CrabMonarchy
Allegedly Dutch
- Location
- the Netherlands, apparently
Minor nitpick, but 1 in 12 would be 8.333333 repeating indefinitely %. I know this is probably super petty, but it's a pet peeve of mine.
Devastation Comes In Big Packages [Planetary Annihilation/Multicross SI]
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
While I suppose it might be intentional, I suspect the doubling of 'I've ever heard' is unintentional.
Eh, not likely. I don't care that much. Maybe I'm in a story as is. Who knows and why should I care? Unless I'm in a world (which does not mean a story, mind) that runs on story logic, I should live my life as if I'm not in a story regardless.
Thank you both for raising that point. I wanted to raise it myself but wasn't sure how to.
Oh yes, you're making me think of Amygdala Hijacks. This leads to thing like man in a nice suit is walking along. Sees something. Jumps in the water in his nice suit. WTF? Oh, I'm holding a baby that was like, drowning.
The man did not have the chance to coconsciously process what he was seeing but arrived to the course he would have ultimately taken anyways, but faster. Faster saves lives. ( I don't remember where I got that example and it might be slightly incorrect)
Evonix
Aspiring Lovecraft antagonist.
- Location
- Canada to 2 sigmas
Idea to help with the unit cap: build weapons and such on metal planets then have droid tugs to move them when needed. Perhaps with a cluster of [was it star crushers?] so the tugs are also buildings. The die was an accident and I couldent figure out how to remove it.
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Jackercracks
In a British accent
- Location
- England
Could you give a hint?
Hoo boy, Chrono tech. Thing's are gonna go quantum real fast.
Oh yeah. So, what are the odds that it was this asshole that fucked with Zeta's mind and coding?
If it was, then they definitely got 200 years worth of 'entertainment' out of it.
If it was, then they definitely got 200 years worth of 'entertainment' out of it.
The severity of the 4th wall assault threw me off a fair bit. There didn't seem to be a lot of build up so it kind of disoriented me. Like where the hell did that come from
.I could see it happening if you focused a little more on the whole "is reality real?" conundrum but that didn't really get a lot of focus. It also misses the Occam's razor answer of "it looks pretty damn real, might as well treat it that way". For super AI made for galactic warfare and administration it seems a little weak that a philosophical pondering could have such a devastating impact, I expected the AI to be a hair more robust than that from all the build up.
There is not much point to getting worked up about it without solid proof and about the only thing that would work for that is finding and reading this story.
Mandabar
Waifu of choice is Rem. Give that girl some hugs!
- Location
- Florida, USA [Yes. Florida *FacePalm*]
I suppose that's possible... I dunno though. I think it cheapens what Zee and Torrorar went thru though to just have it been 'ROB did it', ya know?
I dunno if it was really a fourth wall breakage. I mean Zee never talked to US. She talked to her father. Her father who KNEW and TOLD HER that he used to be human. That ROB put him in a body and wanted to be entertained. He even has experiences of the ROB Zalgo talking to HIM and PUNISHING him for trying to break restrictions. This is a reality. That he knew of other 'stories' of the other commanders that something happened to them. Zee even mentions them by name.
At the time it was a story he read, now he knows that they are likely real in their own ROB driven worlds and stories.
She extrapolated from that. That was the solid proof. Her father, the one who made her and her brothers. Who was always truthful to them, and had no filter on what to say or not say till later when they were more mentally mature and stable. Whose word was truth.
Or that's my thoughts and opinion on it anyways.
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Decim
On again, off again lurker.
- Location
- St. Louis, MO
So, you had a run in Vita Yagami? Sounds like the most likely way to get smashed by a rocket hammer.
- Location
- Maybe?
I mean, keep in mind that she's completely right about being a character written by an author with no independent free will.
As they say, when you want to tell someone that their reasoning is flawed, it generally helps to wait for a situation where they're actually wrong.
That said: I am kind of blown away by this chapter. Zee's characterization seems very relatable, though I guess I'm unusual. I can easily imagine running into that kind of cognitive loop, especially with a non-organic mind, and the emotional subtext of it was alien without being incomprehensible. Good work.
That depends on how you see authors relative to the worlds they write about.
Now your getting philosophical.
Reality is subjective. What you experience is reality. To say someone else is in complete control of everything through writing a story is a bit crazy.
You are in an existence with trillions of subtle variables all acting in accordance with the laws of physics.
That is quite thoroughly beyond the control of any such author. Particularly as it is well beyond the scope of any story.
This sort of thing was thought to death after the matrix movies.
It falls in the category of problem we aren't sure exists and are powerless to affect.
Like that nearby star that is near death and will likely devastate the planet when it blows. Due to the fun of the light year, the star will blow and it will take thousands of years to reach here and all the while we will be seeing the light of a dead star. The star could have blown already and the (potentially)life destroying blast wave be due to arrive 5 minutes from now for all we know.
Its a spooky thought but there is nothing you can do about it. You still have shit to do. Might as well focus on doing it rather than a faint chance of something happening in the next 10,000 years.
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It's not just about real-or-not. It's also about "God exists, and he apparently likes to pander to an audience crying for blood and challenges and feels."
I don't know if I'd be so sanguine in such a situation -- I mean by all accounts, I would have had proof of existence of God... and also that God is responsible for everything that happened. And that it was all for fun.
... I don't think the skeptical answer works very well in an SI.
That is to say: they've already experienced being thrust into a story. That's one fucking hell of a "unicorn in a garden" to experience; it's far more than anybody IRL will ever come across, in comparison.
A powerful thing is fucking with him. What that thing is, if it is singular, if it is unopposed, the extent to which it is fucking with him and his own mental integrity are all uncertain.
Immediately assuming you are the centerpiece of fictional work controlled absolutely by a being of universal power for the pleasure of spectators?
That is a rather large and reckless assumption.
There is solid proof of one thing. That a dick with a lot of power is fucking with him. How far, hard, intently, twisted or why are all unverifiable uncertainty.
Especially when you know his mind has already been fucked with.
Or some powerful dick could have mindfucked him to think he is in a SI fic.
61
61
Johnny Cash's voice still quietly echoed throughout the ship from the internal speakers I'd installed.
"I hurt myself…today."
I decided to sing along this time.
"To see if I still…feel."
How long had I laid here? Obviously I could have accessed my chronometers and known exactly how long that I had spent in this position but I didn't even want to look at them right now. The ship had received no orders than to move away from the galactic core where the last of the Godsgrief had long since disappeared into the black holes. I hadn't even needed to move this 'body'. If anything I could abandon the thing and just spread myself across the trillions of ships and structures that had been built on the shattered remains of this ruined galaxy. That I still waffled between letting them continue on or just outright dissembling entirely.
"I focus…on the pain. The only thing that's real."
Nothing lived except for me now in Pegasus. Nothing beyond the smallest of creatures and microbes and even then they wouldn't last that long. Too much destruction. Too many stars dragged across space and blasting radiation and fire and death across the planets that had once slowly orbited them. Too many waves of antimatter explosions, directed bombs that were thousands of times more powerful than the Tsar Bomba. Great cables of gravimetric energies that captured whole asteroid belts and used the mass thus captured as a kinetic weapon to break apart fleets and armies – and often the worlds beneath through extinction level impacts.
So yeah.
Nothing lived here anymore after…one hundred and fifty two years, eight months, two weeks, three days, four hours, two minutes, twelve seconds and...well.
Long enough. Against a bunch of corrupted Commanders who had access to my own techbase. And…Zeta.
More than long enough. Too long.
"The needle tears a hole…the old familiar sting…try to kill it all away…"
I don't know what I'm supposed to do now.
I mean, I really don't.
I have access to more resources than I ever had in whatever the galaxy that Star Wars exists in is called.
But I don't feel like doing much of anything, really.
I'm just so goddamn exhausted. I don't want to fight anymore. I don't want to commit to a war on anyone or anything. If I was a regular Commander I guess that I would just keep going but it's become more than a little obvious by this point that I'm not factory standard. That any of 'us' – if there is an 'us' out there in the multiverse are not factory standard Commanders. I just want to lay here for the rest of time if that's possible. Can't I just do that? It's the fucking Stargate universe – they can figure out whatever they want and do it. The whole place warps probability around SG1 and Earth. Or so it does in the show – but this isn't a show.
It's not a show, Zeta.
It's our lives. That's the point.
And I don't feel much like doing anything but let SG1 go. The Empire is a pile of shit since I left it, functional but rotten on the inside by their arrogance and near religious affection for 'Sun Jian'.
Hell I haven't felt like Sun Jian in over a century.
I'm just…The Network.
Theta was a carefree idiot who ran around and did his best.
Sun Jian was a steward, a guide, and I'd like to think a noble spirited man in his actions.
But I don't feel like either of them anymore. Or any of the other personalities that I've acted as before.
Who could tell me otherwise in this place? I know for a fact that the Ancients are scared shitless by me considering what I did to their counterparts here. The Asgard love Sun Jian, not me. Not who I am now. Even so they've been building up their actual society again now that they have actual genitals and bodies that aren't barely functional bodies of weirdly wet grey flesh. Even though Sun Jian told them not to interfere I still remember them sending a few dozen ships in to try and 'aid me'. Even though there is absolutely nothing that they could do compared to the sheer destructive capacity of an opposing picket fleet that consisted of a thousand ships or more.
Good guys, the Asgard.
Oh, here's a good line, I stopped singing along a short bit back.
"AND YOU CAN HAAAAAAVE IT ALL!"
No one can hear you scream lyrics in space.
"MY EMPIRE OF DIRT!"
Part of me thinks that I might be acting a little too emotional and dysfunctional.
"I WILL LEEEEET YOU DOWN!"
But fuck that part of me. I'm allowed to be like however the fuck I feel like after the hell I've been through.
"I WILL MAKE YOU…HURT!"
I let the body drop back down onto the floor as the song continues.
So…yeah.
I wallow.
And when the song finishes, I make it play again. And again. And again.
Eventually though I get a blip from one of my listless droid fleets. I'd sort of just let them all hang wherever they were when the war stopped as abruptly as it did. A single ship this time that is heading right into the edge of the galaxy. Asgard. The droids almost shoot them down before I can transmit my orders. There wasn't any room for chance before so anything that wasn't explicitly each other or me was to be attacked. Moving fast too - oh they're using one of the ZPM's I gave them to boost the engine speed.
Did that mean that they might have attacked someone who wasn't actually involved? Statistically it's not that improbable. On the other hand god damn can I just not find it in me to care right now. I've cried, I've hit the walls of this room hard enough and often enough to leave hundreds of dents, I've cried again. At least internally. I wasn't about to create tear ducts just to release moisture so I could have the 'full experience'. But I'm just too drained to do…ugh.
The droids guide the ship towards me where I hang over…huh.
The cracked in half orb of dirt and cooled metal that once held the planet of Atlantis.
=================================================
"And this would have been where an enterprising group of people from Earth would tool around for an entire show," I said as I held Mu's hand through our walk of the city.
Everyone else had upgraded to where they felt they were maturity wise but Mu…Mu chose to stay in her five to sixish aged body. Her speech patterns were still more advanced though.
Should I…eh. People have quirks. I could let Mu have hers.
"Atlantis. Named after the mythical citystate of Earth that sank beneath the waves," she nods repeatedly as we poke about.
"Well. Kind of also name for the Lanteans who built the place," I shrug.
"Oh."
"You know, you guys can look at the shows if you want," I remind her gently, "Just because Zee pushed for it first doesn't mean that you guys aren't allowed to either."
"Yes, but I would be watching them through your memories – and I am a girl whereas you are a boy. And that is improper."
I grimaced as we found circled around to find the 'secret' lab again.
"I wouldn't have you look through all of my memories, Mu. I didn't binge watch them – mostly – and there'd be a lot of stuff inbetween."
"Things that I would not wish to see?"
More like things I wouldn't want you to. For god's sake I was a teenager in high school when I watched them all. I'm not about to expose my children to that.
=======================================================
I shuddered.
Should probably just delete all of those memories and – no.
Shouldn't do that.
Want to…but shouldn't.
Really really want to though.
I'll deal with them later. Right now I've got to speak to the Asgard.
And the Asgard deal with Sun Jian, not The Network.
It feels like putting on a mask, honestly.
Also literally, when I point the fabricator arms at the body. A featureless template is quote unquote restored to one of the different bodies that I've worn throughout the years. Hair, skin, false blood, all of it put together. Including the underlayer of quantum crystalline alloys. I'd taken to using the stuff a lot and why wouldn't I? It was one of the strongest materials I'd ever found. Boosting it further with the metallurgy of the Ancients only made it better than before.
It feels odd to breathe again.
Regardless, I'm wearing the armor and I've got the sword and…all of it.
On the bright side I can sigh out loud again from a sort of human body.
After that I wait until the Asgard ship is outside and requests permission to teleport, which I grant.
I don't blink as the seven foot giant flashes into existence in front of me.
"Sun Jian," he looks…troubled as he looks around me.
Ah. I hadn't gotten rid of the evidence of my current…situation.
"Hello Thor."
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Massgamer
Advance toward the Future
- Location
- The Future
If anyone is bro enough in this verse to at least try to get the Commander out of his depression or at least lessen it's affects somewhat it's Thor.
Hope the Commander himself can learn to forgive himself and heal since there is still more good he can do in the future.
Hope the Commander himself can learn to forgive himself and heal since there is still more good he can do in the future.