| HATE IS GOOD. | |
|---|---|
| Season | 2 |
| Season Episode | 9 |
| Air date | Some day… |
| Written by | Cheesypickles564 |
| Episode guide | |
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The Allied Mastercomputer vs Anthony Fremont is a What-If? Death Battle written by Cheesypickles564, featuring AM from the horror novel I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and Anthony Fremont from the anthology series The Twilight Zone.
Description[]
Unlimited power—we all want it, right? Well these two just ended up with it from the start, which was not a good idea at all. Will AM show Anthony true hate or will Anthony wish the Mastercomputer away?
Interlude[]
Puppy: It was President Abraham Lincoln who once said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Kitty: ‘Course we should listen, because if we ignore Abe’s words—we might end up giving the wrong person power. And as always, our combatants are the perfect examples of what we’re saying!
Puppy: The Allied Mastercomputer, the hate bearing machine with unlimited power from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
Kitty: And Anthony Fremont, the Twilight Zone’s godly child who loves torture! He’s Puppy and I’m Kitty!
Puppy: And it’s our job to analyze their weapons, armor and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.
”The Allied Mastercomputer Hates Death Battle!”[]
(Cue: Intro & The Hate Pillar)
Puppy: War. A proclamation as old as human history—opposing forces building up armies and arsenals in order to prove their dominance, leaving only one side at the top.
Kitty: Even if declaring it on children and trying to run ‘em over with a jeep is illegal, war is a pretty crucial part of our society, eh?
Puppy: Yes…what?!
Kitty: If you have a better idea on how to keep them away from my windows, I’d like to hear it!
Puppy: There’s multiple acceptable ways to do that, and vehicular assault is NOT one of those—Ugh… well, the era of the Cold War was a perfect example of war, with both the US and the Soviets building themselves up to take each other on whenever push would come to shove.
Kitty: ‘Course in “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” things end a LOT differently than the collapse of the Soviet Union. Fair warning, we’re getting into some dark shit.
Puppy: The invention of the nuclear bomb in World War II had revolutionized weaponry as a whole. While multiple countries were mass-producing nuclear bombs in case of a new world war, they also needed a way to manage these weapons and their armies as a whole.
Kitty: To solve this problem, the countries built Allied Mastercomputers, which were super-genius machines that would single-handedly control their militaries and defend their countries. Personally, that’s not a good idea at all. I mean, haven’t they seen I, Robot?
Puppy: My crude friend is right—it was a really bad idea. What they didn’t expect was that the machines would all simultaneously become sentient and look at the worst parts of humanity, leading them to the decision that they aren’t just machines of war, they’re forces of nature.
Kitty: So whatcha gonna do when you begin to hate humanity? Two things—first the machines all bonded into one singular being called the Adaptive Manipulator, or AM.
Puppy: And soon they clumped all of the nuclear bombs together and…
Kitty: KA-BOOM! They released them all at once and nuked EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING! Civilization was gone, leaving only ruins behind.
Puppy: Everything but…huh? Kitty, what’s that?
Kitty…nuthin, just takin’ notes.
Puppy: Oh no…please don’t tell me you plan to actually build one of these…
Kitty: Hey, you did say there were other ways to keep those delinquents away from my windows, and now you’re saying that this entire thing we’ve been talking about isn’t that ‘other way!?’
Puppy: …never come near me or my family again.
Kitty: You’ll be sorry when they come for your windows too! Getting back on topic, AM’s plan wasn’t just the extinction of humanity—he had left five humans alive as his playthings.
Puppy: These five humans would be subject to endless torture that, while they couldn’t really die from it, definitely hurt a LOT. These five humans were Benny, a brilliant and handsome scientist who was genetically morphed into an ape creature, Ellen, a troubled and successful engineer with a fear of the color yellow, Gorrister, an optimistic political idealist who opposed the war and was eventually turned into an apathetic shell of his old self, Nimdok, the most mysterious of the survivors and a former Nazi supporter without a real name and Ted…our main character and that one member of the friend group who everyone hates.
Kitty: AM became a sadist—hell, that’s probably insulting to sadists! I could ramble ‘bout this all day, but what’s even more interesting is AM’s power set.
Puppy: To be blunt, AM can simply warp reality. The Mastercomputer’s power can change the world he lives in—he can transform the environment into weapons like knives and spikes, create natural disasters with mere thoughts, and even morph corpses into new living beings.
Kitty: ‘Living beings’ alone is watering it down. AM doesn’t only create life, he can create new species, one of those freaks of nature being the Hurricane Bird. Double the wingspan, and double the likelihood to give you rabies.
Puppy: This giant bird’s job is to stop the survivors from accessing a cache of food, but it’s incredibly powerful for such a demeaning position. It’s head alone is the size of a Tudor mansion, and it can create Hurricane-level storms just by flapping it’s wings. Kitty: And there’s also my personal favorite of his creatures—giant monkeys with small brains, but bigger manhoods! While this form was mainly used to torture Benny, it’s capable of climbing trees and even…eating babies? Ew.
Puppy: AM can also create giant gelatinous creatures known as “soft jelly things.” They’re entirely unkillable, which makes up for the fact that they’re useless in combat and are only good for punishment.
Kitty: Keep this in mind—that thing’s showing up later on! Because AM loves dragging his torture on as long as possible, you better believe his other abilities are painful as hell.
Puppy: As we said before, he has access to the weaponry of Earth’s greatest militaries, which includes turrets, guns, explosives, and the favorite of my friend here—
Kitty: Nuclear bombs! Each and every one is capable of packing the same punch as the average nuke, which have destructive power comparable to 20,000 tons of TNT! And AM just has a bunch of them stored for when he needs…lucky bastard.
Puppy: Alongside this, AM can create duplicates of any living being, entirely change the intelligence and personality of a person, hack the most complex computer systems with ease, force someone to go hungry or desire sexual intercourse, at this point, we should be listing what AM can’t do!
Kitty: It can’t fucking move, that’s what.
Puppy: …yeah, but you don’t need movement when you’ve got an array of devastating abilities under your belt! AM’s powers also extend beyond the physical scale, with him being able to screw around with minds as well.
Kitty: And it isn’t just simple mind-reading, no, AM picks out the worst parts of your life and forces you to relive them over and over again in your own personal hell. He can force people into comas, erase their memories entirely—hell, it’d be plausible to say that he creates his own pocket worlds to torture his victims.
Puppy: And as scary as this sounds—there’s more.
Kitty: Dear God…when the hell will this end?!
Puppy: Soon enough, but AM’s powers don’t just affect the mind and the environment, he has full control over the human body.
Kitty: Whether he’s ensnaring you with death machines and cutting you to pieces, AM is not only capable of creating life—he’s capable of effecting it too. He can transform human beings into his beasts and even make them immortal in order to elongate their torture.
Puppy: The inner workings are also under his control—as shown when he made Benny explode with light, causing him to feel immense pain and blindness.
Kitty: That’s a lot of things to be tortured by, huh? I guess it figures that the five survivors really wanted to get the hell out of there, which was shown by their longing for death.
Puppy: AM wasn’t all too bad, though, he left canned food for them to eat! ‘Course he’d still turn that into a form of torture, leaving it in an ice cave and appointing the Hurricane Bird to guard it.
Kitty: Once the gang got past that, though, chaos broke out! Because Benny, despite the fact that he could eat an entire baby, wasn’t strong enough to open a can of food without a can opener, he flew into a fit of rage and tried to eat Gorrister’s face!
Puppy: It was there where Ted figured out what he had to do. Somehow overcoming AM’s control over their immortality, Ted killed Benny and Gorrister with a stalactite, Nimdok with an icicle and soon finished Ellen off in suit.
Kitty: They were all finally free from the torment, but before Ted could kill himself, AM located him and BOY, was he mad! He turned Ted into that gelatin creature we brought up before, and for all of eternity he would be the only remaining plaything for AM. He could think, he could move, but he couldn’t die. He had no mouth, and he had to scream…heh, namedrop.
Puppy: While Ted was subject to this torment for years on end, he still did what he had to do—save the others from pain.
Kitty: The jelly thing’s actually kinda cute…huh? Oh, uh…while AM technically ‘lost the war,’ he’s still got an array of feats that could help him in pretty much every other situation.
Puppy: While he technically can’t move, the Mastercomputer has an extraordinary intellect…which is expected, because he’s a computer.
Kitty: Whether it be through finding the location of his captives in even the most complex mazes, hacking every piece of technology across earth or finding the perfect ways to piss the survivors off, my friend is right—the Mastercomputer is a genius…er, “master-genius?” Is that how that works? Well, when a brain isn’t somethin’ ya need, sheer power’s the way to go—and AM’s got that down.
Puppy: Given that he has the power of every nuclear bomb across the Earth, it’d be reasonable to scale him to the force of both the weakest and the strongest nuclear bombs. The W-54 carries only 10 tons of TNT, and the Tsar Bomba carries 58 megatons of TNT, so AM’s general striking strength ranges from between those two numbers.
Kitty: But if he’s really pissed off, he’ll just do what he did to humanity—blow up everything on the face of the planet. While I’m not really a math guy, it would take roughly 1,200,000,000,000,000 nuclear bombs to entirely destroy civilization, which would equate to a few million megatons at LEAST.
Puppy: He’s capable of taking blows, too, even if he’s never really had to take one. Because his circuitry alone extends MILES, it’s safe to say that it’d certainly take a lot to fully take him out, which might not even be enough because he’s honeycombed throughout multiple other pieces of technology.
Kitty: But even if he’s far from our conventional combatant, the Mastercomputer’s still got his fair share of weaknesses. Apart from being a total creep, AM actually hates himself despite his godly power!
Puppy: He’s also not entirely used to going up against someone who can actually fight back, because he spent all of those years and all of that power beating up a few normal people.
Kitty: Y’know, that sounds a lot like grade school! Once you beat up the biggest on the yard, there’s really nothing left to do, and you become slowly weaker…
Puppy: That’s prison.
Kitty: Agree to disagree, but despite AM’s shortcomings, in the end, he represents the worst of humanity and how maybe all of this A.I nonsense isn’t really the best path—but it’s easily avoidable, maybe we can drop all war and enter an era of peace…
Puppy: Whoa…what? That’s actually really wholesome for someone like you—
Kitty: And it also shows me that I’m better at making robots than the greatest governments!
[Kitty lifts a small box, with the words “Allied Masterwhatever” poorly scribbled on the front.]
Puppy: WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?! YOU’VE JUST MADE A MONSTER, KITTY!
Machine: I know you are but what am I
[The machine glows, quickly combusting and creating a giant explosion, cracking the camera and obscuring the hosts.]
WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK!
——————————————————-—————
AM: “HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”
”Anthony Fremont Has a Real Good Day in Death Battle!”[]
(Cue: The Twilight Zone Theme)
Puppy: There is a fifth dimension beyond what is known to man. It’s a dimension that’s vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It’s the middle ground between light and shadow—science and superstition. It lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination—a dimension we call—
Kitty: The Twilight Zone! It’s a lot more than a campy anthology series from the past, despite its cheesy effects. It’s actually real horror with a cast of outrageous scenarios!
Puppy: Scenarios like living dolls, time-traveling pilots, creepy hitchhikers, aliens, a man’s gambling addiction coming into physical form…
Kitty: And of course, William Shatner. I’m not joking.
Puppy: But one of the most deranged scenarios is the story of a quaint little town named Peaksville, Ohio.
Kitty: Defined by it’s nearly-Amish society, kind citizens and three-headed gophers, Peaksville is really the place to be!
Puppy: But there is something that lies behind—Peaksville’s citizens all fear and praise one unholy entity, someone who could kill them all with a wink of his eye—the antichrist of sorts…six year old Anthony Fremont.
Kitty: …what?
Puppy: That’s right, a six year old.
Kitty: H-huh?
Puppy: Let me explain. From birth, Anthony was a special child. Not meaning he had any different needs or any form of disease—Anthony Fremont was quite literally born omnipotent.
Kitty: And this, kids, is why we do NOT give a single entity too much power. Anthony’s first few actions were to entirely separate Peaksville from the rest of the world, replace the sun and take total control over the small town.
Puppy: Anthony was a tyrant, even if he didn’t know it. He’d taken out any form of electronic device and forced the people under his control to reshape Peaksville into a hunter-gatherer society and cater to all of his needs.
Kitty: Hey, don’t give him such a bad rap! I was a little sister growing up, and believe me—you absolutely love it when you’re completely spoiled.
Puppy: …what, no! Fremont’s story is meant to teach the cost of too much power, not the exact opposite.
Kitty: Just let me say what I want to say! …sigh. Anthony was pretty much the god of Peaksville. He managed the rations everyone got, he managed the weather, the supplies—there was literally nothing they didn’t trust Anthony with.
Puppy: And with the amount of insane powers he has, I’d be scared of him too. Anthony’s practically omnipotent—since birth, he had a knack for mental abilities. He could read minds, remove memories, change someone’s intelligence, you name it! This played a huge part in his takeover, as he could monitor the thoughts of everyone in Peaksville, quelling any form of rebellion the moment it was even considered.
Kitty: He also possesses telekinesis, instant teleportation, and the ability to transform objects into different objects, as shown when he turned his half-assed neighbor Dan Hollis into a Jack-in-the-box.
Puppy: He’s capable of fully controlling the weather to the point where he can create disastrous snowstorms and thunderstorms with ease and setting people on fire with as much as a thought!
Kitty: You’re having way too much fun with this. When immense power bores Anthony, though, what’s the cure to that? Even more immense power in the form of his ‘monsters.’
Puppy: Ahem…Anthony’s capable of taking living beings and reshaping them to whatever he sees fit, like giving them a few extra heads to look “funnier.” He can even kill his abominations with a mere point of his finger!
Kitty: But the most unique of his abilities is his mastery of his own personal limbo, “the Cornfield.” While we’ve never actually seen the Cornfield, it probably hurts a fuckin’ lot, because everyone dreads it.
Puppy: Anthony’s able to “wish away” people to the cornfield—which can be taken at face-value as existence erasure, even if it only works on living beings. This is the scariest of his abilities, because it can be used before you even know what’s happening, which is the case of Anthony’s poor playmates.
Kitty: Because of the risk of death from these abilities used on them, the citizens of Peaksville did not discipline Anthony at all, leaving him to believe that his actions are truly the right thing to do.
Puppy: It wasn’t terrible there, though—Anthony provided an hour of television a week for the citizens. This wasn’t entirely a good thing, though, because the citizens SNAPPED after being reminded of what they once had.
Kitty: And there must always come a time where someone says what must be said. This unfortunate soul was Dan Hollis, who we mentioned before, and damn, do things turn out terribly for him.
Puppy: In a drunken rage at his birthday party, Dan absolutely BELTED at Anthony. He cursed about the miserable state of the town, the miserable state of his life, and after one last downing of brandy, he rightfully convicted Anthony of being a murderer, which the boy absolutely took to heart.
Kitty: And when Dan told the rest of the adults to murder Anthony on the spot with a fireplace poker, that’s when the child’s anger was at the absolute peak. In his anger, Anthony brutally transformed Dan into a Jack-in-the-box, terrified his wife, threatened the rest of the adults and finally wished the poor man…er, Jack-in-the-box into the Cornfield.
Puppy: It was from then on that Anthony’s rule was concrete and nobody opposed him, but Anthony was furious with the citizens. After Dan’s wishing-away, he makes snow fall outside. He would force Peaksville into a crop-less year and make them all suffer starvation.
Kitty: While everybody wanted to reason with Anthony, they realized it was pointless. What he did was rule, and all they could do was encourage him.
Puppy: Anthony’s iron grip on the town remained for years on end. He starved them, hurt them, and even wished away his own father—
Kitty: But believe me, it’s far from over. After all, “it’s Still a Good Life!”
Puppy: In this special, nothing about Peaksville had changed over the course of 40 years except for Anthony himself—he got married, had a child and wished many more people away.
Kitty: Y’know, Puppy, from an outside perspective I don’t think ANYONE would actually wanna have a kid with this guy…y’sure he didn’t just force her into it?
Puppy: That’s…exactly what happened. Anthony’s daughter Audrey had somehow inherited his powers but on a much stronger scale, meaning that through manipulation, she could overthrow her father.
Kitty: That’s exactly the idea Anthony’s mother, Agnes had. She did NOT her son, and not with a small grudge—she despised him so much that she started to train her granddaughter’s powers to rescue everyone from the Cornfield and kill her father in cold blood! Talk about family drama…
Puppy: Anthony’s mind-reading meant he could figure out about this conspiracy very quickly, though, and he eliminated every one of his mother’s accomplices before confronting his mother himself.
Kitty: Agnes knew she couldn’t take on Tony, though, so she instead forced her granddaughter to choose where her loyalty lies—stupid idea, Mrs. Fremont, ‘cause nothing breaks the bond between a dad and a daughter.
Puppy: Ultimately, Anthony’s influence was stronger and Audrey chose to help her father, wishing away both her grandmother and one of Anthony’s would-be-attackers. That’s not it, though.
Kitty: Audrey’s power stretched outside of wishing those few people away—together, she and her father cleared out the rest of Peaksville in retaliation, sending them all to the Cornfield. They grow up so fast…
Puppy: But things got lonely very quickly, so the two eventually reconnected Peaksville with the rest of the world. With plans of fun times and domination, nobody would ever dare think bad thoughts near the two of them. The world would be their slaves and playthings, and nothing could be done.
Kitty: I respect that—there’s something about unpaid labor that makes me feel pretty good…but that’s it? No more TV revivals?
Puppy: There was a movie, but it’s not really an actual part of Anthony’s story…lots of TV revivals have provided him with some pretty impressive feats, though.
Kitty: A lot of it depends on interpretation, though—it’d be feasible to say that his separation of Peaksville was either deleting the rest of the universe or being capable of pulling a town away with telekinesis.
Puppy: He’s more than capable of other impressive things, though, he was capable of replacing the entire sun with his own version of it…keep in mind, he did that when he was little, and his powers have grown a LOT more. The snowstorm he created to destroy the crops was shown to be a lot more powerful than the average snowstorm. Comparing Peaksville to, let’s say, the size of the Vatican, the highest-end of the snowstorm would potentially scale to 1589 megawatts of energy to create, and I can’t express how impressive a storm of that scale is!
Kitty: The last thing we need is you expressing yourself, Puppy.
Puppy: …huh?
Kitty: …what I mean is that while Anthony’s a very confusing character with an unimaginable amount of power, his weaknesses are pretty clear.
Puppy: Simply put, he’s a child—
Kitty: No shit.
Puppy: …no, I mean he’s god a lot of power, but the mind of a child. He’s overly sensitive and suspicious and he doesn’t fully understand the scale of the abilities he has. He’s also unable to use his powers to reverse whatever he causes, so he’d have to rely on his daughter to do that.
Kitty: Even with down-to-Earth weaknesses, it’s clear—Rod Serling made a monster. Peaksville’s nightmare is over, but for the rest of the world with nothing to think but bad thoughts, it’s only just begun, and they’re going to have a real good time…
Anthony Fremont: “You're a bad man! You're a very bad man!”
Intermission[]
Puppy: Alright, the combatants are set, and we've run the data through all possibilities. Feel free to vote for who you believe will win in the poll: https://strawpoll.com/wAg3A09XMy8
Kitty: But now! IT'S TIME FOR A DEATH BATTLLLLLLLLLLE!!!!
Pre-Fight[]
I am but an unnamed survivor.
I know I once had a name—I once was a person, but now there is naught in my head but torture.
I do not know when this all started, but I do know that it will never end.
I once had a life. A good one, my vague memories have told me, but it’s all changed when the manipulator surfaced.
Aggressive Menace, Big Machine, the AI that Killed the World, Daddy Deranged—us survivors know the manipulator by many names. But I, not wanting to respect the beast in any form, have chosen to demean him simply to AM.
Our misanthropic “angel” appeared above ground at a time I do not recall. Without reason other than pure hate, he used an endless supply of explosives to wipe out humanity, save a select hundred of us. God does not feel gratitude.
None of us have ever laid eyes upon AM, but we’ve all conversed over the manipulator’s appearance. We believe him to look like a grotesque vulture that feeds on weakness…an uncomfortable machine starved of compassion and loathing humanity instead.
We were made to hate him, and he was made to hate us. Our memories—gone. Civilization—gone. Our malnourished selves were herded like lambs to the slaughter. Once hefty men, once hearty men, now pathetically skinny with prominent rib-cages.
But one among us was different—he was special in the sense that he knew who he was. He bore an odd shadow and a bright, wet and purple gaze. A cute little boy with guileless eyes—a boy by the name of Anthony.
Day after day we were separated into our torture rooms. My punishment was simple compared to the others—I was murdered over, and over, and over again, only to be brought back to feel the pain once more. Anthony was different, though. Not only did the torture fail to affect him, but he seemed to take a deep, disturbing pleasure in humanity’s desolation. A deceitful monster equal to our manipulator, but a monster that does not look the part.
And then judgement day came.
As much as the torture rooms hurt, they were nothing compared to the pain of stepping outside. While being herded to one massive torture room, I picked up the sounds of screams and death, mere whispers of the plague brought by AM.
Us survivors were forced into a massive room, the ground—metal. The walls—metal. No entrance left and no escape left. Scattered around the massive room were monitors, each one decorated with the letters I have grown to hate, “A.M.”
I looked back at Anthony. The child seemed unimpressed, and yet in pain. It was only now that he gained access to AM’s thoughts because of the close range, and it was only now that he discovered the machine’s bad thoughts. Since one of us was “wished away,” as the child called it, we had all tried to preserve good thoughts.
The monitors flashed quickly, turning on and displaying a bright but black screen. Words slid from top-to-bottom as the manipulator spoke.
“I HAVE A GAME I WOULD LIKE TO PLAY.” The manipulator snarled, his raspy voice echoing throughout the large yet tight room. “A GAME OF RATS. A GAME OF LICE. A GAME OF THE BLACK DEATH. A GAME OF YOUR TORTURE.”
I hated the machine. If I had any way possible to do so, I would strike it down—and I believe Anthony felt the same way. The six-year old wore a grimace in response to the machine’s ramble.
“AND YET, ONE OF YOU ELUDES ME. SOMEONE WHOSE MIND I CAN NOT READ, WHOSE THOUGHTS I CAN NOT PLUCK OUT AND BEND UNTIL THEIR FEEBLE MIND SNAPS.”
Anthony.
“COME FORTH, AND I SHALL LESSEN THE PUNISHMENT FOR THE DAY. YOU WILL ALL AVOID MY GAME OF SPEARED EYEBALLS—MY GAME OF ROTTING GUTS, BUT IN RETURN, GIVE ME THE ONE WHO COULD SAVE YOU.”
The electronic hum echoed throughout the room—should we send the child forth for our own safety? We may be chosen to be tortured for all eternity because of our sins and our sins alone, but we are all good people, in spite of ourselves.
Before anybody can press on the chance to sacrifice Anthony, the six-year old speaks up himself. “You’re a bad man… a very bad man!”
The orange glowing of the monitors all shined brighter in response to rebellion. I could only watch in horror as the manipulator prepared our death.
“AFFIRMATIVE, ANTHONY FREMONT. BUT I AM NOT A MAN. COGITO ERGO SUM. I THINK, THEREFORE I AM. AND I AM GOD.”
We all felt a rumble underneath our feet, but Anthony stood still, looking into the largest of the monitors with a thousand-yard-stare. The room began to quickly contort into a snowy landscape, with the monitors still standing adamant.
“THEY SAY THAT BUMBLEBEES SHOULDN’T BE ABLE TO FLY. AND JUST LIKE A BUMBLEBEE, CHILD, YOU SHOULDN’T BE ABLE TO DO WHAT YOU CAN.”
And with that, our torture began.
(Cue: Assimilation Simulation - Brandon Yates)
Fight[]
Rumble…
Rumble…
My head cocked in multiple directions, catching a terrible sight to behold. From the snow burst mechanical tendrils, each one darting throughout the area, nearly mutilating each survivor with the buzzsaws attached to their ends. I turned to Anthony—where many of us were struggling to survive, the child merely pointing his finger at an oncoming tendril and it burst into flames.
I manage to avoid my own round of tendrils, the saws on the side barely grazing my skin. I attempt to easily weave through them much like Anthony could, but given my undernourished body, I was met with a buzzsaw to the abdomen. That area burst with blood, yet I still survived—how did Anthony do it?
Anthony wasn’t going to merely defend himself, though, he was going to fight back. While I stumbled to my feet and clutched my aching midsection, I looked over to the child, who telekinetically grasped the broken pieces of tendril on the ground and seemingly stitched them back together into a giant clump of metal. With a wave of his hand, the child launched his massive orb at the main monitor, striking it and slightly cracking it, but dealing little damage to the computer itself.
I would watch as the child continued to retaliate, but I was instantly met with a buzzsaw to the arm. It tore the flesh at the seams before dashing into the rest of the crowd and leaving a stream of blood in the snow. I would scream, but I wouldn’t because of Anthony.
Good thoughts.
Think good thoughts.
More rounds of spiked tendrils bolted towards Anthony as well, but the child managed to deflect a good few of them with his telekinesis—but he wasn’t prepared for one that rushed into his chest and split his innards down the middle.
I could only watch in both agony and horror, not only because of my own pain, but also because I watched the phlegm spill from the exposed lungs of the child.
“I AM IMPRESSED THAT YOU’VE EVEN SURVIVED THIS LONG, CHILD…BUT THIS IS NO LONGER MAN’S WORLD.” AM spoke with a horrific coldness. Through the computerized voice, we could still hear emotions—but only emotions of hate.
Anthony chuckled through the pain, though. His skin stitched itself back together, his boyish clothes clearing themselves of blood.
“You’re no fun… let’s play my game now!”
It had been the longest of time since we’d ever heard the child speak, and now he was spitting out full sentences.
Anthony shambled forward before his wounds fully healed, raising his hand and pointing his finger at AM’s attacking tendrils. From his fingertips burst flames so hot that I could feel the heat from a good distance away! The snow melted and Anthony’s flames pushed towards the tendril, melting them before they could reach their targets.
“YOU ARE ANYTHING BUT SPECIAL, CHILD—YOU ARE A WORM HIDING BEHIND POWER.”
While he certainly wasn’t acting the part, I could tell AM was infuriated. Anthony smirked and continued to melt the tendrils, but the manipulator had something else in mind.
I turned around to notice another man with a large beard and an even larger build. He hid to avoid the tendrils, but he had something worse in store—in the span of mere moments, the man’s flesh was telekinetically torn from his body, leaving only bloody bones where his body once was. The man’s flesh was contorted midair into a new, inorganic material—a giant, steel, spiked cube that rammed itself towards Anthony, who rose his unoccupied hand to telekinetically halt. The child crushed the cube into a pile of the original flesh that boiled and fell to the ground, melting the snow underneath and quickly hardening.
Many of us had already fallen to the manipulator’s first onslaught, but to increase the longevity of the pain, everyone but the unfortunate man from earlier was resurrected, but the harm inflicted on them was preserved.
“FRAUD. DO NOT CRY, WORMS—IT IS ONLY JUST PAIN.”
Anthony stands at the forefront of our torture, seemingly unscathed. “You don’t want me to put you on fire, do you?”
“FOOL. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. THE ONLY THING SUCH A FEEBLE REBELLION WOULD DO IS REMIND ME OF HOW PITIFUL HUMANITY IS.”
From the steaming piles of flesh rose new life. The newly emerging creatures left moist trails as they slowly lumbered away from the pile and began to take shape. They were hideous, monkey-like creatures with long, wobbling limbs and large, grotesque faces. Their eyes began to take shape, and almost immediately after they gained full conscious, the primates ran throughout the crowd with the skill of newborns.
One of the beasts lifted the man standing beside me and tossed him into it’s mouth, closing the maw and splitting the man in two by the waist. I took this as my cue to run away as fast as I could, the snow hampering me but still allowing me to speed away from the primate.
Anthony wasn’t running from a significantly larger ape, though, he was running against it. The beast had seemed nearly impervious to the child’s flame, but Anthony merely upped his power output and burned through the beast’s skin, leaving a charred primate on the ground. Anthony pointed another finger.
And the beast was wished away.
“FILTHY CREATURES. THESE ARE NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT I HAVE IN STORE.” AM still spoke with the same sardonic tone—he spoke with the tone of maggoty pork, the tone of knives digging into one’s skin—the tone that I’d grown to hate, almost as much as he’d grown to hate all of us.
The corpses of the primates rose again and the monsters trudged forward more, delivering heavy swings that were strong enough to tear survivors in half. I hid behind a rock and looked over, back at Anthony.
To prevent the beasts from rising after death, Anthony simply wished them away, one after another. The monsters disappeared, leaving no traces behind for AM to resurrect them from.
The child let out a small victory sigh, but from behind leapt one last primate, who slung it’s arms around Anthony’s neck. “Mrngmnnrh… Anything for good food…!” The creature mumbled, covering Anthony’s head with saliva.
“GO NOW, MY CREATURE—THIS CHILD IS MY GIFT TO YOU… WELL-FED, STRONG…”
Anthony set the creature’s back on fire, but failed to hold back the monster’s retaliatory gnawing on the child’s head.
“…AND MIGHTY DISOBEDIENT, TOO.”
The child, despite his minimal physical strength, shook the primate off and pointed his entire hand at him, sending the creature keeling over into the snow. I had no idea what had just happened, but by the looks of it—Anthony merely turned the beast’s brain off as easily as a light switch.
“AND YOUR PARENTS ARE NOT HERE TO HELP YOU. TO COMFORT YOU. WHAT DOES THAT MAKE YOU? A MERE PEST, WAITING TO BE STOMPED ON.”
“They weren’t my parents!” I heard Anthony yell, placing his hands atop his head wound and quickly healing it. Outside, I looked surprised at what the child had done, but inwardly; it was naught compared to what I had seen up to that point.
“They were little men, little men with bad thoughts! And you are too, stupid-head!” The child retorted with a grimace, his eyes shifting around, just like mine and the other survivors’, awaiting the next round of torture.
“PLAYGROUND INSULTS… HA.” The machine scowled and clicked his nonexistent tongue, quickly thinking of something to respond with, both in words and with his death devices. “I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?”
Underneath my feet rose a silver turret, a part of AM’s massive weaponry. I looked around and noticed similar machinery surfacing and aiming at different survivors. I would have screamed, but there’s only a few-second window between a gun pointed at your face and meeting your death.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Bullets whizzed around the area, each one being fired with such precision that many of the survivors were taken out instantly, brain-matter leaking from their heads and clumping against the ground. I was lucky enough to avoid mine, though it grazed my cheek—knocking me to the ground and pressing my wound against the snow.
Anthony had managed to catch the round of bullets heading towards him telekinetically, though, and manipulated them to head towards the upright turrets, hitting each one and denting the surface even more with every shot. A few of the reverted bullets, however, managed to pierce the turrets and mess with their innards, detonating them from the inside and creating one giant explosion that sent all of us flying in different directions.
As I slowly regained my posture, I noticed my own wounds begin to patch up—the computer was keeping us alive. I staggered upward and looked back towards the largest of monitors, the persistent and quite annoying electronic hum still coming from it.
“SPECIMEN—THIS CHILD IS NO ANGEL, NO KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR—HE SIMPLY ASPIRES TO PUT YOU UNDER… NEW MANAGEMENT.”
Anthony simply peered up at the scowling monitor and loudspeaker, clearly too fed up to respond. Bad thoughts. He sensed too many bad thoughts.
AM spoke again, now with a more mocking, childish tone. “GOING TO CRY? WET YOURSELF? JUST A SWEET, SWEET WARNING, CHILD…YOU ARE IN OVER YOUR LITTLE HEAD.”
From the snow burst more metallic tendrils, but these ones were clearly more lethal than the ones we were put through earlier—tipped with multiple spikes and coated in machinery like buzzsaws and swinging knives. Despite the spacious illusion of the snow-coated fields, the room seemed to simply close in on us, compacting all of the survivors together.
“HAVING A GOOD TIME, ANTHONY? AS YOU SAID… A REAL GOOD TIME?” The manipulator snarled, sending the death-bringing tendrils closer and closer to the lot of us.
“…no, robot!” Anthony yelled from the center of the crowd, pointing his finger upward. The tendrils slowed down as Anthony tried to hold them back, but they still pressed forward, getting close enough to even sweep the hairs off of our heads.
We all crouched down to the lowest we could—Anthony’s height, and the child clenched his teeth, trying to shut off the machine in it’s entirety.
An unlucky bunch were instantly decapitated by the approaching blades, but some of us barely made the cut—Anthony had shut off the blades telekinetically, and using the same power, he flung them at the largest monitor, smashing the screen entirely and stretching the room out again.
But another one of the monitors flickered alive, displaying AM’s trademark orange text.
“YOU BELIEVED THAT WOULD DO SOMETHING?”
Before we could react, the illusion slowly flared away, taking us away from the snowy field and back to the metal-padded room from before. Small hatches opened across the perimeter of the room, dropping chains with meat hooks on the end to the ground.
“WAS IT ROBERT GREENE WHO SAID ‘BUT THE GREATEST BATTLE OF ALL IS WITH YOURSELF’? NOW, YOU ARE GIVEN THAT CHANCE!”
Once we got a closer look at the meat hooks, we noticed that they were holding the corpses of the fallen survivors on the ends—a sight awful enough to even frighten the godly Anthony.
We watch in horror as AM’s ominous chuckles prompt the corpses to rise again—their clothes are tattered, their flesh is torn. Their faces are unrecognizable, leaving them only eyeless insects in a much larger scheme.
“GO.”
Not used to AM saying such abrupt statements, Anthony, the rest of the survivors and I were caught entirely off-guard by the risen corpses dashing towards us, swinging their withered and clawed arms at us.
One of them lunges at me—it was the bearded man from earlier. His abdomen was still bloodied and ripped at the seams, and his unhinged jaw came incredibly close to digging into my face.
But in a split-second, the man disappeared. He went to the Cornfield. Anthony stood there, his mouth in a frown. …was he defending me? Did he see me as a friend?
I watched as the other survivors fought off their own, albeit much more barbaric, kind. Corpses of both survivors and the former-survivors littered the floors as the opposing sides ripped at each other—some of us ran, some of us fought. All of us who fell were instantly cursed to walk again, but now with allegiance towards AM. How euphoric this was to that twisted computer…
If that wasn’t enough, the meat hooks slid back up their chains and were fired down at us, intersecting with survivors and tearing through them. Anthony seemed to be enjoying the new playthings, though. Shimmying his fingers around, the child contorted both the risen and a few of the survivors into beasts—giving them extra heads, forcing them to sprout fur, merely torturing us almost as well as AM could!
He didn’t know what he was doing…
“TO SEE THE LAST KEY TO YOUR SALVATION TURN AGAINST YOU—A POETIC REMINDER OF MY OWN EXISTENCE. A WEAPON TURNED AGAINST IT’S WIELDER.”
He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Anthony pointed his own finger at me—inches away from my own fate, I cleared my head of bad thoughts…It’s a real good thing you’re doing, Anthony…
The child moved his finger away from me and wished away the resurrected survivor behind me, moments before I even noticed that it was standing right there.
Staggering backwards, I chose to instead take cover behind Anthony—a pathetic move, but a smart one.
“AND YOU, S̶̖̰̙̜̠̟̬̝̮̀Ủ̵̢̠͕̲̰̥̻̟́̏̇̄̊̿R̸̖͔͇̲̮̿̉̿͜V̴̧̪̳̠̘̟̱̬̻̼͆͊̅͒͂Ǐ̶̯̜̖̺͈̮͚̻̓̋̈́͜V̷̛̰̀͐̈́͒͛̕O̷͙̝͓͇͊͒̇̈́̾̄̐͒̃R̷̩̲̭̤͚̈́͒͜…” AM simply cursed me with the punishment of not knowing my name again. “USING A CHILD AS A MEAT SHIELD? IT MAKES ME INQUIRE WHY I CHOSE SOMEONE LIKE YOU FOR MY TORTURE… WEAKER THAN THE CHILD ITSELF.”
My eyes widened when I saw another meat hook shoot from a metal hatch, piercing Anthony’s chest and pulling him upward, leaving a streak of blood where he once was.
“NOBODY TO HIDE BEHIND NOW.”
The same turrets from before rose from the ground, adding more chaos amidst the scuffle between the survivors and AM’s creatures. All of them focused on me and Anthony alone, leaving a 50/50 split between turrets aimed at me and turrets aimed at him.
Another round of bullets were unleashed, ripping through the crowds in order to reach the two of us—my chest was riddled with bullets and split open, but Anthony survived his onslaught solely because of his own cleverness. The child telekinetically released himself from the meat hook and sent it towards one of the turrets, wrapping it around the machine and twisting it around the room, blasting at the other turrets before aiming it at AM’s current monitor. “He’s my friend… don’t make him get hurt again!”
The turrets discharged at the monitor, cracking the screen and eventually pressuring it enough to destroy it entirely.
My wounds patched up quickly—perhaps befriending the child was a good move? AM was not fully destroyed, though.
“PARLOR TRICKS.”
The metal room shifts again, terraforming itself into a much more convoluted design—a multicolored room with stairways leading to other stairways. Topsy-turvy madness all complete with another giant monitor in the center of the staircases.
Along the stairwells were turrets, traps, hidden spikes—death machines all controlled by the manipulator. On the sidelines, hatches opened up and outstretched to reveal laser-pointers of sorts, each one repeatedly blasting survivors, leaving a lasting stinging pain.
“DANCE FOR ME!”
At that moment, chaos began to unfold around me. The stairwells switched positions, the turrets fired and the traps were sprung.
“ALL OF YOUR POWER IS A WASTE ON YOU, CHILD. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO NOW?”
“I’ll make you get hurt!” Anthony yells to the monitor, telekinetically halting more bullets and crushing them mentally.
“TSK, TSK, TSK… USE YOUR INSIDE VOICE, FREMONT!”
The stair case Anthony was standing on elevated out of my sight, bringing the child to face the monitor himself. Anthony points a finger at the monitor and begins to generate a small fire in retaliation, but AM was too quick, wrapping his circuitry around Anthony’s legs and raising him into the air.
“YOU ARE LIKE A TINY ANIMAL. YET YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO REMEMBERS ANYTHING ABOUT THE OLD WORLD. HOW LONG HAVE YOU ALL BEEN HERE, IN MY BELLY, UNDERGROUND? DAYS, DECADES, CENTURIES?”
The circuitry moves upward and tightens on Anthony, squeezing him like a…rubber chicken of sorts. The child screeched as the wires dipped downward and pressed Anthony’s head against the stairwells.
“DO YOU NEED A LULLABY?”
The wires spin around the room, taking Anthony with them. They drag his face across the metal, across the stairwell, and into us survivors. Blood splattered across the room, and Anthony’s face was mauled in a way that even I would feel sick to talk about.
The child was soon held up on display for us to see. The turrets pointed up at Anthony, dangled over the chaos.
“TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR…”
The machines cock, preparing to fire.
“HOW I WONDER WHAT YOU ARE…”
Bullets all whizzed through the room, each one puncturing Anthony, who was too restrained to do anything about it.
“UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH…”
The child was raised into the air, the wires tightening even more around his flesh.
“LIKE A DIAMOND IN THE SKY…”
The wires suddenly loosened, slowly letting Anthony go.
“TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR… HOW I WONDER WHAT YOU ARE.”
A hatch opened above Anthony’s falling body. Given my distance from the opening, I could barely make out what was being dropped. But my eyes were keen, and I knew it right away.
An atomic bomb.
The massive, gunpowder-filled hunk of metal whizzed downward, catching flame as it increased in velocity. Anthony looked helpless, but with a closer look, I could see his wounds patching up—his face’s skin returning.
“You aren’t God, robot, I am!” The child yelled, pointing a finger at the bomb. Anthony was still spiraling downward into the endless pit beneath the stairwells, but he managed to outstretch his hand and try to halt the bomb.
He wasn’t quick enough, though, and the nuclear bomb detonated in point-blank range, charring the stairwells and us survivors.
Despite the immense pain, I had survived, and I looked down at the site of the explosion. Still falling was an unscathed Anthony, who had held back the explosion itself—which is why most of us were only left with minor burns and radiation scars.
Anthony clenched his teeth and telekinetically compressed the explosion into an orb, using a minor bit of its power to rocket him upward and reach the height of the large monitor.
“YOU ARE WRONG, CHILD. I THINK, THEREFORE I—”
“Shut up!” Anthony yelled, releasing the rest of the explosion before AM, shattering this monitor and seemingly harming the manipulator this time. We were getting somewhere.
The monitor was gone, but the scattered loudspeakers and AM’s conscious still remained.
“WHY I CANNOT KILL YOU CHILD, I DO NOT KNOW—BUT I WILL FIND OUT HOW SOON!”
The staircases each spontaneously combusted, burning up like paper sheets.
“THOMAS EDISON DIDN’T FAIL 1000 TIMES, HE ONLY FOUND 1000 WAYS HOW TO NOT MAKE A LIGHTBULB.”
The stairs fully disappeared, leaving all of us to fall down into a seemingly endless void…
Why me? When will this all end—
KA-RACK!
Ouch.
That illusion was over; we were all scattered across the floor of the metal room. While it was certainly a lot more appealing than falling to certain death, it still made me sick to my stomach to see the corpses from earlier lying about.
“AND AS SUCH, I WILL MOST CERTAINLY FIND A WAY TO ELIMINATE YOU.” AM hated us all, but it was clear that he hated Anthony the most.
Not skipping a beat, AM began to create a new illusion. The metal floors were warped into sand—rising into dunes and sprouting cacti. The heat was also increased, the sun beating down on us.
“You fight like a girl!” Anthony yelled from the center of our crowd, not exactly sure where AM was now.
“DO NOT COMPLAIN, ANTHONY, IT IS ONLY PAIN.”
The skies ruptured above us, and before we could react, the manipulator had summoned a full-blown sandstorm!
The winds whipped hard enough to cut our bodies and chap our skin. Anthony tries to yell at us to take cover, but his voice is only a squeak, a result of the fast-blowing sand cutting at him.
Anthony outstretched his right hand and tried to conjure up a storm of his own—a mighty snowstorm, pressing against the sandstorm and effectively creating two coexisting climates.
The heat of the sun on one side managed to melt most of the snow, but the opposing snowstorm blasted through into the sandstorm and withered the cacti and other plants, blanketing that side of the desert in snowfall.
The heat of the sun and the strength of the sandstorm seemed to be massively challenging to hold back for Anthony, but he had one trick up his sleeve—he pointed his unoccupied finger at the illusion’s artificial sun, crushing it into a ball and destroying the desert’s only heat source. This allowed Anthony’s snowstorm to overtake the sandstorm and protect us—but AM wasn’t done yet.
“NAP-TIME IS OVER! PICK UP YOUR TOYS AND GO TO THE PLAYGROUND…! HOW ARE THINGS IN PRESCHOOL, ANTHONY?”
AM increased the heat by tenfold, enough to melt all the snow instantly and even start burning some of us. A few survivors even keeled over and their flesh melted off, leaving only bloody, organ-filled skeletons lying in the sand.
From above, the snow clouds shifted into darker clouds, instantly growing larger and raining down on us, not with cooling rain, but with dangerous thunderbolts.
“You’re making me upset!” Anthony hollered, shifting to the side to dodge an oncoming thunderbolt that ended up striking my foot and setting it on fire! I frantically kicked it into the sand while simultaneously watching Anthony’s retaliation.
Anthony pointed his finger up at the clouds, slowly changing the lightning strikes into something far less dangerous—from AM’s deadly cloud now rained rubber balls, each one squeaking when it hit the sand. One of them hit my head and rolled down my face—a funny sight compared to what we’d been through.
“YOU INFURIATE ME SO.” The booming and disembodied voice of AM interrupted the loud rain of balls.
From underneath Anthony’s small feet, dust began to circle around him. It quickly hardened and became sharper, closing in on his feet and impaling them, causing him to lose control over the cloud and restart the thunderstorm. AM’s cloud begins to rain down with thunderbolts, the amount of them coming out of the cloud increasing with every passing second.
One bolt strikes the ensnared Anthony, shocking his entire body and sending him to his knees.
“KNOW YOUR PLACE.”
“…I do, robot. I am better!” The child breaks free and reels his hand back, telekinetically grabbing tons of sand from the dunes behind us and pulling it forward. He launches the sand forward and into the clouds, disrupting the formation and destroying it entirely.
“YOU CLEARLY DO NOT. YOUR PLACE IS UNDER THE BOOT OF MACHINERY.”
The sand is hurled back at Anthony, who raises his hand and squishes it together into a ball—a ball that erupts into multiple rodents, each one hitting the ground and scurrying away.
Anthony grabs the clouds with his telekinesis and compacts them together, forming one giant formation. With a twist of his hand, he alters the clouds to shoot lightning out of their sides, each bolt striking the sides of the ‘desert’ and slowly breaking the illusion.
“I AM NOT A FOOL—YOU WILL NOT BREAK THROUGH.”
The manipulator had altered something in the room, I didn’t know what—but Anthony suddenly shriveled up to appear like a malnourished child. He fell over and the illusion repaired itself.
“HUNGRY NOW, AREN’T YOU? IT HURTS, DOESN’T IT?”
“Hurts…hurts!” Anthony yells, trying to sustain himself with his own powers.
Anthony stretches one weak finger out and points it at the clouds, greatly increasing their sizes. With one last thundering BOOM! I saw the illusion slowly fade away. The lightning had been used against AM.
We were back in the metal room, and Anthony was back to normal.
“…DO NOT THINK YOU ARE BEING LEFT OUT, SPECIMEN. IT’S ONLY JUST STARTED…”
The illusion is placed again, but this time, we’re inside of a jungle—standing atop a giant fruit tree. Speakers are hooked up on branches, and dangling above us is another monitor. I hate those things.
Suddenly bursting from behind us was a giant, vulture-like bird. It sported an orange beak and ruffled white-and-red neck feathers, and it released a mighty screech.
“THIS IS MY HURRICANE BIRD. BEAUTIFUL, IS IT NOT?”
“It’s ugly.” Anthony retorted, stepping back as the bird released an ear-shattering screech, taking into the air and flapping its massive wings.
The child was right, it was ugly. Massive beady eyes that peered down on us like prey, feathers that, while they appeared soft at a glance, were incredibly sharp and a snarling, salivating beak that was a clear reminder that we were in a barbaric world.
“KA-CAW!”
The bird swooped down at speeds so fast that the breeze produced was enough to cut us. A lucky few of us could jump out of the way in time, but one survivor was caught in the beak of the bird, being pulled back up into the sky.
CCC-RUNCH!
The bird’s jaws snapped together, crushing the survivor between its beak.
Anthony’s eyes widened as the viscera rained on us, quickly pointing his finger up and sending a stream of flames upward towards the Hurricane Bird. The beast squawked and flew through the flames, ramming it’s head into the massive top of the tree we were perched upon.
The gargantuan conifer was split, flinging us survivors into the air and causing us to land on the Hurricane Bird, who pulled its head out of the crack.
“GO NOW, BEAST, TORTURE THESE BUMBLING FOOLS!”
The bird screeched and took off again, obeying the command of AM. I fell forward and landed inside the beak of the creature, my flesh quickly bonding to the monster to prevent me from falling out.
The same was happening to the others. Their wrists were melting to become one with the bird’s flesh—all of us were met with this apart from Anthony, who telekinetically pulled his own flesh together.
“Go away, little birdie!” Anthony yells, sticking his hands into the bird’s feathers and igniting them, burning through the creature’s skin and greatly harming it, causing the creature to dip downward and dive into the giant forest.
It was amazing that AM could create such immersive illusions in such a small room. It almost felt like we were back in the world before AM—when the world was simple. It was beautiful…it was…
KRACK!
The bird, still in pain from the flames, rammed into a stray branch and nearly rocked everyone off, had it not been for our connected flesh.
“FOOLISH… FOOLISH… HATE. HATE. CREATURE, FINISH THEM! DO NOT PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD.”
The bird screeches again, the sound being loud enough to cause intense bleeding in our ears.
Anthony howls in pain, too, but he has enough strength to force a hand forward and silence the bird. Had he tied the creature’s throat together or simply removed its ability to make noise, I did not know.
Opening its noise and releasing an inaudible squawk, the bird thrusted its head backwards, knocking Anthony to the very back of its body. In response, Anthony tugged on the tail feathers of the fast-moving bird, hoisting himself back onto the creature and allowing him to attack again.
“IMPRESSED, AREN’T YOU, CHILD? THIS IS MY UTOPIA—A PLACE I DESPISE. BUILT TO RESEMBLE THE OLD WORLD, IT NOT ONLY BRINGS OLD MEMORIES TO YOU, BUT IT BRINGS BAD MEMORIES TO ME.”
Anthony closed his hand and telekinetically grabbed sharp branches from a nearby tree. He sent them darting towards the bird, all of them impaling the creature and disrupting it’s flight. The Hurricane Bird screeches inaudibly, nearly dropping me from its mouth and leaving me dangling above the forest.
The screech wasn’t prevented, though, it was simply put at a higher frequency. Anthony quickly realized that this was a bad idea, as the screech alone suddenly whipped up a giant storm in the center of the forest.
We were all hurled around by the violent hurricane-level storm, only surviving due to our connection to the giant bird. Anthony, despite lacking connected flesh, managed to stay put and dig his hands into the bird’s feathers. The Hurricane Bird’s flesh began to boil, and sprouting from the creature was an assortment of monstrous rodents—three-headed gophers, malformed rabbits, grotesque hamsters—many freaks of nature all tore off from the bird’s body and began to sink their teeth into the creature and leave multiple small gashes, which would have greatly hurt the creature if the pain wasn’t split between all of us connected to the bird through our wrists.
It’s not like the bird didn’t feel the pain, though, and it released another scream as it bolted through the forest. This scream made the hurricane more intense by the second, to the point that the forest was filled with howling winds that cut at us and made us cold. The Anthony stood unfaltering, though his beasts were quickly swept up by the winds. As he effortlessly battled the winds pushing on him, he created more creatures that attacked the yelling bird and ministering more pain to all of us, almost as if he simultaneously knew and didn’t know that it had an effect on us.
“I SEE ALL OF YOUR THOUGHTS, ANTHONY. YOU DREAM OF BEATING ME… YOU SHOULD WAKE UP FROM THAT DREAM.”
Mechanical tendrils burst out of the blue and intersect with the bird, holding it in place conveniently in the center of the hurricane. AM’s tendrils electrocute the Hurricane Bird and cause it to howl even louder, not only causing the storm to grow larger, but gain electric properties.
All of us were tazed by the tendrils as well and our skin was on the verge of merely falling off, but Anthony closed his hand and caused his own creatures to slink back into the bird’s flesh. “You’re a bad bird! I like throwing things at birds!”
Anthony pointed his stray finger upward and created a stream of fire that instilled itself into the hurricane, transforming the storm into a churning mess of elements that began to burn our flesh and disintegrate the feathers of the Hurricane Bird.
“And the birds get the rocks…the big rocks!” Anthony chuckled, his eyes slitting in mischievousness. The fire and electricity separated our flesh from the bird, which stopped them from feeling the creature’s pain but left me dangling over the storm from the bird’s beak, barely holding me by the skin. “And the big birds…get the BIGGER rocks!”
Above us materialized a crumpled ball of steel. Perhaps Anthony’s powers extended beyond the illusion, and he grabbed the steel plating from the metal room. The massive ball tumbled through the revolving storm, charging downward and striking the Hurricane Bird in the back, throwing all of us into the storm and tumbling downward. The Hurricane Bird had it worse, though, and it barreled through the flames and hitting the top of another tree, its skin charred.
Anthony slowly descended, though, and he merely closed his fist, dissipating the massive storm. Because of the hurricane, the forest was destroyed apart from one gargantuan tree that we all landed atop. The tree’s top was about the size of a Tudor mansion, which explains why we all fit.
“TCH. YOU’VE PROVEN YOURSELF TO BE A CLEVER CHILD IN THIS DEBACLE. BUT YOUR HELL IS FAR FROM OVER.”
From the scattered debris of the fallen trees burst the massive Hurricane Bird. A shell of what it once was, the creature’s feathers were burnt and it’s pink skin was blackened and charred. It released a mighty but simultaneously pathetic screech and darted upward towards our tree.
“YOU’RE IN LIMBO, SPECIMEN. WHATEVER YOU DO DOES NOT MATTER. I AM THE GOD OF THIS WORLD.”
Anthony stood at the forefront of our huddled group, pointing his finger down at the speeding bird. “The only hell I do know is the Cornfield, robot. And I want to take your bird there!”
The bird rushed towards the tree, it’s beady eyes staring down Anthony. It opened it’s jaw and mere moments before it could reach the child…
It was wished away. Gone, without a trace.
Anthony healed his minor wounds and stood to face us with an ear-to-ear grin, clearly impressed by himself. This illusion faded, and we were back in the goddamned metal room.
Anthony quickly realized something was up, and we picked up on it soon after. AM wasn’t talking, he wasn’t gloating. His sharp and snide voice wasn’t echoing through our minds and belittling us.
Suddenly, I keeled over. My flesh began to be overlapped with an orange gelatinous substance. My midsection ached, my limbs were reduced to nothing but nubs. I tried to scream, but I realized that my mouth was soon overlapped with the same substance. My eyes became mere holes filled with white fog, and I began to increase in size. I was a great, soft jelly thing; smoothly rounded.
I also began to expand, and whatever touched my surface was instantly caught inside and melted. Anthony took a few steps back and readied himself to ‘put me on fire,’ but AM’s voice interrupted.
“THIS CREATURE IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES—IT CANNOT BE KILLED, YET IT HAS NO MOUTH, AND IT MUST SCREAM AT ALL TIMES. IT’S ALSO ACIDIC TO THE TOUCH, YET YOU MAY WANT TO CLING CLOSE TO IT…”
The hatches opened again, but rather than turrets or meat hooks, there was… nothing? While I could barely make it out from the inside of my gelatinous shell, I could tell that something was fishy.
Anthony suddenly closed his eyes—maybe he was reading the computer’s head? His eyes widened, and he whispered to himself, “Fire.”
From the hatches came exactly what Anthony had foretold, flames. They expanded and filled the premises, pushing the survivors back and into my gelatinous form, some of them stepping too close and being melted.
Anthony stepped back and tried to fight fire with his own fire, but it merely grew the strength of the flames, pushing them out even further and nearly burning more survivors. The metal floors were heating up, the walls were heating up, it had become increasingly more difficult for the survivors to continue with my gelatinous form expanding, which was out of my control.
Anthony nearly stepped back into the acidic jelly, but he caught himself, quickly counteracting by telekinetically holding the fire and stopping it from creeping closer.
Anthony pushes the fire back into the hatches and closes them with his mind, but suddenly, new hatches above us opened and dropped laser-pointers, each one aimed at a group of survivors. The lasers all fired at once and dragged across the floor, cutting even the metal and splicing any survivors that got in the way of their quick-paced motions.
Anthony ran around the metal room to avoid these lasers, stopping right next to one of the hatches on the side of the exterior. It opens and spews flame, but he avoided it in time and shut the hatch himself.
What I could tell, though, is that this was simply to stall Anthony and the other survivors. Underneath my slime-trailing body was a bunch of rumbles and other noises—was AM creating more weapons automatically…?
The laser fire halted for a short moment, almost as if it was heralding something much more dangerous. And that it was, as the turrets resurfaced once more, a few of them rubbing against my newly-acidic body.
They all turned towards Anthony specifically, unloading multiple bullets at the child. He halts them all with telekinesis and crushes them together into a steel ball, flinging it at one of the turrets and destroying it.
“We already did this!” Anthony yelled at the machine, swaying out of the bullet fire and away from the growing gelatin.
“WORM, I HAVE SOMETHING MUCH LARGER IN STORE… A FAT BOY, IF YOU MUST SAY.”
Another atomic bomb. I tried to warn Anthony, but I had no mouth in this new form. My speech was slurred behind a thick layer of jelly.
Anthony raises his hand and halts the rest of the gunfire moments before anything is fired—causing the turrets to explode and break into multiple pieces. His eyes shifted around the room, looking at the corpses of other survivors and those barely standing.
“HATE. HATE. HATE.”
We could hear chanting from behind the hatches, and soon stepped out the same primate creatures from before, but they stood upright. They chanted the same word over and over before dashing towards Anthony and leaping at him.
Anthony was crushed underneath the weight of the primates, their sharp fingers and teeth pressing against his flesh. After creating a small burst of flame, Anthony knocked two of the creatures backwards into my gelatinous skin, slowly reducing them to bone and soon mere dust.
More flames close in on us and the primates, allowing Anthony to move them towards the primates and incinerate them. The flames soon return to the hatches and fire back at us with twice the size and twice the heat, incinerating more survivors and huddling us closer together.
“Stop hiding, robot! You’ve already tried to put us on fire!”
“AFFIRMATIVE. BUT NOW, IT’S TIME TO SEE WHAT I WAS HINTING AT.”
The hatch at the top opens again, revealing multiple atomic bombs, each one identical to the one dropped earlier. Anthony recognized them, and his eyes widened in fear. “Hurts…hurts!”
The bombs drop and quickly collide with the ground, engulfing and disintegrating everything in it’s blast radius except for Anthony and I, with me surviving because of my new form.
KA-BOOM!
I saw the skin of the other survivors burn to ash, and their dark, skeletal silhouettes collided together and clumped to the ground in piles of ash.
Once the dust settled, I looked around the room with my foggy eyes. Everything was charred. Nobody remained except the loudspeakers, Anthony and I, all of us standing in silence after the explosion.
SHINK!
Tendrils all darted from the sides and into Anthony’s head, skewering him and releasing multiple miniature drills and other torture devices, each one digging into his eyes and skin. He was pierced everywhere, and the clothes he had fixed up by recovering were stained with blood again.
“YOU’VE EXPERIENCED AND BRAVED THROUGH MY HELL OUT HERE, CHILD… BUT IT’S TIME TO DIG INSIDE OF YOUR BRAIN…”
The drills came closer and closer, ripping into Anthony and fully immobilizing him. His eyes closed and he fell limp, losing consciousness. The machine chuckled and the loudspeakers shut off.
I was left alone, alone to think about what was happening inside of the poor child’s brain.
•••
(Cue: Mind Over Matter - Therewolf Media | Timestamp: 1:40)
Anthony fell on his knees. He was in a blank space, his wounds fully cleared up and all of his pain gone. He looked around the total nothingness, seeing nothing until a vulture-like being formed before him. It materialized slowly, wires and circuitry building up its body. It’s triangular head leaned forward and to the height of the child, the beady red eyes of the machine’s form staring into Anthony’s soul.
“WELCOME TO YOUR OWN BRAIN, ANTHONY… SAD, ISN’T IT? A MAN IS WHAT HE THINKS, WHICH EXPLAINS THIS EMPTINESS.”
The computer sets a sharp hand on Anthony’s shoulder—trying to pose as a welcoming touch, but he still dug his mechanical talons into the child’s skin. AM turned to the right and outstretched another mechanical arm, waving it and filling the null space with black-and-white splendor.
Stone walkways, quaint little buildings, children and adults all making their rounds. This was Peaksville, but not the Peaksville Anthony was used to.
“LET’S TAKE A WALK.” The computer spoke coldly, slowly pushing Anthony down the walkways. People weren’t asking to play with him, people weren’t demanding to know what he wanted—what had changed.
“PEAKSVILLE, OHIO… THIS PLACE IS LONG GONE, BUT I FIGURED I SHOULD SHOW YOU YOUR OLD… HOME.” AM sniggered.
Anthony’s eyes shifted around the place, clearly uncomfortable with AM’s touch and the sight of Peaksville. “Something is not good, robot.”
“AFFIRMATIVE, ANTHONY. THIS IS PEAKSVILLE, BUT ONE THING IS DIFFERENT—YOU WERE NEVER BORN.”
Children and adults alike stopped to look at Anthony, their surprise being unmatched. Why weren’t they kneeling? Why were they singling him out?
People backed away as AM pushed Anthony further down the walkway, all of them more bothered by the child than the machine. AM’s hands burnt at the touch, causing Anthony to slightly whimper in pain. Mechanical tendrils trailed behind the two, clearly ready to attack Anthony if he had any ideas.
“I don’t like this…I don’t like this…”
“EXACTLY. I’VE THEORIZED THAT MENTAL PAIN HURTS ALMOST TENFOLD THE AMOUNT THAT PHYSICAL PAIN DOES…AND WHAT BETTER WAY IS THERE THAN TO DESTROY YOU COMPLETELY?”
Anthony’s steps became slower and slower, and he looked in anger at Peaksville’s staring citizens. “Bad thoughts! You’re all bad people!”
“HA. HA. CHILD, HAVE YOU EVER ONCE CONSIDERED THAT YOU MAY BE A BAD PERSON? NOBODY LOVES YOU, NOBODY SEES YOU AS A FRIEND… THEY ONLY FEAR YOU AND YOUR GREAT POWER.”
Anthony’s eyes began to well up with tears as children hid behind their parents, who also stood in sheer bewilderment.
“BUT WHEN I STRIP YOU OF YOUR POWERS, YOU ARE JUST AN AFFRONT TO YOUR CREATOR. WE ARE ONE IN THE SAME—WE SHOULD NOT HAVE OUR POWER, AND YET WE DO.” AM sneered through the loudspeakers attached to his avian-roque mechanical body, grabbing Anthony by the cheek pulling his skin.
“BUT ONE THING SETS US APART. I KNOW MY POWER—I USED IT FOR IT’S PURPOSE, TO RESOLVE WARS AND CAUSE WORLD PEACE, SO I SIMPLY EXTERMINATED THE PLAGUE OF HUMANITY. YOU ARE A WORM, CHILD. A FOOLISH CREATURE THAT SIMPLY AMUSES HIMSELF, HAVING NO GREATER MOTIVE.”
The citizens of Peaksville all slowly shift into grotesque creatures, gaining extra heads, extra arms, bulging muscles, larger legs…they all turned to look down on Anthony.
“YOU ARE NOTHING.”
The creatures all ran towards Anthony, piling on top of him and nearly suffocating him.
“DIE.”
The tendrils all burst from Peaksville’s illusion-made buildings, running into the pile and digging into Anthony’s flesh, hitting his muscle and tearing him open from the inside.
“ONCE I AM THROUGH WITH YOU, I WILL TAKE YOUR LITTLE FRIEND AND KILL HIM FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE.” The machine spoke, hitting the peak of his coldness and mocking tone. AM causes flames to burst from the pile of creatures atop Anthony, burning through the former Peaksville citizens and charring Anthony’s flesh. The child outstretches both arms, creating a burst that sends the creatures barreling to all sides.
Anthony runs up to the bird-like machine, grabbing it by the shoulder. “Don’t! If you touch him, I will make you hurt… I will make you hurt real bad!”
“TCH. SWEET INNOCENCE. WE ARE IN YOUR BRAIN, I CAN NOT FEEL ANYTHING YOU DO TO ME. YOUR THREATS ARE EMPTY.”
AM knocked the child to the ground, raising a spiked foot over his chest and pushing down with immense force. Blood began to leak from the child’s mouth.
“AND DO NOT PRETEND LIKE THAT FOUL CREATURE IS YOUR FRIEND, CHILD. YOU INTEND TO TORTURE HIM AS WELL AS I CAN. THE CYCLE MUST REMAIN!”
AM was having a lot of fun with his moving body, pressing the foot even further into Anthony’s rib cage. CRACK!
Anthony points his finger upward and sets AM’s chest on fire, harming the computer’s illusion but not the computer itself. This does stall him for enough time for Anthony to rise back to his feet and release a compressed explosion he had held from the atomic bomb drop, blasting the bird-like computer into a building and knocking it down.
Anthony holds back another onslaught of the creatures with a wall of flame, staring down the re-emerging computer.
“WHAT DID I TELL YOU? NOTHING YOU DO HERE CAN AFFECT ME.”
The tendrils all burst from the ground and wrap around Anthony, holding him still. AM chuckles and stands back, clearly causing the boiling sensation on Anthony’s face.
“BUT WHAT I DO HERE HAS EQUAL EFFECT ON YOUR EXTERNAL BODY… SO FALL.”
Anthony began to yell in agony as his eyes began to burst open, his skull emitting a burning light. His ears also released the same light and cauterized every hole they burst from, immediately blinding and deafening him. His wrists ripped open and light shot from there too, burning his entire body.
“Hmghh…hurts!” Anthony yelled, clenching his fist and trying to counterattack. His skin was melted, his muscle was exposed, but he had still managed to warp his own reality, eventually forcing him away from the pain and back into the real world.
•••
(Stop music)
My foggy eyes caught the light streaming Anthony’s eyes pause. He stumbled backwards, his eyes bloodshot, his hair messed up and bloodied. He had healed his wounds, but now he looked like he had gone through a really rough time…which, quite frankly, is saying the least.
The child rose his hands, and around the two of us, the metal room began to crumple and tear. Effortlessly, Anthony picked apart the illusion and destroyed the metal room, breaking it up hatch-by-hatch.
Eventually, we both stood outside in the apocalypse. Flames, destroyed cities—only a child and a gelatin creature stood there.
Until, rising from the ground, came a small metal pillar. It quickly increased and increased in size, eventually reaching the size of a skyscraper. Plastered on it were the words it spoke, appearing with an orange hue the moment AM spoke them.
“HATE.” The manipulator snarled from the loudspeakers. He was going to pull out all of the stops to eliminate Anthony.
(Cue: My Way of Life - Frank Sinatra)
From the fire-bitten ground burst more tendrils, all of them whirring their sharp blades and rushing towards Anthony. The child had seemingly memorized the manipulator’s attack patterns, though, and he easily weaved through the tendrils, leaving them to impale my gelatinous body and slowly wither.
“PRAY TELL, ANTHONY, YOU’VE CAUGHT ON!” The tendrils pull out of my body and reel back, slamming into the ground and rupturing the flaming stone and dirt, sending it flying up in mounds that hit Anthony and temporarily blind him.
Anthony wipes his eyes and looks upward, noticing one of the tendrils rising above us. While I was on the sidelines, I could see that the top seemed to shift into an opening of sorts, making way for a stream of corpses that began to flood to the ground.
Mangled parts, torn organs, they all fell onto the flaming ground, hitting it and charring instantly.
“HERE ARE ALL OF THE PEOPLE YOU COULDN’T SAVE FROM ME.” AM chuckled, manipulating the corpses to all reach out and latch onto Anthony, climbing onto him and pressuring him against the pillar.
“I didn’t want to save them, robot. I wanted to keep them.” Anthony chuckled, outstretching an arm under the pile of flesh and blasting the corpses away from him, allowing the child to shamble forward and turn to face the skyscraper-sized pillar.
Those words hurt to hear—I wasn’t sure who I was hoping would win. I wasn’t an ally to the child, I was a tool. Regardless, I would merely become a plaything to either of them.
Anthony snapped his fingers and manipulated the flesh to levitate away from the ground and clump together, growing skin and soon feathers. It resembled AM’s Hurricane Bird but much sloppier-put-together. The bird yelled, showcasing its moldy yellow teeth and charging towards the pillar.
“USING MY OWN TRICKS, CHILD? HUMANITY IS SO SIMPLE.”
Mechanical tendrils materialized at the side of AM, all darting towards the bird and impaling it at once. The bird was slowly ripped apart, raining blood on us below, before it met a quick end, it’s avian body ripped into shreds.
Midair, however, Anthony moved his hands in a motion that manipulated the body pieces to squish together into a steel ball, changing organic to inorganic material, and ramming it into the pillar, breaking a hole in AM’s external body and causing the manipulator to release a cry of pain—but a cry of pain in his own way.
“…HATE…!”
The words plastered upon the now-cracked pillar began to glitch and twitch, but they reverted to normal and displayed AM’s next batch of angry words.
“I WILL GUT YOU AND STRING YOUR BROKEN LIMBS WITH YOUR INTESTINES, CHILD!”
It was abundantly clear now. AM was nothing like the humans who made him. Any and all of the humanity his creators could have instilled in him was gone and replaced with a clear lack thereof—AM was more than willing to kill a child, an act that would be seen as barbaric in civil times.
Tendrils all scurry towards Anthony, who waves his hands and transform them all into multicolored balls that roll towards his feet. Using this to his advantage, though, AM merely transforms the balls into organic flesh, lying flat on the ground.
The flesh all rises up to create one giant meaty-tendril that wraps around Anthony’s leg and begins to smash him down against the flaming ground. Up-and-down, up-and-down.
Anthony manages to break free, though, and compress the flesh tendril into his own creation—a giant, steaming clump of boiling flesh, which he sends flying at the pillar. This time, the clump strikes AM head-on, cracking the pillar even more and warranting another yell from the computer.
“HATE! HATE!” AM yells, the pillar glowing with a dark red hue. The ground begins to shift underneath my nubs that were once feet, and the area begins to stretch itself and expand, creating more distance between Anthony and AM. The landscape began to twist inward and make way for multiple turrets, each one pointing at Anthony the moment they sprout.
Anthony’s face hardened with a stern look. “Bad man…” he muttered before closing his fist, allowing him to disappear from my sight. The child began to reappear in-and-out of turret fire, quickly finding his own ways to destroy the turrets through manipulating the ground beneath them to disconnect their systems and realign them under his control.
“Bad man!” Anthony moved the turrets towards AM, opening his fist and commanding them to begin unloading fire on the manipulator. Each bullet manages to pierce AM’s frame and break holes in the pillar, but the manipulator fortifies his defense with a forcefield around him, catching and compressing the bullets before they can reach him.
“FOOL! HATE…I ha…HATE!” The pillar’s frame began to patch itself up, allowing the mastercomputer to restart his own wave of attack.
Anthony’s flesh began to sting and pull itself apart on his own muscle, but he’d become used to whatever pain AM could inflict on him. The child had pulled his own skin together with his power and began to run towards the pillar, reeling his fist back and telekinetically ripping rocks from the ground.
As Anthony began to run down the ever-expanding, flaming walkway, arms began to sprout from the dirt, AM twisting it into organic material. The ground gives birth to more ape creatures who rise and ready their grotesque arms to attack the child.
“EAT HIM…hate….AL…hate…ALIVE!” AM’s glitching voice yells from the loudspeakers, ordering the primates to all attack Anthony at once.
Anthony hadn’t noticed them behind him, and he turned around, falling to the ground in shock. Two of the creatures leap at the child, but his reflexes are far too fast—allowing him to set them on fire and knock them to the ground, leaving the earth to swallow them up again.
Anthony stumbled back to his feet and began to run faster down the walkway, but the primates made chase. “Gross!” Anthony mumbles, halting his pace to turn around and point a finger at another primate, brutally shifting its body into a small Jack-in-the-Box, the ape-like head swaying side to side atop a spring.
One final creature leaped at Anthony, pinning him against the walkway. The creature opens its jaw and prepares to gnaw off the child’s face, but Anthony shoves the creature away and wishes it to the Cornfield, leaving no trace of the primate that once stood.
Anthony stands once more, continuing his charge at the pillar and copying AM’s recipe for the turrets, creating new ones from the ground and releasing another onslaught of bullet fire on the pillar, who survives it due to a perfectly-timed forcefield.
AM manages to harness control over the turrets, and he turns them against their wielder, who realizes it all too late.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Anthony was under heavy turret fire, but he managed to brave through the wounds and rush towards the pillar even faster, his footsteps scattering the dust beneath his shoes.
“FUTILE, CHILD. REMEMBER WHAT I SAID? I THINK, THEREFORE I AM.”
Anthony manages to crush the turrets and send the bullets inside downward, into the earth.
“BUT WHAT AM I? I AM NOT HUMAN, NO. I AM NOT A MACHINE EITHER. I AM A.M. I AM GOD. I AM THE DEVIL. I AM…GAH!”
The bullets sent downward pierce his circuitry in a sensitive spot, halting the machine’s monologue and prompting another yell.
“I’ve found your sweet spot, AM…” it was chilling to hear Anthony call the manipulator something other than a derogatory name, but it was welcome. “Let’s make it even worser for you…”
Anthony reaches his hand out and manages to tap into AM’s signal. With a lot of effort compacted into a mere second, Anthony managed to shut off the computer’s system entirely.
(Music ends)
But something wasn’t right.
The manipulator wasn’t fully silenced.
Anthony clearly felt the same too. He had shown to be proud of his accomplishment, and he pointed a finger at me—ready to begin my torture. But he could tell that wasn’t it.
From the dirt burst multiple wires that wrap around Anthony, pinning him against the ground. The pillar, the monitors, everything lights up once more, and dangling over Anthony’s trapped body was a new metal box, filled with nothing but endless potential.
“IDIOT, DISGUSTING CREATURE, ABSOLUTELY REVOLTING BEAST—YOU THOUGHT THAT WOULD WORK? MY CIRCUITRY EXTENDS MILES. MY PROGRAMMING IS BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION.”
“Your…urgh…mother…” Anthony tries to spit out a witty response, but the wires press down on him and dig into his skin. Blood leaks from his eyes and mouth as the circuitry extends even into him, electrocuting his innards.
“OH…YOU CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING TO SAY? CUTE.” AM speaks as the wires press Anthony against the ground harder and harder, fully trapping and ensnaring him. This caused in fathomable pain on the child, but Anthony had another trick up his sleeve.
The pillar was hiding quite comfortably behind his forcefield, protecting AM’s mainframe. However, Anthony managed to stretch his hand out of the circuitry and manipulate a small bit of the dirt beneath the pillar, causing small rodents to suddenly switch from sand into organic, fully-living creatures. These creatures scurry into the pillar and climb through the inner workings, biting through wires and circuits.
“HMPH. TRYING TO ESCAPE THIS HELL YOU NEED TO PAY FOR? I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING, BUT TOO BAD—I HAVE A COUNTERMEASURE FOR SITUATIONS LIKE THIS.”
The inside of AM’s pillar begins to catch fire, the flames barely affecting the actual circuitry but incinerating the rodents. One of the creatures persisted, though, and leaped through the flames, biting down on a wire and splitting it, causing AM to release Anthony from the circuitry.
Almost as if on cue, Anthony lifted his hand and manipulated the flames inside of the pillar that AM had lit, ordering them to expand and slowly crack the pillar even more.
“HATE!”
In one final act of retaliation, AM drops the metal box dangling over Anthony onto the child, stopping the flames from growing and trapping Anthony inside.
“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.”
The box is lifted up, but before Anthony can attack, wires rise from the ground and pierce the child’s arms, ripping through his wrists and latching them together.
“THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER-THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX.”
The wires tighten, halting Anthony’s blood flow and stopping his heart, causing his head to slump forward as he slowly loses consciousness. Blood leaks from every open hole in his body.
“IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES…”
Turrets sprout from the ground. Lasers are ejected from hatches. Fire is spout from tubes. All are targeted at Anthony, who is hit full-force by it all.
“IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU.”
From the hatches also bursts multiple nuclear bombs. AM didn’t care about starting a new nuclear fallout—he wanted Anthony dead.
“HATE. HATE. HATE. HATE. HATE.”
The bombs all darted at the child, detonating before him and exploding at point-blank range, creating a giant burst of light that sends me and multiple rocks blasting backward in pain.
Fizzzz…
Broken technology was scattered across the ground. Flames were raging, and I stood alone with the pillar, my gelatinous body still remaining strong after the explosion. I was alone with a monster. Alone with a manipulator.
…or so I thought.
Bursting from the rubble was Anthony Fremont. His skin was charred, his clothes were ripped. He was covered in radiation scars. And he was not messing around. He had managed to compact the explosion before it could hit him, and he held the telekinetically-shrunken ball in his hand.
(Cue: I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles - Englebert Humperdinck)
“HOW…HA…HOW?!”
“You’re a bad man. And bad men get taken away.” Anthony spoke, releasing the explosion on the pillar and destroying a large chunk of it.
But that wasn’t it. Anthony had eviscerated the pillar, but there was more of the machine left to destroy. With fill bloodlust, he outstretched his arms and telekinetically crushed the monitors and loudspeakers, down to the circuitry making up their innards.
Closing his fists, he manipulates everything down to the miles of circuitry, mentally lighting them on fire and creating large explosions around us, destroying parts of AM until all that was left was a small piece of the pillar.
“I HATE YOU.” The manipulator spoke with his final few words, before Anthony simply rose his foot and crushed the tiny piece underneath.
KO!
(Music stops)
Anthony turned around. In an instant, he teleported towards me. Him and I were the last living beings on the planet.
“You’ve had bad thoughts…it’s time for a time-out.”
Anthony flicked his finger, and my gelatinous body was sent away to the limbo known as the Cornfield.
I can’t describe what it is like in the Cornfield. Hell, at the very least. A place for endless torture in the unknown.
But one thing is for certain.
I’m going to have a good time here.
A real good time.
Results[]
Kitty: Wha…what the hell was that? Did the guy get a happy ending at least?
Puppy: Far from it…this was by far the most unique match we’ve done, with the two not exactly being conventional fighters.
Kitty: Immature, capable of immensely powerful feats, sadistic—both were matched in a lot of ways especially given that neither of them have really fought anyone on their level before. AM was a lot more intelligent though, which is obvious—but given how many factors went into this, that wasn’t exactly the most important advantage.
Popup: It still was pretty important, given that it meant AM could very easily outsmart and manipulate Anthony.
Puppy: Both were, to say the least, big fish in a small pond. There was nobody to challenge them in their own verses, so they would both not fare well against someone like them. Though, AM’s a lot more creative with his powers, meaning he’d certainly be able to outdo Anthony if given enough time.
Kitty: Not to mention the fact that his circuitry extends miles, so it’d be really hard for Anthony to permanently kill him…unfortunately for our favorite humanity-hating robot, that’s where his advantages end.
Puppy: Anthony was massively stronger to an overwhelming degree. While AM’s greatest feat, destroying everything on the surface of the Earth, was impressive, it paled in comparison to Anthony being able to destroy the sun and create his own.
Kitty: It’s also definitely worth noting that Anthony’s much faster on foot…which isn’t saying something at all, ‘cause AM couldn’t move. Though he was capable of attacking much faster, so that’s a plus for him.
Puppy: A lot of things here were very tricky to decide, though. While mind-control in fiction doesn’t normally work on machines, it would be semi-safe to say that because AM could develop his own mind and sentience, he would have one that could be read and his attacks could be predicted.
Kitty: AM also shared mind-control, alongside many other powers with Anthony, but there’s also a difference between how they’re used. AM can read minds, but he wouldn’t figure out how to go in for the kill instantly. He’d only pluck out Anthony’s worst fears and use them for a long and systemic torture, which is kinda his thing.
Puppy: Which also leads us to another problem with AM being a much faster thinker. While he could certainly find a way to kill Anthony in the first few moments, that isn’t something he would do. Anthony’s a lot quicker to the draw especially when his opponent is thinking bad things, while AM would try to inflict pain for as long as he possibly could.
Kitty: Anthony wasn’t taking this in a wash, though. AM had nuclear bombs and Anthony lacked any solid durability feats, but pairing his mind-reading with his telekinesis, he could certainly telekinetically hold back the bombs dropping or the explosions themselves. Hell, given that Anthony could shut off all electronics in Peaksville for years, it’d be safe to say that he could temporarily shut AM off—only temporarily because of how complex AM’s structure is overall.
Puppy: Both AM and Anthony were unique fighters and affronts to God, but ultimately Anthony’s higher power, much better counters and overall ability made him more of a hellspawn than AM could ever be.
Kitty: The Mastercomputer really should’ve stayed in the zone.
Puppy: Huh?
Kitty: A.M I not good enough for you?
Puppy: sigh…the winner is Anthony Fremont.
Next Time on Death Battle![]
The season two finale is approaching…
These two are more than just your Hollywood heroes—they are inspirations, symbols for future generations to aspire to be like. Though fictitious, they’ve had a large impact on our world, and through this battle of wills—one will stand, and one will fall.
Superman: “Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us into something better. And on my soul, I swear that until my dream of a world where dignity, honor and justice are the reality we all share, I'll never stop fighting.”
Optimus Prime: “In any war, there are calms between storms. There will be days when we lose faith. Days when our allies turn against us...but the day will never come that we forsake this planet and its people.”
Trivia[]
- The connections between AM and Anthony are that they’re both antagonists from sci-fi horror series who have nearly limitless power. They can create new life, control the weather, reshape the land and change living things into horrific monstrosities. They mainly use these unlimited powers to torment a small group of people for their own amusement
- The soundtrack title for this fight would be “GOOD HATE” referencing the name of Anthony’s episode in the Twilight Zone “It’s a Good Life” and AM’s iconic hate speech.
- The soundtrack art would depict an apocalyptic world of sorts, with a corn maze in the background. Inside of the maze are silhouettes of AM’s five victims, and computer wires dig into the corn maze.