Final Trial

[cartesio]

Final Trial

It takes a few minutes after everyone talks with the generic mannequin. The easygoing conversation, the bragging from Gant, Keith's exasperation, it all stops when a very heavy and ominous presence fills the room.

"I think it's about time this circus stopped"

It's the Sergeant. He's standing on the doorway, arms crossed. The shadows on his face wriggle, he seems to be rather furious, but is restraining himself from lashing out

"I should have guessed you bunch would take advantage of all that noise and ruckus to sneak in here. I was careless, I admit. 'Oh, this is over in like four hours, it will be okay if I step away to deal with that'. Careless."

Slowly the Sergeant enters the workshop. Behind him, the door slowly disappears, fading away, until where the door was now there's only a smooth wall. The Sergeant raises an arm, the entire room shakes.

All the mannequins fly up to the ceiling, the one that was now Damon Gant turned back into the empty husk the mannequin was before. The one with a t-pose has the same fate. Once all the mannequins are up on the ceiling, the operation tables are uprooted, bolts and screws flying around. The tables are twisted in the air, formed into knots, disassembled and assembled all over again, until several rustic podiums are formed and deposited on the ground.

Seven podiums, with him at the center. The Sergeant crosses his arms and speaks:

"Get on those spots. Tell me... ...how much do you know?"

Is it a rhetorical question? Who knows. You still have to answer, though

Comments

[cartesio]

Data doesn't take into account why. Corruption slowly takes you over, Natalie. Morality is a finicky thing -- a bad action does have weight on you, no matter what reason it has. It's a taint in your subconscious you can't get rid of, and my role was to ingrain that taint as much as I could.

It's for that reason we pushed you all to engage in progressively worse behaviors.

[robitussin]

...Jesus, you're even more cynical than I am.

[She takes a breath.]

You're also wrong.

[cartesio]

Really? Why, Natalie Goodman?

[He sounds actually kind of interested to hear why he's wrong]

[robitussin]

Because you think you corrupted us or whatever, but that's stupid.

[She leans forwards slightly, propping her elbow on her podium and placing her chin in her hand.]

You think you brought us all here to be corrupted or ruin things or whatever, but that isn't what happened, is it? The townspeople cared about us enough to try to break us out of here. We saved their parade. We tried to rebuild their church. We donated to try and get the diner rebuilt. If some of us did bad things, you didn't anticipate us to try and help them, did you?

[cartesio]

Oh, I anticipated you guys would resist. What I didn't was that they would let go of their hatred so soon. That's...it must be my fault. I configured things incorrectly. People aren't so nice they'd forgive criminals like you lot just like that.

[He shrugs]

This exercise was not only to corrupt all of you, it was also to test how society out there will react to you all. After all, do you know what's the first target in the world?

[robitussin]

You didn't configure anything incorrectly. They were that kind. Sorry that you're in denial, but...

[She sighs.]

No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me, now that we're done touching on the first way you failed.

[cartesio]

[He shakes his head. He really is in denial]

The real Cartesio. I sure didn't create all this out of nowhere, you know.

[robitussin]

And how exactly are you expecting that to happen? It being targeted, I mean.

[protectandselfserve]

All things considered, though... you really didn't do as good a job with your little Matrix as you could have!