Nasuverse Fate/Revelation Online - At the Dusk of Knowledge

Mokofooja

Well-Known Member
#1
daniel_gudman said:
Re: Proposed recursive fanfic of FRO
To: Mokofooja

Mokofooja said:
However, I also am interested in posting what I've written, for public critique and to breathe some life back into the crossover. Since FRO was your brainchild, I assume it would be polite to ask first for your permission - and perhaps provide you with a preview if you were so inclined.
Go for it!

I'm looking forward to seeing what you've got, so I'll be the first to read it when you start the thread!
My thanks to daniel_gudman for green-lighting this recursive fic.

Like Hardcore Heathen and his "A Mirror's Honest Reflection," I came away from the trapped in FRO discussion with stuff that I had to put into words.

On the one hand, I want to make it clear: I really like what daniel_gudman's got in store for FRO, and the personal touches Hardcore Heathen has given it as well.

Having said that, I also wanted to address topics that weren't critical to the original fiction's plot, and so were going to be glossed over. Stuff like foreign players in FRO, or alternate magic systems like Sacraments that Kayaba was not too familiar with, etcetera.

In these drafts, I hope to avoid conflict with the established storyline while actually creating new content based off of it, to provoke thought and discussion, and most importantly to entertain. But if conflict does occur, I would be more than happy for you guys to speak up, and to correct what I can; it would mean a lot to me.

And now, without further ado, enjoy Dusk of Knowledge.

001 - Diving Off the Deep End

0015 - Little Web on the Prairie

002 - To Move Immediately Upon Your Works

0025 - Historia Ex Machina

---

Prologue - The Manse

"This place doesn't look too haunted."

At Wong's remark, I rolled my eyes, while KakamaJosh groaned and put his face in his hands. Half-jokingly, PowPowLoosa reacted just as dramatically.

"You just had to say it! You just HAD to say it! Now you're gonna jinx us!" he hammed in his exaggeratedly hoarse voice.

"Chill. SAO isn't call of Resident Evil, and we've already done some practice," chuckled Wong. He stretched his arms a bit before bringing his fists together, a small habit he claimed previously was from his short-lived career in boxing.

I glanced around at the lonely residence in the middle of the sparse clearing. Several shattered huts and agriculture landscaping surrounded the manse, but weather and the animals of nature had long since weathered their outlines into disrepair.

"That's true, if it counts for anything," I concurred, "At least if there are fantasy zombies, they shouldn't spread the effect through biting. But there's still the whole difficulty with magic here, and this quest IS an escort mission-exorcism thing. We should prepare."

"Yup," said PowPow, lacking the theatrics of his last comment. Wong nodded as well and focused on his glove-covered arms, while PowPow tapped his spear twice on the ground, centering himself on it.

Kakama suggested, "let's make this place in front of the house the rally point if things go south." He unslung his own two-handed sword and placed his hand on it. Even though I couldn't use magic yet, I could see the long sword gain a reflective hue, and in my head I could almost hear the sound effect of sharpness.

"Alchemy this time?" I guessed. Kakama tilted his head in acknowledgement, his attention still on his sword.

Having learned more than one format of magic without specializing in one for whatever reason, KakamaJosh had taken to practicing a different one each time he needed a magical effect. Mechanically, the effects stayed roughly the same, but the game engine seemed to graphically manifest them differently, as if to insist that all the mumbo-jumbo between magecraft, alchemy, and runes really did separate them at the fundamental level.

By now I had seen him magically enhance his sword - [Reinforcement], the game called it - several times with each kind of magic. Default magecraft didn't seem to do anything visually, while runes tended to have a glowing symbol etched on the sword. Alchemy seemed to be a subgenre of normal magecraft, but it’s mechanics were geared more towards crafting than on-demand use, as Kakama had told me. As a crafting magic used to temporarily improve an object instead of making it from whole cloth, it was ultimately limited by the user’s own skills and knowledge about the item at hand, rather than by the potential of the item and resources itself. So thanks to Kakama’s limited knowledge of a “good sword,” my weapon was certainly shinier and sharper-looking, but still not as good as a magecraft enhanced weapon.

Inwardly, I dragged myself away from contemplating the art I had yet to wield, and looked at our fifth member, my sister. She had unlimbered her buckler and thrusting sword and was stretching out, even though it would obviously have no effect on her digital body's performance. She was nervous.

"You alright, Tirakima?" I asked as I drew my own arming sword. My shield was already equipped, as I preferred it that way out in the field.

"Oh, I'm fine," she brushed me off politely and calmly, also beginning to cast her magic on her equipment. "I'm just not into the horror stuff like you and your friends are. I'll try to ignore the surroundings and pretend I'm doing another fencing match."

"Just don't forget to use your buckler," I chided her. It must have been annoying for Tirakima, to finally get used to not using her off hand when she fenced; now she had to unlearn everything in order to get better at Sword Art combat.

"Oh, Moko? Can I do it this time?" requested Kakama.

"Get your hands off mah big bro!" Tirakima mocked him in her fake high-pitched sassy voice.

I snorted. "You guys are just fighting over me and my equipment. Am I that good of a guinea pig?"

It was good-natured ribbing that everyone was used to by now. Kakama touched my blade and then my shield quickly, making quick glowing marks -runes - on each, and then on my armor backing he sketched another mark. Patiently, our group waited, and as Kakama finished and slapped my back shoulder, we turned and walked towards the home. I mouthed a "thank you" to him.

In front of the building, Father Gabriel stood, his white stole fluttering in the breeze, hinting at his black cassock underneath. Approaching him, PowPow caught the the good father's attention and he turned to the spearman, the closest one in the party.

"It is good to see you again," he greeted us in English, a Latin accent flavoring it. "You are ready to confront the spirit?"

"We're good," PowPow replied. "Let's do this! Moko, you're calling the play this time!"

"Gotcha!" I acknowledged, jogging up next to PowPow. "Let's poke some eyes out."

"Follow me," Father Gabriel instructed, and the gloom of the house enveloped him. As he entered, we trailed behind him, close on his heels.

---

Having played or watched horror items like Amnesia, Sinister, Vanishing on 7th Street et al, I had half-expected the interior of the building to be stained brown and abandoned. Personal belongings and furniture would be randomly scatterred in a haphazard fashion; maybe they'd dump a good heaping of dust over everything and arrange irregular lighting everywhere even in the middle of day, all to give that impression of a hasty abandonment and lengthy absence of proprietors not unlike Chernobyl.

I was not disappointed.

"The spirit is bound to the ampitheatre," Father Gabriel said. "It's haunt as a whole, however, is particularly restless. Be on your guard."

"Ampitheatre? This place is big enough for that?" Wong pondered.

I looked around at the modest foyer. "If those are the offices over there, then perhaps it's at the back," I guessed.

"Wait, guys. Quiet."

"What?" I looked back at my sister, who had hushed us.

She cocked her head, looking around. "Listen."

Nobody moved.

PowPow was the first to speak, saying, "I don't...hear anything?"

"That's the point!" Tirakima hissed. "Wasn't there a constant wind blowing while we were outside!?"

"But we're inside now," I pointed out. "Of course there isn't going...to...be..."

Looking around the foyer again, I realized my mistake; all the windows had blown out, and a collapse on a part of the roof had fallen down in the west wing, joining the interior zone with the exterior zone and cementing it as [Still Outside].

And on second thought, the standard [Forest BGM] had stopped too. There was truly an absence of sound.

"Is something the matter?" queried Father Gabriel. He had stopped ahead, his cassock hidden by his stole, which was most definitely not ruffling from any sort of moving air.

"Nothing!" I called to reassure to him absentmindedly. But rather than put truth in my reassurance, I joined my party in warily examining our surroundings.

KakamaJosh squeezed his sword grip a little harder, throwing over his shoulder at us, "It could just be a weather change, but it's too-"

He ducked.

Above Kakama, a throwing hatchet loped over him and slammed blade first into the decaying wood column next to him. Everybody heard it's meaty thump - and saw the crimson red of a health bar come into focus above the hatchet.

"Eight o'clock!" Wong confirmed. To our left, abandoned tools, rubble, and weapons were slowly levitating into the air, more health bars emerging above them. Even as our party addressed our flanks, the background music started again, but this time with a very new and yet unheard [Strings and Waterphone BGM]. I glanced back towards the good father, and held back an inward groan.

As he made for the back of the mansion, the priest shouted, "Make haste! Time is against us!"

"More like game design is against us," I muttered under my breath. "We're still on the first floor and they're already throwing raydrics at us. Wong, Pows, on point!" I started hollering, "Tirakima, cover Gabe with me! Watch our back, Kakama! Remember, priority is stay alive, then keep Gabe alive!"

Our party surged. Off guard from the appearance of a new type of enemy, we reacted on instinct and rote instruction. PowPow and Wong sprinted up and past Father Gabriel. Guessing which door the good father was moving towards, Wong body-checked it instead of calling up the door menu, surprisingly bursting through without trouble. Behind him, PowPow sidestepped a self-hurled rock and parried an incoming scimitar blade, grunting. It attacked him again, sparks flying as the two weapons struck each other, and the angry crimson bar shrank.

"Guh! These guys take damage from being blocked," he shouted, then glanced at his spear. "But they wreck up your weapon if you block with it! My spear went down five percent!" He slashed at the scimitar, and backed through the door.

So if they respawn, then the battle becomes a speed check; we had to complete the exorcism before we lose all of our equipment, I thought to myself.

Even [Tomb of Horrors] didn't make these guys the very first encounter of the dungeon. What a terrible misfortune.

Tirakima [Bashed] aside an incoming coffee table with her buckler as she and I flanked Father Gabriel, the three of us going through the door next. Hastily, I deflected a set of silverware flying towards the good father's back with my own shield. Even though they wouldn't physically scratch the shield, they still made that torturous chalkboard screech as they collided with my trusty defense.

Pausing to repel an assault by a chair leg, Kakama unleashed a [Horizontal] at it, and the leg shattered as it's health bar emptied. Splinters flew everywhere - including into Kakama. He yelped.

"Ohmygoshohmygosh," Tirakima hyperventilated, "KAKAMA GET IN HERE!"

Hurriedly, she grabbed the door that Wong had battered open, and I backtracked to cover Kakama as he half-ran, half-dove for the opening. With a solid slam, Tirakima wrenched the door closed the moment we were both through, and I hammered my own weight against it, hard enough that [Object Collision] and [Damage Modelling] brought up the [Immortal Object] tag. Struggling, I tapped the door with my shield hand to see if it could be locked.

The door menu came up, but the [Lock] option, in Japanese text, was greyed out. Confused, I glanced down at the door handle, and realized that the door may or may not be [Immortal], but the lock most assuredly was not, thanks to Wong. [House fires] might not have been implemented yet, but it seemed [Simplified Vandalism] models were already in effect. I cursed incoherently.

"Kakama, you're alright?" demanded Tirakima behind me.

Getting up from the prone dive he had executed, Kakama held onto his long sword with his right hand as he dusted himself off. His health bar had chipped about ten percent when he took the wooden shrapnel head on.

"Got my face, got my armor, got my sword. Life. Is. Good," he snarked.

"If you're in one piece, then do us a favor and grab some of those benches there and bring them over!" I reprimanded him. "PowPow! Wong! Are we at the ampitheatre?"

"Yes!" Wong responded.

"Good! You guys cover Gabe!" Under my hands, the door shook violently as the possessed objects on the other side began pounding it. The [Strings and Waterphone BGM] grew louder.

Those cheeky developers! Giving aggressive mobs algorithms to attack physical obstacles in their pathfinding was only fair in Dwarf Fortress! Well, let's see how they like barricades, a la Les Mis!

Three benches came our way courtesy of Kakama, and my sister and I wedged them firmly against the door, floor, and nearby walls. As they vibrated a little and the frame rate dropped, I smirked as repeated [Object Collision] permutations reduced graphic performance locally. A little bit of revenge against a systematically unfair situation, I thought.

"---eclesiasticooo---"

I lost that thought as I turned around at the new voice.

"The hell? Another Spanish speaking NPC?" Kakama voiced everyone's thoughts.

Before us, the amphitheatre spread out like a classic Greek theatre, worn down benches on a semicircle hill gently sloping down to the stage. Similar to the wrecked foyer, a raiment of destruction and neglect punctuated the orderly lines and arcs, all topped by a toppled pulpit perched on the stage. Balconies rose behind us, and light streamed in from two smashed stained-glass window frames flanking the theatre; the light beamed onto the wall behind the pulpit.

And at the foot of the stage where the pulpit was, though we could see nothing there, everybody's hackles rose. I tasted bile. I could feel it rising up my throat.

"---eclesiasticooo---" the new voice repeated, a stage whisper gone morbidly threatening, "---no eres bienvenidooo---aquiii---"

Beside me, my sister, our other Spanish-fluent group member, paled further, mumbling, "a ghost with a grudge. We are so dead."

Even Father Gabriel seemed to be affected by it. "Felipe...," he said himself, lapsing back to his native language.

Suddenly, a windy gust smashed into the room, knocking us and Father Gabriel to the floor. Clouds of dust billowed from where it rested, and the sound of splintering wood and glass above us rang out as the miniature storm howled in our ears. When we recovered our sight and balance, I looked up to see several blood-red health bars appear. Some of the possessed objects’ AI must have pathed up through a second floor entrance; they now stood floating near the ceiling, hesitating.

Down below, though, the swirling dust did not stop and condensed near the fallen pulpit. A figure slowly emerged, thousands of individual particles coming together to form a humanoid shape from top to bottom. In response, Father Gabriel confronted it, his health bar soon mirrored by the figure's own angry red line of "life".

I double checked that I still had sword and shield in hand, sliding over inconspicuously to the good father. Crouching with spear out in front of him, PowPow coiled up like a spring, ready to move at a moment's notice. To his left, Wong bounced off his back into a centered stance, his fists coming up in a classic boxing form. I heard rather than saw Kakama and Tirakima shuffle up behind me, and raced to call the shots in my head.

Time to improv.
 

Mokofooja

Well-Known Member
#2
Chapter 1 - Diving Off the Deep End

November 6th.

"What about the proxy IP address? You find out how to get a Japanese IP address or something similar?"

"Done. Stole the process from the KanColle wiki and substituted the registration instructions with the NervGear authentication procedure instead."

"That whole VPN thing you installed everywhere?"

"Yeah, even on the NervGears, though that was tricky. Never got why Japanese game companies are so anal about only letting Japanese people play their games."

"Okay, got the helmet set up? Power, connection?" my sister asked. I shrugged and sat down on the mattress we had dragged up from the basement.

"Pretty much, got solid colors on the plug lights. Hopefully our internet is fast enough," I replied. "Can't count the number of times lag made online games unplayable for me."

All the tech babble on the NervGear had emphasized the extreme level of wifi speed the device could get. Unfortunately, it neglected to mention how important the wifi modems used by the NervGear had to be just as fast; wireless advantages become irrelevant in the face of unreliable routers.

Hence, why we were in the living room of our home, at one-ish in the morning.

Rather than stay in our bedrooms and gamble with wifi - advertised and portrayed as how NervGears were normally used - we opted to wire in directly to the modems, with some spare optic fibre cables. This was something our home had an abundance of, thanks to our father's profession as a network analyst and consultant. With luck, we would maximize connection stability and volume, hopefully generating a better gaming experience.

Then again, if we really were interested in maximizing those two, we would have plugged in at the basement, where our landline router was. But there was only an old mattress there, and as both of us were well past our childhood years, we weren't exactly comfortable enough to share that when there was a sofa upstairs for my sister to use, and I could drag that mattress upstairs. Besides, we still needed to coordinate with our own friends to really pull this off, and that meant accessing Skype and Steam - and the two computers in the living room.

BWEEP-BOOP.

Speak of the devil. I glanced at the monitors, and turned to say, "It's Kaka." At that, my sister leaned in from the couch next to it, and began reading and typing.

[KK:Ready on this end Tira!

How are you and Moko's friends doing?]

[TK:We finished set up over here. No word from bro's friends though.]

To my sister's right, I scrambled into my office chair and brought up the Skype screen on my machine. Frowning at the inactive icon hovering over my friends' names, I enlarged my Steam client instead, and started a chat with PowPowLoosa and Wong.

[MK: Showtime boys. In or out?]

[PP: In. Let's do this!]

[W: Go. Hope there's fried chicken.]

[MK: kk. Witching hour.]

Smiling at the references, I addressed my sister, "Tell Kakama we're ready. And thank him once again for all the goodies."

"Sure," she replied. A moment later, "He says don't thank him just yet. He's still got to teach us everything once we dive in."

"Huh. We really owe him one, then. Even though all we're doing is just trolling."

I got settled on the mattress, and put the NervGear helmet over my head. Behind (above?) me, I hear Tirakima - my sister - also physically prepare herself.

"Hey bro, you changed your dive activation phrase?"

I grinned. "Did you?" I replied.

"Wonder if our NervGear can tell who's speaking at the same time. Wanna log in together on three?"

"Let's do it."

I settle back, a little excited and already holding back laughter on what phrase I'd chosen.

"One.

Two.

Three!"

"WO SHANG DANG PI FAI MA!" we shouted in unison, and like that, my vision of the real world faded, and blinked out.

---

"I have no idea what you said, but it sounds absolutely ridiculous; like an asian version of Biggus Dickus," said Kakama, as the five of us walked out of the starting city, starting gear in hand.

As she tried to keep from snickering again, Tirakima explained, "It's an in joke from Chinese school."

"Something about flying horses?" commented PowPow.

"Something like that," I agreed, then changed the topic to something that had been bugging me. "I knew you played both genders, Wong, but really? Your first virtual reality game and you choose to play a girl?"

"Nah, it's just an avatar, Moko. It's no different from Final Fantasy Eleven and Fourteen, or from Ragnarok Online," retorted Wong with an alto voice. In his girl avatar, he shrugged, playing with one of his brunnette twin-tails in his left hand and holding his right one out to Kakama to greet him. "By the way, I'm Wong. This guy here," he patted the short player next to him after shaking hands, "is PowPowLoosa. We're Moko's friends from fellowship."

"Nice to meet you," Kakama affirmed politely, also shaking PowPow's hand. "KakamaJosh, Tirakima's friend. Met online playing games."

PowPowLoosa asked,"You'll the beta tester who hooked us up with all the gear?"

"Don't mention it. They gave me free subscription time to SAO because you guys bought through me, so I'm pretty happy," Kakama answered.

"How did you get into the beta anyways, Kakama?" I wondered. "You live down in the states, right? So you should have been in the same boat with us guys up north."

"My new job. When I quit being a chef and moved out of the industrial cities, I managed to land a position with a media importing company on the west coast. They had contacts with tons of Japanese companies including Argus; one of their forward-looking project managers were looking to scout NA contacts - you know, just for when they get around to releasing it to the EU and the Americas. And, well, there I was and here we are now."

"Speaking about the here and now," I continued, returning to a previous point still bugging me, "I would also agree about avatars being inconsequential in most games, but in a virtual reality, it's just...a bit too off. For someone who's boxed before and who's a close friend to suddenly go up a pitch in voice, lose his tan, and change his proportions, it makes me feel like a fish out of water, in a way."

"Huh," murmured Wong. "Interesting."

"And what about me?" challenged Kakama, slapping his avatar's hefty chest. "You feel the same discomfort with me?"

"Not really," I replied, scratching my temple. "It's not in a hypocritical way, but since I don't know you in person, Kakama, I don't have a preconceived idea of what you should look like. Though the whole male voice pitch with female avatar is still a little freaky."

"He's just doing it as a prank on anyone who hits on him," my sister interjected. "He also plays both boy and girl avatars, just to see how ridiculous the game engines can make them."

"Was he the guy who hit on you in Mabinogi?" I reminisced.

Tirakima corrected me, "No, that was Baron Spencer, and it was in Ragnarok. But Kaka and I did make fun of each other in Starbound."

"Oh yeah, Tira," said Kakama, "Can you do me a favor, and just stand there for a minute?"

"Eh?" She stopped and tilted her head questioningly. Motionless, Tirakima made a perfect target as Kakama bent down and thrust his fingers into her eye. Tira flinched instinctively and covered her face, stopping a second poke from Kakama.

"Hey! What was that for!"

The female avatar named Kakama smiled broadly, almost squinting. "Good. We're now well out of the safe zone, and can start learning some basics of SAO."

"Such as how [Real World Biology] doesn't apply in game?" I raised an eyebrow at the antics of the two. Kakama beamed at me.

"Yes! Tira, how did you feel when I poked your eye?"

My sister played along and pouted. "Oh, so betrayed. We finally meet at the next best thing to face to face, and you try to blind me!" Beside me, PowPow and Wong smirked.

"Nope," Kakama patiently replied, still stooped next to Tira. "Not looking for your tender feelings. What did you physically feel?"

"Well, it was kind of numb for a moment, and then it felt normal again?" Tira looked up quizzically, experimenting with her eye. "I blinked, but it didn't feel like something actually hit my eye."

"Well, that's lesson number one," Kakama answered. "Theoretically, SAO can simulate pain, but all pain has been turned off and reduced to numbing, like you felt there. All you guys, try looking at me while you're at it."

Listening to him, I turned my attention from my sister to him, and saw in my peripheral vision his avatar's name come up. I frowned.

"Wasn't your name green just a second ago? Why is it now orange?"

"That's lesson number two. I mentioned earlier how I could tell we were outside safe zones?"
We nodded.

"That's because the [Safe Zones] are places where no matter what you do to other players or yourself, nobody will get digitally hurt. Outside the Safe Zones, besides actual attacks, normal actions that would cause injury in the real world will also reduce your hit points, and if those normal actions are directly caused by another player - as a deliberate attack or assault - the offending player becomes an [Orange Player]."

"So it's a [Criminal System]," PowPowLoosa summarized.

"Something to keep in mind as we go around messing with other players, yeah," replied Kakama. "As a side note, if you try doing the same thing in a safe zone, you won't get labelled a criminal, but if the actions are suitably intimate, the victim will get a dialogue box asking if they're being harassed."

"You mean a dialogue box like this one?" Tirakima pointed at something invisible in front of her. I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Um." Kakama frowned. "By default we can't see your user interface, so I don't know, but you shouldn't get harrassment dialogue boxes outside of safe zones. It would make the criminal system redundant."

"Maybe it's a bug?" Wong asked.

"Or it could be a message box for something else," mused PowPow.

I turned to Kakama. "Is there a way to turn your UI public for other people to see?"

"Yeah, but you gotta summon the main menu to do it. Tira, try pinching the air in front of you."

My sister nodded and did as Kakama asked.

"Now swipe it."

With a swish, Tirakima slashed her hand across herself, and then her eyes went wide. "Oh, shoot---"

Suddenly, a flash of light enveloped Kakama. By the time we recovered from our momentary blindness, his avatar had disappeared from sight.

"Shoot, shoot, Kakama? Where are you?" Tirakima lost it and glanced around.

"Okay." PowPowLoosa paused. "What just happened?"

"I just did as Kaka wanted," Tira panicked, "but my hand went into the dialogue box and hit one of the buttons, and now the box and Kakama are gone!"

"Alright, calm down," I urged her. "Kakama's a beta tester, so he knows the basics of SAO. He should be fine, though we don't know how to find out."

"Um, actually, I think I know how to find out," PowPow interrupted nonchalantly. He motioned towards the other crossplayer in our group.

"Wong, poke my eye out."

Wong snorted, as if understanding what PowPow wanted. "No man! You poke my eye out!"

"What. Are. You. Doing?" I noted.

"Okay fine. Moko, poke our eyes out."

"Yeah, man. Do it." PowPowLoosa and Wong both turned to me.

Shrugging at my friends' momentary lapse in judgement, I shoved my fingers into their face.

"Satisfied?" I asked.

They rubbed their poked-out eyes, then grinned. Wong gestured with a finger.

"Pows, you got the left button?"

"Yeah, you get the right one." Pows replied.

My eyebrows rose in immediate comprehension. "Wait! You guys can't be seri---"

---

"So from bugging one of the Beta buddies of mine, it turns out Argus extended the harassment system's "zone" to overlap the criminal system zone by fifty digital meters or so from where the safe zones end, as a compromise with some Japanese ethical and women's rights activists," Kakama explained.

His female avatar leaned back against her cell's stone walls, his hands couching his blonde hair.

"By the way, I don't understand how, in a full immersive game like SAO, they don't have voice chat and make do with virtual text chat. Seems really backwards, even back in beta." He glanced over my way. "Penny for your thoughts?"

"I can't believe I fell for it," I groaned, cradling my head in my hands. "Sending me to jail on day one of my virtual gaming experience is exactly what those two would do."

"To be fair, though, they didn't know there was even a jail in SAO," replied Kakama.

Bleary eyed, I looked up out of my cell towards Kaka's. "If they had known there was a jail, they'd be even more gleeful to do it. They're those kinds of friends."

I half-smiled to myself. "Still trying to get on their level. But, fair warning, once you get used to them, they'll probably do something for you too. Hope you have fun."

Kakama grunted. "Looking forward to it. Want to learn about menu navigation, while you wait?"

"Yeah, sure," I responded. "What are they up to anyways, while we're rotting in the dungeons?"

"Sword skills. They found a pack of boars and are decimating it." Kakama glimpsed aside for a moment, an action that I was now recognizing as a player looking at their own menus and chat logs. "Tira seems to be a natural at it."

"She does fencing in real life, so I'm not surprised." Recalling the action my sister used, I pinched the air and swiped - downward instead of horizontally, as she had done - and was rewarded with a list of abstract icons. "So I'm looking at the menu from the first swipe. Walk me through it like I have no idea what they mean."

"'kay, so we'll take things one at a time, and briefly. At the top with the one person icon you've got the character options - items, equipment, skills, etcetera. Under that with the two person icon you've got social options, like friends, guilds, and, sometime in the future hopefully, blacklists. The two dialogue boxes icon are your current chat boxes and, again, hopefully in the future, voice chat and world-wide/server-wide shout options. That icon with tag and square is your map and quest journal. If you want to change options, you hit the self-intuitive gear cog, second from the bottom. And last but not least at the very bottom..."

Kakama hesitated as he looked at his own menus, and I mulled over his words.

"What are you talking about?" I spoke up. "There's nothing underneath options."

"That's odd. There should be a sixth door icon at the bottom of the menu, to log out of the server, change characters or exit everything." He stabbed the air in front of him a couple times, and scowled. "They didn't move it to options either, unless I'm misreading the kanji. What the heck?"

"Maybe it's like Final Fantasy XIV and you have to log out by going to bed," I suggested, but mentally I already knew that couldn't be right. It would have been functionally unfriendly even under normal circumstances, and basically ensured players in unusual circumstances - like being in jail - couldn't log out, period. Even Square Enix made the sleep logout function an optional one in FFXIV, complete with a [Go to Bed] animation as an easter egg.

"Gimme a sec," I spoke, "and let me join in and open a chat with everyone. Let's see if it's the same thing for them."

As Kakama typed, I began navigating, first to the social tab to add KakamaJosh, Tirakima, PowPowLoosa, and Wong to my friends list. After waiting on confirmation that yes, they knew me, and yes, they would like to be friends with me, I was scrolling down to join the chat when my menu abruptly closed itself. In it's place, a blue glow enveloped me.

"We're being teleported?" exclaimed Kakama.

I tried to respond, but the light grew overpoweringly bright, my vision doubled on itself, and without warning, I was no longer sitting on the cobblestones of a virtual prison.

---

To be seated cross legged on the floor one minute and then be standing the next was a terribly confusing experience. I staggered. Around me, the sudden babble of hundreds, thousands of people speaking all at once swamped my ears, pierced periodically by peals of church bells. Several shouts came my way.

"There's Mokofooja! Over there!"
A familiar looking twin-tailed brunette waved in my direction, and a short player and a ponytailed one strolled over.

"Bro, you okay?" was Tirakima’s first question.

"Yeah, I'm in one piece," was my response. "Where's Kakama?"

"Right behind you," the very man called out. "Did everyone get ported here?"

"If not, then pretty much the majority of them," PowPow said. "There was some lag right after we got here."

Wong added, "if they did send everyone back to town, the lag would be normal."

"But that's interesting," I wondered, scanning the crowd around us. "Even though we were seperated, we got teleported pretty much next to each other. And if you look around, everyone seems to be talking to someone else, so it looks like they were ported here deliberately with people they already know."

At my observation, Kakama glanced again at his surroundings.

"You're right. Everyone seems to be with another person. A normal mass teleportation would have resulted in people being distributed randomly across the destination, and groups having to take a minute to regroup. Something doesn't add up."

"Something official," Wang conjectured. "They're going to make a mass announcement, or do a system reboot." But PowPowLoosa shook his head at that.

"Does that need an orderly teleport? They could have disconnected all of us first before doing a reboot or an announcement."

"I think it's something PR related. If it's going to affect our social circles, then they would want to have them on hand," Tirakima guessed. Above her, I watched as the digital sky darkened and a figure began to emerge.

"Well, whatever it is, we'll find out soon," I noted. "Kaka, you understand moonrunes?"

"I understand what?" he blurted.

"Japanese," I explained the joke. Behind me, the figure formed into a robed enigma as I continued straight-faced. "I don't think the current English-speaking SAO population is big enough for a separate press release, so whatever happens next is probably going to be in nihonjin."

"Yeah, sure. Hopefully the guy speaks slow enough," Kakama said. He looked up and started fiddling with his menus, while the rest of us settled down, watching the figure's body language as he/she began to speak.

"Woah, it's Kayaba himself," Kaka exclaimed.

"Kayaba?" asked Tira.

"Development director for SAO, and effectively the executive producer in all but name as well." Kakama squinted as the figure began manipulating a giant-sized menu. "He's...talking about the logout function?"

"Huh," was my eloquent response. "So everyone was right."

For the next little while, we said nothing, though the figure continued to gesture, and there were a few bursts of excited babble and gasps from around us. I failed to notice Kakama clenching and unclenching his hands as the announcement continued. However, my attention shot to my inventory as my menus opened up and began operating independently. As I watched, my cursor relentlessly queried from character options to individual items, coming to rest on a new item I hadn't seen before.

"Magical Mirror?" Kakama read the description, answering the question on all our minds. My cursor flickered, indicating item activation, and my menus closed as a short animation played of a plane of glass materializing - and smashing itself into uncountable fragments.

In panic I unconsciously sucked for air as all of my senses shut off in another burst of light. My sight still black, a fevered flash shot through my body, sparking memories of a bad summer 'flu in Mexico. Involuntarily, I shuddered. Like puzzle pieces coming together, my sensations slowly returned, and I blinked uncomfortably as a strangely familiar gut feeling came to me.

"Woah, bro, you..." Tira pointed at me, stunned. As horror from recognizing her new voice set in, I did a double take at her.

Neither my sister or I had significantly changed our avatars from our own actual bodies. Tirakima liked her small build and lack of chest, but had slimmed her limbs a little and given herself a slender face. Approaching the same answer from a different direction, I had been interested in how close to myself I could get by recreating myself in my avatar, and had only taken a boyish face with a fake scar running diagonally across it as my creative customization. Other aspects of my average height and below average upper body build I'd kept.

All of our minute changes were gone. Before each other, I distinguished her as my flesh and blood younger sibling, with the faded scratch across one cheek that I had accidentally given her in swimming classes a decade ago. And she knew the elder brother in front of her. There was the almost-invisible pale white scar patch on my upper right lip; I had gained it from falling face-first off my bike onto concrete when I did part-time at a bank.

I whirled to examine PowPowLoosa and Wong. Both their avatars had changed - reverted, I numbly corrected myself - to the images that I knew them by. PowPow's short and muscled bodybuilder physique morphed into a healthy, but chubby, asian complexion of average height. More drastically, Wong had lost the highschool sweetheart look, and now stood with his ex-boxer's arms crossed trying to look normal. He was still wearing the female starting dress, with his short black hair done up in ridiculous twin-piglet tails.

KakamaJosh was no better. Seeing his real-life look for the first time, I thought that his face lacked all the androgyny it needed to match the garments hanging from his tall frame. And then I realized he was still looking up uneasily at the figure he had identified as Kayaba.

Hushing my sister for a moment, I tried nudging Kakama in the shoulder. He didn't notice. His was still concentrating on the announcer, still speaking and gesturing. Now and then a foreign word spoken in a thick Japanese pronunciation came from it - *thaumaturgy* was the best I could make of it. Latin? "Making of *thaum*," whatever root noun *thaum* derived from?

I shook Kakama a little harder, finally getting his attention.

"What's going on?" I asked, trying not to be bothered by the voice that was definitely mine. "Getting ourselves looking and talking exactly like we do in real life, it's like something out of the twilight zone. What happened to the announcement on the logout button?"

"This guy..." Kakama glowered at the figure, slowly receding in detail as it stopped talking and faded away. I got the distinct impression he was grinding his teeth.

"If I'm hearing him correctly, he's insane. He removed the logout button and trapped all ten thousand starting players inside SAO. Inside his own little dream world. Making our avatars look like ourselves was just to flex his omnipotence."

As if to punctuate his absurd statement, a chorus of wails and angry shouts rose up. People nearby started crying, throwing tantrums, began bellowing and getting angry. Ruthlessly, Kakama continued.

"He hasn't given us a good explanation, but he made his one and only goal clear. He wants us to die fighting."

Kaka wanted to say more, but he turned to face me as I shook his shoulder once more.

"How certain are you about this?"

"I'm missing a nuance or two, but that was an 80-90 percent certainty. The rest is details."

"Then let's talk about the details somewhere else," I suggested, looking around at the ensuing bedlam on the streets.

"Somewhere quieter."
 

Mokofooja

Well-Known Member
#3
1.5 Interlude - Little Web on the Prairie

Nobody thought it was going to survive.

When local businesses started leaving town, it was the talk of everyone's gossip. Not enough bandwidth, they said. Impossible to run an information age operation on forty megabytes a second.

Soon it would be the youths leaving, everyone guessed, looking for work and money. Looking for a place elsewhere to hook up their custom computers, bought on money earned elsewhere, to connect to their internet friends who lived elsewhere.

Guessing became speculating. Who would leave next? Parents, who were retiring and starting to rely on their savings and their children's earnings? Grandparents moving into healthcare facilities outside of town? Teachers and chefs and grocery store workers who didn't have pupils to tutor, guests to cook for, families to keep fed?

Something had to be done. Before the town gained the "ghost" adjective, they had to act.

Organization already existed. Town leadership, college leadership, the chamber of commerce, and the agricultural society had worked previously before, a modern "quadrumvirate" that people called the institute.

A few town hall meetings later, the institute convened. Worried, the people were, but they were not yet panicking. Shortly afterwards, a committee of the institute had a plan of action.

In the nineteenth century, railways and factories had built the west.

In the twentieth, oil gave the west the gift of prosperity.

Now, in the twenty-first century, what was the secret elixir that guaranteed wealth and growth? Committee opinion was unanimous; the internet would be a fountain of eternal youth for the town.

Two and a half million dollars secured from the provincial government. A six million dollar loan from the town itself. The target: streaming capacity of one thousand twenty-four megabytes per second via fiber optic cable for all eight thousand five hundred residents of the quiet town, provided at less than ninety dollars a month per household.

All this, in a country where the download speed was 16.6 megabytes per second, for a rate of $54 a month a person, on average.

Skilled labor to lay the fiber optics bottle-necked the project. As the planned central hub for the new network, half the town library had to be torn down and rebuilt, to house the video conferencing center and public access stations. The institute reached out to major commercial internet providers "to offer their services via the new network." All the providers balked, unwilling to work with a network they hadn't built themselves - or billed the town for.

Whatever, was the institute's indifferent shrug. We'll just do it ourselves.

Another three and a half million dollars to build a Point of Presence in a central office. Just to put all their eggs in one basket, phone line services and IPTV were also rerouted to the POP. Now the half-crazy, half-desperate, all-decisive project had a name: the O-Net.

About to hit thirteen million dollars in spending, residents joked lewdly about it as The Big O. The name stuck.

2013 came and went. Six out of every ten homes now rivaled Google Fiber in information transmission speed. By the end of the next year, the institute estimated the other four would be covered as well, to the final tune of fourteen million dollars. College admissions skyrocketed; iPads with paperless textbooks for all classes were not only mandatory, but standard issue, paid for by the secondary education establishment. Business that had left returned, bringing with them the contacts and experience they had gained from outside of town.

And then, when everyone thought things couldn't get any better, the 2014 Game Hostages made headlines.

When you got down to it, very few people confined by rogue game designer Kayaba Akihito lived outside Japan. Even before you took into account blocking IP addresses outside of Japan, ten thousand hostages didn't give you very much diversity in the player base, especially when compared to the world population.

So, in the typical sacrilegious fashion that social networks were famous for, that handful of North Americans lucky or unlucky enough to be swept up in those events became overnight celebrities. To the Japanese and foreign community, their "gaijin" status and exception to the rule made them stick out like a sore thumb; even if they were not sympathetic to the anonymous bystander, they certainly attracted attention. And for once, their stardom actually did them some good.

Lady Luck smiled on the town. The mayor had extended family that lived in the electoral riding of the prime minister. His extended family hadn't met the prime minister face to face - in fact, they had voted for the liberals, and were only now starting to regret it - but they had spoken with the minister of foreign affairs, before his appointment by the governor general.

Numerous frenzied phone calls connected the town to the foreign office, and to the Secretary of State down south, and to the families of the victims. Summoned by the prime minister, Japan's diplomat to the country skillfully negotiated an agreement to give the town's POP honorary Japanese status to bypass Argus' localization locks - a status that would remain long after the crisis had ended, as a sign of the cordial relationship between the two countries. Assembling an emergency IT team, the institute finished the fiber optic coverage in the town's medical facilities overnight. A combat engineer battalion cordoned off the east-west and north-south highways running through the town as makeshift landing strips; para-rescue teams from the states soon joined them, deploying by chute to the scene.

Half a day later, Argus' North American hostages arrived en-masse at Olds, Alberta, via civilian and military air ambulance. As the Mayor of Olds put it, "there was no longer the risk of death by shoddy connectivity."

Nobody thought it was going to survive. But in the coming days of media coverage, a few residents of Olds secretly wished that Olds had stayed the sleepy prairie town dying a quiet death.
 

happerry

Well-Known Member
#4
Looking good.

I'll be watching to see where you go with this.
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
#5
Mokofooja said:
Prologue - The Manse

"This place doesn't look too haunted."

At Wong's remark, I rolled my eyes, while KakamaJosh groaned and put his face in his hands. Half-jokingly, PowPowLoosa reacted just as dramatically.
This was a really strong start.

Not just because of the in media rez thing (although I think it's a solid way to start a chapter!) but also because all the different characters have distinct names so it's easier to keep them straight.

You started with an interesting and dynamic setting and naturally drew me in to the setting.

I noticed that your SI didn't use any magic... is that a "can't do it" or an "unsuited to do it" thing? Without natural Magic Resistance, there is a world of hurt waiting....

I couldn't tell at first whether [Father Gabriel] was a player or an NPC. His involvement in the dialogue implied NPC and the "if it comes to it, let him die" thing cinched that, but it was never explicitly said.

...Of course, getting back to the part where the party is improvising to get out of their jam is a checkpoint I'm expecting this story to cross as the "end of the beginning".



Continuity stuff...

The thing about zombies made me wonder if this was after the 5th Floor was opened; the talk about alchemy later on made it clear that it is.

Alchemy is unsuited for transient effects. Using alchemy for something like a buff would actually have a shorter duration and take more prana than other methods to achieve the same effect. But, alchemy is well-suited to item creation. That is, it's not something you'd use to increase your crit rate fighting in the field, but instead, to increase your crit rate while manufacturing the item in the first place.

Hauntings and ghosts haven't appeared in the game yet, but they're coming soon, so there aren't any problems there.

...Don't get too dependent on seeing HP bars.


Mokofooja said:
Chapter 1 - Diving Off the Deep End
This was mostly rehashing basic mechanics, but that wasn't actually what it was about; it was using that as a script while really the personality of the Players were introduced to the audience. Also decompressing after the last chapter.

Well, I was counting heads to see if there was somebody that wasn't in the first bit (a possible sacrifice to the Altar of Serious Business...?) but I didn't find one, so you got me at least that interested in them.

...That you had the cast ignore the one thing Kayaba cared about most in his announcement was a pretty good piece of irony.


The female avatar named Kakama smiled broadly, almost squinting. "Good. We're now well out of the safe zone, and can start learning some basics of SAO." He looked around at the empty grass area

"Such as how [Real World Biology] doesn't apply in game?" I raised an eyebrow at the antics of the two. Kakama beamed at me.
That "He looked around at the empty grass area" sentence cuts off.


Mokofooja said:
1.5 Interlude - Little Web on the Prairie
This was poignent. It was the implied details that made it touching; and it really had a "resourceful underdog" vibe.

I'm not sure what you're going to do with it, though.

...Are you going to adopt Glenn and Martha Mackenzie as people from the town of Olds?
 

Mokofooja

Well-Known Member
#6
I noticed that your SI didn't use any magic... is that a "can't do it" or an "unsuited to do it" thing? Without natural Magic Resistance, there is a world of hurt waiting....

I couldn't tell at first whether [Father Gabriel] was a player or an NPC. His involvement in the dialogue implied NPC and the "if it comes to it, let him die" thing cinched that, but it was never explicitly said.

...Of course, getting back to the part where the party is improvising to get out of their jam is a checkpoint I'm expecting this story to cross as the "end of the beginning".
Heh heh, compared to other writers I know, I very rarely write fiction, so I pretty much expected my techniques to be fairly obvious.

Because I did start the epilogue as an action set to draw in the reader, I deliberately left some details out, like Father Gabriel being an NPC, and only implied it instead. By leaving answer-shaped holes in the prologue, I wanted to engage readers in thinking as they read. Not to mention as the story catches up to the prologue, many of the holes will be filled in.

Speaking of answer-shaped holes, you touched on one hole that I was worried about being bigger than would be comfortable for readers. In the next chapter or two, I hope to reveal why as of the prologue, I wasn't wielding magic. For now, I'll just say that it isn't for lack of trying, or even a lack of understanding.

Continuity stuff...

The thing about zombies made me wonder if this was after the 5th Floor was opened; the talk about alchemy later on made it clear that it is.

Alchemy is unsuited for transient effects. Using alchemy for something like a buff would actually have a shorter duration and take more prana than other methods to achieve the same effect. But, alchemy is well-suited to item creation. That is, it's not something you'd use to increase your crit rate fighting in the field, but instead, to increase your crit rate while manufacturing the item in the first place.

Hauntings and ghosts haven't appeared in the game yet, but they're coming soon, so there aren't any problems there.

...Don't get too dependent on seeing HP bars.
The zombies quote was just a off-hand horror reference, so I didn't expect it to actually help date the epilogue. I may have to revise that, depending on the final date I actually want the epilogue to take place at.

I'm assuming HP bars will be removed as realism increases in FRO?

Hmm, I think I understand what you mean about alchemy.

Let's try changing the part about Kakama using alchemy to this:

Alchemy seemed to be a subgenre of normal magecraft, but it’s mechanics were geared more towards crafting than on-demand use, as Kakama had told me. As a crafting magic used to temporarily improve an object, it was ultimately limited by the user’s own skills and knowledge about the item at hand, rather than by the potential of the item itself. So thanks to Kakama’s limited knowledge of a “good sword,” my weapon was certainly shinier and sharper-looking, but still not as good as a magecraft enhanced weapon.
That "He looked around at the empty grass area" sentence cuts off.
Whups! Correcting that asap.

I think so far, the biggest thing that I've come away from your critique so far is in considering the characters.

When I was writing these pieces, I was using my knowledge of my sister, my friends, and my sister's online friend to write them. So for me, it was never really so much "establishing character" as it was making sure that it was authentic. That scene in Diving Off the Deep End where everybody meets everybody else is how I honestly feel things would have progressed in real life, if they had actually met up.

So when you made notes about them like they were actually fictional beings, I was surprised, because I had failed to consider them from that point of view entirely. For NPC's like Father Gabriel and other future, unamed NPC's, certainly, I wanted to use good literary techniques to flesh them out and make them interesting, but I never examined doing the same thing with the real people I'm including. This will be something for me to think about.

This was poignent. It was the implied details that made it touching; and it really had a "resourceful underdog" vibe.

I'm not sure what you're going to do with it, though.

...Are you going to adopt Glenn and Martha Mackenzie as people from the town of Olds?
Ah, I'm actually a little sheepish that my interludes were mistaken for something bigger. I don't have anything planned for the Mackenzies, no.

The thing about both Fate Stay/Night and Sword Art Online is that, with just a little imagination, it's easy to see how they might actually exist and interact with our world. For me, in fact, it's one of my most common mental interests to take a setting I'm interested in and see how it fits in with my real life world - see how big the ripples spread, and what odd and curious things result from it.

And the thing is, in our real world, there are many different stories that happen independently of each other; billions of individuals making choices, wrestling with problems, and just living life normally, maybe even oblivious to the millions of stories around them.

That was what I want to illustrate with the interludes; short, stand-alone stories or events that maybe just touch on FRO, or A Mirror's Honest Reflection, or the Mid-liner tales, and so on and so forth. People doing things and making decisions that make the reader step back and say, "Woah, I never expected that to have a connection to the stuff I enjoy."

Because if FRO was real, then Kayaba Akihito would be making history, creating a splash in current events. But that history would be defined not just by his actions, but by the reactions of everyone affected by him, no matter how indirect.
 

Mokofooja

Well-Known Member
#8
AK-47's UPDATES FOR EVERYONE

Just in case you haven't gotten your fill of Daniel's last update to FRO, enjoy a Dusk of Knowledge update!

After this post, I will be editing the first post to setup links to each chapter.

Chapter 2 - To Move Immediately Upon Your Works

November 13th.

When the internal alarm clock dumped a bucket of water on my sleeping mind, I groaned.

Mistakenly, I had thought my night owl habits would help me adjust to the Japanese time zone faster than my friends. It had worked whenever I went to Hong Kong, after all, and I expected it to work here as well. But for some unknown reason, it hadn't.

Maybe it was the stress of the unknown getting to me. I had trouble getting to sleep as it was, since I usually slept lightly. Pile on the fact that we were probably setting a new world record of Longest Virtual Reality Dive Ever, and there were bound to be some mental side effects nobody was prepared for.

"Yo buddy, still alive?"

I squinted in the direction of the door. "If you're still around, then this isn't heaven."

"Ow, man, cut me some slack," Wong chuckled. "Hey, Kakama went out to buy breakfast. He should be back soon, so we should head down to the tables."

"Sure," I responded, and hopped out of bed. Say what you will about life in the virtual world, but not having to shave, shower, and change after waking up made my life much easier.

Not having to go to the toilet felt weird though, made all the more confusing since my privates (and, I assumed by implication, other people's privates) were most definitely there, which normally indicated the game designers wanted to use them in some way.

Kaka had said something about SAO being PG-13, so that eliminated an entire branch of speculation. Maybe it was a targetable area, to appease the rights activists by allowing self-defence moves to work if a person got harassed? But it also opened up the possibility of molestation.

Something to talk about after breakfast, I guessed. Definitely not during though. My sister's [Bloody Stools] discussion came to mind at that.

My thoughts grew somber as I followed Wong out the door into the apartment hallways. He had crossed his arms and was looking slightly down absentmindedly as he walked. He was like a mathematician mulling over a problem he'd encountered for the first time in his life.

"Hey," I called his attention by patting him on the shoulder. He looked back with an inquiring noise, as I scrambled for something to say.

"I think Jaylene's doing fine," I offered finally. "She's going to be mad, but she'll be waiting for you when we finally get out of this." Mentally, I kicked myself for not having anything better to discuss.

But Wong smiled when he heard that. "Thanks," he replied. He faced absently forward again as he started down the stairs, but he'd uncrossed his arms and put his hands casually into his pockets.

Inwardly, I sighed in relief. That was an improvement, right?

To see Kakama sitting at a table in the inn's commons surprised me and Wong. I made to greet him with a "Morning," but except for a distracted return of the same, he remained focused on fiddling with air at the table. Over the last week, I had learned to recognize those gestures as a person working with their personal menu and chat, while it was still set to private.

"Where's Pows and Tira?" I asked to no one in particular.

That got KakamaJosh's attention. "They're out duelling. They just started when I came back."

"Wow, again?" I reflected on that. "PowPow really can't get over it, can he?"

Wong waved the suggestion off. "Nah, he's just bored. He got like this in Borderlands, remember?"

About to respond, I cut myself off as the two duellists tromped in through the front door. Snatches of their conversation came up to me.

"--with your size will give you more reach, but it throws you off balance."

"...just as bad as Sword Skills?"

"--much, yeah, because you're open and I can hit you anywhere after I parry or dodge. Oh! Morning bro!"

That was a fast duel, I thought to myself.

"Morning," I greeted my sister, as she and PowPowLoosa came up to the table. As we all took a seat, I noticed PowPow rubbing one of his eyes, and peeked at his health bar. It was slowly regenerating from about half health.

"So," my sister continued, "how was your beautiful REM sleep?"

"REM?" I asked.

"Rapid Eye Movement," responded PowPow.

I put two and two together.

"You're thinking about gouging out eyeballs this early in the day?"

Tirakima, PowPow, and Wong all stared at me like I was an idiot. Even Kakama stopped typing for a moment.

"Moko," my sister resumed, "I think it's about time I give you a crash course in Bio 101. After breakfast."

"Oh, oh! I call being the TA!" PowPow clamoured.

"What? Fine," Wong snorted. "Uh, I call being the special needs assistant."

"Are you saying I'm a special needs student?" I accused Wong.

He thought for a moment. "Nope. In your case, that'd be insulting to Gary," he retorted.

I spluttered at his friendly revenge as Tirakima looked scandalized and PowPow forgot about his eye and began chuckling.

"Alright, 'children'." Kakama put his hands together as he addressed us in a fake fatherly way. "Since we're all together now, we should start breakfast. Mokofooja," he turned to me, "would you say grace for us?"

"Sure," was my reply. We all bowed our heads.

"Dear God, thank You for the food that You've given us..."

Puzzled, I stopped. This was my first time saying grace in SAO, and the usual "bless the people who helped grow and make this food" wouldn't work here, since the food was artificial. I couldn't pray about the "food nourishing our bodies" either, since our real world bodies wouldn't be affected by eating this food.

Hastily, I grabbed onto the events of the morning.

"We also thank You for the company You've given us this morning, of the friends we can speak to and get to know, and the joy that we get from them and You.

We pray that as we eat this food and enjoy each other's company, that we don't forget You, and that we be a blessing to You and to each other, and the world. In Jesus' name, we pray."

"Amen," everyone echoed. At that, Kakama poked the air in front of him a few times, and lunchboxes began appearing on the table. Deviled eggs, sandwiches, and porridge - the closest things to breakfast foods we could find - passed around the table. Though Kaka had bought just enough for five people, only the the porridge and juices were divvied up quickly.

As I scooped some porridge for myself, Kakama spoke up.

"While you enjoy your sandwich-flavoured Jello, I have some bad news to announce. I still haven't received an answer from my Beta contact. And all the coordinator GM's that I knew from Beta also aren't answering either. We should consider ourselves completely separated from all resources except ourselves.

Which means it's time."

Halfway to my mouth, my spoon halted as the words sank in. Slowly, I put the spoon back into my bowl.

"Wait, are you sure he, um, isn't here anymore?" Tirakima asked hesitantly.

"I can't be 100% sure that he's just ignoring my chat messages," noted Kakama, "but Obrivious tends to answer stuff in less than an hour or so after receiving something. And he even answers spam messages from players he doesn't know."

He gestured to the rest of us.

"Did any of you get a response either?"

We shook our heads.

"I thought as much. For now, we have to assume the worst case scenario that, even though we're all still here, he's...gone."

I grimaced at that. Without chatboards, forums, server-wide shouting, or even a global marketplace, we had virtually no way to integrate with the local gaming community trapped with us. Gathering information would mean relying on painstakingly-translated system announcements and talking to complete strangers in a foreign tongue.

Except for Kakama, nobody had worthwhile skill in the Japanese language. And he was only six months fluent. Now even the glimmer of hope that was Obrivious winked out.

"Moko, do you have the coin bag items?" Kakama requested.

"Yeah, gimme a sec." I put down my spoon and opened my inventory, as Kakama continued.

"One of the bags, put it in my room. That one will be for staying put in the safe zones, since that was the action I looked at." Kakama chewed on an egg, and then swallowed. "Put a second one in Tirakima's room, since she examined how feasible it would be to help clear the game."

I materialized two empty coin pouches, reflecting on our debates the last week.

"Should I put a third one in PowPow's room?"

Kakama pondered for a moment, then dipped his head.

"Do it. It'll probably split the votes, but we're all in this together. Even if it means a second vote, we need a clear direction."

"Actually, I know a way around that," Wong interrupted. "We can use a ranking system, instead of one person, one vote. How's our budget?"

"Um, on track. We've got just over a thousand col altogether, after today's rent and food," said Kakama.

"Then, since we have more than 555 col, don't give everyone just one coin. Give each of us a 100, 10 and 1 col coin. We put the 100 col coin in the vote we like best, the 10 col coin in our second choice, and the 1 col coin in the vote we don't really like."

"I like that," Tirakima commented on Wong's suggestion. "Makes things really clear. But everyone still votes privately."

"We're all okay with ranking instead of voting?" Kakama asked all of us.

I nodded, as did PowPow.

"Alright. Everyone will vote right before dinner. PowPow, Tirakima, make sure you unlock your rooms at that time and that you take anything that you consider personal with you, so you don't have to go back to them.

We've all had time to think about this, but since it's so important, take the rest of the day to put your foot down. Don't feel pressured; the situation we're in is so far fetched that anything can happen next, so the best choice today could be meaningless tomorrow. If something drastic changes, we'll just vote again."

We all acknowledged him, and then went back eating. It stayed quiet that way, until PowPow started bugging Kakama about where to find a blackboard, cardigans, sweaters, and skirts for Tira.

---

Taking a walk around the starting city always threw me off. It was too clean.

And I didn't just mean the looks. I wasn't a big traveller, but I had been to several large, metropolitan cities around the world, with their high end apartments and indoor shopping centers. Wherever you went, the nicest neighbourhoods always had that one public trashcan with a dirty smear and a funky smell, and if you looked around the five-star hotel lobbies you never failed to find that dried-up potted plant, or that old smoking corner with a dusty ashbowl and a lingering aroma of cigarettes.

But even the "worn-down" and "heavily used" parts of the starting city neighbourhoods were fake. When I leaned against a wall of chipped paint, I could feel the rough surface of the brick. Run my hand along the cracks of peeling paint, though, and I'd sense the texture failing to outline the weathering. If I sniffed the air around the bakeries and home fireplaces, there'd be no soot or ash to make me cough, only the scent of baked bread and warm hearthstones.

I'd already been down this main street before, the last few times I came here. It’s familiarity wasn’t helping the unease. A thoughtful mind is a mind that needs to see new things to help it settle down. So let's take the scenic route and try scaling the battlements.

Twelve strikes of the clock tower rang out as I turned to follow the edge of the park east, the commercial district behind me. My hand trailing against the wall, I nearly bumped into another player walking my way. I uttered a few hasty apologies in English, but he gave me a blank thousand-yard stare, and then continued as if nothing had happened.

Again I was struck by how neat he was, with his starting clothes unwrinkled and his black hair nonplussed. Though he hadn't shown emotion, I could see his teeth without blemish, orderly and ordinary. He didn't even have a sharp odour to him, unlike Beatrice.

A light breeze whistled through the street. Thoughtlessly, I juxtaposed him with her, as I too resumed my path.

I had been riding the train back home that night when I bumped into that homeless lady, that giddy tramp with the heart and mind of a child. Wrinkled, gnarled, with dirty fuzz for hair and a neon-pink windbreaker, she had been awkwardly ignored by everyone else on the train until I'd offered her my seat. When she grinned and thanked me and told me her name, I had told her mine and asked (rather rudely, thinking back on it) what had happened to her yellow and crooked teeth.

As I strode past a small church, I spotted steps up to the wall and made for them. Lost in thought, my shoes padded on the cobblestone underfoot.

From her explaining how other homeless people would steal even toothbrushes from you when you slept outside, we had chatted, meandering our topics from hygiene and weather to how long a person could live while still homeless. Near the end, I had offered her my scarf and an empty bottle in my backpack, so that she could recycle it for change. Her face could not contain her smile at that, and she hugged me hard. I was half-afraid she'd try to kiss me; I still remember hypocritically hoping to wash my hands soon, after returning her hug.

I pursed my lips as I started ascending the stairs. That part of my memory had brought up an unhappy thought.

Before I got off the train, Beatrice had told me that she'd been on the streets for almost a decade, with two of those years in my home town. When I asked, she claimed to be familiar with homeless people who also wandered the downtown area.

That was when I described to her an elderly gentleman, grey-haired and bearded, who'd lost both his legs to frostbite and sat in a wheelchair outside the 8th Street station and Husky store, begging for change. Beatrice asked me what his name was, and I had shook my head in shame.

I told her I had talked to him and even eaten together with him for three months, when I had a summer internship near there. We had told each other our names, but three years later I could not even remember what he was called. Now I routinely passed that station and that Husky Store going to university, but the place where his wheelchair used to sit was empty every time.

Had she met the gentleman, during her two-year stay in town? Had he survived three more winters of deep snow and blinding blizzards?

At her denial, my heart was crestfallen.

Finally at the top of the walls, I gazed out into the open, the fake city and my real memories behind me. Stretching away, vast fields, hills and forests rolled and tumbled into the distance, as if there really was a horizon that connected the land to the sky. The dome of the second floor so far flung above me, reflecting the heavens and clouds far away, gleamed and glowed in spite of the missing noon sun.

Somewhere past that dome, I thought, was the third, and fourth, and fifth floors. Somewhere past those ninety-nine floors, there was the topmost floor of this virtual tower.

What did it look like? Was it any different a prison than the small, squat bedroom I slept in for the last week?

Idly, I tried to set my imagination free. I sought to picture that distant hundredth floor, tried to populate it with buildings, and landscapes, and skylines. I attempted to contrast that vast, far-away place with the creaky bed, hardwood floor, and battered desk and chair of my rental room. But my imagination rebelled.

It was like a great void, dividing my bedroom on one side and an imaginary heaven on the other. A yawning chasm split those two images apart, shoving them further and further away to the irrelevant sidelines of my mind. In the midst of that chasm, I began to see people, and recognize faces.

There was Beatrice, all smiles and bright neon pink. There was the gentleman beggar, in his wheelchair in the corner. There were the four Native Americans asking for change, and the carpenter and his family from Tijuana. There was the shy and lonely Diana handicapped by her deafness, the dozens of half-naked Romani children shrieking to have their picture taken, and the child summer playmate with her double rows of front teeth and birth-defective left hand. So many were familiar faces, and so many more were the faces of strangers.

Many beamed happily. Many more clenched their expressions, or looked away, or scowled in anger, disappointment, and despair. My mind's eye tried to meet their eyes levelly, but each time it did, it dragged itself back to the figure leading all of them.

At their front was neat, black-haired player, with his hair nonplussed, his clothes unwrinkled, and his orderly, ordinary teeth without blemish. Etched in my mind, his blank thousand-yard stare looked at me, so different and yet no different from everyone else's gaze. He mesmerized me.

A single, solitary toll sounded from behind me. But instead of startling at the clock tower's time signal, I let out a breath I did not know I had been holding. Unbidden, my back straightened, as if accepting a heavy responsibility.

It seemed my walk had made up my mind for me.

That afternoon before dinner, I remember poking fun at Tirakima as PowPow tried to haggle a pair of glasses to help her complete the look. I recall greeting Wong and Kakama as they played battle tops with spinning coins instead of actual tops at the foot of the inn's stairs. Just before we sat down to eat, I could not forgot how nonchalantly I walked from room to room, putting my rankings to vote.

In Kaka's bedroom, I dropped the small copper col into the satchel on his bed.

I stuffed the bigger bronze decacol into the pouch on Tira's chair.

Into the purse resting on the desk in PowPow's room, I placed the largest silver hectocol.

---

Nervously, we sat after clearing the table, while Kakama and Wong came back with the vote bags.

Both Wong and Kakama took a seat as well, with Kakama placing the wallets in front of him. As if inviting any last thoughts before the act, he glanced at each of us, but except for a nod from Wong, nobody said anything.

"Here goes," he announced, pulling one of the pouches out of the trio. "This one is from my room, for the vote to stay put in the starting city while the current situation lasts."

Tap.Tap.

Reaching into the coin bags, Kaka brought out each coin individually and placed it flat on the table.

Tap. Tap.

"Well, that's interesting," he remarked. He reached in for the last coin to accompany the four copper col.

Tap.

"We all ranked staying put as the least desirable option," Kakama concluded. "I wonder if you're all crazy, or if I'm crazier for agreeing with you."

"Actually, I think the budget was working fine," Wong commented as we all stared at the coins. "And we could have stretched it with the starting city quests. But as you pointed out," he referred to Kaka, "we didn't know how long we would be stuck in here."

"Which means, if we end up stuck here a long time, we'd have to either start exploring the outside world, or we'd have to stop eating and start sleeping outside of protected rooms," PowPow finished for Wong. "Either way, that's bad news."

"You guys thought that far ahead?" Tirakima asked. "I was just thinking back to that talk we had about putting ourselves in Kayaba's shoes, and guessing what he would do next. Everybody just kept on throwing out really bad stuff terrible for people who never left the safe zone."

"Well, the big thing at least is that we're all agreed that we don't just want to stay here waiting for outside help, right?" summarized Kakama. "Even though waiting isn't the same as doing nothing?"

"I think that view is reason why nobody wants to wait," I pointed out. "If we can be doing something while we wait, then we might as well put all our attention and effort into doing that thing in the first place."

"Alright. Let's move on to the vote to help clear the game then." Rather than putting each coin out like with the first bag, Kakama opened the mouth of the second pouch from Tirakima's room. With gentle shakes, he sifted out the coins inside.

Plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk.

I gaped. Kakama whistled. Tirakima gave a low "woah," while PowPow and Wong fist-pumped the air and bro-fisted each other.

In a neat pile by the pouch lay five bronze ten-col coins.

"Unanimous decision to put game clearing as a second-priority objective." Kakama muttered to no one in particular.

"If you voted the same way, why are you so surprised?" I half-heartedly jabbed him.

"I was thinking practically and pragmatically," he retorted. "Game clearing is a long term goal that could take months, if not years. If staying put isn't a good idea on one end of the spectrum, then boss rushing is also a bad idea, but on the other end of the extremes. It was just a process of elimination for me."

He studied me for a moment, before choosing his next words.

"I wasn't certain if everyone else would see it in the same way, even if the end goal is no different."

"So, so, when are we going to learn Japanese, and start quest grinding to buy snacks and coffee?" asked PowPow. Wong cut him off

"Guys, guys, we should start scouting the marketplace and find good places to sit down and talk with people there."

Tirakima interrupted, "Shouldn't you at least open the last pouch and count the rankings there, just in case?"

Focusing on Tira's question, Kakama scratched his temple.

"I guess, but unless someone made a mistake-"

His gaze swept all of us assembled in the common room.

"-it would be just formal procedure."

He upended the last pouch. With a clatter, five silver hundred-col coins landed on the table.

"And that settles it. So," Kakama rubbed his hands. "Now that we have collectively issued this...philanthropy ultimatum, what should we tackle first?"

I felt the tension rise at his words, but rather than raise my hackles, I eagerly devoured the plans that began flying every which way.

It was time to act.
 

Mokofooja

Well-Known Member
#9
2.5 Interlude - Historia Ex Machina

It's feasible.

Your quest-building algorithm is incredible, no doubt about it. Compared to the current run-of-the-mill and AAA MMORPG's, quest generation as an innovation is more revolutionary than evolutionary.

But the biggest danger is that after repeated exposure, the players will begin deducing the components of the algorithm, and start to piece together the templates for quests. As you said yourself, this is especially true of players uninterested in the background of the game in the first place.

That's why, in the long run, automated quest building is not enough. Taketa-kun and his team are working on a self-correcting, evolving subroutine that can alter things like quest creation in response to player interaction, but his project is at least a generation of AI in the future.

Until his tree grows fruit, we'll need a stop-gap to maintain immersion for our customers, and perhaps to incorporate into Taketa-kun's project when it finally gets implemented. And that's what the Personalization Engine is all about, and why I need your support to convince the boss on this.

I'll explain the fiddly bits in the meeting next week, but the big points of the concept are simple:

1) Emotional metrics

2) Event observation

3) Automated correlation and research

4) Reaction implementation

PR and Sales keep getting tons of invitations from psychology institutes and departments. Their researchers know that we can simulate facial expressions and body language accurately, if a little exaggerated - and that means we can gauge a person's subconscious emotional state rather than just abstract brain activity. This is something unprecedented in medical hardware.

We take those emotional states of a player, and tie them to a timeline record. We take the event logs of the player - his battle log, quest log, chat log, voice log - and tie them as well to the timeline.

Now we know what the player's feeling as he does things in the game.

It doesn't take a statistics major to know that we're interested in the extreme outliers of this timeline. We take those points in the player's emotional metrics where he had an extreme feeling - of any sort - and we cross-reference it to what he was doing at the time.

Now we know what's interesting to him, and what loses his interest.

We pick a couple keywords from the stuff happening around him triggering those extremes, and dump it in an internal database filled with knowledge of the subject. Even better, we mash together a search engine that uses those keywords on the world wide web and comprehends the resulting data in game terms.

We take what we've learned from the database and the web search, and we feed it to the quest creation algorithm. A minute later, the algorithm drops a personalized quest on the player, designed to trigger those emotional reactions. We watch him run that quest and respond to our customization, and then repeat the process all over again.

Except all this time, it wasn't "us" human programmers doing this, but it's a subroutine that we write, doing this for us, for every player on every server at the same time.

The Personalization Engine is all about tailoring quests in SAO real time so that all players become emotionally involved. Emotional involvement is not new to games, but it is incredibly powerful at breathing life into the mechanics of games, and because it's a premier, it will have an undeniable effect on immersion and game longevity. For RPGs as a whole in gaming history - no, for the history of art itself - this will be another first for interactive media, and just as important as your quest creation algorithm.

I hope that was a satisfactory summation of what I have in mind. If you have any questions on this, please, don't hesitate to ask and I will do my best to answer them. In the meantime, I will continue soliciting support for developing this engine, and I hope your voice will be counted among them.

---

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. (20xx). Internal Communication Between Argus Employees: Confiscated as Evidence for the SAO Incident Public Inquiry (Unedited). Email 523. Tokyo Prefecture: Telecommunications Bureau Printing Office
 

Mokofooja

Well-Known Member
#12
Jouaint said:
I have a question will your characters accidently "discover" sacraments somehow or will it be taught to them like other systems?
Taught to them.

Don't forget, they're people from the "real world," where magic is considered nonsense.

None of them are even Catholic, so we have no mental co-relation between our own personal beliefs and some supernatural power that can be manipulated.

(and yes, if you were to ask my point of view, sacraments are controllable by it's users and have a supernatural effect, primarily on the soul, but also capable of physical manifestations. That's very different from any conventional beliefs on divine intervention and miracles in the biblical sense.)
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
#13
Mokofooja said:
Not having to go to the toilet felt weird though, made all the more confusing since my privates (and, I assumed by implication, other people's privates) were most definitely there, which normally indicated the game designers wanted to use them in some way.
Originally genitals weren't included in the beta, but lots of guys complained to the devs that it was too freaky walking around without anything there, so they were added.

If K-Josh is the "beta contact" he's probably familiar with that story.


Mokofooja said:
Except for Kakama, nobody had worthwhile skill in the Japanese language. And he was only six months fluent. Now even the glimmer of hope that was Obrivious winked out.
Asuna can speak enough English to give directions on the street if everyone talks slowly with simple grammar, Agil is a native speaker of English (and highly visible as a shopkeeper), and now that I think about it, it's not like Japanese is Ilya's first language, huh?


Mokofooja said:
"We all ranked staying put as the least desirable option," Kakama concluded. "I wonder if you're all crazy, or if I'm crazier for agreeing with you."

...

"Unanimous decision to put game clearing as a second-priority objective." Kakama muttered to no one in particular.

...

"So, so, when are we going to learn Japanese, and start quest grinding to buy perishables?" asked PowPow.
...

"And that settles it. So," Kakama rubbed his hands. "Now that we have collectively issued this...philanthropy ultimatum, what should we tackle first?"
So Option 1 was [Bumps on a Log], and Option 3 was [Front Liner]; and the middle path of Option 2 is [Mid-Liner], right?

But I don't understand what you mean by "philanthropy ultimatum".


Mokofooja said:
PR keeps on getting tons of invitations from psychology institutes and departments. Their researchers know that we can simulate facial expressions and body language accurately, if a little exaggerated - and that means we can gauge a person's subconscious emotional state rather than just abstract brain activity. This is something unprecedented in medical hardware.
1) Does PR refer to "Public Relations" here? I guess it makes sense that they're refer to it just by the initials if they both know what's being talked about, but on the other hand, it's not really good to use an acronym without explaining it to the audience.

2) Wait, wouldn't PR be part of the Marketing (or maybe Sales) departments?

3) Wouldn't it be a different group - Inside Sales, or Technical Development - that would be the ones getting contacted by researchers?
 

Mokofooja

Well-Known Member
#14
daniel_gudman said:
Originally genitals weren't included in the beta, but lots of guys complained to the devs that it was too freaky walking around without anything there, so they were added.

If K-Josh is the "beta contact" he's probably familiar with that story.
Cool beans. Never found that in the SAO sources, so I'll keep that in mind for the off-screen discussion

Mokofooja said:
Except for Kakama, nobody had worthwhile skill in the Japanese language. And he was only six months fluent. Now even the glimmer of hope that was Obrivious winked out.
Asuna can speak enough English to give directions on the street if everyone talks slowly with simple grammar, Agil is a native speaker of English (and highly visible as a shopkeeper), and now that I think about it, it's not like Japanese is Ilya's first language, huh?
Fair enough, and that should be good news in the long run. I may have to ask you to message me your notes on Agil in the future.

Hopefully the next in-game month or two for the group goes well as they start talking to random strangers in the city.

Mokofooja said:
"We all ranked staying put as the least desirable option," Kakama concluded. "I wonder if you're all crazy, or if I'm crazier for agreeing with you."

...

"Unanimous decision to put game clearing as a second-priority objective." Kakama muttered to no one in particular.

...

"So, so, when are we going to learn Japanese, and start quest grinding to buy perishables?" asked PowPow.
...

"And that settles it. So," Kakama rubbed his hands. "Now that we have collectively issued this...philanthropy ultimatum, what should we tackle first?"
So Option 1 was [Bumps on a Log], and Option 3 was [Front Liner]; and the middle path of Option 2 is [Mid-Liner], right?

But I don't understand what you mean by "philanthropy ultimatum".
Um.

I didn't want to go right out and say it, especially early in the chapter, but I want to strongly imply to the readers that the group had talked about helping other players (in a personal way) as the third choice. I believe the official term is community outreach.

It's part of the reason why I had that entire trippy part about Beatrice in between, where I was mulling over the different choices available and kept coming back in my head to the need to reach out and help other players.

If it wasn't obvious enough, let me rewrite it by adding another comment from PowPow or Wong about how to move ahead with community outreach.

Revision! said:
"So, so, when are we going to learn Japanese, and start quest grinding to buy snacks and coffee?" asked PowPow. Wong cut him off

"Guys, guys, we should start scouting the marketplace and find good places to sit down and talk with people there."

Tirakima interrupted, "Shouldn't you at least open the last pouch and count the rankings there, just in case?"

Focusing on Tira's question, Kakama scratched his temple.
That should do it.

1) Does PR refer to "Public Relations" here? I guess it makes sense that they're refer to it just by the initials if they both know what's being talked about, but on the other hand, it's not really good to use an acronym without explaining it to the audience.
Yep. Just trying to keep in character, since the email was supposed to be part of a series of email exchanges, but I'm only showing the reader just this email.

2) Wait, wouldn't PR be part of the Marketing (or maybe Sales) departments?

3) Wouldn't it be a different group - Inside Sales, or Technical Development - that would be the ones getting contacted by researchers?
You could be right on that one. To be frank, I don't know how Argus is canonically organized in terms of business structure for functionality.

And now that I think twice about it, most researchers would be interested in leasing, licensing, or buying outright the NervGear hardware and software. They'd only contact top Argus Leadership if they were looking for a collaboration instead of a purchase (plausible, if they were fairly short on funding but still wanted to do something with MIND READING HELMETS - get an inside contact and work out a deal or something.)

I think I'll change that part to include both PR and Sales then. Consider it done after this post.
 

fitzgerald

Well-Known Member
#15
To show Mokofooja 's work is actually based off of in Real life

O-Net

which is enabled by the

Alberta SuperNet a middle mile backbone set up by the Provincial gov't.

What blows is that a freaking small town a 100K to my north has every home hooked up to cheapish 1 Gig while Calgary is still only running off of speed limited service from the major ISPs.

~ Goddamn Telus / Shaw / Bell ~ I wants me cheap Fibre Optic
 
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