A PORTAL THROUGH SPACE AND TIME FORMS IN THE LIVING ROOM
Sam: How much more to film for the movie?
Mike: We haven't decided where to stop Battle of Neo-Kyoto's story. It's pretty open ended. The main battle itself will take a few more months at our leisurely pace. Then we should have 2 hours of good footage, hopefully exciting enough for theaters. Kyu and I talked about making it a mini-series, but I don't know if the crew can keep going. Luckily, making movies doesn't really cost anything. I mean, it's crazy how expensive it used to be to make any kind of film, much less one with epic giant robot battles.
Sam: You still need a high profile project to get talented people though.
Mike: Tell me about it. T really tries, he does. I think his memory of the battle has been spilling over into his portrayal of Riful. I don't know if it works or not.
Sam: But just having T in it is going to draw quite an audience, whether he can act or not.
Mike: Seriously, don't say things like that where he might hear you.
Sam: [wincing] Right! I don't know what I was thinking. Do you have anything ready to show?
Mike: The last skirmish we filmed was pretty cool, we could watch that.
Sam: [party-wide broadcast] We've got movie sign, people! To the living room!
Everyone streamed into the living room, including Dex's random friends from outdoors. The physicals took seats on the couch and the chairs around the table, which they repositioned toward the sand wall. Keen was courteous enough to move its Gothtastic proxy to a virtual chair. It propped itself up, at least feigning interest. The proxies created their own virtual seats. T's plush recliner came with a tube that dispensed various liquid refreshments. He sucked down a fruit smoothie while his physical took another shot, in anticipation of seeing himself on the big screen again.
The couch and seats in the living room were oriented toward the main video wall. The main wall, behind the sound visualizer, was specially designed to deliver the highest definition video. It was 3D capable to the naked eye, but even with that the wall's visual effects were lame compared to Mike's augmented vision from his contacts, or the better-than-normal-human vision produced by the Plant. The prevalence of augmented reality gear meant that almost everyone carried around the highest quality theater experience with them at all times. Still, most of the walls in Sam's house came with basic video and sound. Most non-Plants used bionic contacts and ear inserts, but adding video and high quality surround sound speakers to the walls had become cheap enough to be a standard feature.
There was a bass speaker next to the couch, the only standalone speaker in the house. It was mainly for unaugmented guests. The walls could generate bass too, but sometimes an extra oomph was needed. Plants could provide more "bass" than anyone could ever need, and haptic clothing such as Mike's could also generate bass for their wearer, although it could feel a little localized. Sam activated the living room's movie mode, which turned off the lights and any of the room's potentially intrusive virtual elements.
Mike: It's only 10 minutes long and its pretty raw. We don't know how much of it we're even going to use.
Sam: Hey, whatever. Go ahead.
Mike: Alrighty. Well, as always, we haven't changed any of the strategy, tactics, or the outcomes of any of the battles. We only made changes to bring out the emotion and drama of the players, because that can get lost when you're just dealing with raw feeds. Enjoy.
Mike pulled out a baseball with a tag for the movie and threw it at the wall. The living room disappeared, leaving only the people and chairs. Dexter was sitting in T's way so he turned him invisible. The virtual screen appeared in the distance, with dimensions a little bigger than one of the old IMAX screen and maximum resolution above the limits of normal human vision. Perceived resolution varied based on the individual's tech and settings, of course.
RIFUL'S FIRST UNFORTUNATE ENCOUNTER OF THE DAY
The video started with an overhead shot establishing the beautiful, futuristic battlefield that Neo-Kyoto had become. Fires blazed throughout the city. A series of explosions in the North sent up giant clouds of smoke and debris. As the camera moved to street level, mecha, or mechanized suits of various sizes, exchanged fire as they ran or rolled through the streets. Most of the mech were humanoid to various extents.
The sun was just coming up as the view lowered to street level. A light smell of smoke and exhaust filled Sam's living room, at least for the Planted members of the audience. Garish skyscrapers lined both sides of the street, many featuring obscenely sized 3D screens displaying ads for mech parts and news footage from around the city.
A bulky 15-foot tall mech marched down the street, shooting the screens as it passed, leaving them fractured and shooting sparks but still playing. Fans of this iteration of Ataraxia knew from the mech's distinctive paint job that it was piloted by a certain bastard named Riful. He was the captain of the 9 slightly smaller units, all colored light blue, which pulled up to flank him. Collectively they comprised "Blame5" squad. The color blue stood for Sure Fire, or SuFi, at that point the most powerful force in Ataraxia. Being light blue meant that they were part of the elite division Sudo Refresh.
Charred mecha of various shades of blue fled down the street past Riful and his crew. One of the fleeing mech exploded near Riful's squad, damaging two of his units. Riful, signaled the other mecha to stop and move to the side of the street to let the rest pass by.
Thomas, playing the role of Riful, appeared in a subwindow which tore across the lower-right of the movie screen. The faces of the characters appeared in transparent subwindows on the screen while they talked, creating a manga feel while not slowing down or obscuring the action. The windows showed mostly faces, as bodies were usually securely fastened by the cockpit's netting.
Riful: [>squad channel] What the hell was that?
Thomas' head and face had been amalgamated with Riful's, so that both faces could be recognized by perceptive fans. Thomas' black skin and Riful's Chinese complexion mixed well, but Riful's iconic red wavy hair had been toned down a bit. They had kept the scar across his chin and the menacing robotic left eye. They had to respect Riful's beloved cliches.
Unit 8: [>squad] Looked like a proximity bomb attached to that poor sucker. Clever.
Riful: [>squad] Let's go show them how clever they are.
Riful: [>Gozu] Gozu, what's the situation?
Gozu: [>Riful] Tsukamoto Street is being overrun! They keep advancing. We can't get through their shields. Where are our reinforcements?
Riful: [>Gozu] Krauser Brigade should have been there by now. They were wrapping around down South. Something's going on. Go ahead and risk a reading on the shield.
Gozu: [>Riful] Oh gods! Scan returned null. It has to be a mobile base. It covers at least 39 units. A heavy unit is likely present. They noticed me scanning them. We are no... my eternal allegiance to Sure Fi [feed ends abruptly]
In the city, there was a restriction on broadcasting video due to cracked codes, so Riful was blind at his position. He took off toward Tsukamoto Street, closely trailed by his squad.
Chester placed a proxy on Riful's shoulder to get a better look at the ruined city. She put her hand on one of Riful's shoulder guns and was burned by its intense heat. It had really only felt like holding her hand over a flame for a few moments, but it reminded her to turn off damage for her proxy in the movie.
Other audience members placed similar proxies to get a better view (or smell) of one of the smoldering buildings, or to jump up on a skyscraper and get a view of distant fighting, which there was plenty of. Under Mike's screen settings, viewer proxies in the movie were unable to influence the movie or appear to the audience through the screen, so no one would be tempted to make a spectacle of themselves.
In-movie proxies were possible because the screen was less a projection than it was a portal into a gorgeously rendered, photo-realistic 3D world. The life sized buildings, streets, and robots were actually there, just beyond the "screen". Every element in Battle of Neo-Kyoto was as substantial as any given proxy. In fact, proxies could just step through the screens of most movies for full immersion.
The original recording of the battle, which Mike's crew had been reworking, encompassed a complete 3D recording of every detail of the game. With a fully rendered recording like this it was easy to put yourself in the middle of the action, or to just create one or more subwindows to explore the surrounding events and environment while still paying attention to the main screen.
Viewers changing events within some movies was encouraged, but Mike had locked that down. Static 3D recordings like Mike's could be set so viewers could blow up mecha or raise the entire town, but everything unaffected by the carnage would go on like nothing had happened. Mech would clip through rubble and corpses, and fire missiles at thin air. After the fun had died down, viewers would typically hit restore and go back to watching the unaltered video.
It was considered best before diving into a video to watch it once or twice from the filmmaker's default perspective to appreciate its dramatic framing and to follow along with all of the significant events. Framing helped define complex events and made viewers think about them in different ways. A "camera" perspective brought to light things that a viewer might miss if they were simply roaming around looking for the story by themselves.
Mike's hope for Battle of Neo-Kyoto was that it would offer a solid and interesting perspective on chaotic events, a dramatic framework which could help guide further exploration to overlooked characters and developments. He hoped that it could illuminate how chance encounters, such as Riful's fateful meeting with a certain mech, had shaped the narrative of Ataraxia.
An overhead view showed Riful's squad encountering a group of 15 enemy units a few blocks away from Tsukamoto Street. They began exchanging fire. The enemy were red, indicating that they were Kirin, Sure Fire's main adversaries. These particular Kirin units didn't seem particularly strong, but were protected by a suspiciously unified shield. It was probably another mobile base. This was bad news for Riful, as it meant that someone had carefully planned whatever was going down. But Riful was bad news for them too.
Riful's squad clustered around him and established their own collective shield, though they did not have the equipment to form a true base. They concentrated fire at the Kirin's weakest point, but it was compensated for. Even Riful's plasma cannon glanced off of it. With Blame5's own shield weakening, Riful directed their fire to a medium sized building adjacent to the Kirin. A mobile base was strong, but it was slow. As the enemy group retreated, Riful trained his plasma cannon on a larger building behind them and brought it crashing down on them. The Kirin broke the shield to pull away in time.
The street filled with smoke, dust, and chunks of the fallen buildings. The building Riful brought down physically pinned 4 of the Kirin and split the rest into two groups. Blame5 jumped over the debris from the first downed building and shot down the six Kirin units trapped in between the two fallen buildings, using their nonvisual sensors.
Riful was spraying plasma into the wreck of the second building with the 4 pinned units when a small scarlet mech, barely 8 feet tall, jumped over from the other side. As it landed it broke through Blame5's group shield and uppercutted Riful over the first building's rubble and some distance back down the street. The rest of Blame5 immediately went into retreat. Some got away, but the scarlet Kirin kicked one apart, which sent its pieces at high velocity destroying a second one. Then the Kirin ripped the third mech's head off and punched its exposed pilot to death.
Riful and his six remaining troops on the other side of the building gathered and established a new shield. The Kirin jumped over the building, and easily evading Blame5's fire. A thin, twenty foot "hyper-chainsaw" unfolded from its back and extended from its chest. It looks absurd, but it didn't slow the Kirin down as it rushed Blame5 and cut through two more units with its chainsaw in the most casual way possible.
Riful: [>squad] I am way too hung over for this crap. Can't somebody kill that thing?
Blame5 responded according to code, but they couldn't seem to touch the Kirin, who darted evasively around the street like a ninja. It went after Riful, who managed to dodge its chainsaw, and fired a spread at where he projected the scarlet menace would be in a moment. He missed. A subwindow showed Riful's face dropping. Blame 5 fell back, trying to create space. This gave Riful room to spray a wide path of plasma, but it missed the Kirrin as it moved past him on its way to dismantling the other SuFi units.
As he continued firing, Riful noted that his sensors were still picking up the other Kirin units on the other side of the downed building. They were just waiting there.
Riful: [>general distress] Strange unit at this location. Hand-to-hand, very small. Eating us alive.
The scarlet unit put its hand through the chest of Riful's last soldier. It's fist was covered with her blood as it turned and barreled at Riful. Riful missed shooting it again, and this time its chainsaw connected with the helm of his mech, but it bounced off. He sighed with relief that his armor was strong enough. Its chainsaw retracted instantly into its back and the red unit started beating the hell out of Riful's mech with its fists. Riful was completely unsuccessful at shooting the Kirin, who always seemed to evade or push Riful's guns out of the way at the last moment. It looked like Riful was fighting water.
Riful: [to red unit] I am Riful. Declare yourself.
Slack: [audio] Slack.
Riful: [>general distress] Player Slack. Murdering me with goddamn Gun Kata.
Riful snapped out of his half-drunk stupor and fought smart. He sprayed plasma on the ground around him, pushing Slack back for a moment. This gave Riful time to pull his shoulder cannon into his right arm. When Slack was back a moment later, Riful smashed his arm into Slack's side. Slack couldn't compensate for the unexpected weight of the cannon and danced backwards to recover. Riful shot everything he had at Slack, and even hit him a few times. This gave him time to switch into hand-to-hand mode.
Riful and Slack exchanged vicious blows. They grasped each other and spiraled down the street, rebounding off of the sides of buildings. Slack brought his chainsaw out, hyper extended it, and whittled away at a nearby hotel with it, attempting to bury both of them. Riful grabbed the chainsaw, but only managed to mess his hands up, costing him several fingers.
Just as the fingers fell, a large black mech appeared from the other side of the street and hit Slack all the way through the building he was trying to collapse. Slack took off running toward Tsuakamoto Street.
Riful: What the hell? I almost had him you dumbass!
Then Riful noticed who had intervened. The large, ominous mech was piloted by Ko-Enshaku, one of the Core Guardians of Sure Fire. It passed him a secure message and jumped into the distance with rocket speed.
Riful: [to himself] What could be so damn important....
The message unfolded on the screen: "Krauser Brigade has taken Zero Daisaku prisoner. Proceed to office 23 to aid in guarding him."
Riful: [to himself] Oh... huh. That just does not seem at all likely.
Riful, the only surviving member of his squad, took off toward office 23.
AFTER MOVIE CHAT
The screen disappeared and the movie space reverted back into a living room. A few people applauded. Saitou set the wall next to the couch to display a sped-up overhead view of the the conflict of Neo-Kyoto on loop. It was complete with color-coded highlights indicating areas controlled by the various factions and points of conflict. The flow of colors had a strangely soothing rhythm. It stuck out of the wall to exact scale, which meant that occasionally a rocket would fly a few feet from hitting the back of Chester's head.
Saitou: The dialogue is horrible.
Mike: It's improved from the original. Go check and compare. Especially Riful, who cursed to the point where it was just annoying. It's like a nervous tick.
Saitou: I noticed you moved some stuff around too.
Mike: For visibility. Some of the shots were perfect except for a few units waltzing around like idiots.
Thomas: You know, I was just a few miles away during the Tsukamoto thing at a skirmish off of Satoshi-Kon Boulevard.
Thomas highlighted his character's presence on the wall map.
Thomas: Sure Fire's nothing to mess with, I'll give them that.
Megan: OK, I've heard about the basic story of that iteration of Ataraxia. So was Sure Fire really evil, or was that just for dramatic purposes?
Thomas: Most of the time, the various factions in Ataraxia just have conflicting views on how the game should evolve. It's not uncommon to have 3 or 4 factions, each claiming that all the other factions are evil. But there have been iterations where one side takes a turn for real "evil". Sure Fire was definitely evil.
Mike: Within the context of the game anyway, SuFi was evil. At least after Sure Fire's leadership was taken over by the ideological group Sudo Refresh. Among their goals was the complete extermination of the Kirin. Their goals would have added nothing to the richness of the world. They sought to senselessly roll back some fruitful development from past iterations. And it was apparently guided by a nihilistic sentiment bent on destroying Ataraxia by making it unplayable.
Megan: But if they did ruin it, couldn't players just create a new instance and ignore what had happened?
Mike: That's what happened with CyFrenia, actually. It's a fork from an iteration of Ataraxia just before the game started moving away from primarily mecha based combat to more of a balance with hand-to-hand and ki stuff. CyFrenia turned out fine, but it sucks to deal with that crap. Setting it up is a serious pain, as is getting enough players together for it be worthwhile. Ataraxia has tens of millions of active players. You'd lose that rich involvement, and it would take a long time to get it back up and running. CyFrenia is thriving now, but it was weak for years. Sure Fire would have destroyed a whole lot of momentum if they had won.
Chester turned toward Mike. She had activated her social mirroring function, so her proxy's wooden surface turned black to mimic his skin tone.
Chester: So why make the Neo-Kyoto stuff into a film? Why not the Siege of SuFi's Doomsday Ziggurat, the seaborne invasion of Kobe, or the meeting of the five Pandemonia?
Mike: How many damn movies have been done about the clash of the Pans? Neo-Kyoto was a critical victory for the Kirin. If it had gone the other way, SuFi might have won.
Sam: Besides, that period in Neo-Kyoto is where you start to see the training and preparation of the players coming through. They make mecha fights looks easy, but Ataraxia's combat system is quite sophisticated. To excel there you have to be an athlete, physically and mentally.
Megan: Advanced mecha interfaces actually hook your brain up with the mecha like it was a kind of body. You have to train that body like athletes train their bodies. You have to develop the mech, but you also have to get skilled at manipulating it. You build actions and reflexes into it, just like any proxy, and then you have to ride those reflexes into the chaos of combat.
Sam: You're getting pretty enthusiastic about mecha there, Megan. Do you pilot anywhere?
Megan: Oh, not really. I dabble, maybe. Oh look, it's the Kirin's final push.
Everyone stopped to watch the wall for a few moments as thousands of units engaged in dozens of furious and desperate skirmishes all over the city. It was quite sparkly.
Chester: Well, I would have gone with another part of the war, but I thought it was very well done. I can't wait to see you do the next part.
Mike: It's going to be awesome! This Saturday we're filming the Zero incident.
Chester: That guy was completely weird. How are you going to be able to capture that?
Mike: The actor we got for him is pretty good and we're actually leaving more of Zero in there since he does have such an unusual character.
Thomas: I have a theory that Zero's an untreated autistic. It would make sense of the rocking.
Megan: Let's not start up with the Zero theories. I have another question. I've never understood why people limit themselves to in-game communication. I mean, I know it's against the spirit of the conflict and all, but that message to Riful could easily have been sent through an out-of-game text message.
Mike: People do use external messaging, of course. But there are three reasons why they don't tend to do that in a high stakes situation. First, it's cheating. You don't want to be a cheater. Second, you'll get caught. Everything in Ataraxia is recorded, and released eventually. People playing important parts usually want to look good, and cheating looks lame. Imagine if Riful received the message out-of-game and went to the hotel without prompting. It would have been obvious that someone had circumvented the communication system, disrupting the internal reality of the game. Being evil is fun. It's even acceptable to disrupt the game like Sure Fire was trying to do. But being lame just sucks.
Sam: Some games flag suspected cheaters automatically. Ataraxia leaves that to the players, but there are some damn perceptive people in that game. It's hard to get the 'cheater' label, but if a consensus hits you with one, you are screwed. A lot of players just stop cooperating.
Saitou: Sorry to interrupt, Sam, but you have porn on your shirt.
There was a video of lesbian sex on Sam's shirt. Sam didn't bother to change it. It went through several more porn clips before moving on to clumsy red panda babies.
Sam: Huh. How did that get in there?
Saitou: Porn is like glitter. Gets everywhere.
Sam: Anyway, some cheating is almost unavoidable. Big events get out on the message boards and game alerts pretty quickly. When everyone "cheats" like that, there's nothing to do. Like when Blaze Snap went off, it was mass carnage all over the place. I remember it hitting some regular news feeds, which didn't used to carry Ataraxia as much. Not that you needed to cheat to find out about that, what with the earthquakes and half-mile high explosions and all.
Thomas shot some missiles at Blaze Snap as it flew along the wall map, blowing it up. It's flaming wreckage took down several buildings and doused the area in molten destruction.
Thomas: Ha! Man, we were all like, "what do we need you for, you giant bastard?" He just got in the way.
Mike: T, you're starting to sound drunk. If you have your slurring compensator on and you still sound drunk, you may be too drunk.
Thomas: [mock indignant] I do not have to put up with this abuse! Yes, I am drunk. Yes, I am too drunk. I mean, why have alco-detox pills if you don't use them?
Mike: Incidentally, it's an interesting fact that T is a cheater. It's been proven in a number of contexts.
Thomas: I am not a cheater. I always say, "cheaters are the scum of the Earth."
Mike: Tenchi, is there any record of T ever speaking out against cheating?
For years, Mike had set his agent Tenchi to record everything that T did around him, for occasions such as this.
Tenchi: One moment... According to your recordings, Thomas has never spoken out against cheating. His only comments about cheating were, in effect, to encourage it. A search of other accessible records of Thomas' communications pulls up nothing of consequence. Playback relevant recordings?
Mike: Nah, it doesn't matter.
Thomas: Gods, I hate that spider. Spinning his little webs. He's going to get it one day.
Tenchi: There is, however, no evidence that Thomas has ever cheated at anything significant, with the exception of his role in Golden Martyr.
Thomas: Oh, it's too late to get on my good side.
Sam: It's just a dumb agent, Thomas.
Thomas: A dumb, character ass...assinating agent. Two asses in that word, I think. [checks] Yep.
Dexter's friends had gone back outside or left or something. No one really cares. Let's say they were dragged off and eaten by feral crabs. For reference, left sitting in the living room were: Chess, Dex, Keen, Meg, Mike, Saitou, Sam, and T.
Saitou pulled out a cup of liquefied Starburst and slurped it down through a straw. Seeing that only proxies were sitting on the non-couch side of the coffee table, he extended the table's top toward him and put his cup on it.
Chester: So, a week ago in CyFrenia...
Thomas, recognizing that Chester was about to start telling one of her stories, set up a private layer labeled, "Chester is a dummy" and made it available to everyone but Chester. Accepting it sprouted a 3 foot wide neon sign out of the top of Chester's head, displaying commentary from T. Sometimes these commentaries were funny, but T was too drunk for anyone to get their hopes up.
Chester: I was test piloting one of the new Serpine-3 mecha. [*DRY HUMPING MORE LIKE IT*] Completely ungainly things. [*LIKE YOUR MOTHER*] I can't release the recording because of contractual stuff with my clan. [*STRAIGHT TO VHS*] The cockpit fits two for some reason, although only one can pilot it. Anyway, I'm fighting these two Skalar-4 units, which came out of freaking nowhere, while I'm getting a blow job from my captain. He's a slut. [*...*] Anyway, he just wouldn't shut up, you know? It's like, yeah, it's so clever that you can talk while giving a blow job, good for you. [*I GIVE UP WHAT'S THE POINT*] He just didn't care if we both died.
Megan: Wait, there's sex in CyFrenia? Chester: [turning snowy to mimic Meg's winterland body] Well, not natively. There's no gender or sex functions. But you're always in control of how game proxies correlate with your senses, and you can change your superficial proxy form with little effort, so you can fashion sex organs and assign your genitalia input to them.
Thomas: When I see sex being added into games like Ataraxia or CyFrenia, it usually indicates lack of focus. You keep fucking around in Ataraxia, and you'll be clawing your way up from limbo over and over again.
Saitou: It's a pretty small minority of Cy players that are sexually active though. In terms of blowjobs, why not just set up an out-of-game sexbot to give you the blowjob while you play? Why go to all that trouble? It's just watering the game down.
The Neo-Kyoto display reached its end and reset, restoring the vast city to the pristine glory it emanated before being trashed by various sized robots.
Chester: [turning starry to mimic Saitou] Why is everyone so serious about this stuff? I fuck people in CyFrenia not just because it's "not allowed," but because in-game sex makes for an interesting group dynamic. And lots of drama. And lucky for me, CyFrenic vaginae are harder to pull off than penises. Sensory input from mouths are much easier to reassign as vaginae than to craft special pockets with the right texture and such in the body. It's just a little more difficult, but it's enough. So most of the sexually active CyFrenics have cocks, whatever gender their character might appear. Being a natural female with a gay male sexual orientation, I can just filter them all to look male, and tada! It's like a bathhouse sometimes.
Thomas: You can have sex anywhere! Anytime! Why add it into a game? It's like strip chess, it ruins both parts. I'm having sex right now, but you don't see me dirtying up the party by bringing in sexbots or molesting Chester.
Megan: [leaning in] Are you really having sex right now?
Thomas: You should try it, it's easy. Just lay a proxy out on a bed somewhere, assign the proxy your erogenous zones and sexual organ inputs and whatever else you like, and let some sexbots go to town while you inhabit another proxy elsewhere, like here. I mean, you could get more complicated with it if you want, but the idea is to make it minimally distracting.
Megan: Sometimes I don't know when Thomas is kidding.
Mike: He's never kidding. Well, he's rarely kidding.
TIDES OF WAR
As they talked, Chester pulled a gold coin out of her left ear and tossed it onto the coffee table. This activated the game Tides of War, a popular idle distraction. The coffee table was set as the boundary for the game. Its surface transformed into a grassy field of gently sloping hills and strangely gnarled trees, automatically incorporating bottles and paper plates into the landscape. Seven stone towers about the size of beer bottles rose out of the field near the edges of the table. They were different colors representing each of the seven players sitting around the table (Keen was out to lunch again).
No one paid much attention as the colored waves streaming from the towers. They swept slowly across the field toward other towers, encountering and mixing and obliterating other towers' waves along the way. Each wave contained numerous tiny warriors, so many and so small that at normal resolution the armies appeared to be almost solid colors. The battles of the waves were beautiful glowing cascades of frothing colors. Their colors merged and formed whirlpools, representing conflict. Eventually, one army or the other would prevail and continue on its way, though its color would be tainted and weakened by each battle.
Megan zoomed in to the frontline of one battle. She marveled at the intricate details of each of the warriors as they hacked and slashed at each other. She had never looked that closely before and was pleased to find that the warriors were comically rendered, though oddly realistic, dwarves of various sizes. They all had weapons- spears, swords, knives, nunchucks, and slingshots.
The winning tower would ultimately be determined by random luck, and no matter of interference by the players would have significant impact on the game's outcome. Tides of War was a glorified screensaver. With enhanced settings it was capable of deeper play, but few bothered with that when there were superior strategy games like Hyper Grind. The controls were simple. Gesturing with two fingers aimed outgoing waves, but they frequently went off path for no reason. Poking at a target with an index finger fired your tower's cannon, resulting in low-damage fireworks. The entire battlefield was often lit up by these fireworks during games, the result of fidgety players. By default, the game didn't produce sound.
It was a game no one cared about. But everyone decided to kill T anyway. There was no discussion of it, and no secret conspiracy of coordinating texts. Everyone just targeted their waves at his castle while they continued talking. The odds of this having the desired effect was low. Armies tended to interfere with each other's paths, for one thing. But T did not care that their betrayal was futile. He reversed his personal gravity and fell up to the ceiling where he stood looking down/up at the game.
Thomas: And so it begins.
Mike: You're not talking about this dwarf thing on the coffee table, right?
T's agent Villain appeared on his shoulder. It fell into the game, landing just in front of T's tower. The chinchilla shrank as he fell until he was the volume of a pair of dice, the game's maximum volume for a player's "champion". He was small, but was monstrous relative to the dwarves in the game, which only came up to his shins. Champions were a way for players to gain more direct control over the game, traditionally using agents. They allowed better control over the direction of waves and were capable of inflicting considerable damage themselves. They were one of Tide's options that deepened the experience, making it more of a game and less of a passive experience. In other words, ruining the fun.
Villain dove into the closest enemy wave, which happened to be Saitou's. He went completely, dwarf murderingly, nuts. It was like a monster movie.
Sam: Chess, why did you set it to allow champions?
Chester: Just my default settings.
Chester sent his agent in response to Villain. Sifl the sock puppet appeared near Chess' castle and was soon rampaging across the table toward Mike's castle, crushing wave after wave under sock while awkwardly wielding a sword in its mouth. Sam dropped Tacky the octopus into the game. Tacky's 20 arms carried swords and bows and arrows. Tacky immediately began shooting at every enemy that moved. Each arrow hitting the ground killed a dozen dwarves.
Mike appeared to sit silently watching. He was actually busy talking to Kyu and Miguel. Thanks to his ear insert, phone calls no longer disturbed anyone but him. Mike had a quick chat with Kyu and Miguel regarding a few last details about the Saturday shoot and was done before anyone knew he was taking a call. He then went back to ignoring the game.
Villain intercepted Sifl and tackled him. The vicious (but cute) battle ended with Villain running from the sock puppet.
GRATUITOUS ESCALATION
T normally wouldn't have cared about Tides of War, but he wasn't about to let a sock puppet kill his chinchilla. T reversed his gravity, holding on to the ceiling by a single foot while letting his other leg fall into a figure four shape. He hung there for a moment, swinging back and forth like a pendulum, taking aim. At the right moment he fell into the game, shrinking to half Villain's size and landing on his back. Villain reversed his flight from the sock and T threw axes at Sifl until he freaked out and ran away. T and Villain ran rampant over Chester's dwarves.
T battered Chester's dwarves with the flat of his axe. T and Villain smacked one wave so hard it turned entirely around, a rare achievement. In triumph, T licked some of the dwarf innards hanging off his axe. Marshmallow. Keen, for whatever reason, sat up in his chair to watch the game.
Sam: Player proxies too? Really Chess?
Chester: Default. Settings. I am not responsible for T's antics. This is a stupid game anyway.
Sam: This is a stupid game. It's for relaxation. This is like the stupidest game to get competitive over.
Chester: So let it go.
Sam: I am going to let it go. All over T's face. Hey, get away from my tower!
Thomas: [yelling up at her] No! Come make me!
T, still riding his chinchilla, had slaughtered his way through Sam's army with his axe, and was ramming into Sam's tower. It wasn't doing much damage, but that wasn't the point. Tacky had wandered across the field and was now returning to Sam's Tower, but Sam knew he would be no match for Thomas.
Chester had entered a proxy into the game, controlled by her URC. She carried a mace and ran alongside her puppet Sifl, waded through Sam's troops and tackled T. Sifl and Villain went at it again while Chester and T traded blows. T switched to a longsword and had shortly cut Chester into pieces, removing her from the game for two minutes. He then helped Villain slaughter and dismember the sock puppet.
Sam, deciding to do something about T, entered the game riding Tacky and charged after Thomas. She threw a spear at his head that narrowly missed. Tacky grappled with Villain while Sam engaged in mortal combat with T.
Megan looked pensive.
Mike: Hey new Plant, why don't you join them?
Megan: Yeah. Uh... let's see here....
Megan's proxy entered the game. She cut off her physical senses to make it easier to adjust to the game. Tides, it turned out, was terrifyingly real for proxies down in the game. Where there was fighting, which was everywhere, dwarves were brutally dismembering each other, their body parts flying in all directions. The ground was stained with blood, something she had never zoomed in enough to see. She looked up and saw everyone around the table watching the game or talking. She reeled from that surreal moment. She hadn't expected this game to be so immersive, to so quickly draw her in. She was soaking in a new, absurd reality, full of endless cycles of death and sweaty, sweaty dwarves.
Mike: [yelling down to Meg] Go kill T!
Sam's tower was next to hers, so it didn't take her long to get there. Sam and T were still going at it, now with their bare fists. Tacky had crushed Villain to death and though wounded by the chinchilla's bites was now shooting arrows at T. Thomas dodged the arrows amazing well considering how thoroughly Sam had bloodied him.
Tacky noticed Megan and shot two arrows at her. She managed to dive out of the first one's way, but was hit straight in the chest by the second. It sent a small, sharp pain through her chest. By itself it wouldn't have killed her, but Megan had panicked and hit her Plant's kill switch, temporarily shutting it down.
Suddenly she was purely inhabiting her physical again. Megan reflexively jerked her legs up to protect her chest from further arrows, hitting the table and knocked over Chester's virtual drink and Sam's real beer, which was luckily half-empty. Sam, still locked in combat, picked the beer up and ordered a house robot to clean up the spill, indicating it with some quick eye tracking.
Chester: Don't feel bad. You just died.
Megan: It hurt! I don't think I'll ever get used to that.
Chester: Oh, you will. Pain's not that bad once you know it can't hurt you.
Megan: I guess Thomas is right. I really should go diving.
Chester: It'll be fun. [:)]
Sam: Tacky-chan, consume his corpse!
That done, Sam went back to inhabiting her physical body. Thomas' proxy reappeared where he had died. Thomas was no longer in the game, so he couldn't interact with it or cause trouble, but he could still run around on it. He climbed up and sat on the top of Sam's tower and made himself a foot high so he could talk with people.
Megan: How did you guys do all that? It happened so fast.
Chester: Your proxy isn't trained for combat.
Megan: Should it be?
Chester: It helps if you're going to play violent games.
Chester: It helps if you're going to play violent games.
Thomas: [yelling with his tiny voice] My proxy is trained to automatically deal with certain threats, such as knocking arrows out of the air. You were doing everything manually.
Megan: But if your proxy is doing everything for you, what's the point?
Thomas: It's just like training your physical body and mind. When you first learn to drive, for instance, you have to think about everything, but soon it's mostly automated, so you sort of just direct where you're going. You train these automated processes in your brain, which are mostly unconscious, to take care of the mechanics for you. You don't have to think about all the muscles involved in moving your arms and legs to drive a car, but it still feels like you're driving. Not that people drive that much anymore. Anyway, it's the same thing with training a proxy. You'll know it inside and out, and you learn that you can trust it. Swatting arrows out of the air like that feels like I'm doing it, because I am. You just have to extend your identity.
Megan: Giving up control like that is scary though. Will a trained proxy feel really like me?
Thomas: It's just something you have to experience yourself.
FUTURE PLANS & STUFF
Sam: This Friday is Crain Slain! [info tag] They suggest if you don't donate some money to throw a rock at someone's head during a solo. Mike: Also, movie shoot this Saturday afternoon, if anyone wants to come contribute to art.
Sam: I might be able to go.
Megan: Oh, oh, I want to see a movie being made!
Mike: Cool. After that we're going to Omni.
Thomas: Megs said she'd go diving.
Megan: Yep. Plus, I apparently have to check out all the sex feeds.
Saitou: That reminds me. Megan, can I turn your proxy into a sexbot?
Megan: Sure, I don't care. But I don't have any sexy ghosts.
Saitou: That's alright, I'll throw a generic sexbot ghost in there. Or maybe one of Thomas' ghosts.
Megan: Why T's?
Thomas: I have several excellent ghosts of various genders and orientations fit for a wide range of sexual purposes, all there for the taking on my SIS. I get compliments.
Saitou: I, for one, am a satisfied user.
Mike: Don't encourage Thomas. He really doesn't need it.
Tacky informed Sam that it was about time to wrap it up. She and Dexter had to get up early the next day.
Sam: Well folks, that seems like a good enough place to end the party. Physicals can stick around of course.
Keen: [as its proxy blew away like dandelion] Thanks for the party! It was very entertaining.
There were hugs and goodbyes all around.
There were hugs and goodbyes all around.
Megan: I've never been at a party that had a scheduled ending.
Thomas: Oh yeah, this is your first Sam party. Just wait a second.
ONE WAY TO END A PARTY
A spinning roulette wheel appeared on the table. Sam threw a ball into it and it glided around the wheel's slots labelled:
Bullet Ballet
Fistfight
Musical Number
SD Mecha
Wingsuit Massacre
Thomas: Come on, Fistfight!
Mike: Why can't we just do Wingsuit Massacre? Everyone likes that one.
Sam: Shush, the ball is speaking.
The ball settled on Bullet Ballet. The wheel disappeared and "Bullet Ballet" floated blinking for a few seconds as it faded away. Sam and Megan stayed on the couch while everyone else jumped away from the table and spread out through the room. Mike and Dexter's proxies left their physicals sitting there.
Sam: Standard house rules apply to proxies, physics and weapons. Bullet speed accelerates as time goes on. If you've got a natural body here, death takes your house privileges. 80% damage now ejects your proxy from the house.
Megan: Wait, what's going on?
Sam: Slow motion bullet battle to the death begins... now!
Targets with damage percentages appeared over each proxy's chest and head. And it was on.
T pulled a Walther P38 and went gunning for Chester. T's green glowing bullets glided at human walking speed. Chester easily weaved through them while firing back with her uzi. Bullet Ballet guns were realistic in their operation and the look of their bullets, except that they had no kick, never ran out of ammo, and bullets all moved the same speed and did unrealistic relative damage. It was a friendly game, after all.
Mike and Dexter's physicals were safe by the table, since only damage to the player's primary proxy counted. Without a Plant, Mike was not quite as agile with his proxy as the others, but it still beat trying to physically run around the house dodging virtual bullets. Mike and Dexter immediately paired up and started shooting at Saitou with their handguns. Saitou, who had lost his stars in favor of a matte black body, easily dodged the bullets while going crazy with his M16. Streams of orange glowing bullets peppered the air. They were harder to dodge, but did little damage, so Mike was able to block some with his forearms.
It quickly became nearly impossible for anyone to avoid all of the bullets. The game's default setting made getting hit by bullets produce an unpleasant buzzing sensation, which Mike's haptic suit did a fair job emulating. As always, virtual sensory experiences were the player's alone to set. Hits caused penalty reactions in the proxies, a spasm and a second of slowness. Saitou felt a slight buzz as one of Dexter's hit his side, causing numerous stars hidden under his matte finish to spew into the air. He managed to stumble out of the way of further fire.
Thomas winced as one of Chester's bullets hit his thigh, producing a sensation not unlike being shot by a paintball at medium range. Thomas' impact setting produced pain at a motivational level. One of T's bullets grazed Chester's head, causing her head to splinter. To Chester, the wound produced a taste of tart raspberry.
As the living room was filled with bullets, Sam and Megan sat on the couch watching and occasionally leaned over or shifting in their seats to avoid bullets. They pulled the virtual representation of the coffee table onto its side to protect their legs. A puddle of dwarves fell to their deaths. Sam laid her proxy down on the ground behind the table while her physical body stayed on the couch, safe from the bullets passing through it.
Thomas found that his leg was wounded enough to slow him down, so he fell to the ceiling and laid flat against it. Chester sprayed the ceiling with metal death, trying to predict which direction T was going to go, but T was faster than the bullets. He propelled himself across the ceiling like it was lubed, with a combination of skillful manipulation of gravity's direction and the force from his gunfire. He fired rapidly toward his feet while changing gravity to pull toward his head and moved at a frightful speed to the other side of the room, where he assaulted Saitou, then Mike and Dexter from above. He then turned at a right angle just before hitting the wall and sped off in another direction.
Megan: Is that legal?
Sam: I suppose so, or he wouldn't be able to do it.
Megan: How can he add so much speed to falling with just the force of that low velocity gunfire?
Sam: Have you ever tried to lift him? He's really light. Also, not real bullets.
Now everyone was trying to kill T, while also trying to kill everyone else. When the ceiling was too crowded with bullets T fell and stood on a wall, minimizing himself as a target into his head and shoulders. Chester tried riding on the ceiling, but found it awkward. She wondered where T had gathered such experience with gravity manipulation.
T managed to wing Mike, which stunned his proxy long enough for Saitou to put a bullet through his heart, putting him at over 80% damage. Mike proxy turned into steam and evaporated. His physical sat up in his chair and watched the battle unfold. Sam had let him keep the game layer, so he could watch. Proxies darted around the room as haphazard trails of bullets filled the air. Mike leaned over and whispered something to Dexter's physical. Dexter's proxy slowed down with a comical flourish and caught some of Saitou's bullets.
Dexter: [last gasp] Oh noes, I've been shot!
Demons dragged Dexter's proxy down through a fiery hole in the ground. Then Dexter lead Mike to his bedroom, mindless of the carnage. Megan pulled out a pistol and used its butt to hammer a bullet away from her. It didn't work and the bullet hitting her neck produced an off-putting kissing sensation. She considered giving up by turning off the Bullet Ballet layer, but kept it on so that she could watch the battle.
FIRE IN THE KITCHEN
T glided into the kitchen, hopping over the top of the door frame, followed quickly by Saitou and Chester.
Megan and Sam watched the proxies' targets fly around the kitchen, unsure of what exactly was going on. Sam could have cheated and looked, since it was her house, but that wouldn't have been fair. While they were watching, the bullets reached jogging speed, fast enough to breach the wall between the kitchen and the living room. The living room was once again filled with bullets. Two bullets approached Megan. She leaned her proxy out of the way as the bullets passed harmlessly through her physical head and chest.
In the kitchen, T slid randomly around the ceiling, targeting mostly Chester. It became increasingly difficult to dodge the bullets and Chester was forced to take some side blows. Splinters leaked from her wounds. Saitou menaced T, hitting his extremities occasionally. Chester hit Saitou's knee, limiting his movement. That's when Saitou pulled out a flamethrower.
Saitou: I saved up my points last time. Die!
Saitou's variable length flame evaporated Chester and Thomas' bullets. At minimum length, it was an almost perfect shield, surrounding his body. At maximum length it was 15 feet long and still did some damage. It also set everything it touched on fire.
Chester whipped out a shotgun and began pumping away at Saitou, hoping the wide area effect would get through. While Sai was distracted by Chess, T shot a few bullets from a distance. Falling from the ceiling, T changed his gravity to fall toward a far wall at a diagonal vector. He caught some of Saitou's flame, but his trailing bullets hit Sai's shoulder and stomach. Chester hit Sai's leg, but she took flame to the face in return, leaving her at critical health.
Chester took the rest of her points and bought a grenade. She threw it behind the kitchen counter so that it rolled behind Saitou while he was still being distracted by T. It went off, unnecessarily loud, shaking the house and annihilating the refrigerator. Shrapnel pierced Saitou's back, sending his proxy into spasms on the floor. Thomas put him out of his misery. The stars in Saitou's body rapidly converged and formed black holes, ripping his body apart.
Saitou: [disappearing into a singularity] You've won, T.
Thomas, shell-shocked and bloody, walked over to Chester. She was blackened and warped, her body in splinters.
Chester: You were a... worthy opponent... [into a Star Trek communicator] One to beam up.
Chester shimmered away. She had another party to go to anyway.
Back in the living room, Sam and Megan could see Saitou and Chester's death animations through the wall.
Megan: So what happens if you die?
Sam: I explode. Guts everywhere.
Sam: I explode. Guts everywhere.
Megan: It was a nice party.
Sam: Oh yeah, thanks.
Sam pulled a katana out of a portal in her neck and ran to the kitchen.
The kitchen was a bullet-ridden inferno, perfect for a showdown. Thomas dropped his gun and pulled a sword out of his chest. They faced off, then went at it. Sam was better, but T was wily. He fell between the ceiling and the floor and back. He had more space to work with, and could add gravity's force to his weight with ease.
Having made little progress, Sam flipped to the ceiling with Thomas and locked their gravity.
Thomas: Hey, no fair!
Sam: How about this for fair?
Sam instated Bushido Blade mode, turning the kitchen ceiling into a bamboo forest.
Thomas: And people call me a cheater.
Sam: Hey, you got your health back and we have equal proxies now.
Thomas: But this is like your favorite game!
They clashed again and again. Each time T was sure he had an advantage and each time he came away with a few more cuts. Seeing that he was as doomed as he initially thought, he tried a desperate gamble.
Thomas: I challenge you to a dance off!
Sam: Fine. But winner only get a strength advantage.
Thomas instated Dance Slam and the bamboo forest became a street with a large cheering crowd. T and Sam were now dressed in tasteful spandex. Their dancing would be judged by the game for funkiness and rhythm. Preset routines were not allowed.
Sam picked a heavy metal song, and their band appeared on a stage in the distance, ready to rock. T nixed it and choose a new song.
Thomas: How about a more traditional dance song?
Sam: Let's do it.
Rick Astley appeared on stage.
Announcer: Ready! Go!
Rick Astley: [singing, plus techno enhancement] We're no strangers to love. You know the rules, and so do I...
And they danced. In some ways, the dancing was more furious than the sword fight had been, and now there was an audience of sorts. Sam's style was hip-hop with a touch of break dancing. T's had a jazz core with a splash of rave. They both danced well, but Thomas was better and Sam grew frustrated.
Sam: Screw it! You win!
Thomas: Ha!
The crowd went wild. They picked T up and threw him into the air. He was midair when Dance Slam changed back to Bushido Blade and he fell hard onto the forest ground. He dusted himself off and they clashed swords again. This time, T had a strength advantage. But even with that, Sam continued to whittle him down.
Meanwhile, Megan sat and figured she should leave. So she used all her points, pulled out a bazooka and fired it at her chest. For a moment, everything went black. Then she opened her eyes. Megan was hovering over a crater where the couch used to be. Her body parts were strewn around the room.
Megan: Oh yeah. I'm physically here.
The house layer turned off and she was back on the couch. Without augmentation, the walls of the living room were empty. It was a little sad. She stood up to go.
Megan: Bye everyone!
But they were all too busy getting killed or whatever, so she left.
Back in Bushido Blade mode, T had one final maneuver. He feigned right and raised his sword, exposing his chest. He cut into Sam's neck as she skewered his heart. They stood like that for a moment, then staggered, slumped to the ground, and commenced dying. The forest turned back into what was left of the kitchen, which had mostly burned down.
Sam: Mutually assured death. Nice.
Thomas: Yep. Nice party. Oh, can I go say bye to Mike?
Sam: You can try. See you later.
Every part of Thomas' body was sliced up. His guts were hanging out, and he was spilling blood everywhere. It kind of hurt. He managed to limp along the ceiling into the living room before Sam exploded. Her blood and guts spread over the ceiling, then dropped to the floor, extinguishing the fire.
The fire from the kitchen had spread to the living room. No Mike in sight.
Thomas: Villain, where is Mike?
Villain: Last footage shows him going with Dexter into Dexter's room.
Thomas' quickly decaying body crawled over to enter Dexter's room, but it was restricted.
Thomas: Huh... oh... I get it.
And then his body turned into a dozen cats which fell from the ceiling and ran off in all directions.
Next- Episode 04: Crain Slain (1 of 2)
I have a feeling Thomas would have preferred 'Samurai Showdown' to 'Bushido Blade'.
ReplyDeleteLots of action in this one. Balances out what I thought the previous part lingered too much on descriptions. I wouldn't suggest putting some of the action up front though, as I know it has been a while since I read episode 02 (which had some good action too).
I'll have to read the whole thing again once you are finished before I think I can get a really clear read on whether or not the pacing is right. So far it looks like you are still doing pretty good.
Is there supposed to be a protagonist in this? So far Thomas seems like the 'leading man' to me (I may be prejudiced though - Thomas Baugh).