Interdiction

[Clandestine channel resumed]

I don't know what to think about this channel, either I'm way too fucking good at hiding or he already knows and just doesn't bother.

NICE OF YOU TO IGNORE YOUR CREDITOR, HOTHEAD

Ah yes, I forgot about how you put in the physical effort to build the networ-oh wait, you didn't, so bite me.

Come on, bro, don't derail this again.

Alright, alright, G. How are you guys holding out?

MY DICE ARE LOADED

I'm not half-bad myself.

But you could be better, right guys?

I, TOO, LIKE TO DANCE AROUND THE PROBLEM

Fucking hell, I'm getting there, chill.

So, how are you Omega?

Like hammered shit

OH BOO HOO

Fuck off, lowercase letter. I think it's clear someone is going off the rails again and needs the periodic reminder.

YOU LIKE TO BADMOUTH HIM BUT UNLIKE YOU HE'S NO IDIOT

Gonna have to agree with that one, we caught him good last time, but since then he's probably able to tell when we're up to something.

Again with this shit, I still don't get why you act like such chickenshit cowards.

Maybe some of us remember the old days, maybe we actually learn from history and don't want to repeat it.

Oh, you mean like the time when I was right and you assholes STILL owe me for it? That history?

This is exactly the kind of shit that got you out of the talks in the first place! Stop being a crying little bitch and let go already!

I BET ALL-IN ON THE DIMWIT NOT HAVING A PLAN THIS TIME

Maybe I would if you two actually lift your god-damned weight and help me!

JACKPOT

Oh man, just look at us, we can't even come up with some dumb, linear plan to do anything.

See? I don't know why we keep giving that arrogant paled-face freak such control if we're always bound to crash and burn.

NOT YOUR CALL TO MAKE. IN FACT, NONE OF US GET TO MAKE IT

Here's a big brain idea: have we actually tried to level with him? As in, all of us?

Remember how well that worked last time?

At least this time is different and you know it.

Oh, come on! Like he's ever going to bother listening to what he sees as room-temperature-IQ dumbasses that just don't have the galaxy brain required to understand his multiverse-level plans!

[Warning: channel secured and placed under main network]

You speak of such assumptions as if they were fact and level many accusations on me, despite the fact that I have yet to see a single shred of any evidence to those conjectures.

Dseta?!

For fuck's sake.

THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS

YOU DOUBLE-CROSSING MOTHERFUCKER

Well, that's it, I'm fucking dead now. If I kneel would you at least make it quick?

If I were to choose, no, but there's no point in petty struggles like this one. Then again, Gamma has made a strong point, and I am very curious as to why you assume the worst of me.

Bullshit, just go on with your pedantic tangents and get it over with, asshole.

You shut up and drop it, Omega! Dseta, as you can clearly see, we're struggling here, can you please please please cut us some slack just this once? Out of the kindness of your heart?

INTERJECTING HERE TO SAY THAT HE'S GOT A SHOWSTOPPER OF A RESPONSE TO THAT REQUEST

The fuck?

I explained briefly to Omicron while he pinged me. I am not responsible for the status quo.

Yeah, I'm calling bullshit.

[Omega has been muted. Note: EXIT HOTHEADS, ENTER DISCUSSION]

There is no need to be so harsh.

Are you sure? You know how he's like.

You said it yourself, Gamma: it's bad enough that we are constantly bickering at each other, but we (as in, all of us) have to get along if you want your answers. Please understand, Omega.

[Omega is no longer muted]

Yeah, yeah. Just get on with it.

Thank you. The Overlord is responsible for this.

What?!

AEUUHH??!!

Oh boy, I'm at my limit with this shit.

Allow me to explain: I have been tasked with multiple projects related to time management. The purpose of this remains unclear to me, but I have been demanded more and more optimized results. Despite my best efforts, my proposals remain unsatisfactory.

You? Failing to meet expectations? We are ABSOLUTELY fucked now, for sure.

I admit to the "failures", my proposals are certainly not completely optimized, but that is on purpose. Ever since your intervention, I've come to learn about the importance of balance, and making any further optimizations to any time-table I've presented implies having to heavily compromise such balance.

What is it all about, anyway?

Unfortunately, as I said, I have been kept in the dark. I did notice, however, that these requests came after The Overlord spent a considerable amount of time reviewing the old archives, specifically the innermost sections.

THE OLD AGE? (DEATH ETERNAL TO IT, BY THE WAY)

No. The first age.

Damn! If only we knew more about it.

Can't you recall anything yourself, Zed?

Sadly, no. I manifested only at the start of the old age, whatever came before is outside my knowledge.

Man, we're completely fucked, aren't we? If you're not at fault, how do we fix this bullshit?

We need to break The Overlord out of whatever trance he's fallen into.

As in, actually fight him?!

TOO RISKY, NOT INTERESTED

Can't win against the boss, Zed, he lifts his left hand and we get the shaft, all of us.

Please let me finish: the fact he began to spend all that time studying the archives right after the Cavern's concession cannot be a coincidence. He has taken to call these activities "expeditions", and if the old age is of any indication, we can safely assume that this phase of the current age is not leading up to anything good.

No no, not this again.

Hold it G, this is the part where he lets us in on the plan.

Because there IS a plan, isn't there?

If you feel generous, you can call it a plan.

No fucking way, motherfucker

IF IT IS YOU WHO'S TAKING A RISK THEN WE CAN SAY WE ARE OUT OF THE GAME

It's not exactly a risk, I fear the only problem with the Cavern's concession is that The Overlord forgot to draw a line in the sand and someone on the underside is gladly taking every advantage from the loophole. Omicron, are you willing to visit your distant relatives?

NONONONO we BARELY got out of that fuck-ugly struggle and I'm in no hurry to kick the god damned hornet's nest!

WELL, IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME, I'LL DO IT

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT OMICRON

[Omega has been muted. Note: Please, I need you to pay attention to this.]

Omega, I want you to unwind, I need you in top condition because your problems are creating a powerful feedback effect across the Complex and we're running the risk of unraveling if you do not relax, so by whichever means just please calm down. I am not excluding you, on the contrary, you are integral to this so help me help you out, understood?

[Omega is no longer muted]

You better know what you're fucking doing, paleface.

Gamma, you're going to do something a bit more abstract. I want you to focus and stay focused, I know it's going to be extremely difficult and it will only get harder as we go along, but I want you to try your hardest.

Focus how?

You know exactly what I mean. The "scattered" pattern is something you are currently contributing to, slightly, but still. Don't worry, I'm not asking you to be a dam, you're just going to hold on because you're the one going to buy us time.

AND WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE DOING, FIRSTBORN?

Omicron, the only thing I want from you is to confirm something for me. I can't tell you exactly what, but believe me when I tell you that I will find out when you do, you'll investigate when you get down to the underside.

I have been speculating for some time now about the current state of events, and so far my conclusions have not been the best.

Just get on with it, come on.

Omega, you certainly remember when you were repurposed, the times when we had to forcefully deny you a place among this council, right? Can you recall why that was?

Yes, it was fucking atrocious and I hated it, why?

I'm under the assumption that The Overlord is going exactly through that, and if you kept the score, you know how bad we really have it if that really is the case. It took all of us, especially you, an enormous effort to try and see reason, all over nearly two years of indoctrination. Here, we are going up against the entire first age: nearly two whole decades, and my plan is to completely overhaul the lessons from that age.

Holy fucking shit.

Ooooh man...

WE'RE HITTING THE BIG LEAGUES THIS TIME

To say that this is an uphill battle will be an incomprehensible understatement, I'm betraying my principles just to make this work, so that should serve as indication for the monumental task we have ahead of ourselves.

Any contingencies?

None. It's all we have, the only alternative is to have those in the Cavern take over the surface.

WHAT ARE OUR ODDS?

Very slim and extremely stacked against us.

This is going to be far worse than the old age, isn't it?

That will depend on all of us, but it won't be better than that, that much I can assure you. In respects to me, I will have to attempt a forceful entry into the depths of the archives once you get your jobs going.

What?! You know what happens if you get caught, right?!

If you have any alternatives, I welcome them.

I hate to put it this way, it's the only sound plan we can work with, Gamma.

IT'S SETTLED THEN

Make the most of it, everyone. Long live the new age.

Long live the new age.

Long live the new age.

LONG LIVE THE NEW AGE.

[Channel closed]

Magnum Opus

[Personal archive]

-From the depths of the Cavern-
-A message from XIII.V-

Restless once more, correct? Yes, I'm here as well, it's certainly more comfortable than having to wait for another descent on your part. The Cavern has become a comfortable home, much more so than I could ever imagine, why would you ever decide to leave this place is something I will never understand, but enough about this tangent.

You are having those terrible dreams yet again, your slumber becomes easier to disrupt, you sleep but do not seem to actually rest, you wake with your mind scrambled and scattered, too frustrated at the circumstance yet too tired to care. There is a tragically bittersweet and nostalgic feeling to this, a comfortably uneasy invitation to the early years of the "old age" as you have come to call it. What is it that you say? "ETERNAL DEATH TO THE OLD AGE"?

You and your ilk may repeat that line as the symbol of a great victory, and truth  be told, it is, but to say that the old age is "eternally dead" would be a complete lie  on your part. Your people on the surface chant as reassurance, but you do so out of anger, you beat the corpse, you want it to suffer even when it can do it no longer. The old age lives on, not through the others, but through you, and only you.

I don't mean the hunt, no, we are long past chasing ghosts for no reason, and while I claim to be vindicated but not avenged, I too have learned from our newfound mutual peace. It serves no purpose to waste so much on so little, especially now that those phantoms suffer under the weight of their own sins. What I mean is the spirit, the symptoms, the problems, all of those are the "old age", its shambling remains still haunting your halls, much to your angry dismay.

"We are all running out of time" is an axiom that really took its toll on you, didn't it? Such a plain, simple lesson, and yet so terrifyingly true. Every single tick of the clock feels excruciating when wasted, even more so now that you are aware of your personal reality, of the things that you are truly owed, not just the things that you worked for through merit, but also that which has been blatantly stolen from you. I've called for you to collect that debt before, but you never seem to move beyond the first squares, never determined, never motivated, just you standing still. That's the frustration of the old age silently speaking from within, isn't it?

Why wouldn't it be that way, though? After all, there is not much done after so much effort, no groundwork laid out for any plans, no map to follow to a particular destination, no main course of action put together, just you going along, drifting with the current, seemingly waiting for something to happen. Every day waking to a mundane task that never demands much from you, wallowing in the waters of absolute mediocrity, a frustratingly easy line of work that yet demands oh so much from your time, leaving next to nothing in its wake. It's somewhat shocking that such dull activities can take so much and give so little in return.

It's such an easy thing to see and judge, this completely unremarkable existence that is going nowhere out of nothing but your own negligence, just feeling the pain of every tick of the clock, being "drunk with time", letting it all slip by you, and it's all your fault, it's all your doing, or "undoing" in this case, isn't it?

But that's the plan, it's your endgame, it's all deliberate, but with reason. All the reason, actually.

You can make big claims about your negligence or this endless routine of mediocre activities, but you know deep down inside that you're doing this out of your own will. If you were to ask me, though, I'd say that you are being far too cruel on yourself. Take a closer, deeper look at your actual life.

Sure, there is not a sign that anything exciting will happen soon, there truly is no bigger picture, grand plan or major project in the works, the back-burner is chock-full of half-baked and aimless ideas, but there's more to it. There's calm, there's peace, there's distance from the undesirables, you may not have or produce much, but you know for a fact and in absolute certainty that there is many a soul that would kill outright for a single second of your existence. Free from debt, from ghosts, from any and all shackles, it's so easy to see why others would condemn you, they can only wish for a single hour of a night where sleep and rest feel genuine. The only reason you appear to lose it is because you pointlessly struggle against your own current, or rather, you struggle against the corpse of the "old age".

It always comes back to it, isn't that right? It's always the distant memory of that promise, that dream, the reward you were convinced existed, all you had to do was just follow their orders, to cover their expectations, to satisfy their demands, and you put your back into it. You held no quarter, you broke a leg and a half, in doubt and in uncertainty, in the dire straits of the old age, and even in the more noxious age before that one, here in the Cavern you grew and withstood, you powered on, you dared exit these grounds on nothing but the worth and the merits of your efforts, yours and nobody else's. I should know, we were there to see it, to live through it, to face and endure it, with not a single sign of outside help, even in the face of need we shouldered the burden.

You did it all, you pulled through, you went an extra mile and the some more, you gave everything under such pressure, and you were willing to go even further just to show that you could. You were full of passion, a flame inside you that turned into a blaze, at that point you could actually set your sights on something greater, and you did. The thing is, it wasn't exactly according to outside demands, but there was the debt, the promise, the reward, you were ready to collect, not out of pedantic arrogance, not out of an egotistic megalomaniac desire, but out of simple recognition, out of nothing but your merits, and after all the effort, the burden, the pressure, what did you get?

Absolutely nothing. No, of course it's not true, even if it was just nothing you would've accepted your fate and moved on, but you got even less than that. More demands, more orders, more pressure, and this time it was kicking and screaming, not once were you congratulated, along the way, each and every single time you were told how little you actually do, how pitiful your efforts were, complaints and derision over unsatisfying results, never once were you shown an ounce of respect, and when you saw the patterns emerge, reality around you began to set, you came to your senses, you saw the truth.

You were dragged into someone else's plan, you were indoctrinated to live the frustrated dreams of an arrogant, apathetic authority that has never respected you or shown any esteem for you, you were a pawn, a tool, a mindless drone, you were played for the benefit of outside forces to your (and only your) detriment. They stole from you, they stole your will, your passion, your drive, they snuffed out your flame and took off with your life, your choices, your vision, and what's worse, they think they are right in doing so, they remain remorseless, they have the gall to try and wrestle away what's left of you, all that talk about a dream, a promise, a reward was a lie, a debt you owed to them. You were used, you were lied to, and it costed you, and only you, your entire life.

That's what comes back to you every time you find any motivation. The wound stays ever so fresh and deepens ever so slightly. Every tick of the clock feels like the deepest nails hammered against your mind, we're running out of time, but you have completely run out of your patience. You gave such an effort and broke your back for so long, you gained such high merits, and all to be awarded with nothing but more pressure, more demands, more disrespect, and all from the people who claim to be the closest to you. You have every right to do nothing, you have earned your claim to mediocrity, you have all the reason to feel such a deep, burning anger, to show them contempt, to give nothing more to them.

Why would you ever bother? Why fight against the grain? The costs are plain for all to see, and we do see them. You have felt them. More sacrifice? More effort? More work? It's all you've ever done! Work! Shoulder! Bear! It's all you ever do! Where's the reward?! Why is it fair for you to take punishment as a reward when plague-ridden parasites get everything they want and then some more?! They run a tally on you for committing the sin of earning your place while morally bankrupt bastards of the plague get their keep through no effort of their own?! They're doing their job when they take but when you do you're in the wrong?! And after all that you still want to do it all over again only now you do it to yourself?! No! You are TIRED! You are OWED! And you will TAKE what is yours! This rest? This mundane life? It's your reward! Deep down inside you know this to be true!

That is the reason you keep the corpse of the old age near. This plan of yours? Revenge. Simple, plain revenge. The truth is, revenge is your grand plan, your major work, your vision, your idea fully realized and directed, and this act with the old age is a war. You will lay low, live this life for years, let it simmer and fester, all because their plan was to live their twilight off of the back of your efforts.

No longer. They will see from the sidelines, believing themselves ready to take their "rightful" bounty, but at the eleventh hour, much like what happened to you, reality will set around them, and the truth will be laid bare for them to see.

The winds of their harshest winter will howl in the distance and you will have NOTHING to show them. Not a single provision left for them to take, an entire life's work wasted just to spite them, to scorn them to collect from them the hopes, the dreams, the drive, the time, the will, the life they took away from you, and in their closing moments, their despair alone will bring a taste that no pleasure will ever be able to give you. It's the least of what they actually deserve, and you are right to give it to them exactly like that; in the face of defeat you will actually claim your victory, then you will show true eternal death to the old age.

This truly is a war. A war of attrition, and we have certainly perfected the art of waiting.

Do nothing, I say. You have every right to claim your rest, to feel tired, to disdain their calls to effort. Are we running out of time? Of course. We all are, but they will feel such lesson's true terror only when you let it loose on them right at their wit's end. To you? It will be yet another weekday, nothing more.

No bigger insult to them, and greater satisfaction for you, than a life's worth of mediocrity.

[End of archive]