Taking Responsibility.

[kingmakereffect]

And a while after that strange, dark floor is accessed, after you've had time to look things over and get some idea of what's happening...well. There won't be any sort of official announcement to tell you to get downstairs, nor will there be a personal invitation for you to do so. Instead, the doors at the end of the corridor (were they there before? You find that you don't remember. It doesn't matter anymore, though-) slide open, as they always do, and the elevator ride to the courtroom is probably the first familiar thing that's happened all day. It's smooth and quick, though it seems to take a bit longer than it usually does. And when the doors open at the end of the line, the courtroom looks different. The dark, weirdly cylindrical room is largely the same in and of itself, but the usual twenty-seven podium circle is gone; instead, there's a smaller setup in the center of the room - ten podiums total, and you'll likely find the way your spots have been distributed to be very familiar indeed. Of further notice is the balcony - there's a structure that wasn't there before in view of the courtroom, situated high above, barred-in by a railing that'd probably be at about waist-height on your average person; there's no one up there just yet, however. There are so few of you now. It seems that today there are no speeches to give; maybe the Kingmaker is absent, maybe he just doesn' have anything to say. Either way, however, the implication in the fact that you're here at all is clear. For one last time, make the guilty take responsibility.

Comments

[captainobnoxious]

The screen was a way to talk to Glory... herself? Really? Glory's a girl?

[Huh. Okay.]

Well, that doesn't matter, really, because whatever you saw was fake.

Glory was made to help out the Kingmaker every game. An... artificial intelligence, I think it was? They're made up of the memories of other people, basically, and... created a personality to talk to us all.

[Someone's clearly hit by this. Three for three, guys! Three for three, working with the Kingmaker.]

There's, uh, a lot of info we got from them, too, but... I'll actually let Black handle that, since I had him take notes for me. But we learned about three topics specifically: about the game, about Glory, and about our situation.

That's the three topics they'd answer without fail, since Glory can't help us win the game.

[cherryblooded]

[...Since she's right there next to him, Cherryblod's going to set a hand on her shoulder.

He's sorry this keeps happening to her.]

[captainobnoxious]

[It's appreciated, even if forces a small smile with a wave of her hand.]

Hey, at this point, I'm kinda used to it. I'm like a hound with how often I sniff people like that out.

[By befriending them.]

Pretty damn useful.

[cherryblooded]

Doesn't get much more fun.

[Even if it is 'useful'.]

[goodforsomething]

......you know, kinda seems like an AI shouldn't be able to write on a whiteboard.

[Turning to Mouri now, because are you a psychic, man?]

[cherryblooded]

...Kind of seems like entire rooms shouldn't be able to move or disappear, either.

That virtual reality theory is holding some water.

[goodforsomething]

I could buy magic on that one, or demons. But AI's a whole different can of worms.

[cherryblooded]

Any particular reason why?

[goodforsomething]

Pretty sure they shouldn't be able to do stuff in the real world without controllin' a machine. [Stan shrugs.] All I know about that's from movies though.

[cherryblooded]

About that. What's to say that we're in the real world?

[amygdalae]

[An AI, huh...

It's a hard topic for Bruce, considering... well. His recent(?) history with it.]

...she certainly seems to be an incredibly complex AI, if that's the case. I only know one person in my world who could have managed to program something to that level.

[goodforsomething]

Ford's never done that, but hell, he probably could if he wanted.

[Fuckin' Ford, always being so smart...]

[amygdalae]

The important thing to note, mostly, is that not anybody would be able to program an AI like this so easily.

[sleepingkogoro]

Don't look at me. I don't know more than you about how AIs work.

[isafraid]

[Ah.... Speedwagon's looking as if he's about to come down with a headache.]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around that bit with Glory.

[goodforsomething]

[Oh, right.]

It's like if someone made your phone come alive or somethin'. We don't have real AIs where I'm from - [That he knows about] - but they're in movies and stuff.

[isafraid]

So they're fictional then? [As far as he knows.] I guess it's just another thing from the future I'm not meant to know about then.

[Maybe that'll at least help sooth his headache. If he's so in over his head, should he make the attempt to understand in the first place?]

...Still, can't help but feel sorry for her.

[sleepingkogoro]

[Artificial intelligence? What is this madness? Mouri is not technologically ignorant but do you know how rare something like AIs are?]

That explains why she couldn't reveal much. As far as I know AIs are bound by all sorts of rules.

What I'm not sure is for what purpose Glory would be included in this mess. Was it just another way for the Kingmaker to toy with us? I don't know, I think there's something I'm not seeing here.

[captainobnoxious]

Like I said, they help the Kingmaker out. They deal with the upkeep of the vault and stuff.

[... But Black'll probably have most of that to deal out tbh.]

There's no rule against them helping us, and the Kingmaker wants the game to end. Simple as that.

[notjustawriter]

Why would he want the game to end? There's too many of us left to crown a "king", isn't there?

[penduli]

That's what I was confused about too. [ Hmmm. ] ...he did say the reason he wanted the game to end was simple, but unbelievable when I asked him earlier this week, though.

But it isn't that he's tired of us or this game, so I don't know what it could be.

[notjustawriter]

That doesn't give us a lot of room to speculate, does it?

[cherryblooded]

...I'd say 'maybe he thought he couldn't get any more murders out of us', but he's wanted the game to end for a while now.

[amygdalae]

If we are going with the virtual reality theory... at least in my world, something of this scale would have required a lot of resources.

Perhaps it ran out.

[...its a simple reason, right?]

[cherryblooded]

That's possible. Maybe their funding was cut.