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

[... You know, Karl's never thought of himself as unlucky before, but when Otome appears, he starts to wonder if he should revise that belief. And so soon after he told her that he was healthy, too...

(In his defence, he honestly didn't expect his blood to destabilize, after he'd gotten it to relatively okay levels back in Ishgria.)

He tries to edge away from Otome, because there's a very distinct problem: namely, that there doesn't seem to be any problems, aside from maybe some slight bruising from the car accident that his healing didn't cover. He doesn't know how to explain this—well, no, that's a lie. He can explain this very easily; he just absolutely does not want to.

And so, he (weakly) smiles, as clearly, if he smiles enough, then he's totally fine and Otome won't worry. That's how it works, right??]

Ha... well, I'm guessing you've been pretty busy...

It's unfortunately nostalgic. [ To the point where she could very easily become more distressed than she's allowing herself to be. But Otome's strong point has always been keeping calm and composed in any situation, and right now, she's relying on that to stay true now. Even when he tries to move away from her.

It could be internal bleeding, she thinks, because from what bruises she can find don't seem to be large enough to be causing him this much pain. ]

... But I promise, I'm not going to hurt you, so please stay still.

[ Why had he flinched away? ]

... You really... don't need to check up on me...

[The pain in his voice is probably not helping his case, but he doubts Otome can do anything for him to begin with. It's not exactly a conventional affliction, and this time around, he's not completely sure of what's causing it, unless he's so pathetic that his insecurities are bleeding this badly into his powers again.]

Karl, you're in pain. [ Simply stated. ] And I'm not really someone who could leave a friend [ or anyone ] to suffer on their own. Can you tell me what happened?

... And if you'd rather not, then at least let me stay until you're feeling better.

[...]

Ha... I'm really no match for you, huh?

[Sometimes, Karl almost regrets knowing such steadfast people—though he knows it's that quality that probably made him like them in the first place.]

... It's complicated.

[And while he's said that about other things before, he meant it in the sense of it'd require an explanation I don't know that you want to hear. This time, he definitely means it in the sense of I don't want to talk about it.]

It's not fatal or anything, though... [Probably.] It'll... pass eventually.

[ It's the way he says the familiar phrase that really does prevent her from asking further. So with a sigh, Otome shifts from her crouch-- only to settle down beside him instead. She'd meant it; she's not going to leave him to deal with this - whatever this is - on his own. ]

It can't be healed?

[He feels bad—both that Otome is sacrificing valuable time for his sake and that he's currently blocking her from helping anyone else—but he knows there's not much he can do about it.]

You can try, but I doubt it'll do anything... It's not... something that needs to be healed, exactly.

[He isn't injured or poisoned or anything, after all. His body is merely trying to adjust to an inhuman power after spending so much of his life only ever utilizing his human half; removing his powers entirely, if such a thing was even in the scope of Otome's abilities, might help, but that's not the solution he wants for this.

Granted, he still really doesn't know much. Liomerg hadn't been all that helpful about explaining the cause beyond telling him that it was his fault for not being prepared to deal with demonic powers (then again, that might be all Karl needs to know).]

... So it's not something you have to worry too much over...

[Futile words, probably, but he has to try nevertheless.]

It's not something I can really control. [ It's a sharp reminder of how Hiro had "glitched", seeming to blink in and out of existence, and for how many tests she had run, Otome hadn't been able to treat him. She hasn't felt quite as powerless since then, and Karl's form seems solid enough, but all the same... Otome's expression is clearly troubled. She hates not being able to do anything more than this.

Other than try to think this through. If it isn't anything that requires healing... it's not an injury, internal or otherwise. It could be an illness, or the body reacting to something foreign, possibly trying to fight it, again like an illness-- ]

... Excuse me for a minute.

[ She's just going to (slowly, this time) reach out and ease a hand under his bangs to see if he has any sort of fever. Granted, the guy uses ice, so it's possible that keeps his body temperature regulated, but she does want to try and help here. ]

[Karl can't hide the look of surprise on his face once he realizes what she's doing—he's not oblivious as to what the gesture is for, but being deprived of a proper parental presence all his life means that no one has ever done it to him, making this rather odd for him.

He doesn't have a fever, at least. If anything, his skin is somewhat cold to the touch, as if he's been running around in the winter air.

... It might not be too strange, considering what she already knows... and the fact that he soon glitches again, as (after a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash in his eyes) there's promptly a burst of water and ice in the air, raining around them.]

S-Sorry!

[This one wasn't his fault, for once, but ack.]

[ Is this her fate? Three out of four encounters end with Otome getting drenched? A pause, and then she slowly draws her hand back, if just to wring water out of her increasingly curly hair. No fever, but involuntary use of his powers... ]

No, it's all right. You're not the only one whose abilities are acting up.

[He really is sorry, even as the stirring in his blood is making him vaguely nauseous.]

I don't know whether... to be relieved or worried about that...

Maybe a mixture of both. But try closing your eyes for a bit and taking deeper breaths. You're also welcome to lean on me if you'd like.

[ Even if she's... wet now...

Always a doctor, this one. ]

I... I think I'm good, thanks...

[He likes you and all, Otome, but leaning on you in this situation miht be a little weird.

He will, however, be closing his eyes and trying to take deeper breaths, as suggested. It's disconcerting, since like this, he's even more aware of the abnormality pulsing within him, but he's doing his best to ignore it.]

... Maybe you should dry off.

[ She wouldn't even care, she's had to haul a grown man back after he'd had a panic attack and that had been... the second meeting?

He'll hear her chuckle, though. Lightly, even as she subtly changes her breathing to match his. It might be easier for him to focus, that way. ]

I can't say I have a towel on me. I think I'll just have to manage like this.

[Yes, but Karl would feel awkward, okay!!]

I really am sorry... I have no idea why most of our meetings seem to end up this way...

Bad timing on both our parts?

... But really, Karl, you don't have to apologize. I won't have to worry about overheating anytime soon!

[ Just possibly frostbite if he keeps doing that. ]

More importantly, we should try to find a place where you can lay down for a bit-- once you're feeling steadier, anyway.

I'm not sure if that should be a concern here...

[Are you usually in danger of overheating, Otome??]

You don't need to go this far... [except:] ... but saying that isn't gonna change your mind, so...

[He'll be trying to push himself into a standing position, aka let's go.]

Mm, you're learning.

[ Good man. She'll push herself to her feet as well, and reach out to steady him if he looks like he even remotely needs the support. ]

Haha...

[Considering it only takes a step and/or a few moments before his body decides that nope, it's not ready for this and he nearly collapses... yeah, he's going to need the support.

... This is kind of embarrassing, but he supposes he'll have to put up with it.]

... That's all right, we'll take it slow.

[ Please forgive her for having to wrap one arm around his waist to hold him upright, she knows this is a whole lot of personal space invasion. ]

[This is indeed a whole lot of personal space invasion. He can't say he's never been supported like this, but aside from it having been a while, it's usually been done by someone he knows better. If nothing else, he supposes this takes him back to his first meeting with Seria, even if he swears that he wasn't about to collapse then and she was dramatizing the story.]

Thanks... Sorry for the hassle. I know you've gotta have other work to do...

Karl...

[ This is totally a tone of admonishment, even as she works very valiantly to haul him-- well, elsewhere. Her apartment's got a couch, at least. ]

Did you plan specifically to collapse somewhere secluded and have me find and help you?

[... He's starting to see what happens when you're friends with a doctor.]

No, but...

Did you order me to help you? Because so far, I can't see anything you'd have to apologize to me for.

[ YES, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS. ]

No...

[He sighs.]

All right, I get it, I get it... You won't let me apologize...

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