Writing Challenges
This week's Odd Prompts writing challenge at More Odds than Ends is from AC Young: He was convinced that he’d cracked the code on the treasure map.
It sounded very much like a story of a pirate treasure -- but in what circumstances? It felt like a fantasy, and after some reflection, I thought maybe it could be a dark fantasy, like the one glimpsed in the piece from "NPC's" a couple of weeks ago
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A Most Troubling Map
After having struggled for so long to decipher the map he'd found on that planet, Roger was just as glad to leave the space opera game and come back to the little moon-bubble house in Toni's LAN. However, he wasn't here long before his mind went back to the puzzle of the map.
As near as he could determine, the thing involved some kind of numeric and geometric code that had to be solved in order to find the treasure. Of course, given that the entire space opera game was built upon the Space Is An Ocean trope and no account was given to the actual structure of the galaxy, it would most likely be a map to a distant planet that treated the galaxy as if it were a solid disc, all rotating together, rather than stars and their families of planets all going around the central black hole Sag A*.
But sometimes it was fun to ignore everything he knew about astronautics and astrophysics and just play make-believe in a digital world based upon the stories he'd loved to read and the serials he'd loved to watch as a boy back in Grand Rapids, half a continent away from Mountain View, California. The interactive nature of these games made it even more enjoyable because he could be an active participant, whether fighting robotic space pirates or solving puzzles in order to find a device created by a long-lost civilization that had vanished without a trace when dinosaurs still ruled the earth.
However, right now the puzzle was getting just frustrating enough that he needed a break. Although all his freelance work was on schedule, there were still plenty of tasks that could distract him from the frustration of being unable to find his way through it.
Or that had been the plan. By the time Toni arrived home from her own work, Roger was once again wrestling with the puzzle of those interlocking geometric designs that made up the mysterious map.
Toni noticed his preoccupation at once. “Having a problem with your code today?”
“Actually, it's someone else's code.” Roger hoped she wouldn't be too annoyed at the play on the two meaning of code. He explained about the map he'd found. “I'm sure if I bring my full machine intelligence to bear on it, I could solve it at once - but then I'd have the problem of explaining my solution to the other player characters.”
“Which would be unwise.” Toni's expression became abstracted, in the manner Roger had come to associate with her calling on information only devs had access to. “Especially since I don't recall any map being located in that part of the storyscape, and I hadn't heard anyone on the development team talking about adding something like that.”
“Let me show you.” Of course Roger hadn't been able to bring the actual map with him when leaving the storyscape - that would've required black market cheat software that could get you permanently banned from a game, even a company's entire portfolio of games. However, as a post-bio, he had the advantage of being able to retrieve visual memory data as standard image files, then pull them up here in Toni's storyscape as if they were photographs, or photocopies.
Toni's lips tightened into a frown. “That's not Digital Dreams work. I'd have to go into the game and use my development utilities to examine the code, but it looks a lot like something out of Witnterborn.”
Roger looked from Toni to the image of the map still floating an inch or so above the kitchen table. “What's that?”
“It's one of Black Mirror's games. It's a fantasy, but it's all brutality and betrayal and heroes being put in impossible situations where they have to choose between evil. They used to call that subgenre of fantasy grimdark, and games based on it are supposed to be at least 18+, if not 21+, but Black Mirror isn't always as careful as they ought to be about maintaining appropriate guardrails. There's been some stories about people being able to do things with chibis that violate the game development Code of Ethics.”
Roger recalled that chibi was the term for a child avatar being played by an adult, often to experience childhood activities that had been out of reach when the player was actually that age, usually because of financial constraints. Going to expensive theme parks and going on the children's rides, having a bouncy castle in your front yard for your birthday, stuff like that. But Toni had made oblique references to certain abuses of those games, which she refused to detail but he could make surmises about, having been a father of young children and concerned about their welfare even in a time when communities were generally assumed to be safe.
“So you think I stumbled on one of these illegal backdoors and entered their game?” Roger considered the implications.
“It sounds very likely. I think we'd better take a look at this - and before you ask, yes, we'll be going in god mode so it won't mess up the character you've spent so much time building.”
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I think this will end up being part of "NPC's," and will tie into Sierra's discovery of the illegal backdoor in the Academy game -- which may set up for the conversation that her father interrupts when he puts the Harness on her. But this is a very rough version, the words practically thrown onto the screen (frex, the use of "chibi" in gaming and how it came from the anime community will probably be established earlier). The names of the game and the company may be placeholders.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.
It sounded very much like a story of a pirate treasure -- but in what circumstances? It felt like a fantasy, and after some reflection, I thought maybe it could be a dark fantasy, like the one glimpsed in the piece from "NPC's" a couple of weeks ago
===========================================================================================
A Most Troubling Map
After having struggled for so long to decipher the map he'd found on that planet, Roger was just as glad to leave the space opera game and come back to the little moon-bubble house in Toni's LAN. However, he wasn't here long before his mind went back to the puzzle of the map.
As near as he could determine, the thing involved some kind of numeric and geometric code that had to be solved in order to find the treasure. Of course, given that the entire space opera game was built upon the Space Is An Ocean trope and no account was given to the actual structure of the galaxy, it would most likely be a map to a distant planet that treated the galaxy as if it were a solid disc, all rotating together, rather than stars and their families of planets all going around the central black hole Sag A*.
But sometimes it was fun to ignore everything he knew about astronautics and astrophysics and just play make-believe in a digital world based upon the stories he'd loved to read and the serials he'd loved to watch as a boy back in Grand Rapids, half a continent away from Mountain View, California. The interactive nature of these games made it even more enjoyable because he could be an active participant, whether fighting robotic space pirates or solving puzzles in order to find a device created by a long-lost civilization that had vanished without a trace when dinosaurs still ruled the earth.
However, right now the puzzle was getting just frustrating enough that he needed a break. Although all his freelance work was on schedule, there were still plenty of tasks that could distract him from the frustration of being unable to find his way through it.
Or that had been the plan. By the time Toni arrived home from her own work, Roger was once again wrestling with the puzzle of those interlocking geometric designs that made up the mysterious map.
Toni noticed his preoccupation at once. “Having a problem with your code today?”
“Actually, it's someone else's code.” Roger hoped she wouldn't be too annoyed at the play on the two meaning of code. He explained about the map he'd found. “I'm sure if I bring my full machine intelligence to bear on it, I could solve it at once - but then I'd have the problem of explaining my solution to the other player characters.”
“Which would be unwise.” Toni's expression became abstracted, in the manner Roger had come to associate with her calling on information only devs had access to. “Especially since I don't recall any map being located in that part of the storyscape, and I hadn't heard anyone on the development team talking about adding something like that.”
“Let me show you.” Of course Roger hadn't been able to bring the actual map with him when leaving the storyscape - that would've required black market cheat software that could get you permanently banned from a game, even a company's entire portfolio of games. However, as a post-bio, he had the advantage of being able to retrieve visual memory data as standard image files, then pull them up here in Toni's storyscape as if they were photographs, or photocopies.
Toni's lips tightened into a frown. “That's not Digital Dreams work. I'd have to go into the game and use my development utilities to examine the code, but it looks a lot like something out of Witnterborn.”
Roger looked from Toni to the image of the map still floating an inch or so above the kitchen table. “What's that?”
“It's one of Black Mirror's games. It's a fantasy, but it's all brutality and betrayal and heroes being put in impossible situations where they have to choose between evil. They used to call that subgenre of fantasy grimdark, and games based on it are supposed to be at least 18+, if not 21+, but Black Mirror isn't always as careful as they ought to be about maintaining appropriate guardrails. There's been some stories about people being able to do things with chibis that violate the game development Code of Ethics.”
Roger recalled that chibi was the term for a child avatar being played by an adult, often to experience childhood activities that had been out of reach when the player was actually that age, usually because of financial constraints. Going to expensive theme parks and going on the children's rides, having a bouncy castle in your front yard for your birthday, stuff like that. But Toni had made oblique references to certain abuses of those games, which she refused to detail but he could make surmises about, having been a father of young children and concerned about their welfare even in a time when communities were generally assumed to be safe.
“So you think I stumbled on one of these illegal backdoors and entered their game?” Roger considered the implications.
“It sounds very likely. I think we'd better take a look at this - and before you ask, yes, we'll be going in god mode so it won't mess up the character you've spent so much time building.”
=========================================================================================
I think this will end up being part of "NPC's," and will tie into Sierra's discovery of the illegal backdoor in the Academy game -- which may set up for the conversation that her father interrupts when he puts the Harness on her. But this is a very rough version, the words practically thrown onto the screen (frex, the use of "chibi" in gaming and how it came from the anime community will probably be established earlier). The names of the game and the company may be placeholders.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.