thisavrou_log | A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

Who: Anyone and Everyone
When: December 19 onwards
Where: Avagi... and beyond?
What: Your past, someone's present, and potential futures.
Warnings: Body horror and an associated image in the second part. Otherwise, label your content.

While the Ingress may have been destroyed, the energy powering it remains alive and well. The residents of Avagi know this intimately: from their own arrivals, from the portals that have appeared, and the short-lived changes (as well as longer-lived possessions) that have cluttered the station over the last few months. Recently, whatever force is manipulating this has even gone so far as to revive the dead—demonstrating, perhaps, an unwillingness to relinquish those it has brought to this place.

To say this entity is seasonal would probably be a mistake. In the heart of Avagi's storms, there are no stars to mark the seasons, much less connect them to a certain planet's holidays—or the literature thereon. Still, from luck or from intention, the current fluctuations comes with a certain theme...

Past

It starts at the turn of the station clock's midnight. Flickers at the edge of one's vision. Indistinct whispers, ghosting through walls and down corridors. Those who are sleeping will be untroubled, but the wakeful and wary can watch the light build: from flickers to pulses, from pulses to pools. Over several hours, silver mist fills rooms and corridors, varying from a thin veil to dense, obscuring fog. If you step into the mist, you'll feel a sense of displacement; of sound and color, energy and a shift of life. Ingress travel.

Except... not quite.

Shortly after entering the mist, you'll find yourself free of disorientation and apparently free of physical form, unable to interact with your surroundings. As a quasi-ghost, you've been transported to somewhere and somewhen—a location from the past, back on a world of someone’s origin or from any place you've been since first arriving through the Ingress. While these experiences can vary wildly, some things remain consistent:

The past matters: These visits to the past are not repeats of idle afternoons—each has emotional significance to someone currently on Avagi.
The past cannot be changed: As real as any given scenario seems, you're fundamentally incapable of altering it. The past event will play out as it did in real life and dissipate when it reaches an ending.
Trying has consequences: Attempting too hard to interfere increases the emotional significance, and will consequently draw onlookers further into the scene. You may find yourself anchored to any participant in the scene: first physically (experiencing the scene through their eyes) and then emotionally (experiencing their emotions and thoughts). If drawn in too deeply, you may lose track of your own nature during the experience, drowning in the sense of being someone else..
You are not alone: While immersed in a scene, you'll see nothing but the history playing out. However, at the its conclusion, the fog will once again displace the world around. As it melts away, you'll find themselves back in Avagi's halls—and face to face with whoever else was also viewing that piece of the past.

Present

Whether through one memory or several, eventually, the fog disperses. Only a faint mist remains, gathered in corners of the station's halls. It's simple enough to avoid, and nothing obstructs efforts to return to your rooms, your friends, or any other destination. Nothing, that is, except finding them.

The layout of the halls has shifted. The clutter you so painstakingly cleared is back. The GPS on your ACE mistakenly reports that you are floating off in space far outside the station, and any efforts to locate or call your companions results in glitchy static. Something is interfering with your calls—more effectively than the distance between worlds.

Inference and intuition are all you have to put together the pieces. The layout has changed, but the construction stayed the same. You're still on the former Ingress station. But not the same area that you called home. This is a different section of Avagi.

An inhabited one.

Dank, warm air pulses in and out of the vents in odd rhythms. Water damage stains the walls, and some seep dark liquid. There's an odd symphony in the distance: four notes, hummed to a pattern that buzzes in the back of your head. It's possible to wait it out. But if you do explore, you might come across your friends. And together, you might find the source.

Further in, a wall of flesh fills the pathways, rising and falling with intermittent, massive draws of air. A fluid wash of features glues it to the bulkheads. Claws and eyes, hands and faces: half-made bodies shifting in and out of recognition with each pulse of breath. And always with the same gold glow beneath the skin. It's a familiar shade, to those who witnessed Thisavrou's destruction.

It's the being who destroyed it.

Those who flee will escape her notice. Those who wait may watch in secret for a time. Mother's focus seems to be elsewhere...or, perhaps, something else is hiding your presence here from her.

Any attack on Mother's flesh shape, or any overt effort to draw her attention, will meet violent, immediate reprisal. You'll experience an immobilizing psychic force before the flesh consumes you. But whether you hide or fight or run, your time on this section of the station will end in the same way: a burst of brilliant, clear light providing transport back home.

Future

You flash back to reality amidst a burst of light—but this time, you recognize your surroundings. You have returned to the Avagi you know, and the silver mist that filled the halls has cleared.

Over the next few days, most of Avagi will settle back into a state of normalcy. The ACEs are working properly, and station residents will have all the time they need to compare notes on their experiences—and, perhaps, on any plans to act on what they've learned.

Avagi is not as empty as it seemed. And one place in particular will remain changed in the wake of the event. The Ingress Memorial, once inactive, has come to life, emitting a swirl of silver light that shifts and flickers, like the light of the portal it once contained. For the next five days, it will offer a vision to anyone approaching it: a single, brief scene from their potential future.

Players have the following options:

Canon future: Your character catches a glimpse of their future if they were to return from Avagi to their own world. This consists of a canon event.
Avagi future: Your character catches a glimpse of their own future on Avagi. This can be a short-term future (i.e. an actual vision of a future scene you plan to play out), or a potential longer-term one in which they stayed on Avagi for months or years.
Storm future: Your character catches a glimpse of themselves as a Mirtos—a desiccated husk and incarnation of the storm's hunger. As seen in Thisavrou's destruction, these creatures are carried by the storms and destroy all they come across.

The visions can observed by any present when the Memorial is approached. And while the past is fixed, the future is always capable of being altered. What will you do regarding yours?

[OOC: Check out the OOC post for more information!]

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[As the memory fades, Alan can’t help but chuckle at Yori’s remark.]

I wonder how that conversation would’ve went.

[Would programs care about fame in a world they’d never seen? Tron was certainly a star in Alan’s own world, though not one any would mistake for a real person, anymore than any other superhero.]

It would’ve certainly made for an interesting welcome if our worlds actually met—hopefully a warm one.

[Alan can see the logic behind it; even the most hard-hearted of individuals would have a hard time bringing themselves to harm worlds and people that had formed the fables of their childhood.]

[Yori chuckles, tone a little wry.]

I doubt he could ever have included any explanation.

[Alan-One isn't locked out of giving logical reasons, but Flynn certainly seems to be. She's accepted it as a personal fault and not an attack. That doesn't mean she likes it.]

[She hopes he's right about the convergence of worlds, because that would be a better motive for Flynn than anything he seems likely to say.]

If all this gave Sam a reason to appreciate the programs he's going to have to take care of, I suppose it's worth something.

[The mention of Sam gets a smile.]

Well, he definitely liked Tron well enough. He had the toys, posters, comics—all of it.

[Though Alan feels a bit embarrassed now at playing the part of his program for his godson when he was younger.]

It wasn’t just Sam. An entire generation of users was brought up on this stuff. [And if the two worlds ever did collide, far more users than Sam might find themselves with programs to befriend and safeguard.] As strange as it feels looking back, I can see why Flynn told these stories the way he did.

[Toys, posters, and comics of Tron. Toys, posters, and comics that included Ram? Included Yori herself? It's such a strange concept.]

But even if the Users had that introduction to Tron, it wouldn't encourage them to treat their own computer systems better. Not unless Flynn gave some different explanations.

[She can understand the stories, but not how they stop short of actual usefulness.]

[Alan can only shrug. Whatever grand plan Flynn had been angling for hadn’t come to fruition, thanks to Clu’s intervention. Now, they can only speculate as to what the next step would have been.]

Maybe if he told them their own computers were filled with people just like Tron, it would’ve changed some minds—though it probably would’ve taken a face-to-face meeting to make sure of it.

[What had Flynn’s plans for that day been like? Did he have any at all? Alan has to believe he did.]

The truth would have had to come out eventually. From Flynn or from Sam… Neither of them would have kept it secret forever.

[That matches Yori's experience. Users are so forgetful of any program they aren't actually looking at, even when she has told them.]

What would you plan, if either of them told you?

[It's too late to change the past, but maybe not too late to make new plans. She's curious how Alan would approach the task for his own world.]

[Alan gives a small, rueful laugh at that.]

I’ve been thinking about that question a lot since… well, since I first met Tron, to be honest. I’ve thought up a few ideas, but I don’t know if any of them are good ones.

[He thinks it over for a few moments, trying to put his thoughts in order.]

It would have to start with users meeting their programs: maybe taking them into the system—maybe even having them stay there for a little while so they could see how the other side lives. If they could get to know their programs the same way I did Tron and Rinzler, I’m sure a lot of them would want just as badly to make things better for them.

[He's smiling now, but it's fading. If only things could be that simple.] A lot of times, I find myself wondering who I’d tell, but the truth is, once a few people know, it’ll only be a matter of time before they all know. And that means the knowledge will eventually get to people who’ll abuse it.

[There's no more smile now, just a far off, pensive look.] Though I suppose things can’t stay the way they are now, either.

[Meeting Tron should affect anyone, but especially his own User. Yori nods at the outlined plan, which gets around many of the doubt she's witnessed in trying to explain to Users why they should treat their technology nicely.]

[Alan-One's own misgivings are understandable, too, after the time they all spent on Calla's strict world. But to Yori, the scope of the problem as things are now is much more vivid than the potential for abuse in an unknown future.]

Anyone who tries to harm people knowing that they're people is an enemy we can all work to prevent and stop, but Users who send orders to wipe out programs and worlds without even knowing what's at stake...

[Yori shakes her head.]

It's so common, that would be all of you. I don't mind dying for you, but I'd like my death to matter.

[Yori’s words bring with them a now-familiar chill. Alan has had a long time to reflect on the things he’s done as a programmer—all the programs he’s so thoughtlessly deleted, entire systems he’s wiped out to replace them with something new. Most of the time, it’s too painful for him to dwell on it for long and he does his best to push it to the back of his mind and instead focus on doing better now. But it’s impossible to ignore when he's speaking to one of the people who his actions might have very well directly affected. He had worked at ENCOM for a long, long time, after all.

How many of Yori’s friends has he killed?]

I’m sorry. [The words slip out quiet and guilty. It’s only a moment before Alan snaps out of it, painfully aware of how little that apology means if he fails to act on it.]

You’re right. Even if there are users who abuse their power, if it’s only some of us, then it’s less than there are now.

[He’s quiet for a few moments after that, thinking over what Yori has said. He's been agonizing over this issue for awhile and yet it's only now that one thing seems clear.] I suppose if I did let things continue as they are, the only thing I’d be protecting is our conscience.

[The guilt in Alan-One's face and voice prompts Yori to step closer, a tentative brush against his arm to help chase that look away.]

I don't blame you. I know you've always done your best.

[Impossible to know what Alan-One did or didn't do without hearing from the programs involved, which is exactly why she wants to increase communication between worlds. But at the very least, no matter what happened to Encom, it was Tron's User who protected them all from the MCP.]

Meeting you makes some of this mess worthwhile...seeing that, even if you get things wrong, you're worth fighting for.

[Proof that the MCP was always wrong, that Clu is wrong, that Users might be fallible but they can be kind and good and worth working for; working with, Yori dares hope. It's worth protecting their collective conscience, too, but not at the cost of total ignorance. She's not sure how to handle any of that.]

If anyone listens to the program point of view, it'll be better than things as they were.

[Alan doesn’t shy away from the comforting touch on his arm, but his gaze remains pensive.]

That’s kind of you to say. [Maybe it was his best considering how little he knew then. But it still doesn’t feel like enough.

Still, as Yori continues, Alan manages a small smile.]

Maybe some of us are worth fighting for. [Yori’s user, for one.] But… what you said about dying for us… After meeting all of you, I can’t think of anything that would be worth that kind of cost.

[Rinzler, Tron, Yori, Ram… They’re only a handful of programs next to the hundreds Alan must have destroyed over his career. And yet, Alan would already give anything to keep them safe and alive.] I can only hope users back home will feel the same.

[It's difficult to even begin calculating a business network, not like Flynn's Grid, in which the Users don't expect to have the authority to delete anyone, in which none of the component systems ever go dark. Not just recognition but defense? It's much stranger than the best Yori had begun to hope for, in which the only deaths are truly necessary, explained and long delayed.]

[Helping Users is what programs are for, unless insane administrators try to take the place of a User and claim the same level of absolute power. But how can they make that gap between program and User smaller, the power less tempting?]

I hope so, too.

[She suspects Alan is too optimistic, but she can't argue with the sentiment.]

Start slow. The programs need to know acceptable ways to question an order as much as the Users need to know what orders not to give.

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A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

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