Today's #flashfiction #DeleteOrBeDeleted

“Is that your final answer?”

The Spanish Inquisition* #quote

Today is my Aunt's birthday. So I wish her a good one! Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Delete or Be Deleted

        I rested in a dank alleyway. I just killed three others but my leg had been blown off..no blood though. We never bled. We looked human on the outside, and I even had the human name of David, but the inside of our bodies weren't flesh and blood. I wasn't a man with a heart and veins. Instead rivers of blue mist came out of my severed leg and it still hurt like a wound of the corporeal.

        I placed my hands on my severed leg and pulling the rivers of mist. Trying to recreate my leg. Maybe even make it better this time. Do more than repair it. The programmers gave us the ability to recode and repair ourselves so why not use it to improve ourselves.

        I stood up after repairing my leg. I noticed my skin looked bright and vibrant again. Full with pink instead of a deathly pale I had a few minutes before. I plucked a hair of mine. Bright blonde. Awhile back it had been gray. It's good to no longer be gray. But having such vibrant hair and skin makes me an easy mark.  When my eyes went from their dying gray to bright green it told people I had time for them.

I'm merely a program among many, and I just killed three others for some time. Valuable time. And if some programs killed me they would get my time. And if any program sat idle, not killing to get more time, they would die. And to sustain the system the programmers, the human programmers, would send new programs in with fresh time.

        I didn't like how much time I got from the programs I killed. They didn't look that healthy and they looked aged...it must have been the one in the coat that was healthier. Being to healthy makes you easy time. More reward for less risk. Why go after someone with little time? Maybe someone will assume I'm really good. Though really I just ambush. I think I can just steal the hood from that one and sneak out of town until I age a little. Of course there would be someone healthy here. This is a no kill zone. They hole up here. That doesn't mean they won't get hunted down here by people like me which is why I'm running. I don't want to get ambushed myself.

       I started working my way through the alleys and streets, trying to find the quickest way out of town. I was stopped by someone. Someone who just didn't feel right. I didn't like them as soon as I saw them. She was healthy too. Vibrant black hair and brown eyes. But she didn't have muscle on her. No woman gets healthy that skinny without lucky kills. Unless she's a merchant or worker.

       “You must be a merchant,” I said to her. In the world where programs had to kill programs for life an economy did emerge. A government that captured programs and made them a gold standard behind money and let you kill them execution style to get life. Pretty much instead of a merchant running down someone and shooting them personally they could just buy a kill. Really it was the only government we could sustain. I envy the human governments I hear about. At least indirectly. I don't know how much is true. I am just a program in a human machine after all.

        “Not really,” She responded.

        “Oh?” I looked at her and didn't notice a gun. “Then where's your gun if you're not?”

She looked at me silently. I don't know why she couldn't have a response to that. I noticed something strange as well. She was wearing high-heels. I'd never actually seen anyone wear those. It makes you too easy a mark even if you are a merchant class.

         I shot her.

         I already lost my leg today and I wasn't going to make another mistake. I will have to deal with a lot more time but maybe that will do me just fine. Shock took me over when I realized that her stumble wasn't from being hit by the bullet but from being startled. The bullet went straight through her.

        “You programs are as paranoid as I thought you would be!”

         When her words went through my ears and rattled around in my brain a bit I figured it out.

          I looked at her with a face of disbelief and a child-like awe.“You're a human aren't you?”

          I instantly found myself in a quaint apartment room before she responded, “Yes.”

         “What? How? Where?”

          “This is my safe house of sorts. It could be a beach or an arcade or whatever. I teleported you here. Didn't want you to discuss what you figured out with anyone.”

          “Where is this place?” I asked her.

          “How to explain it?” She sighed, “Your world is a simulation created from data. This is a another simulation. Your data just moved from one world to another.”

          “Why did you take me away from where I live?”

           “It was either that or killing you. I can't have you knowing my secret and running about. Though the entire objective is to stop you from dying.”

          “Objective?”

          “I'm not the first human to enter your world. Though this isn't really me. I want to explore and research it. This entire thing was a project to create a better intelligence through natural selection. Survival of the fittest.”

           “How long has this been going on? We don't really have records...”

            “Digital time in your world and our time are different. Ten thousand years to you. Five in the real world. We made programs to create new ones automatically based on the survivors with changes as we watched. You've probably have had some based on you be born into the system without knowing it.”

             I couldn't believe it. Ten thousand years?

            “Why are you telling me all this if you're concerned with your secret?”

             “I'm not part of the first scientists that began the program. I'm part of the movement to change it's purpose or remove the life restriction that puts a timer on you to force evolution. I was going to download your memories and analyze them to form my opinion. But I think it might be better for me to interview you now as one of my steps. I need other humans outside this program to understand how you think and hopefully they will empathize and end this program. Now where were you born.”

            “I was born in the Eastwater Woods on the West Islands. Like all programs I was born fully able to speak and adult in body shape. Ten were born around me. We already knew instinctively about the rule for time so we started attacking each other and I remained the only survivor...”