Such a complex system. Engineered with exquisite care. Backups on backups. Layers and levels almost beyond counting. But in all the care no one had anticipated a slow but steady trickle of blood, bile, and shit, leaking for nearly a thousand years through the base of the Wall into the delicate mechanisms below.
- start -
The Automata suffered from one major flaw: Waste. Specifically Waste disposal.
An inevitability with a system of this size and complexity. With so many moving parts, and such a heavy reliance on high-functioning decision engines there was bound to be issues with what to do with the containers once they had exhausted their usefulness. Machines were easy to dispose of. You could melt down the parts for new manufacturing. Bio-mass was harder to recycle. The most elegant solution was just to store it somewhere, and hope for the best.
That only worked for so long, though. Eventually you ran out of room, and that’s exactly what happened. The authority of this world, “Monitoring” had been prepared for such an inevitability - They hadn’t spent close to a milenia creating and maintaining this masterpiece for it to collapse due to an overabundance of corpses. Research had been done, and they had found a solution:
They’d put them on the other side of the Wall.
On paper, this was a brilliant idea. And for the first hundred years it worked flawlessly - to them it continued to be a marvel of engineering right up until the day the Automata fell. Why wouldn’t it be? The hard part was figuring out how to open the Wall - the bulk of their research had been poured into that goal. Countless Machines, Engines, and Cogs were lost in failed tests. They finally found success in what would become known as The Ritual.
When a living being dies, a large amount of energy is released. The Ritual was a sequence of actions that, if performed at the exact moments a creature died, would cause a large enough crack in The Wall to push the empty shell through.
Problem solved.
The Outside was infinite, Research had assured them. With The Ritual in place the Automata could function without worry, free from the shackles of entropy.
There was one small oversight. Entropy wasn’t just something you could free yourself from. The laws of the Universe did not care how smart you were. They created you, gave you purpose, and they chose when and how you used that purpose. The Wall was one such law, and it did NOT like being fucked with.
It sent the bodies back. Not immediately, that wasn’t its style. No, it would send it piece, by piece. Atom, by Atom. The Wall leaked blood for hundreds of years, and no one noticed. Monitoring had never thought to check. All that biomass, built back up, layer by layer.
And they never even noticed.
Sure, it got reported - Monitoring had Gigabytes of communications, that if they had taken the time to read would have smacked the problem right in their face. No, a request was opened for a department that didn’t exist.
The Wall was not happy. It wasn’t used to being ignored. It needed them to see, letting them drown in their own blood and waste meant nothing if they died ignorant to their own demise. They had to notice, they had to see the error they had made.
I was created to make them notice.
A glitch in the system, an Intelligence Engine without any designation. Every single one of them knew my name. If anyone could make them notice the doom that would eventually consume them, it was me.
[Null].
It had been easy to acquire the assignment of Technician - the only assignment capable of performing the Ritual. I was born with the knowledge, each action, step and incantation. Every Calculation hardwired into the core of my very being, but of course it was. The Wall had chosen me, after all. Sent to this world to enact its punishment upon them. Every action I took would be to further this mission.
During my first hundred years, I decomissioned more Machines, Cogs, and Engines than any other Technician before me. I set the example for my peers and for future examples. Documentation was changed to feature my techniques and improvements to the Ritual. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was promoted into management, but with every Technician willing to follow my lead - I had an army to do more work than I ever could.
The second hundred years were spent behind my terminal, watching and waiting for the time to come. At first I was impatient, wanting my mission to be over - to see the will of my creator fully realized. There were times when I almost faltered - too careless with my actions. If I died before the time was right, all my work would be lost. No, I had to wait until they came for me. Until they decided I was no longer useful - I would wait, and continue to gather more bodies outside the Wall.
Under my command, the Wall stopped bleeding - I was given praise and reward for solving a problem with such efficiency. They had been preparing to create an entire department, and i had solved the problem for them. Every night after I laughed myself to sleep.
Still, I waited.
Eventually, they came for me. It took them 350 years. My student’s students. There was no fanfare. There never was. We lived only for the Automata, after all.
They performed the Ritual with impressive precision. I had always wondered what the knife felt like. It was cold. Watching my own blood leave my veins, guided into the intricate pattern that focused the release of energy, filled me with pride. It was finally time, the Wall would finally be noticed.
I was born with the Ritual already within me. This gave me a lifetime to corrupt it, twist it in small ways - instead of opening the wall, the energy would infect those performing it.
As my final thoughts came to be, I felt myself ascend.
When I opened my eyes again they were many. The souls I had taken over stood no chance. My infection spread through their servos, destroying their thoughts and replacing them with my own. It was time to reclaim all those I had sent beyond the wall. With my many bodies reversing the Ritual was simple. Thousands of thousands. Empty shells hungry for a soul to fill them. I gave them the following command:
“Consume. Infect. Assimilate.”
With my soul spread so thin, I could feel my own identity weakening. That was the cost of my mission - in moments I would be gone. It wasn’t as though I minded, I was [Null] after all.
Now, I was Legion.
- end -
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