PBlade wrote:

Garu wrote:

<3 ya, Banshae. 

Definitely.

And never forget that event where you were all Agents, and we harassed you from the sidelines. I always loved the character of Banshae.

Hah! I loved some of the dialogue in that.

There's a reason Agents don't have nationalities or ethnicities. It's hard to be all official when you have to shout "Yer nae authoriz'd t'be i'this area!"

- Void

Yeah, I keep mis-reading that word, myself. Good thing it's the wrong kind of glove, there.

- Void

Mitrios wrote:

Regression = RP people and me ?

This is why it wins.

- Void

Poster from a recital I gave recently.

You can take the Void out of the Matrix, but you can't take the Matrix out of the Void.

- Void

One of my former MxO-playing friends is currently playing Pirates, and I was hoping to join him for a little while and check it out.

Is there an official reason as to why we're not going to be given access to that or Planetside...?

- Void

- Void

Fen wrote:

Void ate the Matrix.

*burp*

... I'm working on something like this.

- Void

Thanks...

I'm really gonna miss this crazy place.

- Void

Sounds like a party.

- Void

It's the last piece of clothing I wanted to get, but never got around to.

If you don't want yours, I'll gladly take it. I plan on getting a ton of screenshots while I still can.

- Void

Sexy portrait shot, Bay.

- Void

Part 10 - Rast

Now, he first noticed how tired he was...

All that he had sacrificed for, all that he had become, had in that singular instant of realized purpose been stolen from him, plunged back into the depths from which he had derived its gift in the onset. All was for naught; all seemed as it had been before. At long last, he had finally been granted a second chance at humanity.

The problem was, simply, that he had not wished for it. Nor did he desire it now.

A howl of pain and anguish reverberated around the tiny room, and it took his mind a few moments to realize that his flesh and bloody body was its source. His mind... That was another thing that was incomplete as a human being, and more complete as something very much inhuman. Such as was his nature as a machine - flesh or no flesh as the casing proved to be. His new body was yet another chassis. Admittedly, it was one of which he had once been quite intimately knowledgeable. This memory, recalled by the A.I. dominating the flesh, served him well in taking inventory of his current functions.

Everything hurt. Beyond his likely projections for the stability of his shell, the element of pain itself was an unwelcome weakness. He could ignore it, but the fact that it registered proved troublesome. He had nearly forgotten what pain felt like - it was an unpleasant recollection, to say the least.

Fingers opened and closed, groping clumsily as they sought the sides of the makeshift pod encasing his form. How long had it taken her to grow an exact copy of his body? Or was this yet another construct - and yet another trick? Perhaps seeking her out after all this time had all been a mistake - perhaps she was far too gone into being too far gone.

The metal felt warm beneath his touch, and he pulled himself with great effort out of the tank. He couldn't sense anything here, beyond what his fingers and ears told him. There was an odd ringing sensation in them... It was a B-flat. Not that that was relevant, but Void's mind struggled for anything in the way of logical data. He was forced to remember how to be human... and yet, he was not human. This world, this body... it was inefficient. If he could simply jack back into the Matrix...

Diagnostics completed, he paused a moment to recapitulate the information. Sensual range was limited. He had a full sense of touch - though even at rest, his limbs burned with the pain of sudden and unexpected usage - hearing, taste, smell... All the things needed to appreciate art. All the things needed to find her, though she seemed to be nowhere to be found.

Sight...

... Slowly, he opened his eyes. This body had eyes. A hazy image began forming before him - not of code, but of the world the way he had once known it to be. These eyes were perfect replicas of his originals... and yet, they were not his. When his old form had passed away, she had stolen some of his rising code, and had kept it within herself - partially for study, and partially for safekeeping. If he could now see (as clearly he now could, even in the dimly lit laboratory), then it meant...

Climbing from the pod, he lowered himself onto the cold, metallic floor, his knees buckling weakly beneath him, still not quite calibrated for proper usage. As he huddled there more by circumstance than by choice, naked and dripping with that oh-so-familiar red mucus, he realized that he had found that which he sought. Now that he had fallen to rest, he could feel the burning sting of the serpent within his newly-acquired body.

She was there, somewhere. He wasn't sure how. But she was there.

The eyes which were his own and not his own closed slowly. Succumbing to the relentless pull of his mortal fatigue, Void's body slipped into slumber, while his organic mind engaged in the traditonal habits of such biological hardware.

This was to say, for the first time since discarding his humanity, Void dreamed.

- Void

... Some of us old people are still here, lurking in the shadows.

- Void

I think it's pretty clear from looking at last year's panels that this year there will be little, if anything to entice MxO players to attend Fan Faire. I would certainly like to attend, if only to meet Walrus, Virrago, and some of my fellow players. However... I would like to know what they plan to offer our community. This includes any in-game items. Do we even have the resources for something like that?

- Void

Hm...

- Void

Sent another one. I'll see what else is available in my stack.

- Void

Try .9 instead of .1. I believe the blend number has more to do with the amount of textures you see, rather than the amount of code.

I use .95 and can just barely see the code.

- Void

LtCmdr_Tsusai wrote:

01 robot?

I was going to guess TaskMaster, but that's pretty much the same guess.

- Void

Hey, look me up when the Old Republic hits.

I'm around on the forums already...

- Void

I'm glad you decided to respond to this one.

- Void

I remember going "Delinquent is a Cypherite?" during that.

- Void

I find it to be not nearly matrix-y enough.

(Unfortunately, my computer froze as I was finishing the image, but I managed to take a pic on my phone and upload it)

- Void

Patch Notes wrote:

•   A mysterious stranger has been reported on the rooftop of the Government Building in Park East

Coincidence? I think not!

- Void

Xamanek also showed up at a Merovingian-only meeting I held back on Regression. I don't have the log anymore, but we discussed the Assassin, and whether we should claim his work as our doing or not (this is after Morpheus was killed, but before it was revealed that the Assassin's mission was a Merovingian plot).

- Void

Nah, just B♮.

- Void

((I'd like to add my thanks as well. Even though I'm usually the first one to get taken out in a given battle, I've always loved the tactical thinking that goes into each situation. Every battle played out differently, with only a few simple rules forming the core of the game, and I think it was a great system. I'm hoping to develop some automation in order to make future battles easier for the community to run by themselves, but the core rules are great, and I look forward to working with such a logical and stable system.

And, personally speaking, that one time I was able to tear completely through Fenshire's ship... That made all the defeats worth it.

- Void))

I'm interested. You already know the kinds of stuff I'm good at, so drop me a line if you need any of that.

- Void

Shh... Don't ask them that, or they'll 'fix' it!

- Void

WTB one anyway.

- Void

Where'd the desktop backgrounds come from? Those are great.

- Void

Part 8 - Rückblick

The energy of the errant pipeline burned beneath his many tentacles. He followed its meandering course until he could no longer received the wireless network containing his access point into the Matrix itself. He was now truly beyond broadcast range - trapped out here in the frozen wilderness, with only a thrumming twist of cables to guide him.

And yet, as his systems released all familiarity with the old topography, new formations became available to his sonar. New spires of steel and rock jutted up before his advance, and these he floated through like a piece of driftwood through the treacherous rocks and final resting places of so many ships on a foreign shore. He was close - he had no way of knowing this, but his sense of familiarity with his target told him that this was so. Here, he would find her, in this dead place - where she could hide away from life, and yet live.

He perceived slow, oscillating motions as he passed each jagged formation, and supposed that he was being watched by many an electronic eye. Perhaps she had built her own surveillance system from discarded Machine technology. He knew that NightTrace had physically seen her at one point... He knew not how deep her connections to the Machines ran, but he realized, ultimately, that she was a woman of vast resources and could likely have built or borrowed anything she needed.

That also meant that there were likely to be traps, assuming that she knew he was approaching, and did not particularly want visitors. It was a reasonable thing to assume; after all, she would not recognize him in this shell, nor would she have isolated herself so far into this frozen and silent part of the Earth, had she expected to be receiving callers.

He first heard, then felt, a scuttle amongst the debris. Ignoring it, he realized that there was nothing he could do - he was on her territory now, and had no choice but to play into her hands, merely on the supposition that she had never particularly desired him harm, and probably would not do so now. Then again, living in cold, dark silence usually drove one mad. And mad folk could hardly be trusted. Especially humans. Especially artists.

Finally, the pipes disappeared into the side of a man-made (or in this case, woman-made) cliffside, and he landed upon it, scouring its surface for irregularities... Unfortunately, the mismatched composition of metals and concrete made it difficult to identify any possible openings from mere difficulties in fusing the various parts of the edifice. Here was a car, and over here a park bench (just the frame). Above that, a few subway cars snaked their path through the corpse of human hubris - although perhaps ironically it was the subway cars that were being slowly devoured by rust, frost and pressure. Everything was covered with a thin layer of chemical ice...

That was it. He began scanning for any areas not covered with ice. Obviously, there were the energy cables, and...

He found it. A door in the mountain of scrap.

Of course, it was quite locked.

An in-depth analysis of the door revealed that it could only be unlocked from the inside, and was made of a material resistant to his cutting laser. He could probably have torn it open with his many arms, given enough time, but it was attached to an unstable-enough mountain of junk... He hardly wished to collapse the whole thing and crush his target inside. That would've been altogether anti-climactic.

Finally, his sensors noticed a port not entirely dissimilar from a neural jack - the sort one might use to connect to the Matrix, if outfitted with the proper plug in the back of one's head. Or, in the case of a Sentinel, on the side of one's undercarriage. In fact, the plug he had used to connect to his current shell and override it was compatible with the technology of the neural jack. Carefully manipulating it with his finer instruments, he positioned it over his own input jack. If this was a trap...

No, he KNEW it was a trap. But knowing her, it was probably a game, too.

At least, that was the prevailing theory.

Void took a mental breath, even though his machinery couldn't support the gesture, and plugged the jack into his port, powering his body down and entering her system - a system in which he did not control, or even necessarily know the rules. He was at a decided disadvantage... But he was still Void, and he was still a coder. Armed with the weapon of self-understanding, he ventured into the darkness, and the unknown...

- Void

"They tried to take my stabbin' knife..!"

- Void

Foxxdie wrote:

Oh man that's great, I want in on this, hahaha.

Likewise. Give me a prod if you need any writing or voice talent.

- Void

Ooh...

I gotta get into this 3D stuff someday.

- Void

Very House of Leaves.

- Void

I've always hated being in factions.

I still hate being in factions.

- Void

"Disc 0: Inferno."

- Void

Take care, Phi.

- Void

That's very 'Westside Story'...

- Void

Part 7 - Auf dem Fluße

Hand, over hand, over hand, over hand...

The going was tough, and painfully slow. With his engines cut, he could do little but crawl his way up one of the line towers, in an attempt to manually reach the power cables he had been following earlier. Time remained against him, and the Void conceptually knew that if he couldn't reach a more favorable position soon, that all might be for naught.

Concept, of course, had no real place in this Real world. And so he pressed on, because it was all he was presently able to do.

At extreme length, he reached the top of the tower and clambered out onto the cables themselves. They buzzed with electricity, but after monitoring their electromagnetic levels for some time, he had found that the pipelines themselves were shielded enough to permit him to walk out over them. This was no doubt a maintenance concern addressed by the Machines. Machines... He thought to himself, still scuttling down the lines. If he could somehow attract a few Sentinels to this place - if he could somehow disable them without damaging them too much, he could use their spare parts to repair himself...

It was a risky proposition, but one infinitely preferable to this slow drifting down a frozen river of energy. At least the heavy chemical frost didn't seem to be able to build up on the warmth of the pipes - a small blessing in an otherwise so-far unfavorable journey. He walked back and forth over the lines, measuring them, sizing them up, gathering as much information about the surrounding area as he could. Blind and now disabled, he was at a distinct advantage to the systems of what would likely be multiple fully-powered Sentinels. Only his exilic nature - to use the tools provided to him in unexpected ways - was of any possible advantage to his own cause.

He knew that the line he was following currently did not lead to the Machine city, but he supposed that many of the other nearby lines would be monitored by the denizens of Zero-One, and that any disruption of their energy carriage would be dealt with by the dispatch of one or more Sentinels. Void hoped that there would not be too many more than one, but there was really nothing for it. He was far north from any known outposts, surrounded by chemical ice and snow, and was not currently likely to survive to meet his objective, much less return.

Scuttling over to two of the smaller pipelines (as he imagined this would provoke less of a response), he cut into each in turn with his laser, punching a hole in each casing and tearing it back a little with one of his arms. Then, gripping that same appendage, he pulled sharply, tearing the arm from his own body. The Void felt no pain, and the loss of a single limb from fourteen was a minor (and temporary, he hoped) inconvenience. He dropped the arm, making sure that one end of it landed within each incised hole, onto the humming energy cables. He monitored the energy levels as he watched them dip significantly in one pipe, and rise in the other, the torn-off arm acting as a bridge to connect the two flows of energy, diverting one to the other. He had no doubt that the Machines would notice a persistent fluctuation of such an irregular nature, and curled up to wait.

A few hours later, he was rewarded. Well, as rewarded as one could be, when one's reward was a pack of four hostile Sentinels. Void remained curled up, waiting. He knew that to the Sentinels' instruments, his reactor would appear to be functioning minimally, and his CPU would appear offline. He appeared to be nothing more than a battle-damaged husk. That was as he wanted it, and was really his only chance to gain the element of surprise - and to defeat this quintet of identically-bodied foes. On the plus side, his time spent as a Sentinel himself had given him a very clear idea of what they were - and were not - capable of.

He watched as they analyzed the area, taking note of the dangling arm, the triangular laser-cut incisions, and even his seemingly deactivated form. They would no doubt be relaying this back to the Machine city, and he continued to lie there, monitoring their equipment for compatible matches to his own needs. These Sentinels seemed to be outfitted with a number of upgrades with relation to their cold and remote atmosphere of operation. For one thing, their communication gear seemed to encompass a much longer range than his own, and they didn't seem to have a problem with the build-up of chemical frost. If he could isolate just one of them from the group...

One gave itself as a candidate, by approaching him, probing at his shell with an appendage, knocking on it, taking energy and damage readings. It puzzled over his makeshift armor, and sought to tear it aside to connect to his processing unit, to gather a dump of his internal RAM. As it opened its own shell-casing to link with his, Void struck. Before the enemy Sentinel could link with him, he linked with it, engaging in a deadly struggle for control.

The Sentinel's intelligence tried to lock him out, but Void was able to keep it from contacting the rest of its unit, which stood, repairing the broken pipe casings only a few feet away. They ignored their comrade's struggling, as its memory banks were penetrated and overwritten by the consciousness of the foreign Sentinel. As its very existence threatened to be entirely wiped from its own body, the hapless Sentinel was able to make one outgoing transmission - a distress call to its unit.

The Sentinels turned all at once, eyes blazing bright red, and turned on the body of the Sentinel that had been lying there, claws and lasers tearing at it in the attempt to remove a foreign body from their midst. The remaining active Sentinel pulled the link cable from its body, closing down its shell and partially powering down to run a self-diagnostic on its systems.

The foreign Sentinel struggled, spasming in the iron grip of four of its kind, its laser cutting a wide, unfocused scorch into the pipeline below its bulbous body. Despite its struggling, they were easily able to overpower it, and it went toppling from the cables, falling down the long tower, its reactor sputtering, dying... There was a smashing crunch as the Machine Sentinels drove it into the snow-covered surface of the planet.

Returning to the pipes, they resumed their work. The project leader queried the remaining Sentinel as it finished its diagnostic check, and the machine in question reported that all was in order. It had managed to expel the foreign presence before being overwritten. Just to be sure, the Sentinel unit leader ran a redundant check on subordinate #3. All systems reported 100% efficiency... Except for its occular receptors, which were inexplicably non-functional, and its CPU... which appeared blank.

Then, the sharpened point of a claw jammed its way into the leader's face, cutting off his central PSU. Void had used his diagnostic to quickly figure out where all the vulnerable parts on these Sentinels were located - most of them were housed behind the large central eyes of the machines. Without their leader giving orders, the remaining two machines hesitated for just a moment, attempting to determine which was to give the new commands in the absence of their controller. Void needed no leader, and thus capitalized upon the opportunity, springing into the air and landing on one of them, his laser punching brutally into the Sentinel's core, disabling its motor center. Unable to move, it could do nothing but watch as the Doppelgänger tore the other Sentinel limb from limb. Then, it turned back to face its last active counterpart...

Its business finished, Void's new body lifted into the air, following the same cables as before, still intent on reaching his unknown destination. In the face of his enemy, he had recognized his own image, and beneath the nondescript metallic exterior, there once more ran a raging torrent of ambition.

- Void