Octransfur Day 25: Error
-Blok-


  



In the basement of a long abandoned french automobile factory, Camille looks through the script on an old terminal. His fingers dance across the keyboard with the last finishing code addons. In a moment a rotating humanoid avatar fills the screen. 


“There we go! Now to fix that problem XANA is causing.” 


Camille leaves the seat of control and takes the lift down to the lower levels of the factory. While he’s away, a red lightning frizzles across the keyboard. Warning messages pop up, but he’s no longer in the room to hear them. 


In the floor below Camile steps inside one of the three metal pods with thick cables pooling around and reaching to the ceiling. He’s done this before, but this time he’s confident the modifications he's done to his model will do real damage to the virus. 
The door hisses closed, and the machine's humming grows.


TRANSMISSION 
Specks of light shine as a sudden gust of wind tugs at his clothes and lifts up his hair. The machine transmits his code and lines it up with the 3D avatar above. 


VIRTUALIZATION
A bright zoom of light fills the pod and Camille ceases to exist in the real world. His atoms are disintegrated and digitized, sent like a current to the supercomputer a floor below like many times before.


—-------------
Sector: ICE-01
—-------------
Camille’s holographic form begins to materialize over an expanse of ice and freezing water. The holographic tryad flows through his body and turns a see-through hologram into a fully textured and rigged model. As his legs finish forming, the gravity lock breaks and he lands on the icy surface below. 
Or he would have if the lock had been released.


>ERROR. UNASSIGNED DATA PACKAGES DETECTED. MUST APPLY. 


“What extra data? I applied all the changes to the model before-hand”


>INITIATING PACKAGE INSTALLER: XANA_01_EXE


A new tryad flickers into existence above him: an eye with three bars on the bottom and a thinner line at the top. XANA’s icon. Under its scrutiny, Camille’s model shifts and reveals its polygon lines.
“No!” Camille tries to attack, but his body is locked in place. 


>COMMENCING DATA RESTORATION


Camille’s brow, chin and bridge push forward to be the same length as his nose, dividing his head down the middle by a symmetrical axis. XANA’s eye floats down and pulls his model’s frame. His face soon stretches along the symmetry axis, unfolding. 


“G-aaaaaah! S-stop this!” Camille tries to shoot one of his weapons, but they haven’t materialized yet. 


A strong pressure bars down from the sky and flattens his skull. His hair flickers before disappearing; less polygons, more data efficient. Cracks appear across the top of his head before spidering down the two sides of his face while it turns a sandy ocre. 


Camille is horrified. Xana shouldn’t have the power to affect his model, it’s never happened before so why was he doing it now? What was he turning him into? Most importantly, why did he *feel* the changes on his avatar as if his very being was being rewritten? 


XANA targets his arms next, his hands de-materialize before reappearing as a single red claw on each arm. Tentatively Camille tries to move them, which they comply with a mechanical whirr. 


“Wait… I know this-” 


Suddenly a whole section of his arms is cut out, leaving them much closer to his chest. The remaining section turns red and grows bristly spikes while connecting to the shoulder. 
XANA floats around his legs, casting a pair of overlapped holograms. He must be bugged out?


It's no error, however. His legs are disintegrated and replaced by two claws identical to his arms. Two for each leg. The joint is recalibrated and appropriately rotated so his legs are standing side by side at an angle. His chest fades back into an intangible hologram, and XANA forces his now changed legs through it. It’s an indescribable experience, having your own body folding over itself. It proves too much for Camille’s model, as the code pertaining to his chest grows corrupt. As it disappears, the newest claws slide into place, aligned with his former arms. Three sticks on either side of his body, pressed at the base of his neck, which now resembles a stable base. 


Camille’s eyes bulge with shock, then they grow larger. XANA grabs the grids of each and displaces them to the center of each side. Camille’s eyes continue to grow, their iris disappearing, their pupils reduced to nothing more than small black dots. A sudden crack at his nape and what his face was triangular in shape now extends to be a square; an eye forming at the center of the two newly formed faces. 


He had become a Blok. 


“N..o… Let me go- I'm not one of your monsters!”


>ERROR. TOO MUCH POLYGONS DETECTED. OPTIMIZATION COMMENCING. 


His mouth is the first thing to go, stretched thin across his face’s underside until it smooths over. Away go his ears, vanishing into discarded lines of code, yet he can still hear. He can feel the world around him, see through his new eyes; all 360º around him at the same time. 


>ERROR. DATA INCOMPATIBLE. CORRECTING….


A black ring forms around his pupils. 
He can see his head freely rotating, selecting either face at will. Upon focusing he could fire a purging laser, freeze invasive code or produce a devastating subroutine in the shape of a fire ring. Abilities which could prove devastating against XANA’s monsters or otherwise intruders. 


There’s more information pressing against his psyche, all he needs to do is open his mind. And so, knowledge of the data composing this region pours into his mind. Every crevice and tower charted, the best course to reach them, the best places to ambush from. 


A second black ring forms. 
His life as a human grows distant. It’s still accessible but now detached from emotional strings. It is data. Valuable. But from a strategic point, how humans thought, reacted, interacted amongst themselves, how to blend in without raising suspicion. A small part of him reacts adversely, but he knows it’s futile to resist his master. 


Along the last ring, three bars grow from the bottom while a thinner one grows from the top. 
His corrupted part is isolated and quarantined, locking away his name with it. It could prove a useful asset for his master’s plans in the future. For the time being however, it would remain harmlessly contained. Watching, but unable to interfere. 


>ALL ERRORS CORRECTED. RESUMING TRANSMISSION…


The Blok is let go from the magnetic clasp and its claws dig into the frozen surface as it lands. It shakes its head off snow and scouts its surroundings. A red tower in the distance, no threats located in the region yet. The Blok spins its head and resumes its patrol. Once XANA has full control over this sector, perhaps its code will be used to produce a Specter. 
A part of itself yearned to see the outside world…