Route IC Contact

[moveslikestrider]

Dave: Get your damn gear.

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[freshprints]

[...What in god's name just happened there.

...

Okay, you know what...]

yes
i am serious
you did it you broke the code
you have become my equal in the solving of mysteries
deducing all the hard-hitting questions
like why words mean things
and an extensive dissertation on the qualities and complexities of an assortment of nuts
not to be confused with assorted nuts
which while delicious have very little to do with the subject at hand
but yes
you have done it
congratulations you have won a prize
please allow three to five business days for delivery
or just pick it up yourself from the ticker-tape parade being thrown in your honor
it comes with a bouquet of roses and an embroidered sash
and a crown
the very best crown
and all shall bow down before you and your mystery-solving prowess
as you reign over them and spend the rest of your days putting your talents to use figuring out where people have left their keys
or why they're called doughnut holes when they're not actually holes
the resident guru of all the mysteries of life that no one has ever cared about
that will be your job
you will be the one to unlock their secrets
it is you
it is your destiny
godspeed yon detective prince

[moveslikestrider]

ok knock off the sass there detective princess
that one got away from me
no pancakes

[freshprints]

I'd appreciate it, thank you.

[moveslikestrider]

lets just go with tacos
thats fast cheap easy
no chance of pancakes or butter
everybody wins

[freshprints]

I'm surprised you're not asking what I have against it. It's an unusual thing to have an aversion to, I know.

[moveslikestrider]

i did ask
you didnt tell
isnt that universally a back off sign
unless you want to share im not going to ask twice

[freshprints]

I assumed the question was largely rhetorical, once you wandered off on your nut tangent.

That said, you're right that I'd rather not talk about it. I was just remarking on your courtesy in not demanding an explanation.

[moveslikestrider]

i wander off into tangents a lot
its literally just following a train of thought down to the bitter end
you can always tell me when to knock that shit off i dont mind

well in exchange
i uh have an issue with puppets
i know i didnt have to say it but fairs fair

[freshprints]

Puppets? Like hand puppets, or something else?

[moveslikestrider]

all of them
i could list them but lets not

[freshprints]

I don't like robotic animals.

Dirk told me he enjoys building those.

1/2

[moveslikestrider]

[He stares at the screen for a few minutes. Did she just pick up on what he wasn't saying? ]

2/2

[moveslikestrider]

i never asked him about it
did he say if he installed cameras in them

[freshprints]

He didn't say. But he told me about some of the robots he'd built at home — the one he mentioned in particular was a rabbit.

I think he avoided telling me much about them because he was trying not to upset me. And to find out what it was I don't like about them so he could keep them away from me.

[moveslikestrider]

you want me not to tell you what the rabbits are about in that case

[freshprints]

Rabbits aren't an animal that bothers me. So there's some significance to them?

[moveslikestrider]

yeah
first lets recap
tell me how much you know about our universe
ill see if you already know the answer or not

[freshprints]

You want me to recap all of it? In the interest of time, I'll attempt to summarize and hit the notable points.

You and your three friends (John, Jade, and Rose) are from Earth. Together, you participated in a game called SBURB, which is slightly different from SGRUB, the variant that the trolls played on their home world of Alternia. The point of SBURB has something to do with destroying the world via meteors and then creating a new world once the players involved have entered the game and won it. The game is played like a classic RPG; the four of you apparently all did quite well at it because you were all able to ascend to God Tier, which gives you a particular power boost, immortality, and a set of complementary pajamas. However, reaching God Tier also means you all died — you have my condolences.

Players of SBURB receive a class and an aspect. The aspect determines a player's power or area of influence, and the class determines how they control it or use it. Some of the classes include knights, maids, seers, and princes; aspects are things like time, light, and mind.

None of you were born; you were created (by John?) to play the game via a process known as ectobiology. John and Jade are related without precisely being siblings; I presume that means that you and Rose are likewise, and given your similar colorings, that theory would seem to hold out.

However, there's also an alternate universe where four other children played SBURB, and those players are somehow related to the four of you — in your own world, they were your parents or adult relatives, while in their world, the four of you were the adults. Thus resulting in the paradox where Roxy Lalonde could be Rose's mother and her daughter simultaneously, and vice versa. I presume Jake is related to Jade, given that he referenced a grandmother and I'm assuming that the relative ratio is one to one — if Rose is already someone's mother/daughter, then Jade is the only remaining girl to be Jake's relative.

(Which, by extension, suggests that Dirk is your parallel universe equivalent in some capacity, given the similarity in names and how much the two of you look alike.)

Do I need to go into what I know about the trolls and the gameplay of SBURB, or does that suffice?

[moveslikestrider]

no thats good
so you only know stuff about sburb itself and not the specifics of the session
ok
ill give you this bit
the meteors were always coming whether we played the game or not
the game is just a way to escape meeting the fate of the rest of the planet
some are meant to some wont
just like some sessions will yield the end goal and others are doomed
but just because a session is meant to fail doesnt mean thats the end of it
wanna guess how

anyway yeah dirk is my teenbro ectobiological dad lets just call him my teenbro and keep it at that

[freshprints]

I assume if there are alternate universes available where the session is a success, the way to avoid "the end of it" is simply to transfer yourself to one of those...somehow.

[moveslikestrider]

youd think that
but ours is a really special case
if you were trying again youd need a reset right
which of the aspects would be good for that

[freshprints]

...Time.

You'd rewind time and try it over again.

[moveslikestrider]

the reason the other version of our universe exists is because our session was meant to fail
the reset switch is called a scratch by the way

now back to the rabbits
there was two in our session
but one held no bearing on the chain of events that lead up to the scratch
we knew we werent going to win but the how wasnt clear
that changed pretty fast

[freshprints]

And you know all this because your aspect is time, so it's inherently within your role to understand.

So the other mechanical rabbit played some kind of pivotal role in bringing about the scratch?

[moveslikestrider]

yeah
i dont have all the details but john used it to deliver an important item to us
you mentioning dirk made one makes me wonder what the connection is there
since i got here
more facts open up like this and yeah i wont remember when i coma connect to home but it solves something here
sometimes

to get back to the item
lets say these dead sessions just take up space
how would a game take care of that