Nyr ~ How many times have I come back from that world just to stare up at this ceiling..?
Nyr ~ A few hundred? Over a thousand maybe..? It seems unlikely..
Nyr ~ Do I want to know?
She lies motionless with the back of her wrist slumped over her forehead, brain desperately trying to reject the severity of the situation, procrastinating the need to reconcile her next course of actions.
Nyr - "[Sigghh....]"
Her hand awkwardly twists and tugs at her face, trying to wipe away the anxiety.
Nyr - "Aghh..!"
Nyr - "A-Again..?!"
Nyr ~ Transitioning between not having an arm and having one is getting to be quite the nuisance..!
Nyr ~ I wonder if I respawned in-game if it would fix it..?
Nyr ~ Probably huh.. It always repairs all damage..
Nyr ~ But still, I shouldn't throw away that life, it's unique! I can't wait to see the look on some peoples faces when they realize! Everyone was so distracted with the fighting that the few people we did briefly see didn't even notice..
Nyr - "Hahhh.. Whatever..!"
She pushes all the thoughts out of her head as she pulls herself upright.
Nyr - "EuwehgHhHhHhh..!"
Nyr - "W-Wha..?"
Nyr ~ Why does that feel a little.. off..
Nyr - "Oh no.."
Nyr - "Oh that's so embarrassing.."
Nyr ~ I forgot that was earlier..
Nyr ~ And even through the headset..
Nyr ~ Curse the inability to block out involuntary actions..!
Nyr - "Bwehhh.."
Nyr ~ The sensation in those areas is already reduced to a fraction of normal to discourage this kind of thing.. But I'm so pathetic, what does it even matter..?!
Nyr ~ I hope I didn't make any strange sounds during all that..
Nyr - "Xiko...."
Nyr ~ Whatever.. I'll just prepend a change of underwear to the list of things to do..
⧖
One firm flip of a quaint tactile switch later and the array of screens suspended over the desk glow to life with useless information before her butt is even in the seat.
Nyr - "Hahhh.. Halllright, let's see.."
Connecting through a specially encrypted and obfuscated route, a few deft keystrokes initiates a simple first step in a complicated operation.
Nyr ~ Stage one: Research..
The term "Sci/O" is entered into a web search.
Nyr - "Oh.."
'DeepVR-MMO Lead Sci/O Under Fire From Community After Lacking Response to Ongoing Server Issues'
Nyr - "Huh.."
-Click-
If you've been playing 'In-Worlds' (The world's most popular VRMMO) this weekend, no doubt you've experienced firsthand the slew of strange issues that have crept in and only gotten worse since late Friday night.
Players are in a mad scramble trying to protect their prized virtual territory as extra-aggressive, glitched-out beasts are attacking all over the game's massive, shared worldwide server, leading us to believe this isn't an isolated problem but rather an inherent bug in the game itself.
As of this moment there is no word on any instigating factor to the incident, but the company behind the game 'Sci/O' has confirmed at least that what is happening is not a planned event.
These in-game beasts are showing up at an increasing rate, each with one or more abilities that are either outright unintentional or have been supercharged to unfair levels with glitched stats. While not all have been noted to be aggressive, an inordinately large percentage seem to be actively seeking players to attack.
Other notable issues include altered appearances of beasts, sometimes granting adverse effects, and environmental idiosyncrasies such as spastic weather patterns.
-Ad Blocked-
In most games this kind of turmoil might otherwise be just an interesting event to enjoy while you can, later looked back on fondly as a 'Remember that crazy time when-?' moment. Some players are even getting wild new drops as the issues seem to propagate to the loot as well.
But with how the In-Worlds works, all property in the game is simulated live and the players are responsible for protecting it. Meaning that by any means, buildings in the game are permanently destructible.
And while this is one of the games biggest draws, many players are justly upset that everything they've worked hard to create together is under attack by an unprecedented and unfair onslaught. Leaving millions of unanswered questions along the lines of: 'Will there be a server rollback once this is fixed?'
Ladies and gamers, we're here to tell you: we don't know either..!
Despite the immense outcry among the game's community, Sci/O have yet to properly respond to the most important questions being asked right now. This behaviour is somewhat unusual for the company, as they typically communicate fairly well with fans.
Now, I don't want to be an alarmist here but, this lack of response seems like a pretty bad sign. It's likely that the reason they won't say either way is because they either don't plan to, or are incapable of performing a rollback on such a scale.
It's not that surprising, and while I can't condone them being so hushed, personally I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to be able to perform a serverwide reversion when (as stated in previous interviews) the data for the whole game world takes up an entire data center.
Not that it's all cause for concern! Just because they can't do a complete reset doesn't mean we won't get some kind of compensation. We already know there's functions in the game to reverse damage to buildings. Though it's unclear either why they haven't already implemented something like this, or temporarily halted the ability for things to be destroyed.
There are some concerns that, due to aforementioned data size restrictions, the amount of concurrent damage is too much and cannot be fixed in its entirety.
But really, it feels useless to ponder why they haven't done these things because the company's strategy for dealing with this currently seems to be to sit around and do nothing while they wait for the server issues to be resolved internally. They've stated that no changes can be made to the game while the issue persists because it would cause 'irreversible damages'..
Whatever that means. In my opinion, with my technical background, this is a dubious claim at best. There's likely something larger preventing them from doing anything, or else I can't see why they'd risk all the bad publicity. But evidently there's a strong force somewhere stopping them from saying too much.
-Ad Blocked-
We (futilely) reached out to Sci/O for an official statement, but we've only got back what little has already been said, and it's not very helpful.
So instead of copy/pasting that here, I'll just repost the painfully short interview from earlier today by another outlet. Though strangely it was posted only in text form, and it's not really clear who is the one answering the questions, or asking them for that matter.
Maybe it was all redacted to avoid hate being directed at anyone in particular, which seems likely in today's internet.. At any rate it ends up feeling more like an awkward FAQ.
Interviewer - "So, what's been happening with the In-Worlds recently?"
Sci/O - "There's currently an unknown issue with the server system that is causing unintended effects in the game world."
Interviewer - "Okay.. Any word on a fix for the issue? Diagnosis progress? A timeline at all?"
Sci/O - "Not at this time."
Interviewer - "Right.. What about implementing some kind of simple patch to add temporary measures against the effects ruining player's experiences?"
Sci/O - "While the game is designed for constant uptime with the ability to roll out even major updates to the game with zero downtime, the nature of this problem is such that we cannot make any changes to the server side without causing irreversible damages.."
Interviewer - "Can you elaborate on what that means?"
Sci/O - "No. I'm sorry."
Interviewer - "Alright.. Well if nothing can be done to address these issues in-place, why not just take the servers offline while fixes are being worked on?"
Sci/O - "On a similar note, taking the servers down now while they are in this compromised state will likely corrupt everything and we would not be able to restore them without a complete reset of the game. This is a risk we aren't willing to take, and would prefer the current situation over starting from scratch. Moreover, the issue isn't reproduced in our test server, so we need the global server to stay up in order to diagnose it."
Interviewer - "Thank you, that's at least vaguely understandable, if not unpleasant news.."
Sci/O - "We're sorry for any inconvenience caused to our players. We're working hard around the clock trying to resolve the issue."
Interviewer - "Uh-huh.. You know, this response, or rather lack thereof, is somewhat uncharacteristic for Sci/O. Is there any reason for the delays and lack of details? Is there any pressure from outside sources, investors, parent companies, hackers?"
Sci/O - "Sci/O is and has always been an independent company working to provide great experiences. This issue is unprecedented for us, that's all."
Sci/O - "Though on that note, hackers have been a concern, as if we say too much then anyone savvy and malicious enough might be able to bring the game down and ruin it for everyone. Not to worry though, rest assured at this point we've figured that in its current state, it shouldn't be possible to do that with the limited information we've given. So please, bear with us while we work to fix this. I promise we'll make this right for everyone afterwards."
Interviewer - "There have been rumors recently though that Sci/O is-"
Sci/O - "Thank you, but I think that's all we have time for right now."
Interviewer - "Really?"
Sci/O - "Sorry. And again our apologies to everyone who enjoys our game. If we have anything else to report, we'll post it on our official channels. Thank you."
Interviewer - "Alright then.. Thanks for your time.."
-Ad Blocked-
The interview was confirmed legitimate by Sci/O head of public relations.
If you ask me though, the thing about the hackers was just a genius last minute deflection inspired by the interviewer's question. Though if any hacker wants to expose what's going on.. Be my guest.
And almost certainly the last question they were trying to bring up is about the rumor that Sci/O is secretly being run by a biotech corporation. But it's worth noting that these rumors are unsubstantiated currently. Important if, and only if, true.
Anyway if there's one thing I can say for sure: this situation BLOWS!
I'm not immune to the chaos either, In-Worlds was easily one of the most fun experiences to explore with friends and get some excitement in your life that otherwise consists of nothing but writing! -_-
Be sure to keep up with our feed as we'll be posting updates to the story as it unfolds.
Click here to read our dramatized story of the assault on Eidolor.
Nyr - "Well.... That was a lot of useless fluff for very little actionable information, thanks.."
Nyr ~ But.. I guess that tells me all I'm gonna find about this on a surface level at least..
Nyr - "Ask the chat maybe..?"
Chat:
--7:16 PM--
NyrOfFear: Does anyone know anything about this Sci/O stuff??
DarkToad: Nyr? What are you doing here now? What's it been, coupla weeks?
NyrOfFear: a little less.. I've just been busy.
Zer0Life: righttt. especially that re-intro, i think we know what uve been up to ;)
NyrOfFear: byte me.
DarkToad: Eww your puns... Maybe you shouldn't have come back??
Zer0Life: ragging aside, what do you want with them, got anything juicy planned? i mean haven't you been playing that game?
NyrOfFear: uhh yeahh, thats why i wanna know why stuff is all fricked up haha
DarkToad: And lemme guess, you think you can just go in there and fix it for them?
NyrOfFear: M-Maybe.. :flushed:
Zer0Life: lmao
Zer0Life: so then what is it
Zer0Life: i dont feel like u should get too involved with anything on that scale (edited)
NyrOfFear: ughh im actually just interested in the crazy rumors im sure youre aware of
NyrOfFear: genuinely curious
NyrOfFear: this stuff is mad susss ykno?
DarkToad: Ohh that biotech shit??
NyrOfFear: yup.
NyrOfFear: im sketched out by this and wanna figure this out before spending any more time in that game
Zer0Life: well if its just recon it cant be so bad i guess
Zer0Life: plus the world probably deserves to know anyway
NyrOfFear: so do you know anything?
Zer0Life: nope. sorry.
Zer0Life: but you should just try cracking into scios public facing stuff. if any of this is true then no doubt youll find some connection in there
DarkToad: Uhh yeah, what he said ^^
NyrOfFear: figures as much..
NyrOfFear: thanks anyways
DarkToad: Let us know if you need any additional pawns. I've been itching to get involved with something
Zer0Life: just stay safe alright
NyrOfFear: right
--7:51 PM--
DoomBear: aww.. sorry to hear about that! it's been crazy watching the news from outside..
DoomBear: such a shame, ive been wanting to try that game out for a long time! just never got around to it >.<
NyrOfFear: ykno, every time i come back to this chat these names make me question why im still here
NyrOfFear: but i appreciate the sentiment, bear. thanks
DarkToad: Huh? Even you, lover of awful puns?
NyrOfFear: theyre not even puns or anything! you just forced intentionally edgey and cringey names on everyone.
Zer0Life: just a little insurance for everyone not to take it so seriously and get caught up in some real shit
Zer0Life: after all who wants to be outed with a callsign like 'NyrOfFear' ;)
NyrOfFear: ughhhhh
DoomBear: i actually kind of like mine :3
NyrOfFear: lucky..
DarkToad: Make any progress yet?? I'm antsy over here
NyrOfFear: uhhh well actually i got hungry and made food instead
NyrOfFear: tacos
Zer0Life: yummy
DarkToad: Lameee. The lack of progress. Not the tacos.
NyrOfFear: yeah well i needed some kinda fuel for the long sedentary road ahead
Zer0Life: well good luck
DarkToad: Cheering you on from the sidelines btw
NyrOfFear: yeahh, see ya. prob be dark for a good while
DoomBear: good luck on your misshun! :3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Message #general |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nyr - "Hahhhh.. Just as fruitless as always.."
Nyr ~ Mmm.. What if..? Worth a shot I guess..
A search is run for the term 'Syr'.
Nyr - "Agghh.."
Nyr ~ Of course.. That's way too broad. Millions of unrelated results..
Nyr ~ But I don't have anything else to go on! She could barely remember anything herself..
Nyr ~ I'd rather not have to resort to hacking the government trying to get IDs for all the people named Syr..
Nyr -"..."
Nyr - "Wait..!"
Nyr - "W-What was it she said..? There was a name, just before everything exploded..!"
Nyr ~ Ahhh, think!
Nyr ~ Aaa.. Aeehh.. Aahh.. Aii.. Air..?
Nyr - "Aaron..?!"
Nyr ~ T-That's right! She said "where's Aaron" before.. That must be her brother!
The name is quickly added to the search.
Nyr - "..No..? But.."
Nyr ~ Looking at them in front of me.. Wait.. Of course, if their parents are gonna give one of 'em a goofy name then why not both..?
Nyr - "Ayron.. Maybe..?"
Nyr - "Ah-ha!"
Nyr - "..."
Nyr - "H-Huh..?"
Nyr - "N-No...."
'2 Reported Missing, Biotech Company Pending Investigation'
Nyr ~ T-There's no way that's just a coincidence right..? Do I want it to be?
Nyr ~ Wait but.. That's right..! She said her brother was-!
Nyr - "Ghhh..!"
Nyr ~ Ughhh it's so obvious now! What happened to you wasn't a coincidence at all.. It happened precisely because you are who you are! The only coincidence is just that-!
Nyr - "You met.. me...."
Nyr - "Hahhh.."
Nyr ~ I shouldn't be getting excited over this.. But it does make my job a little easier so, thanks..
Nyr ~ Though I can't help but think maybe I could've stopped this before it got so bad if I hadn't been so scared to find out..
Nyr - "Ughhh.."
-Click-
Mid Saturday, Syron Oh was-
Nyr - "Haaaanggg on..! That's her real name?!"
Nyr - "Well I can see why she would just go by Syr.."
Nyr ~ Parents these days are getting so wacky with their naming. Guess they just thought it'd be cute if she matched her brother..?
Nyr ~ Though I'm one to talk with a name like this.
Nyr ~ Wait.. I gave myself this name..!
Nyr ~ Ehhhh.... Is that better or worse?
Nyr - "Hmph!"
Mid Saturday, Syron Oh (25) was reported missing by her employer after failing to show up to work for several days. Her only known family, her brother, Ayron Oh (38), was also unable to be located once authorities started to investigate.
The story quickly escalated after Ayron's employer, a local biotech company, was asked for information. The company was quick to deny involvement, but refused to provide any of the requested documents, citing confidentiality issues.
All the more troubling is that the night after anyone last saw Syron, a strange altercation between a woman on a motorcycle and the guards was captured on security cameras outside the entrance to the company campus.
While no identifying information was available in the footage, the entire circumstance is highly suspect. Also of note is that this incident was not reported to police.
The company was quickly placed under investigation, but thus far no outside party has been allowed inside. It is unlikely progress will be made any time soon due to contentious legislation prioritizing the intellectual property of tech companies working closely with the government.
They must be given ample time to prepare for any investigation in order to conceal classified information, and all requested documents must be redacted.
Though the concern is that in a situation like this the company may use this time to hide evidence of what happened in order to protect themselves.
Not much else is known about the-
Nyr - "A-Alright.. Enough of that.."
Nyr ~ I've got all I need to know..
Nyr ~ It all seems so obvious from my perspective.. But.. I'm the only one who knows what happened to her..
Nyr ~ Sort've..
Nyr ~ Welp..
Nyr ~ Stage two: Forbidden research..
Nyr ~ Yes, great naming scheme, me..
Nyr ~ Okay, well start simple, just probe their public facing stuff.. And anything that matches this expression..
Nyr ~ Ah..! No way!
Nyr ~ This is a little too easy.. Is this like a trap or something..?!
Nyr ~ No no.. Calm down, it's only easy for me..
Nyr - "..."
Nyr - "That sounded so egotistical.."
Nyr ~ Don't get cocky!
Nyr ~ So.. Seems like they're using a known framework here for running their network and remote access stuff.
Nyr ~ That's fine in itself.. It's known to be pretty solid. But this version still isn't patched for a new type of threat.
Nyr ~ You'd think such a secretive high-tech company would be more on top of security, but just goes to show how dumb everyone really is.
Nyr ~ Okay well.. To be fair not everyone has access to a research-grade quantum computer with a custom decryption algorithm..
Nyr ~ But look, if I can do it so can some foreign government!
Nyr - "Jeez!"
Nyr - "[Sighs..]"
Nyr ~ At least university paid off for something. Though, my god, installing that backdoor in the lab was one of the most stressful things I've ever done..
Nyr ~ I really wasn't cut out for field work..
Nyr - "What time is it..?"
Nyr - "Ehh.."
Nyr ~ Let's just hope there's no intrepid students staying late night over break to use this dang thing. It's gonna be hella sus if anyone's around to see their state-of-the-art machine whirr to life on its own..
Nyr ~ Here goes..
Nyr ~ I've already got the decryption code but.. It needs to be rewritten slightly for this specific task..
Nyr - "This syntax sucksss..!"
Nyr ~ I never want to write another superposition in my life!
Nyr ~ Whatever, now just to-
Nyr ~ Whopss, I'm getting ahead of myself here, I don't even have the hash to crack yet..
Nyr ~ So if I recall correctly, there's a really stupid trick here..
Nyr ~ This software has a dumb thing that allows a temporary guest account with full read access to be made, I guess for smaller operations as an ease of use thing. But honestly it's just a security nightmare waiting to happen. Even if the feature is disabled, with a little forceful finegaling of the commands you can get it to create the account anyway..!
Nyr - "Ahp buh buhp buhh!"
Nyr ~ A little command spam here.. A little memory manipulation there.. Toss in a buffer overflow.. Prefetch prediction abuse with the right timing, and a simple request later..
Nyr - "Whammo."
Nyr ~ A hash for a randomly generated user returned right to me..!
Nyr ~ Usually you would need someone's internal help to log in to this account, and it's not possible to get the real key just from this.
Nyr ~ Buttt obviously with the right tool you can smash any lock!
Nyr ~ Feed that to the quantum bad-boy and..
Nyr - "Got em..!"
Nyr ~ Brute forcing becomes painfully simple when you can try every possibility simultaneously.
Nyr ~ So then we just log in with this..
Nyr - "Phew.."
Nyr ~ Now, if they aren't complete idiots, someone will definitely notice this account.. But it should be fine, all I need is an hour or so to fetch any data that might be useful..
Nyr ~ Unfortunately I only have read access, I won't be able to affect anything about the game from here even if I do find something..
Nyr ~ But still, there has to be something here to help me find her..!
Nyr - "Is that..?"
Nyr ~ Boy it sure is..
Nyr ~ The source code for In-Worlds, right here..!
Nyr ~ If there was any doubt left, it's gone now..
Nyr - "Yoink..!"
Nyr ~ I'm sure this will come in handy later..
⧖
Nyr - 'Human ACP Test One Incident Report..?'
Nyr - "The hell is this..?"
'Despite numerous animal tests, a critical miscalculation occurred when formulating the processing requirements for recalibrating a human network.'
Nyr - "W-What the.."
Nyr ~ I don't like the sound of this..
'The error means that though the coupling process was as accurate as predicted, not enough resources were available during the next crucial phase of remapping the data to the new neuronal medium.'
'The deficiency resulted in near instantaneous corruption of the target network as the inline stream could not be captured simultaneously, resulting in sporadically absent sectors.'
'It is currently unclear if this damage is reversible. Technology is still unable to provide redundancy of the coupling due to the inherent sensitivity of the process. And with contemporary methods the time window for transfer is much too short.'
'Theoretically all the data was stored before the failed recalibration took place, it's possible the holes could be repaired if the mechanism of corruption could be identified. But so far all attempts to diagnose the problem have done more harm than good. So it is highly unlikely this type of damage will be repaired.'
'The unique storage medium prevents any direct reading of the information, and any other attempts to glimpse the internal structure seem to further increase existing damage.'
'When fed the standard input data set, the resulting output is inconsistent and borderline unresponsive. There is no sign of consciousness. It is likely that the forced activation of these pathways is also resulting in unwanted damage as the built-in mechanisms try to reconnect broken links and forge new connections. This usually is quite successful, but with the damage so uniform throughout the network there is nothing to anchor itself to. Broken sectors simply link to other broken areas, slowly increasing the size of each deformity.'
'Furthermore, similar to the recalibration stage, merely keeping the structure online consumes enormous resources. This leads to growing concerns on the feasibility of keeping the malfunctioning network online.'
'We will continue to carefully probe this model and try to make progress, if for nothing else than to extract all we can learn from such limited data. The priority is to find a way to avoid such mistakes in the future. It's currently theorized that some property of the human network structure is resulting in dramatically increased power consumption. Completely counter-intuitively, it seems the requirements do not scale linearly with overall complexity.'
Nyr - "T-This is.."
Nyr - "Some kind of brain.. scan..?"
Nyr ~ And they didn't have enough processing power to run it, so it corrupted itself and now the brain is all wibbly..?
Nyr ~ God I hope whoever that was didn't experience any consciousness for that..
Nyr ~ By the sound of it.. They created some kind of custom architecture to run it on, so I doubt we're dealing with traditional computing..
Nyr ~ This complicates things..
Nyr - "Ughh.."
Nyr - "There's another part to this though.."
'Part two of this report covers an additional unexpected coupling attempt that occurred by accident due to outside forces. How this event happened with such strict security measures in place is not fully known and is under investigation. The lab has since been placed on an increased level of alert.'
'While not intended, the result of this attempt varies greatly from the first and is valuable to study in detail as well.'
'The cause of such a different result almost entirely comes down to an altercation that transpired before the accident took place. Some critical equipment was damaged in the process, causing a certain part of the recalibration process to fail outright.'
'Usually this would result in catastrophic failure, but the area in question was rather serendipitous in being the region controlling memory. With such a large section offline, the processing requirements were lowered drastically, leading to a successful recalibration of the remaining areas.'
'While important, the memory region is not crucial for core operation of the network. It simply means the target is without memory of their existence before the transfer. This does not apply to more specific kinds of memory such as language and personality.'
Nyr - "N-No.."
Nyr - "T-That can't be.."
Nyr ~ But it lines up too perfectly..
Nyr ~ Her brother and-
Nyr ~ Syr.. With no memory..
'However, with the self-repairing mechanisms now fully functional with a healthy core and with the memory region merely offline, not corrupted, the network has been able to slowly reconnect the separated region resulting in a near flawless reintegration of the subjects memory.'
'While tragic in the first case, this second outcome is quite fortuitous in it's potential to solve the problems of the initial failure. Though likely more stressful on the subject, this method of forcefully disabling the subject's memory region may be a promising avenue to explore in the future to ensure higher chances of successful recalibration of the target network.'
'For now, the single successful subject will be closely monitored for any issues that may arise. Unfortunately, due to aforementioned processing resource concerns, no further human testing may be conducted until absolute safety can be guaranteed and the procedure can be optimized to reduce processing constraints.'
Nyr - "W-What the hell is going on..?!"
Nyr - "Where are you..?"
Nyr ~ Even if this all does line up, then.. Why are they missing..?!
Nyr ~ Okay so what, they scanned their brains with some weird machine.. That's very creepy and messed up and all but how does that lead to them being all.. y'know..!
Nyr ~ And how is this connected to the game..?
Nyr ~ There's still more to this, I gotta keep looking..
Nyr - "W-Wait!"
Nyr ~ Does this mean t-there's.. two Syrs out there?!
Nyr ~ Only one of them knows about me then..
Nyr ~ And naturally, I absolutely fell for a virtual girl..
Nyr - "Aghhhhhh.."
Nyr ~ Of course it all makes sense now how she never left the game..
Nyr ~ And how she was oblivious to everything..
Nyr ~ Weird falling out of the sky thing..
Nyr ~ No memory..
Nyr - "Hahhhhhh.."
Nyr - "I-I think I'm gonna be sick...."
Nyr ~ I-It's not like I could've known.. This kind of tech has never existed before..
Nyr ~ And she just seemed so real..
Nyr - "No...."
Nyr - "She.. She is real..!"
Nyr ~ Who cares if it isn't organic.. That's a real person's consciousness, as valuable as any other!
Nyr ~ The only difference is the name of the world they live in..
Nyr ~ Or am I just telling myself that to justify having a literal VR girlfriend..
Nyr - "Bwehhhhh.."
Nyr ~ Either way it doesn't matter, I have to solve this if I want to see either of them ever again!
Nyr - "Wait so.."
Nyr ~ If she ended up in the game after being scanned.. Then that must mean..
Nyr - "T-The game is a virtual testbed for artificial consciousness..?!"
Nyr - "O-Ohhp..!"
Nyr ~ I probably shouldn't say things like that out loud..
Nyr ~ This is unbelievable..
Nyr ~ But the game has been around for years.. And they're only just now getting to the tests?
Nyr ~ I guess they needed to perfect the world before making full on brains live in there..
Nyr ~ But then, why open the game to the whole world..? Isn't that a bit dangerous??
Nyr ~ I guess it's a nice way to fund the operation but..
Nyr - "No.."
Nyr ~ There's no way it's about that..
Nyr ~ This is just a great way to get an insane number of test subjects with nobody questioning anything..!
Nyr ~ They're probably collecting data from everyone's brain and like, using it to perfect their simulations..! Or worse.. Advertise to them!
Nyr - "..."
Nyr ~ Is that really all that different from any other game that collects player behaviour data to either improve their stuff or to sell for whatever reason though..?
Nyr ~ I mean maybe it's a little more personal but.. Idunno..
Nyr ~ Why am I almost defending this all of a sudden..?!
Nyr ~ It's messed up okay!
Nyr - "Whew.."
Nyr - "What's next..?"
Nyr ~ What was that thing called? It just said ACP..
Nyr ~ Searching..
Nyr - "Aha..!"
Nyr ~ Atomic coupling prototype..?
Nyr - "Eh..?"
Nyr ~ There's all sorts of design documents and procedures in here..
Nyr ~ I can't possibly go through all of it right now but I should at least get the gist.
⧖
Nyr - "Hhhhh.."
Nyr ~ Well I barely unstood any of that, but at least the process isn't that complicated..
Nyr ~ The system seems to take care of most of it, so if I ever need to do a weird brain scan I guess I'm qualified now..!
Nyr - "Hmm.."
Nyr ~ Some stuff about animal testing..?
Nyr - "Oh!"
Nyr ~ That's right, that report briefly mentioned animal tests..!
Nyr ~ That would make a lot more sense than going straight to humans but..
Nyr - "Wait.."
Nyr - "No no no.. Don't tell me.. Why didn't I put that together before?!"
Nyr ~ I need to confirm this.. But I don't want to!
Nyr - "Ughh! Okay I'll read it..!"
'...these specimens are then placed into the virtual research environment and allowed to roam freely. At first they are placed in forms similar to their original as not to be too much of a shock. But after an initial training period their virtual form can be changed to fit many different designs and the network will adjust its existing connections to suit the new abilities, showing the incredible adaptability of the brain.'
'When given extra offensive capability, it's noted that creatures can become more aggressive. While not entirely surprising, these developments are quite interesting. Further research is required on the limits of how far this can be pushed. But for the time being, it's best to match each archetype to a similar virtual form.'
Nyr - "Nooo! Jeeez whyyy..?!"
Nyr ~ Why does this situation just keep getting worse..?!
Nyr ~ I mean I guess this is comparatively not that bad to me but.. That's just selfish I mean.. All those animals..?! All the beasts in the game were.. simulations of animals from the real world..?!
Nyr - "Hhhh.."
Nyr ~ All that time I was essentially killing real animals.. All that distress caused by the game to them.. And not just me, there's so many players..!
Nyr - "..Oh great there's more.."
'In order to make the specimen more resilient to research purposes, their ability to feel pain has been forcefully removed, or rather the input to their network that would result in pain is limited to just a few percent. This allows them to continue fighting in the environment in a more desirable capacity, and overcomes many stresses involved with fight-or-flight responses.'
'Upon the virtual death of each beast, the network is simply recycled as the network fades offline and back again resulting in nothing more than the sensation of sleep. Networks are then respawned along with their virtual form after a brief resting period.'
Nyr - "Well.. I guess it could be a lot worse.."
Nyr ~ But still.. It can't feel good to constantly be under attack like that.. And all the limb severing..?! Just because they don't feel the pain doesn't mean that's not stressful!
Nyr ~ I know that one first-hand now..
Nyr - "[Shudders]"
Nyr - "H-How are they getting away with-?!"
Nyr - "Right.."
Nyr ~ They're doing it all in secret because it's so unethical..
Nyr ~ Alright so, I feel like I have an okay grasp of what's going on..
Nyr ~ But this doesn't explain anything about the chaotic situation in the game!
Nyr ~ Nor what happened to the real Syr.. Let alone the deal with the virtual one!
Nyr - "Hnnn.."
Nyr - "This is really starting to get to me.."
Nyr ~ Maybe it's time to look through the source code and try to find any kind of strange bug or something that could cause the weird simulated AI system to wig out..?
⧖
Nyr - "..."
Nyr - "Uhuh.."
Nyr - "Bah bah blah blehhh.."
Nyr - "Yep yep, uhh.."
Nyr - "Yeah.."
Nyr ~ Okay so.. I hate this stupid custom language they have for this deep-VR programming stuff..
Nyr ~ The syntax is awful. It's barely legible at a glance, and it doesn't help that the engine is written separately in a lower-level language..
Nyr ~ But at least based on what I can see, there's some kind of functionality in place for sharing resources under high load by cycling quickly between everything and discarding low priority instructions. A system quaintly called 'Resource Compression'....
Nyr ~ Seems promising considering what I read before..
Nyr ~ However I feel like it wasn't tested very well, I don't think they were ever counting on this being seriously necessary..
Nyr ~ There's a fault here where the discarded instructions are messing up address counters and causing desynchronisation of executing entities..!
Nyr ~ Meaning.. The wrong instructions are run for each beast, and with messed up values as well..
Nyr ~ It's not hard to see how that lead to the issues seen in-game..
Nyr ~ But..
Nyr - "Aghh..!"
Nyr ~ I can't fix it from here..!
Nyr ~ And I'm not sure if I'd even want to, considering they haven't done it yet either..
Nyr ~ There must be a reason..?
⧖
Nyr - "Huh, what's this? It's fairly new.."
Nyr ~ More stuff about Syr's scan maybe..?
'Through continued monitoring, it's been confirmed that the subject's memory has continued to become reconnected by the neural reparation mechanisms. Though this is perfectly in line with the predictions made initially, this has begun to pose a serious threat to the overall system.'
'As more of the subject's network returns to functioning capacity, so increases the processing power required to keep it online. It was adequate initially, but as requirements grow, the system is fighting for resources between all current entities. This conflict is resulting in much undesired behaviour in the virtual environment as some networks have begun to share the same resources, causing in the minor cases a few malfunctioning game functions, and in the greater cases wholesale temporary combination of networks.'
'The concern is that if this continues for a prolonged period of time, and if the intensity of the issue continues to increase, that it could begin to create permanent corruptions in all the afflicted networks.'
Nyr - "O-Okay.."
Nyr ~ That explains a few things.. sort've..
Nyr ~ But man that sounds reallyyy bad..
Nyr ~ Like, if I can't fix this somehow, Syr could..
Nyr ~ She.. She could like..
Nyr - "Aghhh..!"
Nyr ~ I can't even phrase it properly..! How do you phrase it when your virtual girlfriend's brain gets all corrupted and like.. dies?!?
Nyr - "H-How am I supposed to deal with this..?!"
Nyr - "Hhhh... Calm down.."
Nyr ~ It's not over yet..
Nyr ~ But.. I just can't figure it out.. Why haven't they just rescaled the system..?!
Nyr ~ I saw in the source code that the entire server stack in control of both the virtual environment and its simulated AI that it's designed to be scaled on the fly, it should be possible to just add more processors to handle the increased load..!
Nyr ~ And I know it can't be that hard, maybe the AI itself is a proprietary medium, but from looking at the code I know it all runs on standard hardware..
Nyr ~ Or at least bring some of the other AI offline to lower demand..?
Nyr ~ Maybe all the animal networks aren't enough to make up for the deficiency..? I'd say maybe it'd have something to do with the game, but I think at this point most players would rather a beastless world than what's currently happening..
Nyr ~ The only hunch I have for all of this is just that doing so would damage some of these networks or whatever..?
Nyr ~ Even if that was true.. Why do they care so much about that one broken network that they'd risk all this..?
Nyr ~ Based on everything I saw and just some common sense.. The networks should be fine even after an update, otherwise they'd have to start over with all the animal AI every time they update or something.. So it must be something to do with that other scan..
Nyr - "This whole thing just gives me a bad feeling.."
Nyr - "But.. What the heck do I do now..?"
Nyr ~ Okay, presuming I'm right about the reasoning, then it should be fine if I manually rescale the server to fix the resource issues.
Nyr ~ ..And I guess while I'm at it I can apply a simple patch to the AI code..
Nyr ~ But how the hell would I do that? I can't get access here.. And what would I even scale it to? It's not like I can just-
Nyr - "Waittt.."
Nyr ~ I basically never used it because it was just an experiment and I'd feel too bad to take advantage of it but.. I do technically still have a botnet lying dormant with millions of computers across the planet..
Nyr ~ This is.. a valid cause to use it for.. right?
Nyr - "I.. don't think I have any other choice.."
Nyr ~ Still.. I'd need physical access to the-
Nyr's Subconscious ~ Bi/O is located in this city..
Nyr - "..."
Nyr's Subconscious ~ You could..
Nyr - "Nope."
Nyr - "Uh-Uh."
Nyr - "Not a chance..!"
Nyr - "I'm not going to in-!"
Nyr - "Aghh..!"
Nyr ~ Not out loud..!
Nyr ~ I'm not going to infiltrate a high-tech bio corporation and physically hack their servers to fix a video game and save my, again, literal VR girlfriend..!
Nyr - "..."
Nyr - "S-She's not even my girlfriend yet..!!!"
Nyr ~ God, how am I this pathetic..!?
Nyr - "But.. What else am I gonna do..?"
Nyr ~ What option do I have..?
Nyr ~ If I don't do anything.. It seems they'd rather everything else come down than lose their first test subject..! It must be more important to them somehow.. But that doesn't matter to me, so I could just..
Nyr - "Aghh! But-"
Nyr ~ But I could barely install that backdoor in the university..!
Nyr ~ This is like.. A thousand-
Nyr ~ No, a million-billion times harder than that..!!
Nyr ~ Not to mention how seriouslyyy bad it would be if I got caught.. At the very least it's gonna be biggg jail time.. If not worse..
Nyr ~ I mean if these guys are willing to hold Syr and her brother hostage or something.. Then what'll happen to me..? If they haven't already like.. k-k-killed them..? Will they kill me..??
Nyr - "N-No.. Calm down.. That's far too drastic.."
Nyr ~ I'm going to need a level head if I'm gonna pull this off at all..
Nyr - "Ughhh.. I can't believe I'm even considering this..!"
Nyr ~ And for her..
Nyr ~ Though one could argue I'm just selfishly trying to get my VR girlfriend back..
Nyr - "..."
Nyr ~ Potential VR girlfriend..
Nyr - "Ohhh it sounds so ridiculous.."
Nyr - "I'm such a loser.."
Nyr ~ But at least let me be your loser..
Nyr - "Why am I so cringe?!"
Nyr - "Just a never ending stream of cringeee..!"
Nyr - "..."
Nyr - "Sheesh.."
Nyr ~ Alright don't beat yourself up over here..
Nyr ~ You got this..
Nyr ~ I've.. Got this..!
Nyr ~ It's not just some dumb thing about a virtual girlfriend, I'm trying to save a couple peoples live's, after all..!
Nyr ~ Yeah.. That's it!
Nyr - "[Sighs..]"
Nyr - "Guess I'll just message the chat with updates and ask for advice.. Go from there.."
End of chapter seventeen