Leaning back into the sofa I watch as my laptop whirs and whines, the fans spinning at such a rate it almost doubles as a space heater. It can't be good for the damn thing, the old gaming laptop having grown uncomfortably warm to the touch for the better part of an hour.
The Command Line whizzes past in a flurry of white text, the code flying by as a blur while whatever I had downloaded compiled itself.
"If it's a virus..." I sigh, rolling my head back as I stare for a moment at the ceiling. "Well I'll just reformat. Shame to lose everything on the drives but..." I muse, my blabbering slowing to a halt as the Command Line window vanishes and quickly re-appears.
The new window slowly churns out a set of blocky ASCII art, the separated lines forming what almost looks like some kind of form. Despite the lack of compiling the computer continues to grow warmer and louder, the fans only slowing once the form begins to finish filling itself out.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Character Creator]
[ Name: Jordan Hughes ] [ Points: -50 ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Being part of a program wasn't too bad. In fact, if it were possible for reality to be simulated by any sufficiently advance society and were they able to make more than one simulation then it's more likely than not the world itself was one of these simulations.
For the most part no one really noticed, the perfect nature of the simulation itself making it truly indistinguishable from the one true reality. And for us NPCs, well it was all we had ever known leading all to never really question it.
Many of these realities were close environments, simply made to view and research life and society. However, it had been built from the weaker consumer version which allowed for players to build a character of their own in order to explore their computer generated world.
This character creator was a robust and intensive system, from split end hair tips to the width of one's toes, everything under the sun was up for alteration and perfection. Many players didn't even play the game, instead spending their time merely focusing on building their own perfect little characters before starting over before even finishing the first.
While this full and overly powerful character creator was lost to those inside the simulation, other methods of changing things had been developed. Back end was to interact with reality itself, tumbling and brute force methods to attack the code that made up our lives even thought we didn't really understand what we were even interacting with.
Floating around the web, the 'Character Creator' had been rumored to exist for a while. To most of the urban legends it was a magical program that allowed the user to fiddle with the universe, the seemingly mystical power to change the code of our world being attributed to some form of sorcery rather than the cold and calculating code it was.
Sadly, the program itself was not nearly as robust as the real thing. This package of compiled frantic spaghetti code was merely reverse engineered based on how it effected things, the changing of digit here and there sometimes resulting in an identifiable change. From suddenly living in a tiny hamlet to waking up on an island in the pacific, the roaming program was built up by a growing and then mysteriously diminishing community as it passed from hand to hand throughout deeper parts of the web.
One thing that had been a road block for delving too deeply into the program was one strange property, the Point System. While a player from the outside could make a character however they saw fit, though with the option of playing a 'Hardcore' point locked run, those trying to retroactively change their code were stuck to some predefined amount.
This score ranged from negative to positive, with the negative being un-intuitively a better result. Living is a developed area or where food was plentiful cost more points, while living where food was scarcer or where the community was smaller and more remote refunded some level of points for other purchases.
The score itself acted as a check sum, the program making up our reality refusing to change should the NPCs suddenly have a new outcome in their score. As such, each change needed to be tested slowly and careful, with each one being countermanded with changes to other options in an effort to balance out these unknown variables.
This testing of course was dangerous, the vanishing developers being just as likely to come from the person settling into a happy life as they are to find themselves hundreds of miles from civilization or decades from the nearest computer.
I had stumbled onto the path of the program while simply browsing the web for a new hobby, the unemployment and job hunt leading to a deep sense of boredom. Hunting 'Online Cyrptids' had been something I could do from my apartment, something cheap and easy that could keep my finances in check in between filling out job applications.
It had taken weeks to find an old link, buried deep in a locked and falling apart chatroom. While it may not have been the most recent version, if that was even a thing, at least it was some sort of find after so much time wasted tracking down dead ends.
Reaching over I try to pick up the laptop, the hot plastic quickly making me realize I would not be putting this thing anywhere close to my lap. With a quick search through my old home office I quickly snatch up an old keyboard, my feet pounding against the hardwood floor as I race back to plug in the twisted USB cable.
Tapping slowly at the arrow keys I begin to navigate the roughly formatted form in the window, my tongue poking out the side of my mouth as I try to make sense of what I was looking at.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Difficulty] [Normal] [+/-0]
[Starting Community] [Conurbation] [-10]
[Starting Zone] [Grassland] [-20]
[Starting Wealth] [Middle Class] [+/- 0]
[Period] [1990's] [+/- 0]
[Family] [3] [-10]
[Education] [Graduate] [-10]
...
...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Huh..." I mutter to myself, my heart catching in my throat as I look at the roughly categorized representation of my life fill out on the screen. More filters in lower in the window, however, my gaze remains stuck on the first few options. "... Difficulty?" I coo softly, tapping at the keys as I navigate the blinking cursor up to the [Normal] option.
As I try to delete it the option itself merely begins to blink as if selected, the whole form shifting and editing itself as I tap up and down through the options. From [Very Easy] [-50] to [Insane] [+50] it quickly becomes obvious just how much of a change each would bring.
"Those are... they're the same as the whole total up top!" I croak, realizing that changing to even an [Easy] [-25] life would take some sacrifices down the line.
Still, my heart races at the thought and my lips curl into a wicked grin. This was simply too intriguing to pass up, my mind wheeling as I try to think of what I could safely edit and change.
"Let's just see... what we have..."
No comments:
Post a Comment