I’ll try to update tomorrow.

If you’re new to the Great Game, please have a quick look at the blurb to your left, where you’ll find a short catch-up introduction.

Surely he wouldn’t have me shot. Why would he have waited this long? He could have killed me when I was tied down, and sent someone else to check the data. Unless…

I shook my head stubbornly, and told myself I was being paranoid. I even tried to make myself believe it — with a degree of success.

Either way, I needed to get a decent meal if I was going to avoid simply falling over. There had to be somewhere fairly nearby to eat at, and if it got me out of the immediate area for an hour or two, well, maybe that was no bad thing.

The machines were whirring away, so I left them to it. Outside, the clean-up was in full force. Off to the right a way, they’d made a small field of body-bags. Looked like several dozen. A bit closer, they’d started stockpiling reclaimed kit. There were a heap of guns, and another pile of less identifiable equipment, but by far the biggest heap was covered in a rumpled camo cloth. I peered at it, and realised it wasn’t covered at all. It was clothing. My mind shied away from the implications, and I happily let it.

My pod was at the edge of the camp, not far from a group of transports the clean-up guys had presumably arrived in. It looked untouched since I’d arrived that morning. I sank into it, and sighed gratefully, then told it to take me to the second-nearest place that served food that would be open for at least another ninety minutes. It flashed up a confirmation that I barely looked at, and then got underway.

Ten minutes later, it pulled in to the car park of a pleasant-looking Italian restaurant. There were three other pods parked up, and space for thirty. Slow night. I cackled, and then eventually managed to stop it. After a moment to pull myself together, I got out of the pod and went into the restaurant. “The Olive Grove”, the door said. Cute.

Inside, artists had done a passable job of painting the walls so as to make it feel as if you actually were inside a sunny olive grove. They’d even put down a greenish carpet, and painted the ceiling a cheery light blue. It could have been hideously kitsch, but it worked. Just about, anyway. A frazzled-looking waiter leapt up from a chair, and stared at me. He was the only person in the room.

“Hey,” I said. “Table for one?”

“Of course, sir.” He looked a bit hesitant, but he managed to keep it out of his voice entirely. “Feel free to sit anywhere.”

I fought down a giggle, and went over to the most central table I could find. I sat down facing the door.

“I’ll get you a menu, but, uh, a lot of things are off. You know.”

Yeah. “That’s OK,” I said. “What’s good?”

“The chicken parmigiana, and…”

“I’ll have that,” I said, cutting over him. “Some cold beer, too.”

“Nastro Azurro?”

“If that’s cold, and it’s a beer, then sure.”

He nodded and headed into the kitchen. I heard voices. A short while later, the waiter came back with a basket of little bread rolls, a dish of butter, and a bottle of beer. I nodded appreciatively, picked up the beer, and said “Thanks. Better get me another one of these.”

He was back less than a minute later, by which time I’d finished the beer and eaten three of the rolls. When it came, the Parmigiana was excellent. I had two portions of it — along with most of a second basket of bread, and several more beers. Travis hadn’t said anything about staying sober.

Finally, I ordered a coffee to wash my stims down with. I felt pleasantly full, for what seemed like the first time in days, and the beer tinged everything with a light halo of golden cheer. For a moment at least, the world was good.

The coffee arrived. It was attached to a tall, pretty blonde woman somewhere in her 30s, in a light grey suit. She put it in front of me, waved at a chair, and said “May I?”

I blinked, smiled up at her, and said “Sure.”

She slipped into a chair. “How was your meal, sir?”

“Great. Are you the chef?”

She managed a smile. “No, I own the Olive Grove.”

“Well, you’ve got a real gem of a cook back there. Best food I’ve had in… Well, in quite a while.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry to ask, but are you from the, um, trouble zone?”

Heh. Was I ever. “Yep.”

“Forgive me, but what’s the situation? What’s going on there?”

Huh. That was why she looked stressed. As far as I knew, we didn’t have any instructions to hold information back.

“Well…”

Today’s photo is Aztec Skull by Seriykotik.

My apologies for not updating yesterday. I’m still not back in the routine yet, and simply forgot all about it. Today so far has been a welter of communications issues, but I seem to have some semi-stable net access back! If you’re reading this, it clearly updated OK

If you’re new to the Great Game, please have a quick look at the blurb to your left, where you’ll find a short catch-up introduction.

Finally, I found what I was hunting for. Some 90 minutes earlier, there was a burst where the EMF sensors, gravity meter and particle radiation filter all went absolutely mad. I cross-checked with Overlook, and sure enough, it was exactly the same time as the visual feed switched from an impossible scene of ordinary daily life to an accurate depiction of the devastated empty territory.

I started at it for a long moment, then forced myself to get it together.

First things first. I put a call through to Travis, and it didn’t take long for him to answer.

“Sir.”

“What is it, Taylor? Any luck?”

“Actually, yes. There was some odd wavering in the local magnetic field when the Infected were talking to me, and some strange problem with subatomic particles throughout, but the main payload is a crazy burst of sensor readings that correspond with the Overlook feed returning to true.”

“Good work. I’ll have someone slurp the information up and get it straight to our analysts.”

“I’ll head back, then,” I said.

“Ah, no, don’t do that.” Travis paused for a moment. “I want you to have a closer look at the riot zone. See if the Infected were up to anything. Go over it carefully, will you? I’ll let you know if we find anything in your data.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Well, yes. But there are floodlights, and the buildings have power. I’ll get the streetlights turned back on. The ones that survived, anyway. Or there’s always morning if you’re scared of the dark.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “But…”

“Good man,” Travis said. “Examine the area throughly, then give me a call once you’ve prepared a report. You used the goose fat?”

“Yes. B…”

“Good evening, Taylor.”

The line clicked shut. I leaned back in my chair, muttering irritably. After spending half a day trussed up like a Thanksgiving Turkey, I wanted a solid meal, followed by a long hot bath, several whiskies, and a good night’s sleep.I did not want a handful of stims and long night poring over the riot zone.

I started blankly at the data for a while, scuffing one foot on the concrete. I was a long way from convinced that Travis actually cared about an inspection of the riot zone. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was just a way of keeping me here whilst he sent orders to have me killed.

I  froze.

Surely he wouldn’t have me shot. Why would he have waited this long? He could have killed me when I was tied down, and sent someone else to check the data. Unless…

I shook my head stubbornly, and told myself I was being paranoid. I even tried to make myself believe it — with a degree of success.

Today’s photo is 11-22-06 Bath by artbandito

If you’re new to the Great Game, please have a quick look at the blurb to your left, where you’ll find a short catch-up introduction.

It took a few minutes of painful stamping and arm-waving to get the blood flowing back to my hands and feet properly, but eventually the cramps faded. When I left the tent, I discovered that the clean-up was starting. Standard procedure was to sanitise first, so bodies would be recovered quite early on.

First priority was to examine the machinery I’d set up, however. The receptors were laid out along the riot barricade, facing into the infected zone, but the analytical equipment was in a tent off to one side of the encampment. I made my way over there, loftily ignoring the various looks I received from the clean-up crew.

There were a couple of corpses outside my machine tent. It was difficult to tell if they had been on guard there, or if they’d just been passing when… Well. It seemed to me that there was something wrong with their eyeballs, but I just stepped over them and went to examine the computers.

My main analytical tool was an electro-magnetic field recorder, a simple piece of kit that just recorded what the local EMFs were up to. In addition to that, Travis had given me a gravity meter, a radiation counter, a filter to analyse the air for pollution, and even a widget which claimed to be able to measure relative strength of different types of sub-atomic force. All of these sensors had been continually feeding into the recording and analysis box, and I had a visualiser dome to play with if I wanted to see the results as a snazzy, media-friendly 3D image.

I didn’t.

I dived into the data. The first thing that struck me was that right from the moment I set up the sensors, the colour force sensor was recording a confinement boundary of almost twice normal. I could tell, because there was a big, friendly analytical note on the screen saying “Colour force: boundary force 1.93x standard”. It was obviously important, because it was flashing. Everything else seemed reasonably normal — at least, it didn’t have alerts.

I thought about calling Control to ask about the colour force, but it seemed like a good way to get slapped with another medical evaluation. The analysis package had some cryptic explanations, and between those and the assorted data stores I was linked to, I eventually managed to figure out that it seemed to imply something was badly wrong with the makeup of physical reality. Swollen electrons and so on. Possibly. Either way, everything I could find suggested it was impossible.

I made a note of that, and went back to the data. There were moments when the local magnetic field wavered frighteningly. It took a while, but it turned out that whenever the rioting Infected had spoken en masse, north had suddenly been deflected straight towards them. That was uncanny.

I pressed on, scrolling through the data. Finally, I found what I was hunting for. Some 90 minutes earlier, there was a burst where the EMF sensors, gravity meter and particle radiation filter all went absolutely mad. I cross-checked with Overlook, and sure enough, it was exactly the same time as the visual feed switched from an impossible scene of ordinary daily life to an accurate depiction of the devastated empty territory.

I started at it for a long moment, then forced myself to get it together.

Today’s photo is January by Jer Thorpe.

See yesterday’s post for the story so far. Alternatively, you can read from the beginning of this story by clicking here, or start with the first story by clicking ‘first’ just above. To help ease you back in, the last episode is quoted extensively. It’s the section in italics.

With the gag in place, the best I could manage was a muffled MMMMM noise. No-one came. Great. So I waited. I must have dozed off, because I woke up to a flashlight beam flicking around.

“Taylor? You still with us?” It was Travis.

“Mmmff,” I said.

“Ah.” He unhooked the gag, and pulled it free. I groaned and started coughing. Travis arched an eyebrow at me. “What happened here?”

“Well sir, the short version is that whilst I was setting up my equipment, the rioters got, uh, weird, and invited me in. Then they somehow killed a bunch of security people who were getting fierce with me. The rest couldn’t take the risk that I wasn’t involved.”

“I see,” said Travis, his voice neutral. “Were you?”

“No! Of course not. The Infected were calling me to go have a look around, ‘join the party’. It wasn’t exactly a tempting offer.”

“I suppose not. Odd, but still. What happened next?”

I shrugged. “They gagged me and then hit me with a jangler.”

“And you came to here?”

“Yes. It was heading towards evening. There was no-one around. I dozed off again waiting for someone to check in.” I blinked. Flashlight? “Is there some problem with the power?”

“You dozed off.”

“Oh. Fuck. Look, it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t get to my stims, and even if I could have, the jangler left me semi-conscious at best. Please.”

“They’re dead, Taylor.”

“What? Who?”

“Everyone.”

My mind reeled. “But…”

“The camp. The riot zone. The other security post. Everyone. We sent scanners through. You’re the only living thing in the entire area.”

“Wait… I need to check the readouts.”

“Hm. You don’t seem particularly concerned by the death of eighty soldiers and several thousand civilians. Or are you crying on the inside?”

I shrugged. “No, sir. Not really. I thought that the military were going to kill me out of hand, so I’m not wildly distraught, and I’d imagine that the infected are better off dead. But if I’ve picked up any useful data, it might help us stop this happening at other places.”

“All that came to you in a flash, eh? Very well. Just try not make the transition from unnerving to sinister.”

I blinked. “Of course, sir.” Unnerving? That reminded me… “I forgot to ask. I don’t suppose the area is littered with corpses?”

“Not littered as such, no. There are some in the area still.”

“Excellent.”

“If you say so,” said Travis. “I suppose you’d like to be untied.”

“Oh, yes, that. Thank you.”

“I’ll send someone in to cut you free. I have to head back to the office; let me know what you find.”

“Of course,” I said. “Thanks for coming out, sir.”

“Yes,” Travis said. He turned round and wandered out, leaving me in the dark again. A couple of minutes later, a wary-looking guy in overalls came in with a lamp and some bolt-croppers, and cut me out of the duffs and other restraints the soldiers had heaped on me. He seemed pleasant enough, and he left me the lamp. It took a few minutes of painful stamping and arm-waving to get the blood flowing back to my hands and feet properly, but eventually the cramps faded.

When I left the tent, I discovered that the clean-up was starting. Standard procedure was to sanitise first, so bodies would be recovered quite early on.

Today’s photo is Gay Tie and Suit Bondage 10 by probondage2008.

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.

Hey folks.

After my horribly prolonged absence, I’m very pleased to say that the Great Game is restarting where it left off, with the next installment going up on Thursday. You’re getting this notice today; tomorrow, I’m going to post a summary of events so far as a catch-up for everyone. If you have any questions or requests, post them in the comments here or for tomorrow’s catch-up, and on Wednesday, I’ll provide answers.

Until tomorrow…

Hi again folks.

So, I’m not dead. I don’t appear to be in any unusual risk of shuffling off the mortal coil, either. Which is nice. I stopped posting because I was laid flat with bronchitis, but it’s been arthritic pain that’s stopped me resuming over the last month. In other words, I’m OK, just ouchy. I’m scheduled to start the next level on the treatment pyramid within a couple of weeks, but I’m hoping to muster the determination to resume service here before then. Honest!

So thanks for sticking with me — and many, many thanks for your well-wishes and concern — and the Great Game and Ghostwoods will resume soon.

Fabulous.

The Foams!

It's not Lupus.

Meanwhile, in Japan...

I’m a sick bunny at the moment. Normal Great Game service will resume as soon as I’m feeling less dreadful :/

If you’re new to the Great Game, please have a quick look at the blurb to your left, where you’ll find a short catch-up introduction.

“Taylor? You still with us?” It was Travis.

“Mmmff,” I said.

“Ah.” He unhooked the gag, and pulled it free. I groaned, and cleared my throat. “What happened here?”

“Well sir, the short version is that whilst I was setting up my equipment, the rioters got, uh, weird, and invited me in. Then they somehow killed a bunch of security people who were getting fierce with me. The rest couldn’t take the risk that I wasn’t involved.”

“I see,” said Travis, his voice neutral. “Were you?”

“No! Of course not. The Infected were calling me to go have a look around, ‘join the party’. It wasn’t exactly a tempting offer.”

“I suppose not. Odd, but still. What happened next?”

I shrugged. “They gagged me and then hit me with a jangler.”

“And you came to here?”

“Yes. It was heading towards evening. There was no-one around. I dozed off again waiting for someone to check in.” I blinked. Flashlight? “Is there some problem with the power?”

“You dozed off.”

“Oh. Fuck. Look, it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t get to my stims, and even if I could have, the jangler left me semi-conscious at best. Please.”

“They’re dead, Taylor.”

“What? Who?”

“Everyone.”

My mind reeled. “But…”

“The camp. The riot zone. The other security post. Everyone. We sent scanners through. You’re the only living thing in the entire area.”

Today’s photo is Camp Bed by Pam Rentz.