When Marjo’s trans ghost returns from the hospital, the bill comes to 500 piastres, which she pays on the double. That said, her trans male ghost is on a rental wheelchair, with the telltale casts around his legs. And he clearly gained weight while in captivity, too.
“That’s no good: regardless of to whom abductions occur, or of loot, getting abducted by aliens carry a risk of injury!” Marjo moans.
“However, some experiments carried out by aliens did injure abductees in past stories I read about these” Artabeles comments about the hazards of alien abductions.
“I really hope the devs introduce some sort of compensation mechanism to kick in if and when the abductors get caught, presumably by their own race’s law enforcement…” Manolia starts praying for the implementation of such measures, while her own ghost is recovering from a very similar fall.
What’s going on here? Is the sudden increase in weight linked to the implement these aliens injected into my trans male? Marjo keeps playing. However, she quickly realizes there isn’t much her trans male could do, while bound to that wheelchair. And he’s bound to that wheelchair for two more in-game days, too…
Manolia, on the other hand, posts a suggestion on the game’s subreddit about some mechanism regarding the return of items stolen or ransomed by aliens. Contingent on the authorities of the abductors’ race catching them, so there’s a random element on when. And probably on how much is returned. Fingers crossed; the devs cannot implement everything the players want.
Meanwhile, Adèle is yawning and feels the need to take a nap. These unending bug reports have given me a lot to think about, and drained me after just a few hours, she thinks while the weight of her head feels like it’s about to bear down on her body.
Once she lies flat on one of the beds installed in a different room, she has yet to realize that even a short nap can be troubled by nightmares. Then again, she has a lot on her mind…
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After getting caught in a tractor beam, Adèle found herself onboard an UFO, with one of the occupants being perhaps a little too fixated on her forehead.
Hmm… I really wonder what that abductee is capable of. For some reason, her brain feels a little… different from other abductees of her race. It may very well be my lucky day: I really hope that we got lucky with our sampling! The over-excited UFO occupant turned to the UFO’s captain, after injecting a serum.
“The test subject is ready, captain!” the occupant signaled the captain, loosely translated from their native language.
“Strap her to the testbed, and administer the test, on the double!”
“If I may, captain, some adjustments might be required to ensure the testbed is going to work for her!”
And the over-excited alien abductor took measurements on Adèle so that she could snugly fit on the testbed, with the final one being her mass.
Once that part of the test was over, Adèle was strapped to the testbed, and had a helmet full of electrodes attached to her after the bed was adjusted to fit her body.
To Adèle, the first stage of the test these aliens administered felt like taking a test in their native language. So while she took a while to even process what these symbols were at first, and their meaning, these aliens were surprised that she was actually able to do so, at least in that timeframe. However, she felt her forehead’s heat as her brain worked harder.
“Don’t forget about taking DNA samples!” the captain yelled at him while Adèle was busy answering the test items.
It was then, however, that Adèle realized that test items were far more than just language questions: some items reminded her of what was typical of IQ testing, be it in terms of logic, reasoning, math or spatial orientation, and were placed at random.
Maybe I can have her write my personal statement, the “base” one if you will, so that I can always tweak for the program-specific details. She’s learning fantastically fast, at least compared to other people her race. It’s not uncommon for prospective alien abductors to struggle writing personal statements, since, for undergrad, only a handful of programs actually required one, and we were told then that it was for explaining one’s extenuating circumstances whenever it was optional, the would-be alien abductor mused while he waited for the right opportunity to collect her DNA sample.
“What’s going on here? I wasn’t told about what you were going to do to me, and now you’re using a Q-tip to rub the inside of my cheek?” Adèle’s face turned red as the would-be abductor just finished taking a DNA sample.
“I don’t understand!” the alien abductor told her in their native language, realizing that, just because Adèle could read their language by now, it didn’t mean she functionally spoke it. The intern abductor then turned to the captain. “It seems like this test subject is a little rebellious, captain!”
Now I have a better idea of what I could want to write my personal statement about. About that encounter that makes me want to go to graduate school to gain an abduction license. Obviously, grades matter, but the other things that go into getting into an abduction license-granting program are: research experience and interests, personal statements, letters of recommendation, and, of course, the institution having the resources to admit you, the tester starts thinking of writing the personal statement, even if it meant Adèle writing it in their place.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
“Inject the forgetfulness serum!” the captain ordered the intern in their native language.
“If I may, captain, I’m not sure it will work on her! Her intellect is far stronger than is usual for her race; I’m not sure she will forget about her experience!”
“Just inject the serum! If you don’t, I won’t write you a letter of recommendation and you won’t get your license!”
“All right, all right…”
The abduction intern injected her the serum, causing her oneiric self to go to sleep, and the captain maneuvered the UFO to close in on where Adèle was beamed up.
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I guess, it could be worse than taking some alien IQ test, followed by DNA sampling. Upon awakening from this nightmare, she feels the need to flesh out the whole alien abduction mechanic of the game. She returns to the open space where other engineers are working on the bugs.
“What I would love is to have two types of alien abductions occur. The one kind we have right now will remain as-is. The other will not involve any ransoming or theft, just a random chance of getting AFAB characters pregnant with alien babies, and the abductee returns by a certain time! Same fall from the UFO though” Adèle tells the engineers about the alien abduction mechanic.
“You were the one who wanted to have the alien abductors commit theft, or ransom abductees!” the trans engineer retorts.
“The question is: how often do you want each version of the abduction to happen?” the gay engineer asks her.
A person from customer service comes in, having overheard something about 2 versions of the alien abduction, brandishing an email from her on mobile. “What’s the meaning of this, Adèle? You want some future patch to put more depth into abductors’ society along with space travel, and then another one about college, and finally bringing back spells from MAA as a countermeasure to alien abductions?”
“We must get started as soon as the beta period ends so that all the features of these patches are ready to go! However, I think I could introduce a second type of abductors in a few hours of coding work!” Adèle retorts.
“The current crop of abductors are alien criminals, why? Alien abductions being very short-term, experimented upon the abductees without any theft or other crimes committed is what people have come to expect from alien abductions for decades, and people tend to focus on the side effects of the abduction!”
“Nearly everyone incorporating alien abductions tended to focus on the abductees’ side; now I feel like it’s time to flesh out the abductors! Besides, aliens are fully intended to be playable, but requiring players to get abducted to acquire their first one!”
“Doing abductions differently amounts to playing with fire!”
“Most video game manufacturers have been risk-averse for years now! So much so that, like you said, giving any depth to the abductors might net us some backlash! But I’m willing to face the consequences of this choice!”
“Why do you feel like giving more depth than it needs to?”
“Yet, both abductor types require their race to have functional legal and law enforcement systems to actually act the way they do, and often bureaucracy as well!”
“Can you two argue about alien abductions elsewhere? We’re trying to work here!” the gay engineer asks the two.
Adèle and the customer service person, who’s working that specific weekend, keep arguing about the need to flesh out the abductors, but also about the vibe this game might give off if the roadmap is adopted in full.
“This is nearing on obsession, Adèle… your plan amounts to transforming RCG into what feels like MAA 2, but without us inadvertently controlling another world! First, you had the art team bring back hundreds of outfits from MAA, and use music from unreleased content…”
And more specifically music from the Drunken Quarry, which was nearing completion when the Treaty of Perseria was ratified, which is one of the spooky tracks of this game, Adèle tries to regain her composure.
“Enough! If you played MAA before the Treaty was ratified, you would know that a lot of MAA players loved its outfits, and they wanted these back in some form!”
“Treaty? You never mentioned a treaty when you talked about the stuff this game brought back from MAA in the past!”
“The Treaty of Perseria only ensured that MAA’s world was no longer controlled by ours, and MAA was closed. You’re talking about intellectual property!”
“What are the terms of the Treaty that concern our world then?”
“There was no provision in the Treaty about the reuse of intellectual property from MAA’s world! The only provision for our world was the closure of the game! Now, if you could please excuse me, I have bugs to fix!”
Adèle then storms off to focus on refining the alien abduction mechanic. So it starts with an extra level on a decision tree. The first part of the script for abduction determines whether one occurs, which remains unchanged. But what changes is what happens to abductees after the determination is made. Some sequence activates when if k_alien_abduction < X, elseif the other sequence, it adds a new layer in a nested code, Adèle starts thinking about what would adding in the licensed abductors mean in coding terms.
Except that, if the licensed abductors show up, there is no choice the player needs to make. And the only guaranteed consequences are the ones common to all abductions, which is in the same layer of the nest.
“Thank God the code for the licensed alien abduction isn’t nearly as complex as for the criminal one! Since I want the needs being randomized to be common to all abductions, along with the fall and the injury roll…” Adèle sighs after a while of coding in the difference between the two abduction types. “I realize that abduction types aren’t mutually exclusive”
Back in Kinder, Marjo feels like her trans male being stuck to a wheelchair threw a wrench in her setback, but this motivates Marjo to have her farmer toon take care of him outside of, well, tending to crops.
And, of course, her main did little more than just sewing copies of the outfit she designed for Manolia in the meantime, selling them on the Haunted Bazaar. With the outfit being well-liked enough to charge high fashion prices for it.
It seems like, on the second and final in-game day of him being bound on a wheelchair, her trans male has gotten noticeably heavier. As soon as the debuff of his injury disappears:
“What’s going on here?” Marjo yells at the screen, upon looking at her trans male’s belly.
“Do you have any idea?” Manolia asks her.
“Maybe my trans male has gotten fatter because of him being bound to that wheelchair, maybe it’s because of the stuff these alien pirates did to him!” Marjo sighs. “I guess I need to wait a few more in-game days to find out… and he’s in pain, too!”
“Don’t forget about your other characters! I understand that your male trans is taking up a lot of attention because he broke a leg and had what feels like a tumor…” Gordon scolds her.
“That’s true!” Marjo realizes that her cis female has an unfulfilled quest preventing her from being promoted beyond prep cook in the culinary career.
What kind of restaurant would ask prep cooks to host a dinner party with them cooking all the food as a condition to become a line cook? Oh well, I may as well host a dinner party with fellow abductees! Marjo muses upon seeing the unfulfilled quest that sat there for several in-game days because of the whole alien abduction mess.