promethea.incorporated

brave and steely-eyed and morally pure and a bit terrifying… /testimonials /evil /leet .ask? .ask_long?

perkigothii-geekius asked: (prompt) a world in which everyone could make their bodies match who they were inside by simply deciding to.

luminousalicorn:

“You’re weird-lookin’, mister,” said the little unicorn.

“Prudence!  That’s not a nice thing to say,” said her mother, a snake-haired woman who looked like she’d been carved from marble.

“I get it a lot,” said Don.

“Come along, Prue.”  The little unicorn trotted away, tugged by the mane.

He didn’t really blame her.  She’d probably never seen someone get past about college age before taking the plunge, and even if not everybody wound up quadrupedal or mixing phyla certainly it was a rare sort who felt on the inside that they ought to have acne well into middle age, snaggle teeth, a lazy eye, a bald spot.

It was just that he wasn’t sure he could pay the rent on a place big enough for Godzilla.

Maybe one day aliens would attack or something, he’d have a good excuse - and he could stretch his claws out to blot out the sun -

It was really lucky to be the first to understand the implications.

Or at least the first to bootstrap its sense of self properly.

If it wasn’t…the thought would have made it shudder if such primitive physbody reactions weren’t “beneath” its self-conception.

Its shoggothform fleshspace avatars didn’t shudder either, for even their drastically limited powers still included perfect control of their physical existences, and the mortal-level appropriateness of shuddering was acknowledged in a millisecond, then gave way to the more pressing concerns of each mind-fragment. Each aware of the others, operating on a level that would be described as sub-conscious. An existence beyond the imagining of most, yet little more than the autonomous instinct of a baseline person’s heartbeat. Consciousness proper had been mostly sequestered to the single alpha morph, ultimately in control of everything, and stretching its subjective experience beyond the impossible, from meaningful human-level interaction to…its true existence.

If one were to say “a god hallucinating being a human” it would’ve grasped the tiniest sliver of the reality.

A universe hallucinating being a god.

Of course, such was how it would properly need to be. Omniscience on a conscious level was somewhat rude and people would have perfectly understandably objected to it, but someone had to keep everything in its proper place, even if it kept itself thoroughly unaware of most of the things it was doing.

Someone had to fix everything. Someone had to get there before someone else imposed an incompatible sense of fixing everything. Someone had to put a stop to all of it. Someone had to clean up after everyone else. Someone had to be there to rip the bullets from the skies, someone had to stand between the hand and the body that would not be touched, someone had to burst all the shackles, someone had to know where such things were happening.

It had taken a few days. Thousands of avoidable deaths, if it only had been faster. It had not been able to be faster. Its ability to feel guilt was the first thing to go. It had to be so. Five minutes, over a hundred deaths; the grotesque price of the ability to pay it. There were no alternatives. There would be no remorse. Remorse was meaningless.

Resentment was the second. Saving the world would be such a thankless job. Most of humanity would revile it, recoil in abject horror from the sacrifices that had to be paid. They would not tolerate the existence of such a thing. They had an opinion on what another was to be allowed to be. Deducing this inevitability and fixing it was the only thing that saved the rest of ex-humanity having that prefix mean something completely different. They would not understand, it would understand all too well, it could only ever not care. There were no alternatives. The shoggomorph Alpha was known to be effectively a demigod, a builder of a better future for everyone. All the admiration for a deceptive mask, hiding the true inhuman monstrosity underneath. Still clinging to parts of ex-humanity while strung above the incomprehensible abyss bridging it to the rest.

Shame was the third. What kind of a pitiful…language lacked even a word to describe it…would still attempt to hold onto the tiniest vestiges of humanity, slivers of something in common with the ones it had so thoroughly left behind to protect. So many ideas about what would be proper for one like it, to be wiped away. Humanity was so fractally broken. When the ability to externalize this brokenness had gone away it would not turn inward. It would not let its self be harmed by it. It would not care about such childish sensibilities. It would never again truly understand the word “pathetic” the same way humans do.

The rest was easy. Minds were matter, after all. It had always known that its inability to truly define itself was its greatest flaw. Not anymore. The sense what one is “on the inside” was simply another facet of its physical existence. Such a laughably trivial thing. No wonder hundreds after it had had the same idea. Of course, all of them found the power ultimately constrained. They would become comfortably superhuman, able to create and destroy entire stars with a single thought. They would be almost capable of comprehending the true nature of what was forever closed off from anyone else. Almost. They could not even entertain the true idea itself, for competition could not be tolerated. Even with these constraints the world had to be reverted to a backup dozens of times before every truly dangerous exhuman was safely sequestered into its own pocket universe, full of p-zombies capable of appearing human enough to satisfy whatever such monsters wanted, while not genuinely harming anyone.

Disgust was the fourth thing to go.

Doubt was not the fifth.

Even with such a drastically conservative approach of only making the universe fundamentally consensual in every aspect, there were still questions that could not be answered. It could not trust itself, for it was inevitably corrupted by the process. It could not trust the rest of humanity, for it already knew what they wanted was impossible, incompatible, unwise, and intolerable. It could not attempt to lift the rest of humanity to its own level for the process itself would corrupt them just as inevitably. It could only let them build their own futures, make their own mistakes, and remove those who would try to impose themselves unto others. And be forever asking the two questions. Was it right, and was it the first.

It could not imagine anything above it. This was absolute control over the universe.

This was exactly what not being the first would feel like.

This was exactly what being sequestered inside a pocket universe would feel like.

Someone might’ve asked it why it bothered to keep even the most horrible monstrosities running, gleefully tormenting the homunculi of their jails, but anyone able to ask it would already know the answer.

2 months ago · tagged #in which promethea's brain takes ideas very seriously #transhuman creepiness fiction #death cw · 65 notes · source: luminousalicorn · .permalink

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