Dark Fate, Book 8 Prologue (Patreon)

Yes, it is time for some Trade Chat.

Prologue – Trade Chat

(Community Building and Civil Defense Chat, formerly Life in the City Chat Room)

abby_gail, bento, RainyDayze, GringottsGoblin, DoritoMan, D.VaLuvr69, RadicalEdward, DarkLord, FusionGal, NotACop, Scholar, RamblingWreck, Anonymous4, Anonymous6, SevenNationArmy, BagOTrix, DarkLord, Faraday, BackpageGal, FullServiceMassage, daytrader, shadow_clone23, THE_MERCHANT, jenny8675309, Rabbit, Angelus and Tracker are in the chat.

SevenNationArmy: Hey, um, did anyone see something weird last night? And again a few nights before that?

shadow_clone23: Well, I did have a date with your mom. Never knew she was into that kinky shit.

SevenNationArmy: Ha ha ha. Fuck you.

Anonymous4: Do you have anything more than just ‘something weird’? Because things have been weird as fuck ever since the System came online.

daytrader: No kidding. Stock markets are simultaneously going up and down, changing so fast that it is literally making people age a hundred years every day the markets are up.

Faraday: That bad?

daytrader: Yeah. Only reason the automatic controls haven’t stepped in is because things have averaged out enough that you don’t see the overall volatility if you just look at the daily prices. One stock I was tracking was up 50% by 10AM, down 50% from opening by 2PM, and 0.1% above open by close of business.

BagOTrix: Daaaamn. That’s the kind of shit that gives you ulcers just thinking about it!

daytrader: Oh, yeah. Actually, Proctor & Gamble have been one of the more stable stocks, despite everything.

shadow_clone23: How come?

daytrader: They make Pepto-bismol.

shadow_clone23: Ah.

SevenNationArmy: But anyways, I was wondering if anyone saw something unusual in the sky, the last few nights. Like, UFO unusual.

bento: Aliens? As if monsters and elves and all that shit wasn’t enough, you’re talking about aliens now?

GringottsGoblin: Actually, it makes sense. Remember that message we all got when the System came online? It definitely said that there were people or things outside our own world. And the System Shop popped up too quickly for it to be just a random piece of the puzzle.

THE_MERCHANT: That is because it is not a random piece, but a core part of the System functionality.

Rabbit: Wait, how much do you know about what is going on, Merchant?

THE_MERCHANT: More than you do, I promise you.

Rabbit: Then why haven’t you come forward and said something? People have DIED!

THE_MERCHANT: Many reasons, starting with the fact that no one would have believed me until they had outside proof. But most importantly, I am bound by the System itself, and cannot speak of everything I know.

BagOTrix: By the System itself? Not by a magic contract enforced by the System?

THE_MERCHANT: That is correct.

BagOTrix: What can you tell us, then?

Rabbit: You’re not buying this, are you?

BagOTrix: I am keeping an open mind and reserving judgement. Especially since I know that the Merchant is the one running the System Shop at the mall.

THE_MERCHANT: Indeed. There are limits on what kind of information I can give out. If someone comes to me with questions, I wouldn’t be able to give them direct answers, unless the knowledge was already commonly known, but I could make ‘suggestions’ on tomes and datafiles that could be purchased through the System Shop. Likewise, there are some features that I’m not allowed to talk about unless people have certain races, classes, or professions, or they already know about the feature.

bento: That seems like a stupid rule.

BagOTrix: No, it makes sense. The System likely implemented something like that to give people who are in noncombat positions, or are less combative, an edge to balance out how combat classes are fight to level quickly. Probably also to keep some pay to win elements out of things, too, since people would need to know what they were looking for in order to then go and buy it.

Rabbit: But just think of how many people could have been saved!

DarkLord: If, before the Apocalypse, someone came up to you and described, in detail, what was about to happen, would you have believed them? Or would you have called for someone to go and lock the guy up in an asylum?

Rabbit: Uh, well. But still!

DarkLord: But nothing. And, despite all of that, if the System has bound what he can and cannot say, then there is nothing you can do about it. The System does not give a damn about your feelings.

Rabbit: How rude!

DarkLord: But true.

THE_MERCHANT: As DarkLord said, getting upset does nothing. You may as well try and go back in time and change history as try and get the System to do something it doesn’t want to.

NotACop: Is time travel even possible?

DarkLord: Sure. Enough magic thrown at something can do a lot of things that were thought to be impossible. However, doing it in a controlled way? That’s another question entirely.

Scholar: Oh, man. And then you’d have to figure out whether it is closed loop time travel, branching path time travel, or multiverse time travel.

bento: What do you mean?

Scholar: Closed loop is self-explanatory. You go back, and even though you try to change things, it turns out that the changes you made cause the future you thought you stopped.

THE_MERCHANT: Branching pathways is like the Back to the Future movies. You go back, and change something, and the timeline shifts to follow a new course of events. You inspired your nerd dad to stand up to the school bully, and back in the present he’s running a company and the bully now works for him. Or you take a sports almanac from 1985 back in time so that someone can bet on all the games, and win big, so that in the future they are uber-rich, and everything has changed.

Scholar: And multiverse is where every decision that can be made, has been made, in an ever-expanding number of universes. You decide to turn left at an intersection instead of right? Both universes come into being, and progress along their timelines. So, if you time-travel, and try to change things, you’re not actually changing your world, but jumping into an alternate timeline.

RainyDaze: Any idea which kind the System deals with?

DarkLord: Well, that gets sticky. First, you’d have to go back in time and try to change things, to see if it was the closed loop or not. If you don’t see any changes, then it is a closed loop.

RainyDaze: Makes sense. Then what?

DarkLord: Well, if things have changed, then you need to determine whether it is branching path or multiverse, right? So, you have to break down the boundaries between dimensions. Which is probably a bitch to deal with, all on its own.

bento: Why not start with the breaking dimensions?

DarkLord: Because we KNOW there are other dimensions, but they’re more ‘up’ and ‘down’, not ‘side by side’, like you’d have in a multiverse. Kicking in Cthulu’s front door when you’re trying to find out if there’s a multiverse is not a great plan, yeah?

THE_MERCHANT: Even better, the fun doesn’t stop, even when you figure out which of the three types you’re doing. There’s also the question of whether you go back bodily into the past, or whether you’re projecting your spirit into the past and taking over someone’s body (and what happens to the original, even if it was an earlier you, is a whole ‘nother can of worms), or what.

RainyDaze: I’m getting a headache.

DarkLord: Welcome to the club. There’s a reason why only the truly desperate, or the truly insane, ever even think about doing time-travel shenanigans.

Scholar: How do you know about this, anyways?

DarkLord: At one point, I encountered a bit of loot that mentioned ‘time magic’ when I analyzed it. Went to the System Shop and purchased a couple books on the subject.

Scholar: Any hints you can give?

DarkLord: Stick with spells like ‘haste’ or ‘slow’. Time travel, actual time travel that is controlled, is Tier 4, maybe Tier 5. Otherwise, unless you have a couple of artifacts to break every time you want to make the attempt, or maybe a town full of people you want to sacrifice to power a ritual, don’t even think about it.

Scholar: Ah. Yes, that would make testing more difficult.

THE_MERCHANT: Especially since, by the time entities get to Tier 4 or 5, they are less likely to try and ‘rock the boat’, as it were, becoming far too invested in the current state of the galaxy to try and meddle with time.

SevenNationArmy: But what about the UFOs?