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

Entering the Medium (and dying painfully)

[biwinning]

Outside Sollux's hive window, hundreds of meteors fall. The city he was raised in is on fire, his bicyclops panicking and trying to detach itself from the chain keeping it on the roof.

Sollux wakes up, the familiar feeling of his room surrounding him. The bees are buzzing in an irritating manner, but before he has a chance to buzz angrily back at them, to tell them to shut up, he feels something heavy in his mouth. Thick, sweet...

Honey. Mindhoney. How did it even-

He tries to close his eyes, tries to stop the overload in his mind, putting his hands to his head- but it's too late. He's screaming and trying to make it stop, but it's too late, white-hot energy is pouring from his eyes. He can't stop himself from absolutely flipping his lid, blasting a hole out his roof, out the roof of the whole building, killing and destroying anyone and anything in it's path. His lusus dies instantly, and Sollux collapses to the ground. It's not until another ten minutes later that he wakes again, and the reign of the meteors has spread. It's nearing the ocean by this point.

Sollux manages to drag himself to the computer, and tries to catch up on everything he's missed. Everyone but himself and that fish princess are in the Medium, and she needs to get in before he does. Another ten minutes later, she's in, but that means that the giant horrorterror of a fish is also dead- and he has about five minutes to live. He's beginning to feel dizzy, as Karkat places down the pieces of SGRUB tech he needs to work with. Four minutes now.

[eyecontact]

The Tibetan beatdown had been downright relaxing in comparison to the next bewildering change. Jericho barely has time to get his footing before the ground beneath him rattles. His arms swing out to steady himself, stepping over a mess of...something. He's not even sure what, except he's sure he just caught glimpse of a bit of keyboard over—

Over gray and black and little flecks of mustard yellow and red and white—

Jericho is across the room in an instant, laying hands on the troll he's afraid to be sure is actually the troll he's pretty sure...

[biwinning]

To which Sollux replies by flailing his hands away from Jericho without even seeing who it is. He's a bit blind right now from such a powerful blast, and no one- no one is supposed to be here with him...?

"Who..." Sollux turns his head to try and make out who's in the room with him. His nose starts bleeding, dripping a disgusting yellow. He doesn't take notice of the blood, but does finally see Jericho. "The fuck are you doing here?"

[eyecontact]

Jericho, on the other hand, appears to take notice of nothing but the blood. His expression is contorted with worry and fear — he doesn't know troll first aid! — scanning the rest of Sollux twice over for other dangerous injuries. Per the flailing, he's backed up a little, his own hands up in a kind of just here to help! way.

He shakes his head at the question; he couldn't explain why he's there even if he knew what was going on!

[biwinning]

Sollux continues to push away from Jericho, stumbling over to a large piece of machinery and entering a card into another piece of machinery. He coughs, and spits up a bit of blood into his hand and keeps working.

"I'm going to die thoon. The pthychic wave from Feferi'sth luthuth ith going to kill me, but if I don't keep doing thith, we'll both die from meteorsth. Tho thtay out of the way or help me, you've already delayed me enough."

[eyecontact]

Jericho shadows Sollux's every step, hands hovering, twitching in and out of reach lest the troll stagger too far or seem to fall. The machinery around them would've been much more of a factor had Sollux not mentioned dying.

His face contorts, not really grasping the why or how of anything going on. But there's no time for that, apparently. His brow wrinkles as his eyebrows pinch and angle up. What do I do?

[biwinning]

The punched card goes into the Totem Lathe, carving the yellow (again, the color of the blood Sollux is now spewing) Cruxite Dowels. It carves the dowel into a wavy dowel, and Sollux coughs again, leaning against the machine, trying to press his forehead to the cool metal of the Lathe. He's sweating like he has a fever.

"...Need to get that to the Alchemiter," Sollux says, before feeling his face and- is he crying? No, nope, that's just more blood, now coming from his eyes. Well Jericho, do you remember which one is the Alchemiter?

[eyecontact]

This is horrifying. Whatever Sollux is doing...he can't keep going on like he is! He's...If that's blood, or...or something just as bad...Oh, man. Jericho's nauseous with just the fleeting thought of it. Alchemi-what? What's a luthuth? Death by meteors?!

This can't be real. It just can't. Real or not, though, he can't just let the guy fuss about in that state. Time to nose himself into this strange, alien business, and worry about the consequences later.

He advances, putting hands on Sollux's shoulders, carefully, but in a very certain way. Sit down. He urges the troll to sit, stepping back and eying the Lathe's creation before reaching for it, all the while shooting glances toward Sollux for instruction. Just point the way!

[biwinning]

He weakly waves Jericho away, trying to get him to focus on other tasks. He feels another bout of nausea coming on and tries to breath steadily to calm it. The pain in his head as he's sure his brain is on fire and bleeding from psychic strain, he slowly slides to the floor against the machine. And then he points, "take that," he points at the dowel. "To that platform," and he points toward the alchemiter. "It hath... to make an entry object."

[eyecontact]

Jericho picks up the that, doing a double-take toward the Alchemiter Sollux pointed to before moving. Carefully shifting the weight in his arms, he moves, hopping over a mess of...something. With bees? He's not even going to ask just now.

[biwinning]

"Once it'th there, an item should appear. I think... it'th a..." and then he drifts off, leaning against the machine and silent.

Meanwhile, once the carved totem is on the alchemiter, Sollux's entry object appears in the center of the platform, a yellow box of matches.

[eyecontact]

Jericho's attention splits from the item in question; another time, a time with less blood and meteors, and he'd have questioned why matches? What does that even mean?

He does a double-take before it clicks that the instructions were stopped for a reason. Color draining from his face, he practically abandons the box, blindly grasping in its direction before fingers closed on it while he was already in motion. He slid on his knees most of the way, leaning into Sollux's space and pressing his free hand on his chest. No!

1/2

[biwinning]

Sollux starts up coughing, wow he's such a mess, there's blood everywhere- but he's awake again, and grasping for the box of matches.

"Gonna die," he says quickly, just barely smirking. He shakily holds the match box, and pulls a match out, his fingers trembling. "B.R.B."

He strikes the match, and then dies.

[biwinning]

At the same time, a flash of light completely fills the room, pure blinding light and the whole hive stem is transported into the Land of Brains and Fire. Sollux would be awaking on Derse, when Feferi arrives to kiss his corpse... or at least that's what would happen, if this was actually a true reliving of what happened. Instead, while the landscape outside changes to a strangely textured land where the ground is made of brains, and flames plume out of nowhere, Sollux's dreamself body doesn't come flying through the giant hole in the wall. His corpse-like, blood covered self just slowly blinks his eyes open again, confused and still totally gross.

"Oh, okay. Tho thith ith different. Thup Jericho."

[payback]

"Oh, my God."

This place wasn't so bad at first gasp, really. It was less - busy than some other memories she'd been. But Rin stared in blank horror nevertheless. It was hard not to when a kid but an alien but still a kid what gushing blood right out of the eyes. The mustard color barely registered as she hurried forward.

"Oh my God."

[biwinning]

It's easy for Sollux to not realize yet that this is all just a memory. With the way his visions of the future work, everything that had happened to him after this point could have just been a prediction. That, and starting to die really gives you an altered state of mind. His thoughts are racing, trying to navigate his hive with honey still on his face and something wet dripping down his cheek amd he needs to get this card to the alchemiter--

What?

Who is... he knows her.

"What??" He asks anyway, absentmindedly touching his cheek and looking at his hand. Oh. Blood. "Oh." Unfortunately this doesn't snap him out of it completely. "Get out of the way! I have to finish thith!"

This wasn't supposed to happen this way.

[payback]

"S-sorry! Sorry!" Obedient and easy about it for once Rin scrabbled backwards out of his way, staring as she did about the blood slicking down from - was it his eyes? He was bleeding from the eyes. Her heart thumped. "What are you doing? Can I help?"

The offer was reflexive more than anything.

[biwinning]

"You can help by getting out of the way," he replies automatically, making his way to the alchemiter, although leaning heavily on pretty much anything nearby he can to get there. He's got the pre-punched card, it goes into the totem lathe, wait, where's the dowel??

"Wait, fuck... can you... thee a yellow colored cylinder? Anywhere?" Since, you know, his vision isn't so great right now.

[payback]

She got out of the way. And then she looked around wildly at his question. "Ah. Yeah." Scrambling over to get it and scooping it up in her arms, she realized that she needed to ask only belatedly: "Do you want it? Where does it go?!"

Nothing made any sense! But at least nothing was attacking them, right now.

one month later...........................

[biwinning]

"Put it there. On the thtand of the alchemiter," aka the thing he's slowly making his way to. More blood vomit, how fun.

B)

[payback]

Rin flittered around the junk scattered on Sollux' floor, headed vaguely in the direction of the alchemiter and then stalling next to him with the dowel still tucked under her arm. "Do you need help?" He wasn't moving too well - she had a wild idea about ducking under his arm and dragging him over there, because she certainly was strong enough. But there was also this scary idea that she'd tear him right in two, if she did that.

[biwinning]

"No." He says, although his throat is so raspy, it's probably hard to understand the rest of what he's saying. "Put it there." A limp wave of his hand to the platform on the alchemiter, as he is on his knees in front of the same device. "Quick."

[payback]

Rin hustled to do as told, and then hustled back around to kneel next to Sollux. "Let me help you up," she said, and then reached out to touch him gingerly without waiting for a yea or nay.

[biwinning]

Enjoy that intense static and shock in exchange for touching him.

"DON'T. Touch me."

Yeah, think you got the picture, Rin?

[payback]

Electricity snapped to her hands and Rin jerked back with a muffled yelp, falling gracelessly right on her ass. "Sorry!" The word squeaked out tearfully. "Sorry!" Then she didn't know what to do and scrambled around to crouch on her haunches, watching fearfully.