DIGITAL INTOXICANTS
Many of these were developed by the regulars at The Mind Electric. The Heliquary also imports them for the software-beings among its clientele.
"Party-zombie thing, like Solanum3... a pretty typical hyper-suggestible trance simulation, with weird little side effects. Like wanting to dance on tables and a fascination for other people's brains." -
Mirqur
Created by
Sel after hearing complaints that there are not enough 'soft' digital drugs. Digital Cannabis comes in a index card like IC board and chipset with a data port. Chips with multiple ports (Digital Hookah) and local wireless area network versions (Contact High) both exist. The experience is pretty mundane as fair as digital drugs go, typical with simple cannabis use.
"...a martini glass containing a bright gold drink, with three little silvery slabs bobbing slowly in it. The scent is faintly sweet, and a bit peppery. The silver, whatever it is, dissolves slowly into metallic swirls, and gives off a vapor that's a little dizzying in itself. 'Straighten your head out' may not be the exact term that springs to mind, although you're starting to feel as if you could count your own tastebuds without looking..."
A physically-strange substance - it behaves like a fluid, but at rest seems nothing more than a number of silver doilys and lace ribbons stacked in the glass. Effects biologicals and software beings alike; tends to make the user sesquipedalian.
- "Library," Kalinda says, peeling another silver doily from the sometimes-fluid stuff in her past-half-empty glass, "is a smart drink. It's hierarchival substrate, the contents of a whole, entire library dumped into drinkable, pseudo-liquid form. It likes to be read, what book doesn't? That's why it jumps into your mouth."
"...straightforward sensory candy."
These items are often simply plugs which are designed to be inserted into neural-link sockets. Within them are chips which generate a scene or a situation for the user. Often games or relaxation/meditation scenes are simulated. There is usually a way to alter the amount of sensory override the chip generates. Some chips include subliminal programming of various kinds both
therapeutic and parasitic.
- Lysette leans back slowly, her eyes closing.. "Its nice.. I can feel it warming me, even.."
- Echo says, "Yeah. Careful with that part. Apparently, one user was feeling a little chilly and plugged a beach in to feel warm for a while instead of turning the heat up. Froze to death during the snowstorm. So, basic warning for sensory overrides."
Co-authored by
D, Tone Burst's code is 'aged' using selective mutation algorithms, and generally appears as a glowing drink. The effects vary according to the individual's own codebase, but include pleasantly distorted perceptions, and outwardly, glitches in one's visual representation and speech patterns.
- Mirqur swirls his glass lightly, filled with fractally glowing fluid, and downs it. His own outline slowly becomes less opaque, and the rendering of his body becomes a little cruder, an occasional miscalculated polygon spiking out into the air. "Whoa."