Louise in Space: Mirror Thread

It was the same summoning that had repeated itself countless times, across countless facets of the Kaleidoscope.

"Show us, Zero!" Kirche jeereed as Louise Francoise Le Blanc De La Valliere prepared to summon.

Trying to ignore Kirche's mockery, Louise began the incantation. But she had no idea just what kind of oddity she put herself in for.

"My slave who lives somewhere in the universe! Oh sacred, beautiful and strong familiar spirit! I desire and here I plead from my heart! Answer to my guidance!"

And as the eternally resounding call sounded throughout the multiverse, it connected onto something... else. As the explosion happened, a wormhole opened beneath Louise's feet, swallowing her up and closing behind her. And while her disappearance didn't go unnoticed, that is not something Louise Valliere is concerned with at the moment.

------

[X]Be Louise Valliere

You are disoriented, no you are Louise Valliere, and as you get your bearings after, whatever that was, you start noticing things. For one thing, this large room is NOT the Tristain Academy of Magic, and you have no idea what that thing is behind you that unsettles your stomach when you look at it.

Some other things you notice, are that you feel signficantly lighter than you should, and that this room is COLD. While you had not paid theories about the Headmaster's perverted streak any attention at the academy any heed, you find yourself believing them anyway in irritation over just how COLD this room is.

As what you can only presume is an alert sounds throughout the room with an infernal racket, Four musketlike things begin
retracting out of the ground and pointing at you, two on your left side, and two on your right side. They are quickly followed by a pair of spherical, long armed golems as two men in face obscuring helmets rush into the room from a nearby tunnel, their unusual looking muskets trained on you.

"Put your hands in the air and get on the ground!" one of them cries out in unusually accented Tristanian.

You:

[X]Comply
[X]Argue with him as any Noble would to an uppity commoner
[X]Put Your Hands in the air, but don't get on the ground
[X]Start Blowing Things Up
[X]Write in

 

Index/Various bits of useful information

Louise and Anne's Character Sheets:
Reputation Networks:

Index:
[X]Babble
[X]Q&A
[X]Q&A - Part 2
[X]Quaranti(Gatecrasher Interrupt)
[X]Greetings
[X]Uh huh
[X]Challenge Deferred
[X]In which Lancie attempts to salvage things, and gets interrupted
[X]Get on with it already
[X]Lets do this Properly
[X]Squee/Firing Range
[X]Sidetracked Messiah
[X]Curiosity
[X]Guns guns guns
[X]MOAR GUNS
[X]Searching(Part 1)
[X]Searching(Part 2)
[X]Let the Science commence
[X]Cover story established
[X]Welcome to the Saloon
[X]I Can has Social Links?
[X]In which somebody finally acknowledges Louise's goggles
[X]Sono Hitsuyou Wa Nai Wa~
[X]FIREBALL
[X]Week 2: Interrupt
[X]The week goes on...
[X]Like putting on a new dress
[X]Scientific Responsiblity
[X]Rare Elements
[X]Did you just...
[X]Discuss ALL the things!
[X]The Void
[X]Popping Balloons
[X]Discussions With Erika
[X]Simulspace
[X]Start New Game
[X]Tonight's Entertainment
[X]Sleepless Murmurings
[X]Target the Golem
[X]I Just Wanted Some Milk
[X]Sakura Meikyuu
[X]Web of Intrigue Part 1
[X]Web of Intrigue Part 2
[X]Web of Intrigue Part 3
[X]Singing in the Dark
[X]Session_Start()~ if(adjutant.search(SHARD) == TRUE){Sptr = CreatePointer(SHARD)~ LinkPointer(LValliere, Nightfallsmirror)~ ELEVATE()~}
[X]F̱̭̙̞̠͍͕̀͜͞ͅͅr̡̭͙̞̭͕̩͈͎a̧͏͚̮̠̰͕g͇̥̻̘̪͇͎ṃ̫e̷̦̤̦͉̮̩̖̥͘ͅn̢̘̦̖̲͖̟̳ț͔̰̫͖͖̼̩́͘a̸̡̗̘̞̥̯͙̣͡t̲̩̤͓̕͝i͚̝̻̻̣̦o͚̜̥̕͞n̨̤̳͎̥̮͕̙̱̕
[X]The Rule of Steel

 

Louise's Stat Sheet:

Muse: Anne

Background: Isolate(Halkeginian Noble)
Skill Bonuses: +20 Academics(Magical Theory)
+20 Animal Handling
+20 Protocol(Halkegian Nobility)

Penalty: All Repscores start at 0

Reputation: @-List: 7
r-rep:1

Faction: Anarchist?

Current Morph: Flat

Augmentations: Medichines, Cortical Stack, Mesh Implants
Aptitude Maximum: 20
Durability: 30
Wound Threshold: 6
Speed: 1
Death Rating: 45

Motivations: +Prove You aren't a Failure +Return to Halkeginia +Impress Mom


Traits:

Ego: Familiar Bond(Has a sense of Anne's surface emotions), Nobles Ego(Still vaguely present, but took a significant hit as a result of being exposed to transhuman society), Psi(Level 3), Schizophrenia: Alien Passenger

Unknown: Void Mage

Noteworthy Gear:

Physical:

(1x)Wand
(1x)Ecto
(1x)AR Goggles
(1x)10mm Pistol(11 bullet capacity)

Files:
The Challenge (Published by the Ultimates, you downloaded this during your research spree in quarantine, but never got around to reading it)

Eternal Struggle, Eternal Growth (Published by the Ultimates, you downloaded this during your research spree in quarantine, but never got around to reading it)

[From Thoughts to Words: A guide for new writers, by the First Church of ROB]

[The Complete Series of Durarara]

[Take A Deep Breath: Freelance publishing and you, by the First Church of ROB]

[Multi-angle video proof of magic]

[Lifelog data from the petal]

Contact List:

Erika Karisawa
Aldrick Laprade
Lancie
Carlos Anderson
Rocky
Zen-2
Aada Korhonen
Farhaan Mitri
Kiana Mance
Rebecca Camulus
Maxwell Lincoln
Lliandra Starzy
Lihua Peng
Cecille Godeaux


Aptitudes:

Cognition: 17
Coordination: 14
Intuition: 15
Reflexes: 15
Savvy: 10
Somatics: 15
Willpower: 15


Skills:

Academics(Magical Theory): 40
Academics(Ultimates):10
Animal Handling: 40
Art(Weaving):13
Art(Writing):15
Art (Painting): 30
Deception:15
Exotic Melee Weapon(Whip/Riding Crop): 20
Fray:25
Free Fall:22
Hardware(Electronics):15
Hardware(Industrial):10
Impersonation:13
Infiltration:15
Interest(Transhuman Culture):25
Interest(Transhuman History):25
Interfacing: 24
Intimidation:18
Kinesics:25
Kinetic Weapons: 23
Language(Native Tristanian): 82
Magic ("Fire"): 80
Magic("Void"): 90
Navigation(Land Map Reading): 30
Networking(Anarchists):27
Networking(Scientists):14
Networking(1st Church of ROB):5
Palming:15
Perception:21
Persuasion:40
Psi-Control: 45 (This skill relates to Psi-Sleights that manipulate others)
Psi-Assault: 45 (This skill relates to Psi-Sleights that cause physical or mental harm)
Psi-Sense: 45 (This skill relates to Psi-Sleights that can sense others)
Profession(Halkeginan Estate Management): 35
Protocol(Halkeginian Nobility): 40
Research(Mesh):25
Research(Physical): 50
Swimming: 20
Throwing Weapons: 12
Unarmed Combat: 18




Other Stats:

Lucidity: 30
Trauma Threshold: 5
Insanity Rating: 60
Initiative: 6
Damage Bonus: 1
Moxie: 3

Stress Points: 8

Halkeginian Spells: "Fireball"(Fires a ball of freezing black flame)

Psi Sleights:

-Enhanced Creativity: Any action where creativity plays a major part (Hint: Write Ins), gains a +20 bonus. This creativity tends towards the creepy and odd, particularly with paintings. Louise now paints visions of chains, swords, cold fires and black suns when bored.
-Pattern Recognition: Louise can now spot the hidden patterns in massive amounts of raw data and information, giving her a +20 bonus to Language Tests, Investigation Tests, Research Tests and Codebreaking Tests (this does not apply to InfoSec tests which are performed by software), and can learn new languages in half the time as normal transhumans or humans, even dead alien languages.
-Time Sense: Louise can now slow down her perception of time. Her Speed is increased by +1, but this can only be done on mental or mesh actions. Mental actions in this case includes spellcasting.
-Projected Cryokinesis: A bolt of Higgs-Boson condensate that causes rapid energy loss in molecules, flash-freezing the target. Does 4d10+(Will/5 round up) damage and causes a cumulative -10 Penalty to all physical actions per successful hit with this attack.


Anne's Stat Sheet:

Cognition: 20
Coordination: 5
Intuition: 25
Reflex: 15
Savvy: 15
Somatics:5
Willpower:15

Skills:

Academics(Psychology): 60
Academics(Computer Science): 40
Academics(Fairy Mythology): 40
Academics(Firearms): 40
Hardware(Electronics):30
Infosec: 40
Interface: 80
Professional(Accounting): 60:
Programming: 40
Research: 30
Perception: 30
Nanofabrication: 60


Traits:

Myzonitnirn: Anne possesses a probe given to her by the familiar bond, allowing her to interface with nearly any electronic device, including Pandora Gates and certain items of Factor Technology

Real World Naivete: Anne has never experienced physical existence, and may have issues understanding certain matters as a result.

Familiar Bond: Having the Myzonitnirn Library integrated into her systems, Anne has an inclination in favor of serving Louise, and an improved ability to read her surface emotions compared to another muse in an ecto.

 

Copypasted from the creative commons licensed core book:

The @-list: the Circle-A list for anarchists,
Barsoomians, Extropians, scum, and Titanians,
noted as @-rep.

CivicNet: used by the Jovian Republic, Lunar-
Lagrange Alliance, Morningstar Constellation,
Planetary Consortium, and many hypercorps,
referred to as c-rep.

EcoWave: used by nano-ecologists, preservationists,
and reclaimers, referred to as e-rep.

Fame: the seen-and-be-seen network used by
socialites, artists, glitterati, and media, referred
to as f-rep.

Guanxi: used by the triads and numerous criminal
entities, referred to as g-rep.

The Eye: used by Firewall, noted as i-rep.

RNA: Research Network Affiliation, used by
argonauts, technologists, scientists, and researchers,
referred to as r-rep.

 

[X]Babble

Things have gone just too wrong for you. The room is chilly and noisy and you didn't summon a familiar and all these muskets pointed at you and you have no idea where you are. You can't think under these conditions damn it!

"W-who are you?!, Where am I? What is this place? How did.." You start babbling loud enough for them to hear.

"She's probably just as confused as we are Adan!" One of the helmeted men says in better accented Tristanian a distorted click punctuating his sentence.

They look at each other, and for five seconds, do absolutely nothing. You can barely breathe from the tension in the air. The alarm stops as the golems retreat and the musketlike things retract back into the ground.

"We can sort this out in the quarantine zone. You're at the Fissure Gate facility on Oberon. It'll warm up once we get out of this room. Just come with us." Adan tells you.

"Q-Quarantine?" You ask, concerned.

"We have no idea which Pandora Gate you came out of, and we are not letting any xenobacterial contamination happen on our watch."

Pandora Gate? What in Brimir's name is he talking about?

The other man comments:

"We definitely have as many questions for you as you do for us. Like Adan said, it'll be warmer there."

In a haze, you follow them to a set of large metal doors, Adan making a point to remain behind you. As they open, you step inside, and the room seals shut.

"Just an airlock, we're fine, relax."The unnamed man says, attempting to put it in as calming a voice as he can as the other side of the room opens to a metallic looking corridor.

Warmth. Warmwarmwarmwarmwarmwarmwarmwarm. You see a door to another similar looking room in front of you, and another similiar looking door on your left as you enter the corridor.

You make a left turn as you go through another airlock, albeit a dusty enough one that your hair is standing on end for some reason.

"Do you have working mesh implants? You may be here a while." Adan asks you.

More terms you've never heard of. You just nod your head no.

"Lancie. Run her off an ecto for me would you?" Adan asks noone in particular as you enter the circular, two story room full of couches.

A boxy device in the center spits out something paper thin and a strange looking pair of goggles.

"It's the key to your room, among everything else an Ecto does. Do not lose it. We'll be back with someone who can help us sort this out in a half hour to an hour while we get things settled down. Let Lancie or a member of the medical crew know if you need help with anything."

"Who?"

The helmeted men are already in the airlock.

You:

[X]Attempt to communicate with this 'Lancie'
[X]Faint from exhaustion
[X]Explore the area
[X]Find the Medical Crew
[X]Write in

 

[X]Q&A

You take the paper thin object and goggles, and make yourself comfortable on one of the couches. With nothing else to do but wait, you decide to see if whoever this 'Lancie' person is would be willing to answer some of your questions.

"Lancie?" You ask tentatively.

An Albionese sounding voice replies from no apparent location.

"Yes o' pink haired one?"

You look around, confused.

"Curiouser and curiouser" the voice muses to itself.

A fit of sheer contrariness allows you to regain at least the facade of confidence.

"Speak plainly. My name is Louise Francoise Le Blanc De La Valliere. And where are you coming from anyway?" You demand of the voice.

"Touchy aren't you. And such a long name to boot. It'll probably be easier on both of us to continue this conversation if you put on those goggles. Slide the disks on the strap over your ears." It suggests.

When you put the goggles on, it continues.

"Now unroll the ecto and touch the circular button on the side."

Not sure where he's going with this, you go along with his advice in hopes of getting an answer. For whatever reason, it tells you to touch the button saying French when it activates. You're definitely going to ask about that later. It then walks you through a series of convoluted steps for something called "AR synchronization".

"And that's the last step. Now hit synchronize."

You nearly fall off the couch as a series of signs enter your vision, one in front of you saying "Fissure Gate Quarantine Facility - Common Room", and others hovering on the edges of your vision. But the most unsettling thing that suddenly appeared in your vision was a gentleman in a nightmare inducing purple feathered top hat with a bronze arm covered in gears, lounging on the couch in front of yours.

"What I just needed to walk you through configuring, is an ecto. 96 percent of transhumanity has one of them or mesh implants. Your confusion suggests one of two things. You either escaped from an exceptionally successful neo-primitivist enclave, or you didn't come through a Pandora Gate at all. In spite of your biological similiarities to transhumanity, you are not transhuman."

Still flabbergasted and hearing too many terms you barely understand, you ignore the deduction he made, in favor of another question.

"Are y-you a spirit?"

"Not in the way you're probably thinking. The Cosmonauts are going to have a field day when they find out about you I'm sure. I am an Artifical General Intelligence. While the term machine spirit is somewhat accurate, it's still a massive oversimplification. Your question confirms my theory. You didn't come here through a Pandora Gate."

"People keep saying that, but nobody ever explained it to me. What. Is. A. Pandora. Gate." You ask exasperatedly.

"Something we barely understand. What we know, is that they were discovered after the Fall. They are made of materials we barely understand, and we have only vague notions of how to use them. You use a blue box or some larger scale variation to dial an address. The gate opens a wormhole, and you go through a gate on the other side. There have been many accounts in the Gatecrashing community of strange incidents involving them, but your case is likely to set a record when word gets out. That's all transhumanity really knows for certain about them."

You didn't come here through a gate though. Is it even possible to return to Halkeginia?

"Because I summoned myself through one of them." You reply, with the sullenness of one doomed to execution.

"You're catching on."

"Is there any way I could go back?" You ask resignedly.

"A lucky incident caused by repeated Pandora Gate usage is probably your only legitimate chance. Any scheme somebody may come up with would possess a considerable risk of death or worse."

You throw the goggles at him and they pass through. No way back. No way to prove to anyone you aren't a zero. No way to see your family again. You'd even settle for Kirche at this point. You cry yourself into unconsciousness on one of the couch pillows.

[]To be Continued

 

[X]Q&A - Part 2

"You may want to wake up. Aldrick and Erika will be here in a few minutes to talk to you. And if you don't want me to keep using the PA system to talk to you, remember that the goggles are also headphones." Lancie says over the PA.

Munya... you roll a bit as you begin to come to. Right. You're here. In this lavishly appointed quarantine facility full of things you barely understand. It takes you a while to manage to get up and retrieve the crazy goggles.

As you get the goggles on, you hear the hiss you've learned to associate with airlocks, as two people in the epynomous helmets enter, one of them with a pistol at their belt. The difference is that their faces are apparent this time, and little AR things mention their names, along with something about profiles. Erika Karisawa and Aldrick Laprade are a black haired woman and an unremarkable looking blonde-haired man behind the helmets.

"Ara, Ara, right out of a fantasy setting you are."

"I took the liberty of informing her of my deductions while you were napping. You won't have to tell her anything you already told me. You're welcome." Lancie pipes in through the speakers in the goggles.

Erika clicks her tongue sympathetically as she continues. The lady has some issues with personal space, made evident by just how close your faces are.

"Lancie filled me in on what happened to you, so we don't need to repeat all the particulars of that interrogation that wasn't really an interrogation. After all, the best interrogation is when the person doesn't even know it's happening. That makes things simpler for all of us." She clicks her tongue again, seeming to approve of the notion.

"If you were some kind of spy, your memory was probably so edited it would take a psychosurgeon to sort it out" Aldrick comments.

"And we're better than that. Nobody here has any desire to make you undergo psychosurgery. If you're interested though..." Erika adds questioningly

Yeah you aren't touching that with a 10 foot pole. Memory editing? They can DO THAT? What else are these soul manipulating lunatics capable of!

"No. No no no no a thousand times no!"

You and Erika back away from each other and she makes a drawn out click with her tongue you think signifies exasperation.

"Fine. No psychosurgery. Moving on. You're a scientific curiosity simply by virtue of you being here. But that's nothing compared to if your magic still works here. The amount of repscore you could gain as a test subject, the amount of repscore any science crew working with you would accumulate!" She gets awfully enthusiastic about that last part.

"It's mindboggling. Your case is the kind of thing conspiracies and singularities are made of. " Erika finally manages to finish.

The suggestion that your magic might not work here makes your stomach drop from under you. None of these people are making sense. Why couldn't someone more sensible talk to you?

"Who's in charge here? And why would my magic not work?" You ask insistently.

You think you hear a slight hint of a snicker coming from the speakers of your goggles.

"Because real magic doesn't exist yet, and we're all in charge. We're members of the Love and Rage Collective, and we are Anarchists!" Erika perkily tells you.

Yep. Your brain stopped. You're trapped with a bunch of lunatics with such Germanian naming sensibilities.

"I think you broke her." Aldrick jokes at Erika.

She leans in near your ear as she replies.

"Nonsense. Oberon to Louise. Oberon to Louise. This is Erika Karisawa of the Love and Rage collective, you alive in there?" She keeps making buzzing noises with her mouth for no apparent reason.

You've snapped. You're probably delusional in Halkegina after you failed the summoning ceremony. You don't think anything would phase you anymore.

"OF COURSE I'M ALIVE you..."

"See, she's fine." Erika happily chirps at Aldrick as the two of you back away from each other for the second time.

"Maybe you should let me do the talking Erika. You've traumatized her enough for one day."

"Aww..." Is... is she making puppy dog eyes at him?

"Fine, we both do the talking." Aldrick sighs.

"We have a proposal. You look like you could use some time to acclimate. You'll probably only be even more confused once you get out of quarantine. You could be out of here in 5 days, we can get that extended to two weeks. Nobody to deal with but Lancie, your muse, and the occasional Gatecrashing crew."

"Muse?"

"I sent you a message with an attached baseline muse. You should get that set up as soon as possible." Lancie answers through a message that appears in your goggles.

"Once you get out, we can get you in the room assignment system here, but you're still going to need repscore. If you can't find any other way to help people out here, you could always be my science group's test subject." Erika suggests.

"Questions? Objections?" Aldrick asks you

Any Questions:
[X]Write in

Take the offer(Spend 2 weeks in Quarantine):
[X]Yes
[X]No

Muse Name:
[X]Write in

Muse Appearance:
[X]Write in

Muse Personality setting:
[X]Write in

Priorities during stay in quarantine(5 days gets top 3, 2 weeks gets top 5):
[X]Socialize with Gatecrashers
[X]Work to understand the ecto and your muse
[X]Socialize with Lancie
[X]Get your muse to fetch you information from the mesh(Specify subjects)
[X]Write in

 

[X]Quaranti(Gatecrasher Interrupt)

Repscore seems important. You need to know what it is.

"You keep talking about Repscore. Is that money?"

Aldrick fields your question.

"That's a common inner system misconception. Out here in the outer system, nobody uses money. Repscore is not money. Social networking platforms have reputation systems. If you have a positive interaction with a person, you can ping them, bringing their repscore up slightly. If you have a negative interaction, you can ding them, and bring their repscore down the same way. The higher your repscore is, the more willing to help you complete strangers are."

You notice a section beneath Aldrick's name in AR. You see two bars, with numbers beneath them.

@-List: 40
RNA: 5

Then you get curious and look at Karisawa's name in AR:

@-List: 50
RNA: 30

"Most people use @-List out here, once you get your muse set up, creating a profile there should be your next move." Lancie suggests.

"Anything else? Are you fine with us leaving you in here for two weeks?" Karisawa asks you.

You need all the time you can get to get used to this place. You accept the offer. Before they leave, you see a little picture of an envelope in AR, with a 3 next to it.

Mesh Contact information acquired for:

Aldrick Laprade
Erika Karisawa
Lancie

Items Acquired:

Baseline muse

-------------------------------

With a little bit of, no, make that a lot of, advice from Lancie, you manage to get a muse set up. As you end up hearing more about what a muse actually is, you realize that they are almost exactly like Familiars. You start going through various appearances, going through several manticore and dragon related designs, until you find the cutest looking fairy you have ever seen, and your interests switch over into that direction. When you finish, your muse is a small purple haired fairy named Anne who is NOT based on Princess Henrietta.

Over the course of the next four days, Lancie has you undergo preventative sessions in a decontamination chamber, but besides that, leaves you to research as you see fit. You learn during those sessions that he is a part of the Love and Rage Collective's cybersecurity team, and about his fondness for something called Steampunk, which has something to do with goggles, clockwork, and the culture of an Old Earth nation called Great Britain, but that's all you can gather from your attempts at making conversation with him.

You have Anne retrieve primers on ectos, augmented reality, and the nanofabricators they call cornucopia machines that made your food. When you read the articles on resleeving and uplifted animals though, you were speechless. Your mind skipped over that as you realized that these people lived better than Halkeginian royalty as Anne helped you through what was apparently called a wiki walk.

You thought there was nothing scarier than Elves. The Solarchive articles on TITANS and The Fall proved you wrong. Transhumanity was driven from its homeworld by these military seed AIs, and has yet to reclaim it from the creations they left behind. They haven't even made a serious attempt. Halkeginians would have staged at least two crusades by now.

'And they would have gone the same way as the crusades to reclaim the holy land.' A pessimistic part of your mind thinks. You have a nightmare of The Fall happening in Halkeginia that night. You move on, reading about the Outer System, the Pandora Gates, and most of all, the maddening levels of division Transhuman society has underwent. The inner system vs the outer system over Economic disagreements, the Planetary Consortium, the Morningstar Constellation, The Autonomist Alliance, even the Ultimates and their base near Oberon (Acquired copies of: The Challenge, Eternal Struggle, Eternal Growth). When you read about the Titanians and the Jovians, you find yourself relieved at there being responsible adults in the Outer System and get the urge to bang your head against the wall because they're at each other's throats. You spend your days researching, until Lancie tells you that a group of Gatecrashers will be in here for a few days.

Curious, you watch from the second floor as a many wheeled synthmorph called a Xu Fu,

(Name: Zen-2(Reputation: N/A))

the tentacled being that is an Octomorph,

(Name: Rocky(Reputation: RNA: 20/@-List:30))

and four other biomorphs enter the room. One of them is a hazer, she's tall, black haired, and
has vaguely elven features,

(Name: Aada Korhonen(Reputation: @-List:50))

another resembles one of those morphs from Mars but looks slightly different,

(Name: Farhaan Mitri(Reputation: @-List: 30/RNA:10/Civicnet:10))

and you can't quite put your fingers on the last two's morphs, but you'd guess they're Exalts.

(Name: Carlos Anderson(Reputation: @-List: 15/Civicnet:5/RNA:30))
(Name: Aleksi Ryabov(Reputation: RNA: 30/Civicnet:20))

[]? ? ?

 

[X]Greetings

You'll be sharing this place with them for the next couple of days, and you've been wanting to talk to someone who isn't wearing some kind of helmet or an AI for a while. Anne has been incredibly helpful in allowing you to keep yourself sane when you and everything else in this madhouse that isn't strapped down floats everywhere, but there are things she just doesn't get.

Like why your hair floating everywhere is a problem. Anne and Lancie forward you links with advice on microgravity living, but the first couple of times you bumped into the ceiling, you can't help but think Lancie was snickering when he sent them to you. You doubt he could do any better though, you'd pay to see what happens if he sleeved into a physical body.

Still, you're curious about just what kinds of people would use a Pandora Gate voluntarily.

"Based on the lack of repscore, I'm 75 percent certain Zen-2 is a fork." Anne tells you.

Thank Brimir you already read the article on that, it wouldn't be becoming of you to freak out like that in front of complete strangers. You suppress your nerve at the notion of anyone dinging you as you go down the stairs to talk to them. After all, you don't exactly have much of it to lose anyway(Louise Valliere: @-List - 1).

Your mesh profile may be public, and their mesh profiles may be public, but there's something to be said for introducing yourself properly.

"Hello, my name is Louise Valliere." You say once you reach the bottom of the stairs.

"If we're doing introductions, then please, call me Rocky." The Octopus rasps.

"You're the girl that accidentally hacked the Pandora Gate they've been keeping down here?" Carlos asks you.

"The owners of the five Pandora Gates in the Solar System have measures in place to keep people from doing what you just did." Anne clarifies for you as she pulls up an article on the subject in AR. You aren't quite sure how to respond to that.


[X]Let it pass. From a certain point of view, it's correct.
[X]Clarify exactly what happened there.
[X]Write in

 

[X]Uh huh.

"Before you ask I have no idea how I did that." You tell him.

"So your telling me you just mashed some buttons on a blue box and got the Fissure Gate? Gatehopping alone? You're a lucky girl, any reasonable simulation would project your death." The many-wheeled synthmorph comments in a feminine voice. It's going to take you a while to get used to that.

"You couldn't possibly have done that voluntarily, did someone force you into it? If I run into them on the other side of a Pandora Gate, I want to chew them out." Aada says, concerned with the erroneous conclusion Zen-2 jumped to.

"I tried running Carlo's face through facial recognition software. Did you know that his morph's facial structure bears a 90 percent resemblance to prefall actor Keanu Reeves? All you'd need to do is dye his hair from red to black and he could probably pass as him." Anne mentions to you.

You're flattered Aada cares and are probably going to ping her later for that, but you need to correct this before it gets out of hand. Having another conversation about the possibility your memory was edited is preferable to letting their line of thought or Anne's misguided attempt at being helpful continue any further.

"It was a spell, okay! The Familiar Summoning Ritual. I have no idea how it sent me here though. There's no record in Halkegianian history of anyone disappearing when they use it."

Farhaan seems particularly curious when you say that. Everyone else seems skeptical.

"That's an extraordinary claim." Carlos tells you.

"He's probably referencing the prefall scientist Carl Sagan. He popularized the saying 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.' I can retrieve the episodes of his show if you want to watch them later." Anne suggests via an AR text message as Carlos continues speaking.

"Do you have any evidence to back it up? Anything that might rule out alternative explanations why you're here?" Carlos asks you, looking pensive.

[X]? ? ?

 

[X]Challenge Deferred

You may be the Zero in Halkeginia, but you are probably the only person capable of magic here. And Erika's suggestion that your magic may not work here has been grating on your nerves.

"Lancie. Is there anyplace I can make an explosion in here without hurting anything?" You measuredly ask the AGI.

Every humanoid in the room looked at you as if you'd grown a second head, and you're sure the octomorph and synthmorph are thinking similiar thoughts.

His avatar flickers into AR existence.

"Well. That escalated quickly. You realize this is a secure facility right? Unexpected explosions lead to things like alarms, and response teams with Reaper support." Lancie says in a patronizing voice.

The golems that showed up when you came out of the Pandora Gate. You understand why they were there, but you still can't help but think they're massive overkill. The fact their guns would overwhelm any mages shield has no connection whatsoever to that. What's the point of biomorph soldiers if both sides have Reapers? They could just keep sending them at each other until one of them gives up. An entire war fought with no loss of human life.

"While explosions with the proper notifications being sent are a different story, people will ask questions about them happening in a quarantine facility. Explosion or no explosion, starting the process would cause me no end of problems." He says exasperatedly, his hand covering his face as he does so.

"Oh? You seemed fairly certain there would be an explosion. What's your perspective on all this?" Zen-2 asks sardonically.

"I have yet to come up with an alternative explanation that doesn't have its gears grinding themselves to pieces. The smoothest explanation is simple mental illness, but even that has issues."

Lancie sends you a PM.

"Explosion or no explosion, that venture would have lost in the long run. Did you ever find the saying 'Information wants to be free', when you browsed the mesh on commonly available hardware with a functional videocamera? Did you look into Zen-2's mesh profile long enough to realize she's a beta fork of an Extropian banking executive? I suggest you keep quiet while I salvage this."

Lancie had no end of commentary to make about how Extropians would do anything for credits when you read the Solarchive articles on them and their anarcho-capitalistic society. Of course, he had almost identical commentary about inner system hypercorps.

Zen-2 seems like she's about to continue her discussion with Lancie.

[X]Let Lancie handle it
[X]Say something(Write in)
[X]Write in

 

[X]In Which Lancie attempts to salvage things, and gets interrupted.

Lancie is probably going to be saying some unpleasant things about you, but it can't be helped. His advice about checking peoples mesh profiles is a good idea though, so you start looking over their mesh profiles as Zen-2 and Lancie begin to converse.

Anne is faster at reading them then you are, so she gives you the basics via AR text messages.

"Zen's the CEO of Zen Banking in Extropia. Her bank's currency is backed by antimatter, and the bank worked out an agreement with the Argonauts to support their expedition to the Iktomi ruins on the recently discovered world of Kokytos. Her bank supported them after Spector Banking, headed by Adrian Spector, worked out a similiar arrangement. She probably sent her fork to keep tabs on how the Argonauts are using those philanthropic gestures. Rocky invited her, which is why she could even egocast out here."

That's... unusual.

"Did you consider the possiblity her memory was edited?" Zen-2 asks Lancie.

"Alexei Ryabov? He's another Argonaut, a Xenobiology specialist and close friend of Carlos's from New Cambridge. He spent a long time consulting with Terragenesis before he egocasted out here. Rocky had to invite him too."

"If they were going to edit her mind to that degree, it probably would have been easier to create an AGI from scratch. And what would be the point of sending her in a morph that doesn't have a Cortical Stack? She wasn't even carrying any supplies! And her story is too far-fetched for her to have possibly come from a neo-primitivist enclave. The mental illness hypothesis is a reasonable one, but how could someone with that many issues distinguishing fantasy from reality survive gate travel from who knows where in a morph like that?" Lancie retorts back at Zen-2.

Yeah. You're going to have to ask Lancie to expand on just what he was talking about when he sent that message. It's all you can do to keep silent.

"Easy. Every gate she hopped to was connected to civilization, and she just got lucky."

Aada takes that moment to interject.

"She's standing right there. You're scientists, and you're dismissing her before you even know her story? And Zen. What, The, Fuck. Did you lose your ability to not jump to hasty conclusions when you were pruned or something?"

"Aada Korhonen. She's a mediator. With Titanian military background. Somebody convinced her to work as security for the Argonauts, and her profile isn't clear on who."

"Yes! That was the point I was about to get to! This isn't Pascals fucking Wager here people. You aren't wasting anything by hearing her out. And do you really think she'd propose an explosion to demonstrate her abilities if she could do anything else? The fact she was even willing to put herself under scientific scrutiny ought to add to her credibility. It's not like she's a psychic hack attempting to fake her way through some analogue to the Randi Challenge. An explosion from nowhere isn't the kind of thing that leaves any room for doubt. If you want to know so badly whether or not this girl can create explosions, all you need, to do, is wait. She may very well send you a video when she gets out of Quarantine in a week and a half to prove her point." Lancie says with an odd mix of happiness and exasperation.

Lancie sends you another PM as Zen-2 backs down.

"While I'd advise against it, Argonauts with decent @-Rep are probably the most trustworthy outsiders you could send something like that to. Erika might try to bring one or two of them on as consultants herself assuming your magic works. Less video evidence of your magic, means less problems for you, and less problems for the entire collective. Stories and idle chatter can be dismissed as just stories and idle chatter."

"I suppose you have a point. Louise, do you have any other way of demonstrating magic that wouldn't cause an explosion?" Carlos says tiredly.

"If I did, I would have done it already." You say with glum exasperation.

"Then I'll have to reserve judgement until you get out of quarantine. If you can demonstrate your abilities on video, send them to me next time I'm on Oberon, there are plenty of Argonauts who would be curious about something like that." Carlos tells you.

"Seconded." Rocky rasps out.

Mesh contact information acquired: Carlos Anderson, Rocky

"So. Now that that's out of the way, who wants to exchange stories?" Farhaan asks the room.

[X]Talk about Halkeginia.
[X]Remain quiet, continue going through the Gatecrasher's mesh profiles(Specify focus if desired).
[X]Remain quiet, PM Lancie asking for clarification on whatever he was thinking during that conversation.
[X]Ask questions about their expedition to Kokytos.
[X]Write in

 

[X]Get on with it Already!

--Account of what happened in Quarantine

Over the course of the week and a half you have left in quarantine, you learn a great deal.

You find out that Rocky is one of the Physicists from the Argonaut base at Lear, and that's why he invited Aleksei and Zen. If you don't have any @-rep, and aren't vetted in advance, you need to be screeened at the the mobile farcasting station Cobweb to visit Chet Noir. And that requires you be vouched for by one of the Gelderloos who run Cobweb, a member of Love and Rage, or an Argonaut from Lear.

He hired Farhaan for the same reason he got Aada to join the expedition. Security against unforseen incidents. He doesn't get any more specific than that. You find out via the mesh that Farhaan was a scavenger in the area around Extropia. Then something happened and he became an Ego Hunter and mercenary, albeit one with more principles than most sellswords. You can respect that, roving around the solar system as an agent of justice like some kind of wandering knight. If he was in a play in Halkeginia, he could probably do a good job of acting the part too.

Coming from a land of spirits and dragons, elves and birdmen, a "fantasy setting" as Erika called it, means you were hardly surprised by the Iktomi at all when you discussed them with the gatecrashing party. The only interesting thing about them were the pictographs they left behind. They had a warning that they repeated constantly. Mind the Weave, the Iktomi say, with a pictograph that looks like a web with a Pandora Gate sitting in the middle. It makes you wonder. Did your spell disturbing the weave(whatever the Iktomi meant by that) bring you here?

Compared to that, their spiderlike appearances and penchant for musical sculpture are tame, although they mention not all the sculptures make something listenable. Exploring the Iktomi ruins on Kokytos requires ear protection. They came back to send some reports, and take a week to relax in Chet Noir, where the buildings don't make music that makes you want to drive a spike into your eardrums.

The Factors, however, are a completely separate story. When Carlos brought them up, along with his theory about them running some kind of long game to devour our remains, you needed to have Anne retrieve articles and pictures of them for you to believe it. How could something as lowly as mold be as intelligent as a human being? How could mold have technology human beings want? How could mold have technology TRANSHUMANS want? They seemed significantly more willing to listen to you talk about magic after that. When they weren't being debriefed anyway.

You bring up your issues with magic with them, and after explaining the basics of Brimiric magic, you learn that when people have no idea how magic really works, they will believe ANYTHING about it. You know the transhumans have taken Natural Philosophy beyond Professor Colbert's wildest dreams, possibly to the point of madness, but Arthur C. Clarke was not a mage, and no matter how interesting the idea is, wands aren't things that store castings of a single spell.

Still, they have some interesting ideas. Most of them being ones you already considered in your years of searching, but it does them credit that they came up with them so quickly.

The lack of moisture in your explosions rules out a water affinity, that's so obvious a child could figure it out. When you think about the number of times you've had to clean up after one of your failures, you don't put much stock in your ability to use the creative art that is earth magic.

Which means your element is probably fire or air, assuming you have one and don't have any of what transhumans call genetic defects. You know you aren't an inexprime. Technically. No, really. And even if you do have any genetic defects, considering what transhumans were able to do to themselves, figuring out what's wrong with you shouldn't be too hard right.

After all, if they can't figure it out when they could stop aging and transfer bodies, who could?

Opinions on your issues with magic were mixed, until Farhaan asked you about void magic. Simple process of elimination, he called it. Even assuming you were a Void mage, the element is lost and so you couldn't test the theory even if you wanted to.

By the time you leave, you're on friendly or semi-friendly terms with most of them. Aada sends you a link to the Charcoal Tower so you can start educating yourself up to a transhuman standard after mentioning her concern with your situation. Farhaan and Zen give you their contact information, Farhaan due to being curious on whether or not you can confirm his belief that Pandora Gates can go to alternate universes with a video(Lancie described people like that as cosmonauts), and Zen probably saw some opportunity to profit from it. The lengthy debriefing leaves Aleksi uninterested in returning to the Fissure Gate facility, and he neglects to give you his contact information due to being irritated at nearly everyone.

Mesh Contact information acquired:

Aada Korhonen
Zen-2
Farhaan Mitri

The other groups of Gatecrashers that turn up tended not to be particularly talkative or interesting. One group had their mesh profiles in private mode and didn't seem to be in a mood to talk to anyone. Another group was from a place called Carnivale, and you wanted nothing to do with them whatsoever. You kept to your room for most of the time you weren't exercising, for fear of running into people from that place again.

--End account of what happened in quarantine

You finally think you're starting to get the hang of microgravity living, although you would have appreciated Erika sending you that exercise advice sooner. You read about the effects of microgravity on unaugmented humans and want no part of it. It's finally time for you to leave quarantine. If you understood the minutes of that meeting Lancie sent you correctly, Erika and Aldrick managed to convince members of the collective that you were relevant to their investigation into the incident without going into details about your magic, that you were just as confused as they were and obviously needed help, and that your point of origin was unconfirmed so they couldn't just send you back.

You accepted the offer to become a provisional member of the Love and Rage Collective. You didn't see anywhere else you could reasonably go but Locus, and you wanted to stay close to the Pandora Gates out of some irrational hope you'd find a way back to Halkeginia at some point. Your membership is conditional on you making a good faith effort to build repscore and not causing any major incidents. You have a room and a cornucopia machine ration equivalent to a member's, along with access to most spimes, however, you have no voting privileges in collective matters. To become a full member of the collective would require you to make regular contributions to the business of one of the collective's crews for at least six months. You'd probably need at least a couple of years however, due to how behind you are by transhuman standards of education.

Aldrick shows you the way to your room through the graffiti filled maze, and when you ask him why, you get the explanation "Empty Walls, Empty Minds", and mentions a particularly entertaining Graffiti edit war he remembered seeing. You guess it must be an anarchist thing.

Room 210 is fairly similiar to how it was in the quarantine facility. Utilitarian but functional. You've got a maker in your room and there's a cornucopia machine in your hallway's common area. For the sake of blending in, you run yourself off a 10mm pistol once Aldrick leaves. You didn't see a single anarchist who wasn't armed in the entire facility, and using magic where it can be recorded would be problematic, as Lancie explained to you. If the Ultimates or an inner system hypercorp got wind of your existence, it could lead to kidnapping attempts.

Once you get to your room, you aren't entirely sure what you want to do though. A lot of things occur to you.

[X]Browse the Mesh(Specify Priorities if desired)
[X]Use Charcoal Tower and Study(Specify Priorities)
[X]Hit the Gym
[X]Find a Firing Range
[X]There's a tavern in the upper regions of the facility, you're curious about it.
[X]PM Erika about becoming her test subject
[X]Attempt the familiar binding ritual on your muse, it may be crazy, but it's not like there are spimes in your room.
[X]Write in

 

I guess I'll start with the simplest one, that doesn't require us leaving our room.

Invisible Castle Roll: 43

[X]Lets do this properly

"Anne, could you come out for a moment?"

Her purple haired fae avatar flickers into existence in your AR goggles.

"What is it Master?"

You may not have summoned a familiar. But your spell did bring you a servant. Maybe it would still work. You've been needing to adapt to the world of the transhuman, but you finally have a chance to make the transhuman world adapt to you. They may have technology for making their technology adapt to the user, but you can take it further then they'd ever dream possible. As you've heard people say, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

"I wanted to try something, if this works, you'll be able to serve me better than you could before."

"What did you have in mind?"

"A Familiar binding. You'll be closer to me, almost as if I had mesh implants. Now, just stay there for a moment."

Her avatar hovers at around head height as you retrieve your wand, going through the motions.

"Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers, grant your blessings upon this creature and bind it as my familiar."

In spite of the strangeness that is Anne having no physical existence, the contract is sealed.

"Something's trying to intrude, mesh address 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000. It's setting up for a database injection, I can't stop it!"

Her avatar flickers out of existence, being replaced by a black floating screen.

UNCOVENTIONAL INTERFACE DETECTED, ADAPTATION NECESSARY.

GENERATING LIBRARY <Myoznitnirn.h>....

LIBRARY LOADED, FURTHER ADAPTATION NEEDED.

SEARCHING.

DOWNLOADING LIBRARY <Turing.h>

ADAPTING...

DONE

The screen disappears, and when Anne manifests again, her avatar is different. She's taller, the size of a human now, and wearing a flowing set of purple robes. On her belt filled with various pouches is a wand holster in the Halkeginian style. A set of runes are branded into her forehead. It's almost as if her wings, which remind you of ice now, where before they reminded you of an insects, are framing the runes.

"While I have no desire to do that again mistress, you were right. I am more than what I was before."

[]Move on, find a firing range.
[]Ask for clarification
[]Write in

Anne's Interfacing Skill is now 80!
Anne's Nanofabrication Skill is now 60!
Anne's Programming Skill is now 40!
Anne's Infosec Skill is now 40!

Software Acquired: Myzonitnirn Probe(Anne can now interface with electronics that weren't made by Transhumans, including Pandora Gates and certain items of Factor technlogy).

 

[X]Squee

It worked. It actually worked. You are a mage. Your magic still works here. You have a familiar.

Kirche would probably make some kind of joke about Anne being a hallucination, but you don't care.

Forgetting yourself and Anne's AR nature for a moment, the low gravity sends you into a floating low speed collision with the wall.

Anne looks on, seeming to suppress an urge to laugh, before finally shrugging and reciprocating the gesture as you're reorienting yourself.

"While I'm glad you're happy mistress, the <turing.h> library doesn't make me manifest a body. Whatever it was that hacked me and loaded the modified version of that library into my systems, it made me something... different. If I'm not an AGI, I'm incredibly close to being one."

"Turing.h?" You ask her.

Articles on Alan Turing and the test named after him pop up in your vision as Anne explains.

"An old C++ library mostly used in AI research. The language is practically ancient, and it has a large body of work associated with it, but it fell out of general use in favor of Python, Java, and functional programming language derivatives when humans stopped being able to recognize the speed differences. I never thought I'd see anything written in it I didn't specifically look for."

Your familiar is sapient enough to pass a Turing test. There was another library you saw though. <Myzonitnirn.h>.

Anne gets up and makes a declaration when you finish reorienting yourself.

"You didn't know this would happen, and I did gain considerably from the experience, but thrice I say it and done Louise Valliere. Never do that to me again. Never. Do. That. To. Me. Again."

How incredibly fae of her. You aren't entirely sure what a database injection is, but it obviously isn't something good, considering the amount of times she repeated herself.

Serious as steel itself, you assure her of this truth.

"I understand. Even if I needed to do this again, I would find another way. I will never make you experience this again, Anne."

"Good. My origin as a muse, code from <Myzonitnirn.h>, and the fact I am now just as valuable a scientific curiosity as you are means I'm still willing to be your muse. You should keep my nature as secret as you keep your magic."

Myzonitnirn. So you did see the name of that library correctly. Unless the Transhumans have another meaning for the term, that means your muse is the Mind of God. Which means... Farhaan was right. You're a Void Mage.

"What does Myzonitnirn.h do?" You ask Anne.

"It's a library of very uniquely written code that takes the concept of an adaptive interface beyond anything transhumans thought possible. I've got a sense of your surface emotions now, even without mesh implants, and the list of electronic devices I couldn't interface with now is likely to be an incredibly short one."

The Mind of God. Capable of using any magical item. It keeps coming back to Clarke's Third Law. Still, you are a Void Mage.

Thoughts:
[x]? ? ?


[x]Firing Range

You haven't used a pistol or any form of musket before in your life. Considering the heavily armed nature of this place, it could be a problem. As you take your pistol out of it's holster, you marvel at the ammunition counter informing you of its 11 bullet capacity and semi-automatic fire mode that appears in your AR feed, and disappears when you holster it. This is definitely not a Halkeginian pistol, meaning you'd have to be an idiot to apply anything you may have learned in Halkeginia to using it.

"Anne. Do you know someplace where I can learn to use this?"

"I could teach you the basic safety rules, but do you want to find a physical or a simulspace range?"

[X]Physical
[X]Simulspace
[X]Write in?

 

[X]Sidetracked Messiah

You've learned a lot about the data-saturated realm in which transhumanity resides, but you don't
think you can try simulspaces just yet. Even if you wanted to. The only reason you aren't the
Transhuman equivalent of a low class commoner is something you can't reveal without people trying
to kidnap you. Right now you're a mess of contradictory emotions. You need to do something to get
your mind off this, and learning how to use this pistol seems like the best way to do it.

"It worked didn't it? Why so glum?" Anne asks you before you can say anything.

You peek outside your room. Good, nobody's listening at your door.

"You remember what I told those Gatecrashers about magic, right Anne? The element of Void was lost
since the time of Founder Brimir himself. He was the only one to take multiple familiars, and the
only one to take human familiars."

"I can see why. The amount of issues with such an arrangement would be considerable. I was
uplifted from something meant to be a servant, but binding a human? Ignoring the slavery
perspective, AI-controlled golems could have done a much better job. No need to constantly fear
them stabbing you in the back."

"Wasn't that what The Fall was? The familiar summoning ritual is meant to find a familiar
compatible with the mage anyway." You retort.

"Then don't make them AGIs, and make sure you have limits in place to prevent them from becoming
seed AI." Anne says as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

"It would be beyond any Earth mage to make one anyway, now can we please get back on topic? I was
going to explain about <Myzonitnirn.h>."

That gets her attention.

"Alright."

"One of his familiars was the Gandalfr, said to be able to use any weapon with the skill of a grandmaster. The Windalfr was said to command the obedience of any animal."

With a brief dramatic pause, you get to the point.

"The Myzonitnirn, the Mind of God, was said to be able to use any magical item."

"That explains the zeroes... that mesh address shouldn't have been valid, but it was. Your
affinity is void. The way you used his name in the past matches a similiar pattern in a transhuman religion. It still doesn't explain why you're so glum about it. You're the second coming of a religious figure and you aren't mentally ill. Shouldn't you be honored?" Anne replies with an odd mix of breathlessness and confusion.

She's right and wrong at the same time.

"In Halkeginia I would be. And I'm glad I'm not really a zero. Except I don't know any void
spells, and using magic in public here would lead to kidnapping attempts. Without magic, I'm the
transhuman equivalent of a low class commoner."

"At least you've got time. People don't die of old age out here. Not unless they want to. You
could theoretically rediscover the entire art from first principles. And if you want to start
augmenting yourself, I'm sure you wouldn't need to wait very long to get a cortical stack
implantation. These people aren't Jovians, and they'd probably see themselves as redressing some
kind of injustice by doing so. You might even be able to get mesh implants in the same procedure.
Now what kind of range did you want to go to?"

"A physical one."

"I'll start setting up nav points then."

As you follow your muses instructions past the cornucopia machine to the elevator, one of your
neighbors comes out of her room, her door covered in a mural of ice and spiders.

You can't quite put your finger on her morph, but she has the same hair color as you. That's where
the similiarities end though, because you couldn't ever see yourself looking like that. She's like a
taller version of Tabitha that shares your hair color.

She starts walking to the elevator with you.

"Judging from what I saw of her profile, she's practically an infomorph when she isn't manning the Pandora Gate, if you're going to spend that much time on the mesh, why even bother with a physical body?"

Name: Kiana Mance
@-Rep: 30

[X]? ? ?

 

[X]Curiosity

The eye tracking interface on your AR goggles is a bit finicky, but you manage to send Anne a message discreetly telling her to keep looking, and notify you if she finds anything interesting.

"I'm Louise Valliere."

She shrugs slightly.

"Kiana Mance, and yes, you are." she replies quietly.

You glance at her as you head for the elevator, slightly confused.

"She's a programmer through and through, various opensource contributions before she branched into bluebox and gate operation work. She's been interested in nanoswarm programming for the last year or so. " Anne informs you

"Your mesh profile. Says who you are." she explains.

"What about it?" You ask her.

"Makes introductions redundant."

You aren't entirely sure how to respond to that, so you move on to something else as the elevator descends.

"Do you know anyplace interesting? You probably already know I'm new here."

She sends you a link to a place called @-Channel.

Louise's Networking: Anarchists skill increased by 5!

"You might find lurking there entertaining."

Anne explains:

"She just sent you a link to an imageboard. Nobody uses their real names there. It would defeat the entire point. They're places to go to act... the best word I can come up with would be unusually."

"If you want to learn about the meatspace here, try doing a shift with a maintenance crew. Takes you everywhere." Kiana tells you.

"I could probably walk you through the simpler things, but you may want to do some of your own research before you try it."

The elevator dings open.

"This is my floor. I have some side-projects you may be able to help me test later if you're interested."

[]? ? ?

Rate this Interaction:
[]Ping Her(Commentary optional)
[]Ding Her(Commentary optional)
[]No opinion

 

[]Guns Guns Guns

"I might take you up on that later. Thanks for the information."

She nods at you before stepping out of the elevator.

Ping!(Louise Valliere's repscore is now 2).

Mesh contact information acquired:
Kiana Mance

You ping her back.

"Do you think her interest in nanoswarm programming and her need for test subjects are related?" Anne muses as the elevator closes.

That's something you hadn't considered.

"I'm glad you recognize my line of thought. If she doesn't provide more detailed information, you should make sure somebody knows what you're doing if you accept her offer. Still, the advice she provided was sound."

"Could you remind me about maintenance next time I'm thinking about repscore?" You ask Anne.

"Of course. You didn't even need to ask." Anne reassures you.

As you go up to the floor where the firing ranges are located, you do some research on imageboards.

You start with the Solarchive article, and find out that the concept of the imageboard predates even mesh networking. How these anonymous discussion parlors centered around cartoons grew into major powerhouses of internet culture, and even how they influenced modern hacktivist movements and the modern study of memetics.

Hacktivists. Foquet's tradition is alive and well, even in the realm of Transhumanity, you suppose. And you are in no mood to wrap your head around the constantly shifting mix of private jokes that is imageboard memetics right now.

You reach the entrance to the firing range, which seems to be split into two paths. One of them leads to the range, and the other leads to an AR course according to your goggles.

"Please don your ear protection before entering the range. Remember to recycle your shell casings." An AI hologram tells you.

Your AR feed flashes in the location of a nearby cornucopia machine, and you run yourself off a pair of earmuffs before entering the range.

Adan Berner(@-rep = 40), who your AR feed tells you is currently the range's safety officer, is watching the lanes from behind. He points you in the direction of an empty lane.

"You look like your new at this, so I'll say it now. Keep that holstered when you aren't in a lane, keep your finger out of the triggerguard unless your shooting, it's always loaded even when it isn't, and don't point it at anything you aren't prepared to kill, along with whatever is behind it."

"Exactly what he said." Anne tells you.

Adan... the name sounds familiar. He might be one of the security volunteers who accosted you when you first summoned yourself through the gate.

[]Talk to him/Ask him some form of question(Write in)
[]Just go to your lane and start shooting
[]Write in

 

[X]MOAR GUNS

"Do you have any other suggestions for someone who hasn't used a gun before?" You ask Adan.

Adan scratches his short red beard thoughtfully before sending you a link to a site describing handgun stances with pictures and video.

"If you want someone to check your form, you'll need to find someone else. But when your finger is in the triggerguard, keep it on the trigger at all times. Your hand won't shake as much between shots. Other than that, learn to control your breathing, and when you fire a shot, squeeze the trigger instead of pulling it."

That's not much of an explanation at all. Define 'squeeze the trigger'.

"He evidently isn't much of a teacher, expecting you to grasp it intuitively like that. I can find material clarifying what he said though, so lets just start shooting." Anne suggests to you.

"Thanks." You tell him, but it seems slightly awkward.

"What the AI said about shells is virtually pointless. Most post-fall guns use caseless ammo anyway." He says as a parting thought.

When you go to your lane, you find AR controls for spawning targets and a scorekeeping option. You don't need an explanation for breathing techniques. You were learning those before you came to the academy. Mother made sure you and your siblings knew them, even though you weren't very good at them.

"Louise?" Anne asks you, concerned.

You spawn targets at the 10 and 30 meter marks before taking a minute to get your breathing under control. And unfog your goggles. And gawk at just how large 500 meter lanes actually are.

When you draw your pistol, a slightly wavering circle appears in your AR feed, along with a shifting number on its left, and your ammo counter and fire mode in the lower right.

"Your targeting reticle is online. Wherever your reticle is, so will your bullet. Especially in microgravity conditions, where taking bullet drop into account is virtually unnecessary. If you haven't deduced it, that number is the range data from the smartlink. It's not practical here, but smartlinked weapons have cameras for firing around corners should the need arise."

Using the material Adan sent you as a reference, you attempt to reproduce an isoceles stance, taking aim at the 10 meter target. Your first 6 bullets miss the target completely. Two hit center mass. You got startled once by Anne reminding you about trigger discipline and one of your bullets hits the target in the knee. The rest hit somewhere around the shoulder.

"There's no shame in trying a closer target. This is your first time shooting." Anne reminds you as you go to the Cornucopia machine and print 4 magazines worth of bullets.

After wasting an entire magazine trying to hit the 30 meter target, you concede the point and spawn a target at the 5 meter mark.

After a round of breathing exercises and watching videos that claim to show the difference between pulling and squeezing the trigger Anne retrieves for you, you actually perform passably on the 5 meter target by the time you use up your last two magazines. 6 of your 22 bullets miss, but you manage to put two bullets in your target's head, and 4 of them hit center mass.

You think you're getting a bit tired, but you run off one last magazine and attempt the 10 meter target again. You do slightly better, missing 4 times and making 3 shots to center mass, while the rest all hit your target in various locations.

Louise's Kinetic Weapons skill is now 5!

"That was good for a first time Louise." Anne tells you as you run off another magazine and recycle your old ones before leaving.

"Thank you." You briefly think about disagreeing before realizing Anne would find evidence to the contrary and just accept the praise.

As you leave the range and look for the Gym to prevent your body from decaying under microgravity, you find yourself thinking about the pistol you've got holstered. This gray mass produced weapon would be a serious threat to anyone in Halkeginia. Weapons this accurate make musket lines and volley fire suicidal, and it would take an earth magic shield to block more than two or three shots. A commoner with two of these could easily assassinate a mage. Weapons this dangerous should be more distinctive.

"Anne, is there some way I can make this pistol more unique?" You ask her.

"Anyone can print accessories or chrome gun parts. If you're looking for personalization beyond just those basics, you're going to want engraving templates. Just whatever you do, don't overload your gun with accessories. One or two is good, but whatever you do, don't go down this road."

Anne shows you a picture of a gun that can only be described as distinctive.

"Pictures of guns like this float around the mesh, where they are mocked. Endlessly. You can't just bolt a grenade launcher onto a pistol. You'd probably have to be an Octomorph to use it without breaking anything, and that's excluding the pistol."

She then pulls up three pictures of engraved weapons that look befitting of a noble, especially the drawing of one being held by a sinister looking man in a red coat and glasses.

"Where did you find that picture Anne?"

"That was a picture from Erika Karisawa's review of Hellsing. She takes to reviewing Pre-Fall anime on occasion. Wait a second. Pre-Fall anime... Well. I didn't expect this. People tend not to care if you use a fake name out here as long as you stick to it, but did you know Erika Karisawa was a character from Durarara!!" She emphasizes the name. Loudly.

"You don't need to shout you know."

"The name has two exclamation points. I can only assume it was meant to be shouted like that."

After you take the necessary measures to stave off musculoskeletal decay, you return to your room, asking Anne about what Maintenance work would entail on the way.

"Hmm, I'd guess things like replacing cables when the spimes report it being needed, Replacing parts on the robots and automated systems that minimize everybody's workload, changing adsorption beds for CO2 scrubbers and cleaning stray things that may turn up in the scrubbers, and repairing larger breaches. Most of it's fairly simple."

Afterwards, the conversation remains quiet until you reach your room.

"Empty Walls, Empty minds." You say to yourself.

"Hm?" Anne asks you.

"Do you think this place could use a coat of paint or something?" You ask Anne.

"Well. I wouldn't mind some AR customization. Some kind of Fae aesthetic maybe."

She then points you to a download site for customizing the AR appearance of a room.

[? ? ?]

Afterwards, you realize you're tired enough to start winding things down for the... day? night? Does it even matter?

Pick two mesh actions/Questions for Anne/??? before sleeping

[X]PM Somebody(Person/Message Contents or general premise required)
[X]Browse @-Channel
[X]Browse Charcoal Tower
[X]Start researching something(Specify)
[X]Ask Anne for study suggestions
[X]Start reading something(Write in what)
[X]Try watching something(Hellsing/Durarara!!/Random)
[X]Write in??

 

[X]Searching(Part 1)

You have no idea how Transhumans remain sane in this place. How long has it been since any of them experienced sunlight? If there's one thing you've noticed in the time you've spent here, it's that there's a considerable difference between being told the time by an overly precise clock and having some visual clue what time it is. So the first thing you're doing is giving this room day and night, and the windows to be able to see it.

You start looking through the AR decorating directories to see if anything there can do that. Skyline apartment was one of the more popular sections, you start there. You preview 21st century and Martian dome and get twilight vistas of cities beyond anything in Halkeginia.

"There's something missing," You muse as you look out the simulated window.

"You're right, the skybox could use more green," Anne muses.

That's not what you had in mind, but considering she'll be seeing this place too, and you agree with what she said anyway, you go with it.

Then you try the neo-cubism section and go for a grassy hills skybox. With the skin that came with it, your room became something between four stone pillars, with windows made of glass blocks between them letting you overlook hills made of blocks of dirt and grass that defied all logic. Even the sun and moon were sqare shaped!

"Thats... interesting," You muse as you look out the simulated window.

"Yes, this is definitely servicable. It could use modifications though. Perhaps you'd like to check out the fantasy section?" Anne asks pensively.

When you try the fantasy section, Anne's avatar somehow switches to her old pixie self when you see pictures from the furniture skins section.

"Those plant furniture skins! Don't make me beg... wait a minute" She says in a high pitched, adorable voice, looking down before blushing at what happened and returning to her taller self.


[X]? ? ?

 

[X]Searching(Part 2)


You arch an eyebrow at the display, before going back to browsing the plant furniture skins. Out of the corner of your eye, you thought you saw Anne get a lot less tense. By the time you finished downloading skins Anne recommended, your Mattress was resting on a purple and green plant, and most of your rooms features were in a similar style before Anne was content.

That just leaves the walls and the skybox. You continue browsing the fantasy
section, looking through the various castle packages. You finally settle on one with a shade of stone that reminds you a lot of the academy, and has a reasonably sized window into the skybox that gives you a view of grassy hills that aren't made of blocks. The result is surreal, with plant roots digging into stone, but this is the most comfortable you've felt in a room since you came here.

Moxie+1!

Afterwards, you find yourself browsing the mesh in bed, and your mind drifts towards the Argonauts and that Gatecrashing group you encountered. Particularly Rocky. You couldn't help but think there was something off about him. You're aware he was vouching for Zen, but can't help but think there was something fishy to him.

"Did you think Rocky was strange Anne?"

"If your talking about the fact that a physicist studying Uranian magnetic fields went anywhere near a Xenoarcheology expedition, then yes, Rocky was strange."

Attempting to shed more light on the matter, you begin a new round of research into the Argonauts. You're aware they're a prolific group of researchers mostly based out here, that they have an interest in the free flow of information, and assuming they know about your magic, they're interested in you. You also know that they designed the first Pandora Gate control interface, and that they frequently work with the Love and Rage
Collective for various projects.

The urge strikes you to find out more about who the Argonauts actually are. From what you gathered, there was no rational reason for Rocky to be a part of that Gatecrashing expedition. He's a Physicist from an Argonaut base devoted to studying magnetic fields. The Solarchive article on them was large(especially the history section), and you had so may other things you wanted to read, so you didn't exactly read that article as closely as you could have.

Still, from what you read and learned from the Argonauts you met, you know they're a prolific group of researchers mostly based in the outer system with an interest in the free flow of information, and assuming they know about your magic, you. You know they designed the first Pandora Gate control interfaces, and how they frequently turn up at the Fissure Gate facility for one operation or another.

You also know they try to be apolitical, and that they're willing to share their knowledge with the inner and outer systems equally to help keep transhumanity from splintering. You realize Anarchists manage to make this work somehow, but you don't see how the Argonauts can't see that the alternative to splintering is working to promote centralization.

Then again... Transhumans take economic philosophy disputes to levels of childishness you never thought possible, it would probably take the TITANs returning or someone forcing them to get the inner system and outer system to even start on something like that.

In spite of knowing the larger picture of what the Argonauts are, you have yet to do any in depth research into their history. That's about to change though.

Louise Research Roll(These are to determine how many interesting details you find and/or How interesting they are): 68
Anne Research Roll: 30

You start looking at the Lear Base's publicly available site, and find a history of their organization. They were originally called the Jasons, back when they were an advisory group to the US government. Before the fall, they cut their ties to the inner system hypercorporations, who became blinded by their own desire for profit. After the split, they went out into the outer system, where they contributed to the founding of Locus.

They made themselves useful during the Fall, and if the Argonauts hadn't contributed their expertise...

Anne interrupts you during your reading.

"It's a Titanian blog so it will need time to load, but I can't help but think some of these conspiracy theories have merit when you take Argonaut history into account. That history of the Argonauts you found. They even use it in the inner system. It barely even mentions the fact that they stole and released quite a few hypercorp secrets when they went into the outer system after they split with them."

When it finally loads, you find yourself reading a blog article written by a Titanian infomorph by the name of Thorsten Abrahamsson. None of the claims of who was responsible for attacks on hypercorps have even remotely reliable evidence according to Anne and the infomorph is fond of jumping to conclusions, but they all have a recurring theme. The involvement of the Medeans, who according to the article Anne shows you, are the incredibly
secretive private security force of the Argonauts, devoted to guarding their high value members and assets.

You can understand the need for private security in the outer system, but you have no idea what to think about the hypercorp thefts the early Argonauts were responsible for. The hypercorporations may have forgiven them because of the fall, but you aren't particularly sure what your opinion is on the matter.

[]???

Afterwards you start researching Gatecrashing.

"If you're thinking about trying to join an expedition, I'd advise against it until you've resleeved into something more suitable." Anne tells you when you start making searches

And become unrecognizable if some miracle of Brimir makes the Gate send you back to Halkeginia?

"Who said I wanted to join an expedition?"

"Why else would you be researching this?"

"Because that's the entire reason this collective exists?"

Anne sighs.

"Fair enough. Let me know if you need any help finding anything."

Louise Research Roll: 42(http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4044133/)

You're already aware of Love and Rage collective policy regarding the Fissure Gate. Gate time is on a first come first serve basis, with your quality of service being proportional to your repscore. The Love and Rage collective doesn't tolerate people attempting to use the gate to make a profit.

They have a guide for new gatecrashers, most of what you read seems to be common sense things, like leave alien artifacts to the xenoarchaeologists, travel armed, wear a vacsuit, which you now realize are what everyone you've met in quarantine first entered with, you will probably be quarantined and debriefed afterwards, and a list of things that are nearly mandatory to bring, like survival belts, robomules, shelter domes, and life support packs, but you do find useful suggestions for other supplies like Go Cycles, and if possible, Quantum Entanglement communicators.

You set your goggles and ecto in a conveniently placed pouch before you fall asleep.

You've gotten yourself in order and woken up. What do you do now?(Pick 3 options and the order you do them in):

[X]Firing Range session
[X]PM Erika
[X]PM somebody else
[X]Mesh Research(Priority?)
[X]Attempt to acquire basic augmentations(If you have any specifics in mind, specify them)
[X]Exercise
[X]Try to get a Maintenance shift
[X]Investigate the Tavern
[X]Study(Specify focus)
[X]See if you can't run into one of your neighbors
[X]Didn't you see a simulspace parlor? See if you can't get some measure of the experience, even with an Ecto.
[X]Write in

 

[X]Let the science commence.

The Love and Rage Collective has shown you considerable hospitality, but your continued membership is conditional on making a good faith effort to build Repscore, and you do not want to push that. The fastest, most practical way to raise it is to take Erika up on her offer.

You pull up Erika's profile on @-list(You didn't notice the hazer ears under her vacsuit's helmet before), and hit the PM button.

"If you're interested in studying magic, I think I'd like to work with your group. Much as I dislike admitting this, every spell I cast before the one that sent me through the gate led to an explosion. How would we start something like this? Also, could you send the notifications so that Reapers don't show up? Thank you for helping me like this.

Sincerely,
-Louise Valliere"

With that message sent, you move on to other things conducive to repscore building. Having what's essentially a flat morph is problematic to this, considering you aren't able to do as much for people as someone with more augmentations.

While you question the notion of if cortical stacks actually work, you think it would probably be a good idea to have one anyway, if only because you could only gain from it, along with mesh implants, so you know you can access
simulspaces. And that's just for starters. You know about the enhanced vision hazer morphs get, and you start thinking about whether or not you'd be able to get improved senses like that without resleeving. A bloodhound's sense of smell, and even a hawk's sense of hearing. Cattleya told you once that they have better hearing than humans.

"If I wanted to get myself augmented Anne, do you have any ideas for who to talk to?"

"What did you have in mind Louise?"

"A cortical stack. If it makes a perfect copy of me, I lose nothing, and if it works like most transhumans think it does, It could very well save my life. Or ego. Or whatever the best term is, you know what I mean!" You facepalm as your
thoughts enter the muddy waters of just what cortical stacks mean.

The idea of a machine in your neck encased in artificial diamond that could store your soul. Or a copy of it, you aren't really sure. It reminds you of an old Gallian fairy tale you heard once.

You think it was called something like "Chauncey and the Goblin King". The goblin king had taken to abducting people, bringing them into his realm of woods beyond woods and warping them into twisted caricatures of their former selves. Mageknights wielding flame and sword came forth to challenge him in his demesne, but he only became stronger, an abomination of flower and vine that used the plants burned around him as fertilizer as he devoured the knights, taunting them by revealing that he was invincible as long as his heart existed. Chauncey was one of the victims, an Earth Mage turned into an ambulatory statue by the Goblin King and forced to serve as his attendant. He knew where the heart was, and so he began to fashion a wand from the wood of the king's realm. He cleaved the heart in twain with an iron blade when the goblin king least expected it, returning the kings victims to the realm of human existence as the king was devoured by silver fire.

The idea of artificial diamond alone has staggering implications, but when the artificial diamond holds an ego... if it works like transhumans think you nearly eradicated the concept of accidental death. The theological implications of
this are completely beyond you, and you are not even going to bother trying.

"Even if you're using what's essentially Pascal's wager, the argument works here. I like it. Any other ideas?" Anne asks you.

"Mesh Implants. It's harder to make yourself useful to the community, as certain articles about repscores talked about, when you can't even use a simulspace."

"Also a good idea."

"I've also heard about the eyes hazer morphs get, and how transhumans usually only need four hours sleep and never get sick. Do you think I'd be able to get anything like that?"

"You just sent Erika a message about making yourself her test subject. Getting Bioware without consulting her would almost certainly mess up whatever experiment she may come up with. Cyberware ennhanced senses should be fine though. Maybe start with medichines and go from there?"

Anne shows you the article, and you like what you see. Nanomachines that prevent non-nanotechnology based illnesses and poisons from having more than minor effects before they pass and accelerate regeneration? Oh yes, you are definitely going to try getting these. And as crazy as it sounds, you can't help but find yourself drawn to the notion of a cybernetic eye.

"So where could I get them?" You ask Anne.

"Hmm, you could run a search on body bankers, they might have people with the medical skills to handle genetic modification or cybernetics."

"Alright, I'll run a search for the facility, you run a search for Chet Noir." You say as you head out of your room. You'd heard about the dome tavern called Enemy Mine in the upper regions of the facility, and you'd heard stories about
people overhearing interesting things in Taverns. You decide to check it out.

You find a bodybank inside the fissure gate facility ran by a hazer named Alexander Pardo(@-rep 40; E-rep 10), and Anne sends you the first bodybank in Chet Noir she finds, ran by a Swarmanoid named Cecille Godeaux(@-Rep 45; r-rep 10; C-rep 10)

First person you want to contact about augmentations:
[X]Alexander Pardo
[X]Cecille Godeaux
[X]Wait
[X]Write in???

While you're in the elevator, Erika sends you a reply.

"Hi Louise! I was bouncing some ideas off Aldrick, and even he agrees, we're going to need to do this carefully. Start with a video, get some air quality sensors and nanotechnology sensors handy. Once we have a good video, we could get more than this weapons designer who owes me a favor to help us. We've came up with a couple of ideas for how to do this. We could do this in my lab with things cleared out and the notifications sent(Aldrick didn't like this idea very much), get suits and make a trip to the surface, or convince the weapons designer to let us use her lab. Her names Lihua Peng. She's nice enough, and her @-rep is sound."

When you check it, you find out Lihua Peng has 50 @-rep.

Where to get the video:
[X]Surface Trip
[X]Weapons Designer
[X]Erika's Lab
[X]Actually, I had another idea I wanted to get your opinion on(Write in)
[X]Write in???

 

Short update this time.

[X]Cover story established

You save the contact information of the bodybanking facilities you found for later reference and begin drafting a reply to Erika.

"If you think she's trustworthy. We should try using her lab. Nobody will think twice about explosions in there right?" Is the first part of the message you think about sending.

The fact Erika is probably using a fake name is interesting, and you think about asking her about it.

[]Bring it up(Write in)
[]Just download the complete series of Durarara instead, it might have a clue(You refuse to use the exclamation marks).
[]Aldrick might know, try asking him(Write in).
[]Leave it alone.
[]Write in???

After you finish sending that message, you make your way through the top floor dome the elevator exits at, and find a tunnel leading to the Enemy Mine saloon. When you enter, you find yourself looking upon a series of 5 columns, each containing shelves of various makers and alcoholic beverages and surrounded by stools and crescent shaped tables. Looking around you find various booths around the outer ring of the dome.

"Excuse me coming through!" A tall gentleman in a hat, large glasses, and grayish-white camouflage says as he seems to be preparing to throw a drunk out, who he apparently had in a hold involving his chin and stomach, mostly using the chin to keep him off balance. He's moving fast enough where you can't really get much of a read on his AR profile.

"Sorry mate, but for now, ye've got no further business here," He says as he throws the drunkard out of the bar before heading over to you.

"Sorry about that. You're the new girl right? Name's Mitchell Hillman."(@-rep: 27) He says as you shake hands.

[X]What did you do to throw that man out?
[X]Have you heard anything interesting around here?
[X]Is there anything interesting to do here?
[X]Who was that?
[X]Write in

 

Oh, boy, Louise in Space Quest! One of the quests I've been following on SB, but can't post in due to being banned there!

[X]Bring it up(Write in)
-[X]So, out of curiosity, my muse says your name is the same as the character in an "anime" called Durarara? Is there a story behind that?

[X]Is there anything interesting to do here?

 

[X]Welcome to the Saloon

After you sent Erika that message, you plugged Durarara into a search engine and downloaded the series from an archive in Chet Noir. You see a little text message in your AR feed saying it finished downloading as you talk to the security volunteer.

"Louise Valliere, and I must admit, I haven't seen a technique like that. Where did you learn it?

"A martial artist I met on Locus. E' was only about 60 percent as good as he thought he was, but 60 percent of that is still pretty dang good. Anyone know you're here? This may be a respectable saloon, but getting drunk, alone, with a low repscore sounds like a pretty bad idea."

You issue a quick denial.

"That wasn't what I had in mind!"

"Then what brings you here?"

"I was curious. And don't people hear interesting things in Taverns, or find interesting things to do there?"

"Well, there's that batch of people I stopped Frank from getting into an argument with. ROBists. Infomorph literature cultists and freelancers, but they have some interesting ideas on high caliber weapons. Ye may be able to get a story out of them."

You look in the direction Mitchell is looking in, and your AR feed shows you two names from the motley group of 6 with unusual looking pistols in the booth.

Sierra Tomblin

@-rep:40
r-rep:25

Claire Powell

@-Rep:42
r-rep:15

"Not gonna throw ye out yet, but ye've got no business drinking here. Not like this."

"By Transhuman standards, if you're ever drinking alone, you've got a serious problem." Anne explains to you.

It's the same way in Halkeginia. Except people didn't take the notion anywhere near as seriously.

"Thanks?" You say hesitantly.

"No worries mate, this place serves more than just booze. The booze is still the most interesting thing here though." Mitchell says before you go off to look around the bar. When you find an empty booth, you sit down for a moment to look into what Mitchell was telling you about. Anne's avatar flickers into existence as you start asking questions.

"So who are these...robbits?" You ask as you check out the bar's AR-overlay, some style that a pop-up helpfully described as 'Neo-Western', as the Muse shook her head slightly.

"ROBists. Members of the First Church of the Random Omnipotent Being, a parody of mainstream religion that became serious some time after the fall, when the Second Church of the Random Omnipotent being was founded. Considering the Second Church is comprised of TITAN Worshippers and singularity seekers, they do not like being confused with each other. They're fervent cosmonauts, and the existence of an infinite number of parallel universes is literally an article of faith for them. Simply put, they believe everything exists in an alternate universe somewhere. Magic co-existing with technology, Elves being the dominant race instead of humans," You suppress a shudder at the thought of the Anathema being the dominant species somewhere out there, "Or even a videogame being reality. Their tenants are mostly based off an ancient pre-fall mesh forum they recreated called Spacebattles."

"Spacebattles?" You ask, checking out the AR-music options before deciding that something called 'Classical Dubstep' was the least offensive to your tastes.

"An old pre-mesh forum as I said, primarily focused around fanfiction and arguments over the minutiae of fictional settings. Take an established story and change the situation to serve your own idea for a plot, and you have a work of fanfiction. The facility has a repository if you want to take a dip into it."

You get a link to the repository before Anne continues.

"Back on topic, ROBists believe in preserving literature in all forms, along with encouraging the writing of new literature. One of them once remarked that every AR-Game, every movie, every cartoon, every simulspace, starts with a story, if that enlightens you about how seriously they take their priorities. They send out groups of 'Paladins' to go on massive downloading sprees that could take weeks or years to complete from the processor locus in the Neptunian Trojans where they live as infomorphs, distributing stories over the mesh. The 'Paladins' also do security and mercenary work to get ideas for story material."

"Do they have any church doctrines?" You ask curiously while looking over the selection of drinks, virtual and physical, idly wondering why something called 'sake' made you feel like whipping someone. Anne pauses for a moment.

"They distribute an e-pamphlet on their doctrines...ah, this group put one up, they don't usually gatecrash on Oberon, usually they use the Gate on Pandora, so they must be here to schedule gate time and/or latch on to a sufficiently interesting expedition." A small window appears in your AR-view with the typical fluff that is used to proselytise to the commoners, and a list of their doctrinal points.

Points of Doctrine:

1. ROBism is a nonexclusive religion. There's an infinite number of parallel universes. You're right somewhere.

2. The advancement of science deserves support.

3. You need more Dakka, no exceptions.

4. Be prepared, ROB's give no warning before beginning their games.

5. Writing is the spring from whence universes flow. Those who are stricken with plot bunnies deserve constructive criticism, no matter how atrocious the story. If they don't declare their story a trollfic, that's their problem.

6. The singularity has already happened and it was The Fall. For your own safety and the safety of others, do not destroy vital habitat apparatus.

7. Every story is the creation of an alternate universe.

8. If 3 doesn't work, purge it with fire. Any fire, up to and including Oppenheimer's light.

9. This is your story, make it interesting.


"Interesting...but what is 'dakka' and why should there be more of it?" Anne pauses briefly before giggling at your question and showing an image of a large creature firing a large number of guns, and her giggles increase as you stop dead for a moment.

"Quite simply, dakka is the phonetic of an automatic weapon firing. More dakka means firing more guns, and is a simple philosophy that you can never have enough guns. Never."

"And Oppenheimer's light?"

"Nuclear and depending on who you ask, antimatter weapons."

You stare at Anne, remembering what you read about how those were used during the fall to destroy cities.

"The only thing I can say is they like overkill."

"Hmm... do you think they might be willing to pass on some of their knowledge?" You ask Anne.

"Maybe. ROBists tend to be willing to trade knowledge, skillsofts, and if any of their more common weapon blueprints haven't proliferated somewhere yet, they'll even trade those in exchange for a good story or two."

As Anne says that, you notice the first group of transhumans that looked your age you've encountered since you came here as they enter the bar. As they pass by your booth, you can't help but overhear their conversation.

"I can't believe we're actually going on a Gatecrashing expedition, this is going to be awesome! Maybe we'll find something no-one else has!" Gushes one teenage girl in a normal Splicer Morph with a shock of rainbow-coloured hair and dark skin that is accented by a number of colour-shifting tattoos, hands fiddling with a Medium Pistol.

Liandra Starzy
@-rep: 12

"They're all Chet Noir residents, this one has an interest in xeno-archaeology. She's going to be part of a small expedition to Luca to take part in the xeno-archaeology digs there."

"I just hope it's safe. I heard that some dangerous stuff was found out there..." Replies another teen, wrapped up in form-hiding clothing and hood, her voice the only clue to her gender. A pair of Light Railgun Pistols at her sides.

Rebecca Camulus
@-rep: 14

"She's training to become part of the Black Marshal's Brigade, and has been involved in a few low-level citizen's arrests."

"We'll be fine. We just have to stay clear of those hyper-corpses from Terra Genesis." Remarks another teen, male, who seems to be affecting what Anne helpfully points out as a 'classic cyberpunk' look.

Maxwell Lincoln
@-rep: 12

"Finally, he has leanings toward becoming a genetic scientist."

"Should I go talk to them? I mean, they are my age." You ask.

"It would be nice to interact with people your own age Louise. Just remember that you escaping from a neo-primitivist enclave is the most plausible cover story for why you're here. No talking about magic except as illusions created by hidden nanotechnology."

"I know, I know." You grouse.

[? ? ?]

 

[X] Have Anne send a message to the ROBists, requesting a future meeting.
[X] Introduce yourself to the teenagers. Claim to be from an exo-planetary neo-primitive enclave.

Also, question: How is it possible for a teen to be "born" to Chat Noir, when it probably wasn't built until after the Fall happened? Are we looking at some sort of Anarchist equivalent to the Lost Generation, minus the psychic powers and mental illnesses?

 

Point taken. It's been clarified.

 

Robists.

Me like

 

*looks at SB thread*

LOL, the vote's a tie. You might also want to mention on there that votes with (QQ) appended to them are on here, given that one of the posters seemed a bit confused over not having seems my post.

 

I did put the QQ in parentheses by your vote. Maybe I'll be more specific next time.

[X]I can has social links?

As the most human seeming RObist you can see right now, you send Claire Powell a PM.

"I have a story or two I may want your opinion on later. Do you know how long you'll be on Oberon?"

"We've been trying to get ourselves hired for a trip to Kokytos for a while. It's a classic trope. Follow the money. The banks aren't acting like banks, and we want to be part of the story when it happens. If we haven't found an interesting expedition within three days, we're probably going to hunt plot bunnies elsewhere. Maybe Portal. Have you read our pamphlets for prospective authors?"

"I haven't seen them, and what are plot bunnies?" You reply back.

"When a plot bunny manifests, it keeps jumping around inside your mind, annoying you until you try writing it. So what genres are you interested in. Science fiction? Fantasy?"
You take a moment to consider your options before deciding to go with what you know, "Fantasy actually. Coming from a neo-primitive enclave with nobility and royalty tends to create a lack of actual science, let alone science-fiction." You reply as you dredge up the old stories and myths that every Tristanian child knows, "Unfortunately, I can only recite them from memory for now, but that should be fine right?"

"Of course! If you want to write them down and send them to me, that'll be fine as well. Like I said we'll be here for the next three days negotiating for a security contract to Kokytos, so you don't need to push yourself. If you don't manage to finish them before we leave, I can give you a link to one of our gateway nodes to be edited, reviewed and sent back with feedback. Can't give you a direct link unfortunately, security and all that you know."

You nod in understanding, "Of course. And whatever material you have for a new author will be greatly appreciated." You receive some download prompts and download the documents.

Louise has received:
[From Thoughts to Words: A guide for new writers, by the First Church of ROB]
[Take A Deep Breath: Freelance publishing and you, by the First Church of ROB]
[A mesh-link to a First Church gateway node]

Louise now has Networking (First Church of ROB): 5

Thanking Claire, you consider pinging her profile.

[Ping?]

With that done, you decide to take the plunge and speak to the three teens, stepping out of your booth to physically approach them with a nervous but hopefully friendly smile on your face, and give the three teens a short bow as their muses likely alert them to your approach, "Greetings, my name is Louise Valliere, it's a pleasure to meet you." You say politely.

"Before you ask. Yes, I did make sure that your profile lists where you came from." Anne states to your concealed relief, at least that was one thing you wouldn't have to explain.

"Um, hi. Wow, I saw on one of the message boards here that there was a person from a neo-primitive enclave who just popped up out of nowhere."You wonder if the entire solar system knows about your arrival here as she continues, "But I didn't think I'd meet you. Liandra Starzy, nice to meet you. How are you finding real life?" She asks with a smile.

"Rebecca Camulus. Un plaisir d'entendre un autre naturel." You smile wider at the greeting, there's a shortage of French Speakers here, hearing it spoke without the aid of a program is a welcome thing and you can't help but reply to that.

"Ah ! Vous parlez Tristanian aussi bien!" You exclaim and then blush at the amused grin on the teen's faces, "My apologies, I haven't had very many opportunities these last few weeks to hear my native language without translation software."

"Don't sweat it, Becky doesn't speak a word of English anyway, never wants to learn either. Maxwell Lincoln. Your profile says you came from a neo-primitive exo-colony, what was it like? I've heard about them but I've never been myself."

"Yeah, are there really nobles and royalty where you came from? Ooh, do they disguise technology as magic there? Fight with swords and bows?"

"Are there other languages spoken there?"