Guinevere knew that Eluesi Rogork, that alien parasite, wasn't being fully truthful with her. She had fed it some false information and it took the bait, building on her lie. In fact, they had discovered deceased alien life forms. They did not disintegrate upon death, so at least that much was blatantly false. Further, the alien life forms it had claimed were called "Sellasai" were normal, carbon-based lifeforms, contrary to what the thing had claimed. Catching it red-handed with these two lies made Guinevere doubt everything else it had said as well.
However, that didn't mean Eluesi was being entirely untruthful either. At least the story of a space battle near Earth (and the escapee survivors coming down to it as meteors) matched what she knew.
A series of unexplained debris clouds had indeed been discovered prior to the first alien infections; and what had led to their discovery was the meteors that appeared without prior warning. Specialists had back-calculated the meteors' trajectories and found the debris clouds. Of course, about halfway into the Earth's atmosphere, the meteors had splintered into thousands of tiny pieces, and since there were already hundreds of meteors, it had been impossible to pinpoint where every piece had ended up.
This is what landed the Supernatural Forces, for whom Guinevere occasionally served as a private consultant, in such a bind. Ideally, they'd have been able to locate every single meteor and use that to narrow down who the unfortunate, parasitized humans were before the aliens completely hijacked their bodies. Since that was impossible, they could only take roundabout measures. They used the media to spread rumors of a dangerous new drug dealer.
As Guinevere's interrogation of the parasite had continued, she noticed a few other times where the parasite's answers felt somehow off. However, the parasite was (as of yet) her only source of information. It was in her best interest to merely observe for now. The more data she collected, the more she could cross-reference both what she observed personally and what it claimed -- and therefore the more accurate of an analysis she could provide. What's more, the longer she let it believe she was fooled by its nonsense, the more likely the thing was to make a critical mistake. Ideally, it would make more than one.
"In other words, unless your demands are met, you are essentially holding my friend hostage?" Guinevere asked brusquely.
Cecilia growled as she passed along Rogork's response, "Exactly. I figured you would understand. These terms are favorable, no?"
"I suppose. Last question, is there any chance there are other sentient survivors like you?"
"I can't say for certain, but I wouldn't count on it."
Without another word, Guinevere walked off.
"That girl," Cecilia huffed, as if used to this kind of behavior. "When will she ever fill me in on what she's thinking?"
Rogork, for its part, felt a wave of relief wash over it. First potentially life-threatening hurdle, cleared.
Now, how was it supposed to get the "Patrons" to recognize it as a Player?
----
Whistling a cheerful tune, Orochi closed the door of the private booth behind him, tail and wings deftly moving out of the way before it shut. He walked over to the coffee table, fiddled with a small display on its side, and raised it to a comfortable standing height; after a morning spent lounging, he figured he'd switch it up a bit.
He clicked a button on the side of a cylindrical device on the center of the table, causing it to extend into a tangible holographic display resembling a stiff scroll. This was a PAD -- the Patron Assist Device Zorhellian had designed to facilitate the viewing of his Storytelling Games. He picked it up, adjusted a few settings, then slid the PAD into a slot on the side of the table.
A three-dimensional viewport appeared, covering the table in its entirety. This was a feature unique to the fourth Game: Alien Parasite Survival. Since the object of this Game was not to observe the progress of the Participants as they navigated the Story world, but rather to identify the Participants while they tried to evade the planet's Supernatural Forces, it required a different format.
The display resembled the viewport of a kingdom-building game. A holographic city in full color and remarkable detail was laid out across the table, zoomed out enough that human beings were visible only as clusters of glowing dots on the streets and in the buildings. They moved around in real time. Almost all of the dots were white, but a few were either yellow or blue. White dots represented humans who had not yet been investigated by the Patrons. Yellow dots represented humans who at least one Patron thought might be a Participant. Blue dots represented humans who at least one Patron thought might be parasitized but not a Participant.
There were no orange, red, turquoise, green, gray or black dots yet. Once a dot turned orange, it meant 5 Patrons agreed the human might be parasitized by a Participant; red was the same except 10 Patrons instead of 5. Once a dot turned turquoise, it meant at least 5 Patrons agreed they might be parasitized but not by a Participant; green was the same except 10 Patrons instead of 5. Gray and black were for if 3 or 8 Patrons agreed the human was not parasitized whatsoever. Eventually, the majority of dots would darken, and only a few would glow in bright colors.
Patrons could decide how to cast their votes on specific humans arbitrarily, or they could examine the humans carefully. Votes could be changed once per human. If a Patron wished to investigate a specific human, that could be done by navigating the city, zooming in and following the life of the human to look for clues. Automatic tracking of specific individuals was available for convenience's sake. A Patron could even split the table's display to surveil up to six humans at a time -- one for each quarter of the table, and two hovering sections (equally sized to the others) in the center above them. Each still appeared in 3D as a holographic display and the volume of each would be automatically adjusted for the Patron when their attention shifted from section to section. The specific settings for that could be controlled by extending the control screen from the PAD, which remained inserted in the table throughout the process. It was remarkably user-friendly.
Orochi immediately split the display into six, checking the PAD Chat and searching the map for colored dots to investigate. This Story was both a collaborative and a competitive game between Patrons. It was collaborative because the Patrons needed to work together in order to find Participants, and competitive because the Patrons who correctly identified the most Participants early on could win prizes.
Briefly, Orochi wondered why this Story came after the Hero Summoning one instead of before it. In terms of keeping interest of the Patrons, wouldn't it have been better to avoid putting two long-term Stories back-to-back? This Story was much more interactive than the others, after all, so it could have served as a nice half-time of sorts.
He quickly gave up thinking about it, however. It wasn't really his problem.
Instead, he turned his attention to the tangible holographic images in front of him and chose which humans to investigate.