Participants:
| Scene Title | Neuromancers — Part 2 |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Erasma and Dee extract information from a thinking computer and then escape back to the real world. |
Inside a thinking computer. Then, inside an apartment.
Erasma takes a deep breath as she looks over to Dee. "Go… scan things. Im going to keep it busy. And if things go weird…think fast." she says as she strides over towards the security gaurd, holding out her hands with a smile. "I have broken computer systems that make you look like an etch a sketch. Be ready to cry." she says as she strides towards it. Ras focuses her will on the machine ,putting pressure on it to break but making sure she puts enough to be a challange and defend herself. By keeping it focused she can posibly keep it off her freind. Hopefully she dosn't accidently crush it, or get crushed.
Dee frowns, not looking too thrilled at Erasma risking herself that way, but arguing would waste time. Unfortunately, so will picking and choosing what data to read and what data to ignore. Instead, she steels herself because this is really going to hurt and then reaches into that bright white core into and out of which all that data flows.
The swarm of voxels twisting around the program part as Erasma approaches and as she attempts to constrain it, the silvery humanoid scatters into a cloud of volumetric pixels that dive onto the Daughter of Hephaestus, zipping through her data-body in a whirlwind of silvery-grey blocks. The sound of a piledriver cracking over and over echoes through her mind.
The swarming bits dig and burrow through Erasma's information, despite the fact that she seems unphased by the assault on her persona. The swirling and swarming grows more aggressive and frenzied. The sound of a freight train derailing storms through the digital landscape. The walls of the storage room quiver and reverberate, flashing blue to purple in a steady, pulsating rhythm.
Erasma grits her teath as she feals the attack on her person though due to the hardning skin she created and her toughness in general she seems unphased. Devoting a bit of her attention to repairing herself, hoping the same rules apply she smiles at the program. "Oh yeah… feels nice…you son of a BITCH" as she raises her axe-creation and swoops it over towardst the other being. "Dee hurry the fuck up." she says as she tries to hurt it enough to slow it down.
Dee was right. It hurts a lot. As with when she and Erasma were pulled into the brain, if she were mortal her mind would shatter. As it is, it's far too much for her to handle. All she can do is keep trying to suck it all in and not lose consciousness, and sort everything out later if her mind doesn't fry even with her divine heritage. It is a small mercy though, that the stream of information in and out has slowed. It's not much, but it's something.
The security program scrambles about Erasma frantically, if the machine could display anger (maybe this one is one of the machines that can?) it would certainly be anger at this point. A stream of voxels split off from the storm whirling around Erasma to buzz about Dee's digital body. Harrying her as the information from the data storage device is copied into her brain bit by bit through her scanning. Perfect cubes zip through each woman's body, colliding with lines of data again and again.
Erasma closes her eyes again and growls. "LEAVE her alone." she says angrily then throwing her arm back she channels the mental strength and physical streangth she knows she has into two mighty swings, front and then back. Hopefully this is enough to finaly get this thing off her freind.
While Dee would like to just focus on sucking up data, no matter how unpleasant an experience it's being, she also has to be at least a little mindful that Erasma might not be able to hold all of its attention. When it does strike at her again, she has to sacrifice some of the time spent on what she's doing to not become a virtual red smear on the wall of the virtual room. As much as she can, given she also has to not die, she continues to take in data. On the whole? she's near to passing out. It's a good thing that dodging comes so naturally to her, or she might already be unconscious.
As Dee rips the last shreds of data from the brain's storage, things go…wrong. Both sense a wrong feeling again. The feeling of being an intruder (Dee should be familiar with this feeling, maybe to her it is a right-feeling feeling). The pinched ceiling and floor near the glowing core of information start to descend, closing around the sphere in a last futile attempt to defend the information inside. Too late, bub.
The swarm of voxels around Dee retreat to harry Erasma again, zipping by and through her, bouncing against lambent-red digital 'flesh' and 'armor' as it clashes with her mental projection, unable to force her from the machine. Metal cutting metal, a buzz saw against an I-beam grinds in the minds of both women. The walls of the room start to fade, and the data lines connecting to the sphere of data break off and retreat. The wire mesh of this environment flickers and fades slowly.
Erasma blinks and turns to Dee, yellign quickly. "If your fast run over and grab on to me." she says before she begins charging towards the door axe out. It apperas Ras is going to try to force herself out of this data confinement the old fashioned way. She forcuses her will and sharp mind and tries force her way out. "IM THE JUGGERNAUGHT….BITCH!"
Dee is lucky at least in that there isn't all that much more that she needs to suck up from the storage core. Once the last of the bits she might possibly need is absorbed into her aching head, she drops to ditigal knees, wiped out. "Done. We need out." At the moment though, she can't make her brain focus on that. It's far too overloaded. She's lucky she managed to say that much. And then the walls start to close in around them kind of literally. When Erasma calls to her, she looks like she's really like to just sleep. "Uh huh…"
Erasma reaches the webing and sticks her hand out towards it, closing her eyes as she tries to use brute force to trick the machine to reverse its process. "Dee… help me or get its attention a little." she says as she grunts, putting foward her mind. Its just like hacking from outside the computer. Thats what she tells herself over and over.
Since there's really no way to know if they will just magically find their consciousnesses back in their bodies, Dee can't let herself fall over completely just yet. "Erasma. Get to the data stream. We need to get to a port…ish thing, and get out." She's not sure that's how it will work, but it's how they got in, right?"
Erasma gives a small sigh. "Lemme see if I can just get us out of here." she says as she grabs Dee and focuses her will. Trying to end the transmition the old fashioned way, trying to connect back to her body. Hopefully it hasn't suffered any damage in her abscence and to take Dee to her own body.
The flickering environment fades to a static that snaps between purple and blue. Sound ceases to exist, but at the same time, the women feel as if their ears have been plugged with wax. Their vision goes inside-out as the universe flattens to a plane and the third dimension leaves the reality they perceive. The plane thins to a line, and the line collapses to a dot. The sound is an impossible sound, it pierces your ears and shudders your heart as it shrieks to the ultrasonic and gutters to the subsonic. Maybe that's what an electron sounds like. And as the sound fades its replaced by the sensation of your bare nerves popping in a fire as the cytoplasm erupts and boils off. And then that fades. There is nothing except the lack of everything. And then that too, is gone.
And then reality snaps back to a universe of lavish color and soft sound. A world of warmth and cold. A world of flesh and blood and wood and stone and everything else you've known. A world of sight and sound and a world where fleshy minds live in fleshy heads and alien thoughts no longer need to exist for the time being. The black box sits quiet. Dee, if she has the fortitude, would notice the lack of emanations from it. No more radio frequencies. No more electromagnetism. It's quiet.
Erasma stumbles to her feet from the floor, staggering to her knees shortly afterwards. The computer is screaming at her at the moment, trying to contact others to get them over. "Erasma? Sweetie? Erasma's Freind? Are you ok?" the computer asks as the girl tries to stand.
Dee's luck to be conscious by the time she's able to again be aware of the real world. It doesn't last long, though. She manages to push herself up a bit from where shey lays on the floor, looking bleary-eyed. She blinks a few times, then tries to say "I'm gonna sleep now." What it actually comes out as is "Aiuuum… sllp… She puts her head down then, and is out like the proverbial light.
Erasma staggers to her feet again. "Tally baby? Im ok.. just… just need to lay down a bit. I.. I just got down and intimate with that computer I… I yeah. Goonna get some sleep." she moans. Having to defend your persona against a program trying to delete you is hard. She just sort of lays down on the ground herself.
