{"id":11319,"date":"2024-12-13T12:11:35","date_gmt":"2024-12-13T20:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=11319"},"modified":"2024-12-13T12:52:51","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T20:52:51","slug":"the-pilot-enters-the-core","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=11319","title":{"rendered":"“The Pilot Enters the Core."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\n\n\n

The Core enters the pilot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n Ventilators boot up, hydraulics whisper reassurance, control surfaces flicker to life. Straps and webbing cinch tight, securing him to the command chair. Haptic controllers flex around his fingers; awakening subsystems chirp in readiness. The headrest jack snaps into his cervical socket. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n It’s as though he’s been holding his breath for days, and can only now let it out. His gut unclenches; the tightness in his chest evaporates.\u2006 \u2006 The tension accumulating like radioactive waste just\u2014 melts away. All the data embodied in this colossal prosthesis. All the telemetry flowing from a thousand sensors. The scales falling from his eyes, the fog lifting from his brain. A whole universe, stretching beyond the pitiful limits of flesh and blood: he mainlines it all. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n He’s born again.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n Shrieker shifts around him, responsive to his slightest movement. He leans forward and the great machine trembles as though straining at an invisible leash. He’s not just a pilot any more. Not just an individual: not a he but a they<\/em>, a marvelous and grotesque fusion of meat and mech. A centaur.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n Hanger doors rumble open onto the horizon. Shrieker steps forward. The ground trembles. The pilot looks down at Walter\u2014tiny, insignificant Walter\u2014already halfway to the foreman’s office in pursuit of some next priority that probably seems very important to him. I could kill you.<\/em> It’s a distant thought, abstract and dispassionate. One step and I could squash you like a bug.<\/em> \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n But what would be the point? Why waste even a thought on something so inconsequential when there’s a whole world out there waiting to be fought?\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shrieker emerges under an endless low-slung sky sick with electricity. Pneumatics hiss like rearing vipers as she rises to cruising height. Embodied, enhanced, alive<\/em>, the colossus and the incandescent being in its heart head out across the desert.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The man and the mainline.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\n SPOILERS FOLLOW\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can see it all, can\u2019t you? Some of you have<\/em> seen it (well, except for the bit about Walter, who in the final cut is reduced to a few disembodied words in an earpiece) because the Blurmians translated those words into visuals so perfectly it took my breath away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

True, we never got to see Shrieker\u2019s real name in <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\n stenciled block letters disfiguring the starboard flank: CHICXULUB. An ancient word from a forgotten world. Something about an asteroid. Walter sounded it out for him once\u2014tsheek-shoy-lub<\/em>\u2014but it sounds even worse than it looks when the pilot tries to say it.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shrieker. Close enough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n In fact, in the episode you actually do <\/em>catch a glimpse of the name stenciled onto the carapace, and it\u2019s just\u2014disappointingly\u2014Shrieker<\/em>. Too bad.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n In the grander sense, though, who cares? Everything we did see was beautiful.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Shrieker. The solo album cover.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The actual story? Changed significantly, as I mentioned last post. And largely, as I also mentioned, for the better. When I was brought on board there was all this canon<\/em>: a spice-like McGuffin called \u201ccoral\u201d, which acted as a networked intelligence and plastic explosive and (I kid you not) food source. The game Fires of Rubicon<\/em> takes place on a planet ravaged by a catastrophe that burned all the coral off its face (along with about 95% of its biosphere); it begins fifty years later, when the Coral seems to be making a comeback and there\u2019s a gold rush booting up because He Who Controls The Coral Controls<\/em>\u2014 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n You get the idea.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protagonist is called Raven. His handler is Walter, and he\u2019s a slippery cryptic sonofabitch who keeps his agenda very close to his chest. The voice in Raven\u2019s head is Ayre, and she appears to be a some kind of sentient iteration of Coral that interfaces with Raven\u2019s implants. I was originally retained to tell a story about these characters, but one that wouldn\u2019t give away any major plot or character elements of the actual game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Keanu has never been cooler. Literally.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But mid-course, someone up the line decided that we couldn\u2019t call the pilot \u201cRaven\u201d and we couldn\u2019t call the coral \u201ccoral\u201d, because even those terms constituted spoilers. Even the term \u201cRubicon\u201d was expunged. The story originally played out in\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2026the Glasslands now, cruising the radioactive slag at a cool three hundred kph. Far-off peaks jut over the horizon like tiny broken teeth. Obscene sculptures punctuate the landscape in the nearer distance, the half-melted corpses of old machinery from old wars. Some probably date back to the Calamity itself.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u2026\u201cThe Calamity\u201d being, of course, the immolation of the Rubicon system when the Coral went supercritical fifty years earlier. The desert and slag are gone now, some winter world swapped in in their stead. (Glad to see that plenty of dead machinery made the cut, though.) Keanu\u2019s back tattoo notwithstanding, this dude isn\u2019t Raven. Cool sexy vibe notwithstanding, the voice in his head need not be Ayre. There\u2019s nothing in the final cut to even distinguish the world as Rubicon. So many details have been stripped away that this particular episode might fit almost anywhere in the Armored Core franchise\u2014which was apparently the point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n Since the payoff of my story centered around the corpopolitics of coral on Rubicon, these changes left certain elements dead in the water. (The very title\u2014\u201cAsset Management\u201d\u2014derives from the way Walter treated Raven; with Walter virtually eliminated from the story, it dangles like a vestigial appendix.) But if some elements were killed, others were liberated. Without the need to bend the narrative to all that arcane filigreed lore, the character at the center of it all\u2014a wasted addict in a codependent relationship with a suite of drugs, a suit of armor, and a voice in his head\u2014could become a narrative focus rather than a vehicle. We could stop talking about magic tech and start talking about the Very Soul of the Machine. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n That\u2019s what JT Petty did. That\u2019s what you see on the screen.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, when all is said and done, I was delighted by how much of my story survived the refit. Dialog especially: a surprising amount made it through unscathed, and even the scathed material kept the right vibe. Ditto for the way JT translated the story\u2019s interior thoughts into spoken words when called for. No complaints. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
A mech pilot walks into a bar…<\/figcaptionstyle=\"font-size:80%;\"><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The episode is the subject of a fair bit of back-and-forth over on Reddit. From what I can tell there seem to be two factions: one focuses on canonical minutiae, tries to fit various clues and Easter eggs together to figure out what generation of augments the protagonist is carrying, or precisely where in the AC universe this story fits (kinda like the way certain Tolkien fans kept trying to map Middle Earth onto locations IRL). And there\u2019s a lot for them to dig through; from the sound of it, \u201cAsset Management\u201d is jam-packed with call-outs and franchise references. Hell, even the cameo of an unkillable cockroach\u2014 something I\u2019d just assumed was a brilliant little metaphor for the pilot himself\u2014 was apparently a call-out to some obscure bit of AC lore. But all those in-jokes were JT\u2019s doing. I\u2019ve never played Armored Core; I knew nothing about it before Blur handed me a very comprehensive deck of docs on the lore. Whatever arcana I inserted was based on Fires of Rubicon, and was pretty much stripped out. The details the fans are poring over is 100% JT\u2014 and judging by how granular they\u2019re getting in their analyses, he did a kick-ass job at that. So I can see why so many hardcore fans are trying to fit all those pieces together, perhaps at the expense of the story itself. One negative review (one of the few, I\u2019m relieved to say; the consensus is that \u201cAsset Management\u201d is one of the better episodes of the season) exemplifies this perfectly. IGN complained<\/a> that the story focused more on the pilot than \u201cthe granular mech customization that is the cornerstone of the series\u201d. Apparently they regarded this as a bad thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Highly significant, apparently.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\n The other Reddit faction is more interested in \u201cAsset Management\u201d as a self-contained story, without worrying too much about canonical consistency. They\u2019ve generally been quite kind given that this story, these themes, were composed by someone who has never the played the game. The up side is that the story will hopefully be accessible to others who have never played the game. The eggs and references will go right over their heads; hopefully the thematic tension between conformity and individuality will land.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n Also I should mention that I really enjoyed Reeves\u2019 performance. I see a lot of Johnny Silverhand references out there, and fair enough\u2014but speaking as someone who\u2019s only just gotten around to playing Cyberpunk 2077 (I waited until they got the bugs out) I gotta say I prefer his performance here. Seems more natural, somehow. Grungier. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Getting a bit of a Michelangelo vibe here. Albeit with the whole Divine element toned down somewhat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\n Is there anything I didn\u2019t <\/em>like? In hindsight, there were fridge-logic issues with the ending. I loved the twist JT introduced\u2014his ending packed way more of a punch than mine\u2014but looking back you have to wonder why the other mech pilots didn\u2019t just radio their intentions before everything went to shit. Or at least use those cool energy weapons to carve We Come In Peace<\/em> into the snow. I can think of a few reasons why they wouldn\u2019t do that just off the top of my head; a line of dialog, a single camera shot could have stitched that seam.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Glorious chaos.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Also, maybe, the mech battle itself. Don\u2019t get me wrong: the mech battle as rendered was fucking spectacular. I\u2019d been going for a kind of Enemy-Below\/Balance-of-Terror vibe, though, something more tactical than button-mash. Much of the encounter I wrote was a game of cat-and-mouse in a derelict industrial wasteland full of giant storage tanks and pipes and the encrusted fifty-meter hulks of dead machinery. Shrieker got walloped right out of the gate and never fully recovered: barely held its own against two and suddenly there were four more coming out of nowhere. The voice in his head tells the pilot to drop and Shrieker drops<\/em>, without the pilot even knowing why until \u201cA beam of energy shatters the air just overhead, strips electrons from nuclei, draws a line of sun through the Rubicon atmosphere\u201d. The voice rattles off bearings and he shoots blindly, not knowing what at. Keanu takes a lot more on faith in the short story. You can see some tactical maneuvering if you slow the video right down and step through critical moments frame-by-frame, but viewed in realtime it’s gorgeous cinematic chaos. It would have worked spectacularly if I hadn\u2019t been expecting gambits and countergambits, moves and knight sacrifices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n It still worked plenty well enough, mind. And since the rest of you never read the story, I\u2019m guessing it works even better for you.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n Admittedly, the whole premise of giant mechs punching each other in the face is fundamentally silly\u2014 we\u2019re talking about a game here, not a peer-reviewed scenario for plausible off-world combat\u2014so nitpicking over the implementation of specific tactics is probably missing the point. That\u2019s completely okay. Vampires are silly too, but you can still do interesting stuff with them thematically.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n Anyway, that was it: my first brush with the cinematic arts. It was a blast working on it; it was a blast working with them<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n I hope you dig the end result as much as I.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Core enters the pilot. Ventilators boot up, hydraulics whisper reassurance, control surfaces flicker to life. Straps and webbing cinch tight, securing him to the command chair. Haptic controllers flex around his fingers; awakening subsystems chirp in readiness. The headrest jack snaps into his cervical socket. It’s as though he’s been holding his breath for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ink-on-art","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11319"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11358,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319\/revisions\/11358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}