[2/17/17, 5:07:13 PM] Chrome Dragon: … I had the weirdest fucking dream. Anonymous Pony: Eeeek, very scary? Anonymous Pony: Was it about fluffy baby animals? Anonymous Pony: With wiggly noses? Anonymous Pony: Or maybe dwagons? With wiggly noses. Chrome Dragon: Well, it involved getting assassinated with an ionizing-radiation death-ray, so… Anonymous Pony: Very ouchies. Anonymous Pony: Sometimes me dream of cheese. Chrome Dragon: And that’s when it started getting really meta and turning into me arguing with myself as a DM. Anonymous Pony: Eeeeeeek. Chrome Dragon: Someone was about to get a noble title - prince, I think - and I was on the bodyguard team. Chrome Dragon: I got popped with … a particle beam, maybe? - out of an air vent, and chased them in there before I passed out. Of course, an AR prompt offered to let me skip straight to the mass scene without experiencing dying. Anonymous Pony: Owies, eeek. Chrome Dragon: Of course, I was dizzied, nauseated, and passing out. Chrome Dragon: … I’m not sure what I tapped, but clearly it wasn’t, in hindsight, the “skip" button. Anonymous Pony: Eeeeeek. Anonymous Pony: Anonymous Pony pets nosie lots Chrome Dragon: So when I wake up in someone’s driveway, in a lawn chair, I’m shaky, and queasy, and can’t remember how I got there. Chrome Dragon: I’m also starving and help myself to a slice of pizza. Chrome Dragon: I get the feeling that whoever it was was some kind of military, doubly so in hindsight. Anonymous Pony: Very weird, eeeek. /me pets face Chrome Dragon: We talked, and I told him and his guest what happened - they were watching TV and hanging out in a garage with an open door, being used as a securable patio. Chrome Dragon: I stole a couple chocolate-chip cookies, as my hands started to shake like I had five-minute-onset Parkinsons Anonymous Pony: Anonymous Pony wears dwaggie tail like a stole Anonymous Pony: Sounds very weird, eeeeeeeek. Chrome Dragon: We talk some more, and he offers to shorten it when it gets really bad. Chrome Dragon: I put down the second cookie - I can’t eat it for reasons of nausea, satiation, and can’t get it in my mouth with those tremors - and ask if I can plug into a computer before I go. Chrome Dragon: He sits me down in front of a cyberdeck, and I plug my head into it with a TRRS audio cable. Chrome Dragon: USB2 signaling, perhaps? Anonymous Pony: Anonymous Pony pets tail and eeeeks Chrome Dragon: And a very, very video-gamey UI pops up in my top-left peripheral vision, a pale amber rectangle with brighter amber text. Chrome Dragon: Following a spherical contour, like my perception is a globe… it stays at a constant distance from my eyeball, or something. Chrome Dragon: I find three executable programs on my implants. Chrome Dragon: I don’t recall the other two, but #2 was called “brainfry” so I try running that. Chrome Dragon: Almost immediately, I’m very close to throwing up the nice man’s pizza on his garage floor, if not his computer, and I’m just internally begging for a Benadryl or two right now. Anonymous Pony: Very ouchies, eeeeeeeek. Chrome Dragon: Which I probably end up getting, since the nausea subsides. Chrome Dragon: Then I feel a prick on … shoulder? Arm? Right shoulder, I think. Chrome Dragon: And feel all warm and fuzzy - I think his idea of palliative care for a radiation ghost was a massive dose of mil-spec painkillers. Anonymous Pony: That sounds like good approach probably. Chrome Dragon: Chrome Dragon nods Chrome Dragon: Probably was, in hindsight. Anonymous Pony: Just run out the clock, then OD on morphine. Chrome Dragon: Mmm-hm. Chrome Dragon: Then my perspective shifts, and I’m someone else, following my own trail. Chrome Dragon: I find the garage, and have the briefly bewildering experience of finding my own body, all curled up in ways that look like painful cramping happened. Chrome Dragon: Of course, I also know what “brainfry” is, now, since I haven’t had radiation-induced strokes - simple epithelium is the first to go, so I’d had a series of small arterial dissections, I think. Chrome Dragon: It’s a program to dump your memories, personality, and brain wiring to external storage, which recognizes the onset of brain death and switches to a more destructive scanning mode once you’re not capable of suffering any more. Chrome Dragon: So I step over myself, and knock on the door, and ask if I can see their computer, please. [2/17/17, 5:01:19 PM] Chrome Dragon: Words are exchanged, and it’s … Chrome Dragon: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/07/back-to-the-future-the-trs-80-model-100/ Chrome Dragon: Something a lot like a TRS-80, with an afterthought of a vacuum-fluorescent display or something like that. Anonymous Pony: Eeeeeek. Chrome Dragon: (The last character jacked in, after all; this is just a really nice status display) Chrome Dragon: I plug in a USB key, do some typing… “Looks like that program he ran left fifty petabytes of log files…” Chrome Dragon: I’m trying to type “cp brainfry.log /volumes/usb1s01/brainfry.log” when they spin the keyboard out of my hands, and words are exchanged, maybe slightly threatening. Chrome Dragon: I know that “my” soul’s on the line, literally, so that’s when the sweating starts. Anonymous Pony: Eeeeeeeeeeek. Chrome Dragon: I answer, spin the keyboard back to start typing again, and … Chrome Dragon: The phone rings and wakes me up. Chrome Dragon: Radiation-poisoning-me is a buck, though, “bucking” the usual trend. I think “ego-hunter” me may be rocking some kind of feline body, but it could have been another cervine just as easily. Chrome Dragon: And I only learned what I looked like when I found my body, so no reason to know what my second avatar looks like. Anonymous Pony: Very fluffy, eek? /me pets fluff Chrome Dragon: Not fluffy at all. Chrome Dragon: Shorter-haired coat. Chrome Dragon: … I also kind of get the feeling that the army medic (I suspect) sat there with me and stroked my head until the convulsions started, then he got up and left out of some combination of giving me some privacy at my most vulnerable, and not wanting to watch that part, but since an unreliable memory is part of the narrative, I don’t have clear memories of it. And strictly speaking, my point-of-view character would be brain-dead for part of that scene. Chrome Dragon: On the other hand, if cloning works, he could be revived with memories of every last moment right up to when BRAINFRY started destructively measuring synapses. So, there’s that. Chrome Dragon: … I kind of suspect that the guy following me was a clone of me, come to think of it. Thus the personal, deeply visceral fear of losing part of me.