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

[mightymorphin]

Who'd be giving up on it? The AI? Or... whoever put together the simulation?

[That's one of the things that's bugging them, knowing that a simulation had to be programmed by someone. Morph couldn't imagine what might lie on the other side of the simulation, and for all their suspicion that this might be more an experiment than a prison, they couldn't back that theory up with anything.]

[entreats]

I was imagining the latter.

[ Not that they.. know who is behind it. That complicates matters more. But while Ange doesn't know all that much about the AI, and doesn't know how to feel about it, it definitely kind of seems like it is just carrying out something that it has been told to do by something else. ]

Someone must have set all of this up in the first place, right? I don't think any of us have any idea as to why though, even after all this time. I even tried asking the AI about it before, but that didn't get me anywhere. [ She sighs. ] There are too many questions.

[mightymorphin]

Sticking everyone with a crime is pretty much the only clue we have about their motivations, right? There's no telling if the simulation was even made by humans. It could've been aliens. Or robots. Alien robots?

[The possibilities were endless, and that made it all just a teensy bit scarier.]

Hopefully the architects of this whole thing will appreciate our can-do attitude.

[entreats]

[ Honestly?

Ange isn't ruling out alien robots either. ]

When I first showed up here, I thought they were witches. [ She admits.

Even though it feels kind of embarrassing to do so now, with all this computer talk, but.. well, Morph hasn't seemed like they'd make fun of her so far, so maybe she can at least say this much. ]

Because that's what I was used to back home. Witches dragging me into different worlds. I thought the same thing had just happened again when I suddenly found myself here.

[mightymorphin]

Woah, really? Witches can do that?

[It does sound a little strange, but they're also from a world that has actual time travelers, so it wasn't super outside the realm of possibility. Especially not in a place like Aldrip.]

I'm pretty sure magic exists where I'm from, but I haven't met anyone that can use it. [Or so they think.] What I've seen of magic-users here made it look powerful, though.

[entreats]

Yeah. I honestly thought that traveling between different worlds was kind of a more common thing.

[ Especially when Ange doesn't feel particularly special, but.. welp, it sure happened to her, didn't it! ]

But I don't think I've heard of many people at all having done it before in this place.

[mightymorphin]

I don't know that it happens on my world. Time travel, sure. There's a couple of guys who bounce around trying to keep the future from being a dystopia. Actual different worlds or dimensions is something else entirely.

[entreats]

Even though you have all those other powers? [ Like she said - she's learned it's pretty uncommon here, but she did imagine that if it would happen in any world, it might have been one of the ones with all the mutants in it.. Especially when the power of every single one she's met seems to be so different from the next. ]

Are there some sort of limit to your powers? Don't you know a mutant who's powerful enough that they would be able to handle this situation and get us all out of here?

[mightymorphin]

Uhh... well, no. Powerful mutants are pretty rare as it is. Even when Jean was possessed by a cosmic entity, she never displayed any powers that involved dimension-hopping.

Even the time travelers were making it happen based on the technology in the future, not their own powers.

[entreats]

.. oh.

[ It's a little disappointing, but.. she's aware it's not like they can help it. It's just that apparently, more than Ange imagined, there's-- ]

So there's some sort of upper limit to what mutants are capable of?

[mightymorphin]

That's a pretty hard thing to measure, y'know. There's more mutants being born as time goes on, so maybe we're just not to the point of dimension-hopping yet. None of the Omega level ones I know of could pull it off.

[entreats]

I just know very little about how any of this stuff works. [ She clarifies.

After all, she may be living with Scott, but she honestly hadn't asked him all that much about the mutant stuff. Especially since there seemed to be a part of him that was just kind of upset about it all, and she didn't want to accidentally tread on that. ]

I was kind of trying to compare it to the witches in my world, but it all seems very different. Are those Omega level people supposed to be the strongest mutants?

[mightymorphin]

Don't worry about it. We're all from pretty different worlds, so the rules are gonna be different too, right?

And yeah, they are. Being an Omega level mutant basically means you have powers that could destroy the planet or mess it up on a fundamental level. Picture someone that can control huge weather systems or mess with the Earth's entire electromagnetic field.

[entreats]

[ There's a very slight pause, like she's imagining it.. ]

.. That seems like a lot.

[ Sure, there are beings back in Ange's world that could surely also do something like that, but for some reason they haven't really chosen to do so.. Maybe they don't think it's entertaining enough for them, the girl figures. ]

I mean, that could easily end up being a really bad thing. Are all of you even on the good side?

[mightymorphin]

Nope. One of our longest-standing villains is Omega-level. We had to stop him from destroying the planet pretty recently, too.

[Magneto wasn't normally the type of person to want to wreck things quite that badly, but it had been a uniquely bad situation, and too long of a story to get into right now.]

We have a couple of Omega-level mutants on our own team, thankfully. It means we have the firepower we need to deal with some really serious threats.