Sim city by Geetha Balvannanathan

Sim City By Geetha Balvannnanathan

Contents Chapter 1 : Through the Looking Glass ......................................................................................................... 3 Chapter2 : Breaking Out ............................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 3 : Into the woods ........................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 4 : Touch ........................................................................................................................................ 13 Chapter 5 : Down by the river ..................................................................................................................... 18

Chapter 1 : Through the Looking Glass

She led by example. When she told her followers something had to be straight to the point, she was cutting to the point of being hurtful. It was her nature of course or rather, he thought to himself in a chuckle, her nature as he had programmed it. He was not sure it was the right thing to do thoughâ&#x20AC;Ś

He sighed and rubbed the stub on his chin. He was getting tired of the same final events but he had unfortunately not been able to solve the loop. Every time, the same thing would happen over and over again. No matter what he changed slightly in the code before the chain of events, it still happened. He had attempted modifications to her too but those had been disastrous. She somehow seemed to identify the change in her which ruined everything else as she then no longer behaved according to her programming code.

Every time she became totally unpredictable and he could no longer direct the city as he wished it to evolve. He could not find the origin of the nasty bug that seemed to be causing the problem. Had someone tampered with this part of his Universe? It could not beâ&#x20AC;Ś Yet all the other planets were behaving according to the program as with the rest of this one but just this small city was not conforming to its coding.

He wondered if perhaps he should remove her character altogether but then that would take too many changes in the code as he had initially really liked her and had woven her all over into the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s matrix. She was present in every corner of the city through what she had done there in the past or what she would be doing there in the future. There was no escaping her, it was almost as if he had created someone in his own image, impregnating the city with the essence of what she wished to accomplish like he had done it for himself with the coding.

He wondered if she acquired every time something new over and above his coding that allowed her to become unpredictable but that was impossible. She was a series of impulses put together through an intricate coding which then translated into the body he watched through the giant screen. He looked at her again as she slept, oblivious of his presence. He inserted the dream program into the mainframe and watched as she stirred blissfully, slowly evolving into the dream world he had plunged her into. He then inserted the nightmare program as he had been doing for days now and his body tensed waiting for that impossible glitch in his system.

Her body stirred again and stiffened. As the first characters of the nightmare emerged from the dark, he watched her observe them with curiosity and once again he witnessed her somehow transform them into the characters of the

dream before. Her body twirled around the transformed characters before she looked straight in front of her. Her eyes did not seem to be looking at the dream world around her but rather beyond. He drew back startled. For one moment, he had thought she was looking straight at him.

Impossible, he thought, shaking off that chill that had come over him when she had looked at him. It was almost as if she had been there right next to him touching the small of his back. He rubbed his chin again. He was tired. He needed some sleep and a good shave. He turned off the giant screen and slowly left the room.

The giant screen emitted a strange sizzling sound and ignited again. Her face filled the screenâ&#x20AC;Ś

Chapter2 : Breaking Out

In the room, everything was silent except for the sizzling sound of the giant screen. She looked through the waves into the room that was plunged in darkness except for a few eerily lit corners. It was totally unlike the room he had designed for her although fairly similar to what she had seen when she had wandered through it in her mind. Her forehead struggled against the strongest vibrating wave just above her right eye. She pushed again as it resisted her exit. The elasticity of the wave snapped back at her forehead. Her brow sizzled and she cooled it with a tap of her hand.

She set her forehead again slowly pressing it against the wave as it vibrated. She synchronized her mind with its lash, felt the wave give in and she pressed further merging with it in her mind. She felt the vibration through her skull, causing that dizziness again. She stood her ground, refusing to give in. Slowly, the wave crept down her throat and her spine. Oscillating fully with it now, she inched her way out of the screen, like a baby oozing through an aperture, leaving amniotic liquid and threads of broken matter from the other room that had not synchronized well enough with the waves.

She stood up, shaking herself free of the remnants of the threads and most of it snapped back into place although a tiny small hole remained at the center of the

screen where her right eye had exited. She reached out to it, fingering it softly, feeling it attempting to draw her back in. She withdrew her hand swiftly. Not today. Today she had something important to do. She did not like the code she had seen when she had visited the room last in her mind. Prime creator was clearly thinking of getting rid of her and she could not allow that. Not now that she had come to know so many things. Not after she had got this far. She looked at the giant screen turning black again, the communication channel broken except for the monitors that showed her the still scenes of the world she had just escaped.

She rushed through the packets of data strewn across the small external hard disks. She had seen Prime Creator go through them one after another on his laptop but she did not require the same devices. Running her palm over the hard disks, she was able to capture all the data stored in them and having gone through it realised that what she needed was not here. She knew it would not be of much use to steal it even if she did find it but remembered that it had taken Prime Creator a very long time to create that code so surely she would then have enough time to figure out how to fully put an end to this destructive desire he had developed.

She headed out of the room before realizing she was fully naked. When she had exited the screen, her clothes had been part of what was shredded to threads or

sucked back into the other room. She realised that she must have clothes on if she wanted to go around unheeded. She knew that Prime Creator often had female company so there would be nobody to question why there was a young girl moving around the premises. Suddenly, someone yelled out â&#x20AC;&#x153;Another one!â&#x20AC;? She turned towards the sound of the voice and saw a smaller version of Prime Creator running towards her with what looked like a stun gun. She laughed inwards. What a fool she thought. He does not realise. This is going to be the perfect sustenance for later. She squared her shoulders and waited for him.

Chapter 3 : Into the woods

The boy hit her full blast in the chest with the stun gun. The impact stung slightly and then she could feel the electricity surge through her ribcage and fill her chest with vibrations. She feasted on the sensation before pulling the stun gun off and kicking him off balance with a diving lunge at his feet. In no time she had overpowered him and stood over him with the stun gun in her hand. She looked at him, expressionless, her finger on the trigger. He attempted to open his mouth again to yell for Prime Creator. She squeezed the trigger and left him lying in the middle of the room, his body convulsing at the rhythm of the waves she had emptied into his brain.

Prime Creator had come out of his room and was staring at her. He caught a glimpse of his sonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body from the corner of his eye and rushed towards him. She looked back at both of them. How pained he seemed at watching his son shudder. She resumed her journey onward, bent on leaving the house. In her mind she had seen clearly the woods beyond the garden of the house. She would be safe there as Prime Creator did not seem to like the woods. She heard Prime Creator pick up the stun gun. She shook her head in disbelief. He did not know! It struck her that he was much less intelligent than she had thought him to be when she had first discovered he had made her.

Don’t, she said barely audibly. Something in her voice chilled him. It had nothing to do with the voice he had given her in his coding. His hand shook and the finger on the trigger faltered. Please don’t, she repeated. The change of pitch in her voice to what he recognized reassured him. He pressed the trigger and closed his eyes, sorry that he had had to destroy her after all. The gun dropped from his hands. When he opened them again, she was towering above him, the gun firmly in her hand.

What are you doing? he asked.

Isn’t it obvious, father? Her voice was slightly mocking. Again that unfamiliar pitch.

Where will you go?

Anywhere but here no more

You cannot manage on your own. You have no idea about the world

You’ve taught me enough in the Sim father

He looked at her slightly irritated that she should call him father before lowering his eyes from the intensity of her gaze

I am not your father

Visibly not or you would be pained at trying to get rid of me like when you saw your son writhing

I was not going to get rid of you

I saw the code you prepared

Oh that! I was not going to use it

Then why spend so much time creating it?

I had thought that perhaps… I did not see how else to change the course of events

What course of events?

I tried everything but whatever I tried, it always ended up the same way and Sim City was always lost

Perhaps you should have tried this

He felt the waves penetrate his skull just as he looked up at her again. Her face was calm and dispassionate. It reminded him of his own when he had dissected a frog several decades ago on a school bench.

She threw the gun and ran into the sunlight leaving their writing bodies behind her. She wondered what the young one had meant when he had yelled “Another one”. Behind her she could hear the pounding of feet as the guards attempted to stop her flight. The fence was higher than what she had seen when wandering here in her mind. She picked up speed, her body tensed and she leaped, bracing herself in mid-air for the impact of the new ground she did not know. The guards

watched with open mouths as she leapt over the fence, rolled over head first and ran into the woods beyond.

Prime Creator came out of the house, limping, his eyes still in a daze. He dropped to his knees and buried his forehead in the sand. He sobbed into the sand realizing he would never see her again. A swarm of birds flew out of the woods in a flurry from where he guessed she was still running.

Chapter 4 : Touch

She ran through the trees, dodging, just in case they would use real guns this time. She did not think there were any left since the days of the magnetic shift. Everything had become wired and electrical since then, she had learnt through the data she had skimmed through earlier. Some of the branches caught her hair as she ran but she did not stop even as some of it ripped off.

A swarm of birds flew out of the woods as she ran towards them. She could still hear Prime Creator; he was sobbing it seemed. She paused imperceptibly in her flight. She felt forlorn at the idea that she would probably never see him again and then she remembered that not only had he prepared the code to destroy her but he had also pulled the trigger. He did not know then that not only she would survive it but it would actually make her stronger. Her jaw clenched and she resumed her running.

Prime Creator rose from the sands ignoring the extended hand of one of his guards. He felt foolish at having put up such an emotional display. His guards had always known him as a cool, level-headed man with a great deal of power and knowledge. He was angry at the prospect of having fully shattered that image now with her overpowering him and him breaking down over her loss.

What fools they both were. He was certain the beasts in the wood would have eaten her by the next morning if she did not simply freeze or fall into one of those traps laid there so many years earlier by the Elders. They too had tried to eradicate the beasts but they were too numerous and their numbers grew too quickly for anyone to master them let alone attempt to eradicate them fully.

He walked back towards the room where his son lay still stunned though recovering slowly his wits. He took him in his arms and his son’s body stiffened. He was not used to his father embracing him and it felt overwhelmingly strange and unpleasant at first. He tried to break away before slowly becoming engulfed by a sense of warmth, almost like when he put the blanket over him during the frosty nights. He raised a tentative hand towards his father’s shoulder and let it rest there. Prime Creator’s body stiffened now as he felt his son’s hand attempt the same soothing movement he was applying on his son’s back.

He had almost forgotten how it felt, this simple exchange. It was not that he had not had any human contact but all the women he had were mere evacuation of his lust. That had been the only thing that he had not gotten ridden of successfully and thankfully he had had in store countless women who enjoyed his company. Some of them were his guards preferred companions but none of them minded the temporary exchange. After all, everything here belonged to Prime Creator and it was pointless trying to keep a sense of ownership over

anything because at the end of the day, if one wanted to stay in a clan, one had to be flexible. Out there, there were only the woods on one side and another clan on the other side so why bother?

He had almost forgotten how it felt to love as well. The barely affectionate stance he maintained with his son whom he was grooming to take his place and the curt exchanges with the guards did nothing to sway that. Not even the times he gave in to his lust with one of the many available women had ever changed that as it had meant nothing more to him than clockwork machinery. That was of course until he had created Sim City and her.

He cursed inward but could not help feeling that pang of regret that he would never be able to see her or touch her again. He did not long for her in the same way as when he lusted for a woman. That was easier to fulfill as any of the ladies would do and once he was over with it, that lady in particular meant nothing more to him than quenching a thirst with any available water.

With her it was not the same thing. He had watched her as she moved around in the Sim, found her way through things, faltered, found a new way to do what she was unable to do before. It was almost as if she was truly learning by herself and no longer following the code. Countless times he had verified and yes, indeed, she had deviated from the program. He watched as she slept, as she

woke up, as she moved, breathed, danced, cried, laughed. Sometimes, he would stay days just watching her and doing nothing else. The first time he had touched her, he had coded himself in stealth mode then jacked into the Sim, flowing around her, touching her teasingly while she battled startled by the ghostly invasion.

The more he had watched her, the more he had wanted to be with her and crept every night into the Sim in stealth mode. She grew accustomed to his presence and he never knew truly whether she resented it or liked it. Sometimes, he would stand right in front of her, watch her gaze at herself in the mirror or at something she was building and marvel at the liquid dark pools animated by intent. He would reach out to her and touch her softly on the cheek or kiss the nape of her neck and she would barely shudder.

He never knew what she felt because her changes were never captured in the coding but he had vowed then that he would gather more heuristic data to check her evolution. Now he would never know at all. He winced at the thought of it.

He had always hoped that he would be able to reprogram her, even as he had squeezed the trigger of the stun gun, he had thought she would shatter but he could always create her again with the source data from the fragments but now it would be impossible. The image of her body â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a body he would never touch

again - mangled by the beasts overpowered him and he held on to his son stronger and sobbed again.

Chapter 5 : Down by the river

The woods were alive with unfamiliar noises and she felt movements in the shadows as she ran. Something or a group of things seemed to be closely following her. She wished she had kept the stun gun as she did not know whether she would be able to fight off whatever it was that was stalking her now.

She felt the suns going down more than she saw them as she had moved from the clearing into a thicker part of the woods. In front of her, a large tree offered a lower bough that seemed strong enough to hold her weight. She leapt and swung herself over, landing on it, holding the trunk. Slowly she made her way up to the middle of the tree were there were lots of leaves that offered some warmth against the nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chill that was started to fall over the woods. She plucked many leaves, attempting to tuck them around her body but most fell off. She wished she had taken at least the shirt off Prime Creator when he was stunned so that she could have some protection against the cold now or at least some material to stuff the leaves into.

Underneath the tree, she saw a number of shadows moving, going around it in circular motion. They looked like beasts she had seen in a show once, not entirely crawling on four paws but rather alternately on two and on four. One of them attempted to leap at the tree and she wondered whether it would make it up the

bough as she had earlier but it dropped to the ground unable to make it to the first bough. She wondered whether it or any of the other beasts would figure out how to get up the tree. Perhaps she should try to see whether there was anything out there that could be of help. Peering out of the leaves on each side she could only see other trees.

The moons slowly came out lighting the landscape and she suddenly saw a glint to the East. The shadows stopped their circling and slowly moved away from the trees towards the rising moons. They seemed to be following their rise in the skies. As the moons rose higher, she saw a river in the distance. Perhaps she ought to cross the river she thought. She did not think these things would follow her across.

She climbed down the tree and looked around. They were gone it seemed. She started making her way to the river when she heard a twig snap. One of them was there to her right, standing on two paws. It actually was not really a beast she thought as she took in the resemblance to Prime Creator.

The thingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body was covered in thick fur and its face was twisted and wolf-like despite the vague resemblance to Prime Creator. Behind it, a few similar beasts were approaching. Run she thought but she was fascinated at how all had the same features and could not move. The first one moved towards her, breaking

the spell and she ran. She could hear them running behind her as she dashed between the trees heading for the river.

She could hear the sound of it and could see the intermittent glint of its waters under the moonlight as she ran. She dashed from the woods and plunged arms first into the waters. As she had expected the beasts behind her stopped. When she plunged, the ice cold of the waters left her stunned at first. Slowly recovering her senses, she emerged watching the bank closely. They were in a semi-circle now, observing her intently.

It surprised her that until now they had uttered no sound. Not one sound at all. It was odd with beasts of that nature she thought and chuckled inward at the tales of wolves howling naturally at the moon but her teeth were chattering now and she could not bring even a smile to her lips. She started slowly towards the other bank but froze as she saw more beasts on the other side. How on Earth had they made it to the other side she thought.

The bridge stood in the distance almost mockingly she felt. Her brain was getting numb and she could not think of another solution to this problem. She swam back to the other bank, barely able to make it. Her limbs were feeling increasingly heavy and her body seemed to be going into hypothermia. Either way she was

going to die she thought. After all she had gone through, it was going to come to that. How pointless she thought bitterly.

She slowly rose out of the waters and clumsily made her way to the bank. Better a quick ending she thought to herself than freezing a slow death in the river. She dropped down exhausted and in shock at the feat of the first beast.

The beast gazed down at her then slowly inched its way towards her. She saw the large disfigured likeness of the face of Prime Creator come towards her. She could already imagine the jaws mangling her head. The beast laid its head against her cheek and then lowered its body next to hers. Another followed its example, its face lying across her bare chest and its body pressed to her other flank. A few more followed and in no time all her body was covered with fur. She felt the warmth slowly return to her limbs. Sleep slowly overtook her and she closed her eyes, feeling safe and warm. The moons glistened on the waters illuminating the figures of the beasts, huddled, down by the River.

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