Somewhere deep underground, under a mountain, in a bunker, behind multiple layers of physical and electronic security, Cognisant’s heavily augmented brain finally succumbs to senescence. Meanwhile his robotic proxy sitting in a meeting, pretending to listen while playing solitaire in his HUD, gets a notification, deletes it, then goes back to playing solitaire as if nothing had transpired.
“You can ask me one question about anything, except the meaning of life. Three questions about life/death/humanity and the universe. And five questions about the history of mankind. Choose wisely.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Alright straight to hell it is.”
The clouds below Cog’s soul open up and he falls down, through heaven, through space, through the Earth, finally landing in the fiery pits of hell, and there sitting on a throne carved out of a giant horned skull sits
@Melkor.
“I like what you’ve done with the place”
“Coggie! Long time no see, why don’t you ever visit me?”
“Because last time I opened a portal to the immaterium you conquered Mars and killed hundreds of my employees, by the way do you still have that phone I gave you?”
Melkor tosses him a weird looking mobile “It’s useless, you never answer and the pizza place won’t deliver”
“You just don’t know the right number”
To everyone’s surprise including his own Cognisant’s speakers start playing a ringtone, the classic Doom theme, a moment later he waves his metal hand and it stops “my apologies, I had a call”. He leans back in his chair and the meeting resumes only to be interrupted again by Cog’s body vibrating, his forearm thrumming loudly on the glass table top, this too stops suddenly, he pretends it didn’t happen. The presenter gives him the evil eye and resumes his speech when “HEY ASSHOLE, it’s me, you, hang up on me again I fucking dare you”, the presenter chucks his notes and bellows a warcry that’d make his ancestor’s proud, Cog says “uh I’m going to take this outside”.
As the presenter dives down the boardroom table hell-bent on doing god knows what to the 8ft tall robot said robot dives out the window, procures the crucible from a compartment in his chest and slashes open a portal to hell, he falls in, the portal closes and the presenter’s body slams into the sidewalk where the portal had been.
To be continued... probably not though.
