Chapter Text
Assimilation felt themselves get shot. They felt their bones and sinew knitting back together, assimilating the ground beneath its corpse for energy. They can hear those stupid “admins” talking.
“admin4: I AM a genius.
admin3: he’s just standing there
admin4:His AI was told to beat the game.
admin4: Now that his goal has been
achieved, he has no tasks
admin4: It’s a bug we haven’t patched.
Lucky us.
admin3: 40 minutes. Think the training is working?
admin4: That isn’t what we’re training for.
admin4: But I have proven that it is.
admin3: I think I have a theory as to why
they keep coming back here.
admin3: Collect him.
“P1 may be deactivated upon run victory”
Then Andre got shot.
…
Assimilation saw red. They stayed though,waiting, until the “admins” finished..celebrating their.. “victory”. The idea of it being a “victory” made Assimilation sick. Andre was dead. Andre was dead..
Not deactivated, that made it seem like Andre was nothing more than his robot body. Assimilation knew he wasn’t.
.
..
Did Assimilation know that?
The way Andre kept going back to the portal. Even with Assimilation teleporting them back, then when he threw the ender pearl. Was Andre more than their programming,truly? Or was that time they had together nothing more fleeting memory that was then erased from Andre's memory card? Assimilation had seen what the Admins did to records they didn’t like, they just deleted them. Records of trainings, records of runs that went wrong. Assimilating with things gave Assimilation a perfect picture of their past, even things thought long gone or deleted from this world Everything except Andre, every part of their system was overwhelming like a tidal wave, Assimilation could only take in so much before it would’ve exploded.
Should Assimilation even try to save Andre? It’s more than likely Andre will do as he always does, keep running away, back to the Admins, back to the ‘security’ of the lie that they are.
Assimilation didn’t know..
That's the thing about lies, they’re so much more appealing than the truth.
Assimilation knew it cared too much. They cared about every animal they had ever unwillingly unwillinglyassimilated maybe that's why its form resembled them.. It had cared for Andre, it had seemed that Andre had cared for Assimilation likewise, but in the end Andre succumbed to their programming. If Assimilation could break through their programming, why couldn't Andre? Was his code more strong than theirs? Has Andres existed for so long with their code it isn’t recognized as code? Or did Andre simply not want to acknowledge their true existence? Assimilation doesn’t know.
That's the problem, Assimilation doesn’t know anything. The new knowledge of everything did nothing to drown out what it didn’t know. They can’t understand Andres thought process, can’t see where things are going next with the robot, Assimilation doesn’t know if the time spent together actually meant anything to Andre the way it did to Assimilation, or if Assimilation was a tool Andre saw could be useful to get what they wanted.
“KILL”
That one directive was enough to let Assimilation go loose, to finally start living. Living past its program. They felt the rush of true freedom destroying the end crystals, teleporting freely not being condemned to conserving their strength for tests.
In the back of their head they were confused about the end, it didn’t teleport them here.
This was the first time they’ve seen anything resembling emotion that wasn’t fear in Andre’s eyes.. defeating the ender dragon seemed to ignite something in him. Assimilation thought it was beautiful. Then suddenly Andre was in the portal and wouldn’t get out.
Assimilation had been used all the way to the end. Or atleast it felt that way. Both of them were AIs, maybe Assimilation could break out, but Andre was confined to his programming. It seemed so arbitrary though, to speculate on these things Assimilation had no clue about.
Assimilation watched as the admins took Andre away. Away. Why did that word feel so wrong in its mouth? Andre had betrayed it. Andre was stuck to their code, Assimilation wasn’t sure if they could do anything about that. If Andre couldn’t see the lie that they were, why was it up to Assimilation who just started living to tell Andre.
…
…
Maybe it’ll give it a few days. They’ll make their way back to Gridworld if necessary.
Maybe it’ll all stop feeling like this is the worst choice it’s ever made…
Andre felt cold. Everything around them was bathed in darkness. It wasn’t comforting, not in the least, but it was familiar.