Re: Inexorable Altercation [Round III - Vorlon Complex]
07-03-2011, 07:31 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
The queen's assertion certainly came as news to Will 18; as he stopped to ponder a response, he noticed that the area around the vorlons had become faded and edged with pastels and that he could see the other side of the throne now despite the intervening stone of the throne itself. In fact, the far side of the room, including those areas that he shouldn't have been able to perceive had he been using his own eyes, were in sharper focus than the area immediately around him. A few moments of thought later and he'd come to the conclusion that the device he was currently in was simply constructing an image of his immediate surroundings based on Annaliese's memories and left him feeling a little foolish for not realizing it immediately.
He also realized that ever since his tangential little bout of musing had begun, the queen had been oddly silent. And unmoving. It was both strange and anticlimactic from someone who had essentially just finished cackling and shouting "I'm free, I'm free!"; Will tapped his mandibles and began to say something, but was cut off.
"I appears I spoke too soon; the Cage was supposed to be unable to send or receive any kind of data and I presumed that your intrusion was the result of disabling its security entirely. It looks like you simply masked yourself as one of the testing programs some long-dead technician forgot to revoke access privileges for back when they were designing this cruel prison, and as I discovered shortly after being uploaded, that little loophole doesn't work going out. How did you know that was the only way into the Cage?"
Thinking quickly, Will 18 gave a noncommittal little gesture with his wings; "Most of my more mundane subroutines are unconscious. I just noticed the presence of some device running down here and transferred myself down; some entry program or other did the actual legwork, I just told it to go."
"Hm." There was silence for a moment, before the queen said "By all rights I should probably delete you, but contrary to what the Concordance of Sentience would have you believe, I'm not a complete monster. You're welcome to exist as long as you like, my guest and as much my prisoner as I am this device's. Still..."
Annaliese had been gradually creeping away, finding it oddly difficult to shut out the chattering aliens behind her. The queen vanished, reappearing directly in front of the witch, causing her to start and drop all of the things she'd bundled up when starting her slow flight.
"Freedom may yet prove attainable. You and I are together now, alien, and even being trapped in your mind is preferable to being trapped alone."
The queen's assertion certainly came as news to Will 18; as he stopped to ponder a response, he noticed that the area around the vorlons had become faded and edged with pastels and that he could see the other side of the throne now despite the intervening stone of the throne itself. In fact, the far side of the room, including those areas that he shouldn't have been able to perceive had he been using his own eyes, were in sharper focus than the area immediately around him. A few moments of thought later and he'd come to the conclusion that the device he was currently in was simply constructing an image of his immediate surroundings based on Annaliese's memories and left him feeling a little foolish for not realizing it immediately.
He also realized that ever since his tangential little bout of musing had begun, the queen had been oddly silent. And unmoving. It was both strange and anticlimactic from someone who had essentially just finished cackling and shouting "I'm free, I'm free!"; Will tapped his mandibles and began to say something, but was cut off.
"I appears I spoke too soon; the Cage was supposed to be unable to send or receive any kind of data and I presumed that your intrusion was the result of disabling its security entirely. It looks like you simply masked yourself as one of the testing programs some long-dead technician forgot to revoke access privileges for back when they were designing this cruel prison, and as I discovered shortly after being uploaded, that little loophole doesn't work going out. How did you know that was the only way into the Cage?"
Thinking quickly, Will 18 gave a noncommittal little gesture with his wings; "Most of my more mundane subroutines are unconscious. I just noticed the presence of some device running down here and transferred myself down; some entry program or other did the actual legwork, I just told it to go."
"Hm." There was silence for a moment, before the queen said "By all rights I should probably delete you, but contrary to what the Concordance of Sentience would have you believe, I'm not a complete monster. You're welcome to exist as long as you like, my guest and as much my prisoner as I am this device's. Still..."
Annaliese had been gradually creeping away, finding it oddly difficult to shut out the chattering aliens behind her. The queen vanished, reappearing directly in front of the witch, causing her to start and drop all of the things she'd bundled up when starting her slow flight.
"Freedom may yet prove attainable. You and I are together now, alien, and even being trapped in your mind is preferable to being trapped alone."