[spoilers] The nature of Cloudbank

[nago]

Hopefully this prevents the text from previewing from anyone who is eager to avoid spoilers from the game.

Here comes 50 sentences that end in question marks: (Spoilers, Spoilers, Spoilers, Spoilers, Spoilers, Spoilers, Spoilers, Spoilers, Spoilers, ... And we're out of room in the preview text.)

What is the nature of Cloudbank? I believe I understand that the Camerata are a group of non-governmental individuals who have in mind the goal of being able to prevent Cloudbank from being changed on a whim in order to preserve history and achieve "real progress." The more cloudbank changes from day to day, the more history and progress are in fact lost.

What I wonder, then, is what actually powers Cloudbank to be such a harmonious democracy? Which organization established it, and by what mechanisms is it able to refactor() itself so completely?

I suppose that the Camerata did not create the process but rather they modified them hoping to use them for their own purposes, but then who did create the process, or are they some naturally occurring phenomenon?

So I am left to wonder who or what built and/or controlled cloudbank -- it appears to lack a written history (Which the Camerata were actively trying to correct) and appeared to have an elected government assembly ... but where did it all start, and how?

What's outside of Cloudbank? Does nature exist? Is "The Country" exclusively a metaphor for the afterlife, or is there a real factual countryside?

Lastly, on the subject of the Process, what is their relationship to the Transistor? Seeing as the Transistor was "found," is it possible that Cloudbank, the Process and even the inhabitants were all created by the same higher power? Seeing as how people can be integrated with the Transistor, is it not possible that Cloudbank is entirely a simulated reality a la 'The Matrix'?

Just eager to chitty-chat about some nuance of the game plot. =)

[Eiphel]

It's very noticeable that the game contains lots of documentary information, but it's all very much about the present. Asher (I think?) specifically calls this out - Cloudbank has no history. It drives home the Camerata's point. Everything is so fluid, there's no foundation to build from. You wake up one day and yesterday doesn't matter at all, everything's already been completely overhauled to fit today's whims. The background of Cloudbank is wide open, it could be anything. It's certainly an intriguing question, but there's almost nothing to really found speculation upon, because it's a city that just has no past, and I think that's very intentional - it's a major element of the Camerata's dissatisfaction.

[nago]

I also think it's interesting to point out that "Breach" actually might have a good deal in common with the Camerata.

The game really leads you into feeling like "This city is terrible! Even the weather is a vote! Ugh! What a dystopia!" because Breach really comments on his distaste for the OVC polls and how much the Camerata are "controlling everything ..."

Even "Breach" is noted to be the only (known) citizen of cloudbank to never vote or select anything. Ironically, the Camerata are working to change this aspect of Cloudbank, yet he and the camerata are of course bitter rivals until the end.

It makes you wonder if he and the Camerata might have been co-conspirators under different circumstances, because both parties are clearly quite disenchanted with Cloudbank as it is.

[gkathellar]

Originally posted by nago:

What is the nature of Cloudbank?

I don't think there's a real answer to that. Cloudbank is a city that may be virtual reality, or may be a physical space. Personally, I'd think it's both - the technology is so advanced that the difference is functionally irrelevant.

Originally posted by nago:

I believe I understand that the Camerata are a group of non-governmental individuals who have in mind the goal of being able to prevent Cloudbank from being changed on a whim in order to preserve history and achieve "real progress." The more cloudbank changes from day to day, the more history and progress are in fact lost.

It's also worth noting that the city doesn't change in any meaningful way. Cloudbank just runs in circles, going nowhere, because there are no conditions that force adaptation in the people - rather, people adapt the conditions to their will.

Originally posted by nago:

What I wonder, then, is what actually powers Cloudbank to be such a harmonious democracy?

The fact that it's a post-scarcity society probably helps.

Originally posted by nago:

I suppose that the Camerata did not create the process but rather they modified them hoping to use them for their own purposes, but then who did create the process, or are they some naturally occurring phenomenon?

Royce seems to suggest they're the underlying mechanism of the whole city. They're the entities that enact the designs of architects like him - something akin to living incarnations of assembly language.

Originally posted by nago:

What's outside of Cloudbank? Does nature exist? Is "The Country" exclusively a metaphor for the afterlife, or is there a real factual countryside?

I get the feeling that both are true. The Country is a real place that you go to when you leave the city, and also a real place that you go to when you die. They may very well be the same real place. Either way, when you go to the Country, you can't come back.

Originally posted by nago:

Lastly, on the subject of the Process, what is their relationship to the Transistor?

The Transistor is the master override for the Process (and implicitly, for all of Cloudbank).

[essen]

Originally posted by nago:

What I wonder, then, is what actually powers Cloudbank to be such a harmonious democracy? Which organization established it, and by what mechanisms is it able to refactor() itself so completely?

Kendrall Esher's bio talks about the past of CloudBank. And it's in fact the only place where the past is discussed. He investigated into the past of the city and found a lot of dead ends and contradictions. Then he met with older people and that's how he ended up meeting Grant and joining the Camerata. But the past of the city itself is not covered. CloudBank just *is*.

Originally posted by nago:

I suppose that the Camerata did not create the process but rather they modified them hoping to use them for their own purposes, but then who did create the process, or are they some naturally occurring phenomenon?

From their point of view it's just a natural phenomenon, just like particles for us.

Originally posted by nago:

What's outside of Cloudbank?

Nothing. At some point in the story before the Bracket Tower you pass in front of the Visitor Bureau. The narrator comments that he never saw it open, which is a hint that there are no visitors from outside the city.

Originally posted by nago:

Does nature exist?

There is some weed in the game but I wouldn't call it nature.

Originally posted by nago:

Is "The Country" exclusively a metaphor for the afterlife, or is there a real factual countryside?

There isn't. It is a metaphor for death indeed, but also spoken about when you're at the edge of the city. Presumably leaving the city means dying too.

Originally posted by nago:

Lastly, on the subject of the Process, what is their relationship to the Transistor? Seeing as the Transistor was "found," is it possible that Cloudbank, the Process and even the inhabitants were all created by the same higher power? Seeing as how people can be integrated with the Transistor, is it not possible that Cloudbank is entirely a simulated reality a la 'The Matrix'?

It doesn't matter. For the people inside the city, this is their reality. They are born, age and die in CloudBank. It's just a world that, for us, looks like a virtual world, but for them, isn't virtual.

[Illessa]

Maybe this is wandering too far into the realms of allegory but I assumed from fairly early on that what with the name & the deep levels of tech references, Cloudbank was most likely, well, a cloud service. A city of servers constantly shifting on the whims and needs of its userbase, services only existing for as long as someone needs them. The Process is a self-modifying virus that started as a simple worm (see the VCS note for weeds). The Transistor is the unauthorised storage device that The Process first arrived on. The Country is tape backup :).

[Randomgold]

I would just like to point out that Cloudbank does, in fact, have a past. It's the archives. Massive computers that store data about everything that happens in the city. Every person and every alteration is there, maybe even going as far back as the start of the city. The problem is that it's not at all easily accessable, and most people chose to simply ignore it. I think whatever governing force Cloudbank has (maybe even the Camerata themselves) just want people to ignore it. It gets so bad that those who delve too deeply (for example the person with the Get() function) is kept apart from everyone else, or even silenced permanently.

So there is technically a past, it's just in a form that not everyone can get at. Makes you wonder what might have been burried deep in those coutless files...

[HeresJolly]

At first I asked the question "is it like the Matrix?" Which is what led me to this thread. But I'm starting to think it's more like a holodeck from Star Trek. Here me out.

You see the holodecks work on the same principle as the transporters or replicators, the conversion of matter into energy and vice versa. With the holodeck however, the process is slightly different, "incomplete" for lack of a better term. A holographic brick wall for instance isn't just light and force fields made to resemble a brick wall, it's an actual brick wall. But because the replication process is incomplete, it needs to be maintained by the environment.

This also explains why when someone gets shot during a malfunction or gets busy with a hologram, the room isn't littered with blood and man chowder when the program is terminated.

With living holograms however, they would need a work around. The replicators can't create living bio-matter, nor can the transporters just make copies of people, (that malfunction with Riker not withstanding.) Because of this, the holographic people are probably more like nonliving meat sculptures constantly being updated by the environment to give the appearance of life.

I believe Cloudbank functions on this same principle, except instead of it all being inside a small room, the Process create complete replications of matter, and when it's no longer needed, they turn it back into energy. Just as with the technology from Star Trek, they can't create living things, so no plants around town. The process can't or don't discern between matter that they created, and that which came on it's own, such as the residence of Cloudbank, so when the process deems them unnecessary, they reclaim the resources used to create them, only now they're gone for good, because they can't be recreated and still be alive.

This is actually supported by the story, in that when she recreated Breach's body, he wasn't alive, which I'm sure was what she wanted, only the process simply was incapable of that.

If I'm right, then when the people saw everything fading away, even beyond the city, it's because the Process got out of control, they weren't simply reclaiming the matter used in Cloudbank, but everything outside of it as well, or at least for some distance. "The country" probably did exist, but it's probably gone now. It's very well possible, that if I'm right, Red was the last Human alive for quite a ways around the city, if not on the entire planet.

I haven't finished the recursion yet, so if there's an alternate ending the contradicts anything above, oh well.