Re: CLOUD ∞

Unearthly Embrace

Everyone is searching for something. After Disc-Hoover left Stargazer Detachment One in the year 2111, the world was searching for a new simulation to satisfy a yearning. Only two years after the Cloud was retracted and the game to utopia terminated, the world waited. What new virtual reality would the government come up with?

Michael Tillman, the previous game's winner, and Valerie are the only hosts of what is left of the Cloud. But everyone has a host, a body. In other universes, such as the one where the all-mighty tetragrammaton resides, they have a peculiar fascination with a scientist by the name of Frost, but there are no more Frosts to capture. Tetra machines ran out of Frost realities when the human hybrids returned home. Michael and Valerie are very loud disruptions to the cosmic reality of time. Michael knows that someone is after them because his Dad too, who was just released from prison, has been sending him messages. The world has a plan to get them home.

Charles is a preferred decoy, he can serve as Michael's twin whenever this tetragrammaton the Earth is gossiping about gets to Cloud utopia. There is only the slightest problem: Michael and Valerie have no clue where Chuck is.

Stargazer Detachment One's Mission Oversight Team also has no idea what is happening on Disc-Hoover because there are huge space anomalies and disruptions that keep happening in interstellar space. Hybrid shapeshifters like the retired and masochistic by now Ellis Bartram know about the submerged ancient starship in the Atlantic Ocean. If only his superiors would let him and the other seven hybrids get to it at those depths. New CEOs are taking over the world of Cloud technology now.

Daniel Voss is one of them and his Cryonocloud Cast Manufacturing Company boasts about the mining ventures on planetoid Zeta-9, named after the first Cloud game's name to fame. Like Pluto was, they are having a difficult time deciding if it is a planet or a large asteroid. Mostly because of its chemical composition. Something else might be lurking out there, further. The rainbow-tinted cryo chamber covers CCMC creates are translucent and murky at the same time, and if you touch those outer shells with your fingers, you not only see but feel its healing power. CCMC is also making digital cryo-solarium the biggest trend in cryptocurrency since the Cloud was confiscated a few years ago in 2109. Its use, keeping cryochambers cool, and allowing its users to stay alive while working in virtual reality, the venture pays for itself.

"The best thing we've had this entire time was barely that dangerous, Cloud Colloidal Silver. Our telepathy works," Bartram declares from vivid memories of over twenty years ago. "Why did no one tell us about this Cloud game before the disaster happened?" he asks adamantly to the projection of a visibly distressed guard. He and the other hybrids are getting briefed about their imminent release, finally after more than 20 years on hiatus.

The guard agrees. "Yasmine Salah knows all about it."

And he is right, Yasmine was masquerading as the Real Games Enterprise (RGE) Manager's "voice of good reason" the entire time as a holographic consciousness projection. This sort of thing, about telepathy, gets sorted out rather in ubiquitous ways such as another conglomerate or enterprise disaster, disguised as something else.

"When will you all stop pretending to be heroes when you are only villains yourself? Is that not apparent Mr. Bartram?"

For a moment the group looks inspired but the leader of the posse, Ellis Bartram, has refrained from imparting words of wisdom, or what was the opposite of wisdom, maybe malice all along.

"Mr. Bartram, Mr. Bartram. . . Yasmine, anyone, wake up!" the guard repeatedly delivers to them as they venture into another bout of paranoia and psychedelic drifting.

Perhaps now actually is the right time to get them out of their mild slumber, to remember how bad, or good, it all was before the Cloud took over the world. All eight of these hybrids can be true heroes again.

"In another universe, if I remember from my last dream," Silas Betts recounts.

It is Silas Betts, Clyde Van Dyke, Sarah, Ronny, Dimitri, Yasmine, Ellis, and the adult baby Yhemlen who all have the prophetic shapeshifting ability transferred over to their body. And people, not just shapeshifters are needed to test new hardware such as biophotonic suits, rover pods, and extensions, and Cloud treatment centers where software is being uploaded to people's brains. Fewer and fewer natural humans are left wandering society. The guard that was conversing with Bartram and the others, has disappeared by now but that will be the last time any of these hybrids witness such a monster of a human. The interesting part about this is it is the first time in a while they have all been together in the same room. It is a change, but to everyone beyond their facility, it is nicer than most residences. Plush furniture and linens, the only downside is the VR and interactive activities drown out real life for them too. Space is a novelty Bartram and the others did not count on as a success twenty or more years ago. Maybe this time will be different.

All of the spacefaring crewmembers are also on a hunt for what caused them to be stuck between what seems to be some maladjusted neutron star. They are hearing voices. Members routinely awake from their cryo chamber attachment every so many weeks only to return to their mounted Cloud deck in orbit around Zeta-9. The workers do their duty before returning to the ship. Each note from the previous astronaut has instructions for the next. No one has figured out why there seems to be a new magnificent number eight neutron star in sight, instead of seven so close to Earth. With all of them mounted inside Disc-Hoover like this, time dilation has already sped up the years on Earth. They were technically scheduled to arrive at Proxima Centauri in 2117 at near the speed of light pace until they found cryosolarium. They are 3 years into the mission, and for them it is 2116.

"If Disc-Hoover gets seventy years into the human Earth timeline, believe me, and if we do not want to be any more weary than we are now, we should get moving on that rescue plan. It will take us that long to regain contact with Earth." Clyde Van Dyke is growing testy. "Are they moving?"

"It's not clear, I think there is still more cryo-solarium to retrieve. How will we know with certainty what happens on Earth that far out?" Sarah asks.

"They're forgetting, much like we are now about everything. The lights, the Cloud, the VR, it's still alive, just not like when Delphi Corp. or RGE was around." Yasmine chirps back to her comrade.

"Well, what we will know is that one person, a designated gifted child, Nirvana Cyberius, guys will help us navigate the Cloud on Earth." Ellis reiterates boldly.

Within years preparations are made to train the hybrids on how to hone their astral stones and astral projection powers. It is not easy, but it is worth it. The only remaining duty at the end of the years-long regimen is to get to the Class-A starship at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. And Michael's Dad wants to get to Michael before anyone else in the Cloud can as well. As old as he is, he knows getting Michael, Valerie, and Charles home soon will take courage. He takes his daily dose of Cloud Colloidal Silver (CCS) Remnants every day to stay young but he is having visions too of something strange coming to attack Earth and the Cloud archive of people and paradise. There is only one simulation he has access to, unlike most people, and that he uses and it is the RGE archive where his sons are.

The gossip about colliding universes is hard to ignore. Michael communicates with Valerie about what his Dad has been writing to him through the government facility housing their pods and bodies. Complete Brain Transfer is a closer possibility most believe, a hangover from the experiments started by RGE managers to make forever a reality, but why disconnect now? Chuck is the only problem with paradise. Luckily for them, they are still young.

Mariner Station itself has not moved since Michael and Valerie were erected to the satellite via a space elevator, but its exact location in the space-time continuum is nearly impossible to decipher for these new scientists. Whatever happened inside of the Cloud twenty years ago is unretrievable. Even the Cloud spectacle known as Real Games Enterprise is just as much lore. Magnificent moments were meant to be remembered, and for the two winners in utopia, it means ever-increasing beauty. When Charles glitched in and out of the Cloud stream inside of RGE's game, it was not the end. He is still behind them in the process of things.

"We need to go back," Mike tells Val.

"Back to where?" Val insists.

"To find Charles. He is going to be my sibling body double in the Cloud. Besides, he needs paradise just as much as we needed it back then."