Fictitious Rhombicuboctahedron

The dazzling instructions of the training program were still ringing in his brain as he was placed in front of the terminal. It was a swim or sink type of situation, and it was already sinking. The beep boop tiddly toot was ringing on the tingler and one of the monitors had seventy six circles doing rounds in a triangle shape. Twisting the knob that belonged to the monitor, the triangle tilted and revealed the 3D space where the circles lived. If he had only been born with a stereoptical lobe or better he wouldn’t have to use this stupid knob, but instead use some kind of wearable monitor one for each eye. He glanced towards one of the other new ones, who did perceive depth on a neurological level, and it didn’t even think about using the knob. Didn’t have to.

Oh god the toodly bitties then ticked right to the beat of the circles moving in and out of a certain pattern (a three-day experienced recruit would have known it as a B3, yet this guy misidentified it as a much rarer 90ZB) and moved his talking bits to an audio receptacle and made some unholy sounds as the clickclack was pressed and one of the (let’s consider them) feet pressed on a certain array of pedals. They went up and down and sometimes the feet would get caught in the mechanism and bleed(?) and hurt but he had to go on.

The circles didn’t do as he wanted, not at all, and as he heard his own voice over the tiny terminal speakers he shivered all over. The knob was twisted in the other direction, the circles now seemingly moving mirrored and as he aggressively twisted accidentally the bip was bipped and the screen added colors. “Holy” the thing started, realizing it was an everyday B3 and, if you wouldn’t have known him until now, almost skillfully reverse the pattern on the array of pedals. Now for the proper procedure, he just had to speak some more sounds and send some waves over the touchmachine.

There had been some alarm going off in the space, he was aware of it but no cycles could be spent on such tasks. It had to be solved. He already heard the electrical humming of devices that torture - you don’t want to be the one they make an example of, as they do with every batch - and tried not to think about the mere meters they were behind his back as the procedure was finished and the circles collapsed into one circle and the triangle faded and the feet let go of the pedals and the light stopped flashing and the beeps stopped beeping.

It was alright.

Humming receding, it was alright.

Now he has some moments to look at the terminal. The screen with the circles was somewhere on the right and it was a somewhat smaller one. There were eighteen other screens in various resolutions and dimensions. In total a terminal has 240 plain buttons, 27 pedals and various input machines so something would fit the thing that sat in front of it. There were two speakers and several knobs for those with various visual impairments. There were sliders and switches and things that pull out or push in. Some switches were digital and some were analog. There was always more than three ways do do a thing, and that was a good thing? The training program had said so.

The array of dots in between two of the monitors blinked all green and then blue and one by one the two hundred or so dots would die out and then the next thing would need doing. He twisted his lookers to scan the "operating floor". It was unimaginably big, as he was told in the training program, one operating floor contained more terminals and operators than some planets had inhabitants!

His friends from the training program (NOT mister stereoptical) were not near. What were their names again? He almost remembered a few. Not many were local - he was the only one - and all others were brought in by the company. It didn't pay too well, but a thing's gotta eat.

They teach you only one of the three ways in the training, the rest you have to find out. By accident? It didn't matter. One of the things that it learned itself was that if the pedals were chorded in the right way it didn't even hurt and could influence some of the visual interfaces so the stupid knob wouldn't need to be turned - what a relief.

The time was up and the work resumed and a sinking feeling appeared as three monitors showed the familiar circles moving in various patterns and in different rhythms. Pedals were pressed chords were made and for a short time the thing flowed with the circles and made them do what they needed to do. The various sounds and other feedback mechanisms reduced their excitations.

Electrical humming appeared again. It had gone alright hadn't it? things were as they should be on three of the monitors. Quickly he scanned all the screens, only three were on.. one was a little brighter than the ones that were really turned off... he flicked the screen and it... turned on? Well the circles went into the bad place according to the training. A message relaying a critical state was flashing on the latest monitor.

BZZZZZZZZT

A sharp pain entered his body.

BZZZZZZZZT

Before the pain had any chance to recede, the next jolt arrived. He almost passed out, but was aware of something grabbing him and forcefully dragging him over the floor. They were not taking him the way he had gotten in, it was somewhere towards the middle. He felt his body scrape against the hard floor and he felt bruising and some bleeding.

BZZZZZZZZT

With a light push (how bothersome that THEY needed to PUSH him, it felt like!) they sent him over the edge and into the hole. Due to the low gravity on the planet, the fall itself could be described as mildly pleasant. Every now and then there was the light of another floor of beings and their terminals, before he fell onto the pile of other beings at the bottom. Quite some were passed out (or passed away) from the earlier shocks, others were groaning, complaining and crying and dying at the bottom of the pit.

It was odd, for they were suspended for a while, then they would sink a half a meter or so. This pattern was repeated twice before another being dropped down into the hole, luckily not on top of him! But soon another, and another. He couldn't understand most of them as their languages were foreign to him, but that might actually be a good thing considering the situation they're in. Nobody wants to hear any of their cries! But it also didn't take long for there be enough beings falling down that he was completely buried in them. Breathing became more difficult. There were only grunts.

The thing now was the heat of the bodies concentrating, unidentifiable liquids dripping down, and the rhythmic moving down the tube. They must be in there with hundreds if not thousands of them. The lower they got, the louder a first ticking and later clanging sound appeared. In between the clanging, a growling noise appeared. And it become louder, and louder. They were almost there.

Deafeningly now a clang sounded, growl growl growl, and clang again. He could feel cold metal at the bottom if he stretched his feet(?). He almost passed out as breathing had become virtually impossible. Clang! And he fell.

He fell into the grinding teeth of the grinding mechanism, tearing and crushing and grinding whatever it was that made him. Below the grinding mechanism there was a particulate collection container, which guided his bits on a cleated conveyor belt, transporting him to the part of the building where he would be further processed into budget livestock feed for various third-world planets.

The End