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treave

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Codex 2012
Code Masters

“Oh, very well,” I say, as I release Diogenes and the Masters. “If you insist.”

A flicker of disappointment crosses the old man’s face, as if he hoped I would have chosen otherwise. With a shrug, he dusts himself off. "A sensible choice.” The female Master approaches me slowly, her hands held firmly by her sides. “The procedure should be easy,” she says. “Theoretically, you should instinctively know what to do the moment you come into contact with the security terminal.” Suddenly, she frowns. “Camna, there’s a disturbance out in sector A7. It looks like Sheldon is causing a mess.”

Diogenes’s crinkled face contorts into a mask of fury, the first time I have truly seen him angry. “Damn his foolish pride,” he curses. He looks at me, and then at Stella, dithering. Finally, he decides. “Bring me there, Stella.” Then, he turns to me and says, “Our deal is still valid. Follow through with your end and you won’t have to worry about any universe-ending mishaps. Mikey and Rory will show you what to do.”

With a flash of lightning, Stella, Diogenes and the dog disappear.

I walk over to the large door, where one of the Masters is standing; Mikey. He looks just slightly older than me and has an unkempt appearance. “It’s locked us out,” Mikey offers an explanation nervously. The Masters are still rather twitchy around me, as if I’m going to explode and kill them if they handle it wrongly. I smile at him, “Thanks. Hey, no need to be so stiff. We all did what we had to do.”

I look at the security workstation next to the door, a square old thing that appears rather clunky to me. “You can’t hack it? I’ve had a look at the language that this world uses. It’s more primitive than mine – I’d have thought any of you could have coded together a bypass in a flash; is this facility more advanced?”

“Huh, cool,” grinned Mikey, his interest overcoming his concern of me. “I’m impressed, you picked up the fundamentals in what… an hour?”

“Half an hour. I derived the assembly language from one of the computers in the library. It’s all rather similar to what I’m familiar with anyway, and that makes sense.”

Mikey nodded, seemingly glad. “I won’t have to waste time explaining the details then. Anyway, to answer your question, we can’t hack it. It can't be solved by merely coding or programming. Iae changed the lock on us, so to speak. It’s like coming home and finding that your girlfriend put a biometric scan on every entrance. It’s not a matter of finding a key, it’s what we are. That disqualifies us entirely.”

“To continue Mikey’s analogy, what we’ve been trying to do, with Dio’s help, is to blow up the whole house because we can’t break the lock,” replied Rory, joining us. “Then suddenly the key drops in our lap. You can see how that makes things easier.”

“That’s interesting,” I say, tapping in some commands at the security terminal. “Why do you guys want to blow up the house anyway? Do you remember what happened before this whole thing started?”

The two men shook their heads. “Nah,” said Rory. “Not a thing. Hell, we only remembered our names because of the name-tags we had on us.”

“You have personalities,” I comment.

“We don’t even know if they’re real personalities or something Iae made up to fuck with us. I mean, amnesia, man,” muttered Mikey.

“We slowly pieced stuff together from the lab notes, and we seem to have retained our expertise, but other than that, it’s a blank.” Rory adds.

I decide to dig into another angle. “Diogenes mentioned something about the crisis that required Iae’s creation. Do you know anything about that?”

“Huh, there was something in the lab notes,” Mikey says. “Wait, that’s not the right shell, you need to go there –“ He stops his explanation to guide me back onto the route I’m supposed to be taking to unlock the door.

“What was I saying? Oh, yeah,” Mikey continues. “Apparently Iae is a replacement observer or something. Some really secretive organization affiliated with the company wanted to use it to impose a new reality on the universe to stave off impending doom. Or something. If you really want to know about that, ask the metaphysicists, like Sheldon, or maybe the mathemagicians. They spent like forever ruminating on theories as to what the crisis could have been, and even more forever running simulations. I’m just a code monkey in the end.”

“Well, it seems to have backfired spectacularly anyway. Story of our lives,” muttered Rory.

“And I’m done,” I proclaim, making the final entry and unlocking the door. The door slides open, revealing a rather familiar place. It looks identical to the room where I had deleted the Council immortal, though I know that was just a representation. “What happens next?”

“Consciousness transplant,” says Rory. “We’ll replace Iae with the old guy. He doesn’t need to be here for this, all the action is going to happen outside when Iae begins to resist.”

Why the old guy, anyway?” I ask. “Can’t one of you do it?”

He shakes his head. “It could be possible, theoretically, but why would we? Can you imagine eternity as some all-seeing eye?” Mikey nods. “Bothersome as life is right now, I’d rather die than get imprisoned as the next ‘god’. No way. Oh, and don’t try to stop us. We’ll take your universe out if you try anything. I mean, I don’t want to, but I will.” His warning seems to come a bit late, seeing as Diogenes had already made his point to me quite clearly. “Yeah, you seem quite cool and all, but Dio’s our best bet here, even if he’s a bit of a twit,” says Rory. “You would be subject to all the same problems that Iae has. Iae version 2.0, in fact, with even less chances of us fixing this shit.”

“Well,” I begin, “What’s stopping Dio from betraying all of you when he ascends?”

“Good point,” muses Mikey. “I mean, besides the fact that we’re doing this entirely altruistically and it doesn’t matter if we or trillions others die as long as the entire multiverse is saved, but yes, good point.”

“You just said you didn’t want to become the next god because it was bothersome,” I point out.

“Huh. Oh, you got me there,” flushes the Master.

“As Mikey said,” adds Rory, “It doesn’t really matter if he betrays us because we’ve taken steps to ensure that it won’t succeed. Sheldon’s idea, really.”

Mikey glances to the side with a little smile, and whispers conspiratorially. “We’ve prepared new rules for the system. Diogenes will be a rather passive and benign fellow after his ‘ascension’.”

“And you think he doesn’t know about that?”

“Hm, well, he shouldn’t,” mutters Mikey. “Actually, I’m quite confident he doesn’t. He’s not very good with computers, even after all this time. He wouldn't be able to notice it, and even if he did, he wouldn't be able to do anything.”

"Well, it is still possible that he could sabotage your program somehow," I suggest.

Rory shakes his head. "The IAE system is very sensitive. It'll lock down the entire dimension if anything goes wrong. The last time that happened, it took... what was it?"

"Probably nearly six billion years in real time," says Mikey.

"Yeah. We spent a long, long time playing cards. Galen managed to invent an entirely new way to turn stars inside out in his spare time, but we had no stars to use it on," Rory laughs.

I laugh along with him.

***

A. I put my trust in the Masters and their plan and help them carry it out. If what they say is true, things will fall into place and work fine once they enslave Diogenes as the new Observer. I can decide what to do after that.

B. I attempt to subtly sabotage or otherwise influence the process of ascension as best as I can. I am in a good position to do so, though it may backfire if I am not careful. If I cannot stop Dio from ascending, I can at least induce a lock-down, which would remove the threat of the universal reset.

C. I change my mind about cooperating. I attack Mikey and Rory immediately, attempting to catch them by surprise and kill them, universe be-damned. This will end Diogenes’s chances of becoming the next Observer. It also means that I will have to take on Iae without the aid of the Masters, but I will chance those odds.
 
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TOME

Cuckmaster General
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Ah the loredump:bounce:

These guys don't seem trustworthy. They haven't got a clue about what they are doing. Sure they know how turn stars inside out but they are rather naive trusting Dio and hoping a few lines of code is going to stop him.

Sheldon:love:
sheldon.jpg
 

Baltika9

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These guys don't seem trustworthy. They haven't got a clue about what they are doing. Sure they know how turn stars inside out but they are rather naive trusting Dio and hoping a few lines of code is going to stop him.
Yes, they apparently haven't heard of Dio's "bullshitz-"level willpower.
 

Esquilax

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Mikey glances to the side with a little smile, and whispers conspiratorially. “We’ve prepared new rules for the system. Diogenes will be a rather passive and benign fellow after his ‘ascension’.”
...
“Well, it seems to have backfired spectacularly anyway. Story of our lives,” muttered Rory.

Uh, if all their plans have fucked up before, why the hell should we go along with this now?! @treave, what will the new rules be that will put Dio in check and how will the new Observer Mikey and Rory propose be different? Also is the word "mathemagicians" in the update a hint or a typo?

For the record, I don't find their plan very convincing right now - they want to enslave a man who refused to accept the meaning that the Great Idea ascribed to him, he's not going to let these rules confine him over a long enough timeline. Eternity is a long time for Dio to ponder a way out of the sort of prison these Masters intend for him.

Speaking of Dio:

“Ah, you are still keeping calm. Excellent. I do puzzle over what I must do to provoke you. Are you wondering how I came by this pair of marvellous bodies?”
...
A flicker of disappointment crosses the old man’s face, as if he hoped I would have chosen otherwise. With a shrug, he dusts himself off.

I wonder, did Dio's grand plan depend on us killing him in the first place? Perhaps what Dio wanted is for us to restore the multiverse's data upon defeating I.A.E., which would possibly mean restoring him while we're still vulnerable? I don't know, but it certainly would certainly give a motive as to why he wanted to piss us off so badly.

Anyways, at the very least we can be fairly sure that Mikey and Rory are telling the truth as they see it. We know that Dio has an incredibly firm grip on his emotions, and the fact that he was unable to keep a poker face when he found out that Sheldon was doing something he didn't want him to do speaks volumes. Whatever Sheldon has planned, I don't think that Dio knows the full extent of it because he wouldn't have left so nervously just now if he suspected it would leave him vulnerable to some sort of sabotage in this place. But another interesting part here is this:

One of the Masters steps forward, seemingly amused. The hood of the cloak is brought down, revealing a well-groomed young man wearing spectacles.

“A face-off, then?” It is the same Master that had called the fortresses. The Vajra in each of his hands sparks to life, putting out power exponentially greater than that of the measly single piece you have. “Let’s see what you bring to the table, Gilgamesh.” He smiles, anticipating your move.
...
“Damn his foolish pride,” he curses.

Sheldon probably faced the previous incarnation of Gilgamesh, the Devourer. But this is really probably just a clever distraction to lure Dio out while Mikey and Rory attempt to carry out their plans.
 

treave

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Codex 2012
All their previous attempts to reach the Great Idea have failed. But this time they'll get it right, they're sure. Getting access to the main console is something they've never managed before, and they've been doing the equivalent of brute-forcing their way all this while.

They aren't telling you the new rules but you can find out on your own with A or B. Senya expects it'll probably be along the lines of forcing Dio into being a very passive Observer, meaning no spheres or any other emissaries running about, and possibly stripping him of any free will or thought.

Ah, and mathemagician isn't a typo.
 

Esquilax

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Thanks, that hint is helpful.

“We slowly pieced stuff together from the lab notes, and we seem to have retained our expertise, but other than that, it’s a blank.” Rory adds.
...
“What was I saying? Oh, yeah,” Mikey continues. “Apparently Iae is a replacement observer or something. Some really secretive organization affiliated with the company wanted to use it to impose a new reality on the universe to stave off impending doom. Or something. If you really want to know about that, ask the metaphysicists, like Sheldon, or maybe the mathemagicians.

They don't remember shit. The knowledge that they probably remember is how to operate their technology, which they probably also pieced together from their lab notes, but they don't remember a fucking thing about why things work the way that they do. They just know how to push buttons, basically, which would explain why all the non-Vajra tech seems to be more primitive than our own. Idiot gods, indeed.
 

treave

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Not really. Creating pocket universes and dimensions, nanomachines, Vajra, plus a host of other tech that you haven't seen were developed in the long, long aeons after the IAE went active. Some of it of their own design, some of it from the civilizations that completed their simulations. The lab notes only referred to Iae itself. Everything else is theirs.

If you ask Sheldon he might be able to give you a more concrete answer as to how the IAE system works, but they still won't be able to tell you the actual reason it was built (doom or otherwise), because that has no direct bearing on how it works, just like how you can't infer that the Little Boy & Fat Man nukes were built to be dropped on Japan just by looking at the bomb itself, with no other context.

Just because Iae locked them out doesn't mean they don't know how it functions. They just didn't have the chance to really apply their knowledge before this.
 

Jester

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B and hope that Senya will add line like every time Dio will think about backstabbing, he will start break dancing or singing words with tenor.
 

Jester

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Guys, I think this is ULTIMATE CHOICE time, or near to it.
B and hope that Senya will add line like every time Dio will think about backstabbing, he will start break dancing or singing words with tenor.
So Dio will be there dancing forever?
Devious isnt it? :smug:
Dirty dancing all nigh long.:dance:


PS. As for godhood Dio is probably best option if he only wish to be at the top of food chain, not to benefit from it.
 

ScubaV

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I'm curious how Dio would behave if he did theoretically achieve ultimate power. He's unfathomably ruthless, but I can't recall him ever being cruel just for fun or vengeance. His atrocities were only committed to achieve his goals. Then again, if that's all he knows...

@treave, what does the lockdown mean? Would it be temporary (albeit in the range of 6 billion years)? And how does it prevent a reset? Perhaps just maintaining the status quo, which really isn't a permanent solution.
 

Esquilax

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I'm curious how Dio would behave if he did theoretically achieve ultimate power. He's unfathomably ruthless, but I can't recall him ever being cruel just for fun or vengeance. His atrocities were only committed to achieve his goals. Then again, if that's all he knows...

This is a good point. Once he achieves his goal of ultimate power, well, what then? If you are omnipotent and omniscient, there are no goals you can't accomplish. I'm curious if the Masters plan on using this against him to subdue him if they're going to make him the next Slave-God.
 

treave

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Codex 2012
Well, it's probably temporary, but you don't know how long exactly. Locking down means that the whole dimension 'inside' the Great Idea will be cut off from the rest of the multiverse. The Masters will be unable to contact Senya's universe, so they can't give the signal for it to reset, etc. Nothing will be getting in or out.

As for the current Observer, it really isn't fettered by any rules except one: observe everything you can.
 

Baltika9

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I'm curious how Dio would behave if he did theoretically achieve ultimate power. He's unfathomably ruthless, but I can't recall him ever being cruel just for fun or vengeance. His atrocities were only committed to achieve his goals. Then again, if that's all he knows...
One of two things: consilidate his power and purge his enemies, or search for MOAR POWAH!
 

Baltika9

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Once Dio has no more enemies and MOAR POWAH... then what?
UNLIMITED POWAH!
Even when he was head honcho of the Empire, he was much more focused on deatroying his rivals and reaching for the next stage of power, namely, becoming a god.
Treave did say that Creation is far from being completely observed, so Dio opeeating at his normal character would probably proceed to observing and dominating the rest of Everything, which will take him a couple of billions of years.

Once he's done with that, well, go beat up other gods, I guess? He'll find someone to fuck over, I'm sure.
 

Baltika9

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Actually, Ean would be the best choice for an observer: we established his character as a ruler during the "Empire" phase, and his prime concern was always taking care of the underdog(s) and setting wrongs right, not glory or conquest. Plus, as you yourself said, he already had a transcendent experience, he knows what it is to be a god/demigod. 'Sides, due to their connection, Sekh will most likely ascend with him and she can put the sense back into him, see Ean's last chapter.

That is, if Senya will want to put a new god on the throne in the first place. The whole "no gods, no masters" from the previous chapters may yet bite us in the ass. Or solve all our problems with the application of "Tactical Genius, hurr." We'll see.

By the way, @treave, if only one the previous Gilgamesh's shards landed on a planet and became the Gieloth race, what happened to his other shards? Still drifting in space?
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

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A - B sounds like it would backfire and make Dio an unlimited god, rather than a slave-god. C sounds like the only way to have our cake and eat it - minus Kyrie of course.

B

edit: @treave, what would B do exactly? Do we get a choice of how to sabotage it?
 
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treave

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Marduk found one fragment. Afterwards the Dragon Emperor took it all back, including the Gieloth.

As for the sabotage, it'd be like throwing a monkey wrench into the machine. Metaphorically. Do you want to have a choice on how to sabotage it?
 

Storyfag

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Marduk found one fragment. Afterwards the Dragon Emperor took it all back, including the Gieloth.

As for the sabotage, it'd be like throwing a monkey wrench into the machine. Metaphorically. Do you want to have a choice on how to sabotage it?

So that's why the Dragon Emperor wanted Selkhet, because she was the last fragment left? Althrough at first he wanted to take her as a bride, but from what Adrahasis says and the last Ean update said, the Dragon Emperor was less of a person and more of a collection of disjointed Ean-Gilgamesh-Marduk thoughts/ideas/memes hoped on the wrong frame (Marduk's, not Ean) - GOD-EMPEROR OF MANKIND, conquer the universe, fuck the Masters, Devour/Take Selkhet/Sekhenun as bride, DEVOUR SOUL.

Its just me or there was earlier a opportunity for Ean to embody the Great Devourer if Senya let the Dragon reach Earth and ambushed him with Ean?

I think there were much, much earlier chances for Ean to become the Devouring Emperor. Something dating way back to the Olympus showdown.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

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Marduk found one fragment. Afterwards the Dragon Emperor took it all back, including the Gieloth.
Makes me wonder what would have happened had we let humanity become gieloth hybrids...
As for the sabotage, it'd be like throwing a monkey wrench into the machine. Metaphorically. Do you want to have a choice on how to sabotage it?
Hmm. Throwing a wrench into a machine that controls all the universes. What could possibly go wrong?

As for the choice, I thought it'd be to add some restrictions of our own devising to Dio's slave program or to do as you suggest and simply sabotage it.
 

treave

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You wouldn't really have the time or opportunity to do anything fancy. Maybe if you had gone to the IAE headquarters earlier and dug around there, you'd be more familiar and better prepared for this, but apparently a library is a good place to get actually useful information about a reality-altering god-machine.
 

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