oo3 | Video

[hybridification]

Hey guys!

[Comes Rhys' familiar voice, annoying as ever as the camera flips on. He's sitting in his disheveled bedroom, clearly a little sleep deprived, but accomplished and seemingly triumphant all the same.]

I wanted to wait until I was sure that there's nothing bad going on before releasing my next game. Are you guys ready for it? It's Mrs. Pac-Man, and it took me forever because- well, funny story actually, it's really easy to code the ghosts to take the shortest route to get to you and kill you, but it's kind of harder to program in other difficulty levels where it's not super tough, and so I was looking into it and developed this nifty algorithm for the easy and medium difficulties, and-

[...and he's getting ahead of himself and saying shit that nobody cares about. At least everyone totally has time to listen because nothing bad is going on!]

-well, anyway, it's a really cool game about a badass lady sphere. You can all download and play it, but uh, I'm gonna need at least five of you to give it a shot.

Have at it!

[File Attachment: rhy5_1s_4w3s0m3]

Comments

[murderpotato]

[Gren sits down near him, so that he can get a look at whatever it is that Rhys has got on the little screen. So far, not so good on the 'shit Gren understands' front; the screen just looks like it has a whole bunch of weirdly-formatted almost-sentences on it. ]

[The way Rhys shows him this stuff makes him think that he's supposed to understand it, at least a little, and the fact that he doesn't... well, he knows that Rhys is smart. He might be kind of dumb about some things, but he's gone to school and learned things and knows how to make things work. That's why he was some fancy corporate man and all Gren's ever done is pick up heavy things and load them onto trucks or boats. That's really all he's good for, and it's probably nice that Rhys is even bothering to explain something to him.]

Shouldn't there be pictures or some shit?

[There'a just a little hesitance when he asks; it's probably a stupid thing to ask.]

[hybridification]

Hm?

[Okay, it is a little stupid, but Rhys doesn't expect Gren to know much about computers at all, given that he's from the stone age or something. So he shakes his head and clicks a few buttons to back out, before opening the image files to show Gren the static pictures.]

Those are in a separate folder. The code I just showed you layers all these images together and then makes them interact. Kind of like puppet strings.

[murderpotato]

Okay.

[He's just going to believe what Rhys says. If Rhys says that the code is like puppet strings, than the code is like puppet strings. It's not like Gren knows enough to contradict him on it.]

[But he kind of gets it, he thinks. The code tells everything what to do, but it doesn't have everything within it. It gets things when it needs it, like the pictures or whatever.]

What's the thing you were excited about figuring out last time? Some of Hope's shit?

[The OS, he means, even if he doesn't remember the words or know really what 'OS' even stands for.]

[hybridification]

Oh, yeah-

[Honestly, nobody is ever really interested in him or what he comes up with, and Rhys is more than happy to show Gren what he knows. It's gratifying, in a way, to be able to show someone his work- the real nitty gritty of it, not just the finished product.]

What Hope used to make these phones talk to one another and read these files- I had to figure out how it worked so I could write my code to match it.

[murderpotato]

Oh.

[That makes more sense to him-- it's like a language, and Rhys had to figure that out so he could write his stuff in the same language that Hope's stuff is in. Gren can understand that, he's actually... kind of okay with languages? He's had to learn a bunch of them, anyway, when he went from being an asshole monster in the forest to living with people.]

[It's hard, too. And computers seem like they're hard, so learning computer languages probably isn't easy either. Figuring it out by himself is actually pretty impressive.]

I guess that'd take a lotta work.

[beat]

You put all that fuckin' work into just figurin' out how to play Pong?

[hybridification]

Well... I mean.

[He flushes a little, self conscious, and pulls his phone back with a slight shrug.]

It's not like I have much else to do here.

[murderpotato]

Fuckin' fair enough.

[After all, what does Gren do around here? Mostly he just drinks and keeps their swag pad stocked with food and supplies and acts like Rhys' security blanket against the people who want to kill him. He doesn't have a whole lot of room to judge.]

I guess people like this shit, anyway, when they ain't gettin' eaten by something.

[Gren hadn't ever gotten the first one; he'd never seen the point of playing fake table tennis with himself.]

[hybridification]

That's what I thought!

[Honestly. Rhys sighs, frowning a little, before pocketing the phone.]

But then everyone started yelling at me. Can't win 'em all.

[murderpotato]

That's probably because people are gettin' fuckin' eaten by shit.

[Didn't they have this discussion once before? This conversation is giving Gren some deja-vu.]

Zombies put people in a pretty shit mood in general.

[hybridification]

I guess that's true.

[He sighs.]

It's not like I can build a giant robot that can kill all the zombies. At least, not with the equipment here.

[murderpotato]

...So, what, if you weren't here you could build a fuckin' zombie-killing robot?

[Because that's both a.) useful and b.) kind of awesome? And awesome is not a word that he usually associates with Rhys, normally it's things like 'dorky'.]

[hybridification]

Probably.

[He shrugs, like it's not a big deal at all.]

We had tons of killer robots at my old job.

[murderpotato]

Wait, I thought you were some kinda hotshot businessman, not a... I dunno, fuckin' robot engineer or whatever.

[The fuck did you even do at Hyperion, Rhys, other than walk around with nicely coiffed hair and asymmetrical clothes? And do something super shady to make a lot of money?]

[hybridification]

I'm a hotshot businessman for a galactic weapons company.

[He shrugs, because he's super awesome and we'd all like to know what the fuck he did at Hyperion.]

They just also specialized in military robots.

[murderpotato]

You worked for a fuckin' warmonger.

[Wow, not really what he expected out of you, Rhys.]

Guess government contract's are where the fuckin' money's at. [Because who else would have a standing military to outfit with military robots, right?] So you sold murder machines or some shit, then?

[hybridification]

I mean, I feel like that's kind of an exaggeration, but yeah.

[He shrugs.]

I made really good money.