/lounge/ - Lounge

>>314169
… I remember having passed out from drinking my own piss, a challenge some pretentious goofers, so-called 'wizards' that thought I was so cowardly as to refuse their challenge. Victorious or not, I must now rise from my sofa that now barely manages to contain my fat, a blubber that was too big to be considered human. Too big, too thick, too heavy, and too rough, it was more like a big pile of humanoid meat; and calling it a whale's human form would be a vast understatement.

When suddenly, a cassowary entered my room. It was like living proof that dinosaurs are deadly yet beautiful creatures with feathers. "Do not fear dissapointment" said the cassowary "Karma has been unkind to the ones you've loved despite having them shower you with expectation and radically subjective ideals" I cried happy tears, knowing such a deadly creature could understand me instead of succumb to its instincts. "Thank you, mighty cassowary, my heart feels whole again" I said.

bump

The cassowary taking notice of my Dorito encrusted fingers pecks hungrily. I humbly oblique, "Free maid service? why not?" I state even though I was saving those Dorito crumbs for a snack. Such a wonderful and glorious creature, truly misunderstood. The cassowary pecks every molecule off my sausage fingers, then turning its head, looking upon my sofa it sees the its prize, an unopened crushed Dorito bag, which I had in fact earlier passed out on…

haha this is good so far. re-reading it made me laugh. we need more writers

The cassowary starts rummaging its beak, now dirty with dorito, inside the crushed Dorito bag, searching for something. As I watch it, I realize that something is off. Have cassowaries always worn such beautiful shoes? Before I can return to my questions about avian fashion, the cassowary pulls something out of the dorito bag and delivers it into my round hands

bump

>>317784
OP here, completely forgot my thread haha. nice to know other wizards want to continue this peoject

>>314630
(what would it be? A ring? A berry? A seed of some sort? A random gem? A flash drive? a NAND chip? A lottery ticket? A shell/a bullet/a whole round?)

>>320816
(a flash drive sounds good someone post the next bit and I'll continue on from there)

>>314630
You catch a small piece of scratched, dirty black plastic with a little red dimple, that looks like anything but a plug-in device at the first glance.

You see a small rectangular hole on its narrow side.

After you try to clean the little thingy, you accidentally unlatch something - its fancy desing have preserved the USB prong intact and clean. It IS a flash drive.

>>320909
The cassowary as if awoken immediately turns its head and comes towards me and with a quick peck knocks the flash drive to the floor. It sits on the couch and lifts it legs trying to get me to look at the shoes which it wears. Wanting to see the contents of the flash drive i look at it on the floor, but due to my fat gut i cant bend over to pick the flash drive up. With my knees in pain i decide to sit, with a grunt i sit on the couch beside the cassowary. My eyes go to the shoes …

>>321139
bump


please draw the room were in

>>321139
New anon here, I think I made my post is too long, but hopefully it's good. I also made a drawing of the previous anon's post.
>>322184
"Are those… converses?"

"More specifically, Jack Purcells. I thought it'd be fitting, ya know? Cassowary, converse, they just sound good together."

I guess I had to agree with him there, but before I could respond, an obvious thought popped into my mind. Why the fuck is a talking, converse-wearing, cassowa—

"Oh, you're probably wondering a lot of things. Yes, I know the situation is strange, but I've got a mission to give you."

"A mission for me?"

"Yes, you. I'm an operative of a three-letter agency, you don't need to know which one, but you do need to know that if you disobey, I also have a secondary mission to eliminate you."

I was already sitting still, but at this point, I was frozen. Okay, that bird thing is probably trained in black ops techniques, so no chance head-on. Maybe make a run for it? Okay, yeah, keep the conversation going and escape when the time is right.

I slowly opened my mouth and said, "Okay, got it. Just tell me what to do."

"You see that flash drive over there? It's got a special-purpose operating system in it designed to give you a debrief of your tasks and has some useful tools built in, a bit like a spy version of Tails OS. Just boot from the drive, enter the password, and open the mission portal."

"Hang on, how do I know it doesn't contain a virus?"

"Look, if I wanted to harm you, I could kick you so hard in the balls right now that it undoes puberty. Just trust me here."

I got up and tried to reach for the flash drive again, but my years of sedentary behaviour betrayed me here, and when I tried to squat down to retrieve it, I groaned in pain and fell back down to the couch. The cassowary sighed and just used his shoes to do what appeared like a kick flip with the flash drive and then handed (or should I say winged?) it over to me. I plugged it in and was then met with the login screen.

"So… what's the password?"

For the first time, I saw a non-neutral expression on the cassowary's face; it was a mix of many emotions, but I could make out that there was a tinge of embarrassment.

"Fuck_ostriches2145"

I couldn't help but let out a slight chuckle at this, to which the cassowary urged me to just keep going in a dismayed tone. I opened up the portal and saw…

>>322264
>Fuck_ostriches2145
lol

To summarise the design of the site, I'll drop a hint: t3h 51^/^3 ////45 %ULL 0% 5um fun/\/9 5(12i88135

"zOMG t3h 1337!" - I thought, widening my eyes. I spent no time realizing the site is enforcing old good leet speak for the extra privacy.

Despite looking like a basic forum with plain gray-ish background, the site looked both awfully edgy with all that leet-speak… and overengineered, with all those funny scripted effects where the <marquee> moving line of text was the least unusual. Random pixels would subtly change colors here or there. It was almost like the site was aired to my computer through a TeamViewer-like app, rather than opened as a tab on my machine. Or, maybe, it WAS aired on purpose. It was hard to tell. Hard to tell whether the site intended to look like XX century aired television with all the color bleeds and chromatic abberations or rather, there was some kind of purpose, such as an attempt to overload the system with junk information, that is.

I looked at the cassowary and nodded with a smile, compressing my feelings like "Oh yeah! J00! It's just like the g00d 01d tymes! k3w1!" and mundane "I'm in".

There was a funny decoration in the background also: a realistc 3d cylinder turning into funny face and uncreasing back to a cylinder back and forth.

My knowledge of computer systems was hinting me to trust this gibberishful design. You could feel it's an attempt to overflow any possible sniffer with hard to process information. Maybe there was a funny "zip" trick cycling somewhere as well to surprise a more advanced system?

- "A site for (/_/17U23|) h4><><orz doesn't need "rules", - I thought.
- "My old "rebel without cause" self was telling me to avoid checking the clearly visible "ru13s" button of the site. In modern terms, a button for rules of the site could have been a honeypot."

To my surprise, I suddenly heard my own voice going all boomer: "Back in my days, "rulez" had a very different meaning".

>>322316
selffix

- "A site for (/_/17U23|) h4><><orz doesn't need "rules", - I thought. My old "rebel without cause" self was telling me to avoid checking the clearly visible "ru13s" button of the site.
- "In modern terms, a button for rules of the site could have been a honeypot…"

To my surprise, I suddenly heard my own voice going all boomer:

- "Bak in mah days, "rulez" had a very different meaning".

>>322316
>>322318
"How far back are you talking about here?" chirped the cassowary.

I felt a lump in my throat form—coagulated from pure nostalgia—and replied "Too long, man… too long."

"Well, I don't exactly know what you are referring to by 'rulez', but check them out, they'll be useful for you."

"I think I prefer to do things my own way." Wow, I can't believe I said that. I could notice the intensity of my heartbeats increasing, but not following rules rulez.

"Look, I was assigned to guide you, but I'm not some babysitter. Tell me when you give up."

Fucking bird brain. You think I can't crack this site? I'll have you know I've…umm…well, I've made a few scripts and designed my myspa—wait, why the hell was I chosen for this?

I defiantly chose not to reply and continued frantically rushing through pages and trying to interact with every element. As my desperation began to grow, that toilet roll's presence began to irritate me. Just the same animation again and again, making that stupid face, at the exact same pace. Hold on. That time it took a bit longer. It isn't a basic loop, the two states mean something deeper—1s and 0s! It can't just be 10101.. though, maybe the length determines the length of how many times a binary digit will repeat before it alternates.

I opened up a spreadsheet, a Wikipedia page for ASCII representation and started to track the times.

"You're still trying?"

"I'm almost there." I could hear the cassowary give a chuckle at my answer. Every state has a minimum of floor of 1 second before it changes, with each repeating digit adding a specific amount to the time.

z J00 n33d TH3, yeah, I must have started tracking it in the middle of its message. It's too tedious; maybe looking at the source code for the site will help. I hit F12, and to my surprise, the site had the code—comments and all—unobfuscated. One part instantly stuck out to me.

<!–
NOTE TO STEVE: REMOVE THIS BEFORE DEPLOYMENT

For the toilet roll puzzle, the message is supposed to be "h4><orz, WORM. J00 N33D TH3 K3Y, 4ND TH3 K3Y 1Z B1RD_BRA1N"

The second puzzle's debriefing portal is at '/var/www/html/r-u-l-3-z.php`
→

Well, that's awfully convenient. I navigated to the corresponding page and was greeted with a 90s-era barebones text box with no words telling me what to do, but I didn't need them. I entered the key and saw everything on my computer turn bright red.

"Jesus Christ, did you actually do it?" said the cassowary in a concerned and surprised tone.

"Yeah, it was a piece of cake."

"No, you don't get it. You aren't ready."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

A notepad window opened, and the speakers on my laptop unmuted themselves, and a robotic voice boomed, "H3H… W3LL, L00K 4T TH4T. S0M30N3 F1N4LLY R4TTL3D TH3 C4G3. G00D F0R J00, M347B4G."

Before I could process what happened, the cassowary put me in a chokehold. I tried to break free, but my vision began to fade. The last thing I could make out was him pulling out some weird wire and putting it around my neck.

I entered consciousness back again. I'm not sure how long it's been, but I feel disturbed, both mentally and physically.

"What the fuck was that?" I shouted at the cassowary standing sheepishly far away from me.

"Look, just wait for it to explain." The cassowary then took a step back, his entire demeanour doused in a nervous caution.

"I just want to—

A voice erupted from my own body, somehow communicating more than just audio "C0NGR4TUL4T10NS 0N TH3 R3B1RTH, M34TB4G; W3LC0M3 T0 DAY Z3R0. TH3 0FF1C14L D3S1GN4T10N F0R TH1Z CYB3RN3T1C W0RM 1Z 'CH1M3R4_SRI'. BUT J00 C4N JUST C4LL M3…"

>>322345
Sounds like a good ay to startt chaper 2

Or chapter 0 with a negative count of pages (into -1, -2, -3, -4 and so on).

>>322358
Yeah, I'd say so as well. As the writer of the spy and worm post, I want the next person to feel free to take this story in whatever direction they want and have fun coming up with a name for the cybernetic worm thing.