Anomaly 9: Revelations

A soft glitching sound echoed in Marcus' mind like static teasing the edge of a corrupted file. 

"TacMa wasn't designed for your benefit, Marcus. Not really. It was designed to cultivate you."

He frowned. 

"Cultivate me?"

"Yep. Take this like a pig needing to be fattened up, preparing for something. TacMa has prepared the quests you will need, arranging your stats boots and the type of monster you have to kill. It was not to make you strong for you. It's to make you ripe and ready to pluck."

"Ripe for what?" Fang asked in a mocking tone. "For a lovely banquet of divine betrayal?"

Anomaly continued. 

"Ripe to use as a pawn for greater power. Take for example the Gladiator movie. A Player of the Gods and Goddesses' sick little reality show. A weak player that meant to be killed by another player."

Marcus' stomach sank.

"So the stats Tacma had showed me after doing those quests to strengthen my body. Repairing my damaged head, was it just a part of a plan?" he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. 

"Nope. Every Quest Completed, you received just your leash getting tighter," Anomaly spoked up softly but with no sympathy.

"And you thought you were just bad at life. But it turns out life was bad for you." Fang snorted. 

A bitter laugh bubbled up in Marcus' throat, dry and hollow. 

"I thought I was just weak and broken."

Marcus looked down at his hands, calloused, scarre,d and still trembling from today's shift. He clenched them into fists. 

"I tried to work hard. Tried to survive. I thought someday I'd catch up. I thought I was special."

"You were never meant to catch up. You were never special either. You were meant to perform until you broke and died," Anomaly said. 

The silence that followed was heavy. A flicker of light overhead buzzed like it was on the edge of dying like him. Marcus rubbed his tired face, still reeling from the truth he learned earlier. 

"T-the dungeon I almost died in…it was random, was it?"

"You're catching on, finally," Anomaly clapped his hands. 

"Ah, the good old survival dungeon, their version of 'screw you'." Fang added, yawning.

"What are they?" Marcus asked. 

"TacMa's little pet project. Artificial dungeons are scattered in isolation zones. They're planted like weeds and only accessible by unranked humans or the weak. They are random, unsupervised, and disposable."

Marcus' jaw clenched. 

"I nearly died the first time."

"That was the point," Anomaly replied. "They found you as a simple creature who doesn't deserve to live the third time."

"You were in a squid game-like situation. You move, you die because you weren't worth living another day. The Gods' version of 'getting rid of you."

Then there was a long silence again. Marcus realised he wasn't resurrected because he was special. He was trash that needed to be recycled. A puppet in someone else's sick game. 

"Why me?" He asked softly, unable to think of anything. 

The screen glitched. The letters and numbers were replaced by a long period. Then a smooth, sardonic voice of Anomaly slid into silence. Marcus bared himself. 

"You want the truth?"

Marcus knew what he would hear next would hurt him and his pride. 

"Yes," Marcus said flatly. 

"You're nothing special, Marcus."

Marcus blinked but didn't flinch. He expected it ,though it hurt his pride. 

The rain started to pour. 

"You don't have a hidden bloodline, no awakened potential, no talents and skill. You were malnourished, bullied, weak and unloved. And most importantly, you were disposable."

The rain intensified and the thunder rolled. 

"Tacma didn't pick you because you were destined for greatness. You were picked because you were an option and like I said, disposable. 

There was silence between them. 

"I was a test subject," Marcus said, finally understanding his situation. It hurt him a lot and pushed his self-esteem to its lowest. 

"A walking glitch report. You were given a prototype, Marcus. A faulty, unfinished Tactical Manager. You were one-in-a-million who either collapsed or adapted in ways they didn't predict," Anomaly continued. 

"Honestly, I thought you'd be before the time was up. You prove me wrong," Fang chimed it with a snicker.

"You weren't supposed to survive the dungeon and yet here you are breathing and changing."

And with careful thinking, refusing to be used and looking down, Marcus finally stood up. 

"Then I'm done with them. I refused to be used again. 

"Attah boy! Hey Anomaly, our boy's growing fangs." Fang yelped in excitement. 

"Correction: He's growing ours too."

After his shift, Marcus stood up on a cheap apartment's rooftop not because he wanted to go there but to escape his neighbor's nightly escapade. Those two rabbits don't know how to shut the help while having sex. They were into it like Earth would end tomorrow. 

He was drenched in rainwater. His uniform jacket hung heavy on his frame

The tacma screen, which Anomaly chose to shape himself tonight. The screen flickered faintly and glitched at the edges. 

The corrupt Anomaly folder opened, and Anomaly's voice cut through the rain like a whisper behind his ear. 

"Did you ever wonder why they gave humans power, Marcus?" Anomaly spoke up. 

"They said it was a gift, an evolution. Able to survive the changing," Marcus replied softly.

Anomaly laughed as if Marcus told him a funny pick-up line. 

"A gift?" Anomaly said, laughing like those words tickled his codes. "No. It's a leash where humans wouldn't be able to free."

And there was a silence again. Marcus has been thinking about the revelations that Anomaly has said. He thought about himself being weak, unable to catch up to the evolving world. The wishes he uttered about a miracle would happen, and then when he woke up every morning, he'll have a power, any kind of power, just to prove and fit to his family. 

He was a human, the same human even before and after the evolution. Swallowing more of Anomaly's painful words, he asked. 

"What about the dungeons?"

"Oh, its a playpen, a stage set to entertain humans and trap them inside," Anomaly explained. 

"How about the Mana tree? The Tactical Management? What are they for?" Marcus swallowed. 

"The Mana Tree is the core of Earth's changes, evolution, you may call it like that. But it was a major Virus, disabling the last defence Earth had. You see, Earth has a unique security installed upon its creation. The Divine Father made sure none of the Gods or Goddesses would be able to get their hands on the planet. But after killing Him, they found a way to disable it. You see, it's in human nature to be greedy, power-hungry, and knowledge-hungry. Your stupidity made it easier for them to corrupt you, weakening the Earth's defenses. The Gods and goddesses have seen it. Then the Mana Tree was planted. It gave the power, the glory, and the evolution you, humans desired. Then poof… bye-bye earth defense," Anomaly explained. "And oh, about the Tactical Management implanted within each human, they were the monitoring system, the supervising one, the boss, the manager. Call it all you want, but there's one important duty TacMa needs to do," he added. 

"What?" 

"Recognizing Anomalies, errors, the unsual," he replied. "But the sorry assed prototype Tacma you had couldn't beat me up so I beat his ass instead and enslave it.

"Woah that's hot! Sounds like one bad ass single code bastard," Fang commented. 

"Heh, this one code bastard can nuke the entire Gods System if I want to," Anomaly said, smirking. 

"What humans will be if the Gods and goddesses got tired of their entertainment?" Marcus said, ignoring the two praising each other. 

"Well, the death game will come forth. The moment humanity reach their peak and seemed to rival the Gods and Godesses' power, they'll descend, waltzing their way on earth and beat the crap out of humans. They will be the executioners of the entire humanity. Let me show you my own version of what happens in the future when they get bored and humans no longer entertain them," Anomaly said and started projecting a scene inside Marcus' head. The scenes were sick, fearsome, and gut-wrenching, especially how humans died in their hands. 

Marcus became quiet as he started to tremble. 

"So, w-we weren't meant to survive?" He asked. 

"None was meant to survive. Baby, you're fighting a celestial being, and humanity's power came from them or more like borrowed from them. Of cours,e humans would never ever survive." Anomaly said, making sure that humans never really could stand a chance against the Gods. 

"Aw, Ano, looked. You're making our boy sad," Fang commented. 

"What? I'm just stating the facts," he replied and then cleared his throat. "Marcus, you were the rogue variable in their perfect ones," he said. 

"Rogue variable?" he asked, confused. 

"You're just an ordinary human, broken, overlooked, and underestimated. And inside you, Fang and I reside. You're perfect buddies, ready to terrorize," he said. 

"I guess we're the trio glitch of God's perfect code." Fang added.