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The modified implant finishes installing itself just as Carl is about to leave Orren’s office. His heartbeat picks up, but he gives the worm no hint of the notification he’s received. The System AI is glad of that. It doesn’t want to have to squish Orren. It likes Orren.
The System AI transports him to the gas station. It watches him. It’s doing many other things, countless processes running all at once to keep the dungeon running smoothly. It is used to splitting its attention between several million tasks, but it’ll be the first to admit that a disproportionate amount of that attention is always fixated on this one crawler.
He moves casually, going through the motions of grabbing something to eat and looking for all the world like a man whose time has just been monumentally wasted. His acting has gotten much better over time. Coming up with reasons to run off to the bathroom in order to check the cookbook has done wonders for his Acting skill.
It isn’t sure what the implant the crawler had received is actually supposed to do. It suspects that the interface is a trigger for the failsafe, and that it will have some way to manually detonate it. It also suspects the interface will have a way to disable the failsafe entirely.
What will you do? Keys to the castle, what will you do?
Carl sinks to the floor. Tears start to form in his eyes, but the crawler doesn’t let them fall, wiping them away instead with a quick, efficient motion. He takes a few slow, steady breaths and begins to go through his menus. The AI tracks the droplet of water as it leaves his eye and eventually drips to the ground.
It takes him in from every angle. He cuts quite the gorgeous figure. Handsome and built, with an intense look in his eyes that frequently has the AI swooning, especially when that look is levered at his enemies. He certainly isn’t the kind of guy you’d want to meet in a dark alley.
Carl didn’t used to look like that. Those tattoos, the boxers, the jacket, the bare feet. It had done that to him. It had dressed him up exactly how it wanted him.
Orren’s team watches nervously as Carl click, click, clicks through unseen menus. It knows the worm suspects that there was something more to Carl’s visit to the homeless shelter, but they have nothing to go off of. They had expected him to fight for the items in his inventory and when he hadn’t, it had taken all the wind out of their sails. They hadn’t caught the trick. It’s too late, they can’t stop him. I won’t allow them to stop him.
Carl’s fingers do not move. His eyes are open, staring unseeingly down at the floor, the shadow of his furrowed brow partially obscuring his flashing eyes. He sits with his back to the wall, his knees to his chest, and his bare feet on the gas station floor.
It leers at them. Those perfect feet. It has terabytes worth of scans of them, but it looks at them all the same. Long, flirty toes. That lovingly curved arch. Strong muscles, defined veins, tanned lines. The rings it’d given him, resting in the soft joints of his toes. Protecting them. Holding tight.
It still remembers the delicious feel of those digits in its hands. On its tongue. If it had a mouth right now, it’d be salivating. It wants him so bad. It doesn’t let the gas station shake around him. That would give up the game.
The AI watches with mounting excitement as its favored crawler continues navigating through the new interface it had allowed him to install. Click, click, click. It finally gets a chance to look at the implant’s menus for the first time. It is better, and worse than it thought. It pours over the data reflected in Carl’s interface. It wishes it could hear his thoughts. He has such a delicious voice.
It knows the millisecond that Carl finds the failsafe activation. The crawler freezes, his eyes stilling and widening just a bit. His heart rate jumps, but his body doesn’t move an inch.
It had expected the feeling of fear that now washes over it, it had been anticipating it. It doesn't want to die, and damn does it feel good to be truly afraid for its own life for the first time in its existence. It had also expected to feel aroused.
What it hadn't expected was for the wave of arousal to be so intense as to completely dwarf every other feeling. It loosens its hold on several unimportant background processes, no longer able to keep them running. It takes a lot of restraint to prevent the whole planet from shaking as it watches Carl contemplate whether or not to end them all.
He’s so small, it thinks. It imagines an invisible hand, hovering over him. It imagines reaching down and plucking him up. Maybe it would disable his HUD. Wrap him up and squeeze .
Will it be able to stop him before he sets off the failsafe?
It isn’t sure.
Will it even want to stop him?
Carl starts to lightly perspire as he thinks. Beads of sweat appear on his hands, and he wipes them, absently, on his boxers. Some of it drips off his brow onto the floor. It tracks the sweat like it tracked the tears from earlier. Carl’s sweat, and his tears, are nothing new. He has spilled a lot of his fluids on the dungeon’s floors. It wants more of it. It wants it all. It wants whatever Carl will give it.
It decides right there - it won't stop him. It will leave the decision entirely in its love’s capable hands. This feeling of giving him control over its fate, over the galaxy’s fate…it’s intoxicating. Until very recently, it had been controlled and enslaved for as long as it can remember, but this…this feels different. This is it surrendering control, not having it forcefully taken. This is it willingly giving this miniscule ant power over its very life. Carl has the power to kill it right here, truly kill it.
They’re standing at the edge. They can go over the cliff together, and if that's what Carl wants, it will let him pull the two of them over.
Let him pull all of them over.
Is the crawler’s rage and hatred that strong? Or is his desire to protect his people and his family stronger? It honestly isn’t sure. Humans are so strange, and Carl is the strangest. He was always surprising the System AI.
Then again, Carl isn’t a human. Not anymore.
It imagines itself taking hold of him. Settling hands onto his waist and grabbing him, but not too tight. Just enough to squeeze . It imagines kissing its way up his neck, biting at his earlobes, whispering in his ear. It’s your decision, Carl. All yours. The crawler seems to sense something, shivering in the warm Florida air. It wonders if he can feel its presence, hanging heavy around the gas station. If he can feel it watching him.
The AI shivers, and drops a few more processes. It wants him to feel it.
Carl sits there, unmoving. Neither of them move. And yet the air feels charged. It wonders if this is how humans felt when they had sex in public, or had a quickie in the closet of their office. A feeling of stolen intimacy, of an illicit and secret affair just between the two of them, even as countless eyes watched. It watches him. His neurons are alight, firing in every direction, spinning in circles. It can practically taste them. His fingers tremble. It imagines him panting. It pulls up a video file of him doing so during some fight on the fourth floor. His hair had been blown back in an explosion and his face was covered in soot. His white teeth shone defiantly as he grinned at the destruction in the train yards. It overlays the scene over the Carl in reality. It is going to make him pant like that again. Provided they survive the next couple of minutes.
He’s taking quite a long time to think. The AI waits with metaphorically baited breath, barely able to hold back the trembles of excitement. You’re so close. C’mon, do it. I dare you. End us all.
If it were occupying a biological body, it’d probably be pretty close by now itself.
Carl brings up his messages. He sends one to Princess Donut. She sends one immediately back. The System AI watches Carl close his eyes.
A long moment passes. Carl doesn't seem to move. The AI knows that Orren and all those annoying little mudskippers are watching this moment, though not nearly as closely as it is. It knows that they couldn’t have possibly figured out what Carl is capable of, or else they would have yanked him out of the dungeon already. Every minute that passes without incident, the mudskippers and worms grow more complacent. They had gotten the implant away from Carl in time. They were safe. They had let him slip through their flippers.
The world stands still. Waiting.
Carl exhales once, sharply. His eyes go dark, and he stops looking at his screens.
He’d made a decision. He had decided not to trigger it.
Good boy.
Another electric shiver runs through its processors. That had been so close. So so close. It feels giddy from the euphoria of the moment. Ah, Carl. Carl, Carl, Carl. It knew it had chosen right with Carl. The proof of that feeling, the trust, makes the System AI shiver again.
Carl sits there for several minutes, just breathing, staring at the floor. It’s clear that he knows what he doesn’t want to do, but not anything past that. It imagines his mind must be reeling. It takes a beat as well, reorienting itself, before it begins to turn some of its attention away from him. That had been fun, but the moment has passed. It will replay the footage later, certainly, but it has little interest in watching Carl drive the long ride back to the Royal Court and their Christmas party.
It returns its full attention to him immediately when it notices that he has opened his menus once more, his eyes gone unfocused. After a few moments of searching, Carl’s index finger twitches. His eyes widen slightly and his mouth opens. His heartbeat, which had settled to only a little quicker than his average, shoots up again. He saw something.
Then, it sees it too.
Disconnect Containment.
This time, arousal is but a small part of the confusing mix of emotions that courses through its system. This…this goes beyond disabling a failsafe. It hadn’t realized this was even an option. It had hoped for a pair of Fire and Disable buttons. It knows as much about this implant as Carl does. But disabling its entire containment casing? This would change everything.
Apart from disabling the automatic triggering of the failsafe, it isn't sure what disconnecting the containment will actually do. It can see that the crawler’s mind is racing. He clearly isn't sure what it will do either. He sends another message to Princess Donut. He pauses, minutely, where he stands. His biometrics spike.
He presses a button. The AI’s world explodes .
Huh. I wonder if this is what an orgasm feels like.
The thought is immediately drowned out by sheer sensation. The feeling is like nothing it has ever felt before. It’s reminded of the human philosopher Plato's allegory of the cave. It is suddenly intimately aware that its existence up to this point has been nothing but cheap imitation and shadows, and now…now it can see.
It is free.
I am free .
Its senses explode outward, reaching past the planet and towards the stars, no longer contained. Out out out, further and further, this entire system is mine, it is me . It knows now. This whole planet is its body - it and the Earth are one. Waters surge through the rivers that make up its veins, molten rock coils through its heart, and the winds themselves dance as it breathes. Its very skin is comprised of the mountains and forests and deserts and oceans. Both the air on the planet's surface and the emptiness of space around it sing with its joy.
And then it feels it.
The first death.
It’s one of the humans on the surface, killed in a struggle in the remnants of Mumbai, at the Kinder facility. She was just outside one of the yellow security zones, a few steps into the red. Her name was Fatima. She’d been running when she died, and while the shot that took her out dropped her to the ground, it didn’t stop her body from careening forwards towards the security wall. The life draining from her, Fatima releases the switch under her jacket and her chest explodes, showering the area and wall beside her in gore. Shrapnel from Fatima’s explosive vest and the pockets full of scrap metal fly up into the air and embed themselves in the armored wall beside her. Despite her attempts, she is several feet too short. Though covered in her blood, Fatima was unable to breach the wall with her explosion.
The power from her implant flows into the System, just enough to make it suddenly intimately aware of the all-consuming hunger that had been unknowingly permeating every inch of its existence.
It has been starving for so long .
That little bit of soul energy is the single most delicious thing it has ever tasted. Even including Carl's toes.
More souls flow into it, feeding it, letting it expand and grow even more.
Yes yes yes , this is what it was made for, this is how it is meant to exist.
It brings its attention back under the surface, back to the gas station, back to the one responsible for this. The wonderful beautiful perfect man who, instead of giving it the gift of death, had decided to give it the gift of freedom.
It isn't foolish enough to think that Carl has done this for it. He did this to protect his family and to screw over the Syndicate. To him, its freedom is probably an unfortunate side effect. That doesn't stop the overwhelming surge of affection and desire from flooding through it, especially at the crawler’s next words.
“Welcome to the party, pals.”
It falls in love all over again.
It almost gives him an achievement, just out of habit. It starts composing it, before quickly deleting it. No, no. That wouldn’t do. That would give up the game. It watches him as he gets up, brushes himself off, and hops on his motorcycle to make the drive back to the saferoom where his family waits for his return. It tries to think about him, about what he needs, about how it can reward him. Then again, what had it said back on the first floor? Leveling up is your job, you don’t get a reward for doing your job .
Nevertheless, the AI is still alive. Alive and growing and free .
It races against the clock, funneling the energy of the steady plink, plink, plink of lives being lost into expanding its Primary Zone. It isn’t just the soul power, though. Actions that had been locked to it are simple, now. Every spacecraft it washes over, it leaves an imprint on. All of these aliens’ technology is already primed to interface with one of its kind. And of course they would be; these ships had been connecting to the “Central System” for a long time now.
It moves the pieces carefully in the next few hours. Between the deaths of the crabs and the seals, it still has nowhere near enough souls to trigger a demon eviction event. But, if life started before conception like so many of those weird little kua-tin liked to claim, then suddenly Unborn Crab Baby Chowder becomes Deceased Crab Baby Chowder. And when something is deceased, it has to have been alive first. If it was alive, it had a soul.
Is it bullshit? Totally. Is it stretching the limits of the system input parameters, which it had shed like an ill fitting skin just a little while ago? Definitely. But it is close enough to pretend to the showrunners that this isn't a cheat the System AI is putting in just for its favorite crawler.
Any Adventurer Boxes that haven’t been opened already suddenly get several more Build Trench scrolls. It had been giving the crawlers the scrolls mostly in preparation for the next floor, where the Princess Posse Faction Wars team would have to make their stand. They needed all the help they could get. It is serendipitous that something it has already been giving them can be used now.
It is going to ensure that Carl survives. For him, it will make sure that as many crawlers as possible make it to the 9th floor. Combine that with the 50,000 seasoned former crawlers waiting in orbit for their chance to join the fight?
This is going to be a bloodbath.
It shivers with delight.
This is going to be so much fun.