[network] @gravedigger; We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark; video; Evening 107 [open]

[harlequinofhate]

[For the first time the Joker shows his face to the Network. His features are gaunt, slightly crazed, and oddly clown-like.

He smiles into the camera almost flirtatiously and waves with his fingertips.]

Hello, honeys, it's your pal Jack White here... Or the Joker. Jeepers me, I guess that little secret is out by now.

[He coughs into his fist.]

Anyhoo, let me get to the point.

By now everyone is probably deciding that the next logical step is to dig deep.

Before you all grab your shovels and ice picks I advise you to think.

[He taps the side of his head.]

Don't go doing anything crazy now! Hahah...

If you do, you might find the punchline to this whole cruel gag is not terribly funny.

[A thoughtful pause.]

Oh, and if anyone sees the United States tell him I think he has my stuff. I want my stuff back.

Comments

permavideo

[harlequinofhate]

As a doctor you should know better than relying on America to give you meds anyway. Have you seen the health care system? Yikes.

[rubikscomplex]

[House rolls his eyes, hating that he finds this amusing.]

i usually skip the middleman and go straight to the pharmacy
but you do what you gotta do
especially in this weather

anyway, if you don't want the kids to dig deep
what's the advice?
personally i'm thinking that door in the wall's the best bet to get through
got a nose for secret passages?

[harlequinofhate]

Oh, the wall is just to get to Town Hall.

Winter says her old gizmo gal pal is there. Rhys says that's where we're gonna have to dig.

My advice is not to dig at all.

No, sir.

I think that might let the proverbial genie outta the bottle and it's not one we're gonna be able to put back.

[rubikscomplex]

for a guy who bitched about his hose getting shafted
that's a funny thing to say
having second thoughts about the server room being down low?

[harlequinofhate]

Have you been paying attention to a dang thing that's happened since then?

I might be insane but I'm also right.

Probably.

If I am then all of you maroons trying to make sense of this place are coming at it all wrong.

The joke's on us.

[rubikscomplex]

i've been paying attention
just wondering what you've got, cabbagetop

so rhys saw a big scary monster in the matrix
he was in the computer so program
whatever
got a couple ideas
you wanna throw everything up on the whiteboard and brainstorm, fine
let's do it

what do we know?

we're not the first group
there have been others like us who were here before
hundreds of times before
sessions terminated when things started devolving into "hello world" speak like baby's first web page
the monsters, anomalies, or whatever the hell you wanna call them have been evolving since they first appeared
some of them have spoken with that same theme
reasonable assumption they might have something to do with the terminated sessions

our pal winter's claiming she's a weak ai
just a word processor and "dead"
she's a back-up of a strong ai that used to be "alive"
and was originally based on a person
she's some sort of interface for computers and a un darling with classified functions
she was living in moscow
makes sense
capitol of the country that built her

meanwhile we've got andromeda
another ai like our little lovebird
she's living in bumfuck, alaska because... why?
there's something out here
clearly

people have been "possessed" by versions of old residents
how?
well we know there's some sort of server bank that's probably at the town hall with scans of everyone's brains
we know the admin and winter can "program" us
so somehow
some of those scans might've gotten loose and wrote themselves over the brains of other people
that's terrifying

we know one of those people was riley sung who's, like, really dead
and we even had an anonymous little message on the network that decided to pose it as schrodinger's cat
we found the tape of him dying so he's somehow more dead than before

we know one of those people was shelley derricks who designed the network program we're using
she lived here too
and was able to have multiple usernames - haven't seen that for anyone else

we know something's been screwing with that system
it's given winter periodic access
it's sent fake messages to mess with people
might've been what's responsible for that little shuffle we did after hours somehow
and it's given out the instruction to "dig deep" on more than one occasion

so something wants us going down
maybe to free it?
i get that's where you're going with the genie metaphor
what's the alternative?
sitting on our hands?
getting a bomb down




any chance you think you could build a bomb that could be delayed for a drop down below?

@guardian; text;

[phaseshifter]

Excuse me.
Would a flour bomb work? I haven't looked at the vents; I don't know if it's plausible to toss an open bag of flour down one and then throw a match after it.
If it is, I have flour.

[rubikscomplex]

[ He'll play nice for right now because he doesn't actually want this to devolve into something useless. ]

depends on what kind of space we're dealing with at the bottom of the shaft
if it's something relatively contained
that could do some damage
open, like the ceiling in a warehouse?
probably not powerful enough
we'd need something hard that can scatter across a large area

@totheark; text

[0thingsonmymind]

fake mess a ges
you mean when net work comm uni cation was
cor rup ted
?
or some thing el se?


we al so know they can
fix change
obj ects and
per cept ions m i n d s


we know plac es of
dead death
make sick and are
dis tort ed
like monster anomalies

[rubikscomplex]

the corrupted ones
also probably that anonymous one about sung's death vid

good point
winter said she wasn't the one telling us not to trust our senses, though
but she did put out the idea of a mass hallucination
which goes back to the clown's point that the joke might just be on us

have you found any places that distort that aren't associated with the dead or monsters?

[harlequinofhate]

If you need a bomb, I'm your man.

But that thing is probably Andromeda. Surely you've put that together.

That is what Winter says is in Town Hall. That is what Rhys saw and we all felt before the big snooze. The odd shadows and the monsters are all because of her.

I dunno how or why but that's my sneaking suspicion. We don't know what those two AIs were built for. Maybe we have a wargames scenario on our hands.

Eh.

The point is if we let Andromeda out something pretty awful might happen. I normally would not care what happens to this doomed world except I happen to be on it. I'd rather not explode or be turned into lingering code. I'm a very busy man back home.

Getting fused into the matrix would really eighty six some of my long term plans.

@totheark; text

[0thingsonmymind]

why doyou think
andromeda
?

[rubikscomplex]

if this is the middle of "i have no mouth, and i must scream" i'm gonna be really pissed
where's the chinese supercomputer, though?

let's say it is andromeda
what's the endgame?
we can't get out of this town
if it's a program, if it really is some kind of game or experiment
we need to meet the win or completion conditions
or just blow the program up
you don't seem to be a fan of that, though

we're being led toward the city center
we can worry about digging or not once we get there and see what we have to work with

@Mnemosyne; text

[bookofnope]

Winter claims that she was built for interfacing with certain computers. My guess would be that that is where NIMA comes in. I am still reasonably convinced that whatever it is, is not entirely human or local in origin.

@standardissue; text

[deus_ex_phs]

There's also a certain amount we can infer from the state of our surroundings. There's too much damage to the buildings to just be from decay, especially not with how the majority of them are made. So. This town was targeted by something intending to destroy it.

Despite this, most of the bodies we've seen have died of relatively normal causes. The way they've been buried implies that the town was isolated long before they died, but whatever might have been going on outside, the people inside were seemingly safe. Whatever happened, it either happened after most everyone was already dead, or we just haven't found the bodies of the last casualties yet.

Theory: The town was targeted for whatever reason - possibly something to do with NIMA, possibly something to do with the rare AI living here, possibly something else - and the town was forced to go into a defensive lockdown that lasted for decades. When enough of the town died off, the defense systems became understaffed, and their enemy finally broke in.

[rubikscomplex]

interesting theory
the giant ass defensive wall around the government center of the town says they were ready for some kind of attack
if this place is supposed to be america 45 years in the future for me
we sure as hell don't have this kind of system for random small towns
not without some sort of rider to a budget appropriations bill
and that's some serious pork barrel politics for this place to have something like that if it wasn't actually a legit valuable target

state of the surroundings argument doesn't hold up, though
you remember when stitches, vampirico, and hoodie set off their own bomb
they said the place went back to the way it was after getting eaten up with static
every single thing here could be an hallucination
we could be wandering around on a set stage that gets adjusted by altering our perceptions

@Mnemosyne; text

[bookofnope]

We should also consider that we have seen evidence of disturbances within the town itself. Remember, protests over a babysitter? It is not impossible that the townspeople themselves are responsible for this destruction, or that it came about when the authorities tried to enforce order.

The lockdown and prolonged isolation theory has its merits, but decades? We haven't found any victims of starvation, disease, or similar signs of a siege - I have enough personal experience not to have have missed it. I'd be much more convinced if we had some sense of how the town is kept supplied.

@standardissue; text - [private]

[deus_ex_phs]

P.S. There are other people here who can build a bomb.

[People who aren't necessarily psychos, House.]

[private]

[rubikscomplex]

good to know
thanks

text; @zd

[swatsflies]

The previous sessions didn't get into downtown.
At least the session that leaked on the network.

Winter said that Shelley was involved in city planning, right?
Andromeda possessed England before.
Maybe ask him or anyone traveling with him if they can recall anything?

Think we should focus on finding a way over that metal wall.
Winter told someone that City Hall is over there.
There should be a door.
We're downtown. I'll see if the others want to try looking for it.

@gravedigger; video

[harlequinofhate]

Andromeda did what? What happened?

[rubikscomplex]

they were a handful out of hundreds
i'd need to see more before i'd buy that no one got that far

if the limey's anything like quark
he'll be useless for questioning
someone else can do that

yeah
i think we should
if the town hall's behind there
that's where we wanna be

if anyone has a keycard like they used to open up the hospital
try running that along the wall
see if it even gets a response somewhere

@enhance; text

[plundering]

Nice rundown.
We don't know if whatever's down there isn't another program, right?
Is anyone else sick of this AI crap, or is it just me?

@Mnemosyne; text

[bookofnope]

Is it possible that the "hello world" devolution, as you put it, represents a collapse from strong to weak AI?

[kibitzing with the guy you beat up is totally a thing what are you talking about]

@Ecks | text

[ecks]

when something new is made
something that could be dangerous
or in danger
isolation is advisable
Andromeda could be the new thing isolated
the Thing Dickcheese saw could be the thing isolated
NIMA could be the thing isolated

the locked doors hum
when time was slow i heard a heartbeat
through the window
now the windows do not have heartbeats