=Somebody to be Me= -- Prologue

Instructions

[Loading... 13%... 42%... 81%... 99%] [...] [Grumbot no [Grumbot no [Grumbot no [Grum [...] [Task: <powerOn> has failed. Troubleshooting…] Success! That’s what success looked like. Or, at least, that’s what it always had looked like for the master tricker and life-ruiner standing on the concrete platform in the sea. They grinned to themself, though one could not see it in the dark. What about the light from this robot’s screen? Well, it was no longer turning on, and, if this person had truly succeeded in their mission, wouldn’t be for quite some time. After all, they were quite good at mucking things up. And yet, considering the creator of this machine, chances were that this spectacular ruining of a perfectly good robot would be remedied soon. Perhaps they should have been more… thorough in their destruction. After all, all they had done was chuck an emerald into the diamond hole and that did the trick. And if that was good enough for this entire machine to glitch out and shut down, it probably would not be hard to destroy it more, would it? Yes, they decided, why not do a bit more harm? What’s the worst that could happen, that they would accidentally fix the darned thing? Well, if that happened, props to the creator; they’d deserve it. The delinquent clasped their hands together, staring up at this robot. What much more should they do? Just destroying the redstone that made up the hardwiring would be too boring, too petty. Where’s the fun in that? It’s just measly destruction of property. Then again, the person was quite interested in what made this thing tick, how it worked, and if they could replicate it for their own… needs. After all, who wouldn’t want a robot buddy? After little more consideration, the person decided that this was exactly what they wanted to do. Silent as the night, they crept around to the back of the big machine—and it WAS big—and pulled out their shining, netherite pickaxe. They weren’t supposed to have one of these yet, but who cared about following the update schedule? If the Watchers cared that much they’d have to come down themselves and pry the netherite tools from the hErEtiC’s cold, dead hands. They made quick work of the wall, easily digging out a hole large enough for them to crawl through. They climbed through the hole and was immediately astonished. Wow, this was, to the creator’s credit, much more intricate and big and complex than they had expected. Clearly, it was not simple work to create AI. The infiltrator gripped their pickaxe tighter, but hesitated. They couldn’t just go destroying things willy-nilly; that would be barbaric. They had style. They decided that they would seek out the most important thing and get rid of that. And maybe a few little things, just for the fun of it. After all, the entire point of this was to have fun and cause mayhem. What’s the point if they were just going to be boring the whole time? A redstone torch, maybe a few repeaters, an observer or two, and it was time for the big one. Situated in the center of the machine was this weird block. And when they said ‘weird,’ they meant WEIRD. They had only seen it a few times before—how did the creator get his hands on it? It was orange and had a cubed pattern on the center of its faces. That’s right, this machine somehow was in possession of a command block. Now, how were they supposed to mess with this? First thing’s first, they were interested in what exactly it did. So, they opened up its interface and couldn’t help but gasp. There was nothing there. No commands, no notes, nothing. There was absolutely nothing. Could that be a glitch? They closed the interface, waited a few seconds, and opened it back up. Still nothing. And yet, the command block still seemed to radiate pure energy. The sheer force of power it held was, quite frankly, astounding. They were completely in awe. And completely confused. They stepped back and realized that, huh, it wasn’t even connected to anything. No redstone led into it, there were no torches, nothing. Nichts. Nada. … Eh, whatever. Not their problem. After little consideration, they pulled their pickaxe back and swung it full force at the command block. *Dink* It bounced right off. Oh, right, they forgot about how indestructible they were. Darn. They were looking forward to destroying it. Maybe that was all that could be done. They sighed. Oh well, you can’t break them all. They turned around to climb out of the hole they got in from, but froze. Where was the hole? It was there just a moment ago. Now, it was covered by two pistons. Huh, that didn’t seem right. There weren’t pistons there before.