3.5 KiB
[RT][HSF] Ra, alternate ending, Part 4: "Thaumic Sky" (draft)
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Author: u/Noumero Self-Appointed Court Statistician*
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Score: 26
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Created: 2018-05-10T13:37:55
Post:
Comments:
u/MaddoScientisto [+5] (2 hours later)
The new state of affair seems way better than the older ending, although there's still a sort of danger left.
In the end Laura isn't wholly wrong but also trying to overload the simulation and kill everyone in it isn't exactly the right way to go to solve the problem.
Perhaps there's some exploit in the new simulation...
Also I wonder if somebody can build a new akashic record within the simulation
u/Hoactzins [+5] (8 hours later)
Oh jeez. I can really feel for Laura- as far as she's concerned her entire existence is a sick joke - nothing she ever does will "matter." She's not in heaven, she's not in hell, Natalie has killed them all.
Except it's a little more complicated than that and they didn't really have any way to win there. But I still feel for her.
u/CaptainAdjective [+4] (18 hours later)
as far as she's concerned her entire existence is a sick joke - nothing she ever does will "matter."
Now we're seeing what the Actual/Virtual schism was all about.
u/awesomeideas [+4] Dai stiho, cousin. (a day later)
I don't actually think that's it. They got shafted with the worst of both worlds. If they were the other sort of virtuals, they'd have the ability to change internal fundamental laws at a whim and almost costlessly impose their wills on their virtual universe, while still being able to send emissaries to the real universe. Their particular flavor of virtuality only permits them to use the resources available in the simulation. They can't reach out in any way, and they know it's all fake, with nearly no hope of rescue—indeed, if their universe is ever discovered by the original virtuals, existence could be snuffed out instantly, with zero notice.
u/Hoactzins [+1] (21 hours later)
I mean, I got it pretty well during the first read. It's just a little more heartfelt now because Laura feels she was so close to ushering in a new golden age for Actual humanity and... she didn't.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
The big question though, people are, I guess, still dying, why?
u/CarsonCity314 [+1] (4 days later)
Would Laura actually care that they've been virtualized? I think she would care more that there should be a way out of the protected simulation, into the deeper waters of the virtualization.
u/CarsonCity314 [+3] (4 days later)
At this point, it seems like Natalie successfully preserved the status quo, for the sake of all the inhabitants in the recreated world. From her perspective, the alternative was annihilation. There was no escaping virtualization, and to dump all of the existing consciousness into unrestricted virtual existence would likely have been equivalent to dumping a load of goldfish into the open sea.
I'm guessing Laura (not a status-quo person) is going to push for a controlled release into the greater virtualization. I've read nothing to suggest she's a real-reality ideologue - in a sense, the virtualization is more real than the world she's known (it developed organically, while her world was carefully recreated and tampered with).