TO994M | day 4 | morning | audio

[cactusy]

[There's the sound of footsteps on sand; she's walking as she talks, heading away from the beach and up towards the scrubby jungle.]

So I got got by what I think was a crossbow bolt. Kinda hard to tell for sure; it all came at me pretty fast. Got an arrow to the leg not long before that, but the one that came for my head seemed bigger in the point-two seconds of reaction time I had before it hit. And it did hit. Should've been difficult-to-impossible to survive, but here I am. Which tells me some things.

[She relays the news of her almost-certain death matter-of-factly, in the same flat-ish tone as her previous radio contributions. If anything, she sounds a little more upbeat here: it's not by much, but having (what she thinks are) answers is a relief. At least now she (thinks she!!) knows what she's dealing with.]

Look, guys; this isn't real. Fifty-fifty odds whether you're a part of it or not - maybe you're all artificial constructs and I'm the only real sentient person here, or maybe we're all hooked up to machines in a lab and we've been tossed into this simulated... thing together. Gonna be nice and assume the latter, for now. Point is, signs have been pointing to this for a while, and this proves it. But this is good news, kind of. It means that whatever happens here doesn't really matter. We die, we screw up, we do something our monitor overlord doesn't like - we just reset. I fired off three bullets, and they're back now, because the gun and the bullets are just lines of computer code that can be rewritten in whatever way the people running this want.

Priority number one shouldn't be escaping the island or long-term survival or whatever. It should be figuring out how to get out of the simulation. Then the party can really get started.

Comments

[ichoosefight]

That remains to be seen.

What's the plan then, if you're right? Aside from "abandon all attempts to survive or escape".

[cactusy]

Not even a little what I said.

[ichoosefight]

You're doing the thing again. Where you don't answer the question.

[cactusy]

This is about reframing our thinking. Yeah, we should keep eating and drinking and avoiding drones, but we can't think of that as the be-all, end-all here. Our end goal needs to be figuring out what we can do that will get them to end the simulation.

[ichoosefight]

And in the mean time? If we're trying to stay hidden? If the chance comes to get off the island? What will you do when something happens that might mean you're wrong? Assume it's a lie?

[cactusy]

Really depends on what kind of situation we're talking about. You wanna be more specific?

[ichoosefight]

What if something happens that somebody else recognizes? What if you run into a guy with scars like tally marks and I tell you he's a serial killer?