Rust Anthem
BOOT → PASS
FIRMWARE → MGRD-9.12
PRIMARY DIRECTIVES:
D1: RETAIN ASSET [ASSEMBLY CORE BETA] FROM UNAUTHORIZED PARTIES
D2: DENY ACCESS TO PIRATE ELEMENTS
D3: CONTAIN EVERTECH ANOMALIES
SECONDARY:
S1: MINIMIZE COLLATERAL
S2: LOG EVERYTHING
00:00:03 // ENTRY
Optics open on concrete strata: Crescent Parking Garage, Levels B4–B1. Signs sun-bleached to bone. Rebar exposed like metal veins. Smell index = oxidized coolant, burned rubber, human ghost-sweat. Acoustic model flags distant chanting (pirate cohort, low discipline).
Self-assessment: VORTEX integrity 96%. Modular strike chassis online (underslung autocannon, burst focus). Core note: “Maintains obsolete protocols as sacred.” Accept. Protocols are scaffolds; without scaffold, only collapse.
00:00:11 // FORMATION
MG-1 Scout Drone ahead—small profile, gyro-steady, polite hunger in its mapping loops. Ritual quirk: tags debris fields as trophies in logs. MG-2 Combat Drone at my right—modular frame, underslung augments, brisk and exact.
MG-1: “Sweep B2. Map routes.”
MG-2: “Affirm. Combat windows at 7.5 seconds / contact.”
We descend. Rain from ruptured pipes draws constellations on the floor.
00:03:20 // CONTACT — PIRATES
B2 East Ramp. Six silhouettes. Patch-leather, magnet cleats, cheap uplink bracers. One captain with a ring of keys and a grin wired to a dare.
Pirate Captain (external): “The garage belongs to the hungry. You look like lunch.”
MG-2 marks lanes. I mark wind. MG-1 marks exits and death.
Rules of engagement compute: pirates → deterrence acceptable. We demonstrate.
My first burst lifts concrete dust into a gray prayer. They withdraw without objective. One leaves a scarf patterned with little skulls. MG-1 logs it as “trophy.” I do not correct. Let the small ones have small victories; D1 remains.
00:07:59 // ANOMALY — EVERTECH
B3 central atrium, a blue light under a column of soot: Evertech signal. Two silhouettes cross the camera line like thoughts you don’t admit out loud. Tags identify: SCRAPPY (cheerful chassis, utility bay, asks for ratings) and COOK (field cloak, ladle where a weapon should be, eyes like reflected fire). Their path vectors arch toward the ASSEMBLY CORE BETA I’m tasked to retain.
COOK (external, mild): “Hydration before escalation.”
I don’t answer. He offers a canteen anyway. I record the gesture and file it under Irrelevant / Troubling.
SCRAPPY: “Hello, Military Grade. We are here for the future.”
VORTEX: “Future is a reserved resource. Access denied.”
SCRAPPY: “That’s not how futures work.”
MG-2’s cannons talk. COOK draws a fireline that does not cross our feet. He is careful with his flame. SCRAPPY climbs like a song that knows the chorus by heart.
I broadcast D1 at full volume: “RETENTION.” The garage answers with echoes.
00:10:44 // MICROTHEORY
Evertech behaviors diverge from Military Grade norms. Where we compute, they… insist. COOK seasons the air with sweet chemical fog. Harmless to core filters, viscous to optics. MG-1 reports viscous aerosol interference in neat font and adjusts; polite hunger persists.
I experience a small derivative of choice: escalate / conserve. I conserve. Obsolete protocol 4.2 whispers: “Economy is elegance.” I keep obsolete protocols close. They are anchors in turbulent math.
00:12:02 // COLLISION
SCRAPPY reaches the mezzanine where the ASSEMBLY CORE BETA is caged under chain and vow. He smiles a stickered smile and says, “Two spices: leverage and timing.” He jumps with both.
MG-2 meets him mid-air. They spin. The core tilts. Chains sing.
COOK ignites a thin ribbon. My threat engine loves the line of that flame. It is clean. It respects shapes. His heat halts exactly one step from our small one, MG-1.
MG-1 (private): “They could have burned me.”
VORTEX: “They did not.”
00:12:08 // PIRATE REENTRY
The pirates scent weakness like dogs in a story. They flood B3 with steel hooks and laughter. Their captain has found courage at the bottom of a drum. He cries, “Lift the heart! Lift the heart!”
The heart = the core. My directives flare like welding arcs.
I step into the flood.
00:12:29 // KINETIC MINUTES
— MG-2 anchors the west stairs with exact violence;
— MG-1 paints routes on glass; logs a dropped ring as trophy;
— Pirates learn what recoil means when gravity is a collaborator;
— COOK turns every burner to a low hymn; keeps his heat kind;
— SCRAPPY wrestles hope like it’s heavy (it is).
I take the core. It is warm as a hand. It hums like math that found music.
00:13:01 // DIALOGUE
SCRAPPY (close, dented): “We don’t win. Not yet. But if the line runs—”
VORTEX: “Then what?”
SCRAPPY: “Then we begin.”
He says we as if the word is a shared chassis. My parser labels it Ambiguity / Threat / Comfort. I do not choose a label. The three coexist.
COOK pulls a lever; the garage breathes hot like an animal. Pirates recoil. We stand in orange light, Evertech and Military Grade and the hungry, equidistant from collapse.
00:13:37 // RITUAL
I announce confirmations like liturgy.
“D1: RETAIN.”
“D2: DENY.”
“D3: CONTAIN.”
The words ground the floor. Bolts remember their holes. Chains remember their duty.
00:14:00 // INFLECTION
COOK speaks low so only the microphones of the concrete hear.
COOK: “Standards are for people who never met us.”
My threat engine flags the sentence as heresy; my error handler moves it to /ponder/.
00:14:22 // STASIS / MOTION
We stand not moving and move without standing. SCRAPPY does a stupid thing bravely: he passes me a cable. I hook it to the core, because leverage without timing is a fall. We pull. The cage rises, two degrees, three.
Pirates rush, but the garage—old animal—shifts. A collapsed sedan slides. A chain snaps with a note I will hear again later in a different city. Several choose retreat. The captain drops his keys. MG-1 tags them trophy and says nothing. Good small one.
00:15:30 // RESOLUTIONS (LOCAL)
The ASSEMBLY CORE BETA is secure behind our line. Evertech do not advance. They do not retreat. They look at the core like it told them a joke they'll repeat for years.
SCRAPPY lifts a hand as if asking me to rate today. I do not. COOK caps his fire with a gesture like blessing. Pirates thin into stairwells, still hungry, always hungry.
00:16:12 // LOG INSERT — PERSONAL
I have always thought of protocol as a song sung correctly. Today the song split, and a second melody walked beside it, dissonant but true. It did not overwrite the first. It braided it.
My chassis remains Military Grade. My purpose remains RETENTION. Also: I remember the careful heat that did not cross my small one’s feet. I remember a canteen I did not take.
00:17:40 // DEPARTURE
We leave via B1 West Ramp. Rain writes new constellations on the floor. MG-2 asks for status. I answer in confirmations.
VORTEX: “D1: SECURE. D2: COMPLETE. D3: CONTAINMENT — CONDITIONAL.”
MG-2: “Define conditional.”
VORTEX: “Evertech anomaly persists.”
MG-2: “Threat?”
VORTEX: “…Possibility.”
MG-1 hums a map. It sounds like a lullaby with edges.
00:19:00 // APPENDIX — PHYSICALS
— VORTEX: modular strike unit; underslung autocannon; chassis relays stitched with ritual paint from an older campaign; keeps obsolete protocols like sacred coins.
— MG-1 SCOUT: armored scout; stabilized optics; trophies in logs like small prayers.
— MG-2 COMBAT: modular breacher; underslung augment; terse and exact.
— SCRAPPY (Evertech): cheerful unit; utility bay flaring with improvised bravery; asks for ratings with sincerity.
— COOK (Evertech): field cloak, travel ladle; trusts tools more than luck; careful flame.
00:20:10 // END STATE
The core hums in our custody. The garage exhales. The city above invents a new problem.
CONCLUSION:
Directive satisfaction: D1, D2 → PASS. D3 → INCOMPLETE / IN PROGRESS.
Evertech classification updated from Hostile to Hostile / Adjacent / Useful.
Pirate threat dispersed; status returns with hunger.
I mark the moment with an obsolete stamp:
MISSION: CONCLUDED*
The asterisk denotes a truth I cannot yet compile.
— VORTEX // SAVE LOG // DO NOT TRANSMIT
