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.
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PHASE I [ 6 00 ] 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. ] |
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no subject
[Rei goes into her pockets and pulls out another handkerchief, offering that to Chihiro instead. She just keeps those on hand like any lady should.]
That was smart of you. I'm impressed.
[Turning, she lets her eyes track around the copse of trees they're in.]
Technology is acting up everywhere. anything that's got electric parts is going to be potentially dangerous. CERES did something, I think, this morning. I don't know why, but I think that it will pass. So getting away from it all is smart.
[#clevergirl
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I don't get it either. Didn't that woman this morning talk about someone being fired over...
[ What was the word what was it... ]
... spying and sabotage? This is really big if it's a reaction to one person. Unless they weren't the only one. It's still strange. If everything's going crazy, is everything CERES makes all connected?
[ Chihiro picks up her backpack, patting it with her hand just hard enough to dislodge the dust collected on it after the fall. ]
Does that mean we'll go crazy too?
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The person she was talking about was someone called Mosley. I think he's a man, but he might have been a robot disguised as one, and he's been acting against CERES for a while now. That's the industrial sabotage and spying. He was someone highly placed in their organization, and he acted to help us more than he probably should have. He did some things, I think, that probably got him in a lot of trouble with Bellona Recreare, the woman who spoke this morning.
[Rei's hand drops onto Chihiro's head, ruffling her hair just a little bit.]
Don't worry about going crazy though. If we were going to be going berserk or something it would have happened already. Remember it wasn't a gradual thing. This was like someone flipped a switch and all the electronics went mad all at once.
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I don't mean going crazy like that, exactly. Have you seen anyone's clothes change on them? Or some of the other weird things that seem to be happening to the people here.
[ She was surprisingly less worried about legitimate insanity striking. If anything, it has already, but in an external way everyone appears to be trying to cope with either on their own or with friends. ]
Do you think it'll last for much longer?
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Things have changed randomly, yes, it's a glitch in the code. But I haven't seen anything that lasts more than a few minutes. That's a blessing.
[As for the other question, well, she'll answer it after beckoning Chihiro to follow.]
I think everything should clear up in a day or two. It usually does, when things like this happen. Don't worry. A lot of things are going wrong now, but they'll sort themselves out soon.
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That still feels like a long time.
[ To a child, time can progress in strange ways. Days of this really can stretch on, while at other times, days pass too swiftly to keep track. ]
There's a lot of damage out there... construction work is going to go on for a while, isn't it?
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[Oh no, Chihiro, why are you so adorable. Rei turns, quickly scooping the girl up in her arms and lifting her around to piggyback. She can move just as quietly with you there, and all that.]
It's not as long as you might think. We'll be back in our places before you know it.
[Drawing herself up straight again, she starts walking, looking for that little hideaway she'd set up months ago.]
I won't lie, Cerealia is under reconstruction pretty constantly. This isn't unusual, but I wouldn't expect it to be resolved quickly. Not after that train derailed earlier.
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Strange to hear just how often this place comes to pieces. She'd almost understood before. Now it's that much more real. ]
There's many people who've been hurt in all of this. Are there enough doctors and hospitals to handle it when even the hospitals aren't safe? Where do those people go?
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I think most people are relying on magic healing. The hospitals are a nightmare, I'm sure, and nothing's going to work properly. There are lots of people with magic, though. And I know there's a kind of crisis force, that some of the residents here run. The healers work with them.
[But obviously not everything was going to turn out sunny.]
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Magic healing. Magic is Real, and she believed that very recently before this place. At the same time, Magic has been acting strangely, just as people have. She's seen that with her own eyes. ]
When things steady out is when that'll be most dependable, won't it.
[ When the weird fits that have been taking over technology and people peter out. If they do, but she believes the number of people stating they will from experience are right in what they believe — so things will stabilize. It's a matter of time. ]
The magic healing and everything like that.
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That's generally how it goes, yes. I try to avoid relying too much on CERES technology except for the simplest of things. When those go haywire, it's safer to just stop using it all together, and if you're not dependent on it then that makes it easier to do without.
[She stops a few feet away from a rather large hillock that rises up at the center of a group of trees, and then darts up it, and down into a grassy divot at the top. The hill was largely hollow, and at the center was Rei's little hideout. A large waterproof trunk rested between the halves of a split boulder, and she goes right for it after leaning backwards to Chihiro's feet can touch the ground and she can get down.]
Here we are though. I've got a couple of these chests stashed throughout the city, and this is exactly what I was hoping for. Give me a minute and I'll have a shelter set up, okay?
no subject
You're really well prepared.
[ Is her quiet, genuine statement. She steps closer, sticking to one side to stay out of her way. ]
Is there anything I can do?
no subject
[She is also paranoid, but that comes with years of constant fighting.]
And yes, actually. Do me a favor and start getting those tent stakes out and make sure they're not broken. Then go put four at the top of the hill, in a square formation, okay? I'm going to tie this tarp down as a roof.
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Scrambling up to the hilltop, she looks the space over, picking a likely location to place the first stake that allows her to place three more to form the square. ]
How big should the square be?
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[She points to another spot and then another and another, about where she needs the stakes put before starting to unfold a tarp and pull out some rope.]
It doesn't have to be exact, but that's about where I need them. I can adjust the rope later.
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[ Which she more or less does, roughly measuring out five meters between each stake that she spends time driving into the ground. By the time the forth one's finished, she couches down to survey her work. ]
Does this look like it'll work?
gosh I will get my metric measurements memorized one day.
I think so. Here. [She tosses the end of a strand of rope up to Chihiro.]
Do you know how to tie a knot yet? If you can, go ahead and tie that off as a base.]
laughs it's all good, my conversions suffer far too often as it is... /face in hands
[ She knows a variety, but as she catches the end of the rope she works on tying off the rope as instructed. Pulling the knot tight, she checks for slippage — there's none she notices, which isn't the same as there genuinely being none. ]
How does this one feel?
no subject
[She does. Chihiro, for a child, is extremely competent. Rei hops up the hill and checks the rope, giving it a quick tug of her own and nodding.]
Looks good. Now, go across diagonally and get ready for another rope.
[She runs it through a tarp hoop and pulls it taught. Then a fresh rope, tossed up to the girl the same way.]
Once more. We need to get all four corners.
no subject
Ready!
[ She moves on to the next one, anticipating which of the remaining two might go first. ]
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[Rei moves around and starts tying off more of the tarp, and between the two of them they manage to get it together. One tarp over the gently sloping pit means one fairly decent shelter for a large number of people.
Sliding down inside, Rei grins.]
And since it doesn't rain in Cerealia, we've got a good place to stay free from the aggressive plants, and the robots won't find it. They don't trim this part of the garden.
no subject
It's kind of like having a secret fort in the woods. Only most stories with deep forests always seem to have monsters or ogres or restless spirits. Ours has robots.
[ She flops back with a small, almost contented sigh. ]
That was not one of the problems I ever expected to have in my life. On television? Yeah, okay, who doesn't know about robots on tv?
[ Flopping on her side to look up at Rei. ]
Which plants are the aggressive ones? What do they do?
Mods never gave specifics on what sorts of plants are dangerous so I won't either.
Robots are a little easier to deal with than ogres, I think. They're less likely to try and eat us.
[The more serious question draws her up a little and she describes a few traits of the carnivorous plants. Mostly bad smells, particular kinds of flowers, skeletons and bones on the ground...that sort of thing.]
They're more man-eaters than anything really aggressive. They won't roam around looking for you, though. Just avoid those places and everything will be fine.
/thumbs up!
By the end, she breathes in, then breathes out nice and slow. ]
I'll do that. Things here are really not easy to understand at a glance, huh? They're surprising. In all this technology, I wouldn't have expected the garden to be so strange as to want to eat people. That doesn't seem like a very restful garden.
no subject
[Rei blows out a breath, leans back on her hands, and stares up at the green tarp roof over their heads.]
I think half of why they do what they do is for their own bizarre amusement.
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i laughed lasdjf
Hah, good.
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OH MY GOD
"it's totally fine to leave" WHILE SOBBING
Going to wrap this up soon!
o7
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