mylittlejamjar | Debt Unsettlement [audio, backdated to the 1st, private to Porky... err... Pokey!]

[Well he knew this was coming. Dread wasn't the exact word he'd use to describe the moment, but anticipation sure wasn't either. And he'd gotten more than his fair share of embarrassment. True, he hadn't actually expected to win the bet - something like Yg'baladoth wouldn't create a bet it didn't think it could win - but Pokey's pride was easily wounded, even when allowing it to be wounded had been the part of the plan.

For a brief moment he considers not answering. Of making her wait. And of seeing how she reacts to it. Theoretically it could give him a better idea of what he's dealing with, and what Yggy's capable of. On the other hand, actively aggravating her could end up leaving him with something more than embarrassment.

It still takes a moment for him to respond. But ultimately, he does.]

Yeah yeah, I hear you. Gloat about it, why don't you?

[The voice squeaks. Though it's a bit hard to tell, a close ear would be able to tell this was laughter.]

Gloat? Mmm... yes, I suppose I could. After all, the challenge was a contest in order to determine who was the best prank performer in Equestria at the moment. Yet that was not the purpose of the wager, no.

Besides, of the intonation and breath placed in your words, you are already serving myself more than sufficiently to address your wounded pride.

But this isn't what I desire. I see no value in spending more than a moment to celebrate the failings of another. Besides. In my kind failure was often met with more than simple embarrassment.

[Oh. He didn't need to be told how 'your kind' reacted to failure. It was his initial failed invasion that led Giegue to use the Devil's Machine.

Pokey snorts for a moment, attempting to shrug off Yggy's words.]

Fine. So, what? Do you want me to just start talking and drone on about it, or do you have specific questions, or what?

It's your victory.

Speak.

[There's a moment, but then she actually adds.]

Please.

[Speak.

In part, that's what he'd been waiting for, hadn't it? But he'd kind of been hoping for a bit more direction, and where to start kind of boggles him for a moment. There's so much to say, even beyond the two and a half years he'd spent in Mayfield proper and then the time in the town they had won at the end of it all when they left Mayfield behind.

It's the focal point of his life and has been for the last four years. And he doesn't know where to start.

So hell.

Why not start at the beginning.]

So on this planet there are two countries: America and Russia. And they hate each other and, because they hate each other, they do what any country run by people do: they have a war and end up annihilating not just themselves, but the world. With the level of weapons they've got, they just turn it into a big old wasteland.

But where nature can't recover science can take over. So this group makes a type of virtual reality simulator and computer system. The project is over seen by a guy named Zemekis, and the simulation he creates is a sappy happy ideal town called Mayfield. So he and the group of survivors he leads plug in, live in this ideal world, and for a few decades they're happy.

But tensions mount. People become dissatisfied, Zemekis, being the main controller, becomes more authoritarian. Eventually most of the citizens become so dissatisfied they try to leave the town and head to other parts of the virtual landscape held on the server, and are led by a guy named Richard Grey. The group strikes out and makes pretty good pace for a while, avoiding the forces that Zemekis creates and sends after them. Things look good for a while.

But, then, spoilers: they aren't. A member of the group, Evan Olney, betrays their location to Zemekis. I was never really sure on why: I don't think he did it for power, though he got that after it. I think he just assumed the situation was hopeless anyway and that they'd be better under Zemekis than trying to endlessly wander and work out their own town in this virtual world. Zemekis finds the deserters, a fight ensues, most of the deserters and thus the townspeople die. Those that survive Zemekis has dragged back, and he 'rewards' Olney by making him the chief of police in what's now pretty much a ghost town.

But Zemekis isn't willing to give up yet. He's bitter and angry and all kinds of pissed I guess, and doesn't want to admit his attempt at some dumb utopia was a failure. And their technology is so advanced that he could...peer into other realities, I guess. Not draw anything from it, but he could see the people and personalities that lived there. So he came up with an idea.

See, the town had artificial people called drones. They were blank slate AIs meant to help populate the town to make it seem bigger and more natural. Their personalities were meant to be about as bland as oatmeal but agreeable, I guess. And unlike the original people, real people, the personalities and physical characteristics of the drones could be reprogrammed to be whatever Zemekis wanted.

So while Zemekis couldn't pull in the people he could see, he could sure program the drones to be them.

I don't know how long he did that for. But at some point, things started to go real bad. And about a year after they kind of started kicking and screaming down a slope? That's when I got there.

[It's not a perfect early history, but it's the best way Pokey can find to phrase it. He shrugs a little, though he assumes Yggy can't see that. But who really knows.]

A fake city that was a better place to live than the horror show that was the actual world, and turned into an even worse meat grinder to the point where it had to be filled with artificial people. That's one of the big things to take away from it.

You still with me?

Yes.

Continue.

[She could say more. Ask more. But that doesn't seem appropriate yet. Especially when Pokey is so intent on divulging now. She'll stay quiet and be an attentive audience.]

[Alright. Might as well go on the same track he's been going.]

When I got there it turned out that Mayfield wasn't the only artificial town. The Russians had a system to and tried to take over, corrupting the town to their image. It didn't last long, and Zemekis found some way to destroy the Russian's server. For the next year and a half or so the town played games trying to simultaneously destroy any hope for leaving, trying to convince the people in the town that this was the best place for them to live, and destroying any ties they had with each other. People would get 'droned' or reverted to a base state constantly, sometimes coming back, sometimes not. It'd create events every now and then to destroy trust: force people to tell the absolute truth about themselves over the phone lines, force a kind of killing game that had prizes at the end of it, yada yada yada. Pretty standard evil stuff.

After watching a year and a half of that, the town began to lose power, and those in control started fighting each other. Olney was killed earlier the previous year for disobeying Zemekis on an issue, leaving a gap in the actual authority figures in the town. Parts of the town ceased functioning as well: if you died in Mayfield, you'd come back the next day was how it used to work. Now it could take a week to come back and you'd have repercussions from it. Like losing your memory and dumb stuff like that. Had a prank contest once near April Fools. That was fun and kind of surprising it didn't trick anyone into actually killing others but hey. They were kind of losing their touch at that point.

As Zemekis' control weakened Richard Grey bothered to show that he had survived in a minor state in the programming of the system and began to help us. He gave us some information about the program before Zemekis found and erased him. Around that time the librarian in the town, Annie, and her brother who worked at the Post Office where you could get stuff back began to help us too.

Oh yeah. You could get back things that belonged to "you" by making trades at the Post Office. You could get that stuff back over time in general as the programming took effect on adapting to you, but you could speed it up by trading. You could get rid of parts of you you didn't want there to.

So anyway the librarian and the post man, who knew a lot more about the programming, began to help us. Thing is, an even more prominent member in Zemekis' circle, Mrs. Johnson, began to see a way to make a move for power as Zemekis' grip weakened. She managed to boot Zemekis out of power, kill the post man, and essentially take control of the town. She was a psycho who decided to treat the town like an experiment, not really giving a crap about anyone in it.

Thing is she also came to power as the town was beginning to severely deteriorate, and that ended up dragging her down with it. Annie managed to help us leave the town and go to a new town that was further down the server. There, we were given the same powers those who had run the old town had to arrange the town and manipulate it's environment. The item creation powers? That's a part of it, though only a small part.

So, while the power in the computer's server is inevitably starting to drain and will die in a few years, we're allowed to live those years out peacefully in a new town. Our town. And that's how it's been for the last year and a half or so.

Til I got brought here.

[It's amazingly short and succinct version of anything, dancing away from too great a set of specifics, especially around himself. Large parts of the over all history are cut out, not getting into anything too specific aside from a wide overview. If she wants any more than that it has to be asked for.]

[Fortunately or unfortunately, Yg'baladoth doesn't know, or doesn't care(?), about anything that is too detail specific. Instead she listens to everything and keeps some of those thoughts in mind. Her forehead furrows as she considers the implications of a place like this.]

[Though he said much, and undoubtedly there was more, there is only one word that articulated what Yggy felt of that situation.]

Interesting.

Interesting. Sure.

[It...bothers him, on a fundamental way, to hear a place he cares so much boiled down to the word 'interesting'. He tries to hide his anger at the phrasing. After all, it's not like he really wanted this thing to get too interested in it.

Still.]

I can't really describe it the way it should be. You had to be there to understand it.

That can be arranged.

[No, it can't. At least not right now. Yggy doesn't have the power to leave and move to other dimensions, and won't until this is all over, if all powers are actually returned and this isn't just a closed box like Mayfield. He's seen this game before. And even if you could when all this has ended...Mayfield will probably be gone by then. Pokey knows how long this can go, and how little time the server has remaining.

He's resigned himself to never seeing it again, to just being trapped in this damn place.

Still, with a tone of mild curiosity,he asks]

Oh yeah? How would you do that, let alone transplant yourself into a computer server?

[Better to act like he believes she actually could then call her on why she can't, though it's tempting.]

Edited 2014-10-16 17:48 (UTC)

Through you.

[A vague answer. But for all intents and purpose that was her reason to gain access to the curiosity that was Mayfield.]

I will need your help, of course.

[A pause.]

Why do you want to go there so badly and have so much interest in this dumb town?

Why should I waste my time helping you?

[The answer for now, he's decided, is no. But he may as well play along.]

Because... [she actually thinks of her words carefully.]

...it is a challenge.

And what'll you do there when you've conquered the challenge of getting there?

Gee, still not making this worth anything to me.

[grin]

You can't think of something?

You are smarter than that impulsive stunt that got you into this situation in the first place.

[Praise. Praise was something Pokey tended to try and drive head forward towards, to adore, and it's hard for his ego not to take Yggy's last words to him as some form of praise. Even now, even still, he still wants praise. Affirmation.

But instead of letting his guard down, as he'd be want to do, he builds it back up. Because those words? Were so similar to the way Giegue would talk, and tempt, in it's brief stay at Mayfield.]

Going there "through me"...

That could mean a lot of things, don't ya think?

[Possession. Tearing him apart and using his body or consciousness as some road map that could lead back to the source. Corrupting his mind and memories to open some eldritch portal there.]

Sure would help me come to a decision if you could explain what that means better.

The world of Mayfield you know exists in your mind. I know of a place that would allow us, or me specifically, to explore that world.

If you believe it would be dangerous the answer is yes. Any exploration of any mind is not without risk of vulnerability.

You wouldn't be in Mayfield in that case, just my memory of Mayfield. You'd have failed to reach the actual place.

[Unless exploring his perception of it was the point after all, which is a bit...more worrying.]

Y'know you're really dancing around the dangers of this compared to how blunt you were the first deal we made. If the danger is corruption or removal of my memory of it, then guess what? The answer's no.

I am not used to explaining myself. This is easier for me to understand.

The danger does not lie in the exploration of your mind. The risk to you is relatively benign though it does require a certain degree of trust. To explore your mind would mean you would be at the edge of exploring mine. My domain allows for this, I think. I simply have never tried it on a being of order.

I could temper myself to allow for your safety. But should you choose to act in a way that is unexpected I could no longer ensure your safety. Even a marginal exploration could be very damaging, I would suspect.

[Well. That he can understand a little better. Walking on the edge of being psychically influenced by something else was something he - or, well, the actual him, and what was passed down to him - had done before. Had come close to touching infinite power. And madness.

That wasn't something Pokey was looking to have happen again.cHe had no interest in exploring or gauging this thing's mind. But at the same time, he had to wonder-]

So if we did this, would it just be like you were rummaging through my mind? Or would I be re-experiencing Mayfield again, or what?

You would be with me, of course.

[This is a stupid idea. A bad idea. And he knows he's playing with something he really, really shouldn't. It's something that, if he actually was back in Mayfield, he'd maybe have the self-control to still deny.

But he isn't in Mayfield. And that's part of the problem. Because he knows, deep down, he isn't going to see it again. Isn't going to experience it, or the new town they made after it, ever again.

And this? Might be his only chance to.

He thinks on it for a few moments. Which turn into minutes. Ponders it. Before-]

Let's do it.

[Just one more time. One more time to see it, and then he'll be satisfied and be ready to fully start looking for a way to isolate himself from the rest of the people here. To hide from this dumb, colorful world until either whatever monster it is that's hanging outside the fringes devours the place or he finally withers and dies from old age.

He hopes, almost, for the former. Because even if he removed the immortality that time distortion had given him thanks to the Post Office in Mayfield, his understanding of dragons?

Was that they lived a long time. And without the place he cared about, the people he cared about? He expected life would be a long and grinding thing.]

...very well.

This will take me some time, I would see to ensure that I have mastered myself enough to allow you harborage. Bear with me in the meantime.

Ah, and another thing.

Do take the passing of time to reconsider. I would not fault your sense of self-preservation.

[That gives him pause. It was never said that Pokey was a brave boy, and the few things that could give him bravery were far away now. He blanks for a moment at that. Would she honestly give him a chance to back out of this, when it comes to it?

It's a thought that comes in and then passes for Pokey. Given the time, perhaps he'll take her up on bowing out. At the moment?

His sense of self-preservation, in combat with his desire, is losing out.]

Yeah. Sure.

...You're not going to get much of what you want if you just tell people they can back out of crap like this whenever you want, you know.

[Seriously what is your deal? He's never encountered something alien or, supposedly, diabolical like you that would do this before.]

If your words are advice, I will take them under advisement. If they are not, I will dismiss them immediately.

Eh. Take them however you want.

[Well okay. Now it's hard almost not to laugh. Who talks like that?]

Though, and this is advice: you could learn to speak more naturally. People would probably show you more of who they are if you didn't talk like some weird fax machine robot voice.

Relevant, but useless. I am speaking naturally.

Debt Unsettlement [audio, backdated to the 1st, private to Porky... err... Pokey!]

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