The Carnival

[Piper Juunanagou]

In the blink of an eye, the snow-covered mountain had vanished and been replaced by the familiar scenes of Gamer’s carnival; however, the quick transition had also left the woman alone in the center of the amusement park’s entrance. Glancing around, Piper soon found herself frowning at the empty cobblestone walkway. Even the unnerving robotic attendant with the staring problem had vanished from his post.

“…I’m lonely,” Piper mumbled as she reached down to her waist and angled the LCD screen of the pager up so she could read its contents without having to actually remove the device from her belt. “Hurray for winning…” the woman remarked as she noted the little victory symbol on the bottom corner of the outdated apparatus. In the opposing corner, the woman’s ‘monies’ had been upgraded from thirty to seventy—a reflection of the victory she and Szar had achieved over both the other climbers and the mountain.

“Where’s that changeling?” The woman remarked as she slipped her hand off the pager and began to glance around at her surroundings. As Piper’s eyes reached the end of her 360 degree survey of the amusement park, she found herself staring into the smiling face of a woman who had failed to be there just a few brief moments earlier. Reeling back, the soldier clenched her bare fist and raised the gauntlet to defend herself.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Sergeant Juunanagou,” the brunette said in a rather pleasant and soothing tone. Almost immediately, Piper relaxed her tight posture and lowered her elevated palm. With a smile, the strange woman placed her hands on her hips and tilted her upper body forward until her face was hovering just a few inches away from Piper’s. “My name is Mixie, and I’m here to make sure you’re enjoying Kill Town,” she remarked with a mortifying degree of happiness.

“Are you some sort of robot?” Piper spat as she reached a hand out and pushed the woman’s torso away from her. “I don’t want to talk to anymore of these damned machines. Between all the zombies and robots and ice monsters, I’m beginning to lose my patience with this whole stupid mockup.”

“What makes you think I’m artificial?” Mixie asked—tilting her head as if the almost incessant intonation hadn’t given away the fact that she was clearly asking a question.

“Oh just shut the hell up,” Piper groaned as she rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you tell me where your masters are? I’d sure like to meet whoever it was that built you,” the beleaguered soldier added as she flexed his gauntleted fingers.

“I’m afraid that would be most impossible,” Mixie shot back as she began to shake her head back and forth. “Because I’m a program designed for Kill Town, and as a result, I wasn’t constructed by Gamer…simply coded,” she replied as Piper began to see inklings of an emotive response other than the unnerving happiness and dapperness of the robot staff.

“So does that make you less human than the robots?” Piper inquired, knowing full well that the question had little logical backing and was mainly designed to incense the other woman.

“Well no, seeing as how everything in Kill Town has been programmed all the way down to those robots and zombies that you get along with so well,” Mixie replied with a smug grin that served to illustrate that there was more beneath the artificial being’s skin than 1s and 0s or a bunch of gears and servos.

“Oh, joy,” Piper remarked as she shrugged her shoulders and abruptly began to walk away from the woman in the dark blue one-piece.

“Hey, we’re not done here,” Mixie shouted before suddenly appearing right in front of the soldier. With a grunt, Piper recoiled and then shot a glance over her shoulder to verify that there were two copies of the synthetic woman gallivanting around the carnival. “I can be anywhere and everywhere within the confines of the program,” she remarked upon noting Piper’s quick glance.

“I want to go home now,” the tense reply was punctuated by a light push that sent Mixie staggering to the wayside as the blonde began to advance toward a paved offshoot of the amusement park’s cobblestone entrance.

“But the game isn’t over yet,” the artificially intelligent woman replied after reappearing in front of Piper’s pathway. “You’re not permitted to leave until the festivities have ended and a winner declared.”

“This is bullshit,” Piper remarked as she shoved Mixie to the ground. “Tell your boss I’m going to put a bullet through his skull,” the soldier added before she vanished in a swirl of light particles. Although she could have easily pinpointed the Sentinel’s location within the program, the synthetic woman opted to simply shake her head and sigh before blinking out of existence.

With a glimmer of lights, Piper popped into sight and tilted her head back to take a glance at the giant ride laid out in front of her. The giant apparatus was one of those freefall towers that hoisted its occupants a couple hundred feet into the sky before releasing them to plummet almost all the way back down the ground. What did they call those things again? ‘Drop towers’?

“I’ll pass,” Piper muttered as her distaste of heights prompted her to divert her attention away as the empty gondola began its gradual ascent up the tower. With a frown, the woman turned around and made her way toward a small vendor across the walkway. The robot operated a tiny, wheeled cart that was cleverly concealed behind a colorful, elaborate wooden façade.

“Can I get something for you, Ma’am?” The robot inquired as he leaned out of his cart and gestured toward all the painted signs that decorated his collapsible wooden portico. Taking turns glancing between opposing sides, Piper was able to deduce in a rather short amount of time that the robot was selling hotdogs. Oddly enough, the whole display reminded her of all the hotdog carts she’d seen in South City when she’d first arrived in this timeline. The grotesque, uncharismatic sloths who’d operated those stands were some of the first people Piper had encountered…right before she’d had that chance run-in with Vad Zunlenka.

“That was almost a year and a half ago,” she spoke beneath her breath as she pointed to one of the painted menu items. “That seems like an eternity,” she added as she accepted the hotdog with mustard and onions and proceeded to walk away from the stand. Behind her, the attendant thanked her for her patronage, but the woman failed to bother a reply. After all, none of this was actually real.

Although the hotdog tasted delicious as she bit into it, Piper extracted no enjoyment from the surprisingly high-quality components of her ‘meal.’ The thought that none of this was real, and that her actual body was undoubtedly strapped to a gurney somewhere acted to effectively kill any enjoyment she may have otherwise had with the carnival and its food.

Am I going to die here? Piper thought as she took another bite out of the hotdog and turned her eyes up toward the artificial skyline. I can’t die like this…tied into some underage bastards computer.

The thought filled the woman with an almost violent fury. It was the same fury she’d experienced whilst tearing apart those zombies in the inaugural event. And once again, Piper found herself enjoying the vehement, almost overwhelming sensation as it infused her being. It was uplifting and invigorating, and it made her feel like she felt she had the raw strength to topple anything.

A smile—vengeful and angry—spread across the soldier’s visage as she took a final bite of the hotdog and proceeded to crumple up its tinfoil shell. Turning to discard the ball of trash into a nearby receptacle, Piper caught site of her reflection against the glass surface of a nearby attraction. Although she had initially looked away, the subsequent double-take revealed that the woman had a very faint glow around her. She’d seen the same glow on others—Kaden, Szar, and even Kai Demolic. The woman’s confusion was only compounded when the glow simply faded away after a couple of seconds.

You don’t see that everyday… Piper pondered as she turned away from the glass panel and continued down the path.