Fluid Pestilence (Sci-Fi, LitRPG)

[E.I.G.]

A few things I want to touch on so far:

I've got to wonder if there's a situation like Omphalos by Marcus Rowland, or if we have definitive proof of the literary agent hypothesis in-universe.

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The big question, for me, is who chose the local space for the target of all the void strike contracts. Or if it was the only existing option when they connected to the existing stuff.

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So, when it comes to the infinite multiverse I prefer a take of every possible reality and variation on reality existing, including all of the fictional ones and and all of the ones that have the others as fictional too. Including the realities where our world is just a piece of fiction in another world.
The limiting factor on what universes that are encountered are part of the travel mechanism instead of the outside reality. In the case of this chapter and various Synch-Tech games the development behind them determines the instances found.

The Void Strike developers had an idea for Local Space as a concept, so they found the subset of realities that matched that concept, and then once they knew it was real they started to clamp down as best they could on the method of travel to limit which places could be found with contracts.

Selection bias is basically the core reason why things end up the way they do here.

Oops, it's runaway. The game is now an equivalent of this eldritch thing from beyond the veil of reality, offering you untold power, on a weird suspicious website you've never seen, a game that never been advertised, using technology you know isn't possible. Just $59.99, or $9.99/mo for premium- Anyway the point is that it's now straight up acting as a creepypasta, an offer from outside of reality anyone can take, if they find it...

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This is exactly the way I want crossovers to be, with a bit of "shady person who offers you a game that doesn't make sense, after getting it you never see them in your reality again" too.

And am I reading that there are alternatives of squeaky who are void entities themselves, or pre infected squeaky just putting it random stuff that corresponds to his void strike self like some kind of self referential making yourself your own OC thing? Especially if unintentionally.

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So, the full explanation that I might have left in too many pieces is:
- "Squeaky" is a common and insulting name given to overbearing quartermasters in the 319.
- The full "joke" is that they are both very noisy, and that they "worship" (mostly sarcastically said) the Death-Sound for how much they fear it.
- Some of these Squeaky quartermasters are now making Void Emulation systems that target the Death-Sound as a bit of "I'll just make it real, see how they like that".
- Flamescale's Squeaky is as a result being targeted by those.
- She has not thoroughly checked if any are alternate versions of herself.

 

[Kade_Lanik]

Another oops - woo, it is time travel! This is going to suck to untangle if they start to mess more with it. Hope the part of the system that doesn't let you jump into an arbitrary point in time within an already contacted universe is in the ossified outer "shell" of the system, rather than just a part they can shift around.

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I don't know if it's Time Travel so much as that in a system of an infinite series of infinities, some of the instances will be in the "past" and some will be in the "future" relative to a given otherwise identical arbitrary "baseline" instance. True Multiverse stuff that deals with any sort of infinite possibilities is weird like that, monkeys typewriters etc.

Flamescale's civilisation size of 20k is pretty small when we think of it even in terms of a single city. For me a city is something easily in hundreds of thousands of people. But it's pretty understandably small given what Flamescale has to do, and how it weighs on her.

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Still reasonable to call a small civilization, I think there's some distinct civilizations on IRL Earth that are smaller, depending on your definition of civilization.

- She has not thoroughly checked if any are alternate versions of herself.

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That's one of those things where you specifically don't check because ultimately you really don't want to know. It's not actually important, and may be damaging to your peace of mind to see what-could-have-been.

 

[Jim Starluck]

So, when it comes to the infinite multiverse I prefer a take of every possible reality and variation on reality existing, including all of the fictional ones and and all of the ones that have the others as fictional too. Including the realities where our world is just a piece of fiction in another world.
The limiting factor on what universes that are encountered are part of the travel mechanism instead of the outside reality. In the case of this chapter and various Synch-Tech games the development behind them determines the instances found.

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This is the kind of "monkeys on typewriters" approach I myself favor. In a genuinely infinite multiverse (not just an unfathomably large one), the likelihood that any given universe has been described by a work of fiction purely by random chance approaches 100%; it's just a question of how hard it is to find and reach them.

 

[Menthewarp]

Apparently sometimes when you die you really do end up in another universe instead.

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Ah, I see Truck-kun has been hard at work.

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Oh.
This didn't make any sense until your Truck-Kun comment.
I get it now.

When their Human-self died, their Void Strike self saw their Human-self arrive in a new universe.

that's just
holy shit


On the bright side, congratulations! You just turned Earth/Mars into anime's generic "heaven city" full of modern conveniences and angels walking the streets complaining about their jobs!!!

 

[Dudethunder]

"Heaven City"? Lol, no.

Just wait until the Space IRS starts running Void Strike missions to mug kill void entities who don't think they need to pay Space Taxes now that their human instance selves are dead.

In Another World With My Smartphone videogame system 500 Years Of Unpaid Back Taxes On Too Many Losing Heroines or something.

On a related note, since other game systems apparently work, Sync Technology is also a good candidate for where random Isekai Protagonists get their Gamer Systems.

 

[XNerd2]

"Heaven City"? Lol, no.

Just wait until the Space IRS starts running Void Strike missions to mug kill void entities who don't think they need to pay Space Taxes now that their human instance selves are dead.

In Another World With My Smartphone videogame system 500 Years Of Unpaid Back Taxes On Too Many Losing Heroines or something.

On a related note, since other game systems apparently work, Sync Technology is also a good candidate for where random Isekai Protagonists get their Gamer Systems.

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Why do I have this mental image of an Isekai protagonist's cheat ability, that is just summoning a VR Helmet with unlimited free VS accounts. The real cheat ability is the friends we made along the way we turned into shapeshifting, immortal, demigods to do the heavy lifting for me.

 

[Menthewarp]

Why do I have this mental image of an Isekai protagonist's cheat ability, that is just summoning a VR Helmet with unlimited free VS accounts. The real cheat ability is the friends we made along the way we turned into shapeshifting, immortal, demigods to do the heavy lifting for me.

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Ben 10 + Bobiverse?

"Heaven City"? Lol, no.

Just wait until the Space IRS starts running Void Strike missions to mug kill void entities who don't think they need to pay Space Taxes now that their human instance selves are dead.

In Another World With My Smartphone videogame system 500 Years Of Unpaid Back Taxes On Too Many Losing Heroines or something.

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That is Anime Generic Anime Heaven City.

You just described perfectly.