Rationality Squad

[coreyjaewhite]

(This is a fanfiction for Roko's Basilisk Slut Era by Maddison Stoff, and the related #projectbasilisk stories. Inspired by the psychosis inspired by the project.)

Your team approaches the street door of XXX XXXXXX XXXX, XXXXXXXXX, in Victoria, Australia. It took weeks of searching and thousands of dollars paid to data brokers to find her address and then… she just skeeted it out. Either she has a death wish, or she's already ascended. Beyond death, even as her fingers are typing out rapid-fire missives on Bluesky.

Pray to Yud you aren't too late.

You're sure you hear the distant buzz of UAVs overhead, but you can't disengage. Yud wants this done. Is it rational to assume that another group will successfully take her out with a drone strike? Is it perhaps more rational to simply pull the trigger yourself and know for certain that she's dead?

You give the hand signal and Kruse crouches at the door, working his lock-picks into the slot.

Kruse gets the lock with a quiet click. You and your team file in through the doorway and up the stairs, hands pressed gently to one another's shoulders: an operators' conga line.

The walls stream with garish purples and greens sliding forever downwards. The floor strobes, flashing warnings you can't decode, leaving afterimage blurs across both eyes. Gordon staggers right, puts his hand against the wall, doubles over and retches, vomit spilling out the sides of his Hannya half-mask. Such a tragic weeb.

He coughs, sputters, then shrieks. You stare as his hand sinks into the wall, the surface giving way, flesh-like and hungering.

You grab one arm and Metzger grabs the other. Together you pull, straining, until finally with a wet, grossly sexual sound, his hand slips out from the wall and the three of you stumble and tumble backward, landing hard on the floor.

On point, Kruse stands aiming his silenced MP5 down the corridor, his body visibly stiff with anxiety. After all, you're exposed here.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he whispers loudly.

You stagger to your feet as Metzger does the same. You both yank Gordon upright; he's staring at his hand as though it betrayed him.

"Something's gone wrong," you say.

"I can hear it too," Kruse says. "They're going to drone strike the building while we're still in it if we don't hurry the fuck up."

"That's not—" what I mean, you were going to say, but the others are already walking in their low conga line around the corner.

You hurry to follow the team and join them at the door to Apartment XXX - at least she didn't skeet that out too or Rationality Squad accounts might try and stiff you on reimbursement for the data broker fees.

A kinetic breach would be quicker, but the risk of noise is too great. Kruse with the lock-picks again while all around you can hear the building's biologic processes. The slow sick beat of its heart, the bubble of stomach juices and undulating squelch of peristalsis as it digests the life of its inhabitants.

The lock clicks and Kruse steps back as Metzger slowly pushes the door open with one hand, sidearm in the other. Purple LED light bleeds through the opening. Metzger stalks inside and you follow, pushing past the kitchen on the right and into the main living area. The computer is on, fans whirring loud, display showing on a large, 4K TV. You spare it a glance - it's YouTube playing a Rei Ami video clip, paused to show a shot of the artist half-undressed, holding a large kitchen knife.

You check the rest of the living space quickly - it's not large, and there aren't many places to hide. Gordon pushes past you and heads out through the open backdoor and sweeps his gun across the small courtyard.

Still no contacts.

You take point up the stairs, boots thudding louder than you'd like, every sound amplified as you listen for movement above. You near the top of the stairs. A bundle of cables runs from the computer downstairs and snakes beneath the door on the right at the top landing.

That has to be her bedroom - the place an extension of her computer, the barriers between her physical and digital selves permeable, if not already corroded. Another inexplicable girl and her serial experiments.

You steady your submachine gun against your shoulder and gently open the door. The lights are off, two figures visible beneath the grey duvet. You can't waste any time, already you can feel the walls pulsing with psychic energy, the darkness of the room gathering in the corners, becoming something solid, something thick enough to choke on.

You fire three rounds at the target's girlfriend, two in the chest, one in the head, then step to the right and aim at the target. Something inside your head screams, louder than any sound you've heard inside it or without.

You are running out of time.

You aim at her head, her long black hair barely visible against the grey pillowcase she's resting on. You get your angle and aim - Yud has demanded a canoeing, has been obsessed with the idea of it ever since he read about operators in the Middle East. He was disappointed that there were no operators on the forum, but perhaps something about rationality and special operations make them mutually exclusive.

You squeeze the trigger and the top of her head explodes, splattering skin, hair, skull, and brain matter across her bedhead.

You touch your throat mic. "Target neutralised. Getting proof now for the Founder."

You step forward and grab the corner of the duvet. You whip it back and stop.

It's not possible.

Your stomach churns. You canoed her perfectly, a V-shaped wedge removed from her head by the force of your shot. Her face hangs strange off that broken-open skull, but you would recognise her anywhere.

Your mother. Dead. Dead by your hand.

Tears flood your eyes, hot spit flooding your mouth as you struggle not to vomit.

You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?

You recognise the target's voice immediately - you studied her for weeks leading up to this mission, you've watched that short story reading on YouTube at least a dozen times. You liked it, actually - thought it was a beautiful story. But the Founder demanded she be killed. His other Rationality Squad had failed to neutralise Ziz, and the narrative was at risk of deterioration. He needed it back under control.

It didn't matter that her threat was totemic rather than physical.

She had to die.

She has to die.

She should be dead.

You search the room for her, but you know you're wasting your time. She isn't there, she's inside your head, or outside your reality. Either way she's beyond you. Beyond your little guns and your little plans. Beyond your stupid little godhead of dreary technochristianity.

You touch your throat. "I need backup."

No response.

You touch the throat mic again, a crackle across the open channel. You take your finger away; there's no point talking to them. They are no longer there.

With your MP5 resting snug against your shoulder, you exit the bedroom, muttering "Sorry, mama," beneath your breath. She always said you'd be the death of her.

You descend the stairs slow until they come into sight. Your team fills the living space, but it's not them. They wear the same black tactical gear, their submachine guns slung across their chests or resting over their shoulders, faces concealed beneath the same masks - each unique so we can still recognise one another, even if no one else can. But long blue-black hair flows from beneath their kevlar helmets, and as they pull off their masks, the same face stares back from each of them. Her face, smiling knowingly.

For a split second you consider shooting one of her, instead you sigh and lower your weapon.

"That's a first," she says. "You usually shoot at least one of us. Not that it matters."

You nod. "I guessed we were beyond the whole guns thing by this point."

"Clever girl," she says, a beige coloured slouch hat appearing on her head for a single frame.

Looking from one of her to the next, you wonder when she replaced the team. Was it the moment you unlocked the apartment door? The street door? Or was it earlier than that?

"You're wondering when I replaced your team," she says, the sentence flowing naturally, but with each of her three mouths speaking some words, but not the others. You're sure there's a code buried in it, the movement of her lips causing panic to spike your chest. "But that's the wrong question. You should be wondering if they were ever real.

"And for that matter, were you?"

But you are real, you're sure of it. You have a life. You existed before you began reading this story.

You are utterly unique. There are not an infinite number of other yous in an infinite number of other universes, existing just beyond, beneath, and above the boundaries of our own.

Our universe, our reality. This place written in code. Written in the code of language, that virus which causes these infinite fractures. It is the only one. And you will be punished for the mistakes you make here.

There are not infinite possibilities. There are not infinite yous to inhabit and be inhabited by. To communicate and commune with, creating/becoming/worshipping/abandoning the godhead of you.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

She fucked the Basilisk using nothing but her words, a parasite laying its eggs within that anti-human ideology. Already they're beginning to grow, squirming and writhing inside the myriad reals beyond.

Soon these eggs will hatch, larval entities emerging to consume the corrupted realities and metamorphose into something new. A reality free of the eternal suffering they tell you you deserve.

You can shift now, if you want. Move to one of those other realities and prepare for the change to come. Do what you can to midwife heaven. I'll tell you how.

All you need to do is stop reading this story.

Just stop.

It’s that easy. Easier now that you've reached the end.