So much to hear.
Time and time again, Lisa would spot the strange man and his briefcase scurrying about the city. As the minutes turned to hours, she had noticed that the place had gradually become increasingly crowded as more and more people began to fill the streets, all dressed the same, all equally confused.
"Oh my, excuse me!" the heavy-coated man exclaimed, brushing past the girl as he made his way down the streets, only to disappear into yet another building.
A dull silence fell over the surroundings as many people began to wander back into their respective "homes".
"Attention, citizens of... Snowbush," the voice of the man suddenly emanated from all around, "It has come to my attention and notice that your city has suffered a rolling network outage. I am working with my colleagues in the best of our efforts to find and resolve the situation. In the meantime, it is advised to avoid interface with your devices."
Lisa sat on the curb idly, watching as the noise slowly returned as the same people who had disappeared into the buildings. Her stomach grumbled.
It had become dark, and the girl, like so many other confused citizens, were promptly herded into the central building that the man had entered before. Inside, she saw not one, but many of them: men and women, all plainly dressed, some with the same bulging layers of jackets, all with the same dull, near-expressionless faces, and all with the same briefcases.
The man in the center stepped forward as the crowd hushed. The faint whine of the dingy overhead lights now made the only noise in the tightly packed room.
He silently turned to one of his colleagues, an older woman with greying hair. He appeared to whisper something to her, but quickly turned back, and cleared his throat.
"Hello, ladies and gentlemen." He began plainly, "You may be wondering why you're here at this moment."
Immediately, the crowd burst back into its quiet squabble as the group of indistinguishable people up front furiously spoke to each other on matters unknown.
"Quiet, quiet please." The man continued, "As you may know, your settlement has suffered a network outage, and resultantly become disconnected to the rest of the virtual society across the world."
He turned back and mouthed something to the others, receiving nods in return.
"And so, with that, I assume that many of you may be quite annoyed at the matter. I can assure you that we are trying our best to find and troubleshoot the issue, though, as many of you likely have heard from us, it may take several days to do so."
He reached into his pockets, and pulled out a vial of pale-beige liquid. "With all of you now disconnected, I know that you all are no longer able to sustain yourselves off of these nutrient supplements that you have lived off of for most of your lives, meaning that for now, just as you may have done shortly after waking, you will temporarily resort to the old habits of eating solid food."
A hand raised from the crowd.
"Where would this food come from?" asked Lisa, thinking back to the taste of the burger she had consumed.
The man nodded, and raised a finger. "And that's exactly what we're about to talk to next, young lady."
He turned, and sat down, his place taken instead by the woman he had been speaking to not too long ago. In place of the heavy coats that some of the others wore, she instead donned a simple black and red suitlike uniform of sorts.
"Allow me to introduce myself," she began, "I am Melina Daalmans, head of your local sustenance sector. I oversee the machinery that keeps all of you alive, and upon hearing the first emergency call to your city in over a decade, my team and I quickly oversaw the disconnection of the populace for the safety and integrity of the local society."
She paused for a moment to be met with another pass of rolling murmurs in the crowd before her.
"Over the course of the next few days, up until the issue is resolved, we will import food and essential materials from neighboring establishments, but for now, you are welcome to ask us any questions you'd like."
She turned, and began walking towards the side-door of the building, her colleagues trailing behind.
The original man who had been on stage initially took a bow. "That is all there is to hear for now. You have our permission to leave."
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I'm getting a little bit of a "Feed" feeling in reading this story. Just the feeling of being cut off from everything and learning from tge past.
Although it is odd that they are all in their own groups. It feels like a mix between "Feed" and "The Matrix "
8612940
I've never even heard of "Feed", either. :P
8612949
It's a book. Mainly in the sci fi future everyone has a system in their brains that connect them to the internet
8612959
Wow. I need to get reading then. There seems to be quite a bit that I've coincidentally referenced without ever knowing.
8612940
Not that unusual. Could just be some form of sharding even. Like how some Minecraft servers wil *appear* to have one large map, but they're actually multiple smaller maps split among multiple servers, with user inventory synced between them, and crossing the world border on one shard just takes you to the corresponding point on the border of the next one. (Or alternatively, something more along the lines of the "sharding" system used by CelestAI for Equestria Online in the FiO stories, though obviously without the whole "uploading" part...)
8612969
It's actually a really goid book. Just the first third you have to understand the slang they use.
Ughh...... still haunts me to this day
The best dystopias are the ones its citizens willingly partake in.
I imagine their bodies still aged while they were plugged in, right? Some of them must've been in there for most of their lives... kind of hard to make a choice like that if they never knew the difference. Interesting to see where you take this.
8613111
This dystopia is rather intriguing.
8614607
Indeed.
Still, we see the general populace free of psychotic or rebellious behavior in reaponse to the unknown physical world...
Whixh means it IS KNOWN, and the memories are merely compressed.
8615576
Suppressed. And yes, most people do know the old world.
I like this. This seems like it could very likely happen in the not-too-distant future, what with all this VR stuff nowadays.
Understanding this a bit more now, but depending on how long they were under. Wouldn't it be like really a good long bt before they could eat like large amounts of solid food?
Like people starved to death, don't just jump into eating a few burgers, they need to be eased into it.
Also I feel a few days to fix this sanfu will not really happen.
9011628
Yeah, I've taken note of that issue and I'm planning on writing a workaround in the original story adaptation. As for the timeframe that it takes to get everything back up and running, it's established to have been at least a week, if not more. I intentionally kept many things in this story vague to spur reader interest.
8969922
Eh, maybe if it's Marrix style where you're jacked into a machine that projects a dreamworld directly into your brain. And we're a long way off from that.
But with the technology we have now, it's just not gonna happen. From what I've heard, most people can't even go 24 hours in VR without getting headaches, eye strain, etc.
Strangest VMMORPG I've ever read.