Consortium 1-4: The Gathering Storm- Chapter 6
Story by MigeYeFoxe on SoFurry
What better way to make the station feel like a living, breathing thing that has real people in it than to have an entire system that's effectively them plugging themselves into the matrix or whatever other example you want. Except this one is actually safe to use, because it's a recreational product effectively, and no one would volunteer to use a product if it killed you for using it.
Back in his quarters Richard watches as Edgar is going about tinkering around with his pod, which confuses Richard as it doesn’t sound like something that would be useful for the activity they were talking about during the patrol.
“So what are you doing?” Richard asks, letting the little translator apparatus installed in their quarters so that they have a means to talk to each other without having to carry around the orbs do its job.
“Installing the beta network to your pod,” he says casually. “There is actually far more to the pods than most people realize, but a lot of it is still in development. Don’t know if you’ve found it yet but you can actually enter a sort of separate reality while in the pod, to isolate you’re your mind from your body to do something else. Like when using the little visors. But normally it’s designed to be only useable for just that one pod. It’s an isolated system. But with the engineers given free reign there have been developments from the human sector to try and link all of the pods into a network. It’s not perfect yet so there are still the occasional glitch and stutter but it’s coming along nicely. I’ve heard that they might roll it out officially and make it a public announcement of the alteration in a year or two. Until then it’s only on this station and for those that know about it. I’m hooking you into the network so that we can do a scan-sweep.”
Richard waits for the entire statement to be done patiently, knowing that a translated explanation will be forthcoming and Edgar isn’t really known for taking pauses for the translation to go more smoothly, too used to the hanger where the Language of Intent is in effect. Eventually the translation does occur and Edgar spends the time continuing to just keep tinkering at his pod. “And what is a scan-sweep? None of you seemed all that inclined to actually explain what all it actually is, only on what we’re going to do with it.”
“Well that’s kind of the thing. It’s very difficult to explain. We all know it by just calling it a scan-sweep. I don’t know what you would know of that would be similar enough. Don’t worry, it’s not going to be at all dangerous. There are far more than sufficient safety features installed and the pods will be programmed to stop working out our bodies after the designated duration so there’s no risk of overtaxing the body if we stay late. Anyway, I’m all set up. And we’re close enough to our time that we might as well go ahead and go in. That way you can have some time to get used to the way things are like and let me know if I need to troubleshoot anything for you. Haven’t had to set this up for a human before, might accidentally have given you a tail or something,” he laughs.
Richard shrugs and moves to go and enter his pod. Edgar goes about closing the door for him and he lies down and feels the machine start to strap him in and the visor close over his head. In the past he had used the two hours he was required to be in them to prevent any issues from the lower gravity of the station to just nap. To use the visor to isolate himself from his body enough to just sleep while the machine does its work. This time, however, as the visor closes over his eyes he can still feel it pull him away from his body he instead finds a deep pressure at the back of his brain and then new images and sensations started filtering in. At first he was starting to panic but then rationalized that this must be deliberate. It was still extremely strange for him to experience and it is nothing like the other times he put on the visor. With those he did get a new perspective and could see in a new universe, but there was never a feeling that his body was somewhere completely different. Eventually he finds that the world has started to come in around him bit by bit, as if objects in the universe are slowly coming into reality. When everything is done he finds himself standing in the middle of a causeway. There’re several buildings around in every direction he looks and he can also see a multitude of species walking around the road, some conversing, others not. It reminds him a lot of walking the markets only with buildings instead of stalls and the fact that there are no environmental suits. Everyone, including the Jhereshii are just moving around as normal. Remembering what Edgar was talking about he takes a quick peak of himself and notes that he looks perfectly normal. He can’t even really tell that this is a simulation. After looking around for a moment he sees someone else start to walk towards him and it takes him to realize that he’s looking at one of his squad mates.
“Wow, you look rather different without your environmental suit,” he says to the habenceun.
“Yeah, I get that a lot from most people in here. Some people are so ingrained in how we look in our suits they don’t even associate what we actually look like outside the suit with us. Happens a lot with the Jhereshii as well, though some of them will use a mod so that they still look like they’re in their suit. Privacy is a far bigger issue to them than it is for most. I’ve even had a few Fringewards not recognize me on several occasions.”
“There’s mods here? I’m guessing my engineer probably runs around in that small fox form?”
“Don’t know. Never seen her here,” Mijhanero shrugs.
“I have. She rarely comes on as the same in any session,” a new individual shows up. And based on the appearance Richard can only guess that this would be Allenpo. “There are a few of the engineers that do this. They take on a randomized appearance and give this place a thorough testing as well as to blend in and get honest feedback about the entire thing. Many of the engineers have administrative privileges for this place after all.”
“Ah, right. I suppose that would make sense,” Mijhanero says. “Wouldn’t do to have someone with the ability to make changes being constantly hounded over every minor detail, especially when they have just as much need to unwind as any. So, little human, what do you think of this place so far?”
“Well it’s very similar to those helmet things they had me wear for orientation and whatnot to get the general idea of what things are. It’s just this place is so much more,” Richard pauses to try and figure out how to best describe his current thoughts about it.
“Real feeling?” Allenpo asks, to which Richard nods. “That’s to be expected. With the normal headset there is the simple fact that it doesn’t override your own senses. Meaning you will always see and feel different things, creating a sort of dysphoria. With this place your entire mind has been disconnected from your body. There is no reason to have much input from your body while you are in the pod. So one hundred percent of everything you are experiencing is what is being transmitted to you from in here.”
“That said,” Edgar says as he finally joins the group. “You’d have no idea just how many safeguards are in place here. Your mind is still in the pod. Everything here is being downloaded into your brain. Creates a bit of a latency problem which is especially noticeable during more intense activities. But they’re working on it. But if power cuts out, you just stop getting new information and you’re booted back into your normal pod program with no harm to you. Heart rate gets too high, get booted back into your pod. Think about leaving or try to pull the headset off, get booted to your pod. It is considered of the utmost importance to any system like this that the user is protected. No one designing any system would allow it to mass production if it routinely killed the people using it. Anyway, let’s go ahead and head out. If any of the others want to show up they are more than able to after we’ve started.”
“So what are we doing exactly?” Richard asks again as the group begins to lead the way. Edgar goes and puts one hand around Richard’s shoulder and he actually finds that he can feel this sensation, which is somewhat odd.
“A Scan-sweep. We’re going to go and expose you to our culture. I had actually thought quite a bit about what to start on. There’s just so many to choose from that we’ll have to keep doing these things together until we’ve gone through enough of them. But we all need to be in the pods anyway. So figure at least for a few days in a row we can hit a few of the biggies.”
“So which did you decide on to start?” Allenpo asks.
“It’s um. I want to use its real name so forgive me as I butcher the title. It’s called ‘Yong jee sey ni mo?’” Edgar says slowly.
“Jhongxi sivnimlo,” Mijhanero corrects, to which Edgar immediately turns and points at her.
“Yes, that one. It’s from a director from her people. Won all kinds of awards when it came out. It came out I think it was twelve years ago station time? So it’s a bit dated with some of the references. But it’s a good, light-hearted endeavor. I think you’ll enjoy it.”
“Wait,” Richard says as he notices they were saying things that weren’t being translated. “Is this place using the Language of Intent?”
“Not technically?” Allenpo says in response. “There is an auto-translation feature here that takes advantage of the latency. But you aren’t physically talking. It works in a very similar manner in that it is taking what you intend to say and then broadcasts it here as you saying it, but it doesn’t rewrite your mind. Think of it as something that reads your mind to know when and what you want to say and transmits that as words, but doesn’t rewrite the way you process language so that you can understand. That make sense?”
“Kind of?”
“It’s complicated,” Edgar says. “And best not to think too hard on it. Anyway, to the Scan-Sweep!”
The group seems to be leading him into this one big building and at the front entrance there is a command node. Edgar takes his hand off Richard, walks up and instead puts his hand on the door and closes his eyes for a moment. And then the doors open.
“Okay, we’re all set. I set it so that we can go from one to the next when we feel like it, and made a reserved lobby so that the others can join in if and when they show up. I know three said they would try to make it but would be running a bit late.”
With that Allenpo and Mijhanero just walk in without any hesitation. Seeing Richard being reluctant about it, Edgar grabs Richard’s hands and pulls him in with him. On the other side of the door he finds himself in a completely different location. And once the four are in Allenpo waves his hand and a scene begins to unfold around them. In many regards it’s much like that little show when he had the assessment thing, only this one is far more mature and realistic. If it weren’t for the fact that none of the others that are entering the scene react the slightest bit with the four of them he’d think they would have been transported to some other realm and that these were also real people. And as he watches the others go about he finally starts to understand what it meant by a scan-sweep. It is a combination of things. It is in essence a movie night. They are showing a movie for him to watch and enjoy and get a feel for the culture they’ve all grown up around. But at the same time, while they are watching and explaining some of the context that he doesn’t get, they’re also scouring the area, trying to find any sort of easter egg or detail that they hadn’t noticed before. Pointing out little details that they screwed up or managed to actually put a lot of effort into.
One massive difference between this and a movie night, though, is that they don’t exactly stay in one movie all the way through, which to Richard is just as well. The plot seemed rather confusing to him, even with them explaining things as they went along. But after going through a few of the establishing shots they jump much further into the film to some of the more action oriented parts, the group going a lot more at this point to try and find out what techniques were used and everything and Richard is reminded of the classes Eric had been teaching in regards to how they do shots like this and half was looking to see if he could see any of the foci. But after a scene or two of this they actually jump into a completely different movie altogether. And that is what a scan-sweep is about. It’s about doing a group activity of watching parts of various movies, critiquing them and jumping on. It also makes sense why they were asking what to start on, rather than what movie they were watching. And as chaotic as everything is, in some regards it is helping Richard a lot in understanding how society moves. He’s hearing little phrases with context and joining in on the little detail finding. He actually found a phasic cell just sitting in the open in one of the scenes for the third movie, by which point a couple more had joined in, pilots from another squadron.