Memesis

Character Creation

Character creation is where I first experienced problems. The general order was: enter a character name, or an email address, and the game would determine whether you were a new player or not. I was asked to confirm that the email address was in fact an address. I was then given a password and asked if I wished to change it. If I had not created a character name at this time, would I have been blocked from reregistering with my email address?

Once this was done, I received a BBS-style prompting for character creation, listing, and so forth. I chose to create a new character. I was prompted to enter a name, and provide descriptions of myself. The race selection interface accepted two-letter responses from a fixed menu of choices. Curiously, I was also prompted to confirm my character’s appearance and assign traits, but in these cases I was expected to type in the entire body part (or “area”) and adjective, despite the fact that the choices were just as fixed as the racial selection.

Finally I was put into the extended editor to type in a description. The “save and quit” option left me with no clear direction for my next task, so I used ~q to quit the editor. This then prompted me for a background, again using the editor. However, when I attempted to quit from this editor, the mud apparently turned off local echo (I am using TinyFugue). I believe it’s specific to the mud as reconnecting in another screen session left me with the same problem, and switching to another world restored my echo.

After typing a nonsense command, I was informed (to my surprise) that the game was expecting me to change my password – despite being offered this opportunity earlier. No indication had appeared to me that I would be prompted for a new password.

Five young people are about to join the world of fantastic magic and save the Three Earths – past, present, and future – from the machinations of the Onimecha and their leader, Deluge. These five brave heroes, given the bracelets of their Magical Materials, socket their Heartstones to become superpowerful fighters for justice – Chosenger!

They are:

• ChosenRed – the fiery power of the sun
• ChosenWhite – the mystical power of the moon
• ChosenViolet – the ethereal power of the stars
• ChosenGreen – the five elements of the natural world
• ChosenBlack – the hidden powers of the abyss

When the Onimecha appear, Chosenger must summon their Warstriders and do battle against these invaders.

Farmer Fang has always been a good man. He says his prayers and obeys the edicts of the gods. Today he stands atop a cylindrical dry-coral tower, and looks out over the Siberian fields. If he were not wearing his AR rig, he would see lines upon lines of solar panels sitting atop the flat squares of the organic pipeline.

Instead, he sees the symbolic representations of what he is overseeing. Fields upon fields of wheat, waving in the gentle Siberian winds. The sun is warm on his face; no AR rig has yet been able to match that simple sensation.

Fang stretches out his hand, making beckoning gestures. The spirits of the wheat fields come forth to his tower, and they report to him. 99.5% successful conversion, first quadrant. 92.7% successful conversion, second quadrant – operations were suspended on the 441st through 452nd gateways by the biosensors, who detected what might have been an animal inside the processors. Fang nods, gesturing again. One of his robots lopes off into the distance, to act as his hands. The ubiquitous sensors of the recycling mechanism will be his eyes. But if there is a creature out there, it will need more than just someone to behold its pain.

Fang is a good man. He smiles to himself. He likes this work.

Everyone knows the truth, but nobody really says anything about it. Honestly, I think most people like the Captain’s wife.

When he brought her on board, nobody knew about it. He kept her secret, even from the officers. In this day and age, it wasn’t the sort of thing people talked about.

I mean, if you had a sex android, you left it in the closet and brought it out when you were horny. After you were done, you cleaned up and put it back. You didn’t make conversation with it. They could carry on conversation to a degree, sure, but they weren’t smart. They weren’t people. More like trained animals, as creepy as that analogy sounds to some people. Then again, some peoples’ sexbots do look like animals…

The Captain was incurably romantic. That’s what made him such a good commander. But honestly, he took it too far this time. He fell in love – actually fell in love – with a biomechanoid. I think we all knew, after we found out about her, that he’d never have gone with alternatives like instinct locking or even an immersive VR suit. He was old-fashioned.

After awhile, he realized what he’d got himself into. I think it was then that we really found out what he was up to. He started slaving his private Space on the ship’s computer into his new toy’s brain, giving her higher computing capacity. He started learning about AI and mind emulation and all sorts of things. He intended to really make her a woman, like some kind of female Pinocchio.

This would all be harmless if it hadn’t actually worked. I mean, she’s nice, if ditzy. She doesn’t show real empathy or understand peoples’ feelings – I think. It’s hard to tell. Sometimes she seems incredibly perceptive, but most of the time it’s like talking to an airhead. It’s eerie is what it is. We know she still isn’t a real human being, or even the mental equivalent of one. But was his dedication enough to give her a soul?

I used to think the Cabal was a story they told. The “Iron Wolf” stories from the days of Solar Flame, with his gadgets and derring-do, were romantic and exciting. He’d sneak into the enemy base, shut down their computers, ravish their women and get away after completing his objective. The Cabal was scarier. You never knew who they were. You couldn’t tell where they’d show up. Your trusted lieutenant would turn out to be a secret turncoat, or a computer system you bought years ago and had cleaned out multiple times would turn out to be somehow infected.

What was scarier is that nobody really knew where they came from or how they started. Iron Wolf was easy. You had at least four different origin stories for him from three different “credible sources”. It was the Cabal that nobody could explain. And worse, nobody bothered to try. You just assumed it was there.

I found out the truth once I joined it.

The Chaotician comes to my shop every day. And every day he says the same thing. You think someone who embraced the Wyld would at least vary his routine a little bit, but no, over and over, it’s “want your fortune read?”

When he first came, I thought it was novel and interesting. I didn’t know much about religion other than what I learned in church. I’d heard of the Privileged Symbol Experiment, but I’d never seen it done. My upbringing was fairly conventional. The Chaotician represented something new. I was curious. We talked.

We never talked long, because he always wanted to move on and try his luck elsewhere. After I got the gist of what he believed, things cooled for awhile. I guess the jokes started after that – “want your fortune read?” “let me guess, you foretell that I’ll be disappointed with the fortune?”

Once I ran out of jokes, I just sort of greeted him. And he always just asked the same thing. He never left until I politely refused him. Even after I privately wished that he’d just take the hint, even when I just turned away when he came in, he never left until he got a refusal.

It would have been easier to just give in, except for what he asked for. He wanted a sample of our Dust.

RHO sits at the cafe. His sister is smiling at him. Finally he breaks down. “What? What is it?”

She grins. “It’s your new look. You used to be such a bookworm. What happened?”

RHO shrugs. He reaches into his deck, pulls out a card, presents it. His sister flips it over in her hand, staring at it. ”’Rho’’? What’s it mean?”

RHO walks confidently down the Boulevard of the Seers. Around him, the other travelers in search of their own cathedrals or hovels move like the human current of an urban river. In the distance, the howls of engines warming up for take-off can be heard.

RHO hears a whining noise. He spins, spotting three glowing orbs darting right at him. An attack! In broad daylight? He reaches down, makes a drawing motion. A glittering sword of gold-white light springs into existence and he swings it at the first orb. It slices in half and vanishes abruptly.

The other two orbs energize themselves. RHO sees the blue aura surrounding them, knows to expect beam attacks. He darts forward. The beams miss him by inches, and he comes up under the orbs. His sword slashes again and again, and the orbs fall to pieces and vanish into nothingness.

The people around him are looking up and around. Some are confused; others are amused. Of course they don’t care. Their cyberselves are probably low-grade and backed up on a public server. RHO can’t afford such carelessness.

AST-3000-231 is the 231st mission using Atlantis Space Transfer (AST) technology, specifically a Living Leviathan, in the year 3000. It is scheduled to launch on June 4, 3000 at 4:45 a.m. The mission is also referred to as Vareid-6261 by Vareid Orbital aerospace control. The mission objectives are to transfer military personnel and equipment to Vareid Orbital Habitats #5, #6, and #7 and to return with planetbound personnel.

Mission parameters were amended at the request of Vareid aerospace control to fire non-nuclear rockets at a mass of orbital debris and to track the re-entry of this debris. AST-231 mission planners approved this change and submitted a notification of participation to the appropriate aerospace discussion Spaces.

Vehicles involved are AML (Atlantis Military Leviathan) Aquablue and OTA (Orbital Transfer Assistant) Sunsider.