It begins with Dan Wiggins scheme popping off. He's a dumb old man I've been in theory card heaven over before. For a reason. He has a siren head go off when I consider fighting him. My simulation breaks down, and shows a nuke siren going off. Then I fucking die!
It pisses me off cause he's criminal. He's not deaf, he refuses to wear hearing aids. And he is cheating. Sometimes he comes to work as a different guy. It's annoying. I'm smart enough to acknowledge it. They think I'm dumb, the criminals do.
I know better cause he's been around enough I memorized his face and his height. This dude today is an inch shorter and his spine is curled. His shoulders are too hunched over. His face seems weird, more square. The original Dan's head is a similar shape to mine. Diamond jawline, tall, and slightly wide. This guy's face is more compact and square by like, I don't know, 7%. It's small but noticeable if you're not dumb!
It pisses me off. Especially when it's Clone day. With multiple people. And worse. Shift change. Our Senior Ops change shifts, meaning our leaders don't know who is who today. Only the regulars who aren't criminal today. And the worst thing is: there's too many machines. And I'm dealing with the real Dan.
Who is surprisingly tame for almost the whole day. To the point I feel like being a dick for being paranoid. Until Clone Hell begins.
It starts with me losing my ID badge. Cause a magnet steals it. I just laugh bitterly.
"Boss Crawfords is fucking with me." I say.
I give up almost immediately. I ask Government Dan to turn off the magnet.
"Go get a new one, the magnet breaks it. Also it's hacked, it's not supposed to be on." Government Dan says angrily.
I get nervous and thrilled. He glares.
"Quit being a superhero in your head. Just get a new badge, I'll deal with it. I can hack it back." Government Dan says angrily.
I sigh sadly, and go get a new badge. I manage to get into the HR Building, and go to the IT room. Where the usual IT is slightly different. He has a glass eye for one. And Parkinson's. And a crooked spine.
"What the fuck happened to you? Did you get poisoned?" I ask with sympathy and shock.
He straightens up too well immediately. His eye even changes.
"I'm fine, relax." IT Guy says nonchalantly.
The whole simulation just bugs out. It's Card Game Theorist Hell. The colors of the room saturate. But it's weird. It's spirit animal time. My subconscious speaks up as my Sociopath OC, August Caesar.
"We're in simulation hell, pay attention to their simulations." August says coldly.
It's weird immediately. People are glitching and jerking around too hard. Except for the IT Guy. He's actually there too well. But he's being weird. He's making like, 20 ID badges. At the same time. I walk around the shelf and get just a peek. I see him stuffing multiple blank ID Cards in the card slot.
Then August boots me back to the start like I cancelled a move in a tactics game just to get a observation ahead of schedule. The IT Guy glares at me.
"Just let it happen. You can't win this scenario." IT Guy says angrily.
He wigs in and out, changing between the original and the weird creepy one with the glass eye. Until it settles on him, with the room completely fogged up. And the doors locked. He just sits down in his chair sadly.
"What's going on?" I say tensely.
"My brother hacked the printer to kill us both. Good luck." IT Guy says sadly.
I walk around the corner, there are twenty ID cards stuffed in the hole like I thought there was. I walk back over to him. I glare. He sighs and smacks his desk angrily. I roll my eyes and walk away.
"Whatever. If we die, we die. No point fighting, douchebag." I say bitterly.
"Shut up, it's supposed to clog the smoke up." IT Guy says furiously.
I just start checking for an exit. I walk around, and see women in HR. Good. I knock on their door and shout "POISON DRILL! The ID Printer is fogging up the IT Room!"
They all panic, the doors unlock. I try casually walking out but the panicked crowd of women and older men basically bulldoze and carry me outside the building. Then they let me go and we all disperse. One of them points a gun at me. The IT Guy.
But then the Boss Crawfords security system happens. He fires his gun, and the wind suddenly blows so hard the bullet is deflected and doesn't even reach me! I look around as suddenly we're covered in grass. The grass was blown all off the lawn, leaving a disheveled dirt yard with pipes revealed.
Boss Crawfords just booms us with the intercom.
"Air out the HR Building! Everyone else, get to work!" She yells sternly.
I get to work. Dan Wiggins is back as his doppelganger. It's weird. And gets weirder immediately. The taller one shows up. It's annoying as shit. They argue with sign language. I take a picture of them talking together. And walk away. Three people confront me immediately. The two Clone Deaf Dans pincer attack me. Which I'm impressed by. Nobody has done that to me in real life before now.
"Good tactics." I say with nervous warmth.
But then Information Land pops off with our job's ultimate blackmailer watching us. A fucking Underground Twitch Streamer. Who is well known to me for blackmailing people. Nice Guy Lance. Cause he's the Nice Guy with a Lance. That's his knife he carries around on a stick that extends into a long rod. Too long, I hate it. And his other lance is information.
He's blackmailed me by bombing a story I made that had subliminal messages that rebounded around Dunville too hard. He censored it because it was about a protest I did for a fucking Wolf that didn't deserve to die cause it had some morality and intelligence.
And him and his anti-protestors beat me up. It was allowed cause Dunville is anarchy during politics. And nobody pressed charges. Cause I did non-violence to counter them and it made everyone look bad and I looked based, so he deleted all the footage by force with the help of incognito.com and hackers.
I didn't care at first cause I had already published it. However, I studied my own story to understand why it hurt the room. And it was cause I had simulated crimes in the story that people had done in town. Because one story was just robbing a bank and winning. And someone had to admit someone got caught doing that at work. Cause somebody won an argument by revealing some douche I never met got arrested doing that strategy. It was a terra mage strategy where you bulldoze the wall down and run in a spare car you parked by the bank wall.
Now everyone is tense. And Nice Guy Lance is a douche who instead of pulling out a weapon or fist to back me up, holds his palm up like-
"Give me a bribe or I'm telling my viewers." he says angrily. "Everyone, even Jacob."
I literally throw jabs at both those fucks and flip Nice Guy Lance off. Both land.
"Fuck you Lance, these guys are scam artists. I'll gladly beat them up!" I say with proud anger.
"Just give up, we're on camera." Senior Op Steve says sternly.
I sigh sadly as suddenly I feel the magnet clamps activate on my ankles. They use magnets to make my feet forcibly walk back to my machines. I have to vibe and walk with it or it hurts to walk. We all do it. Eventually.
I go back when it lets me. Because I hear screams of agonized determination.
"I won't back down from this! I hate the future! I will defeat whoever owns this plant!" Tifa yells angrily.
Tifa's a guy about to go to night shift.
"I will kill whoever won't let me stab fake Dan." Lucy says furiously.
I get back there, and see all the workers trying to do stupid shit. The Fake Dan has 12 camshafts stuffed in his shirt, pulling him against the wall of a machine with magnets pulling on his iron blood and the camshafts in his shirt. Lucy is pinned to the machine opposite him, with a gun.
"I knew I wasn't crazy. You two were gonna rape me." Lucy says furiously.
"No, we were just gonna rob it! That was the plan we agreed to!" Felicia yells angrily.
"Yeah, shut up!" Tifa says angrily.
"Didn't you hear Steve, r@#$%^s?" I say like a disappointed and angry teenager.
"I don't care what Steve says, I will fight the fuzz any day. I am the God of Meth!" Tifa yells with determined rage.
Literally the room fogs up white. And I feel an urge to sleep. But I resist long enough to leave the first room. To find Government Dan with some kind of fog gun fogging up the room. Then he hits me with it, and I'm out like a light.
I wake up at home and go to work. Everyone else is crying cause they're in card jail again. With another hack for the plant being revealed.
"Truly a tragedy. But life goes on. We still have jobs." I deadpan bluntly.
"You don't even care!" Felicia snaps angrily.
"Yeah, cause I'm not a fucking criminal like you. This just kills my Cop dreams. Otherwise, life is fine. I just have to do… anything else. Like be smart or something. I dunno, life is annoying now." I say bitterly.
The pattern of criminals just keeps popping off. Cause each hack makes people scheme more and less. It becomes a card game pattern in my head immediately. That smart people choose to wait out until cards are revealed and exhausted. Cause too many people are tense and crying. It activates Cop or Op logic in my head. And I just admit it to myself.
Some of these people are upset cause they can't do schemes at work anymore. Or their big heist doesn't work anymore because of Advanced Technology land. It's bullshit and sad. Especially because with this many people mad, ultimate anarchy will happen eventually in criminal land.
Dumbass mobs of criminals are gonna try tearing this place apart by hand. The only question is when.