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

[hyakuoku]

I think finding the limits -- without getting people killed repeatedly, preferably -- is a good starting place.

SH442K said he might try making a raft and sailing out, seeing if there's some limit in the ocean. It's not a bad idea, testing physical parameters, just how much geographical space we have. Once we know that, we can test ideas on how to break that limitation. Even physics can be pushed a little! We can defy gravity and launch things into space, after all, but technically the rules are all still in place. We're just using them differently when we do that.

We can pick any other rule we want to establish and do the same. Assume x is true, then work to prove it is or prove it isn't. Once we know, we figure out how to break the rules.

I wish we could start with the tech, the electricity, test the power limits or even how and if it works. But I can't get at the stuff here to even try to plug anything in, so that's out for now.

Other than mortal danger, you got anything?

[cactusy]

Not right now.

How much do you trust SH4 not to be an idiot?

[hyakuoku]

[ He laughs a little. ]

Who knows? I trust reckless people to push physical limits the furthest the quickest. That's the fastest way to get data, don't you think?

[ Senku isn't above putting people in danger if they volunteered for it themselves, rip... ]

[cactusy]

Not if he's just going to get himself killed.

[hyakuoku]

Oh? I thought you said that didn't really matter.

[ That laugh again; it's one of his quirks that probably annoys the shit out of other people. ]

To be clear, I don't want anyone to be in mortal danger. I think it would be safer to do an experiment like that in pairs, or with some kind of line tether back to the shore. But he doesn't really seem like the type who's gonna wait to set up that kind of thing. Maybe by the time we could actually build a raft, we could convince him though.

[cactusy]

I said we come back if we die. So sure, technically it doesn't matter, but a guy who freaks out just from being here isn't the kind of guy who's not going to be traumatized by that happening to him. And the fact that you think he's gonna go off half-cocked just makes him an even worse pick. Who's to say he'd even bother communicating his findings back?

[hyakuoku]

He told me he'd tell me what he finds. I don't really have a reason to think he won't. I know a few people like him back home, who yell a lot and make a lot of fuss about things but who get things done when it matters. He seems like that type to me.

You know the first thing he did when he woke up here other than scream a lot was make a giant SOS sign on the beach? He's not a total idiot. And he volunteered tools once he gets down here to this resort we found. That's why I think he's got more to him than just bullshit.

As for trauma...I can't speak to that. Dying and coming back is shitty, there's no two ways around that. I don't know what we'll find out in the ocean and I stand by what I said: it's better to tag team it. What do you want me to do, try to convince a guy like that to not try it? If he's gonna try it anyway, I'd rather hear what he finds and not just piss him off so he won't tell us anything.

[cactusy]

... Okay.

[Sorry, Senku. She's a woman of few words.]