snowblindrpg | [network] @ADMIN; Arrival [open]

[network] @ADMIN; Arrival [open]

Welcome to Norfinbury. The time is E̛̬̞͖͖̫R҉͖̯̬R̼̻͉̰͎̳̙O̩͓͔̫͇͈̯R and the date is E̛̬̞͖͖̫R҉͖̯̬R̼̻͉̰͎̳̙O̩͓͔̫͇͈̯R. This network has been provided for your use. Please interact politely with everyone else on this network.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

London. Camden Town, if you know it. Born and raised, as you can tell from the voice.

So what's that profession of yours?

I can't say I am. You do remind me of someone I knew from home, though. He sounded very much like you.

Medicine. I work with a particular branch of mechanically-based diagnostics and prosthetic health and application, to put it simply. The technology I'm used to is over a century past the use of the telegraph, I'm afraid.

Though, relatedly... has anyone told you about the technology you're likely to deal with here? Besides the tablets, of course.

This N-I-M-A, yeah?

NIMA is part of it, yes, though the guide that Captain Rogers posted goes into more detail about that.

Specficially, has anyone spoken to you about a chatacter named Winter?

I read some of her messages, that's all.

I'll explain a little bit more about her, then, just so you're aware.

Winter herself is what's known as an "AI", an Artificial Intelligence - for all basic purposes, she's a computer program, capable of processing hundreds of thousands of phrases of English and offering a variety of responses in return. Like a... machine that has thousands upon thousands of dictionaries at once, but can read and put words together just as fast as the human mind can. She appears and speaks as though she were a human, but she isn't, and she has clarified as much with us recently.

At the moment, she is stationed on a computer server somewhere in the country of Russia - we aren't sure exactly where, or what kind of person or organization is "housing" her at the moment. What we do know is that she's a backup program - a simplified copy of a more advanced version of "Winter" that was able to walk and talk and exist with humans, though none of us know much about her or what she did or what ended up happening to her.

More importantly, Winter has been here before, in Norfinbury, before the entire town was covered in snow. She apparently used to communicate with and even befriended another AI that operated in the area, known as Andromeda. As far as we know, Winter is the only thing outside this city that's able to speak to the group of us. She's able to create simple programs, which she's managed to share with us from time to time, but what she's able to do without the Administrator interfering seems to be slim.

She does seem to communicate with us whenever she can, though her... perception of time is a little warped. But outside of what we manage to scavenge from the town itself, Winter is currently our only ongoing source of information about the time period or the state of Norfinbury as a whole.

I think that covers the basics, anyway.

Mm.

[That's all she gets, for a moment - he goes back and listens to the explanation a second time before responding properly.]

Do you trust her?

Yes. She's proven consistent with her information, at the very least, and what she's been able to pull from her memory banks has matched up with some of what we've been able to find on our own.

That said... I know it's difficult to do when there isn't a face or voice behind things. It could very well be an enormous hoax, for any reason, and nothing on its own is conclusive evidence to her being on anyone's side but her own. But it's still information that could be important in a situation where we are very starved for context and reason. It would be foolish not to at least view it objectively and consider all options before deciding to pull trust away.

Sure, yeah; sure. You take what you can get. I'd like to speak with her, myself.

That shouldn't be a problem with that. She's usually very open, though the windows to talk to her are slim. Since she seems to be on an entirely different network than the rest of us, we can't directly communicate with her until she opens contact first.

If you've had a chance to look at her messages, usually it's easy to tell when she just... well, can't respond anymore.

Do you trust her enough to give her information yourself?

If it were to come up in proper context? I would, yes.

Though I don't know how much she can actually do with foreign information. Most of it is simply fact-checking or asking her questions based off of what we find or experience.

Fucking unbelievable.

Not you - the rest of it. I understand it, but it's a lot to take in, yeah?

...Yes, it is.

I'm sorry. I know it can be overwhelming. But take the information at your own pace, okay? No one will blame you otherwise - we've all had to go through it, in our various ways, so... we can all sympathize, I suppose.

If you don't mind me asking... what year was it, the last you can remember? You mentioned the telegraph was in use.

This pace is fine.

[It may be a lot, but he's doing his best to make sure it doesn't get to be too much to handle at once.]

It's 1922, for me.

Ah, that would make sense. That would mean the Great War just ended a few years ago, right? [It wouldn't be called a "World War", let alone "World War 1", if she remembers correctly. Granted, all she can really pull up is the American side of things. But it's better than nothing.]

Mmhm. You learn about that in the future?

At least in my future, most people do, yes. It was a prominent turning point of quite a few world economies and general powers for the twentieth century. Plus... well, given how many people went to fight and never returned, it feels wrong not to keep remembering them for what they fought for, doesn't it?

What year are you from?

...2074.

[Surprise. Her hesitancy should be enough to show that, yes, she knows that sounds completely ridiculous to a man from over 150 years prior.]

Given the surroundings, I, um.... I have suspicions this isn't exactly the past. Or, if it is, some things have to have drastically changed. But I could be wrong.

Rogers said 2050.

[And there's no disbelief in his voice over that, or over when Luna says she's from - neither are anywhere close to the weirdest thing he's heard today.]

Mm. I'm glad you're still remembering. The war's the distant past for you, it's personal history for me.

Yes. I... well, I would have been growing up during this branch of the 50's, so this whole situation is a bit of a strange paradox. This isn't the Earth I remember from then, anyway.

[Never mind that that whole statement is a complicated lie. But the idea still stands. The snowfall isn't tainted with ash or debris, animal care was still being dispensed regularly, the sky wasn't permanently blotted out from the sun.]

Anyway... I take it you were involved in the war, by some means? I don't mean to breach too much on the subject if it's uncomfortable.

[Parallel universes. Huh. He'll have to think more about that later.]

I was a soldier. British army.

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