The Masked Man reflects on the destruction of Thunder Tower.

Claustober 2020, day 21: frog.

*hop* *hop*

The sound is out of place in the windowless concrete chamber. It’s a slimy, staccato thud thud thud that’s mostly drowned out by the heavy breathing from the Pigmask in the room.

“Commander! There you are!”

The Commander lifts his head away from the frog hopping around near his feet. Presence detected. Identity: low rank Pigmask.

“No one knew where you were after Thunder Tower went down!”

Access memory. Retrieve incident: destruction of Thunder Tower. Time: two hours and 35 minutes ago.

“Some of us thought the rebels might’ve gotten ya but it’s good to see that you’re okay!”

Okay? Ridiculous. He is not okay. He just is.

“You are not to worry about me,” he monotones. His voice is just a little too high pitched to be taken seriously. But the Pigmasks have taken orders from him for long enough that they’ve come to fear it anyway. “You are to return to your quarters and await new instructions.”

“…Sir? There’s, uh, something you should know…”

The Commander frowns. He turns around and walks in a little circle, making sure the clomp of his boots is loud and intimidating. “Interesting. Environmental scan indicates that at least one Pigmask cadet in the vicinity is disobeying orders.” He comes to a halt and glares at the Pigmask with a glint in his robotic eye. “Inquiring to see if they are curious as to what happens to those who disappoint me.”

The Pigmask bolts upright, towering a good foot and a half over the Commander, and salutes with a trembling hand. “No, sir, I’m leaving – right away sir!”

They run out of the room, leaving it quiet enough to hear the frog jumping around better.

*hop* *hop*

The Commander does not know how a frog managed to get into a guarded Pigmask base, but he does not dwell on it. It serves no use to Master Porky so it serves no use to him. There are other things to attend to.

Such as the destruction of Thunder Tower. He context switches to the process responsible for accessing the requisite memories, and is hit with a pang of discomfort. Analysis of the data is coming back with repeated failures. His infrastructure chokes on it every time.

Something happened earlier.

Something he wants to think about, but can’t. Thinking about it is outside of protocol. The Commander must always adhere to protocol. That is what makes him the best at his job. Master Porky’s top operative.

And if he ever slips up, ever breaks protocol, then he’ll be corrected.

So there’s really no point in thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about him, wondering how he’s doing…

“If you don’t take care to preserve your memories,” the frog says, “you’ll forget them.”

The Commander briefly considers firing a shot at the frog just to shut it up. But that would be outside of protocol. Frogs cannot be killed, so it is a waste of resources to engage with them.

The thing does raise a good point, however. It is time for him to report the day’s events to his superior. Not doing so risks data loss in the event of a catastrophic failure in his organic subsystem.

<Begin status update. Reporting to: Master Porky. Date: 3182, 4 of 7. Today…>

There is an abundance of data to report. The fall of Thunder Tower has significant consequences, even if the role played by the facility is no longer necessary. Several key personnel have yet to be recovered, including Fassad. Additionally, there are new findings in his investigation into the locations of the seven needles, which Master Porky had informed him was to be his number one priority mission.

But a subroutine somewhere in his programming causes him to go down a different code path than expected. One which calls back up those thoughts from earlier, his reaction when he recognized…

He isn’t supposed to consider those thoughts. It is outside of protocol.

*hop* *hop*

<Today I saw…>

But it is protocol to report everything to Master Porky, is it not? He has to. So he can engage in those thoughts. He’s not doing anything wrong.

*hop* *hop*

<I saw my>

BZZT

You are nothing you are nothing you are nothing you are nothing but my servant robot

<My>

BZZT

You have nothing you deserve nothing you exist for ME and me alone

Master Porky’s voice is directly embedded into his firmware. The Commander cannot do this. Entertaining such thoughts of personhood is a grave malfunction. He will be corrected.

<During the evacuation of Thunder Tower, the insurgents responsible for its destruction were witnessed attempting to escape on a Pigmask Army helicopter. The escape failed and they plummeted to the ground. Current whereabouts are unknown.>

The frog makes a dumb little ribbit noise and it’s so stupid it’s so damn stupid and annoying because the fucking thing gets to be free and Claus can’t ever -

“Uh, Commander?”

“WHAT?” he snarls at the intruding voice.

Presence detected. Identity: same Pigmask from before. They have disobeyed orders by returning. State: Concerned. Possibly directed at you.

The Pigmask squeals in fear, and stumbles over their words. “I-I-I- I’m s-sorry Sir, y-you just- you t-told me not to worry b-but we heard scre- screaming from down the hall a-and look at you now…”

Growling, the Commander runs a self-analysis. To his dismay, it appears that memory banks have minor inconsistencies according to local checksums. His organic memories will likely have to be manually adjusted. The thought causes a bead of sweat to roll across his neck.

Also, sensors indicate that he is currently huddled on the floor clutching his helmet, teeth bared, cringing in pain. Objective analysis concludes that it is not a good look for the commander of an army.

“It is none of your concern!” he yells, without getting up. “Leave immediately and close the door behind you this time!”

The Commander doesn’t even hear the Pigmask absconding this time. After a minute, he rescans the premises.

No entities detected. The Commander is alone.

*hop* *hop*

“You’re stupid,” he spits, and his voice sounds even smaller than before in the barren room; it sounds weak and pathetic and he will be corrected.

The frog doesn’t reply to that.

This isn’t fair, he thinks, and he doesn’t know why it should be fair, but still it remains that it is not fair. He is the army’s best. Porky’s right hand man. He performs all duties at peak efficiency and ruthlessness. He does not deviate from protocol.

So then why was his control flow so thoroughly disrupted when he saw that boy in the red-and-yellow striped shirt?

The thing is, he knows why. He remembers, because they missed that one when they put him together. He remembers, and furthermore he knows he won’t remember tomorrow, not after his organic memories are reconciled with the cybernetic ones. He already knows backing them up via report will not work. But maybe he can still take steps to preserve the memory.

If not for him, for someone else.

“Save your game?” the frog asks.

Claus sighs. Rolls onto his stomach – with a loud clang from his arm cannon as it hits the floor. The position isn’t at all comfortable, because his wings are so heavy that his torso gets crushed beneath them. But it feels right, in the moment.

He lifts his chin, coming almost nose-to-nose with the frog. It stares back. Waiting. Listening.

“Begin status update,” Claus says in a quiet voice, as if hoping no one would hear him. “Reporting to: stupid frog. Date: 3182, 4 of 7. Today…”

He takes a deep breath.

“Today, I saw my brother. I think his name is Lucas. He fell off of my helicopter. I hope- I wonder if he is okay.”