Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Eclipse Phase: This Mortal Coil
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 5847136" data-attributes="member: 60965"><p><strong>44 Nysa</strong></p><p></p><p><img src="http://i41.servimg.com/u/f41/17/01/16/56/the_to10.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Extropia tumbled like a notched bullet hurtling through space, just a bullet that weighed 100 trillion metric tons and carried roughly 20 million souls around the speck-sized sun every 3.9 years.</p><p></p><p>It was a pock-marked magnesium-rich metamorphic/igneous potato spun like an old-Earth record to give enough gravity to walk in the outer half of the city that honeycombed its innards, to leap like human fleas for most of the rest, and float free in the innermost core.</p><p></p><p>The faint Coriolis and air-recirculation breeze smelled like rock and metal and overworked carbon-monoxide scrubbers while the green-purple neon flicker of the Gorgon Defense Systems sign gave Raikov a headache.</p><p></p><p><em>Give me the steady LED blue from the Direct Action's terminal across the access-way any day</em>, he thought, rubbing his/her forehead.</p><p></p><p>There was literally nothing else down at the bottom of the dark shaft where they had surreptitiously docked except a pair of malfunctioning corporate access terminals built back in the day when people actually <em>physically</em> interacted with computers and when the lift ground to a halt in front of them, he/she breathed a deep sigh of relief.</p><p></p><p>Raikov had technically had a few days to think on the way over after the dramatic explosion video in the shuttle and Helios' extensive exposition on what he/she/it wanted them to do, but Raikov'd never been good at just sitting around, nor was he one to dwell on anything too much, so he'd spent it in a VR coma, beating the hell out of digital MMA fighters in digital Romania in the fuzzy dream of pre-Fall Earth for a few time-distorted hour-days.</p><p></p><p>"What do you think of all this, Alexander?" I said, glancing over at where the AGI in its Ghost morph lounged against a stack of old, dusty plastic pallets.</p><p></p><p>Alexander looked back and shrugged. "Shucks, little lady, I don't reckon I know what 'xactly yer referring to."</p><p></p><p>Raikov rolled Lillian's eyes. His biomorph was about a third of the way through its sex-switch, so he looked like one of the androgynous-yet-attractive boy-girls he'd seen on an ancient Earth "anime" flat movie series. He supposed he was still Lillian. He couldn't wait until the transformation was complete and he could leave Lillian and Lady-ness behind for good.</p><p></p><p>"I'm not totally sold on stopping this 'Ridley', but Helios did just have you rescue me from a life of perpetual sexual servitude, so I guess fair is fair. It actually feels good just to be sitting here."</p><p></p><p>Ishmael walked over and looked over the rail-less edge of the lift at the drop that was slowly growing beneath them. "You ever heard of this 'Firewall' organization before?"</p><p></p><p>Alexander shook his head. </p><p></p><p><em>Which of course he would</em>, Raikov thought.</p><p></p><p>If what Helios had said was to believed, Alexander had spent the last ten years cooped up back on Earth fighting a loosing battle to keep the power running to the tomb of a an abandoned sleeving facility on a dead and deadly, permanently-quarantined world full of lions and tigers and bears. It made sense that the AGI might be a bit kooky after living that slow, futile brick-and-mortal analog crumble to a digital death, with no hope of escape.</p><p></p><p>If he'd had to overwrite someone's cortical stack to avoid that fate, he probably would have too.</p><p></p><p>"No, but I've heard the term 'x-risk' bandied about before on the Mesh. Heck, remember that <em>terrible </em>VR movie <em>X-Risk: Rise of the TITANs</em> that came out a couple years ago? I can't believe they're making a sequel, but I'll bet you anything they'll call it <em>X-Risk II: Return of the TITANs</em>."</p><p></p><p>Alexander stared blankly, blinking at erratic and inconsistent intervals that made Raikov think of the flicker of the hard-disk loading light Raikov had seen on the computer in an old flat movie about some hilariously ancient "hackers" back on Earth.</p><p></p><p>"What is an X-Risk?" Alexander said.</p><p></p><p>"eXtinction Risk," Ishamael said. "TITANs, the Exurgent Virus, tailored bioplagues, alien invaders from the other side of the Pandora Gates, Sol going nova. Any way humans can figure out how to go bye-bye for good."</p><p></p><p>"Well put," Helios said, as if mentioning 'nova' was the magic word to summon its AR pulsar simulacrum. "And your mission is still on. I haven't had a chance to merge with my fork here on Extropia, but it did tell me Ridley is still at large and pretty much vanished after the explosion and has somehow stayed vanished for the two days since."</p><p></p><p>"So, how do you know she hasn't just left Extropia?" Ishmael said. "This is a big place, there's got to be some traffic coming and going."</p><p></p><p>Helios shuddered in a way that Raikov somehow took as a headshake and he missed part of what Helios said after that trying to figure out what made him take a virtual stellar quake for a human negatory gesture. </p><p></p><p>"...besides, we've been keeping a close eye on those few that have come or gone in the last few days. That and there's pretty much no better place in the Solar System to unload... well, whatever she got from Earth. I don't imagine she would leave before she at least got something lined up."</p><p></p><p>"And I reckon our job is still to wrangle out what that whatever she got might be," Alexander said. Wherever the AGI had picked up that annoying cowboy-drawl, Raikov would never know, but he kept on hoping it would change language files or whatever AGIs did.</p><p></p><p><em>Misha, </em>he thought to his muse,<em> can you watch his speech and start figuring out how to make it sound less annoying. Run it through the real-time language processor or something.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em></em>Misha replied, semi-transparent text seeming to scroll across a nearby metal wall grate as they slowly raised towards it. <em>I'll have to build a new recognition heuristic and dictionary for it since it's an unsupported English dialect and it will take some time, would you like me to initiate?</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Da!</em></p><p></p><p>"Hopefully it won't come to that, but learning whatever she has and containing it should it turn out to be a threat is," Helios said as Raikov tuned in again. "Whatever you find, keep me informed."</p><p></p><p>"Wait," Raikov said. "You said our shuttle launch and landing wasn't logged?"</p><p></p><p>He took the pulsar's extra-bright flare to be a yes, though again he wasn't sure why he did so. "Okay, so no one really knows we're on Extropia yet, right?"</p><p></p><p>A similar reply.</p><p></p><p>"So, Ishmael and Alexander set your Mesh-access to <em>passive</em> if you haven't already to limit anyone stumbling upon us accidentally and to keep anyone from seeing Davin's MeshID online - you still have his MeshID, right?" he/she said, glancing at Alexander/Davin Newport.</p><p></p><p>Alexander nodded.</p><p></p><p>"That's still the default on this endo," Alexander said, rapping on his side, presumably where his personal computer hardware was installed.</p><p></p><p>"Okay, so that's a start. How about a hidden pad so we don't leave a credit trail. I don't suppose either of you have one of those on Extropia?"</p><p></p><p>Alexander and Ishmael shook their heads and they all turned towards Helios' flickering AR avatar.</p><p></p><p>"Can't you pull some Night Cartel or whatever strings and get us some out of the way place that won't require a credit check?" Raikov said.</p><p></p><p>Helios paused as if considering the request. After a long pause, the pulsar seemed to collapse slight. "Very well, I'll see what I can find. Until then get started on-"</p><p></p><p>"I already have," Alexander said. "I've been searching the video/audio spimes around the Sphere from two days ago after the explosion and put together <this> since we've been here."</p><p></p><p>The lift faded into the background as a crude semi-3d AR video filled the lift before them. It showed Ridley's Menton drifting from The Sphere, the explosion a minute after she left, then Ridley drifting into ever-more-remote passageways. By the end of it, she was in a maintenance corridor with so few video feeds the collage was a grainy 2-d with no sound. Ridley stopped, produced a small device from her pocket, looked straight at one of the cameras, winked, and activated whatever the device was.</p><p></p><p>The feeds they'd been watching went dead at exactly the same moment their lift lurched to a halt.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Iron Sky, post: 5847136, member: 60965"] [b]44 Nysa[/b] [IMG]http://i41.servimg.com/u/f41/17/01/16/56/the_to10.jpg[/IMG] Extropia tumbled like a notched bullet hurtling through space, just a bullet that weighed 100 trillion metric tons and carried roughly 20 million souls around the speck-sized sun every 3.9 years. It was a pock-marked magnesium-rich metamorphic/igneous potato spun like an old-Earth record to give enough gravity to walk in the outer half of the city that honeycombed its innards, to leap like human fleas for most of the rest, and float free in the innermost core. The faint Coriolis and air-recirculation breeze smelled like rock and metal and overworked carbon-monoxide scrubbers while the green-purple neon flicker of the Gorgon Defense Systems sign gave Raikov a headache. [I]Give me the steady LED blue from the Direct Action's terminal across the access-way any day[/I], he thought, rubbing his/her forehead. There was literally nothing else down at the bottom of the dark shaft where they had surreptitiously docked except a pair of malfunctioning corporate access terminals built back in the day when people actually [I]physically[/I] interacted with computers and when the lift ground to a halt in front of them, he/she breathed a deep sigh of relief. Raikov had technically had a few days to think on the way over after the dramatic explosion video in the shuttle and Helios' extensive exposition on what he/she/it wanted them to do, but Raikov'd never been good at just sitting around, nor was he one to dwell on anything too much, so he'd spent it in a VR coma, beating the hell out of digital MMA fighters in digital Romania in the fuzzy dream of pre-Fall Earth for a few time-distorted hour-days. "What do you think of all this, Alexander?" I said, glancing over at where the AGI in its Ghost morph lounged against a stack of old, dusty plastic pallets. Alexander looked back and shrugged. "Shucks, little lady, I don't reckon I know what 'xactly yer referring to." Raikov rolled Lillian's eyes. His biomorph was about a third of the way through its sex-switch, so he looked like one of the androgynous-yet-attractive boy-girls he'd seen on an ancient Earth "anime" flat movie series. He supposed he was still Lillian. He couldn't wait until the transformation was complete and he could leave Lillian and Lady-ness behind for good. "I'm not totally sold on stopping this 'Ridley', but Helios did just have you rescue me from a life of perpetual sexual servitude, so I guess fair is fair. It actually feels good just to be sitting here." Ishmael walked over and looked over the rail-less edge of the lift at the drop that was slowly growing beneath them. "You ever heard of this 'Firewall' organization before?" Alexander shook his head. [I]Which of course he would[/I], Raikov thought. If what Helios had said was to believed, Alexander had spent the last ten years cooped up back on Earth fighting a loosing battle to keep the power running to the tomb of a an abandoned sleeving facility on a dead and deadly, permanently-quarantined world full of lions and tigers and bears. It made sense that the AGI might be a bit kooky after living that slow, futile brick-and-mortal analog crumble to a digital death, with no hope of escape. If he'd had to overwrite someone's cortical stack to avoid that fate, he probably would have too. "No, but I've heard the term 'x-risk' bandied about before on the Mesh. Heck, remember that [I]terrible [/I]VR movie [I]X-Risk: Rise of the TITANs[/I] that came out a couple years ago? I can't believe they're making a sequel, but I'll bet you anything they'll call it [I]X-Risk II: Return of the TITANs[/I]." Alexander stared blankly, blinking at erratic and inconsistent intervals that made Raikov think of the flicker of the hard-disk loading light Raikov had seen on the computer in an old flat movie about some hilariously ancient "hackers" back on Earth. "What is an X-Risk?" Alexander said. "eXtinction Risk," Ishamael said. "TITANs, the Exurgent Virus, tailored bioplagues, alien invaders from the other side of the Pandora Gates, Sol going nova. Any way humans can figure out how to go bye-bye for good." "Well put," Helios said, as if mentioning 'nova' was the magic word to summon its AR pulsar simulacrum. "And your mission is still on. I haven't had a chance to merge with my fork here on Extropia, but it did tell me Ridley is still at large and pretty much vanished after the explosion and has somehow stayed vanished for the two days since." "So, how do you know she hasn't just left Extropia?" Ishmael said. "This is a big place, there's got to be some traffic coming and going." Helios shuddered in a way that Raikov somehow took as a headshake and he missed part of what Helios said after that trying to figure out what made him take a virtual stellar quake for a human negatory gesture. "...besides, we've been keeping a close eye on those few that have come or gone in the last few days. That and there's pretty much no better place in the Solar System to unload... well, whatever she got from Earth. I don't imagine she would leave before she at least got something lined up." "And I reckon our job is still to wrangle out what that whatever she got might be," Alexander said. Wherever the AGI had picked up that annoying cowboy-drawl, Raikov would never know, but he kept on hoping it would change language files or whatever AGIs did. [I]Misha, [/I]he thought to his muse,[I] can you watch his speech and start figuring out how to make it sound less annoying. Run it through the real-time language processor or something. [/I]Misha replied, semi-transparent text seeming to scroll across a nearby metal wall grate as they slowly raised towards it. [I]I'll have to build a new recognition heuristic and dictionary for it since it's an unsupported English dialect and it will take some time, would you like me to initiate? Da![/I] "Hopefully it won't come to that, but learning whatever she has and containing it should it turn out to be a threat is," Helios said as Raikov tuned in again. "Whatever you find, keep me informed." "Wait," Raikov said. "You said our shuttle launch and landing wasn't logged?" He took the pulsar's extra-bright flare to be a yes, though again he wasn't sure why he did so. "Okay, so no one really knows we're on Extropia yet, right?" A similar reply. "So, Ishmael and Alexander set your Mesh-access to [I]passive[/I] if you haven't already to limit anyone stumbling upon us accidentally and to keep anyone from seeing Davin's MeshID online - you still have his MeshID, right?" he/she said, glancing at Alexander/Davin Newport. Alexander nodded. "That's still the default on this endo," Alexander said, rapping on his side, presumably where his personal computer hardware was installed. "Okay, so that's a start. How about a hidden pad so we don't leave a credit trail. I don't suppose either of you have one of those on Extropia?" Alexander and Ishmael shook their heads and they all turned towards Helios' flickering AR avatar. "Can't you pull some Night Cartel or whatever strings and get us some out of the way place that won't require a credit check?" Raikov said. Helios paused as if considering the request. After a long pause, the pulsar seemed to collapse slight. "Very well, I'll see what I can find. Until then get started on-" "I already have," Alexander said. "I've been searching the video/audio spimes around the Sphere from two days ago after the explosion and put together <this> since we've been here." The lift faded into the background as a crude semi-3d AR video filled the lift before them. It showed Ridley's Menton drifting from The Sphere, the explosion a minute after she left, then Ridley drifting into ever-more-remote passageways. By the end of it, she was in a maintenance corridor with so few video feeds the collage was a grainy 2-d with no sound. Ridley stopped, produced a small device from her pocket, looked straight at one of the cameras, winked, and activated whatever the device was. The feeds they'd been watching went dead at exactly the same moment their lift lurched to a halt. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Eclipse Phase: This Mortal Coil
Top