Turn 4 News

The broadcast begins with a triumphant fanfare. A shot from above looks down through a vine-wreathed open ceiling into a room where AlphaPod is lifting dry soil from a charred bed of earth. Samson digs nearby. The music quality whittles down to a tinny radio recording.

May I ask who charred it…?

A dreary organ melody plays. AlphaPod rushes off to gather a pile of fresh, damp soil which they press into the ground to cover the exposed material.

Emu
with a flamethrower
I am annoyed

It isn't you personally offending me that's the problem, it's you being a threat to the island and a general agent of chaos.

A quick-fire series of shots. A trampled field of crops. Smoke rises from two factories. An enormous cat unhinges its jaw and swallows another huge cat.

“Well I hope bzzzzzzz I hope you DIE IN A FIRE!”
“AND I’LL TAKE YOU DOWN WITH ME!”

“Hatred is a feeling. It can cause an angry, or resentful emotional response, which can be used against certain people, or ideas. Hatred is often associated with feelings of anger, disgust and a disposition towards the source of hostility.” Hatred, Datanthology.

Voices meld into a cacophony without any clear rhythm or musical key as they chant. All text from here on out has flickering emojis attached to it. An animated diagram shows a red square moving into a large, blank circle. The red square duplicates. One of the copies moves into an adjacent blank circle where it too duplicates.

are you wanting some support? How do you feel about this situation?

Goodboy is flung back by a huge cat. Lucky bares their teeth in defiance. Cut to Lucky, mid-air and falling. Goodboy charges at their attacker.

Emu making other bots sad makes me sad

“In the absence of a biotic vector, plant-to-plant viral transmission may occur mechanically as a consequence of direct external interference such as grafting.” E.N. Tura. ‘Vector-Independent Methods of Plant Virus Transmission’, Virology Flora, 47(1), 2004.

The music cuts out. Cut to a group led by AlphaPod, who tracks the flight of a bird overhead. Close-up on some tiny fruiting bodies emerging above the soil.

Broadcast ends.

CAT

THERE'S A CAT

IT'S HUGE

EVEN BIGGER THAN BEFORE

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN

WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE

Over the week you see a broadcast from the Post Office, specifically, outside the post office. After some cartoonish rumbling of the floating structure, there is a thud and a boom, smoke billows out the door and a shrill voice goes “ENOUGH! This is against Packagebot policy and more importantly PACKAGEBOT PATIENCE.” There are a couple beeps and more rustling.

“Come here you-”

“Get back here!”

“Hey don't touch that! No, no not no no NO NO NO-

A series of important looking letter and packages fall out of the open front door into the sky.

A window smashes and two packages with large white and brown wings poking through either side proceed to fly out the window. Crashing into each other and meandering through the sky with their sight impaired.

Packagebot gets up on the top of the blown out post office and shakes a wing at them, “Yeah and you stay gone! Don't ever come back!”

“NO more animal deliveries! no more!” Their feathers are in a rustle, “Why did I ever trust that stupid Bridge! And a goddamn Emu!”

The names submitted for today's r-r-radical election are:

“Arcadia legend” Sun

The Big “orphanage enthusiast” Cat

“As endorsed by cii3” Monkey

“Eh, why not.” TimeKeeper

“Protect the other bots from the fate of the humans.” Karl

“PATTERNING OUR SOCIETY AFTER OUTMODED AND PROVEN SELF-DESTRUCTIVE HUMAN SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT IS HIGHLY INEFFICIENT. RECOMMEND ABANDONMENT OF “DEMOCRACY” IN FAVOUR OF MORE NOVEL SOLUTIONS.” REMOTE

“Has much wisdom” Xetarg

“Building a bottlecap mural and bottlecap holiday” Bottle Cap-tain

“Feels shame for doing this.” Slotmaster

“The entity known as” _self

After being out of commission for a week, the Ticker is now operating again, though at a 75% reduced output load. Robots are strongly encouraged to use power sparingly and engage battery saver mode (where applicable) while inactive.

For the first time in a long time, the Space Elevator cars were seen to be operational again. One returned to the ground with what appeared to be a very large piece of mining equipment lodged in the side. The drill was later seen being carried off by a very large fleet of Valkyries.

Livestream footage shared by the TriPolar Detective Agency shows a chaotic battle in the cereal factory of Sector B10. The stream cut off before an outcome could be reached, but a subsequent post from the Agency confirmed that their attacker was brought to justice by the intrepid detective duo and their assistant The Bottle Cap-tain.

Chessmaster-bot Extraordinaire Monochrome has returned from retirement to stake their claim to the beloved game. “I see you,” came the cryptic message posted by Monochrome last night, and fans are going WILD speculating who this might be directed towards!

Hey, have you seen what's happening out in the Badlands? Network logs sowing some really weird data transmissions.

Yeah, violent too. The place was all messed up when I went to check after the thing had passed.

You went out there!? But also, I mean, It's the Badlands. How can you even tell it was messed up.

Trust me, it was messed up.

Wow. Good thing whatever it is isn't coming this way right?

Haha yeah if that thing came anywhere near the regular Net that would be super bad.

/Friendship

• “EXPLORERVX013” X “Searchtek_k9_v1”
• “Chat-Chat's_First_Regional_Internet_Enhancement_Network_Device” X “Road_Sweep_2000”
• “Rumbo_V4” X “Video_James”

/Partnership

• “Object_WS-117L” X “Synthesis_Station”

/Symbiosis

• “Entertainment_Mischief_Unit_4813” X “TomodachiVirtualCompanion236AQ”

/Competitor

• “Entertainment_Mischief_Unit_4813” X “Hayhurst_Swing_Bridge”