@clarke.griffin

[strove]

Thank you to Yalena for getting us sorted. [Sort of sorted. Sort of.] Now that we've arrived in New Tokyo and we're stuck inside for a little while, I think we should talk about some new changes that we're facing. I can't be the only one.

But first: a good number of us are here unwillingly, but we have to wait until we're fully prepped before we can go anywhere. Heading outside in these temperatures while unprepared could cost you your life. We all hate being trapped somewhere. I think that's pretty well-established. We also hate having to do anything or be anywhere when we didn't ask for that to happen. At least it doesn't seem like we were drugged, though it wouldn't hurt for Katelin and I to take some blood samples to confirm that. We'll have to store them until we get back.

As for the changes in your lives: have you noticed any? For instance, apparently I'm a lab tech at Giles Bell. I tried to set myself up for a new internship there that I could get easily, but I got ... elevated. Or hired beyond that? I'm not sure what the right terminology is here. Has anyone else noticed this? Or had it happen to them? I got permissions to take leaves from both of my jobs. And no, I'm really not prepared to work as a lab tech. I don't even know the first thing about setting up gels.

As a bit of a personal request ... does anyone think we can make pancakes in the small kitchen here? I have a craving for them. I've not really had cakes of the "pancake" variety before, but I want them now. And if you think we can, can you make them?

[This last bit is Loki's fault.]

Comments

private

[strove]

Can you tell me a bit more about this Ark?

[The switch to private is purposeful. The uncanny similarity to the City of Light?

Yeah, she has to ask. Especially if someone here is behind it.]

private

[theseuschip]

[ damn good call on the private. ]

It’s what’s left of humanity. A computer running a simulation for the brain scans of the last people on Earth. Perfect copies.
It wasn’t that big a deal at first, it was just Catherine’s pet project, but then the comet took out the surface, and it turned into the last hope for mankind. We launched it into space so it wouldn’t rot down there with everything else.

[retravel]

We have two different ones on record, to my knowledge.

The first is of a group travelling for a long time and reaching a bridge. The unafraid cross the bridge and walk into the light, reaching somewhere new. Perhaps they make their way through a portal, but that's just my own interpretation. Myself and two others had that dream.

The second is of a facility where people are being held. Trapped, maybe. Some are sick and dying. The person who had the dream remembered using a scalpel and trying to escape, fighting a doctor or a scientist.

[stabilis]

What? No.

Maybe.

[ wait ]

Do you mean the implants?

[998]

Aye?

[what else is there help he knows nothing. also he was talking about literally taking notes.]

[stabilis]

[ this is fine they will be on the same page for none of this ]

I meant they'd catch anything else we tried to slip by. But modifications to the implants are risky, yeah.

[ A LONG PAUSE. ]

you know, like devices that could log their activity on the internal networks. or

[ what's the most analog thing he can think of that isn't paper ]

tape recorders.

[998]

[nope sorry he only knows paper.]

[I don't know any of that. I thought they could write down what they hear with the implant. Could they?

[secondnature]

That first one sounds familiar.

[Kind of like those bridges he saw in the city in the dream. Though the city itself wasn't entirely logical in its makeup.]

Jughead had that second one.

It didn't sound like it was good.

Do you think the facility there had anything to do with the facility in the dreams that just happened?

[Keith hadn't been there for long, but ... well ...]

private

[strove]

Is Catherine like the androids here?

[She's careful with her questions.]

What I mean is—was she created to serve humans in some way? And this is what she came up with?

[Okay. Leading a bit. But it's not like she can approach it from the angle she'd like. "Were people there allowed to feel, and what would happen to people here if that proved necessary?" It's a very hard question.]

If you can't tell, I've seen something similar. It wasn't good.

[stabilis]

I mean, yeah. They can transcribe it. Which is basically like recording it, but there's a human delay and they have to be in earshot while the bad guys are chatting about state secrets.

[ so... more limited than something they could plant, but not totally useless. ]

[998]

But you take pictures with your implant, too.

[daemonized]

Oh, I was nothing but loyal to the Emperor, and his whim was my own.

[That’s what he was supposed to say, at any rate.]

Though it is a bit of what you say, to be fair. The old man's mind was not completely there near the end of his reign, and so executive action sometimes became a trial in interpretation. For what that’s worth.

[daemonized]

In other words, direct all questions about spacetime and apparent theories of convergent multiple worlds to you? You must be a man utterly overturned with queries all the time.

[retravel]

[ HE HAS NEVER FELT MORE SEEN ;; ]

Don't get very many quiet moments these days, no.
I just hope it helps.

[ from annoyed to soft in .2 seconds ]

[retravel]

Like the bridges in the dream?
Yeah.

[ he'd even jumped through one of the portals there, only to pop out of another one entirely. ]

Can't say for certain, but I think so, yes.
In a world as surveilled as this one, with technological checkpoints at every turn, I reckon it's hard to experiment on human beings unnoticed. It's simpler if the groups doing so are one and the same.

[ and if there are two... christ. ]

The rest of the locations I visited had some basis in reality, too, though I don't know if others had the same experiences.

[windowsills]

[ sounds vaguely familiar. There's blurry memories of stories like that. ]

Two of each, yes.
But a nuclear apocalypse? Clarke, how far in the future was this?

I'm not sure either... maybe we should take a chance on the tomatoes.

I MEANT NOAH NOT MOSES ... I was so sleep deprived last week

[strove]

It was in this world's past. 2052. For context, I was born in 2131.

We'll definitely see what we can do with the tomatoes.

[secondnature]

There were things that are in New Amsterdam. Buildings I know. We'll want to compare New Tokyo to the dreams, too. There are things I saw there that I was able to find through a search already. There might be more. It's just too bad that we can't go to New Johannesburg to check out the bridges more. At least right now. That might be a goal for us in the future.

As Displaced, anyway.

What do you think that Facility was? I mean the one where we just were.

Everything there seemed bad. Like it ended badly.

[And like it or not, the conveyor belt of Displaced is rolling along smoothly.]

[stabilis]

Sure, but that means you have to be looking at the thing you're taking a picture of. Not that subtle.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's still an option. It just takes real physical access. Remote access is safer, if we can hack it.

[ like... literally hack it, but also as the general expression goes. ]

Still laughing

[windowsills]

That’s not too far off from my time. I would be about 80 then. That’s really all the time we have?

[revlon]

Sounds to me as though you'd do well in a board room.

[ The books may be up in the air, but she doubts it; paperwork is a staple in positions of authority, whether they exist in war or peacetime. Captain Rogers, for all that he was seen as a piece of propaganda, was also a genuine commanding officer in the field and did reports just like she did.

Still, she'd like to get to know him and the situation better before making any other judgements. So this is now — ]

PRIVATE;

I may be willing to render some assistance, as my schedule allows. But we'd have to work out a plausible reason for someone in your position to call on someone in mine so as to keep our association strictly within the world of New Amsterdam's government and not as members of the displaced.

This is, after all, in the displaced's best interests; is it not?

private

[theseuschip]

No, she’s human. An A.I. engineer. I guess it sounds like something a robot would make.

[ As far as Simon can tell, she must be asking because, first, the ARK sounds insane from an outside perspective, and second, who the hell programs a hyper-realistic virtual environment for volunteered simulations of their coworkers in their free time?

He doesn’t even connect her last statement to the rest of it. He spent too much energy banking on the ARK almost as hard as everyone else to see someone else imagining a moral downside to what he just described. ]

Something similar, as in a virtual reality?

[retravel]

I think that's a good idea. New Johannesburg also seems to be a spaceport, and space travel is only a hop, skip and jump away from all the rest.

[ time and space, dimensions, the multiverse. Might as well seek it out. ]

We're of similar minds on the facility. Whatever its makers were trying to achieve, it would seem they succeeded, with some of the spectres proud of their work and others mired in regret. I found blood in the water, quite literally, so it evidently ended in the loss of human life. And a great deal of it, at that.

[ he doesn't say that people who use human beings in such a way likely believe they're doing what's right — what's necessary. it may illuminate their motives, but it's a slippery slope, in terms of empathising with the creators of an underwater tomb. ]

The question is if, and how far back, it predates us.

[secondnature]

I couldn't control myself there. It was like something was exerting a pressure on me. It created false trauma.

[Keith doesn't mind explaining the effects, even if he doesn't explain exactly how he knows. He knows he's mentioned not being alien to people, but heck if he knows who does and doesn't know. By now, he doesn't see any issue in sharing it—he just doesn't here in case he has already. Whoops.

Being Keith means interacting with people and doing his best but always struggling when those people number over, like, six.]

I'd say it's linked to whatever brought us in. If not us, then whatever's happened to us. Or whatever was the key to bring us there.

We have to take it that whatever it is had something very bad happen to it.

private;

[daemonized]

[The feed's gone private, and Ardyn can abide by that.]

Insofar that it is in my best interests too, then yes.

[Not that it ever needed a private filter for this kind of declaration. Ardyn is very much this sort of man, and yet at least he's being honest about it.]

But that does sound reasonable enough, doesn't it? Perhaps we'll view our stint in New Tokyo as a chance to do our proper research, regarding our new positions. Once we're back, allow the brainstorming to begin properly.