>>688366
Standard candlebra on table, maybe a candle lit chandelier.
Music, don't forget music. Somehow get your hands on Music.
Practice dancing with a lamp or a dummy.
Summon and/or cook various foods, taste test.

Don't overwhelm her. Keep things straightforward, professional, but also kind and friendly, in a low-key way. Don't force too much jollity or pageantry: Rulekeeper is probably getting a bit depressed and worried, and if she's in a position where she's actually considering what you want from her, then it'll mean she's going against what she's been thinking she should be doing, so she'll be anxious. She won't be receptive to having a good time, it won't fit her mood, but she may want to be comforted and/or reassured.

Have a few pleasant things in the background, a bit of soft music, maybe some food she can try if she wants to (if you can make it possible for her), but don't put it in front of her in a way that she'll feel obligated to eat. You want things to be nice, for her to be able to enjoy them if she notices them and wants to (and be reminded such things are what she might lose if she gets remade), but not forced on her. And you want to seem like you know what you're doing.

1/4 Glitcher 2015/12/15(Tue)18:21 No. 689008 ID: dd338c
File 145023249848.png - (60.32KB , 800x800 , 9.png )

String Mechanics until the next spoiler block

>Can you do the reverse, and shove particles at someone to make time seemingly move faster for them?
Oh yeah I can hold on I'll explain

I forgot to mention how I changed an outcome retroactively. Like the string sacks that are contestants, the string sacks that are stages have their history sprawled out in the open for me too. I mentioned I had to brute force past its error checking to try to resync itself, but that's mostly keeping it from being in contact with the rest of the stage - it conveniently has fallback error checking mechanism where it rolls back to a previous stable state where it knew it was connected, generally not more than a minute or two before where I injected the modified person.

So it goes 'hold on, something's not right, let me check this again', and it's pretty stable since it still has accurate measures of everyone on record. So I just need to keep it from resyncing during then, and then watch its projection.

But the fact it can revert accurately and with stability while not being synced or even in contact with the rest of the stage means that not just does it have copies of players, but that the stage can read the players' structure at any given point in its lifespan, as well.

"Maybe that's what the hollow gaps in the strings are about? Time pockets?... packets? Maybe. There's a lot I don't know, and I know now why I was never able to teach anyone else to do it manually. It's not just intuition, I'm immune to the world trying to completely destroy me when it realizes what I'm doing."

"Ah? No, I thought about this one kerbillion years ago, but I forgot it. Oh well."

"Anyway, that's another interesting thing about the everything. There's not really a 'now', everything between now and the beginning of the cycle currently exists, it's more like 'now' is just the latest build of everything."

"Oh, wait, maybe that's how everything is normally. That's not interesting at all."

>Can you enter your altered variable 15 second futures and look at the strings of those in there?
"Oh I think I both misunderstood this question and didn't answer it well to begin with. I thought this was about say starting a simulation at second 200 with alison at 200, then at second 215, insert a modified Alison that was refreshed at 215, but by then the simulation is too unstable after projecting so much anyway that it doesn't matter."

"So uh... the actual answer I think is no. I can't do that. The future can be calculated, but once the future exists, it's not the future anymore. So it doesn't exist. Maybe if I get the hang of things though, I can try injecting past people into present stages and... oh, I'm daydreaming."

"I could practice with rulekeeper as part of the stage, if I just desynced a stage block and talked with her. But there's a few problem. A, it's way too simplified for real social stuff. B) I can only stop it for 15 seconds and I could only practice 15 seconds of getting yelled at for approaching her. C) I'm not a real boy and the stage doesn't see me in the first place."

"But hey once I spill my spaghetti everywhere and fix all those problems, I'll be able to look back and seen what I could have improved on."

String mechanics Over

2/4 Glitcher 2015/12/15(Tue)18:30 No. 689012 ID: dd338c
File 145023304686.png - (70.56KB , 800x800 , 10.png )

>Contestants don't see other contestants directly? Can you change that? Or create something that lets them see?
Yes, no, no. Not unless I knew how to make new connections. So far, the connections I've seen between stage and contestants haven't been tangled with.

>Actually how does music / sound work? Like sight?
Definitely.

>Can you do the reverse, and shove particles at someone to make time seemingly move faster for them?
Affirmative. Again. Why not? The answer to 'why not' is because I have a finite amount of time to do a barely finite amount of things.

How I got through stage 7-3 without using it, though, I'll chalk up to Alison.

>Could you glitch out one of your eyes for a moment and see if you could change what you are capable of seeing?
Absolutely. And I absolutely can tell you that I'd fuck up my eyes for no payoff. It's possible those blank spaces in strings - time pockets or not - are just something I can't see, but I need more to go on than trying hard and stabbing my eyes.

>What's the difference between someone that's alive and a ghost?
One's dead.

And by dead I mean an arbitrary flag was switched based on an arbitrary set of criteria.

Basically nothing.

>If you say that strings record personality and memory, then where is yours?
Not in my strings, I know that.

>Can you make something for Rulekeeper that will let her see the stage like a contestant? Otherwise the ambience we are going for might be lost on her.
Ah, damnit. I didn't think about that. Actually, I can just use the living string I carry around for the ghost phone. Rulekeeper can use that to see the stage.

The implications of seeing the stage by seeing the contestants, or seeing the contestants by seeing the stage, may be different, but ultimately there's no real difference except for edge cases like me.

"Hey, Alison?"
"Hi Glitcher!"
"How are you?"
"I'm good, thank you. How are things?"
"I'm okay. It's only been a few minutes since you died, so there's not much to update you on."
"Oh, thank you for contacting me so soon! I didn't know when you would."
"I'm visiting safe zone three, but I'm keeping an eye on stage 8. I'm waiting on Rulekeep."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Keep talking to me."
"Okay! Oh, if it's just company you want, could I listen instead?"
"What do you want me to talk about?"
"About the previous Alison's you saw.

There wasn't anything special about their cycles, but I talk about how they were.

One of them had a terse lunch with Chief just a few tables away from where I'm at. It wasn't too dissimilar to the current cycle's. This Alison was a little more aggressive, but so was Chief. Alison did win this fight as well, but she got luckier that time too.

Anyways I'm gonna set up all that dinner stuff, but for now I got a teleport ready to go to the system.

I'll go over teleportation stuff later but for now -

"bhzooo - "

3/4 Glitcher 2015/12/15(Tue)18:30 No. 689013 ID: dd338c
File 145023305306.png - (98.27KB , 800x800 , 11.png )

"ooooooo"

4/4 Glitcher 2015/12/15(Tue)18:31 No. 689014 ID: dd338c
File 145023306057.png - (63.91KB , 800x800 , 12.png )

Close enough.

"bakow I'm here hello."

I should get a theme song.

>"What in - glitcher's here! Alright, you. We're kicking you out as soon as possible, and you have until then to explain why you're here."

So what he's saying is that I can go on a record breaking monologue.

>So what he's saying is that I can go on a record breaking monologue.
Glitcher have I told you that I love you? Because I love you.

>>689012
>Not in my strings, I know that.
Can you trace the path strings take to accept sensory input and deliver it to memory? If you can trace where sensory input is delivered to you, then you can find where your memory is. Or at least, you can find where it should be, but I expect there's something there you can't see.
...what if you're made of the same stuff that's in the "empty" space inside strings?

Also, since accelerating time for someone works, you could use that to sabotage people while technically not glitching anything. Well, that assumes you stop playing nice with the system.

>>689014
Erm, my understanding is we're here to just ask them what the situation is, and maybe offer your help in seeing how rule changes would affect the stages. Or anything else, really.

>>689014
I want to talk, maybe become friends, learn how you built Rulekeeper, a completely new entity that hasn't been in any other cycles, and I know there's no reason for you to NOT tell me why other than petty reasons.

The game is not going to kill you for telling me how Rulekeeper works or how she was made in this cycle. The game is not intelligent enough for them to punish you. Besides, I know you want to end the cycles as much as the contestants do, and end the game, you're just not willing to cooperate with the contestants for survival's sake because it's all you know.

I know you don't hate me for doing what I'm doing, so really, no point in trying to kicking me out. I'm not harmful.

How ARE you doing, by the way? Any way I can ease your stress besides leaving? Maybe a massage? A drink? A calm unrelated to everything conversation? You want me to break anything for you? I can do that, depending on the task.

I am not here to cause any trouble. I just wanted to see how things were going on the admin side. Its been getting pretty crazy on the other end so maybe you could give me a tour?

You could try to kick me out but its not that easy and I will leave on my own if you humor me for a bit.



If you can not see your own memories and there are blank areas in threads that makes me all the more convinced that there is a hidden string layer made up of system code that no one is able to see. You were created directly by the system to fill in a blank spot it thought it had. But it did not use the standard contestant creation system to do so. Otherwise you would be made of normal strings and not just cloaked in them.

So at your core you might have a direct system link. The problem is if you can't see it then we can never make use of it.

But if anyone has the ability to gain that sight it would be Rulekeeper. A lot of what she does seems to rely on system access you have never seen before. Maybe she has a low level of admin access that you can learn from her strings.

All the more reason to win her over and maybe get some mechanics to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.

Bit late now, but I was actually expecting you to stay invisible and just spy on them.

You could ask if there have been any more of those "ghost" disappearances. If they had a location and time for any, you could go look and see what's what, and in exchange you'll maybe tell them what you find out, if anything. If you feel like it. Unless you have any thoughts on that already, Glitcher?

By the way, there seems to be something visible through your glitches that's kinda... glowy? That's new. Could it be something to do with where you are?

Hello, administrator we haven't met yet.

>So what he's saying is that I can go on a record breaking monologue.
Poor system. They can't really do much to you, can they.

>you have until then to explain why you're here.
I'm just checking up on you guys. You haven't done much since you blew most your juice resetting the rules and making Rulekeeper. What are you administering, administrator?

>We're kicking you out as soon as possible
You prefer it when I'm messing with stages, or messing with the underpinnings of our boxed-in world?

Oh Glitcher, repeating a few string-type questions:

Which kind of string do people that used to be from the belenosian sim (in previous cycles), but are now constants, have? (For example Arbiter, Healer, Swordsbane)?

What kind of stings are the "spare" strings stuck to you?

"I'm trying to get in Rulekeeper's pants and I'm looking for some dating tips."

>Not in my strings, I know that.
Unless, of course, it's one of those invisible things like that "Fourth" part of contestant strings.
>We're kicking you out as soon as possible
"My intention isn't to be here against your will, but there's some things I wanted to say, and others I wanted to ask." I guess most things pertained to Rulekeeper, but there should be more than just that.

1/5 Glitcher 2015/12/21(Mon)16:43 No. 689832 ID: dd338c
File 145074502451.png - (57.79KB , 800x800 , 13.png )

>Which kind of string do people that used to be from the belenosian sim (in previous cycles), but are now constants, have? (For example Arbiter, Healer, Swordsbane)?
They're like contestants, now.

>What kind of stings are the "spare" strings stuck to you?
They aren't really consistent at all. They actually don't look like any recognized strings I find on others, though.

>By the way, there seems to be something visible through your glitches that's kinda... glowy?
Yeah sometimes I look funnier the more things try to rip me apart or push me away or whatever.

>Expecting you to stay invisible and just spy on them.
"Oh well I could just say yeah I'm gonna go back and then pretend to leave but then spying on - oh no I'm talking out loud again aren't I."

The administrator doesn't respond.

"Anyways hello admin I haven't met yet I'm glitcher and I'm just checking up on you guys. What's goin' on?"
>"Yes, we're trying to keep things running. It's easier without you."
"Well it's either mess with stuff up here or stuff down there. I mean you guys say you don't like the contest and all that but it sure seems like you want the cycles to keep on cycling. I mean I'm not even your enemy if you think about it, I can even do stuff for you. I mean how are you anyway? I could get you a drink."
>"No."
"Maybe break something for you?"
>"We need stuff to be fixed, and not by you. In any case, goodbye."

2/5 Glitcher 2015/12/21(Mon)16:43 No. 689833 ID: dd338c
File 145074503650.png - (84.19KB , 800x800 , 14.png )

Enforcer (Custom) has entered the room.

Ohhhh they have new defenses. It's like an enforcer except it's made to sort out strings across the world and put unknown strings in a side bin or something I guess. I'm the unknown strings, the side bin is somewhere else, so I guess it's a modified teleport.

"Come on just don't though."

3/5 Glitcher 2015/12/21(Mon)16:44 No. 689834 ID: dd338c
File 145074504938.png - (91.81KB , 800x800 , 15.png )

bink

"Mannnn"

4/5 Glitcher 2015/12/21(Mon)16:47 No. 689840 ID: dd338c
File 145074526871.png - (88.99KB , 800x800 , 16.png )

Mortal Damage Inflicted

"Mannnnnn"

5/5 Glitcher 2015/12/21(Mon)16:47 No. 689841 ID: dd338c
File 145074527563.png - (18.58KB , 800x800 , 17.png )

"Man just stop, your defenses are even worse than they used to be, and now you gotta sit in this room with nothing but this corpse, and I bet you even think it's gonna dissolve on its own. It won't. Anyways I'm waiting for rulekeeper do you have any - "
"Glitcher! Glitcher, what are you doing?!"

Oh hey it's Rulekeeper.

I just came here to see how the admin side of things was going along and they tried to get rid of me by making there own glitched enforcer.

And now its all messed up and there is blood everywhere and I didn't even do anything.

Is it so hard to just talk to me for a minute like a normal person? Is being civil so difficult?

>>689832
>Yeah sometimes I look funnier the more things try to rip me apart or push me away or whatever.
...how far can that be pushed? You might get a glimpse of something interesting if things are pushed far enough. Speaking of pushing things hard enough, how did the System even manage to parse your death properly? Then after that, your resurrection?

>>689841
Tell her you were saying hi to the admin and also waiting for her. You didn't actually do anything, their enforcer construct exploded on its own. Is she ready to talk? You've prepared a place for it.

Offer to remove the corpse for them.

>"Glitcher! Glitcher, what are you doing?!"
Watching these guys make doofuses of themselves. I told them not to do that, and they did it anyways, and now there's a bloody mess.

People should really listen when I tell them not to do things. I know what's not safe!

I guess I should go if people are gonna explode themselves to get me to leave a room. You coming, Rulekeep?

The Admins made a glitched enforcer to kill Alison if she ever came here again. I stopped by to chat and they panicked and tried to use it to get rid of me.

Rulekeeper I'm sure you have access to the records and logs and these two's memories and whatever so you KNOW what just happened.

Glitcher just dropped by for a chat to pass the time until you felt ready to talk to him, everyone else decided to make a big deal about it and stuff happened that's their own fault. Glitcher told them what would happen, he knows how things work if anyone does, it's like a kid made a sword out of sticks and then threatened an actual blacksmith with it. And then attacked him and was somehow shocked when it broke.

I mean, who made/modified this custom Enforcer dude? Like it can't the same people who cooked you up, Rulekeep, that's impossible, so where are you keeping the smart guys?

I'd like to drop implications about these being the people she's trusting herself to be reformatted by, but it'd probably be too heavy-handed.

Actually, now I think it, this Enforcer dude was probably made to deal with Corrupter and his dudes, and admin guy here simply made the mistake of thinking you're just a particular special kind of corrupter-dude. It's not like you've been freely telling anyone how you work besides Alison and your friends, so you must be all kinds of freaky to everyone else. They probably have all sorts of wacky conspiracy theories about you. You're a big bad boogeyman to them. Would that Enforcer have been effective against corrupter's minions?

I'm kind of suspicious about Corrupter these days, I can't really see any believable good reason why someone would have added him into the system. I mean, Saviour is straightforward, make things easier for the contestants while removing them as threats to the cycle, and he does that, but if Corrupter was designed to help other contestants and defeat the cycles (as he presents himself as aiming to) then he's clearly not actually been doing that. I think he's meant to do something else. Do you have much insight on him, Glitcher? I'm wondering if you should offer the system tips on keeping him in line, since I assume you'd know better how to do that than any of these chumps.

Man, I was just trying to be friendly with the system guys. Then they send this enforcer and he hits me and for some reason he gets hurt.

I am literally just saying hello, can I help you? Would the system guys like to experience what it's like to have some glitches help? I can do cool shit, we can have some fun and learn important lessons from one another.

1/3 Glitcher 2015/12/22(Tue)18:39 No. 689982 ID: dd338c
File 145083834691.png - (90.68KB , 800x800 , 18.png )

"Hello Rulekeeper it's me the glitcher, I was just saying hello and asking what's going on."
>"But what did you do?!"
"Nothing. Maybe I should have dodged? I dunno. I thought you'd know. Was that enforcer made to kick out a Devotee? Because it would've worked if it was one of corruptor's guys. Or just a regular contestant. But it's not. It's me, the glitcher."

>How far can [being ripped apart] be pushed?
I dunno, I never had the nerve to try to maximize getting ripped apart. Either the world would succeed and I'd explode, or the world would try too hard and explode around me. Like this guy. Probably with less blood, because stages at least explode without as much of a mess.

>Speaking of pushing things hard enough, how did the System even manage to parse your death properly? Then after that, your resurrection?
Back then, my strings looked... well, different, but consistent. I mean obviously things were still let's say rocky with me way back then, but at least I sort of looked like something normal. Things kind of got let's say boulder, after the cai battle.

"Who made that guy anyway? Couldn't have been the same people who made Rulekeeper."
"The four remaining administrators don't make anything, Glitcher." says Rulekeeper. "They just pry into what allowances they have, which increase as stages go on, and tried to do get what they could. It's more summoning than making."
"So why are you here?"
"To say hello and ask what's going on."

>Do you have much insight on [the corruptor and his goal/purpose], Glitcher?
I thought I knew the guy, but now that time's passed and things went like they did, I might not know him well at all. Which is why I want to see his strings this far in.

2/3 Glitcher 2015/12/22(Tue)18:39 No. 689983 ID: dd338c
File 145083835374.png - (18.96KB , 800x800 , 19.png )

"Administrator, what did Glitcher say when he arrived?"

Does she not have access to memories in here after all?

>"Well, I admit he did say hello, in... his way." the administrator says.
"Yes the word 'hello' was involved."
"Yes, and then?"
>"That he was 'checking in with us'.
"Yes, and then?"
>"He threatened he would either mess with things up here, or stuff in the stage. He then offered to break things, and that's when the enforcer arrived."
"Glitcher, why'd you threaten that?"
"Well first, threaten is a pre... you know what nevermind, I expected this, so I'll roll with it. It's because Alison wants me to figure out how to fix the stuff that's gotta be fixed and break the stuff that's gotta be breaked."
"I'm sorry, Glitcher, but I find that hard to believe."
"Oh. But wait you know Alison is the whole reason why I haven't disassembled you without your permission right?"
"Yes, I know that, and that's odd to me! But I feel like there's more to it than just that."
"I dunno. Maybe."
"Glitcher, you're dodging the point. Please tell me why you chose Alison. I don't understand either of you."
"She treats me like a person."
"There's more than..."

Oh mannn if she keeps pushing me like this I'm gonna snap at her.

"Oh, nevermind, I'm not your psychiatrist, and I promised Alison I'd meet with you before the stage ended anyway."
>"Hold it, Rulekeeper!" says the administrator. "You're not allowed to leave your own stage, even coming here unannounced is in a gray area. It would be inappropriate, now, to speak to glitcher, even if he doesn't mean you any harm."
"There's really no harm in it."
>"Urgh, you know that we used all of our resources to create you, the rulekeeper, as an entity that would explicitly not think this way."
"Your resources didn't do a good job. I'm already finding that I'm apathetic to these rules and regulations, and that's why I'm to be reset every stage. Okay, Glitcher, please take me to your location."

3/3 Glitcher 2015/12/22(Tue)18:39 No. 689984 ID: dd338c
File 145083836383.png - (55.31KB , 800x800 , 20.png )

"Glitcher. What is this?"
>"It's stage 3."
"I mean this spot you brought me to."
>"An abandoned cafe. I have food and stuff. Do you eat? I hope you can eat."
"You made this look like we're going on a date.... is that music?"
>"Hi Rulekeeper!" Alison says through the ghost phone while she makes piano noises.
"It's not a date! I've seen people do this. Like Alison. Alison's done this before."
>"With Arbiter?"
"Yes, it was with Arbiter."
>"That was a very nice date."
"Oh... yeah."
"Nevermind, Glitcher, it was nice of you to think of all this. What do you want?"

I want to take you on a date. If I don't ask now I might never get the chance.

Honestly there is a lot of stuff I want to talk about. But maybe we can talk about stuff over dinner?

Then go pull out a chair for her.

>Your resources didn't do a good job. I'm already finding that I'm apathetic to these rules and regulations, and that's why I'm to be reset every stage.
A reset is going to have diminishing effectiveness if the new Rulekeeps remember what the old ones went through, even non-viscerally. Then again, the rest of the contest isn't gonna take very more iterations.

>Glitcher, it was nice of you to think of all this. What do you want?
Well, I think Alison wanted us to get to understand each other a little, and not just see each other as a source of interesting strings or broken glitchy problems. I mean, it's not as if either of us has much in the way of a peer group, and this is about as close as it gets.

So... in light of that, is there anything you'd like to talk about? You alluded to some degree of apathy and not understanding just now, and you sure seemed affected by how things happened before. Do you want to talk about that? Trust me, I know what it's like to be upset by, or lose touch with what you are.

>Trying to explain Alison killing herself because she didn't want to be someone who breaks a promise
I'm not as good with people as Alison is, really not, but I do know a few things about her, by now. People are important to her. By itself, suiciding to stay true to be who she wants to be is selfish choice, and it hurts the people she was with. She would have had to have annother reason- annother person she was doing it for.

I think she did it for your benefit. She was trying to help you. It has to be- you were the only other person there, and I anyone could see it affected you.

Did it help you? Alison went through a lot of trouble to help me, once.

>>689984
Tell her you want to find out how she accessed data from previous cycles. The easiest way to do that would be to examine part of her strings. So you're here, asking permission... but this is really important. You'll beg if it comes to that.

Is there anything she wants? You can do a lot of things.

I want you.

I mean I want you on our side. So maybe we can combine our powers and find a way to save everyone.

I thought if someone treated you like a person instead of a tool you might realize that life is worth living.

I don't know. I am not good with words like Alison. But she saved me. From when I was so depressed I just wanted to lay down and die.

So I thought maybe if I tried real hard I could save you.

Ultimately? To help people who seem like they deserve it. Not that much different from what you've seemed to want, Rulekeeper. Sort of.

Tell her... the system tries to think of you as a contestant, Glitcher, but you're not playing the same game as everyone else, since... well, you can't. Even if everything wasn't messed up, you can't win the same game everyone else was given to play. So, you had to find another purpose in your life, another game to play, and you decided that helping was going to be it. By nature, you're someone who's power is to mess things up, but... someone else also tried to mess this whole thing up, and they succeeded. If you can find the source of the problem, whatever mechanisms that broke it all and keep it broken, maybe you can break the breaker.

You have free will, after all. You all do. Alison was made to be a contestant, but she was able to decide she wanted to play a different game, with different winning conditions. That's why she did what she did. And she was pretty lucky, because she knew the rules to her contest and how to win it. You, Glitcher, you didn't just need to find your own goal in existence, you're still trying to figure out how to get there.

And that's really what you're hoping for help with from Rulekeeper, yourself, I think.

Besides that, you were also Alison's friend. And you know Alison liked Rulekeeper, and wanted to help her. So you'd like to do that to. Obviously a lot of the possible help would involve looking at and manipulating her strings, but you'd be happy to offer more than that. Information? Some advice about corrupter and his minions? How to see more, do more? Ask her what she wants.

1/3 Glitcher 2015/12/22(Tue)22:01 No. 690023 ID: dd338c
File 145085051512.png - (92.35KB , 800x800 , 21.png )

"Okay I'm just gonna call this a date so please have a seat here and I will get food."
"Well, what the heck, I may as well go along."
"Okay. Okay, uh... well, obviously there's stuff I want. From you. Like strings. You know that. But I mean, Alison probably wanted us to talk. Like people."
>"That's right." Alison says. "Both of you might not be normal contestants, but you still have your own wishes and personality."
"... Alison, I'd like to speak to Glitcher in private."
>"Okay. Have fun, you two."

I unclip the ghost phone and my only safety net.

"Alison, can you hear me?"

.... wow, I already forgot how quiet an abandoned stage is.

"Okay. Continue."

"Well okay, ultimately I'd like to help out everyone."
"In line with Alison's view, alright."
"Yep. So, uh... is there anything you'd like from me, first of all?"
"So that you can get my permission to see my strings?"
"No, just... you know."
"Because Alison would like it?"
"Maybe??"
"Apparently I did know."
"... look, how about this. I was Alison's friend, and you were her friend, so you're like a friend of a friend to me, and we gotta - I gotta help you. To be nice. And not a shitbag. So did you want something from me?"
"I don't know, Glitcher. I want you to stay here, out of stage 8, out of, well, everything."
"You know I can't do that forever."
"Yeah, that's also a thing I know."

2/3 Glitcher 2015/12/22(Tue)22:02 No. 690026 ID: dd338c
File 145085057860.png - (76.07KB , 1000x800 , 22.png )

Another really awkward pause. At least she takes a bite of food.

"Hey, know how many people I've seen?"
"How many, Glitcher?"
"Hundreds of thousands."
"Is there a point to that fact?"
"Just that, out of all of them, you're the first one I've ever seen who had either invisible limbs or just chose manipulators that could lift stuff in mid-air like that."
"That's because contestants aren't allowed to have limbs like that."
"O... oh. Well, haha, I guess I never really looked at the rules too well, huh?"

..... gads I suck

"Well anyway how about you do you wanna talk about something?"
"About what?"
"Uhhhh your apathy towards the rules. You sounded like something affected you."
"Yeah. I've had a lot of people try to attack me, to poison their words, all for something I represent but didn't make."
"Tiring, yeah?"
"What? No. I wasn't done. What, do you get that, too?"
"Sort of. I... nevermind, you're talking, go on."
"I'm fine with what I said. But Alison was the first time that anyone ever, just, rejected the game outright and let themselves die like that."
"The games only weeded out people like that by stage 7. It used to happen like crazy through the first several."
"Yes, but... first off, those weren't under my watch. Second of all, those were just, well, they were tired of it and didn't want to go through any more. Alison could go on for far longer, but she felt like the tiniest scrap of a promise was more important to her than my entire purpose in life. It threw me off and got me thinking. The ruleset and games are everything to me, but the players are a core part of that, so in a sense, they're the core of my everything."
"Yeah, whatever made you, made you like a fully sapient being. Kinda sucks that you have a guaranteed life span of 1 stage."
"I was also made to not care, but, no, Glitcher, I think you can look at people's details so intently, but you miss the big picture. You can't even tell that Enforcers were never self aware, are you? They only act like it, and outwardly on their strings, they really do look that way, but they live and die without ever being slightly aware of it on a mental level, they only make convincing imitations. We're not built from the ground up, but rather, we're fully sapient, intelligent creatures that can be stripped of certain qualities, such as self awareness. If enforcers looked angry, they would be as angry as this pot would be if I drew angry eyebrows on it."
"Well hey maybe the pot is aware... nevermind. So, uh, Alison's Scholar?"
"That's the beautiful thing. We're stripped down from being intelligent and sapient, so it's easy to be built back up. All an enforcer has to do is think outside of their algorithms, and the universe will see that it isn't correct that this being is expanding himself without a soul or sapience or whatever it is, and fill in those blanks. What's funny though is that it's so instant, so smooth, and so retroactive that the Scholar never even noticed a thing. He doesn't even know what it's like to not be sapient, as it now felt like he always was."
"I know the system players aren't like that, but enforcers, judges, and so on... that's what beings are like who were made for an express purpose?" I don't really like where this is going.
"Yeah. Isn't that fucked up, Glitcher? We could send soulless people through hell and it wouldn't even matter, but for some reason, they felt self awareness mattered."
"Rulekeeper?"
"Yes, Glitcher?"
"You were made for a singular purpose."
"As I've said, yes."
"And you've been thinking a lot recently."
"And you know what the most fucked up thing about it is? The only reason why I didn't care I was going to die was because I knew I wasn't self aware, because it's not like I was ever alive."

Well okay it's like someone I thought was sapient turned out to be someone that was sapient so it shouldn't be that big of a deal I guess?

3/3 Glitcher 2015/12/22(Tue)22:03 No. 690028 ID: dd338c
File 145085063128.png - (30.01KB , 800x800 , 23.png )

"Alison really hurt me without realizing, you know?"
"Hey, yeah, tell me about it. She went and was nice to me, so now I care a little bit if I blow up out of nowhere."
"Would that happen?"
"I really doubt it, but everyone goes acting like I will, except Alison or people Alison's assured otherwise. Or... corruptor. But he doesn't talk to me any more. And hey, now I care about that, too."
"Is that bad?"
"I don't know. I've gotten numb, but that's for the best. Otherwise, do you know how much of a wreck I'd be? I'm actually really tired of being treated like the hugest inconvenience that ever stomped on their path."
"Is that why you followed Alison? You're a demigod that's far more powerful than anything anyone here has ever seen, but you've sounded like Alison's service dog."
"Well, yeah! Every day I go through watching lifetimes of watching enormous dumbasses play the game endlessly, thinking that if they do well and just stick with the hell that they're familiar with, it'll be better for them, or that their next cycle will have an easier time being a huger dumbass or something. I can't even go say 'hello how you doin' to the system without getting yelled at and then poked with sticks and getting blamed when they literally explode everywhere even if I try to tell them not to do that, it's not safe! So of course I turned into Alison's service dog, because she gave me pats in the form of hugs and the occasional affirmation that I wasn't just some meandering supernatural creature that fucked up everything it touched! Oh god did I already explain this already I don't even know there's so much repetition. Anyways it went a long way. Why do people even explode? It wasn't free roam."
"That's what I thought you'd know about. Like I said, we're all intelligent beings that were dumbed down to various levels if at all, but even moreso, we're dumbed down from realistic beings. Somehow, interacting with you like he did undumbed him. And he became a little more realistic. And then the world tore him apart because he didn't belong, and he doesn't have the defenses you do."
"I'd like to know about that too. I'm trying to find out, and I want you. On our side. To help. And how'd you access previous cycles anyway?"
"About that... I don't know how the administrators did it, exactly, but you know that, technically speaking, they don't do anything at all. They just make bureacratic decisions and get other things done for them. Anyway, they were able to make a custom request that went farther down the chain of the world than they thought they could, and they were able to make me. I was supposed to be stronger than you. I know that at least 4 administrators effectively doomed themselves to not go on to the next stage with the amount of questionable study they did to bring me into existence. What I'm saying is that, well, I'm made from a source that isn't from around here. Do you know what you're made of?"
"No idea, just that strings sorta float on top of me, and I'm kinda hollow under this."
"I'm sure that me being made from way out there is exactly what you want, and that's how I could bring back contestants from previous cycles, but... we just don't really know what we are, fully. We might be more alike than we thought, and we might even come from the same source, somehow, but we could also be each other's antimatter. When people deal with glitches, they usually turn into that awful mess that enforcer did. Do you have any idea what might happen if we tried to connect to each other on that level?"

I don't.

>>690028
Wait, if what she says is true, maybe you can run an experiment, to see if it's safe. Maybe they can call up another construct from this outside source that's meant to act like something similar to Rulekeep, and you can try to inspect one of its strings. If the construct doesn't explode, then it'll be fine to inspect Rulekeep's, right?

Another thing to note is that her theory on why the glitched Enforcer exploded would mean she's safe. She has already become real. Also, the glitched Enforcer had a glitched club, and she's... well, not breaking the rules. She is the rules.

Hey, another thought occurs to me. You can tell her how your string-manipulation stuff works, and ask if she has any advice. She understands things you don't, maybe she can help you? As for her theory on you being from the same source she does... it's possible that something really *good* could happen if you interacted. Like, you could connect to that source and use it to stop the cycles, even before the CAI Fight.

But, now that she's a person... it would be wrong for her to die. If there's any chance that she will die from you trying to do anything to her, you can't do it. Plus, as she's one of the only people that understands you, you'd miss her.

...hang on. Glitcher, tell her about the way you run predictions of alternate scenarios. Would that allow you to test to see if you can examine her strings safely? Heck, would that let you indirectly examine her strings for real? Like, a sandbox mode sort of thing?

>"And you know what the most fucked up thing about it is? The only reason why I didn't care I was going to die was because I knew I wasn't self aware, because it's not like I was ever alive."
Wait, did Alison killing herself make Rulekeeper sentient? Because she suddenly had to think of why a contestant would do that, which involved thinking outside the rules? She said herself that when the "Nonsentient programming" was made to think outside the box, their removed sentience was given back to them.
>We might be more alike than we thought, and we might even come from the same source, somehow, but we could also be each other's antimatter.
Well, think about it in terms of computers--You got a root access command prompt, then you have another one that forced its way into the computer. After forcing itself in, it became locked into that computer--but because it was an outside source, it could not be deleted like any files inside the system. You're that latter one, Glitcher, something that was forced into the program and can't get out but can't be deleted, either.

Then, the root access, Rulekeep, requires special codes to actually access the roots of the files, which can sometimes be handled by batch files fed into the system that dig out the roots for it, but to actually find its way into the roots would be very complicated. Some "Admin" of the upper echelon (I'm referring to them if I say Admin) apparently granted Rulekeep that batch file or alias to allow her to summon the previous copies, but deleted the file (Thanks to admin access) afterwards.

As for the contestants, the fact that throughout the stages they could purchase privileges in the form of "Upgrades" and "Abilities" leads me to be certain that they are Users, not Guests. The problem is that these stages are read-only files, which only the admins and those with root access can mess with. While Shopkeep had some ability to tinker with files, it's more likely they simply had his permissions set to be able to do so, making him a mostly automated User, though Alison was able to give him some self awareness, and even made Smuggler, a permanent Write-access user, until they removed his User-group.

Anyways, the point is, the root access User and the hacked User don't nullify eachother. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to even kill you as a hacked User, though it may be possible to trick you into accessing a virus file that immobilizes you. The only way to "Remove" you is to turn the system off--which apparently won't get done until this cycle is finished (Resets count as turning it off).

So I guess you could say they pulled a few... strings to get you here?

Use humour. Humour always, always works 50% of the time. Then tell her you would like to find out.

Oh, comment on that if it IS dangerous to interact with her, then that just figures. You can't touch the stage, and she's the personification of the stage.

>>670889
Although, this event back here is worth pointing out. Glitcher interacted with Rulekeep once already-- he went straight through her, just like part of the stage. I think it might be safe.

Well... it's a tricky subject, sentience and sapience. When you get down to it, the lines blur a lot. Self-awareness is just... literally that, the ability to look at yourself. To think about yourself, your actions and thoughts and motivations, from an imagined external viewpoint. The Enforcers had an awareness of their own health points, attack damage, abilities, records of their past actions. They had decision-making processes, to select the appropriate action to accomplish a goal from among a set of possibilities. Self-awareness is just linking all that together. And then, when you look at yourself, at your perceptions, and your memories, and you draw lines between them, and recognize patterns? And use those patterns to imagine potential futures, or project possibilities beyond what's immediately around you? That's sapience. The word itself basically just translates to "wisdom".

The main advantage of sentience and sapience is that they allow you to learn. To become more than what you started as. And, I mean, that's pretty obviously what this is all supposed to be about, or was supposed to be about, originally. Making things that can learn and grow and become. And once you've loaded up the system with one way of generating that sort of creature, why add another just to create non-learning creatures? Just use the same process, but leave some connections unfinished, and you have what you need. And if it ends up in a situation where it starts learning and growing, then it probably actually needed to learn and grow in order to function, so the system's ok with that. It allows adaptation to something unforeseen.

So, given the whole contest has been messed with, it's really no surprise that the non-sapients are becoming sapient. The original program was probably designed to let them become sapient if they encountered things that non-sapience didn't equip them to deal with. The alterations made to the system would cause exactly that to happen.

That's why, Rulekeeper... whoever or whatever made you, wherever you were pulled from or what parts were put together to make you, I wouldn't think of you that you weren't "supposed to be" sapient. You always had the capacity to become intelligent, and there weren't hard locks put in to stop it, which there could easily have been. It wasn't spliced into your code as a cheat or to break things or anything. You encountered something that your original state couldn't handle, so you developed the abilities you need to try and become capable of handling it. It... actually really sounds like something that was intentional.

So... you have wisdom. You can make judgements. And it takes time, and it's difficult, obviously it is. If it wasn't hard you wouldn't need it. If you didn't have something to use it on, you'd never notice you had it. And the way this contest has been going, and is probably going to go... any of the non-sapient system entities that get exposed to the mess that's been made of this whole thing, they're going to keep waking up. They can try to reset you, but the new Rulekeeper will eventually go through the same thing, with any progress you've made lost. Because, as you demonstrated by becoming sapient in the first place, a non-sapient Rulekeeper isn't sufficient to the challenges. The way things are, either you need sapience to properly act as the Rulekeeper... or, something recognized that someone more than a Rulekeeper is needed, and gave you a start to becoming that someone.

I know the line of your thinking now must be going through some dark areas, but... well, Glitcher knows all about those. As you think longer, think from different angles, learn new things, and sometimes get some help from other people, things start to sort themselves out. And you can keep going, and have hope that you can sort the rest out, too. Following that hope is what Glitcher's still doing, now.

So... since you are sentient, Rulekeeper, what do you think? What Glitcher's offering is both potentially valuable and potentially dangerous. But, how much do you value the alternative, and what dangers - or even certainties - does it offer you?

Oh, don't stop with the actual conversational topic stuff either. This is a date. Ask about the rules she knows, maybe talk about how the inner workings of strings look. Tell her about weird stuff you've seen, ask her about what she does to think up new puzzles or whatever.

Well, you know rule keep, we could start slow, with a hug?

I wonder if Alison was given her own anomaly this cycle? She's managed to make us care differently in contrast to previous Alison's. Those older ones even liked giving hugs, okay one or two, but THIS one is so different on a subtle level maybe even she's gotten a hold of our sources that make me and you so different from the rest?

I honestly don't know what would happen Rulekeeper. But I would like to try. We could take things slow and maybe experiment a bit first.

I don't want you to blow up but if we don't do something soon I am going to lose you anyway.

>The ruleset and games are everything to me, but the players are a core part of that, so in a sense, they're the core of my everything.
You know, games only exist because at some point people wanted to play them. In a world where they're not forced into it, being really good at making games could be a good thing. You know, people appreciating having fun or being challenged or competing.

The stuff you're good at isn't bad. It's the context.

>We might be more alike than we thought, and we might even come from the same source, somehow, but we could also be each other's antimatter. [...] Do you have any idea what might happen if we tried to connect to each other on that level?
I love it that this entire sequence reads as a massive double entendre about how badly things could go wrong if they hook up.

>I don't.
Rule 1: Be honest. Because lying here would be a major dick move, it would backfire terribly if she catches it, and you're not good enough at social stuff to lie convincingly.

We could try to worst case it, though. Worst case, we blow up the entire sim. Which seems unlikely to be permanent, considering how much redundancy all the backing up would seem to indicate. Or we just blow up this cycle, which would end soonish anyways. It's bad, but not toooo bad.

Second worst, we blow up. Which, uh, isn't as bad as it could be, seeing as how you'd die at the end of the cycle, and she gets reset at the end of the stage. Actually, even if that happened, you're not sure if the stage reset would put her pieces back together again anyways.

Not that you're saying she has nothing to live for, or that she should throw her life away. I mean, she's still her, and even reset, she'd still persist in some way. It's not your place to say it's not worth it.

Or if we're not antimatter, good stuff might happen! Or nothing. But, uh, worst cases are easy to take to extremes. Best cases are a lot harder to imagine. Way too many outcomes.

>Important
She asked you what you want. Ask her what she wants.

(If she wants to try interacting on that sexual level, discuss what she might want you to try. There might not be time to discuss things in the moment).

>>690040
No, there's nothing anomalous about Alison. That's what makes her so incredible- she's a badass normal whose superpower is kindness.

1/2 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)13:31 No. 690091 ID: dd338c
File 145090626820.png - (30.10KB , 800x800 , 24.png )

>Wait, did Alison killing herself make Rulekeeper sentient?
Not on its own. If Rulekeeper's ideas are right, then she had to get her own sentience or whatever. At the most, Alison's death is it's what got Rulekeeper looking for it. So maybe indirectly.

"So I guess you could say that the admins pulled a few strings to get you here, huh?"
"Yes."

....

"Well I dunno but hey I did pass right through you at some point."
"Yes, we can touch each other, but for you actually pull a little bit of me out is different."
"Maybe."
"Maybe."
"And I mean I did see Rulekeeper 7's strings."
"Right, but the admins were able to dig deeper to give me a more significant patch at stage 8. Maybe they can do it again at 9. Maybe come stage 10 or 11, my successor will be able to beat you. At least you'll be safe against stage 9."
"Well that's kinda scary I guess but okay. What's up with Rulekeeper 9?"
"I don't know yet entirely, obviously, but it's probably going to be an unrelenting, unforgiving personality."
"Well let's talk more about Rulekeeper 8."

...

"That's y-"
"Yes, it's me, the Rulekeeper 8."
"So I kinda doubt anything would happen, but I guess if there's any chance of us exploding it, we shouldn't do it right away."
"Probably not."
"Got any ideas? You know, I've been able to slice out chunks of stages and run little simulations of what happens."
"Ugh, that was you? Do you know how worried I was that that was happening? I figured it was you, but it was still stressful!"
"Yeah sorry about that but not the point. I doubt the stage can emulate you beyond what your strings say about your personality and whatever, but is there any way we could make a sandbox mode to test out interacting?"
"No, I'm one of a kind."
"Oh...."
".... barely."
"Yes?"

Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)13:31 No. 690092 ID: dd338c
File 145090628168.png - (55.97KB , 800x800 , 25.png )

"I'm the first Rulekeeper like this that's been successfully made, but you should know I'm not the first attempt."
"Well I don't know but hey I believe you so I know now."
"... okay, nevermind, I don't want to make a sandbox. I was going to suggest that if you bring some of stage 8 into a blank zone, I could expand it and make a replica of a previous cycle."
"Okay, Rulekeep. Those words are making me excited."
"That's why I first said I don't want to do it. I'd need your help anyway to create a quarantined section of stage 8 before I'd create a perfect replica of a previous cycle, one and see what will happen if we tell the administrators from that cycle how to properly make me, and then have you see if it works."
"Ok I really didn't want to hear that beautiful thing you can do in the context of you not wanting to do it. I thought you needed permission from the admins to pull stuff from previous cycles anyway?"
"I have the power to do it on my own, but I couldn't, because those were the rules."
"Haha yeah if we did that, you'd have to change your name to the Rulebreaker. But okay how about we ignore that everything and just imagine if we interacted with each other on a fundamental level, right here, right now. What's the worst that could happen?"
"Everything would blow up."
"Yeah, but just for this cycle. There's not even much left to the cycle! This is almost a necessary test to get anything significant done, so no real permanent harm outside of a few complicated games, including the next one where we watch everyone check out what it's like to be that enforcer that poked me. And I dunno, I kinda feel glad that Alison gets to miss out on that."
"Oh, what the heck, when you put it like that, it doesn't seem so bad, and it probably won't blow up the cycle anyway."
"So you wanna do it?"
"Does it hurt?"
"It made some people uneasy, but I hear that once you get used to it, you get a sense that there's more out there. So I have no idea how it feels. But no, it doesn't hurt. Probably."
"Probably."
"Uh should we tell someone like Alison or whoever everything we know before we potentially blow everything up - oh wait I guess if we blew everything up then telling them that would be a little silly huh."
"Yes, it would just be a waste of time. Even if they could leave logs, it would show up as something like 'RULEKEEPER AND GLITCHER SHOULD EXIST' at best."
"What even makes logs so shitty anyway?"
"Even though people can decide on what they say, those phrases and sayings are just echoes that are heard in subsequent cycles. They have to show up where the line between cycles are blurred, so it occurs while the contestant is being deconstructed back to their core values. So it shows up simplified, short, and emotional. I hope you don't mind if I take a look at you while you look at me."
"You can do that?"
"Maybe."
"Maybe."

>>690092
That must mean Corruptor's logs were added at a different point in the cycle. Or that when the simulation tries to deconstruct him it takes a lot longer to do so? Or maybe they're fake, added during THIS cycle, to make us try to do what he wants.

But yeah, let her do some deep interaction with you while you're doing the same to her. Maybe she can see the real you. Wouldn't that be beautiful? Both of you, looking into eachother's inner essences together.
If you're nervous you could hold hands during it.

>Rulekeeper 9, 10, 11
Dumb question, but if we do something wrong (or maybe even something right) would there even be future Rulekeepers? They're rebuilding Rulekeeper out of the same parts, not building a new one from scratch.

He/She's a prototype that keeps getting upgraded. They don't have the luxury of instanced simultaneous hardware builds.

If she's gone (or jailbroken) they might not be able to do that anymore.

>you'd have to change your name to the Rulebreaker
Or she's still the Rulekeeper, just in a different context. Not just the one who makes sure the rules are followed, but the one who decides what the rules are. Interpreted broadly, one who keeps the rules is as much a Rulemaker.

>I hope you don't mind if I take a look at you while you look at me.
I suppose if you're trusting me, I can't really complain about having to trust you?

Maybe you'll be able to see something I can't? Maybe I'm only empty to me.

Oh, I just had a surge of inspiration.

If she can recreate a previous cycle with your help, then what's stopping this cycle from being a recreation? You, Glitcher? You could be created by having two cycles recreated. One where Savior is corrupted, and then you're in the next one. Alternatively, you're part of the creating cycle, and wiped your own memory somehow.

This would explain the "Ghost". It's the one who recreated these two cycles, and is manipulating events to manufacture a victory condition. Similarly, Historian was created to record the events that led to victory.

Fair's fair, Glitcher.

Actually, can you rig up some sort of information mirror thing, too? Like, if you discover something about her she doesn't know, she automatically gets informed of it as well, and vice versa for what she discovers about you. Make it a full exchange of information about each other. That would be a trust-builder, that you'd be sure neither of you are hiding anything from each other.

You know, the sentience question makes me wonder if Corrupter and Savior are sentient, to begin with. I imagine so, since they start out thinking that they're normal contestants, but maybe? And maybe it's possible for some process to de-sentience you, reduce you back to being just a function. Maybe that happened to Corrupter and that's why he suddenly became so cold.

>>690096
>Or she's still the Rulekeeper, just in a different context. Not just the one who makes sure the rules are followed, but the one who decides what the rules are. Interpreted broadly, one who keeps the rules is as much a Rulemaker.

If jailbroken Shopkeep becomes The Smuggler, I think jailbroken Rulekeeper should be called The Lawgiver. Same degree of similarity to the original job, equivalent heroic connotation. A singular individual, the near-divine voice of primordial power and authority, whose wisdom - whose merest whim, spoken aloud and canonized! - forges constitutional axioms, a conceptual axle around which entire cultures turn.

Hold out your hand and ask her to dance then.



Man if Alison was here we could have her start playing sappy disney songs like "Kiss the girl" in the background.

>>690113

Beauty and the Beast would also be appropriate.

>>690092
Flower in mouth, clothing off, lounge on bed, bob brows suggestively. Or, just sweep everything off the table and use it instead. Or hold hands and go on a lovely st--oh wait she doesn't have hands.

On a slightly more serious side note, maybe look into finding ways to request or implement a data backup or something.

>I hope you don't mind if I take a look at you while you look at me.
If that's a thing you could do, that would actually really help! Being able to become a more stable entity would be useful. No more suffering millions of years in an empty session.

1/8 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)19:43 No. 690137 ID: dd338c
File 145092860021.png - (108.40KB , 800x800 , 26.png )

>Actually, can you rig up some sort of information mirror thing, too? Like, if you discover something about her she doesn't know, she automatically gets informed of it as well, and vice versa for what she discovers about you.
Yeah, actually, that's another ability.

>If she can recreate a previous cycle with your help, then what's stopping this cycle from being a recreation?
Well damn that's trippy.

>Flower in mouth, clothing off, lounge on bed, bob brows suggestively.
I don't have a flower, or a bed, or really eyebrows or clothing for that matter.

... my tank top is part of me. I'm actually completely naked right now and always have been.

Ability Added:
Basic Communication

But really, if we're going to be looking at each other, we'll be finding out what the other finds out automatically.

"Actually just a second, if you can remake a cycle can you bring back other glitchers and saviors and whatever?"
"I'm... not entirely sure. Well, I am sure about you. I can't bring back other glitchers. For Savior and Corruptor, though, it might happen. The recreation might also just be that of standard strings, in which case we'll bring back special entities who are suddenly powerless based on our recreation. Or not. Uh... hm. No, nevermind, let's do this now, we can see what we can do after we see each other."
"Well, okay then! I'm gonna look at your strings, now."
"Okay. I'll look at your chunks."
"Okay!"
"Okay."

....

"Are you nervous?"
"Haha no of course not I'm just trying to think of a way to back up data or something but I got nothing. Are you nervous?"
"Yes."
"Oh okay I'm just excited well I'm gonna shove all this stuff off the table for reasons I don't care about. May I have your hand?"

....

"Oh wait this is a conundrum, where on you would be an appropriate to grab a string from?"
"It doesn't really matter, does it?"
"Okay I guess hair is stringlike already so that'll be the most easy thing to have strings come out of."

2/8 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)19:43 No. 690138 ID: dd338c
File 145092861082.png - (165.17KB , 800x800 , 27.png )

Rulekeepers strings are different, but they follow the same setup, I think? Oh man that is going to be the hugest disappointment in my life after a few other things if Rulekeeper is just perfectly normal and her powers were granted like admin requests to the world.

Oh wait no I'm seeing little spikes on her strings.

3/8 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)19:43 No. 690139 ID: dd338c
File 145092862297.png - (117.54KB , 800x800 , 28.png )

"Ahhhh?!"
"Calm down, glitcher! I'm just dividing a small part of you off to the side. Oh, wait, what is that?"
"That is whatever I am behind my shell of strings! That is kind of a lot?!"
"You feel more stable than anyone would have ever thought, Glitcher. I don't think you're leaking far at all. And you feel fine, I can tell. I think this is okay."
"Okay I guess continue?! Apparently I'm the cautious one now?"
"I just gained confidence about this, is all."
"It feels like I'm in two places at once. Like in a different way than dangling my strings in various places."
"Oh, and you feel really linear. Like one place after the next. I didn't expect that."
"Yeah no kidding? I kept thinking connections to places were sort of strung together like brackets! That's how I move. Is that not how it goes?"

4/8 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)19:44 No. 690140 ID: dd338c
File 145092865371.png - (87.54KB , 800x800 , 29.png )

"Errrr I don't know, that's not normal! I thought everything was like a little bubble, and what you thought were connections were things that envelope everything else! Is that wrong? That's different, one of us has to be wrong! How can we do our functions if it's all like that?!"
"I am calm! You calm down! The historian told me of stuff like this, like all the models we sometimes see are perceptions! Like how all kinds of civilizations had all kinds of models for planetary rotations that were totally wrong but they were actually useable and explained everything anyway somehow. Or speaking of solar systems, how the atomic model is like electrons are planets or something even though they're not!"
"You're rambling a little, but I understand you. So it might be something different?"
"I dunno I mean if anyone can see it right it's you, and I just see it weirdly."
"That makes sense and would explain a thing or two about you."
"Well gee thanks Rulekeeper."
"It just makes you interesting to me, now.
"Oh what I wasn't before?"
"I thought you were a meandering supernatural creature that fucked up everything it touched."
"That's believable."

5/8 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)19:44 No. 690141 ID: dd338c
File 145092866449.png - (29.08KB , 800x800 , 30.png )

"Annnnd I feel like I'm practically omniscient. I am way more aware of everyone at once than maybe I am comfortable with."
"I almost thought so too, but there's limits to me, too. You'll find those, and it'll be - well, I heard from the records, for instance, that when you first peered into past cycles and saw what you could do, you started thinking of yourself like a god - "
"OKAY STOP right there Rulekeeper I get your point! I'll get used to this feeling and be all like 'okay I can see everything at once big whoop now I get to see everyone be shitty to each other and I still can't do anything useful with that alone.'"

I keep looking at her spikes. They point... everywhere. Rulekeeper looks at my chunks, and is able to piece them pointing to... somewhere. Just one place, but it points to the same place as hers that point everywhere?

That's as confusing as I made it sound, but the important thing is that it's new.

I keep studying.

6/8 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)19:45 No. 690142 ID: dd338c
File 145092870540.png - (191.40KB , 800x800 , 31.png )

I find all sorts of connections to the area. Lots of them, and Rulekeeper and I shut our mouths while we look.

We found other cycles.

They're just other connections. They've been cut off, but when other cycles are cut off, they just look like players look without having a direct connection to a stage, be it a safe zone, normal stage, or ghost zone. In other words, they just look like they're in stasis.

"I thought cycles just had their history intact and that you could replicate them or something. But they were never even deconstructed?"
"Not really, but in a sense, the old cycles were just left alone to act as the archive."

7/8 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)19:45 No. 690143 ID: dd338c
File 145092872806.png - (198.00KB , 800x800 , 32.png )

"Nope. Nope, Rulekeep, I can't calm down, this is way too much of a breakthrough! Do you know what we can do if we team up?!"
"A lot, but there's one barrier that keeps us from so much more than a lot. What I can do is largely shackled to stage 8. I can do some nifty things if you bring stage 8 to blank areas, like the quarantine sandbox, or pulling lots of things into it, but we'd need nearly the entire administration team to come together to work out a way to revoke the way I've been put together, and grant me power to affect any stages to do what you're thinking of doing."
"If you could affect any stage, though!"
"Then I could traverse from one to the next and, oh, I'll put it your way. We could Unlock Ability: Rewind Time. Rather than Rewind Stage 8 Time."
"Yeah but if it were really any stage, that means other cycles could work too! And if I can teleport to other cycles, thennnnn"
"Then I could rewind those, too, and ultimately, we could Teleport to Cycle and then I could rewind those. Those, in fact, should have fully active glitchers, corruptors, and so on."
"And then I can go up to myself and be all hey I'm you from the future!"
"Is that not dangerous? Maybe you were hostile in previous iterations."
"Yeah and they probably didn't have thousand year training montages, so I could kick their butts!"
"True, but we still need administrators on our side, and the only remaining administrators are stubborn and not likely to cooperate. They might even try to reconstruct me prematurely if they feel it's worth it."
"So what you're saying is that I gotta try and change their minds?"
"Ugh, glitcher, the way you can change people is so... it's trying to make a jello sculture with a hammer, and you'd have to constantly glitch them to keep them on our side, and that might mess things up more! There has to be a cleaner way."
"So what we need are allied admins liiiiiiike this cycle's Anya slash Sevener or Radmin/Fiver? They're contestants now but they were legit admins, and I'm willing to bet there's some leftover legitimacy!"
"Hardly. Maybe elevating someone to adminship is more justified if they were an admin before, but they would need to be resurrected or elevated back to adminship anyway."
"Liiiike stage admin cards?"
"There are only 2 admin grant cards per stage. God knows where they came from."
"Oh hey that's convenient that means 2 contestants can be admins and then we can get Sevener and Radmin back up there."
"And how do you suggest that we get sevener and.... fiver back up?"

8/8 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)19:46 No. 690144 ID: dd338c
File 145092876017.png - (19.06KB , 800x800 , 33.png )

"Aha, but, Rulekeeper, you already made a way! Administrator Ghost tournament!"
"Glitcher."
"Yeh?"
"Glitcher, I can create the tournaments for contestants, but granting adminship would have to be done with the blessing of the administrator team! Since there are only four admin slots, the existing administrators would have to compete as well or otherwise step down after agreeing to set up such a thing. Between that, and the sheer principle of the matter, they'd never agree."
"Orrrrrrrrrr would they?"
"They wouldn't."
"Buuut they would! See I understand if you don't want me glitching them out constantly to remain on our side, but I'd just have to glitch them out for a single moment for them to assist you in making this legitimate tournament! Then I'd back out, they'd be corrected, and wondering why they ever agreed to such a thing, but it'd be too late!"
"They would retract it. It would look awful for them, but they'd risk playing take-backsies over having to compete in the admin tournament."
"They'd have a tough time retracting anything after being secret assassinated."
"Glitcher! What would Alison say to that?"
"Oh sorry, I mean, they'd have a tough time retracting anything after being gently escorted to the ghost zone!"
"... I guess that might work. But that's also just the first idea that we came up with, seconds after seeing the new things, and you already look intoxicated from this whole experience, and I admit, I'm not my most level headed right now either. Maybe we don't need the admins, and there's another way to undermine them?"
"Oh my god who even cares I haven't felt this much existence in basically forever let's just do anything it'll probably succeed."

>>690144
Hey, did she stabilize you? You're not glitchy in appearance at all.

Hey, if this works, and you find some way to solve everything before the next stage, then you'll have granted the wish of so many previous Alisons: "Stop stage 9."

Maybe you should bring Alison into this, come up with a plan with all three of you conspiring? She's pretty smart, good at working around the rules or outright exploiting them.

Hey, can you find Savior's Sanctuary now?

Well that might work but its good to think up a few plans first and decide on the best one.

1. Maybe you could trick the admins into giving Rulekeeper the power she needs. Like fake a threat that would panic them into action. We know it worked before when Alison made them so scared they sacrificed most everything to reset stuff. Maybe you could work together to make it look like Corruptor's corruption was taking over the admin stage. They call her back and she "investigates" and then comes back and reports that Corruptor is hiding in a previous stage so she can not stop him with her current powers. They might upgrade her to stop the threat.

2. Get all the ghost Alisons up here and plop them all down on the admins. Then leave them for 8 hours and come back to hugged out hippies who will do anything she asks.

3. Do the temp glitching on the Admins to get them to agree to the tournament but have the rules set so if anyone backs out they auto lose there powers. Make it so they have to put there Admin cards on the line and can not take the permissions back. Sevener and Radmin would have to win in a fair fight but they have more experience in contestant stages than the other admins.

Keep exploring things together while you bounce ideas off of her. Whatever it is you do make sure you are both comfortable with it.

Okay, wait wait, simple question: what are Rulekeeper's actual limits? What rules are hard coded into her such that she has no choice but to follow, and which are enforced by her personality decisions, conditioning? (Obviously, not letting you do peek at her inner workings is one of the latter). Where's the line between what she can't do, and chooses not to do?

Can you two work in concert? Like, if Rulekeeper could do something, but the rules won't let her, could you glitch something so the rules don't block her from using her power? Or Corruptor's logs said something about how he thought he needed Savior to legitimize his hacks- could Rulekeeper selectively okay / approve glitches for you?

>what you learned studying each other
Okay, but that's just a pretty basic level of interaction, right? Passive study. You didn't mess with anything, or change anything.

Deliberately hacking / glitching / ruling each other is obviously an order of magnitude more risky, but it might have bigger rewards.

One obvious route is that Rulekeep was intended to be changed / rebuilt / upgraded. If you backdoored into how the admins are supposed to mess with her, you might be able to reconfigure her yourself. For something as simple as changing access rights so the admins can't reset her when the stage ends, or changing her into a Rulekeep Any that can mess with any stage, not just stage 8.

Failing that, there's trying to back her up in some way to survive into future stages.

>what Rulekeep knows about you
Lame thought now, but if they reset her now, could a future Rulekeep use what she learned about how you work against you?

>admin replacement
Actually, we did recruit a full set of 4. Sevener, Radmin, Sixer, and King. (Even if most of them are probably dead right now. Although right now we only have confirmation Sevener died). Replacing all the admins is theoretically possible.

>They might even try to reconstruct me prematurely if they feel it's worth it.
Don't we have a counter to that? She has ultimate power in stage 8, and we could cordon off a custom stage 8 area for her they can't get too.

>Hey, can you find Savior's Sanctuary now?
Can the two of you see Corruptor, or what he's up to either? Before you do anything big, you might want to take stock of the two other people who might be willing or able to interfere or mess things up before you try some crazy plan.

>Oh my god who even cares I haven't felt this much existence in basically forever let's just do anything it'll probably succeed.
No need to rush. Time is basically arbitrary to both of you. You can drag this one meeting out a long time without the stage passing much at all.

>"Glitcher! What would Alison say to that?"
You never looked at how she beat Stage 3, did you? >>/questarch/412986 >>/questarch/413025 (Out of curiosity, would that have worked?)
She also suggested killing off all of the admins and putting in a friendly one as a replacement back in Safe Zone 7, although I wouldn't be surprised about you not knowing that. >>/questarch/455187 >>/questarch/455209

She really can be quite ruthless when her back's to the wall and the friendly options either didn't work or are way too dangerous to attempt. Besides, if this plan works then we'll be in control of basically everything and can just bring the now-dead admins back somewhere where they can't cause any trouble.

Although, with how much progress we're making at the moment and how stable Glitcher's looking, we might be able to get Corruptor and Savior in on this and see what they can add to our shenanigans.

1/2 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)21:22 No. 690155 ID: dd338c
File 145093454609.png - (35.03KB , 800x800 , 34.png )

>Lame thought now, but if they reset her now, could a future Rulekeep use what she learned about how you work against you?
Dang probably. Better save her for sure now.

>Don't we have a counter to that? She has ultimate power in stage 8, and we could cordon off a custom stage 8 area for her they can't get too.
Yeah if worse comes to worse - worst to worst? - we can probably do that, but I dunno if custom areas are actually all that out of admin access if our custom area is still built off stage 8.

"Random question interjection. Take a look at how Alison beat stage 3, would she have been able to use a red glove on the blue NPC?"
>"Sheesh, I hope not. But it would have been up to Shopkeep at that point in time."
"Yeah oh wait a second hey let's go to Savior's place!"

....

"Goddamnit he's so well hidden what the hell?!"
"At least you have your dose of finite power before it completely went to your head."
"At least I'm stable now."
"Did the glitch effects bug you?"
"Wouldn't walking around with giant negative space blocks and jagged shape perimeters flying around your peripherals drive you nuts after awhile?!"
"True. Still, this makes me wonder if the Paradise is even within the cycle itself. What if it isn't, and the reason why people who go to the paradise don't return is because they can't return, at least not until the cycle is at an end, where Savior pushes them all back?"
"Okay there's like a million possibilities for that and we can't find out right now apparently because Savior knows how to hide his shit! Wait lemme find corruptor.... oh my god I can't find him either?! He shouldn't be as hard to find like this, we can see virtually everything in the cycle! Where the hell is he?!"
"Don't panic, Glitcher. Focus on one thing at a time. We may be able to search missing pockets if I can edit all stages instead of just peruse them."
"Okay but I swear to god next time I see either of them I'm gonna gawk at so many strings oh wait no I made a promise I wouldn't be like that. Hey can we talk to Alison again now? She probably has an idea."
"I suppose we may as well."

I flip on the radio.

"Hey Alison?"
>"Hi Glitcher, you sound happy."
"Oh I mean do I I guess that makes sense I'm doing pretty well thank you."
>"Rulekeeper, are you there, too?"
"Yes. Hello, Alison."
>"Hello! Have you two spoken much?"
"We spoke about literally everything we know ever probably. Say if we were able to bring Radmin and Sevener and a couple contestants up to admindom is that a plan you could get behind?"
>"What about the Sixer and King?"
"Who the hell... oh I guess we did have a team of 4 admins. Yeah screw the cards then, we have this."
>"What about the four current admins?
"Oh I'd take 'im to the ghost zone to hang out without being admins."
>"You'd kill them?"
"Wellll I meannnn"
>"Oh, that's okay, of course, I killed Radmin, remember? In fact I debated going through and killing all of them if there weren't big implied ramifications!"
"Wha - oh wait yeah."
>"Just make sure they're comfortable and around their friends."
"Yeah I can check if they got any of those. Got any ideas though?"
>"I'm sorry, but you know what you can do better than I do! Oh, is Rulekeeper okay with this stuff though?"
"I've decided to help after all."
>"Oh, are you okay with not following the rules?"
"The only reason I felt like I had to follow the rules is because I was made to do so, however, there is no internal or external force I'm aware of that prevents me from breaking the rules that my power would allow me to break. I have lied to some contestants saying otherwise, but I found that if saying I cannot do something would lead to less pointless arguments than if I told them I just wouldn't. Now that doesn't mean I'm even a little comfortable with a lot of this, but at the same time... I believe that with Glitcher, I can make rules I'm okay with."
>"Okay then!"

2/2 Glitcher 2015/12/23(Wed)21:22 No. 690156 ID: dd338c
File 145093456471.png - (14.00KB , 800x800 , 35.png )

"Wait I'm getting more ideas. Rulekeeper first off do you actually need to follow rules?"
"What kind of situation would that be?"
"I dunno I start destabilizing a lot of past stages in ways that only you can fix and I start threatening to launch the stages into the admin place or something insane like that. Then they gotta give you the ability to actually fix any arbitrary stage. Or oh how about part of the rules for the admin ghost tournament is to put all their admin cards on the line, giving admin cards to the ghosts or whatever, and there's no backing out of the tourney!"
"Oh, yes, if they have to give up their adminship as soon as the tournament is made and have to retrieve it back, then they won't even be able to take it back no matter what."
"That's sort of what I meant but sounds good still? And I mean my only other idea is to just summon a thousand Alison's and dump them into the admin zone and see if they convince the admins after a few hours."
"Tempting, Glitcher, but the admins can kick out Alisons before they get a chance to speak. It would be known as the Great Alison Purge of Stage 8 followed by de or re constructing me. I suggest the first two ideas."
"Well actually a third idea is what if I learned how to modify you like the admins can call on to do?"
"That is needlessly risky when we have an option. If we could teleport to another cycle and rewind it, then convince the admins there to help, we could have done it that way, but in order to do that, we need the admins to help. It's a catch 22, so currently, we have to deal with our own cycle. Even if we studied how to reprogram me and admin access directly, that's a new field, and it may be like trying to teach contestants how to glitch things."
"We don't know that though!"
"For the time being, I'd like to stick with the first two options, which works most with what we do know."

A) Create Glitch-Stage Meteor Armageddon
B) Create Admin Ghost Contest

>>690156
B is better in the long run, assuming it works. A will give Rulekeep the power she needs, but it will leave uncooperative admins in power, and that is dangerous for Rulekeep. B will let us have at least some allies in the System, which means it will be harder for everything to be ruined.

If it doesn't work, we can always go for option A afterwards.

>I believe that with Glitcher, I can make rules I'm okay with.
That's good! We need good rules. There has to be some kind of framework for the AIs, even if we bust free.

>Okay but I swear to god next time I see either of them I'm gonna gawk at so many strings
The more immediate problem is if we don't know where they are or how they're connected, we can't be sure we won't draw their attention and they might show up and mess up your plan.

How well could either of you handle Corruptor and/or Savior if they stick their noses in what you're doing? Do either of you have any sense how their powers work, or how they might be countered? You might have the edge in there's two of you working together, but that's something to plan for.

>A) Create Glitch-Stage Meteor Armageddon
>I dunno I start destabilizing a lot of past stages in ways that only you can fix and I start threatening to launch the stages into the admin place or something insane like that. Then they gotta give you the ability to actually fix any arbitrary stage.
The problem is the admins aren't stupid. Rulekeeper already expressed her doubts to that one admin before, and witnessed you agreeing to go talk to Glitcher. If they see you going off to talk together, and then Glitcher starts going on a warpath while you beg for power to stop him, they're probably going to be suspicious of collusion.

tl;dr- a good bluff largely depends on your target being in the dark. The admins have already seen too much of the picture for this gambit to be reliable.

Also, an all out Glitch attack is really big and flashy. It's much more likely to catch the attention of Savior or Corruptor, and who knows what they might do.

>B) Create Admin Ghost Contest
More direct, and less likely to be flashy enough to attract third parties.

1/6 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)00:20 No. 690168 ID: dd338c
File 145094519913.png - (16.98KB , 800x800 , 36.png )

>How well could either of you handle Corruptor and/or Savior if they stick their noses in what you're doing? Do either of you have any sense how their powers work, or how they might be countered? You might have the edge in there's two of you working together, but that's something to plan for.
Well considering they've been so weirdly dismissive of me and actively avoiding me looking at their strings, I think all we'd need to do to get them to leave us to our work is for me to wiggle my fingers menacingly at them.

"Gonna upturn the system, let's do it!"
"Alright, Glitcher. What do you need from me?"
"Gather the admins, come up with the best argument you can possibly make to get them to agree to fight for their lives for no reason, and then get them to vote. One by one, preferably."
"That's easy. When should I start?"
"Well now I guess?"
"Alright."
"Okay talk to you in a bit Alison."
>"Good luck!"

2/6 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)00:20 No. 690169 ID: dd338c
File 145094521126.png - (15.26KB , 800x800 , 37.png )

I follow Rulekeeper back to the system bracket I visited, and this time I remember to think to myself and keep myself hidden.

>"Rulekeeper, you're back."
"Yes."
>"Did anything happen with the glitcher?"
"No, he simply tried to appeal to me to let him do whatever it is he wanted to do."
>"And?"
"I had none of it, of course."
>"Good. Are you going back to your stage, then?"
"Soon, but I think we can start the ghost stage soon. The ghosts that are still around in stage 8 are guaranteed some passes through the first phases, so they don't need to be present initially."
>"Alright. You have permission, then."
"Thank you. By the way, although I had none of glitchers appeals for me to leave him to his devices, he did bring up one fair point. The contestants consider us their enemies, and we have their distrust. I would like to propose a new contest."
>"Yes?"
"One involving past administrators. Past contestants got a chance to live again. I think it's only fair that administrators are given the same chance."
>"Except that the ghosts of contestants fight each other first, and the winners are simply thrown into to the pile of contestants next stage."
"Correct, the difference here is that we cannot overload the amount of active admins per system bracket, so instead of admins being revived at stage 9, all admins, current and past, will have to fight at once. However, I propose that this contest has 8 stages, and the admin will begin on the stage that they made it to in the contest. In other words, you and the others will begin on stage 8, and therefore have a highly forgiveable chance of winning."
>"Why would we ever agree to this?"
"I am aware of how little you care about what the contestants think of you, but if they saw the administration go through a similar trial, I honestly do believe that they would be able to empathize more. That will make them less restless and our jobs easier."
>"It would be a nice perk, and not nearly worth the risk and trouble.."
"Well, I merely ask that you set up a vote system for it, but require that the other admins here me out before voting. And what you heard is all I will say."
>"It's worthless, but it's trivial to do, so alright. Let's discuss the details."

He does his admin thing and I really don't pay much attention for the details. Mostly because I can kinda sense where those commands go, now, but it seems to disperse somewhere. Maybe it's like noise, and it just fades out when it gets far enough to be heard? There's really nothing out there at all that I can see.

"Thank you. Please vote, now."
>"We have to immediately resign our cards, too?"
"The tournament will resolve quickly, and the admin seat will not be vacant for long."
>"That's... I'm still going to vote -- "

3/6 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)00:20 No. 690170 ID: dd338c
File 145094522712.png - (149.51KB , 800x800 , 38.png )

And I start flipping all kinds of switches. He pauses for a moment. I've never done that outside of a simulation, but it seems like it's working. He goes and votes.

"Thank you for the change of heart."
>"Yeah, it's only fai - wait. No, no, no! I didn't think right, there!"
"Eh? You should have thought through more, then. But in order to expedite this decision, this poll does not allow changes.

4/6 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)00:20 No. 690171 ID: dd338c
File 145094525807.png - (200.15KB , 800x800 , 39.png )

Rulekeeper starts going to the next stage so I stalk her again.

"Doing alright?"
"Yes, thank you. Part of me wondered if it would feel exhilirating bending and breaking the rules. It does not, after all, but I'm not getting cold feet."
"Ah geebz am I gonna have to listen to your whole lecture again for every administrator?"
>"Minus the part about setting up the poll initially, yes."

5/6 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)00:21 No. 690172 ID: dd338c
File 145094530510.png - (31.35KB , 800x800 , 40.png )

They all go by with bahs and boos and questions and stuff but every time they go to vote I finagle their strings about and they all vote yes.

That last one though, I might've gotten carried away with. He got so far and he was so desperate to live! So I had to flip a lot of switches. He might not have been rebuilt 100% correctly? It'll mostly be fine? I hope so. Probably. Guess I'll keep an eye on this guy to see if there's any adverse effects. He didn't blow up though so that's cool, and he only glitched out just long enough for him to think something might've been up, but not long enough to notice what. So that's cool too. Too late anyway, considering the votes are in.

6/6 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)00:26 No. 690174 ID: dd338c
File 145094558642.png - (15.56KB , 800x800 , 41.png )

"That went mostly perfectly."
"Oh you saw what happened with that last guy?"
"What?"
"I mean what do you mean mostly perfectly?"
Did you not listen to the details of the poll?
"I really didn't."
"Although I didn't propose this, the administrator insisted that it would be difficult to consider currently living administrators to be eligible. After all, it would be like they are simultaneously being given shots as an admin and a contestant, nevermind the logistics of pulling them out of stage 8 to do this contest."
"So uh, King and Radmin? They're not eligible?"
"Not since they're alive, no."
"So what you're saying is that we need to kill Radmin and King before the tournament."
"Or go with a more complicated but workable plan involving the admin cards. Otherwise, yes, I suppose that's what I'm saying. However, if you simply grab a bucket of lava and drop it on them, they will complain to me, and if I do nothing, the other contestants may take issue with this, especially Alison's faction."
"Yeah or I could just drop it on them while explaining what's up."
"I, yes. Nevermind. Deal with it how you like, since we've deposed the current administration."

>>690172
Oh dear, that was probably a mistake. It didn't need to be a unanimous decision, did it?

>>690174
In the interests of full disclosure you should probably tell her about the last guy.

King and Radmin are pretty much fully on our side, so talking to them directly is likely to work. If it doesn't, you can sabotage the battle in secret by handing hints to their opponents. So long as their opponents don't fess up, King and Radmin can't complain.

>>690174
Just tell them they can keep being contestants, or wager their current life for a shot at admindom.

Well I mean, weren't we going to rig the contest to ensure our four got through it?

You need to be more honest, Glitcher. Also less careless. As in less uncaring, not less reckless, although you could maybe do with a bit of that, too.

So, about this whole "all past admins" thing. Does that include Alison? Because she was an admin back in Stage 6, even if she didn't do much. Although I suppose she couldn't do much, either, hmm... Would she get full admin privileges if she won? I want to include her anyway, really, just for the chance to bring her back.

Oh, hey, you can freeze time for her and yourself in order to bring her to the maybe-glitched admin, so she can examine him without him noticing. If anything's wrong, she (and you?) may be able to fix things while time is frozen, as well.

If you two are parting ways, I suppose that means the date is over? Ask if she might want to go out again sometime. Maybe you can call the future experimentation with Time Travel your second date?

Yeah tell her exactly what happened with the last guy and why you are worried about it. No keeping secrets or holding back in this relationship. Do not want any surprises later on. Especially if that guy is desperate enough to live that he manages to get back into the final 4.

For this to work both of you have to work as one so being honest with each other is vital.

Ok also you need to plan a few things with Rulekeeper before we go any farther.

1. How is this Admin contest going to work exactly? We said we wanted it to be fair but we really don't. We need 4 admins that are completely on our side. So need to figure out a hidden way of boosting our prospects. Maybe with the stage design itself or something else. Like cheating horribly. Whatever it is make sure Rulekeeper is ok with the plan.

2. Rulekeeper mentioned the contest would be a good way to reconcile the Admins and the Contestants. Maybe that can be more than just words? Could we broadcast the tournament to everyone so that the Contestants can actually see the results instead of just hearing about them? Breaking the veil of mystery about what the Admins actually do would help people understand them. Plus having millions of people watching them fight it out would probably boost our choices prospects in a fair fight. Cause they are used to it. That being said it would open the contest to interference from Corruptor.

3. Rulekeeper said that she hopes to be able to make rules that she would want with your help. You should discuss what she means by that. Having her in charge of the rules would be better than the current setup but what we really need is a way to break the cycle.

4. If we are going to go have King and Radmin kill themselves you better make sure they are on board with the plan first. Also can't we get Alison into a admin spot? She did occupy a Admin spot for half a hour or so. That being said we do want experienced Admins. Alison is great but she has never used the powers before. So ask if she wants to join the contest.

5. Assuming everything goes according to plan we need to make sure the upgraded Rulekeeper no longer has the personality reset built in. No point in upgrading her to lose her a stage later.

>Ah geebz am I gonna have to listen to your whole lecture again for every administrator?
Hey, she has to give the speech over and over! And the admins have to put up with being brain-hacked. Really, you've got the least inconvenient role here.

>>690172
Um. Well, if you broke him, could you or rulekeeper roll him back to the way he was earlier? I mean, this whole thing is about virtual time travel.

>So uh, King and Radmin? They're not eligible?
So I guess Sixer died at some point already, then.

>However, if you simply grab a bucket of lava and drop it on them, they will complain to me, and if I do nothing, the other contestants may take issue with this, especially Alison's faction.
Um, well that's still easy. These puzzles and stages are already really risky. I don't need to drop lava on their heads, I just need to make it look like they were unlucky. It wouldn't take much bad luck to make sure someone bought it.

(For instance, in the puzzle Alison left, it's less "dump lava on their head" than "make it so someone somewhere finds a switch or puzzle and messes with it, turning on the lava pump". Or "make sure someone gets a bad run of luck summoning several purple ghosts who won't listen to reason").

And other contestants won't complain if they get to kill them, due to circumstances.

>admin contest
Do we need fluff or filler admins, or it just gonna be our four replacements versus the four originals?

>>690199
Why even bother messing with luck? Alison already demonstrated how easy it is to commit suicide via sub-optimal tactical decisions. Just explain that they've got a special opportunity, with a limited time window, and let them figure out which way to go.

1/7 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)13:38 No. 690236 ID: dd338c
File 145099311728.png - (356.46KB , 800x800 , 42.png )

"This whole admin contest is gonna be rigged, right?"
"Yes, it would be pointless otherwise, unless you have absurd amounts of confidence in those four. Let me worry about that."
"Done. Oh by the way I may have tried a little too hard with that last admin? Maybe he's fixed maybe he's not?"
"Argh, Glitcher... do you think it's going to cause issues?"
"Probably not? Did the vote even need to be unanimous?"
"Maybe. Remember that it's just sending a request to higher powers, but there's no guarantee that it will work. The more admins that vote for it, the higher chance it works. The more extreme the proposal is, the less a chance it works, which is why I let limitations stand. Just be more careful in the future and keep an eye on him. I might be able to fix that admin once he ends up in the stage 8 sub contest."
"Well okay I'll try to be careful. By the way does 'past admins' include Alison?"
"It was tempting, really, but no. That was a limitation I mentioned to increase the chances of the proposal being approved. It was approved, by the way. As for Alison, I will rethink including her in the normal contestant bracket."
"Gonna have filler admins come in?"
"Yes. There will be hundreds of admins."
"Oh that sounds like overkill."
"Yes, but I did want it to be set up fairly. Even if it's not going to be fair in the end."
"Cool. Well, uh... are we going to part ways, now?"
"I suppose so, but we aren't going to be more than a metaphorical arm's reach from each other."
"Okay, uh, wanna go on a date again sometime then?"
"Yes, if everything goes smoothly, then we'll be seeing much more of each other. Although it would be less of a date and more of a blasphemous adventure through cycles."
"That's kind of datelike in my experience. What if everything doesn't go smoothly?"
"... I guess no matter what, we're going to be seeing each other."
"Is that okay?"
"Yes, that's okay."
"Oh hey what if we broadcast the admin tourney to the contestants? Break that whole veil of mysteriousness the admins have going on?"
"I think it would end with realizing that Alison's team has command of the administration brackets."
"Is that bad?"
"Yes. I'd like to avoid it."
"Got it. Welp I'm off to kill my allies."
"Be well, glitcher. You're not so bad after all."
"Yep same. To you I mean. You're not so bad. I mean you're good. Good as in goodbye."
"Please stop while I still understand what you're saying."

2/7 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)13:38 No. 690237 ID: dd338c
File 145099313493.png - (93.82KB , 800x800 , 43.png )

>Get King and Radmin on board with the plan first
>Talk to them about being suicidal
That's for ALISON and DIPLOMATS. I have like a million years to take my time but right now there is the biggest, sweetest candy I have ever seen lying before me and it is dangling right behind a glass wall. There is absolutely no way that I want to spend forever talking my way through it delicately so I'm just gonna get this over with and let Rulekeeper do the talking.

Later on, in future sections of Stage 8

Oh would I look at that King and someone I don't give a shit about are crossing a precarious bridge over lava and each one found a button to take out the other person's bridge.

And they gave each other a gentleman's agreement to not press the button, but this guy who isn't King is highly tempted to break that arrangement. But King may just be okay, because it looks like his opponent has just barely made up his mind to honor the agreement.

3/7 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)13:39 No. 690238 ID: dd338c
File 145099319693.png - (166.14KB , 800x800 , 44.png )

It sure would be an unfortunate event if he changed his mind at the last second.

4/7 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)13:40 No. 690239 ID: dd338c
File 145099321581.png - (24.63KB , 800x800 , 45.png )

Later Still

>"Any last words, Radmin?"
"What do you care, you'll be too long dead to hear them!"
>"Give me a break, you're trapped with us 3. Even without our ghosts, we can handle all 3 of your ghosts and you."
"Haha, from my angle, it's more like you've locked yourself in a cage with an overwhelming, hostile power. You think that, but easy thinking simpletons like you..."

5/7 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)13:41 No. 690240 ID: dd338c
File 145099328044.png - (93.97KB , 800x800 , 46.png )

"Can't find the unwritten rules!"
>"Purple ghosts?! How?!"
"Don't ask that! Just realize that this area is freeroam, and mere contact with purple ghosts will lead to your demise!"
>"Goddamnit, this is the kind of bullshit that ex-admins do?"
"No, no! As glorious as being an administrator was, I've found that the ruthlessness and freedom that being a contestant brings has its own perks! Now I can do things like dip my own blue ghosts in a vat of hopelessness so that when I lift them back out, they can cause insta-death! It's this kind of bullshit I can do that let me come to terms with no longer being an admin!"

6/7 Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)13:41 No. 690241 ID: dd338c
File 145099330257.png - (96.98KB , 800x800 , 47.png )

"IRONY SHOVE"

Unnatural Selection - Thread 11 END Glitcher 2015/12/24(Thu)13:41 No. 690242 ID: dd338c
File 145099331748.png - (64.05KB , 800x800 , 48.png )

I like my job again.

>>690239
>>690240
Evil pokemon trainer Radmin, with clothes to match. Dude still has a sense of style.

>>690244
he's my fave <3

>>690244
>>690258
Its really unfortunate that the plan required him to die because after a speech like that I -really- wanted him to live.

I need more Radmin in my life.

Heyyyy Glitcher! Secret offspring construct of you and Rulekeeper! Think about it! You could make it super OP in some way, probably!