Sideshow on :
Personally I doubt whether She is a person at all. I'm starting to think that she is either the flaw, or is related to the flaw from earlier episodes. Just my opinion, and conversation starter :)
Monday, August 1. 2005Macon Craig
Yes, that's right. My name's Macon. Yes, I do hate my parents. I mean, what kind of parents name their son Macon? It's like condemning your child to eternal torture especially if that child is, well, not fat, but a little bit overweight. And that's just kindergarten. But you're not here to listen to me whine about my past, are you? So, let me get back to where we were.
How did this all start? Well, it all started the day that I decided to cut class. It wasn't the first time. In fact, it was supposed to be the last time, because if I got caught cutting class one more time, I wouldn't be able to graduate. So there I was, sitting in the media room with a friend of mine. We were both working on special effects for a movie that we'd been making after school, even though both of us were supposed to be in Geometry class. I heard his instant messenger chime. He stopped work to read the message. "Hey Make." "Yeah?" "You still playing with those 3D rendering programs?" "Yeah, you should see some of the stuff I'm coming up with. Finished one last night that makes Lauren look bad." "Nice. You gonna bring it in?" His IM chimed again, interrupting my thoughts about Lauren, and the um, enhanced version of her that I had finished the night before. "You should come talk to this guy. He's looking for someone who's looking for a good time, and who's good with 3D rendering." "Cool." His name was Night_Watcher. He told me what he was doing, and I've barely been to class since. The environments aren't perfect. We haven't figured out a way to embed scent or taste information in them, the AI has some definite limitations, and if you stay in them for too long, you get terrible headaches, and your body starts to attack the HESII, but it's better than school. I walk in, and no one dares cross me. I'm not some dork who they can walk on, and then scrape off their shoes between classes. I'm a warrior, a hunter, an adventurer. I'm dangerous, strong, and I'm in control.
Night_Watcher and Brain_Stem are into urban warfare. At their insistence, almost all of the environments I've created are cityscapes full of narrow alleyways and dead-end streets. I airbrushed the last bit of graffiti onto the station wall, and began the upload. This one was a masterpiece, a huge sprawling city, complete with subway lines, a sewer system, foundries that spewed hazardous waste into the areas around them, and hundreds of decaying, condemned buildings. I wouldn't be playing in that city, though. I never played the cities unless the other two insisted on playing a cooperative mission against the AI. I always went to the same environment. It was one of the first environments I had created. At that time, our server didn't have much capacity, so it was a small place, only about as large as one of the blocks in the newer urban war zones, but when the wind whispered through the trees, and I listened to the far-off roar of the waterfall, it was almost like heaven. My IM chimed. Night_Watcher[2:37]: Sorry, I drifted off. I had to laugh. He likes to tell anyone who'll listen that he doesn't sleep much. We argued for a while about some new ideas for rendering environments. Night_Watcher might be a genius, but sometimes, he's a real prick. He thinks that since he knows everything about how the computers work, he knows everything about how everything works. The upload finished. I wasn't really tired, but I didnt feel like running the file checker on the server, and besides, I had already run it on my computer before I uploaded it. I signed off, and went to bed. After an hour of tossing and turning, I gave up. The environment loaded. Looking back, I think it might have loaded a little bit more slowly than usual, but that may be hindsight coloring things. I walked a few feet into the trees so that I couldn't see the edges of the environment, and I laid down to sleep. The grass was soft against my face. If I turned over, I could see the stars overhead. Man, I'm good. I don't know how long I slept. I heard a noise, and woke with a start. At first, I thought I had imagined it. Then, I decided that it was one of the night birds that we had embedded to make the environment seem more realistic. But when I heard it again, I knew that it was no bird I had ever heard before. I got up, stretching myself. In this environment, I wasn't the fat kid that nobody really liked. Here, I was tall and strong. It had taken me a while to get used to switching bodies, but now I could do it without much hesitation. I followed the sound of her voice through the trees, moving with the careful quiet that comes with long experience. She had built a small fire in a clearing near the center of the environment. She was bent over it now, stirring something in a pot, and humming to herself. From where I was standing, she looked good. I circled the clearing carefully, looking for weapons. From what I could tell, she was unarmed. She started and stood up when I stepped into the circle of firelight. A knife appeared from somewhere, and she held it between us. She wasn't AI, her movements were too smooth, too human. I looked her up and down. "Wow. Nice . . . " my voice trailed off. I was never very confident around girls. "Excuse me?" Her voice was piqued with anger. "Nice. I mean, I'm impressed. I don't remember rendering anything like those, so you must have drawn them yourself. You did a good job." She looked at me incredulously. "Pervert!" she snarled. I stepped toward her. "Look, just 'cause you're in a girl's body, that's no reason you have to act like one." She raised the knife. "Don't come any closer." I took another step toward her. Her hand flashed out, and somehow, I found myself lying on my back, staring up at the sparks from her fire as they climbed up spirals of smoke toward the stars. The last thing I realized before everything went black was that I could smell her perfume. Dang, she smelled good. Trackbacks
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Sideshow on :
Personally I doubt whether She is a person at all. I'm starting to think that she is either the flaw, or is related to the flaw from earlier episodes. Just my opinion, and conversation starter :)
Mad Giggler on :
I expect you to finish this story Mr. Elbows.
Johnny Elbows on :
Should I call you Mad? Or Mr. Mad, or Mr. Giggler? I'm never quite sure how I should address lunatics. Anyway, I fully intend to finish the story. But as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
radar on :
yeah! Hell!
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