video / text

[thatwasours]

{ VIDEO }

 

[a man in his late thirties comes onto the feed. his bag is open next to him with the contents ruffled through, and there's an open Pokéball on the ground. the lower left sleeve of his trenchcoat is also leaking blood from what looks like puncture marks (a bite wound?) and is slightly singed, but he doesn't appear to be paying it much mind.]

 

I read the handbook, but there's one thing I'm not getting. These creatures-- Pokémon --are they pets, or are they weapons? The information here contradicts itself. It says here that friendship is an important part of raising the things, but as far as I'm aware, you don't usually make nice with animals you're teaching to cockfight.

 

And what kind of anarchistic society is this that the person with the strongest Pokemon wins every possible interpersonal conflict? All right, so it's not that different from most third-world countries, or your average political standoff, but seeing that kind of thing on an individual, culturally-encouraged level is a little disturbing. [he lets out a snort of disapproval.] Might makes right, I guess.
 
 

 

 

{ TEXT, LOCKED TO SELF AT 30% }

 

LOVE DETERRENCE

 

[the clumsy, highly experimental nature of the lock makes it fairly obvious that this is someone trying to work out how to filter and hack.]

Comments

Audio

[thedifferencebetween]

Finally! Someone who makes some friggin' sense around here!

Yeah, it's messed up. Make friends with the local wildlife! Use your new friends to beat the shit out of other local wildlife! And pets! For profit!

I mean, it's an easy system, not gonna argue that, but it's freaking nuts.

Audio

[thatwasours]

[huh. this guy gets it. and he's amusing. Kaz grins, briefly, not that it's visible over audio.]

Profit? So cockfighting is a lucrative business here? The handbook mentioned betting, but is it actually possible to make any kind of significant money? A living...?

Audio

[thedifferencebetween]

Depends on how you define 'living', sport. Surviving? Sure, you won't starve, beating up kids' pets for their lunch money. But that's about what you'll get, starting out, lunch money from kids.

Gotta get real good at it, to make the big bucks. Get yourself some dragons, a couple of electric dinosaurs, that kind of thing.

Which also can be taken from random kids just wandering on the roads, because there's absolutely no exotic animal licensing or child protective services on this planet. It's like parents want their spawn to get devoured by local wildlife.

[thatwasours]

[this. face.]

There are just kids running loose? With all the--

[okay, he doesn't know what, exactly, but given the words 'electric dinosaur' combined with the fact that in the last five minutes he's encountered a fire-breathing dog and some kind of telepathic green thing, he's starting to get the picture.]

Is anyone actually looking after them? What--

[actually, he decides he'd rather not know the exact mortality rate.]

Is there at least some kind of social safety net that keeps these kids from getting killed en masse? I mean, not just the obvious casualties, but the untreated injuries alone...

[thedifferencebetween]

No idea. I really don't care enough to find out, it's not like they're my kids.

But I seriously doubt it, judging by the number of free range brats running around. I figure it's one of those 'let the strong survive' kind of deals.

[thatwasours]

[a long-suffering sigh]

I don't even like kids, but that sounds like the sort of thing someone should be doing something about.

Not that they'd cooperate. Anything that's dangerous attracts kids like flies, all of them trying to prove they aren't kids anymore.

[thedifferencebetween]

I started keeping a list of all the things that somebody should be doing something about around here, but I ran out of paper on my third day.

There's no government. There's no political infrastructure at all. The entire defense department is a clone army of some hot chick. Everything revolves around these animals. Weapons apparently don't exist.

I'd say it's a cover for something, but it's the stupidest friggin' cover anybody could think of. And not like it's so stupid it's genius because nobody would ever suspect, it's just stupid.

And suspicious.

Really suspicious.

[thatwasours]

And everybody has a military-grade weapon. How is this place not an active war zone? If there's no government, who does the defense department listen to? Are there laws? What good is a defense department anyway, if the only military power available to them is just as available to everyone else?

[these aren't even real questions at this point so much as a continued expression of disbelief.]

What do you mean, 'suspicious'? In the sense that there has to be some underlying structure to this that isn't readily apparent?

[thedifferencebetween]

Or like a hundred of them. Because why not?

Bingo, cupcake. We should be picking our way around the fresh corpses daily, but nobody seems to actually die. Don't even get me started on the economy, there's no way it should work the way it does.

Oh, and the ledges only go one way, so even the laws of physics don't work right.

Nothing should work, but it does.

LOCKED, 20%

[thatwasours]

[and at this point in the conversation, Kaz attempts to lock it. badly, considering he's got limited experience with computer things, but this is the sort of conversation he'd rather have privately.]

What do you mean, nobody dies? Aren't there all kinds of accidental deaths happening because of the monsters?

Not to tinhat, but this is beginning to sound like whatever we're inhabiting isn't actually reality. If everything here is a simulation, nothing would have to operate by logic. But if this is reality, or another branch of it, anyway, why would whoever's behind the curtain go to such lengths to make everything seem like it shouldn't work? It doesn't make sense.

Private

[thedifferencebetween]

Here, lemme get that.

[That attempt at locking the conversation is almost cute, as far as Jack's concerned.]

The ECHO tech here's pretty archaic, but once you get the hang of it... of course, I'm a computer genius, so I've got an advantage.

Anyway, no, it's...I dunno. Some people say it just doesn't happen, some people say you just...come back. I'm more inclined to believe the latter, it's not like every major tech company in the universe hasn't been working toward it since digistruction was a thing. we just haven't done it. Yet. But maybe they have here, this place is entirely off the grid.

I've thought about the simulation angle, but it doesn't add up. Consciousness and senses can be tricked, but the base brain....it is not stupid. It knows. And eventually it starts giving the eyes and ears and the dumb, easily tricked part of the brain little signs and signals that nothing's real.

No, I think if anything is going on - I'm not ruling out that this is just a really friggin messed up planet - it's more likely something's fucking with us. Some powerful alien with a crappy sense of humor.

private

[thatwasours]

[honestly, that 'genius' comment grates on Kaz, but he's not about to snap at the only other guy who seems to have a head on his shoulders.]

Nanomachine tech or symbiotic parasites that rebuild people on a cellular level aren't implausible, either before or after they die. Does anyone actually remember the experience of death?

What do you mean by 'base brain'? Unless I'm missing something, successfully fooling all sensory input would chain straight up to all higher levels of processing. And I'm still going with that as a more plausible answer than 'hostile alien'.

private

[thedifferencebetween]

Sure, organic regeneration's doable, but the whole functioning brain bit's...it's a bitch. I've seen the attempts, they are not pretty.

Dunno. Haven't felt like throwing myself off any cliffs to test it out personally. [And his recollection of just before coming here...that's different. He still isn't sure what the was. But he sure as hell didn't die.]

You know, that dumb animal part at the very center that doesn't pay any attention to actual thoughts. The part that tells you when something's off, even though you've got no good reason to think it is. The gut of the brain.

I'm gonna go ahead and guess you haven't had too much to do with hostile aliens.

[thatwasours]

No. Not at all.

But I just talked to someone who told me that where they're from, some guy won a celestial battle with a demon-taming phone app and gave the power to remove humanity's free will to God.

[he delivers all of this in total deadpan.]

So I'm gonna go ahead and guess you do.

[thedifferencebetween]

Yeah, that sounds a lot like somebody's been eating too many of those hallucinogenic berries that grow around here.

Yeah, I do. They suck. And have crazy kinds of power. Including, so there's whispers, being able to pop anywhere in the universe in an instant. Intergalactic teleportation.

Sounds a lot like what happened to us, don't it?

[thatwasours]

I'm not discounting anything anyone says about where they're from. Don't misunderstand, I won't believe it without proof, but I'm-- unless this is a simulation, because I'm not inclined to agree with you on the brain having "instincts" --standing in a new universe.

Even completely unbelievable things like rumors of teleporting aliens could be true, if we're going with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

[it's only slightly backhanded.]

[thedifferencebetween]

Yeah, yeah, all kinds of weird shit, out there at the edges of existence. I own a two horned diamond unicorn, I've seen tentacled doom get spit out from the bowels of the galaxy, I once watched a dude touch a shiny rock then start foaming at the mouth and tryin' to tear his own skin off. Weird shit's out there. But come on.

Hey, you don't have to believe me, cupcake. But I know simulations, and I know how the brain functions in'em. It always knows. I mean I guess we can acknowledge that this planet might have tech that's beyond what's widely known, but...

Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Teleporting aliens are a thing. We've all found ourselves teleported to some weird, backwater planet that's full of powerful aliens. It just...it just makes sense.

[thatwasours]

...you're saying that those simulations actually exist where you're from.

[as opposed to 'possible in theory within the next few years']

Of course. With aliens and all. I don't know why I'm surprised.

[thedifferencebetween]

They don't where you do?

Simulations, false environments, projected realities...real big in the recreational entertainment industry. Not too shabby for training exercises, either. I mean, there's all kinds of risks, including potential brain melting, but what's a tiny chance of liquidating your headmeats compared to getting blown by the ten hottest stars in the galaxy at once or an army that's not gonna shit themselves the first time they see a monster the size of a building in real life?

[thatwasours]

No. It's possible in theory, but the furthest anyone's gotten is re-creating a human consciousness to pilot a bipedal nuclear weapon. The woman who did it might have had access to the corpse, or she might have been able to do it it just from psychological assessments, although that seems unrealistic given what she was expecting from the AI. But I'm not entirely sure on the details.

Give it twenty years, and that kind of technology'll be in used for combat VR training, like you said. Creating experienced soldiers with minimal risk... it'll be a game-changer.

As for the blowing-- [he laughs a little] --we'll see how long it takes to become cheap enough for civillian use.