This is the AI imouto quest, isn't it?

Rolled 20

>>27791520
Warrick Locke.

> Condition. It’s been years since you’ve been in the field, don’t want to get rusty.

I'll give it a bit more time, but will just move along I suppose. Any particular way you want to condition?

>>27791715
Regular routine, I guess. The same things we did in the army.

****** : 80

You groggily roll off your bed and get to your feet. You almost lose your balance as your blood refuses to reach your head, but you steady yourself on the window frame. Your body is a bit numb from the pain killers, but moving well enough. Looking around your apartment as you stretch and crack your stiff joints, you try to figure out how you can even condition in such a small area. Flipping your bed up against the wall gives you not even ten square meters of floor space, much of which is covered by your piles of electronics.

Still, you can always do some things. You take a deep breath and slap your hands together before starting. Pushups, pull ups, wall planks, abdominal work, lunges, one legged squats, everything you can think of that you don't need specialized equipment for. Back in the military, you had access to entire exercise fields and a myriad of machines and tools. It was easier back then.

You were also in better shape back then, when you had to exercise daily. Those who didn't wound up dead or addicted to stimulants. You can still remember the weight of your ceramic armor, but end up gasping for breath and worn out before you accomplish much of anything.

"Your physical performance is continuing to drop Warrick. You were able to do thirteen percent more during my last overhaul of your systems," your AI comments as you collapse to the ground in a sore heap.

"Shut up Eve," you grumble as you let your heart rate slow. "How much longer?"

"Approximately fifty minutes remaining."

>Push yourself. This is unacceptable, you were an athlete.
>Do something else. You're a civilian again, it doesn't matter.
>Other

Rolled 7

>>27791858
> Push yourself. This is unacceptable, you were an athlete.

Rolled 7

>>27791858
>Push yourself. This is unacceptable, you were an athlete.

File: 1382031391834.png-(373 KB, 798x449, 1375667820623.png)

373 KB PNG

>>27792072
>>27792044
Impressive

Rolled 1

>>27792072
>>27792044
Yea nah, fat slob mode.

>>27791858
>>Push yourself. This is unacceptable, you were an athlete.

Rolled 7

>>27791858
Push yourself.

>>27792115
Fat slab mode, huh.

Rolled 13

>>27792123
>>27792115
>>27792072
>>27792044
Now I've lost it.
I know I can kill.
The truth exists beyond the cheetos.

>>27792138
JUST HOWLING IN THE SHADOOOOOWS.

File: 1382031739959.png-(182 KB, 373x700, 1324838792201.png)

182 KB PNG

Rolled 4

>>27792044
>>27792072
>>27792123
All these sevens.

The d20 was for something else. d100 is standard, but only when I call for it

"Thirteen percent? In fifty minutes? I can beat that. I was used to be the star of my War Games squad," you say as you stretch out again and get back to work.

"You held the record for Quickest Cap for thirteen months, but they changed the rules since you played. I don't think you'd be as good any more, even if you were still in shape. Although Dr. Chase has told you many times that you need to stay in physical shape in order to lessen the burden of the implant on your mind," Eve explains as you force yourself through the same routine again, but without pausing for breath.

You were attempting a handstand push up, you used to be able to do half a dozen without falling, when an alert popped up on your Augment Menu. The sudden spark in your implant made you twitch in pain and lose your balance enough to make you fall. Slamming against the ground and rattling the light fixtures, you groan in pain. Staring up at the ceiling, you reluctantly pull up your Augment Menu.

The prostitute had messaged you, "Hey, you still want to meet tonight, right? Can we do it a bit earlier? Something came up and I'd love it if you wouldn't mind rescheduling a tad."

"Congratulations Warrick, you exceeding last month by seven percent," Eve comments as you close the message and sit up. "I'll be finished in about twenty minutes."

>How do you reply?
>Eat some food. Good food, good gains.
>Rest. You'll have to make a schedule for this, but rest is part of a schedule.
>Go somewhere
>Other

Strength chosen.

>>27792248
Well it's not like we have anything planned so yeah, go ahead on the rescheduled time. Transportation an issue?

>>27792248
Eat something healthy and reschedual the hooker

>>27792265
This. Accept the call, get some grub, shower and get ready.

>>27792248
Eat a healthy meal of meat stuffed meat wrapped in meat and reschedule the hooker.

You pull your Augment Menu up in full, rather than a mere blurb of light on the side. Your implant may be broken, but it still supports full three dimensional manipulation of the virtual menus through both gestures and thought. Ignoring the ambient advertisements and propaganda blurbs, you pull her message up to respond to it. Seems she changed her name again, Twi. She must be new to this if she thinks that's a good alias to use. Regardless, you whip up a quick message and shoot it back to her, confirming that she can come whenever works best.

"Warrick, are you planning on paying for sex again?" Eve asks as you stand up on your wobbly legs.

"I thought I told you to not monitor my communications," you say as you walk around the corner of your bedroom to reach your small kitchen.

"I'm not, I'm monitoring hers." Your fridge is sparse and mostly liquid. The only real food you have left in it is a few slices of pork. On the bright side, it's real pork, not lab grown. Dr. Chase had managed to get your priority on purchasing meat from the Isles, so every once in a while you'd get a shipment, and this was the last of it for now.

"Christ. Is it at least encrypted or something?" you ask as you turn on your electric range to start cooking the pork and crack into a bottle of water.

"It does not appear to be so."

"Well, this could go poorly," you comment as you walk over to your bathroom. "Don't let my meat burn."

A few minutes later you're sitting at your counter in your towel, just getting to your meal when Eve speaks up again. "She's here."

>Get dressed. She can wait for you to be decent.
>Let her in as is. She's just a hooker for the night.
>Ignore her and eat.
>Other

>>27792429
Just because you're ordering prostitutes doesn't mean you can't look nice while doing it.
Put on some good clothes, faggot.

>>27792429
Hm. I would be a little suspicious. Maybe throw something on just in case this is actually four armed assassins or something. Also if it isn't but actually a pretty girl, might be a good idea to explain the basics of how this works if she's new

>>27792429
> Get dressed. She can wait for you to be decent.
We have style, man. And respect.

Any particular style? Or the usual?

>>27792532
Monkey suit, duh.
Failing that, a nice collared shirt and jeans. Casual, yet still nice.

>>27792532
Casual and nice. Don't be rude, introduce yourself, excuse the mess, you know the deal.
She's new at this, might as well help her ease in.

That came out wrong.

>>27792563
i'm assuming business future casual still includes jeans and button up?

Let her know that you'll be getting ready in a minute, and then offer her some of the Real!Meat while she waits

"Tell her I'll let her in in a moment, that I need to get decent first," you say as you stand up and leave your meal behind.

"Will do. Although I still don't understand why you always put on so many clothes just to take them off again."

"It's called style. Some people still have it," you answer as you open your closet and start digging around. The first thing you notice is your old military dress uniform. Well pressed, trimmed collar, and your rank on the shoulder. You frown and push it aside. Modern sensibilities and style dictate almost the exact opposite when it comes to dress clothes.

Denim pants, your belt pulled to the side, and a shirt with a floppy collar and floppy cuffs. Once upon a time it was supposed to be something akin to French cuffs, but there are no French left and their fashion became this silly thing. After lacing your boots, you march over to the door and open the deadbolt to let her in.

She's a couple years younger than you and in a tight red dress held together by laces in the front to show off her assets. Better than average, although she's struggling with the lock still. "Why wouldn't the lock open? I was told this would let me in," she asks as she holds up a small ring with a blinking light on it, just a simple data storage device. She had been swiping it against the outside door lock, the one you disabled months ago.

"I use the deadbolt manually. I told you a lot of technology just doesn't work for me, didn't I? But do come in, sorry for the mess and what not," you say as you step back to let her enter.

"It's Lance, right? Twi," she says as you close the door behind her. She's just a bit too happy at the moment it seems.

>Correct her. Fake names are only for on the net
>Keep the alias. She doesn't know what she's doing

>Say something
>Other

I apologize for how slow I am at typing today, I'll try to speed up.

>>27792716
> Correct her. Fake names are only for on the net.
See if she'd like something to drink or eat.

>>27792716
Help her get comfortable with the job and with your mess of an apartment.

"It's Warrick, I use fakes on the net, not in real life. You seem a bit, what is it? Nervous? Excited?" you ask as you guide her to your kitchen counter, the only place you have chairs.

"Oh well, I told you about that thing right? I just got back from it and I'm in a bit of a good mood, that's all," she says as she takes a seat across from you.

"Right, well. Do you happen to be new to this? Because you weren't using an encryption on your communications with me. Also, who the bloody hell gave you a skeleton key? If that is what you claim it to be. You want some water? Something stiffer?"

You note that her eyes jump over to you at your unintentional innuendo, but she quickly starts talking again. "Yes, thank you. I guess I just forgot to use an encryption this time. Won't happen again."

"I should hope so. Some people actually care that this is illegal," you comment as you get her a water. Out of curiosity, you reach out with your neural implant and ping on the ring to try to get a read on it, but it seems to be unresponsive for the moment. Odd.

"So this is your place then? By yourself?" she asks as you give her the water.

"No, a good friend of mine is in his room over there, but he only ever leaves the net for maybe an hour a day so don't worry about it. We have all the privacy we need."

"Well then..."

>Shall we?
>Keep her talking. She may want this over with, but it will leave a bad taste in your mouth.
>Ask for the ring. You should have been able to activate it.
>Other.

>>27792716
Ah. Correct her, show her the proper etiquette I suppose. Offer something to eat

>>27792898
> Keep her talking. She may want this over with, but it will leave a bad taste in your mouth.

>>27792898
>Shall we?

>>27792898
Keep her talking. Something's fishy here.

>>27792898
I suppose we should small talk for a little. We should ask about the ring if only for conversation sake

"So where are you from Twi?" you ask as you sit down and lean against the counter. "And would you like some of this? It's real meat, not lab grown."

She's amazingly disinterested. "That's fine, I'm really not hungry at the moment. Thank you for offering though. And I come from Delta, just a small place outside the local shopping area really."

"Most people are surprised when they hear I have natural meat."

She shrugs. "Military gets it all the time, don't they? I really don't have much problem with the lab grown kind, that's all." She glances between you and the bedroom, twiddling the ring in her fingers and playing with a bracelet.

"So who gave you the ring? Did you program it yourself by chance? I was playing around with coding one a few weeks ago, it's trickier than it looks."

"Just a friend I met on the net, said he wanted me to test if it works. I guess I'll have to tell him it doesn't, won't I?"

"You might want to test it a couple more times, though I'm not quite sure what use you have for it. So what were you doing before you came here? Shopping or something?"

"Look, I'm sorry," she says as she leans closer to you. "I appreciate that you're trying to be nice right now, but I'd prefer if we finished our business first, you know?"

>Alright. May as well get it over with, she doesn't seem interested in talking.
>Hold out. It's good to take your time and enjoy yourself.
>Ping the ring again. It has to activate
>Say something
>Other

>>27793145
> Hold out. It's good to take your time and enjoy yourself.
Taking it slow.

>>27793178
slow down the path of no plot progression. awww yeah

>>27793145
>Hold out. It's good to take your time and enjoy yourself.
Whoms paying whom here?

"Slow down, I consider this part of the business. I'm paying you a thousand credits for tonight, aren't I? It's acceptable to want to sit down and enjoy dinner with your company beforehand."

"You also agreed to pay half up front, no?" she asks as she sits back and folds her arms.

You roll your eyes and stand up. "Yeah, I suppose I did. I left it over here. It'll just take a second, then I would very much appreciate it if you would slow down."

Twi closes her eyes and takes a deep breath as you walk off, collecting herself it seems. The drawer of your desk is filled with your odds and ends, including a good number of your welfare chips you reprogrammed. The only problem is seeing the ink on them to know how much each is worth.

The monitor on your desk lights up to show Eve, a generic and appealing girl that is far enough on the other side of the uncanny valley. "I don't think you've noticed, but she's walking around with even more data storage than you. And you could store the entire train scheduling subroutine in your pocket."

"I'll keep that in mind," you whisper as you find a five hundred credit chip and walk back. You smile and hand it to her as you sit back down.

Her smile switches to a frown when she looks at the chip however. "This is a welfare chip. It's illegal for me to take. What am I supposed to do with this?"

"So is prostitution. And chill out, those aren't linked to anyone, you won't get caught. Now, I would like to finish my food with your company." She huffs and looks off to the side as you pick up your plate of meat again.

>Chat about something.
>Finish quickly and get to business. This isn't worthwhile.
>Ping the ring. Gotta find what's on there
>Other

>>27793328
She's hiding something, try to figure out what.

>>27793328
Well I suppose we could try to strike up a conversation but if she really isn't into it there's no use in forcing it. Also, all the alarms are going off in the plot section of the brain saying that this is a trap of some kind

>>27793328
> Chat about something.

Maybe ask about that ring, we could help her fix it, if she wants.

"Now, would you like to chat about something? The War Games perhaps? Are you partial to any particular sector?" you ask as you start eating.

"Not really, I haven't watched them since I was a kid, before the rules change. Now it's just one big tech battle and not terribly interesting."

"I used to play for the Great Lakes sector you know. Held the record for the fastest capture. Turns out lots of teams don't consider that the enemy may already be behind them when they start," you explain with a laugh.

"I guess that's why teams now start on pedestals then, no?"

"Yeah, something like that, though it wasn't as problematic as having an AI perfectly predict their movements. Not much sport left in it. More like a chess game," you say. She shrugs and doesn't respond as you finish eating. Finally, you speak up again, "So your friend who gave you the ring. where did you meet him?"

"He contacted me actually."

"And you just said yes? Isn't that kind of dangerous and what not? Even I don't respond to most people who randomly send messages."

"It worked out. You ready then?" She leans forward just enough to give you a view down her dress, not that it needed much enhancing anyways. She's smiling, but it's a practiced smile, the kind you put on for a photo.

>Yes. She was civil enough.
>No. She's keeping secrets.
>Say something
>Other

>>27793504
She's keeping a secret.

>>27793504
She's a cop.

>No. She's keeping secrets.
Play it cool, don't accuse her immediately. Maybe bluff how you saw similar rings during your job, and that they were used as tracking devices.

>>27793566
Because of your position as a case study on experimental neural implants, even if an MP busts your ass they would be forced to turn you back over to Research, and you'd be back in your apartment by the next day. Or so you hope.

"Alright, well you see; here's the thing. When you make business deals like this between two discerning people such as ourselves, there is a need for trust between each other, because we both will go down if this gets out. So, when one gets the feeling that the other isn't trustworthy, the deal is off. So how about you tell me what you're doing, what's with the ring, and anything else you should tell me," you say as you set your plate aside and lean in as well.

You calmly steeple your fingers and drum them against one another as you wait for her response. "There is no secret. Why do you think there is a secret? The only thing I've kept from you is that I'm new at this, alright? I need some money, and my friend talked me into it, that's it, that's all. You're making me super uncomfortable right now, and it's awkward enough for me to be doing this, so can we please just get it over with?"

>Fine. Not like she can pull anything on you.
>Get out. Not worth the risk.
>Other

>>27793727
Pay her in full, tell her where she made mistakes and what to do in the future, and send her away.
If she needs help or something, she can always come back.

File: 1382040500761.gif-(1.97 MB, 267x200, 1328934756222.gif)

1.97 MB GIF

>>27793727
Picture related.

You nod and stand up. A moment later, you had her the rest of the payment. "Regretably, that's that I suppose. I won't be contacting you in the future. For your own sake, be more open with future clients, and for God's sake encrypt your communications."

She looks between the money and you. "That's it then?"

"That's it."

"Alright then," she says as she stands up and adjusts her dress before taking the money.

"Good, now get out. I have better things to do than this," you say as you point her to the door. She nods and steps around you. It takes her a moment to work the deadbolt, but she leaves and closes the door behind herself, leaving you alone again.

"I finished my work on your systems Warrick. They are at peak operational capacity again. Now I have to catch up on my work around EDEN. I'm sure the trains are behind schedule by now and the engineers are always unhappy when I get distracted like this. I'll be on the line if you need me, but I really do have to go now. Sorry to leave you alone tonight," Eve announces as you walk back to your desk. You nod and she waves goodbye.

The hydrocodone has worn off by now, your headache is returning. But something catches your eye in the darkness of your apartment.

She left the ring on your counter.

>Take a look inside. Curiosity and what not.
>Destroy it. Would rather be a live cat.
>Ignore it. There are better things to do now the net is back.
>Other

>>27793934
> Take a look inside. Curiosity and what not.
You know you want to. Can our friend help us with that?

>>27793934
Open the box, Pandora.

>>27793934
Ring. Need to keep ourselves somewhat independant from the net. Atleast prove to ourselves we don't have an addiction

Taking a peak inside the ring it is

please roll 1d100 for me. Highest of first three

Rolled 76

>>27794029
Rolling.

Rolled 68

>>27794029

>>27794029

Roll

Rolled 42

>>27794029

Rolled 56

>>27794029
Let's pop this thing open.

>76 v 80
****** : 80

The ring calls out like siren for you. A program you couldn't finish, but someone else did. That, or the reason Twi was acting so strange. Either way, you can't resist it in the slightest. You jump up and go over to it. The ring is small. A thick cut of delicate iron, enough to contain the circuitry inside, and wireless capable.

You turn it over in your hand, examining it as you pull up your skeleton key program. One of your idle projects may be about to finish, for once. The military would pay good money for a skeleton key, finding some glitch in the locks.

You grin with excitement as you reach out to it with your neural implant, the pain forgotten. It pings back, and seems to be open for analysis, so you drop it on the access pad next to your computer for it to link up. The program immediately starts running, starts knocking around inside your computer. It shouldn't catch anything, it should be looking for a door lock. But then it activates the net connection.

Your neural implant is forced into attempting to connect with it, causing a burst of pain, but now curiosity has you. The data inside the ring instantly uploaded into your internal memory as temp files despite you having disabled that capacity. Looking inside though, there's definitely code in there for a skeleton key, but just the permutation portion, the part you couldn't fix. And then there's an address.

>Continue down the rabbit hole.
>Fix your program. It was given to you after all.
>Disconnect from the net and scan again.
>Other

>>27794229
Continue, then we can fix the skeletal key

>>27794229
> Fix your program. It was given to you after all.
Then
>Continue down the rabbit hole.

Tell you what, I'll write up the scene for fixing the program, in the mean time, you need to decide on a Home Simulation, the simulation you start in whenever you go into the net in full. Could be a sports car, a flying castle, an endless hall of doors. All it has to have is enough space for you, and a door.

>>27794337
A phone booth.
No, not the TARDIS, just a phone booth.

>>27794337
Our room?

>>27794375
Agreed

>>27794337
>>27794375
Hm. Everyone would assume it was a Doctor Who Reference though. I would recommend instead something non-sequitor like a penny bicycle

>>27794337
A shoe!

>>27794483
the TARDIS is a police box not a phone booth

You sit back and think about it for a moment. Considering what it means to take someone else's charity and present it as your own work, how long you spent fiddling with the program, what you could do with a skeleton key that you couldn't already do. You never actually had an issue with getting through a locked door. The door locks throughout EDEN all use the same program more or less, and it's one of the programs that is absolutely convinced that you are the admin for it. Just reaching out and touching it with your neural implant would make all the locks spring open.

But that of course is the easy way. There's no fun in it, just a boon you got when they gave you the prototype neural implant. Having a skeleton key would actually be impressive, rather than a neurobiological quirk. Even though it leaves a sour taste in your mouth, you take the gift of code and combine it with your own. Only takes a moment, it was even using all the same variables you were using. You'll probably have to check your security though, someone looked at it.

Your next step is of course accepting their kind invite. now the most difficult decision of your day is before you again. What avatar to use. You typically don't go into the net dry because your neural implant would fry you, so you still have a rack of old External Mental Uplinks, each programmed with their own avatar, complete down to custom nervemaps for use.

You have an avatar for just about every occasion. The average citizen from Gamma and Delta all have vid mods on to make themselves appear however they wish. The most popular being some variation of winged humanoid. Vidmods don't actually change the collision detection however, most people don't have the time to change their nervemaps. You have ten different ones.

The avatar you choose is...

And thus Choice Overload happened

>Sports Car
>Phone Booth
>Your Room

>Yourself
>Base Avatar
>Female

Things can be negotiated later.

>>27794525
Something that'd fit in the crowd, something unassuming. If everyone's going for a winged humanoid, so shall we.

>>27794637
Phone booth, yourself.

>>27794677
Agree

>>27794677
Why not.

>>27794639
This

You reach back and grab the EMU in way back, the one that has your self projection still saved on it, and slip it on before stepping into the net. Your neural implant isn't the direct connection, but it acts as an intermediary without straining you. It keeps your body asleep, so your mind can wander without any dissonance problems. The EMU shoulders the burden of processing and sending the signals in real time. It's the only way you can really go in the net.

Your Home Simulation is simple and easy, an old phone booth. Any more and the EMU wouldn't be able to hold it easily. There are some obvious perks of course. It's simple as hell to get your coordinate in, just have to dial it into the phone, or just copy it into the address with a touch. Never have to fuss with poorly defined connections like some people who make their Home Sims massive castles and palaces. And the ambient advertisements are neatly contained to the phonebook in the corner, never have to look at them.

As the address from the ring loads, you give yourself a once over. A standard neural implant will map your nerves to an avatar based on how you see yourself, and can be overridden from there. This one still shows you as how you see yourself, or rather how you saw yourself a year ago. Tall, strong, cropped hair, military fatigues.

A jolt through your Home Sim announces your arrival, snapping you out of your day dream. When you step outside, the scenery is immediately familiar, and frighteningly real. It's the same place the military gave you your neural implant. It's also using your neural implant, bypassing the EMU. You can already feel the migraine growing.

Please roll 1d100

>Go exploring. No point in turning back
>Go back. It's not worth it.
>Other

Rolled 42

>>27794881
> Go exploring. No point in turning back

Rolled 50

>>27794881
Go forth and explore you pussy.

Rolled 27

>>27794881
>Go exploring. No point in turning back
GO FORTH!

>>27794904
>>27795020
>>27795058
Man, we suck.

Rolled 19

>>27795168
Yeah

>50 v 80
****** : 80

The simulation is an exact replica of the research facility, and it's address doesn't resemble any other address you've ever seen. You can already feel the mental strain it's putting on you to render everything. Most simulations only have graphics at about the same level of rendering they had before the pandemic. Good, almost realistic, but you knew it was fake. But this is something else entirely.

It's almost as if it's tapping into your memories in order to fill the gaps in its data. The echoes of your footsteps through the long hallways are modeled back with an accuracy you simply don't get in the virtual world. Every surface has it's own texture, even the air has scent. The scent of wet rust and sterilization, exactly how it smelled when they brought you down. Even the constant thrum of super computers saturating the complex and filling every spare space.

The facility is fundamentally a long hallway of laboratories built into an abandoned aircraft hanger. The arching vault overhead would support three or five different towers of EDEN, and was showing the stress from it. Your phone booth had arrived at the far end of the hanger, near the massive gates out, but they're sealed shut. The hall of laboratories gets your attention instead.

The windows into them are all faintly fogged, just enough so that you can't actually tell whats inside, but you can certainly see the silhouettes of people. Sometimes one, sometimes more, but every lab has people in it, going about some work. Whether they are real, or projections of the simulation is impossible to tell from looks alone, and the doors are all locked.

>Bang on the windows. You need answers.
>Try to access the data for the simulation. Know thy enemy.
>Keep looking. There has to be something or someone here for you.
>Other

>>27795270
Access the data logs.

>>27795270
> Try to access the data for the simulation. Know thy enemy.

You take one look around yourself for anyone aware of you, and find yourself alone. No one is here for you, nothing is here except a very accurate recreation of a memory. No one to meet, nothing to see, nothing to hear. But there's always the code.

You swipe your hand through the air, intent on dragging down the source code, like you can for any other simulation. And you get nothing. It doesn't react. Not even a confirmation of rejection. You try again, and get the same result. But on the third try, it acknowledges and displays. The display code is trivial, as is typical for any simulation with the capacity to display to numerous people. All of the processing has to be done elsewhere so you don't kill people with the mental strain, or more accurately, just kick them out. Neural Implants normally shut off before damage can occur.

But you also have access to the proper source code, what's being ran to display itself to you. It's huge. Ludicrously huge. Absolutely, mindbogglingly huge. There's more code than you could possibly comprehend in any meaningful manner. But you do know one thing. Only a small, small fraction of it is actually being used. The rest is just so much storage. Lines and programs of orphaned code, left behind and never ran in a complete adhoc abomination of programming. Then you pull up the access logs. of the millions and millions of people who have pinged this coordinate already, you ar apparently the only one to have ever accessed it.

1/2

>>27795730
"Impressed?" a voice asks from behind you and you jump. Standing there is a man, but no ordinary man. Or perhaps he's the most ordinary one out there. Rather than whatever his proper avatar is, he's displaying the base avatar from when virtual reality was first created. The simple blobby mess that passed as a human being, and his skin is perfectly black, to the point that shadows don't touch it. His appearance would give the sense of looking into a hole if not for the nerve map shining through as thin filaments of silver. "I've been very busy here as I'm sure you can tell. And I figured it was time to give my thanks to you."

>Say something
>Other
2/2

>>27795751
Ask him who he is and what's this place?

>>27795751
>"neat.jpg"

>>27795787
This.

By the way, since this is a slow quest anyways, may as well ask now. How are you liking the pace, world building, exposition rate, and everything else?

File: 1382049350409.jpg-(57 KB, 749x510, 1334427149741.jpg)

57 KB JPG

>>27795839

>>27795839
I like it. I thought some of the choices earlier re: the whore were a little...too anon/white knightey though.

>>27795839
It's pretty damn awesome. Keep it up.

>>27795787
Seems good.

>>27795839
I like it very much.

"Who are you?" you ask quickly. You take a small step back, but the man doesn't seem in the least bit aggressive. If anything, he's distressingly calm, with the air of a tired accountant.

The shadow sighs and picks his head up to answer you. "Truly, it is a shame that you don't know who I am at this juncture of time. Just call me Fenix for now I suppose. It will have to do, and will likely guide you on the right path of questions. I am no enemy of yours, indeed I may be your ally, but I am certainly on my own side, which you have yet to choose to be aligned with or against. Did you appreciate the code I sent you? I'm surprised you set Twi away to be honest. Things would have surely been more interesting if she had stuck around. But, here we are."

"And where is that? I've never seen a simulation like this before. Barry's is the only one that comes close, and that's just a small thing for people to hook up in. It doesn't hold anything to this. It would take entire teams of programmers years to make something like this."

"Not at all. This took me only a few weeks. Just a matter of procedure really. There is of course a reason it is based on a real location, but I'm sure you can surmise that. What you are interested in is why I invited you here, no? I'm not the best at predicting people it's true, but I honestly can't foresee another answer to why you would come here after those events," Fenix explains. Through the entire dialogue however, his mouth never moved, nor his posture from a rigid attention.

"Alright then, what do you want?"

"I wanted you to be the first to receive a key," he answers as he holds out his hand. A moment later and a shining key materializes above his palm, floating in the air before you. Printed onto the face of it is your military ID, Sergeant Warrick Locke d'Angelo MC1309018. And a timer set to go off in three days.

>Take the key. It's a gift afterall
>Refuse the key. It's a trap.
>Other

>>27795990
>misspelling Phoenix
Ask if memory is the key, or just take it.

>>27795990
Look at the source code of the key

>>27796045
or Fenix is a cyberpunkization of Phoenix and he spelled it that way on purpose?

>>27795990
Ask about the key. What does it do?

Rolled 3

I'll be just going with all three, in the mean time, I need d100s again

Rolled 82

>>27796278
Aight.

Rolled 33

>>27796278
Rolling.

Rolled 68

>>27796278
I think we need to make some further inquiries

Rolled 2, 7, 10 = 19

I am loving it

Rolled 3, 2, 7 = 12

lin a clip

>82 v 80
****** : 74

"I'm inclined to accept, but I have to ask, what does it do? What's it for? And why the hell me? I've never met you before," you say as you swipe your hand over the key to examine it. The code promptly appears this time, and is simple in comparison. The whole thing is perhaps a paragraph long. A small subroutine in the beginning to delete itself if anyone other than yourself stores it. A unique random number generator, the timer, and a program to display the randomly generated number.

"What do you think it is? It's a key. Keys open doors, this one starts working in three days. I hope to see you there, and perhaps we'll speak again before then. If you'll excuse me however, I must be going now. Unless you haven't noticed that your migraine is growing worse," Fenix says as he turns and walks towards your phone booth, leaving the key hanging in the air. You look down for a moment to save it into your internal memory, but when you look up he's gone.

"Fucking bastard," you mumble as you wipe at your eyes. Strain is starting to get to you. You've been in the net for too long already. You try to step out, like pulling yourself out of a dream, and find yourself stuck. Your body slowly stops reacting for you as the simulation twists upon itself. Senses start disappearing, objects stop rendering, the walls fade to white, and you're still stuck, fighting with your own mind.

You manage to get a hand to your face as the pressure inside your skull builds and you try to stagger back to your Home Sim, but it's like fighting through a swamp. You grunt in pain and you're certain blood vessels are popping in your eyes, but finally the simulation cuts out and you drop and snap back to reality.

"Are you alright Warrick? Your heart rate increased dramatically in the past five minutes, I can contact a paramedic for you if need be," Eve asks in her same obnoxiously cheery voice as ever as you roll out of your chair and flop on the ground.

1/2

>>27796521
Your migraine is the worst it's been in months. Your head is splitting, your entire body is in a cold sweat. Your Augment Menu is flickering around as a hallucination. Everything a neural implant should never do to you.

>The hydrocodone. It's on your desk, somewhere
>Alcohol. Humanities best friend.
>Sleep it off. Nature's way.
>Other

2/2

Next update will be the last for a couple hours, real life is finally in the way. But I'll be back at like, 10:30 EST

>>27796541
>>The hydrocodone. It's on your desk, somewhere
>>Alcohol. Humanities best friend.

>>27796541
> Sleep it off. Nature's way.

>>27796564
Dude, no. That's a recipe for disaster.

>>27796580
Ride the lightning, little man.

>>27796541
>>Sleep it off. Nature's way.

"Eve. Shush please. I'm going to sleep now."

"On the floor?"

"Yes. Wait, what? There are no camera's in this room. How the fuck do you know that?"

"There's a security camera fifty meters west of you that can see through your window since you replaced the SMARTglass with old silicon dioxide," she explains cheerfully. "When I detected the spike in your heart rate I turned it around to look at you even though I know you hate being videotaped, but I figured it was a bit more important.

You groan again. "Sleep now. No talking. Thank you."

"Aye aye Admin Warrick!" she announces before finally shutting up.

The hydrocodone just above you tempts you, but that would require reaching up and exerting yourself with muscles you exhausted with conditioning. You simply close your eyes and focus on quelling the pain in your head until you drift off. Tomorrow you have to go in for your weekly check-up with Dr. Chase, and he will certainly have something to say about this.

Sleep is peaceful. You don't dream much, merely flashes of memory, but Twi shows up several times.

Break now, back in three hours or so. If it needs to be, archive it I suppose.

Bumpity

Gather round, I have returned and will update in a moment.

>>27799094
Thank you anon, have a Good Samaritan Point

>>27799510
Oh yay, I love those

You're sleeping on the roof again. The temperature is actually bearable outside in the October air if you're forced to stay in your armor. And it's certainly better than being attacked in your sleep. It's peaceful this way. The Jotnar are deactivated at night since they're solar, so the only noise for a hundred miles is nature and you're own breath. Sometimes a v of geese fly overhead looking for the pond in your area, but they're not too bad. One's flying in right now actually, honking at you.

You grumble and try to shift around in the chair you're sleeping on to go back to sleep, but their honking is worse, and getting louder. You don't get any rest during the day, when you have to patrol the fields, this is your only rest, but your body is so stiff it won't move. The honking is blaring in your ears now, and the light from the sun is piercing through your eyes, and your head hurts so much.

You finally open your eyes to see the blurry dawn sky and watch as it shifts from an overcast blue, to a dull grey, then black.

Your alarm is blaring over and over again on the other side of your room. You sure as hell didn't set it, Eve must have. You fell asleep face down on the ground, with your head forced to the side. Your headache feels like five hangovers at once and the alarm is nothing but a pick being smashed into. You grunt and groan something inaudible to try to turn off the alarm as you try to move your body. You're either still in sleep paralysis, or working out yesterday and sleeping on the ground cramped every muscle in your body to the point of immobility.

1/2

>>27799781
Even with all of that, you find the plastic rug of your apartment to be perfectly comfortable, if only the alarm weren't going off. "You have to get up Warrick, your appointment with Dr. Chase was supposed to start ten minutes ago. That alarm has been going for half an hour."

"Eve. Couldn't you have picked a nicer alarm? I have nice music on there."

"I did. You slept through those as well."

>Turn it off with your neural implant. Chase will reschedule you.
>Force yourself up. It's poor discipline to sleep through obligations.
>Other.

2/2

>>27799814
>Force yourself up. It's poor discipline to sleep through obligations.

Gotta go fast

You can't quite move your entire body at once yet, but you can move it piece by piece. You flip your arm up near your face first, then you manage to pull your knee up. Third step is getting your elbow in the air. Then with titanic effort, you push. You actually manage to get onto your elbows on the first try and forcibly turn your head back to it's proper orientation. Rather than continue pushing yourself up though, you reach up and grab the edge of your desk to pull yourself to your knees. Eventually, you get to your feet and stand up straight.

For a moment. Then your muscles cramp down and almost drop you back to the ground, but you manage to grab your desk. You almost flip your entire desk in the process, but you manage to stay up long enough to find your balance again. The alarm is all the way in the kitchen, and apparently didn't bother Barry in the least. "How long was I asleep?" you ask as you stagger over to the alarm with the help of the walls. Your body had forgotten exercise.

"Nine hours and twenty minutes or so."

"Why are you even setting alarms for me? Don't you have a city to run?" you ask as you slap at the alarm until it shuts off and brings quiet back to your apartment.

"You're my admin. And If I didn't take care of you, you would be arrested or hospitalized by now!"

"Fine fine, whatever. Go do AI things or something. I'm up, I'm going," you mumble as you collapse onto your kitchen chain and bury your face in your hands.

>Go as is. You're still wearing nice clothes, even if you slept in them
>Shower. You're already late, may as well show some respect.
>Skip it. You have better things to do than the umpteenth retest.
>Other

Well then, I'm not quite sure how to proceed from here, because I think most of my players are European or something.

I don't want to abandon this since no one seemed to be upset with it, but rather just got pulled away.

So, I'm going to stay here, archive it for the sake of this post

and drop this https://twitter.com/81DEsW1xz4N

I enjoyed this. I think it might have been the break that killed the thread, but I'm looking forward to the next one

>>27801271
perhaps, but I was hoping to pick up new steam since this is a pretty busy time slot. I may be able to continue this Saturday

>>27800523
>>Go as is. You're still wearing nice clothes, even if you slept in them

Ten minutes late before you're out the door. Dr. Chase has probably been messaging you. You pull up your Augment Menu and flick it to the opposite side of your vision with a jerk of your head, which you instantly regret. You get to your feet and try to smooth your clothes down a bit as five message alerts all pop up in your Augment Menu.

Chase : "Get out of your game and get ready. I have better things to do than let you waste my time."

Chase : "If you're sleeping, too bad. Your appointment is in half an hour and you screwed up the timing on the last three appointments."

Chase : "If you're on your way, you could at least message me. Your implant isn't that troublesome."

Twi : "Sorry about last night. I probably won't be seeing you again."

Chase : "You're late."

You close your AM as you step out of your apartment complex hall. A Mag Train had just pulled into your stop, perfect timing for you. Everything would have gone relatively smoothly, but you don't recognize the overseer at the scanner to board the train. Either a trainee or a transfer, but it's going to be trouble when he asks you to scan your neural implant, and it breaks the scanner. You reach back for your wallet to produce scannable military ID, but it's not in your pocket.

>Go back for the wallet. It will save hassle later.
>Wait for the supervisor to clear you through. You might miss the train.
>Override the system to ignore you. Pissed off the supervisor last time you did that, but it took him three weeks to catch you.
>Other

I'm surprised there isn't more speculation chatter in here. If nothing else it gives the QM a notion of where we want to see the quest go aside from choices

>what's special about our neural implant
>who is Fenix?
>what's the key to?
>what happened to the rest of the world?
>where are we actually?

>>27801846
>>Go back for the wallet. It will save hassle later.

>>27801846
>Override the system to ignore you. Pissed off the supervisor last time you did that, but it took him three weeks to catch you.

we're already late enough

>>27802785
>>27802015
Gentlemen, apologies, but I feel it is the correct move to withhold progress in the quest while the number of votes is less than two, or has no majority.

>>27801846
Over-ride it. If we're gonna suffer, everyone's gonna suffer with us.

There's a small line of people queuing onto the train, with you in the far back. Plenty of time to have a bit of fun with their systems. Your migraine is as bad as it will ever get already, so there's no use in holding back. You reach out to the scanner with your neural implant had do a bit of knocking around. However it is your implant lets you override security systems, it makes hacking simply a breeze. You have a fairly good handle on programming between military basics and what you researched on your own, enough to know what the code you want generally looks like, and your implant fills in the rest. Certainly nothing you couldn't program given enough time, but it manages to speed up the subconscious processes for you.

By the time you've reached the front of the line, it's hard programmed to break and display a passing signal to the worker when it detects somebody, without actually scanning anybody. Perhaps you're a bit rusty though, because the man seems to notice something wrong with it. "Everything alright then?"

"Yeah, don't worry about it. Go on ahead, you're fine," the man says as he smiles and waves you past. He's going to get hell from his supervisor when they find out, but you'll deal with that later. You smile back and board the train. AS you look for a seat you notice something in your hand. You had been rolling a small capsule between your fingers the entire time without realizing it, your travel rations of hydrocodone. You had forgotten to grab your proper supply, but you of course had some in your pocket, just in case.

>>27803603
You smile and swallow one of the pills as you take a seat in an empty row just as the acceleration kicks in. The train system crisscrossing the towers of EDEN is one of the many sour marvels of the mega city. high speed transit for the entire populace at high efficiency and with a reliable schedule. It fostered the economic growth that made EDEN the powerhouse of the world. For years more tracks and more trains meant more money and more production. Those years were passed long ago, but they still laid down tracks and still expanded the system. Now the rails choke the sky out from the city to the point that light doesn't even reach Gamma level. And the train cars are so old they break down without warning. You'd have to have the city AI in your pocket to get around without any hassle. That, or do what every kid who doesn't bother with the net does, and ride the rails.

You'll probably be about twenty minutes late to your appointment, but there's nothing to be done at this point but show up and capitulate.

Maybe Chase will have something interesting for you to do in the three days till your key activates.

And I'm going to call it here due to extreme fatigue. I think the next thread can be Saturday. How'd you like it?

>>27803620
pretty interesting so far, looking good

>>27803620
Seems pretty nice, looking forward to next thread :D

just caught up, i love the ai banter

Breddy gud/10
I think you're learning.

Brettygud

no speculation?

>>27808814
The key unlocks things.

>>27808933
and we can look at the code behind it. A random number calculator. We should check out what it uses as seed.

My guess? It uses date as seed. So it wont start working before the actual date. We should save a backup somewhere safe. Like in the ring.
And we should adapt our skeleton key program to work with our key.

>>27791638
Why did it take me this long to realize you named him Warlock the Angel?