lostcarnival | ⇨ MAINFRAME

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⇨ MAINFRAME

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.

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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.

"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?"

Edited 2017-05-29 01:05 (UTC)

Laugh it up Miko, he certainly isn't going to stop her. Even he realizes this is just too ridiculous. That said, how could he convey his affinity for the color yellow without going into the whole troll blood caste system, which always a pain to explain to humans, let alone young humans. He thinks on it for a while before finally speaking. Enjoy the image of a giant number two speaking to you as it walks about Miko.

"Trolls can have different blood colors and mine used to be yellow."

There, that was a simple enough explanation. Wasn't it?

It's a simple explanation, but, of course, it just brings on more questions.

"Wait, your blood's different colors? Does that mean there are trolls with, like, purple or pink or something? And what d'you mean 'used to' - or is that just 'cuz numbers don't have blood. Do you have blood right now?"

He goes a bit cross eyed trying going over all her questions in his head. It's difficult though, especially since the answer to some of her questions is relative complicated. He can tell he's going to have to get a bit more in depth with all this, so instead of asking her to repeat herself he just starts from the top.

"There are only twelve acceptable blood colors, so while there might be a troll out there with pink blood they wouldn't go around sharing it with people. The colors are maroon, orange, yellow, lime, green, jade, teal, cerulean, blue, indigo, violet, and... Fuschia. Trolls with other colored blood are somtimes born, but they are considered mutants and usually killed shortly after they hatch."

Okay, surely that explained it well enough and she wouldn't have any other questions, right?

"As for me, I'm not sure if I have blood right now, but being at the carnival changed it from yellow to purple."

"Oh... jeez. Why would they kill someone 'cuz their blood's the wrong color or whatever? That sounds really dumb."

Nope, more questions.

"Really? This place changes people's blood?"

"It can and I know for a fact I'm not the only at the carnival that's experienced that particular change either."

More questions, of course. Still, he doesn't really mind answering them, not so long as she actually listened to the answers for them.

"There's things humans must have killed each other over, historically at least, right?" Though many of the humans at the carnival were peaceful beings, he knew war existed everywhere in one form or another.

"It's the same on Alternia. There are some trolls who think things should be a certain way, and they'll kill anyone who doesn't fit."

"Really? Man, I hadn't heard this place could do that." Why is changing blood colors stranger than tails or wings? She doesn't know for sure, but it just feels like it.

"Yeah, there've been lots of wars and stuff on Earth." She frowns thoughtfully, crossing her arms. "Guess that kinda thing just sort of... happens, wherever you are. Still super weird, though."

He shrugs, in response to both statements.

"Weird or not, it's just the way things are."

Miko huffs, shoulders hunching. "Well sometimes the way things are sucks. Good thing that crap doesn't happen here... does it?"

She stops for a moment, looking vaguely concerned. If people's blood can change color in the carnival, is there some kind of weird blood racism situation she didn't know about? That would be one hell of a thing to find out all of a sudden.

He actually laughs at her reaction, not loudly, but enough to be heard.

"No, it doesn't. I've never meet another species that has it at least."

"Good." She crosses her arms with a huff. "Is there... anything like that goin' on that I should know about? Like, I dunno, whether people have wings or not. That seems like somethin' that could be a thing."

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.

He sighs, observing yet another carnival member who was lucky enough to get a not number shaped appearance. To be honest though, he was kind of starting to like the whole giant number two thing. It was pretty unique and also hilarious.

"Well, my sign is symbolic for the number two, and the yellow is for my blood-color." he smiles, looking amused, "Basically it's a troll thing."

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⇨ MAINFRAME

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seven ate nine

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