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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Re: Phase I
He turns his attention back to where that last police bot came from, though it seems like it was just the one this time. They're probably safe enough there for a while longer.
Re: Phase I
"Ankh, I know I'm probably always going to be, well, broken. I don't know how to even start fixing myself. But I think..."
He hesitates for a moment, knowing this whole thing has to be unbearably sappy for Ankh. But maybe it has to be, to some extent.
"I think I needed to hear that. Because I'm not used to telling myself that I'm worth anything."
Re: Phase I
"I know you don't." It's been painfully obvious to him that even if two years have passed, Eiji's still just as hopeless that way as he was before. "Get over it."
Re: Phase I
He hesitates for a minute before trying to explain. He's managed to talk to others about what happened to him in Africa, but not Ankh. Not for any real reason, other than Ankh not being there the first few times. Then it kind of just became habit. Ankh didn't seem to want to know, and if it meant Eiji didn't have to talk about it, then he didn't.
"The reason why I lost my desire is because when I did try to help everyone, I screwed up so badly that everyone died while I got out alive. I watched a little girl die right in front of me, and I couldn't reach her."
Re: Phase I
But this is the first time he's heard the words 'little girl' in it, and suddenly it's too close to home. He finally sits, flopping down not far from where Eiji is but not looking at him. For a moment, all he can do is draw comparisons. How Eiji desperately clings to the memory of this girl where Ankh tried for so long to forget. How both of them yelled at Cole about it regardless. And then about how when he'd lost all his memories from back then, the one thing he'd ended up recalling was someone telling him to protect the weak.
"She'd probably think you were stupid for being like this, too," is what he finally says, before he has a chance to think about how oddly sympathetic that might sound, coming from him.
Re: Phase I
"I know. But she was my first friend in that village. Like how you were the first one I got close to when I came back to Japan."
Re: Phase I
Re: Phase I
"Are you okay? I mean, I kind of dumped all of this on you, so...I'm sorry."
Maybe he would have been better off if he hadn't talked in the first place.
Re: Phase I
"How many times do I have to tell you not to apologise?"
Re: Phase I
"Then, why..."
If he didn't cause this awkwardness, what did?
Re: Phase I
Instead, he stands back up. "You wanted to go over to the stream, didn't you?" They haven't been hearing much from the bots aside from that one, so maybe the coast is clear enough.
Re: Phase I
Your useful idiot is too smart to fall for that redirect. Eiji stands up and starts to follow Ankh, still asking.
"Just now, you acted like something I said was...well, I don't know. But if it wasn't me, then what?"
Re: Phase I
"Then it wasn't you." And with that, Ankh walks a little further ahead in the hopes of cutting off further conversation. Eiji's going to run after him yapping like a lost puppy, but it'll buy him a few seconds.
Re: Phase I
"We just fought about this. You can't tell me that I need to stop ignoring my problems when you're trying to do the same thing. If something's wrong, just tell me already. I can't promise I know how to fix it, but at least then, I know what not to do!"
Re: Phase I
He stops, at least, and turns back around to look at him. "And if nothing's wrong?" That's not quite true, but as far as he's concerned it's close enough. It's not something that's holding him back, not the same way the fire was. It's just something he doesn't like talking about, and Eiji is too observant for his own good sometimes.
Re: Phase I
"I don't know. There's nothing wrong with my eyes either, is there?"
Something he knows should be true, but it's not. It doesn't hurt, but it makes him uncomfortable, makes him try to avoid looking too long at his reflection. So maybe this is the same thing.
Re: Phase I
"You'd be more used to them if they were 800 years old." Maybe that's enough of an answer.
Re: Phase I
Still, if it was bothering Ankh...
"...What else happened 800 years ago?"
Re: Phase I
1/2
"Reminded you?"
How could he have reminded Ankh of anything? Sure, Ankh probably lived through war, given the Middle Ages and the King, but that didn't seem like something that would still be on his mind all these centuries later.
2/2
"That girl...the one I saw. She..."
Re: 2/2