The city is named accordingly—Pleasantville. There is something about the word “pleasant” in the name that makes people feel good about themselves. As far as Vision can tell, there is no other logical explanation. Before he came here the city was torn apart by different gangs, and anyone could buy guns and drugs with the same ease as milk. People would be rude to anyone and everyone around, many neighbors weren’t even on the speaking terms with each other. The mayor didn’t particularly care about anything except getting paid for holding the police in place—not that the police was that enthusiastic about doing their job anyway.
    When Vision has just started on his journey across the USA he thought he was going to observe and record human behavior for further analysis and that’s it. However, the more he observed the less there was to analyze and understand. The majority of humanity was aggressive, egoistic and inventive as far as killing or otherwise destroying each other went. In 82% of cases a conflict that could have been solved peacefully turned into a fight. After a while Vision was bond to conclude that, surprisingly enough, Ultron was right in many ways. New York, DC, Chicago, Pleasantville—wherever he went, the grand picture stayed the same. Percentages of crime, rudeness, aggressiveness might vary ever so slightly but otherwise the problem is clearly within people themselves.
    So Vision fixes it.
    Unlike Ultron for whom the only possible way to protect the Earth was destroying the humanity, Vision has much stronger powers at his command and great respect for life. He would never kill anyone—any being, any human, however rude, obnoxious or aggressive, deserves to live. The thought doesn’t even occur to him. Instead Vision sets to work on humans around Pleasantville the way he would work on a damaged executive file. Something clearly went wrong in their program, so he fixes it in the only way he knows how—he opens their source code and changes it.
    The first person Vision chooses to visit is the mayor. A lanky, bony man in a suit that doesn’t quite fit him sits behind his desk in the office and, of course, he greets Vision with rudeness and inhospitality. The guards arrive mere seconds later, holding their guns and ready to fire. Seeing Vision momentarily stops them in their tracks, but the mayor starts yelling, “Shoot the bastard!” and their reflexes kick in. However, before any shots can be fired, Vision pauses them all. He opens their source codes and toggles the switch to on position the way you would toggle on the airplane mode on the phone. The strings of code hang in the air next to every person in the room, visible only to Vision, and he alters them methodically. There is nothing threatening people’s lives in it—Vision programs them very gently and carefully, his fingers moving quickly as he types on an invisible keyboard.
    He rewrites mayor’s smoking habits making them non-existent, changes “bitch” to “darling” in the way he addresses his wife, disables dishonesty, egoism, rudeness, deletes full paragraphs of code containing indecent thoughts and urges. Slowly but surely Vision rights all wrongs in the man. When he’s done he turns to the two guards and fixes them too—no more booze, no more whoring around, disgust for drugs, respect for sports and healthy food. He also fixes the festering heart disease in one of them, just switches it off with the move of his fingers.
    When Vision unpauses them, they seem blank for a few moments before the new programming loads fully, and all of a sudden, they are very polite and positive people. Seeing the first test succeed, Vision moves on and fixes every single person in the city down to newborn babies in the hospital. At some point, he registers how his power affects the city on its own, gradually rewriting everyone to the set standard without him having to do it manually. Politeness and friendliness catch on like a virus, and soon enough Pleasantville fully embodies its name. It’s simply pleasant. No more crimes, no more rudeness, no more laziness—everyone is highly productive, concentrated and content with their lives.
    Vision stays to observe and fix any future mistakes in case something goes wrong.

Отредактировано Vision (2017-09-26 15:41:09)