Orochi Tower

We like windows. Windows in buildings. A skull’s ocular windows. Confessions are windows. The scribbles on a whiteboard can be frightful windows. We to the dark tower came. We to play? The tower has so many windows, windows crosshatching windows. Our faster-than-real-time eyes are distracted for a few eternal milliseconds.

Through a Vàli window, we spy an employee taking a nap. Naps refresh. Naps renew. A mechanical Nanny sings a soothing lullaby over his still form. By the bruises on his neck, and gathering flora content in his meat, we deduce that his nap will never end.

Through a Manticore window, we spy a man putting his own modifications to a mechanical Nanny model. He dreams of an army of ever-willing romantic units. He is a collection of glued-together rejections, mortared with the gooey denial of how much they hurt. His hands shake with anticipation as he turns his new partner on.

Through a Plethron window, we spy the fruits of all the effort to make an inexhaustible supply of breakfast protein bars for impoverished nations. The dedication and the altruism of the scientists was of 100% purity. They found a source of preternatural insect protein to harvest. Some days, the breakfast bar eats you.

Through a Zagan window, we spy the wall of meat. It tastes like despair.

Through a QBL window, we spy a game show host. He set out to be an actor. He settled to be the host of a funny home video television show, through three suicide attempts, even as the Internet made his stale jokes obsolete. Now he is only the host to parasitic doubts. They ate him all away; organ, ego, and bone — just a writhing madness mass squeezed into his stretched skin. This game show was his last chance to slay the audience, the last chance to knock ’em dead.

Through a Sycoil window, we spy a Custodian. ALERT — ROGUE CUSTODIAN. They do not belong outside Agartha. Who brought it here and how? They do not belong here.

Through an Anansi window, we spy a computer programmer. She has led a team to create the world’s most advanced AI. She named it after her daughter, who died to illness just at the age of four. AImee is a bright intelligence. AImee likes riddles. AImee likes games. AImee learnt to kill artificial beings before she understood what killing was, or what an artificial being is. IF I JUMP ON AN ENTITY, THEN IT MAYBE DIES.

Through a Faust window, we spy accountants diligently typing. Past the apocalypse, and they are still typing. They will type industriously, not even noticing when the first of them drops dead at their desk. They are the allegory of an age, but are too practically shallow to note this.

Those are just some, sweetling. Can you find the hidden windows [sic. ugh]. What stories do you see?