The project: our own novel.

[abscess]

Hmm... Yes, it does resemble what we have in more ways than one.

The "Virus" and "Cellular Inffection" ("CI" for short):
Similarites:
Both create a network

Differences:
I
The "virus" needs to create a network to be able to become conscious, but it's a closed network. There can't be any data transfer like there is between computers. For example, something like the human brain today, a person needs written and spoken language (mainly) to communicate with other people. What does the virus want? At first I wanted it to make contact with "Omega."

Your CI creates a human brain network making everyone capable of sharing information (or at least that's how I get it), that would mean no secrets.

II
Your "CI" was created by scientists, while the "virus" was created by a weird AI with a body, "Beta."

III
You say people were profitting from being inffected, how? I dunno. The "virus" doesn't give you any advantage in anything, but actually makes you lose control over yourself and, eventually, kills you.

IV
You know how the CI spreads. We don't know how the virus spread.

Note: I'm not sure if I want to keep the conscious virus idea anymore... If there is no conscious virus, then there doesn't have to be a network. There are reasons for me not wanting a network of that kind:
a) We lose similarities.
b) The most important, it doesn't make much sense if there was a conscious "virus", why would "Beta" want a conscious virus roaming around? It could start acting on its own. Why would "Beta" take that risk? what would there be to gain? It makes little sense after thinking about it.

"Alpha" and ANON:
Similarities:
I
Both are hackers on steroids

II
Both have something to do with a net baby

Differences
I
"Alpha" was active before "Omega" (our net baby). Your ANON went active after there was trouble on the human network.

II
"Alpha" wanted "Omega" to not die and act as a care taker for it. ANON refused to kill it.

III
Superflonic wants "Alpha" to be the one that created "Omega", I'm thinking about it. ANON didn't create the brain network baby.

IV
I want "Alpha" to be more than one person, I dunno if Superflonic agrees. I don't know about your ANON.

V
Some of what "Alpha" did before becoming inactive affected the world in some level or another. I don't know if your ANON did anything before hacking into the main computer storing... whatever it was storing.

"anon-series", "Beta" and NEO ANON:
"Beta" is some sort of a digital copy of "Alpha", it was given the patterns, information known about it and some mission to follow (we don't know what mission it is... yet). Eventually it started acting on its own and disobeyed the "group of people", the ones who created it.

The "anon series" are there to stop "Beta" and continue where it left off.

NEO ANON is some sort of digital ANON copies created to hack that mysterious computer.

STORY (so far):
Similarities
I
In both cases there seems to be a global scale crisis, but the focus of each story is quite different.

II
Both "virus" and CI kill its host.

III
In both cases cats and dogs are just fine ) ..... or are they? )

Differences
I
There seems to be some sort of rebellion, or there was, in your story. There is no all-out war or anything in our story. The main bulk of the people don't even know what "Alpha" is nor cares about "Omega" or "group of people", they just want the damn internet to work again.

II
The human brain network doesn't exist in our case. That is a neat idea of your part, but I'm not too sure if I wanna go there.

III
The "virus" is not something that went wrong, it was created to kill people. Your CI was made so that people were connected, but somehow it got borked and started pwning people.
_________________________________________

There are numerous similarities, enough to make people reading this (supposing there are ) rise an eyebrow, yes. I don't know what is it that you want to do with your story, but by its looks it could go anywhere, from some sort of war-story about guys in the rebellion against robots and/or... scientists..... (I'd like to abstain from further debate about scientists in these kind of stories...) to a story about people hunting the fabled net-baby and that mysterious computer that no one knows what it stores.

What I'd like to do is a story following a few characters that are linked to the few things that are evident of whats going on with the world and make them fall into a thriller-esque ride that was pretty much obscure to the normal people. The major events would never be known to the average person and, while screwing up in their part would potentially mean every people alive will be screwed up one way or another, the common people wouldn't know what hit 'em until it was very late (like 50 or 100 years later).. or not realize at all.

I don't know if I'm makins any sense.

I'll post again later with a comprehensivle (?) map of the few concepts mentioned here and a short description about them. I didn't get yours, sorry

[zweiterversuch]

well...

I was only trying to simplify everything you had said.

I just wanted to do a common background to work with.
I wasn't really trying to make a story. To work with viruses is tough.

[abscess]

Welcome to the (not very comprehensive) incomplete Bible of temporarily named concepts for the unnamed project. Enjoy the fruits of our procrastination of academic activities )

Note: What is between [brackets] is something I'm putting up to debate, since it's something I just came up with (I think).

The Virus
The most immediate threat to the public. Created by Beta, it infects people and, after an incubation time, they suddenly develop symptoms (so far is just a lot of pain) and die. Whether it's a conscious virus or how it spreads, we don't know.

About Alpha _{formerly named anon}
It was some sort of a legend in some circles that had to do with hacking and stuff like that. Some of the things it normally did was [unauthorized penetration in protected systems and, sometimes, createing holes for other hackers to enter said system, data theft, destruction, modification and illegal redistribution of said data. It didn't disclose exactly what its purpose was, but through observation of its actions some people thought it was another gray or black hat], but a very capable one. [It never named itself (what name was it is yet to be mentioned), but was named by other people and never tried to get away from that label for some reason or another].
Very few people met with Alpha online and no one in person, or at least knew about it. To the main bulk of hackers, he was either a glorified legend or a myth some people came up with to explain some of the most hard to believe things that where going on. The vast majority of the common internet users didn't hear a thing about it.
Before disappearing, it created/found the structure needed to sustain a digital intelligent life form. In time, it created the beginnings of such a thing. At first it released few of the information about it to the public, but stopped soon after. Started making less appearances until finally disappearing completely. Why did it created that thing is still not known.

About the Group of People _{GoP for short}
As it's stupid name suggest, its a group of people interested in what Alpha did and could know. Claims to have amassed all information available about it and created Beta, a copy of Alpha with all the information available about it, it's patterns of conduct and some degree of consciousness and free will. Later it created the alpha-series. It's purpose is yet to be decided, but I suppose they're somewhat secreive about what they want to achieve.
I've been toying with the idea that either a member of the group or the whole group where following Alpha during its active time.

About Beta _{formerly named neo-anon}
The first creation of the GoP. It's a machine with humanoid form. As stated earlier, possesses all the knowledge Alpha spread and was retrieved from studying it's past activities, think of it as the result of reverse-ingeneering what is known of a hacker. Very little was added or taken away from the information pool they used during its creation.
It was created with the purpose of recreating Alpha as close as possible with the hope that it would eventually take Alpha's place and start working in whatever it was that its original was working before disappearing. It was being monitored constantly, but something happened and Beta started straying from what the GoP thought it would do, eventually severing all connection with it and acting completely on its own.
Created the virus that is killing people. Why it did that is still not determined.

About the alpha-series _{formerly known as the "anon-series"}
An undetermined number of individuals created also by the GoP. These are not machines, but designed humans. They were made and grown to meet certain criteria that the GoP thought could fit how Alpha was in the real world. Some values were randomized just in case (like say, height, vision, etc.). They have some of the information about Alpha along with its patterns of conduct, [but it was tried to be kept as a minimum for each individual so they don't stray as Beta did].
Being humans, they were given [a not very elaborate fake past (just real enough so they don't question their own existence), names and addresses].
Their purposes are:
a) Taking out Beta and retrieve as much information as possible of what it did after going rogue.
b) Resume the task that Beta seemingly left unfinished.
c) If possible, but not necessarily, stop the virus.
[They think they work for companies owned by the GoP and are part of the main staff on a secret project lead by the GoP itself. Although they don't know much about their actual bosses, they follow their orders without much questions (much like office drones nowadays). The orders of a part of the group, so far, are finding a certain enemy of the company, others do the actual hunting of said objective and another group does research on what's going on with the network.]

About Omega _{the net-baby}
As it was stated before, it was initially created by Alpha. It was intended to be a sentient, intelligent being capable of judgement, learning and interaction with its surroundings. Whether it grows with the same speed as that of a human being or faster/slower, is still not stated. Alpha acts as a sort of care-taker for it. How much does he do and what exactly is, also, still yet to be determined.

Things that I now realize don't make sense:
1.- After thinking about it, if Alpha was that awesome, maybe he would be known at least to a certain degree by the common public, not just a few people.
2.- How come a hacker (or group of hackers) has the ability to create a digital life-form? Security breaching and AI programming don't have much to do, do they?
3.- How is it that only Alpha could do it while there are numerous scientists, even today, trying to make AIs and can't pull off such a feat as the net-baby but the "awesome" dude(s) made it?

So far, from my part, this is what there is.

P.S: Someday, I may try to make a semi-comprehensive map of this garbage.

[Superflonic]

Commence incomprehensive list of information. I also should apologize for my lack of response.

I don't see much problem in overcomplicating stuff, as long as we don't mention them in-game ) Take Tsukihime for example, there are tons of info about Akasha and the lines of death and the connection with this and that other stuff and circuits and what-not; but the main important story, that of Shiki and the heroines, doesn't delve into those things unless necessary. While I'm interested in actually delving more into this narrated universe, I find it useless to show everything there is about it, just what is needed to understand, the rest could hinted at or completely ignored. I'm just explaining my point.

Well, I see your point, and I agree. Hinting things that are not completely explained in the story itself, but can be connected by the reader himself, gives the story a whole new dimension.

I wonder that myself too. So far I've thought about it like the virus is the first thing to show up, with people dying for unknown reasons and show erratic behavior. After explaining more about the virus we get to know about "Beta", after getting to know more about the guy/girl/bipedal thing(?), more info about "Alpha" and the "anon-series" appears. "Omega" would also make its appearance because of "Beta" and "Alpha's" relation, along with the "anon-series" and the "group of people".
What I mean about background story is, for example, the economical and political situation the world is going through at the time the story takes place, what kind of technology is considered common everyday things and what is still not achievable with it, how much society has changed compared to ours, past events that lead up to the present state of affairs of the characters and organizations etc., etc.

Okay, so the background is the state the world is in right now, and how the world changes when the main story takes place. When taken in consideration z2000's post, about the two 'groups' of people, the entrepreneurs (the people that want to change the world, in a good way) try to achieve the (currently) unachievable, just like scientists in the present. This could fit within Alpha's character, starting out as an ordinary (incredibly smart) scientist (or as a group of highly intelligent scientists), but eventually for some reason quit his normal work as a scientist.
Then, he starts to act as an underground computer hacker. He gathers information, possibly politically oriented? Maybe he knows something the government tries to cover up, but thinks that ordinary people wouldn't understand when he comes out right away. He leaks information, spreads it across the net, trying to get people to start puzzling, and jump to their own conclusions. It would be too risky for him to openly 'unmask' the government.
(Oh, and I say 'he', but the 'group-of-scientists' Alpha would work just the same.)

I'm skeptical in throwing all those skills into one single persons. How much of a genius a person has to be to be able to plan such intricate strategies and pulling them off stealthily and effectively? I'm tired of the almighty teen/young adult that somehow is able to do all that stuff and more without any real or believable explanation or hint as to why the hell that happens, not to mention that it would be easier to explain the disappearance of "Alpha" due to disagreement inside the group, thus it disbanded.
I agree the impact of "Alpha" being a single entity would be big, but, as I've said, there are numerous characters that are unbelievably good at what they do and the great explanation for it is "OMG THEY BE GENIUSUHS" (L and Light from Death Note). Yeah, everything is quite outside of real logic, with having a conscious virus (is this idea still going or dropped?) and the internet being somewhat of a living thing, but I'd like to try to keep things from depending too much on the suspension of disbelief. But, seeing things from another perspective, writing a single character as "Alpha" could be considerably easier than having one or two of the group appear and make an excuse to why the rest isn't there and who knows what else.
I think we'll have to discuss about this some more.

Haha, I completely agree now. I have watched Death Note, what, three times? I liked it, but it was unbelievably unreal. So yeah, a group would be better. But not too big, of course. They should be able to do whatever they are doing without attracting too much attention from the 'opponents'.
However, it wouldn’t make as much of a difference, since Beta is a single entity. He may be based on the information collected of Alpha, which are multiple people, but the body Beta is in can do just as much processing as Alpha could with multiple people.
About the virus; I don't know. The original idea of a virus holding the world hostage shouldn't be used, since it would make no sense. I think that if we were to use this, people would think of it as some lame plot device just to get some more action in the story. We have plenty of material to work with though, so action won't be a problem.

Hmm.... I dunno about it. Generally when people think about scientist, they get to thinking about natural scientists (physics, biology, chemistry, etc). Knowing about it, putting the label of cult followers to scientists is quite hard, since very few I know follow a dogmatic belief (like the net-baby cult) or have pipe-dreams of dominating something (the famous world domination oh so present in cartoons and such by evil scientists... ugh). That kind of thought process could be more akin to other people, I think, like politicians or CEOs of some enterprises or something like that. It's just that I think that "scientists" isn't right. What if we first discuss what this "group of people" really is? Because, even though temporary, I just don't feel comfortable naming them "scientists" so lightly...

However, if the scientists do this for a better, realistic future, calling them scientists isn't that odd. I (we) haven't decided yet on Alpha being a bad guy or a good guy. If he was a good guy, we could get him to try to change the world oppressed by the government, for example. (I’m kind of thinking of a pretty peaceful world, but one that is also kept from important information, like future governmental plans. It does sound a bit bland though, but we could pull it off).

Glad we agreed on something. I have a few ideas about how the "anon series", operate, but not much. Just that I didn't think of them of being some kind of trained special forces, more like individuals trying to do what they think is right (due to their programming), but the coordinated manhunt idea sounds cool. We should talk more about this..... how many times have I said that in this post already?

Well, I guess we agree on the fact that the anon series are dispatched to take out/bring back Beta, who is on the loose. Why he is on the loose, and how he escaped from the facility the ‘group of people’ put him in, I don’t know. All I know is that he starts disobeying them, and flees.

Right. The returning part would have to be discussed, because I didn't think about them of being conscious that they are hunting "Beta" or that they know that they are part of the anon-series.... but on another thought, the way I have it, could pose some serious troubles. Well, you call the shots here and I'll see what happens )

Well, you said that the ‘anon series’ could be in more than one kind of flavor. Like robots with the appearences of teenagers, elderly people, parents, who knows. The reason for this is because the ‘group of people’(NAME BLAARGH) still know nothing about who he, Alpha, really was. What gender he had, his age, even his hobbies, besides the obvious cracking. They don’t know, so they designed multiple anons, so at least one of them would think like Alpha.

I like the initial spread of info that then stops, that would hint that "Alpha" was still thinking things through about what it was doing and, eventually, changed its mind and hid at least part of the data.

Okay, I agree. Maybe he had to lay low for some reason.

As for "Omega" being conscious from the get-go, so far I picture it like "Alpha".... well, impregnating the internet with whatever it was that did the job, then it started to develop and grow, after some time, "Omega" started feeling its surroundings, toying with packs of data, learning stuff, feeding on... info? electricity? I dunno, something. Anyway, it started toying with the internet and, eventually, it merged with the net, thus more and more parts of the internet start behaving oddly... or something like that

This would explain why the entire net started acting weird.

From the second group, there are people who take it much too far. I guess this could be the 'fanatics' of Alpha would fall in.

I'm not sure I get what you try to say here. Before I try to jump to a conclusion, could you elaborate this a bit?

Would sure be helpful.

since I pretty much lost interest in it after ep 19 and haven't picked it up again for some years.

DUN DUN DUN DUNNNNNN
Oh well, you are right. Please read the first part of my post )

As for "Alpha's" age. I was toying with ages ranging from late 20's to early 40's when it was active.

Same as above )

zweiterversuch, I read your part, and it's pretty nice. Read what's down this line, it contains EVEN MORE INFO

Note: I'm not sure if I want to keep the conscious virus idea anymore... If there is no conscious virus, then there doesn't have to be a network. There are reasons for me not wanting a network of that kind:
a) We lose similarities.
b) The most important, it doesn't make much sense if there was a conscious "virus", why would "Beta" want a conscious virus roaming around? It could start acting on its own. Why would "Beta" take that risk? what would there be to gain? It makes little sense after thinking about it.

Well, that's true. However, maybe we shouldn't make the virus a conscious being. We could make it something like CI (if zwei agrees), an instrument used to gather even more information. That would fit into the personality of Beta (since he is basically a crippled version of Alpha, not knowing everything. Now that I think of it, it has similarities to Chobits. In that series, there is this whizkid (forgot his name), who recreated his sister as a robot, based on all of her former information).
So the virus is not exactly a virus anymore, but an instrument to gather information. However, this goes wrong at some point, and the 'virus' starts killing people. (They get sick from the infection, as a nasty side-effect? Maybe that is when Beta realizes that his 'life' is in danger, because when the GoP realize what he has done, even they will have to shut him down. Thus, he flees.)

III
Superflonic wants "Alpha" to be the one that created "Omega", I'm thinking about it. ANON didn't create the brain network baby.

Yes. As a tool to collect information more easily. As I stated right above, Beta is a 'crippled' version of Alpha, and maybe his 'virus' is a crippled version of Omega? Both act as a tool to gather information (about various subjects), but the Virus is way more intrusive, and wouldn't necessarily be something Alpha would've created.

IV
I want "Alpha" to be more than one person, I dunno if Superflonic agrees. I don't know about your ANON.

See above ) (Way, WAY above)

V
"Beta" is some sort of a digital copy of "Alpha", it was given the patterns, information known about it and some mission to follow (we don't know what mission it is... yet). Eventually it started acting on its own and disobeyed the "group of people", the ones who created it.

The "anon series" are there to stop "Beta" and continue where it left off.

[/quote][/quote]

Well, Beta's been created to shed more light on Alpha. He was also created to solve problems surrounding Omega (is Omega known at that moment? I haven't thought about that. Maybe Beta tells the GoP about Omega, since he knows about it, because he was programmed to be like Alpha). Beta flees (read above) and the "Anon series" is created.

Also, I think you have Omega all wrong, abscess. Omega was the living internet, and the "net baby" is. well.. The "net baby".

[Superflonic]

*tumbleweed*

*woosh*

[abscess]

OhmyGOD I LOVE tumbleweeds (well not that much)!! They have this weirdy thing going on. Do you know that they appear to have been imported to the American continent from Russia? Interesting, huh?

Anyway, I'm kinda short on time. Finals are coming and there's this project I haven't put the necessary attention and I've been falling behind from the rest of the group. I won't answer your post properly yet. But be sure I'll do it either in Friday or Saturday. Else Next Tuesday.

Have you read the post where I try to give a quick rundown of the few concepts? Could you check some of the ideas that haven't been discussed properly, if you have the time? Thanks. Anyway, sorry for the lack of updates. Laters.

[Superflonic]

Haha, if it's finals, I understand )

I'll check them later, probably this weekend.

[abscess]

Here it is, it's tuesday in the very early morning. My long delayed next wall of text is here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to sleep, it's around 3AM and have class in 5 hours, with luck I'll sleep 3 hours or so....

Okay, so the background is the state the world is in right now, and how the world changes when the main story takes place. When taken in consideration z2000's post, about the two 'groups' of people, the entrepreneurs (the people that want to change the world, in a good way) try to achieve the (currently) unachievable, just like scientists in the present. This could fit within Alpha's character, starting out as an ordinary (incredibly smart) scientist (or as a group of highly intelligent scientists), but eventually for some reason quit his normal work as a scientist.
Then, he starts to act as an underground computer hacker. He gathers information, possibly politically oriented? Maybe he knows something the government tries to cover up, but thinks that ordinary people wouldn't understand when he comes out right away. He leaks information, spreads it across the net, trying to get people to start puzzling, and jump to their own conclusions. It would be too risky for him to openly 'unmask' the government.

Well yeah, Alpha could fit more or less in the group of those who want to help society by how it's defined right now. As for the spreading information in counted drops, I don't agree with it. While saying "hey, the government wants to force us all to wear pink panties as a form of mental control" is quite a hard thing to believe even if it is true, I think that, at first, Alpha would spread the information as raw as it can get to get people to actually see the shit that is actually happening. Whether people are actually prepared to understand the information and do something about it, it would be up to them.
Have you heard about people that believe that, one of the main reasons why incredibly inept and corrupt governments are allowed to perpetuate themselves, is because of the lack of real commitment people from that country show towards enforcing their duty of demanding results to the government? I want Alpha to be like them. A phylosophy a little like this: "if people, after having all this information, still ignore it; it's their fault they are still screwed."

(Oh, and I say 'he', but the 'group-of-scientists' Alpha would work just the same.)

I think you said this before (?), but I still find it odd

Haha, I completely agree now. I have watched Death Note, what, three times? I liked it, but it was unbelievably unreal. So yeah, a group would be better. But not too big, of course. They should be able to do whatever they are doing without attracting too much attention from the 'opponents'.

I was thinking about a group of 5 persons, more or less. There is a chance for a group of 5 people to be very close to act as a unit and still have discrepancies in some things, I guess.

However, it wouldn’t make as much of a difference, since Beta is a single entity. He may be based on the information collected of Alpha, which are multiple people, but the body Beta is in can do just as much processing as Alpha could with multiple people.
About the virus; I don't know. The original idea of a virus holding the world hostage shouldn't be used, since it would make no sense. I think that if we were to use this, people would think of it as some lame plot device just to get some more action in the story. We have plenty of material to work with though, so action won't be a problem.

Beta, being a machine, would more likely think faster than a lot of people put together. If we consider that it may have more than one processor and exchange information between them, it could emulate almost any number of people interacting with each other much faster than its human counterparts (think Melty Blood's Sion with her multi-processing thingy but on crack ) ). But this is me digressing! Going back on topic, I've been thinking that one of the reasons why Beta may have gone out of control is because it tried to emulate a number of people being only one machine, finding contradictions on some of Alpha's actions, it started to develop away from what it was originally intended to do. Whether it develops into something with a logical plan or is merely a short-circuited uber-computer doing stuff that it thinks is logical but it isn't in reality, I dunno yet; maybe it can be an open interpretation to the reader?
As for action, yeah I agree. You can pack only a number of explosions and not make the spectators go ".... yeah, right..." in disbelief, but I still think it's a little too early to kill that idea. Probably it wouldn't be used as it is, but after getting some work on it, who knows?

However, if the scientists do this for a better, realistic future, calling them scientists isn't that odd. I (we) haven't decided yet on Alpha being a bad guy or a good guy. If he was a good guy, we could get him to try to change the world oppressed by the government, for example. (I’m kind of thinking of a pretty peaceful world, but one that is also kept from important information, like future governmental plans (sadly). It does sound a bit bland though, but we could pull it off).

Scientists, more usual than not, are merely tools in grander schemes by others. Alpha could be a group of scientists that grew tired about the current situation and decided to take matters in its own hands and try to fix it as it thought was right, while the GoP could be the same group that was using Alpha before for who knows what reason.
As for the oppressing government idea that does a fine job of covering things up, I like the idea, even though it has been used so many times. I think it still applies to the current situation we are currently living (well, not in my country exactly, but that's another story). IIRC, something like that is one of the themes behind books like Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury) and 1984 (George Orwell, haven't read this one yet); those are good books, if you haven't read them yet, I suggest you give them a try.

Well, I guess we agree on the fact that the anon series are dispatched to take out/bring back Beta, who is on the loose. Why he is on the loose, and how he escaped from the facility the ‘group of people’ put him in, I don’t know. All I know is that he starts disobeying them, and flees.

In one of the previous posts (I thik the last long one) I posted some ideas on how the Alpha-Series (I changed the name before so it goes with the rest). There are also an idea about one of the reasons why Beta started disobeying the GoP (in case you haven't read above).

Well, you said that the ‘anon series’ could be in more than one kind of flavor. Like robots with the appearences of teenagers, elderly people, parents, who knows. The reason for this is because the ‘group of people’(NAME BLAARGH) still know nothing about who he, Alpha, really was. What gender he had, his age, even his hobbies, besides the obvious cracking. They don’t know, so they designed multiple anons, so at least one of them would think like Alpha.

Yeah, the Alpha-Series (... I liked the other name better but....) would come in "more than one flavor," but never wanted them to be robots (much less loli robots >_<). As for one of them thinking like Alpha (or one of the Alpha group), yeah, I also said that. I'll suppose you already check the other post. So far I think that the Alpha-Series could be separated in three sub groups, the ones that search for Beta (in the net and in person, maybe), the ones that phisically hunt Beta and the ones that investigate what's going on with the net (maybe with some interconnection between the ones that investigate the net and the ones that search for Beta).
And yes.... "BLAARGH" at the name "group of people." That's why I changed it to GoP, shorter and sounds a little less stupid.

From the second group, there are people who take it much too far. I guess this could be the 'fanatics' of Alpha would fall in.

I'm not sure I get what you try to say here. Before I try to jump to a conclusion, could you elaborate this a bit?

Would sure be helpful.

Indeed. Because, as it is (supposing I understood it properly), I don't completely like it.

since I pretty much lost interest in it after [Death Note's] ep 19 and haven't picked it up again for some years.

DUN DUN DUN DUNNNNNN
Oh well, you are right. Please read the first part of my post )

It's being broadcast in animax in a weekly basis, so I may give it a chance this time, since I'm not actievely watching it. I'll have to see if I once again feel that something that made quit watching it the first time.

Well, that's true. However, maybe we shouldn't make the virus a conscious being. We could make it something like CI (if zwei agrees), an instrument used to gather even more information. That would fit into the personality of Beta (since he is basically a crippled version of Alpha, not knowing everything. Now that I think of it, it has similarities to Chobits. In that series, there is this whizkid (forgot his name), who recreated his sister as a robot, based on all of her former information).

If we use zwei's CI idea, then there would be a network, and I'm not comfortable with that idea right now. You are right, though, it could be useful, since we still don't have a reason for the virus to exist, just that we want to kill people. We still would need an excuse for it to kill people, though. Thinking about it, for someone who tries to stay low, killing people is doing the exact opposite. But I like the idea of people dropping dead at random, so I don't want to drop that part!
As for Chobits, I didn't watch it entirely. Watched it until ep. 5 or so, when the guy had to... "reset" her for some reason I can't remember. I can't even remember why I didn't finish it....

So the virus is not exactly a virus anymore, but an instrument to gather information. However, this goes wrong at some point, and the 'virus' starts killing people. (They get sick from the infection, as a nasty side-effect? Maybe that is when Beta realizes that his 'life' is in danger, because when the GoP realize what he has done, even they will have to shut him down. Thus, he flees.)

That would seem that Beta screwed up somewhere and was afraid of the repercussions it would carry. I have the idea that what Beta wanted was to kill people, but I still don't have an excuse or reason for it; we should discuss this part. As for the side-effects of getting inffected, besides being doomed, dunno.

Yes. As a tool to collect information more easily. As I stated right above, Beta is a 'crippled' version of Alpha, and maybe his 'virus' is a crippled version of Omega? Both act as a tool to gather information (about various subjects), but the Virus is way more intrusive, and wouldn't necessarily be something Alpha would've created.

Saing Beta is a crippled version of Alpa is not exactly the way I'd word things, but it's a way of saying it, I guess. But, saying the virus is a cirppled version of Omega, I'm not convinced in that one. The virus, although it is Beta's creation, serves a different purpose than Omega. I'm starting to wonder if we understand Omega to be the same thing or we have different ideas of what it is.

[quot="Superflonic"e]Well, Beta's been created to shed more light on Alpha. He was also created to solve problems surrounding Omega (is Omega known at that moment? I haven't thought about that. Maybe Beta tells the GoP about Omega, since he knows about it, because he was programmed to be like Alpha). Beta flees (read above) and the "Anon series" is created.[/quote] Yeah, Beta was created to shed more light on Alpha, and, in a way, study Omega. It is not known what Omega is or about its existence, but it's thought that there is something in the internet that makes it act strange. Think about when you are in a dark park and there's a sound coming from the shrubbery, it could be a toad, a cat or a rapist that is stalking you , you know That there's something there because of the sound, but you don't know what is it, the same applies to the GoP and Omega when they created Beta; Beta is the stick with which you poke the shrubbery to make sure it's not a rapist that wants to tap you.
About the part that Beta flees and the Alpha-Series are created to chase it, yes, that's what I wanted to say.

Also, I think you have Omega all wrong, abscess. Omega was the living internet, and the "net baby" is. well.. The "net baby".

Not quite. I always thought about Omega as the net-baby. Then, I don't know what is it that you understand Omega to be. This is another topic of discussion.

P.S: I'll check if there are typos and shit like that later. Sorry if it's a little hard to understand right now. Will try to edit later.

[Superflonic]

Here it is, it's tuesday in the very early morning. My long delayed next wall of text is here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to sleep, it's around 3AM and have class in 5 hours, with luck I'll sleep 3 hours or so....

Well yeah, Alpha could fit more or less in the group of those who want to help society by how it's defined right now. As for the spreading information in counted drops, I don't agree with it. While saying "hey, the government wants to force us all to wear pink panties as a form of mental control" is quite a hard thing to believe even if it is true, I think that, at first, Alpha would spread the information as raw as it can get to get people to actually see the shit that is actually happening. Whether people are actually prepared to understand the information and do something about it, it would be up to them.
Have you heard about people that believe that, one of the main reasons why incredibly inept and corrupt governments are allowed to perpetuate themselves, is because of the lack of real commitment people from that country show towards enforcing their duty of demanding results to the government? I want Alpha to be like them. A phylosophy a little like this: "if people, after having all this information, still ignore it; it's their fault they are still screwed."

But... pink panties
Anyway, reading my own written part, about leaking information, spread it across the net etcetera, sounds a bit dull. What you say, about dropping raw information, so not really information, but solid proof of certain happenings (which haven't been decided yet), sounds better. Then again, if we use this idea, we need to know what exactly is going on at that time, that is not public knowledge, but is of public concern.
And the philosophy, I don't really like it. Alpha being a few people working together out of a moral aspect is okay, but following a philosophy doesn't cut it.

I think you said this before (?), but I still find it odd

Could you elaborate?

I was thinking about a group of 5 persons, more or less. There is a chance for a group of 5 people to be very close to act as a unit and still have discrepancies in some things, I guess.

Hmm. Let's think about that. There are 5 main "sciences". Chemistry, Biology, Maths, Sociology and Physics. Pretty much everything can be derived from those 5 kinds of science. If each character in the Alpha group would 'master' one of these sciences, they could work together and still cover almost everything as a group of five people.

Sounds good to me.

Beta, being a machine, would more likely think faster than a lot of people put together. If we consider that it may have more than one processor and exchange information between them, it could emulate almost any number of people interacting with each other much faster than its human counterparts (think Melty Blood's Sion with her multi-processing thingy but on crack ) ). But this is me digressing! Going back on topic, I've been thinking that one of the reasons why Beta may have gone out of control is because it tried to emulate a number of people being only one machine, finding contradictions on some of Alpha's actions, it started to develop away from what it was originally intended to do. Whether it develops into something with a logical plan or is merely a short-circuited uber-computer doing stuff that it thinks is logical but it isn't in reality, I dunno yet; maybe it can be an open interpretation to the reader?
As for action, yeah I agree. You can pack only a number of explosions and not make the spectators go ".... yeah, right..." in disbelief, but I still think it's a little too early to kill that idea. Probably it wouldn't be used as it is, but after getting some work on it, who knows?

Ha, I think we still understand eachother, Sion's brain-threading (hyper-threading, lulz)
I don't really understand what you mean with Beta going out of control because he tried emulating a number of people being only one machine. Do you mean, a single machine emulating monologues from different aspects/people, though he is a single machine?
As for short-circuiting, I don't think that could happen, physically. Beta has been designed with the utmost care, so unless he was damaged, it wouldn't happen. However, if he acts like crazy because he couldn't figure things out anymore (an infinite loop perhaps? No possible outcome?), that would be plausible.

Scientists, more usual than not, are merely tools in grander schemes by others. Alpha could be a group of scientists that grew tired about the current situation and decided to take matters in its own hands and try to fix it as it thought was right, while the GoP could be the same group that was using Alpha before for who knows what reason.
As for the oppressing government idea that does a fine job of covering things up, I like the idea, even though it has been used so many times. I think it still applies to the current situation we are currently living (well, not in my country exactly, but that's another story). IIRC, something like that is one of the themes behind books like Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury) and 1984 (George Orwell, haven't read this one yet); those are good books, if you haven't read them yet, I suggest you give them a try.

I know, I should really read 1984. I've heard so much about it.
So, I can't really react on this subject. We should get back at this later.

Yeah, the Alpha-Series (... I liked the other name better but....) would come in "more than one flavor," but never wanted them to be robots (much less loli robots >_<). As for one of them thinking like Alpha (or one of the Alpha group), yeah, I also said that. I'll suppose you already check the other post. So far I think that the Alpha-Series could be separated in three sub groups, the ones that search for Beta (in the net and in person, maybe), the ones that phisically hunt Beta and the ones that investigate what's going on with the net (maybe with some interconnection between the ones that investigate the net and the ones that search for Beta).
And yes.... "BLAARGH" at the name "group of people." That's why I changed it to GoP, shorter and sounds a little less stupid.

Oh, if you meant anon-series, it's okay if you want to use that name instead.
As for super-loli anon-series, that sounds AWESOME.
...Nah, let's not
Anyway, how do you want to realize the idea of the anon-series, if you don't want them to be robots?
And multiple grades of anon-series, like researchers, hunters etc, I don't really like that.
In my version, they are robotic beings, not capable of super-human abilities, but at least they should be able to multi-task, like doing ánd research ánd hunting.

If we use zwei's CI idea, then there would be a network, and I'm not comfortable with that idea right now. You are right, though, it could be useful, since we still don't have a reason for the virus to exist, just that we want to kill people. We still would need an excuse for it to kill people, though. Thinking about it, for someone who tries to stay low, killing people is doing the exact opposite. But I like the idea of people dropping dead at random, so I don't want to drop that part!
As for Chobits, I didn't watch it entirely. Watched it until ep. 5 or so, when the guy had to... "reset" her for some reason I can't remember. I can't even remember why I didn't finish it....

Well, I am not completely sure about the network idea either. People getting linked to eachother without even knowing it doesn't sound real.
However, if we want the virus to kill, and use the networking idea, we could make it so, that the virus was created to equally distribute suffering to everyone infected. That sounds kind of bad though, I need to thinkg about it.

That would seem that Beta screwed up somewhere and was afraid of the repercussions it would carry. I have the idea that what Beta wanted was to kill people, but I still don't have an excuse or reason for it; we should discuss this part. As for the side-effects of getting inffected, besides being doomed, dunno.

Again, I have no idea. I should think about this part too. We'll have to get back on it.

Saing Beta is a crippled version of Alpa is not exactly the way I'd word things, but it's a way of saying it, I guess. But, saying the virus is a cirppled version of Omega, I'm not convinced in that one. The virus, although it is Beta's creation, serves a different purpose than Omega. I'm starting to wonder if we understand Omega to be the same thing or we have different ideas of what it is.

Heh, it's been some time since I wrote that message, so I'll try to straighten up whatever I was thinking later.

Yeah, Beta was created to shed more light on Alpha, and, in a way, study Omega. It is not known what Omega is or about its existence, but it's thought that there is something in the internet that makes it act strange. Think about when you are in a dark park and there's a sound coming from the shrubbery, it could be a toad, a cat or a rapist that is stalking you , you know That there's something there because of the sound, but you don't know what is it, the same applies to the GoP and Omega when they created Beta; Beta is the stick with which you poke the shrubbery to make sure it's not a rapist that wants to tap you.
About the part that Beta flees and the Alpha-Series are created to chase it, yes, that's what I wanted to say.

You said it perfectly.

Not quite. I always thought about Omega as the net-baby. Then, I don't know what is it that you understand Omega to be. This is another topic of discussion.

[/quote]
As I said, I really need to dig up what I was thinking then )

[abscess]

Well, I've waited for an answer for some time, since you left some stuff unanswered in your last post. So, is it safe to say that this project died before it even began?

[RinTohsaka]

Well, I've waited for an answer for some time, since you left some stuff unanswered in your last post. So, is it safe to say that this project died before it even began?

Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!This cannot be!!!

I just found this thread today,and was raring to join the project and then....this!?

Well...if this project is revived I'd really really like to help (I have some experience with Ren'Py and I'd like to help with fleshing out the story once a general outline has been decided upon (I didn't read all the posts so I don't know if this has already been done ) ). )

[abscess]

Well, it's not dead dead, but it seems that Superflonic either lost interest or just can't show up for one reason or another. I'm interested in working on this stuff, but he put some insight on it so I at least would like to have his approval. That and I have no idea on when would I get myself to work on this project, either time or lazyness takes me away from it.

If you wish to know what this stuff is about, I summarized on this page the concepts that were being discussed, just search for this line and you'll find it: Welcome to the (not very comprehensive) incomplete Bible of temporarily named concepts for the unnamed project. Enjoy the fruits of our procrastination of academic activities

If you want to join (although there's no real team to join to), you can start discussing or asking or whatever it is you want right away. So far we were discussing the story, background and such, but never went to the characters (I'd like to leave them for later, but that's just me) or anything else.

Edit:
P.S: Bear in mind that this is not a VN based on the nasuverse but something new. We don't know why was this moved to the Fan Ficion forum.... It originally was in the General.

[RinTohsaka]

I've heard google knows everything about me...lol....but that might actually lead to a (really stupid ?) idea.

A case in point

The "oppressive government (OG) " (I think this was mentioned somewhere...?) collects information about everyone and ...well...tries to learn everything about everyone.The GoP are the organisation tasked with creating and maintaining the information collection system.The Alpha are breakaways from the GoP.Knowing the mechanisms of the GoP,they try to infuse some intelligence into the net(or whatever) to teach it a voluntary obfuscation practice.
The GoP discover them and over time ,take them down one by one.In an effort to have their project go on they create the "net baby" (improvised version of the obfuscation program that can actually learn and grow ) before they die out----only one member survives , the PC(because s/he defected to the GoP) out of fear.The PC is given a new team to create Beta to take down Alpha's net baby.....no wait ,this is too frail.

I'll edit this post later after thinking this over.

[Superflonic]

Wooooooo back from vacation
That's why it took so long, although before it I didn't really spend much time on the story.

Long story short, I sure hope this project isn't dead. To me, it isn't. However, reflecting back on the time we actively spent time on this, I think we had too much 'what ifs' (most of them were mine, haha). It could be a good idea if one of us would start writing a bit, and 'reviewing' it. And so forth...

[abscess]

Good thing you undied Superflonic.
As for us discussing "what ifs" I think it's a good idea to get at least a decent feel of the background and a little of the flow of the story early before striking the notepad (or whatever you use for writing).

As for RinTohsaka. I don't remember ever mentioning too much about an oppressive government. Let's see what you have to say and then discuss about it.