August 27 -- give me your black sky "The Matrix Online": Black Sky Take Warning
My first 31_days fic in far too long:
Title: Black Sky Take Warning
Day/Theme: August 27 -- give me your black sky
Series: The Matrix (post-"The Matrix Online")
Character/Pairing: OCs: Sieges (my own character, who's technically canon since her name was mentioned in a critical mission), Morraeon
Rating: PG (just in case)
Author's Notes: This is one of my many farewells to The Matrix Online, which shut down thus summer, another online game casualty to the faltering economy. This is a foretaste of one of the stories I hope to write in full someday.
From Sieges's journal:
Further proof that life depends on death. Just as she was created to sustain my life, so it turns out that Morraeon the reaper, my Exile former alter-ego and companion, contains the secret to clearing the skies. It wasn't easy, but I was able to obtain a sample of the nanobots that make up the Dark Sky clouds that blanket the earth. Once I exposed the programs that power the bots to her, she vanquished them and turned their shells into so much dust. It will take some doing, finding the wherewithal to create nanobots with her encoding, but I think this is the way to do it.
[...]
We overcame the hurdle of creating nanobots, now the next hurdle is putting enough shielding on a hovercraft to fend off the EMP field which the storm generates.
[...]
And so the hovercraft Daedelus and it's piggy-backing daughter ship the Icarus were launched today. Daedelus flies well below the storm, while the Icarus flies closer to the storm, releasing its payload of nanobots. Once it empties, the Icarus returns to its dock on the back of the Daedlus. We've been making sweeps every six hours. So far, there's been dustfall, but no significant change. All in good time.
It's easier doing this here in the mountains surrounding Segur, since the Darkstorm clouds are thinner. Of course we don't have any significant sunlight, but we've had times when the sky has shown patches of purple rather than the perpetual greyish-black of the storm cover.
[...]
Our eighth sweep in two days, and we are finally showing progress: a patch of blue sky as big as my hand is showing over the dome of Segur. I stood there, feeling the sunlight on my face for the first time in my life. Not the digital sunlight of the Matrix, as lovely (if green-tinted) as that may have been -- and I miss it since we lost our jack-in protocols -- but the light of the real world. Cheers and shouts of awe rose from the freeborn, who had never seen natural lighting in their lives, while the podborn are in tears.
A wind has picked up, which is making the dustfall a little sustainable, not the fierce, biting winds that roar down from the mountains, but a strong but gentle breeze, like the wind on an autumn day in New England, or at least the digital New England I knew. Keep up the work, little nano-Morraes. I don't know how your big cousins the Machines will react to this, but I hope they can see this for what it is, as a new beginning, a new dawn for all of us, human and Machine alike...
Title: Black Sky Take Warning
Day/Theme: August 27 -- give me your black sky
Series: The Matrix (post-"The Matrix Online")
Character/Pairing: OCs: Sieges (my own character, who's technically canon since her name was mentioned in a critical mission), Morraeon
Rating: PG (just in case)
Author's Notes: This is one of my many farewells to The Matrix Online, which shut down thus summer, another online game casualty to the faltering economy. This is a foretaste of one of the stories I hope to write in full someday.
From Sieges's journal:
Further proof that life depends on death. Just as she was created to sustain my life, so it turns out that Morraeon the reaper, my Exile former alter-ego and companion, contains the secret to clearing the skies. It wasn't easy, but I was able to obtain a sample of the nanobots that make up the Dark Sky clouds that blanket the earth. Once I exposed the programs that power the bots to her, she vanquished them and turned their shells into so much dust. It will take some doing, finding the wherewithal to create nanobots with her encoding, but I think this is the way to do it.
[...]
We overcame the hurdle of creating nanobots, now the next hurdle is putting enough shielding on a hovercraft to fend off the EMP field which the storm generates.
[...]
And so the hovercraft Daedelus and it's piggy-backing daughter ship the Icarus were launched today. Daedelus flies well below the storm, while the Icarus flies closer to the storm, releasing its payload of nanobots. Once it empties, the Icarus returns to its dock on the back of the Daedlus. We've been making sweeps every six hours. So far, there's been dustfall, but no significant change. All in good time.
It's easier doing this here in the mountains surrounding Segur, since the Darkstorm clouds are thinner. Of course we don't have any significant sunlight, but we've had times when the sky has shown patches of purple rather than the perpetual greyish-black of the storm cover.
[...]
Our eighth sweep in two days, and we are finally showing progress: a patch of blue sky as big as my hand is showing over the dome of Segur. I stood there, feeling the sunlight on my face for the first time in my life. Not the digital sunlight of the Matrix, as lovely (if green-tinted) as that may have been -- and I miss it since we lost our jack-in protocols -- but the light of the real world. Cheers and shouts of awe rose from the freeborn, who had never seen natural lighting in their lives, while the podborn are in tears.
A wind has picked up, which is making the dustfall a little sustainable, not the fierce, biting winds that roar down from the mountains, but a strong but gentle breeze, like the wind on an autumn day in New England, or at least the digital New England I knew. Keep up the work, little nano-Morraes. I don't know how your big cousins the Machines will react to this, but I hope they can see this for what it is, as a new beginning, a new dawn for all of us, human and Machine alike...