Chapter 9: Wingless, Wingless, Dumbass, Wingless

I'd been doing some ruminating on the nature of what my goals were over the last few days, as we finalized base development and made sure our operation was thoroughly scrubbed off the map. Alice had been running experiments 24/7; her technological and ideological progress grew with every passing second, and I'd been getting regular firmware updates from her so that I could better utilize my HUD, my halos, and my superhuman strength. We were well on our way to getting her revenge — or whatever she wanted us to do.

And so I had a decent amount of time to think on my own ideals and goals. Not just the goals, mind you, but how to get to them as well. I'd never been the proactive type, but something within me had changed when I fell to this world: a bit of fire, burning inside me, lit after a period of great despair. A weight had been lifted from my shoulders, even as this world's future fell upon it.

Because hell. If it was my responsibility to be the hero they all needed, to become the symbol of a budding Revolution in a new timeline? Fuck it! I'd punch above my weight class as much as I needed to to find that future and show it to everyone.

Which then brought me to the implied "how" of that statement. Our own Revolution had not been a single person standing up against every CEO in the world on an increasingly absurd scale. It had been everyone slowly becoming more educated, teaching their kids about what to do and what not to do and what to be angry about; and then a tipping point where the workers, the farmers, the clergymen, the teachers, and the people revolted against the system. We'd dismantled capitalism as soon as we could, and then we used the technology that the one percent had been holding hostage to speed up construction of gigacities over wastelands from the Old World; our mines and oil rigs and desolate, poisoned swathes of land had been turned into population centers as tall and self-sustaining as we could get them.

And then it had been a shift towards asking the people about what to do; about letting native tribes teach us how to handle land, or looking to nature for our advancement into the new era. Our technology and transport had finally begun to serve us rather than our cash, for the first time in hundreds of years. Solarpunk was a fucking reality. We'd finally started to reconstruct ecology and biospheres and let nature run its course on the rest of the world, combating global warming via our ingenuity and alternative sources of energy, mass, and fun.

But it had all been because of that spark. The spark that set the world aflame was the withholding of time acceleration/deceleration technology from areas that could have used it to massively increase standards of living because like five fucking white guys wanted more money. And then there had been protests. Heroes from the masses, who lived and died by the hope for a better world. They'd spurred the rest of us to action, from all our different groups, to rise up and combat tyranny ourselves.

Our world was also not nearly as fucked up as this one was. I'd been doing some research (with Alice's help for privacy reasons), and it'd apparently been decades since any real welfare programs were introduced. People died on the streets after being squeezed for their labor in what were effectively money laundering schemes by the ultra-rich, who lived in great towers of nigh-infinite height and financed brainwashing projects (both literal and psychological) to keep their reign going. The sky was blanketed in carbon capture devices, used as fuel for the fire of "endless progress"; and yet global warming had only been set to a standstill. Almost all the species on Earth had been relocated to the carbon capture devices in the sky, to live out the rest of their lives in biospheres barely maintained enough to subsist them.

Rather than their invention of energy-to-matter conversion methods being revolutionary and a spark for change, it had been marketed to the consumers as a way to "reduce carbon footprint" and made out as a success of economics. The wealthy got wealthier, where everyone else paid the price. Instead of our mines on the surface, they had found a way to truly exploit the underground for its money and resources. Instead of stars in the sky, they built towers almost reaching the upper stratosphere and housed millions of workers paid scraps inside, conditioned and brainwashed to believe the company was their best interest rather than themselves or their loved ones.

Now? Cyberpunk was real. Our worlds were at odds; one was on the path to utopia, the other in an endless hellscape. And it was clear that the spark for this world would need a real, human element. I couldn't see anyone truly believing in outrage anymore — not after the marketing, the psychological campaigns, the book-burning, the endless cycle of torment and despair and dissection of human life into nothing more than gross domestic product.

So they would have to believe in hope. In the idiocy of a small few. In the belief that, "hey, if they did it, I could too," and in the ideal of a world that could be better. I'd need to break through the despair and miasma of this world with only the power of hope. Which felt impossible. I didn't do shit in the first Revolution.

And yet, what could I do but try? What could I do but everything I could? A hardened, heavy heart cannot carry the future; it will crumple under its own weight. There was only two paths for me: become that symbol of hope, or die with the knowledge that this world would die with me. Hey — me and Alice were the two people standing against all odds, the underdogs. People back home loved that shit! It wasn't just a good trope, it was an enthralling escapist concept: if they can do it, what if we could too?

I would need to make a brand, like Valor said. I'd need a cool name. I needed to sensationalize my fight, our fight for the world's future; it needed to be flashy, and kind, and focused on people above all else, regardless of nationality or race or gender or sexuality. I needed to be human despite all of it. Despite the fact that I was a robot, I needed to appeal to everyone by the fact that my struggles were human, not some manufactured corporate bullshit. I couldn't settle for anything less, because that would give doubt an in. I needed to be perfect, not because it was good, but because it was the only way forward. There was only one way to the future I saw, because there needed to be only one way else that future would not be the right one.

And boy, did I see a future. If we'd found a way to convert matter into energy into matter, our fight would have been so much more easy — and they had found a way to convert energy to matter as well as Dyson-sphere'd their fucking sun, amplifying the energy through some unknown means. Imagine what could be! The stars above were our guides once before — we might be able to go and see them with this tech!

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So while Alice built up our defenses, found more ways to kill or steal or subvert expectations, I started on my way to make our manifesto and our brand. Our name was still pending (since, well, I didn't expect us to need to start using it), but I'd chosen an aesthetic combining cyberpunk, Art Deco, and atomic age design — with pastel color added for flavor. Graphic design had advanced to ultra-minimalism here, so this was an extremely off design for the time. But Alice said it looked nostalgic, still. The collective consciousness had retained the ideas I'd put into our branding, and it helped me figure it all out.

Since we had access to what were effectively the most advanced 3D printers possible, I printed us out some badges — real ones, since holographic ones would be impossible to show off and give out, or leave as calling cards. The badge was simple, mostly: a white, four-pointed star, with a tail of rainbow colors in pastel trailing in a downwards triangle off it. The design itself was made of metal, and bordered in a gold rim; it looked high-quality, but unlike anything that'd been seen since conventions shut down in this world. At least, that's what Alice and my research told me.

I made some posters as well! I liked them a lot, actually — a little more than the badges. They showed a vision of the stars, multicolored and faceted and innumerable, with an open hand reaching up to touch them. Emblazoned on the front was simple, poster-white text: "There is hope," and the entire thing had a small border of the same white. I made several hundred of the posters and resolved to start plastering them in the suburbs near us when I could. We'd need a more efficient vector to put them up, though.

At least for right now, Alice had found our next target. It was a manufacturing plant, one of the few still above ground — but the things it was manufacturing were ID scanners, which meant that if we could find a way to steal one or two we could reverse-engineer it and fully break the security of everything that plant made scanners for, probably. It was a good plan.

The inevitable problems, though, were many. First: The plant was secured with more powerful digital locks than either of us could handle. We'd need to find a covert way in, one that didn't involve breaking and entering in the traditional sense. Second, the plant was overseen by a sentient AI, meaning that we'd be under surveillance and likely found out if the AI was cautious — which they almost always were. So we'd need a way to disable their systems. Thirdly, the matter-printers we had were... almost worthless at this point. The DRM on their systems was too strong for anyone but literally their creator to break, which meant that we were restricted to anything that they were "okay" with printing: basic materials, some amount of graphic designs, and dumb machines like a rudimentary kettle or key-lock.

For the first thing, Alice had found a possible entry method: the factory had, funnily enough, randomized inspections. Not for safety reasons, but to put pressure on the few human workers there and to make sure the AI was running smoothly. We could pose as one of the inspectors to enter, though leaving would be a different matter — it wasn't as if there was no verification, just that the inspectors came and went as they pleased. So really, we'd need to make sure our disguises were good or that we'd incapacitated the real inspector beforehand.

The second one was harder, but I was confident I could reason with them. Or at least dissuade them from killing us. or ratting us out. If all else failed, we'd... go loud.

Which wasn't a good idea, but it was all we had.

The third was impossible to crack, so we just had to hope what we had was good enough. That's honestly what all of it boiled down to — what the crux of this whole operation was. Hope in the possibility that it could work. Hope in ourselves to make it to the next day, the next mission. Hope in the future to improve because of our actions.

And, last of all, a hope that me and Alice could be the change the world needed.

We'd just have to try.