open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

[initiatesnpc]

Date & Time: August 5th, mid morning.
Location: Anywhere characters happen to be/the VR.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: From August 5th to August 8th, characters are plunged involuntarily into the VR Program.
Warnings: Potential violence within the threads.

When the chance arises, she's quick to take it. The programming is incomplete, she knows; the simulation isn't ready — but she's not likely to get another shot at it. And so she moves, slipping through security codes to input the command. The machines hum to life with nothing but a flicker of a green light in a dark room, and it takes only seconds to establish connections. The signal is sent out; the weapons respond.

In a single pulse, reality drops away.

There will be darkness at first as the mind realigns itself to the signals being sent it. Slowly, the darkness fades, forms take shape. People take shape. The setting is terribly familiar, plucked from the user's own mind. It might feel like a dream at first, with events playing out as if predestined, the would-be dreamer moving through a familiar and unalterable route in them. But as things begin to feel more and more realistic, as more senses more fully connect to the simulation, awareness will change. This is not a dream. This is more than a memory.

Welcome to the VR.

Only 20 minutes later, in some underground quarters, Doctor Sponde is roused from an undignified sprawl. He's hastily briefed and shuttled toward the command center, looking grim. He knows the problem demands an immediate fix, but… well, this is some complex machinery. It could take some time. It could take days. He gets to work.

Comments

[myownbestfriend]

"Games" in the Roman sense of the word, I assume.

[She is having this conversation as though she's not carrying a severely wounded man away from a pack of zombie children. Day in the life in comic books.]

[hungover]

Well, we do live in Panem. I'm led to believe that's a Roman word.

[Latin word, whichever. History books are in short supply in the Seam.]

[myownbestfriend]

"Bread." It means bread.

[Emma's Latin is sketchy, but she doesn't need to dredge up school memories to recall panem et circenses.]

[hungover]

[Got it in one, sweetheart.]

Fitting, since we feed the Capitol all our resources.

[myownbestfriend]

Panem et circenses. Bread and circuses. Who bloody names their country after that?

[Since the nominative case is panis. She remembers a little Latin.]

[myownbestfriend]

"This is not the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. It's not even in the top ten." Really, it was just a training exercise gone bad. Those happened like clockwork.

[ex_bandai157]

He's been in simulations, of course, that's not the issue. Considering the capabilities these Initiative people had, it wasn't surprising to be thrown into a large-scale one when he thought about it, and really - the memory his own was based on had been something that could've easily been recreated from video. But the same couldn't be said of the other places he'd seen, and that - was alarming.

He didn't notice the rabbit right away, lost in his own thoughts as he was, but it wasn't too long before he noticed a movement from nearby and turned quickly to face it, relaxing only when he found the cause.

"A rabbit?"

His eyebrows quirked a little and he couldn't help but remember a certain someone at that (Yeah, because you hop around and have long ears like a cute bunny rabbit!), lips almost pulling into a faint smile.

[fe_male]

[ Which means, basically, that even with Tony building every single one of his weapons on the fly with totally random weird shit he keeps finding, they don't take that long to finish the level and Tony busts through the door, assuming: freedom? new level? somebody else's weird nightmare?

but alas.

He all but actually, physically runs into Stane. ] Fuck. [ duck and cover ]

[hungover]

[Authors who know only the minimum about Latin, obviously.]

Somebody full of themselves enough to think they deserve a circus, my guess.

[myownbestfriend]

The circuses were gladiatorial games. Fights to the death and feeding political prisoners to lions and all that sort of thing. It kept people from noticing the Republic was crumbling, I suppose.

[Just giving a history lecture while running away from Haymitch's inner demons personified as undead children, nbd.]

[hungover]

[And he ... laughs, and ugly sort of gurgling sound with the bound wounds.]

Sounds about right. Replace 'political prisoners' with those children back there, of course.

[myownbestfriend]

What?

[Emma is really protective of kids. Historically not very good at it, but still.]

[hungover]

The Hunger Games. That's what -- all this is. Toss a few dozen children into an enclosed area and make a victor of the last one left alive.

...More or less.

[He shakes his head. He doesn't agree with it, sure, but he understands why it's effective. They should be coming up on the water soon, and that probably means they're going to have to figure out a way to ... cross it.]

[myownbestfriend]

What?

[Emma's hands start to tighten involuntarily into fists, but she catches herself before she can do him any damage.]

I don't suppose you could imagine up the instigators? I'd happily kill them.

[hungover]

[Woah there, Emma, he is pretty sure crushing him with those hands would still hurt.]

--calm down there, darlin'. They're not a part of this particular hallucination, much to my own disappointment as well.

[He'd like to carve out President Snow's entrails.]

[myownbestfriend]

I am calm.

[Relative to how enraged she'd be if she weren't in diamond form, at least. Her anger is usually a cold, sharp thing, anyway, more likely to cut than to burn.

She slows to a halt as they reach the water's edge.]

Now what?

[hungover]

...well, now we swim.

[Either that, or they both dunk their heads under the water and end up in another set of memories...]

[myownbestfriend]

I can't float in this form.

[Three times denser than usual. It's not usually a problem because she doesn't breathe and one of her teammates is an amphibian and can come fetch her.]

[hungover]

[He looks into the murky water.]

Then you can take your chances in your human form, or you can try and walk across the bottom.

[perfectionisms]

She has no idea how she got there, her father's office from many summers past. She was standing on the same spot she was when she was ten, and her father was giving the same speech. There was a copy of her grades on the table. All of her marks were excellent, of course. But there was one subject where her grades were less than perfect.

A von Karma must be perfect in every way. Her father paced back and forth as he continued his lecture. She couldn't pick up most of the words but she knew the general gist of it. She didn't find herself as afraid of him as she used to be. Perhaps it was because she was older, or because of what happened a year ago.

But that was before she noticed that the ground shook every time his cane hit the ground while he was saying something about the qualifications of being a von Karma.

"YOU!" She falls on her butt as the ground splits open.

"DID NOT!" Hold on, when did Manfred's eyes start glowing? She starts scrambling to hide behind the nearest sofa--

"PASS!" -- barely missing a bolt of lightning from the end of that cane.

Hold on! This is getting ridiculous! Not risking attacking her own father though.

[myownbestfriend]

[With an expression of unmatched bad grace, Emma turns fleshy again, and looks over her shoulder to gauge the distance between them and the zombie horde.]

Since we have a moment...

[She trails off and looks at Haymitch with peculiar intensity. The pain from his wounds disappears.]

There.

[hungover]

[He raises his eyebrow.]

You're just full of surprises, aren't you?

[He looks over to the horde himself, then back to the water.]

Well, ladies first.

[myownbestfriend]

[Emma snorts and wades into the lake. For all her fastidiousness and aristocratic bearing, she doesn't quarrel with necessity. Bloody hell, that's cold.]

Don't waste your breath on speech.

[hungover]

[...more and more surprises each second, okay.

He just ... nods, briefly wonders whether the pain-suppressing-mojo she just did on him will work on his soon-to-be-shrunken testicles, and wades into the water himself.

He's keeping an eye out for fish. So far, so good.]

[myownbestfriend]

I can keep you from dying of hypothermia, yes. And since I'm bloody well sick of all of this, don't worry about venomous man-eating fish or whatever other monstrosities the more damaged souls in your society managed to dream up. I'm projecting a suggestion that means nothing with a mind, however rudimentary, can perceive us.

[Stuff like this is why pissing Emma off isn't the best of ideas.

She's a reasonably strong swimmer, too.]