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Chapter 22
I sat there on the couch a while longer after she left, turning on the computer naturally came next. Free time was to be used to make games, a little fainting isn’t going to make our deadline any further away and I needed to work out a solution for Mawvis by tonight. What’s her constrictions as a character, what must she be and what can’t she be? A person, real-life blood, tampering with the system from outside and making Cynthia do stuff. Maybe. The premise was that because She was part of an AI system, she’d be able to systematically optimise her concoctions of terror beyond what humans could imagine. An AI focused solely on making terror in people and with processing enough that it could clock thousands of hours within a day in equivalence. Really, it’s just the appearance. I’ll have to rewrite the mandibilising and stuff, but she just needs reshaping. Less tortuous nightmare more generic game enemy. What’s mankind’s most natural fears; spiders were dark and alien. Darkness, aliens…Genetically mutated soldiers…or maybe something more relevant, black clad thugs, drug addicts. Galileo liked realism but not real-realism, that’s why he insisted on no swearing. “I don’t care what you think about it Alan, swearing is no better than rhyming poetry. Class it the fuck up”. I knew as soon as Frost entered that he was going to want Frost straight back out. Callum probably knew as well, even though it is largely Galileo’s idea to have some extra NPC turn up and turn the butler loose on her. “The hero’s journey demands it”, he’d said at the design meeting. He really was a fucking dictator, it’s why Maatru was so convincing. He wrote from the heart.
I spent the next couple of hours laying on the couch, half-sleeping half thinking. The face of Mawvis kept appearing in my imagination, each time growing a little more in detail. God, a system that makes your imagination visible would be a terrifying thing for people. I can see her there watching, those black round eyes staring into me without pupils, waiting. She was always waiting, like she had all the time in the world but simultaneously was always about to strike. Right, something else. Something not Mawvis. Shoes, shoes, carpet. Damn, need to stop looking at things think. I’ll put something on, she watches, her jaws grow more mottled. Look at the T.V. better idea, click click. Turn the T.V. on, wait…feels like she’s a fucking parrot, I can see her like she was there but not. Imagination, Alan, get over it. News, nah. I’d been realising that the world was getting places where I didn’t even want to think about it anymore. Apparently normal became a hate term, just the idea of normality is abusive. Who wants to live in a world of constant extremism? Extremism, how can that be thrillerish? Nah, I’m just getting drawn back into the same mental vortex. Imagine, Alan. A boat? Ha, that’s got nothing to do with it. Clowns, nope. Wedding cake. Must be a struggle King has faced a hundred times, cars, teenagers, fog? She was meant to be a construct of nightmares; the shades already take an eerie human form, so she has to be something non-human but made from humans. That’s it, like that Buddha with a hundred heads all morphing and fusing like erm…that first boss in Demon Souls. Yeah, an amorphous blob of people faces screaming out in terror as they are forever being tortured by their own nightmares. That’s a much more easy-going image. I think Galileo will go for that. Callum will have fun, add some old ladies faces, bit of make-up and errr… slug movement isn’t scary, and I don’t want spider movement. Octopus? Centaur? Can’t give a blob two legs, nor four, legs aren’t scary anyway. Hands, a blob of faces running around on eight thin hands? Chunky, nah thin has to do. Bony and clawed, mottled by rashes and grazes? Make the whole thing one big festering mess of boils and oozes, ahh. Already it’s making me feel more at ease.
I checked the time, 16:21 5th Feb the T.V. said on the info panel, just over two hours to try and nap and have a shower. I decided to shower first and then nap-dry till about 6:30pm then order some pizza and a couple of beers. It’s weird having to live your life with the constant presence of something sinister just hovering in the side of your non-vision. Weirdly occupying a space in the real without ever being real. I need to shower, get my head on different things. It must still be shock.
I spent the next couple of hours laying on the couch, half-sleeping half thinking. The face of Mawvis kept appearing in my imagination, each time growing a little more in detail. God, a system that makes your imagination visible would be a terrifying thing for people. I can see her there watching, those black round eyes staring into me without pupils, waiting. She was always waiting, like she had all the time in the world but simultaneously was always about to strike. Right, something else. Something not Mawvis. Shoes, shoes, carpet. Damn, need to stop looking at things think. I’ll put something on, she watches, her jaws grow more mottled. Look at the T.V. better idea, click click. Turn the T.V. on, wait…feels like she’s a fucking parrot, I can see her like she was there but not. Imagination, Alan, get over it. News, nah. I’d been realising that the world was getting places where I didn’t even want to think about it anymore. Apparently normal became a hate term, just the idea of normality is abusive. Who wants to live in a world of constant extremism? Extremism, how can that be thrillerish? Nah, I’m just getting drawn back into the same mental vortex. Imagine, Alan. A boat? Ha, that’s got nothing to do with it. Clowns, nope. Wedding cake. Must be a struggle King has faced a hundred times, cars, teenagers, fog? She was meant to be a construct of nightmares; the shades already take an eerie human form, so she has to be something non-human but made from humans. That’s it, like that Buddha with a hundred heads all morphing and fusing like erm…that first boss in Demon Souls. Yeah, an amorphous blob of people faces screaming out in terror as they are forever being tortured by their own nightmares. That’s a much more easy-going image. I think Galileo will go for that. Callum will have fun, add some old ladies faces, bit of make-up and errr… slug movement isn’t scary, and I don’t want spider movement. Octopus? Centaur? Can’t give a blob two legs, nor four, legs aren’t scary anyway. Hands, a blob of faces running around on eight thin hands? Chunky, nah thin has to do. Bony and clawed, mottled by rashes and grazes? Make the whole thing one big festering mess of boils and oozes, ahh. Already it’s making me feel more at ease.
I checked the time, 16:21 5th Feb the T.V. said on the info panel, just over two hours to try and nap and have a shower. I decided to shower first and then nap-dry till about 6:30pm then order some pizza and a couple of beers. It’s weird having to live your life with the constant presence of something sinister just hovering in the side of your non-vision. Weirdly occupying a space in the real without ever being real. I need to shower, get my head on different things. It must still be shock.