#compulsory

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu: Can’t Help Myself Placed behind clear acrylic walls, their robot has one specific duty, to contain a viscous, deep-red liquid within a predetermined area. When the sensors detect that the fluid has strayed too far, the arm frenetically shovels it back into place, leaving smudges on the ground and splashes on the surrounding walls.

Compulsory - a short prequel, set before the events of All Systems Red

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory - set just after Exit Strategy, Mensah POV

Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy - set between Artificial Condition and Network Effect, best read after Network Effect as it follows ART + its crew

edit: I have been informed about another tale in the same universe!

"What we doin' now, sir?"

"We can pack up now, I think. All the lads have joined up?"

"Yessir!"

"You told them it wasn't compulsory?"

"Yessir! I said, 'It ain't compuls'ry, you just gotta,' sir."

"Detritus, I wanted volunteers."

"'sright, sir. They volunteered all right, I saw to that."

It's ugly, itchy, painful.

It's itchy. It feels good itching, doesn’t it? It feels good until it doesn’t. It feels good until you scratch away at your skin. Then you’ll have this ugly wound that keeps getting bigger and worse.

It’ll still itch. And you’ll want to itch it even if you know you shouldn’t, even if it hurts. Even if you can feel your raw nerves as you scratch, itch, claw at it, you still itch. In the morning you’ll hold back on the urge and you might even think you’re getting better until night comes. Night is the worst of it. You’ll itch and itch and scratch and scratch. You’re just too fixated on feeling good, soothing the itch, that you don’t care about the consequences anymore. You don’t care until the next morning, your wound is red raw, weeping, blood all over your sheets. You do it to yourself. You know you shouldn’t. You know, you’re aware of the consequences yet you still do it. You can't control yourself, you're compulsive. It’s tender and sore, you feel it pulsating, throbbing. You regret not controlling yourself the previous night.

It’s a cycle. It dries, it itches, you scratch, it's raw. It only gets worse from there. You cry. In frustration, or desperation, or both. You want to rip your skin off. You want to tear your skin apart. You want to peel it off. You just want to get better. Why is it so hard? This disease embedded into your skin won't let you go, you just want to be free. Cold compresses, medicine, what will it take to repress that itch tickling from under your skin?

What’s worst of it, it’s ugly. Horrid. That scaly, rough, dry, patch of skin on your body. It’s ugly. You try to hide it, but the more you hide it the more it gets worse. It needs air to heal, it needs to dry out to heal, you can’t keep it hidden underneath a bandage forever.

This is a part of you. It’s you. There is no escape, not really. You won't ever be apart from it, it’s part of your identity. This ugliness is part of your being. You are disgusting and you will live your whole life like this. You can’t stop it, there is no cure, all you can do is subdue. You can wish, pray, and hope all you want for some sort of miracle divination to free you but this is you and you cannot get away from it. And then your hope turns into anger. You curse the world, the universe, God, any form of higher being for cursing you with this disease. You ask why this happened to you, what sins you’ve committed in a past life to warrant this. It’s not fair, is it?

And you wake up, you stare at your hand, decayed with this ailment and wonder, can you really do it? Your whole life, subduing this itch. Restricting your diet, applying these products to keep the ugly from spreading. How much longer can you take until you break?