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magisteriaexe2024-10-07 03:40 pm
lunardreaming) wrote in magisteriaexe2024-10-07 03:40 pm
the dream i left behind was never real [ open ]
where: all around magisteria
who: lucy + others
when: october
what: an ota post for october questboard starters
warnings: tba as necessary
[ ooc: all of the following are the tech quests from the october questboard, starters to be posted in the comments ]
who: lucy + others
when: october
what: an ota post for october questboard starters
warnings: tba as necessary
[ ooc: all of the following are the tech quests from the october questboard, starters to be posted in the comments ]
no subject
[ Lucy's no stranger to VR, but Vplane is whole new scope.
Normally so reserved, Lucy's eyes have been bright with curiosity ever since they entered Vplane, gaze darting, taking in everything from the digital denizens to the impossible scenery. She knows what the goal of being in here is, but--
Just let her play for a moment, okay?
They're on the corner of a busy street, AI and inorganic beings bustling to and fro. She recognizes where they are, right on the intersection near this little ramen shop she likes, but a lot of businesses are different here, even if the streets seem to be roughly the same. At least some of it must be patterned after the real Magisteria, while other parts seem to be totally different. A being walks past leaving metal flowers in their wake; a cloud of birds fly upside down above them; a building nearby leans and yawns with the effort of staying awake.
Lucy feels like a kid in a candyshop-- or a cyberjunkie in a ripperdoc's office.
She lifts a hand to brush over the leaves of a nearby tree, and with a thought, the leaves turn into moths, their wings opening and closing lazily, some of them bursting free and fluttering around Lucy's head. With another thought, they cycle through neon colors, and the trunk spins with floating ribbons, and the dirt heaves with roots that want to perk up and walk. Then, she sets everything right again, back to being a normal tree with normal green leaves and a normal trunk, though some of the moths still linger. ]
This is... really, really cool.
[ Help, she cannot contain her nerdery. ]
no subject
So this is what a largescale simulation is capable of, hm?
[ He muses idly when he sees her. Naturally, he assumes they have come to this place for the same reason.
Gilgamesh, of course, is still learning the technology of this world, though he is making great advancements. But it's still a little new. By now, he has come to understand simulations, in a general sense. They are what power the different appearances of technology-centric quarters within the Evergreen Terrace apartments. If Lucy finds herself comparing the world's magic to the holograms, then Gilgamesh frequently finds himself doing the reverse. Magic is the closest frame of reference he has for technology that operates in such an advanced way so as to modify and create the very appearance of... well, in the case of this Vplane, something like an entire city-state of its own.
It is with some internal amusement that he takes note of Lucy's happiness. Indeed, it has been rare, in his experience, to see this woman showing such... open-hearted wonder. One might even call it child-like. ]
Is this akin to the world from which you hailed? If so, then I must grant... [ Gilgamesh is quite stately about it, but his tone if sincere, not grudging. ] It is indeed... impressive. Even worthy.
[ Of a King, of himself. And he does not give praise lightly/easily. But it is clear innumerable minds and hands and thoughts have gone to work to create the fabric of this sphere, and he can feel that it demands a kind of respect and understanding. Unlike Lucy, he has not begun to alter the scenery. Not yet. Rather, he is much more hands-off, but only so far. Still feeling out the parameters. ]
no subject
The point is, Lucy had had a very sleepless night. Few nights after that, actually. This Vplane shit has come at exactly the right time to cheer her up. ]
Oh, no, no way. My world had nothing like this.
[ She frowns thoughtfully down at the ground, her shoes, and experimentally pushes off. Just like that, she's floating, and with a delighted little laugh, she kicks off the tree trunk to do a flip. AI in very business-like attire ignore her completely as they bustle down the street, and Lucy floats over to Gilgamesh to bonk him with a finger on the top of that golden head. ]
We had little pieces of virtual reality. People's memories, or simulations, that you could jack into and experience and play around with. Nothing close to a whole city, though.
[ She knows they're here for a reason. Shut up, let her have fun for a bit. She captures a drifting leaf, which she cups between her hands and turns into a breeze, a spinning globe, a baby bird, and then finally a big floppy-brimmed hat that she sets ever-so-seriously on top of Gilgamesh's head. It says I LOVE VPLANE in big obnoxious font. ]
The hardware that run all of this... wow, I'd love to see how big it is one day.
no subject
Truly, how does one even respond? Though, after a moment, of course, Gilgamesh catches himself, making the familiar hmph sound beneath his breath. Then, perhaps taken by a sudden whim, he lifts the hat, taking the virtual item and holding it in his hands, arms outstretched. Seeing all that Lucy has done, Gilgamesh too has a mind to experiment with this world, but he must first think of what to convert the material into. His hands are accustomed to holding treasures and weapons, swords and grails. But here, that feels inappropriate: uncreative, simply item after item that is the same in some respect. ]
So, instead, Gilgamesh turns his thoughts towards the concept of a "lion," imagining it in his mind and projecting what he has learned of the code bases within this world. The hat becomes a papier-mΓ’chΓ© lion, albeit one with imperfect features. ]
Is it the freedom that appeals to you? [ He glances around, still turning this virtual realm over in his mind. In truth, programming is still utterly new to him, let alone... the connection to the mind, pulling out some piece of knowledge of code and willing it into something, as seems common here. This feels like learning another language while entering an environs where one is forced to speak with the locals, a form of immersion, because they don't speak your native tongue. But Gilgamesh has been approaching programming as one would encryption/decryption, also treating it a bit like a treasure hunt in which one finds and thus learns the answer and one is constantly building upon what one has. ] A world which you can design yourself... framed thusly, I suppose I understand the appeal.
[ It's not that the world does not appeal to him, for that matter. Gilgamesh values novelty. It's more that it veers into an alien level surreal. Here they stand in a terrain built by invisible, unknown gods, forces and powers from "Beyond." Only those gods are, as Lucy references, giant supercomputers or skyscrapers' or whole districts' worth thereof lurking on some invisible horizon, dictating a life of entities not born of any organic means. ]
And what of these beings who are so populous within these cities? These fleshless entities? [ AI, robots, cyborgs, their various names and titles. They seemed virtually endless here. ] Did you also interact with those? In this city-state of Magisteria, they seem a society unto themselves.
We had no such... [ He hesitates, uncertain. ] ... peoples? In Uruk.
[ "Peoples" seemed accurate. They were citizens, and the general behavior of the populace, both from and with respect to them, would seem to suggest that they are virtually as sentient/feeling as humans. Though how was this possible? Even with Gilgamesh being from millennia earlier, his understanding of "modern" technology, phones or the sort, is that it possesses no such attributes of life. Curiouser and curiouser, and now, in this Vplane, seeing them walking around, feeling the weight of their gaze, it feels impossible not to contemplate this more deeply than he has thus far. ]
no subject
[ Lucy can't quite help the wistfulness in her voice. She arranges her legs under her to sit cross-legged, still floating, playing with the leaves drifting from the trees. ]
Where I'm from, freedom is a thing you have to buy. Freedom from the pollution; a big shiny penthouse apartment. Freedom from fear: your own crazy security system. Freedom from oppression: being rich enough that the pigs and corpos don't hassle you. You can't even just fuck off into the mountains and live off the grid, someone will grind you into dust for not paying taxes or bribing your local gang or whatever the fuck. Here, it feels like... you can be whatever you want, maybe. It's clean, and you can breathe, and nothing hurts.
[ His little paper mache lion is cute -- and well made, she thinks, despite the slightly wonky features. Would have been easier to make something out of a more solid material, like wood or metal. Paper mache is more complicated. More angles, more detail.
She makes a wordless noise when he brings up the AI people. ]
Nah. We didn't have people like this back home either.
[ She pushes off the tree trunk, and hangs upside down. Still, the businesspeople around them are unbothered -- as long as they're not standing in the middle of the sidewalk, whatever, right? They've probably seen weirder. ]
We had AI back home, but it was different. Not people, you know? Some of them were pretty smart, but they were-- corrupted. Old. People decades ago had walled them off in the Old Net so they couldn't damage anything. People like this-- [ Lucy gestures around them. ] --that's new to me, too. Magisteria's way more advanced than Night City.
no subject
[ Gilgamesh also sounds a touch wistful. But also proud. Slightly nostalgic, as well. ]
I was an adventurer as well as a King, traveling throughout all the world... and that, to me, was freedom. Yet, even with my authority -- [ or "Authority," capital A] -- the gods attempted to bind me and have me enforce their will. Indeed, as I recounted to you, I was created to enact a specific purpose. In that sense, I too know what it means to have one's freedoms curtailed... or, rather, for the attempt to be made, for I did in fact defy the gods and bring about the end of their reign.
[ He looks down at the lion, adding -- ]
Perhaps you may take this as a souvenir. Though it would be easier, were I to carry it.
[ And with that, the creation disappears into one of his golden portals. As Lucy correctly ascertained before, Gilgamesh has his own pocket dimension -- quite useful if either of them should wish to take anything from this landscape back to the other. Other souvenirs of their time here, for example.
In place of the lion, the King of Heroes pulls out one of the aXess Link codes -- a map -- and projects it as a three-dimensional surface screen before them. ]
In any case, we should make our way to this being, "Gridmaster," I suppose they are called.
[ Gilgamesh supposes he should probably contemplate all this more: the entity known as Phantom Cipher, this new being calling themselves the Gridmaster, the society of Magisteria. Lucy seems quite fond of it, and from her description of her own home city, well, it makes perfect sense why she would be. It seems a city of abundance and plenty, but ... the presence of these rogue elements suggests it is not all a paradise, and it is entirely possible there is more than meets the eye afoot in the structure of everything, especially with how vague some of those authority figures have been. ]
I should hope eventually we will gain more of an idea for the workings behind this city-state. If there are towering structures powering this virtual city, there must accordingly be beings working within those structures. And we do not yet know whether all their ideals align, or whether there are internal conflicts.
[ The division of magic and technology was one, but that AI caretaker had, from the first, claimed it was far from the only one... ]
no subject
She eyes Gilgamesh's map, nods, and starts making her way toward where the Gridmaster is. He'd said something about digital Echoes being vital for fighting the Phantom Cipher, and Lucy was intrigued enough by the concept that she's willing to give it a go. ]
Yeah. There's a lot we're not being told. I'm sure there's conflicts all over the fucking place; ideals of cooperation only go so far. Some people just aren't built to work with others.
[ Like the Phantom Cipher, maybe. Lucy can't say she disagrees with some of his stated missions. The shit about stealing that AI away from corpos? Shit, she'd let him have it if it were up to her. But these disruptions, letting the Fractured loose on the streets to possibly hurt innocent people... ]
If you defied the gods and brought about an end to their reign, you shouldn't have too much trouble with any corrupt elements here, right?
[ Lucy shoots him a smirk. ]
no subject
That is indeed the case.
[ It could be an arrogant statement, or at least greatly self-assured, but Gilgamesh says it rather casually, returning her smirk with a smile that even borders on fondness. ]
Yet... well. [ Because he is in fact a Wise King now, he adds: ] Though I am built by nature to overcome most obstacles, I am not so presumptuous as to assume that I might not face difficulty when encountering something of a nature foreign to me.
But, if I am to speak on that point, I rather hope these 'corrupt elements' do provide a challenge. It would be boring otherwise, would it not?
[ He says, as if musing to himself. ]
The worst experience I had, for example, was the time I died from working myself overly hard... I had perished when the goddess struck me down, also, but far better to die in battle, do you not think so? In any case, the second time, I did perform a miracle and summon my other self. The first time, the goddess of the Underworld became quite displeased with my presence.
[ He was having too much fun in Kur.
Anyway, to speed their journey, Gilgamesh blinks and waves his arm, device still in hand, and with a look of concentration, the terrain speeds by the two of them in planes and diamonds and filaments of different colors of light. In the virtual world, he supposes, if they can shape this place, then it can also maneuver them where they need to go -- after all, isn't this merely a sphere created by technology and their own imaginations? Though it would be interesting to have a more mechanical and solid understanding of how exactly they are operating this place. But Gilgamesh thinks he is beginning to get the hang of it.
Within mere seconds, they stand before the projection of this great AI being, the Gridmaster: [he? it? they?] -- all lines and translucent body. It is a projection on a screen, not even a figure within a room, but it seems to inhabit the screen as though it were a room.
And the screen itself seems not a tangible screen, but a rectangle sliced in the shape thereof in a world that blurs technology, code, the virtual, and the real, at every corner.
It does not speak to them. Staring straight ahead of itself as lines and diagrams shift before it, it does not even seem to be looking at them, but both Lucy and Gilgamesh will begin to see/hear the instructions for this task in their mind. They will see/hear what sounds like the beginning of a simulation:
Nodes activating...
Sequence beginning...
A perfectly and ambiguously AI voice, humanlike but also perfectly mechanical.
-- alongside numbers and glyphs that run like links of chain up and down and through the air around them. They seem to be standing on platforms that are moving down/up, and the floor, or what passes for a floor, also lights in different places. Like a dance floor. ]
Well, well... this certainly has the promise of being intriguing.
[ No dying of boredom here, huh, Lucy? It suits Gilgamesh just fine, this sort of adventure. But he thinks she must really be in her element. ]