| Brita A. | Report n.01 – Day 00099 This is a report from my latest mission as Bounty Hunter (or BH for short). From now on, all experiences I have should be preserved in simple text format in case something terrible affects me in the future. If you find this, it means either I’ve given permission to show this text, I’ve died, or my hard-drive as been leaked to the world. So far I’ve been given simple jobs: find the person that has a bounty on their heads, and either capture them or go for the quick kill. This time however, my mission wasn’t so simple. I was told at the communication center that I needed to go to a town far north and “kill the ghost” that was haunting a town’s river. Unfortunately they couldn’t provide me more details like what kind of creature it was, if it was from a human being, an animal being or a plant gone conscious, none of those were confirmed. To put it lightly, I had gone blindfolded through this ordeal. Non the less, I walked there… it took 10 days and 9 nights just to reach the place, when I finally saw the lights covering the stars of the dark night, I couldn’t find anyone, but not as if everyone had gone to sleep because I got there at 3am, more like they vanished from the place… I used my Heat Vision and fair enough, I couldn’t find anyone, not even domestic animals. It was a weird walk to say the least, the fragile sound of my steps on the lonesome road with no cars or motorcycles on sight, no cats meowing, dogs barking or horses that I could try to translate. Most of the rain shutters were up like if asking “Hey, don’t you want to enter this open window?” and as someone that needed to relax for a bit, I immediately did that once I figured nobody was close. Normally when a big travel is done, the mayor of the town or the client give a day of rest to guarantee we BHs could be prepared fo missions, with a room or even apartment to rest in. Since no client or civilian was around, taking a property for myself was the best option. Thankfully I don’t need to sleep or somehow recharge with my plug-in, but every night I look at the place I’m in… and it feels strange… like as if I should be capable of resting during nights like a usual person, believing that if I close my eyes for long enough I’ll be capable of seeing sheeps jumping everywhere, despite that hope I can only look at the brick work done in these small towns, it’s not like I’m a human being after all, I’m an android. Androids do think like humans, but more logically probably. As I’ve come to learn, a lot of the missions were necessary because problematic people were forced to socialize in ways that society usually don’t allow for, and when the stress from that builds up, humans break. I still have to find another android so I don’t know if I could mentally break like humans do, and hopefully, I don’t figure that out on my own in the future. The brick walls from all buildings and decorative structures in that town weren’t in ruin, but they surely weren’t in good shape… maybe an acid rain passed through there? That was my first guess at the time, once I get back to the communication center I’ll probably get answers about it. The town itself is really deep in the moist woods of the north, after searching for the river I was capable of finding a cave system with 5 houses inside it’s entrance, deeper in the cave I found a bunch of unlighted torches and some mine carts but nothing else I believe. Coming outside of that cave I tried to use the Heat Vision once again, it was comfortable seeing a humanoid figure far far away from me, still existing non the less. I believe that it was for the best to not rush in, when I got close to the person, what I found was a kid, probably close to the age of 10 years old and initially the Heat Vision was on, but when I turned it off I couldn’t believe it… there was something holding the boy’s hand. I followed the strange thing clutching his hand and surely what I discovered was shocking compared to all missions I’ve done before: in the river there was 30 cabins, they probably were for locals to take the water from the river and process it to be drinkable. Unfortunately inside were skeletal bodies I couldn’t identify, some were naked and some had their original clothes on, the wood below them was soft, I’d take a step and it melted the shape of my feet like mud in the rain. The boy seeing all of this seemed terrified, the pale shape of a person close to him was looking at him with a small grin, as if saying “welcome to reality” for which I couldn’t understand, I was too far away to follow what they were saying to each other. The best I could do was examine the water from the river since the “ghost” was apparently haunting it… it took a while, a few seconds to be exact, but I could deduce it was poisoned somehow… maybe radiation liquids were leaking from the top of the river? I couldn’t do anything alone at the moment, so I finally decided to go and talk to the boy and the humanoid thing. The boy looked at me as if he was naked, fully embarrassed and scared like I’d tell his mom he was a bad boy or something. The following is what I recall of our little conversation: - Good morning – I started. - H-HI. Who-Who who, why are you here? - He looked mentally exhausted from seeing the cabins, the white thing close to him didn’t say anything. - I’m Birta, a Bounty Hunter. There’s a town nearby that asked for my help, do you know where everyone is? - T-They are gone. - To where? - I don’t know. I need help! I need someone! - He exclaimed forcefully, as if he didn’t want to ask me for help but couldn’t do a thing about it. - Are there any other towns? - Where are my parents? - I don’t know kid - Where are my parents? - I don’t know kid… - Where are my parents Aura? - This time he asks looking at the pale thing. - Aura? So that is your name? Well then… Aura… do you know where the people of this unpopulated town are? What it said was a jumbled mess, I couldn’t understand a single syllable of what it’s voice tried to express, once it looked at my confused expression, it’s grin became large and with it’s hand it pointed at the sky, five seconds later it vanished from our eyes. This was when I understood THAT is a ghost, an incoherent white shape that is in fact conscious of what it does, and probably it’s first instinct is to find a way to communicate with human beings, maybe with my look it identified me as a normal human being. The boy even more stressed screamed: - AURA! Aura where did you go!? This is not funny!! - the boy was about to cry, I tried to speak logically to him. - Okay kid, let’s calm down… breath slowly and think of what I’m going to ask you okay? - ~~sob~~ okay… - Are you from here? - yes… - When did you realize nobody was here? - 2 days ago, I’m starving… - Did you drink the water from the river? - All the town does, mom said there is a house at the top that makes the water from the river drinkable. - Do you have relatives to take care of you away from here? - I don’t know, I don’t think I have aunt or uncle… - Y-you don’t think? As in you don’t know them at all? - No. I never saw my mom either. - Then… do you know where your father is? - … - Kid? - … - Kid?! - What is a father? This was a confusing moment for me, it was as if in just a mere minutes he forgot his life. At the time I didn’t knew, but this kid would die in one hour, there was nothing I could do to fix that, and even worst I blamed the ghost for all of this without thinking about it properly in that exact moment. - What is your name kid? - … - KID! WHAT IS YOUR NAME?! - I screamed, he was dozing off… he was being mentally destroyed from the inside out. - Nome? - W-what? - Nome, name, 姓名, 名前, नाम, όνομα, Ime, nazwa, isim, nom, имя 이름, navn… - he kept on and on, speaking words I could not comprehend. Whatever he said, no matter the size of the word he said it in the same speed, each word taking 0.4 seconds to be said, a brief 0.1 seconds to breath and loop that cycle over and over. - KID! KID WHO ARE YOU?!! - I had to do something to end this madness, and I didn’t know how. After screaming at him for what it felt like hours but were seconds of his life, he dozed off… he was breathing with a terrible expression, his lips dried from speaking without sleep, the best I could do was bring him to one of the houses that I could jump in and let him rest, I didn’t know his condition and I don’t know how to do emergency healing yet… My only clue was the “house of the river” that he spoke of was causing this, no way a ghost could kill an entire village through water intoxication. It took me an hour to finally find the house, the journey itself was stressful… every time I heard the wind blow the leaves from the trees around me, I could only think of the pale figure, probably looking at me from afar like I did to it before. All the shadows it could stick into, all the places it could vanish and reappear from. I was stiff, trying to prepare myself for a fight, conscious that anywhere I was in was a bad position since I was an easy target. Once I found the “house” I realized how hard it would actually be just to fight this ghost, the house was in decay, ready to collapse with the touch of a feather on the floor. By all means it’s a risk I was taking just for a stupid bounty that wouldn’t save anyone, the town’s people either ran off or died already, there was no helping to this, just a hunter trying to understand it’s prey. Got inside and there were a few shelves filled with books, close to those were 3 corpses, 2 were adult sized… 1 was the size of a kid. I can only deduce this is how ghosts are made, someone that died but refuses to leave this world, so they keep on and on, unfortunately I can’t see why a kid that died here would kill a town’s worth of people just because, there was probably more to this story but at the end I’m not a detective. The ghost reveals itself and takes a look at me for what feels like eternity, trying to understand what I am, a human, a machine, a living being or an object, no matter what it decided it tried to talk to me, and once again I couldn’t understand what it meant, it was all jumbled. Probably considering that I couldn’t make heads or tails of what it said, it pointed at me and then it pointed to one of the machines in the house. Taking a better look at it I concluded it was the mechanism for processing the river’s water, once again it was impossible for me to understand the ghost’s purpose, but I assumed it was asking me for help to fix it I couldn’t do it, more importantly I was here for the ghost itself. I then had a stupid idea: what if I drank the water? I’m an android so poison doesn’t affect me at all, worst case scenario I’d die, it’s not like that matters honestly, nobody is waiting for me. If people from here are seeing the ghost, maybe it’s the water that allows it. Thinking all of that I drank it, the ghost looked at me scared, like I was committing to something I couldn’t get out of for the rest of my life. Once I drank a bunch of it the ghost spoke, this time I could understand it, this is what I recall from all of that: - Why? Why did you drank it? Everyone is dying because of it. - I want to get it. - What? - If you aren’t killing the people of this town, then why are you here? Everyone is dead. - I couldn’t do a thing about it, we were attacked, my dad… my mom… they were supervising the water, I was organizing the cleaning of the house... when a bunch of people shot us down like thugs. - Who were they? - I don’t know, I’ve never seen them. - Who was that kid you were holding hands? - That was Launo, each of the town’s people after drinking the bad water were losing memories constantly, I tried to talk to them, but nobody saw me… I can talk to people… if they are about to die. - You what? Then about him?! I left him alone! - He is dead. It’s too late. - Then what about me? Am I dead? I just drank the water. - I have no clue what you are. You aren’t like him or I. - No, I’m an android. - A machine? - Yes. - Then you probably are on the edge of death and life, you live but you aren’t alive, I can’t find the flame in you. - A-A flame? - Yes, everyone as a flame when they are alive, but not you. - Then what am I to you? - Something that came from the world itself I assume, plants don’t have flames, you see? - What can I do? What can I do to help you all? - Nothing, go home. - What will you do? Will you just stay here and suffer? Look at the empty town you once were part on?! - Go home… - I won’t! I came here because you were accused of murdering everyone! - SHUT UP! I don’t care what happens to me!! We all loved here, we all protect each other’s backs, living innocently with nature… Holding on to the past that was once this town… If I’m gone… nobody will be here to remember the sacrifices done! - Leaving here wouldn’t bring you peace… but neither would be looking at a past that the world will erase one day anyway. People, animals, plants… even machines have to die one day! Whether it’s replaced or never spoken of it doesn’t matter! - How do you know that?! Information can be preserved! Knowledge can be preserved! Nature should be preserved! We should be preserved!! - … - … The silence was screaming, none of us would budge. I wanted for this ghost to get peace and me finally getting the bounty, and it wouldn’t leave this town because it didn’t know just how insignificant this place is… it would never affect the country it’s in, let alone the world… there is no way their people wouldn’t be forgotten. Then again… they all deserved to live a peaceful life, that’s probably the reason why I wanted this person to kick it already, to stop holding on to something that was too broken to fix. - Then how about this Mr. White… - I get closer to the shelves in the house. - If I preserve every single information that still exists about this town, you leave. - There’s too much of it, every house had it’s own history, families of 5 to 8 members were common, I remember them all. It will takes months just to compile every thing. I won’t let go of them at all, and I doubt you can take it all in. - Watch me. And so for the duration of 58 days the ghost told me everything he remembered, then we looked at every book we could find. I analyzed the dirt quality, I analyzed most trees around the area to see how long most would live if not disturbed, tried to bring animals to see how they’d react to the abandoned town. Speaking of the town itself I discovered something about buildings, apparently some aren’t made with just safety in mind, some are made with styles in mind (the ghost told me that’s called Architecture) but other are made considering the location and resources in mind, this town was made with those in particular, but maybe in the future I’ll find new architecture styles, maybe I’ve found some before but didn’t consider that. The Asta Astrid Town was compiled in my hard-drive as much as possible, at least 200 GB of images, texts and audio were written into me. It saddens me that I had to repeat what the ghost Eskil had to say to me since my recording couldn’t sense him somehow, even if I myself could. Our last conversation went as such: - I’m jealous Ms. Brita. - Jealous? Of what? - You of course. You don’t sleep, you don’t eat, you don’t need to stop and if not harmed you can live forever. I wish that at some point that was possible for us, to find true peace. - This is not peace kid, I can’t sleep but I can’t rest, thinking constantly makes me sad a lot of times. I actually can eat and drink, but people seem to like the flavor of those things, I’ll never know how that feels. I can stop, and there will be moments when I should stop, otherwise places like this will never be noticed. “It’s the small things really”… As promised, once I get back for my bounty, all information I have will be stored in as many places as I can, so rest… you should stop. - Then, I guess this is good-bye then. If you ever see yourself in trouble… remember that we see all from where we are. Whether it’s in the crystal blue of the sky or the deep blue of the ocean depths, we still exist somewhere… - Good-bye Eskil… And that’s all from this report that I need to write I believe. Once I get back to the communication center I’ll do as I promised, it’s been 6 days and 5 nights now, time doesn’t stop and neither will I. |
|---|