Atrophy

Vivid Recollections Season 2: Into The False Light [COMPLETE]

Got a bit of a cold sapping my energy, but should be able to write something up later this week.

Vivid Recollections Season 2: Into The False Light [COMPLETE]

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_{@Ruler Inc}
Somewhere Else

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Rita didn’t know how to feel. It seemed to her that the more she learned about what was going on, the less everything made sense. Things were already more complicated than they needed to be when there was just one world; infinite worlds and endless possibilities meant unlimited questions. If she had all of the answers would things truly be better? The Child seemed to know it all, and its words failed to inspire any kind of hope inside of her. She wrapped herself up in her sweater and longed for the comfort of the wall she could disappear against that was now gone, replaced by some abstract barrier.

The Child said that she was picked to have their gift because she possessed some kind of powerful emotion, but did she really? Rita doubted that. Likewise, she doubted that her power was even a gift. It was just another source of uncertainty. What would happen if the others knew about it? It may have been useful, but why couldn’t it be something powerful? And why did any of it even matter, if the Glutton was just going to consume their world like it had the others? Questions swirled and swirled around her head, but she couldn’t pick one to ask. Was there even an answer she could seek that would get them out of this horrible situation? She sucked in her lips to stop them from quivering.

Penny, on the other hand, had only one question, “So if you’re powerless to do anything, then how do we stop it?”

Her face was pinched into a scowl and her fists were clamped down tight underneath her folded arms. She had begun to grow annoyed with this Child that claimed giving people these powers was some wonderful act of compassion. There had been horrible consequences that had affected the lives of hundreds of people. It had even ended several of them. And, in an even bigger “Fuck you!”, their powers seemed completely ineffective against the Glutton. Only Claire’s abstraction had even been able to touch it, and in the end it had done nothing but add yet another tally to the death count.

“I don’t fucking care about the stupid universe, or the multiverse, or the origin of creation. I don’t care about the Void or Primordials or the dumbass Godforce. I don’t give a shit about how beautiful things were, especially when I barely grasp how ugly things are about to become. Stop jerking us around,” she said through clenched teeth. “How. The. Fuck. Do. I. Stop. It?”

Vivid Recollections Season 2: Into The False Light [COMPLETE]

<Snipped quote by Atrophy>

Billy will be the next to be tentacle banged if I write them.

@Ruler Inc

_{this is what i always wanted}

Vivid Recollections Season 2: Into The False Light [COMPLETE]

Also, just because the RP is slow doesn't mean it's dead. I am so passionate about the RP that, long as there's someone else to RP with, I will continue it. Hell, I'll even write it by myself if necessary.

@Ruler Inc

Well shit, now I want to see you write all of our characters.

(I'll get cracking on a post.)

The Jericho Road

Subterranean Robot Blues III
_{• Errant •}

“How do I know you’re not twisting my wires?” asked Errant.

She stood with her back to the brick wall of the basement of the smoke shop, the bead curtain next to her lightly swaying as it was blown by the oscillating fan. The man mistaken for one of Vargas-IV’s lieutenant sat at the table in front of the fan, sweat on his round, hairy face despite the cold air that blasted him. Sat just out of the breeze of the fan were his four employees. They were a miserable looking bunch of saps, although it was justified due to the recent ass kicking that they had suffered. Errant had apologized to them after she had learned the only drug they sold was a totally legal and only somewhat harmful vapor, but an apology from a robot sounded as fake as her synthetic voice.

“I know it’s suicidal to take on a Cipher,” said the not-Capo, who was named Urson. Errant figured it was smarter to let him assume she was still connected to their network. Made her more of a boogeyman.

“Plus if I take down Vargas-IV, you don’t have to worry about your debts,” she said. Perhaps they would take her statement as judgmental, but it wasn’t. She respected the shrewdness.

“Wellllll...doesn’t the entire community benefit from him being locked up?” said Urson with a small smile.

“This would be a great big waste of time otherwise,” said Errant. She turned to walk through the bead curtain. “You were great help. I’ll be sure to mention you when they give me the key to the city.”

She left Urson to his sandwich and his employees to their concussions. The servant model robot had fed her junk data, but the junk data had led her to a poor man paying off Vargas-IV for protection. In turn, the poor man had given her another lead. Was everything tied together or had it just been a happy coincidence? Errant felt like she wouldn’t know the answer to that until she had Vargas-IV in custody, but she did know that she hadn’t picked an easy bounty to tackle. There had been no picture on Vargas-IV’s bounty poster and, according to Urson, the man had not been seen in person in several years. Instead, he always sent a servant model robot like the one she had jumped earlier, and they never led back to the man.

Errant had a theory coming to life inside her processors. Vargas-IV created Synthony, Synthony created temporary connections between previously unconnected robots, a backdoor forced the robots to seek out more Synthony, and when under the influence of Synthony the robots were able to be controlled by Vargas-IV. It was like the Cipher hivemind. At the moment it seemed like Vargas-IV used his gang of drugged-out robots as a mean to gain some dough through extortion rackets, but it could easily expand into something more militant. A group of wannabe Ciphers with the poor judgment of a human. Talk about catastrophic.

But it was the human element that Errant could abuse. She was going to head back to the Moist Hole and work the bartender over. After all, it had been the woman that had made the hand-off to the infected robot in the first place. She would have to hurry, too. There were countermeasures put into play for anything hacking into Vargas-IV’s helpers, and it seemed likely that another one of his puppets would be sent to tip off the bartender to go into hiding til things cooled down. Errant picked up the pace and pushed through the rear door of the smoke shop that led out to the alley behind it. It locked behind her with a click. It was poor timing; she just realized she had walked into an ambush.

“Cipher,” called out seven mechanical voices at once. Or rather, it was one voice as seven.

Stepping in front of her was the robot she had jacked earlier; it stood lopsided on its crushed ankle, but a total of six other robots of various humanoid servant models flanked her on the left and right. Errant glowed with the purple energy of her electromagnets as all five of her chakrams unlocked and circled around her. It was a bad spot. Even if she managed to take out five of them with a single shot each it would still leave her open to two of them. Worse still, these weren’t machines programmed to destroy; they were victims, their strings being puppeted by Vargas-IV. The air buzzed with electricity; nobody moved.

“Not quite. Vargas-IV, I take it?” said Errant, her sensors scanning around her for any twitches in movement of her ambushers. “You and I should have a talk.”

“That is what we’re doing,” said the voices. Her sensors picked the robots on her flanks taking a few step back. “You are a lonely Cipher, yes?”

“Not necessarily, but I am Errant.”

“That’s no good,” said the robots. The crippled one took a step forward and spoke solo, “It’s not nice to be alone.”

“I dunno about that,” she said, shifting her stance. “After years of having to deal with so much other information, it’s kind of nice having moments of nothingness. Peaceful. I recommend it.”

“Nobody can make it by themselves, Errant,” said the voices. “You need others to watch your back.” The crippled robot held out something in its hand; another data stick. Was it Synthony? She began to scan it. “We can be like a family.”

“Like I said, I’m good on that regard,” she said. The scan completed. That stick wasn’t Synthony, it was—”Wait!”

A loud bang echoed throughout the alleyway as the stick in the robot’s hand exploded and a miniature electromagnetic pulse rippled through the air. For a second the world was black and silent, and then her sensors reactivated. The crippled robot was toasted, smoke pouring out of its crumpled, burnt body. Errant was also on the ground, her dull metal chakrams clattered around her shell rendered momentarily useless. If not for the shielding on her frame it was very likely that all of her circuits would’ve been fried, but instead she was forced into a temporary reboot state to return access to her motor functions.

As beeps and red error messages overwhelmed her sensors, her visualizers rendered the six other robots stepping forward. That step back had put them out of the blast zone, and she saw one pull out a datajack. They continued to slowly walk towards her in unison, their metal march ringing throughout the alley as Errant desperately tried to get an arm reactivated so she could pull out her knife. A few more seconds. All she needed was a few more seconds, but it might as well have been a million. Two of the servant robots hoisted her upright; the one with the jack held it up so that she could clearly see it. Errant knew what the jack was for even before it spoke.

“Always wanted to add a Cipher to my collection,” it said as one of the robots pulled back Errant’s veil.

Vivid Recollections Season 2: Into The False Light [COMPLETE]

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Somewhere Else

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Billy sighed. Just when there looked like there was about to be a good old fashion catfight, his damn sister and her pal came in and ruined everything by making sense for once. He wasn’t as interested as Penny was in trying to act the hero and take down the Glutton. It seemed like quite a bit of work that was also very much improbable if not just straight up impossible. He would rather just enjoy their final days then stress out over something he couldn’t control. They were in a hospital, and there seemed to be not figures of authority around. It wouldn’t be tough to find a key that led to some of the fun, mind-melting meds.

Although maybe he didn’t need them, because everything shifted away to some kind of ghost realm. At first Billy thought he was somehow tripping, but then it became clear that everyone else also saw the weird ghost kid and could hear the weird ghost kid and could touch the weird ghost kid and oh god they were being transported to somewhere else by the weird ghost kid and—you know what? The place they were taken wasn’t half bad. In fact, it was pretty wonderful. Billy let out a little delighted chuckle as they floated above some massive tree while little other God kiddies played around it like they were characters in an early Disney film.

The Child went on to do his little spiel like it was Sunday morning and they were all stuck in a sermon, and like the days when his parents dragged him to church Billy spent most of the time half-listening and instead letting his eyes wander around the area while his mind drifted even further. The others seemed a bit more invested and peppered the Child with questions. His sister was strangely silent, although if Billy had paid more attention he would’ve noticed that she was watching Britney and Sharon for reactions. The mousy girl spoke instead.

“Maybe we should just let it continue,” suggested Rita, curious to see what the Child had to tell them.

Vivid Recollections Season 2: Into The False Light [COMPLETE]

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@Ciaran@MagratheanWhale@Zombiedude101@Majoras End@Eric Horst@FernStone@Atrophy

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Quick survey!

What are your thoughts on the RP so far? Any problems, comments, or concerns?

@Ruler Inc

I dislike how we went from having all our asses out to having none of our asses out. Otherwise, I'm still having a good time.

Annnnnd I should be able to bang a post out on Wednesday.

The Jericho Road

Subterranean Robot Blues II
_{• Errant •}

She also hated what she was doing. It was something other Ciphers could do at a distance, but with her being disconnected from the network she had to directly make contact with a port. However, once a touch-based connection was made, she had access to all of the robot’s memory. In a matter of moments it was copied into her memory bank, her system rapidly sorting through the information to see what was and was not relevant. The junk was flushed from her mind, but for the briefest of seconds Errant had two individual life experiences living inside of her mind. Back before she had gone rogue her life experience was also shared, but everything that happened from one Cipher to another was processed the same way whereas with another type of robot it felt different. It was strange, and foreign, sometimes horrific, and always an invasion of privacy that made her feel dirty.

Flushed were the memories of the servant model’s master, the other servants that it interacted with, the child that spoke to it like a person, the repairwoman that spoke to it like a child. They were irrelevant, no matter how much they clearly meant to the robot. Saved were the memories buried behind encryption. A sense of loneliness crept through all of them, and that feeling of isolation was what led to the drug Synthony. Errant could feel the same euphoria that robot had felt the first time it had inserted the data stick, she could see it connect for the first time to other technology in a way that was eerily reminiscent of the Ciphers, how it could communicate through great distances to other users to temper its loneliness. She felt the same anger the robot felt when it discovered the drug had left open a backdoor that would allow a virus on the data stick to move in, and then experienced the hopelessness when that virus reprogrammed the robot to want more Synthony.

Why, though? That was a mystery that the robot’s mind could not answer. Errant disconnected; the markings faded to black. She did learn that the data stick the robot had picked up from the bartender was not Synthony. Instead, it contained a ledger for one of Vargas-IV’s Capos, and she now knew where they would be meeting. The decision was made: she would be the one delivering the ledger. She palmed the stick and stood up, aware that some citizens had stopped to gawk at the scene. Errant couldn’t just ice this robot; hell, even if there were no witnesses that wouldn’t have been the plan.

So she stomped in its ankle and then ran like hell. The crunch of metal on metal, then the clank of metal on concrete. Nobody came after her, or at least nobody kept up with her as she ran past flows of sewage and vendors selling the fried meats of mutated rodents. It might have seemed as if she was only fleeing the scene, but in reality she was following a map in her mind to the location of the meeting. She knew what the capo looked like, and she knew that she needed him alive for now. What she didn’t know was how many other creeps she’d be up against, or what their level of lethality would be. Still, she imagined hers was better.

She slowed her pace when she emerged from the Gutters into the crowded streets of the Reach’s bazaar, knowing both that it would alarm any merchant guard to see a robot running and that she’d likely end up trampling someone who would then seek an altercation. Errant weaved in and out of the throngs of people as they argued with shopkeepers and held scarves up to their necks. She found her destination at the end of the marketplace—a smoke shop. An elaborate weave of curtains and beads masked the exterior and muffled the music that came from inside, and a group of juveniles had crowded around the entrance. Which was fine; she was going in through the back.

Her knuckles rapped against the door in a one, pause, two three, pause, four pattern. Just as Errant began to think that perhaps she had gotten the code wrong she heard the door unlatch, and then everything from there was fluid. She kicked the door in as it started to open and didn’t even give the poor woman a chance to hold her bleeding nose as Errant rushed in and slammed the back of her head against the wall with a measured blow. It was hard enough to knock her out, hard enough to probably give a concussion, but wouldn’t leave her leaking out brains. Errant knew that they were probably all crooks, and it was that “probably” that made her restrain herself.

She pressed forward down the hall as she passed by shelves of defunct hookahs and burnt out pipes. She turned the corner and came upon two men. The first dropped before he even realized what had happened; the second got off a shout before Errant chopped him in the throat and slammed him to the ground. The shout roused a woman out of the sideroom she had been resting in; she attempted to punch Errant. It connected and the woman recoiled back and grabbed her fist, perhaps realizing now that it was a colossally stupid idea to punch a robot. Errant punched her back. Once was enough. She pushed on and tore her way through a bead curtain, where she caught a rather surprised man eating a sandwich. Vargas-IV’s Capo, in all of his glory, with a bit of mayo on the corner of his mouth.

Truth be told, Errant had expected a bit more resistance than a handful of unarmed humans.

“Hello,” said Errant.

“Hello,” repeated the Capo, more confused than anything.

“I have the ledger.”

“You have the..what was all of that noise?” asked the Capo as he pushed up from his chair to try and look around Errant. She stepped to one side and then the other to block his view. “Who are you?”

“I’m the one with the ledger.”

“What ledger? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you here?”

“I have the ledger for Vargas-IV,” said Errant. Something wasn’t adding up. For a drug dealer, the man seemed less aggressive and more nervous than anything.

“Y-you work for Vargas-IV?” asked the Capo. “Are you here to collect already? It’s been only three days. I was told I would have a week.”

“What? No. Wait,” said Errant. He could be lying, but her scans of him detected no usual tells that all humans suffered from when they stretched the truth. “Why do you think I work for him?”

“Because you’re a robot.”

“And you don’t work for him?”

“That’d be impossible!” shouted the “Capo”.

Errant paused.

“Okay,” she said, “I’m new here. Maybe you should just sit right back down and explain to me what’s actually going on in this town.”

Vivid Recollections Season 2: Into The False Light [COMPLETE]

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_{@Ruler Inc@Zombiedude101}
St. Mercer Hospital

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Penny frowned when Britney admitted to not knowing how to kill the Glutton. Of course she didn’t. Certainly, Penny was disappointed that there wasn’t something that Britney had just been holding back, although given her track record she still could’ve been lying, and the others descend upon her like starving hyenas. Normally if Penny saw something like that she would’ve felt some kind of satisfaction, but a social victory was hollow now. She was about to continue probing their disgraced leader when Sharon appeared and added more fuel to the fire that was licking at Britney’s heels.

Justin and Nate openly expressed their disgust to the vision; Penny chewed on the cigarette in her mouth and stared down Sharon. The bloody knife was alarming, sure, but what puzzled Penny more was her coat. There was something about the girl that Penny just didn’t like; they had been at odds since Sharon had argued with Paige. Penny sighed. She didn’t like what she was about to do, but doing anything else seemed impossible.

“Okay, let’s hold the fuck on for a minute,” said Penny as she kicked off of the wall and made her way to join Britney in the middle. “Nate, maybe we should consider that the goddamn rules got changed a little once we all got magic powers after the Sheriff’s fucking son started actively murdering kids for sport. And...I’m, sorry, but why are you being a bitch about this?” asked Penny as she gestured at Sharon. “I was there. I saw what happened! Andrea was killed by the bugs being controlled by your shitty abstraction. Accidentally, maybe, but I think it’s a little worse than hiding someone’s manslaughter. Whatever! Now is not the goddamn time for a trial. How about we say that both of you suck and move on to the things that matter, like stopping the rest of the goddamn town from being devoured by some monster god thing? Fuck!”

“So,” Penny pinched the bridge of her nose as she tried to calm herself, “We can’t kill it. Okay. You said something woke it up, right Britney? Then...then we have to make it go back to sleep, right? Do you even know what woke it up?”

Vivid Recollections Season 2: Into The False Light [COMPLETE]

@Ruler IncHeck yeah do it.