My entry. Hope you guys like it.
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Day 1: Frank and the unknown threat to freedom and all of humanity
Something stirred on the other side of the globe, and this was something that Frank knew nothing about. He was just happy to finally have gotten a job and a good job at that. He had been employed by the Ministry of Defense and Freedom situated in Nevada to punch in numbers for the Counter-Intelligence Department, a job he was qualified for by the fact that he could touch-type. It wasn’t something he wanted to do; he was molded to become a philosopher, his father, a philosopher himself set out to create a genius intellect when Frank was born.
Frank turned into a precocious child, at the age of three he translated The Critique of Pure Reason to English from its original German using touch-type exclusively, he mastered Latin at his sixth birthday and at the first day at elementary school, which he had looked forward to and was obviously a day of celebration for him, he started smoking the pipe. Everybody thought that Frank would turn out to become a great and prolific thinker, he even had naturally wild and exotic hair, but it wasn’t to be, after writing his doctoral thesis on the ontological consequences of the philosophical zombie and physicalism, no jobs would appear. He thought he had written a great work of art, nobody seemed to share his enthusiasm. He was bitter.
“Freedom and thinking does obviously not belong together” he thought to himself.
But now the tables had turned, he had gotten a job. On the other side of the globe jubilation turned into monstrosity and grim reality, something had been summoned. But, this was something Frank, or anyone else didn’t know **** about. How could they, this was North Korea. Best Korea.
Day 2: Sledgehammer and reconciliation
While the first day at Frank’s new job seemed like a breeze of relaxation and sanctimony, the second day really started when a random guy was running through the office with papers flying from his arms. The guy slammed the door after him going into the Chief of Joint Affairs office. Frank didn’t really think much about it, because he was tickling the elevations on the homerow, the closest he ever came to befundeling elevations.
Suddenly he heard a guy shout, “How the **** were we supposed to know!? We’re the COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE! Don’t give me that ****, I will kill the **** out of you!”
The guy that previously was running into the office with papers, was now flying through the door with the Chief charging after him with a sledgehammer ready to smash.
“I guess that my boss”, Frank thought.
“OK, dumb****s, listen up, the first guy that finds out what’s happening in North Korea gets a smiley badge!”
The moment the chief said the last word people dropped what they were holding and started running towards their desk, some guys fainted the moment the Chief opened his mouth, a guy was even crapping himself as he ran towards the desk.
One could just feel the schadenfreude oozing out of the Chief as he watched all the commotion.
“And you better not be doing anything else, ****brains!” he slammed the door to his office and snared.
“Wow, people really want smiley badges”, Frank said to himself, “What’s up with all the hype”. The guy at the neighbor desk gave Frank an angry yet sad stare and said “You know nothing, Frank…!”
The group manager stood up and said that everybody should focus their efforts on what was going on in North Korea. After long hours nobody found anything. The Chief was not happy – guy was sent to the army surgeon.
Day 3: Feels are brewing!
The telephone was screaming Frank in the ear. He fumbled for it, dropping it on his face two times before he could answer. Somebody was screaming on the other end. Frank couldn’t make much of it.
“Eeeerrrrrrrrmmmmmm…” said Frank, “who is this?”
“We are under attack, dip****. Are you still lying in bed? Stand up, ****face!”
Frank was barely a living being this early, he could not function without coffee, “my name is Frank, what time is it?”
“Shut your pie hole, **** for brains, and get over here, now!”
At the military camp where he worked there was complete chaos. People were running left and right, some were dragging crates with firearms, others were summoning troops to go fighting and this one guy had peed himself, he was probably working in Frank’s department.
Frank opened the door to the office, there was no one there except some guys mumbling in the meeting room. Frank peeked in. The Chief and some random guys with bling on their shoulders were studying a map of the west coast.
“There you are! We welcome you, massive turd of ****s. You are late to the party”, the Chief didn’t seem happy, as if he ever did.
“We have been overrun by North Koreans, a couple million of them walked out of the water along the whole west coast tonight, it seems that they have walked underwater from NK, and the funny part is that there is no killing these ****holes.
The Chief took a sip of coffee, and continued “It has come to my ear that you can touch-type. Its complete desperation over here, HQ does not know **** about what they are to do, and neither does the arrogant ****brains in Europe. We need you to log in and try to find out how we stop these walking ****s”.
Frank was dragged in front of a computer that was situated in the Chiefs office, he was the only one left working the computers now, and now, to Frank’s dismay he had the chance to get to know the Chief better.
“The smiley badge is still up for grabs, ****bucket,” said the Chief as he padded Frank on the back and then stormed out of the office while he called “SMILEYBADGE!”
Frank walked and grabbed a coffee, getting ready to grab the **** out of that ****ty smiley ****.
It was getting late, when Frank caught a glimpse of something out of the ordinary. It seemed like all the radioactive material North Korea had been hoarding hadn’t been used for bombs, warheads or power plants, it had been used for a project that was called “Father of all Fathers”, and the document was labeled with a cosmic classification stamp.
“What the hell”, Frank thought to himself, “top classification on a document about fatherhood, that doesn’t make sense”. Then again, nothing makes sense when using Google Translate.
Day 4: A something and its army
The Chief stormed into the room nearly tripping on the Ergo Dox that someone shamelessly had left on the floor, he had obviously been running, because he was panting like crazy, “… it’s… giant… something… huge… took down all… the planes… looks… like… Kim… Jung… Un…”
It didn’t seem like the Chief was thinking straight so Frank interrupted, “Kim Jung-Un shot down the planes? Isn’t Kim Jung-Un dead?”
“… he hit the recon planes with his… hand, and no… he isn’t dead anymore.”
Frank had a hard time following what the Chief was talking about, confusion didn’t quite cover Frank’s feelings, it maybe that the Chief had broken down and was imagining nonsense now, this being real life attack from the North Koreans and all. “Are you sure that Kim Jung-Un, who is dead, hit the planes with his hand, I’m pretty sure he is short man, how did this happen?”
Frank had a hard time keeping a serious face and couldn’t help smirking at the Chief now, “stop smiling you ****face, Kim Jung-Un is a three thousand feet high radioactive giant that stomps through Asia with one oversized arm who punches planes out of the sky now!!”
Then it hit Frank, this might just be true being that this was the first time the Chief called him **** in quite some time. This was serious.
“What do we do then?” Frank asked.
The Chief just shook his head and stared into nothingness “We don’t know yet, to be honest, we are having a hard time just coping with the hordes of North Koreans that are flooding our shores. We have yet to find an effective way of killing them. And the worst part of it is that they are so toxic that they infect everyone they come in contact with. They are just walking across our country infecting everyone”.
“They are zombies, bro”, a voice emerged from behind the Chief.
“They are what? Zombro?”
A guy walked out from behind the Chief saying “No, they are Zombies, bro. The living dead, you know”.
The Chief stepped forward “This is Gene, he has been gathering some intelligence for us for some time, and we took him here so you two could make a joint effort.”
“So Frank, do you know what’s going on?” Frank shrugged his shoulders, Gene continued talking while gesticulating wildly “well from what I have figured out, North Korea have been trying to resurrect Kim Jung-Un for some time now. He is North Koreas great father, you know. Well, they figured it out; it seems they need a lot of radioactive material to be able to synthesize the serum necessary for a complete resurrection. And while pumping the serum through the pipelines from the factories where they make it tons of it has leaked into the ground. Dead toxic people, or radioactive zombies if you want, have started to crawl up from the ground en masse in the whole of North Korea. And they are just marching around infecting more and more people”.
The Chief interrupted, “the worst part of it all is that we are running out of personnel to fight the zombies. We are basically surrounded by now, and there are getting more and more of them, Kim Jung-Un has started throwing scores of zombies at us from across the pacific. He is working as artillery support for the invading zombies, large parts of the Great Wall of China were flying at us yesterday, so most of our armored vehicles are shattered to **** now. If it weren’t for Kim we could have coped with the invasion.”
Frank thought The Chief looked kind of depressed, it had to be something because his pathology of saying “****” had almost subsided.
Gene and the Chief looked at each other “we have to do this” the Chief said.
Gene nodded and looked up at Frank “you have to come with us Frank. We have an assignment for you”.
Gene and the Chief stepped apart making way for Frank to be guided out of the office, they walked through several doors which Frank didn’t have clearance too and into an elevator he never thought existed, this being a one floor building. Inside the elevator Gene and the Chief were just staring at the elevator door. Frank was getting more and more nervous, what was it that they wanted him to do. After thirty minutes of descending they got out and Frank was guided into a room with a sleeping bag.
“You sleep here tonight, Frank. We got out just in time, you know. The compound is swarming with zombies now, everyone is dead. You got a big day tomorrow, so get some rest”.
The Chief shut the door super gently; he seemed like a reformed man. Maybe that was the cure against douchbaggery – getting conquered.
Day 5: My body is ready
“Wake up, Soldier!”
It was obviously the Chief. Frank rubbed his eyes, looking up at a big army shoes that had mustaches attached to them. Yup, it’s the Chief.
“You got to see this, you lucky son of a ****, it’s your big day”.
He literally dragged Frank out of the bed, and guided him through some corridors before they entered the biggest room Frank had ever seen. “Room” seemed a misplaced word related to the enormity of the distance between each end. It was big, really big, mind-bogglingly big. The walls were littered with floodlights to be able to even light this place. The roof… not even visible. And in the middle of it all, a giant robot.
“So,” a grin had started on the Chiefs face that would soon reach epic proportions, “are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” asked Frank.
“Saving the world in a giant robot of gleaming awesomeness?”
Frank just stared at him.
The Chief continued “Yes, you are going to defeat Kim Jung-Un in this thing,” the grin had manifested.
“No!” Frank was very clear on this point, “No… No, no, no, no, no”
“Yes, you are going to defeat the invasion of zombies, and you are going to paddle this thing over to Asia and defeat the huge Kim. Do I need to cite your obligations as an American to you,” the Chief gave him a stare, “if you do not do this, it is the end of the world”.
Frank started laughing “But unfortunately, I don’t know anything about operating a Giant Death Robot.”
“Well, we have worked out all the details,” The chief waved over a couple of the scientist that was there, “these guys have worked tirelessly to suit it for you after I told them that it was only you left on the globe that could touch-type proper.”
One of the scientist started talking, “Yes, this is the BroBot, it has an inbuilt AI which analyses your typing pattern and from that interprets what kind of actions you want to perform, all you have to do is touch-type flawlessly as fast as you can manage. The Chief told me that you are averaging in 110 wpm. That is good, but might not be good enough. It is imperative that you will try your upmost to touch type faster, the continuation of the human race depends upon it.”
Another scientist emerged, “yes, the level of output you provide will translate into the effectiveness of the BroBot as a fighting machine. The Brobot will synergies with your thoughts and the proficiency of your typing.”
A third scientist emerged, they were clearly exited, but also desperate, “…construction of the BroBot started in the fifties as a cold war response. But, due to the fact that it is a gargantuan frame, and would leave a giveaway footprint in usage, we have never tested it. You will be the first to even see if it works!”
Even more scientists emerged speaking at the same time, Frank couldn’t differentiate who said what, “…world most powerful weapon…”, ”three thousand five hundred feet tall”, “…almost went haywire”, “…rail gun with nuclear capabilities”, ”157 mounted machineguns”, “intravenous coffee infusion system…”, “…electrocution, anti-personnel device…”, “dead silent, ironically made for surprise attack”, “flamethrower muzzle…”, “…system contained ammunition factor, “unprecedented hydraulics, with unlimited movement speed…”, “armed with state of the art weaponry”, “
Frank couldn’t keep up and interrupted, “I don’t know anything about combat or weaponry!!”
“… we have a big problem...”, “no, knowledge of the rail-gun…”, “…what about the flamethrower”, “unable to communicate with the BroBot”, “… won’t work…”
The Chief stepped in, “I thought I told you, this guy’s knowledge is limited to keyboards. And that you were to arm the BroBot with loads of keyboards for fighting!?”
“We heard you say that, and we started doing so, but thought it was a silly idea, so we didn’t run with it”
“Well, didn’t you hear what Frank said, dumb****s!?” the Chief didn’t seem happy, “he does not know **** about weapons. Arm it with KEYBOARDS NOW!!!”
The Chief guided Frank away. “Will you be ready in an hour,” Chief held one arm around Franks shouldiers, “we need to strike now, if we don’t counter-attack against Kim Jung-Un now, our capital will fall in 74 hours.”
“You really don’t have a choice in this,” the Chief continued, “and I’m sorry about that, but there are hardly anyone left to fight, you are my best bet.”
“If touch-typing is all there is too it, I guess I can do it” Frank replied.
The Chief’s face lightened up “yes, touch-typing and a big heart!”
The Chief wandered off.
After some time a fleet of what looked like maintenance robots came in through a door and started swarming the Brobot. They had crates which they plugged into sockets on the on the BroBot’s back. There was a lot of steam and shuffling about. Right below the scaffolding where Frank was standing, a couple of scientist were pacing nervously up and down while giggling with excitement.
Suddenly every robot and scientist were dead silent. For a moment it seemed like nothing was happening, then a massive light emerged from the BroBot’s eyes, even though it was incredibly far up, Frank had to shield his eyes from the glowing brightness.
“It’s fantastic…” the Chief stood amazed behind Frank.
After a bit of moral and technical guidance, Frank was elevated up towards the entry hatch in the neck of the BroBot. On the factory floor everybody was saluting at Frank, after some time he couldn’t see them anymore. Getting to the top, Frank entered through steam filled doors and saw just a seat and an unknown keyboard elevated to it with a gyro arm. The room wasn’t large, it seemed like you operated the whole thing from that seat. The chair was really close to the glass which Frank concluded had to be one of the eyes of the BroBot. Some of the scientist had told him earlier that the BroBot is a two man machine. You had to be two to secure fluid movements, and these two operators had to train daily to achieve consensus in guiding the movements. The other person was to be situated behind the other eye. Frank was alone, he got in the seat.
Then the Chief started talking over the com, “Are you seated, Frank?”
“Yes!” said Frank hesitantly.
“Ok, hold on, we will start elevating the platform shortly” replied the Chief.
Seconds after the armored machine slowly started to move upwards. Slowly, but steady, it was creeping closer to towards the tiny spot of light at the top of the bunker.
It was late evening outside, and the light that was shining through the hole was barely visible due to the fact that there was falling loads of zombies down at the platform. Frank sat watching the creatures falling in front of his window. He looked down and saw that the zombies were piling up at the BroBot’s feet.
The elevator stopped, even Frank’s imagination couldn’t cope with how high up in the air he was. He could see clearly for miles and miles. The sun peeked out through some clouds in at the horizon. The ground looked like mud, but it was carpeted with zombies, and they were swarming at the BroBot. Frank looked down, what did he do now? Suddenly, bolts of lightning shot out at the base of the BroBot, frying every zombie in a huge radius.
“Do you have it moving!?” the Chief was screaming into the com.
“No,” replied Frank, “not yet. What do I do again?”
“Just start touch-typing.” The guys at the other end said in chorus.
“Start touch-typing,” Frank thought to himself, “what do I type then…?” and just then words started zooming at him on the window.
Well, he had to just jump into it, and let his fingers just run casually “letter sentence day be then than of there animal story”. The BroBot jerked into motion. Muzzles opened at its shoulders firing 60% aluminum cased keyboards in rapid fire, bombarding zombies bellow. Frank looked at it while he continued touch-typing, “leave school have above start begin would between as when we enough near”. Tubes appeared at the hips of the machine, spraying liquefied acrylonitrile butadiene styrene at everything in sight, at the same time it was kicking, stomping and falcon punching zombies into pieces.
“How is it going?” it was the Chief again.
“Smooth” replied Frank, he was feeling great, this was a great job!
After ten minutes with loads of “father back before face keep make many here high be car tell that city much line where state show but later young quickly so above he page such,” Frank had killed so many zombies, that where there was a carpet of them earlier, there was now only solitary ones gnawing at his ankles.
Frank called up the Chief in the com, “What do I do now? I have killed the zombies here.”
“Great work, Frank! Head out west, we need to get you across the pacific.”
Frank shot off towards the coast, getting from A to B wasn’t a problem in the BroBot, it was fast as a jet plane, and ran smooth as David Hasselhoff in Baywatch, “small miss little made have number must line off part Indian one as side every number.” Easy.
At the west coast Frank a heap of mega tankers in the waters. They were clustered together forming what look two cross country skis.
“Yes, those are your floaters,” it was the Chief again, he was watching Frank through Dronecam “hook those up and paddle over to the Asian coast”
“…”Frank replied,
“For paddling,” the Chief continued, “you have a set of great, multipurpose Ergo Dox attached to your back plate.
Frank reached on his back “soup far part second.”
“Yes, you got them.”
Frank fastened the Ergos in the BroBot’s palm, and kneeled down on the mega tankers. “This is going to take forever,” Frank thought, “the pacific is huge”.
The BroBot lowered the Ergos down into the water.
The sun was going down and it had started to hale. He could see that there was awful weather to the west, it was creeping east. “May be the amount of radioactivity that monster pumps out”, Frank said to himself, and started to touch-type.
The BroBot accelerated so fast it started to glow like a light bulb. The Ergo Dox attached to BroBot’s arms was so effective paddling with that the tankers never touched water after takeoff. Frank crossed half of the pacific in three seconds. He could see Japan closing fast, and a green glowing creature in the distance. Frank took aim.
The Brobot touched down in Japan with such force that it became a ramp launching it across the Sea of Japan. It flew over South Korea so fast that no one saw it. Frank saw Kim Jung-Un waiving around in Gansu, he gathered the feet in front forming an arrow towards its head.
Frank braced himself inside the cockpit. The impact struck with enormous force, sending Kim flying towards Xinjiang. The tankers shattered into millions of pieces. The BroBot landed face down. The zombies that wasn’t killed due to the epic impact was swarming the area, wanting a bit or two of that lovely Brobot.
“I have to kill these too?” Frank was in shock and reacted with annoyance.
“right start is big now right line long white really about little earth onto mountain thing quickly”
Frank saw a figure standing up in the west. It started to charge towards him. Frank focused his armaments towards it, BroBot leaning into a forward stance, shoulder cannons pumping out custom TKL’s, forearms sniping at Kim’s head with rare PBT spacebars, back-ballista firing arrows littered with novelty caps from grab bags.
But nothing deterred Kim’s pace. He crashed, head first, into the torso of the Brobot. It sank together. Kim was flailing its huge arm, he hit several times, and each time it stunned Frank trying to touch-type.
“You got to focus, Soldier!!!” said the Chief on the com.
But Frank couldn’t type correctly, “often mountain nw even group can me thoughr us somrrhing.”
The BroBot was down on its knees getting bashed by Kim, Zombies started to swarm up its leg. Frank had to not let them get into the mussels and cannons destroying its mechanisms, he had to get up.
He got into the correct sitting position and closed his eyes, gambling on the effectiveness of muscle memory and the BroBot’s will to power.
As Kim was about to slam Frank further into the ground, he Jet Li rolled to the left and equipped the Ergo Dox as punching glows. Super stiff switches helped set their mark on Kim’s face as Frank was typing at 150 wpm – the BroBot punched like a hurricane. Switching between body shots and ferocious hooks to the face, Kim was staggered. The BroBot ended its combo with an elbow into the head of Kim, sending him back several miles.
The shoulder cannons kept on firing Custom TKL’s at 600 boards per minute rapid fire, as the BroBot was charging up for a massive falcon punch. But just before connecting the punch, Kim Jung-Un swung his arm and revealing a terrifying scream. The shockwave shattered the window to Franks cockpit, exposing him to a tornado of gamma rays. He tried to shield himself from them using BroBot’s arms, but it was too little, too late. He was burning up. His skin felt like it was melting. The right eye just ran out of its socket and his face scorched. Fused to the chair, he vomited himself, and passed out. The BroBot fell in a twist backwards, facing down in the mud. Kim towered over him, he grabbed the BroBot by the neck, held it up, smiled at it, and threw it down to the shores of Vietnam. Planning to drown Frank in the South China Sea, he ran towards the crater were Frank lay half dead.
“Wake UP, Frank… no time for this, ****brain!! … don’t you… I will beat the **** you of you… initiate emergency sequences… start typing!!” Frank couldn’t compute with anything the Chief said anymore. He was looking out into the ocean. Satisfied with the solution that was at hand. Zombies had overrun the world anyways, there was nothing left fighting for.
He passed out. He started dreaming of gold. “Here Hector entered, with a spear eleven cubits long in his hand; the bronze point gleamed in front of him, and was fastened to the shaft of the spear by a ring of gold”.
Frank woke up. Kim hadn’t gotten hold of him yet. Through the corner of his eye he could see something shining at the shore.
“GET TO THE WATER FRANK!!!” the Chief was screaming in his ear.
At the shore there was a huge keyboard made of gold. It was transported to the coast by a fleet of tankers.
Frank touch typed as fast as he could, staggering down to the shore. He could see it now. It was a IBM Model M. The god mother of all keyboards. Frank reached to grab it. It’s weight was perfect. He had found his perfect keyboard. Energy was coming back to him. He would not let the zombies win. Zombies cannot touch-type!
Kim was flying at him. Telegraphing a giant swing with his abnormal arm. Frank had a serene calmness about him. He was enlightened. He had no longer the need for random words delivered to him. He was a philosopher at trade. So he started citing great works of philosophy.
“One does not simply touch-type Heidegger at 250 wpm, Frank!!? Stick with the program," the Chief was shouting in the com again.
But Frank had already started.
“Has Dasein itself, in the range of its concernful absorption in equipment ready-to-hand, a possibility of Being in which the worldhood of those entities within-the-world with which it is concerned is, in a certain way, lit up for it, along with those entities themselves?”
“We shall seek the worldhood of the environment (environmentality) by going through an ontological Interpretation of those entities within-the-environment which we encounteras closest to us”
Frank was typing faster and faster. Everything in the universe except the fingers of Frank seemed to be going so slow as standing still. Frank finished it off the series of quotations with a huge sentence from Kant, “And then nothing can protect us against a complete falling away from our Ideas of duty, or can preserve in the soul a grounded reverence for its law, except the clear conviction that even if there never have been actions springing from such pure sources, the question at issue here is not whether this or that has happened; that, on the contrary, reason by itself and independently of all appearances commands what ought to happen; that consequently actions of which the world has perhaps hitherto given no example—actions whose practicability might well be doubted by those who rest everything on experience—are nevertheless commanded unrelentingly by reason; and that, for instance, although up to now there may have existed no loyal friend, pure loyalty in friendship can be no less required from every man, inasmuch as this duty, prior to all experience, is contained as duty in general in the Idea of a reason which determines the will by a priori grounds.”
The BroBot dived in a roll, under the arm of the radioactive zombie, Kim Jung-Un and stood up behind him, swung his gold Model M. It crushed Kim’s torso into particles. Just as it happened Frank fainted.
The aftermath
A cloud of long range chinooks came flying towards Frank. They lifted the BroBot across the Pacific, home to ‘murica. Frank was in a coma at the hospital for 4 months. After waking up he was awarded with the smiley badge in a ceremony at Nevada and a doctor’s degree in philosophy at his local university. He cried a solitary tear from the clear blue eye on his pale face.
(Written on a Ducky Mini and a Ducky YYY)
- Frank
