#the mutant virus crisis in a computer world

[smbhax]

The Mutant Virus: Crisis in a Computer World (NES)

[vgadvisor]

[innytoes]

Self-Insert January: Let’s Go Steal A Protégé

Yes I did write a self-insert fanfic of my own fanfic. Most of this was written in December and then um, January happened. This takes place December, probably before Christmas (and is obviously not canon).

Happy Self Insert month!

Being with Leverage, Jamie had seen a lot of weird stuff. Done a lot of weird stuff, too. But all the breaking into highly classified places and museums and pretending to be a circus performer and jumping off the Eiffel Tower did not prepare them for the magic portal that opened up in the ceiling of the Leverage Offices, or the lady that fell through it.

Luckily, their startled yell had summoned an Eliot, which meant that if this was the beginning of an intergalactic space war or some kind of mutant criminal rival of Parker’s, Team Leverage was going to come out on top.

Except Eliot actually put away his knife and greeted the lady, who struggled out of the squashy purple beanbag chair she landed on. “Hardison, Parker, Inny’s here!” he called.

“What the hell is an Inny?” Jamie asked. Was it a species of alien? Was Hardison’s Doctor Who obsession because they literally knew The Doctor? Honestly, it wouldn’t really surprise Jamie.

“I the hell am an Inny,” Ceiling-Lady said, before gasping and pointing at them. Which was concerning, to say the least.

“That’s Inny,” Hardison said, coming into the office and handing the lady one of Jamie’s Mountain Dews. Rude.  “She’s from a darker timeline and drops out of the ceiling once or twice a year to catch up. And get inspiration for her fanfiction. Apparently we’re like, a TV show over there. What’s up, girl?”

“Is that why nobody is allowed to move the beanbag chair?” Jamie asked. They had thought it was some weird Parker thing. Or perhaps that it was on top of some kind of secret trap door to Hardison’s BatCave or something. They ignored the part about the fanfiction and the TV show. That was too Truman Show to think about. Though their brain was already going over actors they’d cast as the team. Eliot would totally be played by Chris Evans, right?

Inny stopped chugging the Mountain Dew long enough to shrug. “They used to live somewhere with way lower ceilings. Nearly broke something falling from this one.”

“Yeah, me,” Eliot grumbled. He nearly broke something again when Parker dropped down from the ceiling onto his back. “Dammit, Parker!”

“Inny!” Parker proclaimed. “How is Deeks?”

“Good!” the lady fished a beaten up phone out of her pocket. “He met some alpacas, wanna see?” Parker snatched up the phone and made delighted noises. Jamie peered over her shoulder. They had to admit the dog was pretty cute, and the alpacas looked very intrigued by their small, same-coloured, short-necked friend.

“How’s life in the darkest timeline?” Hardison asked.

“What date is it here?” the lady asked, looking around. “I mean, if you still know.”

“Why wouldn’t we know?” Parker asked, still swiping through dog pictures.

“Well, I mean, 2020, am I right?” Inny said, waiting for a reaction. She looked incredulous at their blank  faces. “It is 2020, here, right?”

“Um, yeah?” Hardison ventured carefully.

“How dark is this timeline of yours?” Jamie asked carefully. Sure, it was a tumblr joke, usually reserved for stuff like the however-many-renewed-season of Supernatural when great shows were cancelled or whatever creepy feature FriendCzar had tried to impose that month.

The woman paused, frowned, then took a deep breath. “In response to the global pandemic of a deadly respiratory virus, President Donald Trump suggested on television during a briefing that people should inject or ingest bleach to kill the virus.”  She took another big breath. “And that’s not mentioning the fact that he downplayed the seriousness of the virus while knowing how deadly and contagious it was, called it a hoax, made taking safety precautions a political thing instead of a public safety thing, and held massive super-spreader events.”

“Donald Trump?” Jamie asked. “The ‘you’re fired’ dude?”

“Oh my sweet summer child,” Inny responded, before taking another swig of her Mountain Dew. “Yeah, I mean, I thought the fact that Australia was on fire at the start of the year was going to be the only terrible thing I was going to tell you.” She laughed and shook her head ruefully, like that was some kind of funny joke.

“Australia was on fire?”

“Yeah. Parts of the US too, for a while. Orange skies. But since the country was basically on lockdown anyway, it wasn’t like it was very different to stay inside for that…” Jamie stared at the lady, then back at the adults. Parker didn’t look overly concerned, but then, she never really did. Eliot and Hardison were both frowning, though. There was no sign that this was some kind of elaborate prank Hardison was pulling on them with the help of one of Sophie’s acting friends. Besides, he was good, but not ‘fake opening a magic portal in the ceiling’ good. At least not within the five minutes Jamie had been in the other room.

After a litany of horrible things, which were apparently not even all of them, the woman stopped. “On the upside,” she said. “I perfected my banana bread recipe, Deeks met some alpacas, Leverage is getting a reboot, and I figured out why I probably keep dropping in here.”

“To remind us that things aren’t so bad like some messed up version of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’?” Hardison guessed.

“Because Jamie is my OC,” she said, dropping a fucking bombshell like she just dropped out of the fucking ceiling. Jamie felt their brain fill with static, because no, they were a real person, and that either meant that this lady was full of bullshit, or, well, basically god. The Truman Show feeling returned ten times over. “This is my fanfic.”

Hardison recoiled a little. “No,” he whispered, fully understanding the implications of that. Hell, it was probably even weirder for him. Sure, knowing they were a TV show was probably cool, even more so with the reboot. But Fanfic Land didn’t fade to black and Jamie was pretty damn sure some kinky shit went on behind the soundproofed doors of their bedroom.

“Now, there’s two prevailing theories about this, as far as my internet rabbithole searches can tell,” Basically God Maybe continued. “Either I wrote this world into existence, because the multiverse is ever expanding and that is one of the ways it expands, or I just got some vibes from whatever crack between worlds keeps bringing me here and wrote down your shenanigans.”

At Parker and Eliot’s blank looks, Jamie clarified: “Basically, she’s either God or…”

“Some kind of shitty false prophet,” the lady on the beanbag chair beamed. “Probably the second one, honestly. My subconscious turns everything into a zombie apocalypse sooner or later, and you guys seem to be fine.”

Jamie whipped around to look at Hardison and Eliot, hopeful. “We’re fine, right?” they asked quickly. If anyone knew about a starting zombie apocalypse, it would be those two. Between Hardison poking around in basically every intelligence agency’s server ever and Eliot’s contacts, they’d know. God, Jamie hoped not. They were so not ready for a zombie apocalypse. Eliot hadn’t even taught them how to murder someone with an axe yet.

“We are definitely fine,” Hardison assured them.

“Yeah, I figured,” Not-God agreed. “If I had my say, Eliot would have stopped pining long before he did and kissed you guys.” Eliot grumbled and glared, probably because she was right. Parker patted him condescendingly on the head, which wasn’t helping matters.

The ceiling started crackling and glowing ominously. The lady put her can down as she slowly drifted off the beanbag, alien-abduction style. “Well, it’s been real. Be good, guys. Have some fun adventures. Ruin some rich douchebag’s day for me.”

“Will do,” Parker promised. “Say hi to your dog for me.” She got a thumbs up.

“Let us know how the reboot turns out,” Hardison said. Jamie figured it would probably fuck with the space-time continuum if she downloaded the show and brought it to them, but who knew. Maybe there was some kind of loophole for that, too. They were kind of curious to see what a Leverage show would look like. It probably had kickass fight-scenes.

“Stay safe,” Eliot said seriously. He’d been the most concerned about the talk of the pandemic, probably because you couldn’t punch it.

“Will do,” Inny shrugged. “I mean, 2021 can’t possibly be any worse, right?”

The portal crackled louder, which Jamie hoped wasn’t a sign. The lady was almost at the ceiling. She looked concerned, like she realised she just totally jinxed herself and the new year.

“Hey, just in case you are god,” Jamie called up. “Can you give me superpowers?”

The portal closed to the sound of laughter, and then there was silence. All that remained was a dent in the beanbag and an empty can of Mountain Dew.

“What the fuck,” they told the room at large.

“Yeah, you get used to it,” Parker said, before wandering off back to the blueprints she had been studying.

“I’m just gonna… check some things,” Hardison muttered, making a detour to the kitchen to grab a ginormous bottle of orange soda before getting behind his computer. “And buy a bunch of disinfectant and toilet paper, just in case.”

Eliot rolled his eyes, before bumping his shoulder against Jamie’s. “Come on,” he said.

“Come on where?” Jamie asked. “I’m having a bit of an existential crisis here.” If they were someone’s OC, did that mean that they didn’t have free will? Did it mean that all the cool things they had done the past year had only been because of some weird lady that fell out of the ceiling? Or did it mean-

“I’m gonna teach you to throw a knife so you can take out a zombie,” Eliot said.

Fuck that, the existential crisis could wait until 2am. They had more important things to do. Knife throwing would be fun and useful no matter if there was a zombie apocalypse or a pandemic, or they got superpowers.

[thesffcorner]

The Fever King

The Fever King is the first book in a YA sci-fi/dystopian duology written by Victoria Lee. I have a lot of very strong mixed feelings on this book, so buckle up; this will be a long one. 

In the near distant future, the United States has been withered down to several smaller nations, courtesy of a magic virus that has wiped out most of the population. The virus in the form of a fever, burns its victims to a husk, and those who survive it are called witchings, and they develop supernatural abilities. A 100 years after the original outbreak, we follow Noam Alvarez, a 16 year old boy who lives in the only witching state of Carolina. He’s the son of undocumented migrants, and when an outbreak in a refugee camp kills his father and all of his neighbours, he survives and gains technopathy: the ability to control electronic devices. He gets recruited into Level IV to train for the military, under the direct supervision of the man who created Carolina: Calix Lehrer. I think that long intro, might have already clued you into some of this book’s problems. In case you couldn’t tell, this book is a debut, and it really feels like it. Victoria Lee is a talented author, with a good grip on style and explores interesting ideas. This book’s hook bought me, and her characters (the few that are developed at least) are genuinely intriguing. This book is also highly political, and it’s subject matter is absolutely topical and relevant for today’s issues. If you are someone young, who hasn’t read a lot of political science and wants to get a primer into stuff like communism, revolutions and migrant issues, then I think this book would serve as a great primer. However, there are issues. The plot and the themes are just all over the place; there are also significant issues with the pacing and worldbuilding, and even the characters end up confused. The writing is solid, and I think with some more time and experience, I could really love Lee’s work, but as is, this book is a very much, an ambitious mess. Writing: Let’s start with some positives. Lee has a writing style that’s quite unique, and not something I have read before. She writes in third person, but the writing is very stream of consciousness. Lot’s of scenes, especially at the start read like we are following Noam’s thought pattern; he will interrupt himself, or not explain what is happening fully, because he himself hasn’t processed it yet. Since he’s the PoV character, he ends up feeling quite unreliable, which is a rarity in YA, and his inability to be unbiased and objective, actually factors into the plot, because we flip flop on what is happening and who we trust just as he does, and we operate on faulty or partial information, because that’s what he knows, or sometimes doesn’t notice the discrepancies. Unfortunately, this has the adverse effect of making this book read extremely young. Lee explores a lot of themes here, but the main one revolves around freedom, revolution and what and how much you are willing to sacrifice to achieve your goal. Both Noam and Lehrer do unspeakable things in the name of justice and freedom, and there is a fine line between fighting for a cause and becoming a monster. I would like to say that this theme is handled with finesse, but Noam has a very black and white view of the world, and has the patience of a teenage boy; as such he ends up making a lot of really stupid decisions, and refusing to acknowledge a lot of horrible things. There’s also a lot of discussion of communism, dictatorships, and leadership, all of it feels like a middle grade school report. The absolute worst scene for me was when Noam and Lehrer discuss the phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’; I was cringing so hard as the book ground to a halt to give me a history and philosophy lesson on what that phrase means. It’s so over the top and blunt, and I really didn’t care for it. Tone: If the book was written entirely like this, I think I would’ve liked it more; I am simply not the target audience. I am too old and have been through enough classes, discussions, debates and even real world protests and changes of government for a middle grade discussion on communism to appeal to me. But the book mixes these really simplistic juvenile themes, and a character who read like a 14-15 year old, with brutal realities of what revolution is actually like, and it made for such an uneven reading experience. There are numerous scenes of people dying in executions, from disease, there is discussion of rape, child abuse, assassinations and violations of the body and mind. It’s at once a very ‘baby’s first guide to revolution’, while at the same time attempting to have a very nuanced and complex villain/hero dynamic. The sexual politics of this book especially made me uncomfortable; the scenes between Noam and Lehrer especially felt like they belonged in a much more mature book than this one. Worldbuilding: This is where most of my problems with the book stem from. This is a book that has the very difficult job of setting up this world, explaining how the situation got so dire, introduce the superpowers, the characters, the status quo, and it has to do all of that for 2 separate timelines. I would like to say Lee succeeded but I am still very confused. Let’s start with the positives. I really wasn’t sure why it was necessary that the virus was magic; it could have been any kind of sci-fi virus that changes the morphology and biology of the survivors in order to give them superpowers. The fact that the virus was a form of magical fever that burns up its victims reminded me so much of Osaron from the Shades of Magic series, that I half expected the infected to have black veins and black eyes. What I enjoyed about the superpower aspect was that the powers were tied to something that the person already knew or had a connection to. For example, Noam is very good with computers and coding already, so his presenting power is technopathy, meaning he already knows exactly how computers, electricity, magnetism and algorithms work, so his power is just a physical extension of that. This was the most original and interesting aspect of the setting, and I liked all the bits we got with Noam doing math and physics and why it was necessary for him to learn all of that, before he could really master his powers. The early scenes where Lehrer teaches him and Dara on how to use their powers were great, and though the scene with the coin was lifted straight out of the X-men films, I loved it. The refugees, the refugee camps, the post apocalyptic setting and the politics were all things I have read before. There’s so many elements borrowed from Divergent, The Maze Runner, The Hunger Games and The Darkest Mind; the ending especially felt exactly like the ending of The Darkest Mind. I don’t even need to know that Lee is an avid X-men reader to tell you exactly where she got the estetic for the setting, the apocalypse, the anti-witchery suits, the suppression, the anti-witching vaccine and especially, especially Lehrer’s character. This is where the problems start. First off, the two timelines. Everything to do with the Lehrer brothers forming Carolina, the virus outbreak, the dissolution of the United States and the virus was incredibly confusing, underdeveloped, and lifted straight out of the X-men films. It’s like Lee took bits and pieces of all of them and pulled them all together: Lehrer being tortured in the mutant, I mean witching camps was a mix of X-2 and Origins, Lehrer redirecting the nuclear warhead back into the ocean was from First Class, Lehrer being questioned by the telepath was from X-2, and Carolina having closed its borders and being the only safe haven for withings was from the Genosha/San Francisco storylines in the comics. The reason I point all of this out was because it was so blatant, and so badly patched together that I didn’t feel like Lee had anything to say about these things; she just took bits and pieces of these various X-men storylines, which for better or worse were actually complete and devoted time and development to their implementation. Here, I wasn’t sure why some states were states, like Carolina, while others, like Atlanta were cities. Europe and Canada are mentioned, but no mention of Asia or Africa. Is every other place in the world unaffected? Or did they all execute every single witching and infected person? How come Carolina is supposed to be this heaven when their technology hasn’t advanced past 2019, and yet they are still somehow independent? Everything to do with Lehrer was likewise confusing. He was King, but he then abdicated and Sacha was democratically elected, and yet the state he ruled was a communist monarchy? Why did he abdicate? If everything is infected, how did the Carolina army get to Atlanta to besiege them? And then we get to the migrants. This part was the worst, because it suffered so hard from the black and white morality. The migrants come from Atlanta which is suffering horrible outbreaks of the virus. Even though the Carolinas are willing to let the refugees in, they do everything in their power to keep them secluded, undocumented and completely isolated. Look, I’m not going to pretend that migrants are treated well in most places; they are not. But usually there are bigger issues at hand, not just bigotry. A lot of refugees have problems with learning the local language, adapting to local climate, customs, food. There are cultural clashes between the local and the refugees, religious differences. That simply doesn’t translate here; if the virus isn’t genetic, and it’s detectable, than what good would expending resources to keep the refugees secluded do? They speak the language, there aren’t different customs or religion, the only difference is the city they come from. Carolina and Atlanta are not a good allegory for the current migrant crisis, and I can’t believe I’m siding with Brennan but they really are guests in someone else’s homeland. They can’t just start a revolution and overthrow the government, which is what Noam wants. The way Noam acts this whole book is a righteous rage that’s just ill conceived. Yes, he’s being manipulated, but he acts like no one other than refugees have a hard life, like Ames or Dara or any of the other characters couldn’t possibly have problems. What’s more is he’s never called out on this behavior and he’s never corrected or shown to be wrong, which is just insincere at best and blatantly untrue at worst. Pacing: Like the tone, the pacing was all-over the place. This book is at once overcrowded with information, trying to set up so much, and accomplish even more, while at the same time painfully slow and uneventful. There are pages upon pages of exposition and pontificating on irrelevant philosophical questions, while the actual action is so mediocre. The pacing reminded me of my least favorite part of The Hunger Games; the first part in Mockingjay where Katniss just spends pages upon pages training and locked inside the District 13 compound. The same is true here; once Noam is inside Level IV, almost nothing of interest happens until the very end, with the exception of his detour during the protest. We are supposed to be invested in the character development, but there really are only 2 relationships, and both are… iffy. Characters: There are literary, only 3 characters of interest in this book; none of the supporting cast was interesting in any way, and the 3 other students might as well have not been in the book. So let’s talk about Dara. Dara was the most frustrating character I have read in a while. The best way I can describe him is, he’s Rhy from Shades of Magic; he is a beautiful, deeply damaged character, who is promiscuous, seductive, and completely there to serve as a love interest/victim for Noam. Dara is the second most powerful character in this book, and yet he spends 90% of it drunk, high, locked in a room, or in some sort of peril. There is so much abuse throw his way that I wondered for a second if I accidentally skipped back to The Raven King. As a character by himself, he wasn’t particularly interesting, until the very end of the book, where we get several reveals that have no time to be digested or explored, because the book is over. His relationship with Noam was even more frustrating. He acts appropriately, like a teenager, but he’s also supposed to be older and more clever than Noam, which makes the situation they are put in even dumber. So much of this book could have been avoided if they would just TALK to each other, and even the reveal doesn’t hide how much this whole plot relies on contrivance. Like ok, I will absolutely buy that Dara would fall in love with Noam, but he still violated Noam’s trust, privacy and very core by doing what he did to him for over a year. I also don’t often comment on sex scenes in YA, but I really, really disliked the sex in this book. Like I said, Noah is so naive and reads so young, that I kept forgetting he was 16, not like 14, and even still Dara is at least 18, when they do it, so it was just immensely uncomfortable to read. That scene also had the absolute worst line I have read this year which was, I shit you not “Dara was born to lie on mussed bedsheets with wet hair spilling like an ink stain onto white pillows, flush cheeked” pg.250 I am feeling iffy just writing it down right now, knowing the context of this character! Speaking of, let’s talk about Lehrer. First, let’s all acknowledge that Lehrer IS Magneto. He is a revolutionary who has a very loose sense of morals/regard for human life, he isn’t above violent and destructive means, he is incredibly good at inspiring and manipulating people into joining him, he is Jewish, and he is powerful. I can’t say anything more about him without MAJOR SPOILERS, so if you haven’t read this, skip to the end. From the very first scene Lehrer appeared, I thought the way he acts around Noam was strange. There is a constant, underlying sense of predation in all of his scenes; the scenes are written as a type of seduction, and though he is never explicitly sexual with Noam, it is very clear that his intentions and feelings for Noam aren’t just paternal. Lehrer is praying on Noam, and Noam constantly flip flops between feeling attracted to Lehrer and considering him a mentor, father like figure. This was beyond uncomfortable to read; watching Noam be manipulated for 300 pages was hard enough, without constantly being worried that Lehrer would escalate their relationship. And then we find out that we were right all along, and Lehrer really is a predator; the bruises and marks Dara has are not from Ames, they are from Lehrer. Lehrer, who is his legal guardian, who has raised him like a son. I wanted to vomit. Not only that, but we also learn that Lehrer’s true power is persuasion: it’s similar to Alison from The Umbrella Academy’s power in that he can influence what people who are around him do, and he uses that power both on Dara and Noam. This made the ending incredibly confusing; did Noam forget what Dara told him about Lehrer releasing the virus? Does he only remember certain things but not that? Does he not remember the part where Dara told him Lehrer has been assaulting him for years? If he doesn’t, then why did Noam rescue Dara at the end? If he does, then why does he believe Lehrer when he says he never used his powers on Noam, when he clearly blatantly did? This reveal made the book incredibly fascinating to me, but also, I wanted to throw up. I still feel ill writing this review. I will give Lee all the credit; she got me hooked. I want to see what happens to Noam, I want to see what exactly his relationship with Lehrer will be now that Dara is gone, what happened to Wolf (did he turn into a dog? Fullmetal Alchemist style?) Conclusion: This is an ambitious but confusing book. It’s lead 3 characters, and the dynamics between them are the real draw, but the worldbuilding and plot leave a lot to be desired. I would recommend it, but if you are at all disturbed by abuse, implied rape, and predatory behavior… maybe read the X-men instead.

goodreads

[tumblunni]

I had a really weird dream involving Dr Maddiman. Its a shame i can barely remember any of it and also it seems i woke up before it ended? Like i just had this overwhelming sense that allll the plot threads were gonna be wrapped up any second now and then BOOM awake. So just a whole bunch of random stuff happened with no real explanation at all.

It was some sort of post apocolyptic setting i think? Humanity was in these small isolated cities fighting against some sort of invading army but we never actually saw the aliens themselves. And some part of my brain was like "it makes sense its the same rules as a hairdresser and the design takes cues from a pack of AAA batteries". I have NO idea what that means! So basically everythibg was super vague and undescribed and dream-me just had a sense of already being a long time fan of this series and knowing enough to fill in the gaps. Apparantoy this was some sort of adaptation of a thing id already seen, but id been told the ending was different and more accurate to the manga? Also i wasnt actually a person watching this show i was still the protagonist of the show yet i acted like i'd been reincarnated and relived this week a million times or something

ANYWAY the way dr maddiman comes in is that he was some sort of 'brilliant but dangerous' expert the government had hired to help our fight against the aliens. It wasnt really explained why he was.. yknow.. maddiman. Like is this meant to be that ghosts also exist in this sci fi universe? Was he a half alien hybrid instead of a yokai? Was it just human maddiman with the personality of yokai maddiman due to ptsd...? In any case he didnt seem entirely tethered to the laws of reality and nobody knew exactly how he pulled off all his scientific miracles. He was treated as the only guy who could understand the mindset of the aliens, but that also made him dangerous because he trapped in the delusion of everything being okay and fun and happy and he often did evil things by accident while having good intentions. But they didnt have anyone else who'd cracked the code of the alien weaponry so they had to put up with him. He was just sorta assigned a crack team of secret agents whose job was Be The Old Man's Friend So We Dont All Die. Dont let him realise how the world is all destroyed and such, just play along with his goofyness and try and remind him to do his important work while dancing around why its important. it was super creepy how he was locked up and gaslighted like this!! And he was all 'oh im sure when im done with my ultimate experiment i can go home to my wife and kids' and yeah it was implied here that the same backstory applied :( 'distract the old man and validate his false opinion that his family is still alive and waiting for him' :( poor sci fi madds :(

Oh also for some reason he seemed to be wearing elements of Adventure era Dr Eggman's outfit? But just the general style of the coat and the wearing goggles that he never actually uses. And he had a very warm and cuddly autumnal colourscheme

Anyway i was part of the Super Secret Grampa Cherishing Division whose job was to act as his assistant but also secretly be packing a bazillion weapons to neutralize him if he poses a danger to humanity. But i started to genuinely care for the guy and question the 'any atrocity is permitted for the sake of saving the world' philosophy of my bosses. Also it was just very weird how it was this post apocolypse alien fighting action thing yet i didnt see ANY OF IT cos this story was confined to this one laboratory. It was surreal hearing about all this stuff happening offscreen!

I think Maddiman's main project was some sort of dimensional transport thing using salvaged alien tech? It was just a door in his lab that usually led to a closet but if he got it working itd teleport us straight to the alien base and save the world. And a lot of it wasnt explained but i got this great sense that itd all come together with a great twist ending evebtually but then i woke up before i got that far. Same for the reveal of this maddiman's new sci fi backstory and soooo many other dropped plot threads. Alas!

So anyway: closet. Closet with one of those bead curtain things cos i was thinking about them when i fell asleep. It was supposed to be a teleport but when it malfunctioned it had really scary negative effects warping people's biology and stuff. I remember one of the test subjects was sent in for a five day trip to a specific alternate dimension but then when they came back itd been several years and theyd had to survive in a deadly wasteland and been mutated into a hellbeast. And maddiman had a huge breakdown because he felt like his recklessness and optimism towards this experiment had caused this mistake to happen, and he'd never realized just how awful the consequences could be. He was babbling motor mouth discussing theories for where it went wrong and there was something like 'we'd only tested it for one day trips and assumed that just programming two of them would equal two days but actually with each additional number on the screen it multiplies the days by 3" And there was something about like...the bead curtain was the machine rather than the door itself? Like trying it on a bunch of different doors around the lab to try and find a way to cure this person.

And there was some sort of artificial intelligence computer with the personality of an adorable lil girl, who helped maddiman do calculations and stuff. She missed the mistake in this calculation cos her concept of linear time and the limits of human organs was kinda undeveloped. She only existed within the realm of numbers after all, and didbt even have functionality to record footage of her human friends's faces. No idea wtf a human looks like! So maddiman was lost in his desperate grief of potentially accidebtally killing or at least mentally scarring a person and the government would probably kill them now if they saw they were a super mutant. And he was sobbing and begging this AI to help, his last resort was her maybe being able to see a brainwave that he'd missed. But she was freaking out cos she didnt even fully understand why maddiman was crying let alone what to do to fix it. Eventually she did manage to find a solution theough some simple different logic thing that she had from her perspective as a computer. And that person was saved but still traumatized and maddiman had a moment of realizing just how high stakes everything was and freaking out. He was like 'whats wrong with my head, why didnt i notice that, why was i so reckless, why cant i seem to grasp basic human logic that i need right now" Having a big existential crisis of 'wait how did i even get in this lab, where's my family and why do i seem to have superpowers'. Protagonist mission: hide all the goddamn mirrors to avoid this weird ghostgramp (...aliengramp??) from realizing he's dead (..or an alien??) and losing control of himself. And everyone was running around talking about 'containment procedures' and poor maddiman didnt know that if his panic attack continued he might just straight up be killed for outliving his usefulness. So the protagonist was desperate to help him calm down and it sucked SO MUCH cos they had to lie about his past and weave the web of deception around him again for his own safety. In the end they just hugged him close until he calmed down, and all the other employees were like GASP THEY ACTUALLY TOUCHED THE EVIL DANGEROUS SUPER EVIL MAN and protag was like 'i am 1% away from slapping the next bitch who insults this grandpa'. And it was super depressing cos once he'd calmed down he seemed to start forgetting that anything bad had ever happened?? And he was really panicking and scared cos he didnt understand why he was forgetting, and he knew he had to cling onto something important but he didnt know what. And then five minutes later he was back to haha cheerful nothing is wrong and i love doing my fun science in this room im never allowed to leave. And protagonist was crying the tears that this poor gramp wasnt allowed to cry :(

Also actually i think maybe he was a ghost AND an alien? Like he was a scientist who died in some sort of tragedy back when the aliens first invaded, but along the way he'd been infected so his body got back up as a twisted combination of human and inhuman. And this was something unique to him, like he just happened to have a genetic mutation in his blood that was totally undetectable in life but happened to mix unpredictably with this alien virus to turn him into a hybrid instead of just killing him. So the government was very interested in finding a way to replicate this and create new supersoldiers, as well as just taking advantage of this dude's confused mental state that granted him a unique understanding of alien tech that made him more effective than other scientists. And, of course, also made him easy to manipulate :(

And i also had a feeling that maybe his backstory was mixed up with Adventure dr eggman? Like here it seemed he had a daughter instead of a son, and she had a similar death to Maria Robotnik where she was assasinated by the government he worked for, and it tipped him over the edge. I think Maddiman-alien-scifi-dude originally died trying to save her from being used in some sort of experiment? Like she was already dying of a disease and thats why maddiman took this job to have access to powerful government technology to try and look for a cure. But when the whole alien apocolypse happened, the evil government decided to use her for experiments cos she was 'basically dead anyway'. Theyd just lie and tell maddiman she died of her illness. So this was how they found out that this particular family's bloodline had a mutation that let them form a viable hybrid with alien dna. They were turning this poor kid into a monster in the basement while lying to her dad about her being dead! And maddiman was about to commit suicide from having no reason to live anymore, with the hell of this apocolypse world and the false impression that his kid was already dead. But somehow monster-daughter sensed this or something and broke out of containment to try and save him, and when he saw her he was able to recognise her even in her twisted state. So when the soldiers gunned her down in front of him and fed him some lies about this not being his daughter, he just completely snapped. He tried in vain to fight back and take down as many of them as possible in revenge, but well he was just a simple round dad with no ability to fight a government. So he was unceremoniously executed along with his kid and they shoved the bodies back in the lab to continue testing. "Damn that overemotional science dad, he made us execute our most valable test subject! But at least this way we can analyze his corpse to see if the mutation is passed down on the patrilineal side." But at some point during the fight, monster-daughter's blood had splashed on her dad and gotten into his bloodstream. So the seemingly dead body suddenly got up out of the morgue and started sucking people's blood or something. And this led to the current situation where they have him locked up cos he's a valuable test subject but also hey he has 100% reason to kill all of us and we're screwed if he remembers his past. Also i think the computer AI thing was his subconcious attempt to recreate the personality of his daughter even if he couldnt remember she'd ever existed :(

Anyway at some point things escalated and there was this final showdown versus both the invading aliens and the evil governmebt guys. I think there was some corrupt greedy politician dude who stole maddiman's teleporter tech and sold us out to the aliens cos he wanted money and power or something. And probably predictably the aliens just threw him off a bridge after he gave them the thing, because seriously even this evil army thinks these government dudes are too evil!

So this big actiony event was happening and Maddiman was freaking out like 'no no no i cant leave the lab everyone wpuld be mad at me, i dont even know what its like outside this room' even when he was in the middle of being attacked by aliens. He was forced to face his repressed memories to survive, and he naturally had a massive fuckin freakout! And i think maybe when protagonist character was trying to protect him he accidentally lashed out with his powers and hurt them, and he was so horrified thinking another person he cared about was gonna die because of him. Protagonist was like 'dont worry gramps its just a scratch' but he'd already freaked out and run away into the battlefield to his heavily implied death.

BUT THEN at some sort of moment of dire need, he came back all powered up and re-memoried and was like 'i have every reason to despise humanity but im not gonna let more children die because of these damn corporate monsters (and also literal monsters which are infinately less scary)" And he did some sort of great sacrifice to save the protagonist at the cost of his own life, and it was super dramatic falling from a building into a lake of fire or something. While sobbing and smiling peacefully thinkibg "did i atone for my sins? Will i be able to see my family again?" As his smiling face sunk beneath the flames and the protagonist cried out into the abyss...

Aaaaand then i dont really know what happened in the big battle and i also never found out wtf the solution was to fixing the transporter thing or how the aliens invaded or any of the million plot points that were non gramp related.

I just remember that when we all saved the day and defeated the baddies we found that maddiman had actually survived and it was a big hugs reunion. He was like "OH YEAH i totally forgot i literally already died once and regenerated from it, and this was the entire start to my story. My bad!" *shrugs inexplicably not dead arms*

So yeah in summary im glad my brain summoned up a universe where my favourite sad granddad is literally immortal now, but also why did it torment him with an even sadder plot than his original one

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Play Mutant Virus, The - Crisis in a Computer World (USA)

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