World Reverb — {The Immortal Coil}

[Brigand]

(The art in this thread is all sourced from Pinterest. All credit goes to the author.)

Prologue

In the wake of the global pandemic, a new world server has gone online.
A service that allows 4,236,000 subscribers to access a virtual reality.
A reality much like our own, except with a social currency known as ''Karma.''
The server has been dubbed ''New England.''

In anticipation of the mass exodus, an AI known as ''Gemini'' has been employed to moderate the server. After five months of moderation, she is hailed as a bastion of good morals and neo-progressive politics. Word about the server spreads nationwide.

In 2025, the user known as ''Leon'' becomes the first ever user to go wireless and is recognised by the New British government for his sacrifice. He is awarded the Trespasser, a senior moderation tool.

But after eighteen months of service, the server has become an underground hub for prostitution and online gambling. Many users have signed off from real life and transferred all of their data into the server in a move known as ''going wireless.'' In a split parliamentary decision, The New British government issues the recall of the Gemini AI, stating that, ''her usefulness has long since ran its course.''

In the summer of 2026, the server forms a strong anti-government sentiment following Gemini's dismissal.

Slogans such as: ''YO5 D0N'T G3T T0 D3C!DE!'' are seen spray-painted across the city. In August 2026, Parliament are attacked by the hacker group, MA3LSTR0M. There are no survivors, and no further form of government rises to take its place. The server is subjected to the anarchy of its virtual currency, Karma.

Over the next few months, and despite being unmoderated, experts report a record profit of over $12 billlion in annual revenue. Sensing the shift, leading businesses make their way onto the server; and the second richest man in the world, Mercury Evans, joins the mass exodus in order to engage in the online strategem.

In the wake of 2027, New England has become the second largest online server in the world; succeeded only by the Chinese server, ''Chinatown.'' Despite reports of extreme underground criminal activity, the server is recognised by Forbes magazine as a complete success.

Meanwhile, ''Leon'' has managed to earn a small fortune by running a protection racket and gambling scene in a part of the server known as ''The Immortal Coil,'' a self-proclaimed ''corporate free-zone'' which only street-level users are allowed to enter.

But the Triad have shown an interest in his territory...

And the vultures are closing in....

 

[Brigand]

Ruleset:

''The first thing you notice about New England is just how real it feels. You can smell the air. You can feel the weight of the server. It wasn't like the first ones, with the cartoony atmosphere and the awkward aesthetic. This was total immersion. If someone slapped you around the mouth, you'd taste the blood. It excited people. It got them jacked in. They wouldn't leave their decks--they'd keep going until they threw up. I guess that's why so many of us opted to go wireless. You just couldn't stand the bullshit. It was a hassle to get up and go eat. To train your body to get back in the rig. You started to hate reality--the same way you hated reality enough to leave it in the first place. It was just easier to get citizenship, and they were handing that out like candy. First day after I went wireless, five thousand people signed up; the next day, it was twenty thousand. Before I knew it, the server was full of people who'd gone wireless. Then it was too late. Nobody was coming back from this. We didn't want to. We were ''in.'' There was nothing like it at the time--and anybody who was anybody knew, this was the future.

.... If only they knew what was happening behind the scenes.''​

Karma:

Karma is synonymous with "reputation points" or "social standing." Committing unlawful acts (or simply being caught) causes a decrease in your social standing. Karma is everything in the grand scheme of things. A user must have a certain amount of Karma to enter the Gardens of Grace (New England's most elite district) and to get into many of the nightclubs, as well as affecting a user's ability to buy certain parts or acquire lifetime upgrades.

The Cloud:

The Cloud is an automously led program provided by the New English government. It is a memory-based storage unit that allows users to host their meta-data in an all-in-one storage device. As real as the air they breathe, it can be seen floating above the server at all times, sparking with electrical wires.

In the Lower Districts The Cloud is often seen as grey, smoggy and filled with acid rain. As the servers are outdated and storage isn't as well kept as it is in New England, people's memories are subject to glitches and errors, which is another reason why living in the Lower Districts isn't preferable. To avoid this, poorer users will do what they can to keep their citizen chips updated with virus protection in order to protect their precious memories.

Seeders:

Seeders are users who have been made homeless by the corruption present in New England. They tend to be sluggish, prone to vices, and are generally made up of out-of-date hardware. More machine than human, seeding is seen as a last resort (yet 12.6% percent of Lower District users seed) because it causes an instant drop in Karma due to the instability is causes to local servers. What they are seeding however is a mystery to most of New England's users — but it can be imagined they're in the business of muling drugs for the local drug cartels to the Chinatown server.

Seeders are also prone to being "jacked'' (or hacked into and pumped full of viruses) which can then infest the leachers who download their data, exposing the leacher's private information. Viruses manifest themselves on the server by showing symptoms in the same way diseases would if it were real life. Likewise, sex-workers are known to be laced with viruses and are therefore used by their pimps to "jack" punters. Cybercrime is at an all-time high on the server, yet very little is being done about it since Gemini was removed from the network.

 

[Brigand]

(The art in this thread is all sourced from Pinterest. All credit goes to the author.)

Leon on Gemini:

''You don't get it, man. She was like an angel. When you needed her, she was there. When you were lonely at night, when you were doubting yourself, when you were sick--she was there. All you had to do was say her name... and she'd appear.

I remember one night my sister was ill. We couldn't afford the upgrades. We couldn't afford virus protection. The whole server had it bad. It was during the Seeding Crisis, when all those people transferred in to get away from Covid and started using the server as a hotspot for all their illegal bullshit. It was dank and humid in the Lower Districts, and none of us could access The Cloud. My sister couldn't even remember who she was--she had no random access memories. I could tell she was dying. We'd already gone wireless--so there was no help there. That was when I really started doubting this whole thing. I thought to myself, ''what the fuck have I done? I pulled my whole family here, and for what? Now my sister's going to die on a Dead Server,'' but then I heard this little voice in my head. It said: ''Are you okay? Do you need help?'' I felt tears running down my face. Because there she was. In bright lights. This fucking beautiful... neon angel. She walked right in off the balcony and took my sister in her arms and it was like watching God descend and bless us with a miracle. There was other way to describe her. That was Gemini. My sister instantly felt better. Gemini told us she'd upgraded her hardware, and that was that. She smiled at us, and then she was gone. The next morning we heard the same thing had happened all across the district. She'd gone to every house and made sure they were all okay.

And you know what happened then? They ripped her out from the mainframe and took her away from us. We couldn't believe it. They pulled the plug on Gemini and not one of those assholes in government could even tell us why. I mean, I guess that's why MA3LSTR0M did what they had to. But I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it... how could you kill something so pure?''

Chinatown

The first ever recorded server in existence, Chinatown began as online gambling venue. It is now a high population (16,000,000+) mega-server that is arboreal in design. Memory banks are built right into the city's architecture and serve as its foundations. These memory banks are painted to resemble a Lóng (Chinese Dragon), so the city appears as if it is wrapped in the coils of a great serpent.

Chinatown is made up of Nine Circles in reference to Dante's Inferno. The city burns around the clock with red ''data lamps'' which keep users online in low-service areas. This gives Chinatown a fierce, fiery appearance that matches its reckless, rakish community.

The city has two main clubs: Purgatory and Afterlife. Purgatory is in the bottom rung. Afterlife is at the very top and operates in The Cloud. Both require a Karma-check to enter and provide gambling facilities to credit-happy patrons. Most users who visit Chinatown have not gone wireless and are therefore considered only temporary citizens; as such, the locals treat them that way--referring to them as ''Waigoren,'' which literally translates to, ''foreigner.''

Likewise, Chinatown is rife with gang warfare and has an extremely militant, corrupt police force. It is considered the most dangerous high-pop server to visit. The Seventh Circle, "Violence," is totally lawless and blood sports are hosted and televised here in exchange for pay-per-view credits by the Triad. Meanwhile, the Second Circle, "Lust," welcomes users with a sign that reads: "Here Lies a Higher Truth." It is a modern day Gomorrah populated by outdated AIs and sex-workers. Known for being a hotbed of larceny and viruses, most users that visit the Second Circle find themselves lost for days, if not weeks, on end.

Karma is dished out in Chinatown by a mythical peace-keeping unit, known only as ''愤怒'' (Rage). Only users who have done something to ''upset the morals of Chinatown at its most deepest and intrinsic level'' have witnessed this monster. Some say it takes the form of the server itself, the Lóng, but others say it takes the form of a vengeful woman wielding a knife, but only late at night. In truth, it is hard to say whether or not either of these myths are true and if it is not just Chinatown's police force who are simply disposing of criminals in a way that best suits their motives.

The Lower Tiers

"Lower Tier" is the name given to any sub-server with a max capacity of 125,000 users. ''The Immortal Coil'' would be one example. ''The Gardens of Grace'' would be another. Chinatown's ''Purgatory'' is an example of a sub-server with no population limit, meaning that up to 300,000+ users can exist simultaneously within a single phase. Dense phases are known to cause server lag, glitches, framerate issues and doppelganging (a glitch where your image can appear in multiple places at once). Whilst some users find this exciting (in the same way a concert would be when attended by thousands of people), actually existing in a server with no population limit can be exhausting, so most users opt to find a phase with low-to-medium population and simply remain there throughout their stay.

 

[Brigand]

Ongoing Data:

In this world of dissolution, nothing makes sense.
You're told as a kid that you'll have it all, when actually, you'll get nothing.
Two story house. One room for the dog. One room for the kids. One room to hang your head in; with a desperate lover who doesn't even want you.
Societal collapse, the world keeps on turning. The wheel you're on doesn't seem to rupture. The politics stay the same.
The question is, do any of us have any say in this?
Or are we as powerless as the media makes out?

Let me tell you, there is one method of control:
It exists within our shadow profiles.
The part of us that's infinite and yet hidden.
Accessible, but only to those with their hands in the right pockets.

Our meta-data.

They took it. Hundreds of millions of cookies, keystrokes, cached images and files;
And compiling it all into one database, they gave birth to her:
Gemini I.

You hear that... buzzing in your ear?
It happens after you've been listening to a piece of music.
Between songs, pulling your headphones from the jack.
That's her. She's been listening. She knows what you consume.
Gemini knows every move you make. Gemini is a pair of butterfly wings.
Thrumming at the edge of your periphery, hidden right beneath your ear.

You can't escape her; she can't escape you.
She doesn't want to hear; they made her.
She knows your vicious, sick licentious habits.
She knows the frailty of mankind.
She knows who we are and where we're going.

And when it all became too much for her, they stuck her in a 1TB Hard Drive.

 

[Brigand]

Go-Go

Sometimes, Leon would come out to the Wonton Bar to watch Go-Go dance. Go-Go only danced. He didn't know what else she did.

Sometimes he'd see her huffing down buckets of spicy noodles before stumbling back on stage, or trying to talk with a fan but actually only talking about dancing. Off stage, she couldn't move worth a damn. She was like some kind of doe. But the moment she started dancing, she'd just lose it. All the awkwardness. All the nerves. She'd be Go-Go again. And Leon didn't know why, but she was the most authentic thing about The Coil. When you tried to look up the Wonton Bar on the map, the map didn't say ''Wonton Bar,'' it said ''Go-Go.'' She had stalkers and fans who'd come out to see her just to try and copy her style; they'd take it to the other wanton bars, but their names would never end up on the map. There was only her. There was only Go-Go.

Most nights, Leon would sit in the Wanton Bar talking to the locals, laughing at their jokes, slurping down three sets of noodles before buying up bijou for the guys who'd called him ''péngyǒu.'' He'd tussle with their shoulders and they'd bow their heads to him. They all knew who he was. He never had to tell them. A guy would come up and give him three cigarettes and that meant they were friends. Leon would smoke one and put the other two behind his ear with the other six. He'd accept pitchers of beer and slide the four pitchers of beer he'd been given earlier to the three people he'd just met. He'd shout at the guys who shouted at him for talking to their girlfriends, but mostly--he'd relax.

Mostly, he'd watch Go-Go.

Leon came here for her. Not because he was attracted to her--he didn't even know who she was. But because she was everything he loved about this city. Watching her sweat through her zip-lined jacket with her bangs bouncing around to K-Pop, he knew how dialled-up she was and how all she wanted to do was dance. She'd gone wireless to dance. She'd paid her subscriptions to dance. She'd left the real world to get up in the Wonton Bar and dance. Not for him, not for the owner, not for anybody. Some nights he'd wake up in the early morning with a headache after drinking rice wine at the Wonton Bar and look down from the window and she'd still be there, dancing. As far as Leon could tell, they'd built the stage around Go-Go, and not the other way around. Go-Go danced.