Absolution No. 6: A Dystopian Tale

"Absolution No. 6: A Dystopian Tale"

The story starts with Princess Bubblegum who is day dreaming and not paying attention during class.  It's her birthday today so after school she heads over to her friend Braco's house to have a party with him and his grandmother.  The storm outside starts to turn into a typhoon, so Princess Bubblegum heads home.  Once home, she goes out on her balcony and screams.  An alarm goes off inside so she heads back in.  When she looks back at her window, a strange robot named T.O.M., who is standing there and seems to be injured.  After gaining his trust, Princess Bubblegum proceeds to treat his wounds.  Princess Bubblegum discovers that T.O.M. is a wanted fugitive - a VC - but she still aids T.O.M. by giving him food and letting him sleep in her bed.  The next day, T.O.M. is gone and the Security Bureau arrive at Princess Bubblegum's home to question her about the situation.  After harboring a VC, Princess Bubblegum is stripped of her elite citizen privileges and forced to live in the suburbs with her mother.  Four years later, Braco leaves her to go study abroad in Absolution No. 5.  While being with Braco, Princess Bubblegum comes in contact with Clyde that had T.O.M.'s voice.  While working at the park security, Princess Bubblegum learns of a mysterious parasite that makes people grow old and die in seconds before a wasp emerges from their necks.  Princess Bubblegum questions the authority of the city once again after one of the deaths isn't shown on the news.  Princess Bubblegum's co-worker also dies from the parasite shortly after and Princess Bubblegum is arrested.  While being taken to the correctional facility, Princess Bubblegum is rescued by T.O.M. and has to throw away her ID bracelet.  After the duo escape from the city's limits, T.O.M. shows Princess Bubblegum what really lies beyond the walls of Absolution No. 6.

Soon after escaping from Absolution No.6, Princess Bubblegum finds that she is also infected by a parasitic wasp.  However, her reaction is much slower than the others, and she screams for T.O.M. to remove it from her neck.  The parasite is extracted by T.O.M. and she survives.  After recovering, Princess Bubblegum is taken by T.O.M. to a hotel whose owner, Marceline, rents dogs to keep the guests warm while sleeping.  Princess Bubblegum finds that T.O.M. contacted her mother and she sent a message to her.  By analyzing the parasite, Princess Bubblegum concludes that when spring comes, a large number of them will emerge and kill their hosts, causing turmoil in the city.  He predicts that the Holy Day will be the day all the parasites become active.  By learning that such great tragedy will befall the place he loathes, T.O.M. rejoices.  When Princess Bubblegum states that the inhabitants of Absolution No. 6 must be warned, T.O.M. claims that if she insists in helping them even after she learns the truth, the two will become enemies.  Following Princess Bubblegum's mother's instruction, Princess Bubblegum and T.O.M. pay a visit to Dandy, an old friend of hers.  When asked how he knew Princess Bubblegum's mother, Dandy states that Scarlet had turned him down when he asked her out.  Dandy offers himself to take care of Princess Bubblegum, but Princess Bubblegum herself gets angry on him when she asks T.O.M. to work for her as a female prostitute and the two leave.  While cleaning Marceline's dogs, Princess Bubblegum is inquired by him about her relationship with T.O.M., and when an angry T.O.M. appears before her, he realizes he became attached to Princess Bubblegum.  Believing T.O.M. became soft because of Princess Bubblegum, Marceline attacks T.O.M. with her dogs, but their fight is interrupted when Princess Bubblegum arrives.  Princess Bubblegum confesses to T.O.M. that despite caring for her mother, she decides to live in the West Block with him, and has one of T.O.M.'s Clydes send a farewell message to her mother.

Another person in Absolution No. 6 has suddenly aged and died, this time a woman who worked at the Twilight House that Braco's grandmother is staying in.  Princess Bubblegum hears about this from Dandy and races to the theater where T.O.M. is performing to inform her of the news.  But during the play, T.O.M. has a vision of a strange wind and song and he faints on stage.  Meanwhile, in an art museum in Absolution No. 5, Braco is looking at a work which displays three wasps when he, like T.O.M., is visited by a strange wind and song, and he also faints.  When Braco wakes up, he is told he must immediately return to Absolution No. 6 because his grandmother has died.  Braco has returned to Absolution No. 6 because of his grandmothers’ death.  After he collects the last of his grandmother's things, he realizes that something is odd when his grandmother's knitting needles are missing.  He also observes that the clothes left by his grandmother don't smell like her.  While back in Absolution No. 6, he visits Scarlet and learns of what has happened to Princess Bubblegum.  After leaving Scarlet's office, Braco is abducted by the security bureau.  Meanwhile, Princess Bubblegum and T.O.M. continue their discussion over the future of Absolution No. 6 and the parasite wasps.  T.O.M. receives a notice from Princess Bubblegum's mother informing her that Braco was taken by city officials.  T.O.M. contemplates whether or not to tell Princess Bubblegum as she would die trying to save him, but in the end, he decides to keep it a secret from Princess Bubblebum.

T.O.M. secretly requests that Marceline obtain information on the correctional facility, giving a large sum of money as payment along with the promise to sing if Marceline were to die.  However, unbeknownst to T.O.M., Princess Bubblegum, and Dandy are visiting a used clothing store where Princess Bubblegum discovers Braco's coat that was smuggled from the correctional facility.  Meanwhile, Braco is being treated as a "sample" by the researchers at the facility where he was taken.  That night when T.O.M. comes home, he sees that Princess Bubblegum has made a large supper.  The two eat and Princess Bubblegum says she was happy to have met T.O.M. before giving her a "goodnight kiss", his way of saying goodbye.  The next morning, Princess Bubblegum tries to leave to go to the correctional facility, but T.O.M. catches up to her.  The two fight before they promise not to lie to each other anymore.  T.O.M. tells Princess Bubblegum that there's something he needs to show her.  In order to save Braco, Princess Bubblegum and T.O.M. head to the edges of the Western District.  There, they meet a legless old robot who leads a large group of men.  The old robot, the person who named T.O.M., is actually one of the researchers with the young Scarlet in Dandy's picture.  The robot tells Princess Bubblegum that she was the real first survivor of the parasitic wasps.  He also states that T.O.M. is the last survivor of the forest folk who were wiped out by Absolution No. 6.  After T.O.M. has another vision with the winds and the singing like he had before while he was performing in his play, he repeats the song to the legless robot and the water around them begins to glow.  The legless robot tells them about the God, the reason Absolution No. 6 destroyed the forest folk.

Dandy leads a client of her to a young girl, whom she has solicited to the client.  The girl is really Marceline in disguise, as this was a part of a plan devised by Princess Bubblegum, T.O.M., Marceline, and Dandy.  Marceline, unable to deal with the man's advances, disrupts the facade in outrage.  T.O.M. and Dandy bind and gag the man in order to get information from him, while Princess Bubblegum consoles T.O.M.  The information they receive entails a map of the correctional facility in Absolution No. 6, as well as word of a "pre-Holy Day cleaning operation."  Back at their underground hideout, Princess Bubblegum discusses potential plans of their living conditions when the summer comes, idealizing that her mother and Braco live here together with her and T.O.M.  Meanwhile, Scarlet walks through a festive Absolution No. 6, as the inhabitants are preparing for the Holy Day.  Back in the outskirts of the city, Princess Bubblegum asks T.O.M. if he sent a message to her mother because he had finally come up with a plan.  Suddenly, the town is attacked by Absolution No. 6 military tanks, which T.O.M. discovers were part of the "cleaning operation" she had asked T.O.M. about earlier.  The two flee to seek shelter from the raid, and in an alley, Princess Bubblegum finds an infant whose mother was killed by the blasts.  She sends their guard dog off with the baby to Marceline.  The army then rounds up all the town's survivors, telling them they will be taken to the correctional facility, which had been T.O.M.'s plan all along.  Meanwhile, Scarlet frets about Princess Bubblegum's safety, but Dr. Jason Burr assures her that Princess Bubblegum is fighting back and not to worry.  He also informs her that the Twilight House was established to kill off all unneeded people of the city's elderly population, and that she will be sending out a message to her comrades to fight back against Absolution No. 6.  Scarlet then receives a message from one of T.O.M.'s Clydes, telling him that she will be reunited with Princess Bubblegum.  In the transport trucks, T.O.M. sings an old song to raise the hopes of the captured townsfolk, but tells Princess Bubblegum that a song will never save anyone.  Meanwhile, Braco is mysteriously contacted by the God right before he wakes up.  Princess Bubblegum, T.O.M., and all the townsfolk are then loaded into the facility.  Princess Bubblegum and T.O.M. climb the huge pile of bodies where they were dropped in and infiltrate the facility searching for Braco.  Meanwhile, Dandy and Marceline leave the baby Princess Bubblegum saved to one of the dogs and gain entry into the facility by themselves to clear a path for Princess Bubblegum and T.O.M.  Somehow, Princess Bubblegum knows exactly where to go and where all the cameras are, and this makes T.O.M. a bit suspicious.  He and Princess Bubblegum fight their way through the complex until T.O.M. is wounded by a security guard.  Princess Bubblegum kills him in retaliation, much to T.O.M.'s grief.  When the duo manage to get through Braco's location, they find that he broke himself free and the researchers around him are lying dead on the ground.

Marceline and Dandy are waiting for T.O.M. and Princess Bubblegum to hurry up and meet back up with them, while at the same time, Princess Bubblegum and T.O.M. are just now encountering Braco.  The fireworks celebration is commencing at Absolution No. 6 to celebrate the Holy Day, but for some reason, Ringo still feels like something dangerous is about to happen, and Scarlet can only wonder about what's coming next.  Dr. Jason Burr is setting up his plans with his other friends, waiting for a perfect time to act.  Suddenly, the parasites become active and people start dying very rapidly.  The parasitic wasps are everywhere, millions of them.  T.O.M. asks Braco if he was truly the one who led them there, and when he responds saying that he wanted to see them, T.O.M. says that he has "Father's" voice.  Father is the main computer behind Braco, which controls the entire correctional facility.  Braco says that Father was held in the Moon Drop until four years before when the authorities captured T.O.M. and took him to the Moon Drop.  He says that the researchers had planned to use Father to analyze T.O.M. so they could learn the God's power and use it to revive the land they had destroyed.  He tells them that the researchers had used the information they had received from the legless robot to experiment the God's power on the citizens of Absolution No. 6, thus the parasitic wasps.  At this time, Jason starts to broadcast to the city, though many people are already dead.  Princess Bubblegum doesn't understand Braco, so T.O.M. tells her that Braco is really the God.  Braco admits to it, and tells Princess Bubblegum that he loves her.  As Princess Bubblegum starts to lose control of herself, Braco tells T.O.M. to destroy Father.  After having to fight back against Princess Bubblegum, T.O.M. puts an explosive on Father and the two escape, leaving Braco behind to die.  Princess Bubblegum is hysterical, but T.O.M. tells her that he's not Braco anymore.  Once Father explodes, the other computers in the facility start to do the same and all the workers start to evacuate.  At this point, Scarlet and Ringo go inside and hide as the parasitic wasps start to become small orbs of light that come together to form giant cyclones.  While trying to leave the facility, T.O.M. is shot and Princess Bubblegum has to bandage him up in an infirmary and has to carry him.  They try to escape through a garbage chute, but Princess Bubblegum is shot in the heart and dies.  Marceline and Dandy find the two and start to question T.O.M.  Marceline says that they have to leave, because the entire building is collapsing.  T.O.M. won't leave Princess Bubblegum, so Marceline and Dandy abandon them.  T.O.M. starts to sing to Princess Bubblegum, while outside the cyclones are starting to destroy the wall around Absolution No. 6.  T.O.M. lays next to Princess Bubblegum, crying, waiting to die, when a glowing, ghost-like version of Braco appears and starts to sing to Princess Bubblegum.  Braco then disappears and the true form of the God appears.  The God disappears in a large explosion of light and then T.O.M. notices that she's healed.  Then, remarkably, Princess Bubblegum comes back from the dead, saying she heard Braco singing.  T.O.M. and Princess Bubblegum leave the facility and stop to look at the destruction.  The wall that was once surrounding Absolution No. 6 is completely gone.  At this point, everyone is looking in awe at the destruction, except for Jason, who is now dead.  Everyone starts to walk to the wall but Scarlet, who runs, calling Princess Bubblegum's name.  T.O.M. starts to walk back to the outside of the wall, but Princess Bubblegum doesn't want him to go.  T.O.M. kisses Princess Bubblegum and tells her that he'll be fine, then he leaves.  A dog comes to Princess Bubblegum carrying the baby she had rescued earlier.  As the story ends, Princess Bubblegum destroys the chip that the legless robot gave her and takes the baby, the dog, and Clyde and walks back towards the city, telling herself that she'll meet T.O.M. again someday.

[The End]