maskormenace

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[Tyl is pacing. This is normal, but he's even more agitated than usual right now.]

I shouldn't have to explain this, but some of you just aren't getting it. So! It's time for me to use the small words.

[He leans in so close that his mask fills the screen.]

This. Isn't. Real. It's not! Can't be! Real things don't do this. We don't blink and wake up somewhere new--unless you're dissociating. Already ruled that out though.

This is a simulation. Things popping in and out of existence, physics that doesn't make sense, lost data pretending to be real. [Something about that makes his voice shake with rage for a moment.]

[But he stops, leans back, takes a deep breath. Back to pretending to be calm.]

Are we real? No idea. Not even sure I'm the real Tyl Regor. Could just be a code scraplet with delusions of perfection. But I'm gonna find the guts of this thing and figure this out.

Anybody seen a user interface lately?

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You alright there, buddy? Havin' a bad day?

I wasn't crazy about the cheese selection, either. Someone ate all the camembert.

No, extremely, and lactose intolerant, in that order.

The fact that this simulation has so much cheese in it is a whole extra layer of offense I'd forgotten about until just this moment. Thanks for the reminder, more things to be angry about. So! Up for trying to crash the world, or am I going to have to do everything myself, as per usual?

Ya just said you ain't even sure you're real! Not exactly inspirin' a lot of confidence here.

In fact, this all sounds like a great way to get myself hauled off to the local funny farm. In record time, I might add.

What a timid little creature you are. Not my job to train you, though. So fine, stay in your kennel, I've got things to do.

[And he is doing something, there's metal scraping and clanging just off-screen.]

Just sayin'. If you wanna recruit people to take this whole operation down from the inside, uh.

Might be a good idea not to use phones the feds hand out.

Why would a simulated human government's attention make a single squid's worth of difference when the real problem is I've been digitized and stuck in here with a bunch of--

[There's a long silence, and a deep breath from behind his mask.]

...I need to use the small words again.

This isn't real. The 'feds' aren't real. Whoever 'n whatever's done this, they know everything we do in here, so it doesn't matter. ...Probably. Sims aren't my specialty. Don't seem to be yours either, or you'd know reality doesn't work this way.

Look, I know this shit's unsettlin', but more denial isn't the solution. Even if this thing's all a simulation, or a dream, or we're all dead, we still have to deal with the rules here in the meantime.

[ But go off, he supposed. ]

That's just--

A better point than I was expecting. [He huffs, momentum frustrated for a moment.] Still. Worst they've done is sedate me, they can't really kill us either. They're nibbling little minnows.

That's what they say, man.

Of course, if I had a bunch of potentially angry interdimensional weirdos on my hands, I wouldn't be showin' my hand, either.

[By now, of course, she's reassumed the mask of absolute control over herself and her emotions. Though the entire experience has left her somewhat shaken. And with wisps of ghosts everywhere. But she also finds his reaction...amusing.]

We are quite real. This is all quite real. The means are beyond me, but the technique is not.

This is all tactics. To what end, who can say - but it is manipulation to produce precisely that result.

[She'd done it herself, after all. But on the level of single individuals at a time. He might be amazed how much you can do to reshape a mind with a few simple tricks and not a finger laid on a person.]

So I can give you this assurance: You are the real Tyl Regor.

[He sighs theatrically, but honestly. All his emotions are big enough for theatricality.]

Feels like today's going to be an exposition day. Fine. Catching up the crowd.

Might be beyond you, but me? Every so often, sneaky little lizards would crawl their way into my labs. Mostly to kill everything and destroy all that's good, but sometimes! Sometimes they'd go after a target. Some minion or another their Lotus wanted, or a random trooper some mad Cephalon decided was a perfect specimen. What happened then? Cubes. Cubes happened.

[Don't worry, he's actually going to explain for once.]

They'd chunk up and digitize the poor twits. At least, the Cephalon did. Never quite sure what happened to the ones the Lotus got her roots sunk into.

And d'yknow the last thing I definitely remember, before all this? Lizards. [Lizards and lots of rage and blunt force trauma. Probably busted his spleen again. Not a fun day.]

So, no. I'm not buying this place. Physics doesn't do this. Planets don't get redecorated on a whim. Not real ones. Simulations, though? Change the parameters any way you like.

At least on the outside. When you've got access to the interface. Which I'm gonna find. You can deny it all you want, but I'm not gonna waste any more time.

I have heard of stranger planets.

[It's all possibly he's right, of course. But she's generally convinced by more familiar means.]

An alternative thesis: every one of us who comes through the Porter is, in some way, tagged. A biological chip, perhaps. Expensive but proven technology where I am from.

Now, consider: we know we are altered upon arrival. Coded, empowered, changed - what is one more change? One that allows further editing at any time. The imPorts are a small, contained population - our perceptions could be altered with relative ease, without anybody being the wiser, if the force doing it is strong enough.

[He may get the impression, despite her vagueness, that she knows a lot more about brain alteration than might otherwise be obvious.]

The Emperor I served once hid a nineteen kilometer-long ship under the surface of the most populous Ecumenopolis in the galaxy - a population of over two trillion. And nobody ever recalled it happening. There are ways to alter the mind, even on scales such as this. We are just unaware of the specific how.

[Stranger planets?] Really? Name one. How many planets've you seen that can rewrite reality on a whim? That've got portals that can just decide to let you break reality too? [He rapid-fire blinks between his three different bodies, just to prove a point.]

Your explanation's too complicated. Too many moving parts, too many ways to break. I'm not buying it.

I can name two, though I have not seen them personally. Dromuund Kaas and Malachor V. Supposedly so imbued with the dark side of the Force that they can alter ones' perceptions at will.

Then of course there are the stories about the machines of the old Infinite Empire, which were practically worlds unto themselves. Infinite factories, so they say.

My point being, to one of sufficient power - none of it would be complicated. It would simply be an entirely different playing field, one we could barely comprehend. Yet, at any rate.

Half of that was gibberish. Look, I can do the same, and it'll be just as true!--Half this stuff could be explained by Void fissures, maybe. Tear open, corrode reality, fall to pieces and close again. Sounds like an 'anomaly' to me, but that's the only similarity. Besides, no Orokin here to mess with the universe for a few millennia before getting smacked to pieces by Sentients.

[Somehow, he managed that ramble all in one breath.]

See? 's not so fun when somebody else does it. [He draws himself up.] The point is that none of this stuff should fit together. It can't! But your people have your Force business you think's doing it, and the lizard that was running around here had Void energy coming out of its horrible little ears. Void nonsense was my theory for a while, but it's not good enough to explain this. Either it's all fake, or it's all fake. Entirely fake, down to the last clod of dirt on this mudball.

[His ranting is noticeably worse than normal. Today's been hard on his brain.] Either way, it's gonna keep doing this. Toss us around like we're nothing, mess with us, reset when it's gone too far. But it's gotta have rules in there somewhere. Rules that someone's messing with. Somehow, somewhere. That's what's gotta be figured out.

[She lets all that just sort of...roll on over. His mental state has certainly not improved.]

I have seen the Force at work, and I know I have not seen the worst of it. But what I did see was on such a vast scale that it makes me think that even a slight step up would do it.

May I ask: when was the last time you slept? Or recharged? Whatever it is you do, in whichever form you do it.

I think you've been watching too many movies.

I have watched no moovees at all, try again.

You should. There's some pretty good stuff out there.

Not planning on it. I'm trying to get out of here, even if nobody else is.

I think the rest of us just know that's easier said than done.

That's why I'm saying and doing.

Uh huh. How's that working out for you?

What's a user interface, exactly? [ Finn is 17, so there's really no excuse for his ignorance here. ]

It's a computer thing, right? Or a robot thing? [ ... ] Or a crab thing?

[ He never did get an answer on how crabs differ from robots. ]

[Oh thank the Queens, someone who just seems legitimately clueless. The responses to this post have lowered his standards significantly.] The thing you look at to make your communicator do the things it does. The little buttons and twiddly bits. You poke something in the interface, the communicator shows you what it thinks you want to see, courtesy of its little computer brain.

If this is all simulation, [He waves a large metal hand around to demonstrate how much all he means] then somebody's doing the same to us, somewhere. Pressing buttons. But user interfaces've gotta interface with the guts of the program somehow, so if I can just find a command readout or diagnostic or--[Wait. He's talking to somebody who thinks crabs and computers might be related. Try that again, with smaller words.]

If you're smart enough, you can poke the buttons from the inside. Just gotta find how it all works.

Oooh, okay...

[ He thinks about that for a moment. He doesn't know jack squat about computers or diagnostics or anything like that, so he kind of has to take Tyl's word on any of this being possible. ]

So, wait, you think this is all like a video game or something? I was inside a video game once and it didn't look like this at all.

I'd say if you are experiencing a thing, that thing is real. It's all a matter of context, don't you think?

[Tyl is too worked up to type, so you get his unfiltered rambling directly to your ears and eyes. Hurray!]

You sound like a philosopher. Or a monk. Or a politician. Find an answer and do nothing with it.

I'm not any of those. I'm a scientist. The universe does something weird, I poke at it. The universe stops making sense, I keep poking it until an answer falls out. Figure out how it works, get it to work for me.

Then I sit back and feel smug, not before. It's fun! You should try it.

Scientists certainly love throwing out accusations without much to go on as well, do they? Or is it just your foul mood?

It's all me. 'n I prefer to call it a hypothesis.

Regardless of how you put it, you're wrong. I'm no philosopher or what-have, rather someone simply offering a thought. I had no idea it would be so quickly reviled.

Fine, fine, you're forgiven. Got any other thoughts?

[Usually he's slightly more sufferable, but today's been bad on his brain.]

Several, but perhaps not the sort you care for. I'll leave you to the poking, then.

Well! Legitimately good job, making that decision. Surprisingly good sense. Wish there was more of that around. Bye now!

Nothing on a user interface, but this being a simulation is a possibility I won't even rule out, given that we've attempted to find out if the universe was a simulation before I even came here.

But once again, someone has messed with our memories and reality.

Thank you! You're the first one here that's got some room for hypotheses in your skull.

Memory and reality--not a problem, if this is a sim. Sims can do whatever the user wants, within their constraints. Throw in new ideas whenever they feel like. Reset the board when things run too far.

'n the things stuck inside of it only get the information they're supplied, right? That's the whole point of a sim. Throw digital stimuli at some programs, see what they do.

Really? But literally anything could be possible! This world is still unstable from what happened in November, if that is even a factor, so until we rule something out … Sorry, I’m getting off topic.

But yeah, that is exactly how a simulation works. We can’t even rule out pain, because that is another form of stimulus.

No! No, I forbid you from apologizing. Rambling is good for you. It's how I get everything done.

In any case! No matter what's really going on, we know something's messing with us. Pulling us in here, tweaking us, tossing us around like unloved floofs.

Could be those, those Fate things. Could be something else. No matter what it is, there's gotta be a logic to it. Some way it controls everything. I wanna find it. Figure it out. Get back where I'm supposed to be.

Really? I thought I was the only one who did that!

[She had learned to kind of do it under her breath or when no one else was around, but it was still a great way to get unconscious brain connections to become more apparent to her.]

Something is. I'm not sure if it's because of what happened last November and if this falls under that 'instability' umbrella, but it might be the most likely case.

[She wonders if she should move up her own Porter test timeline.]

You poor thing. Thought the same, 'til I learned my science 'n clawed my way up and out from the basic models. Well! Now you know. Ramble away! [Because he's certainly going to, starting right now!]

It's been doing this instability thing the whole time, right? Seems to just be how this system works. Throw something into the mix for a few days, cause a stir, then take it away, rinse, repeat.

And--[His train of thought almost audibly shunts onto a different track, one that he's been stuck on since they all got back from wherever that was.] Look. I hope it's not a sim. I don't want it to be. Seems to fake to be real, though.

Still. Can't know until it's tested. Porter's the most obvious target, but hard to get to. Recording instability, maybe? Figuring out the ground rules?

[He sighs, his voice dropping half an octave along with his mood.] Or just breaking into the Porter base and smashing things until the world's set right. Not likely to work, but it's tempting at this point.

[Awesome!! Time to unlearn a habit!]

Since we made that choice last November, yeah. However, nothing about the instability has been predictable. Some of it seems to have been based off of our original worlds, ties into possibly overlapping with other universes and realities, and just ... randomness. There might be a linking thread of people and events originating from this world, but I'll need to look back through records to determine that.

I don't want all of this to be a simulation either, but that is where we kind of get into some philosophy: if everything is a simulation, isn't it still real? Even if we're just code of some kind, we still exist. You know, "I think, therefor I am."

[She hums.]

I was able to break into it once, when I first arrived. I didn't get anywhere and what footage I got became corrupted. Maybe it's time I make another attempt.

It was supposed to get better, right? Kind of. But seems like lies. There's been longer, weirder ones.

And nope. Not in a very specific way that matters to me:

[Presto! He's not there anymore. Or, he is, but he's got a face on.]

See this? This is Old Grineer. This is worth more than this whole tree-infested rock we're on, far as I'm concerned. The genetic template for this could save all Grineer! Tens of billions of us!

But if it's a simulation, no real genetics, just voxels faking the idea of biology? Then I don't have anything. Try and take it out of the sim and it goes poof. [There's a very expressive hand gesture and extremely heartfelt scowl.]

Still. Can't find out until we know. And the Porter's at the center of it all. Having another scientist on board can't hurt. How do you feel about sea bases? [Perfectly normal question to ask.]

I don't know if that is better or not either. It might just depend upon who you ask.

[And then there was that whole giant robot thing, before they were transported. What ever became of that?

His explanation and the change of his face surprises her a bit, but she nods.]

And then what caused the problem in the first place? A glitch in the code? Why didn't someone fix it when they got the results? Why would individual reactions count if we're just a program? But I get what you mean. It would mean anything that we have to solve what might be classified as a 'glitch' doesn't mean much of anything.

[Perfectly normal location.]

Hmm. As long as we can get to them easily, I don't mind where the base is located.

Not necessarily a glitch. Could be tests. Experiments. Programmers can change the code, too. A really good one could build all this. [And never attribute to stupidity what can instead be explained by malice! ...Unless it was malice and stupidity, of course.]

Easy would defeat the whole point of having a sea base! But I could get you down there. Better place to talk more about experimenting right back at this whole place. Interested?

True, you have a point there. They could have done dozens of experiments and tests, resetting parameters and we would never know. Not if they had the right protocols over our memories.

[Stupidity and malice often went hand-in-hand, in Jane's experience. It was frustrating, because it made her want to punch people twice as hard, but apparently assault was illegal.]

Well. Easy for us, difficult for those we want to keep out. But yes, I am totally interested.

Seems like they almost did, with this last one. Lots of clueless types wandering around, more than normal, even! [It was uncomfortably homey, all that obtuseness.

Still! He'd at least found someone who understood.]

Well then! [He claps his hands together, momentarily disappointed by the lack of metal clang that would normally accompany the gesture. This body was fantastic, but it lacked a certain flair.] You're officially invited.

Yeah. I'm not ... liking how they are getting closer to that. Soon, they might be able to do anything and we'd be none the wiser.

[She grins.]

Great! Give me directions and a list of anything you think I should bring. I'll have my own suggestions too!

[Have a grin right back! It almost looks sane.] Head for Heropa, South Beach near the breakwater. Bring clothes you don't mind getting wet.

And if you happen to have any grokdrul, I need sixteen drums of the stuff. But that's just wishful thinking.

[She gives him a mock salute, keen on being there three hours ago, sane or not.]

No, I don't have any of that. If I could make matter out of nothing, I would get right on that.

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thank you for your patience!

and thank you for your patience too! PhD work has been eating my brain.

ahhhh PhD work THAT IS AMAZING

I hope it will be, eventually!

i am sure it will be!!

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