The Automated King

The Awakening

“Ah, I overslept. Better be quick or my superiors would be mad with me.”

In about 30 minutes of playing, I got myself blacked out. The game automatically disconnect itself if the system couldn’t render the movement of the player’s muscle, so it’s just a blank space facing my head. I rested like a log last night, even in a sitting position like this one. This is kind of impossible to uphold, though, since I was rooting on my feet as the props for keeping me asleep. On the other way, my legs is sore. It might be contracted so much to maintain my body gesture in this state.

Hey, what’s with this static current? Did my VR broke down or something?

Ah, better go to the store, then.

Hey, Marion were supposed to be standing there, as far as I could notice. She used to sweep up her lawn in this moment, for two hours to be precise. However, she is not in her outpost to shout at me with her unholy salutations. I wonder why...

Uhm, she’s inside her garage, looking for something up her toolbox. A poke of fun of the day would be interesting to have, right?

“Yo, Marion. Is there any problem? You looked so tense over something down there.”

She seems surprised over my arrival to the scene, even jumped a bit over the shock.

“Hey, how could you enter this place without permission? Do you have a warrant for it?”

This is gotten serious. Nah, she might be playing around with me as usual.

“Alright then, since you don’t need my aid, I have to dismiss. Have a nice day, Ma’am.”

She chuckled to my response. I thought of genuine altruism, and she trifled with ease.

“Hahaha, pardon me, officer. I am just role-playing as your captious aunt. It’s for the next act, so please bear with the role, m'kay?”

Did she ever talked about being an actress, previously? This is the first for me.

“Look at my toolbox right here, Is there something wrong with it?”

 Nothing peculiar inside the box, as much as I can fathom. I could count over the wrench, screws, but nothing seems out of hand for me.

“Well, I couldn’t detect the issue right here, Marion. I never touch your box, let alone looking at what it contained.”

“Right, my mistake. To be brief, I lost my lawnmower. Someone might be ‘borrowing’ it without my consent.”

“HEY!! How could I know it is about your grass cutter? Does it even fit?”

Ah, this woman is pretty imbecile at times.

“Oh, yeah, again, I am spacing out. Sorry, man, I just got into a little ruckus yesterday.”

After putting my focus to her body odor, yes, it’s a faint scent of alcohol. She just came to after a night of drinking, I see.

“Hey, please hold back your horses, Mr. Molester wannabe.”

“Nah, not interested with an alcoholic, to be frank. I just wanted to share my condolences, that’s all.”

“Okay, now I got irritated. What is your concern with it, huh?”

I got myself crossed the line, again. I have to stop right at this point.

“No, nothing of the sort. Let’s just discover your missing items instead then, Marion.”

“Hmm, where do we have to begin? Yup, it might be plausible for you to know about the lawnmower first, right? See the brochure for yourself.”

What’s this? It seems like a blueprint of the missing goods. Hoo, she already yearned for assistance, somehow.

“From the brochure that you held so much, you have expecting visitor, Marion?”

By the paper, I can overview the entire structure of the lawnmower. Did I saw it somewhere? Looks like I’ve gazed upon this many times during my spree of the week in the shopping district.

“Well, just a mere guess. I know that there must be a passerby in this morning, but I have no intention to say that it should be you, Regi.”

And it is clearly just me walking in this peculiar morning. Of the other residents that I knew about in this block, they would be 2 hours later than I do.

“Yeah, yeah, a cliché of yours, I get it.”

“Yes, If you say so. What about it, then?”

“This is a quite a regular basis lawnmower. Are you sure it is stolen on some ways?”

Well, this metal blue-tinted lawnmower are surely be anyone’s household appliances by now. There are other preferences of colors, of course, but the models are not scarce enough to find.

“Yeah, it is ordinary, I agree. But, I do stick some stickers on it as identification. Look at this one.”

She's unveiling yet another crumbled papers from her pockets. Nice trick, miss magician. I could see her portrait with the lawnmower alongside a man in the green shirt. Hmm, the stickers that she referred to is the logo of her favorite music band, huh

“I do get the reason of why you crumpled those photos down. You must be dug the dumpster real deep for this. Anyway, the culprit can clean up the sticker by themselves, Ma’am.”

“Don’t be so hasty. We don’t have knowledge over the person and his motive. Here it is, detective, your only clue.”

Oh well, I have to go real soon. The clock is ticking.

“Okay, I’ll inform you if I have it on my tail. Bye, Marion.”

“Alright, have a cheesy day.”

It’s absurd. My legs could comprehend with my demand of speed, somehow. They both seemingly lighter than a feather. No, It’s so weightless I could sprint better.

Hey, am I treading too fast?

---

Finally,  there’s Minamart in front of me. It just took at least 1 minute to run, huh? Is this a superpower from a comic book? I could run in a blistering speed...That’s-so-cool!! I couldn’t grasp the reason, though. Am I really sprinting? I don’t sense any fatigue over my muscle. No tension within my leg, either.

Well, It seems that I’m already late this time. Everyone is here, working on their desktop and maintaining the shop. Ouch!! I tripped my leg. Fallen down to the floor is quite painful. I could taste the speck of small group of particles, the end-products from the cold tiles of the floor that being exposed to the air conditioner time-to-time. Did this startled them, though? No reaction? Are they so absent-minded of their surroundings when they got so engrossed with their work?

Hmm, I am invisible. Not only being unseen, They couldn’t even feel my presence. No matter how much of the force I’ve put in motion, they don’t seem to budge.

Last, but not least, let’s try to attract their attention.

“HAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

It’s fascinating to release this anger sometimes, and it’s a rare occurrence for me to howl in my workplace.Yes, It’s against the norm, and I might scare them nevertheless. But again, they are not aware of my presence in this room.

The profound check over their static composure brought myself yet another conclusion; they were petrified in time and become the fabric of my own space. This is so fictional, and on the other hand, being true and materialized. I couldn’t tell myself of what kind of emotion settled inside my brain. Is it joy? Pleasure? Happiness? Hmm, I am truly an obsessed reader of comic books of late, so this would be the actualization of what people fantasized upon.

How do I get out from this situation, though?

----

This is the 2753 steps I’ve done to escape from this hell. Being confined in the middle of my own quirks started to grow as horrible situation. Even running back doesn’t work well....

I must roam this area, that’s for sure. Sightseeing would make myself inspired for any bread crumbs of ideas that might be dispersed out of whim. For the first, maybe the college would be the best pick. I need to be vigilant for a person with uttermost tendency to be clever and competent, as they could be my key point of running away from this place.

A single blast of dexterity, which is brilliant, lead me to the gate of my old alma mater, The Sea Side Down University. Back in my day, there are some areas filled to the brim with identical type of student. A little nerdy glasses, pretty small in height, reddish eyeballs due to the sleepless night, and other stereotypical size of a person with enormous wealth of knowledge.

Where are they, then? No suitable characteristic on my viewpoint. They might be wandering about in the science area, probably. Let’s jump right on it.

There you are, my fellow science-people. The Hall of Logic, the signage up above told anyone across if you need to be fluent with your own conscience of rational thinking. No one in this quadrant would be cooperative without some installments of novel mechanical invention. You are mandated to speak in arithmetic language, complemented with the schematic of statistics and facts to comprehend.

What’s with all of these buff, then? They are scurrying the hall like there’s no other place to hangout. Hey, why are those ripped muscles carried out experiments? The vial wouldn’t stand the sheer force of those hands. It could be shattered anytime soon, I know it.

To confirm this irregular phenomenon, I have to open one of their bags..... What in the world? Superhero comics, science fiction, books of numerous theorem, all in a bundle. Is this parallel universe? Where everyone hurled outside of their common sense? Is this viable with my prowess?

A counter-argument is deeply needed for this one. I need to trace another spectrum of behavior, the one who might turn this table of oddity by a single smash. If there’s a chiseled mongrel reading books, the opposite of it must be....

A college gangster with glasses and weightless figure, it is.

Ah, there you are, my fellow brawn-induced mobs. This group of spectacle guy tried to harass a nerd, or we should say the smart-and-powerful grunt, in public. They should be trampled by those massive brute, in spite of him being a single-player, but they are prevailed. From the scene, I suggest this man must be gotten a heavy barrage of insult and scoff from these goblins. The ruthless chain of bad words draining his self-esteem, drifting him from sanity. This is clearly not good, but I can’t do any sort of counter-measure to them. Well, my cue to go out, I guess.

Alright, where is my next destination? Laboratory? Or ministry of education? Where would  be the place for me to answer to my trouble?

AAAAAAAAH!!!!

I’m starting to wear out, mentally. The infamous, notorious fabled tales of heroic me would be ended by self-imprisonment. Nobody would heard of my exploits in preserving justice, laying off some malicious being off the ground. The legendary manager of Minamart would be ceased to the void of nothingness, trapped in humiliation of his own prowess.