Entry tags:

August Event Log: Part I

Who: Everyone
When: August 9 and onward
Where: An unexpected destination
What: The newcomers go on a trip and end up far from where they expected
Warnings: Potential violence. Please label your content!

NOTE: PLEASE READ THIS OOC POST FIRST.

When the time comes for the travelers to go on the off-world trip that will help restore Thisavrou, they are not alone. Others who have settled on the planets longer and come to call them home are also prepared to travel; through the Ingress and do their part. Yet when the newcomers step through, whether they stepped through the Ingress seconds or hours apart, they will find that they have arrived at the same time, and only newcomers are in sight.

What awaits them is not a land of plenty. The land is barren, and dark storms in the sky resemble those held at bay by the Ingress complex—but much, much closer. Those who traveled on the Moira may recognize the landscape; though they have come through at a different point from the crash, they are on the Midway Hub. And there is no portal back. They are trapped.

hitting the road

Though some have been here before, the Midway Hub is not as they remember it. The storms fill the sky, leaving it dark and ominous even when they are not sweeping across the landscape—but they have clearly done so in recent times, and often. While never a lush land, large patches of ground an acre or more wide looking nothing more than utterly dead; the thistle that naturally grows is brittle, black and unable to be consumed even with the usual preparations to make it edible, and here and there animal corpses are found twisted into unnatural poses, but seemingly uninjured. These places are particularly concentrated near the broken Ingresses litter the landscape. While Midway Hub as a whole may seem naturally arid, these dead spots leave no hope that anything can possibly live there again.

The travelers have two options: stay where they are, or move on. While it might seem that they've been tricked into coming here and been left abandoned, those with the technological ability to do so may detect a sign of hope: a familiar energy source, far in the distance. Although none of the Ingresses they pass will ever work again, the faint energy shows that one still-functioning Ingress lies far in the distance, days away.

Although technological scanning or impressive memory of the landscape indicates that they are not separated from their destination by one of the gates that divide the land, they are also far from the shelter of the facility at the center of the Hub. Any attempt to travel in a direction other than that of the energy signal will result in a strange disorientation after several hours, bringing individuals back to their original path as though they've gone in circles. Meanwhile, though travelers will feel the need to slake their hunger and thirst through any natural water sources they discover, wildlife they can hunt for food and any supplies they have on them, if they don't find sustenance, they'll find that they will never pass out or reach the point of starvation. Instead, they'll be left alive and awake but feeling utterly hollow.

storm front

At regular intervals, the energy storms above descend onto the land, bringing not rain but violent clashes of negative energy and thunder so loud that nothing can be heard above it. The passing of the storms leaves some strange effects. The ground is warped and rotted by their touch, even solid stone degrading to a spongy surface. The air is tepid and oddly charged. Prolonged contact with air or ground will not supply energy, however — it drains it from organic and synthetic life alike.

Those who remember their last trip to the Hub, or simply explore in the right direction, may come across the cave complexes with their glowing surfaces and streams. The light is dimmer now, a sickly green, but drinking from the streams will still restore the energy lost, for a time. This time, however, the lethargy that inevitably follows is much more severe, and the drinkers are left with a raw, empty feeling leeching in from the wasteland around.

Those who are exposed to the storms, either by finding themselves in very close proximity or even closely observing them for too long as they approach, may lose their sight, or hearing, even much of the ability to feel touch — whatever sense they used in observation. What lingers in its place is a numbness. A hunger. And as time passes, the time between storms decreases; what seemed like hours between the storms becomes scarcely one, and their intensity grows.

wild life

Sentient beings are not the only ones affected by the storms; these creatures, attracted to sound and able to track by scent, and these panthers, which once looked normal but have been twisted by the storms into more monstrous forms, are numerous enough that travelers must be constantly alert for their presence. Though natural predators, the threat the creatures represent is not itself natural. They are also more aggressive. Some strange instinct drives them, not a need for food. While the panthers themselves can be caught and their meat cooked, it has little taste, offering nutrition but not satisfaction.

old familiar places

Although it's difficult to track the passage of time without day-night cycles, after what seems like more than a week of the travelers' unexpected trip, the storms abruptly come rushing in at the group of travelers, as if they're herding the group to move faster toward their destination and the Ingress energy that awaits them. The true nature of that destination becomes clear when debris appears on the horizon; the energy comes from the wreckage of the Moira, the interstellar ship that crashed here months ago.

Despite the trauma of impact, large sections of the ship remain surprisingly intact, though few of them are properly vertically oriented. If travelers are able to make their way inside the damaged sections of the ship, they'll find familiar territory, if they are one of those who traveled on the Moira, as well as shelter—something that's increasingly necessary as the storms seem to center over the ship, leaving little hope for survival outside. Useful items may be scavenged from the ship if they are willing to explore, but no personal items of any kind remain.

Strangely, the deeper travelers go into the crashed ship, the less familiar their surroundings will seem, regardless of their orientation. The inward-leading paths into the ship become generic metal, and as with the travel on the surface of the planet, they may find themselves back where they started. And no matter how far they go or how hard they try, they will find themselves unable to make it to the Ingress chamber itself...for now.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Navigation... Aloy's never heard the word, not in this context, but she can guess - and then a moment later, she doesn't have to, as the woman explains it to her in simple terms without being patronising. The last person she had explaining technology and how the world worked to her never failed to be either patronising or downright caustic about it.

The idea of 'between stars' seems phenomenal. It's such a big idea it feels for a moment like it doesn't fit in her mind, like her mind has to expand to really understand it. And she wants to.

As she looks around the room, though, her slightly awed expression falls for a moment as she realises: "All that information - the records, all that history... Is it gone?"

Maybe it was copied - she doesn't know much about technology, but does know that can be done - or maybe it's still somewhere in the computers here, retrievable in some way. But it seems a terrible shame for everywhere that ship went, what it 'saw' (in a manner of speaking), what its crew did, to be lost.

"When the crew left, we carried a copy all the way to the Savrii, so they have everything intact." Yori's not sure if that's any sort of comfort, considering. She doesn't want to analyze it over again right now. An uncertain grimace is all the conclusion she can offer.

The cores here don't look as badly damaged as she'd feared they must be after the crash. Dark, but not shattered. "I'd like to rescue these computers and find out what's left. I just don't know if we have the time to focus on them."

So many other urgent things...it won't do these programs any good for Yori to starve herself of energy or fail to help her fellow travelers find a way onward.

She traces the cracked edge of a hologram projector with a gentle finger. They won't learn anything new from these peripherals, but Yori hates the thought of abandoning the faithful programs even more the second time.

A look of relief crosses Aloy's face at hearing the data is safe...but it's not to this woman for some reason. In fact...

"What else is in the computers, if the information's been copied?"

She doesn't know what else would be important, if not everything they learned and experienced, but then, she knows her knowledge of computers is almost non-existent. There's the Focus on her ear, right now dormant and just a tiny triangle of metal, but almost all the rest of her knowledge of technology comes from ruins far older than this.

Not much that matters to most Users. To a program who never expected to leave the Encom computer system in the first place, it's more complicated and also hard to explain.

"The programs that usually help us work with the data are still there." Yori glances up at the User, down to the cracks. She doesn't like to mark herself as only a program to strangers, but she needs to advocate for programs who are only lines of text.

The Moira crew had done their best to carry out all the crew, even the artificial crew...but not all the quiet mainframe programs in the ship computers.

She pushes a breath out. "Not everyone recognizes them as people, but I'm sure they are." Far more complex than an analysis program written in 1982 on comparatively primitive hardware.

She mouths the word programs. Every day is a school day for Aloy here, and she's probably about to make things even harder to explain.

"I'm sorry - is a program like an AI?" AIs, she does know, are housed in computers, or in mechanical bodies, or machine cores. They're huge, complex, and no less people than she is. Why would her creator, Gaia - one of her mothers, in a sense - be any less a person than Aloy?

"I don't know much about computers - I've talked to a couple, and I've got my Focus here..." At this, she points to the tiny triangle of metal clipped to her ear. "But where I'm from, we don't know anything. My tribe think technology is taboo." She grins wryly.

"I don't, but that doesn't make it easy to learn."

It's a common question. Yori knows better than to take offense, even though she's not fond of putting all the programs she loves in their User-assigned level of significance. She can't turn down the chance to explain computers to someone so open to learning.

"AI...artificial intelligence is designed to be intelligent," Yori says, extending one hand up toward the screen where Cortana had once spoken to her. "The people who create it usually recognize that, respect it to some degree." Not that things always go well, by any means.

She holds out another hand, lower down. "Programs are simple code written to do something more specific. Display stars, record words. Most of the time, the people who write them don't recognize them as intelligent because they're not designed to communicate."

With a quiet sigh, she folds both arms. "But more often than their Users expect, programs become people in their own ways, talking with one another inside their computer. I know they're not as high a priority as User lives, but they're still important." If only to other programs.

If technology is forbidden, it explains the tone of the questions. Is the Focus a computer like the TAB? "There's always more to learn out here," Yori agrees. "I don't mind teaching you what I can. If you want."

She nods along with the explanation. The only AI she's ever known of is Gaia - created because only she could be intelligent enough to do everything that needed to be done. Detoxifying and repopulating a whole planet needed an intelligence.

Lines of code written to do more specific tasks. Like the sub-functions that Gaia controlled, maybe - which only became self-aware by accident twenty years ago. Or smaller - the pieces of those sub-functions, building blocks they couldn't exist without. Their minds.

She's trying to understand this on her own terms as best she can.

"I'd really like that," she says with a small smile. "Maybe once we get out of here - however we're going to do that."

The Ingress. Sure - however they find it.

"So, Users are...people like you and me, right?" It seems logical.

The Ingress is so unpredictable. "Or if getting out of here takes long enough that we have time to spare." If they have to work on the Moira's systems, technical knowledge might need enough hands to justify teaching anyone who was willing to learn.

The inclusive phrasing startles Yori more than she'd be willing to admit to, and leaves her with a dilemma. She can't flat lie to the User without completely breaking trust. In this case, she might mean both the User's faith in her honesty and her own faltering ability to offer trust at all.

"People outside a computer who use it," she confirms the broad definition. That does include her these days, which is a new shock every single time she looks at her TAB. But it isn't accurate enough to let her get away with leaving it unqualified, not for someone she hopes might be an ally.

The Savrii and Clu himself were already well aware of her origins and weaknesses, anyway, and Yori hasn't been keeping it a secret when she needs to make a point. Still, she's uneasy drawing attention to the fact.

She winces and looks down at her folded arms, one hand curled tense. "I was actually written as a program, though, before the Ingress dropped me outside the computer." Or not the Ingress? Cranky illogical world-snatching by whatever name it prefers. "I still don't know quite how I can be out here now."

A program outside a system shouldn't even be possible.

It shouldn't surprise her that she's said something odd at this point. Apparently everything she does and thinks here is odd. In this case, though, she doesn't initially understand what she did - after all, the woman tells her straight away she was right anyway.

She doesn't, for a moment, understand the explanation that follows either. Written as a program. Dropped outside the computer. Aloy looks from her to the computers around them. Then back. She looks and talks and acts like a perfectly normal human.

Is this what's inside all the computers she's seeing right now? And everyone abandoned them?

"...Oh." She sounds a little embarrassed for assuming...but how was she supposed to know? For a second, she tries to figure out how that's possible. Then--

"Well, I don't know how I got here - or how any of us got here... If I went home and told people about any of this, they'd think I was insane." So what's one more phenomenon she can't understand? She didn't know what a program was a minute ago.

(The words "written as a program" suddenly sound very familiar, as she thinks about it, but she can't quite grasp where from.)

"So, uh... Is it really different? Out here compared to in there." And here come the questions.

Insanity is a state of illness, of inaccuracy. Yori tries to picture explaining any of these adventures to the programs back in Encom. Tron would listen at least, but any claim to have walked with Users in their own world would have gotten her mocked at best, or else derezzed fast by anyone who shared either the Master Control Program's desire to hoard every claim to power or a pressing need to be rid of malfunctioning programs.

"There are some differences," she answers, tone pensive. "Details. The way the sky should light up, and the way there's no pulse of energy outside. But I've run across enough similarities to keep surprising me even now, so I expect they'd surprise you, too. I never would have believed Users were so much like programs. Stubborn, like my friends. So often kind, so often mistaken or wrong."

The Savrii are defending their system from identified threats, including the newcomers. The Moira was a system under attack from multiple threats that never managed to mount enough defense. Within Encom Yori used to hear reports from systems that went silent, but there must be better methods of defense than the murderous plots of the MCP.

"I never know whether to be amused or terrified about that," she concludes wryly. The Users themselves don't know what they're doing, so how can she check her conclusions? "I just wish we could all work together better."

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August Event Log: Part I

hitting the road

storm front

wild life

old familiar places

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