Chapter Text
July 11th, 2020
Location Unknown
7:21 local time
A certain man walks into what seems to be an office. The room isn’t too large, but it’s all he needs; he doesn’t have too much to put on the shelves, anyway: just some books on basic physics, mechanics, software development, video editing, and music theory. The most important stuff is kept on his computer (and three backup drives, after the last incident) on the desk in the middle of the room, which he immediately walks towards. As he turns it on, he glances at the window, to be met with an amazing view of the entire facility: all those buildings, the equipment inside them, and the people operating it… To think that just a few months earlier, all this used to be jungle. Then again, the view will get even more impressive soon enough.
“Welcome back, SMG3. What will it be this time?”
A disembodied female text-to-speech voice snaps him out of his trance and makes him shift his attention back to his computer.
“Status report.”
“The facility is operating at 98% efficiency, all personnel is accounted for, and there have been no intruders in our vicinity lately. Server and power loads are both nominal.”
“98% efficiency? Did something happen?” SMG3 asks.
“There has been an accident involving a forklift, a jar of mayonnaise, and the power lines in Sector C at exactly 2:34 today. The power lines have been fixed already, but the forklift and mayonnaise are both missing. This should not slow the project down.”
“Alright, I can live with that. What about Snitch.exe?”
“Despite the program being corrupted by its storage unit coming into contact with your morning coffee-“
“Ai! Didn’t I tell you we were supposed to forget about that?” SMG3 interrupts before the voice goes any further.
“Why? I thought it was my job to record everything which happens here?” despite her voice being completely emotionless, SMG3 knows full well that she’s being sarcastic. He doesn’t have energy to argue, not so early in the morning. He sighs and continues.
“Whatever. So what about that program?”
“All of its original code was able to be recovered. It is being uploaded into the main server at this moment.”
“That’s good to hear. So all we need now is more fuel and we’re ready to go, right?”
“That, and some minor structural improvements.”
“Excellent.”
This is it, this is the final stretch: the project is almost finished. And once it is… Everyone will finally know the name SMG3. However… There’s just one more thing he needs to do before he’s truly satisfied. There is one person in particular that needs to know of his intentions sooner rather than later. After all, his triumph will be so much sweeter if it’s combined with another, more personal victory.
“Ai?” he calls out his virtual assistant’s name.
“What is it?”
“Open Twitter. I have a dm to send.”
Just as he says that, the homepage of that site appears on his computer’s screen. He logs in and starts searching for a certain person. A person SMG3 hates the most. Whose shadow he was forced to live in for the last decade. Who had everything he was denied.
SMG4.