Sun Moon Star

Sato / 18 / she/her. I have moved on past an MS paint icon to a photo of myself.

Owner of an enterprise originating from New Jersey trying to get said company settled into where the Nameless City used to be, now called Gotham.

First thing that greeted me was some ugly Gothic tower from a big-shot company planted right where I died.

Rude.

Anyway, it's been an utter pain in the butt.

He's now trying to convert the town that Lillian and her peers retreated to into his dream indoctrination army base. Luckily, a couple generals grew a backbone (or realized that a thousand or so dead kids is bad P.R since it's clear they can't protect them ) and are blocking that choice. So now the military and the executive branch are pissed at each other.

People are being requested to pick up their kids in the town. No one wants to take the responsibility of transport. Not with the wild creatures still around - even though they won't be around with Lillian there, but they don't know that.

I sorta figured out the trick when I bat to < normal > bulb. Siege's help, mindset to create one.

Light bulbs are associated with inspiration, the birth of an Idea. The whole light bulb flashing on with bright light.

If a Light Bulb flashing bright is Inspiration - the birth of an Idea and a Light shattering Loss, a Light should be of an Idea.

But a light bulb darkly - I guess I trying to think of killing an Idea - snuffing it out - but it wasn't the idea. Because me smacking bulb with a was the actual.

The more I try to make the Concept concrete, the further away I get. Unknowable isn't Concept as I it. It's not - it relies more of a.

I feel Light Bulb pulsing and it's doing like absorbing. Like hole. Falling in. Information.

I'm starting to get a feeling that Unknowable and a Bright Bulb are incompatible. Every BC is shaking its head every time I accidentally make one of these.

And out of curiosity, I then tried using it with other Concepts I've practiced with like < normal > and < blue >, which I normally bind to paper.

Effects are unpredictable. For example, < normal > seems to alter people's perception of normal, similar to its paper form, but instead of making people believe abnormal things around them are normal, this...seems significantly focused on making people act normal. Like they can't do anything outside of societal norms, so long as they're in the light.

I asked someone to cuss me out.

And he told me he couldn't think of any words to do so.

... Yeah I should probably smash this thing.

Weird experimenting aside, I still haven't figured out my goal.

And I really don't get why these light bulbs are now bright instead of dark. Feels like I'm doing the exact opposite of what I should be doing.

@strikingskeletonsiege

Any insight's helpful at this point. I'm about to hit the deadline, and I'm starting to realize I have no idea what I'm doing.

I am getting somewhere now. Sort of. I thought I did something when I made the latest light bulb with your advice after several tries - thinking about light going into it rather than out - like a black hole.

After I finished, the BCs started hopping excitedly but then just suddenly lied down on the floor prone but like wiggling their arms and legs. It was weird, but BCs are weird, so I didn't think much of it.

The concept wasn't < black, light > though - the light was actually bright white. But it wasn't < Unknowable > either. And it's difficult to read concepts that I don't know, but I could at least tell it's purely perceptual.

So I grabbed a couple testers. And well, they refused to enter the room. One of them even jumped to the side as soon as I opened the door.

Because apparently I created a lightbulb whose light makes people think that there's a < hole > in the area.

All willing subjects, of course. And no direct manipulation of the mind.

Only surface Concepts that shift the senses. Like < notice > or < blue > or < normal > or < sour >. The one I'm trying to create is probably borderline as a surface Concept, but it's one that everyone in the Inn is regularly exposed to and it's one that I'm very familiar with.

So it can't be too bad, right?

In any case, I don't really dare to do anything deeper. Changing people's minds, sneaking suggestions, tampering with the Concepts that make up a person, etc. Not even as a last resort.

Mostly because I don't think I can resist the temptation once push came to shove. It's easy to start saying everything's a shove if you have the power for it.

So I'm putting this post here to keep me honest.

----

I'm trying to conceptualize < Unknowable >.

The plan is to have Ava's dragonflies wreck havoc on the walls while having the Concept on them. The army will see said Dragonflies but be incapable of remembering specific details about them.

Afterwards, people will refer back to the recordings of the incident, which is where Echo's manipulation of the record will finish the job.

Because people will use the recordings to fill in the missing gaps in their memory. So what Echo creates will become what they know. Because people tend to trust technology over their own memory.

-----

Problem it's easier said that done.

I've seen Lillian use this before. I should be able to do what she can.

So why is it so hard?

I was hoping that having the Blank Canvases around, who innately are Unknowable, would inspire me. And...they're helping somewhat. They keep putting a light bulb in my hand. And I know Lillian uses light bulbs when she feels compelled to wield Unknowable - and the lightbulb turns black in her hand - emits a light that casts everything around it in shadow.

But when I try to do the same, I keep creating the Concept < black, light > instead. And I don't have enough Faith to carelessly experiment.

That's what all the BCs around me are doing right now.

Some of them are "helpfully" nudging my hands as I try to sorta shape the Concept I want - except now those ones are wrestling each other now while others stare curiously. At least how things without eyes stare anyway.

Even Sprout and Potato came back from god knows where, just to watch me fail at this.

Anyway, a coalition of Japan, China, and Korea have been pressuring me to sell ALTIMIT at a fraction of its cost.

Japan especially - through KaibaCorp, which needs good PR since it's been alleged that Legendary Heroes, their game, was the vector for the Pluto's Kiss virus that knocked down most of the electronic infrastructure there.

Luckily, ALTIMIT is an American asset, though situated in the Free States, not the actual USA. The companies though are largely unaffected by the separation of North America.

I can feel like I'm going to be eminent domain'd soon by either the Free States or the United States. As an OS that's virtually immune to all viruses and malware - even though logically it should only be a matter of a time that it's cracked - it's a very good bargaining chip for diplomacy to Japan which is trying to recover from its losses and scared of a second Pluto's Kiss.

So in my self-interest, I've made use of our screwed-up government. Most billionaire companies nowadays have a direct line to the President's staff, the equivalent of concierge service. And as soon as I offered ALTIMIT, the Presidential staff jumped on it. The specifics are laborious to list, but I get a lump sum equivalent to a quarter of the company's value (which I paid practically pennies for it initially), a way to get Lillian unofficially out of the camp - and I've given a lot of latitude in regards to developing in the Nameless City.

Seems like I missed the meeting where all the major companies were divving up the remnants of the United States. Maybe because I wasn't a billionaire then.

Problem is with Lillian's case. I've seen the news about the animal attacks - seems like the animals are being displaced because of that large eagle capable of wind-based mana attacks. Though admittedly, some of those animals seem to be making it a point to attack human settlements. Luckily, the mana modifications for most of the animals doesn't render them invulnerable to hot weapons...yet.

I am also pretty sure that the reason why the fort she's in hasn't fallen is because she's there. Which means if Lillian leaves, it might make her anomalous nature obvious - not to mention several hundred kids dying is a pretty bad outcome. The army is being stubbornly machismo, being desperate for a win and have moved a lot of their firepower to protecting this particular fort - instead of properly retreating and just letting the animals have it.

I can't help but have this feeling that something slipped through the World Boundary without me being able to perceive it. The only thing I can think of doing that are Blank Canvases, but they don't normally cause such intense feelings of foreboding.

I've been checking the news for a couple hours now based on this feeling.

Their sudden hostility is a little suspicious though, since they were the ones who requested us to go on their little corpse hunt. Or at least the angels did.

...Ugh.

Public sentiment has been incredibly negative, but the government is staying its course. I suspect they've hired an "internet water army" to control online opinion. Say one negative thing, and there's like 15 other people present to shoot it down. Geez, that's the sort of thing you expect in China, given that's where the phrase comes from, and not here. People are catching on to that tactic.

They're also trying to shape public sentiment for a Real ID online identity act, where all internet access will be linked to someone's real identity. They've already passed laws that make VPNs illegal except for government-approved ones owned by Googol and Macrohard and Jungle, because they're safe and American.

--

And on top of that, I also got a message from the [ Bright Expanse ] - the fragment of the Dream that exists in this world - asking to talk and offering to help deal with the consequences of the massive influx of mana entering this world.

There's nothing to talk about.

I'm not a naive nine year old kid anymore.

I don't want to deal with your chronic backstabber syndrome right now.

I was more worried that she would be picking up and dragging whole trees or revealing paranormal activity. I guess increased durability and stamina could be explained by mana affinity, which is starting to become a known phenomenon. 1 in 1,000 have such affinity, so she's not too strange.

I guess people want a bit of an update from my side of things.

--

The mana density in the world has increased. And it's been discovered that similar to how mana congregates around subway stations in a city, it also congregates in caves in the wild.

This has manifested as increased intelligence and strength of wild animals. Some have even gained abilities similar to a meta-gene, except magical in nature. Fortunately, powerful animals affected by mana tend to be territorial and stay in their territory.

It's why we haven't really heard anything for the past couple months. They don't particularly care about humans. Those animals are too busy hunting their own kind in order to devour and increase their own strength. So those that actually attack humans are very rare - usually it's a hunter that's pissed them off in some way.

The ones in the Appalachian mountains have been particularly agitated as of late. Part of it is the army bringing hundreds of loud kids in the mountains.

But really, it's them bringing one very specific kid whose presence is actively ticking off the wildlife - and likely driving off whatever powerful creature was in the area, causing a chain reaction.

----

Also, the Free States, The Lone Star, and the United States of America are working together to create their own oligarchies. It isn't completely confirmed, but given how each one has sent me incredibly insulting offers for my company, there's not really much else it could be.

The Free States located at the West Coast is primarily run by the major Silicon Valley companies including Googol and Macrohard. Lone Star is controlled by a large congolomerate of Health Insurance companies and Hospitals as well as Big Oil. And United States of America is controlled by the current federal government who is a shill for Edison and Jungle. I've heard they're going to combine together in a conglomerate any day now.

The internet companies are special in the sense they're already combined into one entity known as DynaNet. And all three countries in America have passed laws requiring real-life ID log-in to be done as soon as possible - tied into an active SIM card and government ID.

----

As for Lillian, we're going to visit her this weekend. I'm busy forging documentation as to why Lillian would be unfit to join the army - despite the fact that she probably is the best fit that the army has ever seen. Particularly her love for routine and her tendency to simply obey orders that aren't absolutely jarring to her. I haven't even talked about her more anomalous abilities.

I'm crossing my fingers that no one's noticed much.

...Our back-up plan is that we lure one of these super-monsters from the mountains and have Lillian pretend to be severely wounded and in needed of more care.

We should compare tech some time! Or you should send me some water samples for my R&Dweebs to look at!

Sounds good. Not that we have many things that are advanced here.

Kunlun's inciting several of the gangs to take over the slums. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about that, given their military arm Spring Chant. I don't want to make Lev and Chi choose between me and her sorta-once-upon-a-time foster mom/elder sister. So I've left it be and started focusing on the area opposite to the harbor.

It's mostly barren land because of the high tides resulting in the area to be submerged every so often. I've convinced the city that I want to buy it, and they've given me a dirt cheap discount. It probably would've been fertile land at one point if it weren't for the fact that the water is so polluted.