Blame!² (ブラム!² Buramu! Tsu), also titled Blame!2 Eighth-Generation Pcell’s Megastructure Escape Chronicle, is a one-shot chapter that takes place after the events of Blame!. It was published in Morning Bessatsu Mandala #2, 2008, and collected in Blame Gakuen! and So On, 2008.
Synopsis[]
A community of Silicon creatures lives in an area of the City where the Netsphere has been shut down entirely. Their religion mythologizes the now-ancient story of Killy and his quest, and forbids interfering with Netsphere artifacts.
The community is assaulted by humans using a hijacked Builder. Only eight Silicon people survive, including a derivative version of Pcell, aged about one billion seconds (nearly 32 years). They are forced into a long journey, and are hunted by humans on further occasions. Eventually, only Pcell remains alive, now much older. She seeks to retrace Killy’s journey, hoping to find the legendary “end” of the City.
Pcell wanders into a human settlement and is gunned down, losing an arm and an eye. Her body lays dormant for 47 years to conserve energy, but reactivates when a Builder approaches. She extrudes a cable, connects to the Builder, and disables it. She recycles portions of the Builder to replace her arm.
The journey takes Pcell through many strange areas of the City. She reaches a possible exit through the outermost megastructure, but it is guarded by a matter conversion tower, still enforcing Netsphere security. Despite the teachings of her community, she attacks the tower and its Exterminators, but they disable her. Killy himself appears, rescues Pcell, and destroys the exit’s defenses.
Pcell retains a storage device with a backup of the memories of her people. Outside the City, her body reformats into a spacefaring form. She departs to restart her community somewhere else.
Trivia[]
- It seems that Killy saves the life of a Silicon creature, and sets her on a course to repopulate her race. This is a radical change in Killy’s agenda and mindset, as he has spent millenia hatefully killing Silicon creatures on sight. Perhaps, with the Safeguard’s control of the City finally waning, Killy has become receptive to a future in which humans and Silicon life might coexist.