Post by CYPHER on Jun 15, 2022 2:40:58 GMT -5
(Previously: ocwonline13.proboards.com/thread/8799/ent1ty-2-m3rcy)
February, 2010
Deep Creek Conservation Park, South Australia
Four figures are traversing a hiking trail, their small bodies leaving long shadows in their wake. The afternoon sun is beating down on them as they follow the narrow path bordered by bushes and rocks. They are led by a boy wearing a black hoodie, an article of clothing which seems out of place on a warm summer’s day in Australia. The others are dressed more suitably for the weather. Flanking him are two other boys stomping down the trail in shorts and t-shirts, their chests puffed out and eyes glimmering with excitement.
“Guys wait up!”
Trailing behind the three boys is a girl, panting heavily as she tries to keep up with them. Her blonde hair is tied back in a ponytail which bops from side to side as she moves. Her overalls are stained with sweat She wipes sweat off of her brow once she finally makes it to the pack.
The eldest of the three boys, wearing a yellow shirt and khaki shorts, turns up his nose at her.
“Anna you’re sooo slow.”
“No, you guys are going too fast.”
“Sure, that’s exactly what a girl would say.”
The sarcastic remark comes from a boy wearing a Port Adelaide Power AFL guernsey. His freckled cheeks are twisted in a sneer. Anna pouts and looks over at the black hoodie boy, waiting for some kind of intervention. Instead, he simply continues to stare away into the distance.
“Ty, tell them to stop being mean.”
Her brother folds his arms. His voice is tinged with annoyance when he speaks.
“Can we just keep going?”
Silence over the group. Tyler turns away and continues to walk down the hillside. Shrugging, the rude boys take after him, leaving Anna in their wake. What they don’t see as they turn around is the look of pain and anger on her face. They weren’t even looking back to see if she would join them.
Did they even care?
The whole journey she had been berated, made fun of, and constantly left behind. The one person who she thought she could trust to always have her back had abandoned her in favour of his asshole buddies.
Not long ago she couldn't imagine Tyler treating her like this, but the truth was as they had grown older together, the less and less he had resembled the big brother she remembered.
Fine.
If he didn’t care about her, then she would find her own way.
She didn’t need them.
She didn’t need anyone.
/~/
May, 2022
Somewhere in Djibouti
Cypher gripped Anna close to him, savoring a moment he didn’t want to end. His sister had long haunted his mind over the past 12 years. As much as he was able to blank it out during his day-to-day life, at night when he closed his eyes she would be there. Asking him over and over…
Why?
Why not me?
Then his friends would appear, faces twisted into a collective sneer.
Why?
Why choose us?
Now, even as he lay here with his arms around her, those thoughts were swimming around in his mind again. Even though he had found Anna, he still felt guilty that he had let her be taken by whatever had held her captive over the last dozen or so years.
They finally broke their embrace, and for the first time Cypher took a moment to take in her appearance. Despite the bruises and slightly smudged makeup, she still had a lot of that natural beauty he could recall from their youth.
But at the same time as he was admiring her, he couldn’t help but feel like her eyes were piercing through him. A reminder that her suffering was directly tied to him.
He swallowed, willing himself to speak.
“Anna, I’m sorry.”
She half-smiled, reaching out with a hand to wipe away a salty tear from my cheek.
“I know.”
“I shouldn’t have been so stupid, I just didn’t realise you hadn’t come with us and when I did I tried to find you but-
Anna pinched my face, like she had done so many times when we were little, to interrupt my rambling.
“It's OK, you’re here now Cypher, and that’s what matters.”
He froze.
“Cypher”?
That didn’t make sense.
She had only ever known him as Tyler.
His spine tingled with dread as he realised something weird was going on with her face.
Her makeup was slowly but surely being wiped away with each tear that streamed down her face…but it was more than makeup. Her actual face was being distorted by the liquid seeping from her eyes. The way the “tears” were leaking in sort of a spreading motion made him feel even more uneasy.
“What’s wrong?”
Without thinking, Cypher raised his hand and pinched her cheek, just as she had done. The texture was soft and slick…but soon gave way to something cold and metallic.
He jerked his hand away.
Where his fingers had pressed against her “skin”, they had revealed a metal surface underneath.
This wasn’t Anna.
This was a lie.
“Ehh, I guess the crying feature could still use a little work.”
Aaron Schwarz nonchalantly waltzed through the door leading out of Cypher’s prison. He stood there, gloating, as the robo-Anna kept staring at him with cold, unblinking eyes.
“What the fuck did u do?!”
Cypher brushed past the cheap imitation of his sister and lunged at Aaron, but his progress was immediately halted by an arm slipping around his neck. In an instant his world turned upside down and he was slammed head first into the ground. His lights were almost knocked completely out on impact, but somehow he clinged to consciousness.
Breathing heavily, he looked up to see robo-Anna smiling down at him, the makeup which had concealed her true form now all but gone. Her grip around his neck was unnaturally strong, stronger than any chin-lock he’d ever been put in while in the ring.
He struggled in her arms as Aaron leaned down to his level.
“Pretty believable huh? We’re really stepping it up in our Artificial Intelligence department, so thanks for being my little test dummy Tyler…only a few kinks to work out.”
Seething, Cypher spat directly into Aaron’s face.
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Wrong answer…Anna?”
Robo-Anna instantly wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled Cypher into the air. He hung there a moment before his skull slammed into the cold floor beneath. The jarring impact sent a wave of pain through his head, and again he felt groggy.
As he tried to remain cognisant, he could only think about one thing.
Artificial Intelligence.
If Anna was an AI…then the technology he had recovered from Gideon Solutions had to be related…
Blood had begun to pool in his nose and was now slipping back down into his throat, making it difficult to speak.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Ohh Tyler, there’s so much that I want to tell you. I want to tell you about all our wonderful plans for expanding our AI capabilities now that you’ve so kindly delivered to our doorstep. I want to tell you how we’re going to make the world a better place, but this has never been about us…
“It’s been about you.”
Aaron pulled a remote out of his pocket and pressed a button. The LCD screen on the wall next to them blinked to life. Previously it had been a feed of Adam and his lackeys, but now it had changed.
It was Cypher’s Twitter feed.
However, it was different - he hadn’t been in control of it for however long he’d been trapped in Entity’s possession for.
So someone else was controlling what was posted and how he interacted with his friends.
“See while we had you working hard for us I decided to introduce your peers to the real Tyler. Not the one who hides behind the Cypher name, but the boy who abandoned his sister and left her for dead.”
Tweets from his profile flashed on the screen, all under the name “Tyler Norrie” rather than his usual “CYPH3R” tag.
“I”m sorry Anna, I failed you.”
“It stands true. Cypher is, was, and will always be a cunt.”
“Cypher is dead. Long live Tyler Norrie.”
“Cypher is gone. Why do you want him back so badly? He’s a horrible person. A fake. A voyeur who violates privacy without a care.”
Then there were the responses…
“What is this? Where’s the l33t speak? Who the fuck is Tyler?”
“This version of you is cringe.”
"I want my Cyphie back!"
A few moments of silence passed before Aaron spoke.
“See Tyler, all these “friends” of yours? They hate who you really are. You have deluded them into liking you through your Cypher persona.”
Cypher opened his mouth to respond but closed it just as quickly. He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to say that this was all bullshit, to call out Aaron for being a deceiving prick…but at the same time, he never forced anyone to say those things.
“The problem is you don’t make friends Tyler, you manufacture them.”
The screen blinked and changed to an image of his tweet leaking Emma’s nude photo.
“I was going to tweet about this next, what do you think?”
Aaron’s finger hovered above the remote.
Cypher bowed his head.
There was nothing he could do.
Then the room exploded into light.
The sound of gunfire reverberated off the walls of the tiny room, and Cypher felt AI Anna’s grip around his waist loosen.
The next thing he knew he was being carted out of the room on top of someone’s shoulders. Everything seemed to happen so fast, more than his scrambled brains could process.
Then his head began to finally succumb to the weight pressing down on it, and he slipped into unconsciousness.
/~/
Several weeks ago Dangerous Dan helped me end Veronica Strader’s undefeated streak for my biggest win in OCW.
At the following PPV, I sat on the sidelines and watched him claim the title that was rightfully mine.
Despite continuing a winning streak which has seen me defeat Sadie Ko and Hall of Famer Bob Greiner, it took the entire company switching hands for me to finally get the same recognition as a clown with some facepaint on.
Cmon bruh, every1 knew I should have been put into that title match, it should have been a triple threat and I would have claimed the title by beating both ur asses.
Now I gotta settle for going one-on-one with one half of Thing 1 and Thing 2. U guys remind me of video game characters…wait no that’s too generous. U guys remind me of demos of video game characters, like the placeholders the developer shoves into his Street Fighter rip-off when he’s still trying 2 fill up the cast.
“OK I want this guy to be the ‘cool’ one, what about, uh…Dangerous Sam? Nah wait, Dangerous Dan! There ya go, boy with a name like that he’s sure 2 be popular…what about this other guy? I want him 2 be the wild one, the one u never know exactly what he’s gonna do…oh man, Chris! Crazy Chris! Gonna be so FREAKIN Crazy man!!”
The fact that a duo with names like that has held multiple championships across multiple feds to me is a cause for concern. Man, the biz must be really scraping the barrel 4 tag teams these days.
I get that ur a champion, but let’s be real, these past few weeks everyone’s been talking about me. I’m the hottest wrestler in this biz, and I’ll be damned if I let a guy named Dangerous Dan stand in the way of my first championship.
February, 2010
Deep Creek Conservation Park, South Australia
Four figures are traversing a hiking trail, their small bodies leaving long shadows in their wake. The afternoon sun is beating down on them as they follow the narrow path bordered by bushes and rocks. They are led by a boy wearing a black hoodie, an article of clothing which seems out of place on a warm summer’s day in Australia. The others are dressed more suitably for the weather. Flanking him are two other boys stomping down the trail in shorts and t-shirts, their chests puffed out and eyes glimmering with excitement.
“Guys wait up!”
Trailing behind the three boys is a girl, panting heavily as she tries to keep up with them. Her blonde hair is tied back in a ponytail which bops from side to side as she moves. Her overalls are stained with sweat She wipes sweat off of her brow once she finally makes it to the pack.
The eldest of the three boys, wearing a yellow shirt and khaki shorts, turns up his nose at her.
“Anna you’re sooo slow.”
“No, you guys are going too fast.”
“Sure, that’s exactly what a girl would say.”
The sarcastic remark comes from a boy wearing a Port Adelaide Power AFL guernsey. His freckled cheeks are twisted in a sneer. Anna pouts and looks over at the black hoodie boy, waiting for some kind of intervention. Instead, he simply continues to stare away into the distance.
“Ty, tell them to stop being mean.”
Her brother folds his arms. His voice is tinged with annoyance when he speaks.
“Can we just keep going?”
Silence over the group. Tyler turns away and continues to walk down the hillside. Shrugging, the rude boys take after him, leaving Anna in their wake. What they don’t see as they turn around is the look of pain and anger on her face. They weren’t even looking back to see if she would join them.
Did they even care?
The whole journey she had been berated, made fun of, and constantly left behind. The one person who she thought she could trust to always have her back had abandoned her in favour of his asshole buddies.
Not long ago she couldn't imagine Tyler treating her like this, but the truth was as they had grown older together, the less and less he had resembled the big brother she remembered.
Fine.
If he didn’t care about her, then she would find her own way.
She didn’t need them.
She didn’t need anyone.
/~/
May, 2022
Somewhere in Djibouti
Cypher gripped Anna close to him, savoring a moment he didn’t want to end. His sister had long haunted his mind over the past 12 years. As much as he was able to blank it out during his day-to-day life, at night when he closed his eyes she would be there. Asking him over and over…
Why?
Why not me?
Then his friends would appear, faces twisted into a collective sneer.
Why?
Why choose us?
Now, even as he lay here with his arms around her, those thoughts were swimming around in his mind again. Even though he had found Anna, he still felt guilty that he had let her be taken by whatever had held her captive over the last dozen or so years.
They finally broke their embrace, and for the first time Cypher took a moment to take in her appearance. Despite the bruises and slightly smudged makeup, she still had a lot of that natural beauty he could recall from their youth.
But at the same time as he was admiring her, he couldn’t help but feel like her eyes were piercing through him. A reminder that her suffering was directly tied to him.
He swallowed, willing himself to speak.
“Anna, I’m sorry.”
She half-smiled, reaching out with a hand to wipe away a salty tear from my cheek.
“I know.”
“I shouldn’t have been so stupid, I just didn’t realise you hadn’t come with us and when I did I tried to find you but-
Anna pinched my face, like she had done so many times when we were little, to interrupt my rambling.
“It's OK, you’re here now Cypher, and that’s what matters.”
He froze.
“Cypher”?
That didn’t make sense.
She had only ever known him as Tyler.
His spine tingled with dread as he realised something weird was going on with her face.
Her makeup was slowly but surely being wiped away with each tear that streamed down her face…but it was more than makeup. Her actual face was being distorted by the liquid seeping from her eyes. The way the “tears” were leaking in sort of a spreading motion made him feel even more uneasy.
“What’s wrong?”
Without thinking, Cypher raised his hand and pinched her cheek, just as she had done. The texture was soft and slick…but soon gave way to something cold and metallic.
He jerked his hand away.
Where his fingers had pressed against her “skin”, they had revealed a metal surface underneath.
This wasn’t Anna.
This was a lie.
“Ehh, I guess the crying feature could still use a little work.”
Aaron Schwarz nonchalantly waltzed through the door leading out of Cypher’s prison. He stood there, gloating, as the robo-Anna kept staring at him with cold, unblinking eyes.
“What the fuck did u do?!”
Cypher brushed past the cheap imitation of his sister and lunged at Aaron, but his progress was immediately halted by an arm slipping around his neck. In an instant his world turned upside down and he was slammed head first into the ground. His lights were almost knocked completely out on impact, but somehow he clinged to consciousness.
Breathing heavily, he looked up to see robo-Anna smiling down at him, the makeup which had concealed her true form now all but gone. Her grip around his neck was unnaturally strong, stronger than any chin-lock he’d ever been put in while in the ring.
He struggled in her arms as Aaron leaned down to his level.
“Pretty believable huh? We’re really stepping it up in our Artificial Intelligence department, so thanks for being my little test dummy Tyler…only a few kinks to work out.”
Seething, Cypher spat directly into Aaron’s face.
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Wrong answer…Anna?”
Robo-Anna instantly wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled Cypher into the air. He hung there a moment before his skull slammed into the cold floor beneath. The jarring impact sent a wave of pain through his head, and again he felt groggy.
As he tried to remain cognisant, he could only think about one thing.
Artificial Intelligence.
If Anna was an AI…then the technology he had recovered from Gideon Solutions had to be related…
Blood had begun to pool in his nose and was now slipping back down into his throat, making it difficult to speak.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Ohh Tyler, there’s so much that I want to tell you. I want to tell you about all our wonderful plans for expanding our AI capabilities now that you’ve so kindly delivered to our doorstep. I want to tell you how we’re going to make the world a better place, but this has never been about us…
“It’s been about you.”
Aaron pulled a remote out of his pocket and pressed a button. The LCD screen on the wall next to them blinked to life. Previously it had been a feed of Adam and his lackeys, but now it had changed.
It was Cypher’s Twitter feed.
However, it was different - he hadn’t been in control of it for however long he’d been trapped in Entity’s possession for.
So someone else was controlling what was posted and how he interacted with his friends.
“See while we had you working hard for us I decided to introduce your peers to the real Tyler. Not the one who hides behind the Cypher name, but the boy who abandoned his sister and left her for dead.”
Tweets from his profile flashed on the screen, all under the name “Tyler Norrie” rather than his usual “CYPH3R” tag.
“I”m sorry Anna, I failed you.”
“It stands true. Cypher is, was, and will always be a cunt.”
“Cypher is dead. Long live Tyler Norrie.”
“Cypher is gone. Why do you want him back so badly? He’s a horrible person. A fake. A voyeur who violates privacy without a care.”
Then there were the responses…
“What is this? Where’s the l33t speak? Who the fuck is Tyler?”
“This version of you is cringe.”
"I want my Cyphie back!"
A few moments of silence passed before Aaron spoke.
“See Tyler, all these “friends” of yours? They hate who you really are. You have deluded them into liking you through your Cypher persona.”
Cypher opened his mouth to respond but closed it just as quickly. He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to say that this was all bullshit, to call out Aaron for being a deceiving prick…but at the same time, he never forced anyone to say those things.
“The problem is you don’t make friends Tyler, you manufacture them.”
The screen blinked and changed to an image of his tweet leaking Emma’s nude photo.
“I was going to tweet about this next, what do you think?”
Aaron’s finger hovered above the remote.
Cypher bowed his head.
There was nothing he could do.
Then the room exploded into light.
The sound of gunfire reverberated off the walls of the tiny room, and Cypher felt AI Anna’s grip around his waist loosen.
The next thing he knew he was being carted out of the room on top of someone’s shoulders. Everything seemed to happen so fast, more than his scrambled brains could process.
Then his head began to finally succumb to the weight pressing down on it, and he slipped into unconsciousness.
/~/
Several weeks ago Dangerous Dan helped me end Veronica Strader’s undefeated streak for my biggest win in OCW.
At the following PPV, I sat on the sidelines and watched him claim the title that was rightfully mine.
Despite continuing a winning streak which has seen me defeat Sadie Ko and Hall of Famer Bob Greiner, it took the entire company switching hands for me to finally get the same recognition as a clown with some facepaint on.
Cmon bruh, every1 knew I should have been put into that title match, it should have been a triple threat and I would have claimed the title by beating both ur asses.
Now I gotta settle for going one-on-one with one half of Thing 1 and Thing 2. U guys remind me of video game characters…wait no that’s too generous. U guys remind me of demos of video game characters, like the placeholders the developer shoves into his Street Fighter rip-off when he’s still trying 2 fill up the cast.
“OK I want this guy to be the ‘cool’ one, what about, uh…Dangerous Sam? Nah wait, Dangerous Dan! There ya go, boy with a name like that he’s sure 2 be popular…what about this other guy? I want him 2 be the wild one, the one u never know exactly what he’s gonna do…oh man, Chris! Crazy Chris! Gonna be so FREAKIN Crazy man!!”
The fact that a duo with names like that has held multiple championships across multiple feds to me is a cause for concern. Man, the biz must be really scraping the barrel 4 tag teams these days.
I get that ur a champion, but let’s be real, these past few weeks everyone’s been talking about me. I’m the hottest wrestler in this biz, and I’ll be damned if I let a guy named Dangerous Dan stand in the way of my first championship.