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
I appreciate that. Kara.
[Her head dips.]
My name is Rei. My...human...name, anyway.
[It's a little complicated. But.]
And what do you mean by that? Name to prove it? Is Mars a planet in your world?
no subject
In terms of looks, they probably can't be more different; Rei, with her long, black hair and dark eyes, and despite the robe, appears to be slender, contrasts with Kara, with her short blonde hair, hazel eyes, and muscular undertones, decked out in her finest pajama wear. (She thinks idly of how useful the power to change clothes would be.)
Kara smiles, genuinely glad Rei trusted her enough to meet her like this.]
It's nice to meet you for the first time in this case, Rei. No, Mars isn't a planet where I'm from... it's a name we use for one of the Lords of Kobol -- the gods some people believe in.
Some call him Ares, but he's also...
[But then she trails off, feeling a little dizzy from all this information hitting and crossing paths all at once. She actually feels angry at herself for not catching it sooner, as much as she knows about the Lords even if Ares has never been one of her focuses -- but her mind had been preoccupied at the time. So this girl -- young woman -- Rei or Mars, is the Goddess of Flame and War as she'd said, and given the cyclical nature of all things including the gods...
What the frak. But Kara believes her. After what she's seen and what her own faith dictates, how can she not?]
I guess the scrolls are true. Our Mars is strong, ruthless. We even have a holiday called Mars Day...
no subject
[There's a kind of strange reverence that Rei's getting from this discussion. Like that name holds a lot of weight, like these Lords of Kobol are beings Kara believes in herself.
It doesn't surprise her at all to hear the name Ares, either. Mars and Ares were linked, though the name Ares hardly applied to her personally.]
Where I'm from, Mars is the fourth planet in the solar system away from the sun. But it's named for an ancient God of War that some called Ares as well. Mars was named for me, or rather, Mars was named for who I was in the past.
[Her eyes close in contemplation, quiet thought, trying to gather her thoughts to better help this woman.]
Who are the other Lords of Kobol?
no subject
What if it's the same solar system they've been looking for?]
Your past was long ago, wasn't it? [She speaks softly, feeling somewhat of a kinship to that though so doesn't know why.]
We have so many... [Speaking their names makes her feel closer to home than she has since she got here.] Athena, Aphrodite. Artemis and Apollo are twins. We have Jupiter, Poseidon or Neptune.
I don't s'pose you guys are all on speed dial, huh?
[She grins.]
no subject
[Rei huffs a little laugh and reaches out to take Kara's hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. There's definitely kinship, and Kara's soft, almost reverent voice strikes a chord with her. She's not that much older than Rei, at least, in this life and she has a kind of tragic sense beneath that beauty. She's clearly a dog of war, just like Mars, and that's something she can admire.]
I'm a good deal older than you might think too. Nineteen in this life, and probably five thousand in the last.
[The joke earns a bark of laughter though.]
I know...well, actually. Athena isn't one of my companions. Venus is, though some call her Aphrodite. [There's an especially fond smile at that name.] Artemis is an ally as well, and Jupiter and Neptune are very close friends of mine.
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto. Along with Serenity and Endymion, Artemis, Luna, Helios, Phobos, Deimos, and Diana. Those are my friends and family.
no subject
[A pause.]
I've never told anyone that before.
[Kara gives a shaky sort of smile and squeezes Rei's hand back. Hearing those names shared with her own people's mythologies, hearing that they exist in some form, is nothing short of amazing. Is the lore of the people of the Colonies based around these same figures?
The way Rei speaks of them, it's as if she can see them right in front of her. It's all fascinating to Kara. Some of it rings so familiar but she can hardly wrap her head around the mere fact that she's talking to the human form of essentially some form of deity guardian.]
I never expected...I mean, we have the Scrolls of Pythia, but I never thought any of it might have a root in truth. Is it peaceful where you're from? Not just Earth, but...where your family is.
no subject
It is now. It wasn't. We had to fight, to preserve our world. Our Earth. But we won, and our enemies are all gone. [For now anyway. As far as they know.]
Earth is our home though. The other planets are dead worlds, now. The war claimed them, but that was a long time ago.
[She sits up a little straighter.]
In my past life, anyway. I grew up a human, till my powers awakened.
no subject
I wish I could give those people hope knowing it's there. [Her smile, though a little sad, never falters.]
Yeah, even if I met you like this, I could tell. You have an old soul. My father used to say that about people, that they would have an old or a young soul. He always said mine was old, and now I see what he meant but with you.
[Then her smile turns to a full-out grin.]
And, man, you're good at disguises.
no subject
Well, one day you will. We'll figure a way home, don't worry. It may take time, but we'll get there.
[She lets a smile quirk her lips. She has always been told she has an old soul. She doesn't disagree, even if she wasn't like this.
Allowing herself a laugh, she has to answer that with some enjoyment.]
It's magic, Kara. It's a spell to keep my battle identity and this one separate from enemies. That spell won't work on you now, though. You'll always know it's me.
[A beat.]
Does your world have magic?
no subject
[Kara smiles.
She thinks of all the things that have happened in a little over three years. The Tomb of Athena, that had been magic but real, they were really standing on Earth then. Everything she feels leading her to some kind of big finale, she tries to dismiss, tries to just fly and fight and see what happens --
But now she's away from all that, her thoughts creep in like shadowy fog in the corners of her minds. The Sacred Scrolls, the Book of Pythia, Kara's role in it all, her dreams lately...
She's bound by honor to answer honestly -- this time, at least.]
Yeah...yeah, I think it does. Just not in the way everyone thinks when they think of magic. Maybe there's some kinda truth to mythology that humans aren't meant to understand or see.
no subject
That’s about half right. Mythology is…a part of history for a reason. It came from somewhere. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if these Lords of Kobol were real people, maybe even your world’s versions of my friends and family.
[Pausing, she thinks it over, wondering if she should really get involved…]
And when this is all over, and we manage to find our way home, I may…be able to find a way to help you and yours find Earth. I have a few tricks, and a few thoughts on how to make that a reality.
[May as well. It wasn’t like she intended to just let people in other worlds suffer, if she could do something. And a little hope for the future, she’s learned, goes a long way.]
no subject
[She sighs a little. Mythology is just that for a reason, but maybe Rei is right. Maybe they were real at some point. Their universe's. Kara's only just starting to realize the number of universes of different people and beings that exists.
Kara searches Rei's face after her comment. Kara knows not to get hopeful - if anything, distrust anyone who claims they know where Earth is - but something in Kara's gut tells her she's for real, that she wouldn't try to hurt them.
But it's just a feeling. So she proceeds with caution.]
That would be... [Kara struggles to find the words.] That sounds like it would be a miracle. Too good to be true. [She cocks a half-smile.] But I'd be willing to gamble on it.
thinking I'm letting the thread go after this. For her return thread.
Then, Kara. I'll do what I can. It may not happen immediately, but when everything is said and done, I'll do everything in my power to make that happen. I've already been thinking of ways to move between worlds, and it's absolutely possible to do that at home. It may not be your version of Earth, but it will be an Earth. I think that'd be a decent substitute, assuming Mercury, Pluto, Neptune and I can manage to work out a gateway spell.
sure thing! I'll just do this as a little wrap-up
Any help you can give would be great. Thank you so much, Rei. I'm...a little glad we almost got killed by machinery today.