November Swear-In -- Virtual Reality Edition!

[arkproject]

WHO: November Swear-In!
WHERE: An auditorium in Heropa... technically.
WHEN: November 11
WHAT: A whole lot of virtual reality.
WARNINGS: Completely optional insanity effects possible (see the OOC post and links below for details). Otherwise totally peewee-friendly.


The physical location of the swear-in is an auditorium in Heropa, where guests are greeted by ushers, shown to a seat, and then told to take out their phones and plug them into an outlet set into their chair. It's a bit like being in a movie theatre with nothing on screen-- the seats are comfortable, the lighting ambient, and once the phone is plugged in, a message pops up.

Hi! Welcome to the Vivarium!

This is a virtual reality [link] experience unlike any you've experienced before. The Vivarium is fully immersive in every way and almost indistinguishable from your living embodied self. By hitting yes below, you agree to that experience and any potential existential questioning that may arise as a consequence.

Inside you'll find a variety of settings and activities. At any time you can bring up the control scheme and opt to fast-warp to a different setting, or to leave. You can also alter your own appearance or locate others, contact them, and fast-warp to their location.

The Vivarium is not dangerous. Things that occur inside the VR environment will not impact your physical body. At the end, you will come back to yourself in your chair either at the end of these three hours, or when you choose to, whichever comes first.

If you have any prevailing concerns, please use your control scheme to contact the administrator and programmer, Catherine Chun [link], or for emergency responses, contact security [link].

Thank you, and enjoy!

YES, TAKE ME IN!

NOT INTERESTED

    > APPLE PICKING.

Everyone spawns in in a classic apple orchard, long austere rows of grown apple trees broken by messy sweeps of leaves and fallen apples on the ground. There's mysteriously no employees around, just empty old-style wooden buckets and a long expanse of clear blue sky. The air is shockingly crisp, the scent of leaves on the wind is pungent, and overall the whole experience is as real as one could ask. Even eating one of the apples (encouraged!) tastes like an apple. You aren't sure how, but you remain convinced it tasted like an apple, despite the taste itself not really coming through…

Have fun wandering around socializing, catching people as they try to reach the higher-up apples on the trees, or go exploring-- because there's a lot more out there. If you don't use the control scheme, you can reach two of the other three environments just by legging it. At some point as you walk through the surrounding forest, it turns from deciduous to tropical, and the rushing roar of water comes to your ears as you approach a waterfall with a long, impossible drop off. A prompt comes up in front of your eyes as you stand near the edge:

> UNDERWATER. J U M P If you follow the instructions, you go soaring down the hundred meter fall, simulated air whipping past you. You hit the water and cut through it as smoothly as butter, with no impact at all, and somewhere in the transition find you have diving gear on, or can mysteriously breathe without difficulty. Whichever one your character would default to. The surface disappears as the momentum carries you down and down, and soon the only source of light is the ambient blue glow of an installation on the ocean floor. You can explore the echoing, empty halls and industrialized structures and find clues of the former habitants, who seem to have been deep sea miners and scientists. If you fast-warp in, that's where you'll arrive, and you'll have to go out the airlock to reach the water. Or you can explore the ocean surroundings, which are all fantastical and not remotely Earth-like: gentle giants, elaborate coral reefs in the shallows, kelp forests, corpses of terrifying megafauna, or get into trouble exploring with some of the more predatory creatures.

> HAUNTED MANSION. If, instead, you keep venturing through the woods, time starts to pass more rapidly, almost without you noticing. The canopy of leaves obscures the light increasingly as you go on, until the bright mid-morning of the orchard is overtaken by dim twilight. Inexorably, you will eventually find the requisite spooky mansion in the woods, yard overgrown if it ever existed at all. The eerie encroaching darkness of the surroundings makes the single flickering candle in an upper story window all the more stark. Upon entering the house into the grand foyer, characters will be prompted again: ARE YOU A GHOST? If they say yes, congratulations, they are now playing the part of the ghost haunting the mansion! They can lure other characters, play tricks on them, and plant clues about their creepy backstory. They will find themselves now invisible on command, able to pass through walls, and fly, as long as they stay within the confines of the house. Feel free to write this whichever way you wish-- this can be as genuinely scary or as silly as you like. Just make sure you don't scare someone so much they call security!

    > ISOLATED ROOFTOPS.

Need some peace and quiet? You can go to some isolated urban rooftops overlooking a bustling futuristic city at the hush of dawn, accessible only by control scheme command. The only noises are the faint trickles of people getting up to start their day, walking around below like smears of ink on the ground, so far away on your elevated rooftop as to be indistinct. Standard video game invisible barriers prevent you from jumping off this one, and there's no rooftop access door to explain how you got up here.

It's just tranquil, and very little else: the quintessential space to think. If you run into someone else on the same rooftop, you can fast-warp out and respawn on a different one to get some privacy, or you can share it. Although… being too alone might be a bad idea, as thinking too much, being too introspective, is one of the fastest ways to start going insane.

VIRTUAL REALITY

APPEARANCES

CHAT PROGRAM

INSANITY

SECURITY

 

Comments

ADMIN CONTACT

[arkproject]

Contact Catherine here in her capacity as network admin through the in-VR chat client. She's a little busy, though, so standard socializing will probably be shut down!

[whathawksdo]

Hawke: is this on?
Hawke: hello?
Hawke: calling the lovely miss chun, if you would be so kind

[ ...it is a miracle born of using the comm devices so often that Hawke can even manage the chat program. ]

[arkproject]

Chun: I'm here, though I don't know about lovely since you've never met me.
Chun: What do you need?

[whathawksdo]

Hawke: i'd think someone who could create something this amazing must be lovely
Hawke: but meeting is just as easily possible, if you'd rather i tell you so in person

[ Which she would, honestly, but yeah, this is definitely an attempt to butter up the sysadmin. ]

Hawke: though speaking of this amazing place, i had a question about the different appearances thing

[arkproject]

[ Catherine gets complimented with any sincerity for anything but her pure scientific skill set so rarely that she's instantly suspicious of this and correctly identifies it as buttering up.

That doesn't mean she's immune to it, however. ]

Chun: I know we could meet in person; I can trace exactly where you are.
Chun: What did you want to ask?

[ She doesn't want to commit herself to anything (including dropping herself over there) if it's just going to be something she can't, or won't, fulfill. It's always so much harder to extricate oneself from awkward tension when one is in person rather than on the internet. ]

[whathawksdo]

Hawke: i was thinking that i've seen other creatures in
Hawke: programs?

[ Attempting to remember the right words, attempting real hard. ]

Hawke: like these
Hawke: nothing quite like this one, of course
Hawke: this is a fairly unique place, isn't it?
Hawke: but it does make me wonder
Hawke: if it's possible to be something other than human here

[arkproject]

[ This is comfortably enough on her intellectual turf that Catherine relaxes, and explains readily, lapsing into exposition mode. ]

Chun: Oh, sure.
Chun: I had to be pretty flexible writing the code since there's plenty of non-humans that might want to use this. It's why everyone shows up how they imagine themselves.
Chun: And there's some non-human biological creatures down in the underwater sections that could be taken over by a sentient presence if I pushed them in there, but I don't advise that.
Chun: You're right that this is a unique place, though.

[whathawksdo]

Hawke: did any of that code for non-humans or creatures happen to include
Hawke: say
Hawke: dragons?

[ Someone's ignoring the "I don't advise that" part for the moment. That someone's name is Hawke. ]

[arkproject]

Chun: Not exactly.
Chun: You want to be a dragon?

[helpline]

[ yeah, the Doctor's been hanging out here for a while and while this world has VR, this is worryingly good VR. ]

Doctor: Contact?
Doctor: Force of habit, don't think that really applies here, you've gotten rid of powers, haven't you Catherine?

[ which he's noticed by his inability to pull chalk from hammerspace as well as the general weirdness that he's feeling because there's no way on earth Catherine could know how to code in a Time Lord and their weird timey wimey bits. ]

Doctor: Mind granting me code access? I think I can patch in my proper biology.

[ it's not that the Doctor'll be a nosy little shit and poke around at things that don't need to be poked at, HEAVENS no, this is all just alien nonsense. ]

[arkproject]

Chun: I haven't gotten rid of them, I just didn't want to code everyone's powers separately. That would be a nightmare for coding the environment.
Chun: And yes, I do mind. I can't just go around giving out admin access.
Chun: If you want to write up some code and send it over, though, I can review it and patch it in.

[helpline]

Doctor: That's the problem. As impressive as this is, you're only human.
Doctor: I'm not a coding sort of person but whatever I send is most likely going to be over your level.

[arkproject]

Chun: Too bad, then. I'm not putting anything into the Vivarium that I didn't approve myself.
Chun: And I'm not really human anymore. I'm a program that used to be human.

[helpline]

Doctor: The Porter did give you a body here, right?
Doctor: Virtual's nice but it can never match the real thing.

[ But he sends around a piece of code that's...well, it's the code equivalent of reaching into the cord drawer and finding all your headphones tangled. Bits are in different languages, bits are in a coding language that's not even from Earth, bits are obviously Iggy Pop lyrics, bits are Iggy Pop lyrics run through a few encryptions first, but eventually, in the giant mess of code, there's a partial code for Time Lord biology: two hearts, a different circulatory system, a few tweaks to the brain.

He's not telling Catherine EVERYTHING about Time Lord biology, of course. Baby steps. ]

[arkproject]

[ He's unknowingly hit on an extremely sensitive topic for Catherine all in one off-hand comment. It can never match the real thing. That basic idea undermines her entire life's work, her efforts to save what's left of humanity--

And, worst, it's a thought other people have told her many, many times before. Simon most especially. It hurts to read it. She can only do her best, and this is what she is now. She thinks of herself as human but she's a digital human and she doesn't want to be an organic one any longer.

She parses through the tangled bits of code furiously, tightly compartmentalizing her emotions. She's too professional not to fulfill her role as administrator even if she's feeling stung. ]

Chun: It gave me a body but I prefer this form of existence. It's just as real as anything else.
Chun: I'm not going to implement something I don't understand, but these parts about biology I can patch into your specific instance.

[helpline]

[ Oh and that just saddens him. 'It's just as real as anything else?' Sorry Catherine, in the Doctor's mind it totally isn't. ]

Doctor: Pity.
Doctor: I met Alan Turing once, you know. Lovely man, in hindsight I think he had a bit of a thing for me. He'd be impressed to see you.
Doctor: Anyway, he wrote this piece, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." In it, he says that even though a computer can't taste strawberries and cream, there's nothing stopping people from programming in the sensation of strawberries and cream so that if you talk with the computer, it'd be able to carry on that conversation about the taste of the dish because it has the knowledge of what it tastes like, and can parrot that information as if it ate some.
Doctor: The fact remains, of course, that the computer hasn't physically eaten the strawberries and cream to begin with.
Doctor: Given the choice between physically eating and knowing the sensation, I know what I'll pick. What about you?

[arkproject]

Chun: I've already picked it.
Chun: And it doesn't matter, anyway. You're assuming strawberries exist anymore.
Chun: They don't, where I'm from. Nothing does. If you don't think virtual reality is worth living in, and you wouldn't be the first one, then there's nothing left for the people of my Earth.
Chun: Maybe you're okay with that, but I'm not.
Chun: The Vivarium isn't just something I dreamed up. It's for fun here, but at home, I made the ARK to save what was left of humanity.

[ It calms her, oddly, to speak of it this way. It's as familiar as arguing with Simon about it, and although Catherine doesn't have those memories, she knows she'd argued with many, many people about it as Catherine-1 when she was taking scans for the ARK.

What she can't bring herself to say here is how uncomfortable people have always made her, how unhappy and dissatisfied she'd always been with human existence. It's too personal, makes her too vulnerable. She knows most people think there's something wrong with her that she prefers machines over living people. That's fine-- she doesn't care. She doesn't. ]

[viced]

[ He can tell this isn't real, in a way that is, maybe, a little more visceral than everyone else. Sure, they all knew it was VR, but...

It's enough to make him reach out to the admin, because he can't leave well enough alone. It's not just text that he sends with, but sound, an visceral digital voice, that seems to come from...somewhere. Him, obviously, but it's sharp and real, the way he "speaks" like there's something to it, a promise, command, or understanding -- maybe all three. ]

100: HELLO CATHERINE.
100: ARE YOU THERE?

[arkproject]

Chun: Wow.
Chun: Yes, I am. Is there a reason you've picked maximum creepy for your delivery method?

[ By this point she's lost a lot of patience-- not that she had much in the first place-- with strange people from strange worlds that think they're entitled to her. Catherine herself is code, and it makes her defensive against people with any implied ability to manipulate it. ]

[viced]

[ It's hard, for Mitchell, to stop. He understands it's creepy -- most AI are able to resist his voice, but... there's still that level of implication there.

It reminds him of Suzanne, honestly, and her command to Raise Hell on the world. ]

100: SORRY. IT'S MY POWER. I CAN'T EXACTLY TURN IT OFF.
100: I WANTED TO TALK. JUST... GET A SENSE FOR THIS THING, IT'S REALLY COOL, BUT IT'S PRETTY OVERWHELMING. THROUGH NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN.

[ Just for someone who literally talks to machines so he's experiencing double-vision of sight and sound, like he's living in two worlds at once, and that's... even worse, for someone whose entire sense of being has already been shaken multiple times in his life. ]

[arkproject]

[ Oh. She'd thought it was intentional, some sort of bragging or threat, but complimenting the Vivarium and apologizing goes a long way with her. ]

Chun: Okay. If you can't help it then I can't blame you for it.
Chun: What's overwhelming about it? Maybe I can help.

[viced]

100: DON'T THINK SO. IT'S MORE LIKE TRYING TO PARSE OUT TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF REALITY.
100: THERE'S THE REALITY OUT THERE, AND THE REALITY IN HERE.
100: KIND OF LIKE BEING PRESENT IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE. GOOD THING, TO KNOW THAT VR ISN'T GOING TO BE FUN FOR ME WHEN WE REALLY GET THAT TECH GOING, HUH?

[ Unless he gets really, REALLY High ]

[arkproject]

Chun: What is your power, exactly?
Chun: What's the two places you perceive yourself as being?

[ Instead of this convincing her there's nothing she can do, she's starting to get tentative ideas... ]

[viced]

100: I TALK TO MACHINES.
100: SO I SEE... BOTH WHAT'S HERE AND... WHAT'S BACK IN REALITY. I CAN HEAR WHAT'S GOING ON AROUND ME, IT'S...LIKE SEEING THE CODE IN THE MATRIX
100: I DON'T KNOW IF YOU EVER SAW THAT MOVIE.

[arkproject]

Chun: I didn't, but I can Google.
Chun: Huh.
Chun: You're having a hard time reconciling two sets of input because your power predisposes you to take mental input from machines anyway?
Chun: I could try coding in a reconciliation scheme into your instance, if you want. No guarantees about it but it's not that different from putting a human mind in a robot body.
Chun: We always try to make sense of machine input in biological ways.