6.3 KiB
[RT] [FF] Dungeon Keeper Ami: Recruiting Trouble
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Author: u/Zephyr1011 Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity*
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Score: 19
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Created: 2015-11-14T15:40:51
Post:
Comments:
u/eaglejarl [+6] (19 minutes later)
Really glad to see this updating again, and especially to see a focus on Tiger's social situation, as that's one of the more unique B plots in the story.
I'm confused about how she intended to use this spell originally; she had to know she was mostly going to get fish, so what was she hoping for?
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (2 hours later)
Well on the upside she can just do the obvious thing: have all the zombies destroy all the useless zombie fish. That way the power of the chunk of Crowned Death will be lessened and she won't be wasting charge and adding latency controlling pointless zombie fish.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+2] fear of last pages (5 days later)
Tiger's situation
There was a story by G. Martin with a similar idea.
“Joachim Kleronomas,” I said.
“Yes."
[...]
He was looking at me. His eyes were crystalline lenses set in metal sockets, moving back and forth in some green translucent gel. They had no visible pupils; behind each implacable crimson iris burned a dim light that gave his stare an ominous red glow. “Am I that fascinating?” he asked me. His voice was surprisingly natural; deep and resonant, with no metallic echoes to corrode the humanity of his inflections.
“Kleronomas,” I said. “Your name is fascinating, certainly. A very long time ago, there was another man of that name, a cyborg, a legend. You know that, of course. He of the Kleronomas Survey. The founder of the Academy of Human Knowledge on Avalon. Your ancestor? Perhaps metal runs in your family."
“No,” said the cyborg. “Myself. I am Joachim Kleronomas."
I smiled for him. “And I'm Jesus Christ. Would you care to meet my Apostles?"
“You doubt me, Wisdom?"
“Kleronomas died on Avalon a thousand years ago."
“No,” he said. “He stands before you now."
[...]
Over the crenellated edge of the parapets the ghost came crawling, pulling himself up with frail grey-white hands that left bloody stains upon the purity of my stone. He stared at us wordlessly, a half-transparent whispering in white. Kleronomas averted his eyes.
“Who is he?” I ask.
The cyborg could not answer.
“Do you even remember his name?” I asked him. He replied with silence, and I laughed at them both. “Cyborg, you judged me, found my morality suspect, my actions tainted, but whatever I might be, I am nothing to you. I steal their bodies. You've taken his mind. Haven't you? Haven't you?"
“I never meant to,” he said.
“Joachim Kleronomas died on Avalon seven hundred years ago, just as they say he did. Steel and plastic he might wear, but inside he was still rotting flesh, even at the end, and with all flesh there comes a time when the cells die. A thin flat line on a machine, glowing in the darkness, and an empty metal shell. The end of a legend. What did they do then? Scoop out the brain and bury it beneath some oversized monument? No doubt.” [..] “But they did not bury the machine, did they? That expensive, sophisticated cybernetic organism, the library computer with its wealth of knowledge, the crystal matrix with all its frozen memories. All that was too valuable to discard. The good scientists of Avalon kept it in an interface with the Academy's main system, correct? How many centuries passed before one of them decided to don that cyborg body again, and keep his own death at bay?"
“Less than one,” the cyborg said. “Less than fifty standard years."
“He should have erased you,” I said. “But why? His brain would be riding the machine, after all. Why deny himself access to all that marvelous knowledge, why destroy those crystallized memories? Why, when he could savor them instead? How much better to have a whole second lifetime at his disposal, to be able to access wisdom he had never earned, recollect places he had never been and people he had never met.” I shrugged, and looked at the ghost. “Poor stupid thing. If you'd ever played the game of mind, you might have understood."
What can the mind be made of, if not memories? Who are we, after all? Only who we think we are, no more, no less.
Etch your memories on diamond, or on a block of rancid meat, those are the choices. Bit by bit the flesh must die, and give way to steel and metal. Only the diamond memories survive to drive the body. In the end no flesh remains, and the echoes of lost memories are ghostly scratchings on the crystal.
“He forgot who he was,” the cyborg said. “I forgot who I was, rather. I began to think ... he began to think he was me.”
u/DataPacRat [+2] Amateur Immortalist (2 hours later)
For the last few updates, every time I try to read the story I get a page saying 'Access Denied'. Does anyone know of an alternate method of reading it?
u/Zephyr1011 [+6] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (2 hours later)
Seems to be mirrored here
u/DataPacRat [+2] Amateur Immortalist (4 hours later)
That works. Thankee.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+1] fear of last pages (5 days later)
This story reminded me of the Tabula Avatar series (Baldur's Gate × Buffy.)
Some choices Ami was making were really frustrating, especially considering that she was supposed to be risking her “soul” and being eternally tortured in case of failing almost any of her plans.
Aside from that, the unnecessary anime-style fanservice scenes, and the regular contacts with sailor universe (haven’t seen Sailor Moon, neither care much about it), the story was rather entertaining to read.
Too bad it’s a slow WiP like so many other interesting projects out there.