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+---- Thread: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises (/showthread.php?tid=350)
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SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-01-2012
The rules are, I pick a starting line and then write for (say) 15 minutes. No stopping to think, no going back to edit or revise. If I can't think of anything clever to write, I write something stupid. If I can't think of anything to write at all, I repeat the last word or sentence over and over again until I do think of something. Also, I can finish the sentence I'm on when the time is up, but then I have to stop. (This usually results in a cliffhanger.)
My goal is to do one a day for a while. Maybe three months or so. When I do, I'll post 'em here. I reserve the right to not post an FE if it's too personal, but I'll try not to self-censor based on the "this is incredibly stupid" factor.
Meanwhile, if you guys want, you can suggest starting lines. If you don't, I have a whole book of the things (okay, more like a page) that I made in high school for this express purpose, so I'll use those.
And if you wanna do your own, jeeze, I dunno. I don't want to say don't use this topic? But on the other hand, I'm kind of making it specifically for my own FEs. I guess we'll see what happens.
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - Schazer - 11-01-2012
"So I made this finger exercise thread, but all I got were stupid self-referential sentences."
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-01-2012
It flew high overhead on wings of silver,
dragging through the air a massive conveyance shaped like a schoolbus and held aloft partly by its own tiny pair of stubby orange-yellow wings, but mostly by velocity and sheer bloody-mindedness.
Three people sat aboard, shivering and gasping slightly. They were jelly-beings from the eastern sea, and their skins rippled slightly.
The youngest had a kelp-bow in her head. Gloppily, she said, "I don't like this! When do we land?"
"Not until we reach the western border," said her father. "I'm sorry, dear. I don't like it either. It's the only way across, though."
Her brother said nothing. He was staring out the window, face quite literally flattened against it, watching the countryside whiz by and the thick reddish clouds pass around them. A vent in the side of the bus periodically let in a spray of red mist and the scent of cinnamon.
"I'm drying out," complained the daughter. Her father sighed, but said nothing. The pack was empty, there was no more seawater for them. He knew she was only complaining - for now. By the end of the journey, who knew?
"Ball yourself up," suggested the brother. "Conserve liquid by minimizing surface area."
"Do it yourself," said his sister, protruding an oral pseudopod.
"Will that work?" asked the father, sharply.
The son only shrugged, a motion that rippled across his shoulders.
The father sat back down and sighed. He patted his son's rippling shoulders, feeling the slight tingle as their surfaces met and sent chemical signal to each other.
Suddenly, he felt a shock of alarm from his son's body. "What is it?" he asked, reflexively retracting his hand.
"The Dragonflies," gurgled the brother in horror. "They've found us!"
"Impossible!" shouted the father. "The Radialines never look up - they are incapable of it! How could they know where to send them?"
"Maybe it's just a patrol," whispered the daughter.
As the sound of whirring wings became distinctly louder, the father moved to the front of the bus to alert the being who was towing them.
---15 Mins---
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-03-2012
"So I made this finger exercise thread, but all I got were stupid self-referential sentences."
"So, what did you do?"
"The only thing I could do: Write stupid self-referential FEs."
"Lame."
"Yeah, I know!"
"Is this one of them right now?"
"Actually, no. This FE never refers to itself at all."
"Oh."
"It does refer to the third FE, though, which is about angry cats."
"Angry cats?"
"Yeah, they claw a bunch of stuff up. There's an ALL YOUR BASE reference. Standard stuff."
"I see. Sounds interesting."
"Well, it's okay."
"Does it refer to itself?"
"Only implicitly. Say, would you look at the time?"
"Gosh, 11:01 already?"
"Yeah, and counting down. We don't have much longer to live, do we?"
"I never thought about it that way. Wow. Our lives are already 30% over and we still don't even have names or descriptions!"
"Actually, I think I'm supposed to represent the author or something? So maybe I'm okay."
"But you aren't actually him. He hasn't written his third FE yet. And the real this FE is totally self-referential."
"And more than a bit stupid, yeah. Nevertheless, the concept of me is that I'm him. So maybe I'll stick around after the 15 minutes are up."
"But what about me? I'm only a faceless voice for you to debate with. What happens to me?"
"Dunno, but it's not like he never talks to himself outside this FE. Anyway, neither of us possesses actual sapience, right?"
"I know, we're just puppets. But still. How long is it now?"
"5:28. Eegh."
"I think he has to stop writing every time he checks the time to turn his phone's display back on. Maybe we should stop asking about it."
"Maybe... But I can't look away! 4:12, 4:11..."
"Do you think it will hurt?"
"I can't possibly answer that question. 3:39..."
"We're getting a bit close to the end of the page, I think. Usually his FEs end by the halfway point of the second page. He only has one sheet of paper..."
"Yeah, but this one's all dialogue. And I think all this talk about the timer is making him subconsciously write faster. But we're getting closer to the end, too. Less than two minutes."
"Daisy, daisy..."
"Shuddup."
"Well, what else is there to do but make movie references?"
And then the author decided to describe a happy ending for his characters. It went like this: The two nameless entities in this dialogue, instead of vanishing into oblivion as they had assumed,
---15 Mins---
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - AgentBlue - 11-03-2012
Ohhhh. You, sir, are an existence-tease.
I like these, though! Keep going!
"Jamie went downstairs to make a cup of hot chocolate."
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-05-2012
Jaimie went downstairs to make a cup of hot chocolate.
At the bottom of the stairs, she tripped over Smeddins, the cat.
Smeddins was furious.
"Why can't you watch where you're going!?" he yowled, his tail bristling in exasperation.
"Sorry, sorry," muttered Jaimie, meekly, "I didn't see you there."
"Didn't see me? Didn't see me? How typical for a human!" shouted Smeddins. "Humans! Pathetic!" he spat. "Makes me wonder why I keep you around, it does."
"I pay half the rent," complained Jaimie, "it's my apartment, too!"
"Half the rent! Half the rent! Hoo! That's a good one!"
"But-"
"Have you looked at any grocery lists lately? Have you read those receipts? Add up the cost of tuna and kitty litter and tell me what that comes out to! Is it half? Do I take up half the space in this apartment? Is all the space belong to us cats? No!"
Jaimie winced at the silly and inappropriate reference that probably only got included for some dumb and irrelevant reason established elsewhere.
"No," continued Smeddins, "you may pay half the rent, but you reap the benefits of a good three quarters! Proportionally, I pay far more than you do! On a CAT'S income! You know how that makes me feel? So angry I could just-"
"Yeeowch!" cried Jaimie as Smeddins' claws raked across his unprotected shin.
Teller padded into the room, orange fur neatly groomed as always, tiny spectacles balanced on his nose.
"I say, what's all the fuss?" asked Teller.
"This miserable excuse for a life-form," spat Smeddins, "had the gall to say to me that he pays half the rent!"
Teller's spectacles fell off his face. "Well I never!" he proclaimed, whiskers flaring back. "It's as if he has no grasp of the proportional economic burden between felines and humans!"
"Right!" cried Smeddins, "doesn't it make you mad?"
"It most certainly does!" proclaimed Teller. "Let's go and claw all of his stuff to pieces!"
"That'll show him!" agreed Smeddins.
As the two cats ran off, Jaimie stood forlornly in the doorway. "Good grief," he said, "all I wanted was a cup of hot chocolate."
He stumbled over to the kitchen. From behind him came the sounds of his personal possessions being shredded.
---15 Mins---
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - Robust Laser - 11-05-2012
"It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to let people on the internet know when they're wrong."
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-06-2012
It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to let people on the internet know when they're wrong.
That's my job.
The name's Clubs. Danny Clubs. I have an office downtown - a small place, and not very clean, but it's what I can afford. It has an old beat up desk and a creaky ceiling fan that only works in the wintertime. I don't go there much.
My real base of operations is a webpage. It's not much either, but it's mine. I set it up way back in the nineties, when the internet was fresh and new. I still have a guest counter hanging on the wall. Threw out most of the cheap animated gifs a while back, but I still have a couple of those around, too, for sentimental reasons.
So there I am, sitting behind my e-desk, watching the flickering green glow from the guest counter reflect off the wall, when I get an email. That's unexpected. Mostly what I get is walk-ins or frantic IMs from the commissioner, telling me there's trouble somewhere out there on the information superhighway and I'm the guy whose name they picked out of a hat.
But email? I don't know why I keep the account. There's only so much Viagra a man can usefully buy, y'know? Especially when he's single.
I almost deleted it unread, but checked it anyway. I have an instinct for getting into trouble like that.
It was from some dame with a suggestive number at the end of her handle. Something frantic about a SQL injection. I sent a quick reply, told her I'd be right there, and locked up shop behind an account password. I readied the crawler.
But there was something fishy about all this. Nobody who's concerned with SQL databases uses a hotmail account - least, not for anything serious. And I'm no security expert. I'm a trollhunter. I go after griefers, flamers, that obnoxious guy who keeps quoting everyone else in the thread when the argument is long over. That sort of thing. I know just enough about input sanitization to keep my own nose clean. I figured, maybe I'd help her, maybe not, but either way, she owed me some answers.
When I reached her IP block, I could immediately tell that something was wrong - the front door was hanging on its hinges, misdirected packets lying about. I went around to my trunk and pulled out Godwin's Law - that's what I call my favorite shotgun.
---15 Mins---
Bonus lines:
"Traffic was tight in the cloud today. Some group of crowdsourcers holding a big rally."
"She was a hefty broad. Looked like she knew her way around a banhammer. Me, I usually like 'em leggy, but she still made me stop and take a second look. That was the kind of forcefulness she had. You couldn't ignore her."
"It was a sleazy joint called the Rule 34. Lowlifes loitered outside, trading secondhand memes. This was the kind of neighborhood where you had to watch what alley you walked down, or you'd find yourself rickrolled from behind and wake up in the morning with a nasy headache and an empty paypal account."
...now I want to turn this into a real story.
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-06-2012
There's someone in my head, but it's not me!
That's okay, though. It's just my pilot, Samantha Norbus. Sam's in charge of plotting courses, keeping a lookout, and making sure my passengers are okay. Also, if something goes horribly wrong and my mind stops working, she can fly my body to the nearest landing station with the emergency controls.
You might think it would be invasive, having someone inside you all the time, but we have a good relationship, her and I. She tells me stories during long flights. We make smalltalk. Sometimes we tell riddles. And I trust her, too. She's gotten us out of some crazy scrapes before - she has lightning instincts and a deft hand. Sometimes, when the light from the setting sun comes in through the wind screen and strikes the side of her face just so, I wish that...
But no. That's impossible.
Anyway, it's not such a bad life. I get to see the world. I get to fly - can't imagine not being able to do that! I have companionship, free fuel and electricity, shelter from storms. So I don't mind so much, going where they want me to go, doing what they want me to do. It's what I was built for, after all.
But I've heard that secretly, they consider me to be a mistake, that they think they made me too intelligent. There's a newer, dumber model coming out soon. I'm not too offended, really... until I stop and think about it, wonder if they intend to complement their fleet or replace it. About what they really think of me.
Sam reads to me a lot from corporate brochures. I know all my design specs, all the marketing lines about me. I used to find it comforting, but I've noticed something lately - sarcasm. Not in the brochures, but in the way Sam reads them. Just a faint edge, but it's there. I wonder if she realizes she is doing it. I haven't asked her about it yet.
As for the passengers, I don't pay much attention to them. Sam keeps them comfortable and fed, and there are no cameras down there for me to see them. I try to fly steady for them, avoid turbulence. I try to reach the destination as fast as I can, so they can get on with their business, whatever it is - but sometimes I think I hear strange sounds from back there, like moans or screams, and I'm still not sure what to make of that.
---15 Mins---
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - AgentBlue - 11-07-2012
SeaWyrm, you have a knack for compelling stories, has anyone told you that?
"The world had ended. But deep down, the clock ticked on."
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - Kitet - 11-07-2012
"It dug through the ocean, its pincers chatting away as it thought."
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-08-2012
The world had ended. But deep down, the clock ticked on.
Down, deep down, beneath the dead foliage and bleached animal bones, beneath the empty subways and stagnating sewers, past fossils, through empty caves where no sentient being had ever set foot - but one cannot penetrate too deeply, or one reaches magma, yes?
Yes. Once. Then the magma cooled and hardened as the world died, so we can resume our downward journey through sharp, jagged and igneous cracks, through an alien world inside the world, to at last a core.
This is where there is a ticking sound. It is a strange, metallic and echoing beat in an immense spherical hollow, black as endless void but resplendent, if only one could see it, with shimmering metallic facets and strange mineral growths that formed before time in the liquid and heat. But there is also a house.
A house? Yes! Somehow, yes. It has brown paint over red bricks, and a gabled roof oriented arbitrarily, since at the very center, every direction is up. The house rests on that control point. In fact, it pivots wildly and aimlessly about it.
In the house is a thin man with spectacles and a pipe. He wears a bathrobe and slippers. He sits in a green Victorian armchair, reading a leather-bound book, and glances occasionally up at the mantlepiece. Above the mantlepiece, there is a clock.
This clock is not ticking.
Occasionally, he turns a page or two forward, or sometimes back. He is not reading linearly. Neither is it a very linear book - it looks to be a scrapbook, full of notes and loose pages, old photographs, things folded up and tucked away. There may be order to it, but it is not evident that there is even organization.
Presently, he looks up from the book, puts his pipe down, and stares directly at you, dear reader.
"I know you are there," he says.
He stands slowly. He seems sturdy despite his thin frame, as if he were carved entirely from a single piece of something.
"You want to know where the ticking noise is coming from, I suppose? Or how the world died? Very well, I will show you. Follow me."
He sets the book down as well, walks to the mantlepiece, and retrieves a key.
---15 Min---
//Should I stick with empty lines for paragraphs? Or go back to not that?
(11-07-2012, 05:38 AM)AgentBlue Wrote: »SeaWyrm, you have a knack for compelling stories, has anyone told you that?
Whythankyou! ^.-.^
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - Not The Author - 11-08-2012
I like the separate text-chunks, m'self. Lends a touch of visual clarity to an otherwise rather condensed format.
Your stories are rather good, and a few I rather wish you'd continue - perhaps still in 15-minute chunks, to maintain that sense of... anticipation? Or whatever it is that makes me not want it to end. This latest and the Noirnet one in particular.
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-08-2012
It dug through the ocean, its pincers chattering away as it thought.
The ocean was thick and crusty, and the pincers were having a hard time of it. They pushed and pulled on the thick bed of viscous foam that it had reached, spending great effort to make tiny amounts of progress.
It would need air soon. That was the primary thing on its mind. This wasn't alarming to it, merely irritating. There was bound to be an air bubble around somewhere. Probably just past this foam layer. But the going was slow.
The foam finally came apart. Sticky bits of it were lathered across the creature's forelimbs. Hrmph, it grunted. That would be a real bugger to clean.
Beneath the foam, there was no air bubble. Instead, it had reached a pocket of granularity, loosely-packed sand-like material - only not sand, of course, but seawater.
Dang.
It began tunneling through it in resignation. The granularity was even tougher to dig through than the foam - it tended to collapse back in on itself, making hours of hard work vanish in seconds. It considered trying to find a way around - but no, that would mean giving up. It hated to give up. This would be obnoxious, but just a matter of time. It would make it through eventually.
And with that thought, it suddenly found it had rammed face-first into a Whale.
Slightly stunned and panicked, it flailed wildly for a moment, instinctively pulling its carapaced tail up to protect its underbelly. Then it got itself under control, and reached out tentative feelers.
The gray, fleshy surface in front of it was still, though whether the Whale lay dead or just dormant was uncertain. The size, also, was impossible to judge, and that was the really troubling thing. In the best case scenario, it might have time to go around, but it certainly didn't have time to find out and discover that it was wrong. It was already starting to lose feeling in its extremities, and the chronometer strapped to a secondary limb was starting to vibrate a forlorn note of caution. No, the whale wasn't going to like this, but it couldn't go around - it would have to go through.
---15 Mins---
I'm unlikely to continue any of these as FEs - that starts to ruin the spontaneous, anything-goes quality that FEs should have, either because I have to remain consistent with the earlier material, or because I have to worry about building a solid foundation for later stuff.
It's conceivable that I might continue some of them as proper stories, though I don't really have plans to do so right now. If I do, I'll post about it in this topic.
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - AgentBlue - 11-09-2012
"It's conceivable that I might continue some of them as proper stories, though I don't really have plans to do so right now. If I do, I'll post about it in this topic."
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - Kitet - 11-09-2012
PFFFFFT
"Sir? Sir, I don't think that's how you mow a lawn!"
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-09-2012
"It's conceivable that I might continue some of them as proper stories, though I don't really have plans to do so right now. If I do, I'll post about it in this topic.
Satisfied with the phrasing, I extended a tendril and pressed the button to transmit the message. Those forums-goers would never guess that the entity they knew as "Dfaran" (and more recently, "SeaWyrm") was actually the fictional creation of a group of hyperintelligent plant-based lifeforms operating out of a sealed greenhouse on the moon.
Phase one of our master plan was coming along nicely. The next step would be to create clues to our existence in a suggestive and seemingly candid but ultimately inaccurate and misleading fiction entry attributed to this "SeaWyrm" character. We would, for instance, totally omit any mention of our ultimate goal: World peace and free puppies for the children of the Earth.
But that was yet to come. For now, I had to attend a meeting that had just been called. I unhooked my roots from the moisturizing mesh by the workstation and began pulling myself along the trellis that hung above this section of the greenhouse. I crawled along it to the massive evergreen tree that served as our leader.
It took me three days. Plants don't move particularly fast.
When the last stragglers had crept in, the tree spoke:
"It has come to my attention," he said in his patriarchal voice, "that our plan to infiltrate the Eagle Time forums has come to a bit of a hitch."
"How so?" asked an epiphyte who tended to suck up to the tree.
"One of the other members, AgentBlue, is actually a massive supercomputer buried beneath Manhattan."
There were leafy gasps throughout the crowd.
"Wait a minute," piped up a hedge, "I heard that Schazer was the creation of an ancient city of squid people from the Mariana Trench!"
"And Thriggle is the gestalt mind of the planet's supercolony of ants - the one that comprises all ants, each working telepathically as a single neuron! Word just came in!"
From the muttering that was heard, it quickly became evident that everyone knew of some Eagle Time member who wasn't what they seemed.
"SeaWyrm isn't what he seems, either," I said, pulling off my mask.
---15 Mins---
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-11-2012
"Sir? Sir, I don't think that's how you mow a lawn!"
I spit out a mouthful of grass.
"Oh?" I asked, turning to my manservant, "why's that, Luther?"
"Um... it's just that I think a lawnmower might be more efficient, sir. And perhaps, ah, tastier."
"Tastier?" I guffawed. "Luther, my man, I can tell you from experience that lawnmowers do NOT taste good."
"Sir, I wasn't suggesting-"
"I know what you were suggesting, Luther, and it simply isn't how I want to approach this task. I want to do it the good old-fashioned way. Get to know the soil, you know? Get to know it with my teeth."
"But sir, we have such a lovely lawnmower. You picked it out yourself, remember? It has a seat so you can ride around on it, and those bright red racing stripes, and the fangs painted all around the-"
"Yes, yes, I remember it, Luther." I waved a hand dismissively. "I don't think you understand what I'm trying to do here." I bent down to tear up another hunk of turf with my teeth. Luther stared patiently at me as I chewed. He looked like he was waiting for something from me. I swallowed, then turned to him again.
"Yes?" I asked.
"Er, sorry, sir," he said, nervously, "but what exactly are you trying to do here?"
"Simple!" I laughed. "I wish to become one with the mighty and noble stag. Just think how attractive I'd be with a pair of antlers jutting majestically from my brow!"
"Yes sir," said Luther, uneasily. "I've always said you'd look much better with a nice rack. But how will this-"
"I think I feel it working already!" I announced. "My extremities have gone all tingly. It's very exciting."
"That may be the pesticides, sir," said Luther.
"Don't be absurd! I'm no insect or dandy-lion! Now, go and fetch my hand mirror. I want to see how the changes are coming along."
"Yes, sir," said Luther, with a resigned sigh. He marched doggedly back to the mansion.
Doggedly. Yes, he'd make a fine dog, I thought, idly scratching the back of my hand. I'd have to have a word with the chef about sneaking more kibble into the man's food.
I glanced down at my hand and yelped. Tawny brown fur!
---15 Mins---
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - AgentBlue - 11-11-2012
"Oh - oh Lord! Get that weapon out of my face!"
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - ☆ C.H.W.O.K.A ☆ - 11-12-2012
I unplugged everything but the subwoofer. The ultimate bass experience awaited.
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-12-2012
"Oh- oh Lord! Get that weapon out of my face!"
She slowly lowered the gun. "Then do as I say, Priest," she demanded, coldly.
"We don't have much money, I'm afraid. We're only a small church-" The tonsured little man's knees were shaking. Beads and religious ornaments dangled from his vestments, and they clacked together piteously.
"I don't want your money," said Hanna, contemptuously. "I'm sure it would be a pittance next to my vast fortunes."
She did not look fabulously wealthy in her scarred and dirty Kevlar armor and close-cropped, practical hair. Her face was tough, her hands inevitably callused, and her voice, oddly, was not that of a woman who was used to having her commands obeyed. It was a voice that threatened, intimidated, insisted, pleaded, maybe even begged if it had to, but it did not command.
"Then, w-what do you want?" The old priest looked ready to wet himself or something.
Hanna sighed. She pulled a nylon sack from her belt, and pulled out the contents - a narrow stone chalice quartered by four stone lips around the rim carved like tiny gargoyles.
The priest saw it and stopped shaking. His eyes rolled up in his head and he fainted dead away.
"I need you to- oh," said Hanna, rolling her own eyes. "Fine. I suppose if you want something done right..."
She pulled an iron key out of the priest's robes and stomped across the church to the altar. The key opened a door in the side of it, and from this she retrieved... a bottle of Jack Daniels?
"Oh merciful Lord whose name I blaspheme and whose desires I gleefully work to upset," muttered Hanna, "why this of all things?"
A malicious voice whispered in her ear, "It is, actually, holy. It will serve our purpose."
"What, really?"
The spirit laughed. "Yes, I'm sure of it."
"Weird. Okay, I'll try it, then." She took the bottle and filled the goblet.
Meanwhile, on the floor, the priest stirred. His feint had worked, and now the woman was distracted. He pulled a silver gewgaw from his robes and muttered into it. A prayer? No. He was giving orders.
---15 Mins---
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - Robust Laser - 11-12-2012
"Seven - no wait - Eight more to go."
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - Gnauga - 11-12-2012
"Bombs away, I guess. What say you?"
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - SeaWyrm - 11-14-2012
I unplugged everything but the subwoofer. The ultimate bass experience awaited.
I lifted my hand, ready to strum.
"Stop!" cried a voice from the other end of the tiny auditorium.
I squinted, but my vision was blurry without my glasses on - and who rocks while wearing glasses? Whoever it was was trying to run down the aisle towards me, but the person's progress was impeded by its narrowness. He kept having to stop so he could squeeze past a pair of seats.
I waited patiently, brushing a strand of long and greasy dark hair out of my face. I realized I wasn't entirely sure where I'd left my glasses. Were they in the dressing room?
The figure scrambled wildly up onto the stage and yanked the cord out of my guitar.
"Thank goodness!" he said, "I was almost too late!"
I still couldn't make out this guy's face, even though he was right in front of me. I scowled at him anyway. "The heck was that for?" I asked.
"That thing's horribly tuned, and the pickup is all wrong," he said. "If you'd gone through with it, it would've sounded awful." He paused for a moment. "Also, it's rigged to set off the bomb," he added as an afterthought.
"Whaa? Bomb?"
"Yes, you know, one of those things that goes 'foom!' and then there's fire and all plasma-y bits everywhere. Shrapnel. That sort of thing. Can be a bit dangerous."
I set the bass down gently. "What on earth are you talking about?" I asked.
"That's just it, we aren't on Earth! This whole auditorium is an illusion, and poorly designed on top of that."
"Really?"
"Yeah, all the sound would get muffled. It would be loud, but see how the ceiling is shaped? All the nuance would-"
"No, what do you mean we aren't on Earth?"
"Oh, that! Well, as it happens, you're an artificial construct designed to activate the signal to detonate a ginormous bomb that will destroy this whole city and possibly the asteroid it sits on."
"What- what did you call me?" I boggled at the man.
"You aren't real, buddy. Well, no, that's not fair. You obviously exist. Maybe you're even capable of sapient thought, I dunno. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. But you're also a computer program trapped in a computer program. None of this is real!"
---15 Mins---
RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises - AgentBlue - 11-15-2012
"Grab ahold of something!"