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]

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.

[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.]