Imagine someone went and built a huge online world with the sandbox effect fully repped. It, literally, provided the basis for anything but, get this, there was a God Mode in which whoever sat in the captains seat said what went for the rest, plugged in. This was done to keep it interesting as the developer thought they’d built a great base but one story could get stale and “Hey, let them get creative and we’ll see what they bring“. After this it was a hands off mindset as they governed its introduction to the world and it was enough of a thrill to trill about the immense detail in this realm and how different it was from the rest. The next team that kicked decided it would be most interesting to improve on this by changing various things. Playas could now set their own character options instead of presets and design clothes as well along with uploading voice samples which made their avatar sound just like them. A little while later they added in motion capture tech so they’d have your strut as well and, for the right amount of cash, you could dance, flourish and all kinds of blips. The Game was progressing, nicely, but it was still mainly a natural thing in which people spent a lot of time pottering around the garden and designing environments for others to come and lounge in as it was a really social thing. Someone hit upon a glitch that allowed him to use the skin option on the environment and thus the first sculpture was born. The previous management, impressed, promoted him and not long after they left so he now controlled the realm.
As he was a hackers hacker he studied the code, outside and in. The first thing he did was introduce weapons but not the type you load with clips to kill but based on pure awareness that needed a developed skill for wielding. Soon people were shooting each other out of the sky with beams of focused intent as well as playing games of “Tag, you’re it!”. Oh yeah, they can fly as well now. A whole subgenre dropped in and built up an immense fighting circuit in which people tested their skills, flexed on opponents and generally kicked seven shades of pixels out of the next for a thrill in this fake environment. After a while he felt he’d pushed it to its limits and another was selected. He bought a couple of friends with him and this triumvirate grounded everyone, much to their chagrin. “No more flying” went the notice as it was too complex to render the particle physics from the fallout and laser beams as well so something had to give as the users had increased ergo they consumed more bandwidth. The violence had became the bread and butter as a whole load of people came piling in and thus they built the new model around this where, locally, gravity could flip and dip but only if you were trained in the skills. This lead to a whole load of new cadets who wished to become adepts logging immense hours in to learn these occult tricks so they too could, temporarily, bend the laws of physics and emit Chi style energetics that left people dazed and amazed by their gifts.
This aspect of the Game came along with an immense refinement as people were cheering and placing bets but many missed the simple things and went back to the community aspects so they invented virtual clubs and hangouts as well that went over real well as people could strut their funky stuff and link with a grin and wink. One of the team decided to start building housing around this and people complained the fix was in as only the management could do this and the rest had to either pay rent or splash big to afford a pitch. The high rollers didn’t care as they dove in and soon there was another economy thriving in which you too could hang out with friends in a nice apartment and see how the rich lived. An aspiring young hacker found a way to finagle this so he could rent a pitch for a night and live there, gratis, for as long as he wished. The admins admired the cut of his jib and it kept people talking so they didn’t do anything as they weren’t losing anything and the press was lapping it. Eventually a mob effect kicked in and some of the fighting adepts took matters into their own hands and it was around then that a lone gunman stomped into the mix and made his presence felt as a force to be reckoned with.
Literally.
The first shot wasn’t even a warning. People didn’t know what hit them. He declared himself the king of the pavement and demanded everyone pay for access. Users, once again, lamented but let it ride as it was super interesting to see what was happening. Soon they acquiesced as the health care was private and they found him the lesser of two evils as each time he hit he’d tear what they wear to shreds as well. Soon he bought up everything and had people working for him. Including the apartment hacker. Together the two were unstoppable and, seemingly, online Twenty Four/Seven. What he’d actually done was run a local code algorithm that was trained on observation of how he usually reacted and thus it was nigh on impossible for people to tell what kicked. The real life press were having a field day and users were baffled at this man and his skills to, seemingly, be everywhere at once. The old team let him in as they walked away and thus he sits, alone, at the helm. The first thing he did was fill the realm with NPCs programmed with various subroutines so no one could really tell who was his and the real ones, beyond the web. Actually, initially, they were not aware of this and thought the immense surge in traffic was totally organic and natural. It only came out that these fakes were portals pushed in to present a script to what was, previously, free reign as it was mass social engineering aka the ultimate power trip for one who came from nothing to be the man who would be king. Thing is, that head is heavy and not just due to the influx of digital narcotics and performance enhancements that are, allegedly, under the counter and presented as illicit when, in the end, he coded and profits from them via his proxies who supply all the rest. What gave it away was when a whole load of people arranged a “spontaneous” rave in which these dopescripts were passed from one to the next and changed the visuals whilst creating aural thrills. Before they knew it a riot kicked and the place was torn to shreds. Someone watching back the feed noticed the inception points were way too regularly spread to be organic then traced back the trips and found the same “playas” reciting a script in ways that were totally regimented and thus completely inauthentic.
When it became news, in the flesh, some were mortified and others couldn’t care less as they pointed at how much the Game had evolved since they initially started playing. Many just laughed and called it entertainment as they strolled around with beefed up characters with artificially buffed stats that made them feel real good. Soon this became standard as everyone was doing it and thus he needed to up the ante. This is where he hit up on a idea that was pure genius as the Game went multisensory. It was already in VR due to a previous advance but he sent out millions and millions of free touch stimuli devices to totally random users (or so it seemed) and this had people intrigued to shell out for their own kit. Now the dopescripts were something else as were the people who were modifying the codes he’d released as open source after creating something more potent for his own connects. Users were praising the best controller there had ever been and many agreed without clicking who owned the NPCs that initially started the chants of thanks but now using a tighter algorithm thanks to bits of data that were patched into everyones VR set where they may or may not emote something which they never said but would appear invisible on their end. Not only this but he was siphoning their energetics by running the equivalent of a audio compression algorithm that was based on WAVE to MPThree tech in which their awareness was fed looped back labels in lieu of present moment sensations and none could spot the grift as they were too busy being consumed by their consumption to click the thinker who did the thinking was them but in a higher octave…
What comes next in the Game? Who can tell? Thats the thing about it as the Prime creator operates on a “What the people expect, they get” type mindset as he believes they select what they accept as no one is forcing them to do it. Silence is consent, my friend, and you vote with your attention. I just found it an interesting tangent of simulation theory because we’re getting to the time when the split between real and pixel is going to seem real thin and blurrier still once we get augmented so you can’t help but wonder as its always sex, drugs and violence that sells everything. Say, what if the whole point of the Game of Souls was actually this intent in the sense that the denizens of the really real world built a replication in which all of this mess kicks as it keeps the other pristine? Wouldn’t that be something? How would you know? It would be akin to becoming awake in the dream but how many Souls can truly claim lucid living, at present, let alone whilst drifting? In many ways the meta is apt as there are many sandboxes so its worth asking who rules which one and how they’re playing the Game within it as you can apply this across the board to anything as far I can tell so have fun playing with this concept which brings a fresh perspect to all of this as it may just be the Club Hell has two levels and you currently dwell in the lowest resonance as you walk around this floating insane asylum which was designed to hem in the ones who couldn’t maintain their resonance…
Till we meet again
