⇨ MAINFRAME

[ringleaders]

Who: EVERYONE.
When: Day 92 - Day 105
Where: Mainframe, the city inside a computer.
What: The carnival stops at its next location, a computer world full of computer people. Except, this time it's not the Matrix, don't worry.
Warnings: Nothing inherently suspect here.

THIS PLACE, MAINFRAME↴ After the Nightrunners have done their search, you will be welcome to enter the tree portal into Mainframe. There is no loading room this time - instead, any alternations will occur as you pass through the portal. Remember to wear your icon buttons! If you aren't wearing one, you won't be able to pass through the portal, and during your stay you will not be able to remove it. The portal is currently opening into a forested area of Mainframe, filled with a bunch of sort of low res trees. A large section of a residential area has just been nullified by a Game Cube. A large quantity of former sprites and binomes are now wandering the city in the form of null worms, and the rest of the city is generally in a panic. You'll be able to learn about the details of what happened if you ask the locals, though they will act incredulous if you behave as if you don't know what a Game is. Just tell them you and the others just arrived from a different "system" in the "Net." Yeah, that seems to allay their suspicion. Nailed it. Here is a convenient map of the Mainframe from the original cartoon, which this setting is more or less based on. This Mainframe is larger and lacking areas dedicated to specific characters (no Megabyte or Dot's Diner), but is laid out basically the same, for reference's sake. ► LOW RES: Your glamour will come into affect as soon as you cross through the portal, and while you are here your body will function like a weird mixture of its original self and the formatting of a program. You can eat their food and use their amenities, but if one of them were to look at your coding it would be obviously foreign to them. Also, maybe your skin has turned blue, or green, and your clothes are suddenly way more 90's scifi? Maybe you look like a giant number 7 to other people. This place is weird, aesthetically speaking. ► RELIEF EFFORTS: For the altruist out there, you can offer help to the locals that are trying to recover from the recent Game loss. The buildings that were caught within the Cube's range are twisted and burnt out, as if the energy has been sucked right out of them, and it sounds like all the losers were transfigured into slugs. You might want to avoid Game Cubes if any show up. Just an FYI. (As if that will happen.) In the meantime, you can console the programs whose family members are now works, or help try to clean up the buildings that are now falling apart. Or, you can ignore all of this. That's cool, too. ► VIBRANT CULTURE: Despite being weird computer program people made of boxes and spheres, the people of Mainframe seem to live their lives much the same ways humans do. They have TV programs, restaurants, and other shops that you can buy weird 90's computer world bullshit from. There's even a Hollywood inspired area, where you can go to shows. They also have some neato hoverboard things you can fly around on. As usual, the Ringmaster will be giving people an allowance to buy any modest souvenirs or necessities during their stay. Feel free to be creative about fleshing out sections of the city! The mods barely remember the details of this show, either.

Comments

[stillwinningthehardway]

Scout finds this place extremely offputting. Some of it's the lack of details, the smooth, shiny, almost plasticky texture everything has when you're not at a considerable distance. Different textures are rare. If you don't squint through her glamor she's an oddly bright golden-orange without freckle or scar, her hair a solid piece, the hairs on her white tail looking like quills. Only her heavy boots don't seem much different. She put her icon on her belt.

Still, she's acquired an air kart for not much - it does tend to drift right - and got a container in the back of it, so she can take it through the devastated area and collect Nulls with tubes, like some of the locals are doing. They can cause a lot of upset and trouble if left to their own devices, apparently.

Otherwise she tends to be seen driving said air kart, trying to correct for its drift. It reminds her of a long-ago attempt to buy a speeder from another stop. Considerably less good looking though.

[kingsroads]

Strange also finds this place extremely offputting. It's a combination of his understanding about anything digital, the lack of features on anything, and residual memories from the awfulness of the Matrix. It's hard for low resolution 90s animation to format individual strands of hair, so Strange's scattered flecks of gray in his hair are shown as thicker, blockier chunks of gray, like really awful highlights. Aside from that, his skin is a dull gray, matching his eyes.

Still, he's a nightrunner so he's at least got to pretend to explore the area and take notes. As he spots Scout on her air kart, he sees through the glamor almost instantly because something something magic and something something moving the thread along. He waves her over, gesturing for Scout to fly over.

"What is that thing? Some sort of flying car?"

[stillwinningthehardway]

It's disorienting recognizing someone by their glamor. Ugh. What's with the shine? Luckily voices at least haven't turned into early 90s synthesized voices too.

Obligingly she brings the kart down with only minor trouble. "Hello to you too, Strange. You're looking as terrible as everyone else. This isn't a real flying car, I didn't have enough on me, but I'm not clear on the difference besides the cars being bigger and having an actual chassis."

[sunflowerfields]

Low Res

When Hinawa heard "computer world" she immediately thought of May Tricks which, despite all of its dangers, looked enough like reality. This place, however, makes her eyes hurt. Everything is so bright and sharp. And nothing looks real. It all looks like it's made out of metal.

At first, all she can do is stop and stare at the environment. Then, she has to stop and stare at herself. She's green. Is she wearing trousers or a dress? She honestly can't tell.

"Does anyone else feel a headache coming on?"

Relief efforts

As usual, it doesn't take very long for Hinawa to adopt every child she comes across. Right now she's surrounded by a small gaggle of numbers, reading them a story.

"Then, at the stroke of midnight, the magical carriage... er..." She stop to squint at a word on the page. "De-rezzed...? Back into a pumpkin!"

At least she was familiar with the original tale. She wasn't so sure about some of the others, like Beauty and the Beta-test.

[amusicaladventure]

Low Res

"Sweeeet," Ash said, as she stood on one foot and swiveled a little to get a good view of herself. Not much had changed save that she now had fancy lines running up the bare skin of her legs and arms, which glowed in reds and greens and blues with no apparent rhyme or reason to the changes. Also her tail and ears were now strangely boxy, like a poorly-done graphics mod, but she couldn't see the latter and the former didn't bother her too much. "This just makes me look cooler!"


Culture

Balanced lightly on the hover-disc-thing, Ash gently leaned backwards just a hair. The discs slowly rose, lifting her a couple of feet into the air. No problems on her end, thank you feline balance.

"This thing is great!"

Low Res

[fortuneglass]

Ahhh~ [Carly, for her part, did not just go 'full humanoid'. She practically colour inverted, with her skin going orange and her orange markings going inky black. And also shiny.

She's very shiny.] What cool marks~ Though, your ears look a little strange now...

[amusicaladventure]

Oooh, you look wil-- huh? [Carly saves herself for once, as her comment distracts Ash. She tries to look up, futilely, at her ears. On the other hand, not being able to see them is a good sign in some ways...] What's with my ears?

[showmystar]

Relief Efforts
[The first thing Allen finds himself doing is helping out around town. He picks up debris in the streets and buildings with other helpers, citizens and carnival workers alike, and moves it to neat piles. His Innocence doesn't work here, but he still has his strength. He also carefully scoops up the slugs, careful to not . . . actually touch them.

He's walking through the street, holding a low-res board of wood with a slug balanced on it. Maybe you're helping out too, or maybe he's about to bump into you with the dangerous creature.]

Blending In
[Allen's glamour gives him the illusion of blue skin, and it's the only thing that blends in about him. He's talking to a local selling some strange, block wares. They're so low-res, it's difficult to tell what they even are. Is it food? Is it a suitcase? Who knows. But sitting on the counter between them is a hoverboard, and that seems to be what they're haggling over.

Well, were. It doesn't seem to be going well.

The local asks:] So where did you say you were from?

Ah . . . "The Net?"

Oh yeah? Whereabout?

. . . England?

[The salesman squints. Someone save him?]

Duck!
[There's a boy flying through the air on an out-of-control hoverboard.]

aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

[Watch out for that board!!! HE'S COMING RIGHT AT YOU]

england is an internet tea store right

[perverses]

Ha ha, yeah, England dot com. Y'know, you probably haven't heard about it because it's pretty small.

[ Allen's rescue comes in the form of a pink-haired kid with a third eye stuck in his forehead. With how odd this place is, he hasn't even bothered with much of a glamour, although he has turned a pale blue color that fits in a little better with the other citizens of Mainframe. It... really clashes with his hair, but what can ya do?

Anyway, he's sidled up alongside Allen while the haggling was going on. ]

They don't even got hoverboards there, man. [ And here is where he'll try and throw a comradely arm around Allen's shoulders, though he's addressing the salesman. ] But if you give him a good deal, your store will be the one he tells everyone back home to stop by first thing when visiting here! Don't you want that?

[ And then as an aside (although loud enough for the salesman to hear) to Allen, ]

Or maybe we should go take a look at some of the other places around here?

Duck!

[hippocarnival]

[Duck is right! Yuya lets out an alarmed squawk, looking back and forth for some sort of escape--but the street is narrow.

He runs to the left, flattening himself against the wall and praying Allen doesn't swerve sideways into him.] Look out, look out!

OTA

[insidescoop]

[LowRes/Vibrant Culture]

[Having been there on the 'first day' for the scouting mission, Carly has already become familiar with herself as she appears here. Others? Not so much, most certainly. It's as if her skin has colour inverted; rather than glowing orange on jet black, it is now an inky tattoo map of black all over shining orange. Not literally shining, of course-that would just be weird. But it is as if she were thrown through plastic wrap, or molded into shape from rubber. Her hair has it worst-still black, it gleams with the look of chrome, her otherwise human appearance adjusting glasses and beaming at the city around her.

It's time to go shopping. And the first use of her vacation allowance? Carly streaks by in her d0wheel, its wheels shifted according to the laws of the Mainframe to zip along not unlike the air karts and hoverboards the biomes and sprites are so familiar with. She pulls aside for only one thing...]

WOAAAAAAHHH! This fabric actually has pixelation going through it~!

Missy, that's standard cut, what end of the net did you come from exactly... [The biome manning the fabric store is very, very curious, to say the least.

Carly manages the straightest face possible in reply.] ....We're pretty rural.

Ahhhh, well, I suppose there would be places more so than here...

[As usual, it appears that others are going to find her haggling for the unique fabrics and accessories of the Mainframe.]

[RELIEF EFFORTS]

[As much as she has her job as tailor to do, she can't help but at least try to lend a hand to the people here. Carly decides to make good use of her D-Wheel for more than just transportation. A number of Biomes clip some cables to the back of it as she looks back, before nodding.] Okay! Stand back!

[The engine roars, and she pulls forward, the cables in turn tugging at a twisted and collapsed billboard off of an equally crumbled building. It's going to take a lot to rebuild this area, but at least they can do something right?]

[WILDCARD]

[Aside from fabric purchases, fashion studies, and attempts to help with the rebuilding, Carly will be easily spotted taking as many photographs of this place as she can-if you have an idea for a prompt, let me know at usagisquared

[LowRes/Vibrant Culture]

[disorder_heaven]

[ Lucifer's not really fashion-savvy at the best of times, but considering he consists of little more than black and violet textures with two giant black triangles for wings, it's a weird sort of relief to see a black and orange person (probably?) to match him. He watches the exchange silently, curious, his eyes two spots of flickering light in his badly rendered face.

When he feels like he won't be interrupting, he approaches her, holding a scarf (again probably) made of the same material she had been oogling previously. ]

So... What the heck is this gonna look like when it's got better graphics?

[ Because that's the problem here. Bad graphics. ]

[handwringing]

Get Cultured (Baudway)

Elsa listened to the Nightrunners' radio call, but she still doesn't really understand any of this place. Something about the "net" (that is not for fishing) and "information highways" (that are not for carriages). She doesn't really get why there are things that look like numbers and dots. She definitely doesn't get what she is now wearing, a white and blue jumpsuit type outfit with a belt and boots. Her skin being blue, at least, is mostly normal.

But that doesn't stop her from going to explore. When she tells a local she's from another part of the "net," they call her a tourist and suggest she visit "Baudway." She doesn't quite catch the pun but decides to take a look.

You can find her marveling at all the whozits and whatsits in one of the stores, or standing outside a theater and wondering if these are the "movies" she's heard about before but never watched. Or really all around!

Relief Efforts

Eventually leaving Baudway, she finds herself in the residential areas. Things seem less cheery here than they did back in the entertainment district - people seem grim here, and many of them are in a hurry.

Elsa finds out why when she comes upon the twisted, burnt out buildings. It looks like a large fire happened here, but the locals seem confused when she suggests that, instead telling her that a "game" did this.

"This is awful," she says to no one in particular. To have entire homes and families wiped out so easily... how does that happen?

relief efforts!

[kingsroads]

This is the part of the area that Strange has been scoping out, partly because of his status as a Nightrunner, partly because of the fact that the burnt out buildings are at least quieter than the confusing nonsense of the Mainframe. He wasn't expecting anyone to actually show up here, due to the destruction, so hearing Elsa's voice is a pleasant surprise. He had been inspecting the remains of one of the buildings but now he's abandoned that as he walks over towards Elsa, giving the supervisor a small nod as he approaches.

"Awful certainly is one way of putting it. I honestly didn't think something like this could happen to begin with." Of course something could be set on fire. And of course buildings could be destroyed in war. But this level of destruction and, from what the locals have told him, this level of destruction happening that fast? It's something that Strange wasn't entirely sure even could exist in the first place.

"One thing's for certain. Whatever these game cubes are, they're as dangerous as people think."

BAUDWAY...

[otoko]

B...Baudway..?

[Gongenzaka's form has taken some getting used to, 'as usual' it seems. Rather than his familiar taur-like body, the entire lower half appears to have been replaced with some sort of covered, wheeled...thing. The rest of him just looks chrome, more or less, and lacking in canid features.

As it is, he is now looking at the initial sights of 'Baudway' and squinting. This....is not something that really interests him at all, this was a mistake.] ....I, the man Gongenzaka, am wondering if perhaps we should have asked about a park... [he mutters to no one in particular. It's likely that even his companion, his snubbull, didn't hear him honestly-the pug-looking thing has decided to wander off and sniff for more familiar things than this street, and for the moment is yipping at Elsa.

You! You smell like carnival!]

HM?! Suzu? [And someone just noticed their pokemon is missing.]

RELIEF EFFORTS

[dorkypantsuit]

It really isn't a pretty sight, and Psi is struck by the destruction as well.

"Haven't seen anything this bad in a while." Even in realms like the Matrix where things were very wrong, there hadn't been anything as blatant as the destruction they see now. A giant yellow number two seems to be serving as Psi's glamour, the strangeness of which would definitely deserve a comment if it weren't for all the collapsed buildings.

"I wonder how many survived." A morbid thought to be sure, but he could at least hope most of the damage had been to the buildings and not the people.

[disorder_heaven]

[ Shops ]

The place reminded Lucifer of every game he'd tried to play on his old laptop, which was too useless to run anything more complex than Pitfall. His wings had become unrendered, and even as he folded them he noted they were little more than black, amorphous blobs behind him. Torn between being amused and frustrated, he moved to explore this new world that looked so much like so many old ones.

He wondered if his skills in hacking computer code would help fix this place, or perhaps tear it apart. If Satan were here, he'd insist on finding out, but there was no point to that. This world had a life of its own, and Lucifer wanted to see it all, in as short a time as possible.

Even so, he wandered, the pointless kind of wandering one did when they just didn't have anywhere better to be. Killing time had become what Lucifer did best, and he browsed the wares of a mall he swore he'd seen in some old video game back home. He wasn't alone in this strange little market, but he was afraid to approach anyone outright for fear of making friends with someone who had been born from code. Anyone wearing one of the carnival's pins might have soon found themselves being tailed by a tiny teenager with two black triangles coming from his back.

[ Restaurants ]

Lucifer was having trouble reconciling the fact that he was coded into a world made of code. Bored and hungry, he found a restaurant that looked eerily similar to MgRonald's back home. The food he ordered came out looking like regular food (mostly), and he wondered if it would even fill him up.

Was this real? Was any of this even real? Wasn't this like eating radio waves or something?

Uncharacteristically desperate for a human-like distraction from his own head, he stopped the nearest person who was passing by with their own food. "Hey. Sit with me, would you?" Unspoken were the additional words I'm bored.

Shops

[hippocarnival]

It's a couple blocks of window shopping before Yuya decides that, yes, this guy is definitely following him. He's a lower res, off-color model but he wears the carnival badge very obviously on his shirt to mark him apart for everyone else.

It's resulted in a few strange questions from the locals, but it's only because he recognizes it on Lucifer that he doesn't appear bothered as he stops and turns around.

"Are you following me? I don't bite, you know."

RESTAURANTS

[otoko]

[Food. Food is good, and it certainly looks normal enough to order. The awkwardly computerized teen has only just finished receiving his own order, before his chrome face turns to blink at Lucifer. (Gongenzaka, notably, changed A Lot in this place; his lower half some kind of covered and wheeled Thing, and his upper not only chrome but lacking all canid additions.)

Being asked to sit with another is...not what he expected, naturally.] Auh-if you like? [What is happening here.]

[control_freak]

Foster came into the mainframe not out of a desire to be there, but out of a desire to be away from the carnival. That this is the lesser of two evils says a lot about how poor his feelings about the carnival are right now--Foster has a very negative opinion of video games, as he does of fantasy novels, daily crossword puzzles, extreme couponing, and most hobbies or other forms of escapism.

On a less dire note, he's also inexplicably purple, which isn't really any worse than being dead, or covered in mushrooms that are probably using his rot-arrested body as nourishment, but it's a lot more offensive to him on principle.

Visually, it's disorienting. Functionally, it's clumsy. Even the texture wrap on the polygonal model over his own body feels... sticky. It's disgusting.

But what actually bothers him isn't his physical condition--or its illusion--at all.

It's...

"This isn't real," he's muttering to himself, seated irritably on a digital bench in a digital park. In a digital metropolis. In an artificial, imitation, make-believe world. "It's not real."

[starseedling]

Normally, Steven had sort of been avoiding this guy. He's seen how he acts towards other people, and when his primary reason for coming to the carnival (outside of following his dad) had been for escapism, it didn't really seem like there was a point. Yet, after the big mess with Ginko, he can't help but wonder.

Steven just happens to be in the digital park at the same time, and he hears what Foster is saying. He's quiet for a little while, before saying, in a quiet voice:

"Yeah, it is."

[pullingamiko]

"What's not real?"

Miko just kind of... plops down next to him, either oblivious to his bad mood or just choosing to ignore it. Maybe he'll feel better if he's not stewing over whatever it is that he's stewing over today. "Hey, like it's your turn to be purple for once. Seems like kind of a pointless thing to shake up, but whatever."

Sure enough, Miko is, for the first time in a while, not purple... not that being green is actually an improvement.

[dorkypantsuit]

Seven Ate Nine
He's used to glamours that hide how he looks, and even the forced changes they faced in worlds like Atlantis. Still, even in those places he still looked mostly troll shaped. Instead upon entering mainframe he takes on the appearance of a giant yellow number two, with stick arms, legs, and a face. It is totally bizarre and very disconcerting. For a moment he just stands out the portal exit looking very confused.

"At least I'm a yellow two?" he comments, mostly to himself. That counted as a bright side, right?

No Relief

It's been a long time he's seen aftermath that looks quite like this. Despite the attacks that had been made on carnival members or on the carnival itself, the damage was always fixed near instantly thanks to the Ringmaster. Here it was an entirely different story. He's glad his psionics seem to translate relatively well to this world, because it means he can at least try to help these creatures pick up the pieces.

He was certainly going to think twice before playing any computer games for a while.

Through their stay Psi can be seen using his Psionic's to pick up destroyed pieces of the buildings, helping the inhabitants of this world reclaim whatever they can. He wishes he could somehow stick the pieces back together, it should theoretically be possible if he could fix the code but, it's been so thoroughly broken in places he's not sure he could do it if he even tried.

The people who'd become nulls are even more distressing, there could nothing more than garbled characters combined in a nonsensical fashion, as though he tried to open a program in a text editor instead. If only there was some kind of back-up system for these numbers he feels like he could at least do something to correct them, but when he asks around people just give him a strange look.

"It's like the people here are just tools for their User." He comments, his voice so clearly bitter. It strikes a chord in him he wished would stay silent.

seven ate nine

[pullingamiko]

"Why d'you want to be yellow?"

Miko, meanwhile, got a lot luckier on the avatar front; she's still pretty much human-shaped, possibly more so than she has been lately... except for the green skin. That's not actually much more human-looking than purple.

She looks him over, doing absolutely nothing to hide her amusement. "Though, I guess if you do, you gotta take what you can get right now, huh?"

seven ate nine

[walkonedge]

And he's blue. His avatar still looks mostly humanoid, which is a good thing - he's not used to non-humanoid forms, so that would have been a disaster. He's no stranger to being rendered digitally, although for the most part, being in the Digital World somehow preserved his own look rather than changing it to something like whatever his form was supposed to be.

Blue is a terrible colour for his skin, especially when it's a light blue and it's kind of clashing with his blond hair (which, surprisingly, was not changed to blue).

The only way he recognises the yellow two as Psii is by his voice - even with the whole change, it still sounds similar enough that he can identify the speaker pretty easily. The yellow's also about the same shade as his hair colour, now that he thinks about it.

"... Any significance behind the colour and the number?"

He's just looking curiously at Psii's "two" form. Strange, he would have assumed that everyone would have looked like vaguely-human sprites.