(Originally posted to Let's Play Sacntuary)
#31, originally posted Mar 24 2016, 08:02 AM
I'm back with route B. New protagonist, new characters, new setting, same story with some of the same characters from a different perspective. Something like that.
Route B—Session 08, part 1: It's Criminal
Our second protagonist has a nightmare about the moon and the city. What could it mea— Wait, it's the same sort of thing? Ishtar is the leader of a group of hackers, who never leaves her penthouse suite, since everything she needs is either there or accessible through the Net. Last night's incident has caused a flood of support requests and created a media buzz. She also reminisces about the time they caught a cute pair of twin crackers and recruited them.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
NOT Gate
Hmm. The titles for Hinata's chapters were all-lowercase, as far as I remember. This one seems to be capitalized. Is this a fluke, or...?
Even in this dream, the difference in Ishtar's personality comes through. Hinata would never use phrases like "Mister Moonlight" and "gently wraps my anxious heart".
When the view shifts to the eclipse in totality, there is an odd clicking sound, not acknowledged in the text. My first impression was of a gun's firing pin being pulled, but after hearing it a few times, I think it's actually a camera shutter. Why is that in her dream, though?
inbound
Ishtar is momentarily confused about her identity and even the world. Foreshadowing?
input
According to what I looked up, Ishtar is the goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. One of those should be concerning. More on this a bit later.
Looking at Ishtar's office, I see three sets of regular keyboards and monitors. Over near the window, there's also what looks like an old Macintosh or something; you know, like the first-generation models that had the whole computer and a CRT monitor in one case? I wonder what something like that is doing there. I guess she just wants something old in there. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It's just an odd contrast to the PCs.
pinger
Hmm. So this Miyata thinks the incident was probably a bug. I have to agree with Ishtar's assessment, for the most part. If the systems are running different code, they wouldn't have the same bug. However, there are other possibilities. For instance, something running on middleware (as in Java or some other virtual machine) could have a bug that affects all of the platforms it runs on.
Anyway, Miyata also rejects the possibility of the eclipse having anything to do with the incident. Well, it could very well be a coincidence. But really, what are the chances? Even if it's unlikely, it certainly feels as though someone managed to perpetrate this, and set it to coincide with the eclipse. Or some process set to synchronize with lunar eclipses managed to crash all these systems (although that's harder to believe).
"Magdalene", huh? Obvious biblical reference is obvious.
When the Shinozuka twins show up onscreen, there's a soft buzzing sound, and the picture has a fisheye effect. It's obvious that security drone is built like a fly or bee or something. But it's interesting that it can get in a house so easily. Either the crack in question is fairly large, or the drone is really small. Yumi calls it a bee, though, so it's probably not too dissimilar in size to one.
Hmm. The titles for Hinata's chapters were all-lowercase, as far as I remember. This one seems to be capitalized. Is this a fluke, or...?
Even in this dream, the difference in Ishtar's personality comes through. Hinata would never use phrases like "Mister Moonlight" and "gently wraps my anxious heart".
When the view shifts to the eclipse in totality, there is an odd clicking sound, not acknowledged in the text. My first impression was of a gun's firing pin being pulled, but after hearing it a few times, I think it's actually a camera shutter. Why is that in her dream, though?
inbound
Ishtar is momentarily confused about her identity and even the world. Foreshadowing?
input
According to what I looked up, Ishtar is the goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. One of those should be concerning. More on this a bit later.
Looking at Ishtar's office, I see three sets of regular keyboards and monitors. Over near the window, there's also what looks like an old Macintosh or something; you know, like the first-generation models that had the whole computer and a CRT monitor in one case? I wonder what something like that is doing there. I guess she just wants something old in there. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It's just an odd contrast to the PCs.
pinger
Hmm. So this Miyata thinks the incident was probably a bug. I have to agree with Ishtar's assessment, for the most part. If the systems are running different code, they wouldn't have the same bug. However, there are other possibilities. For instance, something running on middleware (as in Java or some other virtual machine) could have a bug that affects all of the platforms it runs on.
Anyway, Miyata also rejects the possibility of the eclipse having anything to do with the incident. Well, it could very well be a coincidence. But really, what are the chances? Even if it's unlikely, it certainly feels as though someone managed to perpetrate this, and set it to coincide with the eclipse. Or some process set to synchronize with lunar eclipses managed to crash all these systems (although that's harder to believe).
"Magdalene", huh? Obvious biblical reference is obvious.
When the Shinozuka twins show up onscreen, there's a soft buzzing sound, and the picture has a fisheye effect. It's obvious that security drone is built like a fly or bee or something. But it's interesting that it can get in a house so easily. Either the crack in question is fairly large, or the drone is really small. Yumi calls it a bee, though, so it's probably not too dissimilar in size to one.
#32, originally posted Mar 25 2016, 09:22 AM
Route B—Session 08, part 2: That Email Again
Ishtar ponders the seeming impossibility of every machine connected to the Net being susceptible to the same exploit. She reads the mountain of email from Criminal's clients, before receiving that email; as with Hinata, it has a profound effect on her. She has a nightmare about a tragic death in her past, and her friend Mika comforts her, as she remembers trying in vain to respond to the email. She feels she belongs nowhere. Mika reminds her of how Ishtar helped her when she most needed it. TV carries a news report with random responses of people to the incident, as well as a dubious theory about sex ratios. Ishtar gazes into a crystal-ball–like storage device she owns and sees herself in some sort of adventure with a mysterious man. Mika restocks food before leaving for school.
Apologies for 9:16. I thought I cut that out of this video, but it seems I forgot to actually do it.
Notes (EDITED to correct an error):
Spoiler: click to toggle
pinger
I wonder what's up with that rosary. A crucified maiden is definitely not any sort of Christian theology I'm familiar with. Come to think of it, though, I just realized something along these lines was mentioned before, in Hinata's route: that cover for the thrash metal CD. There was no crucifixion there, but there could be a connection.
Concerning the Net disruption, it is indeed weird how it seemed to affect everything connected, regardless of its OS. Also strange is the fact it was limited to the Kanto region. That clearly indicates that there were more conditions than just the eclipse. While a solar eclipse is only visible from a limited area, a lunar eclipse is visible from anywhere the moon itself is visible at the time, which is almost half the earth's surface. Actually, it could be more than half over the entire period of totality, as the earth turns and locations in twilight see the moon rise above the horizon. I'm not sure, though. In any case, what exactly was the area affected? Could it have been circular, by any chance? If so, where was the center?
Here's that email again. Is it really from Mutsuki? I have a strong suspicion that's not the case. So then, whom?
"{He}"? Is she talking about the Legendary Hacker here? It has the curly braces, after all.
queue
Again, questioning the world she's in.
An image flashes onscreen. It's a room full of monitors with "WARNING" on them. Some ambiguous fluid is forming puddles on the floor. What I assume to be Ishtar looks on in the foreground as a woman kneels in the middle of the floor, cradling a dead body covered in blood. I'm not sure what happened here, but I have a vague notion, if this is again related to the Gilgamesh story. I was reading a bit about Ishtar, and there are some not very good things concerning Ishtar's lovers, although the Ishtar in this VN doesn't seem cruel. Anyway, I'm not going to try to guess at this point who the dead person is, but this is something to keep in mind.
Magdalene's real name is Mika, apparently. Noted.
Apparently, "Eresh" is a bit ambiguous. It looks like it's the Akkadian pronunciation of the cuneiform sign which is pronounced "Nin" in Sumerian. See Wikipedia for more.
Everyone is mystified that an email seems to be coming from an address that doesn't work. Putting aside the syntactically invalid domain name, which I discussed before, in reality it is not that strange a thing to receive such an email. One cannot trust what the message declares to be the sender, since that information is provided by the message itself. Generally, the sender themselves write that header, and they could put anything. A mailserver (usually the originating server) can, of course, reject a message that tries to say it comes from an address the server doesn't believe it comes from, but this doesn't always happen; for instance, a server deliberately supporting spam might accept anything, or alternatively might write anything.
There are things one can check. Besides the content of a message, which is usually not difficult to identify as spam, even for computers, there are also the "Received:" headers. Each server that handles a message adds such a header identifying itself and where it received the message from. The last one (or sometimes more) is from the receiver's own ISP, which can generally be trusted; if one compares where it says the message was received from with the previous received header, a discrepancy may be evident. It's not perfect, but it's something, and no one in this story thinks to check that.
Ishtar mentions the moon being far away. This is a bit of trivia, but if you look at the Earth-Moon system to scale, it's surprising just how far apart they really are. There are tons of pictures depicting the Moon right next to Earth, but these are only to compare their sizes. In fact, the moon is about 30 Earth diameters away. Here is a picture I made to illustrate it, based on data about the Earth and Moon (there are many similar to it, but I was unsure about them, so I wanted to make one that I know is precise down to the pixel, based on numbers I find). The three images of the moon are, from left to right, at perigee, mean distance, and apogee.
Again, two years ago, huh? This is a critical period in the backstory.
This simile ("Life is like a steam locomotive...") is strikingly poetic. A nice bit of writing there.
homepage
The news brings up the fact that there have been countless total lunar eclipses with no hint of network trouble before. What is different about this time? Well, this is what I think: it's not just about this eclipse. Something happened recently, probably two years ago, putting something in place that was ready to be triggered by the eclipse. Just what that was, and how it was triggered, is still a mystery, though.
I question this commentator's theory about genes controlling sex ratios. As far as I know, there is nothing in human reproduction that would change the percentage of male and female conception so dramatically. This is controlled by sperm, and those are produced by meiosis, where the two sets of chromosomes in certain cells are duplicated and mix up some of their genes, and then the cells divide twice, resulting in four variants of the genome, each with half of the genes, called gametes (sperm in males). Since the original cell in a male contains one X and one Y chromosome, that means two of the resulting sperm contain an X and two contain a Y. Overall, exactly half should produce males and half should produce females.
Now, there may be mechanisms that alter this ratio between meiosis and birth. But what would those be exactly? The easiest to explain would be one or both parents preventing birth of children with one sex or the other. But what about before conception? No theory is provided.
I touched on it, but an exabyte (1018 bytes, if properly using the SI prefix) is a really huge amount of data. I don't know how much data the National Diet Library contains, either now or in 2032, but let's use the US Library of Congress, which is frequently cited as a comparison. According to an official 2012 blog post, the LOC has more than 3 petabytes (a petabyte being 1015 bytes) of digital collections. By this measure, an exabyte crystal would encompass the LOC's digital collections more than 300 times over. And Ishtar treats it as a toy?! Wouldn't it be rather expensive?
Also, the fact that it is sensitive to visible and ultraviolet light makes me wonder why it isn't ruined just by being in a lit room. EDIT: I previously had a calculation that seemed to say this crystal was impossible, but I made an error. It's actually fine. If the whole crystal is 0.1 m in radius, its volume would be approx. 4.189 × 10-3 m3. In order to fit 1018 discrete bits, cubical in shape, each would need to have a volume of 4.189 × 10-21 m3, and thus sides of 161 nm. It would be an interesting engineering problem to be able to focus a laser to any point within the crystal.
Then she has a vision of another self and some guy with stylish glasses. His figure looks familiar (thanks, artists, for keeping the same silhouette). Just like that vision in Hinata's route, he says not one word.
I wonder what's up with that rosary. A crucified maiden is definitely not any sort of Christian theology I'm familiar with. Come to think of it, though, I just realized something along these lines was mentioned before, in Hinata's route: that cover for the thrash metal CD. There was no crucifixion there, but there could be a connection.
Concerning the Net disruption, it is indeed weird how it seemed to affect everything connected, regardless of its OS. Also strange is the fact it was limited to the Kanto region. That clearly indicates that there were more conditions than just the eclipse. While a solar eclipse is only visible from a limited area, a lunar eclipse is visible from anywhere the moon itself is visible at the time, which is almost half the earth's surface. Actually, it could be more than half over the entire period of totality, as the earth turns and locations in twilight see the moon rise above the horizon. I'm not sure, though. In any case, what exactly was the area affected? Could it have been circular, by any chance? If so, where was the center?
Here's that email again. Is it really from Mutsuki? I have a strong suspicion that's not the case. So then, whom?
"{He}"? Is she talking about the Legendary Hacker here? It has the curly braces, after all.
queue
Again, questioning the world she's in.
An image flashes onscreen. It's a room full of monitors with "WARNING" on them. Some ambiguous fluid is forming puddles on the floor. What I assume to be Ishtar looks on in the foreground as a woman kneels in the middle of the floor, cradling a dead body covered in blood. I'm not sure what happened here, but I have a vague notion, if this is again related to the Gilgamesh story. I was reading a bit about Ishtar, and there are some not very good things concerning Ishtar's lovers, although the Ishtar in this VN doesn't seem cruel. Anyway, I'm not going to try to guess at this point who the dead person is, but this is something to keep in mind.
Magdalene's real name is Mika, apparently. Noted.
Apparently, "Eresh" is a bit ambiguous. It looks like it's the Akkadian pronunciation of the cuneiform sign which is pronounced "Nin" in Sumerian. See Wikipedia for more.
Everyone is mystified that an email seems to be coming from an address that doesn't work. Putting aside the syntactically invalid domain name, which I discussed before, in reality it is not that strange a thing to receive such an email. One cannot trust what the message declares to be the sender, since that information is provided by the message itself. Generally, the sender themselves write that header, and they could put anything. A mailserver (usually the originating server) can, of course, reject a message that tries to say it comes from an address the server doesn't believe it comes from, but this doesn't always happen; for instance, a server deliberately supporting spam might accept anything, or alternatively might write anything.
There are things one can check. Besides the content of a message, which is usually not difficult to identify as spam, even for computers, there are also the "Received:" headers. Each server that handles a message adds such a header identifying itself and where it received the message from. The last one (or sometimes more) is from the receiver's own ISP, which can generally be trusted; if one compares where it says the message was received from with the previous received header, a discrepancy may be evident. It's not perfect, but it's something, and no one in this story thinks to check that.
Ishtar mentions the moon being far away. This is a bit of trivia, but if you look at the Earth-Moon system to scale, it's surprising just how far apart they really are. There are tons of pictures depicting the Moon right next to Earth, but these are only to compare their sizes. In fact, the moon is about 30 Earth diameters away. Here is a picture I made to illustrate it, based on data about the Earth and Moon (there are many similar to it, but I was unsure about them, so I wanted to make one that I know is precise down to the pixel, based on numbers I find). The three images of the moon are, from left to right, at perigee, mean distance, and apogee.
Again, two years ago, huh? This is a critical period in the backstory.
This simile ("Life is like a steam locomotive...") is strikingly poetic. A nice bit of writing there.
homepage
The news brings up the fact that there have been countless total lunar eclipses with no hint of network trouble before. What is different about this time? Well, this is what I think: it's not just about this eclipse. Something happened recently, probably two years ago, putting something in place that was ready to be triggered by the eclipse. Just what that was, and how it was triggered, is still a mystery, though.
I question this commentator's theory about genes controlling sex ratios. As far as I know, there is nothing in human reproduction that would change the percentage of male and female conception so dramatically. This is controlled by sperm, and those are produced by meiosis, where the two sets of chromosomes in certain cells are duplicated and mix up some of their genes, and then the cells divide twice, resulting in four variants of the genome, each with half of the genes, called gametes (sperm in males). Since the original cell in a male contains one X and one Y chromosome, that means two of the resulting sperm contain an X and two contain a Y. Overall, exactly half should produce males and half should produce females.
Now, there may be mechanisms that alter this ratio between meiosis and birth. But what would those be exactly? The easiest to explain would be one or both parents preventing birth of children with one sex or the other. But what about before conception? No theory is provided.
I touched on it, but an exabyte (1018 bytes, if properly using the SI prefix) is a really huge amount of data. I don't know how much data the National Diet Library contains, either now or in 2032, but let's use the US Library of Congress, which is frequently cited as a comparison. According to an official 2012 blog post, the LOC has more than 3 petabytes (a petabyte being 1015 bytes) of digital collections. By this measure, an exabyte crystal would encompass the LOC's digital collections more than 300 times over. And Ishtar treats it as a toy?! Wouldn't it be rather expensive?
Also, the fact that it is sensitive to visible and ultraviolet light makes me wonder why it isn't ruined just by being in a lit room. EDIT: I previously had a calculation that seemed to say this crystal was impossible, but I made an error. It's actually fine. If the whole crystal is 0.1 m in radius, its volume would be approx. 4.189 × 10-3 m3. In order to fit 1018 discrete bits, cubical in shape, each would need to have a volume of 4.189 × 10-21 m3, and thus sides of 161 nm. It would be an interesting engineering problem to be able to focus a laser to any point within the crystal.
Then she has a vision of another self and some guy with stylish glasses. His figure looks familiar (thanks, artists, for keeping the same silhouette). Just like that vision in Hinata's route, he says not one word.
#33, originally posted Mar 26 2016, 08:32 AM
Route B—Session 08, part 3: Dinner
Ishtar does solo hacking for the whole day, until the Shinozuka sisters call. After a while, Mika and Kosuke arrive. The latter is teased a lot, as a news commentator talks about cyberterrorism. Once the sisters arrive, dinner is prepared and shared. Afterward, more news commentary, saying they don't know who Code is, among other things. After more teasing of poor Kosuke, the group takes a look at a picture of the eclipse, before preparing to start seriously working.
Not too much in the way of notes, but here they are:
Spoiler: click to toggle
hologram
This is that hologram chat that was mentioned much earlier. I wonder if the backgrounds of those images are altered, as was mentioned is possible. The windows do appear to have that generic light-blue "cyberspace" background.
intranet
Part of me feels sorry for Kosuke getting teased. But another part thinks he kind of invites it, the way he's telling the others what they should be eating. Mika should lay off, though.
optimize
I hadn't really noticed it before, but Sami actually seems to have some respect for Kosuke. When he's not making an ass of himself, at least. While the others are belittling his abilities, she tries to defend him.
There's that same weird lunar-eclipse-that's-not-a-lunar-eclipse thing.
This is that hologram chat that was mentioned much earlier. I wonder if the backgrounds of those images are altered, as was mentioned is possible. The windows do appear to have that generic light-blue "cyberspace" background.
intranet
Part of me feels sorry for Kosuke getting teased. But another part thinks he kind of invites it, the way he's telling the others what they should be eating. Mika should lay off, though.
optimize
I hadn't really noticed it before, but Sami actually seems to have some respect for Kosuke. When he's not making an ass of himself, at least. While the others are belittling his abilities, she tries to defend him.
There's that same weird lunar-eclipse-that's-not-a-lunar-eclipse thing.
BTW, I made an error in my notes last time, so I've edited them to make a correction, which I marked (it's near the bottom).
#34, originally posted Mar 27 2016, 06:58 AM
Route B—Session 08, part 4: Mountain of Work [HALF BLIND]
Criminal reviews the big task related to the incident: someone has declared they will crack a system and steal its data. Ishtar gets the members' opinions before revealing that it is her own security system at stake, protecting none other than eXarch. Everyone is supportive, making Ishtar very happy. The mysterious eye warns about their fragile friendship. The next night, during a break in their work, the group discusses the possible culprits of recent crimes, including HE. They also discuss the mysterious Babylon emails before resuming work. The news reveals a shocking fact about ICs. Yumi calls to talk about a boy she bumped into. And then, Ishtar gets an email with a very ominous warning.
I think somewhere in this part is where it becomes blind.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
optimize
I wonder about that system management password, specifically whether there is a meaning behind it. There are various techniques to come up with strong passwords. One such technique involves taking a phrase and abbreviating it using the first letter of each word, and optionally changing some words to numbers (making "to" into "2" and "for" into "4") and/or substituting lookalike characters ("4" for "A", "$" for "S", etc.). Or it could just be a string of random alphanumerics. It doesn't look quite random to me, though it's hard to prove or disprove.
The mysterious eye makes another "appearance". As I write this, I suddenly had a thought about the decisions in these routes. Is it necessary for the proper decisions over all routes to work together to create a sort of ultimate ending, or something like that? I'm reminded of how both Ever17 and Remember11 work.
Would it be reasonable to suppose that elements of both of those systems have been incorporated in I/O? After all, it already appears that routes A and B are connected at least a little. I'm getting slightly ahead of the story here, but Yumi even mentions bumping into Hinata at school. Before LPing this, I actually tried, in route A, deliberately mistaking Yumi for Sami, noting that there were significant changes to how the route played out, even though it reached the same ending. Wouldn't that choice have an effect here in route B?
domain
On a lighter note, Regista Gold sure is one epic energy drink! 10,000,000 mg of taurine? That's 10 kg, or about 22 pounds (in addition to the other ingredients)! That'd give you energy for days. If it doesn't kill you.
I think this is roughly the point where I left off in the pre-LP playthrough. It's blind from this point (or very soon).
Hmm. So HE may not be such a good guy after all? Well, really, that shouldn't be surprising. Even heroes usually don't entirely live up to their heroic images when examined closely.
Mika says something particularly insightful. She subscribes to the theory that HE is just a label for many different hackers. A shared fictional identity, if you will. We should keep this in mind, because in cyberspace, a person's true identity can be difficult to determine with certainty.
But Yumi rejects this, believing both that HE exists and that HE always does the right thing. Where does her conviction come from? Is she just naïve, or does she know something she's not telling? (Sami also believes in the existence, but not in the heroic image.)
Ah, the mysterious email invites are brought up. I'm not sure what the purpose of this choice is. Why would a reader choose not to ask about the email, except in trying to get a bad ending, of course?
Mika seems surprised that Ishtar was invited to a game she doesn't play. I don't understand this. Isn't it only useful to invite someone to something they're not already a part of? The people already playing and getting those emails would not be the audience for such a thing.
We get hints of Ishtar's involvement in Babylon's early days. Not that we didn't already know, with a name like that and that flash of memory. (On a side note, Ishtar has a mysterious background. She says she doesn't remember her original name. Does she even remember her childhood?)
The media is doing its best to stir up fear. Assuming that figure (90% of people arrested for drug use are ICs) is accurate, it doesn't follow that the majority of ICs are drug users, only that more of them are getting into drugs than the general population. It's still concerning, but not, in and of itself, cause to think that, as the host implies, "the entire human population [will] become drug addicts". At worst, I think it would lead to ICs as a whole (a minority, if I understand correctly) dying out. Natural selection at work, leaving more fit individuals to propagate the species.
"STOP THE RAMPAGE—OR THE WORLD WILL COLLAPSE!"? Whoa! How could it possibly be more ominous than this? But it raises two important questions: what "rampage" is it referring to, and what is "the world"? Is it the "real" world? Is it cyberspace? Babylon?
I wonder about that system management password, specifically whether there is a meaning behind it. There are various techniques to come up with strong passwords. One such technique involves taking a phrase and abbreviating it using the first letter of each word, and optionally changing some words to numbers (making "to" into "2" and "for" into "4") and/or substituting lookalike characters ("4" for "A", "$" for "S", etc.). Or it could just be a string of random alphanumerics. It doesn't look quite random to me, though it's hard to prove or disprove.
The mysterious eye makes another "appearance". As I write this, I suddenly had a thought about the decisions in these routes. Is it necessary for the proper decisions over all routes to work together to create a sort of ultimate ending, or something like that? I'm reminded of how both Ever17 and Remember11 work.
Spoiler: click to toggle
In Ever17, one must get the good (for various definitions of "good") endings for all four routes and then lead one of the protagonists on a particular path with newly-opened choices, in order to find the true ending. In Remember11, choices made on one route affect the other route after an ending is reached, requiring one to use both protagonists to get some of the bad endings.
Would it be reasonable to suppose that elements of both of those systems have been incorporated in I/O? After all, it already appears that routes A and B are connected at least a little. I'm getting slightly ahead of the story here, but Yumi even mentions bumping into Hinata at school. Before LPing this, I actually tried, in route A, deliberately mistaking Yumi for Sami, noting that there were significant changes to how the route played out, even though it reached the same ending. Wouldn't that choice have an effect here in route B?
domain
On a lighter note, Regista Gold sure is one epic energy drink! 10,000,000 mg of taurine? That's 10 kg, or about 22 pounds (in addition to the other ingredients)! That'd give you energy for days. If it doesn't kill you.
I think this is roughly the point where I left off in the pre-LP playthrough. It's blind from this point (or very soon).
Hmm. So HE may not be such a good guy after all? Well, really, that shouldn't be surprising. Even heroes usually don't entirely live up to their heroic images when examined closely.
Mika says something particularly insightful. She subscribes to the theory that HE is just a label for many different hackers. A shared fictional identity, if you will. We should keep this in mind, because in cyberspace, a person's true identity can be difficult to determine with certainty.
But Yumi rejects this, believing both that HE exists and that HE always does the right thing. Where does her conviction come from? Is she just naïve, or does she know something she's not telling? (Sami also believes in the existence, but not in the heroic image.)
Ah, the mysterious email invites are brought up. I'm not sure what the purpose of this choice is. Why would a reader choose not to ask about the email, except in trying to get a bad ending, of course?
Mika seems surprised that Ishtar was invited to a game she doesn't play. I don't understand this. Isn't it only useful to invite someone to something they're not already a part of? The people already playing and getting those emails would not be the audience for such a thing.
We get hints of Ishtar's involvement in Babylon's early days. Not that we didn't already know, with a name like that and that flash of memory. (On a side note, Ishtar has a mysterious background. She says she doesn't remember her original name. Does she even remember her childhood?)
The media is doing its best to stir up fear. Assuming that figure (90% of people arrested for drug use are ICs) is accurate, it doesn't follow that the majority of ICs are drug users, only that more of them are getting into drugs than the general population. It's still concerning, but not, in and of itself, cause to think that, as the host implies, "the entire human population [will] become drug addicts". At worst, I think it would lead to ICs as a whole (a minority, if I understand correctly) dying out. Natural selection at work, leaving more fit individuals to propagate the species.
"STOP THE RAMPAGE—OR THE WORLD WILL COLLAPSE!"? Whoa! How could it possibly be more ominous than this? But it raises two important questions: what "rampage" is it referring to, and what is "the world"? Is it the "real" world? Is it cyberspace? Babylon?
#35, originally posted Mar 29 2016, 10:03 AM
Route B—Session 08, part 5: Hollywood Cyber [BLIND]
Mika and Kosuke are playing the "Ashur" scenario, apparently not doing very well. After ordering ramen, they get to work eliminating malware from the eXarch server (apparently left wide open by someone inside the company), in a Hollywood-esque sequence. Ishtar makes a competition out of it; guess who ends up winning.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
target
Kosuke continues to show why he's the butt monkey, with his mishearing words and such.
They bring up the opposite-sex requirement for Ashur. Putting aside the possible reasons for this, I'm wondering how the game determines their sex in the first place. To my knowledge, normally, the player has to declare it, or decides what sex their character is. It would be strange to require their character's sex to be the same as their real sex. But this is Babylon we're talking about; it's meant to feel as real as possible, obvious departures from reality notwithstanding, and I guess in such a circumstance, many people would be uncomfortable inhabiting a character of the opposite sex, particularly if they're using biocomputers.
I haven't seen far enough ahead to know how involved Criminal is going to be in playing Ashur. But if they do end up doing it, who would be the best match to trigger the gate? Well, sad to say, but I don't think any of them is going to develop romantic feelings for him. So I guess that leaves the hate option (as Chiquitita explained it, a dramatic change to a pair's relationship, whether good or bad, will trigger it). From what I can see, I think Mika would work best for it; she seems to dislike him thoroughly, so it would be easy for things to get even worse. I suppose if not her, then Sami could work; even though she sometimes defends him, she still usually gets pretty upset at him for little reason. It definitely can't be her, though, because of what happens soon.
So, uh, I get that they run a simulation to test the integrity of the security system. But when, exactly does that happen? Is that what happens in "debug"? But that doesn't make sense to me, with all the malware continuing to invade.
I don't know why Kosuke is whining about something as easy as placing a food order. I mean, I would be complaining about my general treatment by everyone else if I were in his place, but come on. Is ordering over the phone so much harder in Japan, or is he just that whiny?
debug
They're actually trying to justify this silly Hollywood-like representation of cyberspace. I do like the idea of tangibilization, but the way everything is depicted is still unrealistic. I really do not think things would look like this. Well, the spraycan and patching program thing can be explained as Ishtar having a flair for over-the-top metaphors; since she made the program, she can make them look however she wants. In general, though, I can't really believe it.
Children's Limbo is a tradition in Catholicism that infants who die unbaptized inhabit a realm between heaven and hell. I don't quite get the connection with what Ishtar is talking about here, though.
I'm not sure Ishtar's game was a good idea, the way she set it up. Leaving out Kosuke, even if only accidentally, and then making him the "prize". Well, he didn't seem unhappy about it, but as for the others, various negative emotions may have been stirred up. Yumi is clearly jealous, while Mika's... protective(?) side is fired up. At the very least, I feel that things like this may lead to avoidable drama. At worst, it could be disastrous in some way.
Kosuke continues to show why he's the butt monkey, with his mishearing words and such.
They bring up the opposite-sex requirement for Ashur. Putting aside the possible reasons for this, I'm wondering how the game determines their sex in the first place. To my knowledge, normally, the player has to declare it, or decides what sex their character is. It would be strange to require their character's sex to be the same as their real sex. But this is Babylon we're talking about; it's meant to feel as real as possible, obvious departures from reality notwithstanding, and I guess in such a circumstance, many people would be uncomfortable inhabiting a character of the opposite sex, particularly if they're using biocomputers.
I haven't seen far enough ahead to know how involved Criminal is going to be in playing Ashur. But if they do end up doing it, who would be the best match to trigger the gate? Well, sad to say, but I don't think any of them is going to develop romantic feelings for him. So I guess that leaves the hate option (as Chiquitita explained it, a dramatic change to a pair's relationship, whether good or bad, will trigger it). From what I can see, I think Mika would work best for it; she seems to dislike him thoroughly, so it would be easy for things to get even worse. I suppose if not her, then Sami could work; even though she sometimes defends him, she still usually gets pretty upset at him for little reason. It definitely can't be her, though, because of what happens soon.
So, uh, I get that they run a simulation to test the integrity of the security system. But when, exactly does that happen? Is that what happens in "debug"? But that doesn't make sense to me, with all the malware continuing to invade.
I don't know why Kosuke is whining about something as easy as placing a food order. I mean, I would be complaining about my general treatment by everyone else if I were in his place, but come on. Is ordering over the phone so much harder in Japan, or is he just that whiny?
debug
They're actually trying to justify this silly Hollywood-like representation of cyberspace. I do like the idea of tangibilization, but the way everything is depicted is still unrealistic. I really do not think things would look like this. Well, the spraycan and patching program thing can be explained as Ishtar having a flair for over-the-top metaphors; since she made the program, she can make them look however she wants. In general, though, I can't really believe it.
Children's Limbo is a tradition in Catholicism that infants who die unbaptized inhabit a realm between heaven and hell. I don't quite get the connection with what Ishtar is talking about here, though.
I'm not sure Ishtar's game was a good idea, the way she set it up. Leaving out Kosuke, even if only accidentally, and then making him the "prize". Well, he didn't seem unhappy about it, but as for the others, various negative emotions may have been stirred up. Yumi is clearly jealous, while Mika's... protective(?) side is fired up. At the very least, I feel that things like this may lead to avoidable drama. At worst, it could be disastrous in some way.
#36, originally posted Mar 30 2016, 10:04 AM
Route B—Session 08, part 6: Hacker Battle [BLIND]
Criminal sits in the eXarch server, waiting for the attack. It seems to come a bit early and is easily repelled. Then an AI we've seen before warns them, just before a certain famous person shows up. They're powerless against him, and it ends badly for one of them. Then, something unnerving happens.
BTW, I think most of the cyber-related stuff this time is utter nonsense. See my notes for details:
Spoiler: click to toggle
crack
LEM appears, and Ishtar recognizes her as "Onee-sama", whoever that is (probably that mentor Ishtar was thinking about before; also might be the one who created the fairy program, whom Mutsuki's diary mentioned). I'm going to assume that's the personality that was reading Hinata's fortune, or at least that it's not the ditzy one that calls him "Onii-chan" and that he perceived as Mutsuki.
So... HE is a bad guy, then? Well, at least this manifestation is. But as I said before, it's quite possible there are multiple people appearing as HE.
Also, I'm surprised Ishtar doesn't notice that HE looks just like the man in that vision she saw. Or, rather, since everyone apparently knows what HE is supposed to look like, it's surprising she didn't think the man in the vision looked like HE in the first place.
"All of her blood's rushed to her head." Another statement I don't understand under the circumstances. I thought their appearances here were just avatars. Do avatars blush?
"This is for Dad!!" Whoa! What's the backstory on that? I really want to know.
When it says "Masami" throws the bombs, I'm pretty sure that should have said "Mayumi".
All of this is pretty nonsensical. For one thing, cyberspace wouldn't have any sort of geometric space, so it doesn't make sense for people to be running around and fighting like this.
browser-crasher
Sami is apparently in danger just from being forcefully logged out. I see this trope in a lot of sci-fi, where having a neural connection severed is dangerous somehow, and it really bugs me. I just don't believe it. I really believe that, at worst, it would be a jarring experience, as if one were to be, say, falling, and then in an instant, be standing in a room, not moving at all, with no impact. In other words, one might be disoriented for a moment, or maybe even a minute or two. But I see no reason why it would be physically dangerous to the brain. If someone can come up with a reasonable explanation within some story, then I think it should be easy enough to engineer a way to make it safe. In this case, though, I don't even see where this power surge comes from; they're all connected wirelessly. They send and receive digital signals via radio waves; there's just no way to transmit any amount of power other than what each station uses for its signal.
Finally, an explanation for Ishtar's left eye. I wonder whether it's natural or artificial. From what "Onee-sama" was saying about her eyes, it sounds as though they were natural, but who knows? Maybe she had an implant, and then regretted it. Regarding the ability itself, it's not as far-fetched as one might think. The human retina actually is capable of detecting near-ultraviolet light via the blue receptors. Most of us don't see it because the lens is opaque to it. However, people with aphakia (the lens is missing) can see it. Infrared is another matter. Apparently, there was an experiment that involved feeding US Navy sailors an alternative form of vitamin A; they started to be able to see infrared. I haven't checked the references in that, but I find it plausible, because many animals are known to be able to see infrared.
"that fairy who had the same aura as Onee-sama"? Again, physics intrudes into cyberspace?? Or does she just mean she felt as though it were that person?
"My reassuring friends ... I have them." She just had to say that. Now it's even more certain something is going to happen to that friendship.
I'm not sure what (-ワ-)lel or （－ワ－）ｌｅｌ is supposed to be. Some weird emoticon? And why do most of them use ASCII characters and a couple of them fullwidth characters? Of course, in the Japanese version, I think it would have been only fullwidth characters, though I'm not sure.
LEM appears, and Ishtar recognizes her as "Onee-sama", whoever that is (probably that mentor Ishtar was thinking about before; also might be the one who created the fairy program, whom Mutsuki's diary mentioned). I'm going to assume that's the personality that was reading Hinata's fortune, or at least that it's not the ditzy one that calls him "Onii-chan" and that he perceived as Mutsuki.
So... HE is a bad guy, then? Well, at least this manifestation is. But as I said before, it's quite possible there are multiple people appearing as HE.
Also, I'm surprised Ishtar doesn't notice that HE looks just like the man in that vision she saw. Or, rather, since everyone apparently knows what HE is supposed to look like, it's surprising she didn't think the man in the vision looked like HE in the first place.
"All of her blood's rushed to her head." Another statement I don't understand under the circumstances. I thought their appearances here were just avatars. Do avatars blush?
"This is for Dad!!" Whoa! What's the backstory on that? I really want to know.
When it says "Masami" throws the bombs, I'm pretty sure that should have said "Mayumi".
All of this is pretty nonsensical. For one thing, cyberspace wouldn't have any sort of geometric space, so it doesn't make sense for people to be running around and fighting like this.
browser-crasher
Sami is apparently in danger just from being forcefully logged out. I see this trope in a lot of sci-fi, where having a neural connection severed is dangerous somehow, and it really bugs me. I just don't believe it. I really believe that, at worst, it would be a jarring experience, as if one were to be, say, falling, and then in an instant, be standing in a room, not moving at all, with no impact. In other words, one might be disoriented for a moment, or maybe even a minute or two. But I see no reason why it would be physically dangerous to the brain. If someone can come up with a reasonable explanation within some story, then I think it should be easy enough to engineer a way to make it safe. In this case, though, I don't even see where this power surge comes from; they're all connected wirelessly. They send and receive digital signals via radio waves; there's just no way to transmit any amount of power other than what each station uses for its signal.
Finally, an explanation for Ishtar's left eye. I wonder whether it's natural or artificial. From what "Onee-sama" was saying about her eyes, it sounds as though they were natural, but who knows? Maybe she had an implant, and then regretted it. Regarding the ability itself, it's not as far-fetched as one might think. The human retina actually is capable of detecting near-ultraviolet light via the blue receptors. Most of us don't see it because the lens is opaque to it. However, people with aphakia (the lens is missing) can see it. Infrared is another matter. Apparently, there was an experiment that involved feeding US Navy sailors an alternative form of vitamin A; they started to be able to see infrared. I haven't checked the references in that, but I find it plausible, because many animals are known to be able to see infrared.
"that fairy who had the same aura as Onee-sama"? Again, physics intrudes into cyberspace?? Or does she just mean she felt as though it were that person?
"My reassuring friends ... I have them." She just had to say that. Now it's even more certain something is going to happen to that friendship.
I'm not sure what (-ワ-)lel or （－ワ－）ｌｅｌ is supposed to be. Some weird emoticon? And why do most of them use ASCII characters and a couple of them fullwidth characters? Of course, in the Japanese version, I think it would have been only fullwidth characters, though I'm not sure.
Route B—Session 08 (full) [HALF BLIND]
#37, originally posted Apr 2 2016, 08:47 AM
Route B—Session 09, part 1: Black Market
Kosuke busts in with a shocking revelation about Andras. The next day, Ishtar leaves her penthouse to seek information. On the way, she witnesses a drug deal in an alley. Then she talks to an old friend from Anunnaki and finds out some surprising things about eXarch and another company, about Andras, and about Code.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
browser crasher
Aw, Ishtar, how can you leave us hanging? What about Kosuke's father?
scan
A little surprisingly, Ishtar actually goes outside.
Oh, Ishtar, even if you're the leader of Criminal, what are you doing interfering in actual criminal affairs in some back alley? You're lucky you only got garbage dumped on you.
Here we see that, as good of a hacker as Ishtar is, she's absolutely lousy at convincing people to talk face-to-face. I suspect that, even if she were only dealing with an ordinary person, and not someone as hardened as Nergal, she might have trouble. Well, she's an IC, after all, so I suppose that's to be expected.
Favorite quote so far: "I'm almost certain that Nergal has coins for red blood cells."
Aw, Ishtar, how can you leave us hanging? What about Kosuke's father?
scan
A little surprisingly, Ishtar actually goes outside.
Oh, Ishtar, even if you're the leader of Criminal, what are you doing interfering in actual criminal affairs in some back alley? You're lucky you only got garbage dumped on you.
Here we see that, as good of a hacker as Ishtar is, she's absolutely lousy at convincing people to talk face-to-face. I suspect that, even if she were only dealing with an ordinary person, and not someone as hardened as Nergal, she might have trouble. Well, she's an IC, after all, so I suppose that's to be expected.
Favorite quote so far: "I'm almost certain that Nergal has coins for red blood cells."
#38, originally posted Apr 3 2016, 01:20 PM
Route B—Session 09, part 2: Reverse Connection
Ishtar heads home and Mika stay with her for the night. Yumi is working on a very Japanese crossword, thinking about Hinata. An innocent musing about the meaning of his name when written backwards leads Ishtar to a flash of her own insight, and in turn a guess about who might be behind this plot. Later, all of Criminal receives a challenge to a duel. Ishtar remembers the first time they defeated Andras. It will probably be quite dangerous, but Ishtar decides to accept help from everyone.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
fingerprint
I know next to nothing about these Japanese puzzles, so I'm totally unfamiliar with this type of crossword that Yumi is working on. Sounds interesting, though. If only I actually knew the language. (I talk about certain things in the language, but I can only talk about those because I know a little, and I supplement that with some research. I would be pretty lost with a puzzle like this that is all about kanji.)
Sami says she'll tease Hinata next time. In Hinata's route, she only appears one more time after this, and things go differently. After that, she doesn't appear at all, with Yumi saying she has a cold. I wonder if that's really the case. It makes me just a little worried.
Kosuke thinks that "sunflower" (himawari) backwards is "riwamahi" (this is a natural meaning of "backwards" for a Japanese person, who would tend to think of words in terms of syllables rather than letters). I guess "illiterate" really is an appropriate label for him. How can anyone see that explanation about Hinata's name and not understand at least a little?
That aside, is this just trivia, or is it actually important in some way? Well, besides helping Ishtar figure out the Code/E-doc connection, that is.
So, this seems to be a theme with certain names, spelling them backward. We have Aoi Hinata (葵 日向) which is "sunflower" (向日葵) backwards, E-doc which is Code backwards, DlroW which is WorlD backwards. Any others?
Ishtar is rather naïve, isn't she? No way a game could cover for crime, right? Actually, it doesn't seem like a particularly good way to conduct their affairs, in an environment where their every action might very well be recorded, by the very nature of it being mediated by computers. Still, it's by no means impossible, and telling fact from fiction isn't necessarily the issue.
firewall
Apparently the email is sent by Andras. Everyone assumes it's a personal thing. What bothers me a bit is the "we". Although it doesn't identify them as Code, it's reasonable to think it's probably that whole group. And yet, later on... but I guess I'll talk more when that part comes up.
Well, I can kind of understand why Ishtar decided not to turn Andras in. But I think they should have. Not that it would have made a difference, now that his case seems to have been wiped away.
I don't have a clear understanding of the role of IP addresses in this world. Is it the address of a person's biocomputer? I'm not sure about that, since not everyone has biocomputers (actually, no one is supposed to have them, according to national policy, but lots of people clearly ignore that). Well, let's just say, for those familiar with the way things are in the United States, it's sort of like a Social Security Number (SSN), except it's more a global than a national identifier.
In the real world, IP addresses do not have a one-to-one correspondence with people, nor even to devices. Rather, an address is assigned to a network interface, which is a communication channel over a link, where a link is a local communications medium, such as a modem, an Ethernet cable, or a Wi-Fi hotspot. Even then, a single interface can have several addresses. As an example, my computer has at least two interfaces, a "loopback" interface for communication within the system, and a regular Ethernet interface for external communication. Each one has an IPv4 address and at least one IPv6 address; in fact, the Ethernet interface has three IPv6 addresses: a global address for talking to the world, a Unique Local Address for use within the local network, and a link-local address for talking to the local router (used for managing the link and such). In short, networks are more complex than this story makes them out to be.
I know next to nothing about these Japanese puzzles, so I'm totally unfamiliar with this type of crossword that Yumi is working on. Sounds interesting, though. If only I actually knew the language. (I talk about certain things in the language, but I can only talk about those because I know a little, and I supplement that with some research. I would be pretty lost with a puzzle like this that is all about kanji.)
Sami says she'll tease Hinata next time. In Hinata's route, she only appears one more time after this, and things go differently. After that, she doesn't appear at all, with Yumi saying she has a cold. I wonder if that's really the case. It makes me just a little worried.
Kosuke thinks that "sunflower" (himawari) backwards is "riwamahi" (this is a natural meaning of "backwards" for a Japanese person, who would tend to think of words in terms of syllables rather than letters). I guess "illiterate" really is an appropriate label for him. How can anyone see that explanation about Hinata's name and not understand at least a little?
That aside, is this just trivia, or is it actually important in some way? Well, besides helping Ishtar figure out the Code/E-doc connection, that is.
So, this seems to be a theme with certain names, spelling them backward. We have Aoi Hinata (葵 日向) which is "sunflower" (向日葵) backwards, E-doc which is Code backwards, DlroW which is WorlD backwards. Any others?
Ishtar is rather naïve, isn't she? No way a game could cover for crime, right? Actually, it doesn't seem like a particularly good way to conduct their affairs, in an environment where their every action might very well be recorded, by the very nature of it being mediated by computers. Still, it's by no means impossible, and telling fact from fiction isn't necessarily the issue.
firewall
Apparently the email is sent by Andras. Everyone assumes it's a personal thing. What bothers me a bit is the "we". Although it doesn't identify them as Code, it's reasonable to think it's probably that whole group. And yet, later on... but I guess I'll talk more when that part comes up.
Well, I can kind of understand why Ishtar decided not to turn Andras in. But I think they should have. Not that it would have made a difference, now that his case seems to have been wiped away.
I don't have a clear understanding of the role of IP addresses in this world. Is it the address of a person's biocomputer? I'm not sure about that, since not everyone has biocomputers (actually, no one is supposed to have them, according to national policy, but lots of people clearly ignore that). Well, let's just say, for those familiar with the way things are in the United States, it's sort of like a Social Security Number (SSN), except it's more a global than a national identifier.
In the real world, IP addresses do not have a one-to-one correspondence with people, nor even to devices. Rather, an address is assigned to a network interface, which is a communication channel over a link, where a link is a local communications medium, such as a modem, an Ethernet cable, or a Wi-Fi hotspot. Even then, a single interface can have several addresses. As an example, my computer has at least two interfaces, a "loopback" interface for communication within the system, and a regular Ethernet interface for external communication. Each one has an IPv4 address and at least one IPv6 address; in fact, the Ethernet interface has three IPv6 addresses: a global address for talking to the world, a Unique Local Address for use within the local network, and a link-local address for talking to the local router (used for managing the link and such). In short, networks are more complex than this story makes them out to be.
#39, originally posted Apr 4 2016, 12:05 PM
Route B—Session 09, part 3: Undercover Gameplay
Ishtar sends Mika home, escorted by the others, so that she can secretly log into Babylon and find out what's going on. After discovering the existence of the AIO system, she sees some familiar faces, and encounters ditzy LEM. Then she runs into a drug addict.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
underground
After she tells everyone not to log into Babylon without permission, Ishtar does just that. I hope it's worth the risk. Also, her reason for not wanting the rest to see her logging in is silly. Do they not know that she hasn't played it for a while? Perhaps they don't even know that she did once play it. In either case, surely they would be understanding about it.
Talking about people using chains of proxies to hide their identity. This is not too bad a technique. But do they use anything like Tor? That should be more effective, I think, seeing as Tor is specifically designed for this sort of thing and takes steps to try to prevent its users from being traced. It also automatically takes care of routing, which makes it easier to use. It's probable that either Tor will have evolved significantly by 2032, or something else will take its place.
Well, to her credit she's at least smart enough to check how things have changed. So she discovers the existence of the AIO system. But she's not worried enough about it. If it were me, I would immediately wonder how it could mess up my mind with false memories. I'm reminded of what Hinata was thinking about regarding biocomputers and being able to tell fact from fiction. He and Sakuya don't have them, but the members of Criminal all do. I have a feeling this could be bad for them. (However, Sami's biocomputer is out of order, so maybe she will have an important role in this aspect.)
Utterly ridiculous: Ishtar tries to use an ability of her PHYSICAL body in a VIRTUAL world. A world that only exists as data in computers, sensations projected to its users, and experiences in their minds. They went to the trouble of explaining that an aura is actually just radiation beyond visible light that some people can see. And as I explained, that in itself is plausible. But there is no reason a computer's output hardware would get involved in this by deliberately emitting anything beyond visible light, so no one could sense such a thing in cyberspace. Besides which, why would it even be programmed to deal with anything other than visible light in the first place? Come on, writers! You built up great expectations with how much work you put into explaining real world facts, but then you betray them with nonsense like this.
LEM says, "I'm late, I'm late..." It's hardly conclusive, but could this be referring to that Alice quote? She's not a rabbit, but...
And here we see the true effects of these drugs we've only heard about until now. It seems to be about as bad as any highly addictive substance. I'm not sure how this works in cyberspace, though. It might be similar to the Imaginary Vision thing.
Ishtar's reaction is understandable here. But I'm a bit worried. She has taken some violent and outwardly ruthless actions. If the AIO system works the way it's said to, then Ishtar's Shadow could end up being just as violent and ruthless, and if she logs into this account again, she would experience such actions as if she herself performed them. Well done, Ishtar. And Mutsuki, too, I guess.
After she tells everyone not to log into Babylon without permission, Ishtar does just that. I hope it's worth the risk. Also, her reason for not wanting the rest to see her logging in is silly. Do they not know that she hasn't played it for a while? Perhaps they don't even know that she did once play it. In either case, surely they would be understanding about it.
Talking about people using chains of proxies to hide their identity. This is not too bad a technique. But do they use anything like Tor? That should be more effective, I think, seeing as Tor is specifically designed for this sort of thing and takes steps to try to prevent its users from being traced. It also automatically takes care of routing, which makes it easier to use. It's probable that either Tor will have evolved significantly by 2032, or something else will take its place.
Well, to her credit she's at least smart enough to check how things have changed. So she discovers the existence of the AIO system. But she's not worried enough about it. If it were me, I would immediately wonder how it could mess up my mind with false memories. I'm reminded of what Hinata was thinking about regarding biocomputers and being able to tell fact from fiction. He and Sakuya don't have them, but the members of Criminal all do. I have a feeling this could be bad for them. (However, Sami's biocomputer is out of order, so maybe she will have an important role in this aspect.)
Utterly ridiculous: Ishtar tries to use an ability of her PHYSICAL body in a VIRTUAL world. A world that only exists as data in computers, sensations projected to its users, and experiences in their minds. They went to the trouble of explaining that an aura is actually just radiation beyond visible light that some people can see. And as I explained, that in itself is plausible. But there is no reason a computer's output hardware would get involved in this by deliberately emitting anything beyond visible light, so no one could sense such a thing in cyberspace. Besides which, why would it even be programmed to deal with anything other than visible light in the first place? Come on, writers! You built up great expectations with how much work you put into explaining real world facts, but then you betray them with nonsense like this.
LEM says, "I'm late, I'm late..." It's hardly conclusive, but could this be referring to that Alice quote? She's not a rabbit, but...
And here we see the true effects of these drugs we've only heard about until now. It seems to be about as bad as any highly addictive substance. I'm not sure how this works in cyberspace, though. It might be similar to the Imaginary Vision thing.
Ishtar's reaction is understandable here. But I'm a bit worried. She has taken some violent and outwardly ruthless actions. If the AIO system works the way it's said to, then Ishtar's Shadow could end up being just as violent and ruthless, and if she logs into this account again, she would experience such actions as if she herself performed them. Well done, Ishtar. And Mutsuki, too, I guess.
#40, originally posted Apr 5 2016, 08:35 AM
Route B—Session 09, part 4: Be a Good Friend
While Criminal beefs up its security, Mika is distracted for the whole day. When they take a break, she says she's going to go home. Leaving the others to decide on dinner, Ishtar goes along to get her to open up. It's a meeting. Alone. And she's adamant. Still, Ishtar gets her to agree to cyber-backup. After cracking the meeting place and other preparations, Ishtar remotely observes the meeting. No surprise, it doesn't go as Mika had hoped.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
codebreak
Well, during recording, I thought for a moment that this choice, to go with Mika or let Kosuke escort her, was a tough one. But I quickly realized that Ishtar should go with her in order to find out what was going on. Who would really choose the other option with even just a moment's consideration? I mean, if they aren't choosing it just to find out what could happen, that is. There's a good chance I'll be choosing it at some later date, while I'm seeking bad endings. (That's not to say I know for sure that the choices I'm making now won't lead to a bad ending. But, well, I'm going with what seems like the right things to do.)
brute-force
Sprite-wise, Andras looks exactly the same in real life as he did in cyberspace. This is quite different from the case of Inagaki/Chiquitita, whose Shadow is considerably more handsome than his real-life appearance. Despite this, neither Ishtar nor Mika seem to recognize him based on appearance. I can't say I really understand the presentation of this.
Well, during recording, I thought for a moment that this choice, to go with Mika or let Kosuke escort her, was a tough one. But I quickly realized that Ishtar should go with her in order to find out what was going on. Who would really choose the other option with even just a moment's consideration? I mean, if they aren't choosing it just to find out what could happen, that is. There's a good chance I'll be choosing it at some later date, while I'm seeking bad endings. (That's not to say I know for sure that the choices I'm making now won't lead to a bad ending. But, well, I'm going with what seems like the right things to do.)
brute-force
Sprite-wise, Andras looks exactly the same in real life as he did in cyberspace. This is quite different from the case of Inagaki/Chiquitita, whose Shadow is considerably more handsome than his real-life appearance. Despite this, neither Ishtar nor Mika seem to recognize him based on appearance. I can't say I really understand the presentation of this.
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