SHOKA <---> BARRETT

[gluttoning]

Comments

[gluttoning]

DV.

[Just cutting to the chase as he ducks into the weird blacklight decor, looking for the token machine. Do they even need tokens? Eh. He's running off reflex, not game intuition.]

Unless you didn't want to talk about him right now.

[threatmewted]

[Her eyes narrow.]

You know I'm always down to learn more.

You think you can get away with talking now?

[gluttoning]

[He pauses, taking the silence to fiddle with the token machine and try to figure out if it's a prop or not. Bear witness to the genius of man.]

Sort of. There's still some stuff I probably shouldn't talk about. Not until we get a better idea of what's going on.

It's not DV, though. I can guarantee it's not. This is what he wanted to prevent.

[threatmewted]

[It's okay, her focus is way more on the conversation than the prospect of gaming anyway. At this point she'd probably perform badly at those games - too much other stuff on her mind.]

How can you be so sure?

[gluttoning]

I just am. [He definitely sounds like his mind's made up.]

He's warned me about most of this. What happened with you was supposed to be a test of some kind from CCCorp. Digital... something? Digitizing? [checking, checking... he nods, good enough.] Doing that, to human minds.

1/2

[threatmewted]

[They what.]

2/2

[threatmewted]

...You know, I shouldn't be surprised anymore. But that's still creepy as hell.

[gluttoning]

Yeah. Damn, do you just not get tokens out of this thing--

[He frowns, crouching next to the token machine that is very, for meta purposes, nothing but a prop, it's 100% a prop there is nothing coming from this machine. Here he is anyway.]

He's worried about what CCCorp was going to do with the data they collected, and he wasn't exactly happy to see they almost got you a while ago. I don't know how he'll feel about this all going bad now.

He didn't want to watch it turn into something dangerous. But he's said for a while that he believes the game is built on corpses.

[threatmewted]

[It occurs to her to suggest that the games are all set to free to play but it's not like she's nearly as interested in gaming right now as she is in his story so uh. Just suffer, ig.]

Only "almost?" Do they want us dead so they can keep us totally digital only?

[gluttoning]

...I mean. Corpses are pretty dead.

[Water is wet and all that.]

I don't know. I think if they wanted us dead, they'd have killed us all a while ago.

Maybe it's more... they don't care if we end up dead. If they have our digital brains, maybe it doesn't matter.

[threatmewted]

Well yeah. I guess I'm just wondering what stopped them from getting a full digital scan of me back then.

But still... you think there was a previous group of players for this fucked up experiment or something?

[gluttoning]

I don't know. If there were, I don't know what happened.

But DV has said nothing that gets deleted in Fragment stays deleted, and the company knows it.

[threatmewted]

...I hope that doesn't mean there's a digital mostly-me hanging around somewhere.

[Ugh!!! She hates this.]

You sound like you've talked a lot. Have you met him in person?

[gluttoning]

I like to talk to him.

[He seems to stop the thought short at that, though. Thinking. Letting his hand tap against the machine in thought. Hm.]

He has a hard time meeting people, though.

[threatmewted]

How come?

[gluttoning]

[He shakes his head.]

Dangerous.

The more he talks, the more he puts himself and everybody else at risk.

I'm wondering if he's going to blame himself now. He's been trying to warn people.

[threatmewted]

Why, because he could get found?

And warn people... how?

[gluttoning]

Sort of. I don't think that's it. He's more worried about what might happen to the players.

Doing things in the game. Sending messages. I think he's trying to show people things... to make us think about what the game knows about us.

What happened to Morgan, though... that wasn't him. And I don't think what happened last week with the NPC lady was him, either.

[threatmewted]

What about what happened to you?

[gluttoning]

[He shakes his head more insistently.]

Wasn't him, either.

I don't know how anyone could have done it, but I think it was a threat.

[threatmewted]

[Well that's infuriating on a couple different levels.]

Doesn't sound like it was a very good one if you don't even know what it was about.

[gluttoning]

Mn...

CCCorp knew I had an agreement with the university. If someone figured out I was talking to DV, maybe they wanted to scare me off. Or maybe they just wanted to force me into a situation where I wouldn't be able to talk to him if I was too busy with something else.

You know. My damn life getting ruined. Made me busy.

[He shoves his hand up a little hard against the token machine. No, he's fine, thanks for asking.]

[threatmewted]

-?!

Wait, agreement with the university? What?

[gluttoning]

Rules for my time in the beta. From the school.

I could only give so much time a week because I was on football scholarship, and the school and its image had to come before CCCorp's needs. So I had to be careful talking about what school I went to, what team I played for. Had to be UCB's representation. It's the only way the school really allowed CCCorp to give us a custom setup at our dorm.

[threatmewted]

[It was a scholarship. He was on a scholarship.

...

If she wasn't already furious before, she sure is now.]

Those assholes.