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

private

[aluminumandash]

[ He abandons the walkie while she's piecing everything together, but he's quick to reply once it crackles back to life. Joys of a six-foot cell. ] Yeah, you're on your vision quest. [ Despite the phrasing, it's not dismissive. ]

It's a two-man job, I can tell you that. And it's important.

private

[cactusy]

I think I almost had something, before I bit it. But if you can get out, or you can give me an idea of how to get to you--

private

[aluminumandash]

I only know it from the coast. The northeast shore, I was following it south, marking my trail with three rocks in a stack. Ah, you'd see the downed cockpit, maybe the remains of a fire.

Before I headed into the jungle I sketched a little compass in the sand. From there, mmmm, ten hours due west? Set out early morning, arrived near dusk.

[ With sharper interest: ] What do you mean, had it?

private

[cactusy]

[Ah, the direction she's already kinda-sorta headed in. Good.]

Shouldn't talk about it over this thing.

private

[aluminumandash]

Alright.

Drones're still up and running. Only way I can figure to short them out is to clog the fucking toilet. [ And for obvious reasons he's keeping that one in reserve. ]