estoria | //EVENT032.EXE

Entry tags:

//EVENT032.EXE

Who: CERES and associated intellectual property
When: OOC: 8/01 - 8/08, IC: 8/16 - 8/19
Where: Cerealia™
What: PR really was important. Who'd have thought?
Rating/Warning: Currently none! Please let us know if the log heads into R-related territory so we can lock it!

//event032.EXE

Everything is normal today during the early hours of the morning. There's really no hint, no way of knowing, no anything that could indicate that CERES -- and thus Cerealia -- is about to irrevocably change. There would be birds chirping, if there were birds, but since there aren't any, there's just the constant sounds of a city in motion, humming with technology even that early in the morning.

And then, regardless of where you are or what you're doing or how early it is, everyone's CereVices flicker on to show a perhaps-familiar, perhaps-unfamiliar face.

Bellona Recreare, the business owner of Cerealia and CEO of CERES, stares at everyone with a flat, cold look. She doesn't seem happy.

(When is she ever?)

It has come to my attention that there has been industrial espionage and corporate sabotage in CERES' personnel. Such a thing will not be tolerated.

Due to this, Mosley's employment with CERES has been terminated. Please now direct any public relations questions to 1-800-7322934844444.

Good day.

//SCENARIOS.EXE

PHASE I

[ 600 ] Bright and early, not long after that sudden announcement by Bellona, you may decide to go back to sleep, or you may decide to get up and go about your day (or you may not have woken up at all).

Either way, it doesn't matter.

Because your apartment is broken.

The entire apartment. The door is locked shut (and that sucker is solid metal so it might be time to try a window), the HOLO(gm) is flickering wildly between settings, and the blender is out for your blood. Anything technological in any way (that is CERES-brand or has been tampered with by CERES) will be malfunctioning in a way that comes across as... oddly malicious.

Now's a bad time for the late sleepers to realize that the beds, too, have auto-control tech functionality. Hope you enjoy that electroshock wake up call, or the fact that the bed could fling you totally across the room.

PHASE II

[ 1000 ] The rest of the city isn't faring so well either.

The trains are completely out of commission; even if the doors do open, it's probably not a good idea to get on. If you do, it looks like the doors will slam shut behind you, and the train will go hurtling forward at dangerous speeds with sudden stops. Many of the shops can't be accessed at all, automated doors refusing to open, and worst of all, every single last piece of tech in Cerealia now seems to have the sole goal of Making Your Life Hard.

The Pleasure District is flooded now that the spas are broken, but hey -- at least the perfume ensures that water smells good, and it's pretty warm. That's good, right? Maybe go for a nice swim.

The CERES police bots are out of control, chasing people down to arrest them for imagined crimes (What do you mean you aren't a closet voyeur?), and heaven forbid you're around any of the auto shops when everything goes totally wrong. The auto-drive feature in many of CERES's cars seem to be a little... finicky today. It doesn't seem like anywhere in the city is exempt from this. Good luck.

And towards the end of the second day of this insanity, the train, with whatever unfortunate passengers are on it, will derail. It crashes into part of the shopping district, leveling buildings and leaving the wrecked overturn husk of a train resting there uselessly.

Suddenly, things don't seem so harmless anymore.

PHASE III

[ 1100 ] Of course... you're CERES-owned too.

Your code, rather, is made and owned by CERES, and it's inevitable with the craziness going on that it would soon affect everyone's code as well. So as the hour approaches noon, a few unlucky souls may start to notice that things are just Not Quite Right with them. Their powers may be on the fritz, functioning entirely wrong or not at all, or even stranger -- fire powers turning into water, ice into flame, electricity brings mud. Your clothing might suddenly change when your coding glitches, or it might be gone entirely. You may suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to start singing, or frolicking. You may suddenly be wildly in love with the first person (or robot or mirror) that you see, unable to stop it until the odd glitching wears off.

And then, just like that, you're back to normal, if a bit more tired than before. How troublesome.

There are also moments where what appears to be an ID number appears on the back of your neck in glowing light blue numbers. Each of these codes is a 7 digit number, with an E at the front of the number. It appears that the longer you've been in Cerealia, the lower the number is -- like a brand of some sort. You may not be able to see it yourself with it on the back of your neck like that, but everyone else sure can.

PHASE IV

[ 1645 ] And, just like that, on the last day of this madness, the city goes dark. The lights cut out. The technology shuts off. Every last robot in Cerealia is completely and totally down, and can no longer be booted up. Even when the lights come back on in a few hours... the robots remain dead.

Cerealia's a lot harder to function in without those handy dandy robots running the place. It's also a lot more desolate, and rather quiet.

Slowly but surely, the rest of the technology will boot itself back up towards the end of the last day. But the robots remain broken, and cannot be fixed. In fact, opening them up will reveal that nothing's wrong with them at all... they just won't wake up.

As time ticks by, it doesn't look like Bellona will address anything on the network about the events and all people are left to do now is... learn how to function again. Without any help.

BONUS

[ ???? ] If you were a ~~stupid~~ brave enough soul to log into ViViD during this time (or were unfortunately glitched there, which could happen), you will find that ViViD is in... safe mode. It's struggling to boot up, and even when you finally enter, you'll find yourself wandering through skeleton levels of half-completed scenery and incomplete quests. There are readings in the corner of each level that can be seen now, one about Energy Gain and one about Energy Loss, and just as the gain goes up the longer you are there, the loss, too, rises. At first, it's fascinating, and it isn't particularly dangerous... but then it becomes clear that you can't actually log out.

You can't exit Safe Mode at all.

Slowly, it feels as though you can breathe less and less, that the empty walls of the level are closing in on you... and there's nothing you can do. Unless you are or find a particularly genius hacker and they can access the source code and find the exit buried inside that code within the next few minutes... there's nothing to be done.

And then everything goes dark.

You'll wake up the next IC day, with those same energy readings marked on your wrist like some sort of bright blue digital tattoo. When you wake in the mornings, it will read at 100% and slowly go down during the course of the day until you sleep. It will fade after three IC days.

And from now on, ViViD always has those energy levels in the corner, even when it's fixed. They always seem to be recording you, every time you're in ViViD. Strange.

[ Remember to apply proper warnings on threads with sensitive or inappropriate material and do let a mod know if your thread careens off into maiming or canoodling so we can lock the log. ]

//RUN.EXE

Welcome to Cerealia's August event! Please visit the OOC information here, and should you have any questions, feel free to ask them here! You can also check the FAQ for more general inquiries. This event will last from 8/01 to 8/08, or IC 8/16 to 8/19. Should this event log hit Captcha, there is an all-purpose overflow here. Thank you!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ PHASE I:a (locked to housemates) ]

[ There's no way he could go back to sleep after a wake-up call like that, no matter how late he might have been up the night before (spoilers: it was very late). A well-balanced mix of anticipation, anxiety and adrenaline sends him pacing in the living room of his apartment, notepad in hand and a nearly-splintered pencil between his teeth.

First Flamines in VIVID, now Mosley's been terminated. He's uncertain of how literally to take the latter.

After frantically pacing a few miles around the apartment, his stomach starts to catch up with him and he breaks to the kitchen. Craving a cola - because what better thing to consume at six o'clock in the morning? - he opens the fridge, only to find it definitely looks like it leads into some kind of otherworldly portal. ]

Gah! [ His yelp is definitely loud enough to be heard throughout the apartment, and he snaps the door shut. Last time he checked, there was not supposed to be another dimension inside the fridge.

...And, naturally, a few seconds later he's peeking back inside, only to find it's returned to normal.

For now, anyway. ]

[ PHASE I:b ]

[ Once the fridge is dealt with(?), Dipper still hasn't solved his hunger issue. He seeks out his next breakfast go-to: Poptarts. He unwraps a pair of the pastries, inserts them into the toaster, and processes a moment too late that whatever's bugged the fridge has probably bugged the toaster, too. Maybe that sleep deprivation is getting to him after all.

Whatever the case, he's no longer in his apartment. He's possibly inside yours, in his pajamas and socks, cradling the toaster in his arms. So, the toaster apparently is a teleporter now. Maybe he's ended up in someone's bedroom, or even worse, the bathroom. Maybe he's stuck in a locked closet and is now knocking for freedom, or rolling chilled out of the freezer. Maybe he's not in an apartment at all! Maybe he's wound up stuck on a rooftop or in a department store window with a bunch of mannequins. Wherever he ends up, he keeps a good hold on that toaster, because for as annoying as it might be, it's also kind of cool. Let's be real. ]

[ PHASE II ]

[ Dipper's bike refuses to pedal now (and he has the skid marks to prove it as it savagely ran over him to get away), but the vacuum flies. He proooooobably shouldn't trust a flying vacuum after his other recent appliance-related adventures, but he's got to get around quickly somehow and he doesn't trust the cars or rails at all now. So, yeah, Dipper is flying around the city on a vacuum. It's about as cool as it sounds.

He's not focusing too much on his delivery work - though there is a bit of that, so recipients may receive a package from him via vacuum-drop - instead cataloging every instance of technological malfunction he comes across. It's obvious enough from the very first day that everything CERES has touched is malfunctioning, but he's determined to find a pattern if there is one.

Or maybe all bets are off and this really is just pure mayhem.

He's observing a pack of CyBuddy dogs playing poker in the pleasure district when the police bots come for him. ]

DIPPER PINES, you are under arrest for the crime of GRAVE ROBBERY. You have the right to... [ But the bot just shrugs and reaches out for Dipper's arm anyway. He has no rights, apparently. ]

Hey - let go of me! [ He starts to struggle, but could definitely use a hand here. More bots are coming, and he needs a distraction before he can slip away. ]

[ PHASE III ]

[ Not everything coming from this technological free-for-all is bad, necessarily, because on two morning after Bellona's cryptic message, Dipper wakes up and feels...different. It's a better different, but still different.

And it's immediately obvious as soon as Dipper swings his legs out of bed and his feet hit the floor much sooner than they usually do just what it is that's different. He's grown about a foot taller overnight.

The thing is, he hasn't really gained much elsewhere. It's really just like he's been stretched out, narrow and wiry, the picture of an awkward teenager that's hit an unexpected growth spurt. Whatever. He might look ridiculous and his clothes might not fit so well anymore, but it doesn't matter. HE'S TALL.

He goes about business as usual, heading out for more observation and recon on this day's particular brand of haywiring. He may look a mite more self-assured as he tasks himself. It does get a little weird, however, when those mannequins he'd chilled with in the department store window a few days ago suddenly approach him in the street and start trying to inflict new, better-fitting clothes on him. Unlike his previous encounter with the police bots, his added height makes it possible to outrun the mannequins now, and here he comes in a graceless gazelle gallop, zipping right towards you with the throng of bots hot on his tail. ]

Get out of the way!

[ He could maybe use a hand shaking them. ]

[ PHASE IV ]

[ Dipper wakes the next day to his usual height. That's fixed itself, unfortunately - though nothing else has.

In fact, they seem much, much worse. It's a complete power outage now. He can't even get his flashlight to work. It's only after several hours of darkness and communicating the old fashioned way that lights and the CereVice network returns. As soon as it does, Dipper quickly sends out a mass text: ]

Chime in if your power is back, and how long it has been.
Also if you noticed any kind of anomalies happening during the power outage.
Also if you've seen any functional bots.

[ That would do it - for now. The power hasn't been restored to everything yet, and Dipper can't help the sinking feeling that this is only the beginning of what comes next. ]

Edited 2016-08-01 04:22 (UTC)

you mean aside from night of the living IKEA shit? 
glowing skin. doesntmatter what kinda freak, they glowed. 
aint it a good thing? the copper ones were dicks

Yes, aside from that. I mean mostly the total power outage today.
Did you see any kind of coding under their glowing skin?
It's good and bad. Bots run the shops, too. What if we run out of food because no one's stocking the shelves?

i
maybe? i was more worried about not getting my ass killed tbh 
i guess we take em over if thats the case
if theres bots that stocked the stuff theres gotta be storage filled with food and stuff
just gotta find it and break in

But what about when that runs out? This city is supposed to be fully automated. If things cease to function then we'll be sunk, quick.

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