Writing update - Subreality [Chapter 2, Part 2]

 Freyre stabbed at the fire with a long stick, causing it to flare up for a second before growing dim again.

"You're sure this will work?" Ruth asked the new unknown, who seemed unwilling to give his proper name.

The dark haired boy shook his head and shrugged. "I'm not sure of anything anymore. But it should work."

Ruth sighed, pushing back her scarlet fringe with one thin, long fingered hand. Things had been getting more uncertain lately. A few months earlier, she'd not have agreed to a stunt like this unless it had been planned out, researched, test run at least twice. And now she was giving it the go ahead on 'should'.

My, the world really has gone downhill, she thought. But she couldn't really say no. Chances like this didn't come along every day, and if they could manage it...

It was a very big If, though.

"Freyre? Grey? Kerin? You guys okay with this?"

Kerin Russik looks up, her hooded silver eyes making her look permanently tired and slightly dead, as usual. The fire made them shiny, like two tiny mirrors, reflecting the orange light. She nodded, slowly, and then went back to attempting to sleep.

Grey, the second in command, ignored her, and stared in the other direction, arms folded. He didn't like the choice to take on the new boy, about whom nothing is known except his appearance. He could be anyone, an operative from the Authority, sent in secret to take them down. Grey was highly wary of him, and hadn't spoken except to ask for caffeinated drinks since the boy arrived.

"Even if we can manage it, no. But I'll join you on it anyway," said Freyre, who had stopped trying to provoke the dying fire and decided to put on a padded green jacket with a fur lined hood instead.

Ruth hated this life sometimes.

Writing update - Subreality [Chapter 2, Part 1]

 The world is moving too fast.

Lai can't work out what's going on, but suddenly it's no longer sunny, warm, a perfect day in a perfect world. It's cold, dark, and something is going very badly wrong.

Someone says something, too quick and quiet for her ears to pick up. And then there's a sharp pain in her arm, a needle, something cold being forced into her veins.

And then she doesn't remember anything for a long, long time.

Writing Update - Subreality [Chapter 1, part 6]

Sorry for missing updates. I'm not sure how many I owe, and one of the upcoming ones is short, so I'll post up four now and then get back to a normal schedule.

*

 Mandy and Sarah stand on a thin walkway, high above the ground. A slight breeze blows fallen leaves around, cooling the air and making Sarah get rather annoyed at her long hair.

"Vend Coke."

"Specify Coke," the vending machine replies.

"Whaddya mean, specify coke? Vend Coca Cola."

"Here is your Coca Cola."

The VirtualVendor rattles a little before spitting out a bottle of a brown fizzy drink.

"Sarah, what in the name of all that's virtual is that?" exclaims Mandy, unable to comprehend why her friend would consider a liquid that is mostly sugar and carbon dioxide to even be a drink in the first place, much less why she would willingly want to drink it.

"Coca Cola. You know, invented in, 1886 or something?" says Sarah casually, not understanding Mandy's confusion.

Mandy whistles. "That's one old drink. However, tea is better, and older, especially when you don't put mountains of sugar in it." This last bit is spoken through gritted teeth. Then she turns to the vending machine.

"Vend tea."

A delicate china teacup with a pink floral pattern appears on the collection platform, where the machine dribbles hot water into it and then uses some sort of spoon-like implement to stir and remove a teabag.

"Here is your tea."

Mandy grins, supposedly triumphant. She takes the white teacup, sips the tea and makes a face.

"Ugh, this isn't tea."

"Tea type: unspecified. Last requested tea: peppermint. Default to peppermint tea." the machine informs them brightly.

"Which would be why," says Sarah, grinning slightly.

"You, shut up. You, vend proper tea."

"The machine doesn't stock proper tea."

"Vend request, proper tea."

"Define: Proper Tea."

"I give up," says Mandy, unable to figure out what to tell the Vendor.

"Here," Sarah tells her, tossing the bottle of Coca Cola. Mandy fumbles to catch it, narrowly missing dropping it on the head of someone below.

"Vend request tea."

"Specify tea."

"All of them."

"Unknown command. Please specify."

"Looks like we'll have to do this manually," says Sarah. She turns to Mandy.

"Name a type of tea."

"Earl Grey."

"You want that?"

"Not particularly, no."

"Then why..."

"It's a type of tea."

"...Vend request, Earl Grey Tea."

The machine is silent for a few seconds, then says "Vend request accepted. Earl Grey Tea will be added to the machine soon."

Mandy jumps up and down, clapping.

"You're that excited about a vending machine?" Sarah asks, frowning, raking her reddish brownish fringe with her fingers.

"No, I'm that excited about tea."

"You have a go, then."

"Uh... Vend request Chai Tea."

"Chai Tea added."

Mandy smiles, happy that yet another piece of technology is now under her control.

Writing update - Subreality [Chapter 1, Part 4]

 "Kyraaaa, I'm hungry."

"No one cares, Coffee," says Kyra, whilst Cream reminds Coffee that they're due to go to a meeting later on at which copious amounts of food will be available.

"You can wait," she says.

"But I want it nowww," Coffee moans, pouting and twirling a clump of his ridiculously long dark brown hair into tighter curls than it already naturally is.

"Have a drink then, and stop complaining."

Coffee takes the offer and steals Kyra's cup just before she can grab it out of his reach.

"Hey!"

"Losers weepers!"

Kyra considers punching him, but Cream has her dark brown eyes fixed on the window and doesn't look like she is going to notice if Coffee tries to kill Kyra.

Coffee and Cream are an odd pair. No one is entirely sure where they are from, Kyra included, though there are many theories. They were created in a lab, as the ultimate weapons for Government use. They are from another country where the specification for your virtual appearance is much less specific. They simply have alternate eye and hair colours by coincidence. Whatever the reason, they always look out of place in a crowd.

The wall flashes into life, informing Cream that she has a message. She glances back at it.

"View message," she says. She decidely doesn't like eyemouse control, as it has a tendency to get confused by her hyper speed blinking.

The message is listed as being from Apricot Pumpkin, and contains a generic wall of text:

Your contact, Mrs APRICOT PUMPKIN was unable to answer your call. You are requested to go and speak to her/him in person. Please do so between the times of THREE hours TWO minutes and FORTY FIVE seconds – FOUR hours SEVENTEEN minutes and TWENTY THREE seconds.

It never fails to surprise Cream that Pumpkin hates her name. She supposes that Mrs Apricot Pumpkin is a little ridiculous, but there are so many people on the Planet that your name usually has to be long, complicated and sometimes fairly silly. The Generator System can't, for some unknown reason, register more than one person under the same name. These three had got in early, though, so their names are somewhat normal.

Cream's full name, for instance, is Cream Sugar Chocolate, and Coffee is Coffee Cheesecake Chocolate. But they don't use these names for anything other than registering for the Virtual Reality – otherwise they'd have picked proper, sensible names.

Cream tells the wall to send Pumpkin an invite to meet her at the cafe on War Street, and then goes to get a meal. Eating isn't neccessary in the VR, as energy is provided by your physical self, which is kept from growing weak or old or ill or dead by very high tech equipment, but it's something to do whilst talking in case conversation gets awkward.

Writing Update - Subreality [Chapter 1, Part 3]

 "Hey, Kai-"

Kai clearly isn't aware of Mandy standing directly behind him, because he jumps when she speaks, causing the Shrine Maiden to get hit by a sudden wave of bullets. He turns round, irritated, as the words 'GAME OVER' flash up.

"Having trouble?"

"What do you want?" he snaps.

"Well, sorry for disturbing the clearly world changing game, but I'm meeting Sarah in ten. I need to you quit your bullet hell and help me land the house."

"Since when did I help you with that? What happened to Pumpkin? And why can't you just use a ladder like last time?"

"Pumpkin's still in her room. I don't know whether she's asleep or not, but frankly if she is then I would waste time checking. And we need to land anyway for the meeting at five-whenever, and the parade thing at midnight. So. Quit your game and give me a hand."

Kai makes a frustrated snorting sound and quits the game.

"Since when does this take two people?" he asks, shoving the computer at the wall with more force than necessary. There is a slight bang as goes through a hole and hits something, before the wall folds back over it again.

"Since the auto-lander broke."

"Since when was that broken?"

"Stop saying 'since when', and perhaps you spilling tea all over it might have had something to do with it?"

"That was your tea!"

"You were holding it at the time, though."

Writing Update - Subreality [Chapter One, Part Two]

 Trinh pulled out a pair of slightly battered headphones from under the ever growing pile of electronics. Nothing in the pile was sold anymore, taken off the screens as soon as the newest alternative became available. Inevitably, most of the unsold stock (and there always was a lot of it) ended up on the black market.

Trinh was glad of that.

She flicked open the circular cover on the side of the right speaker and took out the memory-disc. Fishing through the pile again, she found the handheld device used to write to memory-discs. It was pretty old – old enough to still have a button panel. She clicked the disc into place and closed the cover.

The little handheld powered up, playing an advert which advised her to ditch memory-discs and get the newer option – namely, a direct cranial implant. She skipped it and flicked through the menu options to 'LOAD'.

Trinh pulled up her sleeve and squinted at the messy ink scrawls covering her entire left hand and forearm, and wished the handheld had a visual handwriting recognition driver installed. It would take her ages to input the codes she'd bought from the archaic goods screen-stall in the Subway manually. It was a shady stall, but then the entire Way was black market shops, so that was hardly surprising.

When she finally did manage to type them all in, she selected 'BURN TO DISC' and waited as the disc whirred, and after about a minute the message '73 SONG FILES BURNED. PLEASE REMOVE DISC.' flashed up.

One minute. Trinh mentally poured abuse on the device. A whole minute for anything less than two hundred song files was so bloody slow.

She took out the disc and returned it to her headphones. Closing the cover, she put them on and shut her eyes, looking at the little SmartScreens on the inside of her eyelids. Selecting 'Play New' and 'Shuffle', she dumped the pile of electronics back into the plastic box she kept them in, and shoved the box under her bed.

Some time ago now, Kattela Milles had insisted that her seven year old daughter should have all the newest technological implants it was safe to have – eye-screens, lip-mic, the lot.

Laying back, Trinheran Milles cursed her mother for turning her into a Technician's nightmare.

Writing Update - Subreality [Chapter One, Part One]

Because I don't seem to be able to hold my post-a-day idea, and I've been ill for the last week, I've decided to make my daily update a section of whatever I happen to be writing. Today, it's Subreality (a scifi NIP).Enjoy!




* * *

"So, what time's this meeting?"

Mandy looks up, surprised that Kai has not chosen a different time to ask this rather important question.

Mrs Pumpkin answers before Mandy has a chance to. "Five fifteen, and thirty two seconds. The Council does love to be ridiculously precise."

Kai rolls his eyes, tips his head back to stare at the ceiling and swears under his breath. He wonders whether agreeing to this in the first place was a good idea at all. But agreed he has, and he doubts the option to fall mysteriously ill will be available with a girl like Pumpkin in the room.

It is unclear why Pumpkin is a Mrs; she's certainly not married, being only thirteen. But for as long as Kai can remember, which to be honest isn't as long as he'd like, she's never been anything else. Perhaps it's because Miss Pumpkin or Ms Pumpkin don't sound right. He'll never know, as he's too afraid to ask her. He doesn't like her mismatched unnaturally coloured eyes, one of which is a deep vivid orange colour, and the other a velvety black. He isn't too keen on how she speaks, either, though he's less concerned as to how a teenager has the vocabulary of several above-average adults than he is about his own wishes, which mostly consist of food and trying to beat the final levels of Portal 13 and a remastered version of Highly Responsive To Prayers.

They are interrupted by the large digital display clock bleeping loudly, flashing out the time to remind them that tomorrow is the dawn of a new ma, and they are required to attend the parade in the Virtual Town's central area.

Mandy blinks from behind the frames of her SmartLenses and tells the clock, "Display time and location."

The screen flickers while it brings up both the time - displaying every unit from year right down to nanoseconds - and a realtime map showing their position in relation to the rest of the generated world.

Pumpkin's phone begins to buzz at her, and she looks at the screen to decide whether she wants to answer it or not. The caller is unknown, so she presses the button which will send a message to the caller telling them to come see her in person.

"I'm going to go take a nap. Don't disturb me," she says, glaring at Kai. He pretends not to notice and continues to wait for the computer to load the X and Z keys, which are currently missing. Last time he had attempted to disturb Pumpkin when she was sleeping, he had found her hanging from the ceiling by her neck, apparently dead. Although it's impossible to actually die in the VR, he still yelled like all hell had broken loose, waking most of the neighbours but surprisingly not Pumpkin. He had found out later that her generated self reacts to whatever she is dreaming about, and that if she doesn't want to be woken up it is virtually impossible to do so.

Mandy continues to stare at the screen, flicking things around with her eye movements, and waves slightly, not really concentrating.

Mrs Pumpkin disappears off to her slightly creepy bedroom and Kai, seeing that the keyboard has finally finished loading, starts up Highly Responsive To Prayers and begins shooting.