Re: The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Three: Water...place!]
11-17-2010, 03:32 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
Wyrmlog: Wyrm desig. Fanthalion → Server “Jennifer Tull” Unk. legacy file, desig. “Sikarius” (see file: Sk’Va)
Loading…
34% (Loading neuron base)
45% (Applying DNA irregularities [human])
67% (Correcting for magical noise)
79% (Translating psi-language [Eng])
91% (Poetic license)
98% (Semantics)
100% Wyrmlog complete!
(See file: Server corruption by “Kath” entity)
FANTHALION (henceforth “F”): This type of behavior won’t let you keep ignoring me, you know.
JEN TULL (server; henceforth “J”): Shut up.
F: There! A response! Was that so hard?
J: Shut up. You’re a schizoid reaction I’m having to the death of Maxwell which is a thing that happened at some point when I was unconscious.
F: You can continue to pretend to believe that as long as it suits you, Jen honey.
J: Damn straight I can. Fucking schizoid Jungian fucking flesh-eating—okay you’re a Maxwell worm.
F: Well, that was easy. The term is “Bio Wyrm.” I’m Fanthalion, nice to meet you.
J: Oh, that’s nice.
F: What is?
J: Being conveniently named after my old biffle from way back before everything. The hell kind of psych tactic is that supposed to mean? Next you’re gonna be wearing my mom’s perfume, I’ll be like “Damn, that smell reminds me of my childhood! Obviously this means I should let this worm on my fucking back hijack my brain so it can devour flesh.
<font color="red">F: Jen.
J: You are… you are doing nothing more than sullying the memory of the best friend I ever had. I am kind of important, “Fanthalion,” read my mind, you know I won’t fall for that bullshit.
F: Jen.
J: Listen, all I need is to get to Mermaid City, find Kracht or whoever ends up down there, embark on some adventures until someone else I’m friends with dies and we get shunted off to some other bullshit and--
F: Jen, you never had a friend named Fanthalion.
J: The fuck now?
F: It was always me. I made Fanthalion happen to your memory.
J: …That’s—no.
F: That was the first step to the process that was supposed to give me complete control over your brain, before we got… interrupted by more important matters. I think we’re stuck like this. But the Fanthalion in your memories, and me? The very same. Remember that.
J: Fantha--
F: This isn’t how they taught your companion’s host, way back when, but this is how the process starts. There was a hole in you, Jen. This gaping maw in your heart, always hungering to just have one human relationship that wasn’t characterized by hopeless desire or worshipful servility. So I gave you a friend. I became your friend. From that point it only would have been a matter of time.
J: Fantha, you could—you could never have zombie’d me completely, you know. I’m stronger than that and I’ve taken certain magical precautions against--
F: Yes, yes, Jen, we’re all very impressed by your magical powers. Listen, you have my goals and I have mine. They might not be mutually exclusive. We can become friends. We already are friends.
J: Listen, I’m not cutting your wormy-ass head off right now because I think I’d die, but you’d better not push your luck.
F: You want to be my friend just as you want to feed. We can help each other, but it starts with you. Make a compromise.
J: I’m just trying to find a way into the city.
F: So am I! Plenty of warm bodies there.
J: Shut up and stop making me want to eat this mermaid. It’s getting us nowhere.
(See file: “Hydresther” gene-report prelim)
F: I admire the way you never know what you’re looking for. Myself, I’ve always been certain.
J: You know when you talk to me like that, it becomes really fucking hard for me to pick apart all the things you did to my memory and find out how to get rid of you.
F: If you’d gotten rid of me, you’d have drowned. That’s a painful way to die.
J: You gave me gills. I don’t like having gills, Fantha. Why couldn’t Sikarius do that to Maxwell?
F: This is uncharted territory for me too, Jen. Before he died, your friend Sikarius dropped me a data package that with his primitive upbringing he couldn’t possibly have understood. Imagine a portable hard drive plugged into an abacus. He must have been roaming the stars for millennia, brain full of indecipherable chaos, knowing that he was hearing higher truths but unable to comprehend them for himself. Can you blame him for being an insufferable, rage-filled specimen?
J: So what, now you’re running Windows 7 and get to look through all Sikarius’s porn?
F: I can’t quite divine the full nature of things yet, Jen. Maybe with the help of your magic… Listen, I’m not just being the selfish parasite here. This is important to the future of my species. I should either bring this back to the carrier planet or… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
J: This is a really beautiful city. Makes Cyk’Nl look like Iowa by comparison.
F: I… yes, I suppose it is. I never pick up on these things on first glance.
J: First lesson of being a successful human is to treat the world like an art museum. Now it’s your turn. What makes a Bio Wyrm?
F: ...I’m not sure I should reveal my hand at this point in our relationship, Jen.
J: What, aren’t we friends?
F: Don’t mock me. Bio Wyrms are… the librarians of the universe. Our function, as a species, is to launch of from the carrier planet, move from host to host, collecting their DNA, then return the information to the stockpile. It’s more glamorous than your Earth sensibilities can comprehend. Every single Bio Wyrm that ever lived has seen things that none other has. Each of us has spent centuries, some much longer, exploring the mysteries of evolution. Sikarius, or whoever passed on the packet to him, stumbled across something big. Maybe even the key to everything.
J: There’s nothing glamorous about turning innocent people into your zombies.
F: Those are, as I said, millennia-old tactics. Our preferred servers are fresh corpses. We attach, insinuate, send the host’s brain patterns through a sort of purgatory, take complete control within minutes and send the server’s soul onto whatever oblivion they believe in.
J: And I got stuck in the purgatory phase.
F: I was trying to work through your issues. Think of it as a combination of therapy and sex.
J: I’d rather not.
F: You never were quite as fun as you wanted people to believe, Jen.
J: Shut up, Fantha. Focus. What do you mean by “key to everything?”
F: The Bio Wyrm’s map of God—our Qabala, I guess is the closest equivalent—is the double helix. Two perfect saccharine strands stretching on through infinity, forever embracing, never touching, and yet forever linked by the chemical language of genetics. It’s language that keeps us together, Jen. Remember that.
J: Quaint little religion.
F: Isn’t it? The revelation of the Bio Wyrm is that a certain song can be sung in the genetic sequence that will unlock the perfect being, at once Wyrm and server, who is the living incarnation of the Helix upon the Universe.
J: And the Bio Wyrm Messiah is in your brain somewhere?
F: Ever since Sikarius… I can hear music.
J: I’m not letting you eat anyone no matter how pious and epic your motives are.
F: It’s not a matter of “letting.” I’m hungry, so you’re hungry. You know it’s possible that it disgusts me just as much as it does you.
J: Possibly. But it doesn’t, does it?
F: No.
(See server reports)
J: I can’t believe I fucking died!
F: Oh, did you just contact me of your own volition?
J: Well who else am I gonna talk to? The mermaid? Somehow I doubt she’d be sympathetic.
F: Once again I am your only friend on this Earth. Are we surprised?
J: Fantha—shut up. We have known each other for no more than an hour. I know this.
F: Anyway, can we cut to the point? I know you, Jen. You’re trying to work your way around to the subject of alleviating the hunger.
J: Am not! I’ve pushed that to the back of my head.
F: I’m in the back of your head, Jen. You can pull a lot of strings from back here.
J: I’m not allowed to be upset about having been killed by a fucking dragon without you questioning my motives! You were a way better friend in all those false memories you implanted, you know.
F: Come on, dearest, it wasn’t your fault. The beige thing brought that dragon in there. You were backstabbed.
J: Fucking Ovoid. Listen, being killed by a dragon signals that a warrior is no longer worthy to carry on her service. It’s not about “surprise” or even how good a fighter I am. It’s about something higher deeming me not worth it.
F: The Ovoid is something higher, Jen. Do you think it has DNA?
J: Ugh. Okay, the hunger is back in the front of my brain. I’m like a fourteen year old boy who’s seen my friend Kara.
F: If you kill the Ovoid, I’m going to try and feed on it. Even if I die. Can you imagine?
J: So, what, you eat its DNA?
F: It gets stored, yes. I’m carrying so much data, now—I mean, I gave you gills, that is completely unprecedented—but there are still elements missing. Maybe I should eat the dragon, too.
J: My opponents are not on the fucking menu! Do you think it was cause of Maxwell? Did I give up on him? Is that why the dragon was able to kill me?
F: I don’t give a damn. What matters is now. Have we even discussed the fact that I’m offering you the power of evolution itself? We can make ourselves a very, very happy ending if you’ll let me, Jen.
J: We haven’t discussed it cause I don’t fucking care, Fantha. I just want to keep waiting for my comrades to die one by one until we figure out a way to take the Observer the fuck down.
F: Ooh. Do you think the Observer has DNA?
J: Can’t you just, you know, take a sample?
F: Eating is more intimate.
J: Fresh corpses.
hello
F: And the hunger goes away. For a time.
J: We’ll see.
F: We’ll see what?
J: We’ll see if we see any fresh corpses.
F: Attagirl.
Which brings us most of the way to the present.
Apocalypse bore down upon Jen, but she was used to it by that point. Kath was long gone, off on her own adventures (though narrative good sense dictates that she will return), and Xadrez had been driven off, leaving Jen with no friends but an eviscerated dead cop and fucking Fanthalion.
Somehow, amidst frantically trying to ignore the smell of fish, and trying much harder to ignore how satisfied she was feeling, Jen found the clarity to think about the Grand Battle. She was in a city and it was about to be destroyed, this was nothing new. She and Arkal were now alone amidst the cosmic entities, although she supposed that Arkal was now the only humanoid among them. She had the sinking feeling he would die this round.
Xadrez was in Hydresther, and the Ovoid was wherever he wanted to be. That left Kracht… here? It seemed likely that whatever Xadrez was up to would be mostly involved in exploiting Kracht’s lack of foreknowledge about the round, so that would put Kracht in the city. As for Arkal, shit, Arkal might still be on the raft. Then again, wouldn’t the Observer have taken measures to balance out this situation?
Jen admitted to herself that she had no idea what was going on and that she should follow Xadrez. Are we done here, she asked the red part of her.
Patience, Jen. The gastrogenetic arts are meant to be enjoyed, not rushed through. Imagine that what you’re doing isn’t a social taboo, but an exercise in high culture, as it is for me.
Two things, replied Jen. One, you totally just made up the word “gastrogenetic” to fuck with me.
You got me.
Secondly, if we’re pretending that this display is an exercise in high culture, why don’t I just strip naked and swim around singing showtunes and convince myself I’m a fucking patron of the arts?
You’d enjoy it.
Yeah that does sound kinda fun, okay, bad example, but—
We’re done.
Jen stood, feeling herself for the first time since she died, and that worried her more than anything. Xadrez was disappearing into the distance. “Yo, wait up!” she yelled, sprinting over the rooftops. Zombie or not, it was time to make her presence known; Jen did not want to acquire a reputation as somebody to be fucked with.</font>
* * * * *
Elsewhere, a recent traveling companion was experiencing a similar moral quandary.
Namely, Kath had committed another murder on the way the fuck out of the Jen situation. This one underwater, which meant the blood swirled around like a billowy article of clothing. Kath hated clothing, but was willing to make an exception in this case.
It was difficult leaving the corpse behind; she loved how still it was. She was convinced that if she decided to spend the rest of her life with this corpse, it would only be the second-worst marriage she ever entered. Still, as with the first marriage, she managed to cut herself away. She fled. Just as earlier in the day, except with the shadow of the falling city over everything, she worked her way up the thoroughfare to the borders of Hydresther.
This time, she stopped.
Merfolk of all shapes and sizes were rushing out of the city or being pushed out by the waves that seethed above. They pushed her on all sides, trying to force her out, but Kath balked. The open ocean outside Hydresther was so… open. How hadn’t she seen it before? It was like diving into the aqueous humor of the Creator. The openness admitted all the fleeing merfolk, but in its judgment seemed to deny Kath the fortitude to proceed.
The mob made the mistake of not heeding Kath’s hesitation. A tail slapped her in the face; using an instinct she never knew she had, she went legs and kicked out at the offender’s face.
Under the water, she couldn’t hear the crack of the merman’s neck. The only sounds she heard emanated from the city.
Kath turned around and headed back to where Jen was. At this point, asking why was out of the question; the city beckoned her like the smell of blood.
* * * * *
is anybody there
Wyrmlog: Wyrm desig. Fanthalion → Server “Jennifer Tull” Unk. legacy file, desig. “Sikarius” (see file: Sk’Va)
Loading…
34% (Loading neuron base)
45% (Applying DNA irregularities [human])
67% (Correcting for magical noise)
79% (Translating psi-language [Eng])
91% (Poetic license)
98% (Semantics)
100% Wyrmlog complete!
WYRMLOG 1
12:00:00:1/1/1969/1/1:00:00:12 clock err (see server!file: “Grand Battle”)(See file: Server corruption by “Kath” entity)
FANTHALION (henceforth “F”): This type of behavior won’t let you keep ignoring me, you know.
JEN TULL (server; henceforth “J”): Shut up.
F: There! A response! Was that so hard?
J: Shut up. You’re a schizoid reaction I’m having to the death of Maxwell which is a thing that happened at some point when I was unconscious.
F: You can continue to pretend to believe that as long as it suits you, Jen honey.
J: Damn straight I can. Fucking schizoid Jungian fucking flesh-eating—okay you’re a Maxwell worm.
F: Well, that was easy. The term is “Bio Wyrm.” I’m Fanthalion, nice to meet you.
J: Oh, that’s nice.
F: What is?
J: Being conveniently named after my old biffle from way back before everything. The hell kind of psych tactic is that supposed to mean? Next you’re gonna be wearing my mom’s perfume, I’ll be like “Damn, that smell reminds me of my childhood! Obviously this means I should let this worm on my fucking back hijack my brain so it can devour flesh.
<font color="red">F: Jen.
J: You are… you are doing nothing more than sullying the memory of the best friend I ever had. I am kind of important, “Fanthalion,” read my mind, you know I won’t fall for that bullshit.
F: Jen.
J: Listen, all I need is to get to Mermaid City, find Kracht or whoever ends up down there, embark on some adventures until someone else I’m friends with dies and we get shunted off to some other bullshit and--
F: Jen, you never had a friend named Fanthalion.
J: The fuck now?
F: It was always me. I made Fanthalion happen to your memory.
J: …That’s—no.
F: That was the first step to the process that was supposed to give me complete control over your brain, before we got… interrupted by more important matters. I think we’re stuck like this. But the Fanthalion in your memories, and me? The very same. Remember that.
J: Fantha--
F: This isn’t how they taught your companion’s host, way back when, but this is how the process starts. There was a hole in you, Jen. This gaping maw in your heart, always hungering to just have one human relationship that wasn’t characterized by hopeless desire or worshipful servility. So I gave you a friend. I became your friend. From that point it only would have been a matter of time.
J: Fantha, you could—you could never have zombie’d me completely, you know. I’m stronger than that and I’ve taken certain magical precautions against--
F: Yes, yes, Jen, we’re all very impressed by your magical powers. Listen, you have my goals and I have mine. They might not be mutually exclusive. We can become friends. We already are friends.
J: Listen, I’m not cutting your wormy-ass head off right now because I think I’d die, but you’d better not push your luck.
F: You want to be my friend just as you want to feed. We can help each other, but it starts with you. Make a compromise.
J: I’m just trying to find a way into the city.
F: So am I! Plenty of warm bodies there.
J: Shut up and stop making me want to eat this mermaid. It’s getting us nowhere.
WYRMLOG 2
Clock err quickfix: h-wl1 +.684 (local noon to be calibrated at lower depths)(See file: “Hydresther” gene-report prelim)
F: I admire the way you never know what you’re looking for. Myself, I’ve always been certain.
J: You know when you talk to me like that, it becomes really fucking hard for me to pick apart all the things you did to my memory and find out how to get rid of you.
F: If you’d gotten rid of me, you’d have drowned. That’s a painful way to die.
J: You gave me gills. I don’t like having gills, Fantha. Why couldn’t Sikarius do that to Maxwell?
F: This is uncharted territory for me too, Jen. Before he died, your friend Sikarius dropped me a data package that with his primitive upbringing he couldn’t possibly have understood. Imagine a portable hard drive plugged into an abacus. He must have been roaming the stars for millennia, brain full of indecipherable chaos, knowing that he was hearing higher truths but unable to comprehend them for himself. Can you blame him for being an insufferable, rage-filled specimen?
J: So what, now you’re running Windows 7 and get to look through all Sikarius’s porn?
F: I can’t quite divine the full nature of things yet, Jen. Maybe with the help of your magic… Listen, I’m not just being the selfish parasite here. This is important to the future of my species. I should either bring this back to the carrier planet or… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
J: This is a really beautiful city. Makes Cyk’Nl look like Iowa by comparison.
F: I… yes, I suppose it is. I never pick up on these things on first glance.
J: First lesson of being a successful human is to treat the world like an art museum. Now it’s your turn. What makes a Bio Wyrm?
F: ...I’m not sure I should reveal my hand at this point in our relationship, Jen.
J: What, aren’t we friends?
F: Don’t mock me. Bio Wyrms are… the librarians of the universe. Our function, as a species, is to launch of from the carrier planet, move from host to host, collecting their DNA, then return the information to the stockpile. It’s more glamorous than your Earth sensibilities can comprehend. Every single Bio Wyrm that ever lived has seen things that none other has. Each of us has spent centuries, some much longer, exploring the mysteries of evolution. Sikarius, or whoever passed on the packet to him, stumbled across something big. Maybe even the key to everything.
J: There’s nothing glamorous about turning innocent people into your zombies.
F: Those are, as I said, millennia-old tactics. Our preferred servers are fresh corpses. We attach, insinuate, send the host’s brain patterns through a sort of purgatory, take complete control within minutes and send the server’s soul onto whatever oblivion they believe in.
J: And I got stuck in the purgatory phase.
F: I was trying to work through your issues. Think of it as a combination of therapy and sex.
J: I’d rather not.
F: You never were quite as fun as you wanted people to believe, Jen.
J: Shut up, Fantha. Focus. What do you mean by “key to everything?”
F: The Bio Wyrm’s map of God—our Qabala, I guess is the closest equivalent—is the double helix. Two perfect saccharine strands stretching on through infinity, forever embracing, never touching, and yet forever linked by the chemical language of genetics. It’s language that keeps us together, Jen. Remember that.
J: Quaint little religion.
F: Isn’t it? The revelation of the Bio Wyrm is that a certain song can be sung in the genetic sequence that will unlock the perfect being, at once Wyrm and server, who is the living incarnation of the Helix upon the Universe.
J: And the Bio Wyrm Messiah is in your brain somewhere?
F: Ever since Sikarius… I can hear music.
J: I’m not letting you eat anyone no matter how pious and epic your motives are.
F: It’s not a matter of “letting.” I’m hungry, so you’re hungry. You know it’s possible that it disgusts me just as much as it does you.
J: Possibly. But it doesn’t, does it?
F: No.
WYRMLOG 3
Clock err quickfix: h-wl1 +.738(See server reports)
J: I can’t believe I fucking died!
F: Oh, did you just contact me of your own volition?
J: Well who else am I gonna talk to? The mermaid? Somehow I doubt she’d be sympathetic.
F: Once again I am your only friend on this Earth. Are we surprised?
J: Fantha—shut up. We have known each other for no more than an hour. I know this.
F: Anyway, can we cut to the point? I know you, Jen. You’re trying to work your way around to the subject of alleviating the hunger.
J: Am not! I’ve pushed that to the back of my head.
F: I’m in the back of your head, Jen. You can pull a lot of strings from back here.
J: I’m not allowed to be upset about having been killed by a fucking dragon without you questioning my motives! You were a way better friend in all those false memories you implanted, you know.
F: Come on, dearest, it wasn’t your fault. The beige thing brought that dragon in there. You were backstabbed.
J: Fucking Ovoid. Listen, being killed by a dragon signals that a warrior is no longer worthy to carry on her service. It’s not about “surprise” or even how good a fighter I am. It’s about something higher deeming me not worth it.
F: The Ovoid is something higher, Jen. Do you think it has DNA?
J: Ugh. Okay, the hunger is back in the front of my brain. I’m like a fourteen year old boy who’s seen my friend Kara.
F: If you kill the Ovoid, I’m going to try and feed on it. Even if I die. Can you imagine?
J: So, what, you eat its DNA?
F: It gets stored, yes. I’m carrying so much data, now—I mean, I gave you gills, that is completely unprecedented—but there are still elements missing. Maybe I should eat the dragon, too.
J: My opponents are not on the fucking menu! Do you think it was cause of Maxwell? Did I give up on him? Is that why the dragon was able to kill me?
F: I don’t give a damn. What matters is now. Have we even discussed the fact that I’m offering you the power of evolution itself? We can make ourselves a very, very happy ending if you’ll let me, Jen.
J: We haven’t discussed it cause I don’t fucking care, Fantha. I just want to keep waiting for my comrades to die one by one until we figure out a way to take the Observer the fuck down.
F: Ooh. Do you think the Observer has DNA?
J: Can’t you just, you know, take a sample?
F: Eating is more intimate.
J: Fresh corpses.
hello
F: And the hunger goes away. For a time.
J: We’ll see.
F: We’ll see what?
J: We’ll see if we see any fresh corpses.
F: Attagirl.
Which brings us most of the way to the present.
Apocalypse bore down upon Jen, but she was used to it by that point. Kath was long gone, off on her own adventures (though narrative good sense dictates that she will return), and Xadrez had been driven off, leaving Jen with no friends but an eviscerated dead cop and fucking Fanthalion.
Somehow, amidst frantically trying to ignore the smell of fish, and trying much harder to ignore how satisfied she was feeling, Jen found the clarity to think about the Grand Battle. She was in a city and it was about to be destroyed, this was nothing new. She and Arkal were now alone amidst the cosmic entities, although she supposed that Arkal was now the only humanoid among them. She had the sinking feeling he would die this round.
Xadrez was in Hydresther, and the Ovoid was wherever he wanted to be. That left Kracht… here? It seemed likely that whatever Xadrez was up to would be mostly involved in exploiting Kracht’s lack of foreknowledge about the round, so that would put Kracht in the city. As for Arkal, shit, Arkal might still be on the raft. Then again, wouldn’t the Observer have taken measures to balance out this situation?
Jen admitted to herself that she had no idea what was going on and that she should follow Xadrez. Are we done here, she asked the red part of her.
Patience, Jen. The gastrogenetic arts are meant to be enjoyed, not rushed through. Imagine that what you’re doing isn’t a social taboo, but an exercise in high culture, as it is for me.
Two things, replied Jen. One, you totally just made up the word “gastrogenetic” to fuck with me.
You got me.
Secondly, if we’re pretending that this display is an exercise in high culture, why don’t I just strip naked and swim around singing showtunes and convince myself I’m a fucking patron of the arts?
You’d enjoy it.
Yeah that does sound kinda fun, okay, bad example, but—
We’re done.
Jen stood, feeling herself for the first time since she died, and that worried her more than anything. Xadrez was disappearing into the distance. “Yo, wait up!” she yelled, sprinting over the rooftops. Zombie or not, it was time to make her presence known; Jen did not want to acquire a reputation as somebody to be fucked with.</font>
* * * * *
Elsewhere, a recent traveling companion was experiencing a similar moral quandary.
Namely, Kath had committed another murder on the way the fuck out of the Jen situation. This one underwater, which meant the blood swirled around like a billowy article of clothing. Kath hated clothing, but was willing to make an exception in this case.
It was difficult leaving the corpse behind; she loved how still it was. She was convinced that if she decided to spend the rest of her life with this corpse, it would only be the second-worst marriage she ever entered. Still, as with the first marriage, she managed to cut herself away. She fled. Just as earlier in the day, except with the shadow of the falling city over everything, she worked her way up the thoroughfare to the borders of Hydresther.
This time, she stopped.
Merfolk of all shapes and sizes were rushing out of the city or being pushed out by the waves that seethed above. They pushed her on all sides, trying to force her out, but Kath balked. The open ocean outside Hydresther was so… open. How hadn’t she seen it before? It was like diving into the aqueous humor of the Creator. The openness admitted all the fleeing merfolk, but in its judgment seemed to deny Kath the fortitude to proceed.
The mob made the mistake of not heeding Kath’s hesitation. A tail slapped her in the face; using an instinct she never knew she had, she went legs and kicked out at the offender’s face.
Under the water, she couldn’t hear the crack of the merman’s neck. The only sounds she heard emanated from the city.
Kath turned around and headed back to where Jen was. At this point, asking why was out of the question; the city beckoned her like the smell of blood.
* * * * *
is anybody there