Last night I had a dream which, after the fact, I struggled to stabilize into a story, but eventually, I managed to have it solidify into something resembling a webcomic-worthy tale.
Basically, in a Resident Evil like world (one of the three main characters is, loosely, based on Wesker, albeit with a different backstory, with him looking similar and even having tentacle powers), there was a team working at this universe's equivalent of Umbrella Corporation.
The young protagonist is a 21-year-old intern, still in college, but seen by people as being incredibly dumb. He's incredibly clumsy and while he means well, he constantly makes mistake after mistake after mistake. And it's not just bumping into things he shouldn't, it's also in him having ideas that end up leading to unforeseen bad consequences.
He's in a team with a 26-year-old redheaded female scientist (yes, with green eyes, with her hair being kept in a ponytail as being fairly short but still warranting being like that), who has been with the corporation on the team since she graduated college, which was a slight while ago but not a long while ago. She's the official assistant. (Although later she becomes far more action-oriented.)
They are in service to a veteran scientist. When he was younger, he was a field agent, being just hired muscle that was smart enough to work on the scene with highly sensitive material of all types. He was genetically modified prior to this, and during his fieldwork, infected with an experimental virus. He survived, most did not. The corporation bribed him to keep this a secret by basically making him an executive of the company. Not the highest ranking, but high up the chain of command.
So with this position, he retired from fieldwork and began to work in the lab, convinced that he could achieve the dream of immortality for himself, and potentially, the world (but he admits that the latter is an afterthought). He's 55 but appears to be about 32, in peak physical condition, because his aging has been greatly slowed. He can survive in many conditions, including the vacuum of space.
One day, the young protagonist makes a coffee that he believes the scientist will like, laced with some nanites that would, in theory, be harmless if they didn't work but if they worked could help the scientist. This was done with extensive work on his part, where he thought it was a genius idea.
When he accidentally broke the glass, the coffee with the nanites managed to splash into a vial with a genetically engineered virus--and the two combined. The team was blamed for this, made public enemies and fled. They were not realistically able to claim they weren't, either. The scientist was up to no good, the intern wouldn't be able to prove lack of malice, and the assistant was just loyal to the scientist.
Basically, it's not like the big bad corporation was framing innocent people. They had their hands dirty and knew what they were doing was shady-at-best. So they become hunted by the public for causing an outbreak of a plague that mutates humans into monsters, a semi-intelligent living growing disease. It doesn't cause an apocalypse because it's not the first outbreak to have happened, but it does periodically cause local outbreaks at random that kill plenty, mutate others, and require constant vigilance and specialized task forces to put down.
Having caused the worst outbreak in recorded history, the trio fled to an underground railway as their first base. (It's later revealed that the scientist also brought along an AI with them, this AI program is not exactly benevolent but she is still loyal to the scientist which makes her benevolent to the protagonists.)
They build this base up considerably and make good use of it, but the protagonist/intern eventually messes things up by accidentally triggering an alarm that would alert those looking for them to their exact location. Desperate, they have only one escape avenue: a teleporter not meant to transport living people, which transports them to a space station that is an abandoned weapons satellite.
The scientist, however, had come prepared, having injected the two others with nanites that would allow for the transportation to be successful, and also upon arrival, allow for them to have a form of artificial gravity. The station, being in space, has no gravity, but the floor is a specialized magnetic field, which all the items on the space station are attracted to with the approximate force of gravity, so items have the same weight they'd have on earth in effect.
And with those nanites in them, that allows for the protagonists to have weight in a weightless environment.
With the assistance of the AI, the protagonists are able to retrofit the satellite from something that is a single compartment not designed for humans to be on (it's literally basically just the internal parts with spare parts, effectively a small storehouse of bits and pieces), into a proper space station, with rooms, a dining hall, and work stations.
This is accomplished through harnessing a ton of energy and stored matter to make what amounts to effectively an advanced 3-D printer of sorts, where they rearrange matter from one form into another and recycle everything, to create food, water, air, and the materials needed to expand the station.
The webcomic details this journey but also displays the issues they run into. The scientist basically sets his two companions to work on effectively a crash-course of advanced scientific concepts neither was really familiar with. The assistant only had a bachelor's degree and the intern didn't even have that, and they were launched into forcefully learning things that even those with a PhD would struggle with.
Which, essentially, forced them to get smart, and be creative in troubleshooting. Lots of issues crop up, and at times, the protagonists need to leave the station and go back to earth, where their presence even for that short time stirs up a great amount of trouble and solidifies the view of the public that they are, essentially, supervillains.
The issues include needing to save the ai, running out of material, irreparable damage to something power-related, and later-on after the assistant has a daughter, saving that daughter who was born with nanites that began to rapidly age her. (They save her when she is physically around 10, stabilizing her.)
The concept is two parts resident evil, one part supervillain story, and one part sci-fi slice of life, covering both bio-engineered things and advanced technological things.
It's a bit of a complex thing, but the idea formed and I like it.
Will never make it, mind you. I will never have the time for every project I want to make, and this one is near the bottom of the barrel priorities-wise.
But I like it and it's worthy of being made. It's worth making, so I'm sad I won't be able to.
Ah well.
At least I blogged about the basics behind it.
(Also, half an hour late to leave......)
Basically, in a Resident Evil like world (one of the three main characters is, loosely, based on Wesker, albeit with a different backstory, with him looking similar and even having tentacle powers), there was a team working at this universe's equivalent of Umbrella Corporation.
The young protagonist is a 21-year-old intern, still in college, but seen by people as being incredibly dumb. He's incredibly clumsy and while he means well, he constantly makes mistake after mistake after mistake. And it's not just bumping into things he shouldn't, it's also in him having ideas that end up leading to unforeseen bad consequences.
He's in a team with a 26-year-old redheaded female scientist (yes, with green eyes, with her hair being kept in a ponytail as being fairly short but still warranting being like that), who has been with the corporation on the team since she graduated college, which was a slight while ago but not a long while ago. She's the official assistant. (Although later she becomes far more action-oriented.)
They are in service to a veteran scientist. When he was younger, he was a field agent, being just hired muscle that was smart enough to work on the scene with highly sensitive material of all types. He was genetically modified prior to this, and during his fieldwork, infected with an experimental virus. He survived, most did not. The corporation bribed him to keep this a secret by basically making him an executive of the company. Not the highest ranking, but high up the chain of command.
So with this position, he retired from fieldwork and began to work in the lab, convinced that he could achieve the dream of immortality for himself, and potentially, the world (but he admits that the latter is an afterthought). He's 55 but appears to be about 32, in peak physical condition, because his aging has been greatly slowed. He can survive in many conditions, including the vacuum of space.
One day, the young protagonist makes a coffee that he believes the scientist will like, laced with some nanites that would, in theory, be harmless if they didn't work but if they worked could help the scientist. This was done with extensive work on his part, where he thought it was a genius idea.
When he accidentally broke the glass, the coffee with the nanites managed to splash into a vial with a genetically engineered virus--and the two combined. The team was blamed for this, made public enemies and fled. They were not realistically able to claim they weren't, either. The scientist was up to no good, the intern wouldn't be able to prove lack of malice, and the assistant was just loyal to the scientist.
Basically, it's not like the big bad corporation was framing innocent people. They had their hands dirty and knew what they were doing was shady-at-best. So they become hunted by the public for causing an outbreak of a plague that mutates humans into monsters, a semi-intelligent living growing disease. It doesn't cause an apocalypse because it's not the first outbreak to have happened, but it does periodically cause local outbreaks at random that kill plenty, mutate others, and require constant vigilance and specialized task forces to put down.
Having caused the worst outbreak in recorded history, the trio fled to an underground railway as their first base. (It's later revealed that the scientist also brought along an AI with them, this AI program is not exactly benevolent but she is still loyal to the scientist which makes her benevolent to the protagonists.)
They build this base up considerably and make good use of it, but the protagonist/intern eventually messes things up by accidentally triggering an alarm that would alert those looking for them to their exact location. Desperate, they have only one escape avenue: a teleporter not meant to transport living people, which transports them to a space station that is an abandoned weapons satellite.
The scientist, however, had come prepared, having injected the two others with nanites that would allow for the transportation to be successful, and also upon arrival, allow for them to have a form of artificial gravity. The station, being in space, has no gravity, but the floor is a specialized magnetic field, which all the items on the space station are attracted to with the approximate force of gravity, so items have the same weight they'd have on earth in effect.
And with those nanites in them, that allows for the protagonists to have weight in a weightless environment.
With the assistance of the AI, the protagonists are able to retrofit the satellite from something that is a single compartment not designed for humans to be on (it's literally basically just the internal parts with spare parts, effectively a small storehouse of bits and pieces), into a proper space station, with rooms, a dining hall, and work stations.
This is accomplished through harnessing a ton of energy and stored matter to make what amounts to effectively an advanced 3-D printer of sorts, where they rearrange matter from one form into another and recycle everything, to create food, water, air, and the materials needed to expand the station.
The webcomic details this journey but also displays the issues they run into. The scientist basically sets his two companions to work on effectively a crash-course of advanced scientific concepts neither was really familiar with. The assistant only had a bachelor's degree and the intern didn't even have that, and they were launched into forcefully learning things that even those with a PhD would struggle with.
Which, essentially, forced them to get smart, and be creative in troubleshooting. Lots of issues crop up, and at times, the protagonists need to leave the station and go back to earth, where their presence even for that short time stirs up a great amount of trouble and solidifies the view of the public that they are, essentially, supervillains.
The issues include needing to save the ai, running out of material, irreparable damage to something power-related, and later-on after the assistant has a daughter, saving that daughter who was born with nanites that began to rapidly age her. (They save her when she is physically around 10, stabilizing her.)
The concept is two parts resident evil, one part supervillain story, and one part sci-fi slice of life, covering both bio-engineered things and advanced technological things.
It's a bit of a complex thing, but the idea formed and I like it.
Will never make it, mind you. I will never have the time for every project I want to make, and this one is near the bottom of the barrel priorities-wise.
But I like it and it's worthy of being made. It's worth making, so I'm sad I won't be able to.
Ah well.
At least I blogged about the basics behind it.
(Also, half an hour late to leave......)
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