Lucid Dream [Ch. 1 posted 2/1/17]

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— a Phantasy Star Online story —

Hello and welcome! I'm back with another PSO fan fiction that I hope to actually finish. This one is a '60s style sci-fi yarn, probably somewhere in the ballpark of of Philip K. Dick and some of the weirder Vonnegut novels. The plot deals with the appearance of an unusual new psychedelic drug that is not a chemical at all but a string of ones and zeroes sold on technique disks, designed to be downloaded directly into the user's central nervous system. As with any drug, there are certain risks associated with abusing "lucid"—and reporter Nol Rinale is determined to uncover a far-reaching conspiracy linking the drug's proliferation to the mysterious Flowen Foundation. Many familiar faces from the Episode I & II canon will make appearances, including everyone's favorite: Mome.

Chapters will most likely be shortish, and I'll update on a roughly once-a-week schedule (although probably more frequently at the beginning and the end, when I'm all charged up to write it). I hope you dig, baby!

— TABLE OF CONTENTS —

Ch. 1 (posted 2/1/17)

— 1 —

Gilbert Bluefriend observed with binoculars, from his high-up apartment window in the Pioneer 2’s silicon & robotics enclave, the slender figure of Nol Rinale cutting an upstream swath through the civilians who had taken to the streets for the lunch hour. He wondered for perhaps the thirtieth time if meeting a reporter in his home in broad daylight was too obvious even to qualify for hidden in plain sight… but he knew it was a late hour for those types of second guesses. Sighing, Bluefriend turned away from the broad window and told himself sternly, This Is Right.

He lay his binoculars on the glass coffee table that sat between his towering vidscreen and the sofa, beside his photonic field scanning equipment. He intended to scan Ms. Rinale's field before she got any further than his foyer, just to quiet a few of those rebellious nerve endings that kept crying danger. Bluefield was no spy, and the whole business of secret meetings put him on edge.

He buzzed Rinale in and waited for her to appear at his peephole. After a minute or so her face filled his vision. She was a pretty girl; slight, blonde, and well-groomed. One green eye ballooned up at him as she herself peeked into the hole, and he drew back.

"Sorry," he said hurriedly as he waggled the scanner in her face.

"What is this?"

"Photonic field scanner. I wanted to make sure you weren't hologramming yourself. Or someone else wasn't."

Nol Rinale made her way inside and set her purse down on the arm of Bluefriend's couch. "You didn't seem this paranoid when we spoke over the screen."

Bluefriend frowned and adjusted his coke bottle glasses, watching her. "I've barely slept," he said testily. "The Foundation will suspect a leak. My career will likely change directions because of this. Please forgive me if I seem high-strung."

"You're doing the right thing," Nol said.

They sat together on the couch, and Bluefriend snapped on the vidscreen. He navigated its menu to the music library and set a random record playing. Nol wondered if he were worried about bugs in his apartment. They listened to the first few bars of the song together.

"Well, do you have it?" she asked.

Bluefriend nodded. He went into another room and soon returned with a data disc. He handed it to Nol and then went back in for a pack of cigarettes, one of which he promptly lit and, shakily, drew from.

"I put that disc together myself," he said, not looking at her. Little rolls of smoke came forth with each syllable. "Lot of bad juju on that thing. My friend was able to grab it all across only a handful of visits to the Foundation's network on a compromised root account. I wondered at first if it was so easy to find because they wanted it found. Maybe as a smokescreen for something else. But if all the stuff he pulled off their servers is real, the whole Pioneer 2 population is in bad trouble."

Nol turned the disc over in her hand, letting a rainbow play across its edge. "And is there a sample of lucid on here?"

Bluefriend said nothing. Finally he took off his glasses and rubbed them on his shirt. "Yeah," he told her. "And I don't recommend that you get curious about it."

Nol put the disc into her bag and slung it over her shoulder as she stood up. She was trembling a little. If Gilbert Bluefriend's claims were true, if she actually had the lucid source code sitting on a three-inch read/write disc in her purse, then she was now the colony's top bounty. She would feel as though she were walking around with an unexploded bomb until she handed it off to Dr. Montague. What would the police think, she wondered, if they caught a little blonde Newman reporter out in the middle of the day with the lucid source on a read/write? Would they figure her for a drug lord?

Nol Rinale, she thought. Illegal narcotics trafficker.

She left Bluefriend's apartment, rode the elevator down the lobby, and stepped back out into the light of Ragol's hot, white star. It was a remarkably clear day, and jet cars were navigating between the tallest buildings in lazy arcs. The planet Ragol hung dizzyingly in the eastern sky like a giant blue coin. She realized she was terrified; less at peace than she had been at any time in the past year or longer.

Nol caught an autocab and had it chart a course to the research district. She had a pressing appointment with a very specific doctor.

Interesting. I look forward to the next chapter.

He returns! Will be interesting to see how this story will shape up.

And you guys return as well!! I wondered if I'd see any familiar faces.

I've been reading a lot of PKD lately, especially Ubik and A Scanner Darkly. Such cool and creepy books. This story will probably follow in their footsteps to a certain extent and have only a little comedy (nowhere near as much as the Ash & Pauline story for instance), but it'd be hard to avoid writing at least one or two jokes when the plot involves PSO characters (such as Mome) and sci-fi LSD.

Heh, hippy trip humor.

Oh! Look who's back! I'll look forward to it! If you want something illustrated from the story, you know where to find me :wacko:

Nice! You're off to a good start here. I look forward to seeing it play out.

Will there be any references to the infamous NOL glitch? ;)

Heck yeah, what is up qox! And PD, you better believe there will be. That spooky Dreamcast-era polygon count model of level of level 5 NOL is an acid trip in itself.