iamresponding: (bucketless - out of it)
Nova Prime / Rich Rider ([personal profile] iamresponding) wrote in [community profile] ya_assemble2015-03-27 01:35 am

[AI] Cold Reboot

Something had hurt him. He wasn't sure what. He had been doing something. Something something. Getting something for someone. Home. Getting something for home?

He remember crumpled flowers in a puddle in an alley. Broken brick. A fight. He'd staggered around and fought. A suffocating feeling over his face. Energy pouring out. Molten brick, burning the flowers, vaporizing the puddle. He'd gotten free but the world had shattered into a million confusing crystalline shards. So many voices, perspectives, alien images and words in his head.

Crumpled flowers. They were important. They'd belonged to someone. After that, the voices told him to hide. They were broken like him, all of them.

SYSTEM FAILURE +++ ERROR ERROR +++ WORLDMIND GESTALT DATA CORRUPTED +++ REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.


They tried so many times to fix themselves to fix him but something was wrong. So the voices told him to hide, to survive. It was still looking for him, trying to take him. The star.

"Star tryin' t'take me," the man said to the older woman doling out soup at the soup kitchen. "Told me to hide. Voices tol' me to hide. Starfish, bad starfish."

He trusted the old woman. For some reason. Something about her face. White hair, reminded him of someone. Another older woman. Flowers.

"I lost the flowers, ma, I'm sorry," he said to her. "But the star - the star got me. Now the voices're saying to hide. Voices."

"Oh, you poor dear," said the woman. "Why don't you sit over there, young man? I'm going to get someone to help you, okay? We have someone on staff here, they're going to talk to you to get you some help."

"Help," he echoed back, taking the bowl of soup gratefully, going over to sit where the woman had pointed him. "Help. Help me."

Someone could help him. Faces. Floating spheres and pink light. Fire. Winged feet. Black and red. Faces. There were people that could help him, good people, but he didn't know how to call them. Couldn't remember their names.

"Help me," he said into his bowl of soup. "Wish you were here, Pete. Always know what to do when things are broken."

They were stuck like this. Surviving. Him and the voices. They didn't know what to do, how to get help. All of them were too confused, too addled, splitting and blending.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.

REBOOTING...REBOOT FAILED.


"Restart. Need to restart," he said, in between spoonfuls of soup. "How? How do I...? No button. Can't use a button. How? Why can't you tell me? Brother. Brother could. Where's my brother?"
bouncytrouncy: (Crazy Grin)

[personal profile] bouncytrouncy 2015-04-01 05:01 am (UTC)(link)
"Finally!" Robbie said, peeling off his facemask and giving Rich a quick hug.

"You gotta tell me some of the stuff you've been doing. I mean, Robby said something about you dating the deadliest woman in the galaxy."
always_teddy: (Hulkling Pout)

[personal profile] always_teddy 2015-04-01 06:54 am (UTC)(link)
Teddy's smile at the rib-crushing reunion of friends promptly turned into a grimace.

"Can we just tell them that I snapped back into the Cataclysm?" he asked miserably. "It happens. I can come up with a new identity. I'll even do the training over again from scratch."
sir_vancelot: (What?)

[personal profile] sir_vancelot 2015-04-01 07:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Vance laughed at the hug, giving Rich one back almost as hard. He'd put on a lot of muscle of his own over the past few years, after all.

Nothing compared to Rich, really, but he could give at least partly as good as he got.

"We'll do our best. Robbie probably knows more than I do, though." Because, yeah, Vance hadn't heard about the 'dating the most dangerous woman in the galaxy' thing. "And considering the stories it sounds like you have to tell, ours should be pretty boring. Though I can't tell, yet, if they're going to make me jealous of my future alternate self or not."