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Eclipse Phase: This Mortal Coil
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<blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 5840581" data-attributes="member: 60965"><p><strong>Twinkle Twinkle</strong></p><p></p><p><img src="http://i41.servimg.com/u/f41/17/01/16/56/astero10.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>We didn't die to decompression, exposure, suffocation, or the other dangers of immediate and violent exposure to void. We didn't die at all, in fact, and now hurtle through space at a velocity unimaginable to our ancient Earth-bound ancestors - neglecting, of course, the then-unobservable speed at which our planet moved through the solar system, the speed that our solar system spun in orbit of the galactic center, and the unimaginable velocity at which our galaxy tears through space. It's all a matter of relative perspective I guess.</p><p></p><p>Regardless, after making the hull of the rocket shuttle "transparent" - i.e. overlaying a composite of the video-feed pickups of the shuttle's external cameras over the walls via AR to show what would be visible from our perspectives were the walls truly transparent - Helios begins to talk.</p><p></p><p>As I listen, I sit and watch empty space, the occasional solitary asteroid showing up only as a dim star moving slowly against the apparently stationary backdrop of actual stars before fading away again. Those pre-Fall movies showing ships navigating asteroid belts that are actually dangerous are amusing as the odds of accidentally colliding with an asteroid are about the same as accidentally stumbling across a TITAN artifact - unimaginably rare and equally unfortunate.</p><p></p><p>Helios has taken on an AR form suitable for his(her? its?) moniker - a pulsar star three feet in diameter that floats before our acceleration couches. Its voice is gender-neutral but musical, constantly fluxing in a pleasant yet vaguely annoying auto-tuned melody.</p><p></p><p>"You're now wondering why you have the luxury of a private, all-expenses-paid shuttle trip to beautiful, crazy Extropia. I'd say it's simple, but what's ever simple now days? There's not really any specific order that works better than another to explain what's going on, so I'll do it in the order I find the most interesting; let's start with Earthwing."</p><p></p><p>"Earthwing?" Lillian says, glancing at the flickering pulsar with a suspicious look. "Is that a code name for some Night Cartel faction?"</p><p></p><p>"No." The pulsar changed color, from simple white to a lovely shade of violet, the streamer of a virtual solar flare drifting towards Lillian as if to emphasize that it was talking to her. "This business has nothing directly to do with the Night Cartel-"</p><p></p><p>"This from the Night Cartel's best accountant."</p><p></p><p>Lillian snorts and I find myself sharing her derision without even thinking about it. I'm not a big fan of being around Sylphs for that reason; damned morphs always playing with your emotions at a chemical/neuro-reactive level so you can't tell which ones are real and which ones are psycho- or physiological-induced reactions.</p><p></p><p>"That from the mistress of a glorified whore house," Helios replies dryly. "You of all people should know that we are not all what we appear, <em>Raikov</em>."</p><p></p><p>I admit I don't understand what exactly they are talking about, but having had several morphs shot out from under me on some of the rougher Planetary Consortium business I've handled in-system, I think I get the gist.</p><p></p><p>"Anyway," Helios says, flickering to a pale red. "We have been watching you all for some time, though it wasn't until that business in the resleeving facility that I realized that we were going to get Alexander instead of Davin Newport - which isn't necessarily a bad thing since a pre-Fall AGI recently escaped from Earth on an overwritten cortical stack is less tied to solar politics and factions than a personally involved member of Earthwing."</p><p></p><p>I quirked an eyebrow at Newport's carefully expressionless morph, then glanced back at Helios. "If your exposition is supposed to be somehow leading to an actual explanation of things, you're going in the wrong direction."</p><p></p><p>A digital sigh. "All right, let me try again. Earthwing: a group of four highly-trained specialists with an eye on liberating some Earth artifacts for sale on the pre-Fall memorabilia market. They drift in past the orbit-laced kill-sats on a derelict wreck, HALO in as it burns up in the atmosphere, find... something... and battle their way to a barely functioning pre-Fall facility that specialized in cortical stack escape pods for those who had issues with pure digital ego uploads during the Fall. Records I have accessed show that an AGI named Alexander was responsible for maintenance and operation of the facility. Presumably it made an alpha fork of itself and overwrote the real Davin Newport's cortical stack with its own ego, leaving the Alexander ego/Newport morph that rides with us today."</p><p></p><p>Another flare drifts towards Newport's morph. "For all intents and purposes, Newport has suffered the final death and the AGI Alexander is his doppelganger."</p><p></p><p>There's a momentary pause as I - and Lillian by the vaguely troubled look on her face - contemplate what has just been said. Losing a morph is a property crime, a particularly annoying and expensive one, but a property crime none-the-less. Wiping out someone's ego <em>and</em> it's backups, robbing someone of their functional immortality... that's something that you only hear on the most sensational newscasts and in horror VRs.</p><p></p><p>"Okay, so the guy is gone and Alexander has replaced him. Sucks to be this Newport person, but what does this have to do with us?" Lillian says, finally breaking the silence.</p><p></p><p>"Excellent question Lillian/Raikov, let me show you what became of the other three members of Earthwing after their cortical stacks were planted in their backup morphs after arrival at Extropia."</p><p></p><p>The inside of the shuttle opaques, replaced by a three dimensional replay of what looks like composite video of a 0-g, spherical bar/restaurant. The decor is neon, shiny, sleek, everything rounded and vaguely organic-looking, a giant sign blinking "The Sphere" dominating the center of the space.</p><p></p><p>It's a happening place, probably a hundred morphs of all varieties drifting about or clustered around the half-spheres of 0-g booths, knees clamped on float-bars to keep them anchored at their tables, slurping likely-overpriced drinks out of fluid ampules.</p><p></p><p>Everything else blurs faintly to draw focus to three figures at one of the tables. The audio isn't very good, implying its been cobbled together from a dozen cheap public surveillance recorders - none of which seem to have been close enough to the table itself to actual record what is being said - and all I can make out is that they are arguing about something.</p><p></p><p>One of them is in a Menton morph, judging by her extra-large skull for an equally large brain; the second is in a Sylph that gets me slightly hot-and-bothered just looking at the stylishly cut dress hugging her designer-perfect curves and <em>just barely</em> covering her up; the last is a Swarmoid, a roughly anthropomorphic cluster of fist-sized mechanical bugs constantly skittering across and around one another like a colony of metal insects trying to pass themselves off as a person.</p><p></p><p>As we watch, the Menton shouts something offensive about the others' ancestry and body functions - that's clear on the audio at least - then pushes off from the booth and out of the restaurant, leaving the other two arguing.</p><p></p><p>A minute later, the booth explodes in a massive fireball so real that I raise my arms to protect my face and, for a moment, I truly can't tell if it's part of the recording or if our shuttle has just been hit and I'm going to wake up in the resleeving facility back on New Sicily short an absurdly expensive morph and a few days worth of memories, trying to figure out what the hell just happened... again.</p><p></p><p>---</p><p></p><p><em>Note: Yes, the picture contradicts the (more realistic) asteroid belt from the post; the pictures are meant to set the mood, not to necessarily represent the actual action.</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Iron Sky, post: 5840581, member: 60965"] [b]Twinkle Twinkle[/b] [IMG]http://i41.servimg.com/u/f41/17/01/16/56/astero10.jpg[/IMG] We didn't die to decompression, exposure, suffocation, or the other dangers of immediate and violent exposure to void. We didn't die at all, in fact, and now hurtle through space at a velocity unimaginable to our ancient Earth-bound ancestors - neglecting, of course, the then-unobservable speed at which our planet moved through the solar system, the speed that our solar system spun in orbit of the galactic center, and the unimaginable velocity at which our galaxy tears through space. It's all a matter of relative perspective I guess. Regardless, after making the hull of the rocket shuttle "transparent" - i.e. overlaying a composite of the video-feed pickups of the shuttle's external cameras over the walls via AR to show what would be visible from our perspectives were the walls truly transparent - Helios begins to talk. As I listen, I sit and watch empty space, the occasional solitary asteroid showing up only as a dim star moving slowly against the apparently stationary backdrop of actual stars before fading away again. Those pre-Fall movies showing ships navigating asteroid belts that are actually dangerous are amusing as the odds of accidentally colliding with an asteroid are about the same as accidentally stumbling across a TITAN artifact - unimaginably rare and equally unfortunate. Helios has taken on an AR form suitable for his(her? its?) moniker - a pulsar star three feet in diameter that floats before our acceleration couches. Its voice is gender-neutral but musical, constantly fluxing in a pleasant yet vaguely annoying auto-tuned melody. "You're now wondering why you have the luxury of a private, all-expenses-paid shuttle trip to beautiful, crazy Extropia. I'd say it's simple, but what's ever simple now days? There's not really any specific order that works better than another to explain what's going on, so I'll do it in the order I find the most interesting; let's start with Earthwing." "Earthwing?" Lillian says, glancing at the flickering pulsar with a suspicious look. "Is that a code name for some Night Cartel faction?" "No." The pulsar changed color, from simple white to a lovely shade of violet, the streamer of a virtual solar flare drifting towards Lillian as if to emphasize that it was talking to her. "This business has nothing directly to do with the Night Cartel-" "This from the Night Cartel's best accountant." Lillian snorts and I find myself sharing her derision without even thinking about it. I'm not a big fan of being around Sylphs for that reason; damned morphs always playing with your emotions at a chemical/neuro-reactive level so you can't tell which ones are real and which ones are psycho- or physiological-induced reactions. "That from the mistress of a glorified whore house," Helios replies dryly. "You of all people should know that we are not all what we appear, [I]Raikov[/I]." I admit I don't understand what exactly they are talking about, but having had several morphs shot out from under me on some of the rougher Planetary Consortium business I've handled in-system, I think I get the gist. "Anyway," Helios says, flickering to a pale red. "We have been watching you all for some time, though it wasn't until that business in the resleeving facility that I realized that we were going to get Alexander instead of Davin Newport - which isn't necessarily a bad thing since a pre-Fall AGI recently escaped from Earth on an overwritten cortical stack is less tied to solar politics and factions than a personally involved member of Earthwing." I quirked an eyebrow at Newport's carefully expressionless morph, then glanced back at Helios. "If your exposition is supposed to be somehow leading to an actual explanation of things, you're going in the wrong direction." A digital sigh. "All right, let me try again. Earthwing: a group of four highly-trained specialists with an eye on liberating some Earth artifacts for sale on the pre-Fall memorabilia market. They drift in past the orbit-laced kill-sats on a derelict wreck, HALO in as it burns up in the atmosphere, find... something... and battle their way to a barely functioning pre-Fall facility that specialized in cortical stack escape pods for those who had issues with pure digital ego uploads during the Fall. Records I have accessed show that an AGI named Alexander was responsible for maintenance and operation of the facility. Presumably it made an alpha fork of itself and overwrote the real Davin Newport's cortical stack with its own ego, leaving the Alexander ego/Newport morph that rides with us today." Another flare drifts towards Newport's morph. "For all intents and purposes, Newport has suffered the final death and the AGI Alexander is his doppelganger." There's a momentary pause as I - and Lillian by the vaguely troubled look on her face - contemplate what has just been said. Losing a morph is a property crime, a particularly annoying and expensive one, but a property crime none-the-less. Wiping out someone's ego [I]and[/I] it's backups, robbing someone of their functional immortality... that's something that you only hear on the most sensational newscasts and in horror VRs. "Okay, so the guy is gone and Alexander has replaced him. Sucks to be this Newport person, but what does this have to do with us?" Lillian says, finally breaking the silence. "Excellent question Lillian/Raikov, let me show you what became of the other three members of Earthwing after their cortical stacks were planted in their backup morphs after arrival at Extropia." The inside of the shuttle opaques, replaced by a three dimensional replay of what looks like composite video of a 0-g, spherical bar/restaurant. The decor is neon, shiny, sleek, everything rounded and vaguely organic-looking, a giant sign blinking "The Sphere" dominating the center of the space. It's a happening place, probably a hundred morphs of all varieties drifting about or clustered around the half-spheres of 0-g booths, knees clamped on float-bars to keep them anchored at their tables, slurping likely-overpriced drinks out of fluid ampules. Everything else blurs faintly to draw focus to three figures at one of the tables. The audio isn't very good, implying its been cobbled together from a dozen cheap public surveillance recorders - none of which seem to have been close enough to the table itself to actual record what is being said - and all I can make out is that they are arguing about something. One of them is in a Menton morph, judging by her extra-large skull for an equally large brain; the second is in a Sylph that gets me slightly hot-and-bothered just looking at the stylishly cut dress hugging her designer-perfect curves and [I]just barely[/I] covering her up; the last is a Swarmoid, a roughly anthropomorphic cluster of fist-sized mechanical bugs constantly skittering across and around one another like a colony of metal insects trying to pass themselves off as a person. As we watch, the Menton shouts something offensive about the others' ancestry and body functions - that's clear on the audio at least - then pushes off from the booth and out of the restaurant, leaving the other two arguing. A minute later, the booth explodes in a massive fireball so real that I raise my arms to protect my face and, for a moment, I truly can't tell if it's part of the recording or if our shuttle has just been hit and I'm going to wake up in the resleeving facility back on New Sicily short an absurdly expensive morph and a few days worth of memories, trying to figure out what the hell just happened... again. --- [I]Note: Yes, the picture contradicts the (more realistic) asteroid belt from the post; the pictures are meant to set the mood, not to necessarily represent the actual action.[/I] [/QUOTE]
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