(A virtual room in NERV HQ)
Everyone was stunned. Even Isaac, usually the first to cheer at moments of badassery, was silent at what had just happened.
On the screens in front of them, they watched as the ‘Technophages’ began spreading through the Senate chamber. The Emperor and the entire Senate screamed in pain and tore at their faces where the implants were, as tiny nanomachines began eating the very metal from their bodies, going up into their brains, and using every last inch of the advanced technology in their implants to make more of themselves. They were brain-dead long before the rest of their bodies caught on to the fact. It was, perhaps, the most horrific thing anyone had seen in a game that wasn’t set in the Horror genre.
After seeing the devastation of the Senate, Isaac shuddered, and once again reaffirmed that he had no idea how anyone could stand to play those full VR survival games, like the Denizen Evil series. ‘Eaten alive’ was NOT on his list of ways to kick the bucket!
Morgan looked over to him, and said, “How will this affect Earth in the game?”
Taking a deep breath to keep from thinking too much about what he just saw, and so he wouldn’t embarrass himself in front of Morgan, said, “We ran the numbers once we saw that his teams had grabbed the Luddite Bomb. If they get fences up and keep them powered, the enclaves will be fine. The rest of the world? Well, have you seen those ‘life after people’ shows? That’s the kind of thing that Earth is going to have, from the wildlife and ecology side of things. But with the technophages eating all the post-Industrial tech, which probably includes the better part of most of the ultramodern buildings, I wouldn’t be surprised if the only things left are old stone buildings, like Notre Dame. Might be able to rescue the art and stuff if you make mobile fences, or go full low-tech to haul things, but…”
“Yeah, that’s a big change from the way things are on the planet now. How many are going to get killed?”
“Depends. In-game population is roughly 20 billion, on the planet surface. More on various space stations, and then you have the lunar population and the rest of the solar system. But Earth? Say 20 billion. The cult had something like 35% of the planet at least partway through the conversion process. They’re pretty much all a write-off. They’re setting up… twenty-four enclaves around the world. Probably be able to hold maybe twenty million each, so that’s roughly 480 million in the enclaves. Maybe more if they Judge Dredd it, but not much more. So you’re left with twelve and a half billion people. You’re lucky if only half of those die, mostly from panic and chaos, but also because cultists aren’t the only ones with implants. The Empire is going to have a MASSIVE refugee crisis on their hands, worse than the Confederacy did after Jagloth, since most of Jagloth’s population was dead.”
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“But the cult threat is contained, right?”
Isaac sighed. “Yes and no. The threat of the AI taking over the Empire? That’s done and dealt with. Even if we see Travis again thanks to the AI’s fake immortality, he’s mostly powerless now, as are his minions. The cult on other worlds and in the fleet will get hunted down, of course, so that’s good.”
Morgan just looked at him. “But?”
“But the AI itself escaped, and apparently as a fuck you to the universe, spread the fake immortality tech to several different tech forums, though given the source it probably is corrupted to tie the users to the AI.”
“Damn, what does the game controller AI think?”
“Given the actions so far, we’ve decided that the best course available is to have the places these ‘immortals’ pop up turned into the game’s first respawning Dungeons. Deus is now officially the final Raid Boss of the game.” He paused, and said, “Well, once someone finds his lair, that is.”
Morgan breathed. “All right, we can work with that. People have been complaining about there not being dungeons, so spinning this as the way to add them into the game without breaking immersion, and to give people a bit of a reason to go after the one responsible for the destruction of Earth… yeah, I can work with that. Add in the stuff our favorite beta tester was saying to the cameras, and we can actually come off looking pretty good. Better than I thought we’d be when this whole debacle started, anyways.”
There was a flash on one of the screens, and it went black, filled with the ‘You are Dead’ box. Everyone looked up at the sudden change, and Isaac said, “Whoa, someone actually killed him! Roll the footage back, I want to see this!”
They rewound the footage in the beta tester’s stream, up to the point where he dismissed the Destroyer of Worlds title box, and then slowed it down just as he got a mail from another player. Morgan frowned. “Requiesce-in-Pace? That’s a rather unusual name. And why does it say ‘Notice of Termination’?”
Isaac chuckled. “That guy is the game’s top assassin character so far. His crew were the ones that flew the shuttle into the palace and kicked off the civil war.”
They saw the figure on the rooftop, with the big gun. Mirikon was on a rope, hanging from a shuttle. Pretty much a sitting duck. There was a flash, and then the screen went black.
“And THAT would be the termination, our boy got ‘Notified’ about. Man, I think this is his first death since the start of the game! Boy, is he ever going to be pissed about the death penalty!”
Morgan narrowed her eyes at him. “Isaac, what did you do?”
“Uh, would you believe ‘nothing’?”
“NO! What. Did. You. DO?”
“Well, it is like this…”