Memitim's Tomb
| Memitim's Tomb | |||||||||
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| Part of The Name of Heaven Part of Dead Gods Stir | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven The Girl in Many Colors | ??? | ||||||||
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Bunny Hop Fennec |
The Host Sculpting of the Tomb Dissonant Sprites Foundation Entities | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| None | Foundation Entities | ||||||||
Summary
God is dead, and we tried to stop them.
Background
Bunny Hop and The Girl in Many Colors get along really great in their mutual pursuit of Heaven. So great, in fact, that when she has a hot tip on a host that might be a way there, she instantly cold calls Bun on a Saturday night, red hat firmly on, while fighting off other hackers and waving away Bhop's half-amused attempts at offering help. She gives Bun a host address, and instructions to check it out, if she's got the time. Trusted friends, of course, may also come - the more Heavenseekers, the better!
The Girl in Many Colors, unfortunately, is swiftly punched in the jaw, a nasty looking data spike, and turns to finish the job. Bunny Hop, simply, says to leave it to her.
The Meet
Bun, knowing the very-likely-Resonant nature of Heaven, turns to one of very few friends she might trust in a situation like this: noted technomancer and local Matrix fox goddess, Fennec, who is, at the moment, not doing so well. After a... successful operation for the DGSE, which is to say, French federal intelligence, they finally appear to have sent the fox home - albeit, of course, too late to salvage her home, on which she is surely delinquent on rent. Or her stream and its tanking subscribership after her extended stay abroad. They sit joyless, lifeless, staring at the ceiling of a coffin motel when the red rabbit flashes into the view of their AR feed.
"Moshi moshi~," Bunny Hop asks. "How's your 'headache'? Are you still stuck in Japan?"
"Still hurts. Yeah." Fennec lies. She doesn't want Bhop to know the truth.
"Sou ka," she hums genuinely. "Sorry."
...
"... Do you want to go on a side-quest?"
Fennec, obviously, says yes. They are happy to be remembered. They are happy to be seen. They are happy to be anywhere but stuck in their own head, trapped in a crappy Seattle coffin motel.
The Plan
Bun explains the situation. Heaven might actually be a place on Earth, or on the Matrix at least, and she has a lead that might start them on the path to finding out the Truth. She shares the host data, and the two of them, experienced hackers as they are, fall into sim to do a standard, run of the mill, no frills attached, vanilla-flavored host dive as they both have a thousand times before.
The Tomb of the Heavenly Host
The host appears on the grid as a dilapidated mine straight out of gold-rush-era California, with a rusting spiral staircase rising into the sky - a chain link fence marked "No Trespassers" protects it from the public, along with the intimidating Rating 7 designation. The techno pair, undeterred, place their marks without too much difficulty - Bunny Hop surreptitiously slaps a Sanrio-inspired bunny-face sticker onto the metal frame, While Fennec takes one of their tails, shoots it underground, and has it reappear on the other side to unlock the gate for them. Close observation beforehand reveals another mark in addition to their own - a white feather, trapped between chainlink.
Inside, details of the host become even more apparent. Not only is the mine itself dilapidated, but all the veins of gold, all the tools, the tracks on the ground, the rocks on the walls. Things that should not rust are somehow left to rot. Rugged, dirty men in hard hats holding lanterns, Patrol IC the two hackers are easily able to determine, scan the mine, though see nothing of the two rebel personae, and walk right on by. Bunny Hop and Fennec, noting the corruption with the appropriate wariness, continue up the stairs.
As they do, they chat. Bunny Hop mentions that she hopes this may be a way to the resonance realms, and voices her distaste for the possibility of ever needing to call on Iron for help again. Fennec is stunned - they ask, hurt, if Iron helped Bunny Hop, knowing that he wouldn't help them, and Bunny Hop, with her hands to her mouth as though she'd regretted speaking at all, has to confirm. He helped her commune with the Deep Resonance, though she hadn't quite been able to make it.
"I still don't know what you see in him," she bargains, as though trying to mitigate harm. "He's an asshole who won't listen to anyone or anything." Fennec is unconvinced. "He's just a big dumb idiot, just like his persona."
Fennec, wounded again by negligence, asks Bunny Hop if she's seen both his persona and his body. She slaps hands to her mouth again, and apologetically nods. "When he was recruiting for the Foundation dive, he showed me his persona during the interview. We meditated in person."
Best for some rabbits to stop digging holes, ne? Fennec is left to wonder why Iron would help Hop-chan, but not them.
They continue in silence, up this rusting, creaking stairwell, until finally, breaching white and fluffy clouds, they ascend to a nested host that, at a staggering Rating 9, might be Heaven - or a place that might once have been called that, anyway. Birds - pigeon and carrion and corvid - perch and feast among the broken and untextured chains of what must have been a great beast. A large stone pillar with an inscription stands across from them. A quick look around (Bunny Hop aided by Fennec carrying her on their shoulders) reveals the birds are not part of the sculpting, but dissonant sprites. Bunny Hop's heart sinks as she rises to look more closely at the inscription...
... And struggles not to be pulled within. Dragged as though by a riptide, she is able to peel herself back, far enough away to not be subsumed. At the very least, she's able to determine what this pillar might be - in her mind, a gravestone, but in more practical terms, a dissonance well.
The pigeon squawks at her, almost cackling. It tells them both to witness the work of its master, the Demiurge. More scrutiny of its data trails tells them that the last thing this little guy did was send a message, though they cannot pinpoint when, and scrutiny of the others reveals that what they feast upon are the rotting remains of a once-living persona.
Bunny Hop, sick with such proximity to dissonance and the reality of being far, far too late, grits her teeth and doubles down as the host sounds its alarm and sprites caw and swarm and IC begins to rez in. Maybe, in addition to her heartbreak of only a little, the cocksure confidence of the ace hacker she's convinced she is helps her along.
"Ne, Fennec," she asks, turns her head, and forces a smile. "You wanna see what happened here?"
Fennec, meanwhile, has been beaming. A side-quest? A Matrix side-quest? Lost gods and dissonance? A veritable portal to the Truth? They grin wildly, and nod. "Of course!"
The entrance to the foundation is apparent. A door, embedded and engraved into one of those many stone pillars. Each of them bolt, fly to the granite block, and break through into the space deeper and further beyond.
The World of Forsaken Hope
Reality washes over them, as if they've jacked out. Ego-shattering hallucinations confront them.
For Bunny Hop, desperate for connection, affirmation, and love despite confidence in her skill, the vision of herself, her meat, head-bowed and still. She sits in chair on the surface of a vast ocean, warped as though by a fish-eye lens. The monotone horizon is curved tightly in all directions, and makes it apparent she is alone.
For poor Fennec in denial, she streams and nobody watches. Without an audience, the fox has no idea who they are.
Both stripped to bare essentials, they come awake in the middle of a vast dustbowl. Fennec locks as she always does - save that she now, definitively, is 'she'. Bunny Hop, similarly, is fully exposed, her heart laid bare as a plain girl, one who could be her sister, one who could have been her.
They look at themselves, at each other, and trade sad smiles.
The horizon in all directions are the ashen remains of a world that once was, and the dust devils that haunt its corpse. A dilapidated church in the distance is their only guide.
Aftermath
Rewards
Game Quotes
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Bunny Hop
<Thoughts Swarm Inside Her Mind, Barely Organized, Haphazardly Constructed and Built Upon and Connected>
Maybe it was some kind of heaven. It isn't now... I hope the Foundation heals. Maybe it'll heal the host too.
They're supposed to be my people, right? And they were gone in a second. Just a year ago, too - I was doing the Matrix Freeter shtick, research requests, tagging hosts when I was bored, trying and failing to keep my white hat on like that separates me from him, and the whole time they were fighting and dying for something sacred... I really fucked up, ne?
Man, I guess I really did go through a little white hat phase after that foundation dive way back when. What a little nerd, like she might've still believed in being a normal person, haha... Well, if dad did one thing right, it was raising a criminal just like he wanted... I'll never get out from under his thumb, it said... I won't believe that...
The dissonant flags on the hat girl... No, I shouldn't dwell on that. The dissonant sprites wouldn't have bothered her. She wouldn't have needed to send me at all if she were.
That thing looked like an AI. Xenosapient. Them? But dissonant too. A carrier for it? Dangerous... Fucking- ... Monster... I'm glad they didn't show up in force this time. I'm tired of hopping through burner comms... They feel gross to use, too...
Fennec... I don't know what I saw in you in the foundation. But...
I believe in you. Come home soon, 'kay?