replica-if

Hello! :D My name is Leah, but I tend to go by Courtland on this platform.

I am finally writing this post to introduce the Interactive Fiction I have been working on…which is…Replica: Discarded and Damned! It is mainly sci-fi, but with some fantastical elements woven through =) Now, I am not new as a reader to IF, I admire and support a lot of IF authors over the years, and it has truly inspired to try my hand at it =D

So, let me just put the main synopsis that I have (it’s not perfect, but hopefully for now it will give you some form of idea/proof of concept to go forward with!):

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Welcome Replica into a future of Earth, but it is not the one that used to exist. That Earth is a myth long gone.

No, this Earth is changed.

In centuries bygone, an asteroid smashed into the moon, throwing pieces of its debris straight into the Earth’s orbit. Not only has the night become a floor to stars slowly dying over the years, but the tides on Earth changed, too.

You remember the statistics, so many species died out, ones you would never get to touch, or see...but as it ever goes, those humans survived—would you even be here if they had not? Did Mother Earth grieve further to know they had lived; did she detest you too for what you have done, for what the Makers created you for?

Perhaps it is a shame then, that so many groups of humans survived; taking to ground, or burrowing into mountainsides, protecting themselves from the hostility arising in an Earth they had once been choking slowly to death.

Now it is the Earth’s turn to do it back.

Due to the change of the moon’s pull, an imbalance formed; you have spied some of the craters, the scars littering half the wasteland of Earth, all the way up from your window in the barracks of Cogwheel. You have gazed upon the aftermath of when those tectonic plates completely ripped apart the earth; re-forming everything that once existed.

No, indeed, you would never truly know what Earth used to be like, Replica.

Lots of places around Earth are considered inhabitable because of the scars made by the moon and all the changes that followed. Isn’t it just a perfect excuse to keep you locked up, the Makers’ leash around you tight?

But you cannot deny how the Death-of-the-Moon, and its cold body falling to ground, weakened Earth’s natural magnetic shield, and brought down more of the solar wind and radiation from both sun and space.

Maybe the demise of Earth will come from a very different source...for in Earth’s new weakness…when the moon’s wound caused a ripple...it...alerted other minds unknown, deep within the dark depths of space. 

Oh indeed, it touched upon the solar echolocation of the Star-Dragons, you have come to know them well, Replica—a type of alien dragon—your mind races, overwhelmed, so much data spilling out of your broken and corrupt memory core.

You know the Star-Dragons well, you even think such dragons spoken about in old Earth myths could have been Star-Dragons. But these alien dragons...ever since discovering the ailing Earth, have had no issue with adding humans to their diet. Not only this, they have wished, since Earth became so weak, to use it as a resource.

This is known from the records kept by the Cogwheel Defence Unit—CDU—the place of your old job. Over the years, through death and slaughter of humans, Star-Dragons have picked at the Earth, taking flight back to space with the pieces.

To where, and to what purpose, is unknown.

And is that not slightly terrifying: the unknown?

But what you do know, the purpose of you at least, is that the threat of the Star-Dragons is still very real. You know this danger, for within the cold, sparks cackle off the ends of your knotted wires in response. But it is too much to think of your bloody encounters when you are…so broken right now. The only order you can make in your memory core is the vague understanding of how the Star-Dragons appeared so abruptly over Earth, and how they leave in the same manner.

This is because the Star-Dragons know how to jump through space, and can warp wyrm-holes to their will. Eventually, through centuries of on-and-off war, humans even learnt that these wyrm-holes may be the Star-Dragons trying to replicate some aspects of blackholes.

But who really knows?

Like tracking sun spots, little blacked-out circles have been spotted like mould around the edges of these wyrm-holes—eggs. Star-Dragon eggs. A perfect place to preserve them. Perhaps even to prolong their lives; in the funny way time warps the closer you get to the dark mass of the unknown.

And hanging right above you is a wyrm-hole the Star-Dragons left behind over twenty years ago. It changed everything, and Earth has come to call it The Eye.

The Eye: a singular churning ring of darkness left up within Earth’s orbit, now a nest left so close…are the eggs left there nearly ready to hatch…you cannot remember how much of a solar cycle has passed, but if Cogwheel knows, the CDU will be swarming with activity.

You cannot see it right now; your vision is damaged, you do not believe you will survive long enough to get it repaired, but you sense that wyrm-hole hovering. A strange sort of pressure rises within you, making your fizzled and exposed wires spark.

Something up in the wyrm-hole…it calls to you.

And it is this very circular mass of darkness that has allowed these dragons to come and go as they please much more quickly than ever before.

The Star-Dragons, while they want to take Earth apart, they need to make it last; to prolong their new resource until its depletion. That is the only guess you can make on why this war dance has lasted so long.

The only upside to The Eye is the small warning it gives when in use. The Eye pulses with energy, cackling with red lightning when a Star-Dragon is making their journey through, from whatever point in space they dwell, and into your skies.

You were made to fight these dragons from a distant galaxy.

But...you failed.

The Makers, they made you in the perfect image of humans; one glance and no one would ever know under your skin graft wires twist.

And you used to be the best and most advanced Replica of your kind, until you broke; the Makers performing experiments to make you more powerful and formidable. They wanted more than you were willing to give...because Replica, you thought you might have gained a heartbeat, and who knows, perhaps a soul resides within the wires of your body.

But, in the end, what use can a weapon be when it has emotions?

No matter that you were thrown into the landfill, or how you escaped the Cogwheel city dominating the continent for miles, eating into the mountains, you cannot go on...

Could you have saved this world? Maybe, maybe not. Because if you do live, it could equally destroy this world.

So, perhaps, this is really for the best.

After all, you carry a dark secret inside that the Makers want back. If they catch up to you, would you unleash all that cold-blooded training, becoming the Replica they always wanted? Or would it be the end of you?

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Whew! I know that it’s quite a long intro concept, but I hope it has given you a glimpse of what is to come in the IF!

If you would like to play the Intro to the IF, please click this link =):

Before I sign off this post, I just want to put a few credits here (I have also, of course, put these in the IF credits too). This is my first IF, I am not a brilliant coder, I’ve had to teach myself as I've gone along, and I would not have been able to do it without @manonamora-if and her amazing 100% Good Twine Sugarcube Guide by manonamora, as well as her wonderful available templates! I used ''Space/Tech UI Template'', and I spent a lot of time then having a great solid foundation that I could mess around with, and to which I could add all my own additions to! I’m eternally grateful! =D

As well as this, I have got character portraits drawn of all the main characters (included in the demo)—I have actually drawn these characters myself =D I used my iPad with Procreate, but I would not have been able to do it without taking artoffrostandflame’s (Instagram handle name) digital art course: ‘How to Draw Semi-Realistic Portraits for Beginners’. I love A.J’s art style, and so mine has been heavily inspired by her teachings; I hope to improve as time goes on!

I will be making another post soon depending on how things go with the demo, and it will be a message and some disclaimers that I believe are important to discuss before going forward. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy my small demo =)