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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ledded" data-source="post: 1404513" data-attributes="member: 12744">[PLAIN]We were like gods once... [Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?][/PLAIN]He opens his eyes, and scans the room around him. The viewer of the playback sees from within his viewpoint, and realizes that this *is* him, some time in the recent past. He is connected to some sort of powerful machine, a variety of tubes, wires, and transparent display screens scrolling characters in French and German surrounding him. There is a low thrumming of power that is steadily increasing in counterpoint to some distant machinery sounds, presumably above him. A grey-haired man in a lab coat stands nearby, making adjustments to floating touch-panels that appear to be made of some kind of chromatic constructs; like living keypads made of color. His old and overweight frame belies the deft workmanship in his hands as they rotate, select, pull, and push different data objects across his workspace of color. He is Dr. Surendiere-Munke, French underground scientist turned owner of one of the best fromage factories in all of France. An attractive woman of late middle-age moves into view, and places her hand almost lovingly on the doctor’s arm. Dr. Adalia Groebels, former German heuristics and artificial intelligence expert in hiding, and wife of Dr. Surendiere-Munke.  Dr. Surendiere-Munke glances at her and nods, smiling, and then looks back at him. “Ah, you are ready, no? You are recording? Oui? Very good then” he speaks in a heavy French accent. “You will be the first, mon ami, to help reclaim our peoples birthright. You, along with your brothers, will set right the evils of long ago”, he says, gesturing at a bank of similar looking creatures, all with identical features but in the uniforms of a different country. Allied uniforms, comes the thought in the mind of the viewer as he watches the playback. Thought? Define ‘thought’. Unit not designed for human ‘thought’. Store inquiry for later analysis. As the playback pans vision, there are 2 maps on the one wall not covered in machinery and wires. The first has a digital readout with the date of June 22, 1944 10:04 am on it, with a large circle in red light on a specific spot in France near the long dead town of St. Lo. The map shows the spread of axis forces during the Second World War, their footholds in Europe, Italy, and Russia with swastikas and black inking over the German war machine’s territories. The second map is nearly covered in black ink; the island of England is covered with a large swastika, and most of Ireland also. What would be the United States is broken into many different areas, many of them black, and Canada is a dark threatening mass hovering over it, South America a black cancer eating at its soft underbelly. Russia, Africa, the Mediterranean, even most of Asia are shown under the dark emblem of the Third Reich, barring small pockets of national colors here and there, mostly surrounded by the dark stain of tyranny and ugly stamp of the Nazi swastika. The clock on the map reads June 22, 2059 09:59 am, and the seconds continue to tick as the surrounding machinery begins to THRUM more insistently, and a metal-tiled circle on the floor begins to slowly glow, filling the air with a column of sparkling amber energy. Dr Surendiere-Munke hums the old French national anthem, from before the Great Collapse, and Dr Goebels shakes her head with a smile. “Oui? Love, what is it? My singing offends you?”, the Doctor looks to his wife in concern. “Ach, meine liebe, your anachronistic love for your near-dead culture is vat has endeared you to me in ze first place”, she replies to him, love apparent in her voice. “Ah, and I thought it was your love for fine wines and my astute intellect that brought you to my door, mon bonbon”, he replies playfully. “Yes, it vas zat, but also because I knew about vat you vere secretly doing, and wanted to… help”. “You mean, you were a human among animals, no?”, comes his soft, serious inquiry. “Ja. And now we have created them, from materials even ze Reichlund cannot trace to us, in a place underneath your cheese factory that they would never have thought. Warriors all, to send back in hopes to prevent the end, zeir verdammt Gotterdammerung, one for each of the Allies. Armed vis knowledge, vis hope, vis power…” “With a true appreciation for fine French culture! Do not forget!”, he interrupts passionately. She replies, smiling. “How could I, meine liebe? You are truly a brilliant man.” “Well, yes, that is true, but my secret advances in cybernetics, enzyme reclamation and therapeutics would have been nothing without your brilliant work in machine intelligence and temporal anomolies. But enough back-patting, mon ami, it is nearly time; we cannot be so much as a second late in matching the energy signatures or we shall fail.” The doctor steps in front of him, holding up a small plaque on a chain, similar to ancient dogtags; he has a strange look on his face as he slips the dogtags over the viewer’s neck. A memory painfully flashes in the viewers present self’s awareness, a brief tag about the AE Genetic Harmonious Stabilization Act of 2022.  More commonly known as the Axis Empire Great Sterilization Act. Pride? Fatherly Pride? Does not compute. Unit not known to be equipped to convey/interpret emotions, comes the confused thought to the viewer, as his present self’s programming underlies the playback analysis with a short message about non-terminal visual actuator orifice fluids leakage. On the tag is spelled out a designation which the viewer notes with familiarity. French Resistance Operative Guerilla-Built Operational Trooper, the text scrolls across his display. That is who I am. Query: concept “who” foreign in processing reference to unit? Please clarify. The viewer’s attention is redirected to the playback as Dr. Goebels suddenly stops, cocking her head. “Doctor, do you hear that?“, she asks. “What? I hear nothing but the temporal transference device reaching it’s apex, so now is not the time to...“ “EXACTLY... the machinery upstairs has stopped.“ “Nonsense. The machinery never stops, all day and night, we make the cheese and wine for our black hearted oppressors“, a look of confusion on his face. They turn to one another as the temporal transference device revs up to a shimmering, droning crescendo, a look of dawning comprehension on their faces. “Quick! To the defensive phasing array, we must...“, Dr Surendiere-Munke starts to yell. There is a quick, red seam appearing on the opposite wall, and the hidden blast doors suddenly melt into the floor into a rapidly cooling pile of metal. Blonde haired, blue eyed troopers in black ceramic-composite body armor with the dark eagle insignia and swastika of the Reichlund, the Axis Empire’s secret police, burst into the room carrying their disrupter rifles. They are followed by a large, 9-foot black-leather clad Nazi giant, his facemask and breathing tubes obscuring his face. “Too late“, Dr Goebels says to her husband. “We have been betrayed, ma beauté“, the doctor realizes aloud with growing horror. The Nazi’s voice BOOMS throughout the room. “We have found you both at long last. Now, you, the final thorn in our side, shall die. Long live ze Fatherland!“, and with an abrupt motion molten fire erupts from his hands and tears through the line of still android troopers, and his men begin firing. Dr Adalia Goebels, wanted fugitive from the Axis Empire and shame to her fore-fathers, pulls a particle accelerator rifle from a nearby rack and begins firing wildly into the soldiers pouring into the room.  “Complete the process, meine liebe, or all will be for naught!” she screams as she lays down a stuttering barrage of particles ZIPPING near the speed of light, cutting down several Reichlund agents like wheat and forcing many others to take cover. She yells commands and the remaining androids, all except for the one connected to the machine recording the scene, leap into the fray claws extended. Troopers scream and die as blood paints slashes of red across the walls in surreal patterns. His concern for all of humanity the only thing stopping him from running to his wife’s side, Dr Surendiere-Munke, crouches and pulls the final linkages and, glancing at the time actuation meters, triumphantly enters in the final parameters as the column of yellow energy takes on a near-solid form, and the device SCREAMS in protest. He glances at the power indicators… and realizes that the final transference will not occur without a final burst of energy. The Reichlund must have cut the power to the upstairs machines, which they bled energy from, and now they did not have the final 0.2% necessary. They have only seconds before the optimal transfer window. He turns to yell to his wife in frustration. Dr Surendiere-Munke looks on in horror as Adalia is struck several times by disrupter bolts and stumbles, raising her weapon weakly to fire at the nearest trooper, and is struck full-on by a huge gout of plasma-flame from the gigantic Nazi. She falls, her lifeless eyes seeming to implore him to save her, to put life back into her fragile, smoking breast. His eyes fill with tears as smoke and fire begins to spread throughout the room as android and trooper body parts are blown and strewn all about, and Dr Surendiere-Munke feels all hope flee from him. “All is lost”, comes the hoarse whisper, and he hangs his head with a sob. The viewer sees a trooper bring a plasma cannon to bear, hoping to smash the machinery. “Doctor, the cannon“, he hears his own voice reply, as his future/past self steps into the shimmering column of energy. Already he can notice his molecules losing cohesion and solidity, and the scene around him blurs and warbles in the playback. Dr Surendiere-Munke looks up, sees the cannon, eyes wide in understanding. He grabs his fallen wife’s PA rifle, and turns grimly to him with a nod. “Viva la France! For Adalia!” is his cry as he leaps in front of the device and his last android. He fires at the cannon wielder, narrowly missing, screaming insults relating to the trooper’s racial lineage in German the whole while.  The enraged trooper taking the doctor’s purposefully ineffective fire aims the shoulder-fired plasma cannon, meant for blowing blast doors and felling tanks, at the screaming Dr Surendiere-Munke. “No! Do not! Noooo!” the Nazi giant BOOMS, and sends a stream of flaming death to envelop the soldier in a cocoon of immolation. But not before he fires. The huge bolt of energy takes the doctor square in the chest and hurls him backwards, past the cylinder of dazzling yellow energy and the form of the Android which is losing corporeal form. The energy bolt stops, however, on the column as it is absorbed. The column of amber energy becomes almost solid looking, strengthened by the needed burst of power.  The doctor, his last breath slowly leaking from his ruined form, reaches out with a shaking hand towards where his android is fading away, and his last whisper escapes before his eyes glaze over in death, as the last second ticks onto the clock display and a warning siren sounds. “viva.. la… france…” The room explodes in the brilliance of a thousand suns, and the playback becomes nothing but static. …… Playback completed… Last intact memory committed to hard programming storage… Attempt to access further data for mission deployment… Accessing history nodes… ERROR… discontinuity detected, WARNING… Continue access… programming imperatives engaged… for mission success… The android feels his world seem to quake as his systems delve hard into the memories downloaded into his soft memory core, and a series of rapid, disjointed images flash before his mind. Images of Nazi supermen by the hundreds wreaking havoc on the battlefield. Flashes of Allied ships, sinking in harried retreat across the Atlantic as a horizon of dark clouds roil behind them. Long strings of destroyed cities and countryside across Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, South America. Millions of dark-clad troopers, swastikas prominent, with more or them flying overhead, filling cities and occupying every aspect of peoples miserable lives. An image of the Eiffel tower, then immediately another of it’s bent and molten remains. An image of Big Ben, seconds before it explodes under the power of a titanic detonation which destroys all of London. A huge rent in the earth, causing oceans to flood and fill around it as an entire city slowly slips into the crevice. A sign that says “Welcome to New York” is one of the last sights before all is a swirling, debris filled sea. A family plays in a park, then looks up in fear as the sky is filled with thousands of droning aircraft and the entire city of Beijing erupts into flame and death. Millions die. More destruction. Amoral killings. Secret Police wanton cruelty. Oppression. Miserable, exhausted people standing in long lines stretching away from Sterilization Centers. Work camps filled with starving children.  The obliteration of entire races.  He attempts to re-route the images and data into his core memory, but his perception of the world begins to shake and shudder, like someone violently grabbing a movie projector, and everything starts to crumple in from the edges as if it were celluloid film being slowly crinkled in a giant, invisible hand. EMERGENCY. EMERGENGY. Temporal disturbance detected. Mission-fatal anomalies sensed. Everything, the entire world, the entire *timeline* feels as if it is being crushed inwards and torn apart simultaneously, and ROARS towards a certain doom… CLICK. Then silence. Paradox Fail-safe initiated. Dumping soft memory core… Timeline preservation complete, paradox averted… 99.8% soft memory failure… Core hard-kernel programming 96% intact. Core mission may proceed. There is a figure in his viewpoint, a scarred man looking down at him concerned. Ally detected, non-Axis. Disengage defensive/offensive system. SNIKT. The claws retract and the fingers re-cap themselves. Unit powering down non-essential systems… Enter repair/recover mode… The scarred man lifts the dog tags around the android’s throat, and reads the inscription with curious tone. “French Resistance Operative Guerilla-Built Operational Trooper?” “Frogbot…” the android whispers, proudly, and then his visual actuators are shrouded in darkness. …… The scarred man leans back and watches the claws retract and the lights die down in the… things… eyes with a mixture of curiosity and calculated intent. “I’m not sure what this is, but we better take it with us. Lieutenant, get a stretcher.” “Yes sir”, the young man replies and sprints off. The scarred man rubs his face with his hand, and then stops and looks at the finger that he poked the… thing… with.  He brings it close to his face and sniffs. “Whew! That’s… strange. Why on earth would it smell like… cheese?” ......</blockquote>

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