Cyberevolution

[Endgame]

Post theme: Metal Gear Rising OST - Collective Consciousness (MG Excelsus) - YouTube

Cyberevolution​

The year is 2480. Cybernetic augmentation has become commonplace, to the point where people with only minor augmentation are considered a minority. Overpopulation has reached a peak, and the vast majority of the known world is covered in urban infrastructure. Resources have become scarce: Recycling is compulsory, and heavily enforced. Within the various blocks of continental cities, Manufacterism is rampant, and customers of low-price low-grade parts produced by Volkskorp have begun forming militant and political groups to combat and campaign against the discrimination. The various currencies of many countries have been replaced with the Watt, a standard measure of electrical measurement, due to the rise of a severe shortage of electricity.

The peak of the energy crisis is heralded by the election of the first full-body cybernetic president of the United City of America, John Loganson, a fanatical right-wing politician. The Wattage taxation rate and extreme rationing measures imposed by his party have caused a great deal of dissent amongst the populace, but have also shown positive results.

The suggestions of several prominent opposing politicians to organize expeditions beyond the known world have been met with ridicule by Loganson and his cabinet, with repeated citations of fact that even the City of Britain have report only barren wastes beyond their eastern boarders, and that the resource wars of the 2200's stripped the European lands of everything of value, and the deforestation afterwards turned them into unlivable wastes.

One of the most controversial topics for Longanson are the sudden disappearances that began following his election. The party has released several official statements too the tune of 'Large violations of electrical legislation are met with equally large punishments.' No further investigations have been launched, though the disappearances continue.

You are a citizen of the United City of America. Your station is unimportant. Your job is irrelevant. Who you are, how you think, what you do, what you are, where you are: None of these things matter. What does matter is what you have begun to realize - Something is not right.



Any and all questions should be directed to PM. Questions and answers that will be beneficial to others will be posted here for their perusal.
No template or biography is necessary. You guys know the drill. Don't powergame, don't godmode, keep your characters and play true to the setting.
Let's not muck around. There is no discussion thread, there is no interest check. This is an RP that we will or won't play, not just talk about playing. The overall theme can be summed up as 'Just post something and let things sort themselves out.'

 

[Orion]

Gabriel - handle of Angel - sat in a meditative pose, legs crossed, arms resting at his knees, wings folded. Numbers and letters flowed around and through him in beautiful complexity, glyphs and symbols in orbits shallow and wide darting about faster than any natural eye could follow.

Far out from all that, an uncountable collection of individual glowing points of light traced the inverted shape of the Earth all around him. A hundred billion points of data - government and corporate surveillance; civilian photos, videos and communications; internet updates pinging around in the thousands per second.

In the blink of an eye, a ripple from one or many points would spread out quickly (an all-out assault) or slowly (an idea) from a globe mostly green. Some of these waves were unstoppable, but lost momentum as they spread from the point of impact. Every now and then, a particular wavefront would pick up speed as it spread, an immovable idea planted in the public minds.

He had toyed with the idea of sending out all manner of digitally- and physically-transmitted idea-viruses, to deliberately infect people's minds and change them as minimally as possible while still planting sufficient concepts to foment societal change.

He had ultimately decided against it. His ultimate goal - he called it such because he had no idea how many others like him existed, the powers that be were so capable of keeping the harmless disconnected and the troublesome quickly removed - needed to spread willingly, otherwise he'd be little better than the oppressive elite and their enforced ideas and thought police.

Even with that adjective, he had always wondered at and appreciated a level of necessity in their existence at the top, as some sort of ordering force to prevent the world totally crumbling.

When the explosive or gradual tinges of red, gold, purple, whatever slowed to a halt, the globe reset to its normal, pale green. A different series of starting variables plugged in, different actions taken along the way. A thousand simulations per second, spanning the whole world and lasting decades into the future - sometimes centuries, if an idea managed to take hold for rather a long time, or a prolonged conflict occurred.

He had no real idea of how many Watts he was using, or the exact amount of computing space he was consuming. Quantum computing was relatively cheap, but you still needed a lot of it when dealing with twelve billion people and eight continents - the new microcontinent of Zealandia having been raised when landspace became scarce. It was easy to become detached in a virtual world abstracted from the Real. He was aware that some people chose to essentially becomes brains in vats, hooked up to a simulated world.

He had had similar ethical worries of his own simulations too: When you got down to simulating individual human beings, if your simulations became perfectly accurate, you were essentially toying with wholly sentient, feeling beings, even if they were inside a massive computing array.

A thousand Earth-fulls of people disappearing every second as the simulation reset, trying to find an ideal solution, an ideal path of action. But he had long ago decided to forgo the concerns of virtual people in favour of the real ones suffering. He had powers to fight, people to free, a world to save.

And on the simulations went.

 

[Ashes Remnant]

<recollect:entry>
/2480.3.12|12:32:00

Jacen bolted out of his bed as his alarm went off. His wife, Sarah, lay at his side, sound asleep. He sighed heavily as he threw off the covers, and pressed the button on the antique alarm. He slowly dragged his feet over to the bathroom. Most of his co-workers had a sonic shower. A shower that would clean you sonically maybe? He didn't know. He preferred water. It made him think of a simpler time.

After his quick, and cold, shower, he slowly made his way to a dresser. He so longed to have one of those new fancy ones that would choose an outfit for you based on what the day's forecast read. But instead Jacen had a simple metal locker. His wife shared it with him. He put on his work uniform. A one-piece suit that was designed to monitor his every move. The upper-echelons claimed it was to ensure maximum productivity. Jacen figured it was to control them even more. He put on clothes over top of the suit so that you wouldn't even know he was any different. After finishing all this, he blinked twice in beat, activating his optics. With a subtle eye motion, he opened up his inbox.

Great. We're having potential buyers in to see our work, and it's not even HALF done. I'm screwed. As he tightened his boots, there was a small figure that stumbled into the room. "Daddy?" Jacen looked up and met the eyes of his only child, his precious Belle. He stood, and walked over to the doorway where she stood. She looked up at him, asking if he had to go to work. The words sent pain through Jacen's heart. "I'm sorry hunny, daddy will be home soon. Promise." Jacen ruffled his daughter's hair before moving past her and to the door.

Jacen's house wasn't a house. It was a two-room apartment in the slums of the district. He quickly moved past the beggars, and the homeless. Everyone was asking for just a bit more energy. He tried to use as little as possible. He hoped to someday be able to get into a better part of town. Maybe get his daughter the education she deserves. Belle deserved a better chance then he got.

After an hour on the tram, he got to his place of business. An unassuming warehouse in the middle of an entertainment district. The throbbing crowd pressed against him on all sides. The lights flashed in his face, and the smell of sex and drugs filled the air. He moved past the addicts and the carefree teenagers to reach a dark alley, the kind your warned about in primary. He walked to the door, and placed his hand on it. He felt a small twinge of pain, as it took a small sample of his blood to ensure his identity. A moment later, the door slid open, and Jacen entered.

There it was in all it's glory. Jacen's life. The Aesir VI. Recent wars were not fought with flesh and blood, but machines and technology. A peace treaty prevented the use of mechs for the past two hundred years or so. That didn't stop governments and corporations from making them however. Jacen worked under a brilliant engineer who had made plans for a new kind of mech that had a direct neural interface with the pilot. It increased the mobility and responsiveness of the mech by nearly twenty times. However, it had it's risks.

The first few incarnations of the Aesir met with terrible failures. Braindead pilots and mangled corpses. Jacen had pushed and pushed for the designs to be changed so that the pilot would have more control over the suit but was met with nothing but more plans to even further fuse the pilot and suit.

A dozen or so scientist and engineers surrounded the Aesir which was currently laying flat on the ground. As Jacen walked towards it, he ran his hand down the side of an arm. It was ice cold to the touch. The design of it was a jet black, with a large metal blade. It was primative, compared to the weapons of the day. Still effective. He stopped day dreaming, and went up to meet his superior on the upper level, overlooking the entire operation.

As he reached the top of the scaffolding nearly fifty feet tall, the engineer was talking to several men in suits. As Jacen approached, the old man smiled and put his arm around him. "This is Jacen Alexander, one of our hardest workers. He's been here since the Mark II! Tell them how capable in combat this mech will be."

Jacen wasn't one to lie. He shrugged, saying "It will be plenty capable. It has the capability of travelling up to a hundred and fifty miles an hour over land, even faster in the air. However it's not ready for human testing. It's killed the last three pilots."

The face of the old man twisted in anger. The men in suits simply said "That's all we need to know for now. We'll be in touch." The men walked past the designer and the engineer, and began heading down the stairs. The old man pushed Jacen away in rage. He began yelling at him, "How could you do this to our project! My life's work! You might've just ruined everything!" The older man pushed Jacen again. Jacen stumbled back. Before Jacen could mutter a word, there was the sound of metal breaking before the scaffolding gave way.

Everything began to move in slow motion. Jacen could see his superior falling backwards away from him, metal falling all around the two. The men in suits were near the bottom of the falling structure, ducking and running away. As Jacen fell, he turned to see an open cockpit rushing to meet him. Then everything went black.

 

[Endless Warrior Sora]

Remain in the shadows.
Be the light that remains inside them.
Enveloped in darkness we become light.

Esther was currently integrated with the mechanics of Dogma, the title she annointed the ethercycle she was using to travel distances far faster than your average ethercycle or ethermobile. It appeared as if there was just a motorcycle traveling through the pathways that linked one destination to another. In a different timeline, these would be called freeways, however, they were something much more now. According to files from Angel, an incident had occurred in the Slum District resulting in multiple deaths and known engineer Jacen Alexander had gone missing. Things like this had happened all the time, and Esther debated whether or not she should investigate. As an agent of Angel, she must act as a Guardian Angel does: protect, save, and stay as far from the public eye as possible. They would do the things that the powers that be could not. They would be saviors that authorities are too inefficient to be. She was currently returning to meet Gabriel and as he probably already knew: things weren't right in UCA.

"Halo Matrix." She muttered, as a small circle of data appeared around the girl's head from inside the ethercycle. "Contact Gabriel. Leave him a holo message telling him I'm about 15 minutes away from destination. Let me know if there's anything I should do before I return."

She hated being so formal. She sounded so...robotic. So...unempathetic. And she hated it.

[Disregard the second half of this post, will be edited out]

 

[Orion]

Gabriel could almost feel his muscles in the Real tightening in a grimace, though in his virtualised state he was totally paralysed for all physical intents and purposes. A green humanoid figure representing Jacen flashed from deep forest green of calm, quickly pulsing lighter to agitation, before waves of red rippled up and down - from his crown to his coccyx. Feeds from Jacen's suit, the facility as a whole - even the Aesir protoype that began automatic startup procedures as it felt a pilot approaching its cockpit - quickly filled out a laundry list of damage inflicted upon the subject.

Brain:Concussion
:Microtears in the posterior cerebral cortex
:Subsequent leakage of cerebrospinal fluid

Neck:Whiplash
:Ruptured C5-C6 disc
:Fracture of C6 vertebrae

Thorax:General Trauma
:Total disconnect of T7-T8-T9 vertebrae
osterior rib breakages

Lumbar:General Trauma
:Kidneys ruptured
ulverisation of posterior lumbar muscles
:Extensive internal bleading

Even before the list was completed - flashed into his mind in a tiny fraction of a second - Gabriel knew that if Jacen was taken out of the suit immediately he would not survive to see a hospital, if his employers even cared to treat him. The Aesir had a plethora of built-in medical treatment facilities for the pilot that could act manually, autonomously, or in a combination of both. Gabriel set them to work while Jacen lay unconscious. Gabriel could observe virtually anywhere without being noticed, but it was when he extended his influence that he was most vulnerable. Hopefully those in Jacen's vicinity and wider workplace would be more concerned with simply getting him out of the suit, to the extent they'd think the Aesir's subsequent medical actions were totally autonomous.

Gabriel kept special tabs on people like Jacen. Those unhappy with their lot in life who might work to spectacularly change it if given the tools. Jacen's special ticket was his work on the Aesir, which was in itself a valuable tool, but its ambient radiation absorption meant it could be a particularly potent and antagonistic utensil if applied correctly. Gabriel jumped upon the chance that Jacen might become a pawn, an ally, maybe even a friend, but at the same time he needed that suit more than anything, and he was willing to lie to keep it.

He sectioned off a part of the Aesir's storage and processing capabilities, and set up a faux biomedical simulator slaved to the aforementioned new areas. He immediately followed this up with a total neural dump of the pilot, making use of the Aesir's sensory and motor emulation to let it function as Jacen's actual body, at least for a while. Exactly how long that while would last, Gabriel wasn't sure, but it needed to be long enough to get his new tool on the run.

He sent an abstracted neural command to the emulation subroutines.

They're already whipping out the blow torches and axle grinders. Best get moving!