May 25th - Final Day

[cartesio]

Final Investigation

It's Friday. It's the last day marked in your calendar. Presumably, the few without medals will leave at some point today, and the rest...you're not sure what'll happen to you, but it'll be what the Sergeant wants.

How to defy him when you have so little time left?

Whatever plan you had today, it's guaranteed it won't go like expected. Early in the morning, the ground rumble slightly, and something pops in the sky. Fireworks! One after another, blasts from firework spread through the sky. Many of the residents of Cartesio come to the street, gathering and making all the noise they can.

It's a very radical change of behavior, compared to the once peaceful demeanor they had, and then the hostile behavior showed towards the visitors, but now they're making hubbub and causing disorder. Everyone does it spontaneously, and nobody's approaching the motel at all.

At least none of the townspeople.

Not long after that started, you may hear the noise of horns and whistles from vehicles, right outside the motel. Go take a look?

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[robitussin]

[Do any of them have any wires or cords that might lead to a central location they're all plugged into?]

[cartesio]

[ Not a single one. They're just mounted on the walls, no cords or wires in sight. ]

[robitussin]

[Can she move one to see if there's anything behind it?]

[cartesio]

[ No. They're mounted on the wall pretty well. ]

[robitussin]

[At that, she'll return to the corridor to see if she notices anything else that draws her attention, including any other rooms that might seem different.]

[cartesio]

[ Aside from the laboratory Sakura's investigating, Natalie will find one locked door, notable because...well, not a single other one is locked. ]

[robitussin]

[Is it the kind of locked that could conceivably be opened with some toying around with a hair accessory, or the kind of locked that will absolutely need the correct key?]

[cartesio]

[ A key. No putting lock picking to work here, Natalie. ]

[robitussin]

[Time to go check in the surrounding rooms for any sign of a key, then!]

[cartesio]

[ The boring rooms continue to be just that, boring, aside from similar monitor phenomena in the rundown ones.

However, Natalie might find something a little more of interest in the laboratory Sakura found. ]

[robitussin]

[Time to head on in there, then, and take a look around! She's going to be checking for a key first and foremost.]

[cartesio]

[ It'll take a little looking, but there it is, an ordinary-looking key.

It's right next to something else, however, that may catch Natalie's attention. An old looking journal. ]

[robitussin]

[She'll leave the key, picking the journal up carefully instead and flipping to the first page.]

[cartesio]

[ It's a person's work journal...sort of. A name's scrawled on the inside cover, Sergei Fedorov.

It's detailing places and people that would be unfamiliar to you...but on the more recent pages, there's some...interesting information. Relevant. ]

After a few years of work, we finished the development for the program and finished the planning phases. About time, if you ask me. I haven’t told the others yet, but we’re playing with fire here. If this fails, we’re doomed, and we may as well go lie down in a hitch and wait to perish. Grim, but it'd be depressing to fail after this long. Society is already very fragile right now, this is the last hope to take a step towards fixing it.

After rereading what I just wrote, I’m horrified with myself. I can't let myself fall into negativity. I have to look on the bright side: we’re finished, and we can finally start. We can do this! The others would look down on me if they heard their boss had such a gloomy mindset.

Creating such a big simulated world is a feat, but its size is also its weakness. The simulation is rather fragile, any kind of damage to the computer hosting it or to the inner workings of the coding is bound to cause all kinds of problems. To avoid such thing happening, we have placed the computer in the depths of our laboratories, and have ensured it won’t be damaged by any natural occurrences. Human error is still a possibility, but we're all professionals. I trust none of us will mess around with the cables or press random buttons. I understand the temptation, but we didn’t get this far by forgoing self-restraint.

[ ...Continue? ]

[robitussin]

[Softly:]

Holy shit.

[So... Yeah, she's continuing.]

[cartesio]

My theory that reviving the deceased through the use of radial images obtained by the quantum computer Baer and I built seems to apply to more complicated matters than I thought. It's like we accidentally struck into a hidden vein of brilliance buried within us! Baer seems to have been able to find minds that not only are from places and countries away from here, but also are from other worlds. This has a lot of potential, more than I ever imagined.

I'm going to have to rewrite all plans from the start. I can’t just shove this new development in and call it a day. Once I figure out how to use Baer's genius work into our plans, we'll truly be cooking with petrol.

[ Interesting...but not even close to done. Continue? ]

[robitussin]

[She is indeed continuing!]

[cartesio]

If we can retrieve minds from other worlds, we may be able to speed up the project. The sooner we revive the world and turn society back to normal, the better. Knowledge and powers from other worlds will make it easier, and if there’s something we need right now, is ways to make it easier. It's an entire world and society, and we're just a group of scientists. Even if we were already making headway, this could mean we won’t spend the rest of our lives working on this. With some luck I'll be able to retire when I'm seventy and go relax on a beach.

The problem is that we can only copy their minds, not their bodies. Unless we’re going to carry these minds around in laptops, this isn’t going to be of any help.

I will think of some way to solve this.

[ ...Huh. Continue? ]

[robitussin]

[Screams internally!!

And also keeps reading.]

[cartesio]

Koda and Baer are working on a machine, presumably to have a one-way method of sending objects into another world. Science is all about pushing the limits of human knowledge, but I feel opening breaches between worlds is a bit too much. I will stop these developments immediately -- nothing good can come from them.

I can already hear what they'll say. They’re going to argue this is necessary, and that it’s the next step in our work. Koda will go pessimistic for a moment and say we'll need a way out of the world once we screw up. Baer will pout like a kid and pretend he doesn’t care. I like them both, but they’re such a handful sometimes.

[ Continue? ]

[robitussin]

[Continuing once more!]

[cartesio]

We can't go full throttle into the final result right away. First we should test it carefully, to ensure there won’t be any type of mistakes. It’s like building a sandcastle. You don't start right away with the towers, first you make a moat and fill the bucket with sand.

I need to stop thinking about the stupid beach.

First I tested the process with myself. Using a radial image of myself, I brought a copy of my mind into the quantum computer. It's too unstable to go through the process of being inserted into its own body, so we have repurposed him as an AI in charge of the simulation. It's strange to think there’s a copy of myself here, but if there's anyone I'd trust with this, it's myself. I already thought a name for him, I'm sure he'll find it amusing.

[ ...Continue? ]

[robitussin]

[She kind of wants to puke, but!! She's continuing regardless.]

[cartesio]

Since copying from a radial image is a viable action, as I just proved, I kept escalating the plan. AIs and other mechanical beings are easier to copy, and so are nonhuman beings. I can't even begin to understand how the computer found them, but I can't complain, they seem...interesting. Sergeant is hosting them in the server for the time being. He seems rather reluctant to erasing them, even though I insisted.

If he's trying to get some sort of equivalent to Koda and Baer I think he missed the mark by a mile -- or more like by several miles. They're nothing like them.

Now that we proved the systems work, it's time to do the real thing and hope for the best. The first try is scheduled to happen in a month, until then we'll keep preparing the simulation and giving Sergeant the last instructions.

I think I'm actually feeling hopeful about this.

[ ...That's the last entry in the journal. There is no more. At least you can go puke in peace. ]