[Round 1, Day 4] promise I'll be kind

[trollofthree]

Characters: Gino and YOU
Format: Any
This log is: OPEN
Location: Everywhere.
Summary: [palette swap] Ordering a present for Anya: a day's wait at in the lobby. Realising you've got a camera just in time for everyone to go multicoloured: priceless.
Warnings: Gino.

[Gino is just wandering around the campus, camera in hand, taking photos of everyone for posterity. There's already several of him, in several fetching shades of blue, so you're not alone. Say cheese, he's just snapped a shot of you!]

Comments

[trollofthree]

A flash, and then Gino was lowering the camera to smile at her properly.

"Thanks! Think it's permanent?" He tugged at his fringe, which was a perfect example of 'royal blue', then leaned down to flick at hers. He'd seen her going into the computer room the evening before, and she'd been in there a long time before she left, looking sick and shaken. Something had happened in there, and her approaching him here just confirmed that.

He'd let her say that, though. For now, photos.

[summerstars]

She barely managed to not wince back as Gino flicked at her hair, and then looked up at him.

"... No. I-- I don't think it's permanent. They wouldn't..." How do you explain something like what she'd seen, done?

"Gino... I went to---" Grenn paused to look around, but no, one else seemed to be even remotely close to hear. "Yesterday, I went to hack the mainframe. See if I could interrupt or bug the holographic tech." Grenn rubbed her face with her hands, briefly hiding it.

"You know what happened, Gino? The whole room disappeared when they discovered me after I did... er, something." She finally looked back up at him, to see what he'd say.

[trollofthree]

"You tried to hack it?" He was actually surprised. He'd thought she'd just triggered some kind of normal penalty, but... "Man, they let you off lightly, if you're walking around this morning. What happ--" Oh, oh wait. "You did this?" He gestured to... well, the entire rainbow-coloured student body.

[summerstars]

She had to hide her face again, beacuse, frag, this was embarrassing and she felt guilty.

"Yes. Yes I did. The computer... well, all of them... Said something about having encountered an error and then needing an emergency reboot... I, er... Think that emergency reboot wasn't enough, or they think this is funny," Grenn mumbled, her voice further muffled by her hands. Then she sighed and straghtened.

"And I was dizzy and felt ill the whole evening and night... I... still don't feel right, really," Grenn paused, but there was no way to tell if her skin was an adverse colour, considering the mossy green.

"Gino... They can kill us however many times they want to, until our brains can't take the information." Grenn gritted her teeth and shook her head. "I have seen people die from overload from a simulation. It's not pretty."

[trollofthree]

"A simulation?" Gino's hand was halfway to Grenn when she stopped talking, and he held it there for a moment as his head tilted. "What d'you mean?" After that pause, he rested the back of his hand against her forehead. Yeah, she still felt warm. Weird. "... So they actually made you sick, huh."

[summerstars]

"Yeah..." Another sigh, and since Gino still had his hand on her forehead, she tugged on the hair on the side of her face instead.

"Virtual reality, Gino. Like a video game, but actually being inside it." She wasn't sure if she was overdoing the explanation, but at least he would have references for all of those terms.

"I mean, I'm not that great at hacking, but I'm decent. But it felt like trying to change game files while you're playing the game, and... Remember what the announcer said? 'Maintenance'?"

[trollofthree]

"Not really," he said, honestly. His dream had been extremely hazy, apart from the killing and... well. That sort of thing. "I'll take your word for it, though."

[summerstars]

She was an adult (well, by a few months, and juridically speaking). She would not whine over the fact that she couldn't get him to have some sort of revelation that she was speaking the truth.

The reaction may of course also have been influenced by the fact that she didn't feel well, yet. She still felt she should apologize, even if she wasn't sure she'd actually expressed any of the childish reaction.

"Sorry, Gino. I just... Unless these people have some amazing sort of technology, prolonged exposure to stressful situation in simulations... Brain haemorrhage is the least of what could happen..." The thought brought a brief swell of nausea, but that was probably just conencted to her still feeling sick.

[trollofthree]

"So they've got us trapped in a video game?" He sounded doubtful, though clearly he was trying to keep that particular reaction out of his voice without success. "You sure that's possible? Everything's a little too real to be a fake, an' they wouldn't trap a bunch of people just to kill them by accident."

[summerstars]

She could hear the disbelief. Not even she was so deaf to emotion in a voice she couldn't pick up on that. She supposed she could even understand the reaction; if you weren't the least bit familiar with simulation technology, it would seem rather far-fetched.

"Gino... At home, there's laws for how 'real' simulations are allowed to be, at least to the public, and there's a reason for that." Grenn fell silent for a moment, face drawn. "There's some prison sentences that're carried out in simulations... prolonged death-sentences, really, as the person is firstly completely convinced the situation's real, and that sense of reality adds to the stress..."

She shrugged and rubbed her face.
"I don't know. They're probably not after killing us, but we were the 'beta' batch, right? If we had actually died, if our brains had given up from round zero, they'd have known their 'students' can't take that strain, and could avoid it for later rounds."

In a way, she hoped she was wrong. What was even the reason for doing crap like this? But she'd been in that computer room, and while actually getting to the programming in a simulation was actually harder than doing so for a video game, it wasn't impossible.