the dream i left behind was never real [ open ]

[lunardreaming]

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 ]

Comments

[lunardreaming]

Yeah. It's the freedom.

[ 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.

[gilgamess]

It was a different matter for me, as you are aware.

[ 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... ]

[lunardreaming]

[ Lucy's definitely getting that paper mache lion from him later. She can display it in her apartment somewhere. It'd be cute. Maybe she can start... having things again. Personal items. Making her apartment into a home rather than just the place she sleeps.

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. ]

[gilgamess]

[ As a being whose inherent nature is oriented towards collecting treasures, Gilgamesh would certainly not dissuade Lucy from such thoughts. Quite the opposite. He is not much for a barren life of pure utility: one of the great joys of living is the collection of objects, not merely for their sake, but for the worth and value you instill within them. ]

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. ]