[network] @dulcedeleche; A Message [MORNING 251][filtered from @admin, @robertmiller]

[snowblindmods]

Whoa, did the network go down for a second there or was that on my end?

Comments

@user; voice

[cosmicwords]

There does seem to be some sort interference in the Network. We lost contact briefly.

You must be Winter, right? I've heard a lot about you.

[snowblindmods]

That's me. Sorry for maybe crashing your network, that's never happened before.

[cosmicwords]

That's quite alright. If it was you, it was an accident, right?

Do you know how we might restore full functionality?

[snowblindmods]

Hopefully the administrator will do that for you. If not, there might be a way to manually restore it, but you'd need to find a place that would let you mess with the network.

[cosmicwords]

I don't suppose you'd know what such a place might look like?

[snowblindmods]

Town hall, but that's been a bitch to get to for you guys. Maybe a data center, if you can find one intact. Not the one in the industrial zone, that's locked up.

[cosmicwords]

How many data centers did you have?

[snowblindmods]

I only know about the one in the industrial zone, but that doesn't mean there's not ones the public didn't have access to.

[cosmicwords]

I see. Thank you, I will keep my eyes open for any such structure.

How do you suppose you could have crashed the Network?

[snowblindmods]

If it was under an unusually heavy load my getting on it may have been more strenuous than normal.

[cosmicwords]

I only just got here so I would not know if it was doing anything unusual.

I've heard people who have been here a while have been encountering monsters and even turning into them sometimes.

[snowblindmods]

So I've heard. I don't think anyone's actually turning into anything so much as being made to think they are.

[cosmicwords]

Yes, but illusions are still real to people experiencing them...

[He suspects he will be saying this a lot during his stay here.]

I think it was a traumatizing experience all the same.

Would such a mass hallucination be the result of a system override or an error?

[snowblindmods]

It could be either one.

[cosmicwords]

I admit, I prefer to think of it as an error.

Is there any reason you can think of that the people in charge of this place would subject everyone to such suffering?

[snowblindmods]

Not unless they went crazy.

[cosmicwords]

...A town under the control of administrators who may have succumbed to madness...

And now the town itself is mad; a frozen cage trapping confused wills.

[A low, thoughtful hum.]

If that is the case I would like to give freedom to these poor souls.

Where would they be located? Are they at the Town Hall as well?

[snowblindmods]

I think so.

[cosmicwords]

So even here there is a flow and currents point towards this Town Hall.

We will find it.

Until then, is there a way for us to buy ourselves and our bodies some time?

Is there a way to override to signals to our own nanomachines without having access to that building?

[snowblindmods]

I wouldn't, those nanomachines are keeping you all alive. The whole town's irradiated, from what I understand.

[cosmicwords]

I don't want to eliminate all functionality, only block whatever it is that is causing so many people so much pain.

If the person who originally designed these machines did so to help people then surely creating mass hysteria was not a part of their initial design philosophy...

Unless....

If the government created them would they have had a reason to build in a failsafe function that would cause madness at the flip of a switch?

[snowblindmods]

I don't think so. That would just cause more chaos.

[cosmicwords]

Sometimes more chaos is precisely what someone wants...

[He trails off a moment, then-]

But if it was not the will of the creator then these machines plaguing us with hallucinations was not intentional.

Who created them? And why?

[snowblindmods]

It's medical technology. Some US medical research lab, I don't know their name.

[cosmicwords]

How much connectivity do you have to us? Is this network the only way we can interact?