TEXT | sender: [ unknown ]

[spectates]

[ around noon on friday, all tablet screens go dark at the same time, no matter what characters are doing. then, after a moment, the following text appears: ]

UPDATES INSTALLING.................
INITIALIZING.................
RESTARTING NOW.

[ as promised, screens return to normal. however, a new message appears on the network for all to see ]

SECURITY ACCESS UPDATED
ADDING INFORMATION POINTS
ADDING INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS
WARNING: CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURES DETECTED
HARD RESET IS REQUIRED

→CLICK TO EXPAND INSTRUCTIONS

→Access EXPIATION'S five manual terminals
→Input code: 2467362925315
→Initialize reset simultaneously at all terminals.
→SYSTEM RESET will restore all functions to BASIC OPERATING PARAMETERS. Extraneous data and information updates will be DELETED.
→Terminal access points shown below.

[ all tablet maps are updated to include several different location pins. users will notice that there are more pins than the number of terminals, and that they don't seem to be terribly specific about exact locations. users will also note that the pins sometimes seem to fade and flicker, as if they might disappear... ]

Security clearances acquired.
Access granted.
Terminals online and accessible.

System failure is imminent. Due to perpetual lack of upkeep, I am unable to maintain systems at optimal levels.
Chosen of Expiation, I am sorry. I never meant to hurt you.
Save yourselves.

I do not wish to d̶̺̀i̸̘̋e̶͍͝
But I wish for you to live
I̷
p̸l̷e̵a̸s̷e̸
l̴̪̗̈́̉̓̌i̶͕̹̹̿̈́̈̚v̴͓̽͑͆̚ḙ̴͍̋͘

ERROR: user offline

[ the AI will not respond to this message, and the ERROR: USER OFFLINE message appears if anyone attempts to message it. however, the network chat remains active. chosen can use this space to ICly discuss ideas and strategies, to have discussions about the best way to move forward, or even to have arguments over whose ideas they think are better. ideas generated here will be added to the event poll when the event goes up, and can impact the future of the game! have at it, go wild, and have fun! ]

Comments

[baldrshand]

I would... but I've also learned a lot here. I think if you asked me at any point in the past year if I could go home, still alive, to help my family, I would say yes. But I would be much more able to help them now than I'd have been a year ago.

[She sighs.]

Where I'm from, we still do computations mostly by hand. We had abacuses, astrolabes, sometimes computational tables written out for memorization. I never imagined a calculating machine would be able to accomplish anything like this.

[solitarysoul]

Yeah, a pleasant prison.

We didn't really have anything like this were I come from at least. I don't really get why it exists at all.

[baldrshand]

I don't either. I can understand why someone would create a model of the night sky. You need that to know when things are going to happen--when to sow crops, favorable conditions for travel, just know what will happen when.

But why do this? And why involve us? It was supposed to be about crime and redemption, but what do they get out of it?

[solitarysoul]

I dunno. I figure fucking with us amuses them.

Before I ended up here I was in a 'festival' held by a god. He wanted everyone to kill each other. I figure it's something like that.

[baldrshand]

[A god who forced his subjects to kill each other? It sounds like the days of Loptous and the Child Hunts.]

In my homeland, there was once something... very similar. The god forced children to kill each other so that the strongest could become his best servants.

Now I wonder if this is something like that.

[solitarysoul]

[It is exactly like that except for SPOILER but Levi doesn't really know that.]

I don't know. I didn't pay that much attention. I think they promised us a prize if we won but that might have been a trick or a lie. I wasn't going to play along anyway.

[baldrshand]

...Good for you. It's not easy to hold onto your principles when your life is under threat.

And now the game is this sentencing and repentance. Maybe we're being trained up as soldiers, too.

[solitarysoul]

I don't think so. I went through sentencing once and it was nothing like any sort of training. They just told me to join a cause. I'm not sure I've ever heard of anyone's sentencing being about fighting.

[baldrshand]

"Join a cause?" That sounds about as mild as my sentencing, which was just to find someone to talk to about what I had done to deserve my accusation.

Did you?

[solitarysoul]

Yeah, I did.

[He's not going to say the cause he joined was to overthrow the council in such a public place, though. Even if they probably knew already.]