I read Slayers Virtual, watched some fansubbed episodes of Hack Sign, and
drank caffienated drinks. And it's 2AM. No other excuse. It just sorta
happened...
Uh, for this to make much sense you probably need to read Slayers Virtual.
It can be found at: http://pixelscapes.com/slayers/virtual/
All rou really need to know about Hack Sign is that it's a big online game,
and weird stuff's been happening with a guy named Tsukasa. But go find a
copy anyway, because it rocks.
.slayers//HACK
It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, creating a pleasant contrast
with the cool breeze. Subaru sat on the edge of one of the floating pieces
of land in The World. Of course, being a computer game, the sun was ALWAYS
shining and it was ALWAYS a beautiful day. Unless the program decided
otherwise.
"Can't figure him out?"
The voice startled Subaru. It belonged to a redhead wearing standard
adventuring gear, with a black headband and red jewels on her
shoulderguards. "Excuse me? What do you mean?"
"Tsukasa, of course," the redhead replied. She casually walked over and sat
down close to Subaru.
"You know Tsukasa?"
"Heh. Oh, yes. Tsukasa's famous."
Subaru blinked. "Famous? We have been unable to find out anything about him.
Noone knows him. I don't see how he can be considered 'famous'."
"Weeell, You must have been looking in the wrong places. I know all about
him, after all. He's kinda been confusing me for a while now." The redhead
lay back, hands behind her head, smiling, in Pose #24: I Know Something That
You Don't And I'm Really Enjoying It.
Subaru leaned towards the redhead. "Who are you? How do you know Tsukasa?"
"Oh, sorry. My name's Lina." The redhead closed her eyes, and relaxed in the
sun. Nothing else seemed to be forthcoming.
Subaru paused in confusion, then tried again. "Do you know where Tsukasa
is?"
Lina opened one eye. "Eh? Oh, yeah, him. Yeah, sorta. It's kinda
complicated." The eye closed again.
"Well, could you please explain it? I would really like to know all about
him. Nothing he does seems to make any sense! He doesn't seem to have an
account for 'The World', and yet he plays here anyway! He says he can't
leave! He appears and disappears from the system seemingly at will..."
Subaru trailed off as Lina started grinning.
"Appears and disappears from the system, eh? Fancy that. I wonder how he
does it." Lina seemed content to let Subaru work for the information she
wanted, while enjoying confusing her.
"You know how he does these things, don't you? Please tell me."
Lina sat up. "Oh, I don't wanna explain that! I'd have to explain all sorts
of stuff before it'd make any sense."
Subaru blinked. "It can't be that complicated..."
"Hah! Shows what you know, girl. It's all this planes of reality stuff."
Lina waved her hand in the air to illustrate. "You know, people on one plane
mess with things on other planes. That sort of thing."
"You mean The World has different planes? It is possible, but The World has
been explored quite thoroughly by millions of players. I would assume some
of them would have found hints that these areas exist."
"I don't mean areas in the game, dummy." Lina gave her 'I'm explaining
something to an idiot swordsman' sigh. Not that Subaru recognised it, of
course. "Different planes of reality... look. Do you read science fiction?"
Subaru blinked. Again. This redhead seemed to have a gift for putting her
off balance. "Uh, no, should I?"
"Damn. Sci-fi geeks are always so easy to explain things to. You can spend
hours explaining to a normal person how holographic projectors and
forcefirlds and such all work to make a computer simulation of an
environment, but to a sci-fi geek you just say, 'It's basically a holodeck.
Okay?'"
Subaru blinked. It was rapidly becoming a habit. "I don't understand..."
"Of course not. You're not a trekkie, are you? Hey, what's the date?"
Subaru stared off into space for a moment. Not blinking in any way, shape or
form. "It's the Day of Freedom, 18th day in the Month of the Forest."
"I meant the date on the material plane, idiot."
"Oh. October 30."
"What year?"
"Huh?"
"What year is it?"
"2062."
"Ah, I see. So Star Trek would be before your time. Never mind." Lina lay
down again with her hands behind her head.
"Um... Before you go to sleep, could you tell me about Tsukasa?"
"Oh, yeah. Tsukasa. Well... hmm. I don't even know where to start. Well, you
have the material plane, right?"
"The material plane?"
"The 'real world'"
"Oh. Yes?"
"And you have things on the material plane that can create little imaginary
universes of their own. Like brains, and computers. Right?"
"Right..." Subaru was following the explanation. For the first time, the
conversation had gone for almost ten seconds without throwing her. She
wasn't sure WHERE it was going, but it WAS going.
"Well, there are OTHER planes. You might hear about the astral plane if
you're interested in astrology and reading tea leaves and all that spiritual
crap..." Lina noticed Subaru staring blankly at her. "Oh, come on, the would
couldn't have changed that much... Ah, whatever. Look, the astral plane is
basically a big, black void. Every deeam, VR world, and everything like that
appears on the astral plane. Okay? So on the astral plane, you get all
these... they look like bubbles. Swarms of bubbles, each bubble containing
one dream or VR world. Okay?"
Subaru was fairly puzzled over where this was going, but she was fairly
intelligent. And she hadn't been surprised by a sudden turn in the
conversation for a whole 30 seconds. "Yes, I think so."
Okay. Now, each little dream bubble is basically just a shadow being
projected by a mind. Or a computer. You have a dream, or a VR world, and you
get a shadow on the astral. Okay?"
"Okay..."
"So you have all these minds, and later on you have computers, too, all
generating these shadows. Whenever someone runs Quake, or has a daydream, it
pops up as a bubble on the astral. Okay?"
"Quake?"
"A game. Also before your time. Still, you get the point?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Now, that's how things worked for millions of years. Now, the internet
started causing problems."
"How would it cause problems?"
"Well... Before the net came along, all dreams and such were different. Even
if two people read the same book, the way one person imagines things will be
different from the way another person imagines things. So the two imaginary
worlds are different. Even watching movies was okay, because movies are only
short. So the movie world isn't explored in-depth, and people imagine all
the off-screen stuff to be different." Lina had grown much more serious over
the course of the conversation.
"Okay... so what did the internet do?"
"The internet, and online VR games like this one, stepped over the line. You
have a VR world, which is VERY clearly defined, what with being computer
generated and all, which people can spend time exploring. Lots of time
exploring. And it all happens IN SYNC. That's one of the worst parts of it.
So, there are people imagining The World, there are computers running The
World, and each of them is picturing exactly the same thing at exactly the
same time. You know what that does?"
"Generates a lot of bubbles that are all the same?" Subaru guessed.
"Ooh. Well done. And I thought I'd lost you. Wrong, but well done all the
same. No, what happens is the bubbles merge together. Each person or
computer only imagines a small part of The World, but the shadow on the
astral plane, the little dream bubble, meshes perfectly with all the other
bits of The World. So you get one BIG bubble, containing the entire game.
Understand?"
"I think so."
"So you have all these people playing the game, and all these computers
running the game, and because it all fits together, you get one big bubble
shadow thingy. Right?"
"Yes... you said that."
"Just making sure you get the point. This is complicated stuff, and I don't
pretend to know all of it."
"Oh, okay. But what does this have to do with Tsukasa?"
"You know how I said it was complicated? And I had to explain all sorts of
stuff first? I wasn't kidding."
"Okay then."
"Now, the problem arises when the astral plane gets out of sync with the
material plane. I can't think of any other way to explain it. You get
someone who starts messing with the astral shadows, and it... well, they
sort of become more real."
"More real?"
"Yeah..." Lina sighed. "I'm getting a headache. See you round..." Lina
started to fade away.
"W.. Wait! Where is Tsukasa?!"
Lina was gone.
*****
Author's Notes:
There might be more of this, depends on whether or not someone asks for it,
or if an idea occurs to me. *shrug*
Yes, I need a better story name. Feel free to suggest one.
Oh, and this may or may not be even remotely accurate. I don't have the time
to reread SV and I have only seen up to ep 12ish of Hack Sign, and that was
a while ago. Feel free to correct me on anything I have wrong.
BTW - Lina's headache is real. It resides in my head as I speak. Otherwise
this might've been longer :P
- Zuriel
*****
"I regret that my target has but one life to give for it's country!"
- Jared Saotome, the Phoenix Mage
"If it don't make you drunk, have breasts, or explode, I ain't interested."
- Dan, 'Insertion'
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