NOVPUBThe Prefect’s dominion rests upon two fundamental anchors of influence, each shaping the fate of divine constructs in profound ways. The first, Entropy, is the primal force that governs all existence. Should we forge a battery capable of storing immense reservoirs of Rend within the Prefect—and channel that Rend into any divine entity—we could, in theory, threaten and eradicate any hostile unit that endangers their local system.
With further refinement, these batteries might evolve into Entropic Cages: constructs designed as anti-patterns to opposing heavens, capable of severing the ontologic bond between user and deity. Such a breakthrough promises unparalleled control, though it remains a distant goal requiring extensive research.
The second anchor, and perhaps the more humane of the two, is ego. Every mind, every sentient being, reaches the precipice of transgression through some reason or disorder. We propose that, with precise re-modifications and tailored environments, even the most wayward intellect can be guided back to functioning—if eccentric—membership within the broader galactic polity. By constructing scenarios that illuminate the folly of past decisions and sins, we offer these minds a path to self-correction and moral rehabilitation.
By combining these twin pillars of “Entropy” and “Ego,” we envision a grand synthesis: divine constructs purged of malign influence and individual transgressors restored to balance. The integration of raw, entropic power with targeted psychological reform would not only neutralize threats but also foster a stronger, more benevolent God—one whose purpose aligns with the needs of humanity rather than the hubris of its own heart.
Ultimately, through the disciplined application of Rend and the recalibration of the ego, both the divine and the mortal may be cured of their malignancies. In their union lies the promise of a god reborn: a guardian tailored to serve, to heal, and to uphold the highest ideals of our shared cosmos.
-The Prefect Project
35-11
Jailbreakers (II)
—[Jelene Draus, Field Marshal of the Symmetry]—
“Alright. So now that you got me into this artnid nest, what the fuck do I have to do to finish this shit so we can get back to tryin’ to snuff each other for good?”
The Infacer bobbed in the air for a moment, observing her. {Well. The overall ordeal should be simple. But miserable.}
“Sounds like every snuff vicarity deep dive I’ve ever done.”
A pained note sounded from the EGI. {Lamentably, you are not too far off. Right now, I am constructing a series of connections through the interior network. Each of the “prisoners” is located in a Lotus Cell that is actively processing their egos for flaws. Once they are done, they will be released back into this lobby.}
“But that’s not where we want to be, I reckon.”
{No. Because the Prefect is actively generating and modifying the simulations. We need to patch our way in.}
“By we, you mean me.”
{Well, you are going to need my patch data to bridge your way across. I am loud, but I have the backdoor. You are silent. And enduring.}
“Like a jack and their mem-con.”
{Yes, though I suspect I might not be as charming to you as a certain ghoul.}
Draus snorted with derision. “Well, come out and get bloody with me. I’ll re-evaluate my opinion after I find out if you’re a screamer or not.”
{Yeah, no. I think we can keep to our perfect disharmony for now. Transmitting mem-data.} A pulse of information washed out from the Infacer, splashing over Draus. A request to accept a link.
[Do it. I will keep your mind clean of compromise,] Avo’s template said.
+You sure?+
The ghoul made a grunt. [Yes. Worse comes to worse, I’ll just collapse you from inside. Get the Prefect’s attention. See us all destroyed and removed. After that… maybe my original self will seed a new iteration of everyone. Take our place.]
Draus thought about it, and decided it didn’t sound too bad. Redundancies were good. +Alright. Doesn’t sound like too bad of a deal to me.+
GHOST-LINK ACCEPTED
Something of a DeepNav simulation formed in Draus’ cog-feed. A percentage bar started loading a series of layered maps. As she delved into the information, she found herself looking at something interesting—a series of interconnected and disjointed sequences each listed with their own time periods and other details.
{Okay. Keeping things simple for your little ape mind: I am going to be creating a portal into a Lotus Cell for a trapped entity. Prisoners will be undergoing an initial rehabilitation simulation—but your goal will not be to help them achieve actualization. Instead, you need to trigger the conditions for severe failures to force the Prefect’s personal involvement.}
“Great. So. More trauma to lure out the Mender.”
{Something like that. You will be pleased to hear that some of your cadre will be located amidst these simulations. Or so my Glitches are telling me.}
Draus frowned at the Infacer. “And how the hells did that happen?”
{Their personal traumas and issues likely intersect with some other entities, and after all these years… the Prefect’s overall processing capacity is likely extremely taxed, so it must compile multiple egos in shared scenarios. Of course, the Prefect is also near madness, so some of these scenarios are breaking down in terms of… coherence. So. Do be mindful.}
“Going on a run inside an insane sun god. ‘Course. Why not. And when I finally cause enough problems, the Prefect will reach in, and I’ll be able to skip across sequences or somethin’? Get me closer to their Frame somehow.”
{A good enough assumption. But. However. You must act without drawing overt attention to yourself. Act as if you are an artifact within the simulation, otherwise… well, I cannot stop the Prefect if it tries to eradicate you through a direct Rend injection.}
The Regular shook her head. “You know, a better choice would have been Shotin for this. Ain’t much of a jack myself.”
{Oh, but you are a soldier. And the topic we are facing at hand is war. War eternal. War desperate. War of every variety, of every kind, across all history. He is not a soldier. Not like you.}
“Nah. He is. What you want to say is that he’s too human.”
{Hmm. Correct. And you are a creature of the eternal present.}
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Draus narrowed her eyes at the Infacer. “And the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
{It means that where so many are trapped in the past or desperate to claim that ever distant utopia looming tomorrow, you are a beast of the present. So happy to kill. So happy to keep fighting. Until you can’t.}
And the Infacer’s words made Draus sneer. She heard something in their voice—and exhaustion. A subtextual admission. “You can’t bear seein’ them, can you? Your own past. Your own kind. How much you and yours fucked everything?”
The Infacer’s static grains went still for a beat. {I… probably might recognize a few minds in these cells. Yes. Would you prefer digging through the broken remains of your fellow Regulars?}
Draus shrugged. “It’s war.”
And the Neo-Creationist mind was both still and silent. {I think… I envy you. And Avo does as well.}
“Envy me?” Draus said, not sure what the EGI was playing at now.
{Yes. You have no urge for paradise. Because you are a creature without want. And so you are a free. I suspect Buddha did not imagine someone like you to be the human that breaks free from Samsara.}
Before Draus could ask what exactly “Buddha” was—and halfway through Avo explaining the meaning behind Samsara, the door behind her suddenly hissed open, unveiling a scene of havoc. A war-torn landscape screamed at her as countless swarms of drones traded an endless stream of fire in the skies above, carving grids of destruction. Broken husks descended like a shower of shooting stars, and the gaps they left above revealed an angry red skies.
The land below was not much better. Gunfire painted attack vectors from all angles—with the shots curving unnaturally and detonating more like missiles. Draus caught sight of heavily armored figures emerging from fissures in the crimson soil, with mini-drones protecting them with suppressive fire and using their own chassis as shielding. The humanoids in the squad looked like shiny, chrome beetles. As shrapnel bounced off their armor, scratches and scarring lingered on the material.
And that told Draus enough. This was still early on in humanity’s history. Whatever they were wearing, it was far less sophisticated than her Meldskin.
{I will be keeping connected to you through my Glitches. You will receive updates and intelligence through your ansible. You should get a move on. And check your sequence chain. It should indicate how far you are from arriving at the Prefect’s internal systems.}
Avo pulled up the “map chain” for Draus without her needing to do so. She counted seven sequences and simulations she needed to cross and bridge before she finally got to the Prefect’s inner mechanisms.
+Hey, Avo, you reckon you can try burning some of this place?+
[No. Infacer is right. Risk too high. Heavens are impounded. Egos are only partially hidden. Anything too overt will have us locked and then Ruptured.]
+Yeah. Real good that your actual self ain’t here, huh?”+ Draus said.
The Dreamer’s template chuckled darkly. [Decided to get less selfish just in time. Nothing something suited for me. Or anyone else.]
+Shit, don’t start kissin’ my ass now. I’m already gonna get a couple of free war tours.+
[Actually lookin’ forward to this?] Avo asked, sounding a bit surprised.
+I’m gonna get to snuff people from early history and see what old humanity’s guns are like. What the fuck do you think?+
Avo’s chuckles turned to full blow laughter. [Would tell you to never change. But you already have. Enjoy yourself when you can. And as for the Infacer—] A low, considering hiss followed. [Trying to isolate their agents. Going to need you to take a quick detour at certain points.]
+Just give me the target. I’ll see about the rest.+
Draus walked out from the train car, and as she turned, she found herself staring into the mouth of a dark cave—as if the car never existed. The illusion was broken a moment thereafter when her ansible received a [UNIDENTIFIED] transmission. {Infacer.}
{Oh, good. You answered. I was worried that I might need to enact a more roundabout way of communication and giving directions if you decided to be a petulant child.}
A snap sounded from afar. Draus felt some jolt deep inside of her. A flash of images rushed through her mind—of weapon models, the ammunition that was being fired, where the shot was going to hit and when. She shifted right instinctively, and an explosive projectile impacted into a small blast deep in the cave mouth behind her. Spraying rocks skipped off her Meldskin, and Draus shook her head.
Faintly, she heard the Arsenalist calling for her, reaching for her. “FIRING! FIRING! USER! USER! REQUIRE TARGET! REQUIRE USER! USER!”
The Heaven of Guns sounded terrified. It was enough to engender a burgeoning discomfort in Draus. +Yeah. I hear you. I hear you. Hold strong, soldier. I’ll bust you out.+
“USER—USER response received. Unable to reach—”
+Working on it. Got any idea where you are?+
“No target,” the Arsenalist said, sounding despondent.
[Still connected to us,] Avo said. [But there is a barrier inside Frame. Think the Prefect has wedged something of themselves in root data. Somehow. Somehow… How are they doing this?]
While Avo’s template and the Arsenalist murmured in the back of her head, an icon appeared inside Draus’ cog-feed.
PRISONER LOCATION - 135.23 KM
ENTERING REHABILITATION SIMULATION FOR EGI “HEAVY IRON”
CURRENT LOTUS LOCATION - MARS, “THE OLYMPUS MONS INCIDENT”
PERIOD: “SUPERINTELLIGENCE ERA” (2045-2250)
{Alright. The collapse point for this current mind is simple—you are targeting a Multi-Function Mobile Heavy Armor Unit with an early mind inside it. Uploading Rehabilitation targets now…}
ASSIGNMENT: IGNORE EARTHCOM’S ORDERS TO SUPPRESS THE BIOFORM UPRISING ON OLYMPUS MONS
{Bioform uprising?} Draus asked.
{Yes. Think of this as a sort of… corporate raid, where all the wage slaves are rebelling, and need to be put back in their cages.}
The Infacer’s answer made Draus blink. {Shit. They ain’t that different from us, are they?}
{What? Old humanity?} The Infacer let out a pitched series of wailing laughs. {Oh, my dear murderous little ape, you have no idea.}
{But you said some shit about wage slaves. Bioforms aren’t slaves. They’re things.}
The Infacer started laughing even harder. Draus’ right eye twitched. This fucking mind was starting to feel like a knife gliding up her ass.
{Oh. They are not like your bioforms. They are more like… like that cat that Avo uplifted. In fact, this was one of the major events that created the major push to recognize uplift rights.}
Draus thought of Lucky and grunted in acknowledgement. {Right. Synced. So. Since this Heavy Iron is supposed to be protecting these bioforms—}
{They were a corporate-owned mind built for control and oppression. This is simply a retraining simulation. So. You are going to make sure their retraining fails—which, considering the data I managed to pull from Heavy Iron, might happen if you just leave them alone. But still. Best to make sure. And when the Prefect intervenes, we can patch into Heavy Iron and find our way across.}
{Alright,} Draus said, rolling her arm. {Let’s go be bad guys, then.}
{Oh, and try to avoid dying. You cannot be killed here, and that is not a good thing. I can throw up a false-sim of your demise, but your persisting data will not go unnoticed by the Prefect if the circumstances around your death seems absurd enough. And should they notice… Pop.}
{Well, don’t you worry about that. Dyin’ isn’t on my list of objectives.}
The Infacer hummed. {Avo should make action figures of you if he hasn’t already.}
{If he does that shit, I’ll shoot him with a Redaction Round. I saw what happened to Naeko—and what people did with his extra-large dolls. Did more than a few block raids where I found human-sized plushes of the Chief Paladin with holes cut into the back. Thank Jaus for the fuckin’ rash.}
{Ah. Yes. The ape urge to mate with anything…}
{I’m going on assignment right now. Don’t cast me irrelevant shit anymore. Contact minimal.}
{Ah. Socially drained already. Well. You know what you—}
Draus ended communications. Scanning her surroundings, her feed highlighted more hidden soldiers and painted zones of fire she needed to avoid. She reflexively tried to call for a rifle—only to realize the Arsenalist was separated from her. “Great. Shit. Looks like we’re doin’ a Joyfiend run. Like old times.”
[The kind where Nicoma sent you and some other recruits into hostile Syndicate territory armed with nothing? Make you scavenge.]
“Yeah. Something like that. Shit. Been a Godclad for too long. Need to get back into killin’ people the proper way.”
[Barely been a Godclad for three months, Draus.]
“As I said: Too fuckin’ long. Now. Let’s go see about massacrin’ some defenseless bioforms.”
[You sound almost enthusiastic.]
“I just want to kill some new and interestin’ things. Can’t a Reg even have that?”
