| Brita A. | Report n.02 – Day 00402 This is a report from my latest mission as Bounty Hunter (or BH for short). It’s been a while from the first mission report I’ve done, but it’s with good reason. My last job was to retrieve information from a book inside the biggest tower known to living beings on this world: “The Tower of Hope and All”. The Tower itself is massive of course, but from the outside it doesn’t look anything special besides making a whole in the sky’s clouds, it’s all made out of cement blocks and electric wires with no lights on the outside to show where it is in the night. It’s contents are the real treat for the eye, as it contains millions, no, maybe even more than trillions of books in it that anyone can read. They are all there to guarantee all information is preserved, and in said tower there was a book with information on human history which my client was paying high bills to read and learn from, and so I went on. Once I got there I found a person in a wheelchair that seemed like an employee or a local from the place, a set of plastic chairs typical from lobbies I’ve been in, a set of pushing doors and a set of lines on the ground underneath the doors, all combined made a colorful rainbow. With all that, I tried to speak with said person: - Good night. - Hello Miss, how may Derval help you? - she asked calmly. - I am searching for information on human history, specifically from… “2809 AC, 25th December”? - Ah, a historian coming for wisdom? Please make sure you have all rations and water ready, it’ll be a long journey until you find the book with said knowledge. - Actually I’m here as a Bounty Hunter, my client will be taking a copy made by myself once I find it. Is that allowed in here? - Of course you can, it is not allowed to bring the books out of this building, it was made to guarantee all things knowledge have a place to be in. It was designed with the Library of Babel in mind, as it was the most important library of all time. - Library of… what? - Ah, you haven’t heard of it? - Sorry, no. I’m not from this area, I’ve only learned of this tower from my client. - I see, basically it was an idea made by Jorge Luis Borges, a library that had books with all possible text-character matches. Most books were gibberish, noise for the eyes and nauseating for the brain, but if you were lucky, there was a chance you could find stuff that nobody knew, like cure for all diseases, the future already written on it or how the universe at large works, atom by atom. - He constructed it? - No, not at all, it was a mere story about the infinite possibilities that we can and can’t find in the world, it took millenniums to find a way to reproduce the same results. What you are inside is the result of trying to copy an idea from an old fairy tale of sorts. It’s funny since now it exists, it can’t be considered a fairy tale anymore. - How long did it took to build all of this? - It’s still ongoing, so it’s impossible to answer that unfortunately. - It is?! How!? - It builds itself, no sacrifices or efforts are needed to build it, what is hard to do is understand the contents of each book, because one of the issues in the Babel was remade here: most of the contents are noise to common humans. It’s impossible to read. - Well yeah, if a word isn’t a word, then it has no meaning to read from. - Technically yes, but here is a question: What if it is written in a language we don’t know? Like I said, the future could be written there… Maybe all that noise is a language that we don’t use yet. - Do you wish that to be true? - I don’t wish anything, I just verify it all. - Well then, where can I find information on human history, specifically from… “2809 AC, 25th December”? - You see the lines below the door? - The rainbow? - Yes. Follow the yellow line and walk it for 3 years, or run it for 7 months, which ever you prefer. Once you do it, copy all the text as you want and jump into the closest white void you find, make sure it isn’t a black void or you’ll die for sure. - … - … - You said 3 years if I walk it, right? - Yes. - Wow, no wonder my client was younger than I thought. - Well no human would have enough rations to get there anyway. - If that’s the case, why did you told me to have rations and water ready? - It’s a morbid joke at this point, I’ve seen people entering it and never coming back… Don’t be surprised if you look at the green line from afar and find skeletons for at least 10km. - What’s so special for people risking their lives in that line? - According to my old boss it has the list of materials to create temporary immortality, but it’s too far away, it takes 42 years running non-stop just to get there. - Is the boss in here? - He is the cleaner of this tower, he is the one that as to take care of the bodies. - I see… well then, I’ll be on my journey. - One last thing before you go. What is your name? - I’m Brita, the Bounty Hunter. - So that is what you go by now uh? - Yeah… I don’t know my real name so I’m going with what the girl in the mountains called me. - Do you remember anything? - No. - I see. Have a nice journey then, always remember to never jump. - Alright. From this point on, I opened the door with the colored lines and followed the yellow that went for a set of stairs. Initially it looked as I expected, a bunch of floors with bookshelves filled to the brim with knowledge and like the tower’s name suggest: hope. Once I got to the 30th floor I got stunned for a second as the stairs challenged gravity itself, with nothing to support them they just floated, the bookshelves were stuck to the walls with pipes and wood to guarantee they wouldn’t fall. After the 389th floor there were only 6 lines, purple was done for the rest of the tower I thought. The line led me to a door, I opened it and got stunned once again for I was challenging gravity this time, as I was walking upside down, my hair getting in the way at points but nothing major. Then I opened another door, for some reason a door after that appeared, so I opened it, for some reason a door after that appeared, so I opened it, for some reason a door after that appeared, therefore I opened it, somehow a door after that appeared, likewise I opened it, questionably a locked door after that appeared, so I broke it and opened it. This took me 1 entire day until the road finally changed. Each floor after this felt like the tower was corrupting more and more, like the structures inside didn’t make sense, all I could do was run the line and find the book as fast as possible. The line passed through a window-like hole and I jumped in to continue. The line passed through a small gap and I crawled through. In another floor where I was challenging gravity once again and I looked what felt like up but deep-down I knew it was down and couldn’t believe it, it was identical to the first floor except I was on the roof with a yellow line and 2 doors: One where I came from and another one I had to enter, the moment I entered it I screamed not with anger, just confusion: I got to the floor of the same room. I even got myself between the opened door and looked up and down, I could see my body in the door with multiple lines on the floor but myself on the roof like I was an insect. I felt like one, I felt smaller and smaller with each step I ran. This floor also meant something important: the purple line was back, so the only way to continue the purple line is to continue it from the yellow one. It’s so confusing. At some point I didn’t care about how this place, all I did was run, count the hours to know how many days passed, run and count run and count. Over and over and over and over and over again, run faster if you can, don’t stop thinking about each hour, each minute, each second to know when to start looking for the book. I knew that if I wasn’t careful I’d go mad eventually, and I don’t want to break, I’m fine. 5 months passed and there was only know 5 lines, I don’t know what floor I was in, that stopped being a reasonable thought since the first month. I could see the green line across the window-like door and like the Derval person said I saw someone dragging bodies and skeletons around~ in a pushcart like he was buying vegetables in the market. I’m going to assume that he was a man, the mask he was wearing didn’t allow for judgment, which made me run away even faster, like how could a common human get this far? How is this a functional way of preserving knowledge?! Barely anyone can get here, let alone find whatever they want! Windows are doors, doors are floors and staircases are beds! This was absolute madness to navigate, if it wasn’t for the perfect piss yellow line that would lead me to get the bounty I accepted I’d be lost for eternity. Common sense is useless in the Tower of Hope and All. At the day that made the 7th month of running I started looking in the bookshelves for which of them had a section about the 25th December of 2809 AC. It took me 2 days to read it all, I got confused about the contents as it was about an event that happened in an annual party called Christmas. On that day, an invention called Time Machine was used but it was too unstable, it destroyed 2 entire countries and killed a lot of people. The girl that invented it, Casilda Castro Caro, didn’t die from the explosion, in fact she disappeared without a trace at all. The book itself doesn’t have information on where did she travel to with the machine, but it is assumed that it was a one way trip, the machine can only work 1 time. There were 86 books in total just about that day on this planet, retelling how the plants grew, how many of them died, how each insect lived hour by hour, how did nature in general functioned that day and how many random facts that we never take in consideration affected how people lived their lives. I wonder how many books were written to show all that happened in that specific day, probably more than I could see in front of me in that floor. The combination of 12 books gave instructions of how to do this time machine and I considered not taking the bounty at this moment now that I knew the negative consequences it could give humanity once again, but maybe, it could be used as a warning to not do this mistake and so I copied it all. Knowing that a few floors from where I stood there was a white void I ran into it to finally escape this tower. I was so happy to finally see the doors of the entrance that the moment I saw Derval again I instantly hugged her. She said “hi” and congratulated me for coming back after so long… I was emotionally exhausted to say the very least, and just being capable of speaking to another person gave me joy once again: - Derval! Derval thank you! Thank you for being here! - I’m always here Brita. I’m happy that you came back safe. - That was not safe! This place is dangerous! It’s almost impossible to navigate it! How could anyone get in there safe?! - Well that is not my responsibility, it was designed like this unfortunately, and you only saw a fraction of it I believe. - A fraction? Derval, I ran that for 7 months. How did I only saw a fraction!? - The yellow line is exclusive for information on this planet. Not only that, you only went to 2809, we have a lot more history than that. - Do you know the suffering to run all that!? It’s not that it’s exhausting physically, it’s that the navigation truly goes against everything I’ve seen before! - I don’t know how bad it is, but I know more information then you could ever try to get from this place. - Really? You can go there with the wheelchair? - No, but here, can you see my back and my legs? - They… They are connected via tubes… are you sick? - No no, I’m an android just like you, you see? I was made for the sole purpose of reading as much of the tower’s contents as possible. These tubes send me information and I gather them to filter all of it, to preserve information that can be understood by people. - So what you are saying… is that this is all your life? This tower is you? - To some degree, I learned that I was actually made to be the closest thing to a military android that could eradicate any army in wars, but thanks to bombs the wars were dissolved and I got turned off. After at least 2 millenniums, I was turned on thanks to an update they gave me: almost infinite hard-drive to store all texts imaginable. To some degree, I’m alive because of this mission I was given. - Are you happy about that? - Yes. I was given a reason to exist, I’m not good at deciding things so this is no doubt good for me. - How much have you learned here? - It’s hard to say in a way you can measure, but I know all that happened on this planet between the moment it was conceived, and millions and millions of years after that. - This tower can have information of the future… have you found information of the future? - Not yet, but if my progress is steady and slightly faster than the passage of time. With small breaks, I should finally get to the “present” in 803984 years, from then on I’ll only be given information of the future. - That’s a lot of time. - It’s smaller then you think my dear. - What a “small break” is for you then? - 6 years. - After what I endured, that doesn’t surprised me unfortunately… - Well you are an android, so it’s not like time will be important anyway. - Time… yeah right. I got the information my client asked for, I’ll talk with him for once and say to not do this invention like Casilda did before. - Ah don’t worry about it, if he uses it he’ll become a human employee here. - What? - Yeah, didn’t you see my boss? He was the 7th human to use a time machine, like the others their bodies were shredded into time and space, and the only place that allows for such living people with no bodies is in the tower. - What about ghosts then? - They are dead, that’s the difference. Living souls that were flunked atom by atom into the universe can only restore themselves in the Tower of Hope and All, since it gathers information from everything and everywhere, once they fully come back, they’ll die. I want new people to talk to here, it’s lonely. - But if the machine is used, a lot of people will die for no reason. - I don’t care. - That’s selfish. - That opinion from a BH is stupid. You do the bidding of selfish people all the time. - Well… it’s not like I have something to do. I just do it because it allows me to experience the world more, I want to see what made me exist in the first place. The humanity, all the good and bad in it. - You can do that anyway. - Yeah but… going to a place and paying for rest, eating and thanking the chef for the food and service… just talking to people that are struggling with their lives… it feels like I’m cheating everyone if I don’t do it. - We are androids, made to copy humanity to a fault, you just care more about it I guess. - Yeah, I guess… - I can’t be annoyed with the selfishness you allow to exist, after all I’m alive because everyone was selfish turning me on, not considering how I felt or will feel. They probably exist and almost killed themselves countless times because everyone as a reason to be selfish, morals or ethics be damned. I still want more people here. It’s a boring reality Derval lives, her speech wasn’t that mind shattering but if she doesn’t get anything from her situation… it’ll break her probably… the only android I discovered so far and after months of running alone… I could relate. With that I got an idea: - Derval. - Yes? - If we become friends, if I come here often, can I tell him to not do it? - Why do you care? - Because you have the right to see people that don’t come here for information. Even if you finally got turned on thanks to this mission, it’s just an infinite grave you are attached to. Sleeping here with the universe in your hands some day, but not a single dream to tell… Let me come back over and over telling you my stories, let me tell you dreams. - Will you really do it? - I’ll make sure to send you letters in case I can’t between missions. I’ve started to do personal reports, and this next one will surely be about all this. - T-thanks. - I didn’t know an android could blush at the time, it made smile more than I should. - One thing: how many people came here while I was gone? - 8 I think. - That really is a small amount of people. - Nobody can walk the tower nowadays, and the information I own although big isn’t that useful for people’s resources anyway. - I see… I stayed there for one more day just talking to her, once that was done I promised to come back before starting the next bounty. I’m thankful that I made a new friend, and an android at that. I wonder what can happen in this tower, if people that didn’t die from natural or murder causes could be salvaged from here, how it actually builds itself up, what kind of information it truly has… and what is the point of having infinite knowledge but stuck in here, forever. |
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