Domain and Quorum
Picard opened his eyes.
All things considered it looked rather boring. He was standing on a simple stone circle atop a green hill on a brisk summer day. Almost, but not quite, like a hill he had visited back home many times. In front of them was a doorway with a shimmering, mirror-like surface inside instead of a door.
“...Report,” he said.
“Here,” Troi said. “I’m fine, and as far as I can tell everything’s the same. My body, my mind, my empathic senses… everything’s in working order.”
“I’m fine too!” Ty Lee said, jumping up and down. “I’m in a computer! I still have no idea what that means but I still think it’s cool.”
“All good here,” Tails confirmed. “Bon Bon?”
Bon Bon lifted up her sunglasses to check the function of her eyes. “All good here. Even got my connection to the earth. Hard to believe that I’m just a bunch of electric signals right now.”
“Actually,” Tails began, “the Thon Iridescence doesn’t use electricity for most of its function. …Dracogen Enterprises had no idea what it does use, but it isn’t electricity.”
“For once, we don’t need to understand it to use it,” Picard said. He rolled up the sleeve on one of his arms, revealing a number counting down from one hundred hours, and a second number that stayed still at two hundred. The files in Dracogen Enterprises’ Archive had told him about this—the timer was how long they had in-simulation before the Greeter would check this realm to see if they wanted to be reconstituted. They would have three sets of one hundred hours before they were stuck. The other number was the starting value of the world’s currency they had available—femtos.
The Archive had also told them something else. “Lieutenant Drops, remind me of the procedure for making a... quorum.”
Bon Bon nodded. “We leave through that door and all think, together, that we want to break off and make a new realm within the construct. After we do that all our thoughts about what we want it to be will be averaged and a new area will be created. If we don’t use it regularly it’ll fade into nothing because of underuse.”
Picard nodded. “We all need to think of what kind of place we wish our base of operations to be.”
“Why not just recreate the bridge of the Enterprise?” Troi asked. “It’s a place we’re all familiar with, and it will provide us the structure to keep working as a crew.”
Bon Bon and Tails agreed without reservation. Ty Lee frowned. “I don’t hang out on the bridge that much…”
“You should be able to say you don’t want your mind to be part of generating the quorum,” Bon Bon said.
“Oh, okay! Then… let’s do this!”
Picard stepped up to the shimmering door to the rest of Thon. “I… know we should be able to stick together just through mental will, but let’s link hands for this first jump.” He took Troi’s hand, and in the end they created a chain with Bon Bon taking up the rear. “Prepare yourselves.”
He took a step and his body was gone. Suddenly, he was nothing but a mind floating in a nexus of endless tunnels. To his intelligence, it appeared as an endless web of bluish tendrils that focused at certain areas like neurons. The instinct to go and explore was almost impossible to resist, but he had a mission, and that came first. Willing to pop outside the web, his awareness was automatically pushed out into an area with nothing, vaguely aware that four other minds were following him. He asked the construct to make a new realm for him—and those following him. It allowed it. There was a burst of light, and he felt something enter his mind and ask what the desired realm was to be.
The bridge.
It asked a question. Enable replay? Picard answered yes immediately. He did not want to be able to be shot and killed in his own realm.
Then he stepped out of a shimmering surface where the turbolift should have been right onto a perfect replica of the bridge of the Enterprise. The rest came in behind him—though Ty Lee was in the back, rather than with the rest, and their physical link had been broken in the process of creation.
Picard was not worried. He strode down the aisle to the Captain’s chair and sat down, smirking. “I believe we’ve done it. Well done, everyone.”
Bon Bon took her station at tactical. “Most of these consoles are completely blank.”
With a hop, Tails jumped to the helm. “No warp control at all, sir.”
“I wouldn’t expect there to be,” Troi said. “After all, we’re the only thing that exists.” She sat down at operations rather than her usual seat, just to see what the console was like.
Ty Lee examined the spot the Enterprise’s schematics usually were. It only showed the bridge and the few rooms directly adjacent to it: Picard’s ready room and the briefing room. “I’m gonna see if the food replicators work.” She ducked into the briefing room, leaving the rest to examine the bridge.
Picard looked up at the screen. Pressing a few buttons on his chair, he was able to bring up an animation of stars trailing by, as if they were at warp.
“Nice touch, sir,” Troi said.
“Thank you, Counselor. Now…”
Ty Lee ran back from the briefing room, delivering a cup of piping hot Earl Grey tea into Picard’s hands. “Replicators work a-ok!”
“Good.” Picard took the cup and took a moment to appreciate the aroma. “I don’t know what I would have done without them. Now, of course, we must begin our mission. The Pure Heart and information about the Ancient Wanderers. We know almost nothing about this world except…” He decided to try something, simply willing that the Enterprise computer knew what they knew about the Thon Iridescence. Pressing a button on his console, he was delighted to see blue text appear in front of the moving star background. Entry Point. Enterprise Bridge. Ecatora. “These are the three realms we know about. Where we arrived, where we are now, and the public city coordinates Jenny provided for us. We know next to nothing else about how to navigate this web or where we can even find what we’re looking for. So keep your eyes peeled. And, if we ever get separated, remember—return here. This is where we will operate.”
“Yes, sir!” they all agreed.
“Now… I think it’s time we paid Ecatora a visit.” He stood up and adjusted his uniform.
“Recommendation, sir,” Bon Bon said. “Establish a forcefield that will only recognize us stepping out of the turbolift… shimmer. It is unlikely a hostile entity will enter, but we don’t want to take chances.”
“Make it so.”
Bon Bon pressed a few buttons and the bridge forcefield generators created a barrier around the turbolift: a circular area just large enough for two people to stand. It dissipated the moment Picard approached it.
With a deep breath, Picard locked his hands behind his back. “No chain this time. Now… we fly to Ecatora.” He stepped through, once again entering the bizarre web. He found it much easier to move now that he’d already done it once, easily able to check that the other four were linked to his mind.
He thought about the coordinates to Ecatora, and the Thon Iridescence heard him. The network sped by like every strand was but a single fly shooting by on a highway, narrowly missing the cars that were Picard and his crew. Ecatora itself was a brilliant realm that could be seen even from far, far away in Thon. It was the brightest “star” in the sky. Once you saw it, you could never lose it.
They entered…
Picard walked out of a large shimmering wall with the rest of his crew. To the left of them a troop of floating bubble creatures poured out, and to the right a massive centipede scuttled along. Sensing it wouldn’t be proper to stand and stare in awe while others wanted to enter Ecatora, Picard made sure he continued moving forward while he appreciated the sights.
Already, he knew that gravity was unusual. He had taken three steps and he was on a flat black street at a direct ninety degrees from the entrance he had just come out of. Once he had gained some space, he allowed himself to stand and stop moving to appreciate the world.
It was a city. It was every bit as varied and complex as the Beanstalk Station, except with a big difference: back on the Beanstalk, it had been possible to discern patterns. Groups of ponies, Mobians, and races with discernible features. Here, in the city fueled by imagination, there were no patterns based on previous experience. The people varied so much that a group of humanoids seemed almost out of place for how similar they were, especially given the matching uniforms. Buildings ranged from ramshackle wooden huts to skyscrapers made out of dark clouds to floating islands made out of imitation bone. The only constants were the sky and the ground; the former a constant deep evening blue, the latter a matte black covered in neon-colored lines that snaked all around the city.
Turning around, Picard saw his crew all turning their heads to see the sights. The irony was that the greatest of all was right behind them; a replica of the black hole that Thon itself was built around, sitting in the center of the black ring that was Ecatora, placed such that, for most of the city, it appeared as a black sun that never quite set.
“Marvelous…” he said, a soft smile coming to his face. “Absolutely marvelous.”
“I want. To try. Everything.” Ty Lee said, quickly realizing she was getting excited and subsequently forced herself to stifle her excitement. “But that can wait.”
“Just stick together,” Picard ordered. “Otherwise, our only course of action right now is to try everything.”
“Ah, newcomers?” A floating brain in a jar drifted over to them. “You’re all still in matching uniforms, too. I bet you just arrived fresh off your ship, huh?”
“Yes,” Picard said, believing honesty was a good policy for the time being.
“So, you guys immigrants, or you here for a reason?”
“We have a purpose here, to seek an artifact known as the Pure Heart and to gather information about the wise builders of this digital construct.”
“Don’t know nothin’ about the Pure Heart, and I know very little about the mad lads who built this place,” the brain chuckled. “But I’m sure there’s stuff somewhere around Ecatora for your pleasure. Few things to be aware of. One: replay’s not enabled, so don’t go doing anything stupid like upsetting one of the bigger avatars or tripping over and breaking your head on the pavement. Don’t wanna die on your first day here, do we?”
Ty Lee shivered. “No, I very much like being alive, thank you.”
“Two:” the brain continued, “the neon roads on the ground are shortcuts that whisk you to other parts of the city. Step on them with intent to use them and they’ll take you to their pre-coded destination. I wouldn’t use them at first, easy to get separated from the group with them.”
“Noted,” Picard said.
“Three: if you’re ever looking for free information about Thon, the public library’s a good place to look. It’s one of those buildings that duplicates itself everywhere, you’ll be able to find it almost all the time. In fact…” He pointed at a short building made of red brick with a holographic book floating above it. “That’s one of them right over there. They all link to the same information network, but you can’t use them to teleport around, unfortunately.”
“That shall be our first destination.”
“Four: here’s the last and most important one. The femtos you got on you? They will not get you very far, not even in the cheap markets. If you ever want to purchase anything in Thon, even information, you’re going to need more than the… thousand you probably have between you. Find a way to get work. What did you all do before?”
Picard smiled. “Various things. But… more than anything else, I led this crew as explorers to strange, new worlds—of which this place is a part.”
“It just so happens there’s a Navigator’s Guild here, they always need more explorers to work out the maze of the Thon Iridescence. Well, good luck!” He floated away.
“Was he being truthful?” Picard asked Troi, to which she nodded. “Good. Then… we’re going to that library.”
Together, they moved over the few streets required to get to the library. It was a little strange to walk alongside monstrous beasts, fluttering clouds, and multi-segmented beings that couldn’t actually exist in the real world, but they never felt in danger. They were in a city where anyone and anything was welcome.
However, when they finally saw the library doors, they were shocked. There, standing at the top of the steps, was none other than Twilight Sparkle, horn lit.
“Twil—”
Picard was too late. She had already teleported away. In a city this large, she could have gone anywhere—if she hadn’t left the city for another part of Thon entirely.
“...New mission,” Picard said. “Find Twilight.”
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YESSS TWILIGHT IS BACK
It means you've been minted to the blockchain!
My guess is photons. No idea why, I just think it's photons.
Oh god, timers and in app currency? This is The Metaverse! Quick, spend all the femtos on pictures of apes, they'll go to the moon in value and you can sell them to the next sucker who comes along!
Wow, Star Trek: Bridge Crew gets some major graphics upgrades in the future.
Ah, the central hub. Now, if this is anything like the real internet, there should be catgirls flirting to the left of them, spambots trying to sell them them things to the right of them, and a Ugandan Knuckles... somewhere.
You're telling me the PvP is enabled in the main hub area? Now that just strikes me as terrible game design...
Ah, of course. Strangely specific guilds for people to join and do quests for money. Getting some flashbacks to the last few days here...
So, like... O'Chunks? Reminder that 'multi-segmented' is how I would describe basically the the original characters in Super Paper Mario.
What? Book horse, at the book building? Inconceivable.
Welcome, to the internet, have a look around! Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found! We're in Thon now, and I will not lay off on the VRChat/MMO/general internet jokes, you cannot make me. Also Twilight is here. Neat. I wonder if Toph is here too... Or maybe she's in the other place, I dunno. Hopefully Picard and crew can track her down, and the Pure Heart while they're at it.
Hope twilight has time left.
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A trans should tell people he/she is a trans, so people know, and threats him/her properly, som Will hate it, some won't mind, some Will show respect, etc, it is decepction if it is not known by his/her Friends, there are cases where trans people get girlfriend/boyfriends without telling them what they are, and once the truth is revealed, problems occours. In other words, not telling what You are is deception, as simply as that, people deserve to know.
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I'll give you a fun bit of knowledge; you are not entitled to personal knowledge about someone unless you will actually be getting that personal with them, at which point you then ask. You don't have to tell someone every detail about you. The proper way to treat someone who is trans is no different than the proper way to treat someone of any gender. It turns out, you are not entitled to know a damn thing about someone else's body. That said, I can see this topic is going to go nowhere with you. You clearly just don't or can't understand, which is fine, it happens. Have a nice day.
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No, I read a detailed screenshot LP on a forum and the player did just about every sidequest and showed off all the dialogue he could, giving a detailed analysis and synopsis of the setting, the characters, the themes, and explained WHY it was garbage, and I agreed with him.
Of course she’s in a library. Now comes the question of whether she can get out, both of the building and this virtual existence.