Blood Sport Season 4 - THAT Host (Round 3)

ROUND 3 EDIT: The bot has arms now! He also has made a bit of a bloody mess...probably courtesy of those poor people that attached those arms.

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On the Deck of the Massive…

“My Lord Tallests!  I am pleased to report that the Breepabraps are totally pacified!”  Invader Phlegm stopped to bow.  Behind him, a pair of Breepabraps stood sullenly in their manacles and shook maracas with a complete lack of enthusiasm.

“That’s… that’s great, Phlegm!”  Purple managed, his smile trending more towards a grimace.  “You’re-a-credit-to-our-race-gotta-go-bye!” Unable to tear his eyes from the screen, his fingers rammed three or four buttons on the remote before they properly cut the feed.  “Yeesh.”  Purple fell backwards like a puppet with his strings cut, finally able to close his poor eyes.

“He’s gotten really hard to look at,” Red muttered, tossing away the churro he decided not to finish.

“He should really get that mole checked out,” Purple agreed.  “What’s next?  Are we almost done yet?”

The Imperial Day Planner swallowed behind his high collar.  “Next, my lords, is the matter of… That Planet.”  The screen flickered to life with image of a temperate, modestly-sized blue planet.  Well, it was certainly blue after Purple had screwed with the remote; the color balance was way out of whack.

The Tallests’ faces, already tinged with disgust, reached new shades as apprehension joined the party.  “Not THAT PLANET!” Purple gasped.  “Wait, which one was that?”

“It was the planet with That Thing…” Red hissed.  Purple blinked.  “We locked it in That Vault.”  Still no recognition.  “Look, take my word for it, we gotta ditch this planet without making it obvious that we’re trying to ditch this planet.”

Purple screwed up his face in thought, a process he wasn’t particularly used to.  “Ooh, we could give it away as a prize for one of those Blood-Sports!  People will be like, ‘if we’ve gotta fight for it, it must be a pretty good planet!’”

Red rubbed his chin.  “We haven’t had a Blood-Sport in a while… and people loved that circus!”  He pointed at the Day Planner.  “Why haven’t we had a Blood-Sport recently?”

The aide blinked.  “Both of the last two showrunners went mad with power.”

“Oh, right.”  Red sighed.  “Can’t trust anybody with that job, they’ll start shooting satellite lasers everywhere.”

“Ooh!”  Purple flailed his arms, struck with inspiration.  “Make a Control Brain run it!  Those things are super logical and stuff!”

“Two ideas?  You’re on point today.”  Red smiled with the satisfaction of not having to do anything itself.  “It’s settled, then.  New Blood-Sport, grand prize is That Planet and also not dying, assign a Control Brain to handle literally every other detail.  Make it so.”

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And So...

“Yeah, that’s a great idea, Frob.”  The Control Brain Technician sighed and tapped his fat fingers on the desk, speaking into his commlink.  “But we don’t have a Control Brain to spare!  They’re all tied up running billions of calculations per second!  If we reroute just one, then Devastis’s budge will fall apart, or there won’t be a new flavor of cola next fall!  We can’t make that kind of sacrifice!”  He sighed at the retching, squealing noises coming out of his commlink.  “Yeah, I’ll make it happen.”  The Tech turned to his assistant.  “Have we got any Control Brains running at only 99.9% efficiency?  Running a deathmatch can’t be that hard.”

“Actually,” the Assistant Tech said, “we have that one Control Brain sitting around not connected to anything, just collecting dust.”  Her superior glared at her.  “It’s… uh… really dusty in there…”

“Hook it up, then!” the Tech snapped.  “For Irk’s sake, no reason to let a good biomechanical supercomputer go to waste!”  The Assistant Tech nodded and scurried into the back room of the facility, looking for Control Brain BX4.  She found it easily enough.  It was her job to know where each Control Brain was and how to assign them to given tasks.

Within one minute of its awakening, BX4 was downloading all knowledge on the topics of Blood-Sports, survival competitions in the Irken Empire and related space, hosting, and That Planet (although there was some redacted data in that last folder).  By minute three, it had already contacted Irk3 Radio Station to secure Tjazz’s return in an official capacity, based on data of her previous broadcasts.

At minute four, it began drawing up lists of potential candidates from all of the Empire’s many databases, from the Most Wanted to the Medal of Valor Nominee list to the List of Beings Expunged from Other Lists.  Some would be enticed by the prize.  Others would need to be forced, or cajoled, or blackmailed.  These would be arranged.  Still others would send proxies to compete for them, and some of these proxies would in turn need to be forced, cajoled, or blackmailed, or send proxies of their own.  A unique few would come here by accident.  Even a supercomputer couldn’t account for every random chance… but it could account for the fact that it couldn’t account for them.

At minute nine, it realized it would need to interact with the contestants and audience, in order to fulfill its duties as a host.  The audience and contestants would be organics… they would interact better with a friendly face.  A face!  BX4 immediately designated resources to the design and commission of an android body to facilitate interaction.  The control brain revved its cooling fans in satisfaction and turned back to the task of overseeing contestants.  After all, the quality of the Blood-Sport was ultimately in their hands…

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Story above written by

Art and design by me and everybody who watched and helped me create this monstrosity (and its later forms 8P)



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