[The Grid] Chatper 1: Hardwired

[magnificentmomo]

Hank is muttering prayers, any he can think of. Most of them are in English, others he has memorized in Latin, Hindi, or Arabic. Mortality is something Hank has never been comfortable with, and if shit is about to get real, he is gonna take it on with Holy words.

 

[Persell]

It turns out that "a little weird" is a euphemism for "horrifying existential agony." The operation proceeds like this.


Kase drops into a seated position on the sand, and Athena hums to herself while she does some something. Moments later he hears her say, "And go." Then he hears some short music. It's peculiar, somewhat like a bass viol, the large string instrument frequently mistaken for a cello. There is about forty seconds worth of playing after which Athena instructs Kase to pass the phone on to Erin.


"A moment, I need to tune it for you. Just a moment," she adds, and that's when you realize this isn't a recording. Somewhere Athena, or Tink, is actually putting bow to strings and easing a strange, haunting tune out of the wood. While she's tuning she explains to Erin that she hasn't really had time to do this before, as Kase was the only one they expected.


Meanwhile, Kase is feeling odd. On the one hand, not much has happened. He's looking around, poking at sand, generally doing not much of anything, and the music of the wind and waves is louder now than the notes from the cell phone were before. The only really peculiar attribute of the events is that the tune is caught in his head, and he starts humming along to it. Once he notices what he's doing he feels oddly embarassed and tries to stop, but instants later is doing it again. Then Athena plays for Erin, and the two of them are sitting side by side on the sand. The phone gets passed around.


Erin sees a lot of nothing happening. She starts humming the thing she just heard, and the two of you probably make generally polite if awkward conversation about it.


"What did you here? Dum dum da dum? Oh, mine went dum dee dee da." You exchange shrugs and continue listening to the music in your heads. Athena plays for the next contestant. Kase starts to space out.


The music is strange. Deeply, deeply strange. It's like the fragments of misconstrued folk songs torn from deepest memories and filtered by years of internal conversion as you grew, altering the way you think and feel, until the melodies of youth have change organically into something nothing like what they must have sounded to a different listener. The songs play weird harmonies outside the normal realm of tune. Lines of music branch and recombine with infinite, unplaceable complexity that worms it's way deeper into your mind. Soon the nature of the song is all you can think about. Any of Hank's prayers fit perfectly, like the ancient Romans and nameless Arabs composed them especially for this song.


Then you realize that the song of wind and waves isn't separate from the tune that's drumming in your head anymore. There is a percussion in the nature of the world, and rapidly approaching from outside the night sky and under the depths of the sea, it comes rushing up to you and crashes into your minds with the awesome strength of a thousand embarrassing memories. All of those moments in your past wherein you ever failed or put your trust in the wrong place, carried by the singing strings of Athena's viol, erupt back into consciousness once more. The music hits you like stinging insects, burrowing into your ears and under your skin, and dragging with it history and fate. Kase starts screaming. Erin isn't much better.


Malcom, standing nearby with the phone while Athena retunes for him, notices those whom have gone before start to convulse. The wind picks up, and blows away the sounds of their cries. Perhaps a tiny feeling of uncertainty piques within him.


For the three who have gone before, there is no more chance. Veils over senses you didn't know you had are being burned off, and an awesome complexity of sensory stimuli is flooding you while at the same time overwriting your memories, unlocking details that were gone in the depths of history. Flows of meaning are suddenly blindingly obvious. Physical acts like breathing carry with them the feeling of cold air and the scent of sea salt, but also the meaning of inhalations and the vitality of the atmosphere dredging your lungs. In time you will come to know these meanings as essence, and will talk about it as if it were perfectly natural. Now there is another world, underlying the one you've always been in, and you're being confronted with it all at once.


You can feel your body pumping essence in and out with each breath, but worse, you can feel the thing on your back sucking it out like a syphon. A lifetime's worth of 'you could have been better' is being drained out of you with each moment, leached out of your lives and being dragged off to power the Grid. You are being farmed, but not of energy or power, but of belief and self will. The world is sucking you away.


You can't ignore it. You are a thousand times less than you should be, because you're jacked in and being torn away. Malcom sees the first three on the ground, twitching convulsively, before they grow still. Athena finishes her reset.


"You and I haven't really had time to talk, Malcom, so I'm going to give you the short version. The world is a lie, creation is dead, and you're trapped in an elaborate simulation for the sole purpose of ruining your life. With me? Good. I'm about to disrupt your carrier signal, and then your connection to reality is going to get all buggered up. This is your one chance to turn away. After this, you won't have a spot in the world you know any more. Say when."

Spoiler

Welcome to the world of enlightened essence. Spend 20 xp for Essence 2, annd get yourself an essence pool of 20 motes. Standard mortal rules apply, so you can access seven of them for free, and must spend a temporary wp per scene to access the rest. Feel free to begin learning TMA, Terrestrial Sorcery, or whatever you want. Things are going to move pretty quickly, though, so you won't have long left in the Grid before you get physically unplugged.

 

[Blackadder]

Malcolm laughed suddenly and hard. The mirth of a man seeing something oddly right when it sounded so wrong. "By now, I agree. I do have to ask you about some odd visions, but that's after yanking the cord, m'am. Do it."

 

[Persell]

Malcom gets punched in the face by the Fist of Awakening Essence. It goes for him like the others.

 

[Arynne]

Erin Hagens


At sea, as in fencing, everything turns on keeping the adversary at a distance and anticipating his moves. The black cloud forming, flat and low, in the distance; the slightly dark area of rippled water; the almost imperceptible foam breaking on the surface -- these augur deadly thrusts that only constant vigil can parry.


So is fencing or sailing a truer metaphor for life?

Then you realize that the song of wind and waves isn’t separate from the tune that’s drumming in your head anymore. There is a percussion in the nature of the world, and rapidly approaching from outside the night sky and under the depths of the sea, it comes rushing up to you and crashes into your minds with the awesome strength of a thousand embarrassing memories. All of those moments in your past wherein you ever failed or put your trust in the wrong place, carried by the singing strings of Athena’s viol, erupt back into consciousness once more.

…and the air writhes. It presses, smothering, upon her like a weighted wind, then pounces on her with the unleashed fury of a hurricane. Reality shatters like a broken window, sending fragmented images sailing everywhere. It’s like being lost in a movie lot, stumbling from set to set, only the scenes are about everything in her life Erin would rather have forgotten. Everything. She sees things that happened when she was one. She remembers how she first acquired her fear of spiders. She witnesses her parents’ quarrels -- mean, nagging, petty quarrels -- in all their tawdry glory, including the three-year custody battle. Once again, she sits in the judge’s office trying not to sob while they tear each other apart. Every lie she has ever told, every childish temper tantrum, every cheap knickknack she ever shoplifted, every humiliation at the hands of her so-called ‘friends’, every time she has cowered down and wept instead of standing up straight. All of it. And none of it is real.


Lost in the swirling tempest, blinded and deafened by the whirlwind, Erin sees her entire world come apart, and feels as though she is coming apart with it, her body tugged and torn in many directions. Though all within her is dark and crying, she reaches out blindly for something, anything, to hold onto, to take as true.


“The end of all swordsmanship, child,†a remembered voice says, “is simply this: to hit the mark. Excelence is everything.â€

 

[lordofthestorm]

Kase was never musically inclined. And yet, when the music began, it began to feel like a medley of every song from Legend of Zelda in some kind of slow minor key, like a requiem. It was oddly fitting in a way, as he took a seat on the sand, his head nodding slowly to the tune as more and more songs, seemingly from every source beyond that, and even the whole world began to play along, right as he got into Zelda's Theme...


WHAM.


His mind exploded in a burst of past memory, and he felt the same sensation he had when he picked up that golden stone condensed in his head. He saw his childhood play back, trusting people he thought were friends who instead wanted nothing to do with him. Every test he failed. Every insult, ranging from gay to retarded. Every award he never won in school because he didn't have the drive to succeed like his mom wanted.


Everything he ever loved. Everything he ever hated. It was all a lie. A cruel joke.


The world became a swirling mess of dark colors, and any mental strength Kase had wasn't enough to keep hold. He wanted something...anything...but there was nothing.


All I do is cry. All I do is bleed. It's never enough...especially for me.


And then a voice commanded him.


Look up. When the sun sets, then the cosmos reveals its splendor: stars unto infinity. Follow them, and your path will be clear.

 

[The Bushranger]

Patrick


"It's clean," Patrick tells Kase, before looking over at Erin as she starts talking to the kid, half-listening and filing away the name for future reference.


He looks over to Kase as he listens to the cellphone call, and takes a deep breath.


"Make it a left turn for me. But yeah. I'm ready."


Watching the others, he takes a step forwards as the convulse, reaching, but then stopping. Something tells him to trust Athena. And when the phone comes his way, he simply says two words to the woman who already has, and will continue to, turn his world upside down, eyes closed tight as he readies himself.


"Punch it."

 

[Persell]

OOC: I assume someone slaps a phone on Jordan's ear and let's him have the same fun you guys are.


That's an experience, and when it ends the world is still pounding a fluorescence against the senses you never knew you had. Each and every one of you gets the mother of all headaches. They must be related.


From there things break down quickly. Athena gives you some simple instructions. "I've just made contact with Bob, and he's still some time out. He's on his way in now, but between now and when he gets here, you all need to do some simple things. They are get the hell away from everyone, don't make contact with anyone, and don't get dead. If you three so much as blink with a hint of essence while you're still hardwired into the Grid, you're going to shoot past surgical sterilization teams and into the realm of catastrophic wipe protocols. They'll read us in a heartbeat, and the bad guys will literally end the world again to make sure you don't get away.


"Go get on a boat. Patrick, I seem to recall you having one. Throw every phone, every watch, every bit of electronic equipment you might have over the side, and then sail, not motor, sail, that puppy into the middle of nowhere on the ocean. Then, quite simply, hang out. Now this is the hard part, and I want you to know that I honestly really am sorry, but you can't do anything with your gifts while you're out there. Yes, I know I just opened the floodgates on raw power and told you not to use it. I'm sorry. But hang out in the middle of the ocean, maybe do some fishing, and generally kill a few days, and when next we meet, it will be meat-side and then, boys and girl, brace yourselves. We are going to party hard."


OOC:I'm going to skip ahead a bit and assume you do it. Anyone really want to roleplay staring at the ocean for a week? No? Good. Coincidentally, for reasons that will become clear, if anyone starts experimenting, you'll find out that Athena isn't exaggerating. The baddies will wipe the Grid, so build new characters and find a new game. They aren't carrying the idiot ball like the Agents were in the Matrix.


Sailing is normally sort of fun, but this trip can't end soon enough for most of you. With each passing day your senses get more acute, and the absolute moratorium on using these new powers chaffs horribly. But time does pass, and even the worst boredom can't stop the clock. You all have plenty of time and nothing to do, so names, histories, and profiles are exchanged among you. It's amazing how much you learn about people when there isn't a damn thing else to do.


Then one day Patrick is showing Kase how to bait a fish-hook for tuna when Kase twitches, turns green, and fades out of existence. It's like the reception on a TV went to crap all at once, and as the static fades, Patrick is talking to himself, holding an empty rod.


A few hours later Erin is preparing for a crushing, CRUSHING victory at paper-clip poker. She has the best hand she's ever been dealt, straight flush, seven of spades up, and naturally, that's the exact moment she drops out of the world of the living. Malcom, who had been about to fold, suddenly goes all in and wins with a pair of jacks. Luck is all a matter of perspective. That evening Hank goes as well, and Malcom by morning. Patrick gets left behind and it isn't until nightfall that day that everything gets screwy for him too.


There is a sensation of darkness, abyssal cold, and sudden, unbelievable weakness. He's soaked from hair to toenails. Then the darkness recedes faintly, and though your eyes cannot function, your essence senses inform you that two figures are looking down on you from above.


"Welcome, Patrick O'Connell, to the end of the world."