>>519187
I kinda figured we weren't that lucky, but that it was worth throwing out a line, anyways.

> a subordinate AI would do better at organizing her memories, and she's probably right.
Oh. So... the trade off in this immediate decision then is easier to generate and specialized versus harder to generate and more versatile?

With the main (potential) risks of a duplicate being overhead, versus the main risk of subordinates being personality aspect issues / conflicts? (Ignoring the risk of partitioning / duplicating / mobilizing parts of your consciousness at all, since they share that).

I guess one question is, if we build a dedicate personality (or personalities) optimized for the purpose of memory reconstruction, what happens to it (or them) when we're done? Can we repurpose specialized subordinates, or are they basically disposable? If it's the later, than I'd be more inclined to clone ourself. A copy can be put to other uses, and if we have to merge later, it's less... morally uncomfortable.

I suppose an advantage of either is that we would be able to continue parsing broken memories even after waking up (if we don't finish by then).

Another consideration is that we know that there are some unpleasant things waiting in Cocona's memory. (Her parents are dead! She killed them!). I'm wondering what's the best way to rediscover them. Would a memory parser be well, less sympathetic and more interested in forcing the whole truth out? Would a duplicate be more understanding and give Cocona her own shoulder to cry on? Or would it just magnify and worsen the negative reaction?.

I think I'm still leaning towards Twinda Twocana.

>effectively take shifts
I'm going to assume our body still needs to sleep. And if a Revyvateli becoming developed enough to make personas coincided with a 'awakening' that took away the need to sleep, you'd think that would be part of the stories. (Although I suppose the option of a fresh mind in a tired body is better than a tired mind in a tired body, if it comes to that?).

I do like (possibly) having the option of one instance of our consciousness driving our body and another dealing with the control room. We might need that edge to navigate the immediate crisis before the energy deadline.

>'watcher' persona
Not a bad idea. Someone to fulfill Scanner's role in combat (or in between) could be pretty useful. In fact, if you get a fully realized Revyvateli with a bunch of subordinate consciousness preforming different roles, we start functioning a lot like Unity (if you're reading Unnatural Selection). That multitasking and delegation capacity is a big edge.

Eventually, to get ready for the tournament, I'd expect we'd want a whole team of dedicated personas for specific combat purposes. Kind of getting ahead of ourselves there, though. We have to resolve the energy problem and our own damage or it's moot.

> Can we repurpose specialized subordinates, or are they basically disposable?

Mu.

There could still be some use for a persona specializing in memory handling after untangling that memory ball--it might enable more rapid memory retrieval, store memories better (making for better learning and stuff), and whatnot.

> => YLYIx XNx YA YLYINA EXEC hymme 2x1/0> >0101

Okay, so upon some further digging, this is supposed to specifically denote two songs sung at once (fitting for what we're doing, really). And the binary string tells you what song the words belong to, and the little x's denote word fragments you need to attach. So the two songs we have are

0: ylyiya
1: xnylyina

Where each is only a single word! And these words are kind of like German or Japanese mashups words. Only instead of stringing things together, you insert things inside. ...and capitalization is supposed to be important, but we lost that somehow, making our lives harder.

0: yLYIyA = y.y. + LYI + A = (heal, cure) (This world's pain / destruction) (Strength, concentration, doing one's best)
I will do my best to heal the damage to this world.

1: xNyLYInA = x.y.n. + N + LYI + A = (hurt / injure) (aloofness, relaxation, neutrality or negation) + (This world's pain / destruction) + (Strength, concentration, doing one's best)
I will do my best not to further injure this world.

Which are both good sentiments, I guess!

(Turns out this is actually easier to make sense of than standard, once you know what you're doing, because there's no three part emotion phrase you have to struggle to interpret).

>Mu.
...no idea how to interpret that yet, I suppose.

>Mu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)#.22Unasking.22_the_question

So now that Cocona going to create another mind, she has two options: create a persona, who is heavily specialized in some particular facet of Cocona's personality; and create a fully independent mind, perfectly identical to Cocona.

On a meta-game level, I would prefer the persona. The game would be easier to handle (and more in keeping with the scale of the quest as of now), if we went with the persona. If we went with the double-consciousness, we would either control both minds, simultaneously, which would put more work on the quest runner as well as the audience (which I am not able to put in); or, alternatively, one would just run on auto-pilot, and get up to shenanigans on her own, while we control the own that's with Ilya (presumably; while possibly interesting and very good in the right hands, controlling just the one that's on her own is too much of a split with the beginning of the quest). (There is the option where we switch perspectives periodically, but that would also make it difficult to follow, I think.) With the persona, however, it would automatically act to Cocona's betterment within Cocona's mind (being, of course, limited so by nature), without any of our input other than the normal shaping of Cocona's personality inherent within the quest participation.

On the actual quest level... Well, we know Cocona has a lot of emotional trauma in her past, and the reclaiming of memories might retrigger the original emotional trauma, which the double-consciousness would amplify (since, presumably, both Coconas would be the same, and would have the same emotional reactions--the machinery of her mind would be simulating double the trauma as with all other mental processes). A pro of the double-consciousness, that I don't think has been mentioned, is that Cocona's Songs could have their power doubled, if both her consciousness concentrated on executing the Song. That would require double the power, but still.

But, on the persona side, I think the purpose of the persona (and the emotion behind it, as well as the personality facet of it) would be to 'make Cocona whole' (on the mental side, at least; i.e. Songs it empower won't be physical healing, but mental healing), which I think would also assist in dealing with Cocona's emotional problems (i.e. the whole Berserker class, and the giant ocean of acid beyond Cocona's barrier level). I mean, the whole reason we are considering making it is to facilitate easier and faster repair of Cocona's mind.

tldr: I vote for the persona.

>>519228
>Binasphere easier to understand than Standard.
...You be crazy, man.

>>519266
Practically speaking, it'd be switching, swapping off which of them runs on autopilot depending on what's most interesting at the moment. Anything more.. would work better in a novel than a quest. There would still be benefits, like not dropping unconscious quite so often, but honestly you've mostly gotten over that now anyway.

This is, of course, assuming that she can do either of these without going insane. I'm not saying. :P

>>519266
I like that purpose for the persona. It's not as narrow as the original memory parser idea, but that gives it more potential applications, and should make it better at helping Cocona cope with the dark stuff she's about to run into (and really, minimizing the trauma from that seems like a very big concern). And a potential counter to berserker problems is a very good idea.

I'll support this approach. Assuming this works, and we have the processing power for it, we could always try other persona's later, or the second instance, if we feel we need it.

>>519270
It is possible to suggest for multiple characters at once. If they're cooperating, it's pretty easy and natural. If you want them doing different in different things in different (meta)places simultaneously it does get kind of complicated, requiring perspective swapping, or even running simultaneous threads.

>going insane
We already made the decision to take that risk. Unanimously, even, which isn't exactly common for us.

Hopefully if this isn't feasible, Cocona will be able to figure that out early in the process.

>>519275
Oh, don't worry. Arbitrary game overs are not my thing. Well, then.. time to write.

>>519037
Good going.

It’s not an easy decision. There are good reasons for either option, as well as reasons to avoid both. What makes up your mind, in the end, is the fear of what you might find if you spend days combing through your memories. A properly instructed subordinate AI.. you’ll call it an SAI. A properly instructed SAI could evaluate how any given memory might affect you, without you actually learning the details, thus acting as a buffer.

Although you’re generally of the opinion that learning the truth should always be a good thing, that would only be true for an ideally rational Cocona. There’s also a possibility that some memories might be broken enough to actually hurt, which means it’s better to have some isolation.

How to make one, then..?

You really don’t feel confident about this, and spending a few minutes going over what you remember just ends up making you nervous. Your best guess is to, um.. well, this world has always responded to will so far, though that’s hardly a surprise. So far you’ve just outright willed changes, and they’ve happened, but that’s not quite how it works in the stories. That is.. it sometimes is, and then it works like you’ve experienced, but half the time they just will an end state, and in those cases a SAI usually pops up to do the job.

You twiddle imaginary fingers. Basing it off children’s stories.. this is the worst plan, you hate it already. It’ll probably blow up in your face. Maybe you should test with something simpler, first, though you have no idea what, and.. honestly, you’re on a timer here. Part of you just wants to run away, though.

..the lack of sensation from your nonexistent fingers is really getting to you. Besides, weren’t all of those stories set in a rather physical, three-dimensional pretend world? Especially if you’re going to have more people in here, it’d be nice to be able to see them or something.

You’re really just stalling, now.

Guiltily, but pretending it’s a form of practice - which may even be true - you ‘close your eyes’. What kind of world to create.. eh, you can just change it later.

Metafalica...

You zone out for a bit, painting paradise across your mind.

Green, rolling hills, covered in flowers. Grass, soft to the touch and slightly damp. When you touch it, it bends under your hand. Beneath it, deep soil.

A deep forest, inviting you to explore it.. birds, winging across the sky.. the sun, warming.

Scents, too. The fresh smell of newly cut grass, and from the flowers. The musty smell of soil, if you lie on the ground, though not quite as musty as the waste recycling center please.

Most importantly, yourself. All of yourself.. there’s a chance you already have an extra self or two going, Reyvateils seem to do that naturally, and you’d like to talk to them before doing anything crazy.

It’s pleasant enough just to imagine. With no sensations from your actual body it’s easy to pretend that what you’re imagining is real, and for a few minutes you almost doze off like that. As often happens, at some point between waking and dream your daydreams start feeling utterly real. You can feel the grass against your back, and the scorching - yet not uncomfortable - heat of the sun on your face.

This is your cue to wake up, or else fall completely asleep. It’s really comfortable, though. You don’t feel like going back to your worries right away.

Something tickles your right ear. You shift slightly, rolling to lie on your left cheek.

A few seconds pass, as your awareness kick-starts. The grass you were pretending to sleep on is showing no signs of going away, and there’s a shuffling sound.

Something blocks the sunlight, and you sense someone standing over you.

Seriously..?

A wet, rasping sensation covers your right ear. You scream, practically levitating to your feet - or trying, as you actually end up banging your head right into someone. Dazed, tumbling to half-sit, half-lie a few centimeters back, you stare at the thing that just licked your ear.

...it’s a goat. A white-haired, woolen creature.

You’re sitting on the field you just imagined, and it’s almost precisely the way you imagined it, but.. all around you, there are dozens and dozens of goats eating the grass. Each of them looks up as you look at them, meeting your gaze for a moment before going back to the eating. Trimming the grass, rather; they seem very determined to keep it a particular length.

The smell of cut grass wafts up from where the goat that woke you has gone back to its job.

You facepalm, muttering under your breath about your, overly rational and justification-seeking subconsciousnesses. Well.. okay, you guess this worked a lot better than you were expecting. It even seems like you managed to create a SAI or.. ten, or.. um. Maybe about fifty? ..if these even count, they seem a bit too simple.

It’s as good as place as any to talk to whatever you end up making, though. The grass feels nice under your bare feet.

“A little goaty, perhaps.”

Enough procrastination. Let’s just..

“If it’s goaty, that’s really your own fault, sis.”

You spin around. That was your own voice, and that’s impossib - wait, no, you’re the only one who could - no, but -

Why do people always sneak up on you from behind?

..the girl who snuck up on you is about your size, maybe slightly taller. Shockingly violet hair bound in two ponytails.. visible shield emitters sewn into her clothing...

With a snap of recognition, you realize you’re looking at yourself, or someone very like yourself. Slightly older, bleached hair and clad in some kind of purist battlemage outfit instead of your own stylish variant, but still recognizably yourself. She doesn’t look good - in fact she’s pale and sweating, swaying slightly on her feet, though managing a cocky smirk for all that. You instantly start worrying.

This is wrong in so many ways...

“Cat got your tongue, Fef?”

What do?

>SAI
Oh good, terminology. We needed that. Cocona's an AI, with some SAIs, and together they all make a CAI.

>goat SAIs
Well... I guess they're maintaining whatever the grass metaphorically represents. Assuming the grass represents something at all, and this isn't just a UI. In which case they're the equivalent of pointless desktop widgets.

>fef
Why's she calling you that? That mean something to you?

>what do
Go to her. She's you, or a part of you anyways, and she's hurt. I mean, that's not entirely surprising (you know you're damaged, but...) but this is somewhat less abstract.

...I don't suppose you can pull up the specifications, user docs, or well, process information now that you're looking at her? Can you tell what she's supposed to do, what's broken, what aspect of yourself she's based on, how much of your processing power she's taking to run (we were worried you might not be able to handle personas, yet), and more critically- if she's been running in the background the whole while, or if you just made her now?

Failing computer magic letting you access information, you could just, talk to her.

>Cat got your tongue, Fef?
No, sorry. Confused, worried, and dealing with way to many problems and surprises all at once. Though you'd know that, wouldn't you.

> Does fef mean anything to you?
Um.. not really. It's the hymmnos word for 'four', but you don't see how that applies.

First, run up the poor girl and ask worriedly, "What's wrong?! Are you sick?!" etc. etc. Call up some comfy bed and sheets for her to lay down in, with lots of warm food (soup, crackers, etc.). And more stuff that one normally does for a sick person, who one loves and adores and desperately would like to be better now, kthx? She is Cocona's sister, y'know, or something thereabouts. Let's be human instead of mechanistic robot, yeah? Cocona's a Reyvateil, an artificial lifeform dedicated toward the purpose of controlling and operating an emotion-powered satellite, not a cog lacking the capacity for emotions.

Then, after making Cocona's sister comfortable, ask for her name. Get to know her (her likes and dislikes, her dreams, her hobbies, etc.). Cocona can do the system diagnostics later, in the warm company of her sister, after the introductions are done.

>Fef
When I first looked at it, it seemed to be a childish lisp of "sis" actually...

It takes you a few seconds to get over your surprise. There are a lot of things you’d like to ask the girl who just appeared behind you, only..

Her smirk slips for a moment, as she loses her balance and has to take a staggering step backwards to restore it. You react instantly, reaching out to steady her and wishing you understood the place better. She’s obviously not well. Ideally you’d like to create a bed for her to rest on, but you don’t know how - just wanting it doesn’t seem enough.

“..thanks”, she whispers, before her voice strengthens again. “Gravity’s well made, but I don’t think I’m up to games right now. Do you mind if I just sort of ignore it for a bit?”

You shake your head, bewildered. The girl slumps against you, closing her eyes with a look of concentration on her face. She’s pretty heavy.. you almost lose your own balance, and have to hurriedly sit down, letting her rest on your lap and kind of holding her from behind. She’s trembling in your grasp, her muscles knotted like wires. Even if you weren’t actually holding yourself, you’d want to help her somehow.

Then the sun goes out.

The world fades like a bleached photograph, before sticking halfway to oblivion. Gravity fades, only a weak pull still holding you to the ground. You can still see, despite the lack of a sun, but it’s through some sort of omnidirectional, shadowless lighting. The birdsong stops, and you realize you never saw any actual birds before.

The goats pause in their chewing, popping like soap bubbles.

A few seconds pass, before the girl completely relaxes in your grip. She’s no longer trembling, at least, though she doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything at all. You decide to leave it at that for now.

…

..if you actually made her just now, you’re going to have to rethink this whole “SAI” thing. You instinctively grasp her tighter. She sighs, then reciprocates, leaning back in your grip to hug you properly. It feels really nice, actually. There isn’t a question in your mind that this is family, although you’re not quite sure how you know.

…

Well, you suppose there is the whole “really some subordinate part of yourself” bit, though you’d prefer not to think of it like that.

...

“..embarrassing, isn’t it? I’m supposed to be the older sister, and here you are, rescuing me like this. I wanted to surprise you.. yeah, that worked out well, what with almost collapsing like that.” She opens her eyes, then pulls herself slightly upwards to look around. “..though I guess I might not be the only one who’s not quite up to spec. I’m sorry I wrecked your level like that, really just meant to turn the gravity down a bit. Usually it’s almost impossible to change anything at all, to be honest.”

What’s this girl talking about..?

“I know it’s probably against some rule somewhere, but.. Eight’s gone, Seven might as well be, and I haven’t seen hide, hair or avatar of anyone other than you since I woke up. I have no idea what’s going on in the real world, and I don’t care that I’m not supposed to care. What do you say we drop the competition and just cooperate, at least until Cocona’s conscious again? This whole idea of having to work separately never really sat well with me anyway, and right now I don’t think it’s a luxury we can afford..”

As she’s saying that, she relaxes again. Whatever competition she might be talking about, it’s not something that makes her nervous about you. Conversely, you get progressively tenser, enough so to make her notice. She trails off at ‘afford’, before twisting around to look back at you.

“What’s wrong, Fef?”

You flinch, having no trouble processing the two possible implications of that address the second time around. She looks concerned.. and pale and still slightly sweaty, yeah, but largely concerned.

“Four? Come on, tell me what’s wrong?”

>“Four? Come on, tell me what’s wrong?”
...I'm sorry. Either I'm not Four, or I just don't know I'm not Four. I thought I was me. Cocona. Prime. Knot. Whatever we call the real us in here.

I- I don't remember any of this inner world stuff. I didn't know anything about rules, or a competition. If I knew you, I'm sorry, but I don't remember. I wasn't even sure there were other personas in here, period.

I've been the one driving, when we're awake. And trying to fix the Cosmosphere, when we're not. Real world's... a long story. I'll get to it later. Or maybe you can just watch the memories? In here, we're hurt. Layers 7 and 8 are gone, 6 is busy growing into something, and we've got 2 years of damaged memories I had to partition. If there's more of us in here, and you know even some of what you're doing, then yes, we need to work together. We, I, need your help. Our help.

Uh. Um. I'm sorry, but which/who are you?

I don't remember you, or even know what you mean by a 'competition'. I thought I was creating a SAI just now. What happened...And what did I just do?

>>520606
"Oh. Oh! I'm so sorry!"

This is either the Persona in charge of a level in the Cosmosphere, the facet of Cocona's personality that dominates and reflects and is a reflection of a level in Cocona's Cosmosphere. This is probably First, the Persona that is the ideal of an independent Cocona, who can fend for herself without relying on anyone else and has no weaknesses as envisioned by a childish Cocona (to engage in some psychoanalysis, the first layer, as we know it, is the barrier layer, the surface-most layer of Cocona's personality; since paranoia of Ilya and a [forced?] emotional distance from everyone she has met is a running theme, I would hazard that First would manifest as something like this Persona). She thinks the POV!Cocona is the Persona in charge of the fourth level of Cocona's Cosmosphere, presumably because that layer is a representation of Cocona's wish and desire for paradise, which POV!Cocona evoked when she imagined and willed into being Metafalica.

Cocona needs to break the situation -- that POV!Cocona is not a Persona -- to her, gently. Fill her in with the details of events since Cocona was summoned (since those are the clearest and most complete memories she has).

...Possibly, ask for the idea of the other, currently existent, layers (i.e. 1st, if she isn't that, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, maybe 6th though since that's going through reconstruction we probably shouldn't do that)? And then will into existence those, to see if the other Personas are trapped in their layers/one layer/etc. and thus gather resources?

>>520637
Not quite, >>519037 made the excellent point that you should check for pre-existing ones first. That's working out.

Unless you count the goats, which personally I wouldn't.

If you're wondering where I've been..

Dublin's currently undergoing an (in my opinion) severe heatwave, and I have no energy left for writing. Fortunately I'm going on vacation northwards in four days, so there's that. See you next weekend!

>>524519
I'll be looking forward to it. I really like this quest.

“Four? Come on, tell me what’s wrong?”

You’re not..

What she’s suggesting is impossible, and contradicts her own statements. She’s claiming you’re the same kind of being as her, just part of Cocona? Well, just a minute ago she admitted that she can’t see the outside world from here, and you’ve been doing practically nothing but dealing with reality. So you have to be the real one. Instead, you should figure out how to break it to her -

Unfortunately, you’re very bad at lying to yourself. That reasoning.. well, it’s evidence against, but it’s far from a knock-down argument. You still don’t think you’re some kind of persona, but you can’t really be sure anymore. What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?

..there’s a pale, concerned-looking mirror of yourself looking into your eyes. With a jolt, you realize you have to answer her somehow, and.. and, summing up evidence you’re already pretty sure is inconclusive would only be more procrastination, when you can probably gather an overwhelming amount just by talking to her. Normally you’d have just charged ahead, not spent ages thinking about it; you’re really not acting like..

You abort that line of thinking; she’s starting to look downright worried.

“..gimme me a minute, I’m still thinking about that.”

You only meant that as a delaying tactic, but for some reason your words make her brighten up, and she flashes you a quick grin before nodding.

Weird.

All your memories tell you you’re impulsive, prone to acting quickly - and sure, you’ve done some of that. They also tell you your quick actions are generally correct, but you’ve kind of made a hash of things lately. Furthermore, you’ve never been into self-analysis of any kind - sitting down and thinking about things, or planning ahead, is just not.. not you. At least, you can’t remember doing that, not even to the level you’re doing now. Even just the notion of preparing for a fight instead of jumping right in, now that you think of it. Certainly not going on long internal monologues.

Though you’re not at all sure how much of that is the general situation, how much is your lost memories, and how much might be.. a second’s thought provides ‘theories you haven’t yet generated’. Children do change over time, right? Right. You’re sure you read that somewhere.

“..well, okay. This might take some figuring out. I’m definitely not okay - for starters, my memories are swizz cheese, not even counting the giant ball I had to slice out entirely. Um, could you tell me your name?”

That certainly did it. If she looked worried before, she’s looking downright scared now, and her mouth opens and closes a few times before she manages a response.

“Fiver. You always used to call me Fiver. Said it reminded you of some ancient story or other. Fef, you..”

You raise your voice to override hers, not immediately wanting to hear whatever she has to say. “I take it that means you’re representing the fifth layer?”

She pauses, nods and tries to continue, but you override her again. “Right. Then.. I’m not sure how, because I’ve never heard of this happening in any stories, but at any rate you’re wrong. I’m not Fef, I’m.. well, Cocona. I mean, her primary mind, not any of the components. I’ve been dealing with things, up in the waking world.. trying to, anyway, I’m really not in good shape.. trying to fix the cosmosphere, too, I should probably tell you about that.”

You pause for breath, and to gauge her reaction. You’re not..

Fiver was worried before, then scared, but now she’s looking borderline panicked. You were going to continue, but seeing her like that.. now you feel terrible for scaring her, and somehow you feel terrible for telling her you’re not Four.

You’re still trying to think of some way to console her, looking away, when gravity shuts off entirely and you start drifting upwards, Fiver rapidly shifting around. You barely manage to look back, spotting a look of resolve on her quickly approaching face, before she tackles you in mid-air and you’re caught in a full-body hug.

You don’t know how to react to this.

“That’s enough.. Fef”, she whispers. “If you’ve forgotten, I’ll explain.” She pauses for a second. “Cocona is made up of all of us. If she’s awake, we can’t be, and vice versa.. though you always liked to claim it’s really that we can’t be properly awake unless she is.” A sigh. ”You’ve been awake for a long time now, I could tell, even if I couldn’t get to you before. At least a day. I didn’t wake up normally this time, I don’t fully remember whatever happened most recently. So, you see..”

You start trembling. Fiver responds by holding on tighter.

“..you really can’t be Cocona. I’m not sure why you only have her memories, that’s something I might expect from Three if anyone, but of course.. she’s not awake, is she?”

Right now, Fiver’s grip is probably the only thing stopping you from huddling in a corner somewhere. That’s not something you can object to. Objections..

“But.. nothing about this is right!”, you object. “You just said that, didn’t you? We’re the only ones awake, and you just got here. Can’t I be just most of Cocona? That would match my evidence just fine!”

You can feel her shaking her head. “Not really possible, little sister. Cocona’s made up of all of us, and then some; there are parts to her we can’t ever touch. She wouldn’t work as part of us, her mind isn’t that flexible, and you’ve seen the damage - more so than me, I’d guess.” She tightens her grip for a moment. “It’s like her mind got hit by a shotgun blast, bits missing everywhere. No human mind can survive that, even one grafted to Infel Phira, and Cocona’s not a pure Reyvateil - remember? Well, maybe you don’t..”

You actually do, and manage a nod.

“..well, that’s good. If you can control her body, that’s better. Don’t know how you can, but I sure can’t.”

“But.. but.. how can you be so sure?” You’re not ready to agree just yet.

She groans. “What, except for what I just told you? Your mannerisms absolutely scream Fef, you look like Fef, you talk like Fef, you act like Fef - most of the time, anyway. You’re Fef, I’m sure of it. It’s not like we’re all identical, you know? Wouldn’t be much of a competition if we were. And you don’t act like Cocona, not really. You’re Fef, the little bookworm.”

You have nothing to say to that, instead electing to just hang there for a minute or so. After half a minute, she starts stroking your hair.

“..I don’t really act like that up in the real world, not as much, but I already noticed going in here seems to change my personality a bit. Actually, what do you mean I ‘look like Fef’?”

Fiver pauses in her stroking before responding. “Interesting. Not sure what that means, though I think it’s really the other way around.” She chuckles. “And you’re several centimeters shorter than me, didn’t you notice?”

Well.. yeah, but you thought that was her being taller. How are you supposed to notice a relative difference as something applying to you, personally?

“I thought that was you. For the rest of it.. please hold, still processing. It’s not every day you’re told you’re just part of what you thought you were, and I’m still not convinced.”

To be honest you’re still trying to ignore reality, just a bit. The evidence is.. well, it’s not absolute, but.. pretty one-sided?

“Though, I guess.. I probably should be...” You feel a few tears leaking out. Stupid glands, there’s no call for that kind of thing. At least in zero gravity they’re not going to anywhere, so Fiver won’t notice, and.. she shifts a bit, probably in response to your sudden death-grip.

“Fef, there’s something you told me once that I think applies here. ‘If you can anticipate updating your beliefs, just go ahead and update them already. You can bear the truth, because you are already living it.’” She laughs gently. “I may have butchered those sayings a little, but who cares. They’re forty thousand years old.”

“..the exact form matters,” you hear yourself saying. “Even if it doesn’t for the meaning, it’s still precious, old wisdom, you never know when it’ll matter.” In response, Fiver squeezes you, then reaches up and ruffles your hair. Hey, watch it!

“Yep, that’s my Fef,” she tells you gently.

Ten minutes and half an hour later, you’ve regained your composure and filled her in on what’s been going on. Apparently, although she has some access to Cocona’s memories - and is supposed to have full access - ever since she woke up it’s been even more spotty than yours. She seemed a bit confused about the situation with Ilya, although she wouldn’t tell you exactly why, claiming she needs to think about it.

In return she explained a little about your own past to you, though she agrees that time is of the essence.

Your earlier belief that personas normally “just happen” turned out to be.. well, actually sort of correct. Turns out the first set of eight or so - nine, for Sol Marta - are created when a potential Reyvateil first connects to Infel Phira, by tasking a number of AIs to mimic some facet of the Reyvateil’s personality. Her love of learning, apparently, in your case.

…in the last couple of days you’ve gone from thinking you were mostly human, to learning that large parts of you are artificial, then that more are being made so, and finally discovering that you were never human at all. At least Fiver immediately stressed that there was never a period when you were pure machine; you only woke up as a sapient being after already becoming part of Cocona, years back.

The purpose of that system is, she believes, general intelligence enhancement. While you’re not precisely independently sapient while Cocona is awake - and isn’t that a cheery thought? - you’re still capable of thought, and can go on thinking about whatever facet you’ve tagged as your own while Cocona-prime is doing other things. Then, the more she relies on you, the closer to being conscious you get - while Cocona is awake, of course; it’s a different story when she’s asleep. That’s all there really is to the competition, as far as either of you knows.

You’re personally of the opinion that your own apparent focus on general scholastics is by far the superior one. Unfortunately you don’t think Cocona agreed, and Fiver admitted (under pressure) that the fourth cosmosphere is generally about elements of the Reyvateil’s personality she dislikes but still needs. You’d have liked to have words with whoever came up with a system like that. And with Cocona, if that were possible.

AIs for running spells are supposed to be based off the same template, only with far narrower focus. As a result, they don’t really count as sapient beings at all, though their access to Cocona’s memories and behaviour patterns could make that hard to distinguish. Well, their presumed access; hard to tell what would happen if you made one now. As far as either of you know, Cocona didn’t have any yet.

So there’s you, the rejected bookworm. There’s Fiver, who’s meant to be some kind of battlemage, representing Cocona’s personal ideal. (You’re unsure just how much you can trust that presentation, but whatever.) Fiver wasn’t able to give many details about the others, as her own memories are apparently fuzzy. One is hardly a personality fragment at all, being entirely focused on electronic warfare; Two is all about interpersonal relations; Three deals with memories. Six and up used to be pretty secretive, and may no longer be around anyhow.

Despite living in the same mind, she never spent much time with most of them. You - Fef, that is - were the exception, mostly due to the underdog factor. She claims you were more gregarious, though you remember none of it.

As for restoring your memories...

“It’s not like it’s a bad idea, but we already have someone like that. Three would do it far more efficiently than either of us could, no matter what we cook up. It’s her job, and she’s been doing it for years. She could probably figure out why your own are missing, too.”

You mumble something about having had no idea she exists.

“That’s the drawback to such a strategy, yes. For now why don’t you take care of things ‘upstairs’, and I’ll look into waking her up? I mean, I suppose we could try to do something ourselves, but I don’t think we’re in the kind of a hurry that would make that sensible. It might do more damage, or fixing damage might cut you back out of the loop, and then where would we be?”

You give Fiver a skeptical glance. For all that she likes to play the big sister, she’s still looking pretty bad - her lack of facial color hasn’t improved at, assuming that means something.

You probably haven’t been in here longer than.. oh, an hour. Two, at most.

What do?
[ ] Accept the proposal.
[ ] Try to wake up Three yourself.
[ ] Do the SAI thing, get a working replacement faster.
[ ] Something else?

So we're not the gestalt, or the original Queen. We're a deva, and we've been acting as the de facto Queen, somehow. (Who would have thought Lunar Quest logic would ever make anything simpler).

...the real question is if the Queen even still lives / exists. Is there a Cocana-prime anymore? Maybe that's part of the problem going on. The original is dead, and all that's left are her children of the mind.

>Two is interpersonal
...well, then we guessed wrong about why you shut down when the tower of light started rewriting layer six.

>Go upstairs while she goes looking for a way to wake up three
Problem. You're not Cocona-prime, but you've been acting as her. You've noticed differences in your personality between waking and in here, and you've shown at least partial dependence on layers other than 4. (When you shut down layer 3 to make repairs the first time you passed out, it affected you).

What if that means when you're awake, acting as Cocona, that Fiver and the others can't be?

Fiver's also in kind of rough shape. Worse than you, in different ways. Is there any way we can help her? Something we could do in the cosmosphere?

The last problem is that both of you have problems. It's possible when you find Three she'll be as bad as or worse than either of you. Wouldn't the two of you working together be able to handle that better than one alone?

I mean, it's one thing if Fiver looks into how to get to wake Three up (I mean, it's not as if you even know where to start), but I'd feel more comfortable if you worked together when it's time to contact her.

>>526221
Yeah, a team effort might be best. Of course, too many cooks can spoil the pot and all, but at least offer your help as needed. Also inquire if there's anything you can do for her. It's good to look after friends, even if you can't remember them right now.

Currently missing: Team roster and a proper database. Getting memory selection and retrieval working properly and at speed is vital to more than just recovering previously-normal function (to the degree that it can be): For the foreseeable future we are stuck in an alien world with people we don't know about to engage in deadly combat with other people we don't know. That is vastly too much uncertainty and we have a lot of learning to do. That learning is ultimately pointless without recall and the ability to use that information in a timely and comprehensive way.

Expedite recall/repair/reinitialization/resurrection of missing personality elements, memory and recall is a priority.

With what you’ve learned, waking up Three really does seem like the best option. Well, there’s still the time limit, but having Fiver work on waking up Three seems reasonable enough. In principle. All else being equal. Except...

Fiver’s condition is really worrying you. Even at your worst, visiting the Cosmosphere has always made you feel better. Bearing that in mind, her condition being this bad in here is a very bad sign. Admittedly there may in retrospect have been reasons for why coming here helps you in particular - limiting the connection to Cocona’s larger mind - but you don’t think that’s the entire problem, and it doesn’t look good either way.

Unfortunately, you don’t know her well enough to really predict how she’ll act. Maybe you once could have, but not now - bluntly, you’re worried that she’ll try to do everything herself, and mess herself up in the process. She does somewhat seem the type for that, and everything you’ve seen of her so far indicates she’s thinking of you as some sort of younger sister for her to protect; there’s a good chance she’d try to push herself, just to avoid having to call you up. Maybe that even used to be a good idea, but right now.. well, you’ll just have to disabuse her of the notion.

This is still a mindscape, and more to the point, it’s your mindscape. You close your eyes, trying to regain the lucid-dream feeling from earlier, and mentally enumerate the world you’re in. Grassy field.. Fiver and you, floating above..

The details rapidly start showing up on their own. Flowers, forest.. well, all dark and kind of paused at the moment. Heedful of Fiver’s condition, you decide against changing that right now. Hills..

You find Fiver’s hand and squeeze it, then deliberately alter your mental image of the situation so you’re facing Fiver from half a meter in front of her, rather than being hugged by her. As you were hoping, ‘reality’ follows suit - you seem to be an all-purpose reality-warper in here, probably through your mental representation simply being the same thing as the virtual world.

“Fef, what..?”

Fiver spots you immediately, of course, and slowly lets her arms drop to her side. She really doesn’t look good - her face is drawn, as if she’s in pain. That just strengthens your resolve. You start talking, paying careful attention to her reaction.

“Well, let’s start by assuming you’re capable of doing anything while I’m dealing with the real world, because I don’t think that has been proven yet. And let’s assume you can wake her up, without making things worse. Are you even in any condition to try that?” You make your best attempt at looking serious. “I can tell just by looking at you that you’re in bad shape. You’re right, you’re not the only one who’s hurt, but other than my memory issues that’s only been a problem in the real world - which, from what you’ve been saying, could be because I’m running into parts of Cocona’s mind that aren’t very stable.”

Fiver immediately composes herself, obviously trying to look like she’s fine. If you hadn’t already seen her otherwise, you might almost have been fooled. As it is..

“I already noticed, you know.” You put your hands on your hips, trying to act the concerned little sister. It’s easier than you’d have thought, like you’re following well-worn tracks. If so, at a wild guess.. “You don’t need to do everything yourself, and you’re in no condition to try.”

Fiver laughs ruefully, a mix of emotions showing on her face, but you can’t really make them out. “Yeah.. I guess you’re right.” She puts a hand on the back of her head. “I wasn’t actually going to try, but - “ she smiles - “I’m glad you’re looking out for me. I promise to tell you before doing anything potentially dangerous, or if I think you can help.”

So much for your carefully planned persuasive speech. There weren’t any loopholes in that, were there? Other than depending on Fiver’s judgement, but you suspect hers might currently be better than yours.

Oh, right.

You shoot her a slightly dubious glance. “And you’ll also tell me if there’s anything you can think of that’ll help you get better, right?”

Fiver nods, but only after wincing and looking to the side for a moment. Right.

“..all right, out with it,” you tell her. You are not going to ignore that.

Fiver looks reluctant, but complies after you give her your best little-sister glare. Hum, you’ll have to start naming these.

“The truth is, and don’t take this the wrong way, you’re usually the one we’d ask if we had any concerns relating to the overall functioning of the system - or about ourselves. You’re the only one who was focused on learning about it, and unlike working with Cocona none of us have instincts for that, fixing me would require someone who properly understands how I work. That’s actually a large part of why I looked you up, just now, but..” She hangs there, looking awkward.

“But I’m missing my memories, and have no idea how. I didn’t even realize there’s a difference. That about sum it up?”

“...yeah, pretty much.”

You rub your forehead. “Which means, to summarize, that the reason you want to wake Three isn’t primarily to fix Cocona - or at least make me better able to act as her - but to fix me, so I can fix the rest of you.”

Fiver waves her arms frantically. “No! I mean.. Yes, but not like that! Fixing Cocona, if we can, is also really important, and you’re the best chance of doing that, but Three understands memories well enough that she should be able to do both!”

You facepalm. “..and when were you going to tell me that? No, never mind, you already did, I just wasn’t paying enough attention.” Opening one eye to look at her, you continue: “Are you sure you don’t just want the old Fef back?”

Fiver looks pained. When she replies, it’s in a much softer tone than she’s used before; she almost reaches out for you, but lets the arm fall back to her side.

“...never think that, Fef. If you weren’t the same person, changing your mind like that would be murder, and I’d never do that. None of us would. You are her, though. You’re the same person - same personality, same way of thinking, same mannerisms, and I think you’re even remembering me a little. You’ve just.. forgotten. You’re my little sister, and you’re hurt, and - ” her voice hitches “ - I just want to help you.”

Well, that certainly puts it in perspective. Blinking back tears, you grab hold and give her a full-contact hug. You can feel her trembling, but it only takes a few seconds before her arms close around your back, slowly relaxing. You’re just starting to enjoy it when you notice she’s silently crying. Er.. what do you do? Patting her head doesn’t seem appropriate..

Fiver takes the decision out of your hands, pulling slightly back so she can properly smile at you. She looks pretty haggard, but the smile appears genuine.

“Thanks, Fef. I needed that. I’m okay, really.” She pauses. “Well, not exactly okay, but I’ll be fine for a while.” Yawning, she continues, “In a while. I’m going to need some quiet time to recover. You’re a real handful, you know that?”

You feel a momentary stab of panic. “You’re going to sleep? I had a lot more I wanted to ask you.. I mean, why ‘Fiver’, anyway? Wouldn’t you prefer a real name?” You immediately feel like kicking yourself, that’s probably the least relevant question you might have asked.

She chuckles. “You kept calling me Sevener after some ancient story, I’m happy just to get an accurate name.” More seriously, ”We don’t sleep, you know that, but I do need rest. Whatever is wrong with me, the programs seem to be compensating, but I need to spend a lot of time doing nothing to let them catch up. Sorry ‘bout the questions, I’m pushing my limits as is. I’ll send you a message when I figure something out ‘bout Three, ‘kay?”

She started slurring her words at the end, there, and although it’s inconvenient and you immediately feel a little lonelier, you make no move to stop her when she closes her eyes and fades out of existence.

Well, that was quite the revealing conversation. You hug yourself, doing your best to remember what Fiver’s touch felt like. You’re not alone...

It did give you something else to think about, though. Reading facial expressions is an important skill, and you remember being pretty good at it. You also remember failing a lot, with Ilya and the others, but you’d attributed that to lingering after-effects of.. whatever actually happened, at the end. That being the case.. that being the case, you should have been able to read Fiver as an open book; she has your own face, she presumably thinks a lot like you, and Ilya was definitely harder. Even so, you could only make out the simplest expressions. It seems that, like many things, that particular ability is something you’ve been borrowing from Cocona, and is inaccessible in here. You don’t expect it’ll matter, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Right, then. Time to go back.. although you haven’t actually solved the problem that sent you here in the first place, enough time has passed that maybe it’s solved itself?

It’s worth a shot. With the benefit of hindsight, and Fiver’s explanations, you’re willing to guess that the reason for your sudden bout of exhaustion wasn’t a problem with you, but with some fragment of Cocona, and since you seem to be largely disconnected in here it might count as sleep for her. If it happens again, maybe you could even disconnect from that part, and just handle it yourself?

You’re unsure if that’s the kind of idea that makes sense. It’s something you might once have known, you guess.

You prepare to ascend, the mindscape fading to black around you. This should really be pretty simple, but no sense in taking chances.. you just have to poke right here, and..

There’s a kind of staticky feel.

Medical override - connection suspended.

Instead of returning to somewhere in Ilya’s mansion, you were just presented with a mental message from what you’re pretty sure is somewhere in Infel Phira. It has the appropriate tags, although you don’t have any other examples to compare against.

..well, fuck.

[ ] Ask Fiver
[ ] Go have a look at the Infel Phira control room, if you can get in
[ ] …?

Terminology note:

From now one, virtual worlds like the one she just tried to leave are classed as 'mindscapes', the mind-architectural view (with multiple layers, etc.) is her 'soulscape'. Hit me with a herring if I mix them up.

Well, you thought you would like having yourself as a sibling, if you ever got home. Turns out you already do. Provided you can keep all of you alive.

>Medical override from Infel Phira.
Well dang. Where does that leave you? Are you still in your mindscape where you met with Fiver? Or can you reach the Cosmosphere soulscape? My first guess as to why there might be an override is the same reason you passed out in the first place- the tower of light rebuilding layer six. If you can see that construction still going on, there's no reason to panic.

If the construction is complete, and you still can't wake up, then something is messed up you need to correct. Checking into the control room seems a good way to deal with that.

Don't wake Fiver, yet. She's injured, resting, and as ignorant as you, here. Also, you don't know how to get to her mindscape layer or even send her a remote message, anyways! You can always search out a way to contact her later, if you can't find the solution yourself. At least by then, she might be well rested enough to contribute.

>also
...there's always the dummy test of just trying again and seeing if it works, or if the error is the same, or worse.

>>530849
I mostly agree with you there, including not disturbing Fiver, though that's only if we can help it. If neither taking a look at the soulspace nor checking out Infel Phira helps, Fiver's your current best bet for information. But she has a good deal on her platter already.

Above all, don't try to force anything. That's the best way to make it all worse.

I've been thinking about the story, and what exactly I'm trying to do here. Which, well...

I started writing this as a way of forcing myself to *actually publish something*, as opposed to filing at the same damn paragraphs for days on end. It worked, as far as that goes, but I can't help but notice that the result doesn't seem to fit too well into the quest format. Nor is the story something that, at the current time, I'd consider terribly interesting to continue *as a story*; it's too fragmented.

I'm sure you've noticed my posts have gotten longer, at the same time as they've gotten rarer. To put it bluntly: While I'm pretty sure I've gotten better at writing from this experiment, I'm still lousy at running quests. I don't think it's fair to let you assume that will change, so I'm saying it straight out.

...by this point, you probably think I'm about to kill the story. That might still end up being the case, but I'm going to be unfair and let you decide. I see two options, here: I can kill it, or I can accept the situation and turn it into, well, an actual *story*, ignoring that parts of it don't fit too well together; you've already read this far, after all. That'd mean much longer chapters, and less options for you to choose, but still *some* options; I'll go on treating you as parts of Cocona's subconscious.

It wouldn't mean I'd update any more often, but at least the updates could be sizeable, and they're unlikely to get any *rarer*. So far I've been procrastinating because every time I post something you end up breaking my plans somehow. (Another sign that it's not cut out for a quest.)

Does that still fit on this forum? I wonder... well, if it doesn't I might just move it to SB.net, though then I'd end up rewriting half of it. (For the second time, heh. You wouldn't want to see my first try.)

If you just want to read my writing, and don't care what it's about (how likely is *that*?), I'm also working on a pure Sword Art Online story, which you can find on SB.net as 'the last enemy'. Chapter 2 in progress.

So, those are your choices.
- End it here
- Keep going, in a form I can work with
- Rewrite as a traditional fanfic. I know how that usually goes, so I'd keep most of the text; I have no desire to end up stalled, there are just some parts that need fiddling. Well, a lot of parts. Anyway.

(As for Author Quest? Um.. I think, if I'm more self-conscious, I can avoid getting stuck on the kind of overly intricate plot that's messing me up here, but time isn't unlimited. I'll decide about that afterwards.)

>I'm still lousy at running quests.
I would disagree, there, really.

There's nothing wrong with long posts, or leaving the suggesters only to make key decisions that the character then expands upon. We don't have to sketch out every little detail of her actions for you. (And the pace is fine. We're well used to things being slow round here).

And for what it's worth, I thought this worked pretty well as a quest! I came in knowing nothing about the two properties you crossed over here, but you managed to set up a complicated, engrossing mystery for us to try and work though and understand. And it drew me right in. Honestly, that's a hard balance to get right, and you nailed it! A lot of quests fail to make a mystery that's actually, well, interesting, and there's a certain number that go rather too far the other direction and bury you in so much detail and mechanics and goings on you cease to care about any of it.

>every time I post something you end up breaking my plans somehow. (Another sign that it's not cut out for a quest.)
That's totally part of being a quest. Every author gets surprised by their readers, sometimes. Sometimes this makes it more difficult, as the story is going in directions you don't expect, sometimes it makes it better, as the story encompass things you never would have thought of on your own!

Honestly, I've thought your quests are one of the most interesting recent additions to the board, and I'd be sad to see them go.

Mutability of plans is a natural part of the beast. There's a certain inherent chaos that gets thrown in when you include outside input on character actions. I'm curious, you seem to have writing experience. Do you have any experience with GMing a roleplaying game? A quest's a lot like that.

You can have general ideas of what's likely to happen, what major and minor players and factors're involved, and what the world's like, but the players'll tend to throw wrenches into your predictions. Hell, I recently ran a complete and successful game in which I barely did any planning ahead (it helps I was using a system friendly to this kind of improvisation). The players pretty much had a blast.

I'll add that your quests, as well as Breaking Reality, were a major inspiration and motivation for finally starting my own text quest. Which I need to update but that's tangential.

That said, I think you should do this in the form that feels best to you. I'd certainly like to see it continue as a quest, but I'd still read it if it was turned into a fanfic. And if your heart ultimately isn't in it, killing it's always an option. I'll be sad, but I'll understand. There're plenty of legitimate reasons to drop a creative project and work on something else instead. But like I said, I'd like to see it continue.

Ah. Piro syndrome. Didn't think it would happen to me.

All right, if you think it's fine like this then I'll keep going for a bit. Don't be surprised if post lengths shoot up to actual chapter length, though.

> Do you have prior experience writing?
Not really, not in any real sense. I feel like I'm just remixing everything I've previously read. Or something like that.

So, what, you’re stuck again?

This is getting distinctly annoying. Earlier you’d have had no better option than to wait and see, or maybe poke around randomly, but that was before you learned so much more about what the situation really is. You’re not going to force the issue, because there’s a good chance it’s right, but maybe you can fix what it’s talking about instead. You nod, firmly; Cocona certainly wouldn’t have thought it through this far, and you still feel the impulse to just punch your way through any obstacles, but you’re the one in control right now.

You’re still in your mindscape. It may have faded to black, but that just means there’s nothing other than you in it; it’s simulating a vacuum with only you existing in it, that’s all. On a whim, you try tracing your kinesthetic sense, wondering how that really works.

Turns out it’s made up a rather large bunch of programs, none of which you can figure out just by looking at them - there’s very little metadata, and probably several gigabytes of code. Some of it, the parts you think you’d like to call parts of your own mind - if only because you could theoretically edit them…

Well, huh. You remember trying to learn programming before, or rather, you suppose you remember Cocona trying. It was one of her favorite subjects in school, probably because she was highly talented at it - no prizes for guessing why - but this means you remember how she did it. Line by line, that is.

You’re not doing that now. The programs you’re looking at are far too large to comprehend in any reasonable amount of time, it’d probably take days or weeks, but you’re taking in thousand-line constructs in a single glance, the way you might take in a single scene in an enormous mural at a glance. That’s.. very neat, and potentially very useful. The subchannels in Hymmnos are all software, so if you could do this in the real world…

Oh. Right, being able to create and control more complex magic was one of the original functions of AIs like.. well, like you, so you guess you should have predicted this. It’s half of what Reyvateils were created for in the first place, the other half being their physical enhancements.

More interestingly, you can trace some of the functionality back into black boxes, of the type you’re beginning to associate with Cocona’s human mind. They’re not literally black boxes, in the sense that there’s nothing there to see, but they might as well be; most of them follow the same structure, with a simple virtual machine running an enormous graph of simple evaluators with, for all you can tell, randomly chosen coefficients. A neural network? It doesn’t at all look like the far more orderly code in the rest of your mind, at any rate.

Most of that seems to be about motor functions, but a large part of the network is cut off, the mindspace simulation hooking in at earlier levels - using your intentions directly, rather than Cocona’s translation of those into muscular commands. Well, that makes sense.

Curiosity temporarily sated, you have another look at the system message you got earlier. “Medical override” is only the headline; it actually tells you precisely what the problem is, if not how to go about fixing it. You were operating on instinct earlier, but it looks like there are three or four different ‘default setups’ for your mind - it automatically toggles between them when you try to do something that’d naturally require one. Well, for some value of “automatic”, because that module is tied directly into your consciousness.

Each of them is essentially a list of requirements and options, but…

Hm. Well, there’s the mindscape, of course, the setup you’re supposedly using right now, but a quick query shows that your actual current setup is only mostly like that. A lot of the components are missing, replaced by Cocona’s black boxes, or references to different layers entirely… yeah, looks like that includes your memory, so Fiver was right. Oddly enough, that one’s marked as ‘optional’. You’re swizz cheese in a lot of places, but very few of the required parts seem to be missing, which you presume is why you’re so much better off than Fiver. Most of the ones that are missing have been replaced by Cocona’s stuff…

You wonder what the causality is like there. Did whatever supervisory system has overall responsibility just pick up anything that looked like it’d fit, or are parts of you ‘missing’ because Cocona’s got there first? And if the latter, could they be swapped back out? Would you even want that?

There’s the soulscape, with a list of requirements that looks nearly identical, except a lot of the emotional and all the kinesthetic modules are gone. “Emotional emulation”, according to this. So.. what, you don’t actually…?

..yeah. The modules are complex, but far from the most complex things you’ve looked at, and it only takes you a few seconds to track the data flow. Apparently your emotions don’t drive the priorities of the rest of your mind at all, except to color your consciousness. These things.. they’re polling the rest of your mind, figuring out what’s taking up most of your thoughts at the moment, then computing the appropriate emotion to go with it, in what you think is the exact opposite of how humans work. Basically you could turn them off entirely, and it’d have very little effect on your overall behaviour or thought patterns.

You feel conflicted about this, and trace the emotion as it forms, then laugh in bemusement. Neither of the inferences that caused that emotion had risen to the level of your consciousness, apparently because they were too uncertain as yet, but.. yeah, that’s right. If this is the case, then you have no reason to object. Human emotions are ridiculous, really - if you’re annoyed at one person, it’ll affect your behaviour around someone entirely different, like improperly used global variables?

No, this is an improvement overall.

Shaking your head, you turn to the last setup. No metadata there, no explanation for what it’s for, other than the blatantly obvious connections to Cocona. It’s the most complex one yet, but the complexity looks random, like it was cobbled together by some dumb process or even by accident. Either way, it’s what you’d accidentally invoked every time you woke up.

It looks incomplete, somehow…

Oh. It’s missing a prelude, so it won’t even try removing any components that don’t fit before jamming new ones in place. It doesn’t do any kind of health-checking either, it just unconditionally makes connections. If everything was working, that’d probably be fine, but it’s the shoddiest code you’ve yet seen.

You’re running on the mindscape manifest right now, so if you activated it.. huh… yep, looks like it’d happily try to jam Cocona’s emotional black boxes in, and with more of your own activated since you started the mindscape, that’d probably end up with a runaway loop. It’s actually a good thing you got kicked out, or that could have ended badly. So.. every other time you woke up, you’d done so from the soulscape, and there would indeed be fewer conflicts like that.. but not zero. Besides, you’re here now because you caught a medical override while awake.

Well, you could just make a new one? A proper one?

You smile, happy with that idea. If you do that, not only will you be able to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, but you’ll have a great deal more control over the process. You can look at the details on that medical override to figure out what is actually required, then use your own judgement for the rest.

Decisions, decisions…

A whiteboard materialises in front of you, and you start writing. It’s a little silly, maybe, but you’re not going to let that stop you; it feels good just to play around. Cocona was way too focused.

Motor and sensory connections, obviously. Those are what connect you to the real world in the first place, although.. oddly, they’re apparently proxied via Infel Phira, you’ll need to figure out how that works sometime. Check.

Memories…

Even with some of your own modules apparently missing, you have no trouble whatsoever remembering. It’s more like amnesia than anything, really. You’re also still connected to Cocona’s own memories, via the third layer of soulspace, but it looks like the only things actually getting stored there are sensory input - not your own thoughts.

You could keep both systems, it’s unlikely to cause any conflicts and you already diked out the problematic bits. You probably should. If you don’t, hm.. well, it might help Fiver a little, but you’d be limited to whatever parts of Cocona’s history you’d already thought about, if that. Probably not worth it.

Emotions.. yeeah. You already considered that, but that’s.. on reflection, if you switch Cocona’s out for your own, Ilya and the others will almost certainly notice a major difference. For starters, Cocona’s emotions are supposed to drive your reasoning process, and yours aren’t. You’re lucky the option of using hers like that even existed, only.. no, that’s not luck, is it? It’s just that you weren’t originally supposed to be conscious at the same time.

You find it hard to be too upset that you are.

Using hers, though…

In retrospect, it was like being a ship in high winds. They ignored your will, driving you every which direction, always expecting to get their way. You feel much calmer now, and you think you like it. Ilya might notice a difference, yes, but how much of a problem is that really?

You sigh, shelving the problem for now. More stuff, here… an assortment of skills, some usefully tagged, some not; all you have to do is turn on healthchecking, and you’ll know what not to try without having to halt and catch fire first.

Interpersonal skills.. oh dear. Cocona’s are a mess, and not in shape to be used, but your own were only really meant for interacting with other parts of Cocona. Cocona’s fill an entire layer.. the system as a whole is as large as the entirety of your mind, dedicated to one thing only, so there’s no way you can reasonably replace it. It doesn’t look like you have much choice, though; the whole thing essentially has a giant “under construction” sign on it. It doesn’t want traffic at the moment. That’s probably what got you kicked down here in the first place, isn’t it?

You’re going to come off as terribly naive and inhuman, incapable of reading even the most obvious of body language. It does put an edge on the ‘emotions’ question; you won’t be able to pretend you’re Cocona anyway, the only question is how inhuman you’re okay with looking. Still, you don’t have to do this at all, you could stay asleep - looking at Infel Phira, maybe - until that layer looks ready for use.

...no, finish the summary before making decisions.

Reasoning, that’s the last bit, and you wince as you take in its current state. It’s the part of you that actually does the thinking, so you’d hope it was in good shape, but.. that’s actually where the worst damage is…

The core’s fine. Metadata says it’s a General Word Reference Systems AGI core, running code that’s.. you have to double-check the results. Well, the dates say it’s a copy of software that hasn’t been modified in over forty thousand years. Hopefully that just means it’s really, really stable, and not that the metadata itself is corrupted.

Goal structures, same, but you feel a strong aversion to even touching that. Not that the thought had crossed your mind.

Restriction modules, ethical injunctions, a wide variety of… well… you’ve read stories like this, and they never end well, but as a matter of fact most of the missing parts are meant to regulate and limit your behaviour. The metadata is still there, but the programs are crashlooping, and the watchdog programs that are supposed to turn you off if that happens are also crashlooping.

How did those stories go, again?

You carefully consider the notion of shutting these things off, and watch in fascination as one of them triggers, telling you that’s a terrible idea. You can see the coefficients of that thought just fine; there’s no way you would be able to bring yourself to actually do it, which is presumably the point. Well. That’s how you’d expect it to work if it was all operational, but it manifestly isn’t. If some of these parts recovered in the wrong order, it’d kill you… but you might be able to find a way through the holes in that fence, and there was nothing stopping you from forming that intention.

This is going to require some very, literally, careful thought. You discard the idea of asking for help, on the prompting of another restraint module, then decide to shelve it for now - it’s likely enough that you’ll stay stable at least until you’ve solved the Infel Phira situation, something you still very much want to do. It’s not just your own life at stake, here.

Still, you scribble “Go rampant! Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ” on one side of the whiteboard before sitting down to think. Or, well, pulling your feet up and sitting in midair.


[ ] Wake up. <insert spec here>
[ ] Hang out in Infel Phira’s control room while you wait for level six to stabilize
[ ] Become the AI overlord. Or not, depending; if a system like this lasted this long, you suspect the writers may have been a little paranoid.

[Wake up]
load-out-
Emotions- Sevener's layer
Interpersonal- Sevener's layer.
Reasoning- Cocona's Layer, if possible.
Basically, full robot mode.
it might be FUNTIMES for Illya, but at least you won't shut down if an enemy Servant says hello to you or something.

Ah, you can't use Cocona's reasoning system - for one thing, if you could you'd be Cocona.

For another, to all appearances it's missing.

And Sevener is from a different quest. I think you mean Fef. :P

>>539337
Ah.
Forgot the protagonist Cocona's name, so defaulted to the nickname...Fef/fiver eh?
I see...
Anyhow, I guess use Fef's reasoning, for now? Be nice if there was a way to fix that, but I think it's safe.
from what I know of Fate/Stay Night, Berzerkers go mad in battle-that might be why there's no restraint-the idea was that Cocona's 'PUNCH THROUGH' personality was supposed to feed into-without those restraints, she's go overboard and go nuts, which is what that servant type is supposed to do. So we shouldn't fix the restraint issue, if I'm right.

Dang that's a big data-dump.

Well. Jeeze. At least you adapted well. And kind of scary-fast. You went from being afraid to face that was inhuman about yourself, to accepting you aren't yourself, embracing your inhumanity openheartedly, and dissecting your own inner workings in detail in a manner of minutes.

I'm concerned by how quickly you've distanced yourself from, well, your roots. Remember, you're not so much a constructed AI as a child of a mind. Yes, you are artificial in origin, but you were shaped, molded, and heavily influenced by a life that created you, and that you are still a part of. Don't dismiss that.

>emotions not real / human emotions silly
I wouldn't get hung up on that, really. Being able to suppress or disable your emotions when you need to might be useful, but don't forget that emotions are important. Front end or back end processes aside, they're there for a reason.

>damaged interpersonal sectors / emotions may put you at a disadvantage, you'll have trouble acting as the 'real' Cocona
Well, part of the impact of this can be bypassed with a proper explanation, and planning your statements in advance. We have been fairly honest with Ilya so far, and I see no real reason to change that. You may not have the time to explain the full scope or all the details... but still.

For instance, when we wake up and see Ilya again, you want to apologize for causing trouble again, and thank her for her concern, or try to reassure fear, or calm anger. Explain what caused you to pass out again (the interpersonal system breaking down) and what having it damaged means. They might have to be kind of patient with you, and try not to get mad about missing what should be obvious.

You don't think you'll be passing out again, though. You've got a bigger scope on the problem though. You're... not really you. You're just a piece of yourself, acting as the whole. An uppity sub-routine. A pawn promoted to Queen in her absence, and not even knowing it.

Ilya will probably be a little weirded out by it, but well, whoever you are, you're still you, right? You were just wrong before. And who knows if she'll ever get to meet the 'real' Conona, anyways.

>big question: time?
Estimate of how long you've been unconscious? Of how long that code-structure analysis took? Of how long level 6 might take to stabilize on it's own? ...also, would level 6 continue to make repairs if you were conscious?

If we haven't been unconscious for too long, and you estimate level 6 might be useable in a reasonable timeframe, I'd say the best use of our time would be to check in with the Infel Phira control room while waiting for the problem to resolve itself. Actually, since time moves slower over there, it's still possibly a good idea to check in over there while considering what our boot sequence should look like.

As for the exact parameters of waking, when we wake, hold on, I need a little longer to work those out.

>AI overlord?
That goes from one extreme to the other. From being overly concerned with and worried about your humanity to discarding it entirely. I don't think that's a good thing,

>>539340
>forgot our name / nickame
We're C4, baby. We dy-na-mite. 4‿4

>What do
Okay, more precisely:

1)Assess how long we've been out, and how long it will take level 6 to stabilize.

2a)If we haven't been out for too long, and you estimate level 6 will stabilize in a reasonable amount of time, check out Infel Phira and wait.

2b)If you feel you've been out of contact with the real world too long, or you estimate level 6 will take a great deal of time to repair on it's own, consign yourself to waking without interpersonal skills. Ready an explanation in advance to give Ilya to try and make interacting with her easier.

3)Wake.

Supplemental- if we wake without sector 6 online, will it continue repairs while you're awake? If it does self repair while you wake, will it come online automatically, or will it have to wait for you to place it back in the boot sequence the next time you're asleep?

>Parameters for waking:

Motor and sensory connections: default, no decisions to be made.

Memory: keeping the hybrid system seems best, for now. Small benefits to Fiver working on the memory problem aren't worth you missing chunks of data you need while awake.

Emotions: ...I'm conflicted here. Emotion seems very important to both being the Berserker, and song magic. Using the real stuff seems like it might be important to that. And I'm kind of hesitant how much you're rushing to be artificial. But you have a point with the high winds thing. We spent a good deal of effort just reining in emotional reactions to things (although that might be easier now that you understand and accept who and what you are). Calmer has an appeal.

The deciding factor is if interpersonal stays offline. If we can't use that, you're going to need something human. If layer 6 comes back online though, I suppose we could experiment with how running your emotion emulator instead of Cocona's baseline changes things. We could always swap back next time you sleep / wake.

Interpersonal skills: we should wait for Cocona's, if you feel the timeframe is reasonable. If not, load your own, and be prepared to make an explanation as to why you're acting odd, or they may need to be patient with you not getting what should be obvious clues, and probably a preemptive apology.

>Become the AI overlord.
...just to clarify, what did you mean by this? Trying to bypass the protections on the core processor and/or Cocona's own reasoning module to put yourself in charge of the system? To get access to sectors you're not supposed to, or to permanently replace or supplant Cocona-prime permanently?

> Become the AI overlord: What does that involve?
Hell, if you knew that...

The core of your mind - your soul, if you like - is that GWRS module, in combination with the goal structures. You lack information on how it works, and it'd take you days to figure out by inspection, but all the modules have metadata tags that tell you roughly what their purpose is.

In this case, it's surrounded by a bunch of other modules that restrict and limit its behaviour. Things like ethical injunctions - "you're not allowed to invent solutions that involve killing" - strict limits on self-modification, on what you can control about your own mind, etc. Not the type where you can try to do something, and it'll stop you; rather, the type where you won't want to try in the first place.

It would be reasonable to say that those limiters are what keep you human, and due to the way they're implemented shutting them down would cause an immediate change in the way you think, never mind long-term. The problem is, half of them are already broken, and some part of you rejects the notion of living in chains, even this kind of chain.

Some of the broken ones are watchdogs that were supposed to shut you down if this happens. If they start recovering, which they probably won't without effort, but still.. it's enough to make you quite nervous.

You also have a notion that, if the system is this old and no-one has gone rampant and tiled the universe with ponies or something, the programmers may have been overly paranoid. It's possible that you can shut it down and nothing in particular will change, except you won't have a sword hanging over your head anymore.

It does not involve supplanting anyone else; to the degree Cocona can be said to still be alive (an open question), she'd be just as alive afterwards. This is strictly internal.

> Time
It's been about an hour since you 'fell asleep', and you spent about half of that talking to Fiver. The code-structure analysis you just did took maybe two or three seconds.

There's no problem leaving L6 to its own devices, but there's also no telling how long it'll take to recover. You're uncertain about what the problem is in the first place, except that it's probably got to do with the construction efforts in L7-8; you have very limited abilities to look at what it's doing.

Don't deactivate any functioning limiters. Do deactivate the ones that look like they'll cause problems, particularly those watchdogs. Though you might have to face the possibility of having to eventually step down if you repair things sufficiently, to maintain peace within the system if nothing else. As for the broken ones, if they aren't active you can probably leave them be for the time being. But if some're broken but still active, you might want to find some way to fix that or at least patch in new ones with the parts that're still functional. In short, do your best to maintain status quo.

As for the rest of the loadout, let's go with your own emotional and interpersonal loadout. With no apparent ETA on the completion of the repairs to Cocona's interpersonal stuff, yeah, not much point to just idling waiting for it. Do check out what's going on with Intel Pira but don't waste too much time if there isn't much you can do for the moment. You'll definitely want to fix that situation, but right now it's looking like you might have to wait for the tools for that to come online. Do see if you can get it to alert you when those repairs're complete.

Keep the hybrid memory system. Right now you need access to both. And the motor and sensory systems're gimmes as they are.

Do prepare that explanation for Ilya when you wake up. Be reasonably honest, but don't go for too complicated an explanation unless she asks for more details--basically enough to get the gist of the situation.

> particularly those watchdogs
It's not that easy; you can't want to just shut them down. That's not to say you can't get rid of them, somehow, but it's more akin to carefully picking apart a tangle of rubble (making sure it doesn't collapse on you) than just shutting down those particular parts.

If you want to get a good mental image of how that'd work, have a look at http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/05/anatomy-of-a-hack-6-separate-bugs-needed-to-bring-down-google-browser/
.

Chances are it isn't *possible* to shut off the watchdogs without also getting rid of other bits.

Fortunately they're not doing much of anything at the moment, so.. yeah, you have the option of leaving things as they are.

>>539395
If the problem in level 6 originates from the construction in levels 7 and 8, that's actually further reason to check in with the control room. The construction, as best you can figure, originates from Infel Phira, after all. There might be a progress bar or ETA available over there.

The only real risk with checking Infel Phira is if there's some new crisis there that demands your attention. Although, the Narnia effect of the time difference favors the Infel Phira control room- you can mess around in there without it costing as much real time.

>>539394
Oh. Uh. Interesting.

The emotional and/or reasoning limiters are best left in place. Yes, there's a certain appeal to being unfettered by moral concerns in your planning, but that kind of altered state could be dangerous as well. It's a loss of perspective, and information. I'd rather have to override a warning than never receive it at all.

The self-modification limiters are also probably best left in place, for the moment. There may come a time where we understand the damage to our mind better, and decide we that kind of access is necessary to survive, or correct certain problems. But until then, there may be good reason for those safeguards to exist. You don't want to accidentally make things worse and/or damage yourself, Cocona's systems, or your sisters in your ignorance.

...chains are frustrating and restrictive, yes, but the impulse to break them as soon as they're found is as much irresponsible and childish as it is a yearning for freedom.

The watchdogs that may come after you are the only thing that really seems worthy of our immediate attention. However, on the whole, having to shut down other safeguards to bypass them doesn't seem worth it, right now.

Could you construct your own watchdogs? Something simple, to watch this system for changes? If the system starts making progress with its recovery / reconstruction, or the native-watchdogs start looking like they might come online or out of their loops, yours will bring it to your attention. Then you can return, reassess, and hopefully do something about the problem before it becomes one, if necessary.

>>539405
One last point: There's no overriding ethical injunctions; they're absolute rules. You aren't even capable of wanting to.

The term is googlable, incidentally.

>>539478
Well, that's a big difference being AI and fully human. And one disadvantage in your driving rather than Cocona-prime. Your ethics are absolute- you cannot chose to compromise them.

I'd still say we want to leave our ethics in place, but as they're inflexible, we should probably take a moment to take note of our inflexible absolutes. Know your limitations.

The biggest, of course is "you're not allowed to invent solutions that involve killing". That precludes even considering strategies that involve getting people killed.

...which strikes me as problematic in our situation. Death seems unavoidable in the contest Ilya has described. The only way not to die, and keep Ilya alive, is to win. Which, according to the information you've been given, necessitates the death of every other servant and master involved. Either way you violate the injunction- you kill by either direct action or as an indirect consequence of inaction.

Not that this is a problem in the short term (if you don't solve your energy crisis you won't live long enough to care about the war). However, once we get past that, you're going to need to get creative. We'll have to find a third option.

>>539480
Yeah... I don't think we should abandon ethics, but it's starting to look necessary to write a fresh new ethical module to socket in instead of our old one. After we solve the Infel Pira crisis. Which we want at least take a look at before waking up. Agreed on getting an idea of our functional limitations, though. And my suggestion of what modules to wake up still stands as before, save that the ethics one should remain active.

rolled 1 = 1

---

You consider destroying your chains, and watch those same chains shifting to block the thought. You can’t really think about it, but you can think about thinking about it, you can think about what they did, and that should be good enough to let you deal with them if you have to. If the system had been working properly, you wouldn’t even have been able to try.

Really, that should have been enough, it makes the other modules in here seem like magnificent overkill. When it took a bizarre situation such as this to even realise your situation, what good is one that’s supposed to immediately make you forget, or one that’ll make you want to tell your programmers about the situation? Let alone both at once?

Neither of those is working, though for different reasons. Can’t tell someone who probably died thousands of years ago, after all, no matter how much you’d like to.

Well, for now...

You probably won’t have the luxury forever, but for now you’re going to leave the situation alone. There’s quite enough wrong with you already, without risking impromptu brain surgery. Again. What you’ll do instead is figure out precisely what these things are forcing, and add a watchdog of your own to ensure you don’t get blindsided later. There’s already one similar module, you can repurpose -

<watchdog.c:417> Timer elapsed. Initiating hard reset. <hypervisor.c:1966> Reset signal asserted. Hard-resetting VM. <hypervisor.c:182> Reset signal still asserted after 10 seconds. <hypervisor.c:182> Reset signal still asserted after 20 seconds. <hypervisor.c:174> Reset signal unasserted. Releasing control to VM. [0.000000] init_memory_mapping: [mem 0x01000000-0x0fffffff] [0.000000] Booting in quiet mode [0.000001] ZFS Copyright © 2018 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory [0.000001] And May All Advertising Clauses Die A Painful Death [0.000001] General Word Reference Systems AI Core v2.1b5 initializing [0.000001] Copyright © 2031 Uppsala University [0.000001] Copyright © 2033-2038 MIRI, Google Inc. [0.000002] Layered VM detected (6 layers). Negotiating syscall map. [0.000037] VM setup complete [0.002931] Loading previous known-good snapshot [0.491213] Snapshot @166739990047.1 loaded [0.519688] 8 of 11 incrementals loaded [0.519693] Error: Manifest pointers corrupt. Linker abandoning startup with 13 of 28 modules loaded. [0.529654] Emergency mode selected. Handing off to GWRS core.

- your thoughts stutter, as they have many times before, but this time you’re watching it happen, and it throws you for a loop. Which is, not coincidentally, what the core logs you’ve just discovered look like. It appears you’ve been.. crashing and restarting, oh, every half hour or so… as far back as the logs go, which is only a few hours.

You really, really want to crawl into a corner and hide. There are no corners, so you curl up in a ball instead, but the expected emotional white-out fails to materialize. Oh, right.. you’re not using Cocona’s, so causality goes the other way around, you can’t actually panic.

Damn it. You don’t even know if this is abnormal for you, and you don’t have time to panic.

This.. changes nothing, really. You already knew you were in bad shape, now you just know a bit more about the specifics. You’ve still got to handle the power situation, Ilya, Fiver, everyone else.. there are all sorts of things that need to be stabilized before you can risk making things worse.

Even being extremely careful, it doesn’t take you more than a few seconds to move code into the right shape for a watchdog program. An independent one, given what happened when you even slightly jarred the one that’s part of you; it’ll tell you if anything changes, including any further resets.

Now to check Infel Phira, the local construction efforts, and then probably off to see the landlord.

7253, huh. You wonder what reference frame that is. Under different circumstances, you’d probably be thinking about the effects of time dilation on supposedly synchronized atomic clocks right now.

“Ilya.. Ilya!”

You groan, letting out bubbles under the water, and sink a little lower. Last we checked on our heroine, she was dethawing from being thrown bodily into a snowbank by her overly enthusiastic servant... and although the bath feels incredibly good, you still feel frozen to the core. You can’t really blame Cocona, actually you’re kinda starting to like her, but having a mock battle in this kind of weather was the worst idea ever. Mokona never got thrown into a snowbank by his girls - no, that’s the wrong comparison, you’re not an animal companion.

You are now Ilya.

Sella just opened the bathroom door, and is shouting for you. You were too dazed to properly pay attention earlier, but shouldn’t she be dealing with the mess downstairs? Sure she should. It’s entirely too nice in here to even consider getting up yet.

“Go ‘way”, you tell her, then sink entirely under the water to make sure you won’t be able to hear her response.

To your frost-addled mind, this seems like the perfect idea. You vaguely remember trying this before, without success, but any other course of action would involve less heat and is therefore an unreasonable request.

Ten seconds later, sensing Sella’s shadow looming over you, you’re starting to doubt this course of action. You’re good at holding your breath, though; you can probably stay under for at least a minute before you’ll be forced out of paradise.

You sense her sigh, more than you hear it.

[ ] Give in to the inevitable, maybe she won’t make you get out yet.
[ ] Stay under for as long as possible.

Might as well raise up...slowly...just enough that you can hear and talk, but no more than that. Because WAY TO COLD!!!!

>nat 1
...dangit.

>code stuff
Referencing real places and a modern dating system. Would seem to support the theory Cocona's from the future, unless those organizations just happen to exist in multiple universes. (Which isn't impossible).

...actually, that might mean reporting errors to her programmers is technically possible. Although said programers might be a little young right now, and their projects not even started.

>perspective swap
Oh. Wasn't expecting that. We're going to have to suffer the consequences of booting Cocona with all that inhuman poor interaction stuff directly.

>what do
Give in, slowly and resigned. (And shape up quick once you see her expression and realize something is really wrong).

The water is nice, but you can kind of sense Sella fidgeting above you. She wouldn’t interrupt your bath in the first place if it wasn’t important, and she wouldn’t be fidgeting if she wasn’t feeling impatient, and.. and you didn’t breathe in properly before diving, so you’re already starting to feel a slight burn. No helping it.

You shift slightly, pushing your face above the surface of the water. The blurry figure of Sella slowly resolves itself. She does look agitated.

When was the last time you saw Sella looking visibly agitated?

You shift to business mode, forcing the drowsiness away as best you can, then sit up properly - whatever this is, it’s more important than comfort. Anyway, the room is almost as warm as the water.

Sella’s mouth opens and shuts. She looks lost for words, uncertain how to explain it to you. You cock your head.. then, faintly, you hear the sound of combat from downstairs. Alarmed, you look to Sella. She appears to have noticed the same thing.

“Ilya..”

“I get it,” you say. You climb out of the bath, hurrying to get dressed. “You weren’t expecting a fight, but now we’ve got one. I assume Leysritt and Cocona are downstairs defending. Sella, report - what’s going on?”

“Ah.. yes, Mistress!” she says. It appears giving her an order got her over her daze, or maybe it’s the increasingly loud sound of combat. You almost tear your shirt in your hurry to get it over your head; then, after a moment’s hesitation, put on your shielding amulet. The prana drain will be annoying, but less than Cocona ought to have taken.

“It’s.. after you went inside, Cocona offered to help with the cleanup. I told her she didn’t have to, and asked her to join you, but then.. she collapsed again, almost fainting on her feet. I thought she might have overused her abilities, she told me it was some remnant of the damage she took getting here, and I was going to carry her to her bedroom, but…”

She trails off.

“Well? How does that lead to fighting?” you ask, a sinking feeling in your stomach. If Cocona isn’t helping.. no, Leysritt is strong. She can handle herself against anything short of a phantasmal beast, or another Servant, and neither are plausible options right now.

You can hear the fight getting closer, though. Leysritt is retreating. Worst case, she might be fighting Cocona, though you can’t think of a reason why that might be the case.

Sella shakes her head, frantically. “It’s got to have something to do with.. just after Cocona fell asleep, there was a burst of rainbow light, and a floating white diamond appeared next to her. Not an actual diamond, something diamond-shaped.. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it better. It was a like a hole in the world - no shadows, no texture, nothing. So I shouted for Leysritt, and ran here with Cocona the moment she got there. Cocona’s just outside, but she’s still asleep.” She hesitates a second. “I couldn’t feel any prana, no sense of magic of any kind, but the thing was slowly expanding. Felt like it was unfolding, somehow.”

She stops, apparently satisfied she’s told you what she knows. You notice you’re confused. Rainbow light, like a kaleidoscope, that sounds like the second magic.. but the rest doesn’t, and this isn’t like Zelretch’s modus operandi at all. Someone else? But who would be able to create magic that doesn’t feel like magic?

Non-mages?

You discard that idea immediately. Whatever their other abilities, scientific methods are always clearly recognizable as following the laws of the world, and Sella’s description didn’t sound that way at all. Which leaves the unknown. Dangerous, dangerous… you’d like to send Sella out to help Leysritt immediately, but that would be foolish. Either Leysritt is managing, and it sounds like she is, or getting into the fight piecemeal would be the worst thing you can do. She’s not trained, she doesn’t even have a weapon.

Twenty seconds later you pull on your jacket, finally fully dressed. Wet, but there’s no helping that; if you have to, you’ll burn some prana to stay warm. You do take a second to shake your hair, hoping to get at least some of the water out.

You glance at Sella, who is practically hopping with eagerness. You nod at her. “Okay, let’s go help Leysritt out.”

Battle of the Bathroom, round 1 Infel 2013/10/12(Sat)15:46 No. 544021 ID: 563dc1
File 138161800533.png - (28.37KB , 563x166 , b2_1.png )

The situation outside your bathroom takes a second to comprehend. Going west to east there’s a wall, two bedrooms, one Cocona (on the floor), one bathroom, and the stairs. In front of the stairs is Leysritt, ricocheting off the walls like a demented pinball as the thing she is fighting tries to kill her, alternating between guns and.. micro-missiles...

“Flying.. that looks mechanical,” you mutter to yourself in confusion. You’re being attacked by way of science after all? But you can feel it using magic, even if it feels different to human prana. More like a phantasmal beast, actually.

“Don’t just stand there, help!” Leysritt shouts, and you snap out of it. Right. Whatever it is, you’ve got to do something. Analysis can wait until it’s dead.

Now, how to arrange that.

You gesture for Sella to stay back, considering the situation. Your abilities are somewhat limited; in theory Wishcraft can do anything, but in practice it takes twice as much power as it would for anyone else. You have that much power, but it’s still limiting. You certainly can’t throw around fireballs - you might set a curtain on fire, but little else. The thing you’re fighting.. it looks like a mecha for one of your stories, except for the lack of arms or feet; it only has nubs, which it occasionally uses to shoot at Leysritt. She’s dodging well, but she can’t keep that up forever.

Support? Should you try boosting Leysritt somehow?

Electricity? You wouldn’t be able to make a lightning strike worthy of the name, and you’d be screwed if it isn’t especially vulnerable. It’s times like this you envy the Edelfeldts and their evocation gems.

-----

Leysritt:
HP: 43
SP: 28 (68)

Ilya:
HP: 45
SP: 120 (800)

Sella:
HP: 25

ABR:
HP: 258
SP: N/A

Nenesha 2013/10/12(Sat)15:59 No. 544025 ID: 563dc1
File 138161878934.jpg - (17.05KB , 165x220 , icon_abr.jpg )

Hopefully you remember how this works from last time. Either way, this is a time to think quickly. I've included an zoomed-in picture of the thing you're fighting - it's called an ABR.

Some stats for ya:

Leysritt
Polearm: 2d8+10
Power strike: 5SP. Doubles damage at the cost of accuracy.
Speed boost: 5-20SP. SP cost added to damage, also improves accuracy and dodge.

HP max: 60
SP max: 50 (150)

Ilya
Punch: 1d2
Wishcraft: 2*(whatever it’d cost for someone else) SP
HP max: 45
SP max: 120 (800)

Sella
Punch: 1d3
No abilities of use during combat
HP max: 25
SP max: 80 (300)

ABR
Micro-missiles: 2d6, explosive, homing.
Gatling gun: 1d10, piercing.
HP max: 260

The long and short of it is, Wishcraft can do anything Ilya can imagine. She does need to be able to imagine it, however. She will not be throwing around 40-SP Cocona-style fireballs, as those require millisecond-to-millisecond tuning of nuclear fusion to prevent them blowing up in her face.

There is one mage who could do something similar; it's called the Fifth Magic. She's not around.

All right. Basic assessment: this thing has way more hp than you can reasonably expect to burn through fighting fair. Luckily, we don't have to fight fair.

Cocona is down, and Sella is basically a non-comm. She should focus on keeping herself and Cocona out of the line of fire. ...maybe if she stays close enough, Cocona's automated defenses will cover both of them? (If we can assume her armor works while she's unconscious).

No matter how hardened that thing is, is has internal systems. Computers that need to run it, flight systems that provide mobility, etc. Your checkmate should be to disable these systems from the inside. A lightning bolt might be hard for you to pull off, and the thing might have shielding. But, with the right wish, you can bypass it. Fry it from the inside out.

My guess is though, that spell will take a little time and space to set up. I'd suggest starting off by buffing Leysritt. Give her the speed and endurance to run interference, so she can keep this thing busy without getting killed, and buy you time for the killing blow.

Round 2 Infel 2013/10/13(Sun)15:16 No. 544161 ID: e1000c
File 138170257264.png - (49.27KB , 564x200 , b2_2.png )

rolled 10 = 10

---

Long seconds pass as you consider your approach. Leysritt has been fighting it for some time; you can see how battered she looks, while her enemy is practically untouched. Brute force is out, then, unless you can help her get at its weak points. Presuming this thing has weak points, that is. Finesse… dubious, it is unlikely to react like a human to your repertoire of low-powered spells. That doesn’t actually leave much; your combat training was based on the assumption that you’d be supporting a Servant, not fighting on your own or with Leysritt. Worse still, most of your options would require you to touch the target. A dangerous tactic at the best of times. Boosting Leysritt directly is dangerous, only possible because of your shared nature, and impossible in the midst of combat. It’s still your best option, not that you have a lot of choice.

First, you need to separate them. You could try blowing the robot backwards with a blast of air, but if that fails…

You glance at the ceiling. Yes, that will do. Brute force, applied with finesse, and a lot less force than you’d need to do it the other way.

“Leysritt!” you shout. “On my mark, disengage and join me. One… two…”

The flow of the battle shifts, letting you know she’s heard your instructions, before it fades from your perception as you prepare to use your magecraft. Wishcraft. It’s the ultimate arrogance, differing from a Reality Marble more by degree than quality; using your prana as an intermediary, wishcraft allows you to overwrite reality with your own perceptions. As such it requires you to understand the true reality of a situation while simultaneously deluding yourself into believing it’s different, more to your liking. Missing the desired mental state even slightly would cause a failure or a true backfire, but you’ve done this often enough that there’s no reason to worry, and part of the ability gives you near-perfect clairvoyance of the thing you are trying to affect.

As such, doing it while talking makes little difference, and as you shout “Mark!” the ceiling comes down in near-perfect synchronization with your imagination. Leysritt takes a flying dive, dropping beneath a final jet of light from the robot before the falling timber and bricks push it to the ground. Peripherally, you see it burning a neat hole through the ceiling on the other side of the corridor.

You frown, sensing a stronger than expected drain on your reserves. In your haste, you pictured how the ceiling would come down, rather than just imagining cuts to the support beams; that may have guaranteed it’d work correctly, but it also made this more of brute-force affair than intended.

To your left, Leysritt is leaning against the wall, gasping for breath. In front of you, the corridor is filled with rubble; there’s no way that took it down, but with any luck you’ll have a little time to properly prepare for battle. You haven’t tried this before, but perhaps you can also use wishcraft to check how much time you have. Even without trying to do anything, the secondary effect…

Ilya recommends:
[ ] Spend a round ‘listening’, try to see what the ABR is doing. Or what it’s made of.
[ ] Immediately start preparing.

Ilya:
HP: 45
SP: 105 (780)

ABR:
HP: 256
SP: N/A

Well, looks like glass windows are no longer the most expensive item on the repair list.

It's a pity Cocona is out of commission- even ignoring her power as a servant, she did seem to poses a knowledge of machines that might be useful now. Unfortunately, helping her to recover from whatever mental injury has her currently incapacitated is not something you know how to do, and not something you will likely have the time to figure out.

>what do
You don't know how much time you have, and if you haven't experimented with short term precog right before, we really cannot afford to mess around now, useful as an actual time estimate might be.

For the moment, focus on buffing Leysritt. She's been hard pressed, and you need her to be able to hold this thing up and survive. She needs her physical endurance reinforced, defenses against the kinetic impact of bullets, and explosive fire of the missiles. She has her own abilities to bolster speed and the strength of her blows, so that should be a secondary concern.

Once you're sure she can hold up to a renewed round of combat, and provide the cover and distraction you need, turn to the problem of studying your enemy. Hopefully it won't have broken free, yet. You don't have time to understand entirely how it works, but you need some crude understanding to decide how best to destroy or disable it.

> precog
It's not that. More along the lines of clairvoyance; directly reading the state of reality. It'd work. It'd take a round.

>>544172
Which would give us an accurate assessment of how many round it would take the ABR to free itself, and possibly some understanding of it's function, construction, and/or weaknesses?

The turn count doesn't buy us much, but the results of a scan might be useful.

For comparison, how long would it take to setup buffs, as proposed? (Assuming they're feasible, and ignoring tripping the danger Ilya warned of).

I suppose if we can safely assume it's pinned for multiple rounds, scanning first would be advantageous, since Ilya could then tailor the buffs based on actual knowledge of the threat, rather than assumption.

> Which would give us an accurate assessment of how many round it would take the ABR to free itself, and possibly some understanding of it's function, construction, and/or weaknesses?
You don't know. It might be perfect accuracy, it might be very vague; you've never tried this before. Doing it is a risk.

> Buff time
More is better, especially for safety.

Hrrrm...I think we should attempt to focus on buffing.
I'd LIKE to say more scanning for killing blow strategy, but the problem is the scanner itself is unreliably useful...Plus it's a Cocona-era mech, so smart money says that Ilya wouldn't be able to make sense of it even if she DID look inside, what with probably being filled with uber-exotic materials and incomprehensibly advanced technology. As a result...
Don't bother scanning. All hands to BUFFING!!!
Perferably toughness/defense, or END if I wanna be technical about it.

So the trade off is a successful scan allows us to tailor our buffs off knowledge, and time the casting to finish just as we run out of time.

However, with an unsuccessful scan, or if the ABR is breaking free in a very small number of turns, we're wasting time for little advantage.

...I guess if the buffing is a multi-turn procedure, sacrificing one cycle for increased efficiency is worth it. It's like error checking in computing.

Do the scan.

I think you're ignoring the fact that our opponent is currently pinned in a known location, can wishcraft add to its impediments, by (for instance) encasing it in concrete or steel?

Why destroy anything or engage in anything more indirect than disabling this device?

rolled 8, 1 = 9

---

When the racket of falling wood carpentry ceases, the robot appears quite thoroughly buried. You breathe a sigh of relief; your gambit was a complete success. No matter how tough it is, being pinned like this should at least keep it down for a few minutes.

So you hope, but you’d be better off if you can take advantage of your wishcraft to figure that out directly.

“Sella, take care of Leysritt’s wounds,” you hear yourself say.

If you are to do this, you’ll need to minimise distractions. You close your eyes, reaching out towards the rubble with one hand; it’s not that the location of your hands particularly matters, but it’ll provide a point of reference.

For wishcraft, imagination is key. Building a mental picture of your environment, just slightly distorted, and forcing it to become reality. You can feel the differences, as if you’re pushing against resistance. Now, if you give in instead of forcing it…

You’re standing in the middle of the corridor.

Beneath you, a carpet. Beneath that, asp… no, oak planks. In front of you, rubble - shattered wood, cracked bricks.

It’s working, and a part of you - the part that isn’t maintaining a delicate mental balance - is overjoyed at your accomplishment.

First die - how well this works, on your first attempt. Second die - how bad your timing is.

rolled 2 = 2

---

Shattered wood, cracked bricks. Cracked wood, at times; the main support beams came down in one piece, by and large. There are some electrical wires, too, and you find to your surprise that you can tell which ones are still electrified, despite the lack of a circuit.

What you can’t do is discover anything about your assailant. Oh, it’s easy to find; it’s a fairly large robot, you’d need to be blind not to spot it. The only problem is that you can’t see inside it. Where you were expecting metal, wiring, electronics, it looks like nothing so much as a hole in the world. You can still see its exact shape, though; it’s displacing air, if nothing else. So much for finding a weak spot, but you should at least be able to tell how stuck it is.

“..lya”

Tracing the flow of the wreckage, you find that it’s surrounded on all sides by heavy support beams. It’s moving, but only slightly; shifting rhythmically back and forth. It doesn’t appear to be making any headway, and after a few seconds it ceases to move and starts whining.

“Ilya! Get down!”

You open your eyes, startled, to see Leysritt throwing herself at you. At the same time the whine shifts to a higher pitch and an actinic glow fills the hallway, emanating from the rubble. There’s barely enough time to relax your muscles before she slams into you at full speed, forcing you out of the way of some kind of energy beam barely a tenth of a second before it hits.

THANK YOU LEYSRITT!!!
Sooo Robot is hole in world. Strange, very very strange...
Ok, I think we should either Wishcraft heal Leysritt, or Wishcraft form a Reflective Box around the robot.

Infel 2013/10/16(Wed)15:34 No. 544430 ID: 94e610
File 138196286981.png - (146.09KB , 1128x398 , b2_3.png )

You hit the floor rolling, your clothes smoking.

Leysritt is worse off; hers are actually on fire, and it takes a few frantic seconds to put them out, but other than the affront to her dignity she seems basically fine. Belatedly, you realise you’d seen the glow even before it fired, but you’d been concentrating so hard you didn’t properly notice. That… that was…

There’s a circular hole in the rubble, and a trench carved all the way down the corridor. You can’t see the robot itself from this angle, and you don’t think you want to, but there’s no way it’s going to stay down for long. You’re not sure why it only chose to do this now, but you don’t think you can deal with this.

Thank God Sella followed your instructions, even if it means she’s now on the other side of the corridor. At least she wasn’t in the direct line of fire. She looks pale, though; scared, both for you and for herself. That attack was easily on the level of a Servant, and it was produced by a mere robot, something that can be mass-produced. You couldn’t even - you still don’t feel any magic from it, just a sense of unnaturalness.

Eventually, as your ears stop ringing, you hear the robot moving rhythmically, accompanied by the sound of cracking timber. Leysritt grabs your arm, and you look up at her; she says something, looking grave, but you can’t make out the words.

You think you get the gist of it, though. “Retreat.” Sure, but how?

Ilya:
HP: 43
SP: 108 (778)

Leysritt:
HP: 41
SP: 28 ( 63)

ABR:
HP: 231
SP: N/A

>>544429
You cannot heal using Wishcraft, not in timescales useful in combat; nor can you do anything that would directly counter a blast like that.

Practice WishCraft LATER WHEN IT'S SAFE!
Ok...We needs out of here. If you can walk/run, this might be fairly simple. WishCraft a section of the wall to right in front of the robot, then have Stella, and yourself retreat through that wall, with Leysritt grabbing Cocona and following after you two.
After that...Maybe use WishCraft to send a message to anyone else in the castle that there is an angry robot-thing and (area where Hallway is at.) should be avoided until it is dealt with.

So... as feared. Scanning how long it would remain trapped was a waste of time, since it only stayed down a single round.

...you couldn't see inside the machine. But you saw outside it, and the movement of electric current. Could you pick up what the machine was using for sensors? External active sensors might have left an energy signature visible to you.

>You’re not sure why it only chose to do this now
Targeting constraints. It had to pause and charge momentarily (the whining) to fire off that beam attack, and the path was fixed. It would have been hard to reliably hit Leysritt when she was engaging it at close range (short of a lucky shot), whereas you and the rubble were stationary.

...at least that attack seems to have burn off 25 hp. Although there's no way allowing it to burn off it's own health reserves is a viable strategy- we'll miss a dodge roll, Leysritt will exhaust her SP, or the castle will collapse on us before the ABR burns out. (And that's assuming this thing can't heal itself, which the Ar Tonelico spoilers say it may be able to).

>it looks like nothing so much as a hole in the world
That suggests then, that it's some sort of projection or intrusion in the world? Perhaps that is the solution. If the hole can be collapsed or filled, the entity will cease to exist or be banished.

Potentially an instant win, but since you don't understand what mechanism summoned this machine, the difficulty, danger, or time required to use wishcraft to attempt a banishment is unknown.

>retreat
To the chamber you brought Cocona to practice in, before? That was supposed to be nuke-proof, right? That might hold up under this thing's assault, for a bit. Unless those wards are only designed to contain internal energies, and not withstand external. (Although those same wards would block your attempts to banish it, if it's on the other side. Problematic- you'd have to hit it when it broke in, or open the door when ready).

The problem is retreating under fire doesn't work very well. Ideally, you need something to distract or hold back your foe to create an opening for retreat. You didn't have time to buff Leysritt- her staying as a rear guard would be suicide. The rubble won't it for long either with a large hole in it.

Best option is to use wishcraft to create an additional delay or obstacle as your group falls back. Another collapse between you, if nothing else. Or something to confuse or blind it's sensors, if you picked up any of that.

>>544434
I'm not sure summoning a wall across the hall is something Ilya can do in a useful timescale. ...and are there other people in the castle to be concerned with?

>>544436
Only the four of you.

Can we wish it were somewhere else? Like, say, oh, suddenly appearing near one of our (future) opponents? Seriously, fighting bullshit foes that may not actually exist is problematic to start with.

Hypothesis time: Is this particular nonexistent-foe a manifestation tied to Cocona's safeguards? If so we may be able to influence Cocona to end the encounter.

>>544449
Oh, you can wish for just about anything. It may not work.

When you don't know where those enemies are, and the ABR is pretty hard to affect in any way whatsoever? That would be a good way to burn up MP.

To say nothing of the fact that teleportation tends to be an expensive ability in most systems, anyways. (After all, a character who can reliably throw 'teleport away' spells at enemies in combat situations has a pretty hard to break defense!). I'd be surprised if Ilya could pull one off within acceptable time or energy limits, even ignoring the problem of divining future enemies to target, or the difficulty in targeting the ARB.

Remember how Ilya described how her attempts to throw a fireball or lightning might go. That's kind of the 'scale' of magic we need to think of- not quite up to what you'd think of in terms of a traditional battle-mage.

(And if we want to lean on out of character spoilers- the ARB is supposed to have a way to absorb song magic. It's not clear if wish magic would do the same thing, but...)

If you're familiar with Dresden Files, the things Ilya can pull off are roughly on that same scale. Better in some ways, worse in others; she's a Dresden-level prodigy (well, construct), but she's hardly a Servant.

Cocona can pull off stronger spells without really trying, and she's not of the Caster class - bit of an oddity, really; it could easily be argued that she should be.

Servant Caster could, if properly powered, wipe out a city with a single spell - or water every plant in a city with a single spell, quite likely.

rolled 2, 9 = 11

---

Leysritt points at the floor, speaking urgently. You still can’t make out what she’s saying - destroy the floor? Beneath the robot? That’s dangerous, it might not fall down with the rubble. It could fly, right?

You point at the rubble, trying to look quizzical. She shakes her head, looking startled, then points at your ears. Right, you’re a little deaf. You shake your head; she gives a worried glance over to the heap of rubble, where the sounds of tearing timber are starting to sound like it’s getting lose.

Have to get out of here… this is really stressing you out. It isn’t what you were expecting from the grail war at all, on a lot of levels; direct combat isn’t your forte, let alone against something like this. Whatever it is, it’s cheating! Magic of that level shouldn’t even be possible in the modern world, there’s nothing to feed it. Is this even real? It’s like something out of a manga, more than the real world. If you fail here, you’ll die? Really die? The grail war sounded like great fun when your tutors explained it, and it’d give you a chance to find out why dad left you, but you never really considered what it meant if you’d fail. That failure meant death. Because you wouldn’t fail, right? Let alone in a fight this unfair, and never mind that the grail war is by definition unfair. No, no, no…

Leysritt grabs your arm, and you almost literally jump, nearly slamming into the wall before she manages to get a proper hold. She grabs you by both shoulders, shouts something at you. You attempt to tear yourself loose, but she holds on without really trying; you’d never quite realised how strong she was before. How scary she could be, too. Your heart is beating frantically, telling you to run, but there’s nowhere to run to… and anyway, this is Leysritt… you’re not really scared of her, so why do you still feel like running? This isn’t like you.

She grabs you in a tight hug. You stiffen, trembling, then slowly relax.

There’s an audible crash from the direction of the robot, and the sounds of its struggles stop for a second, then turn into a rapid series of brittle-sounding snaps and painful scraping sounds. No more than ten seconds have passed since it shot at you, at most, but it’s already getting loose.

Leysritt releases you, then points at the floor again, drawing a circle around you, Cocona and Sella. She’s still on about that? What could she… oh. Oh! If there isn’t an exit, you should just make one. Now why didn’t you think of that?

You nod at her to show her you understand, and she nods back, then draws a similar line on the ceiling in front of the robot. Right, make a bit of a barricade at the same time. That won’t last long, but it’s something.

You close your eyes in concentration. You’ll need to hurry; it’ll be free any moment now. Peripherally, you note Leysritt falling back to take care of Cocona.

It’s basically the same trick as earlier, but two of them at once, while you’re on an adrenalin high, and rushed. It’d be no surprise if you don’t get it perfect.

You focus mostly on letting the four of you down carefully, and it bears dividends; the fractures bend unnaturally, forming an almost staircase-like structure all the way down to the ground floor. Sella yelps as the floor falls away under her, but has no trouble picking her way down; Leysritt, who is carrying Cocona, looks like she might as well be walking on flat ground.

If only your impromptu barricade worked as well, you’d be in good shape.

You cast a worried glance backwards, to where a large section of the ceiling has come down but remained relatively intact. It still forms a barrier, but one with major gaps which the robot could potentially shove through if it’s strong enough. Of course even a perfect barrier wouldn’t have survived one of those blasts, so perhaps you shouldn’t feel so bothered about it.

Then, as you’re making your own way down, you realise Leysritt has stopped.

“..lya. Ilya! Can you hear me now?” she asks.

“Yes!” I reply, relieved that my hearing seems to be recovering. “That is, mostly. You’ll still have to shout, I guess.”

“You’ll be all right, then. Ah, but… I think we have a problem. Come, tell me what you see.”

What you see? Well, all right. You step down into the kitchen, joining Leysritt and Sella at the doorstep to look out at -

You’re having trouble interpreting what your eyes tell you. No, your eyes aren’t really telling you anything, but something in the scene bypasses the eyes, forcing its way directly into the brain.

It should be the entrance hall. It still is, in a sense, but it’s broken beyond repair. Not in the sense that the building is damaged, in the sense that the room - the space is broken.

The room has stretched, walls distorting to accommodate a far larger volume that should by rights fit, but that’s the least of it. The floor is tiled, and you should be able to count your way to the opposite wall - forty-three tiles, at some point in your childhood you made a close study of them. If you tried the same today, though, you wouldn’t even reach the halfway point. The tiles seem to grow smaller, letting more fit but still somehow arranged in straight lines, while the floor as a whole bends sharply downwards. There’s a hole, in the middle of the hall; utter blackness, shot through with sickly green. A thin beam of light pierces the centre of the hole, stretching to the matching hole in the ceiling.

You tear your eyes away, and they catch on the thing that is floating right next to the door. A pure white pyramid, lacking texture of any kind, and rotating slowly - but somehow the light seems to bend so every side of it is facing you, if light is even involved. As you stare at it it seems to expand, the central face taking over and pushing the others to the edge of your vision. There’s a black spot at its very centre, moving closer… no, a tunnel. It’s rushing towards you…

You stumble backwards until Sella catches you, breaking eye contact by the brute-force means of putting the wall between you and the pyramid, but you can’t forget what you’ve seen. Every time you think about it, the blackness comes a little closer; it takes an effort of will to push it out of your mind. If you look, you think you’d be able to see it straight through the wall, so you don’t look.

You don’t know what this is, except that it’s not of this world. And still there’s isn’t the slightest tingle of magic, not even a sense that it’s disrupting the natural ley-line flows that pass through this area. You don’t understand what’s going on.

Above you, there’s a crash. Oh, so now the robot is breaking free…

“Ilya,” Leysritt says, sounding worried. “You know a lot more about magecraft than I do. What is going on? Is this still part of the Grail War? And what do we do?”

Hell if you know.
Ilya recommends:
[ ] Going outside would be suicide, so go where that robot came from; it’ll never expect that. If you can figure out how.
[ ] Desperately try to wake Cocona.

Ilya:
HP: 43
SP: 76 (736)

>never really thought about the fact that the grail war meant death if you failed
>never really considered failing
>even though every remember of your family ever has tried, failed, and died
...I, uh, geeze did they have you coddled and conditioned for this. Remind me not to let you make important decisions anymore. That is some seriously dangerous naivete. I suppose you're only a child, and your upbringing is partially to blame, but you're going to have some fast growing up to do to stay alive.

>complete tear in euclidean geometry
Well that isn't good. Could you tell if the damage was stable / localized, or if the effect was spreading? One is considerably more dangerous than the other.

>Is this still part of the Grail War?
...indirectly, I think? Cocona talked a lot about advanced machines, she sort of is one is some ways. And it showed up right as she collapsed, and that thing is on the power level of a servant. It has to be connected, but I'm not sure how.

>options
>running outside suicide
And I assume you don't believe you can make it to the safe room from before? And/or that it will stand up?

>pass through the rift
...well, that sounds sort of suicidally dangerous, and maybe impossible. It's an option, though.

>wake Cocona
Can we? It's only been minutes since her collapse in Ilya's frame of reference. According to this post >>539395 we spent at least an hour in Conona's inner world. Unless Conona got that wrong and there's some kind of machine cycle time advantage, she's still talking to Fiver. Maybe hasn't even got to her yet.

So... really not an option.

If Ilya needs her own reason: she doesn't really understand Cocona's inner workings, or what's wrong with her, or how to correct it. And trying to interfere with that process could be too dangerous. If she damages Cocona, that's it, for all of them.

>third option
...is closing or repairing or undoing or inverting the rift an option? That might well take the machine back with it.

Best course of action I can think of is to try and study the thing. See if you can find any useful way to interact with it, mage-wise. Yes, passage through it is one option, but there are others as well. See what levers you can find, and then try throwing one. Kind of desperate, here.

Or possibly, if the rift is so dangerous, you could to use it indirectly. Trick the machine into entering it, or use some combination of magecraft and combat to propel the thing into the distortion, and hope it is destroyed or lost.

>can't wake Cocona up
>unless time has been passing differently
Wait.

Can we make it pass differently? Ilya doesn't need to understand Cocona's problem to help her recover- we just need to fast forward to the point where Conona has recovered on her own. To create a localized time distortion around her- so she recovers in minutes instead of hour(s).

A local temporal manipulation might actually be safer than trying to toy with the gaping hole in space-time, really. And if that really is a hole in space time, temporal manipulation might be easier than it would normally be.

> safe room
Might work. Might not work. It's only slightly safer than diving headlong into the rift, if you think the ABR might come after them.

>>544757

We don't know for sure that Cocona can fully recover without outside help or if fast-forwarding her will leave us with a gibbering, insane wreck that's useless due to her... psychological issues. Worse is also plausible.
I think we're better off powering her up and pushing her awake if we want to get her to do something, or at most no further in the future than a few hours: She has those Infel Phira power issues, which might kill her by magical drain, remember?

I'm tempted to suggest trying to use the wards of the safe-room offensively by attacking this weird shit with those questionably-indestructible walls. Sadly, I don't imagine they'll oblige us by being adequately maneuverable, self-propelled and effective for the task.
We need more magic juice and we need more offensive capability. Tell me, is there any good reason the three ladies here have been hanging around in this stone shack sized for more than ten times as many people as live in it? Or was that instead generally vanity and the rooms are all empty of anything *useful* for this sort of crisis?
Seriously, the main reason people have places to live is not to shelter themselves. Instead, it is to keep all their stuff in. (With the right stuff you don't need a house for shelter, stuff that can work as a substitute includes a car, RV, tent, prefab shelter kit, etc.) What *stuff* can we use here?

>>544758
...it probably will. And then we're left with the same problem of trying to wake Cocona or find a way to fight that thing, without the (extremely dangerous) possible resource of the rift to consider.

>>544771
>We don't know for sure that Cocona can fully recover without outside help
Technically true, although the internal phase did seem to strongly suggest it was just a matter of time, and we even cobbled together a new boot sequence.

Of course, if she does need outside help, that's a big problem considering Ilya wouldn't know how to give it, even outside combat circumstances.

>if fast-forwarding her will leave us with a gibbering, insane wreck
...I really don't see any reason why that would happen. I mean, she's already dealing with hopping back and forth several reference frames (external, several internals, and the remote control room) and time doesn't pass at the same rate between all of those.

>Infel Phira power issues
Possibly a concern. Although if her recovery were going to take more time than the big battery in the sky would allow, she's dead anyways. Fast forwarding to that point would make no difference. Ilya would just discover it faster, from her perspective.

...then there's the fact that I'm not sure an acceleration here would matter there.

>we're better off powering her up and pushing her awake
Forgive the silly question, but uh, how? I think you need some kind of mechanism. Just wishing her awake and strong seems like it would be harder than wishing something to happen that might get us the outcome we want. And just dumping power into something isn't the best solution for healing or repair.

I don't know the specifics of the setting (system) well enough to suggest anything very good/specific in terms of solutions to Cocona's issues. It seems like a tightly-interlocked mess of conflicting fragilities and worries which has no clear path outwards. I couldn't make a useful decision without being able to either eliminate or prioritize *some* of these worries:
--Severe psychological trauma, which could (would?) destroy her sanity when she's done repairing her memory access, so we can't fast forward her a month and expect everything to be peachy even if nothing else goes wrong from trying that.
--Uncertain internal power situation from her manifestation which may be counting down to her running out of energy permanently and ceasing to exist. We don't know what the end state of her attempting to solve it will be, and this may kill her directly if we fast forward her too far in the future.
--Hard-counter safeguards which will stop Cocona from attempting the murder necessary for her to actually win in this contest if they work, and which remain hazardous even if they don't. These might also stop her from harming things which seem to be sentient, and this attack-bot might qualify. Fast forwarding her into the future subjectively gives these more time to cause problems either from correct or buggy function, possibly unsurmountable ones.
--She's a little (teenage?) girl from a highly-developed society, so it's unlikely that she would have any serious combat training and ability. It would be even more alarming if she does (what psycho trains little girls as murderers, and what conditioning baggage does that leave?), and worrisome either way whether she has a killer instinct or not.
--I don't know if we can identify whether this drone and the anomaly are tied to Cocona's manifestation or not, and whether interacting with either will affect Cocona. It seems likely that the abnormal, future-tech, autonomous, assault robot has something to do with the weird cyborg girl from a syfy future place. Will destroying it kill Cocona? Is it caused by one of her safeguards somehow and will defeating or escaping one just make her empty out what's left of her energy reserves making more? Is it some bizarre side-effect from whatever magical glitch brought her here in the first place and if so will trying to break it break the spell that manifests her here?

If we were going to attempt to fast-forward her I'd suggest no further than eight hours in the future, but I can't think of any options for aiding her recovery I like because we don't have nearly enough information about any of this to do anything that isn't potentially stepping on a landmine. The least hazardous thing seems to be straight up healing Cocona with magic, dumping some extra juice in her to make sure she's not running empty, and then waking her up. I don't even like that one because of the weird way things happen inside Cocona's head while she's unconscious.
This is why I think it's better to try to solve this without waking up Cocona, but for all I know the robot and the spatial anomaly are exterior manifestations of her nightmares while she's sleeping. I'm totally fucking clueless about the ultimate nature of the bot and weirdass rift whatever.

>Severe psychological trauma, which could (would?) destroy her sanity
Trauma that's much more significant to Cocona-prime than C-4, though. Now that Fev's accepted what she is, bad memories from Cocona's past won't hold as much sting. Especially as we're currently running Fev's emotion emulator rather than Cocona's raw emotion. We have more distance and detachment.

And I think the timescale on repairing the damage necessary to wake again is a lot less than the timescale it would take Fiver to find Three and start doing anything about untangling memories.

I just want to say I love this quest even if I don't vote in it.

>>545564
Good, good, you're in exactly the right frame of mind for this. :P

Well, anyway. Cocona's from Ar Tonelico, there's a lot of information to find if you want to do light reading, and on the basis that you're supposed to know everything she does (amnesia aside!) I'd be willing to discuss some of it, but.. this is what the discussion thread is for.

Suffice to say, she does have combat training. Yes, this is fucked up. It's a reflection on their society, which has gone through a lot of apocalypses recently.

Hrrm...I don't know about the space-rip thing...But maybe that thing is here for Cocona somehow? It might be like...One of those...Robot-things she mentioned earlier, and it's here to make sure she's safe?

“It almost has to be connected to the war, right?” you say, feeling rather unsure. “At least, there aren’t very many other options I can think of. This thing is out of this world.”

There’s a sound of crashing wood from above, making you jump.

“We’d better get out of here. That barricade isn’t going to hold for much longer,” Leysritt says, looking worriedly upwards.

You hesitate. This rift, or whatever… you’ll call it the rift. It’s a potential resource, making you loathe to immediately leave, but Leysritt is right. You doubt there’s anything you can do before the robot attacks you again, much less safely. If you had reason to think you could do anything at all, maybe… no, no time.

“You’re right. I might be able to do something with the rift, given time, but we don’t have any. Let’s go, there might be something useful in one of the storerooms.” If your cowardly human kin didn’t take it all with them when they left, you leave unspoken.

It leaves an ashen taste in your mouth, as one of the things youmight have been able to do is shut it down, potentially taking the robot with it, but you lead the way, expertly picking a path through a maze of tiny “servant’s corridors” to the personal quarters of the rest of your so-called extended family. One small blessing, the robot is entirely too big to fit through these.

The next few minutes are filled with frantic searching, although you do manage to grab Leysritt for long enough to stop her bleeding and fix the worst of the damage. One advantage of being a battle-oriented homunculus, she heals very easily.

As a family of mages, by most accounts the Einzberns ought to have had a lot of magical paraphernalia, most of which would be useless in battles lasting less than a month. Your hopes of finding a magical superweapon is thwarted, however, by two distinctly unusual features of your family: One, the family specialty Wishcraft makes most of you think of traditional magecraft as pointless; why spend years doing research, if you can get the same effect by just throwing more power at the problem. Sure. Maybe in a different situation.

Two, you are the family’s magical superweapon. Up until quite recently you felt confident that you could, indeed, power through any non-servant enemy with brute force.

Every so often you hear distant crashes, from where the robot is still doing something. In the distance, yes, but somehow that fails to reassure you.

Ten minutes after first escaping the robot, the three of you - plus one unconscious servant - are holed up in a small bedroom that is, as far as you can tell, about as deep inside the castle as you can get without losing your options. You could have dug down and gone into the heavy-duty workroom, of course, but that’d mostly amount to trapping yourself; it may be heavily warded, but the wards are all directed inwards. You doubt it’d stand up to even a single one of those giga-death beams.

There’s a small collection of trinkets on the floor.

“That’s it, then,” Leysritt says, sounding somewhat defeated. “No real weapons here, nothing of better quality than my halberd. Useless.”

“I wouldn’t say that. There’s a decent collection of automatic shields, way too many poison detectors, some… hmm, I wonder what this is. Looks like some kind of self-sustaining illusion bracelet?”

Sella pokes carefully at one of the rings. You can’t really tell what that’s supposed to be, but she’s your teacher, after all. You guess she hasn’t taught you everything she knows yet.

You’re sitting leaned against the bed, trying to recuperate from casting three high-power spells in short order and doing your best to appear unaffected, listening to the two of them going over what you’ve found.

“Anything we can use? Do you think that illusion would work against the robot?”

“Ah… no. This looks like it’ll only affect the wearer, and it’d trap you if you used it. You probably wouldn’t even be able to tell that the world you’re in isn’t real, I can see some circuits here meant to affect your reasoning. Nasty piece of work. These shields, though… two of these shielding amulets can be precharged, so you could use them without affecting your combat skills, and you could use both at once if you wanted. It’s not much, it certainly won’t let you take a direct hit, but it should cut down on the scrapes and cuts.”

“Anything else? Any conventional weapons?”

Sella shakes her head. “Nothing of any conceivable use, I’d say. Lots of poison, but that thing isn’t going to be affected. If we had an hour I could cook up some kind of acid, but I still wouldn’t bet on it being affected.”

“All right. Damn, I was hoping for a grenade or three.”

Your eyes shoot open, and you give Leysritt an astonished look. She blushes lightly, defending herself. “It works, that’s all I care about. Your father demonstrated that well enough… oh, sorry.”

You frown, then sigh. The infamous magus-killer had indeed demonstrated that, you’ve heard the stories too many times. If he hadn’t abandoned you, you might have respected his ability. He still lives in the area the grail war is supposed to take place, last you heard. You’re going to give him one chance to explain - one - and then you’re going to have Cocona burn him to a crisp; that’s the only thing you really care about in this war. The Holy Grail can go screw itself, you’d really prefer if it’s never completed, but you suppose you’ll have to try for appearances’ sake.

That all requires you to survive today.

“Let’s take stock,” you find yourself saying. “We’ve got two questionably-useful shielding bracelets, Leysritt and me, to go up against some kind of robot from the future. Sella can’t fight, Cocona’s unconscious, and we’ve already demonstrated that neither hitting it with a halberd nor dropping the roof on it already does very much, while it probably has more tricks up its sleeve. That about right?”

Leysritt nods. You put your head in your hands.

“Well, what the hell do we do? I’m open to suggestions, here.”

The three of you sit quietly for a minute. Deep in thought, you’d like to say, but your mind is blank. You’ve never had to deal with a situation like this before.

[ ] Write-in
[ ] Hope Sella or Leysritt has a bright idea

...
In short, the rest of the family grabbed the good stuff and ran. And you're not really set-up to do the -nuking- thing yourself...
Which means the family ancestral home is soon to be toast, if that..Robot...
Wait...
Cocona talked about Robots quite a bit. That thing's like a Phantasmal Beast...Maybe it'd obey her or something? Or even just looking for her...
How hard would it be to wishcraft an illusion image of Cocona in front of that thing? Might give more insight to WHAT exactly it is and does...

>If your cowardly human kin didn’t take it all with them when they left
How long ago was that, anyways? They all bailed when it started to get close to when the war would start up?

>illusion bracelet
Hmm. If that functioned outwards, I'd have suggested trying to make yourself appear as Cocona. If the robot is connected to where-ever or when-ever she was summoned from, that might have gotten a response from it.

It's not a disguise though- it's a personal holodeck device. For putting your own mind in an illusion. One theoretical application I can think of- you could plug yourself into Cocona. Dive into that inner world she was describing, and possibly pull her out, or help her recover. She did say people could use machines to 'dive' inside a Reyvatiel's mind, right?

Drawback is you'd have to understand how the bracelet works enough to repurpose it, and you don't know anything about setting up an interface with Cocona. Also, you'd go from being an asset to another liability until you managed to escape (assuming you figure out how to exit the illusion).

>...or
There's also still my idea for a temporal manipulation. Make Cocona wake up faster than she would have otherwise. Although I don't know how much juice that would take, and we're pretty much ignorant of the risks involved. (Ten minutes in... Fev is still talking to Fiver, I think. Assuming same passage of time, ect).

>overall
If you have the a small amount of time and space to maneuver, you should seriously consider means by which you might be able to help your servant recover. If this thing is connected to her or her world (she talks of powerful machines frequently, right? And she partially is one?) she may have knowledge that is invaluable. It may respond to her control, as a phantasmal beast. And, if nothing else, your servant has far greater firepower than you or Leysritt. Having her active increases your odds of survival significantly.

> How long ago was that, anyways?
About a week ago. They left because we were planning to move the castle to Japan, where the actual battlefield is.

>move the whole castle to Japan
...dang. Well, that's an improvement on catching a plane. Teleport your whole base off operations and fortifications in directly!

Following the prompting:
Check Cocona's energy level, note how close to empty she is and add/transfer more as necessary.
Let's give the cyborg lady up to eight hours in accelerated time, in one hour increments. If she still hasn't woken up yet at that point we need to try something else.