00:05So this is a game I got as an epic freebie. It's called Citizen Sleeper, and apparently the plot is
00:14I am surviving an interplanetary capitalistic system.
00:34New game. Empty.
00:38Oh, okay.
00:39Uh, operator with drones, high-precision remote machines, and performs complex tasks for distance.
00:46Sleepers assigned as to operator work, usually cerebral...
00:57Cerebral and precise people.
01:02Extractor.
01:04Work on resources, often hard vacuum environments. Sleepers assigned to extractor work, often incompetent, self-sufficient, have high level endurance.
01:16Machinist.
01:16Repairs and modifies automated systems used in the industrial resource extraction. Sleepers assigned to machinist works are usually diligent, careful,
01:25and structured people.
01:30Engineer. Interface. Engage.
01:36Hmm. Machinist.
01:50Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
01:50I'm the dumbest.
01:56Do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
01:59Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
02:13The first thing you become aware of on walking is to disconnect the delay between thinking
02:21and feeling, between wanting to act and acting, minor, almost imperceptible, but always
02:29present.
02:33It's at its worst when walking when yourself has spent many dark hours recalling what it
02:39felt like to be real, to be a person, and to be in a body that was indisputably yours.
02:47Do I think of the body or forget that body?
02:52I leap into the cold like on a hot day, the sting of blood welling from fresh wound, the
02:59friction of a fingertip.
03:01All of a sudden the memories are closer than you thought, blurring as you approach, until
03:06you can't tell one from the other.
03:11I'm thinking about what my actual body used to feel like.
03:16The cold slips in behind and around you, and the sensations fade out of reach.
03:21Perhaps you should be thankful for the dull nature of this new body.
03:26Given your current circumstances, the walls of the container feel immensely present.
03:32the cold heart at your back and face, cramping your limbs.
03:38So I'm pretty much 100% machine now.
03:43You resist desire to stretch knowing that your claustrophobia comes next and retreat a little
03:49from your central nervous system.
03:54It isn't painful.
03:56Not like you used to know.
03:59At least.
04:01In emergency mode, pain is a message delivered with efficiency and ease.
04:06A reminder that harm is imminent.
04:10There is no insistent throb, no trembling nerves.
04:14Just a warning delivered with the banal quality of digital notification.
04:19Right now there are thousands of them.
04:21You mostly remember that it wasn't a good plan, but then your options were limited, and once
04:28you got the itch to get out, by any means possible it was either the plan or something much worse.
04:34It was at least simple.
04:37Collapse the shaft, drift away into chaos, slip into cargo processing, seal yourself into containers,
04:43and then just hope the freighter left before you were missed.
04:49Some were lost in the shaft.
04:51Others never found the meeting point.
04:54Only a few made it to the containers.
04:57But the freighter, as far as you know, left.
05:00That feels like enough.
05:01Enough to know that you might no longer be on that grim and heartless rock.
05:06Even if the airless hold of a freighter,
05:11you might freeze solid long before you reach any destination.
05:16I'm going to try to rest.
05:18But you are restless.
05:21It has been a long time since you left.
05:24Surely weeks, maybe months.
05:26You are duly aware to damage to your legs, your right arm.
05:33You have been reserving energy as much as possible, but your body still needed to shut down many of its
05:40systems to protect you.
05:42You have spent much of that time asleep, knowing that anything else would be impossible to endure.
05:56You feel the weight of that impossibility begin to gather.
05:59It is time to sleep again, to nudge the false-sleeved body into inducing delta waves into your emulated mind,
06:07and once again to recoil into the dream of when you were once a person.
06:17Time passes.
06:19The cold creeps further in.
06:22You feel something.
06:24Warm.
06:24Not true warmth, but the indication of its presence.
06:28Your joints released from their river.
06:30Sounds, too, everywhere screeching and the shimmering so loud that your body ducks.
06:35Your hearing to protect the sensor.
06:39Then light, white, as the cold, softer and softer until the haze of dirty yellow.
06:46A figure appears.
06:47You are out.
06:55There's been a few hours since Dragos pulled you from the container.
06:59You sit huddled in the corner of your scrapyard,
07:02swaddled in the reflective folds of the Milo blanket.
07:05You are slowly coming back to consciousness, back to life.
07:08And you stare at the ornately curving elements of an improvised heater.
07:17You are surrounded by angular, incoherent limbs of a ship.
07:21Some corroded beyond recognition, others still carrying glassy wounds along the edges.
07:28Where a plasma arc slice them apart.
07:30As you trace their shapes with fogged eyes, you hear a voice.
07:37So sleepy.
07:38You all thought out yet?
07:44Do I say something?
07:46Or do I pretend to be asleep?
07:54Eh, why not?
07:59I've never seen one of you come in like this.
08:01New frames meant to have better preservation and so zero back.
08:05Seeing more than a few of you frozen solid to the whole place or inside outer locks in my time.
08:11They weren't so lucky.
08:14Dragos comes into focus.
08:16Shrouded in makeshift tech.
08:18His head set with its glinting eyes.
08:22The mark of a throne operator.
08:25On his shoulder, one of his symbolically linked thrones.
08:28Perchards.
08:29Its irising eye.
08:34Locking you with an unflinching stare.
08:38The last something sleeper that came to this yard was a while ago within your last lap.
08:42You struggle to reach the expression beneath the tech, but it seems lost in memory for a moment.
08:47Or perhaps he has just figured out what to do with you.
08:55What happened to them?
08:59He ignores your question.
09:00I won't ask what led you to do it.
09:03To sell yourself to a corporation.
09:05And I suppose you know you can't go back.
09:09Your old body is theirs now.
09:12And you are just software.
09:14A rogue emulation illegally possessing a corporate property.
09:20You nod along.
09:21You remember biometrically signing the form.
09:24The cold floor on your feet as you padded to the sleeper cells.
09:29The promise of life off-world.
09:31But as you do, you get a familiar sensation that these aren't your memories.
09:37These are things you know, but not things you feel.
09:40You are no longer that person.
09:42You are an offshoot of a copy.
09:45So...
09:48Wait. Hold on.
09:50Let me see if I understand this correctly.
09:52I am technically not here.
09:55I am sleeping in some casket, coffin, whatever.
10:02And my mind was copied into this corporate body.
10:11Where I would work for eternity.
10:14Or I am at the mercy of a corporation.
10:20I am almost curious, and I think I'll probably find out later on in the game.
10:27I don't think I thought brain work before speaking.
10:33What was the other option?
10:35What other choice was there that was worse than this?
10:55I am operating on cryptocurrency.
10:57Oh.
10:58Oh.
10:58This is hell.
10:59This is hell.
11:01Oh.
11:04So are these my dice?
11:19So do I roll for like four different dice and I guess I just put different ones in
11:27whatever I think my best chances are?
11:43So I only have two dice up here that are pretty much guarantees to work and one that's a failure.
11:58How do you find something small to waste that one on so I can get another dice?
12:04Clocks are displayed while they actually fill them.
12:06They track your actions and how they affect the world.
12:08Filling a clock means something good or bad is about to happen.
12:12Some clocks such as Tracking Dragon's Dead are cycle clocks.
12:16These clocks tick themselves much as cycle and can complete without player input.
12:22Any active cycle clocks are displayed on the icon for that location.
12:36So safe first game.
12:38I'm going to put you in safe.
12:40I'm going to put you in safe.
12:45Consider to review our drives.
12:47These go more about your self-aware drives.
12:49Guide you to pursuing specific objectives depending on which path you wish to take.
12:54You can track drives.
12:56And any tracked drives will place yellow markers on location that will help you pursue your goal.
13:01Access your drive menu via the arrow button at the top of the screen.
13:08You are now free to explore Ireland's High and make life for yourself here.
13:14Oh!
13:15It worked!
13:19Saw two good ones.
13:26Okay, so it autosaves now.
13:29So...
13:30I can stop for a bit.
13:33I'm gonna reach out to you.
13:34I've been a handler because it's in a space that have explained by that person.
13:35You should have seen it only.
13:35But it's not difficult to recognize itself.
13:35It's 10 per story.
13:35you guys who can do it.
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