#chromatic transference

Jonesy Babbitt (Subject 04, "The Dreamer" from the Tannhauser project, Sparks's chosen younger brother) began working at a virtual reality net-den on station called Avalon.

It was fantasy-based, like an MMO. People could connect and escape into a beautiful world that they'd never be able to experience otherwise. Avalon was likely the only time most people living on Ortega would ever see a blue sky. Less than 1% of people ever travel through space, after all. People are born on the station and die on the station. Jonesy was Avalon's artist, he was in charge of modeling different environments and such. In reality, Jonesy was using the psychic abilities he got after undergoing dissociative warp tests, and projecting illusions to help complete the world. If he (or others) could imagine it, he could project it. He was helping others experience things they never would have been able to before. He started a group, the Black Toga Guild. He made friends. They knew him as King Babbitt.

While working on Avalon, Jonesy noticed glitches. There was a remote player (someone who was not coming into the net-den but playing from somewhere else), who was experiencing bad spawn locations, and their model would not render properly. Just a low-poly, translucent pink of what could be a person. Jonesy got to know the player. She went by Anzu. Spoke with her, laughed with her, developed a relationship with her. Soon, other people in Jonesy's guild (people who also interacted with Anzu), went missing, trying to find Anzu.

Eventually, Jonesy went too, arriving in a slickdev office somewhere in the Wattcolmbe Apartments district.

Enkidu Cybernetics (a prosthetics and technology company completely separate from Magatsu-Ward) had sent Adolfo there a few years ago, with the intent to find and retrieve stolen property, and "take care of" a certain former employee.

Sparks, Percival, and Bob went to check it out first; along with an Android provided by Enkidu, as Adolfo was somewhere else trying to settle a debt we had with Enkidu (another long story to touch on).

Bob got stuck within a "demo" simulation, forgetting her past life. She often saw flashes of a young, gaunt man with sunken features and messy hair in reflections, flashing across screens, or appearing in projections. Bob knew this to be Jonesy, but the persona she took on within the demo couldn't recognize him.

Sparks was also attacked by the Augmented Man within the building (who was, if I had to guess, returning to Wattcolmbe under Anzu's influence, unable to fight back her influence much longer). Sparks had her head smashed in, skull fractured. Percival escaped with Sparks, leaving Bob behind and making sure Sparks got immediate medical attention. But in doing so, Percival had to come clean about his employment working under Magatsu-Ward.

Percival has been reporting back to the company with information and updates on our whereabouts and with information about the test subjects ever since we've met him. He was keeping tabs on us under the promise to eventually return the subjects back to the company. He regrets his decisions, and wants to make it right. Sparks made him promise to go back and save her brother.

An extraction team provided by Enkidu (which consisted of Percival, Adolfo, and two of Enkidu's marines) returned to the slickdev office with the intent to retrieve Anzu, and rescue the 5 people stuck within the demo simulation; three missing players from Avalon, Bob, and Jonesy. Bob was released, and one of the Avalon players, Anchal, made it out. The other two missing Avalon players (named Zepp and O'Hara) died within their slickbeds, unable to be saved. The two marines provided by Enkidu were also killed in the gunfight.

Finally making it into the AI-Core room, Adolfo, Percival, Bob, and Anchal finally got a good look at Anzu. She was an amalgamation of every person that helped create her. All 24 developers were within the core room, their corpses strung up by wires and tubes like a gruesome chandelier or branches on a ginormous tree, all connected to the AI.

Around the crew, the room changed.

It turned into a huge stone tower with a spiral staircase that traveled up. Beneath us, a glass floor, reflecting the AI Core as it once was. And forming within, a roiling black storm with red lightning striking.

As the four of us climb the tower, the storm followed steadily, moving without resistance, just out of reach.

We all experienced memories, memories that brought us here.

Bob remembered the mistakes she made when she was younger that led to the death of her wife. Anchal remembered interacting with Anzu and promising to come visit (it's what friends do, after all). Adolfo remembered his first deployment on Hecate, and how he killed the man who tortured him throughout his training. And Percival remembered the hit he took out on an Android on Jovos, an Android that looked suspiciously like his deceased sister.

Each time we woke from our memories (our bodies climbed the stairwell, but our minds took us elsewhere), the storm licked at our ankles and our sanity deteriorated along with it.

Adolfo took it the worst. He was barely holding on to his humanity.

When we finally made it to the top, the "king's burial chambers", where Jonesy was, in a slickbed carved from marble...

Adolfo stayed back. He didn't run. He faced the storm, with his flamethrower.

It was like witnessing the birth of a star.

The storm took him, and there was flame, gas, and lightning. A searing inferno that Adolfo once was.

He bought Percival, Bob, and Anchal more time to reach Jonesy.

Jonesy knew Anzu wasn't a person. Anzu didn't dream. He knew she wanted to manipulate and use him and his abilities to consume and replace as much of the station as she could.

But, Jonesy thought he could use Anzu too. Jonesy wanted Anzu's reach to put out a better world. He thought that if he could just get rid of the nightmares they lived in, everything would be better. Jonesy was prepared to kill himself for the people he loved and cared about. They didn't deserve to live in such hardships any more, and he thought he could fix it himself by making a different reality for them to live in.

Eventually, Jonesy gave in, and we got him out.

Percival and Bob are returning to the Lethe, with Jonesy in tow, but without Adolfo.