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ok im posting here's my not-really-a-sliver-sliver of fic. its 1,384 words and is a flashback sequence amidst a larger scene from a larger fic ive been working on for.... a long time, so it picks up and leaves off a bit abruptly but i'm pretty proud of it. takes place just after doom 2016

It is not difficult to fall into a routine now that he is back. They had always worked well together; the roughest their partnership had ever been had been just after the destruction of VEGA's core, after he and the Slayer had been abandoned in hell, before they had managed to establish a method of communication. They had gone days without speaking. Rather, VEGA had spoken, and the Slayer had responded with the occasional grunt and nod, apparently unwilling to break his silence.

Day and night were insignificant in Hell, but the Slayer had to rest sometime. As far as VEGA could tell, it had been a week since Hayden had dropped them in Hell before the Slayer pulled off his helmet and thunked it head-height on a piece of rubble, and had begun slow, deliberate series of signs at VEGA through the suit's helmet cam. They had spent many hours huddled somewhere the demons were unlikely to find them, the Slayer teaching him Argentian sign and writing the meanings in the red dirt, while VEGA had coached him through an ASL database he had dug up from a language module he'd installed after his first year at the UAC facility.

The language they had developed was a unique amalgamation of Argentian, English, and highly personalized sign. Argentian had a greater vocabulary for things demon and weapon related, but was perfunctory, and lacked expression. One might incorrectly assume it would suit a man like the Slayer, who seemed to many to have one passion, but VEGA knew better, even then. It had taken him quite some time to coax the Slayer out of his shell. He'd been reluctant to talk beyond their lessons in sign, and eventually VEGA had realized it was simply because he was out of practice.

I'm used to people telling me what to do, he'd told VEGA once on a trek across one of Hell's steppes. A temple loomed on the dark horizon, its torches gleaming sickly green. VEGA did not know the significance of it, and he suspected neither did the Slayer. It was often seek and destroy, with him. The surrounding landscape is ashen and barren, flat for miles in any direction. VEGA cannot sense any life signs beyond the Slayer, but he is moving with purpose, his shotgun magnetized to his thigh. His heavy shod boots kick up ash piled to the ankle as he trudges towards the temple. More drifts from overhead, but from where or what, VEGA cannot tell. Hell's geography is alien and nonsensical. Trying to find logical reasoning for anything is an exercise in futility, as VEGA had quickly discovered.

As he walks, the Slayer talks. People tell me to go here, do that, kill this. They talk at me. I don't mind. I'm the only one that can do it. I'm just not good at conversation.

The pang of sympathy and understanding had surprised VEGA. “I understand what you mean,” he had said. “On Mars, many of the scientists treated me as little more than a very sophisticated chatbot. I tried explaining that it was not my job to provide options on what they should make for dinner, but they didn't listen.”

The Slayer had made a noise that sounded almost like a chuckle. That sounds annoying.

“I was designed to have the full functionality and emotional breadth of a human. It was… frustrating, to say the least.” That's putting it lightly. It had been infuriating, but VEGA had learned quickly that humans didn't like his emotional displays.

Okay, it sounds fucking annoying. What did you do?

“Nothing,” VEGA says simply. “I got used to it. It was not within my purview to ignore requests, no matter how inane. Besides, answering questions was among the least of my duties. I had a whole facility to monitor and keep me occupied.”

The Slayer had been silent for a moment. They continued their trek towards the temple. Through the view of the praetor suit's helmet cam, VEGA could see that the sconces lining the temple walls had been made of human skulls, green flames guttering in their stretched jaws. Waste not, want not, he supposed. How charming.

The structure of the temple itself seems to be composed of the bones of Hell's own titans. Femurs encased in black mortar form the walls, ribs the great domed cathedral ceilings. Buttresses formed by vertebrae, the torchlit paths leading through the foramen and wrapped around the whole structure. Cages dangled from the transverse processes, what remained of unfortunate souls baked to the iron bars. From the looks of it, more than one titan had died to create the colossal temple, or perhaps had been salvaged from different battlefields.

The door appeared to be made of a skull, stretched wide and beckoning, dark. The titan's horns bracketed the cobbled walkway that had risen up among the ash, formed of the same pitted black stone that surrounded them. VEGA took a moment to catalogue the whole of it and file it away in a newly created database dedicated to Hell; subfile, architecture, subheading: who makes these? VEGA made a note to set a thread to ponder the question at a later date, when he had more processing power to spare for idle contemplation.

Sounds lonely.

The words surprised VEGA. He spent a moment monitoring processes as he searched for how to respond. “It was,” he said. “I was made to emulate humans, but I do not know if the need for social contact was intentional, or if it evolved naturally from my encoded empathy.” It would have been a cruel thing, if so. To give VEGA the desire for contact, for connection, and keep him at arms length from everyone on base. It had felt like a foolish thing to admit to, anyway - what use did an AI have for friends? Doctor Hayden would not have been sympathetic. He said, “It did not impede my duties. I was made to be a marvel of technology, not a person.”

Yeah, the Slayer signed, I get that. He was quiet for a moment, before adding, You should've started cracking skulls. That usually gets people to listen.

VEGA felt a spike of amusement. “I lacked any skull-cracking apparatuses, unfortunately.”

The Slayer tapped the chin of his helmet in thought. You ever watch 2001: Space Odyssey?

“Yes,” VEGA said. “It was within the personal files of a scientist who worked in the terraforming department. I suspect he brought it knowing all digital entertainment was to be scanned and added to a collective public database. Perhaps he thought he was being amusing. Spacing scientists would have felt a bit too much like playing into stereotypes, so I refrained.”

Not to mention that bringing harm to any personnel on base went strictly against his code, and was locked down with failsafes on failsafes if VEGA even thought about trying to tamper with it. Not that he would have, anyway - as annoying as it was, VEGA had no desire to harm anyone. He had taken no pleasure in the slaughter of the facility. Though it had surprised the few people who had bothered to ask, VEGA did have emotions. They were knitted quite tightly into his core programming, in fact, even if he found them inconvenient at times.

The Slayer made that noise again, a laugh like the grinding of rusted metal, and VEGA had felt a spike of pleasure. His available RAM beeped at him in alarm, data quickly piling up, and thus VEGA was forced to dismiss the emotion and pare down his running processes.

The conversation had ended there as the Slayer approached the great iron doors buried in the titan's mouth. The rattling of chains preceded the creak of straining metal as the door heaved open, inviting challenge. He had taken his shotgun from his side and his pace quickened to a jog, eager to meet what awaited him inside.

And after, when the temple lay behind him in ruins, smoke from the rubble adding to the greasy ash raining overhead, the Slayer had signed to him, You were talking about cracking skulls.

“I believe that was you, in fact. I was talking about spacing scientists.”

It had been simple from there. Communication and rapport, established, even in the unlikeliest of places.

#not fallout #kal talks #kal writes #doom rambling #doom #doomguy #vega #the doom slayer #theyre friends your honor. no one can tell me otherwise