Brightling Archive #229821 - Anecdotal experience of Wel Enders. part 1


It all started when I was a kid, messing around hooking up shape receptors to illegal nodes I found out in Denshen and Torpor to get free games.  I just figured that if it was out there then I should have it: it was all very straightforward and I had a good time.

Unlike other kids who messed about on the shape, I was good in school.  My parents just saw my grades and let me do whatever I wanted.  I never got into trouble.

Then I started to see things.

It started when I probed this unmarked system in Loss; this was back when Enyo:Nomad started doing all those predictions and they were on the news every day.  Everyone thought they were the shit.  Anyway, this system was a kind of directory for part of their whole network, so I thought I’d have a run around.

Eventually, I find this construct; like a green big chamber with a glass altar at the centre.  Part of it was geographically in Torpor; another part was in Corteca.

The altar was an improb - you know, those things that are geometrically impossible in the real but artists build them in the shape to wank over. Anyway, this thing curved in on itself from different angles: one side looked like a snake biting another snake’s tail, another angle looked like these two arms grasping each other.  It was suggesting those things, rather than displaying them...you know how it is with that stuff.

Anyway, this place is completely sealed - I can’t get any lines in or out - just patch in from where I am and look around.  You can only get in there with a full sensorium.  Again, I’d seen things like it before but mostly to stop people screwing around with games or movies.

I started going there a couple of times a week - I guess I liked it there.  Also, I could patch out there if things got a bit complicated while I was trying to get into other shape descriptors.

So, the last time I went there, I see this woman sitting on the edge of the altar.  I normally don’t like change in constructs, but this was something else - creepy as hell.  So I try to patch out, except I’m completely locked.  I start dropping workarounds, but I can’t get any lines out so most things don’t work, and I’m frantically trying to compile a switch when she shouts out, “The failsafe is at Nashar!” and then she bites her own arm.

I’m talking hard here, she just goes for that thing.  I used to be quite into horror when I was a kid but this was just straightforward and calm; no excessive blood or anything like that.  She just makes a wound and starts biting into it like an animal, looking up at me the whole time.  It’s not that she’s trying to harm herself; her object is just to consume herself.  

Obviously, there’s worse things you could imagine, but it was the intention of the thing.  It wasn’t trying to scare me, just get me a message of some kind.