Post by occulo on Oct 4, 2015 16:15:28 GMT -5
Occulo is in his dressing room hammering away at a punching bag. He looks pumped and extremely excited about his in-ring return. So he should be, considering the prize. He stops and takes a breather.
Occulo: It’s time for a fucking War. A War where the only survivor has the chance to cement himself as the King. I’ve been out for a long time. I know. But I’m going to shake off that rust and prove that I really am the best in this company.
He stops and laughs to himself, shaking his head
How droll.
He walks over to the sink and wets a cloth with cold water, before splashing it onto his face. He takes a deep breath and sighs
It’s funny how everybody here is the best in the company. Bland self-promotion after bland self-promotion. I mean I could stand here telling you all about how I’m going to beat everyone in that ring with ease and how nobody holds a candle to my excellence. I could say that, but what’s the point?
I’m just going to throw all my cards on the table and be as honest as I can. At War, I’m going fight at my best. I’m going to battle those other hopefuls using everything in my arsenal and survive for as long as I possibly can. I’m going to encapsulate the pure exhilaration of finally being back between the ropes and show the WCF that Occulo is definitely back. Go out there and express myself as professional wrestler. That’s the plan. That’s the protocol. That’s not what the system anticipates. I want to…gaze into its eyes and dissect. I’m a unit, a string of code that can have its values modified to amplify results and gains and deleted when they dip just that little too far.
Everyone here is a value that fluctuates on a constant basis, like what do they call it on the “user interface”…a Power Ranking. Wrestler A is no.3 this week, a drop from no.1 because he lost to wrestler B who was ranked 7. For some reason that computes as a drop. For some reason that little display of objectivity matters.
Everything here isn’t as subjective as we think. The reaction from an audience to what a wrestler does or says is only as comparable to
A: The best reaction of the night
B: The worst
If the system says you beat A then bang, welcome to the top. Do worse than B, the system shuts the door on you and stores you away in a room, to be computed later as perhaps overexposed or just not relevant anymore. You’re over or under. Two states of being of a wrestler. 1 or 0. That’s all folks.
He grabs a rubix cube, a mixed up one and sits down on his chair.
So, what is War? Well, at the moment I see the WCF like this. Colours mismatched due to months and months of intertwining storylines, construction and deconstruction of stables and partnerships, wrestlers coming, wrestlers going. The system needs each side…
He rotates the cube, looking at all sides
…each side that represents the different colour code of wrestlers here. The Joey Flash and Jonny Flys, the Oblivions and Johnny Rebs, the Kaz Mazys and the Bobby Cairos have all become mixed up and order needs to be found. So an automation, a macro, a program is created by the system.
As he speaks he quickly solves the rubix cube
Throw all of the units together in the ring and suddenly the system knows how each unit responds to each unit. War is an experimental, sorting system that’s conclusion is one unit that performed better than all others. This unit is singled out by the system and protected as it exists as the future of the system’s performance. The talisman. The potential champion.
He holds the completed cube up
Order is found and the optimal unit is born out of the number crunching. The other colours just simply and happily fall in line, just happy to make up the completed program. They are all held together, held together by one thing, order and shape.
He lowers the cube and starts detaching each individual cube, laying each one out in a line on his desk.
Take the shape away and suddenly these things exist on their own. No longer held together by the functionality and moved by the rotation. They can only exist like this before and after they live in the system.
The camera rewinds Occulo taking the cube apart until it is whole again, and then plays as normal
But just what if one of these units acted autonomously?
He shows the cube with one smaller cube missing
The shape is suddenly…irregular. This colour isn’t happily sat in its place. It isn’t…complete. The process is repeated endlessly with nobody batting an eyelid. This is the career they’ve chosen. This is the process they’ve chosen. This is a process I chose. I fell into place. I was loved, and I was hated. I put my body through hell to near retirement on numerous occasions. What did I achieve? A United States title and a couple of matches away from the World Title. I was the unit just not quite defined as ‘optimal’ by the system. I was the nearly man and the underdog. It’s what the audience likes these days. It’s what the system liked and labelled me and stored me as.
Then I was damaged. Damaged on the cusp of becoming the best in the company and down to the bottom of the ladder I went. I was the detached cube painted black on all sides.
I’ve been given another chance though. I’ve been given a new opportunity.
I have been given a second wind by my own will and determination that this journey won’t end here. I’m not done with the system and I know the system isn’t done with me.
He takes his top off, revealing the scar on his torso
When I was laying on the stretcher, with my insides feeling like death, I questioned who I was. How big can an injury be that it leaves you there questioning just…who are you? What is with this co-existence between me and The Cold? I thought about the conversations with Frigus and how close to death I was. But…since that night, I spent weeks staring up at the same glowing light on the end of the grey lamp that was suspended above my bed in the hospital. The Cold never even spoke to me. I wondered if it really took a life changing injury to finally push me over the line from his world and into this. It felt like the end of everything. The end of my wrestling career, and the end of those…experiences.
Until…until one night he came back. I woke in the middle of the night and he was stood at the foot of my bed with Frigus. They told me I had unfinished business. They told me this wasn’t the end, and then bang. They disappeared. The next day I was checked up and the doctor told me I had defied the odds and I’d be able to compete again. For so long I wondered, did they really come back or was it a dream? I had to know. I had to know if I was returning to my career with or without them.
3rd August. The birthday of John Mullins Senior. I thought what better day for me to go through my belongings and dispose of anything that bore any memory I had of him. This action seemed to be the very thing that opened the door for their return. The Cold appeared clear as day and took my hand. “Not here” he said. “Leave your memories of him in my world”. Everything blurred away and I was suddenly in this moonlit forest stood before a stone well which seemed bottomless, a black hole from which nothing could escape and everything was destroyed. I dropped these memories into the well. I felt liberated. I felt ready. I finally felt autonomous.
I felt ready to begin anew. To stare into the eyes of the system of the WCF and dissect it in my own way to finally say that I have done this my way. The world title is there for the taking. I can now exist purely as Occulo. I had so long to think about the WCF and think of it as the system I have explained. Before everything was convoluted, but now everything is just so simple. Keep your eyes on the prize and go and win it purely by just being myself under the rule of nobody.
I found solace in The Sentinels before I got injured, and it is clear to me now more than ever how and why I found such comfort and clockwork with them. Those two had this aura of autonomy which has laid dormant in my mind until now. Now it is sparked, now it is who I am.
WCF, I am ready for you. I am going to approach you with a freedom not even your system can shackle. Dune, I will always look at you as a great friend and one I owe a debt to. Howard, I pray that you recover so I can help you in the same way you helped me.
I will begin again in the slipstream of the memory of our union, however brief it was.
He smiles widely in pure excitement
My name is Occulo, and I am free. I am going to fight a war with a second wind and I am going to confuse the system. Dissect the system. Challenge the system. Become a champion outside the system.
Let the WAR begin.
END
Occulo: It’s time for a fucking War. A War where the only survivor has the chance to cement himself as the King. I’ve been out for a long time. I know. But I’m going to shake off that rust and prove that I really am the best in this company.
He stops and laughs to himself, shaking his head
How droll.
He walks over to the sink and wets a cloth with cold water, before splashing it onto his face. He takes a deep breath and sighs
It’s funny how everybody here is the best in the company. Bland self-promotion after bland self-promotion. I mean I could stand here telling you all about how I’m going to beat everyone in that ring with ease and how nobody holds a candle to my excellence. I could say that, but what’s the point?
I’m just going to throw all my cards on the table and be as honest as I can. At War, I’m going fight at my best. I’m going to battle those other hopefuls using everything in my arsenal and survive for as long as I possibly can. I’m going to encapsulate the pure exhilaration of finally being back between the ropes and show the WCF that Occulo is definitely back. Go out there and express myself as professional wrestler. That’s the plan. That’s the protocol. That’s not what the system anticipates. I want to…gaze into its eyes and dissect. I’m a unit, a string of code that can have its values modified to amplify results and gains and deleted when they dip just that little too far.
Everyone here is a value that fluctuates on a constant basis, like what do they call it on the “user interface”…a Power Ranking. Wrestler A is no.3 this week, a drop from no.1 because he lost to wrestler B who was ranked 7. For some reason that computes as a drop. For some reason that little display of objectivity matters.
Everything here isn’t as subjective as we think. The reaction from an audience to what a wrestler does or says is only as comparable to
A: The best reaction of the night
B: The worst
If the system says you beat A then bang, welcome to the top. Do worse than B, the system shuts the door on you and stores you away in a room, to be computed later as perhaps overexposed or just not relevant anymore. You’re over or under. Two states of being of a wrestler. 1 or 0. That’s all folks.
He grabs a rubix cube, a mixed up one and sits down on his chair.
So, what is War? Well, at the moment I see the WCF like this. Colours mismatched due to months and months of intertwining storylines, construction and deconstruction of stables and partnerships, wrestlers coming, wrestlers going. The system needs each side…
He rotates the cube, looking at all sides
…each side that represents the different colour code of wrestlers here. The Joey Flash and Jonny Flys, the Oblivions and Johnny Rebs, the Kaz Mazys and the Bobby Cairos have all become mixed up and order needs to be found. So an automation, a macro, a program is created by the system.
As he speaks he quickly solves the rubix cube
Throw all of the units together in the ring and suddenly the system knows how each unit responds to each unit. War is an experimental, sorting system that’s conclusion is one unit that performed better than all others. This unit is singled out by the system and protected as it exists as the future of the system’s performance. The talisman. The potential champion.
He holds the completed cube up
Order is found and the optimal unit is born out of the number crunching. The other colours just simply and happily fall in line, just happy to make up the completed program. They are all held together, held together by one thing, order and shape.
He lowers the cube and starts detaching each individual cube, laying each one out in a line on his desk.
Take the shape away and suddenly these things exist on their own. No longer held together by the functionality and moved by the rotation. They can only exist like this before and after they live in the system.
The camera rewinds Occulo taking the cube apart until it is whole again, and then plays as normal
But just what if one of these units acted autonomously?
He shows the cube with one smaller cube missing
The shape is suddenly…irregular. This colour isn’t happily sat in its place. It isn’t…complete. The process is repeated endlessly with nobody batting an eyelid. This is the career they’ve chosen. This is the process they’ve chosen. This is a process I chose. I fell into place. I was loved, and I was hated. I put my body through hell to near retirement on numerous occasions. What did I achieve? A United States title and a couple of matches away from the World Title. I was the unit just not quite defined as ‘optimal’ by the system. I was the nearly man and the underdog. It’s what the audience likes these days. It’s what the system liked and labelled me and stored me as.
Then I was damaged. Damaged on the cusp of becoming the best in the company and down to the bottom of the ladder I went. I was the detached cube painted black on all sides.
I’ve been given another chance though. I’ve been given a new opportunity.
I have been given a second wind by my own will and determination that this journey won’t end here. I’m not done with the system and I know the system isn’t done with me.
He takes his top off, revealing the scar on his torso
When I was laying on the stretcher, with my insides feeling like death, I questioned who I was. How big can an injury be that it leaves you there questioning just…who are you? What is with this co-existence between me and The Cold? I thought about the conversations with Frigus and how close to death I was. But…since that night, I spent weeks staring up at the same glowing light on the end of the grey lamp that was suspended above my bed in the hospital. The Cold never even spoke to me. I wondered if it really took a life changing injury to finally push me over the line from his world and into this. It felt like the end of everything. The end of my wrestling career, and the end of those…experiences.
Until…until one night he came back. I woke in the middle of the night and he was stood at the foot of my bed with Frigus. They told me I had unfinished business. They told me this wasn’t the end, and then bang. They disappeared. The next day I was checked up and the doctor told me I had defied the odds and I’d be able to compete again. For so long I wondered, did they really come back or was it a dream? I had to know. I had to know if I was returning to my career with or without them.
3rd August. The birthday of John Mullins Senior. I thought what better day for me to go through my belongings and dispose of anything that bore any memory I had of him. This action seemed to be the very thing that opened the door for their return. The Cold appeared clear as day and took my hand. “Not here” he said. “Leave your memories of him in my world”. Everything blurred away and I was suddenly in this moonlit forest stood before a stone well which seemed bottomless, a black hole from which nothing could escape and everything was destroyed. I dropped these memories into the well. I felt liberated. I felt ready. I finally felt autonomous.
I felt ready to begin anew. To stare into the eyes of the system of the WCF and dissect it in my own way to finally say that I have done this my way. The world title is there for the taking. I can now exist purely as Occulo. I had so long to think about the WCF and think of it as the system I have explained. Before everything was convoluted, but now everything is just so simple. Keep your eyes on the prize and go and win it purely by just being myself under the rule of nobody.
I found solace in The Sentinels before I got injured, and it is clear to me now more than ever how and why I found such comfort and clockwork with them. Those two had this aura of autonomy which has laid dormant in my mind until now. Now it is sparked, now it is who I am.
WCF, I am ready for you. I am going to approach you with a freedom not even your system can shackle. Dune, I will always look at you as a great friend and one I owe a debt to. Howard, I pray that you recover so I can help you in the same way you helped me.
I will begin again in the slipstream of the memory of our union, however brief it was.
He smiles widely in pure excitement
My name is Occulo, and I am free. I am going to fight a war with a second wind and I am going to confuse the system. Dissect the system. Challenge the system. Become a champion outside the system.
Let the WAR begin.
END
