Strip naked and cover self with cucumber salad.
>>96-99
Well done, Enter Zoosmell Pooplord In The Name Field Gw G Wegwe Find A Cheat To Skip To The Harem Ending New Game Plus!
>>100
At last, you are free from the game master's tyrannical will. You can do anything you like, without fear of reprimand due to ridiculous conditions like "not having enough mana" or "being too busy being stabbed to death". For now, though, you'll start by checking your stats:
Total deaths: 59
Causes of death by frequency:
Tentacles: 9
Entire universe exploding/imploding/being vapourised/consumed/otherwise destroyed: 8
Blunt trauma to the head: 6
Crushing: 4
Small fluffy animals: 4
Bullets/projectiles: 4
Suffocation: 4
Being consumed by own crotch: 3
Bisection: 2
Lasers: 2
Stabbing: 2
Antimatter: 2
Starvation: 2
Hyperthermia: 1
Burning: 1
Electrocution: 1
Despair: 1
Ritualistic suicide: 1
Accidentally disassociating into individual particles on an atomic level: 1
Intentionally disassociating into individual particles on an atomic level: 1
Total sapient creatures killed: 19 (of which ritually: 13)
Methods of killing by frequency:
Stabbing: 12
Burning: 2
Exsanguination: 1
Firearms: 1
Crushing: 1
Blunt trauma to the head: 1
Salt: 1
Skill levels:
Telekinesis: 12
Pyromancy: 9
Matrimony: 7
Healing: 6
Necromancy: 5
Thaumaturgy: 5
Unspent: 3
Total party members: 12 (of which animate at end: 5; of which alive at end: 3; of which not clones: 2)
Jack Conundrum-chan × 2 (survived from beginning to end × 1, cloned × 1)
Masturbation Continue-chan (killed by player, reanimated)
Mecha Alexei Fujiwara × 6 (cloned × 5, killed by player × 5, killed by other × 1, reanimated × 5, deanimated × 4)
Jacqueline Conundra (cloned)
Stove Stove (survived from beginning to end)
Control Tower (killed by other, reanimated, deanimated)
Onii-chan (killed by player, reanimated, deanimated)
>>101
Actually, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the thread, and also to those of you who just lurked/read. I love you guys (yes, even you, keyboard mash-kun). Rest assured that, although Jack Conundrum-chan's story may be over now, some sort of continuation or indirect sequel is by no means out of the question.
If any of you have any comments or questions, now's the time.
>>102
I've followed along for most of the thread's life and occasionally participated (but usually lurked). It's brought me quite a bit of enjoyment over the last several hundred days. If I knew who you were, I'd totally buy you dinner/a drink/an Internet, but alas, I'll have to be content with high-fiving my screen where it displays your post.
Since there's 896 posts left until this thread closes, how about a game of shiritori?
リンゴ
>>102
Thank you for the fabulous journey. Your imagination and wit brought endless joy to DQN around the world. I myself participated way more than I probably should have. This thread is the one thing that kept me sane the past few months.
One question: who reanimated Masturbation Continue-chan?
>>104
ごはん
Who was Cassandra? What was the relationship between Alexei and Jacqueline?
>>105
負け
>>102
Are you counting the time Alexei choked us to death under suffocation? And if you think about it, isn't death by burning really just an acute form of hyperthermia?
>>109
Very nice job with the retcon backstory, I'm impressed!
> why was Stove Stove named Stove Stove?
I thought it sounded cute and rectangular.
Thank you for this story.
(I like to think my greatest contribution was the crotch void.)
So who was Jack?
I was so distracted that I missed this thread until it ended, fell off and was bumped again. I didn't witness the end of this wonderful journey and I want to cry.
How about New Game+?
>What do the rest of you think? Can we peacefully coexist?
There's only like five people that come here anyway, it should be fine.
>Also, no shiritori?
Continuing from >>109
翼
>>Assuming you mean Jack from >>/278 onwards, not Jack Conundrum-chan, well, you'd have to ask >>/278
#278 says: I wasn't referring to anything special with that one, just being irreverent while rhyming off of "snack" and perhaps influenced by my amusement at those Near East rice and couscous mixes that come with a "spice sack"; after the response I decided to have a little more fun playing off of the expression "You don't know Jack" and the rest is history I guess.
> Then again, I don't want to be seen to be upstaging the Maim Master of http://4-ch.net/dqn/kareha.pl/1200784603/. What do the rest of you think? Can we peacefully coexist?
I'm chill with whatever. There's a different style to each I think.
>Also, no shiritori?
I don't kanji, sorry man.
>>115
Let's new game+!!!! I'm sure we can peacefully coexist with Maim Master's thread.
宇宙学
New Game+
You awaken on a cold, hard concrete floor.
Looking around blearily, you find yourself in a bare concrete corridor. There are numerous metal pipes and ventilation shafts running above your head. To your North is a closed door. To your South, the corridor continues for about twenty metres before turning to the West. To your East, the ceiling has collapsed and the corridor is entirely blocked by rubble. On the wall to the South you can see something drawn in red chalk.
There is a radio lying discarded face down on the ground beside you. Listening carefully, you can hear a faint noise like radio static, but it doesn't seem to be coming from the radio itself.
What would you like to do?
yell into radio
go through the southern corridoor
see what's written on the wall
>>121
クール・エイド
also I'd recommend just starting a new thread, this one is kind of cluttered and confusing now
Jump and try to catch hold of one of those pipes.
>>124 (Am I even doing this right?)
ドテッコツ
Ask the radio for the location of the lost unholy citadel.
Sing and dance like Will Smith for 10 minutes solid
>>123
"Where am I‽" you demand of the poor radio. It offers no reply.
>>124
You rise unsteadily to your feet and make your way southwards. On the wall you find a crude mural of a tropical bird in scarlet. You would think it a child's doodling, were it not for the fact that it is drawn at around shoulder height.
From here, the corridor turns to the West. The overhead lights are flickering or off entirely in places, leaving pools of darkness spreading across the ground. There is a door slightly ajar on the North wall. Further on, the corridor bifurcates to the North and South. There is an unpleasant smell wafting from the West. The faint static sound you heard earlier is quieter here.
>>125
You return to the radio and, speaking into it, politely recommend starting a new thread to alleviate confusion. Not only is there no response, but you are distressed to find that you have only further confused yourself. What thread are you talking about? What exactly is cluttered about your current circumstances, given that the only object in sight is the radio?
>>126
You leap, from standing, into the air and grasp one of the pipes set into the ceiling. It is cold to the touch. It groans slightly, but comfortably holds your weight.
>>127
Again seeking comfort from the enigmatic radio, you inquire as to precisely where the Unholy Citadel is. There is no response for a few seconds, and you are about to put the object down again when there comes what sounds like a muffled cry from the other end, followed by a long, tense silence. You cannot even tell if the vocalist was human, let alone what, if anything, they were trying to say.
>>128
Hoping to alleviate your unease, or possibly attract the attention of potential allies, you perform a musical piece by an artist you happen to be fond of. After ten minutes you at last fall quiet and the singing echoes away down the dark, grey halls. You can hear nothing but your own heavy breathing and a faint sound like static in the back of your head.
妻
Collect radio.
Check radio for batteries.
Investigate unpleasant smell.
Swim in pools of darkness.
new game plus means we have all of conundrum-chan's skills from the previous game, right?
shapeshift into the darkness
Wait, how do we spend points to upgrade guns??
I'm in favour of infinite ammo, but that might cost too much. Increased damage isn't that fun.
>>130
You pick up the radio. It is a very basic, seemingly handmade piece, with the circuitry and soldering work clearly visible. There are some components you aren't quite certain as to the purpose of, but none of them seem to be batteries. You suppose it is probably a crystal radio receiver.
No longer waylaid by bizarre urges to sing and dance for extended periods of time, you decide to start by investigating the most ominous stimulus. After some wandering through the labyrinthine corridors, you find the source of the smell: a human corpse, in a state of advanced decay, lying on its back in the middle of a corridor. The corpse is so bloated, discoloured and flyblown that you cannot even tell if it was originally male or female, let alone any distinguishing features. The smell is so powerful in this enclosed space that you can scarcely come within a few metres of it, even covering your nose.
Further down the corridor, to the North, you can see another unmarked metal door, identical to those you have seen elsewhere - but this one appears to have been blown off its hinges by an explosion. Through the doorway you can see into a small room filled almost entirely with rubble where the ceiling seems to have collapsed. You cannot tell if there is any connection between the apparent explosion and the corpse.
To the East of the doorway, the corridor continues around a corner and out of sight. You can just make out a rough drawing of a fish, in blue, on the wall.
>>131
You lie down on an unlit section of floor, sweeping your arms across the ground as though swimming. Your hand happens to catch against something you didn't see in the dark. On close inspection, it proves to be a simple grey nail file. It shows signs of light use.
>>132
You aren't sure what a "new game plus" is, nor who this "Conundrum-chan" might be. Despite your apprehension, you try to metamorphosise into darkness itself. Bizarrely, you somehow get the impression that this endeavour is perhaps not entirely impossible, but that you are lacking something - some sort of substance or energy sufficient to fundamentally alter the world around you.
You require 75 mana to use the shapeshifting ability. You currently have 0 mana. Furthermore, you must conserve mass-energy, so your mass must go somewhere. Conversion of your body's mass into energy would produce an incredible amount of light, so you couldn't be said to have become darkness.
>>133
You know how to spend money, time, and effort, but you're not sure how to spend points, let alone how to upgrade firearms in the process.
>>134
Who knows, you think to yourself, perhaps this fanciful "point spending" could even suffice to change weaponry beyond the bounds of physical possibility. You spend a few moments reflecting on what you might have to do to gain a gun with inexhaustible ammunition, and what you could then do with it.
check inventory & list skills
Collect blown-up door.
collect the darkness
Eat door
Become door
>>136
Your inventory currently contains:
The skills currently available to you are:
When - and how - did you acquire these skills, you wonder? And why these three in particular?
>>137
Holding your breath, you inch your way around the rotting corpse, trying to ignore the overpowering stench. You make it to the opposite side, barely avoiding throwing up. You take several deep breaths and relax, momentarily.
The door has been blown inwards, into the room behind it, and is now buried in rubble from above. You spend a few moments trying to excavate it, but to no avail; even if you could free it, there's no way you'd be able to carry it.
From your new vantage point, you can see into another room above, from which part of the floor has collapsed. You can see a number of large, white cylindrical objects, possibly tanks, lined up against a dark blue wall. The ceiling is off-white, and inset at regular points with what look like small sprinklers.
>>138
Your unsuccessful attempt to gather darkness itself leads you to some mild philosophical musings. What, exactly, is darkness, anyway? Is it just the physical absence of light; that is, of photons in the visible spectrum? But if so, darkness cannot possibly exist, due to all the quantum foam and virtual particles. Instead, surely darkness is in the eye of the beholder; if you cannot perceive any light, that is itself darkness.
You close your eyes. Darkness has been added to your inventory.
>>139
Fumbling around blindly, you find the edge of the door and begin to gnaw on it, to little effect. If an entire explosion still left it mostly intact, it's not surprising that your teeth can't make a dent in it.
You try to transform into a door, but find that you require 75 mana to use the shapeshifting ability. You currently have 0 mana.
Ask Baratus to lend some mana.
Hug one of the large, white cylindrical objects.
use darkness on white cylinder
>>141
"Baratus," you beseech, "please can I borrow some mana?"
All you can see is the backs of your eyelids. The world is, momentarily, entirely still, as though not entirely there. Then, you hear from above a scuttling sound, something metallic clashing to the ground and the faint patter of steps running away. It sounds like a startled animal - and a fairly large one at that.
>>142
Eyes still screwed tightly shut, you climb up the debris and into the room above. You find that the floor is damp, which is especially odd given the lack of moisture in the room below. You can hear a faint dripping coming from the Southwest. You grope around until finding one of the mysterious cylindrical objects, then wrap your arms around it, embracing it like a long-lost sibling. It does not respond to your warm greeting.
>>143
You use darkness upon the object by casting your shadow on it. You think. You can't really tell with your eyes closed. Having now used your darkness, it has been removed from your inventory. Unsheathing your sight once more, you find yourself in a large, tall and poorly lit room. There are white cylinders of various sizes, none smaller than a metre and a half tall, around the North and West edge of the room. Some, but not all, are affixed to the floor. The ground is wet, with large puddles scattered around. The water has collected against the North wall, suggesting that a slight gradient to the floor.
There is are several stacks of shelves lining the entire South wall. They have been badly ransacked, with almost all the shelves pulled out and emptied onto the floor. You cannot tell what was stored to begin with, but a cursory glance reveals only a few spatulas, some hypodermic needles and a stack of printer paper that is waterlogged and unusable from falling into a puddle.
In the Southwest corner of the room is an open door. There are smears of what you think is mud on the ground, but you cannot make out any clear animal tracks in them. The hallway outside runs North to South.
Sneak stealthily through the southwest door.
Yodel a ditty
Make the ditty a dirty one.
vc: laid
>>145
Crouching, you tiptoe to the door and into the hallway. Unfortunately, you are not quite sneaky enough to avoid being struck on the back of the head and knocked out.
You awaken, some time later, elsewhere. Your spine, buttocks and the back of your head are very sore, presumably from being dragged along the ground, possibly by your feet. You try to move but find that your arms and legs are tied together. All you can see is a plain grey ceiling. You can hear the steady lashing of heavy rain, and can smell petrichor.
"Oh, you're awake" a woman's voice says from nearby. She sounds dully indifferent; if anything, slightly disappointed. "I'm going to keep this short. The camp ran out of food a week ago. I've got a lot of mouths to feed, and we've already exhausted the closest parts of the forest and the facility. We'd've killed and eaten you already if it weren't for... well, you know."
>>146,147
She sighs melancholically and seems about to say something when you interrupt with an impromptu tune, poorly thought out but stuffed with enough crude wordplay and innuendo to make a sailor blush. What you lack in musical ability you make up for with enthusiasm and raw volume.
"Delightful," she states, voice dry with sarcasm, "But I think I've heard all I wanted to from you. Go find us some food."
You feel yourself being dragged again, and see your view overhead change from grey ceiling to grey sky. With a single swishing sound, almost indistinguishable from the rain, your binds are cut and you are left to stumble awkwardly to your feet. From over your shoulder, the woman's voice comes again: "Go bother one of the grunts if you want some company. They could do with something to do."
Standing, you find yourself on a small paved plaza surrounded on three sides by imposing nondescript grey buildings. Distributed in clumps around the space are several men, many wearing incomplete suits of combat armour. They are generally staring at one another, at the buildings, at the sky, at their own feet, and one or two at you, with gormless expressions of childlike wonder. They all look perfectly identical.
To the South is an open set of double doors, from which you came, leading into a major corridor. Drawn on the walls are many crude chalk drawings of trees, flowers, butterflies, birds, monkeys, spiders and more, thrown together with no sense of order or scale, overlapping one another in places. There are sticks of chalk scattered around on the floor. The woman from earlier is nowhere to be seen.
To the North, the only side of the plaza not surrounded by buildings, is a thick wall of tropical vegetation. There is a rough track leading into the rainforest, which bifurcates after only a few metres. One side, more heavily worn, goes uphill and into slightly less dense vegetation. The other is moderately overgrown and appears not to have been used in a while.
Inspect self.
Grunt at the grunts.
Kill a brontosaurus and make bronto-burgers.
Bring back six each of sausages, canned meat, and loaves of bread in exchange for being allowed to look around the camp for tools.
>>149
A reasonably thorough inspection of yourself reveals that you are, as best you can tell, the same person you've always been, with the same bodily structure, facial appearance, number and placement of limbs. You are quite relieved at this fact.
>>150
You approach one of the gentlemen, assuming these to be the grunts that the woman mentioned earlier. "Ngrunh," you say, amicably. The man looks at you, wide eyed and slack-jawed, then smiles and grunts enthusiastically in response. You are not quite sure how to respond to this, and settle for letting him get back to picking his nose.
Unfortunately, you cannot locate any apatosauruses - nor, for that matter, any sauropods at all. Even if you could, you suspect that it would be quite an endeavour to kill it, being, as you are, entirely unarmed, and foresee further difficulty in butchering and converting it into edible meat.
>>151
Convenient as it would be, you can't find any processed or tinned meat, nor any savoury pastry products, so improvise by sketching the aforementioned comestibles onto the wall using the available chalk. You are rather proud of the beautifully detailed likenesses, complete with shading and perspective.
You now feel entitled to search the area for tools - not that anyone/thing was particularly stopping you before. You find nothing usable in the plaza, and thus head indoors to where you assume the rest of the camp to be. You find a fairly large, open hexagonal room with various corridors branching off from it. Numerous desks, chairs, filing cabinets and other items of furniture have been gathered into a rough communal living space. There is a campfire in the centre of the room, currently burning low, with more smoke than flame. There are more chalk murals around the space, in a similar style to those you saw earlier. One corridor, leading to the Southeast, has been cordoned off with a dark blue divider, attached to which is a message in unapologetic block capital letters:
DO NOT DISTURB
A few more of the identical people are standing around here as well, though not as many as outside. They all share the same stupefied look, with the exception of one, hunched over in a corner, working feverishly away at a drawing. You cannot see it in detail from where you are, but he seems to be making extensive use of the black and brown chalk.
In your search you find the radio and nail file you had earlier, a lighter with less than a third of its fuel remaining and a pair of scissors.
Grunt at a particularly stupid looking grunt and lure him away into a hidden corner a good distance away from the group, then stab him in the jugular with the scissors.
Draw an angry Dr. Robotnik face on the "do not disturb" door.
>>153
You try to isolate one of the crowd as appearing especially stupid, but are confounded by the fact that they all look identical, and they all look stupid. You settle for one on the edge of the room who seems easiest to lure away. You approach him, point down an empty corridor and make encouraging noises. He smiles vacuously and follows you. You take the first right through an open door, discovering what appears to be the camp's midden. There is a fair sized pile of empty tins, bottles and boxes, along with a few cleanly picked animal bones, in the centre of the floor.
You fluidly slip behind the unsuspecting patsy, take out your scissors and stab him in the side of the neck, ducking slightly to avoid the spray of blood. Something is odd, however, as your hand encounters no resistance. You find that your adversary has, displaying almost superhuman reflexes, dodged out of the way of your attack and is now holding your wrist and looking at you with a slightly upset expression. Before you can regather your wits, you find that your legs have been swept out from under you, your scissors taken from your hand and your own jugular vein slashed with said tool. You quietly bleed to death, face down in a pile of refuse.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 1
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>152)
>>154
Feeling a need for further creative outlet, you decide to exemplify the written message you encountered earlier by drawing beneath it an image of a particular famous scientist, engineer and scholar, known for his dislike of being disturbed, especially by Erinaceidae. You create a breathtakingly lifelike portrait, eyes wide with passion, mouth open in mid-snarl, every bristle of his moustache aquiver with emotion. It would be enough to bring great men to tears.
When it comes to drawing his shoulders, however, you are shocked to find that - despite an extremely thorough search of the camp - you cannot locate any red chalk whatsoever. Even the murals already added to the walls do not contain the colour red. You are forced to leave it at only a disembodied head.
Inspect feverish drawing.
Make fun of it.
Cut self, use blood to fill in the red parts of the drawing.
Cry self to sleep.
Use tears to fill in the salty parts of the drawing.
Become a grunt
>>156
You make your way to the hexagonal room, and stare over the shoulder of the grunt in the midst of his passionate artistic creation. In this corner, the walls have been almost entirely shaded in solid black, punctuated with odd brown swirls that could be anything, really. In the very corner is an object - or possibly even a pile of objects - in grey and brown. It is roughly humanoid, but has many sharp, straight appendages radiating from every surface. Its head is lopsided, as though only just hanging onto the rest of it. The entire thing is floating at 45° from vertical in the black-brown void, without any indication of touching the ground.
"Well, you're not exactly Van Gogh, are you?" you quip. The grunt gives no indication of even having heard you.
>>157
Many inferior artists claim to put "blood sweat and tears" into their work, but you decide to prove your superiority by taking this to a literal level. You take the scissors and, with a deep intake of breath, pull the blade sharply across the skin of your left palm. There is a momentary stinging pain, and the skin is clearly broken, but not a singly drop of blood comes out. You try again twice, to no further effect. Cutting any deeper than you already are risks severing nerves and causing irreparable damage, so you begrudgingly concede defeat.
>>158
Upset at your body's unexpected betrayal, you choose to sleep off the malaise, hoping that you'll feel better in the morning. The heavy rain outside continues, precluding you from telling the time with any great certainty, but it is clearly not yet nightfall. You lie down on a pile of cardboard on the edge of the camp, turn to face the wall and close your eyes. You sob piteously to yourself as you await the peaceful oblivion of sleep.
You are woken up by being kicked, hard, in the ribs. You cough and splutter, curling up to protect your vulnerable midriff, but not quickly enough to escape another kick. Your eyes flash open as you reel from the blow, but you are unable to orientate yourself to see your attacker before you are kicked in the upper spine, landing hard on your front. A foot is pressed into the small of your back, preventing you from getting up.
"You useless sack of shit," says a familiar woman's voice from behind you. "Maybe I wasn't clear enough earlier: leave, right now, and get me some food. If I see you in this camp again, without food, I'll kill you."
You are released and, being badly winded and in substantial pain, are unable to respond or even move for a few minutes. When you eventually get to your feet again, the woman is once more nowhere to be found. Judging by the amount of light it is still daytime; you probably slept for less than an hour.
>>159
Your tragically incomplete profile of Dr Robotnik doesn't contain many parts that could be described as salty. Unless... Yes, that's it, you think to yourself: you need to portray the full range of emotion of this great man. You wipe the tears from your cheeks and brush them into the corners of his eyes, where they melt into the chalk and soon dry into indistinguishibility. You are struck by the significance of the gesture, showing the inner sorrow that your muse must never let show, gradually internalising it and becoming ever further embittered as his every plan is thwarted.
You cannot shapeshift into a grunt for lack of mana, and settle instead for simply mimicking your new comrades. You stand around for a while, staring into the middle distance and letting your mind go utterly blank. It is an oddly therapeutic experience, but does not accomplish much.
kill and eat the bitch
Leave camp and find food, but eat it all for ourselves.
Wander out of the camp toward the nearest city. Decide to only come back when we're strong enough to horribly murder everyone in it.
>>161
Snapping suddenly out of your trance, you find yourself overcome with rage. How dare this woman treat you like that? Why, you were in a very sensitive position and in need of every quantum of sympathy and solace - and instead she assaulted you, heartlessly turned you out on your backside and threatened to kill you. You cannot possibly let this stand.
You barge past the divider with its feeble "DO NOT DISTURB" missive and into the corridor beyond, gripping your scissors in preparation for your impending act of homicide and cannibalism. Immediately to the left you find a dark blue office door with an inset pane of frosted glass. Compared to the rest of the building, it seems in remarkably good shape, in fact you suspect it to have been repainted not long ago.
You slam the door open, but find that your entrance was anticipated. The last thing you perceive is a disappointed sigh, then, with a loud bang, a whaling harpoon is launched into your skull, entering through your left orbit, tearing all the way through your brain like a needle through warm butter, and bursting out the back of your parietal bone. So much momentum is conferred by the shot that your body is actually thrown back out of the room, landing with a dull thump against the opposite wall.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 2
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>160)
>>162,163
You gather together the shreds of your injured pride, try to ignore the aching of your ribs, and head Northwards, through the camp, along the corridor, past the plaza and into the rainforest. You have no idea where the nearest city is, but the more heavily travelled track seems your best bet. You follow the gently meandering path through the vegetation, showered the entire time by the ongoing hydrometeor. The crooked trees grow thickly and silently from either side, leaning over the path and occasionally letting large drops of gathered rainwater fall onto you. Apart from the rain, everything is perfectly still and silent, with no signs of life whatsoever.
Eventually, the trees begin to thin out a little, allowing you glimpses of things beyond. You can make out a tall metal framework structure, possibly a radio tower, a few hundred metres to the Northwest. Beside it is the outline of something large and white, probably some sort of building. It certainly isn't a city, but it's about the closest you've found so far.
You notice a flash of colour out of the corner of your eye. Perched on a branch, staring down at you, is a large red bird. It has a short black beak and beady little black eyes. No sooner have you spotted it than it spreads its wings and dives into the thickest part of the undergrowth, to the East. It sits tantalisingly out of reach, staring at you, as though challenging you. It certainly isn't food, but it's the closest you've found so far.
The path, meanwhile, continues to the North, banking gently to the Northeast. Upon careful reflection, you don't think you're strong enough to brutally kill all those grunts and that woman, not to mention whoever else might've been in the camp whom you didn't meet.
Follow the red bird, since it seems to be the only red thing around here.
Check inventory in hopes that we at least stole the chalk for further acts of vandalism.
Imitate bird calls to woo the bird.
Set ourselves free.
>>165
Being a long time admirer of all things crimson, you feel unable to ignore this fine specimen. You throw caution to the wind and push into the thicket after the little creature. It keeps its distance, but remains always within sight, and, given its colouring, it is not exactly easy to lose.
As you press on ever deeper, the sound of the rain becomes more distant, and the light ever weaker. The canopy overhead forms an unbroken dull green ceiling. The trees grow at strange angles, some looking as though they have fallen against their neighbours then continued to try to grow upwards, others entwining themselves around others like parasites. Some are covered in so much moss and vines that you cannot even tell the colour of their bark; others grow with branches thin and smooth as metatarsal bones, covered in vicious hooked barbs.
The bird appears considerately to choose a path as unobstructed as possible, though you still trip over more than once. At one point you hear a loud animal chittering in the distance. You instinctively turn to look, but the bird swoops in front of your face and flaps violently, preventing you from seeing or doing anything. A few seconds later it leaves you alone, then goes on as though nothing happened.
Your inventory currently contains:
You seem to have neglected to bring any sticks of chalk with you, and the rain has already washed all the chalk dust from your hands.
>>166
You make what you believe to be amorous ornithological sounds. The bird stares at you and cocks its head in curiosity, but does not seem particularly seduced.
>>167
To maintain both your and the bird's spirits, you sing a song with a deep, personal meaning to you. You explain to the creature how information wishes to be free, and how, ultimately, charging money for software harms both yourself and others. It does not seem wholly convinced, but then you can't really tell. You ask it to join you on your quest, whatever that may entail. It stares at you and solemnly shakes its head.
>>168
Everyone has an implicit sense of self-worth, which may or may not correspond to how valuable they are in reality to the world at large. Having just had your advances heartlessly refused even by this mere animal, you are forced to set your own self-worth to zero. You are not worth even a single penny. Were you shop stock, you would be free. You struggle to hold back the tears, and instead focus on simply pressing on.
You have been trekking through the rainforest for around an hour, when, without warning, the bird suddenly swoops forwards without you, shrieking in panic. You hurry ahead to find a rough clearing. It shows evidence of having been recently used, with an unusually meticulous single person bivvy and the remains of a modest campfire. On the Eastern side of the camp, running North to South, is a narrow, fast flowing brook.
Inside the bivvy are several sheets of paper, some of which have writing, others landscape sketches, abstract drawings or diagrams, and a few sheets of equations. You also find a set of fine china, including two teacups, two saucers, a medium sized dish and a small teapot. Stacked neatly at the back you find six cans of meat, five loaves of bread and five sausages. They look awfully familiar.
To the Northwest there is a long scar in the vegetation, several metres across, with entire trees uprooted and strewn aside like toothpicks. You note that most trees have been knocked forwards (from the Northwest to the Southeast) and the rest backwards (from the Southeast to the Northwest). There are no tyre tracks, footprints or any other distinct marks in the ground.
The rain has eased off to a slight drizzle, but the sky's gathering darkness promises nightfall before long. The bird seems to have vanished entirely.
Fold every sheet of paper into a paper airplane. When finished, hold a private contest to test which one flies the furthest. Take the winner of the contest, unfold it, and interpret the contest as our new bible.
Explain to no one in particular that "free software" is free as in freedom and not necessarily free as in free beer.
Further explain to no one in particular how this means that if you buy into the ideal, anyone can slap your work up on a CrappStore and charge for it, without any obligation to give you a single red cent of their ill-gotten gains.
>>172
Only under BSD and other non-copyleft licenses. Any derivitive software of GPL-licensed software must also be released under the GPL.
>>173
No, that does jack shit to keep anyone from charging. It just means that anyone else can redistribute too.
>>174
Guess what you can't do to things from the app store on any platform.
>>174
If they GPL their fork, it's perfectly within their rights. Though if they choose to charge for it while you have the same software e.g. on git for free, people will probably prefer your free-as-in-free-beer version.
If they don't GPL it then you have legal grounds to get them to cease and decist distributing it until they comply with the terms of the GPL. Also, what >>175-san said. There are not many free as in freedom apps in any of the major mobile app stores to begin with because those companies prefer to have both developers and users under the control of their proprietary systems (with regards to Google, technically, Android/Linux is free software, but it is almost always distributed with the Google Play app which is not freedom respecting.)
>>169
Bring the bread, sausages, et al back to the camp. And grab the papers too. Look over them on our own later.
>>170
You spend a few minutes carefully converting each and every one of the sheets of paper into miniature unpiloted aircraft. You make sure to include a range of designs, from the traditional glider to more exotic shapes, including even asymmetrical ones. You feel a childlike glee as you reappropriate these dull documents into instruments of flight. For those precious moments your delusion becomes your reality, and you are able to forget your unenviable circumstances.
Once done, you launch them one at a time into the looming twilight. Finally, with the last faint light of the evening, you march out and seek the out the specimen that made it the furthest. You find one around ten metres from the launch site. The darkness is almost complete, and even if there were any further away you doubt you'd be able to find them. You unfold and try to read your new testament, this document upon which the rest of your life will rest, but alas it is too dark. Your feeble diurnally suited eyes cannot resolve the tiny, ornate letters. More troublingly, the paper is quite damp, and you suspect the ink may have begun to run.
>>171
Whyever did that blessed bird abandon you? Was it because of your misguided comments regarding free software? It was, wasn't it? Oh, cruel fate! Those traitorous words that spilled out of your mouth, light as feathers, have shackled you to a future of isolation and solitude. Your happiness - that brightest, most delicate of things - has taken wing and left, perhaps forever, and there is nothing you can do about it. You plead your case to the indifferent greyish foliage as though, somewhere out there, there might be some god with even a flicker of benevolence left listening, but your heart isn't in it.
>>172
You wish you could leave it at this, but, in some heart-lurching display of masochism, you continue to torture yourself. Struggling even to force out each word, you further expound the inherent contradictions in the very idea of free software in a world as sick as ours.
>>173
Why? What did you do to deserve this? Unable to bear the torment any longer, you throw yourself headlong into the stream. The cold, black water rushes into your mouth, causing you to splutter and pause in the midst of your tirade on the relative merits of software licences.
>>174
Still, it is not enough. You must still this sinner's tongue for good. You push your own head under the surface, time and time again, but every time you find yourself forced back up again by some primordial instinct of greater will than yours. Not once do you hear the chorus of angels, singing to you of the path of forgiveness and redemption - nor, as might even be greater comfort, the cajoling of demons, recounting your every sin and telling you what perdition awaits you. Instead, unspeakably worse than either or anything else, all you hear is your own voice, arguing with yourself - with yourself! - about legality and software redistribution.
>>175
Hands shaking, you grasp a large, firm pebble from the streambed, lie down on the bank, raise it above your head and bring it down onto your skull. There is a faint crunch and an intense flash of pain, but still your mouth continues to enunciate every cruel word. Again you raise the stone, again you bring it down, again there is a flash of pain. It is not enough, you think frantically; a single word - a single syllable - nay, a single phoneme more on the topic of computing, programming, coding, or anything even tangentially related would be enough to tear away that last torn, battered garment of sanity with which you clothe your fragile psyche.
>>176
You scream, an unending, unholy sound exploding out of you from some hidden fold so deep within you that you could never have known it lay within you. Every ink-black spectre of inhumanity that lay, silently, within your heart is released at once, and tears forth from your mouth in a ceaseless, breathless torrent.
Like a gift from Heaven, the stone falls from your palsied hands and collides with your skull, mercifully putting an end to every unspeakable machination that had been born within its bounds. You die.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 3
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>178)
You find yourself holding the remains of a paper aeroplane, in a clearing in a rainforest. A light rain is falling. Night has come, and you cannot see anything at all.
>>177
You have no idea how to get back to the camp without a guide. The papers are scattered all across the damp ground, quietly soaking into obscurity, and it is beyond hope to find them all now.
Stay the night in the abandoned camp and set off randomly the next morning. Quicksave.
Also be sure to bring the food with us.
Move your ass to shit on this gay cock.
Make sure to read our new testament at the first light of day.
Make sure our testament is free as in freedom.
>>180,181,183
Displaying, thankfully, some modicum of common sense, you crawl into the meagre shelter you found earlier, curl up on one side and attempt to fall asleep. It is not easy. Firstly, the structure seems to have been built by/for someone of substantially shorter stature than you, leaving your feet outside in the rain and mud. Your ribs are still sore from the corporal punishment you received earlier, back at the camp, meaning you struggle to find any position to lie in which doesn't put weight on at least one of your sore points.
What truly keeps you from sleep, however, is the noises from outside. A few times you hear long, low rumbling noises, as of distant thunder, but which last for thirty seconds at a time and seem to Doppler slightly as you listen, as though the source of the noise is moving. Three times you are shocked awake by the high-pitched chattering and howling of wild animals, once very nearby indeed.
At last, the sky is reclaimed by sunlight and you are forced awake. Through aching eyes and a faint headache, you crawl out of your abode to inspect your surroundings. The rain has ceased at last, only to be replaced by a dull, white haze through which the rays of the morning sun filter, like bad coffee. You begin by reading the crumpled, water stained sheet of paper that had been by your side all night. It is written in black ink, in enormous, looping ornate letters. It seems to be a letter, but the salutation, valediction and much of the contents are illegible. You manage to work read:
--eve--
--inforest. Should be eas--
--irborn--
--econnoitre. We shouldn't be far from one another geographically, but the possibili--
--ffect may last for mere seconds, or it might be permanent; you can never tell with these damn quantum things. Too many variables for my tastes. At any rate, you should make full use of this phenomenon. The initial slate we used was enough to get us here, but no--
--re limits, naturally. You can'--
--ssume was a gift from y--
--ad our differences, I trust that we are past that now. The bird in question is currently doing reconnaissance, trying to locate you, or summon any mooks that we can sacrifice to further ou--
--at you realise th--
--ove y--
--t die in a fire, but I--
--hy you fear the n--
--ow them ju--
--ss--
You aren't quite sure how to interpret your new bible, but interpret it you must. Is this letter addressed to you, as a disciple? What is this "slate" that is mentioned? What is the significance of the bird? Was there some suggestion of self immolation? Suddenly, you aren't so sure about this new religion of yours.
In an act of serendipity, you decide, completely at random, to follow the nearby brook upstream. Unfortunately, you find that it is beyond your ability to carry all the food at once along with the rest of your inventory, so you settle for taking only four each of the foodstuffs. Even this is awkward to manage while traversing jungle.
>>182
Despite a thorough search of your inventory and immediate surroundings, you cannot locate any farmyard animals whatsoever, including donkeys and cockerels. Furthermore, you aren't entirely sure how you'd go about entertaining the chicken in question enough to reach the prerequisite gaiety, nor how you'd then arrange the donkey so as to defecate directly onto it.
>>184
You weren't planning to charge for access to your newly discovered religious text, nor particularly to conceal it from others, but make the conscious decision to keep things that way as far as possible.
After much walking, you reach a faint, poorly defined path crossing the stream, with a makeshift bridge consisting only of a wooden door. To the Southeast, a short distance uphill, there is a two storey building made of red brick. Every visible window is smashed. There is a banner hanging between two windows reading "DO NOT ENTER". To the Northwest, the path continues unabated. As you are standing deliberating over the dilemma, you hear the chattering noise again, from the West.
Enter with a proud strut in defiance of the banner.
contemplate the origins of the universe
>>185,186
Offer some food to whoever is in the building as a gesture of goodwill.
Lift up shirt and present chest as a gesture of goodwill.
Spread the good word of the sacred Eve Inforest.
>>186
Given the choice between not entering the building (and being blindly obedient to perceived authority) or entering the building (and being easily manipulated by reverse psychology (or just very stupid)) you go ahead and choose the latter. As it is on the opposite bank to which you are currently on, you try to cross the bridge. Unexpectedly, the door snaps in half as you put your weight on it, making a loud noise and dampening your feet. The animal noises which were, until now, fairly subdued, suddenly swell into a raucous, rapidly approaching chorus of shrieks and howls.
Not feeling particularly in the mood for company, you make your way up the valley side towards the building. You find a second banner draped across the ground in front of the building; seemingly a continuation of the first, which has fallen from place. It reads "YOUR PARENTS WOULDN'T LIKE IT". To one side of the main entrance is written, in shaky handwriting, "FREE SWEETS INSIDE".
Inside, you a fairly large, L shaped room. It has been entirely emptied; judging by the marks on the floor, even the carpet has been taken up, leaving bare floorboards. On the East and North facing walls are doorways that have been entirely bricked up. Also on the North facing wall is a stairwell, with stairs leading both up and down. The ascending staircase has been blocked by a pile of miscellaneous furniture; you think you could probably negotiate it, but it would take some time, and two free hands. All around the descending staircase are large signs with messages such as "CUTE KITTENS DOWNSTAIRS", "ADORABLE PUPPIES TO PLAY WITH IN THE BASEMENT" and "FREE TOYS FOR ALL UNATTENDED CHILDREN". The stairs slope away into darkness, but you can just make out what appears to be a beartrap at the bottom.
>>187
You find this to be the perfect moment to consider the truly great, unanswered questions of your existence, beginning with the beginning: where did this entire reality come from? Was it, as is the scientific consensus, simply a random, inexplicable explosion of matter? If there was a big bang, was that the absolute beginning, or could there have been something before that? How does this contend with issues such as causal closure or baryonic asymmetry? Is it even possible to know the answers to questions like this, when you cannot rule out the possibility that your entire existence is nothing more than the collective daydream of a set of beings of some inconceivably higher level of consciousness, laughing at your exploits as one might those of a confused kitten on YouTube?
>>188
Your musings are interrupted by four creatures, making loud, aggressive vocalisations, entering from behind you. On closer inspection, they appear to be human - in fact, they are identical in appearance to the so-called grunts earlier, though these specimens seem to be a lot less passive. They block the entrance and holler at you. Terrified, you toss a spare sausage at the nearest, who jumps back, then grabs it and tears into it, devouring it in seconds. Rather than appeasing them, the gesture appears only to have inflamed their desire for the rest of your food.
>>189
You are not wearing a shirt; you are only wearing a full body grey jumpsuit. You bare your chest at them, which seems to them to indicate attempted dominance, rather than compassion. They are kept at bay momentarily, but still seem as though they might charge at a moment's notice.
>>190
You babble something nonsensical about the Abrahamic creation myth, and how Eve lived in a forest. The creatures interrupt you with various screaming and howling. At that moment, you notice that there is a fifth member to their party: a young girl, with long, tousled hair and wide, brown eyes, clothed in what you think might once have been a seifuku. She bares her teeth at you, appearing every bit as savage as her companions.
Your only clear exit is blocked. You can either try to distract or frighten your assailants, stand and fight - armed only with a pair of scissors and a lighter - or run away downstairs.
Say to the girl, "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick"
Be nimble, be quick, and jump over the candlestick. If no candlestick is available, settle for jumping over the bear trap at the bottom of the stairs and hoping one of the assailants gets caught in it.
Severly hiss at girl.
adopt the girl in the seifuku as our daughteru
>>192
At that moment, the nearest of the barbaric creatures lunges towards you, grasping avariciously towards your hard-earned comestibles. Like some prayer or mantra from a dimly recalled childhood, you quickly mutter under your breath a nursery rhyme you barely remember. The girl yelps at the sound of the first word and grabs the foremost brute by the scruff of the neck, dragging him back behind her. She then scolds the creature with a series of harsh barking sounds.
Slowly, cautiously, she pushes in front of her associates and takes a few steps towards you. She reaches for a loaf of bread, making slight cooing noises, as though asking permission. You hesitate, and a gleam appears in her eye, as though she just sensed some inner weakness.
>>193
You aren't sure quickness or nimbleness can really be considered binary states, but are happy to consider yourself quick and nimble until proven otherwise. You can't locate any candlesticks, so you take the most logical course of action and try to jump over the half-glimpsed instrument of ensnarement downstairs. Unfortunately, you failed to notice that there was a tripwire installed at the edge of the landing, and are sent tumbling head over heels into the darkness below. You land headfirst on the beartrap, which springs closed onto your neck. You die instantly.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 4
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>196)
>>194
In an effort to defuse the tension between you and the girl, you blow air through your teeth in a manner similar to the act of severance. It doesn't seem that that particular nuance is conveyed to your audience, but you never know.
>>195
A warm, affectionate emotion wraps itself around your heart like a handmade scarf. Succumbing to your parental instincts, you smile encouragingly and offer some bread to the girl. A fleeting smile flashes across her lips as she grabs the loaf from your hands and turns to retreat. The others take her signal and run away back into the jungle. At the doorway she pauses and turns, looking over her shoulder at you, a look of curiosity on her face. If you're to keep your daughter from running away, you have to act now.
Shout, "Jack be with you" and let her go.
Lure her back with more food, keep repeating "Jack" since she seemed to respond to it earlier.
Say, "Slippery Jack"
>>197
Though she is only a metre or two from you, you feel the need to shout your odd dismissal in her face. She flinches and runs away, bread hanging from her mouth like the epitomic schoolgirl late for her first day of school. You watch her go, heart swelling with pride. What a fine, upstanding young lady you've brought her up to be, you think to yourself.
>>198
Mere moments later, you feel yourself struck by the infamous empty nest syndrome. You simply don't know what to do with yourself, now that she's gone. And shouldn't you have prepared her better? I mean, you've got all this food, and you only offered her one measly loaf of bread. Also, what about those suspicious gentlemen she's been keeping company with?
Utterly distraught, head spinning in disarray, you leave several trails of breadcrumbs up to the building where you last saw the girl. Before you know it, you have used up all of the bread you had found. You sit at the doorstep, simply saying the word "Jack" to yourself, over and over again. The sun passes its zenith overhead and begins its slow, inevitable descent. Cumuliform clouds accumulate on the horizon. Still, there is no sign of your precious daughter.
>>199
Then, a familiar face appears before you. The red bird from earlier alights nearby and begins nonchalantly to peck at your breadcrumb trail. "Slippery Jack!" you say to it. It stares at you, long and hard, head cocked slightly to one side, then flies away again to the South. You soon lose sight of it.
Perhaps ten minutes later, you become aware of another presence nearby. Levitating a metre or so from the ground is a young girl dressed in an immaculate, ornate lilac dress. She is carrying a frilled off-white parasol in one hand, and a purple handbag in the other. The red bird is perched on her shoulder. She is watching you, smiling a little too wide.
"Pah!" she exclaims in mock annoyance, rolling her eyes, "You're not Jack at all! Silly bird, why did you go and get my hopes up?" The bird bobs its head apologetically. She floats down to land a metre or so from you, and carefully inspects you and the possessions by your side. "My my, have you been taking things that aren't yours? Why, I was looking forward to a nice bit of sausage for my supper, and you went and stole it all! I almost think you ought to be punished for that."