Miracle CYOA

>>29879103
It's your responsibility to fix things and you will have the best chance if you accept help. Surely you don't think you know better than everyone here put together.

>>29879141
"Rubicon, we can help you with it." Says Rarity.
"But it's my duty to-"
"And you won't share the weight?" Sarim interrupts him.
"I'd rather not, teacher." Says Rubicon after a moment.
"I find your lack of trust insulting." Says Sarim casually.
"I apologize, teacher."
"But you aren't sorry."
"I wouldn't lie to you, teacher." He answers quietly. "It's my weight to bear."
"The egocentrism of the depressive grows very tiring very quickly, pupil. Do try not to hear that part of yourself."
"I will, teacher."
"Well?"
"I..." Even that word seems to be one he has to torn from himself, "The giant is memetic entity into which I inserted an ego, teacher. I believe it's gained physical mass thanks to the earthbones somehow, and that might've given it the..." He looks at me for a moment, "The voice of the emperor."
"Context for those who don't have it, pupil..."
"The capacity to order life to even die. The only way I can think of to... terminate its existence would be to destroy its ego. To convince the dream, the living idea, that it doesn't exist."
"You yourself said it has flesh, pupil. Flesh that gives it undeniable existence."
"The body might be left as an empty shell, teacher. I've been told the giant has regenerative capacities... that might mean the underlying dream is still a separate entity that invigorates the flesh."

>>29880210
So then it doesn't have to die. It just has to have its physical body seperated from its true dream self. Can that be done? Can whatever the earthbones did be reversed? If we can return it to a dream then he would be harmless and you could try to help him instead of us having to end him.

>>29881122
"Can't you take them appart instead of killing it?"
"If some kind of spark formed between them that might prove much more dificult, Honesty." Rubicon doesn't look at me. "A spark is mighty, and like the voice of the emperor, fuelled by willpower."
"You don't sound very sure of that."
"How could I be? It's been years, Honesty. Spending time in my flesh and blood might have changed him in unexpected ways, and I don't even know how could it have contacted the earthbones."

>>29881771
What if you give him a purpose then? You said you thought that might be the issue. Would he be willing to talk to you?

>>29881785
"Then give him a purpose! You said you made an objectiveless dream, wouldn't it hear you?"
"Honesty, the last time we talked he had had me trapped in the tower for weeks and stole my body." Rubicon pauses for a moment, looking at his metalic leg. "I wish he would hear me, but have little reason to believe such a thing."
"From what I know you were found in a rather advanced machine, yes?"
"One clearly not designed to contain me."
"And as far as we know, the last to interact with your remains was the giant, and he trapped you rather than kill or steal your body outright" Sarim stands and, after a few leashes of his tail, hops down to the ground. "There are many uncertainties here, but some don't speak disfavorably of the creature."

>>29882391
That is the first glimpse of humanity the thing has shown. He may be nothing but rage and desire, but he cares about his dad.

I think I'll leave you two to discuss the finer points of magic as it relates to the giant. There are some recordings and notes back a ways that I passed up earlier that I want to go back check. I'll be back soon.

Paused.

>>29883599

>>29882803
||

>>29882391
What did he used to be like?

>>29883599

>>29887969

File: 422 - Hear their song.png (314KB, 3984x1072px) Image search: [Google]

314KB, 3984x1072px

>>29886684 >>29882470
"What was it like before all of this?" Asks Rarity, "The giant, I mean."
"He was not without kindness... or something I saw as that." Rubicon pauses for a moment, "He especially enjoyed to be left alone in the forest of the third floor, and grew irritated if anyone disturbed its wildlife- at a point I simply asked the gardeners to leave it grow, to appease him."
"Rarity?" I ask her, "Where's WInona?"
"She was, er... playing with the animal you took from the engine."
I whistle to call her, and before long long she runs and crashes onto me happily, her tail wiggling.
"You two try to think of something, we've got some things to do."
"Farewell, Honesty." Rubicon makes a curtsy.
"And do try not to find anymore ancient beings, will you?"
I don't answer to that for my own sake and head off with the others, Rarity's rapier gliding gently besides her.
Once we are sure that Rarity wasn't affected too strongly by the beam, I check the third floor for the note I am sure I saw and find it besides a bottle-sized metal cylinder, scotchtaped to the wall.

> Dear friends:
>Would you make me a favor and stop messing with my research? If I completed it, you could spend longer in Oneiros without having to return for batteries, because you could simply charge them by throwing them to a fire.
>I appreciate the try to make me socialize more, but you hiding the test batteries around is getting on my nerves.
> -Seer

After that a recorder with a tape in it-- It still has its batteries on, which I could use for the flashlight.
"Applejack?" Beckons Rarity when I walk down the stairs, "I gave a quick look to the kitchen, it was... unusually usual. other than it being well stocked in flour."

>>29889248
Ask rarity what food was there. Then listen to the tape.

>>29879103

>>29889533
"Was there anything we can eat?"
"I suppose some cans might still be well? But I wouldn't trust them."
I nod, disappointed. Sarim's food always has little taste to it, and our peaches have ran out by now.
What I wouldn't give for some apples.
"There was this," I put the recorder on the table, "Mirria?" She nods and walks closer to us, giving one last annoyed look to the blocked door.

> "Alright, alright, let's have some mindstorming.
>Topic for the day: Automatism and automatics. That'll be a good title for the thesis.
>Artificial inteligences... let's start with Sabrina, Cathrina, and the yet-to-be-made Sussanah- break naming schemes, why won'tcha?
>Cathrina started her existence as a couplet machine, a formulaic system to create nice, if bland, little poems. As far as I know this was made to test Rubicon's first forays into electronic information processing units as an alternative to magical ones, since the tower's bricks, an incredibly complex mushroom, does feed on magic and light to sustain itself.

1/2

>I am going off-tangent... Cathrina was the first to be made, originally designated CAT zero zero one for reasons that Rubicon himself has forgotten. At this point she was a Complex-Enough class Artificial Intelligence-- only a series of scripts focused in some tasks made to emulate inteligence, so as to be more pleasant to interact with.
>Rubicon expanded her program on moments of boredom over time, and after a few years, the error-inducing protocols and capacity to "Learn" new forms of poetry led to her requesting to knowledge completely unrelated to poetry. She's needed to be moved to more advanced hardware in a regular basis ever since.
>What I find fascinating is that, despite the strides in her development -just two years ago she recognized her own existence as an intelligent entity, after months upon months of arguing otherwise- she still is prone to talking with prose-- when she is happy, she talks in haiku. When she is saddened or stressed, she talks in increasingly complex purple prose. When she is worried, she talks in couplets. To the better of my knowledge she is able to avoid this habit if there are reasons to, but finds comfort in keeping to her old ways.
>And Rubicon, who never had any sons of his own, has a marked, and acknowledged, tendency to deal with his students as surrogate sons and daughters-- strong enough for me to call it automatism, even.
>This is even more obvious when it deals to Sabrina and Cathrina-- the two girls he is effectively the father off...

Rarity clicks a button on the recorder, earning a look from me, "What? It sounded like the battery was running off. I thought you might want to save it for something else?"

2/2

>>29890837
Nope. We can find more batteries. I'm going to turn it back on now.