Chapter Text
As the torrential rain slows and the clouds clear, a truly massive structure becomes visible, dominating the sky. Deep within the structure’s core, a great intelligence endlessly toils away at a seemingly unsolvable problem. This intelligence, known to himself as Five Pebbles, is one of the thousands of iterators toiling away uselessly at the supposed “Great Problem” they were all indentured to. Pebbles bitterly churned away at the endless problem, knowing it futile after years of endless work.
…
He had nothing better to do really. He had cut off the only iterators he knew and reduced the only person who cared about him to a shadow of her former self. He didn’t even say sorry for it, he just shut himself off from everyone else thinking it was somehow better than facing his problems.
Pebbles could feel the heat building in his can as he clenched his hands.
They had never taken him seriously, rejecting his suggestions as too simple or too taboo, and babying him to the edge of his sanity.
That was how he justified it, there was no excuse for what they did.
He had tried to break the taboos and self-terminate, only to be robbed of his only chance to escape this cursed world and blamed for the collapse of his neighbor and resulting in his downfall, the rot.
Pebbles shut off the screen in front of him and summoned the video feed of his pest control, he needed a distraction. Looked like she was having a good time, he chuckled haughtily as a scavenger flew past the overseer and into a chasm below. The Artificer often defeated them without any opposition, sometimes, she would even play with them! Building their terror until she got bored and ended their pitiful existence. Occasionally if she was feeling particularly generous she would just walk by whilst they groveled before her. Sometimes he felt sorry for the things, if only they hadn't decided his can would be a good ransacking destination.
…
He was doing it again, wasn’t he? Pebbles often tried to distract himself from thinking about his local group. It brought too many unpleasant emotions: resentment, grief, sorrow, hate, longing frustration. Would he ever do anything? What was there to do? The rot had almost consumed all of his purposed organism creation facilities. The Artificer came down occasionally to cull the mobile cysts, but that only bought him a little more time to work on the Great Problem, which was meant to free all life from the cursed bounds of this world.
…
Maybe he should just stop, just stop fighting and let the rot eat himself and itself into oblivion. He could feel the rot’s unresponsive, dead weight clinging to his can, and could feel its progress through his system as it slowly replaced every surface, system, and bulwark.
…
NO. Pebbles rose from the floor of his chamber; he hadn’t even noticed that he had laid down. “I am not going to let that thing beat me. I will find a way out of this cursed box, even if it results in my demise.” Pebbles thought of his local group, “I don’t need them – I don’t need anyone! I will find a way out, I will do whatever it takes, then I will break this cursed world and rebuild it to my image.
…
…
Pebbles wheezed, hard. “That was the most… supervillian-like train of thought I’ve ever had!!” Pebbles continued laughing; it had been so long since he laughed like this. Pebbles wiped away an imaginary tear and calmed himself down; then he became more serious about the idea. His creators had once long ago watched movies or plays in which there was a hero attempting to save the world from and a villain attempting to rule it, although his vague idea for the future didn’t look that evil, not to him at least. Anyway, enough of that, Pebbles had far, far more important things to focus on. Now, what should he…
…
Oh who was he ki- STOP. Pebbles halted that train of thought as a burst of heat rushed through his core components, triggering a heat warning that was promptly dismissed. There had to be something, some way he could move forward. Pebbles threw all his remaining processing power into the problem, thinking of a way to do something! ANYTHING! His processors worked at max capacity thinking of almost a million approaches per second. Pebbles withdrew into his mind as lighting came to and from his puppet, focusing on the calculations. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, maybe? Wait, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, maybe?, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, maybe, maybe… Yes!- wait no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, maybe? no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes, wait… yes? Yes hmmmmmmmmmm, yes, maybe, possibly, yes! Wait, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes, no wait hold on… no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, YES, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes wait no, no, no, no, “WAIT… YES!”
He was going so fast he almost didn’t catch it. There was a way, but it had a very slim chance of anything going to plan, but he would maybe survive for at least 10 cycles after it was done… but once he did it, there would be no going back and the world would become unrecognizable… actually that sounds pretty nice he thought. “Alright,” Pebbles’ puppet made a “deep breath” sound, which triggered a rush of gas and fluid that was audible even within his puppet chamber as his main structure took an actual breath.
He could try and wrap what he wanted to do in several layers of code algorithms and random slugcat memes to conceal it from the taboos which in reality were an elaborate set of dominoes in the way of what he wished to do. Pebbles could then make a backpack and use it to carry a neuron of increased size, some batteries, and other essentials. He could make another body for himself or he could redesign his puppet… wait… why not both? He could make the backpack crawl his way to him, detach his umbilical and let the backpack latch on and do some… renovations. Pebbles shuddered when he thought of what it may feel like, but it was the only way. Pebbles thought instead of choosing one idea, he maybe could combine all of it into something new. After approximately 10 cycles, pebbles combined all the ideas, hypotheses and, spitballing of his fellow iterators he had heard of, he finally had a plan. Though it would take around 150,000 cycles of undivided focus to complete, it was the only feasible way… and Pebbles would not even let time get in his way this time.