The White Room (Super Hero/Cyberpunk/Horror Quest)

[Arcanestomper]

It was thirty minutes past seven on an unforgiving Monday morning. As the shrill alarm went off you pull your groggy form out of bed and stumble to the bathroom. Stick a nutrition bar in your teeth as you throw on your office wear, then it's a quick elevator ride down to the tram station. Packed in with faceless office workers you keep one hand on the bar and the other browsing nameless sites. Sustenance for your mind just like the nutrition bar fed your stomach. And with all the same empty calories.

The alarm blares and the train's PA announces that the next section of track is running through a red zone. Armored shutters snap shut, but you're only reaction is to check the news. This sector was yellow last week. A few muffled thumps come from up top. Must be some enhanciles fighting, but it doesn't even shake the train. These behemoths are rated up to Beta on the C-Scale, and Paragon Industries promises that they'll keep their occupants alive in the event of an Alpha class incursion. You shudder. You don't quite believe that advertising.

Fortunately it doesn't go beyond the thumps and the train announces that it is exiting the red zone halfway to your stop. You step through the blast doors and make your way to your elevator riding the stream of humanity. You enter your office to the bleary nods of your coworkers and spend the day in a haze of technical work. Fixing networks, helping clear accounts, and generally dealing with the mess your less adapt colleagues leave behind. You must have talked with some of them surely, but you don't even register it.

The trip home is your morning in reverse. The only addition a stop at your favorite curry place for dinner. You note that the red zone has been cleared at some point, but you don't really care. Stumbling off the elevator you open your apartment door with a yawn.

Then you freeze at the first unexpected thing all day. There is a door in your apartment. Your apartment is only one room. The shower is just a pod in the corner. There can't possibly be a door. But there is. It looks old fashioned, made of painted wood and with an actual knob. Something compels you to reach out.

You turn the knob, and open the door.

And then you are falling. A white void surrounds you. As far as you can see there is nothing but pure white with delineations of shadow or color. You flail and hit something soft, but unyielding. It is only as you turn around that you see the door frame right behind. You were not falling at all. The floor here is simply so perfectly white that your brain has no reference.

Carefully you stand up. Still off balance from the lack of depth perception you feel around you to see if there are any walls in this void. There appear to be none and you step away from the door. You move around, but still cannot find any boundaries. It occurs to you suddenly that there could be a pit in the floor and you would never know until you were actually falling.

You hastily return to the door.

The next few days pass in a blur. You go to your job in the day, but at night you explore the white void. One of the first things you do is figure out some way to differentiate between the white ground, and the white everything else.

[ ] You are Thrifty
You mark the areas you have explored with some simple taped down tarps.

[ ] You are Fearless
You don't need more than a few lines of paint here and there. You remember where you've been.

[ ] You are Practical
You bring in a few carpets to both differentiate the floor and give yourself a nice bit of extra living space.

---

Quest Note: This quest is just a little tidbit that won't leave my mind. I decided to explore it to get it out there. I don't know how many post I'll do, or what the updates will be like. It'll just be as my muse takes me.

 

[Arcanestomper]

Interior Decorating​

Carpet, where can you get carpet? Your apartment came furnished, and you have no idea from where. You search online, but those prices! Way too much for your meager budget. You try to find the nearest physical store, but can't find one that you are certain actually sells carpet, isn't beyond a red zone, or has better prices than online.

That just leaves one option. The local grey market. You take the elevator down. Past your usual tram stop and down some more into the pits of the city. Then you take a bridge over the swirling muck. Even through your breathing mask you can smell it and you try to breathe through your mouth. There's more people down here than you would expect, but of course there are. They're here for the same thing you are after all.

The teeming throng of market goers filters through a set of thrown open loading doors. Guards on either side keep their rifles at the ready. Their smart visors scan everything. They take in your heat signature, clothes, facial features, and lack of transponder signal. In a nanosecond they communicated with the grey market's security system and delivered a verdict. Just another normal citizen of the city. A non threat. A non entity. You pass through the doors without even getting a second glance.

Inside is a vast cavernous space. Once it was a receiving warehouse for countless logistics routes. Now it is taken over by the Grey Market. Individual vendors crowd the space with their wares on tables and tarps. There is scarcely enough room to pass between them, and definitely no sort of order. The air hums with shouted advertisements and the chatter of bargaining.

You let the flow of humanity sweep you down a random aisle. You see a lot of interesting things though it's all jumbled together. Cutting edge cyberware and kitchen dishes stacked side by side. You'd love to browse, but you don't have any money to spare, or time for that matter. Finally you spot a rug vendor and you slow down. But as you look at the products on display you quickly realize a key issue. They are all very big and there's no way you're carrying them through this crowd, much less all the way back to your apartment.

You merge back into the masses with a new target, some kind of trolley or cart. It takes a while but eventually you manage to convince a merchant that's just about out of stock to sell you their pallet mover. You pick up a bit of wire at another stall and with a bit of jury rigging manage to build a sort of trolley that will keep the rug rolls you saw before from falling out.

Then it's back through the aisles searching for your original target. You can't actually get back to the first stall you saw, but you do find another merchant selling a nice plush rug. It's soft, large, cheap, and you're willing to ignore the red stains on it. You also purchase some additional fabric. You plan to use it to make wall hangings to conceal the door. Useful if you want to have guests over ever again.

With some difficulty you maneuver you're now heavily loaded trolley out of the grey market. Pushing out of the exit doors you find yourself at an angle from where you need to be to get home. You're also carrying goods that can be stolen. That sends a spike of worry through you and you hurriedly push your prizes back over two more bridges and through an alleyway whose every shadow makes your nerves tenser.

By the time you make it back to your building elevator you are a jittery mess, but no one tries to assault. On the ride back up it occurs to you that big rolled up carpets and fabric might not exactly be the target of choice for most thieves. Still you sigh in relief once you can lock your apartment door behind you at last.

You spend the next few days setting things up. Wrestling the carpet into the white void and setting it down is simple enough. But hanging wall drapes in a way that hides the door without making it obvious that you are hiding something is a lot harder than you thought it would be. You need to watch a lot of sewing and interior decorating videos, and by the time you are done you have to admit that your apartment looks a lot nicer than it ever has before. Maybe you should have done this earlier?

Through all this life continues. You ride the train to work every day, and suffer through the mundanity of existence while you work on your new hobby at night. Everything continues as it always has, until one day it doesn't. As your train approaches your station you automatically get ready to get off, when the train suddenly accelerates again.

The siren sounds and the armored shutters come down. The PA asks everyone to remain calm, but absolutely no one is. This isn't just a random red zone. That's the siren for an imminent Beta Hostile Event. You might all die no matter what the safety ads said and everyone in the train car knows. Random strangers are shouting and parents hold their children tightly as the train accelerates faster and faster. It rocks back and forth alarmingly as something hits it hard several times. Then the entire train is sailing through the air and everyone inside is sent tumbling.

The next part is a blur. You hear loud crunches that you aren't sure are coming from outside. You hit your head on something hard and your arm goes into someone's face. While someone else's knee knocks the wind out of you. Eventually the train comes to a halt and then lurches upward as the emergency maneuverability legs engage. Internal foam deploys to lock everyone in place and you and all the other passengers can only wait as the train laboriously climbs through and around buildings to finally reach another track.

You can tell when it does because of the sharp locking sound followed by the ride smoothing out considerably. An hour later you pull into a bunker station and emergency personnel cut away foam and tend to everyone's injuries. You were lucky. You only ended up with two broken ribs, a broken arm, and a slight concussion. The paramedics wrap your ribs and arm in a quick heal cast and tell you to take the next few days off work before calling a transport pod to get you home.

In a daze you let the pod carry you home and deposit you right on your apartment doorstep before you stumble inside. Lying on your bed you finally have a chance to take stock. Checking the news you see that the entire building you worked at was destroyed in a fight between the Sunbreaker and the Crimson Crusader. You start laughing hysterically as you realize this means you won't have any problems taking time off work. At some point you fall asleep.

The next day you wake up groggy and in grime and foam encrusted clothes. You feel filthy, but the struggle to get yourself cleaned and clothed with one arm in a cast and wrap of healing nanites around your chest brings it all back to you. Your company was erased from existence. You nearly died. You would have died if you had been five minutes earlier to work. And the banks do not care.

Near death experience or not you owe the banks a lot of money for your student, apartment rental, and print pass loans. You groan from frustration, and then from pain as your lungs expand still healing ribs. What are you going to do? Leaning against the mirror and staring at your haggard face you realize you can't deal with this yourself.

You have to call a friend. You just have one problem. You glance at the drapes covering the white door. An Alpha class anomaly in an Eta class apartment.

[ ] The Network Analyst
She's smart, educated, and a rising star in her company. She's easily the most put together. She's also sharp as a razor and keen on sniffing out anything that might be bothering you. Such as an illegal spatial anomaly. You don't know if that would be a good or bad thing. She's a good friend, but very ambitious.

[ ] The Enhancile Junkie
He could be working in a lab somewhere, but he's got a job loading pallets in a warehouse. Everyone in your friend group keeps trying to get him to apply himself, but he just puts all his free time and money into tracking every enhancile in the city. He's got a collection of Paragon memorabilia second to none, and you know he'd jump at the chance to be one himself.

[ ] Your Government Appointed Friendbot
Ever since the Friendship Act of 2180 it has been legally mandated for each citizen to get a certain amount of social interaction each week. Still the assembly at the time realized that might be more difficult for some people than others. So they also contracted with Paragon Industries to develop Friendship Bots. Personalized to fit your personality it loves all the same things you do, is a great listener, and offers helpful advice. And probably also reports everything back to the government.

 

[Arcanestomper]

Meeting Irene​

You clean yourself up as best you can with one hand. Then you fall back into your bed nook for a proper sleep. Your dreams are twisted and fragmented. You find yourself in the white void, but there is ash covered the ground. Through the doorway you see the arcologies of Utopia, but as you watch the buildings twist and fall. They are pushed away by some enormous bulk. You hear the tapping of enormous legs and see a claw snap an arcology in half. It is blue. The blue of the deep ocean.

You snap awake. The apartment is dark and you grope for your phone. 7:02 glows into your face. You should get up for work. Maybe five more minutes. 7:08, oh right you don't have work. 7:12, 7:20, 7:23 you can't sleep. Giving in to reality you crawl out of bed and perform your morning ablutions. You sit at your computer and stare at the black interface. You're normally on the train by this point. You aren't sure what to do.

The minutes creep by and you decide to browse the news. You find the fight between the Sunbreaker and Crimson Crusader easily enough. Apparently she was able to apprehend him. You suppose that's good. You wish she had been faster, but you can't begrudge her the time when the Sunbreaker has the power of a star. You find a line about the arcology destroyed buried deep in the articles. Nothing about the companies inside. None of them were big enough to be worth a mention.

Deciding to bite the bullet you pull up the government site. There are provisions for this. It takes five clicks and you're on the unemployment rolls. You won't starve at least.

You nervously scroll through news articles full of doom, gloom, and ads. The light outside strengthens as the sun burns away a few of the morning clouds, then fades as the factories retaliate with dark clouds of smog. There is a chime from your door. Your friend is here. You get up and have a few brief moments of struggle as you realize your right hand is still in a cast. You can't type in your security code to unlock the door with it. And without muscle memory it takes a few tries to get it open with your left.

Finally you get the door open and your friend strides in like she owns the place. You've seen her do the same thing in fast food joints and ritzy corporate lobbies. That's just who Irene is, bold, confident, and ambitious. She knows what she wants and how to get it. And right now she wants to get you patched up. Before you know it she's got you sitting on your bed while and she whips out a medkit. One of the high end corporate jobs with a shiny case and built in AI guidance.

She plugs the ports into your casts and you feel the last of the aches and tensions drain away as the corporate grade nanites clear out the government ones. Irene stares at the readout intensely for a few minutes and then gives it another poke. "Your stress levels are too high for just broken bones. What's bothering you."

You tell her about the fact that you lost your job. That you've got debts that need paying. Oh right, and you nearly died! Your voice rises at the end, but Irene is unruffled. She just gives you a pat on your good shoulder, "But you didn't. So now you have to move forward. You need a job. Well I can put in a good word at my company. I know you can handle it."

You grimace, Irene works for Khoas Industries, one of the leading megacorps that specializes in pharmacutecals and bioware. They pay well, but their working conditions are notoriously bad. You'd have to work long hours, and they get raided by enhanciles all the time.

Irene has already brought out a pad and is looking through it. You're sure there are hundreds of job openings on it. She ticks through them instantly dropping offers you'd probably spend hours mulling over. "Okay here, network IT at a Paragon Industries branch office. You'd have to commute a long way, but it's Paragon."

Paragon is widely considered the best company to work for because they're headed by Paragon himself. The world's leading hero he ensures all of his employees are well cared for. The pay isn't the best, but the benefits are. Of course sometimes his enemies target the company specifically to get at him.

Irene is still swiping through the pad, "Or if you want to look for yourself you could apply for the Victim Relief Program." She sees your uncomprehending look, "It's a fund the Crimson Crusader set up with the government to help people impacted by collateral damage from her fights. You've got to jump through a bunch of hoops and fill out forms, but I've got you covered."

Your own computer beeps as you receive a software package from Irene's pad. She shares a few more offers, but none of them sound as good as the first three. Then after checking that the nanites are doing their job the two of you spend the rest of the night chatting and playing card games. At one point Irene comments on your apartment's fresh new look, and you consider. Do you want to tell her about the door?

Look for Work
[ ] Khoas Industries
Pros: Significantly Less Debt, Work with Irene
Cons: More Stress, Possible Enhancile Raid

[ ] Paragon Industries
Pros: Less Debt, good benefits
Cons: Some Stress, Possible Major Enhancile Raids

[ ] Apply for Victim Relief Funds
Pros: No Stress, Not a target
Cons: Debt doesn't change

Tell Irene about the Door
[ ] Yes
[ ] No

 

[Arcanestomper]

Back to the Void​

In the end you decide not to tell Irene about the door. You think she is smart enough to suspect that something is up. You are not the type of person to spontaneously redecorate after all, but it's unlikely she realizes you have an anomaly in your apartment. And for now you'll keep it that way. You do get her help to update your resume and send it around to a few companies. The one you're really considering is Paragon Industries though. It seems like the safer less stressful choice.

A few days later just as your taking the wraps off your ribs you hear a beep as your computer alerts you to a message from Paragon's HR department. Their AI has analyzed your resume, history, and personality profile and approved your hiring. You think it's a little suspicious that it alerted your right after you fully healed. The companies aren't supposed to have access to your medical records, but they are suspiciously timed every now and then.

Still the next day you are on the train to Paragon's branch office in the Yellow 213 sector. It's a long commute so you get to stare out the windows at the passing city for a few hours. One towering arcology is pretty much like the other though so your mind wanders. You spend most of the time alternating between pondering the white void and stressing over the possibility of another enhancile attack. However once you get to the office it all fades into the background as fall back into the groove of doing mundane IT work. The job is basically like your old one, though you note the health benefits look a lot more generous.

Debt: Treading Water
Stress: Mundane Reality

With your financial needs taken care of you turn your attention back to the void beyond the doorway. You've laid down enough carpets by now that you actually have more safe space here than you do in your actual apartment, though that was a low bar to clear. You've tapped around with a broom and haven't found any holes so far, but it is still extremely disconcerting so you stick to your little carpeted area for now.

The question though is what exactly you want to do here. There's room here and light. You can breath here and the temperature is comfortable. But there's nothing else. You ran an extension cord in for power. You can't close the door while its there, but honestly you're a little scared of what might happen if you close the door while you're inside so that's actually a plus. Once that was working you ran a cable in for network so now you can get online inside the void. But still how does that help you exactly. You already have space for a computer in your apartment.

You've got a few ideas though. You've got space, light, and apparently temperature control. That means you could set up a server farm if you wanted. You wouldn't be able to compete with a corporate data center, at least at first, but you could sell time on the servers for gig jobs. That would be your first choice, but again you'd be competing with the big data centers. So you're not sure how viable it would be.

Alternatively you could try to produce some kind of physical product. There's obviously plenty of space to build a workshop here. The problem there would be that your apartment is literally a bottleneck. You can only fit so much stuff through the door and through your apartment. So you'd have to do something that is small, but high value. You see two options here.

First electronics repair. Especially robotics repair. The upper middle class, which you are not part of, adore their pet bots and are willing to drop serious cash to make sure they stay fixed. You aren't sure if you can actually break into that market, but if you set up a few fabrication benches you could do a sort of junker version and sell robots to the lower middle class on the cheap.

Alternatively you could fulfill those farming game fantasies of your spread some dirt around to grow crops. You'd have to sell it on the grey market since you wouldn't have a license. But fresh fruit and vegetables in the middle of the city would be wildly profitable. Of course you get the feeling that actually growing things in real life is harder than the games make it out to be.

Or possibly you could try to experiment more with the void itself. You aren't sure how exactly you would start. But it would certainly be nice to have a better understanding of things before you embark on some expensive capital investment project.

What to Try Next
[ ] Set up Server Farm
Pros: What you do for a living, easy to scale
Cons: Competing in saturated market, may need have power problems later

[ ] Set up a Real Farm
Pros: Very profitable, better personal food
Cons: Involves physical labor, messy

[ ] Set up Bot Repair Shop
Pros: Not too far from current skills, fairly profitable
Cons: Market uncertainty, may get criminal jobs

[ ] Try Another Business
-[ ] Write in some other thing you want to do.

[ ] Experiment with the White Room
-[ ] Write in your method of experimentation

 

[Arcanestomper]

You aren't sure how to actually go about starting a bot repair shop. How do you even get customers or pick prices? You think about it for a while and decide to start somewhat more hands off. You make the trip down to the grey market and look for a cheap robot. Something useful, but clearly damaged. You manage to find a little cleaning bot that has several broken sensors. The seller says it has a tendency to go in circles so they'll part with it for cheap. Just what you're looking for.

Hauling it back to your apartment immediately reveals one of the issues you're going to have if you want to make this work. You're going to need a good cart. Or hire a delivery drone. Regardless you get the robot set up on a folding table in the void. Then you take it apart according to the manual you found online. The sensor problem just needs a replacement camera to fix, but you decide to do better.

You disassemble the robot completely and check and repair each component. You end up ordering a whole catalog of tools and specialist diagnostic equipment. You're not making that money back on this robot, but you think of it is an investment and a learning experience. It takes a few weeks but you get the robot running like its brand new. It cleans up your apartment far better than you ever did.

You take a look online at prices and wince. You're definitely not making your money back on this even if you could charge the same as a robot that's actually brand new. Fortunately the void means you don't have any ongoing rental fees and your day job pays for your daily expenses. So you can take your time getting this whole thing off the ground.

Eventually you manage to sell the robot on for a nice sum of money. More than you paid for it and more than the major parts you replaced cost. So this is viable at least. You just need to keep working at it, and maybe get more practice at repairing robots. For now you don't feel confident quitting your day job to do this full time, but you can see it in your future.

Pick One
[ ] Keep working on small repairs
Buy and repair damaged robots from the grey market. The money is reliable, but buying a robot that works at least a little is eating into the profit.

[ ] Try to source something bigger
You don't actually know where to get a completely broken down robot. Eventually you think might be able to make enough of a name for yourself that people will come to you, but right now you're just a random reseller. That means your only option is going to the dump and hoping to get lucky.

---

You are not a farmer. No one in your family is a farmer. But it can't be that hard right. It's just planting seeds in dirt. And there's lot of guides to gardening online. So you get to work. You purchase several planting boxes and a lot of dirt. Getting it all to your apartment reveals one of the issues you're going to have if you want to make this work. You're going to need a good cart. Or hire a delivery drone. But for now you manage.

Setting up the boxes you plant your seeds, just some tomatoes to start with, and give them water. They start growing fairly quickly, but over the weeks of tending them you note some abnormalities. The plants seem to have a sheen to them that you are fairly certain isn't right. They almost seem translucent.

When they finally fruit and you have your first crop you are sure of it. About a third of your tomatoes seem to actually be healthy. These are plump red spheres that you are sure will sell for a lot. Another third of them are kind of sad. Small, lumpy, and discolored tomatoes that you wouldn't buy unless you were desperate. You try a few of these and they most taste fine. Maybe a little too tart, but you suppose you can keep them for your own food.

And then there's the last third. They're big juicy spheres like the first group. If anything they're larger. But they're also an off white with a translucent skin through which you can see silvery fluid flowing through the tomatoes. You are absolutely not eating these things. And they make you reconsider eating the others. Though you dissected a few of your good batch and couldn't find any of the whiteness.

After some agonizing over the ethics you decide you want money more than you care about potential side effects. Actually selling them is a bit of a problem. You don't have the reputation to sell tomatoes online so you have to go down to the grey market and rent a spot to set up a stall. It's more expensive than you thought it would be, and even though you sold all your tomatoes pretty quick you end up losing money. You ended up with less of a crop than you expected when you calculated how many boxes you were planting.

Still you can plant more next time. And there's always the White tomatoes. You aren't sure what to do with those.

Pick One
[ ] Plant More Tomatoes
Don't worry about it. If you have to discard a third of your crop so be it. Just work on growing more tomatoes and getting them healthier so you don't have as many of the discolored ones next time.

[ ] Look into the White Fruits
You aren't a chemist, but you can get a few test kits for poison and stuff. Maybe a few little rodents to try eating the white tomatoes and see what happens.

---

You suddenly gasp. Your head hurts. You have too many memories. You remember repairing robots and planting tomatoes at the same time. You look into the White Void and you see your planter boxes and repair benches occupying the same space. You have to squeeze your eyes shut. When you open them again you only see planter boxes. Open and shut again and now you see repair benches. You are getting a migraine.

You stagger over to your computer and check your bank balance. Your bank only records one set of transactions. You are a mildly succesful robot reseller. And now you're in the hole for tomatoes. You wince. The world seems to warble between the two options. You feel that both realities are real, but not at the same time.

Clearly there is more to the White Room than you had discovered previously. But this is also an unstable situation. You can't keep both realities going with the amount of pain your head is in. You feel like maybe if you focus on one really hard it will be fixed.

Pick One
[ ] The Farm
[ ] The Repair Shop
[ ] Try to Keep Both
-Add Stress