First Quest (Video, username 'westandreamcatcher')

[lightnovelexperiences]

[So.

The camera picks up an idyllic looking sandy Mediterranean beach, near a patch of grass and forest. It shakes a fair bit, like a cell phone cam in an unsteady - or nervous - hand.]

This is... this is uh. Deedee. ...'s player. Don't... if you know my real name from before the Badgernet crash don't throw it around.

I uh.

I'm on the fucking Shores of Awakening. I'm on fucking Mundus.

And taller and y'all hear how high my voice is. I can feel my tails.

I woke up alone face-down on the sand here. Felt it burn. I uh.

Please advise.

Comments

[turingcompletionist]

[Dr Durante groans.] No, no, that's not what's happened. I've seen this happen before. There's been a problem with the mind-machine hook-up in his neurohelm and he's gone catatonic IRL. Instead of a fraction of his consciousness still inhabiting his body on Earth for safety reasons, it's all on Mundus, piloting his player character.

[have_hat_will_travel]

... Wait. Waitwaitwait.

Okay, that's. There's some implications there that I need to work through a lot. Not that I am likely to be much help, but...

First thing is - how does that work with people's souls? Normally where I'm from, soul and body are a duality, so is it like their soul's somehow been pulled into this game?

Oh how many Devil assholes would love to abuse THAT I'm sure...

[From what Pidonus has shared before, she's from what would broadly be called a high-fantasy setting. Also, she's specifically a demon, and where she's from that means really REALLY hating devils.

Also it means she's used to a specific way of how souls work - and will probably be thrown for a loop by different world's different understandings thereof.]

[turingcompletionist]

I mean, I've always believed that souls are a function of consciousness, so I assume that his soul is with his mind. Mundus isn't in a different universe or anything, so he's still in the same plane of existence as he always was. It's just that his body is, well, currently empty. Like I've said, I've seen this before. I used to work for DARPA.

[We're not saying this is bringing up old trauma, but. Boy is it bringing up old trauma.]

[have_hat_will_travel]

... Okay, 'believe' versus 'know', that means possibly different soul mechanics. I guess that'd make sense on a lower-magic world, which Jake's said as much before.

... So, wait, Mundus is on the same plane? I was thinking it existing as a computer game meant functionally interplanar, kinda. I'm not in intellectual territory I'm quite prepared for, am I.

[Pidonus can kinda tell that, and is trying to use her own confusion as a bit of distraction.]

[turingcompletionist]

Not in this case. The game is inside our universe. He's in our universe. He's just not inside his original body.

He's in Deedee's.

And if we don't get him onto life support in time, if anyone tries to remove the neurohelm while he's still wholly on Mundus, he won't have a living body to go back to. Trust me on this.

[Yeah, she's definitely reliving some trauma here.]

[have_hat_will_travel]

Damn it. This just adds even more case to 'I really wish I knew how to do interplanar moving'.

... The Ethereal plane doesn't count for this purpose.

[And from the trauma in the doctor's tone, she'd probably seen this happen.]

Right now, at least we have one thing - this network lets us bring communication between the worlds. That's. A lot of help, actually? At least potentially.

But you mentioned this is happening everywhere... That makes me think the connections themselves were somehow disrupted. Presumably, the normal failstate would be to kick the entire consciousness back to the original body, so whatever did it did so hard enough that your system couldn't manage that...

[turingcompletionist]

Yeah, that's the thing. Io's supposed to be doing that. We built that failsafe specifically for this scenario, after what happened during--

Well, it doesn't matter when it happened. The point is that Io's supposed to have this in hand. One of my co-founders, Kate, she's trying to get in touch with them to see what fucking happened.

[have_hat_will_travel]

Io being...?

[She's referring to Io as a person. That just adds more terrifying possibilities.]

[turingcompletionist]

Io.tcai. One of the post-singularity Turing-Capable AIs that run the game. Their job, among other thing, is maintaining mind-machine hook-ups and enacting the failsafes so this didn't happen again.

[have_hat_will_travel]

So either they chose to stop for some reason... Or something prevented them from doing so.

[turingcompletionist]

Yeah. Uh. It maybe looks like it was the second. Kate and Claire are on trying to talk to them.

[have_hat_will_travel]

... Some kind of skulldruggery against them, then. You implied there's other AIs for the game; are they reachable?

[turingcompletionist]

Normally yes.

They're not letting us talk to them. They, uh, put up a firewall. The others are trying to get past it.

[Dr Durante is not, because she's always been the worst hacker of the five founders of OWTB.]

[have_hat_will_travel]

... So Io is entirely unavailable, the others have blocked themselves off.

That's not a great combination, to say the least. The kinda thing a demon lord would love to exploit, though I doubt that's your situation.

[turingcompletionist]

Yeah, seriously. I'm hoping, uh, 'Deedee' will get me more info on this from the inside soon. Because right now we're pretty fucked.

[have_hat_will_travel]

If I could cross planes... Well, I'd need to be able to reach both regions to be able to most between them.

That kinda magic would require me finding an Archmage who's willing to help me learn the right magic, in the first place.

[turingcompletionist]

Yeah. Uh. If you get here or to Mundus, let me know and I'll see what I can do to help there.

[have_hat_will_travel]

... Will do. If I find a way, that is.

Of course, pursuing that puts me at its own risks, but...

[turingcompletionist]

Yeah. I kind of figured it might.

Still, I'll do what I can. And if you end up on Mundus, there's people there who I can trust to help all of you. I'm already sending Deedee towards them.