasting my Best of Queen album. Firing blaster shots into the ruins of some corporate headquarters.
Die glorious, old friend.
My Tchaikovsky... she dies ugly.
As the zombie kaiju ripped her apart, I kept firing.
I won't call myself sentimental, but I did try to avoid hitting the car, so I mostly aimed at the base of its neck as I fell.
Then I remembered that gravity is optional.
I turned off my personal gravity as the thing dove for me, already incorporating my char's durability ratings into its skin as it decided that sapphire blue polycarbonate made for the best skin after all.
Not that it would help against an anti-data weapon like the Excisor, but it did mean the Ziggurat idiots taking potshots at it with mere guns were out of luck.
I overclocked, and it immediately slowed as I sped away, placing another trio of shots into its side.
Here's the thing about flying: If you don't have a dedicated vehicle for it, you gotta overclock.
Why the weird restrictions?
Think of it like plugging a leaky dam.
The dam is your exa, your computing capacity, your RAM or whatever. The water is all the data being simulated at you. Now, the data is supposed to leak onto you. Ask a dam engineer, who in this case is Demi. Telling something like gravity to take a hike for a few... That builds pressure.
Fortunately, overclocking buys me a half dozen more shots before the dragon figures it out.
"She's a killer~ queen~ Gunpowder, gelatine~" I sing to myself as I fire a line along the kaiju, hoping to catch the core.
No such luck.
It takes a swipe and I dodge.
With the burn from the Excisor, and its own leaky code, at least the damn thing is getting smaller now instead of bigger.
Still no sign of the core as I reduce it to being the size of an elephant.
It doesn't even resemble a kaiju anymore. Just a sea-urchin made of tentacles, car parts, and-
Yep. Human eyeballs. I was wondering when those would come in.
Humans are insanely visual creatures. Being a former human... I suppose the zombie wants to see its death coming.
I was about to fire when it exploded.
For a curious moment, I wondered if the Excisor had been upgraded. Demi does things like that. Updates my gun without telling me. Adds things to my apartment. Bits of memories that are my rewards for working.
Messes with my thermostat.
As zombie bits rain down on the city, I try to check in with Demi.
//PRIVACY LOCK//
The warning flashes in front of my face.
Oh right. Ziggurat.
I'm probably still in their private airspace.
So I can spare some overclocking for later, if I need it, I decide to land at the entrance. Just outside the range of the privacy lock.
Demi is a stickler for the rules. The only way to talk to them inside a privacy lock is to use designated terminals. They don't violate human-only spaces. The perfect caretaker, worried only about the property and the ecosystem instead of the people using both.
Okay, that's not fair. They recognize when the ecosystem needs some culling.
Hence: Me.
"Hey Boss, did you upgrade the Excisor?" I ask the open air, knowing Demi is listening.
"No," Demi replies. "Its function remains in its 1.42 iteration."
"Did you see the zombie explode just now?" I continue.
"You are aware that I am unable to interact or notice people who set their privacy to exclude me," Demi says flatly. Though perhaps I detect a hint of annoyance?
It's not that they don't have emotions. It's that they don't use them if they can help it. If they did, they'd probably wind up even lonelier than I am.
See, the thing about spending time with anyone is that familiarity breeds one of two things: dependency or contempt. Sometimes both.
Humanity is, for lack of a better system, already dependent on Demi.
And after centuries... let's just say a vast majority prefer their privacy now.
No one wants to talk to Demi unless they're in a bad situation.
Why?
The reasons vary from person to person, but centuries of living with someone is a long time to build up resentment. Especially when they're such a stickler for rules.
The Ziggurat was one of the first places to push Demi out. The prevailing conspiracy theory was that Demi was altering human records to "tame" us. As opposed to humans doing it themselves for fun and profit.
Still, Demi makes a convenient scapegoat, because they are in charge and they never acknowledge or refute such accusations.
I'm not saying humanity has come to hate their AI overlord but...
Humanity has come to hate their AI overlord.
And humanity is a pretty shitty roommate already.
Why is Demi so passive?
I like to think it's like they're a person with cancer. They can't control it. They can't feel it. But without a doctor, they can't do anything about it either. So they just sit there, watching it fester and consume.
I get it. I really do.
In my time, the cancer was the Corporatocracies and the systems they set up to drain the world.
What sucks is, I'm supposed to be Demi's doctor, and I don't even have a scalpel.
All I have is a needle.
"Excluded or not, boss, there are bits of corrupted person scattered all about the Ziggurat," I reply.
"Prior examples indicate that only one 'bit' as you call it should remain active. Proceed to hunt. You are authorized one shot." Demi said.
The Excisor made a sound as it switched off of infinite, showing me a stylized bullet.
"This one's tricky," I argue back. "It definitely has an integration matrix, since it absorbed a dragon and my car. Given the population... wouldn't it be more logical to let me keep infinite on?"
I waited patiently as Demi ran through my logic. Sometimes I felt like they made me wait, other times I wondered if I was just so incomprehensible to them, they needed to translate me to themself.
"You will be authorized three shots." Demi replied. The bullet on the gun added two more next to itself.
"Thank's boss... you're a real lifesaver." I said sarcastically.
Demi was, as always, not amused. "I am not authorized to directly intervene in my passenger's outcomes."
"I know," I said, staring up at the Ziggurat's thousand steps as I walked past the paywall and out of Demi's range.