Piper 90: Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goneawaymod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
goneawayworld2021-04-10 09:37 pm
goneawaymod) wrote in goneawayworld2021-04-10 09:37 pm
3..2...1...CONTACT!
Who: The New Hires
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Possible in every memory, warn in subject lines.
Contact.
It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking across the Top Deck. Taking a slow breath between reps in the training room.
The New Hires are connected. Mental pathways locking together, they're forced into one another's innermost beings. Thrust into one another's memory palaces where the mind collects and stores everything that makes them who they are. The core of their beings are only a few steps away and no one can help the violation.
To make matters worse, it comes with no explanation or no ability to pull out and stop. Once they're through the first memory, perhaps they can find a way out, but they're already witnessing some event from their host's past. And, if they left, who knows whether or not they'd end up accidentally invading another memory palace?
And if they were there, who was in theirs?
[[So, how this works: the memories can either be viewed in spectator mode or the guest can be experiencing everything themselves. The person whose memories are being shown, the host, can watch as their current self or take the form they had of their past self. They can talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.
They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can control any other memories they'd like to show people after. Of course, there's also always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up other memories unbidden.]]
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Possible in every memory, warn in subject lines.
Contact.
It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking across the Top Deck. Taking a slow breath between reps in the training room.
The New Hires are connected. Mental pathways locking together, they're forced into one another's innermost beings. Thrust into one another's memory palaces where the mind collects and stores everything that makes them who they are. The core of their beings are only a few steps away and no one can help the violation.
To make matters worse, it comes with no explanation or no ability to pull out and stop. Once they're through the first memory, perhaps they can find a way out, but they're already witnessing some event from their host's past. And, if they left, who knows whether or not they'd end up accidentally invading another memory palace?
And if they were there, who was in theirs?
[[So, how this works: the memories can either be viewed in spectator mode or the guest can be experiencing everything themselves. The person whose memories are being shown, the host, can watch as their current self or take the form they had of their past self. They can talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.
They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can control any other memories they'd like to show people after. Of course, there's also always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up other memories unbidden.]]
Cammie
It's late at night and the city is dark, illuminated in patches by bright holographic signs projected on the sides of buildings and streetlights. The sound of gunfire is dying out, but the heavy footsteps of Holons and Striders echo through the otherwise empty streets.
Cammie is alone at the edge of the perimeter, four storeys tall in her Holon but looking every bit as nervous as as she would in her human body. This mission has been easier than it should have been; there's Spider Tanks laying destroyed around the streets, dead Union soldiers in black and red body armour scattered between them, and the foot-soldiers are already making their way into the building they've come to clear. The order's just come in to stay at the perimeter and keep an eye out—easy, right?—so that's what she's doing. Keeping an eye out.
She turns in a semi-circle, scanning each street branching off from where she's standing— until she sees what looks like another Holon, approaching from the east. Cammie instinctively raises her gun, the little ears on her armour raising in surprise, but she doesn't fire.
"Hey, look at me! Still not shooting anybody I know," she says, with put-on humour. Her body language tells another story. When no one on her team responds, her ears flatten, then quirk. "Kazu, you get big?"
Over the radio, in Japanese, Kazu asks: "What?"
2. Storm Warning
It's late, well past the bedtime of the preteen girl currently scrambling down the stairs in her rabbit-print pajamas and a familiar pair of robotic rabbit ears—almost too big on her head, and not quite the same design as they are in the present and lopsided, as if put on hastily. The wind is rattling the windows, heavy rain beating against the glass.
"It's just a storm, Bun," the older woman, sitting at the kitchen table, says. Beside her, sat in a wheelchair, a man who shares Cammie's eyes and blonde hair squashes a holographic screen that had been showing the weather radar.
"It's loud," Cammie whines, earning a wry smile off the man.
"That it is, Cammie. Maybe we should have some tea, eh, Elsie?" the man says.
"No tea for the child, not at this hour," Elsie answers. "Besides, I expect she'd like hot chocolate better."
3. Second Birthday
"Chase and Yasamin are downstairs, ready to catch you; are you ready, Miss MacCloud?"
Cammie takes a deep breath, lying in a strange pod, her face set with determination. "Down the rabbit hole. Let's do this."
The grey haired man and an android start flipping touch-screen switches, monitoring her vitals and the system she's connecting herself to. "Clear your mind. Listen to your breathing. The goal is to lower heart rate and blood pressure. Just relax. Just be."
Cammie lays there and listens, closing her eyes as a blue light starts pulsing along the circuits around her head.
"You should sense a pulse, a repeating pressure you've never felt before at the edge of your mind. That gen:LOCK's sync signal, looking for you. Give into it, reach for it, go to that sensation. Go to the light, grab it, and then hang on."
"Kazu," Cammie says, with a strange dramatic air; Kazu corrects her pronunciation across the room. "If I wink out, you can have ma Manga collection."
Kazu answers in Japanese, "I haven't read Manga since I was a kid."
Cammie's eyes open just so she can glare over at him. "What's wrong with ye?"
Then she lays down and something happens. The blue light surges, energy pulsing down into the pod— and the giant, 40ft tall Holon Cammie's mind has just been uploaded to wakes up.
2
He expects the worst and, for once, is surprised by something innocent. Maybe he can ride this out here, in a cozy little memory. “Well, who wouldn’t like hot chocolate?”
no subject
"Yes, please," wee Cammie says, climbing into the man's lap whilst Elsie collected the pan, the milk, the sugar, and scooped cocoa from the tin to mix the drink. Cammie rests her head against her father's chest, her ears drooping with drowsiness.
Older Cammie’s perched herself on one of the kitchen counters, swinging her legs.
“Y’know what I was thinking there? About how cocoa powder makes such nice hot chocolate and biscuits and stuff, but it tastes horrible on its own. I was havin’ a whole wee kiddie conundrum in my head.”
She gives Robbie a smile. Unlike the last time they talked, she has her vibrant Scottish accent. She also doesn’t seem all that bothered about the idea of someone else being in her memories, and maybe even head.
no subject
A kiddie conundrum is an adult epiphany. “I always thought Swiss Miss was sweet already. Your parents let you add more sugar to it?”
no subject
"Pure powder's not great for eatin' on its own, bit intense, not to mention the texture," Cammie says with a nod. "And Gran always used raw powder, she liked to make it fresh as she could, rather than usin' a mix. She knew how to mix it all to make it taste just right."
Homemade hot chocolate made fresh on the stove. Gods, does Cammie miss that.
Present Cammie's ears perk up. "Oh, heads up, there's a—"
Then there's a loud bang, a flash, and the power cuts out, leaving the room in darkness besides the blue gas fire under the pot. Younger Cammie startles with a scream and her dad holds her close, soothing her
"It's all right," he says. "It's just the power's gone."
"But with no power, there's no lights, and no phone, and no Ether—" the little girl sounds ready to cry, clinging to her dad's shirt. Her gran lights a candle and sets it on the table.
Despite the sudden noise and younger Cammie's fear, in the light of the candle and the gas on the stove, the room still somehow feels cozy. They're safe inside, together.
"Good ol' Scottish storms," present Cammie says with a shake of her head. The sound of the rain against the window is almost nostalgic, now. "Haven't been through one of 'em in a long time now."
no subject
Robbie watches the scene unfold, catching himself when present Cammie offers colour commentary. “I guess tiny you hasn’t gotten used to them, yet? Not like the rest of... your family? That must be your grandmother making the cocoa.”
There’s a pause where he takes stock of the memory, casting the familial roles. Robbie is a little jealous, truth be told, of her getting such a big hug from what might be her dad, and so he deliberately doesn’t ask about the man. “They seem really nice. I wonder if that’s why you didn’t buy the fake memory so easily. It didn’t live up to from-scratch cocoa.”
cw: mention of parental death
"I was a jumpy little kid. Back then I could still be woken up by loud noises, ma hearin' loss hadn't progressed so far, so the thunder and rattlin' scared me somethin' fierce," she says, with a nod. "Think this was ma first power outage, actually; stuff's usually built to withstand this kinda thing, these days."
"Hush now," her gran says, gentle but firm in her reassurance. "We're all here, and all safe. It's just the wind's taken down a line somewhere."
"What about Mam?" little Cammie asks. "Is she in the dark?"
Her dad laughs softly. "Oh, Bun, she's likely better off than we are. Those rigs are built to take the weather. She's probably tucked up in her bunk right now, reading a nice mystery, or out on the Ether talking to her friends."
The real Cammie smiles, a smile edged with both nostalgia and a little touch of sadness. "Maybe, aye. It's hard to live up to home." Gods, she misses it. It was quiet, just her and her Gran, but it was home. "Think I'd put my money on that bein' somethin' to do with the way ma brain's wired, or ma experience with havin' other people's memories, but that's the boring explanation. I like yours better."
She doesn't mention how her Dad's dead, now; how he didn't live long past finding out her Mam had died in an attack on a rig she was decommissioning, years later than this night. She doesn't mention it just like she doesn't question the implication that Robbie's childhood decidedly did not live up to the illusion presented by Darlington, because this is still a nice memory, and she's sure neither of them want to depress themselves.