Waterworks

>You need no taxi, march home under your own power.

>Walking home all by yourself may be a little too much to ask if you've had this much to drink. Steal someone's unicycle to get home on instead.

> Bartender: Maybe offer the lass a glass of water before the dame legs it. She might be a little dehydrated after such conspicuous consumption.

Assuming there is any water to offer...

> Connie: How did you defeat the hivemind?

Well, that's that. You're done here.

> Bartender: Maybe offer the lass a glass of water before the dame legs it. She might be a little dehydrated after such conspicuous consumption.

Assuming there is any water to offer...

The bartender hopes that you aren't trying to set a record for the largest hangover and offers you a glass of water.

Eh. Thanks, but you don't touch the stuff.




The Alpha Hall hasn't changed all that much, which is why you've kept returning to it. The vikings who run it are very traditional, and think of it as a labour of love rather than a strict job. You respect that.




In the meantime, everything else has been... let go, in a way. The other two bars have shut down (due to lack of patrons, you surmise).

Despite the city being as populous as ever, nobody is on the streets any more. It's a strange kind of peaceful desolation.

Are you still asleep?

Are you still asleep?

You're not sure what that means any more.

Gotta get home. Just need to find a bus...

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SpoilerI don't want to end this too abruptly - we just need to get her home in an update or two, then I can get to work on the series of updates that will finally wake her up.

>Consider the idea that you've managed to avoid something very horrible that might have something to do with everyone in some sort of coma.

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Wild Mass GuessingThe streets are desolated, maybe becuse everyone's indoors and stuck in some kind of eternal trance. The fact that Connie doesn't want to drink water gives me an idea that something (probably Slick's discharge of Black Goo) might have tainted the water supply and found its way into being consumed by many thirsty citizens, which ended up contributing to their "condition" as their consciousness seems to have been eaten up. Connie probably drinks liquor out of necessity since it's the only beverage she knows that isn't tainted by what the Subject has wrought.

But that's just a theory, I could be wrong.

>If you can't find a bus, just holler furiously until a taxi materializes.

>Maybe the bartender knows were the nearest bus stop is?

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speculation
What if connie is now some part black goop/hivemind and therefore deadly allergic to water?

>Look around for a blue glowing bus stop sign.

> Bus: Arrive almost immediately in a display of fortuitous timing.

> Bus Driver: Don't ask questions. It's far too late to be asking questions.


(at least, I'm assuming it's late at night... but with the dome, who knows? :P)

On the speculation front

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SpoilerMaybe we simply never uited Connie subconcious...
I mean why would th adventure soil it's own ending like that ? Could jsut be still part of hatever illusions the hivemind s cooking to ge Connie under it's influence or something of the sort...

> Bus: Arrive almost immediately in a display of fortuitous timing.

It's time to get serial, after all..

> Slick: Be The Driver.
> Clearly it didn't work properly the first time.
> Kick Harder.

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SpoilerThe way I see it, we're looping back to here, one way or another and we'll either see full gooification or an intervention of some sort. Which is the case? Who knows. Connie's mind is quite literally and figuratively fighting for survival but the only real plan she can have is to stall and delay her demise and hope her compatriots in the 'Real World' can bring her back or at least... bring symbiosis back on the table... At the moment, I reckon that if Slick shows up, that can only be a good sign, right?

also wow I am so glad waterworks is still going it's fucking admirable and I hope it can continue a while longer

>use the power of THE SMARTPHONE to locate a bus. alternatively just call an uber.

>Maybe the bartender knows were the nearest bus stop is?

Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if you get lost. You so much as blink in the wrong direction, something'll show up to help you.
















You're not kidding. You've got quite the liver.










Stupid drones. They're everywhere now. In this city, they're usually built to take the form of garbage cans and dumpsters.




You'd think that public robot servants would be useful.

...They are, but they're also government surveillance kicked all the way up to eleven.







They're programmed to put a human's well-being above all else. Unfortunately for you, this one genuinely believes your life is in danger and is going to be trailing you until you fall unconscious.

Seriously - you're good. You've, uh, built up a tolerance over the years. You're tired; You just want to go home and go to bed on your own terms.

Try and distract it with a fetch quest, one that would bring it to the other side of the city. Or the next one.

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OOCBits and pieces of the worldbuilding slowly fall into place. I wonder if it's always been this way or merely a measure taken after the incident. Hopefully the event wasn't broadcasted to the entire world or something.

>It's a scam. It doesn't want to take you to the hospital. It wants something from you. Extreme paranoia is always the answer.

>Assure the trashcan of your good health by reciting the alphabet backwards.

> Trash Can: parrot what they taught me in Drivers' Ed- alcohol tolerance isn't a decreased level of inebriation, it's an increased ability to mask the symptoms. Ergo, she's dying. Don't look it up or anything, I'm pretty sure it's true.

>Tell the drone that you have a hospital at home.
>Ask him for a ride to your house where you can seek immediate emergency care from Dr. Bed.

>Ask it one of those logic bomb questions. "The following statement is true. The preceding statement is a lie." Or if that's too much to get out at the moment, a simpler "This statement is a lie."

>Tell the drone that you have a hospital at home.

You yell back at the trash can, saying that you have your own hospital at home. In your bed.




It realizes that you're trying to talk to it and pretends to be doing something else.




Ah, the hell with it. Why should you even bother. It'll leave you alone once you get out of this stupid city.

>Trash bot: Intercept her right on her doorstep
>Connie: Remind yourself why you're not going to join the sleepers and why you're not going to consider suicide either.

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OOCWoah, the state of the world is pretty cool but also sad. I wonder if the brain parasite is a lesser version of the black goo. Maybe a medical procedure is capable of extracting it and accumulation resulted in black goo. I wager it's largely extraterrestrial in origin, there's no way it is a result of evolution, natural or not.

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Spoiler(Because god forbid peoples do things out of creativity, curiosity, need for self improvement or passion rather than pure necessity.

... Yeah, I'm going to call Connie as mayybe kind of an unreliable narrator here. She remind me of those workaholics who are forced into retirement and just mutter agrily at the new generation, 'what with them being asisted lazybones alway on dem newfanged computer, my god mam', in my time we were hard working and proudof it, yes siree'

And, 'the people are purposeless, the world is wasting away, misery everywheere !' doesn't that sound like a scenario some sort of control freak entity, oh maybe jsut a little hive mindish maybe, could make up to convince someone that assimilation is the best thing for everyone ?
(hey it's worth a try, even I'm pretty sure it's meant to be the real future of the adventure.)

But just from a narrative perspective, I don't get what is the point of showing this soewhat vision of the future and all hese plot elements (particulary th brain parasiite) now rather than y'know at the end, otherwise ?
(I mean it kind of take the risk of disengaging the reader as we would now already know how it end. Som storries do sometime show a flashforward and do the whole 'how did we gethere', but then it's generaly at the start, not smack in the ... middle , I think ?)

Unless LuFa actualy plan on ending the adventure very soon with the incomming flash, is already wapping loose ends (seems a lttle odd after yu just introduced one whallop of a plot element with a mysterious pandemic) and we are in the finale already, ooor the storry continues in some ways after the five years skip

beautifull flash as alway, great use of music and colors.

>Start humming under your breath, muic used to cheer you up, maybe you'll find some of that spring back in your steps.

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In replyTo be fair, he did address this in his blog. Since he's already neck-deep in interludes, might as well get the worldbuilding out of the way before resuming the main adventure soon. At the very least we get a wider view of the world's state outside of what was given in the lore posts.

https://shakks.tumblr.com/post/162776632718/
https://shakks.tumblr.com/post/163168290588/
https://shakks.tumblr.com/post/163168798508/

And I read the world-building lore posts on his blog