Huh, where did yesterday go? Oh yes, that’s right, in a haze of annoying Windows networking failure. Damn you, Windows! DAMN YOU!
Not the most carefully thought-out promo ever. Still, given that Justin Timberlake is playing BooBoo...
This incarnation of The Great Game is telling the story of John Taylor, an agent of the Department of Security and Protection in a not-too-distant future. The DSP are what the FBI mutated into after the Overlook system came on line — an AI-moderated surveillance network that offers real-time coverage of the entire USA, from wide-scale observation satellites right down to ubiquitous retinal scanners and audio pickups.
Taylors troubles start when he discovers that there are lots of copies of a seemingly insignificant petty crook, and that the copies have been spreading themselves around the country. He’s out investigating a peculiarly half-formed copy in a back-alley when his the hard link to his office suddenly dies, and he finds himself also cut off from Control — the operators at Station Analysis, the national support and analytical center.
When he gets back to the office, he discovers that it’s just a smoking crater in the ground. A moment later, his boss is brutally executed in front of his eyes by an unknown security force, and he runs for it. Despite his best efforts to escape the security net, he’s caught and drugged.
He’s surprised to wake up at all, and absolutely astonished to be offered a promotion. He warily accepts, and finds himself working for the man who blew up the DSP. Colonel Travis is something in military security, and he’s heading up the local operation investigating the Archons, as the mysterious duplicates have come to be known. They’re not human, and the DSP had already been infiltrated. Taylor’s old boss had been dead for days.
At Travis’s request, Taylor starts digging into the Archons as part of the attempt to uncover at least the basics — what they want, where they’re from, that sort of thing. When he looks into the disappearance of the semi-body in the alley, he discovers that the entire alley is gone, seemingly edited out of existence as if it was never there. The fast-food restaurant on the alley’s corner was never there either, but its last food safety inspection certificate is still in the system. The restaurant’s owner works in the bank that replaced the alleyway, so Taylor goes to see him.
At the bank, Taylor discovers that one of the Archons has been working there as a maintenance man. He heads down to the basement to examine the area that Archon was working in, and discovers a strange glyph set into the dirt of a soon-t0-be elevator shaft. It’s a complex design, and in trying to puzzle out the pattern, Taylor somehow accesses it. He is catapulted into an oppressive and surreal labyrinth, with no memory of having ever been elsewhere, aware only that he is being hunted. He flees, and eventually comes to a room of doors. He picks one…
… and finds himself on a raid, three weeks after he went into the bank, with no memory of his actions since then. The situation has deteriorated nastily. In the wake of the Archons, humanity is becoming corrupted. The Infected, as they have become known, talk of cleansing the world of unfairness, of pain, of life; scouring it clean. One last apocalyptic party before the murderous parents come home, mankind’s orgiastic final hurrah. Speech is one of the vectors of infection, so the Infected are summarily killed on sight. Areas they have blighted are eerily depopulated.
Following a close encounter with an Infected child, Taylor is sucked into a dream of a void filled with fleshy stars, and a voice invites him to join their song. He wakes up screaming, as does everyone else in the dorm room. He’s the only one who had the dream though. When Travis hears about it, he puts Taylor on stims, and tells him that if he goes to sleep again — ever — he’ll be killed.
A few hours later, Taylor is digging into the progress of Infected sites when he notices anomalies on the Overlook feed — a few frames of indecipherable text on the screen as an Infection starts, and a very short burst of static as the people vanish. He suggests to Travis that there might be detectable signals to pick up when these bursts happen, and is sent to a contained Infection site with a range of detection equipment. As he finishes setting up, the mass of Infected rioters turn to him and, speaking in eerie chorus, invite him to join the party.
Taylor refuses, horrified, but the incidence scares the soldiers manning the containment so badly that they gag him and use a neural jangler to knock him out. When he comes round, Travis is there, and everyone else is either dead or missing.
Which was as far as I’d got when illness forced me to put things on hold.
So, that’s the summary version. To read the full text of the story so far, click here.
The story will continue tomorrow. If you have any friends who you think might enjoy the Great Game, now would be a perfect time to encourage them to start taking part (*hint, hint*)! If you have any questions about the story, or the process, or anything else, pop them here and I’ll do my best to answer them before tomorrow’s update.
Sorry once again for the lengthy break.
See you tomorrow!
Uh, thanks.
Welcome back!