Six in One

Ch 2 - Purple!

You wake up after what feels like only a moment. You're in the purple room, like you usually are when you go to sleep or someone else takes over. You wonder which it is right now. Are you no longer in control or are you just asleep? You suppose it doesn't matter. You look around the purple room. It looks just like your bedroom, except without the door, and when you look out the window, there's a purple city below that seems to cover the surface of whatever mysterious place you're on. Your room is high above the city at the top of a huge tower. You can also see two other similar purple towers out of the window, but you don't know who lives in them, if anyone. Sometimes, you can see funny little people walking in the purple city. They're black and shiny, and look very much like they have some sort of shell or carapace rather than skin.

Aside from the view outside the window and the fact that everything is purple, it looks exactly like your room. Or rather, how your room would look if you didn't have to share it with five others. Its just as low in decor as your section of your real room, which you like. You don't have to worry about navigating the piles of junk in anyone else's sections. This purple room of yours also has a copy of your laptop for some reason. It's sitting over on a table that would usually be in Jackie's section and covered with all sorts of mechanical bits and pieces. Oddly enough, its already open and turned on. You walk over to your trusty laptop and look at what's on screen. It appears to be a copy of the game were waiting to load, except it appears to have finished loading here. The screen is exactly the same as the loading screen, except there are now two buttons instead of a loading bar. One says "Client" and the other says "Server." The client button seems to be grayed out.

You decide to click the "Server" button since it seems to be the only one that is functioning. Upon clicking it, the screen drastically changes. It no longer has the pleasant sky background or game's logo, but instead shows a view of your own real-life bedroom in a window, with some bars at the sides and top showing what seems to be various resources and appliances. At the very top is a bar labelled "Grist" followed by several icons with numbers after them. Most of the icons simply have a "0" after them, but one of them has a "500" after it instead. You mouse over the icon and discover that it is called "Build Grist." You guess that these must all be different kinds of grist and that it must be the resource for this game.

You take a look at some of the appliances shown on one of the sidebars. Most of them are grayed out, and mousing over them reveals that you don't have enough of the right kind of grist to make them. You pause for a moment and wonder how you're supposed to get more grist. Then you move on the the appliances that aren't grayed out. There are three of them, called a "totem lathe," a "Cruxtruder," and an "Alchemiter." All three appear to be fairly large, and you don't want to place them quite yet. You take a closer look at the window showing your bedroom. In the top right corner, there's an arrow pointing right, and in the top left corner, an arrow facing left. You click on the left-facing arrow, and the window changes to show a different room in your house. Now the window is showing your kitchen. You click the arrow in the right-hand corner and the view returns to your bedroom. You find it very odd that the game seems to take place in your own home, but maybe that's only the case for the version you're playing here in the purple room.

You decide to look closer at whats going on in your room right now. Whats going on in your room right now is VERY weird. You can see yourself, but you aren't lying in bed. You're moving around! Based on the current hairstyle, you would guess that it's not really you so much as it is Jackie in right now. And your laptop has been messed with! It's sitting on the table in Jackie's section on a space she must have cleared of some of her clockwork shenanigans. You guess that's why the version of it here in this purple room was on the equivalent table, but you find it rude that she would touch your laptop. She has one of her own, and you don't mess with it! You understand she's curious, but still! And worst of all, it looks like she's started to play your new game. She must have clicked client though, because the screen on your laptop shows a solid black background with the full Sburb logo on it with "Client" written in block letters below. Even so, you find this breach of trust and privacy to be both rude and, honestly, very unlike Jackie. She's usually one of your more enjoyable personalities to have in charge, if short-tempered sometimes. Far better than THEM. THEY get you in all SORTS of trouble! You're also kind of scared of THEM. You're really glad you don't have to actually ever deal with THEM, because only one of you can be in the real world at once.

That's enough stressing about THEM though. Spending too long thinking about THEM usually results in THEM being in control, and that's not something you want to happen. You return your attention to the screen and what seems to be a live video of what's going on in your room right at this moment. Jackie seems to be fiddling with her own laptop now, having set it right next to yours and appears to be looking up Sburb walkthroughs. You really aren't happy she keeps playing your game. You decide to see if you can get her attention by placing one of the appliances in the room. There's a nice spot right next to her table that's clear of any clockwork contraption that she might not want squished. You select the Cruxtruder from the appliance menu, called the "Phernalia Registry" and drag it slowly over to the spot you want. You release the mouse button and the Cruxtruder lands in the spot with a very visible shake and a loud thump that echoes through the speakers of your laptop. Jackie falls backwards on her butt in panic. You're going to feel that when you're in control again, you're sure, but it was worth it!

End of Ch 2