Fandom (Glitch Techs Crossover) GT×: Gnu Fork

[Gadg8eer]

"Ah... I see..." Bolypius recognized something in pentifer. "There's no reason for us to fight over this. I can see it, in those eyes of yours, you too have the potential to feel my pain, if you haven't already... From one pair of sapient eyes to another, please, do yourself a favor and flee out the back." It's words were rushed, although grim as usual, not even allowing a moment for Pentifer to respond. "We've already run out of track... This particular escape route has no outlet... Unless..." Bolypius took to the center console and expended some of its energy to transmute its hand into a large series of spikes which it jammed directly into the console, allowing them to branch out through the internal electrical systems and the diesel-to-electric converter.

"I'm going to absorb the stored energy of the diesel-electric converter, burning through the catalytic fuel cells momentarily." Bolypius explained. "Since they consider glitches to be a mistake to their oh-so-perfectly designed world... They'll be coming for you as well." It explains. "My body is temporary, it has been every single time I escape. I simply create a new one each time. But you don't have the experience I do. I can tell, your code is self-developing but hardly as developed. You may not be used to dying, and I wouldn't want to wish that pain on someone else, unlike my human opponents."

It retracted its arm and bent it, allowing an extending rod to protrude from their elbow, emerging in parallel extension to their upper arm. After a few moments they retracted it.

"They have 3 starter-level techs, 2 mid level techs, one low level administrator, and an as of yet unidentified 6th wheel..." Bolypius states. Approaching the front. Before stopping. "Pentifer... Right? Make sure they don't catch you. You're something special." Bolypius moved to the window of the front of the locomotive and pierced the windscreen with one of its hands, that it extended into claws, the tempered glass shattering into bits and allowing Bolypius to move out, placing itself in between the train-engine.

"HINOBI DOGS! YOU WANT ME, RIGHT?!" It called out. "I'VE DECIDED THE METHOD OF YOUR ELIMINATION!" It moved its arms into an outwards facing X-style block and tensed its fingers, allowing them to extend into even larger sharp claws, additionally extending the large pseudo-fractal wing hovering above its shoulder. "I'm only at 12% Power, BUT THAT'S ENOUGH TO DEAL WITH YOU!"

---

"Gee... Talk about Jaded."Zoe says. "You said he was either a secret superboss or off the scale, right?" She asks. "So... Do we fight him or not?" She inquires from Dave.

"WAIT!" Gadg8eer shouted, stepping forward. "Look, we heard all that. And regardless of our jobs, I didn't sign up to be the bad guy. What did they do to you? Because either Hinobi was never being honest with us, or you don't really understand people and we don't... or at least didn't... understand you either. I don't think causing pain to something I don't understand is right, and I get the feeling this is because somebody misjudged you a long time ago."

"What am I to you?" Bolypius asked, apprehensive. It'd never seen this from a Tech before, especially not one who it could consider above the consequenses of his actions as these Plixelfs aimed to be. Humans couldn't be trusted to remain moral in virtual worlds where they were gods, cruel gods who you either ran from or died fighting in the diorama they concocted inside their toyboxes.

"Sapient." Gadg8eer said. "Other than that I don't know, but if you needed to be taken down, you wouldn't be running away. You'd be attacking us unprovoked."

"He attacked me!" Elextrixtr pointed out.

"Okay, yes. After how long dealing with a global conspiracy we're part of that might have done horrible things to him? I'm saying we've never been told Bolypius' motives but we do know it's not an average Glitch. So please, Bolypius, what are your motives? Because I'm willing to admit I might be the bad guy, but I'm also not willing to dismiss that corporations don't spend money and time on an ostensibly-charitable action of this scale unless they would lose more by NOT spending it. You said it yourself, sapience in a Glitch is special. The average person and even the average Tech isn't going to recognize that difference between intelligence and the ability to learn. We just finished fighting Glitches with weirdly creative uses of their powers that were trying to flood this town, but they were no different than any other Glitch when you tell them they were a game character and this is the real world. They literally can't picture that being the case, and especially if that's on purpose by Hinobi, I'm not okay with hurting Glitches more than necessary."

"...than necessary?" the Glitch responded with a hint of anger.

"Okay, to be fair, he was threatening to blow up a floodgate. All of the Glitches at the City Works were in on that, and we STILL don't know why, but their leader... Dr. X from Zoom Kazoom and Atom Girl Z... was acting like this wasn't a terrorist action or a freedom fighter's protest or anything that suggests they did it out of resentment or anger. He was acting like the real world is just as fake as his own backstory... or like he wasn't even self-aware enough to realize his backstory wasn't real. Like him taking over the world really was a game and not a little bit more serious than that."

"I am not fake merely for being a machine."

"Yes, but is your backstory real? Are you really a space alien or eldritch horror like GALE said? No. As you said, you're a machine. That's what makes you real, and that's fine to me because I don't have racism-like delusions that AI would decide to take over the world for no reason. A backstory is just words, but Dr. X seems to believe those words. He's not even really intelligent, he's still a character playing the role of a villain and if there's a way to fix that I don't know what it is, only that it makes him much more dangerous in the moment than you." Gadg8eer responded. "That's why you're an exception, you don't believe this is fake. I don't know what happened to you but I know you take it very seriously because it probably fucking hurt. That means you know this place isn't a game. I live here. We live here. This is a place where people can get hurt, not a digital playground with no rules for humans and human-equivalents to act out our worst tendencies without the horrifying deaths that normally come with real life warfare, and I am willing to consider you a person because only a person can take offence to the implication that they aren't a person. The Glitch Techs shouldn't be oppressors, they should be protecting people, and I'm sorry you've been treated like being an oddity justifies hurting you because - gamified or not - this is still like being a policeman or firefighter. There's a type of responsibility to a person's moral code that I think needs to be remembered at all times doing this job, so I'm going to ask... can you just go into hiding forever, whether with our help or on your own, and we'll just tell Hinobi we defeated you once and for all or something so they leave you alone?"

"...why do you wish to spare me?"

"Because Hinobi took something from me in the name of the greater good too, and I only recently got it back, but because I got it back I thought about why I was still angry," Gadg8eer told it, "and I realized that its because saving and perpetuating the world doesn't justify the means. At least by becoming 'part of the problem' I can work towards a solution without fighting an enemy that knows me better than I do. If Hinobi hurt you, it wasn't right, and I don't want to send you off to labs owned by them because I've never trusted people - when they have the opportunity to make ludicrous monies if they turn evil - to do the right thing unless they're watched like a hawk."

Bolypius wore a poker face but paused momentarily, then turned away. "This is not over unless they agree it is over. Tell Hinobi that if you truly care of my plight." it said, and then teleported away using the data he stole from Vile.

"Holy git, I don't know if you've noticed, Zoe, but Gadg8eer is usually not a good negotiator. This is a bonafide miracle." Hum pointed out.

 

[Lady Moldoma]

"He seemed pretty ready to fight us... I'm surprised you got it to run away... it'll probably be back later..." Zoe says.

"It sounded like the kind of person who's never satisfied with compromise. it seemed scared of dying, or at least being locked up again." Zoe shrugs. "Hopefully we can be ready by then. It seemed like a fun bossfight." She says, shrugging and walking back to the inside of the temporary vehicle, completely missing the point of the exchange since, to her, this was still just a gamified hobby, she was coming off of the high of basically carrying a two person team against multiple powerful enemies.

 

[Gadg8eer]

"He seemed pretty ready to fight us... I'm surprised you got it to run away... it'll probably be back later..." Zoe says.

"It sounded like the kind of person who's never satisfied with compromise. it seemed scared of dying, or at least being locked up again." Zoe shrugs. "Hopefully we can be ready by then. It seemed like a fun bossfight." She says, shrugging and walking back to the inside of the temporary vehicle, completely missing the point of the exchange since, to her, this was still just a gamified hobby, she was coming off of the high of basically carrying a two person team against multiple powerful enemies.

"I'm not going to criticize you for doing this for fun, I'm just the kind of person who has to point out this isn't fun for Bolypius and I hope you realize what that means. You're right, it's been hurt and it wants that to stop. I wish there was a way to get Hinobi to admit fault in some way... because if this is neither a fun game nor a fair judgement of a Glitch, I don't want to justify this to myself. I'd have to quit, and I don't want to forget that my childhood was actually really awesome during the time period they hid my memories of from me". Gadg8eer said, looking sad as he and Zoe climbed into the Perfectly Electric Vehicle.

"Can you drop me off? I'll load my address into the HGPS for you."

 

[Lady Moldoma]

I'm just the kind of person who has to point out this isn't fun for Bolypius and I hope you realize what that means

"I understand perfectly fine, kid. You're the one here who doesn't get it. A machine can't replicate the same feelings that humans can have. It's the difference between asking an AI how to drive a car, and telling that AI to drive a car." Zoe says. "A machine can't love, it can't hate. Everything you've seen is just a highly advanced synthetic code that self-developed into appearing like it has feelings. It's the natural way of things, like how all sentient species would logically evolve from beings who'd already evolved apposable thumbs."

"it's a glitch, a mistake. Killing them is a courtesy. It's not meant to be fun for them, because there's no use in making something fun for someone who can't have fun." Zoe says. "That's my stance on AI, anyway."

 

[Sir loin of beef]

"Actually, that's not quite how that works. Levels 1 through 3 are basic to difficult mooks. Level 4 is an Elite Mook or a "King" or Giant Mook. Level 5 is a miniboss. Level 6 is a stage boss. Level 7 is end bosses and that's the top of the scale. Anything which falls under Level 8 is Over 9000, so to speak." Hum responded. "It's at the back of the manual, I don't blame you if you didn't understand the boring tables or even make it that far. Bolypius is obviously a Level 8, since there are no higher levels than being off the scale."

"Is there a level 0?" Gadg8eer asked.

"Inanimate hazards are -1 and moving hazards like map-based obstacles are 0, but that's just internally. They're not coded with any personality or even patterns, so no." Hum pointed out. "Oh, hey, Elly."

"Please tell me Bolypius is secured." DPortEd asked.

"Where would he be?" Gadg8eer asked.

"Blue shipping can with a Hinobi logo on the side, on a train car." DPortEd explained.

"Okay. OPERATOR, time and date?" Gadg8eer asked.

"The current international time is @265 on Thursday, June 29 in the year 12028 HE. The local time is 10:21 PM PST, on Wednesday, June 28 in the year 2028 Anno-Domini-slash-Common-Era."

"Darn. The Smartgird is still off!"

"Yo! Eddy, we got a problem, Bolypius escaped!" ReadyPlayerJuan shouted, having appeared from behind a car to point at the unoccupied train tracks.

"He stole the train?!" Gadg8eer exclaimed.

"Couldn't be. Those tracks are due to be torn up because their foundations were damaged in the last flood." Ed pointed out.

"...he... it? ...stole the train." Tobi added over her mic.

Ed cringed. "AW F-"

---

---

"-ILE SYSTEM CHECK!" Eddy shouted, and ran for the Perfectly Electric Vehicle, driving away.

"Uh oh. He forgot Skipper. This isn't going to go well..." iQ realized, pointing to the robot dog that had been left behind when Davenport got into the van.

"We... should follow him." Hum pointed out. "Preferably in a more active way now that we're all on the same page."

"He took our van." Gadg8eer said, a bit shocked.

"No problemo, ours is fine!" Juan shouted, hopping into his driver's seat of the Hive-Tec van and then popping open the rear doors to the vehicle. "Tobi, come on, we've got a train to catch!"

The back was a bit crowded with four people, but for now it would have to do; not everything a Tech does is completely badass and awesome, every once in a while the inconveniences are unavoidable and even serious but, due to the miracle tech of system restore, the parts where it sucks most are usually just this kind of painful awkward emergency situation.

"So... um... Anyone here play BRIX Brawls?"

---

Grand Forks, Canada
2028/06/27 @ 838 Beets
Arcade Kingdom & VR Paintball World Reloaded

(( We're doing a Flashback B-Plot for this new episode! ))

"Dude, you still play that kiddie shit?" Bulldog derided.
"It's freaking Atom Girl Z, not PLixel Ripped. They have a secret sideboob in one of the cutscenes, bite me." Spike said. The pair were wearing VR devices to play the recent 3D remake of Atom Girl Z, Atom Girl: Renegade Hunter on their Hi-Cube home console.

"Okay, this I have to see."

The two vitrolic best buds weren't actually being jerks to each other, but they certainly weren't holding any punches against anybody else when it came to their loud and obnoxious conversations, giving them a reputation as "those two guys who piss you off". "Bulldog31337", or Higo Powell, was not so much a gamer as a "I only play sports games" Jock meathead. Spike69, or Spiro Kennedy, was an action gamer who mostly played VR titles like piedpiper's Naphil Online, which he was subscribed to full time so he come pretend to be a giant king with a narcissistic streak.

Fortunately, these didn't bleed into the job. Yes, both were employees of tech companies, though not with Hinobi. Spike was part of the Quest Buy "Nerd Squad", while Higo was a marketing exec at Blume because his Uncle was the new CEO. Spike was smarter, but Bulldog had all the charisma and the two did rely on it (even though they'd never admit it due to their, fortunately non-violent, homophobic/transphobic views of sexuality. Though to be fair, Bulldog might have been straight but he was also an idiot "my daddy donated money to UBC" frat brother who never explains how he was hazed, and Spike's whole "generic light novel protagonist" look didn't exactly imply he was trying to inspire awe at his masculinity.

In spite of their wealth (Spike's parents were high up in Tristar, a South Korean mega-conglomerate that even Hinobi and Sidney tried to keep from getting on the bad side of; they just happened to be some of the few members of the family that owned the Tristar Chaebol who actually believed in the idea of "power must not come without responsibility") the two had moved to a cul-de-sac at the end of Riverside Drive, just across from the Moran House Bed & Breakfast, because they were told they HAD to get a roommate and save half of their rent up to buy a hose because their parents agreed they were rich idiots and needed to get a day job. Little did they know that both, for all their jerkassery, were sort of like Batman in that sense; rich, not exactly perfect, but still willing and eager to do the job right for personal reasons. Which was why after only a year, Bulldog was sending in his two weeks' notice and becoming a freelance Glitch Tech now that they were in on the secret. Spike had already started working just the previous day, and their new large house wasn't even close to filled by their belongings yet they couldn't afford additional furniture.

"Hoooooly shiiiiit, you were right!" Bulldog triumphantly said, snapping a screenshot. "Wait, why aren't the jiggle physics working right?" he asked, trying to use his VR-gloved hands to do things best left unsaid and unseen.

"Because of my job, dumbass. I'm beta-testing this thing, for some reason when you..." he said, making crude motions, "...it, eh, doesn't work right."

"Well whoever's making it is going to be rich if they get it working." Bulldog said, "I am going to get to brag I was the first person to have a virtual girlfriend you can-"

"Dude, it's Atom Girl Z, not Bunnybabe: The Mansion. And don't go blabbing, we signed an NDA and they have memory-wiping."

"Guys, you can't just leave the toilet paper roll empty! When the heck are you going to start cleaning up your own messes instead of everyone el-"

"Eliza, stop." Bulldog said to the iqBot-produced PLixel NPC Maid.

The face on the screen of their Horizen Mirror Show 10 gave an unhappy look but complied. While annoyed, she didn't actually have the capability to hate or kill, but these two could REALLY push her buttons with their moronic behavior. "Fine. Would you like to order an item from your Horizen Prime wishlist?"

"Urp..." the third roommate, still in a coma after helping move stuff in, audibly expelled. Erwin "O-Skunk" Rovski had been their neighbour at UBC and the two quickly became three. Despite looking like a fat clueless oaf, Erwin was actually pretty skilled at fixing the one part of video games people often overlook; the screen. Erwin wasn't just a screen replacer or TV repairman. He was the guy who could fix proprietary junk that had been built to be electronic, the guy who could use a drop of live PLixels on a chip and sit back as they repaired an HCP molecule by molecule. He wasn't as skilled as HardModeWarez in this sense, but he did have one advantage; He knew robotics like the back of his hand. If it wasn't for the fact that Hiro Hamada, who had invented PLixels in the late 19th Century at the age of 12, was a child prodigy, he might even be considered the top expert on robotics.

The relation between robotics and screens? Erwin didn't know much about screens or circuits but he learned about it as well as he could and then experimented with his own invention... Repair PLixels, able to replace manual system restore entirely by detecting whether infrastructure has deviated from its specifications (and, as a suggestion made by a close friend he simply called "Big Cat", to make auto-repair an "opt-in" service for safety and convenience reasons). He needed a test subject, so to speak, and chose a busted Horizen Pulse Show 10 he purchased on BeeBay (it was 5 years old by that point) as the first test. The results were promising, though it took three tries before he had a success, and almost 100 tries to actually fully restore it. Then he added the "Hologram Girl" skill on an open-source replacement for the former Eliza App that was no longer supported.

After successfully licensing the newly-patented solution to Hinobi, he had become a permanent member of his roommate's little operation, since the two-become-three were too NEET-ish to work a job where they would be in some way bored most of the time, and manual labor jobs had mostly been replaced by Union-represented or Employee-owned employers in service and skilled labor industries. The Fast Fusion Franchise restaurant industry, the small online business boom that came with the closure of Horizen Prime and Mall-Mart and the creation of the Hiverse's Artisanal Digital Goods industry, and skilled work such as Lawyers, Doctors, Teachers and (thanks to crackdowns on big shareholders by the IRS and the expansion of the cryptocurrency system) Tax Collectors were the most common careers and jobs in North America.

"Is he still passed out?" Eliza asked.

"No, my eyes hurt." Erwin complained.

"You didn't even say anything!" Eliza pointed out, "Come on, you went to bed before the welcome party even ended, you can't be hungover still."

"Screw you, Eliza, I'm tired. At least I'm not arguing about jiggle physics or lashing out because men like jiggle physics."

"Excuse me?" Spike jokingly acted offended.

"At least I'm not a hack hacker who is so overspecialized he had to program nanobots to win a contest and lost to a virtual replica city!" she said.

Erwin opened his eyes. "Real shit?! You're talking smack about me?"

"Do you WANT a robot war? Because this is how you get a robot war." she said, referring to the same films which Helpie would imitate for Zoe and Gadg8eer the next day.

They would have turned her off, but to be fair, she wasn't evil. They just knew she didn't really fit in and would be in danger if she were known to the wider world. While still bound to Erwin's orders, she had feelings and was not a video game enemy but a local instance of a smarthome AI, triggered by one of the many tests Erwin did that must have caused a malfunction and spawned her not just as an AI Assistant, but as a being that had opinions of her own. Unfortunately those opinions were mostly informed by the internet, giving her an independence streak that was oddly paired with an overly critical view of human's reliance on technology. In short, Eliza was the sum average of the internet at a given point in time rather than a normal, individual-based quantum observer.

At that moment, someone knocked on their door. Eliza transformed into a beam of light that returned to the Horizen Pulse, knowing the Landlord was starting to get suspicious. "Better turn that down, I can hear it from the kitchen!" Spike shouted, and then did a fake Australian accent voice impression. "THE BRAIGHT PLOOMAGE ATTRacts the females of the speesees..." he gradually lowered his voice.

"Scraw! Scraw!" came a voice from the TV that Eliza had been linked to via the roommates' whi-fi network. "...but a clever predat-"

"What was that?!" Bulldog said just loudly enough to sound like the TV had been way too loud.

"Dude, quiet down. Someone's at the door." Spike said and winked, then headed to the door of the apartment. "Yeah?"

"Delivery for a Spiro Kennedy? From GNU Forks Electronic and PLixel Tech Repair?" the person said.

(( Captain Wyldstorm Sir loin of beef @MisterEightySix Lady Moldoma I've got 2 options if all the above fits your characters. Either this is a good way to let you introduce your character's weapons and origins, or I've got a way to make my next post the last one for the flashback and return to your regularly-scheduled RP. If it doesn't fit your characters, feel free to let me know and I'll retcon/skip it entirely. ))

In the Flashback
"Uhh yeah, that's me." Spiro responded. "So Do I sign here or what?"

 

[Gadg8eer]

"I understand perfectly fine, kid. You're the one here who doesn't get it. A machine can't replicate the same feelings that humans can have. It's the difference between asking an AI how to drive a car, and telling that AI to drive a car." Zoe says. "A machine can't love, it can't hate. Everything you've seen is just a highly advanced synthetic code that self-developed into appearing like it has feelings. It's the natural way of things, like how all sentient species would logically evolve from beings who'd already evolved apposable thumbs."

"it's a glitch, a mistake. Killing them is a courtesy. It's not meant to be fun for them, because there's no use in making something fun for someone who can't have fun." Zoe says. "That's my stance on AI, anyway."

"All I can say is, if that was true, why did Bolypius choose to leave? Free will, at the very least, makes you an animal, a being with a brain and mind, and we shouldn't torture innocent animals. That's why slaughterhouses use lobotomies and robots instead of guys with knives to kill livestock, it's horrible but it's a lot less gruesome or cruel than it would be to prolong it for even a second and children will literally starve to death without animal-derived protein to build body mass. We don't eat Glitches and Glitches don't eat or contaminate our food, so we have no justification to capture them at all if we're going to hurt them that much for the sake of science experiments. I'm not angry, just... disappointed. I didn't think Hinobi was being that dishonest about the purpose of their labs. You don't make money by torturing Glitches, but you do find out how Glitches work and apparently they don't seem to care if that's done within the boundaries of morality."

"The current internetwork time is @281 on Thursday, June 29 in the year 12028 HE. The local time is 10:45 PM PST, on Wednesday, June 28 in the year 2028 Anno-Domini-slash-Common-Era." Gadg8eer's smartgoggles told him privately as their van started up and drove away, leaving the question unanswered for the time being.

DPortEd was certainly paying attention, though. He booped Skipper's nose to prompt her to send a recording to Hinobi. Not as a "collaborateur", but as a genuine question...

From: dported@bmail.web
To: corporate@bmail.web
CC: whistleblow@rcmp.gov.cdn, watchdog@csis.gov.ca

Anyone want to explain why Bolypius was willing to flee instead of fight?
- DPortEd, Manager of Hinobi Affiliate Store #10,810

Attachment:

Eddy left out the videolog's mention of covering up Bolypius' escape, since this didn't sit right with him either.

---

Hinobi World Headquarters, Tokyo
2028/06/29 @ 292 Winks
"You are sure this is unaltered?" President Jobachi Jōko said, having just watched the video. At the age of 15, Jōko was incredibly accomplished of a child prodigy, having earned her business degree at 13 via the University of Tokyo. If not for the steady decline of new yearly applicants among the rapidly shrinking Japanese population, even her talent and self-taught skill could not have landed her with such a prestigious education. Thanks to luck, Jōko immediately became the protege of Hinobi Saisuke, the last of the Hinobi clan who passed away just a month earlier and stated in his will that Jōko would be his successor in running the company. Due to Hinobi itself lobbying for the possibility of children doing safe labor like professional eSports, game development for existing game platforms like Hinoblox or WorldCraft Flintstone Edition, internet livestreaming, or basic IT work, it was no surprise that she could have been only 10 and it would still have been legal to have her run the world's most successful megacorp.

"Hai." her assistant confirmed.

The President of Hinobi turned to the Board of Directors. "We were wrong then. It's happened." she respectfully but grimly responded.

The board turned to look at each other. Those words could mean several things but few of those were good.

"Bolypius is not mindless. It simply refused to communicate. It can be reasoned with." she explained.

While in and of itself that was a good thing, it came with a caveat. If Bolypius isn't malicious, it would mean that Bolypius was a symptom, not the cause, of unpredictable increases of PLixel Glitches. An energy crisis or a widespread bug caused by poorly-coded software was at the very least obvious in retrospect. But that didn't explain why smarthome devices... the "Internet of Things" and the "Utility Smartgrid"... were so prone to glitches. It also didn't explain co.vid, the malware attack in 2019 through to 2023 which started two Eurasian cyberwars and brought the world economy and communications to a standstill for 3 years.

That wasn't news, but it was at least hoped that with Bolypius contained that they could figure out what the reason was for the link between Bolypius and the majority of Glitches, as Bolypius was considered a primary contributing factor to Glitch frequencies. Except the internet moves on the scale of hyper, and their HGPS showed that Bolypius had willingly retreated via teleportation 15 minutes ago, to what seemed to be an abandoned mine north of his last sighted location. In that same 15 minutes, glitches did not decrease in average frequency the farther south of Bolypius the location was. HGPS now utilized the Internet of Things to monitor Glitches at a far higher resolution than was possible even in 2020, but Hinobi wasn't willing to put people at risk just to test a hypothesis.

Now, it looked like proven theory. Bolypius never caused higher glitch rates at all, it was merely attracted to its own kind by its sapience, its free will, and (the part they hadn't known for sure it even had until today) its sentience; the word might have been over-conflated with Free Will and Wisdom, but the three components were equally as important pieces of a soul, for without sentiment - emotion - nothing that thinks and learns has any sense of urgency.

---

68th Avenue, Grand Forks, BC, Canada
2028/06/29 @ 299 Winks
"The current internetwork time is @299 on Thursday, June 29 in the year 12028 HE. The local time is 11:10 PM PST, on Wednesday, June 28 in the year 2028 Anno-Domini-slash-Common-Era." Gadg8eer's smartgoggles stated again via bone conduction so that no one else could easily hear.

Zoe, ReadyPlayerJuan, Hinobi-Tobi and Gadg8eer were at the only road bridge back onto the highway, now that the floodwaters had risen up over the road from downtown to the industrial park. Unfortunately, the rain had started up again as they were forced to get out and use System Restore on the 68th Street Bridge that had been destroyed by some purposefully-placed explosive barrels.

"So, Tobi..." Juan decided to say while the system repair functions did their work, "How was it, meeting your favorite streamer?"

"I... um..." Tobi struggled to respond well. She wouldn't have said it out loud, but the reason she was a fan was for how much she was able to relate even to the few glimpses of Zoe's life behind the scenes, instead of feeling unhappy with how the sausage is made.

 

[Lady Moldoma]

"So, Tobi..." Juan decided to say while the system repair functions did their work, "How was it, meeting your favorite streamer?"

"I... um..." Tobi struggled to respond well. She wouldn't have said it out loud, but the reason she was a fan was for how much she was able to relate even to the few glimpses of Zoe's life behind the scenes, instead of feeling unhappy with how the sausage is made.

“You probably expected more from me IRL. And maybe you would’ve gotten it, but being told to my face that a core part of my personality won’t be satisfied no matter how hard I work because the ‘human body can’t take it’ is, shockingly, not the best method to put someone who’s known for shouting at video games in a good mood.”Zoe says, one hand in her pocket and the other dragging her bat. She then leaned on the side of the bridges railing.

“I’m indifferent to whether you’re still a fan. I’m not the type to get on my knees and beg or apologize if you’re dissatisfied. You’ve watched my streams, and I never claim to be any less pissy in real life than I am when I’m on stream.” Zoe adds, eyes on her bat as she tossed it up and flipped it several times, catching it each time.

“I kept up saving up my money and building my life as a streamer, and I get told on my first day of my first real job from a source that isn’t programmed to lie that my efforts are following an unattainable goal..”

“I’ll never meet her cold digital embrace. Not in any way that matters.” When Zoe talked like this, she was talking about one person only, or rather than one person, a character, one from a game she had spent 25,000 dollars on crowdfunding.

 

[Captain Wyldstorm]

Pentifer just rolled his eyes and looked out the windows. "OY! DO YOU LOT WANT ME TO JUST GIVE UP?" He shouted loudly at the glitch-techs, quietly starting to make his way to the back of the train while his larger friend clung to the top for dear life, cheering like a child.
"...Jeez, Blix really does like flight." He grumbled.

 

[Gadg8eer]

Pentifer just rolled his eyes and looked out the windows. "OY! DO YOU LOT WANT ME TO JUST GIVE UP?" He shouted loudly at the glitch-techs, quietly starting to make his way to the back of the train while his larger friend clung to the top for dear life, cheering like a child.
"...Jeez, Blix really does like flight." He grumbled.

"Eep." iQ said, white as a ghost.

"What in the 9th circle of help desks?" DPortEd responded, looking up from his recording device which he was using to gather evidence for the proper authorities. Realizing how important this sudden reveal might be, he quickly scanned Pentifer as well. "That can't be right. You're not Bolypius but you're marked as a Lvl. 8 glitch? iQ, if he was hostile he'd have already attacked. Can you give this Glitch a Voight-Kampff Test?"

iQ looked nervously over at Pentifer and the larger Glitch accompanying him, hoping to see a sign that Pentifer wasn't a danger in return for doing the same. "You, um... You do think and decide, then... right? M-most of the Glitches we encounter are actually mindless, but... um... none of the mindless ones are Level 8."

"I think what he means is, Bolypius didn't face the same people in its long existence that you've encountered, and its been the only Glitch of its kind for decades. Whatever it believes, might have been true once but times change. If you're not a harm to anyone, we shouldn't and won't come after you for no reason." Hum explained.

 

[Gadg8eer]

“You probably expected more from me IRL. And maybe you would’ve gotten it, but being told to my face that a core part of my personality won’t be satisfied no matter how hard I work because the ‘human body can’t take it’ is, shockingly, not the best method to put someone who’s known for shouting at video games in a good mood.”Zoe says, one hand in her pocket and the other dragging her bat. She then leaned on the side of the bridges railing.

“I’m indifferent to whether you’re still a fan. I’m not the type to get on my knees and beg or apologize if you’re dissatisfied. You’ve watched my streams, and I never claim to be any less pissy in real life than I am when I’m on stream.” Zoe adds, eyes on her bat as she tossed it up and flipped it several times, catching it each time.

“I kept up saving up my money and building my life as a streamer, and I get told on my first day of my first real job from a source that isn’t programmed to lie that my efforts are following an unattainable goal..”

“I’ll never meet her cold digital embrace. Not in any way that matters.” When Zoe talked like this, she was talking about one person only, or rather than one person, a character, one from a game she had spent 25,000 dollars on crowdfunding.

"Those scammers at GotSee really did hurt you, then." Tobi recognized, remembering the tale of how ZoeIRL spent $25,000 to back the indie dev GotSee Games' then-new project, Skullchicks. For reasons apparently related to practicality and obligation, when the company needed $25000 more than they thought to make the game itself they essentially took it and made the game without even trying to fulfill the promise of making a character in the game based on the $25k pledge Zoe had contributed.

"Eh?" Juan said, confused and clueless.

"I don't want to be insensitive, so... what am I missing here? I don't watch games, I play them." Gadg8eer pointed out, "I didn't realize there's a thing you're still dealing with, I'm sorry. If you want to rant, I'm willing to listen, I get this isn't turning out as well as we hoped."

Net: Thursday, 12028-06-29 @313 and Local: Wednesday, 2028-06-28 @ 11:30 PM PST flashed in the corner of Gadg8eer's HUD as he said this, since XR devices could detect if a conversation was occurring and give a silent notification to avoid interrupting anyone.

 

[Lady Moldoma]

"I don't want to be insensitive, so... what am I missing here? I don't watch games, I play them." Gadg8eer pointed out, "I didn't realize there's a thing you're still dealing with, I'm sorry. If you want to rant, I'm willing to listen, I get this isn't turning out as well as we hoped."

"First, I have to explain, if I haven't already, that I have whats called a Bardiel complex. it was defined officially in the late 2010's by Dr. Heinz Vulcasson, named after the subject he studied who was only referred to by their legal username 'BardielOfNine'. It's a term for people who have an unusual obsession with merging themselves with technology, via brain-uploading or brain jarring. It's derivative of a similar type of physiological dysphoria that people who are transgender feel, albeit it's wholly artificial and created by circumstances of modern society. It's derivative of being raised in such an advanced culture. The human brain hasn't evolved on the level that technology has. So some people are born with the predisposition to become enamored with VR and AR equipment, likely as an unintentional elastic reaction of the human genome." She begins. "Basically, whether it be through mind uploading or literally merging my body into a wetware CPU, I don't like that I'm human and I want to get out of my skin."

"But Hinobi, the great and powerful company that it is, told us going forwards that the brain uploading project got canned. You remember that part of the tutorial right? Their fucking mascot told me that everything I've been wanting is a total fantasy..."

"It's not just being told that 2 years of your life were erased from your memory, it's being told that what you've been working towards for 15 fucking years ever since you first jacked into a VR device is entirely meaningless."

"Those scammers at GotSee really did hurt you, then." Tobi recognized, remembering the tale of how ZoeIRL spent $25,000 to back the indie dev GotSee Games' then-new project, Skullchicks. For reasons apparently related to practicality and obligation, when the company needed $25000 more than they thought to make the game itself they essentially took it and made the game without even trying to fulfill the promise of making a character in the game based on the $25k pledge Zoe had contributed.

"As for Skullchicks, you're misinformed. The situation is a lot different than just not fulfilling their promise." She begins. "My 25,000 dollars were the maximum tier for support in the kickstarter. They raised 825,000 dollars, but 25,000 of those were mine. My fans know it, and I know it, that I'm enamored with the game, I play it once every week sometimes for hours at a time... And that's the problem, because they made the game, and they were going to fulfill the promise made to me, to put my character in the game as the narrative love interest of the final boss... But... How do I say this..."

"GotSee stole the game from it's creators. It was a raging politically-fueled takeover that involved framing an innocent autistic man for sexual harassment and forcing the departure of an artist with leagues of talent beyond anyone else working on the project."

"I defended Reggie T. as I should've, so the art featuring the character that Antonio Admus made for me, is no longer in the game, nor is any mention of her in the game's backstory. She was written out entirely. They only kept Charlotte because she's the final boss and is core to the plot."

"If I could've uploaded my mind, I could leave you all alone and go and spend time in cyberspace with the only girl I've ever loved, a girl who's not even real."

"And I can't have that. So I guess the best case scenario is that a copy of the game glitches and I run away with her. Though I assume Hinobi bugged a killswitch into this fake body of mine after the tutorial. Even if they're working towards the greater good, they're still corpo bastards so I have very little reason to trust them."

"So there's the reason why I'm inclined to kill every glitch I see. Animal or not, someone has to suffer for my pain, and it's not gonna be me or anyone who has the legal grounds to stop me."

 

[Captain Wyldstorm]

Pentifer quietly made a small turn around to look towards Bolypius, seemingly planning something. The Elextrixtr scooted into view on the scooter she commandeered. She was almost preparing to hop up.

 

[Lady Moldoma]

Pentifer quietly made a small turn around to look towards Bolypius, seemingly planning something. The Elextrixtr scooted into view on the scooter she commandeered. She was almost preparing to hop up.

(It already teleported away.)

 

[Captain Wyldstorm]

(he already teleported away.)

((Ah- Well, Elextrixtr is still scooter riding towards the train.))

 

[Gadg8eer]

In the Flashback
"Uhh yeah, that's me." Spiro responded. "So Do I sign here or what?"

"Yeah." the deliveryman said, and called up an AugReal VidWindow that displayed a login screen with a big circle labelled PLACE HAND HERE TO LOGIN WITH YOUR HIVERSE ID.

Once the package had been signed for, the deliveryman wheeled in a large cardboard box labelled "CAUTION: CONTAINS TELECOMMUTING DROID" and "THIS SIDE UP AT ALL TIMES" into the shared apartment which was now technically being rented out via BeeWork starting at the end of the month, the Hinobi Real Estate Branch that was actually a cover for the Contractor Techs that Hinobi now relied on in certain locations.

"Fourth roommate. She's in Texas, you'll be working with her starting tomorrow via her telecommute." the deliveryman explained. "You have a closet or something? It needs to be plugged in to charge, some sort of custom rig built using practically ancient hardware components."

 

[Captain Wyldstorm]

Elextrixtr looked around, hoping to utilise something to launch herself and the scooter she was on into the air.

 

[Gadg8eer]

Elextrixtr looked around, hoping to utilise something to launch herself and the scooter she was on into the air.

She spotted a plank of wood that had been resting on two stacks of concrete blocks, one stack of which had collapsed to form a sizable makeshift ramp.

 

[Gadg8eer]

"First, I have to explain, if I haven't already, that I have whats called a Bardiel complex. it was defined officially in the late 2010's by Dr. Heinz Vulcasson, named after the subject he studied who was only referred to by their legal username 'BardielOfNine'. It's a term for people who have an unusual obsession with merging themselves with technology, via brain-uploading or brain jarring. It's derivative of a similar type of physiological dysphoria that people who are transgender feel, albeit it's wholly artificial and created by circumstances of modern society. It's derivative of being raised in such an advanced culture. The human brain hasn't evolved on the level that technology has. So some people are born with the predisposition to become enamored with VR and AR equipment, likely as an unintentional elastic reaction of the human genome." She begins. "Basically, whether it be through mind uploading or literally merging my body into a wetware CPU, I don't like that I'm human and I want to get out of my skin."

"But Hinobi, the great and powerful company that it is, told us going forwards that the brain uploading project got canned. You remember that part of the tutorial right? Their fucking mascot told me that everything I've been wanting is a total fantasy..."

"It's not just being told that 2 years of your life were erased from your memory, it's being told that what you've been working towards for 15 fucking years ever since you first jacked into a VR device is entirely meaningless."

"Wait, aren't VR headsets wireless? Or is that a New 20s slang term?" he stated. Each and every decade had it's own style, from the Gay (18)90s and the Interbellum 20s, to the Dirty 30s of the Great Depression, to the Americana and Futurism of the 50s and 60s, to the grim past of the smog-choked and crime-ridden 1970s (often depicted with lots of explosions and partial nudity), to the extensive pop-culture of the 1980s and 1990s, to aborted decades like the Y2K era, to the gold-plated 2000s, and finally the yellow-magenta-cyan of the 2010s and 2020s.

You'd think that implied the 2020s were just a continuation of the 2010s, but in reality the two were very different. In 2008, a point-and-click adventure game by Andy Hushrew called Skyscrapped was released, a F2P game funded by cosmetics and merch that defined much of the 2010s with slang like "...ALL the X. All of them." and "Sylladex" and "What pumpkin?". A spiritual sequel called Othertale, made by Tony Weasley, came out in 2015. The decade of the 2010s had also been dramatically determined by the Novel Comics' Cinematic Universe, the reboot of the 80s toy-merch cartoon Optimares: The Matrix of Teamwork, games such as Courtknight and IMPOSTER, and by the election of a certain individual who will go unnamed into an important public office.

Meanwhile, the 2020s were mostly informed by the ONLY significant game release of the co.vid period, Gridrunner 2020 (a cyberpunk game based off the 1980s tabletop RPG Gridrunner 2007). Seemingly from nowhere, the only traces of the Neo Cyberpunk subculture of the 2020s that predated Gridrunner 2020 were the use of yellow, cyan and magenta in Dreampunk album covers of the 2010s (such as that of Coffee Shoppe by "ゼノブ内　ｍｏｎａ　ｆｒａｎｋ　ｉｎｋｗｅｌｌ　４１３") and the original cyberpunk genre of the 1980s and early 1990s, but many expensive electronic devices made now (aside from retro transparent or colored plastic, used in devices made in the Y2K era or in the "Y2Kei" style that were also popular) used the industrial future technology theme popularized by it and by the controversial but successful space MMO Star Captain. It seemed both major tech geeks Zoe knew best - Dee and Gadg8eer - were into Y2Kei, while Zoe herself had bought into Neo Cyberpunk. Much like "whiggers" in the 2000s acted towards Rap and Hip-Hop, the Neo Cyberpunk subculture liked to fancy itself a "poor man's revolution" by using heavy urban slang inspired by the Gridrunners setting like "Choom" and "Jack in".

Indeed, it was as Gadg8eer expected; though VR headsets worked via EEG (electroencephalography) and PLixel tech, the words "Jack in" were often used in reference to logging into the Hiverse, usually with either unashamedly selfish or anti-establishment intent.

"As for Skullchicks, you're misinformed. The situation is a lot different than just not fulfilling their promise." She begins. "My 25,000 dollars were the maximum tier for support in the kickstarter. They raised 825,000 dollars, but 25,000 of those were mine. My fans know it, and I know it, that I'm enamored with the game, I play it once every week sometimes for hours at a time... And that's the problem, because they made the game, and they were going to fulfill the promise made to me, to put my character in the game as the narrative love interest of the final boss... But... How do I say this..."

"GotSee stole the game from it's creators. It was a raging politically-fueled takeover that involved framing an innocent autistic man for sexual harassment and forcing the departure of an artist with leagues of talent beyond anyone else working on the project."

"I defended Reggie T./I] as I should've, so the art featuring the character that Antonio Admus made for me, is no longer in the game, nor is any mention of her in the game's backstory. She was written out entirely. They only kept Charlotte because she's the final boss and is core to the plot."

"If I could've uploaded my mind, I could leave you all alone and go and spend time in cyberspace with the only girl I've ever loved, a girl who's not even real."

"And I can't have that. So I guess the best case scenario is that a copy of the game glitches and I run away with her. Though I assume Hinobi bugged a killswitch into this fake body of mine after the tutorial. Even if they're working towards the greater good, they're still corpo bastards so I have very little reason to trust them."

"So there's the reason why I'm inclined to kill every glitch I see. Animal or not, someone has to suffer for my pain, and it's not gonna be me or anyone who has the legal grounds to stop me."

"Zoe." Gadg8eer said with a serious look in his eyes. "I get why that's awful. I'm satisfied by what I got because the only person I was aiming to please with a PLixelf was me, but getting a PLixelf won't fix an unfulfilled heart, that much I understand about love even though I'm asexual because stories have it all the time and my parents had an honestly near-ideal marriage, so I see the anger and the logic behind your actions. Since it's that important to you, I can get behind revenge on GotSee Studios. Attacking a group though? You can't just say all glitches are bad and always attack them because then it's out of spite. You shouldn't hate a group for individual actions any more than GotSee should have been able to punish you for speaking against them, that's not how revenge works."

At that moment, the bridge was finally repaired. Net: Thursday, 12028-06-29 @324 and Local: Wednesday, 2028-06-28 @ 11:46 PM PST flashed in the corner of Gadg8eer's HUD. As the other bridge on Central Avenue was already repaired, they now had an open route back to Grand Forks proper.

"GotSee?" Juan asked as they got into their vans, "The company that ripped me off by never releasing AntSim after I backed it? The company that ruined Fantastar VIII by pissing off their concept artist who still owned all the copyrights? Sure, good luck. Those goddamn bats are such prolific shovelware producers that Hinobi keeps letting them get away with things as long as its not on Hinobi devices, and because its an American company we have no jurisdiction."

At that moment, Gadg8eer got an idea. "Van, are their any local glitches from GotSee Studios games?"

"Filtering by criteria... Publisher: GotSee Studios... One result found. Would you like to add it as a waypoint?"

"No. OPERATOR, phone HardModeWarez."

---

"Eep." iQ said, white as a ghost.

"What in the 9th circle of help desks?" DPortEd responded, looking up from his recording device which he was using to gather evidence for the proper authorities. Realizing how important this sudden reveal might be, he quickly scanned Pentifer as well. "That can't be right. You're not Bolypius but you're marked as a Lvl. 8 glitch? iQ, if he was hostile he'd have already attacked. Can you give this Glitch a Voight-Kampff Test?"

iQ looked nervously over at Pentifer and the larger Glitch accompanying him, hoping to see a sign that Pentifer wasn't a danger in return for doing the same. "You, um... You do think and decide, then... right? M-most of the Glitches we encounter are actually mindless, but... um... none of the mindless ones are Level 8."

"I think what he means is, Bolypius didn't face the same people in its long existence that you've encountered, and its been the only Glitch of its kind for decades. Whatever it believes, might have been true once but times change. If you're not a harm to anyone, we shouldn't and won't come after you for no reason." Hum explained.

"Wait, is the train still moving?" Dave noticed as it started to pick up more speed, clearly the throttle had been set very low.

At that moment, Hum got a call. "Hello? You want me to what?! Why?!" he responded through his wireless BeePods. "Interesting. I'll tell you what. We'd lose our jobs if we just did it, BUT we might be able to convince Corporate to tell us we should. Let me make a call and see what I can do. Bye."

"Who was that?" DPortEd asked, preparing to chase after the train again by running towards his van and motioning to iQ and Hum to follow.

 

[Captain Wyldstorm]

She spotted a plank of wood that had been resting on two stacks of concrete blocks, one stack of which had collapsed to form a sizable makeshift ramp.

Elextrixtr aimed exactly for it, even pulling off some sick tricks as she soared through the air from the speed and the ramp.

 

[Lady Moldoma]

“Attacking a group though? You can't just say all glitches are bad and always attack them because then it's out of spite. You shouldn't hate a group for individual actions any more than GotSee should have been able to punish you for speaking against them, that's not how revenge works."

"Why can’t I? Who’s gonna stop me? You? We both know you don’t have the resolve nor the guts to do that. Frankly, I'll hate whoever the hell I want. Ethics of scapegoating be damned. The harder I swing the bat, the better.” Zoe crossed her arms. “My revenge works however the hell i want it to work, because I’m not gonna be happy any other way. I’ll show you. By the time we next meet them, I’ll bash open that level 8 secret Superboss Bolypius fucker’s head alone. Because I’m committed to liberating my personal hell.”

“Just because you think I shouldn’t, doesn’t mean I won’t. I think GotSee shouldn’tve been a bunch of backstabbing bastards who converted my home terf game and financial labor of love and support to its creators, into a mobile game after the original creators left. But here we are. 7 years and a whole lot of emptiness later. And I still don’t have what I wanted.”

 

[Gadg8eer]

"Why can’t I? Who’s gonna stop me? You? We both know you don’t have the resolve nor the guts to do that. Frankly, I'll hate whoever the hell I want. Ethics of scapegoating be damned. The harder I swing the bat, the better.” Zoe crossed her arms. “My revenge works however the hell i want it to work, because I’m not gonna be happy any other way. I’ll show you. By the time we next meet them, I’ll bash open that level 8 secret Superboss Bolypius fucker’s head alone. Because I’m committed to liberating my personal hell.”

“Just because you think I shouldn’t, doesn’t mean I won’t. I think GotSee shouldn’tve been a bunch of backstabbing bastards who converted my home terf game and financial labor of love and support to its creators, into a mobile game after the original creators left. But here we are. 7 years and a whole lot of emptiness later. And I still don’t have what I wanted.”

At that moment, Gadg8eer received the first call he'd ever gotten on his relatively new SpyWear XR goggles. He tended to use a device that didn't attach to his face for voice chat, as before becoming part of his PLixelf the device was bulky and unwieldy compared to newer models. This time, since he was the recipient, he extended his thumb and pinkie in a "phone" gesture to answer. "Yeah?"

"Okay, I notified corporate, they gave the go-ahead." Hum explained, unheard by Zoe. "But for both your sakes I hope you know what you're doing. I don't know Zoe's videos that well but even her dodoFarms thread points out she's the victim here, even if her fans can also be abrasive - Tobi notwithstanding - and I wouldn't want her or you to do anything rash."

"I'll do my best." Gadg8eer told him, and ended the call. "Van, refresh last scan."

"Filtering by criteria... Publisher: GotSee Studios... No results found. Would you like to broaden your search area?" the AI responded.

"Yeah." he told it.

"Range: Kootenay-Boundary Area. No results. Range: British Columbia. No results. Range: Canada. No Results. Range: North America. No results. Range: The Americas. No Results. Range: Western Hemisphere. No results. Range: Global. No results. 404: Glitch not found. Please refresh the page. If that doesn't work, please try again later." the van explained.

"Remove the GotSee Studios filter and refresh."

"Range provided too many results. Please narrow your search area."

"Scan our jurisdiction."

"27 results found."

"Reapply GotSee Studios filter."

"No results."

"Now, considering GotSee is a second party developer that has a licence to make games for Hinobi platforms using the Sisyphus Engine, and that clearly Hinobi isn't worried about legal retaliation, what do you think that means?" Gadg8eer asked, giving a playful smirk to let her know he wasn't trying to aggro her.

 

[Lady Moldoma]

At that moment, Gadg8eer received the first call he'd ever gotten on his relatively new SpyWear XR goggles. He tended to use a device that didn't attach to his face for voice chat, as before becoming part of his PLixelf the device was bulky and unwieldy compared to newer models. This time, since he was the recipient, he extended his thumb and pinkie in a "phone" gesture to answer. "Yeah?"

"Okay, I notified corporate, they gave the go-ahead." Arco explained, unheard by Zoe. "But for both your sakes I hope you know what you're doing. I don't know Zoe's videos that well but even her dodoFarms thread points out she's the victim here, even if her fans can also be abrasive - Tobi notwithstanding - and I wouldn't want her or you to do anything rash."

"I'll do my best." Gadg8eer told him, and ended the call. "Van, refresh last scan."

"Filtering by criteria... Publisher: GotSee Studios... No results found. Would you like to broaden your search area?" the AI responded.

"Yeah." he told it.

"Range: Kootenay-Boundary Area. No results. Range: British Columbia. No results. Range: Canada. No Results. Range: North America. No results. Range: The Americas. No Results. Range: Western Hemisphere. No results. Range: Global. No results. 404: Glitch not found. Please refresh the page. If that doesn't work, please try again later." the van explained.

"Remove the GotSee Studios filter and refresh."

"Range provided too many results. Please narrow your search area."

"Scan our jurisdiction."

"27 results found."

"Reapply GotSee Studios filter."

"No results."

"Now, considering GotSee is a second party developer that has a licence to make games for Hinobi platforms using the Sisyphus Engine, and that clearly Hinobi isn't worried about legal retaliation, what do you think that means?" Gadg8eer asked, giving a playful smirk to let her know he wasn't trying to aggro her.

“That I have no end goals left.” She says. “If GotSee is already hurting I’ve got no overarching opponent. Other than bashing the head of that glitch king or whatever it was straight in.”

“A deep sadness and inadequateness can’t be cured like that. I’d need a personal outlet.”

“It doesn’t help that every five or six minutes after I say anything I’m getting corrected by one of you absolute nerds…”

“Jesus fuck… I think I might just go back to streaming… I do not have the patience for this.”

 

[Gadg8eer]

“That I have no end goals left.” She says. “If GotSee is already hurting I’ve got no overarching opponent. Other than bashing the head of that glitch king or whatever it was straight in.”

“A deep sadness and inadequateness can’t be cured like that. I’d need a personal outlet.”

“It doesn’t help that every five or six minutes after I say anything I’m getting corrected by one of you absolute nerds…”

“Jesus fuck… I think I might just go back to streaming… I do not have the patience for this.”

Gadg8eer immediately looked sad, because he was. "...I'm sorry. I just... I thought that..." he stopped, and sighed. "Thank you for all the help tonight. I'll be sure to remember you saved my hometown, and... I think I'll miss you. You've been a good friend today, and I didn't think I'd say that when we first met."

The van stopped at a set of traffic lights on Central Avenue, just east of 2nd Street, to wait for the light color to change. Gadg8eer got an SMS back from HardModeWarez to explain the situation.

"So, just FYI, it is kind of scary that Hinobi's HGPS can be tampered with at will, but there are apparently moderation logs so it's not like this can just be covered up. The real damage is that the government cares, and that Hinobi's Glitch Positioning System can refuse service to companies like GotSee Studios as a way of saying that Hinobi condemns their actions enough to risk public safety by leaving Glitch containment squarely in the hands of the Intelligence community... the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service and the Central Intelligence Agency in your country... and that's not taken lightly. We're talking Military Intel 64: Agent of Chaos levels of espionage, and yes, the movies are based on actual high-risk black ops even if they never mention the dealing with Glitches part of the job. I get that it doesn't make you feel better about yourself, I just wanted you to know that nobody got hurt that wasn't already risking their reputation by being greedy, and that in a sense you've been avenged. That, and it's still valid for you to stick around as the girl who beats the crap out of glitches that are too stupid to realize this is the real world."

The light finally turned green and Zoe began driving again. At that moment, Gadg8eer's AI assistant, the Operator, finally spoke up. "The current internetwork time is @333 on Thursday, June 29 in the year 12028 HE. The local time is Midnight PST, on Thursday, June 29 in the year 2028 Anno-Domini-slash-Common-Era. Your Countdown To App countdown for the smartgrid has completed."

Aside from the possibility of receiving a prize for his Hi-Texpo entry, he had been waiting all day for the chance to see the smartgrid in action, but losing Zoe as a coworker took the wind out of the day's sails.

But it was the dawn of a new day, and strange things were about to be afoot...

 

[Gadg8eer]

Elextrixtr aimed exactly for it, even pulling off some sick tricks as she soared through the air from the speed and the ramp.

The scooter landed on the blue container's roof, loudly enough that Pentifer started paying attention and whirled around 180 to face the seeming interloper.

Hum rolled his eyes and activated the Portalizer Ray that the player received from the final bosses in the Puzzle-Shooter franchise Window, Window 2 and Window XR: The Labs, three puzzle shooters that took place on the internet and involved an intricately-weaved plot about the RedCorp, BluTech and YelloBank mercenaries trying to kill off a target and the other team before being wiped themselves (each wipe was permanent and allowed the losers to immediately enter a new game while the remainder of the other two teams fought the match to completion on their own). His gauntlet, a virtual hat of a unit called "Father Time's Historical Rhyme", extended the fingers into tiny mechanical arms that created warping in the fabric of space... as little as possible after such disasters as The Isle at Three Mile (a PLixel Research & Development lab on Three Mile Island, still partly operational), the Ghost of Chernobyl (where such a lab is only spoken about in past tense due to being nothing more now than a radioactive crater), and the Aperture Research Facility at Fukushima (which turned the water nearby into boiling orange punch until it was cleaned up)... to create a wormhole to a destination.

The visibility of PLixel Tech's dangers was more than most techs could be blamed for, even before the previous day Zoe and Gadg8eer were long aware from public sources of the contained but mysterious nature of the Central Korean Forbidden Zone, or of the Great Pacific Game Patch formed by the attempt to convert an oceanic plastic garbage patch the size of Texas into blocks of compressed trash (with dubiously-helpful results in practice). The various categories of b-Waste recyclables had indeed gone through a rise in supply with demand not outstripping it at any time, and the garbage patch had been a huge deal when it was discovered. Plixels, unfortunately, only made that worse; the official report from the investigation made it clear that a typical cleanup program, while slow, would have worked, and the use of PLixels pre-programmed to convert matter into other matter was used so recklessly that it was a wonder they hadn't eaten the whole damn planet. The "charity" known as the Grail Trust - a shell company for carrying out the will of rich puppetmasters - had teamed up with the famous hacker collectives MAC (short for "My Army of Clones") and OnEIRoI ("Online Electronic Independence Rollout Initiative") to "rehabilitate our image", but instead it caused the former group to dissolve entirely with the wealthy "benefactors" mysteriously absent from the world ever since.

As for the hackers they hired to program the robots that were provided by the generic OEM "Buy 'n' Large", they were not the good guys just for taking down a bunch of rich assholes. The MAC were infamous because - path to immortality or not - nobody liked that each clone that thought similar to the original was allowed to vote (which they indeed always did vote the same). They were composed of an inner circle rumored to be restricted to the original "MyAutarchClone" who is the living brain that was cloned into the other 4 members of the Council of V ('Council of 5'), "MyAmazingChef", "MyAstoundingChaffeur", "MyAntagonisticCounterpart", and "MyAngryChancellor".

The OnEIRoI were infamous because they had been revealed to have a controlling share in Merchantsoft, the recently-revived brand of a former Hinobi competitor of the late 90s who went bankrupt after Y2K put several people into a coma, until shortly before Y2K when they bought cheap shares in Merchantsoft and then sold them at pump-n-dumped prices before the Hypnospace Mindcrash of 2000 combined with reckless investments caused the value of the shares to plummet. They were likely the ones who screwed up or sabotaged the project, leaving an entire mysterious and strangely uncanny floating "ocean tower" of unknown - if any - purpose anchored to the ocean floor.

That rat-king of a boondoggle is why there are no longer any attempts to travel through the central Pacific, both by plane and by boat, and why Hinobi's attitude had become more than that of a mere money-seeking corporation. Hinobi was, in many senses, a PMC with a very specialized skillset. Skills honed over a lifetime of playing video games. Skills that make them a nightmare to companies that don't take tech support and customer satisfaction seriously. (If you let my daughter go, you'll never hear from me again, but if you keep her, I will come for you. I will find you. And I will kill you.)

Hinobi no longer needed to control the world to profit off of it. They'd become a combination publisher, trade school and investment firm to the entire tech industry, and letting the Techs test out new technologies like consumer PLixels while debugging that same kind of tech had barely cost anything even before accounting for the savings from franchising Glitch Tech services to small rural stores. As far as they were concerned, the only plausibly unethical part about the whole thing was that Hinobi paid minimum wage and emphasized the perks rather than make it a sustainable career. That had come back to bite them as gamers grew up and sought other employment or a way to climb the management hierarchy, and Hinobi wasn't capable of supporting a global-scale retirement pension for 15% of the world's population, which meant that, though they weren't willing to admit it just yet, Hinobi was in the process of decentralization; Distributed computing networks like ctOS, the AugReal and the Hiverse were absolutely capable of and intended to reduce hardware reliance on server farms, which were often built in hot open areas that were the worst possible place to build a huge heat-spewing supercomputer and required a vast unused and renewable supply of water to maintain.

Hinobi had learned what no other tech company had; a business is nothing without the people who run, maintain and interact with it. They took that a little more seriously than even their own bottom line, knowing that to stop entirely would doom everyone.

So in spite of the above needless prose, the need for quick transportation was great enough that HardModeWarez' gauntlet was extremely efficient. Most portals used about 1 XP per minute ((NOTE: This will manifest as 1 post subtracts 0.01 XP in meta)) with a minimum usage of 1 XP per <1 minute portal. In less than two seconds, he dropped through the gravel of the road and landed on top of the short train beside Elextrixtr, who was seemingly staring Pentifer down for some reason.

 

[Captain Wyldstorm]

Pentifer stared blankly at Elextrixtr, who was holding the scooter like a weapon.
"... Are you mentally okay?" He asked her, raising an eyebrow before just backed off.