The Years Did Not Treat Our Universe Kindly.

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It was inevitable that you would lose all of your friends.

Nothing you could have done would have stopped it. The wretched wind of time, over the course of ten years, would strip away your connection to three particular people. You had met them during a different point in your life, and there would come a moment- a final moment- in which you would never be able to speak to them again.

This would be the only way to improve.

You were, and suppose you still are, Maria Glial.



In 2009, you were in South Carolina in a semi-rural home with a trashy family and no real ambition. Before that, in 2006, you discovered a group of friends online who made you feel whole, that gave you some kind of purpose. You started to devote more and more of your time towards the world inside the computer, which gave you access to everything you were scared to search for. You found something called MUFFINQUEST, and it took your soul.

Some of your friends dedicated more; some of them cared more. Some people fell away from the project, while you remained. Maybe it wasn't always that you were the best suited to be a part of this online happening, but that you relied on it most. It wasn't a perfectly safe place, but it gave you more protection, it kept you sane-- it was how you met every single one of your friends, ones that you genuinely wanted to keep. For those reasons and many more, it felt realer than everything else.

It felt realer than, for instance, school.



You found yourself dissociating during class and burning all the awkward friendships you'd made in middle school. Briefly, you considered running from it all, but eventually fear gave way for apathy, and you decided you didn't need any of it in particular. You could simply coast through it and wait until you had an opportunity to get home or on some kind of computer. You were able to grow, then-- there was less risk to you when you reached out. A semi-impermeable layer of anonymity let you become--

'zert the curt'
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 zert the curt's profile [|]
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[box width=400]Member Since: July 15, 2006
Last Login: April 2, 2009
Location: South Carolina, United States of America
Age:[/box] [|] [right][box width=400 height=98]Posts: 51,283
Threads: 7
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[box width=400]About me

i'm not running any games right now but if you need someone to play just pm me. also pm me if i ever go inactive to remind me because i have a lot of things going on. i live in the east coast but i basically never sleep ^.^
don't pm me about anything else or i will block you

winner of last poster wins 411 times running
winner of karat mafia 2 times in a row (check my posts)[/box] [|] [box width=400 height=212][right]Friends[/box]

[box width=300]Please Undo [/box]
[box width=300]xSeedyRunning [/box]
[box width=300]Maxeen [/box]
[box width=300]thereal-jack [/box]
[box width=300]Tatring 5 [/box]
[box width=300]pittey299 [/box]
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[box=black width=850]...Hey, give yourself a break. Most people couldn't see how many posts you really had. Most of them were on a hidden board explicitly for the center of your entire life, MUFFINQUEST, which took your soul.

You can't remember where the name 'zert the curt' came from, but it put you in a position to be comfortable with the way you acted online. Even once names got 'faces' you still had a tough time seeing with them as people, which was always easier. You didn't lock up speaking to a woman in Tahiti named 'Maxeen' or a girl in Norway named 'Please Undo', and you certainly never felt uneasy standing up to someone in Australia named 'Tatring 5'. You gained confidence on accident.

By the time you realized they were other people living their own lives, you'd known them by their online persona too long to see them as such.

You could hold your own.
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[2x1][bg=#CCCCCC][box width=200]March 3rd, 2009 3:10 AM

Tatring 5
Posts: 45,925[/box] [|] [box width=600 height=127]So, hold on. I get what you're trying to say, you're trying to say we should use the god ichor for Klaxon, but what I don't get is why, okay. So. He's clearly too full on blood right now. I say we make use of that order we got from Handynet and make a full meal for him. Muffy, make a full meal for Klaxon.[/box][/2x1]
[2x1][box width=200 height=155]March 3rd, 2009 3:13 AM

zert the curt
Posts: 51,283[/box] [|] [box width=600]klaxon isn't a 'he'. it is hard for me to grasp too, but trive (triv?) is an alien species which has three genders. clearly it's easier to revert to martodite pronouns, but to have muffy be respectful we have to be, too.

i want to play this really cautiously and i think that giving klaxon some ichor right now might really boost triver opinion on us. we need that right now. we're totally foreign to the colony and if we plan on staying the full 5 months this is a very strong olive branch.[/box][/2x1]
[2x1][box width=200 height=231]March 3rd, 2009 3:17 AM

Maxeen
Posts: 32,101[/box] [|] [box width=600]The ichor is of limited supply but it self replicates but we also don't have any way of telling a future need for it and considering tatring's current lopsided sleep schedule we won't have a full team all the time

But also keep in account Chekhov and that NARRATOR wouldn't have given us the ichor if we weren't meant to use it (keep to that theory for now) so it couldn't hurt to at least give it an experiment

Honestly I'm just curious if we could gather any more information from Nadezhda on what the purpose of gods are to the universe, we already have some information but it proves pretty convoluted and even self-contradictory, like what we've already learned about Flux. Muffy, reserve the ichor for a bargaining chip with Nadezhda later[/box][/2x1]
[2x1][box width=200 height=155]March 3rd, 2009 3:21 AM

zert the curt
Posts: 51,283[/box] [|] [box width=600]quintessentially, learning more about the universe at the cost of continuing our life in it is a bad risk assessment. remember how the stax situation went specifically-- when we asked questions that breached his trust in us, we also risked our own existence and gave ourselves away.

the truth is most people in the universe already know a lot of these things, intrinsically. they drop hints in conversations all the time, but we need to get to the actual conversations first. let's kick it off by making the mosquito our friend.[/box][/2x1]
[2x1][box width=200]March 3rd, 2009 3:23 AM

Please Undo
Posts: 47,522[/box] [|] [box width=600 height=127]I feel like I'm legit going crazy here!! LEGIT. You legit forget stuff instantly after it happens because you're sleep deprived right now, zert. We ALL chose to try and be open and out in the public and now this is the consequence. Just like Tatring chose to make Stax and now this is our consequence. You can't just pretend you had literally nothing to do with it. We are in this TOGETHER.[/box][/2x1]
[2x1][box width=200 height=193]March 3rd, 2009 3:27 AM

zert the curt
Posts: 51,283[/box] [|] [box width=600]it does not matter if i had anything to do with our group decision. i hate group decisions anyway and it's not like i even said much, i didn't even vouch for or against being out there, i just went with it. whatever-- of course we're on the same team but we can still improve

i know this is the right thing. ive been hyperventilating all night trying to keep up with how many patrons we're getting and i just want a friend who can help us out so i can breathe for a sec. if muffy cant breathe then i cant.

muffy, make friends with klaxon using 1/2 of our god ichor.[/box][/2x1]
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[box=black width=850]Muffin Time was a home to 'forum games', or 'quests', or 'adventures'. They'd been figuring the art form out for a while, since the very early aughts (which, as you would later learn about your universe, was a bit sooner than usual.) Popularity for the format was growing worldwide, while 'Muffin Time' remained a quaint, if ever-growing, platform for the homebrew. But eventually you were invited to see the real reason the website existed. The thing which took your soul.

MUFFINQUEST was run by an artificial intelligence. It posted on a regular clock, every half an hour, utilizing whatever inputs it had to continue its story. This was no longer a game created by other martodites amusing each other, it was no longer a fictional story-- not to you, not to any of your close friends. It was a window through which you could see an entire universe separate from your own.

...

Sometimes you wished you could get there.



MUFFINQUEST took your soul, but not in the worst way. It took thousands of hours over years from your life in service of a universe you could never physically reach, but it also let you realize you could be good at things. You avoided anything but the bare minimum, elsewhere-- you dragged yourself through class and hid in the computer lab trying to stay attentive for the smallest possible thing. You averaged over fifty posts a day, because it was where you felt comfortable enough to talk.

MUFFINQUEST was your everything. MUFFINQUEST took your soul, your entire product of being. But it was also the only way you could enter the Internet, the only way you could have made it there intact. You would not have been the same Maria Glial without it.

In 2009, a number of horrible things would happen to you. Your fate at the end of everything was written in stone the moment you were born. Every action you took was a result of the last one. You were a product of the years before you, and they would shape the years ahead. Every event was necessary for the future to be borne, including the best and the very, very worst.

In April, you were contacted by another universe through NARRATOR. It was a group of people also using a forum adventure to participate in the same universe, and the first goal on their mind was to kill Muffy.
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[2x1][bg=#CCCCCC][box width=200 height=155]April 1st, 2009 2:20 AM

zert the curt
Posts: 51,283[/box] [|] [box width=600]i'm not like a kid i just.
this means a lot to me and i want to make it okay, but it's hard to think of ways to make it okay when in my head it was okay the way we left it
like it

it sucked erasing stax. and now so much is going to be broken or different because you brought him back. it just sucks either way.[/box][/2x1]
[2x1][box width=200 height=174]April 1st, 2009 2:20 AM

GATEWAY | XXAC457682196-EAGLE
Posts: 79[/box] [|] [box width=600]from: Ten11
at: 2019 - 04 - 01

Look, just, you can stay, okay? But don't try to remove all your influence. Especially not any actual *people* you've created. If you made problems, you can solve them the old-fashioned way too, you know, by sending inputs to your character to have them act to alleviate issues. That's what you're supposed to do. You're not meant to get all meta with it and actually erase your actions from this existence.[/box][/2x1]
[2x1][box width=200]April 1st, 2009 2:20 AM

GATEWAY | XXAC457682196-EAGLE
Posts: 79[/box] [|] [box width=600 height=144]from: Reecer6
at: 2019 - 04 - 01

>create two big ducks, quake quake quake quack[/box][/2x1]
[2x1][box width=200]April 1st, 2009 2:21 AM

GATEWAY | XXAC457682196-EAGLE
Posts: 79[/box] [|] [box width=600 height=144]from: ☆ C.H.W.O.K.A ☆
at: 2019 - 04 - 01

good idea: wait 10 years then meet us back here:

[noparse][web]https://eagle-time.org/showthread.php?tid=4298[/web][/noparse][/box][/2x1]
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[box=black width=850]It was a lie, saying you weren't 'a kid'. You were fourteen. You could barely wrestle with the event that had just nearly killed you-- had just nearly killed Muffy, your everything.

The experience left you traumatized very far beyond what you were able to grasp at the time. You were just stuck in that frozen moment of terror that you would lose your entire world, and it didn't matter that the situation got resolved, it didn't matter that your closest friend, your very closest friend, Muffy, was safe. You could never feel the same.

The rest of them-- Tatring, Maxeen, Please Undo, all started to pick up the pieces. They sent you messages of comfort, and you felt closer to them than before, less compelled to be at their throats.

But the year was only beginning. The year which did not treat you or your universe kindly.



There were no choices to be made, on that front.

They had already been made.
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[box width=full]On April 8th, Maria Glial would contact somebody to try and get help. This was:

On April 12th, this backfired spectacularly. She instead found:

On May 5th, a member of Maria Glial's family finally snapped, and:

On May 15th, the original designer and creator of NARRATOR announced it publicly without knowledge of MUFFINQUEST. She announced that she would:

On May 23rd, Maria Glial's closest friends invited her to help try and plan for this new knowledge. They all eventually decided to:

On June 19th, after the power went out for a day, Maria Glial chose to:

On July 12th, Maria Glial stayed up for twenty-six hours to support Muffy because:

On September 2nd, Please Undo confronted Maria Glial about:

On October 13th, Maria Glial's luck ran out, and she:

On October 29th, Maria Glial broke down, because:

On November 3rd, Maria Glial was helped along by an online friend. This was:

On December 9th, things got better, because:

On December 24th, somebody ruined Christmas online. This was:
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Code:

[font=Times New Roman][b]On April 8th, Maria Glial would contact somebody to try and get help. This was:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On April 12th, this backfired spectacularly. She instead found:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On May 5th, a member of Maria Glial's family finally snapped, and:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On May 15th, the original designer and creator of NARRATOR announced it publicly without knowledge of MUFFINQUEST. She announced that she would:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On May 23rd, Maria Glial's closest friends invited her to help try and plan for this new knowledge. They all eventually decided to:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On June 19th, after the power went out for a day, Maria Glial chose to:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On July 12th, Maria Glial stayed up for twenty-six hours to support Muffy because:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On September 2nd, Please Undo confronted Maria Glial about:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On October 13th, Maria Glial's luck ran out, and she:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On October 29th, Maria Glial broke down, because:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On November 3rd, Maria Glial was helped along by an online friend. This was:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On December 9th, things got better, because:[/b][/font]

[font=Times New Roman][b]On December 24th, somebody ruined Christmas online. This was:[/b][/font]

Show Content

What is this?
Copy and paste the list of Prompts and use any number of them. The silly and the inane will unfortunately have no effect, and are not recommended. Recall that Maria Glial's fate at the end of everything is inevitable, but her state may change depending on how she gets there. Ready your pen-- all good things in her life must be rewritten.

This is a person's life. Though you view it from outside, you know how Life can be a reckoning, and how it can heal.

2009 is Maria's year. Next year may not be Maria's year. Beware of easy answers. All people are trying to survive.