[network] @r_m; A Message [DAY 441; open]

[snowblindmods]

I hope you've had fun.

Comments

@Enoch, voice

[warriorscribe]

Why have you done any of this? And it was you, wasn’t it?

[snowblindmods]

I think I can keep something alive here. Not all of you, but close.

[warriorscribe]

Because you saw everything else die?

[snowblindmods]

I've been keeping an eye on things. This just happens over and over again, right? There's a quota to meet. So I'll meet the quota.

[warriorscribe]

So why any of the rest? Why the mind games, why the cult?

[snowblindmods]

That had nothing to do with me. I took advantage of your being here, but I didn't bring you here.

[warriorscribe]

The cult wasn’t yours? Didn’t your strange tablet “evaluate” us for it?

[snowblindmods]

Cult programming isn't something I wanted infecting the anomalies. I'm sure you can understand why.

[warriorscribe]

The message with the garbled username wasn’t yours? Where did that tablet come from, in the room you kept us in? What are the memories you stole from us?

[snowblindmods]

There are drugs that prevent the creation of long-term memories. I didn't steal them, they were never stored within your brain.

[warriorscribe]

I'm too tired for these games, Miller. Stop hiding behind semantics. We still experienced them, and do not remember because of you - you stole them.

What happened down there?

[snowblindmods]

Why do you want to know so badly?

[warriorscribe]

Because we have a right to our own minds, and to our own selves.

[snowblindmods]

There's nothing in those memories that would make you happy.

[warriorscribe]

I know that, and it doesn't matter. They're mine, and those of everyone else you drugged.

[snowblindmods]

I can't give you memories that weren't made.

[warriorscribe]

But you can give us something like it. You were recording. I know you must have been, you always are.

[snowblindmods]

I'm not going to show it to you.

[warriorscribe]

Why not, if we only have a week left in the first place and you're so certain we won't survive it?

@Mnemosyne; text

[bookofnope]

Hello, Miller. I give up on knowing what happened down there. Tell me instead what happened up here.

How did all of this begin?

[Because that, of course, is the question you ask when everything ends.]

[snowblindmods]

There was a nuclear attack. I don't know where it was from, but it set off the town's defense systems, and that occupied the system in general enough to open it up to an attack on the programming, which has been malfunctioning in spectacular fashion since then.

[bookofnope]

So the 'attack' is what created the current situation - the need to keep the town running and all subsequent insanity. Yes?

Who were the attackers?

[snowblindmods]

That's correct. As for who did it, I don't know. Anyone who did is dead now.

[bookofnope]

And the cult? The Norfinbury Entity? All of that, just the town's defenses? What exactly were you defending in this town?

[snowblindmods]

The cult was a result of nanomachine poisoning reacting to the desperation of certain people to survive. Some of you have gotten the same sorts of results. The entity is your conceptualization of the town's systems--trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense. There's military technology here. You probably knew that by now.