---Richard---
Richard tried to comfort the scientist.
Badly.
She was smarter than him. Definitely smarter – the only reason she knew she was being manipulated was because the woman had backed up her brain in bits of technology and sunk memories and shit with anti tampering protocols – metal as fuck. Definitely put her on a cool list.
The level of paranoia…would have been silly but considering what happened to her? It almost wasn’t enough paranoia. Really made you think.
She was smarter than him and yet as soon as he started to confirm some of her suspicions, she just broke down. Blubbered all over the place. You’d think someone with so much would be able to bottle it up better.
Richard explained as much as he could about them being in a fake world and then…decided to leave.
Her tears were starting to get annoying?
Really, Richard wasn’t good with mushy shit like this. He didn’t blame her…and he was angry on her behalf…but still it was annoying. He didn’t sign up for this. Comforting people did not show up as a skill on Richards's character sheet.
What he signed up for was some fun and action and secret exploration. Some system abuse and maybe a cheeky bit of explosions. Not…not this.
“Quest: What are NPC’s” Richard spoke quietly as soon as he was out of the area.
It had been three weeks and he was more than due for a bit of info haxs.
It took a massive delayed pause for the answer to arrive.
Quest: Found the BSF: Where do they come from? Where do they go? Here! Found the source of all bodies in this city. Reward: Unknown
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Quest: Found the three ‘What are’ NPC’s in the city and asked them about their lives. Reward: Mental ‘empathy’ power. Special knowledge.
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Quest: Mortician mike: Dissected an NPC with Mike, finding out just what makes em tick. Reward: Mental anatomy power, Special Knowledge.
Richard squinted down at his free knowledge. Helpful. Really fucking helpful. Richard had hoped for more– he wanted to know how to find out about NPC’s not be told he would be rewarded when he found them…was the system reading his mind? It totally stole Richards joke with that dig about a empathy power.
But actually? Well he didn’t have much luck with the quest system now that he thought back on it. This was same as usual really. He’d thought the first response was hilarious – the only reason Richard was getting annoyed right now was his sense of urgency.
If anything, this was a hint there was a place he could go to…so he’d achieved his goal? Hint achieved.
So. Next question. How would Richard go about finding this body source ‘fingamajig?
The answer is obvious to any who care to think about it.
Drones. Tons and tons of drones. Obviously – who wouldn’t think of that first?
Good thing this game has an infinite money glitch.
“Queue repetitive montage” Richard muttered sending several different information requests through the city net.
…
You know, it really was convenient that a quiet trip through a slightly dangerous pit full of stuff to shoot paid so well. Richard scammed the hell out of some in-game currency by tossing himself through a few murder holes then set to work building his drone army. He wanted custom components and going one step backwards from “prebuilt” was much cheaper when you bought in bulk. Thousand rotors. Thousand gravity distributing diodes. Thousand fiddly little low power computer chips.
Drones were less effective than you’d think – as useful as they were, there was only so much you could do far away from an active slot and constant aether source. Drones were really only effective for scouting or short distance expensive suicide attacks.
Of course that didn’t really make sense – if they could make nukes they could totally make ‘mundane’ ‘payloads’ to drop from the drones but that wasn’t a priority for anyone in this society. Probably some flimsy reasoning for why that didn’t happen.
Standing on a roof to release his army – not because he needed to, but because of the aesthetic – Richard sent them off in all directions while laughing and shouting ‘Fly! Fly my pretties!”. A few drones went offline as some rude shits shot them out of the sky and a few probing information requests ended up on Richards's metaphorical ‘mailbox’…yes this was an above average amount of flying ‘hazards’. Yes he wasn’t using them for illegal means. Yes they were peeking in people’s windows and freaking out their guard mogs. No Richard didn’t want to pay protection fees from the shady alley coorperation that would prevent his ‘investments’ from being ‘shot out of the skies’.
A pass through the city by visual scan…nothing. A pass through with drone army v2 checked infared and x-ray spectrums. V3 checked thermal and bio-resonance feeds.
Richard would do them all at once but the onboard aether batteries could only support a limited number of connections and weight. He could try flipping between different scanners in flight but that reduced efficiency…
…
Days of effort. Wasted. What even was the point in that?
Richard was starting to think he just fed the low aether optic market with enough chips to buy a yacht. Dungeon runs stopped feeling like scams the more like work they became. Of course they paid well. Giant shadow bats kept gnawing on his head and trying to force fuck his mouth with their gross spear tongues. Hazard pay was high for a reason.
More importantly Richard had a lot of time to sit with his thoughts and it was starting to get scary. He didn’t like stewing on things like the NPC scenario – he wanted to feel proactive and able to respond to his environment.
Anyways, there were more scanners. Tons more of course – all sorts of ways to find secret areas from various chemical ‘sniffers’ that collected data from the air to radar and GPR mapping techniques. There was a pulse of strange spinning aether that could pinpoint ‘human signatures’ whatever those were to sensors that could pick up how much aether soaked elements were located in a specific area. There was even esoteric element sensors that resonated echolocation type pulses along bands of escoteric frequency bands sending bounces that ignored everything but those esoteric elements roundtripping with accurate distance readings.
Or in other terms, that last device could send vibrations that found cocaine through super safes made of meteres of concentrated lead.
The main problem with the more complicated sensors was power. Richard could power them all by hand but they basically required an active slot to achieve anything. Not something that could run off an aether battery. He had to put the footwork In if he wanted to use them and it fucking sucked.
Another day of wandering the city checking multiple signatures for nothing and Richard’s thoughts became a bit more…drastic.
You see…the place he was looking for was called a ‘source of bodies’. Not source of NPC’s. Richard was fairly certain that secret tied into how resurrection worked.
It was an unconfirmed hypothesis but one that Richard was treating as fact.
A bit of research into this train of thought and Richard was binding a long ranged personal signature locator. If he had a spare body or something in this city it should be able to pick it up – shouldn’t it? The theory behind the device was a bit over Richards current knowledge level but it should work? It was something like DNA or something right? That was Richards guess considering he had to prick his skin to get the machine to calibrate to him.
Theoretically this machine shouldn’t care about any cloaking used – as long as Richard wasn’t here it would stop pointing to his current self and would start picking up his new body – this was Richards biggest chance of tracking his rez spot down.
Just had to charge up a giant heavy battery to power the machine for a minute or two after his pulse went cold. Pop himself off real quick and the machine would jump to wherever he was rezzing from storing the location and then switching to a low power mode till he picked it up.
Easy enough.
…
…fuck. Dying was almost hard now. Richard couldn’t jump out of clock towers anymore – if he tried tossing himself off a skyscraper he’d probably survive wouldn’t he? Yep. Confirmed two for two.
Stabbing himself with tools and testing his weapons out on various parts of his body – side note shooting himself was a great way to test the efficiency of his guns. Should do it more often.
Well besides some noise complaints the actual goal was out of Richard's reach.
Maybe he was too much of a wimp? He couldn’t commit – something kept stopping him from going all the way. It was easy to pull the trigger when you knew you could shake the bullets out like a party trick.
Jumping off a building a third time was halfhearted at best. At least the system liked what it saw? Whenever Richard hurt himself enough the system would shake some stats his way like Richard was whatever you’d call the torture porn’s equivalent of a stripper.
No, if Richard was truly trying to self resurrect himself he’d finish up his last plan. Momentarily modify his stats especially his pesky void defense which kept healing the worst of his bodies damage after the fact. Weaken them right up then turn around and hit himself with the strongest attack he could fuel.
That should do it – either that or take a trip to the badlands and get eaten by some of the rank 4 or 5 monster…something that could overwhelm his defenses and make him go down in a blaze of glory.
So why wasn’t he doing that? Why wasn’t he ‘commiting?’.
It mostly boiled down to worries about what he’d lose…would he keep all his modifications? If he tossed this life out just because he had some use it or lose it rezzes…Would his hands still be here? His stone ones not his lame fleshy ones – why hadn’t he decked them out with portable rocket launchers yet?
Well no, he knew the answer to that question. Reloading would be a pain. And hand lasers were boring. If he died could he reattach them?
Deep down he was worried he couldn’t. In some way as smart as the plan felt, it sounded…lazy. It was the easy way out.
Richard just had to put in more effort on figuring out the search technology. Buying premade solutions could only get you so far – even if he assembled them himself, mini assembly line and multiple hand factory be damned.
Step one was to start putting all his scanners through his AI and seeing if it could figure out how to improve them or – pending that – figure out the sensing method he was missing that would get him what he wanted.
Taking apart each scanner piece by piece, Richard checked each component against a part database skimming their purpose and feeding in as much as he could ‘google’ into his AI as he went.
That was another thing he’d lose if he killed himself. His AI was full of enough information now as soon as he killed the aether flow to it he’d lose half his improvements minimum. Dying was just so inconvenient.
Richard wasn’t getting scared now that things started feeling more real – nope.
Continuing his deeper study. Richard hooked himself up to microscopic circuit boards then uploaded a copy of each machines raw ‘tryte’ code if it was retrievable. Simple disassembly and analysis tools helped convert the assembly equivalent into rough descriptions. The programs to do that were found in a less than legal part of the map
,but considering how easy to find and use that was just flavour text for the tools this game provided them.
Richard was disassociating hard. It was even worse because he knew it was all a lie. The lies didn’t even make him feel better so he didn’t know why he was telling them to himself? Was it a coping mechanism? Lame.
Richard barely noticed when his ai started locking in on a pattern only obvious when common between so many different scanners. Most devices with an actual circuit board seemed to have a suspiciously similar filter built in at the operating system level. A location based one – not even something easy to explain away as important in scanning algorithms.
Richard could have hacked all the devices to stop blocking that section of town then done a 4th pass with the drone army…but considering the coordinates were hardcoded in?
Extracting the three triples and triangulating the section of town, Richard packed up and headed over. He kept an analogue wand that could reveal light manipulation as well as a full belt of tools that might come in handy when sneaking into a place.
The section of town was roughly equivalent to a ‘suburb’. It wasn’t the nicest section of town or the sketchiest. It was almost boring. Smart. Smart enough it was dumb Richard hadn’t even considered it as the most likely spot of town.
Slowly passing through the apartment buildings and waving his wand by building after building, Richard was surprised when the skyscrapers didn’t turn invisible around the blackout area. Why would they care about blocking long range illusions with a conspiracy style filter if there wasn’t anything exciting here?
Richard stood around trying to figure out what he had missed. He camped the closest area – the coordinates covered an entire block worth of buildings – then attempted to see if anything sketchy was happening.
Finally after a hour of stakeout Richard caught a break.
Someone opened the door to one of the apartments and walked away – not in itself weird. The man’s face seemed drugged out of his mind – suspicious point one. Mans looked like a zombie. More telling was the way his anti hologram rod had reacted – revealing that dazed face to him as the zombie shuffled past. As soon as the zombie was far enough away from his ‘disrupter’ they flickered. A cloak of high quality holographic haze shimmered back into place and made the man look alert – if distracted – and fixed up his stumble into a purposeful stroll.
‘Sus’.
Either mans was using a cosmetic filter to sneak into work high or…
Noting the building he had exited, Richard followed the man down a few streets. It took twenty minutes of stalking – long enough Richard had started to feel weird – before the man flickered and looked surprised.
“Oh come on! That was my last life!” The man suddenly yelled shaking and shivering as he shook his hand at the sky.
English. Definitely a player. It was nice being right. Made Richard feel like he was finally on the right track.
Returning to the hideout – wondering why he had even bothered tailing the zombie to double check – Richard tried the front door and found it locked. He tried smashing one of the windows and found it suspiciously reinforced.
He then melted his way through the base slab. Why stop what works? It was easy to create a Richard sized crawlspace through the block and it was easy enough to squeeze through it with his fat gut.
Not that Richard had ever been fat, but self-deprecation was a backbone of good comedy.
Popping his head up into the area Richard found…a doorway.
The entire inside of the building was empty – like a warehouse, the apartment was nothing more than a reinforced hollow shell. Directly in the center of this empty space what looked like a closet stood. Heavy door to Narnia vibes – old dresser design with stained wood and fancy animal carvings. The whole inside of this building was incredibly strange and bore mentioning. The closet was currently open – a wooden doorway separating the steps down into nothing while all around was nothing more than spacious empty Strange…strange and inconvenient design. Why the added layer? Why not have the stairs directly by the entrance to the building?
A toddler could poke a hole in that design.
Slowly walking towards the door Richard waved his wand and watched how the closest appeared closed when he shone it towards the thing.
So its an illusion of a stairway? The real entrance is somewhere else in this room?
Richard ran his hands over the wooden wardrobe and tried to open it to failure. He then walked around the entire room carefully, passing his disruptor across everything a confused look on his face.
Walking back to the illusion of a open doorway Richard tried the shut doorframe another time then stepped back past the point of his disruptor working returning empty handed to see what the doorway felt like this time.
It was open.
What?
How did that even work? Was there a sensor that could tell if a disruptor was being used and shut the doorway really quickly if it was?
If you shone a light through a solid hologram and measured for the result on the other side a disruptor would break that blocked area and reveal the light letting it activate a sensor. That should work for detecting if something broke an illusion?.
But how fast was the door closing? You’d think Richard would notice the flip if that was the case…did they use a noise cancelling wall he couldn’t sense? A pulse of sound waves or field of energy that dampened movement in the air?
And then turned it off as soon as Richard got closer so he couldn’t feel it?
Speaking and walking about the wardrobe a bit, Richard tried to make sense of things and finally gave up.
Normally he’d just accept the weird shit and move on but…as soon as he accepted it as real he felt like he should be able to understand how it worked. He should be able to explain this. This was…this was reality and if he didn’t understand how reality worked he was a bit stupid wasn’t he?
Stepping into the doorway to Narnia Richard descended stairs that shouldn’t be possible – the back end of this should have jutted out the back of the wardrobe easy. A whole sloped roof that had been retracted when he ran his hand over the other side and extended when he stepped in…for what purpose? To sell this illusion?
Richard descended the steps to Narnia remembering how dungeons messed with your perception and feeling a lot better. This…this was just a dungeon. Why was the dimensions of this hallways so fucky wucky? Dungeon bullshit. Easy.
Bottoming out into a hallway, Richard walked along a clean but empty path sloping further and further into the earth. The walls were stone and surprisingly archaic looking – and yet clean and smooth as if freshly made. Like a reenactment of some medieval castle.
Soon the hallway began to expand. It sloped outwards into a courtyard area surrounding a bubbling fountain.
A tiny little naked man stood on the top of the fountain pissing in a spiral down into the water below.
Not spinning or anything – the little stone gnome pissed straight forward and then the water warped and flowed around through the air in a spiral that wrapped twice before entering the stream below.
Either an ‘invisible’ tube – Richard reached out and let his hand push through the piss – or…well this was pretty easy to do with an active aether flow – either through influencing the water or space the water flowed through…
But this should be impossible without an active slot? Without someone standing here fueling the aesthetic.
Was there someone hiding under the fountain?
Should Richard shoot it up and see if he could find the guy hiding behind the scenes running the whole thing?
…probably a temp worker. Like an employee in a ‘haunted’ house pulling levers and shit when people walked by.
Richard pulled a pronged device out of his belt and touched it against the face of the statue just in curiosity.
A slight glow covered the statue for a half second then faded.
Nothing living here…
Well onwards!
If Richard didn’t find anything else he’d come back and break the fountain open to find the worker and see what was happening but for now?
Richard slowly spun about looking at the doors surrounding them.
It reminded him a lot of a medieval version of the hub he’d been in up above. The one the whiney badass had taken him through. If that was the case that doorway over there should go towards the radioactive farm equivalent?
Stepping towards a yellow archway on a hunch Richard followed the path down a few lengths stepping through several multicolored arches resting just in side the hall before finally reaching a metal door.
It looked out of place – the neon exit sign in the theme park breaking your immersion.
Reaching out a hand Richard tried the door twisting the handle and found it unlocked.
Slowly opening the door in anticipation, Richard peeked into a room one hand on his gun. More telling than the hand was the way a steady flow of aether already linking him to its ‘trigger’. Richard was ready to shoot at a moments notice.
Stepping through as soon as he saw it was safe, Richard’s eyes opened in surprise as he tried to make sense of the area.
On one side of the room, an incredibly thick wall of a clear substance stood. Thick like the tank of an aquarium and filled with tiny glowing lines – like prison bars made out of light. On the other side of this ‘cage’ Richard spotted several grotesque creatures crawling about.
Fat fleshy blobs of hands stared across at him – their multiple red eyes shining with hunger. They looked like a drunk had melted different human body parts together and shifted them into a more fishy form? Tiny pink scales flecked the skin out of place beside the hair
One particularly fat blob hung from a metal bar in the ceiling – its one humanoid hand gripped tightly to the ‘branch’ and swung slightly like some blobby fruit.
Another long snake-like Cronenberg shoved what looked like rocks and trash into its mouth in the corner – two hands shovelling the ‘food’ into its gullet even as acid leaked onto the ground around it in sizzleing drips of drool.
The other side of the cage was larger than Richard’s first impression – maybe a hundred meters to the back wall but extending out of sight in either direction to the left or right. As Richard stepped close to the glass to try and see if he could see its side, he spotted a flash of silver.
Soon he could see the source – a metal ball rolled just into sight and stabbed one of the monsters with a pair of scythe hands.
Reddish blood leaked everywhere as the monster struggled against the robotic harvester, but – within seconds – the blob of flesh had been butchered and the robot moved back towards the side just out of sight of the glass wall.
The whole act of violence was done in efficient silence – the glass wall blocked whatever sound the struggle might have made – and Richard watched in morbid fascination as the ball disappeared. Were they locked in some eternal battle? Some family grudge between the mechanical ball people and the inbred flesh cousins? That had looked way too clean to be an attack. It looked like the ball was simply collecting a snack.
Should Richard smash the glass? Shoot it up and explore the inside of this…this nest? This was definitely a nest but was it a nest inside of a dungeon? Could you nest shit like that? Or was this simply a monster room in the dungeon that was…safely blocked off from being accessed?
Weird.
Richard watched as a second ball rolled up to the fat hanging fruit and speared it from both sides. Shaking it a bit to rip it down, the second harvester caried its prize to a area right beside Richard’s window. As soon as it grew close Richard noticed a bladed bin just to the right of the glass area. The ball tossed its still alive blob into a meat grinder turning before it even began. The bin then splattered gore into the surroundings in an completely impractical manner…oh some of the bloody stone began giggling and spewing flesh babies everywhere.
Richard walked over to the wall finally taking interest in the machines on this side of the room. The meat grinder inside the farm was mostly out of sight but its back clearly connected to the machines on this side.
Within a moment, a steady stream of chunky red gore slid through a pipe into view. Glass panels on the devices showed just where the gore was in any given moment – it pushing through a finer blender and filter than being pumped into several vats that seemed to be squeezing and dehydrating the vats into cubes of what looked like spam? Everything had a faint alcoholic smell to it and the result was decidedly unappetizing even if it was infused with booze.
The machine soon finished pumping out gunk and all the vats suddenly moved – shifting along a nearly invisible conveyor belt to free up a new empty vat near the end of the room.
So this is how sausages are made. Makes sense. I finally saw the ingredient to every ‘mystery meat’ ever.
A robot took that moment to trundle into the room Richard was in – on his side of the glass. Richard raised his gun up once again – sliding an amor piercing round into the special slot and watched as the robot…ignored him?
Trundling along to the far end of the room, the robot picked up the ‘oldest’ vat. Raising the vat above its head, the robot crossed the room then dumped the vat into a strainer. With a series of simple and smooth motions, the machine collected the meat chunks once again after removing a huge amount of milky liquid.
Turning back the way it had come – still ignoring Richard – the machine caried its prize out the door.
Richard followed obviously. Strolling along behind the boxy metal drone, Richard stalked it back to the fountain room and down another corridor.
“They pay you well?” Richard asked his tour guide after a moment and was delighted to receive a beep in response.
“I’m going to call you R3D3 – to avoid copyright and cause you all like 3s so much…Reed for short – how does that sound?”. Richard listened for the beep. Yes, it likes its name!
Idly asking questions, Richard had some fun pretending this was a real conversation, stopping only once they entered a new room once again.
This room was dimly lit and dense – at least three stories of shelves stretched upwards ringed with metal catwalks. The shelves were set into cubicles and each contained a cylindrical pod. A pod like one from the matrix or…well some scifi series full of pod people.
Richard instantly knew there were people in them. It just made sense.
Attaching to a pole and sliding up to the second floor ‘Reed’ slid down the shelves like a romba monky. One hand sliced strips of spam and the other tossed chunks of meat into feeding chutes as it slid.
There were several Reed’s sliding around in the distance – the whole place gave off heavy amazon warehouse vibes and Richard found himself almost magnetically drawn towards the nearest pod.
He knew there was a person in it but he had to see.
Looking about it for some buttons Richard finally noticed he could interface with the pod using his AI.
A flick of connection and several vital readouts later Richard found the ‘release’ command and sent it holding his breath in anticipation.
There was a pause and then a hiss followed by a fleshy sort of gurgle. Slowly the hatch began to rise.
Richard reached out and yanked it up the rest of the way in impatience.
Yep. That there’s a person.
Inside the hatch a naked human figure lay curled sideways half submerged in thick transparent gel. A tube fed into her mouth and nose like some invasive breathing mask. Her eyes were closed and her unsubmerged shoulder rose and fell.
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She looked European – Swedish if Richard had to guess – and a mixture of malnourished and tiny that was slightly off putting. It was as if they were a child who had been shoved through a rapid growth spurt without being fed properly.
Reed should have doubled up her servings of mystery meat.
Richard reached out and poked her cheek – finding the unconscious woman’s head lolled like she was dead. Pulling the tube out of her mouth just to check, Richard watched as the woman suddenly gasped and spluttered. Her eyes flicker open in confusion and Richard paused.
Shit. He probably looked like a creep right?
Fuck…should he offer his clothes? This place probably had clothes right? If Richard had to guess it would be down a different hallway – he could find something to cover the gross bits up and then he could ask some questions. He’d be a savior then right?
The woman gurgled and Richard paused again. Something was off…
The growth-spurt woman stared about in complete confusion and began to cry – whining pitifully like a baby despite her mostly adult body.
Eww.
Poking her cheek a few times and watching as she stared at him uncomprehendingly while choking on her own spittle Richard shoved the tube back in her mouth and snapped the pod back down to get rid of her.
Looking around, Richard found another pod opening it up in curiosity. This one had an androgynous looking hairless man the size of a toddler in it. Repeating the tube removal and poke test Richard tried to talk to the half baked human only to be met by confused gurgles and blinks.
Huh. He was less done than the woman.
Opening a few more pods in morbid curiosity Richard stopped removing the tube’s – content just to see the array of bodies this place held.
Richard tried to think what this could mean. They were…growing humans? These were…clones or something? That felt mostly right.
Noting each pod had a serial number and querying his AI, Richard found a memory of a blue box floating into shaky view. That…that was a trinary encoded serial number. That’s my number I guess?
I wonder if I can find ‘my’ body?
Walking down rows, Richard tried to figure out the organization system. He finally figured out which ‘trite’ referred to the level – his body if it existed would be on the second ‘floor’. Checking a few more numbers let his AI figure out the increment each shelf was moving up by and where he should go to start looking.
Walking along to the number he was nearly positive would contain his body, Richard shimmied up a firepole. Stretching the tip of his toe out to rest on the walkway Richard pressed down then jumped forward as soon as he noted it would hold his weight.
Shifting around the edge of the shelf Richard began walking down the ‘catwalk’ that lined the entire second floor.
Continuing slowly down the isle Richard finally found a set of pods with his name on them.
Well not his name – his serial number – but the equivalent. It was all sort of odd wasn’t it? like finding a shrine to yourself in your parents basement?
Opening the first pod he found a fleshy soup little more than primodial goo jiggling about full of meat chunks.
Gross – that was his first soup pod. The smell…Richard was glad for the stat bleedover protecting his nose from experiencing it as harshly. The second pod opened to reveal…him.
His body at least.
It as almost anticlimactic? Just pop, there's a body double.
The clone was mostly right – he looked strange from the outside but beside that it checked out?
Richard ripped the tube out and watched carefully as his clones eyes flickered uncomprehendingly and his body began to gurgle.
This was gross – why was he doing this?
His body began to cry.
Nope. Fuck out of here with that. Stop fake – making the prime Richard look bad. Don’t be a crybaby – Richard’s clone continued to cry and slam his fists against the surroundings like an overgrown toddler.
Richard found himself growing annoyed. Angry even. At himself. At this mockery of his body. This…wasn’t him. Obviously Richard was Richard and this body couldn’t even talk properly.
But also Richard was angry that his curiosity was putting him through this and angry at the annoying whining and blubbering.
Richard slapped his body then took off his shirt and gagged the clone into blessed silence.
Tears ran down the clones face and his hands weekly clawed at the gagged face and mouth – too dumb to figure out how to take the cloth out.
♻️ Achievement get: Found the BSF
Description: Secret area found and scouted. Where do they come from where do they go? Here! This achievement is part of a chain questline. To continue survive and discover more secrets before inevitable eviction.
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Stat: +33 Mental exploring power.
⚖️ Achievement get: Find yourself
Description: A peak behind the curtain has allowed you to find your clone in the body storage facility. Careful – if you break your backup body, it may take a significant amount of time for another to be made and your respawn to be complete.
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Crystalized skill: Idea from nothing.
Description: Querry the randomness contained in your mind for something you could have thought of but didn’t. Let's pretend in the infinity of you, there’s a mind smart enough to figure out what’s happening. That you probably has more friends. Why isn’t that you the true you? Lets find out!
A prod to continue his search. At this point Richard didn’t even know why he was searching – why was this important?
He felt restless and angry and frustrated – it felt like he was being jerked around. This new skill probably was meant to help him continue his ‘questline’ wasn’t it?
‘Activate this skill and figure out what to do next’. It felt like he was on rails – and Richard's stupid emotions were running wild. He was confused and had been confused for days – and now it was pissing him off.
Richard wanted to smash and grab the truth from this facility. He didn’t care about it being given to him – he wanted to find it out himself. Only when he figured it out himself could he be certain it was true.
To add to that, Richard didn’t know what a crystalized skill was. He’d never heard of one before – and while he knew the rules and safety for real skills…what if they didn’t apply for this one? Was it the system that had given him this skill? Or was it the facility he was in instead and that was why it was ‘crystalized’? Was it like how that cry-genius’s translation had been messed with? Richard had assumed the ai translations were the same as the achievement blue boxes for no reason…well no longer.
He would start questioning everything.
The words in that achievement were sus as well. Not just the system snark but the way the skill was described…would this open him up to being taken over by some brain worm or something?
There was a growing urge to burn this whole place down. Richards first instinct was fire. Bodies were gross. This place felt malicious. Wrecking it would probably piss off someone who deserved it.
Was that the best plan?
Richard was confused and had felt confused for days. That confusion pissed him off and his pissed off brain wanted violence.
It was in this pissed off, confused and restless state that Richard looked at his new skill. He could feel the way to activate it. The ‘correct’ way.
He could feel the way the system had slipped in and controlled his memories. Had made him feel like he had used this skill several times – muscle memory for a mental switch he’d never actually used.
How could he trust his memories if the system could modify them that easily? Was he even a person who’d existed? Was anything true?
Unhooking one of his slots, Richard wielded the connection like a whip. It felt like an invisible weightless extension cord. One with a magnet on the end he could toss at infused items to latch on.
…this was not how you were supposed to use a slot. Richard didn’t even know how he was doing what he was doing – just that he was angry and impulsive and that anger was giving him instincts somehow.
Instead of going through the proper ‘switch’, Richard whipped his connection through the skill. He smashed and connected and pulled apart the skill that had been forced upon him – feeling it resist his efforts. It annoyingly healed the damage he was attempting to inflict.
A blue box flickered into view asking if he really wanted to break this skill.
Yes! Fucking what does it look like I’m doing?
Richard slapped the blue box away with his connection.
He could have dismissed it with a thought but Richard bitch slapped it away instead.
Unhooking a second free slot, Richard slowly attached a slot to either side of the skill like he was grabbing it with two hands. Instead of quickly ripping he slowly grabbed hold sinking metaphorical fingers deep into the shit in his head.
Beside him two stone hands reached up involuntarily. It felt like they grasped the connections he had formed – holding the cords by grasping the air on either side of his head.
Instead of ‘unconnecting’ the slots, Richard pulled while maintaining the connection as firm as he could.
He pulled and stretched and then with a jerk ripped the skill apart in a spray of aether.
His head began to hurt. This…was quite a bit different than normal. Why wasn’t he waiting to properly break the skill and solidify it into a slot? What if this was a bad break?
Richard continued to shred the foreign bit of himself. The inside of his head felt wet and raw – like he’d just blended his brain into his skull.
He was ‘wasting’ the skill. That was incredibly obvious for some reason.
And yet Richard didn’t care. His two slot extension cords pulled bits of the skill apart and began to feed. They felt like snakes for a moment as they stuck and swallowed chunks of skill. Then they felt like arms – two ethereal limbs rubbing mud on each other. Then they felt like tongues licking a cone of ice cream held in front of a blow torch. Then they were two of those sticky hand toys that could stretch and stick to things.
His slots moved on instinct one step away from conscious intent. Richard unhooked the slot attached to his AI and swapped it for the feeding slot that felt the fullest.
This weakest slot fed and strengthened itself catching up to the two originals. Bits of the broken skill were leaking everywhere – for every chunk his connections could eat, there was one that floated away.
Richard knew most of this was in his head. He vaguely knew he was anthropizing the slots as something more than they were – a lot of this felt like his brain didn’t understand the input it was receiving and was filling in nonsense to explain it.
And yet the results were clear. His slots felt thicker – Streicher. They felt like he could reach several times as far as before – that gives me an idea.
Richard slid his gun across the floor and lassoed the connection.
He then pulled.
Richard’s gun flew back towards him on a collision course with his head.
Two of his ever-present stone hands darted forward catching the gun before it brained him then pulled it down into a ‘ready’ position.
And Richard finally calmed down.
Holding the connection firmly Richard sent a command to drop the gun to his arms – hoping he could hold it up by the strength of his slot.
The gun fell – dropping towards the floor and then jerking back up when Richard mentally yanked in frustration.
So…not perfect telekinesis but at least I gained whatever that force pull a weapon back technique was from starwars. What was it called again? Lightsaber boomerang? Come hither my beating stick?
Richard took one last look at his clone’s pod and turned around again.
He’d burned the quest progression path but that was fine. He was already in the facility – he’d figure this out.
Retracing his steps through to the hub, Richard checked each of the other hallways in turn. One had a whole bunch of clothing – several sized yoga pants and grey shirts. He checked the next hall – several large devices that looked somewhere between human sized chemical fume hoods and MRI machines.
The security here was higher – while Richard could send AI requests to everything, he was met with the equivalent of a password request and middle finger seconds after.
The only device that didn’t have a security lock was the garbage can in the corner – Richard could open and close it from across the room to his hearts content. Useful.
Richard tried slotting into the machines but found there didn’t seem to be any standard connections open.
Richard ignored that – pushing harder as he walked about and tried to find a sticky note with the password or something.
His connective arms rubbed themselves all across the room, forcing connections with various parts and doing the equivalent of hooking up a car battery with jumper cables to the side of a toaster.
Some machines responded destructively – smoking or popping quietly as Richard tried to pump aether into random parts of them… but one machine – a giant slab in the center of the room – hummed to life at his connective touch.
It felt like he was hotwiring a car as Richard felt the password based ‘on switch’ get bypassed.
He still wasn’t authenticated, but several ai hooks were suddenly available. Like hotwiring a car and suddenly being allowed to turn on the radio or use the cigarette lighter.
Richard was on to something. He poured over the device trying to figure out what its purpose was.
As far as he could tell it gathered…something from somewhere else and shoved it into a body placed on top of it? it pulled from a source and infused that source into the ‘input’ before running some diagnostics and applying this second source to this set of tools.
Hmm…
Richard ripped the floor open. There was a pattern of white triangular tiles seamlessly laminated into each other – and Richard ‘reached’ past them.
His stone hands could press palm first onto the ground from standing and Richard briefly looked like he was standing on a spider as his hands grasped and pulled in a crunch.
It didn’t take much digging about after that point to reveal the tube.
Simple enough – this was the ‘imput’. A giant glowing rubber line covered in what looked like chainmail.
Larger than most cat5 cables and with hecking massive protective sheathing. Probably a joke in there somewhere. This tube led from the slab back down the way Richard had come.
Turning Richard continued to rip up this strange rubbery tube feet by feet. Behind him the tube spooled about the floor lighting up his back with its glow and casting a shadow in front of him with how bright it shone.
Slowly Richard followed the tube back into the middle feeling it begin to sink down deeper and deeper as it headed towards something underneath the water fountain.
It was starting to take longer to excavate the deeper the tube fell – Richard moved his attention away from the tube and towards the fountain itself.
It…was made out of stone right?
Fragile…
Richard reached out and tried to tear the statue down with a swipe. Instead of melting like little more than toilet paper in front of a hose the statue buckled. It struggled and fought back against Richard’s hands. The center pole of stone squished and rippled squeezing down to show less surface area.
The statue resisted.
Not resisted in the way his skill wouldn’t effect non silicone filled objects – actively pulled against his manipulation as if someone else was trying to manipulate the stone just on the other side of the statue. Someone standing there attempting to force it back into shape.
It was easier to destroy then build and so Richard’s fight was slowly shifting to his favour. He ripped and tore at the statue till the water spiral fell apart and the stone was nothing more than a blob he was slowly raking parts off of.
Reveal your secrets!
Soon Richard had pulled enough stone off to reveal a simple wooden box and the fight for control faded.
Shooting the side Richard smashed his way into the box and found…a doll.
A creepy ass voodoo doll covered in painted wood and straw and twine and bone.
Was this a joke? ‘Not here motherfucker, look somewhere else?’
Dropping the doll, Richard pulled the box aside and tried to dig deeper. Maybe its like that thing where they put a animal body on top of a buried human to hide the real thing. this is the decoy – something else is further down.
It felt like he was digging for treasure. Richard was so focused on his hole building, he almost didn’t notice when the doll stood up and began staring at him.
“Fuck!” Richard jolted and kicked the doll as soon as he noticed, crouching and reaching for his gun in the same movement.
Was it a drone? Some sort of remote controlled toy?
Richard stared in shock and then began to laugh. This was a practical joke. Had to be. That was fine, Richard could take a joke.
The doll spoke – its mouth moving as long thin bone hands reached out and brushed straw back like it was coming its hair.
“I’m not paid enough to deal with this shite. G can fix his vessel factory on his own – before I go. I think I owe you a hit for that disrespect don’t I? This isn’t because your face pisses me off that’s just a bonus –”
Reaching out its hand as if grasping the air, the doll pulled and dragged the doorway towards him.
Not…not the door. The doorway. The hole in the wall pealed off and left a stone wall in its place. As the entrance flew across the room, it blackened the view of the hall the doorway had led to. The hallway inverted as it shifted – as if Richard was looking at an optical illusion purposefully meant to confuse him.
Richard pulled the trigger right before whatever illusion fuckery hit him, mentally cheering when the bullet hit the smug little straw boss dead on.
And then the doorway hit Richard’s body, the bottom half slicing through his legs as if the door were a giant ring saw and his slicing defense was a lie.
Richard stumbled and collapsed – his stone arms rushing inwards as they attempted to catch his body.
Aiming most of his focus towards re aiming his gun towards the doll, Richard vaguely tried to step back onto his severed ankles. So inconvenient – thick goop splattered about as he slipped and smashed his stumps into the ground.
How sharp was that attack? What happened to the doorway?
In front of him the ring of weirdness rippled and transformed into a cloak of weirdness that slowly began wrapping the doll as if turning it into a cultist or some hooded stranger made out of an Esher painting.
Suddenly the doll stopped and turned its head to the side.
“I’m just disciplining a monkey. No, I’m not breaking the rules of intervention. Look he’s fine. Just some – Yes he started it. Y-“Suddenly the doll twisted as if he’d been smacked on the top of his head.
“Fine – G has the Authority for this area. Who am I to show that airhead how to do his job,” the doll repeated and suddenly collapsed.
Richard stared at the pile of straw even as he finally got his feet to stop falling off.
Void defense slowly went to work healing the cut, but Richard was too impatient to wait for passive healing.
Pulling out wonder glue Richard rubbed the healing salve along the cut. The miracle cream mostly sealed the seam shut and the bit he’d squeezed past the flap was being dragged about by his body to increase its effectiveness. Few seconds of bending and the errant body parts were back on!
His feet felt weak as fuck but that was fine – more importantly what was that? Who was controlling that puppet? Everything he knew said both that attack broke common sense and that puppet should not have been able to fuel it – entire thesis’s were in place to show why mecha worked to attack with and remote controlled drones didn’t.
‘So that was a fucking lie –‘
Was that doll an actual person? Like a monster made of straw shaped bones and shit?
It seemed like it knew a bit about what was going on. G…G owned this facility – had Richard heard that name before?
His AI helpfully brought up the time the system had shown him the computers located on the moon. He hadn’t had an AI back then so the memory wasn’t preserved nicely but his AI could do enough to show it had happened. G…G had been one of the computers. Like R…
A distant beep sounded out and Richard jumped to the side as soon as he saw a reed style robot barreling down the hallway.
It no longer seemed content to ignore Richard – waving a sticky looking net with its two grabby arms.
“Well this is simpler-“ Richard shot his gun twice – clipping the bottom of the robot and causing it to trip as he broke whatever hidden wheels were letting it move.
Quickly aiming for the first hallway he’d gone down, Richard ran down it an idea forming.
Skidding to a stop Richard found the vats of alcoholic smelling liquid and quickly tried to tip it over.
It was way too heavy – Richard thought the bin looked relatively thin however so he aimed a bullet near the bottom and tried to blow a drain hole in.
Crack.
A freak spark must have been created because the alcohol began to burn as it spread – everything was under control. Richard totally meant to do that…yeah he was going to light the alcohol on fire anyways so this was just one less step. Totally…
Fire lapped at his legs the bottom of Richard’s pants melting slightly as his skin grew warm and then began to ignore the flames.
Alcoholic fires were relatively low heat anyways – non explosive too so Richard should be fine…
Turning his attention to the wall Richard tried shooting a few bullets into the glass and was surprised when nothing seemed to happen.
His bullets just anticlimactically bounced off.
Frowning Richard swapped to a piercing round – the bullets specifically designed to punch through armour.
Raising his second shot Richard pulled the trigger and watched as the bullet rikashade off a section of glass flying back into the room and smashing some panel on a vat.
Those glowing bars must be wholly focused on blocking kinetic strikes from the monsters inside…
Pulling out a really old batch of combination acid, Richard ran across the burning floor ignoring everything but his rapidly changing plan.
Come on…
Richard tried to melt a hole into the glass watching in frustration as the mixture barely seemed to dent it.
Suddenly Richard had an idea. A use for an old experiment – pulling out the light piggybacker he shone his flashlight-like device across the glass and watched as it passed through mostly unimpeded.
New plan.
Packing some explosive elements into a compartment near the back Richard began charging aether taking a moment to start the process. A few seconds later it was activated and Richard could start drawing explosive lines across monsters on the other side.
Muffled bangs rang out as pulse after pulse of unstable gel was shot into the nest.
Something crashed against the glass bouncing back – a large hand coming from the side the small ball sourcing it dragging itself into view a moment later.
A second crash rang out.
The wall held completely ignoring the assault upon it. It almost felt like cheating as Richard began covering the giant arm in fast-acting sticky bombs.
Suddenly a nearly invisible door at the side of the room – left side by the window and one Richard should totally have noticed – opened. In rolled the first ball robot – a classic.
The reinforcements! Took a while.
The ball slipped slightly as it skidded through burning alcohol as a nice little treat.
Richard tried to dodge a swipe of the scythes and found a deep gash was opened on his side. Turning and shooting the ball repeatedly Richard groaned as the shots bounced off as well.
He was going to need a bigger gun.
He wasn’t James – Richard wasn’t interested in getting into a fist fight with the murder ball.
A second slash left a red line across him as Richard failed to dodge again.
Then again…how many more attacks like this before Richard was basically immune? A few dozen? At that point what could the balls even do to him?
Leaning into an attack this time Richard purposefully allowed himself to be slightly cut by it.
Smoke was filling the room as meat balls burned – the original plan had something to do with filling the air with carbon dioxide and tanking the reduced oxygen. That wouldn’t do anything to the robots but it might flush out hiding people or whatever…if anything part of Richard's fighting style by this point was messing up the environment and standing in the middle of it so the setup was mostly instinctual by this point.
Honestly cause as much destruction as he could until someone came to stop him was a minor goal to getting into the pen and whatever part of the facility was connected to the other side of this farm.
Towards his real goal of finding out what the truth of this facility was.
…
Richard’s bomb teleport trick deposited a line of liquid nitrile tri-glowrate into a crevasse it shouldn’t have deposited into.
The beam traveling through got stuck halfway through the wall and filled one of the bars of light in a strange chemical reaction.
Within seconds the entire net was effected – the softly glowing light becoming murky grey.
Suddenly it shattered – the heavily damaged boss on the other side of the glass shattered the wall before it could explode and seemed surprised at how easily it was able to push into the room.
Giant shards of glass flew through the air and then detonated in a series of shattering chain reactions.
Glass flew – bits and pieces bouncing off Richard's skin or ripping through his clothes.
The shockwaves weren’t that high – most of the power had been put into damaging whatever it stuck to not the surroundings – but the scythe ball was still knocked back into a burning tub of alcohol.
The giant flesh golem shrieked its hollow scream now reaching Richard's ears and causing him to wince.
If that almost hurt the shriek had to be considered a sonic attack.
So kinetic attacks of various flavors…And yep it seemed to be burning as it came in contact with the flaming room.
Richard tossed some stun rounds into place and shocked the beast into staying put as it burned.
Beside him the ball was getting back up seeming to hesitate over whether the durable Richard or escaped farm animal were more important.
Richard didn’t give him the chance to make up his mind – he started power walking into the nest eyes darting about.
There! A set of airlocks at the far end.
There was an entire nest worth of monsters packed into an open area between him and those airlocks…
But Richard had already mostly taken down the biggest one so the fodder barely gave him pause.
Flaming liquid had started pouring past the shattered wall behind him filling the nest with black smoke and the smell of burned pork.
The scythe ball made up its mind and began chasing Richard slashing at his back like that would do something.
Richards belt of tools fell to the ground and he groaned.
I deserved that.
With a yank of his free slot the belt flew up into his hands and a array of various specialized devices began to fall into his stone hands.
Turning Richard began blasting. A funnel was set in the top of his gun and a series of four hands began pulling stone up in a rod like it was a metal wire.
Time to reload. Half a second.
Most of his bullets were badly formed – they were little more than sharp rocks he was propelling into the surroundings in useless but fun pops.
A bit of spare gore was cleaned off Richards body and mixed into the stone increasing the damage- they were inflicting by zero to the equivalent of a hand gun against a tank.
The first ball seemed to have given up on stabbing Richard to death switching to kidnap tactics. Its scythe arms wrapped around Richards body and tried to pin him down Richard shot blast after blast point blank.
It was annoying fighting something that could tank hits as well as him. At least Richard had a distributed body so the first few hits always went through. Made it feel more sporting – sure he was cheating with his adaptation skill but at least he let his prey think they had a chance when they drew blood near the start.
Metal balls that never got damaged on the hand. They were totally cheating in a bad way.
Richard reached out with his free slot attempting to…connect and highjack the robot or something. He wasn’t sure – either way it didn’t work all he managed was to pull himself closer to the ball.
Richard's free hands looked through his tools and pulled out the last bit of explosive. They took quite a bit to activate but once they did the specialized liquid was fast acting and strong.
Loosening himself slightly and then using his slot to yank himself towards the side Richard tossed the explosive into the balls arm socket shoving his hand around the area as if trying to cup it into place.
This should work…
Connecting his slot to the area Richard pumped some aether in quickly activating his trump card and causing a fizzing sensation to cover the inside of his hands.
With a point blank ‘boom’ Richards suicidal attack went off the blast taking off one of his fingers.
The explosion itself didn’t seem to do more than stagger the overpowered ball, but his blood coated the machine and resonated with the damage the explosion had done to his hands more than made up for it.
With a crack, Richard's sacrifice skill broke through.
One of the main arms holding him up fell off and the ball beeped angrily as it spun out of place.
One of Richard's stone hands slapped the area and looked to see if the robot had silicone it could affect.
None.
Pity.
Richard reloaded his gun and shot it point blank at the hole he’d made near the start.
The ball staggered back.
He could do this.
The reinforcements arrived in full.
Just as Richard was nearly done taking down the ball, over a dozen more spun into view.
Hacks. This part of the map was an abnormality!
Even as Richard tried to figure out how to escape, one of the balls slid open to reveal a video screen.
On the other side stood an alien. He was in a cluttered looking blue room. Bright blue walls and furniture with occasional green tools covering a messy desk.
The alien was surprisingly not some creepy shape but something that looked fake like bad cgi.
A humanoid turtle in a lab coat. Like something out of a children’s movie the furry stared at him in slight curiosity eyes slowly raking him up and down. The look was curious but uncaring…like the turtle was imagining dissecting Richard to figure out how he worked.
“Are you ‘G’?” Richard asked – it just made sense.
Waving an arm slightly his head half retreating into his lab coat for a second the furry acknowledge him.
A calm voice rang through the screen “Are the rumors right? Did you break a new affinity to aether?”
Richard didn’t know who the fuck was spreading rumors about him or why that nodded.
“What’s it to you?” Richard asked slowly charging all the aetheric capacitors on all his weapons. He would probably get captured with this many balls and didn’t like his odds of escape. Why didn’t he deck out his favourite chair out and bring it through the dungeon? I mean sure he didn’t want to damage the thing but with a few boosts he could have made it much faster than his body. Maybe he should buy a second chair? A chair for home and a chair for business?
“Do you know the sorts of advancements that could be made with a previously untamed affinity? You probably do – I don’t recognize a single one of your wild skills. Your ramping defense seems more efficient than what I’m using for the barrier in each of your training areas if initially far weaker.”
Richard scratched the back of his head.
“Thanks m8, so how does this work…you spank me and toss me out or are you available for a showdown?”
G shook his head slightly.
“I’m too busy to come down to that instance. Besides, I’ve never been much of a fighter. No need for uncivilized stuff like that from where I came from. No I’m here to explain to you your situation and offer you a choice.” The turtle said pulling a flask out of his shirt pocket and taking a swig.
“This one of those fake choices that mean nothing?” Richard asked overloading his AI with aether in the attempt to create an escape plan.
“Could be.” The turtle spoke slowly taking a second swig before putting his flask away and sitting down.
“To be honest Richard, while you are in a maintenance area and I’m fully within my right to sic the defenses on you and waste a life or two and kick you out…there’s rules about what I’m allowed to do to you that actually matters. The amount of interference I’m allowed to make…” The turtle licked his lips slightly before continuing.
“So the choice I’m offering is really a demand for cooperation. I want your affinity. Let me run some experiments and try and synthesize whatever novel break your aether has lent and in exchange I’ll…what was your goal for breaking into this place? Some unique achievements or something? I can give you some loot and let you go free. Otherwise I’ll tie you up with the harvesters and bring some of the stronger bots up to finish you off.” The turtle made a face like that would be a waste of time and effort.
So yeah, not a choice. Do as I ask or I’ll kill you. At least it wasn’t a choice between two awful not options? The choice was ‘submit’ or ‘not’.
Richard's gut instinct was to flip the fucker off and go down swinging. He didn’t do well with being under the thumb of this sort of overbearing authority.
But really…what was the point in that? If Richard considered his goals there’s only one option that felt like it would help.
“I broke in to figure out what NPCs are and how resurrection works. Tell me what’s up with the NPC situation and how fucked up it is and…sure I’ll let you dissect my body or whatever.”
He could always come back and pay back the insult when he was stronger and understood more of his situation.
The turtle thought for a half second then shrugged.
“By my title of absolute defense and your step upon my path. By your self discovery of your situation and a clause in discretionary laws…sure I’m allowed that much. Let me bring you to a back room and I can tell you about the filler you’re surrounded by while I have you fill up some batteries.” Nodding slightly the ball closed up and Richard allowed himself to be led through the burning nest to a door in the wall.
Stepping through the airlock and finding himself led towards a new area of the plant Richard barely put in the effort to escape and continue his rampage.
In some ways he’d failed but something about this felt different.
He’d accept it for now.
…
Hooking his two free slots into a giant crystal the size of a room Richard began to dump aether in.
Beside him a ball revealed the screen and absolute ‘G’ as he watched Richard channel aether a series of probes dragging his aether away into different tanks and environments in the walls.
“Let's see…what do I need to say.” The turtle began.
“I’m not fully aware about past settlements or the history of things but I do know we selected a group of rules that had the highest chance of settlement success. One of those rules is to provide various examples of civilizations and ‘guides’ in the form of sapient creatures that have used aether in various stages of effectiveness.” The turtle seemed to be trying to figure out how much he had to say to keep his end of the bargain.
“Are those ‘sapient’ creatures real?” Richard asked.
This was the important question after all.
“I’m answering your question. If you want me to short form it we can finish up right away?” G asked the first sign of annoyance flickering across his face.
Richard stayed silent. He could piss off the overlord once he pumped him for information.
Beside him a syringe shot forward faster than he could react and began simultaneously injecting and sucking bits of fluid out of Richard's arm.
“From initial assessment. ‘humans’ as you call yourselves were found to be highly xenophobic in nature. You find reason to distrust, fear and hate minor breed changes in your species – set up simulations showed this trait would be even worse past a species barrier. That is why every sapient seeded into your trials has been given a human body. The infrastructure to grow and clone bodies from your dna is the same as the system to create the guide forms.” The turtle nodded a bit.
Fair, humans sucked – fuck this turtle for sounding so condescending about it though. Richard felt offended on behalf of humanity.
“But are the guides as you call them otherwise just people like us?” Richard asked.
A flicker of the paranoid woman appeared in his head once again. 'I thought I had a tail'.
“Copied bodies and copied minds…If you understand the electric signals that make up a brain you can store a consciousness in a trivial amount of digital space. Translating it between the different shape and structure of a different species is much harder but I’m a specialist and mind interfaces are a hobby of mine.
“To answer your question. It’s much easier to reuse than try and create a consciousness from scratch. Applying the memories and personality of a stored individual onto a new body is not something anyone can do, but it’s the cheapest way to mass produce guides. The ‘real’ individuals are all living lightyears away and from a practical standpoint the guides are ‘fake’.” G was half paying attention to answering Richard.
One wrinkled hand spun lazily in the air as if he were swiping through invisible readings and his eyes were completely unfocused as he read whatever information Richard was giving him.
“Legally it’s a bit of a grey area but allowances are made for absolute infrastructure. Transferring you and the rest of the settlers across the universe is…I wouldn’t say it's impossible but I can’t imagine how it might be consistently done. Storing your mind transferring your energy signature and the information that makes you up then recreating your forms from scratch? It sounds convoluted but its much easier to accomplish. Even accounting for R adding a bunch of minds I wasn't in charge of was simple enough” G began muttering as he poured over readouts and swiped through values.
Beside Richard, a low hum began to ring out as one machine suddenly exploded.
“So…cloned minds and bodies. Legally grey and morally fucked up. Anything else I should know? Why even bother transferring us to do this settling for you if you can mass produce people like that?” Richard asked even as he felt a new injection and pump of incredibly cold liquid fill his body.
“Energy signatures the system picks up on. If you clone and copy your mind and body to a second form, the system won’t recognize it as 'you'. Some hard to copy or replicate energy signature. None of the stats and skill allowances the system has given you will transfer to the second…even if the first body is killed the system is picky about calling the copy the same as the original. It's why I have to put up with that unwashed cultist and his ‘soul’ ‘magic’ as he calls it. His chaotic aether lets him tag a new body with the old bodies energy signature so the system will transfer correctly. Think he called the NPC's 'souless' like the existence of an energy fingerprint meant anything more than system recognition.”
G seemed pleased by whatever he was reading. He began paying more attention to Richard his tone changing as if he were wrapping things up.
“Now! As for why we don’t just seed a settlement with kin. Besides the contracts with R for increased rank caps for our home world, the main reason we aren’t doing that is simple. We already have. The system showers new species with above average levels of achievements. The first adopters get stats and skills anywhere from two to five times as easily as entrenched species. That’s actually the story behind how varied kin are in species. Long ago when the first of our kind were uplifted by the system, we found a loophole. By altering the DNA of our children enough, they counted as a new species and gained faster achievements. Kin are above all else unparalleled in modifying biology. Even if many kin cannot breed ‘naturally’ between ‘species’, modern science lets most parents choose when to create a child outside of mating and fleshy allowances. Test tube babies for all. It took hundreds of iterations of new kin and genome splicing before the system began treating each variation as a 'race' instead of a new species and our achievement abuse was slowed…but there’s a reason we are the strongest practitioners of aether I’m aware of,” G’s eyes took on another form.
“Now, I would have been happy enough with a large sample of aether and some DNA with your energy signature I can cross reference with the DNA I have on file…but you mentioned something about allowing me to dissect you? Have I fulfilled my side of the bargain – R will crack down hard on this exchange if I don’t fulfill my end." G looked nervous. Good.
Richard shrugged. He wanted to pick the scientist’s brain and he didn’t really care about a minor loss. As long as he didn't lose anything important he could sell his body happily.
“Will I keep my stone hands and gear? If I will, knock yourself out I'm satisfied. If not go fuck yourself I'm altering the agreement” Richard called out.
It felt like false bravado but the comment let him ignore the sick sense of horror of being trapped and operated on. The last scientist to do so without his permission got an acid bath – turtle soup wasn't off the menu yet.
“Your body should survive, but just in case I promise to transplant those unstable odds and ends to your replacement. Good night Richard, please feel free to say this was consensual if R comes sniffing around.”
And with that suddenly a rush of cold stifled Richard’s consciousness and everything went black.